Pre-Nerf Viperish Disease

[Nekrotik 0]

Hey all,

Just picked up the game again after playing it 10 years ago, only just found out Viperish Disease was nerfed into the ground and no longer works like it used to.

I was just wondering, has anyone come out with a mod to revert it back to how it was pre-nerf?

[gogoblender 3,069]

9 hours ago, Nekrotik said:

Hey all,

Just picked up the game again after playing it 10 years ago, only just found out Viperish Disease was nerfed into the ground and no longer works like it used to.

I was just wondering, has anyone come out with a mod to revert it back to how it was pre-nerf?

HI Nekrotic and welcome to the forums! 

I remember the drama on this CA when it was first released... it would just spread all over the continent, players' would shoot up in experience and the online boards went nuts with the new meta being viper builds  

I know that this supposed "bug" was quickly attended to and none of the new big mods like CMPatch, Addendum or Pure allow it anymore, but maybe someone here has an idea of how you can change a setting of mod the game for your needs of that old-school hilarity and quick experience eater^^

Happy to see you found us, keep enjoying this Sacred!

gogo

[idbeholdME 393]

As said, it still works the same way in the vanilla game. The vast majority of mods fix it, along with the bug when dual wielding a staff with normal weapon, which would also annihilate entire screens, by making them ranged by default.

You could probably revert the Viperish Disease fix by copying its spell definition from vanilla spells.txt and replacing the modded one with it.

[gogoblender 3,069]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

which would also annihilate entire screens, by making them ranged by default.

 

Wooooo...that bug was EPIC!

...thanks idbeholdME for the tips as well

who dont like some extra pow in their game eh

 

 

gogo

[gogoblender 3,069]

Viperish Bug Builds were pretty spectacular... i can appreciate the draw and the reason it broke all the ladders when it came out

gogo

[Flix 5,116]

Actually the chance to infect and range are the same in CM Patch and EE as they are in vanilla. In fact they even scale a little better, not to mention the damage is also able to scale with skills and modifiers since it now has some flat poison splash damage added.

The difference is the duration of the spell, it's nearly cut in half.

The higher damage in combination with the shorter duration, means the enemy is much more likely to die from the spell rather than run around infecting more enemies, especially at low levels.  Properly built up it will still infect entire closely packed mobs like a plague.

Eternal Fire was subject to the same balancing.

 

The lines in scripts/shared/spells.txt are in the spell named "dr_vo_krankheit"

entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 300, 5, 0, 8 },  -- increase the first number to 500

entry6 = {"et_duration_sec", 150, 3, 2, 8 },  -- increase the first number to 300

 

You'll basically have a godlike spell after that.

[gogoblender 3,069]

12 hours ago, Flix said:

 

 

The lines in scripts/shared/spells.txt are in the spell named "dr_vo_krankheit"

entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 300, 5, 0, 8 },  -- increase the first number to 500

entry6 = {"et_duration_sec", 150, 3, 2, 8 },  -- increase the first number to 300

 

You'll basically have a godlike spell after that.

Brilliant Flix!  Dramatic power up made easy 

gogo

[chattius 2,525]

Viperish disease was a so good mass killer that many people overlooked its late game anti-boss abilities. We had a Waffenmeisterin which did 66% life leech damage a second. If the infection kicked it, nothing lived longer than two more seconds.

[gogoblender 3,069]

1 hour ago, chattius said:

Viperish disease was a so good mass killer that many people overlooked its late game anti-boss abilities. We had a Waffenmeisterin which did 66% life leech damage a second. If the infection kicked it, nothing lived longer than two more seconds.

Would a boss actually catch it ?

👏

gogo

[chattius 2,525]

The early boss run in old times worked good: boar, griphon, ... Have to ask our oldest for undeads and such. I think the life leech part worked, but not so poison. So you have to do enough other damage to reach the trigger value.

[Vishanka 236]

For some reason viperish disease will not spread for me at all (PFP) any suggestions?
I tried to replace spell.txt with vanilla version but with that file it does not do any damage at all

[Vishanka 236]

I tested a bit more and can someone please explain the changes to me:

With the CM/PFP Version of the spell it will immediately do damage so my enemies really die quickly without any spread of the disease.

