Thank you so much for this mod. I was looking for this for a very long time. For my personal preference I will choose the I2 version (+2/+4 looks fine) and reduce the cold req. to 30/50. I think this gives the player more control and freedom in dialogues.
Thanks. :) Yeah, I'm quite late with this mod, glad to hear there are still Elex players out there (or again) who are looking for this type of mod.
Your choices sound very reasonable, I_2 is a good 'middle ground'. Personally I would probably keep a minimal requirement of 40 (at the lower neutral border), if I do another playthrough one day (I'm still halfway in with version I_1), but 30 surely frees the spirit, so to say.
well would say, that ideal setting is 41 and 59 requirement ( so lowest / highest neutral Cold border ), + 1 and +3 Cold ( for medium and large potions )
when i try to unpack those .elex2tpl like discribed in your guide it says its unsupported file type error, deleting the "2" renaming them to .elextpl didnt make any difference, still gsame error
I have a suggestion on how to improve the mod drastically, imo. Mana can counter the effects of Elex Potions.
Consuming one Mana decreases the cold value by 1 at the cost of 2 attribute points with a requirement of 40 cold, the upper limit of "Intuitive". Same values work on all versions and should allow for little exploit (medium Elex potion gives at least +1 cold for +2 AP and a large potion gives at least +3 cold for +10AP when a respective skill is learned with an ever increasing cost, up to three times. This way up to 12 AP can be "exploited" with a substantial investment into intelligence and cunning, and some shards at the easier mode).
Possible uses: roleplay (achieve greater emotion for roleplaying) and gameplay (becomes possible to "borrow" attribute points early from Elex potions while not completely dooming your game to inadvertently growing cold). Is meant to be a part of your mod, otherwise game breaking. Can also have several levels of effect to match the mod version in question. Allows to control your cold level in the late game when conversation cold/emotion picks are scarce and level ups are abundant, while not so needed any more. Any thoughts?
Argument: the game story indicates that the effect of Elex on personality can be undone when exposed to either Elex processed by world hearts or a world heart itself. Jax has never known emotions, except long in the past, so it only lets him rediscover his emotions, not instantly makes him your normal buddy, thus should only go as low as "Intuitive". In fact, he struggles with them even in late game story quests, such as understanding small talk expressions like "here we are".
As a side note (imagine you are reading Thorald's diary): "...As is known, the Elex transmuted into Mana with world hearts behaves in a completely different way. Mana is no doubt a gift meant to deliver salvation to those who reject the temptation of technology, but still the question lingers as to why and how exactly it is obtained. It is truly remarkable how the same substance can have two polar effects on life forms and surroundings it enters contact with, before and after being processed.
The change and the two effects are so natural, as if they are a doing of a divine creature, although it would be foolish to suspect the made-up god that the Clerics worship. I think the truth lies in where it came from, who knows what mysteries are hidden in the far skies. But despite my theories, one thing I can still be sure of: a substance cannot possess its own will..."
I had considered using Mana as a measure against the effects of Elex, but, in the end, I couldn't find a good and implementable (!) solution. One might enforce (more) 'min-maxing' around Elex (Mana), instead of making a relatively strict decision for/against Elex, or trivialize the consequences of Elex consumption, if the effects could easily be removed. Besides other heavy modding limitations, also the availability of Mana and Elex can't be properly controlled by modding, to my knowledge (no access to trader inventories, for example), so balancing things out would always be difficult.
I'm fine with the current, rather simple solution (I initially created it as a mod for myself, since I stopped my first playthrough because of the meaningless effects of Elex), but there surely could be a better and more interesting implementation of the whole system, also based on skills, as you suggested.
Regarding pak limits I found in my case a good indicator if limit is reached or not: in case limit is reached a save will load much faster, usually it takes few seconds to load after around 60%, but if there are too many paks it instantly loads. If you want to use more mods at once merge mods with Elex Resource Manager, unpack more mods in same folder then pack into a single file.
Is this .pak file limit actually confirmed/proofed or might there be another cause of files sometimes not being picked up when several mod .paks are used? In case of the former: Combining the mod files may be a solution then (thanks for the addition), if there's no other kind of limit.
