[XPath Modding Explanation Thread]

1 hour ago, Chevayo said:

One more thing - i sorta burrowed the question in my original post:

How do i get/see those dump files you mentioned, to see how the config files look after the mod is applied? It would really help as compared to just trying it in game. I tried searching it on google, but apparently the terms are too ambiguous.

Those are created in the userdata folder, inside the save folder for the world you are playing in. So

Saves/WorldName/Savename/ConfigsDump

As an additional note on my last post, even something like

<csv xpath="//entitygroup/text()" delim="\n" op="add" >
	I Don't Know You And I Don't Care To Know You.
</csv>

causes no errors. It just gets completely ignored. The change is visible in the configs dump on every entitygroup.

[XPath Modding Explanation Thread]

8 hours ago, sphereii said:

 

I don't think the ConfigDumps formatting really matters. The game reads the entitygroups line by line from memory. The configsDump is just a helper set of files so we can verify that we've added things correctly. However, it doesn't really do it cleanly anymore for entitygroups.

 

If your changes aren't working, I don't think its related to formatting of the file.

I ran into the same problem and I do believe it has something to do with the formatting. More specifically it is caused by the last entity being on the same line as the closing entitygroup tag. That makes it ignore it and causes the mod fail. I ran into the same problem while trying to edit certain entitygroups to only contain one entity. The error I got said the groups were empty whereas the dump showed it had one entity in it, on the same line as the closing tag. You can also try this with just editing an existing group. As an example, group
 

<entitygroup name="scoutHordeStageGS1">
		zombieDarlene</entitygroup>

gives an error for being an empty group. This is also the way csv seems to edit these groups, without a line break at the end of the last line.

[A20 Loot Randomizer]

On 3/1/2023 at 6:05 PM, Krey said:

Hello! I seem to of found a issue! If you relog on your world, it seems that every untouched container you loot, gives you the same items it would of previously gotten last time you played, in the same order! you can see there is 5 boxes of HP 7.62 ammo, when hours earlier, on my first night, I already found some, since it's already in my inventory.

Correct. I noticed this same issue after a while in my own world. It seems to create the same items in loot and so far the fixes I've tried to implement haven't worked. I did, however, get told that this issue would be fixed in A21. So currently I'm thinking of a somewhat sensible solution that would randomize the loot more while not depending on the loot container too much.

[A20 Loot Randomizer]

Changes:

• Set all loot containers have from one to five different items in them.
• Set all items to be in a stack of from one to a hundred. The items will still obey their stack sizes so there won't be multiple full stacks of the same item (unless that item rolls twice).

[A20 Loot Randomizer]

1 hour ago, CrypticGirl said:

This is certainly an interesting mod, and all the useless blocks you get makes it quite challenging indeed.  Though I do need to suggest removing the various "hands" from the loot tables, like the "meleeHand" and "ammoProjectiles" that the entities use.  The reason is because once those things are picked up from loot, they cannot be dropped, which clutters your inventory and makes it impossible to clear.

Thank you, I had this in my mind but somehow forgot to do it. Went ahead and removed those in addition to any "master" items (such as "ClothArmorMaster"), that should clear up some completely useless items.

[A20 Loot Randomizer]

Loot Randomizer

This mod, as the name suggests, randomizes the loot you get from about everywhere. Additionally, you can loot just about any block or item, most of which aren't even obtainable in vanilla. Not that they would usually really help you either. Qualities are also equal so the chances of finding a quality one M60 and a quality six one are the same no matter your progression in-game. As you can probably guess, this mod isn't balanced at all and will not work with mods that add new items or lootable blocks. I may add patches for mods if certain ones are requested a lot. This mod is again server-side, you can use it on your server without the clients having to download anything.

If you find any errors (items you loot giving errors, loot containers giving errors while looting them) or items that are completely useless, feel free to post about them and I'll consider them. This mod is still highly unstable, there is about no way for me to check that all the ~150 loot containers and ~3500 lootables work correctly. From my short testing things should be rather stable, but it could turn out to be a false impression. So it is not adviced to use this mod on a save you don't want to risk losing. At least create a back-up if you want to use this mod in your save.  Technically it should work on an existing save too, although it may affect player-placed containers when first installed. Just be careful with your saves and preferably start a new one for this mod.

