In honor of Martigen who raised the bar so high that I may never touch it, I bring you the culmination of over 200 hours of work...

Hardened

Beta 5 released!(see below for links)

EPIC TRAILER showcasing 2/4 legendary monster encounters redone, I could watch this all day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKJFKkigRO0

New Small Trailer Released:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FjoFO6aySw

I would never feel her face in my hands again, rough and scarred as it was. I had told her that it was too dangerous, the money wasn't worth it, but she wouldn't listen she never does...never had. The sand swirled around me, the old race track was always [censored] windy, the ants didn't mind. Let's see if they mind me wiping them out. The old AER9 was just that, plus beaten to hell, but he had put enough work into it to get the job done..he hoped. If the information he had paid the last of his caps for was worth a damn, then it would be all he needed. Several shots later and scorched earth told him he was right. As the swarm descended upon him, the green death exploding around him and on him, his skin unnaturally resilient thanks to his home brewed beverage, he laughed. For the first time in weeks, he laughed maniacally, decimating the skittering creatures, pushing forward into their home as their warriors lay broken around him. More and more he killed, laughing so hard the tears were cascading down his cheeks, more than he had cried for her even. No movement followed the last shot, as if the hive itself had taken a breath and held it. Then he saw her, gargantuan, and angry. It was the last thing he would.


This mod is for those of us that hit lvl 14, or lvl 10, or lvl 6 and found no challenge left in the game. We installed various mods attempting to remedy this, and some of them are great, but they never filled that hole. The challenge of a new game, new strategies and new ways to learn to die. I will not yet tell you everything I've done, in fact I'm only going to give you small amounts. But rest assured, this game's combat is different, to the bone. Just like the ones you're going to leave in the wastes.

[Updated]List of features:

Completely redone poison system, with new antivenom functionality and failure chances based on skill, new poison effects and tiers of poison. Coming soon poison immunity added to antivenom, take it or be in cazador swarm heck.
Boss encounters that are tremendously difficult and scripted: Davison in the repconn basemant, Tabitha in black mountain, Marcus at jacobstown, regular ant and fire ant queens. Coming soon: all vault 'bosses' such as the ghoul overseer, as well as the legendary monsters.
List of changes to enemies:
Deathclaws: Bonus limb damage on striking, Deathclaw's now ignore crippled limbs, get a little tougher, and gain a slight regen below 20%
Feral ghouls: Regenerate health below 50%, regenerate limbs whenever a limb goes below 25%, shred armor per strike(-2 per strike, -20 total) that lasts 2 in game minutes, explosive damage resistance.

Ants: new weapon, soldiers have high speed plasma that does massive damage, workers now fire a plasma explosive to keep you off balance. Body part damage changes, it's giant bulbous head is now more resilient and soldiers ignore crippled limbs below 50% health. All ants are much faster and turn faster as well. DT increased to 8-12-20 for workers, soldiers and Queens, respectively. Ant weakness is to high powered lasers, no rechargers, rcws or gatlings. Massive regular energy resistance.

Fire Ants: Flamer damage is increased massively, speed is increased greatly, fire ant workers now fire an incendiary explosive, have the same DT values as regular ants as well as body part values, crippled limb ignore for soldiers and energy resistance. Weakness is to plasma.

Geckos: All geckos have massive dynamic regen and scaling, increasing damage resist when their heads are not crippled, regular geckos and golden geckos will bleed out quickly once this weakness is taken advantage of, however fire geckos die on the spot in a fiery explosion. All geckos have had their animation speed increased 30%, making their melee very difficult to avoid. Regular geckos have 20% increased crit.

Golden geckos: Massive armor piercing (-12 DT)bite that persists for 2 mins of in game time.

Fire Geckos: Greatly increased damage on flamer with a reduced minimum range

Nighstalkers: Maintain stealth until you can 'perceive' them, with either a 9 perception and greater allowing for you to see them as they approach, an 8 allowing you to see them as they aggro you, and a 7 or greater allowing you to see them as they attack you. 20% increased crit chance, with an additional 20% while stealthed. Tier 3 poison that is difficult to remove or be immune to. 20% faster movement.
Cazadors: Torso health percentage increased for less knockdowns, head percentage decreased with increased head damage multiplier of 1.5X, 35% increased DR with 25 DT, tier 3 poison now damages head condition and health on top of normal caz poison effects. Weakness to automatic guns and shotguns.

