1.2.7 Patch Notes

Italic text denotes rationale for changes. I don't need to justify myself but I do want those who look deep into mechanics to understand why I made the choices I did.

Much of this work was done while sick with COVID. I found it difficult to concentrate during this time but I had little else to do besides work on the mod and other Conan-related projects, so I went ahead with it anyway. There might be typos or inconsistencies especially where the buff descriptions and journey steps are concerned, if you find any please report them and I'll get them fixed in the next update.

New content:
- Reworked the Apep Chaosforged encounter. He now takes extremely reduced damage unless close to his forge, which periodically spews deadly flames outwards.
- Implemented new journeys for each of the religions showcasing the reworked armour and weapons in each. These journeys are available on all maps but also have triggers on the Exiled Lands that will activate them automatically when approaching a religion trainer.

Issue fixes:
- Fixed incorrect or incomplete tooltips for the buffs and debuffs granted by Jhebbal Sag Headdress, Setite Vestments, Mitraen Vestments, Zathite Dancer Costume, Reptilian Armour, Silent Legion Light Armour, Kurak's Armour, Arena Champion Armour, Khari Soldier Armour, Lemurian Warrior Armour, Abysmal Daggers, Obsidian Weapons, Foeshatter, Claws of Jhebbal Sag, Lusttaker, Serpent-Stamped Khopesh, Setite Shield, The Tenderizer, Yoggite Bone Spear, Phoenix-engraved Sword, Jhebbal Sag's Prowl, Blackheart Blade, and Hammer of Thag.
- Fixed an oversight in the Lemurian Warrior armour rework that had prevented completion of the associated journey step.
- Fixed a bug with The Watcher Above that would cause him to lose his AI under rare circumstances.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing a Sandsquall caused by a Khari Bow from counting for the purposes of the Wine Cellar journey.

NPC changes:
- The Watcher Above's arena hazards now activate more frequently and deal more damage. The final blast now causes knockdown.
It was only activating once or twice during the fight or even less than that if the player was geared, which made the fight both easy and disappointing. With the boss busy casting during the sequence, being hit by it didn't feel very dangerous and I didn't want to make it a oneshot.

- The Warmaker's Champion's arena hazards now knockdown any targets hit.
Similar to above, this didn't feel dangerous enough.

Item balance changes:
- The bonus attack damage from the Tactical Primacy effect now does damage equal to 2% of the player's maximum health (minimum 20 damage).
- The bonus attack damage from the Twin Disciplines effect now does damage equal to 20% of the player's maximum health (minimum 200 damage).
- The maximum damage and healing from the Betrayer's Succor effect is now equal to 5% of the player's maximum health or 50, whichever is higher. The actual damage and healing done still depends on the target's maximum health.
These three changes are all aimed at making ODO items more viable on heavily modded servers. I chose player health values because how much health a player has decides how much damage is considered to be a lot. I've seen modded servers with player health values anywhere from 1k to 50k so balancing it perfectly for everyone is impossible, but this way that will give decent results for most servers.

- The damage from Glacier-Crack's special effect now does less damage if the wielder is a thrall.
This was an oversight - the damage scales with the wielder's maximum HP and thralls have much more health than players, so the item was very overpowered on thralls. The exact scale value may change over time as I hone in on the right value.

- The healing from Silent Legion Light Armour's special effect (Dread Regeneration) can now only occur if the wearer is below 60% health.
The healing from this was too strong and was trivialising encounters. Rather than nerf the healing value into uselessness, I chose to make it riskier to use.

Visual changes:
- Updated the journey steps for the Warmaker's Champion, The Watcher Above, Apep Chaosforged, and Lemurian Warrior Armour to reflect their new mechanics.
- Changed the particle effects for Sandsquall to hopefully perform better.
- Added a distortion bubble particle effect around The Watcher Above when he's dragged out of his structure to better communicate that he must be fought inside the structure.
- Adjusted the alpha for Silent Legion Medium's particle effect to make it less solid.
- Changed the effect tag names for Balias, Mordlun, Ranissan, and Yog's Touch to better reflect what they do. The actual mechanics are unchanged.
- Changed the name of the Glory of the Exile journey step 'Humanitarian Efforts' to 'Show Some Pity'.
I just didn't like the old name. It felt lazy, obvious, and generic, like something we'd find as a mission title for a crappy movie tie-in game on PS2. Is this any better? Time will tell. I'll try not to get in a habit of changing these though.

- Added or changed buff icons for many weapons and armour sets.
This is an effort to improve the amount of information available to players, allowing people who have learned the mod to identify what items another player is using even if the items are transmogged to look like something else. It also sets up a planned future server setting that will allow server admins to disable the particle effects if they wish.

- Temporary buffs from armour and weapon effects now follow a colour code on the buff bar background: red for things that are bad news to you, green for things that are good news for you, and yellow for things whose outcome depends on how you respond.
I recognise that there's a lot of stuff to learn in this mod so hopefully this makes it easier to understand going in.

- The Throne of Glory from the Glory of the Exile journey now has a new icon to better reflect what it actually is.
Previously there were difficulties getting a good image of it before due to the way actors with multiple static mesh components are rendered in the editor, but I figured it out.

