Sacred 2 Enhanced Edition

[Flix 5,116]

12 minutes ago, Androdion said:

The quests' integration is excellent, congrats mate! I can see them being very fluid in their development. New items go in line with your recent talks about physical damage converters and are well achieved as well. One question though, they don't actually do damage conversion do they?! At least it doesn't show in the pics.

Thanks.  As it turns out you can't actually convert TO physical damage, only FROM.  And I'm not convinced that you can convert other damage types at all, for example fire into poison. Need to test more to be sure.

So these items are meant to be useful for a physical weapon or physical-based build, by featuring other modifiers in lieu of damage conversion.

[Androdion 875]

So that you don't leave the damage modifier socket open if you don't want to convert it, at least you can put some boni there. Gotcha.

If you couldn't convert elemental into elemental then how would damage conversion work on a weapon with only elemental damage? Because it works as far as I know. Just pick up a weapon like Essence of Dark Matters and socket a damage converter, it should be easy to check if it has any effect or not.

[dimitrius154 612]

@Flix Regarding improper skill and CA boni on items: there's no balanced way to ensure the proper assignment for 'WEARGROUP_DEFAULT'( Guess it can be done based on local hero class, but then general rings and amulets would be affected). Thus, I think, that an adequate solution could be to restrict class-specific skill and CA boni from spawning on non-class-specific weaponry.

Edited April 21, 2020 by dimitrius154

[Flix 5,116]

5 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Thus, I think, that an adequate solution could be to restrict class-specific skill and CA boni from spawning on non-class-specific weaponry.

This would be accomplished by just manually going into each bonusgroup that appears on weapons and removing any class-specific bonuses?  Sounds a bit like cutting the baby in half, but I couldn't be sure how many builds rely on such bonuses on weapons.

[dimitrius154 612]

2 hours ago, Flix said:

This would be accomplished by just manually going into each bonusgroup that appears on weapons and removing any class-specific bonuses?

That's correct. I'm still reviewing the item generation code, on whether a better solution can be implemented. 

[jwiz 68]

4 hours ago, Flix said:

This would be accomplished by just manually going into each bonusgroup that appears on weapons and removing any class-specific bonuses?  Sounds a bit like cutting the baby in half, but I couldn't be sure how many builds rely on such bonuses on weapons.

The problem with that would be afaik, that various default gear items types are shared among hero classes and just appropriately skinned according to the local hero.

So removing unwanted boni from bonusgroups attachted to that gear, would remove it for all hero classes that share the specific gear item type, which creates another unwanted issue.

[dimitrius154 612]

17 minutes ago, jwiz said:

removing unwanted boni from bonusgroups attachted to that gear, would remove it for all hero classes that share the specific gear item type, which creates another unwanted issue.

Only general-issue weapons seem to be affected by the original issue, since only weapons have 'WEARGROUP_DEFAULT'.

[dimitrius154 612]

@Flix

Inquisitor-only bonus groups are present on "BGW_ranged_bow_normal, "BGW_ranged_bow_magic, "BGW_ranged_bow_rare

Guardian-only bonus groups are present on "BGW_magestaff_normal, "BGW_magestaff_magic, "BGW_magestaff_2h_normal, "BGW_magestaff_2h_magic, "BGW_pole_magic 

 

These contribute to the issue.

Edited April 22, 2020 by dimitrius154

[Torrentula81 0]

On the community patch is

"It seems that CM Patch 1.60 has introduced a minor issue. Its description can be found in this post.

This issue can be resolved by navigating to ...\Sacred 2 Gold\scripts\shared and editing spells.txt with Notepad++. In line 656 where it reads entry0 = {"et_mult_weapondamage", 1000, 0, 0, 9 }, replace 1000 with 1. Save and you're done. Be sure to back up the file prior to editing it. If you have any doubts about it please post in the comments section."

 

Is this still accurate? The link leads to page 22 of this thread. So should this be 1, 1000, or delete it? If if it's delete, what exactly should be removed?

[Flix 5,116]

On 4/26/2020 at 5:44 AM, Torrentula81 said:

Is this still accurate? The link leads to page 22 of this thread. So should this be 1, 1000, or delete it? If if it's delete, what exactly should be removed?

Simplest thing is to change the 1000 to 1.

[Flix 5,116]

Enhanced Edition 2.4 is tested and ready for packaging. I should be uploading it sometime this week.

