About this mod
Changes all unique Weapons, Armors, and Shields to scale their quality level off of character level instead of using enchanting upgrades.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Deadfire is a great game with poor vertical equipment and player power progression. For example, even if you have an early game armor that suits your build well, you are likely to drop it for the Devil of Caroc breastplate as soon as you exit tutorial island and arrive at Nekataka, because DoC offers a Legendary quality (fully upgraded for lategame) medium armor that will provide better protection that any ultra-heavy armor you may have on hand. Sure, you can eventually upgrade your heavy armor to a similar level, but it will take many rare materials and cost significantly more gold. Realistically, you are just going to wear the Legendary armor. The result - every character, regardless of build, ends up using the same equipment early and mid game.
With this mod, all weapons, armor, and shields scale to the player's level, allowing you to tailor your early and mid game choices to your individual character's build and style. Traditional Quality enchantments are disabled (with the exception of Mythic at level 20) Additionally, since players won't be using Legendary equipment so early on in the game, it provides a throttle to mid-game power, which is a nice way of keeping more content appropriate to player power for longer.
Quality scaling does not affect non-unique equipment, so there are still opportunities to loot powerful generic equipment early in the game, if that is part of your strategy.
Installation
- Copy the contents of the archive into your Pillars Of Eternity II Deadfire/PillarsofEternityII_Data/override folder (if the override folder does not exist, create it)
- If you are installing this mod mid-playthrough, you must set the scaling upgrade in the enchanting interface. If you are starting a fresh run, you do not have to do this.
- Mythic Quality upgrades are now available! Your player character must be level 20, and have either a mythical adra shard or godseed inner core in their inventory. The scaling mod will be replaced by the Mythic upgrade
- At least one Soulbound item is now affected by scaling (see below)
- Bashing shields are now dual-scaling. This required some tweaks. See below.
Soulbound items
I had originally planned to leave all Soulbound items as-is, but ended up getting my hands dirty anyway.
- Post-quest Modwyr is now Scaling, as it was too powerful and early/easy to upgrade.
- Lord Darryn's Voulge and Marux Amanth are now scaling on final upgrade. Buff in that they can now become Legendary equivalent, nerf in that you can't just pick them up and upgrade them right away, despite how easy their soulbound steps are.
- All other soulbound items now upgrade to Legendary (Magistrate's Cudgel, Blightheart, Seeker's Fang, Slayer's Claw, Weyc's Wand, Wintertide Bulwark, Robes of the Weyc, The Changeling's Mantle, Guardian's Plate)
Bashing Shields
The tooltips for bashing shields are broken, so I will assure you below that they are indeed scaling. Also, I was forced to do some balancing here. Changes are documented below.
Tuotilo's Palm
Great weapon/shield. Fine the way it is.
- deflection bonus scales with level instead of quality enchantment (item tooltip broken, stats are there)
- Damage continues to scale with unarmed bonuses (unchanged)
Magran's Blessing
This became too powerful of a shield and weapon at once while double-dipping both scalings. A pulling back was required.
- deflection bonus scales with level instead of quality enchantment (item tooltip broken, stats are there)
- burning bash damage scales with level up to legendary. Can be upgraded to mythic using mythic adra shard
- burning bash -5 accuracy malus added. It is cumbersome to strike with a shield of this size
- burning bash base Pen reduced by 1 to account for dual damage type. You will break even with this change at level 4, and continue to gain more pen afterwards
- base damage of Flame Shield reduced by ~33% (6-10 -> 4-8). Total damage buff (Since it now scales up) of ~15% at legendary, plus accuracy and pen buffs
- base damage of Greater Flame Shield reduced by ~33% (10-14 -> 7-11). Total Damage buff (Since it now scales up) of ~15% at legendary, plus accuracy and pen buffs
The Best Defense
Useless trash item compared to Magran's Blessing, tried to sharpen an identity for it
- deflection bonus scales with level instead of quality enchantment (item tooltip broken, stats are there)
- piercing bash damage scales with level up to legendary. Can be upgraded to mythic using mythic adra shard
- piercing bash recovery speed cut in half (4s->2s)
- piercing bash base penetration increased by 1 (8->9)
- piercing bash base average damage reduced by 0.5 (8.5->8)
Best Defense should have slightly higher dps than Blessing even before utilizing penetration or accuracy. However, it is also less effective for Full Attacks. Best Defense also comes much later in the game. It has its place in drawn out slug fests against enemies with tough scales and hides, when an enemy needs to be locked down with crits, or when Full Attacks are not a factor. Ultimately, Best Defense should be the superior offensive option due to providing less avoidance and being acquired later in the progression curve.
Please provide any feedback that pops into your head. Tell me if I have missed any items or you think that a balance change went too far, or even if you have any other kind of tangential thought or suggestion or you just took the biggest shit of your life and need to let someone know. I'm here. I'm listening.