[MONSTERS] Champions Mod v1.06

[TormakSaber]

And there might be a rare champion lurking about in Sunken Ruins areas.
That's just hearsay, though. Wouldn't worry too much about it.

:O I'm in Estheria now on my Vanquisher run...!

[Velari]

Ah, don't worry. Some drunk probably just saw a rat down there *shrug*

[Velari]

SUPER DUPER ULTRA SKIN UPDATE!

Or something.

Yeah, mostly cosmetic again, adding skins for added enemy types and new champions. You may have noticed that in many cases I used unused skins, and in cases where there were no unused skins, a champion is basically just a larger version of the normal enemy. I wanted champions to be a bit more apparent in this scenario, and thus, new skins. Well, mostly recolours, since I'm not exactly a wiz at graphical applications but it should get the job done.
And yes, expect a SUPER DUPER ULTRA SKIN UPDATE *cough* for Crouching Pet, Hidden Beast soon
My personal favourite, and the most time consuming, is giving the Dark Priestess black hair. Enemy Dark Priestesses have purple hairclips to match their armour, the Crouching Pet, Hidden Beast pet Dark Priestess will have golden hairclips.
... But then again, the Dark Priestess has always been my personal favourite *shrug*

At any rate, version 1.04 changelog, commencing:

Finally found how to have a champion show a given name rather than a random one
Adjusted Punisher (Small Troll champion) speed
Changed Elemental Chaos (Wisp champion) size, behaviour, description, removed its blink ability
Changed Elemental Chaos minions spawnclass
Lowered Deathcaster elemental damage bonuses
Changed minions spawnclass for rare enemy champion added in 1.03
Changed Grave Digger champion behaviour
Changed Brood Mother behaviour

Added skins for the following enemies:

Spoiler: show

Embergear Golem
Embershard Golem
Embergolem champion
Dust Imp
Dust Imp champion
Infernal Imp champion
Burrower champion
Felwing champion
Tattered Lurker champion
Blood Disciple champion
Corrupted Disciple champion
Ember Mycon champion
Goblinhound champion
Pygmy Stabber champion
Darkelf Warrior champion
Deathcaster
Watcher Geist champion
Crawler champion
Ratlin champion
Skellie champion
Wight champion
Skellie Archer champion
Skellie Knight champion
Preying Spider
Preying Spider champion
Widowmaker champion
Brood Mother (second Tunnel Spider spiderling uses the same skin)
Brood Mother champion
Dwarven Wight champion
Soulless Cutter champion
Varkolyn champion
Varkolyn Dark champion
Varkolyn Warrior champion
Dark Priestess (black hair, purple hairbands)
Dark Priestess champion (two variations)
Corrupted Shamblie champ
Shamblie champ
Ember Thrall champ

... I am receptive to requests to change any of these if a lot of people don't like the looks of a particular enemy/champ now

[Velari]

So, some time ago it occurred to me that I could post a list describing the traits champions can have with this mod. Seems especially useful to people who haven't played Diablo II (you can find the Diablo II equivalents, here, if you're interested: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/mo ... onus.shtml ). I just never got around to it

Now, here I'll be posting said list, and also describing other changes, such as the added enemies. I recommend against reading up on the enemies if you haven't been up against them, though, as it kinda spoils things, obviously.

Champion traits:

Spoiler: show

- Amplify Damage
Champion has the Amplify Damage skill. Amplify Damage is a modified version of the Destroyer's Spectral Decay skill. It has one level, and the knockback and stun have been removed. Stun doesn't work on the player character, anyway.
In short, it can cast Amplify Damage, and when you're affected by Amplify Damage, you take increased physical damage for ten seconds.

- Defensive
Champion receives an armour bonus.
Champion receives a 25% chance to block attacks. Don't worry, Defensive does not appear on enemies who already block a ton such as Skeleton Warriors and Tu'Tara Warcutters.

- Critical Strikes
Champion has increased chance to score critical hits.
Champion does reduced damage on critical hits to balance this out and not make it too crazy.

- Extra Strong
Champion does double damage. This is basically what already appears in standard Torchlight on Construct champions.

- Extra Fast
Champion has increased movement and attack speed.

- Mana Burn
Champion drains your mana on physical attacks.

- Magic Resistant
Champion has increased resistances to fire, ice, and lightning.

- Unshakable
Champion is immune to knockback, flee, interrupts, stun, charm, and slow. Note that with the Champions Mod, all champions are immune to charm by default.

- Stone Skin
Champion receives an armour bonus.
Champion takes reduced damage from attacks.

