It started as usual....just wanted to replay an old game. Now with best community-created mods, for more fun and all that. And I came upon Full Combat Rebalance made by Andrzej 'Flash' Kwiatkowski. Hard package ofc, not Easy one.

I liked many changes in it -- nice and efficient damage system, useful food, nerfed Signs -- just to name a few. However after some playtesting I've found many balance problems, some bugs (bombs were not working at all, for example), a lot of simplification (many monsters lost their special abilities) and a general luck over preparation gameplay. And I've started fixing it, piece by piece -- and this is a result.

Mod is not perfect. Act II is a huge money sink compared to other Acts, latter acts are easier than earlier ones, Quen tree is lacking, Axii (yes, it was restored) is situational. Overall, however, result is good and I like it.

And yes, it is possible to beat the game on Witcher difficulty in Ironman mode.

Here's the changelog:

ALCHEMY:
1. Increased Rubedo Buff (0.1->0.6 [1.5->9 / min], was less than food buff), desc updated
2. Increased Nigredo Buff (1->2) , desc updated.
3. Increased Full Moon & Maribor Forest buffs (+25% Vitality instead of +20 Vitality and +25% Endurance
instead of +10 Endurance ), desc updated.
4. Removed baseline Cat ability, restored Cat potion, removed De Vries Extract on Cat activation.
5. Increased cost of dog tallow to 40 orens, changed description. It is top quiality oil base in fact.
6. Made Willow potion work. Reduces Stun duration by a factor of 100, minimizes Knockdown duration. Description updated.
7. Made Golden Oriole potion work (reduces Poisoning duration by factor of 100), description updated.
8. Made Kiss potion work (reduces Bleeding duration by factor of 100).  Kiss now protects from
Pain (reduces Pain duration by factor of 100) in addition to Bleeding. Description updated.
9. Nerfed negative effect of potion overdose. It is still very serious though.
10. Blizzard potion now offers bonus to Attack.
11. Thunderbolt now offers +25% attack / damage instead of +50% damage, dodge/parry penalty is same.
12. Bindweed now adds 10% resistance from Acid, Fire and Magic, was 70% Acid before. In addition it protects from Blinding and Incineration now.
13. Insectoid Oil and Ornithosaur Oil now provide increase in damage by 10, same as other specific oils.
14. De Vries' Extract is now a useful potion which halves Toxicity and Vitality without removing effects of all other potions.
15. Restored bombs, they all do work now.
16. Reduced duration of bomb critical effects: Zerrikanian Sun (blind) to 12 secs, King and Queen (fear) to 8 secs
and Samum (stun) to 4 secs. Now you can execute finisher on enemies stunned with Samum. Those 4 seconds is
enough to kill one normal enemy, but 2 seconds is hardly enough for those with resistance (see below on effect time).
17. Increased cost of Saltpeter and Stammelford's Dust to 30 orens.





ITEMS:
1. Overhauled foods and drinks. Water now grants only Endurance regeneration, juices were added a small Vitality regeneration, milk - improved Vitality regeneration. Drinks and foods overwrite each other. More expensive food provides longer Vitality regen.
2. Improved stats of Raven armor, made them somewhat different again. Order version offers extra damage, elven version offers extra Sign Intensity and Witcher version offers extra Vitality.
3. Improved stats of other armors, added damage resistance and Fire/Acid/Magic resistances.
4. Added The Last Wish to Thaler in Act 2, removed Samum from his store.
5. Abigail in Act I now sells Necrophage oil at 100 orens per piece.
6. Added Vampires: Facts and Myths to Kalkstein in Act II.
7. Slightly adjusted stats of temporary runes (Vodon, Perun, Svarog) and Argentia oil, updated descriptions.
8. Book of the Kiss can now be bought from Kalkstein in Act II.
9. Added red meteorite to smith in Act I, restored blue meteortite that was sold at Haren's.
10. Added sun runes to both smiths in Act II.
11. Removed Excellent Leather Jacket from Act II stores. Now in Act I you can upgrade steel sword, in Act II - silver sword, and in Act III -- armor.
12. Added Kiss recipe to Act I. Read Berengar's notes carefully!
13. Improved stats of Aerondight and Moonblade. Also they are more different now.
14. Blue Mnts sword now has Pain bonus. D'yaebl was added Precise Hit, Deithwen now has parry, Sihill was granted
armor pierce bonus.
15. Slightly increased damage of higher end steel swords, helps to avoid leveling and using only silver sword abilities.
16. Adjusted stats of temporary rune stones, removed Precise Hit boni to exclude them from infamous 'stuck oil' bug.
17. Made every oil and runestone increase damage by flat value. Percentile increase is only on potions now (Thunderbolt, Wolverine).
18. Increased cost of Werewolf Fur.
19. Removed Zerrkianian alchemy from Act I trader, added Secrets of Southern Masters. Reversed prices of those scrolls.
Fear is generally more useful than Blind so it goes to Act II.
20. Added Wolfsbane to Vizimian Herbalist in Act I.
21. Bombs and Oils can be sold now.




