Version 1.1 is now a way more reasonable damage bonus. Default Greydwarf bonus went from 100% to 50% for example. This is mostly due to the feature to fix the damage number color, because previously if I lowered it below 100%, then the number would turn grey despite dealing more damage than before (because the base game is 0% after all)
It's not specifically listed in the description, but I'm guessing it's safe to assume that the Elder is counted amongst the "tree" enemies affected by this mod?
Thanks for this, we'll be doing a new playthrough soon so hopefully we'll get a feel for how this affects balance.
Random suggestion/expansion to this idea: along with their new lightning immunity, they could be immune to spirit damage like normal... but most other living creatures that are currently immune would be simply resistant (making mod-added sources of spirit damage a bit more widely viable)
hey again, thanks for the suggestion! I love writing mini mods for people. sadly, this specific one feels a bit off to me. I think spirit damage is meant to be the holy damage of this universe. that's why only the undead and werewolves are vulnerable to it (and bats lol). but that is actually quite a lot of enemies: all draugr, all skeletons, all ghosts, all kinds of blobs, fenrings, 2 bosses, I think that is enough.
one weird thing is the resistance differences between the frost cave enemies and the pre frost cave fenrings. their (non existent) drops are also weird, so tweaking that was already something on my idea pile.
I have a mini mod ready for pickaxe damage though, so I hope you will like that one
Thanks for the perspective, I guess the only thing that annoys me about spirit damage is... all of those enemies but Fenring and Yagluth are in the swamp! D:< And they're not even weak to it, they just have normal resistance D:<<< I've never thought of spirit as "holy" damage before and didn't really see the logic behind everything living being immune.
What's your take on half the bosses being pierce resistant? I feel like it was a deliberate attempt to keep them from just being kited by bow users, but it's suffering for our people who usually stick to daggers/spears. At least bow has elemental options... Pretty sure I've seen games separate ranged piercing damage from melee piercing just because of this issue.
going from immunity to being normally affected is a big damage boost (hence why this chop damage mod probably needs balance changes). it's a lot more damage than going from normally affected to being weak to something
yes, games that (logically) put ranged and melee pierce damage into the same category usually suffer from making those melee weapons pretty weak in the process. or they take the dark souls melee focused approach where spears are very good, simply because bows are next to useless (fun for challenge runs though).
even with the boss resistances, I would say bows are the strongest weapon class as enemies are not aggressive/ fast enough to punish kiting (mistlands excluded, I have not played it), so you can simply use 3 stamina foods and relax. Even without elemental arrows being fantastic, I use wooden arrows almost exclusively, have we ever had a reason to use metal arrows for more pierce damage? no. and then needle arrows arrive to make it even less balanced.
I would love for the spear (which needs an actual thrust attack lol) or even the pickaxe to be viable. Since the knife rework, knives are excellent with their moveset, damage multiplayer and damage split. Same goes for Porcupine, but that really shows how pierce only melee weapons suffer. I was hoping the devs would rework spears after they reworked knives.
seems pretty difficult to fix in a mini mod. I would prefer to write a bigger mod to make the actual spear class better (with animations, mechanics and multipliers). one idea would be an exclusive bleeding wound effect to get around the resistance. another would be allowing shield poking. yes, spears definitely need some love!
there is a reason my first playthrough ended like this (probably quite a few mod testing deaths included) Chop chop! Pew pew!
Yeah we still haven't given it a proper try yet (starting a new game this weekend), but I'm pretty worried about how this will affect Black Forest tier balance. Lack of access to swords going into BF means most of us tend to go into it with axes as our primary melee weapon anyways. But I love the idea too much, especially because rock golems being vulnerable to pickaxes is already a thing.
I guess the sensible thing to do would be to give them slash resistance to offset their new vulnerability, though obviously that makes swords pretty unattractive for the entire forest tier... Honestly though I think it's a good option, at least worth including in the config. IMO in general the balance between damage types would feel a lot better if there was more enemy variety in each biome (this goes for my complaint about the viability of spirit damage as well)--personally I'm already looking into mods that add more enemies to the game, so in the event you do add slashing resist I think weapon balance would turn out just fine for us.
I really like those spear ideas though! Hopefully Irongate will give them the rework they deserve and I'd love to see something along those lines. My only idea was to take the most straightforward route and give them a way to ignore a portion of enemy resistance or something... a static 25% should put them on par with knives right? My dream would be to try something a bit more dynamic though, maybe a stacking debuff or.. something...
