Balancing Deviously Cursed Loot

[LeoninJesterXII]

I love this mod's options, but I can't seem to get the settings to where I like them. I want it set up so that I can play Skyrim, and not just a bondage victim fantasy.

 

I would like the effects to be somewhat rare, but still actually happen.

 

Is anyone willing to share their settings?

[Inte]

Here are mine. 

DCURConfig.json

[LeoninJesterXII]

18 minutes ago, Inte said:

Here are mine. 

DCURConfig.json

Are they well-balanced? Are the procs rare enough to play the game somewhat normally?

[chaimhewast]

I don't have a specific config available, but here's an overview of what I change:

• Solicitation retuned so the customers are more willing to pay up (75% instead of 50%) but require it be done in an inn while wearing not wearing armor
• Followers are limited to commenting on devices, but other NPCs can act on them
• Sex attacks are on a very long cooldown with only naked, unarmed, and restrained as options (and requiring at least 2 of them)
• Public indecency enabled, but misogyny disabled
• Self-bondage, shaky hands, and bondage lover are all disabled

Some of those are for the sake of time - the solicitation change works out to roughly the same rate compared to soliciting outside of inns with default values, and having to sit through a sex scene or be punished when all you really want to do is sell off your junk is annoying; others are due to how I perceive the game - followers are there to help you, bondage is not something my characters actively seek out, and my character's arousal shouldn't affect the actions of others.

 

I've yet to find a balance I like for the trapped containers, though. In my current playthrough, I have them disabled and am getting the special events via Simple Slavery instead.

[El_Duderino]

32 minutes ago, chaimhewast said:

I've yet to find a balance I like for the trapped containers, though. In my current playthrough, I have them disabled and am getting the special events via Simple Slavery instead.

In my experience (and gameplay), the key is usually to dial down the trap chances. Currently, I'm using 0.4 (wilderness), 0.6 (cities) and 0.5 (dungeons) as trap changes, with a factor 2 for dead bodies and picked locks. Also, I'm usually using very low arousal weight and factor settings (each usually at 0.1). The traps still go off often enough -- at 100 arousal, the trap chance is somewhere between 1 and 2% with those settings. Coupled with the other things that can tie you up, low key spawn chances and difficult escape settings in DD, this is challenging enough but still allows me to play the game and quest as much as I like, most of the time anyway.

[chaimhewast]

56 minutes ago, El_Duderino said:

Currently, I'm using 0.4 (wilderness), 0.6 (cities) and 0.5 (dungeons) as trap changes, with a factor 2 for dead bodies and picked locks.

Interesting. When I have trapped containers enabled, I turn off trapped corpses (how does you set up a trap to spring on someone looting you without setting it off yourself?) and cities at least safer than wilderness if not totally safe as well, under the logic that the jarls don't want people setting traps.

[oblivioner]

My settings:

Turn up the minimum arousal to 40, full stack to 100 arousal.  min 1 item, max 3, no cap of total items.

Turn Self-bondage off, shaky hands to 5% chance, can drop and store DD items.

Hardcore mitts off(also hardcore mitt mode prevents other things from working anyways)  

Set the severely punishing events to 1% or 0%(i.e. shock boots, cursed collar).

Fines to 250 gold, keep nudity a crime

Start at default demands for sex, but turn down as desired over time as you get more famous/well equipped.

Sex attacks on, but only allow on combat surrender.

 

Turn off trapped plants and bodies.

 

Keys set to easy to make, 20% chance to break 1% jam chance, infinite use otherwise.

[Choppytehbear]

11 hours ago, chaimhewast said:

Interesting. When I have trapped containers enabled, I turn off trapped corpses (how does you set up a trap to spring on someone looting you without setting it off yourself?) and cities at least safer than wilderness if not totally safe as well, under the logic that the jarls don't want people setting traps.

The thing with trapped bodies is that the items on them might be cursed, not that they set up a trap before they died. 

[LeoninJesterXII]

A big thanks to everyone who has answered. I'll take what you've given me and go from there. Mod well!

[MrEsturk]

Shameless self promotion: You might also try my patch that allows the player to still wield magic if she gets trapped in bondage paw mittens. Makes them more of a middle ground cursed device, as opposed to being completely debilitating which is already covered quite nicely by the armbinders/yokes/etc in a very similar fashion.

