MM7: Yet another skill table mod! (for better balance IMO)

[Arret]

I feel the same way about the Rogue quest. The easy way is to hire a gate master, but if you want to do it as designed (without massive save abuse) it isn't something you likely touch until after you have chosen light or dark.

[Xfing]

I feel the same way about the Rogue quest. The easy way is to hire a gate master, but if you want to do it as designed (without massive save abuse) it isn't something you likely touch until after you have chosen light or dark.

Yeah. The Warrior Mage quest/Dwarf Rescue is similarly tricky to pull off, though not nearly as hard. There are so many more oozes right now that getting past them can prove tricky. After cleaning out the barrows I'm at level 38 already, and I'm only just done with fixing up my castle. Looks like with the spawn mod I'll be well, well over 100 at the endgame. Which is a nice change compared to the regular 70 or so.

As for the balance, I feel it's alright the way it is now. Druids are awesome to have in your party, the hybrid classes perform well and Thieves are worthwhile to have around thanks to ID Monster and Merchant. The only thing that would make me happier about the game is another series of patches by Grayface

[Arret]

The warrior mage quest is easy. Cast protection from magic and ignore the Medusa completely. They don't move fast and they really don't hit very hard. If you have regeneration and preservation up (which you should always have up anyway) you won't have any problems at all.

[Bloax]

Usually it's no problem at all, but if you're playing it with the spawn mod that I posted earlier then the entire god damn corridors are filled to the brim with slimes that can't be hurt with physical damage.
at which point it becomes quite problematic not to get surrounded and eaten alive like a chump

[Xfing]

Usually it's no problem at all, but if you're playing it with the spawn mod that I posted earlier then the entire god damn corridors are filled to the brim with slimes that can't be hurt with physical damage.
at which point it becomes quite problematic not to get surrounded and eaten alive like a chump

Eeeeexactly.

BTW, I'm still progressing in the game. Chose the Light. All promotion quests are done. Cleaning out the surface Nighon area of hydras netted me enough experience to go from level 75 to 85, plus around 500k in gold from the items they dropped. Pretty amazing in its own way. I've done the Walls of Mist quest already, but haven't started on the advisor quests yet. I haven't cleaned out The Maze or killed anything within the Thunderfist Mountain either, I guess each of those would be another 15 levels worth of experience, but I wouldn't dare do those locations before I'm like level 100, so there's still several to go. I'm also not planning to go to Eeofol before the main plotline demands it, but with the spawn mod's greatly sped up outdoor respawn rates, Eeofol is gonna be a literal experience mine. Too bad getting to blasters is still a long way off, cleaning out the hydras without them was really tedious. But I didn't have Starburst either at that point, probably should get it ASAP.

Predictably, with GM Meditation the Archmage has the most mana, his bigger intrinsic mana per level overtakes the Arch Druid's intellect + personality bonuses. But having the Druid able to GM all schools of magic is also pretty amazing, there finally is something to spend that huge manapool on and the offensive presence is greatly augmented.

I have no idea how I'll manage things on the Dark side, though. It's gonna be really rough, seeing how difficult to pull off the Warlock promotion is. Guess I'll have to fight my way to Eeofol earlier, and I don't even want to imagine how many behemoths and medusas are there now. But damn, I do need that Warlock promotion for GM Protection from Magic.

Also, I think I'll be making another adjustment to the balance mod - the Monk doesn't need Master Armsmaster, as the Master perk doesn't synergize with his skills whatsoever, and using it with a weapon as an alternative to Unarmed is plain silly when playing as a Monk. The Thief will become the only class able to get to Master.

[the beavers1]

the rogue and dwarf quest are really easy...... all ya gots to do is run through....

[Bloax]

I just posted why it's extremely hard if you're playing with

(A mod of some variant of the survival mod, except with vanilla items and less absurd monster hp values.)

this thing

The Thief will become the only class able to get to Master.

Was the super tanky Pseudo-Knight Paladin too strong? :^)

[Xfing]

I just posted why it's extremely hard if you're playing with

(A mod of some variant of the survival mod, except with vanilla items and less absurd monster hp values.)

this thing

The Thief will become the only class able to get to Master.

Was the super tanky Pseudo-Knight Paladin too strong? :^)

Haven't tried it yet, to be honest. But anyway, your idea for a Paladin might be interesting, but not really for a mod meaning to be a patch, wherein classes are meant to be balanced. That Paladin is kind of gimmicky to be honest. Also, I really don't think so much HP is needed at any point in the game - truth be told, once you get GM in Body Building with the Knight, you'll rarely even go down to yellow health anyway.

