Fixing Starting Daert / Bagyr

[MattCaspermeyer]

These are all very interesting points...

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

I think its the requirement to use only Orc troops which makes fixing Bagyr's start so unnecessarily complicated.

I certainly agree with you here.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

Sure, Neoline can do impossible/no loss as is with using all demon troops.

For Daert, things are a bit different already: in the unmodified game he has to rely on getting a ultra-rare spell from the ore cart and he will use his 2 free Vampires only. Using just one undead stack does not quite feel the same as using all undead troops to me, although that might be considered a technicality.

With this mod, Daert has more useful Undead troops and it just feels more natural for a Mage.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

More imporant is that relying on a strong spell like Phoenix early on does feel like a natural choice for the mage class, while turning Bagyr into a trapper imho does not.

Relying on Phoenix for Daert doesn't feel right to me since its an Order spell. With this mod, Daert uses Chaos spells, which are more natural of a path for an Undead Mage - at least at the beginning of the game.

As far as Bagyr, I honestly think the Trapper Medal / Diversion route is the most natural for an Orc / Warrior.

Think about it, which of the 3 characters is most likely to be out trapping? It's a Warrior and an Orc to boot.

Diversion belongs in the Might tree, honestly, and probably Heroism with its +Defense belongs in the Spirit tree. The problem is that most of us played Neoline first and we did not question the fact that Diversion is in her tree rather than the Might tree and so as you all so aptly point out, we've done this before with respect to trapping.

This is the real problem, to me though: Diversion is in the wrong tree!

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

In my suggestion, I would also like to keep the changes from the unmodified game to a minimum -this should be a fix for a developers oversight and not a complicated mod.

That was one of my goals with this mod as well, plus there is only a limited amount of things we can do with using KB_DB_EDIT (the tool I've been using to edit the *.LOC files).

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

Because I'm not a modder myself I do not know if these ideas are technically possible to do, but if its possible, how about these suggestions:

1) Find a short-time ally who also flees from the forces of light (after all they advance everywhere, dont they ?). The easiest idea here might be the troll having a child he wants Bagyr to take with him to safety. A single Troll with weaker stats, less hitpoints (2-300 maybe?) and correspondingly lower leadership requirement might be a more elegant solution. He'd stay with Bagyr until he can leave the shelter, which just happens to be after the whitehill fight(s).
Should it not be possible to mod/implement such a baby troll into the game just add one additional stack of a friendly troop as desired on the map (or purchasable somewhere) maybe ?

I pretty much know how to do all this except for how to take the unit away. The strange thing here, though, is that you could probably accomplish the same thing with giving him 2 to 3 of either Brontors, Choshas, or Highterants. The Highterants, especially with their egg laying or the Choshas with their summoning would probably be all you need to push them over the top. I then wouldn't have to use the Orc Scouts, thus preserving that questline for later in the game as originally intended.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

or

2) I like the idea of giving Bagyr more leadership to deal with this in his own way, but I think this should be a temporary buff as to not change the balance of the campaign for all the fights AFTER whitehill. Is it possible to offer an artifact with a +x Leadership bonues and have the game remove it after whitehall ? Or maybe its a cursed artifact with +leadership and -100% max rage ?
Some additional troops would be necessary to offer for him to buy, but this would feel like giving the player MORE options as opposed to forcing him down the only working skill path.

More Leadership does seem natural to me, too. I don't see a need to take it away as long as it is not a whole lot more. The +150 and +100 from items is a lot at the start of the game, but those items will be ditched later, so I see no need to curse them.

As an alternate, it does not seem unreasonable to me to give each class 20 times their levelup leadership rate for starting Leadership: Bagyr: 15 * 20 = 300, Neoline: 20 * 20 = 400, Daert: 10 * 20 = 200. I don't see that as being unreasonable since it is based on their levelup capability.

As far as troops are concerned, the right amount of troops sold at the Troll shop would allow you to use two full stacks in the Shelter with your reserve slots. This is pretty much now this mod works now.

Originally Posted by Ezrekiel

or

3) mod the game to reduce the stack sizes of the initial battles to a manageable amount while leaving the game otherwise unchanged.

So is any of these mods technically possible or am I just dreaming ?