New to 1.2.6:

- Fixed inconsistent tags on Lemurian Sword.
- Moved all map assets from camps-mod-40 to camps-mod-19 to resolve an unforeseen conflict with the Lava Cave mod.

New to 1.2.5:

- Reworked The Watcher Above with new arena hazards and mechanics.
- Foeshatter's damage is now capped and cannot exceed the instigator's maximum health.
- Hopefully fixed the particles for Brittle Chill not deactivating upon the buff's expiry.
- The Setite religious set bonus now grants additional concussive damage alongside strength and agility weapon damage to improve the flow of replacing the lost thrall.

New to 1.2.4:

- Fixed the sound effects for Derketan Acolyte's set bonus.
- Gave the Derketan Allure effect a proper icon and particle effect.
- The Derketan Allure effect now properly detects the sex of the attacker.
- Hitting a member of your own clan (player or thrall) who is wearing Lemurian Warrior armour will no longer trigger the Mark of Honour effect on you. Due to technical limitations there's one situation where this won't work, please check the mod documentation for full details.
- The damage from Mark of Honour is now capped at 30% of the target's maximum health.
- Changed the particles for Mark of Honour from being light blue to orangish red to reflect that it's a detrimental effect.
- Silent Legion Light's Dread Regeneration effect now scales with maximum health. It will always heal at least 80 HP.
- Reptilian Armour's healing effect now scales with maximum health. It will always heal at least 40 HP.

New to 1.2.3:

- Fixed the positioning of particle effects for Destroyer, Blackheart Hammer, Yog's Touch, Carnage, Crom's Hammer, Abysmal Sword, Kingslayer Weapons, Obsidian Weapons, Serpent-men Weapons, Pristine Khari Sword, Pristine Khari Bow, Lemurian Pike, and Rusted Armour.
- Reworked the set bonus for Lemurian Warrior armour. It now marks attackers with the Mark of Honour for 3 seconds. If a marked player rolls within those 3 seconds then they suffer damage equal to 18% of the wearer's current health.
- Changed out the title on the mod config panel to an updated version with nicer colours and a more readable font.
- Slightly increased the vertical size of the mod config panel.

New to 1.2.2:

- Adjusted the particles for Staff of Epemitreus to be slightly raised off the ground.
- All Serpent-men weapons now correctly scale with Agility as outlined in the documentation.
- Fixed missing particle materials for Yog's Touch, Foeshatter, Blackheart Hammer, Royal Lemurian Armour, and Silent Legion Lieutenants.
- Fixed missing sound effects for Daughter of Dagon.
- Toned down the intensity of the particle effect for Glacier-Crack.
- Overhauled the Warmaker's Champion, adding new arena hazards and new dangers upon phase transition.
- Fixed a bug with Zathite Daggers that was causing them to scale with the wrong character's health.
- Fixed journey activation zones double-triggering in some situations.

New to 1.2.1:

- Fixed infinite looping of the particle effects for the Ymir armour healing.
- Fixed Khari Remnants having too much health.
- Added stat modifiers to Setite Vambraces and Mitraen Hood. These may not apply to already-crafted ones, so if yours lack the stat bonuses then you'll need to craft a new one.

New to 1.2.0:

- Added new set bonuses for all crafted religious armour sets, and new on-hit effects for all crafted religious weapons. Mitran and Setite sets have had their missing pieces (head and hands respectively) added. Jhebbal Sag is unique in that there is no full set, only the headdress. See the mod documentation for full details on what all these newly reworked items do. Epic versions of these are to come in a future update, once I know what the right stat values for them will be.
- Arena Champion and Godbreaker pieces now grant their vanilla effects individually without needing the full set equipped.
- Fixed a minor oversight with the Royal Lemurian set bonus that may have caused the Awestruck effect to trigger from self-inflicted damage.
- Fixed the Witch Queen having a lot more health than intended.
- Fixed the tags of many of the mod's buffs and debuffs.
- Fixed an issue that was causing the stamina setting changes in ODO mod config to apply only to the player who changed the setting.
- Fixed an issue with incorrect health values on non-boss Serpentmen.
- Added a short cooldown of 6 seconds to the Tactical Primacy effect.

New to 1.1.3:

Let's try that again. Without crashes this time.

- Fixed Khari Remnants spawning in with the incorrect amount of health.
- Fixed the encounter controller for The Ritual Keeper being visible.
- Added a new mod setting allowing admins to remove the free attack from the Rolling Thrust perk, since the stamina changes in Age of War have made this perk powerful to the point of being mandatory.
- Added a new mod setting allowing admins to adjust whether or not spears cripple on the first heavy attack.
- Added a new mod setting allowing admins to adjust the healing of the Glutton for Punishment perk.
- Fixed a minor issue with the Keeper of the Larder fight where slaves sometimes wouldn't have a valid spawn location.
- Killing the Keeper of the Larder will now properly deactivate the slave control pillars.
- Reduced health values for all Serpentmen bosses, as they had become way too high with the changes made by Funcom in Age of War.
- Increased health values for many of the bosses in the Sunken City, as they had slipped too low with the Age of War update.
- Reduced the damage stack exponent for Dregs Komodo poison.

New to 1.1.2:

Attempt to revert back to 1.1 as 1.1.1 was causing a crash on startup.