I was sitting there thinking "Someone should make a mod for this game where you can just fight waves of enemies. It should let you get new weapons and use skill points and stuff inbetween waves. Include every enemy in the game, harder ones at later waves. That would be sick" then I thought "I'm just gonna Google Dark Messiah Mods and see if this game even has a modding scene at all"... and there it is. Your mod. Uploaded super recently, too. Everything I was thinking, verbatim. Holy shit. Thank you, I am going to binge this tonight and let you know what I think
Thank you. This mod is the standalone of the arena mode of my other mod, Dark messiah map extended. I uploaded it recently as stand alone. The original mod is few years old.
1) MITIGATING CRASHES The Arena tends to crash when loading a save that is at around the round-25 mark or beyond. It isn't guaranteed but usually does, meaning if you die or the game crashes, all saves are corrupted and you must start a new run. The warrior/archer builds seem to crash the least, and a mage build (especially with use of the soul reaver mana draining staff) seems to crash the most. Seems most crashes are tied to magic use, so buying a Menelag or wizard or Leanna to help you in battle may also raise crashing likelihood drastically.
2) SPRINT ATTACK STOPS WORKING Thanks to vanilla Dark Messiah bugginess, sometimes your power strike (sprinting + charged attack) can glitch and not execute when it should have (especially with sword and shield). If you get this bug, simply grab onto a ledge somewhere in the shop and have Sareth vault himself up onto it. This resets the player state somehow and makes the sprint + power-attack ability function again.
3) FAULTY RECYCLING Some items do not give their coins back when recycled, such as bows and certain shields. Always save before throwing something away or buying something. You never know if it'll be a reversible decision or not. Though, given issue 1 listed above, this should be done sooner rather than later. Try to settle on a build you want early on. Once you pass that invisible threshold where all saves begin auto-crashing-to-desktop when loaded, you're officially playing hardcore whether you like it or not.
4) UNNOTED INSANE DIFFICULTY DETAIL Insane is the only difficulty where you DO NOT receive an auto-heal and full mana replenishing at the end of each round, meaning you must spend coins to replenish yourself instead via the replenish upgrade directly behind you when you teleport home after a round. It is not a bug, it's just present to make you prove you're an epic gamer.
5) CYCLOPS ARE ADRENALINE FARMS When a cyclops has its eye stabbed, it can be attacked for the entire duration of its dying animation before it ragdolls. During this time, it provides TONS of adrenaline, so whenever you stab a cyclops, quickly do a jump-attack and hit him in his thighs before he ragdolls to gain what is usually a full adrenaline rush from a single hit (depending on weapon damage, of course).
6) OP NAGA SWORDS The naga sword you can buy for 7 coins actually has faster attack speeds across the board, which to my understanding is just vanilla Dark Messiah combat mechanics, meaning even a sprinting shield+power-attack is performed much more quickly, which can have significant differences in combat as npcs tend to go flying if they receive a large chunk of damage too quickly before ragdolling. The superior naga sword, while it does not share the same attack speed increase as its lower tier, has been given a ridiculous damage buff because wc3neverdies is a massive goober, so he made the superior naga sword do literally the same base damage as the dragonclaw sword, despite dragonclaw being 45 coins and superior naga being just 12. This means naga swords are your meta as a warrior build to quickly begin farming coins thanks to the huge bang for very little buck provided by naga swords.
7) ALTERED HEALING/SANCTUARY SPELLS The healing spell now requires 15 mana to perform, so if you have nothing invested in mage skills, you can only heal yourself one single time in a round. The sanctuary shield spell has been significantly nerfed. It now lasts just 5 seconds, and costs 60 mana to cast, meaning even at the max 130 mana, you can only cast it twice without accruing more mana mid-combat somehow. These changes apply for the entire game, so the single-player campaign also has these new spell balance changes as well.
8) PLAYER UPGRADES RESET ON RESTART Certain upgrades in the secret shop modify console variables in order to provide their functionality. However, if the game restarts due to a crash or a different play session and that savegame is loaded up, those console variables will be reset to their defaults and will need to either be manually set back to what their upgrades should be, or the next level for that upgrade will need to be purchased to set it correctly.
Mana regen upgrade uses "mm_player_time_to_add_mana" and reduces it by 0.1 each purchase. kick reduction upgrade uses "mm_player_stamina_needed_for_kick" and reduces it by 0.25 each purchase sprint stamina reduction upgrade is currently non-functional but is supposed to use "mm_player_stamina_megasprint_cost_per_second" and reduce it by 0.20 each purchase gravity reduction upgrade uses "sv_gravity" and reduces it by 20 each purchase and adrenaline drain reduction upgrade uses "mm_player_time_to_remove_adrenaline" and raises it by 10 each purchase
You can check and figure out how many purchases of a single upgrade you have already bought by looking at the upgrades roster just right of the arena entrance at main spawn, though, be aware, it doesn't exactly display everything correctly, such as adrenaline and gravity% upgrades. You'll have to know how much they each go up by for each purchase to know how many were purchased at a glance.