Oh, and I still haven't made that adjustment to the monk Armsmaster... I'll post a notification when I do.

[Xfing]

Ok, I've added new versions of the files, changed the host to Dropbox too, as Mediafire apparently doesn't keep your files on indefinitely as I just had the misfortune to find out...

The change is that Monks' Armsmaster was cut from Master to Expert.

Enjoy, the links are in the OP as always

[Hayvanadam]

Hello there,

I have been a long time reader here and finally decided to make an account to contribute since I am a fan of MM games and this thread has opened up new possibilities of fun for my favorite MM game And I wanted to share my experiences.

This skills table and the addition of spawn mod has been quite the adventure for me. Full of frustrations at certain points (Please note that I dislike running away from fights) where I had to hone up my combat skills in order to be able to beat said points. Sometimes just runaway and come back later

However I have encountered 2 major and some minor problems with the SPAWN mod.

- The monster which summon adds (Like the wizard types in celeste or proving grounds or necromancer types in the pit), my game crashes after several seconds of fighting. I believe this is related to the summoning monsters because it didnt happen anywhere else. Has anyone else experienced this? Due to this I couldnt let my invisibility drop in the proving grounds or couldnt even attempt to clear the pit (Not that I believe I would succeed, even at level 103 with my KKPS party)

- Secondly, I have experienced that some monsters simply does not spawn. Like the water elementals surrounding the Titan's Stronghold which has been already mentioned. I didnt care much about them so I just shooted in. However once I got to the Tunnels to Eofol, only 30% of the dungeon was filled with monsters. After a certain point, it was simply empty. Maybe there is an engine coding that limits the number of monsters that can spawn in a certain area. Did anyone else experienced this?

Now onto my experiences:

1) Some groups of monster didnt have their spawn increased but decreased. There was a lone goblin standing in Harmondale outdoor areas, where there should instead be a group of goblins. Not a big deal obviously.

2) Monsters that break items (Since it is easier to use the harden item potion on the armor and the weapons) became frustrating really fast. Especially if you have a party in which not everyone can raise their repair skill. Combining with how hard it becomes at certain areas, spending too many skill points at repair for low levels of expertise becomes difficult. And I dont like hiring an Alchemist follower (Yeah, call me spoiled )

3) As far as normal monsters go, it is quite the challange. However, once I started facing those damned Queens of the Dead, it was overwhelming, they killed my lvl103 light party in seconds I find it quite amazing that I can face tank 12837102 behemoths or dragons in real-time mode but fail to kill some half-naked ladies (No sexism intended)

4) As with the normal game, even with the spawn mod the game becomes easier after a certain. I guess this cannot be avoided as you simply outgrow the monsters in strength.

5) I felt like the game suddenly felt like MM6 where you start feeling quite weak against the monsters with a might party and you are terribly in need of AoE damage. While my knights were doing a lot of damage, it felt it would go much easier if I could damage the monsters as a group. This imo shifts the balance of might vs magic in itself. The fact that you have to manoeuvre into melee didnt help.

6) On the other hand a magic based party would have soo much trouble even killing the dragonflies in the Emerald Isle. I guess the situation just emphasizes the fact that magic parties have trouble at the start when they arent developed enough.

7) As it has been mentioned, some corridors just became too small for the number of monsters inside, which made running past them impossible. This is especially a big problem for the Rogue promotion quest. It suddenly becomes a brute force kill the champions instead of a stealth mission.

8) Monsters that drop items in addition to money filled up my inventory quite fast. I was thinking with all the complaining I have done about the number of mobs, maybe it is better idea to increase the strength (As in damage) of monsters but decrease number of spawns. This would help the fact that you gain so much experience and gold and would make the game more balanced in the long run.

All in all this have been an interesting and fun experience apart from the crashes I mentioned. I would like to thank you Xfing for making this a possibility.

[Xfing]

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback, even though I'm personally only responsible for the skill table readjustment. The spawn mod was made by another, and I have to agree with everything you posted about it.

I just found out today that the later half of the Eeofol tunels was empty and I have struggled with the game crashing when facing Queens of the Dead. This must be linked to an inherent maximum monster number for every dungeon, and the crash likely happens because this limit is being exceeded. Also, as you have noticed, some monster spawns outdoors have been reduced, which is probably related to the very same issue. I find this all weird, though, seeing as there were no such problems in MM8 with Survival's mod.

My skill table wasn't initially meant to be played in conjunction with the spawn mod, but it obiously does help. Still, for things related to the spawn mod you'd have to contact the author, which I'm not sure who is. The mod was based on Survival's mod, but I'm not entirely sure it's Survival who compiled this version too (one without modified items).

