Current Version: 9.0

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7904 <-- Download Here!

http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_btb.zip <-- Or Download Here!

Development-wise, I'm thinking that the mod is more or less done. As always, if you have any questions or problems, let me know about it here and I should be pretty quick to respond provided that Houston isn't being crushed by one of those blizzards that you damn northerners keep sending us.

BTB I have a couple of suggestions for balancing your "Race" plug-in

First I recommend removing the Nord's Shock resistance I feel it's lore breaking unnecessary and game breaking Nord's should never of had that in the first place besides they get a immunity although to a uncommon element type but still it is a immunity couple that with their beastly TWO greater powers they outclass ever race in close combat situations arguably more solid than the redguards and more versatile than the orcs, I suggest removing one of their greater powers or giving them a fire weakness to compensate.

Second The tower birth sign should only have the detect Key enchantment and the cheap open spell greater power you gave it, I understand you want it to be balance but detect Creature is useless unless you have the MCP 2.0 which allow you to detect NPC's and detect enchantment doesn't make since to me since the description of the tower birth-sign in the book the firmament says The Tower is one of the Thief's Charges and its Season is Frostfall. Those born under the sign of the Tower have a knack for finding gold and can open locks of all kinds. .

third for the apprentice birthsign I am currently playing a breton mage (still outclasses altmer even with your mod changes.) the wizard brand by level 12 the power is useless I would recommend removing the power and just give the apprentice it's 1.5x int and be done with it, wizard brand even with the highest sound effect mage characters are so scarce and daedra would kill a mage character in two hits if it comes close enough it doesn't even matter, the shock damagel is nice but it is hardly anything substantial that will save you ass in those tough situations since most of those "tough" situations happen in high levels were ash creatures are [censored] you in your ass and daedra don't even get me started.

I did more calcs and I found your mage birth-sign blatantly outclass every magicka birth-sign in every way possible look at these specs I did it assuming it's on a none magic race and it's max level, and also that 20+ intelligence makes doing Alchemy, Conjuration, and lock picking easy in higher levels.

Mage: 1.0x120=240 magicka

Apprentice: 1.0x100= 200 magicka

Atronarch: 1.0x100= 200 magicka

I am bored but I have more suggestions coming up stay tune for part two BTB you might even learn something.

some things RRR said also came to my mind a while ago.
however, the race and settings plugin were the two i adjusted the most for my own game (basically restoring stat and skill bonuses, but raising the required skill progresses to 15 for a new level to scale down the max level from 70-80 to about 50, which works very well, because you stay low-leveled for quite some time)

to add to the ideas:
the atronach is still too powerful in my opinion. as long as there is no natural magicka regeneration, even at the slightest rate (i included the wp-based magicka reg by Assman), you don't have that big a difference between stunted and not stunted magicka (as restore magicka potions are still cheap as you get levels, even with economy adjustment plugins).
i solved the problem by adding a weakness to magicka. this makes sense to me: if magic attacks come through, they hit very hard. that's why atronachs developed absorption at all.

the magicka bonus - thing is balanced in my game, because i raised the natural magicka-multiplier from 1.0 to 2.0. so a normal nonmagicka-race without a magicka-birthsign would have twice its intelligence as magicka. that felt very natural in my last playthrough (although i had atronach in addition to that), i constantly ran out of magicka in the first part of the game and as i got stronger i could cast all the convenience stuff i wanted. notice that my character was a stealth character (yes, there are people playing this kind of character ), so no mage nor a pure fighter type with illusion as a minor skill (very necessary for night eye in a TLM (the lighting mod) game without the scripted sneak-nighteye-bonus plugin, which i find most unrealistic).

i also found that block skill is quite an agony to raise (ok, depends on playstyle maybe, as i sneakattacked most of the enemies or used marksman, but even in close combat it wouldn't really go up. in the end, i was about lvl37 and the block skill as a minor skill was still in its 40s, with some minor skills already hitting the ceiling). i modified the block range from 25% least to 75% the most and made it easier to increase for the next playthrough. this also means that shieldfighters are more of a challange as enemies, as they will more constantly block your own melee attacks, which is a nice addition

so what else? there is some more, but i can't remember right now


today was my datamining exam and i made it! i'm so happy.
so now i have some spare time to work on my D2-sound makeover...



i prefer trap assassins
with infinity, too (who needs insight? O_o)
she was so powerful, can't really get the point in hammerdins as she was much much stronger and tougher (tested both of them for quite some time).

i can tell you that the insight-soundeffect is the new "restore magicka"-sound (so some match in that).
the infinity (conviction) sound is... um... let me look it up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvu4KTaZAPo, which was very useful during the soundeffect-picking-process...
ah... conviction-sound is the new resist magicka sound (so no match here...)

i hope this was not too far off topic...

