Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[sialivi]

I'm currently playing through the Korcari Wilds and noticed the player has a combat bark saying "I'm sensing more darkspawn", which doesn't make sense pre-joining. I think I'm using the female sultry voice. (Video) Edited July 10, 2017 by sialivi

[dmg22]

Hi.

A few small things....

DE012: Market District: Restored ability to ask Kylon if he needs any more help after completing his first two quests ("Pearls Before Swine" and "Crimson Oars"), at which point he can tell you about his Chanter Board quest "Back Alley Justice" if you haven't done it yet.

Not sure if this sequence is related/intended......

-Back Alley Justice quest: Received the reward from the Board, and assuming the wiki and my memory is correct... "If you approach Sergeant Kylon he will say he has something for you. Talk to him and you get: 50 XP and 4 gold...

That didn't happen then. However, it did happen after his 2 other quests had been completed. It works fine this way, just thought I'd mention it.

With a female Warden. Morrigan approval at 86 (warm). Is she supposed to giggle at me?

FFIP Negotiation aids quest, no marker over bartenders head when ready to turn in.

Brecilian Forest:

Cammen's Lament quest: If you fail to get them together, when next talking to Gheyna the camera auto focuses on the midrift of a misc female elf

The Elven Ritual quest: If you perform the ritual correctly after initial failure, the Metal Door will open, but your quest journal remains logged with the 'failed' entry. XP is awarded correctly. This is also noted in the wiki.

----

Just giving you a heads up....

About the next post....

I got just a bit carried away....

It's a *massive* wall of text...

Take a look at it if you get the chance...

Cheers

[Qwinn]

BF037: "Nature of the Beast": Multiple fixes to the Grand Oak dialogue: 1) You should no longer be able to ask the Grand Oak "What's this about your acorn?" before he mentions his acorn. 2) Fixed several instances where both you and the Grand Oak could make references to the reward he can offer before he actually offered it. 3) The Grand Oak now WILL offer his reward if you tell him you'll kill him for the hermit unless he gives you a reason not to, and he hasn't offered it yet. 4) The question "Where would I find this thief?" has been restored to several dialogue paths. Thanks to Totalbalance of the Nexus forums for spotting one branch where the first bug can happen, the investigation of which led me to find all the other bugs.

 

I'm currently playing through the Korcari Wilds and noticed the player has a combat bark saying "I'm sensing more darkspawn", which doesn't make sense pre-joining. I think I'm using the female sultry voice.

This... would be REALLY dangerous to try to fix. I've looked at the soundset files, and the lines have NO conditions. I have no idea how it selects from them randomly, or finds the correct set of lines to pick from without any conditions on the lines, but it does. Adding a condition to any of those lines would be both very hard to test, and possibly break things badly. I'm going to slowwwwly back away from this one. Since this doesn't trigger unless you actually *see* darkspawn, I guess the player is talking about sensing them with their normal senses and just getting a little carried away...

 

DE012: Market District: Restored ability to ask Kylon if he needs any more help after completing his first two quests ("Pearls Before Swine" and "Crimson Oars"), at which point he can tell you about his Chanter Board quest "Back Alley Justice" if you haven't done it yet.

Not sure if this sequence is related/intended......

-Back Alley Justice quest: Received the reward from the Board, and assuming the wiki and my memory is correct... "If you approach Sergeant Kylon he will say he has something for you. Talk to him and you get: 50 XP and 4 gold...

That didn't happen then. However, it did happen after his 2 other quests had been completed. It works fine this way, just thought I'd mention it.

That is all correct and as intended. The DE012 restoration is only active if you did Kylon's two quests given in dialogue and then talk to him again without having done the board quest.

 

With a female Warden. Morrigan approval at 86 (warm). Is she supposed to giggle at me?

I assume you mean when selecting her? If so, yep, it's part of her warm soundset.

 

FFIP Negotiation aids quest, no marker over bartenders head when ready to turn in.

Yeah, whatever markers you ever see on that guy are applied with the "normal" quest markers, rather than the exclamation points used on the other board quest chains. He'll never get the exclamation point like the others do. And I'm not really worried about applying it either, given that the quest involvies having a certain amount of some non-plot item in your inventory. What if I add the marker, and then you destroy the items, or use them for crafting something? Now he's got a marker but you can't actually complete the quest. The solution wouldn't be much better than the original issue, so I'm just going to leave it be. Thanks for the report tho.

