Improved Pa’li (Direhorse) v1.0
Requirements:
– Universal Snowdrop Modloader
So truth be told, I never really ended up using the Direhorse during my initial playthrough of the game, outside of the small required section. However after receiving a request and deciding to give them another look, I have to say that while not quite as engaging as my Ikran, I cant deny their is definitely a unique charm to them all their own, and I actually ended up finding myself rather enjoying riding around more then I initially expected. In any case, I’ve put together a few modifications in order to improve on the experience just that little bit more.
What this mods does:
Makes several personal adjustments to the Pa’li/Direhorse mechanics. See below for list of changes.
Riding Speed Increases: In the game the Direhorse has four separate movement categories that then blend together depending on the amount of your input; Walk, Trot, Canter, and Gallop. For this mod, I left Walk and Trot alone. Instead I increased Canter speed by a set margin across the board and then increased Gallop speeds by various set amounts to allow for different options. As the movement animation is tied directly to this increase in speed, and given it was obviously not made with much faster speeds in mind, I personally found that with the Direhorse there appears to be a point of diminishing returns, when it comes to the limits of the animation, as you continue to increase their Galloping speed.
Behavior Around Water: In the game, water has a direct impact on your movement speed, depending on the depth of the water you are moving through. In addition, once the water reaches a certain depth, the Direhorse will kick or “buck” you off. With this mod the Direhorse will no longer buck you off, regardless of how deep the water is. The depth/speed curve has also been flattened out. This was necessary as once you become submerged, your movement seed would slowdown by up to 90%, but will now not drop below around 20% total reduction. This all means that your Direhorse now essentially becomes an aquatic creature, so if you’ve ever wished for some reason that your Direhorse could also breath underwater, well here you go.
Improved Combat: In the game mounts are given some of their own unique weapon handling characteristics separate from your character, and like your character, I have found some of these elements to be somewhat underwhelming. This mod adjust the impact of gravity on projectiles as well as increases travel distance and projectile speed to allow for further travel before being impacted by gravity, and hopefully also making hitting things on your Direhorse a little easier. This impacts the Longbow, Heavybow, Shortbow, and Spear Thrower.
Faster Bonding: In the game before you could actually ride a Direhorse, you had to first go through a Bonding/Smoothing mini game where you slowly walked up to the Direhorse in order to not spook it, and then once you reached a predetermined distance, a small but un-skippable animation would play before you could then mount and ride the Direhorse. This mod does not completely remove this, but does greatly reduce the time necessary to complete it. Basically it allows you to move toward the Direhorse at an increased pace once the action has been initiated, slightly reduces how close you need to get to the Direhorse in order for the sequence to be considered complete and bonding successful, and removes the animation at the end of the sequence, thus saving you precious seconds of your life you would have otherwise never gotten back.
How to Install:
First you will need to download and install the Universal Snowdrop Modloader.
Second, simply download this mod and place the “blue” folder into your games root directory, “Ubisoft Game Launcher\games\AFOP\blue\”
