Deus Ex Mankind Divided MOD: Hardcore Revival

The MOD Hardcore Revival is a mod which tries to improve the gameplay of Deus Ex Mankind Divided.
This isn't a visual mod and so it doesn't change how the game looks visually.

The mod Hardcore Revival 1.023 for Deus Ex Mankind Divided

Here are the changes made by the version 1.023 of the mod Hardcore Revival to DXMD's gameplay :

	1) Items : - Effects changed for some items (Ex: Amount of energy recovered by the biocells). - Inventory mod: Size, stacking and price of the items changed. - The amount of spare parts needed to craft multitools, biocells, mine devices, thyphoon ammos,... - The blurred vision effects after drinking a beverage now last only 2.5 seconds. - Beers aren't put into the inventory anymore and consummed directly.
	2) Weapons : - The characteristics of the weapons have been changed (Damage, reloading time, recoil, rate of fire, range). - The weapons customizations (How many spares parts are needed and how much their capacities are improved). - The weapons mods (Scope, Silencer,...) : What bonus and malus they give to each firerarm. - The visual (text) stats of the weapons have been changed so they match the weapons' real characteristics (Now what you see is what you get). - The rare Cote d'Azur rifle is now a more powerful weapon.
	3) Augmentations : - The mod changes how many praxis are needed to enable Adam Jensen's augmentations. - A few major augmentations are now disabled at the start of the game but can be enabled later with praxis kits. - The rebreather augmentation now doesn't consume energy anymore. - The radar HUD doesn't display characters, turrets and robots anymore : It now just shows the environments, the objectives locations and if the zones are public or restricted. - The TESLA augmentation can now just eliminate 2 enemies at once (instead of 4, previously). - The player can stay invisible for a shorter time now and it is not possible anymore to do a takedown and stay invisible. - Takedowns use more energy and can only be done if the player is very close to the targets. - 2/3 of the energy bars now regenerates (instead of 1/4). - Each upgrade of the experimental augmentations add +50 to the overclocking.
	4) Experience points rewards : - No Xp rewards for winning or losing conversation battles, for knocking out or killing enemies NPCs, for hacking computers or consoles or for exploring secret areas (like airvents). Basically, play more like you want without being penalized.
	5) IA : - The characters react faster and some actions done by the player do more noise, making characters react more to what the player does.

More details about the mod

Hardcore Revival 1.023 is a complete inventory mod : All playable weapons and items have been modded, including the special EMP ammos and DLC weapons.
- A few items stack more but the powerful ammos tend to stack less and the weapons take slightly more inventory space.
- But there is an optional version of the mod where all the ammos stack up to 500 and items to 50.

For the weapons :

Their base stats and their maximized stats have been modded.
Some examples of the changes made :
- Fully customized, the revolver's magazine can now contain only 7 bullets (Instead of 17).
- Otar's custom Revolver is now a little bit more powerful and reflect its displayed stats.
- The mod changes the Côte d'Azur Combat Rifle (which was pretty useless) into a more powerful weapon.
- The Devastator Shotgun is a little more powerful now (Considering the Armor Piercing ammos for the Shotgun are rare).
- The Tranquilizer Rifle has now a better range so the player can use it to snipe the closest NPCs from the top of the Atrium in the Dubail prologue, altought now body shots make the characters react, unless it is a headshot (and so an instantaneous knockout).
- The Stun Gun's power has been nerfed : One Shot Knockouts are now only possible when the player manages to pull a headshot against characters who don't have a helmet. Characters who do have a helmet or are hit on the body will require 3 to 4 stun darts to be knocked out.
- The Elite Zenith Pistol's damage has been nerfed so it is equal to the normal version of the Elite Pistol.
- Customizing the Elite Combat Rifle and the Elite Revolver now requires a lots of spare parts (as fully upgraded, this weapon is very powerful).
- When equipped with a silencer, the Lancer Rifle's power has been nerfed : It isn't possible anymore to take armored enemies with a single body shot.
- EMP grenades and mines now slightly damage the player (Ndlr: Jensen has a synthetic heart), just like in DXHR.

For the AI changes :

- The mod makes the characters react faster to what the player does or to disturbances (noises, visual disturbances, etc...).
- Also, various actions done by the players and various items and objects now do more noise : For example, the noise radius for opening or closing doors, destroying air vents or breakable walls, the noise radius of bullets, frag and flashbang grenades and mines, silenced weapons, etc... do slightly more noise, making the characters who are not far from the player react.
- In addition to this, electronic devices now can only be hindered for a maximum of 8 seconds, whether the player uses EMP grenades/Mines, EMP bullets or the Tesla and Remote Hacking Augmentations.

For the augmentations :

- The radar augmentation doesn't display targets anymore (Which makes the smart vision augmentation necessary to detect enemies).
- The health regeneration augmentation is disabled but it can be enabled after the first visit to Koller, if you choose to spend praxis kits to enable it.
- The duration of FOCUS is now very short (as this aug was really overpowered) and it is mostly useful if used with rifles equipped with 4x scopes.
- Cloaking has been nerfed a lot as in the base game, it was possible to cross whole levels unchallenged, just by staying invisible (For example, at Garm).
- Takedowns (melee attacks) too have been nerfed : They are more difficult to pull, it is not possible anymore to stay invisible while doing them and it is necessary to be very close to the targets to do them. Oh and also their energy cost has been multiplied by two.
Basically, the takedowns are still very powerful but not so much overpowered as before and not always the best option to use.
- As for TESLA, this augmentation upgraded to the maximum was really making the game a walk in the park, so the mod decreases its power a little and make it "just" very powerful. Also, it is now the most costly augmentation.
- As contrary, the Sarif energy converter augmentation is now more powerful as 2/3 of the player's energy bar now recharges automatically (and not just 1/5).
- For the Chaff upgrade, when it is enabled now the grenades and mines explode after 5 seconds while they are located near the player (while without it, they explode after 2.5 seconds).
Originally, the delay added by this upgrade was 10 seconds, which was way too much and made playing with the grenades and mines items a nuisance.
Now this upgrade is finally useful.
The Remote Hacking Augmentation now requires more energy to hinder Turrets and Robots.

