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About this mod
Adjusts nightmare difficulty damage to make gameplay footage look like cutscenes, except sometimes in these cutscenes your party gets wiped.
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Fast Action Real Damage - Nightmare Mod
The nightmare difficulty setting has been adjusted so that enemies have much less HP and deal much more damage - in a balanced way that is manageable if you pause often.
*note that since I adjust creatureranks.gda this will affect all difficulty settings - remove creatureranks if you want to play on vanilla casual, normal, or hard. - thanks to quiet_man for reminding me of this.
------------------------------
Mod Status:
Beta 0.12
Lieutenants, Bosses, and Elite Bosses should now do somewhat less damage but will also be harder to kill. Still calibrating, feedback welcome.
Optional files - FARD HardArmor
Added HardArmor version (changed in difficulty.gda, creatureranks is the same as vanilla FARD) for people who want more challenge - enemy assassins and wizards will still be glass cannons but a rogue backstab on a "normal" enemy melee will not finish in one blow.
------------------------------
Changelog:
0.12b -
Reduced lieutenant damage 1/3
Increased boss damage back 1/3
Increased lieutenant health
Increased boss health
Increased elite boss health
0.11b -
Renamed files and increased compatibility by removing unmodified rows
Reduced boss and elite boss damage by 2/3 - temporary measure until more testing is done
Added HardArmor version for people who want more challenge - enemy assassins and wizards will still be glass cannons but a rogue backstab on a "normal" enemy melee will not finish in one blow.
------------------------------
Other Mods to Download:
Just so everyone sees this right up front there are a few mods that you should get along with this one. It couldn't be straightforward and simple, could it?
1. To prevent 100% exploding bodies since damage is so much heavier with the mod, download PsychoEva's "no gibbing" mod: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2363
2. To prevent yourself (in your weaker moments) from cheaply kiting everything (easy to do when enemies have less hp) with a ranged character, d/l Xodarap777's "No more kiting" mod: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2408
3. Download the friendship bug fix (so you don't screw your game up, it has little to do with this mod): http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2299
------------------------------
Description:
Making gameplay footage look like cutscenes, except sometimes in these cutscenes your party gets wiped.
tl;dr version -
Easy. Medium. Hard. Very hard.
No matter what you call them (Casual, Nightmare, Derp, Whatever) these are your typical four settings. In very hard the badguys are typically bulletproof. The game takes 75 hours instead of 30 because you spend 5 minutes kiting a troll around till your boss walks in and you alt tab and have to do it all over again.
The intent of this mod is not to make things easier or harder across the board, but to make the game action somewhat realistic (or as realistic as a game with fireballs can be). The nightmare difficulty setting has been adjusted so that enemies have much less HP and deal much more damage. This affects nearly everything in the game, so I'd like you to read the tips section before you come and bitch about the mod as you have to play smart - the mod's vanilla settings are not for a casual half-drunk runthrough. Also please note that the mod is in beta and probably ALWAYS WILL BE because in order for this mod to truly be complete you'd have to go through and rebalance all the spells and skills for amounts of damage and cost and etc., and since I can't tell what half of the damn gibberish numbers mean in the .gda files I sorta don't want to go through all that until it's more clear and there are development tools for us modders, and by then I'll be bored sick of the game. But I promise I'll at least try to look into it at some point down the road.
But that said I've played the game for a while (haven't gotten too far, about 1/4 of the way through and haven't even encountered a true boss yet) but I've probably played for about 75 hours calibrating for some of the early fights. This likely means that things get a bit off later on in the game. So please bear with me and keep in mind this is a beta mod, for you to test and play with and adjust to your whims. And for this last reason I have included all the info I've been able to garner and all the help I can give when it comes to helping you to adjust difficulty in case I've gone and made dragons invincible (which I probably have).
------------------------------
Mod Installation:
Install to \\Whereveryourdocumentsfolderis\BioWare\Dragon Age 2\packages\core\override
------------------------------
Tips for Playing this Mod:
First of all, I'm pretty sure bosses and elite bosses will destroy you with these settings. I'm hoping the progression of health I have going on make them killable, but it'll take some testing. So figure out how to adjust settings yourself. Get gdapp and tweak columns 6, 7, and 8 for bosses if necessary. If you find some good settings, let me know.
