Post subject: Original Legacy of the Horadri... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are pleased to announce a new project by Quatl. The file should be available in a day or two; for now here is the mod description. Legacy of the Horadrim Mod Name:: Legacy of the Horadrim Mod Maker:: Quatl D2 Version: 1.10 final Introduction This ancient tome holds the alchemical secrets of the Horadrim. Its leather binding is cracked with age. The tome exudes a musty oder of rot. Below the crumbled seal of the horadrim, it's cover bears a partially visible inscription: "r.ths t..t li. he.ein, for th.y are th. las. legacy of the Horadr.m" Alchemical tradition stretches far into the darkness of history. Traditional alchemy harnesses the four physical elements: fire and water, earth and air. Alchemy can harness impressive powers from these elements and channel them to the will of man, but this is just a shadow of the true alchemy which Antyrael brought with him to earth from the heavens. True alchemy is a study of the hidden truths. Antyrael spoke to us of a fith essense, the very essense of identity. Herein lies that knowledge which Antyrael has bestowed upon us. Use this knowledge well, harness the quintessens to your will, and alter the very truth of the universe itself. The horadric cube facilitates the practice of alchemy most items must me specialy prepared to awaken their quintessense, and allow it to be directed. An awakened spectral elixer is used for this process. It's afinity to all five of the fundamental essenses reveals the quintessense withen an object. The awakening of a spectral elixer is dependant on the power of the one who awakens it. Thus as one grows in overall power they are able to create more potent transformations. Once the quintessense has been awakened withen an item it may be enhanced by use of alchemical reagents. Simply combining a reagent with an item in the cube will consume some amount of quintessense and alter the nature of the item in some way. Repeated aplications of a reagent are in most cases comulitive. one exception to this is the process involved in adding trigered spells to an item. This requires a number specialy prepared scrolls, empowered with the spell to be added. The power of the spell is controlled by adding one, two, or three scrolls at the same time in the cube repeated applications will increase the likelyhood of the spell being released. Details Legacy of the Horadrim is a mod for version 1.10 of Diablo II - Lord of Destruction. With a heavy emphasis on custom item creation and odd character concepts. Long term planning and resource harvesting are rewarded. Any item may be modified, limited only by character level and available gold. Highlights include: Custom Item Crafting - Unlock the forgoten secrets of Horadric Alchemy - Very flexible crafting system - Modify any item from Sets and Uniques to the lowly broken sword - Create your own powerful artifacts in your own style New socketing possibilities - Sockets are more common and more sockets per item at lower difficulties - Several new gems, and old gems properties have been altered - Jewels are more common - Unique jewels may be found in treasure, or via gambleing - Socketed items can be removed and reused in another item Wield the abilities of other classes to create a truly unique character concept. Spend gold, lots of gold. - So many things to spend money on that gold is never pointless. - Strategic spending becomes necessary and fun part of game play. _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most recent General Release is Beta 1.5A Download-->Legacy of the Horadrim<--Download http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=1421 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version Beta 1.5A Changes Masteries now Appear on the Tree - Passive and Mastery skills now appear on the skill trees for refrence | All of them are on the first skill page. | They will display the benifits you currently recieve from each mastery | you have added to the Tome. - The display is a bit odd, but functional. Bragging Rights - All crafted items now display the crafter's name Skill Repairs - Double Swing is functional, for Assassins and Barbarians | it's animation looks odd, but the dammage is correctly done from | both weapons. - Dodge, Avoid, and Evade should no longer cause crashes | for paladins who are useing two-handed weapons Skill Synergies - Skill synergies should now work properly Skill Caps Return - The level 20 cap per skill is back, and working Save files Broken - This release breaks some (most) character save files ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version Beta 1.5 Changes Crafted Effect Skills Removed - All recipies for adding event skills and charges removed. | as in " X% chance to cast SomeSpell on hit" and similar | Many of these didn't work properly | Those that did were either too weak or too powerful | Bascialy a pointless feature, that sounded cool Minor String Change - The Tome's total skill bonus now now reads "Kowledge Level" | just a cosmetic change Major Behind the Scenes Changes - Many non-functional elements of the mod were purged from the files | All things left over from failed experiments, or old implementations | Mostly unused strings, etc. | Look out for "an Evil Force" let me know if you see it anywhere Non-Functional Items and Modifiers Removed - Includeing things like "+X to Sorceress Skills", and "staff mod" skills | which look like specific skill bonus, but are created from class lists | as well as + to skill tabs | These modifiers no longer worked anyway. - Class specific items other than claws should no longer drop | Sorry if you have one already. It may or may not become unusable | Uniques and sets based on these types should not drop either ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version Beta 1.4G Changes Skill Scrolls are Functional Again - This was caused by me forgetting to save the files Item Enchanting Updates - Alchemical Enhancement has been simplified | To Alchemicaly Enhance an item simply Cube it with a Spectral Elixer | Quintessence will be added acording to character level | The description of the Spectral Elixer has been updated - Quintessence availible, by level has been reduced | This does not effect any items you've already enchanted - The procedure for useing Reagents is unchanged ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version Beta 1.4F Changes Crash Bug Fixed: - Quest related cube recipies should no longer crash the game. | This effected Khalim's Will, The Horardic Staff, and Cow Portal - This Fix breaks the per skill level caps on the tome. (v1.4E) - Thank you, Jounk33 for reporting this Skill Updates: - Double Swing now works for assassin | Frenzy should work for her too, but hasn't been checked - Dodge has been tested with several classes ( should work for everyone) | Avoid and Evade should work as well (not confirmed) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version Beta 1.4E Changes English language is now forced: - This should make instalation simpler on non-english instalations | You should no longer need to rename the DATA\local\LNG\ENG directory | (If you have been doing this, don't. Let me know if this works. I can't test it.) First pass on Gem properity modification: - Gems generaly toned down. | Most damage adds were reduced | Thorns from gems are much weaker | Gems granting Elemental resistances, are reduced in effectiveness. | Single leach gems,leach less life or mana - Skulls now add Magic Damage instead of dual leach Some Disfunctional Skills Have Recieved Therapy: - Assassin traps should now work by all classes | Druid's Arctic Blast should work too. Skill restrictions: - Some classes are now not allowed to add certain skills to the Tome - The scroll descriptions have not been updated to reflect this (yet) | bar.Double Throw -> Alowed for Barbarian only | bar.Double Swing -> Allowed for Barbarian/Assassin only | bar.Frenzy -> Allowed for Barbarian/Assassin only | ass.Claw Mastery -> Allowed for Assassin Only | ass.Weapon Block -> Allowed for Assassin Only | ass.Fists of Fire -> Allowed for Assassin Only | ass.Dragon Claw -> Allowed for Assassin Only | ass.Claws of Thunder -> Allowed for Assassin Only | ass.Blades of Ice -> Allowed for Assassin Only - Some of these restrictions may change later | particularly skills that require claws The following Skills are of High Concern: - Either because of things I've heard or how they look in the texts | ama.Dodge | ama.Avoid | ama.Evade | pal.Smite | bar.Leap Attack | ass.Dragon Talon | ass.Cobra Strike | ass.Dragon Tail | ass.Dragon Flight | ass.Pheonix Strike | And all druid elemental skills - If anyone has tested these please let me know if they work | or not. This would save me alot of testing time Tome Skills are Now Caped to Level 20 (Each) - This is a per skill limit, you can have more than 20 diferent skills | but you can no longer have Level 36 fire bolt from the tome alone. | Attempting to add the 21st point of each skill should return the scroll | and Tome unchanged. ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ok... i tried a clean install , patch to 1.10(final) , install loth then copy and install mod .....starting screen = v1.10 d2modsystem 1.02 plugy 3.02....all good sofar... then the four new characters barbazon assyn etc.. but they all come up with "bad inventory cannot enter game" ????? other mods work on my system ....im out of ideas --------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- check the shops, most of the obvious changes are in them for now. Only the spectral elixer is gambled for (the item that lets you begin enchanting an item) the reagents are for sale in different places in different towns (usualy who ever offers repairs), in act 1 charsi has them on the "misc" tab. The skill scrolls are usualy on the gambler's misc tab(they also drop as treasure). Most of the other changes are subtle, some dungeons are bigger, hirelings are a bit more effective, the player classes are less different in their hidden stats. --Quatl --------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I also see no changes in the shops. I installed as the directions say, and run it via the link provided, with one alteration, instead of "/mod:LotH" I use "-mod LotH". It seems there is something missing, like the loth config file maybe? Malachai EDIT: Ok, I got it to run, after deleting the saved characters, by renaming d2mod.ini to loth.ini, but still dont see any changes in the shops, and my starting gear as a druid is a club and a shield, pots, tp and id scroll. I dunno if everything is getting loaded or not at this point... ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, clearly there is something severly wrong with 1.2 I've posted a (temporary) link http://www.box.net/public/n0dke6tdkr to the new version hopefuly this version will work properly. Hopefuly this will fix the problems. I'd recomend completely removeing the old version, before seting this one up just in case. If the game wasn't reading the new data files your characters are missing items that they should have started with (the Horadric Tome and Cube.) Although you could pass these from a new character via the shared stash. Edit:I just did the install myself from the new archive and it seams to work on my system, please let me know if you still have problems --Quatl ----------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm glad it's working now @cj: What type of item were you mixing the hit recovery with? a body armor, helm, boots or which? I kinda like never haveing enough money, it makes those "useless" rare drops feel usefull:) With vanilla I always ended up with too much gold and nothing good to spend it on. About the shortcut thing, windows gets cranky if you try to make an invalid shortcut. I just figured out right now that I could just copy the file just long enough to make the shortcut for the archive, I'm slow sometimes;) I'll set it up nice for next version. Reguarding balance, I'll likely be rebalanceing the monsters to make them slightly tougher at some point. When the cash starts really flowing at higher levels all the extra stuff makes it a bit too easy in my opinion. Especialy if you're aggressive about enchanting your hirelings equipment. --Quatl ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello QUATL! Great concept to a mod! finally! Let me congratulate u for the ideia and for your work! I?ve playing Diablo2 LOD since the begining. and the mods since patch 1.09 release, and finally a mod that reflets my own ideias of what I really like in a mod! the addictable skills to an item (a book) and the item customize formulas! Ok. Some instalation issue that maybe u could help: After the installing, I run the game and it does not assume the plugY. I?ve to install - by my hand - the complete plugy (version 7.01)in the DIABLO 2 folder and in the LotH folder, to work. I?ve done the install think just like it?s written in the readme. file. No others mods in the D2 folder and I used 1.10 clean files. What?s wrong here? OK, now the skill bugs: To u already know what skills are bugged to the other classes? I?m testing it for my own and i?ll share with u. So far: Artic Blast - bugged(character dissapear during the action) BARB Leap Attack - bugged (character dissapear while jumping) BARB Leap - works fine! BARBARIAN and ASSASSIN double weapon skills don?t work with other classes and maybe U sould remove it... it?s not usefull and it takes room 1 to 6Lv skills- Necro/Druid/Amaz skills work?s just fine. 12 to 18Lv skills- Pal/Sorc/ Barb warcryes work without voice sound - good to all classes and for the ladies. Amaz "strafe" - makes a the female sound with the other classes. Necro sommons and curses - working fine. I will Keep in touch. Keep up your good work. Don?t give it up! ----------------------------------------------- i used it with body armor....mind you it was a rare to begin with and already had a few potions used on it, then i noticed another one (cant remember which now) that was for armor or jewelry and i tried it on rings and amulet ... nothing. seems every now and then theres a potion that does not agree with an item are the potions depending on level or specific item levels ? also notice no tricubing gems etc... did u remove this for a reason? what is the maximum skills versus levels in the horadrim ?? (only asking for character planning) how many item stats can there be on one item using the potions? (this might sort out the first question ) lastly theres a hammer for destroying socket contents....is there any way of creating sockets? ------------------------------------------ Thanks for the enchouragement I've needed some This mod was sitting on my harddrive for about a year, in pretty much the same state it's in now. The tome had me frustrated (still does) so I set it aside for a while ... the while ended up being a year. I ran across it the other week and thought I should just blow the dust bunnies off of it and let people see it, and hpefuly enjoy it dispite it's imperfect state. --Quatl ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cj wrote (View Post): i used it with body armor....mind you it was a rare to begin with and already had a few potions used on it, then i noticed another one (cant remember which now) that was for armor or jewelry and i tried it on rings and amulet ... nothing. seems every now and then theres a potion that does not agree with an item are the potions depending on level or specific item levels ? The only restrictions for reagent mixing should be the quintessence cost, and the item type. Unfortuneatly the item type can be problematic. I don't know how familiar you are with D2 modding (if at all), but there are issues with equivelent item types sometimes that mess things up. For example +duribility should work on all objects of type weapon, except for sub-types combination (javilins and such), and thrown. If I set up the recipe for weapon it sometimes wont work on anything. I asume because it's invalid for some subtype, but I don't really know this to be true. Other times it will work on some of the subtypes but not others in weird ways (like not working for axes but working for swords.) I don't realy know how to predict these issues, so I'm fixing them as I go along at this point. The way I fix them is to "unroll" the item types so if an armor recipe is not working I create 5 extra recipies (torso,helm,belt,shield,glove,boot.) Which makes the file larger (I'm not sure how much I need to worry about this, I don't know what limits there are if any. The file that controls the cube is already 8300, lines in the mod, if there's a limit I'll probly find it) When I made the mod at first I didn't know this, so some recipes are still cranky. Thanks for the info I'll take a closer look at the (armor or jewelry) type reagents. cj wrote (View Post): also notice no tricubing gems etc... did u remove this for a reason? Yes, and yes; I removed them because the gems are availible for sale, and things get out of hand rapidly. I may in a future version add it back in. I've been concidereing various options for rebalanceing gems anyway, especialy in comparison to reagents. If gems go back to treasure drops only, the tri-cubeing will likely return. cj wrote (View Post): what is the maximum skills versus levels in the horadrim ?? (only asking for character planning) The max for skill totals is unchanged, I believe its 20 for inate skill points, and a total bonus of 30. This may change later, after I see what hapens with the mod in hell difficulty. cj wrote (View Post): how many item stats can there be on one item using the potions? (this might sort out the first question ) There is no "hard" limit for how many properties you can add, but... I read a post once that said that if you had too many mods on an item for it to be displayed on screen the game would crash. I've never seen this happen but then I've never had an item with that many mods on it. I'd recomend keeping the number of different modifier types below 15 or so, if you're worried about it. Because of the way the cube works I'll never be able to restrict this. So I'm hopeing it's not true. cj wrote (View Post): lastly theres a hammer for destroying socket contents....is there any way of creating