Update 1.2.4-a.2

-  Thanks to windshadowruins, who send me the updated map files of the challenge boss mod pack, the boss fights of malenia and Radahn should be fixed now.
- Fixed some bugs with wrong combo chaining of the katana
- player damgage increase for all difficulties (look at the file descriptions for more information)
- small speed adjustments for some katana and curved greatsword animations.
- fixed a small bug with the red twinblade meteor attack.


This is a pre-release version, and it is expected to have some bugs. So, enjoy it with caution. It’s always wise to back up your save file to be safe (even though I never experienced any issues with my save file while developing and testing this mod).

PLAY THIS MOD ONLY WITH A LEGIT STEAM VERSION OF THE GAME OTHERWISE YOU WILL LIKELY GET A CORRUPTED SAVE.

Unfortunately, PipeSKR has stopped working on Carian Combo Warriors, but I needed more from this mod. So, I learned Elden Ring modding myself, and after a few months of learning by doing, I present to you a new Carian Combo Warriors experience.

Requirements:

- Mod Engine
- Scripts-Data-Exposer-FS


Installation Instructions:

1. Download the difficulty file you want to use.
2. Place everything from the mod folder of this file into the mod folder of Mod Engine, just like every other mod.
3. Download Scripts-Data-Exposer-FS and place the Scripts-Data-Exposer-FS.dll file into the Mod Engine folder (in the same folder where the modengine.exe is located, NOT in the mod folder).
4. Allow Mod Engine to load the dll by editing the config_eldenring.toml. To do this, open it with Notepad and add the following line:

   external_dlls = ["Scripts-Data-Exposer-FS.dll"]
  
   Right below:
  
   # external_dlls = ["coolmod.dll", "D:\\nicemods\\nicemod.dll", "sosofolder\sosomod.dll"]
 
   It should look like this:






What's New

I focused on four main goals to enhance the CCW experience:

• Better balancing
• Increased role-playability
• Better integration into existing game mechanics
• Improvement of the existing movesets
  

Better Balancing

Enemy Stats:
I modified all individual enemy stats (currently, DLC enemies are mostly globally balanced). I changed their HP, damage, stance, and status effect build-up. My goal was to make fights that are boring or annoying easier, while making fun and fair fights harder. At the same time, I tried to make their balancing more lore-friendly. So, even though dragon fights might be annoying and boring, I still had to keep them a little bit challenging to not completely break the lore.

Enemy Speed:
If you thought it was unfair to be so much faster than all enemies, well, not anymore. Each difficulty has its own chr files, raising the speed of each enemy from 110% on average in the “Very Easy” mode up to 210% on average in the “Don’t let me solo that” mode (the files only cover vanilla enemies, as the tool to mass edit enemy animations isn’t updated yet, and it’s unclear if the creator will update it at all).

Invaders:
I changed the stats and movesets of all invaders. Almost all of them now use one of the featured weapons, so you can enjoy more CCW vs CCW fights. Their stats also increase with the difficulty level you are playing with (currently, DLC invaders are not edited yet).

Elite Bosses:
Going through every single boss in the game made me realize that there are a lot of copy-paste boss fights. So, I took the 10 most fun enemy types and made an elite version for each. They have additional projectiles and special effects and are much harder than normal bosses, but they also have golden eyes, so they give 5 times more runes than normal bosses.






MiquellaTheUnaIloyed Challenge Bosses Modpack Merge:
To increase the fun of some main bosses, I merged my modpack with the MiquellaTheUnaIloyed Challenge Bosses Modpack. (Malenia and Radahn, as well as the additional Stakes of Marika, don’t work right now, as the map files need to be updated for the DLC. So, I have to wait for an update from MiquellaTheUnaIloyed to fix that. Every other boss works fine.)



I also made some small changes to Radagon to create a more challenging final fight.




Difficulty Modes
I created 7 different difficulty levels. Every file also contains speed changes for enemies. If you don’t want the speed changes or want to reduce the speed while maintaining the harder difficulty, then just download the God mode version (for default enemy speed) or the difficulty file that contains the enemy speed you want to use and replace the chr folder.

