This is a mod that aims to rebalance the economy and survival gameplay of Pathologic Classic. While the game has a reputation for being brutally difficult, most of its challenge came from its failure to communicate some of its more obtuse mechanics and systems. Most players who get past Day 2 (or who have already played Pathologic 2) will quickly discover the many highly abusable strategies to exploit the game economy and get on top of the resource curve, turning what was supposed to be a stress simulator in which you must carefully weigh self-preservation against your duty as a healer into a walking simulator in which you tediously grind resources while walking between (admittedly very well-written) character dialogues.
Pathologic Classic RSD is the first mod of its kind to alter the underlying game systems and bring out the potential depth that was hinted at but never fully realized in the game.
Installation [BETA]
- Unzip pathoRSD.zip and open the resulting folder
- Drag the contents of pathoRSD (the \Actors\, \Scenes\, \Scripts\ etc. folders) into [install]\Pathologic Classic HD\data\
- Open [install]\Pathologic Classic HD\data\init.cfg and append the following lines to it:
uspeed 1.15
gt_speed 1.75 - Open [install]\Pathologic Classic HD\data\config.ini, navigate to the [Strings] block, and append the following lines to it:
rsdtext = txt, 0
Key features:
- Survival meters accumulate faster. The twyre blooming in the air makes you tire more quickly and feel the pangs of hunger more often
- Killing bandits, arsonists, and looters is no longer an easy way to restore your reputation, and the scum of the town are also the most destitute, carrying little money or valuables for the taking
- Aside from a handful of quests which help your standing, the only way to regain reputation with the townsfolk is to perform your role as a healer, aiding them with cash donations to afford medicine, administering painkillers to those writhing in agony, or curing them with Clara’s miraculous touch. These mechanics were always in the game, but now you’ll actually have to use them
- Bad Grief is happy to see the police force diminished; he now purchases patrolmen badges at a significant markup to service players who are willing to put their reputation on the line
- Thought you could just hoard food on Day 1 to prepare for hyper inflation? Think again, as the supply is limited since the train stopped coming to deliver food. Initial prices are higher and go even higher than before. You can rest assured that each food item is now priced according to its hunger satiation, however
- With prices soaring and playing vigilante hero paying less than before, you may be forced to turn to theft. You can actually find reasonable sums of cash in houses now. However, stealing now comes at a cost to your reputation, and residents will lock the door behind you as you leave, so you can no longer reset hostilities and barter inventories without expending another lockpick
- Abandoned houses in boarded-up districts are a free-for-all, but the lights are off and you’ll have to sneak around in near total darkness to get the drop on other looters. The lamp burns through kerosene at 1/4th the rate to help you navigate the shadows
- Bartering was one of the strongest and most innovative parts of gameplay, and has seen only minor touch-ups to better reflect the relative value of items and is bolstered by the addition of a few more resource chains. Barter junk is priced higher in shops, though it’s still more lucrative to buy and trade than to sell
- New intuitive clothing durability system: boots degrade as you walk and from rat bites, gloves and masks degrade from plague sources, cloaks degrade from combat and plague sources
- Repairing weapons and clothing is now more costly, and they decrease in sell value by up to 90% as their durability decreases. Disposable clothing items can no longer be repaired, as implied by their descriptions
- Vaccines now last for 24 hours and clothing is appropriately priced relative to its protective value, so maintaining immunity to the plague is more viable than before
- Haruspex’s twyre brewing is much deeper, with expanded utility for bloody twyre and rewritten herbal recipe formulas to make them worth pursuing in quests, as well as rebalanced herb trading which makes various new combinations more cost effective. Herbs also appear in the “Drugs” tab, making inventory management more feasible
- Each character has a more diverse and lore-appropriate collection of starting items
- The Bachelor and Haruspex don’t find as many free guns as before. On the other hand, the Haruspex’s egregious 50 pill quest and 30 rifle round quest have had their requirements reduced
- The Changeling’s healing/hurting hands have a shorter range, requiring her to put herself at greater risk during combat and healing
- Quest rewards are rebalanced to ensure that some choices are not strictly superior
- The story text and item descriptions are unchanged except where necessary to communicate changes to gameplay and quests (main.dat is not replaced, so this is compatible with other mods that do alter the script)
What about the walking speed?
Pathologic Classic RSD globally increases the game speed by 15%, complete with synced gun sounds. Beyond just making the game less tedious to play, this also affects combat animations, survival meters, and the clock, which slightly increases the difficulty. There is an additional clock speed increase of 25% as well, so you must weigh your decisions about routing, quest progression, and resource acquisition more carefully than before.
Will this fix the “jank”?
No, but at least the bandit throwing knife attack no longer deletes 90% of your health bar, and guns no longer auto-reload on empty!
Why don’t I just play Pathologic 2?
You should! This mod doesn’t make the gameplay of Pathologic Classic as sophisticated as the sequel, but it should greatly improve its balance and difficulty, giving more weight to its unique narrative. Feel free to come back here if the setting and story gets its hooks in your brain and you want more.
Credits and Permissions
All changes by RoSoDude
Many thanks to rathologic, adc_ax and aquarium_gravel for their work in building a new Pathologic modding community, producing guides and tools, and offering technical (and moral) support
Additional thanks to adc_ax for tireless work on the powerful Gorkhon Script Editor
The morconverter program (unknown author) and somevideoguy’s parser were invaluable for getting started
Смиренник’s 2015 mod on the Ice Pick Lodge forums inspired the abandoned house lighting and showed some of what’s possible
Tilalgis and DigiDragon7 had useful input on the game engine’s functions and console commands
Thanks to Cabal_Crow, Blitzer, and rathologic for testing
Check out the Pathologic Modding wiki and Discord: https://pathomodding.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page
You have my permission to reuse anything I’ve created for this mod, so long as you credit my work. Please ask me before forking the entire mod, though
RSD's Mods and Tweaks 