sockets? the hammer will actualy pop the gems etc, out of the sockets so you can reuse them (if it says destroy in the discription, I should fix that they used work that way) As for adding sockets, there is not currently a way to do this. I do plan to implement recipes for this eventualy (I do have some recipies for it but they are disabled for the moment as they were acting strange) --Quatl ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quatl: Question about the scrolls we combine with the tome. I have found quite a few so far, well, not that many, but enough to start noticing a difference in the way they are titled. When my necro combines ones that have necro in the title, they appear on the tome as necro only. My question here is this, is this going to be true of every scroll that has the class name in the title, or can any class use any scroll? I have a couple amazonian scrolls, but I also have a scroll titled Holy Text that gives Blessed Aim. I have not tried to combine any of these as I dont want to lose the ability to use my tome, but did find that scrolls that say Eastern Treatise (sorc scrolls) are great, my necro has a point in warmth! Malachai _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any character can combine any scroll with the tome as of now. The mod will automaticaly assign it as a class skill if it is from your class, or as a non-class skill if it's from another class. The names are just to add a bit of flavor. This behavior is a workaround for one of the anoying things about the non-class skill item modifier The only "bad" consequence method is that tomes with skills in them are not completely transferible between classes. Certain skills do not work properly with all classes, currently the mod will let you add them anyway. Yopurzag posted some of these a bit higher up in this thread. Most are obvious though, only the barbarian and assasin can dual weild for example so those skills won't work for a sorceress. Some techniqly work but are lame for other classes, the assasin's martial arts for example are pointless without claws. Nearly every skill seems to work, most "spell" type effects do (there are issued with some druid ones), and most passives seem fine too (except claw mastery as non-assasins can't use them.) Every summon I've tried so far has been fine. (a palidin with druid pets, and some weapon mastery is truely sick if made right, almost boreing ) This will be fixed eventualy. But I'm still trying to fix the other tome problem first. (the musical level requirement problems) I'm pretty sure that the way tomes are built in the cube is going to have to change completely to fix this issue. Keep in mind that the level req for the tome will "jump" when adding a non-class skill of a certain level for the first time. the tome repair crystals only work in the specific case that you have a total bonus count equal or higher than the highest teir level of non-class skill in the tome. (for example a level one non-class skill will jump the level requirement by 6, a level 6 will jump it by 12 etc.) This is the problem that's been making me pull my hair out If you manage to completely mess up a tomes level req (I've done it myself a few times) you can always drop your tome, and pass a new one from a fresh temporary character via the shared stash and them delete the new character. If you only use skills from your own class the tome will work fine, but that's boreing so ... The best way to prevent problems is to follow this roughly: for the first 7 levels only add skills from your own class from 8-13 you can add level 1 skills from other classes (useing the repair formula for level 6 first) from 14-19 you can add level 6 skills from other classes (useing the repair formula for level 12) etc for each teir you can of course use your own class skills mixed in there, it's the non-class ones that make things really anoying. --Quatl _______________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HI Quatl Maybe you can talk to Mirhginoc about the tome issues. It seems he know?s a lot about technical stuff of the game, and general mod making, and maybe he could help. The martial arts skills - the kicks - don?t work so well with other classes. The Amazon doing the fire kick spends an eternity - real slow motion! There are something more: the weapons have different attack speed, depending on class, so several skills can become really clumsy and slow, like the Paladin trying to FEND with a big spear. What is the skill limit in the Tome? for the same skill and for the number of different skills in general... Do you intent to put a limit on the number of diferent skills you can put in the Tome? I thing with a limit of the adiccionable skills (maybe 10 or 15) the Tome gains a strategic flavor and makes u to choose well what kind of skills do you really need. Maybe people will ask for a recipe to erase a skill from the Tome, then. But this must be very difficult to achieve. -------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yopurzag wrote (View Post): HI Quatl Maybe you can talk to Mirhginoc about the tome issues. It seems he know?s a lot about technical stuff of the game, and general mod making, and maybe he could help. I should probly make a post about it again in the mod makeing forum. I've been thinking about various options recently for a new aproach. Yopurzag wrote (View Post): The martial arts skills - the kicks - don?t work so well with other classes. The Amazon doing the fire kick spends an eternity - real slow motion! There are something more: the weapons have different attack speed, depending on class, so several skills can become really clumsy and slow, like the Paladin trying to FEND with a big spear. I've noticed the bit with weapon speeds. I'm not sure where these speeds come from. Thoughts about trying to unify weapon type speeds across classes have floated through my head from time to time. Ultimately I'd like there to be as little difference between classes as possible. I know it sounds weird for a diablo 2 mod but the whole class thing has always felt stale to me personaly. I'd much prefer a system that allows more player choice to do what they want. Yopurzag wrote (View Post): What is the skill limit in the Tome? for the same skill and for the number of different skills in general... Do you intent to put a limit on the number of diferent skills you can put in the Tome? I thing with a limit of the adiccionable skills (maybe 10 or 15) the Tome gains a strategic flavor and makes u to choose well what kind of skills do you really need. There is no hard limits on the tome at all. The level requirements are the only thing that limits it. I think that there is a limit on the total combined skill bonus (that is your inate skill from skill points, plus any item skill bonus) you can have per-skill in the game. I believe I heard the number 30 ... but I don't remember where, or from whom so this may not be reliable. I don't intend to limit it, as it would be against the "spirit" of the mod. (What I really wanted originaly was to have the player be able to pick one skill per level from any skill in the game.) For another mod though I would agree about limits, I see the strategy being in makeing up your own "class". What ever combination of abilities you think sounds fun to play. Yopurzag wrote (View Post): Maybe people will ask for a recipe to erase a skill from the Tome, then. But this must be very difficult to achieve. It's actualy not "hard" just time consumeing ... it would take about 1400 recipies I think. This is certainly doable, but I definately don't want to do anything this involved before the tome's mechanics are finalized. As it stands it is looking like the tome will have to be redesigned completely (not in terms of effect so much as the methods behind it.) A recipe to wipe the tome completely might be a good idea in the mean time. Especialy concidering how easy it is to mess up the level req. It would suck if you had a lot of gold invested but it would be less meta-game like than passing a new tome useing the shared stash. --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am having the same PlugY problem reported earlier. I can get PlugY to run fine without this mod, but when I have everything set up how the ReadMe.txt states, PlugY never loads. Note on Installation in Readme though: It says to set both Starting and Target to ~/LotH, which I assume is a mistake since ~/LotH doesn't contain Diablo II.exe. I've tried a few other things to get PlugY to work as well. The previous poster with this problem wrote that they installed the most recent PlugY in the root and /LotH directories and it worked. This doesn't work for me. I have also tried running the mod through PlugY, but the entire mod doesn't seem to load properly even though the PlugY.log states it loaded D2Mod.dll. Also noted that PlugY.log isn't generating when PlugY fails to load with normal installation. Otherwise, I'm having fun playing the mod =) ------------------------------------------------------------ Quatl wrote (View Post): I've noticed the bit with weapon speeds. I'm not sure where these speeds come from. Thoughts about trying to unify weapon type speeds across classes have floated through my head from time to time. Ultimately I'd like there to be as little difference between classes as possible. I know it sounds weird for a diablo 2 mod but the whole class thing has always felt stale to me personaly. I'd much prefer a system that allows more player choice to do what they want. That difference comes mainly from the animation files. The base animation has a certain number of frames which is equal to the speed you get with a WSM 0 weapon with 0 additional IAS. e.g. the Asn claw strike has an animation length of 13 frames while her other 1h attacks have an animation length of 14 frames. The base animation length also determines the max speed as the EIAS you can get from anywhere is capped. The Amazon animation for a spear attack has a different number of frames than the Pally one. To get the same attack speed across classes you have to make the animations the same length or adjust the base speed of that animation. If you do the second one, additional IAS will give slightly different benefits (if you increase the base speed IAS has less effect, if you slow it down, it has more effect). A good discussion about how the animation lenght and the attack speed work together can be found here (the same principle applies to all other actions like casting, blocking, ... as well). You'll have to scroll down a couple of pages to get to the interesting posts on how the animation speed translates into the attack speed. http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=229326 Hope it's not against TOS to post the direct link. That thread doesn't have any info on how to modify the animations, but you should be able to find that here in the modding section. ------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @kmwill23: I'm not sure what causes this, all the dlls should work in the loth dir. Try the mod installed as directed except: (I'm assumeing you have a fully clean v1.10 install here) move d2mod.dll and D2ModSetup.bat to the D2 dir run D2ModSetup.bat this will "hook" d2gfx.dll to load D2Mod (you can run D2ModSetup.bat again to un-hook it) It's possible that I'm confused, as it's been along time since i started useing d2mod. It may be that I already had the dll hooked for d2mod before I started makeing the mod. If this works for you then I'll have to update the install directions a bit. Plugy should be loaded from d2mod rather than the otherway around, if you're useing the versions included in the archive. If you are useing a newer version of plugy then the load order is up to you (but I don't suport it, because I'm not useing it and so I don't really know about it .) Thanks for pointing out the bit about the readme, you're right the start in should point at the [D2]\LotH directory, and the target should be [D2]. I'll have to fix that. ---------------------------------------- On another note; I've got a new lead on fixing the tome, If it works there will be good news and bad news. As is tradition, first the good news: The tome will not have weird level req behavior The tome will allow selection of any skill with the level unchanged --as in, a necro could add warmth as a level 1 skill rather than as level 6. This would make it even easier to add new skills to the game in a coherant way The good-or-bad-simi-nutural news: The skill system would be completely in the Tome The skill tree would cease to exist, along with prereq skills and such This would free up the skill tree pages for someother purpose --most likely as online help pages Synergies would stop working untill I had a chance to rebuild them. --Although in doing this I'd likely make them more sensible --and un-bind them from class, cross class synergies could get interestinig The bad news for you all: All characters would be invalidated, all current saves would not work. The bad news for me It's alot of work, so it would be a while before the next release. I havn't completely made up my mind yet about this, but it will probly be the way I'm going. How do you guys feel about this? Do you have any sugestions, or complaints? --Quatl ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like the idea of morfing the skill trees as we know it. And I agree with most changes U write, Quatl. But I,ve a suggestion: Making a passive weapon mastery tree for all classes. Making an elemental and poison passive tree (to raise Light/fire/cold/poison/magic damage)?to all classes. Making - maybe- a sommon passive tree - i?m not sure Making a special scroll types for both trees. The scrolls can be found only by monster drops... as rare items. All tree sould have upper Lv req. starting on level 30 - maybe - to the usefull to the further game playing (NM and HL). Gain skill by leveling up? No way. To gain a skill point, combine a passive scroll with one or more components (i don?t know what it could be) to make a book of skill (like Radament drop). Use the book skill to raise te skills in the trees. another thing: NO sinergies... regular skills will be boosted with passive tree skills, or - the alternative - with STR/DEX/EN/VIT status. One more ideia: Create a special dungeon/area on each act, with special boosted monsters: Reagents and passive scrolls have bigger drop rate there, according to the act and the level requirements to make a successfull clean on those areas. Maybe is a real hard working move... maybe don?t feat in this mod... but that?s my contribution. I?ve some ideas but I don?t have time, and I don?t know how to do it. Maybe u "can put that a good use" Good weekend for all! ---------------------------------- @kmwill23:Thanks for leting me know, I'll update the readme @Yopurzag: Some interesting ideas in there. The reason the skill trees have to go has to do with some obnoxious hard codeing in the game. That said new pasive skills are a good idea for replaceing or suplementing synergies. Binding skills to stats more intamately has some apeal. your idea about treasure based only skills is similar to another idea I had, I had pictured them as "Unique" skill scrolls. Only droped by dangerous critters giveing skills that couldn't be had anyother way. Something like this may end up hapening, far down the road. -------------------------In Other News-------------------------- I've been experimenting/thinking more with the changes I was talking about in my last post. It seems like the idea will work, so I've started implementing the basics. I have a new problem, that is there are too many skills between all the classes. It's a display problem though thankfuly. The game can only read 128 unique skill icon sets (little pics on the speed bar and on the skill trees.) So I have to consolidate some, and/or ditch some skills. I need to remove about 70 or so. A complication is that the only place you will be able to see your skills is on the speed bar menu (ya know when you click the left or right mouse skill buttons and all the icons pop up.) This could very easily get confuseing if too many are the same. I did find a way to display more rows of icons, so it should be possible to show 60 or so skills at once. which I think should be enough for any reasonable build, especialy concidering you wont have to put skill points in things just to "climb the tree." I'm leaning towards some kind of useage based Icon system where certain skills share the same icon based on how they are used. Perhaps something like: Primary melee (not sure what this means) Secondary Melee (also not sure) (for spells posibly also by element like fire single target, cold single target...) Spell, Single target damage Spell, Area Damage Spell, nova Damage Spell, Nova Buff (like barb cries) Spell, Nova de-buff (barb cries, some assasin stuff) Weaponlike Ranged (arrows, assasin bombs) Physical Passive (barb resist, ironskin etc) Magical Passive (sorc masteries, summon masteries) Summon Minor (skelletons, wolves, birds...) Summon Major (golems, bears, ...) Defensive aura Offensive Aura etc ... Any thoughts would be helpful. If you have a better scheme that's good too To sumerise since I'm talking too much again 1. I can only have 128 total Icons, but I have 190someodd 2. I can show 60 or so icons, but characters should need less skills than this includeing passives. Do you think this is not true? 3. What do you think about how to break the shared icons up? What would be the least confuseing way for you? --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's some more thinking out loud, about skills: Primary melee ama.jab (spear) [redundant w barb] [tree climber] ama.impale (spear) [redundant w barb] ama.fend (spear) [redundant w pal.zeal] pal.zeal pal.vengance (multi element) bar.double swing [tree climber][only barb(perhapse assasin w claws anyone confirm?] bar.concentrate [Don't really use, anyone like it?] bar.Frenzy bar.berserk [never used it much, any hints?] Secondary Melee ama.power strike (elec/spear) ama.charged strike (elec/spear) ama.lightning strike (elec/jav) pal.sacrifice [?redundant w barb?] [tree climber] pal.smite (shield) [?redundant w charge?] pal.charge (shield) pal.conversion [not sure where this should go] bar.bash [tree climber] bar.stun [tree