bribing chance is based off of mercantile skill, but raises speechcraft. a well documented shortcoming of the vanilla game.

Well, I just got done writing all of the update documentation for my mod and making the necessary changes to the plugins. Like I said before, I can't actually test it until I get off shift for the week... but I'm tempted to post the update so that someone else can possibly do so.

A question about the cooldown, by the by: does it affect the use of *any* enchanted item, or just the one in question? Because in the case of the latter, you could work around it just by rotating it out for another one.

Also... is it possible for the sneak attack damage multiplier to change based on the weapon type? It would be nice to allow short blades to do much more damage via a sneak attack than, say, an axe.

here's your answer BTB.

not sure about weapon types besides missile and melee, but it does seem like a good idea.

Oh. Seems I missed that part somehow >.<

To everyone, I would like to have this version tested and released within two weeks. If anyone is available to spend some time testing the new features and checking there are no missing features, bugs or exploits, and that the documentation explains things well, it can contribute to a bug free release.

Features that still need reviewing:

On-use ring smart equip
Enchanted item rebalance
Potion name bugfix
Spellmaker/enchant edit effect fix
Allow scroll enchant price modifier

I'll do my very best. RL is a bit pressing ATM though. Probably won't be able to mess with the potions much as I never seem to do any alchemy.

My RL is not tight atm and I do like to do some alchemy with my character, so I can do some testing about the potion name bug.

i dont use any of the other functions, but i have yet to encounter the potion bug after 2-300 potion attempts. i'll activate scroll price fix next time i play today or tomorrow.

Oh, on another sound related note; Is there any way to soften the way placed sounds suddenly cut out? A slow fade or something? Its most obvious with the water lapping noise, but I'm sure crops up in other places. Or is it a cell change issue?

Just curious, does the enchant cooldown apply to weapons with "cast when strikes" or just "cast when used" items?

Unfortunately I can't test right now, but I might be able to do some before the deadline. So long, and thanks for all the fix.

Hello, Hrnchamd!

I've tested beta on Russian edition, everything works smoothly, except maybe enchanted item cooldown, but it depends on tastes:

1. Should it work on cast-on-strike items? It is rather unfair to have 4 second cooldown on fast short blades and the same 4 seconds on super-heavy-four-handed-god-given-battlehammer...
2. It seems that cooldown starts from the game load, so you can't use any item right after loading. Is it intended to work that way?

Your work is still tremendous, I have to say.

Also, an idea for the full version of 1.9. Is it possible to remove a possibility of adding "cast when strikes" effect from bows&crossbows enhanting? It's useless. Or maybe you can make it work as intended?


P.S.
I'm still puzzled with Mercantile logic. With your "mercantile fix", old bug disappeared and "player-buys-from-NPC" prices are making sense, but a sell price is incredibly low.
For example we have an item with 14000 base price:

With 5 Mercantile skill:
Sell to NPC with 50 Merc - 4251
Buy from NPC with 50 Merc - 16705 - great, it's bigger than the base price, but not significantly
Sell to NPC with 120 Merc - 2187
Buy from NPC with 120 Merc - 18812 - great, it's bigger and we losing more than 4000 thousand because we're lacking skills!

With 55 Mercantile skill:
Sell to NPC 50 Merc - 6440 - WTF???
Buy from NPC 50 Mrc - 14516 - great, it's almost equal to base price when trader have the same skill as we have!!!
Sell to NPC 120 Mrc - 4375
Buy from NPC 120 Mrc - 16581 - great, it's still bigger than the base price.

With 105 Mercantile skill:
Sell to NPC 50 Mrc - 8408 - WTF???
Buy from NPC 50 Mrc - 12547 - great, it's lower than the base, because our skill is better
Sell to NPC 120 Mrc - 6343
Buy from NPC 120 Mrc - 14612 - great, it's almost equal to base price when trader have the same skill as we have.

So, buying price is precise in most situations. But the selling price makes no sense. Why in the hell we should sell 14000 item for 8408 when we are considerably better trader?
Is there any chance to change the formula for these calculations?


P.P.S. Limit the potion stacking to 4-5 potions! Please!

Thanks!

You mean when drinking potions? NO, thanks. Or make it optional, at least. MCP is more about fixing bugs anyway, not adding/removing features. That area belong to mods.

BTW, I've a little request/s, I hope it's in time for 1.9 (if not already fixed on it...). Constant-effect Feather enchantments doesn't seems to work correctly on any companion featuring the "Companion share" option. Or better said, it works inconsistently. It works as soon as you equip the companion with the CE item and leave him be, and stops working as soon as you add something else to his inventory, or if you reload the save / game.

Something similar happens with torches. The companion stops wielding a lit one as soon as you add something to his inventory, and he doesn't wield them again until you change the area(?), or reload.

A couple of things...

One, every part of the MCP is optional.

Two, the MCP isn't just about fixing bugs, but its about making changes that *can't* be made by mods and involve editing the game's source code directly. Several such changes exist already, most notably all of the enchantment balances.

Three, a potion limit is one of the most-requested changes as of late, particularly since many recent attempts to accomplish it via mods have (apparently) failed.