- More praxis kits are needed to unlock Jensen's best augmentations and upgrades.
That said, for most augmentations, the increased cost in praxis kits isn't that big, excepted for a few augmentations which break the game's difficulty (like the dissassembler augmentation added by one of Deus Ex Mankind Divided's DLCs).
Anyways, the mod makes it impossible to unlock all praxis kits in one playthrought so the players have to choose what augmentations they want to enable, depending on their playstyle.
To unlock everything and make Adam Jensen "complete", you will need to start a party with the New Game + mode.

- The overheating system is now a bigger factor in the main campaign as every time the player unlocks any upgrade of an experimental augmentation, +50 is added to the overclocking.
However, the maximum overheating is capped at +500, so to freely use experimental augmentations (with glitches, thought) and not lose 2 augmentation due to overheating, the player may have to disable 2 augmentations before Vaclav Koller fixes Jensen with the calibrator.

For the experience rewards :

Even if Deus Ex Mankind Divided is more balanced than Deus Ex Human Revolution, its gameplay still favors players who play stealthly, non-lethally and use the hacking augmentation.
The mod Hardcore Revival 1.023 tries to fix this by changing the amount of Xp received by the player.
A few examples below :
- The player now gets zero experience points for hacking, exploring air vents and eliminating enemies. But using passwords and codes still grant Xp points.
- You get the same amount of Xp whether you win or lose a conversation battle. Wannabe a Jackass like JC Denton ? Yes, you can (Now ;).

As for the level of difficulty : The Mod increases a little the game's difficulty, but don't worry, it won't make the game unplayable.
Far from it (It is still too easy IMHO :).

1) The mod increases the game's difficulty by making fighting and stealth a little bit harder :

To play without seeing any targets displayed on the wayfinder radar HUD minimap makes the game a bit more challenging as you can't see the enemy NPCs. Now the only way to know where hiding enemies are is to use the Smart Vision augmentation (but it's a costly augmentation) or to tag them with the Lidar Marking Tracker.
Starting the game without the health regeneration enabled also makes the game harder and if you enable it after the prologue, it costs 5 praxis kits (which you could have used to enable other augmentations).
As contrary, some experimental augmentations only require a few praxis kits to be enabled (to counterbalance the overclocking malus).
The characters also react very fast now and see from a bigger distance.
And since many actions done by the player and silenced weapons make more noise now, it increases the chance to be heard by enemies.

2) The game makes also the gameplay more challenging by altering the economy :

- Now, it is more complicated to get rich easily (You will have to "work" harder to get theses 4 praxis kits from Tars).

Here is how this was achieved :
- Common items and weapons are cheap, while rarer items and sellables items linked to the augmentations technology (like Neuropozyne, hydraulic micropump, stem processor ship, ect...) have a higher price.
- The hypo-stimjectors, painkillers, biocells and beverages recover less energy and health points : So you need to consume more of them (and so, you can't sell them ;).

- More spare parts are needed to craft items with the assembler augmentation and to customize weapons, so during combat your arsenal will be a little bit less scarce. That coupled with changes to weapons (including non-lethal ones) increases the game's challenge.
- The dissassembler augmentation which allow to break items into spare parts now costs 8 praxis kits. Not only did this augmentation broke the game's economy, it also broke the game's pace : After every fight with enemy NPCs, you would just have to drop your weapons out of the inventory, grab the enemies' weapons, break them into machine parts, take back your weapons and when in the Prague Hub, sell the parts to the black market merchants and get a tons of credits.
This is the reason why I made this experimental augmentation require so many praxis kits to be enabled : Because the advantage it gives to the player is way too big, plus it breaks the game's pace.

In summary, this mod makes the game a little bit harder mainly by balancing more its gameplay, by improving the IA and by incitating the player to do more choices.

Mod Hardcore Revival 1.23 (Showcase) :

Mod Hardcore Revival 1.0 (Original version of the mod)

This is a video presentation of the old version of the mod. It just changes the augmentations, limits the number of items which can be carried by the player (As contrary to the version 1.01 and 1.022 where the player can carry a lots more items), and it modifies the amounts of xp rewards the player receives when he completes missions and do various actions like knocking out npcs.

Download the MOD Hardcore Revival for Deus Ex Mankind Divided

Download the mod Hardcore Revival 1.023 on Nexus.

Download the mod Hardcore Revival 1.023 on Moddb.

NB : The installation instructions are contained in the mod's package.
The Mod Hardcore Revival for Deus Ex Mankind Divided works both with the Steam and Gog versions of the game.

Other page dedicated to modding Deus Ex Mankind Divided :

Tutorials to mod Deus Ex Mankind Divided (Texts and videos).

Return to the Deus Ex Mankind Divided Review page.