Get surrounded by too many darkspawn and you're dead. You are a whirlwind of death, but when you get stabbed it hurts and you can get knocked down pretty easily. Don't get hit with a big sword. You kill ogres pretty fast, but they one shot most of your characters so you have to fight them like you would have to fight an ogre in real life - run around and hope you don't get hit.
Damage to you is increased (it's already pretty high in nightmare) and you can't go swinging your giant final fantasy 7 sword near your friends or cast fireballs at them (unless they're not really your friends and you were just using them and now you'd like to have their boots, especially now that your boots have your friends' blood all over them). That said because of the way that damage has been adjusted FF isn't as powerful as I might like it - or maybe I just expect more spells to hurt your friends, because when I jacked it up a thousand percent the lightning storm (or whatever) spell still didn't kill friendlies. Regardless I may have to turn FF up - not sure.
Bring a balanced party unless you really want to have to pause every half second - creature control spells (paralyze rune, etc.) are a must.
Pause as much as possible. After every command is through, send another command. Your people have to be taking out immediate threats or you'll be left with one party member left when the next wave of guys comes to kill you.
------------------------------
difficuly.gda info:
FRIENDLYFIRE
Does not fully turn FF on or off. FF stuns still stun you no matter what this value. A lower value means less damage to your friends and a higher value means more damage to your friends. I have not ascertained whether this affects enemy FF (such as trolls killing friends). I do not believe it does.
My value: 1 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: FF is a good thing. In a mod like this the point is to be strategic because every move is the difference between life or death, and this adds to that feeling. But I'm not sure 1 is high enough since you have more HP than the enemy (they do more damage but you don't do more damage to your friends).
Column 6 - $C2017DC - Enemy Health Modifier (acts as a multiplier for the $C2017DC values in creatureranks.gda).
My value: 0.14
Reasoning: I adjusted creatureranks.gda using Fibonacci numbers for a sort of natural progression and put this low so that adjusting one number would get the job done without having to adjust 5 numbers in creatureranks.gda. With a concerted effort an ogre stands no chance unless get gets a ground slam off. Critters (enemies with the small health bars) go down in a few hits, normal enemies take 4 or 5 (or a good spell or ability) and lieutenants (such as the ogre) have to be hit hard and fast. I played around at 2 (too hard) and at 1 (too easy) and actually had it at 0.15 for a while, but at 0.14 critters go down just a bit easier and it seemed slightly less masochistic.
Column 7 - $E90FF7B - Enemy Damage - The higher the value the more damage to your party members
My value: 5 (250% more than nightmare value)
Reasoning: This acts as a multiplier for $E90FF7B in creatureranks.gda. Settings in creatureranks.gda have been adjusted so that normal and lieutenants deal even more damage than this number alone implies.
Column 8 - $450E4B - Enemy Armor?
My value: 1 (half of nightmare value)
Reasoning: I tweaked this down to hard/normal value because otherwise you just can't enough headway against some enemies.
$AD0428F - No idea.
$C73195B - How long the enemy must wait between using abilities. You can set to 0.1 and watch a troll go the #*@& off.
My value: 0.8 (hard value)
Reasoning: Abilities are good. But you probably don't want constant spamming, and 0.5 was a bit much - enemy assassins were chaining stealth and getting two stealth oneshot kills - now you have a window of opportunity after the first one. But not much of one.
$A3B6334 - How long the enemy is stunned for, as well as how long the enemy is slowed after being frozen (this may have other effects). Looks like the value of 1 is 3 seconds for stun and something like 6 seconds for slow. It does not affect how long you yourself are stunned for (or at least how long you stun yourself w/ miasmic flask). The nightmare mode of 0.6 means the enemy has like a second jump on you if you accidentally hit yourself with the flask.
My value: 1 (casual and normal values)
Reasoning: You get stunned for 1 second. Enemy gets stunned for 1 second. Fair.
$DC6C4EA - Seems to be some sort of tohit or damage modifier, either way the lower it is the less damage you'll be doing to the enemy.
My value: 0.5
Reasoning: I left at normal difficulty value as a miss is a crucial wtf moment with this mod. This may be a number you'll want to play with (just a little! 1 is like max setting).
$B0F98CF - The higher the value the more your party members get knocked down or knocked back by mobs.
My value: 0.2
Reasoning: Against normal mobs, warriors don't get knocked down/back much if at all, rogues get knocked back a lot but not always, and sometimes knocked down, and mages are knocked down or knocked back a lot. Seems fair since you do enough damage now. Note that this number is related to other numbers that were changed by this mod. If you change it back to the nightmare value of 1 it will look like the NY Yankees playing baseball with your party members.
