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About This File
TO: LUCT is no doubt one of the classics of turn based tactical games, it can boast complex storyline with a memorable cast of characters and multiple endings, as well as a deep combat system with a vast arsenal of equipment, items and spells. Its PSP port can also serve as an example of how such things should be done, with the game getting not only a much needed facelift but also a thorough redesign of most combat elements.
Sadly, the game isn’t without faults, as some of the new features make it extremely prone to exploits which an experienced player can use to fully remove any challenge from the game. The main goal of this mod is to render such exploits more difficult, bringing weapons, classes and skills closer to the level they should perform at, as well as to each other. Its secondary goal is to provide tweaks to immersion, visuals and some of the more cumbersome game systems like crafting and endless skill farming.
This is still a work in progress so all feedback is welcome.
For installation instructions and more info check the included Readme file.
Major features:
- Weapon, armor and consumable item rework. Equipment is more likely to do what you expect of it, 2H weapons will do a lot of damage and a tank in heavy armor will be hard to kill.
- Additional items, spells and skills, as well as changes to the existing ones with a focus on improving the more unappealing choices.
- Skills that grant stat bonuses, like Strengthen or Spellcraft, as well as static choices like Switfoot or Spell Ward were removed and compensated with higher stat differences between classes than in vanilla game.
- A full Finishing move rebalance.
- Most ways of gaining permanent stats were removed to reduce power creep in late game and increase options during early game.
- The power of special characters was reduced across the board, they're about on par with each other now and not overwhelmingly stronger than generics.
- Generic characters have more diverse templates that split into fighter, rogue, mage and generalist archetypes, their stats can differ a lot depending on which one you hire.
- Significantly increased the levelling speed of slow skills, like Steal or Parry.
- Most classes were tweaked, with emphasis on nerfing the strong ones and buffing the weak, many gained new tricks.
- Monsters don't scale natural armor as high as before. With the changes to skills, their new role is high HP bullet sponges that take a lot of damage and use the TP gained to spam special moves.
- Many items are easier to acquire, reducing the endgame tedium.
- Visual changes to some items, special characters, skills and spells.
- Streamlined crafting.
Consolidated changelist available in feedback thread.
What's New in Version 0.91 See changelog
Released
Patch notes v0.91
Equipment
- Equipment sidegrades are now the same level as regular gear. I’ve noticed players are often crafting them straight away by mistake and then using the old gear until they gain a level to avoid wasting money, that isn’t very intuitive and it’s also easier to compare both options like this.
- Some bonuses to racial skills on gear were removed or replaced.
- Agility bonus on all gear is higher, also, the amount on 1H Swords is equal to the 2H ones, as agility isn’t something you can stack on most gear pieces like evasion the intention is to make the bonus more noticeable and worth picking.
- Vitality bonus on all gear is lower, attackers were having too hard of a time punching through defensive stats.
- Crissaegrim is now crafted with a Void Orb instead of Storm Orb.
- The damage bonus is shifted around so swords have the highest one of all str weapons instead of axes, as a heavier weapon it would be expected that axes perfom better versus armor so their ATK was raised. This way, hammers have the highest ATK and are the best versus armor but have lowest damage bonus that kicks in against squishy targets, swords are the opposite and axes are the middle road.
- Spears have a slightly lower damage bonus.
- The RT cost of using heavy 2H melee weapons is a bit higher.
- Reinforced 1H Katana have slightly higher ATK and damage bonus.
- Whips provide a +2 bonus to Subdue and Tame, interchangeably.
- Spellbooks are now DEX weapons, they do damage at a 2-3 range and can hit around obstacles, telekinetic weapons are like that. They also have a hidden double damage bonus versus the matching race, similar to baldur weaponry, which might be too much, we’ll see.
- Because of reduction to vitality, damage resistance on all armor except gloves is significantly increased, which will most notably make heavier armor more effective relative to other types but less likely to fully protect a unit from damage than before.
- Elemental resistance on all shields was reduced in order to make them slightly less effective versus spells.
- Jewelry stats are more focused to make the choice more relevant, with a few exceptions. Stat rings will have just basic stats, starting rings will have just ATK/DEF and earrings or chokers will have just damage bonus and resistances.
