Project Delicate Rebalancement: Tales of the Wild Coast

What I meant was: when I finished the game with
my party Zuggy had something around 1000HP...
could be wrong though...

 

Allyx's UberZuggtmoy is alot more than just an incredible amount of HPs, does things like summons between 1 and 3 demons plus summons up to something like up to over 30 evil plants and casts buff spells plus is extremely hard to hit plus has 800 HPs plus whatever else not mentioned here...takes up to like a level 20 uberparty to be able to kill and survive. And understand, I was originally kidding about suggesting using UberZuggtmoy.

 

Except that, if using the source material from the ToEE paper module, then those encounters (if memory serves me correctly) would be beefed up too.

 

I never read any of this thread until today, February 16, 2007.

Here are my thoughts on the topics of this thread.
* I read the 169 posts again, last night and this morning, and added some more comments and edited existing comments below.

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1. Do not tinker with CRs. (basic agreement with ShiningTed and Old Book)

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2. Do not re-mod the entire or most or alot of the game to change coin treasure loot. There are effective, good methods to deal with a party having too much coin wealth. (Read my posts # 171 and # 172 following this post.)

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3. I agree with Kalshane, completely, about wanting to see more different kinds of magic weapons in the game.

My Hickory Branch MOD accomplished this very thing, adds a minimal few of different type +1 magic weapons (not the standard types found everywhere else like what Gaear complained about). None of them are uber-weapons and are not death-weapons. I did not want to add more than a minimal few of basic +1 magic weapons is why I did not add more of them.
* I did mod and added the Silver Sword of Chaos--it is a good weapon to keep and use, but it is not an artifact and it is not a Scather or Fragarach.
** I even added a new non-magical Heavy Saber and Masterwork Heavy Saber to ToEE and included one of each in my Hickory Branch MOD.

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4. Crafting as is in the game is needed and that takes cash. The more crafting someone wants to do for a party means more wealth (and exp) is needed. (Read my posts # 171 and # 172 following this post about how to deal with excessive party coin wealth.)

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5. restoring balance (empower the peops who play the game)

I would suggest the additional mods in question, MoatHouse ReSpawn + Verbobanc + Hickory Branch, be made to one install option that can be selected or deselected in one checkbox option during the installation of a Co8 MOD of ToEE, just like for Deperate Housewives.

Let Co8 5.0.0 MOD remain as is and make CMF 5.0.3 plus final added new content plus game re-balance be new changes for the Co8 6.0.0 MOD, i.e., let the end-user gamer who installs the Co8 6.0.0 MOD make their own decision. If he or she wants the add-on new modules content (Verbo + MoatResp + HickBr) be installed in his or her own installed game of ToEE...if someone does want'em, they are added...if someone does not want'em, they are not added.

5a. Also, I would prefer the new mods are not moved to the end game. Zuggtmoy is the end game and the QotS module is next after that.

5b. I agree with Blue about the Temple Alerts. It could be done by scripts. Just how big of a job it would be depends on the modder assigned the job of writing the scripts.

5c. I agree with Spike and Kalshane about the 3 setting option to set a 70% or a 60% or a 50% exp rate and make it available as a pre-start game option in ToEEFE. This would let the people who want to play a more difficult game decrease the exp rate in their own installed game down to 60% or 50%.

Note: It was previously agreed that the next executable install file of Co8 MOD would be the Co8 6.0.0 MOD. Agetian even chimed in on the conversation (thread discussion), said it makes sense and would be acceptable to him.

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6. on Nevets dlg - WayTOGGOOO and AttaBoy Gaear

I like this idea. Old Book offered to help with this. I would be glad to see the Nevets dialogue added.

For Hickory Branch, even after getting that line from Nevets, a party would still need to visit Nulb and do one of a couple things to help the old Gypsy woman for the party to receive the map.

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7. miscellaneous comments and thoughts

A. @Maggit: Did you know the Orc Soldiers have two PC levels? The reason you probably see them as weak...they attack like soldiers and are made to be different than the Orcs in the Orc cave. (I heard Gaear's grief.) I made them different from those Orcs on purpose.
B. @Maggit: There are changes I have decided on and will make to them (discussed previously w/ Kalshane). Reading your written thoughts inspired me today. So, thanks! :yes:
C. @Maggit: Thanks for the general nice compliment about the MOD!.. :thumbsup:
D. @Kalshane: Thanks for standing up and saying please wait.

 

COIN WEALTH ISSUE: PART 1

Here is one idea as a solution for peops who have a problem with and dislike PC characters having ample money. Meet Ms. Skatta, the Tax Collector NPC character! (It's true that skatta in Swedish means to tax somebody.) Here's Ms. Skatta, a busybody gal who occasionally runs around Hommlet and, sometimes, Nulb and gets her fingers in to peoples' pockets. She sure does sound like a thief to me!

When you first enter town and Ms. Skatta is there to meet and greet you, she breaks combat and automatically runs up to your party stating, "It's time for everyone in the adventuring party to pay their dues to the kingdom. You know the law!" The game deducts 10 percent (rounded down) of your coin wealth measured in gold pieces only (no items considered) from your PC and NPC characters in your party. There is no penalty if a party has no coins or if NPC characters have no coins. Once she collects 10 percent of the coin wealth in gold pieces of a party, she fades and vanishes.