Molerats: reduce armor per strike(-2 and -20 DT total), 20% DR increase, 20% speed increase
Centaurs: new weapon does massive radiation damage in an explosion radius and is quickly fired, 70% increased DR, massive radiation aura that activates on being hit with a bladed weapon. Weakness is to bladed melee weapons, and bladed melee weapons plus plasma, two swings of a melee weapon plus one plasma shot equals a nuclear blast. After being struck a few times by bladed weapons their bodies become unstable and will gooify on death.

Radscorpions: Poison changed to cripple a random limb randomly during it's duration, chance for 1 or more cripples depending on your poison resist. Radscorpion queen poison will cripple two limbs. Massively regenerating limbs and strong health regeneration when a limb is crippled, until the stinger is crippled, which does not regenerate and will massively damage the scorpion upon being crippled. 20-40-60% increased DR for normal, giant, and queen radscorpions respectively. 10% increased crit below 50% health and 20% increased crit for queens. Queen poison cannot be cured and will be administered on any successful attack, depending on your poison resist.

Barkscorpions: 30% increased speed, 90% increased DR, poison does massive amount of damage. 'Bumblebee' weakness, if it stings you, it's tail explodes and it dies.

Supermutants: Melee supermutants have 10% increased DR and a bloodlust effect that they have below 50%. They will put away their weapons and attack you with their fists, gaining 60% increased critical chance, 50% increased DR, ignoring crippled limbs and each attack has a chance to knock you down based on your endurance and strength. They will slowly lose health while under bloodlust. At 10% and below health they run out of steam and lose their ignore crippled limbs and increased DR effects, but retain their crit and knockdown abilities. Gun using supermutants have their critical chance increased by 15%. Missile launcher and explosives wielding supermutants just don't care, they no longer take their own safety into consideration when firing their weapons, they cannot be knockdown-ed and have a massive increase to DT versus explosive weapons. Supermutant masters give a buff to everyone around them every 15 seconds that lasts 5 seconds, which will increase their crit by 50%. All supermutants have had their damage thresholds increased to 20 and their damage resistances increased by 15%. All supermutants have had their attack animations sped up by 30%.

Nightkin: Increased damage threshold to 10, gained 'displacer' effect below 50%, they will randomly port somewhere behind you every few seconds re-stealthing as they do. Nightkin snipers will 'spot' you if they maintain line of sight with you and are within a certain range, sounding an alarm and sending others running to your location. They also have no regard for their safety and will fire their missile launchers at you with glee, taking little to no damage from their own explosions.

Radroaches: Much more aggressive, 30% faster, have a weak rad aura, explode on death into a strong radiation cloud whose radiation persists for a small time.

Giant Rat: 30% faster, more aggressive, 20% stronger attacks, 5 DT added, 50% chance on strike to damage endurance for 3 for 12 hours of game day time(uncurable)

Legion Mongrels: 10% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 10 DT, ignore crippled limbs and a 25% chance on strike to reduce agi by 3 for 12 hours.

Coyotes: More aggressive after being attacked, 30% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 10 DT for normal 15 DT and 5 DR for pack leaders, 50% fire and poison resistance, extra 5 DT to melee and unarmed attacks, Den mothers have a 5 hp regen every 5 second aura buff, pack leaders give 20% crit on a 10 sec timer
Giant Mantis: 20% faster, 20% faster attack animations, 5 base DT with 5 extra DT to guns attacks, 15% increased crit chance, 5-7 higher base damage for each different type of mantis.

Lake Lurks: Massively increased weapon with more and more damaging projectiles that add a large damaging dot and are very hard to avoid. 40% DR increase. Flame weapon weakness: pyrophobia, on hit they will flee for a short time, hit em enough times and they disintegrate.

