Elemental Mod for MM7 -- v4.0 open beta

[Lone_Wolf]

Currently traversing Nighon Tunnels and have found zokarr's axe , but not their skull .

My party hasn't rescued the dwarves yet, but in vanilla that skull was always there.
Is this a bug or does the elemental mod only place the bones there when the archdruid promotion quest is started ?

[raekuul]

The skull is only there once the Archdruid quest has been started (if you look at your minimap you'll see a "barrel dot" indicating you interacted with a something there)

[Tomsod]

I did the DoG HP/SP thing we talked about before, and I'll probably release soon so y'all can playtest it (it's kinda hacky).

Is this a bug or does the elemental mod only place the bones there when the archdruid promotion quest is started ?

The bones can now only be clicked on for a skull after accepting the quest, yeah. Basically this prevents the possibility of a useless quest item (if you complete the warlock quest instead), especially relevant since it's one of the items formerly returned by judge, and now it'd clutter the black market instead.

(if you look at your minimap you'll see a "barrel dot" indicating you interacted with a something there)

The dot only appears after pressing space, not when clicking objects with mouse. A curious precursor to MM8 map markers, I never quite got the intention behind it.

[Lone_Wolf]

I did see the dot, so there was interaction, Will go back there when I got the quest.

In mount nighon tunnel I encountered a floating eye which put my wizard asleep .
When trying to use a blue (awaken) potion on her, I got the message that person is not active .
I understand why inactive persons are not allowed to quaff potions, but this defeats the purpose of the awaken potion .
Maybe the awaken potion could act like the awaken spell and wake the whole party ?

I have started using items of taunting/jester and they do appear to work.
Could the aggro counter be made visible somewhere ?

[raekuul]

re potions - recharge and stone-to-flesh have the same problem. if you bring the potion back with you out of the backpack and focus a character who can act you'll be able to use it just fine (it'll consume the active character's turn instead of the targeted character's turn).

[Tomsod]

In mount nighon tunnel I encountered a floating eye which put my wizard asleep .
When trying to use a blue (awaken) potion on her, I got the message that person is not active .
I understand why inactive persons are not allowed to quaff potions, but this defeats the purpose of the awaken potion .
Maybe the awaken potion could act like the awaken spell and wake the whole party ?

re potions - recharge and stone-to-flesh have the same problem. if you bring the potion back with you out of the backpack and focus a character who can act you'll be able to use it just fine (it'll consume the active character's turn instead of the targeted character's turn).

Yeah, since you need to force-feed an inactive character, you have to select another one who'll do it and right-click the potion on the target's portrait. (Can be done from inside the inventory screen, too!) I guess that goes into the eventual manual/FAQ thingy.

I have started using items of taunting/jester and they do appear to work.
Could the aggro counter be made visible somewhere ?

Aggro is unlikely to go above ten, so it's not hard to count it manually. It would be more useful to show the precise probability of a monster hitting a specific PC, but this also depends on the monster's preferences. Maybe this could fall under the purview of ID Monster?

[Lone_Wolf]

ID Monster screen/skill seems to be a good place to show this, yes.
I feel it can be very useful for those that want to play tactically/strategically, so should be visible early .
Maybe at the same level were attack is shown ?

Related
In nighon town there are some friendly water warlocks and I checked their values .
All resistance values are shown as None .

The hostile warlocks on the road up the mountain west of the town do show resistances .
Is this normal for non-hostile monsters ?
(I never used ID monster in vanilla).

[Tomsod]

Some pre-placed monsters have weird stats in vanilla; I largely kept that. In particular, peaceful warlocks in Nighon never had any resistances. I dunno why.

[Lone_Wolf]

Understood, I like MM7 a lot but sometimes it looks like it suffers from the same things as MM IX : released to early.

While looking for a house hireling teacher I realised there are 2 of them :

Spoiler

Licia Rivenrock In Barrow Downs
Brahein Kadarr in Harmondale

Is that intentional ?

I did the DoG HP/SP thing we talked about before, and I'll probably release soon so y'all can playtest it (it's kinda hacky).

Looking forward to testing that.

[Tomsod]

Good catch, one of these teachers is supposed to be a tracker.

[raekuul]

went through again with a more melee-focused party [Monk, Thief, Ranger, Druid]... but made the mistake of running dark team for it.

Don't run a melee team as dark. It's not worth it. Light Elemental explosions remain irresistable (which also makes the quest for Lucid Apple hilariously painful)

[Tomsod]

How's the monk performing for you? In my own playthrough, he seems to be decently strong, maybe on par with a knight, but also with healing spells.

And on that topic, I just got to the genie dungeon, and apparently it glitches pretty horribly without MMExt installed. Did nobody really notice, or is it just something with my setup?