 

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/4511-magic-allowing-bondage-mittens-patch-for-devious-devices-expansion/

[Ytheria]

Here are mine.

DCURConfig.json

[valcon767]

ok here is mine

 

as soon as i remember i turn item drops down to 4% (I need to remember to save the settings one day with lowered item drops) then adjust other settings after

completing "Thane of Falkreath" questline, after that i turn shaky hands up to 10%, turn on misogyny at 7% and let it run the rest of the game at those settings.

the reason i leave shaky hands and misogyny at lower settings is i keep hitting a vanilla bug with the "Thane of Falkreath" questline, and after much trying i can understand

why the USLEEP team has not quashed it.

the bug causes an early completion of the final stage of the "Thane of Falkreath" questline, even though i have not even started that questline (or it's precursor quest)

used "sqs favor258" to determine if the quest had bugged out, all other stages would show a 0 all the time and the final stage would start showing a 1 (meaning it had  bugged out) somewhere along the way.

after a total of over 50 attempts to track down this bug i gave up.  it does hit me every game if i do not do that questline very early in game, but exactly when and where changes every single time even when following the exact same steps in game.

test steps (while actively trying to track down the bug) were create a female Breton using default looks

exit Helgen

open all city fast travel points in order, including city, stable, and Jarl's residence (Riverwood, Whiterun, Falkreath, Riften, Windhelm, Raven Rock, Winterhold,  College, Dawnstar, Morthal, Solitude, Markarth)

bug hits where i am unable to complete the "Thane of Falkreath" questline every single time along the way

did 5 runs with just the game, and dlcs (no other mods ..not even USLEEP) - bug hit at 5 different times and cities 

did 5 runs with just game, dlcs, and USLEEP - bug hit 5 different times and locations yet again with only 1 duplication of last run

did 10 runs with game, dlcs, USLEEP, and AS-LAL - (started by Helgen) bug hit at 9 different locations (1 duplication during run), and only 3 duplications with lesser order

did over 30 runs with full load order - bug hits every time with some duplications but duplications were at least 5 runs apart

the only constant thing along the way was that it would not occur until i had opened at least the 2nd city fast travel point, and would hit before completing that order of opening fast travel points

with no extra fast travel locations there is 25 spots it could show up and it would always be after #2 and before #25 (with my normal load out it increases to 39 spots and will show after #2 and before #39).

along the way here (not during the active attempt to track the bug down) i have run into it every time i start a new game, no matter what order i use to open the cities fast travel points.  it occurs after the 2nd city is opened and before the last city is opened (every single time).

the only sure way i found to avoid the bug hitting me is to start game (start location does not matter), visit Helgen, complete "Before the Storm", then complete the "Thane of Falkreath" questline next.   if i attempt to open other fast travel locations without doing it in that order i can (and have) had it occur anyway.

and yes i have reported it to the USLEEP team (they already know about it), including the exact steps taken (and the results).  the problem with trying to track down this particular bug is that it shows up (seemingly) at random without having something specific that is triggering it (i am sure something specific is triggering it, but cannot figure out what it is).

if anyone who reads this post has hit this bug and actually knows what triggers it, please report your information to the USLEEP team.

 

 

DCURConfig.json

[ChaosZen]

The quickest and easiest way to scale down all chances while still using your current or prefered relative chances on specific types of traps and items, is to simply tune down the "Modifier" values such as where it says "Dungeon Chance Modifier", ""Wilderness...", and "City...", etc.  I don't have my game running at the moment so I cannot check, and don't recall which mods used which types of values for such modifiers, but generally it should be something like a low number with a single digit decimal.  Setting these to 1.0 will mean the percentile chances will be fairly close to the percentage chances that have have set for specific events. If you change them to 0.5, traps and other related events will only happen half as often as they do currently. 

 

The way I like to play, is to set the chances and risks where I will likely want them in middle of play, somewhere at around level 40 or so. Then I set the modifiers to somewhere between 0.1 to 0.3 in order to play a "mostly normal" game to gain skills, do quests, ... you know, "Skyrim".  That way, once I get the skills I want and want to kick it up just one notch, I only need to go into MCM to adjust just the few modifier values a little. If I start to get bored or ready to kick up another notch, I raise them a little more. And so forth.

