It's finally done! I've been spending so much time working on this over the past month and a half that I'm not sure I even know what it is to not be working on a mod anymore. Oh who am I kidding, as if this won't have a million bugs I'll have to fix, even after various rounds of playtesting...
(Don't mind the fact that the boss selection NPC is now Gideon instead of Astel, I just really couldn't be asked to record new clips and edit the video for the new version).
The core idea behind this new mode is to use the same framework offered by Boss Arena, but instead of having everything available from the start, you must obtain most items and upgrades from bosses. The bosses themselves are structured into tiers of increasing difficulty, and while you only have to defeat between 1-4 main bosses to unlock the next tier, every boss drops a variety of upgrade items and unique drops, not to mention runes, which will help you tackle the main bosses.
In order to maintain a reasonable level of challenge and prevent cheesing, there are some additional limitations as well. For one, you cannot fight a boss again after you defeat it, until you activate NG+ (which is unlocked after clearing all base game tiers, at the same time as the first DLC tier unlocks). Regular enemies also drop 0 runes, no items, and all items have been removed from the world, so no farming here.
All that said, this mode still aims to provide a good degree of flexibility in many areas, so you still have things like all whetblades available from the start, free respecs also unlocked straight away, infinite free upgrade materials of the previous tier after clearing each boss tier, all crafting unlocked from the start, no rune loss on death, and some other conveniences. So while defeating new bosses is your only way to get stronger, the mod does not aim to be sadistic and has been balanced with these limitations in mind.
Probably the most central part of this mode is the item drops. The vast majority of the work went into this system, as it basically reassigns almost every item in the game world to a boss. By default, the drops can be classified as follows:
- A fixed set of upgrade materials for your weapons, summons, flasks...
- A random set of crafting materials.
- A guaranteed unique drop the first time you defeat a boss.
- A number of bonus unique drops, ranging from 2 to 6 depending on the boss (generally, major bosses hold more items than minibosses, as they are more interesting to replay). These are rolled at random within the pool for each boss, with higher game cycles increasing the number of rolls. NG will give you one such drop per boss, while NG+ will roll twice, NG+2 three times, and so on. Note that after NG this doesn't necessarily mean you'll get that amount of items, as the rolls can and will sometimes land on items you already have and won't receive again. This is an inherent limitation with using the game's built-in systems for the randomization, and it's why NG+7 goes all the way up to 8 rolls to try and brute-force drops of new items as much as possible without going overboard.
But there's more! The mod also includes an option you can use to fully randomize the guaranteed and bonus drops, meaning any boss can drop any item, rather than from a hand-picked pool for each boss. Upgrade materials remain fixed to still provide a balanced experience. Personally, this is my favorite way to play the mod, to the point where I considered making it the default (but it felt wrong after spending so much time deciding how to distribute the items for the fixed pools).
NEW: Now there's a third option which disables item randomization entirely, meaning you get every item held by a boss the first time you defeat them.
It's important to note that this mode has been designed with ownership of the DLC in mind. While it may still work without it, there may be bugs that I cannot test for (especially when using full randomization) and you will obviously not be able to access all the content in it. There are currently no plans to include a Legacy version for this mode, as the amount of variants of the mod already makes updating it very time consuming and annoying.
Also, this should be obvious, but I strongly recommend creating a separate new character to use with this mode, not just because the whole progression would be broken with a high level character, but also because there are significant internal changes between both modes that would inevitably result in bugs.
Anyway, I think that's about everything. I hope you have fun with this new mode, and let me know in the comments!
16 comments
Just wanted to ask quickly which boss has a chance to drop the deflecting hardtear? I've just beat every boss and wanted to go again with the tear only, but I can't seem to find it, thanks again, cheers!
Deflecting Hardtear is one of the possible drops from Divine Beast Dancing Lion. You can find a full list of drops here.
Potential bug (or feature) but I found that in seamless coop + this mod, the host did not get talisman slots. Are talisman slots also random drops?
I am a bit unsure if there is some sort of logic behind the loot. I defeated all main game bosses except Malenia and I still don't have Golden Vow and Flame grant me strength which are absolutely core gameplay mechanics. I don't even have howl of shabriri. Games opens up differently without buffs, but this increaes difficulty a lot.
You can check out this spreadsheet if you want to know which boss can drop which items (you can use CTRL+F to find somethig specific). Sorry about the messy formatting, this wasn't really made to be public originally.
Of course this is all assuming you're using the default version of the mod and not the "fully randomized drops" modifier, which is self-explanatory.