- Earrings now apply their bonus through base damage resists so it will show up properly on character screen.
Consumables
- Denam won’t be able to use the Salvation stone in story battles so you won’t instantly lose if you use it by mistake.
- Salvation stone restores 50% HP to the revived unit.
- Grenades have different visuals and have a 50% chance to apply same statuses on hit as dragon breaths, they also do much more damage to obstacles like bushes, barricades or clones.
- Grimoire Montee replaced with Grimoire Torture.
- Grimoire Repit replaced with Grimoire Reparation.
Skills
- Racial skills were removed from the game. Just kidding, but the way they function is a bit peculiar in that they provide a defensive bonus to the race that uses them instead of against target race, so a human unit with Anatomy would be protected versus all other races and have a damage bonus versus humans. With the amount of races in the game and enemy composition no other racial skill but Anatomy would ever be worth using on a human and with the time investment required for levelling them they make for an extremely poor situational equip. To hopefully fix that particular nobrainer scenario, racial skills are now available only for races that can’t use the class, so a Warrior wouldn’t be able to equip Anatomy, Herpetology, Daemonology and Thanatology, but Swordmaster would be barred only from Anatomy as a human exclusive class. As a small compensation, it is now possible to equip multiple racial skils, we will see if the experiment works out.
- Because some races are more rare than others, some racial skills also level faster. The rates are as following:
- 72 for Anatomy
- 96 for Thanatology
- 120 for Teratology, Herpetology, Draconology and Daemonology
- 144 for Sacrology, Aurology and Golemy
- Equipping Instill Light and Instill Dark at once isn’t possible anymore (same restriction as light/dark magic and augments).
- Berserker and Swordmaster gain access to Double Attack a bit earlier.
- Ward skills are available earlier.
- It is now possible to equip all recruitment skills at once, mediator enthusiasts, rejoice!
Classes
- Most have less vitality but the difference between high and low vit classes isn’t as high as before
- Minor adjustments to other stats of some classes, most notably monsters that received a dex buff for better ranged attacks.
- Spellblade/Valkyrie lost access to Rally and gained access to Fated Circle.
- Rogue and Ranger lost access to Disarm, haven’t seen anyone bothering with it and I needed its spot.
- Necromancer gained access to Beckon and Recall.
- Vartan uses the same amount of RT per tile moved as a regular fighter, he also gained access to Windshot.
- Astromancer lost access to Stardust Grace and gained access to Galaxy Stop.
- Dragons lost access to Dragon Eye and gained Disembowel.
Spells and Active Skills
- Minor buffs area of effect reduced by one, buffing your entire team right at the start became too easy so it feels almost like a must, which can turn into a chore over time.
- Basic area damage spells do a bit more damage.
- Bursts do a bit more damage but also deal crushing damage so they will be easier to resist than normal spells. This way they’re more of a normal hits with elemental property so the way they bypass the light/dark restrictions is justified. Damn, I just love being consistent.
- Hover Draft affects an area.
- Poison Mist area of effect reduced by one, it does a low amount of water damage up front in addition to 100% poison with extended duration, we’ll see if that stops CPU from spamming it as liberally.
- Poison Cloud and Deadly Poison got a similar treatment, except the poison/envenom is normal duration and requires a successful roll. As the poison is of supernatural origin and they’re dark spells that deal damage, it means they don’t work on undead now, makes sense, kinda.
- Ascend replaced with Agony, a dark spell that inflicts the damage that caster suffers onto the target at the cost of burning all of the user’s MP. It’s a bit less broken version of Pain from the original game, probably more interesting than Nimble that the enemy likes to spam so much. RT cost increased to 40, initial mana cost reduced to 20.
- Gift of Renewal heals a small amount of damage up front.
- Minor draconic buff cost increased to 20, that way minor buffs from elemental schools retain the advantage of being used on first turn.
- Martyrdom area of effect increased by one tile.
- Frenzy costs increased a bit to match Boon of Swiftness.
- Release changed to Rebuild, a spell that removes all debuffs from an undead unit.
- The damage of basic ninjutsu slightly increased.
- Ahriman got reworked to a necromancer-specific crossbow move that doesn’t miss and can inflict Wither on hit.
