Please see comments and discussion tabs for attribute discussion and to give your input. 07/22/11

***Updated for Awakening***
*** Now fully compatible with Personal Annoyance Remover***
*** Now partially compatible with Improved Atmosphere***
*** Now compatible with Spell Shaping (see Spell Shaping section below) ***
*** Now compatible with Auto Swap Quick Slot Bar ***

Introduction:

The purpose of Dragon Age: Overhaul is to tweak various things that annoyed me about Dragon Age: Origins. If you've ever wished there was more diversity among items, poison was more useful in later levels, stealth had a more active role in combat, or that Rogues and Warriors played more differently, this mod is for you. Basically, my goal is to create a more realistic, intuitive, challenging and rewarding gameplay experience.

Installation:

Simply extract everything into your DocumentsBioWareDragon Agepackagescoreoverride folder. Move cir000ip_fade_reward.ncs, cir000ip_magic_reward.ncs, and cir000ip_will_reward.ncs to Program FilesDragon Agemodulessingle playeroverride. To uninstall, simply delete all of these files.


Features:

The changes I've made mainly focus on items, skills/talents/spells, and combat rules/formulas. Basically, I've tried to make items more different from eachother, with clear advantages and disadvantages; made abilities in general more useful, especially those that seemed almost pointless in the original game; and changed some mechanics of combat that never really made sense to me (ie: Warriors achieving a higher dodge rating than Rogues, among others).


Items:

Items have seen a great deal of changes. Firstly, item damage has been somewhat reduced across the board. Secondly, more differentiation has been made for armor penetration and critical values among weapons. Additionally, attack and defense values now mean something for weapons and armor. Heavier armors have lower defense ratings, because obviously one can't move around as swiftly with so much weight. The amount of damage you do on a critical hit will now vary depending on the weapon you are using, as well. Finally, higher quality materials now have a larger effect on your equipment. Dragon Age takes place in a war-torn time and setting, and thus the quality of one's equipment is a very essential commodity. However, that also means that such fine craftsmanship is also more costly.


Skills:

Several skills have been tweaked, either directly or indirectly.

Poison has been made more useful with double the potency for early recipes, and even more for more advanced ones. I never felt poison was done justice in the original game. By the time you reached a decent level, as a Rogue your backstabs were doing about 99% of your damage compared to poisons, so they just weren't worth the investment. They still don't do huge damage, but it is enough now to give you an option against more heavily armored opponents (more on that later).

I have not done much with herbalism yet, but I felt it was pretty decent in the original game. If need be I may decide to improve some things similarly to what I did to poison.

Traps have been more indirectly improved. Because of changes I've made to combat mechanics, it is more essential than ever to flank, stunk, knock down, snare, or whatever you can to your opponents. Opponents who are knocked down or stunned will take more damage since they can't properly defend themselves. Snaring becomes more useful since some enemies are much more deadly than before, and thus should be kept at a distance as long as possible.

Survival has also been improved in general. Bonuses have been slightly improved, and I plan to give added bonuses like extra health or fatigue regen, or whatever else makes sense.


Talents/spells:

This area has probably seen the most change. Many almost useless skills (like deadly strike, redundant Warrior stances, etc) have been improved, and many others have been otherwise changed or improved. Basically, abilities that debuff armor, attack or defense ratings have been improved and made much more useful now that those stats mean much more. I've also changed some things that didn't make sense to me like Shield Wall increasing defense rating. Some remain, though with improved bonuses, while others have been changed to improve the armor rating instead.

Rogues have been changed in such a way to further promote the use of positioning, evasiveness and debuffs. Base defense has been slightly increased, and base health slightly decreased. The base damage of daggers has been reduced, while the damage of backstabs have been increased. This makes it more important to seek out favorable angles, and prevent enemy Rogues from doing the same. Relying on evasion, and sometimes fleeing is now more important with the increased damage and attack of higher grade weapons (this is meant to counteract people using the Rogue as an evasion tank toward end game). Backstabs do extra damage when used from stealth. Deadly Strike has been improved and can now backstab. Momentum's attack speed bonus has been slightly reduced, while the debuffing effects of skills like Cripple and Below the Belt have been increased. Several skills like Shattering Shot and Arrow of Slaying have had their cast times slightly reduced.

