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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 11, 2017 11:54 AM |
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Titan's Gladius and Sentinel Shield were some of the weakest relics, their only value was in their strategical decision to lose either attack or defense... and +3 to every stat in a throwaway slot is better then +9 to a single stat using the most important slot.
Even tomes of magic are more powerful than that.
About AI spells... maybe it is more fun being "unpredictable", but AI is weak. If you make AI use weaker spells, give it some kind of other bonus to compensate. As they mentioned, Blind forces you to spend your hero turn to counter it, that's its real value, while most other spells can be outright ignored.
Increasing the power of Hypnotize was a nice touch though since it was practically unusable.
***
Now about navigation, I am glad I could convince you of some sense on the issue. The thing is, as it is almost always useless, the few times it is useful should change the game a little bit. Almost all maps have zero or very little water, and teleporters, portals and whirpools, so it's not like some extra water movement will change the outcome of a multiplayer game. And vs AI you are expected to take a water-centered skill in a water-centered map...
But you don't even in most cases since you get Water Walk, Dimension Door and Fly (When they are not banned), plus Town Portal and Boots of levitation, all of which also make going to the sea useless. Hoorray. What's left for the poor pirates. I though you liked HoTA/Cove 
____________
Never changing = never improving
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 11, 2017 12:55 PM |
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Would you ignore Mass Curse, Slow, Sorrow or Forgetfulness?
It's still casts Blind pretty often, just not ALL the time.
Glad you like the new Hypnotize, compared to Blind and Berserk it was a joke before.
About sea movement I agree with you a lot, but in my map, which is an XL +underground map composed of many smaller and bigger islands water movement actually plays a big role, at least until you get WW/TP/Fly/DD or Boots or Levitation or Angel Wings.
But there are also 2 sea movement artifacts and they can be combined to Admiral's Hat and then getting in and out of boats won't be an issue no more. A high-level Navigation specialist with Admiral's Hat is powerful in such a map.
But I am still thinking about it, I don't know Air Magic feels a bit weak to me now, with Haste and Dimension Door nerfed and Fly is useless if you have Angel Wings. So I am considering either removing Angel Wings or having DD work 2 times a day at advanced or expert level, I don't know yet, DD also works on water so...
About Cove I think they are still very powerful, maybe the best town overall.
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orc
Famous Hero
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posted September 23, 2017 03:09 PM |
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May I share mine too ? 
I made Pyre Logistic specialist and Torosar Archery specialist.
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Aquilo
Tavern Dweller
Pecking at goblins
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posted September 23, 2017 07:35 PM |
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Wow, these changes are convenient indeed (well maybe most of them).
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted January 26, 2018 10:46 PM |
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To anyone interested I have updated and added all my changes to the very first post. All changes will be applied to the first post from now on.
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StrikerX
Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
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posted March 30, 2018 08:22 PM |
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Edited by StrikerX at 20:42, 30 Mar 2018.
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Nice post. I'm interested in some of your changes in my game as well especially making fire spells better like fireball / inferno. I'd also like to set DD to only 1 cast a day.
As far as secondary skills, I think that useless abilities should just be banned outright. Not much you can do to make them a 'better' choice over say any of the magic / warrior skills. (Keep in mind I'm only talking about the boost it gives to AI since I don't do MP)
It's amazing how much better the AI is in my HotA templates when I just banned them because the AI will actually be able to get alot of 'useful' abilities and not be randomly given a comparably worse skill just because it's always been part of Heroes 3.
I banned Scouting, Diplomacy, Navigation (I never use water maps in templates), Mysticism, Ballistics, Eagle Eye, Estates (AI always seems to have plenty of money to clear there towns every week without it), Learning and First Aid. That's 9 'useless' abilities that gives the AI alot more stronger skills. Still gives 19 abilities and since I would never pick any of those banned secondaries it doesn't really detract from making my games unpredicatable / different each time and gives the AI a huge boost to it's abilities.