The old version would spread the disease and deal damage after the end of it's duration (15s for me), is that correct?
Why was it changed in the way it was? With the new version I could not get a single spread of the disease so there's no Area of Effect potential for me and the spell is basically useless

New:

        entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 300, 4, 0, 8 },
        entry1 = {"et_range_area", 200, 0, 0, 4 },
        entry2 = {"et_plague_poison", 76, 4, 0, 42 },
        entry3 = {"et_plague_infect", 200, 1, 0, 42 },
        entry4 = {"et_regThisCool", 0, 20, 0, 8 },
        entry5 = {"et_plague_poison", 10, 2, 1, 42 },
        entry6 = {"et_duration_sec", 150, 2, 2, 8 },
        entry7 = {"et_plague_infect", 70, 1, 3, 42 },
        entry8 = {"et_drop_a_head", 950, 50, 4, 42 },
        entry9 = {"et_chance_deepwound", 200, 1, 5, 5 },
        entry10 = {"et_range_area", 80, 0, 6, 4 },
        entry11 = {"et_hits_persec", 999, 0, 0, 4 },
        entry12 = {"et_spelldamage_poison", 300, 25, 0, 133 },
        entry13 = {"et_chance_areasplash", 200, 2, 0, 5 },
        entry14 = {"et_chance_areasplash", 75, 1, 3, 5 },

 

Old

        entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 500, 5, 0, 8 },
        entry1 = {"et_range_area", 200, 0, 0, 4 },
        entry2 = {"et_plague_poison", 76, 4, 0, 42 },
        entry3 = {"et_plague_infect", 200, 1, 0, 42 },
        entry4 = {"et_regThisCool", 0, 20, 0, 8 },
        entry5 = {"et_plague_poison", 10, 2, 1, 42 },
        entry6 = {"et_duration_sec", 300, 2, 2, 8 },
        entry7 = {"et_plague_infect", 70, 1, 3, 42 },
        entry8 = {"et_drop_a_head", 950, 50, 4, 42 },
        entry9 = {"et_chance_deepwound", 200, 1, 5, 5 },
        entry10 = {"et_range_area", 80, 1, 6, 4 },   

 

[Flix 5,116]

Rationale was explained above. The vanilla ability basically exists in a vacuum, unable to gain any damage benefit from skills, attributes, gear modifiers, etc. 

I'll see about reverting it in PFP.  There's been enough complaints.  A proper way to allow the damage to scale would have to come at the code level anyway. 

You can also just replace the entire entry yourself in the meantime.  I'd keep the lowered duration unless you really want the full-blown exploit version of the CA.

[Vishanka 236]

5 hours ago, Flix said:

You can also just replace the entire entry yourself in the meantime.  I'd keep the lowered duration unless you really want the full-blown exploit version of the CA.

I would love the exploit version and used the old entry but it just will not work. Maybe something is missing in the guides, I don't know...
It does not spread the disease properly and I've watched a few videos and I think I do exactly what they do, my disease will sometimes infect 3-4 enemies around the main target and then it will do like 20 dmg and not kill anything. But most of the time there is no spread at all, and it will only spread at the very end of the disease duration, after 8 seconds when it deals it's damage to the main target...

My dryad is lv 20 with lv 8 VD, maybe it's too low? But people reported they were doing the desert already on that level, but it will not work for me.

What am I missing?

 

In this video it starts to spread immediately, was anything else changed about the disease so that it will not do that anymore? I replaced the whole spells.txt with the original one but that does not solve the problem.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Vishanka

[Flix 5,116]

2 hours ago, Vishanka said:

was anything else changed about the disease so that it will not do that anymore?

Nope.  I don't recommend replacing the entire script file lest something else break.

2 hours ago, Vishanka said:

In this video it starts to spread immediately,

That doesn't look like low level behavior.  I wonder if they had taken any of the modifications - Gangrene, Relapse, Transmission, Contaminate.  And whether you have?

[Vishanka 236]

24 minutes ago, Flix said:

That doesn't look like low level behavior.  I wonder if they had taken any of the modifications - Gangrene, Relapse, Transmission, Contaminate.  And whether you have?

I chose 2-1-2 but also tested with 1-1-2, not really a difference.

That's my hope that it's just a low level problem, even though the guy in the video is lv 20 as well. He might have edited the gamefile to have better spread maybe?

