Version 3.20 [Released - Ed]

[noELrunes]

yea I"m before enq.

with that bug your talking about with the amazon.

I never got it, I have a level 18 amazon and the skills never crashed me o_O

[enq]

Hehe yeah beaten, by 14 minutes!
I just didn't get time yesterday with that bug and uploading again + work.

Strange that you did not get the bug - maybe I had already uploaded v3.20 by then?

Anyway I'll post the changes here and I've made this an announcement thread

_________________
Gogo long post:

I noticed I did not put in the changes to Crafting in the changes.txt file but they are in the readme at least
Basically crafting is redone and much much better, easier, more useful and more recipes per character, all 900+ are available to everyone!

New Readme file in .pdf format no less
Reduced the glare from the Game and Character selection screens.
Because this version uses the 1.09d .dll files you are able to run Seasons After on a server (which I have been doing for the past week or so to test if it works

.dll Changes
Moved to the v1.09d .dll's thanks to Foxbat and Myhrginoc's fix regarding chance cast skills.
Fix to the Assassin/Barbarian Critical Strike bug.
Fix to the Malah resistance scroll bug.
Removed opening the Cow Level multiple times.
Crushing Blow removes half the base life again (rather than a quarter).
Inner Sight as a % reduction to defence rather than a direct subtraction.
Max skill level of 40.
Fix to the Druid skill bug.
3 Skill Points per clevel.
Cold Mastery as a direct subtraction rather than a percentage subtraction.
Gamble percentages: Magic 85%, Rare 10%, Set 4%, Unique 1%.

Characters
Socketed boots have 1 socket that gain the same gem properties as a socketed weapon.
All Travelling Items have been slightly improved with sockets added. Because they act like normal items you can make runewords from them later or socket them with gems/jewels for a fast start, your choice
Traveller items have also have some colour work done.

Skills
Reduced the delay on Plague Javelin to 3 seconds. The delay is still necessary with this skill - if you ever saw someone (ok ok, yes someone like me spam these it would lag something horrid.
Increased the defence bonus per level of Holy Shield from 15% to 25%.
Holy Shield increases by 1 mana per level.
Strafe gains 10% Attack Rating at slvl1 and increases by 5% per slvl.
Added a 0.4 second delay to Lightning and Chain Lightning - they needed the nerf
Impale is now a normal speed attack, but both its damage and bonus to attack rating have been reduced.
Zeal increases in mana cost per level.

Cube
You can reroll Jewels: 4 Magic Jewels = 1 Magic Jewel (ilvl=[(3*CharacterLevel)/4]+3). - The same as Rings and Amulets when rerolled.
The socketing recipes have changed requiring fewer jewels and more gems:
3 Chipped Gems and 1 Magic Jewel and any Normal (white text) item = 2 Socket item of the same type with
-1 to -2 Life Drain, -1 to -2 Mana
3 Flawed Gems and 1 Magic Jewel and any Normal (white text) item = 3 Socket item of the same type with
-1 to -4 Life Drain, -1 to -4 Mana
3 Normal Gems and 1 Magic Jewel and any Normal (white text) item = 4 Socket item of the same type with
-1 to -6 Life Drain, -1 to -6 Mana
3 Flawless Gems and 1 Magic Jewel and any Normal (white text) item = 5 Socket item of the same type with
-1 to -8 Life Drain, -1 to -8 Mana
3 Perfect Gems and 1 Magic Jewel and any Normal (white text) item = 6 Socket item of the same type with
-1 to -10 Life Drain, -1 to -10 Mana

Items
Altered some prefixes, for better and for worse
Greatly increased Rune drop rates.
Changed the durability on several Traveller Items.
Reduced the blocking rate of Normal shields by about 10%.
Reduced the blocking rate of Exceptional shields by about 5%.
Reduced Arrow and Bolt drops.
Exceptional and Elite items are sold in shops in Nightmare and Hell respectively.
Improved Jewel properties.
Crystal Swords, Dimensional Blades and Phase Blades gain automagic Mana Steal.
Automagic Damage Reduction on some heavy armour types.
Increased the damage of Class Specific Bows (excluding Amazon Bows)/Crossbows/Flails and Swords.
Increased throwing items stacks by 100 for Normal items, 150 for Exceptional items and 200 for Elite items.
Axes gain an automagic 1-5% chance to inflict a Deadly Strike.
Blunt weapons all gain an automagic 1-2% chance to inflict a Crushing Blow.
Deep breath... halved the one hand damage of all two handed swords.
Sorceress Orbs are now 2hand weapons with up to 4 sockets where gems use shield properties.
Staves and Orbs have strength and dexterity requirements.
Reduced buying cost of items with +skills.
Increased the chances of Elite items to drop in Hell.
Throwing potions spawn with some good automagic properties.
Improved some two hand axes.

Gems
Improved Strength and Dexterity bonuses on Amethysts and Emeralds.

Gambling
Allowed all Class Specific Items to be gambled.
Fixed a bug where you could not gamble Ogre Axes.

NPC's
Repair costs have increased.
One NPC in each act sells both Poison and Oil Potions.
Akara sells Sorceress Orbs.
Lycander sells Amazon Weapons.
Elzix has a better stock of items.
Fara sells Paladin Shields.
Ormus sells Druid Pelts.
Larzuk sells Barbarian Helms.

Runewords
Easy Now works in Armour, Weapons, Shields, and Helms.
Leaf, Lore, Memory, Radiance runewords will now work in Orbs.

