Me newb FAQ

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IronDeath
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Me newb FAQ

Post by IronDeath » Mon Apr 14, 2003 12:48 pm

Hi there, I realized that since the article of fluxx is out, the Me community grows rapid as it seems.
But some of the new players don't have any experience with mods at all, so they ask the same simple questions over and over again spamming the whole forum ( even if there is something called readme, but well i know laziness ;) ).
As for this problem i want to create a topic whith the most common beginner questions.
We got this kind of thread on the old forum too, i think, but it got lost after we moved to the keep.

So lets start:

1.) Don't play a mod EVER over closed bnet, mods mean open bnet only !

2.) Don't try to join an open bnet game in your joinlist ( you can just join a game when the creator of this game has the mod too).

3.) Don't play a mod with an existing char ( you can do that, but make sure you stripped him from all items, and even after that the game could crash ).

4.) Be sure that 95% of the time the game will crash, its an installation failure that you made ( got this knowledge by myself painfully ;) ) so check the installation instructions on the mainpage of Varaya and Khan ( www.vkmods.d2mods.com ).
In case that the game still crashes after checking the installation infos be sure that you got the english d2lang.dll which is required for the mod.
Is the game still crashing feel free to ask ( please search the forums for existing topics before, we got 3 or 4 topics for one problem in about two days ).

5.) White amulets and rings are a feature, no bug so keep them for crafting.

6.) There are no prerequisite skills in the mod anymore so don't waste your skillpoints on skills you don't want.

7.) Crashes sometimes occour when you use weapon or armor racks.
Some players get those crashes some players don't ( a friend of mine get crashes through racks all the time, i never had one ) there are no known ways to prevent them from happening.

So far from me, Khan or anyone who is more familiar with the mod please make more suggestions of faq's which could be added to this post.

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Éowyn » Mon Apr 14, 2003 1:01 pm

Nice Idea Iron,
I also hava a few things:


I

The Shortcut for the ME-Mod must be

- if you want to take advantage of the double-start ability with the modified D2gfx.dll:

"X:\blablabla\Diablo II\game.exe" -direct -txt (if you have spaces in your path)
X:\blablabla\DiabloII\game.exe -direct -txt (without spaces)

-if you don't want to use the feature from the modified D2gfx.dll you can also use:

"X:\blablabla\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -direct -txt

but you cannot use:
"X:\blablabla\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -direct -text
"X:\blablabla\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -direct-txt
"X:\blablabla\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe -direct -txt"


II

Be sure you have checked the option "create folders" in winzip when you extract the Mod-Files from the archive. Otherwise it won't work or there will be lots of errors.

;)
Last edited by Éowyn on Mon Apr 14, 2003 8:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Khan » Mon Apr 14, 2003 3:52 pm

Great idea - I will make this a sticky

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Amtiskaw » Mon Apr 14, 2003 8:46 pm

A few more questions. The answer to the first one I found in some other posts in this forum (being a newbie myself, thus ignorant).

I want to play in a multiplayer ME game. How do I locate games and/or players?

- So far, "you are not gonna find many people to play online with, a lot of gaming with this mod is done on single player". There's a list of some players at http://www.feenwelt.net/spiele/diabloii/me/player.html

Does Blizzard mind me playing ME on Open Battle.net (ie, may they ban my CD key)?

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Eliminster » Tue Apr 15, 2003 9:52 am

Blizzard dont give a rats what you do on open bnet, so long as you dont try and bring down the servers themselves. Check the topic called Sigh a lil down from here, they are discussing what channel/game names should be used for ME players to find each other.

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Fluxypoo » Wed Apr 16, 2003 12:46 am

A bunch of random tips:

Read the readme.txt.

Read "CubesnRunes.rtf" in the install folder, it lists all of the recipes and other useful stuff. There are a lot of new recipes, many improvements over the cube use in D2X. Sockets are listed also, and there are big changes there too (light plate can go up to 6 sockets).

All of the game files are in \data\global\excel in your install folder. You can MAKE A COPY FIRST, then change the extension to .xls and view it in excel spreadsheet, if you have that program. Don't change anything, or you'll probably break the mod and be cheating as well, (you'd have to change the extension back to .txt and overwrite the original for your changes to appear in the game) but you can view the stats for uniques, weapon dmg/speed, armor, rune effects, etc, etc. OR don't, if you'd rather find out as you play.

