MM6 skill emphasis mod (#74)

[raekuul]

Another though is to differentiate shield and stuff protection specialty is to use shield against actual projectiles including magical. Whereas stuff should have some sort of dispel power giving a chance to deflect bad effect on party (not projectiles) like curse, weakness, fear and such. Not sure how many monsters issue such spells and how they are relevant in the game. The curse is the only one that I even remember being pretty annoying.

I was actually going to suggest having Staff help protect against Dispel Magic (to help with places like Darkmoor Castle and the Tomb of Ethric the Mad) but that's kind of niche.

Another option is to give bunch of not shooting monsters arrow attack to increase the value of physical projectile protection.

In vanilla, "basic" arrows are limited to the Lizardman and Archer classes. And even then it still deals monster attack damage as opposed to true "bow" damage, so if you give this capability to other monsters it'll need to be tested pretty thoroughly in order to make sure that the game is still fun. Unless you want to exempt non-magical ranged attacks from the Homing Attacks rule?

btw can i make some suggestions for changing spells? i have a number of such

By all means! I would love to hear it.

Mass Curse is the one I would look at, to be honest. I don't even know what the Curse status does in MM6 when applied to a monster - presumably it would shut down some of the more dangerous spells/abilities but you reach a point where everything's immune to Magic and thus can't be cursed anyway (which incidentally is the other reason why Shrapmetal is better than Dragon Breath - the book text for Water Magic's attack spells say that poison resistance is rare but you wouldn't believe it once you get to Western Enroth, meanwhile Shrap deals physical damage and thus only a very small number of enemies are immune to it).

[tnevolin]

shield: i think 1% should be fine, although its unclear to me what spells it protects against, it includes stuff like firebolt and lightning bolt right? i rather like the idea of shield adding damage tbh, makes it a real option so you can make your paladin with shield.

Currently it protects from all projectiles physical and magical alike. Everything that is flying around and may hit the party.

Spells:
low level damage spells; always seemed a shame to me these get phased out (and the really low level ones dont get used at all) so I'd suggest the very low level spells like flame arrow get +1 damage pr rank and low level stuff like sparks and poison spray get cost 2 at master while fire bolt and deadly swarm get cost 1. They'd still deal a good deal less damage than knights but it gives sorcerers a low DPS high DPM option which is useful if temple heals get more expensive

Generally agree.
Singe shot spells may use some boost but shard spells (sparks, poison, etc) are already insanely effective against a crowd or against a single target at point blank.
There are too many attacking spells in the game. We won't be able to balance them all perfectly. I think it is normal for player to gradually switch to more devastating spells as game progresses. They cost more (both books and spell) for reason.

first aid to 5+1 pr rank for cost of 2/1/1, (or as previous 5/7/10 for 2/1/0 cost but i like this better if doubling cost and effect of cure wounds)
healing touch should be changed to 3-7+2 pr rank
cure wounds 5 + 5 pr rank cost 10
power cure heal 10 + 3 pr rank
shared life 2/4/6 added to pool

I don't think it is worth reducing low level spell cost even more. When character becomes a master the mana pool grows tremendously. Saving 1SP per spell is unnoticeable. It is better to fiddle with spell effect instead - that is what player notices most.
Cannot change the cost of the spell either. At least never tried. They are assigned to a spell table and each position at this table dictates the cost. So cure wounds is actually a "cost 5 body spell".

Healing touch would now grow twice as fast for 1.5 of the price and becomes a clear winner comparing to first aid. Is it fine? Do you want to drop healing touch fixed cost to make it still growing faster but not at early stages? Something like 2 per rank? Or even from 0 (fixed) to 4 per rank ? Keeping its not predictable outcome lore.

If we keep cure wounds cost at 5 and power 5+3 - would it suffice?

blades: is too close to deadly swarm would double cost and damage (or 1-10)

Yep. Bad design or too many direct damage spells.
It is already 1-7 * skill in this mod (check in game description). Making it 1-10 would equal it to death blossom. We may do swarm more static like 10 + (1-2) * skill to make it stronger initially but fading away with time.

