MM6 skill emphasis mod (#74)

[RawSugar]

"Difficulty for the sake of Difficulty."

I can only say i felt the same way first attempt. Did a 3 archers party thinking i was still playing easy old MM6. it quickly got very hard. Managed to get to level 10 or so but was bankrupt and miserable. So I sat down and figured out the game again. Yes temple is more timeefficient in vanilla because its barely harder than goblin watch etc. but apparently the monsters there are about twice as strong as the goblins, the game is just so easy you dont even notice - and why would you when you can skirmish everything to death effortlessly.
You're going to want an expert healer if you try again. healing debuffs in temple is ruinous until level 40 or so and you will be level 20 or so before you have bought the books and skills to do it yourself.

o and you can still do water magic early for poison spray etc but dont think you'll get the funds for beacon before level 20 earliest, 30 more likely/requires fewer sacrifices.

[raekuul]

I think a large part of what I have to rethink is stats-based; since I can't even access the Day of the Gods pedestal in JVC's Office I can't rely on having super-inflated stats in the New Sorpigal area, let alone the longer-term benefit that the Shrine of the Gods provides with its smaller-but-permanent +20 to everything (I was half-expecting the NS/DS portal to still be accessible without flight/jump since now you're basically eating a TPK by using it thanks to homing everything, but having access to the shrine at least would still have helped immensely). I might have to abuse the general store and brew black potions to help offset losing the Shrine and I will have to save money and buy the Day of the Gods spell from Blackshire to offset losing the Pedestal.

(in case it's unclear: the Shrine of the Gods in DS is +20 to everything, the pedestal in JVC's Office at the NWC Dungeon is actually the Day of the Gods spell at an obscenely high rank - NWC probably learned from internal testing that having an early game superbuff like that helps the player Have Fun in the early game, since they added a similar pedestal to Emerald Island in 7)

[RawSugar]

Ye - or like i said just do the money+cavalier quest when the game gets harder than fun. You honestly wont even be that overpowered, it just give you a little breathing room before the difficulty catches up w you.

I stand by my earlier suggestion of making 1 or more early quests give more XP (and maybe reduce the XP from Lorettas money quest) so you can reach level 10 in new sorpigal. Its doable but i do agree that without exploit its one hell of a grind...

[raekuul]

Cavalier is on the table (only going to aggro that first group of Apprentices in Free Haven since I'll be diagonal travelling from NW Ironfist and drowning my way back and forth to Rockham is 'free' in that it won't aggro anything else), Money is probably not on the table yet (I think I have to aggro a group of Magyars to uncork Silver Cove for paid travel, but if not then it's just a question of Darkmoor having a return trip on the day I arrive which is a simple matter of logistics)

The point about AT's difficulty is one I didn't really think about before but in hindsight that makes sense; even with the NWC Pedestal I would have to duck out and heal at the temple three or four times before I reached Queenie. I'll tackle GW next, then try AT again (probably not much deeper than Angela though; there's only bats and spiders between Sparks Chest and Angela's Hiding Place so it's just a matter of getting past that one single Queen Cobra I uncorked)

tnevolin: maybe replace dungeon flavor text with a "Suggested Party Level: XX" blurb instead? That way if you intended for me to do Abandoned Temple at a higher level it's actually clear that "whoops I'm not supposed to be here yet" as opposed to this frustrating "this is supposed to be early game." Though with that said, AT will be important in early SkEm since food prices are increased and you get free food for rescuing Angela - once you've turned The Letter in to Wilbur Humphrey and trained off of that experience you can't actually afford to buy food with the Pity Gold (which was part of the point of the pity gold in the first place!).

