That's okay.

Bleh, not sure I want to do actual testing.


I still need to fiddle around with the artifacts... should their HP values be greater than the HP values of their material type? For example, if I classify the Volendrung as a Dwemer warhammer (per lore), then should its HP be the same as a regular Dwemer warhammer, or should it be increased because it is a special artifact? If Umbra is an Ebony Claymore, should I set its HP to that of an ebony claymore (yes, I calculated that...) or should the HP be greater because it is an artifact?

I think that if they have a higher max damage, you should increase the weapon health. The reason being that if you don't, in effect, you're making the artifact effectively weaker (you can swing it fewer times before it breaks) than the standard, non-artifact weapon of the same type. I don't think there should be a downside to an artifact weapon.

So say (making up the numbers) an Ebony Claymore has 6000 health and does 1-60 damage on it's highest damage attack. Umbra does 1-70 (I know Umbra isn't this powerful). Give Umbra at least 7000 health. That makes sense, right?

UPDATE: progress has been... slow...

I've finally tweaked the weapons and artifacts to my satisfaction. I've finished balancing the bows, crossbows, arrows, bolts, and throwing weapons, too. Unlike the ranged and melee weapons, I altered the damage output (min and max) for arrows, bolts, throwing stars, throwing knives, and darts.

Today, I slapped together something for clothing and jewelry weight, cost, and enchantment points.

So, now everything is in purty excel spreadsheets and mhtml files... work in the CS can begin... however, the end of my Public Speaking class is coming up, and I have to put together some speeches for that. :ahhh:

Not sure when I'll being work in the CS. I don't particularly look forward to it and would much rather play Overlord.

If anyone is interested in taking a looksee at my progress, let me know! I'd love to have some feedback.

As I've already said, learn how to use the export & import functions of the CS, it will save you hours and hours and hours of tedius work, especially when it comes to further tweaks. If you do a release, then have to make a global change, guess what, that's hours and hours and hours of manual entry again compared with a few seconds auto importing.

How do I turn my excel data into the correct format? The CS exports as a .txt... :unsure: Only my laptop has MS Office (Excel) on it, and only my desktop has Morrowind... Unless I can use the CS disk without installing Morrowind? Is that possible?

EDIT: no, I need the .bsa's, d'uh.

Okay, I figured out how to save a worksheet as a tab dilineated .txt file, now I have to go rearrange all the data so that it is in the correct format. Gah, I am so worried I'm going to horribly mess something up by doing the quick-'n'-easy way...

Nah you won't. Take another looky at my spreadsheet (if you've still got it). I've got a sheet that pulls the information from my messy calculation tables so that sheet is formatted exactly the same as the exported data.
Save that sheet as a Tab TXT, and bingo, it imports nicely.
Trust me, it'll save your sanity (or what's left of it).

I still have it...

Oh, B'Vehk, I don't think I can do that!

I'm not a wizard at Excel. Just looking at all of that makes my brain explode. I'd need it explained to me in dummy language, because that's what I am right now.

I can probably figure it out, but I only have a few hours in the day that I'm good at concentrating, and I need to use those hours for my class assignments. Maybe after class ends I'll pick this project up again.

Send your spreadsheet to me, I can set it up for ya.

:twirl: Oh, wow, thanks! :twirl:

Should I send it to your contact email, located at the bottom of your Morrowind Mods website? I'll put "Weapon Rebalance mod" as the email subject title. :dance:

Again, thank you! I can't put in enough emoticons to express my joy and gratitude. :wub:

I will try my hand at the armors, though. It will be tough, but I shall persevere. Hopefully. Actually, I just imported the exported CS data to Excel this morning. I'm still tweaking around the armor values as I go, but I'm satisfied with the weapon values right now.