Trapsin s a nice char but a bit slow on killing speed, so is hammerdin hehehe. ES sorcs need insight and pretty much everything else on the manaregen side to survive due to bugs in D2. Sure, she looks unkillable and can tank everything. But the sad truth it, every mob can be Manaburn, and so every mob can potentially two-shot a ES sorc. No problem on lvl90, but take lvl98 and she just cant afford to be hit by anyone, even in Nightmare if its >1ppl. ES sorcs are pretty crappy, but lots of fun. There are not many things more rewarding then cleaning a room full of frenzied moonlords, while everyone else is hiding in town. Or leave her standing in a 8ppl cows crowd and go drink tea.

ontopic, to prevent post deletion:

cool! d2 sounds! BTB!

Given that Nords are my character type of choice (owing in no small part to my own Scandinavian heritage), I'd be remiss if I didn't say I was at least somewhat biased. But I'll try to explain, anyways.

Of the three warrior-type races, Redgaurds are the most offensive of the bunch (due to Adrenaline Rush), and Orcs are the most defensive... or at least, they're meant to be. I imagine that Woad combined with the two elemental resistances probably make Nords more suited to that role in the long run.

I suppose I could kick the frost immunity down to a 75% resistance.



Well, I spam the hell out of the MCP in my mod's readme, so anyone who is using my mod had damn well better be using it.

And the logical connection I made of the power to the lore is that enchanted stuff generally tends to be worth a lot of gold. Not much, but it's better than the game originally did.



Well, the intended benefit of the Mage is that you get more magicka in the long run from it than the Apprentice and the Atronach. Whether or not the Wizard's Brand power stands up to The Mage in the long run is a debatable point (though I'd likely agree with you). As for the Atronach, the fact that I was unwilling to nerf it is one of the telltale signs that this was the very first plugin from my mod. I was just getting my feet wet, and so I certainly wasn't about to get rid of the one birthsign that everybody and their damn dog uses. Rather, I tried to make all of the other ones just as useful (again, whether or not I succeeded is debatable).



Yeah, I think playstyle does come into play here. I find that my block skill raises quite fine on its own.

Speaking of Nord racials I think you went really overboard with Thunder Fist

shock damage 25-50, 25 ft on touch (instead of frost damage 25)
blind 25-50 for 60, 25 ft on touch (new effect)

its almost like console cheat, especially on low levels. Also with MCP future "NPC AI Casts Zero Cost Powers" every Nord npc will basicly one shot me unless I'm level 10+ ?

Well, what about compared to the *other* racial powers?

In this case, the balance issue is due to the Zero Cost patch rather than the powers themselves. Just wait until an Argonian uses Black Death on your ***. :3

You can look at racial powers from two points of view, player characters and player vs NPCs if you are using "NPC AI Casts Zero Cost Powers" (really cool future imo).

From player PoV nly Thunder Fist seems to be overpowered, especially aoe component of it, rest is nicely balanced. Redguards and Orc powers were righteously nerfed.

From Player vs NPC PoV :Thunder Fist and Imperial Star of the West will one-shot low level chars. Maybe their damage components could be turned in to dot like Argonian power.



I know, playing with that is really hardcoe, at least Black Death can be countered with potions at lower levels.

I still hope you'll consider ( or repent :verymad: for that matter ) and make self-made-brew ring some coins.

I understand your reasoning concerning balance, but there has to be some kind of trade off and reward for hard working (brewing) Alchemists.

If not the standard or beginner potions, then at least the quality ones, if player advances enough!


RepenT! :bowdown:

:biggrin:

Seconded!

well, if it's so important to you, you can always change something on your own (and for yourself!) in the construction set i do that as well wherever i'm not with the original modder...

which brings me to telekinesis.
i found it a little, well... disappointing, both the first time i looked into the unmodded game to find out that you can't push enemies or something with it, and then again when BTB killed the reach of the spell.
i can very well imagine magical adepts thieving around with telekinesis. a better solution than reducing the reach would be some machanism that lets npcs notice when you're telethieving on them (though, to get that working would mean some effort i guess...)

@Alchemy:
Yeah, I'm also not that happy about the way alchemy is handled.

If I understood correctly, self brewed potions get (a lot of) negative side effects. Imho it would make more sense, to eliminate side effects of more advanced potions and keep the value low.

Aye. I'd like to point out that, even without my changes, the AI powers thing kinda svcks. Consider that Dark Elves are the most common NPCs you'll encounter and that they have a power that gives them Sanctuary 50 for 60 seconds. Now think about how many of your hits are whiffs to *begin* with.




