Hirki Plus Patch (H.P.P.)
Description
Hirki Plus Patch (H.P.P.) is a modular gameplay and balance patch for Heroes of Might and Magic III on VCMI, designed for use with Horn of the Abyss.
The patch focuses on making underused creatures, skills, spells, heroes, war machines, town buildings, and map interactions more practical and interesting while preserving the classic feel of Heroes III. Its changes are intentionally modular, so players can enable the parts they want and keep the rest of their setup close to the original game.
## A Modular Patch for Heroes III
Hirki Plus Patch expands selected systems rather than replacing the whole game. The main goal is to give more meaningful choices to the player: secondary skills should feel more rewarding to pick, creature abilities should better reflect the identity of their units, ranged combat should have a clearer economy, and narrow spells should gain more tactical value.
H.P.P. is built to work alongside Horn of the Abyss on VCMI and uses the content, factions, creatures, artifacts, spells, and gameplay systems provided by HotA as its foundation.
## Secondary Skills
Several secondary skills have been reworked or improved to make them more useful while keeping their original theme.
Sorcery now increases the hero's Spell Power during combat, serving as a direct Spell Power counterpart to Interference.
Estates provides daily gold income to each hero's owner and improves Marketplace exchange rates for the entire team, with Marketplace bonuses stacking across multiple Estates heroes.
First Aid preserves the First Aid Tent's creature maximum health bonus while improving Tent durability with stronger damage cap protection.
Navigation keeps its original water movement bonus and adds free ship boarding and disembarking, with remaining movement converted between land and water.
Mysticism keeps HotA-style spell point regeneration and adds Mystic Momentum, granting additional movement on the next day after successfully casting adventure-map control spells.
Scouting keeps its hero-only scouting radius bonus and adds Thieves' Guild access for the owning player and allies.
## Luck System
New Luck keeps the original Basic, Advanced, and Expert Luck values, but expands Luck into a broader gameplay system.
Positive Luck can grant or improve selected chance-based creature abilities, while negative Luck can reduce selected existing abilities. The system also includes reworked Fortune and Misfortune spells with reduced mana costs and a direct counter relationship.
Luck-based spell modules can also interact with selected defensive spells. Magic Mirror can work together with New Luck modules, allowing protected stacks to receive controlled bonuses or penalties to spell reflection chance when the relevant modules are enabled.
Pendant of Courage is adjusted to better fit this system: it becomes a relic-class artifact with increased value and grants +2 Luck and +2 Morale.
## Intelligence and Combat Mana
New Intelligence keeps HotA-style maximum mana scaling and adds a combat mana bonus during battle:
Basic Intelligence: +20% maximum mana and +5 combat mana.
Advanced Intelligence: +35% maximum mana and +10 combat mana.
Expert Intelligence: +50% maximum mana and +15 combat mana.
Selected magical, mystical, or knowledge-themed allied creatures can further support heroes with Intelligence by increasing their total combat mana. This support is based on army composition and stack size, while avoiding simple abuse from splitting the same creature into many stacks.
## Ranged Combat
New Ranged reshapes ranged combat through skill changes, spell support, shooter ammo economy, war machine adjustments, and selected artifact value polish.
Archery improves ranged damage and full-damage shooting range while supporting the reduced ammo economy with +1 / +3 / +5 total ammo at Basic, Advanced, and Expert levels.
Artillery preserves Ballista control, double-shot, and double-damage progression while adding protection against losing ranged war machines too quickly.
Archery and Artillery can work together, allowing Ballista and Cannon to receive controlled Archery bonuses when both skill modules are enabled and the hero has both skills.
Shooter Ammo creates a fixed baseline for shooter ammo across ranged creatures.
Ammo Cart replaces unlimited ammunition with a fixed +5 total ammo supply for allied ranged units during combat.
Precision gains additional ranged-combat utility at Advanced and Expert mastery.
Torosar is adjusted to better support his Ballista specialty.
## Spells
The spell package focuses on narrow or underused spells that can gain clearer tactical identity without losing their original role.
Mirth and Sorrow are reworked into stronger morale-control spells with reduced mana costs. Mirth protects affected units from ordinary Morale penalties, while Sorrow prevents ordinary Morale bonuses from raising affected units above its negative cap. The two spells remain direct counters to each other.
Slayer becomes a more practical anti-elite combat spell. Without Fire Magic, it keeps its original behavior. Basic Fire Magic expands it to all level 7 and higher creatures, Advanced Fire Magic allows repeated casts to stack on the same allied stack, and Expert Fire Magic turns it into a mass spell. The module also includes a HotA-like correction for Coronius, updating his Slayer specialty and description.
Magic Mirror becomes a more flexible defensive spell. Higher levels of Air Magic add a chance to resist hostile spells, while Expert Air Magic turns it into a mass spell.
Acid Burst adds a new level 4 Water Magic debuff spell designed for prolonged battles. Higher mastery levels strengthen its effects, ultimately affecting all enemy stacks.
## Heroes
Selected heroes receive clearer battlefield roles and more practical specialties.
Melodia becomes a Luck support hero with Basic Wisdom, Basic Luck, Fortune, and a specialty that grants +1 Luck while protecting her army from ordinary Luck penalties.
Roland is added as a regular playable Morale support hero with Basic Leadership, Basic Armorer, and a specialty that grants +1 Morale while protecting his army from ordinary Morale penalties.
