1 items
About this mod
Comprehensive mod of Divinity 2 that's actually balanced and feels like an expanded version of the original game.
- Permissions and credits
The purpose of this mod is both to expand the skill trees a bit (28 new skills/spells) in parts they're lacking while also setting difficulty to a proper balance. Normal mode of the game is too easy while tactics mode isn't too hard, but punishes mixed damage type groups (balance problem that forces you into all melee or all magic parties if trying to minmax).
The majority of mods I've tried are either not balanced well, add too many skills making base skills redundant, and other such problems. Mixing and matching random people's mods just makes it worse, so I feel it's better to use a single, monolithic mod. This mod keeps difficulty in a good area while giving you a few more options to work with.
Difficulty:
-------------
Difficulty - Regular mode is untouched while tactics mode (the way I recommend to play) is changed to +50% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor and magic armor, +50% enemy HP (instead of 50/50/50). I feel regular mode (with no mods) is too easy, while tactics mode discourages mixed damage type groups, so not buffing enemy armor makes those groups much more viable.
Due to a few other changes to surface damage, spell damage (which enemies also benefit from), etc, the 50/0/50 of this mod is not really easier than normal tactics mode. On my last play through (tactics mode which you should be using with this mod), I lost the Drill Worm and Radeka fight of act 1 twice then won the 3rd time, which I feel is probably right about where balance needs to be resembling standard 1990's RPG difficulty.
Necromancy
-------------------
*NEW* DOT spell: Boil Blood - Appears on vendors at level 4. Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Pyromancy.
*NEW* touch-based damage spell: Festering Hand - Appears on vendors at level 4. Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Geomancy. The spell applies a DOT called Pox.
*NEW* Skeleton Warrior summon spell: acts as a small progression/side option from bloated corpse. It's similar to the witchcraft undead decapitator summons from DOS1, uses a 2hander, has attack of opportunity, a little less hp than bloated corpse, but does more auto-attack damage. Has crippling blow skill. Is not overpowered like summons from other mods and requires a corpse to cast (appears on vendors at level 4).
*New* ranged spell called Bone Break - Ranged damage and tendon rupture but costs 3 AP instead of 2 AP like the rogue version since it's usable at range.
Pyromancy
-----------------
*NEW* Explode - good damage but has a 2m explode radius and is character only targetable (not ground targetable), so it's a spell you always want to use but have to be careful about hitting your own party members (similar drawback to spontaneous combustion - appears on vendor at 4).
*NEW* Flame Sphere - Summon a 2 radius flame sphere on the battlefield that lasts for 2 ticks, damaging anyone inside and lowering their fire resist by -10% that stacks with other fire debuffs. It also sets fire to anyone standing inside the area of the sphere's creation.
Anyone inside the sphere is also immune to wet, chilled, or frozen and has their water resist increased by 20%, so it might be able to be used in strange ways defensively.
- *New* Fire spell melt ground - a 3 AP, one tick damage and root spell
- Flaming Daggers: Slight bump from 0.25 x 3 to 0.33 x 3.
Geomancy
-----------------
*NEW* level 1 earth spell Midnight Oil - creates oil surface for 1 AP
*NEW* level 2 earth spell Earth Shard: 2 AP 0.95 multiplier 13m range 20% chance to petrify. Earth line was a bit too poison focused, and this spell balances that out.
*New* Petrifying touch spell
- Earthquake knockdown is now affected by magic resist instead of physical resist
- Impalement: no longer cripples and instead causes bleeding. Resist check for bleed is also changed to magic resist for this particular spell. Earth line was too overloaded with CC due to earthquake, this spell, and worm tremor, with worm tremor really being underutilized. Now worm tremor has much more of a reason to exist, and thematically impalement's graphic looks like something that would cause bleeding anyway. You also now have a 1 AP spell that adds oil if you really need oil.
- Throw dust - slight damage increase from 0.75 to 0.85
- Corrosive spray - kind of underwhelming as a source skill so it's been changed to do decent poison damage + apply it's normal acid status but atrophy removed.
- Dust blast - small bump in damage due to being a source skill
Aero
-------
*New* air spell Deafening Rapture - 2m radius, 0.90 damage, causes deaf status.
*NEW* level 2 air spell electric ray added (this is not the same overpowered spell seen in a few other mods), a beam spell that goes in a straight line, good damage, 3 AP cost. Since it electrocutes the ground water it touches in a straight line, can also be used to attempt to benefit from air elemental affinity, which is harder to do in the base game.
*NEW* level 3 air spell translocate - self teleport
- Electric discharge (lightning bolt) damage multiplier bumped slightly to 1.00 to keep up with early game strategies of spamming burning and poison status all over the landscape. Enemies will also zap you harder as well.
- Dazing bolt - slight damage bump to 1.35 because it's a 3 AP spell and elemental affinity in air is harder to use. Enemies will also nuke you harder.
- Vacuum touch - slight damage bump. Too low of damage for a touch spell compared to the others.
- Vacuum Aura - slight damage bump because the damage is underwhelming for a source spell even if the aura can be considered good.
