Mod Request - NO level restriction in weapons, armors and smiths

[Cheeka]

All armors and weapons should be completely static. It is YOU who should increase it's effectiveness. The higher level you are, the better you should swing the sword, or the better you should understand how to move in armor. I understand the need for the smiths, that actually makes sense. But to have two identical pieces of equipment, of the exact same "quality", have different requirements and have differt degrees of functionality, that's just infantile mmorpg nonsense.

 

This makes so much more sense.

[ripple]

The Witcher level requirement for equipment use is as annoying as the level scaling for TES games...

[Allexio]

Yes I entirely agree, this would be REALLY nice and would get me to play the game.

I'm tired of working my arse off to do quests above my level and endure this ridiculously unfair combat system only to be rewarded with things I can't equip!

This system does not reward the player with skill, it is therefore completely stupid.

 

Please someone, make this happen!

 

(also, if the mod already exists somewhere, please do share the link here)

[Chaosmonkey1979]

All armors and weapons should be completely static. It is YOU who should increase it's effectiveness. The higher level you are, the better you should swing the sword, or the better you should understand how to move in armor. I understand the need for the smiths, that actually makes sense. But to have two identical pieces of equipment, of the exact same "quality", have different requirements and have differt degrees of functionality, that's just infantile mmorpg nonsense.

 

Excellent idea!

[some1ne]

All armors and weapons should be completely static. It is YOU who should increase it's effectiveness. The higher level you are, the better you should swing the sword, or the better you should understand how to move in armor. I understand the need for the smiths, that actually makes sense. But to have two identical pieces of equipment, of the exact same "quality", have different requirements and have differt degrees of functionality, that's just infantile mmorpg nonsense.

 

This is actually fairly close to what happens in TW3 already. If you check out what happens each time Geralt levels, his base attack power increases and additional multipliers are applied to his magic damage. In my experience with playing the game, these stat increases seem to matter as much as (if not more than) equipment stats. A high-level Geralt is pretty lethal even with the worst sword you can find. And though I can't currently test it, I suspect a low-level Geralt wielding the best sword in the game would still be relatively ineffective.

 

But anyways...I've been trying to create exactly this sort of mod. However, the minimum levels for each piece of equipment don't appear to be defined in the standard item XML files. So I'm wondering if anyone knows where this information can be found? Surely it's not in the application binary itself, right? That would make it very difficult for the developers to add new equipment as DLC's. Or if nobody has found where the minimum equipment levels are defined, does anyone know how to isolate the files contained in a particular bit of DLC? For instance, if I could inspect the package for the Wolf-school Gear DLC, that would probably make it easy to track down how they're setting the equipment levels.

 

In the mean-time, I've found that I can "fake" having unrestricted weapons and armor by changing the level-up settings so that Geralt gains 1 level per XP for the first 34 levels, and also by removing all of the stat increases (and ability points) that Geralt would normally get for those levels (so you get a level 34 witcher whose stats are identical to a level 1 witcher). That works for the most part, however it makes the next ~40 levels (or all of the quests) need rebalancing, so that Geralt can continue leveling up normally after receiving his "free" levels. Quests might be easier to do, as the XP uses a mix of rewards that don't scale (a successful Axii dialog choice always gives 40XP) and things that do (quest XP rewards drop to a minimum of 5XP per quest, monster XP seems to drop to 0). Has anyone worked out how to change the level on a quest?

 

In theory if I add 34 levels to each quest the overall game balance will remain the same, and the only difference will be that 1) Geralt can use any equipment he wants right from the start, and 2) picking a fight with a neutral NPC (witch hunters, Nilfgaard soldiers, etc.) will be extra deadly, since they'll now be effectively 50 levels above Geralt instead of just 15.

 

 

Edit: Nevermind about isolating the files from a DLC package. I found that this utility can be used to do that. At least that makes the haystack a bit smaller.

Edited July 13, 2015 by some1ne

[HikeTribe77]

Why on bloody earth would you put in an outfit or a weapon and make it almost impossible to use it. So ridiculous

[some1ne]

I found that rewards.xml can be used to fix the XP scaling. Seems to work, for the most part. The only noticeable side-effects I've encountered after giving Geralt 34 "free" levels with no stat gains (and then leveling all quests up by 34 to compensate) are:

 

1. As predicted, neutral NPC's are now extra deadly to Geralt.

2. Killing monsters won't yield any XP.

3. Some loot weapons appear to be randomly generated, and may still be created with a level that exceeds Geralt's current level (still need to confirm that witcher gear is unaffected).

4. Geralt's fist-fighting abilities scale up even when his combat stats aren't increased, so he can KO NPC's in one punch.

 

The good news is that apart from fistfighting the rest of the combat balance is unaffected. A pack of level 4 drowners can still easily kill a level 34 Geralt if he's not careful.

 

Edit: The levels on all the witcher gear appear unchanged, at least when using the debug console to source in schematics and crafted weapons. Meaning that Geralt can use all of the witcher gear from the moment he finds it (and unlocks the blacksmiths), which is the goal.

Edited July 15, 2015 by some1ne

[some1ne]

Published my current mod version here, if anyone wants to play with it:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/264/?

 

Granted it's not exactly what was asked for, and comes with some interesting side-effects. But I think it's as close as I can get at the moment.

Edited July 15, 2015 by some1ne

[some1ne]

Okay, V2 is much, much closer to what was asked for (the only caveat is that it only mods the crafting weapons/armor, instead of all the items in the game). URL is the same as before:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/264/?

 

Might come in handy given that patch 1.07 seems to have raised the default level of the built-in witcher sets by 5. Which is unhelpful if you were, say, level 30 and using a mastercrafted witcher set, and then suddenly left with no usable armor after updating.

 

And also here's one I did for the Wolf School gear. Same deal, no side-effects:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/271/?