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Living World Dexterity Fix

Patch for Living World that fixes its unintentional nerf to NPCs' Dexterity. Load after (below) Living World. Read on for more information about Living World's Dexterity nerf and what this patch does. Please offer feedback on this mod if you have any.

So what's this Dexterity nerf? Here is the issue as explained by crux on October 7, 2024 in Living World's comments:

Originally posted by crux:

This mod nerfs the dexterity of a lot of NPCs, significantly. Making them much weaker.

It add unarmed stats to many of them that is below their combat stats. When a mod does this, the unarmed stat determines dexterity. There is a fix though that lets you keep the unarmed stat and not break the dexterity balance. Make the "stealth" stat in the FCS the same as the combat one. For whatever reason, the stealth stat also modifies dexterity and takes priority over the other two.

This will make these NPCs harder to sneak around, but seems more balance than cutting their dex 50 to 90% This is not a little we are talking about. It's really balance breaking.

I decided to try and fix this nerf. For now, I'm strictly following crux's suggestion to raise the affected NPCs' stealth stats. In the future, I might adjust specific NPCs if it seems more appropriate to fix it a different way (like raising the unarmed stats to match the combat stats) but it does truly seem less unbalanced to fix this by making it harder to sneak past these NPCs rather than making them into stronger martial artists.

(Side note: why am I sure this change was unintentional? Living World's creator Mad Scientist was clearly trying to make these NPCs stronger by adding unarmed stats to them so they wouldn't be so helpless if they were disarmed. Many NPCs also had their Strength raised, and some even had their combat stats raised as well, so it's very clear that the intent was to make them tougher. Mad Scientist probably just didn't know there was a risk of nerfing NPCs' Dexterity this way, which is understandable; Living World is a huge mod and the FCS has some pretty intricate details, so it would be hard to know if you've missed some weird little thing about how it works.)

To find out which NPCs were nerfed, I opened Living World in the FCS and did the following:

1. Open the Change List in Living World
   
2. Look for any character that had unarmed stats added
   
3. Check to see if those are lower than their combat stats
   
4. Check to see if this is already offset by high-enough stealth stats (equal to or higher than combat stats)

I did not look at brand new NPCs that were added by Living World, only at existing NPCs that were altered. It's possible that some of the new NPCs have weaker Dexterity than intended because of how their stats were set up, but that's more of a balance decision I might tackle later. The important thing for this patch is to fix the nerfed Dexterity of all affected vanilla NPCs.

If you have already seen these NPCs in your current save file, you may have to import to update their stats. I can't test this part right this minute but it would make sense.

The following is a list of all NPCs I found whose Dexterity was nerfed by Living World, all of whom are fixed (hopefully) by this patch:

• Arc
  
• Armour King's Thrall
  
• Big Fang
  
• Big Grim
  
• Buzan
  
• Crabsmith
  
• Dack
  
• Deadcat Vendor
  
• Dust King
  
• Empire Bounty Hunter
  
• Empire Mercenary
  
• Flying Bull
  
• Ghost
  
• Grayflayer
  
• Grey
  
• Hive Prince
  
• Holy Lord Phoenix
  
• Holy Sentinel
  
• Hound
  
• Inquisitor
  
• Lady Sanda
  
• Mercenary
  
• Mourn Barman (apparently not from the vanilla game after all, but it showed in the FCS as a change. Also it's new stealth stats bringing the Dex down rather than unarmed stats, but same deal)
  
• Quin
  
• Rebirth Slave (other combat stats were intentionally nerfed, but still has the Dex discrepancy)
  
• Royal Soldier Drone
  
• Samurai Elite
  
• Shek Fighter
  
• Shinobi Smuggler
  
• Shop Guard
  
• Skeleton Civilian
  
• Slaver Caravan Boss
  
• Smuggler
  
• Soldierbot Guard
  
• Stone Rat
  
• Swamper Non-Gang

Those are all the NPCs affected by this patch. Please let me know if I missed anyone, and if you're one of the players that has been irritated by the Dexterity nerf this patch is meant to address, I'm definitely looking forward to your feedback most of all.

The below information is mostly for anyone who has looked into the FCS and wondered why I changed some NPCs and not others:

Note that there are some NPCs who had unarmed stats added by Living World but without nerfing their Dexterity. This was because of one of the following reasons:

• The unarmed stat that was added was not lower than their combat stats (it was either the same or higher)
  
• The NPC also had a stealth stat added which was the same as (or higher than) their combat stats (which is the exact fix suggested by crux)

An example of an NPC that was altered without being nerfed is Bayan. He was given unarmed stats of 60, but was also given both combat and stealth stats of 60, so his Dexterity was not reduced. (He was in fact buffed by this change, as his original combat stats were only 15, but the relevant point is that his new unarmed stats don't inadvertently weaken him by being lower than his combat stats.) Another example is Big Gray, who was given unarmed stats of 28, but this is exactly the same as his combat stats, so his Dexterity remains the same.

Another variant is that some NPCs were not "nerfed" per se because they were intended to be buffed, but may have received less of a buff than intended because the Dexterity from the added combat stats is being reduced by lower unarmed stats, just as it is for the nerfed NPCs. Considering NPCs in this situation are already stronger than they were in vanilla, they aren't part of the accidental nerf so I'm just leaving them alone for now. Seems to just be these characters affected in this way:

• Holy Shop Guard
  
• Lord Mirage
  
• Seto