Oh! I haven't calculated adjusted prices for enchanted items (well, except for artifacts). If you could spare the time to do so, that would be awesome. :bowdown: If not, I'll be able to handle it on my own (I was thinking of taking the difference between vanilla weapon and vanilla enchanted version and just tacking it onto my modified price for the unenchanted version of the weapon. But, I'm not even sure if the vanilla enchanted version prices are balanced - I haven't enchanted a lot of weapons on my own, so I'm not familiar with the appropriate price increases associated with different kinds of enchantments).

You're awesome, PirateLord! :cake:

processed and sent back to you

Enchanted Items are a pain, you have to work out your own system of adding extra cost to items based on enchantment, and since this cost would be based on the enchantment, you can only get this information manually by looking at the enchantment ID on the item, and then finding the enchantment, and keying that info in.
Trust me, really tedius

Thanks, PirateLord! :wub:

Typing the data will be tedious, but I shall overcome the boredom!

As for enchanted item prices: Unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, I'll probably take the easy way out and just tack on the difference I mentioned in my previous post, or just eyeball the price.

"OMG, will she ever finish this mod?!" :facepalm:

Okay, I need some help from you guys and gals!

I'm trying to rebalance ammo (throwing weapons and arrows/bolts), and unlike the other weapons, I'm going to change the damage. Now, what I want to know is, do you feel that I should change arrow/bolt damage? I haven't played a character that uses marksman weapons like bows and crossbows, so I don't know if the damage output from bow + ammo is comparable to melee weapon damage. How high should I go for the max damage? 20 damage for Daedric Arrows? 50 damage?

Also, what do you feel is a good maximum for thrown weapons, such as darts, knives, and stars? 80 for Daedric? 40? Like I mentioned before, I haven't had a character that uses marksman weapons, so let me know what you feel would be a good damage output for thrown weapons!

So far, I have arrow weight = bolt weight, where the heaviest arrow is 0.08 MWU. The low weight is because you can carry quite a lot of arrows without them being very cumbersome. However, if the majority of you would prefer a greater heft/my proposed weight change is too unrealistic, please let me know! Along that vein, I don't think I have any thrown weapons with a weight over 1 MWU. Is that too unrealistically light? For comaprison of cumbersome-ness, a Chitin Dagger weighs 1 MWU.

I've also reduced the price for ammo, especially arrows and bolts since they are useless if you don't have the appropriate 'launcher' (bow or crossbow). Also, I want to encourage players to use higher end ammo instead of selling it for cash to buy something else.

Does anyone know if there is a mod that adds an npc vendor(s) that sell high quality ammo (glass, ebony, daedric; stars, knives, arrows, darts)? Otherwise, there's only, what, 8 daedric arrows in the game?

Please leave feedback/input!

I believe Alusaron(sp?) in the Vivec FQ plaza sells a few Ebony arrows as well as other less exotic types.

As to balancing the price of enchanted items, obviously you haven't done a lot of DIY enchanting, or you'd know that cost of an enchanted item is the same as for the unenchanted item, whether the enchantment is done by you or by a "professional". Soultrapping is a lucrative profession, while Enchanting is an expensive hobby. Of course, Bethesda boosted the values of many enchanted items in the game, but there's no rhyme or reason to that either. Nothing like opening a fresh can of juicy worms: now you've got weapons, armor, AND enchanted items to deal with....

Have fun.

Umm... thanks? What's DIY? Anyway... yeah, I know the pre-enchanted item prices are a little loopy. I'm just basing them on the usefulness of the enchantment and comparing to vanilla price differences. :shrug:

Could you give me some input regarding ammo properties? :cookie:

DIY = Do It Yourself

Ammo properties are relatively insignificant in comparison to the damage effect of the bow or crossbow. The difference between a chitin arrow and a steel is something like 1-3 versus 1-5 damage, although I don't have a copy of the arrow damage chart with me. Even the Ebony ones aren't much more than 10 damage, if I recall.

