idbeholdME

So it has been present in the code, but just not functioning? I am mainly wondering about whether this is a bug fix, or a modification.

Good job on the wing effect. Got it to work with the PFP easily enough: I am wondering though - was the effect always supposed to be there in the PC version, but was just broken in some way, or was it an entirely new thing in the console versions and this mod just retroactively adds it to the PC version?

From my testing, the change is in s2logic.dll. When I used the vanilla spell definitions + the vanilla .dll file, these 2 spells started behaving as they were originally. However, there are a TON of changes made in this dll and using the vanilla one could reintroduce a lot of the vanilla game's problems. It would also likely cause issues with existing saves. I did some tests here: But the conclusion basically is, that restoring the original behavior would be probably impossible without reverting the .dll file change. Eternal Fire: Viperish Disease: Just replace the definitions of both spells in spells.txt in scripts/shared. That should bring back at least the functional CM behavior.

Yes. The problem with Viperish Disease and Eternal Flame has been worsened with PFP 1.4. It reverted the spell definitions to vanilla state in an attempt to restore their vanilla behavior but sadly they were functionally changed on the .dll level when the project started, using the .dll and .exe files taken from the CM Patch. Chances of a fix are minimal, as manipulating the .dll and .exe files is nigh on impossible and PFP 1.4 is most likely final. Your best bet is to revert the spell definitions of VD and EF back to what they, were in PFP 1.3. They will not function like in vanilla, but like they do in the CM Patch. But at least they will be usable. If you don't have the definitions on hand, I can post them later.

Yes. I gave the Scarabs in the desert dangerclass of 9 so that they'd drop boss amounts of loot and to make them able of dropping Legendaries in the first place, gave Magisil 20000 weidghtedprob and put ZRareExpectation15 to 500 or so, which combined with Enhanced Perception made it so that every Scarab kill would roll a tier 15 item. Result was only Magisil whenever a Legendary item dropped. For my personal use, I manually edited the weightedprob of all tier 15 and 14 items to be much, much higher than those of tier 13 (most sets and legendaries) to ensure that when the game rolls ZRareExpectation14 or 15, it actually gives me an item of that rarity. The game rolling 15 only means that it can generate up to rarity tier 15, not that it will drop. It still determines the item to drop by the weightedprob, So even if you score ZRareExpectation15 but there is 1 Legendary and 15 normal uniques with the same weightedprob in the drop list, you still have only 1/16 chance of getting the Legendary. I can give you my modded drop.txt if you want to see. In game, I noticed quite a bump in the drop rates of rarity tiers 14 and 15 without touching the ZRareExpectation.

As far as modding goes, there is one big hurdle for the game in my opinion. And that is the fact that there is a ton of hardcoded stuff that it nigh impossible to touch. Hidden in the .dll and .exe files, which require a very high degree of extremely specific knowledge to even attempt doing. And sadly, the answer to "Is this possible?" more often than not is "No" because of that reason. Things like: - Removing the limitation of rarity tier 15 items (Legendaries) only dropping from enemies with dangerclass 9 and 10 - Making ranged weapons fire 2 projectiles when using the ATTACKX animation. - Changing monster AI. Like for example, make the Garganthropod not get stuck doing the idle animation constantly when you attack him from range. Or there seem to be a ton of behaviors defined in behavior.txt which never get used/don't work etc. - Or something as simple as knowing exactly what Enhanced Perception does at the code level. Why are there 2 values at Mastery level? Which one does what? Do they stack? The code in scripts would suggest that it only increases the rarity tiers from lootable objects etc. That being said, a lot of stuff IS moddable. I'm more into the gameplay and mechanics related parts of the game. Visual modding is possible, but not really my area. I'm pretty purist when it comes to any game's visuals (rarely even play remasters/remakes for that reason) and even if I wanted to change something, my artistic aptitude is.... not good Documenting at least what's possible would probably be a good idea, as most of the info is randomly scattered throughout various threads on these forums.

Strange. Because I tested it, just increased the Magisil to 20000 and got only Magisils and nothing else. With PFP of course. And even just from general gameplay, I can safely say that the lower the weightedprob, the less likely the item is to drop when selecting an item from the drop list.

