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About this mod

An open, overhaul of Witcher 3 balance, the unofficial Witcher 3 1.40. It is about balance fixes and small improvements at most - for people who don't want to install any overhaul mod, that makes major changes in gameplay, but want to enjoy good game without terrible and basic balance failures. Divided into modules. Anyone can contribute.

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The mod is now obsolete!!!
I recommend switching to Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition, especially to my line of the mod: Less Hardcore Witcher 3 Enchanced Edition. I intend to move my ideas there where it fits.

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This is an open mod that anyone is invited to contribute according to the assumptions. More info in a sticky thread in comments. Github repository: https://github.com/Fnts7/W3GrandBalanceRepair

Continously developed overhaul of Witcher 3 balance. It is about balance fixes and small improvements at most - for people who don't want to install any overhaul mod, that makes major changes in gameplay, but want to enjoy good game without terrible and basic balance failures. Anyone can contribute. This mod mostly does what CD Projekt RED should fix in patches, so the category is on the border of overhaul/balancing/bug fixing.



Changes description and module division:
Key:
  • Must have adjustment. Can be considered vanilla bug fix.
  • Significant change.
  • Small change, minor impact in game.

Main file:
- Integrates Crossbow Damage Boost And Balance
- Integrates Signs Overhaul
- Includes following modules: Alchemy, Combat, Equipment, Petards
- DOES NOT include modules: Realistic Burning, Enemy Scaling, Combat Speeds - those are available in optional files, but are equally important! Requires: Custom Localization Fix (version for 1.30 available HERE)