Download the mod here!

[Issue with Item Modifiers granting/loosing Buff on Equip]

I did some testing too, unfortunately I didn't find a solution to your problem but found out some consistencies on how the buffs applied. It seems that if you equip an even amount of mods, the mods in even positions (starting from the top) are used and apply the buff. So if you have two or four mods on, the buffs from slots two and four are used. Same works with uneven amounts. If you have one or three mods, the buffs from slots one and three are used. So, for example, if you have modGiveBuff1 on the first slot and modGiveBuff 3 on third slot, you have an even amount of mods on and thus the slots two and four are used. However, they are empty and as a result you get no additional health. This does seem to work, as you found out too, with other properties than HealthMax as well.

[Misery Business - A20 Modpack]

This mod doesn't add or remove any zombies, only changes their properties. Mods adding new zombies should work without any problems but depending on how the mod works they may not be affected by this mod. There aren't really any new biome challenges but the existing ones (weather/wetness) have been buffed a bit.

[Misery Business - A20 Modpack]

Updated the mod due to some changes not applying, mainly on the biomes' lootstages and weather.

[Is there a mod that adjusts zombie block damage based on the type of block?]

Setting a few DamageModifier tags for different types of blocks (Glass, Stone, Wood etc.) on the zombie hand item could be a sufficient solution. The broad approach may be an issue as all the blocks are clumped into roughly ten categories. Wood, stone, concrete and metal seem to separate options so what you described should be possible this way.

[Misery Business - A20 Modpack]

Not sure what realistic chance is but this mod doesn't affect the dysentery rate of those foods, only the canned foods.

[Question : Reducing/Removing Experience from building/upgrading blocks]

You could probably create a piece of clothing with
 

<passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="base_set" value="0" tags="Upgrading"/>
 

so players with that equipped would get no exp from upgrading things.

[Game's mod path not working]

No problem, great that you got it to work!

[Game's mod path not working]

This guide by Sylen goes over it quite well I think. If you have questions about any specific part of it, presenting them would make it easier for us to give accurate information.

[Water % affecting stamina regen.]

After lowering my stamina regeneration through a mod I've become increasingly aware of it. I noticed that when in the range of 75% to 100% water the stamina regeneration works just fine. However, below that things differ. When the water is between 50% and 75%, the stamina regen is 3/4ths of the norm, between 25% and 50% water it's half of that and under 25% it's only a quarter of the stamina generation. This change is, however, not seen in the character stats. Neither can I see this effect anywhere in the files. Have others noticed this effect and is it visible anywhere?

[Misery Business - A20 Modpack]

Performed some updates on the files. The folder "Misery Business-Quests" is now called "Misery Business-Traders-and-Loot" to reflect the contents better. You may remove the Quests folder after downloading the new folder if you're updating the mod. Changes in the mod include:

• Reduced the chance to get workstations or their schematics from traders
• Removed the chance to find workstation schematics from broken workstations
• Increased the effect of wetness
• Fixed dysentery chance to show on honey and canned food that provides water.

[Misery Business - A20 Modpack]

Misery Business

This modpack doesn't really add anything new, but instead adjusts existing features to make surviving harder and the player think more about their actions. The player character isn't as fitted for the survival whereas zombies are more fierce than before. Items aren't often as effective as they used to be and many buffs have been weakened. Traders require more quests to advance and the rewards are usually worse. Overall, things are looking quite a bit more miserable.

Due to the nature of this modpack, it is completely server-side and consists only of XML files. It is also divided into three parts: items, player and zombies. These let you easily decide which part(s) of the changes you want into your game. The mod is still very much in progress when it comes to balancing, so voice your feedback below!

Download the mod here!
 

