About this mod
More upgrades and ability points, more difficult enemies and shorter cooldowns. Active gameplay. All specializations rewarding.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
The Executive Summary:
2 ability and 4 attribute points per level.
Expanded talent trees: more upgrades, better abilities, shorter cooldowns.
Increased enemy health and damage values.
More active gameplay.
Improved character customization.
Drag and drop into your override folder: Program Files\Dragon Age II\packages\core\override
*This will conflict with any mods that modify the abi_base, passive_abilities or persistent.gda (files relating to abilities) difficulty or creatureranks.gda (files that relate to difficulty), and/or the exptable.gda (anything to do with leveling).
Note: the prelogue takes longer, since enemies have +50% health and your special abilities and extra attribute points won´t be in play. This is a pain for rogues, but manageable with a warrior or mage.
For a more detailed explanation...
It makes enemies tougher but also makes you stronger. You receive an extra attribute and ability point per level (so that´s four attribute and two ability points) and all abilities are noticeably more potent. There are extra upgrades available and key class abilities have shorter cooldowns. This means that auto-attack suffers, because enemy health is greatly increased, but the overall feel of the game is faster, more active, more deadly. You will take more damage, forcing defensive and strategic gameplay, but also dish it out in kind. Will you need to spec, gear and play both defensively and offensively, but you won´t need to pause every two seconds. The intent of this mod is the opposite of that: to make the action more intense and every class and specialization fun to play with.
The extra abilities go a long way to achieving this, since even at an early level you´ll have many things to manage. In fact, you could potentially have so many that I´d even go as far as to recommend doing the opposite: limit yourself, plan your final spec from a very early level and stick to it, keeping in mind the number of keybinds you have at your disposal.
All abilities have been altered somehow, be it through upgrades, mana/stamina cost, direct or CCC damage, etc. Abilities that were poor at best (Confusion, Glyph of Repulsion, Sleep, etc.) has been improved, either through increased duration, effectiveness or reductions in cooldown. The most significant change, however, is cooldown reduction. All classes follow a 10s - 15s - 20s scheme for they basic, class-defining abilities. Two Handed warriors, for instance, have Mighty Blow available every 10s, Scythe every 15s and Wirlwind every 20s, and damage has been altered to reflect this: Scythe now does more damage than Mighty Blow and Wirlwind does more damage than either. What this means, in practice, is that gameplay is more active, user input more valuable and speccing deeply into any given tree more rewarding.
Most changes are self-explanatory, but there are some I should point out:
- Cleave grants a passive 50% damage bonus. Assail´s damage bonus increased to 25%.
- Aid Allies and Regroup no longer require Pancea to be active, and Group Heal and Revival don´t require Healing Aura. Pancea is now the same as Solidarity: a passive ability that grants 10 constitution and 100 health regeneration rate.
- Sacrifice does damage to enemies instead of allies. Both Sacrifice and Grave Robber have lower cooldowns, so Blood Magic´s health to mana ratio was reduced. The Bloodmage now heals better and hits harder, but he´s constantly dancing with death.
- There are “hidden” upgrades in the Duelist specialization. Its two passives now grant more and better passives. Sure Strikes gives 20% attack, 20% attack speed, 20% crit chance and 20% critical damage. Evasive Maneuvers gives 20% defense, 20% damage reduction, 20% magic resistance and 20 health regeneration rate.
- Enemy lieutenants (rogues, mages, revenants, etc.) will hit much harder than they used to, so you´ll need to spec deep into constitution with all you characters.
- Mana/Stamina regeneration is no longer an issue, all values have been increased. Spec for it and forget about it.
- Hawke starts at level 2 and caps at 24. Warriors will be specced into two handed and rogues into dual wield, this is unavoidable. You can either give yourself a Maker´s Sigh or wait until you get rid of Aveline or Varric, if you want to play weapon and shield or archery. The level 24 cap is there to keep your character´s action bars and tactics from becoming unmanageable and just plain silly. With two abilities every level, even with more upgrades, at level 28 you´d have too many options you won´t use or even need, so I put a cap at level 24. This is achieved by distributing the xp required to go from level 24 to 28 into levels 14 through 24, so levelling is faster in the beginning and slower towards the end. I recommend doing Legacy at the beginning of act 2 and Mark of the Assasin during act 3 to compensate.
- Hard is the same as nightmare, but without FF and magical immunities.
Optional Files:
Optional_Titan - A file that lowers enemy health and one that lowers both health and damage, as well as another that lowers Elite´s damage only. This is there to make auto attack more potent, mostly, and allow more freedom in character customization.
Optional_Nightmare - It makes critters and normal enemies more difficult, but harder enemies more forgiving. It also lowers health, so you´ll be taking more damage but killing faster.
Recommended mods:
- No follower autolevel
- Dalls weapon swap
- Sunnie´s item packs
- Looka´s definitive item pack & all items evolve
- Restrictions removal
- Rune expansion pack
- Valuable junk (100)
- Waddi
2 ability and 4 attribute points per level.