6 comments
1) MITIGATING CRASHES
The Arena tends to crash when loading a save that is at around the round-25 mark or beyond. It isn't guaranteed but usually does, meaning if you die or the game crashes, all saves are corrupted and you must start a new run. The warrior/archer builds seem to crash the least, and a mage build (especially with use of the soul reaver mana draining staff) seems to crash the most. Seems most crashes are tied to magic use, so buying a Menelag or wizard or Leanna to help you in battle may also raise crashing likelihood drastically.
2) SPRINT ATTACK STOPS WORKING
Thanks to vanilla Dark Messiah bugginess, sometimes your power strike (sprinting + charged attack) can glitch and not execute when it should have (especially with sword and shield). If you get this bug, simply grab onto a ledge somewhere in the shop and have Sareth vault himself up onto it. This resets the player state somehow and makes the sprint + power-attack ability function again.
3) FAULTY RECYCLING
Some items do not give their coins back when recycled, such as bows and certain shields. Always save before throwing something away or buying something. You never know if it'll be a reversible decision or not. Though, given issue 1 listed above, this should be done sooner rather than later. Try to settle on a build you want early on. Once you pass that invisible threshold where all saves begin auto-crashing-to-desktop when loaded, you're officially playing hardcore whether you like it or not.
4) UNNOTED INSANE DIFFICULTY DETAIL
Insane is the only difficulty where you DO NOT receive an auto-heal and full mana replenishing at the end of each round, meaning you must spend coins to replenish yourself instead via the replenish upgrade directly behind you when you teleport home after a round. It is not a bug, it's just present to make you prove you're an epic gamer.
5) CYCLOPS ARE ADRENALINE FARMS
When a cyclops has its eye stabbed, it can be attacked for the entire duration of its dying animation before it ragdolls. During this time, it provides TONS of adrenaline, so whenever you stab a cyclops, quickly do a jump-attack and hit him in his thighs before he ragdolls to gain what is usually a full adrenaline rush from a single hit (depending on weapon damage, of course).
6) OP NAGA SWORDS
The naga sword you can buy for 7 coins actually has faster attack speeds across the board, which to my understanding is just vanilla Dark Messiah combat mechanics, meaning even a sprinting shield+power-attack is performed much more quickly, which can have significant differences in combat as npcs tend to go flying if they receive a large chunk of damage too quickly before ragdolling.
The superior naga sword, while it does not share the same attack speed increase as its lower tier, has been given a ridiculous damage buff because wc3neverdies is a massive goober, so he made the superior naga sword do literally the same base damage as the dragonclaw sword, despite dragonclaw being 45 coins and superior naga being just 12. This means naga swords are your meta as a warrior build to quickly begin farming coins thanks to the huge bang for very little buck provided by naga swords.
7) ALTERED HEALING/SANCTUARY SPELLS
The healing spell now requires 15 mana to perform, so if you have nothing invested in mage skills, you can only heal yourself one single time in a round.
The sanctuary shield spell has been significantly nerfed. It now lasts just 5 seconds, and costs 60 mana to cast, meaning even at the max 130 mana, you can only cast it twice without accruing more mana mid-combat somehow.
These changes apply for the entire game, so the single-player campaign also has these new spell balance changes as well.
8) PLAYER UPGRADES RESET ON RESTART
Certain upgrades in the secret shop modify console variables in order to provide their functionality. However, if the game restarts due to a crash or a different play session and that savegame is loaded up, those console variables will be reset to their defaults and will need to either be manually set back to what their upgrades should be, or the next level for that upgrade will need to be purchased to set it correctly.
Mana regen upgrade uses "mm_player_time_to_add_mana" and reduces it by 0.1 each purchase.
kick reduction upgrade uses "mm_player_stamina_needed_for_kick" and reduces it by 0.25 each purchase
sprint stamina reduction upgrade is currently non-functional but is supposed to use "mm_player_stamina_megasprint_cost_per_second" and reduce it by 0.20 each purchase
gravity reduction upgrade uses "sv_gravity" and reduces it by 20 each purchase
and adrenaline drain reduction upgrade uses "mm_player_time_to_remove_adrenaline" and raises it by 10 each purchase
You can check and figure out how many purchases of a single upgrade you have already bought by looking at the upgrades roster just right of the arena entrance at main spawn, though, be aware, it doesn't exactly display everything correctly, such as adrenaline and gravity% upgrades. You'll have to know how much they each go up by for each purchase to know how many were purchased at a glance.
Also I'll be sharing the .vmf inside the mod so people can open the map and make all the changes they want.
EDIT
Fixed the recycle, added the vmf