Even without any other changes the AI is casting alot more variety. Sometimes he will just implode me every round while he sits behind a castle wall. Or mass berserk while I sit behind my castle walls and seems to cast mass slow / haste alot more because they are allowed to get those magic secondaries more often now. I also hex edited quite a few heroes to remove any of those banned secondaries they already had and give them more magic / warrior ability secondaries .
Now playing 8 ai's even all vrs each other is more of a challenge with my templates that I've removed all chances for relics except for 1 in each of there starter zone and 1 or 2 utopias and made resource aquiring alot more challenging so I'm forced to use mines or finding the trading post in the middle of map to exchange. Also limited creature banks to 1 for most of the better ones and conservatories and hives so you mainly just get a few angels / wyverns which help in early stage of game and don't affect gameplay much.
Turned into a long post Anyways are those hex edits for changing spells like inferno / fireball and dd to cast only once or is that the .lod / sptraits.txt?
p.s. I forgot how powerful Fly spell (flying over barriers) is since I haven't played with it on in years. I enabled it in my template with these other changes and got steamrolled by the AI. I was trying to do no magic book with Thorgrim as my main anti magic hero using the new mechanic. I was never able to aquire fly even with other secondary hero's and one AI just wiped everyone out with it.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted March 30, 2018 09:06 PM |
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Thanks Striker.
For editing the spells you need to change the text file sp.traits and add it to HotA.Ing.lod - I use txtedit for editing text files and MMarchive to open and add .lods
I recommend changing DD and Inferno, Inferno is now just as good as Chain Lightning and Meteor Shower, if not better. Btw if you boost Fireball, you should probably boost Frost Ring too, these spells are kind of opposites.
Sorry, but I don't understand why you ban all those skills, well maybe the worst of them, but a skill like Ballistics is very important for AI, otherwise it will have a hard time taking your towns. Estates is good both for your secondary heroes and for AI. Diplomacy I can understand because of how broken it can become with level 7's. Scouting can also be good both for you and AI.
Btw LOL about your experience with Fly. 
Nice that AI is trying to put up a fight.
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StrikerX
Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
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posted March 30, 2018 09:48 PM |
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Edited by StrikerX at 22:04, 30 Mar 2018.
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A few of them like Estates is a recent addition. Mainly I did it just cause the AI doesn't seem to need it and I rarely used it on secondaries cause I never leveled them up much (to get it to expert). I use them mainly for holding resource artifacts. It does put me in a money crunch alot but doesn't seem to affect AI so I consider it a plus for making game harder and forces me to sell off already scarce resource at low rates or risk making the trip to trading post with a weak hero.
And ballistics. It's just a bleh skill for me. Makes it harder to capture there towns as well and they do a pretty good job using spells like earthquake and damaging spells and they really don't need it 90% of the time to take a town I'd say. If they commited to trying they usually outnumber / stronger hero by a good margin. Just my last battle before posting this, the AI imploded my main army 6 times in a row lol trying to take there castle and moved out there flyers at same time. I was stronger army but he wiped me out lol. Needless to say I reloaded and moved on 
I did keep the scouting specialty hero's and there secondary skill intact so there are a few ways to have a scouting hero but I think having it as a main skill weakens the AI.
If you've never tried with those abilities banned it really does make a huge difference in the amount of firepower they have.
Thanks for tip with txtedit I was wondering what program to use to space it correctly.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted March 31, 2018 12:20 AM |
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Well I can't and won't tell you what to do, I just feel like you maybe limit the gameplay experience a lot by removing 9 out of 28 skills.
I also find Ballistics meh, but that's because AI usually charges right out of the gate, so I don't need it. (Guess it does'nt understand the concept of defending.  )
So I never pick Ballistics and the only thing good about it is you get to cast a spell first, which is good when playing a slow town like Stronghold or Tower.
