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| Salt & Sanctuary Pax Empyrean's Balance Overhaul | |
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| General | |
| Author | Pax Empyrean |
| Type | Game Hacks |
| Version | 1.07 |
| License | Mixed |
| Last Updated | 2019/09/04 |
| Links | |
| Download | |
| Website | |
This is a PS Vita conversion of Pax Empyrean's Balance Mod.
Everything scales much more smoothly, consistently, and intuitively. Bows & daggers ain't crap anymore. Heavy armor is now worth a damn. Shields are awesome too. Fashion Salts™ is now a thing. Twisted Heart & Drowned Tome now farmable. Amber Idols less scarce. Spells & prayers reviewed. Carsejaw no longer sucks (so bad).
Weapon/Armor/Shields/Spells spreadsheet for the official version 1.08 can be found here.
Installation
You need to have rePatch plugin installed on your Vita.
To install the mod, copy the PCSE01023 folder to ux0:rePatch/.
Note: Most changes to weapon attributes do not require creating a new character or reacquiring weapons, but changes to weapon upgrade progression rates will not be retroactively applied to existing weapons with upgrades. You will, at the very least, need to acquire new copies of upgraded weapons when you first install this mod in order to have the correct attributes.
Changelog
v1.07
Weapon changes as follows:
- Removed dual attribute scaling. This lowers potential player damage output. Heavy weapons (+8 or +16 weight) have had their additional weight removed and their damage brought down to typical levels. Fast rolling poison builds are now possible without getting into NG+. Changes to the way buffs are handled mean that Wisdom and Magic builds are still just as strong with one attribute as they were before with two, and elemental weapons for Dexterity and Strength get double the effect from item buffs.
- Weapon class weight tweaks. Spears and axes now weigh 4 instead of 6. Maces weigh 6 instead of 8.
- Tier 5 weapons that required one higher tier to use one handed have been moved down to tier 4.
- Shikeimaru and Wraithclaw have been changed from Lightning to Arcane damage. They now have good interactions with Arcane Weapon; double the effect compared to before the last patch.
- Fire and Lightning weapons are moved out of Magic and now scale with Strength or Dexterity instead. All of these weapons have the following properties: high tier (either 4 or 5), double base damage, low starting damage with high upgrade modifiers (comparable to low tier weapons), and lower stat scaling. The effect of these different changes altogether is to give them roughly comparable damage to non-elemental weapons as your stats and upgrades progress, but have double the effect from using their corresponding fire and lightning damage buffs. This makes them comparable to Divine Blessed Weapon. This helps creeds that have access to these elemental buffs (Iron Ones and The Three), as well as increasing the damage type availability for Strength and Dexterity builds even though at best only 50% of the total damage will be elemental. The cost of lightning and fire buff consumables has been increased from 500 to 1000 to incentivize the creed items rather than just using consumables all the time.
- Poison weapons adjusted to keep from going crazy with the latest patch changes. The boost to Pessmud and Venom Blade to multiply off of both their base poison damage and their base physical damage means I can give them base damage levels comparable to other weapons. Wonky poison damage interaction with Dexterity is worked around by giving poison weapons an upgrade profile comparable to higher tier weapons, otherwise they are garbage at low Dexterity.
- Boss poison resistances have been increased. The extra time it takes for poison to do its full damage isn't a meaningful drawback against bosses. Poison is still excellent against bosses, but not quite so overpowering.
- Monster body part drops reduced. They're at 250% of what they were in vanilla instead of being guaranteed.
- Switched Bound Arrox and Saltfin Creature high level drops. Added high end Drowned upgrade components to Alkymancery Knights, along with Gray Pearls.
- Added very minor focus costs to Ray of Searing, Sprites, and Flame Orbiters. They're still super cheap, but no longer completely free. Reduced focus cost of Sacred Linen.
v1.06
- Updated weapon, shield, and armor descriptions to include special abilities, listed before the item description. Abilities with "(cosmetic)" listed next to them offer a small (<5%) damage bonus to compensate for being useless.
- More weapon adjustments. Mechanically, it's mostly small changes. As always, the spreadsheet has the latest stats as well as the previous version for comparison purposes.
