BW Spell Improvements and Fixes for DS2 and Broken World

this mod makes the following improvements and fixes to the spells and spell related powers in Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World:-
main download link
alternate download link @ mediafire

Legend:
(added a legend to mark out and seperate pure bugfixes from subjective improvements and enhancements some users may not like and for easy browsing by modders who want to implement some of the bugfixes i caught, fixed and to put it in their mod. if there is sufficient demand i might make just a pure bugfix version of this mod.)

* - denotes a bugfix
# - denotes a subjective improvement or enhancement

#1. the casting speed (aka cast reload delay) of each individual spell is now shown on the spell inventory item mouse-over popup. pet spells are excluded as they dont seem to have a proper cast reload delay? (cast reload delay value of 0.0)

*#2. *EXTREMELY IMPORTANT* change regarding corpse transmutation. please read carefully! in order to fix the bug of corpse transmutation not appearing in the char buffs panel, i had to set is_buff=true for corpse transmutation. however, this causes the game to think corpse transmutation counts towards the 2 buff limit, well sort of... in order to fully enjoy the 2 nature buffs, you must first buff up with the nature buffs. AFTER THAT, then you cast corpse transmutation. i have tested it in-game and it works in that order. however, if u have corpse transmutation active first, then u can only cast one nature magic buff. you have to wait for corpse transmutation to expire or just right click the icon in the char view panel to remove the corpse transmutation buff, THEN cast the second nature buff, thereafter cast corpse transmutation again. you should be able to hold all 2 nature magic buffs plus corpse transmutation together. corpse transmutation has also been changed to benefit from increased curse duration from debilitation while the armor bonus provided by corpse transmutation will also now benefit from increased curse power. the base duration for corpse transmutation has also been increased to 60 seconds however the mana cost is also tripled. the mana cost calculation formula has also been swapped with the resurrect mana cost formula. the mana cost for corpse transmutation is now dependent on your combat magic class level.

#3. combat magic summons will now benefit from increased damage from devastation, searing flames, amplified lightning, grim necromancy, arctic mastery and any staff weapons that give bonuses to fire, lightning, death magic, and cold damage depending on the summons' respective damage type. e.g. trasak summons will benefit from devastation, grim necromancy and weapons that give death magic damage percentage bonus; thrusk summons will benefit from devastation, searing flames and weapons that give fire magic damage percentage bonus; stygian twisted shail summons will benefit from devastation, arctic mastery and weapons that give ice magic damage percentage bonus; mucrim shocker summons will benefit from devastation, amplified lightning and weapons that give lightning magic damage percentage bonus.

#4. the mucrim shocker summon's multispark attack has been changed to use the jolt attack instead. this should make it more effective against moving targets.

*#5. fixed a bug with wrath of ice wrongly using enveloping embrace instead of feral wrath to increase the duration of its freeze chance. the freeze chance will now also benefit from the increased freeze chance of the freezing skill. half of the freeze chance value of the freezing skill will be added to the default 5% freeze chance of wrath of ice.

*6. fixed a bug with the summon lesser bracken defender's melee minimum damage not benefitting from improved summon damage bonus from items.

*7. fixed a display bug with the kohl beast's power recharge. it was displayed as "medium recharge" by gpg. it has been fixed to show "normal recharge" now.

*8. the iceshot spell icon has been changed to use the lesser frost beam icon instead, so players do not accidentally mistake iceshot for lesser icebolt and sell off the wrong spell. you shud now be able to better differentiate between iceshot and lesser icebolt at a single glance now. so now, just remember to sell off iceshot before you reach lvl 21 in nature magic so you dont mistake the real lesser frost beam with iceshot...

*9. the resurrect line of spells will no longer show "at next skill level: restores 20% of target's health" or whatever. this is done because the resurrect heal amount is fixed for each grade of the resurrect spell.