When playing Hardcore, I can definitely recommend a mount. It basically gives you an extra life. When the mount dies, you become stunned but untargettable for about 5 seconds. Enemies briefly lose interest in you and that gives you a chance to run away/heal. Found that out when I flew my Wind Serpent too close to the Werewolf boss Also, if you are playing a Seraphim, I recommend restoring the non-functional life regeneration bonus on Cleansing Brilliance by changing its spell class. That could help with survival. Details here: https:/darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72569-cleansing-brilliance-hp-regen-bonus/

Alright. This is Grim Resilience in spells.txt: Sounds like you already know the basics, let's just get straight to it. The defined token entries have 4 numbers. The first one is base value, second one is increase per CA Level. The third number denotes which mod node the bonus is tied to and this is what interests you. The 4th number is irrelevant for now (although very important if you want to look into further CA modding). If the third number is 0, that means that token is active on the CA baseline, without any mods. Numbers 1-6 represent mods. 1 is the first Bronze mod, 2 is the 2nd Bronze mod, 3 is the first Silver mod, 4 is the second Silver mod, 5 is the first Gold mod and 6 is the second Gold mod. All you need to do is simply duplicate the mod tokens and assign them the same number as the other mod in the pair. So for example: entry0 = {"et_life_buff", 250, 250, 0, 9 }, entry1 = {"et_addattr_willpower", 300, 150, 0, 41 }, entry2 = {"et_life_buff", 125, 125, 1, 9 }, entry3 = {"et_life_regen", 20, 20, 2, 41 }, entry4 = {"et_baseVW", 100, 50, 3, 5 }, entry5 = {"et_regThisBuff", 250, 5, 4, 8 }, entry6 = {"et_chance_evade", 200, 2, 5, 41 }, entry7 = {"et_damping_phy", 50, 3, 6, 41 }, entry8 = {"et_life_buff", 125, 125, 2, 9 }, entry9 = {"et_life_regen", 20, 20, 1, 41 }, entry10 = {"et_baseVW", 100, 50, 4, 5 }, entry11 = {"et_regThisBuff", 250, 5, 3, 8 }, entry12 = {"et_chance_evade", 200, 2, 6, 41 }, entry12 = {"et_damping_phy", 50, 3, 5, 41 }, That will make it so the bonuses of both tokens get applied, no matter which one you pick in game. There will be still only one active visually, but you'll get the benefit of both. Make sure you only have one of the mods picked at each tier if you do this (if you used the character editor) or you will get both bonuses twice. You can add however many tokens you want to a particular mod this way (as long as they are compatible with the spell class).

Sorry for double post, but just randomly noticed this several years later as I was making a reply to the latest thread bump I think there might actually be an overflow problem if you put in values above 1000, the game's internal math probably internally breaks in some way. Not really a good idea to put an X+Y value into a parameter where the game expect X-Y Same thing happens if you put a value in QuestExplow that is higher than the one in QuestExpmax. If you put QuestExplow for Silver at 5000 and QuestExpmax at 4500, completing any quest will instantly give you around 2 Billion XP and max out your level. The safest way to increase XP gain if you want would probably be adding this token to one of the buffs you are using in spells.txt: entry6 = {"et_exp_rel", 100, X, 0, 41 }, This would give you a 10% XP bonus initially and you can change the X value into whatever you want. So if you wanted the bonus XP to go up 1% every CA level, you'd put 10 in there. Another, much more time consuming alternative would be to add extra XP to the monsters, but you'd have to do that for every single one of them manually.

All the "aspects" (the three groups of Combat Arts each character has) have 2 related skills that count towards giving you modification points for Combat Arts within those groups. If you take Malevolent Champion from Shadow Warrior for example, the 2 linked skills are Tactics Lore and Malevolent Champion Focus. The hard points you've invested into those 2 skills (so bonuses from gear don't count) get added together. You get a modification point when that combined value reaches these breakpoints - 3, 5, 9, 14, 22, 31, 42, 55, 70, 87, 106, 126, 149, 173, 199. Every aspect can only ever receive 15 modification points total. As the max value of a skill is equal to your current character level, you will only be able to get the final 15th modification point once your character is level 100 at the soonest (by having both skills linked to the aspect at 100 hard points invested). After that, no more mod points can be earned, because by default, you can only pick 3 modifications for any Combat Art and as there are 5 of them, any further points could not be spent anyway. If your goal is to be able to pick all the 6 modifications for a single Combat Art, that is not possible under vanilla conditions as the choices are mutually exclusive and you stop getting mod points after the total value of linked skills reaches 199. I'm not sure how hard this would be to mod, someone like @Flix might know. But it is not something you can do through balance.txt. You could do it through spells.txt, by having the effects of both modifications at Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers applied at once, no matter which one you pick. That is pretty easy to do. If you are interested in that, I can show you an example of how to do it.

