ERAS 2 -Balanced Loot

[Fleebusia]

I rebalanced the loot and loot table as a personal use modification, but thought why not share it for other likeminded players. A simple modification that adjusts value and respective loot chance of items to hopefully correct the ridiculous abundance of high-value loot in ERAS mod. So far Only Jewellery, Weapons, Pistols have been tweaked.

End result is that you will no longer find hundreds of thousands of gold worth of loot each dungeon run or in general loot. The high-end valuables, especially Jewellery are still relatively valuable but are far less common. You will still find a decent amount of middling items of middling worth.

In the base mod you can reliably walk out from a single generic dungeon with over a million worth of loot. In this mini-mod, expect a typical yield of about 15-50k depending on chance of course. It's still profitable and a worthwhile endeavour to run dungeons, but unlike base ERAS you will not make end-game gold simply by doing a handful of low level dungeons. You should be able to make enough in loot to sustain a few hundred crew on your ships with regular visits to the brothel as well as stocking of potions. But not much beyond that unless you get insanely lucky.

I've only made a single passes over items so its likely not perfect yet. But it feels so much better in my tests so far.

You will need to re-initialize items for an existing game/save. Currently the only way I know of doing that is to toggle the following in OnLoadReinit.c:

bool bInitItems = true;

(You want to save after toggling, then exit and restore the default value >false)

 

[Fleebusia]

Version 2-

Corrected Most Mineral or Trinket type items. No longer can you buy trinkets giving +20/30 skill bonuses for a pittance. Low skill bonus items mostly unchanged. Adjusted some weights to make items more practical.

Currently deliberating whether skill books need tweaking.

 

[Fleebusia]

Version 3-

Rebalanced Skill books. Increased value and rarity. Tried to adjust prices to reflect strength of utility per stat. Some books like Hybrid stat skill book cost a lot more and should be almost impossible to find without buying them. Lvl 3 books doubled in price, greatly increased rarity.

Might be final version unless Min levels need to be adjusted, which I haven't touched.

 

[Fleebusia]

After more playtesting I've come to realize that what I've accomplished here likely constitutes a fraction of what it would take to balance this mod out properly, or more accurately, to better suit a player mentality that doesn't want the world served to them on a silver platter from day one.

Quite remarkable that despite what was quite a heavy-handed nerf to loot, this mod still plays like Hello-kitty island adventure for kids who want everything here and now. It's like every facet of this mod was tuned to require the least amount of effort from the player and where money-tree's sprout up on every path you travel.

I'm afraid its going to be months until I can weed all the cheese out of this mod and make balancing semi-respectable. Seems this mod was created by and designed for people so salty, seasoned and desensitized to the game that there is no longer any interest in the character development process. I can't think how else to explain how superficial and arbitrary the balancing is.

I'm not actually entirely happy with the loot rebalance. From where I stand it could probably benefit from yet another pass with even harsher and more thorough nerfs.

 

[Rip0sta]

Hi, i was playing ERAS 2 a lot in 2022 and now i came back to try it again. I 100% agree with everything you said about economy ballance in this game. I even tried to discuss it myself on discord group, but was only ignored or got idiotic answers like: "but you dont need to grab this item if you dont like it so what's your problem?". So yeah... The way these people are thinking, which is: "you don't need to pick up this item if you don't like it" is also a great answer for any questions about why modders let this game be so unballanced.

When i was playing in 2022 i created some sort of special rules for myself to increase money ballance, like for example i never opened any chests in cities or took any items lying in taverns.

I will try playing with your file and test it, but im already almost certain that i will like your changes a lot, because we think very much the same.

If you gonna someday decide to put even more work into ballancing this game economy then be sure that i will be happy to use it.


Playing with hardcore mode on impossible difficulty also helps - it's easier to accept obtaining a million $ treasure after 30 minutes of swimming and fighting dozens of enemies without doing a single save. You kind of feel like you somehow deserve to be highly rewarded for doing all of that without dying.