I am writing this after having spent some time playing around with modding axu.
Here is the save location: Users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Ravensong Games/Axu
It took me forever to find it, more so because I did not see it on https://cynapse077.itch.io/axu-rl for some time.
I suggest before you start modding to back up any save you want to keep, and extract a new copy of the game for modding.
Note that I am pretty certain this is covering 5.2 , which at the time of writing this a 5.3 has come out, so some things my not be the same.
In the folder that you extract the files to is Axu_Data , within that is StreamingAssets .
In side StreamingAssets is Data.
Data is basically your options menu for deciding what sort of modding you want to do.
Within each of the files below data are .json files, these can be edited in notepad or similar text editor. Remember if you use a text editor other then notepad to make sure the editor does not have tons of format code that will mess things up.
To make a profession you go to entity Data and open up profession.
Each profession starts with a { and ends with a }
Commas separate out each profession.
I recommend if you want to make a new profession to copy a pre-existing one and edit that. Make sure that the last profession does not end with a comma because I have done that many times.
The first profession I tried to make was the unstable, a ball of instability that is constantly morphing. My method was to give the unstable leprosy to remove limbs, and radiation blast to grow new ones.
Leprosy is a trait, and radiation blast is an ability. You can replace the pre-existing traits in the profession with the trait id you want. Same with abilities.
I was going to give the the unstable 3 random starting traits but it seems that the
Random traits of a mutant are hard coded rather then something in the profession data.
Otherwise the combination of leprosy and radiation blase almost worked, but leprosy works faster then radiation from radiation blast.
It seemed that you would lose one limb, before you would mutate once. That made it almost fast enough, but if your mutation did something other then grow a limb you would be doomed. Also unless you grow a head before it falls off you are doomed.
In addition I lost my off-hand and grew an extra hand, but sadly an extra hand can’t serve as a replacement for an off-hand.
That was when I tried to figure out a way to make radiation work faster.
I attempted making a radiation blast that would apply the effect "Radiate_Self" multiple times, however it seems that abilities can only have one effect.
I also tried making an ability that produces items so I could radiate myself, but I couldn’t figure out how.
A thing that would be a nice addition is more control over effects. Maybe if they had their own data file so that they could be modified at a numeric level.
After that I tried making a creature with 6 extra arms, 6 extra heads and 6 extra legs.
Turns out if you simply use the id for each trait it doesn’t add the body slot. I also set all stats starting values to 1.
This experiment also showed that speed changes not just movement speed but attack speed. I noticed this because my attacks did little but I got a large number of them quickly increasing my proficiencies far faster then normal.
While I am on the topic of proficiencies, I noticed that thrown and abilities level up with usage, but the other proficiencies and your main level only go up when used against an enemy. I am also not entirely sure how most of the stats work, or how damage for abilities is determined.