idbeholdME

I have the character editor so I can make any blank character I want. I just asked here first if anybody knew the breaking point for Stealth on Shadow Veil at which it becomes permanent invisibility and if it is reachable without boosting the Stealth value in any way before I have to go and test it myself. But, I will probably do as Flix says. The prospect of future usefulness of finally having a blacksmith character is becoming more and more appealing the more I think about it. What about my second question with Hafted vs Pole Arms? I have never dabbled to much in weapons until now but as I said, Pole Arms seem to do a bit more damage. Which weapon class would you recommend more?

Of course that would be optimal but frankly, leveling 2 Shadow Warriors side by side just because of one skill would just be too tedious for me. Simple as that. I'd rather play one of the characters I haven't played extensively yet. I was not planning on making Shadow Veil a permanent buff. That 3rd buff spot would be taken by Nether Allegiance. Shadow Veil would just be a CA for movement speed and reduction of detrimental effects with the Avoidance-Nimble-Shadowmaster mods. The thing is that I would be leveling Shadow Veil hard to have maximum value from the Avoidance-Nimble mods, also slowly raising the stealth value in the process (+10 per CA level). The goal of course would be to have duration longer than cooldown and place it in a combo with Rousing Command for non-stop effects from both So I was wondering more about if I would eventually reach the stealth value that equals complete invisibility even without taking stealth mods (Creep-Fade) or Astral Lord Lore. Because if that were the case, I would definitely not pick it.

So a few days ago, I've started a new Shadow Warrior: I had this build in mind. 9 skills are most likely set in stone (You would have to try really hard to make me back off from one of them) and I'm absolutely torn on the last one. X marks already picked ones. Tactics Lore X Death Warrior Focus X Armor Lore X Concentration X Combat Discipline X Malevolent Champion Focus X Hafted Weapons/Pole Arms Constitution Toughness Blacksmith/Astral Lord Focus I've been originally set on Blacksmith but then I thought "Why waste Concentration mastery and not utilize the 3rd buff - Nether Allegiance? " It would also allow me to make Shadow Veil a utility CA, going for the non stealth mods. BUT.... I want to avoid Shadow Veil becoming complete invisibility. Does anybody know if I will eventually reach complete invisibility even though I won't take any stealth mods or Astral Lord Lore (not boosting the stealth value in any way)? I really want to avoid that and if it were to happen at any point (even on CA level like 100 or something like that), I would instantly pick Blacksmith. I would be leveling Shadow Veil quite hard to get the most value out of the 2 scaling mods (Avoidance-Nimble). I just dinged level 25 and simply can't decide what to pick. As I still don't have a Blacksmith character in my portfolio, both Astral Lord Focus (movement speed, reduction of detrimental effects, Nether Allegiance) and Blacksmith (massively better Smith arts than NPCs, ability to forge stuff for other characters, ability to put rings and amulets into lower tier sockets) would be a huge boon. What would you do/prefer in this spot? I was thinking about cutting out Hafted Weapons/Pole Arms at first and taking both but after verifying that double hits from weapon lore mastery work on melee CAs too, that is out of the question. But it brings me to one last question. Are Hafted Weapons the best choice when it comes to 2-handed weapons? Shadow Warrior has some exclusive items in this category but from what I have seen, Pole Arms tend to do a bit more damage than Hafted Weapons.

CAs too? Well damn. I guess Frenzied Rampage will be non-stop double hits then with its 2 double hit mods... I might have to cut something else from my build then.... Probably Blacksmith which is a shame as I have been wanting to make a Blacksmith char for a long time. Some other time then. Thanks for the answers.

