Might & Magic 7: Reimagined (Big Overhaul Mod)

[kotgaf]

I've tried to enter Wine Cellar before Judge Quest.

Party: CLR/THF/SRC/SRC.
Overall, it's too easy. Sorcerers keep spaming their 1 level dmg spells, and anyone who come close enough is welcomed by mace&dagger smash for 70-150 dmg per round. If melee is undesirable, there is always amazing slow spell. A lot of items is just placed around, you can easily grab +54 plate just walking in towns. A lot of ore which gave me insane dagger (+25 might +fire dmg).
Killing poor blue dragon for quest is trivial - just get every character a wand (which are plenty in game) and here it is.
Only thing can stop such party is insta-kill spells. Like lighting from bowmen (new quest in harmondale) or shots from water elementals. The main problem, YOU CAN'T really mitingate this. Even having a lot of resistance doesn't make change - a nice 100 dmg shot to your head became... 89, I guess? So only possible solution is to run&gun. Probably, reasons of that lies in quite strange system of magic resistance in MM series.
Getting map for cleric quest wasn't even a little problem.
Stealing vase for quest (at level 6) was indeed a little tougher and fun - gladly, I've already experted Mind for charm and berserk. And it was perfectly balanced for such party.
I haven't played further yet, but I surely remember what previuos version was more cruel in almost every aspect.

Anyway, maybe it's the way you want this mod to be?
Btw, I love your sollution to add tougher and different monsters into old areas, and class rebalnce is also nice comparing to vanila.

[AzimovHaas8]

I been able to enter Wine Cellar before Judge Grey quest.
Some options in GreyFace patch installation window (such as "Install LOD archives with fixes for map and game progression", "Fix Thunderfist Mountain entrances mismatch" and "real Mega-dragon instead of weaker regular dragon") may cause problems for the mod and changes I made.


...I will think about making separate version of a mod with higher difficulty curve.
Unfortunately, enabling more viable options for killing enemies (and previously lacking magic paths - such as Mind Magic for clerics or Earth Magic to a degree which is great for druids) means that game going to be easier. While not a lot of classes in M&M 7 can use plate armor at all, it is indeed easier to get good armor relatively early. And here is more options to earn money early on (such as crates of wine in Erathia that can be sold in Tatalia).

From my experience, economy is hard to balance as at one point in the game money can be scarsity (magic books / training / skill experts early on, etc), at other point money are abundant and at last money become scarce ones again.
+ Different playstyles and different team compositions need dfferent amounts of gold "intake".

Existing spell resistances are quite... weird in M&M 7 for sure : ]


And from my experience as well, clerical spells (preservation preventing characters from dying, regeneration and shared life, charm, turn undead and mass fear) allow to keep party alive even in face of shrapmetal, pain reflection or acid shots. But this is just matter of my own preferences of spells to play the game as I lean towards defensive magic.

But ones again, increasing amount of monsters per spawn, adding some nastier abilities or better spells to existing monsters and reworking economy a bit (removing best ores from maps along with best reagents) is an option for a separate version. If you have any suggestions for difficulty rebalance, I would be interested in hearing them out.


Thanks! I enjoyed making maps more alive and more rewarding for exploration.
I also feel that rangers and druids are better to use in my mod.

[Eksekk]

It's amazing to see you still working on the mod, AzimovHaas8!!! If I may suggest one thing, kotgaf's ludicrous melee damage may be partially caused by too generous stat breakpoints. IIRC and if you didn't change it, every 5 points gives 2 points of effect, for example 2 melee damage. Combined with day of the gods this may have absurd benefits. I suggest lowering it to 5/1 or even slightly less.

[AzimovHaas8]

It's amazing to see you still working on the mod, AzimovHaas8!!! If I may suggest one thing, kotgaf's ludicrous melee damage may be partially caused by too generous stat breakpoints. IIRC and if you didn't change it, every 5 points gives 2 points of effect, for example 2 melee damage. Combined with day of the gods this may have absurd benefits. I suggest lowering it to 5/1 or even slightly less.

