Dimitrius's CM Patch Addendum

[dimitrius154 242]

Fellow players, I'd like to present the result of the endeavor of the last 4 months - the CM Patch Addendum. 

 

The Addendum contains game changes and fixes , that were not included into the stock CM Patch 1.60, due to either not being ready at the time of the release, or the lack of consensus among team members about inclusion viability. It's best to play with fresh characters to avoid possible unpleasant side-effects. The Addendum is not compatible with either D2F, or Enhanced Edition out of the box. It also requires the Elite Textures to be switched on(the Trimmed Elite Textures are highly recommended). The available localizations are English and Russian.

 

Game Mechanics Changes:

 

1. One of the primary calculation functions, used in attack vs. defense, spell intensity vs. spell resistance, damage vs. armor calculations has been fixed.
2. Occurrences, where, upon changing locations via doors, or secondary teleports, various objects and NPC states at the new location were not updated in a timely manner, should no longer manifest.
3. It is now possible to traverse dungeons levels and enter-exit dungeons without dismounting. Previous technical limit have been successfully alleviated.
4. Non-player aligned NPC damage is mitigated by 85%. Escort quests should no longer be the same potion spamming frustration, as before.
5. Ingame price inflation is decreased by a factor of 10. Minimum item full price is 4 gold, now.
6. Characters can now possess only one mount, either normal, or special at the same time. Any type of mount can be sold to any mount vendor. Buying remains separate, as before.

 

Equipment and Skill Changes:

 

1. Item classification modifiers now spawn on Set, Unique and Legendary items, which should improve loot diversity.
2. "Warding Energy Lore" dependent modifier will no longer spawn on equipment pieces of the characters, who cannot obtain the "Warding Energy" skill.
3. "Bargaining" skill mechanics has been changed: the skill is now a viable investment at higher levels, due to increasing chance to encounter Sets, Uniques and Legendaries in shop inventory selection.
4. "Smithing" skill mechanics has been changed. Safe forging removal chance progression is much better now. The "Blacksmith Arts" are now runic forging tokens carrying one(two at skill mastery level) random modifier.
5. "Combat Art Skills +" modifier behaves correctly now, improving "Spellcraft Lore", "Combat Discipline" and "Concentration" skill instead of "Shield Lore" and "Warding Energy Lore".
6. Due to "Chance for Melee Double Hit" modifier not being checked for ranged and spell-based attacks, it has been replaced with "Opponent's Health Threshold for Deathblow" on items "Essence of Dark Matters" and "Aarnum's Pathfinder".
7. Damage converters now only affect Physical damage. The lying GUI readings, stating battery-slotted damage converters having effect on the damage output of spell-based attacks have been corrected.
8. "Chance for Splash Damage" modifier Area of Effect radius has been decreased by 20%.
9. "Chance to Disregard Armor" and "Behind Armor Damage" modifiers now work for spell-based attacks.
10. The "Combat Trance" modifier should no longer spawn on incorrect conditions.
11. Ice weapon enchantment shader no longer badly interferes with the item's texture alpha channel.
12. Item classification character-specific modifiers should now spawn correctly.
13. Rings, amulets, other forgeables are now affected by item auto-collect quality filter settings in the "Gameplay" menu.

 

Combat Art Changes:

 

1. Incorrect "Tactics Lore" skill dependency for several combat arts has ben corrected. "Dust Devil", "Killing Spree", "T-Energy Shroud", "Deathly Spears" now depend on "Spellcraft Lore".
2. "Spectral Hand", "Archangel's Wrath" and "Magic Coup" now depend on "Tactics Lore", due to them being weapon-based CAs.
3. "Belligerent Vault" is a weapon-based CA now, doing splash damage to enemies in the landing area.
4. "Raving Thrust" now affects energy creatures and ghosts.
5. "Essence Projection" now reincarnates the Inquisitor into his similar without the death event being called: the Survival Bonus does not reset, reincarnation works on Hardcore. It's no longer possible to turn "Essence Projection" into a buff.
6. "Shadow Veil" now improves much slower and cannot be turned into a buff.
7. The Dragon Mage does no longer lose general equipment boni, while in Berserk, or Dragon form.
8. "Psychic Maelstrom" projectile slowdown reduced by 50%.
9. "Raving Thrust", "Clustering Singularity", "Scything Sweep" do no longer pose a threat to allied units, or mounts.
10. The Dragon Mage is able to use potion slots, while in Dragon form.
11. Some CA visuals have been reworked.
12. The Dragon Mage does no longer lose his active buffs during Berserk Form, or Dragon Form transformations. However, he can no longer manage his buffs(switch them on/off), while transformed.
13. "Essence Projection" Similar now has access to many more combat arts of all three of the Inquisitor's Aspects. Similar's hitpoint regeneration has been drastically reduced. Modifications 3 and 4 of the CA have been altered.