ENEMIES:
1. Echinopsae, now Archespore -- was renamed to "Archespore, lesser" to avoid duplicate entries.
2. Drowners and Drowner Dead are Necrophages now, so relevant oil works on those monsters.
3. Restored monsters' abilities: Pain to wraiths, Stun and Knockdown to golem, Knockdown to cockatrices and graveirs,
Blinding and Pain to kikimore warriors, Pain to vodyanoi warriors, Stun to vampires (fleders, alps, bruxae, garkains),
Blinding to vodyanoi priests, Pain to alps and bruxae, Knockdown to devourers, Pain to centipedes, Knockdown to basilisks,
Stun to bloedzuigers, Blinding to noonwraiths, Knockdown to wyverns, Blinding to vodyanoi priests, Pain to mutant assassins,
Stun to greater brothers, Knockdown to cemetaurs, Stun to skullheads, Stun to zeugl, Knockdown to Ozzrel and other alghouls,
Knockdown to skoffin (sewer cockatrice), Knockdown to Moa (wyvern), Blinding to Teju (priest), Knockdown to Ureus (cemetaur), Stun to Lilly (bruxa) and Vesper (garkain), Stun to Dagon, Stun-Knockdown-Pain to the King and Grandmaster,
Bleeding to the Beast and barghests, Knockdown to frightner (and removed its instakill). Updated descriptions.

4. Similar to above, monster immune to something gets corresponding effect time reduced by a factor of 100x, monster resistant to something has effect time halved and monster vulnerable to something -- doubled. Updated all descriptions.

5. Reduced damage of Savolla and increased his vulnerability to Knockdown. After all, Triss said it will be 'magic lights'
and that he is exhausted from teleportation. Previously he had a ~80-90% chance to kill Geralt on Witcher difficulty.
Nerfed his hp too as his armor now offers better protection.

6. Noonwraiths and nightwraiths (and midday bride) now have same immunities as regilar wraiths.
7. Leo's ghost now has all ghost immunities - but is still killable even w/o pre-knowledge. Geralt has many tools for killing.
8. Monsters resistant / immune to Fear are now normal / resistant to Axii. Immune to Axii are: golems, specters, archespores,
kikimore queen, koschey, mutants, Dagon, King, Lilly and Vesper.
9. Added immunity to Pain to garkains and bruxae, removed resistance to knockdown from alghouls.
10. Added a small dodge chance to ghouls and alghouls. It's rather fun to watch.
11. Wraith in the "A Restless Ghost" quest now responds adequately to aggression instead of ignoring Geralt's attacks.
12. Removed monsters' innate vulnerability to silver, silver sword was doing 5 extra damage to many monsters.
13. Increased Attack of zeugl's tentacles to match its head.
14. Added slight damage resistance (percentile) to lightly armored humanoid enemies.
15. Added some point damage resistance to heavily armored humanoid enemies -- there're some underarmor garments too.
16. Upgraded fistfighting minigame, now it is very possible to lose it, especially to bosses.
17. Increased wraiths' weakness to Yrden
18. Removed bloodstains from specter type enemies. They still appear sometimes though.
19. Added regeneration to King, reduced his resistance to Yrden
20. Added additional resistance to silver sword damage to armored humanoid enemies.
21. Upgraded Dagon hp and damage so he's not a pushover anymore.
22. Slightly increased hp of vodyanoi priests and warriors.




SIGNS:
1. Restored Axii skill tree.
2. Upgraded Quen skill tree, removed broken abilities
3. Upgraded Axii tree, removed broken abilities.
4. Updated Axii tree skill textures for new FCR color scheme
5. Normalized sign trees: 5th line of upgrades requires silver talents now. Removed useless and bugged abilities.
6. Moved Added Efficiency to 5th Sign level.
7. Same progression -- Incineration-Pain-Fear -- is now in Igni tree.
8. Yrden duration is now Sign Intensity divided by 5, thus it is way shorter.




