Wanting to Do a Nice Rebalance of Patch 1.1 - Some Help With Spiritual Successor/Modding?

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

So, I'm pretty new to this whole modding thing, but I wanted some advice on how to do a rebalance of some of the sweeping item nerfs and some ability nerfs in 1.1

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around Spiritual Successor as a file editor though, and I'm a little lost - whenever I try to edit an ability, I can't make sense of most of the stuff that appears. It's all just strings of letters and numbers, I can't find anywhere where I could, say, adjust a full attack to a primary attack. 

 

For best results, I want to collect all of the changes I'll need to make in this thread and carry them out when the patch hits - I think it'd be easier to work backwards with some of the bugfixing framework for certain skills. 

 

Here's a list of the abilities I wanted to edit:

 

Fighter: 

 

Charge - Make it so that it's a primary attack against all enemies it hits. Removes dual wield cheese but still allows for decent AoE damage/use of two-handers. 

 

Weapon Specialization - Bring this up to 15% damage with proficient weapons

 

Weapon Mastery - Bring this up to 10% damage with proficient weapons

 

Cleaving/Mob Stance (Not sure if I need to edit these separately, clarification would be lovely) - Instead of a full attack against one enemy, a primary attack against all enemies. For this, I don't know if it's possible to do a 'half-mod' if 1.1 has some sort of functionality included that keeps Cleaving Stance from infinitely proccing. 

 

I've seen a lot of Fighter buffing mods bumping Armored Grace from 25% to 50%. Is this something I should do? I'm not really sure how the math works.

 

Monk: 

 

Turning Wheel - 5% lash instead of a 2% lash. 

 

Lightning Strikes - 30% Shock Damage lash

 

I've considered bumping up the Action Speed buff from 15% to 20% again. Would this be too much/make the game too ridiculously easy, even with the updates to difficulty?

 

As for items...

 

Items are a bit of a different beast, as - judging from what people have said - pretty much every item in the game has been hit with some sort of change. It honestly seems like it'd be better to just decide on which items I plan on using most and changing them individually. 

 

What you guys could do to help me...

 

Do the work for me? :D

 

No, but seriously...

 

Some help deciphering the more obtuse bits of data with the mod tool would go a long way. For example, I have no idea how to properly change something from a Full Attack to a Primary Attack (Or, in the case of the new Charge, from a Stun to a Primary Attack on all enemies). I feel like editing the passive skills would be better since I'm pretty sure it's just changing numbers around and that's about it. Plus, how on Earth do I adjust Cleaving Stance so it hits everybody instead of just one nearby enemy, or would I not be able to do that?

 

Also, once I've done this, what do I do to get my files to take effect over all other saves into infinity? Please be as descriptive as possible. I saw an Override folder mentioned in the sticky thread, but I don't see one in my Steam folder. Do I have to make one myself? Since I'll only be changing specific skills, the override will only affect those skills if they're changed in subsequent patches, right? So I don't have to worry about it affecting, say, all Monk skills or all Fighter skills, or Paladin/Cipher skills? 

 

Also, if some of you who are also unsatisfied with the state of things could review the changes I'm considering and potentially provide your own input/suggestions for updates to the other classes, I'd appreciate it. I've really only played with Monk, Fighter, and Paladin, so getting some insight into how the other eight classes fared and how people are planning to adjust those skills would be much appreciated. 

 

 

 

 

[Seroster01]

A few notes in answer to your questions: 

 

I have yet to mess around with changing the attack function (full attack to primary, etc.) and looking at the editor briefly I don't see how to do it exactly (I thought you had to add/edit an "effect" that would specify what type of attack it was, since that was basically how it was in POE1).  But I don't see that type of thing listed in pre-existing abilities so I have to say I can't help you there.

 

The numerical changes shouldn't be very difficult, as like you said you mostly just need to find the proper entry in the Status Effect game bundle & change some #s.

 

As I kind of mentioned when I talked to you in the other thread, I'm inclined to believe that the Cleaving Stance change is a scripting issue.  I looked at every piece of the ability I could locate in the editor, and I couldn't see anything that looked like a "cap" on the # of attacks made by the ability.  So my assumption is they changed the script of the ability to throw 1 attack at a target instead of attacks on every target.  Someone with more experience editing abilities might look at it & see what they think.

 

The stuff about overriding changes is very simple.  You DO have to put an override folder in yourself, it should go in Pillars of Eternity II\\PillarsOfEternityII_Data\override.  And as I mentioned previously, anything placed in that folder with the proper file/format will override anything in-game.  The way the mod tool works, only the individual parts you change will be exported & put in your override folder.  So no you can't accidentally change "All monk/fighter abilities", and yes if it's in the override folder it will not be affected by patches changing the base info for the said ability, unless you re-modify the ability with the new info.  In relation to the Cleaving Stance changes I mentioned above, if it really is something that is not in within our ability to mod, having the "old" version in the override folder is likely not going to affect such a change (since we can't override it).

[Kohwalter]

There is already a mod for fighter Weapon Specialization, Mastery and Charge: 

https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/72

 

That mod pack also has many other tweaks in the game.