About this mod
Fixes bugs and balance problems added in LoA expansion and existed without it.
Goal of this mod is to provide best vanilla experience.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
It's mainly fixes bugs and balance problems.
Also there are some convenience improvements.
Game feeling is mostly the same. Some things were changed to be closer to original Dungeon siege game (compared to LoA addon).
It's recommended to start a new single player game to play with this mod. Not all changes made in this mod will apply to already started game.
For multiplayer characters creating new ones is not required. Only side effect may be some items changing stats or appearance and they will change back if mod is removed.
Changes:
Balance problem/Bug - LoA changed armor penetration formula which resulted in:
Many enemies do 0 damage. Most enemies from original campaign had their damage changed.
Monsters with fire breath and similar attacks do not increase damage on Veteran and Elite difficulties.
Damage balance was broken:
between two handed and one handed melee - two handed doing less DPS and do not have bonus armor from shield
between bows and crossbows - crossbows better DPS (while also having more range)
same with spells - multi projectile low damage spells doing much more damage than they should, high damage doing way less
"Thee is also an overall balance issue (result of armor penetration change) - melee, ranged and magic attacks which have equal damage will deal very different actual damage.
If level 40 mele hero hit does 200 damage,
level 40 ranged hero with the same damage will do 160 damage (melee do 25% more)
level 40 mage hero with the same damage will do 144 damage (melee do 39% more)"
How it was fixed (+ additional improvements):
Changed armor penetration formula (for ranged and magic) to make melee, ranged and magic attacks with equal damage do actual equal damage.
All ranged and mage enemies from original campaign are changed to do the same DPS as without LoA expansion.
Two handed weapons get damage bonus and chance to hit. So, two handers now have more DPS compared to one handed (more offensive oriented, as 2h are missing armor bonus from shield).
Bows fire rate improved. They now deal slightly more DPS than crossbows, as they have less range than crossbows.
"Spells are rebalanced. Some multi projectile got reduced damage. Weaker spells improved. Attack spells generally got their cast speed improved.
Big AOE spells, which cost lots of mana are improved and now worth using.
Mana cost is set according to spell efficiency (single target, close range, low dps - cost less).
All offensive spells and summons now scale until level 120 (done for better spell diversity). High level spells are still better than scaled low level."
Balance problem - Experience gains on late Veteran difficulty and Elite difficulty are too low.
It takes too much grind to progress.
Going to Elite difficulty require level 83, while enemies on Veteran difficulty are not giving enough experience to progress levels with reasonable speed to reach such a high level.
How it was fixed:
"Reduced level requirements for Elite and later Veteran Starting locations.
So higher level enemies can be fought earlier (and those will give more experience)."
Instead of clearing Grescal ruins or Lava caverns hundreds of times, it's possible to move on to Elite difficulty.
"Increased experience from Elite enemies.
Experience from low level Elite enemies enemies increased more to be inline with high level ones.
Idea behind it is to make more areas of map worth playing instead of just running to high level locations (Grescal ruins or Lava caverns)."
Experience from LoA map Elite enemies is not increased, but LoA Elite map is accessible earlier.
Balance problem - underleveling for nature mages, who mainly doing healing.
Nature mages, while healing are not doing damage. And leveling happen almost (healing give neglectable amount of exp) solely by dealing damage.
Was partially fixed in LoA by adding orb spells, which are dealing damage, while mage is healing.
How it was fixed:
Nature magic orb spells are improved (more damage and now continue to scale until level 120) to further reduce underleveling problem.
Also all summons got extended duration. Nature magic summons got survivability bonus, relative to combat magic summons. Overal nature summons last longer in battle, wich improve nature mages passive damage dealing.
Also increased exp for healing.
Balance problem - with equipment for mages and archers, which was incorrectly fixed in LoA:
"Armor in original was separated in groups for different classes:
Heavy - best armor, highest STR requirements, only warriors can equip.
Light - low armor, almost no STR required, even mages can wear it.
Robe - very low armor, but have bigger bonuses (prefixes and suffixes like +11 INT or +9 nature/combat magic), for mages, require INT.
So, for mages there is valid choice between Light and Robe.
Medium is between Light and Heavy, archers can wear it.
Also, combat mages have more STR, compared to nature mages, so they can wear stronger armor (possibly best Medium armor with enough +STR bonuses from items). But combat mages got a little less INT and combat spells overall require closer contact with the enemies compared to nature, while most nature spells are precise long range attacks (or healing from the back).
Overall it's quite interesting and with compromises."
Problem, is that those armor classes only made for body armor
"Gloves, boots, shields are can only be Heavy.
Helmets can be Heavy or Robe (but without bigger bonuses unlike body)"
Almost all gloves, boots and shields on higher levels can not be equipped by mage. There is no gear progression. Equippable ones are just low level, also with low level bonuses.
In LoA Gloves, boots, shields and Helmets for all classes were added. Good? No! Instead of complying to old good armor class system, it was completely dropped.
