My Center Deadzone Mod for Dark Souls 2 (SOTFS) is out!
Enjoy smoother movement AND camera control, both of which now use a radial deadzone, the same as other Souls games.
Easy to install and safe for online play!
I am officially announcing Absolution, the major mod I'm making for Dark Souls 2 (SOTFS). Its goal to address gameplay complaints held by those who don't enjoy Dark Souls 2 as much as other Souls games, and to improve the PvE experience.
Every Dark Souls 2 enemy has a leash radius, which tells it how far it can follow the player from its original location.
Most enemies in No-Man's Wharf have a leash radius of 100 meters. The problem: a 100m radius sphere is bigger than the whole area.
#DarkSouls2
One of the holy grails of Dark Souls 2 modding has been achieved—true deadzone adjustment!
Decreasing the deadzone size allows for much smoother and more precise movement.
This isn't Durazno's fix or Steam controller shenanigans, this is a direct change to DarkSoulsII.exe.
Dark Souls 2 has a balance problem: armor is very bad at blocking physical damage, much worse than in DS1/3.
Unlike elemental defense, which is %-based, DS2 physical defense is a flat reduction. Every 12 phys def reduces damage by 1. Even Havel's set +5 isn't that good.🧵1/5
The Anatomy of a Dark Souls 2 Roll
Green: Invincibility frames
Orange: "Super armor" frames - attacks damage you but won't interrupt your roll, regardless of poise (other Souls games don't have this)
Blue: Normal
I discovered that fat rolling in Dark Souls 2 slightly increases the duration of invincibility frames. From 70% to 100% equip load, the roll animation gradually gets slower. At 100% load, you roll at 0.9x speed, so i-frames duration is 11% longer compared to normal rolling.
This old ironclad soldier before the Last Giant is probably one of the least encountered enemies in the Souls series. There's no reason to send the elevator down without you, so I imagine most people never knew about it. Did you?
I fixed a Dark Souls 2 bug that always bothered me. Boss HP bars only showed the most recent damage done, instead of adding damage up over successive hits. Now you can see how much your combos and multi-hit spells are hitting for.
I had to change 1 line of code.
#DS2Absolution
Here's an actually useful tip about Dark Souls 2 dodge mechanics, since yesterday's tweet did so well.
If you roll while nearly out of stamina, your invincibility frames get reduced! Manage your green bar!
What Twitter teaches you about modding FromSoft games:
1) If you make changes, the game becomes different.
2) The game is fine the way it is.
3) If you mod a game, you must not like it. Otherwise, why change anything?
4) Nothing is unfair, unbalanced, or poorly designed. Git gud.
I've finally solved the mystery behind the pair of super fast hollows that Scholar of the First Sin added to Huntsman's Copse. Their AI routine has a movement speed multiplier of 3. I lack a sense of humor, so I fixed it.
Despite DS2 enemies' reputation for following you to the ends of the earth, this is an outlying case. Spellswords in Eleum Loyce will only follow you 40 meters in any direction.
10-Second End Credits Mod for Dark Souls 2: SOTFS
DS2 end credits are 9 minutes long and can't be skipped unless you're on NG+ or beyond. This simple mod makes the credits roll so fast that in 10 seconds you can get back to playing!
See reply for NexusMods link!
An anonymous source has informed me that two-handing binoculars doesn't look quite right. This is the most minor "complaint" about Dark Souls 2 that I have ever received, but I respect it.
The infamous torturers perched above the path to Undead Purgatory can all wander 150 meters from spawn, more than enough to cross the bridge. They can even enter the Chariot's arena if the boss is defeated.
Dark Souls 2 enemy aggression parameters!
DS2's enemies are very willing to swarm you. I think that's the bigger difference compared to other Souls games than the actual number of enemies. Decreasing this a bit is probably the way to go.
#DS2Absolution
To the surprise of no one who's ever ventured into the Frigid Outskirts, the frozen reindeer have the largest leash radius of any enemy excluding certain NPC phantoms. 500 meters!
Dark Souls 2 player characters are about 5'6" (1.67m) tall while their collision capsule is about 6'3" (1.9m) tall. This explains why you have to wait until portcullises rise well above your head before you can pass them.
Collision display by
@LordRadai
We can now see exactly when you have invincibility frames in Dark Souls 2, thanks to
@LordRadai
's work.
Entering fog gates does give them, you just have to wait 1.5 seconds first. I plan on removing that delay, as it's extremely unpopular.
Even now, Dark Souls 2 receives much criticism for the ways it differs from its Souls siblings. "Black sheep"/"Good game, bad Souls game." The goal of Absolution is to create a version of DS2 that doesn't receive these labels, and brings the Souls community together in enjoyment.
Gavlan now buys soul items for their full value when consumed. In SOTFS, he only pays 10 souls for regular ones and 100 for boss souls.
Find someone who loves you the way Gavlan loves wheel and deal. Happy Valentine's Day.
#DS2Absolution
My conservative goal is for playtesting in Spring 2023 and for a full release on NexusMods in the Summer. In the meantime, I've just created a Discord server for people to chat, offer suggestions, and be part of the development process.
Found out today that you can animation cancel the majority of attacks into a dodge in Dark Souls 2. I did not add this. The timing's pretty tight, but I'm sure the PvP heads already knew about it.
The hammer-wielding Drakekeeper is one of Dark Souls 2's most infamous enemies, due to its fast and nonstop attacks. I have decreased the startup & recovery speed of its combos to make it more reasonable to fight.
#DarkSouls2
Making the Sacred Chime Hammer ring as it should!
