Elemental Mod for MM7 -- v4.0 open beta

[Lone_Wolf]

Magic Embers are kind of the rare campfires prize

They are easier to get then you may think .

Spoiler

with perception 12 you can get embers from campfires .
Psychic npc gives +5 , scout gives 6 .
If you have both as temp followers you only perception 1.

Besides, if money is the issue high perception improves the loot/money you get..
Just wait with doing campfires in avlee/TF until your perception is high enough.

Spoiler

[Tomsod]

Master Plate & GM Chain can mitigate some of the damage, but leather users can't as far as I know .
Or are those attacks considered spells that have a chance to be absorbed at leather master ?

Anything that has an SP cost (for the player) can be absorbed, restoring those SP instead. (Light Bolt is the only exception, because of its "irresistible" flavor. I also think there's a bug allowing gog etc. death explosions to be absorbed for 0 SP, but if so I'll fix it later.) Still, at typical skill values leather protects against physical attacks the least, although its unique bonus grows with skill investment, unlike heavier armor.

In practice though, single-target physical spells don't hurt all that much.

A good point and a good compromise, though I still say "don't make Permanence the GM perk in the first place" - by the time you can cast Grandmaster Spectral Weapon at will you're largely past the point where physical immunity is relevant (if you're playing Team Light it's still useful but only situationally so) and so you can't enchant over Spectral once you need something "better" when you do only need it for a few hours.

I want it to be same as other weapon-enchanting spells. If nothing else, it remains a cheap way to double the price of sold weapons.

I think what I'll do is downgrade Fire Aura, Wizard Eye, Spectral Weapon and Vampiric Weapon (am I forgetting anything?) scrolls to Master when sold in GM guilds, to prevent overly easy access to their permanent effects.

To add on the perception topic, it's worth upgrading to Expert even in early game, since then the hireling bonus is also doubled and they turn out to be about as strong as factors/bankers (more gold from corpses, but no increase to gold piles in chests etc.), at lower upfront cost. A bunch of other interactive map features are also influenced by perception (e.g. ore veins), and I plan to eventually add even more of those.

[raekuul]

Spectral Wepaon is really the only one where the GM guild is accessible at level 1 (well, level 4 because emerald island experience, but level 1); you have to do some fighting to get through to Nighon to get to the Paramount Fire guild, and the other two require advancing the plot by a few quests. Other than that, I'm actually okay with limiting some scrolls to master even at the paramount guilds.

So once I cool off I am going to go back to PACS since that does work well with my playstyle, but with the addendum that I'll be shutting off Monster EXP via an MMExt script (as opposed to playing on a higher difficulty), to see just how viable low level clears are. Which this will be my first time shutting off Monster EXP for 7, so this is going to be fun

[Lone_Wolf]

I think what I'll do is downgrade Fire Aura, Wizard Eye, Spectral Weapon and Vampiric Weapon (am I forgetting anything?) scrolls to Master when sold in GM guilds, to prevent overly easy access to their permanent effects.

Not weapon related, but maybe limit charm scrolls to master ?

Using ID monster on all attackers in range helped against trolls, although the trees make that hard .
Mountain Trolls stay very tough though.

Trolls use rock blast M 3-6-9 , regeneration is N3 - E6 - M9 .
Maybe change rock to M 3-5-7 and regeneration to E3 - E6 -E9 ?

[Tomsod]

So once I cool off I am going to go back to PACS since that does work well with my playstyle, but with the addendum that I'll be shutting off Monster EXP via an MMExt script (as opposed to playing on a higher difficulty), to see just how viable low level clears are. Which this will be my first time shutting off Monster EXP for 7, so this is going to be fun

As in, no XP from monsters at all? You would probably still get a decent level from quest XP, it's roughly evenly split in a normal playthrough. Increased XP from kills is coincidentally the only "positive" change on higher difficulties, so yeah, you now have no reason not to play on easy!

Not weapon related, but maybe limit charm scrolls to master ?

Right, good catch, that and Control Undead. They're not truly permanent BTW, expiring after one year, but I think it still counts.

Trolls use rock blast M 3-6-9 , regeneration is N3 - E6 - M9 .
Maybe change rock to M 3-5-7 and regeneration to E3 - E6 -E9 ?

Something like that, yes. Although regeneration N/E/M rank doesn't do anything for monsters; I don't remember why I wrote it like this.

[raekuul]

As in, no XP from monsters at all?

Yep! I did this before for MM6 - it turns out that without monster EXP but with doing every quest you still end up at level 62. I think I theorized level 50 for MM7 before but with Elemental locking promotion quests behind apprentice tokens it's a bit more tightly integrated with the main quest now (which does help in that Elemental has a more curve-shaped curve than vanilla, but the main quests were originally balanced assuming that all the promotion quests were completable once you finished the arbiter choice - see that harsh level jump between the Wine Cellar and the Tunnels to Eofol? I'm about to get my nose broken by that.)

anyway here's the lua code if you want to duplicate.

Code: Select all

function events.GameInitialized2()	
	for monsterID in Game.MonstersTxt do
		Game.MonstersTxt[monsterID]["Experience"] = 0
		Game.MonstersTxt[monsterID]["Exp"] = 0
	end
end

MM7's main problem is just that instead of side quests plural it just has a bunch of promotion quests for other classes. Which sounds good on paper but each Path has That One Promotion Quest that's best done in the early game (Champion for light, Bounty Hunter for dark), and makes Erathia feel hella empty since it means basically all your lategame quests (save two - the stautettes and Haldir's Remains, which are really the same quest) are tied to your path choice. So while I'm thinking about it, thank you for adding more sidequests. (Now if only a bunch of them weren't locked behind skill ranks...)

Anyway all of this is why I want the gold nerf to be a separate option from the monster ability changes. I want to play with higher monster difficulty in spite of the EXP disable, but not with the reduced gold gain, since the changes to gold economy impact low level play far more than high level play.

[Tomsod]

I think I theorized level 50 for MM7 before but with Elemental locking promotion quests behind apprentice tokens it's a bit more tightly integrated with the main quest now (which does help in that Elemental has a more curve-shaped curve than vanilla, but the main quests were originally balanced assuming that all the promotion quests were completable once you finished the arbiter choice - see that harsh level jump between the Wine Cellar and the Tunnels to Eofol? I'm about to get my nose broken by that.)

If you aim to complete as much quests as possible, you should get your 8th and 9th apprentice tokens just before being given the quest to kill devil leader, actually. So at least you won't have to fight behemoths (too) under-leveled.

Oh, and keep in mind that Learning affects quest rep in the mod (and so do hireling etc. bonuses to it).