Correct. Weapon Lore double hit only has a chance to add an extra attack to basic attacks. It is actually a chance to trigger a special attack animation, that includes an extra hit visually. Double hit from gear however, is simply a chance to double any melee hit instance, including from melee CAs. If you had 100% and combined it with the weapon lore chance and dual wield, you'd end up with 6 damage instances from a single basic attack. But it can only be gotten in pretty low amounts and is quite rare. I also think it simply stacks with any double hit from CA mods, although I'm not a 100% sure on that one.

Narmul is one of the few enemies who has Ancient Magic as one of his passive skills. Meaning that from level 75 on (enemy passive skills are equal to their level), he has access to its Mastered version, making his spells ignore a very large chunk of any and all damage mitigation. Especially if you are fighting him at level 200, where he is presumably in the 230+ level range, he will have around 67-68% penetration of mitigation. This means, in your case when you have 106.5% mitigation, it will get reduced to ~35%. Combined with the VERY HIGH base damage of his spells (probably the strongest scaling enemy spells in the game, based on his level), you can die very easily no matter what. The safest way is to keep constantly moving and avoid all his delayed and telegraphed attack. Only very few enemies and some bosses in the game have it, but are especially dangerous if you are relying purely on damage mitigation. Here is a full list from Vanilla: - Small Red Dragons in Dragon Caves (both normal and elite versions) - Temple Guardians that throw Traps (Elite versions only) - Narmul - Fire Lord - Ice Lord - Poison Lord - Abishai I assume they still have Ancient Magic even with the CM Patch.

If counting mods, then yes. Either ranged Frenzied Rampage or ranged Pelting Strikes will probably be the most hits. Get any regen per hit and if you walk into melee range of the enemy, you can just minigun them down. For ranged attacks, CAs use the default ranged attack animation with ranged weapons (extremely quick), so you can unload 4 hits into an enemy several times per second. It really does feel like Ascaron didn't have enough time to fully finish CAs for ranged weapons so instead of cool animations like for melee, it's just extra projectiles with the default boring attack animation. Would have been cool if there were custom ones for that too.... I remember playing a BFG Seraphim with the CM Patch. Was so overpowered there wasn't really a point in playing it

It shoots 4 only in community patches that change it. In vanilla, Pelting Strikes fires only 2 projectiles with ranged weapons.

Temple Guardian with Battle Extension in a Mobiculum and as much chance of causing double hits on gear as possible. If you got 100% chance of double hits (not realistic), and always used the ATTACKX mounted attack animation, it would be 6 damage instances in a single attack. 2 from ATTACKX + 1 from Battle Extension x 2 if all hits were doubled. Don't think it can get higher than that under vanilla conditions.

It is possible. The Fear mod on Augmenting Guidon was also bugged in vanilla. But both are fixed in the PFP, I was testing the Guidon fix myself and PD has been working correctly on my Inquisitor in PFP 1.4