Protectrons: Ignores crippled limbs, lasers now explode on impact doing strong damage and blinding any in their explosion radius, 50% faster.

Gutsy: Massively increased damage on plasma(multiple projectiles) and flamer weapons, 25% increased DR, 15% increased movement speed, ignores crippled limbs, when hit by a mr gutsy plasma weapon you will not be able to see for a time, when hit by a mr gutsy flamer you will be blinded as well, but much differently.

Sentry robots: Immune to knockdown, ignore crippled limbs, 60% increased DR, 20 DT, 20% increased speed, 25% increased turning speed, weapon now ignores 8 DT, weapon damage greatly increased, ignores damaging self with explosives(will point blank shoot a missile) and has a high exposives DT increase.

Turrets: Significant crit increase, 5 DT, DT reduction ammo scaling with scaling mark #, 5-8-15 DT ignore for the scaling types of both guns and energy weapons turrets, increase to firing rate and damage scaling with each scaling turret mkI-mkII etc.

Securitron MkII: greatly increased weapon damage and moderately increased DR, equivalent to a sentry robot with a 6 missile payload and a much stronger laser weapon.


Future Releases:
More boss encounters that are scripted and varied. DONE
Spore creatures redone. DONE
Venus fly trap thingers redone. DONE
Balancing damages and armors more. DONE
Graphics for found weakness, notes for found weaknesses, challenges for found weaknesses. Notes DONE
Legendary encounters redone(still haven't found any myself lulz) DONE
Human faction NPC changes.
More...

WIP
Antivenom changed to give immunity while under it's effect for the various tiers of poison: example, successfully applying three antivenom doses should make you immune to every poison but Queen Radscorpion poison.

Recommended mod lists:
Arwen's
IMCN
WME or WMX
Perk every level(I won't on this playthrough or the next, but it's recommended)
Realistic repair
No Auto Aim
Sprint
Bullet Time
Xtra Special NV

This mod requires archive invalidation to function effectively, it now requires NVSE as well.

VVV is coming out soon and will be amazing!

I could use someone that is good at creating effect shaders for some of the things I wish to implement in the future, if anyone feels like they can help, please PM me.

Special thanks to Cipscis, Gunmaster95, RickerHK and b3w4r3 for their help with questions.

Remember when playing this mod, you have drugs, use them. And skill mags. Use everything, you'll need it. Oh and, this mod is untested in regular playing, enjoy!


1st Beta:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=T0ALEWJ3
2nd Beta:
Antivenom changed to immunity version, general clean up of messages and small bugs leftover from testing.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H9W8FSEI

Beta 4 Update 3

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C0DEK45V

Beta 5
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WR8RG1FK

Beta 5 Update 1(Use update 2)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PI4YBEP3

Beta 5 Update 2(you only need Update 2)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DHST6GE9

And this is the comp patch between hardened and AWOP v.32, I have'nt updated it, but nothing should break if you use it. Update, not yet up to date with the latest AWOP, might be a while before that happens :\

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D2Q3SMO0



Oh and for load order, I recommend putting it late. For now. Update, it is now on the BOSS list, using it's load order should be fine.

Sounds really interesting, but I still have a very vague idea on what it alters. Any examples of a scripted boss fight? How dangerous are poisons now? A wee bit leery of installing any mods that I don't have a good feel for. It can make error checking a real pain if there is some odd conflict.

Also, for the new strategies required are we talking about critters with resistances/immunities to various damage types? Or something else?

Poisons are very dangerous. Scripted boss encounters, I really want that to be a surprise. I'll make a poll to see what percentage of people care about spoilers. Don't really want to spoil the strategies either, let's just say some types are incredibly difficult if you don't have the right set of weapons, and some have certain weakspots. I just realized, in case you don't understand, the story contains a weakness.

this looks very interesting. though i have to agree that it doesnt much give an idea of what is altered.

I agree, I'd like to know as much as possible about what I'm planning on/thinking about downloading. What I've read so far does sound interesting, but I don't know enough about it yet.

Hmmm, I'm mostly interested in the scripted boss fights thing. Without spoiling anything how would you classify them?

