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mym

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mym

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About this mod

HBFS is a mod that allows you to change Morrowind's difficulty by various simple means.
It is done dynamically for all vanilla or added actors (NPCs or creatures).
Settings are provided to adjust the mod to your taste, including player level scaling options, and can be changed any time during a playthrough.

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Harder Better Faster Stronger (OpenMW)

OpenMW 0.49 or newer is required!

HBFS is a mod that allows you to change Morrowind's difficulty by various simple means.
It is done dynamically for all vanilla or added actors (NPCs or creatures).
Settings are provided to adjust the mod to your taste, including player level scaling options, and can be changed any time during a playthrough.

Features

  • Dynamically alter stats for any NPC or creature (customizable)
  • Supported stats are all attributes, health, fatigue and magicka
  • Dynamically increase (or reduce) physical damage taken through the alteration of enemy's strength and agility (customizable)
  • Dynamically increase (or reduce) magic damage taken (customizable)
  • Make the game harder or easier based on the settings
  • Scale the difficulty on the player's level (customizable)
  • Multiple presets to ease the configuration
  • Improve difficulty and realism through many Morrowind game settings (GMSTs) (optional)
  • Prevent backwards running (on by default)
  • Damage actor's equipment on death, to reduce the player's wealth and improve realism (on by default)
  • Picking items from a dead guard is a crime (on by default)

Why

Veteran players can find Morrowind too easy. Beginners can find that game too hard.
Vanilla Morrowind only offers a difficulty slider that only affects physical damage.
Some mods make specific enemies stronger, but they only cover a limited set of actors and don't allow you to adjust the difficulty level to your needs.
Other mods allow you to slow down the player progression in order to prevent you from being overpowered too early.

HBFS offers other complementary ways to adjust the challenge:

  • Make actors stronger (or weaker) by dynamically altering actors' attributes, Health, Magicka and Fatigue
  • Increase (or decrease) magic damage dealt to the player
  • Alter various game settings
  • Dynamically alter some mechanics

Adjusting physical damage is naturally handled by altering actors' Strength, but also Agility and Luck for hit chances.

Magic damage needs a special treatment because no attribute or skill can change the magnitude of spells.

How it Works

Actors

  • When an actor becomes active, HBFS dynamically updates his attributes, Health, Magicka and Fatigue, based on the configuration you set in the mod settings page.
  • When an actor becomes inactive, HBFS restores his statistics in order to limit the changes to your game save, and ease the removal of the mod if needed.

If some of the actors' affected stats are modified by another mod while the actor is active (companion leveler?), HBFS detects the change and preserves it.

Player

When the player takes damage from a magical source, HBFS alters the effects' magnitude on the player's health.
Handled magic effects are: Damage Health, Drain Health, Absorb Health, Fire Damage, Frost Damage, Shock Damage, Poison and Sun Damage.
Regarding Absorb Health, HBFS doesn't affect the amount of health absorbed by the enemy.

Scaling

If the "Difficulty Scaling" setting is enabled, HBFS uses the player level and the user defined scaling settings to progressively increase all actors' stats and the magic damage dealt to the player.

Game Settings

HBFS also provides an optional addon that alters multiple game settings (GMSTs) in order to increase the challenge on specific game aspects, while improving the realism.
That addon is also split into multiple modular addons.

I only tackled GMSTs I could not find in other popular mods, or if they are not available as independent modules, or if I had another opinion on their value.
Check the recommended mods section for complementary mods.

I took inspiration from the following mods:


Combat

Hardens combats.