Ice blast: damage is weirdly low even when it manages to hit its target i think it could be changed to 1-12 pr rank

Agree.

incinerate: the damage pr mana is just too low given how common fire resist is, i'd change to 1-20 pr rank

Mmm. You need to balance them all correctly. There are other direct damage spells in game. If you make this one too powerful others won't ever be used.

Mind magic is potentially the clerical damage school but magic resistance is so common its useless if possible i'd change mind blast and psychic shock to physical damage

All immunities are removed already. All too high resistances are reduced too. So mind magic should now hit liches all right.

toxic cloud cost could be changed to 20 or damage to 1-14 pr rank

Again, let's not change spell cost. It is quite hard coded there. Effect is easier to change.

And hey thanks for everything you done so far and the bug fixes. I really love that you made this game come alive for me again

Glad you liked it. I played it like hundreds time in my youth but after discovering all exploits it no fun anymore. I actually was modifying it to experience again for myself. Great if it added to other people enjoyment.

[tnevolin]

Mass Curse is the one I would look at, to be honest. I don't even know what the Curse status does in MM6 when applied to a monster - presumably it would shut down some of the more dangerous spells/abilities but you reach a point where everything's immune to Magic and thus can't be cursed anyway (which incidentally is the other reason why Shrapmetal is better than Dragon Breath - the book text for Water Magic's attack spells say that poison resistance is rare but you wouldn't believe it once you get to Western Enroth, meanwhile Shrap deals physical damage and thus only a very small number of enemies are immune to it).

Curse is supposed to randomly disable every second action. So it like never happened. Should theoretically reduce monster threat in half. Never checked it, though. Not sure if it works.
So what do you propose to do with it?

Immunities are gone in this mod. Everybody is affected to some extent.

[raekuul]

If immunities aren't a thing then as long as curse actually works as-is it won't need to be changed, as now you can actually curse the things you would want to curse

also be prepared for an all-new kind of endgame cheese in the form of "Mass Fear"

[tnevolin]

There are no immunities but there are resistances still. So not every time spell sticks to the monster. Need to test.

[raekuul]

Simply removing the immunities will make a difference; the probability of the spell succeeding is no longer 0%, so as the number of attempts approaches infinity the probability of the spell succeeding on any given attempt approaches 100%

and besides I don't need Mass Fear to work on everything all at once, I just need it to thin the crowd for a few minutes while I close against the stuff it didn't work against. (Also removing the immunities probably puts Dark Containment squarely in the Usable category since now it's actually "Dragon Breath with status effects")

[RawSugar]

Low level spells:
Its an adjustment to balance with melee getting stronger. It gives caster spells costing 0 dealing ~50 damage for 0 mana with flame arrow or~100 damage with fire bolt for 1 mana (and 600 for 15 mana with fireblast) at rank 40 while knights deal ~300 for 0 mana. But sure, obsolescence is a different design philosophy. there's just something in me that objects to letting coded content go to waste

As for the multishot spells, ye they are manaefficient but melee is deadly for casters in your mod, especially if endgame damage is adjusted to account for better defensive skills.

healing spells in the scheme i had the progression would be cost 1 -3 -10-30 healing 1/2/5/12 pr level , ie gradually diminishing mana efficiency the higher the DPSsame as damagespells. its a nice curve of triple cost and ~-25% efficiency
If we cant change manacost but are stuck with cost 2/3/5/30, and still want heals to be able to keep up at low level id suggest all three spells healing 10/15/20 base and 1 pr level for first aid, 2 for healing touch and 3 for cure wounds.

blades: too bad about cost, they are just too similar, but yes 1-7 at least makes it viable.

incinetrate: compared to lightning bolt , incinerate is triple cost and half DPM, its too steep a cost. 1-20 puts it at -25% efficiency which is more reasonable imo.

mind magic: even with no immunities magic resistance of 200 is still extremely common, they need either double damage or physical typ to be viable - but again clerics dont need to be viable damage dealers...

toxic cloud: then 1-14 damage, that puts in in line with acid burst. atm its double cost for similar damage

[tnevolin]

mm6.jpg

attachment

Hmm. Doesn't get attached. Don't know how to send it. Will try by email.

