Original Legacy of the Horadrim Thread

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Iron_Priest » Tue Sep 05, 2006 9:48 pm

Nice Mod. I guess I'll have to try it out fully when I get back from study.

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Post by Malachai29 » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:50 am

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! :)

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:22 am

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
Last edited by Quatl on Wed Sep 06, 2006 1:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Yopurzag » Thu Sep 07, 2006 12:48 pm

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.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:59 pm

[quote=Yopurzag";p="287307"]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.
[/quote]
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.
[quote=Yopurzag";p="287307"]
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.
[/quote]
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.
[quote=Yopurzag";p="287307"]
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.
[/quote]
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.
[quote=Yopurzag";p="287307"]
Maybe people will ask for a recipe to erase a skill from the Tome, then. But this must be very difficult to achieve.[/quote]
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
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by kmwill23 » Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:52 pm

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 =)

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Fri Sep 08, 2006 5:29 am

[quote=Quatl";p="287338"]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.
[/quote]
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.
Last edited by Nameless on Fri Sep 08, 2006 5:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:41 pm

@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
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Post by Malachai29 » Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:47 pm

Sounds good to me! :) As a tester, one should be ready to start new characters at any time, as the creator of the mod may make changes to anything at any time, especially in beta stages.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by kmwill23 » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:17 pm

The idea of completely getting rid of the skill tree is intriguing! Looking forward to trying it out =)

Quatl, the additional instructions you provided for the "hooking" worked perfectly! PlugY and all.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Yopurzag » Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:48 pm

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!
Last edited by Yopurzag on Sat Sep 09, 2006 12:12 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:40 pm

@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 :o
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
Last edited by Quatl on Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:21 pm

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)

[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
sor.Hydra (fire)
bar.grim ward [lame]
[all assasin traps need some help]

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
nec.bone wall (und)
sor.blaze (fire) [?should be buff instead?]
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
Last edited by Quatl on Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:18 pm

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.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sat Sep 09, 2006 7:34 pm

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
Last edited by Quatl on Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Sat Sep 09, 2006 8:15 pm

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).

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sat Sep 09, 2006 9:06 pm

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
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Sun Sep 10, 2006 8:00 am

[quote=Quatl";p="287594"]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)?[/quote]
Half of the sentence is missing, so I can't figure out what you want? Know if it is a good idea, how to do it, ... ?

If you want to know more about which skills are useful and have the time, then you might want to read some of the build guides on diabloii (sans the gear section). They can often give you good insights into skills.
e.g one Barb guide totally dismisses Grim Ward while another finds it useful for certain situations.
Same for the 'sin, one guide dismisses CoS while it is a cornerstone for another one.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:09 am

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
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:33 pm

You can skip all the guides that focus on PvP and some of the skills are indeed much more useful for PvP than for SP play.

I think it is a decent idea to have skills that convert a portion of the damage to elemental, but I would do it more for attack skills than for buffs. Other people will disagree and prefer skills that do 100% conversion and use those only against PIs.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Jounk33 » Sun Sep 10, 2006 6:17 pm

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 ;)

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:46 pm

[quote=Jounk33";p="287708"]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 ;)
[/quote]
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.

[quote=Jounk33";p="287708"]
One Question:
Why is gemmergeing in LotH deleted ?
I mean this was a bad desicion.
[/quote]

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.

[quote=Jounk33";p="287708"]
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.
[/quote]
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
Last edited by Quatl on Sun Sep 10, 2006 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sun Sep 10, 2006 10:01 pm

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
Last edited by Quatl on Mon Sep 11, 2006 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by IndianaMaggot » Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:12 am

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.
Last edited by IndianaMaggot on Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:30 am

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 for convienience.

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:34 am, edited 2 times in total.
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