#10. several changes have been made to the resurrect line of spells. firstly, you will no longer lose the minor resurrect spell after saving and loading a game. the minor resurrect spell is now also a combat magic spell and has been renamed to lesser revive. lesser revive requires combat magic lvl 3 to use. /*(rez invul commented out. doesnt work) the resurrect/revive line of spells (except master resurrect) and resurrect scrolls have been changed to give temporary invulnerability for 2-3 seconds. this allows a resurrected/revived character to get up off the ground and to run away from enemies without being killed again due to low health (yes, i hate spawn kill). this should help a lot when raising a slain party member during boss fights.*/ also, the requirements for lesser resurrect have been changed to require only nature magic lvl 1 to use and the heal amount has been increased to restore 25% of target's health; resurrect now restores 50% of target's health; greater resurrect now restores 75% of target's heath; master resurrect now restores 100% of target's health. the mana cost calculation formula has been swapped with the corpse transmutation mana cost formula. the mana cost for resurrect/revive is now correctly dependent on the target's maximum health. the old formula used nature magic lvl which is not in accordance with the description which said it used the target's maximum health.

*11. fixed several instances of curses decreasing physical resist (melee and ranged resist) but saying they decrease armor in the description. it now shows "+% melee and ranged vulnerability" instead of "armor reduced by %". this is done to reduce confusion about curses since there are monster curses in broken world that actually decrease armor rating instead of physical resist. armor rating mitigates damage from all damage types while physical resist only affects melee and ranged damage.

*12. the description for the familiar surgeon's doomsday life/health decay curse has been changed to "2-3% health loss per second".

*13. fixed a mistake in the bound dryad's -40% magic resistance curse description. it is supposed to show "-40% reduced magic resistance" not "-4% reduced magic resistance".

#14. cripple has been changed to reduce the armor rating of its victims instead of reducing their maximum health. this should make the highest level curse in the game more useful instead of being useful just once to reduce the maximum health of the target. after reducing the health of the target, its kinda useless to try to cast cripple on the target again... the armor rating reduction starts at 5% and maxes out at 10% and can be further augmented with debilitation.

#15. if you play a single-class combat or nature mage, you should no longer see "you have maximised this spell's power" before you even meet the requirements for using the spell.

*#16. Note regarding corrosive eruption: the damage type for the corrosive eruption power has been changed to dmt_death in the power's spell template. previously, it was dmt_lightning which makes no sense. however, the damage type specified in the power's spell template seems to be ignored by the game and the corrosive explosion seems to do dmt_melee which is the default damage type. this does not seem to matter as the damage from the explosion seems to ignore melee resistance and damage reduction from armor rating.

*#17. the damage type for the aether blast power has been fixed to dmt_non_elemental. previously, it was dmt_death which makes no sense.

*#18. the damage type for the energy orb power has been fixed to dmt_elemental. previously, there was no damage type specified. this makes the game use dmt_melee as it is the default damage type used by the game in rules.skrit when no damage type is specified which could sometimes cause the attack to do less damage due to melee resistance which does not make sense when it is a magical attack. also fixed a bug with the energy orb power's spell template that was causing it to not follow the damage type specified in the power's spell template. this caused rules.skrit to always use dmt_melee as the damage type for damage and resistance calculation for energy orb.

*#19. the damage type for the dark and light naiad's duskbeam attack has been fixed to dmt_non_elemental. previously, there was no damage type specified. this makes the game use dmt_melee as it is the default damage type used by the game in rules.skrit when no damage type is specified which could sometimes cause the attack to do less damage due to melee resistance which does not make sense when it is a magical attack.

*#20. the screen name and description for the lap dragon's dragon fire attack has been changed to "dragon ball" (woot Dragon Ball-Z ftw!) and "spits a ball of natural force that explodes on contact" respectively. this appears to suit the lap dragon's attack better as it was meant to do non elemental damage instead of fire; since gpg got lazy and reused the firebolt and fireball projectiles for the lap dragon's attack.

*#21. fixed bugs with the blood assassin's execute and ravaging strike powers not following the damage type specified in the power's spell template. this bug caused it to do dmt_melee by default.

*#22. fixed a bug with the blood assassin's rune of blood power not following the damage type specified in the power's spell template. this bug caused it to do dmt_melee by default. the damage type of rune of blood has also been changed to dmt_magical since making it do dmt_ranged would cause it to do more damage if the target(s) is(are) cursed with decay armor which doesnt make sense when it is a magic-like attack. the rune of blood power has also been changed to give experience to combat magic when it kills or damages creatures since it is a magic-like power, it doesnt make sense to make it give experience to ranged.

