[MOD] Van Helsing Enhanced: An Overhaul And Bugfix v9-2 Out Now

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Current Version: v9-2


Authors: ILL-, WareBare, And A Cat

Disclaimer: The authors keep no responsibility for any loss of data or errors that occur while using this mod. This mod changes several game files which may cause errors I am not aware of. Do not contact Neocore or use the in-game bug reporting feature to report any bugs you have while running this mod. Neocore does not provide support to people who run mods.

Fix-Only versions have been discontinued, as 1.04 fixes most of the issues with end game gear.

About Multiplayer: Changing the core files of the game changes your version checksum, and two clients with different checksums cannot play together. Basically, you cannot play with anyone who does not have this mod installed. Uninstalling this mod will fix the problem, but there will be problems with gear missing their enchantments, gear missing entirely, other things like that. It will essentially break any gear you've obtained while running the mod.

This mod now includes A Cat's description changes as of v6. He's a master wordsmith and worked hard to clarify a lot of the in-game descriptions, as well as add flare to the text!


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----------------------DESCRIPTION------------------------------
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The Van Helsing series has stolen a place in my heart as one of the most atmospheric and interesting ARPGs I've played. Unfortunately the recent installment is not living up to my expectations, and I wanted to do something about it.

What this mod aims to do is provide a more enjoyable experience with tons of additional content, much needed balance tweaks, overhauls to skills, bugfixes, and clarifying of game mechanics.

What this game does not do is make you overpowered without challenge or give you too much reward for too little risk. This is not a cheat mod, and the balance of this mod is completely different than that of the original game, for the better.

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--------------------MAJOR FEATURES-------------------------
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Monster Scaling:
The vanilla balance in VHFC is rough around certain levels. The problems stem from being unable to keep up with decent resistances with new, good gear, and the vanilla scaling has some sudden, immense increases in difficulty. The new scaling I created using an exponential algorithm, smoothing out what was once a jagged, sometimes intense curve in monster power to a more subtle and steady increase with some emphasis on monsters gaining power when you do. For example from obtaining and leveling new skills at 20 and 40. Then when you start leveling slower and have enough time between levels to find some good gear to replace the old ones, the scaling rate starts increasing again. No more sudden, massive boosts of power in enemies that you can't keep up with.

Additionally, the less-known modifiers like monster resistance (which actually gives them their resistance/immunity statistics at level 100) now scales slowly, slowly incorporating monster resistances to certain damage types, until monsters start getting their immunities around level 80. Before it was a sudden increase at level 50 and other high levels they would gain huge bonuses, making the change between levels jarring. The other hidden stat which reduces the constructor's minion damage, suddenly starts increasing at level 30. I leveled a constructor to 78 and can say there was a massive increase in difficulty at some places, and this stat is why. Now this stat increases logarithmically to the same point as vanilla at level 100. No more sudden huge decreases in minion damage at levels 30,50, and 70. It's a nice smooth ride.

With this scaling you'll notice a drastic increase to your survivability at lower levels, and less sudden power spikes in monsters. You might find that the casual difficulty is actually casual. At level 100, this mods scaling and vanilla scaling meet, leaving you at the a similar monster difficulty. The monsters are roughly 5% stronger at level 100 with this scaling than in vanilla.


Mechanical Clarity:
Van Helsing has some really confusing damage calculations and mechanics, and some of them don't even do what they say they do. I've cleared up these tooltips, as well as changing the tooltips of things to tell you exactly what they do. For example, bonus % damage values only apply to the weapon damage of a skill, not to any added damage bonuses. This is hardcoded and I cannot change it, but I can make it clear as to exactly what they do, so you know what to expect.


Total Rebalance:
The intent of this rebalance is to change the damage differences between sources: weapon and added damage. Previously they were completely unbalanced after you got greater essences, and from level 50 onward most of your damage would come from added damage and not your weapon. However skills only scaled per level from weapon damage, and there was a hidden enchantment multiplier that handled added damage for different skills. This caused a huge imbalance in skills, and didn't incentivise leveling dps skills unless you wanted their masteries. Additionally stats and other % bonuses only affect weapon damage (this is hardcoded), so stats would have neglible effects on overall skill damage, as would any % damage bonuses on gear.
Additionally this should move the metagame away from being forced to abuse certain mechanics and skills to get to inhuman difficulties. This mod will allow for more diverse builds to succeed, and old builds that abused certain skills will no longer be nearly as effective.

