[Patch 5.2D] Eastern Sun Rises

[gogodanny]

Hey Bogan,

afaik rune-drops were enhanced ever so slightly. I have found 3 Purples since I played this Patch. 2 Prior to it, so the difference isn't quite noticable.

Drops should however improve somewhat once you make it to hell

[the_bogan]

Yeah, in NM act 5 now.

I started getting green runes in NM act 3
Prior to that, nothing past Yo. So I've been having to downgrade runes regularly for the first time in I dunno how long.
With the skill limitations in place, I can't go through everything on Players 8 from scratch like I do normally.
Having said that I did redo Acts 1 to 4 normal when I was 63 and still no noticeable drop.
I don't know wether to be proud or embarrassed of wearing the level 1 assassin set all the way through to NM act 5

[AlphA - The Real One]

Rune droprate should be the same as before. I didnt change anything there.

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

Kudos Bogan that's incredibly remarkable. Especially considering the low dmg output of the set :-D

Honestly I think u're just grassfeeding Fortuna and will likely cash out once you reach hell with amazing drops :-D


@Alpha - I cleared BRW, DMC and Domain inkl. Naraku (full clears) like 10 times on hell /p6 or /p8 already but have not seen a single of your newly introduced secret items.

Don't know if I'm just unlucky, but I managed to find a ZOD decal, 2 more purples and 9 gold runes in the meantime.

I really wanna find at least one of them, is there a specific area more likely to drop any of em?

[AlphA - The Real One]

Yeah the dropchance might be too low. On the other hand, how many class specific lvl 75 amu's/ring's did you found yet? Even duo I played my sorc to lvl 100 I only found the lvl 75 sorc amu...

It took me a few hours on Lost Farm players 16 to find one. If I am not mistaken it should be a little less than 1 out of 10 lvl 75 unique charms. Probably best way to find one is going for Clone Dia as he has a higher chance for unique charms.

Question: Would you guys prefer further patches focus more on balance/fix current content or would you rather see bigger changes (which would also include the removal of current content)?

Cheers
AlphA

[the_bogan]

On a not quite related note, my Druid died at level 80, hell act one, due to me thinking I'd paused the game but hadn't (or something bumped the space bar) so I'll try again in a couple of days once I've decided on a character, taking into account the new skill point limitations.

Initial thoughts on the patch?
I know you said no changes to drop rates, but I'm wondering if a bit of tweaking in the treasure classes caused really low drops until Nightmare act 3, then really high drops afterwards. In my shared stash I still have 38 jewels, 19 of them are Jewel of Ire, lol. I never found a white rune other than I, or Yo. No red runes at all.
Despite that, the game still feels easy. If it wasn't for my stupidity in not pausing the game, I reckon my Druid would have beaten hell after only maybe 15 hours gameplay. As is, 11 hours got me up to hell act 1, cruising, and level 80.

I wonder what could be done to make the game more challenging?

[Lucifer666]

I have a couple of ideas for making the game more challenging...I don't like the current changes that unbalance the game even more...

Increase to monster dmg,life...Normal monsters as the specials in Hell are the only place where you are in any danger at all...More monsters are necessary as with the skills the way they are you are pretty much mowing everything down fast...

Decrease the drop rate of everything...maybe even nerf many skills so that they do less dmg as with Dstoning and Gem Melding you can increase the dmg output of any char...removal of dmg per lvl from the Damage Augmenter...Nerf to Dmg Auras(I had a Freeze Pally that did not even have to hit monsters not immune to Cold in Hell on p/8)...make Maple Leaf take down only one lvl from enhanced gear as with weapons(will make it harder to make Uber Armors)...

there is more that can be done,but will post once i know what you people think of this...

[the_bogan]

I know version X isn't popular here at the keep, but I felt the much slower levelling made the game more challenging rather than simply upping monsters life/damage. Ironically enough, the reason I stopped playing it was that rerolling scrolls always gave scroll 13. I'm sure there is a simple fix to that but not sure what to change.

Come to think of it, no offense to you AlphA, but to me your changes are just as dramatic as Version X was, but maybe a couple of years on helps to lessen the effect. The guy who did version X was effectively banned from posting about it here.

[AlphA - The Real One]

Sure I would always like to hear ideas. I'll go through them one by one.

More life and dmg isn't in my opinion needed but a reduce on itemstats as dmg reduction, absorb and max res lvl 95. Once those go down, monsters will get tougher. Second is life/mana leech. Whatever life/damage a monster has, a melee char with enough life leech won't care, as long as he won't get one-hitted. So changing this stat is also important.