 

 

[Ytheria]

I suspect OP is no longer here, but here is my current game in stats, with more or less the settings I attached above:

• 65 game days
• Level 19
• 19 quests completed
• 51 miscellaneous objectives achieved
• 'Experienced slave' trait acquired
• 4 hours and 37 minutes spent having sex
• 212 times 'victim' (as recorded by SexLab, which is not always accurate)
• 3 times jailed
• 4,006 gold paid in fines.

[Mathrue]

I'm a bit late noticing this topic, and yeah the thread starter has already gone ahead after receiving advice from everyone, but LeoninJesterXII's line about "so that I can play Skyrim, and not just a bondage victim fantasy" definitely resonates with me.

 

I like to adjust the settings of CL so that I have enough freedom to still play my way through the game from scratch (well, via Skyrim Unbound with minimal settings). The best game for me is one where I'm often wearing devices, but also often not wearing devices. And not usually stuck wearing the same stuff for a lengthy period of time, because after a while the "magic" fades and it's just inconvenient. I usually do some side quests or explore some simpler dungeons while wearing devices, then do a tougher dungeon each time I'm free.

 

Here's what I change from the default options to achieve that:
 

Spoiler

 

- I change the occurrence rates to common .1, ornate 1.0, corpse .5, plant .3. I mainly just want to rig corpses and ornate containers, which are the most necessary to loot; I don't want to make common containers very trap-prone, because there are so many of them with typically little pay-off that I'd be forced to choose between constant traps or avoiding common containers entirely. I also raise the key chance from 5% to 10%, make sure to check the option to only drop keys when I'm in a device, and set no pickpocketing. Click to set the recommended DDI values, too. This seems to be a good balance that lets me cycle through CL's items.

- I disable many settings related to SexLab Aroused's arousal because (a) the rise and fall of the numbers never seems intuitive to me, and (b) when I'm in a chastity belt it tends to stick around 100 which causes me to run into traps constantly. That means lowering the arousal modifier and altering the base trap chance to balance it, setting minimum arousal to 0, setting the arousal threshold to 101 in order to disable the "force full set" feature, and disabling forced self-bondage at high arousal.

- I disable many of the devices I personally dislike (set the weight to 0): the tentacle parasite (tedious to remove), the shock boots (the slowdown's too much for me), flash-bang grenades (arbitrary and uninteresting effect), high security devices (unsexy waste of time/money to remove). I also lower the weights of events which involve serious quests like the rubber doll and cursed collar, and drastically reduce the min/max days/sex acts for a few of the special collars.

- I also disable many of CL's non-core feature sets because they're not personally interesting to me: solicitation, bondage adventure (not the same as the trap, which I love), device comments, misogyny. I uncheck horny buffs, device buffs, bondage lover (clutters the inventory too much), and the shopping quest.

- For convenience, I uncheck "Lock menu when tied". When I first ran DD and CL, I checked this thinking it would spoil the fun if I allowed myself to change stuff--only to find that what really spoiled my fun were specific situations that frustrated me due to the settings being configured in ways that didn't suit me. After hitting the emergency escape button (free me) time and time again, I realized I should just leave it unchecked, and trust myself to have the self-control to know when to struggle on and when to give up because it's not sexy anymore.

 

I haven't played CL in a couple months while waiting for the next update, so the settings aren't very fresh in my memory--after playing with CL for countless hours and different games, I tend to immediately have a strong impression toward any setting that frustrated me in a past game, so I remember what to adjust just by looking at the menu. I also usually avoid saving and loading my settings from a json because I like to have the opportunity to re-evaluate my previous choices, and I may change things slightly depending on what other major mods I'm running that affect how often I'm in devices (like Captured Dreams or Defeat + Captures). It's always interesting to read how other people configure CL--everyone's so different.

 

 

[LeoninJesterXII]

On 12/9/2017 at 9:29 PM, Mathrue said:

I'm a bit late noticing this topic, and yeah the thread starter has already gone ahead after receiving advice from everyone, but LeoninJesterXII's line about "so that I can play Skyrim, and not just a bondage victim fantasy" definitely resonates with me.