Here is the link to google drive.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ue&sd=true

[tnevolin]

I like the way you thinking of balance (as well as other participants on this thread - great job everybody!). My thoughts was in the same line as well.
Here, look at "mm6.xls" attached. I changed extension to "jpg" - it doesn't allow non picture attachments. You need to download and rename it to "mm6.xls" to be able to open with Excel.

This is my attempt for comparing and balancing offensive spells. Not all of them are there and this may not match current version but it is a good place for you to start playing and modifying values if you like.

The "spells offensive modified" tab contains "damage" (vanilla damage) and "damage mod" (mod damage) column groups with base and max variable damage:

Code: Select all

power = base + (1-max) * skill

Multiplier is for multi shots. Columns Q-U are for spell power at different skill level assuming character increases in rank at level 4 and 12. And columns V-Z are for the mana effectiveness:

Code: Select all

mana effectiveness = power/cost

I tried to stick to few principles:

• A generic game balance principle not for spells only. Each feature should be usable at some point in the game. It should be a player tool even if helps them to go through a single episode in the game. For example, lowest level spells like flame arrow were absolutely not usable and not worth money spent on books.
• The average damage for most used top level spells should be about same as in vanilla. This can be changed if desired but it would require another round of careful magic-might rebalance. Doable but time consuming. There are plenty of other means to tilt the balance in the game. Monster health/damage is one of them. So think carefully if you want to drastically deviate from these proportions.
• Higher level spells have higher damage per shot but lower damage per mana. It seems that vanilla spell power progression is (very roughly):

  Code: Select all

  power = 1.4 * sqrt(cost)

  I tried to keep this as a rule of thumb. And that is what column H is for - to give me an estimate how fast spell power should grow compared to lower level ones.
• Higher level spells generally progress faster with skill. That is natural as player would like to transition to them as they advance in skill (and game progress). More expensive books should pay off toward the end of the game. At the same time, low level spells should have higher fixed bonus to compensate for their slow improvement and give player some viable combat tool at early stages.
• Add some sensible variations based on lore and/or specific of the spell. For example, area damage spells (fireball, meteor shower) should deliver much lower damage per hit as there are multiple hits so they are not effective against single target. However, they should become more effective against a group. Restricted and more difficult to use spells should be more effective or, otherwise, they will never be chosen. And so on. For example, Destroy Undead should be the strongest direct damage spell in the game - both by lore and the fact that it is restricted to undead only.

Low level spells:
Its an adjustment to balance with melee getting stronger. It gives caster spells costing 0 dealing ~50 damage for 0 mana with flame arrow or~100 damage with fire bolt for 1 mana (and 600 for 15 mana with fireblast) at rank 40 while knights deal ~300 for 0 mana. But sure, obsolescence is a different design philosophy. there's just something in me that objects to letting coded content go to waste

I agree we may give lowest level spell some small growth per skill. They still get obsolete due to their low damage/shot ratio. But can be used against not so tough enemies for mana saving. Just again - review the chart and make sure you are not overpowering them.

As for the multishot spells, ye they are manaefficient but melee is deadly for casters in your mod, especially if endgame damage is adjusted to account for better defensive skills.

That was the designed trade-off, is it not? Party can rush toward the enemy under fire to get a strong point blank multi shot. Or resort to long range single shot attack to avoid risk. Player's choice. As for me I quite often use former tactics. So in my experience they are not unusable at all.

healing spells in the scheme i had the progression would be cost 1 -3 -10-30 healing 1/2/5/12 pr level , ie gradually diminishing mana efficiency the higher the DPSsame as damagespells. its a nice curve of triple cost and ~-25% efficiency
If we cant change manacost but are stuck with cost 2/3/5/30, and still want heals to be able to keep up at low level id suggest all three spells healing 10/15/20 base and 1 pr level for first aid, 2 for healing touch and 3 for cure wounds.

Good idea in general with power/cost progression. Didn't get what your final proposal is, though. Can you elaborate on formulas?