Monster Rebalance:

• Champions and Elites no longer share a loot table, and therefore champion packs no longer drop 3x the loot a single Elite does. Additionally Elites have been overhauled to be slightly harder and provide more loot, and their minions have actually been turned into minions instead of huge HP walls that stand near the Elite.
  
• All mana drain abilities have been reduced in scaling slightly. Chimera mana drain was significantly reduced. There are now some enemies with ranged, slow projectile mana drain attacks to bring some difficulty to ranged casters, they will only cast at a range so melee heroes will likely not be targeted when in close proximity. Mana draining skills used to only be a problem for melee classes due to the huge mana drain rates and melee classes having a smaller mana pool and lower regen, now mana drain is a threat to all classes, and the instant mana drain on melee classes has been removed.
  
• Caster-type enemies have had their spellpower reduced, which was their scaling strength on their spells. Some of their spells in combination with their spellpower could do 60x the damage a normal ranged mob could do. Additonally some missile speeds have been lowered to give you the chance to dodge them if you're fast. Enemies that casted only very slow-moving projectiles have not been touched. You can dodge those, I believe in you.
  
• Ranged monsters with instant-hit abilities (dreadknekts, rokhs) have had their damage reduced. Enemies who have projectiles that you can actually dodge have not been changed.
  
• Some giant enemies with smash-attacks that deal high aoe damage have had their windup time slightly increased, giving vigilant players time to escape before getting hit.
  
• Melee normal monsters have had their defense increased by about 40%, making them more than just more cannon fodder.
  
• Various elites have been tuned to provide more specific challenges associated with their skillset and resistances. For example some caster elites now fire slower-moving projectiles, but faster and spread out in an area.
  
• A large number of enemies had improper CC resistances, specifically elites. This allowed them to be stunned/instant killed at the rate of a normal mob. This has been fixed. Note that this does not make them invulnerable to CC, just very highly resistant. Bosses are still immune to all CC. CC does not include Slow or Vulnerability.
  
• Some enemies have been given improved CC resistance, notably some melee mobs and giants.

Skills:

• The skill balance has been completely reworked. All skills now have a base damage multiplier, which applies damage from both weapon and added damage from enchantments. Previously skills had a hidden modifier to their added damage gains, and since most of your damage came from added damage on items and essences after level 50, some skills were left in the dust, and it was difficult to understand which skills had high enchantment bonuses, and which didnt. Skills also now level by increasing their total damage by 15% per level, bringing back incentives to max a skill for damage.
  
• Some skills have been touched up with modified damage multipliers that are different from their old weapon damage due to the new skill damage calculations. Other skills have been reworked slightly to provide a more obvious niche or role. Many skills have also been given different masteries and rage powerups. Note that a large number of old skill abuses: umbralist instant crit kill, elementalist and protectors' permanent invulnerability, and some overpowered skills being brought into line with the rest will probably require you to rethink your build.
  
• Katarina's skills have been rebalanced as well. Previously the player bonuses you could get from her were paltry at best, and completely overshadowed by her sheer combat power. Those bonuses are now stronger, and if you don't want to have a companion in battle you can keep her in spirit form and not lose out on her combat power. Her combat skills have been spiced up as well, and specializing her to your needs should be more rewarding.

Overall, all dps skills should be viable for the role they were intended for.

With the skill changes, item added damage enchantments have been significantly reduced to be more in line with their weapon damage counterpart, as such most of your damage will probably now come from your weapon unless you specifically gear for added damage.


