Elemental Mod for MM7 -- v3.1 holiday release!

[Karol]

I support the idea making the Genie Lamps random again. (or great again?)
And I also won't miss XP, food, gold. The only time I miss food, is after the Avlee pixie dungeon quest, but ever since I have enough food, and sometimes (after I run the game through multiple years, and harvest all apple trees) I have 100+ food.

Genie lamps for 7 stats, resistances is ok, but I also would like to get Skills.
XP - I can get it elsewhere (in worst case scenario in Arena), Gold -> in 2nd part of the game I have excess of gold.
But skill points...
https://ibb.co/rbzcBh6

For most battles, having skills at 12 or 14 is good enough. But because I like 'respawning' the world and re-fighting old battles (so I get myself imprisoned for 1 year), I crave for every high Water Magic, so my Lloyd's Beacon can last over 360 days (that is why I am hiring spell m
aster hireling, despite he / she only gives bonuses to elemental spell schools) so when you will tune up followers, that is also welcomed.
For the BDJ's mod, I first thought that upon respawn, also the challenge pillar (fire) is respawned, but then I realized that it is just circulating through the 7 stats, and when all 7 challenges are won, that's it. And there I was, hoping that I will finally get some of my skills to 60+ values

[Tomsod]

Noted. I'll probably include skill points as one of the genie's rewards, but 4.0 won't be very soon (likely next year!) 3.0 will at least have an artifact book that can be consumed for 80 skill points (likely to be found among obelisk treasure), and every human PC will get one extra skill point on each level-up. (Other races have HP/SP bonuses and improved weapon skills, but humans are extra special.)

On respawn: some locations, notably Eeofol, respawn every 6 months, so waiting a year is probably an overkill. Just travel on foot some 35 times (hold the down key) and 6 months will pass, easy enough. And you'll need only 25 skill to preserve your beacons.

On 60+ skills: actually, 60 is the absolute limit, both with or without bonuses. And if you have a magic booster and right hirelings, a raw magic skill of 36 is enough to reach 60. Of course, that's still 665 skill points!

On challenges: there are actually 28, four difficulty levels for each of seven stats. In vanilla winning all of them is impractical, as the lowest-difficulty (25 stat) one only appears at Emerald Isle, so you need to stay there for 12 years to get all seven. In my mod, these can be found elsewhere, FWIW.

On hirelings: while I'll tweak them more in 4.0, I don't think I'll make spell masters stronger. They're already very powerful! One thing I'm considering is the ability to have four hirelings at once, but with each one only affecting one PC. Like, for a typical Knight/Thief/Cleric/Sorcerer party, only the Sorcerer needs the spell master, only the Thief needs a locksmith or burglar, only the Knight significantly benefits from a weapons master, and so on. Most of the time, such a hireling affecting the entire party doesn't make much sense.

[F-man]

Currently playing this mod and wanted to say that I find myself liking all the changes you have made so far. Great mod, and the next version sounds even better. (Posted this in case you wanted more encouragement or feedback )

[Tomsod]

One can never have enough feedback! If you have any ideas or opinions, feel free to share.

[F-man]

OK, this ended up being a long and I know you have a lot of stuff to do already but these are just ideas.

Like I said, I like everything you have done so far as well as about your current plans you have mentioned. Your changes to spells and alchemy are really great, but they could be even more. I have read and tried what other modders have planned and done and there are some good ideas. For example, alchemy could use more thorough overhaul, though I don't know how big effoert changing potion effects is. BTB made a good point that having health and magic potions in the same level doesn't make sense. Awaken (which is also 1 mana spell) and magic potion could simply be switched, that would also improve usefulness of yellow ingredients. There are also other status cures that have quite weird locations in the alchemy table like fear and stone cures and then there is the divine restoration that is just almost all of them put together. I also like your idea about alchemical bombs, but the fact that alchemy master is only available in Nighon makes bombs little too late game stuff for my taste, so there could something more low level like a single color fire potion. With low level bombs it could be possible to make a class that is like Pathfinder alchemist, grandmaster alchemy, light gear and several utility skills and there we have it. You have your own plans for new classes but editing classes is also easy for people like me. Combining some status cures (if possible) might also be good idea to get more space at lower alchemy level.