More monsters always favour skills which can kill multiple monsters at once. I would like to avoid that. What could be done is creating new ctc trigger for melee skills/weapons which cover a small area to give every single-target melee skill a small aoe. (see Reign of Shadow, Median XL, Resurgence, etc..)

A change I liked is giving monsters more skills and put monsters with different kind of counter skills in an area. Also to give them ctc on death triggers. (see Hell Unleashed, Aftermath, etc.)

Decreasing the droprate is something this mod already does, mostly for crap though. A problem I see here is the option to increase drop rates with /players X. Another way I read somewhere recently is removing magic find / gold find all together. Resulting in only killspeed / treasureclass being import for drops. I would like some feeback on this especially.

I wouldn't nerf all skills all along, but certain skills are too strong for sure, like Sandstorm or Immolation. Personally I would remove the Damage Argumenter alltogether. That would allow giving buffs for stats to certain skills or for certain functions, like 1 extra Tornado per 200 base energy, but no more than 10 in total. Do you by any chance still have the files for the holy freeze paladin?

Lowering the level reduce for maple leaves would just result in more farming. That's not really an answer to the actual problem. Quoting myself here about a possible solution.

What would you guys think of a combination of tinkering and dstoning. Rather than having the ilvl we would use the tinkerpoints as a limit on how many times an item could be dstoned. This would result in a bigger item diversity, as its harder to define a best in slot. Second we could control better how many times an item could be dstoned. For magic/rare items we would create a suffix/prefix controling the tinkerpoints. Unique items could be designed around how many times they could be dstoned. On the other hand, runewords would be excluded from tinkering (good) and dstoning (bad).

@the_bogan never heard before. Just googled for a quick overview. Certain changes do sound interesting and could be used. Anyone has a download link for me?

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

I'd like to chime in again too.

Personally I enjoy the changes a lot as it seems even as a non hardcore game you're able to thoroughly enjoy the game.

Currently I think there's a huge variety of chars that can make it through the game untwinked and this is where ES has excelled all the time. I don't remember this many viable builds in any other mod i've played. Most of the time it's whirlwind or frenzy for barb, zeal or Hammer for Paladin, trapper or martial artist for assassin ... you get the idea.

What do you guys think about summoner builds? I've yet to finish the game with a dedicated summoner, never made it past Baal Hell. Surely I ain't the best D2 gamer, but still, you guys feel it's fine, or they could use some higher damage? I somehow like what Median does there, where a few summons are tanky, some others a mix of life/dmg and a few deal insane damage with low life. I kinda get the vibe that resummoning makes those builds more fun as you don't just stroll along and cast a curse every couple steps.

So far I have yet to find a single Lvl75 ring/amulet. I managed to craft 2 amulets but that's that. Jewellery is usually crap anyway, I hardly ever find useful ones, except that I was able to hoard a little collection of +1all jewels which I love truly.
I guess I'm glad to know that it's charms that I should be looking out for. So Clonewars it is :-D

[Lucifer666]

Alpha@

I still have the files for the pally...

More dmg on normal monsters is neccesary as they are unable to kill you unless you are naked,more life is meccesary as you are OHK-ing most monsters anyway in gear that is meant for nightmare in hell on p8...Stats reduction might also be neccesary,also take a look at the Lord Of Maidens mod for d2,that will show you some interesting stuff...More farming would be desirable as you can make a very strong char by farming in nightmare after all...

I also though about increased levels for both chars and monsters,that would prolong the game by much,and make the last level virtually unobtainable in XP too,maybe even remove Nirvana Grass so that it is that much harder...

GoGoDanny@

Summonners are quite viable...just finished the game on p/8 with a Dire Wolf Druid build...he powned...without teleport he would be much weaker as you would be unable to target specific monsters...Metalspark was the most dangerous monster as USUAL...so a boost to Unique monsters would also be desirable...

