Rebalanced Levels

Grim Dawn Modding - Projects
1

Hi everyone,

First things first, this mod is just a small thing I wanted to do for myself and I thought I might as well share it.
It only took me a few minutes to do it and I don’t have a lot of time to invest in modding, so it will probably stay this way.

I followed a few topics here and there about the lack of skill points and I completely agree with those that brought it to attention.
While the game play fine as it is, it greatly lacks variety since most builds only revolve around 3 or 4 maxed skills.

My goal was simply to increase the number of skill points you gain each time you level up in order to unlock more skills and have a greater versatility with each character.

I made four separate mods to allow each player to choose the one they like best :

RebalancedLevelsVanilla : you gain 5 skill points from level 1 to 25, 4 from level 26 to 50, 3 from 51 to 75 and 2 from 76 to 85.
It should give 315 points instead of the original 217 at level 85. You can max about a third of all your skills.
Apart from that, nothing was changed.

UberRebalancedLevelsVanilla : you gain 5 skill points from level 1 to 50 and 4 skill points from level 51 to 85.
It should give 385 points instead of the original 217 at level 85. You can max about half of all your skills.
Apart from that, nothing was changed.

RebalancedLevelsPlus : you gain 5 skill points from level 1 to 25, 4 from level 26 to 50, 3 from 51 to 75 and 2 from 76 to 100.
The total is 345 points at level 100. You can max about a third of all your skills.
I also tinkered with the stat points, you get 2 per level instead of 1 and they increase a stat by 5 instead of 8. So you get a bit more stats overall and a greater control over what you want to increase each level.

UberRebalancedLevelsPlus : you gain 5 skill points from level 1 to 50 and 4 skill points from level 51 to 100.
The total is 445 points at level 100. You can max about half of all your skills.
I also tinkered with the stat points, you get 2 per level instead of 1 and they increase a stat by 5 instead of 8. So you get a bit more stats overall and a greater control over what you want to increase each level.

To install this mod :

Extract one of the mods in the “mods” folder of the game directory. If you don’t have one, create one.
For steam is should be : \Steam\SteamApps\common\Grim Dawn\mods

You can only use characters from custom games with mods.
They’re kept separate from the ones of the main campaign.
Also note this mod only change the leveling gains.
As such, it won’t award points for levels you already gained with an existing character.
You’ll have to start a new character to take full advantage of it.

Hope people will appreciate it.

Attachment: RebalancedLevelsPlus.zip
Attachment: RebalancedLevelsVanilla.zip
Attachment: UberRebalancedLevelsPlus.zip
Attachment: UberRebalancedLevelsVanilla.zip

1 Like
2

This is great. I do want to ask - if we do get to learn more skills, is there a future skill bar UI in place to support the increase of abilities?

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That’s one way to get absolutely overpowered. Hopefully Project Cornucopia will end up really well thought and balanced, unlike this.

You got to do changes to other things man, this can’t stand on it’s own.

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Way too many

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First, this mod is just a small thing I wanted to do for myself and I thought I might as well share it.
It only took me a few minutes to do it and I don’t have a lot of free time to invest in modding, so it will probably stay this way.
(actually, I’ll add this to the first post)

@Evilzlegend : You don’t get to learn a lot more skills, since a skill can take 40 to 60 points just to max with its passives, you probably won’t need any change to the skill bar as it’ll only add 4/5 skills to use overall and there’s plenty of space right now.
But if the need ever arise, I’ll see what I can do.

@Somerled : It’s in no way designed to give the same balance as the original game. It’s designed to allow for a greater diversity in the skills you can use, allowing the game to be a little less repetitive.
Of course, you can just take the passives, but to each its own, you’re in no way obligated to do that and it sure isn’t my case, I don’t find it fun.
As for Project Cornucopia, it certainly will be better than this, but the scope is totally different and the goal is not the same.

@Gezas : Not really, Titan Quest allowed the player to use all the skills of a class or half of both.
Grim dawn has more skills, use more skill points to max each and more skill points for masteries.
As such, I only rebalanced the game to be closer to the titan quest experience.
With this mod, you’ll roughly get all the skills of a single class or half of both.

6

Not going to knock your mod as I’m sure there are people who will enjoy it. But the game limiting the number of skill points is what gives builds variety. Your mod will hinder that variety basically making all builds the same or very close to the same.

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FurryRage don’t let other people dissuade you from your vision, This is modding, anything goes and persistence is key. There are people who enjoy mods like this.

I do think more skillpoints help.
TBH my primary test toon runs around with cherrypicked skills from all classes,
I still have to calculate how many skill points i do want to award to allow a real nice setup of skills.
Your mod has inspired me with a fun idea for a future release, depending on feasibility.
Thank you for that.

To me Grim Dawn is broken on many levels, many people who comment here seem to be fine with that kind of gameplay,
so you have to expect a certain attitude from those people who shaped the stock game into the snails pace it currently plays at.
The more “normal” people dedicate some time to publish their views, the more things will change for the better.
Don’t give up.

Go to Nexusmods, uploading mods there is easy and you have visibility.
I actually forgot to announce my mods release in this forum and still got a decent amount of downloads and views.

As an uploader I cannot recommend moddb, there are ridiculous requirements and many hoops to jump through, but as a downloader it is much nicer.

either way upload where it is searchable and does not drown in mod talk.

8

I don’t understand why people came to this thread just to rag on him. Of course that many skill points makes the game a lot easier.

