Help with mod for wizard summoning weapons

[Dalzar]

Greetings to this wonderful community from long time lurker.

My idea is that I would like to mod parasitic staff and firebrand back to its poe1 glory.

I feel like my Corpse eater/blood mage should play with parasitic staff and my tempest (my favorite multiclass, blood thirst always on!) would like to play with stronger firebrand.

Firebrand had 29-44 base, 45% lash and +4 accuracy.

Parasitic staff was exeptional from lvl1, had 26-39 base damage and 30%  lash.

I do not have any experience modding the game so if anyone has time help me with i would appreciate it. 

[Boeroer]

Hello and welcome!

There's a bit confusion about base dmg and lashes. None of those weapons had a lash. Instead they have a "normal" additive dmg bonus. Lashes would be multiplicative dmg bonuses. 

For example:

Firebrand has actually 25-35 base damage. What you see in the wiki (or on the tooltip ingame) is not the base dmg but instead it's the base dmg +45% already included). Firebrand has the  "Damaging III" echantment which consists of+45% additive dmg bonus (which is not a lash) and +4 ACC. It also has the enchantment "Annihilation" (+50% additive extra crit damage bonus).

Parasitic Staff, Firebrand and Spirit Lance (all the two handed summoned melee weapons) all have the same base dmg of 25-35 in PoE.

Only their different qualities (Parasitic Staff -> Exceptional: 30%, Firebrand -> Damaging III: 45% and Spirit Lance -> Superb: 45%) lead to different tooltip values (or values in the wiki). But the base damage is always 25-35 (average 30).

For Deadfire you don't need to mod the quality - because they are scaling automatically now. That means those additive dmg bonuses come automatically with level. You'd basically only need to alter the base damage.
Great Swords normally have 18-24 base dmg in Deadfire. If you lift that to 25-35 that's already a very strong buff. Quarterstaffs have the same dmg values. I wouldn't add Annihilate to Deadfire's Firebrand because in Deadfire it comes with a 25% burning lash - which will be very good in combination with the higher base damage. 

There are several modders still active here who can tell you exactly what to do. I'm not one of them unfortunately.  

Edited April 16, 2021 by Boeroer

[Dalzar]

Thanks @Boeroer for  the detailed reply!   

I would imagine that changing the base damage of these weapons could be pretty simple to do?

Other interesting option I have in mind is to make the parasitic staff to scale with power level. 

 

Does @Elric Galad have any tips on how to do this,  since  Polishing mod has made corpse eater really fun to play with and you have  buffed warding staff and citzal armory in your recent patch.

[Elric Galad]

Leaving apart the balancing consideration, to answer on the technical side.

First check the modding basics on the various tutorials to get an idea about the structure of Gamedata files.

Then on the specific topic :

 

Weapons are listed in the Items Gamedata file. Weapons have several attributes but the most important to know are Attack ID and Item Mod ID.

 

To change the base attack, you have to change the Attack Gamedata file where you can find with the object with corresponding Attack ID. There are 2 cases :

- either the weapon has its own attack, which is likely to be the case for Firebrand since it has specific damage type. Then you can directly change the min - max damages.

- or the weapon shares its attack attribute with similar weapon which is likely to be the case for Parasitic staff (it should have the same attack as other staves). Then you have to duplicate the attack object, customize it, give it a new ID and change the Attack ID attribute within the Item Item Gamedata file.

 

The Item Mod ID is used to describe the Enchants and also scaling properties. It points within an Item Mod object within the Item file. The Item Mod Objects have status ID attributes that point to the Status Gamedata file. Just follow the ID to get an idea about how it is structured. 

There are several Statuses for scaling weapons (Acc, damages bonus, PEN) within the status file. You have to customize their scaling attributes so PL is taken into account instead of Level. Then of course you will have to duplicate the whole path from the weapon attributes to the status so you don't impact other scaling weapons.

 

Modding isn't that hard once you have figured the basics. I suggest to start by customizing Firebrand, then Parasitic Staff, then the Power Level scaling which is a bit trickier to do.

[Elric Galad]

For Balance : Firebrand isn't viable as an ultimate weapon as it is. It is good but not enough. The spell is perfectly fine as a Tier 2 utility spell to get a weapon that deals elemental damages (very important Vs certain foes). That's why I won't change it.

Parasitic Staff isn't as strong as ultimate Weapons, but its unique enchant makes it suitable for certain builds. Such as Bloodmage indeed. But that's why I think it doesn't need a buff. For Wizards, it is fine to use it sometimes but switch to other Conjured 2 handers such as Citzal Lance or Warding Staff if necessary.

 

Power Level scaling is a tempting idea but I'm conservative about Keeping the char level instead since it is way easier to balance (PL stacking and differences between Multiclass and Single Class would be a pain).