2 questions: Most weapon lores add double hit on mastery. Does this chance affect only normal auto attacks or also weapon CAs like Pelting Strikes or Frenzied Rampage? Recently started a 2 handed SW and was thinking about replacing Hafted Weapons in my planned build with Astral Lord Focus IF the double hit chance doesn't affect CAs (resulting in using no weapon lore at all). That would allow me to make Shadow Veil a utility CA by taking mods Avoidance-Nimble-Shadowmaster and also utilize Concentration mastery by allowing Nether Allegiance. How exactly does Avoidance mod on Shadow Veil work? Is it like Spell Resistance Mastery (reduction of damage over time duration AND detrimental effects) or does it reduce only detrimental effects without affecting damage over time?

Thanks for the much needed input. The RPfB thing is just confusing due to the tooltips as I and Flix attested. But determining what exactly is the "correct" behavior might be difficult . On one hand, it makes sense that you lose the bonuses once you remove the gear with RPfB but on the other hand, if you boost the buff CA level by gear, cast it and then remove the gear, it persists in its buffed form. I would have no problem with keeping it as it is, maybe just somehow make the tooltip update immediately after removing the RPfB gear. But that issue is secondary to the BFG thing. That has MUCH bigger impact on gameplay than the RPfB as it creates more than 30% increase in my damage based only on the conditions of how the BFG is cast.

No ideas, comments or thoughts? Just to be sure, I checked both in Vanilla and with the CM Patch installed and the same behavior occurs in both. The numbers are not exactly the same with the CM Patch as in Vanilla but the same behavior still occurs (BFG damage being a lot higher and majority of the damage being physical when cast bare-handed as opposed to when cast with a weapon previously equipped). I find it strange nobody ever noticed this before since it seems like a big deal AND it is present even in the CM Patch. The numbers difference might not seem relevant at first but as I said, my crits went up several k when I started using the bare-handed version of the BFG. I bring this up mainly because I'm concerned with which damage is the correct one and if anyone can explain this behavior. I barely played my char since I found this out because I'm trying to find out what exactly is going on and don't want to accidentally play with artificially boosted damage.

Hi, Did some testing and I just noticed the following when looking at the damage numbers for BFG on my Seraphim. If I activate it while holding a non-bow weapon during the casting, the damage becomes 6307-6857 (5360-5545 Physical, 947-1312 Ice). When I cast BFG when holding a bow (not even all ranged weapons but only bows), the damage becomes 6346-6896 (5399-5584 Physical and 947-1312 Ice). And when I cast BFG bare-handed, the damage becomes 6883-7432 (5936-6120 Physical and 947-1312 Ice). So I just found out at the end of Platinum that I've been missing out on a decent amount of damage because: Another thing I just found out is that pre-buffing using buff suits (stuff with -Regeneration Penalty from Buffs) doesn't work as I had previously thought because the cooldown and tooltip of a Combat Art change back to the non-reduced values after the first cast of any Combat Art after removing the -RPfB stuff. I've been casting my buffs exactly that way and for no reason it seems... So 2 questions and observations Any idea why does the damage of the BFG change depending on what I'm holding while casting it? The damage jump especially when bare-handed is quite big and it affects only the physical portion of the damage (Ice always stays the same). It is a pretty big deal since my damage when fully buffed went from 9113-9887 (7779-8040 Physical, 1334-1847 Ice) to 9689-10462 (8355-8615 Physical, 1334-1847 Ice), And the bows being the only weapons which have different value is interesting too. Since when does the pre-buffing with -RPfB not persist? I'm pretty sure it was possible and worked in Fallen Angel when I played back in the day. I was confused by the tooltip showing the reduced cooldown so I thought it worked but it goes back to the normal regen times after the first casting of any Combat Art. EDIT More observations. When casting BFG bare-handed, the weapon itself shows 1343-1450 damage in a ~80% physical, 20% Ice damage split. If I cast BFG while holding a weapon, it shows 277-384 damage in a ~70% Ice, 30% Physical damage split. Even though my damage on character sheet goes up by about 500-600, the actual damage is much bigger. Where I was critting before for 13-14k (with mostly Ice damage BFG), I now regularly see 17,18 or even 19k crits (with the mostly Physical damage BFG). I'm guessing that massive damage increase to the weapon now doing much larger portion of Physical damage and thus is much more efficiently punching through armor. But I'm not sure if that would increase the damage by almost 30%:) And why does it show so drastically different values? I'm seriously confused now.... Here is the comparison, the only difference being the first one is cast while holding a weapon, the second one is when bare-handed. The effect on damage numbers is described earlier in the post.