I tested with changing 2 values that would increase with CA level in time and the behaviour "normalizes", meaning the spread definitely gets better, although I was able to get the exploit behavoir once(!) and I have no idea what could have caused that.

What bugs me is that oftentimes there still is no spread at all and the CA just seems to vanish from the mob without doing anything.

But other than that, I think I will use the old version of the spell and just not focus on the disease for leveling. I hope it will have some Area of Effect value later nevertheless

With my changes in the script it was able to eliminate groups of 5-10 but did not spread across the whole map either. If that's what it will be it'd be fine for me.

Will revert the changes now and just see where it goes.

[chattius 2,525]

Too bad that the german sacred forum is gone. A fading memory is that disease needs way higher CA-levels to spread if the monster level gets higher. Doing higher numbers in spells.txt is not the same as a higher CA-level

[Vishanka 236]

58 minutes ago, chattius said:

Too bad that the german sacred forum is gone. A fading memory is that disease needs way higher CA-levels to spread if the monster level gets higher. Doing higher numbers in spells.txt is not the same as a higher CA-level

I always played lifeleech blowpipe back then and ignored nature and voodoo 

But mostly Seraphim.

It is not the same but I was not sure if the disease might be bugged altogether since I neither got damage, visual effect or spread from it. I modded it to double infection rate and spread range and while it still sometimes would not do anything I got spread quite frequently. My CA level was just 8 and the changes were also dependent on the CA level so I hope it will turn out well.

I don't understand why the videos are different from my game but I don't really need the exploit and wipe a whole desert in 5 minutes, I just want a disease that will infect stuff; and I prefer the original behaviour, it feels sluggish and sinister like it should 

It just needs to be a bit more reliable, sometimes I casted 10 diseases on 5 mobs and they were still all at 80% hp, I'd be faster to melee them right now.

[idbeholdME 393]

At CA level 8, the chance to spread (with the infect chance mod) would be: 20 +(8*0.1) + 7 + (8*0.1). So 28.6%.

Assuming the chance is rolled once per cast, it could very well be that only one of 4-5 casts will actually spread. My bet is that the CA simply needs a higher level to reach the critical mass.

It is also possible, that the wiki has info from Fallen Angel and there's been some change in Ice & Blood. I've recently made edits to some bits of outdated info on the wiki. It was still claiming that the cooldown reduction mod of Divine Protection scales with level (it does not) and that Open Wounds behave like the other secondary damage effects (they do not).

I never really played Dryad (just reading her CAs, it's obvious she's the most OP character in the game, so wasn't really interested ), but it could just be that Ice & Blood made some change that made it so that the critical mass is reached much later.

Edited August 21, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Vishanka 236]

33 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

I never really played Dryad (just reading her CAs, it's obvious she's the most OP character in the game, so wasn't really interested )

If not using an exploit I do not consider her that powerful, seraphim always worked better for me since she can get invincible. blowgun dryad has good killspeed though and non existent projectiles can not pass by the target..

But what I never liked about the dryad is armor lore behind combat reflexes (wasted skill no1) and people say you need both nature skills just for the damned ancient bark and I really hate "choices" that are none.

I don't know if ever someone created a dryad without nature aspect...

that's already 4 skills wasted that you always need to choose. thinking about skipping nature lore though, will make bark and heal weaker but I really need one more skill.

 

[idbeholdME 393]

41 minutes ago, Vishanka said:

If not using an exploit I do not consider her that powerful, seraphim always worked better for me since she can get invincible. blowgun dryad has good killspeed though and non existent projectiles can not pass by the target..

But what I never liked about the dryad is armor lore behind combat reflexes (wasted skill no1) and people say you need both nature skills just for the damned ancient bark and I really hate "choices" that are none.

I don't know if ever someone created a dryad without nature aspect...

that's already 4 skills wasted that you always need to choose. thinking about skipping nature lore though, will make bark and heal weaker but I really need one more skill.

 

I guess it is mostly just the Nature Weaver tree, except Viperish Disease. The numbers for most of Nature Weaver CAs simply seem not balanced, after having played High Elf, Shadow Warrior and Seraphim extensively before.

Goldenglade Touch - Ridiculous HP regen with auto-reducing Cooldown based on CA level (most other CAs have to take a mod for that) that with sufficient CA level beats Grim Resilience, Combat Aura and Constitution Mastery combined. Mods make it even more insane. The Silver Persevere mod for this CA is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen in this game. 20+30 Willpower PER CA LEVEL? The only thing Grim Resilience has over this is the HP bonus. Which really doesn't matter as you have nearly instant auto-heal against anything that does not one-shot you.

