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This War of Mine >  Workshop > toomanynights's Workshop > Against All Odds (actual hard mode) > Discussions
Against All Odds (actual hard mode)
Description Discussions9 Comments709 Change Notes
 This topic has been pinned, so it's probably important
toomanynights  [developer] Jul 13, 2021 @ 2:02am
[EN] Feature list - more detailed description
Here's what you can expect to see in this mod:

  • Two entirely new game modes. You may (or may not) pick between them on scenario selection screen, as they replace old "Final Cut edition" and "Anniversary edition" checkboxes.
    "No free loot" is a new, unforgiving game mode with only inhabited locations. You will get exactly zero freebies. Like I've mentioned in the description of this mode, I'm fairly certain one can not reach the ceasefire in this mode.
    The second mode - "Random locations". This mode though will bring all 10 locations that have multiple variations each (Sniper Junction, School, Hotel and so on) on one map, and each time variation for each location will be picked at random. You will get a couple of pre-defined easy locations, but apart from that, you're at the mercy of RNGsus. That's over 1,500 map combinations in one checkbox!
    TIP: For even more fun try to combine it with random scenario (there's a button for that on the right bottom of the scenario selection screen).
    Have in mind though that the balance in this mode is off. It's possible to get all "peaceful" or all "hostile" locations, but some sort of mix between them is more likely.

  • Rebalanced morale. Now it's easier for your survivors to get depressed and harder to recover. You should try to minimize the "questionable" actions like killing or stealing and prioritize good deeds. Giving away those 2 cans of meat to the kids is now not only a moral thing to do, but also a possible saving grace from depression. Try not to fall into depression loop: remember that your survivors get progressively more depressed as their states (hunger, sickness, wounds and even depression) increase.

  • Severely reduced shelter loot. You won't believe how much it changes things when you can barely craft a bed from scarce ingredients you find in your shelter. You'll have to prioritize from the day 1 what fittings you need most. Have in mind (or even on paper) what resources and in which quantities you need to bring from scavenging.

  • Degraded starting condition of your survivors. The war started much earlier then the moment you join your survivors, and now it actually shows. Wounded, sick, tired and hungry, they will require your attention immediately. Mitigate those problems ASAP to avoid getting trapped in depression loop (see "Rebalanced morale").

  • Reduced comfort from shelter items. A couple of armchairs won't help your people forget the horrors of the war, now you'll have to work harder than that. Every comfort item counts, every good deed helps you stay afloat. Chance comfort boosters, like the kids, snowman or Zlata (I call them that because you're not guaranteed to get those in your run) are now less helping. Keep track of your shelter's comfort on "Some thoughts" screen: now it accurately describes how far you are from reaching a point of maximum comfort, so if you see the "We feel like home here" message, it means you've done about everything you could.

  • Increased probability of psychotic breaks. Get used to the cases of insomnia and outbursts of smoking. And if you neglect your survivors' well-being for too long, they won't hesitate to leave the shelter either. But it's not all that bad: this mod introduces "Catharsis" mechanic, so if your dweller freaked out, they will feel a little better instead of worse (unlike the other dwellers who will still be disturbed).

  • Routine actions now take longer. Prepare to forget your well-established patterns, because now the game is way less forgiving in terms of time. Choose your steps wisely. Daytime is decreased, and sleeping takes longer, so if you're not careful with your timing, it's possible that one bed won't be enough for two survivors to recover during one day. Several other actions now take more time as well. You're gonna need some new patterns, because the old ones are likely to break now.

  • Bandits & military are people too. The game doesn't punish you nearly enough for robbing and/or killing "the bad guys". While for the regular citizens, such as our dwellers, murder should be a murder, no matter who was killed. With this mod, prepare to pay harsh price for immoral actions. Not as harsh as with the same actions against regular citizens, mind you, but still, a normal person feels bad about killing or stealing. It's not impossible that the bandit was a different person before the war, and probably your survivors even knew them, so in no way the conscience is off the table.

  • Nerfing the most fruitful locations. Military Outpost, Warehouse and several other locations, taking the level of danger, should of course have more resources than the average, but they shouldn't be the game breakers. Combined with the previous change, it should drastically change your survival strategies. Is it really worth it to risk your dweller's life over a couple cans of meat, especially considering that you'll have to deal with morale afterwards? Maybe you should concentrate on trading instead? Have you tried to reach self-sufficiency without the plentiful loot from Military Outpost? Maybe you should?

  • Long-term consequences of murders. Yet another reason to try and avoid running around killing bandits and soldiers. They now react on finding a dead body of their comrade: not only will they pack their things and flee, making the location inaccessible for the rest of the game, they may also follow your survivor back to the shelter and, after gathering enough strength, hit your group with the toughest raid you've ever experienced. But there's also good news: you can still try to steal from them. That will have no such consequences, if you don't get caught. Let me tell you this: the game shines in an entirely new light when being played in a stealthy way.