This is the complete change log:

Spoiler

Enhanced Edition 2.4 Change Log

[General]
 - The overall structure of the mod is changed so that there is only one CORE module (based on the old "Original Spells" version). Some changes from the old "Enhanced Spells" version are now carried over into the new CORE module.
 - The old "Enhanced Spells" is now called "Alternate Spells" and is a small, optional module that must be installed on top of the CORE. The "Alternate Spells" module cannot be used alone and will function only to add the new custom/swapped spells.
 - Hungarian translation by Pokolfajzat is now included (CORE module only).
 - Chinese and Italian localizations no longer officially supported due to lack of translations.
 - Blueprint.txt script optimized to avoid corruption when file is edited - replaced German characters which broke encoding format (if saved with certain text editors).
 
[Quest]
 - A few unique quest NPC's got unique appearances instead of being ice elemental clones: The Djinn, The Passive Water Elemental, The Air Elemental (Will-o'-Wisps quest).
 - Some unused High Elf and Human character designs were activated and assigned to various quest NPC's: Aaron King of Thieves, Varnar, Informant Harol, Commander Iskari, Officer Shabbovsky, Sentry Hicks.
 - Improved variation of male and female quest characters in Artamark. Now over 2 dozen different designs are used instead of the same 3 NPC's over and over.
 - "By Order of the Crown": "Lord of a Castle" NPC renamed to Baron Reikenstein.
 - Reward for completing "The Needy Water Elemental" changed to a rare-tier Relic of Frost (formerly normal-tier).
 - Reward for completing "The Earth Lord" quest is changed to a "Wol" Sigil (pure Physical Relic).
 - New Quest: "The Lightning Lord."  See Tizz'Agoz in the Ruins of Khatuz to begin. Rewards a Sacred Relic of the Arcane.
 - New Quest: "Elite Mounts." The elite mounts trader in the Jungle region now gives you a quest before he will begin trading with you, as a test of strength. Requires completing either "Unique Mounts" or "A Roof Over the Head" quests to unlock.
 - Commander Elsurion ("A Long Journey" and "Raiders") no longer gets attacked constantly by bandits.
 - "Panem en Circensis" (Shadow Path arena quest) now grants 1 skill and 1 attribute point as reward.
 - All quests which grant skill and attribute points are no longer repeatable per difficulty in Multiplayer, to prevent abuse. Total list: Ancaria Airlines, Feed the Poor, 7 Days of Rainy Weather, Survivors, Panem en Circensis.

[Items]
 - Item modifier: "Detrimental Magic Effects -X%" is renamed to "Debuff Duration -X%" to more accurately describe what it does.
 - Unlockable bonus on "Enhance" Blacksmith art changed from "Hitpoint Regeneration" to "Spell Intensity +X%".
 - Unlockable DOT Damage Mitigation on Recovery Elixirs are combined into a single bonus (effect is unchanged).
 - Significantly increased the power of item modifiers: "Chance to Banish Undead +X%" and "Energy Shield Absorption (Opponent) -X%".
 - The Hafted Weapons Lore-unlockable bonus "Fire Damage vs. Undead" is changed to "Damage vs. Undead" (affecting all damage types).
 - All unique/set/legendary weapons that had "Opponent's Armor: Physical -X%" are changed to use "Opponent's Armor -X%" (affecting all damage types).
 - New item: "Ogre Knuckle," physical-based damage converter with magic/rare/unique variants. These have a tendency to drop from Orc-type enemies and can also be bought at Blacksmiths.
 - Dryad set "Leaves and Twigs": Spell Resistance +% set bonus is now the correct one (values are much higher).
 - Base modifiers on Throwing Stone weapon class changed to: Chance to Bypass Armor (unlocked by Ranged Weapons skill), Chance for Open Wounds, and Attack Speed.
 - Sigils (CM patch relics) minimum drop level increased from 10 to 30. They are now tier 14 drops (slightly more rare).
 - Potion drop rate is moderately reduced for low-level trash mobs. Merchant stock is unchanged.
 
