Soulvizier AERA - Presentation, changelogs, downloads

[soa]

Last released mod version : 1.13c [PUBLIC RELEASE]   (17 September 2024)
Discord : https://discord.gg/qs9t6AA

Here is the main presentation topic of the Soulvizier mod for Titan Quest : Anniversary Edition and DLCs Ragnarök/Atlantis/Eternal Embers (also known as SV AERA).

This mod is based on the Soulvizier mod for TQ : Immortal Throne (last known version : 0.98i around 2014-2015) whose developement has been on hold since then. It aims at :
- continuing the work began before by Munderbunny (Underlord mod), amgoz1 (Soulvizier mod) and all the people who helped them.
- merging this work with the official additions brought to Titan Quest since the Anniversary Edition.

/!\ /!\ /!\ Both TQ:AE Ragnarök and TQ:AE Atlantis are required to play this mod.   /!\ /!\ /!\
Supported languages (if you wish to translate, contact me) :
- English
- Russian
- Chinese
- French
- German

Most functionalities from Soulvizier 0.98i, and from Underlord's mod (upon which Soulvizier is built) are restored and expanded for act V.
 
Creatures :
- Hundreds of new uniques in random encounters (heroes & bosses)
- New Elite monster groups (green name) with their own items
- New skills, textures or effects for some monsters
- Greatly increased difficulty : more monsters, tougher, with more damage
 
Skills :
- Reworked & expanded masteries (60 levels in mastery bar ; skills require up to lvl 40 in mastery bar)
     * Occult mastery (based on Rogue mastery)
     * Runes mastery expanded, including a new pet (Golem)
     * Small tweaks to skills in the vanilla game (including unfinished skills from the original Soulvizier mod)
     * Introduction of some new skills from Atlantis
     * Brand new skills for this edition of Soulvizier
- Tweaked class names
- Many new item skills, including unique skills for souls

See here the topic for Soulvizier AERA masteries :
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=980.0
 
Items :
- Tons of new items and several new item types
     * 710+ unique Souls for most heroes and bosses (including Act V), 1 version/difficulty level ; they use a ring slot, but most of them are no longer enchantable
     * New charms & relics including elite charms for elite monsters
     * New 1h items : wands (like 1h staves) and orbs (usable in main hand as a weapon, or off-hand as a smaller shield)
     * Formulas to create Mythic items (above Legendary)
     * Common Vitality and Poison staves (find them on enemies or merchants) based on WNG's mod
     * Mercenary contracts, allows you to summon a mercenary while contract is in artifact slot
- 220+ Unique items (Blue/Purple) with reworked loot tables
- New affixes (including original ones for this edition of Soulvizier and lot more from another WNG mod)
- Create equipment (weapons, armor and jewelry) with the new forging formulas
- Artifact formulas and forging formulas are sold by merchants – formulas still drop from monsters and chests
- Experience potions can be created in all acts with formulas (sold by new merchants called Alchemists)
 
Gameplay :
- Health Regen depends on your maximum amount of Health (+0,35% maximum Health as Health Regen bonus)
- Energy Regen depends on your maximum amount of Energy (+0,5% maximum Energy as Energy Regen bonus), it no longer depends on Intelligence
- Magical (yellow) and Rare (green) rings give a flat Health or Energy regen as a base bonus
- Some items give increased Weapon mastery (increased damage when you use these weapons)
- Potion cost and cooldown greatly increased
- Resistance penalties (fewer than classic Soulvizier)
- Increased player speed
 
Other features not in the original Soulvizier mod :
QoL (Quality of Life) :
- Caravan Stash & Transfer, Player Inventory expanded
- Caravan and Mystic in Sparta
- More readable resistances in the character window
- Soul Collectors, new merchants allow you to preview all souls in the current act :

Spoiler for Hiden:

- Affixes can be seen on unique & MI

Bugfixes :
- Countless corrections of bugs (introduced by the official game, Underlord or Soulvizier mods) in affix tables, loot tables, item and affix files
- Bugfixes from nargil66's mods ("Enhanced Gameplay" and others) and Endymion's "A few bugfixes" mod

Balance, consistency :
- Throwing weapons now share their affix tables with bows instead of axes
- Bows and Throwing Weapons no longer get affixes or properties that give Offensive Ability or reduce Defensive Ability
- Staves no longer get affixes or properties that give Strength
- Complete unique item rebalance
- Armor values and requirements are now more consistent. For instance helms in act V had lower armor protection than other pieces of armor for no reason
- Requirements have increased both for attributes and levels

