[MONSTERS] Champions Mod v1.06

[Phanjam]

The answer to your predicament is giving me your beta key

LOL LOL LOL

[Velari]

Here's a bit of a write-up on the new stuff. Major stuff, things like some of the male Darkelf champions dual-wielding or having fixed the Tu'tara Dreamreaver weapon screw-up (as mentioned earlier in the topic) will not be mentioned. Although I did just now.
Obviously it can spoil stuff so don't read if you don't want to know yet.

Spoiler: show

Traps:
At one point in the topic, Bibikat suggested champions coming from say barrels or chests. Bibikat also pondered storyline bosses appearing as champions in the Shadow Vault. Well, both are now the case, but you are probably already aware of the latter.
Toying around with traps was interesting, I had never looked at them. I like trying something new for my mods every once in a while, and I hope that shows from how this and CPHB have progressed.
Anyway, there are now a couple of new things that might happen when you break barrels or open chests, although they do all boil down to monster spawns.

Burrower trap - three Burrowers emerge from the ground around the object.
Cursed Sword champions - One of two different Cursed Sword champions, the Dancing Blade and Spectral Sabre, will pop up
Skeleton champion trap - Tarp, which is a terrible name, will pop up. If things work out when he spawns from a chest it hopefully looks a bit like he climbs out of it.
Corrupted Shambler champion trap - a generic Corrupted Shambler champion emerges, similar to how Tarp pops up.
Spider traps - one or four (large chests) spiders pop out. Being an arachnophobe, this seems like a terrible thing to do to someone. They're the same spiderlings a Brood Mother can produce, so they're not very dangerous. I did considering making a champion version that randomly spawns among them. The idea of a tiny but absolutely murderous spider coming out of a chest seems hilarious, I'll probably add it at some point

I never really looked at how traps work, so this was interesting. It's different from how Mimics work (and by extension the Mimic champions), which I had examined before. Interestingly enough, the traps that traps can normally trigger are actually skills that are assigned to the chest (or barrel or whatever).
That did create problems in figuring out the frequency, which I still don't really understand, so I ended up upping the frequency a lot and still rarely seeing them. I did notice that the files for the skills themselves include a line that reads <INTEGER>CHANCE: that doesn't show up in the editor's layout, you'll only find out it's there if you look at the actual text. From what I've tinkered with it that, combined with the chance assigned to the skill in the unit file, will not make the trap guaranteed even if you up them to 100, which is too bad because that would have made controlling the frequencies waaaaaaay easier. So yeah, at this point in time I have no idea if the frequency of the traps is way too high or way to low or probably not exactly right.

Another issue is that when you spawn a chest from the console, which simply is the easiest way to make them appear and test stuff, they will always spawn facing the same direction. That makes it easier to make for example the spider or skeleton spawn look hopefully not terrible in that very specific situation, but when actually playing chests that appear are not all as nice as to appear with that specific orientation. Combine that with the frequency issues, and, well, I imagine the spider trap might not always look right, but I've never even run into on while playing to be able to observe it xD

Monsters!

So, first of all, the Multishot ability has been added to some champions with ranged weapons. Off the top of my head Deadeye, the Tu'tara Duskprowler, and the Tu'tara Preyseeker. In essence, it's a bunch of shots in very short succession (accompanied by the twanging sound of a bow a couple of times), shot randomly in a frontal cone. The shots are weaker than a normal, single shot, but you can be hit by multiple shots from the burst, which of course is more likely the closer you are.

Raider
The Raiders are Vanquisher-based enemies. They have the same appearance as La Rive from CPHB for the most part, the only difference being that normal Raiders also wear the Gunslinger hat.
Normal raiders are armed with rifles, and have Seeking Shot, the Tu'tara Scalepiercer's Piercing Shot, and Multishot Rifle, which is a Multishot variant that shoots all shots at the same time, shot-gun style, accompanied by a single shot sound playing.
The Raider champion retains Piercing Shot, but also has Trueshot Barrage (Tu'tara Scalepiercer champion version), Explosive Shot, and Multishot DualPistols, which because she dualwields pistols, produces double the amount of shots the other two Multishot variants do. Because, you know, I thought that would be kind of cool. I feel I am correct on this issue.