God Mode:

• Enemy speed: unchanged
• 40 % enemy HP/  75% enemy dmg
• No weight limit
• Unlimited stamina
• 20 sec ultimate charge time
• Player doesn't get staggered from attacks
• Fall damage disabled
  

Very Easy:

• Enemy speed: 110% on average
  

• 40 % enemy HP/  75% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight reduced to 10%
• Unlimited stamina
• 40 sec ultimate charge time
• Fall damage disabled
  

Easy:

• Enemy speed: 130% on average
• 70 % enemyHP /  100% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight reduced to 10%
• Only dodges cost stamina
• 60 sec ultimate charge time
• Fall damage disabled
  

Normal:

• Enemy speed: 150% on average
• 110% enemy HP / 130% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight reduced to 30%
• Only dodges cost stamina
• 80 sec ultimate charge time
• Fall damage disabled
  

Hard:

• Enemy speed: 170% on average
• 130 % enemyHP / 160% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight at 100%
• Dodges cost stamina and every attack reduces stamina by 10
• 100 sec ultimate charge time
• Fall damage disabled
  

Very Hard:

• Enemy speed: 190% on average
• 150 % enemyHP / 200% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight at 100%
• Dodges cost stamina and every attack reduces stamina by 20
• 120 sec ultimate charge time
• Fall damage disabled
  

Don’t Let Me Solo That:

• Enemy speed: 210% on average
• 220 % enemyHP / 250% enemy dmg
• Weapon weight at 100%
• Dodges cost stamina and every attack reduces stamina by 50
• No FP flask independent ultimate charge
• Fall damage enabled
  

If you are able to beat the game on this difficulty without abusing any bugs or spamming the same attacks repeatedly, send me proof, and I’ll title you as a real Carian Warrior, and your name will be forever praised in this mod description.

Better Role-Play

Altered Special Effects:
I changed the special effects of all weapons to be flashier and have a similar color scheme. This means I changed all the fire and blood effects to Carian, glintstone, and ice lightning magic. However, I know some of you prefer the red special effects, so I have also started to include red magic versions of the weapons. So far, fist (Star Fist) and twinblade (Twinned Knight Swords) have red special effect variants. Additionally, dodges, jumps, and some object interaction animations have additional special effects based on the magic type the current weapon possesses.

Lore-Fitting Weapon Models:
Now, every featured moveset has its own unique weapon models that I created by remodeling and retexturing some of the original weapons. You can instantly obtain the blue magic type weapons from Merchant Kale and the two already featured red magic type weapons from the Nomadic Merchant (West Limgrave). These weapons are designed to be used with this mod, as they have fully balanced stats that should create an equal balance independent of your stat distribution.
If you want to swap the models, just rename and replace your weapon with the following partsbnd.dcx files in the parts folder:

• Spear (Glacialus) --> short spear [wp_a_0923.partsbnd.dcx]
• Straight Sword (Sword of Malissia) --> short sword [wp_a_0199.partsbnd.dcx]
• Greatsword --> Lordsworn's Greatsword [wp_a_0607.partsbnd.dcx]
• Colossal Sword --> Troll's Golden Sword [wp_a_0608.partsbnd.dcx]
• Curved Greatsword --> Bloodhound's Fang [wp_a_0453.partsbnd.dcx]
• Katana --> Uchigatana [wp_a_0550.partsbnd.dcx]
• Fist (blue magic) --> Iron Ball [wp_a_1164.partsbnd.dcx]
• Fist (red magic) --> Star Fist [wp_a_1166.partsbnd.dcx]
• Twinblade (blue magic) --> Twinblade [wp_a_1100.partsbnd.dcx]
• Twinblade (red magic) --> Twinned Knight Swords [wp_a_1105.partsbnd.dcx]
  

New Idle Animations:
You probably noticed the cool idle animations exclusively featured on the twinblade moveset and thought, why does only the twinblade have this cool little feature? I thought so too. So, I added these two idle animations and 10 additional ones to every weapon. Eight of these animations are gender-exclusive, so each gender has four exclusive animations and four “unisex” animations.






