Elemental Mod for MM7 -- v4.0 open beta

[Tomsod]

+12 ring of health works and gives angel's ring of health
+13 ring of health gives : sorry, that item doesn't seem to exist

Apparently there is a limit to the amount such a ring can get through special order.
If that's correct, changing the message to something like 'I'm unable to craft such a powerful item, try asking the Ancients for itt." would help to avoid confusion .

Rather, +12 is the absolute limit to these enchantments, because +HP and +SP are halved, like +armsmaster in vanilla. But adding this to the error message would be a good idea, indeed.

[Lone_Wolf]

Thanks, that will clarifiy it.

Another issue with special orders for E magic shop :
Alacorn wand of acid, blades, fireballs, lightning can all be created, but alacorn wand of charms 'doesn't exist' .

(Want to try a no-kill approach to sewers using charms) .

Edit:

It seems there's now an alacorn wand of shock and a "fairy wand of charms" .

[Tomsod]

I intend to also allow orders like "wand of charms" (without specifying wand type), but I haven't got around to that yet. In general, shop orders assume some player knowledge on e.g. how everything is named, which unfortunately may not hold for some obscure mod changes. Dunno if that's a problem.

[Lone_Wolf]

The special orders would benefit from a drop-down interface with selections for type, quality, enchantment etc or a multi-level dialog menu system.
Neither seems to be part of the MM7 UI .

Add a note that when in doubt people should look at items.txt , spcitems.txt & stditems.txt ?

My ptrs party is now at lvl 15 .
The hp penalty for elves hurts the sorcerer a lot, she got killed in arena fights 4 times already.
Items help with that, but I dislike depending on them for the whole game.

I do like the skill distribution over the party.

Edited

Looking closely at the sorcerer I may have chosen the wrong items to strengthen her.
Of the Troll + Of the Golem items add +30 Endurance, but that only gives 7 hp .

An of life item + of earth would add 10 hp directly and 4 extra (End from 15 to 25) so 14 total .
Total is still low, but not as low as I thought.

The stats of the other 3 are more to my liking.
I do intend to promote the thief to assasssin eventually (rest of the party will go light) and GM alchemy should help a lot.

I might start over, but with the same setup of human paladin, goblin thief, elf ranger , elf sorcerer.

[Lone_Wolf]

My party now is at lvl 9 and has 3 items from special orders :
Mogred gauntlets of the earth (sorcerer)
Silver belt of life (sorcerer)
Full helm of the ocean (thief)

I would have preferred mogred helm of the ocean, but I only found 8 erudine and the other 2 items needed 7 .
Mogred helm of the Ocean needed 2 erudine, full helm of the ocean 3 kergar .
Elf sorcerer (end base 10, 7 accounted for race, lvl 9) is still fragile, but went from 26 to 41 hp with these 2 items, or an increase of 58% .


I've done all battles on hard and noticed a very annoying behaviour with flyers and jump .

example :
visit the erathia obelisk area (walk, don't use fly) and notice griffins jumping towards you without changing their height .
This results in them ending up above you . you can't even see them or hit them.

The same happens with Deyja harpies and Bracada griffins . Bats are likely to be affected also, but I don't think they appear outside.
Haven't tested rocs or dragons.

On easy/vanilla flyers change height when moving so over a few turns they end at the same height as party.
Parties that can use fly shouldn't have problems with this, but I have found only one way to deal with this for those that don't :
move away fast during move phase of turn based combat.
The distance stays below jump threshold so the monsters use the vanilla mechanism of adjusting height slowly.

Does mouse look allow looking up above you and aiming at such targets ?

If not, the jump mechanic may need to be changed for (some) flying monsters.

Sidenote :
For walking units jump does make battles more lively in in terrains with height differences (try erathia bandits near the bandit cave)

[Tomsod]

It seems hardening artifacts (with the potion) broke at some point. This is serious enough that I'll probably make another bugfix release soonish. (Plus, another playtester made some good points about how necromancers are way too easy now, even compared to vanilla, and that's also bad.)

The special orders would benefit from a drop-down interface with selections for type, quality, enchantment etc or a multi-level dialog menu system.
Neither seems to be part of the MM7 UI .

Yeah, that would be a bit too much work for me! And arguably it's not even simpler for the player, apart from not having to remember how everything is called.

Add a note that when in doubt people should look at items.txt , spcitems.txt & stditems.txt ?

These are packed inside the lods, and the copies on github are liable to change anytime. But whenever I get around to writing a proper user guide, I can add an addendum with all the new item and bonus names.

I might start over, but with the same setup of human paladin, goblin thief, elf ranger , elf sorcerer.

Take care not to overdo this, it's easy to lose interest if you redo the same thing several times over.

I've done all battles on hard and noticed a very annoying behaviour with flyers and jump .

example :
visit the erathia obelisk area (walk, don't use fly) and notice griffins jumping towards you without changing their height .
This results in them ending up above you . you can't even see them or hit them.

The same happens with Deyja harpies and Bracada griffins . Bats are likely to be affected also, but I don't think they appear outside.
Haven't tested rocs or dragons.

On easy/vanilla flyers change height when moving so over a few turns they end at the same height as party.
Parties that can use fly shouldn't have problems with this, but I have found only one way to deal with this for those that don't :
move away fast during move phase of turn based combat.
The distance stays below jump threshold so the monsters use the vanilla mechanism of adjusting height slowly.

I've noticed this too, but it didn't seem that bad. Thankfully, it should be easy to fix.

[raekuul]

Question. Is Judge Grey's death only on a time limit (as in vanilla) or does it also happen when you complete the altar pieces quest of your choosing?

[Tomsod]

Question. Is Judge Grey's death only on a time limit (as in vanilla) or does it also happen when you complete the altar pieces quest of your choosing?

