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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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1. About The Wayfarer's Tome

2. Gameplay Changes From Heretic

3. Menu Options

4. New Stuff
     4.1. Sigil of Power
     4.2. Lightbringer

5. Credits


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1. About The Wayfarer's Tome
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The Wayfarer's Tome is a standalone gameplay mod that lets you use the gameplay rebalance from The Wayfarer with any standard Heretic map. Although the rebalance was designed primarily as a base for creating new maps, I've found it to be enjoyable with any well-designed Heretic map. Hopefully you will too!

How does it play with Heretic.wad?
Heretic has mixed quality when it comes to level design, and a gameplay mod isn't able to address all those issues. However, playing with the mod does improve the pace of the game and keeps the combat from dragging. I think it's worth playing Heretic with the mod, especially if you didn't like the game much in the past but want to give it another shot. E1 is super quick and breezy with all the fodder enemies, and the tougher maps in E3-E5 are generally more fun as well. E4M1 is still nonsense. If you play continuous, you'll often end up with enormous amounts of ammo and armor, so consider using Wand starts if you're looking for more of a challenge.

What do you recommend playing with the mod?
I've tested the following maps and mapsets with The Wayfarer's Tome, and I would highly recommend all of them (with or without the mod, but especially with).

-Elf Gets Pissed*
-Realm of Parthoris
-Curse of D'Sparil*
-Icebound
-Templum Dormiens Dei
-Dark Deity's Bastion
-Where Serpents Ever Dwell
-UnBeliever*
-Serpent's Wake
-Quest for the Crystal Skulls*
-Sold Soul*

*Requires a patch, which is included with the release. Load files in the following order: the mapset you're playing, then wtome_sa.pk3, then the patch. The patches are as follows:
-wtome_egp.wad: Elf Gets Pissed
-wtome_cod.wad: Curse of D'Sparil
-wtome_ub.wad: UnBeliever
-wtome_qcs: Quest for the Crystal Skulls
-wtome_ss: Sold Soul


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2. Changes From Heretic
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The Wayfarer's Tome adds a variety of mostly minor tweaks to Heretic, which are intended to make the gameplay smoother, improve the overall balance, fix a few weird design choices that could be considered features but are probably bugs, and so on. The main goal of these design changes is to make the game a bit more fast-paced and fun to play. The following is a complete list of changes.

Player Weapons:
-The Staff uses custom animations by OSJC that make it feel more like a weapon and less like a cattle prod.
-The Staff has a longer melee range.
-The Tomed Staff is significantly more powerful, and it now hits ghost enemies.
-The Gauntlets are slightly more powerful and are more likely to stunlock enemies.
-The Elven Wand's shot is now a bit more powerful. Both the un-Tomed and Tomed versions of the Wand fire slightly faster.
-The Ethereal Crossbow has been beefed up to feel more like a true shotgun weapon. It now has four side bolts instead of two, and the side bolts do more damage. To compensate, the weapon is slower to refire. The Tomed version does slightly more damage as well.
-The Hellstaff does slightly more damage with each shot, and its projectiles are now heat-seeking.
-The Hellstaff's animation is less jerky and more in line with the firing speed of the weapon.
-The Tomed Hellstaff's projectile rain lasts longer, and the rain projectiles no longer knock enemies back. This allows enemies to enter the storm, dramatically increasing the weapon's effectiveness. To compensate, the weapon now uses 10 ammo per shot instead of 5.
-The Tomed Phoenix Rod is more powerful to provide better compensation for its short range. It also has less knockback when it hits enemies.
-The range of the Tomed Phoenix Rod has been increased somewhat, though it is still a short-range weapon.
-The Tomed Phoenix Rod has had its attack behavior rewritten to eliminate the unpleasant hardcoding. It no longer transfers the player's momentum to the projectile (meaning that you can now aim and dodge at the same time), and it depletes ammo steadily over time instead of the wonky vanilla behavior where it depleted one ammo for each time you hold down fire and then forced the weapon to shut down periodically.
-Following RottKing's lead from Elf Gets Pissed, the Lightbringer has been added to the game as a slot 7 weapon. The Firemace hasn't been overwritten, so you will likely only see the Lightbringer if you're playing the mod with Elf Gets Pissed, but you can also cheat it in if you want.
-The Firemace spawns 100 percent of the time instead of 75 percent. It can also be placed at multiple locations in the same level, rather than randomly spawning in only one location. (Note: in the standalone mod, it still only appears in one location per map, as in vanilla, to avoid conflicting with the map design too much; however, it still appears 100 percent of the time).
-The Firemace does about 50 percent more damage. The damage of the main sphere projectiles has been increased, while the occasional larger splitting spheres are the same as before.
-The large Dragon Claw ammo orb now gives 30 ammo instead of 25.
-The brightness levels of various weapons have been customized/fixed. Most weapons use the set of custom brightmaps from Elf Gets Pissed. The Tomed Staff and Tomed Gauntlets are bright even when idle to reflect the electrical energy around them. All ammo pickups are now bright.