Reactive Limit - No idea. Possibly how fast the enemy reacts to changes on the battlefield, or how well the enemy bosses direct troops.
My value: 1
Reasoning: Why did I change this? I have no idea. I think it may be in my head, but I think it might be a little bit of a better battle experience, with enemies "reacting" faster. But it doesn't have much of a difference from the nightmare value of 4.
TrapDmg - Obvious.
My value: 1.5 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: It's a trap (!).
$5B8BE0B - No idea.
$0602595 - No idea.
AIAbilityUseMod - Enemy ability use - not the time between ability use (that's &C73195B) but what abilities are used and the likelihood of high level abilities to be used
(that is, I think so).
My value: 1.5 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: Enemy mobs need to be able to use good abilities, so I left it alone.
$12A6678 - No idea.
$BBD735C - No idea.
$BBC129F - No idea.
$6CED7BB - No idea.
------------------------------
creatureranks.gda info:
Column 6 - $C2017DC - Enemy Health Modifier - Since I played so much with this number the difference between this and the original amount means nothing to you. Basically I used fibonacci numbers until it seemed like the natural progression between critter, normal, and lieutenant felt right. I haven't messed much with bosses so this may get you
killed later on. Note that revenants and ogres and the like are all lieutenants, along with the normal assassin or reaver type npc's you'd expect to be lieutenants.
Column 7 - $E90FF7B - Enemy Damage - This was 1, 1, 1.5, but now it's 1, 2, 3 - lieutenants such as the revenant and ogre will one shot you, and so will an assassin backstab. Normal guys hurt pretty hard, maybe 2 swings to kill one of your mages, but a critter guy takes maybe 3 swings to kill one of your mages.
Column 8 - $450E4B - Enemy Armor? - I actually brought this down for critters so that they'd go down faster, but it's normal for normal guys and 3 instead of 1.5 for lieutenants - so that the more heavily armored lieutenants such as revenants and ogres are harder to take down than, say assassins.
IsBoss - All I can tell is that it's harder to chain moves on a lieutenant since I put this at 1 instead of 0. They'll turn around immediately to swipe you instead of twitching when you're behind them.
The nightmare difficulty setting has been adjusted so that enemies have much less HP and deal much more damage - in a balanced way that is manageable if you pause often.
*note that since I adjust creatureranks.gda this will affect all difficulty settings - remove creatureranks if you want to play on vanilla casual, normal, or hard. - thanks to quiet_man for reminding me of this.
------------------------------
Mod Status:
Beta 0.12
Lieutenants, Bosses, and Elite Bosses should now do somewhat less damage but will also be harder to kill. Still calibrating, feedback welcome.
Optional files - FARD HardArmor
Added HardArmor version (changed in difficulty.gda, creatureranks is the same as vanilla FARD) for people who want more challenge - enemy assassins and wizards will still be glass cannons but a rogue backstab on a "normal" enemy melee will not finish in one blow.
------------------------------
Changelog:
0.12b -
Reduced lieutenant damage 1/3
Increased boss damage back 1/3
Increased lieutenant health
Increased boss health
Increased elite boss health
0.11b -
Renamed files and increased compatibility by removing unmodified rows
Reduced boss and elite boss damage by 2/3 - temporary measure until more testing is done
Added HardArmor version for people who want more challenge - enemy assassins and wizards will still be glass cannons but a rogue backstab on a "normal" enemy melee will not finish in one blow.
------------------------------
Other Mods to Download:
Just so everyone sees this right up front there are a few mods that you should get along with this one. It couldn't be straightforward and simple, could it?
1. To prevent 100% exploding bodies since damage is so much heavier with the mod, download PsychoEva's "no gibbing" mod: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2363
2. To prevent yourself (in your weaker moments) from cheaply kiting everything (easy to do when enemies have less hp) with a ranged character, d/l Xodarap777's "No more kiting" mod: http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2408
3. Download the friendship bug fix (so you don't screw your game up, it has little to do with this mod): http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2299
------------------------------
Description:
Making gameplay footage look like cutscenes, except sometimes in these cutscenes your party gets wiped.
tl;dr version -
Easy. Medium. Hard. Very hard.