Healing touch is too close to first aid to be able to balance them well together. It can be made an odd ball and excluded from normal healing spell progression. Just for the grain of salt in it. This is spirit magic after all with some unpredictable side effects:
- a wide effect range to make effect unpredictable
- rare and random ailment healing
- maybe repurpose it for mana restoration or make mana restoration a random side effect ???

incinetrate: compared to lightning bolt , incinerate is triple cost and half DPM, its too steep a cost. 1-20 puts it at -25% efficiency which is more reasonable imo.

Didn't get your computations. It is triple cost and double damage. Seems like a pretty normal progression.

toxic cloud: then 1-14 damage, that puts in in line with acid burst. atm its double cost for similar damage

It is already more powerful than acid burst even though by not that much.
Regardless of its cost it is a low level spell in its school supposed to be overtaken by more faster growing more advanced spells.
It bounces from wall so player can shoot enemies behind corners in dungeons.

[Tomsod]

Just popping in for a second. You efforts to balance the spells are admirable, but I can't find the recovery values in your tables? Most offensive spells have variable recovery depending on skill rank. What you should balance is not damage per cast, but damage per round, as it's what matters in combat. Some ostensibly high-damage spells also have bad recovery, which makes them worse in combat than they appear.

[tnevolin]

Yep. They do have variable recovery but this is usually 1 per skill. So at skill 10 you have a difference between 100 and 90 recovery which is pretty much negligible. Besides, they all are affected by this so the recovery can be easily excluded from comparison.

Granted there are few outliers with too long or too short recovery. We can identify them and keep in mind. Out of these I recall spells like Fly, Armageddon, Dark Containment - but they are already pretty special and are not part of numeric comparison.

I also didn't want to complicate already 30 lines page. Feel free to add this parameter and see how it changes things.

[RawSugar]

The issue with incinerate is that its not double damage but +75% AND the spell should get a small compensation for being a endgame firemagic spell. Most other fire spells have other benefits, being AOE fx, incinerate doesnt and fire resistance is relatively common, so i'd suggest doubling damage vs lightning bolt and adding 10% putting it at 10 pr level so really 1-19.

I think triple cost-->double damage is a much better progression, SQRT(cost)*1.4 matches vanilla i agree but it deals too low damage for high cost spells especially if you cant just beacon for full mana.
The formula i came up with is damage pr level=0.84*(3/4)^(LN((COST*3/4)))*COST
this matches fire bolt, ice bolt and lightning bolt but puts incinerate at 10 or 10.5 pr level. It actually matches shrap metal damage better, since shrap is supposed to be at -30% damage similar to deadly swarm and implosion. even with ~250% damage for being multishot
Similarly it puts toxic cloud at 1-15 factoring in a -20% damage for poison (like acid burst).

low level spells, giving the really low level spells +1 pr level wont make them OP, they are sort of off the charts sincecost is 0 making DPM infinite, but just common sense says they could probably even be 1-2 pr level.

Agreed the tradeoff for multishots is huge damage in melee but increasing monster damage changes the tradeoff and makes it significantly worse for low cost/damage spells. if we cant touch manacost i dont see a good solution though, maybe reducing base damage to 0 and increasing pr level

healing the proposal is
first aid cost 2 base heal 20 + 1 pr level
healing touch cost 3 base heal 20 + 2 pr level
cure wounds cost 5 base heal 20 + 3 pr level
(i actually suggested a variable base heal, but thats likely not possible and 20 at all ranks is fine)

this makes first aid most mana efficient until level 20 when healing touch takes over. cure wounds is somewhat less mana efficient until high rank but heals much more pr cast, and using a simple weight of DPM*DPS ( can you elaborate of your concept of "spellpower"?) becomes the better spell of all three ca rank 12. It also helps a bunch in those tough early levels.

[Tomsod]

Yep. They do have variable recovery but this is usually 1 per skill. So at skill 10 you have a difference between 100 and 90 recovery which is pretty much negligible. Besides, they all are affected by this so the recovery can be easily excluded from comparison.