Other :
- Recycle unique items that you don't use into another random unique item of the type of your choice
- Upgrade unique items with the forge (gives affixes), an infinite number of times
- New player skins based on nargil66's mod, with dyes sold by new merchants in town
- Introduced a new recycling system with formulas, that allows the player to recycle his unused relics and charms into new ones, to replace the materials from classic Soulvizier
- Created hybrid armor classes with strength + intelligence or dexterity + intelligence requirements
- Added flavor/lore text for many unique items based on nargil66’s Enhanced Gameplay mod

These functionalities of "classic" Soulvizier v0.98i are not restored :
- Enchantable Epic and Legendary items (too much imbalance)
- Blood Cave + quest, Secret Passage, secret vendors (they don't fit the original game atmosphere + it would take some work to implement it into the game)
- Diablo 3 UI (not fit for this game)
- Infinite level (imbalance)
- Materials are no longer dropped and sold (inventory cluttering – as said above in “other features”)

Other functionalities planned but not implemented yet:

- Expanding the recycle system to recycle MI (trade items ingame with formulas)
- Create quests to be able to complete sets faster without having to use stashed gear.
- New "elite" maps accessible at the end of Legendary
- Adding a barrier that closes behind the player when fighting, or some “anti-exploit” feature for most boss fights
- Blood & Gore (Death Effects 1.6 Mod)
- Increase maximum level above 85 (doesn't work in AE because of engine limitations)

[soa]

Downloads

Main mod:
https://discord.com/channels/664901959186382898/708391497392980008/713814917878120480

Changelogs:
https://discord.com/channels/664901959186382898/726939145355919383

SV Calculator :
Thanks to Zaphodgame. Still work in progress, allows you to plan builds
https://bytesquire.github.io/TitanQuestCalculator/mods/SoulvizierAERA/

For modders only :
Put the "Templates" directory in ...\My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne\Working\Database
You don't need those files unless you want to do modding.

Templates files are on Discord
https://discord.com/channels/664901959186382898/708391497392980008/976908993060536410

[soa]

Videos and screenshots

Check the Steam Workshop page for various screenshots.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2076433374

[soa]

Frequently Asked Questions

Q#01 - I have a bug : [insert bug here], can you fix please ?

Spoiler for Hiden:

Check first if you are in one of those cases, if yes that may be the cause of your bug :
- You use a hacked version of the game.
- You don't own or haven't activated Ragnarok and Atlantis DLCs.
- Your game is not up to date (latest official patch).
- You don't use a language that is supported by the mod.
- You played Soulvizier and vanilla campaign or another mod in the same game session. (If you play Soulvizier, quit the game before switching to vanilla campaign or another mod. If you play vanilla campaign or another mod, quit the game before switching to Soulvizier.)
- You used other mods with Soulvizier (bounce, or custom quests)
- You launched a bounce mod with a Soulvizier character.
- You loaded a Soulvizier character in the vanilla campaign or a vanilla character in Soulvizier.
- You used TQ Vault, TQ/GD Defiler or a third party program with a Soulvizier character/inventory (it may work, but use them at your own risk).

Q#02 - Why do you require Ragnarök and Atlantis to play the mod ? I don't have/don't want to use them or one of them. Please make a version of SV working without these !

Spoiler for Hiden:

I don't do that to displease anyone or force anyone to buy the DLCs. I am in no way affiliated with the official developers team and don't earn any money, commission, benefit of any sort if you buy their products.
The mod is 100% free. So there are various other reasons :
- First, if I create different versions, I would have to update them. The more versions of the mod you have, the more time consuming it is to balance and maintain them, and to fix the bugs.
- Ragnarök : if I make a version with AE only and one with Ragnarök only, I would have to manage 2 versions of most armor pieces and weapons, one for AE, one for Ragnarök (rescaled values). Everytime I create an item, I would have to wonder if I need to actually create 2 different versions of it and balance them. I would have the same problem with general balance and progression.
- Atlantis : players with the DLC can reach level 40 in the mastery bar. But the maximum level for players without the DLC has also been hardcoded to 32 when Atlantis came out. So it becomes impossible on paper to create a mastery mod with more than 32 levels in the mastery bar, if you don't own Atlantis : SV wouldn't work anymore. Maybe it's possible with hacks, I don't know. I also added some of Atlantis skills, and you need to have Atlantis for them to work because I'm not going to include all of the officials resources of the DLC in a mod.
- Making an AE only version would be easier, obviously (not considering the level 32 cap in mastery bars since Atlantis); but it would also be quite close to classic SV in a way. And people playing Ragnarök and/or Atlantis wouldn't be able to benefit from it. Not sure it's in the best interest of players.
- I'm not even speaking of maintaining 4 versions, AE/AE+Rag/AE+Atl/AERA.
- You can try to launch the mod without Ragnarök and Atlantis, maybe it will launch and some things will work. It's practically sure that many things won't work or will behave weirdly, even if there are no crashes. Even if you don't see bugs, you'll not get a balanced mod. But you can create your own version of the mod if you want.

