Mod: Spirits extended

[Csimbi]

Hi all,
I am getting my spirits up to higher levels - and I am sad to find out that they are pretty limited. Makes me feel like the all-powerful spirits are becoming less and less useful as they hit their limits.
I made a mod that extends the level cap on the special skills for all the spirits.

Be sure to read at least the "Note well" part of the readme (the readme is also included in the package):

Spirits extended mod u1
=======================

I found the special skills of the spirits rather limited. Once you run out of improvement choices, you are forced to pick things that you might not want.
This mod extends the number of attainable levels for the special skills in the following manner:
 - doubled the max. main upgrades (from 5 to 10, 3 to 6, 4 to 8 and 7 to 14, respectively).
 - extended the rage reduction to 5 (from 2 to 5 and 3 to 5 in all cases)
 - extended the rest reduction so that rest 1 is always achievable (the spirits need to be very high level though).

The only thing I did NOT extend was the radius of Rockfall - it would become useless as it would cover near the whole battlefield.
I left the original values untouched, while I calculated the extended values on the scale derived from the original values.
Linear scales remain linear, while the exponential scales remain exponential.

The total number of improvements (including all special skills and even their starting levels):
          Before    After
Zerock    46        91
Sleem     44        92
Lina      41        75
Reaper    37        73

Note well:
 - you are not going to see the improvements in this mod when you improve all special skills - for best results, try to pick only one (an pick a secondary only when you must).
 - you are limited to level 30, so:
   - you can never ever have the entire arsenal of special skills fully developed.
   - quite often, not even a single special skill can be fully developed (because some of the max. upgrade is allowed only above level 29) and chances are good that you won't be able to pick the right one always.
   - you need to plan very carefully which special attacks you prefer - and invest more choices in those.
 - as Neo adequately put it, the problem is the choice. I assure you, you will face this problem.

Since some files have been directly modified, there may be conflict(s) with other mods. The modified files are:
 - death.atom
 - lina.atom
 - slime.atom
 - therock.atom

Required game version
=====================
King's Bounty: The Legend; 1.7 English

Updates
=======
u0 - Initial release
u1 - There was a typo in Sleem's level 9 upgrade: instead of 500-550, there was 500-050 (!). It's fixed now.

Usage
=====
 1. Start a new game or load an existing game.
 2. Enjoy the extended spirit levels when you level up next time.

Installation
============
Put the ".kfs" file in the <King's Bounty>\DATA\MODS directory (if the directory does not exist, you need to create it).

Uninstallation
==============
Delete the file(s) you added during the installation.


22nd of January, 2009
Csimbi

I have almost all special attacks unlocked in my current game, so I guess I am not going to be doing much field testing until I start a new game (so I can pick only the skills I want). So, I would like to ask everyone (especially those who start a new game) to provide feedback.
Complains, bugs, improvement suggestion are all welcome.

***Edit
A word of warning:
I did not check whether there is a side-effect when:
- the mod is removed,
- a saved game is loaded with improvements already picked from the mod
- the spirit goes to battle or levels up again.
If you see any negative side-effects, please post them here ASAP.
Thanks.

***Edit2
Updated the package. See notes about u1.

[Keneth]

lol, that's insanely overpowered, most of the abilities are already strong enough without extra buffs. Except for the rock, he gets useless once you reach endgame. This does partially solve the problem with taking levels in abilities you don't want though. I think a better solution might be to change the values of existing levels and how upgrades are chosen at level-up. Would take more work to pull off however.

On a side note, I've been trying to devise a way to would allow you to control the intensity (strength, power, w/e) of the ability when you decide to use it (kind of like choosing the level of the spell you want to cast except more complex) but I can't think of any workarounds that would reduce the ammount of code required to make this and I'd probably need to make a new interface panel for each of the abilities. I kinda wish the devs had done a better job at this.