Chaos Warrior
Destroyer guys! wearing black armour with red accents. They dualwield because they think they should be awesome. Normal Chaos Warriors have Cleave, Stampede, and the Blade Mistress's version of Blast Wave - because the unused Destroyer version has knockback and knockback on a skill that can hit multiple times is incredibly annoying. Champion has the same skills but also a modified Doomquake, modified Seismic Burst, and Soul Rend, which, although slower, does a lot of damage (partly because it bypasses armour by a percentage). Since it's slower, get out of the way
As a bit of trivia (and one of the various things Revail tells you after you beating Ordrak), they're named Chaos Warriors after the monster of the same name in HeroQuest - one of our Chaos Warrior minis had armour painted in dark blue which looked pretty great, and that's what it made me think of.

Ember Artificer
The Alchemist-based enemy. Honestly I wasn't sure what to do with him, a lot of the Alchemist's skill don't work out as well as you might want when placed on an enemy.
In the end, the normal version spawns with a golem, is armed with a staff the enemy version of Pyre (Enemy Hexfire), and has Shock Field (Tu'tara Voltrunner), calls down lightning, and has Ember Flow, a modified version of the unused Alchemist skill Flame Wave.
The champion not only spawns with a golem but can summon them as well, and, well, just throws a lot of magical and elemental crap at you. And has a wand. And a shield as well, because I didn't want him to spawn with nothing in his offhand. The shield makes him a bit more resilient, but it only has a low block rate (6% off the top of my head) because he's not supposed to be indestructible. Other options were, of course, something to hit you with, or a pistol or second wand. A sword or something didn't seem fitting, and he certainly doesn't need more ranged firepower, so shield it is.
Oh, before release he had Ember Strike. Be thankful I removed it.

Shade
Shades are actually called Tortured Souls and not Shades. While slow, they teleport around, cast a bit of fire, and swing massive chains around them. They wear shackles and chains, so WHY NOT.
The Hoarfrost Horror was originally an ice-focused Overseer champion, but partly because it didn't work out and partly because the Deathcaster is an Overseer-based champion already. The idea was reborn in the Shade champion, who tosses ice around like it's going out of fashion. And chains.

Ember Abomination
From here on out it's champion versions of bosses who only appear in the Shadow Vault. For the most part they aren't changed too much since some of them already have a fairly large assortment of skills. So let's start with the least exciting one - the Ember Abomination is an Ember Colossus with no new tricks. Randomly running into it along with other enemies is probably annoying enough *shrug*

Eidyia
If your familiar enough with Greek mythology, you may recognise this name as Medea's mother. Eidyia is somewhere between Medea and a Blade Mistress.

Elder Treant
If you play a Vanquisher or Alchemist, Vilebracken was not much of a challenge since you just kite him and blah. Also, Vilebracken can't actually do much, the breath doesn't matter when you have ranged attacks, and only the draining spores might be a bother. The Elder Treant throws a bit more fire around, which should make him demand at least a little more attention from ranged players.

Troll Overlord
A lot of hit points, shockwave attacks, and a self-enrage that increases not only his damage but also his speed. There's a limit to what you can do because giving a big troll with a club magic and such doesn't fit at all, so hopefully the added speed makes things a bit interesting. The reason it's only during the enrage is because it just doesn't make sense for a big lumbering creature be super fast all the time, and I guess even with the enrage he isn't THAT fast because you don't want it to seem completely unnatural.

Corrupted Behemoth
Did you know that Ordrak's skill directory contains two charge skills that went unused? Add a quake on top of that, and constant frost meteors! Actually the meteors are a little tame right now, originally it would sometimes spam a dozen (or well over that) over the course of a single second. While all kinds of hilarious, it was possibly a little overkill and eventually got toned down

wee unnecessary info

[Phanjam]

wow...

[TormakSaber]

why are you still updating this mod

downloaded!

[Velari]

Well, uhm ... Torchlight II isn't out yet >_>

[Embodiment]

as a strict no-mod user - I'm quite compelled to actually use this mod since it offers more of a challenge.
Kudos man.

