D2:Elements mod for Diablo II

The four main features of d2:elements are:

- Random Immunities on monsters
- Elemental Weapons
- A new Skillsystem
- Skillpower to enhance Skills

Further things included in my mod:

- new class-specific items
- changed levels including all towns and Tristram (old D1 Tristram is back)
- reworked magic affixes, uniques, set items, runewords, gems, runes, ....

Explanations:

Random Immunities:
Every monster (including Act Bosses) has a certain chance to get one or two random immunities assigned. This chance increases with the monster level.
On normal, you will not see too much random immunes, but they are already noticable. But on hell, in the fifth act, you have to expect that most monsters have a random immunity, and lots of monsters even have two, making up standard monsters that have up to three immunities (one standard, two random), and bosses that have up to five (although the chance for five immunities is extremely low, I never saw such a monster in my tests).

Elemental Weapons:
If you do not specifically want to kill each and every monster and are a physical-damage warrior, an elemental weapon in the second weapon slot will really help you. You can kill most of the enemies this way.
Elemental weapons are the same as physical weapons, except that they deal elemental damage instead. They share with their physical counterparts the requirements (level, strength, dexterity), but have higher damages because they do not get strength or dexterity damage bonuses. They get a small damage bonus from energy though.
An example: there is a Great Sword dealing 19-34 physical damage. There is as well a Fluid Sword dealing 28-51 cold damage. It looks the same (except for the fact that its blue) and has the same requirements.

New Skill System:
I came up with a new one that does not have a maximum level and no level requirements for skills either.

The cost for increasing a skill is based upon the current skill level now. You need 1 skillpoint for the first level, 2 skillpoints for the second level, 3 for the third and so on (it changes a bit from that theme later on, but you get the idea). The first level of former higher-level skills now costs as much skillpoints as the former level requirement was (Concentration: 24, Fanaticism: 30 and so on). This prevents players from investing in highlevel skills too early.

You get more skillpoints per level, basically you get (characterlevel/3) skillpoints.

This should make it easier to spread your skillpoints over more skills or to concentrate on just some skills if you like (decide between 7 skills at level 19 and 4 skills at level 25...). One should not concentrate too much, though. Beware of the random immunities...

All skills have been rebalanced to fit this new system, and i also made lowlevel skills more useful when doing that. They can now compete with the highlevel skills.

Skillpower:
I did not like the synergy system in patch 1.10, so I removed it and replaced it with a synergy to Skillpower (former Energy). Most of the skills (though not all) increase their effects when you increase Skillpower. The effect this has are numerous and reach from enhanced damage (Bone Spirit) over increased lightning absorb (Resist Lightning) until decreased damage to self (Sacrifice). This should encourage caster characters to care more about their Skillpower value. But there are, of course, some caster skills as well that do not need Skillpower to be effective (Nova for example).

There are numerous other things changed as well. The monsters have been completely rebalanced, all weapon damages have been rebalanced, some armor stats have changed, skills have been rebalanced, rare items have been improved, there are new unique and set items, new runes and runewords, new class-specific items, altered cube recipes, altered drops (more good stuff for you), ....

I did not make this mod a total conversion though. Its more an expansion and rebalancing of Diablo2: Lord of Destruction, and most skills that were in the unmodded game also are in d2:elements.