  • fCombatDelayNPC: -0.5 (from 0.1)
    • Reduce the delay between NPCs attacks (from 0-1 sec to 0-0.5 sec)
  • fCombatCreature: -0.5 (from 0.1)
    • Reduce the delay between creatures attacks (from 0-1 sec to 0-0.5 sec)
  • fCombatAngleXY: 30 (from 60)
    • Reduced the horizontal hit angle with melee attacks: You'll have to aim more accurately
  • fCombatAngleZ: 30 (from 60)
    • Reduced the vertical hit angle with melee attacks: You'll have to aim more accurately
  • fCombatBlockLeftAngle: -40 (from -90)
    • Reduced the left blocking angle when wearing a shield: You'll have to face your enemies more accurately
  • fCombatBlockRightAngle: 20 (from 30)
    • Reduced the right blocking angle when wearing a shield: You'll have to face your enemies more accurately

Magic

  • fElementalShieldMult: 0.4 (from 0.1)
    • Increased elemental shield damage multiplier: Now it deals 40% of the resistance value, instead of only 10%
  • fMagicItemRechargePerSecond: 0.01 (from 0.05)
    • Slowed down items' recharge to incite the player to use more soul gems
  • fFatigueSpellMult: 1 (from 0)
    • Casting spell cost some fatigue, depending on the player encumbrance and the spell cost
    • Light-weighted mages won't suffer much from this setting
    • Example, with an encumbrance at 40% and a spell cost at 20, then the fatigue spent is 40% * 20 * 1.0 = 8

Flee

Make sure that actors with a high base flee value will actually flee, and far enough, when their health is low.
Most enemies have a base flee value of 30, and with HBFS's changes they will only flee when they are close to their enemy and if their health is below 10-15%.

  • fAIFleeHealthMult: 80 (from 7)
    • Increased the factor applied to actors' health ratio used for estimating whether they should run for their life or not
  • fAIFleeFleeMult: 0.5 (from 0.3)
    • Increase the chance to flee with low health, and increase the effectiveness of Demoralize and Rally spells
  • fFleeDistance: 6000 (from 3000)
    • Increased actors' flee max distance, e.g. when their health is low, or they see a werewolf

Security

  • fPickLockMult: -1.25 (from -1)
    • Increase the overall lock pick difficulty: You'll need a better security skill
  • fTrapCostMult: -0.5 (from 0)
    • Increase the overall trap disarm difficulty: You'll need a better security skill

Sneak

  • fCombatCriticalStrikeMult: 3 (from 4)
    • Reduced critical strike damage multiplier
  • fSneakViewMult: 2 (from 1.5)
    • Significantly decreases your chance to sneak while in view of an NPC

Nature Hazard

  • fSuffocationDamage: 9 (from 3)
    • Increased the damage taken while immersed and running out of air
  • fFallDamageDistanceMin: 300 (from 400)
    • Reduced the minimum height from which the player takes damage when falling
  • fDiseaseXferChance: 10 (from 2.5)
    • Increased the chance to catch a disease when interacting with diseased creatures

Disposition

  • fDispRaceMod: 10 (from 5)
    • Increase the disposition bonus and malus when interacting with actors of same or different race
  • fDispWeaponDrawn: -10 (from -5)
    • Increase the disposition malus when interacting with actors while your weapon is drawn

Economy

  • iAlchemyMod: 0 (from 2)
    • No more easy money with home-made potions

Altered Mechanics

A few mechanics can be altered (on by default).

No Backwards Running

Prevent the player from running while moving backwards, for a better realism and an increased challenge.

Death Damages Equipment Condition

When actors die, their armors and weapons are damaged to reduce their sell value or to force the player to repair them.
The condition reduction depends on multiple criteria, see the setting description for more details.

Dead Guard Item Picking is a Crime

Picking items from a dead guard is now considered as a theft crime.

Customization

The settings page of HBFS allows you to adjust the mod behavior to your needs.

For player and actors stats, the difficulty is set with a percent value applied to actors' stats or player's taken magic damage.
A value of 100 means no change. Lower than 100 eases the game, greater than 100 makes it harder.

If you enable the "Difficulty scaling" setting, you'll be able to enter a new "Per level" percent which will be multiplied by the player level and added to the base percent.

You can either select one of the preset configurations or set one by one every setting.

Compatibility

Requires OpenMW 0.49.

HBFS should be compatible, out of the box, with any mod that don't alter actors stats.

Mods that alter actors' stats should also work in most cases as HBFS detects stats changes and preserves them.

Mods that rely on actors stats can benefit from HBFS changes, if they read actors' stats after HBFS updated them.