Warriors have been changed to further promote head on combat. They do more base damage and (with good armor) take less. Shields now decrease defense but add to armor. Several skills like Shield Wall now increase armor instead of defense with similar additional bonuses coming from Shield Mastery and Expertise. Skills like Taunt have had their potency increased. Generally, all Warriors (especially sword and shield types) will be more effective at taking damage and two handers should be doing more damage toward end game. It is now also much more important to have warriors playing their roles well as a simple thing like shield bashing an opponent to the ground at a key time can make a big difference, and skills like sunder armor may make the difference between doing 1 damage and 20 damage on heavily armored opponents.

Mages have been changed in a way that promotes greater strategy and care when it comes to choosing which spell at which time. Mage changes are discussed in greater detail further down this description.


Races/Classes:

Races now recieve the following starting bonuses:
Dwarf: Strength +3, Willpower +2, Constitution +3.
Elf: Dexterity +3, Cunning +2, Magic +3.
Human: Strength +2, Dexterity +1, Cunning +1, Willpower +1, Magic +1, Cunning +2.

Additionally, different races and classes now receive bonuses to damage, armor, attack and defense according to their race and class when they level up. What this does is give the player more options when they create a character, and keep their choices relevant toward end game. They can either use race and class bonuses to create a character as specialized as possible, or to balance the areas they are weaker in. You had the same option before, but the result was pretty much the same regardless of your race or class.

The changes are pretty logical across the board, and they apply to enemies, too:

Elves - More accurate and harder to hit, but less damaging and more fragile.
Dwarves - Not very accurate or evasive, but give good damage and are excellent at taking it.
Humans: Most well-balanced falling in between the two, though just slightly more similar to Dwarves.
Qunari: Similar to Dwarves, but slightly less resilient and more damaging.
Animals: Very quick, evasive, and accurate.
Beasts: Much like Animals, but slightly less accurate/evasive and more damaging/resilient.
Darkspawn: Essentially fall in between Elves and Humans.
Golems: Very damaging and resilient, though easier to hit and evade.
Spirits: Fairly evasive and magically damaging.
Undead: Somewhat slow, but fairly damaging and resilient.
Dragons: Very dangerous. Little slow, but accurate and very damaging/resilient.

These changes apply to all creatures, including party members and enemies. However, your party members will receive less of the bonuses if you do not make use of their skills.

This system is in an early stage, and I plan to expand on it by making many more changes to the way specializations scale, as well as some unique bonuses they will give. Please let me know any insights or balance concerns.


Specializations:

Every specialization has been hand tweaked in the interest of greater variety and specialization. Characters who choose different specializations will now find themselves more solidly distinguised from others in abilities, as well as play style. Like most of this mod, this is still a work in progress, and things are liable to change in future updates.

Assassin - Assassins are unmatched in their ability to fight dirty. They now gain bonuses to poison damage, debuff land rate, debuff duration, and effect duration. Exploit Weakness has also been tweaked to allow for higher bonuses when working with higher damage toward end game.
Cunning +7, Melee Critical Chance +3.

Bard - Bards are strong-willed, master manipulators. They now gain bonuses to Persuade and Lockpicking checks, as well as increases in Cunning, Willpower and Mental Resistance. Additionally, Bards now have a chance to appear entirely unthreatening to all foes around them while using Captivate.
Cunning + 3, Willpower + 3, Mental Resistance + 15.

Duelist - Duelists are masters of lightly-armored, one-on-one combat. When in dueling mode, Duelists now gain better bonuses, as well as improved effects for several other skills. Because of how highly trained and well-conditioned Duelists are, they are also harder to hit.
Dexterity +7, Evasion +15%.

Ranger - Rangers are highly attuned to nature, and are skilled with bows and traps. They now receive a bonus to nature damage, have a slightly faster aim speed and higher optimum range with bows, receive bonuses to several bow skills, and gain bonuses to trap damage and duration.
Nature Resistance +20%, Ranged Critical Chance +3, Faster Aim.

Templar - Templars are bred and trained to be the ultimate in mage hunters. As such, their effectiveness against mages (particularly defensively) has been increased. Mental fortress now gains a higher bonus to mental resistance, and the base power of Holy Smite has been reduced, while the willpower modifier has been increased.
Willpower +7, Mental Resistance +20.

