Better/Improved drops for Boss chests? Also increase(slightly) drop rate for legendaries?

I'm deliberately staying away from the major drops and more common drop sources (e.g. no actual treasure chests), as this is intended as a minor mod with the goal of subtly improving immersion without a significant impact on balance.

Thanks for the suggestion though! Hopefully you'll find a more comprehensive mod that does what you're after.

I noticed that you added 'renamed' items to the game. Unfortunately, adding more and more to games, such as items and effects to the game and drops, can be a complication on computers. I can say that if you did not rename items and just used the actual item in various drops, it would decrease the amount of space the mod takes up on the hard drive, and the memory used by the computer when calculating drops. For instance: The Green Potion is the same exact item as the Poison Resistance Potion bought from General Goods Vendors. As such, using the vanilla item would be a good idea. The same means can be applied to various other objects.

Also, you mention so many different changes to various objects that could be handled in a much MUCH easier form. For example, lighting objects could just have a small chance for dropping an single ember instead of a variety of oddball items, this would be not only a balanced choice, but also realistic, as some of the lighting devices in the game function through ember, a common power-source in this game. Pagodas are also a spot that is used for religious purposes typically, so a combination of any one or more items like a potion, scroll, or spell scroll dropping, along with gold would normally make sense.

Finally, not all Sundials are used for the same purpose. A Sundial can be used for common everyday purposes, as well as for religious purposes. It would actually be normal for a Sundial to produce the same kind of drop that I suggested as a change for the Pagodas. But remember, each item should have a small chance of dropping (like 25%) to ensure that you don't get lots of valuable items. This chance is also ideal for Pagodas, which are commonplace. Otherwise you could wind up with one of each item, or most items, in addition to gold.

This mod doesn't rename any items. In fact, all of the items that drop exist in the base game except bones and teeth which are new items. You can easily verify this: if you remove Daylight Robbery and check the mod status from the main menu, the only dropped items that are dependent on this mod and will be removed are the bones and teeth. The poison reisitance potion is the same one you can buy from Tinya in the first act.

Lighting objects and ember: Your suggestion is in fact exactly what this mod does, with the lone exception of the bowl-style braziers which can also drop a round shield, which is kind of consistent with its appearance and "smash" animation.

Pagodas: They can potentially drop all of the things you mention in the base game, but I liked the feel of always getting scrolls from those (more than from the sundials) so I simplified their drops. It seems like everything drops potions and gold so to me that made them feel more mundane.

Sundials: Having sundials always hold a secret "loot" stash made less sense to me than disassembling them for their raw materials which is how I justify gold (inlaid dial face and style) and sometimes a single cheap gem from the center or noon marking. They still have a chance of containing a real cache of loot, but that's now a pretty unusual event.

If you feel some of the drops are too common, I definitely don't want that but I'm also trying to balance them with drop frequency in the rest of the game. Compared with other RPG-style games, Torchlight 2's drop rates are certainly on the high side, which speaks to the pace of the game. For example, when in testing I realized that I was getting more spell drops from nearby monsters than from the dedicated "scroll" items I realized that my original drop rate was probably too conservative. It's a subjective thing though so I'm always open to specific suggstions for improving balance.

Appreciate the feedback, but given some of the examples you've included, I'm wondering if perhaps you have another mod that also modifies drops. I do agree that simpler, more consistent drops can actually improve immersion, and that's what I'm going for here, so if you have more specific suggestions like that they are most welcome.

So, a friend and I are using this and we seemed to be fighting different Mimics. As in, I saw him standing there fighting nothing for a very long time, and he said the Mimic wasn't dead yet, when I'd killed it a long time ago.

Is True Mimic possibly why such a thing could happen?

There was an area where there was a Mimic directly next to a chest. After it was dead, he saw three chests and I saw just two (the dead Mimic + the actual chest). So, I assume that how True Mimic works is that the real chest is supposed to spawn the monster, and the real chest should disappear...

Also, I believe that the "spawn" rate for the wooden boards that come from destroying boxes is much too high. Sometimes a box will create 4 boards, and one or more of those boards will create more boards. I can privately make fixes like this myself, but the more I change on my own the harder it will be to merge in any updates. :)

Finally, are many of the various breakables unique to the players? I know that in Diablo III, for example, satchels, dead people, etc. which drop journals and letters are unique to each player, meaning it only gets harvested on their screen... I noticed a few times I mentioned a breakable to him and he said there was nothing there / he'd already gotten it.


Edit: Sorry that only part of this is a suggestion... There is a character limit on the main page and I didn't want to split it up into several and spam you. :)

Thanks for the bug report. As you suspect, the Mimic "monster" spawns from a Mimic "chest" and the "chest" is supposed to disappear when activated (it really is a Mimic though, not a normal chest). I've double checked that everything is supposed to show up for both players, so unless this happens for every mimic there may have been a sync issue between your games. May I inquire as to the mods you were running?

Crates spawn two splintered boards each at most, so you may have smashed two crates at once, but yeah, those can in turn create more. It amuses me that you could in theory go on smashing boards forever if you got a really unlucky roll, but I will tone down the initial chance of boards being left behind when smashing crates and barrels.

By the way, you can simply ignore the extra debris. That's included for those that like clicking on every little interactable, but if you're not one to turn over every rock you see you may as well treat the boards the same. If you *hate* splintered boards, the file to nuke is \media\units\props\breakables\z2_desert\mod_smashable_boards_dinghy.dat. But let me know if you do; negative feedback is always appreciated in my attempts to subtly improve on the environment.