SR definitely is underrated. The Mastery is one of the most impactful in the game. The problem with the base skill is it only reduces damage from regular spell hits. -DME reduces damage from DoTs, which IMO is much more impactful, not to mention also duration of all debuffs and as you mentioned, roots. As for the crit reduction, I'm not entirely sure that part works. I have Mastered SR on my level 200 Seraphim at a very high level (245), and the Dragons in the caves are still critting me like no tomorrow with their Fireballs. It's more of a gut feeling, but it definitely does not feel like the enemies have 80% reduced spell crit chance. And at the end of the day, Sacred 2 is one of the few ARPGs where crits are not that important, because they only ever result in +20% damage. Whenever I pick SR, it's exclusively for the Mastery and in that case, it's amongst the first 5 skills I Master on that character. The Mastery in this case works as if you had an additional item with that amount of -DME. So adding more to it is mostly a waste. Shield Mastery is the only bonus in the game that's additive. And with block/reflect, it's not really necessary to go for ludicrous amounts like 80 or 90%. Anything between 50-60% is already quite good, which many buffs will provide just on their own. If your character can't afford to take a couple hits, you are severely lacking in the HP/damage reduction department. Even something as simple as equipping 3 Fire Relics while in the Dragon Caves for example does wonders and cuts the received damage by thousands from every single Fireball. The 80%+ from SR Mastery alone is nice of course, but I find 40,50-60% enough for general operation on most characters. That already reduces all DoTs from 4 to 2 damage ticks and makes them a lot more manageable. There is also an often forgotten method to compensate - the green potions. When I get hit by a particularly nasty DoT like from a boss or unexpectedly swarmed by spiders, I spam several of them at once and get rid of any DoTs instantly. Ever since I bound these potions to my F key, I've actually been occasionally using them. And regarding buffs, they are fine I feel. I can squeeze over 42% -DME even from something like Grand Invigoration. And most importantly, it doesn't have to be only -DME on gear. -DoT can honestly suffice. And some items can have a very decent amount of it. To be honest, the best is a combination of the 2 because of the diminishing returns if you only stack one. If I have a skill slot left open, SR is of course my go to. But that rarely happens these days and the moment you play a non-single aspect character, you will most likely not have the space for it.

Double hit on gear is a different thing. That actually is simply a chance to double any hits that occur. So if you theoretically had 100% chance on Weapon Mastery, Battle Extension, 100% chance of Double Hit and were mounted on the Mobiculum, your every attack would hit 3x2, so 6 times. Also keep in mind, that the special animation can trigger even without weapon lore, the skill just massively increases chance. Even before you master it, the bonus chance just becomes visible and receives a big bump once you Master it. This was the vanilla behavior and it was recently found (before PFP 1.4), that most mods broke this behavior and the weapon masteries were considered to be bugged for the longest time because of that. It's fixed in PFP 1.4, but not sure if the other restored this behavior. One last thing - the special animation can only trigger on normal attacks. If you only spam weapon CAs, it does nothing. But the standard Double Hit on gear (and CA mods that give a chance to double hit) CAN double any hits that occur when using a weapon CA. As for Spell Resistance, the actual Spell Resistance stat bonus is not the main thing. It is the Mastery bonus, which provides an equivalent of a very high detrimental effect reduction. That can be found on items in decent amounts, but having the skill frees up 2-3 slots that'd be best suited for detrimental effect reduction otherwise. The Spell Resistance increase from the unmastered skill is nice to have, but far from being highly impactful. Doesn't matter if you have 2000 or 10000, it will still always be a 30% reduction in Spell Damage at most. On gear, I'd take Chance to Reflect/Block spells every time over whatever amount of Spell Resistance increase.

If you mean weapon Mastery, then it doesn't give a classic chance for double hit but a chance to use a different animation that hits one additional time. When it proccs with Battle Extension (or on Mobiculum), you can get 3 hits in a single attack. Well, I did it and he's far from a glass cannon. Spell Resistance is very good, but can be compensated for with gear.