AI needs it a lot, to take down that gate though. There are of course other ways to get inside the castle, but Ballistics makes AI much more dangerous.
Well happy exploring with the text files, you can experiment a lot with changing those if you want. Just maybe keep the original files somewhere or make a list of your changes, if you change your mind.
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StrikerX
Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
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posted March 31, 2018 02:25 AM |
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Edited by StrikerX at 03:31, 31 Mar 2018.
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Well I changed a few of the spells and everything seems to work right except for fly. I was gonna make it cost alot of movement points to use it and changed it to 70,60,50,40 percent penalties but when I test it with 4 heroes side by side on swamp land they all can move pretty far and barely 1 step each away from each other.
So I changed it to 5, 30, 60, 100 to test it and same thing. I know it's taking effect cause the text part I changed is different but the movement penalty stays pretty much the same.
Quote:
I just feel like you maybe limit the gameplay experience a lot by removing 9 out of 28 skills.
Maybe a little bit if I was just forced into picking one of those 9 banned skills but other than that I would never use them and the bonus to AI more than makes up for it cause they get stuck with quite a few of them on each hero and maybe lose like 3 to 5 good skill slots.
Quote:
(By hex-editing the game, I have also made it possible to "dismiss" a ballista or cannon, useful when you wan't to get rid of it when you learn Blind and don't have the Artillery skill.)
Is this easy to do? I find it frustrating too not being able to get rid of war machine.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted March 31, 2018 09:02 AM |
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I have'nt tried messin' with the Fly percentages, but if you see no difference perhaps it needs to be hex edited instead. Berserk radius need to be hex edited too for example, so you can't change everything in that text file.
Making ballista/cannon dismissable is easy:
Go to line de4af and change 75 -> eb
A little warning though if your backpack is full, the above change can also dismiss artifacts, so be carefull with that.
So make sure you got some space left in the backpack. (As you always should.)
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StrikerX
Known Hero
The Bringer of Rain
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posted March 31, 2018 09:16 PM |
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I uploaded my new template for good challenge against AI. If you like single player against AI check it out I've disabled fly but kept in TP and DD. Angel wings have a chance though to appear but relics are few in this template. I've yet to see an angel wings spawn.
Death from Below (XL+u - H+u)
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Sir_Juas
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 14, 2018 12:21 AM |
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Hey Phoenix
I am trying to learn these things, I already made most of the use i had for "text editing" and now i'm trying to learn "hex editing", but i donīt seem to find any information about how to start.. like a tutorial or something.
What i mean is that i got WinHex and now i dont know what to do 
Which archives are to be opened? is there need for extraction and then insertion to the game like in text editing?
Thank you, you kind of inspired me on learning this stuff and i'm having a blast with my modifications 
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FfuzzyLogik
Known Hero
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posted June 14, 2018 12:37 AM |
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Good evening Juas,
I suggest you the thread "how to edit HotA" who has many answers about hex editing !
Many noob questions here (many are mine ^^) and tips.
So feel free to read it. There is tons of informations.
Good luck in you try,
____________
FfuzzyLogik.
If I'm crazy ? Sure, because its madness to be normal...
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Sir_Juas
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 14, 2018 12:42 AM |
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Edited by Sir_Juas at 01:44, 14 Jun 2018.
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FfuzzyLogik said:
Good evening Juas,
I suggest you the thread "how to edit HotA" who has many answers about hex editing !
Many noob questions here (many are mine ^^) and tips.
So feel free to read it. There is tons of informations.
Good luck in you try,
Thank you! I'll chek 
EDIT:
I checked and it's quite complete, i'm sure i'll find what i need there, thanks again Fuzzy
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted June 14, 2018 04:56 PM |
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Happy modding Sir_Juas.
As Fuzzy said, you can find lots of useful information in the "How to edit HotA" thread and find me asking tons of stupid questions.
I have been able to do a lot of great stuff, thanks to that thread.