[wtfkeinnamefrei]

So is there actually anything I can do to prevent the invisible Champions to spawn? I really like the mod, but it is quite annoying to nearly get killed while sorting through the Inventory. I am using the latest Torchlight Version and 1.06 of this mod

[Velari]

Noez, that still happens? D: I hadn't had it happen for quite a while, darn it >_>

It would help if you had identified what kind of monster it is - I'm assuming it's a Corrupted Behemoth, but without knowing what it is I can't give you anything that's sure to help.
Anyway, assuming it's a Corrupted Behemoth, go into the spawnclasses folder of the mod and open CHAMPIONS_SVBOSSES.dat in a text editor. Go to the Corrupted Behemoth and change the weight to 0, or just delete the Corrupted Behemoth's entire object section. Afterwards, delete the file CHAMPIONS_SVBOSSES.DAT.adm. This will mean that the Corrupted Behemoth won't spawn anymore, but until a fix is found it's either or :/
Mind you that you can just kill the things, they really shouldn't be that dangerous since for some reason they can't use skills when they spawn that way *shrug*

[wtfkeinnamefrei]

Thanks for the help gonna try it out. I honestly I dont know which Monster it is though because I just use Devastate until it dies each time I encounter it. Most of the time it drops some serious big loot and makes some hilarious loud sound when it dies.
If its any monster besides the Behemoth I am going to report back, but since the invisible ones never used any skills so far I am pretty sure you are right

[Velari]

That definitely sounds like a Corrupted Behemoth, so hopefully it'll work out

[DarkTails]

What the-, you're still updating this!? Velari, if I could squiggle your face I would.

I'm gonna try TL1 again with an Alchemist this time since I never used him, this mod always makes the playthrough more interesting

[Velari]

I'm not sure I want my face squiggled, I would like to know what that entails first
Feel free to discover what's the cause of invisible Corrupted Behemoths and relay that information to me, though

Actually, I am kind of curious if people are encountering the trapped chests and if they are too common or prevalent >_>

[4xFan]

Thanks for making this mod, awesome work ~ tried it out today, very enjoyable!

[ElvenAvenger]

Back to TL after... a long time.

Glad to see that the mod is still alive. I'm definitely going to use it on my next character, along with the 999 level mod for some nice leveling up

Offtopic: Is it just me or torchleech is not working? Or am I missing something? I mean, it loads and shows all the mods I have, but it shows all of them as "unsupported version" and won't update any of them. And I can't see any other mods there, like before I could just look through a list of various mods and download any of them.

[Velari]

Torchleech is basically defunct, it's recommended that you switch over to HotSpot instead.

[Velari]

Quick update before the whole Torchlight II thing. Because, you know, otherwise I might not get around to it.
Two changes of note, apparently not major enough for me to bother with updating the version number. It has a designation for the current build, though!

First of all, the champion versions of the bosses were spawning in random map scroll dungeons as well, which was not intended, they were just supposed to appear in the Shadow Vault. That should be fixed now.

Second, the bloody Corrupted Behemoth. I still haven't found what the heck is the deal and how to fix it, so I've just decided to separate it from the main mod. If you want to be able to run into Corrupted Behemoths, you can add the separate folder, with the risk that sometimes there will be a bugged spawn that is invisible and does not use skills and does not make sense and really should not exist. If that's not something you want to deal with, just don't add the folder and there will be no Corrupted Behemoths, normal or otherwise. Until there is a fix, this is probably the best solution. Unless somehow this happens to be a fix in which case I will rage xD


Remember Theramore! D:
I would use a pic of my gnome with the Theramore tabard for my avatar if I could

[DarkTails]

Velari's back, baby!

[Velari]

Well, there is the semi-inevitability of Champions Mod II >_>

Given that I can run the editor, at least. TorchED had some bits that I can use all that well. For example, the Dungeon Editor window that is way wider than what fits on my screen but can't actually be enlarged past the dimensions of my screen, so I have no idea what functions are on the far right of it. That kind of worries me, haha. Scroll bars at least plox, Runix?

[Phanjam]

Well, there is the semi-inevitability of Champions Mod II >_>

WOOT!

[Kovaelin]

I guess I'll try this mod as well, before playing TL2. I know I probably won't come back to the first once I hook myself up to the sequel. I was also hoping to have made it to level 100 of the Shadow Vault by now, but I don't think that'll happen.