[mod] DZM Expanded

[KonstigMan]

testing5432, thanks. You said it right.

[Fallen_Outsider]

Maybe I'm a dumbass and missing the point of the mod, but will there ever be any options to limit the soulforging? I like the events and some other additions from the mod, but it gets really painful when you're a kingdom trying to conquer some irrelevant count and he just wrecks your shit because he has 100+ or so martial constructs that make his army literally invincible.

[TriggerBlade]

6 hours ago, Fallen_Outsider said:

Maybe I'm a dumbass and missing the point of the mod, but will there ever be any options to limit the soulforging? I like the events and some other additions from the mod, but it gets really painful when you're a kingdom trying to conquer some irrelevant count and he just wrecks your shit because he has 100+ or so martial constructs that make his army literally invincible.

I'm going to tie the spawning events to the game rule that DZ programmed that disables magic entirely.

If you can't wait for that then just remove the on-action file from the mod folder.

[TriggerBlade]

Updated the mod. Check the change log.

[ImNotOneToJudge]

I have been following this mod for a bit and was wondering are there an plans to add routes for the characters i.e Fate characters or are they destined to remain Gods on earth with their stats? i read somewhere that it was a future plan but can't remember where. Besides that i'm enjoying this mod 

[TriggerBlade]

15 hours ago, ImNotOneToJudge said:

I have been following this mod for a bit and was wondering are there an plans to add routes for the characters i.e Fate characters or are they destined to remain Gods on earth with their stats? i read somewhere that it was a future plan but can't remember where. Besides that i'm enjoying this mod 

I mentioned earlier that I planned on writing a visual novel type story for each player soul forge. I still have this plan but I'm sure you're aware it will be a time consuming task and I would rather get all of the other features complete as it won't add any game play benefits outside of potentially adding the character as a lover or altering traits.

These routes won't be super complex and will mostly have binary choices because it's not the major focus of the mod, but I intend on following up on the narratives set up during the conversations after you summon them. Some rare instances will allow a third choice but most likely at the conclusion. Expect these to be simplified, but more plot heavy, versions of the Belle events from Dark World.

 

Sex will not be explicitly depicted, definitely implied, as I am keeping to DZ's desire of this not being a sex mod. The most obscene thing to expect is Medb treating you like a bench and sitting on your back while your character is on their hands and knees(This was mentioned in the discord and I'll note that you have the option of saying no to being Medb's sub) People are free to make an add-on that allows unique sex scenes and I will work with them to ensure it functions correctly but it will never be part of the core mod.

I'll note ahead of time that I will be adding blocks that prevent the romancable ones from being seduced or taken as concubines unless you go through their story.

Aside from that, some NPCs will be reworked to spawn like how Fenris and Vlad did in Dark World or like Vanilla Hordes. You can either side with or against them.

I also want to see if I can program that you'll be able to "revive" player soul forges if they die through unintentional means such as being a target of one of your courtier's assassination attempts or if they die in a duel to an NPC. I put it in quotes because they'll have their original traits and stats of when you first summoned them. Accounting for any possible changes will be too time consuming.

As a preview of what to expect, but not any time soon, here's what will be possible outcomes of the "Visual Novel" stories.

 

1. You end up married to them.

 

2. You aid them in reclaiming their historical lands with them as a vassal or if Empire tier, an Alliance.

 

3. The player will gain their artifact or get a stat boost while still having them as a courtier.

 

4. Potential player death if you're an ass to the wrong person, some servants will have positive reactions to being an ass to them so choose wisely.

I'll state for the record that these are all things I want and plan to add but that I will never give a definite time of when to expect it other than that they'll only happen after things with higher priority are taken care of. There's still a whole heap of content not related to soul forges so that will add to the delay of implementation of the story lines.

[ImNotOneToJudge]

4 hours ago, TriggerBlade said:

I mentioned earlier that I planned on writing a visual novel type story for each player soul forge. I still have this plan but I'm sure you're aware it will be a time consuming task and I would rather get all of the other features complete as it won't add any game play benefits outside of potentially adding the character as a lover or altering traits.