Q#03 - Why is there no Blood Cave+quest, no secret passage after the one in A4, no secret vendors with occult skin, etc ?

Spoiler for Hiden:

These things [features from the classical 0.98i version of Soulvizier for TQ:IT] would be very time-consuming to port to the Anniversary Edition, even more with the recent Map Editor bugs, and more work to maintain everytime the official devs decide to update the main map.
I don't like these elements, they don't fit the atmosphere of the game. I'm just not going to spend many hours working on something I don't like and won't play. Remember the mod (as any "normal" mod) is free, one of the rewards to me is that I can play it some day.

As some point, when the main mod features will be done, I intend to include endgame map content. Maybe I will make a map that includes some elements of the Blood Cave, arranged in a way that I like.
Or I will include another modder map content that has Blood Cave elements and such, with his consent and if this is something I like.
But that's all there is to hope from me. If you want it, make it !

Q#04 - What are the Weapon Masteries ? I found an item with +X to [Weapon Type] Mastery, what does it do ?

Spoiler for Hiden:

Weapon masteries give you bonus damage when you wear a weapon of the appropriate type. It is not linked to any mastery like Warfare, Hunting, Nature, etc.
All characters start with every weapon mastery at level 1, that gives +0% bonus damage (for technical reasons, it’s not possible to make the weapon masteries start at level 0, that’s why you see the weapon mastery in yellow even if you don’t have the appropriate weapon type equipped).

You can gain up to 100 levels in weapon Mastery (minimum 1, maximum 101).
Bonuses are as follows:

Axe Mastery
+1 to Axe Mastery: +1% Physical damage, +0,2% Pierce damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Axe Mastery: +5% Physical damage, +1% Pierce damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Axe Mastery: +100% Physical damage, +20% Pierce damage, +40% Total damage

For instance, if you have +15 to Axe Mastery, it means you have +15% Physical damage, +3% Pierce damage, +6% Total damage when wearing an Axe.
This is cumulative, so having an item with +20 and another with +10 would give you +30 (level 31) in Axe Mastery (hence +30% Phys, +6% Pierce, +12% Total)

Blunt Mastery (maces, clubs)
+1 to Blunt Mastery: +1.2% Physical damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Blunt Mastery: +6% Physical damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Blunt Mastery: +120% Physical damage, +40% Total damage

Bow Mastery
+1 to Bow Mastery: +0.6% Physical damage, +0.6% Pierce damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Bow Mastery: +3% Physical damage, +3% Pierce damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Bow Mastery: +60% Physical damage, +60% Pierce damage, +40% Total damage

Spear Mastery
+1 to Spear Mastery: +0.6% Physical damage, +0.6% Pierce damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Spear Mastery: +3% Physical damage, +3% Pierce damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Spear Mastery: +60% Physical damage, +60% Pierce damage, +40% Total damage

Staff Mastery
+1 to Staff Mastery: +0,8% Total damage
+5 to Staff Mastery: +4% Total damage
+100 to Staff Mastery: +80% Total damage

Sword Mastery
+1 to Sword Mastery: +0.8% Physical damage, +0.4% Pierce damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Sword Mastery: +4% Physical damage, +2% Pierce damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Sword Mastery: +80% Physical damage, +40% Pierce damage, +40% Total damage

Ranged 1-Hand Mastery (works with any one hand ranged weapon)
+1 to Ranged 1-Hand Mastery: +0.8% Physical damage, +0.4% Pierce damage, +0,4% Total damage
+5 to Ranged 1-Hand Mastery: +4% Physical damage, +2% Pierce damage, +2% Total damage
+100 to Ranged 1-Hand Mastery: +80% Physical damage, +40% Pierce damage, +40% Total damage

Q#05 - Does the mod work with Steam or GoG version ?
Both versions are supported, with the same mod.


Q#06a - I've got a bug when I equip a Soul, my stats and resistance drop very low. Can you fix it ?   or
Q#06b - What are Soul Collectors and Soul Visions ?

Spoiler for Hiden:

The mod features Souls, which are unique rings dropped from heroes and bosses.
Because there are a lot of Souls, I included merchants called Soul Collectors, who sell (almost give) Soul Visions.
Soul Visions are not Souls. They are meant to give you a "vision" of what the real Souls are. It's a preview, like an ingame database ; but you have to get the real Soul from the monsters.
Soul Visions have the same stats as the corresponding Souls, and they are equippable so that you can check what the active skills do. But they are absolutely not for playing, so there's a huge penalty when you wear them.