Points I'd add after finishing a completionist Silver playthrough yesterday (without DLCs). 1) The attention to detail. The world is extremely detailed, there are tremendous amounts of nice looking animations (with the CM fixes), so many voice lines dependent on where you are, who you kill, so many footstep sounds depending on the surface and if it's raining or not, random NPC conversations and so much more. This all combines into a world that I like to return to. 2) The static map. Instead of some RNG map built from pre made blocks, the handcrafted and HUGE world of Ancaria has character with clear landmarks unlike many games in this genre. 3) Survival bonus and map explored mechanic. A great way of rewarding not dying your way through the game and it perfectly fits my play style in these kinds of games. Playing normal but as if I was on hardcore. And getting CtFV for thorough exploration? Sign me up! 4) The graphics and world design hold up to this day. I still just stop at some of the places and look around. And the elite textures are extremely good looking. Too bad there is no way to increase the view distance so you could enjoy the nice views more.

Will bump this too. I'd like to make the day and night cycle more equal. I find the current night too short for my liking (75% day to 25% night ratio IIRC) and I'd like to see all the environments at night and hear the night versions of the music more often.

I was pretty sure that this was not a brand new find. But rather than the toad itself, I'm more intrigued as to why it is linked to the quest (correctly it seems as the quest gets marked as finished when you kill it). Was it supposed to appear sometime during this quest? They most likely just forgot to link it and update the quest logic, which results in the "bugged" quest entry.

Hi again everybody. Couldn't find anything about this on the wiki or anywhere else, so I thought I'd post it here. While running around the desert, I started to wonder where does the bugged quest step in Ephraphim's Nightmare quest chain in the vanilla game lead. The quest completes normally, but the quest step "Heavy Burden" is not ticked as completed in the quest log and the quest locator points into the sea. My curiosity got the best of me and I used the dismount trick to get out of bounds and jump my way to the quest circle. I expected nothing to be there, just a not properly closed quest. But lo and behold: there was creature. A toad. But no just any toad, the HYPNOTOAD. If you kill the toad. The "Heavy Burden" quest step even gets completed. No reward or anything but still nice. Too bad I can't do it as I would technically gain a small additional bit of map discovered, which would be cheating. This is obviously a Futurama easter egg, but it is unreachable by normal means. I wonder how this bugged quest/easter egg came to be. Was it intentional? Did they not have time to finish it? Did someone start it but forgot to come back to it? We will never know. But there really is a mystical creature inside the northern sea. The one whose plan is to dominate us all D: GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD.

I knew that much. The thing is, I was not using the spawn.txt and the new Kobold Riders were spawning anyway. And I am already basically in the state that you described also minus the map navigation changes and mounts. I just discovered that I will have to edit the original creatures.txt and not just use the new one. No biggie. I am afraid to use the quests because if it works fine and later down the road I find an impassable problem (start a quest that refers to a non existing creature for example), the change will be irreversible. And I definitely don't know which quests are new and which are old. Besides, I don't want random question marks on my map that I have to avoid. So I will survive the occasional bugged quest (encountered 2 so far in act 2). Any input on the elite Kobold Riders not doing much of anything? That is present in both vanilla and patched versions and not caused by my alchemy with the CM files.