Alchemy module (Fnts) - toxicity, potions, oils:
  • Heightened Tolerance skill enhanced, so it has better gain with mutagen poitions*. In addition to its normal effect, it now lowers the toxicity threshold of mutagen poitions by 5% per level, bot not below 35 value. So most of mutagens are lowered from 70 to 52.5 on skill level 5.
  • Heightened Tolerance skill is now row switched with Refreshment skill*. That is for better balance, because Acquired Tolerance and Heightened Tolerance make a powerful combo.
  • Acquired Tolerance skill adjusted to counter the level 1 overpower in late game stage*. It now simply raises maximum toxicity by 36 per skill level.
  • Metabolism Control perk now rises the maximum toxicity by 40.
  • Adjusted Protective Coating skill for balance. Combines now multiplicatively** with armor derived resistance. The skill is no longer that overpowered with high damage resistances from armor. It gives 7% damage res per level for current oil vulnerable enemies.
  • Crabspider (Arachas) decoction fixed and balanced. Now it simply gives extra 25% damage reduction combined multiplicatively**. Utterly stupid vanilla dependence on encumbrance is removed.
  • Balanced and fixed Griffon decoction. Now it gives 3% more damage resistance per hit, up to maximum 36%, combines multiplicatively**. This one is better than Crabspider with heavy armors. But no more that OP, also more useful for lower damage resistances armors than vanilla.
  • Fixed Leshen decoction, so it is more worth using. Damage returned ~4x, for essence enemies ~6x compared to vanilla. Now it is nice mutagen to use with heavy armors and Combat Speeds module.
  • Balanced and fixed Ekimma decoction. Life leech percentage depends on player level, because the damage dealt scales with level rapidly, while Geralt's HP very slowly. Will no longer leech more life than the enemy had vitality or essence left. Also slightly weaker for essence enemies, as the silver sword damage is higher.
  • Balanced and fixed Alghoul decoction, way too weak in vanilla. Now it starts combat with 75% adrenaline gain bonus. Then when Geralt gets hit or 16 seconds pass the bonus drops by 25%. So after 3 hits or 48 seconds at most, the bonus is gone.
  • Balanced and fixed Archgryphon decoction. Uses now up to 60 stamina, causing 10% of hit target HP drain. If Geralt has less stamina than 60, then the HP drain is decreased proportionally.
  • Balanced and fixed Succubus decoction. Raised max attack power bonus to 45% and takes 80 seconds of combat to reach it.
  • Balanced and fixed Wyvern decoction. Gives 4% attack power bonus per hit. Max bonus is 80%. When Geralt gets hit, up to 24% of stacked attack power bonus is removed, instead of vanilla's all.
  • Ancient Leshen decoction limited to 12 per sec max stamina regen gain in combat. In vanilla it was bugged and not working properly - it is fixed (thanks to Primer mod). After every sign cast regen grows by 2 per sec until combat end. In vanilla it could raise up infinitely, so overpowered. Now after six casts it stops increasing the regen.
  • Boosted moderately Katakan decoction to 8% crit chance gain. Use with Signs Overhaul to make the critical chance apply to signs also.
  • Gourmet perk is now reasonable - food effect lasts 30 seconds. So it acts like a weak Swallow, but can be stacked with the real one, so gives quite a strong effect.
  • Euphoria mutation factor nerfed from 0.0075 to 0.005. Still about +100% both spellpower and attack bonus with close to max tox with Acquired Tolerance.
  • Balanced and fixed Golden Oriole potion. Level 3 no longer gives healing from poison. Level 1,2 durations increased. Poison resistance is now 70%, 80%, 100% for levels 1,2,3 accordingly. Also Geralt's base poison resist is lowered from 25% to 20%. Gives now also protection from toxicity increasing venom, resistances: 55%, 65%, 75% for potion level 1, 2, 3 accordingly.
  • Balanced Thunderbolt potion. The stats are now as follows. Level 1: +30% attack power, Level 2: +40% attack power, 15% crit chance bonus during storm, Level 3: +50% attack power, 30% crit chance bonus during storm.
  • Increased Blizzard duration by about 40% depending on level.
  • Petri's Philtre spellpower gain boosted to 20%, 30%, 40% on potion levels 1, 2, 3. Level 1, 2 now also have a chance boost for signs effects apply test. Level 3 like vanilla makes this chance 100%.
  • Maribor Forest level 2, 3 small boost to adrenaline gain bonus 20% instead of 15%.
  • TawnyOwl levels 3,2 nerfed slightly. Level 3 from 10% stamina regen boost to 8% and level 2 from 8% to 7%.
  • Poisoned Blades are adjusted  in a way that the skill depends much less on oil level. The poison apply chance is 6% per skill level and gets +5%,+10% apply chance increase with oils level 2,3. Also the power of the poison from this skill is reduced by about 37%. The outcome is that the skill is stronger in early game (because of higher apply chance), but a bit weaker finally.
  • Fixative skill now also gives a chance to apply a random effect on oil vulnerable enemy. In vanilla this skill had a pretty pointless effect, as the oil can be re-applied at any time. The apply chance is 9% per skill level and the max skill level is 4. The possible effects are currently: burning, bleeding, blindness, poison (stronger than from Poisoned Blades).
  • Synergy skill nerf from 10% gain to 7.5% gain per skill level. In a loaded game to reset the skill effect, unequip all mutagens and the skill itself and re-equip all again.
  • Mutated skin mutation damage reduction per adrenaline point boosted from 15% to 18%.
  • Fixed a vanilla bug related with Transmutation skill. The skill could have its effect after loading a game even if it is not equipped.




Petards module (Murzinio, Fnts):
Petard descriptions in game might be now flawed - not adjusted yet.