  • More diverse city maps. In vanilla game, there are 6 so-called "Map packs" - sets of locations, one of which you get at random when you start the game. The thing is, there is one occasion where two map packs have as much as eleven locations in common. Out of 15! There are also several occasions with 6-9 intersections. 15 locations are being reused on 3-6 map packs, while 13 others are used only once. And three more are not being used at all, thus being available via Scenario Editor only. That can get old pretty quickly. In this mod all map packs are customized, while preserving balance. There are no two map packs that have more than 5 locations in common, and no locations that are being used on more than 3 map packs (with the sole exception of Hospital). On top of that, there are two entirely new map packs. Experience Pogoren like you never did before!

  • Partially anonymized location descriptions. Now you will not get any indications of "danger", "advised caution" or "possible trading" on "Plan the night" screen. The percentage of loot present on the spot is hidden, as well as the quantities of every type of loot (so, you'll now there's "food", but you won't know how much). Also, when it comes to the locations that have multiple variants (like Hotel and Semi-detached house), their texts have been rewritten to make sure you won't know what exact scenario you're about to face there. This is pretty much what "Spoiler-free locations" does, except that here the descriptions will actually be updated after your first visit (this feature was not available at the times of SFL development). This only works for several supported languages languages for now, namely Russian, English, Chinese and Polish. If you want to help me translating it to other languages, let me know in comments!

  • Greedy Franko. In times of war having your items delivered to your door is a luxury, and you have to pay for it. This change should shift the trading strategies towards outside traders, leaving Franko as a last resort only, right where he belongs. Besides, now he visits your shelter a bit less frequently. You're still not on your own, but this man is an entrepreneur and not a magic wand that can solve all your problems.

  • Worthy abilities. While tuning the game aspects, I made the abilities of those survivors who have them more valuable. Meaning that Roman's combat ability will now actually stand out, and Arica's silent stride will be more helpful than ever.

  • Nerfing combat. One more aspect that I want you to suffer more with is combat. Regular citizens should have harder time while fighting with the trained soldiers. If all you have is a knife and an old man with no training behind his shoulders, only a miracle will help you survive against several armed goons - and you will need that miracle badly.

  • Colder winters. The vanilla game has got a nasty limitation: the temperature outside can never go any lower than -5C, even when it's supposed to (remember those really harsh fragments of winter that keep the raiders away?). That limitation is gone now. Prepare for cold, cold winters - colder than ever.

  • New mechanics. Food poisoning, potential danger from removing rubble with your bare hands, night shellings that can potentially destroy something you'd hate to lose - and more! Pay attention as you play - you never know where help (or danger) may lay.

