Incline Deepest Dark - A Lords of Xulima difficulty mod.

[Celerity]

Xulima doesn't have either of those, so Git Gud. At least reach the second area so you can shitpost about being better than almost everyone here.

 

[kyrub]

I guess I am figuring now what you meant by "finishing the game without any rest". The question is, how one gets to the point of having multiple characters with Divine power. Then it seems well doable to renew all the HPs and MPs during the battle - but it's really slow and grindy.

 

[Celerity]

There's enough early power and low hanging fruit that even a weak party can hit level 8. I had one where a since fixed bug effectively locked my best DPS at starter level weapons and I didn't have any alternatives, still got by. And most spammable skills don't cost very much.

 

[Celerity]

Congratulations Blackguard for being the first non mod maker who has ever completed the entire mod. Get good Codex, you're being cucked by Ze Germans!

 

[kyrub]

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

I accidentally found how to change the gods' bonuses, but I guess it is of no use to you anyway, since your mod seems done work, doesn't it?

 

[Celerity]

Oh, and how did you do that?

 

[kyrub]

I was curious and looked into the DLL files (using special software). It seems that it is possible to edit them with a hex editor program. It requires a bit of training.
For instance, if you change the value on address 2A69F from "1A" to "19" in the SOL.dll, starting God bonus for Agility is only 3 instead of 4. The other bonuses are nearby, like at address 2A72E you find the "19" for resistance bonus (+3), changing this to whatever you want is simple. One could make the bonuses significant, giving the characters an interesting starting variety. Or improve the downright bad options. Just a thought.

I have played a while and found a few other things, like blessing bonuses. Personnally, I'd love to have these changed. I rely heavily on only few of them, + SPE, + CON mostly, sometimes + resists. Making it possible to use specific blessings in specific situations / combats would add another strategic layer to the game.

Of course, I work with GOG edition. Changing DLLs in steam edition is problematic, you need to block the corrections from the server.

 

[Celerity]

Interesting, though if I did change them I'd rather make them a different stat entirely. It doesn't seem compatible with the workshop though.

I kind of like the way priest buffs work. They're a bit roundabout, but it makes a noticible difference in power between people derping through every fight and burning all their resources then spamming rest and food vs fighting intelligently, killing the enemy faster and having a far less tedious experience. Shame the rest controls are buggy, resting in dungeons should have a penalty and escape crystals shouldn't work indoors.

So how far have you gotten?

 

[kyrub]

I did not have any time for extensive play for these 3 last weeks' time. Just made my way through Nabros and cleared the nothern area, made a bunch of arena fights - and stopped. Still early game, I guess. By that time, I have started to grow a bit bored by the game, frankly. When playing a game feels like a toil, it's never good - the automatic options play their part here (always choose the +speed, always the same blessings, I avoid the automatic +learning but remain doubtful...).
Must say I really dislike the repetitive hound fights, by the way, it's just so same-ish. And too frequent - you should not have changed that for the worse, I thought. I would welcome the opposite, in fact: less cursed dogs fights but more brutal.

It's still great mod, don't be mistaken, Celerity. I am just a bit of an ingrateful casual gamer who has little time due to RL issues.

 

[Celerity]

If I made puppies much more dangerous they would start OHKOing people. If you're getting them constantly you're probably spamming rest, I usually get 1-2 per area in the areas they can appear, sometimes a little more for big areas.

 

[kyrub]

No, I rested very little, instead using small gold for healing when necessary. 1-2 per areas is definitely too much for my liking, I call it repetitive. I could have had half of it, I don't see how it affects difficulty, it's more "oh, no, again this damned fight, I don't care since all my frontsmen are cursed anyway and they will be so until late game... OK, let's dispatch the dogs". Basically, when playing a RPG game, I am looking forward to see new types of enemies and fights. Dogs are the opposite. And since they were added to normal encounters, they feel even more unwanted.

Btw, the Divine Power trick also adds to grind feeling - if I want to heal all my party during a fight, I need 5 more minutes of RL game time. Bad design, I'd probably make it more powerful and longer action or something. Pumping all mana up and healing takes eternity.

 

[Celerity]

1-2 + 10+ normal enemies seems like a good mix. As for the rest, see if you still think that once you get past the training puppies, those are among the most tense fights.

