Seeking better damage handling

[Kjorteo]

Hi all,

 

I beat Oblivion ages ago and forgot about it for a while, and then I realized that I really missed it--all the exploring and stuff. It really was fun. I beat it before the expansions came out, so I figured I could get all of them (Shivering Isles + Knights of the Nine box + Fighter's Stronghold download) and that'd be my excuse to get back into the game.

 

I figured I'd look into the mods, too. I have absolutely no intention of breaking or even bending the game--just aesthetic and behind-the-scenes improvement type stuff. UOP here, texture replacer there.... The only mod I have that alters gameplay in any way is one that makes a new value to handle Mercantile advancement that's based on the value of things you sell, because the "Sell arrow for 1 GP? Sell arrow for 1 GP? Sell arrow for 1 GP? Sell arrow for 1 GP?" was driving me batty. Other than that, I must emphasize that I am not out to mess with the gameplay!

 

Still, there is one thing I realized, and maybe you guys can help. Combat is so incredibly boring now. I'm level 33 or so, with "I wasn't 5/5/5 powerleveling or anything but I didn't exactly mess up either" stats for my level. I'm a custom class whose major skills are Hand to Hand, Light Armor, Alchemy, Restoration, Mercantile, Speechcraft, and Armorer.

 

The problem I have with combat is this: As far as anything in Cyrodiil is concerned (haven't actually entered the Shivering Isles yet,) I am God. I have amazing armor that pretty much says no one can touch me. The closest I've ever been to danger since getting this phase of my character established was one time when I fought three Dread Zombies at once. Other than that, I pretty much run in with fists flying and kill everything with impunity. The problem there, of course, is that at level 33 enemies have stupidly high amounts of HP, and even at 125 after fortifications, Hand to Hand just doesn't seem to do awe-inspiring amounts of damage. Don't get me wrong, I easily defeat everything I engage...it just takes a while to get their health down.

 

So, that's basically the problem. I'm near-invincible but enemies take forever to actually die already, which together mean combat is tedious. Yesterday, someone sent me to get something at the bottom of a dungeon, and I actually "cheated" a little and employed my Alchemy to make enough Chameleon potions to get to 120% Chameleon or so just so I could run through it and not be bothered with the encounters. Not that I was in any danger of losing or anything, it's just that when I dread going into dungeons because "Oh for crying out loud, Gloom Wraiths and Nether Liches again?," it just seems significantly less fun than that awesome game I beat and missed and got the expansions so I could come back and play again. :(

 

I think what I need is an all-around damage increase. I want to do significantly more damage to enemies, and I want enemies to do significantly more damage to me. I considered tweaking the difficulty, but those are mutually exclusive. (I could have one side do up to 6 times normal damage while the other does down to 1/6, or vice versa. Having enemies do 6 times the damage to me would certainly spice things up, but I already do too little in return, and doing 1/6 that would just be intolerable.) Are there any mods out there that just raise damage across the board? If not, is there a good formula to achieve that through play with the difficulty and equipment? (Maybe if I lower the difficulty so I do more damage, then start going through dungeons naked....)

 

Or...something. I just want combat to be interesting again. I just don't want to feel like every quest more involved than "go talk to this person, then talk to this other person" is a test of my (as in the player, not the character) endurance. I really missed this game and I haven't even gotten to the Shivering Isles yet--I can't be getting bored with it now. :(

 

(In the sake of fairness, I suppose I should add that I did just complete Umbacano's quest lines--The Collector, Secrets of the Ayleids, etc. With any luck, I will never have to lay eyes on an Ayleid ruin ever again and that should help a little. Still, all-around higher damage on both sides so combat goes faster would be nice too.)

[Vagrant0]

Might want to give my combat tweaks a try.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14087

 

It raises damage all around, and lowers the health of auto-calc spawns. Unlike OOO or some other mods which affect combat damage, among other things. This entirely setting based, so you can try it, and then either remove it or adjust the settings further for your own use. You can even load it after other combat mods to make it use settings contained in the tweaks file.

[Kythrius]

Hmm..

 

You're bored with combat?

 

Try out my mod. It adds over 280 abilities for combat (spells and special attacks!). They use conditional logic, not everything is direct damage, and there are plenty of combinations that work well against different things.

 

My mod also increases overall damage done by the player(Monsters are not affected). If you know what you are doing you can easily make a 250 damage combo in a few seconds.

 

No power leveling needed. My mod makes the player's skill more important. Power leveling helps a bit, but even with a crappy character setup you can still fight mobs of monsters easily.