Specific compatibilities:


Load Order

Load order should not matter for player and actors stats changes.

For game settings changes, if you have mods that alter the same GMSTs, you'll have to decide which change you prefer and place HBFS-GMST.omwaddon (or the modular versions) before or after those mods accordingly.

Mod Recommendations

Here is a list of mods that nicely complement HBFS on difficulty and balance:

Combat AI

  • Fair Care
    • Enemies heal each other (your followers may heal you too)
  • Take Cover
    • Fleeing actors will try to hide if you try to shoot them from a position they cannot reach
  • Mercy CAO
    • Better AI for melee enemies (CPU costly)

NPCs and Creatures


Recommended load order for NPCs and Creatures addons (adapted from Necrolasian):

  • Expansions Integrated - Fewer BM Creatures.esp (or Expansions Integrated.esp)
  • IO - Cultists.ESP (or MDMD - More Deadly Morrowind Denizens.ESP)
  • MDMD - Creatures Add-On.ESP
  • Expansions Integrated MDMD Patch.ESP
  • BTBGI Creature Buffs.esp
  • BTBGI Creature Buffs MDMD - Creatures Patch.esp

Economy

  • Better Merchants Skills
    • Less cheesy barters
  • For the Right Price
    • Balance service prices
    • Use only Creatures and Services addons (Merchants conflicts with "Better Merchant Skills", "Wealthy NPCs" makes it too easy to become rich)
  • Price Balance
    • No more easy money with over expensive items
    • Use only "Price Balance - Items.ESP" addon

Misc


Integration with Other Mods

HBFS offers an interface to get the current settings:

  • From a global script, use I.HBFS.getSettings() to get a table of current percents applied to actors' attributes and dynamic stats
  • From an NPC or Creature script, use I.HBFS.getState() to get the current actor's stats and the original ones, or nil if no changed was made

Also, each time an NPC or a creature is active, HBFS sends an event "hbfs_onActorReady" on the actor, after stats are updated, even if they are unchanged.
This event also provides the current settings and can be used instead of the default onActive engine handler if HBFS is installed (for NPCs and creatures).

Installation

  • Decompress the mod archive in a folder named "HBFS"
  • In openmw.cfg
    • Add the full path to the "HBFS/00 Core" directory as a data path
    • Optionally add either "HBFS/01 GMST" or "HBFS/01 GMST/Modular" as data paths
    • Add HBFS.omwscripts as a content file (also optional, if you only want the GMST changes)
    • Optionally add either HBFS-GMST.omwaddon, or your selection of the modular version, as content files

For example:

data="C:\games\OpenMWMods\Gameplay\HBFS\00 Core"
data="C:\games\OpenMWMods\Gameplay\HBFS\01 GMST"
content=HBFS.omwscripts
content=HBFS-GMST.omwaddon


Or:

data="C:\games\OpenMWMods\Gameplay\HBFS\00 Core"
data="C:\games\OpenMWMods\Gameplay\HBFS\01 GMST\Modular"
content=HBFS.omwscripts
content=HBFS-GMST-Combat.omwaddon
content=HBFS-GMST-Disposition.omwaddon
content=HBFS-GMST-NatureHazard.omwaddon


More info on how to install OpenMW mods here.

Update the Mod

  • Replace old HBFS files with the new ones
  • Go to the settings page and reset each section
  • Reconfigure your settings

Uninstallation

  • Run Morrowind
  • Set the presets difficulty "Normal" and scaling "None"
  • Exit the menus and wait a couple of seconds so HBFS resets all active actors stats (you'll see a message)
  • Remove HBFS entries in configuration files

Thanks to

  • Bethesda for creating Morrowind
  • OpenMW team for their great game engine and for adding so useful Lua bindings
  • Nexus for hosting most Morrowind mods
  • Modding-OpenMW for their huge contribution to Morrowind
  • @Cybvep for feature ideas: Equipment condition reduction and guard corpse's item theft

Localization

EN: @mym

Repository

This is an open source project, check the repository.
Feel free to report issues or suggestions.

Author

@mym