 

Cammen's Lament quest: If you fail to get them together, when next talking to Gheyna the camera auto focuses on the midrift of a misc female elf

Can you be more specific? What dialogue line do you hear when this happens?

 

The Elven Ritual quest: If you perform the ritual correctly after initial failure, the Metal Door will open, but your quest journal remains logged with the 'failed' entry. XP is awarded correctly. This is also noted in the wiki.

BF039: "The Elven Ritual": Triggering the trap will no longer close the quest in a failed state, so performing it correctly afterwards will update the quest properly. Thanks to dgm22 of the Nexus forums for making me aware of this one.

 

It's a *massive* wall of text...

Hit me with your best shot! (I'd have to be quite an ass to complain about walls of text... :ermm:)

Edited July 10, 2017 by Qwinn

[dmg22]

Hi,

I discuss *intent* at the end, but first your other points....

"Oghren says the shielded dwarven armor is awesome and he wants to wear it. Why? He's not a rogue."

-Because it's lightweight, causing less fatigue and allowing him to use his abilities more often? Maybe he's tired of wearing that Juggernaut armor set you've had him in and he wants to get back to his roots? Maybe he's trying to get on the "old mans" good side because he's going to ask the daughter out? Maybe he just likes the color.

-But seriously... Game design. Redcliff is designed to be one of the first areas the player goes to. If you have Oghren here, then you went to Orzammar, realized you were in over your head (by design), and headed to an easier place, i.e. Redcliff. That means he would still be in lowish level armor and the "shielded dwarven" would look pretty good.

And if someone manages, through multiple playthroughs, wikis, mods, min/maxing, luck, reloading, etc. to "break" the game, then that's not the designs problem.

-That line fits for the point in the game that it was written for.

---

"If Owen sees value in making items of terrible materials so rogues can use them, why is his whole store made of tier 6 and 7 items?"

-"We talked about a reward, so I hope this is enough. It's dwarven made, and should serve you well." -Owen

-Unless Owen is the worlds tallest dwarf, he didn't make it.

---

"The Helm of the Red is a heavy helm, not something generally associated with archery or rogues, heh."

Well, if you look at it's bonuses: +1 dexterity, +10% fire resistance. That's a rogue stat. And one of only 2 med/hvy/massive helmets with a rogue stat. bonus. (the other is "Corruption" which is there at the end for a very specific purpose.)

And if you look at the description: "Ser Ferris was a trickster of many means, and his walk through fire took more than one road." That says rogue to me.

And there is a medium helm: Camenae's Barbute, Silverite, Requires: 30 strength, Chance to avoid missile attacks, Rapid aim. (Available much later in the game).

Not hvy, but it does show that they don't have to be light.

---

Owen's Remasterwork Helm; Tier 2 gray iron, req. strength of 12.

It's called a light helmet. With a light helmet Item ID: gen_im_arm_hel_lgt_own

Who wears light helmets? Rogues.

Remasterwork ?

Well it's obvious, a rogue who favored brains over brawn commisioned the finest metal helmet he could use. The smith using all of his skill and talents fashioned an item of style and grace, melding function and form, into something wonderous to behold.

It's not the material that makes a masterwork, but the genius that shapes it.

---

Intent....

Game Design, Game Balance, and Challenge Scaling

-First a word about the DLC. They can be played at any point in the game after Lothering. Trying to do balancing with them would have been both problematic and difficult. All you can really do is make everything variable and let the chips fall where they may. That's just the nature of addon DLC. The exception here is Shale, but that was made at the same time as the main game and "repurposed", so there are still fixed level items there.

What is the intent of Shielded Dwarven Armor; Tier 3 steel, strength of 18?

Leliana. As I wrote before. Starts with chantry robe, gets bits and pieces of hand-me-downs, and then gets this. That's why it's here. That's why it has a fixed tier. So it doesn't "price itself out of the market".

Other examples of the same thing....

What is the intent of Templar (massive) Armor [steel (Tier 3) 27 strength] fixed instead of variable? Because it's designed to be found at a certain point and used. If it were variable, Alistair might not be able to wear it. I.e. Lothering to Tower, lvl 9 at Tower = Tier 5 = str 36. At that point Alistair's max str is 20 + 15 = 35.

Another example...

What is the intent of the Ancient Elven Armor Set [Veridium (Tier 4) 22 strength]

Zevran.

Look at the stats: +1 constitution, +2 dexterity, +4 armor, +4% spell resistance, +35% spirit resistance, Set: +5 defense

That's rogue armor. And it's fixed tier so it doesn't "price itself out of the market".
And 3 or 4 points into str and it's all Zevrans.