Wait, is this how things are in your mod? In vanilla MM6 recovery usually only depends on the normal/expert/master rank, not the skill value. E.g. Flame Arrow has 100/90/80 recovery, Lightning Bolt, 110/100/90, and Dragon Breath, 160/140/120. I suppose if you already reworked the entire recovery system then my objection is invalid, sorry.

On the topic of Incinerate: in my own mod I gave it a small instadeath chance since I too felt it's a bit bland for the top elemental spell (esp. since in MM7 it also requires GM). I'm yet to playtest it, though, it could prove to be imbalanced. (Another wild idea is to give it fireball-like AOE, but only if it kills the original target. That one will most probably remain an idea.)

[raekuul]

okay so I started a new game on the latest version and... how, exactly, am I supposed to survive? The goblins are level eight with 24 AC (which means that it takes a lot of attempts to hit one) and the follower-class enemies over in Ironfist are hitting for a third of my HP (I can't get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing their aggro). Party is PACS, so far only harvested two horseshoes (the ones from New Sorpigal)

edit: I wound up spending the Fly scroll to get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing the aggro from the Followers of Baa off to the west and now that I have my bow skills the game is "playable" but I still ate four TPKs in the Abandoned Temple just to get to Sparks Chest (it was cheaper to eat the TPK than to try and cure the Diseased condition from the bats) so I still am doing something wrong compared to what you're wanting me to do.

edit edit: okay I must be doing something wrong. I can't kill a single queen cobra that's by itself, and it can knock out my strongest character in one hit with a lucky poison attack. This is what we call "Early Game Hell" - I know that the game will get a lot better once I get my momentum going but I am very much not having fun getting to that point (which basically means that this mod is inaccessible to all but the most enthusiastic of players). I've resorted to repeatedly taking a TPK to get the free 100 gold from the well in New Sorpigal just so that I can afford new spells after a couple in-game months.

[tnevolin]

The issue with incinerate is that its not double damage but +75% AND the spell should get a small compensation for being a endgame firemagic spell. Most other fire spells have other benefits, being AOE fx, incinerate doesnt and fire resistance is relatively common, so i'd suggest doubling damage vs lightning bolt and adding 10% putting it at 10 pr level so really 1-19.

I think triple cost-->double damage is a much better progression, SQRT(cost)*1.4 matches vanilla i agree but it deals too low damage for high cost spells especially if you cant just beacon for full mana.
The formula i came up with is damage pr level=0.84*(3/4)^(LN((COST*3/4)))*COST
this matches fire bolt, ice bolt and lightning bolt but puts incinerate at 10 or 10.5 pr level. It actually matches shrap metal damage better, since shrap is supposed to be at -30% damage similar to deadly swarm and implosion. even with ~250% damage for being multishot
Similarly it puts toxic cloud at 1-15 factoring in a -20% damage for poison (like acid burst).

low level spells, giving the really low level spells +1 pr level wont make them OP, they are sort of off the charts sincecost is 0 making DPM infinite, but just common sense says they could probably even be 1-2 pr level.

I agree with your math and reasons but don't want to discuss each and every spell details. It'll take too long.

I have updated mm6.xls with spell recovery factored in. So feel free to play with it and present an alternative view on complete magic attack system. Then we can easily review/criticize.

healing the proposal is
first aid cost 2 base heal 20 + 1 pr level
healing touch cost 3 base heal 20 + 2 pr level
cure wounds cost 5 base heal 20 + 3 pr level
(i actually suggested a variable base heal, but thats likely not possible and 20 at all ranks is fine)

this makes first aid most mana efficient until level 20 when healing touch takes over. cure wounds is somewhat less mana efficient until high rank but heals much more pr cast, and using a simple weight of DPM*DPS ( can you elaborate of your concept of "spellpower"?) becomes the better spell of all three ca rank 12. It also helps a bunch in those tough early levels.

20 base heal for level 2 spell?? It'll be a life giver from the game start. I don't see myself dying anymore with this in my pocket.


Seriously, I think it is too much that early in the game. Also when you talk about "until level 20 when healing touch takes over" do you mean a 20 skill level in body/spirit magic? This is way beyond becoming a master of magic and way way beyond mid game. You really want first aid to be a king until then? If you want to make transition between them, I'd say first aid should fade away in appealing by about when healer becomes an expert in the skill.