Only problem is it makes all other great hammers and greataxes ring too because they share a swing sound. Call it a proof of concept for now.
Let's talk about weapon scaling in Dark Souls 2. First of all, Dexterity scaling is misleading because it uses unique letter rank ranges compared to Strength and the elemental damage types.
e.g. a weapon with 60% scaling in both STR and DEX would be "B" for STR and "S" for DEX
A thread of
#DarkSouls2
enemy hitboxes, made possible by
@LordRadai
hitbox display. Taking requests.
First, the dreaded Pursuer stab grab. It's a bit bigger than the sword but otherwise I'm underwhelmed.
Hunting dogs have a lot of problems. The bite hitbox is too big. The swipe hitbox starts before their paw starts to move, and makes both their paw and their entire front half an active hitbox.
This enemy will take some elbow grease to fix.
Fun fact, this is why it's impossible to play the entire game at the slowest movement speed (>120% equip load). You will be too slow to cross the bridge in time.
DS2's fat axial deadzone can make it feel like you only have 8-way movement (not actually the case). I've made the deadzone smaller, but ideally I would rewrite the code to make it a radial deadzone, like that of DS1/DS3. For now, this is still a very noticeable improvement.
Iron Warriors have a head hurtbox despite being headless. Shooting the empty space above their neck will deal damage. They did have heads in the concept art.
Program used: DebugManager by
@LordRadai
I greatly appreciate all the enthusiasm surrounding Absolution. However, I'm asking my followers not to bother people who are vocally uninterested in the project. It doesn't do any good.
I am officially announcing Absolution, the major mod I'm making for Dark Souls 2 (SOTFS). Its goal to address gameplay complaints held by those who don't enjoy Dark Souls 2 as much as other Souls games, and to improve the PvE experience.
To fix this, I'm giving all armor pieces %-based physical damage absorption. At the high end, full Havel's will absorb over 40% of physical damage. This will make light and heavy builds more distinct, and make it possible to become a real tank if you want to. 3/5
To balance this out, I'm reducing the equip load % at which you start to incur a gradual movement speed penalty from 100% to 30%.
This is to avoid the DS3 problem, where armor is pretty good, but there's no difference between 30% and 69.9%, so everyone runs around at 69.9%. 4/5
How do people feel about reinforcing armor? This was only a thing in DS1 and DS2 and it feels like most people never did it, though I occasionally see people lament its absence in DS3 and Elden Ring.
Flat damage reduction's issue is that it becomes less helpful the further you progress. Reducing a hit from 200 damage to 100 is great, but 1000 to 900 is mediocre. The physical defense offered by even the heaviest armor is negligible against late-game bosses, let alone NG+. 2/5
Dark Souls 2 v1.04 (April 2014, the first PC version) -> SOTFS changes (thanks
@king_bore_haha
for help with this)
Amana Shrine Maiden sight distance: 40 -> 30 meters
Their magic tracking was nerfed in 1.03, so PC players never got the full Shrine of Amana experience.
The fact that we're still learning more about how the game works on a technical level. It's rewarding to figure things out that no one else has. DS1/3/Elden Ring are more "solved" for modding purposes because they're more structurally similar to each other than to DS2.
I removed the 1.5x weapon stat requirements for powerstancing (e.g. Rapier requires 5 STR/12 DEX so you needed 7 STR/18 DEX to PS two). Now, if you meet a weapon's normal requirements, you can powerstance two.
#DS2Absolution
Normally, in Dark Souls 2 you actually sprint ~15% slower when locked on. Being able to sprint at full speed when locked on feels very freeing and lets you better deal with groups of enemies.
#DarkSouls
I've never seen anyone talk about this this, but Scholar of the First Sin changed something about the sky in the Lost Bastille. The moon was made much less visible. Except, it's not that simple... (1/3)
LobosJr said in his Dark Souls 2 retrospective that he preferred how in DS1 there's one of each ring and its effect is usually very noticeable, as opposed to having +1, +2, +3 versions of rings that are each a small upgrade from the last. Thoughts?
All characters in Dark Souls 2 have a speed limit. At 50 meters per second, it doesn't normally come up unless something is falling to its death. However, it does apply to all movement.
Player poise in Dark Souls 2 refills so slowly that I think it's a typo. It's 0.56 per second. Going from naked to wearing Havel's chest armor, it takes over 90 seconds to reach full poise. My mod will increase the refill rate of player poise to make it more reliable in combat.
The Stone Ring has a bug. When you wear it, YOUR poise is reduced when performing "attacks" that affect you. This includes
- Healing spells
- Homing Soulmass
- Weapon and body buff spells
- Weapon special attacks that buff themselves
I want to commission artwork of my Dark Souls 2 player character. If you are an artist or know of one who is looking for work, I would like to hear from you.
Did you know a hollow soldier can block a two-handed heavy attack from a Smelter Hammer? When I discovered this, I decided to find out how enemy shields work. (1/3)
I want to talk about FromSoft's two modern leveling cost tables: the normal one, the one Dark Souls 2 uses, how wildly different they are, and my guesses at why DS2's developers felt compelled to break the mold.
#ELDENRING
fun fact: the rune cost for leveling up uses the exact same calculations as leveling up in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 3, and Bloodborne.
A legacy calculation.
Dark Souls 2 weapons where their attack power value in menus is inaccurate because they have invisible damage modifiers:
(I'm removing all of these modifiers because they're dumb)
#DS2Absolution
@Moonlight_Ruin
These guys are weird. They have an overhead swing that doesn't pancake you and a horizontal swing that lifts you up but doesn't knock you back.