Some of the main modifications for items include:

• Reduced mod slots
• Reduced mod economic value increase and made it %-based instead
• Reduced healing values across the board
• Reduced duration and intensity of various medical items
• Lowered food, water and health gains on most, if not all, foods and drinks
• Added dysentery chance to canned food

Some of the main modifications for the player include:

• Lower movement speed
• Lower stamina and health regeneration
• Higher food and water consumption
• Lower carrying capacity (before being encumbered)
• Increased the effect of wetness
• Revamped infection, giving debuffs at 10%, 20%, 35%, 50% and 75%

Some of the main modifications for quests include:

• Raised the amount of quests needed for a tier completion
• Lowered the duke and exp rewards from quests
• Lowered the amount of choices in tier completion rewards
• Lowered the chance to get higher quality items as rewards
• Reduced the amount of ammo gained as rewards

Some of the main modifications for zombies include:

• Removed knockdown completely
• Increased feral sense range
• Increased pain resist and movement speeds
• Increased max health and radiated health regen.
• Increased chance of inflicting a debuff
• Decreased exp.

[How the "random" part of the weapon or tool damage actually works.]

Alright, so, after a good night's sleep and some testing after, it seems that acquiring steel pickaxes from either looting or crafting does randomize the values evenly around the base value of 62,8. In other words, the histograms I made are complete rubbish when it comes to actual items found while playing the game. Altho I am still profoundly confused by how the creative menu can produce something so systematic yet false. I guess this thread could be renamed to "How the CM actually works 🙃". Thank you all for your comments.

[How the "random" part of the weapon or tool damage actually works.]

Thank you both for the input. I did consider the CM to be one of the things that could apply error to the experiment but the seemingly well-fitting spectrum the different qualities had made me think it had no significant effect on it. I will continue testing.

[How the "random" part of the weapon or tool damage actually works.]

Random values in items' damages and other attributes has been a heavily discussed subject since they were implemented, really. Finding, or crafting, a quality 4 weapon that's worse than a quality 2 one certainly raises frustration and questions about how can it be that way. The reason offered has been that there is a "random" factor of +-15% to most values, mainly to damage. But how random are the values in the end? This question started to bug me after I tried to reach the theoretical max damage of a steel pickaxe. Quick calculations say the damage should reach the maximum of 103,6, but I failed to reach even past 95,4. This started to interest me and began to type down the block damages of the pickaxes I spawned through the creative menu systematically. After 200 different values I made a histogram out of them. The results were quite shocking, as you may see:

 

The bottom bar has different block damage values, ranging from 64 to about 95,2. Each dot represents the "base" value a steel pickaxe of certain quality should have. The graph, however, is nowhere near what one could expect to see based on past assumptions. The first thought I had was that I had no idea which bar came from which quality. So I repeated this experiment and this time listed the quality I had got the block damage value from. The results were equally interesting, if not even more:

 

Here we can see the bars colour-coded: grey is quality 1 picks, orange is quality 2, quality 3 is yellow, quality 4 is green, quality 5 is blue and quality 6 is pink. The bars are at the same places as in the picture above, but two notable points can be picked from this. The first is that quality 2 and 4 steel pickaxes share the same possible damage values. This surprised me greatly as it would be logical to think that 4 is better than 2. The other thing to notice is that quality 3 picks' damages varied by a lot. The worst picks were only a bit better than quality 1 pickaxes, but the best were as good as quality 5 picks were. This increased my interest in this phenomenon and I did an additional test by removing the tier bonus so that every quality would have the same base value where the "random" value would be added. The results were, in the light of these past pictures, quite explanatory:

 

Here we can see the bars aligning (near) perfectly next to each other, filling the area of +-0.15 the base steel pickaxe's block damage completely. This chart explains the huge differences in quality 3 picks' damages and why quality 2 and 4 picks have the same damage values. It also explains why I was not able to get the theoretically best damage out of my pickaxe. I was able to determine the ranges to these values quite accurately.
 