- Fire Enchanted
Champion appears with the 'burning' theme.
Champion applies 'burning' theme to targets on physical attacks. This is just graphical and does not cause damage unless the standard chance to cause burning on fire damage happens to proc.
Standard damage is modified to do less physical, but get increased fire damage instead.
Champion receives a bonus to fire damage.
Champion has increased fire resistance.
Champion has the Champ Inferno skill. This is a modified version of Gel Inferno, and basically causes fire damage in a small radius around the champion when used.

- Lightning Enchanted, Cold Enchanted, Venom Enchanted
See Fire Enchanted and replace elemental stuff, and ignore Champ Inferno.
Other changes:
Lightning Enchanted champions emit shocks on striking them, to mimic the incredibly annoying charged bolts on being struck from Diablo II.
Cold Enchanted champions reduce your attack speed, movement speed, and cast speed for two seconds on a physical attack.
Venom Enchanted enemies release poison gas on death (like Corrupted Shamblers), and have the Poison Spell skill. This is a modified version of the Poison Cloud spell.

- Spectral Hit
Champion does vastly reduced physical damage but gains bonus fire, ice, lightning, and poison damage on standard attacks.
Champion has increased resistances to fire, ice, and lightning.

List of added enemy types:

Spoiler: show

- Embergear Golems
Small melee golems, overall kinda slow and not very threatening. This is mostly because they can appear on the first level and you don't want the player to get slaughtered at that point

- Embershard Golems
Small ranged golems with a beam attack. Beam attack is 75% electric, 25% fire damage.
No champion version.

- Brood Mother
Spider enemy, can spawn small spiderlings.

- Corrupted Disciples
Much alike the Blood Disciples, but not as organised and do not possess a charge attack.

- Cuddles & Huggles
Based on an unused enemy with the name "cryptminiboss" and the display name "Cuddles." Interesting
They are Troll champions.

- Darkelf Warrior
Based on the guy who accompanies Alric and you at some point fight where he carries the title "Shade." Has a slowing ability, although it's used somewhat rarely.

- Depth Dweller
>_>
Based on the unused Leviathan boss, the Depth Dweller is a rare champion that can spawn in Sunken Ruins tileset areas. It has varies smash attacks that cause shockwaves, and can fire frost arrows that will damage and slow targets.

- Dust Imps
Bigger versions of the Alchemist's Imps, somewhat fast but not too threatening.

- Dark Priestess
What the entire mod is about. The Dark Priestess is awesome and she also causes Dark Zealots to spawn slightly less
The Dark Priestess is an enemy caster focusing on lightning and poison. She uses various beam and lightning blast attacks, the modified Poison Cloud mentioned earlier, Ice Meteor, and a heal skill that targets Corrupted Disciples, Blood Disciples, Darkelf Warriors, Dark Zealots, and Dark Priestesses.

- Punisher
A Champion Small Troll based on the unused Punchbag. Due to his smaller stature Punisher is much faster than the average Troll.

- Deathcaster
The Deathcaster is a rare caster Champion who can summon and resurrect skeletons, and specialises in elemental magic, projectiles mostly. Plus a little emphasis on poison with for example the modified Poison Cloud spell. The little "Powerful Spellcaster" blurb in the description is there with a reason - Deathcasters have a bonus to their elemental spellcasting antics. Facing one without decent resistances is risky.

- Preying Spider
An aggressive spider with higher movement speed, an increased crit chance, and a dash attack.

- Widowmaker
A slower but tougher spider. Their basic attacks are 100% poison based, making armour nowhere near as useful in mitigating their attacks.

- Varkolyn Dark
An unused type of Varkolyn, the Varkolyn Dark are tougher but nowhere near as common as the Varkolyn you'd usually hear the townfolk of Torchlight complaining about.

- Varkolyn Warrior
Another unused type of Varkolyn, these guys are tough little buggers and can take a good deal of damage. Don't blame me, blame Runic - I didn't change anything about them

And, finally, champions who are special in some way or differ from their normal counterparts:

Spoiler: show

- Corrupted Disciple champion
Contrary to standard Corrupted Disciples, these guys have a dash attack.

- Darkelf Warrior champion
Darkelf Warrior champions have access to a minor haste spell.

- Shan Dian (Lightning Elemental champion)
Has two additional AOE lightning spells.

- Infernum (Fire Elemental champion)
Has an additional Fireball skill, and the skill Infernum Quake, a modified version of the Destroyer's Doomquake.

- Froidier (Ice Elemental champion)
Has two different Ice Meteor skills, making him spam them a lot more

- Dokueki (Poison Elemental champion)
Has an additional poison projectile attack, and the modified Poison Cloud spell.