Spoiler

The second one. The timer resets to just a few days when the quest is completed.

[raekuul]

Awesome.

So impressions, both generally and with the current version:

• The changes to elemental damage - the centerpiece of the mod - are welcome changes. MM6's magic system was interesting in that every spellcaster had some amount of options (even Paladins, as they could just use weapons instead of spells), but in vanilla MM7 every spell only dealt damage of its school (which meant that Dark teams that made a deal with Mr. Malwick were up a creek without a paddle, as their strongest spells were completely useless against a hostile Castle Gloaming).
• The expanded requirements for grandmastery caught me off guard (it would help if "combat experience" was quantified somehow) but they're definitely interesting and it reminds me a lot of how MM6 handled mastery. Overall I like this.
• I like the crafting system but it can be hit or miss in some ways:
  • some more powerful enchantments require easier to acquire catalysts (of Mana vs of the Eclipse) but this is offset by stronger enchantments requiring stronger items and therefore stronger minerals
  • getting the most out of the system currently requires external knowledge (I can't generally ask for a "bow of carnage" because "bow" is not a valid keyword, but there's no ingame feedback about which keyword is unrecognized)
• Absolutely loving the new quests and the Apprenticeship system; I already loved using Warlocks even in vanilla so being allowed a Warlock on a Light team (or, conversely, a Ranger Lord on a Dark team) hits all the right notes, and that's before accounting for the rebalanced grandmasteries that they have access to.
• An early run from Nighon to Eofol is actually easier now that the manticores are in place (even with nerfed Invisibility) - now the only hardpoint in the cave is that chokepoint right before the Jump Bridge that's full of Behemoths, and since Behemoths don't have any form of ranged attack you can get them stuck in the geometry and spear/knife them to death. And thanks to the changes to Town Portal, you can get out without having to do the run back.
• On that note, I am... still not entirely sure what the range on throwing knives actually is. But the changes to ranged weapon availability works to my benefit here - anybody who only has access to knives as a ranged weapon should be casting damage spells instead, so it encourages me to play smarter rather than just beat everything to death with Bless and Heroism like I normally do.

[Tomsod]

The bug with Harden Item turned out to be purely visual, artifacts are still hardened. Also, it only affects the Russian translation, and is in fact a vanilla bug -- weird how I never noticed it before! Another minor release still feels like a good idea, but maybe I'll wait until there are more changes.

The expanded requirements for grandmastery caught me off guard (it would help if "combat experience" was quantified somehow) but they're definitely interesting and it reminds me a lot of how MM6 handled mastery. Overall I like this.

I didn't want to burden players with numbers, but there are four different teacher replies based on whether you're 25%/50%/75% there. Is that not enough?

I like the crafting system but it can be hit or miss in some ways:

• some more powerful enchantments require easier to acquire catalysts (of Mana vs of the Eclipse) but this is offset by stronger enchantments requiring stronger items and therefore stronger minerals
• getting the most out of the system currently requires external knowledge (I can't generally ask for a "bow of carnage" because "bow" is not a valid keyword, but there's no ingame feedback about which keyword is unrecognized)

Admittedly, I haven't thought much about balance when adding the "special ingredients", so maybe some changes are in order.
"Bow" is not valid because while it allows un-ID names, there are still only "longbows" or "crossbows". Same with "sword", with which I actually caught myself by surprise more than once. Actually, parsing class names like those could be a good idea!

An early run from Nighon to Eofol is actually easier now that the manticores are in place (even with nerfed Invisibility) - now the only hardpoint in the cave is that chokepoint right before the Jump Bridge that's full of Behemoths, and since Behemoths don't have any form of ranged attack you can get them stuck in the geometry and spear/knife them to death. And thanks to the changes to Town Portal, you can get out without having to do the run back.

You must've played on Easy difficulty, as on Medium medusae see through invisibility, and on Hard it's downright unusable and behemoths throw rocks. Also, I'm pretty sure I only replaced other monster spawn points with manticores near the beginning; the rest were already present in vanilla, but inactive because the third monster type was unset.
As for Town Portal, yeah, using it as an escape tool is the idea. It compensates somewhat for not being able to jump between towns on Master.

On that note, I am... still not entirely sure what the range on throwing knives actually is. But the changes to ranged weapon availability works to my benefit here - anybody who only has access to knives as a ranged weapon should be casting damage spells instead, so it encourages me to play smarter rather than just beat everything to death with Bless and Heroism like I normally do.

Thrown weapon range scales with Might. But yeah, they're intended as backup weapons for spellcasters, at least in the early-midgame.

[raekuul]

I didn't want to burden players with numbers, but there are four different teacher replies based on whether you're 25%/50%/75% there. Is that not enough?

By itself, no. If the trainer said "kill this many monsters total" in the dialog then it would be fine, since the topic's subtopic does change as you progress. As it is, it doesn't give a clear picture of what the actual goal is. Do I need a hundred kills with the weapon? A thousand kills? Four Score and Seven kills? Do I only need to have the weapon equipped, or does the character need to be the one to get the kill? Does it matter what I kill?

(Remember, "Experience" means something specific!)

You must've played on Easy difficulty, as on Medium medusae see through invisibility, and on Hard it's downright unusable and behemoths throw rocks. Also, I'm pretty sure I only replaced other monster spawn points with manticores near the beginning; the rest were already present in vanilla, but inactive because the third monster type was unset.

Fair, but even on medium this would still be a valid strategy pre-Mines - the Behemoths are the only truly dangerous creatures in the Eofol tunnels, as Immutability does still protect from petrification at Master and the others are sparse enough (and Medusae small enough) that you can get past them - shorter duration aside you still only need to break cover for the one choke point since there's no other way past those clusters of Behemoths.