For topic of spells I again refer to BTB about some changes. Mind magic could benefit a lot if charm and (powered up) mind blast changed places. Charm and berserk in same level is not really that great and self spells have no damage spells at expert level. Telepathy plain sucks, it could be the 1 mp spell or replaced, unless there actually is some use for it that I don't know. BTB also had an idea about not letting primary casters use bow and instead making them use spells and wands while making low level attack spells cost less.

Again, I really like everything so far. I know that there is a good chance you knew these ideas already and did not really care about them, but I wanted to mention them just in case as there is possiblility that we could have a quite similar mindset about these things.

[Tomsod]

Surprisingly, we do have a similar mindset, as I already implemented most of these in the WIP version of 3.0! I actually regularly upload new changes to the mod's github page, but in retrospect, I should've posted a link to it somewhere in this thread if I wanted someone to read it. Anyway:

I did swap blue and green potions recently, as well as moved stone to flesh to white, remove paralysis to layered (as an alternative use of recharging potion), and added a raise dead potion. These are all ideas I directly pilfered from BTB's mod thread, as they do make a lot of sense. But moving throwable potions below Master would probably require too much changes. (One thing that's doable would be to leave recipes in place, but reclassify these potions from white to some other category - like rainbow? - that is brewable at Expert. I'll consider it.) FWIW, in 3.0 it will also be possible to brew potions without the required Alchemy rank, but with a high risk of explosion and most likely lowered potion power. So that lowers the entry barrier somewhat.

I also recently replaced Telepathy with a spell that influences which PC monsters will attack (so tanky builds would make more sense), although I still need to commission an image for it. Removing bow skill from casters is also something I did (like in Xeen!), although I'm more lenient than BTB here: both druids and sorcerers can use throwing knives instead (dagger-skill missiles, worse range and damage than bows, but can become quite good with high stats), and any class can unlock bows by starting as an elf. I don't feel like rearranging spells, though, and I don't feel that lack of damage spells for clerics is a problem - they should spend most of their mana on curing anyway. Charm will be slightly improved in 3.0 (e.g. you'll be able to talk to and hire charmed peasants), so having it be on the same tier as Berserk should be justified.

[F-man]

Sounds great and I didn't notice that you had github Interesting stuff there.

[Eksekk]

Amazing changes! I'm sad that I cannot help you in any way, but also happy that you're still working on the mod. Keep up the good work!

[Tomsod]

Amazing changes! I'm sad that I cannot help you in any way, but also happy that you're still working on the mod. Keep up the good work!

Oh hey, you're back! Look, I was actually going to invite you to playtest the mod whenever I'll finish coding 3.0 (hopefully this month). So if you're up to it, that would be nice.

[Eksekk]

Oh hey, you're back! Look, I was actually going to invite you to playtest the mod whenever I'll finish coding 3.0 (hopefully this month). So if you're up to it, that would be nice.

Sure, I'd love to play 3.0 (and 4.0)! Also, I'm sorry for not helping with skill training requirements, but I simply didn't have any ideas.

[Tomsod]

Sure, I'd love to play 3.0 (and 4.0)! Also, I'm sorry for not helping with skill training requirements, but I simply didn't have any ideas.

Don't sweat it, I haven't got any ideas either. In the end, I just added a 'have used the skill enough times' requirement to all those four skills for now, which didn't take much effort. Maybe later I'll get a flash of inspiration, or maybe it's okay as it is.

I'll PM you about playtesting whenever it happens.