These routes won't be super complex and will mostly have binary choices because it's not the major focus of the mod, but I intend on following up on the narratives set up during the conversations after you summon them. Some rare instances will allow a third choice but most likely at the conclusion. Expect these to be simplified, but more plot heavy, versions of the Belle events from Dark World.

 

Sex will not be explicitly depicted, definitely implied, as I am keeping to DZ's desire of this not being a sex mod. The most obscene thing to expect is Medb treating you like a bench and sitting on your back while your character is on their hands and knees(This was mentioned in the discord and I'll note that you have the option of saying no to being Medb's sub) People are free to make an add-on that allows unique sex scenes and I will work with them to ensure it functions correctly but it will never be part of the core mod.

I'll note ahead of time that I will be adding blocks that prevent the romancable ones from being seduced or taken as concubines unless you go through their story.

Aside from that, some NPCs will be reworked to spawn like how Fenris and Vlad did in Dark World or like Vanilla Hordes. You can either side with or against them.

I also want to see if I can program that you'll be able to "revive" player soul forges if they die through unintentional means such as being a target of one of your courtier's assassination attempts or if they die in a duel to an NPC. I put it in quotes because they'll have their original traits and stats of when you first summoned them. Accounting for any possible changes will be too time consuming.

As a preview of what to expect, but not any time soon, here's what will be possible outcomes of the "Visual Novel" stories.

 

1. You end up married to them.

 

2. You aid them in reclaiming their historical lands with them as a vassal or if Empire tier, an Alliance.

 

3. The player will gain their artifact or get a stat boost while still having them as a courtier.

 

4. Potential player death if you're an ass to the wrong person, some servants will have positive reactions to being an ass to them so choose wisely.

I'll state for the record that these are all things I want and plan to add but that I will never give a definite time of when to expect it other than that they'll only happen after things with higher priority are taken care of. There's still a whole heap of content not related to soul forges so that will add to the delay of implementation of the story lines.

Ohh that clears it up. What are the plans to what you will add in the next update or whats on your To Do list, i am unsure if the file page has been updated with what you have completed so far so i am to believe asking is a much more efficient way?

[A_guy_with_the_plan]

so im a derp and cant make everything work i get the fate stay heros but i dont get the soulforge the heros(i.e whats to do with them) or how to use the nerco tomes i started collecting them all via war for artifacts or even how to be one other than the mage building you make giving you the power to summon a 1k army can anyone explain 

[TriggerBlade]

On 5/22/2020 at 5:48 PM, ImNotOneToJudge said:

Ohh that clears it up. What are the plans to what you will add in the next update or whats on your To Do list, i am unsure if the file page has been updated with what you have completed so far so i am to believe asking is a much more efficient way?

I'm currently adding artifacts to NPC soulforges. Not sure what I'll do when I'm done.

[randomlast]

Hey I'm probably missing something, but I've only been able to find the option to build the hidden tunnels once out of about 6 or 7 games. Is there a building requirement you have to meet before you can build them?

[heliospolaris]

I saw the original mod required the Rajas of India DLC and some others, does this mod need those DLC to work right? I ask this because   I can manage to  get a court mystic (after giving myself the mystic trait at the start of the game because specializing in necromancy at the wizard tower didn't seem to work), but still I can not find the decision to send them out after specializing in necromancy or any other magic stuff besides raise undead horde, summon to work in terms of necromancy spells and I doubt I have the soul forges working though I haven't really bothered trying to look for them yet given the issue I am having. That said, am I missing a step or something?

[TriggerBlade]

On 6/14/2020 at 12:53 AM, randomlast said:

Hey I'm probably missing something, but I've only been able to find the option to build the hidden tunnels once out of about 6 or 7 games. Is there a building requirement you have to meet before you can build them?

No, but there is a game rule that prevents it. The two moon rule.

