Zallambo’s Enhanced World (ZEW) Mod

[Myhrginoc]

We get requests to set up threads in this forum, usually when a mod maker has a solid idea and is working toward a playable beta. This time we get the mod ready to play when we first learn about it! In his own words:

Hi, I'm Phrozen Zallambo, or just Zallambo. My mod doesn't change much- not nearly as much as most mods. However, I don't feel that a mod should change more than is needed. I have had the main part of this mod, the auto prefixes on all items, around for nearly a year now. I have playtested ZEW, and personally find it more enjoyable than regular Diablo2.

The official webpage is at www.members.cox.net/justinpombrio/ZEW which included a link to download it.

Zallambo’s Enhanced World (ZEW) Mod

Mod Version 1.0 (alpha)

D2 Version: 1.10

~Mod Concept~

I have been playing Diablo 2 on and off since the day it came out. I love the feel of the game. However, there are aspects that could be better. I have not been able to find a mod that alters what and only what I think should be altered. And so I am making one.

The purpose of ZEW will be to make the game more balanced, less clickfest-y, allow more character builds, and be all around more fun.

For the players out there, if and when ZEW is released in beta, please tell me of ANY problem you have with it, or any suggestions.

~What I plan to do~

1) Make magic and rare items more useful
2) Eliminate potion click-festing
3) Allow more character builds
4) Make the game more difficult when you first start out, so that experienced Diablo 2 players don’t have to wait for nightmare or hell to get a challange

~How I plan on doing it~

1) -There is now an autoprefix on every item. For example, all caps spawn with a bonus to health. Each general type of item has a few related mods. For example, helms have +health, +mana, +health regen, +mana regen, with some of these used more than once. The value of the mods range from 1 to a maximum. This was done so that you have to do some item hunting to get one with a high value. It also adds more variety to rares. These autoprefixes do not spawn on set or unique items, so it does not boost their power.
-Eventually I might redo the entire affix system. The reason this is a might is because it is a huge task. It would take many full days of nothing but mod work. If I do, the affix mods will become set (as in if you found a small charm of magic find, the mf might be, say, 5%, as opposed to a range of 3-6%). There would also be a much better chance of finding high level affixes later in the game.

2)-First off, mana potions are gone. Now, before you scream and go look for a different mod, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Mana regeneration for all characters has been nearly doubled (12/7 the original).
-Two new potions have been added; the Elixer of Health, and the Elixer of Mana. Both of these recover 35% health/mana. These are as common as rej pots, which isn’t, and can’t be bought in stores. Both of these serve a purpose. The EoH will be the only potion usable during combat, as you will see. The EoM will be the only reliable source of mana.
-Rejuvenation potions now recover much less mana. This was done to prevent them from being a reliable source of mana. (You’d have to be pretty desperate to use one for this purpose)
-The health recovery on healing potions now takes 50% longer. This makes a big difference, as they can no longer be used in battle to stay alive! (although it helps). Instead, they are best used after a battle, or while hiding behind something.
XXX-I have tested these changes with a few characters, and overall I find it to enhance the gameplay.

3)- Patch 1.10 was spectacular for allowing more builds. All of a sudden, you see necromancers, paladins (well, more), and elemental druids (boy was that a surprise) in hell. However, the number of useless skills still frustrates me. I plan on fixing the skills that need fixing and leaving the rest alone. A few of the changes do/will include: Frozen Nova- it will freeze now! And with a huge mana cost that goes down and a low freeze duration that goes up, it should need a few points to be useful, and with a lot it could be a major part of your build. Salvation-1 pt. wonder indeed. This skill starts out with +60 resist and barely goes up after that. I have changed it so it starts with around 30. With 4 pts, you can get it back up to the original 60. With 10, you can get about 90.

4) First off, the damage of monsters in normal was multiplied by 1.4, and those in nm by 1.2. This helps level out the difficulty curve, so you can have challenging fights in normal. Also, life/lvl, and life/vit has been multiplied by ¾, so all characters have effectively ¾ the life. This was done mainly to help balance out to autoaffixes on items.

[PhrozenZallambo]

Ok, here's the first update.