If a party enters town several times without meeting Ms. Skatta, it could be modded for her to have a 10 percent cumulative chance of meeting up with your party every time the party enters Hommlet or enters Nulb. The base 10 percent chance would be incremented by an extra 10 percent for each time the party enters a town until she catches up with the party and collects the 10 percent of coin wealth as measured in gold pieces (rounded down), no items considered. Once she collects her 10 percent of coin wealth in gold pieces, the next percent chance to meet her is reset back to the base 10 percent chance and it all starts over, again.

Note: The 10 percent chance and the 10 percent of coin wealth as measured in gold pieces could be changed to a 5 percent chance to meet Ms. Skatta and a 5 percent reduction in coin wealth as measured in gold pieces...or whatever combination of percent values is acceptable to the community.

 

COIN WEALTH ISSUE: PART 2

Or, if you want or prefer something mundane, dull and boring, and much less work and effort to mod and implement, there is the simple method.

Make a mod that every single time a party enters Hommlet or Nulb, the game checks if a party has 50,001 or more coin wealth measured in gold pieces. If a party enters Hommlet or Nulb and has 50,001 or more coin wealth in gold pieces, the game automatically deducts 5,000 gold pieces in coin wealth from a party.

What this method accomplishes is when a party has lots of coin wealth, they had better spend it fast because a few trips back-and-forth and entering Hommlet and Nulb will leech their coin wealth down to under 50,001 gold pieces in very little time.

Or, another possibility, the game could be modded to always have a 10 percent chance every time a party enters Hommlet or Nulb to reduce coin wealth by an amount of 10 percent in gold pieces (without a Ms. Skatta NPC character being modded in to the game).

 

The tax collector's a not a bad idea, however
I still think it would leave too much gold for the
PCs. Hmm wouldn't it be possible to make a fix
like Blue did on the XP amount? You know, it would cut
the amounts of gold found by, let's say, 50%. This would
be much simpler to do (if it's possible ) and wouldn't
give the players a chance to kill the tax collector.
No tax collector, no tax, eh? Unless he would be powerful
like Jade Empress.

 

@maggit: I don't know about that. Money is very sparce in the beginning of the game. The fix is trying to find out what to do about higher-level parties with far too much cash. If you do it that way, you'll hurt the player in the beginning of the game that actually needs the money for decent equipment.

 

Right... I haven't thought of that. I guess we have to change the
treasures in the later parts of the game. IMHO, the Verbo-dragon has
too many valuable gems on him, as well as the hill giant in Emridy
Meadows.

 

You mean 'she', not he. I could mod an uber-ultra powerful female NPC who could not be defeated by a level 20 party of 8 characters in combat, 100 out of 100 times. *smirk*

IMO - Completely excessive coin wealth could be changed in-game by scripts without modding most or alot of the existing game content.

[EDIT]
The She female NPC as a tax collector that I could mod would be able to make the Fiend of the North drop to his knees, cry, plead "Uncle!" and say "pretty please with a cherry on top".

 

Nice Al, but I still think we should reduce the amount
of gold found in the game. The number of items found
in encounters (armor, etc) is enough to make PCs too
rich. I know Kal opposed to my idea of armor nonlootable
armor but it seems reasonable... I told you how much one
can earn by collecting the black breastplates of the greater
temple guards.

 

Unfortunately there is no easy fix for the amount of wealth in the game like there is for the XP awarded. There are basically three options:

1. Take the wealth away from the party after they have it, like Krunch suggests.
2. Edit the MOB files for every NPC, critter and chest in the game to reduce the amount of money and items.
3. Write a script linked to sans_loot or some such trigger that looks at all the items present and their values, calculates the total value and removes items until a certain percentage of the original total is reached.

The first option is by far the easiest to implement, but also the most contrived and heavy handed in my opinion. No one is going to like seeing their hard earned coin stolen from them in a manner that is unavoidable and obviously contrived to do just that. I could see some of the leaders in Homlett trying to "persuade", perhaps vigorously, any party that was flashing a lot of wealth into "donating" generously to the construction of the castle, but only to the point of being annoying, not threatening. Similarly the people of Nulb would definitely try to part any newcomers from their wealth (like Dala), but an open confrontation with a well armed party would only happen if provoked.

The second option is by far the most elegant, but also the most labor intensive, much along the lines of the 3+ months Kalshane and I (mostly Kalshane) spent on converting all the NPCs in the game to RAW. And much like that project, the question of what to remove will be the subject of much debate, Most of the wealth in the game is from not coin, gems and jewelry. You could strip out all of those and still have an overabundance of wealth in the game. Do we remove magic items?

The third option lies somewhere in between. A clever coder could probably whip up the script in a weekend or three, and the party would never actually see the wealth they were losing. On the other hand, the calculations would be tricky, and we would still have to decide what the script is allowed to remove. The script would also be a resource hog by necessity, most likely resulting in a noticeable lag when trying to loot.

If anyone else has any options I haven't thought of, I'm eager to hear them.

 

The shop keepers should only have so much space in their stores and should have limited money to pay out for buying gear from parties, including magic items. Plus, shop keepers would not be truly interested in buying less than 'like new' gear, too.

A script could be made to limit how much gear and, maybe, what kind of gear every shop keeper will buy from a party and how much total money they will spend on buying gear.