Soulvizier AERA - General discussion

[nargil66]

@botebote77  The "rest" skill was removed after v0.96 or 0.98 (i dont remember the exact version). Along with rejuvenation and XP potions.

[soa]

I made some quick tests regarding some modifications or skills which needed to be tested (for skills I tested them at max level with an accomplished hero).

- The mayhem and ravage of time works fine, although since the first is a mind control, it sometimes MC every ennemy, creating a weird situation where everyone is you ally and you can't kill anybody (this was with the skill at max level tho).
- Elemental fury should be tested with a higher character (like at least in epic difficulty), well equiped to see how the damage scales, because with all the flat elemental damage & the +% elemental damage & conversion, it's kind of strong even with a weak weapon, I had a bow which gave me 110 dmg per arrow, but with elemental fury + the synergy skill I was doing around 600 per arrow.
- I had a few relics drop, and one minor seal, so the update of lootpool for relics seems to work fine.
- Minotaur Lord's auto attack are more manageable, he does around 120-140 dmg without onslaught, so melee characters should have less trouble with him, but the real problem is with ground attack, it still does 360 damage per tick, and sometimes can tick 5 times (this is not a joke, I was hit by it with my level 32 character and got one shot because of the 5*360 damages)
- Ormenos's boulder attack is fine as it is i think, deals around 1600 damage, should be threatening enough to avoid it, but not a death sentence (at least in normal), i tried to see what his other attacks were doing by fighting him without pet, and his vitality auto-attack actually deals a ton of damage (i never took one on my previous fights with him), just ONE of this projectile deals around 2000 damage for the whole duration of the dot, and he spam them two by two, i think we either have to build a lot of vitality resistance (well i think it's vitality damage) or we can't fight in melee at all.

I'll try to test skills with non-accomplished heroes to see how it goes on very early game, in addition to the non-tested one.

- Mayhem : I will make converting rate and duration fixed across all levels to avoid all monsters being MC. And will try if thechnically doable to make monsters neutral so that you can attack them (this is double-edged)
- Elemental Flurry : I slightly buffed the damage of the base skill at higher levels (67 instead of 57 at lvl 12, 88.5 instead of 75 at lvl 16). I also added % Conversion from Physical to Elemental because this Ragnarok mechanic which wasn't in classic SV seemed to fit, but it's maybe over the top if other values are not tweaked. I will wait for an Epic/Legendary feedback before a nerf.
- Can you provide a save just before the Minotaur in Normal with an appropriate leveled character, for testing purposes, I think I know why he's still strong despite the 1.1 nerf on his Earthfury.
- Ormenos : he actually deals a mixture of life leech (no life leech in AE), frostburn (damage x1,5 to 2 from AE) and vitality (smaller vitality in SV against bigger vitality decay in AE) with his bigger blast and 1000-1500% ADctH added in classic SV, and only minor vitality+cold with his smaller blast. His AI should cast the biggest Energy Blast between 6 and 22 m (Medium Range), so not in Melee. I may tone down his levels of Life Leech in Epic and Legendary considering that it should now scale with monster level. But for now he may be just as dangerous as he should in Normal (and Icefreeze said he's not). Runes now gets 20% Life Leech and Energy Leech resistance at lvl 40 in the mastery though.

[soa]

for the mean time save directory is the same as the main game's.. but @soa i hope you can answer my question above.. i prefer a different save directory if it's possible

first impressions are positive.. i created a storm char currently lvl 8.. he will remain solo storm for quite a while.. i'm liking ice orb so far.. it seems like this is the early caster skill for this mastery.. can't remember if it's like that in the old SV.. i just hope the devs fix the freeze animation bug

i already found a soul from a champion enemy.. i just remembered the old minor problem that the original SV weren't able to address: nobody were using rings anymore because of the presence of souls

i'm not sure about the high health and mana regen for the char.. iirc the original SV had a sit skill that rapidly restores health and mana.. i think i prefer that. (was there a sit skill in the original SV? i hope i'm not confusing SV for a different game  )
will have to play more and give my opinion on this when i get farther into the game

no spellbreaker? awww was it like that in the original SV? i know the energy drain is in storm nimbus now but the main feature of it was the dispel skill.. oh well i'm not complaining about it (yet)
also, if the arctic whatever cold skill has a chance to freeze, isn't it fitting that storm nimbus have chance to stun? although i don't know what you replace for it, skill disruption? i'm not complaining about it though, this is a minor issue imo

some boars don't even bother attacking me even though i'm hitting them with a bow, staff, or spell.. was it like that in vanilla? can't remember

finally, the exp curve.. this is my only gripe so far.. i think it's too slow.. even the x3 that i usually play is faster.. i don't think following the accomplished hero lvl 40 start of act 5 is a good decision..slow leveling was a problem in TQIT that the old SV fixed in the opinion of many including me
also, accomplished hero on a straight playthrough would let you finish at about lvl 75.. it's too low.. i think it should be about lvl 78-80

edit:
also, with the presence of orbs, lightning dash might actually be a good support skill here.. just support because it looks like vanilla lightning dash so it probably won't trigger WPS skills
(will have to see this later)

occult - all masteries have something innate skill unique only to them.. storm has cast speed, earth reduced requirements, defense physical res, etc except occult which only increases stats.. is this fair?

Save directory : at the time of TQIT SV, I was using a .bat file and had two shortcuts for the game, one for SV and one for classic game. I also had two "My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne" directories, one named like that and the other had an added "_original" at the end.
The shortcuts were launching the bat files that automatically renamed one "My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne" to "My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne_SV" or "My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne_original" depending on which shortcut, then launched the game. I'll try to recover that file if you want, you'll only have to make slight edits for the game paths with any text editor, and you shouldn't need strong coding skills for that.
I suppose it's possible to duplicate only SaveData instead of the whole My Games\Titan Quest - Immortal Throne, that should work too, that's what I suggested in the instalaltion files of v1.1

About the things that were already in classic SV and the changes I made :
- Ice Orb was already there, I haven't touched it except I renamed it to Orb instead of Shard
- Spellbreaker : I knew you would not like it, but that's not my change. I don't know which version of SV or Underlord it came from, but it was reworked, moved to Dream and named Mind Breaker. I tweaked it so that there is one skill instead of a skill+modifier, to gain new slots in the mastery tree for the Atlantis skills. Admittedly it was a strong skill and kinda abusable, but it may still be strong in Dream.
- Haven't changed Storm Nimbus + modifiers, or Arctic Shell + modifiers from classic SV, besides giving Storm Nimbus a pet bonus like AE did. I can't make a dispel on attack skill, even with a % chance (or if there is any way, I don't know it). I think yeah the skill disruption is the "equivalent" of chances to freeze.
- Boars - haven't changed but as sauruz said their AI may be slow. They don't have big brains, and react mostly on attack on when you are quite close. Not sure classic SV changed anything here
- Lightning Dash is now same as the vanilla, I will rework it when I'll have some time. See the "WIP stuff" file with the installation files.
- Occult has more intelligence and energy too instead of a resistance, speed, regeneration or another bonus. It's still something. I haven't changed it from classic SV.
AE gives at level 40 : +70 Strength / +100 Dext / +1400 Health.
SV gives at level 40 : +62 Strength / +100 Dext / +1200 Health / +60 Intel / +400 Energy. You're trading 8 Strength and 200 Health for 60 Intel and 400 Energy

For exp, I know this isn't popular, but I've already got trouble balancing the game when going too far from AE, because of the new damage equations of AE (more scaling damage), the fact that the players power doesn't scale linearly. And because of the new xpacks, the XP progression isn't the same. Finally AE added a bonus XP rate in Epic and Legendary of +10% and +20% respectively. Maybe something in between AE and classic SV ? But then I'll have to increase again the power of monsters, that's not easy to balance. Will try to ease again XP again in v1.2...
x3 monsters mods (this is roughly the number of monsters in SV as well) actually make the game easier because it gives the same XP per monster so more levels. x3 monsters don't hit you for x3 damage especially if you pull carefully, and if you have AOE they don't take 3x the time to kill, but give you three times as much loot and close to 3x the XP. Loot is fine because the base game lacks it, bonus XP gives bonus levels so you have to increase the monsters power to compensate and then it's hard to know what numbers to use. I want it easier than classic SV so that you can play untwinked, but just increasing XP to classic SV standards is not going to cut it, I'm afraid. It will take some time to adjust.

[soa]

Report from Great Wall:
- Havent reported bugs till now, because all were missing texture/mesh bugs (fixed now, thank you )
- Borealic Warriors (Elite Tigermen) are freezing while using skill casting animation
- Regarding Recycling recipes - the idea is good, but... i think the main problem after each game act aren't the completed charms/relics, but the incompleted ones (especially now when they are not dropping in other Acts). Can you do something about that? Like maybe 2 or 3 incomplete pieces to make 1 random incomplete piece (or maybe complete one)?
Edit: Flamescar (Forge recipe sword) has a missing tag as MI ingredient (i believe it was Sabertooth?)

