Gamebreaker - Yes/No?

[WabbajackMadness]

Most of you probably know Enai Siaion's Apocalypse mod, which adds a ludicrous amount of spells to Skyrim, about 90% of which (according to both personal experience and posts from other users) perform smoothly and efficiently; however, whether or not s/he (or, for that matter, anyone else using this mod) was aware of it or not, they also created an exploit, one of gamebreaking potential.

 

Said exploit involves one of the new spells, Offensive Contingency; this spell is part of the Destruction school of spells and its effect alone is remarkable: after casting this spell, should the player cast any other spell (Vanilla, Apocalypse, Midas etc.), then that spell will be 'registered'; the meaning of this, is that the 'registered' spell will now have 15% chance of being cast for free alongside any other spell the player casts for a period of 5-10 minutes (can't recall the exact number...).

 

"Sure," you might say, "It's nothing to scoff about, but what's so broken about it?"; well, now we take a look at another Apocalypse spell: Limited Wish.

 

Limited Wish is a part of the Alteration school of spells, and - upon being cast - grants the player three options, only one of which may be taken per cast; for my character (level 32), the choices are:

Restore Full Health

Restore Full Magicka

Conjure Fox Companion

 

Now, 15% chance isn't very encouraging, but it can become completely negligable if the player decides to use Alexemia's Grace (another Apocalypse spell, belonging to the Alteration school of magic) in order to try to trigger Limited Wish via Offensive Contingency.

 

The end result?

 

With Alexemia's Grace being one of the cheapest spells to cast in terms of MP, the player - should they feel they're about to run out of magic - can cast Alexemia's Grace over and over until Limited Wish is activated; this results in the player possessing an almost unending pool of MP to cast spells from, so long as the Offensive Contingency + Limited Wish combo was performed earlier on and is still active (SkyUI does NOT let you know when Offensive Contingency has run out, so you'll have to manually check your spell status).

 

I'm sure there are many, MANY players out there aware of this exploit, so I'll clarify: this topic is for discussion and/or bringing this discovery to the attention of the players who have not yet encountered it; feel free to post or not, but just make sure you keep this trick in mind ;-)

[screendrop]

It is somewhat game breaking, although, one must consider that many game play elements are inherently also, game breaking. Also consider that most of the vanilla magika spells are generally insuficient to deal with end game enemies.

I would consider a game play mechanism like that not to be game breaking on the premise that it can be considered to be like a combo. Like having a sword of leeching stamina at high levels and being able to perform almost unlimited power attacks

[prod80]

Just not use it? If that's too hard, remove the spell from the game to break this 'exploid' using tes5edit or CK.

 

How about vanilla. You start a game, you put 1 point in Sneak, there! You already broke it ;)

[WabbajackMadness]

Just not use it? If that's too hard, remove the spell from the game to break this 'exploid' using tes5edit or CK.

 

How about vanilla. You start a game, you put 1 point in Sneak, there! You already broke it :wink:

 

Yeah, I completely agree with you on the subject of Vanilla 'difficulty'... I had to restrict myself from raising HP anywhere above 100 just to make it challenging, and even THAT had its limits XD

Still, I'm not so much complaining about this 'exploit' as trying to discuss it and/or see if any other interesting combinations were discovered ;-)

[WabbajackMadness]

It is somewhat game breaking, although, one must consider that many game play elements are inherently also, game breaking. Also consider that most of the vanilla magika spells are generally insuficient to deal with end game enemies.

I would consider a game play mechanism like that not to be game breaking on the premise that it can be considered to be like a combo. Like having a sword of leeching stamina at high levels and being able to perform almost unlimited power attacks

 

True; at least its not on par with Vanilla enchanting... I swear, once you have so much as an inkling as to what you're doing, Draugr Death Lords pretty much become common wolves in terms of combat!

[ArtMurder]

I personally ignore the main spell you are talking about. I use many spell packs, and that one spell is probably the most broken, casting a spell for free without even having to cast it is just silly.

 

I personally like to make my game as hard as possible, so I HAVE to use exploits like this to stay alive though. If you ask me, it's like discovering powerful hidden spells and techniques. No matter how awesome your epic combo is though, as long as something out there can still kick your ass, it's fair.

[WabbajackMadness]

I personally ignore the main spell you are talking about. I use many spell packs, and that one spell is probably the most broken, casting a spell for free without even having to cast it is just silly.

 

I personally like to make my game as hard as possible, so I HAVE to use exploits like this to stay alive though. If you ask me, it's like discovering powerful hidden spells and techniques. No matter how awesome your epic combo is though, as long as something out there can still kick your ass, it's fair.

 

Yeah, I guess it makes sense: even with almost infinite MP, three dragons (courtesy of the Dragon Combat Overhaul mod :cool:) can still brutalize an unsuspecting player - guess it just comes down to a combination of exploits and personal experience from just playing the game while also being slaughtered repeteadly :biggrin:

[EnaiSiaion]

Running out of mana is not actionable - there is nothing you can do differently to avoid running out of mana, and the only thing you can do after it happens is run around like an idiot. Many other games have more engaging implementations of mana (Diablo 3 arcane power, Dota mana recharge items, LoL blue card mana refill, etc) Skyrim still uses an ancient implementation of mana.

 

A combat game is supposed to be about killing opponents before they kill you, not about hoping their life bar hits zero before your mana bar does or else you might as well hide in a corner and afk for 10 minutes.

 

Then again, the guy who made Apocalypse is a complete idiot so who knows. :biggrin:

[Deleted1308005User]

Running out of mana is not actionable - there is nothing you can do differently to avoid running out of mana, and the only thing you can do after it happens is run around like an idiot. Many other games have more engaging implementations of mana (Diablo 3 arcane power, Dota mana recharge items, LoL blue card mana refill, etc) Skyrim still uses an ancient implementation of mana.

 

A combat game is supposed to be about killing opponents before they kill you, not about hoping their life bar hits zero before your mana bar does or else you might as well hide in a corner and afk for 10 minutes.

 

Then again, the guy who made Apocalypse is a complete idiot so who knows. :biggrin:

Don't you dare to say something like that!

Maker of apocalypse spell pack has made playing mage much more pleasant and fun!

[WabbajackMadness]

Running out of mana is not actionable - there is nothing you can do differently to avoid running out of mana, and the only thing you can do after it happens is run around like an idiot. Many other games have more engaging implementations of mana (Diablo 3 arcane power, Dota mana recharge items, LoL blue card mana refill, etc) Skyrim still uses an ancient implementation of mana.

 

A combat game is supposed to be about killing opponents before they kill you, not about hoping their life bar hits zero before your mana bar does or else you might as well hide in a corner and afk for 10 minutes.

 

Then again, the guy who made Apocalypse is a complete idiot so who knows. :biggrin:

 

Trust me, I meant absolutely ZERO offense; I like your mod a great deal, actually!

It just surprised me to find such a devastating combo outside of Vanilla programming; now that I've gained access to even more spells (mainly in Alteration and Conjuration, not to mention Time Lock + Heartstopper...), the only thing preventing my enemies from dropping like flies is how badly I want to summon a Dremora Lord at a given moment or not XD