Acute Mind - Another castable buff which takes a massive chunk of regen off of every CA, boosts Intelligence to ridiculous levels and can potentially become chain castable.

Ancient Bark - Probably the most overloaded buff in the game. Another source of HP regen that, once again, beats Grim Resilience. Random defense bonus because why not. Makes you basically immune to Poison and Physical through massive amounts of flat armor. Every single mod is ridiculously powerful.

Tangled Vine - on demand root that works even against bosses. No need to fiddle around with chance to stun and can be cast from a safe distance.

 

Just combining GT and AB makes you pretty much immortal unless you get one-shot. Also has access to Viperish disease, that deals pure % damage to anything including bosses.

 

As for the Armor Lore being in the 2nd tier of Defensive Skills, it is a non-issue. Spell Resistance is one of the best Defensive Skills once mastered and an easy pick to get to Armor Lore.

[Vishanka 236]

1 hour ago, idbeholdME said:

The only thing Grim Resilience has over this is the HP bonus

But as seraphim you just need like 84 points into one skill and 3 items and that's all you will ever have to do for defense... no healing needed, no specialization needed and plenty of slots and skills you can do whatever you want with... even if you don't stack tanits collar you will reach that high mitigation that you wont need a healing pot anymore ever... I know that was considered broken and fixed in CM Patch I guess but isn't that far better than dryads defense?... and on top you have divine protection, semi-permanent, will soak EVERYTHING without shield absorption items, takes care of blood forest and it isn't even a buff

acute mind, what will you do with it? dual wield staffs? buff vine? sure the bonusses are huge on paper but there's nothing about her that I couldn't do better (and easier) with my seraphim... maybe just blowgun darting assault and regen per hit, that was my fastest leveling character

edaphic lances are slow, totems are slow, moribund animus is slow and the AI unreliable, twisted torment will never be amazing, twisted vines sometimes dont activate, unreliable... I do not see that many possibilities with her, and on top there's the skill limit because you need 4 skills just for your defense alone and one active buff that forces you to take concentration as well if you plan to have a second one... and her skills work poorly with melee...

Right now I'm trying to come up with a new build but I don't think it will turn out amazing really and that's a shame.. whenever I think about it I always fall back to just like... 2 builds that make sense on her... for everything else there's always something missing or too much.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Vishanka

[idbeholdME 393]

2 hours ago, Vishanka said:

But as seraphim you just need like 84 points into one skill and 3 items and that's all you will ever have to do for defense... no healing needed, no specialization needed and plenty of slots and skills you can do whatever you want with... even if you don't stack tanits collar you will reach that high mitigation that you wont need a healing pot anymore ever... I know that was considered broken and fixed in CM Patch I guess but isn't that far better than dryads defense?... and on top you have divine protection, semi-permanent, will soak EVERYTHING without shield absorption items, takes care of blood forest and it isn't even a buff

acute mind, what will you do with it? dual wield staffs? buff vine? sure the bonusses are huge on paper but there's nothing about her that I couldn't do better (and easier) with my seraphim... maybe just blowgun darting assault and regen per hit, that was my fastest leveling character

edaphic lances are slow, totems are slow, moribund animus is slow and the AI unreliable, twisted torment will never be amazing, twisted vines sometimes dont activate, unreliable... I do not see that many possibilities with her, and on top there's the skill limit because you need 4 skills just for your defense alone and one active buff that forces you to take concentration as well if you plan to have a second one... and her skills work poorly with melee...

Right now I'm trying to come up with a new build but I don't think it will turn out amazing really and that's a shame.. whenever I think about it I always fall back to just like... 2 builds that make sense on her... for everything else there's always something missing or too much.