OOPS, posted instead of edited :P.... Already been there and no issues. EDIT: Probably found the cause. It turns out I cannot just slap the creatures.txt from the CM Patch into my vanilla game and expect it to work 100% correctly in the entire game. For some reason, the game was spawning the new variants of Kobold Riders (the green and purple ones) and they were missing animations (due to me not having the CM Patch installed fully). This is the first creature it happened with so far. Screenshots show the hillarity. The Kobolds were perpendicular to the wolves and were just sliding around on the ground doing nothing. I tried reverting back to the old creatures.txt and it fixed the bugged Riders (only the brown ones spawn now) and the game no longer seems to be crashing in that spot I posted before. I was using the CM Patch creatures.txt to scale up the human NPCs. I will just have to do that manually in my old creatures.txt but at least I have the one from CM Patch as a base. It will just take some time. Also on topic of Kobold Riders, the normal ones are okay, but the elite ones seem to behave strangely (both in vanilla and the CM Patch). I just tested it and the elite Kobold Riders to the south of orc area don't attack you on their own. If you get close to them, they start swinging at you but their attacks make the sound as if they were firing a projectile from a staff. They also seem to have an extremely low chance to hit. They had 22% chance to hit me in stats and I just stood there for minutes with 2 of them flailing at me and I got hit only a very few times. Also the moment you get from melee range, they just start walking around again as if nothing happened.

Already been there and no issues.

I only sometimes crash if I play for a very long time without stopping (read like 5+ hours). I also didn't experience any problems with crashing on loadings. But yesterday, I found an area in the Orcish lands where I crash very often. I marked the area with a red circle in the screenshot. It took a lot of tries to finally be able to get through without crashing. Once I am away from this area, everything is okay. No idea what's causing it but there is usually a big battle going on between the orcs.

It was recently (when I started playing again). I have by no means state of the art GPU. GTX 780, i7 7700 CPU and 16GB RAM with relatively fast timings. Yet the PhysX cause 0 issues to me. Yes, if you stand in one area for too long, sometimes more and more leaves spawn. My screen was once covered completely with leaves, flying and on the ground after I went AFK and every gust of wind or movement of my character caused tons of them to go flying again. It was still running completely smooth. Important thing to note though is that I'm playing in windowed mode (to have normal loadings and transitions instead of just freezing until the loading is done). It seems like the game is much smoother in windowed mode in general.

That is exactly what I did. But people not aware of this change in the CM Patch will be robbed of the experience. Many guides on the internet on how to get this game working smoothly just say "Install the CM Patch". And not everyone is willing to carefully study the change log and weigh the changes/see something has been cut out for a reason that is no longer relevant. The game worked for me even without the CM Patch with full elite textures, enabled PhysX and everything else maxed with no crashes. The only problem I encountered was stuttering in dense areas due to texture loading.

I'm just going to chime in and confirm. The vanilla elite textures are almost unbearable in Griffinborough (Sloeford seemed fine though). The game is constantly loading the huge textures and it becomes a stuttery mess whenever you turn the camera. Using the graphics files from the Community Patch largely fixed the problem. It is still not completely smooth but 1000% better than it used to be. Great job. But regarding the PhysX, I really don't understand the decision in the Community Patch to disable most of the effects. It is what gave this game such a WOW effect when I first played it and it makes the game world feel much more alive. I had no problem playing with them on, having elite textures and every graphical setting maxed and I have had like one crash to desktop in tens of hours of playtime. Modern PCs should be able to handle them easily. It should really be left up to to the final user whether or not he want to disable them. Maybe make it an option in the patch installer?

The built-in DOT on Blazing Tempest is not the same one as the usual burn effect that can get applied by everything that deals fire damage. That indeed means that an enemy can have a Blazing Tempest DOT on him AND the normal burn effect at the same time. Just think about the Blazing Tempest DOT as being a part of the Combat Art itself rather than the usual burn effect. The built-in DOT on Blazing tempest has 100% chance of happening and is not affected by Damage Lore or Incandescent Skin. But they increase the chance of the normal burn secondary effect happening. And yes, these 2 DOTs can stack as they are different.