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FfuzzyLogik
Known Hero
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posted June 14, 2018 06:08 PM |
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You'd better thank the persons who patiently answer... Maurice, RoseKavalier, AlexSpl and some other persons were very productive (and patient) !
____________
FfuzzyLogik.
If I'm crazy ? Sure, because its madness to be normal...
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted June 14, 2018 06:55 PM |
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Yep, I think I have done that lots of times already, but here we go one more time:
Thanks again guys, I could'nt have done it without you.
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Djangoo
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 15, 2018 08:27 AM |
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Edited by Djangoo at 16:44, 17 Jun 2018.
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Hello, I made a couple of changes to in the past that I'd like to share here since this thread inspired me quite a bit to do so. (you'll notice I adopted some changes from Phoenix4ever )
I'm playing mostly custom maps or random maps vs AI with friend or solo with very few to none creature banks or creature rewards, so rushing is harder and games tend to go longer. Fly and DD disabled.
I don't have any PvP experience besides from watching some streams and I don't think the game should be balanced the way I changed. These changes are to spice gameplay up a bit and fixes to some of the major imbalances (vs AI) imo.
Mostly changes to magic, because I like the town and unit balance in original Heroes and HotA very much and don't want to change too much.
Artifacts
Sword of Judgment +3A+2D+2P+2K; Lionshield +2A+3D+2P+2K; HoHE +2 all; Necklace +2 (now they are closer in stats to other relics)
Pendant of Courage: +1 Morale +1 Luck (when it gave +3/+3 I picked it every game: found it not fair to give 2 secondaries worth, although bad ones). Maybe I change to +1 morale +2 luck.
Units
Ballista Dmg 2-3 --> 3-4 (you can see the power creep is already real)
Secondaries
Mysticsm: 2/3/4 --> 3/6/9
Learning 5/10/15 --> 20/30/40
Sorcery 5/10/15 --> 10/15/20
Eagle Eye and Scholar are banned since I find them quite useless, especially with the HotA spell research feature and lvl 4 spell shrines. I also ban Diplomacy, First Aid, Scouting, Artillery (ballista heroes get it),(Navigation) and Necromancy by default.
Changes to magic:
Earth Magic is overpowered. I picked it on every hero whenever possible. Mostly because of TP, but also because of Mass Slow and bonus to Implosion, Meteor Shower, Ressurection, Shield and Stone Skin (sry for obvious). I tried to nerf Earth Magic a bit and make other schools more interesting.
- Townportal is moved to all spellschools, like magic arrow. Requires advanced effect of any magic school for AI to chose town, expert for human player. (sometimes I also play without Townportal, but if you want to finish a big map 2v6 AI in hotseat in a ~5 hour session you need this spell.)
- Dispel moved to Air Magic (since I play without Fly and DD I felt that Air Magic required a little buff and it still kinda fits thematically)
- Frost Ring is now a lvl 4 spell; cost 16/12/12/12; dmg P*20+(15/15/30/60) ai value 75/75/75/75 (same as ChainL); a weaker but more spammable version of Meteor Shower
- Meteor Shower: cost 16/12/12/12 --> 18/14/14/14
- Slow is now a lvl 2 spell; effect 25/25/50/50 --> 25/25/40/40
- Haste is now lvl 2 spell; effect 3/3/5/5 --> 3/3/4/4
- Quicksand: lvl 2 --> lvl 1 spell
- Fortune: lvl 2 --> lvl 1 spell
Its now a bit harder to steamroll neutrals with Slow/Haste; I also felt that Water Magic required a better Dmg spell (who ever used Orb of Driving Rain?) and to compensate for the loss of Dispel.