Movement Changing by Gender:
If you can successfully run Scriptextender.dll, you can change the walking animations depending on your player’s gender by resting at a grace. The default animations are male, and as soon as you rest at a grace with a female character, the animations become female (fists and colossal greatswords keep their unique walking style to work properly).

Game Integration and Additional Features

Speed and Stat Changes of Other Abilities:
I tried to make other game mechanics independent of the movesets more viable and fitting for this mod. Other Ashes of War and weapon arts, spells, bows, item usage, and player staggering have increased animation speed (160%) and no FP cost, but also lower damage. Spirit ashes live longer but have decreased damage.

Ultimate Attack System:
Now, FP doesn't decrease with magic, items, or spirit summons. Instead, FP now represents a slowly decreasing ultimate attack bar that enables special attacks used by the unique Ashes of War for each featured weapon type (the correct Ashes of War are equipped by default for the featured weapons). Activate it by:
-Pressing AOW button( Greatsword, Colossal Sword)
-Pressing AOW button + light/-heavy attack( Katana, Curved Greatsword)
-Pressing AOW button + right while locked on to an enemy (Spear, Straight Sword, Twinblade, Fist)


You need to equip the Carian Filigreed Crest to activate the ultimate attack system. The “flying abilities” of the straight sword, twinblade, and spear AOW reset the ultimate attack bar, as they need the FP reset to work, and they would be pretty broken in some fights if you could constantly spam them.




Talisman and FP-Flask Changes:
To properly integrate the ultimate attack system into the actual game, I changed all FP-related talismans and the FP-flasks effects so they don’t break the system:

• FP-Flask: reduces FP now
• Carian Filigreed Crest (MUST EQUIP): enables ultimate attacks, reduces fall damage to 0, and for lower difficulty modes, reduces staggering from enemy attacks
• Cerulean Amber Medallion +0 to +3: boosts Ultimate charge by an additional 0.15%/0.25%/0.5%/0.8% per second
• Primal Glintstone Blade: makes you immune to status effects (Yes, it’s OP, but I feel like for some areas, this reduces a lot of unnecessary frustration)
• Assassin's Cerulean Dagger: critical hits reduce FP by 25%
• Ancestral Spirit's Horn: FP is reduced by 8% for every kill
• Blessed Blue Dew Talisman: restores HP twice as fast as the vanilla Blessed Dew Talisman
• Sharibis Woe: Cheat item for debugging 
  

Torrent Attacks and Speed:
Every featured moveset has unique attacks while riding the horse. Additionally, Torrent rides faster.






Magic Shield:
If you press guard without a left weapon equipped, you create a magic bubble that serves as a strong shield, reflecting all reflectable spells and projectiles (you’ll need it for some elite boss fights).



Unlimited Jumps and Air Dashes:
Thanks to sdfwersdf, air dashes and multi-jumps are now possible. You can jump and air dash (press the dodge button midair) unlimitedly.



Moveset Changes

Weapons

Spear:
I completely made a new spear moveset, from the small base moves PipeSKR already implemented, that makes you an acrobatic ice lightning god. Featuring 50% spear attacks and 50% unarmed lightning bending attacks.

Straight Sword:
I completely overhauled the straight sword moveset. It's now a Malenia-inspired elegant moveset with a much larger range of motion than the original moveset.

Greatsword and Colossal Sword:
I added several additional moves for all the unused animation slots and changed some animations here and there.

Katana, Twinblade, Curved Greatsword, Fist:
Except for the new special effects, the movesets don’t change much. Only some small changes in the combo chaining and singular animation replacements.


Weapon-Specific AOWs:

• Spear, straight sword, and fist got almost completely new and more complex AOWs with similar combo chaining to Bloodhoundstep for twinblade.
• Colossal greatsword got completely new AOW animations with the same combo chaining as before.
• Curved Greatsword has new ultimate attacks: AOW button + heavy attack is a normal damage-dealing ultimate, while AOW button + light attack activates the exceed state, increasing your damage and adding new visual effects to your animations for 1 minute.
• Twinblade, katana, and greatsword AOW are the same as before.
  