- Borealic Warriors have a skill similar to Flash Freeze in Storm Mastery. This skill immobilizes them and increases their Health regeneration with 75% Damage Absorption. I think that's normal they "freeze" from time to time (if they don't become invisible it's an immobilization like Stone form would do, not actual freeze)

- Recycling recipes : the devs haven't given us modders any way to use relic shards differently from the base game (another one to add to the modding limitations topic). I don't have separate files for shards and completed relics. I can't allow them as valid ingredients or do anything with them. How about give a new formula to get a Relic Orb, with a current act seal to get an act-1 shard ? Would be similar to current act seal to get a current act shard. Only thing is that you can make the choice between current act and previous act, not let the RNG decide for you.
Besides, relic drops being exclusive to an act brings more benefits than disadvantages. Because before, you had a (tiny) chance to get Greek relics in Egypt. But that would give you in the other hand a corresponding lack in Egyptian relics. In turn you had to try to find them in Orient and so on. Plus you could find in Egypt new Greek shards which would become useless. Now you have better chances to get completed relics in each act, and you know better where to farm your relics. You don't have to wait Orient to know the number of Greek relics you got from a playthrough.
Admittedly to balance the system better I would need to maybe reduce the number of relics in A1 and increase it in A2, so that you have roughly the same chances to get a particular relic in each act. Or I can increase the chance to get two shards instead of one with a relic Orb, at least for Greece because it has more relics than the other acts.

- Flamescar : will check

[soa]

i already found a soul from a champion enemy.. i just remembered the old minor problem that the original SV weren't able to address: nobody were using rings anymore because of the presence of souls

i'm not sure about the high health and mana regen for the char.. iirc the original SV had a sit skill that rapidly restores health and mana.. i think i prefer that. (was there a sit skill in the original SV? i hope i'm not confusing SV for a different game  )
will have to play more and give my opinion on this when i get farther into the game

Forgot these comments (for other posts I'll reply later) :

- I think health/energy regen increase depending on max health/energy is one of the best ideas of late SV versions (granted, it has an inconvenience because it also boosts monsters, but I think it can be overcomed. It may already have been as of v1.1). This enables regeneration builds, and more important new ways of sustain besides the inevitable potions perfusion and % ADctH. It can be one of your sustain sources, not the only one. It gives more interest to invest points in Health of Energy.
Regen build were possible in AE or even TQIT, but would often requires gimmick items such as Caress of Persephone (+50 HP/s), Enkidu's Stand (+25 HP/s) with two weapons or something like that. Maybe these items should get less regen now, I'm not sure. But regen is not the ultimate way of making you character unkillable anyways. To me it just adds more diversity to the way you sustain and heal, more options.
The "sit" skill was called "Rest" and was deleted before like written above (I would have deleted it myself otherwise). It was made mainly for the beginning of the game when you had not many potions. You would sit with very high regen and less resistances I believe. Plus it takes one slot of much needed special animations for the character, and one much needed slot in the special hidden skill trees, for something you wouldn't use past level 5 or so. No regrets.

- Yeah souls prevalence is not so minor to me... They should get a nerf with drawbacks on every soul. That's what makes them different from most rings. I've already made them non enchantable, which I think balances things out a bit, but unique rings (except Ragnarok ?) may have a hard time to compete. What bothers me is not that a player uses a soul from a hero that has the same "playstyle" as him... That's actually perfect and probably the true "soul" (huh) of this feature. What seems wrong is that you often find a soul from a hero that has no resemblance to your character build, bonuses to a different kind of damage, bonuses to skills that aren't even in your masteries, drawbacks, etc. But you still use it because it just crushes the rings you find.
Green rings got a regen bonus in latest classic SV versions, to enhance them... that's a start.
One other possibility is that I add attributes requirements on top of the level requirements. So that a random soul not even remotely made for your build doesn't look like a usable top tier item.
I would have liked a possibility for the player to get more item slots for them, or a way to make artifacts enchantable with a soul...

[botebote77]

about sit skill.. i see.. no prob.. thnx for the info soa and nargil.. perhaps it just reminded me of another old game (older than TQ) i used to play

the save directory.. yeah i would like that.. another suggestion: i think it's better if you change game loading screen, game welcome screen, and desktop icon to a more fitting one for SV

- Occult has more intelligence and energy too instead of a resistance, speed, regeneration or another bonus. It's still something. I haven't changed it from classic SV.
AE gives at level 40 : +70 Strength / +100 Dext / +1400 Health.
SV gives at level 40 : +62 Strength / +100 Dext / +1200 Health / +60 Intel / +400 Energy. You're trading 8 Strength and 200 Health for 60 Intel and 400 Energy

yeah but i still ask? is this fair? say you play warfare + occult for example, would you really want to trade 8 str and 200 health for 60 int and 400 energy?
@nargil66 @icefreeze @Vadumee and others, what do you think?

