[WIP] Apocalypse New

[EnaiSiaion]

The best magic mod for Skyrim is getting eclipsed by various incompatible mods with "Re-" in the name. Time to drag it back into the garage and rebuild it.

 

Apocalypse New is a large overhaul (buzzword #1) update for Apocalypse featuring tons of new/replaced spells with the intent of avoiding conflicts with popular overhauls, fixing lots of "hey it was 2012" code and showing dem n00bs how to make proper spells.

 

Also many modern conveniences like MCM menus (alteration master spells too expensive? Fix it with a button press!).

 

 

 

But for now, I need YOU to tell me what you liked and what you didn't like about Apoc.

 

Market research is important, and this community is stone dead so this thread is kind of my only hope to squeeze any helpful community opinions out of that stone. Don't disappoint me, brotato.

 

Where's Spectraverse and Dwemerverse? Dw, still in development. :)

[Tykiii]

Outside of the things I wrote in the Apoc thread. The spells that I liked the most of all are:

Alteration:

Adaptive Protection <3

Crystalflesh <3

Weight of the World

Warp the Flesh

 

Conjuration:

Detonate Dead <3

Seed of Undeath but the summons needs to start following you... not just kil the enemy and stand there. Plus they time they are summoned for is too short.

Conjure corpse spells

 

There should probs be moar summon Deadra spells on the list but I mostly use undead themed ones.

 

Destruction:

Glacial spike <3

Hidden scorpion and Scorpion Rune althought they need to start causing hostility when you use them on neutral NPCs <3

Fracture

Creeping cold <3

Elemental Cyclone <3

Electrocute

Hailstrike <3

Finger of the Mountain <3

Call Lightning - Was it really bugged? lol <3

 

There should probs be moar fire and shock spells on the list but... I mostly use frost magic.

 

Illusion:

Blur <3

Bend The Shadows <3

Evil Twin

Mimic Magic

Haywire

Overload

Darkweave <3

Outcast

Cloacks

Geas Rune

Mindshock

 

Restoration:

Brimstone Curse <3

Leech Seed <3

Slay Living <3

Bloodwine

Command Undead

Healing Journey

Breath of Arkay

Culling Rune

Death Proof

Lionheart <3 <3

Circle of Death

 

Scrolls:

Erase Spell <3 <3

Wizard's Fury <3

 

Things that I did not like.... hmmm:

-Repetitive vanilla hand and inventory animations for most of the Alterations spells

-Alteration bee spells – Did not find them useful

-Alteration stun spells - there were tots too much of spells with similar effects here... and just a simple stun effect is not that helpful (with an appropriate perk all dual casted destruction spells do the same... plus also deal damage)

-Alteration spells that were lifting the target in the air to cause fall damage - too much of the spells with a similar effect and... skyrim lacks the cool fall animations that would make those spells shine

-Shock Orb and Shattering Crystal animations - the spells itself were cool but I did not like the animations

-Eyes of xxx type spells - not sure why… they were just not my style

-Conjure Draug spells – I did not find summoning draugs to be immersive

-Fire of the master spells – Hmmm… like… I did not find them immersive. Couldn’t understand the logic behind an spirit cat emitting a blast of fire. The concept would be cool if it was recognizing the summoned minion… and adjust the blast based on it. Like and fire atronach emitting fire and ice atronach emiting ice… and zombie poisoning the target etc.

 

[myztikrice]

Liked

- More spell options

- Time Lock

- Almalexia's Grace

- Glacial Spike for positioning requirement, just not its damage numbers

- Frost Nova

- Earth to Water (although overpowered by its nature but fun, gives tons of Alteration xp perhaps too much)

- Prayer

- Sense Status/Resistance

 

Disliked

- Sense Status/Resistance casting sounds; loud, screechy, annoying

- Damage/duration values all overpowered and not compatible with "1% more effective per skill level" scaling almost every magic mod incorporates despite claims otherwise. This influences many of the overpoweredness of spells, but not all. Glacial Spike still does too much extra damage for instance even without scaling.

- Destructive Cantrip does too much damage for magicka cost, and since XP gain is based on base magicka cost you kill everything more quickly but get less XP. Clunky.

- Slam moving enemies through ceilings

- Throw having a delay. They're already hitting me before it goes off.