Q#07 - I've got a Caravan bug, it looks like I can't use all of the storage space. Can you fix it ?

Spoiler for Hiden:

If you have installed the "hard mod" version (replaces the original games files), as stated in the installation notice you should have a separate save directory dedicated to Soulvizier, not mix it up with vanilla saves.

To fix the problem, first, empty your caravans for all your characters (store items of all personal/transfer/relic vault in mules), then :

In ...My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne\SaveData\Sys :

Delete winsys.dxb
Delete winsys.dxg
This should delete the transfer stash, and the game will recreate it with correct size the next time you load it.

Delete miscsys.dxb
Delete miscsys.dxg
This should delete the relic vault, and the game will recreate it with correct size next the time you load it.

In ...My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne\SaveData\Main\_charactername (for each Soulvizier character)
Delete winsys.dxb
Delete winsys.dxg
This should delete the personal stash, and the game will recreate it with correct size the next time you load it.

Q#08 - Why is it no longer possible to enchant epic and legendary items with relics?

Spoiler for Hiden:

This feature has never been balanced and made every green item useless. The whole game itemization is based on enchantable green items and non-enchantable unique items.
Also adding more and more disproportionate bonuses to the player equipment in SV for TQIT led to an "arms race" that created disproportionately powerful monsters. The goal for SV:AERA is to limit this and increase difficulty more reasonably.

Since SV AERA patch 1.10, a new forge system is in place. It is based on the act 5 forge, but is available in every act, can be reused an infinite number of times at a cost, and has different affix tables.
It allows to upgrade unique items with affixes, of smaller quality than green items, though.

[soa]

Credits

- Munderbunny, amgoz1 and others for respectively making the Underlord mod and the original Soulvizier mod for TQ:IT disc version
- nargil66, for many new assets, features, ideas, and general support
- WNG & Torstein159 for new items, new affixes
- Endymion for bug fixes and new content
- Bumbleguppy for some assets (Runes mastery : Rune Golem, Guardian stones)
- All beta testers of Soulvizier AERA
- And more generally, everyone who provided feedback and contributions.

[Cygi]

These functionalities of "classic" Soulvizier v0.98i are not restored :
- Blood Cave, Secret Passage, secret vendors (they don't fit the original game atmosphere + it would take some work to implement it into the game)
- Quest in Blood Cave

Boooo...

But I still have hope that in the end we will get these content after all.

[efko]

These functionalities of "classic" Soulvizier v0.98i are not restored :
- Blood Cave, Secret Passage, secret vendors (they don't fit the original game atmosphere + it would take some work to implement it into the game)
- Quest in Blood Cave

Boooo...

But I still have hope that in the end we will get these content after all.

Screenshot of Blood Cave and all this?

[Cygi]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/underlord/images/blood-cave2#imagebox

[efko]

Strange, never seen this before. So its located somewhere in Chumbi Valley in act 3? Also is it available for all 3 difficulty levels?

[soa]

Updated FAQ.

[Cygi]

Strange, never seen this before. So its located somewhere in Chumbi Valley in act 3? Also is it available for all 3 difficulty levels?

Yes and yes.

[InkyCricket]

Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there no Blood Cave+quest, no secret passage after the one in A4, no secret vendors with occult skin, etc ?

To be honest, I think this is a good choice.
Blood cave is more of a repetitive "grim dawn" style area instead of the "myths and legends" style areas that titan quest normally has.
I had the same feelings about occult replacing rogue and the UI change that SV had. Simply the wrong style. Rogue wasn't the most interesting though, so that replacement was okay and the summons had satisfying special effects which made up for it.

I've been excited for this mod for awhile.
It always was my favorite mod for vanilla titan quest and the game just isn't as fun without it.

[Groom]

Will there be Mythic item drops or will it only be obtained through crafting (formulas)?

In current game state, is there an area/dungeon where one can hunt/farm for better/increased chance of loots?

[Carl_Johnson]

These functionalities of "classic" Soulvizier v0.98i are not restored :
- Enchantable Epic and Legendary items (too much imbalance)

Is this difficult to do this feature yourself?

[soa]

These functionalities of "classic" Soulvizier v0.98i are not restored :
- Enchantable Epic and Legendary items (too much imbalance)

Is this difficult to do this feature yourself?

It's something I don't want. So I don't care if it's difficult or not, I don't want to spend even 10 minutes working on it. As with every feature I don't want, if you want it, mod it.