Battle for Elements mod for Diablo II

0 comments by TrueMage on May 14th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Battle for Elements 1.50 has been released! This is a new base version so you will have to start over from the scratch as your previous characters will not be compatible with the new version due to basic changes. These were bad news but good ones overcome the pain. I have got many feedbacks on my previous work and almost all of them were considered while preparing the new version. You will get many pleasant surprises in the overall gameplay and even the storyline. Please see the full list of changes below.

Changes list:

• Global changes:
  • All monsters and areas were extensively rebalanced!
  • Adjusted difficulty settings, which result in an easier Normal difficulty, a slightly more difficult Nightmare difficulty, and a more challenging Hell difficulty.
  • New Act I storyline! Look for tons of new items, monsters, and NPC monologues. Look for the special "++++++!!!++++++" signs in the beginning of monologues, and note also the gold color of the texts.
  • New "Friendly Fire" doctrine. Now we have different FF skills on different game difficulties. Refer to 'Difficulty Modes & Friendly Fire.doc/pdf' for an explanation.
  • 3DFX Glide video mode was added: Run D2VidTst.exe in root D2 folder, press "Run Test", and choose the 3dfx mods from the list after all tests were performed. Please note that the colors of some items, ambient light in some locations, and other such things were optimized for this video mode. If you don't like this video mode, you can change some parameters with gl32oglinit.exe or even run D2VidTst.exe one more time and return to your preferred mode.
• New features:
  • Enlarged item graphics! Look for the "Right click for additional information" string on items. I began to add enlarged images for some items, but it is hard and long work, so every new version of the mod will contain several such images. Great thanks to Necrolis for coding this feature!
  • No more VBS script! Now we have an EXE file to launch the mod. Thanks to Werdn for coding and to Ice_Instinct for the background art! :)
  • Some User Interface elements were changed.
  • "Rescue Deckard Cain" (A1Q4) quest reward on Normal difficulty was changed. Akara gives two rare rings, Ancient Key, and standard ruby now.
  • 24 new monsters (7 unique)
  • 21 new locations (by Cubaholic)
  • New modifiers for runes, which means that all runewords have been changed as well.
  • New soundtrack for "The Ancient Vault" location by Tony Flex.
  • New Horadric Hypercube animation.
  • Recipes for enabling/disabling death counter on your Talisman (See 'Cube Recipes.doc/pdf').
• Balance:
  • Act 3 Cold mercenaries use Ice Blast instead of Frost Nova.
  • Chance for gold drop was reduced, but its quantity was increased.
  • Chance for drop of Regurgitator blood was increased.
  • Some properties of "Safety" crafted items were nerfed.
  • Potions of Resistance depend on character level now.
  • Sentinel of Light (one-hit-kill monster in the Spider Cavern) was removed because the contest was won.
  • Level of Firebolt retaliation from Goatmen was reduced from 5 to 4.
  • Gargoyle's Thorns aura strength was reduced on Normal difficulty.
  • The Smith was weakened.
  • Increased chance of exceptional items while gambling on Nightmare difficulty.
  • Some statistical caps were raised.
  • Multiple Shot has more arrows/bolts now.
  • Chance to drop mana and healing potions was reduced (excepting drops from champions).
  • Level requirement for Nature's Peace was reduced; properties of Bul Kathos Wedding Band were improved.
  • Drop chance for runes was boosted.
  • Drop quality from sparkling chests was boosted.
• Bug fixes:
  • Fess' Marching Clothes set charm properties correspond to appropriate set bonuses now.
  • Perspective for Tristram map was disabled.
  • Day/night cycle in some dungeons was removed.
  • Some animation modes for mercenaries were fixed.
  • Favorite Talisman upgrading recipes using 10 Emotions and 10 Cells were changed to prevent one-HP bug when characters level up.
  • Mystery Potions are not beltable anymore.
  • Quest drop for Diablo was fixed.
  • Range of Exotic weapons were fixed.
  • Thorns, poison, and open wounds will now cause "on-death" events. So if you used Thorns to kill a monster, which must die in order to open a portal, then upon death the portal will now open.
  • 32k HP character cap was removed.
  • Some bugged Mystery Potions were replaced.
  • Some in-game texts were edited (great thanks to Myrmidon for my-pidgin-to-common-English translation).

New contest!

As usual, we have a new contest included in new mod version. :) In two words: SEARCH for TREASURE!!!