1) I've been playing Tempest with a smidge of Riftwalker, and I like it a lot. It's very much a glass-cannon, but that's fitting and I'm not complaining. Chain lightning felt kinda OP in the early levels, maybe just because the base game doesn't have any reliable way I can think of to zap three baddies at once over such a huge range, especially at first level. I'm level 16 now and I've got a couple of points in a bunch of abilities (sigils, EMP, nova, etc.) so at this point it feels level-appropriate instead of kinda cheaty--but to be honest, I'm just bringing it up to nitpick. It's a fun and satisfying ability and very much what I wanted out of playing a storm mage, so I don't actually want it changed :p

2) I think my only concern so far is that each mastery seems to be incredibly self-contained. I obviously haven't spent much time at all playing with combos, but other than Riftwalker, I don't see much synergy between any of the masteries. Was this intentional? What sort of interactions and combos do you have in mind?

3) There are a ton of spelling and grammatical errors all over the place, in pretty much every ability description in every mastery. Just a few off the top of my head: the Tempest shock nova ability or whatever it's called is spelled "noova" instead of “nova,” “instable” is used a lot but it should be “unstable,” and the Gladiator Critical Eye ability description is identical to the Lucky Strike ability description (seems like a copy-paste mistake).

4) The Tempest Disorder ability seems to have an error where it should unlock at 10 points but instead requires 24 points to unlock.

These things aside, I haven't run into any problems yet. Everything is working fine (like you said, Chain Lightning sometimes fizzles if you get too click-happy, but whatever) and is a lot of fun so far. I'm excited to try out the Vampire next!

Hi wynterknight, thanks a lot for your feedback. There will be a patch fixing the grammar mistakes in the descriptions as well as the requirement to unlock the disorder ability. I did unfortunately not have a lot of time reviewing the skill texts so I'm most grateful about anything you find.

The second point was indeed a big challenge during the design process. There are some natural synergies that are quite obvious like the elemental specialization of the riftwalker, but there are also some that focus around specific skills. For example, nerve paralysis and disorder from the tempest tree can be paired with most classes to get a massive resistance reduction. Stasis is a great tool for classes that can make good use of some extra survivability like a retaliation build with the mirror knight.
There are a lot of other skills that can have a great impact on a build. If you feel like going full class-cannon, you might want to test tempest with gladiator. You can use ephemeral power with lucky hit and if you are feeling risky with berserk to get crazy burst damage.
But I agree that there is not that much natural synergy. So if you have any ideas to improve that, I'd love to hear them!

hi 小玉米, at the moment I'm not planning on doing any difficulty changes for the mod. However, it's possible to combine other mods with the masteries from this one. Maybe someone else in the modding community would be interested to do that.

Could you describe what error codes you see? At the moment, the mod is only available in english language. Maybe you see the localization keys right now, but as far as I know, the default should be the english text.

maybe I will do a hard mod some time in the future, but right now I can not say for sure I will. I won't have a lot of time in the near future to work on it unfortunately.

The language problem is a bit strange. I tested with German as well to see how it interacts with the mod, but maybe Chinese was implemented differently. Anyway, thanks for sharing your workaround. I'm going to put it in the opening post.

I didn't look through everything but I found that the skill Liquefy doesn't have a description?

Hi W.N.G., thanks for reporting this. There is a typo in the description key that prevents the localization from translating it properly. I will release a fix sometime this weekend to fix this.

Hi Acamas, I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but when create custom game with your mod, it goes directly into the game (it doesn't bounce back to main menu) and my character starts without a weapon and doesn't do any damage and gets insta-killed in first combat. Could you please help me find out what I am doing wrong? Would really love to play your mod:). Thank you for any help.

Hi Jazziah, there is a different character selection for steam mods. It is recommended to create a new character for the mod, since it uses a different source database. Because of that, characters from mods are completely seperate from the characters you play in the original Titan Quest. I remember that most mods a few years ago used the same characters as the original game, but this has changed at some point.
However, you should defenetely not be killed instantly when entering the game. After creating a new character, you should spawn in the starting area near Helos with 300 health and energy, 50 in each stat, now armor and just a dagger in the main hand.
Could you describe what you are seeing when starting the game with your character? Maybe you logged in with a character from another mod. This would cause the character to lose all skills and probably most of its gear as well, because the game couldn't map them in the modded files.

