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About this mod
A more or less complete overhaul of how poisons work in the game. Should be now much more dangerous and force you to always carry antivenoms and antidotes if you don't want to perish to them. Gives more enemies the ability to poison you, restrictions to weapon poisoning, and a new perk for you to silently poison anyone.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This mod started as a personal pet peeve of mine, seeing as tribal and makeshift remedies like Antivenom was pretty much everything that the world of New Vegas knows about poison treatment, and somehow they have an amazingly wide spectrum of effectiveness. Looking around the Nexus for inspiration, I first came across MadCat's Antidotes mod, which offers a pair of new ingestibles to immunize your character for a short time prior to a fight against Cazadores or Scorpions. Not much, but an excellent start. I also noticed that going by the game file's names, the different bottle models used for the weapon poisons in New Vegas were initially intended for such a system, having different antidotes against different enemies, before they decided to dump them all together into antivenom.
I also wanted for being poisoned to actually matter somewhat, even if curing poisons was ultimately easy, for it to actually be able to affect your character in nasty ways, and take an awful lot of time and pain to clear out so that waiting it out would be simply impractical. Like in the classic Fallout games, where getting poisoned by a radscorpion sting ultimately didn't do much, but the effect could last even several days if you didn't take antidote.
Finally, as for the bottled poisons you can use in melee, I also wanted them to have more interesting effects and be included by the above ideas as well, something for which I drew inspiration from Alceister's Poison Overhaul mod, adding a new perk to make poisons and the Medicine skill more useful.
In this mod I've touched a lot of stuff, and while I believe the end result can still be improved (of course), hopefully you'll find that poisons are now something more of a menace... well, at least if you let them touch you and don't go swimming in Antivenom; and that if you favor the Medicine skill you might have more fun with them as well.
Poison Buff and Overhaul
All poisons should now be simply terrible for you and your enemies. Bottled poisons had their effects buffed up, and in some cases new effects were added. Mother Darkness will drain the target's movement speed, Bleak Venom will damage or cripple the chest, Dark Datura drains Agility and Action Points whether you or White Legs use it. Tremble will cause the target to trip and fall due to violent shakes every few seconds, even dropping any non-Unarmed weapon he has drawn, making it more useful against both creatures and NPCs. All poison recipes are categorized under a new subcategory in the Campfire menu.
Animal poisons are even worse. Green Gecko and Tunneler poisons were restored which will drain your Strength and cripple your legs respectively. Green Gecko poison was renamed to Spore Poison, and is now used by Spore Plants' spit attacks, Spore Carrier's suicide bursts, and Green Geckos' melee and ranged attacks. So you can now get horrifyingly sick while exploring Vault 22 as the spore atmosphere there would suggest, well, at least if you get hit. Any attribute drop caused by creature poisons now lasts a very, very long time, making it almost mandatory to use an antidote if you don't wish to be burdened by it for hours or days on end.
So yeah, my headcanon has been shamelessly plugged into this mod making it so Green Geckos draw their toxic nature from managing to include Spore Plants in their diet (no, they don't attack them because everything in HH is a big happy family of oversized random critters spawning out of thin air to kill you every time you take a wrong turn, but I digress), metabolizing their toxins into a terrible new poison they can use against other live prey. Their ranged attacks now actually follow the erroneous wiki info, causing an additional 8 poison damage over 10 seconds. Kill them with righteous fire.
Plus, the worst of all, in addition to those attribute drops, any poison received causes the Poisoned condition, which messes up your sight and causes periodic vomiting and health loss. You can stall this through your Poison Resistance, but unless you have immunity (player's resistances are capped at 85% by default), the poison will chip away at your health continuously for a looong time, typically until you die. Vomiting causes a drop in Endurance and Charisma, and in hardcore mode also causes a spike in thirst and hunger, and is frequent: without a high poison resistance, you'll be puking your guts out every 20 to 60 min of in-game time, making it hard for your character to enjoy life. So, best to cure it ASAP.
There's also an optional download with a shorter vomiting idle animation by weijiesen, from A World of Wacky.
Enemy Poisoners
Enemies can now use bottled poisons in their melee and unarmed weapon attacks, just like you could! Any poison they have in their inventory can be applied to you in every melee hit, with a customizable chance. Legion fighters have a fair chance of carrying poisons, while any NPC who carried drugs before now has a slight chance to carry a poison sample as well (Vanilla poisons only, made with Cazador/scorpion glands and White Horsenettle).
A poison used by Deathclaws has also been restored through this feature. As if they weren't bad enough already. Plus, Giant Ants also apply a poison through their jaws, so watch out, they are meaner than ever. And, a very peeving issue (for me) is also squashed: rad and bark scorpions will not be able to apply their poison if their stinger is crippled! So aiming for the stinger now has some actual use.
Antivenom and Antidotes
Antivenom and derivatives (Fiery Purgative, Snakebite Tourniquet) will still cure most animal poisons when applied, but you can now craft specific Antidotes with a long lasting duration using your Medicine skill and empty syringes. There are antidote recipes in the Campfire menu for avoiding poisoning from Bark Scorpions, Radscorpions, Cazadors, Nightstalkers, and even Tunnelers from the Divide. While the antidote is in effect, those enemies' poison will not get through to your system. Plus, they can work in tandem to cure you from the bottled poisons that NPCs may have poisoned you with:
- Having Rad and Bark Scorpion antidotes active will protect you from Silver Sting. B & R protect you from S.
- Having Radscorpion and Cazador antidotes active will protect you from Tremble. C & R protect you from T.
- Having Bark Scorpion and Cazador antidotes active will protect you from Mother Darkness and Bleak Venom. B & C protect you from B & M.
As the ultimate poison remover, you can also craft an Universal Antivenom with a high Medicine skill that is guaranteed to cure any and all poisons affecting you, no matter their source.