Reaver - Reavers are warriors that use demonic magic to accentuate their power. Devour and Aura of Pain now scale more aggressively to the Reaver's spellpower. The effect of Blood Frenzy now also increases with the Reaver's spellpower. The damage received by Aura of Pain is now proportionate to the Reaver's health.
Magic +7, Spirit damage +20%, Spirit resistance +20%.

Berserker - Berserkers are vicious fighters who put everything into their power. Berserk's damage bonus is now proportionate to the Berserker's damage, and the stamina penalty has been increased, while an attack penalty now occurs. Resilience adds more health regeneration and nature resistance than before, and now also adds to physical resistance and health. Constraint now relieves most of the attack and stamina penalties of Rage.
Strength +7, Health +50, Health regeneration +5.

Champion - Champions are like the generals of the battlefield. They inspire allies and demoralize foes, and are very skilled at arms, particularly with a shield. Motivate now improves Rally more, and Superiority now adds bonuses to both Rally and War Cry. Superiority also adds passive bonuses to armor, physical resistance and stamina regeneration. The Champion also receives bonuses to many shield skills.
Constitution +7, Stamina regeneration +10, Physical Resistance +20.

Arcane Warrior - Arcane Warriors have been changed to allow for more scaling and more focus on either defensive or offensive stats. Combat Magic's attack and Shimmering Shield's armor boost now scale to the caster's cunning. Combat Magic's defense, Shimmering Shield's elemental bonuses and Fade Shroud's evasion bonuses now scale to the caster's willpower. Aura of Might now adds passive bonuses to attack, melee crit and physical resistance. Fade shroud adds passive bonuses to spellpower and mana regen.
Dexterity +7, Attack speed +20%, Physical Resistance +10.

Blood Mage - Blood Mages have not changed much, as I felt they were well represented. However, their spells now scale more aggressively as per the Mage Overhaul. The cap on Blood Sacrifice has been raised, and they now gain bonuses to many debuffing spells. Because they are adept at controlling the minds of others, they also now gain a boost to mental resistance.
Constitution + 5, Cunning + 3, Mental Resistance + 20.

Shapeshifter - Shapeshifter forms now scale more appropriately to the creatures they represent. With Master Shapeshifter, these stats increase considerably. Their skills have also been improved. Poison spit now scales to the caster's spellpower/dexterity, and Rage now scales to the caster's spellpower/strength. The effect of Stinging Swarm now scales more aggressively to the caster's spellpower. They now also gain bonuses to nature resistance and damage.
Magic +7, Nature Resistance +25%, Nature Damage +25%.

Spirit Healer - Spirit Healers now have their spells scale to their willpower, and more aggressively. Healing magic is now considered spirit magic, and Spirit Healers gain the ability to use it as an offensive weapon on undead. Because of their attunement to spirit magic, they have an increased affinity to heals, and gain bonuses to spirit resistance and damage. Lifeward now also increases the target's healing factor.
Willpower +7, Healing Factor +50%, Spirit Resistance/Damage +25%.




New damage formula:

I was always unsatisfied with the damage formula in vanilla DA. When combined with my changes to classes, I felt it allowed an unfair advantage to Rogue classes. To elaborate, my changes involved increasing critical damage modifier, and lowering critical rates across the board. Therefore, backstabs were much more useful. With the old damage formula, the difference between armor and armor penetration was simply subtracted from damage. Heres an example:

Lets say you are a Rogue, with base damage of 7.0 and armor penetration of 6. Your target is a soldier outside the Arl of Denerim's Palace in the City Elf Origin with 12 armor. With the old formula, you'd end up with 7-(12-6) = 1 damage. Now on a backstab you'd have (7*3) - (12-6) = 15 damage. That's a huge difference which is very significant when you consider the fact that a Rogue will see many more criticals than other classes.

The new formula instead divides armor by armor penetration, and then divides base damage by that quotient. Heres the same example. 7 / (12/6) = 3.5 damage. On a backstab its (7*3)/(12/6) = 10.5 damage. As you can see, armor mitigation now applies in a much more uniform way, which prevents all the 1 damages you were probably seeing before, using a class that doesn't get many criticals.

What this means is that changes in armor and armor penetration now have a much more significant effect on damage and will continue to do so in later levels than it did before. It also means that I've had to change the way all armor buffing or debuffing skills work to increase or decrease by percent, instead of static values.

It's taken a lot of tweaking, but all in all I personally find my system to be vastly superior to the original. I hope you'll feel the same way.