climber] [lame] Weaponlike Ranged ama.magic arrow (mag/bow) [?tree climber?] ama.fire arrow (fire/bow) ama.cold arow (ice/bow) ama.quided arrow(bow) ama.poison javelin (tox/jav) [tree climber] ama.lightning bolt (elec/jav) bar.double throw [tree climber] [may be cool w amazon stuff... not sure] Assasin only martial arts [these are problematic] [basicaly only work with assasins] [its possible these could be made to work with all mele weapons] [if not they should probly just get removed] ass.dragon tallon (finisher) ass.dragon claw (finisher/ dual-claw only) ass.dragon tail (finisher) ass.dragon flight (finisher) ass.tiger strike (charge) ass.fists of fire (fire/charge) ass.cobra strike (drain/charge) ass.claws of thunder (elec/charge) ass.blades of ice (ice/charge) ass.pheonix strike (multi element/charge) Druid were-stuff ( anyone tested these with other classes?) dru.werewolf (wolf) dru.werebear (bear) [the were attacks are here too as they only work while transformed] dru.Ferral rage (wolf/attack charge) dru.maul (bear /attack charge) dru.rabies (wolf/bear attack) dru.fire claws (wolf/bear fire) dru.hunger (wolf/bear? can't remember for some reason) dru.shockwave (bear nova) dru.fury (wolf) [redundant w barb.frenzy/pal.zeal] weapon like ranged area ama.explodeing arrow (bow) ama.imolation arrow (fire/bow) ama.freezing arrow (Ice/bow) ama.plague javelin (tox/jav) ama.lightning fury (elec/jav) bar.leap attack [simi lame/ teleport is more versitile and less buggy] bar.whirlwind [may be over powered] Spell, Single target damage nec.bone spear nec.bone spirit pal.holy bolt (or single target buff?) [does anyone actualy use this?] sor.firebolt (fire) [tree climber] sor.ice bolt (ice) [?redundant w ice blast?] [tree climber] sor.ice blast (ice) [tree climber] ass.psychic hammer [mostly-lame, is unique in that it doesn't hit targs between] ass.mind blast [not popular with me ... you? Spell, multi target damage ama.teeth (physical or magical ... have to loo it up) ana.multiple shot [simi redundant w strafe] pal.blessed hammer [another one that I don't like anyone use this thing?] sor.inferno (lame, anyone use?] sor.Charged bolt (elec) [iffy] sor.chain lightning (elec) ass.blade fury [lame] dru.firestorm (fire) [all the worst qualities of inferno and charged bolt in one!] dru.molten boulder (fire) [lame when sorc skills are an option] dru.arctic blast [lame and doesn't work for non-druids] dru.twister [never used it] Spell, Area Damage nec.corpse explosion nec.poison explosion (tox) sor.fireball (fire) sor.meteor (fire) [hard to use, simi-lame concidering other options] sor.Lightning (elec) sor.Glacial spike (ice) [tree climber, but i like it] sor.blizzard (ice) [as meteor] ass.fire blast (fire) [simi-unique as it travels over enemies] dru.fisure (fire) [never used it] Spell, nova Damage nec.poison nova (tox) ama.strafe (bow) pal.fist of the heavens (elec+holy) sor.Static Field (elec) [manages to be both too good and too crapy at once] sor.Nova (elec) [lame in the long run, ?elevate and make cool?] sor.frost nova (ice) sor.Frozen Orb (ice) [BROKEN:does any sorc not use this (no that's not a complement)] bar.warcry [I suspect this may be pointless but ...] Spell, Nova Buff bar.Shout bar.battle orders Spell, Nova de-buff ama.inner sight ama.slow missiles [kinda worthless anyone like this one] bar.howl [eh, has potential for non-warriors?] [tree climber] bar.battle cry bar.battle command ass.cloak of shadows [not exactly like the others here but close] Physical Passive ama.critical strike (off/i believe this is spear/bow/comb only)[see bar.weapon masteries] ama.penetrate(off) [see bar.weapon masteries] ama.pierce(off) ama.dodge (def) ama.avoid (def) ama.evade (def) [as with sorc armors, should be combined and weakened] bar.Weapon masteries (off) [I understand why they were made seperate but is it realy necessary] [how about: melee (damage/crit/to hit) ranged (damage/crit/to hit)] [still 6 masteries but more reason to invest in more than one] bar.Iron skil (def) bar.increased speed bar.natural resistance (multi-element/def) ass.claw mastery [see bar.weapon masteries] ass.weapon block [as claw mastery, might be cool if it worked in general] Magical Passive skeleton mastery (critter-type mastery) golem mastery (critter-type mastery) summon resist [should proly make this aply to ALL summons] sor.warmth (mana) sor.Fire Mastery (fire) sor.Cold Mastery (ice) sor.Lightning Mastery (elec) dru.Lycanthropy (were-stuff) Summon Minor nec.raise skeleton (und) nec.raise skeleton mage (und) ama.decoy (temp) dru.raven (prety crapy) [all around crapy skill] dru.Poison creeper (tox/ plant) [concidering other choices pretty weak] dru.Spirit wolf (animal) [tree climber, but less so than some] dru.oak sage (spirit) dru.carion vine (plant / res-control / heal) dru.Heart of wolverine (spirit) [simi redundant with auras] dru.Dire wolf (animal) dru.solar creeper (plant / mana) [far better choices for mana regen exist] dru.Grizzly (animal) dru.spirit of barbs (spirit) [redundant with pal.thorns] Summon Major nec.clay golem (gol) nec.blood golem (gol) nec.iron golem (gol) nec.fire golem (gol/fire) nec.revive (und) ama.Valkyrie ass.shadow warior [tree climber] ass.shadow master [really "broken" if I fix it, useless otherwize] [?rename "clone"?] Summon trap nec.bone prison [I never use this] sor.Hydra (fire) bar.grim ward [lame] [all assasin traps need some help] [I like the idea but they perform poorly] ass.charged bolt sentry (elec) [tree climber] ass.lightning sentry (elec) ass.wake of fire (fire) ass.wake of inferno (fire) ass.death sentry dru.volcano (fire) [never used it] dru.tornado [never used it] curse [generaly dubious] nec.amplify damage nec.dim vision nec.weaken nec.iron maiden nec.terror nec.confuse nec.Lifetap nec.attract nec.decrepify nec.lower resist Self buff nec.bone armor sor.energy shield (mana?hp?) sor.Thunder storm (elec) [lame?] sor.Frozen aromor (ice) [tree climber] sor.shiver armor (ice) [tree climber] sor.chilling armor (ice) [the three sorc armors need work, perhaps just pick one and make it long term viable] ass.burst of speed ass.fade [dubious] ass.blade shield [lame] dru.cyclone armor (multi-element) [dubious] dru. armageddon (fire) [never used it] dru.hurricane [never used it] nec.poison dagger (tox) [totaly redundant w venom] ass.venom (tox) [very nice, might be too good] weapon buff (enchant will work on other characters/minions/self) sor.enchant (fire) [kinda cool for melee classes] Wall [I never use any of these] nec.bone wall (und) sor.blaze (fire) [?should be buff instead?][i like the idea but never use it] sor.fire wall (fire) ass.shock web [pretty much useless] ass.blade sentinal [very useless] Buff aura pal.might pal.thorns pal.concentration pal.blessed aim pal.fanaticism pal.Prayer (heal) pal.Resist Fire (fire) pal.resist cold (ice) pal.resist lightning (elec) pal.salvation (multi element) [the other resist auras are redundant with this one] pal.clensing (de-tox) pal.vigor [almost worthless, anyone dissagree?] pal.meditation (mana) [simi-redundant with pal.redemption] pal.redemtion (mana/anti-res) Debuff Aura pal.conviction (elemntal) Damage Aura pal.holy fire (fire) [like the idea, but poor long term performance] [wepon buff redundant w sor.enchant] pal.holy freeze (ice) [as holy fire, but less so] pal.holy shock (elec) [...] pal.sanctuary (?anti dead?) [feels redundant with other auras, anyone use this?] Weird stuff sor.Telekinesis [mostly worthless] sor.teleport bar.leap [tree climber][redundant w Teleport] bar.find potion [tree climber] [lame] bar.taunt [lame] bar.find item [lame] Something I'd like to avoid is the "null option". That's what I call it when you have the ability to chose something, but it is so blatently inferior to another choice that selecting it is pointless. poison dagger vs venom is one example. venom does superior damage and works with all weapon types, and other than that the skills do the same thing. Thus picking poison dagger is a null option, no one who knows better would do it, and those who discovered they'd done it may feel riped-off (and should.) [tree climber] is similar but less severe, it means that I feel most folk wouldn't take the skill if they didn't have to as a pre-req. (in many cases these would be more desireable if they had different mana/damage balances and or caps. Fire bolt for example is useful at low levels when you have less mana and don't need lot of damage. but it would be nicer if it remained useful as a "machine gun" at higher levels) There are several less blatant cases up there, and some that I'm not sure are nul options; but smell like them. (The skills marked with [reduntant w x] or similar.) I'm sure I've missed some too. Let me know what you think, I'm very far from perfect judgement --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some comments, I'll keep it short: Berserk: Magic damage to use against PIs and when cursed with Iron Maiden. Double Swing is similar to Dragon Claw. DClaw is a finisher, though and a much slower attack (without IAS, at least). Smite and Charge are quite different. Bash is good if you increase the damage significantly (like in ES). Druid wereform attacks work with other classes, at least in ES where you can get oskill items with Werewolf+Fury and Elemental (basically Werebear with different graphic)+Double Smash(renamed Maul). Hunger works with both. You can probably make any of the skills work with either/both Werewolf or Werebear by setting a column in skills.txt. Mind Blast is very good to stop mobs. In ES you can increase the radius with synergies which makes in very good. Psychic Hammer, Telekinesis would be good skills if they did decent damage. WarCry is good for stunning but does too little damage in vanilla to be used as a main damage dealer. Slow Missiles can be REALLY great if you know how to use it. It can make Archer packs that would normally tear you up in seconds completely harmless. I would combine the masteries, I think the main reason they were seperated was that they had to fill the passives tree of the barb with 10 skills without making the barb ridiculously overpowered. Combine with Ama Critical Strike and Penetrate and reduce to 3 or 4 masteries (melee or 1h / 2h, throwing, archery). I think that weapon blocking could be made to work with other chars and weapon combos, but you'd have to make the animations for it. Most likely that would mean to set it up to use the hit recovery animation for the other classes/ sin without 2 claws. Charged Bolt Sentry is good as a boss killer. In ES it is all-around great because the number of bolts increase with skill level, just like the Charged Bolt skill. Actually Poison Dagger is GREAT when used together with Venom (so I have read, I haven't tried it). If you don't have any other source of poison damage, then PD will work at regular duration but with Venom damage/second which means that it does totally CRAZY damage. A lot of the skills that you marked lame or weak could be pretty decent if they were improved (more damage, better synergies, ...). In ES a lot of those skills are viable because they were improved. ---------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks Nameless! Some very nice insights there. Interesting about useing poison dagger and venom aat the same time, funny I didn't think of that However I'm not sure it's nessasary, and if I'm doing the skills as all non-attatched to classes poison dagger is a good chance to drop a skill with out loseing anything. In fact restructureing elemental weapon damage skills in general may make more sense. What about haveing enchant for all flavors (that is each element), instead of all the slightly diferent skills for this as a they are? (i like how enchant can bbe cast on other people.) Most of the time lame or useless didin't mean I thought they had to go, just be altered. It's nice to know that others have had some sucsess with that. About psychic hammer/TK do you think having both is helpfull, if TK was better in damage is hammer redundant? TK has extra things over hammer (items activatiation) otherwise they seem similar. (If traps were actualy dangerous TK would have more purpose too.) Sometimes the skill itself isn't lame, per say. Just lame in comparison to other choices one could make in the classless context. (fend vs zeal) Some redundancies do seem to make some needless though. Like teleport vs leap. Not sure why one would take leap, other than for style. Even worse leap is reduntant with leap attack too. Every barb I've used leap atack with, had just one point in leap as a prereq, I never actualy use it.) ---------------------------------------- I'm not really familiar with skill editing, so my thoughts are troubled. There are many coments I didn't make because I don't know what the problems are. I think the first thing is to get the skll system finalized with pretty much all the skills as is. and then tweek. -------------------- I've been thinking about the diferent ways skills are scaled. In light of de-treeing synergies don't realy work as well as they could. it's hard to see them/ work with them without the tree interface. And intelectualy its the designer (me) shapeing your decisions forcibly into what the designer thinks you should be playing. I believe that the motivation for blizzard for synergies was primarily an apoligy for the tree based skill prereqs, sort of making us feel better about that and all the points we need to put in crap at lower levels because we couldn't choose the skills we wanted (not a very good reason to keep them.) I'd much prefer if all the skills scaled better. Some posible methods include Masteries (especialy if more were added), Stats granting bonuses to skills (this already hapens partialy more mana = more uses, more str = more weapon damage, dex = less missing etc., or scaling based on character level (also the "weird" idea below.) Not sure what else, I'm sure there are other things. It would be nice if you could take a skill and feel good about it, and use it during the whole game. Pretty much all games suffer from this sort of thing. I had a crazy thought this morning while dozing in and out of conciousness. I think a use based skill system might be possible. Wherein skills increase in effecicy the more you use them. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not even if it is possible though. Certainly not with the current structure of the design as far as skill damage progression. Might be interesting if the skills were "streatched" more (like skill rank going from 1-100 vs 1-20.) may be this idea belongs in a different mod though Along with this idea came thoughts of unified skill sets (not enforced in the game but as a design tool.) Skills, in terms of stereo-typical character role they serve. For instance caster, fighter, sneaky, suport, summoner etc. Likewize if you can toss lightning do you need lighting bolt (javilin)? Would it be better to replace/reorginize/create some elemental lines of spells (ie poison(bolt/crawler/stream/cone/ball/nova/region), Fire(bolt/crawler/stream/cone/ball/nova/region) etc ? And have weapon based effects primarily stronger vs single targets? Takeing out some lines between classes really changes the dynamics of the game obviously. All skills have to be viable choices in general, not just viable because you have nothing else for the role. Of course the goal is not to make all characters the same, it's in fact to make them more different. So I'm not saying there should be one strategy, or that all skills should serve all strategies. The feeling that there are one or a few fun and effective builds per class is a large part of the motivation for me to try something different with this mod. Technicaly I don't need to remove any actual skills, just icons. but it's made me think that perhaps some are not adding anything to the game. If that's true, there's no reason to keep them. As always I apritiate your comments. --Quatl _______ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teleport is usually better than the alternative (Leap, Dragon Flight). Leap has area knockback and it is sometimes useful just for that. This doesn't mean that it is not dispensible. AFAIK Leap Attack is badly programmed (if the target moves while you leap, then the attack auto-misses). You probably don't need both, maybe you could combine them. Apart from item picking, the biggest diff between Telekinesis and Psychic Hammer is the element, I think, but I doubt that you really need both. Maybe the Knockback works differently, too. I hear that the traps are downright deadly in Median, so there is nothign that stops upping their damage in your mod and make Tk a useful skill. If you make Enchant type skills for every element, then you may want to consider making them exclusive (only one may be active at a time). ------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nameless, If you insist on continueing to be so helpful, I'll be forced to add you to the credits Your analisys of the transit skills jives with mine, I think leap is a gonner for sure. Leap attack and dragon flight I'm less sure of. Dragon flight has some of the problems all martial arts have. (I've been thinking of marking most melee attack skills as finishers if martial arts stay in) And as you say leap attack is buggy, it can be fun to jump on people and stick pointy things in their heads though Very good point about elem enchant skills, I was thinking this, as wellas perhaps a less effective multi-element version, perhaps 1/5th damage but to all 4 "primary" elements (fire/cold/elec/poison). Related thought: how does something which changes physical damage to magic (magic damage type not elemental) at a poor ratio (like 1/4th or 1/3rd.) for weapon strikes either as a per activation skill (ala bash etc) or as an enchant style one (lasting duration)? --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- oops i ment to say "how about" not "how does." My brain is a bit defective sometimes so my hands like to type different words (letters too) than I tell them too on ocasion. It can be really funny on ocasion when they get extra creative about it Reading some guides is a good idea, especialy concidering I'm not into multiplayer so much, I'm sure some skills are better in that context. And some folks might want to put to gether a multiplayer mod game at some