Improved Anvil 6.6 BETA Options

[SparrowJacek]

Hello, as you could see from my activity on the forums, I've been working on Cleric rebalancing for the past few months. Finally I have enough changes, that they can be presented to players and make your experience with Clerics different.

But before I present the changes, I need to emphasize, that because of not enough time in our team, the chances that I prepared were only superficially tested. Only extensive tests would enable us to catch some less obvious mistakes and strange behaviors of new/reworked content. We are sorry for that, as we know that's an inconvenience to players. That's why this version is labeled as BETA. We hope, that you will install the mod anyway and if you can, then please report any bugs or issues to us, this will be your contribution to ensuring the quality of the next official release.
Sadly I am not skilled enough to ensure that no bugs will be present and since we have not enough data, we can't also objectively say if the changes that are introduced in BETA v6.6 are balanced, if you find them too overpowered, then let us know, or if you think they're too underwhelming, please share your thoughts on how to improve those skills/spells

The current release of v6.6_BETA can be downloaded from this link
https://github.com/SparrowJacek/ImprovedAnv...es/tag/6.6_BETA

If you want to get the newest version with all newly found bugs fixed, please download it from my Github repository:
https://github.com/SparrowJacek/ImprovedAnv...v7_beta_changes
You can download zip with all the changes by clicking "<> Code" button and then "Download ZIP"

And finally here's the general list of the biggest changes:
Changes made for IA 6.6:
1. Defensive harmony cast by a cleric kit gives additional 2/3/4% DR at levels 12/18/24 to party members, each party member affected gives similar boost to caster, so max 20%DR, this works by casting a spell lasting 6 seconds each 6 seconds, so keep a tight formation to get the benefits!
2. Divine Intervention - new HLA, works as Greater Restoration for whole party, doesn't trigger fatigue, can be taken 2 times by all clerics (it's an ability)
3. Greater Restoration is now single target spell, as per its description, to me it made no sense that Clerics can use a ranged full heal for whole party as 7th level spell and Druids get a single target spell as a HLA
4. Heavenly Shield - new 6th level spell, each round your first hit deals additional damage if you wear a shield, damage increases when you have more points into Sword and Shield, available for all Clerics
5. Hold Undead - Priest of Lathander spell, it slows down undead for 3 rounds (by 50 or 100% depending on saving throw) and decreases their resistance to slashing and crushing
6. Protective Chant - new 5th level spell, AoE, fast cast, for 1 round increases MDR by 50 or 75%, only for kits
7. Guardian Angel - new 6th level spell, each time you take damage, you regenerate for 4/6/8 HP, only for kits
8. Spiritual Link - new 7th level spell, decreases max time to cast spell to 7/6/5/4 at 14/18/22/26 lvl, prevents all other forms of decreasing casting, only for kits
9. Spare the Dying - new 7th level spell, protects from dying for 1 hit, after which it is dispelled when dispelled that way, for 10 seconds prevents chunking, only for kits
10. Purify Aura - new HLA, instantly cleanses aura, has delay, which decreases with levels, at lvl30 no delay, can be taken 3 times, only for kits
11. Demon Hunter - new 5th level spell, AoE, gives thaco/dmg against demons, gives 10%chance per hit to increase demon chance of critical miss by 1 for 2rounds, demons affected by this spell get +1 to critical miss and if they critically miss, they suffer 10magical dmg, available for all Clerics
12. False Dawn - works only against vampires/mists, deals 6-24dmg, bypassing magic resistance and fire resistance
13. Bolt of Glory - if hits demons, then decreases their magic damage resistance by 40% for the impact
14. Sunray - if hits undead, reduces their fire resistance by 25% for the impact, does nothing if enemy has fire resistance higher than 100
15. Weaken Undead - reworked Repulse Undead, bypasses Magic Resistance, reduces chance of Critical Hit by 1 and damage dealt by 10%
16. Strength of One - does nothing if character has higher str than 18/75
17. Holy Power - does not decrease strength if already higher
18. Blade Barrier - does not hit allies (done only for that version available to party)
19. Boon of Lathander - increased dmg/thaco to 2 from level 10
20. Cause Serious/Critical Wounds spells are drastically improved and reworked, please read the description for details
21. DUHM cast by Lathander is undispellable and lasts 90s
22. Holy Power cast by Tempus is undispellable and gives 1/2APR from lvl 12 and 1APR from lvl 20
23. Righteous Magic cast by Tempus is undispellable
24. Summon Animals spells from levels 4-6 are not available to Clerics now
25. Bless duration increased to 1 turn
26. Aid spell from level 15 works as an area spell
27. Seeking Sword is reworked to improve with levels, its disadvantage is now that it can't be used with another weapon (though it can be with shields) and it decreases caster level
28. Priest of Helm gets * in Long Swords at lvl 1 and gets a HLA which increases it to **
29. Holy Bracers are now available to Clerics
30. All Clerics can get ** in Sword and Shield, Tyr can get ***
31. Sword and Shield reworked to add -1 AC and -1 AC against arrows per *, instead of just -2 against arrows
32. Divine Favor duration increased to 6rounds
33. Priest of Talos gets Purify Aura ability at levels 5/15/25
34. Priest of Talos casts Spiritual Link with better result, his spells casting duration is reduced to 6/5/4/3
35. Fully reworked Shaman class with its own abilities and new spells
36. Slightly improved Irenicus' dungeon
37. New recipe for Keldorn's armor
38. New item upgrade designed for Barbarians - Stained in Blood chain mail

