Arcanum Rebalance - Almost every spell, item, monster

Arcanum Equilibrium Rebalance Mod by Leonidusx v1.12

now available here on Terra-Arcanum (downloads->arcanum->main module expansions)

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/ ... xV1.12.zip

Easy to install! Just overwrite Arcanum data folder.

READ THE README! Because I changed almost everything

What my mod changed:

-Stats on over 500 weapons/armors/items (almost every single one)
-Stats on almost every spell
-15 spells replaced with new ones
-170 extra portraits
-Stats on almost every monster
-Important schematic changes so that good items require a special rare component, typically only found at certain parts in the game
-Follower level schemes so that they are more useful and effective
-Much, much more of course!

What my mod does:

-Makes combat actually challenging to your character at times. Some enemies are now powerful boss monsters.
-Balances combat by making as many styles viable and equal as possible (particularly magic, guns, fighter, bows, thrower, tech)
-Balances follower favoritism by making even useless followers decent. I've won games with Jayna, Weldo, Jormund, etc.
-Removes overpowered abilities or features, such as most stun/paralyze effects
-Adds purpose to previously useless things. Fancy clothes give a charisma bonus, for example.

-Overall it makes people's character build decisions actually matter. In regular Arcanum, it's all easy as hell no matter what you do. With this mod, how you develop your character determines what is harder and what is easier as you complete the game.


What my mod doesn't do:

-Absolutely everything I wanted it to. Arcanum has almost no modding information generally available, so some things could not be changed, like many cursed items or backstab damage.

500+ items changed though, not too shabby.

Enjoy!

AND READ THE README!





(or just suffer, whatever)

 

After trying out this couple of times I can say it's quite good, but the downside is that certain parts don't work well with real time. While I personally prefer turn-based in most games, I believe Arcanum's real time has actually it's uses especially when playing as gunslinger. Also disabled items oddly enough seem to work. I don't know if I did something wrong, but I can still use fatigue potions and all that.

+Magic system (harm balanced, OP-spells removed, meditation for fatigue etc.)
+/-More damage for guns (seems bit too much sometimes though, some of it's way too off-scale, even in TB)
+Melee weapon balancing seems to be fine to me, although I haven't tried it out much yet
+Throwing is cleverly balanced towards melee
+Machine guns are pretty cleverly balanced too
+Armor balancing
-Tesla Gun doing more normal damage than ED kinda makes it bit useless (many weapons that seem to surpass it in speed/damage ratio exist)
-Flamethrower is still pretty useless
-Bromwyck's didn't get much love either
-Some weapons generally still suck (I'm not sure if you wanted to balance *everything*, but there is lot of stuff that didn't get much love)
-Disabled items still work
-Not optimized for real time at all
-Bows are very bad compared to other ranged weapons (in RT some of them become machine guns though)
-Pyrotechnic gun has way too much fire damage compared to anything else

Overall, I'd say this is the best "combat mod" there currently is (not much competition though) and pretty much what inspired me to work something similiar, but that is still extremely WIP although there is early beta-version with prototype and sound changes. I enjoyed playing your mod greatly, but I still think it's bit biased towards guns even if you play TB-only.

 

Thanks for the words, and glad you liked the changes.

The most troubling thing on your post is that some disabled items still work. No one else has had that issue so far, and since you mess with game files yourself, it might be related to your own modding work? The fatigue potions should say 'You feel no effect' or something similar, while the FT restoring tech items should only give 1 FT if any. If anyone else is able to use them, let me know. The only recommendation I can think of is reapply the spellist.mes file freshly from the zip to overwrite your current one, or even do a new separate install, reapply the mod, and move over your saves.

There's a lot of good news on your few minor misgivings too. Going to go through them each one by one.

Gun damage is generally the same as good melee damage (20STR etc), the only real exception being the higher level guns later on are about 1 DPS better than the best legit melee weapons. (8 dps opposed to 7)

Tesla gun doesn't have much elec damage because nothing has much elec damage. Elec resist is the rarest for enemies to have, so it's much more armor piercing and valuable. Tesla gun's overall dps is one of the best in the game of all weapons (top 5) and it is exactly matched with the Droch Warbringer, both of which are only available from Vendigroth.

Flamethrower does average damage (6dps) but a lot of it is fire, which is worth more than physical because FR is rarer than DR. This makes it quite good, not to mention you can get it extremely early (BMC). Because it is available early, its dps is not off the charts, but just quite good.

Same goes for Bromwyck, it has quite good dps in fire and er, and its available early (Isle of Despair) so it's not extreme.

The only weapons that still suck are ones meant to be bad, like rusty sword, old guns, that kind of thing. I think the actual tesla rod underperforms, but that's it.

Balancing towards real time would require all weapon speeds to be nearly the same, extremely low, especially because of how max damage for melee works. This limits weapon choice, and so I balanced for turn based.

Bow damage doubles with training, which is why their basic untrained dps is bad. The arcane bow is actually one of the best legit weapons in the game (9dps) because there are so few options for bowmen I just felt bad for them and had to give them something to look forward to.

Pyro gun is available only after Vendigroth, making it the last fire gun in the game, so it is the best fire gun in the game. Dps still slightly less than Droch's or Tesla Gun, but higher range.

If anyone is ever unsure about the damage coming out of weapons in my mod, just refer to the documentation. There's extremely detailed excel sheets for this stuff. The middle blue column shows DPS for a trained character.

I spent a lot of time really making sure everything was as balanced as I could make it, and that it all compares very well to the other options, so that no weapon or style has a real absolute advantage in combat. The best thing about Arcanum is that you can play however you want to, and it was my goal to extend that into the combat of the game.

Once again, keep in mind there are some things I couldn't change (like anything not on the weapon dps chart in excel and any of the purple colored weapons on the excel chart). Staff of xoranth, bangelian scourge, isle of despair weapons, iron clan hammer are still too good, for example. The few guns I couldn't change are probably going to vastly underperform (Clarington rifle, quality revolver, hushed revolver/pistol). Backstab damage is still extremely unbalanced. I can't stop you from using these, so you all have to use your own judgement.

Again thanks a lot for the feedback, glad you liked the mod, and if anyone else can use disabled items such as fatigue potions please let me know asap.

 

Re:

It is a clean install in a different directory, but the fact that I use it with AWIP it might cause the problem. I installed AWIP first and then your mod (overwriting files ofcourse), so I find it hard to believe that could be causing it. Then again it's possible something strange happened during the process and I messed up. I wasn't too bothered about it, so haven't tried reinstalling.

 

Okay so I've played this mod (up to Tulla so I've seen a lot of what the mod has to offer) and its good. Not perfect but a hell of a lot better vanilla if you've beaten the game for the nth time. See as fun as Arcanum is its always be plague by balance issues strictly in combat. In Arcanum you have health and fatigue (your mana). When you run out of fatigue you pass out and people beat you in your sleep. Spells cost fatigue, running/chasing enemies uses small amounts of fatigue and getting hit drains fatigue. So imagine you casters using up all their magic and then passing out and being useless for the rest of the battle. It was a cool idea but it was probably not thought out very well. This is just one of the many issue that I believe Leonidus corrected.

Since Arcanum was released this is the third mod that aimed to fix the games difficulty because frankly its very easy. Early game before level 20 there are some challenging encounters but after level 30 you'll notice enemies haven't really scaled to match your more powerful characters and you continue to level at a fairly fast pace which is fun (leveling is fun) but easy enemies are not at least in my imo. I mean the final boss is a joke and so are most enemies that npcs just told you were vicious as hell. So this mod fixes that too. I must say I'm sad I wasn't strong enough to kill the Stillwater Giant. If I knew how beastly it would be I would have prepared better. Oh and your buddies will die; its okay. Resurrection items are cheaper and you should stock up because theres some pretty intense boss-type fights that will steamroll your team if your not careful. Thats another thing; difficulty wasn't amp-ted up by just giving enemies a boatload of health. Enemies hit hard now too and that was the main problem with animal/monster type enemies. They sucked compared to your sword wielding followers.

Lets just say melee combat was overpowered before and everything else kinda sucked. Any character with 20+ strength could possibly do 10-20 more damage per swing that a character using a different method or maybe didn't have 20 strength. This is what made ogres so scary because they max out strength around 24-26. Well thats changed in this mod. Strength bonuses are the same but weapons were adjusted in damage and speed to compensate it. Now guns rock early game and even out later.

So like I said earlier there was two other mods before this that tried to address the difficulty problems in the game. The first was Car Arcanum which was fun but when I played it there was a bug in combat that prevents enemies/followers from taking damage when i was standing more than 5 feet away from a fight (like let say I was using a gun or a bow. I played that mod a lot by the way too. Got near the end I think and never found that damn car. Maybe it was in vendigroth. I'll say that that mod added some difficulty fights to the game but its used some of the cheap tricks that I complained about to make some of those fights more interesting. Honestly though the combat bug really took a lot out of it.

The other mod was called A: WIP or arcanum work in progress. I enjoyed this mod probably more than car arcanum but mod focused more on adding new content and stuff to kill over adding a challenge to the game. The best way to describe it is like when you get dlc that adds a bunch of new areas to your game for more gameplay hours. Other than that is doesn't really address the difficulty issues. Arcanum had a multiplayer module with its own town and dungeon to explore. A:WIP was able to incorporate that (vormantown) into the single player game which was pretty cool but in a way just allowed my character to be stronger when I progressed through an already easy game. Some of the new towns were cool like a hobbit shire type town but it didn't really feel like Arcanum anymore if that makes any sense. Both these mods are no longer worked on so if you ever played them you would feel they are incomplete.

So if I haven't made it clear by now This newest Arcanum Mod Rebalance actually does what it says and I feel blows the other two out of the water. There are currently a few items the author could not modify so these are considered op items. Sad cause I was liking some of those items tool; was wondering why they felt so strong lol. I've talked to the author and he thinks he might be able to modify the items he couldn't before so I got my fingers crossed cause that could be an updated version or a more complete version of the mod. Hes still around to work on the mod which the author of the other mods are not so thats a plus in my book.

The mod is designed for turn based combat and honestly I've always played this game in real time so it was an adjustment when I finally switched styles. Ranged weapons (or very fast weapons maybe) destroy in real time which will kill some of the challenge added to the game so I would recommend turn based. Real time also allow you to kite which will also make the game easier since enemies AI can still be pretty stupid. Also a number of items are changed. Light armor gives speed bonuses so imagine you gunslinging rogues kiting and out running enemies in real time. So I did find a bug with one of the new spell that was causing a crash to desktop. I believe it was the acid rain one. One vanilla bug in Arcanum is certain spell effect can be too much for any computer (freaking stupid really). I don't know if its a sound issue or the stupid rain animation that lags the game but its ends up crashing the game and some of your followers like to learn that spell. To avoid the crash hit spacebar a couple times to switch back and forth between realtime and turnbased and back again and this should cause your follower to deactivate the spell. Its kind of a weak spell anyway. I think casting it once in a battle is okay but the problem is you can cast it twice for a double stack effect that just sucks. Double the crashing fun.

So for anyone who is a fan of Arcanum and has been looking for a mod that addresses the lack of difficulty in the vanilla game I believe this is the mod for you. I was recently told there isn't much info on mod comparisons so I hope this helps. Thanks again for the mod.