T1 Min	T1 Max	T2 Min	T2 Max	T3 Max Min	T3 Max Max	T3 Min Min	T3 Min Max	T4 Min	T4 Max	T5 Min	T5 Max	T6 Min	T6 Max
+2%	+7%	+7%	+12%	+12%	+15%	-15%	-13%	-13%	-8%	-8%	-3%	-3%	+2%

The Min value indicates the left side of the bar group whereas the Max value indicates the right side of it, thus telling the best possible value the quality item can have in relation to the base value. The exact values are mostly useful for searching the best (or worst) damage one can have in a pick.

I have done, in addition to everything presented above, tests with other types of stats and items as well. So far it seems that both entity and block damage follow the same deviation no matter the item, be it a weapon or a tool. There are some values outside the scope occasionally, but these are usually about 1% lower than the mathematical model would suggest. Stamina usage and attacks per minute (apm) don't seem to follow it, nor does armour properties. There are some other shenanigans happening with the armour resists, but their relation to this phenomenon remains unclear yet. I will continue to experiment with this subject and you are free to do similar testing with any property and item you wish. I would actually encourage you to check the chart every now and then and see if you find any clear anomalies in your travels. Would the event occur, be sure to post it here for us to see!

[Any tips on surviving Wasteland early game?]

2 hours ago, Ray_Garraty said:

The Wasteland adds free +50 to your Loot Level, which seems extremely helpful early game...

It actually adds 31 to it on level one and because of the adjusted loot scaling, you won't be getting any T1 weapons or armour with that loot level just yet.

[Food usage in natural health regeneration.]

2 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Something like Iron gut? (I know it's different than what you suggest, but, it's right there)

Well, now that you say it, yes! Interestingly enough, the Iron Gut decreases the amount of water used in health regeneration as well but not food. I guess it could be implemented on that per as well, after some thought.

[Food usage in natural health regeneration.]

21 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Just realized, I compared it to the health value of food but I made the mistake of thinking it was always 1:1. Instead the ratio is mostly 1:0.5 with canned food and lower food and is very variable with quality food. Boiled Meat gives 10 food but 15 health, MeatStew gives 50 food and 25 health.

 

But to answer you, simply said eating a meat stew will give you 25 health immediately, but then with regeneration potentially another 50 health.

Okay, that's what I thought could be what you were saying, thanks for clarifying! After looking it from that point of view where food is more of a "health reserve" opposed to just something that depletes over time and has to be maintained, it seems that health is intended to use quite a bit of food to regenerate. This doesn't seem to be too big of an issue on normal level of regeneration, but perhaps there could be some edits to the Healing Factor -perk to decrease the food amount a bit. Like a reduction of 10% used food per level. Or 5%.

[Food usage in natural health regeneration.]

8 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I agree. Health is the more important value as zombies tend to remove that in large chunks while the food goes down at a constant slow rate so you can always throw in some food before it becomes critical. So I have mixed feelings about it too, but on the whole I think the regeneration is still valuable for players who often forget to look at the health (like me). It may be that you lose food if you are at full health (not sure), but on the other side any food is used twice for healing with regenration on, once while eating, then with regeneration again.

 

I don't quite grasp your point here. I do agree that natural regeneration in a great system in the game but the question was more whether or not it is intended to use as much food as it does at the moment. Compared to the general food drain (30 food per real-life hour) and regenerating stamina (0,00408 food per stamina point gained), it seems really high. On the other hand, though, natural regeneration isn't that big of a factor (1 health per minute base value) so the food drain overall isn't as high as one could think, but still definitely impactful.

[Food usage in natural health regeneration.]

I was a part of a bug report in A19 concerning the massive food usage when regenerating health with Grandpa's Moonshine. Now in A20 I noticed that the line

<passive_effect name="FoodLossPerHealthPointGained" operation="base_set" value="0" />

had been added to buffs that increase the health regeneration but not to the player itself. This left me wondering whether it is then intended that naturally regenerating health costs one food per one health point gained. While this mechanic seems understandable for me, the high value compared to the water loss (0.06 per health point gained) made me question it a bit. More so with the reduction of food available in the world of A20.