One other possibility is that I add attributes requirements on top of the level requirements. So that a random soul not even remotely made for your build doesn't look like a usable top tier item.

yeah that sounds fair.. why don't we try it and see what people think?
again, guys? ....

edit:
by occult, i mean this is what it looks like at lvl 40
storm - 120 int, 40 dex, 680, health, 880 energy, 60% cast speed

earth - 120 int, +60 dex, +120 health, +320 energy, -24% reduced req

defense - +80 str, +60 dex, +2000 health, 10% phys res

etc (all have something unique to them, except

occult - +62 str, +60 int, +100 dex, +1200 health, +400 energy

[icefreeze]

- 8str -200hp vs +60int +400mp
Fair enough (it's even some kind of "buff"). And it's suite for more int, hybrid build, melee str/dex build can be nerfed a little bit, but can  be use skill more comfortablely.

- I can play with any condition if it doesn't impossible ridiculous in-logic vs game mechanic. So just try.

[botebote77]

i think i found a bug.. i don't know if it's a known bug already but i don't see it in the WIP stuff and changelog

essence of herakles might - -10% str req for weapons, same for shields

but for shields, it counts as -20%.. for weapons it's correct just 10

edit:

- I can play with any condition if it doesn't impossible ridiculous in-logic vs game mechanic. So just try.

this actually feels like a toned down SV (i think).. SV is actually a troll mod lol.. it tricks you into believing you are creating a strong char, then it throws a random boss at you and then BAM you die.. and he makes a mince meat out of you.. and somehow people liked it 

[icefreeze]

i think i found a bug.. i don't know if it's a known bug already but i don't see it in the WIP stuff and changelog

essence of herakles might - -10% str req for weapons, same for shields

but for shields, it counts as -20%.. for weapons it's correct just 10

edit:

- I can play with any condition if it doesn't impossible ridiculous in-logic vs game mechanic. So just try.

this actually feels like a toned down SV (i think).. SV is actually a troll mod lol.. it tricks you into believing you are creating a strong char, then it throws a random boss at you and then BAM you die.. and he makes a mince meat out of you.. and somehow people liked it 

Shield can be counted as "weapon", Runeword Feather skill of Runes works with shield as weapon too.

[botebote77]

i think i found a bug.. i don't know if it's a known bug already but i don't see it in the WIP stuff and changelog

essence of herakles might - -10% str req for weapons, same for shields

but for shields, it counts as -20%.. for weapons it's correct just 10

edit:

- I can play with any condition if it doesn't impossible ridiculous in-logic vs game mechanic. So just try.

this actually feels like a toned down SV (i think).. SV is actually a troll mod lol.. it tricks you into believing you are creating a strong char, then it throws a random boss at you and then BAM you die.. and he makes a mince meat out of you.. and somehow people liked it 

Shield can be counted as "weapon", Runeword Feather skill of Runes works with shield as weapon too.

i think you didn't understand.. it counted double.. 20 instead of 10

[icefreeze]

i think i found a bug.. i don't know if it's a known bug already but i don't see it in the WIP stuff and changelog

essence of herakles might - -10% str req for weapons, same for shields

but for shields, it counts as -20%.. for weapons it's correct just 10

edit:

- I can play with any condition if it doesn't impossible ridiculous in-logic vs game mechanic. So just try.

this actually feels like a toned down SV (i think).. SV is actually a troll mod lol.. it tricks you into believing you are creating a strong char, then it throws a random boss at you and then BAM you die.. and he makes a mince meat out of you.. and somehow people liked it 

Shield can be counted as "weapon", Runeword Feather skill of Runes works with shield as weapon too.

i think you didn't understand.. it counted double.. 20 instead of 10

-10% str require for all weapons & -10% str require for shields => total = -20%str require for shields.

[botebote77]

oh boy.. how do i say it so that it's easy to understand?

pardon but it was meant for soa

[icefreeze]

oh boy.. how do i say it so that it's easy to understand?

pardon but it was meant for soa

You're never use this ring, right?
https://tq-db.net/en/equipment/captain's-signet
I don't think it worth to complain about normal things that you don't know in base game.

[botebote77]

ok nice.. i meant no disrespect

now lets wait for soa.. pls?

[nargil66]

Talking about reduced requirements... have anyone seen this beauty?



The big brother of Thorny Maul out there... now im tempted to start a Warfare char With a few Herakles' Mights... just imagine...