Thank you for a very good suggestion!
With current state of mod, stat breakpoints are worth restructuring on both lower amount of stats and high end of same stats.

By the way, I think about removing "poison damage per tick" part of assorted changes scripts completely. They do not work correctly. And I'm not sure if ranger ID monster skill addon work as intended.

On side note: two unused unique enemies in Castle Gloaming (Fallen Samael) and Castle Lambert (Archangel Michael) probably will find their use in two remaining town halls as targets for two new quests. Other then this (along with *maybe* replacing one unused types of creatures or one group of peasants with terminators from M&M 6 into Reimagined for purpose of adding new enemy type into Lincoln), I have no big plans for my creation : ]

[Tomsod]

Some options in GreyFace patch installation window (such as "Install LOD archives with fixes for map and game progression", "Fix Thunderfist Mountain entrances mismatch" and "real Mega-dragon instead of weaker regular dragon") may cause problems for the mod and changes I made.

That must be it, I believe one of the optional MM7Patch map fixes concerns the unique vampire in that very cellar. If your mod doesn't expect the changed cellar map, crashes are unsurprising.

[kotgaf]

I also feel that rangers and druids are better to use in my mod.

That is 146% true! I still think that Ranger is little weaker than others, but hey, he is not bad at least!

I been able to enter Wine Cellar before Judge Grey quest.
Some options in GreyFace patch installation window (such as "Install LOD archives with fixes for map and game progression", "Fix Thunderfist Mountain entrances mismatch" and "real Mega-dragon instead of weaker regular dragon") may cause problems for the mod and changes I made.

Oh. I almost 100% sure I've done it right, but ok, I'm reinstalling it.

From my experience, economy is hard to balance

No doubt.
This run I had zero problems with money, and even bought some chains and gloves with nice bonues for ~3x of it price (almost never done it in Vanilla).
Anyway, free merchant goods lying here and there looks just fine to me.

If you have any suggestions for difficulty rebalance, I would be interested in hearing them out.

Some suggestions:
1) add some very few out-of-level monsters into old areas. Four swamp trolls in Castle Harmondale? Two vampires in Haunted Mansion? or swarm of fireflies in Blue Dragon Den?
2) wizard eye now give you items on minimap only on master. Expert level just make it free.
3) ID monster now give character a 0.5*skill chance to critical hit it with any attack against any monster he CAN identify.
4) few wands, wands charges, larger cooldown.
5) low-level spells are too effective. You can easily cast two spells in one round and get nice ~60 dmg with 100% hit chance. And because of stat scalling you've got a LOT of SP to spend on this spells.
6) (addition for Eksekk 's post) Maybe stats should scale more like it was in vanilla, I mean from 10 to 30 every 5 points make 2 effects, from 30 to 50 every 6 and so on ?

7)

[AzimovHaas8]

I also feel that rangers and druids are better to use in my mod.

That is 146% true! I still think that Ranger is little weaker than others, but hey, he is not bad at least!

I been able to enter Wine Cellar before Judge Grey quest.
Some options in GreyFace patch installation window (such as "Install LOD archives with fixes for map and game progression", "Fix Thunderfist Mountain entrances mismatch" and "real Mega-dragon instead of weaker regular dragon") may cause problems for the mod and changes I made.

Oh. I almost 100% sure I've done it right, but ok, I'm reinstalling it.

From my experience, economy is hard to balance

No doubt.
This run I had zero problems with money, and even bought some chains and gloves with nice bonues for ~3x of it price (almost never done it in Vanilla).
Anyway, free merchant goods lying here and there looks just fine to me.

If you have any suggestions for difficulty rebalance, I would be interested in hearing them out.