- Berserk: adv effect = former basic effect; expert effect = former adv effect; cost 20/16/16/16 --> 20/16/12/12; ai value 60/60/60/60 --> 60/60/60/80 (this spell on expert felt like a cheat to me, now on expert it is still possible to catch 3 units, still very powerful)
- Hypnotize: power 25 --> 50; ai value 37/37/75/100 --> 45/55/65/75
- Inferno: power 10 --> 17; cost 16/12/12/12 --> 20/16/16/16; ai value 75/75/75/75; buff % chance to gain for some towns in mage guild
- Fireball: power 10 --> 15; cost 15/12/12/12 --> 16/13/13/13 ; ai value 12 -> 25
- Death Ripple: power 5 --> 6; ai value 20/20/20/20 --> 24/24/24/24
- Firewall: power 10 --> 12
- Land Mine: power 10 --> 13
- Ressurection: cost 20/16/16/16 --> 22/22/22/22; ai value 50/50/60/120 --> 60/80/100/120
- Animate Dead: cost 15/12/12/12 --> 17/14/14/14; ai value 60/60/60/120 ---> 60/80/100/120
- general formula specialty hero 3% spell effect bonus (icebolt, chain light, inferno, ressurect etc ) --> 5% effect (still worse overall than specialty sorcery heroes, but gap is now smaller)
new ai values:
fire shield 10/10/15/15 --> 7/9/12/15
air shield 20/20/50/50 --> 7/10/15/30
bless 10/10/11/11 --> 7/10/15/30
curse 10/10/11/11 --> 7/10/15/30
bloodlust 7/7/15/15 --> 7/10/15/30
shield 10/10/20/20 ---> 7/10/15/30
disruptingr 7/7/15/15 --> 10/15/20/25
prayer 8/8/16/16 --> 10/15/20/40
mirth 1/1/2/2 --> 5/7/10/20
sorrow 1/1/2/2 --> 7/10/15/30
fortune 1/1/2/2--> 5/7/10/20
misfortune 1/1/2/2 --> 5/7/10/20
forgetfullness 1/1/1/1 --> 5/7/15/30
haste 5/5/10/10 --> 7/10/15/30
slow 5/5/10/10 --> 7/10/15/30
counterstrike 20/20/30/30 --> 10/15/20/40
fire elementals 50/50/100/150 --> 25/50/75/100
earth elemental 50/50/100/150 --> 50/75/100/125
water elemental 50/50/100/150 --> 10/25/50/75
air elemental 50/50/100/150 --> 1/10/25/50 (does not seem to effect AI that much, it still casts Water and Air over Earth, derp)
I also made a ton of changes to secondaries of heroes, basically made them more "Cove-like" i.e. more useful. (but no 350g+ Estates ;P). Ballista heroes start with Artillery, spell specialists with their respective magic school, lots of Scholar removed, lots of Scouting removed etc etc. Eagle Eye heroes start with expert sorcery (band aid fix until I figure out how to make new specialities )
to do (maybe): add new creature or spell specialists(where is my Medusa )for Eagle Eye, First Aid and Cure (urgh) heroes; slayer mass spell; resistance buff (I play with old resistance); small changes to magic;
Testing these changes will keep me busy, until the HotA crew releases the next update with changes to magic, I'm excited for that, their balance changes have been very good!
Thanks@ Phoenix4ever for this thread, RoseKavalier and Maurice from the how to edit HotA thread(and everyone else to participated!) , very helpful information and patiently answering my noob question . Shoutout to my buddy Karyoplasma, who wrote a nice tool to easily change a hero's secondary skill.
(https://github.com/Karyoplasma/HOMM3SecondarySkillsModder/releases/)
And of course thank you to the HotA team for releasing quality content all the time, thumbs up to you. Really got me to play this game again.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted June 15, 2018 03:29 PM |
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^^ Nice post Djangoo.
Seems like you are having fun with modding and it also seems like my changes inspired you a bit.
I would like to comment on all your changes or exchange ideas, but I don't really have time right now, might do it later though.
Enjoy your new wonderful Heroes 3.
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