Attribute changes:

I have tweaked several attributes from their original functions. My goal was to accomplish two things: create logical effects from these attributes that I felt were missing from the original game, and make more attributes useful to more classes. I have seen similar things done in other mods, but I didn't like the changes because they mostly seemed to be in the interest of convenience. For example, having constitution affect the amount of health gained from poultices in place of magic. This is convenient, sure, but does it make sense? What does constitution have to do with that? Also, it makes it possible for warriors to gain yet another benefit from a stat they would normally pump anyway, instead of making them choose and have more options with developing their character. Because of this, every character is built pretty much the same way because its the most efficient way. These are the things I want to avoid. Like I said, my goals are logic and variety. Not convenience.

Currently, Willpower adds twice the mana/stamina and twice the mental resistance it did before, as well as adding to mana/stamina regeneration. It also affects spell duration for mages. Strength decreases a character's fatigue, allowing them to exert themselves for longer, and in heavier armor. Constitution adds twice the health it did before, as well as adding to health regeneration, and slightly to resilience (armor). Dexterity now affects cooldown for fighters, and Cunning does the same for mages. Cunning is also now the attribute that determines whether a debuff type of spell lands on a target, and is measured against the target's mental resistance to determine how much damage is done by spells.

I am very much open to suggestions with this. I'd like to make more attributes useful to more classes in ways that are logical. Input is welcomed.


Mage Overhaul:

I sought to make Mages more alike to how they are in more traditional RPGs. I wanted to make their use potentially more deadly, but also more strategic. As such, the majority of spells now have longer cooldowns and higher costs. Many also have longer cast times. However, they also scale higher to the caster's spellpower. These changes should make the mage use more strategy and timing when using certain spells. Much like traditional RPGs, mages will now start out feeling a little weak, but will quickly become much more powerful.

Many changes have been made to attributes and the way they affect mages. Willpower has a greater affect on mana, mana regeneration, and now also affects spell duration. Cunning affects spell cooldown and acts similarly to the way armor penetration does to mental resistance. The Spell Focus tree has also been introduced, which allows mages to specialize in a certain type of magic. Spells in these trees allow the mage to make more use of their favored attributes, as well as gain several bonuses to their chosen magic. This allows people to specialize further if they wish, at the appropriate cost of losing effectiveness in the other spell types.

Modal spells have been tweaked in a few ways. Firstly, spells that previously only affected your party (ie: Flaming Weapons, Haste, etc) now affect everything, friend or foe, within the spell's radius - which is now significantly smaller than it was. This increases the need to strategize the use of these spells as the mage using them will have to come perilously close to the battle to bestow their benefits on your allies, and minimize the amount of enemies who receive the benefits, as well. Secondly, the fatigue penalty of most of these spells has been significantly increased. These spells are quite powerful and don't come cheap.

Finally, an effort has been made to make branches in magic schools more different from eachother. For example, the Primal school of magic now has several things setting its branches apart. The fire branch is generally the most damaging, but spells have longer cast times and some enemies are resistant to fire. Cold magic is not as damaging as fire, but has the added benefit of a chance to freeze and/or slow enemies. Lightning magic is less damaging than either, but casts faster and sees few enemies who are resistant. Finally, earth magic uses the physical forces of earth to do its damage and therefore is unaffected by a target's mental resistance making it a good choice to use on enemies like Templars.

Please note that all of these changes are experimental and a work in progress. I am interested in feedback on these changes.



Spell Shaping:

Can be found here. It is recommended that you play with this mod, as several changes have been made with its functionality in mind. Namely, the increase in friendly (or unfriendly) fire. Several tweaks and improvements have also been made to it. Beneficial spells affecting hostile targets are now negated by this skill, and damage negation now also applies to damage dealt over time. However, a compatibility patch is required, which can be found in the file section here. Simply extract the file to the directory your Spell Shaping folder is in (probably My DocumentsBiowareDragon AgeAddIns) and overwrite everything when prompted.


Creature scaling:

More changes have been made to the way creatures are scaled. Many of the changes had to be made to accomodate the new damage formula. As a result, I've had to spend a lot of time tweaking the amount of armor and armor penetration non-humanoids who don't use weapons or armor have in certain level ranges. I have grouped them in categories as follows:

Smaller, faster creatures like dogs, wolves, spiders etc will have slightly higher damage mitigation than humanoids in light armor to start, dropping off toward end game when higher quality armors come into play. However, because of their speed and agility these creatures will be difficult to hit. Because of their small size and quick attacks, they see more critical hits, but do not penetrate armor well.

Mabaris, werewolves and some demons fall in this category. These creatures scale similarly to the faster creatures, but around medium armor instead of light. Likewise, they also taper off compared to higher quality armors toward end game. They won't be as quick or hard to hit, but will typically do more damage. They do not crit as much as smaller creatures, but because of their larger size they penetrate armor more.

Finally, large creatures like bears, sylvans and golems will scale in much the same way around heavy armor (bears will be slightly under, golems slightly over, and others like sylvans in between). Because of their huge size, they do not attack as quickly, are easier to avoid and easier to hit. However, they penetrate armor well and can do massive damage.


Be warned:

Many of the changes in this mod make the game more challenging. For some (like me), this is a good thing. If you do not want more challenge, you may want to play on a difficulty setting lower than before. Also, because of so many additional functions and checks, this mod does have a small impact on performance. How much? Hard to say. I notice a small hit, but my system is also very dated. Those with mid to high-end systems probably won't notice any change at all.


Future plans:

Additional spells are in the works for existing spell schools with the intention of rounding them out a bit more. When this is done, I may look at fighter classes and do similarly for them. I also plan on adjusting enemy AI and ability tables, so that they will also possess these skills. When that's done, I'm thinking of looking at item scaling and possibly removing it for the most part (requiring you to fight for the higher quality materials) and adding more unique, lore-friendly items.


Compatibility:

Currently compatible with Awakening and Personal Annoyance Remover. Anything that changes race, class, skill or item stats is not likely to be compatible. If you have a request for compatibility, I can try to contact the author of the other mod to achieve that.


Notes on 1.2:

First of all, sorry for the long wait. The wait was a combination of countless issues in developing key features, my inexperience as a modder, and my lack of free time between classes and other commitments. Anyway, there are a few key features I felt it necessarry to elaborate on in this update. Also, and to my utter shame, this update is still incomplete and so I will also note several currently known issues.

First on the list is the new spell trees. They are pretty much complete, with the few issues being possible need of balance, and some incomplete descriptions/tooltips. As for the former, if there are any questions or concerns, please let me know. The reason for the latter is that the computer I have all of my string work on recently crashed for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to revive it. I could just start anew on this system, but it would be a lot of work to replace and I don't want to give up on the old system because there are a lot of other valuable things still on it, as well. If I can't find a way to fix it, I'll have to start anew.

The second known issue is a bit more concerning and frustrating. When playing, I noticed Alistair mysteriously wracked up 1,000 armor. I reset his armor, then watched his behavior in fights for a while. I have his tactics set to apply shield wall the majority of the time, and I noticed that sometimes it would switch off then immediately switch back on and the bonus would stack. Eventually, this would lead to the 1,000 armor he ended up with. However, I have not been able to duplicate this while playing manually, and so I have not been able to figure out what is causing the problem. I had no choice but to release with this issue, hoping that maybe some of you can figure out what is causing it. All I know is that it seems to involve Shield Wall.

Now on to critical backstabs. To me, this made sense from both a logical stand point, as well as gameplay. I see a backstab as being an unseen attack to an unsuspecting opponent. That is the reason for the increased damage. However, that is not the same as a critical hit, which I consider to be an attack that catches the opponent in a very vulnerable place. Unfortunately, the game makes it impossible to do both at the same time, which I see as illogical, as well as unfortunate since it makes critical chance largely useless to Rogues - the class it should really benefit the most. To avoid any balance issues, this was the main reason for decreasing Rogue critical damage bonus, as well as critical chance of characters and weapons, and bonus from flanking.

Poisons were also a logic issue to me. First of all, when I think poison, I think damage done over a period of time. Secondly, this only makes sense for a short period of time, as the poison you coated your blade in will surely be gone after you've made a few slices with it. As a result, the poison now effects your weapon for a short time, during which anyone you strike with it will suffer much more damage than before, but over a longer period of time. I've also made this possible with bows, but because of the short duration, you will likely only get one shot off with the effect (another logic issue, its the arrow that is coated not the bow, and the arrow is gone after you fire it). As you become more skilled and work with higher quality poisons, they will move through the body more quickly, thus dealing more damage in a shorter amount of time.

As always, any ideas and/or comments/suggestions are welcome. Another change in this update is the separation of optional patches. While I probably should have done this before, it was because of requests that I did it. Do not be afraid to make a sensible request. Fortunately, these particular optional changes should not be difficult to maintain.



Credits:

- Bioware, for the fantastic game and toolset.
- goner12, for concepts and icons.
- tinman06, for concepts and additional work.


Updates:

Version 1.3b:

- Adjusted attribute requirements of several items.
- Slightly reduced aggressiveness of attribute requirement material scaling.
- Updated difficulty settings for Flash's Rescaling compatibility.
- Increased ranks of several friendly characters in the Redcliffe night battle.

For IA compatibility, copy the files in the IA folder to your Improved Atmosphere/Modules/Characters folder and overwrite.

Version 1.3a:

- Added compatibility for Improved Atmosphere and Flash's Creature Rescale. Follow directions carefully.
- Reduced the armor penetration bonus from Cunning.
- Slightly increased damage of several spells, especially fire spells from Primal tree.
- Reworked weapon and race/class scaling. Weapons now start off with higher damage and much less scaling. You should do more damage in the early game and less toward the end game.
- Rebalanced bows. Damage of all bows have been significantly increased, while aim time has also been increased. Crossbows now have the highest base damage and armor penetration, but are slowest and have shorter effective range.
- The draw time of bows is now affected by the aim speed.
- Bows can now backstab, but at half the regular backstab damage bonus.
- Rapid Shot's scaling has been reduced. This was an unintentional bug.
- The attack speed penalty of Aim has been reduced.
- The aim speed bonus of Ranger specialization has been cut in half.
- Tooltips updated for Ranger and Arcane Warrior specializations.
- Fixed a bug with Lethality not calculating damage properly. Lethality now scales to 60% of Strength's bonus.

For IA and FCR compatibility: There is a zFCR compatibility folder in the main mod folder. Simply copy that file into the Overhaul folder. For IA, install the mod then delete Bodies Stay folder from inside Extras folder, and delete all but the Flash Creature Rescale folder from inside Compatibility folder. (Icons and Ser Gilmore folders might work, but haven't tested them). Follow the directions in each folder. That should be all. However, keep in mind that when using the Items folder from IA you may encounter balance issues.

Version 1.3:

- Fixed several bugs from previous version.
- Removed unintentional Spell Shaping dependency.
- Attributes have been tweaked further. Tooltips updated to reflect changes.
- Specialization tooltips updated.
- Further tweaked race and class bonuses. Tooltips also updated.
- Each race now differs slightly in movement speed during combat.
- Made some changes to item stats and scaling.
- Made bows slightly faster and more damaging.
- Combat speed in general has been slightly increased, with the largest increase being for two handed weapon styles.
- Further differentiated combat speed of each weapon within each weapon style.
- Health and lyrium potions now give healing over time instead of an instant heal.
- All spells now share a global cooldown. The cooldown for each spell depends on the tier of that spell as well as the cooldown of the spell last used. These cooldown times are affected by willpower.
- Spells can now crit. Crit chance is based on cunning.
- Slightly increased damage of several spells and decreased cooldowns across the board.
- Made changes to speed up a few animations and make combat a little more smooth in general.
- Attribute requirements for gear have been slightly increased.
- Each class now receives skill points less frequently.

Known bug: Often when you first recruit a new companion they will show up ready to level with an attribute point to spend. My best guess is it's a side effect of race and class attribute changes. It's pretty harmless.

Version 1.2a:

- Fixed test settings for song of courage. Should now function normally.
- Increase all attributes item stat should now work properly.
- Slightly decreased critical bonus of aim.
- Made backstab criticals half as common.
- Slightly decreased mephitic haze base power.
- Decreased scaling effect of Degradation spell line.
- Doubled potency of all elemental damage type runes. Cost also appropriately adjusted.
- Re-uploaded spell shaping patch. Unsure whether this will resolve issues, it is only a test. WARNING: I highly suggest you have a backup save game in case spell shaping causes issues (possible issues would be stats stacking permanently either positively or negatively).
- Re-organized all files into a single folder for cleaner (un)installation.

Version 1.2:

- Fixed issue with attribute bonuses from gear not applying.
- Introduced poison and nature spell trees. Credit to goner12 for concepts and graphical icons.
- Introduced new spell combinations involving the new spell trees. Some have codex entries, while others do not (yet).
- Fixed various issues with Spell Shaping.
- Constitution now grants a bonus to hp regen and stamina regen, as well as bonuses to nature and electric resistances.
- Willpower now grants a bonus to fire, cold and spirit resistances.
- Dexterity now grants a small bonus to critical chance.
- Cunning now grants a small bonus to critical damage.
- Rogue critical damage bonus has been decreased to 30% (from 50).
- All weapons have had their critical chance slightly decreased.
- Player now starts with 0 base critical chance instead of 1.
- Critical chance bonus from flanking has been reduced.
- Bows have had their damage slightly increased, speed slightly decreased, and critical power increased.
- Reworked poisons. They now have a very short duration on your weapon, and now do damage over time instead of a bonus to every hit. They may now also be applied to bows. More details above.
- It is now possible to have a critical hit on a backstab. More details above.
- Added separate download patches for Auto Swap Quickslot Bar, and for default hp gains with constitution (request).
- Upgraded Asala (Sten's sword) to a higher grade material more befitting it (request).

Version 1.1a:

- Fixed a bug preventing Spell Shaping skill from appearing with the Spell Shaping patch.
- Created an optional file for people who would rather play without Overhaul's additional friendly fire changes.
- Updated Spell Shaping skill descriptions to reflect Overhaul functionality.

Version 1.1:

- Many changes to existing spells. Reverted all Willpower/Cunning related scaling changes. Notes on this above.
- Willpower now affects the duration of all spells.
- Cunning now affects the amount of spell damage done against a target's mental resistance and determines the chances of landing a debuff type spell.
- Beneficial spells can now affect nearby enemies and debuffing spells can now affect nearby allies if the user is not skilled or careful.
- Added Spell Focus ability tree. It is essentially a tree for mages who wish to specialize in a specific type of magic. Special thanks to goner12 for the concepts and icons.
- Added compatibility for Spell Shaping and Auto Swap Quick Slot Bar mods.
- Specialization rework: Bard.
- Increased the maximum amount of attack speed gained from bonuses.
- Increased the maximum amount a character's elemental resistances can be raised/lowered.
- Updated several in game descriptions.

Version 1.0b:

- Fixed bug with arcane warrior spec. Should now increase attack speed instead of decreasing it.
- Scaled Starmetal to be equal to Dragonbone.

Version 1.0a:

- Re-tweaked many cast times. Many are now instant cast again, while others have been otherwise slightly changed.
- Modal spells are back, however they still affect all targets within their radius. This radius is currently invisible, so you will have to be aware of the spell's range.
- Tweaked primal spell paths to be a little more different from eachother.
- Spells that deal physical damage (ie: Stonefist) are now unaffected by mental resistance.
- Death Cloud now prevents all targets in its radius from healing.
- Included the plot scripts that are needed for attribute bonuses from attribute points gained from the fade.
Note: None of these changes require a new game.

Version 1.0:

- Mage overhaul introduced. See details above.
- Mage specialization re-works. See specializations above.
- Modified several existing specialization bonuses.
- The new bonuses from attributes now apply to attributes granted by items, and plot (fade).
- +Healing effect now works properly.
- Slightly boosted the power of Holy Smite and Pain.
- The bonuses granted by Mabari Dominance are now relative to Dog's stats. Also, he now gains Dexterity instead of Strength.
- Lyrium pots now scale to the user's Willpower instead of Spellpower.

Version 0.9a:

- Fixed a bug that was causing poultices not to work.
- Cunning now affects the cooldown on items.

Version 0.9:

- Tweaked creature scaling, particularly by lowering the health of boss enemies.
- Tweaked various item stats and scale rates. Should now scale a little more evenly.
- Specialization reworks: Berserker, Champion, Reaver.
- Willpower now adds twice the mana/stamina and mental resistance as before. In addition, each point also increases mana/stamina regeneration.
- Constitution now adds twice the health and physical resistance as before. In addition, each point also increases health regeneration and armor by a small amount.
- Dexterity now affects the cooldown for fighter talents, and cunning does the same for mage spells.
- Doubled the cooldown on health and lyrium poultices.

