Topic: Magic Mod! 1.2 (Updated 1-4-2023)  (Read 10617 times)


rudy

« on: January 10, 2021, 07:32:24 PM »
The goal of the mod is to introduce as much 'magic' into the game as I can given the constraints of modding.

This is not the low-magic-is-it-really-magic-at-all feel of the base game, so I'm sure it's not to everyone's tastes.

The current version (1.2) consists of three menus and some build additions. Make sure you download 1.2. I'm leaving 1.1 attached because, selfishly, I like seeing the number of downloads!

OVERVIEW:
The first thing to do in the mod is to use the Incantations menu to make sacrifices of various food items to the spirits. This allows you to build up 'favor points' with spirits, which can then be used to perform other actions.

As you start to explore the other options under Incantations, you'll find that most require a Shrine to work. Three exceptions exist: "Wound Treatment Poultice - No Shrine", "Feather Tree Token - No Shrine", and "Magic Barkskin". These are three early-game magic options that let you do things from early on.

For everything else, you'll need to construct a Shrine. This is not an easy task. Most challenging is the requirement for 0.1 pounds of bronze and 0.02 pounds of silver, which you'll have to obtain through trade. If you are playing a game that involves avoiding places that might have bronze or silver, it's easy enough to change the recipe. I would suggest, if you remove the bronze/silver requirement, increasing the favor required to at least 500.

The Shrine, and other "buildings", are found under the Buildings > Kota menu. It is not possible to create a new sub-menu through modding, so I used the Kota menu to allow enough space for the appropriate actions.

Note also the Incant Weapon and Incant Skill menus. The former uses a Weapon Enchanting Rune to create a slightly more potent version of mundane weapons. The latter uses a Skill Training Rune to provide a good chance (but not a guarantee) of increasing a given skill.



All weapon enchantments require a shrine, 50 favor, 2 bear teeth, 5 feathers, and a bone.

"Knife for battle" uses a Kaumo Knife, Skramasaksi, or Northern Knife, and spits out something a bit better than any of them. "Staff" uses either a Hard Staff or Staff, "Trident" uses either a wide trident or trident, "Bow" uses a Northern Bow, Longbow or Hunting Bow, and "Crossbow" uses either type of crossbow. These compressions were done due to menu space limitations.

Because an enchanted weapon is more powerful than its base component, it may do damage to hides more often, note. So an enchanted club may be less effective at preserving hides.

Weapon enchantments use the WEATHERLORE skill due to the unfortunate loss of the RITUAL skill. According to my testing, using COMMON makes it impossible to get a masterwork result, even with %50% or more parameter. Enchanting weapons and using other incantations will increase the WEATHERLORE skill, allowing more reliably good enchanted weapons. Aspire to the 'masterwork enchanted X' weapon. It should be a long time coming, at least that's my intent.

Spoiler: "Exceptions to Enchanted Weapons Rule" • show

As stated, most enchanted weapons have their numerical values increased by 1 (unless they are 0 for a damage type). Here are the exceptions:

* Battleaxe already has the maximum edge value of 9, so in place of that I reduced its one-handed penalty slightly.

* The three combat knives in the game all become an "enchanted battle knife", which is 1 better than the best of the three knives in each area. The result is on par with an enchanted shortsword.

* The enchanted trident uses the best aspects of trident and wide trident to determine what to improve on. The result is comparable to the enchanted spears.

* The enchanted staff improves upon the hard staff numbers, regardless of which type of staff is used.

* The Roundshield already had the maximum possible defense value (6), so I halved its weight instead.

* The point value of bows (the wiki tells me) is a stand in for its "power".  Hopefully that is correct, meaning that the enchanted bow has a power of 9, one better than the longbow or northern bow, and two better than the hunting bow, though any of the three can be used.

* The enchanted crossbow combined the loading speed of the small crossbow with the power of the heavy crossbow. It's still probably inferior to an enchanted bow, though, since the heavy crossbow already has the maximum power value it can't be improved on.





Using these options provides a good chance, but not a guarantee, of increasing the chosen skill. Weatherlore is not included, as that is the "magic" skill used for all recipes in this mod. Two skills are commented out due to space limitations, Unarmed and Crossbow. The recipes are in the file, though, so any player could easily comment out two different skills if they wanted to use a skill ritual for unarmed or crossbow.



I'll run through the menu items in Incantations, and explain what each does. See "MagicMenu1.jpg".

The first four items allow different forms of sacrifice to obtain favor from the spirit. Meat and fish provide the most favor per pound, while grain provides the least.

Magic wound poultice duplicates the effect of burdock leaves, so useful for cleaning a wound. The version that uses a shrine requires less favor to create.

Magic Feather Tree Token similarly uses less favor if created at a shrine. The token, once created, allows you to use the "Feather Tree" option to transform a Tree Trunk into a feather tree weighing only 25 pounds. This can then be turned back into a regular tree trunk using the next menu option. The point, of course, is to be able to easily transfer tree trunks long distances.

Magic Tree Seed creates an item that can then be used to quickly cause a full-grown tree to sprout from the ground. The trees can be found under Building > Kota menu.

Magic Stone Seed creates an item that can be used to create an impenetrable wall of earth in one space. Found under Building > Kota.

Magic Well Seed creates an item that can be used to create a 'rapids' tile icon, representing a magical well. Found under Building > Kota.

Magic Feather Weight Charm is arguably the most powerful invocations. It creates an item that has a weight of -10. This requires 200 favor and 100 feathers to create, but will reduce your overall carry weight. WARNING: reducing your carried weight below 0 won't crash the game, but it will have strange effects on fatigue.

