Breathless rulers should have disliking for deep ones automatically removed from them. Maybe they should get (obsessive) liking for deep ones instead. This matters for cult growth within breathless settlements.

I had some problems with "Direct Control" in my last game, it just said the target was invalid when I had the drowned prophet selected. Investigating more now.

Very fun

Biggest comment I have with the interaction with the DLC is that it is a bit of a pain to be competing with the Innundai to try to get Deep Cathedrals going given that they are also taking from population. Possibly allowing making them at the Innundai Palace could be a fix for that?

Also, for those using the Community Library, it would be cool if the deep one artifacts could show up in shipwrecks

thanks for that fun mod!

When considering motivation to attract deep ones by the inundai, it should ignore abyssal cities that have too low of a population (say less than 20 or something).

I appreciate the fix. What do you think of doing some reworking on abyssal ritualists now that the dlc is out?

@crawlers sorry it took so long but the motivation with the coral statues should be fixed now. I had accidentally multiplied it instead of dividing it. Now the motivation should be the modifier's charge divided by 3.

And just in case I've also capped it at 40.

Appreciate it. I want to resume my savegame but the only spot that the inundai have set up has a cranked motivation for the heroes to banish them.

@crawlers yeah I messed up the math in the motivation calculation. I'll try to get an update made this week that fixes that.

Did you manage to figure out what was going on?

To clarify, this is the "unnerving coral statues" modifier to motivation, not the base motivation.

Oh there's definitely something funky going on with how that motivation is being calculated. I'll need to look into that. Thank you!

0 difficulty. As of speaking the motivation has increased to 866. In case it is relevant, I had once used the challenge to move population from that city (it moved 35).

@crawlers thanks for the feedback! That might have been leftover text from an earlier version of the Inundai. I'll need to change that when I get the chance.

Also, out of curiosity, what difficulty are you playing? That's definitely not how high the base motivation should be.

Some notes on inundai. The challenge to create coral statues says it stops the local presence modifier from being blocked, but actually it is just the opposite - it gives heroes an extremely bloated motivation (ive seen over 700) to block it which can be quite problematic if there is only one such presence in the game. The actual modifier says something else, allowing migration even if the local presence is blocked.

You're good!

You can get the abyssal tome like other deep one items. So either searching through a sanctum or getting a deep one event can get you one.

However, I've set it to be the rarest deep one item to drop, so the easiest way to get one is to recruit the Fisherman.

Sorry one question, is it possible to obtain the abysall tome durign the campaing like any toher abyssal object or is it only obtinable via the fisherman spwaning ?

@Jotbe83 sorry for the late reply. You can spawn a Kraken (along with Leviathans) from any Deep One Sanctum, so long as the Abyssal Locus there has sufficient charge.

how do i spawn a kraken

Just updated the mod for the DLC.

If you have the DLC and it's telling you the mod is the wrong version, try unsubbing and resubbing.

New DLC just dropped!

I'll work to have this updated either later tonight or tomorrow night. As of now, DO+ should still work fine if you're running the game without the DLC.

I appreciate it. It would make the negative growth and all the other actions that rulers who dislike deep ones can do actually mean something, and that it would be possible (although difficult) to progress in such a place.

Gotcha. As of right now no, but I can add in that as an option for the next update. I'm currently waiting for the upcoming underground update to be released before updating this mod.

I am playing at 0 difficulty level, and generally I have not bothered much to change that setting. I did not know this mod had configuration options. If I could disable the action to destroy a cult, that would change quite a bit - is that possible?

@crawler I'm very curious to know if you're playing with a changed difficulty level.

Also, you can disable and modify the deep one threat level through the mod's config options in the mod menu, along with the ability for priests and ritualists to naturally spawn. I forgot to mention that.

Rulers at 100% shadow can get dislike for deep ones.

The overall feeling I get from this mod seems to be that deep ones have some use as a minor aide to the player's strategy but trying to go all-in on them is a bad idea due to how powerful and rampant the dislike for them eventually becomes.

I also noticed the actions rulers who dislike deep ones can do against them are all basically irrelevant except for the cult destroying action which dominates and gets used often. What use is adding 30 menace to the cult if it gets blown up immediately after?

I suggest disabling the extra growth and downplaying of deep ones ruler action before turn 0. I had a game start with a deep one cult already past 200% and at turn 39 there was an abyssal priest and a deep one sanctum with zero action from me. The impact of an extra source of shadow like that is big.

