Incline Deepest Dark - A Lords of Xulima difficulty mod.

[Celerity]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=538266546

I've been working on this for a while but development paused without notice because of a combination of different factors, some related and some not. Now that things are calming down I'm considering restarting and continuing development on this.

The current release version includes the entire tutorial section of the game, including the first prince, witch, and herald fights. Most of those will be revised, and the regions beyond them (Cunavern, etc) are blocked off by impossible fights until I complete the revisions there.

Who is this mod for?

Anyone who finds Hardcore Ironman easy. Especially if you were disappointed with the later parts of the game dropping off in difficulty and interest. If that doesn't describe you, you will ragequit 120% likely before reaching said later parts.

What difficulty should this be played on?

Hardcore Ironman. There is no other. Literally, I intentionally broke the other difficulties because I couldn't remove some of the hardcoded aspects of them.

Why are you making this thread?

Very simple. The more people that show an interest the higher a priority continued development becomes. Part of the reason why it ceased is because no one cared.

What are you looking for?

Ideally, intelligent testers capable of articulate English conversation with the tester mentality and who record their entire runs on Youtube or Twitch and who won't flip their shit when they get made fun of for stupid mistakes. Might be expecting a bit much though. Failing that, general interest and feedback.

 

[Celerity]

Deepest Dark says: You ain't ready for me.





So after much delay I'm working on Deepest Dark 2.0. It will refine and enhance the difficulty even further, change enough that even if you tried the earlier versions you'll still be surprised, and will also revise the skill system so that it's more interesting and dynamic on the hero side of things. It will also advance beyond the tutorial region, Cunavern and beyond which is kind of important.

It is still in testing as of the time of this posting but it is going extremely well.

Key differences apparent early game by this point:

Gaulen learns Wounding Strike (and Bleeding Strike).
Thieves also learn Bleeding Strike.
Arcane Soldiers can equip and train Daggers, which have been substantially buffed.
Paladins can equip and train Axes.
There's no multiclass penalty on skills (I might readd a lesser one).
All of the combat and semi combat classes start with 2 ranks in weapon skills instead of 1 (it still costs 2 skill points per additional level for them).
Most low level spells (not skills) have had their skill point and/or mana point costs reduced.
Many underpowered skills had their skill point costs reduced.
Every class gives a few starting items, not just Explorer and Thief.
The following classes get 1 additional skill point per level: Cleric, Thief.
The following classes get 2 additional skill points per level: Divine Summoner, Explorer, Mage.
Mana stat gains for most classes have been changed. Instead of every class gaining mana based on energy, each class has its own stat

Barbarian, Soldier: Strength.
Arcane Soldier, Bard: Agility.
Explorer, Thief: Speed.
Paladin: Constitution.
Cleric, Divine Summoner, Mage: Energy.
(this is experimental and might change)

Many more enemies have defined strengths and weaknesses, making having a wide variety of abilities useful.
Enemies hit significantly harder and are just statistically more capable all around.
All weapons have increased critical hit rates and decreased critical failure rates. The biggest gains are on swords and daggers.

There are many more changes but they don't become apparent until after the Rat Cave.

 

[kyrub]

Great mod, Celerity.
The daggers are terribly overpowered, though, typical for a mod to redeem an uderestimated feature of the original by making it too strong.
I got early an electrodagger for a few quids from the shop and it isby far the best weapon I have seen so far (and they all cost quite a lot more). Then I saw a second one and made it an insta-buy, reworked my archer-bard into a second dagger wielding character. That made the game not so "deep dark" hard.

I still enjoy it, alot, thanks for your work.

 

[Celerity]

Daggers carry a lot early game because you can't bloody hit anything. It balances out real quick though because weapon skills don't use weapon speed (for some reason)

Notice the only classes that can use daggers are magic uses (encouraging some offtypeness), Arcane Soldiers (who get a spammable weapon skill the fastest), and Thieves (bleed specialists). In all cases it will fall off quick unless you specialize in it, same for just about everything really.

 

[kyrub]

I can imagine that daggers more or less even up somewhere in the future. The point was, when you can get an electro-dagger for 140 quids early, it does 5 normal + 5-10 electro damage plus extra 4 bleeding, and it is 50% faster than any other weapons and it gives criticals 25% of the time, it's really out of balance.