Artifacts:
-The Chaos Device no longer transfers between levels.
-You can now carry up to 25 Time Bombs of the Ancients, instead of the default maximum of 16.
-Time Bombs of the Ancients no longer count toward item percentage.
-The Torch lasts 45 seconds instead of 120 seconds.
-The Ring of Invulnerability and Chaos Device are now bright.
-The Morph Ovum uses custom brightmaps so that the electrical energy around the artifact is always bright.
-The Shadowsphere now makes the player immune to melee attacks from the Golem/Nitrogolem, Sabreclaw, and Undead Warrior.

Enemies:
-The Gargoyle fireball, Undead Warrior green axe, Weredragon fireball, both Ophidian projectiles, and the Maulotaur's small spreading fireballs all do slightly more damage. The Weredragon fireball and both Ophidian projectiles are slightly faster.
-The Maulotaur's ground crawler attack delivers damage a bit differently. In vanilla Heretic, a direct frontal hit does low damage, and the residual fire trail does massive damage. With the mod, a direct frontal hit does full damage, and the residual fire trail's damage is reduced a bit; it's still very powerful, but easier to tank a hit if you have armor.
-The Maulotaur's melee attack deals splash damage within a tight radius, significantly increasing the overall power of the attack.
-The Weredragon's melee attack does significantly more damage, and its melee range is a bit longer.
-The Weredragon has higher health (300 instead of 220) to help it function as more of a tank enemy.
-The weaker melee Gargoyle variant uses its charge attack slightly more often.
-The Nitrogolem and Undead Warrior have slightly less health (Note: the Nitrogolem Ghost and Undead Warrior Ghost still have the same health as in vanilla Heretic).
-The Ophidian and Maulotaur have less health.
-The Weredragon's fireball and contrail are now bright, and the Weredragon lights up when firing.
-The Disciple lights up during its attack windup and death.
-The Sabreclaw and Iron Lich light up during death.
-D'Sparil has received a number of brightness fixes to light up during frames when energy is crackling around him, including teleportation and death.
-D'Sparil's first form now has a pain chance of 25, like a Maulotaur. His second form has a pain chance of zero. This is primarily to keep him from being stunlocked by the Tomed Phoenix Rod.
-The Sabreclaw, Weredragon, and Ophidian have slightly higher mass.
-The Iron Lich has significantly higher mass.
-All Golem/Nitrogolem variants have slightly reduced speed.
-Gargoyles and Fire Gargoyles will no longer infight with each other.
-Golems, Golem Ghosts, Nitrogolems, and Nitrogolem Ghosts will no longer infight with each other.
-Enemies no longer infight with the Iron Lich.
-The Undead Warrior and Undead Warrior Ghost drop three Crossbow bolts instead of five.
-The Weredragon drops five Crossbow bolts instead of ten.
-The Ophidian drops one Phoenix Rod ammo instead of five.
-The Maulotaur drops a large Phoenix Rod ammo instead of a small one that somehow gives 10 ammo.
-The Sabreclaw is less likely to drop Hellstaff runes, and the dropped runes provide 10 ammo instead of 20.
-The Disciple now potentially drops the Sigil of Power instead of the Tome of Power.
-The Maulotaur's Mystic Urn drop is rarer (about 25 percent as likely as before).
-Ghost enemies and players using the Shadowsphere are now immune to the ice shards from the Iron Lich ice ball. Previously, they were immune to the ice ball but not the shards.
-The Fire Gargoyle and Weredragon's projectiles, and the Iron Lich's flame tower attack, now have the fire damage type. However, the Fire Gargoyle and Weredragon projectiles don't cause burn death.
-The Gargoyle/Fire Gargoyle and Weredragon melee attacks also now do fire damage.