ABILITIES:
1. Overhauled Endurance regen buffs. Base is now 1.67 [25] pts per minute, was 1.4 [21]. Tawny Owl is now 2.67 [50], was 2 [30] per minute. Drink is now 1.67 [25] pts per minute too, was 0.6 [9]. All in all it is 100 Endurance per minute, unlocking all
abilities that increase speed of Endurance regeneration will bump it by ~128%.
2. Overhauled Vitality regen buffs. Base regen is now [0] hp per minute. Food regen (see below) is [3] hp per minute.
Regeneration ability grants [1] hp per minute. Rubedo is [9] hp per minute. Swallow is [15] hp per minute. All in all (with milk)
it is 30 hp per minute. Unlocking all abilities that increase speed of Vitality regeneration will bump it by ~128%.
3. Changed Vitality, Vitality regen and effect resistances per Stamina level, desc updated.
4. Each level of Intelligence awards increased Endurance regen, similar to Stamina, desc updated.
5. Oil making now requires Intelligence level 2, desc updated.
6. Bomb making now requires Intelligence level 3.
7. Overhauled critical effects. Immunities / Resistances do not work properly in original game, but timing factors DO work.
Therefore - I made it so every "+ resists" upgrade in Stamina tree reduces negative effect's duration by corresponding amount.
All in all, acquiring all 5 Stamina upgrades and 1 specific anti-effect upgrade will reduce effect's duration by ~80%.
Want near-total immunity -- get a potion of Willow (Stun, Knockdown), Kiss (Bleeding, Pain), Golden Oriole (Poisoning) or  
Bindweed (Incineration, Blindness). Finally, Knockdown has some minimal duration (it is related to animation played i think)
and it cannot be reduced beyond it.

8. Made Buzz ability work (reduces Pain duration by factor of 100).
9. Rebalbanced Petri Philter / Intensity / Place of power effect. Each of them now adds +25% to Sign Intensity, they stack.
10. Reduced Brawn effect on Endurance special attack drain from -60% to -50%.
11. Upgraded base stat trees with new abilities, normalized them.
12. Normalized stat trees again: 5th line of upgrades requires silver talents now. Removed Rituals from Intelligence tree -
they are bugged.
13. Replaced Finesse with Flowing Attack.
14. Being drunk now reduces Attack / Parry / Dodge by 10. Removed additional parry / dodge penalties from Buzz.
15. Greatly reduced Geralt's Attack. Now enemies can parry or dodge his blows.
16. Updated Dexterity tree, now it offers bonuses to Attack.
17. Restored Attack and Dodge boni of Predator ability.
18. Strength tree now offers a bit more damage.
19. General improvement of Gold abilities over Silver ones in all trees.
20. Dodging in fistfighting now works.
21. First level of Attribute trees now requires Bronze talents, making game start a bit easier.
22. Added 4 more bronze talents, available at level 1 and intented for use on basic level 1 attribute abilities.
23. Added 4 more bronze abilities to level 4 in attribute trees.
24. Reduced Vitality regeneration of Regeneration ability from 3 per minute to 1. Geralt still needs to eat to heal naturally.
25. After some playtesting - reduced base Attack to 75 and increased Attack gain from Dexterity tree. Now all 4 attribute trees
are equally needed -- for raw damage, for to-hit chance, for survival, for Signs and alchemy.



SWORD STYLES:
1. Upgraded strong sword styles, they now offer more damage, giving better result than improving Strength.
2. Upgraded group sword styles. Fear has been removed, extra dodge has been removed. Now developing this style offers
increased damage angle (from 90 degrees to full circle) and improved damage.
3. Improved branch abilities in fast styles, it now offers best Attack, also removed Pain effects.




OTHER:
1. Added Yrden vulnerability to wraith description.
2. Restored original camera settings.
3. Adjusted activation threshold for potion overdose to match hud effect appearence (51 and 61. It is rather low, but I cba to
recompile all potion scripts.
4. Many spelling fixes.
5. Adjusted talent progression. By level 40 Geralt will have enough talents to learn 13 of 30 gold abilities,
28 of 57 silver abilities and 62 of 119 of non-mutagen bronze abilities, mutagen potions that grant talents are not counted in.

6. Reduced armor of Vesna Hood as it was very high - ghouls have same armor. She now carries same armor as Geralt
and has high dodge chance.

7. Updated tutorials, improved description of chaining attacks and fast style.
8. Made different spelling for Attack/Parry/Dodge/Sign Intensity points and percentile increase/decrease.
9. Updated tutorial about potion overdose effects.
10. Letter to Eric and Books of the Kiss / Tawny Owl / Wolverine / Golden Oriole / Thunderbolt / Vampire Oil / Swallow
are now quest items -- to reduce inventory clutter.
11. Updated tutorial about risks of finisher moves.

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Updates:
1.0.2
1. Slightly nerfed defense of barghests in Act I, removed their Bleeding attack, updated bestiary description.

1.0.1
1. Nerfed defense of Salamandra bandits in prologue and (to lesser extent) in Act I.

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Installation: put z_FCR dir into your \Data dir. Developed and playtested with GOG version of The Witcher.

Thx to Flash for creating a firm foundation for it.