No matter what you call them (Casual, Nightmare, Derp, Whatever) these are your typical four settings. In very hard the badguys are typically bulletproof. The game takes 75 hours instead of 30 because you spend 5 minutes kiting a troll around till your boss walks in and you alt tab and have to do it all over again.
The intent of this mod is not to make things easier or harder across the board, but to make the game action somewhat realistic (or as realistic as a game with fireballs can be). The nightmare difficulty setting has been adjusted so that enemies have much less HP and deal much more damage. This affects nearly everything in the game, so I'd like you to read the tips section before you come and bitch about the mod as you have to play smart - the mod's vanilla settings are not for a casual half-drunk runthrough. Also please note that the mod is in beta and probably ALWAYS WILL BE because in order for this mod to truly be complete you'd have to go through and rebalance all the spells and skills for amounts of damage and cost and etc., and since I can't tell what half of the damn gibberish numbers mean in the .gda files I sorta don't want to go through all that until it's more clear and there are development tools for us modders, and by then I'll be bored sick of the game. But I promise I'll at least try to look into it at some point down the road.
But that said I've played the game for a while (haven't gotten too far, about 1/4 of the way through and haven't even encountered a true boss yet) but I've probably played for about 75 hours calibrating for some of the early fights. This likely means that things get a bit off later on in the game. So please bear with me and keep in mind this is a beta mod, for you to test and play with and adjust to your whims. And for this last reason I have included all the info I've been able to garner and all the help I can give when it comes to helping you to adjust difficulty in case I've gone and made dragons invincible (which I probably have).
------------------------------
Mod Installation:
Install to \\Whereveryourdocumentsfolderis\BioWare\Dragon Age 2\packages\core\override
------------------------------
Tips for Playing this Mod:
First of all, I'm pretty sure bosses and elite bosses will destroy you with these settings. I'm hoping the progression of health I have going on make them killable, but it'll take some testing. So figure out how to adjust settings yourself. Get gdapp and tweak columns 6, 7, and 8 for bosses if necessary. If you find some good settings, let me know.
Get surrounded by too many darkspawn and you're dead. You are a whirlwind of death, but when you get stabbed it hurts and you can get knocked down pretty easily. Don't get hit with a big sword. You kill ogres pretty fast, but they one shot most of your characters so you have to fight them like you would have to fight an ogre in real life - run around and hope you don't get hit.
Damage to you is increased (it's already pretty high in nightmare) and you can't go swinging your giant final fantasy 7 sword near your friends or cast fireballs at them (unless they're not really your friends and you were just using them and now you'd like to have their boots, especially now that your boots have your friends' blood all over them). That said because of the way that damage has been adjusted FF isn't as powerful as I might like it - or maybe I just expect more spells to hurt your friends, because when I jacked it up a thousand percent the lightning storm (or whatever) spell still didn't kill friendlies. Regardless I may have to turn FF up - not sure.
Bring a balanced party unless you really want to have to pause every half second - creature control spells (paralyze rune, etc.) are a must.
Pause as much as possible. After every command is through, send another command. Your people have to be taking out immediate threats or you'll be left with one party member left when the next wave of guys comes to kill you.
------------------------------
difficuly.gda info:
FRIENDLYFIRE
Does not fully turn FF on or off. FF stuns still stun you no matter what this value. A lower value means less damage to your friends and a higher value means more damage to your friends. I have not ascertained whether this affects enemy FF (such as trolls killing friends). I do not believe it does.
My value: 1 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: FF is a good thing. In a mod like this the point is to be strategic because every move is the difference between life or death, and this adds to that feeling. But I'm not sure 1 is high enough since you have more HP than the enemy (they do more damage but you don't do more damage to your friends).
Column 6 - $C2017DC - Enemy Health Modifier (acts as a multiplier for the $C2017DC values in creatureranks.gda).
My value: 0.14
Reasoning: I adjusted creatureranks.gda using Fibonacci numbers for a sort of natural progression and put this low so that adjusting one number would get the job done without having to adjust 5 numbers in creatureranks.gda. With a concerted effort an ogre stands no chance unless get gets a ground slam off. Critters (enemies with the small health bars) go down in a few hits, normal enemies take 4 or 5 (or a good spell or ability) and lieutenants (such as the ogre) have to be hit hard and fast. I played around at 2 (too hard) and at 1 (too easy) and actually had it at 0.15 for a while, but at 0.14 critters go down just a bit easier and it seemed slightly less masochistic.
