Arcanum Equilibrium Rebalance Mod by Leonidusx v1.12

now available here from Terra-Arcanum

http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/hacks/arcanumEquilibriumRebalanceByLeonidusxV1.12.zip

Easy to install! Just overwrite Arcanum data folder.

READ THE README! Because I changed almost everything

What my mod changed:

-Stats on over 500 weapons/armors/items (almost every single one)
-Stats on almost every spell
-15 spells replaced with new ones
-170 extra portraits
-Stats on almost every monster
-Important schematic changes so that good items require a special rare component, typically only found at certain parts in the game
-Follower level schemes so that they are more useful and effective
-Much, much more of course!

What my mod does:

-Makes combat actually challenging to your character at times. Some enemies are now powerful boss monsters.
-Balances combat by making as many styles viable and equal as possible (particularly magic, guns, fighter, bows, thrower, tech)
-Balances follower favoritism by making even useless followers decent. I've won games with Jayna, Weldo, Jormund, etc.
-Removes overpowered abilities or features, such as most stun/paralyze effects
-Adds purpose to previously useless things. Fancy clothes give a charisma bonus, for example.

-Overall it makes people's character build decisions actually matter. In regular Arcanum, it's all easy as hell no matter what you do. With this mod, how you develop your character determines what is harder and what is easier as you complete the game.


What my mod doesn't do:

-Absolutely everything I wanted it to. Arcanum has almost no modding information generally available, so some things could not be changed, like many cursed items or backstab damage.

500+ items changed though, not too shabby.

Enjoy!

AND READ THE README!





(or just suffer, whatever)

This is a great patch.

you got a link to just the readme?

Here's a link to just the readme for you:

http://www.filedropper.com/readmeforarcanumequilibrium


And Tony I'm glad you like it. Would love to hear feedback if you got any my friend.

I need to test this, it seems awesome! Thanks ewmarch!
Have you improved gunslinger (mages have always been stronger) ?
I ask because, this is the type of character I want to do in my next playthrough.

I improved everything by making it balanced and the monsters more challenging.

You could look at that as I made mage more normalized than I normalized guns. Or you could look at like I made mage weaker but I weakened guns less, because the monsters are harder. There's a bunch of other ways you could think about it, because so many parts of the game were changed. But if you were hoping for a death ray that makes guns disintegrate things like mages can, then the answer is no, because that isn't balanced. Of course, mages can't disintegrate away enemies anymore either :)

The biggest part of the balancing made damage output normalized, once you develop your character, no matter how you develop your character. Average weapons will do about 6 DPS (damage per speed point in turn-based). Mages, because of their entirely different nature, can do the highest DPS, but those spells are the least mana efficient and there is no longer a method to heal fatigue in combat (so that mage damage is fair). So mages can burst better if they blow all their mana, but once they're out of mana they are out.

If you play the game you will see what I mean.

In general it's designed so that:

Fighters' strengths are consistent damage and toughness (heavy armor) but suffer in speed and versatility

Guns' strengths are initial range advantage and good damage, but suffer in toughness and versatility

Mages' strengths are burst damage and versatility, but suffer in toughness and consistent damage. Mages can vary greatly because of spell/build choices.

Tech strengths are versatility + whatever your build allows (arachnids/grenades/guns/melee etc. all can vary greatly)

Bows have bad damage until you get two-shot training, which makes damage with good bows very good.

Thrown weapons have good damage, and are probably the best early game, but are equal to other damage outputs as other characters catch up in levels. It has the least weapon variety in the game, though :(

Overall, whatever real method of combat you use, you will find that it compares well to every other (assuming you are trying, like not a zero skill in melee rusty dagger build). You will find that some monsters can still kill you. And you will find that some monsters would have been easier had you taken a different path, while some monsters are easier for yours.

As stated in the readme, there are some strategies and items which could not be edited and remain unbalanced, but I changed everything I could wherever I could (500+ items!). If something is still overpowered, it's probably because I spent hours and hours trying to find a way to fix it but couldn't, and there are not many of those left in there.

I hope you all like it! It's been great to me for my 3 test playthroughs. I do so love playing this game now that it isn't just silly.

Thanks for the reply.
I'm gonna start a game right now.
Should I contact with you when I finish (report bugs, suggest improvements, etc) ???

Absolutely. Any serious comments are more than welcome.

Any chance of this working with UAP or WIP?

I use it myself with the UAP. Installation instructions also mention this. Hi-Res and UAP are definitely ok.

Haven't tried with WIP tho.

I've been playing this mod as a gunfighter. I'm currently level 15-ish in Tarant. A few things I've noticed:

It seems like you've balanced tech/magic/melee for the end game only, not for the whole game. Mostly what I'm seeing is that melee is balanced with the +20 strength in mind, so for the first half of the game, before your melee fighters (including the half-ogres) get to 20 strength, they lag behind guns/magic/throwing. I know especially as a gunfighter I'm doing like 5 times as much damage as my melee NPCs at my current level. I think a fix would be to lower gun (and throwing) damage for early-game weapons while keeping it fairly high for later-game weapons.