Items and Loot: Fall in love with loot again

• The enchantment system has been totally overhauled. There are now 5x the amount of item enchantments in the pool that can roll on items. With these changes come two kinds of enchantments: normal and rare. Rare enchantments come in two varieties: rare enchantments taken from unique items but are far less powerful, and rare versions of normal enchantments that can roll much higher. Rare enchantments appear at a 10% rate of normal enchantments. You can tell if an item has a rare enchantment by its significantly increased value.
  
• Critical hit chance and damage have also been toned down so it takes some more investment to hit the cap, or go past it. Whereas before they were pretty much the go-to stat for damage increases, now they're toppings on a larger, more diverse, non-vegan, damage increasing stat cake.
  
• The restrictions on what enchantments can show up on items has also been reduced, so there are more enchantments that can show up on pieces of gear they couldn't before. There are still restrictions: You wont see attack speed on caster weapons since they do nothing. The stats that would be useless for a class or innapropriate on gear still won't appear on those pieces of gear.
  
• Essences have been changed as well. Greater essences were clearly balanced in the original game to be used at level 100, but the fact that you got them at level 50 caused a huge power spike. Greater essences have now been balanced for use at levels 50-75. Now there are two new tiers of Essences: Major and Ancient. They are not just upgraded versions of the other essences as I wanted to bring more variety to the potential bonuses you could get from essences. There are currently only a few Major and Ancient essences in the game, including Epic ones, and more will be added soon.
  
• Katarina's set items have been overhauled as well, with each set focused on a specific role. They also have more set bonuses and more set items. Because of the loot changes and a much larger variety of mods available on Katarina's gear (crit, damage%, etc) she can scale very well into the end game instead of fizzling out around level 75.
  
• I've also gone through and fixed all the discrepancies in set item bonuses where a decimal point was misplaced in the original files, giving things like the manticore set 10-20x the bonuses on some stats.
  
• Godlike items have also been changed. Godlike items now roll 6 random enchantments instead of their original fixed starting bonuses that weren't always useful, and their upgrades have been changed a bit to be more appropriate for the item type they're on. In addition, they have very high base stats, higher than any other items in that slot, making them the best gear you can wear in that slot. There are currently more Godlike items than in the vanilla game, which only had 6, and only a few could even drop. I will be adding more in future versions. The names of Godlike items have also been changed.
  
• A bunch of new Epic items are added into the game, mostly at higher levels, some of which are truly unique.

Adventure Mode:

• The bosses in Bounty and Boss Hunt Adventures have been overhauled, becoming much more difficult akin to a boss in story mode, with Bounty bosses being weaker than Boss Hunt bosses. Boss Hunt and Bounty modes should be considered tough challenges on higher difficulties, made to test your strength. The bosses have additional skills and varying specializations that can be deadly. Bounty bosses drop a lot of Gold and Essences, and Boss Hunt Bosses drop a lot more of everything, and have a great chance of dropping the highest tier of items. This feature will be expanded upon soon as well.
  
• Arena has been completely overhauled to a totally new experience, it is much more difficult and has much higher rewards. View the v9 changelogs to see the full changes.
  
• Treasure Hunt mode is now just that: a hunt for treasure. The chests drop significantly more loot than a regular chest. Beware, some of them have extra enemies guarding them!

The overall feel and endgame play has shifted: with the changes to loot and skills, the endgame should now be much more rewarding in the way of building strength through gaining items and honing your playstyle, and working your way through the inhuman difficulties. Gear can potentially be very, very powerful with lucky rolls, so you should now be able to slowly gear yourself up to playing on the hardest difficulty without abusing the old skill mechanics.

When you install this mod you may find your damage has gone up or down significantly. Before immediately coming to the forums, try playing for a while, maybe even on a higher or lower difficulty. The game's balance has been changed to the model of working through difficulties and gaining new gear, and your old builds and items will take a minute to catch up.


Known Issues:
There is a known issue where an Epic or Set item that always spawns with an enchantment can get a second enchantment of the same type. For example, if an Epic weapon always rolls a % weapon damage mod, it can roll a second % weapon damage mod on its random enchantments. This can also happen with Set item bonuses and Godlike upgrade bonuses.