- Added Windshot, a special skill that does crushing damage to all targets in a line.
- Movement buffs on items last longer.
- Huapango winds restores a small amount of HP up front
- Empower skills don’t advance RT counters anymore, it turned out to be a bit too good and made catnip obsolete.
- Recruit skills will now show their actual effective range which will extend by rank, their RT cost is also lower.
- Added Fated Circle, a cheap skill that grants a single guaranteed melee hit to units in an area, most skills that spellblades have were kinda situational so having one they can use at any time would strengthen their support role. A guaranteed hit is also more useful in the mod considering there are more weapons with effect procs around.
- Salvation TP cost further reduced to 20, consiering it’s a skill that doesn’t create MP from nothing it probably shouldn’t be even remotely costly.
- Added Galaxy Stop, an expensive move that can inflict Bound, Shackle or Stop on all enemies in the field, the chance is rolled separately at 10% for each with the stronger debuff replacing the weaker if more than one proc, same as Infernal Kiss.
- Limelight has an additional... effect, mostly for flavor but it might be useful in certain parts of the game.
- Added Disembowel, a monster special skill that spends all TP to scale both accuracy and damage.
- Liftoff lasts two turns, as it should.
- Added Beckon, a special skill that does the amount of damage equal to any that the target currently suffers.
- Added Recall, a special skill that stills a single undead, it was a bit abusable as a spell. As Necromancers aren’t very sturdy, this and Beckon are meant mostly to give them more options against enemies that break into the back line.
- Conviction is back to charging MP every time it hits, however the amount is a percentage of the user’s own pool now instead of equal to hit damage so it will usually be lower, a princess equipped as a mage with items that raise max MP will obviously recover more.
- Acid Breath and Hydro Press always inflict Breach.
- Crystal Pumpkin and Requiem always exorcise.
- Tainted Kiss always inflicts Poison and Envenom, Stun still has a chance to work.
- Silent Song TP cost reduced to 20, instead of inflicting silence it will remove all MP that the targets have and deal equal amount of HP damage. It’s obviously useful against casters but can also do solid damage cheaply against classes that don’t cast spells very often, like knights.
- Poignant Melody does the same, but to TP, making it potentially both debilitating and devastating, its TP/RT cost was increased to 40/20.
- Instead of removing zombified condition, Celestial Song restores HP by TP spent and clears all status effects.
Finishing Moves
- Jihad has less range but can be targeted anywhere and can’t hit self anymore.
- Annihilate has more range, does dark damage and inflicts Curse
- Obliterate has more range
- Liquidate has more range and resets RT
- Devastate does lightning damage in a larger area
- Level 6 finishers for projectile weapons inflict no status effects anymore but have different advantages
- Heaven to Hell does full damage at a greatly extended range
- In Flagrante renamed to Starfall, it does light damage in an area with moderate penalty and lowered range
- Nightmare renamed to Quillrain, it does earth damage in a line with slight penalty and lowered range
- Sidewinder renamed to Blunderbuss, it does lightning damage at point blank range but scales damage with TP
- Special finishers that the dark knights use are actually better than normal ones
- Fiery Death renamed to Witch Hunt, it does damage in an area and inflicts Shackle
- Angel of Death does damage in an area and inflicts Fear
- Venomous Strike renamed to Creeping Doom, it does damage in an area and inflicts Poison/Slow
- Crushing Blow renamed to Riot Buster, it does damage in an area and inflicts Sleep
- Tempest Blade renamed to Fatal Fury, it does damage in an area and resets RT
- Dark Prison does damage in an area and inflicts Stop
- Armageddon renamed to Atropos, it does damage in an area and inflicts an extended duration Petrify
Racial Templates
- Enemy leader Grion in the act I battle now looks like a Terror Knight, he will likely become one at a later date.
- More leader stats were further adjusted, especially recruitable characters that appear as enemies, like Xapan or Vyce.
Shop
- Grimoire Reparation is available in PotD shop.
Misc
- Renamed Weaken status to Rupture, it should be more obvious that it reduces magic resistance.
- Renamed Spoilspell status to Feeblemind, it should be different enough from Spellslip now.
With version 0.91:- Download
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