 

NPC and Creature Changes:

 

1. Various NPCs have had their equipment corrected.
2. Boss and miniboss AI discrepancies and faulty CAs have been corrected. Occurrences of bosses stopping in their tracks, or wandering aimlessly during combat should no longer happen.
3. Bosses are now subject to additional mitigation of all damage types.
4. Elite mounts have received improved models, textures and special effects.
5. The elite mount trader now resides on Isla Ancar. In order to receive a privilege of buying elite mounts, Narmul, or Abishai have to be defeated - a test of strength, of sorts.
Quest Changes:
1. "Panem et Circenses"(Shadow Path) quest reward now includes 1 attribute and 1 skill point.
2. The Shadow Path characters should now be able to finish off the Grand Inquisitor, after the appropriate stage of the "Great Machine" quest.
3. Shirka Alana gets to keep her Inquisition Guard attire at the latter stages of the Inquisitor class quest. Once the quest is finished, she becomes a permanent companion on the current difficulty.
4. The Shadow Warrior class quest texts have been rewritten.

 

GUI Changes:

 

1. Combat Values / Inventory Screen has received additional reworking. It's context tooltip windows no longer contain erroneous, or confusing info. The "Mounts" tab has been removed due to complete lack of function.
2. All font and background colors have been changed to conform to the "black-glass" interface style.
3. Multiple changes in skill, combat art and bonus modifier names and descriptions.
4. The catalogue of books read has been reorganized. Some book texts have been changed, or corrected. Two extra books have been restored.
5. New characters now have the lore-appropriate deity preselected - a harmless immersion feature.
6. Activated portals and miniportals do no longer have their names constantly displayed on the worldmap, as a clutter avoidance measure.
7. Incorrect availability display has been corrected for several Aspect CA related item modifiers(Dragon Mage - other characters, Shadow Warrior - Dragon Mage, Dragon Mage - Dragon Mage).

 

Miscellaneous Changes:

 

1. Both ambient and combat music selection have been significantly expanded.
2. PhysX object behavior in the game world has been optimized.
3. Some gameworld locations have received names.
4. Background pictures for the Inquisitor and the Shadow Warrior aspects have been replaced.

 

Installation:

 

Either through GME, or directly on top of the stock CM Patch 1.60.

 

Links:

 

Trimmed Elite Textures (Size: 2,7GB):  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5yMxfzmPZ4_R2J2eFZxc2wzeGc

CM Patch 1.60 Addendum (Size: 1,5 GB, password: 12345): https://drive.google.com/open?id=11ui11HhWPCcpA8N5vAdqk-0SNyfHBOMT

CM Patch 1.60 Addendum Hotfix (updated 03.09.2018, password: 12345): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iHyv8ty1YCJAtoMDMJ12IdGzORAseHgs

Whistling Tyr Lysia music track replacement(should be added to musichq2.zip): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_hE3mq6oxb1gvB_IRqJLp628SzT0fOen

Edited September 3, 2018 by dimitrius154

[Flix 4,019]

I wish we could have found a way to develop these changes (or some of them, anyway) into an official CM Patch 1.70 release.  Alas.

Congratulations on the release of this impressive endeavor. 

[jordan0422 38]

42 minutes ago, Flix said:

I wish we could have found a way to develop these changes (or some of them, anyway) into an official CM Patch 1.70 release.  Alas.

Congratulations on the release of this impressive endeavor. 

Hi Flix, do you plan to include all/some of these changes into D2F and Enhanced Edition?

[Hooyaah 1,966]

It would be helpful to add some installation instructions. Is it necessary to start from scratch from the Sacred 2 Gold edition and install the addendum? Will there be additional patches that will necessitate starting yet another new character? If I understand correctly the character that I created for the CM Patch 160 will not play with stability any longer after the addendum.

[dimitrius154 242]

32 minutes ago, Hooyaah said:

It would be helpful to add some installation instructions.

Yeah, forgot about those. Unfortunately, I'm unable to edit my posts after a time.

 

The Addendum is installed on top of the fresh CM Patch 1.60 installation. No other updates are expected in the foreseeable future, if ever(I'm out of fixes, to be honest).