Column 7 - $E90FF7B - Enemy Damage - The higher the value the more damage to your party members
My value: 5 (250% more than nightmare value)
Reasoning: This acts as a multiplier for $E90FF7B in creatureranks.gda. Settings in creatureranks.gda have been adjusted so that normal and lieutenants deal even more damage than this number alone implies.
Column 8 - $450E4B - Enemy Armor?
My value: 1 (half of nightmare value)
Reasoning: I tweaked this down to hard/normal value because otherwise you just can't enough headway against some enemies.
$AD0428F - No idea.
$C73195B - How long the enemy must wait between using abilities. You can set to 0.1 and watch a troll go the #*@& off.
My value: 0.8 (hard value)
Reasoning: Abilities are good. But you probably don't want constant spamming, and 0.5 was a bit much - enemy assassins were chaining stealth and getting two stealth oneshot kills - now you have a window of opportunity after the first one. But not much of one.
$A3B6334 - How long the enemy is stunned for, as well as how long the enemy is slowed after being frozen (this may have other effects). Looks like the value of 1 is 3 seconds for stun and something like 6 seconds for slow. It does not affect how long you yourself are stunned for (or at least how long you stun yourself w/ miasmic flask). The nightmare mode of 0.6 means the enemy has like a second jump on you if you accidentally hit yourself with the flask.
My value: 1 (casual and normal values)
Reasoning: You get stunned for 1 second. Enemy gets stunned for 1 second. Fair.
$DC6C4EA - Seems to be some sort of tohit or damage modifier, either way the lower it is the less damage you'll be doing to the enemy.
My value: 0.5
Reasoning: I left at normal difficulty value as a miss is a crucial wtf moment with this mod. This may be a number you'll want to play with (just a little! 1 is like max setting).
$B0F98CF - The higher the value the more your party members get knocked down or knocked back by mobs.
My value: 0.2
Reasoning: Against normal mobs, warriors don't get knocked down/back much if at all, rogues get knocked back a lot but not always, and sometimes knocked down, and mages are knocked down or knocked back a lot. Seems fair since you do enough damage now. Note that this number is related to other numbers that were changed by this mod. If you change it back to the nightmare value of 1 it will look like the NY Yankees playing baseball with your party members.
Reactive Limit - No idea. Possibly how fast the enemy reacts to changes on the battlefield, or how well the enemy bosses direct troops.
My value: 1
Reasoning: Why did I change this? I have no idea. I think it may be in my head, but I think it might be a little bit of a better battle experience, with enemies "reacting" faster. But it doesn't have much of a difference from the nightmare value of 4.
TrapDmg - Obvious.
My value: 1.5 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: It's a trap (!).
$5B8BE0B - No idea.
$0602595 - No idea.
AIAbilityUseMod - Enemy ability use - not the time between ability use (that's &C73195B) but what abilities are used and the likelihood of high level abilities to be used
(that is, I think so).
My value: 1.5 (nightmare value)
Reasoning: Enemy mobs need to be able to use good abilities, so I left it alone.
$12A6678 - No idea.
$BBD735C - No idea.
$BBC129F - No idea.
$6CED7BB - No idea.
------------------------------
creatureranks.gda info:
Column 6 - $C2017DC - Enemy Health Modifier - Since I played so much with this number the difference between this and the original amount means nothing to you. Basically I used fibonacci numbers until it seemed like the natural progression between critter, normal, and lieutenant felt right. I haven't messed much with bosses so this may get you
killed later on. Note that revenants and ogres and the like are all lieutenants, along with the normal assassin or reaver type npc's you'd expect to be lieutenants.
Column 7 - $E90FF7B - Enemy Damage - This was 1, 1, 1.5, but now it's 1, 2, 3 - lieutenants such as the revenant and ogre will one shot you, and so will an assassin backstab. Normal guys hurt pretty hard, maybe 2 swings to kill one of your mages, but a critter guy takes maybe 3 swings to kill one of your mages.
Column 8 - $450E4B - Enemy Armor? - I actually brought this down for critters so that they'd go down faster, but it's normal for normal guys and 3 instead of 1.5 for lieutenants - so that the more heavily armored lieutenants such as revenants and ogres are harder to take down than, say assassins.
IsBoss - All I can tell is that it's harder to chain moves on a lieutenant since I put this at 1 instead of 0. They'll turn around immediately to swipe you instead of twitching when you're behind them.