[Enemies]
 - Fixed a vanilla scripting bug whereby hundreds of opponents had broken skills (Tactics Lore, Armor Lore, and Aspect Lores were most common).
 - Ensured all bossses have boss-level (top tier) drop chances and XP.
 - The Carnach now has increased movement speed, vitality, chance for critical hits, and chance to burn. Its melee attacks have further reach and inflict additional magic damage. It has also learned the Pole Arms skill, which will increase its attack speed and attack value.
 - Reworked the resistances and spells of each Elemental Lord. Each now has a significant vulnerability to a single element, corresponding to the armor displayed on their health bar. Physical mitigation is also reduced for all except the Earth Lord. In return they each have more crowd control resistance. They now each have new custom spells.
 - There is now a fifth Elemental Lord, attuned to magic damage: The Lightning Lord, with associated quest in Hissil'Ta. Fen Fires now spawn in his vicinity.
 - All Bat-type enemies are smaller and faster, with increased evade chance and life leeched per hit. Base physical damage slightly reduced to compensate.
 - The chain lightning spell used by Furies and other enemies no longer strips player buffs. Instead it penalizes combat art regeneration for 4 seconds.
 - The frost ring spell FX used by Ogres and other enemies no longer has a negative impact on performance. Accordingly, this FX has been restored to Shelob's "Frosty Lair" spell.
 - Mounted enemies should no longer explode when they are killed.
 - Small red dragons are now vulnerable to ice damage instead of physical (vanilla script fix).
 - Texture tweaks to Raging Boar (no more fur shader on tusks and eyes).
 - Removed Hard Hit attack for Gronkor (was missing an animation, causing him to not attack) - replaced with the "Blind" debuff spell. Also added his missing running animation - he should no longer glide across the ground.
 - Grurag and Ore-Thag Orc Archers no longer equipped with incorrect Ogre weapons.
 - All Orc Archers/Hunters will now use (and prefer) their bows instead of always using melee weapons.
 - Lupus Coldhand and Ogan Kandimiro (Orc Masters of the Hunt) have increased damage, hit chance, resistances, and XP per kill. They are now equipped with weapons and will use their special attacks.
 - Blackhammer is now more powerful and is equipped with a weapon. He also has the black hair Ascaron designed for him instead of generic NPC hair.
 - Reduced melee damage of Demons (Wastelands and Arena in the Clouds).
 - Increased hitpoints of Black Seraphim.
 - Haenir has increased stats and also knows the Hafted Weapons and Shield Lore skills now.
 - Deranged Earth Elementals ("A Growing Danger") are now elite-class. The 2 "mature" ones are now T-Mutated Elementals, in keeping with the quest lore.
 - Fen Fires in Facetelleon cave are replaced with Lithos enemies.
 - The deepest levels of the Schlun'Zum caves (lair of Thranak and Ice Lord) are now filled with T-Mutants and Ice Elementals instead of Kobolds and Wolves.
 - Mutated Kobolds are no longer equipped with weapons/shields they can't use (equipment was appearing at their feet & clipping into the ground).
 - Mutated Scarabs are no longer missing portraits in the "Last Opponent" window.
 - Kobold Ghosts on Christmas Island are now the four "Christmas" varieties instead of a generic Kobold.
 