Well, bear in mind that I balanced the magnitude, range, and duration of the spell versus the cost of creating a similar spell yourself. The long duration and high range are specifically to make it more useful than anything you can whip up on your own.



Really? How do you figure?

Redguards I can kinda see, but I made Berserk much more useful than before, I think.




Yeah, but some perspective can be added by the fact that my level-one Nord also one-shots low level chars with her regular weapon.

25-50 damage isn't really a whole lot, particularly when it's tied to a once-per-day power.

But, again, I'm sensing that the true motivation behind this is wanting to play with the "AI casts powers" fix from the MCP. And for that, all I can say is that, again, i wouldn't recommend it with or without my mod.





I've looked into this several times in the past, and I always reach the same conclusion that there's not an inch I can give without it turning into a mile. As long as cheap, restocking ingredients from vendors exist, there's no way to turn this back on without it being a balance nightmare.



Yeah, Telekinesis sort of falls into the same boat as self-made potion values in that there's really not much i can do with it except turn it off (almost). I've said it before and I'll say it again: stealth just does not work very well in this game.

Funny you should mention the whole "NPC's noticing their possessions flying away in front of their eyes" thing, though, since Fliggerty actually does have a mod for a somewhat more "realistic" telekinesis effect where stuff does actually fly toward you instead of magically appearing in your hands. Needless to say, it makes the fact that NPC's don't see it *much* more jarring.



I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting, because it sounds like what my mod already does. Please clarify.

I thought that you get almost nothing, if you sell them AND that there are a lot of negativ sideeffects.

I actually haven't tried to brew a potion, but after reading your ReadMe it doesn't sound worth trying.

To sum it up:
I think it's a good idea not to become instant-rich through selling potions, but in return the shouldn't have (serious) negative sideeffects.

I for one think the potions are well balanced. The early ones are short and weak. I just brewed one that restored my Fatigue, but left me rooted in the spot. :hubbahubba:

It's great i think. Well redefined potions should be reserved for the masters of the trade!

yes, and i very well understand the balance issue. i just think the spell was goofed in the first place, and i'm not too happy with it. with that name i was expecting something more



oh, cool, didn't know that. will check it out.


and:
thank you for your edited version of the area effect projectiles
both the errors during cell load are gone and the particles show up on the arrows.
next time you can save yourself some time and just ask me for the plugin files, as those are pretty much the edits i did on my own when i was writing about it
(i only posted a comment on pes to tell you "here, i already did it" instead of "please make a compatibility update for me, i'm too stupid/lazy to do it" )
hm... okay, maybe this was an "i don't trust you enough and want to do it myself". i understand that, on second thought...
anyway, works fine now and i think the particles are a nice add to any game

Yeah, it was one of those things that I just had to do for myself. Sort of like getting married, except in this case it doesn't take me nine months to figure out how badly I [censored] up.

sounds bitter. i hope you're ok?

@BTB you could just lower the success rate for alchemy and lower the value of self made potions from vanilla by a little that will make alchemy have sort of a realism to it it and it will be balance since most people will fail until they max the skill which would take a long time with your modifications.

'eh, I'll live.

I could go for a nice Swedish redhead right now, though.



Actually, it was brought to my attention that anything with a value of zero is just as exploitable... meaning that I do need to think of a new way to approach this problem.

hm, i don't have any in stock right now if there's anything else i can do... ?


@topic
the dwarven darts from bamz-amschend are a bit too powerful, me thinks. i recently faced almalexia and deliberately didn't use the darts and switched to trueflame, because this way the battle was more of a challenge
just imagine: the enchanted sword of a legendary war hero, recovered through endless efforts during the main quest line, is total crap compared to regular darts dropping from regular opponents.

and these darts are sort of restocking as well! just farm for them in bamz amschend. i wasn't too happy about the black dart gang darts as well, but at least you only get your hands on a limited number of those.

maybe we could do something about it?
my concern is that the centurion archers would be even less of a challenge than before if just the dart damage was scaled down (or does weapon damage not influence damage output with creatures?)

note to myself:
hm... maybe i should just halve the hitpoints for endurance in talrivian's script to balance the game beyond lvl20...

Maybe you should give them shock spells powerful ones with low cost in order to compensate for those weak darts or just to be gay give them regeneration and [censored]loads of hp.

good idea.
or how about raising creature hp in general, for as soon as you get trueflame/hopesfire, the game is over combatwise. the only challenge left would be the hands of almalexia (which my character would never think of killing - let them wait for their goddess until blo*dy eternity).
even morrowind advanced doesn't change that.

Stupid Question ahead!

How am I supposed to recharge enchanted items? :shame: