Lalup’s Ethereals

Changes the Ethereal introduced by ReshiKillim and E3245 to be more consistent with vanilla enemies and abilities, decreasing its durability, damage, and flexibility. After modding Skyrim for years, I was not surprised about the kind of comments left on the original mod page, so I decided to publish my tweaks. I was inspired by Uberjammer’s request that the HP and Defence be switched, mirroring the Ethereals encountered in XCOM: EU. The intention is to balance the Ethereal to rival Sectopods, Gatekeepers, and Avatars.

What started as a simple health change turned into a slight rework of ReshiKillim and E3245’s fantastic mod, editing the Localisation to clean up the mod, among other changes. I also want to thank Rather Incoherent and Novaseer for inspiring me to create and publish mods for the workshop. The former has an excellent workshop collection and YouTube series.

I simply love the work ReshiKillim and E3245 have done to incorporate Elders into XCOM 2. It would be a shame to avoid their mod over some balancing decisions that could be changed in the configuration.

• Adjusted the stats of both the Ethereal and the Revived Ethereal.
• Added difficulty variants.
• Decreased the amount of enemies the Ethereal spawns from 6 to 3 (2*3 -> 1*3).
• Adjusted the damage of the Ethereal’s abilities to match the Avatar, mainly switching Shred with Pierce.
• Provided support for AP Farming.
• Provided support for ADVENT Not Created Equal.
• Edited localisation to address mistakes, and made it easier to read.

I have made similar changes to the Revived Ethereal in the extension mod, reducing HP from 16 to 10 but the Legend variant has 12. The XP Kill Score has been reduced from 88.6 to 46.2 and the Direct XP Amount from 30 to 10.

I have also changed the abilities to mirror Avatars.

Please provide feedback about the changes.

I don’t think these changes are necessary with LWotC / Ted Jam.

If you would rather simply disable the reinforcement mechanic, use Stop Spamming Reinforcements! It has already been configured.

If you are interested in using A Harder War: Waterworld Ethereals (highly recommended), I would be mindful about its reported conflict with Golden Path Missions Revamp.

Rather Incoherent:
"If you are using A Harder War: Waterworld Ethereals and Golden Path Missions Revamp you need to open Golden Path’s XComEncounters.ini and comment out every section that adds new ‘EncounterBuckets’ for Waterworld. There should be 3 sets of bucket removal + bucket addition, the first one of which is around line 850."

Original instructions: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/2902795486/5704402939715963248