New LoA body armor give more armor, then Medium and require INT or DEX, easily equippable. It makes Medium, Light and Robe armors useless.
Also, there are no rare or unique variants of a new LoA armor except some low level.
So armor from the shop is the best for mages and archers and rare and unique armor drops are useless to them (because Medium, Light and Robe armors are useless compared to new one).
How it was fixed:
All armor was changed to fit original armor classes.
Changed new LoA body armor to require STR (similar to Medium). Half of LoA armors are converted to rare/unique.
All gloves, boots, shields are now require STR (less then body armor, most in Medium/Light category). Half of LoA ones are converted to rare/unique.
"All helmets are changed to 3 types.
Heavy closed helmets are unchanged.
Lighter early game helmets have their STR requirements reduced and now are Medium armor. They are now drop more often on highter levels and with bigger bonuses (instead of LoA helmets). Firstly warrior will wear them at low level and later archers and combat mages."
Original mage hats are the same as original, but got better bonuses. All hemlest except original mage hats are now require STR.
Also added armor bonus for LoA robes, becaue bonuses on those are not as good as normal ones.
Also was fixed: Lots of items are not dropping in LoA. Also LoA items appear much more frequent almost replacing original items.
Bug - Shield block working incorrectly.
How it should be: while shield is equipped and used with one handed weapon, it should give it's armor value and block chance. It should give only it's magic properties othervice.
How it works: Armor bonus is working correctly (only with 1h weapons). Block chance work with any weapon (even ranged and magic). Sometimes block do not work at all.
How it was fixed:
Block chance is removed. Shield armor is doubled.
Other equipment improvements
"Improved rare and unique items.
In original best melee weapons are rare/unique. LoA added two melee weapons, which can be bought in shop and better then any rare and unique weapons. Those are changed to be rare/unique."
Rare/unique bows/crossbows are worse than normal ones from shop, they now got fire rate bonus.
"Rare/unique prefixes/suffixes are improved to be stronger than normal ones of the same level.
Some are alright and were unchanged."
Added armor bonus to rare/unique robes to be competitive with normal ones.
Some items, which were too good(for how easy to get them) are nerfed.
Problem - Buffing waste time
There is no limit to number of buffs casted and it's good to cast as many as possible. It's just cost time. Even the single buff must be casted many times to get decent duration.
Some buffs are too good to be long stackable buffs and practically mandatory.
Improvements:
Buff duration was extended to reduce buffing time.
Strong buffs (like haste, triple strike, death blast) are not extended and can not be stacked and now are short time single cast.
Haste duration is reduced, but gives little more attack speed.
Triple strike duration now increase with magic level, but initial duration is less. (previously level was only increasing mana cost)
Death blast costs more mana and has a shorter duration, but duration increases with magic level (still less).
Party recharge mana regen reduced to +10%, duration was greatly extended.
Other spell impovements
Curse spells cost much less mana. Temporarily disabling or debuffing a monster should be cheaper than killing.
Removed annoying 5-10 seconds delay after casting some spells, when nothing else can be casted.
Improved prefixes and suffixes generation
Fixes several problems:
"1. Lots of very similar suffixes reducing chance for others to generate.
There are many suffixes with a chance to cast different spells with different chances to cast, like those:
""+10% Chance to Cast Zap on Taking Damage"" upto ""+30% Chance to Cast Zap on Taking Damage""
Those generate way too often, usually most armor in the shop have those, instead of something different."
Now only 25% chance variant will be generated, so chances to get other suffixes will increase.
"2. Prefixes on weapons with chance to do something and added damage work incorrectly.
Damage is fully added to weapon damage tooltip, but it will be dealt only if percentage is triggered for prefixes like that:
""+20% Chance To Acidify And Adds 20 to 30 Acid Damage"""
Now bonus damage is dealt every time.
3. Some bonuses do nothing
Removed from generation several non workin bonuses: chance to hit with ranged and dodge ranged.
On rare and unique items those are replaced with ranged piercing chance and chance to block ranged.
Increased value of bonuses: damage reflect (increased most substantionaly as it's realy weak: not reducing incoming damage, only reflect melee, reflect damage value is after incoming damage reduced by armor), +max health (to compete with +STR which also adds a lot of health and other things on top), +max mana(to compete with +INT), health steal, health per hit, mana steal, mana per hit (they only work with melee attacks and are quite weak).
There are other smaller changes.
"Fixed several set items giving only 1% spell bonus damage with full set completed - bonus damage value is increased.
Bonus damage for spellbooks from shop is reduced. It's less needed as spell damage was improved overall by fixing armor formula. It's also makes compeating bonuses (like mana discount) more viable."
There are also many small changes, which are not listed.
Incompatible with:
"Experience mods (experience rebalance is already included in this mod).
Mods, which change items or spells.
Mods, which change enemies.
Mods, which change pcontent (item generation, prefixes and suffixes)."