point. I don't think I'll be removeing anything at first, just giveing the redundant skills the same icon or something. I want to solve the mechanics then move on to getting creative --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi at all. My first post in Keep. I looking in Keep since 2001 but never register because of my bad english. Great mod. When I'am still playing D2 intensivly, I've started with a projekt like this, but never get completly. One Question: Why is gemmergeing in LotH deleted ? I mean this was a bad desicion. And one proposal: To making Equipmet socket equipmet, an acid can be pursached in Vendorshops. The more the acid brings sockets in Equipment, the more the acid will cost. Becuse of your mod I'am installed and play D2 again ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jounk33 wrote (View Post): Hi at all. My first post in Keep. I looking in Keep since 2001 but never register because of my bad english. Great mod. When I'am still playing D2 intensivly, I've started with a projekt like this, but never get completly. [...snip...] Becuse of your mod I'am installed and play D2 again I'm glad you like it It's nice to know I've made diablo fun for you again, that's high praise indeed. I hope as I continue with the mod you enjoy it even more. Jounk33 wrote (View Post): One Question: Why is gemmergeing in LotH deleted ? I mean this was a bad desicion. I understand how you feel. The problem is, that with gems for sale, the cube upgradeing is too powerful. When you get to act 2 you will find the next grade of gems for sale there And so on as you get to new towns. Jounk33 wrote (View Post): And one proposal: To making Equipmet socket equipmet, an acid can be pursached in Vendorshops. The more the acid brings sockets in Equipment, the more the acid will cost. Adding sockets to items is somthing I'd like. There were some problems with the way I was trying to do it so I disabled them untill I figure it out. This will be possible eventualy. I know it can work because I've seen it in other mods. --Quatl _________________ On to serious buisiness The tome now apears to work! It turns out that I was able to be very sneaky and wedge all the skill icons into one file after all. I was mislead by some advice that while true in general, wasn't quite true for this case. Which means I can wait to mess with the actual skills untill a later release. I'm going to put together a new beta archive after testing a bit more. To be cautious I think i'll post a temporary link when it's done, and let you folks bang it around for a bit before asking for a file center update. Unless I find some major problem it should be up in a few more hours. ******It's been a few more hours, check my first post in this thread for a link****** I really should stop playing with text colors --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey i am running v1.4b and i go to create a new necromancer and this pops up Assertion Failure Location: D2Common\DATATBLS\DataTbls.cpp, line #2190 Expression: pbData EDIT: It is still not working... I really dont feel like reinstalling Diablo II. _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not sure what the problem is, it's running fine here with necros. Give me a sec and I'll do a full bin recompile to make sure. and post a new link. Try it again; here's the link http://www.box.net/public/szi5r8niau for convienience. --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phlebiac wrote (View Post): Two things, that came to my mind, while playing through the first levels with my Necrobarbarian . 1. With the new skillsystem and without some questrewards you are missing at least 12 skillpoints. Maybe you could make an item for those questrewards which reduces the levelrequirement of the tome by one or two points. 2. While my raise skeleton skill is considered an item based skill, I lose all my skeletons on every levelup. Is there a workaround for this? Necrobarb huh? sounds interesting RE:#1:I would like to address the missing points from quests, i'm not sure exactly how yet. One thought is to have the book of skill be cube-able somehow into special skill scrolls that don't add to the level req of the tome (most likely book + normal skill scroll --> one (or more) special scroll for that skill.) This would be a bit more complicated than it sounds though. I have a couple other things I'm experimenting with. Characters may also start with such a "special" skill scroll in the future. Keep in mind that as you don't need prereq skills you in effect have a few more skill points ( for example you don't have to put a point into raise skelleton to get points in skeleton mage.) RE:#2:Speaking of skeletons, I agree it's anoying to have to resummon everything when you upgrade the Tome. I think it works this way to prevent you from equiping an item with summon skill plusses, summoning critters, and then equiping something else. (in other words cheating ) We may have to live with the anoyance. kmwill23 wrote (View Post): Doh! No more uber powerful characters =) I guess it's a needed balance though! True, when I first started on the mod, the plan was roughly, "heavy custom item crafting" (because Sir General went MIA, and I loved his rune mod) pluss unifying the classes' skill lists (because I was pretty bored with them after playing D2 so much , and i thought it would be more interesting than makeing my own set of new classes to get bored with). The Tome arose as a comprimise solution to the second part. I was never very happy with the uberness. I think in the long run, it's probly more fun without the uber At least for me, I get bored eventualy when things are too easy. --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jounk33 wrote (View Post): Do you looking now for a final Version ? I'am interesting to translate your mod in german, of course with your permission. I like this mod, because with the new offered Tome-Levelsystem, we can make every class we want. And the only thing originaly D2 was not comlete, is crafting. But this mod allows crafting what ever want. It would be nice if people could play the mod who don't read english. The tables are in the mod archive If you wanted to translate them and give them to your friends I certainly don't mind. I'm not really possesive about things like that Most of the changed strings are at the bottom of patchstring.tbl however some other strings are altered too. I havn't counted them but I think there are around 150 or so. You could export most of them from patchstring and import them into the german table (I think) and then translate them in place. That would catch most of them. I'd recomend waiting a while though for the following reasons: The string tables are not what I would call "clean" there is alot of old crap in there from various experiments that didn't pan out. I havn't gotten around to removeing them. Translateing these strings would be a waste of time, and worse I might reuse them for something else, makeing your translations popup in odd places. As for includeing translations in the official release, I don't think I'd like to pursue that untill the mod is more stable. There is a lot of string work left to do (I plan to have every skill scroll show the skill discription. Similar to what used to show on the skill tree mouse overs. This will add a huge nomber of strings, since I don't think I can just "steal" the old ones because of formating problems) Other structures I'm useing for some text may still change a few times, I'd hate for you to have to translate everthing over and over Lastly; I would not be able to offer suport for non-english readers, should they encounter problems or have questions about the mod. As I've been too lazy to learn any other languages. By the way, when the mod is closer to "complete", I'm planing to release all the source files anyhow for people to learn from. You may want to wait untill then. That you would ask to do a translation is a big complement thank you! You must really like it to want to do something like that to help out. --Quatl ______________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That pesky readme file I just re-re-re-edited it to explain about D2Mod. Hopefuly there won't be any more people confused about it after the next update. It seems I had an old version of the readme lurking around, and my batch file was copying it from the wrong place. I apoligize for my incompetence there folks. [Edit] the procedure is: Copy d2Mod.dll and D2ModSetup.bat to your Diablo II folder. Run D2ModSetup.bat to install D2Mod. (This will alter your D2 Instalation so that D2Mod can load the plugins used by LotH. To remove it simply run D2ModSetup.bat again) [End of Edit] --Quatl PS: Beta v1.4a will be released in a few hours, it shouldn't break the saves I don't think but it might. (includes a fix for a potential crash issue) ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So are you changing the tome settings again? Currently, I think the 'bugged' method that it's using now is pretty much the only thing keeping everyone from being hidiously overpowered. In 1.3, you could pick your class skills and any skills from another class. This means skeletons + golems + might/concentration/fanat, sorcs + conviction, skelemages + fire goglems + conviction, any caster + warmth, any melee + masteries, any melee + ww/zeal/shapeshifting + might/concentration/fanat, etc. In 1.4, your own skills adding to the lvl requirements actually does a lot of nerfing (which would be needed). This comes with some weird side effects of previous bad balancing that already existed in the game (and I'm sure a lot of it wasn't even intended). Concentration normally is better than might (concentration starts with more ED%, gets more ED% per level, and has 50% uninteruptable), but now that the first point costs 18 level req, you have to get it to lvl 31 (48 lvl req) to match an equal lvl req might (lvl 48). Another good example would be the zon's elemental arrow attacks. Ignoring the fact that the higher skills have better effects (like explosion/freezing), to get them to actually catch up with their predecesors takes a LOT of points. But then this creates two problems; some lvl 1 skills would become overpowered (skeletons), and some later level skills which aren't that powerful will be ignored (resist fire/ice/lightning are the same, but have different level reqs.) So let's go into overpowered with 1.4. There currently is no level cap on skills so you can get a skill to lvl 99 and be fine. 'Good' skills have higher level reqs, but what about skeletons? Summon Skeletons and Summon Mastery are both lvl 1 skills. What's another good skill to combine with it? Might! Might is lvl 1. So at lvl 99, this gives us lvl 33 skellies with lvl 33 mastery and lvl 33 might. Taking this further, a normal necro would get 20 points of skellies + mastery getting him 8 skellies doing 124-127 damage, 605 attack and defense, and 359 life. Our shmancy necro with 33 points of skellies + 33 points of mastery gets 13 skellies doing 387-390 damage, 995 attack and defense, and 600 life. Wow! Look at that difference. We're not done yet, though because we have lvl 33 might giving us +360% damage (x4.6) which brings us up to 1780-1794 damage. So our naked lvl 99 necro has 5 extra skeletons doing over 14x damage each! A normal necro can only double it with amp damage. In fact, you could even sacrifice a few points of might to get amp damage, which would probobly bring you up to 3k skellies. Mercs get might aura too, so you could even ignroe that and go skel/skel/amp and get something around 45/45/9. Now compare this to another fairly standard build... the hammerdin. Lvl 20 hammers and lvl 20 conc is 533-544. That puts the lvl req up to 57. Lvl 99 req brings us up to 41/41 and 2064-2081. So a tripple lvl 1 build totally outshines a two skill higher end build that is almost entirely usless until you max it. You might think that it might not really be fair because of the lack of synergies, but remember that you don't even have enough skill points for the synergies. But let's go after the sorc. Easy first choice is conviction. You only need lvl 25 conviction because there's a -150 resist cap (which is obtained at lvl 25). That's a whopping 54 lvl req, leaving 45 points left for a spell. So lets go for some big guns: Forb, blizzard, meteor. Forb goes up to lvl 16 and 206-218 with conviction bringing it to around 515-545. Normal naked forb with maxed synergies came out to 366-373 before mastery (which brought it up to around 786-801). Also remember that conviction is better than ice mastery AND it breaks immunities. Blizzard goes up a bit higher to lvl 22 and 660-711 damage with conviction bringing it up to 1650-1777 damage. Remember that a normal naked lvl 20 blizzard with full synergies did 2620-2844 before ice mastery (which brought it up to 5633-6114). Meteor also goes up to lvl 22 and has a damage of 1027-1089 and 278-302 dps, with conviction bringing it to about 2567-2722 and 695-755 dps. Normally it's 2865-3057 with 411-449 before mastery (which brings it up to 7534-8039 with 1080-1180). So the cross class skelemancer kicks a ton more ass, while everything else is nerfed. So, let's take this further. Ice Blast is actually pretty a solid. Ice blast goes up to lvl 40 with 883-906 damage. 2207-2265 with conviction. Normally naked with full synergies it's 2129-2238. So basically the strategy is to use the most low level skills as possible. I think you bit off a little more than you can chew at the moment. If you plan on keeping this system, you really have to rebalance every single skill in the game. Right now, every melee char is going to take a mastery and might (both of which are lvl 1) and become much more powerful, while casters really take a blow from their lack of high level spell choices. Naturally you can't just make the good skills weaker and then bring them down to lvl 1, because then things like forb/blizzard will completely outshine ice bolt/ice blast (which were pretty much only used in the first place until you were high enough level to get the uber skills). I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just trying to give you the biggest possible epiphany I can early on so you don't end up with even BIGGER issues later on in your mod. I like your idea, and I wish you luck, but you really need to give a long hard look at all the skills at once. It's a lot easier to rebalance 30 skills on one character than it is to balance 210 skills which weren't supposed to be combined in the first place. -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow Fish of Muu! That's one big juicy post full of great critacism I apritiate the harsh and thorough nature of your post. I really need this sort of talk to get my creative juices flowing Some of your coments had ocured to me and others are new. A few comments: The restriction on the tome will be 1 skill point add-able per level (or the tome becomes unuseable untill you catch up. ( testing with a non level req related stat is just a necessary mechanic to achieve this, as the level req itself is the problem) And no level 6 skills before level 6, no level 12 skills before level 12 etc. In other words the same way the game works normaly except for all skills for all classes. (asumeing the new scheme actualy works this time, which it probly won't as it really doesn't want to ) [EDIT: I think I misunderstood your coments pertiaining to this] The skills will definately need to be rebalanced, especialy with atention to redundant skills; both from the perspective of bad (skills that do almost the same thing but one has something extra, like zeal vs fend) and good (many of the things you mention.) There will be a fair amount of "pruneing" done in the future. Some skills are just plain broken (in terms of being too good) even in vanilla. These require adjustment or removal. Frozen orb is one example. Likewise some skill combinations are much nastier than others. I don't think that balanceing is going to be quite as complex as you say however, it will be alot of work. It isn't really 210 skills balanced in every combination because some skills are really mutualy exclusive, and some don't influince each other directly. Masteries are a source of concern as they pretty much act as magnifiers for broad classes of skills. Auras are much more effective than normal too with summoning availible. Skeletons + auras in particular as there are so many of them (it is almost certain that skeleton numbers and power levels will be reduced to similar levels as wolves. And wolves and skeletons may become mutualy exclusive) Some auras will likely be drasticaly reduced in strength. ( you mentioned might, but thorns + skeletons + skeleton mages + wolves + golem of the day + valkiery + shadow master + huge mana reserves, is almost worse ... trust me Critters explodeing every where) The mod is still young, and monster strength has not been adressed at all. Ultimately the critters will need to be stronger clearly. How much stronger and in what ways I'm still rolling around my head. I don't think it makes sense to start this process yet, as it would lead to back and forth "double-balanceing." Which usualy leads to everthing feeling weird and ad-hoc (because of course it is.) I don't want to just give monsters more hps and more damage. I'd like diferent kinds of critter require diferent methods of attack and defence, thus make being over specialized a bad idea. Vanilla D2 doesn't have nearly enough of this in my opinion, imunities are relatively boring (and inefective) ways of forceing versitility. With my first sorceress experience (when diablo was first released), I mulched my way through normal with no real problems. But when I got to nightmare and ran into cold imune undead all over the place I was screwed. I'd over specialized "dumping" points into nothing but cold spells, and I had no way to kill cold-imunes. This factor should be a part of the whole game (not elemental imunities per say but various "confounding factors".) I don't want people to be stuck like my sorc was, but rather to learn early that versitility will be required of them. There should be a strategic "tension" to players' strategy, between specialization and versitility. I have some ideas on how to address this too (particularly how