and speaking of the pity gold: is Guardian Angel supposed to send me to the last temple whose services I used? I only ever saw it send me back to New Sorpigal (though admittedly that could also be the case if GA looks for the last temple you donated to which outside of fixing Candelabra Rep is a thing I never do) and if GA sent me back to the last temple used then it would at least soften the difficulty/tedium in the mid-game when I usually start eating TPKs anyway in vanilla for the sake of "grab the objective and run"

also in the Ironfist Temple of Baa dungeon there are those skeletons that get summoned in the Altar Room; since part of the appeal to me of SkEm is mastering Pulling that battle is going to be interesting without Beacon to fall back on (since I won't be able to outrun the skeletons after they spawn and I don't remember if I can Jump up to either ledge)

also also (since apparently the Readme is unclear on this point as well): What skills are shared with who, and what skills are shared with what other skills? the readme says that weapon/magic skills of the same group all increase each other and that certain miscellaneous skills are shared across the party for convenience sake, but having a precise explanation of what is shared with what would help a lot with planning.

[tnevolin]

RE: Early game difficulty.

Yes, I played it few times up the level 20-30-40. I agree it becomes (a little bit) easier as game progress and higher skills begin to kick in.

Thank you for feedback. Based on this it looks like early game experience is overly hard? Let's make something about it to make it less unpleasant.
One idea you gave me that I have already put in backlog is to add fixed HP to all classes at the beginning. This should at least make all early areas more passable. Let me know if you want to change anything else.

[RawSugar]

ye you need the gate master to do the quests. cavalier you probably will agro but you gate to free haven, sleep, run to get quest, gate to free haven, sleep, run to get nomination, gate to free haven, sleep, and then do quest. Same thing for Money/stables quest.

I found myself killing a bunch of monsters just for the extra XP, there's a weird thing with dungeon/area difficulty being kinda clustered, so early on you're really grubbing for the extra xp. At some point sorpigal respawned and i gladly did that again for the extra xp and gold. But i think even on my 2nd and 3rd playthrough I could have made better choices. sparks has gotten a huge damage boost fx, and i was quite high level before bothering with even rank 4/expert defensive skills

[tnevolin]

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).

Makes sense. Sure. Let's try it out and see how it goes.
True about playstyle. I am too trying to emphasize one-two skills at first but later on I will pull them up more or less equally.

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.

You are right that with your playstyle it is either one or another. That is why I proposed to not consider healing touch in healing series but give it some more interesting meaning.

[raekuul]

ye you need the gate master to do the quests. cavalier you probably will agro but you gate to free haven, sleep, run to get quest, gate to free haven, sleep, run to get nomination, gate to free haven, sleep, and then do quest. Same thing for Money/stables quest.

I found myself killing a bunch of monsters just for the extra XP, there's a weird thing with dungeon/area difficulty being kinda clustered, so early on you're really grubbing for the extra xp. At some point sorpigal respawned and i gladly did that again for the extra xp and gold. But i think even on my 2nd and 3rd playthrough I could have made better choices. sparks has gotten a huge damage boost fx, and i was quite high level before bothering with even rank 4/expert defensive skills

It's possible to get from Castle Temper to the nomination without pulling any aggro at all, you just have to walk across water for a little bit. Which is one of the reasons I want to go to Mist before going to Free Haven, so that I can get Water Walk from the water guild there, but I might just decide to eat the drowning damage instead since it's not like this is MM8 with its accelerated drowning speed.

Sparks hasn't actually popped up in the Elemental Guild yet but even if it had I haven't been able to afford it yet (since my Sorc didn't start with Air Magic, I have to pay for both the spellbook and the skill - my archer only has enough SP for two shots right now)

You don't actually need a Gate Master to get all the stagecoaches; they all travel to each other so it's just a matter of logistics (though Darkmoor either has to be done last or else you have to arrive on the same day you can leave). Once you travel to Silver Cove across the Frozen Highlands border you can travel there by boat/coach, you don't have to get into town proper on the first visit (otherwise I would be complaining about the gargoyles outside of the Silver Helm Stronghold, which is close enough to the main road that you will pull their aggro). Similarly, the Dragon Towers quest doesn't "need" access to Gate Mastery, but since every Town Portal destination is a Dragon Tower destination anyway it's just better to do things that way anyway.

[tnevolin]

Very good, everybody.
I see multiple indication on hard early game. I certainly didn't want to do it difficult to turn into grinding. Please propose changes to make it more fun.