Baltram's Resource Manager can be found here, if anyone's interested:
I don't know exact reasons but from personal experience pak count is the variable and it doesn't matter how much content pak contains. E.g. in G3 there can be a lot of packs at the same time with different extensions which have a huge impact on performance which is why the optimization tool was made that merges all G3 packs into separate ones for each category.
On the changes the issue with Elex mechanics is that devs didn't wanted to make the game for a specific audience so they added Gothic style progression with Elder Scrolls dynamic world (respawn enemies and plants, farmable elex etc.), this have a negative impact on balance and economy. Vanilla cold debuffs were most like made because otherwise those that wanted to play the "good" path would need to farm levels to be at least efficient giving how much combat is there even on main quest line (not counting getting trophies 3 and all desirable crafting/combat skills). In this mod it feels as if you're evil you have some path to be good (through dialogs), but if you're good you need first to chug small elex potions until you can use other ones, though with 5 cold per potion you can generally forget about getting emotional through dialogs. If the main idea is that elex is like a very powerful drug and in order to get good ending you need keep away from it like at all then current system seems ok. The main issue I see is farmable natural elex, I think alternative solution would be to have a king sorrel like rare ingredient for elex potions so elex itself would be primarily used for upgrading, but allowing limited amount of "free" attribute/skill points ( lore wise it would mean that natural elex requires a special processing to get benefits from it, which is why eating natural elex is bad for your health).
Yeah, the low Cold values and the abundance of natural Elex were clearly designed to give all players access to Elex Potions (regardless of their 'path') and not seriously 'restrict' them. Though this removes the whole point of Elex and waters the different possible experiences of the game down, because everyone can consume Elex Potions at any time without significant consequences.
I'm not sure what you mean with ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in this context; the emotional path does not necessarily mean Jax acts 'good' in dialogue or that the story will have a 'good' ending as the player envisions it, and vice versa the rational path; doing ‘good’ can mean choosing the emotional dialogue option (if it’s empathic for example) or the rational option (e. g. if it’s ‘calm’ instead of aggressive). The emotional path indeed now requires abstinence from bigger doses of Elex (medium and big), though this means the player followed this path in dialogue before. Drinking some bigger Elex potions in the first part(s) of the game and then abjuring the Elex to become emotional until the end is probably still possible though.
A more strictly (and calculably) limited amount of Elex (esp. through Trophies III) would definitely have prevented several problems of Elex, I agree, I'm not sure why Piranha Bytes did that. Maybe just because they considered this to be 'more fun' (or concluded this from their 'focus group' tests which, judging from Piranha Bytes' videos and interviews, seem to have had quite an impact on their decision-making). This Alb power fantasy is surely part of the game, as one possible experience, but they definitely overdid it.
My changes shall make sure this power experience is now not possible without entering a certain path (one of 3: Albish-rational, balanced [neutral] and emotional).
"Good" and "evil" in this context is more like Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect than the ones in let say KOTOR. The whole game feels like it doesn't have a clear direction so it stays somewhere in the middle and is not as hardcore as Gothic 1, but not as casual as TES.
16 comments
For my personal preference I will choose the I2 version (+2/+4 looks fine) and reduce the cold req. to 30/50. I think this gives the player more control and freedom in dialogues.
Yeah, I'm quite late with this mod, glad to hear there are still Elex players out there (or again) who are looking for this type of mod.
Your choices sound very reasonable, I_2 is a good 'middle ground'. Personally I would probably keep a minimal requirement of 40 (at the lower neutral border), if I do another playthrough one day (I'm still halfway in with version I_1), but 30 surely frees the spirit, so to say.
Consuming one Mana decreases the cold value by 1 at the cost of 2 attribute points with a requirement of 40 cold, the upper limit of "Intuitive". Same values work on all versions and should allow for little exploit (medium Elex potion gives at least +1 cold for +2 AP and a large potion gives at least +3 cold for +10AP when a respective skill is learned with an ever increasing cost, up to three times. This way up to 12 AP can be "exploited" with a substantial investment into intelligence and cunning, and some shards at the easier mode).
Possible uses: roleplay (achieve greater emotion for roleplaying) and gameplay (becomes possible to "borrow" attribute points early from Elex potions while not completely dooming your game to inadvertently growing cold). Is meant to be a part of your mod, otherwise game breaking. Can also have several levels of effect to match the mod version in question. Allows to control your cold level in the late game when conversation cold/emotion picks are scarce and level ups are abundant, while not so needed any more. Any thoughts?