The silver mod "Boost" claims that it reduces the cooldown by 50%+1% per CA level. However, after I took it, the cooldown was reduced to 40 seconds (33% decrease) and it does not scale up with levels (stays at 40 seconds forever). Also the same case with the bronze mod "Capacity". The duration goes up by 33% (from 15.1 to 20.1, again 33% increase instead of claimed 50%). I was originally planning to take Dampen on bronze and let the silver cooldown reduction mod take the cooldown down to manageable levels once I get DP high. But now I will probably have to take both the duration and cooldown and even then I'm still not sure if I will ever hit a threshold where the DP is infinitely sustainable. At this rate, I might just make it a 20 second invulnerability panic button and take Dampen and Uplifted Force. I don't know what version of the game the wiki is based on, whether it's console or one of the various PC versions but in the case of the latest PC release (GOG, Steam), the info is wrong. EDIT: My bad. Just noticed that the info is from community patch 1.30. That would explain it since I'm playing without the CM Patch.

That's great. As I said, I can change some minor things myself. But when it comes to complicated stuff (like quests and their scripts), I'm lost. All I could do is look up "Ephrahim" in the quests.txt and there were 7 entries in total (which I suspect are quest steps) and that is where I ended. I probably could look into the CM Patch quests.txt, copy all these entries and replace the original ones by those and see what happens. But I don't think it will be that simple. I don't think the changed dlls and exe are a problem I.e. they can be used. I noticed that they don't uninstall themselves after removing the CM Patch so I am using them but I don't mind anything they change or at least it's not noticeable (except maybe summoning mount in caves, I liked that little immersion thing of animals like horses being afraid to enter caves). The stacking change is a huge QoL improvement that I think noone would have problems with. Really, all that would be needed is removing new items/quests and new enemies. I like the things like the new variants of old enemies (the zombie skins and such which have 0 impact on gameplay) but I have no idea how to separate that. Also, the creatures.txt seems to work fine. Humans are scaled up (even those I missed when I was doing it myself) and the game is not crashing/bugging out, so great .

Just tried and yes, the CM Patch fixes it. The log entry Heavy Burden is gone altogether. However, I don't think I can use it (quest and questscripts) because I'm sure it will cause bugs the way I have it set up. I don't use any new items/enemies and didn't use any new quests. The moment some new quest directs me to a new boss for example, the game would most likely crash because I don't have that boss in my game files. So I either have to fix it manually (which I have no chance of doing) or just live with it. Also, after using the quests from the CM Patch, there was an active quest Hunting Fever I in chapter XI for some reason? I have been nowhere close to that. Here is the list of what I used: animation.txt behaviour.txt (in hopes of fixing the non responsive white griffin) all particle files graphics10, 13 and 25 and then some small manual tweaks to various files (blueprint.txt (fixing Endijah's Wings), creatures.txt (tried to maunally do the human NPC scaling changes, had partial success), spells (weakened the sptiting spiders attack but not as much as in the CM Patch)) Also, the potion and rune stacking is in for some reason and I have no idea how I did that. No complaints though Am I correct in thinking that I can safely use the creatures.txt (to have the scaled human NPCs) and it wouldn't cause any problems? As far as I understand, it is just creature definitions so it should't cause any issues if new creatures are defined but not spawned. This also led me to a thought. A lite version of the patch with only bugfixes, fixed animations and general improvements and no new content (for purists as you said) would be a good option to have. Thanks for the input.

It is.... complicated.... Let's just say that I picked and used the parts of it that I liked. And I'm not using the quests part of the CP and I wasn't sure if this was fixed in the CP or not. That's why I left the note in case it was fixed there and someone wondered why I still have the bug.

This quest flows normally, you get the reward correctly, everything is fine. But after finishing it, it isn't marked as complete in the quest log and there is a dummy quest circle in the middle of a sea. Can be seen in the screenshots. Is there any way (like using console for example) to finish a bugged quest, remove the ciccle and mark it as complete? NOTE: I'm not using the community patch. Well... parts of it.