Related to the gun damage, I keep killing myself with critical misses. Because my gun does like 25 average damage and I only have 40-50 HP, it is very easy to go from full health to dead in a single critical miss. It has happened at least 20 times, maybe more. I have to save my game right before every battle, which is annoying. (For reference, I've been playing on Medium difficulty. I turned it up to Hard for a while and the critical misses got even worse).

A few of the potions, specifically the Cure Light potions and the Heal Poison potions, don't seem to work. I thought maybe it was a magic/tech interaction, but I gave them to my magic users and they didn't heal any HP either.

I think you increased the speed penalties for encumbrance, right? I think you increased them too much. If my characters are encumbered at all, they practically can't move in combat. This basically means I can't wear any armor heavier than leather.

Overall, though, I like the Mod so far. Just these few issues (especially the critical misses) are causing me problems.

Thanks for the feedback, and feel free to ask any other questions about the changes as you play through it.

Basically, melee fighters can wear better armor and have more hp (from ST) so even before they reach 20 ST they have durability advantage. Secondly, a good player made fighter can have 20 ST from level 1, and any determined fighter can get it before level 20, which is about after the Black Mountain Clan. Because melee is the only weapon which gains damage with character development (similar to mage) it has to be balanced for when that character does get developed, so they aren't as good damage early (just like mage).

Encumbrance is higher for exactly that reason: wearing the toughest armor early is not balanced. As characters get stronger and faster, it becomes more viable to wear the heavier armor. I think that is much preferred to the stupidity of regular Arcanum you know, where you can just pick up plate and get 30 DR right off the bat no problem. Characters who never get strong will not want to wear plate, which also makes a lot of sense and that's why I intended it that way. Battle mages should get ST to wear plate, weak mages should wear robes.

The regular health and poison cure potions still work the same, the effect is increased/nullified by MA/TA. Morgana's Tears (big hp/mp potion) was disabled if I remember right (like all FT effects). Note that potion of haste/intelligence/damage resistance etc. have been made negligible for a reason. I tested the potions just now to be 100% sure and yes they do work, so tell me if you literally just cannot get them to do anything on a magical character in your game and I'll see what I can do for you specifically.

As far as gun crits, the only thing that helps this is increasing skill and increasing your durability. Try to get that 4th rank in firearms asap and you'll have only the fluke accidental critical misses. If I could've changed the way the game does crits though, I would have because it is ridiculous without question.

Really glad you like it, and I look forward to hearing more man.

As far as wood rings go, every character can get 1, and any character can stock up on them before going evil at Tsen Ang (which would take some shop-grinding tho).

The guns requiring wood ring to craft are hand cannon, looking glass rifle, long range pistol, and elephant gun (because it requires hand cannon). You can still get hand cannons, looking glass rifles, and elephant guns without crafting them though. So it's not exactly a deal breaker. I wasn't trying to cripple evil players or anything. This exact info is something I should be more specific about in the readme so thanks for bringing that up.

Post is too long, wish you guys had easier questions hahahah.

Good luck, adventurers.

In Depth Reason Why Melee Is Meant For High Strength
-------------------------------
Melee is the only weapon type which gains damage as you level up, so the weapons are based on 20 strength. A player made melee character can get 20 strength very very early (like level 1), and almost all of them should have it by the time you get through the Black Mountain Clan Mines. I changed the NPC level schemes so the good melee fighters get it pretty quickly too (I changed all the NPC schemes).

The reason it has to stay that way at all is because the vast majority of weapons are available before even the BMC and there's basically no way to change it. You have just as much of a chance of getting an arcane greatsword from a chest in the ancient maze as you do from the same type of chest in the void. You can get arcane weapons from gypsies, and many of the magic items are store bought, and the stores are generic not specific like in most rpgs. That is, in most rpgs your item selection gets better and better as you gain access to advanced stores later in the storyline. In Arcanum, the shops in Caladon are like the ones in Tarant, and so on, with the only real differences being the Dwarven shops (in the Wheel Clan, not too far into the game) and the Qintarra shop (which is only slightly different from Ashbury elven trader). To make the only viable melee weapons the few which are found at later stages of the game would make the item choice for melee extremely small. It's better for melee to just be somewhat worse off in the early game until they develop, because it doesn't take long at all for them to get high enough strength anyway.

They still have certain advantages over gunslinger early, because they will have more strength they will have more HP, and they can wear better armor. Durability is definitely the forte of the melee fighter.

I haven't tried your mod, but I have one question - does it change anything in texts? I have a Polish version and don't want to have PL-ENG game :)

Paul the only text changed is item/spell/schematic name and descriptions.

I went out of my way not to change anything that didn't need to be changed, and overall keep the exact same feel as original Arcanum. For example, the new schematic texts are in the same style: "You too can decimate your enemies with this gun! Astounding!" etc.