Some finds: Eternal Fire has been modified through the .dll file (most likely through a change in the logic of the cSpellDrKrankheit spell class, as it also affects Viperish Disease) to now expect the "et_hits_persec" token in its definition, in order to deliver the flat fire damage it's been given. You can just use the persec value and through it, you can regulate how frequently and over how long a period the plague damage ticks. Without it, all damage is just dealt at the end of the duration because the game doesn't know how else to handle it without that token. Interestingly though, the value in that token affects two things: 1) The length of time the plague damage will tick. 2) The damage value of the ticks. The lower the hits_persec value, the lower the tic damage but the longer the overall duration. It lasts basically forever with a value of 1, but ticks for 1 damage. Value of 800 seems to be the original 8 seconds, but causes EF to tick for much more damage every tick, multiple times above the value listed on the CA. The damage value of the fire plague can be changed to match the level 1 of the vanilla EF, but the problem arises the moment you level up the CA, because both the duration and damage go up. Some approximation to the original values could probably be found by fiddling with the duration, damage and hits_persec values, but to assure it remains consistent throughout the levelling process would be a very tough task.... :/ Example definition: tokens = { entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 800, 8, 0, 8 }, entry1 = {"et_plague_const_fire", 1600, 800, 0, 42 }, entry2 = {"et_range_area", 200, 0, 0, 4 }, entry3 = {"et_plague_infect", 300, 2, 0, 42 }, entry4 = {"et_regThisCool", 0, 20, 0, 8 }, entry5 = {"et_range_area", 80, 1, 1, 4 }, entry6 = {"et_duration_sec", 300, 3, 2, 8 }, entry7 = {"et_plague_infect", 100, 1, 3, 42 }, entry8 = {"et_chance_fear", 300, 5, 4, 5 }, entry9 = {"et_plague_const_fire", 600, 300, 5, 42 }, entry10 = {"et_deathblow", 500, 0, 6, 5 }, entry11 = {"et_hits_persec", 800, 0, 0, 4 }, }, Causes a level 1 EF with damage value of 60 listed in the skill description to deal 8 ticks of damage, dealing 7*38 damage and 1*22 = 288 total damage (listed CA damage is 60). Then lowering the damage value to entry1 = {"et_plague_const_fire", 295, 147, 0, 42 }, makes it deal 7*7 damage and 1*4 damage = 53 total damage (listed CA damage is 11). One very notable thing about the above numbers - the value of the first 7 ticks (38 for example) + the value of the last tic (22) equals the listed CA damage. Same in the other example (7+4 = 11). The problem is in how it's distributed over the duration. The original behavior with only 2 quick ticks happening at the end of the duration is still there, the hits_persec just adds more of the same ticks before the final 2 happen. Spreading behavior is maintained but when it spreads, it only deals the last two ticks and the spread EF is instantly removed. It only persists on the initial target. The problem is in how the damage is dealt/distributed. Also, no idea what would happen once the duration/damage went up or if the persec value would need to scale too. Maybe the same as duration? Would require further testing. But I'm afraid the original behavior won't be restored without reverting whatever edit has been made to this particular spellClass. I'll probably drop any notion of playing around Eternal Fire, but wanted to try it at least once Might fiddle around with Dragon Strike instead.

Well, with the Inquisitor, you want to be taking manageable amounts of damage if you want to squeeze full value out of Purifying Chastisement. But the simple fact of the matter is that Inquisitor is meant to be an offensive class. I played a dual wield melee Inquisitor with Damage Lore without Life Leech %, focusing on Poison and Fire damage and it's doing very fine. I can hit most things just once and they die passively. He is the only character that can go above the attack speed cap, has probably the best debuffs. He has tools, but yes, it's not the character for you if you want to be stacking mitigation. Mitigation stacking additively without diminishing returns is definitely questionable, but then you have stuff like Divine Protection, which can just make you invulnerable no matter what and can eventually be chain cast, or Viperish disease which deals ludicrous amounts of % max HP damage and you realize balance was not exactly the game's strong suit As for the "free" double hit with TG, it only works for 2 of the 4 basic attack animations. So it translates to 50% chance of double hit. If you are in the Mobiculum however, then every hit will be a double hit.

If the original behavior could somehow be restored, then balancing it further locally is an option. But I had a thought. If the CA was working properly before Flix changed the CA back to vanilla, then simply adding a fire DOT to Eternal Fire, dealing 1 damage could be enough to make it work? Seems that a change was done to the .dll to accomodate the change done to Eternal Fire in the CM Patch, which was also initially transferred to PFP. Will try once I get home.

Great. Really hope you can think of something that'd allow keeping the patched s2logic file.

Inquisitor has Purifying Chastisement. Innure is the single most powerful damage mitigation mod in the game. You can get 23+% of all channel mitigation just from that and you can also get Toughness. Also has Reverse Polarity, which can be modded for all channel reflection. Dislodged Spirit completely neuters even the toughest bosses. Paralyzing Dread negates any enemy relying on fast, hard hitting normal attacks. He has the means and can be plenty survivable, nigh unkillable pretty easily if you want to. So him not having both chest and shoulders with mitigation is pretty understandable.