Hi Acamas, thanks for responding so quickly! So I started the game again and clicked on "Play Custom Game". I click on Cataclysm mod and then created a new character. After that, I clicked start and the game took me to the starting area near Helos. But still, I have no weapon and can't do any damage. All my stats are normal. I have tried several times by completely exiting the game, creating new characters, and starting again, but keep getting the same result.

Edit: I decided to download a similar mod for testing: Shadow Champions - Mastery Mod and got the same result. So it looks like the problem is on my end. Perhaps, I am having mod conflicts as I do have several mods for the game. I will remove some of the other mods and see if that solves the problem. Anyways, thank you very much for your help.
P.S. - All my Steam games are located on my D: Drive instead of C: Drive. Not sure if that would make a difference.

Hi Jazziah, that sounds like there is a problem in your installation. My mod and I think Shadow Champions as well uses the same base files for character creation. Perhaps this file is broken in your original Titan Quest Anniversary Edition. Maybe you can verify by creating a new character in the original game.
I hope you can find the problem soon

Hey sorry, I got distracted by Grim Dawn for a little while lol. But I just played a Ghoul (Vampire/Plaguelord) up to level 12, and while it's downright fun now, I have some thoughts:

1) Before I say anything else, the grammar and spelling mistakes pretty much all look gone! Nice work, everything looks great. The only problem I saw was that the Vampire's Supernatural Agility's description just says "Supernatural Agility's description" lmao

2) I started with Vampire, and the early levels are... disappointing. The level 1 attack ability (why didn't I write down the name? Hunger something?) that gives you life on hit in exchange for negative health regen is not just useless in the early levels, it's downright suicidal. The negative health regen is so large that it's easy to accidentally kill yourself, and 6% of damage converted to health is 0 health for a long darn time, which means you never actually recover the damage you're dealing yourself.

I had to buy SO MANY potions to avoid killing myself, and finally just stopped bothering with the ability altogether until I hit level 10 or so, and I still don't really like it so far (although tbh I haven't put more than 3 points into it, so maybe it's fine if you just pump it to the exclusion of everything else). This might be mitigated by using a two-handed weapon to pack a big enough punch to make the percentages worthwhile, but the big ability tree on the left seems to function only off of dual-wielding instead, which just gives you more attacks healing 0 health lol. Maybe if the ability was granted later, when you're dealing enough damage that 6% gives you more than 0 health? The Spirit Mastery's Life Drain ability converts something like 150% of attack damage to health; I know it's not weapon-based, but it at least does its job. Or maybe if it provided some sort of slowly scaling life leech instead of % damage recovered?

Speaking of life leech: I was also super disappointed that there's nothing to grant life leech until level (24? 32?), and even then it's in a chance-based WPS. I lucked out and immediately got some good weapons with some life leech and even managed to find the recipe and parts for the relic that grants life leech (that never happens this early!!!), but I hate being at the mercy of the RNG for something that feels like it should be part of the class--especially when it's essential to not killing yourself with your main attack ability.

To me, it felt like the first couple of levels you're basically just a kinda fast guy hitting baddies with whatever random weapons you've happened to find, which doesn't feel very vampire-y. I know all classes suffer from some degree of early level boringness, but at least the tidecaller/tempest guys FEEL like elemental mages, and the Plaguelord (I'll go into it below) gets awesome poison abilities right off the bat.

On the other hand, Blood Rain is awesome. I don't want to say it's overpowered, but I honestly kill most mobs by just kiting them all into a group, casting BR, and then running in a circle around them until they die (at level 12, with three points in the main ability and in the burning upgrade). Not very dignified lol but very effective. Also, the Burning BR is one of the only attacks the Vampire has that affects undead, which is nice.

I haven't tried the Ghoul or Blood Mist abilities yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing how those work out. On the other hand, I haven't tried the Fangs ability and don't see myself doing so this playthrough, just because it doesn't fit my personal idea of what a vampire should be able to do (shoot your teeth at people... through your hands?), and I'm going for a melee thing anyway. (And YES torrents of blood falling from the sky is totally vampire-y! It even happens on page, um, eleventy-nineteen of Dracula. First edition only, though, not the copy you might own. I promise.)