### Specialist Starting Armies
The specialist army modules make creature-specialist heroes begin with a creature from their specialty in the first army slot. After retreating from battle, affected heroes return to the Tavern with 1 creature from their specialty instead of a level 1 creature from their faction.
The changes apply only to standard heroes specializing in creatures of tiers 3–6. Tier 1, 2 and 7 creature specialists and campaign heroes have been intentionally excluded.
The modules change only the composition and order of starting armies. They do not modify how hero specialties work.
## Creature Abilities
Creature-focused modules add new active abilities, unique creature spells, support spellcasting, and deeper battlefield roles to selected units.
Armadillos gain Stone Skin spellcasting for supporting allied units.
Efreets gain Protection from Fire spellcasting, with cast count and duration scaling by stack size.
Gunfighters gain Precision spellcasting for supporting allied shooters.
Priests gain restorative and support spellcasting through Cure and Bless.
Zombies gain a Death Ripple-like spell named Grave Ripple.
Cerberus gains Threefold Bite, an active focused-strike ability for a single-target triple-damage melee attack.
Hydras gain the Bloodwake chain, increased durability, and Pulse abilities that damage nearby enemies while applying persistent Speed and Defense reductions.
## Map Objects
The object package expands selected adventure map objects while preserving their original purpose whenever possible.
Creature Upgrade Objects add free thematic creature upgrades or transmutations to selected objects such as Magic Spring, Sanctuary, Swan Pond, Redwood Observatory, Faerie Ring, Mermaids, Pillar of Fire, Cover of Darkness, and Trailblazer. These rewards are tied to the object's normal visit logic and are designed as contextual progression bonuses rather than standalone recruitment.
Spit - Hydra Reward turns the Spit creature bank into a Fortress-flavored reward site that grants Hydras instead of gold while keeping its Basilisk guards, visuals, layout, terrain placement, and creature-bank role.
## Towns
The town package expands selected town buildings with additional thematic interactions while preserving the identity and role of each town whenever possible.
Elemental Ritual adds rituals to Mage Guild Level 3 in selected towns. Heroes can sacrifice complete Fire, Water, or Air creature sets in exchange for matching elemental Tomes and Orbs, while full sets also provide temporary magic-school support. Earth Magic and Necropolis are intentionally excluded for balance and theme reasons.
Resource Specialist Silos give rare-resource specialists a weekly reward from the visited Resource Silo, based on the resources produced by that town building.
Gold Specialist Halls give gold-focused heroes a weekly reward from the visited City Hall, with Lord Haart included as the only Estates-themed exception.
## Artifacts
The artifact package improves selected artifacts and artifact-related interactions while preserving their original theme and strategic role.
- Diplomatic Artifacts reworks Diplomat's Cloak, its components, Shackles of War, and related Diplomacy interactions. The completed cloak becomes a fused diplomatic relic, improves surrender economy, helps with neutral-creature diplomacy, acts on the adventure map like the Disguise spell at Expert level, and can neutralize Shackles of War in battles where fleeing or surrendering is normally available.
- Armageddon's Blade is reworked as a combination set made from six components. The components remain equipped and keep their own effects. Together, the completed set grants +10 to all primary skills, increases fire spell damage, protects allied creatures from fire spell damage, generates +1 sulfur per day, and allows heroes with a Spell Book to cast a special 0-mana Armageddon spell. A Spell Book is still required.
- Boots of Reinforcement add a new four-component Relic combination artifact assembled from Boots of Speed, Equestrian's Gloves, Wayfarer's Boots, and Angel Wings. All four components are consumed during assembly. The completed artifact removes additional movement penalties from rough terrain and allows heroes with a Spell Book to cast the custom Reinforcements spell once per day, exchanging already recruited creatures with an owned town. Fire Magic improves the spell with next-day land movement, town selection, and, at Expert mastery, full flying movement. Equestrian's Gloves are reclassified as a Major artifact, while Boots of Speed become a Relic.
- Golden Goose is reworked into a stronger economy set. Counting component effects, it increases the daily income of the bearer's owner by 5,250 gold. In addition, each hero on the team with Estates increases the daily income of the player controlling that hero by another 3,000 gold. The bearer also qualifies for this bonus, and bonuses from multiple Estates heroes stack. Its components are reclassified as Treasure, Minor, and Major artifacts, while Golden Goose remains a Relic.
- Cornucopia keeps its combined component income of +5 mercury, sulfur, crystal, and gems per day for the bearer's owner. In addition, each hero on the team with a rare-resource production specialty provides the player controlling that hero with +4 of every rare resource per day. The bearer also qualifies when they have such a specialty, and bonuses from multiple specialists stack.
## Compatibility and Localization
Hirki Plus Patch (H.P.P.) requires VCMI 1.7.4 or newer and depends on Horn of the Abyss. The mod was developed and tested for the VCMI 1.7.x line.
H.P.P. is built as a modular patch for HotA on VCMI, with individual submodules describing their own detailed mechanics, thresholds, values, and compatibility notes.
The Polish localization is written to stay close to the style and terminology of the classic Polish Heroes III translation where possible.
Version
1.3.1
Author
bew_
Contact
https://github.com/vcmi-mods/hirki-plus-patch/issues