| Author | Georg Zoeller, BioWare |
|---|---|
| Valid For | Dragon Age 1.01 |
| Status | Experimental, release 3 |
| Files | itemstatdefines.gda, itemstats.gda |
Experimental hot fix for the following issues:
You can read more details about these issues in this Forum Post 1) on the BioWare forums.
The plan for the final patch is to not address this issue for Hard and Nightmare difficulty, causing an increase in game difficulty on both settings.
Hotfixes are unsupported, often experimental and require some technical background to use. If any of the instructions below seem arcane to you, please do not install this hotfix.
Hotfixes are not officially tested and may (and in fact often will) exhibit side effects.
Files temporarily removed for update to patch 1.02.
c:\program files\bioware\dragon age\packages\core\override.
You can tell if this hotfix installed correctly by inspecting a bow or crossbow in your inventory. If the hotfix is active, you will see
Attack: 5
as part of the item tooltip.
When done testing or before applying the next offical patch, delete the following files and restart the game.
This hotfix should uninstall cleanly and leave not permanent changes after removal.
Please share your experience with this hotfix, noting any issues you think may be related to it, to Georg Zoeller on the bioware forums or social site or use the form provided below. All comments are screened before posting, so don't waste your time trying to spam.
Please familiarize yourself with how weapons calculate their damage before posting technical feedback.
Discussion
"I notice that shale's weapon adds nothing for his attack stats, in terms of the base damage, armor penetration and crit. Also, if I try to use hotfixes such as the dexterity one, it totally bugs up his armor and weapons, so that they don't even show anything besides adding the green numbers and +elemental damage."
I appreciate endorsements of player mods as it demonstrates that your ears are to the ground. However, I take issue with some of the changes in that mod and would prefer to see the vanilla mechanics and weapon/player stats get sorted out so that I can have a better idea about where I want to go in terms of representing bows vs crossbows and increasing levels of trained skills for archery-centric characters.
The reason is, fundamentally, because you need 2 attribute points for every single increase in damage for longbows, but for shortbows the increase is 1:1.
Furthermore, a ranged hero has no real reason to invest heavily in strength. They're supposed to be far away from the action, wearing light armour (20 str for drakeskin) so as not to draw too much untoward attention and not killing their stamina with fatigue inducing heavy armour.
A simple illustration :
25 levels = 75 attribute points.
Longbow user invests 60 in strength and dexterity, and spends the other 15 in other skills. Assume that with his starting stats, he has 85 points in strength and dexterity. That results in 42 bonus damage.
A shortbow user could spend 35 in dexterity, 40 in other stats, and still receive about 60 bonus damage. So not only does he get about a 15 point advantage (let's assume he was a rogue and pumped strength enough for drakeskin armour) when it comes to spending points on willpower, constitution, etc., he's also already picked up about 18 more damage than the longbow user.
(taken from forum topic http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/9/index/299744/2)
Most likely, yes. Or the author is...on holiday, forgetful, evil...your choice. :D
I'm not really sure, whether this is just problem of displayed stats (not only stats of items, but stats of Shale too - if I equip large crystal, Shale's displayed armor changes only if the crystal has magical bonus to armor) and game inner mechanisms work with correct numbers. But as Shale is praised all over the Internet as ultimate tank and mine seems to lose A LOT of health in even the simpliest fights and talent activation seems to have reduced cost even with large crystals, that should impose penalty over 15%, equiped, I believe that inner mechanisms work with no basic data as well.
P.S.: The influence of dexfix on *displayed* stats of crystals is verified. After I removed the files, crystal basic stats appeared.
This patch can have unalterable effects on Shale and Allister. It seems to ruin Shale's weapon and armor crystals and drops Allister's armor rating into the negative. See thread here: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/283037
Originally it was thought the problem was limited to Shale but others are reporting similar problems with Allister as well (and possibly Sten as well).
I would highly recommend against using patch as of right now with these potential issues. Oh, and negative effects dont seem to disappear even after patch is removed and older save game loaded. See thread here: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/282353/1#295913
Prior to using the hotfix, armor crystals will show armor rating once they are examined. Once worn, they will add to Shale's armor rating. Once removed, they will subtract from Shale's armor rating. As they should.
Once the hotfix is installed, crystals will no longer show armor rating and screws up Shale's armor rating. The armor rating gets stuck. Lets say Shale has 10 armor with a crystal equipped. Taking it off, she will still have a 10 armor. Equipping crystals that I know has more armor, such as the ones that have 16, will do nothing. It will still stay at 10.
Removing the hotfix fixes the problem only for games that started without the hotfix.
A new game that starts with the hotfix installed will break Shale's armor rating for good. Even upon removing the hotfix, Shale's armor rating will continue to be broken.
1) The most immediately apparent issue, is that with the Hotfix installed, the large armor crystals for Shale lose their reference to any armor value in the mouse over description. Uninstalling the hotfix brings back the proper description.
2)Having the hotfix installed when you first pick up Shale as an NPC seems to cause unexplained behavior with Shale's armor Value. Equipping a Crystal does not give the reported value. For instance, equipping a crystal that says 10.8 armour value will only give her an armor of 4 up from zero, with no other abilities activated. Uninstalling the hotfix after the fact does not remedy this behavior.