Edit: Stats and Skills for my Summon Druid
Name - Play Style - Stat Allocation - Focus Skills - Mercenary - Status - Char Lvl - Death Count - Kill Count
BlackRaven - Summoner - 75 STR,Rest ENE - Dire Wolf,Elemental,OAK SAGE - Cold Wolf - Finished Hell p/8 - 95 - 2 -
6665 - RETIRED
Equip:Weapon Druid Craft Shilelagh(+3 Summoning,+1 Druid),Shield Druid Craft Ceremonial Shield(3 Soc),Armor Eternal Reign
(Te N Ka Wo To Ru) Eth Ceremonial Armor ,Helmet Druid Crafted Dream Spirit,Gloves Magic Titan Gauntlets (+15 Might),Belt Goldarks Strap Muscle Wrap,Boots Hermes Gift Gladiator Boots,
Ring 1 Druid Craft (+16 Might) ,Ring 2 Druid Craft,Amulet Rare Druid (+1 Teleport)
Merc Equip:Weapon ES Runeword Hound(I Nu) Viking Sword,Shield ES Runeword Dread (O So Re Ru) Thorned Shield,Armor ES Runeword
Animal Friend (Na U Shi Ka) Plated Cuirass,Helmet Nightwings Veil Spired Helm,Gloves Boots and Belt Rumour of Pain,
Ring 1 One Ring, Ring 2 Elemental Jewel, Amulet LOD Eye OF Etlich
Charms:Vet Charm with Jewels,All Unique Charms,5 Summoning Grand Charms
Weapon Switch:Rakas Folly
Main Skills and Oskills:Summon Dire Wolf 100,Summon Elemental 91,Oak Sage 72,Might 62,Teleport 32,Elemental Form 53,Shock Wave 55
Specific Info:Teleport is a must for a summon char,it allows you to use em effectivelly...Oskill Might or any of the other
Damage Auras for more pownage...died two times in Domain due to not paying attention...Used Elemental Form with Shock Wave for
crowd control...

Edit 2: and my summon Necro...

Necro - Summoner - ALL ENE - Golem Mastery - Fanaticism Desert Hell Offense - Finished Hell(p/8) - 93 - 22 - 8440 RETIRED ・
Equip:Weapon Etherial Alea Jacta Est Precision Cleaver,Armor Jindujun (Su Ha Ra Shi I)Runeword Dragon Scale,Gloves
Runefusion Battle Gauntlets,Helm Rare Tiara(Oak Sage),Belt Laertes Treasure Merchant Belt,Boots Spirits of the Dead Phase Boots,
Ring 1 Rare Necro +11 Might,Ring 2 Rare Necro Ring with +1 All and +5 Battle Orders,Amulet The Cursed Donut,Shield
Dracula's Wit Bloodlord Skull
Merc Equip:Armor Fox (Ki Tsu Ne)Runeword Archaic Armor,Helm Arthurs Crown Titania Crown,Weapon Dragons Breath
Dragon Spear,Gloves Rare Sharkskin,Belt Timeloop War Belt,Boots Hermes Gift Gladiator Boots,Ring 1 Elemental Jewel,Ring 2 ???,Amulet Eye of Etlich
Charms:Gemmed Veterans Charm,All Unique Charms,5 Summoning Grand Charms
Weapon Switch:Nothing,he has everything he needs in main switch...
Main Skills and Oskills:Golem Mastery 88,Clay Golem 84,Blood Golem 88,Iron Golem 75,Fire Golem 85,Might 46,Oak Sage 39,Heart of Wolverine 37,
Battle Orders 37,Amplify Damage 44,
Specific Info: My first Char I made in ES...He got all the way to Hell Baal in Autolicus Set...hehehe...
I would never try something like that again...Teleport is the most important skill for every Summoner,it helps
you position your summons and it can get you out of trouble really fast as well as get you into trouble if you
are not carefull...Skill levels of your summons are also very important,and to of course have a lot of auras...
Anyway as I got to Hell Baal in Autolicus I died many times,and Baal Himself Killed me at least 7 times,and
in the end I killed him with no Summons and with Blade of Oblivion...which I didn't even up to exceptional...

[gogodanny]

Thanks a lot for your progress reports Lucifer.

I remember I made a golemmancer back in the days myself. Even tried druid summoner, but to pretty much no avail as their dmg is so abysmal - least what I remember.

What I do remember though is that I did have crappy gear tho and refused to invest my ever so precious materials :-P Ye I tended to be a hoarder rather than user of lil Precious ;-)

Guess I'll give it a dedicated try soonish - just started with new Median Patch so it might take some time till I'm able to provide feedback ;-)

Cheers and thanks again

[Narzath]

Two things.

1. I found one of the secret treasures finally! It increases my skill level cap by 1. Does that mean I get to have a unique named after me?

2. Shadow Master is currently broken. any level of shadow master oskill or otherwise will allow you to have 25 shadow masters. Yes, 25.

[AlphA - The Real One]

1. Might wanna post a screenshot to share with anybody else. I'll name it after you, or any name you would like.

2. Fixed, patch 4.2E uploaded. In case you don't like any of the latest changes. I included easy instructions on how to remove them.

Notice: In case you already downloaded an earlier patch, remove the old data folder first, before copying the new files. (cause I only included the .txt files).

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

oh ye screenshot please

Oh and AlphA - could you perhaps bump revive AI? The current one is abysmal. I decided to do a nec and my revived monsters run away instead of engaging ... perhaps you can look into it? Thanks a ton

[Narzath]

Here is the proof!

https://imgur.com/a/yDB9e

I would love if you could name it as "Narzath's Notorious..." whatever you decide to make. Thanks for all your work Alpha!

