Original Legacy of the Horadrim Thread

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Fish of Muu
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Post by Fish of Muu » Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:46 am

So are you changing the tome settings again? Currently, I think the 'bugged' method that it's using now is pretty much the only thing keeping everyone from being hidiously overpowered.

In 1.3, you could pick your class skills and any skills from another class. This means skeletons + golems + might/concentration/fanat, sorcs + conviction, skelemages + fire goglems + conviction, any caster + warmth, any melee + masteries, any melee + ww/zeal/shapeshifting + might/concentration/fanat, etc.

In 1.4, your own skills adding to the lvl requirements actually does a lot of nerfing (which would be needed). This comes with some weird side effects of previous bad balancing that already existed in the game (and I'm sure a lot of it wasn't even intended). Concentration normally is better than might (concentration starts with more ED%, gets more ED% per level, and has 50% uninteruptable), but now that the first point costs 18 level req, you have to get it to lvl 31 (48 lvl req) to match an equal lvl req might (lvl 48).

Another good example would be the zon's elemental arrow attacks. Ignoring the fact that the higher skills have better effects (like explosion/freezing), to get them to actually catch up with their predecesors takes a LOT of points.

But then this creates two problems; some lvl 1 skills would become overpowered (skeletons), and some later level skills which aren't that powerful will be ignored (resist fire/ice/lightning are the same, but have different level reqs.)

So let's go into overpowered with 1.4. There currently is no level cap on skills so you can get a skill to lvl 99 and be fine. 'Good' skills have higher level reqs, but what about skeletons? Summon Skeletons and Summon Mastery are both lvl 1 skills. What's another good skill to combine with it? Might! Might is lvl 1. So at lvl 99, this gives us lvl 33 skellies with lvl 33 mastery and lvl 33 might.

Taking this further, a normal necro would get 20 points of skellies + mastery getting him 8 skellies doing 124-127 damage, 605 attack and defense, and 359 life. Our shmancy necro with 33 points of skellies + 33 points of mastery gets 13 skellies doing 387-390 damage, 995 attack and defense, and 600 life. Wow! Look at that difference. We're not done yet, though because we have lvl 33 might giving us +360% damage (x4.6) which brings us up to 1780-1794 damage. So our naked lvl 99 necro has 5 extra skeletons doing over 14x damage each! A normal necro can only double it with amp damage. In fact, you could even sacrifice a few points of might to get amp damage, which would probobly bring you up to 3k skellies. Mercs get might aura too, so you could even ignroe that and go skel/skel/amp and get something around 45/45/9.

Now compare this to another fairly standard build... the hammerdin. Lvl 20 hammers and lvl 20 conc is 533-544. That puts the lvl req up to 57. Lvl 99 req brings us up to 41/41 and 2064-2081. So a tripple lvl 1 build totally outshines a two skill higher end build that is almost entirely usless until you max it.

You might think that it might not really be fair because of the lack of synergies, but remember that you don't even have enough skill points for the synergies.

But let's go after the sorc. Easy first choice is conviction. You only need lvl 25 conviction because there's a -150 resist cap (which is obtained at lvl 25). That's a whopping 54 lvl req, leaving 45 points left for a spell. So lets go for some big guns: Forb, blizzard, meteor.

Forb goes up to lvl 16 and 206-218 with conviction bringing it to around 515-545. Normal naked forb with maxed synergies came out to 366-373 before mastery (which brought it up to around 786-801). Also remember that conviction is better than ice mastery AND it breaks immunities.

Blizzard goes up a bit higher to lvl 22 and 660-711 damage with conviction bringing it up to 1650-1777 damage. Remember that a normal naked lvl 20 blizzard with full synergies did 2620-2844 before ice mastery (which brought it up to 5633-6114).

Meteor also goes up to lvl 22 and has a damage of 1027-1089 and 278-302 dps, with conviction bringing it to about 2567-2722 and 695-755 dps. Normally it's 2865-3057 with 411-449 before mastery (which brings it up to 7534-8039 with 1080-1180).