Version 1.1

There is now a greatly increased chance of getting higher level affixes on items. Items have double to triple the chance of spawning the upper half of an affix. (It used to be completely random).

Rejuvenation potions are now gone. The duration of healing potions is now about 2.7 seconds-slow enough for a running retreat or while hiding, but not for staying alive in a battle. The health/mana recovered by the Elixers has risen to 60%. Mana burn bosses have been removed.

Characters now have much less base mana regeneration than in the last version, but their mana/lvl and mana/energy has been increased. Altogether, since mana regen is based on total mana, the regeneration is the same. The mana was increased to allow for longer battles, without needing to wait.

The %dmg that static field does now starts at 15% and goes up 1%/lvl. This is an added incentive to putting a few pts in it. Lightning’s damage has been increased- it finally does more damage to a single monster than cl, by a reasonable amount. I am thinking of ways to “fix” holy fire and sanctuary. As always, input is welcome.

Unfortunately, I am going on vacation for a week tomorrow, because of an upcoming wedding in my family. Bubye!

[WarWolf]

Well, your mod sure sounds promising and exciting. Continue...

[mishy23]

Wow alot of your ideas sound great, wish they were mine,
I did alot of balancing the skills already in the game by making them more useful if you want any suggestion for certain spells i can share what i did.
I never used most my skill changes, in the end my mod didnt touch skills in exhange for working on other things.
But I always wanted to make them one point wonders not so one pointy anymore
-Mishy23

[PhrozenZallambo]

Hi everyone (all 3 of ya), I'm back. I'll show you some of the latest changes:

-----
Version 1.2

There is still a greatly increased change to get higher level affixes later in the game.

The autoprefixes have been returned to how I originally created them. This is double what they have been so far in the patch. I felt free to do this, without worrying about the balance, because:

Monsters in normal now do double thier original damage . In nm it is 40 or 50% increased, and its the same in hell. I have found this to make some very interesting battles in normal.

The largest changes, though, are on the sorceress. Firebolt, frozen armor, shiver armor, and chilling armor, have been "fixed". Firebolt is particularly interesting. I'll let you (if anyone has actually downloaded my mod) find out how. Also, I had to make frost nova's mana cost increase instead of decrease. When it decreased, the mana cost had to start over 100 to keep it balanced later in the game. Needless to say, getting a spell with a 100+mana cost at level 6 is a little intimidating. Next I believe I'll focus on paladin skills.
-----

By the way, Mishy, I am greatly interested to see what changes you made for skill balance. Where would I be able to find this?

For anyone who's interested, I am up for playing a TCPIP game. You'd have to host though (stupid firewall). Just message me at Zallambo on AIM. If I'm on, that is. *mental note to self: increase time spent on AIM to greater than 5 minutes/week*

On a sidenote, thx Mythginoc.

[mishy23]

Well I don't have a list of changes I made, but let me see if I have my old notes around, I can post my ideas, and you can borrow, change, or just forget anything I post here. As I said I am not suing any of these ideas right now so feel free to use.

Are you thinking about changing/adding any synergies? Thats where alot fo my changes took place, I had alot of unique abilities granted by synergies, instead of the blah, extra damage.

Hmm here are some ideas I remember of the top of my head:

Berserk-Had a built in function to add damage resist, even though it reduced your ac to 0, but was set to zero and never used. Check out param5 in skills.txt. I made it so that you recieved a 2%DR per level in berserk, cause when your berserk you just dont really feel the pain as much. I lowered damage a bit so that this skill wasnt to over powered.

Battle Command - Increased the +skill bonus for this skill every 4 levels I think, I never liked that this skill had no point after the first point but longer duration.

Conversion - I made the duration start smaller, but go up per level

Sacrifice - I changed the 8% damage to self into a formula, that let it decrease when you put points in it, so by level 20 you only were receiving 1%damage to self.

Concentration - I let the uninteruptability increase at high levels.

Blessed Aim - I added small chance to do crushing blow that went up per level, otherwise I thought this aura really sucked, i think I made it 1% per level.


In general I tried t make some of the weak auras better, since you can only have one up at anytime in 1.10.

Lifetap- was to strong, started at lower percentage of lifesteal and raised it up per level.

Amp Damage - Started at only 50% DR reduction, but let it go up 5% per level.