Now, let me know what you think of it all - or just stop reading and go survive!
Last edited by toomanynights; Feb 7, 2022 @ 10:50am
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Showing 1-15 of 32 comments
dorkquark Aug 1, 2021 @ 4:14pm 
Very impressed with the change re digging thru rubble - previously I have often neglected to make a shovel and just dig things out a little slower - esp at locations where the shovel takes up a space in my pack. Now that injury (with accompanying new dialogue) is a real possibility, one has to rethink that. Is it worth the chance of injury just to save a small amount of materials? Probably not - esp if your other character is ALREADY wounded!
#1
toomanynights  [developer] Aug 1, 2021 @ 10:13pm 
Originally posted by dorkquark:
Very impressed with the change re digging thru rubble - previously I have often neglected to make a shovel and just dig things out a little slower - esp at locations where the shovel takes up a space in my pack. Now that injury (with accompanying new dialogue) is a real possibility, one has to rethink that. Is it worth the chance of injury just to save a small amount of materials? Probably not - esp if your other character is ALREADY wounded!
Yep, that was my exact intention.
You know the funny part? This function, including all the speeches, was already in the game. It's right there in the code, but calling for that function was removed (probably the devs decided it would make the game too complicated). So I just had to put that call back and tune it a bit here and there.
Last edited by toomanynights; Aug 1, 2021 @ 10:13pm
#2
burnsj52 Aug 2, 2021 @ 12:13pm 
I'm unilingual English, but I know many who like this game speak MANY different languages, and probably better English than I do. So pick a language and start working on it. And considering this has been co-opted by the polish high school curriculum, perhaps you could do a Polish translation next? :steamhappy:
In fact! if you could get in touch with a teacher who uses this game, maybe you could make a mod for a class of high schoolers to be using.
#3
toomanynights  [developer] Aug 2, 2021 @ 12:17pm 
Originally posted by burnsj52:
I'm unilingual English, but I know many who like this game speak MANY different languages, and probably better English than I do. So pick a language and start working on it. And considering this has been co-opted by the polish high school curriculum, perhaps you could do a Polish translation next? :steamhappy:
In fact! if you could get in touch with a teacher who uses this game, maybe you could make a mod for a class of high schoolers to be using.
I'm all in for a translation job. If you know anyone who's willing to contribute, let's do it!
As for a "school mod", again, I'm definitely in, but I'm not sure how it works. Where do I find a teacher to act as a "contractor" for such mod?
#4
toomanynights  [developer] Aug 2, 2021 @ 12:19pm 
@burnsj52 Also, I gotta clarify that most of the game actually exists in Polish, Portuguese, Chinese and a lot of other languages. Only a small fragment of the texts that's brought by this mod doesn't. You probably know this already, but still.
#5
burnsj52 Aug 2, 2021 @ 2:27pm 
As it's on the school curriculum in Poland, I'd try contacting a high school principal, or Superintendent in Poland and see what they might need.
Although, they might have already contacted 11Bit studios about something like this, I don't know.
Or maybe they're using the tabletop game and not the video game.
Last edited by burnsj52; Aug 2, 2021 @ 2:28pm
#6
toomanynights  [developer] Aug 2, 2021 @ 10:26pm 
Originally posted by burnsj52:
As it's on the school curriculum in Poland, I'd try contacting a high school principal, or Superintendent in Poland and see what they might need.
Although, they might have already contacted 11Bit studios about something like this, I don't know.
Or maybe they're using the tabletop game and not the video game.
Nope, I'm pretty sure it's the video game. Boardgame is way too complicated. It'd take a couple days of classes just to teach the kids how to play it.
Thanks for the idea! I may try it.
#7
残月碎春风 Dec 29, 2021 @ 6:45pm 
Hello friend, what does "no free lot" mean? Although I haven't tried much,but it seems to be invalid. What is its specific impact on the game?
#8
toomanynights  [developer] Dec 29, 2021 @ 11:01pm 
@残月碎春风 Hi! "No free loot" means that there are no abandoned locations on the map. In that mode you will be forced to trade, steal or kill to get what you need, because nothing just lays around waiting for you to get it - everything belongs to someone.
#9
miracleflame Nov 1, 2022 @ 5:46am 
Wow.. Just... WOW! This mod stands out among all the countless dozens of crap called mods here and if there is one single TWOM mod worth mentioning it's definitely this one. I am writing here because I just can't do anything on your mod page - Valve discriminates me and a great deal of other decent players for not buying the game through their DRM Steam. That's a reason why I strongly encourage you to put your mod on Nexusmods page where it would definitely shine during these war days and maybe will spark a new outburst of TWOM mods there, where all decent mods belong. After spending hours I have finally stumbled upon one mod I am looking forward to play immediately and for the rest of life by sheer luck through your comment on Eleatic monism mod. Thank you so much and please consider the Nexusmods as I believe most decent TWOM players won't ever know such mod exists here.
#10
toomanynights  [developer] Nov 1, 2022 @ 5:59am 
Hi @miracleflame, thank you for such an inspired feedback!
I would say even too inspired at times - I wouldn't go as far as to judge players' decency by which platform they prefer to use. As my mum always says, "remember, son, even Epic Games users are worth something... Not respect, of course, but definitely something". :6face: Just kiddin', of course.
To be honest, I never uploaded a mod to Nexus, though of course I downloaded some from there. I will give it a shot.
#11
miracleflame Nov 1, 2022 @ 9:44am 
Of course you shouldn't judge at all but the decent players go for mods that are not mere out-of-place skins or cheats - as one mod here called Shortcut to Boredom smartly collected all the tweaks from most mods here. Anyway I am a GOG player and have the game bought there. Found a way to download and effectively load your mod in my game and I have noticed some disturbing details so I'll better ask before I spend time in the game to find out it's not compatible and causes unexpected results. With the mod enabled launching the game sometimes CTD immediately, sometimes there's a strange click sound and a few seconds blackness before the logos start to appear. Some text seems to be missing in game - e.g. the main menu placeholder for Workshop Center is blank, starting scenario Eternal Winter going to Night plan there's Shelled Cottage location with name and description while the other location has blank name and blank description. Is that expected behavior?
#12
toomanynights  [developer] Nov 1, 2022 @ 11:49am 
No, none of this is expected (except for maybe "click sound and a few seconds blackness before the logos start to appear" - that I've seen in a normally working game).
Is this the only mod you use? May I ask how did you get the mod? Maybe I'll upload it for you to Google Drive for instance and you give it another shot.
Also, what's the game version you have?
#13
miracleflame Nov 1, 2022 @ 2:31pm 
I use steamworkshop.download page with the current mod page URL and then put the files under "%userprofile$\Documents\This War of Mine\Mods" renaming them with specific prefix which I put then in Mods.list file as per general instructions. My GOG game version is 6.0.7.5 Final Cut with all the DLCs. I have a few other mods as well but the issue can be reproduced with this mod only and can't be reproduced with all the other mods without this one. I can make you screenshots of the missing text if that helps. The missing text on locations is mostly notable in workshop menu when enabling custom location set.
#14
toomanynights  [developer] Nov 2, 2022 @ 1:43am 
@miracleflame For the test, can you try to leave only this mod turned on, restart the game, and then start the scenario anew?
#15
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