"Shoot this body part to do massive damage?" / " use this type of ammo/element for massive damage"

Or are there at least some where you like:
Use knock out weapons because the boss has a hug amount health and does major damage, but has very low fatigue.
Steal a certain item off them to demoralize/weaken them
two bosses that support each other and the surviving boss gets considerably weaker when the other boss dies
Hungry bosses that get distracted if you drop meat near them or leave corpses around for them to eat.
A boss that's very sensitive to radiation and gets weakened bit very easily ( for if there's irradiated water, glowing ones, or hot spots nearby... trying to avoid locational stuff in my examples because I'm not sure if you're adding bosses to specific areas they're completely random)
A boss that responds differently to different armors and weapons (ie: First recon gear and having Boone with you would either enrage or demoralize a great Khan boss that had their family killed at Bitter Springs.... could also work for some creatures/robots by having a similar effect for leather/metal type armors.)
etc.

Sounded good tills i did read "scripted boss encounters", what i have learned under my 25 years of gaming so is scripted fights a bad way to make enemy's smarter (better in fights). Why? you say, because when you have done it ones you know exactly how they will react and do, then they are as easy to defeat again as in vanilla...so it is just an temporary fix for one play trough.

Still....good work and keep it up, I'm sure that many people will like it.

Just not me

You could have multiple weaknesses or ways of defeating the boss. Take Horrigan(Fallout 2) for instance you could use brute strength if you were strong enough, you could use science to turn off turrets, you could use science plus stealing/killing to reprogram the turrets, use speech to have some people help you, or use your 6th toe! (just kidding!)

I think the key point is that you don't make it:
"Alright now, shoot it in the eye 50 times with the BB gun it is the only way to kill it!"
So long as multiple solutions are possible, and the "brute strength" option is still viable, I see no deterrent to scripted boss fights.

Alright let's spoil some stuff. I have made changes to almost every single creature of worth. Bighorners, regular dogs, spore creatures and venus fly traps are not effected yet. Almost every creature has had their damage, weapons, and armor changed. Many have had their attack speed animations sped up so that when they approach you in melee, you can't just back up when they attack and escape their only way of damaging you. Some now have DT reduction, especially swarmers. Many have regeneration abilities that either kick in at certain percentages or are there until you find their weakness. Some weaknesses balance out massively increase damage and mobility. Antivenom now has a large chance to fail, success is based on your survival or medicine, whichever is higher. Tiers of poison are as follows:

Tier1 barkscorpion, small/regular radscorpion
Tier2 giant radscorpion
Tier3 Cazador, Nightstalker

Antivenom lasts a short while after ingesting it, to build up in your system. Queen radscorpion poison has been added and is undispellable.

There are 3 scripted boss fights and they are mutants. The best, most dynamic one is in the repconn basemant. And ceano, which is better? A scripted encounter that you know nothing about and will be crazy cool as hell the first time you do it? Or plain jane fights that are already the same LOLSHOOTUMWITMAHGUN style. Not enjoying the fight I just alluded to is really your loss. I tested it several times and frankly, knowing exactly what he does and how best to do counter it still doesn't make it any less fun, every single time. Just remembered, there is a 4th type of scripted boss fight and it requires that you know the weakness of the base creature, then create a 'wound' to use that weakness...have fun with that tidbit.

Certain creatures can spot you while stealthing, raising an alarm as long as they get a small time with line of sight.
Some critters will have a chance to wound you, that you will have to heal over the course of half a day. Some attacks may make it so you can't see anything or very little. And some are just huge sponges for ammunition that should have been that way in the start, sorry if you fell different, but vanilla made certain robots incredibly weak, a travesty to their ability in the past. That's it for now, if I continue to see an increase in the poll ratio I'll spill some more beans.

I didn't see anything about it posted, but how does this work with XFO? Any compatibility issues? Any issues with compatibility with other mods that aren't already listed?