There's also an issue with converting old Godlike items to the new ones, any Godlike items that you obtained before this mod can possibly break, either nothing will happen or they will have extra bonuses they shouldn't.


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----------------------MINOR FEATURES-----------------------
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• Key Chests properly drop what they say they should: An Epic, Set, or Godlike item, depending on the chest. Please note that Godlike and Set items only drop at level 100, even from key chests. Previously Silver and Gold chests only had a small chance to drop their intended item, often requiring 4 or more keys to get a Godlike. With the difficulty of getting fate points in the latest versions, you should be rewarded for opening those chests. Additionally they drop more items, and have a chance to drop more than one of their intended item, if you're really lucky.
  
• Godlike and Set items now drop properly from champions, bosses, and anything else that can drop an Epic item. Previously they couldn't drop from anything but the Key Chests. Arena chests have an additional chance to drop Set and Godlike gear at higher arena wins. The current droprates for Set items are 1 to every 5 Epics, and Godlike drops are at 1 to every 50 Epics. The Epic droprate is unchanged.
  
• Katarina's Epic and Set items are now able to drop. Previously they could not, even though she has some cool Epics and Set items.
  
• Gold and item drops have been increased from in-map chests as well as adventure rewards. I wanted to bring back the "Oh sweet a loot chest" treasure-hunting aspect of the game.
  
• Added in v2: New monster scaling. A more gentle leveling experience when it matters, and a more difficult experience when you can keep up.

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------------------------------BUGFIXES----------------------------
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• Only working Set items drop. The 30+ Set items without Set Bonuses no longer drop, and until Neocore gives them bonuses or I do you will only get the functional Set items, and there are still plenty to choose from. Each class has at least one class-specific Set, and there are several cross-class Sets.
  
• The 46 instances of set items having over 100x their intended stats have all been fixed. I'm serious.
  
• Fixed a ton of inconsistencies in individual item base stats, across all rarities.
  
• Katarina's Epic and Set items can actually drop, whereas they previously could not. She has a lot of them, too.
  
• Tons of summoned AI fixes, as well as some changes to Katarina's behavior. They should now be more consistent, and you'll find a lot of them are just better in combat because of it.
  
• Fixed monsters and monster skills that did far too much damage, didn't do any damage, monsters that didn't attack at all, champions and elites that didn't drop loot, etc.
  
• And a ton more not mentioned here. Most of them relate to content and balance issues, as I cannot fix technical problems in most cases.

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------------------PLANNED FEATURES-----------------------
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v9 has covered pretty much all of what I intend to do with this mod and now mostly requires polish. I will be enhancing the current features and fixing bugs and balancing the game as time goes on. I will also be adding in new items and enchantments, and continuing to polish up the balance and skills in the game.



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-----------DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION-------------
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You can download any version of this mod from my Google Dropbox here:

v9-2: This version is the full mod experience, with all features discussed above included. You cannot pick which parts of the mod you want as of v4 and later, due to the number of changes that change the same files.

To install, extract the zip file to Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing Final Cut

To uninstall, delete your cfg and strings folders in your installation directory, and steam should automatically redownload the original files for you. If steam does not, check the integrity of your game cache in the steam window. You can also backup your cfg folder to later replace the mod files with the original (this is the safest option).

Whenever Neocore applies a patch through steam, it will overwrite the mod files and you will have to re-download the mod! If you run the unmodded game after running v4 or later you will lose most of your items permanently. Make sure if steam downloads something, it's not an update to VHFC, and if it is, redownload and install the mod again to prevent things from disappearing.


If there are any issues related to the changes the mod makes, or any discussion related to the mod feel free to post in this thread.

Huge thanks to WareBare for reworking the skill damage calculations and balancing half of the classes.



The changelog is now in the first post in this thread.




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-------------LIST OF SPECIFIC MECHANICS-------------
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There are some added mechanics that use Keywords to describe what they do. More will be added in the future.

On Hit Effect:
On Hit Effects are special effects that can be triggered by dealing damage to enemies. As of v7 any skill that deals damage can trigger On Hit Effects, except minion and summoning skills. Katarina can also use On Hit Effects with her basic attack.