Argument: the game story indicates that the effect of Elex on personality can be undone when exposed to either Elex processed by world hearts or a world heart itself. Jax has never known emotions, except long in the past, so it only lets him rediscover his emotions, not instantly makes him your normal buddy, thus should only go as low as "Intuitive". In fact, he struggles with them even in late game story quests, such as understanding small talk expressions like "here we are".
As a side note (imagine you are reading Thorald's diary):
"...As is known, the Elex transmuted into Mana with world hearts behaves in a completely different way. Mana is no doubt a gift meant to deliver salvation to those who reject the temptation of technology, but still the question lingers as to why and how exactly it is obtained.
It is truly remarkable how the same substance can have two polar effects on life forms and surroundings it enters contact with, before and after being processed.
The change and the two effects are so natural, as if they are a doing of a divine creature, although it would be foolish to suspect the made-up god that the Clerics worship. I think the truth lies in where it came from, who knows what mysteries are hidden in the far skies. But despite my theories, one thing I can still be sure of: a substance cannot possess its own will..."
thanks for your thoughts.
I had considered using Mana as a measure against the effects of Elex, but, in the end, I couldn't find a good and implementable (!) solution. One might enforce (more) 'min-maxing' around Elex (Mana), instead of making a relatively strict decision for/against Elex, or trivialize the consequences of Elex consumption, if the effects could easily be removed. Besides other heavy modding limitations, also the availability of Mana and Elex can't be properly controlled by modding, to my knowledge (no access to trader inventories, for example), so balancing things out would always be difficult.
I'm fine with the current, rather simple solution (I initially created it as a mod for myself, since I stopped my first playthrough because of the meaningless effects of Elex), but there surely could be a better and more interesting implementation of the whole system, also based on skills, as you suggested.
In case of the former: Combining the mod files may be a solution then (thanks for the addition), if there's no other kind of limit.
Baltram's Resource Manager can be found here, if anyone's interested:
https://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1512504-tool-Elex-Resource-Manager
On the changes the issue with Elex mechanics is that devs didn't wanted to make the game for a specific audience so they added Gothic style progression with Elder Scrolls dynamic world (respawn enemies and plants, farmable elex etc.), this have a negative impact on balance and economy. Vanilla cold debuffs were most like made because otherwise those that wanted to play the "good" path would need to farm levels to be at least efficient giving how much combat is there even on main quest line (not counting getting trophies 3 and all desirable crafting/combat skills).
In this mod it feels as if you're evil you have some path to be good (through dialogs), but if you're good you need first to chug small elex potions until you can use other ones, though with 5 cold per potion you can generally forget about getting emotional through dialogs.
If the main idea is that elex is like a very powerful drug and in order to get good ending you need keep away from it like at all then current system seems ok.
The main issue I see is farmable natural elex, I think alternative solution would be to have a king sorrel like rare ingredient for elex potions so elex itself would be primarily used for upgrading, but allowing limited amount of "free" attribute/skill points ( lore wise it would mean that natural elex requires a special processing to get benefits from it, which is why eating natural elex is bad for your health).
I'm not sure what you mean with ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in this context; the emotional path does not necessarily mean Jax acts 'good' in dialogue or that the story will have a 'good' ending as the player envisions it, and vice versa the rational path; doing ‘good’ can mean choosing the emotional dialogue option (if it’s empathic for example) or the rational option (e. g. if it’s ‘calm’ instead of aggressive). The emotional path indeed now requires abstinence from bigger doses of Elex (medium and big), though this means the player followed this path in dialogue before. Drinking some bigger Elex potions in the first part(s) of the game and then abjuring the Elex to become emotional until the end is probably still possible though.
A more strictly (and calculably) limited amount of Elex (esp. through Trophies III) would definitely have prevented several problems of Elex, I agree, I'm not sure why Piranha Bytes did that. Maybe just because they considered this to be 'more fun' (or concluded this from their 'focus group' tests which, judging from Piranha Bytes' videos and interviews, seem to have had quite an impact on their decision-making). This Alb power fantasy is surely part of the game, as one possible experience, but they definitely overdid it.
My changes shall make sure this power experience is now not possible without entering a certain path (one of 3: Albish-rational, balanced [neutral] and emotional).