My work lives and breathes on comments and endorsements, friends, so give my work some mouth to mouth(no tongue plz), and endorse!

Current Update:
===============
New hotfix to beta 7.5 is out! Addresses legendary hunter perks and ant plasma on/off switch.

Description:
============
This mod is for those of us that hit lvl 14, or lvl 10, or lvl 6 and found no challenge left in the game. We installed various mods attempting to remedy this, and some of them are great, but they never filled that hole. The challenge of a new game, new strategies and new ways to learn to die.

So this mod adds new and varied abilities to almost every creature in the wastes(no changes to bloatflies, bighorners, brahmin, or regular dogs).

Changes such as increased damage resistance, damage threshold, and regeneration are often tied to weaknesses that were not present in the vanilla game. A radscorpion that just won't die may become a quick kill if the stinger is crippled, for instance.

For those not wishing to be spoiled, notes have been added to Sunset Sasparilla bottles as a chance when consumed. These notes are written by dear old festus, and give you detailed instructions on how to take down beasties. Getting all the notes will give you a perk, too, with two different perks available(one for wild wasteland, and one for those without it).

Many of these changes are configurable to your liking, and the overall difficulty of the hardened experience is also configurable.

I really recommend you skip over the(long) list of features, and just play, figure out strategies and die a lot. It's more fun that way. Plus the list of features is incredibly long.

Scroll down for a full view of changes made by HarderThanYou.

Updates:
========

Hotfix for beta 7 is available. This doesn't do much, but removes the hardened menu item from the apparel section, and reduces the duration of antivenom application/failure messages from 5 seconds to 3.

HarderThanYou now requires MCM in order to be able to change settings, download this amazing mod and take a peek at some of the other amazing mods that utilize it!
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=42507

A Bit of Info On Me:
===================

I stumbled on Poopoopapa's work on Hardened some time ago and had a lot of trouble getting a hold of him, only to find that he had stopped working on the mod.

He green lighted me to take it over and so here are the fruits of my labor.

Optional compatibility patches for AWOP, AWOP MoMod, and AWOP-MonsterPatch are also included(created by me).

I hope that you enjoy my work on this mod, and give feedback on proposed DLC changes, monster changes you want to see, and any bugs you find.

Below is the full change log, and spoilers are included, so only read on if you dare.

Name: Hardened
Version: Beta 7.5
Date: 8-23-11
Category: Gameplay Effects and Changes
Author(s): Poopoopapa, HarderMan

Needs NVSE(http://nvse.silverlock.org/) to run

Needs MCM to configure options
http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=42507

Future Works:
=============
More bugfixes as they roll in, more compatibility patches as needed, more balance changes as needed and reported, DLC patches to harden the creatures added there, bosses for each vault, and a possible upgrade to the Lillith weapon.


ChangeLog:
========

Beta7.5

Bugfixes:
-Molerat damage threshold reduction should now properly expire and restore any reduction
-mutant knockdown effects now apply to any creature that isn't strong or hearty enough to withstand the blows, not just players
-knockdown effects internal timer to prevent back to back knockdowns should now properly reset without having to be hit
-the hardened difficulty curve(while still in beta) was not working at all previously, this has been fixed and the changes should now properly take place. If you had it turned on before and didnt notice any changes, beware! Creatures will hit harder and have more health at the specified levels if turned on. This affected the honest hearts difficulty curve as well, and it should function as intended also.
-Giant radscorpions are now on the difficulty curve
-added script to all radscorpions to ensure that turning off radscorpion regen will cause regeneration to cease, and turning it back on will do the reverse
-davison stealthboy's hologram should no longer aggro neutral or friendly npcs.
-davison's stealthboy should now properly fail to activate when the random number generator fails to meet the desired chance
-all legion mongrels should now have increase damage resistance and reduction of agility on strike
-nightstalker combt style changed to allow for the possibility of being poisoned, as the vanilla game disabled this
-spore creatures in v22 should now properly change their combat style to suicide below 50%
-spore creatures healing reduction effects now have a message to inform the player when afflicted
-fix to the legendary hunter perk to correctly refund health and action points that were reduced by the other legendary perks