I had actually considered this, but Neoline seems pretty well tuned for the stack sizes in the Shelter / Whitehill so I went with changing Bagyr and Daert instead.

An alternate is to add some level 3 / 4 Orc troops to the Shelter shop when you get there to augment the ones you already have (of course these would also be available to Neoline and Daert as well).

All of your ideas sound doable for the most part or implementable with perhaps some limitations or alternates that are roughly equivalent.

But let's hit the reset button for a moment and consider this:

If you played Bagyr first, and saw Diversions where Heroism was, would you have thought twice about it or just picked the skill and kept playing?

For me, I honestly wouldn't have thought about it and just kept playing. The Traps seem more natural to a Warrior for me. The skipping turn part, could be more natural for Neoilne / Spirit tree. We could split this skill apart, putting the trapping ability in Might and keeping the skipping turn part in Spirit.

Has anyone played Daert with this mod? I think his playthrough now works really well as he can focus on the Magic tree and use his various Chaos spells to great effect. So I think at least Daert is good now.

As far as Bagyr is concerned, I think the Trapper Medal / Diversion route is much more natural for him than Neoline. If the Trap part was in the Might tree to begin with then we really wouldn't be talking about this.

I think I could possibly remove Orc Scouts if I gave Bagyr the opportunity to get some level 4 Lizard troops. I don't think there are any eggs, but it is easy to add Brontor / Chosha / Highterant eggs to the game and have the Troll shop sell 3 or so of them (probably have it be random between one of those 3). You could then hatch them as needed to augment your army. They are not Orc troops, but I don't see it being unreasonable for the Troll shop to have some exotic Lizard troop eggs. As Lizard troops are not normally in the game, Bagyr could be unique with the opportunity to play with one or potentially more of them (you could even use Sacrifice later to augment their numbers if you really, really wanted to play them).

I like the ideas coming here, let's keep thinking of more ideas, but let's also not let the Neoline playthrough cloud our thoughts with what might be better suited for Bagyr.

I'm actually partial to the Lizard egg idea now that I'm thinking about it some more. There could be a lot of potential here, especially if you buy them as eggs. I'd have to see how much they'd cost, they might be expensive. Using Griffins and Ents as a guide, Highterant Eggs would be 520 a pop, Choshas 1500, and Brontors 1700. I'm not sure why Highterants are so much cheaper than the others, but they only cost 260 compared to 1100 for Choshas and 1300 for Brontors (egg cost is roughly Troop Cost + Leadership + Hitpoints).

Resetting back to the unmodded game, if I made it such that you had max Shamans and max of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, or Veteran Orcs by the time you hit the Shelter as well as a random level 4 Lizard troop maxed out due to eggs, that may go a long way as you could split the Shamans into at least 2 stacks to double up on their totems keeping ranged troops busy. The Choshas / Highterants could summon / lay eggs to get you some disposable troops or the Brontors could dig and attack remotely. Your other Orc troops could then support the others as needed, either dishing out ranged damage or protecting against melee troops.

If I gave Bagyr at least 250 Leadership to start the game, he'd have exactly 460 at Level 5 so that he could have at least 2 Brontors / Choshas or 3 Highterants. He'd have enough Leadership for 2 Shamans.

Shelter fights could be:

• 1 Shaman
• Maximum of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, Veteran Orcs
• Departing Tristrem numbers of either Spirit Talkers, Catapults, Orcs, Veteran Orcs
• 2 or 3 Lizard Egg troop
• 1 Shaman

I'd still give you Trap as a spell - you don't have to go Trapper Medal / Diversion if you don't want to although it'd be easier if you did.

I wonder if the above lineup would be sufficient to defeat the Elven / Human Shelter stacks. With the Orc Scouts, I continuously summoned Wolves multiple times so this may still not be enough.

We could then augment with more Leadership if the above proves insufficient or I could give the option of getting another Lizard troop, probably always Highterants and then either Brontors or Choshas.

Thanks for all the comments so far - keep 'em coming!

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

I want to thank everyone who posted here as it helped me think outside the box a little bit and allowed me to make the below changes to Bagyr so that you now have a chance at no loss on impossible and you don't have to go the Trapper Medal / Diversion route.

You don't even need to be level 5, I was level 4 when I got to the Shelter and needed to defeat the Dwarven and Elven stacks before I made level 5. I also did all the stacks except the big spider stack in the Catacombs.