So what? Everyone has fun their own way. I’ve modded characters before the mod tools were released to have unlimited skill points before. Sometimes you just want to have fun killing and experiment with all skills at once.

I’m sure plenty of people will appreciate this.

9

IMO this is a good starting point for potential modders, let him be guys. Calm down.

OP, hopefully you will work on this further or use your newly acquired modding knowledge to create something bigger on your next project. :slight_smile:

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@sfbistimg : I do understand what you said. But even with more skill points, there’s still a way to go ! We go from a quarter of the skills to half of them.
It’s hardly enough to make all the builds similar.

I can concede one thing though, I didn’t take the points you get from quests or shrines into account, just remembered about it.
I won’t change anything right now as I have a lot of work coming my way this week and the next but I’ll lower the skill points amount a bit to match the gain from quests and shrines as soon as I can (do shrines also give skill points ? or only devotion ? can’t remember, haven’t played in a while).
I’ll probably reduce the amount you gain in this mod a bit to match.

@NateATon : Thank you, I know, everyone is looking for something different in games, some like it casual, others like it hardcore, I’m a bit of both actually. I’m not here to claim this mod is the best ever, nor to tell people how to play and enjoy this game. There’s no right or wrong way to play, as long as YOU have fun.
Also, as I said, I’m only sharing since I know a few people might like it and I don’t really care if it’s used a lot or not.
I’m not into modding (that’s the first mod I ever made)
And I don’t really care enough to go post it on moddb or Nexusmods even though I know of and use those websites (a lot when I was younger, less nowadays).
Feel free to do it in my stead if you want (just give credits)

@adoomgod : exactly, my point and why I shared

@ASYLUM101 : it really wasn’t much, it only took a few minutes to read the manual for the modding tools and even less to modify the file I wanted.
Also, I accept critics, good or bad, and I’m not one to get offended easily, don’t worry about me.
I understand why they say what they say, I’m not here to judge, nor should any of us. As long as they listen to my reasons too, I’m good.
The point is to have a meaningful conversation allowing this mod to get better if need be.

Now, all I need is to find how many skill points you get from the game outside of leveling.
I’m also curious to know if it does give too many skills to fit in the skillbar.

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Aw, too bad, i was hoping to convince you to upload there yourself.
If you are really ok I may do so eventually, but I do not even know if it is easy or allowed to upload other peoples mods there, ie how to credit it properly etc.

Without people populating at least one database-esque site modding will not take off.

Last time i used nexusmods before was almost decade ago.
I’m not really keen on spending much time on general modding or maintenance after my goals are met.

Heck I still have to play through the campaign, with a fresh toon from start to finish with my mod.

Skillbar, no worries, with item skills you can overflow that already, and in general the skill slots available are too few.
I tend to swap some hotbar skills if i change my playstyle on the fly.

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@NateATon : Ah, right, I totally forgot about item skills.
It may get a little cramped then, true.
I’ll see if something can be done without taking too much time.

Edit : hum, not sure I can do much, due to the position of the skill bar, it would require a graphic redesign of the HUD, which I can’t do.
I’m sure something can be done, but not by me.
It’ll have to fit within the current skill bars.
I tend to play like you and swap skills on the fly so it’s not really an issue on my side.

13

Heh yeah, but after some time you really yearn for another bar.

Is it possible to add more skill icons already? I was under the impression not.
IF so, then maybe just shrinking the icons etc could be done, but really, mods which dabble in ui backgrounds and want to target the main campaign will be huge(for now at least)

14

I made two more mods with a bit less skill points for those who think the previous two were overkill.
You can roughly get a third of all skills available to a character with those.
Everyone should be able to find one that fit him/her now.

I also renamed the original mods to better fit with their new status.

15

Keep up the good work. I for one can’t wait to use this to test skill builds. Too bad about the UI, but I do hope someone out there can create something for us!

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Rude. You go play project cornucopia and then compare the two. Oh wait, you can’t because nothing was released yet. I posted 2 formula edits into PC and they didn’t respond at all, despite the fact it would do at least 70% of the requested combat changes.

Somerled, where is your mod?

17

It can be done. I read a lot of UI dbr files while I was working on Stasher. The windows themselves are restrictive - everything needs to fit within the window or it doesn’t exist. Modifying the TEX files for Stasher took HOURS but I could probably do the same work again (maybe better!) in under an hour. The biggest issue to UI modifications is the tex based utilities. I tried using a GIMP DDS DXT3 plugin but no luck. I was so happy that the transparency still worked. A secondary issue here is the use of hotkeys, which I know nothing about besides the cfg file existing near your save files.

18

Honestly I am pretty interested, especially for the lvl cap at 100.

What bothers me the most in the vanilla game is the difficulty in Ultimate where you really need to be 85 with the perfect gear in order to enjoy it (even worse if you try to make a not-so-tanky build).
Difficulty is not a problem for me, especially in RPGs, but only if I know I can grind in order to get more powerful.

This little mod seems to be exactly what I am looking for, but how do I install it ? I just copy and paste in the steam directory ? should I make a back up first ?

19

Backup your saves directory first.
You can play existing characters in a mod but I don’t know if you’ll get the historic skill and point gains (I should check that myself). If you look at my mod in signature, there are directions on how to do most of the character manipulations and I link to another thread which has more.

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Thanks ! This is very kind of you mister !