Adding a weak 1-4 elemental damage spell to a bolt or arrow hardly makes a difference when you're using a bow that does 30 or 40 plus a bonus for your Strength. Even the more powerful 3-7 points of enchantment damage, complete with a second "Weakness to..." effect aren't all that special, especially for 19 Septims each (I can easily use up 100 arows on an outing). The only ones that are really worth their price are the long-duration poison arrows (around 3-7 for 10 seconds) and the Arrows of Holding (Paralysis). The Daedric Arrows are rare, and I usually put them in a display case, rather than fritter them away hunting measly Daedra or fallen demi-gods like Ur or Alma.

So, what if I increase arrow/bolt damage so that their damage is significant? That's the question I'm asking here.

So, 1) is the damage output from vanilla bow damage and vanilla arrow damage comparable to the damage output of a similar melee weapon?
And 2) if the answer to #1 is "no," then what range of arrow damage will make using marksman weapons just as useful (damage-wise) as melee weapons?

The reason I asked about the ammo vendors was because I was hoping there was somebody in TES III that could supply the higher-end arrows to marksmen-oriented PCs. Since the answer seems to be "not really," does anyone know of a mod that adds a vendor that sells high-end ammo? Is there some sort of generic merchant inventory I can edit to make higher-end ammo appear more frequently in merchant inventories?

There is an official addon which create an archery shop in Vivec. There is a lot of things for bowmen there.

But the arrows which are sold there are enchanted arrows. Very useful, because they overcome the main problem of ranged weapons in vanilla - projectiles cannot be enchanted, so they deliver only normal damage. Not problem if you have daedric bow

But you probably know about this addon...

Yup, it's a Beth DLC.

Well, I haven't gotten much feedback/input regarding ranged weapon damage, so I've just pumped the damage full of steroids. :mellow:

Weight
Arrow: ranges from 0.02 (corkbulb) to .12 (daedric)
Throwing weapons: range from .24 to .72

Price
Arrow: 1 to 6
Throwing: 6 to 83

Damage
Arrow: 1-2 to 10-40
Throwing weapons: 3-8 to 19-46

To be honest, I'm not really happy with these values. I think I'm going to have to do some more tweaking. I would really appreciate input from everybody. I want to know what you think about:
- Weight: you're going to carry a lot of ammo, and weight can add up. What's a reasonable, balanced weight for arrows and thrown weapons?
- Price: you have to restock your ammo. I want the price to be realistic, but not wallet-bleeding
- Damage: what damage range would make thrown weapons useful in battle and arrows actually matter?

cant wait for this ^_^

Thrown weapons, arrows and bolts should not have excessive weight (what is excessive? Check out some hunting e-stores.) as you still need to propel then a useful distance.

Of course, some of the swords in Morrowind are ridiculous; who in their right mind would want to do battle with a weapon that weighs over 50 pounds. I get tired just thinking about it.

sieboldii

i imagine a 50 pound sword only needs to hit a target once...

as encumbrance represents mass and bulk, it could represent that the weapon is fairly balanced in weight, but is awkward and bulky to store.

Again, the weight units in Morrowind are not even remotely equal to pounds. My "rough estimate" is closer to 1/4 pound per. That 50 weight unit sword would be more like about 12 lbs., still a little too heavy to fight with easily, but not impossible. The regular iron and steel swords at 20 weight (5 lbs.) are just a shade on the high side of realistic, but not wrong. Compare a "standard" iron warhammer at roughly 30 weight to an 8 pound sledgehammer. You're going to have to work to get it moving and bring it around over your head, but it's going to hurt a LOT if it hits. Forget finess, forget parrying, feints, and all that, but it's quite usable as a weapon. Narrowing the gap between the very light and the very heavy weapons might make sense, though.

If your '"tweaks" bring the weapons down 10% or so, that's not bad. If you drop the weight by 50% or more, then they become gigantic "nerf" weapons with almost no mass for their size.

Overall bow and arrow damage can be quite deadly in the game, especially if coupled with a Sneak bonus. I regularly take down Scamps, Alits, and other minor nasties with one standard iron arrow, without any stealth bonuses or enchantments. With a Sneak bnus on the opening shot, even Golden Saints or Winged Twilights generally fall after 3 arrows. Increasing the damage through higher arrow stats would make this already powerful Skill ridiculous. Perhaps you might consider LOWERING the bow damage a hair, and then bringing the total back into line by upping the arrow damage slightly to match, otherwise I wouldn't change it.