[gogodanny]

Awesome buddy! Looks great. How About "Narzath's Notorious Nephalem Relic" or "Narzath's Notorious Noblesse"

@AlphA - I really think HE runes socketed into anything else other than Weapons are garbage. reflectdmg/lvl ist utterly useless, especially with those values. Currently the reflect is 720 on a lvl 96 char. Aside of normal this can't kill enemies whatsoever ...

I was wondering if we could either bump the reflect dmg significantly (lets say 15.000-30.000) or use a different thing altogether. eg. +2%EXP or 2% all attributes or 2% all elementaldmg or something like that. thanks for your consideration

[AlphA - The Real One]

Name noted. Will be included in the next version.

@gogodanny: % for attributes sounds not bad. Might be a stat that is worth stacking for instead of +1 all skills jewels. In the end I rather would simply remove all stats from runes alltogether. Those people would only sock them for runewords. Another possibility I was thinking about is a dll plugin I always found great, but never saw anybody using it. Nosock dll, this would allow us to limit what can be socket into what.

National Holiday coming here in china. Hopefully have some time to work some more on ES. Also got some monster reworked from Ogodei to include in the next release.

Edit: Thanks to Ogodei the next version will feature improved revive AI and a fix on shadow masters attack behaviour.
Edit2: Maybe any of you guys wanna join the Phrozenkeep discord. That would make this a whole lot faster and easier;).

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

Thanks for your consideration AlphA - I'm really curious what's coming next.

Wow - something weird happened. I wanted to respec my barb - in doing so, my lvl 63 Barb (act 3 NM) all of a sudden had 117 Skillpoints to spare. I'm scared to respec again ...

Furthermore: Berserk (e.g.) says "req. Lvl 47 for me to invest further skillpoints - i'm lvl 68 tho :-D

I think I've never had more fun than I had with 25 Shadow Masters in Hell Domain :-DDDD

[AlphA - The Real One]

The respec is a problem with plugy. Cant do anything about. If Im not mistaken you shouldnt respec if you have free skillpoints. Somehow you also can get back to the original number of skillpoints.

For Berserk, should be the same for every skill. Have to change it in skilldesc.txt, but man this one sucks..

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

Hey AlphA I really just highly appreciate your efforts of improving this mod. If I wanted everything to work flawlessly I'd not play at all :-D

Furthermore you're doing this free of charge and I love all your changes so far (even jewellery graphics which makes cubing rings a pain xD)

Keep up the great work man!

[Lucifer666]

I am of a opinion that Alpha should be making his own mod...

The changes are just drastic...no other words for it...new treasures,new monsters,now we are changing runes,next will be lets just throw all the runewords down the drain and make our own and so on...

And don't get me wrong,I too have a set of edited files of ES,done the changes i talked about and more and the entire mod now feels like ZyEl in the first couple of areas...but i did those for my own pleasure and am not about to share them...I don't even use them anymore,played once thru and done with it...

[gogodanny]

As much as I value your input Lucifer, am I still under the impression that since AlphA's changes are completely free to use and not mandatory, as well as clearly marked as "community patch" that it has a right to remain.

What's more, I am sure a lot of PK Moderators have glanced at AlphAs piece of work and considered that it's according to the PK ToS.

So please don't be a grumpy cat and let those people who enjoy his changes do exactly that.

Thanks :-)

[AlphA - The Real One]

I'm a little at loss, but what new monsters you talking about? Replacing monsters with an better looking version made by Ogodei? I replyed about gogodanny and has much as he was right, I wouldnt change a single part of it as I am not happy with the whole system. But the point of those patches arent changing the game completely.

Only thing I would handle as a drastic change are the hidden treasures (which took players quite some to actually find one out of eight an the way you unlock skills, which makes leveling harder.

What is the problem of sharing them? I made those changes mostly for myself too and uploaded them, so anybody who like them can play with them. Also I made quite a lot optional or easy to remove. Nobody forces you to use them.

Yes, after the next release I will probably release a mod based on Eastern Sun, but also quite different. I just wonder why people in this community are so against any changes or new thing.

Edit: Released 4.2F Started working on Eastern Sun Rises 5.1A . Will take a while before the next update and beta test. Also a big shout out to Ogodei for his help:) .

@Narzath: Will include your "charm" in 5.1A

Cheers
AlphA

[gogodanny]

Holy Smokes, I love the addition of the Hellfire Torch ... So curious what else you got rolling in the patches to come AlphA, can't wait to play it!