This post has been edited by SparrowJacek: Dec 18 2022, 07:37 PM

[SparrowJacek]

Hi Badgerlad, it's great to see you're back

to answer your questions:

- Is Shaman considered a druid when it comes to item limitations, strongholdwise and such

Critto will have to say for sure, but Extended Druid Stronghold should be available for all Druids and Shamans, so maybe Shaman is already treated as a a Druid for most logical checks in v6.6_BETA

- Did you introduce new items (shaman-specifics notably) ?

At the moment there are very few new items, IIRC we have some new recipes, which are also present in Items section of the readme. We've reworked Keldorn's armor(that's v6.6_BETA stuff, not 6.5 right?) and added a new chain mail for Barbarians that can be forged. As for extended Druid/Shaman items, I'm not sure whether they are accessible before V7.

or will it come in v7 only ?

No, that's v7 stuff. Apart from Shaman rebalancing and some smaller changes or bugfixes, version 6.6_BETA does not cover any major parts of Extended Druid Stronghold quest to my knowledge.

Started a run yesterday with a shaman protagonist and Anomen tweaked into priest of helm (instead of generic).

I'm curious as to what party composition will you use

I'll report bugs I find (if i do) in another thread

Amazing, thank you!

This post has been edited by SparrowJacek: Dec 12 2022, 03:09 PM

[Badgerlad]

I'm curious as to what party composition will you use

Eventually itll probably look like :
Shaman protagonist
Anomen (he's a ranger > priest of helm so he can ironskin)
Minsc (tweaked berserker)
Neera (I almost always run with a solo arcane on IA)
Imoen ( tweaked kensaï)
Korgan DD

I believe the kited priest + shaman combo can support a melee party fairly well, but I'm also quite worried about dragon fights silences.
By the way, the shaman healing power early on is insane thanks to the mending thing. Minsc could litteraly facetank the Suna Seni fight VERY early on.

EDIT after some early IAish fights (Slavers, TorGal, Windspear full dungeon...) :
The healing from shaman REALLY makes a difference. Never felt so safe in IA, we shall see about later stages of the game. A fight I can't wait to try with such a healer is the kobold crystal in Spellhold.

As for clerics, Anomen is a beast right now. The no friendly fire Blade Barrier is quite a thing, and all these goodies you guys added to the cleric kits feels like it should always have been this way. It really makes them distinct from druids in a good way.



This post has been edited by Badgerlad: Dec 13 2022, 12:10 AM