Magic Collapsible Punt creates a magical version of a Punt that weighs only 5 pounds.

The next five items all create magical armors that cover your entire body. As is in the description of the recipes, you are only intended to use one at a time. When you activate any one of them, you should immediately equip it, removing and destroying any other that you have on.

The difference between Magic Furskin, and Magic Furskin, Greater, is that the first is generic fur, and the latter inherits the superior protection values from specific fur types.

Skill Training Rune and Weapon Enchanting Rune are each required to use the other two menus.

Finally, Token of the Shaman turns 20 favor with the spirits into a small tradeable item worth 4 arrows/squirrel skins. This is intended to represent you helping out a village with your shamanistic connection to the spirits, and getting material goods in return.

The Build Menu



Spoiler: "Limitations of the Mod" • show
* Because the mod allows you to build trees and rapids, it also lets you deconstruct them. There is no way around this. Simply put: don't. Deconstructing trees and rapids is unbalanced for the mod, and not intended behavior.

* The enchanted battle knife uses the optional tag to allow the use of any one of the three knives. Technically you can skip all three; this is not intended behavior. Use at least one.


So! Please let me know what you think of the idea or use of it. I welcome feedback on the balance or any other aspects, or future ideas.

Mod is attached, of course!
« Last Edit: January 04, 2023, 10:09:16 PM by rudy »

JP_Finn

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« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2021, 10:13:00 PM »
You could also mod in a crossbow with graphic like magic wand and have it shoot über powerful lighting (blunt arrows with new graphic) and/or fire/ice bolts (regular and broad head arrows) without elemental portion for damage.

Just ideas. I prefer my URW as low-fantasy. I’ve not gotten amulet of Yendor in decades, that was my high fantasy choice  :D

rudy

« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2021, 11:09:59 PM »
It's not a bad idea, but crossbows use the same arrows as bows, right? I can't see a way to prevent the "uber-bolts" from being used by regular bows.

JP_Finn

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« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2021, 06:31:10 AM »
True. Maybe they’d then be magicked arrows?

rudy

« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2021, 04:39:11 PM »
I think I'm more likely to make a lightning bolt javelin, but that's a possibility too!

Hotfix attached, very minor.

In biy_magic.txt

{bronze*} and {silver*} should instead be {*bronze*} and {*silver*}, to ensure all jewelry is accepted for the creation of the shrine. Easy to make the change yourself, or download the attached single file.

rudy

« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2021, 10:21:46 PM »
Version 1.1. Attached here and in first post.

NEW STUFF

* New magical skin spells! Barkskin, Leatherskin, Woolskin, and Furskin. Barkskin can be done without a shrine, the others require a shrine. All use a sacrifice and base materials to create full-body armors to wear of the appropriate material (they are not weightless, but do weigh a bit less than full normal covering of that kind). For best RP I suggest they are non-removable (if you ever take it off, destroy it).

* New recipe for magically collapsible Punt (weighs only five pounds).

FIXES/ADJUSTMENTS

* Silver requirement for shrine reduced to #0.02#. That sounds like nothing, but it's still three silver rings, or one silver bracelet.

* Bronze/silver requirements for shrine added another asterix in front to allow all bronze/silver items.

* All runes/seeds/tokens moved to "tools" section. Feather charms have feather graphics, other runes/seeds have rock graphic. Eventually would be nice to have unique graphics.

* Magic well seed> "Raw Fish" to "Raw fish".  Didn't know it was case sensitive!

* Weapon enchanting rune now requires four pounds of bone instead of one.

* Token of the shaman significantly reduced in price (20 > 5). Still a valuable trade good to create.

KNOWN ISSUES

"magic wells" constructed on rock (instead of ground) will function properly, but will not have a tile graphic. It will be blackness.

All magic skin armors have the same name once created, "spell-skin". This is the only way to enforce only wearing one at a time. You can tell them apart by weight (fur: 15, leather: 12, wool: 8, bark: 5)

rudy

« Reply #6 on: January 04, 2023, 09:59:28 PM »
Took a break from updating BAC to polish up my true love: magic!

Version 1.2 in this post. Going to update the first post after adding this.

Major Change: Rather than each recipe requiring sacrifices of meat and/or fish, each requires a certain amount of favor with the spirits. Favor can be gained through individual sacrifices of meat, fish, berries or other plants. This change was made to accommodate more varieties of play. For example, you no longer *have* to fish or hunt in order to use many of the spells. This led to many changes in the amount of overall sacrifice needed. For the most part, incantations now require more total sacrifice, but that sacrifice can be done over a long period of time, building up favor.

Other changes/additions:

* In-game descriptive text added to many recipes.

* spell-skins named differently, to allow better distinguishing. Descriptive text tells players they should wear only one.

* Furskin, Greater added. This inherits the properties of specific animal furs used.

* Token of the Shaman recipe adjusted; lower price per sacrifice overall.

* Skill Training adjusted to include TEXTILECRAFT. Due to too many skills for one menu, CROSSBOW and UNARMED are commented out by default, but that can easily be changed in the file.

ineedcords

« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2023, 02:14:19 AM »
Took a break from updating BAC to polish up my true love: magic!<snip>
Wow! this, is... magical! ;)

Any active development for this wonderful game is good news for me.
Also, I think, this is the first new mod release of year 2023, so congratulations on being the first as well! Keep up the good work!
This could be a good day to utilize your squirrels hides.