 

On 6/16/2020 at 5:50 PM, heliospolaris said:

but still I can not find the decision to send them out after specializing in necromancy or any other magic stuff

You gotta wait a bit. There's a delay. There's also a timer to prevent you from sending them out too often. It also depends on where you are as some artifacts are region locked.

 

I've been trying to remove the region lock but it's so woven into the code that I haven't had the time to make attempts that wouldn't break your game.

 

 

Also I apologize for the delay. Neither the mod nor myself are dead. Despite feeling like it sometimes.

[helixyos]

I think it would be nice if we had a new level of trait exclusive to dreadlord (one level above brutal strenght).

[TriggerBlade]

6 hours ago, helixyos said:

I think it would be nice if we had a new level of trait exclusive to dreadlord (one level above brutal strenght).

I can look into it. No promises on it coming out soon though. Other things are on my plate.

 

I don't think I mentioned it on the forums but next update is gonna have a lot more artifacts and bloodlines to go with the soulforges now that they can become mortal. To the existing ones. Update after that will be finishing off the list entirely and then I'll finally move back to other things.

[helixyos]

No problem, it's just a suggestion not an obligation.

can't wait for the next update ?.

[veedanya]

Quick question: How does artifact seeding work? Only four or five (of the, what, 100+ in the game files?) have managed to spawn after 100 years or so of gameplay. Are artifacts only spawned on game start, or is there a running scripted chance of new ones appearing each year?

 

And before you ask: I have supernatural stuff enabled, checked the save file to see artifact spawns (to be sure I wasn't just failing scrying attempts), etc

[veedanya]

Also, I don't know if you're still working on this or have moved on to greener pastures (CK3), but a few suggestions:

 

1. You have both a DMZ and DMZE file for artifacts, resulting in duplicate entries. This means the artifacts you removed from DMZ (i.e., did not put in the DMZE list) are still in-game. And if you should modify the stats on one artifact entry, you risk it being overwritten by the duplicate entry in the other file. I'd merge them both into one list to prevent the risk of changes being overwritten.
2. The "cannot be an assigned commander" requirement for casting nercomancy spells is a bit tedious and only adds extra clicking. The CK2 game mechanics allow you to assign or unassign commanders instantly, so all it really does it add extra clicking when you want to sacrifice prisoners or heal a sick relative. It doesn't really act as any sort of real restriction, unless that character happens to be in actual combat.
3. There should be some sort of cheat/game rule setting/annual on-action event to affect artifact spawning, particularly for soulforge-able characters. Since all the artifacts are very rare, it seems players will encounter less than one-tenth of them throughout an entire multi-century game. And may never encounter some at all if they get unlucky with RNG.
4. I've noticed that like many older mods or those with inexperienced modders, there are a lot of files/entries which are basically entirely copy-pasted from vanilla... which means they'll overwrite current vanilla files with out of date entries. Or clash with other mods that need to overwrite vanilla entries. Most of the 00_artifacts.txt is an example of this. Might want to clean up the unmodified vanilla entries/files to prevent unnecessary mod conflicts.

[TriggerBlade]

On 9/8/2020 at 2:32 PM, veedanya said:

Quick question: How does artifact seeding work?

I have no idea. I've been trying to streamline it but the way DZ went about it has confused people way more experienced than me. All I know is that many are regional.

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

Also, I don't know if you're still working on this or have moved on to greener pastures (CK3)

I'm still here. CK3 scares me.

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

You have both a DMZ and DMZE file for artifacts, resulting in duplicate entries.

DZM and DZME files are kept separate to keep me and others aware what is old stuff. It's slowly been merged and one day will be completely.

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

The "cannot be an assigned commander" requirement for casting nercomancy spells is a bit tedious and only adds extra clicking. The CK2 game mechanics allow you to assign or unassign commanders instantly, so all it really does it add extra clicking when you want to sacrifice prisoners or heal a sick relative. It doesn't really act as any sort of real restriction, unless that character happens to be in actual combat.

Yeah I don't know why that's a condition. I can see about removing it. 