- Starting class adjustments. The loadout of the main classes (Knight, Paladin, Hunter, Thief, Mage, Cleric) has been adjusted to fit within specific weight constraints, and starting armor sets are designed for usefulness for their corresponding play styles. The gear is the same, but the item stats are different. The Knight and Paladin can just barely mid-roll in their starting armor if they remove their shields. This makes for a noticeable difference in how the very early game plays. The v1.05 notes on gear are out of date with these changes.
- Carsejaw the Cruel has had his health increased from 1250 to 2000. He was a pushover for how late in the game he appears.
- Shield weights have been reduced again. This time it's just a flat -1 across the board, which helps lighter shields more than heavier ones. Shields that have special abilities have had them listed in their item descriptions, but I haven't done much on that front this time.
- Armor overhaul. This was my major focus with this release. There are four main changes to armor:
- First, armor no longer benefits from upgrades at the blacksmith; it's as good as it gets right from the start. You can still upgrade it, but it doesn't do anything. Shield upgrades are unchanged. This should let you switch out armor as you play the game and increase your Endurance, without worrying about farming upgrades.
- Second, armor protection is equalized across all damage types, with a few thematic exceptions that have the chest piece give +40 armor against a specific element mentioned as a special ability in their item descriptions.
- Third, protection is a function of weight, scaling linearly. Each 1 weight gives 12 points distributed between protection and balance, depending on the armor type (light armor gives no balance, heavy armor gives a mix of protection and balance that varies depending on the set). Due to the way Salt and Sanctuary's damage and armor formula works, you can look at each 1 weight of light armor as giving you a 6% increase to your base health, and 1 weight of heavy armor giving about 4% on average, plus balance. Heavy armor still provides more protection due to its higher weight, and only heavy armor provides balance. The light armors range from about 4 to about 17 in weight, while heavy armor sets range from about 16 to 44 weight for complete sets. This is a substantial reduction; at 50 Endurance you should be able to mid-roll in any armor set in the game, and fast roll in any of the light armor sets, all while carrying a respectable weapon/shield loadout. Protection values for the strongest and heaviest armors are comparable to fully upgraded heavy armors in vanilla, although a few sets have been boosted to increase max-weight armor choice.
- Fourth, many sets of armor have been given special abilities, listed in their item descriptions. Special abilities come at a cost: pieces of armor with special abilities offer less protection than armor pieces that don't have special abilities. Stat bonuses cost 1 extra weight for +3 to a stat, while other abilities like increased stamina regeneration or fast rolling cost 2 extra weight. As a rule of thumb, use armor with stat bonuses if you can spare the weight, but only pick up other special abilities to cover things you don't yet have rings for or if you've used all your ring slots already. There are a few other changes made to armor, mostly shuffling some skill requirements around. For example, the Blacksmith set now requires Light Armor 2 so using it at least requires a small investment instead of just being a freebie against every fire boss. All of these special abilities are listed in the item descriptions, and as always the spreadsheet has the data on everything for planning and comparison purposes, including data on complete sets in weight, armor, damage reduction, and balance.
- As a last thing, the developers mentioned on their Discord that they plan to release one more language patch. If it's like the last one, it will break my mod and the tools I used to unpack/repack the game files. I recommend making a backup of your entire Salt and Sanctuary folder so you can continue to play the game on the older version after the patch hits.
v1.05
- Weapon adjustments. Reduced weight of non-Strength heavy weapons. Weapons with mechanically irrelevant special abilities (charm move, chain whip) have slightly increased damage to compensate. Check the spreadsheet for weapon specifics.
- Poison rework. All poison weapons have higher weight than non-poison weapons and scale exclusively with Dexterity, but less weight than they had before. Poison weapon damage reduced from v1.04 values, but the v1.05 update to the Monster mod reduces poison resistance as well so it should trigger the effect after two hits against any normal enemy or four hits against bosses. Poison values adjusted so that when fully upgraded, poison weapons do 50% as much damage as normal weapons on the initial hit, with the poison effect matching regular weapons at ~10 seconds after the poison takes effect and surpassing them by ~50% by the time the poison wears off at ~20 seconds after the poison takes effect. Compared to v1.04, poison weapons are weaker against bosses and stronger against normal enemies, pessmud and venomous blade are better, and wraithfangs are better. Stone Roots should finally be as good as Splendor or Betrayers throughout the game now.