-The intent for a lot of the rest of these cases is to keep the items from becoming overpowered because areas are visited out of the designed sequence.

For example: Why is Eamon's Shield [steel (Tier 3) 22 strength] fixed instead of variable? Because my rogues' use it as a hand-me-down? No. Because when you are supposed to find it at Redcliffe Castle, it's pretty much the best. And it is (arguably) the best all the way through Ashes (and even Nature) to the end of the Arl of Redcliffe, when you receive the Redcliffe Elite Shield, [Red Steel (Tier 5) 32 strength].

That's a real improvement. A sense of achievement.

If it was variable? You find Eamon's at say lvl 10? Eamon's Shield would be Tier 5? So after Arl you've just received a really good Tier 5 shield, to replace a slightly different really good Tier 5 shield. And if you went really out of order, you'd be replacing a tier 6 or 7 with a Tier 5.

That's kinda not how these things are supposed to work.

So make the Redcliffe Elite Shield variable? OK, say 2 lvls for Nature and 3 for Ashes... The Redcliffe Elite Shield is now tier 7. With the Deep Roads still ahead, every other shield in the game is pretty much useless, until Duncan's Shield pre Landsmeet.

With this change you have increased the combat power of a Weapon and Shield warrior by a factor of "quite a bit" for what, 3/4ths of the game?

I think the intent is clear. These arn't mistakes.


-I'm sure there are some things out of whack, there allways is. For instance I just got the "Coarse Cut Gauntlets". They're teir 1 !!! and I'd have a hard time coming up with a good reason why.....

Cheers

[MartenX123]

Hey Qwinn,
you asked for feedback and opinions. I can't bring anything really new to the discussion, but I agree with dmg22 that there are at least very good arguments why some non-scaling items are intended the way they are in the vanilla game. So personally I feel like this change goes beyond a bug fix and I would definitely prefer to keep them as they are in the base game.

 

On the other hand I consider the rare loot drops a bug, but it is nothing that I feel strongly about.

 

Thank you for considering this and most of all for all the effort you put into this! :-)

[Qwinn]

Let me start by saying - oops on one of the items. Somewhere along the line, I confused Eamon's Shield with the Redcliffe Elite Shield. I thought I was fixing Eamon's direct quest prize for reviving him, but it's not, it's just a shield in the vault - which means it can be acquired much earlier than I thought it was. I don't have a problem with his *actual* prize for reviving him being tier 5 red steel, that's not insultingly weak. Now, it seems a bit silly to me that Eamon would use a WORSE shield material-wise than his own men use... but... it does have nice stat boosts that might warrant Eamon using it instead. At any rate, what I made scalable wasn't a main plot quest prize, as I thought it was, so I'll probably be reversing that change.

 

"-But seriously... Game design. Redcliff is designed to be one of the first areas the player goes to. "

I don't see much support for this, actually. The only one of the five mid-game areas that seems designed to be done *later* is Orzammar, in that the first ambush in Frostback Mountain Pass is explicitly intended to be difficult and a test to make sure the player is high enough level to deal with the rest of it (and if you're not, you're not getting to Oghren). If anything, I'd say the biggest incentive is to do Broken Circle first, since it's comparatively easy and you get all the nice ability point boosts that make doing everywhere *else* much easier. Nature of the Beast isn't particularly hard for low levels either, and there's plenty of easy low level content in Denerim. Haven/Urn isn't particularly hard either. And if you want to make it a LOT easier to save everyone in Attack at Nightfall, you want to postpone visiting Redcliffe for a while - I always do, anyway.

 

Certainly, the idea that someone might choose to do Redcliffe later is not "breaking" the game.

 

First a word about the DLC. They can be played at any point in the game after Lothering. Trying to do balancing with them would have been both problematic and difficult. All you can really do is make everything variable and let the chips fall where they may. That's just the nature of addon DLC.

What you say about DLC is true of the five main game areas as well. All of them can be done right after Lothering. I don't see how being DLC makes that any different. Now it's true that you can do the DLC *after* the Landsmeet starts, unlike the five main areas, but if the Landsmeet has started, you should have everyone in tier 6-7 gear by that point anyway.

 

-"We talked about a reward, so I hope this is enough. It's dwarven made, and should serve you well." -Owen

 

Fair point, conceded.