Didn't understand about concept of "spellpower". It is not my concept. It is used interchangeably for spell damage or spell effect.

[tnevolin]

Yep. They do have variable recovery but this is usually 1 per skill. So at skill 10 you have a difference between 100 and 90 recovery which is pretty much negligible. Besides, they all are affected by this so the recovery can be easily excluded from comparison.

Wait, is this how things are in your mod? In vanilla MM6 recovery usually only depends on the normal/expert/master rank, not the skill value. E.g. Flame Arrow has 100/90/80 recovery, Lightning Bolt, 110/100/90, and Dragon Breath, 160/140/120. I suppose if you already reworked the entire recovery system then my objection is invalid, sorry.

My apologies. Typed too fast. Yes, they recovery reduce with rank, not with skill. The argument still stays, though. They all have more or less same recovery reduction scheme: base, -10, -20. So their recovery is equal at every single point in time. Except super outliers, of course.

On the topic of Incinerate: in my own mod I gave it a small instadeath chance since I too felt it's a bit bland for the top elemental spell (esp. since in MM7 it also requires GM). I'm yet to playtest it, though, it could prove to be imbalanced. (Another wild idea is to give it fireball-like AOE, but only if it kills the original target. That one will most probably remain an idea.)

I agree that we can spice things up by giving some flavor to top level spells. Open for suggestions like above. The only requirement is that this should be consistent across all magic school. Not only Incinerate should stand out.

[tnevolin]

okay so I started a new game on the latest version and... how, exactly, am I supposed to survive? The goblins are level eight with 24 AC (which means that it takes a lot of attempts to hit one) and the follower-class enemies over in Ironfist are hitting for a third of my HP (I can't get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing their aggro). Party is PACS, so far only harvested two horseshoes (the ones from New Sorpigal)

edit: I wound up spending the Fly scroll to get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing the aggro from the Followers of Baa off to the west and now that I have my bow skills the game is "playable" but I still ate four TPKs in the Abandoned Temple just to get to Sparks Chest (it was cheaper to eat the TPK than to try and cure the Diseased condition from the bats) so I still am doing something wrong compared to what you're wanting me to do.

edit edit: okay I must be doing something wrong. I can't kill a single queen cobra that's by itself, and it can knock out my strongest character in one hit with a lucky poison attack. This is what we call "Early Game Hell" - I know that the game will get a lot better once I get my momentum going but I am very much not having fun getting to that point (which basically means that this mod is inaccessible to all but the most enthusiastic of players). I've resorted to repeatedly taking a TPK to get the free 100 gold from the well in New Sorpigal just so that I can afford new spells after a couple in-game months.

Hmm. Is it your first time playing this mod or first time playing this version?

This mod is supposed to be more challenging than vanilla but not to the level of impossibility. Try to use all normal tools in your possession to beef party up. That should help tremendously.

• Travel by coach to CI. That is a more or less safe road. You'll attract some followers attention on the way up to the castle but this is nothing.
• Talk to castle lord. He instantly give you XP enough to train to level 3-4.
• Well, train the party then!!
• Find a sword in stone in NS.
• Collect all the items from chests that you can reach without being beaten first.
• Collect all the herbs you can get safely.
• Trade junk and buy more herbs and bottles.
• Make basic potions. They are great at the beginning. Drink them before the battle.
• Get bows to everybody.
• Buy lowest level attacking spells in guilds. Distribute them across the party. They deliver 4 HP on average. Not much but good replacement for arrows those not always hit.
• Hire hirelings! Hirelings, man, are the key! Especially those increasing your attack/defense/magic skills. Every single raise in skill level matters. It is like a difference between life and death. Remember what kind of mod you are playing.

I guess this should be enough to kick goblins around like pins. I recall myself just destroying them on the field East of NS without even going to temple once. Well, maybe I am lying. Maybe I went to temple one-two times but it still was easy.