  • Adjusted various petards base parameters to make it consistent over petard levels, base and NG+ game.
  • Boosted Grapeshot silver damages. Level 3 physical damage also. Grapeshot level 3 now causes Long Stagger instead of ordinary Stagger.
  • Petards direct damages, effect damages and durations scale with Geralt level in addition to petard level***.
  • Dragon’s Dream has also scaling of burn chance***.
  • Pyrotechnics skill damage scales with Geralt's level in addition to skill level and petard level***. Also boosted Pyrotechnics base silver damage by 33%.
  • Northern Wind adjusted. Freeze effect slightly nerfed: -1second freeze duration. Level 1,2 petard loop durations also reduced. But petard loop also causes freeze (petard loop is petard on the ground).
  • Dancing Star level 2,3 loop durations are slightly lowered to counter damage scaling. But impact damages are raised.
  • Devil's Puffbal level 2,3 impact damages slightly raised.
  • Heavy Artillery perk adjusted: -25% petard count, +75% damage, exception: Dragon's Dream cloud poison receives +150% damage from this perk.
  • Manually aimed petards will deal slightly more damage***.
  • Steady Aim skill will now increase the manually aimed petard impact damage bonus***.
  • Cluster Bombs skill balancing. Main petard throw explosion gives now full effect (unlike vanilla). Skill has now 4 ranks, which gives following gain for each skill level: +1 cluster, +10% all petard's damage, +1 cluster, +10% all petard's damage. Grapeshot clusters damage (but not the main explosion) has penalty of / 1.5, because Grapshot benefits from this skill the most on average.
  • Manticore 1st bonus (petard criticals) nerfed strongly (because of petards scaling). Petards critical chance is now relatively lowered by 25% and critical damage bonus by 25%, except Grapeshot (which benefits greatly from critical damage, so the penalty is 60%). With proper Matincore build - petards focus naturally, Pyrotechnics skill, focus on crit chance and damage, it is still powerful. Note that sword critical chance and damage bonuses do apply to petards with this set bonus.
  • Efficiency skill reduced to 4 levels. So max petards ammo count from this skill is now +4.
  • Normalized critical chance gain on blinded enemy. If the effect comes from Samum level 3 it is +60%, from Samum level 2 +50%, and any other blindess effect gives +40% critical hit chance. This change is important for Signs Overhaul - Conductors of Magic Yrden shock blindness effect and for alchemy module Fixative skill, but had to go to petards, because of changing a petard related code chunk.



If you use this module, but not the main file you must either install also Realistic Burning module or use Signs Overhaul (or both of them) for corrected per level burning resistances!

Combat module (Fnts):
  • Arrow deflection is now possible even without the skill, although with 30% failure chance and no bouncing at enemies naturally. This is a good compromise between not having to use a skill slot for arrow deflection and the overall balance. This is also more lore friendly, as the deflecting arrows is not a special skill for a witcher.
  • Balanced Rend skill. In vanilla it gives constant critical chance bonus regardless of attack powering up time. Now the critical chance bonus is proportional to the powering up time. The stamina damage bonus now varies with skill level from 50% (level 1) to 90% (level 5). 
  • Whirl skill balance - uses a bit more stamina. +20% compared to vanilla and stamina cost reduction per skill level lowered from 10% to 8%.
  • Adjusted 'Attack is the Best Defense' perk. Perk cooldown lowered to 4s. Parry adrenaline gain raised to 0.2 and counter lowered to 0.3. Dodge lowered to 0.2. Now all the actions either give 0.2 or 0.3 adrenaline. Because of constant cooldown there is no point in big differences of adrenaline gain depending on action type. 
  • Fixed Undying skill to actually work according to assumptions. The skill now works the following way - if the Geralt's HP drops below zero and the skill can be triggered, heals Geralt by the fraction of max HP: 0.15 * current_adrenaline * (1 + (skill_level - 1) * 0.33). After the healing, HP will be never lower than 10% of max HP and never above max HP. This way the skill triggers emergency health restore, but doesn't affect damage received.
  • Fixed Crippling Strikes skill, so that its damage scales with Geralt's level.


Combat Speeds module (Murzinio, Fnts):
- Integrates Lore Friendly Armors and Reflex (by Murzinio, very important mod for balancing gameplay with light and heavy armors)

  • Muscle Memory skill increases now also fast attack speed and whirl speed. By 2% per skill level, so up to 10%. This is not reflected in fast attack and whirl speed settings in LF Armors mod, but is combined with them.
  • Strength Training skill increases now also strong attack speed. By 2% per skill level, so up to 10%. This is not reflected in strong attack speed setting in LF Armors mod, but is combined with it.
  • Fleet Footed skill increases now also dodge and roll speed (or cuts down nerf). By 2% per skill level, so up to 10%. This is not reflected in dodge and roll speeds settings in LF Armors mod, but is combined with them.
  • Rend skill balanced better with combat speeds. Since it is faster than strong attack when the button is released quickly, introduced minimum Rend stamina cost - it depends on strong attack current speed - the lower, the greater minimum stamina cost, but not higher than 33 stamina points.
  • Default light and heavy armor speed and resistance params adjusted. In comparison to LF Armors 1.2.

Remember to copy <game_installation_folder>/Mods/modGBRCombatSpeeds/bin folder to <game_installation_folder> !