Known Issues

Doesn't work for pirated versions of the game.

 The weapon type exclusive AOWs only deal damage for the featured movesets. In theory, I know how to fix this, but it would take too much time to be worth doing it.
I didn’t have time to test if it’s still the case after the DLC, but before the DLC, the Elden Beast constantly used attacks.

 (I lost all my description text files. So, the Talisman changes are not described in their in-game description, and weapon names and lore description texts are not provided right now. )

Files explained

This information is intended for modders who wish to merge this file or want to delete/edit specific elements of the mod. It's not recommended to try to merge or isolate specific mechanics, if you don't have any clue about modding or at least have some basic understanding of DS Anim and DS Map Studio. Several files require other files to work, and you need to understand their interrelation. 

Regulation.bin (requires the param folder)

Altered Params:

• ActionButtonParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• AssetEnvironmentGeometryParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• Atkparam: Contains all the enemy attack information for all elite bosses and the challenge boss modpack merge
• AtkparamPC: Contains all the player attack information, primarily damage and hitboxes for all movesets. Also includes adjustments of magic damage numbers
• BehaviorParam: Contains all behavior files for all elite bosses and the challenge boss modpack merge
• BehaviorParamPC: Contains all behavior files for the player
• Bullet: Contains all the magic projectiles of enemies and players
• CharaInitParam: Needed for altered starting classes and player-based enemy (invader) balancing
• ChrModelParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• EquipMtrlSetParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• EquipParamAccessories: Added some for the player-unusable talismans, which I used to balance player-based NPCs
• EquipParamCustomWeapon: Used for the invader weapon changes
• EquipParamGem: Sets the FP requirement for all AOWs and sword arts to 0
• EquipParamGoods: Sets the FP requirement for all consumable items to 0
• EquipParamWeapon: Defines which movement types are used for the different weapon types. Changed the VariationID of all featured weapon types so every weapon uses the correct attack behaviors. Balances the featured weapons
• GameAreaParam: Used to adjust the rune drops of some enemies
• LockCamParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• Magic: Reduces FP consumption of spells to 0 and raises their stamina cost
• NpcParam: Balancing for all non-player-based enemies, including the changes of the challenge boss modpack
• NPCThinkParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• ShopLineupParam: Adds featured weapons to the nomadic merchants in Limgrave
• spEffectParam: This one is too extensive to describe fully. You’ll need it in any case since almost every featured mechanic depends on it
• spEffectVfxParam: Needed for some visual effects of the player moveset, the visual effects of the elite bosses, and for the challenge boss modpack merge
• TalkParam: For the challenge boss modpack merge
• ThrowParam: For the Twinblade grab attack and for the challenge boss modpack merge
• WebAbsorpPosParam: Needed for weapon positioning of some featured weapon types
  

Action Folder

• c0000.hks: Contains all player scripts for combo chaining, idle animations, increased jump height, movement speed changes, multi-jump/air-dash, changes necessary for the custom AOW, and more. For easier merging, I placed comments with CCW on every changed line. CCW+ means you need to add this part in place. CCW* means you have to replace an existing entry with this line.
• c8000.hks: Simple speed increase for Torrent. Also added comments for merging.
  

Chr Folder

• c0000.anibnd.dcx: 
  Movement, idle, jump, object interaction, item usage:
  • Tae 0: Fist weapons movement
  • Tae 3: Male movement
  • Tae 10: Female movement
  • Tae 12: Colossal sword movement
  • Tae 13: Several resources for other movements
    
  (You need all of them to work properly since they are cross-referenced.)Weapons:
  • Tae 23: Straight sword
  • Tae 24: Twin blades
  • Tae 25: Greatsword
  • Tae 26: Colossal sword
  • Tae 30+31: References for straight sword
  • Tae 36: Spear
  • Tae 40: Curved Greatsword
  • Tae 42: Fist
    