[Kjorteo]

Might want to give my combat tweaks a try.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14087

 

It raises damage all around, and lowers the health of auto-calc spawns. Unlike OOO or some other mods which affect combat damage, among other things. This entirely setting based, so you can try it, and then either remove it or adjust the settings further for your own use. You can even load it after other combat mods to make it use settings contained in the tweaks file.

 

Oh, awesome. Like I was saying, the main problem with combat with my lv. 33 Hand-to-Hand type with awesome armor is that I can instantly tell I'm going to easily win (they pretty much can't ever hurt me,) but it takes forever for it to actually happen (I can only very slowly hurt them in return,) with the end result being tediously long punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-punch-PLEASE just die already-punch-punch-punch-there we go, finally. A major across-the-board damage increase for both sides could be just what I need. I will definitely check into this. Thank you!

 

I gather from your information file that this mod makes pretty much everything in the game deal more damage to you, and all you get in return is lowered health for auto-calc enemies, which means random battles go faster as both sides do more damage, but "bosses" and unique NPCs are unaffected except for increased damage to you and are thus strictly harder. Two questions:

 

1) Am I right about that? Feel free to correct me if I'm misreading here.

 

2) Assuming I'm right, I don't mind extra difficulty on special occasions (I do have some fantastically powerful poisons I made with my high Alchemy, and a pretty decent enchanted bow even though my Marksman is somewhere around 11, just in case I need a way of delivering said poisons. The last time I had to actually use any of them was against those three Dread Zombies, and before that was during certain incredibly plot-heavy quests with seriously bad men waiting for me at the end, such as "Paradise" and "Confront the King." I'm prepared for special occasions! I'm actually kind of looking forward to that, even.) However, is there an easy way of knowing just what is and is not considered an auto-calc spawn? I'm not exactly an expert at that. I would have thought any level-based random enemies would fall under that, but your notes say that Dremora do not.... :confused: (Please, at least tell me that high-end random dungeon fodder enemies like Nether Liches and Gloom Wraiths, Skeleton Champions/Heroes, Dread/Headless Zombies, Spriggans, etc. are affected.... Also, what about bandits/marauders/conjurers/necromancers?)

 

Hmm..

 

You're bored with combat?

 

Try out my mod. It adds over 280 abilities for combat (spells and special attacks!). They use conditional logic, not everything is direct damage, and there are plenty of combinations that work well against different things.

 

My mod also increases overall damage done by the player(Monsters are not affected). If you know what you are doing you can easily make a 250 damage combo in a few seconds.

 

No power leveling needed. My mod makes the player's skill more important. Power leveling helps a bit, but even with a crappy character setup you can still fight mobs of monsters easily.

 

That sounds interesting...maybe not quite what I had in mind, as I was hoping to just fix damage instead of completely revamping the game to turn it tactical or something. Still, it's an intriguing enough idea that if you have more information (like a link, maybe?) and if I find making combat faster still doesn't make it interesting, I could at least look at it.

[Kythrius]

<snip>

 

Link to the thread is in my signature.

[Kjorteo]

Link to the thread is in my signature.

 

Ah, um, yes. Of course. I'm not stupid, really! ... :(

[Vagrant0]

1) Am I right about that? Feel free to correct me if I'm misreading here.

 

2) Assuming I'm right, I don't mind extra difficulty on special occasions (I do have some fantastically powerful poisons I made with my high Alchemy, and a pretty decent enchanted bow even though my Marksman is somewhere around 11, just in case I need a way of delivering said poisons. The last time I had to actually use any of them was against those three Dread Zombies, and before that was during certain incredibly plot-heavy quests with seriously bad men waiting for me at the end, such as "Paradise" and "Confront the King." I'm prepared for special occasions! I'm actually kind of looking forward to that, even.) However, is there an easy way of knowing just what is and is not considered an auto-calc spawn? I'm not exactly an expert at that. I would have thought any level-based random enemies would fall under that, but your notes say that Dremora do not.... :confused: (Please, at least tell me that high-end random dungeon fodder enemies like Nether Liches and Gloom Wraiths, Skeleton Champions/Heroes, Dread/Headless Zombies, Spriggans, etc. are affected.... Also, what about bandits/marauders/conjurers/necromancers?)

That's pretty much how it is. Although the specific placement of autocalc VS regular stuff isn't that consistant in the vanilla game. But is used by many leveled list mods to allow for a wider range of creatures to spawn at any level. Autocalc basically refers to any single creature type which changes attributes according to what level you are. The change was made primarily to reduce the amount of life some things had at higher levels which made them take too long to kill.

 

The mod is just several changed settings, and if the settings used aren't good for your current needs, atleast they're isolated to where you can locate and adjust them as needed.