Generally changed casting delays around for sorc and druid for balance.

Cold mastery - changed to be +damage like the rest of the masteries.

Changed the cold armors around so they were a bit cooler, I think second armor casted frost nova when hit, and third one casted a frozen orb when hit (changed missile)

Blaze - Changed blaze so that it had an aura effect that lated same as the skill and only effected caster, that made them run faster while blaze was going.

Telekenesis - I wanted to make this slow the enemy as well, but dont think i figured out a way to do that.

I wanted to make explose arrow have an increase in explosion size per level, but never figured out how to do that.

Immolation arrow, I changed back to how it was a bit, increase in duration.


Well thats off the top of my head.
Talk to you later!
-Mishy

[PhrozenZallambo]

Thanks for those Mishy. I either have, or will, use most of those ideas.

If anyone is interested, this could become a group mod. The idea behind it is to take Diablo 2 and make it better, in any way that doesn't interfere with the GOOD parts of D2. Kind of like 7 lances, except I heard that killed the balance between the classes at higher levels. By using the old (D2) as a basis for the new, this mod couldn't fall into that trap. The name of this mod would, of course, change. If so, just message me on the Phorums (my new name for the Phrozen Forums ).

In any case;
To let everyone know, I've been working on redoing the magic affixes. I (finally!) finished the prefixes. The changes are:
-affix bonouses continue to improve at higher levels, generally up to affix level 75
-there is an improved chance of getting higher level affixes
-the affix bonouses are now set (they don't vary). This makes editing their values easier, as well as keeping things balanced.
-Rare charms will now be spawnable.
However, the mod wont be updated until I finish the suffixes.

School's coming up in just 2 days, so expect a drop in work on the mod .

[PhrozenZallambo]

Alright, everyone, I’ve done it. Version 2.0. It includes a remake of the entire affix system. Now, I’ve done my best to keep things balanced and bug-free, but obviously this still needs a lot of testing. So I call to all the mod players: would anyone like to play test ZEW?

At this point, any input would be greatly appreciated. Do you like a particular concept? Do you not like something I changed? Is there anything you would like me to change?

Major Changes:
-all of the prefixes and suffixes have been redone. There is an increased chance to find higher level affixes later in the game.
-one of the first things you will notice is that you see a lot of bonus per level affixes right off the bat. This is because all /lvl affixes can now spawn at lvl 1. The beautiful thing about /lvl affixes is that they can stay reasonable throughout the whole game.
-affixes now continue to improve later into the game; generally they stop at lvl75 or so.
-there are some new affixes, such as absorb fire, cold, and lightning. There is a list of all the affixes, and what they can spawn on included in the patch download, but I’ll warn you: it’s not spruced up)
-rare charms can now spawn. To help balance this out, there are now bad, (yes, bad) prefixes for charms. They aren’t that bad, and they don’t have much of a chance to spawn (unless you get a rare, which is the whole point). Personally, I found it entertaining when I found a Vile small charm with -2 vitality.
-Just to warn everyone, there is now a “of laughter” suffix, with 30 drain life. It doesn’t spawn on rares, so it won’t spoil your shinies, but watch out. It could spawn on anything! Dun Dun Dun. (Except charms and jewels)
-Monsters are currently at 2*hp and 1.5*dmg in norm.
-every item spawns with an autoprefix, see previous posts
-potions redone, see previous posts

I’m concerned about the potions. I like the way the mana ones came out, but I’ve found myself buying and glugging huge piles of heal potions. Which was precisely what I was trying to avoid... A “fix” will be coming soon, as soon as I can think of something (or someone else can think of something and post it )

By the way, what do you guys think of /time affixes? Should I stick a bunch in?

Edit: uhm, actually, apparently the "of laughter" affix CAN spawn on charms. I just found one .



Edit: To let everyone know, I'm going to stop working on the ZEW mod, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I've been busy with school, and have had a lot of other things to do as well. Secondly, I haven't seen that much interest in the mod. I enjoy being able to edit a game like this, so I'll probably be back- just not now.
Myhrginoc- you can do your thing and lock this thread up if you like.
Bubye

[Myhrginoc]

Done. Sorry to see your mod didn't catch on.