masteries work and how they are split up), but they are not ripe yet. And between conceptual aspects like kill speed vs lone targets vs area, and such things. Conflicts like this are largely missing in vanilla precicely because each class ia "a kingdom unto itself." How exaclty this works will depend on the specifics of the skills what ever they end up being. I don't know what if any limits exist on total skill levels. It's something I will have to look into eventualy. I know that some skills "cap out" and it may be possible for me to cap others myself. [EDIT: Actualy I just thought of how to do this very easily with the cube, so its doable] The word "Beta" in my case does not imply "feature complete" In fact I probly should have called this an alpha ... too late now This mod is ambitious. In part that's the point. For me it's just not worth the efort of banging my head into my computer screen unless the prize is big. I enjoy agrivation, hard work and the rewards which come from doing the hard thing, and makeing something worthy. Something that I myself can spend hours upon days upon months playing. Somthing as rewarding as diablo 2 itself was for me for so long. Anything less just wouldn't drive me. If it wasn't so damn hard I'd have never goten this far. The project would have died of boredom in the crib. It may be that I'm not up to the task. I certainly mess things up often. Many times I'm slopy, and I often out smart myself. I'm certainly not as capable as some of the giants who lurk in the dark corners of this message board. I'm thankful to have so many people who are willing to help me out, with their deeper knowledge, and skills. This mod as it is is as much a creation of the FrozenKeep comunity as it is mine. Only time will tell, but in the striveing is it's own reward to a degree. And If I make something that I really enjoy, I figure some one else out there will enjoy it too. And may be alot of people who would never invest the time and agrivation to make something like this for themselves, can enjoy something which I've made. I don't think there's any greater reward than bringing enjoyment to other folks. If an hour of my effort brings an hour of pleasure to 20, 30, or a hundred people that's a real acomplishment in my book. Even if, judged on it's merits, my mod is complete crap Vanilla Diablo 2, for all the complaints I've had about it over the years, is still a great game, and a great platform for creating something new. It is also full of poor choices, imbalance, and (in my opinion) overly restrictive structures. None of which can detract from the fact that It's the only game that's had a permanant place on my hard drive since the first day it was released. I don't have the recources that the "big boys" have and I could never make an engine or all of the great art required to make a game like D2 from scratch. But I'm tenacious, stuborn and ocasional clever, and maybe that's enough for me to do something great with what Blizzard has given us to work with. I'm babeling now though, so I'm off to bed. Thanks again for your coments, it is rare that people will offer each other such honesty and directness. I really apritiate it when it is offered, and I'll give your coments weight in my thoughts as the mod develops. --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'am not sure that I understood the last two posts complete. But I think with this concept we can have a real own character. Of course, this mod seems not to be used for Multiplayer. But for Singleplayer it gives one of the best possibility to play individualy. I dont think you need to balanche the monsters for the new skillsystem. Porposal: With higher level the prices for gambling become more expensiv. This should be too for the scrolls Another way; to make the vendorinventar not refilling, so you can only buy a scroll once by the same vendor. Threfor making the droprate for scrolls a little higher, or given every boss a scroll to drop. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IndianaMaggot wrote (View Post): YAY I can finally play again thanks so much for all the help and thanks for an awesome mod... but may I make a suggestion for the skill trees... Why not have class specific passive skills that way each class plays a little bit different but almost the same... you could make skill point books for 500 gold or something that grant 1 skill point just like the Radament skill reward book... just my Great! I'm glad it works for you now... I was troubling myself about your difficulties this morning without any new ideas. It makes me a bit nervous that we never really figured out the problem. Hopefuly it was just a fluke no one else will have similar troubles. Your idea about the trees is interesting, I'll think about it. (My thinking has generaly been twards makeing the "classes" into cosmetic options only.) For the near future I'm focused purely on makeing sure the tome behaves itself, and then onto confirming every crafting recipe (not looking forward to this part.) ------ If that infernal tome works now I'll overjoyed, although I have my suspisions that it's still hideing something to bonk me with when I'm not looking [EDIT: v1.4d is now availible, see my first post here for the link.] --Quatl ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IndianaMaggot wrote (View Post): The only problem with that is that there is no need for 7 classes then... You're right there wouldn't be any "need" for 7 classes, I'm not sure that it's important for there to be a need other than enjoyment. IndianaMaggot wrote (View Post): I was only talking about having 5-10 skill per class and the max level should only be from 5-10... also the skills should probably have a decient lvl requirement like 20-30 and cost around 10000-50000 ... but the skills would have to be worth it... These details make it sound even more interesting as a concept. The only reason I could have for not doing something like this, is that it is related to the very thing I don't want to do ... That is: Telling people how they should be playing the game. The underling philosophy for this mod is freedom to create. Create items and equipment that you want, and the "class" that you want. If you want to be a little woman with a giant sword who drinks the blood of your enamies ... well then you probly need a theripist, but I'm not going to hold you back. Want to play a huge beefy norseman who frolics with woodland creatures, and casts spells? Great more power too you. The choice of apearance is in some sense a game mechanic in and of itself. It can change the emotional astetic of the game. People who don't care can always just pick randomly. However if I add back in a mechanic that forces (or even enchourages) a certain binding between the character and how they must be played, then I'm doing something other than Legacy of the Horadrim. Haveing said that I do think it is an interesting idea. Some form of it might even have a place in LotH. Just not a form of it that is bound to the graphics, of one character class or another. -Quatl _______________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Making classes purely cosmetic creates a lot more issues. The sorc and barbarian both have the came casting speeds, but the barbarian can dual wield. Because you got rid of +skill items, the barb can just use any two weapons and make them both caster weapons making him better than the sorc is every way. The ability to dual wield beats the inability to dual wield. A casting sorc/barb have no other differences. I think you should rip apart the skill system that exists and make it a hybrid with the skill trees, or possibly even innate skills like older versions of Median. Some ideas would be... put the elemental mastery skills back on the sorc but tone them down and make them lvl 1. Maybe something like only 1 or 2% per level. Possibly even make it so only one can be learned (once you learn one, the other two will be locked). This way anyone can use any of the elemental skills, but the sorc uses them better. Put skeleton mastery on the necro only. Anyone can summon, but necros do it better. Tone down the auras, or give them only to the paladin (They REALLY break the game now). Put Battle Orders only on the barbarian. This makes each character different, but only with support skills. All the attack skills are available to everyone. The necro wouldn't be as good a caster as a sorc, but he still might want to use Glacial Spike for supporting his skelly army. This makes your job a lot easier. You don't have to rebalance all the skills knowing that everyone gets access to every aura. Might/concentration gives melee chars 3x damage while giving summoners about 50x. Not everyone blows past synergies and just gets 1 spell and conviction. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's nice to know I can count on you to find uber where I would never have thought to look Muu Especialy interesting about dual weild makeing the barb a better mage. And here I had been thinking the only real reason to play a barb was to dual wield melee. Your other coments are good too, Auras are pertty abusive if one wants them to be. I'm reluctent to talk about specific skill alterations because of The BPFtNF... ----------------------------------------------- The Big Plan for the Near Future(tm) Skill Tome mechanics will be finalized (versions 1.4d-1.4X) - Includeing a cap of 20 points per skill, as per vanilla - Get Skill descriptions onto skill scrolls - Make the skill icons stand out a bit more, from each other - (already started but there are alot) Alchemical Enhancement (versions 1.5X) - Confirm every recipe, and fix broken reagents - Some moderate rebalanceing of gold and quintessence costs will happen - Fix the "Rainbow of Confusion" Effect in reagent vendor inventories - Probly images based on item type compatibility + element colors Gems will be rebalanced to make thier cost benifit ratios a bit lower (versions 1.6X) - I'm thinking about twice as cost effective as the alchimical enhancements - Costs and Efects could go up or down depending, proly some of each Clean up Loose Ends (Versions 1.6X) - Unique/Set items, and Runewords with invalid skill mods clensed this could mean removal/substitution/ (especialy +skilltab which is useless) - Put back the +skill type bonuses on items in a way that works Declare Legacy of the Horadrim (Vanilla flavor) Complete - This version will be alowed to float around unmolested - This is for those who just want a "better" vanilla than vanilla Begin the "Real" work on the mod Legacy of the Horadrim(Steak -n- Potato Flavor) Develop a Unified Theory of "Balance" This will involve answering these and other questions: - What is "advancement", and how does one acomplish it? - How are monsters, levels, skills, stats, and equipment related? - What are the proper roles of melee, ranged and magic characters? - How do various skill structures work? - What kinds of things should "spells" do? - What kinds of things do "Melee Skills" do? - What kinds of things do "Summons" do? - What the heck is a mastery any how? - How are Auras different from Passives? - Do synergies not suck in any universe? - How does/should items influince skill function, use, and power? - What are the atributes for, how do they influince things? - What is the proper tension between various stratigic types? - What is(are) the purpose(s) of monsters? - How do they serve (or not) these purpose(s)? - How many diffrent ways are there to kill them and be killed by them? - What is the function of Gold? - Why are(n't) quests boring? - Are the areas and their sequence part of my boredom? - many many more Then in acordence with the UToB Redesign/alteration of various elements of the game. Skills, spells, critters, levels, equipment etc... This is when I'll start thinking in terms of specifics. In other words I'd like to make my changes non-randomly. Not based on what I think is cool from moment to moment, and especialy not in terms of reactive ping-pong style rebalanceing. Rather based on a consistant philosophy about how I want to play the game, and the emotions I'd like to experience while doing so. Things I am sure I don't want: "Hard" balance (as much as possible every character should be different and effective) Zero point strategies (sort of like zero-point energy, theoreticaly infinite but boreing) Lack of reward for creativity of the player. Boredom --Quatl ________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to contradict myself (nothing new there ) I would like to discuss an idea about skills. In particular masteries. The basic jist is that rather than (or in adition to perhaps) investing points into masteries, each skill point invested into a skill would add to the relevent mastery or masteries. For example each point in fire bolt might add to fire mastery, bolt mastery, and spell mastery. A point in ice arrow might add to cold mastery, bow mastery, and ranged mastery. These masteries would not be nearly as potent as the vanila ones. And there would be alot more of them. So each skill adds a small amount to the effectiveness of many other skills. And as the overlaps form a sort of colage in skill effectiveness space this should aid both specialized characters and generalists. I think, if done carefuly, something like this could be a good substitute for synergies, and traditional masteries. The key is to have the effect of each skill point's contribution be fairly small. And construct the overlaps so they conform to "reality." Meaning the skills conceptual interconnections become real interconnections to some degree. So Fire Specialist can mean multiple things, fire spell caster, fire melee/ranged fighter, fire summoner or any combination. For example an elemental melee generalist would still gain benifit from stacking multibple melee skills (from the melee mastery adds.) But this character putting a few points into an elemental bolt would not make that bolt as cool as the mixed elemental spell caster's bolt, and even less so in comparison to a single element bolt spell specilist. Of course this idea should be thought about in the context of a very different set of skills. The skill set would have to be carefuly crafted along with the masteries to make this viable, and avoid uber-power cracks for players to fall between. This also requires that combat situations be more varied, in the sense of being easier to deal with useing one catagory of strategy than another. So that the broad skill types that are currently mostly pointless (like bolt spells) become fun, and the over powered ones (like area effect spells) become less monotinous. Enchourageing a median between specilization and generalization (perhaps 2-4 basic tactical styles/elements per character.) This is what I ment about haveing a unified philosophy. Everything is related to every other thing, and the design ideals and details arise from these relationships rather than being ad hoc. This is the direction I'm currently leaning twards for after the basic version is "complete." --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hi quatl I have been trying to get a working download for the last two days, right now I'm finished with my knowledge so please someone help. what I did : clean install lod 1.10, meanwhile 3x,unzip 1.4d to the d2 folder sent the shortcut to the desktop, targeted it to where I got my stuff(i.e.c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe\ mod:LotH -direct -txt, to be done in c\games\diablo2\LotH, of course with the appropriate quotation marks. Start the game, run around and find scrolls that only show up as tiny little black squares, no name whatsoever. Same with gems, same with the stuff Charsi offers(simply price and itemlevel), same with Gheed (simply price and itemlevel). I read in the forum that almost everybody finds necro or ama or pala scrolls. None of the scrolls I found showed any mark exept itemlevel. So, please, someone give me a little hint how I can manage better than now,because I only can fill my tomb with what I got, purely by luck, hoping to get some stuff for my ama, getting 90% others. Now this cannot be meant by building your own character! Just by plain luck!!??!!?? mayday!!!!!! meimo btw. I did copy the dll and d2modsetup to the d2dir -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- meimo wrote (View Post): [...snip] clean install lod 1.10, meanwhile 3x,unzip 1.4d to the d2 folder sent the shortcut to the desktop, targeted it to where I got my stuff(i.e.c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe\ mod:LotH -direct -txt, to be done in c\games\diablo2\LotH, of course with the appropriate quotation marks. [snip...] I'm sorry to hear you're haveing trouble. It sounds like the game isn't finding the graphics. One thing to try: Take the "-txt" off the end of the shortcut target line It should look like: ["c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe" /mod:LotH -direct] I've had diablo II be confused by the -txt and act strange before, when the actual txt files aren't present. I've not seen exactly what you describe, but similar partial mod dis-function. (by default the included shortcut is -direct only) If this doesn't help, confirm that, in the "[LotH]\Data\global\items" folder there are a bunch of files called invXXX.dc6. Make sure these files exist. Please let me know if this fixes things or not. By the way Gheed should be selling every scroll of 1st and 6th level skills for every class. You are definately not expected to find all your scrolls from item drops, that would be very poopy . --Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- meimo wrote (View Post): hey, jounk33, what did you do to get this mod to work properly?? I've just done as discripte. Install D2+LOD new. Patch to 1.10. Unzip the last LotH in the D2 Folder. Copy the D2Mod.dll and bat in the D2 Folder and the Shortcut to the desc. Start the bat and write down the corect path in the shortcut. This way works. And specialy rename the ENG Folder to DEU for German. This makes that nearly everything in the game is listed in english but without that, the new items will appear without any discription. But I'll translate the final mod version. EDIT: Quatl, Just to your information. There isen't any skilleffekt too. The barbarian become invisible and no other effektanimation will happens and no trapeffekt damage the enemys. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, thanks for the new beta. A little request. I found the Quintessence to powerful. With QE 200 I can upgrade a dagger about 100 Damage, makes a total of 104 max. Damage. Some alchemistc regants sould be use more QE EDIT: To rename the Language-Folder makes the modifikated items become nameless. So, I musen't rename. When I translate, I need a list of all new and renamed items. I wonder becuse in version 1.3 only the new items where in english when I rename language folder, but in version 1.4+ the complete items are in english. EDIT 2: Arctic Blast works. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jounk33 wrote (View Post): Okay, thanks for the new beta. A little request. I found the Quintessence to powerful. With QE 200 I can upgrade a dagger about 100 Damage, makes a total of 104 max. Damage. Some alchemistc regants sould be use more QE I agree, quentessence costs were not done in an intelegent way. They definately need to be altered. There are many things in the mod that are too easy. Most of them are the first things I added and I wasn't thinking very deeply about them. Jounk33 wrote (View Post): To rename the Language-Folder makes the modifikated items become nameless. So, I musen't rename. When I translate, I need a list of all new and renamed items. I wonder becuse in version 1.3 only the new items where in english when I rename language folder, but in version 1.4+ the complete items are in english. The big change in 1.4 was that some strings that had to change were in the Base tbl file, the patch tbl won't overide them. To make sure I understand. If you just install and play, you see the names, but if you rename the ENG folder there are no names? This is how it "should" work now. For the translation I'll give you an export file with only the new strings to edit. Then I can include them. I'll need to make an installer that will allow language selection. So folks who read german can use your translation, and others can still play in english without problems. (and if others ask to do translations for other languages they can work too.) Jounk33 wrote (View Post): EDIT 2: Arctic Blast works. Good news Thank you for your help, I really apritiate it ------------------------------------------- CRASH BUG WARNING Stay away from Double Swing with the assassin. It can cause a crash if you get hit in the middle of a swing. I'll dissable this skill for assassins next time If I can't get it to work. Everything was fine for about 20 mins then it crashed, I sort of know what the problem is but fixing it may take a while. [EDIT: I've been able to make this work ... sort of, the graphics don't look right but it does proper damage. Frenzy, should work now too (internaly they are similar)] -Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was wondering when folks ould start posting thier character designs Your thrower idea sounds fun, you might concider less Decoy and adding some other things in for verstility instead. Passive builds in general are interesting to me. I was thinking the other day about trying a pure passive warrior, but I don't really have time to play and mod at the same time -------------In other news----------- I spent alot of time this weekend cleaning out the mods files of trash created by experementing. This is in preperation for the psuedo-final vanilla version of LotH. I'm still testing abit, but I'll be releasing a version soon with no new features, but just to check stability. Alot of stuff was removed that shouldn't cause problems but may, especialy if I "slipped" somewhere. Which I do alot it seems Alot of unused string refs, non-functional item props, and non-functional cube stuff were removed/dissabled. I also removed all +skilltab and +class-skill-group modifiers (as they do nothing), from prefixes, affixes, automagic, unique items, and set items. I'm basicaly trying to ready the mod for translation at this point. There are still a few more things to clean up as far as mechanics go before finalizeing the vanilla release. After that it wil be a while before the mod stableizes again. --------- I have done alot of research and thinking in the last few weeks and I have a pretty good handle on the basic design philosophy for what LotH will evolve into. The preliminary dev-plan includes about 60 weapon related skills, 80-100 spell like and summon skills, and a very different mastery/synergy structure. Skills are more inter-related, more "general" in flavor, and include trade-offs, especialy when they have non-numeric advantages (area effects, auras, curselike effects.) They are designed to enchorage the use of more than one primary skill, for difereing situations. The skill system will be mostly flat (level reqs), and likely extended in level range. There will be no uber skills. Power will come from interrelateing skills and strategies. Re working of item types; weapon classes will have reasons to exist and suport differing styles of play. There will (hopefuly) be no useless choices of weapon and armor types. Rather each weapon type will have it's own distinctive advantages and dissadvantages. Some of these diferences involve how the "combat" skills interact with weapon types. I'm even thinking about why and how some characters might use a back-up weapon for certain situations. Attributes and character level will have a greater impact on how a character plays. Many basic quantities (like spell and weapon effectiveness) will factor stats and level more heavily. Monsters will change quite a bit. They will be more varied per area. The monster's will have tacticaly varied strengths and weaknesses. Monsters will be easier or harder based on your mix of skills/spells/tactics. Meaning that you will "have trouble with" or "have an easy time" with diferent monsters depending on your character. There wil be no "perfect" builds, but many, many very effective ones. Monster "balance" will not be extreemly hard, but it should be possible to die if you are incautious or un-thinking. Equipment and treasure will be altered acordingly as well. There will be conflicts inherent to the crafting system. Your choices will make a difference. General treasure and found magic items will be changed around quite alot as well. Sets and Uniques will serve in a diffrent role than they do in vanilla. Gold will be an important recource at all levels of play. Gaining treasure in general will be more important than hunting specific drops. All of these plans are interrelated, which should improove the quality of the experience. There will be nothing in LotH that is there just because "it's cool." Which should really make the mod as a whole much more fun to play, I hope This also meens that interum versions will not be much fun to play most likely. The overall balance will be pre-determined, but it won't "come together" untill most of the elements have been implemented. I do plan to still release interum versions along the way, but the "vanilla" version will remain availible for those who don't like my vision. I'm making LotH the way I want to play, and I realize that not everyone will enjoy what I like. I hope at least some of you will enjoy the result I also need something hard to do or I lose motivation:) I'm a masichist I guess. Of course plans like this are often started and never completed. It may be that I lose interest and drop it eventualy, but I can't work on simple things for too long. Stangely the ambitious things I start tend to be completeded more often than the simple things I'll post details of various elements as they firm up. -Quatl [EDIT: Preview release of Beta 1.5 is availible on the first page] http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40253 _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Legacy of the Horadrim now has it's own forum. If you found your way into this thread indirectly you can find the new forum here in The Non-Hosted Mods Section I'm locking this thread for posterity -Quatl http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=151 ********************************************************************************* SOME EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS ... SEEKING OPINIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been doing some tinkering with skills. Along the way to implementing something else an idea ocured to me, so I did some testing and it seemes to work. I'm not sure about names but how does this sound: Skill/Spell Specization Each character would be able to select a few of these, most likely over the course of leveling. maybe one every five levels or something. What they do is change the functionality of a certain set of skills or spells, or add a small advantage to the character in some other area. For example there could be a Bolt spell splitting one that would allow you to fire multiple bolts with all bolt spells (fire bolt, ice bolt etc) I'm thinking this would split the bolts' damage as well so you'ld get several smaller damage bolts. Or there could be one that increases the amount of mana you recieve per point of int. Or one that increases the effectiveness of potions. There could be multiple specialties for a given spell group. Alternatively these could work on individual spells (strangely enough this would be easier to implemment.) So you could turn your Ice Bolt into Ice Multi-Bolt, but have your Fire Bolt convert some damage to physical, or move faster or whatever else. Essentialy I'm talking about adding a sort of crafting element to the skill/spell system. Allowing tweeking of spell effects a bit, and adding more creativity. Each character you create would be more unique, more a product of your imagination. One variation would be more vanillaish where each base spell has a sort of tree. Each branch adding some thing or another. The basic quantities (like damage) would be determined by the total points invested in the tree instead of those in each spell individualy. Think: 5pts in bolt and 5pts in multi-bolt, allows you to cast either a lvl 10 fire bolt (one potent bolt), or lvl 10 fire multi-bolt (several smaller damage bolts ina spread). Most of these things already work, so this is not pure fantasy. There are some complications, and certain enhancements are more difficult or impossible. I'm curious what you all think. Both of the basic idea, and if you have thoughts about what specialties you'ld like to see for various types of spells and things. -Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sounds good to me. While I read your post I was thinking about skills that maybe increase the amount of essence you can apply on an item or which increases the outcome of crafting recipes in any way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not a bad idea here's some related thoughts: "unique" items spawn with quitessense on the already and no other mods (also would be much more common to drop, perhaps 1 in 100 or 1 in 50, names would be general like "Horadric Short Sword", or "Alchemicaly Suitible Tower Shield", higher level req items could have more points on them) Everyone could enchant these. I like this idea in part because it makes "Unique" mean what it says Then possibly as a specialty type choice you could select an item type (likely broad groups like melee weapons, torso armor, jewlery etc) to be able to enchant the way it works now (spectral elixer -> enchant any item grade.) So you'ld have to give up some skill/spell effectiveness to gain extra enchanting effectiveness. I like trade offs like this in general, I think it adds veriety in a way that is meaningful rather than only appearance. Perhaps enabling one to place modifiers on item types that don't usualy allow it (like +damage on boots, or +hps on weapons.) This one is potentialy hazerdous to "balance" but possibly interesting. -Quatl _________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All these skill choices would be through which skills you put into the tome, right? Is there any way a char can have more than 1 tome? Is it personalized? Even if it has a "carry 1" mod, you could possible still swap tomes with a mule. Then you could have one tome for regular play and one for crafting (or several if you need different specializations). Even one char can't swap skills, you could still make "craftsman" chars who don't have very good all-around skills but specialize mainly in crafting who then mule the crafted items to other chars. You may have to set up MP games and rush those chars, but... Just something to think about. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's certainly true Nameless, there are issues with Tome passing in general, but more so with crafting skills, as they don't play a role in combat. There are other ways to store crafting specialties in theory. It should be possible to do it with one param based stat (character saved i mean.) Then another character's tome wouldn't work for that. I think tome passing may be solve-able with code editing, but CE is a bit scary for me still, so it's not likely to happen unless someone made a plugin for it. The ability to pass empty tomes on the other hand is actualy kind of nice. If you hate a character's skill selection you can just rebuild your skills on a new tome. -Quatl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought about your ideas over night and one thing that came to my mind is, that these new skill choices which are in the tabs would be the only reason right now to start a second character at all. As you said if I don't like my current build or want to try something else I can simply change my tome, which is really nice in my eyes. But if I want to have a good crafter and some other char, I would have to play at least two chars. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's an interesting perspective, I hadn't thought about it tht way. Stats will be more important in the new skill system, which should partialy reduce that. They will directly add to things like damage, and weapon types and the skills for melee will make more use of them as well. I'm useing a few stereo types for planing these relationships (I'm avoiding the word class here because It's more about the skills than the people) Mage, melee fighter, ranged fighter, summoner, manipulator, and rogue. These represent catagories of skills, and they have diferent needs in terms of equipment and attributes. The reason for this is not to force builds, but rather to help balance unmeasuareable quantities of skills better against each other. These areas are further broken down into clusters of skills, which internaly renforce each other. When creating a hybrid skill set across stereo types you will find that you trade raw power for versitility in comparison to a specialist. [EDIT: I didnt explain well above, the sterotypes are to help determining inter skill set stat contributions, not only how skills directly interact. By stats I mean primarily str,int,dex, and vit, but also secondarily magical modifiers from equipment, like dammage adds, speeds, crushing blow etc.] I want to avoid as many Uber cracks in the skill system as I can, creating many good sets rather than a few super strong ones. For example melee skills (with a few exceptions) do not renforce spell like skills in terms of numbers (though they can renforce a strategy that includes both.) I'd get more specific, but the exact skill set is still fluxuateing. I have to find the happy place between my ideas and what D2 will allow I'm not quite there yet. I'm only just starting to feel like I know what I'm doing with D2's quirkyness -Quatl **************************************************************************** NICE MOD -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just getting started, more or less. Level 10 Pal. Really like the Reagent/Quintessence concept. Very Novel. With the Inventory so small, the 1x1 Portal and Indentity tomesn and Horadic Cube feature is really neat. Have tried a few 1K gold Reagents and a few scolls on the Horadic Tome. Now a few questions: Can you remove skills from the Tome? How many levels are there? The standard 99? Are there now or later going to be rune words and Sets? I know there are Uniquies, as I found one. I read most every thing and couldn't find the answeres to the questions. Elad Edit: Whoops!! Must be runewords, just killed the Countess. Have 1.5E version of Mod -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elad wrote (View Post): Just getting started, more or less. Level 10 Pal. Really like the Reagent/Quintessence concept. Very Novel. With the Inventory so small, the 1x1 Portal and Indentity tomesn and Horadic Cube feature is really neat. I'm glad you like it so far, LotH is still very much a work in progress. There is alot more to come, as I have time, and figure things out. You're the first one to comment on the small tomes, and inventory Thanks for noticing that, I thought it was a pretty clever comprimise. Along with the PlugY stash I like how the inventory situation worked out. Elad wrote (View Post): Have tried a few 1K gold Reagents and a few scolls on the Horadic Tome. Now a few questions: Can you remove skills from the Tome? Yes! It's a new feature as of 1.5E, that never made it into the readme. To remove a skill point in any skill you need: 1 Scroll of the skill 1 Bottle of Alchahest (1000gp from gheed or other scroll merchant) Place both in the cube with your Tome and Combine One point of the skill will be removed, and returned to your skill point pool. The Alchahest and the scroll will remain in the cube, so you can remove all points in a skill by repeatedly clicking combine untill you hear it "click" at you. (This is described in the readme on the forum here, just not in the archive) Elad wrote (View Post): How many levels are there? The standard 99? Yep, same as vanilla Elad wrote (View Post): Are there now or later going to be rune words and Sets? Yes for now most vannila sets are arround, in the long run these will change into something else, however I havn't gotten around to this. The same is true of uniques. Both sets and uniques are rarer than normal. Some of each of these things have already changed a little. Anything that used to give "+skill X (class X only)", "+skilltab X", or "+to all X-Class Skills" mods no longer does, as