Can't speak for every mod lol, but I changed the combat styles of a few monsters, and created a combat style or two. So those aspects of certain mods won't function, I changed the ammo functionality of HP ammo so it isn't completely useless against all the creatures with DT. I changed the glowing one burst explode that is also changed by arwen's, no biggie there. Change to the formid list for supermutantweapons which conflicts with AWOP, a bashed/merged patch fixes that. fMaxArmorRating is changed which conflicts with arwen's change, from 90 to 95. I made a change to the head explode script which conflicts with PPA, but it shouldn't cause any problem as far as I see. The centaur spit and ant spit projectiles were changed which conflicts with arwen's, but shouldn't be any real issue. The small radscorpion and larger radscorpion poisons were changed, which conflicts with arwen's but shouldn't be any issue. And those are all the conflicts I see with my relatively large list of mods.

Just realized I left in a test message for super mutant masters, but don't worry, it might do you some good to know why they have a blue aura every now and again.

One of the first compatibility patches I am creating is for a world of pain, as some of the weapons like the Hunting Shotgun M, and the Minigun M, are not on the vanilla weaponlists. And without shotguns or automatic weapons, taking down cazadors is very difficult...Then we have the M versions of the plasma weapons, how can you ever handle a fire breathing ant that skitters at a terrifying pace towards you without plasma? Do you want more spoilage?

I don't prefer any of them, i want my AI to be smart and learn of there mistakes...to be able to use cover in fights and try to flank you if they can. There is AI that can do this even today, so that is what i prefere...i don't condemn your mod in no way...just isn't my cop of tea to fix the lack of AI intelligence.

Still there is certainly many that is going to enjoy your mod, so keep up the good work

Gotcha, ya that's next on my list, to do what I can with evaluating packages and changing combat styles within them to mimic AI, eventually I plan to study neural nets to improve the quality of the encounters I create, but that's beyond the scope of this game, I fear.

There are still quite a few bugs with my first release, as expected, so far it's really only been superficial stuff like the message I mentioned in the earlier post, also a few tokens that were supposed to be unplayable to run scripts on, were left playable and might leave some scratching their head, either way they shouldn't cause any issues and an update is in the works. Just need to go through and encounter every type of creature first.

As for spoiling. Nightkin.
Nightkin are the coolest thing I've done in this mod, fighting against them is the funnest thing and fighting against Davison in the repcon basemant should give you a serious WOW factor.
Rad roaches that really have a go getter spirit and explode into, guess what, radiation on death.
Centaurs that do massive radiation damage in an area with their main attack, and aren't afraid to spam it when you get into melee, which, with a bladed weapon, is the only way to crack through their shell. Some say they're all kinds of nuclear fusion mess inside, just waiting for you to cut em enough to fit some plasma through the gap..then..well..you'll see.
Nightstalkers that you can't see unless you're perceptive enough, and even then, it might be too late.
Gutsy's whose plasma short circuits your eyeballs, and whose flame turns the dial on them past 11.
Deathclaws that get a second wind and can't feel any pain. Especially in their legs, the ones that you shot or blew up to get em to slow down.
Supermutants that berserk and put their weapons away so they can knock you down and around with their fists.
Supermutant masters that buff their pals with a massive chance to ignore your armor.
Supermutant explosives experts that just don't care, they'll walk right up to you and shoot you in the face with a missile launcher, and while you're getting up, they're reloading...with not a scratch on them.
Barkscorpions that take massive amounts of punishment, but are little more than armored one use venom delivery agents, save the ammo, let em sting you.
Legion mongrels that go for the sweet spot and have been inured to pain, sure, they'll die, but not before they take away your legs.
Protectrons that blind you, good luck hitting them.
MkII securitrons that are possibly the hardest group of enemies in the game.

Small feature list movie added(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FjoFO6aySw) which includes a small bit of the davison fight at the end, a small update posted, and full feature list added. Update includes new antivenom functionality, you are now immune to the effects of various tiers of poison while under the effects of antivenom, which now lasts 10 in game minutes. Be warned, the poison is still in your system! If your antivenom wears off, it will hurt! You can 'roll' antivenom stacks by taking another dose while under the effects of antivenom as well, maintaining your level of immunity.