[Spells General]
 - All Combat Art icons and Aspect backgrounds have new artwork (can be restored to vanilla with optional module).
 - Improved combat AI for all summoned minions. They should now attack consistently, with minimal time spent "deciding" what to do.
 - All buff-summoned minions except Nether Allegiance are now mortal (will die instead of "fainting" when killed). Accordingly, they have increased evade chance, spell resistance, damage mitigation, and DOT resistance.
 - Divine Gift: Sakkara - Increased the Sakkara Demon's strength, intelligence, movement speed, attack speed, and chance to hit. Its melee attacks have further reach, increased damage, chance for critical hits, chance to burn, and can strike multiple opponents at once. The Sakkara Demon no longer turns against the player when the duration expires. Instead, it self-destructs in a fiery explosion that damages enemies.
 - All temp buffs now have the extended durations and related changes from the old "Enhanced Spells" version. This includes: Dashing Alacrity, Divine Protection, Frenetic Fervor, Zealous Doppelganger, Dislodged Spirit, Paralyzing Dread, Cascading Shroud, Rousing Command, Killing Spree, Dust Devil, Goldenglade Touch, Acute Mind, Combat Alert, Combat Trance.
 - Baneful Smite: Innate 2% Magic Damage per level changed to 5% Total Damage per level. Gold mod "Chain" can now chain to up to 5 opponents.
 - Flaring Nova: Magic damage increased to be equal to the physical damage.
 - Fire Demon: Slightly lowered the level bonus to the Demon's combat arts. Adjusted the Demon's model and animations to prevent its fireball from crashing into the terrain. The Demon now also casts a version of Eternal Fire.
 - Cobalt Strike: "Chain Reaction" mods can now each chain to up to 3 opponents.
 - Grim Resilience: Silver mod “Readiness” (defense) replaced with “Guard” (reduction of secondary damage effects).
 - Augmenting Guidon: Range now scales with level. Gold mod “Fear” was debuffing the player instead of opponents, therefore is replaced with “Aegis” (debuff duration reduction).
 - Nether Allegiance: Gold mod “Balm” (hitpoint regeneration) replaced with “Legion” (summons +1 skeletal minion).
 - Ravaged Impact: Bronze mod "Perforate" effect changed from Open Wounds to Deep Wounds.
 - Deathly Spears: Can now strike multiple times by default. Number of jabs per cast scales more quickly. Gold mod “Jab” (extra strikes) changed to “Impale” (chance for deep wounds).
 - Furious Emblazer: Duration increased from 2.3s to 2.5s. Hits per second increased from 1.5/s to 2.0/s. Slightly increased fire damage of “Accelerant” bronze mod. “Intensify” gold mod now increases hits per second by 1.0/s.
 - Archimedes Beam: Base damage increased (including bronze mod “Bundle”). Hits per second now scales.
 - Dragon Berserk: The two “Frenzy” mods (duration per hit) are replaced with “Scales” (armor %) and “Fury” (damage %).
 - Familiar: Now uses the correct creature model.
 - Protector: Now summons 2 Protectors by default. "Familiar" gold mod that summoned an extra Protector is replaced with “Master” which lowers the buff’s regeneration penalty. Summoning VFX now appears where the Protector emerges from the ground, rather than at the Dragon Mage's feet (bug was only present in Original Spells version).
 
[Alternate Spells Module Only]
 - Divine Gift cooldowns standardized at 900s (up from 750s).
 - Sublime Guardian: All 3 forms now each wear different armor sets. Gold mod "Guardian's Wrath" now gives the Guardian a lightning attack instead of a fire bolt.
 - Battle Daemon: All 3 forms now each have different un-summoning FX.
 - Augmenting Guidon: Silver mod "Tutor" restored, “Aegis” (debuff duration reduction) is moved to replace gold mod "Fear" instead.
 - Venomous Entrapment: Spell is changed into a close-range poison nova that can root opponents. Modifications remain the same.
 - Positronic Overload: SFX is no longer so noisy and overly long.
 - Sentinel Construct: Now uses a special T-energy blade. 

As you can see there is major change to the structure of the mod in 2.4.  There will no longer be two core modules, only one, which is a sort of merge of Original Spells and Enhanced Spells.  The CORE module will now include the duration increases to temp buffs, and the modifications which increased duration will be changed to more useful ones, but otherwise all spells with remain original.  NO combat arts will be replaced or moved to different aspects.  The CORE module will be required to install any of the other modules.

If the player wants the custom spells that I made, they should install the optional module titled "Alternate Spells."  This will swap out the combat arts with the ones that players of the old "Enhanced Spells" will be familiar with (Sublime Guardian, Sentinel Construct, etc.).

There will be "Classic Icons" packs for both versions, since the updated CA icons and aspect backgrounds are a part of the stock release now.

Hope that makes sense.

[jwiz 68]

Great news!

Something to look forward to in these days!

[dimitrius154 612]

2 hours ago, Flix said:

"Lord of a Castle" NPC renamed to Baron Reikenstein.

It might be worth adjusting the string 2874219187. One monument in the area states, that owners of Reikenstein are Counts.

 

2 hours ago, Flix said:

- Fixed a vanilla scripting bug whereby hundreds of opponents had broken skills (Tactics Lore, Armor Lore, and Aspect Lores were most common).

Interesting - what's that about?

2 hours ago, Flix said:

 - A few unique quest NPC's got unique appearances instead of being ice elemental clones: The Djinn, The Passive Water Elemental, The Air Elemental (Will-o'-Wisps quest).
 - Some unused High Elf and Human character designs were activated and assigned to various quest NPC's: Aaron King of Thieves, Varnar, Informant Harol, Commander Iskari, Officer Shabbovsky, Sentry Hicks.
 - Improved variation of male and female quest characters in Artamark. Now over 2 dozen different designs are used instead of the same 3 NPC's over and over.

Is it possible to get a dump for these?

 

[Flix 5,116]

58 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

It might be worth adjusting the string 2874219187. One monument in the area states, that owners of Reikenstein are Counts.

