@BrisckHiron, "* Growing a spear without any food causes Spearmaster to have Gourmand's exhaustion for a few seconds (configurable)."

I like your thinking; apparently we went through the same line of reasoning! Basically, every second spear generated, my code tries to subtract a quarter pip, but if the food is already at zero, the food meter is unchanged. This, however, doesn't prevent Spearmaster from actually creating the spear: Instead, losing food is triggered by him creating a spear. (So the spear is generated, then my code subtracts food.)
I tried adding an exhaustion effect (actually I think it may have been riley_'s idea) when creating a spear without food as a slight penalty (to hopefully discourage players from abusing the mechanic); however, it rarely has any impact on gameplay. Spearmaster can only have two live spears at a time anyway.

@BrisckHiron, "* Growing a spear without any food causes Spearmaster to have Gourmand's exhaustion for a few seconds (configurable)."

I like your thinking; apparently we went through the same line of reasoning! Basically, every second spear generated, my code tries to subtract a quarter pip, but if the food is already at zero, the food meter is unchanged. This, however, doesn't prevent Spearmaster from actually creating the spear: Instead, losing food is triggered by him creating a spear. (So the spear is generated, then my code subtracts food.)
I tried adding an exhaustion effect (actually I think it may have been riley_'s idea) when creating a spear without food as a slight penalty (to hopefully discourage players from abusing the mechanic); however, it rarely has any impact on gameplay. Spearmaster can only have two live spears at a time anyway.

But, what if Spearmaster for example starvs in a den/gets no backup food pips for the next cycle? Afterwards he will have 0 food pips and since you made the change to Spearmaster, that he needs 1/4 of a food pip for a spear, he just can't do that
(In a start of a cycle where he starts with 0 food pips) Unless you have some kind of change that, he gets a spear and exhaustion effect when he has 0 food pips mabye?

Let me know if you already had a similar solution or no :)

"Scavenger population is 50-60% of what it previously was, making things easier." This isn't a nerf.
And if thats the case, you can kill all scavengers. But you need scavengers for karma gates.
So.. WHAT THE HECK

@evilmoondragon, Oh, I didn't realize the warp cap was tied to ripple level. Yeah, it should probably stay constant at the minimum. And the invisibility meter gets ridiculously huge as ripple increases; that would definitely be tuned down.

@TheLazyCowboy1 The special ability meter and warp count increase based on your ripple, the former being based on your current ripple and the latter being based on your max ripple.

I believe at the highest max ripple your warp count is 2-3 times starting max ripple. Your ability meter also takes longer to purple out.

I think this gets pretty ridiculous and find myself thinking the max ripple duration should be same as the current min ripple duration/pre-ripple duration.

@Peacherweasel | Skyjackal, Well, those mods just about entirely rewrite creature spawns, so I'm not surprised! I am pleasantly surprised that it didn't cause any issues, though.

For some reason, I have increased the scavenger population for artificer up to 2x what it was originally on, though when I subbed to another mod (Dawn + No more rain world) it stopped working.

@-|Eli|-, Personally I really like the balance of the Watcher campaign. If I were to nerf something about Watcher, I would probably end up doing some of the following: 1. Make it so you can only safely warp ~2 times per cycle instead of ~4; 2. Simply decrease the size of Watcher's special ability meter; 3. Make Watcher temporarily visible when throwing an item (would be difficult); 4. Gradually increase the speed of void spawn when in ripple space.

out of curiosity what is the watcher ability that might need nerfing

I just saved & quit, I still had to reach the shaded citadel echo (as I hadn't yet) & when I was going to that's when I noticed the karma reset. Yet I can still gain passages as If I had them.

@Peacherweasel | Skyjackal, When exactly did you save/quit the game? If you got any ending (including ascension or whatever), that might reset your karma permanently; but if you just normally quit the game and it reset... hmm, maybe Watcher caused the issue. It did mess with echo code...

Having a strange issue with Artificer. I have "Compatible Endings" turned on. I defeated the king scav, I managed to meet all the echoes, however when I saved the game & left, I was reset to karma one. Lost all my other karma levels, but I'm still gaining passages as If I still have the other levels (but I don't)

ouuhh yeah i wouldnt wanna do that either,, i can probably just use pupify to nerf myself if i ever decide to play as rivulet

@C4L0N, I considered it, and I wish it were easily possible. I would literally have to upload it as a separate mod with all the Meadow features disabled (and all the food pip mechanics in this mod disabled) and the options capped (pretty easy, to be fair). I just really don't want to have to manage two separate copies of the mod.

are we allowed to use this in meadow to NERF ourselves, or is it just disabled entirely? i cant play rivulet without the nerfed speed and jump height (i mean. i CAN. but like..yk...it feels too overpowered)

@PoisonedMaple I updated it and briefly tested it and it didn't break, yeah. Let me know if it doesn't work.

havent tried using this mod post watcher, does it still work?

@ImpishIdeas I totally understand where you're coming from. If you want to just have the Rivulet cell changes, I suggest you use the "Disable" preset and then navigate to the Rivulet tab and change the cell configs there.
I can't take credit for the cell idea, though. It was actually inspired by some random YouTuber I've forgotten who suggested that precycles should get worse. I found it really fun in practice, though.

Honestly, I'm fine with almost all of the MSC mechanics being as they are, but am considering using this for the Rivulet cell change alone, because afaik, you're the only modder who even considered that.