[Eksekk]

How it's going Tomsod? I know such questions are hard to answer, but will 3.0 release in a month or two or later, including playtesting time and all that other stuff that needs to be done to release? The reason is when I tell people about your mod, I always say something like "but 3.0 is around the corner, I'd wait for that". Maybe I am unintentionally deceiving them? :/

[Tomsod]

It's actually going pretty well! I'm done with coding, and for the last week or so I was working with an artist who was drawing some new item graphics for me. Now I need to finish putting them into the game, do some pre-release cleaning up, and then it's indeed playtesting time. Should be ready for this by Monday. As for how long it takes to playtest... well, it depends on you! As well as a couple of my IRL friends I roped into this, and myself, too. I need samples of how the party looks at various stages of the game, and I'll tweak some numbers based on this. Plus some bugs will probably show up. And after that I can release.

[Tomsod]

Hello again! I'm proud to finally present the next release of the mod. I dare say there's enough changes now that my mod won't be boring even if you're tired of vanilla MM7 -- give it a try! I've reworked the races (each gives unique and significant bonuses), classes (light and dark promotions differ from each other, both can be combined in the same party, some classes got special abilities) and skills (generally more leniency with skill promotion, especially with magic GMs, and many skill perks were changed), added 16 new artifacts and several other items, including new item classes (robes and throwing knives), implemented a difficulty level switch, and made many more tweaks to spells, game rules, and other things. Also, Eksekk provided a new castle Harmondale for this release -- now with 20 chests! The full list of changes is, as always, in the changelog.

Download here! Unpack the archive in the game directory. I recommend using a fresh install, but if you don't want to, at least make sure to delete any other mods and that pesky new.lod archive. You will also need the latest version (2.5.7) of MM7Patch installed (make sure not to uncheck the last two optional tasks). Older versions of the patch will probably not work! MMExtension is not required, and in fact, the mod is incompatible with the current git version, although the latest release (2.2) works fine.

If you're not afraid of spoilers, you can also read the party creation guide and the new artifact list. Personally, I recommend perusing the former if you want a well-build party, but deferring the latter until you discover an artifact you're confused about.

I still plan for one last major release, but I will probably need a year or more to make it. Nevertheless, the mod is already playable enough. I might also release a bugfix minor release if any significant bugs come up.

[rampage77t]

I really wanted to try this mod and it really looks very promising. I just have a question and I apologize if it was answered earlier, but I understand that you can do two promotions per side before choosing a side. 1 of good and 1 of evil was done after passing the tests in The Breeding Zone and The wall of Mist, but how are the other 2 done? Because unless I fulfill the mission of the temples of light and darkness that makes me choose a side automatically and there would be only 1 character with the opposite promotion to the one I choose. Congratulations and I will be waiting for future updates of this great mod.

[Eksekk]

There's another quest for each side, even in vanilla, that can be completed before choosing side (this is specific to the mod).

[Tomsod]

Precisely. Light and Darkness each have one non-story sidequest in vanilla, and you can now potentially complete both for promotion tokens.

[rampage77t]

But when receiving the 2nd token to promote, there is no way to go to the other side and receive the opposite token without being an enemy. Maybe I misunderstood the way to carry out the missions, sorry

Edit : In short, I mean if there is a way that I can have 2 characters with good promotion and two with evil promotion.

[Tomsod]

One of the sidequests (steal the scarf thingy) can result in the Pit being hostile, but only if you go there. You're supposed to fight your way out to the surface.

[Mortis]

Hi, Tomsod!
Excellent skill changes:) I always wanted someone to make changes to dodging and unarmed skills in a way just you did:)).
Evading incoming attack perk should be connected to dodge from the beginning- is more logical that dogde gives chance to evade than unarmed, which supose to be typically offensive skill, and now thanks to you it is.
Monk is a trully killer now:)
I just wonder if your changes(not only monk's skills but also shield GM perk)could be implemented to Rodril's Merge project.
I have question for you- would it possible to change master mace skill effect from "stun" to "can be use in left/other hand" ? I think stun is very simillar to paralaze effect, and having paralaze makes stun rather uselles . I also always wanted to have dual-wielding blunt warrior (paladin in MM7 or troll in MM8) especially that there is no two-handed mace/hammer neither in MM7 nor MM8.