Added Configuration:
-Protectron laser blindness can now be disabled or enabled in the menu

Beta 7

Bugfixes:
-Poison applications should no longer make the stinger sound when it is not effecting the player
-Damage threshold reduction applied by ghouls, molerats, and golden geckos should no longer cause permanent reductions in DT
-Lakelurk pyrophobia should no longer effect the player when a lakelurk is struck by a flame based weapon

Balance Changes:
-Queen radscorpion organ destruction poison has been reduced in duration, to 15 seconds. While the straight damage portion has been increased in duration, to 15 seconds as well.

Davison Encounter:
-Large change to the repconn basement where Davison is housed, this area is now much bigger, to allow Davison room to breathe, and you to breathe your last.

-Davison now drops his stealthboy on death, which can be disarmed with the proper explosive skill(50), and can be repaired if it explodes with the proper science skill(70)
-Davison's stealthboy can be upgraded with the proper science skill and items, and can be converted at a workbench to an implant if the hardened-project nevada compatibility patch is installed. This implant can also be upgraded, and reverted back to an apparel item if need be as well.
-Read below for spoilers as to what Davison's stealthboy does.

Menu changes
-The Hardened menu has been fully integrated into MCM
-Added options include:
Mister Gutsy flamer blindness on/off
Mister Gutsy plasma blindness on/off
Radscorpion regen on/off

Beta 6

New work from HarderMan fixing some bugs, with more to come as they're reported.

BugFixes:
-Barkscorps only give experience when exploded by the player.
-Vanilla form lists for relevant weaknesses changed from created form lists for ant weaknesses, fire ant weaknesses, lakelurk weaknesses, and centaur weaknesses. This has the effect of allowing mods, dlcs, and the like that add new weapons to always have an effect on hardened creatures, as long as they add to the vanilla form lists. So a flamer pistol added by Project Nevada will make lakelurks run in fear when

torched.
-Legendary Deathclaw door fixed to allow entry as this was bugged before. Needs more testing but that's what you're here for!
-Gutsy Plasma blackout effect should only proc when the player is tagged by gutsy plasma now.
-Gutsy flamer blinding effect should only proc when the player is tagged by gutsy flame now.
-Some changes to Sunset Sasparilla notes to reflect bugfixes.

Balance Changes:
-Fire Geckos no longer regenerate limb condition, this makes them significantly easier to kill.

Important note(s):

If you are using a mod that changes the sunset sasparilla add bottle cap script(SunsetSarsparillaAddCapEffectScript), for instance imp's more complex needs, then you either need to load harderthan.esp after that mod, add the "Add Script Contents" tag to the HarderThan.Esp in Wrye Flash, or create a patch using fnvedit. Otherwise you won't get the sunset sasparilla notes and you won't have a chance at getting the perk from obtaining all of the notes.

Beta 5

Menu system added:
1. Difficulty options, either regular hardened(default), 50% difficulty(DR/DT/Regen), and Vanilla with
the added hardened abilities like nightkin teleportation.
2. Ability Removal. Turn on/off ant plasma, regular gecko regeneration, and radroach explode. At
any time.
3. Difficulty Ramp(BETA), game getting too easy? Turn on the difficulty ramp(s) and at the
appropriate level(s) have the health and damage of creatures increase by 50% and 30%, respectively,
per ramp. Activating both ramps is not necessarily recommended, as things can get real! Not for the
faint of heart.

Added notes! Sunset Sasparillas now have a 20% chance to get you a semi-detailed note on the specific creatures of the wastes! Collect all 16 and get a special perk, one for wild wasteland and one
without.