Equipment module (Fnts):
  • Runeword Replenishment fix (charging sword with a sign effect). In vanilla, the cost of charging a sword with a sign effect is 1 adrenaline point. This is obviously ridiculous, because that makes this runeword useless. Changed that to 0.25-0.4 adrenaline points depending on sign type. Additionally the cost is only taken if the sword is uncharged. So first you hit an enemy, then you can charge again and spend extra cost when casting a sign.
  • Glyphword Rotation fixed - causes normal burning effect now.
  • Increased the range of Glyphword Explosion from 2 meters to 3.
  • Cat gloves now give critical chance bonus instead of attack power bonus. Includes also Grandmaster gloves, which give 6% crit chance bonus. NG+ Grandmaster gloves critical chance bonus is 9%. I used formula attack_power / 2 rounded up.
  • Sword runes values increased to less ridiculous values. For most runes: lesser - 3%, medium - 6%, greater - 10%. Swarog rune: lesser - 15 armo reduction, medium - 30, greater 50. Veles rune: lesser - 2%, medium - 4%, greater - 8% sign power. Dahzbog (burning): lesser - 3%, medium - 5%, greater - 9%.
  • Stribog rune causes now light knockdown effect instead of stagger with chances: lesser - 3.5%. medium - 7%, greater - 12%.
  • Lesser sign armor glyphs now have 3% power, medium ones 6%.
  • Set bonuses now present for all NG+ witcher school gear, except Viper. Integrated fnexus'es mod Set Bonuses For All Tiers of Witcher Gear.
  • Increased rune slot count for NG+ witcher gear gloves and boots to 2. So that it is not lower than Grandmaster items.
  • NG+ Grandmaster Wolf Pants have 3 rune slots like superior and mastercrafted NG+ Wolf Pants now.


Enemy Scaling Module (hidden inf, Fnts):
It is branched from Enemy Scaling for 1.30 - a great work of hidden inf and all who helped him.
Adapted to be compatible with GBR and merge without conflicts. If you use the Main File or Signs Overhaul, install the module file (optional file in files tab) otherwise install the original mod, because the module requires Signs Overhaul part to compile. Remember to copy <game_installation_folder>/Mods/modGBREnemyScaling/bin folder to <game_installation_folder>/

Realistic Burning module (Fnts):
Most important reason for existence of this module: other modules or submods depend on burning resistances, because there are different ways of causing burning effect on an enemy (Igni, explosive bolt, petards). To eliminate
dependencies, I have created a module that is compatible with all. Fixed per level burning resistances (XML assets) are adjusted only in Signs Overhaul (to avoid conflicts).

Module functionality:
  • Adds customization of burning per level (and per category) enemies resistances.
  • Improves the per level burning resistance function. It shouldn't be linear like vanilla. Instead it is a 3 step linear function now. Until level 10 the burning resistances grow slowly, then until level 50, they grow fast (so on level 50 they reach 75% of level 100 resistance), then again until level 100 they grow slowly.
  • Adds alternative burning effect logic (thus the name Realistic Burning).**** In this mode the effect doesn't stop on hit. Instead the effect totally being taken down, only its critical animation stops. So burning effect has 2 phases. Phase 1: the victim is burning with critical animation, thus disabled from combat. Phase 2: the victim is active, but still getting burning damage. Transition to phase 2 happens on hit or when some time of a initial burning duration passes.
  • Improved Igni Melt Armor logic. Now it really melts armor. Melts up to 100% of point armor reduction and up to 7% of percent physical resistances per skill level, so 35% on 5th level. The amount of Igni hits or firestream burning time needed to reach the maximum armor reduction depends on skill level and spellpower. Also the resistances reduction wears of totally after one minute if not hit by Igni in meantime. With Realistic burning enabled the skill has also one more effect. Increases critical burning time by 6% per skill level. So what I call phase 1 burning. Counts for all burning caused by Geralt, not just Igni.