Expanded talent trees: more upgrades, better abilities, shorter cooldowns.
Increased enemy health and damage values.
More active gameplay.
Improved character customization.
Drag and drop into your override folder: Program Files\Dragon Age II\packages\core\override
*This will conflict with any mods that modify the abi_base, passive_abilities or persistent.gda (files relating to abilities) difficulty or creatureranks.gda (files that relate to difficulty), and/or the exptable.gda (anything to do with leveling).
Note: the prelogue takes longer, since enemies have +50% health and your special abilities and extra attribute points won´t be in play. This is a pain for rogues, but manageable with a warrior or mage.
For a more detailed explanation...
It makes enemies tougher but also makes you stronger. You receive an extra attribute and ability point per level (so that´s four attribute and two ability points) and all abilities are noticeably more potent. There are extra upgrades available and key class abilities have shorter cooldowns. This means that auto-attack suffers, because enemy health is greatly increased, but the overall feel of the game is faster, more active, more deadly. You will take more damage, forcing defensive and strategic gameplay, but also dish it out in kind. Will you need to spec, gear and play both defensively and offensively, but you won´t need to pause every two seconds. The intent of this mod is the opposite of that: to make the action more intense and every class and specialization fun to play with.
The extra abilities go a long way to achieving this, since even at an early level you´ll have many things to manage. In fact, you could potentially have so many that I´d even go as far as to recommend doing the opposite: limit yourself, plan your final spec from a very early level and stick to it, keeping in mind the number of keybinds you have at your disposal.
All abilities have been altered somehow, be it through upgrades, mana/stamina cost, direct or CCC damage, etc. Abilities that were poor at best (Confusion, Glyph of Repulsion, Sleep, etc.) has been improved, either through increased duration, effectiveness or reductions in cooldown. The most significant change, however, is cooldown reduction. All classes follow a 10s - 15s - 20s scheme for they basic, class-defining abilities. Two Handed warriors, for instance, have Mighty Blow available every 10s, Scythe every 15s and Wirlwind every 20s, and damage has been altered to reflect this: Scythe now does more damage than Mighty Blow and Wirlwind does more damage than either. What this means, in practice, is that gameplay is more active, user input more valuable and speccing deeply into any given tree more rewarding.
Most changes are self-explanatory, but there are some I should point out:
- Cleave grants a passive 50% damage bonus. Assail´s damage bonus increased to 25%.
- Aid Allies and Regroup no longer require Pancea to be active, and Group Heal and Revival don´t require Healing Aura. Pancea is now the same as Solidarity: a passive ability that grants 10 constitution and 100 health regeneration rate.
- Sacrifice does damage to enemies instead of allies. Both Sacrifice and Grave Robber have lower cooldowns, so Blood Magic´s health to mana ratio was reduced. The Bloodmage now heals better and hits harder, but he´s constantly dancing with death.
- There are “hidden” upgrades in the Duelist specialization. Its two passives now grant more and better passives. Sure Strikes gives 20% attack, 20% attack speed, 20% crit chance and 20% critical damage. Evasive Maneuvers gives 20% defense, 20% damage reduction, 20% magic resistance and 20 health regeneration rate.
- Enemy lieutenants (rogues, mages, revenants, etc.) will hit much harder than they used to, so you´ll need to spec deep into constitution with all you characters.
- Mana/Stamina regeneration is no longer an issue, all values have been increased. Spec for it and forget about it.
- Hawke starts at level 2 and caps at 24. Warriors will be specced into two handed and rogues into dual wield, this is unavoidable. You can either give yourself a Maker´s Sigh or wait until you get rid of Aveline or Varric, if you want to play weapon and shield or archery. The level 24 cap is there to keep your character´s action bars and tactics from becoming unmanageable and just plain silly. With two abilities every level, even with more upgrades, at level 28 you´d have too many options you won´t use or even need, so I put a cap at level 24. This is achieved by distributing the xp required to go from level 24 to 28 into levels 14 through 24, so levelling is faster in the beginning and slower towards the end. I recommend doing Legacy at the beginning of act 2 and Mark of the Assasin during act 3 to compensate.
- Hard is the same as nightmare, but without FF and magical immunities.
Optional Files:
Optional_Titan - A file that lowers enemy health and one that lowers both health and damage, as well as another that lowers Elite´s damage only. This is there to make auto attack more potent, mostly, and allow more freedom in character customization.
Optional_Nightmare - It makes critters and normal enemies more difficult, but harder enemies more forgiving. It also lowers health, so you´ll be taking more damage but killing faster.
Recommended mods:
- No follower autolevel
- Dalls weapon swap
- Sunnie´s item packs
- Looka´s definitive item pack & all items evolve
- Restrictions removal
- Rune expansion pack
- Valuable junk (100)
- Waddi