As for Divine Prayer, I don't see why it'd be taking that long at those low levels. I could see you making that argument later when you have hundreds of mana (and lots of mana potions). I hotkey any commonly used skill because divine prayer or not it makes things go really fast.

 

[kyrub]

If it gets even worse later, it's giving me nightmares already. We clearly have a different approach to "what seems to be" fun, hm.
So, at the end, I will make the changes for myself, along with the dll files, otherwise I would have to stop playing from boredom.

 

[Celerity]

My point is ok, you're in the forest right?

So excluding special encounters, the forest has:

Small red mushrooms.
Small green mushrooms.
Large red mushrooms.
Large green mushrooms.

And that's it. Without special encounters that's all you'll fight, with them you get 3 other enemy types, each of which will appear in 1-2 encounters. That's less than any of the others.

So the dogs add variety, not subtract from it. They're also not in every area, in fact they only appear in a specific category of area.

Now the training puppies are pretty easy if you have tactical sense so I could see them becoming a drag, especially if you're already level 8-10. The later dogs are a LOT harder, and that tactical tension is what makes the whole dogs thing work.

So if dogs bug you gain a few levels, you'll either get much harder dog encounters or no dog encounters because again, they only appear in a specific category of area.

If they still bug you quit traveling at night. Just in case you didn't catch the clues already.

 

[kyrub]

Now the training puppies are pretty easy if you have tactical sense so I could see them becoming a drag, especially if you're already level 8-10. The later dogs are a LOT harder, and that tactical tension is what makes the whole dogs thing work.

Spot on, level 10/11 exactly.

If they still bug you quit traveling at night. Just in case you didn't catch the clues already.

Ah, interesting. No, not really. Shush, will have my eyes open now. The dog encounters are fine, if I can see a rule for the extra attacks, it will be OK.


EDIT: On the second thought, it's still a problem. I actually NEED thouse hound encounters, because of large amount of XPs they generate. Otherwise, in your mod, I will not survive, even more so, as I gave up on Learning. Well well...

 

[Celerity]

They don't give that much xp. What was it, 100, 110? Normal enemies aren't that much less.

 

[Whisper]

Congratulations Blackguard for being the first non mod maker who has ever completed the entire mod. Get good Codex, you're being cucked by Ze Germans!

I think i saw your comment that game difficulty was increased since that time(what was changed?).

 

[Whisper]

To add, i finished it, posted on Steam forum.

Now i would like to share tactics. What team you used to finish it?

 

[Celerity]

I don't remember what I did other than fixing that bug.

And I assume you mean share tactics with me since I'm the only one here who has beaten it.

Given that I'm as much testing as playing I don't change more than one or two things at a time. So every team had Gaulen, obviously. Every team had a Bard, mostly for Haste song though later for death songs and bleeds. Every team had an AS because the only class that competes with them damage wise is a well optimized Barbarian. Almost everything else was mutable.

I think one team tried replacing the Cleric with Paladins. It works if you have 3 of them and you have stupidly high defense but still die a lot because you don't kill that well.

One was basically let's test Polearm Barbarians. The conclusion is that they are very bad early on and you're better off equipping another weapon early game but once you get 1: An actual polearm and not a staff. 2: Some Strength. 3: Enough flat mana boosters and weapon levels that you can actually use Brutal Strike they start brutally nuking back rows before they can do anything which is why I was very surprised when I heard it was getting rekt by casters. At higher levels their damage probably exceeds AS levels, it only looks competitive on the damage comparison because of all the high HP flamebait enemies that take 3k burn ticks... (Soldiers would do a little less damage and not have 100% crit but would get mixed strikes for versatility).

I don't remember the focuses of the other 2 groups and would need check video records but all of them used 0 or 1 mage only because even after all the buffs they were low damage and mostly just spamming support stuff. I didn't use any Soldiers even though they're good now, I used a lot of Paladins because they make a good support/glue class though only one a team as long as a Cleric was there. Clerics are good at nuking undead and later demons but otherwise work about how you'd expect. Divine Summoners are garbage in the currently released version, potentially good in a test version that's in the works. Gaulen is really powerful if used right and only ok if used poorly. If used as a decoy then yeah he's still a flower picking faggot.

Only class I'm really uncertain about is the Thief since if you have a Bard and you can't part ways with Gaulen you already have every Thief ability between them and even Bard vs Thief alone doesn't look good for Thief.

 

[Whisper]

Any new mods from Celerity? For other games or this one?