Here's the text from the README and the download is at the bottom of the post.

Daert and Bagyr No Loss Impossible - Giving Them a Chance Mod

This mod is only for use with King's Bounty - Darkside.

Tired of scanning saves for the right spell combination to do Daert no loss?
Tired of having Bagyr using uncontrollable stacks of spiders and snakes just to survive or don't want to go Trapper Medal / Diversion?
Tired of the fact that Neoline has a chance at no loss impossible with any start, but Bagyr and Daert don't?

Now you can actually play impossible no loss with either Bagyr or Daert, while still being challenged and at least trying all the fights from the start through Whitehill! You also get to start with new troops so that you can get a flavor of them right from the beginning of the game and Bagyr can play like a Warrior and Daert like a Mage and you'll be having fun instead of getting frustrated!

This is a very small mod that implements changes to balance out Bagyr and Daert so that they have a chance at no loss just like Neoline on impossible difficulty level.

Installation Instructions (note that my base Darkside folder is located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\):

1. Extract the "mods" folder in this archive to: sessions\darkside\locations\ under you base Darskide folder (see above for an example of where it is located on my system) so that you have the following files:
   1. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\m_tristrem_start. embryos.loc
   2. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\m_vampire_start.e mbryos.loc
   3. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\hero.txt
2. Play the game! You should note that the starting scenario for Deart and Bagyr are now different, giving you new options and the chance for no loss on impossible difficulty!

Uninstallation Instructions:

1. Remove the mods folder from your sessions\darkside\locations folder (see above for where the base Darkside folder is located).
2. That's it!

Use at your own risk, but I sincerely hope you now enjoy playing as Bagyr or Daert!

If you have any comments or questions, please post them to this forum topic: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=228683

Thanks, and good luck playing this mini mod!

Matt Caspermeyer

/C\/C\

This mod makes changes in the following files:

• sessions\darkside\locations\m_tristrem_start\m_tri strem_start.embryos.loc
• sessions\darkside\locations\m_vampire_start\m_vamp ire_start.embryos.loc
• sessions\darkside\ses.kfs\hero.txt

Here are the changes:

V0.2 - 2014-10-11 (thanks to @wyatan, @ckdamascus, and @Ezrekiel for their comments as they were very helpful in me formulating the changes to Bagyr). Note that this version has changes to Bagyr from V0.1, whereas Daert is the same as V0.1.

• m_tristrem_start.embryos.loc
  • Troops that will join Bagyr:
    • 5 Spirit Talkers
    • 1 Veteran Orc
    • 1 Shaman
    • 2 Catapults
    • 3 Orcs
  • Troll Shop:
    • Items (all other items are the same as the unmodded game):
      • 1 Symbol of Valor
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 to 2 Stone Skin
      • 1 to 2 Berserker
      • 1 to 2 random level 1 scrolls of 1 to 2 each
    • Units (Jotuns and Troll are still sold):
      • 5 Spirit Talkers
      • Either: 6 (additional) Spirit Talkers or 2 Catapults
      • 2 Veteran Orcs
      • 3 Shamans
• m_vampire_start.embryos.loc
  • Troops that will join Daert:
    • 2 Female Vampires
    • 2 Cursed Ghosts
• hero.txt
  • Bagyr:
    • Starting Leadership: 250
    • Starting Army:
      • 2 Catapults
      • 3 Orcs
      • 13 Furious Goblins
    • Spells:
      • Trap
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 Animal Call
  • Daert:
    • Starting Army:
      • 1 Necromancer
      • 1 Cursed Ghost
      • 1 Black Knight
    • Spells:
      • Poison Skull
      • Stone Skin
      • Weakness
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 Frost Grasp
      • 1 Kamikaze
      • 1 Evil Book

Good luck and I hope you enjoy playing the newer version if you want to play Bagyr. I'll leave V0.1 up so that people can still play that one if they want.

/C\/C\

Download V0.2 here:

[peshoo]

It seems you understand a lot how to change stuff in the game. Is it possible Neoline top right item slot to be changed from placing only Regalia to Artifact/Regalia, same as Bagyr and Daert.