Version 0.8b:

- Fixed a bug that was causing moving targets to be virtually impossible to hit. The penalty is now as it was intended.
- Adjusted attribute modifiers for two handed weapons and bows.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing sunder armor from applying its armor debuff.
- Changed the resistance for holy smite from physical to mental resistance.
- Re-tweaked some of the attack and defense scaling, particularly for higher ranked foes. Should now be much more reasonable.
- A few small optimizations.

Version 0.8a:

- Added compatibility for Improved Atmosphere. Please note that this mod is still NOT fully compatible with the No Bodies option, and not compatible at all with IA's difficulty tweak. If you do not use either of those features, you may use 0.8a with IA without issue.

Version 0.8:

- Fixed a bug that was causing critical and attack modifiers from items to be added twice.
- Adjusted base aim speed and damage of bows. Bows will be slower, but do more damage. The speed difference between shortbows and longbows should be a bit more noticeable, too.
- Bow aim speed now has an effect on the speed of archery skills.
- Dex now has a greater effect on how much damage an archer can take without being interrupted. Melee archer no longer grants immunity, but instead increases the dex modifier.
- Moving targets are now harder to hit, especially for bow users.
- Slightly decreased poison rank damage modifiers.
- Specialization rework: Templar.
- Implemented new damage formula. Details above.
- Mental resistance will now factor into spell damage.
- Re-adjusted armor and armor penetration values of all items to accomodate new formula. Adjustments to the ways non-humanoids scale, also. Details above.
- Willpower now affects how much damage a mage can take without having their spell interrupted.
- All characters, especially non-humanoids and tanks, will have more hp later in the game.

Version 0.7:

- Now completely compatible with Personal Annoyance Remover. Special thanks and credit to Rekicker for the assistance and permission.
- Reworked damage enchantments. These enchantments will now gain bonuses your regular damage would (ie: critical hits, etc).
- Changed the way the bonus damage stat works. It is now applied much earlier and will be more useful overall.
- Reworked poison system. Bonuses are now gained with skill ranks, and damage also scales to Cunning. However, poisons no longer stack with eachother.
- Implemented first three specialization re-works (see above). More to come (suggestions welcomed).

Version 0.6:
- Completely re-did the way races/classes scale. Now creates more differentiation and opens up a lot more options in character customization. Details above.
- Increased challenge of mobs, particularly Lieutenants and up.
- Modified the way attack and defense rates scale.
- Archers now gain a bonus to attack and optimum range when firing at an enemy on lower terrain.
TODO: Continue the trend of class differentiation into specializations and also in spellcasters. I have some ideas to make them a little more unique and 'special' than before.

Version 0.5:
- Fixed some oversights. Should now play nice with Awakening.

Version 0.4:
- Re-tweaked material progression to accomodate the two new tiers in Awakening.
- Awakening items are now scaled appropriately.
- Re-tweaked attack and defense ratings for many items. Two handed weapons will no longer have negative scores, just low ones.
- Slightly decreased shield bonuses.
- More tweaks to various class stats. It is now recommended to start a new game to experience all the changes.

Version 0.3:
- Tweaked shield armor/defense scores. Larger/heavier shields will now grant large bonuses to armor and smaller bonuses to defense. Smaller/lighter shields will do the opposite.
- Slightly increased armor penetration of mauls and decreased accuracy of mauls and battleaxes.
- Increased strength modifier for greatswords, mauls and battleaxes.
- Strength modifiers will now increase with higher quality equipment.
- Slightly increased the debuffing potency of Mabari howl and overpower.
- Slightly increased the debuffing potency of sunder weapon and armor.
- Significantly raised the caps of many stats like critical power, +% elemntal damage, resistances, and more (actually an old change, but I forgot to mention it).
- Slightly increased the potency and duration of mark of death. However, the effect now only increases the critical damage done to the target. (This always bothered me. How does a class that doesn't know anything about magic make things more vulnerable to it?)

Version 0.2:
- Slightly increased critical rate and armor penetration of longswords.
- Slightly decreased armor penetration of daggers.
- Increased damage and armor penetration of two handed weapons. Currently they all have the same attack rating. This may need to be changed.
- Dog now has higher defense and slightly higher health toward end game. This is to compensate for the fact that he can't wear armor and the higher tiers are so powerful. Its also logical; even a Rogue in flexible light armor will not be as agile as a well-bred and well-trained animal like a Mabari.