Thrown weapons are poorly represented in the game, since there are no HEAVY throwing spears, throwing axes, or other serious ranged IMPACT weapons. Standard throwing knives and darts could use a moderate boost in stats over vanilla, but their low weight doesn't justify major damage.

Just a few commments...

The Ebony Staff has a ridiculous enchantment value in comparison to a Daedric Staff (or any weapon for that matter). At 90 EP it is the HIGHEST weapon EP value in the game. Compare this to a Daedric Staff at 21 EP. I like the idea of Staves having very high EP values but low damage, but they should follow the same trend in EP values as weapons. Specifically that the Daedric Staff should be the best EP value. Also... The Daedric Staff should get boosted a little in the damage department, it's damage values are elmost exactly the same as an Ebony Staff. Truthfully the Ebony Staff is better in all ways if you hav "Always use best attack" on. However I don't remember the difference in rarity between the two of them...

In regards to throwing weapons:

Throwing weapons should be a viable choice as weapons, however not as good as other weapons. To encourage RP'ing. In order to do this I would recommend giving them damage values beginning from 1-3 and ending in the vicinity of 5-23 or so. This will make them considerably better (currently 2-12 is the best) without making them exceptionally strong. This will mean that the thrown weaqpons do more damage than a Daedric dagger at upper reaches, but then Thrown weapons are almost useless as far as enchanting goes. (Once enchanted they do not stack, and you need to enchant each individually, meaning you have to re-equip a weapon after each attack.)

Another point in Daedric weapons... Staves should be best in EP value among all weapons (with the possible exception of Polearms, being in rough balance). However the Daedric Staff has the same EP value as Daedric Claymores and Dai-katanas. This means that for your enchanter characters it is
MORE effective to use such a weapon, since you'll also be much more effective in melee with it. Unless of course you have an ebony staff. However as I said before I'd like to saee the ebony staff anomaly fixed.

The curious case of the Bonemold Bow: Apparently a bonemold bow is the SECOND highest EP weapon in the game. I see two possibilities here... The first is simply making Bonemold Bows in line with the other bows. Currently they have 40 EP. However a more flavorful approach would be to give all Bonemold items higher EP values than other similar items. However not as high as Daedric. Note that since there is only one Bonemold weapon, this is pretty simple. I would recommend an EP value for a bonemold bow of about 7 (70 in the CS). This would make it a better choice for enchanting than any other bow besides Daedric.

There are several materials I think deserve slight boosts in their EP values in comparison to their peers. Glass, Silver, and Nordic weapons and armor. These materials have an affinity for magic in some way, Glass is pioneered by Altmer IIRC. Silver is damaging against magical beings. Nords work runic sybols into their work, giving a feeling of magical connection. Thus giving them better EP values in comparison to where they stand in the damage (and AR) progression would have a flavorful bent. Also include Bonempold in that bous EP, as can be evidenced by the bow the armor should deserve a little EP bonus. For all these items I would give a 10-20% bonus in EP storage compared to items in the same category with similar damage and health. Note that this SHOULD not boost them above Daedric quality weapons or armor.

Do you have a sheet similar to your armor mod detailing tyour new statistics? If you do I'd like to take a look.

I wasn't very organized when I was working on this, so I have a bunch of files strewn around. I bundled them all up. You can download them http://www.mediafire.com/?v9zdozhfdjw. You are breathing new life into this mod, would you like to work on it together?

I'm not so much a modder as I am good at finding flaws in systems. That and I'm nearly incapable of using the CS. Regardless I don't currently have Morrowind installed, though I'll remedy that before long, and once I do I can take a shot. Until then I'll just help you get the proper balance into this excellent idea.

Anyway... Sorry about my tendency to Wall o' Doom my posts.