Hydro
----------
*NEW* level 2 water spell - Ice Spear: 2 AP, 0.90 multiplier, 13m range, 3 cooldown. Can pierce through multiple targets. It will pierce the main target and hit up to 2 other targets behind the main one if they're lined up similar to bowling pins. Maximum seek radius of second target is 8m or less away from the first. Always target the closest enemy with the spell and not the furthest away one if you want it to work.
*New* Freezing touch - short range touch spell similar to DOS1
*New* resurrection spell added to water magic with 4 skill investment
- Hail Strike - slight bump in damage like all low level, 3 AP caster spells
- Ice Fan - similar damage to Hail Strike
Warfare
------------
Javelin - piercing damage ranged attack that causes bleeding.
Stat changes:
-------------------
- Spears changed from dex to str so they're actually useful
- Necromancy life steal nerfed from 10% to 7%. It was just far too easy to accumulate enormous life steal with bonuses from just a few pieces of armor, so now active healing plays a bigger role.
Resist changes:
------------------------------------------
Melee orientated status debuffs added:
- Status Knocked down: -10% physical resist
- Status Blind: -10% physical resist
- Status Disarmed: -10% physical resist
- Status Sleeping: -15% physical resist
Statuses like warm, burning, wet, frozen, poisoned, shocked, stunned, etc, buff or debuff resists. For example:
- Warm: -10% fire, +5% water
- Burning: -15% fire, +10% water, +10% air
- Necrofire: -20% fire, +15% water, +10% air
- Wet: -20% air, -10% water, +10% fire
Around 10 or so status changes like this. I think features like this didn't exist in the original DOS2 release and some were added in the DE version, while this mod has had them all along.
Surface changes:
-------------------------
Hazardous surfaces cause a little more damage to step on them. When I originally played DOS2 (pre-DE), I noticed it was kinda easy to ignore surfaces (especially once you got resist gear). Statuses like burning and poisoned are unchanged, but standing in or running through surfaces like fire, necrofire, poison clouds, etc, cause more damage. This is another reason you can't really say this mod is easier than normal tactics version. You will likely take more damage and have to rely more on active healing, while lifesteal is also slightly less effective.
Other changes
-----------------------
- A few QOL changes like making spells that require 2 Warfare 2 Water for instance only require 2 points from the parent class and 1 point from the other.
- Change the memory requirements for some underutilized 2 memory slot buff spells to 1 slot instead, while higher tier damage spells are generally still 2 slots.
- The same changes as the no psychic enemies mod so enemies don't automatically know your resistances, if you're undead, etc.
*There's still a Fort Joy respec mirror added in with the mod that doesn't work on newer Divinity versions, so just ignore that and use the respec mirror included with the gift bag instead until I remove it.
** Tooltip for Corrosive spray is wrong and needs to be fixed but spell works fine.
The majority of mods I've tried are either not balanced well, add too many skills making base skills redundant, and other such problems. Mixing and matching random people's mods just makes it worse, so I feel it's better to use a single, monolithic mod. This mod keeps difficulty in a good area while giving you a few more options to work with.
Difficulty:
-------------
Difficulty - Regular mode is untouched while tactics mode (the way I recommend to play) is changed to +50% enemy damage, +0% enemy armor and magic armor, +50% enemy HP (instead of 50/50/50). I feel regular mode (with no mods) is too easy, while tactics mode discourages mixed damage type groups, so not buffing enemy armor makes those groups much more viable.
Due to a few other changes to surface damage, spell damage (which enemies also benefit from), etc, the 50/0/50 of this mod is not really easier than normal tactics mode. On my last play through (tactics mode which you should be using with this mod), I lost the Drill Worm and Radeka fight of act 1 twice then won the 3rd time, which I feel is probably right about where balance needs to be resembling standard 1990's RPG difficulty.
Necromancy
-------------------
*NEW* DOT spell: Boil Blood - Appears on vendors at level 4. Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Pyromancy.
*NEW* touch-based damage spell: Festering Hand - Appears on vendors at level 4. Requires 1 Necromancy, 1 Geomancy. The spell applies a DOT called Pox.
*NEW* Skeleton Warrior summon spell: acts as a small progression/side option from bloated corpse. It's similar to the witchcraft undead decapitator summons from DOS1, uses a 2hander, has attack of opportunity, a little less hp than bloated corpse, but does more auto-attack damage. Has crippling blow skill. Is not overpowered like summons from other mods and requires a corpse to cast (appears on vendors at level 4).
*New* ranged spell called Bone Break - Ranged damage and tendon rupture but costs 3 AP instead of 2 AP like the rogue version since it's usable at range.
Pyromancy
-----------------
*NEW* Explode - good damage but has a 2m explode radius and is character only targetable (not ground targetable), so it's a spell you always want to use but have to be careful about hitting your own party members (similar drawback to spontaneous combustion - appears on vendor at 4).
*NEW* Flame Sphere - Summon a 2 radius flame sphere on the battlefield that lasts for 2 ticks, damaging anyone inside and lowering their fire resist by -10% that stacks with other fire debuffs. It also sets fire to anyone standing inside the area of the sphere's creation.