3rd beta added
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R73WV36X
This fixes ant's AoE damage from damaging other ants, and makes sure that weaknesses are in effect on enemies(no more crazy hard cazadors hopefully!).

4th beta of hardened added as well as a compatibility patch for AWOP latest non-test version .32. Highlights include redone legendary encounters, some rebalancing of certain creatures armor ratings, a new vampiric regeneration deathclaw gauntlet, and new perks for killing the legendary monsters. For more info follow the link.
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40076

Epic trailer released showing off 2/4 legendary encounters redone in the 4th beta. Very awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKJFKkigRO0

Looking good. I think I am going to need to dl the latest update now, mine is a bit outdated; Still using Beta 1 :huh:

BTW: I am still too scared to even attempt to take on The Legendary Deathclaw, I still struggle with some of the radscorpions :ahhh: :bolt:

That deathclaw....first time I met him in vanilla, it was like "Hi" BAM ONE SHOTTED. "Bye."

Great mod, however I seem to encounter a problem with all the DT/endurance reducing effects. They get applied correctly, however, they dont go away anymore even after a week of sleep/waiting around - any ideas?

Super proud to say I'm nearly done with the next update to the vanilla version of hardened.

Quick run down of things I've done(that I can remember)
1. Options
a) Regular Gecko Regen on/off at will
b)Ant plasma on/off at will
c)3 DR/DT values options, Hardened(default), Harder(50% increase from Hardened Value) and Vanilla, which retains
the special abilities added by hardened
d)Difficulty Ramp(both options off by default) Changeable at will
aa)Level18Ramp: Increases health and damage of critters at level18, by 30% for damage and a varying amount
for health(still needs gameplay testing)
bb)Level24Ramp: Same as above, but again.
2. Fixes
A)Fire geckos only give xp when killed by the player
B)All poisons(except barkscorpion) are effected by poison resistance, reducing the duration and effects
equivalently
C)All poisons that do limb damage now take adamantium skeleton into consideration
D)Super mutant masters no longer get increasing crit when not self buffed
E)Fire geckos have a few added effects that should make them just a little less difficult than a giant radscorpion
F)Fire gecko explosion now uses a different script than powered power armor's head explode script
G)Debuffs applied by rats and mongrels changed to a regular on hit(no chance) and a base 240 sec duration(like a
chem, but bad), now has pipboy debuff information for duration
H)Protectron and robobrain image modifier(OH JEEZ CAN'T SEE) reduced in duration
3. Notes
a)Sunset sasparillas now have the chance to give you a note written by dear old festus himself, detailing a certain class of critters abilities and weaknesses.

Still have to make the project nevada menu for nVamp hardened and work on VVV then I'll be good for a release.

Got exposed to this mod due to trying out nVamp. Certainly not against the stronger encounter chances, but, and maybe it's the fact I'm not the world's best game player talking, don't some of the enemies you can encounter right from the getgo feel just a wee bit overpowered? I'm mainly talking about the Radroaches, which pretty much slaughtered me the moment I walked out of Goodsprings.

Why? Radiation when they exploded, as I must have run into like, 10 of them or so. It may not be so bad to deal with a radioactive burst from an enemy if it's one in a group, but if the entire group can do it, especially right at the start of the game? Well, that just doesn't seem very fun to me. Have you considered only having higher tiered Radroaches or rare ones explode, and have the weaker ones die normally? I don't mind them being more aggressive, but when I can't even engage them because they explode up close and I've got no ammo to shoot from afar with...Well, that's just frustrating.

That said, if there's some trick I'm missing, I certainly wouldn't mind some advice, because as it stands these Hardened enemies are kicking my butt so fast I can't even get out of Goodsprings.

Sorry, I hadn't planned on making the radroaches any less difficult. You're the first person to bring them up, not even sure if 10 of them exploding would kill you, irradiate you sure, but then just take a hop to the doc. Did you try just running away? If you don't have any ammo then you're kind fubar anyway tbh, but a dynamite stick would end them fast. Try tossing it at your feet and running in the opposite direction of the roaches if they get too close. Or you could pop a rad-x and just go to town.