Hardcore Mode

OVERVIEW

This mod makes the overall combat experience more challenging, requiring the player to be more precise in their actions, with a greater punishment for mistakes - encouraging mastery. All difficulties are affected by these changes.

The following modifiers are included by default:

• Link Dodge (dodge chaining) is disabled

• Enemy damage to the player increased by 20% (with an option for 35%)

• Perfect Guard window reduced, from 9. 3 frames  → 6 frames (0. 155s → 0. 1s)

• Guard Regain begins to decay immediately and decays at twice the normal rate

• Legion consumption rate increased by 25-65% (depending on arm; see detail below)

• Fable gain rate (from attacking) for all weapons reduced by 30% (with an option for 50%)

• All weight tiers increased by one (1) level (Light: 0. 3 → 0. 15, Normal: 0. 6 → 0. 3, and so on

An optional, modular version of the mod is also available, allowing you to choose features more selectively.

Compatible with the new DLC expansion, Overture / v1. 11. 0. 0.

Fully compatible with my mods Improved Perfect Guard and Light Weight (see compatibility section below for details).

LEGION ARMS

The Legion consumption rate increase is tiered as follows:

•  unchanged - Left Arm of Steel

• +25% - Fulminis, Pandemonium, Deus Ex Machina, Falcon Eyes

• +40% - Puppet String, Flamberge, Icarus

• +65% - Aegis, Cataclysm

The idea behind this is that certain arms are more powerful and/or easier to use than others. For example, Fulminis and Pandemonium require skillful timing and positioning - as they restrict mobility and cannot be guard canceled. Deus Ex Machina requires time to lay and has a magazine size limitation, while Falcon Eyes already comes with a hefty vanilla Legion cost - etc.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

This mod is my personal take on challenge modifiers, tuned to my taste as a player. I've structured it in a modular way to allow you to mix and match elements, but additional variations of enemy damage / speed / etc are out of this mod's scope - the main point is the core gameplay modifiers.

That said, if you'd like to further adjust enemy damage (or other) values, I'd highly recommend the excellent LoP Gameplay Customizer by Nylaro, which will allow you to easily create a mod tuned to your chosen multipliers, which can be installed alongside Hardcore Mode. Not all the changes this mod includes are available there, but most that you adjust that are present will override their corresponding value in this mod, with a few exceptions: that mod's method of increasing enemy damage will conflict with Hardco