Author Topic: Soulvizier AERA - Presentation, changelogs, downloads  (Read 182327 times)

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Offline soa

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The game is not the hardest ARPG out there but it's not easy if we talk about completing all 3 difficulties with no deaths, which is something i'm always aiming to do with my characters, because the game doesn't have an actual hardcore mode.
The original mod was not made for hardcore, clearly, neither do this version. It’s certain that you will die, especially on the first run.
Hardcore is a very boring way to play, IMO (you end up overleveled and overstuffed, and fighting against trash mobs becomes too easy).
But instead of hardcore, trying to die as little as possible could be something to aim for.

Also, doubling the potion cooldown was a total bs!
It’s x1,7, and it’s one of the most essential things to do. Basically, in vanilla you can rely way too much on a potion perfusion. Also it makes regen (which is now buffed) more useful in comparison.

Then we have stupid decisions like adding some terrible and extremely tough to kill mana draining gigantes (with a mana drain attack that is impossible to avoid) in the Hades fight, making it near impossible to win without dying a couple of times... and don't even get me started with the increase spawns of gigantes just before Hades where i often got 2 or even 3 Dactyls at once. How do you deal with that on a melee character?
I don’t see Hades guards having any built-in form of mana drain. Maybe I’ll rework the fight so that Hades has reduced power while the guards are up, and when you kill one, Hades gets more power. Instead of having a very hard fight at the beginning and easier when guards are down.
Increased spawn of Gigantes before Hades fight is not in this mod, because it would take some time to reimport it back, and I haven’t made it a priority. I don’t think I will put it back the way it was with multiple Dactyls, anyways.

Does the developer even play-test his own creation, or this is some sick joke, designed to piss off TQ players?
I do playtest and notice balance issues that way. But balance highly depends on the builds, and you can’t playtest everything on your own. Also when you play, you’re not modding. So detailed player reports with context are needed. Pure ranting is useless.

There's a way to make a mod interesting and challenging without making the enemies have a ton of more health and deal a ton of more damage... that only will make the game more annoying that anything. The proper way would be to gradually increase the difficulty, but not by making the enemies just annihilate you with 2 hits, but by increasing the spawns in higher difficulties and by rebalancing the skills and builds that are overpowered.
Yeah, sounds easy when you say it this way, but I’m afraid you have no idea how complicated and time-consuming it is to create a mod. You need to modify thousands of files, literally, and you’re not provided with any tool that lets you see in real-time the impact of your changes (like how much damage a given monster does, when counting all his stats, skills and global modifiers, not to mention items…)
Or, I would need to delete all the changed monsters in the original mod, and recreate them from scratch, which sounds irrealistic.
You don’t “just” make enemies not annihilate the player with two hits, or “just” rebalance skills & builds. I think the balance is better now than it was in the older mods because I tried to iron out things a bit, and don't stray so far away from vanilla balance, but the work is not over.

I personally would leave normal difficulty as it is in the vanilla game, just keep the new hero spawns (just don't make them overpowered) and the quality of life features of course.
There are like 600+ heroes, so one doesn’t “just” make them not overpowered. It takes huge efforts and time to balance that.
« Last Edit: 17 May 2021, 22:16:32 by soa »
Soulvizier for AE, Ragnarok and Atlantis [released] :
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=1201.0  / Discord : https://discord.gg/qs9t6AA
Overhaul mod with many new monsters, skills, items, features, balance and bugfixes. Increased difficulty.

Offline Zardoz

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Oh, don't get me wrong, i didn't mean you have to re-design your mod by my vision, not at all. It's your creation, and you can make it however you see fit. I was just giving a vague opinion to what i think would be a better balanced difficulty progression, nothing else. I'm sure making a mod is a difficult and slow task that requires a lot of knowledge that people like me don't have.

I just have a problem with mods that punish and kill the player for no reason, it becomes very frustrating to keep me going, because i'm trying to build a tough character, while the game keeps slapping me in the face, no matter what i do. Dying all the time without making mistakes is not fun. Having to constantly kite huge distances because you have a huge, totally unfair, potion cooldown is also not fun (more on that below). The classic Underlord was doing that a lot.

I have to strongly disagree about the hardcore playthroughs being boring. For me it's the opposite, if there are no stakes and i can just throw myself at the monsters, because i know there's a rebirth fountain nearby, that completely kills the joy for me. It's not like i'm playing just hardcore and nothing else. Sometimes when i get my first death on a character, i might continue playing because i want to finish my plans for the build... but it's always more interesting for me before that first death happens. Sure, sometimes i would straight up delete a character when he dies... especially if it's a class/build that i have already played to completion on a different occasion. A solution for your mod might be to add a gold penalty when you die (if that's even possible), with increase gold losses on higher difficulties. Dying shouldn't be a casual thing with no consequences... and no, i don't consider the small XP loss a significant consequence. But when you think about it, it's better that you don't penalties for death, because i'm there's still a lot of mobs in this new version of Soulvizier, that will unfairly destroy the player, having a penalty will only make it more frustrating.