This effect is also used by the Heartless perk from OWB when it detects you are poisoned, so it now really grants COMPLETE poison immunity. If you think this makes the perk kinda overpowered (and Chris Avellone would agree with you), there's the option to disable that feature. The perk itself is not directly touched, so it retains compatibility with other mods that may alter it.
There are a pair of exceptions though. The newly restored Deathclaw poison can only be cured with antivenom, since it's more like dirt and filth in the claws it lacks an specific antidote. The radioactive poison used by Ghoul Reavers though, can only be cured by the Universal Antivenom or the Heartless perk. So if you lack those, think twice about exploring those radioactive ruins.
All these new antidotes can be crafted and occasionally bought from a vendors' medicinal supplies (except Tunneler antidote, since they are an unknown menace in the Mojave). Doctors won't offer to cure your poisons, but if they sell stuff you may be able to buy an antidote from them with your Barter skill.
Actors other than the player are somewhat capable of curing themselves of poisons. If they are under the poisoned condition and out of combat, they'll check their inventory every 5 seconds to see if they can apply an Universal or regular Antivenom, Datura Antidote, or a Tourniquet or Purgative from Lonesome Road. NPCs will get cured of all poisons when ingesting Antivenom or Datura Antidote as if it were Universal Antivenom, mostly to simplify companion management through JIP's Companion Command and Control mod if they get poisoned, though the simplest solution would be to give them poison immunity which is already done by other mods.
The Doctor is In(sane)
A new perk is added to the game, named Toxic Doctor, inspired by Poison Overhaul's Poisoner perk. Requires level 18 and 90 Medicine skill. It allows you to sneakily inject any of your bottled poisons into a target, be it human or creature. You must be sneaking, completely undetected (the [HIDDEN] indicator), and the target must not be immune to poisons, so it doesn't work on robots for example. You can choose which of your poisons to use, which will be immediately applied to the target. You will not draw any suspicions if the target dies, but you won't get XP for the kill either, so it's kind of a double edged perk.
Poisoning Weapon Restriction
A new setting restores what was the intended functionality of the VPoisonWeapons form list, so that only weapons found in it will be eligible for you to apply a poison to. Otherwise, the game simply allows for any melee and unarmed weapon to have a poison applied to, which in some occasions feels a little weird. It will also affect the Enemy Poisoners feature, so that NPCs will only be able to deliver poisons in their attacks when using weapons found in those lists as well.
The form list includes all bladed/spiky weapons from vanilla and DLCs, it is typically updated by other mods that update form lists but until now it had no effect. You can even add non-melee or unarmed weapons to it, and you'll be able to poison them! It even works with ammo entries. If the weapon's ammo is found in the list, you'll be able to poison the weapon while you have it loaded. The H&H Nail Gun can be poisoned by default.
Other Changes
- This mod also includes an universal addiction remover for all vanilla and DLC scripts that referenced addictions, so that new addictions from mods don't need to be accounted in them, and an universal perk and trait remover that does the same for the OWB autodoc and that tutorial message when you leave Goodsprings.
- The Poison Resistance bonus granted by endurance is lowered, from 5 x (END - 1), to 3 x (END - 1). Otherwise it was just too easy getting max poison resistance IMO.
- The Poison Dart effect from the Dart Gun, if you use a mod restoring it, counts as a Radscorpion poison for the antidote, and its effects were balanced and altered to be affected by poison resistance. The effect from the Ant Sting, a unique knife from FO3, also counts as an Ant poison.
- The Weapon Binding Ritual from HH has also been fixed. It now causes poison damage over 2 minutes so you may have to consider how to keep alive while under its effects, it doesn't heal your limbs but instead it now correctly buffs your Perception to 10 and prevents all your limbs from crippling while it's in effect. My low Speech skill prevented me from including this in YUP, so grab it here while it's fresh.
- The Fiery Purgative from LR was a tad overpowered compared to regular Antivenom, so it now drains up to 4 Endurance for 4 minutes, recovering 1 Endurance per minute.
- Snakebite Tourniquet also kinda obsoletes Antivenom... so its Survival requisite is now maximum and you'll also have to complete Lonesome Road before you can make it. Kinda as if you learned how from Ulysses, like Bitter Drink.
- Datura Antivenom and Blood Shield can now also be made with 10 Spore Carrier Sap samples, instead of Spore Plant Pods. That ingestible pretty much lacks use in the game otherwise.
- All these ingestibles, old and new, dealing with curing poisons will be categorized under 'Antidotes' in the Campfire menu, without touching the actual recipe entries (except for Snakebite Tourniquet to add conditions), so the change should be quite compatible.
Installation
Drop files in the data folder and activate 'MdcAntidotes.esp', trash it to uninstall. The optional file 'MdcAntidotes - Vomit.esp' must load after it, if you want to use it. There's also a patch for the Ultimate Illness Mod by xQd, which patches the doctor curing scripts so they both cure the new diseases, and cure all addictions with this mod's universal remover. It also merges a few leveled lists while I was at it. Load 'MdcAntidotes - UIM.esp' after both these mods if you want to use it.
There shouldn't be too many issues if you uninstall while affected by one of the new poison effects... probably try not to have vomit's effects active beforehand. The mod comes with a configuration file if you want to change a few of its parameters, I haven't bothered with an MCM menu because it's a PITA, and I fear I might start doing that with more mods in the future... BE AFRAID.
Credits
MadCat221 for the Antidotes mod.
Fyrstig Feorlond for his Cazador Stinger Audio Fix.
Alceister for his Poison Overhaul mod.
weijiesen for the vomiting anim and sounds from A World of Wacky.
jazzisparis and LuthienAnarion for the quintessential JIP LN plugin.