Thinking this hard about this stuff just makes me miss Combat Overhaul again (R I P), excuse me while i go sob into my pillow for an hour or two
"to give them slash resistance to offset their new vulnerability" I thought about that a lot, but I didn't want people to not download the mod because they don't want their swords to be nerfed. I may add it but disabled by default
I mean it's not like there are meaningful options at the black forest tier--player sources of elemental damage in vanilla are few until Mistlands or at least Mountain and I'm pretty sure the only one in BF is fire arrows. Then again, anybody downloading a mod like this is likely to already be using other mods already, soooo
The more I think about it the more I'd like an option for slash resist, if only so I can try them both out. Monster HP will be scaled up for this playthrough so we'll really feel it if swords turn out to feel that bad. Elder is the only thing I'm worried about, I don't like making people's weapon of choice nonviable for 2 bosses in a row (bonemass)
This last update is great! We'll be trying with and without slash resist to see if we can't decide which feels better. But yeah, with the previous version my friend and I kind of demolished a 1-star Elder, so something probably needed to be done hahaha
if you add the slash resistance without increasing the chop damage right now, then you will do the exact same damage with the bronze and iron axe, since they have equal slash and chop damage, but the 50% new chop damage will be countered by the 50% lost slash damage. technically they are now 'resistant' instead of 'immune' to chop damage (but the new damage text feature still colors the text yellow). so I recommend 100% chop damage and slash resistance, or keeping the slash resistance off. the elder damage buff went from 150% last update to 50% now. I overdid the weakness for elder, but I never meleed him, so I wanted it to be rewarding, too rewarding it seems
Weren't abominations already weak to axes long time ago by default? or am I missing something? tried to kill a randomly encountered abomination in the swamps today... it was way too OP and fast hahaha but I was using a dual-wielding axe mod combo and one of them was upgraded blackmetal so... only makes sense lol
nope, they were immune to chop damage. slash damage (swords and axes) is the only physical damage type they aren't heavily resistant to though. and I agree, as soon as you are comfortable meleeing them, they aren't that much of a threat. and from what I've heard the dual wielding mod is pretty unbalanced, yeah, but I haven't used it
oh, I see. so the effect of axes/swords against them and feeling as if it's buffed is just the opposite, it's felt in contrast with everything else just being resisted against ahaha. and actually it's not about "weakness" heh. good to know. well, now they ARE weak :3 a bit too much hahaha. but yeah thats DW mod's fault I guess and my OP status for the area anyway :) would need to test on a new playthrough :)
18 comments
Balance feedback is still welcome.
Idea: could this mod also make tree stumps extra weak to pickaxes? 🤔
Thank you so much
Random suggestion/expansion to this idea: along with their new lightning immunity, they could be immune to spirit damage like normal... but most other living creatures that are currently immune would be simply resistant (making mod-added sources of spirit damage a bit more widely viable)
one weird thing is the resistance differences between the frost cave enemies and the pre frost cave fenrings. their (non existent) drops are also weird, so tweaking that was already something on my idea pile.
I have a mini mod ready for pickaxe damage though, so I hope you will like that one
I've never thought of spirit as "holy" damage before and didn't really see the logic behind everything living being immune.
What's your take on half the bosses being pierce resistant? I feel like it was a deliberate attempt to keep them from just being kited by bow users, but it's suffering for our people who usually stick to daggers/spears. At least bow has elemental options...
Pretty sure I've seen games separate ranged piercing damage from melee piercing just because of this issue.
yes, games that (logically) put ranged and melee pierce damage into the same category usually suffer from making those melee weapons pretty weak in the process. or they take the dark souls melee focused approach where spears are very good, simply because bows are next to useless (fun for challenge runs though).
even with the boss resistances, I would say bows are the strongest weapon class as enemies are not aggressive/ fast enough to punish kiting (mistlands excluded, I have not played it), so you can simply use 3 stamina foods and relax. Even without elemental arrows being fantastic, I use wooden arrows almost exclusively, have we ever had a reason to use metal arrows for more pierce damage? no. and then needle arrows arrive to make it even less balanced.
I would love for the spear (which needs an actual thrust attack lol) or even the pickaxe to be viable. Since the knife rework, knives are excellent with their moveset, damage multiplayer and damage split. Same goes for Porcupine, but that really shows how pierce only melee weapons suffer. I was hoping the devs would rework spears after they reworked knives.
seems pretty difficult to fix in a mini mod. I would prefer to write a bigger mod to make the actual spear class better (with animations, mechanics and multipliers). one idea would be an exclusive bleeding wound effect to get around the resistance. another would be allowing shield poking. yes, spears definitely need some love!
there is a reason my first playthrough ended like this (probably quite a few mod testing deaths included)
Chop chop! Pew pew!
I guess the sensible thing to do would be to give them slash resistance to offset their new vulnerability, though obviously that makes swords pretty unattractive for the entire forest tier... Honestly though I think it's a good option, at least worth including in the config. IMO in general the balance between damage types would feel a lot better if there was more enemy variety in each biome (this goes for my complaint about the viability of spirit damage as well)--personally I'm already looking into mods that add more enemies to the game, so in the event you do add slashing resist I think weapon balance would turn out just fine for us.
I really like those spear ideas though! Hopefully Irongate will give them the rework they deserve and I'd love to see something along those lines. My only idea was to take the most straightforward route and give them a way to ignore a portion of enemy resistance or something... a static 25% should put them on par with knives right? My dream would be to try something a bit more dynamic though, maybe a stacking debuff or.. something...
Thinking this hard about this stuff just makes me miss Combat Overhaul again (R I P), excuse me while i go sob into my pillow for an hour or two
The more I think about it the more I'd like an option for slash resist, if only so I can try them both out. Monster HP will be scaled up for this playthrough so we'll really feel it if swords turn out to feel that bad. Elder is the only thing I'm worried about, I don't like making people's weapon of choice nonviable for 2 bosses in a row (bonemass)
tried to kill a randomly encountered abomination in the swamps today... it was way too OP and fast hahaha
but I was using a dual-wielding axe mod combo and one of them was upgraded blackmetal so... only makes sense lol