[RawSugar]

Raekul: that experience matches mine. A few things though; especially at the beginning you are MUCH more sensitive to proper area succession. the order you want to take is clear the area around sorpigal (not islands), goblin watch and only then venture into abandoned temple. And the cobras behind the door are among the very last thing you fight, likely after even spider queen.
Similarly in ironfirst the temple is usually my first stop in vanilla but its actually extremely hard when the monsters can outrun you, and instead you want to clear the open ground and then head to sewers in free haven and the islands in mist, its really hard to fin suitable foes at that point but there's a few options.
Also i can tell you there's a way to get to ironfirst castle without agroing enemies, you crawl up the hill behind the guy with the harp quest.

The game also takes getting used to, vanilla is basically playing on easiest and the mod makes you jump to one of the highest difficulty. in vanilla you can basically ram you way into every room, here you want to tip toe towards the enemy and often run around a corner when you agro them to try and break up the enemy.

What i did was use a gate master follower to do the noncombat quests; Money from Loretta Fleise and cavalier quest in free haven- At level 9 you are much more prepared, but the game was STILL difficult.
I think you can play the game without those quests but it will be hard going, you're also not making it easier for yourself with that party. Paladin and archer are not strong classes. I'd suggest KKCD for the first run.

Tnevolin have you played level 1 to 7 recently?

[RawSugar]

Healing: I did notice in your spread sheet that we seems to have different approaches to the game^^ in my experience optimal play is becoming an expert in 1 skill, that means towards end of the game you are casting spells at rank 50 and i'd use rank 25 as the reference for balancing spells with high base values etc. I also always have a dedicated healer whose main skill is body magic. first aid at 20 base is not very different from a cure wounds healing 5 pr point at rank 8 or so.
At 20+1/2/3 i'd use first aid until rank 8 or so, then at rank 9 i'd use cure wounds as my combat heal (healing 47 rather than 29 from first aid).

comparing first aid to healing touch you have to remember you wont have access to both at rank but if you did its only in terms of HPM first aid is the better spell till rank 20, healing touch would be preferable in combat from rank 9 or so, or arguably earlier.

Spells: I'll add some stuff in spreadsheet, i have some ideas for evaluating spells factoring in both DPM and DPS.

[raekuul]

okay so I started a new game on the latest version and... how, exactly, am I supposed to survive? The goblins are level eight with 24 AC (which means that it takes a lot of attempts to hit one) and the follower-class enemies over in Ironfist are hitting for a third of my HP (I can't get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing their aggro). Party is PACS, so far only harvested two horseshoes (the ones from New Sorpigal)

edit: I wound up spending the Fly scroll to get up to Castle Ironfist without drawing the aggro from the Followers of Baa off to the west and now that I have my bow skills the game is "playable" but I still ate four TPKs in the Abandoned Temple just to get to Sparks Chest (it was cheaper to eat the TPK than to try and cure the Diseased condition from the bats) so I still am doing something wrong compared to what you're wanting me to do.

edit edit: okay I must be doing something wrong. I can't kill a single queen cobra that's by itself, and it can knock out my strongest character in one hit with a lucky poison attack. This is what we call "Early Game Hell" - I know that the game will get a lot better once I get my momentum going but I am very much not having fun getting to that point (which basically means that this mod is inaccessible to all but the most enthusiastic of players). I've resorted to repeatedly taking a TPK to get the free 100 gold from the well in New Sorpigal just so that I can afford new spells after a couple in-game months.

Hmm. Is it your first time playing this mod or first time playing this version?

This mod is supposed to be more challenging than vanilla but not to the level of impossibility. Try to use all normal tools in your possession to beef party up. That should help tremendously.

1. Travel by coach to CI. That is a more or less safe road. You'll attract some followers attention on the way up to the castle but this is nothing.
2. Talk to castle lord. He instantly give you XP enough to train to level 3-4.
3. Well, train the party then!!
4. Find a sword in stone in NS.
5. Collect all the items from chests that you can reach without being beaten first.
6. Collect all the herbs you can get safely.
7. Trade junk and buy more herbs and bottles.
8. Make basic potions. They are great at the beginning. Drink them before the battle.
9. Get bows to everybody.
10. Buy lowest level attacking spells in guilds. Distribute them across the party. They deliver 4 HP on average. Not much but good replacement for arrows those not always hit.
11. Hire hirelings! Hirelings, man, are the key! Especially those increasing your attack/defense/magic skills. Every single raise in skill level matters. It is like a difference between life and death. Remember what kind of mod you are playing.

