quick adjust setting magic attacks to be slightly more powerful than A8 yet much less overpowered than A7 and previous. I have examined RreformistTM's video 11 and the issue he saw where regeneration stopped at his necromancer created before A7/A8 is the tip of something larger. Fresh games do not have that syndrome.
Anyway, if someone wants to scream or hate, just uninstall and leave me alone. Its a hobby, and I am already doing my best. If you don't like it, compile it yourself, thats what the source is for, and do a better job. The only one stopping you is YOU. Else I expect to return in 10 days or so. My family needs a break. It's not like this is my job; and certainly nobody here is my manager. So just chill and enjoy the game, or not. But chill anyway.
Patch Notes v160_A8_r2 Jun.10.24
Probably at patch v160_A7 the 3 new global variables added moved part the savegame so that when reloading older saves than A7/A8
part of the databases are not giving accurate results. I am still looking at this but am out of time before my flight tomorrow. I'll be back in about 10 days. The symptom seen was the spell effects such charm recovery, regeneration, poison damage over time, acid arrow damage over time, haste recovery, and slow recovery all fail to process, at all. But only on savegames made before A7.
Due to patch A7 also moving, compressing, and deleting some quests by slot ID (because actually the game is blind to what is IN the slot), it is critical to never run patch A7 twice on the same savegame. Doing that will chew up quests to where no quest runs except for a very small few, ever again. Anything after A7 will want to run the A7 patch too, if it sees the version is A6 or earlier, so please do not load old
patches thinking you will outsmart the system somehow. You'll just end up rerolling the character if you bounce back and forth.
Having said that, the observation that A8 was a heavy nerf to magic users is correct.
For A7 and forwards, the comparison is made between magic attack, coming from magic ability skill
plus (1/2 of the total magic adjusts from each equipped armor plus staff, with each item added so that if some have minuses and some have pluses they can cross cancel before the result gets divided). For Magic defense, the skill was multiplied by 3/2. Then Magic attack minus magic defense is a number, and if less than 0 the attack does not happen at the magic layer, and if a positive number then that value, whatever it is is multiplied by some value for that spell and damage is given out accordingly.
1) For A8, the equipment worn bonus/minus was divided by 4 if > 1 and divided by 3 if a negative total.
Armors will show a value for magic ability modifier, and this is the value being added to find if the total is positive or negative.
Weapons don't have a place to mark that so it does not show when you examine the magician's staff, but the staves also have a hidden
value adding to this total. At A8_r2, the total is divided by 3 instead of 4, after checking for 0 so no divide by 0 error. this slightly improves the magic attack score. The magic defense is multiplied by 4/3 instead of 3/2, slightly lowering defense core. This slightly wider gap now means more damage gets through, but not a LOT more damage.
2) Acid arrow and Flame arrow have can_penetrate_shields added to the "can_crush_through they had before. Non-magical damage is increased slightly, to 35 from 30, and the speed in flight for flame arrow is increased, making for a faster moving, flatter trajectory when thrown. Accuracy modifier is added to acid arrow, not quite the 100 that flame arrow has (92) but maybe hitting more often than it used to. Acid arrow moves at 65 now instead of the previous 60; this is minor. Lightning continues to move at 110; fireball is 65.
3) Every spell from a magic user goes through the same comparison of attack minus defense, so higher magic defense has value, with A8 and up. Every spell from a magic user has a modification from dynamic resists coming from equipment worn, according to the material the equipment is built from. If I could have somehow gotten down to the last atom I would have. If you believe in atoms, which not everyone did "back then". Whenever that was.
In summary, if you have an old character, you are urged to set it aside 2 weeks. I want to recover it I want to recover MY saved games, which took months to build, let alone yours. You probably have more spare time than I do. Pity me instead of yourself, please.
If you really want to busy yourself while I am away, consider a fresh game, with patch_A8_r2 as the best balance yet, and looks to be working with fresh games.
Otherwise, explore the virtual reality you call "life" [or believe what you want, don't ask me], as a professional courtesy from a much bigger coding team than one dude exercising a hobby then sharing the compiles. Or compile it yourself, and start telling the mod what to do instead of passively waiting for someone else to tell it to do stuff on your behalf. That's why there is source in every download, including THIS patch.
Man those Acid/Flame arrow Spells that ignore shields are pretty nice though it makes me wonder how hard it would be to code a shield that somehow negates/weakens magic attacks by instinct, I always thought that the shield that Mages can spawn does this. However i will just get good and dodge those shots from the mages. Its exciting as heck! I have the game on easy mode for the damage modifier to player because I am super scared of mages.
<3
For now i shall download this patch and ride the enemy down with my Unicorns and Spiders! I really love equipping my companions with the artifacts from Tardareth too!
Except the mage spells do not look at your settings. Easy mode at least lowers the non-magical damage though, and that is a big component. The mage shields are very light and fast for their coverage area, but they are fairly flimsy. At least when they are gone the (NPC) mages will try to auto-resummon them, with varying success according to their magic skill, and if they fail they try again next time, which is a good mechanic for the novice mages.
I am a bit saddened by the Sieges. Like me. As a Sarranidian Elf Bard-Mage vassal. I can never take Ashfield castle. Its impossible. Do you have any suggestions on how or what to do?
They Icestorm me nonstop.
Hello, in 160 a8 r2 it seems there's something in one of the background options at the chargen that prevents you from raising undead from the necromancy menu if you're a Necro/Mage class. I chose the following background: Male/Priest/Acolyte/Necromancer/Lust for Money and Power/2nd Class: Mage/Swadian (or Living Dead, didn't matter), and no matter how much I wait (waited for 2-3 weeks to test) there's no options in the necromancy menu to summon anything despite seemingly having enough health; although the weekly evil stars event and afterbattle raising still gives me undead. I thought that perhaps it was a singular save issue but I tried those starting backgrounds several times and the bug persisted. Meanwhile the background of Male/Impoverished Noble/Page/Necromancer/Personal Revenge/2nd Class: Mage/Swadian works fine and you even get the option to summon shadows (I read in one of the changelog that Necro/Mage class shouldn't be able to, so that might also be unintended). Sorry if this report is not that helpful but I'm not a modder myself.
Necro / Mage is one of my test characters. There is a cooldown timer and otherwise you need sufficient health to summon from the camp action menu. Is this a savegame started after A7/A8/A8r2? Or before those? Because there is a known savegame issue between before A7 savegames and anything later, which I did not notice until A8 but I traced to A7 and beyond. Anyway I don't think there is an issue with fresh starts.
sooo close 1.7 full version
come back later in the summer for something so radical.
Patch v160_A9 is uploaded and waits for authorization.
It is mirrored at Forums.taleworlds.com
where it is already live, and you can read the patch log.
It isn't as big as I wanted but does focus on important enough things for this week.