- Corrected ammunition prices. For realsies this time. These had been modified in an early version of the mod, but I missed the changes when I had to remake it for Salt and Sanctuary v1.0.0.7. They're cheaper now.
- Added special abilities to the equipment that Knights, Mages, Paladins, Thieves, Clerics, and Hunters start with in order to make it more useful. This should help make initial class selection more meaningful. Changes are as follows:
- Knight: Varangian Spatha now scales primarily with Strength. Armor set boosts Endurance. Escutcheon boosts Stamina regeneration.
- Mage: Chest duplicates Storm Ring. Gloves duplicate Crystalmoat Ring. Boots duplicate Conduit of Mind.
- Paladin: Armor set boosts Strength. Palatine Shield reduces wounding.
- Thief: Head boosts salt find. Chest boosts stamina regeneration. Gloves boost gold find. Boots boost fast roll.
- Cleric: Armor set boosts Willpower. Shield grants HP regeneration.
- Hunter: Head boosts attack. Armor set boosts Endurance.
- Other special abilities added to armor sets. Beggar's set and Chain set boost Endurance. Guide's set boosts Willpower.
v1.04
- Mod is now compatible with Salt and Sanctuary v1.0.0.7.
- All shields offer 100% physical damage reduction at 50% less weight. This is just a lazy first pass because shields weighed too much and any shield that didn't block 100% physical was kinda garbage unless it was a specific elemental counter like the Phoenix Rondache. I'll give shields a more thorough rebalancing (including some special abilities) later.
- For those who don't want to spare any weight for armor but don't want to run around naked either, the Cotton Shirt has had all weight and protection removed. Mechanically it's the same as wearing nothing, but now at least you don't look like you got shipwrecked in the middle of an episode of COPS.
v1.03
- First half of the planned armor overhaul. Armor chest pieces have double their original weight and double their original protection values. The weight and protection values on non-chest armor pieces have been set to 0, making them a cosmetic option only (with the exception of pieces that grant a stat bonus or special ability, which have a weight of 1.5).
- The bonus for upgrading armor has been slightly improved so that at level VII they have double their original values rather than +95%.
- The combination of these two changes means that compared to wearing a level VII full set, wearing a level VII chest piece offers ~11% less protection for ~13% less weight, with a lot more cosmetic choices available for the non-chest armors and less farming required to keep your armor upgraded since only one piece matters.
v1.02
- Cut the initial damage of tier 0 and tier 1 weapons by half, increased upgrade factor so they match other weapons at level VII.
- Increased the initial damage of tier 4 and tier 5 weapons by half, decreased upgrade factor so they match other weapons at level VII.
- Decreased damage of most poleaxe and reaper class weapons. Their damage model was based on their normal attack speed, which is substantially improved by using their special combos. Their damage per hit is now comparable to spears.
- Increased damage of the Tainted Ranseur. Slow Hitter has an unexpectedly large effect on polearms, which has now been properly compensated for.
- Decreased damage of the Jaws of Death and Northern Cross. Their damage with most attacks is ~20% lower than other greatswords, while their two handed strong attack outperforms greatswords by a similar margin.
- Reworked magic system. Wisdom scaling foci weren't fully functional and have been reverted back to Magic scaling. Spell attack power is lower, and spell focus costs have been overhauled. A small selection of lower powered spells now cost no focus to cast: Flashfire, Dark Arrows, and Flame Orbiters. For prayers, Ray of Searing and Sprites now cost nothing to cast, while Light and Cleanse have had their costs reduced.
- All items with transmutation costs of 100,000 salt have been reduced to 35,000 salt.
v1.01
- Adjusted cost of ammunition. Standard arrows, bolts, and shot cost 10. Special elemental versions all cost 30.
- Fixed a bug with the Mosaic Culverin. It now requires Marksman 2 and Magic User 4.
v1.0