Vanilla hardened fixes:
1. Fire geckos only give exp when killed by the player
2. Fire geckos increased in difficulty, should be a little less difficult than a giant radscorpion now.
3. Lakelurks no longer frenzy after being afflicted by pyrophobia
4. Supermutant masters no longer get an increasing crit bonus when not self buffed.
5. Fireant queens should now correctly respond to their corresponding weakness weapon.
6. Giant rat and legion mongrel endurance and agi reduction(respectively) effects now correctly apply,
have pipboy status effects and fade correctly.
7. 20% attack animation speed for geckos is now included versus the previous 30%.(REMOVED)
8. Protectron blindness effect duration reduced.
9. Poison resist should now correctly reduce the duration of all poisons, except for bark scorpion
poison. Adamantium skeleton now reduces limb damage taken by poisons.
10. The fire gecko head explode script should no longer conflict with powered power armors head
explode effects.


Install Instructions:
=====================
It is a very good idea to create a fomod for easy install/uninstall, otherwise, unzip the contents of the
RAR into your data directory. A bashed patch is a
good idea as well.


Uninstall Instructions:
=======================
If the difficulty ramp has been turned on you will need to turn it off before installing, all other changes
should be temporary.


Incompatibilities:
===================
Any mod that alters vanilla creatures,
combat styles, or body part data can
conflict.


Credits:
========
Captain Murphy from
sealab2021(god rest you pal), Jesus for
letting me take his name in vain, Cipscis
for his amazing tutorials and work. RickerHK for his help with scripting.


Legal and Licensing:
====================
Please do not use any of my work without
asking first, thanks.

SPOILERS READ ON IF YOU WANT TO BE SPOILED LIKE DAY OLD TURKEY:
===============================================================
-Davison's stealthboy allows the player to have a chance when combat occurs(50% upgradeable to 37%, see below) to spawn a copy of Davison in a way similar to the Davison encounter, this copy scales with the player in hitpoints up to level 30, wield a special bumper sword that does significant damage, has a high critical hit chance, a high damage threshold, a high damage resist, teleports behind its target every 7-9 seconds, and each teleport has a chance to force its target to be fooled into attacking it.
-It does not take up an armor slot, but must be equipped to gain its uses
-Recharges every 2 game hours(roughly), or the duration of a standard chem such as jet
-The copy will disappear when combat drops
-Upgrades include:
The ability to increase the chance that each teleport will fool the target into attacking it [80 science]
The ability to increase the duration of the effect during combat by 30% [90 science]
The ability to increase the chance that it goes off during combat by 25% [100 science]


-When Project Nevada is installed and the Hardened-Project Nevada compatibility patch is installed, the implant(when installed), will cause the player to regain health when each teleport occurs, and this feature upgrades along with the stealthboy.
MkI is 15 health per port
MkII is 21 "" "" ""
mkIII is 27 "" "" ""
mkIV is 33 "" "" ""

Full Description Of Changes:
============================================================
Legendary encounters have been redone:

Legendary Deathclaw
SPOILER: New unique deathclaw gauntlet, vampiric regeneration, one for melee and one for unarmed
Vanilla damage level for legendary deathclaw maintained, it will still one shot most players, just like vanilla
Added DR and DT for legendary
Added automatic weapon(miniguns etc) immunity for legendary
Added no knockdown and no crippled limbs for legendary
Unique encounter with a few different ways to fight, hand to hand brawl, melee brawl, ranged weapon, or bring your friends. Each dependent on player stats/choices.
New perks depending on how you kill it. Part of a range of new perks for killing the legendaries.

Legendary Cazador:
SPOILER:
New perk added for defeating the swarm.
New poison effect added to legendary cazador, unresistable, does no damage but has other...effects.
Scripted encounter in it's lair, guaranteed to be challenging and fun.
Legendary DT and armor increased, no knockdowns or crippled effects for legendary, automatic weapon immunity added.

Legendary Nightstalker
SPOILER:
Legendary DT and armor increased, automatic weapon immunity, no knockdowns, no crippled effects.
Encounter is a serious mess, expect a fight that will challenge your aim and your senses!
Perk upon killing the beast.

Legendary Fire Gecko
SPOILER:
Legendary DT and armor increased, automatic weapon immunity, no knockdowns, no crippled effects.
Weapon damage massively increased, weapon blinding effect added.
As many of you know fire geckos explode upon death, the same can be said of the legendary gecko. Good luck surviving it!
Perk given based on whether you avoided the death explosion or took it in the face.