- Goblin Chanter champion
Has a modified version of the Alchemist's Pyre skill.

- Flayer Shaman (Pygmy Shaman champion)
Has a huge fireball stream attack. This is an obvious reference Though it's more obvious now since their name now actually appears as "Flayer Shaman" rather than something drawn from the random name pool. Could have called him Witchdoctor Endugu *shrug*
There are more references in champion names, by the way, and now that they actually appear in-game I guess people will finally see them without having to crack open the files

- Grave Robber champion
Have various additional dig up d00ds skills, depending on which champion it is. In addition to the standard Skeletons, they may be able to dig up Zombies with life steal, Corrupted Shamblers, Pale Shamblers, Skeleton Archers, Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Knights, and Blood Skeletons. I should modify the stats on those Blood Skeletons some day, though.

- Tu'Tara Oathmaster champion
These guys have their heal skill assigned. Yeah, even though the description for Oathmasters says that they heal stuff, they actually don't have a heal skill assigned, even though there is a skill called "LizardmanHealFriends" in the game. Whoops, oversight Not surprisingly, it targets all four types of Tu'Tara.
It's not the only oversight in the game, obviously. For example, Pygmy Shamans are supposed to cast fire as per their description, but they only toss silly poison balls *shrug*

- Dark Priestess champion
Because they are awesome, they have more spells, including a slowing skill and Medea's nasty lightning orbs. Be happy, originally they had way more awesome stuff including Alric's Shadow Dragon thing

- Elemental Chaos (Wisp champion)
Has a mix of the various Wisp abilities. I removed the teleport ability (from I believe the Estherian Shade) recently because it caused some issues. Mainly that Elemental Chaos's appearance would sometimes change into that of whatever Wisp normally uses it. It's a temporary thing, it'll revert back, so it wasn't a major issue, but obviously it's weird and can be confusing

Lastly, some champions have an Enrage skill similar to that of the Deathwalker Battlemaster.
Here's a list of them, plus what targets their version of Enrage affects.
- King of Ages (Spectre champion)
Skeletal Archer, Skeletal Warrior, Skeleton, Zombie
- Infernal Imp (Imp champion)
Dust Imp
- Skeleton Commander (Skeleton Knight champion)
Skeletal Archer, Skeletal Warrior, Skeleton
- Blightfire Claw (Varkolyn Warrior champion)
Varkolyn, Varkolyn Dark, Varkolyn Warrior
- Tu'Tara Healer (Tu'Tara Oathmaster champion) (I'll change his name to Spirit Healer or something, Healer is too basic )
Tu'Tara Shieldsnapper, Tu'Tara Edgebreaker, Tu'Tara Warcutter

Maybe this is helpful or interesting to someone

[goro3d]

So this is a mod update?
If so I'll update !

[Velari]

No, it's just a description for anyone who might be interested. The latest version is still 1.04

[goro3d]

What I meant is I have an earlier version so I'll replace it with this one !

[goro3d]

Any new updates coming soon?

[Seer]

Any new updates coming soon?

This is one of THE BEST and must have mods for Torchlight.I started playing my rifleman/summoner alchemist with this mod and im amazed by the variety of new champions and enemies.Keep up the good work I'm sure everyone hopes you expand this mod even more!

[Velari]

Well, there certainly will be an update at some point. I certainly still have a couple of ideas that I've wanted to try and implement for a while. I just haven't gotten around to it. May have something to do with me picking up League of Legends just about around the time of the last update

And thanks for the kind words, Seer

[goro3d]

I look froward to taking out new champions they are fun to fight and a fun and awesome mod keep up the wonderful work!!!

[civi]

There seems to be something wrong with all spider champions in this mod, they are able to oneshot all my characters, even the grossly cheated ones. And it is not only the champions but their underlings as well

[Velari]

If it was a Widowmaker, that's pretty normal right now.
For example, the other day I ran into a Venom Widow, and she crit me for about 4000 damage. I was level 18 at the time, for the record
Even without a crit she could easily one-shot me *shrug*
Widowmakers are really slow, though, so it's just a matter of staying outside of their range.

I was already planning to adjust their damage for the next version, though

[civi]

Staying out of range was not an option for my pure melee destroyers, so I lost ~3 or 4 to the spiders.
I really like your mod and will download your new version for sure! *waits*

[civi]

Ok, I waited 2 weeks and nothing happened so I took things in my own hand.
I took a look at the stats and data of the spiders and boy oh boy, multiple criticals AND massive poisoning even on the smallest spawnling-spiders, not to talk of the champions!!!? And that on fast and very fast units? No wonder that even my massively cheated characters died with one hit.

