[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, I now know how I'm going to implement the Tomes.

I've already modified the Portrait of Bill Gilbert to produce Tomes after a certain number of battles.

The way it works right now is that it uses a cumulative counter so that you get a few Tomes pretty quickly, but then it slows down.

The way it works, is the counter starts off at 1 and then increments and adds to itself. So you'll get a Tome after the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 10th, etc. battle. There are approximately 320 battles in CW and so you'll get roughly 24 tomes out of 172 or so Tomes during a single playthrough (if you married all the wives and had all the children in my H3B mod, you had the possibility of 32 babies). This seems okay for now - we'll see how it goes and the counter can always be increased to have fewer Tomes, but I think this will give sufficient variety to try them out. I could also just go with getting a Tome every 10 battles, but then you'd get about 32 of them in game (which may be too many for one playthrough - not sure). This will be the only way to get a Tome - they won't be sold or acquired through any other means. This also means that they won't have an impact on the existing items in the game. If you don't want any more Tomes, then you can simply get rid of your Bill Gilbert painting and you won't get any more.

I'm going to experiment with what item type to make them - I'd like to make them a combined regalia / artifact item, but that didn't seem to work. So I can either just make them artifacts or maybe I'll consider them like the metamorph item and they can fit in any slot. We'll see - if I can't figure out how to make them regalia / artifact, then I'll probably make them metamorphic during the early alpha development to aid in checking out their bonuses, etc and then just make them artifacts at the end. Unfortunately, there are only 4 artifact slots max right now, and for some class / companion combinations you might only get 1 or 2 slots - the Warrior and Paladin only have 1 artifact slot. I may also consider making them other item types based on their HOMM3 hero class (i.e. maybe Knights are Shields or Armor).

I'm also going to implement 5 levels for each Tome, and some Tomes will transmute to others (think Mutare and Mutare Drake), whereas others may have up to level 10 for an item level (although it may be entirely possibly that defeating the guardians to get that high is impractical - we'll see how it goes, but think how hard the Towers were with level 5 items in my H3B mod and you can imagine that going much higher will be an exceptionally difficult battle).

Also, with respect to items, think of the H3B children as roughly a level 3 item. So for lower levels, their skills will be stripped so that they only have one or two bonuses.

Take Fafner, for example. His skills are Resistance, Scholar, and Nagas. So this is his level 3 form. For level 1, he'll just get Nagas (which will be the equivalent of all snakes in AP / CW).

Something new that I'm going to implement, though, are the Hero's actual starting stats as bonuses to your stats. Once again, referring to Fafner's level 3 "hero", his starting stats are Attack: 1, Defense: 1, Spell Power: 2, and Knowledge: 2 (6 total points). Spell Power will be 5% increase in KB Spell Power per point, and Knowledge = Intellect. His level 1 equivalent will have just 2 total points (Spell Power: 1 and Knowledge: 1).

So if you got Fafner's Tome, he would provide +5% Spell Power and +1 Intellect and give bonuses to all snakes. I'm still debating what to do with the unit bonuses, but I'll probably make it so that the level 1 items only give a bonus to (say) Attack and Defense and most likely a modest Leadership Reduction, and then with each new level, there are more bonuses and greater leadership reduction. For example, Fafner's level 1 "Nagas" bonus would probably be: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level (Snakes, Swamp Snakes, and Royal Snakes), Leadership Reduction: (Snakes and Swamp Snakes) 4% and (Royal Snakes) 3%. The idea is that you would take the Leadership Reduction values and multiply them by the Tome level (for -12% and -9% for level 3 Fafner and -20% and -15% for level 5 Fafner).

The Leadership Reduction scale would be such that @level 5, you'd get this for the given unit levels:

Level 1: -25%
Level 2: -20%
Level 3: -15%
Level 4: -10%
Level 5: -5%

Those are pretty small for the higher level units, but when coupled with Glory's -2, -5, and -10% Leadership Reduction bonus those values above will be much more substantial. Plus, it may be possible to combine the Tomes with other items to get much higher bonuses.

These are just some preliminary values and may be subject to change based on how things go, but should be a good start.

I have the proof of concept working with respect to being able to give Tomes to your hero, but I need to work on getting the pictures, descriptions, etc. into the game, but hope to make good progress on this in the following weeks...

I'm also implementing the bonus system for the Tome Hero's skills. For starters, it is based on the H3B mod bonuses, but now that you can get any hero, I'll do my best to make sure that each Tome's skills are different (the hero bonuses to your hero will be the same for each class type - Fafner is an Alchemist and so you'll see the same (or almost the same) bonuses for all other Alchemits). There are a few special heroes that may get an extra skill or an extra point (or two) in their hero bonuses and that's because they were special heroes in HOMM3.

Also, I'm going to implement all 8 H3B wives as tomes (since there are only 8 of them out of 172 or so they are going to get a little bit better hero stats and their bonuses will be very similar to what you saw in H3B). Also the 4 spirits will be implemented as Tomes as well and once again they'll have higher bonuses and these will be the items that you can take up to level 10 if you're able (you'll have a really low chance of getting one in a game because there's only 4 of them). I'll probably have them provide spell scrolls of all their abilities (possibly even the ones not included in CW like Lina's mana / rage balls, etc.). I also may consider allowing the H3B wives to go to level 10 as well - we'll see.

There may also be some "set" Tomes. As an example, Calh and Marius were married at one point in the HOMM3 storyline and so I may make them have a set bonus if you're fortunate enough to get both of them. Catherine and Roland Ironfist also come to mind since they were married as well. I also may try to make some combined Tomes as well (think of the "young" versions of a few heroes, i.e. Gem, Sandro, Yog, and Christain) so that if you find both hero variants you can combine them into a more powerful Tome. Mutare will be special in that you'll get her from level 1 to 5 and then you can upgrade her to the Mutare Drake (this will simulate her drinking the vial of Dragon Blood) where her levels will be 6-10. I also may do the same with Young Sandro and possibly Gem. Note that for the set Tomes and combination Tomes to work, you'll have to have the same Tome level (i.e. both level 1, 2, etc.).

So anyway, that's the current state of development for this aspect of the mod and some ideas with respect to the Tomes.

/C\/C\