Also, I know your Riftstalker seems to be home to most of your mobility options, but I feel like the Vampire could totally use a charge/dash attack that would easily fit the feel of the class and just generally help take care of those darn cowardly archers without having to switch to a ranged weapon or doing weird things to local weather patterns. I'm just spitballing here, but if I were to change things I'd swap out the Fangs ability for a bat-dash or a bloodwind charge or something (maybe tied to the Blood Mist ability somehow? I dunno).

2) I added Plaguelord as my second mastery, and I totally should have reversed the order I chose these. That poison aura is huuuuge, and I bet it's super useful in the first few levels (it's technically possible to kill mobs with it at level 8+ when you've only put a single point into it, but I kept getting bored and just drowning them in fiery blood lmao). I haven't got many points in this tree yet, but I just added the Fever ability and I can already tell a big difference in combat. I really really like these auras so far, and I see some nice bleeding/piercing synergy farther up the tree. I'm not sure how I feel about the Fever ability being a separate ability in the same tree as the poison aura, but I don't hate it. How do the later upgrades in that tree work, though? Do they apply to both abilities separately, so if I've got them both toggled the upgrades will be going twice?

I will say I'm chugging energy potions like a skooma-fiend, though! Neither Vampire nor Plaguelord give any Int with progression, and I thought my base stats would be fine but I was wrong lol. I'm not complaining, though--I'm just throwing all my level ups into my Int attribute and I'm managing fine so far. I'm not sure how well the more mage-y classes will mesh with this mastery, but I've no doubt choosing one would fix the energy issue.

I'll try to give some feedback after I've tried out more abilities, but so far all the Plaguelord stuff looks good--it's all thematic and gross haha. I think there were a couple of higher level abilities that I didn't quite understand from their descriptions, but I forget what they were and they might make total sense once I actually use them. Overall I really like the mastery, and I might actually start a new character and go Plaguelord then Vampire, just to see if it flows better.

Oh, about the life-on-hit ability: Maybe if instead of healing 6% of damage dealt, it added a certain amount of (piercing? bleeding?) damage, and converted 50-100% of that added damage to health? Similar to Life Drain, but balanced around weapons and attack speed somehow. I'm not sure how that would work out at higher levels, but it would fix the early-level problem. Just a thought with zero math behind it, though lol

Hi wynterknight, wow, this is amazing feedback. Thank you very much for taking the time to write it down! I can defenetely see the points and I am taking a close look at the Vampire's early game progression which is indeed lacking a few things. The healing of Bloodthirsty (I think that's the one you're referring to) can get quite crazy in higher levels, but healing for 1 or 0 in the early game is a bit disappointing. I'll test some options to make it more exciting.
I had a lot of ideas for the Vampire, but I had to get rid of some of them because of technical limitations and others because they felt clunky. Maybe I will rework the Twin Fangs ability if I have a good idea what to replace it with
For the Plaguelord's aura I originally wanted to make just one skill with 6 modifiers, but unfortunately, the engine only allows for 3, so I had to split it. In general: Everything that deals or modifies dmg applies to Spread Plague and everything that debuffs enemies applies to Fever. Maybe I should write that down somewhere in the description...

Yeah, I figured the healing would work out fine or even bonkers at higher levels, but those early levels gotta be fun too lol. I haven't made any mods myself, but I totally understand how hard it must be to find the right balance. Honestly, just reducing the first rank health reduction to -2 or -3 so you're either not regenerating in combat or only slowly draining life instead of draining so quickly might help. At higher ranks the health reduction can be as crazy as you want because you're assumedly building around that, but for the first few levels a -5 health regen penalty making you take 3 damage per second while you're also getting pounded by satyrs (phrasing?) is painful!

And as for the Twin Fangs ability, I'm not saying it's bad, and it does give the class a ranged option, it just doesn't click for me? I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not just hating on stuff lol. Thanks for the fun mod and all the hard work!

This is good mod but I would like at offer some advice. I played a heretic build (ritualist and angel), and played until level 37. This problem with these builds is twofold. First, if you chose to not use pets, there are not enough resistances/passives to keep you alive and you end up being a glass cannon that cannot hack it in end game content. The only healing ability is on the angel branch and it is high up on the tree. If you chose a pet build, its fun, like really fun, but the pets are to weak and feeble for epic/legendary content. Both the ritualist and angel classes are normal difficulty exclusively. The pets and/or abilities and passives need to be much stronger for the build to be viable at endgame. Once I hit the wall I just deleted the character cause there was nothing else to be done.