So the cross class skelemancer kicks a ton more ass, while everything else is nerfed.

So, let's take this further. Ice Blast is actually pretty a solid. Ice blast goes up to lvl 40 with 883-906 damage. 2207-2265 with conviction. Normally naked with full synergies it's 2129-2238.

So basically the strategy is to use the most low level skills as possible. I think you bit off a little more than you can chew at the moment. If you plan on keeping this system, you really have to rebalance every single skill in the game. Right now, every melee char is going to take a mastery and might (both of which are lvl 1) and become much more powerful, while casters really take a blow from their lack of high level spell choices.

Naturally you can't just make the good skills weaker and then bring them down to lvl 1, because then things like forb/blizzard will completely outshine ice bolt/ice blast (which were pretty much only used in the first place until you were high enough level to get the uber skills).

I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just trying to give you the biggest possible epiphany I can early on so you don't end up with even BIGGER issues later on in your mod. I like your idea, and I wish you luck, but you really need to give a long hard look at all the skills at once. It's a lot easier to rebalance 30 skills on one character than it is to balance 210 skills which weren't supposed to be combined in the first place.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:40 am

Wow Fish of Muu! That's one big juicy post full of great critacism :)

I apritiate the harsh and thorough nature of your post. I really need this sort of talk to get my creative juices flowing :)

Some of your coments had ocured to me and others are new. A few comments:

The restriction on the tome will be 1 skill point add-able per level (or the tome becomes unuseable untill you catch up. ( testing with a non level req related stat is just a necessary mechanic to achieve this, as the level req itself is the problem) And no level 6 skills before level 6, no level 12 skills before level 12 etc. In other words the same way the game works normaly except for all skills for all classes. (asumeing the new scheme actualy works this time, which it probly won't as it really doesn't want to :) ) [EDIT: I think I misunderstood your coments pertiaining to this]

The skills will definately need to be rebalanced, especialy with atention to redundant skills; both from the perspective of bad (skills that do almost the same thing but one has something extra, like zeal vs fend) and good (many of the things you mention.) There will be a fair amount of "pruneing" done in the future.

Some skills are just plain broken (in terms of being too good) even in vanilla. These require adjustment or removal. Frozen orb is one example.

Likewise some skill combinations are much nastier than others. I don't think that balanceing is going to be quite as complex as you say however, it will be alot of work. It isn't really 210 skills balanced in every combination because some skills are really mutualy exclusive, and some don't influince each other directly.

Masteries are a source of concern as they pretty much act as magnifiers for broad classes of skills. Auras are much more effective than normal too with summoning availible. Skeletons + auras in particular as there are so many of them (it is almost certain that skeleton numbers and power levels will be reduced to similar levels as wolves. And wolves and skeletons may become mutualy exclusive) Some auras will likely be drasticaly reduced in strength. ( you mentioned might, but thorns + skeletons + skeleton mages + wolves + golem of the day + valkiery + shadow master + huge mana reserves, is almost worse ... trust me ;) Critters explodeing every where)

The mod is still young, and monster strength has not been adressed at all. Ultimately the critters will need to be stronger clearly. How much stronger and in what ways I'm still rolling around my head. I don't think it makes sense to start this process yet, as it would lead to back and forth "double-balanceing." Which usualy leads to everthing feeling weird and ad-hoc (because of course it is.)

I don't want to just give monsters more hps and more damage. I'd like diferent kinds of critter require diferent methods of attack and defence, thus make being over specialized a bad idea. Vanilla D2 doesn't have nearly enough of this in my opinion, imunities are relatively boring (and inefective) ways of forceing versitility.

With my first sorceress experience (when diablo was first released), I mulched my way through normal with no real problems. But when I got to nightmare and ran into cold imune undead all over the place I was screwed. I'd over specialized "dumping" points into nothing but cold spells, and I had no way to kill cold-imunes. This factor should be a part of the whole game (not elemental imunities per say but various "confounding factors".) I don't want people to be stuck like my sorc was, but rather to learn early that versitility will be required of them.

There should be a strategic "tension" to players' strategy, between specialization and versitility. I have some ideas on how to address this too (particularly how masteries work and how they are split up), but they are not ripe yet. And between conceptual aspects like kill speed vs lone targets vs area, and such things. Conflicts like this are largely missing in vanilla precicely because each class ia "a kingdom unto itself."

How exaclty this works will depend on the specifics of the skills what ever they end up being.

I don't know what if any limits exist on total skill levels. It's something I will have to look into eventualy. I know that some skills "cap out" and it may be possible for me to cap others myself. [EDIT: Actualy I just thought of how to do this very easily with the cube, so its doable]

The word "Beta" in my case does not imply "feature complete" In fact I probly should have called this an alpha ... too late now :)

This mod is ambitious. In part that's the point. For me it's just not worth the efort of banging my head into my computer screen unless the prize is big. I enjoy agrivation, hard work and the rewards which come from doing the hard thing, and makeing something worthy. Something that I myself can spend hours upon days upon months playing. Somthing as rewarding as diablo 2 itself was for me for so long. Anything less just wouldn't drive me. If it wasn't so damn hard I'd have never goten this far. The project would have died of boredom in the crib.

It may be that I'm not up to the task. I certainly mess things up often. Many times I'm slopy, and I often out smart myself. I'm certainly not as capable as some of the giants who lurk in the dark corners of this message board. I'm thankful to have so many people who are willing to help me out, with their deeper knowledge, and skills. This mod as it is is as much a creation of the FrozenKeep comunity as it is mine.

Only time will tell, but in the striveing is it's own reward to a degree. And If I make something that I really enjoy, I figure some one else out there will enjoy it too. And may be alot of people who would never invest the time and agrivation to make something like this for themselves, can enjoy something which I've made. I don't think there's any greater reward than bringing enjoyment to other folks. If an hour of my effort brings an hour of pleasure to 20, 30, or a hundred people that's a real acomplishment in my book. Even if, judged on it's merits, my mod is complete crap :)

Vanilla Diablo 2, for all the complaints I've had about it over the years, is still a great game, and a great platform for creating something new. It is also full of poor choices, imbalance, and (in my opinion) overly restrictive structures. None of which can detract from the fact that It's the only game that's had a permanant place on my hard drive since the first day it was released.

I don't have the recources that the "big boys" have and I could never make an engine or all of the great art required to make a game like D2 from scratch. But I'm tenacious, stuborn and ocasional clever, and maybe that's enough for me to do something great with what Blizzard has given us to work with.


I'm babeling now though, so I'm off to bed. Thanks again for your coments, it is rare that people will offer each other such honesty and directness. I really apritiate it when it is offered, and I'll give your coments weight in my thoughts as the mod develops.

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:29 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Jounk33 » Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:47 am

I'am not sure that I understood the last two posts complete.
But I think with this concept we can have a real own character.
Of course, this mod seems not to be used for Multiplayer. But for Singleplayer it gives one of the best possibility to play individualy.

I dont think you need to balanche the monsters for the new skillsystem.

Porposal:
With higher level the prices for gambling become more expensiv.
This should be too for the scrolls
Another way; to make the vendorinventar not refilling, so you can only buy a scroll once by the same vendor. Threfor making the droprate for scrolls a little higher, or given every boss a scroll to drop.
Last edited by Jounk33 on Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Jounk33 » Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:57 pm

The "Damage+1" Crafting-Modifier seem not work.
Instead you can divide this modifier in two.
1.) +1 maximum Damage
2.) +1 minimum Damage

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Post by Malachai29 » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:57 pm

Jounk33, please use the edit button instead of double posting if you were the last person to post to a thread. It helps keep the forums clean.