I then removed the criticals and lowered the poison damage and the walking/run speed of the spiders and see there: Still strong and special, but no longer the source of nightmares and TOTAL frustration. Then I took a look at the spider monsters from some other mods (one or two of the map-mods added them as well, similar stats and look like yours) and they had the same unbalanced stats... I edited them as well and now I can play without having my LVL 20000 units die in a splitsecond due to a minor spider-spawnling ...

I would make a download available to my fixed version, but I do not know if that would be o.k. so I wait.

[Velari]

I took a look at the stats and data of the spiders and boy oh boy, multiple criticals AND massive poisoning even on the smallest spawnling-spiders, not to talk of the champions!!!? And that on fast and very fast units? No wonder that even my massively cheated characters died with one hit.

I think we're talking about different mods at this point. None of them have all that, except certain champions - specifically Venom Widows, Pulse Widows, and Legs of the Many. Actually, even they don't have all that, as Legs of the Many do not have an increased critical rate, and Pulse Widows and Venom Widows are incredibly slow. Standard Widowmakers only have high poison damage, they are incredibly slow, they do not have a modified crit rate. Preying Spiders are pretty fast and have an increased change to crit, but do not have high poison damage (same as Shadow Recluses) and their crit damage is actually lowered to balance things out. Brood Mothers are not amazingly fast, have the same poison:physical damage ratio as Tunnel spiders, do less damage on a hit than Tunnel Spiders, do not have a modified crit rate, and tend to not go for you outright because they have don't have the standard A.I..
So you're obviously exaggerating at this point. Now, I don't mind the use of hyperbole, but it doesn't help in giving feedback that may drive me to make changes, and I'm not that happy with you choosing to misrepresent the situation. While your earlier point about damage was very much correct and was something I was already going to change, what you're talking about now is, as I've pointed out, incorrect, and thus gives me nothing to work with.

Second, your "ok, I waited 2 weeks and nothing happened" statement. I don't know what you were expecting to happen in two weeks, but I did not mention any kind of timeframe. "Next update" does not mean "two weeks at most." "Next update" right now actually means at least eight new enemy types, most with associated champions, an additional champion type, a new rare champion, a couple of these will ideally need new skills and particle effects, the skin of that new rare champion is going to be a problem as well since it might be outside of what I can do, they all need skins, mind you, there's the animation issue I've mentioned in Art & Sound that needs to be resolved for one of the enemy types to work, at least one of them will need a re-textured weapon, there's all the spawnclasses that will need to be checked and/or changed (especially for random dungeons), making changes to stuff that's already there, at the very least one full playthrough for basic testing purposes ... and so on. Also, other mods I'm working on. And life. So I'm not sure what gave you the impression that the next update would be out there in two weeks.
Note that I would have been fine with making and uploading adjusted versions of the various spiders for you since that is not exactly a big deal and I was going to make changes to them anyway, but you indicated that you would wait for the new version.

Third, the range issue. You chose to play a pure melee destroyer earlier. It's not really my fault that you gave yourself a handicap by making a character that does not have any way to attack at a distance, and I can't make a mod so that it caters to every possible build out there. If I did claim to do that, then inevitably at some point someone comes in playing without any equipment, without any skills, and with a no experience mod, saying that he can't defeat a level 100 Elemental champion, and blaming it on me
If there's a very deadly yet slow enemy that cannot attack you at a distance, your choices are:
- Run up to it and fight it, knowing that you're taking a certain risk because running up to it is the only way it can ever touch you.
- Attack it from a distance.
- Have something else deal with it (pet, minions, traps, whatever).
- Laugh at it and ignore it because it can never touch you, and be on your way.
That you chose to build a character that cannot attack at a distance and then choose #1 is something completely outside of my control. If you happen to die because of that, that's also outside of my control. My choice would have been to have at least one ranged attack on my character, regardless of what kind of character it is, unless I'm doing some kind of challenge - in which case I'm kind of asking to be put in situations that I may or may not be able to manage

Then I took a look at the spider monsters from some other mods (one or two of the map-mods added them as well, similar stats and look like yours) and they had the same unbalanced stats...