List of On Hit Effects:
-Sunder- Deals physical damage equal to 35% of your weapon damage and 17.5% of your added damage, and each subsequent hit of sunder has a higher crit chance and crit damage. Chance to activate
-Shred Resistance- Permanently reduces enemy resistances by 10%. Chance to activate.
-First Strike- Deals 100% base damage on the first hit against every monster. This is an additional damage source and will show up as an additional damage number.
-Spot Weakness- Applies a 50% vulnerability to the enemy for 3 seconds. Chance to activate
-Spirit Arc- When Procced, deals damage similar to Katarina's spirit arc skill. This damage scales to 100% of your (blue) stat.
-Chance to stun/freeze/slow- Does exactly what you think.
-Enchanted Strike- Deals bonus arcane damage equal to 250% of your added elemental damage bonuses. Chance to proc.
-Ignite- Sets your target aflame, dealing 50% of your weapon damage and 150% of your added elemental damage over 4 seconds. Chance to proc.
Envenom- Poisons your target, dealing 60% of your weapon damage and 175% of your added elemental damage over 6 seconds. Chance to proc.
-Arcane Explosion- Deals arcane damage in a 4m radius equal to 150% of your added elemental damage. Chance to proc.

Enhanced versions of On Hit effects have 3x the strength of their normal variants, and Super versions have 5x the strength.

On Hit effects can only proc once per second on the same target if it's an AoE effect, and 2 times per second for single target effects.

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

---------Changelog for v9-2:
- Taunt, Battlecry, and Chain Snare no longer have casting animations, and no longer interrupt combos such as Smashing Blow and Whirlwind, and can be casted while blocking.
- Increased Block's mastery chance for skills to not use retaliation points to 10% per node.
- All protector skills now have individual retaliation point use per cast, ranging from 100% for skills like whirlwind and frozen sphere to 20% for strike and smashing blow. I'll add the tooltips to each skill later, or maybe A Cat will ;)
- Replaced Smashing Blow's rage on kill with rage on hit
- Changed flowing Combo's t1 mastery to added enchantmult damage
- Reduced the charge rate and damage multiplier of retaliation points from block
- Added rare enchantments to protector gear to increase maximum retaliation points and generation rate, and made epics with those fixed enchantments stronger
- Increased the base damage of the whirlwind tree slightly to compensate for the changes

The idea behind the change to retaliation points is to open up the use of retaliation on skills that couldn't use it before, and reduce certain skills' dependancies on abusing retaliation. It falls short of a fun mechanic due to it's inconsistency with what enemies will generate points when blocked, and having to re-up those points after every single attack. Skills like whirlwind assault could output way too much damage by using retaliation, but the combo building wasn't exactly fun, and other skills barely benefitted from it at all.

- Added a new Set: Forgotten Artifacts This set includes a piece for all non-class-specific slots. The Set is not really a Set, and each piece has 10 random enchantments but no Set bonuses. These items can be either very powerful or just mediocre compared to other set items, with a very wide range of bonuses. I added this set because after level 100 you're basically hunting for specific items with specific bonuses, and are never really surprised or enthused after a certain point by the RNG enchantment system. This "Set" is essentially just very rare items that use only random enchantments, so you can potentially find some very uniquely powerful equipment that rivals full Sets and Godlikes.

- Removed Destroy-O-Trons from adventure mode spawns, they have a lot of issues I need time to fix
- Fixed an issue causing Ray skills to only deal 20% of their intended damage



---------Changelog for v9-1:

- Fixed rebel missions giving items they weren't supposed to.
- Sorted out what loot tables actually affected end of adventure rewards and made them actually suitable for the mod's loot tables. Much higher gold drops, chance of Set and Godlike items, and a huge boost to loot drops with high level chests.
- Increased Shieldhp enchantment maximum roll by 40%, the phlogistoneers shield doesn't gain a lot of the bonuses it should from various effects, while I can't fix that I can make shield builds a bit stronger with itemization.
- Increased the phlogistoneers flame thrower skills' tick rate by 20%, and didn't reduce its damage. It was still a bit too weak compared to other skills that let you be more mobile while casting.
- Fixed the tooltip for Elemental Damage Aura to say that it actually gives weapon damage to elemental skills.
- Fixed the the tooltips for mine, flamethrower, and rocket damage tooltips to say it actually only affects weapon damage.
- Mine damage aura is now 4% per level like the other specialized damage auras
- Fixed flamethrower tooltips misrepresenting their dps by several factors
- Fixed an error causing flamethrowers to do half the damage the should've been, but reduced their base damage by 33%, for a total damage increase of 25%.
- Increased Smashing Blow's charge damage by 3% per stack
- Increased Smashing Blow's base damage % 180>190
- Reduced Flowing Combo's base damage % 57.5>52.5, the difference in power between flowing combo and smashing blow was pretty small for a T2 and a T3 skill, and flowing combo was far stronger than its T1 counterpart compared to other T2 skills. These changes should bring it in line.
- Fixed Envenom not properly applying itself on targets
- Fixed Stun On Hit not working on most enemies that it should
- Reduced the attack speed of the Arena Behemoth Boss by 40%
- All non-support bosses can now spawn on the first boss wave, instead of just the two melee bosses
- Reduced the damage of Arena Contender (ranged bandits) by 25%, they're meant to be a toughness-check on weak ranged characters, but not that hard
- Found the string files that contain the descriptions for stats, missions, and character traits and went crazy. Updated as many of the descriptions I could find to the standards of the mod for clarity. This includes Keys, end of mission rewards, basic stat descriptions, class descriptions, menu tooltips, and some character sheet tooltips.
- Reduced the number of items the Pigasus sells, it was accidentally left high from when I was testing set items


---------Changelog for v9:



Arena Overhaul:
The arena has long standed as a pretty easy challenge to anyone at level 100, but still had some of the best rewards, and to anyone leveling it was the best way to gain experience. This overhaul changes it into something meant for end game characters to test their mettle against new monsters and new challenges not found anywhere else in the game. To truly risk those 20 fate points you spent to get in, because you might not make it to wave 10 to break even. And finally to obtain great wealth.
- The arena has some really bad mechanics. First, some wave compositions are 3-5x stronger than others, just because of what monsters get spawned. Second, monster scaling is totally out of whack, and their damage scales faster than their hp, turning anything past level 25 into a one-shot fest between you and monsters. Speaking of level 25, you can only get a maximum of 5 reward chests, so once you beat wave 25 you might as well quit, unless you're trying to get the wave 50 challenge. And finally, the arena scales to a factor of 20 for some reason, and difficulty has no effect on the Arena either. I can't fix the maximum of 5 chests, I can't fix the monster scaling, and I can't fix the way it scales to your level or difficulty. But I can fix the other issues, and make the Arena both more fairly difficult and more rewarding.
- The intent of this overhaul is to make wave 25 difficult to achieve, since it is the last wave you can beat that increases rewards. So to do that:
- The Arena now has Arena-Specific monsters, that are made specially for the arena. These monsters have high base hp and low base damage, to offset the scaling of the arena that I can't change. This will also make waves similar in difficulty, instead of fighting some Act 1 monsters and facerolling and then having to fight some Act 10 monsters the next wave and getting dominated. This unfortunately does lower the pool of possible monsters you'll see in the arena, but since most of them have special abilities to make your life difficult, it should still have variety. I've been careful to add an even variety of damage types, resistances, and special abilities.
- The Arena is now more difficult. If you're not prepared, you might just die before you reach wave 6. This is to make it very difficult to get to wave 25, which is the reward ceiling.
- The Arena Chests now drop better loot. They're harder to get, they take longer to get to. This coupled with the difficulty change effectively increases the challenge/reward ceiling of the Arena. No more casually strolling to wave 25 and then quitting without challenge.
- The Arena can no longer spawn Champions in waves, due to the way it spawns them which would cause champion stacking in waves, making some waves unnecessarily difficult.
- The Arena rewards are now restricted to gold, rare essences, and rare, epic, Set, and Godlike items, but not katarina's items as it was causing problems with the droprates for some reason. The average arena chest includes a very large sum of gold, 3-5 rare items, and one or two Epic or better items. Note that the rarity of items scales with difficulty, despite the difficulty not actually scaling the arena. So when playing the arena always set your difficulty to Inhuman Ordeal 5, because that's what I've balanced the drops around. Additionally, the number of waves you've completed (up to 25) appears to affect the rarity of items in chests, but this is just speculation.

These changes do affect your ability to get your fate points back that you spent to get into the arena in the first place. This has been taken into account when I increased the chest rewards. I can't change the fate point gain from the Arena Waves, and it takes getting to wave 11 before you get back all 20 points you spent getting in, and since wave 11 is effectively the new wave 30, I don't want people getting shorted on their fate points without some good rewards. That being said, if you can't beat wave 5, hold back on the arena until you can, or you'll just be wasting fate points.

This also affects the experience you get from winning the Arena, as I can't change the experience bonus for wins, but I felt it was pretty high anyway. However to compensate, the Arena monsters give a lot more experience than the previous ones.

Since monster hp and damage don't exponentially scale well enough to make wave 23 much more difficult than wave 3, the only way I could make waves really get exponentially harder was to give bosses more ability synergy between them. Boss monster number is the only thing that increases with wave number besides the scaling, so it was the only thing I could play off of to increase difficulty scaling. The bosses are difficult by themselves, but when they're together, their skills in combination can make your life hell. Immobility, vulnerability, high damage burst skills, and defensive skills, each boss only has one of these things, which makes their abilities easy to manage when there's just one. But when 3 or 4 are together, their skillsets in combination are difficult to deal with. Boss waves are probably the most fun I've had in an ARPG in a long time, it requires strategy, quick thinking, and a lot of good footwork to win them at high levels.

Final Word On Arena: Don't try it until you can successfully play on inhuman 2 unless you know what you're doing. The Arena is now one of the toughest challenges in the game, and the rewards match that.

[JelloStorm]

Looks like a great mod, thanks
But I do have a concern with the manipulation of .cfg files, I don't know if I could still play online with friends after modding

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Originally posted by JelloStorm:

Looks like a great mod, thanks
But I do have a concern with the manipulation of .cfg files, I don't know if I could still play online with friends after modding

Only if they also have the mod, unfortunately. Although I recommend everyone who's planning on getting end game gear to get it :P

And if you replace the cfg files with the originals you should have no problem playing with other people, and it shouldn't have any lasting effects on the game. You'll still have any of the items that the mod enables to drop if you got them.

[Luna Mie]

Seems like you need to ask for permission to download the file..

[DracoSerge]

Trying to download your mod, access denied...

EDIT: Fixed

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Originally posted by Luna Mie:

Seems like you need to ask for permission to download the file..

Originally posted by DracoSerge:

Trying to download your mod, access denied...

Sorry about that, looks like the permissions got reset somehow, try again.

[On3Prodigy]

Will there be repercussions using this? I want to know from the dev.
I really want to use this

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Originally posted by On3Prodigy:

Will there be repercussions using this? I want to know from the dev.
I really want to use this

The devs fully support modding, that's why the files are easy to access. If the disclaimer scared you off it's there so people won't flood their bug reporting system about something I may have caused.

Originally posted by Megapull_Neocore:

Just adding that we do not provide support for anyone who edits the game files, so use these at your own risk.

This is a dev commenting in another Mod thread. They're all for it, but they can't give support to people with technical issues using the mods.

[Ξиƙi̽-Ξ∴ i̽ร∴∴𝖈]

This is beautiful. Thanks dude. I'm glad we have someone like you in the Van Helsing community to really spice the game in areas where it's lacking. You're great.

Sincerely,
my happy ass.