Well, I'm running a Seraphim with 4 Defensive Skills, 3 damage mitigation items, currently sitting at 55% damage mitigation (soon to be 65% once Toughness is mastered), 25K HP and it's still far from immortality. I have Spell Resistance, Toughness, Constitution and Armor Lore and enemy spells are still chunking me for ~4K (like the homing red dragon fireballs). The Dryad healing would allow me to outheal pretty much any incoming damage with ease. Any character can just focus on defenses and damage mitigation and reach a point of full or near invulnerability. Even my tri-aspect Shadow Warrior with just 2 Defensive Skills is much tankier than my Seraphim. It's just that the Dryad seemingly has the easiest time of maintaining survivability (through ridiculous HP/sec), which in turn allows her to focus on getting more damage than other characters. At least that's my theory. By CA level 50, Goldenglade alone would give 1767 HP regen and over 1500 Willpower (an amount Grim Resilience can only dream of). Add to that Ancient Bark for another 154 HP regen and you land on nearly 2K HP regen before any modifiers. Triple it (or more) with Nature Weaver Lore, and you can have 6K HP regen per second by CA level 50. That's just for HP regen from Nature Weaver. Maybe also add Constitution Mastery and the Vitality base regen and you don't really have to mitigate that much damage with nearly instant auto-heal. Then you have the free boss root from Tangled Vine and Acute Mind, the main point of which is the regen time reduction (in non-buff form). The intelligence is just a bonus on top and the main synergy I see for that is some sort of Malicious Totem/Edaphic Lances build, which would make them both hit like a truck. All I'm saying is that her Nature Weaver tree seems incredibly overloaded compared to others and the numbers just seem way too high. But then again, I have actually never played a Dryad, just saying what I can see from looking at her trees.

Divine Protection has to be heavily invested into and only becomes somewhat chain-castable at a very high level (130+). Otherwise, it's just a good ~20 second health buffer. Taking any Revered Technology related skills will be done exclusively for Divine Protection modding on a non RT focused build, if at all. But yes, Divine Protection is also one of the most imbalanced CAs in the game. It should never have been chain castable, then it would have been OK.

If anything, I'd say that the Temple Guardian is the easiest to reach immortality with, simply due to T-Energy Shroud. I have one only at level 114 and already sitting at 79.7% damage mitigation + the flat mitigation from Shroud. A couple more levels/items with higher mitigation/higher CA level of Shroud  would easily bring this to the ~90% territory. But again, you have to focus on it hard. Dryad takes Nature Weaver and gets pretty much everything she will ever need.

Edited August 21, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

IMO Dryad's OP reputation is due almost entirely due to the staff weapon exploit of Ice & Blood.  Massive Intelligence from Acute Mind + being able to insta-hit everything on screen (and further) in a 360 degree radius with Darting Assault.

Stripped of that exploit, she's on more even ground with other characters.  The laughable weakness of her Voodoo skills is something I tried to thoroughly address in Enhanced Edition.  Twisted Torment, a supposed kind of "hard hit" direct damage spell, got a massive damage boost. And in the Alt. Spells module, it got a combined with Black Curse to make Twisted Curse, giving the effects of both spells with one cast. Viperish Disease can scale with modifiers (questionable how well this panned out), and a Blood Dryad witch summon was added who has her own root, totem, and staff spells.

[Vishanka 236]

38 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

I'm running a Seraphim with 4 Defensive Skills, 3 damage mitigation items, currently sitting at 55% damage mitigation

You can reach immortality around lv 140, less items and less effort the higher the level is. I've reached it back in Hardcore Closed Net It's just 'having items' and hardly skill point waste... and with that knowledge you can design any build freely, with the dryad that's not possible because of all that mandatory skills that block half of your choices.. I did not pick nature lore and don't know if it will be enough defense but I cannot pick the lore because I need different skills. if the defense is not enough my build is not possible and that would be sad because it looks like it's going to be fun. but if she dies when getting hit once there would be no point in doing it. I would love to have dual wield but not a chance.

43 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Otherwise, it's just a good ~20 second health buffer.

That's good enough to not get killed in Blood Forest, and you just need the Focus, no Lore like with the Dryad. if you don't want to run blood forest you don't need the skill at all, other characters don't have any defense against it either

44 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

the main synergy I see for that is some sort of Malicious Totem/Edaphic Lances build, which would make them both hit like a truck.

What do you need a skill that hits like a truck for? the damage is enough without the bonus, it won't be faster killing if you overkill mobs.. all those skills won't wipe the screen of mobs, blowgun can do that but does not benefit from int... I guess that's why that dual wield int build existed, I never played it though

totem will have the most Area of Effect potential but is also very strong without int bonus, especially with shrinkhead... I never had a character that had problems to kill stuff due to lack of damage