I guess this should be enough to kick goblins around like pins. I recall myself just destroying them on the field East of NS without even going to temple once. Well, maybe I am lying. Maybe I went to temple one-two times but it still was easy.

First time playing the mod. I'm worried that you've fallen into the trap of "Difficulty for the sake of Difficulty." I get that you wanted to remove exploits, and that some of the difficulty is just to counterbalance the inflated late-game damage I'll be throwing around, but the early game does need to be re-balanced. (It's exactly this kind of early-game-hell that I would have been leery about adding more physical ranged attacks, but those are ultimately easier to deal with in the overland areas since you have better control over pulling, and are generally a non-issue in the dungeons since that's all melee combat anyway)

The goblins aren't particularly dangerous (though all of them having Fire Bolt now kinda sucks but it's more annoyance damage than anything else), they just have too much armor class and take forever to kill.

Abandoned Temple is preferred before Goblinwatch because it has three objectives to Goblinwatch's one, so it's more efficient time-wise to attack it first in the early game (GW has a faster objective but you want gold in the early game, and that's where GW is more important as a full clear but you don't want to do that at level 1 either), but I can see the wisdom in doing GW first for SkEm since you don't have to fight everything inside to get to the quest objective. GW full clear is also going to have the Disease issue anyway, between the rats and the suckers, so if I pull disease it's cheaper to bank and TPK than to try and cure it (since the cheapest potion that cures disease is RB+BY which this early on is a lot of lost potions).

Counterpoints, in order:

1. Coach is faster and at low levels cheaper as well, especially with the amplified food costs; the Followers west of the road going up to CI itself are close enough that you draw their aggro just going up to see Wilbur Humphrey
2. Did that
3. With what experience? I've only got enough right now to be level 4, and I currently can't afford the Learning skill across the board (it's not a starting option for every class despite Archer having a 'none' slot at gen)
4. Nobody started with the Sword skill
5. Did/doing that; overland is easier to manage since I have better fine control over pulling and is the main reason I'm still trying
6. YES. Especially with the NS/DS portal being closed off, yellow potions have become invaluable in the early game.
7. Slowly running out of junk to pawn off (though I'm not completely out of junk yet)
8. YES. Especially with the NS/DS portal being closed off, yellow potions have become invaluable in the early game.
9. Did that, but bows only go so far in the close quarters of dungeons. Especially with everything moving faster than normal. Keep in mind that Bows become less valuable against monsters with ranged attacks and you've added those to a lot of monsters.
10. With what money? I need to buy two copies of every spell to begin with since I have two casters for each school, plus I need to learn the skills to cast the spells (base cost 1000). The Merchant skill only goes so far before Expert.
11. With what money? You increased the cost of squires (+2 to every weapon and armor skill) from 600/6% to 2000/20%

E: I can still uncork Free Haven via land travel without getting TPK'd in the process, though it'll be a slog cutting my way over to the Mines and I've only done Diagonal Travel twice before (and will be instantly aggroing a cluster of Apprentices on arrival thanks to level design) but that sounds way more doable than aggroing everything in southern Bootleg Bay, so I will eventually be able to buy all the spells. Silver Cove is right out, though, since I can't diagonal-travel there to avoid the Magyars in eastern Northern Highlands (also Gargoyles; unless I eat a few dragon tower fireballs I'd also have to deal with gargoyles on the way to Silver Cove town). And hey, SkEm actually encourages you to use magic to reach the Fountain of Magic (Water Walk from Tsantsa Island to Temple Island, clear that area, then Water Walk from Temple Island to the village).

TL;DR: Inflated late game difficulty is "a new and exciting challenge." Inflated early game difficulty is "why am I doing this, again?"