In general, breakables are instanced to all players, which means that if you smash an urn it will disappear for everyone and spawn random loot for each player. Since loot chance is low for urns, most players will see no loot appear (loot rolls are almost always different per player and will be affected by their own magic find stat.)

I merge a couple mods into one. Nothing conflicts with the files in your mod, except there were a few socketable files which I just added the item text color to manually (Better Loot Colors). And I assume those files were just part of your bugfix (double drop sounds).

Yeah, we will need to play more, but we had no desync issues for several hours AFAIK, and the only two weird occurrences so far both centered around Mimics. Well, other than the couple times I pointed out a breakable and there was nothing on his screen... he'd already broken it or never had it to begin with. The presence of _loot_ was not the issue there, but the presence of the actual breakable. I guess it's possible that since there are so many breakables, that every now and again the commands to break something for all players do not get sent (or something).

I'm surprised there is a limit of just two boards. It seems it's a lot higher, but I am guessing this is because boards beget more boards. I would guess then a crate only _seems_ to produce four boards, because the initial two break and produce two more, and then those four sometimes produce their own. I know that I can "ignore" the boards, but if you have breakables turned on in the Item Display Filter, sometimes nearly half the screen can be covered in the board text if you are in a spot with many crates.

I've only looked at it briefly, but it seems just removing the display text for anything will prevent the text from showing. I will probably just do this for various things. To be honest I may turn off Breakable items entirely in the Item Display Filter options, but then that doesn't cover the stuff that some breakables generate... Is there any reason boards/rocks are lootables instead of breakables?

Also, I'm curious, other than the couple items you add, can pretty much anything be changed or removed without any ill effect? I think the game may reroll the maps automatically when a mod changes, but I'd probably reroll it manually just to be safe. If we keep having weird stuff with Mimics, I may want to temporarily try removing all the Mimic stuff... I assume Ctrl+Shift+F all files for "mimic" would do the trick...

Wow, I've never seen that many boards show up at once except by the burning house. Your random number generator must really like you. (I have observed that it "clumps" sometimes, so it's possible that you got the same roll on a group of crates hit all at once with an AoE.) In any case, you'll see fewer in the next build.

Lootables vs. Breakables: Some players were having targeting issues with certain breakables like the boards, so I switched them to allow looting "by hand" like the rocks in the game already do. I like it both ways, but the latter seemed more consistent. You could change their unittype back to "breakable trigger" to revert to the old behavior (and make them filterable).

The only down side of removing an item in the game is when it's part of a unittype or spawnclass that picks an item randomly by weight. For example, if you removed identify and waypoint scrolls, every time a "scroll" spawned you'd get a (normally very rare) Vendor Boon Scroll. Otherwise, the game's pretty forgiving. Map progress only gets reset when the list of mods changes (something added or removed), and it's still the same map, it doesn't reroll.

I'm very interested in fixing mimics if there's an issue with multiplayer, so please keep me posted with your observations—especially stuff that happens the same every time—while I do some testing of my own. When you mention some breakables failing to sync, that would seem to indicate some data getting dropped from the netcode which could potentially explain your mimic observations. To revert to the original mimics, simply remove mimic_rare.layout and mimic_standard.layout (and their .animation files) from this mod.

Well, there was a super high concentration of crates in the later Act I areas. Now in Act II we're getting like 6 bone fragments per lootable. =p The amount was a bit overwhelming but then I found out how many are actually need for recipes so it kind of makes sense... But really, probably most often it's 4, sometimes 3. There are just lots of bone piles / skulls. haha

So we definitely continue getting separate Mimics... One killed him, which I finished off, but when he came back "his" was still alive and he continued fighting it. This never happens for other enemies, esp. ones where it would be apparent (uniques with high health).

As for some of the stuff that spawns from breakables / smashables, it appears that 100% of the time they are unique to our players. Meaning I repeatedly asked him whether this brazier or that brazier (and other smashables) dropped Rock piles for him, and they did not. He would get debris from things and I would not, and I would get debris from things and he would not.

I am guessing the way in which they are spawned, it is just how it works. It may be the same reason the Mimic is continually unique to each player.

Interesting point. The mimic is essentially spawned the same way loot is, so even though nothing's configured to be local to one player, the game may very well create a separate instance for each player at the point where you "wake it up". I'll test to verify that's what's happening and see if there's an alternate approach that avoids this. Does the mimic continue to leave multiple "corpses" for you, or was that an anomaly?

If you get a different number of rocks or splintered boards when those appear from smashing other objects, that would be consistent with this, since those get spawned as loot also.

Bones & teeth are mostly there as another "vendor trash" item to give you a predictable drop from bone piles and skulls. At least they're stackable so it's an easy bit of income if nothing else, and some players just ignore them.

This mod is about a more interactive game world, which essentially means more stuff dropping, so if you don't like picking stuff up this mod may not be for you! :) However, I'm always willing to adjust drop rates if you feel something needs adjusting for better balance and consistency with the rest of the game world. For example, as common as the bowl-style braziers are, I think their current chance to drop a flame ember is too high and will be toning that down in the next build.

I've ALWAYS dug into every breakable/interactable/lootable item I could find in Torchlight and Torchlight 2. Admittedly, I had one incident where I wound up smashing what seemed like 50 splintered boards, only to find a Spark Ember Speck at the bottom of a big pile of toothpicks, but it was a handy ember speck to have... especially since I run the Ember Upgrade mod (3 smaller ember = 1 bigger)[ie: 3x Flame Ember Speck = 1x Flame Ember Chip]

On another note, I think I'll enjoy this mod thoroughly... always had crap luck finding scrolls of any kind... maybe now it'll suck less. :)