If I can draw comparisons between my spider enemies and the ones that already were in Torchlight, and other mods have similar stats, I have to wonder whether they are unbalanced, or whether I and the other mod makers in question adhered to the basic balance scheme in Torchlight, which is incredibly easy to do. The only thing that becomes a problem, especially at higher levels, is high elemental damage components, as I mentioned earlier in regards to the Widowmakers, because stacking resistances is much harder than stacking armour. However, this is technically an issue with the items in Torchlight moreso than with elemental damage, and that's the only reason such creatures are a bigger threat.
Though the name "Widowmaker" should be enough to tell you they might be dangerous

[civi]

3 of the ~8 lost units were Destroyers, one (!) of them purely melee, the other units were mixed or pure ranged non-destroyer units. They died all in a split-second due to a mini spider bite (those are hard to see and target, sheesh) or bites from the main spider. It's like "click in territory, see spiders, retreat to elsewhere, been biten by tiny turbo spider that followed and is nearly invisible and die in the very same moment". I really like a challenge, but the balance is way off on those spidey units, trust me. Your other units are awesome, they are tough, the battle rages on very long, it is a fight for survival and the outcome is not sure. I like that. Those spiders however...

Btw, the default game has several units that are unbalanced, too. The Dark Zealot e.g. or the Mech Crawlers and there have been reported bugs regarding the criticals (too strong, for enemies and player side). Maybe that bug is somehow influencing thsoe arachnids, too?

And the comment about the 2 weeks... -> see the huge smiley after it? I was joking

[TormakSaber]

I play on Very Hard exlcusively and have never had an issue with any of the spiders feeling unbalanced. I got nipped by the Widow Champion but that one says very lould yon the package "if this hits you it has a very high chance to do ridiculously high powered crits and eat you". I misstepped and got eaten. My bad.

The only thing else remotely dangerous or out of the norm is the Hunting Spiders that charge, but charging creatures are all over the game, hunting spiders just make you start dealing with them a bit earlier. Brood Mothers make tiny baby siders that have in my expierence on VH do very little damage and die quickly in one AoE, be that something like Ember Bolt, Ice Shock, Slasgh/Doomquake/etc, Explosive Shot, so on.

[Velari]

Btw, the default game has several units that are unbalanced, too. The Dark Zealot e.g. or the Mech Crawlers and there have been reported bugs regarding the criticals (too strong, for enemies and player side).

I got nipped by the Widow Champion but that one says very lould yon the package "if this hits you it has a very high chance to do ridiculously high powered crits and eat you".

Well, the main problem simply is elemental damage. It's harder to get high resistances than high defense. Every piece of armour you get adds to your defense - not every one of them adds to your resistances. Never mind that when you get something with elemental resistances, you have four different resistances and if you don't get the one you need, you can find yourself in some trouble.
At higher levels, it becomes increasingly harder to keep up with elemental damage.
Interestingly enough, whenever I tone down enemies, it's usually one that does elemental damage. For example, I've recently toned down the Deathcaster, and the Brood Mother gets changes in just about every update And one of the other enemies who will get toned down in the next version is the Embershard Golem. I made them weaker than Crawlers initially on purpose, simply because a couple of Crawlers can fry you in an instant. Still, a couple of Embershard Golems can be quite dangerous.

As a little aside, when I did my first test run of the original version, I was pretty sure that if I ran into certain enemies, I was going to die. They included the Deathcaster, Elemental champions, and ... one other type that I can't remember off the top of my head right now. Well, whatever the third one was, all three do high elemental damage. I never ran into a Deathcaster, but ... I did ran into a Dokueki at the end of the Caverns (which happens to be the first place in the main dungeon they can appear). I tried to fight it since, well, it's a test run, I need to test stuff.
Let's just say I did indeed die

Maybe that bug is somehow influencing thsoe arachnids, too?

I don't know, I haven't read about that yet. If there's a bug with it that could explain that 4K crit at level 18 I received

They died all in a split-second due to a mini spider bite (those are hard to see and target, sheesh)

Do you mean the baby spiders that Brood Mothers spawn? If that's a problem I can add a glow or something to them, like on the ones spawned by the pet Brood Mother in Crouching Pet, Hidden Beast.

The only thing else remotely dangerous or out of the norm is the Hunting Spiders that charge, but charging creatures are all over the game, hunting spiders just make you start dealing with them a bit earlier.

Dangerous or out of the norm to the extent that it's a problem? Or to the extent that they prepare you to avoid late-game chargers? They're obviously more dangerous than, say, a Shadow Recluse, but I made them a lot less common for a reason

I appreciate the comments from both of you on the Brood Mother, by the way. As you can imagine a monster like that is hard to balance

[TormakSaber]

No, it's not a balance problem, it's just a charging creature before you normally begin dealing with charging creatures. Incentive to stay on your toes all the time.