It's not just Feather, most of the constant effect enchantments don't work correctly on companions. There was a discussion about it recently...can't seem to remember in what thread though.

I think you're right...I've just remembered that long ago I equipped a Fire Shield item to a companion, and the effect wasn't always present. I always wondered why...

A couple of things...

-The MCP does have a fix that makes the in-game map "chunky instead of smoothed" (that description never ceases to amuse me). What I'd like is one that independently adjusts the gamma correction for it, since it's quite dark compared to the rest of the game.

-One thing that crashes my game more than anything is reloading a save. It's pretty random as to what triggers it, but I *strongly* suspect that it's due to the fact that the game uses old data when it shouldn't. A good example of this is the "Settings" plugin from my mod, which disables camping in all cells by editing the "DATA" for it. Except that 1) it won't work for any cell that you've already visited when applied to a new game (I believe that Wyre Mash can fix this) and 2) this actually carries over into a new game unless you exit the program itself and restart. If you find out exactly why that happens, I strongly believe that you can cut down on one of the most common causes of CTDs (which are so bloody common in the game that I've come to see them in the same light as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpu2W9QHAK8&feature=related)

-I mentioned awhile back that the unarmored skill has the same sort of exponential growth problems as the enchant skill does, just in reverse. I take no issue with how powerful it gets, but rather how slowly it gets there (to wit, my mod makes an unarmored skill of 75 offer a naked defense of 25, and 100 at a skill of 100). Any chance that this can be edited?

I'm afraid that armor rating is a some sort of fake. In my tests I battled 3 opponents simultaneously, taking two different approaches:

1. Having 100 Heavy Armor skill and full daedric set - armor rating 295. I was killed in 16 seconds.
2. Having 1000 Unarmored skill and no armor - armor rating 6565. I was killed in 13 seconds.

So, armor rating will not save you, even if it will be edited.

Ummm...

I think 6565 is a high enough number to cause overflow problems. Try a lower number.

Possibly.
I'll try with lower amounts, but I'm pretty sure that unarmored player with the same armor rating as heavy armored will take more damage. I'll test it to be sure.

I can't seem to find a simple cause for it. Fade out is unfortunately not an easy to add function.



It seemed to be worth testing since it's easy to use up charges on fast weapons quickly. Unless someone has a good variation it will be annoying. Though mentioning this made me go check how scrolls work as well, they seem to disappear anyway even if the cooldown prevents casting. I may need to turn that off.


It shouldn't do that, the cooldown timer starts at ready to cast. Please could other people check if it does this for them?


It's probably because they are placed in the weapons group. Maybe it would be better for players to discover themselves, that arrows are the source of enchanted missiles (unlike D&D).



That is a bit different to what I get, but I have to balance for vanilla where merchants have no more than 10-30 mercantile normally. It does need changing.



It probably needs better lighting.


It's mostly a design issue where you're not supposed to be playing saves with different mod lists in the same session. Not much I can do without an engine rewrite.


You need to come up with a good alternative that is more inventive than linear, or something.



There is a well-documented GMST cap on damage reduction. You take at least 0.25x base damage in vanilla.

Short Blades are actually the one weapon types that need the balancing the *most*, since their quick speed makes their enchanted versions far more deadly than any other weapon.



Yeah o.O



These aren't saves from different mod lists. Hell, I could quicksave and then immediately try and reload that quicksave - I stand a very good chance of it crashing the game.

And it always crashes just barely into the "Initializing" phase.



Aren't the other armor classes linear? Honestly, linear seems to be the way to go on this one.

But you said a change from an old save + new mod persisted in a new game. I think it's reasonable for Morrowind to assume the sleep allowed flag doesn't need refreshing since there's no way to change it during gameplay. Any kind of fix without a full set of regression tests is just asking to break something else in the code.


Honestly what. Go drag on a suit of starting light armour with starting skill, and then heavy.

I can confirm this. To reduce this saving issue I've come up with a little *trick* that has helped me now and then but not always. Every time you either quicksave or save it normal, I always do it 3-5 times in the row and I found out that actually helps if your gamefiles is below 350 saves. So this is my trick to get rid of this annoying saving issue (reduced it anyway).

Hi Hrnchamd and thanks for all your efforts to make Morrowind better.
I've a little request. I'd like to see removed an exploit with constant effect enchantments caused by poor design. I'll report the description directly from uesp wiki:

The easiest solution to remove this, if possible, is to link togheter the minimum and maximum for constant effect enchantments so that they're forced to have the same value.

Since Taddeus bought it up with the constant effect enchantment and there is another thing I've noticed in both vanilla or with MCP and MPP installed.

I find it ridiculous that you only can enchant a daedric tower shield with only 4 pts (4% CE-effect) of Feather, Reflect Spell and Spell Absorption (probably a few more spells). The first effect point (1 to 1 starts at 50 pts enchantment costs, which can't be right and that means you can never enchant (CE) a daedric tower shield with 5% it only allows you to have 4%.

If you examine the feather spell and you will see that only 1pts less encumbrance has the feather spell while fortify strength spell gives 5 lesser encumbrance with only 1pts CE enchantment cost.


Is that something you can correct if possible?


Thanks in advance.