Propositions I have collected so far:

• Add fixed HP (and maybe SP) to all classes. Thus making early game more passable without affecting late one.
• Not linear monster scaling. Making them slightly more tough at the end and probably less so in the beginning.

[tnevolin]

Just few notes.

[*]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)

Exactly. Getting to level 4 gives you 5*3=15 skill points which may raise weapon skill to 4-5 and this is a serious improvement. At least enough to cut through goblins much easier. If you didn't do this before - try it out.

[*]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.

Lowest spell books should be like 50-100-150. You don't need to buy them all. Just one per caster or even not that if you already have some initial spells in possession. I recall I was able to after visiting CI.

[raekuul]

It'd probably be a good idea to just focus rebalancing the early New Sorpigal monsters. The main thing is that increasing a monster's HP only makes it slower to kill, while increasing a monster's AC makes it harder to kill without magic. Do not raise both unless you intend to do both.

• Apprentices and Spiders actually feel like they're where they need to be (Blue Apprentices are still lethal thanks to their Lightning Bolt spell but at least with SkEm they're a challenge)
• Bats in general feel good, but Vampire Bats need less HP (their AC is actually right, they just take too long to kill)
• Conversely, Goblins and Goblin Shamans have the correct amount of HP for the damage that they're dealing, they just need less AC so that you can actually hit them
• Cobras are currently balanced for the Temple of Tsantsa instead of the Abandoned Temple, which will be fine for the level I usually attack Tsantsa at (Cobras are still the most dangerous creature in Tsantsa in vanilla but that's mostly because you're more likely to run into Queen Cobras there) but if that's your intention then you'll want to use the "Recommended Level: XX" suggestion I made before for the dungeon flavor text
• I'll have feedback on Rats and Suckers this afternoon once I get a chance to throw myself at Goblinwatch.

wrt spellbook costs: I'm probably running into Reputation Inflation, then (stupid Candelabra). I'll check in a 'clean' game to see what the costs are.

wrt weapon skills: from README.md:

All skills within each weapon type group (melee weapons, ranged weapons, armors) are advanced simultaneously whenever any one in the group is. That allows swapping items within the group without regret of wasting skill points player worked so hard for.

Some "singe master benefits whole party" miscelaneous skills are also shared now. That means that anyone can contribute to them but they will advance simultaneously for all party members. It reduces infinite passing broken items back and forth for repair or identification or selecting right disarm character, etc.

Misc skills are shared horizontally (that is, the rank is shared across characters who know the skill); are weapon/armor skills shared horizontally as well? If so you should use the word "party" instead of "group" since "group" could also mean "group of skills" (which would help explain why I'm having as much trouble as I am this early on, since I invested my Paladin's weapon points thinking that I would be investing in both his axe and spear skills by just investing into spear)

[tnevolin]

Great feedback on NS monsters. I am thinking how to approach it. Currently I just have a formula that increases monster parameters by multiplier. Should we adjust just that or work on goblins/bats/cobras specifically?

Weapon skills are improved simultaneously in group of skills. There are three groups: melee, ranged, armor. I don't remember if shield belong to any group. I think not but need to verify.

Some of misc skills of the kind "one master benefits whole party" (traps, repair, identify monster, etc.) are shared horizontally between party. I.e. one investment in this skill improvement raises it to all party members.

Could be slightly confusing in wording, I agree. Feel free to propose clearer wording if you have something in mind.

[raekuul]

I figured you were using a global multiplier since both HP and AC were being increased (MMMerge has the same issues if you leave Bolster at the default setting and jump around between continents instead of going clear-to-clear, though MMMerge also has specific exceptions in place for the three starting regions); the simple solution would be to have HP and AC multiplied at half the rate of other values to ease the Padded Sumo effect (doubling both at the same time causes average combat duration to square in length which combined with increased damage values skews early game combat too far in favor of the monsters). There will still need to be fine tweaking here and there, but this should ease a lot of the early game issues

in the general case: AC makes the early game harder, HP makes the late game longer.

wrt skills rewording: Right now my understanding is that the utility skills are shared horizontally, the Melee weapon skills are supposed to be shared vertically, the three Armor skills are supposed to be shared vertically, and Bow/Blaster are shared vertically. If that is correct, then the updated wording for README.md is

Increasing one character's skill in that group increases all of that character's skills in that group (example: increasing Player 1's Axe skill also increases their Spear skill). This allows swapping items within the skill group on-the-fly (such as if you're using a two-handed axe and find a better two-handed sword from a chest).

and

Certain Miscellaneous skills - Merchant, Repair Item, Identify Item, Disarm Trap - are shared across the party. Any character can contribute to them, and they will advance simultaneously for all party members who know the skill.

Shield not being shared with Armor is perfectly fine with me, because of Shield's different mechanics

[tnevolin]

Note to all once more.

I did not plan it to be extremely hard and grinding. I have raised monster stats only to keep up with faster weapon skill progression effects. Otherwise, it would be even easier than vanilla which is no fun either. I understand that being a creator of the mod I may expect the monster toughness and understand what to do to succeed. While for new player it may come at surprise.

I am open to fix this and all suggestion are welcome. Currently I am out of time so may implement only simplest solutions but this problem is still on the table.

[tnevolin]

tnevolin: maybe replace dungeon flavor text with a "Suggested Party Level: XX" blurb instead? That way if you intended for me to do Abandoned Temple at a higher level it's actually clear that "whoops I'm not supposed to be here yet" as opposed to this frustrating "this is supposed to be early game." Though with that said, AT will be important in early SkEm since food prices are increased and you get free food for rescuing Angela - once you've turned The Letter in to Wilbur Humphrey and trained off of that experience you can't actually afford to buy food with the Pity Gold (which was part of the point of the pity gold in the first place!).

Eh. When I tried to do something remotely similar people beat me saying they don't need narrator guidance for exploration game. Otherwise, they loose the sense of "open game".


I am all for it if you think it helps but naturally, dungeons should be more difficult than surface and some places could be more difficult than other regardless of location. You do not wander into Gharik's Forge just because you appears on the same map at the game start, do you? I mean - you are free to try and get killed but this is not the reason to put a note on it which level you need to get in. This probably pertains to walkthrough but not the in game text.

and speaking of the pity gold: is Guardian Angel supposed to send me to the last temple whose services I used? I only ever saw it send me back to New Sorpigal (though admittedly that could also be the case if GA looks for the last temple you donated to which outside of fixing Candelabra Rep is a thing I never do) and if GA sent me back to the last temple used then it would at least soften the difficulty/tedium in the mid-game when I usually start eating TPKs anyway in vanilla for the sake of "grab the objective and run"

https://github.com/tnevolin/mm6-skill-e ... version-64
Repurposed to work like mm7 preservation.

also in the Ironfist Temple of Baa dungeon there are those skeletons that get summoned in the Altar Room; since part of the appeal to me of SkEm is mastering Pulling that battle is going to be interesting without Beacon to fall back on (since I won't be able to outrun the skeletons after they spawn and I don't remember if I can Jump up to either ledge)

They are pretty easy to deal with bows if you go behind the corridor and step on a ledge. Just shoot them all the day long. Of course, one could try melee them just for fun.

also also (since apparently the Readme is unclear on this point as well): What skills are shared with who, and what skills are shared with what other skills? the readme says that weapon/magic skills of the same group all increase each other and that certain miscellaneous skills are shared across the party for convenience sake, but having a precise explanation of what is shared with what would help a lot with planning.

Going to reword it better in readme.
In short, all melee weapon skills of one character are bundled in group. Raising one of them raises others. Same applies to ranged skill group (bow, blaster), same to all armors.
For shared misc skills between party I need to list them explicitly there. As far as I remember is it diplomacy, traps, repair, ID monsters and such.

[RawSugar]

regarding difficulty/damage, can it be a formula? quick google says goblins deal 5 damage and gold dragons 72, so if the multiplier was average damage ^0.25 then goblins would get +50% damage and gold dragons +200% damage (0r ^0.33 for +70% or +300%).

Regarding spells

Agreed no point in arguing the specific spells for the most part, but if we can agree on the principles:

the formula i gave means +200% cost -->+120% damage
physical damage type means -30% damage
Poison damage type means -15% damage
for the multishot i made a formula that increases damage by up to +200%, less for higher cost since the higher the cost/damage the less tanking will the caster be doing. I increased this value in the mod to account for greater damage taken, it matches the changes you made to these spells quite well.

I realized we could just test the damage values vs these theorethical values. the 4th column from grey area do so for rank 25. Ideally they will match these 100%, and it more or less does for many staples like firebolt ice bolt. I didnt bother to come up w too much of a formula for the AOE spells. It seems fireball type spells are balanced for 1.5 targets but the rest its really unclear how exactly the numbers were determined - i'm good with the changes you made to some of them.
In the proposal tab i marked some areas red where i'd suggest different values from the current mod values.

i made my own spreadsheet :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1086626142

Most of them match these aside from the ones I already pointed out;
incinerate, toxic cloud, I ended up suggesting +1-2 pr rank for the low level spells.
Added a modifier for magic damage type of +50% damage

[tnevolin]

regarding difficulty/damage, can it be a formula? quick google says goblins deal 5 damage and gold dragons 72, so if the multiplier was average damage ^0.25 then goblins would get +50% damage and gold dragons +200% damage (0r ^0.33 for +70% or +300%).

Didn't get your computations. Do you raise damage to the power?

the formula i gave means +200% cost -->+120% damage

It would be simpler to put it in exponential form to be able to extrapolate to other cases. The example you gave is:

Code: Select all

(damage / base damage) = (cost / base cost) ^ 0.7

I see you are inclined to make higher level spells stronger. Keep in mind that the whole idea for spell damage to not grow as fast as the cost is that damage rate is vital for survival and game passing. So mere increase of damage per shot/time is more than worth the cost.

physical damage type means -30% damage
Poison damage type means -15% damage
for the multishot i made a formula that increases damage by up to +200%, less for higher cost since the higher the cost/damage the less tanking will the caster be doing. I increased this value in the mod to account for greater damage taken, it matches the changes you made to these spells quite well.

Making all spells absolutely equal to each other is probably not what the player wants. We are seeking for higher diversification not the other way around. Yes, physical damage is maybe more penetrable (on some creatures). That is why player should select best spell against specific monster. Making them all hit the same regardless of monster protections takes selection fun element out of the game.

Didn't understand about multishot.

i made my own spreadsheet :

That's the way to go! Although, I need more insight to it. Don't understand how it works yet.

[raekuul]

Just following up on the spellbook costs:

at level 1 with 0 reputation score and no Merchant skill:
Skill cost 750
Spell 1 (Wizard Eye) costs 150 gold
Spell 2 (Static Shock) costs 300 gold
Spell 3 (Prot.Magic) costs 450 gold
Spell 4 (Poison Spray) costs 750 gold

at level 4 with -166 reputation score and Merchant n.2:
Skill cost 652
Spell 1 (Wizard Eye) costs 130 gold
Spell 2 (Bless) costs 261 gold
Spell 3 (Prot.Fire) costs 391 gold
Spell 4 (Deadly Swarm) costs 652 gold

so it's not as bad as I thought, but it's still something a fresh player has to plan around.

Also, on the matter of skill distribution:
Either there's a delay on when the skill ranks are smoothed out, I've misunderstood what groups Axe and Spear are in, or the skill points aren't being shared. actually that's exactly it; once I raised Spear again Axe corrected itself. Probably should add a note saying that newly purchased skills will be out of sync until the next time you raise skills in that group.

On the matter of Aggro Management and Castle Ironfist:

If I don't want to eat a TPK from the three or four clusters of Followers west of this road leading from the Ironfist Carriages up to the castle proper, I have to spend the Fly scroll. There are cases like this all over Enroth, but this one is the most urgent one since your own suggestion was to do this first.

[RawSugar]

Difficulty; yes,
goblins deal 1-9 damage (avg 5), this is raised by 5^0.25=1,49 it now deals 1-13 rather than double = 2-18
gold dragon deals 16-128 (avg 72), this is raised by 72^0.25=2,9 it now deals 47-374 rather than double =32 -258

I'd rather find something even steeper so goblin deals somewhat less and dragon somewhat more, if this approach or something similar is possible? [my guys are now level 51 and clearing alamos without difficulty, i think ill pause that game until hopefully we find a way to raise mid to late gme difficulty]

Formula: goddammit i wracked my brain trying to find that progression^^ ^0.7 is much simpler:) and yeah i added a tab to show the progression of the formula. Both are fine and very close in value until ~10 but already at 30 the SQRT is too low imo and you can see in higher levels it becomes unsustainable. casting a spell for 108 to do ~250% more damage than a 12 mana spell is a really bad deal.
at +365% damage for +700% cost i can begin to see a decent tradeoff between DPS and DPM

Poison/physical: I didnt come up with those numbers they are apparent (give or take) in the damage values in vanilla, i just continue to use them because i agree - and i guess its another design philosophy debate; i much prefer for all spells to be equally good in different ways that gives me freedom to choose. In a scheme where one is better I get a brief satisfaction from figuring out which buyt then i feel compelled to use that one, bad balance reduces game freedom the way i play games (compulsive min/maxing).
they dont hit the same, but if a spell is often reduced by resistances it should be doing more damage in other cases so the average is the same, certainly when players dont have access to all spells (at same rank)

Multishot: in vanilla these are set to deal roughly 3 times as much damage as same cost singleshot. I modified this so its less for more expensive spells, roughly 5 times for 4 cost and 2.5 for shrap metal, to make up for the added danger of going melee when monsters deal more damage(because runningin to fire off 3 spark spells and kill a monster is much more dangerous than instakilling with a high cost spell like shrapmetal).
It matches the huge buffs your mod gives these spells.

spreadsheet
column A:H should be selfevident, just basic stats
column I is just a demarcation before computations
Column J computes the damage at rank 25/master
column K modifies this damage to adjust for the modifiers mentioned (damage type, multishot, AOE), to see the "unmodified" damage
column L computes expected damage based on spell cost^0.7*25 for rank
colum M compares the modified damage with expected damageto see if spell is above or below curve
subsequent columns do the same for SQRT at rank 25 and rank 4/expert with ^0.7 (i didnt bother to change the formula yet, kinda sore about that one

Raekuul; you can still just climb the hill behind the harp guy without agroing

[tnevolin]

Just following up on the spellbook costs:

This is my base spell book values. I don't understand why first book cost 150 instead of 100. Maybe the way traders work by increasing price in their favor?
We can make them start from 50, for example, if you think it'll make things easier for player.

local modifiedBookValues =
{
[0] = 100,
[1] = 200,
[2] = 300,
[3] = 500,
[4] = 1000,
[5] = 2000,
[6] = 5000,
[7] = 10000,
[8] = 20000,
[9] = 50000,
[10] = 100000,
}

Also, on the matter of skill distribution:
Either there's a delay on when the skill ranks are smoothed out, I've misunderstood what groups Axe and Spear are in, or the skill points aren't being shared. actually that's exactly it; once I raised Spear again Axe corrected itself. Probably should add a note saying that newly purchased skills will be out of sync until the next time you raise skills in that group.

All other skills in the same skill group are raised to the value of the skill you clicked. So if you have sword = 2 and axe = 4 and you click on sword it'll raise sword to 3 but axe will not change. You need to click on the highest one for others to follow. After first time when they all equalize this does not matter anymore.
Sorry for that crude implementation but this is everything I could do with limited Lua programming.

Also I don't remember any delay for that. It just updated right on the screen. Try to reproduce it and send me the scenario to test.