All armor pieces now spawn with max durability, bows can be refilled with the cube, other balance fixes. This mod is about darkness, no NPC trade, streamlined progression, starting gear at Charsi's, different character classes.
Test v 21-02-A
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- Items now spawn with maximum durability
- Bows and javelins now spawn with maximum quantity
- Disabled random monster density for the palace levels in act 2
The average number of monsters is similar but random instances of overly dense
monster population are now impossible
- Less monsters in Canyon
- Blood Raven has X 1.5 the hp and is now lvl 17 instead of 12
- Blood Raven now spawns Ghouls
- Cubing any bow or crossbow refills it to 255 arrows/bolts
- Armor drop rate increase
- Weapons drop rate decrease
Test v 21-01-A
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- 4 Tower levels instead of 5, some are larger than before
- Some monster density changes
- Path to the Burial Grounds blocked
- A level connecting the Cathedral to the Burial Grounds
- The Burial Grounds leads to Catacombs level 1
- Fixed graphic issues in the Burial Groungs
- Scrolls of Repair now also recharge staves
- Scrolls of Repair can repair bows, crossbows and javelins up to 255 (due to game limitations)
Note that the max number of arrows for bows is 500 if you wait for the auto-refill and
350 bolts for crossbows
- Andariel drops a scroll of renewal
- Scrolls of renewal now give 2 scrolls of repair if you don't use the reset
- Most staves now have a built-in "Spell Damage" stat for the 2 sorcerer classes
- Sorcerers slowly lose some damage on certain spells per level
This damage loss is compensated by the new staff damage stat (it can even exceed the points lost)
For technical reasons, I went with a damage % bonus. This is why to have weapons scaling, there is
also a progressive loss of skill (spells) damage % (sorcs only).
Just like trying to find a high damage axe for a warrior, you can now want to find a
high damage staff for a sorceress for the same basic reasons.
- Inifus tree replaced by a regular tree
- Unique monster near the tree can drop regular items again
Act3:
- Swapped the Great Marsh with the Flayer Jungle
- A level (called "Dark passage") now connects the Flayer Jungle to the Great Marsh (near both wps)
- The Flayer Dungeon now has 4 levels
- Smaller Sewer level
- All small temples now have the same name. You can't just look for the "Ruined Temple" like before.
- Act 3 small temples have a much, much higher monster density than before
Act 5:
- the arreat plateau now connects to the glacial trail
- the frozen river is now accessed from the glacial trail level
- Anya has been removed from town (for technical reasons, her opening the portal to Nihlathak
would cause issues, same with the class specific item rewards)
The official story reason I'm giving is she's inside her house.
- Nihlathak quest is now linked to the arreat summit, therefore no longer optional
- Added a staircase down to the worldstone levels close to Nihlathak
Test v 20-12-A
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- Mod renamed to "Dark & Focused"
- New main menu background
- Monster changes in act 1
- Different grass and plants color in act 1
- New Lam esen quest in act 3 (work in progress)
- Fixed Rogue lightning arrow skills
- No more Den of Evil quest
- A few friendly rogues in the blood moor
- Tristram can be accessed without going through the underground passage
- Color codes for wp text in acts 1-2-3
Green means it's a good point to stop a game session
Gold should be considered like the end of an act
- Item types changes
- Warrior passive skill changes
- Several drop rates changes
If you are updating from last month's version, your chars will work just fine.
If you are updating from test v 20-12-A (2 versions ago) or earlier, you need to get rid of your books before updating.
* 1h sword Falchion deals as much damage as 2h swords, swings as fast as 1h and requires less stats than comparable weapons, which is a bit too good.
* max ammo and max durability on everything is nice, but staves still spawn with missing charges.
waiting until i can find some high damage low stack throwables, so i can abuse the cube refills :p
- It's even worse than that (lol), I just looked , 9-17 (falchion) vs 8-17 (2h sword)
Point taken. I think I'll go with nerfing falchions and keep 2h swords the same.
Maybe falchions 6-14 and crystal swords 4-14. It would look weird to me to have crystal swords be better or = to falchions
- Good point, I didn't think about staves. I guess that would be logical to have them also spawn with max charges, I'll see what I can do. Not quite sure it will be feasible, maybe, I currently don't know what trick would force the game to do so.