Legendary Hunter perk
SPOILER:
Each perk given by killing a legendary creature comes with a drawback to their bonuses. After killing all the 4 legendary monsters, you receive the Legendary Hunter perk, that will reverse those negative values.

List of features:

Completely redone poison system, with new antivenom functionality and failure chances based on skill, new poison effects and tiers of poison.

Poison immunity added to antivenom, take it or be in cazador swarm heck.

Boss encounters that are tremendously difficult and scripted: Davison in the repconn basement, Tabitha in black mountain, Marcus at jacobstown.

Coming soon: all vault 'bosses' such as the ghoul overseer in V22.

List of changes to enemies:
Deathclaws: Bonus limb damage on striking, Deathclaw's now ignore crippled limbs, get a little tougher, and gain a slight regen below 20%

Feral ghouls: Regenerate health below 50%, regenerate limbs whenever a limb goes below 25%, shred armor per strike(-2 per strike, -20 total) that lasts 2 in game minutes, explosive damage resistance.

Ants: new weapon, soldiers have high speed plasma that does massive damage, workers now fire a plasma explosive to keep you off balance. Body part damage changes, it's giant bulbous head is now more resilient and soldiers ignore crippled limbs below 50% health. All ants are much faster
and turn faster as well. DT increased to 8-12-20 for workers, soldiers and Queens, respectively. Massive regular energy resistance. Weak to lasers of all kinds. Configurable weapons via MCM menu.

Fire Ants: Flamer damage is increased massively, speed is increased greatly, fire ant workers now fire an incendiary explosive, have the same DT values as regular ants as well as body part values, crippled limb ignore for soldiers and energy resistance. Weakness is to plasma.

Geckos: All geckos have massive dynamic regen and scaling, increasing damage resist when their heads are not crippled, regular geckos and golden geckos will bleed out quickly once this weakness is taken advantage of, however fire geckos die on the spot in a fiery explosion. All geckos have had their animation speed increased 30%, making their melee very difficult to avoid. Regular geckos have 20% increased crit. Gecko regeneration is configurable in the MCM menu.

Golden geckos: Massive armor piercing (-12 DT)bite that persists for 2 mins of in game time.

Fire Geckos: Greatly increased damage on flamer with a reduced minimum range.

Nighstalkers: Maintain stealth until you can 'perceive' them, with either a 9 perception and greater allowing for you to see them as they approach, an 8 allowing you to see them as they aggro you, and a 7 or greater allowing you to see them as they attack you. 20% increased crit chance, with an additional 20% while stealthed. Tier 3 poison that is difficult to remove or be immune to. 20% faster movement.

Cazadors: Torso health percentage increased for less knockdowns, head percentage decreased with increased head damage multiplier of 1.5X, 35% increased DR with 25 DT, tier 3 poison now damages head condition and health on top of normal caz poison effects. Weakness to automatic guns and shotguns.

Molerats: reduce armor per strike(-2 and -20 DT total), 20% DR increase, 20% speed increase

Centaurs: new weapon does massive radiation damage in an explosion radius and is quickly fired, 70% increased DR. Weakness is to bladed melee weapons, and bladed melee weapons plus plasma, two swings of a melee weapon plus one plasma shot equals a nuclear blast. After being struck a few times by bladed weapons their bodies become unstable and will gooify on death.

Radscorpions: Poison changed to cripple a random limb randomly during it's duration, chance for 1 or more cripples depending on your poison resist. Radscorpion queen poison will cripple two limbs. Massively regenerating limbs and strong health regeneration when a limb is crippled, until the stinger is crippled, which does not regenerate and will massively damage the scorpion upon being crippled. 20-40-60% increased DR for normal, giant, and queen radscorpions respectively. 10% increased crit below 50% health and 20% increased crit for queens. Queen poison cannot be cured and will be administered on any successful attack, depending on your poison resist. Regeneration is configurable in the MCM menu.