Sounds:
-The sound "rolloff" range (the distance at which sounds begin to diminish in volume) has been increased to 200, as in Doom. Previously it was 0, which is why Heretic sounds so weirdly quiet. Sounds for the Iron Lich, Lesser Chaos Serpent, Phoenix Rod explosion, and Time Bomb of the Ancients explosion have a longer rolloff/max distance beyond the new default ranges. The scream from the Nitrogolem's projectile has a shorter rolloff/max distance so it doesn't get too annoying but you can still tell when it's coming at you.
-The Staff previously had a swinging sound built into its hit sound, and played nothing when it missed. Now, it plays a swinging sound whenever it is used, with a separate sound for impact.
-The Tomed Wand fire and Hellstaff fire sounds have been edited to sound more powerful.
-The Phoenix Rod fire and Phoenix Rod impact sounds have been replaced with more powerful sounds.
-The Gargoyle/Fire Gargoyle now has separate sounds for its regular and gib deaths.
-The Nitrogolem now plays sounds when it charges up and when it fires.
-The Fire Gargoyle, Nitrogolem, Disciple, Weredragon, Ophidian, Iron Lich, and Maulotaur projectiles now have impact sounds.

Graphics/Miscellaneous:
-Water flats now tile properly, without a sharp seam around the edges.
-Nearly all sprite fixes from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project are included.
-The widescreen status bar from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project is included.
-The colormap has been smoothed out a bit so things appear less flat at more light levels. This is particularly true for the red range, but minor changes have also been made to smooth out both brown ranges as well as the blue, pale green, and tan. A couple of obvious small mistakes in the original colormap have also been fixed (transitioning to a lighter color as something gets darker, or transitioning to the wrong color entirely).
-The player sprites have been redone from scratch for better quality and more appropriate sizing. Unlike the original Heretic player, the Wayfarer's Tome player looks like it is wearing pants.


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3. Menu Options
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The Wayfarer's Tome offers the following menu options, which can be found in the "Wayfarer's Tome Options" section at the bottom of GZDoom's main Options menu.

1) Lightbringer Replaces Firemace:
Replaces the Firemace with the Lightbringer, and replaces all Firemace ammo with equivalent Lightbringer ammo. Like the Firemace, the Lightbringer will spawn randomly in one of several map locations.

2) Wand Start Options:
Allows you to set Wand start preferences that will automatically apply when you progress to a new level. In addition to the standard Wand start, there is also a custom Crossbow start option. If you choose Crossbow starts, you will enter each subsequent map with an Ethereal Crossbow with 20 ammo and the Gauntlets of the Necromancer, in addition to the Elven Wand with 50 ammo. Note: the Crossbow Start only applies if you continue from a previous map, not to the start map of an episode or if you use the ENGAGE cheat to skip maps.


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4. New Stuff
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4.1. Sigil of Power (New Artifact)
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This item grants all of the same weapon powerups as the Tome of Power, but activates immediately on pickup and lasts for 15 seconds instead of 40. This helps to avoid imbalances that might be created by allowing the player to carry one of the game's most powerful artifacts into any situation they want.

In the standalone gameplay mod, the Sigil of Power only appears as a replacement for the Disciple's random Tome of Power drop.

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4.2. Lightbringer (New Weapon)
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This weapon fires bolts of magical light that pierce through multiple enemies and ricochet off of walls, making it very effective against large groups of foes or for dealing repeated damage to more powerful enemies in enclosed spaces. When Tomed, the weapon functions like a more intuitive BFG: it charges up and instantly hits enemies in the player's view with an array of tracer attacks, without the hassle of aiming a projectile.

By default, the Lightbringer does not replace the Firemace and won't appear during normal play, unless you are playing Elf Gets Pissed. However, you can use the "Lightbringer Replaces Firemace" menu setting to replace the Firemace, or you can use the "Rambo" cheat to get both the Lightbringer and the Firemace regardless of the menu setting.


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5. Credits
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-Balancing changes (weapons, items, monsters) by Not Jabba
-Sigil of Power by Not Jabba
-Lightbringer by Ghastly_dragon, Xaser, Zero Prophet, Neoworm, Eriance, and NeuralStunner; additional sound from Captain Toenail's Apotheosis
-Additional gameplay fixes and tweaks by RottKing
-Weapon sprite brightmaps, D'Sparil brightness fixes, and smoother Hellstaff animation by Spadger
-Staff animations by OSJC
-Sound edits by Xaser
-Phoenix Rod replacement sounds from Hexen 2
-Fixes for various stock sprites from the Heretic Minor Sprite Fixing Project by Revenant100
-Widescreen-friendly status bar by Neoworm
-Base KEYCONF by Kristus
-Pistol start script by JP LeBreton and DevilBlackDeath, modified by Not Jabba, with cleanup by Marisa Kirisame

Feel free to use anything from the mod -- just give proper credit.