About the Hades' Gigantes minions... I don't know man, i could've sworn that these things had a mana draining  wave attack that was impossible to avoid. Maybe now they're different? Maybe the mod is more fair now? I might end up trying it after all somewhere in the near future, but i can tell you right now, the first undeserved death will probably make me delete it.


The potion usage... yeah, i disagree again. The original game got it right, sure, the potions were OP on normal difficulty, but come on - it's normal difficulty, it's meant to ease you into the game or the new class you try for the first time. The original cooldown is perfect as it is, and it will not make your mod much easier, you already made it crushingly difficult. Health regen is useless when you get a mob that can destroy you in 2-3 hits, you need your potions. You can't make every build in the game have sufficient health regen, most of the build won't benefit at all from it. Sixteen seconds (that's how much it takes, right?) to cooldown a health potion is just insane. Name a game that does that? I can tell you, if that game exist, it's not a good one.  :D It's bad that the TQ community is not very alive these days, because we could've had a very interesting poll on the matter. I guarantee you that most TQ players will agree with me on the potion cooldown.

Offline soa

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Maybe the mod is more fair now? I might end up trying it after all somewhere in the near future, but i can tell you right now, the first undeserved death will probably make me delete it.
The concept of "undeserved" is too subjective. It's pretty much certain you will consider one "undeserved".

Sixteen seconds (that's how much it takes, right?) to cooldown a health potion is just insane. Name a game that does that? I can tell you, if that game exist, it's not a good one.  :D
It's 6s in the original TQ, 10s in SV, and 12s in Grim Dawn. So it's still longer in GD (even if it has a quick regen mechanic when out of combat), but that doesn't make it a bad game.

It's bad that the TQ community is not very alive these days, because we could've had a very interesting poll on the matter. I guarantee you that most TQ players will agree with me on the potion cooldown.
Very few of the players mentioned this as an issue, actually.
Soulvizier for AE, Ragnarok and Atlantis [released] :
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=1201.0  / Discord : https://discord.gg/qs9t6AA
Overhaul mod with many new monsters, skills, items, features, balance and bugfixes. Increased difficulty.

Offline nargil66

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I'm playing only hardcore ever since i tried Underlord mod for the first time. In my experience hardcore can become addicting and greatly devaluate playing the game normally... But my point is i totally understand why first death can be so discouraging.

Regarding Soulvizier in particular - sadly i agree with soa that the mod is probably impossible to beat in hardcore. BUT... if you still want to try there is a type of build that can carry you at least through normal with zero deaths. Its a bit weird tho, because its a Health-focused regen build... basically you take Earth as first mastery for the reduced requirements and pump all Attribute points to Health, and gear up with "Light X of Recovery/Rejuvenation" armors + health regen green rings (not souls). Working second masteries could be Nature, Warfare, Dream, Defense... because all of them have some way to further boost your health regen. My last combo was Earth + Nature and it was so effective that i could tank any uber-hero without much problem (10k Health and around 500 HP regen per second really makes a difference, especially in Normal). I haven't reached Epic with it, actually deleted the char out of boredom :D, but it was ~lvl40 in Atlantis. I strongly recommend this kind of build if you hate dying.
« Last Edit: 18 May 2021, 15:27:56 by nargil66 »

Offline Twinscrew

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Hi, I've recently been trying out this mod and wanted to provide some constructive feedback. The character I've mostly been using is Dream/Defense focusing on melee and retaliation. Currently I'm about halfway through Act 1 on Epic.

My biggest issue with the mod thus far is not the difficulty of it, but rather that the mod is not very rewarding for overcoming the challenge. The very low drop rates combined with low exp gain makes the mod feel like a real slog to get through. In other words, most of the challenge of the mod thus far is due to being under-geared and the inability to acquire any.

For example, currently my toon in Act1 Epic is level 42. Enemies are typically 10+ levels above mine, yet yield hardly any experience. I can clear whole maps out, which is a very slow process, and my exp bar has barely moved. I've killed Nessus more times than I can count at this point, and his chest typically yields nothing but yellow junk. This was also the general experience most of the way through Normal... there is very little point in farming bosses because mystical chests and orbs all have simply terrible drop rates. I would say that about 80% or more of the gear I've gotten to this point is from farming vendor shops or from regular trash mobs. Similarly, any souls that I get at this point are well out of level range. I still can't even equip souls from Act 4 Normal because their requirements are too high.

Anyways, I'm going to take a different build through Normal and see if it fares any better. My goal with the current character was melee & retaliation, but I discovered too late that the Icescale gear has all been heavily nerfed, so I don't think there's much point in continuing on with this toon right now.