Anyone inside the sphere is also immune to wet, chilled, or frozen and has their water resist increased by 20%, so it might be able to be used in strange ways defensively.
- *New* Fire spell melt ground - a 3 AP, one tick damage and root spell
- Flaming Daggers: Slight bump from 0.25 x 3 to 0.33 x 3.
Geomancy
-----------------
*NEW* level 1 earth spell Midnight Oil - creates oil surface for 1 AP
*NEW* level 2 earth spell Earth Shard: 2 AP 0.95 multiplier 13m range 20% chance to petrify. Earth line was a bit too poison focused, and this spell balances that out.
*New* Petrifying touch spell
- Earthquake knockdown is now affected by magic resist instead of physical resist
- Impalement: no longer cripples and instead causes bleeding. Resist check for bleed is also changed to magic resist for this particular spell. Earth line was too overloaded with CC due to earthquake, this spell, and worm tremor, with worm tremor really being underutilized. Now worm tremor has much more of a reason to exist, and thematically impalement's graphic looks like something that would cause bleeding anyway. You also now have a 1 AP spell that adds oil if you really need oil.
- Throw dust - slight damage increase from 0.75 to 0.85
- Corrosive spray - kind of underwhelming as a source skill so it's been changed to do decent poison damage + apply it's normal acid status but atrophy removed.
- Dust blast - small bump in damage due to being a source skill
Aero
-------
*New* air spell Deafening Rapture - 2m radius, 0.90 damage, causes deaf status.
*NEW* level 2 air spell electric ray added (this is not the same overpowered spell seen in a few other mods), a beam spell that goes in a straight line, good damage, 3 AP cost. Since it electrocutes the ground water it touches in a straight line, can also be used to attempt to benefit from air elemental affinity, which is harder to do in the base game.
*NEW* level 3 air spell translocate - self teleport
- Electric discharge (lightning bolt) damage multiplier bumped slightly to 1.00 to keep up with early game strategies of spamming burning and poison status all over the landscape. Enemies will also zap you harder as well.
- Dazing bolt - slight damage bump to 1.35 because it's a 3 AP spell and elemental affinity in air is harder to use. Enemies will also nuke you harder.
- Vacuum touch - slight damage bump. Too low of damage for a touch spell compared to the others.
- Vacuum Aura - slight damage bump because the damage is underwhelming for a source spell even if the aura can be considered good.
Hydro
----------
*NEW* level 2 water spell - Ice Spear: 2 AP, 0.90 multiplier, 13m range, 3 cooldown. Can pierce through multiple targets. It will pierce the main target and hit up to 2 other targets behind the main one if they're lined up similar to bowling pins. Maximum seek radius of second target is 8m or less away from the first. Always target the closest enemy with the spell and not the furthest away one if you want it to work.
*New* Freezing touch - short range touch spell similar to DOS1
*New* resurrection spell added to water magic with 4 skill investment
- Hail Strike - slight bump in damage like all low level, 3 AP caster spells
- Ice Fan - similar damage to Hail Strike
Warfare
------------
Javelin - piercing damage ranged attack that causes bleeding.
Stat changes:
-------------------
- Spears changed from dex to str so they're actually useful
- Necromancy life steal nerfed from 10% to 7%. It was just far too easy to accumulate enormous life steal with bonuses from just a few pieces of armor, so now active healing plays a bigger role.
Resist changes:
------------------------------------------
Melee orientated status debuffs added:
- Status Knocked down: -10% physical resist
- Status Blind: -10% physical resist
- Status Disarmed: -10% physical resist
- Status Sleeping: -15% physical resist
Statuses like warm, burning, wet, frozen, poisoned, shocked, stunned, etc, buff or debuff resists. For example:
- Warm: -10% fire, +5% water
- Burning: -15% fire, +10% water, +10% air
- Necrofire: -20% fire, +15% water, +10% air
- Wet: -20% air, -10% water, +10% fire
Around 10 or so status changes like this. I think features like this didn't exist in the original DOS2 release and some were added in the DE version, while this mod has had them all along.
Surface changes:
-------------------------
Hazardous surfaces cause a little more damage to step on them. When I originally played DOS2 (pre-DE), I noticed it was kinda easy to ignore surfaces (especially once you got resist gear). Statuses like burning and poisoned are unchanged, but standing in or running through surfaces like fire, necrofire, poison clouds, etc, cause more damage. This is another reason you can't really say this mod is easier than normal tactics version. You will likely take more damage and have to rely more on active healing, while lifesteal is also slightly less effective.
Other changes
-----------------------
- A few QOL changes like making spells that require 2 Warfare 2 Water for instance only require 2 points from the parent class and 1 point from the other.
- Change the memory requirements for some underutilized 2 memory slot buff spells to 1 slot instead, while higher tier damage spells are generally still 2 slots.
- The same changes as the no psychic enemies mod so enemies don't automatically know your resistances, if you're undead, etc.
*There's still a Fort Joy respec mirror added in with the mod that doesn't work on newer Divinity versions, so just ignore that and use the respec mirror included with the gift bag instead until I remove it.
** Tooltip for Corrosive spray is wrong and needs to be fixed but spell works fine.