Korax Mod 1.0, the first ever gameplay mod for Hexen, was released exactly twenty years ago on June 14, 2001. To celebrate this occasion, a special 20th Anniversary Edition has been released today that includes a unique in-game menu called “Anniversary Extras”, containing a short history of Korax Mod, a long-lost interview, and player feedback from the early years.
Improvements and fixes:
The inventory and spellstrip movement bug has been finally fixed
When RPG Complexity is set to Off, instead of the useless weight/hunger/fatigue indicators a new overlay is shown, displaying the current values of all six D&D abilities
Healing prayer now doesn’t deduct Faith if the player is at full health
Create Mana cantrip now doesn’t deduct Magic if the player has full mana stores
The default roll is now more suitable for the early game
Feedback messages for class abilities are now always displayed in the top left corner
All class abilities now respect the sound setting
Improved the behaviour of the gimme cheats for gaining levels and acquiring all class abilities
The character creation process has been overhauled: rerolls are now standardized across classes, with the sum total of all attributes always the same
When RPG Complexity is set to off, the roll screen is disabled and the starting attribute values are significantly higher, avoiding the gimped attributes in the early game
Sidekick improvements
Sidekick NPCs attacks and spells don’t damage the player any more
The experience from monsters killed by a sidekick NPC now goes to the player
On Old school RPG Complexity, this experience gain is dependent on difficulty setting: on hard, you only get half the experience than if you’d have killed the monster yourself; on easy, you get double the amount
Player tuning
The Phalanx martial skill now allows the player to move slowly; in turn, its cost has been increased and its duration decreased
Spirits Within behaviour optimized and the feedback message now makes clear what exactly happened
Armor kits now restore 25% more durability
Animated weapons now react more quickly to player input, most notable the Mage’s Thunderstaff
Player’s Fireball spell damage slightly increased
Monster tuning
Dark Advisors don’t resurrect on death any more
Ettin Commander’s hammer throw now lights up the monster, giving a visual cue he’s about to throw a hammer
Ettin Commander’s hammer damage greatly reduced
Lava Dweller’s damage damage greatly reduced
Ranged animation timings have been modified for some ettin and class boss types.
New options
Options submenus have been reshuffled and a new section introduced (visual options)
You can now separately enable and disable screen flashes on damage, screen flashes on item pickup and screen tint effects from other sources (like berserking, being poisoned or under the effects of mana burn)
The sound effects of class abilites can now be switched on and off
In addition to the on/off switch for the automatic use of health potions, there is now a second setting (autohealth cooldown) to determine whether to use only one potion per damage trigger
Miscellaneous improvements
Like Scattered Evil 2.0, KMOD 5.1 is shipping with the latest Vavoom 1.34 release (GNU/Linux binaries are already 64-bit, Windows 64-bit binaries will be added in a future release)
Ported improvements from Scattered Evil 2.0 (mostly autohealth and berserking related)
Heresiarch damage skin visuals added
Lowered the upper limit on the sum of red and green screen tint effects and the strength of damage flashes
The distribution now includes the full Vavoom documentation as PDF files
Korax Mod 5.0 is available for download from SourceForge and ModDB.
Released in June 2001, Korax Mod 1.0 was the first ever Hexen gameplay mod. Throughout the next few months and years, it introduced a slew of new RPG features: experience and leveling, customizing your character during creation, new weapons and spells, monsters dropping silver and gold bars, buying and selling items at shops, special “damage skin” sprite sets to make it clearly visible a monster is badly hurt…
Today, the same team is raising the bar once more with the release of Korax Mod 5:
Introducing an RPG complexity setting that allows the player to mold the game to his personal playstyle, from a complex RPG system to a near-FPS setup that feels a lot more like Heretic’s fast-paced gameplay than the classic Hexen shuffle.
Shortcuts: breaking up the linear monotony and the frustration of the tedious search for the last hidden puzzle switch – now you need to solve less than half of a hub’s puzzles to be able to proceed to the next hub (but you might want to linger for the experience and loot).
“Pistol Starts”: built-in support for warping to the beginning of any hub and receiving weapons and armor automatically so you have an actual chance of beating the game from that point without using any cheats.
Vastly expanded bestiary: not only are there a few completely new enemies and many new types of existing monsters, even the “classic” ones might surprise you by dodging your attacks, running away when low on health, closing large distances with a single leap, and generally finding ways to move around the map and reappear behind your back.
Defeating Korax wasn’t a solo effort: embark upon this epic adventure with a supporting cast of merchants and craftsmen, as well as two sidekicks that will race you to kill the most monsters in the area they stake out.
A large arsenal of new weapons and spells; custom armor with resistance gems.
Designed to support custom maps and mods out of the box: create your own mini-RPG using a large number of new items, weapons and spells, as well as NPCs with pre-configured conversation scripts offering all basic services. Korax Mod is distributed with a Developer’s Reference Guide containing detailed instructions on how to create and distribute your maps and mods.
In this release, all original maps have been replaced by modified versions, nearly all of them have new monsters (including a never before seen one, the flame turret) and about 1/4 have architectural modifications (episode 1 maps by Firebrand, episode 4 maps by RambOrc).
While testing, save often as the current build is prone to crashing under certain conditions.