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

There should be some sort of cheat/game rule setting/annual on-action event to affect artifact spawning, particularly for soulforge-able characters. Since all the artifacts are very rare, it seems players will encounter less than one-tenth of them throughout an entire multi-century game. And may never encounter some at all if they get unlucky with RNG.

This was intentional from DZ. Mentioned above it's partially because they're regional. I'll eventually have it that everyone can get every artifact in one playthrough. I've just been using console commands for my personal playthroughs anyways.

 

If I can untangle things I'll probably simplify it to scrying once per year with a 50% chance of failure. 25% if you're a Dreadlord.

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

or those with inexperienced modders,

Perpetually me.

 

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

there are a lot of files/entries which are basically entirely copy-pasted from vanilla...

This was a thing DZ was going to fix. I'm slowly doing it.

7 hours ago, veedanya said:

Might want to clean up the unmodified vanilla entries/files to prevent unnecessary mod conflicts.

I poke away at this when I can.

 

I've always been limited by time but trust me things slowly get widdled away at. Either by me or the kind souls who donate code and fixes.

[veedanya]

So concerning artifact spawning: I stayed playing in the early days (867 AD? Or whatever the viking-era start was). That entire time I only saw two major/scry-able DMZE artifacts, plus some minor ones. This dry spell lasted about nearly centuries. Then around 1000 AD I started finding artifacts out the wazoo; I found easily triple or quadruple the artifacts in 20 years than I did in the last >100 years. (Also, two incomplete games I attempted earlier also found nearly no DMZE artifacts the first century or two. )

This could just be some sort of funky conflict with another mod on my end -- or just coincidence -- so it probably merits being verified by someone else. But if it's not just me, then the cause might be related to start date; CK2 vanilla's start date was originally in the 11th century, so maybe something is telling DMZE not to bother spawning artifacts in the 9th or 10th centuries (viking era dates) because the player isn't supposed to be playing in those eras. 

 

-----

 

On an unrelated note, found two other bugs related to soulforged characters:

 

1) They have buttholes (the traits) even when the option to have them in-game as traits is toggled off in ala's body mod game rule settings. So you need a butthole game rule check or something.

 

2) I'm currently playing with a kitsune start, and all the soulforged characters had the kitsune trait added to them after appearing. I suspect this is related to the LF startup event that asks, "Do you want to play a race? And do you want to make all your current and future courtiers that race?". LF's own unique NPCs seem to be immune to this problem, so I'd look into the code to see if they apply some sort of flag to prevent racial traits being added to them, and copy that to soulforged characters.

[TriggerBlade]

46 minutes ago, veedanya said:

1) They have buttholes (the traits) even when the option to have them in-game as traits is toggled off in ala's body mod game rule settings. So you need a butthole game rule check or something.

I'll see about adding a rule check for character spawning when you have Ala's mod. Though that would require extensively editing a lot of code to check for each rule and its connected trait.

 

48 minutes ago, veedanya said:

2) I'm currently playing with a kitsune start, and all the soulforged characters had the kitsune trait added to them after appearing. I suspect this is related to the LF startup event that asks, "Do you want to play a race? And do you want to make all your current and future courtiers that race?". LF's own unique NPCs seem to be immune to this problem, so I'd look into the code to see if they apply some sort of flag to prevent racial traits being added to them, and copy that to soulforged characters.

This fix is a lot less extensive so I can do this with a simple copy-paste. It'll be out next update.

[veedanya]

Further detail on the artifact spawning problem: It appears artifacts don't spawn on their own (or at least only do exceptionally rarely). Instead, the primary means of creating them seems to be the scrying action; I discovered this by chance when someone I already had on my watch/important character list coincidentally "obtained" an artifact the exact second scrying was cast.

 

So the issue with lack of artifacts in my early game wasn't necessarily a lack of artifacts generating passively, so much as the scrying spell failing to spawn anything during that period. I thought I filled all the prerequisites; I had a grimoire, over a hundred life crystals, high stats across the board, a court mystic, etc. Tried scrying easily 30+ times, and every one was a failure. No artifacts found in either bandit dungeons or rulers.