[raekuul]

I ended up trashing that save file - I forgot to do bounty hunting when it was still early so now I'm at the mercy of the Hall of Midnight, and it turns out the Assassin training is completely unavailable during a... sensitive range of time (I needed three dark promotion tokens and you can only get two before your hand is forced, so now I know for next time to prioritize Assassin over the other two) - but I'll give it another shot in a few months once I've cooled down now that I know how to mitigate explosion damage from Gogs and Golems (can't really mitigate it from light elementals, unfortunately, and I'm required to deal with those for at least two of these promotions)

I'm still experimenting with classes and haven't played with Paladin or Archer yet, but I'll probably just take them up to the path split - I kind of want to go back to working on my monster position shuffler script (which would probably make Elemental more interesting if I can get it working properly, since then you'll have intermingled monsters more often, but I need to solve the AvLee problem correctly first).

I haven't actually taken the quest that sends me into the genie dungeon yet - I poked my head in once and got absolutely obliterated, but at the same time I'm one of those "don't fight if you don't have to" types so I'm perpetually underpowered to begin with (which is one of the reasons I don't particularly like the gold nerf on medium/hard mode, as avoiding fights when possible also means that I'm perpetually underfunded in Elemental even on Easy). My install of Elemental does not have MMExt installed though so the next time I poke my head in I'll pay attention to what's actually happening.

Re the monk: Still feels like a monk, more melee focused than magic (but the changes to resistances and to spirit magic mean that it's much less of an issue - to my memory everything in vanilla that was immune to physical damage was also immune to body damage so Hammerhands never actually helped a monk). Still has the same basic problem that the thief and ranger has - not very good before promoting (especially since now you need to promote at least once to master any skills, which was something that gives monks/thieves an edge early on in vanilla), but with monks its a bit more of an urgent issue since you have to dive pretty deep in the dwarven barrows to get their promotion (In the absence of my monster shuffler script the ranger promotion is the easiest promotion quest in the game, and the thief promotion is also relatively easy as long as you commit to the TPK) and the dwarven barrows don't exactly give you enough room to fight at range so you're reliant on the monk's now more limited melee abilities to get their promotion.

The other problem with forcing promotions before mastering skills is that promoted classes have higher training costs - Knights and Paladins and Archers are very good for early game gold economy as a result, as their promotion quests are usually the last promotion quests you complete - but the gold problem can largely be solved on my end by actually taking advantage of a lot of the new systems. Interest in particular, even if that means I have to abandon my Explorer/Pathfinder combo earlier.

[Tomsod]

Another release (4.0.3) is here: English, Russian. This one is not so much bugfixing as trying out some new things I want feedback on. Notably, clearing the (hostile) Pit should be harder now as Dragon Breath deals fire and physical damage now (instead of fire and poison), and the formerly Dark lich and necromancer projectiles are also physical instead of magic. Existing saved games will be upgraded to the new version. There are still a few minor bugs I'm aware of, which should be fixed in 4.0.4 later on.

Still has the same basic problem that the thief and ranger has - not very good before promoting (especially since now you need to promote at least once to master any skills, which was something that gives monks/thieves an edge early on in vanilla), but with monks its a bit more of an urgent issue since you have to dive pretty deep in the dwarven barrows to get their promotion (In the absence of my monster shuffler script the ranger promotion is the easiest promotion quest in the game, and the thief promotion is also relatively easy as long as you commit to the TPK) and the dwarven barrows don't exactly give you enough room to fight at range so you're reliant on the monk's now more limited melee abilities to get their promotion.

The other problem with forcing promotions before mastering skills is that promoted classes have higher training costs - Knights and Paladins and Archers are very good for early game gold economy as a result, as their promotion quests are usually the last promotion quests you complete - but the gold problem can largely be solved on my end by actually taking advantage of a lot of the new systems. Interest in particular, even if that means I have to abandon my Explorer/Pathfinder combo earlier.

The original motivation for restricting Master behind promotions was actually to give Knight promotions some spice, as in vanilla they amounted to just a few more HP, not different from advancing bodybuilding. Since then they got horses, which are another solution, so maybe I should rethink this.

[raekuul]

Horses are actually my favorite part of Knights; I want to see what all the other horses do (but I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up staying with the humble ass and its +2 backpacks)

Speaking of a Hostile Pit, is it intended that completing the Seasons Stole quest during the shared time cause the Pit (region) to go Hostile? I did the quest on my light team before talking to Archibald, ended up with a hostile pit as a result (which made the Breeding Zone that much harder as I wasn't yet prepared for a hostile pit) and absolutely avoided it on my dark team because "well if I do that quest then they'll all be hostile" (which led to the aforementioned "need three dark promotion tokens" situation, as my original plan was to have a spy instead of an assassin). This is actually something that unbalances the two quests as the penalty for Seth Drakkson's quest is just... you have to pay about 10k in fines (or serve jail time), which isn't a punishment in the back half of the game.

[Tomsod]

It's intentional, but with a twist.

Spoiler

The necromancers etc. will only attack you if you ever enter the Pit while holding the stole, so you can avoid this simply by going to the surface instead. I think my intention, besides realism, was to prevent an easy respite from hostile zombies. (Giving the stole to a hireling also works. Initially it was on the bug list, but then I learned that in MM2 you had to smuggle a quest item on a hireling to complete the game, and it became a feature.)