  (Some of the animations reference each other, so if you want to separate them, check out the overwrites and clone entries in DSAS first.)Custom AOWs:
  • 606 Stamp (Upward Cut) [colossal greatsword]
  • 611 Spinning Strikes [spear]
  • 613 Prelates Charge [Greatsword]
  • 614 Unsheath [Katana]
  • 615 Square Off [Curved Greatsword]
  • 712 Kick [Fist]
  • 755 Quickstep [straight sword]
  • 756 Bloodhound Step [Twinblade]
    
  Magic Taes (speed increase): 500-562AOW Taes (speed increase): 600-937
• c0000_a00_hi.anibnd.dcx to c0000_a9x.anibnd.dcx: Contains the changed animations for the following Taes:
  
  • Tae 0: a_00_hi
  • Tae 2-3: a0x
  • Tae 10-16: a1x
  • Tae 20-29: a2x
  • Tae 30-39: a3x
  • Tae 40-49: a4x
  • Tae 53-888: a9x
    
• c0000.behbnd.dcx: Contains all changes to the player animation behavior. This is needed for all movesets and custom AOWs.
  

• c0000.chrbnd.dcx: Contains all added dummypolys for the animations. (Sadly, as far as I know, this file isn’t mergeable.) If you want to merge this mod, you’ll have to take this chrbnd file and hope the other mod doesn’t use special effect and sound dummypolys that this chrbnd doesn’t feature; otherwise, you would need to change all the not featured dummypolys to a featured equivalent.
  

• c0100 -c8900.anibnd.dcx (behbnd, chrbnd, texbnd): All enemy animation files containing the speed changes as well as the elite bosses and challenge boss modpack bosses changes:
  
  • Elite bosses + Radagon: c2100, c2500, c3100, c3181, c3560, c3570, c4680, 4770, 4810 + c2190
  • Miquella Unalloyed: c2110, c2120, c2125, 2127, c2130, c3560, c3570, c4481, c4621, c4730, c4800, c8900
    

Cutscenes Folder: 
Contains cutscene files for the challenge boss modpack merge.

Event Folder: 
Contains event scripts for the challenge boss modpack merge. Also, m16_00_00_00.emevd.dcx is added by me for the elite boss Tanith's Knight to add a boss bar and boss music if you fight him after killing Tanith in Rykard's Arena.

Menu Folder: 
Adds new menu pictures for the custom weapons.

Msg Folder: 
Contains new text entries for the challenge boss modpack merge (right now).

Param Folder:
Needed for the regulation.bin

Parts Folder:
Contains the custom weapon models of the original mod and the models I added myself.

Script Folder:
Contains enemy AI changes of the challenge boss modpack.

Sfx Folder
Contains all special effects PipeSKR and I added to this mod. Additionally, the sfxbnd_c2120.ffxbnd.dcx are FFX for the challenge boss modpack merge.

Credits

• Biggest thanks go to PipeSKR for creating such an astonishing mod and giving me permission to upload my personal update for it. 
  

• Another big thanks to McKenyu, who allowed me to use some of her SFX from her Raikiri Moveset.
  

• Thanks to Miquella the Unalloyed for developing the incredible challenge boss modpack and making it available for other modders.
  

• Thanks to madao112, who allowed me to use his Large Sword of Moonlight Prime DeS Remake model. I retextured it for the colossal sword weapon model.
  

• Thanks to sdfwersdf for the open-to-use air dash and double jump mod I modified and utilized for this mod.
  

• A very big thanks to everyone in the Dark Souls modding Discord, who helped me learn all of this and provided several tools and resources that enabled creating this mod. Special thanks to: f_wang, Themyys, Blubbers, Genesis, nomad, CCCode, philiquaz, Belger, El Fonz0Lord, Exelot, Challenger Andy, Ivy, Meowmaritus, Vawser, Nordgaren, ElaDiDu, F the Wish Dragon, AcetoneEyedrops, The12thAvenger, Chocotavo, Gabe12345, DarK•MatteR.