@crawlers it is on my list of things to look into when I have the time

May you do something about humanity's priorities getting extremely distorted by a massive modifier to deal with deep ones? Eventually they even start new wars while in the middle of an existing war and multiple armies halfway across the map go to burn down sanctums that have 10 menace. Can some kind of cap be added to the deep one threat modifier?

@crawlers I would say so, yes. Humanity is supposed to push back against Deep Ones once they start rolling, since in vanilla I always found that they tend to snowball too easily without much resistance.

Shadow taking up more VP is a base game issue that's been brought up before in the community. There's not much I can do about that.

I noticed in the late game, deep ones almost cant spread outside of enshadowed areas due to how fast such places regenerate dislike for them. Is this intended behavior? This seems to oddly mirror the problems that deep ones have in vanilla where it is hard to win with them because shadow winds up spreading too much and giving too many victory points compared to them.

@crawlers thank you for your suggestions. If I remember right, the majority of those features were created before rule preferences affected deep one growth

I also suggest adding a growth rate buff to deep one cults within the drowned holy order. They seem to progress way slower compared to a ruler who likes deep ones, which seems odd considering the entire town is run by them at this point.

Here are the problematic ritualist things I have seen so far.
Sacrificing rulers who really like deep ones - the passive growth rate beats whatever they can accomplish with a temporary boon and the new ruler might not like deep ones.
Amplifying the dislike of deep ones into hate. I have never seen them sacrifice a ruler who hates deep ones, probably since they destroy deep ones so fast as to deny any opportunity.
Sacrificing population - this reduces the yield of the deep one cult. Consider the average place of 40 pop that needs 300 progress, sacrificing 10 pop to yield 30 progress is usually harmful to the player.

The deep one threat modifier should have a cap. Having the world get 130+ extra motivation from it gets rather annoying and distorts what the ai is doing. The motivation can become so powerful that the alliance will declare war even while it is in the middle of another war.

@Crawlers I was not aware of that quirk for the holy tenet. That's definitely not intended. I'll need to look into those other two as well, especially the Ritualist, as imo their spells are probably in need of a couple of tweaks.

Level 3 call of the abyss tenet regenerates deep one cults when they are destroyed, meaning rulers who dislike deep ones will go through an unending cycle of destroying them and triggering the relationship effects of this. I suggest that it be impossible to destroy cults while a temple of a holy order that has level 3 call of the abyss is present.

I noticed insane rulers and those with high (but not 100%) shadow can get dislike of deep ones due to awareness. Eventually this proceeds so fast that it usually outpaces the abyssal sermon challenge to where an acolyte can perform it half a dozen times on a single person and not make much progress. Can it be changed a bit to not repeatedly alter the same person so many times and to have a bit more requirements to get dislike from awareness?

I have noticed that abyssal priests seem significantly more helpful than abyssal ritualists. Has anyone else had this experience?

Priests spread liking for deep ones which is powerful in this mod for growing and hiding a cult and create new cults.

Ritualists can sacrifice population (thus reducing the abyssal city pop gain of having a cult in the first place) to increase cult growth and menace and can sacrifice rulers with an immense preference for/against deep ones to speed up growth, but those who really like them will already grow the cult very fast and this doesn't compare, and those who hate them will exterminate the cult before these guys can do anything.

@WildMurderMuffin that's odd. Definitely a bug.

As of now, no. I have ideas for a couple of others minor deep one gods, but I haven't had a lot of time as of late to do much modding for them.

i love the mod. I think the control Drowned prophet may be bugged. I had 4/5 agents and the 3 power, but when i tried to control the prophet it said i didnt have a free agent slot. I tried it in two separate games. Are there other deep one gods to dedicate cults too?

A Deep Ones god would legit be everything I need in this game

@zgold425 If I have a solid idea for one in the future, I might try to make one

Can you a Deep Ones god?

@crawlers the holy order influence thing is an easy fix. The vendetta mechanics are hard-coded into the game, so I'm not sure if I can do anything about that.

@sewnutty Glad to hear you're enjoying it! feel free to DM me the story! I'd love to hear it!

I have...an alternative trage...story for the Fisherman. I can DM you on discord if you would like.
In the meantime, still love the mod and i abuse the witches to create an easy drowned prophet.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995852637 strange vendetta formed between a breathless house (that happened to also contain a witch) and the drowned prophet

The drowned prophet gives +4 human influence to the holy order when he is not controlled by the player.

The mod has been updated to be compatible with the beta branch