Cube "free" refills are currently only for bows and crossbows because bows typically have low damage and I feel like it would be too unbalanced to have non-stop javelin usage without having to carry a few different javelins of variable quality. I could be wrong, to be honest I have not tried a "real" javelin amazon build so far.
found Treads of Cthon unique boots in countess' cellar, they require clvl15, which is a bit too high for the whole act. and the stats while nice, probably will be obsolete by A1.
*got Razortine triden, clvl12 just a few minutes later.
maybe remove requirements from unique and set items altogether, if possible? to open more opportunities for using them without changing anything else.
Are you sure Treads of Cthon will be obsolete? Because afaik they have high armor class that's great for at least the whole of act 2. Probably not as great for sorcs though.
About req a bit higher than the act: to me, having something to look forward to wear in a few levels is part of the D2 fun.
Removing level req altogether doesn't sound like a good idea imo, it's already not super hard I don't want to make the game too easy...
"Are you sure Treads of Cthon will be obsolete" - didn't have the chance to find out yet - i threw them away, throught i'd find an upgrade quickly. so far i'm seeing a lot of overlap in drops between 2nd half of A1 and 1st half of A2. thought A2 would immediately have way better items. eh, no big deal, the game isn't overwhelmingly tough so far.
Weapon drop chances are as follows:
Act 1 = Act 1 group
Act 2 = 66.6% Act 2 group - 33.3% Act 1 group
Act 3 = 66.6% Act 3 group - 33.3% Act 2 group
Act 4 = 66.6% Act 4 group - 33.3% Act 3 group
Act 5 = 66.6% Act 5 group - 33.3% Act 4 group
Armors are different, you can't get armors from the previous act.
drops feels overwhelming, but they do give me an opportunity to gets something good in any category i want. even had two belt upgrades! :D
...after playing a bit longer, they feel fine. i think i'm identifying way less items now because i can be more picky about what i use.
...only spent ~110 scrolls in A1 by the way. that's definitely less than the usual amount.
There's a lot of drops, true, it can sometimes feel like it's too much, I agree, but during testing I found that if I reduced it further it became impossible to find a certain item type at a reasonnable rate. Current drops are basically made to let you ignore item types that don't fit your build, same thing with how books now have the spell type displayed on the ground.
Maybe I could test with 5 drops at once instead of 4 to make items drop less often, but other than that I don't have much leeway.
Blood Raven fight was reasonably tough! and fun. didn't expect these changes to the arena. i also like how you made use of those two tomb entrances :)
...then you're going to love what I did to act 3 lol ... just remember the level names for the quests and you're good (because I swapped level location)
I played earlier this week, never found it this easy to find the first 2 organs (due to level changes), and next time, I can just use the underground level connecting two jungle waypoints, then it's north east in a quasi straight line to kurast. No more running in circles for 1h30 lol
D2's bugged poison keeps getting me. would really appreciate if there was a way to get rid of it.
Definitely will do something about it!
It's just a bit complicated to find a solution to a bug I can't fix lol
One thing I thought of but didn't have time to test is to have all full hp and full rejuv potions also cure poison.
That way it would not render all poison monsters useless, but it would offer a reliable way to counter the poison bug.
sounds fair enough.
I know of 3 monsters that can cause the "poison bug"
- act 2 mummies
- radament
- one of baal's minion (forgot which one but it's in the throne room)
Is there more? Because I've been thinking, imo it would be a cleaner solution to modify those monsters instead of changing potions...
For instance, I could change the elemental damage type to something else, like magic
Can Andariel cause the poison bug? I'm not sure
i get an impression everything with poison over time attack can bug-poison. i've been bug-poisoned by spiders in A3 cave and, i think, zombie death-clouds in A2 - was hard to tell.
can't recall if i was bug-poisoned by Andariel before. i think not.
okay, so the drops are definitely not too much: those boots i threw away in A1 - i've only seen few replacement pairs during whole A2 and all of them were not good. also seen only one next tier 2h sword (Claymore?). but i also was lucky in finding the right way, so maybe i was just not killing enough. and the situation with 2h swords wasn't a problem for me since i was willing to diversify this time. which leads me to...