 

I think light and medium is appropriate for rogues. Heavy and massive is not. And yes, clearly the Ancient Elven set (medium) is meant for rogues, no argument there, not sure why that has any bearing on the rest tho.

 

What is the intent of Shielded Dwarven Armor; Tier 3 steel, strength of 18?

Leliana.

Despite it being a medium armor, it's made absolutely explicit that the intent is for it to be worn by Oghren. That couldn't be more explicit, in fact, and you even argue as to why he'd want it - so I think you're kinda both contradicting yourself and beyond reaching with that one.

 

Well it's obvious, a rogue who favored brains over brawn commisioned the finest metal helmet he could use. The smith using all of his skill and talents fashioned an item of style and grace, melding function and form, into something wonderous to behold.

It's not the material that makes a masterwork, but the genius that shapes it.

Er, dude, it's a grey iron helm with a whopping +1 armor bonus. "Wondrous to behold"? "Genius"? "Obvious"? Based on *what*? C'mon. I'd prefer the random loot Studded Helm available in Ostagar and Lothering to it (+3 physical resistance is better than +1 armor any day, if you ask me), and it has just as low a strength requirement. There's no aspect of this "remasterwork helm" that makes it superior to even random Ostagar loot.

 

On Helm of the Red, I grant that the description and stat bonus are consistent with rogue, but "heavy" implies not rogue. You can't tell me that lower stamina penalties are all important in one argument, and then dismiss it in the next.

 

As I said, I'll very likely retract the Eamon's Shield fix. I'll think further on the others... but you really did lose me quite a ways with the "wondrous to behold" stuff applied to what's probably the worst helm in the game, even for rogues, heh, and for claiming the Shielded Dwarven Armor is for Leliana. Try again ;)

[firepanda]

I'm currently playing through the Korcari Wilds and noticed the player has a combat bark saying "I'm sensing more darkspawn", which doesn't make sense pre-joining. I think I'm using the female sultry voice.

 

There's actually an even more explicit line in the 'experienced' voice set: 'Warden senses tingling'. This can play at the start of *any* battle (in fact I think it can even play in the origin).

 

"-But seriously... Game design. Redcliff is designed to be one of the first areas the player goes to. " ... "I don't see much support for this, actually."

 

If you ask Alastair for his opinion on where you should go, he suggests Redcliffe. Also, in terms of area scaling, Redcliffe is the easiest along with Circle Tower (which is why the Attack at Nightfall is so easy if you leave it to the end).

 

For that matter, how many high-quality items are there in Redcliffe? Just scanning through the items available in this area, almost every item you can find is steel or lower. (Eamon's Shield, Chevalier's Mace, Helm of the Red, Heavy Maul, Shielded Dwarven Armor, Owen's Remasterwork are all steel or lower. The Fox's Bow is Sylvanwood, the Green Sword is Veridium).

 

It seems to me that the quality of Helm of the Red, Owen's Remasterwork, Shielded Dwarven Armor are entirely in line with the area. The item quality in Redcliffe in general, is designed with a player straight out of Lothering in mind. I agree with you that this is silly (personally, I do Circle and Orzammar first), but a design decision that widespread can't really be called a bug.

 

 

 

Also, did you make a decision on the Gateway Amulet (IR007)? As I mentioned, the author of the 'Unobtainable Item Fixes' mod gave it to the unrelated Gangue Shade, seemingly without good reason.

Edited July 11, 2017 by firepanda

[Qwinn]

I'll address the Redcliffe stuff over the next day or two, but fine, leaning toward retracting. If someone wants to argue for keeping em, go ahead.

 

As for the gateway amulet, already did address that. Search the thread for gateway, you should find it. And no, its me that put it on the gangue shade, UIF put the dead metal bucket on the shade.

Edited July 11, 2017 by Qwinn

[darthbdaman]

I agree that redcliffe is designed to be the first area, and the game certainly leads you towards that conclusion. I think, however, that the arguments that things shouldn't be made scale able because they might benefit certain builds ridiculous. Suggesting that Leliana is supposed to use shielded Dwarven armor is hilarious. The game does nothing to suggest that should be the case, or that that is the intended decision. I think making more stuff scalable is a good thing. There is no sense in having merchants with scaling inventories, in the same area as unique loot that is potentially 4 tiers below it.

 

I highly doubt the developers intentionally setup armor tiers to get strength values that benefit rogues. That's merely an accident, not a deliberate decision.

[MaciejSiemienski]

Qwinn, I don't see any new version...