Thank you.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:31 pm

[quote=Jounk33";p="288193"]The "Damage+1" Crafting-Modifier seem not work.
Instead you can divide this modifier in two.
1.) +1 maximum Damage
2.) +1 minimum Damage[/quote]

When you say "doesn't work" what kind of item were you trying to add it to? A melee weapon, a bow, which?

The modifier was actualy suposed to be adding to both min and max. (but it wasn't, fixed for next release)

-Quatl
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[EDIT: For those of you who, like me ;), jump to the last page of threads. Version Beta 1.4c is now availible. You can find a link in my first post along with the updated change log.

Please bang it around a bit, and tell me if any of the parts fall off :). ]

-Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Jounk33 » Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:01 pm

Meleewaepons
The modifier is shown but the Damagevalue dont change.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:32 pm

[quote=Jounk33";p="288247"]Meleewaepons
The modifier is shown but the Damagevalue dont change.[/quote]

It should work in 14c. I still have to check it to make sure.

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Post by Phlebiac » Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:19 pm

I am afraid I must say there is something wrong with the tome again.
This is what happens when you put in scrolls:
Scroll 1 = No requirements
Scroll 2 = Level 1
Scroll 3 = Level 2
Scroll 4 = Level 3
Scroll 5 = Level 4
Scroll 6 = Level 5
Scroll 7 = No requirements
Scroll 8 = Level 1
and so on.
Right now, I have only level 1 Skills on my tome.

Edit: I have tried a little more and it seems be be that this only happens as long as you put in only scrolls from on character. In my case it was all necromancer skills. Once I put in a Scroll of Might, the requirements jumped up to 12 and didn't roll over any more.
I then made a new tome and put in seven different scrolls from each character and after that, the skill level requirement was 7, as it should be.
Last edited by Phlebiac on Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:01 pm

It is possible that there is a "hole" someplace. The "fixes" involve alot of altered recipies so it is very likely that some are not quite right. In adition there is always the chance that my logic remains "incomplete."

It is most likely a problem with either certain skills, who's recipies are entered wrong, or with level one recipies in general (I'm goint to look at those now and see if it's just an oversight.)

What were the exact skills in question (if you remember) specificaly the 6th, 7th and 8th scrolls you added?

[EDIT 2: Did you happen to add that might skill in at level 12? (i mean was it the 12th skill you added?) If so it makes sense with the way things apear to be busted. It should not have anything to do with class.]

[EDIT: I think i see it, the problem is a logic problem. This "should" happen when you go for alot of low level skills ... I think it's fixible though. I'll work on it. I'd still like to know the specific skills i asked for above if you remember. Just in case there's more than one problem]

[EDIT 3: At least the jumps are downward (potentialy cheater-ish) now, which is better than upward (potentialy devestateing.)]

------------EDIT 4---------------
OK, I think these rules may work:
1. If SkillLevelreq < TomeLevel
-- Return the Tome and Scroll

2. If This is the first time adding a skill of SkillLevelreq,
-- Add skill
-- apply repairs to levelreq
-- Mark this skill level added (hidden)
-- Add +1 to TomeLevel

3. If the above conditions are not valid
-- Add skill
-- Add +1 level req
-- Add +1 to TomeLevel

-------------------------------------------------------------------
[EDIT]:
Ok, I've made the modifications that will be come v1.4d
in a few minutes.

The tome behaves itself in the following tests:
(tested on amazon skills only, but should be general)

Case 1
lots of level one skills

Case 2
Preventing adding a skill before the tome has the required
point total

Case 3
Adding 7 level one skills then adding 3 lvl 6 skills

Case 4
adding 6 level one skills
then adding 1 lvl 6 skill
then 2 more lvl 1 skills

Tests 3 and 4 would have resulted in a lvl req that was too low in 1.4c.

The tome is (hopefuly) functional now. This should not break characters from 1.4c, It won't however, fix any tomes that are currently broken. I'd recomend replaceing your tomes, by passing a fresh one via the shared stash.
--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:40 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by IndianaMaggot » Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:13 pm

YAY I can finally play again thanks so much for all the help and thanks for an awesome mod... but may I make a suggestion for the skill trees... Why not have class specific passive skills that way each class plays a little bit different but almost the same... you could make skill point books for 500 gold or something that grant 1 skill point just like the Radament skill reward book... just my :2c:
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:06 pm

[quote=IndianaMaggot";p="288288"]YAY I can finally play again thanks so much for all the help and thanks for an awesome mod... but may I make a suggestion for the skill trees... Why not have class specific passive skills that way each class plays a little bit different but almost the same... you could make skill point books for 500 gold or something that grant 1 skill point just like the Radament skill reward book... just my :2c:[/quote]

Great! I'm glad it works for you now... I was troubling myself about your difficulties this morning without any new ideas. It makes me a bit nervous that we never really figured out the problem. :) Hopefuly it was just a fluke no one else will have similar troubles.

Your idea about the trees is interesting, I'll think about it. (My thinking has generaly been twards makeing the "classes" into cosmetic options only.)

For the near future I'm focused purely on makeing sure the tome behaves itself, and then onto confirming every crafting recipe (not looking forward to this part.)

------
If that infernal tome works now I'll overjoyed, although I have my suspisions that it's still hideing something to bonk me with when I'm not looking :)

[EDIT: v1.4d is now availible, see my first post here for the link.]
--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by IndianaMaggot » Fri Sep 15, 2006 10:12 pm

Your idea about the trees is interesting, I'll think about it. (My thinking has generaly been twards makeing the "classes" into cosmetic options only.)
The only problem with that is that there is no need for 7 classes then... I was only talking about having 5-10 skill per class and the max level should only be from 5-10... also the skills should probably have a decient lvl requirement like 20-30 and cost around 10000-50000 8-O ... but the skills would have to be worth it...
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:29 pm

[quote=IndianaMaggot";p="288300"]
The only problem with that is that there is no need for 7 classes then...
[/quote]
You're right there wouldn't be any "need" for 7 classes, I'm not sure that it's important for there to be a need other than enjoyment.
[quote=IndianaMaggot";p="288300"]
I was only talking about having 5-10 skill per class and the max level should only be from 5-10... also the skills should probably have a decient lvl requirement like 20-30 and cost around 10000-50000 8-O ... but the skills would have to be worth it...[/quote]

These details make it sound even more interesting as a concept.

The only reason I could have for not doing something like this, is that it is related to the very thing I don't want to do ... That is: Telling people how they should be playing the game.

The underling philosophy for this mod is freedom to create. Create items and equipment that you want, and the "class" that you want. If you want to be a little woman with a giant sword who drinks the blood of your enamies ... well then you probly need a theripist, but I'm not going to hold you back. Want to play a huge beefy norseman who frolics with woodland creatures, and casts spells? Great more power too you.

The choice of apearance is in some sense a game mechanic in and of itself. It can change the emotional astetic of the game. People who don't care can always just pick randomly. However if I add back in a mechanic that forces (or even enchourages) a certain binding between the character and how they must be played, then I'm doing something other than Legacy of the Horadrim.

Haveing said that I do think it is an interesting idea. Some form of it might even have a place in LotH. Just not a form of it that is bound to the graphics, of one character class or another.

-Quatl
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Post by Fish of Muu » Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:39 pm

Making classes purely cosmetic creates a lot more issues.

The sorc and barbarian both have the came casting speeds, but the barbarian can dual wield. Because you got rid of +skill items, the barb can just use any two weapons and make them both caster weapons making him better than the sorc is every way. The ability to dual wield beats the inability to dual wield. A casting sorc/barb have no other differences.

I think you should rip apart the skill system that exists and make it a hybrid with the skill trees, or possibly even innate skills like older versions of Median.

Some ideas would be... put the elemental mastery skills back on the sorc but tone them down and make them lvl 1. Maybe something like only 1 or 2% per level. Possibly even make it so only one can be learned (once you learn one, the other two will be locked). This way anyone can use any of the elemental skills, but the sorc uses them better. Put skeleton mastery on the necro only. Anyone can summon, but necros do it better. Tone down the auras, or give them only to the paladin (They REALLY break the game now). Put Battle Orders only on the barbarian.

This makes each character different, but only with support skills. All the attack skills are available to everyone. The necro wouldn't be as good a caster as a sorc, but he still might want to use Glacial Spike for supporting his skelly army. This makes your job a lot easier. You don't have to rebalance all the skills knowing that everyone gets access to every aura. Might/concentration gives melee chars 3x damage while giving summoners about 50x. Not everyone blows past synergies and just gets 1 spell and conviction.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sat Sep 16, 2006 12:53 am

It's nice to know I can count on you to find uber where I would never have thought to look Muu ;)

Especialy interesting about dual weild makeing the barb a better mage. And here I had been thinking the only real reason to play a barb was to dual wield melee.

Your other coments are good too, Auras are pertty abusive if one wants them to be.

I'm reluctent to talk about specific skill alterations because of The BPFtNF...

-----------------------------------------------

The Big Plan for the Near Future(tm)

Skill Tome mechanics will be finalized (versions 1.4d-1.4X)
- Includeing a cap of 20 points per skill, as per vanilla
- Get Skill descriptions onto skill scrolls
- Make the skill icons stand out a bit more, from each other
- (already started but there are alot)

Alchemical Enhancement (versions 1.5X)
- Confirm every recipe, and fix broken reagents
- Some moderate rebalanceing of gold and quintessence costs will happen
- Fix the "Rainbow of Confusion" Effect in reagent vendor inventories
- Probly images based on item type compatibility + element colors

Gems will be rebalanced to make thier cost benifit ratios a bit lower (versions 1.6X)
- I'm thinking about twice as cost effective as the alchimical enhancements
- Costs and Efects could go up or down depending, proly some of each

Clean up Loose Ends (Versions 1.6X)
- Unique/Set items, and Runewords with invalid skill mods clensed
this could mean removal/substitution/ (especialy +skilltab which is useless)
- Put back the +skill type bonuses on items in a way that works

Declare Legacy of the Horadrim (Vanilla flavor) Complete
- This version will be alowed to float around unmolested
- This is for those who just want a "better" vanilla than vanilla

Begin the "Real" work on the mod
Legacy of the Horadrim(Steak -n- Potato Flavor)

Develop a Unified Theory of "Balance"
This will involve answering these and other questions:
- What is "advancement", and how does one acomplish it?
- How are monsters, levels, skills, stats, and equipment related?
- What are the proper roles of melee, ranged and magic characters?
- How do various skill structures work?
- What kinds of things should "spells" do?
- What kinds of things do "Melee Skills" do?
- What kinds of things do "Summons" do?
- What the heck is a mastery any how?
- How are Auras different from Passives?
- Do synergies not suck in any universe?
- How does/should items influince skill function, use, and power?
- What are the atributes for, how do they influince things?
- What is the proper tension between various stratigic types?
- What is(are) the purpose(s) of monsters?
- How do they serve (or not) these purpose(s)?
- How many diffrent ways are there to kill them and be killed by them?
- What is the function of Gold?
- Why are(n't) quests boring?
- Are the areas and their sequence part of my boredom?
- many many more

Then in acordence with the UToB
Redesign/alteration of various elements of the game.
Skills, spells, critters, levels, equipment etc...
This is when I'll start thinking in terms of specifics.

In other words I'd like to make my changes non-randomly. Not based on what I think is cool from moment to moment, and especialy not in terms of reactive ping-pong style rebalanceing.

Rather based on a consistant philosophy about how I want to play the game, and the emotions I'd like to experience while doing so.

Things I am sure I don't want:
"Hard" balance (as much as possible every character should be different and effective)
Zero point strategies (sort of like zero-point energy, theoreticaly infinite but boreing)
Lack of reward for creativity of the player.
Boredom

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Sat Sep 16, 2006 2:00 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Quatl
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sat Sep 16, 2006 4:12 am

I'm going to contradict myself (nothing new there ;) )

I would like to discuss an idea about skills. In particular masteries.

The basic jist is that rather than (or in adition to perhaps) investing points into masteries, each skill point invested into a skill would add to the relevent mastery or masteries.

For example each point in fire bolt might add to fire mastery, bolt mastery, and spell mastery. A point in ice arrow might add to cold mastery, bow mastery, and ranged mastery.

These masteries would not be nearly as potent as the vanila ones. And there would be alot more of them. So each skill adds a small amount to the effectiveness of many other skills. And as the overlaps form a sort of colage in skill effectiveness space this should aid both specialized characters and generalists. I think, if done carefuly, something like this could be a good substitute for synergies, and traditional masteries.

The key is to have the effect of each skill point's contribution be fairly small. And construct the overlaps so they conform to "reality." Meaning the skills conceptual interconnections become real interconnections to some degree. So Fire Specialist can mean multiple things, fire spell caster, fire melee/ranged fighter, fire summoner or any combination.

For example an elemental melee generalist would still gain benifit from stacking multibple melee skills (from the melee mastery adds.) But this character putting a few points into an elemental bolt would not make that bolt as cool as the mixed elemental spell caster's bolt, and even less so in comparison to a single element bolt spell specilist.

Of course this idea should be thought about in the context of a very different set of skills. The skill set would have to be carefuly crafted along with the masteries to make this viable, and avoid uber-power cracks for players to fall between.

This also requires that combat situations be more varied, in the sense of being easier to deal with useing one catagory of strategy than another. So that the broad skill types that are currently mostly pointless (like bolt spells) become fun, and the over powered ones (like area effect spells) become less monotinous. Enchourageing a median between specilization and generalization (perhaps 2-4 basic tactical styles/elements per character.)

This is what I ment about haveing a unified philosophy. Everything is related to every other thing, and the design ideals and details arise from these relationships rather than being ad hoc. This is the direction I'm currently leaning twards for after the basic version is "complete."

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Sat Sep 16, 2006 4:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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kmwill23
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by kmwill23 » Sun Sep 17, 2006 10:25 pm

For some reason 1.4D won't work for me! I tried removing it,readding, reinstalling 1.4B. When I attempt to create a new character or use an existing, I get an assertion error. 1.4B works just fine.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Sun Sep 17, 2006 10:34 pm

[quote=kmwill23";p="288492"]
For some reason 1.4D won't work for me! I tried removing it,readding, reinstalling 1.4B. When I attempt to create a new character or use an existing, I get an assertion error. 1.4B works just fine.
[/quote]
Well that's not good! :(

If you could PM me with the contents of the error log I'd apritiate it. It should be in your d2 directory. It's called something like "CRASH D2040901.txt" If there's more than one send me the one that's most recent.

It should help me figure out the problem. Also if you happen to remember, what did the assert say?

We'll see what we can do to get it working for you.
--Quatl

[EDIT: one thing that would definately cause assertion errors would be if you were trying to load a pre 1.4C character into 1.4D. I broke saves between 1.4B and C versions]

[EDIT 2: This includes the shared stash save file if it is not empty, btw]
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by kmwill23 » Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:17 am

It was the shared stash that did it =) Thanks!

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Jounk33 » Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:28 pm

Hi Quatl, Sir,

Is it possible in future versions to make classspecific scrolls for other classes unuseable ?
I'am playing now a barbarian and put the blade sentinel skill in my tome, but the skill dosen't work, surly because of animation.
So, there sould be a "for assisine only" warning on the scroll, like classspecific items.