 

About starting with fresh chars: I've included the recommendation to play safe. In fact, chars created after the CM Patch 1.60 will play fine, mostly. Since I did't remove any item modifiers, all items should be valid. The possible unpleasantness is immersion-side(the char gold stash, the fullness of the difficulty completion). 

[dimitrius154 242]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Congratulations on the release of this impressive endeavor.

Thank you, Ben. 

 

It would be interesting to see the reception of the Addendum, especially, whether that particular item, we've had such a heated discussion about, matters in the long run. 

It would also be nice to gather some folks willing to expand the localizations present.

[Flix 4,019]

3 hours ago, jordan0422 said:

Hi Flix, do you plan to include all/some of these changes into D2F and Enhanced Edition?

For now you will have to consider this as an alternative to my mods. In many respects they are mutually exclusive right out of the box.

I would need to rebuild my mods using this Addendum as a base, or else just pull over the script changes, which may be few - a lot of the magic here is happening in the code.

It will take time for me to examine all the features of this mod.

[gogoblender 2,187]

3 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Yeah, forgot about those. Unfortunately, I'm unable to edit my posts after a time.

 

 

I think this is a setting I can change from admin settings...Ill get on that 

Thanks for your huge work update

 

 

gogo

[mewkang 13]

Can I just unzip the Addendum to Sacred base folder and unzip the Trimmed Elite Textures to pak folder?

I have done just that, and I think the Addendum has been installed, but whenever I open the combat art screen using "E" button, and then try to mod a combat art, it crashes.

What's weird is that when I press "E," no combat art icon is visible in the screen. Could you look into this matter? Or is there something that I'm doing wrong?

[dimitrius154 242]

5 hours ago, mewkang said:

Can I just unzip the Addendum to Sacred base folder and unzip the Trimmed Elite Textures to pak folder?

I have done just that, and I think the Addendum has been installed, but whenever I open the combat art screen using "E" button, and then try to mod a combat art, it crashes.

What's weird is that when I press "E," no combat art icon is visible in the screen. Could you look into this matter? Or is there something that I'm doing wrong?

That is a symptom of an incorrect syntax somewhere within "spells.txt"(a missing comma, or inverted comma). Issue has been remedied. Main archive has been updated. The hotfix is available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iHyv8ty1YCJAtoMDMJ12IdGzORAseHgs

[mewkang 13]

Thank you for the hotfix. I'll give the Addendum a try again.

Edit: I've just given the Addendum a try and it seems to be working really well now. Thank you for the quick response, dimitrius154!

Edit 2: Is Agility the same as Dexterity in the Addendum? I think it is, but I'm not completely sure, so...

Edited April 2, 2018 by mewkang

[dimitrius154 242]

1 hour ago, mewkang said:

Is Agility the same as Dexterity in the Addendum?

No, it's the former "Speed Lore".

[mewkang 13]

Ah, I see. Thank you for your answer.

[mewkang 13]

Is this intentional? I mean, that message is displayed for every portal, so I thought it was kind of weird even though I have no problem using portals or resurrection obelisks.

[dimitrius154 242]

16 minutes ago, mewkang said:

I mean, that message is displayed for every portal, so I thought it was kind of weird even though I have no problem using portals or resurrection obelisks

This message normally displays, when a "doctored" character is playing on a difficulty, not reached by legit means(finishing the previous one's main quest).

[mewkang 13]

But I'm playing Single Player on Silver difficulty after having created a new character, so I'm not so sure what's going on. 

Edit: I just checked the portals with one of my pre-Addendum characters (also in Silver), and they are displayed ok somehow. I wonder what the problem with my Addendum character is...

Edit 2: I think I may know how the problem was caused. My Inquisitor was one of the characters that got kicked out of the game when the game crashed due to missing combat arts.

After restarting the game, I assumed that this Inquisitor would be ok to play with, but it seems I may have been wrong. Still, I suppose it's no big deal.

Edited April 2, 2018 by mewkang
adding new content

[Androdion 688]

20 hours ago, Flix said:

I wish we could have found a way to develop these changes (or some of them, anyway) into an official CM Patch 1.70 release.  Alas.

Congratulations on the release of this impressive endeavor. 

Ditto.

Some of the changes listed in the changelog have been agreed to be CM Patch material and some haven't. But if I may do a direct question, much of it is your own personal view of the game isn't it Dmitriy? Nothing wrong with that, everyone mods games to their own liking anyway. My question being then if this Addendum is in fact your mod?

[dimitrius154 242]

3 hours ago, Androdion said:

But if I may do a direct question, much of it is your own personal view of the game isn't it Dmitriy? Nothing wrong with that, everyone mods games to their own liking anyway. My question being then if this Addendum is in fact your mod?