I think he's the Baron of the central Barony, going by the lore that Ascaron released about Artamark, there are three Baronies: Urthamark (green, Mascarell in internal files), DeMordrey (red), and the Central barony (blue). Reikenstein is flying the blue heraldry.  And then the king lives in Griffinborough.  This is just a guess though, they were not exactly consistent with this lore.  

1 hour ago, dimitrius154 said:

Interesting - what's that about?

That was that thing we discussed where all those enemies had the advanced = 1, flag set for many of their skills.  This rendered the skill inactive for NPC's.  I changed all such instances to advanced = 0, instead.  This reactivated the skills.  The most visible way to confirm this is when an enemy like Blade Spiders had Toughness, you can see the extra armor appear in their health bar after making this correction.

1 hour ago, dimitrius154 said:

Is it possible to get a dump for these?

In the purest sense of the word, yes, I can dump my working notes on you.  I don't feel like taking a lot of time making them more palatable but I think you can figure them out.  I'll send when I get home from work in a couple hours.

[dimitrius154 612]

22 minutes ago, Flix said:

I think he's the Baron of the central Barony

Right, the string with the ID provided is the description of said monument.

[dimitrius154 612]

37 minutes ago, Flix said:

That was that thing we discussed where all those enemies had the advanced = 1, flag set for many of their skills. 

Thank you for reminding about that one, with the recent 23 issues resolved I've compeletely forgotten about it. Of course, only itemtypes 1,51,93,94,209,210,1949 can have skills with the advanced = 1.

[Flix 5,116]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

Is it possible to get a dump for these?

I'm attaching the list I was working from.  I think it's all of them, though I do tend to make decisions on the fly.

Numbers alone like 10267, are itemtypes.

Numbers preceded by parentheses like (4083, are taskcreatures

taskcreature changes.txt

[dimitrius154 612]

Thank you, I've just finished with the 'advanced' flag issue. Browsing the notes. By the way, I might be getting dull due to nighttime, but Varnar can be fought?

[Flix 5,116]

41 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

Thank you, I've just finished with the 'advanced' flag issue. Browsing the notes. By the way, I might be getting dull due to nighttime, but Varnar can be fought?

Only for a Shadow path High Elf.

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php/Sacred_2:DeElfici_I_-_The_Promissory_Note_-_Shadow

[dimitrius154 612]

3 minutes ago, Flix said:

Only for a Shadow path High Elf.

Hmm, I've always wondered, as to why the usually practical Inquisitor wouldn't simply snap Varnar's neck, thus annulling any debts there are. No man, no problem.

[Flix 5,116]

Yes it's out of character.  I guess it's supposed to be some of the humor/tension of the quest.  The dark overlord type trying to act like a responsible dad.  Taking her to the recruitment office and signing her up for the guard... I always imagined that his murdering of that monk (who tries to blackmail) immediately afterward was his way of blowing off some steam after all that restraint.  

By the way, I don't know if any mention of Varnar being called "Dylaith" survived past CM 1.60 but you may want to check your texts.  There's no Dylaith in EE.

[dimitrius154 612]

29 minutes ago, Flix said:

was his way of blowing off some steam after all that restraint

I rather consider killing some remote archivist, instead of intimidating him, while fulfilling a crimelord's demands(instead of sending him to the land of eternal hunt) to be a significant deviation from the time-honored path of Lawful Evil

 

Edited April 28, 2020 by dimitrius154

[dimitrius154 612]

27 minutes ago, Flix said:

By the way, I don't know if any mention of Varnar being called "Dylaith" survived past CM 1.60 but you may want to check your texts. 

Multiple occurrences. I've also replaced all instances of nobles mentioned to be Counts to Barons for the Artamark region.

Edited April 28, 2020 by dimitrius154

[dimitrius154 612]

While browsing for sitings to be changed, I've stumbled upon a cute quote:

"In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes."

The Russian version has suitable translation, with a reference to a certain French writer:

"In a democracy all vote for one; in feudalism, one votes for all."

[Flix 5,116]

2 hours ago, dimitrius154 said:

I've also replaced all instances of nobles mentioned to be Counts to Barons for the Artamark region.

Well, I believe there's only 3 living Barons, one for each of the three baronies.  Counts are supposed to be higher ranked traditionally? So yeah it wouldn't make sense for there to be any Counts in Artamark, as the 3 Barons are said to be the lords of their respective realms.