[Xfing]

Finally retrieved the Overthruster with my Light Party with the spawn mod. My only remaining quest is the Arcomage Championship quest (obviously), and three of my chars are eligible to train to 147 (the knight to 144). That's a lot of experience just from completing the game, without farming whatsoever!

I also might add that I didn't really kill anything in the Land of Giants, except for some Devils outside Colony Zod. But no titans nor dragons, since Blaster Rifles are pretty much a must to take care of these. So I have omitted the most exp-worthy area in the game and still am eligible to train to 147. Wow.

Also, I haven't cleaned out the Pit or Castle Gloaming, which I should be able to do by now, but the game crashing keeps me from doing this. After I get the ending cinematic, the next destination will be the Titan Stronghold, and after that the outdoor Land of the Giants. I expect to be able to train to ~165 at least from these two locations alone. If anything, this spawn mod does make grinding levels a bit more comfortable than usual

[Xfing]

Bumping for relevance! New visitors, how about you try playing with these rebalanced classes?

[Creenan]

Having started a few games with these rebalances, they work much better than I thought they would. Archer and paladin are nice alternatives to sorcerer and cleric without being too strong - they're severly limited in magic points after all, more suitable to buffing than nuking stuff with spells early on. Also the druid is much more viable at what it's supposed to do, all in all these changes to magic allow for many more effective party compositions without gimping yourself. Even Cleric and Sorcerer stay relevant with their higher mp pool, earlier access to Master levels of magic and eventually GM Light/Dark. Haven't tried Ranger yet but I'm looking forward to that. Kudos for the mod!

[Xfing]

Having started a few games with these rebalances, they work much better than I thought they would. Archer and paladin are nice alternatives to sorcerer and cleric without being too strong - they're severly limited in magic points after all, more suitable to buffing than nuking stuff with spells early on. Also the druid is much more viable at what it's supposed to do, all in all these changes to magic allow for many more effective party compositions without gimping yourself. Even Cleric and Sorcerer stay relevant with their higher mp pool, earlier access to Master levels of magic and eventually GM Light/Dark. Haven't tried Ranger yet but I'm looking forward to that. Kudos for the mod!

Hey, thanks! I've not been playing with these adjustments for a while now, but after re-reading this thread I've gotten an itch to re-try them. Too bad the increased spawns mod has its issues, I'd really like to play a simple spawn x4 or so mod with no adjusted monster values and that's it.

But reading through the table again, I decided for another slew of changes, reverting some of the changes I had made before.

Monk

Armsmaster:

EEEE -> MMMM

Been thinking hard about this. The monk is a martial class, they SHOULD have master in Armsmaster. Promotion to Initiate is not necessary, as Armsmaster even at Master level is not a core skill for your typical Monk. The bug wherein the Staff stops being treated as a weapon once GM in Staff has been achieved will probably be fixed by Grayface someday, so Master Armsmaster will allow you to stack even more damage on top of Unarmed, should you choose to equip a Staff too. The optimal setup would be that you get a damage bonus only when using a staff, and not when using your bare hands, but that will simply have to be taken care of by Grayface. For now, I can only offer in-universe reasoning for reverting this change.

Meditation:

--B- -> --BB

My willingness of giving the Master an edge over the Ninja in this particular way was rather misguided, since there is no justification for a Ninja to be unable to partake in the art of meditation, usually associated with Eastern monks in real life. The abilities of the Master to become better at alchemy and gain access to Merchant at all are subtle, but significant. That said, Merchant gets reduced to Basic for Masters, since they're still recluses, and expensive leveling is one of the things that helps balance the Monk's amazing martial prowess.

Merchant

--E- -> --B-

Ranger

Alchemy

BEMM -> BEEE

While my argument that Rangers should be at least passable at Alchemy due to their attunement to the land and woods still stands, Rangers generally don't strike as smart enough to get mastery in the art. Expertise is absolutely justifiable, though. Alchemy is a skill of convenience, not necessity for one thing (you can simply buy all the potions that you need), and for another, Rangers will rarely find themselves in parties with not even a single Sorcerer or Druid. Layered potions are still very neat to have for their great effects, so even a single expert of alchemy in any party is already a boon.

Sorcerer

Meditation:

EMGG -> EMMM

This advantage over the Druid certainly wasn't needed after all, since Sorcerers practically never run out of mana as it is. Add the fact that Druids definitely require the extra mana pool to pull their weight both as primary healers and damage dealers, and you are entirely justified in the Druid having more mana overall. They simply need it.

I've already made the edits and the table is still downloadable from the same source as always. Enjoy and let's continue the discussion with the goal of making the classes the best and most rewarding to play they can be!