Start ng plus or ng at class 4

ToM NewGame++ Version 0. 1

This mod was made with the intention of creating a more "true" new game+ experience.

My main issues with ToM's ng+ is that you don't retain a lot of the cool stuff

that you gain throughout your first playthrough and that it's too easy because

you are overleveled. I addressed the latter concern with Trials of Mania, which

I would recommend using together with this mod to get the experience that I'm going

for. Of course, this mod can be used together with any other mod that doesn't conflict

with it (that doesn't edit the same files).

Changes this mod introduces:

- Choose a fourth class of any character and play through the entire game from start to

finish with it. Some neat results of this are:

- Start the game with 4 costumes

- All 4 class strikes are immediately available

- All ability trees immediately available

- Magic/Arts are no longer locked behind acquiring Mana Spirits, so as soon as you unlock an

Art with training points, you can use it.

IMPORTANT NOTES/READ BEFORE USING:

- What this mod essentially does it give each character's starting class all of the characteristics

of one of their fourth classes. For this reason, I advise you to NOT switch classes at a Mana Statue.

This will likely mess up the remainder of your playthrough.

- Use this mod ONLY when starting a new game(+) from the beginning. Uninstall this mod if you decide to

play with a different save and reinstall as needed for your ng+ file. In my testing, the game will

hang/crash if you use this mod with an already existing save and try to travel to a new area.

I think this is because the save file will have conflicting information stored,

so the game doesn't know what to do.

- I highly recommend choosing the exact same fourth classes that you ended your original new game

playthrough with. The reason for this is that certain weapon and armor shops appear to alter their inventory

based on what classes your party is. Also, lots of equipment is class specific, so if you

start a ng+ run with a different fourth class you won't be able to equip your best stuff.

Since with this mod, the game will technically still think you're at class one, you may not

be able to acquire good equipment later in the game. This leads to my next suggestion:

UPDATE: I think mods exist that populate the shop with all items/weapons, so this issue can maybe be

overcome with that.

- Ensure you have all the equipment you want before starting your ng+ run. With this mod you may not

have a way to gain your class's best equipment if you don't have it at the start.

1. Open 'class-picker-EDITME.yaml' with a text editor and enter your desired fourth class for each

character you'll be using. See 'Class_Choices.txt' for an example of what it should look like.

I RECOMMEND USING THE EXACT SAME CLASS AND ROUTE THAT YOU USED IN YOUR FIRST PLAYTHROUGH

2. Run 'ToM_NG++.exe', a new folder named '4th Class Starter_P' should be created.

3. Drag and drop the '4th Class Starter_P' folder over 'UnrealPak-Without-Compression.bat' in whatever

directory 'UnrealPak.exe' is in. This will create '4th Class Starter_P.pak'.

4. Copy '4th Class Starter_P.pak' into your '~mod' folder in Trial of Mana's game directory.

USAGE NOTE: You may optionally copy 'UnrealPak.exe' and 'UnrealPak-Without-Compression.bat' into the same folder

as 'ToM_NG++.exe' (the folder you get after unzipping the download from Nexus). If you do this, the pak

file '4th Class Starter_P.pak' will be generated automatically after you run 'ToM_NG++.exe'.

- The bat scripts and exe used internally for certain conversions were provided by ithinkandicode: https://github.com/ithinkandicode/bloodstained-tools/tree/master/Serializer

- The serializer used was gathered from Kein: https://github.com/Kein/UAssetParser