My 2 characters with those daggers did 60% of damage in the group so far, two other frontliners did 10% each.


EDIT: Seeing other stuff in shop, maybe it's the price of these extra damage weapons (ignateous, electric etc.) that you have increased the effect in your mod - they should be more costly. I know, later on 5-10 is not as much, but still.

 

[kyrub]

I am still in the early stages, but here's what I like / doubt about Celerity's DD mod:

Overall, it's pretty great. No buts and ifs, this is hardcore RPG for anybody, go and play it!

What I really like:
- The game is difficult and punishing. You have to choose your tactics, search for individual blind spots of enemies. There is no pause for laurels, always on my toes (not sure I would find the difficulty so sweet if not for the magic daggers, though).
- The way I can cross-build my characters. There are more classes who are strong in important skills, so I am more free to choose my own path with a character than in original, without losing important traits.
- The reworked magic system is very nice. Every spell seems to be worth having, the PPs are well-poised. I love it.
- The increased variety in enemies, the importance of ambushes, the levelling of characters taking you to the next tier of dangerous enemies. The mod is obviously well tested.
- The traps are pretty good and while really dangerous, not overpowered.
- I started to value other "Gods" than in vanilla. It seems that initial bonus to initiative is a lot more important in your mod. The battles I lose are those when I get bad intiative roll. (On the other hand, is it possible to mod the Gods bonuses? Some are pretty lame...)


What gives me slight doubts sometimes:
- In choking points and before boss battles I rely on going back to town and saving. It's time wasting and boring, but I cannot see myself surviving without that. I was running out of food because of this tactic, before realising that the food points are restored after few days. Now I note them on map and come back for harvest... both things combined are slow and grinding.
- Are swords really best at anything or are they totally outclassed by daggers in every way? They certainly don't attract me at all. And the polearms... what's the point? You want to kill single enemies ASAP, so having one guy with a mediocre polearm hitting the second row seems 'meh'.
- On Gaulen, I find I need the camo skill quite often when I run into a very hard enemy early. But I would like to use his wounding strike in combat as well. Improving camouflage makes it cost less, improving wounding strike makes it costlier. Both things seem to collide, when I use the strike I am left without PP to camouflage against the hardest ambushes (= when I need it). It does not seem to be worth investing into, no?

 

[Celerity]

The thing with elemental weapons (of any kind) is that if your attack modifier isn't high enough, the entire elemental effect will fizzle and you'll get a message like electric resisted. So that 5-10 bonus damage is all or nothing. That doesn't matter that much early on, later on enemies have really high defense (and every dagger using class needs a LOT of agility or they won't have high enough attack, also 30-60 at endgame is much less, prtportionately). It's problem with linear scaling, as it is enjoy the lucky carry. That affix is not very common.

Unfortunately I can't make affixes have a more quadratic scaling or change what different gods do.

As for your other points:

It's designed as a risk vs reward style dungeon crawler. You get the greatest profit margins by defeating large numbers of enemies on one trip which means not saving. But if you die you lose all that progress. As for boss fights, nearly every area in the game is designed in such a way that all the side objectives are on side paths so once it's just the boss left you can go straight there really quickly.

I can't really comment on the rest spam/food grinding because I never use the rest button at all. Ever. And I have beaten the entire thing multiple times this way.

One handed swords aren't as good at bleeding as daggers. They do more damage and the primary combat classes can use them though. Two handed swords are basically daggers on crack, the catch being you can't use a shield so you need tankiness in other ways. Polearms are actually really fucking good. There's a LOT of asshole backrow enemies, if you can't hit them you will get very salty very quickly. A polearm attack from some caster won't do shit, but halberd barbs actually outdamage Arcane Soldiers who were the highest damage class in the game by a large margin.

As for Gaulen's skills... if only there were a skill all divine characters got, that as Golot's herald he could use and restore mana for free! Before you get that a level 1 or 2 wounding strike doesn't cost very much and you don't get a 3rd wound until level 6, so...

 

[kyrub]

I *just* got through Ogre and I felt it would be hard to go on with my setup. The inexperience of the first playthrough combined with this mod was too much.