Items are much different in the mod. Dual leech and damage reduction can be found on all rare jewelry, but not on circlets or gloves, and there are very few uniques/sets with leech, and very few uniques with damage reduction. You'll need rare jewelry for your leech needs, unless you get lucky on the weapon mods.

All magical or socketed elite armor has a default reduces damage property. This makes elite socketed armor very viable for hat and body. Especialy body.

Rares are the best item types, other than a few uniques and potentialy some of the higher quality crafted recipes.

Resistance is much easier to get in the mod, since the nm/hell penalty is lower, and you can get 25% or more prismatic on most every item type. You still only need light with some fire and can ignore cold. There is no shortens poison duration mod in the ME mod, and poison can be very damaging.

Defense matters more in the mod than d2x, and you can get a lot higher on rares.

blocking is much lower in the mod, and you'll need to really pump your dex, or just be happy with lower blocking %. Get damage resistance to at least 35% and it helps tremendously in hell if you're a melee character.

Runes are much rarer than in d2x, and much more useful. Save them all, you cna upgrade to #24, though you'lll probably never find more than 1 or 2 of them higher thajn about #19, other than from the hellforge. (I think rune drop rates need to be increased a lot, personally.)

charms are quite rare and have much less useful mods. there are very few +hps charms, try to get +stats or MF on them. Most will be worhtlessly small amounts of +elemental damage.

It's easy to get to 300% MF or so, with 50% per socketed p topaz (and 6s light plate) and armor/boots/hats going to 51% MF possible on rares. However it's hard to get higher than about 400% MF (without going all socket topaz) since there is no MF on rings, amulets, belts, gloves, and there are no big MF uniques ala Ali Baba or Gull. You can easily get 100% MF on any 3s runeword type weapon though, just with 3 Anna runes, if you're after MF that way.

A couple of medium runes give indes when socketed, so it's not too hard to make ethereal stuff useful. Keep it in mind.

+max resistance mods are on lots of rares. Try to get 85% or more lightning and you can just ignore MSLEs.

The difficulty ramps up a lot from act to act, but it's far easier in act 1 or 2 NM than act 5 normal, and same for going from NM to hell. Easier and more exp, since act 5 isn't far far better exp than the rest of the game, as is the case in d2x. Try to struggle past Baal and you'll find it much easier and more profitable once you move up. You can level up better in act 4/hell than act 5/hell, at least until lvl 85 or so, especially if you don't have the big crushing blow. Item types improve a lot in act 5 though, so you'll have to play there in hell to really find the top stuff.

Crushing blow is extremely useful once you get to act 5/hell. I've played with 2000-5000 dmg zeal, or 150-800 dmg zeal with 50% crushing, and the lower dmg was FAR faster killing. It's all about crushing in act 5/hell, since everything has physical resistance, if you want to play on players 4 or higher, at least.

meph/pin/baal runs aren't the way to items, since there are so many more random bosses and champs, and their drop quality/rate is much improved over D2X.

Love dragons, hate dragons. Blue dragons are immune to all cold, including holy freeze, and if you aren't a stud, or possessed of a good stunning attack, they will eat you. Especially bosses/champs.

Fire Enchanted bosses die with a very big splat. Many will kill you every time in hell unless you have huge fire res, physical resistance, and a ton of hps.

A lot more tips and basic strategy can be found on my site's D2X ME page, at the bottom, and of course pics of almost all set items, and most excep/elite uniques. Feel free to not look and be surprised when you find stuff though, it's more fun not knowing everything in advance.

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Beginning tips

Post by Fluxypoo » Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:20 am

Very early stuff.

Do not charge out with your lvl 1 on players 8. You will fail and die. Trust me. Even if you don't die you'll be unable to kill anything. There is a big to/hit issue early on, since monsters are 5 or 6 lvls higher than you. You'll be at 20% to/hit, but once you get up to lvl 3 or 4 it gets a lot easier. You can go up to players 4 or so then, generally.

pick up all the red potions. You'll need them. You will probably want to buy more also, to speed things up.

Socket stuff early on. I mean put gems into holes, especialy for weapons. chipped and flawed gems do a lot more in the Mod than in D2X, and this is your best tactic early on.

save rings/amulets if you can't wear them. Almost all jewelry goes for 15 or 20k at least in the mod (most rares are 50k later in the game), so try not to settle for 5k in act 1. save them until lvl 20/act 3 or so, and sell a bunch. You'll get 200 or 300k and can do some heavy gambling.

Gambling is very useful early on. prices are much lower than in d2x, so you can gamble more, and rares are much better.

you'll see very few hps charms or poison charms, and in fact getting some kind of poison and/or a "prevent monster heal" mod is very necessary by act 4 and 5. Save any poison damage charm you find. cold dmg also.

you need more hps than d2x, but they are harder to get w/o big hps charms. Around lvl 35ish, you'll start to get/gamble armor/belts/helms with +15% max hps and/or mana. You tend to get a big hps boost around this time as you go from base hps to 30% more, so if you're hurting in early act 5, persist and you'll find equip soon enough to boost you greatly.

Flux

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Ramiel_X » Sun Apr 20, 2003 8:48 am

I have a question.

When I play on Open B.Net, when I create games, it seems noone else can join. Now I don't know if it's my computer, the mod, or just B.Net. If someone knows how to fix, it would be a great help if you enlightned me.

Thankyou

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Pure Sadin » Sun Apr 20, 2003 9:55 am

You can only play open Bnet with others who also have the same mod. So no-one can join your games unless they play ME mod as well.

(If they do play ME mod but still can't join i have no idea why)

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Ramiel_X » Sun Apr 20, 2003 1:33 pm

Indeed, two people who have the mod have tried to join my Open game, but they can'y so, I gues no suggestions.
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Iorek » Mon Apr 21, 2003 8:17 pm

erm if your not able to join each others games...all i can say is make sure your on the same realm...useast or uswest or whatever else.

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Kei » Tue Apr 22, 2003 3:11 pm

If you have a firewall (Windows XP comes with one), it needs to be configured properly to allow other players to connect to your game (computer). According to Blizzard's support, you need to:

Allow port 6112 TCP out and allow established sessions in
Allow port 4000 TCP out (realm games)
Allow port 4000 TCP out and in (hosting open games only)

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Myhrginoc » Thu Apr 24, 2003 7:13 pm

Make sure Ports 6112-6119 are configured to allow both TCP and UDP in and out. If you use a router, be sure to turn port forwarding on for all the ports listed in this and the previous message. (The DMZ option is very dangerous, I would not recommend it unless you have a very good firewall on the DMZ'd machine.)
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Éowyn » Thu Apr 24, 2003 10:19 pm

hmm I only have opened port 6112 an nothing else. I can host an join games, but I don't know if more than one player could join my games. Maybe one port is for one player.
And I don't know for what port 4000 is...
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Myhrginoc » Fri Apr 25, 2003 5:05 am

Blizzard seems to be of two minds about it. On their main networking page, they recommend only 4000 and 6112, but for setting up ZoneAlarm Pro they recommend 4000 and 6112 to 6119. If you can play in any mode with just 4000 and 6112, so much the better.
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Éowyn » Fri Apr 25, 2003 8:54 am

Hmm they say
Diablo II:
Allow port 6112 TCP out and allow established sessions in
Allow port 4000 TCP out (realm games)
Allow port 4000 TCP out and in (hosting open games only)
I didn't forward port 4000 and I could host open games. I only opened port 6112. Funny. Hmm I see the only "in" connection needed is port 4000. I'll change it and see if it works.

They too say
Notes:
"Established sessions in" applies to firewalls only. NAT will allow the "established sessions in" automatically.
NAT users will need to map any "in"s (hosting games only) to the IP of the computer hosting the game.
Warcraft III is the only Blizzard Title that currently supports multiple players hosting games behind NAT.
Thats also strange, why does a game care about NAT ? So I could create games, but only one person could join ? (Because WC3 is the only game that supports more)... I thought no programm notice anything about the NAT progress. But it is through. I read somewhere that IWD2 dosn't support NAT and nothing I've done conviced it to let my games be viewed from outside.
Hmm i'll test this "only one player throught NAT" today...

Hmm I tested it and I could join twice through NAT in my game, but I joined twice from the same IP. Maybe thats because it worked... (And I only opened port 4000)
Last edited by Éowyn on Fri Apr 25, 2003 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Myhrginoc » Fri Apr 25, 2003 8:15 pm

I think they mean you can have one computer behind your NAT router running D2 and up to seven outside, but you can't install two copies of D2 in your private network and use a NAT router to join to the outside. It is probably because NAT forwards ports to one computer. I don't have WC3 so I don't know how they improved on that.

