[OUTDATED AS OF 2023] H3HotA+HD - STF's Skills, Spells & Beyond mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III

This mod does many things that attempt to bring usability and a little balance to some of the more annoying aspects of the game, such as underpowered late-game magic heroes, useless skills (eagle eye, learning, first aid), overall inferior fire and water magic schools (direct damage spells, spells requiring little/no investment), etc.

FEATURES:

* (*) AI stacks are less often distracted by faster and less numerous player stacks.

* Inferno's Castle Gate building now costs 5000 gold, instead of 10000.
* (*) Dungeon's Mana Vortex building now requires Magic Guild level 2 instead of 1 and the temporary spell points added are random up to double, instead of always double.

* (*) Learning skill experience % bonus is multiplied by your current level (so it's worth taking even if you already have a higher level).
* (*) Eagle Eye skill gives hero a 25/30/35% chance to learn each level 1-2/1-3/1-4 level spell in the enemy hero's spellbook, at the start of the battle.
* (*) First Aid skill greatly increases amount healed and also enables mass heal and healing other war machines (it's now a lot better than Cure at healing).
* (*) The First Aid Tent is now tougher, more expensive and heals 50 points, without the First Aid skill.
* The Ballista now deals 2-4 base damage instead of 2-3.

* (*) Spell duration now varies with spell usefulness, Spell Power and Knowledge, and now also affects spells with previously flat durations like Frenzy.
* (*) Spell duration artifacts have been nerfed, since they have more of an impact now.
* (*) Dispel and Cure now only remove the latest eligible effect, not all of them.
* (*) Quicksand and Land Mines spawn +2 patches at all school levels.
* (*) Disguise now instead allows you to select visible army size (more variation with better spell school) and lasts 2 turns.
* (*) Visions is now Water Magic, instead on all magic schools.
* Spells that can be learned in a Magic Guild each have an equal chance of appearing, except direct damage spells which have double the chance of other spells (Cove is excluded due to limitations, but it's barely noticeable).
* Mana costs and spell levels have been rebalanced to better fit their strength and theme (see the pics)
* Ice Bolt has +10 flat damage at all school levels (Lightning Bolt is still better, but only above ~5 SP).
* Earthquake damages 1/1/2/3 sections of wall instead of 2/2/3/4 (equalizes it with the Ballistics skill).
* Scaled damage for Fireball and Frost Ring is SP * 15 and for Inferno it's SP * 20, up from SP * 10 for all 3.
* Hypnotize now controls (SP * 25) + 50/50/100/200 instead of 10/10/20/50.
* Magic Mirror now reflects 35/35/50/65% of the time, instead of 20/20/30/40%.

INSTALL:

Make sure you have Heroes 3 Complete + HD mod + HOTA mod installed before installing my mod, and don't update after.
It should be compatible with any versions of HD and HOTA from 2020 up to and including 2022.
Extract archive contents to root folder, overriding any files. That's it.

LEGAL:

The changes marked with (*) were done by the talented folks at Handbookhmm.ru, so to them goes my credit and I thank them for inspiring me to do this.
The rest of the stuff and text edits is all me.

TO DO:

Put some effort into the description
Don't drink and mod

That is all,
STF