I don't want this to sound completely negative. I think there was obviously a lot of work put into this mod and the potential for interesting builds is there. I like that the souls provide new skills and trade-offs that you could potentially build around. I like the challenge of fighting heroes and champs. The mod actually gives you a reason to visit caves and side areas which were always completely pointless before. So I'll keep chipping away at it for now but I wanted to provide feedback on the experience so far. Thanks.

Offline Orion3000

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I wanted to thank the OP for his amazing job bringing this mod back to TQ. I have a question and I'm sorry if this has been asked before. I'm playing with the hardcore soulvizier and not the custom map one. My question is there a way to get xmax working with soulvizier? I'm willing to even switch to the custom map version if I can make it somehow works with soulvizier. Just trying to make farming for souls easier. Thanks again for your hard work.

Offline BarloGT

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Will the mod be updated further, or has the mod been discontinued?

Offline soa

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No date yet for next update, it's in the works.
Soulvizier for AE, Ragnarok and Atlantis [released] :
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=1201.0  / Discord : https://discord.gg/qs9t6AA
Overhaul mod with many new monsters, skills, items, features, balance and bugfixes. Increased difficulty.

Offline LimJahey

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Hello soa, I can't tell you how grateful I am for the work that you and the rest of the team have put in to continue the work of amgoz1! I am a massive fan who put thousands of hours into Soulvizier 0.96, and I have just recently installed your new version. I started a character using the Play Custom Quest option, and I clicked on the SVAERA_customquest ~ world01.map option and put a day or so into a character, but after I closed the game and attempted to go back in, I forgot to change the map option from EGA to SVAERA and I lost all of my skills. In the past, I would have used TQ Defiler to fix little things like this, but I am not quite sure how to recover my skill points (if it is at all possible) in the new version. Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated! Also, thank you for adding all of the souls into the inventory of the new vendor! In the last versions of the mod, I was always looking for a way to see all of the possible heroes / souls that could be found, especially that of the Green Toxeus Uber Boss and the bosses in the secret passage (if they exist).

Offline Robertus

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Is there something going on with boss life or survivability in the mod? I'm fighting the Act 2 Telkine on normal, and despite breezing through the act, I can hardly damage this boss. He seems to just outregen all my damage.

Offline soa

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Hello soa, I can't tell you how grateful I am for the work that you and the rest of the team have put in to continue the work of amgoz1! I am a massive fan who put thousands of hours into Soulvizier 0.96, and I have just recently installed your new version. I started a character using the Play Custom Quest option, and I clicked on the SVAERA_customquest ~ world01.map option and put a day or so into a character, but after I closed the game and attempted to go back in, I forgot to change the map option from EGA to SVAERA and I lost all of my skills. In the past, I would have used TQ Defiler to fix little things like this, but I am not quite sure how to recover my skill points (if it is at all possible) in the new version. Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated! Also, thank you for adding all of the souls into the inventory of the new vendor! In the last versions of the mod, I was always looking for a way to see all of the possible heroes / souls that could be found, especially that of the Green Toxeus Uber Boss and the bosses in the secret passage (if they exist).
Only tool I know that may work is GD Defiler.

Is there something going on with boss life or survivability in the mod? I'm fighting the Act 2 Telkine on normal, and despite breezing through the act, I can hardly damage this boss. He seems to just outregen all my damage.
He has around 80 hp regen/s. His resistances are not so high, except poison (55%) and fire (40%), with 30% projectile dodge. So maybe you're mainly dealing poison/fire damage with projectiles, with low DPS.
As usual, without knowing your build, can't say much about it.
Soulvizier for AE, Ragnarok and Atlantis [released] :
https://titanquestfans.net/index.php?topic=1201.0  / Discord : https://discord.gg/qs9t6AA
Overhaul mod with many new monsters, skills, items, features, balance and bugfixes. Increased difficulty.

Offline Robertus

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Ah, yeah, mostly doing fire and burn damage with projectiles. That would explain why he seemed so tough. Came back and was able to farm him a few times today without too much problem. I guess I should have expected the fire/poison themed desert boss to be stronger against those.

Offline BarloGT

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2 Soa

Are you going to fix the quest rewards in Atlantis? Now there is a fixed amount of experience for any quest, and this discourages all the desire to go there at all. No stat points, no skills, no magic items as in other acts. Without this, there is very little point in going there, and no one goes - confining themselves to gambling in Gadir.

Offline LimJahey

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Hello soa, I think the Uber Limos boss in act 3 "Waeizhi, Scion of Winter" may be missing a soul.

Offline nargil66

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Hello soa, I think the Uber Limos boss in act 3 "Waeizhi, Scion of Winter" may be missing a soul.
Not every hero/boss has a soul, many are missing ever since amgoz1 was working on the disc version.
« Last Edit: 17 July 2021, 13:51:51 by nargil66 »

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