Barkscorpions: 30% increased speed, 90% increased DR, poison does massive amount of damage. 'Bumblebee' weakness, if it stings you, it's tail explodes and it dies. Also weak to explosives.

Supermutants: Melee supermutants have 10% increased DR and a bloodlust effect that they have below 50%. They will put away their weapons and attack you with their fists, gaining 60% increased critical chance, 50% increased DR, ignoring crippled limbs and each attack has a chance to knock you down based on your endurance and strength. They will slowly lose health while under bloodlust. At 10% and below health they run out of steam and lose their ignore crippled limbs and increased DR effects, but retain their crit and knockdown abilities.
Gun using supermutants have their critical chance increased by 15%.
Missile launcher and explosives wielding supermutants just don't care, they no longer take their own safety or the safety of others into consideration when firing their weapons, they cannot be knockdowned and have a massive increase to DT versus explosive weapons. Supermutant masters give a buff to everyone around them every 15 seconds that lasts 5 seconds, which will increase their crit by 50%.
All supermutants have had their damage thresholds increased to 20 and their damage resistances increased by 15%. All supermutants have had their melee attack animations sped up by 30%.

Nightkin: Increased damage threshold to 10, gained 'displacer' effect below 50%, they will randomly port somewhere behind you every few seconds re-stealthing as they do.
Nightkin snipers will 'spot' you if they maintain line of sight with you and are within a certain range, sounding an alarm and sending others running to your location. They also have no regard for their safety and will fire their missile launchers at you with glee, taking little to no damage from their own explosions.

Radroaches: Much more aggressive, 30% faster, have a weak rad aura, explode on death into a strong radiation cloud whose radiation persists for a small time.

Giant Rat: 30% faster, more aggressive, 20% stronger attacks, 5 DT added, 50% chance on strike to damage endurance for 3 for the duration of a common chem(uncurable)

Legion Mongrels: 10% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 10 DT, ignore crippled limbs and a 25% chance on strike to reduce agi by 3 the duration of a common chem.

Coyotes: More aggressive after being attacked, 30% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 10 DT for normal 15 DT and 5 DR for pack leaders, 50% fire and poison resistance, extra 5 DT to melee and unarmed attacks, Den mothers have a 5 hp regen every 5 second aura buff, pack leaders give 20% crit on a 10 sec timer.

Giant Mantis: 20% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 5 base DT with 5 extra DT to guns attacks, 15% increased crit chance, 5-7 higher base damage for each different type of mantis.

Lake Lurks: Massively increased weapon with more, and more damaging, projectiles that add a large damage over time effect and are very hard to avoid. 40% DR increase. Flame weapon weakness: pyrophobia, on hit they will flee for a short time, hit em enough times and they disintegrate.

Protectrons: Ignores crippled limbs, lasers now explode on impact doing strong damage and blinding any in their explosion radius, 50% faster.

Gutsy: Massively increased damage on plasma(multiple projectiles) and flamer weapons, 25% increased DR, 15% increased movement speed, ignores crippled limbs, when hit by a mr gutsy plasma weapon you will not be able to see for a time, when hit by a mr gutsy flamer you will be blinded as well, but much differently. Blindness effects configurable in MCM menu.

Sentry robots: Immune to knockdown, ignore crippled limbs, 60% increased DR, 20 DT, 20% increased speed, 25% increased turning speed, weapon now ignores 8 DT, weapon damage greatly increased, ignores damaging self with explosives(will point blank shoot a missile) and has a high exposives DT increase.

Turrets: Significant crit increase, 5 DT, DT reduction ammo scaling with scaling mark #, 5-8-15 DT ignore for the scaling types of both guns and energy weapons turrets, increase to firing rate and damage scaling with each scaling turret mkI-mkII etc.

Securitron MkII: greatly increased weapon damage and moderately increased DR, equivalent to a sentry robot with a 6 missile payload and a much stronger laser weapon.

HP Ammo effect changes from 3X DT modifier to 1.25X DT modifier, in lieu of all the increases to DT.