[raekuul]

Okay so now I'm doing the quest that takes me to the altar of wishes (the first room still murders me pretty hard; I was finally able to get it cleared out at about level 30 but it still feels overtuned) and I think I found a bug? Still no MMExt installed in this install

Altar of Wishes stuff

On a clean board, make a blocking move in the exact middle r3c3; the dungeon will follow up with r2c3, and if you counter that with a blocking move at r2c2 it overwrites your move with a cross at r2c2

I also had a whole bunch of textures disappear once I solved the first room "correctly" (can't quite figure out the second room, but I'm pretty sure the disappearing textures aren't intentional and so I'm missing half of what I need to see)

Spoiler

(n.b. - haven't updated to the newest version yet)

[Tomsod]

Okay so now I'm doing the quest that takes me to the altar of wishes (the first room still murders me pretty hard; I was finally able to get it cleared out at about level 30 but it still feels overtuned) and I think I found a bug? Still no MMExt installed in this install

Altar of Wishes stuff

On a clean board, make a blocking move in the exact middle r3c3; the dungeon will follow up with r2c3, and if you counter that with a blocking move at r2c2 it overwrites your move with a cross at r2c2

Ouch. Well spotted, but I'm not looking forward to debugging that mess of a script.

The difficulty is a bit high, yeah, but I was replacing a run through the palace filled with dragons and titans, and there's also some good treasure (including the quest item). I was also able to clear it at 30+, although with some effort.

I also had a whole bunch of textures disappear once I solved the first room "correctly" (can't quite figure out the second room, but I'm pretty sure the disappearing textures aren't intentional and so I'm missing half of what I need to see)

Spoiler

(n.b. - haven't updated to the newest version yet)

Yeah, this is precisely what I was talking about. It's not fixed yet, the workaround for now is to install MMExt, sorry. I think the problem is in the visible facet limit that MMExt lifts, so I just need to copy that.

[Lone_Wolf]

Jumping monsters changes in 4.03

If there is an open path between monster & party, things work much better now.

If there is something blocking the jump path though things are worse .
Enter the tularean caves , kill the wyverns close to the entrance.

Behind the closed door straight ahead of the entrance there are several elf units.
Walk left up the stairs a bit until you hear jumping and hitting sounds .

Kill any monsters next to you , then notice the sounds don't stop .
The elves that can't reach you behind the door jump towards you and then start hitting the wall.

Incase you go slowly down the stairs right of the entrance you should notice some troglodytes try to reach you by jumping and end up under you.

It looks like the new jump system needs some condition testing to verify when it will be useful.


Human Elf war
For riverstride & tularean caves I didn't use any travel related followers, just stables .

start aug 6 1169 in TF
TF - get riverstride quest
Travel H - E
get loren quest
do riverstride
Travel H -TF
deliver plans
free loren
travel H- E
deliver loren
End aug 21 1169 in E .

So 15 days total, well under the 28 days you are allowed.

[raekuul]

I think what's messing me up conceptually is that because the quests are accessible during the twilight period I'm assuming that they're also completable during the twilight period and that is just not true in all cases. But outside of priests and archers the 2nd promotions were never at parity with each other:

Spoiler

Champion can be done ahead of time, but if you don't then you have to burn time waiting on the arena. Black Knight is still hilariously easy.
Master Archer and Sniper being overtuned is on par with vanilla... except in Vanilla you were all but outright told to go in invisibly if you took dark path, which simply doesn't work for Elemental Sniper to begin with, and on higher difficulties this now no longer works for Master Archer. But you can just buy GM Immutability and Day of Protection scrolls now so it's a lot less dangerous on the whole to actually fight your way through the titans and dragons.
Hero is still best done later since it's enforced combat, while with Villain you can just commit to the TPK and get it done early.
Spy still sucks, and I'm going to have to bring in GM Identify Monster to confirm a few things but I get the feeling that it's actually harder now in Elemental than in vanilla, between the changes to Invis and to Earth spells. Assassin meanwhile becomes an absolute joke if you do it before anything else, thanks to the twilight period itself (while you can commit to the TPK, I'm going to play around with this one - somehow I get the strange feeling that this is going to behave like a certain other quest).
Ranger Lord and Bounty Hunter aren't actually affected by Elemental Mod in and of itself (though I would love for these to become sidequests if you pick the other path, as not having to kill Trees ever is a nice bonus and Bounty Hunter gets you used to doing Ranger things). Bounty Hunter also can be completed ahead of time, and you will expire the twilight period if you didn't.
Master Monk is made more difficult by the change to Shrapmetal, but melee combat generally was buffed thanks to the addition of Spectral Weapon. Completing Ninja correctly can now be done with sufficient preparation, thanks to Permanence, and there's another quest that sends you there anyway so now you May As Well Do It (but you're still not actually required to obtain the Scroll of Waves if you already know the solution)
Priest of the Light/Dark is mostly unchanged, though Priest of the Light is technically harder now than it was before due to the change to Shrapmetal.
Wizard/Lich is actually easier now, since you can get into the opposing fraternity's hazing grounds unmolested now.
Arch Druid is still easy as long as you've been exploring properly, and Warlock is still (at least numerically) the hardest promotion in the game (see the previous discussion on the changes to the Eofol tunnels)

re: the elf-human war: I'm just glad I can still grab Loren/the plans ahead of time.