- Glacial Spike doing master level damage for easy restriction (distraction from summon, follower, stagger, simple positioning)

- Meteor extremely overpowered even if only castable outside

- Rain of Fire extra damage against dragons and their large hit model taking every hit makes every dragon encounter boring spam

- Convection Ball has no real use, curves upwards too soon, so it just does more damage than Fireball

- Illusiory Weakness spell-line based on HP, which circumvents Skyrim's difficulty settings and becomes stronger than other spells when shouldn't be. Gaining HP back is irrelevant when the spell can kill them, or by using them you've already taken off half the enemy's HP with one spell when other stronger and more costly spells do 1/8 their HP. Maybe reduce time before HP is restored, or implement a minimum HP so it doesn't kill low HP enemies.

- Slay Living just straight overpowered, reduce every living enemy's HP in the game by 25%, gain massive Restoration levels

- Poison bolt spells pointless and useless, like bee spells mentioned above, when their damage is not competitive

- Alteration Stun spell pointless, hefty magicka cost and long charge time for basic effect, they're already up before you can finish another spell what was the point?

- Xivlai conjuration summon overpowered for its level, spammable AOE

- Fading Blast description is weird, no way to restore base damage? Seems like pointless spell then

Edited November 8, 2013 by myztikrice

[skjt]

I think the main flaw is that Apocalypse is advertised as the balanced alternative to the other blatantly op magic packs, and while that's true if you know what spells to avoid, too many spells still grant the user an unfair and oftentimes utterly dominating advantage over enemies. Most of the novice-adept spells are decently balanced, but I think you run into trouble pretty often with the higher end spells (especially in alteration, where they almost feel like cheating). Still, no one has come out with a better magic mod than this two years after release, so you do deserve a good deal of credit.

[Shadeybladey]

I've never understood this complaint about magick.

 

My first character was an unarmoured, unarmed Druid and with the right perks I found she was perfectly adequate for about 60 levels and 400+ hours as long as I used the right style for her skills.

 

There was no point going toe-to-toe with anything, but being able to cast multiple Fire and Shock spells that staggered was certainly a life saver. And those perks increased damage as well.

 

~

[Tykiii]

I also liked:

-Extra damage upon fulfilling an extra condition

-item requirements for casting certain spells (deadra hearth, nightshade etc.)

[Xander9009]

I concur with what the others have said about a few spells being overpowered. I don't remember much about a few types of spells mentioned: bees and poison. I remember I thought they were pretty useless. My only big complaint would be Fading Blast not being rechargeable. A spell that can only get weaker is... not useful. It's like in other games when you have this awesome potion but there's only one. So you save it and save it and save it. Eventually, you realize you saved it so long it's no longer useful.

 

That being said, it is of course my favorite magic mod. It's actually the only one I've used for quite some time.

[LordoftheForsaken89]

A lot of the insta-kill spells are somewhat useless. I have no reason to use Slay Living unless I was spamming low-level Destruction spells, and Finger of Death is suicide unless I devote all my attribute increases to Health.

 

Horrid wilting...questions on why this is a Restoration spell aside, this seems like a decent attempt to bring the 8th level Necromancy spell into Skyrim. The problem is that for one of the best blast spells in the PnP game (huge range, great damage), its Apocalypse counterpart is kinda lame. How often do you fight Spriggans?

 

A note though; if you want compatibility with Requiem, be advised that Requiem handles conjured creatures very differently from raised creatures. Conjured creatures last for less than a minute at 83 Conjuration, while raised creature stick around for hours.

[Shadeybladey]

I've never seen this mod until this thread, but I am a big fan of any spell mods that add new spells without messing with the perk or magick system, especially spells adapted from AD&D.

 

I don't use any mods with Re- in the title, but I'll certainly try Apocalypse New when it is ready.

 

~.~

[ryanshowseason2]

One thing I recall disliking are the long charge up times to cast certain spells.

 

Spells like Mental parry and earth to water are "oh shi*" spells you likely want to use in response to something in your face. Their charge up times should reflect that.

 

I don't have 2.5 seconds to charge up earth to water I'm getting hit in the face now!

 

Any of the disruption spells that stop things from hitting you IMO should be geared towards "oh shi*" usage. Otherwise...

 

You get excited at the description

You get excited when you actually buy it.

You try it out to see the effect and get more excited

You try it in battle once and it really seems lackluster or you die.

You continue to try it until you figure out it just won't work unless you *know* beforehand combat is coming and use it at the start and never again.

You remove it from your repertoire in disappointment and get excited hoping the next spell will be better.

 

Consider making mental parry concentration based and have it subtract 50 magicka for each actor thrown into the air.