Settings explained:
  • Toggle: 'Game difficulty affects burning damage'. A setting to make burning damage be affected by game difficulty level properly*****.
  • Toggle: 'Realistic Burning'. Alternative burning effect logic switch described above. If disabled, the burning effect will be vanilla-like - all the other settings are valid in both modes.
  • Slider: 'Burning duration (%)'. Burning duration percent adjustment added. Behaves the same in both burning effect modes.
  • Slider: 'Fixed burning resist (%)'******. Fixed burning resistance applied to all enemies.
  • Sliders: "Level 100 human burning resist (%)", "Level 100 group monster burning resist (%)", "Level 100 single monster burning resist (%)", "Level 100 group armored monster burning resist (%)", "Level 100 single armored monster burning resist (%)"******. Per level per enemy category burning resistances. They override the burning per level resistances set in XMLs. The setting sets the maximum resistance for level 100. The resistances for lower levels are computed from this setting using a 3 step linear combined function. On level 1 the resistance is almost zero. On level 10 it reaches 10% of the setting resistance. Then until level 50, the progression is fastest, on level 50 the resistance is 75% of the setting resistance. Then again the progression is slower until the setting resistance on level 100.

Remember to copy <game_installation_folder>/Mods/modGBRRealisticBurning/bin folder to <game_installation_folder>/

Recommended mods:
Custom Toxicity FX Thresholds (so that the toxicity effects are not that aggressive when walking with many mutagen poitions)
Auto Apply Oils (to make sure that you always benefit from Protective Coating skill)
More Quick Slots (obviously must have mod with more poitions and petards in quick access)
No instant kill on knockdown (no instant kill on knocked down enemy with hp > 40%, so that it is not that easy with Aard or blunt bolts heavily knocked down enemies)
Witcher Witcher Gear Scaling with your Level (levels 40+, keep your gear balanced)
UNOFFICIAL 1.30 Mod Update Project (to get vanilla 1.30 updates if not done by authors yet)

Mods worth considering:
Enhanced Quen (my quen balance change is compatible, the config I use is quenTimeExtension = 0, quenPersists = true, the rest as default)

Asterisks from description:
Spoiler:  
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* Heightened tolerance is in vanilla extremely weak skill in comparison to Acquired Tolerance. The mod evens that out. I noticed that there are so many recipes that you can achieve maximum toxicity way more than 250 having that skill. I adjusted that to 208 with level 3. But the make things simpler there is no more recipe amount dependency, because I find it to be overcomplexity. Actually the fights are more difficult on lower levels, so let the skill have a full effect all the time. So with this mod if you use both of the skills at full levels, you can drink 3 mutagen poitions and still have room for normal poitions - about 50 toxicity points left, so a great combo with both skills. Can be even improved by Metabolism Control Perk. To balance that out, Heightened Toletance skill was moved to 2nd row, so that it requires more skill points spent. It is a good idea in vanilla logic, that the lower the skill row, the stronger the skills are - unfortunately this rule is broken badly in vanilla.

** Protective Coating skills, crabspider mutagen and griffon mutagen all give the new resistance combined multiplicatively instead of additively. This way they are not underpowered with armor derived low resistances and most importantly not overpowered with high resistances. E.g. in vanilla you could reach ridiculous ~100% monster damage resistance easily e.g. grandmaster bear armor + protective coating (75% + 25%). Multiplicative formula is following:
resistance := resistance + (1 - resistance) * (newResistanceFactor).
The resistances from all of those 3 sources are applied one by one. For example. Suppose Geralt has 50% some damage type resistance derived from armor, protective coating level 5 and crabspider decoction active. The final resistance will be then:
Armor: 50%
Protective Coating application: 50% + (1 - 50%) * 35% = 67.5%
Crabspider application: 67.5% + (1 - 67.5%) * 25% = ~75,63%

***Petards scaling details:
Scaling is done with per Geralt's level percent boost except Grapeshot. There will be three values. Level 1,2,3 petard accordingly.
Unscaled petards, because it is not needed: Dimeritium Bomb, Moon Dust, Samum, Northern Wind

Dancing Star
Impact Damage scaling: 1.5%, 2.25%, 3%
Burning effect duration: 0.5%, 0.75%, 1%
Burning effect damage: 0.75%, 1.125%, 1.5%

Devil's Puffball
Impact Damage scaling: 1.5%, 2.25%, 3%
Poison effect duration: 1%, 1.5%, 2%
Poison effect damage: 0.75%, 1.125%, 1.5%