Or is there any way the delete some skills from the tome ?

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Nameless » Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:41 pm

I think Quatl said somewhere earlier that he doesn't yet know which skills are class specific and which aren't so he has not yet removed them.

That said, BF works for Necros in ES, but it is possible that an Annimation was added for that or more likely substituted.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:33 pm

[quote=Jounk33";p="288541"]Hi Quatl, Sir,

Is it possible in future versions to make classspecific scrolls for other classes unuseable ?
I'am playing now a barbarian and put the blade sentinel skill in my tome, but the skill dosen't work, surly because of animation.
So, there sould be a "for assisine only" warning on the scroll, like classspecific items.

Or is there any way the delete some skills from the tome ?[/quote]
As Nameless said :) I don't know all of the non-working skills yet (blade sentinel is a new one to me , thanks for leting me know about it.) Haveing said that, I had been puting this off untill the basic tome stuff was working properly. I'll start doing this for the next release.

The way it will work is that skills that don't function will be marked as such on the rolled scrolls (to prevent folks from buying them) and will be filtered out by the cube for other classes (so you will get the scroll back to sell or whatever.)

Thanks for telling me about a new broken one. I'll look into makeing it work, if it's just an animation refrence swap, i should be able to fix this one ... maybe that would work for the druid icy breath one too, have to check it out.

[quote=kmwill23";p="288514"]
It was the shared stash that did it =) Thanks!
[/quote]

Thanks for leting me know :) I'm glad it was that simple.

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by meimo » Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:27 pm

hi quatl
I have been trying to get a working download for the last two days, right now I'm finished with my knowledge so please someone help.
what I did : clean install lod 1.10, meanwhile 3x,unzip 1.4d to the d2 folder
sent the shortcut to the desktop, targeted it to where I got my stuff(i.e.c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe\ mod:LotH -direct -txt, to be done in c\games\diablo2\LotH, of course with the appropriate quotation marks.
Start the game, run around and find scrolls that only show up as tiny little black squares, no name whatsoever. Same with gems, same with the stuff Charsi offers(simply price and itemlevel), same with Gheed (simply price and itemlevel).
I read in the forum that almost everybody finds necro or ama or pala scrolls. None of the scrolls I found showed any mark exept itemlevel.
So, please, someone give me a little hint how I can manage better than now,because I only can fill my tomb with what I got, purely by luck, hoping to get some stuff for my ama, getting 90% others.
Now this cannot be meant by building your own character! Just by plain luck!!??!!??
mayday!!!!!!

meimo


btw. I did copy the dll and d2modsetup to the d2dir
Last edited by meimo on Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Legacy of the Horadrim

Post by Quatl » Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:28 pm

[quote=meimo";p="288551"]
[...snip]
clean install lod 1.10, meanwhile 3x,unzip 1.4d to the d2 folder
sent the shortcut to the desktop, targeted it to where I got my stuff(i.e.c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe\ mod:LotH -direct -txt, to be done in c\games\diablo2\LotH, of course with the appropriate quotation marks.
[snip...]
[/quote]

I'm sorry to hear you're haveing trouble. It sounds like the game isn't finding the graphics.

One thing to try:
Take the "-txt" off the end of the shortcut target line
It should look like:
["c\games\diablo2\diablo2.exe" /mod:LotH -direct]

I've had diablo II be confused by the -txt and act strange before, when the actual txt files aren't present. I've not seen exactly what you describe, but similar partial mod dis-function. (by default the included shortcut is -direct only)

If this doesn't help, confirm that, in the "[LotH]\Data\global\items" folder there are a bunch of files called invXXX.dc6. Make sure these files exist.

Please let me know if this fixes things or not.

By the way Gheed should be selling every scroll of 1st and 6th level skills for every class. You are definately not expected to find all your scrolls from item drops, that would be very poopy :) .

--Quatl
Last edited by Quatl on Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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