Hirelings
Improved Hireling base skill levels.
Reduced Hireling base life by half.
Barbarian mercs gain the Battle Command warcry.
Ironwolves have had some skill changes:
Chain Lightning is used instead of Lightning.
Meteor is cast instead of Fireball.
Chilling Armour is cast instead of Frozen Armour.
Reduced levelling speed.

Monsters
Reverted back to Blizzard's original hit point levels then doubled the max life of most monsters - Undead Dolls etc remain similar to previous SA patches
Halved monsters attack rating - to help counter the 4xAR bug. This will mean defence is now somewhat useful.
Doubled hit points and experience of Pinhead style monsters. I also increased their defence.
The Undead Guardian now drops El Ral and Eth runes in normal for making the Runeword Beauty.
The Countess is now a Flesh Hunter Archer and thus a bit harder
The Countess now has a good chance of dropping Tal and Eth runes in normal for making the Runeword Stealth.
Improved some SuperUnique monsters drop chances.
Reduced the resistances of Gargoyle Traps.
Increased the monster density in the Flayer Dungeon level3 and Act3 Sewers level2.
Most SuperUnique monsters are harder than before.
Rot Walker and Succubae style monsters deal more damage.
Altered monster density in certain areas.
Fallen Shaman are quite dangerous now.

[noELrunes]

ooooh, looks like I'll be getting this tonight, I love the changes.

As for the starting items, maybe you could add 1 mod to each? Like the weapon could be (+1 to AR based on char level)

and can we still add more runewords and/or uniques?

[enq]

Hmm those increase per level style mods would go really well on the Traveller items! - it never even crossed my mind when I was making them, strange
Good idea though, that goes in

You can submit uniques etc though I'm not working on unqiues/sets/runewords for a while as I'm balancing all the base items first. This will mean unique/set and runewords may need changing after that so I don't want to do them twice if you get what I mean

[Untamed]

uhm, i like the enw changes except that orbs are now 2handed... that kinda defeats the purpose of allowing a sorc a one hand weap to use a sheild with... they are kinda of pointless now, just a staff with a different gfx ... just a suggestion, you could put em back to the way they were, let them all have max sockets and runeword leaf allowed in em still.... orbs dont need memory, anyways 1 hand orbs cant use it anyways. if change it again to the way i mentiond people have you use staves to get the nice bonuses of the memory runeword and sacrificing a sheild to be able to use it...



just my

[enq]

Orbs were always far too powerful with a shield. There was no downside to using them.
For example, the same does not hold true with Necromancer shrunken heads. A shield is much better at providing protection whereas the shrunken head is better for +skills. The idea holds true for Amazon bows and the Druid and Barbarian helms. IMHO the Paladin shields are overpowered.

The other thing is that Orbs pretty much just made staves redundant.
Orbs are still very powerful - they can gain (up to) 60% resist all, 60 life or 80 mana. Still better than a staff, so they are still overpowered

It is something that I just changed to see what the results would be
That said the other way to fix them may be to remove the +skills and maybe a couple of other affixes from Orbs.

[noELrunes]

perhaps you could compensate for the lack of shield and add a bit of a Defense Bonus

[Untamed]

[quote=noELrunes";p="62307"]perhaps you could compensate for the lack of shield and add a bit of a Defense Bonus[/quote]

and chance to block...

enq: yeah, they can be strong, but yer the modmaker... how about taking the +life/+mana automagic off orbs, putting them on staves instead... then it might be a bit more balanced between them... use staff and get life/mana and memory runeword.. use orb get leaf runeword and sheild with whatever bonuses it has.... and maybe lower the amound of life/mana/resist that can be gotten on orbs/staves/whatever

[enq]

I did try adding blocking but that then prevents the staff or orb from being used as a weapon - though this is one idea that I will look at again as I do like the idea of a shield orb
Speaking of which weren't orbs originally going to be shields? - that may actually be the answer

Currently they work like this (in my working version):
Staves: Resist all up to 25% or Increased defence up to 100% along with up to 25% Faster Cast Rate and up to 25% Faster Hit Recovery.
Orbs: Resist All up to 60%, 1-2% Crushing Blow and +Life up to 60hp or +Mana up to 80.
Both get automagic Sorceress +skills.

how about taking the +life/+mana automagic off orbs, putting them on staves instead...

This is quite a good idea However in the hands of a melee character the staff would be the ultimate choice over all other weapons - I could lower the damage but that would then hurt melee Sorcs (I try to encourage variants ).
I changed staves so that melee characters could use them effectively as weapons - and they are really nice for that - high damage, low requirements and automagic properties.

It's trying to get the balance between preventing an overpowered Sorc with an orb/shield, along with making staves more appealing to a Sorc. That in turn makes staves deadly in the hands of a melee character - especially a Druid as he has both the melee and casting aspects.
So as you can see I am basically going in circles

What I plan to do (for the next version I am working mainly on item balance - this version contained a bit of that as a test) is nut out this stuff on paper - I'm currently doing that for prefixes and suffixes.

[noELrunes]

perhaps you should have the defense mod at least 30-60%

100% may be overkill especially if a sorc has alot of defense, then they would be pretty hard to hit (unless a weapon had ignore target defense)

[enq]

I can't really beef the defence on staves that much as again, on another classes it just adds to the reasons for gettting a staff over all other weapons

Though I think this may be the solution:
Staves would gain +1 to +3 Sorceress skills and -2 to -3 skills for all other classes. They would also gain the automagic +individual Sorceress skills.
Orbs would be like a two-handed shield so you could block with them and they gain normal shield properties (as would the staff, only the staves would also gain weapon properties).

Edit: Orbs cannot be turned into shields as they lack a blocking animation - so sadly this idea is out the window