 

I like to adjust the settings of CL so that I have enough freedom to still play my way through the game from scratch (well, via Skyrim Unbound with minimal settings). The best game for me is one where I'm often wearing devices, but also often not wearing devices. And not usually stuck wearing the same stuff for a lengthy period of time, because after a while the "magic" fades and it's just inconvenient. I usually do some side quests or explore some simpler dungeons while wearing devices, then do a tougher dungeon each time I'm free.

 

Here's what I change from the default options to achieve that:
 

  Hide contents

 

- I change the occurrence rates to common .1, ornate 1.0, corpse .5, plant .3. I mainly just want to rig corpses and ornate containers, which are the most necessary to loot; I don't want to make common containers very trap-prone, because there are so many of them with typically little pay-off that I'd be forced to choose between constant traps or avoiding common containers entirely. I also raise the key chance from 5% to 10%, make sure to check the option to only drop keys when I'm in a device, and set no pickpocketing. Click to set the recommended DDI values, too. This seems to be a good balance that lets me cycle through CL's items.

- I disable many settings related to SexLab Aroused's arousal because (a) the rise and fall of the numbers never seems intuitive to me, and (b) when I'm in a chastity belt it tends to stick around 100 which causes me to run into traps constantly. That means lowering the arousal modifier and altering the base trap chance to balance it, setting minimum arousal to 0, setting the arousal threshold to 101 in order to disable the "force full set" feature, and disabling forced self-bondage at high arousal.

- I disable many of the devices I personally dislike (set the weight to 0): the tentacle parasite (tedious to remove), the shock boots (the slowdown's too much for me), flash-bang grenades (arbitrary and uninteresting effect), high security devices (unsexy waste of time/money to remove). I also lower the weights of events which involve serious quests like the rubber doll and cursed collar, and drastically reduce the min/max days/sex acts for a few of the special collars.

- I also disable many of CL's non-core feature sets because they're not personally interesting to me: solicitation, bondage adventure (not the same as the trap, which I love), device comments, misogyny. I uncheck horny buffs, device buffs, bondage lover (clutters the inventory too much), and the shopping quest.

- For convenience, I uncheck "Lock menu when tied". When I first ran DD and CL, I checked this thinking it would spoil the fun if I allowed myself to change stuff--only to find that what really spoiled my fun were specific situations that frustrated me due to the settings being configured in ways that didn't suit me. After hitting the emergency escape button (free me) time and time again, I realized I should just leave it unchecked, and trust myself to have the self-control to know when to struggle on and when to give up because it's not sexy anymore.

 

I haven't played CL in a couple months while waiting for the next update, so the settings aren't very fresh in my memory--after playing with CL for countless hours and different games, I tend to immediately have a strong impression toward any setting that frustrated me in a past game, so I remember what to adjust just by looking at the menu. I also usually avoid saving and loading my settings from a json because I like to have the opportunity to re-evaluate my previous choices, and I may change things slightly depending on what other major mods I'm running that affect how often I'm in devices (like Captured Dreams or Defeat + Captures). It's always interesting to read how other people configure CL--everyone's so different.

 

 

Well, since you asked so nicely, I'll give you my settings. XP

 

I set Dungeon to 1.0, wilderness to 0.6 and city to 0.4. I leave the specific trap types alone. I also turn drop keys and shaky hands way down and disable misogyny and bondage lover. That's all I can remember right now, but it works well for me.

[Jappa123]

Will 6.1 configs work fine with 6.2 ? except new options that comes with 6.2 

[LeoninJesterXII]

9 hours ago, Jappa123 said:

Will 6.1 configs work fine with 6.2 ? except new options that comes with 6.2 

I've no clue! I don't even know which version I have...

[Nazzzgul666]

18 hours ago, LeoninJesterXII said:

I've no clue! I don't even know which version I have...

If you didn't update during the last two days, you have 6.1 (or older). Cursed Loot and Devious Devices (extension and integration) both got an update recently. For DD it's a major upgrade, i don't think it's much else than using DD 4.0 has changed in Cursed Loot. So i'd think old settings should work, but no guarantee...

[valcon767]

20 hours ago, LeoninJesterXII said:

I've no clue! I don't even know which version I have...

 

1 hour ago, Nazzzgul666 said:

If you didn't update during the last two days, you have 6.1 (or older). Cursed Loot and Devious Devices (extension and integration) both got an update recently. For DD it's a major upgrade, i don't think it's much else than using DD 4.0 has changed in Cursed Loot. So i'd think old settings should work, but no guarantee...

the old settings will work (mostly) but you will have to go thru and check for the new stuff, and make any adjustments you want.