[Elektra]

Matt - really great, had good fun using this. it remained a challenge whilst did make it doable (gave myself a trap scroll at start, just like using it).

i see that you have a thorough knowledge of the engine - i keep having crashes using the Last Hero spell. i know this has been an issue in the previous installment. any idea how to resolve it?

also, i noted you wrote that you had modded the "My first Alchemy set", making it state the amount of battle done. would be keen to have the same! the code / file would be much appreciated. would it be possible to just automate the rune donation upon reaching 10 battles?

lastly, the dragon eye item on the flying Island - somebody an idea if you need to equip it in order to have the benefit?

much thanks in advance - Elektra

[wyatan]

Originally Posted by Elektra

i see that you have a thorough knowledge of the engine - i keep having crashes using the Last Hero spell. i know this has been an issue in the previous installment. any idea how to resolve it?

No idea how to resolve it (had a quick look at the time through the script files, and nothing stood out as an obvious bug, but at that point I hadn't isolated yet the exact repro steps), but here's how to deal with it when it's cast by an enemy hero:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/289520...9742693482518/

[Matthijs]

Hi Matt - has been some time

about to start a fresh one. would you have any solution available for the last hero bug? it is still there and so annoying to re-do battles.

also, your code on the automated chemical set rune would be much appreciated!

thanks as always - Elektra

[MattCaspermeyer]

Unfortunately, I've been sucked away on another project and I haven't had any time to work on modding any King's Bounty for about the last two months.

Since they are still releasing updates for Ice & Fire, you'd think they'd still be working on fixing bugs in Darkside.

Have you sent in the problem to 1CC? They should hopefully be able to fix the problem (if they aren't aware of it).

It'd be really nice in the Devs could fix these problems...

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by peshoo

It seems you understand a lot how to change stuff in the game. Is it possible Neoline top right item slot to be changed from placing only Regalia to Artifact/Regalia, same as Bagyr and Daert.

It certainly is - just edit HERO.TXT (there is a slots {} heading under each hero - change 5=regalia to 5=regalia,artefact (note that is misspelled with an "e" instead of an "i")).

Originally Posted by Elektra

Matt - really great, had good fun using this. it remained a challenge whilst did make it doable (gave myself a trap scroll at start, just like using it).

Glad you're enjoying it!

I think that's a great scroll for Daert to use at the beginning of the game, where it is actually useful.

Originally Posted by Elektra

see that you have a thorough knowledge of the engine - i keep having crashes using the Last Hero spell. i know this has been an issue in the previous installment. any idea how to resolve it?

This should be resolved by the developers, but I haven't seen any updates from them in a while so who knows if they are going to fix it.

We should probably start another topic on this - unresolved bugs. I actually don't use the spell, but the error is most likely in the LUA files and can be fixed if you can repeat the procedure. In my modding of TL, I ran into all sorts of bugs that I had to use the debugger to fix, but I had to be able to repeat it, otherwise there is way too much guesswork.

If you can repeat the crash then I hope you send the save game file with instructions on how to repeat the crash to the developers to have them fix it.

If, in the end, they don't resolve the problem we can try to fix it ourselves, but once again it relies on a repeatable series of events from a save game.

Originally Posted by Elektra

also, i noted you wrote that you had modded the "My first Alchemy set", making it state the amount of battle done. would be keen to have the same! the code / file would be much appreciated. would it be possible to just automate the rune donation upon reaching 10 battles?

Yah, I mean to open another topic with modding DS where we can post our mods. I actually have it modded now where you don't have to babysit the darn thing and can just cash in for runes when you get back to checking your inventory. I always forget about these items that give something after a certain number of wins and so now when you use it, it just subtracts 10 wins from the total and so long as your totals wins are 10 or more you can keep using it. For example, if you go 24 fights without using it, you can use it twice and then you'll be down to 4 wins and get 2 random runes.

I mean to start a new topic soon, but I've been doing some more modding with my TL H3B mod (just fixing bugs mostly) and need to finish that first. I'll try to do it soon, please be patient...

Originally Posted by Elektra

astly, the dragon eye item on the flying Island - somebody an idea if you need to equip it in order to have the benefit?

much thanks in advance - Elektra

I don't remember that item, but I just looked it up: dragon_eye - it needs to be equipped it looks like.

/C\/C\