*23. the party health regeneration rate decrease description in rune of sacrifice has been changed to "party's health decreased by 2% of maximum health per second".

#24. changed the fist of stone's earthquake aura, faultline and eruption powers to give experience to nature magic instead of melee since these are magic-like powers and it doesnt make sense to make them give experience to melee.

#25. the duration for charged shots has been increased to 15 seconds at level 1, 18 seconds at level 2 and 20 seconds at level 3 to make it more useful for characters that use bows exclusively; since take aim and thunderous shot are percentage damage based and thus work better with crossbows.

#26. the radius of detonation has been set to follow the same radius as gathered bolt; the damage calculation formula for both detonation and gathered bolt have been set to the same. since they are essentially identical in function except for doing a different damage type.

#27. the radius at which chain lightning will search for targets to jump to has been increased from 6 to 10.

#28. increased the radius of all pet auras from 4 to 15 so that they can actually benefit the entire party during combat.

#29. the base duration for all nature, blood assassin and fist of stone buff spells have been set to 3000 seconds. the duration can only be increased by raising your enveloping embrace, feral wrath or improved weapon enhancements skills depending on the buff.

#30. the cast range of the normal line of offensive spells has been increased by +1; the cast range of the greater line of offensive spells has been increased by +2; the cast range of the master line of offensive spells has been increased by +3. this should help distinguish the lower and higher grades of each spell apart and not just be the same spell but with different spelling. only offensive spells have their ranged increased. buff spells, healing spells, curses and summoning spells remain the same.

#31. the cast range of some powers have been increased: the cast range of gravity stone has been increased to 12; the cast range of icicle blast has been decreased to 9 to fix the bug of the power being unable to damage creatures standing at its maximum range; the cast range of circle of frost has been increased to 12; the cast range of flame nexus has been increased to 20 since its very similiar to thunderous shot which also has a cast range of 20; the cast range of detonation has been increased to 15; the cast range of harvest soul has been increased to 12; the cast range of gathered bolt has been increased to 15; the cast range of the scorpion queen's explosive sting power has been increased to 15; the cast range of the fist of stone's faultline power has been increased to 15; the cast range of the blood assassin's rune of blood power has been increased to 15.

#32. the instant heal amount of the nourish line of spells has been doubled; the nourish line of spells will now also give a temporary boost to health regeneration rate for its duration. however, the mana cost has been increased by 50%.

#33. the healing rain line of spells will also give a temporary boost to health regeneration rate for its duration to justify its high mana cost.

#34. the effect radius of fireball and impale have been increased to 3 bringing combat magic area effect spells up to speed with its nature magic equivalent, ripple, and also to justify the high mana cost of fireball and impale.

#35. the effect radius of the call lightning line of spells has been increased depending on the grade of the spell; the number of targets hit by the call lightning line of spells has also been increased depending on the grade of the spell; the mana cost of the call lightning line of spells has also been increased depending on the grade of the spell since they have a larger radius and can hit more targets.

#36. the leech life line of spells have been renamed to leech life and mana. the spell is now able to steal mana as well. you will regain a portion of the damage dealt as mana. the cast ffx has also been changed to use the blue mana leeching ffx.

#37. the fan angle of skull spray has been reduced by half so it doesnt shoot skulls all over the place and hardly ever hits the target. it has also been set to shoot at least one skull straight so you are assured of at least one hit on the target. this applies to both the player and monster version of skull spray so beware of monsters that use skull spray (especially the mock chest mimics) as they will be more deadly.

#38. doubled the intelligence cap for the lesser, normal and greater line of spells. buff spells, curses, blood assassin and fist of stone related spells remain unchanged.

#39. intelligence cap for the master and paragon line of spells has been raised to 999.

#40. intelligence cap for pet spells (except pet curses) has been raised to 999 as well so that they can benefit from intelligence bonuses from their pet development bonus.

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Known Issues(Bugs):

1. the nourish and healing rain spells have a bug whereby the familiar surgeon's doomsday curse which negatively affects health regeneration rate causing u to lose health per second instead of gaining health also makes the nourish and healing rain spells work against u negatively. it worsens the health regeneration rate decrease instead of countering it. im working on a fix but for now, avoid using nourish and healing rain when fighting the surgeons. use heal or healing cascade instead.