double throw kicks ***! took it as a backup skill and then got a super-hurty javelin, which helped a lot with avoiding poison damage for the rest of the act. unpleasant, but ultimately insignificant surprise: Double Throw does consume one javelin on activation. ignoring boss fight, so far i had to switch to my other weapon set only twice.
respecs: carried one from A1 to A2, used it instead of turning it into repair scrolls (had only one item that truly needed repairs and it's disposable), can't decide what i want, so taking some defencive skills, one rank of double throw and one rank of jab, leaving about half the points unspent until i find something powerful or won't be able to progress reasonably quickly anymore. before this i played sword Amazon with points mostly in first two 1h sword skills.
kinda want to rant about lack of Amazon skill changes, but you probably have enough headaches already :p
Well I never actually wanted to make drastic skill changes, that's a design choice.
Personally I'm not a fan of mods where all the skills are changed because I don't want to re-learn everything.
The few skills I changed quite a bit, that was out of necessity to fit my concept better. As you've put it before, what I'm doing is a bit like a fan movie cut.
So unless you point out one skill that really feels like it's totally out of place, you can only expect balance changes, and only if necessary.
Btw I have not had time to test with several stacked evade options that I know you've complained about before
with just one level in Dodge and Avoid i would often spend >5 seconds not hitting anything with a "very fast" weapon no matter it's type while being attacked by >7 enemies. very noticeable with 1h sword skills. makes charge-up and multi-hit skills somewhat worse.
no unfitting skills, just some that makes me wonder if it's worth taking, levelling, or spending mana on them.
erm... something isn't right. i found The Dark Passage with 2 upwards and 1 downward exits in the Flayer Jungle, right before a waypoint. all exits lead to the same place i've entered the dungeon, re-entering the dungeon puts me at the last exit used.
...actually i might have been wrong - the exit from the dungeon looks exactly the same - the outside part, so one of those exits probably do work. just tried - it was the second upward exit.
Entrance and exit in the jungle do look pretty much the same... not much I can do about it without getting a massive headache.
The Dark Passage, when you enter it from the Flayer Jungle (which, you should, otherwise you are litterally going the wrong way), you should look for an upwards exit to the Great Marsh.
I know, it's not totally pretty because it's not two upwards staircases, but it's the best I can do for now (and possibly the best I can do period. lol)
Actually you know what, I was thinking about litterally the thingy you click on to enter in the jungle, but I could probably add something next to it to distinguish entrance and exit.
Torches, statue, idk what, some kind of object like that.
That would probably be better in case someone gets a bit lost but actually finds the exit and doesn't notice they just exited to the right jungle level
the Gidbin fetish guy thing doesn't drop a portal scroll along with it's quest drop.
True, but the quest reward sucks and in my mind this + the organ quest counts as one since they are in the same spot.
That's how I see it anyways. Plus the fetish shaman in the flayer dungeon gives 2 tps
oh, so that wasn't a levelup i had down there - that was a quest reward i got! i didn't realize.
no that was a level up lol
I just meant to say that I rarely (if ever) think to stop to go to town just for gidbin without first getting the organ -- because ormus pretty much rewards you with crap, and because the flayer dungeon is always close to gidbin.
So in my mind it's almost like gidbin and flayer dungeon are the same quest...
What I pretty much always do is gidbin, then flayer dungeon, then tp
okok. to be fair, gidbin only takes two squares in the inventory, it's just that my inventory was pretty stuffed already and i knew i'd lose a random amount of points on exploding skeletons. i was only somewhat stressed about inventory space, that's all. didn't even have to be, actually.
ok, actual bug: can't get over the web wall with the Teleport sword. at least charges don't get consumed from just trying.
tried walking as close to the barrier as possible, saw the inactive waypoint, tried to teleport on it, next to it, everywhere. went to town to check if the waypoint got activated - it didn't. maybe have Telekinesis charges on the sword for touching the waypoint?
It's not a bug and I kind of thought this whole section would be interesting to figure out, maybe I'm wrong haha.
Hint: don't stay too close to the door/barrier
Spoiler follows:
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Just teleport with both feet in the Great Marsh. You can't teleport when in Lower Kurast. It's a one way thing...
wow. i actually made an effort to stand as close to the barrier as possible as not to accidentally blink in front of it in case a path to the area i'm pointing at is blocked. okay.