[Csimbi]

Well, this is a first "draft" to run some tests and see how people feel. If you care to come up with a detailed level-up scheme (new values for each skill) and post it, I would be glad to facilitate an updated package.
BTW: I do not consider it over-powering. Why? Because to make a certain skill stronger, you have to make others weaker - so, there is a trade-off. Also, you should not forget that you are still limited to 30 levels (and so, 30 skill improvement choices).

As for the second part.
So far, I have looked at the atoms only - probably there is a way to pass certain variables to the LUA functions to make change the behaviour.

[Keneth]

Actually there isn't any trade-off since you only want one or two abilities from each spirit to begin with, the rest are just a courtesy since you don't have anything better to invest in, what you've done is allowed the player to spend the extra points to further upgrade skills that are already strong to begin with, likely making them insanely powerful if you continued the same progression. This would make my warrior very (trigger-)happy and my enemies very grumpy as they get blasted each turn with a high-powered rage ability.

Also passing variables to scripts isn't really a problem, if you couldn't do that, they would be pretty much useless now wouldn't they?

[Csimbi]

Hmm. I don't know. I found only one useless skill for each spirit - the other three were pretty useful for specific occasions.

I guess you are talking about passing variables from one LUA function to another. I meant passing variables from the atom file to the script (probably it's more appropriate to say: read the atom variables in the scripts).

[Ryastar]

The only question I have is: does this mod allow soul draining to go to 100% killing? If it does, then that is definitely overpowered...

[Keneth]

Originally Posted by Csimbi

the other three were pretty useful for specific occasions.

Specific occasions are not worth investing upgrades in.

Originally Posted by Csimbi

I guess you are talking about passing variables from one LUA function to another.

No, I'm talking about reading variables from atom files. What use are static values if you can't read them with a script?

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Ryastar

The only question I have is: does this mod allow soul draining to go to 100% killing? If it does, then that is definitely overpowered...

As you can get rage from normal killing (spell/ fight) you can't get 100% of killing... you would need from time to time to kill enemies just with your archers... IMHO

[Ryastar]

I meant 100% killing of one stack, just like ordinary soul drain goes to 50% killing of one stack.

[Csimbi]

Originally there were 5 levels, so now there are 10:

level1=level:0/kill:10,rage:10,rest:3,exp:7,level:1
level2=level:1/kill:20,rage:+5,exp:+2,level:2
level3=level:2/kill:30,rage:+15,exp:+2,level:3
level4=level:3,LV:>12/kill:40,rage:+25,exp:+2,level:4
level5=level:4,LV:>16/kill:50,rage:+35,exp:+2,level:5
level6=level:5,LV:>18/kill:60,rage:+40,exp:+2,level:6
level7=level:6,LV:>20/kill:70,rage:+45,exp:+2,level:7
level8=level:7,LV:>22/kill:80,rage:+50,exp:+2,level:8
level9=level:8,LV:>24/kill:90,rage:+55,exp:+2,level:9
level10=level:9,LV:>26/kill:100,rage:+60,exp:+2,level:10

So, the answer is: yes, you can get 100% once your hero has passed level 26.
However, the rage requirement would be pretty high: 10+5+15+25+35+45+55+60=250

The available reductions (currently) are:

rage1=rs:0,level:>1,rage:>10/rage:-10,rs:1
rage2=rs:1,level:>3,rage:>10/rage:-10,rs:2
rage3=rs:2,level:>6,rage:>25/rage:-25,rs:3
rage4=rs:3,level:>12,rage:>50/rage:-50,rs:4
rage5=rs:4,level:>18,rage:>100/rage:-100,rs:5

Since you can pick 100% kill only at level 27, you won't be able to pick the last three reductions, meaning that the max. reduction you could get would be 10+10+25=45.
So, if you could pick always the right choice (which you can't I think), at level 30 you would be able to have 100% kill for 205 rage.

Alternatively, if you pick the reductions instead of the improvements, you would not be able to pick the last three levels, meaning that you could have 70% kill for 45 rage - and there is an error here, because you would not be able to kick the -50 and -100 reductions (rage req. won't be >50 or >100).

Obviously, it needs some tweaking...
So, I am waiting for your inputs...