 

I looked at the workshop/scrying spell file, and it's so short and simple I can't see any possible reason it failed in that file. I can only assume the issue must be in the much larger and more complex dz_artifacthunting_effects.txt file.

 

[veedanya]

I finally solved the problem of artifact spawning: It was provinces. For some reason I cannot fathom, playing certain 1-province countries seemed to prevent scrying from functioning. I can only assume it's a bug relating to the geographical restriction of artifact spawning, or maybe the game trying to spawn bandit base province modifiers? (If you're curious, I was having the problem with Venice; scrying would absolutely never function until I expanded and captured a second province, after which it functioned as normal. I also tested it with an Irish 1-province country, but did not have the same issues there.) Maybe it's just a mod conflict of some sort. Oh well.

 

Also, some unrelated suggestions: 

• I had no idea how to activate the fighter's guild assignments to raid the bandit lairs until I delved into the raw code. There should really be sort of tooltip on the province modifier and/or the Fighters Guild job title, or something; this has to be the only mod/event I've ever played in years and years of CK2 where right-click interacting with a settlement was the way to activate a decision. I'm sure I haven't been the only one at a loss on what to do because of this.
• The Fighter's Guild bandit lair raid's raw code says you get a bonus to success if you have an artifact granting invisibility. This is another thing that isn't mentioned anywhere in-game and isn't obvious to players, since why would they automatically assume invisibility provides a bonus but not also assume other powerful artifact wepaons/armor also provide the same benefit? So it should be mentioned somewhere, like invisibility artifacts' tooltips, or the bandit lair province modifier tooltip. 

[TriggerBlade]

8 hours ago, veedanya said:

I was having the problem with Venice;

Yeah DZ mostly played Tribals so Republics and Nomads have issues. Blorb donated code an update or two back to fix the Republic though.

 

8 hours ago, veedanya said:

I had no idea how to activate the fighter's guild assignments to raid the bandit lairs until I delved into the raw code. There should really be sort of tooltip on the province modifier and/or the Fighters Guild job title, or something; this has to be the only mod/event I've ever played in years and years of CK2 where right-click interacting with a settlement was the way to activate a decision. I'm sure I haven't been the only one at a loss on what to do because of this.

This has been a problem. It's on the to do list. 

 

8 hours ago, veedanya said:

The Fighter's Guild bandit lair raid's raw code says you get a bonus to success if you have an artifact granting invisibility. This is another thing that isn't mentioned anywhere in-game and isn't obvious to players, since why would they automatically assume invisibility provides a bonus but not also assume other powerful artifact wepaons/armor also provide the same benefit? So it should be mentioned somewhere, like invisibility artifacts' tooltips, or the bandit lair province modifier tooltip. 

I... didn't know there were artifacts that gave invisibility. It may be dummy code for something DZ had planned. 

Tool tips and the like are localization heavy so this may take a bit as the only reason the upcoming update is taking so long is because localization is so time consuming and demoralizing because I have to write college papers too...

I'l try to get to it sooner rather than later but I rather put the energy into finishing what I've been working on.

 

I should add a to do/priority list to the main post. In fact I will. Just gotta sort out stuff... Expect it with the next release.

[veedanya]

4 hours ago, TriggerBlade said:

I... didn't know there were artifacts that gave invisibility. It may be dummy code for something DZ had planned. 

The tag is, if I recall correctly, dz_concealment. It's on the Helm of Darkness, Ring of Eluned, and Arthur's Mantle. There's a success bonus if you have an artifact with that tag equipped.

 

Not that I'd risk an artifact, personally. Those guild missions seem to have pretty punishing rates of failure -- even for characters with off-the-scale martial and personal combat abilities. Better to use fodder characters than risk someone valuable to do them.

[TriggerBlade]

4 hours ago, veedanya said:

Those guild missions seem to have pretty punishing rates of failure

Added to the to do list.