[On3Prodigy]

Thank you for the guidance

[WareBare]

I was thinking of reworking skills and adding new items after neocore is done patching, with you posting mods and "A Cat" maybe we should start making one mod instead of different ones :)

And I started my rework on thunderbolt, was fun in vh3, way too op but fun until neocore nerfed it to the ground and pretty much made it unusuable. just lowering the cd and changing the charge rate is actually going pretty good :) oh and increased the enchdmg to 0.4, its about half the DPH of energybolt, so I feel like its fine for an aoe skill. still trying to figure out how to scale the enchdmg value with weapon dmg -.- or someway with the skill lvl, otherwise the skill lvl simply doesnt matter.

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Originally posted by WareBare:

I was thinking of reworking skills and adding new items after neocore is done patching, with you posting mods and "A Cat" maybe we should start making one mod instead of different ones :)

And I started my rework on thunderbolt, was fun in vh3, way too op but fun until neocore nerfed it to the ground and pretty much made it unusuable. just lowering the cd and changing the charge rate is actually going pretty good :) oh and increased the enchdmg to 0.4, its about half the DPH of energybolt, so I feel like its fine for an aoe skill. still trying to figure out how to scale the enchdmg value with weapon dmg -.- or someway with the skill lvl, otherwise the skill lvl simply doesnt matter.

I like where you're headed with changes like that.

As for balancing weapon damage with enchant damage, I'm going to overhaul the numbers on both, and give enchant based damage a niche, somewhere. I'm also looking for a way to amplify enchanted damage using gear, would add for a neat mechanic.

But first I'm redoing the monster scaling. Have you looked at that yet? It's pretty rediculous where they've added like 200% scaling over 5 levels (the places people are complaining about). I'm using an exponential algorithm instead of their model, which just added an arbitrary flat amount that they increased every few levels by whatever they felt like at the time. It'll come out much smoother, and I can tweak around increases in player power gains, like 20 and 40.

[strigvir]

Technically, WDM in the skill description should affect the damage output after all sources added up.
That enchant mult approach looks like a duct-tape, tbh.

[datguy13]

Originally posted by On3Prodigy:

Will there be repercussions using this? I want to know from the dev.
I really want to use this

ILL already told you what the reppercussions are: You will not be able to pass a checksum test for online and multiplayer, so you can only play with others who use the mod.

One of the lead developers for the game has already provided permissions in previous forums for Modding. ILL has also provided a nearly identical disclaimer to what Honya (the dev)has said in the past concerning support. To paraphrase: 'You can mod the game, you can disseminate the mods, but don't ask us for technical support if you use the mod, because we won't be able to help'.

Originally posted by ILL-LEAGUE-AL LEGENDS:

I'm using an exponential algorithm instead of their model, which just added an arbitrary flat amount that they increased every few levels by whatever they felt like at the time. It'll come out much smoother, and I can tweak around increases in player power gains, like 20 and 40.

Be careful how you construct the algorythm. They actually did use one for monster stat progression in Van helsing 2 originally, but it creates some extremely insane numbers, so they went to the flat values you're rather distainful of. You're going to want to use alot of restraint so you don't end up with the same massive inflation they wound up with.

[NoFoodAfterMidnight]

Originally posted by datguy13:

Originally posted by ILL-LEAGUE-AL LEGENDS:

I'm using an exponential algorithm instead of their model, which just added an arbitrary flat amount that they increased every few levels by whatever they felt like at the time. It'll come out much smoother, and I can tweak around increases in player power gains, like 20 and 40.

Be careful how you construct the algorythm. They actually did use one for monster stat progression in Van helsing 2 originally, but it creates some extremely insane numbers, so they went to the flat values you're rather distainful of. You're going to want to use alot of restraint so you don't end up with the same massive inflation they wound up with.

Level 100 scaling is exactly the same as in vanilla. The only difference is going to be in between, removing the sudden 200% scaling increases over 5 levels in some places.

Originally posted by strigvir:

Technically, WDM in the skill description should affect the damage output after all sources added up.
That enchant mult approach looks like a duct-tape, tbh.

I agree that is how it SHOULD work, and honestly it should be pretty simple to change since they're using their own proprietary engine (I think that may be the problem, they copied it into every damage call, instead of calling it as a separate function or script that they could just change easily, and now it would require going through every damage call to change, just a guess.)