The Banner Saga – Heroic Mod - version 1.0

for Banner Saga 1, Steam version 2.58.17;
Banner Saga 2, Steam version 2.59.01;
and Banner Saga 3, Steam version 2.61.04.

The Banner Saga – Heroic Mod is a gameplay modification for the trilogy of The Banner Saga games made by Stoic Studios. The mod is aimed at improving the game’s balance and making the combat system more fun and challenging for experienced players.

This mod changes most of the character abilities, talents and Heroic titles; reworks character stats and item balance. The intention was to even the power level of all playable characters: the underdogs were given stat increases or some other compensation while all the OP strats were either toned down or removed entirely. The goal is to give players more choice, more room for experiment.

Short changelog (spoiler-free):

Every single playable character got a unique combination of ARM+STR, starting stats and stat caps. Now every character is worthwhile and no character is a straight upgrade over the other.
Balancing philosophy for Human and Varl heroes is mostly based on Banner Saga Factions. Playable Backbiters heroes were buffed.
Characters of the same class have the same max stat meta + the same WILL/EXE/BRK, but are different enough in terms of ARM/STR to provide access to different playstyles. No more clone characters (like Ludin and Tryggvi).
Stats still reflect character traits of a hero (e.g. Gunnulf and his raw physical strength).
Caravans now have more varied rosters in terms of character roles. Arberrang got a bit more strong attackers while Ravens got some more defensive characters.
Some enemies also have their stats reworked.
Nearly every single active ability was changed in some way, ranging from a slight numbers tweak to a total overhaul.
Overpowered abilities were nerfed or reworked. No more Knockback + Overwatch cheese.
Weaker abilities were buffed to be comparable to stronger ones. Check out new Sundering Impact, Bear Rage and Ride the Lightning!
Removed randomness for all abilities except Runic Gale (it still got buffed in other way).
Slightly changed some passive abilities.
Removed temporary armor and willpower bonuses entirely.
Talents were made more reliable and worth investing into.
Fixed a bug with Talent Rank 6 being unobtainable in vanilla (Previously Rank 6 had the bonus of rank 5, Rank 5 had the bonus of rank 4 and Rank 4 had the bonus of rank 3).
Talent Ranks 5&6 usually have 100% chance of its effect triggering. Compensated by making it harder to reach those ranks.
Heroic titles were made more evenly balanced and distinct from one another.
Tryggvi, Kivi, every Kickstarter and Pre-Order item and Heroic Title are now unlocked for everyone from the start. Check out Dredge Breaker and Shield Cleaver titles, Last Stand and Death’s Toll items, as well as many others!
Kivi’s got a little friend.
Eirik’s bears are different now.
Total Item overhaul. OP items toned down, useless items got a new life. The mod aims to make every item in the game unique and useful.
2 unobtainable items from BS2 (Eyjarr’s Will and Yrsa’s Charms – could be see only in EA or Survival) can now be bought from the Market in the main game.
Items from Godstones can no longer be bought from the Market.
Wave Battles in Banner Saga 3 now all have fixed rewards (some had random item drops before). Now there’s a little more incentive to push for a final wave: those fights reward some of the strongest items in the game.
Items for ranks 12-15 were made stronger to justify the price for leveling up and acquiring them in the first place.
Starting with Banner Saga 2, new (but familiar to some players) enemies start to appear in Training Tent, Survival Mode and some battles.
Banner Saga 3 (and Survival) has even more new enemies. Previously bland enemies were reworked and given new appearances. Enemy buckets in general were changed the most for this installment to increase the enemy variety.
Survival Mode in general got a bit more enemy variety than base game.
Added Vognir, Onef, Nikels, Dagr and Bolverk to the game modes they were missing from. Now you can use them in BS2 Survival, BS3 Survival and Eternal Arena. Every playable named character is available to use in those game modes.
Difficulty system has been reworked. Previously, Normal was the “Standard” difficulty, with enemies having basic (unmodified) Strength and Armor, and Hard giving +2/+2 (+1/+1 in TBS1) to enemy stats.
Now Easy gives +0/+0 to enemies’ ARM/STR, Normal gives +1/+1 to enemies’ ARM/STR and Hard gives +2/+2 to enemies’ ARM/STR. The danger levels remain unchanged. All three games and their additional game modes now have a unified difficulty system.
For those who love creating custom scenarios, Eternal Arena now has 50 enemy buckets in total, as well as 8 new item sets and 4 extra hero rosters.

This mod is built on top of community-created fixpacks, legacy-support mods by Yak, Drake and Nafeji that correct bugs, inconsistencies and typos, restore cut content, add secret items and feature various QoL improvements. I did not make those mods, and I do not take any credit for them. I am highly respectful to their creators and very thankful for their work.

Huge thanks to:

Yak (YaK of all Trades), creator of Spare Some Love To Banner Saga 1 and Drake's & YaK's Fixpack for BS2;
Drake (Drake Ravenwolf), creator of Drake's & YaK's Fixpack for BS2;
Nafeji, creator of Nafeij's BS3 Fixpack and maintainer of the BS1&2 fixpacks;
Gestaltzerfall, who updated TBSDecompiler (http://www.mediafire.com/file/wun36alp6ojlkjk/TBS_Decompiler3.2.3.air/file);
Psychic-Paranoia, creator of Warleader Edition, which inspired me to try my hand at modding;
Frown(ᚱᛅᛏᛏᛁᚦ ᛘᛁᚾ ᛘᛁᛋᛏᛅᚴ);
Pieloaf;
Clovis;
Richard_aka_ElTaino.

Please report any bugs in to me on GitHub, Nexus, Discord or Reddit. I am open to any feedback or suggestions.

The mod comes with full English and Russian localisation. The translations to other languages remained vanilla, they do not reflect the changes the mod made. If anyone is willing to provide a localisation for the mod, please contact me. I'd be happy to get the mod available for as many people as possible.

Installation

Download the archive. You can get it on GitHub, Nexusmods, Reddit and Discord.
Uncompress the zip archive and place the /tbs1, /tbs2, /tbs3 folders in your game folder (e.g. .../steamapps/common). It will ask you to overwrite some files. Each folder contains a mod to the respective game.
After launching the game, you will see that the game's logo at the main menu screen has changed. It should have the fixpack inscription added to it from the respective fixpack and the word 'Heroic' next to it. If this is true, than the mod is installed correctly.