Like, idk about you, but I really loved rushing around ahead of the rain for the first half of their campaign, and the long monk cycles afterwards, even if they make sense story-wise, made the gameplay much less fun in the latter half. Keep speedy scug's speed relevant, you know? :/

For Watcher, I'd honestly tweak the maximum karma ability and their secondary ability. I think the normal cloak is decently balanced, but you can optionally make the Watcher nosier in order to force them to actively sneak.

i'll use this mod to x10 scav spawns. nothing else.

So far, not really. I haven't actually played through much of the Watcher yet; I'm pretty much just starting. So far it seems quite balanced (I've actually died a lot), but from my brief glances at the code, I expect the Watcher might gain some OP abilities later on that may need to be, ah, "remixed." We'll see.

anyways now that it's been a few days since the watcher released and i'm curious, do you have any particular nerfs in mind for the watcher?

well they actually usually throw their own bones instead.

Because it is, as you say, a "creature." It is also a remarkably light-weight slugcat throwing heavy metal spears at a high frequency.

why would a creature called "spearmaster" ever get tired of throwing spears

@Stormguy, That would definitely be a good thing to add...

Unfortunately, I probably won't be working on this mod for a while except to fix bugs. But I do hope to come back to it someday and add stuff like that.

please add the ability to nerf/buff rivulets swimming speed i want to be as fast as a jetfish >:D

I love these nerfs! The only one I don't really agree with is the Riv movement speed, since their whole schtick is "be fast", but thankfully it's configurable.

@Chaos101! Bro just can't bear good game design. ;)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thanks now we can nerf that silly rivulet, arti and a bit spermaster like this the classic feeling of being another creature in the ecosystem comes back and not just a slugcat with a power.

@jerrod ...hmm, sounds like a bug with the scavenger spawn changer code.

Did this happen for all slugcats, or just for Artificer?

For which regions did you notice this effect?

If you set the scavenger population modifier back to 1.0, does the bug still occur?

Love it, but breaks scavenger and vulture spawns in certain modern region gates. Everything just spawns on both sides and you end up having to get through like eight scavengers and three vultures and a king vulture to get through it.

@Ezzekiel Yeah, I agree: I specifically thought of giving the option to Spearmaster. ...however, I plan to soon start development of a quick separate mod that would make these options individually configurable for each individual slugcat (including modded ones using SlugBase). So i might hold off on adding more options in this mod until I've made that new mod.

Could you make an option to give Spearmaster the angled spear throws without needing to turn it on for everyone? I get where you're coming from with Arti having it, but it feels like a Spearmaster skill far more

i like this a lot tbh, i agree arti wasnt rly fun and this fixes a lot of it:)

@maryevangelinemartins Honestly, one of the main things that prompted me to make this was that I just didn't enjoy Artificer's campaign. I thought the overall difficulty was acceptable, but it was very poorly distributed: Platforming challenges were non-existent; scavengers could either be blown up with a single grenade without a thought, OR they would swarm you and be unstoppable; non-scav enemies were pointlessly weak; etc. So I remixed it, reducing Artificer's abilities slightly whilst reducing the combat difficulty to compensate.
Not to mention having Artificer or Rivulet in jolly-coop was frustrating because they outmaneuver every other slugcat...
Rain World is special because the main character isn't super overpowered: one single lizard can seem extremely scary, until you know how to deal with it. Most Downpour slugcats completely ignore that game design and instead make you feel much more powerful than everything else.

i get that this is meant for your preferences but. i seriously dont get why you would nerf them when they dont need any? all the scugs seem perfectly fine balance wise aside from arena ( im looking at you artificer ) sorry if this sounds rude i just dont get it

@Kiro the funny proot and @maryevangelinemartins I believe that both of you failed to notice that this mod is highly configurable. This mod contains everything from options to slow Rivulet down slightly to modifying Gourmand's slide speed, modifying Saint's tongue physics, allowing for angled spear throws, remixing how precycles work in Rivulet's campaign, and even making both of Artificer's endings compatible with each other.

Since there is an option to disable every setting; if any one setting has any use or appeal to you, then this mod is not useless (since you can keep JUST that one setting and ignore literally everything else). And keep in mind that you can reverse most of these nerfs: you can make Rivulet run twice as fast.

you arent forced to install the mod, its just the authors preferences lmao??? if you cant handle a little challenge just move on

For example, Rivulet is MEANT to be fast, it is what their campaign is about!

THIS IS USELESS WHAT THE HECK... YOUR RUINING THE SLUGCATS... THEY ARE MEANT TO BE THIS WAY!

this is... useless

alright! thank you :3

@C4L0N The modifiers in my mod multiply the speeds of the slugcats, not set them. Monk/Survivor/Gourmand move at 1 speed. Hunter/Artificer/Spearmaster move at 1.2. Rivulet moves at 1.75 (I think). So if you want to set, for example, Spearmaster's speed to 1, the closest you could get would be to set the multiplier to 0.8 because 1.2 * 0.8 = 0.96. Jump height isn't exactly calculated, so I can't say what the average jump height is.

whats the average slugcat speed/jump?

@Borben It's probably a lot more work than it's worth. I already have this basically implemented (it's just that it removes a quarter pip every other use), and this method is actually slightly better because it would be annoying as Artificer to accidentally explosion jump when at full food and then be just barely unable to hibernate by 1/8 pip (since the game always rounds down).

any chance of support for the 1/8th food pip api ?