I have built multiplayer games with the modified d2gfx.dll and had as many as eight sessions running to test multiplayer code, but that is all on the same machine.

I wonder if it would work if the port-forwarded machine was always the host, and other machines on the network or from outside the router were always clients?
Last edited by Myhrginoc on Fri Apr 25, 2003 8:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by KadarShadowfax » Sun Apr 27, 2003 5:06 am

Yeah the install instructions said to make backups of the files d2game.dll and patch_d2.mpq...well I got patch_d2.mpq backed up...but I have looked everywhere in the Diablo II directory and I can not find d2game.dll its just not anywhere to be found...surely it must be there but I can't find it...perhaps I missed a folder or somthing somewhere?

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Arman Tamzarian » Sun Apr 27, 2003 5:15 am

KadarShadowfax";p="93654" wrote:Yeah the install instructions said to make backups of the files d2game.dll and patch_d2.mpq...well I got patch_d2.mpq backed up...but I have looked everywhere in the Diablo II directory and I can not find d2game.dll its just not anywhere to be found...surely it must be there but I can't find it...perhaps I missed a folder or somthing somewhere?

I had the same problem. What i did was go to the diablo2 directory, and press control+F. THen type in d2game.dll so it searches for it. It came right up for me(i have win.98). Hope this helps :)

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by KadarShadowfax » Sun Apr 27, 2003 6:34 am

Ahhhhaaa!! That did it, thanks alot!!

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by SZ » Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:38 am

I have a question. As a person who has no experience with mods, if you copy your D2X directory and install ME to the copy, will they both still work?

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Myhrginoc » Thu Jun 19, 2003 7:21 am

You don't want to do that, you would be copying several very large files. Fortunately that isn't necessary. All you need to do is make a subdirectory under your game directory for each mod you want to play. There are several ways to run mods, but one of the easiest is to download this script package (follow the link). If you have the default installation:

C:\Program Files\Diablo II

then you create subdirectory

C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Middle Earth

and install the mod there per the modmaker's instructions. Put the vbs files from the script package in the same mod directory (and in each mod directory you make). Now double-click on the LaunchModGame.vbs script in Windows Explorer, or make a shortcut to it. Since Middle Earth is a -direct -txt mod, the first time you play it answer YES to the first option and NO to the second, thereafter accept the default NO answer to both options.

By doing this, you can have multiple mods (even multiple -direct -txt mods) and regular D2/LoD if you want to play on closed Battle.net.
Last edited by Myhrginoc on Thu Jun 19, 2003 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
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Re: Beginning tips

Post by Pispotje » Wed Jun 25, 2003 4:23 pm

[quote=Fluxypoo";p="89586"]Very early stuff.

Do not charge out with your lvl 1 on players 8. You will fail and die. Trust me. Even if you don't die you'll be unable to kill anything. There is a big to/hit issue early on, since monsters are 5 or 6 lvls higher than you. You'll be at 20% to/hit, but once you get up to lvl 3 or 4 it gets a lot easier. You can go up to players 4 or so then, generally.

Socket stuff early on. I mean put gems into holes, especialy for weapons. chipped and flawed gems do a lot more in the Mod than in D2X, and this is your best tactic early on.
Flux[/quote]

I must say I don't agree with your players 8 thingy in the beginning, I always did this right from start, you have only to take the monsters 1 by 1, if u die the monster is always near death and you've free healing in town, so this isn't a big prob. pure melee chars may have alot more difficulty then the rest (ranged+summon).

I do agree on the 2nd part, find/buy a 3-socked-weapon and put 3 elemt gems in it, prefered 3 different one and you do 30+ dam each hit, on a bow it means killing monsters (even players 8) before they come near u. summonings are even more nice with such a bow.

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Cloyd of Northcore » Wed Jul 02, 2003 11:15 am

:( Why did you make this mod direct txt. now i cant play it... GRRRRRR
Cloyd of Northcore

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Re: Me newb FAQ

Post by Myhrginoc » Thu Jul 03, 2003 2:35 am

Cloyd of Northcore" wrote::( Why did you make this mod direct txt. now i cant play it... GRRRRRR
Take a breath, and read this thread to get the packed version.
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
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