3)Installing the hotfix at a later point after having picked up Shale, causes odd behavior as well. In my case, going back to a game save from an older playthrough prior to installing the hotfix removes the reference to any armor value to the crystal, and then removing the equipped armor crystal seems to have no effect on armor score. For instance loading an old game, hotfix installed, Shale has an non-buffed armor rating of 18, with a 14.4 (known from memory, since there is no armor value listed in description). Un-equipping the crystal does nothing to change Shales 18 armor. With the Hotfix uninstalled, the armor description for the crystal is back, and removing the 14.4 crystal removes 14 points from her armor, for an AC score of 4 (have not accounted for where the remaining 4 points come from...perhaps further evidence of corruption).
Thanks for your continued efforts on this!
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/66/index/256651/2#269968
Hope that helps :)
Also, thanks a ton for the site and hotfixes :D
So when cunning should add to the damage, it will?
On the other hand I don't think that changing the short bow to have a better armor penetration and changing all ranged weapons having a higher critical chance belong in a hotfix. A hotfix should be neutral, just fixing the problem. Also I don't think short bows are meant or capable of penetrating armor. They should be leathal to mages and lightly armored NPCs, but heavy armored NPCs shouldn't suffer from short bows, that's unfair imho.
These special changes should be part of an optional mod and should be declared as such, but not be in a hotfix in my opinion.
Therefore I request a light version of this hotfix: Just the dex fixes for bows and dagger and nothing more. That would be great. Thanks in advance.
http://social.bioware.com/project/669/#comments
Is its possible, that this fix somehow overrides values used by Stone Prisoner DLC?
IMO changing shortbows from 50%/50% Str/Dex to 100% Dex is a TERRIBLE idea for multiple reasons:
1) It's completely illogical that out of the three missile weapons, shortbows and crossbows are similar to each other and longbows are the outlier. A shortbow and longbow are just different-sized versions of the same thing, whereas a crossbow is a different device altogether. Crossbows should be the outlier, not longbows. The game-as-shipped had this right (apart from the bug that causes crossbows not to get any attribute bonus to damage at all, of course)
2) You've merely swapped one imbalance for another. Before, shortbows were poor second cousins to longbows; with the hotfix, shortbows are almost completely superior. You get twice the bang for your attribute buck, and unlike a crossbow you don't need to pump Strength just to be able to equip the thing. This problem has been mentioned by several people in the forum thread that you have linked to.
3) Nothing is really wrong with shortbows eventually becoming "obsoleted" by longbows, as happens in the game-as-shipped. Shortbows have a substantially lower attribute requirement than longbows of the same material tier. In the early to middle game, Rogues who have pumped their Cunning for lockpicking (and/or persuasion), and melee Warriors who carry a bow for backup, might not have enough Dex to equip longbows of the best material available, so they settle for a shortbow instead. It's the same situation as with daggers. Daggers are SUPPOSED to eventually become obsolete, that's why there's a talent (Dual-Weapon Mastery) that lets you not have to use one as your offhand. If daggers were as good as swords, Dual-Weapon Mastery would be pointless!
4) The only situation where 3) falls through is if shortbows are SO much worse than longbows that it's better to equip a lower tier longbow than a higher tier shortbow when both have the same Dex requirement. I haven't done extensive comparisons to see if this is really true, but if it is then obviously shortbows do need to be buffed. Making them 100% Dex is just not the right way to do it. +1 to armor penetration, and the global +10m to missile ranges before attack penalties kick in (which reduces the relative discrepancy between shortbows and the other two types of missile weapons) may well be enough.
Actually, you might consider removing the range boost from longbows and crossbows and ONLY giving it to shortbows (making the effective ranges 30m, 35m and 40m respectively) as some players have noted that the ultra-long longbow/crossbow range in the hotfix makes it too easy to "pull" enemies one at a time in certain areas.
There is nothing to indicate that Ranged Weapons should be more powerful than they already are, and so making them so should not be labeled as a 'fix'.
p.s. my english isn't very good. sorry.)
In a game like DA where attributes are given out like candy, they quickly overpower base weapon damage, so you have be very careful with big swings in the way attribute bonuses are changed. It looks like you just turned the shortbow into the next min maxer super weapon.
Now you can have characters with top defense, top attack and top damage, just buy increasing one stat (dexterity). Not unreasonable to expect, 50 or even 60 dexterity on a purpose built character. So +50 to hit, +50 to damage and +50 to defense???
Not only that, they can do it from range.
Not only that but a blanket +5 to attack on top of this and extra attribute multiplier to damage, and range boost as well.
So really that is +55 to hit, +60 to damage, and +50 to defense. From maxing one stat.
At this point shouldn't you only be applying the gentlest of tweaks. Simply up the fire rate on short bows if you want to balance long bows.
Longbows didn't need balancing IMO.
I tried putting the files in the already existing directory on the C drive. Didn't work. The bows in game did not show the Attack: 5
I then tried manually creating an 'override' dir on the D: drive dragon age dir and putting the files in there (removing them from the C: drive). Also didn't work.
"All bows and crossbows now grant a +5 inherit Attack bonus"
It should read "All bows and crossbows now grant a +5 **inherent** Attack bonus"
I really think the daggers did very little dmg and the bows missed to much, and also nice change to short bows, makes them useful!
Gonna try it now!