Much of it is personal preference, text and description-wise.  Still, there's no extravagance present. GUI, code and script changes fall in line with the CM Patch general direction, IMHO. My mod proper resides in the "Extra" folder of the archive. 

[Androdion 688]

Oki doki, thanks for replying.

[Flix 4,019]

On 4/1/2018 at 0:43 AM, dimitrius154 said:

1. Incorrect "Tactics Lore" skill dependency for several combat arts has ben corrected. "Dust Devil", "Killing Spree", "T-Energy Shroud", "Deathly Spears" now depend on "Spellcraft Lore".
2. "Spectral Hand" now depends on "Tactics Lore", due to it being a weapon-based CA.

1. Incorrect?  I think for the sake of consistency they wanted all combat arts in a given aspect to have the same Aspect skills.  Chopping up the aspects like that kind of undermines the whole idea of aspects in the first place.  How do modification points work now?  This also seems kind of a nerf since before these spells could pull damage % from their Aspect Lore as well as Ancient Magic.  Now they only have one skill for that.

2. Why not Archangel's Wrath or Magic Coup?

[dimitrius154 242]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Incorrect?  I think for the sake of consistency they wanted all combat arts in a given aspect to have the same Aspect skills. 

It's clearly stated in the Tactics Lore description, that it governs all non-spell based combat arts. Adding it as an aspect lore skill for spell-based CAs was a... strange idea. Same for the reverse. Spell-based CA controlling Aspect Lore skills should not be able to control the weapon-based CAs of Aspects. 

1 hour ago, Flix said:

How do modification points work now? 

Same as before, I believe.

1 hour ago, Flix said:

This also seems kind of a nerf since before these spells could pull damage % from their Aspect Lore as well as Ancient Magic.

Damage boost calculations for an Aspect Lore skill and the Spellcraft Lore are separate additives in the equation. Spellcraft Lore is counted twice now for the aforementioned CAs - as an Aspect Lore skill and as a general spell-attack CA improvement skill. There's no nerf here.

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Why not Archangel's Wrath or Magic Coup?

I've missed those. dang. Should update the hotfix, as well as the main archive. I'm still unable to edit the head post of the thread, unfortunately. 

Edited April 3, 2018 by dimitrius154

[Flix 4,019]

10 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

Modification points add up by boosting "Spellcraft Lore"(former "Ancient Magic"), instead of "Tactics Lore" as in the previous.

So those CA's are partly divorced from their companion CA's in their aspect.

12 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

Damage boost calculations for an Aspect Lore skill and the Spellcraft Lore are separate additives in the equation. Spellcraft Lore is counted twice now for the aforementioned CAs - as an Aspect Lore skill and as a general spell-attack CA improvement skill. There's no nerf here.

Ah, so really it's more like a boost.  Spell casters would be able to take advantage of those CA's without having to take Tactics Lore.  And the get the benefits of two skills for the price of one.

17 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

I've missed those. dang. Should update the hotfix, as well as the main archive.

Now this is a nerf, because the player will have to take two skills where once they only needed the Aspect Lore skill.  Now they'll need Tactics Lore for damage% and a weapon lore for the Attack Speed%.  One of the perks of hybrid combat arts was that a weapon lore wasn't needed.

[dimitrius154 242]

15 minutes ago, Flix said:

So those CA's are partly divorced from their companion CA's in their aspect.

Right, but that way all weapon-based CA and all spell based CAs conform to the same enhancing skill selection basic logic.

15 minutes ago, Flix said:

One of the perks of hybrid combat arts was that a weapon lore wasn't needed.

Are you certain of that? I mean, whether the animation is considered attack speed(needs weapon lore), or cast speed(needs aspect lore) is controlled by the causesSpellDamage flag, if I'm not mistaken.  

 

P.S. Updated the hotfix and the main archive.

Edited April 3, 2018 by dimitrius154

[dimitrius154 242]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Modification points add up by boosting "Spellcraft Lore"(former "Ancient Magic"), instead of "Tactics Lore" as in the previous.

That statement of mine is false. From what I see, modification point addition is completely independent from governing skill assignments in spells.txt. Just skill ID comparison.  [EDIT] Had that cross-checked again, and the dependency is there. Aspect Focus and Aspect Lore skill entries in spells.txt ARE checked.

Edited April 3, 2018 by dimitrius154

[Flix 4,019]

So a spellcaster can't modify those combat arts without investing in a skill which gives no other benefit?