 

the  "free me" option will disappear totally if you have the "hardore" checked (i think thats the one that makes it disappear totally), but DDI 4.0 also has a option

that does the same thing on its debug page.

[LazyBoot]

1 hour ago, valcon767 said:

the  "free me" option will disappear totally if you have the "hardore" checked (i think thats the one that makes it disappear totally), but DDI 4.0 also has a option

that does the same thing on its debug page.

I haven't checked yet, but I think the "free me" option is just removed. I assume it's hooked into the event from the DD4 one now instead.

[sshar22]

13 minutes ago, LazyBoot said:

I haven't checked yet, but I think the "free me" option is just removed. I assume it's hooked into the event from the DD4 one now instead.

Free me is there if you don't enable hardcore

[Lostdreamer]

I don't have my DCL config to hand (*) but the way I found it worked best was:

 

Increasing Key drop rates rather than lowering event probabilities. After all, the core purpose of DCL is to spawn devious devices and events. Let it, just crank up the chance of you getting out afterwards. Set the chance of losing keys on an event to 100% so that you DO have to wander around tied up finding another set afterwards.

 

Removing the arousal weighting so that things spawn more often at low arousal and don't constantly spawn at high levels.

 

Lowering the chance of all the 'quest' events to fractional, if at all. Part of the fun of DCL is that omnipresent tension that it could all go wrong in kinky and perverted ways - but constantly having your game derailed gets old fast. Deliberately trigger the quest events when you want to 'play' them as quest arcs.

 

Key difficulty Easy so that you only have to get to a forge and find some iron to escape.

 

Device Dialog, rape etc wants turning down a bit but not off - again, part of the fun is things like having to pay attention to avoiding walking around town naked in the dark, and possibly getting in more trouble by buying iron from the  blacksmith to make the keys to get you out...

 

 

That's off the top of my head, I'm sure I forgot some elements.

 

 

*=Although there will be some on the Descent Into Debauchery thread wherever that has got to.

[Kelinas]

Honestly it's been a bit since I played Cursed Loot, but yeah, changing settings always was a time-consuming if strangely enjoyable thing for me. IIRC, my favorite settings could be mostly summed up by the following:

 

- I actually had a rather high key droprate. 25-50% if I remember correctly, but I kept keys as disposable (though anywhere else where keys would be dropped I tried to disable).

- Common events (cuffs, collars, other toys) I kept on decently high chances, but anything that could lead to high-security tended to get cranked way the hell down. I never outright disabled something like the full slave set, but it's probability was most definately at 1 in comparison to standard item's 100-150

- Arousal weight would only majorly factor up to the top layers, I'd pretty much have anything with arousal at 50 min 100 max, though of course considering my chars are exhibitionists after they get decently strong that doesn't mean much in the end.

- I turned off public indecency laws as a thing, mostly because that would just mean a lot more time standing around then I wanted, but I kept anything else related to random sex encounters. Companions I did eventually say no to that on, though companions are a rarity on my sex mod playthroughs I had.

- Most importantly I've cranked the hell down on Cursed Loot settings if I was trying to do something important. I'd usually wait until Dragon Rising or level 5-10 to allow advanced Cursed Loot events, and if on a major questine I'd personally lower the event triggers to be more minisquile. It'd be awkward to get your game stopped halfway through by a gimp suit if you were after some ancient crown with the army after all.

 

Hell part of me is half-tempted to give a lewd skyrim another go, but either because of some flaw of my computer or my last install I'm crashing on container entry after a while. I need to get to the bottom of that or a new computer before I really invest in setting up a sexlab profile again I think :S

[c6222848]

set your timescale lower, to something like 10 or even 8(8 is the lowest stable timescale i've heard) and set the cursed loot proc to 15% dungeon, 10% wild and 0% city, 0.1 aroused scale..

 

and then the cooldown on cursed loot for me is 24hour.

 

I have a rather low key drop but i make it be able to drop all the time. and the dropping key on equip is something like 25% or 20%. so you have double backup. if you happends to find any cursed loot, you will still have 80% chance to keep the key which you can use to open them directly.