Dragon's Dream
Cloud explosion direct damage scaling: 1.5%, 2.25%, 3%
Burning effect duration: 1%, 1.5%, 2%
Burning effect damage: 0.75%, 1.125%, 1.5%
Burning chance bonus to basic value: 0.5%, 0.75%, 1%

Grapeshot scaling:
Damage scaling on levels 1-30: 2.5% damage gain per level
Damage scaling on levels 31-100: 5.5% damage gain per level

Pyrotechnics skill damage scaling: 2%, 3%, 4%

Manual aim dmg bonus: 6%, 9%, 12% (not per Geralt level, just fixed values)
Steady Aim dmg bonus increase: 50% per skill level of base manual aim damage bonus. E.g. petard level 1 with steady aim level 2 will have 12% dmg bonus instead of skillless 6%.

Example:

Dancing Star level 3, Geralt level 40:
Impact Damage: 200, base burn duration: 3s, base burn relative to victim HP damage: 0.01

With scaling applied:
Impact Damage: 200 + 40*0.03*200 = 440
base burn duration: 3 + 40*0.01*3 = 4.2s  (note there are burning resistances per enemy level, so that will be reduced)
base burn relative to victim HP damage: 0.01 + 40 * 0.015 * 0.01 = 0.016

**** The transition to phase 2 time is currently set to 1.5s plus 40% of remaining time. Igni Melt Armor skill improves that time.
In the alternative burning mode NPC don't have any burning damage resistance for effects caused by player, the resistance only affects duration and Igni burn chance. Also to counter that Igni spellpower burning damage scaling was nerfed greatly and petard burning damage scaling disabled or altered for petards module.

***** Since burning does damage relative to NPC health, the damage was not really properly adjusted with game difficulty level in vanilla. For now using fixed values: Death March (Hardcore) - 0.75, Hard - 1.0, Medium - 1.25, Easy - 1.5.

****** There are 3 categories of burning resistances now: base (certain enemy type), fixed and per level per monster category. They combine multiplicatively. See '** Protective Coating skill...' for multiplicative resistance combination explanation.

Compatible with 1.31, Hearts of Stone, Blood and Wine and NG+. Note: there are small differences between some GOTY and non-GOTY script files. This mod contains non-GOTY files. In case of any problems, report.


Installation (manual):
Unzip the archive into: <game_installation_folder>/Mods/
If you update, delete the previous mod folder first: <game_installation_folder>/Mods/modGrandBalanceRepair

After installation (manual or NMM) or update, remember to use script/file merger to check for conflicts (unless you don't have other mods): File merger
After update, make sure you delete all merges of files modified by this mod and make them again.
This way you can make the mods that modify the same file work. Also you can more-less see whether those mods are compatible - if there are heavy conflicts, there is high chance they aren't.

Installation of Enemy Scaling, Combat Speeds and Realistic Burning modules additional instructions:
For each of them:
1. Unzip the archive into: <game_installation_folder>/Mods/ (Nexus Manager does it for you)
2. Copy <game_installation_folder>/Mods/[modFolder]/bin folder to <game_installation_folder> (configuration definitions XML). [modFolder] - modGBREnemyScaling or modGBRCombatSpeeds or modGBRRealisticBurning
3. Go into configuration and set one of presets at first start - for modGBRRealisticBurning mandatory, because it doesn't auto set the config at first start.
4*. With version 55 update Tweaks module is continued under Realistic Burning module. When installing it, delete the remains from Tweaks module, that is old xml, located <game_installation>/bin/config/r4game/user_config_matrix/pc/modGBRTweaks.xml

Credits and Contributors:

Grand Balance Repair dev team:
Fnts, hidden inf, Murzinio, kyoharu1

People who contributed by significant amount of testing, suggestions and bug reporting:
Marth77, marchiali, guynice

People whose work is used in the mod: uacvax, fnexus, skyliner390

Feel free to report bugs or post suggestions.

Recent updates:

Enemy Scaling version 1.31B3.1
First good enough beta to publish. See Enemy Scaling mod page for more details. This is naturally a version adapted for Grand Balance Repair. Most important improvements:
- scaling damages of enemies with too low or too high damages is better normalized
- fixed custom adjustment of enemies damage - it is now better standarized, so +-x% in settings really means it.
- reworking of enemies' armors - at current state in progress
- bugfixes