Some suggestions:
1) add some very few out-of-level monsters into old areas. Four swamp trolls in Castle Harmondale? Two vampires in Haunted Mansion? or swarm of fireflies in Blue Dragon Den?
2) wizard eye now give you items on minimap only on master. Expert level just make it free.
3) ID monster now give character a 0.5*skill chance to critical hit it with any attack against any monster he CAN identify.
4) few wands, wands charges, larger cooldown.
5) low-level spells are too effective. You can easily cast two spells in one round and get nice ~60 dmg with 100% hit chance. And because of stat scalling you've got a LOT of SP to spend on this spells.
6) (addition for Eksekk 's post) Maybe stats should scale more like it was in vanilla, I mean from 10 to 30 every 5 points make 2 effects, from 30 to 50 every 6 and so on ?

7)

About suggestions:

1) I agree with you! Considering that new and unusual monsters in old (and very familiar) maps are not going to be placed in large numbers it seems like interesting and desirable solution.
Also, some monsters are underrepresented in game and can make for a fun little tactical challenges.

(BTW, haunted mansion already have lowest tier of vampires present).

2) I will think about wizard's eye changes.

3) ID monster skill ability may be broken at this point. I need to look into it.

4) Yeah. Removing some wands may be a great idea. Originally, I placed them before balance changes - some of them when I first started to work on mod relatively long time ago (when mod difficulty been cruel and players may need as much options as they can possibly get).

5) I generally found slow to be very effective and increased it cost along with recovery rate in new version, but this may be not enough. Regeneration now costs 20+ mana and I intend to keep this change.

About early level damage spells:
Are you talking about specifically fire bolt or low level damage spells in general (mind blast, sparks, ice bolt, deadly swarm and so on)? What do you find especially good on them (fast recovery rate, low mana cost)? Or it is combination of low spell cost and fast recovery rate?
Do you think slow need much higher cost (maybe even around 11 / 12 mana cost) and much slower recovery rate? Or only one change will suffice?

I'm also interested in your opinion on other spells in game and magic paths balance in general.

6) Maybe! It probably needs some testing and tweaking afterwards, but rewards so far seem a bit too generous at current state.

[AzimovHaas8]

Reimagined mod is now updated to version 1.7 (as of 22.06.2023)
Link to current version is provided in the first post along with list of most noticable changes I made in update.

[Rick3tkh]

I'm having trouble even installing this, the instructions aren't....exactly clear. MMExtension has no .exe or anything, for example. very new-user unfriendly and barebones.

[Eksekk]

I'm having trouble even installing this, the instructions aren't....exactly clear. MMExtension has no .exe or anything, for example. very new-user unfriendly and barebones.

What exactly is unclear? MMExtension has a .dll, you install it by just unpacking archive into game folder, so that dll file ends up in ExeMods folder.

[Rick3tkh]

the part where I'd never seen a .dll file, but now I get it. x3

[Hakinaro]

So I went to the 3 druid altars, but I can't get the promotion. He just says you went to one of the altars now go to the rest and come back.

[AzimovHaas8]

Sorry for late reply.
I am not very active online at the moment, but I will look upon this issue pretty soon.

EDIT: I just tested fist druid promotion from start to finish and had no problems.
Did you take the quest before you touched the three altars or after you visited all the locations?

[Wunder]

Hello Guys, I need some help installing this mod.

1, using gog version, default install path
2, installed greyface patch, works fine
3, installed MMExtension by copying the ExeMods and Scripts folder into MM7 installation folder (instructions unclear)
4, added the path of the .dll to the mm7.ini
5, ran the game 2x (actually had to do 3x) to build the tables and all, game works fine at this point
6, installed the MM= reimagined mod by copying and overwriting the DATA and Scrips folders in the MM7 installation folder
7, game doesn't start anymore

Additionally I tried installing the MMextention outside the MM7 folder, in that case the Scrips folder does not yet exists inside MM7, same result.

Any idea why is it not working?

UPDATE: Guys, I'm so sorry! I didn't run the game with admin rights Totally my fault!

Thanks in advance!