these mods do nothing now (other than possibly cause problems.) This was not done in a "nice" way. The mods were not replaced by anything else, just removed, so a few uniques and sets are now pretty useless, other than for cash. Also all sets/uniques based on class specific items should no longer drop, as class specific items in general don't drop anymore. (except for claws of course) -Quatl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quatl Thanks for the help. Have removed and added many items to the Tome. Some just to try them out. Need to rob Fort Knox, spend gold like a drunken sailor. Always broke. Just about ready to take on Andy in Norm. Will probably be a battle royal, as I am still pretty weak at lvl 16. Need to change strategy. Using a mace and a rare throwing axe. Both with 3 sockets filled with jewels. I am going cold, my Merc fire. Will do much better if I can get past her. Haven't played "vanilla" Diablo in years. Have forgotten a lot more than I remember. No problems so far, going really smooth. Looking forward for the next changes. Thanks. Elad *************************************************************************** NEWS ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Work continues on Skill descriptions. I'm about half way done with the text entry, hopefully I'll finish them up soon. I ahve the barbarian, drui and assassin skills left to finish. I've added some new graphics, there are now several looks which corospond to different skill types. For example a Tome, a smallish book graphic, contain "spells", while a Practicum, a scroll type image, holds an attack form type skill. Each type comes in designer colors too, showing at a glance the element, or psuedo-element the skill belongs to. Cold skills come in dark blue writings for example, while fire ones wear red. There is some duplication of colors, but I think it greatly improoves the shoping experience. Here's another teaser for how skill related thingies look : Picture http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=1829 Skills are grouped by sets of overlaping "Affinities" rather than by class. These include elemental types as well as less specific things. Each skill has three of these. A general use oriented type (like melee, bolt, nova etc), an element or pseudo-element (fire, cold, alacrity, prowess etc), and one from the least well defined catagory, it's "school" which has to do with how the skill delivers it's element (examples include, Transmutation, Invocation, Conjuration etc..) In the long run Affinities will come to replace both masteries and synergies, but as of now they do nothing. Synergy and Mastery will become automatic based on the skills you select, so chooseing alot of melee attacks will improove weapon mastery, or picking alot of fire related skills (spells, attacks, auras or whatever) will improove fire mastery. So for example a dark blue smallish book could be "A Hiemal Tome of Ice Bolt", which would contain "a cold-related spell that is named Ice Bolt", with Bolt, Cold Elemental, and Evocation Affinities. -Quatl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A proposition: If you haven't already done so, you may consider combining the scrolls into one item. It's easy (well, relatively easy) to code a single item to hold all of the scrolls of a certain class (or tree, whatever way you want to go) and be able to simply right-click through them. The benefits to this are two fold : one it eliminates the need to have loads of seperate scrolls, and two it means that characters can access all of the skills when they reach a certain level, much like it would be in regular diablo, rather than waiting to get to the next act. It would be even more helpful if, ala the scrolls being spat back out for removing a skill, that this be done for all skills. The whole thing about having to buy skills in the first place is offset when you consider how much money you can make (I rarely touch a fraction of the gold I have stashed to buy a new skill). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maxx Power wrote (View Post): A proposition: If you haven't already done so, you may consider combining the scrolls into one item. It's easy (well, relatively easy) to code a single item to hold all of the scrolls of a certain class (or tree, whatever way you want to go) and be able to simply right-click through them. The benefits to this are two fold : one it eliminates the need to have loads of seperate scrolls, and two it means that characters can access all of the skills when they reach a certain level, much like it would be in regular diablo, rather than waiting to get to the next act. It would be even more helpful if, ala the scrolls being spat back out for removing a skill, that this be done for all skills. The whole thing about having to buy skills in the first place is offset when you consider how much money you can make (I rarely touch a fraction of the gold I have stashed to buy a new skill). Those are very good sugestions. I have been thinking about these very same problems recently. These isues are being adressed in slightly different ways. Now that the skills are (mostly) seperated from their classes and orgonized by type, I'll be useing more than one store page for them. Some types will apear on the armor, some on weapons etc. Based on the type of skill they are. This way they will all fit in one shop at the same time, even if I add alot of skills later. They'll be further resorted by level and element (in that order, like firething lvl1, firething2 lvl1, coldthing lvl1, firething3 lvl6) This will allow me greater freedom to shift some things around as far as skill levels and quanties without worrying about scrolls not being in the right place. Your Right clicking sugestion is a good one. Unfortuneatly I can't have both a t-mog and the descriptions as they are, as they don't play nice with each other. The other factor is that I hope eventualy to do some code editing to filter the scrolls out of the stores in hardcore mode, so I want the drops to be balance a certain way for that. I'd like it so that for hard-core you have to make do with the skills you find basicaly. Hopfuly these changes will address your concerns suficiently, but If you don't think so, or have some additional insight please do let me know about it -Quatl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That seems fair, especially since the skill system will be getting an overhaul. Another question I have now is how does the item system stand? All this talk of skills and the original purpose of the mod seems to have been put on the backburner. What are you planning to do with uniques? Also some thoughts I had on the whole quintessence system. While it's so far done well and I can't fault you, two things spring to mind. Firstly the fact that quintessence amount is fixed when you cube it based on clvl. This seems logical in terms of balance, but in the long run it will put players off "quintessing" an item, since they may think "well, I don't want to spend too much money if I'm just going to make something better later on". Perhaps a system whereby you can choose to "top up" on the quintessence on an item, but will increase the level requirement of the item, as well as providing slightly less quintessence than if you were to wait until you were higher in clvl. The other concern I had is the fact that magic/rare/set/unique items can be quintessence. Again this is the same problem as above, one may decide to bite the bullet and cube an item, start adding bonuses, only to find a rare item of a better type with better mods, causing them to redo the whole sequence again. Diablo's economy of course is based on what you find, but the added emphasis of customisation adds an element of russian roulette to the proceedings, whereby you can't know what you may find next. Two options present themselves to me. One is to have all items be "cleaned" when cubed, thusly removing any need to search for items in the field to cube. The second is to remove magical items altogether (I know S_G Rune Mod had a similar system to yours and went the same route with some success). Also on the current difficulty of the mod. I've found that the marked increase in monster density/strength and the lowered character Life don't mix very well. Indeed I see a situation later on in the game whereby characters with AoE spells have much more of an advantage than those with single attack (read: most melee builds). It's not usual for me to have to back up every time I meet a mob with my life orb going down to a sliver within seconds (this is with a character with almost every single point so far spent in vitality as well). Whether or not this was your intention I can't say, but I will say there's better ways to increase the difficulty of monsters without resorting to increasing damage output. EDIT: Almost forgot, I seem to remember there being a rune bottle with +1 to all skills. Am I missing it or has it been remove? If so it doesn't bode well for spellcasters... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's alot in there hopefuly I'll hit it all. As for difficulty, I agree there are certain monsters especialy that are causeing more pain than they "should." There are certain monsters which present suden jumps in difficulty, seemingly from no where and this is definately not what I was going for. I've identified a few areas in which my initial changes are out of whack. I do plan to address these very soon. Some of these were just oversights or failures of knowledge on my part. As an example Woodfist (the brute guarding the scroll/key at the tree of infus) I hadn't been aware of exactly how his group was spawned (my intention was that he spawn alone,) And his modifiers are more potent than I had thought. A late tweek to the normal monsters he's based on makes him obcene when combined with his modifiers. My intentions as to difficulty are roughly as follows: Each monster should have a role to play, this means it should have the nesassary tactics and stats to perform one job well (from it's perspective) That is it shuold be good at killing players who fight in a very specific way. The player should always be able to overcomethis by shifting their starategy slightly (utilizeing a secondary skill or potions or alternate weapon etc) The "balance" I want actualy has nothing to do with "hardness." I want to have to think a bit while I'm playing. I have a tendancy when playing vanilla to space out and play on auto pilot. The experience I want is to be engaged in the game and mentaly present. Clearly the changes to monsters, as they are , do not hit this mark. In some cases they are an improvement. But I need to reassess them all. There are a few which are definatly worse now than they were before. Another part of the problems is that the vanilla skill set does need some tweeking to get to where I want things to go. Likewize equipment changes, which I have some prety firm ideas about. Another trouble I'm haveing, is that I'm esentialy aproaching a point in the future, that I have a pretty solid view of, but the path itself is unclear. Every aspect of D2 is inter-dependant. So I have to be careful about back tracking on changes that look bad in the short term when they match the long term theory. Although if the theory turns out to be "bad" I'm more than ready to modify it, or replace it Which brings up some of your other coments/questions. Equipment in general has some changes coming. Each weapon class will be more specific different. There are a few part to this in my current plan. Firstly bonus damage from attributes (str,dex) will be shifted around a bit. This will be made clear on the items themselves. Weapon classes will have different balances of bonus damage and to hit factors as well as common specials. Things like very low amounts of deadly strike or crushing blow will apear on some (in the neighborhood of 5%) Bonus damage vs monster types other than undead is something I've been experementing with as well. Large weapons will all be 2 handed, and reach will be determined by weapon size (it currently is not always.) Polearms and spears for example will have clear reach advantages over 1-h swords etc. 2-handed weapons will also get about twice the enchantment potential as 1-handed ones. And teh before mentioned type-modifiers will be more potent on 2-handed vs 1-handed weapons. Shields will have a greater contibution to defense. So fighting with a 2-handed weapon will be about power tactics, 2-weapon fighting will be about accuracy, and weapon and shield will be about tanking (assumeing a mele character here.) Certain skills will be altered/replaced/merged to intensify these diferences, and some new ones created to fill gaps. This will mostly be done "softly" that is power tactics skills will be less effective with unsuitible weapons but not excluded. There will be some exceptions, mainly at the extreem ends of the spectrum, for example daggers and polearms may have a few skills dedicated to them specificaly. I'm trying to find a balance here between flexibility, and restriction that rewards thoughtful play. (because as a player that's what I want to experience.) (Relaxing the skill setup should also make this less painful. I fully expect characters to have 5 or 10 active skills invested in and used regularly, rather than the usual 3 to 5. And no buffs/summons etc that you recast every 5 mins or so, don't really count; though auras do if they are switched situationaly) As for uniques I'm still debateing their exact nature. I want them to be "special" emotionaly. My current thinking is that Uniques will have two primary roles. First they will drop with additional quintessence so they will be more enchantable than other items. And secondly they may be set up to violate the normal seperations of items specials. They should not be preprogramed items. At one point my plan was to have all quintessence be from uniques and that was to be their role. The likely outcome is that uniques will be about twice as enchantable as items are currently, and Items that are enchanted with an elixer will be alot less potent that they now are. If I go this route, uniques will become much more common (somewhere in the neiborhood of 1 in 100) Sets are less important to change. In the long run I'll mostly make some new ones to suport various strategies, and fix the ones that are now pretty much useless as they overly relied on skill bonuses. Magc modifiers (prefix/suffix) will be altered a bit here and there, the over all comonality and intensity of a few will change quite alot. Another source of quintessence I'm working on is modifier recycleing. You'ld basicly cube off modifiers point by point and get the quintessence back at some ratio or other (possibly even, maybe half, or 3/4ths.) This involves alot of brute force though so this won't happen soon (I'll proly have to make a program to generate these recipies were talking 10s of thousands at least as far as I can tell) The economics of crafting will change somewhat too. I don't want to talk about it in too much detail, because I have a really cool set of ideas that may not work Down the raod as I have more thime to test things out I'll talk more of this. Bottom line, The mod is not close to properly balanced now, on that we definately agree. And some of that is because of partial implementation. And alot of it is because of incautios (possibly stupid is a better term here) modifications I made in certain monsters' stats. Thanks for pokeing me in the head again though. I've been very destracted trying to get the damn skill descriptions done, and it has prevented "real" work being done on the mod. I'm very close to finished with them though, I hope to have a real realease in a week or so. With some sanity brought to the monster/player balance, the new skill descriptions, and some or all of the base equipment class changes implemented. -Quatl [Edit] I just realized I hadn't addressed on of your direct questions. Reguarding quintessence now or later delimas. I agree that these are issues. It's all a trade off, for example in Sir_General's Rune Mod (clearly one of my major influences) there were as you say no magic etc items at all and it was all about continuly adding tinny bonuses to the equipment you started with. One thing that would happen as I played it is that while initialy I got a little thrill each time I added a new point of something, after a while the thrill wore off ... I just ended up sort of taking it for granted. And I missed haveing something special to find or look forwards too. (don't read this the wrong way, the bulk of my d2 playing in the last few years has actualy been his mod. I think it's great, it just isn't perfect for me) My idea for a point based system arose out of seeking a comprimise between the a rune mod like system and vanilla. I'm not perfectly happy with it, but I like the idea of the treasure hunt aspect of d2 where you ocasionaly find something really good. One nice thing about the foundation LotH has now is that I could prety easily change different aspects around. Quentessence could come from another source, as could reagents. I think both of these will change slightly (I aluded to some of this above.) I'm not certain if I want the game to have no other magic items. I think I like some mixture of the two, however "re-quentessencing" is certainly possible. -Quatl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************************************************************************* MOST RECENT README FILE Legacy of the Horadrim quatl@hotmail.com _____________________________ LotH Readme Last Updated for LotH(v) v1.5E __________________________________________________________________________________ Future releases, patches, and discussion of the mod can be found here: http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=151 __________________________________________________________________________________ Legacy of the Horadrim is a mod for Diablo II Lord of Destruction v1.10(final) LotH allows you to create your own character class by selecting any combination of skills you desire. To suport your custom class you can enchant items in virtualy any way you wish,limited only by character level and availible gold. __________________________________________________________________________________ System Requirements: Any Windows PC that can run Diablo II Diablo 2 LOD v1.10(final) (Expansion is required) If you don't have accsess to v1.10 dlls you can find them here: http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=1157 You can find additional Utilities for running multiple versions of D2 on one machine here: http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=16 (several people have recomended "Iowan's Mod Launcher v1.04" for this. __________________________________________________________________________________ Instalation: Unzip this archive into your Diablo 2 directory This will create a LotH(V) folder, containing the following files: Readme.txt (this file) - Legacy of the Horadrim (shortcut) - D2mod.ini - PlugY.ini - D2gfx.dll - PlugY.dll - Utility.dll - NewTxt.dll - SklTree.dll - SkillShort.dll - msvcrtd.dll - MercMod.dll - d2Mod.dll - D2ModSetup.bat - Data (folder) - PlugY (folder) - Note: The LotH(V) folder should be inside the D2 folder - "c:\Program Files\Diablo II\LotH(V)" for example Copy the shortcut from the Loth Dir to your desktop (or wherever you find convienient) and edit it's properties to reflect your D2 instalation directory make sure to change "Start in" path so it points to: [your d2 dir]\LotH(V) (for example "c:\Program Files\Diablo II\LotH(V)") If nessasary, change the "target" to point to your Diablo II folder: "[your d2 dir]\Diablo II.exe" /mod:LotH(V) -direct -txt Copy d2Mod.dll and D2ModSetup.bat to your Diablo II folder. Run D2ModSetup.bat to install D2Mod. (This will alter your D2 Instalation so that D2Mod can load the plugins used by LotH. To remove it simply run D2ModSetup.bat again.) Use the shortcut to start the game. __________________________________________________________________________________ Skills and The Horadric Tome: Skills work a bit diffrent in Legacy of the Horadrim. Skills are not learned from the skill tree panel. You begin the game with a Horadric Tome. The Tome represents your character's knowledge. You use the Tome to learn a new spell or technique, or to encrease the level of knowledge of those you've already learned. Adding or enhanceing a skill requires a scroll containing the knowledge you desire. Scrolls may be purchased in town, usualy the person who offers gambling will sell them. Which skills are availible varry from town to town. You may at times need to return to a previous town to aquire a lower level skill. Skill Scrolls can also be found in treasure somewhat frequently. Before you can add a skill to the Tome you must bind it to yourself useing the "Cupric Orb of Binding". New characters start with this object, as well as two other orbs. These other two are needed once you reach a higher difficulty level. You should store them in a safe place untill then. To bind the tome (or increase the power of the bond in Nightmare or Hell, difficulty) simply combine the Orb and the Tome in the Horadric Cube. Once the Tome has been Bonded, you will see a few new properties on the Tome's description: "Bond of Destiny" tells you that the Tome has been bonded sucsessfuly. The Tome will also show "+1 Pact of the Horadrim." The pact discourages those wo try to wield more than one Tome (in other words cheaters.) After Binding the Tome you can Add Skills if you have an availible Skill Point, and meet the requirements of the skill you want to add. To add the skill you combine the scroll with The Horadric Tome, in the Cube. If you qualify the skill knowledge will be added. The skill's icon will appear in the speed bar. Each skill point added increases the Knowledge Level requirement of The Tome by one. Skills also add to the level requirement of the tome (in a way that is equivelent to vanilla D2's Skill System.) In order to qualify for adding a given skill bonus you (and the Tome) must meet some requirements. Firstly your character's level must equal or excede the level requirement of the skill. Each skill is also capped to a maximum of level 20, so trying to excede this rank will cause the combine to fail. In addition, for mechanical reasons, some skills are restricted to certain classes only: Assassin Only: - Claw Mastery - Weapon Block - Fists of Fire - Dragon Claw - Claws of Thunder - Blades of Ice Barbarian Only: - Double Throw - Whirlwind Assassin or Barbarian: - Double Swing - Frenzy (Note: Double Swing looks odd when used but, it does deal proper damage.) Removeing Skills from the Tome: If you are not happy with your choice of a skill it is possible to remove it. You will need a scroll of teh skill you want to remove, and a bottle of Alchahest (sold by scroll vendors.) Place the Tome, the Scroll and the Alchahest into the Cube and combine. Each time you click combine the skill bonus on the Tome will decrease by one (as well as the level requirement.) Your character will regain a skill point for every one removed from the Tome. Neither the Alchahest nor the skil scroll is consumed by this recipe. __________________________________________________________________________________ Character Classes, and player stats: There are none, really. All character classes have access to the same skills, and gain the same benifit from the various attributes. All classes fight as well as eachother, move at the same speed, drain and regenerate stamina at the same rate, and mana at the same speed. Don't feel like you have to play a Paladin in order to use auras, or a Sorceress in order to cast spells effectively. Unlike in the regular game any class can be effective with any type of skills you wish. There are still some differences, see the section about the Horadric Tome for some of them. The others are animation speeds, some classes are faster or slower than others when casting, or weilding diferent types of weapons. Be careful about assumptions you might have from playing vanilla Diablo II. Classes previously had vary different rates of mana per Int and Hps per Vit. Most classes now gain significantly less of both! You will need to invest points in one or both of these in order to survive. __________________________________________________________________________________ Item Crafting: The crafting system in LotH utilizes Quintessence and Reagents. Quintessence represents the alchemical potential that reagents shape into specific magical effects. Only an item with availible quintessence can be further enchanted. You can think of Quintessence as "enchantment points." Adding quintessence to an item is simple. You must obtain a Spectral Elixer, and combine it with an item in the Horadric Cube. Spectral Elixers can be purchased from the gamble screen in town, or found (rarely) in treasure. Any equipable item may be enhanced. Alchemical enhancements stack with any existing enhancements from other sources, such as magic prefixes or Unique Items. The amount of Quintessence an item recieves is dependant on your character's level. As your character gains in power so to will the power of items they can create increase as well. The rate that this grows in not linear, so a level 50 character will create items with much more than 50 times the quintessence a 1st level character can produce. Combineing an Alchemical Reagent with an item that has sufficient Quentessence availible will add the Reagent's effect to the item. Most reagents will stack, that is by repeatedly applying the same reagent you will gain an increase in effect's power. Each Reagent lists the amount of Quintessence required in it's description. Note: As a shortcut, you can combine five of the same reagent with an item for five times the effect (for effects that stack,) the quintessence cost is five times normal as well. DO NOT STOCKPILE REAGENTS OR SPECTRAL ELIXERS: In an aproaching release reagents will be changed completely. In Fact Crafting will be very different in general. Reagents that are hanging around may become worthless. The enchanted items themselves should be just fine. __________________________________________________________________________________ Sockets and Gems: Most gem properties have been changed, and several new gems have been added. Gem level requirements have been altered. They now roughly follow skill tiers. Chipped require level 6, Flawed level 12, etc through Perfect gems at level 36. Gloves and boots can spawn with sockets. Boots gain effects as shields, and gloves as weapons. It is possible to remove and reuse items from sockets. Purchase a Jewler's Hammer from any gem dealer, and combine it with a socketed item to remove the gems from the sockets. (Note: If the gems cannot fit in the cube with the item they will be lost. Be careful with 2x4 size items) NOTE TO USERS OF PREVIOUS VERSIONS: Prior to 1.5E, gems could be purchased from merchants, and could not be "tri-cubed" into higher grades. They are no longer for sale, however you can once again cube 3 gems of the same type, and grade, into one gem of the same type of the next highest grade. __________________________________________________________________________________ Hirelings: Hirelings have the same equipment slots as player characters. Paying attention to equiping your hireling properly will increase their effectiveness greatly. Don't forget that you can Alchemicaly enhance their equipment as well as your own. Hirelings will in general level faster, keeping pace with your characters level. They are also more effective in certain situations than you may be used to (especialy against bosses.) Treat them as a partner, and you will be rewarded. __________________________________________________________________________________ Critters: The world is slightly more dangerous than in vannila D2. Most mosters spawn in larger groups, and many are more agressive. Monsters are more willing to use their more potent or anoying skills and behaviors. These changes are preliminary, feel free to complain if you think they are too weak (or too strong) in some way. __________________________________________________________________________________ Credits: Moding by Quatl Much help was provided by various members of the PhrozenKeep community I couldn't have done this with out you folks! Game Testers: cj Yopurzag Malachai29 kmwill23 Phlebiac Jounk33 Quatl (Possibly YOU! Find me some bugs) The miraculous D2Mod system [SVR] with the following plugins: PlugY Survival Kit [Yohann] D2MercMod Plugin [SVR] D2Mod Utility Plugin [??? maybe someone can tell me who wrote this] New Text Table Plugin [??? maybe someone can tell me who wrote this] 5th Skilltree Plugin [Talonrage] Skill Shortcut Plugin [RicFaith] CubeOps Plugin [Myhrginoc] msvcrtd.dll [Microsoft] This mod contains additional graphics, some from community sources: New (drinkable)Potions inv1XX.dc6 new gems [FourHorsmen Mods] TP/ID Book [ShadowTalen] Arcane sphere [Diablo I gfx from Incandecence] all other new gfx [recolored from D2 by Quatl] Special thanks to: Erevos, and Maxx Power for making some sugestions, which led me to change my thinking about the Tome Fish of Muu for provideing tough criticism, and insight Nameless for offering much needed advice. Myhrginoc for enchourageing me to civilize this release and being generaly supportive. Nefarius for many bits of mechanical wisdom. __________________________________________________________________________________ LEGACY OF THE HORADRIM FAQ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Legacy of the Horadrim, Frequently Asked Questions Last updated for v1.5E ______________________________________________________________________________ Skills/Spells Q: Do skills gain synergies? Yes, currently skills and spells have the same synergies as in vanilla. Q: Have you changed any of the skills? Generaly no. Some skills have been altered slightly to allow them to be used by other classes. All skills and spells are numericaly identical to vanilla. That is they do the same damage, cost the same or whatever. Some of the alterations to make spells usable by other classes do alter the animation speed. Q: Why can't I add points to the Masteries, they all require level 100? The masteries on the skill trees are just for reference. When you gain points in a skill it's numbers will apear here, so you can see them. You must use the Horadric Tome to gain skills. (RTFM) Q: My skill trees are empty except for masteries, wtf? Skills are gained useing the Horadric Tome, and skill scrolls. (RTFM) Q: WHat's the deal with Orbs of Binding? The Orbs of Binding are needed to allow you to gain the extra skill points from quests, while keeping the Tom's level requirement equal or less to the level of your character. The first Orb must be combined with the Tome before any skills can be added. The other two are for nightmare and hell difficulties, and can be used after you reach those points in the game. Q: What's this "+1 to Pact of the Horadrim" doing on my Tome? It's part of a cheating protection measure. If you have more than one Tome equiped at a time the "skill" makes your character unplayable, untill you get rid of any extra Tomes. Q: How does the Tome's level requirement work? Q: Why does the Tome's Level requirement Increase? Each skill point added adds one to the level req. The Effects from the Orbs of Binding create extra room in the level req for quest skill rewards. This is to prevent problems from "twinking" where a 50th level character could pass their Tome to a 1st level character. It should not be possible for the Tome's Level req to excede your character's level unless you cheat in some way to get extra skill points. ______________________________________________________________________________ Alchemy and Crafting NOTE: The specifics of Item crafting will change soon. Q: What is Quintessence? Quintessence is the "fifth essence" as opposed to the four elements earth, air, fire, and water. It is the essence of identity, that which gives an object it's soul, nature, or form. In LotH Quintessence is basicaly "Enchantment Points." IT's a sort of magical currency with which magical enhancements are "purchased." An item must have enough availible Quintessence for a Reagent to add it's effect to the Item. Quintessence is added to Items useing a Spectral Elixer. These are sold via the Gabling screen by the appropriate vendors in town, or can drop in treasure. Q: 10 Quintessence is not enough to do anything cool with, wtf? I mean really some Reagents cost more that that! The amount of Quintessence an item gains is based on your character Level. Initialy the amounts are small, but as your character grows in power they will add more Quintessence when enchanting. Q: Why can't I use Reagent X on Item Y? There are a few possibilities. In order to sucsessfuly add a Reagent's bonus: - The Target Item must be "Alchemicaly Enhanced" useing a Spectral Elixer - The Target Item must Have enough Quintessense points availible | (the Quintessence cost is shown on the Reagent's discription.) - The Target Item must be of an appropriate type | (The item type(s) a particular Reagent can work with are shown in the Reagent's description) - There could be a bug. If you are unable to add an effect, and all of the above rules are | satisfied, Let me know. It's possible for individual Reagents, and combos, to be bugged Q: How do I enchant an item? Briefly: 1. Buy a Spectral Elixer from any gambler 2. Cube the item you wish to enchant with the Elixer This will add Quintessence to the item and turn it's discription purple and orange. 3. Cube the Alchemicaly Enhanced Item with a Reagent If the item has enough Quintessence, and is the right type, the effect will be added. 4. Repeat step 3 with the same or other Reagents Multiple applications of the same Reagent will in most cases increase the effect. Nearly every numeric type property works this way. Reagents that like "Indestructible" only need to be applied once. Q: Can I enchant items that are already magic, rare, unique, or sets? Yes. All Equipable items except for arrows, bolts, and throwing potions can be enchanted. ______________________________________________________________________________ Technical Problems: Q: My skill trees look weird, all my class's skills are there but there are no conection graphics between them. Q:The shops are selling invisible Items, or every item is called "an evil force". Q:The Horadric Cube Doesn't work at all! Q: When I try to load a character, the game crashes, says "bad inventory," or otherwise poops out. Q: wtf is Assertion Error? Q: I want to paly on battle net sometimes how can I do that and still play LotH? Q: I want to play some other mod too, but it uses a different D2 version, how can I run both? These problems are (nearly always) caused by version problems. LotH only works with Diablo II LOD v1.10(final) all other versions will cause one or more of the problems above. Some mods may leave altered dlls lurking in your D2 directory, which can mess things up too. Especialy if they are not uninstalled properly. You can get the shiny clean dlls and files for any version of D2 from the PhrozenKeep's file center. for 1.10(final) go here: v1.10 Dlls http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/dload.php?action=file&file_id=1157 There are several utilities to help running mods, and multiple versions of Diablo 2. You can find some of them here: Mod management Utilities http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=16 The other Major cause of these errors, is D2Mod not being installed properly. The directions are in the readme file, but here it is again: 1. Copy D2Mod.dll and D2ModSetup.bat from the LotH(v) directory to D2's Main directory (on default instalations that's from "c:\Program Files\Diablo II\Loth(v)\" to"c:\Program Files\Diablo II\" 2. Run D2ModSetup.bat This will pop up a little window, which can say two different things. If it says "Are you sure you want to install this mod?" click yes, and try to run the mod again. This means it was not installed properly and was most likely the problem. If it says "Are you sure you want to remove this mod?" click no, and check that you have the right version of all D2 files. You probly have either the wrong version of D2 or some left over dll from another mod in the way. _________________ Legacy of the Horadrim: Have a taste, contains a full days supply of 0 esential vitamins and minerals. http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=151&start=0