been playing TQAE on/off for a year or so, it's pretty great (minus the targeting cursor being hard to see).
Got to a new town, looked at the items and saw this (see attachment).

a new patch, even if it costs money? great! An old game getting some new life, no problem.
Having a 500+MB update that implements stuff into the game even if you didn't buy it just to say "you /could/ have this if you pay!"? Not so great. Modern day tactics to lure you into spending $$$, tainting a game from 'the golden days' (pre mtx/dlc/lootboxes/season passes).

The game has plenty without the new ragnarok items/stuff, sure. It's just annoying being taunted at every vendor being like "hey, buy the expansion!". I know it's not GOG's choice (I hope) to do this, but still. If it's in the game, let us have it. otherwise don't put it in the game until we buy+download+install the new content.

It's how the developers implemented the new DLC. Nothing GOG could do about it, really.

Same with having to complete the new act 5 every time to advance a difficulty level, if you actually do own the DLC. After playing through Ragnarok once, I never want to see it again, because it wasn't that great, and the voice acting is absolutely horrible.

Perhaps it is not too hard to mod away. I see what I can do.

Edit: doing it automatically seems fairly difficult, and doing it manually easy; but very long and tedious... Unless one wants to throw away also the legit updates.


Edit(2):
Among the files with references to xpack2 I copied back the v45 loot tables, removed the single hand throwing weapons reference to merchants, and copied back the old loot for a base game monsters. Feel free to try.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zTfKbiQCMxYzXLHB42e7T1rO3-ou-phm

Oh my. you did this :o thanks etb!

Too bad there is a new version already; (the v1.49 17085). If there is interest we can make something more community-friendly to keep it updated?

Edit:
I tried to be less approximate and here is what I see. By "bad update" I mean update that makes no apparent sense other than advertise Ragnarok. In partial defense of the company, it probably makes easier to share multiplayer games among players with and without the expansion.

There are about 450 database entries mentioning "xpack2" in v1.491(7085) that are not in v1.45.
- Some of them are easy-to-detect legit updates, like new UI.
- Some are bad updates, but easy to detect as follow simple patterns. Like to change from an old itemNames set to a new one; or only changes of loot chances, but adding only xpack2 items.
For this two, it is fairly easy. Just copy the old database entry, or keep the new one.

There are still about 200 database entries that should be manually checked, usually it is in the lines of merchants or containers that have the weight changed (so possibly a legit update) and xpack2 new items (so bad update). There is also a single base game creature with added xpack2 treasure.

About those, the bounce mod I did for v1.49 basically removes the one-hand throwing weapons to the merchants, copy back the old containers, and fix the creature.

You're right, that's a shame, even an insult to TitanQuest:
"see lesser player: TQ was a bad game because it did not included our DLC, TQ was so an incomplete game needing our work.".

Just looked at the pic. Disgusting. Rated TQAE 1star until its removed.

Playing through the Act. III (with v1.51) there are more and more enemies with Ragnarok weapons that the hero cannot pick up or see pressing Z. I clearly remember tigermen with chakram, but there were many more.

It is indeed of bad taste. Doubly so because obviously the game can distinguish between Ragnarok and non-Ragnarok items (as they do not show pressing X/Z), so it could also easily ignore them when checking the weapon tables if the player that created the game has no Ragnarok. The current behavior makes sense only in a game where the game creator has Ragnarok and a secondary player has not.


Are we sure nobody is interested in modding it away?