So, I have restarted and now it actually seems smooth and easy. Biggest difference is that I bought some armor and better weapons early and I have chosen better company. The capacity to spam Porfic shield with Cleric + Paladin seems to do immense good as well. I see the benefits of polearms now, thanks for the head-up. Let's see what the future brings... By the way, that is one thing that I love about this mod (or game, if that was in vanilla) - that i need to purchase gear, so instead of RNG spamming, it is part of the decision and development of characters. Clever design.

Questions:
- Did you preview the use of Golot amulet or was it added afterwards? Should I restrain myself from using it for cramming gold?
- Why the thief and the paladin do not have the strength bonus on strength = 10 on their weapons? Is this a feature of your mod?

 

[Celerity]

"Why the thief and the paladin do not have the strength bonus on strength = 10 on their weapons? Is this a feature of your mod?" What does this mean?

The Golot amulet was always there, and you probably should use it if needed so you don't wall yourself.

 

[kyrub]

"Why the thief and the paladin do not have the strength bonus on strength = 10 on their weapons? Is this a feature of your mod?" What does this mean?

I don't know. The tooltip for Strength says that the damage bonus is there for every second level after 8. My thief and paladin have strength 10 and they don't get a single point of damage bonus. Gaulen with strength 12 has +2 bonus. It's baffling; probably not related to your mod.

 

[Celerity]

I haven't done anything with that and couldn't if I wanted.

I think how it works though is 5 str is +1, 10 is +1, 12 is +1, 14 is +1 etc. It's 5 str per until 10, 2 str per after 10. I haven't really paid attention though because if your str is below 10 you're not doing meaningful damage anyways.

 

[kyrub]

One more question:
Is Learning still so crucial as in vanilla (they say) or can I avoid it and still have a good chance to win your mod?
I dislike "must take" choices in character development.

 

[Celerity]

I'm not sure actually. On one hand there's a lot more experience being boosted by 80%. On the other there's a lot more skill points. Back on the first there's a lot of level based mechanics (mostly Bard songs). Back on the other you can get Learning out of those extra skill points and have more filled out characters in the meantime.

I've never tried it because who wouldn't want 80% more experience?

 

[kyrub]

Ok, I am going for non-learning run. Let's see if it can be done in your mod or I'll be punished.

 

[Celerity]

Would be interesting, especially if you keep running track of your progress. Don't post it here though because I want the salt of other people going in blind.

My expectation is you'll be the same very early, better off a bit later (because you're spending those skill points on things that help right now) but you'll have a really hard time later still because of your much lower levels.

 

[Black]

Deepest Darkest Dungeon?

 

[Sacred82]

What difficulty should this be played on?

Hardcore Ironman. There is no other.

fluent

 

[Celerity]

He cucked the fuck out after dying 19 times in the tutorial and not beating it. There never was a second video, he'd rather play Beamdog shit.

 

[Sacred82]

wait, you mean after boasting about Hardcore Ironman on every single website he posts, he never got past the tutorial?

 

[Celerity]

That's right. He struggles really hard on vanilla as well, even well past the parts you should be auto winning because of scaling advantage.

The best part is the tutorial of Deepest Dark is actually slightly easier than vanilla because of the boosts you get at level < 3. It gets much harder later but it does let you learn before viciously beating you.

So how far did you get?

 

[Sacred82]

So how far did you get?

when Xulima came out my gf was hogging the PC playing it night and day. I started after she had finished but I realized the stat system was somewhat broken and the redundancy of skills angered my inner aspie. So I got to about that first castle when I quit out of boredom.

edit: never even tried Ironman

 

[Celerity]

Deepest Dark fixes that. Get started. You're not more casual than him are you?

 

[Sacred82]

I don't know about casual, but Fluent has some severe ADHD when it comes to games which is why he abandons them pretty quickly.

I may try your mod but I have quite a backlog (still have to finish PoE and Tranny, for instance) and LoX isn't far up on that list.

 

[Celerity]

I'd say it's both,

Speaking of casual, PoE and Tranny before Xulima?

 

[Sacred82]

:patriot:

I'm not one of those people who can tolerate ASCII graphics or JRPG art because muh mechanics


aka filthy casual on the Kodex