Version 6.00 - Monsters rework

[Xaphan]

As you may know, monsters is the part of the mod that I consider the less polished. I want this to change in version 6.00. This is going to be a long and annoying task to do, but once done, it will make the mod way more interresting to play, so it is worth it.

The monsters, as they are now :
- Die quite fast
- Lot of procs, making some skills that hit multiple time proc the same monster many times, often causing "lags"
- Are somehow randomly placed in areas, without any logic
- Have no synergies between thems
- Are, except in act 5, mostly the old LoD monsters

In a single word : boring

It is time to change that ! Here are some ideas I am testing right now :
- They are more resistant
- Many new monsters added, with new capacities in all 5 acts
- Population is more balanced to prevent areas with only melee monsters or only ranged monsters
- Are placed in area with more logic
- Improved Ai's : they now uses their skills instead of procs
- Can buff self or others monsters, or debuff the player, increasing challenge
- Can appear in organised groups : many melee monsters protecting a caster or ranged monster
- Ranged monsters will try to stay ranged from you or can teleport away if you come too close
- They will be more aggressive

Also, the system of Veteran, Champion and Elite monsters will be reworked :
- Some monsters are now always veteran. They are rarer than other monsters but have more skills making thems more challenging
- Champions monsters can now spawn at specific locations of most maps (usually 2-3 per map). They are protected by minions and have a special set of skill
- Elite monsters are very special monsters that are mostly the target of quests, or can be found in special areas. Like champions monsters, they are surounded by minions and have a special set of skills and are even more challenging than champion monsters

And finally, at higher difficulties, monsters will be improved even more :
- They will get extra skills
- They will move, attack, cast, recover and block faster
- They will deal extra damage

The more you progress trough the game, the more you will start to see monster being smarter. At the beggining of the game there is no veteran or higher tiers of monsters, and monsters apear in small groups constitued of the same monster. Later, you start to see veterans and champions, monsters start to work together and they start to get skills. Even later, Elite monsters start to appear, populations of monster become more balanced with melee, ranged and casters, and monsters start to become resistant to some damage.

And while we are speaking of monster resistance...
In normal difficluty, a resistant monster will have 50% resistance to an element. In nightmare difficulty, it will be 70%. In Hell, it's 90%. Also, in nigthmare and hell, all monsters will have 2 resistances, even the ones that had none or only 1 in normal mode.

That's all for now, feel free to tell me what you think, but keep in mind all of this can change. This is mostly ideas for now.

[prodigypm]

Really good Xaphan , love it.Just give back elemental damage to your items and all will be fine. Since most of your items dont have +fire/cold/poison/lightening/magic etc. and "+%" or more "-%" to "X" element,that includes rare quality items.Fighting with most of chars with only 1- maximum 2 elements is a suicide on every level.Except if you play BTH.Keep on grinding those patches and fixes man <3

[Desocupado]

I'll try to help help you with a small search-fu (actually bookmarks)
Annoying monsters
Improving (monster) tactics
Boss Fights
How to make early monster interesting
Monster name generator (might be handy)

Also, the system of Veteran, Champion and Elite monsters will be reworked :
- Some monsters are now always veteran. They are rarer than other monsters but have more skills making thems more challenging
- Champions monsters can now spawn at specific locations of most maps (usually 2-3 per map). They are protected by minions and have a special set of skill
- Elite monsters are very special monsters that are mostly the target of quests, or can be found in special areas. Like champions monsters, they are surrounded by minions and have a special set of skills and are even more challenging than champion monsters.

Some low count monster do make interesting veteran-only - we can look at vanilla's Frozen Horror and the Minotaur. Or even unrevellers.

You can even try something akin to Resident evil 3 Nemesis - a monster that won' stop until you go elsewhere - someone you can't really kill - like an act 5 skeleton with quick revival (no xp, drops or charge and fast revive and big ai distance)
The point is not every monster need to be defeatable. (or worth destroying, like those sand maggots/eggs)

And while we are speaking of monster resistance...
In normal difficulty, a resistant monster will have 50% resistance to an element. In nightmare difficulty, it will be 70%. In Hell, it's 90%. Also, in nigthmare and hell, all monsters will have 2 resistances, even the ones that had none or only 1 in normal mode.

That's all for now, feel free to tell me what you think, but keep in mind all of this can change. This is mostly ideas for now.

That's a big change from nightmare 1/3 damage to hell 1/10 - I suppose it's balanced around vulnerability inflictions.
If your mobs aren't killed in 1-2 shots, even 75% is a lot of resistance.

[Xaphan]

Thanks, will look at theses links

For the resistance parts, every character has a way to reduce monsters resistances somehow. But the main goal here is to make the player use different elements to defeat monsters, and not stick to only 1 (while still not blocking the player completely, inc case of he faces a monster that is resistant to both elements he choosed to play with). All classes have acces to 4 elements by default (2 per mastery). And other way will exist to access all elements later.

[prodigypm]

Thanks, will look at theses links

For the resistance parts, every character has a way to reduce monsters resistances somehow. But the main goal here is to make the player use different elements to defeat monsters, and not stick to only 1 (while still not blocking the player completely, inc case of he faces a monster that is resistant to both elements he choosed to play with). All classes have acces to 4 elements by default (2 per mastery). And other way will exist to access all elements later.

That will be really sweet if it actually happens.Will wait for the next release hope its gonna be better .Until then - Van Helsing Final Cut , Grim Dawn , Titan Quest and CS:GO must cut it.I wish you happy modding friend.

PS.Succubus and Fire Enchanted are not annoying - Thats bullsht (Just adding this up). However "Iron Maiden" can be a hardcore killer for melee chars.

[FPeacee]

Keep it up! This mod will be a contender for the top one day Xaphan!

[nexx]

Although those are all good ideas for stronger monsters, I believe it'd be good to keep at least some of the monsters that cast spells when struck.
In a lot of mods the most gamebreaking skills end up being the ones with tons of multihits, and although these can be balanced to cover less area or have lowered damage, they're often still very strong unless they're nerfed to the point of uselessness. I think monsters that proc spells when hit are probably one of the best ways to give those skills some trouble, provided these are strong enough to have the player react to them if too many stack together.

For example, a light damage proc that spins a no ND blessed hammer at the player's location can be mostly ignored if you don't have a ton of multihits or hit too many of these monsters at once, but if a high multihit skill goes through a pack of these (or even just a few really) the damage would rack up very fast and force the player to get out and treat these monsters differently.

Just a thought I wanted to share, because in general I do agree monsters have to be more resilient to damage, but I think the pace of the game is fast enough that it would benefit from monsters actually dealing significant damage when their attacks do connect. I think the game is more fun when you have to stay on your toes and watch out for certain attacks or enemies because they can easily kill you, even if you also kill them fast.

PS: Before I forget I'd like to add, the amounts of life on kill available are very high. Coagulated blood is super strong, basically putting one of them in any weapon makes it so you can't die- but in general weapons with 25+ life on kill translate to being at maximum life all the time. It's true that life on kill doesn't help against huge damage spikes or single bossfights, but if you want to revamp normal encounters to make the mod more of challenge I'd definitely look into this. The numbers on this affix could be 1/5th of what they are and they'd still be very good .