Lod 1.11b Single Player Balance Mod
Mod maker: Gebnar
Game version: v1.11b
In Gebnars words:
1: "Lod 1.11b Single Player Balance Mod" is my current working title. This is open to change. I just haven't had the time or motivation to think up a more creative title. It'll happen eventually....
2: I am the project coordinator and the only modmaker currently on the project, but who knows? - I just posted in the forums after my lengthy lurk time. Hopefully others will be interested in joining the project.
3: Diablo II v1.11b, geared toward single player, untwinked
4.1 Thought: I have played Diablo II for years, and I have never had the right conditions to play it online. Hence I have been prevented from ever experiencing much of the game. I have been working on various versions of this project for probably 3 years now. In the last two years the Phrozen Keep has aided me immensely. I believe the project has now progressed far enough that some outside thought, suggestions, comments, and criticisms might help me bring the mod to a releasable state.
My goal is to stay close enough to vanilla LOD that a character played in vanilla will not suffer ANY technical problems.
A secondary objective I have currently attempted to keep in place is that any character played in this mod should be able to load in vanilla without crashing or significantly changing the character. I may give up on this as the mod grows more in-depth.
Even though this is a single-player mod. I wish for the mod to offer an enjoyable and balanced multiplayer play as well. balance is the key here! Everything everything everything must be balanced..... (Boy do i have a job ahead of me
)4.2 Storyline: Currently I do not plan to significantly alter the storyline or npc speeches.
4.3 Character Modifications: In keeping with my secondary objective I have decided for the present to keep the charstats.txt file relatively unchanged. So far I have only increased the walk-run speeds back to their earlier/faster values.
Thirdly: all formerly hell-viable builds should still be hell-viable.
Some underpowered skills have been revamped, but I have chosen to keep their basic operation the same. I believe Blizzard put thought and effort into the idea process for the character skills, and I want my mod to benefit from their work as much as possible. However, there certainly are problems in the current system. My hope is to balance the skills enough that near-infinite possibilities for viable characters are possible.
I am currently experimenting with the possibility of adding two new character related items to the game. One is a book that will grant 1 permanent skill points. The other is a potion that will grant 5 permanent stat points. If these get added in to the final version they may open up even more character build possibilities, and help to negate poor point placement. They may even allow a previously broken character to "get back in the game." Don't worry about the balance issues, I am THOROUGHLY testing the drop rate for these. Currently I have added them into the "good" items treasureclasses with extremely low drop rates. A character played from act1 normal through act5 hell without any excess farming, on players1, to find circa 15 of these items. That would give a character approximately 7-8 extra skill points and 35-40 extra stat points.
Characters who play longer will, of course, find more... Regardless, this is a major change to the game, and I am not at all certain that I will keep it.
4.4 Item Modifications: Having played Diablo II since it was released, and Diablo I before that, I feel that I have a solid career behind me from which to work. I have never dropped a Zod. If I were to be paid $1/hour for the time I've spent in this game, I'd be filthy rich. Obviously, Zod runes don't have a realistic drop rate for a single player....
Drop rates of all items are being significantly revamped, to allow a single untwinked character a decent chance to find some of the more useful uniques and sets.
Many new runewords have been added, and more are in progress. Some of the currently overpowered runewords may be changed for balance purposes as the mod progresses.
Many new crafting recipies have been added, with lots on the way. In the past Blizzard had numerous crafting recipies. Some of the new ones reflect those recipies, but with major changes.
In addition to the crafting recipies, new cube recipies have been added. Others will be changed. For instance:
1 perfect skull + 1 Stone of Jordan + 1 Rare item -> 1 new (high level) rare item
This is useless to a lone character in the big world of D2... I've only ever found a few SOJ's in my time. And I NEVER wanted to use them to get a rare...
Currently I have not added any new item classes other than my stat boosters (discussed above)
I have also not added any new uniques or sets (yet). But this is likely to change.
Keys, while not being removed from or crashing imported characters, are effectively removed from the mod. The character cannot buy them or find them. Chests do not spawn with the locked property. TreasureClassesEx.txt has been modified to rebalance item drops so that more scrolls/utility potions do not spawn due to this change.
Books of town portal and Identify can now hold 100 scrolls each, to reduce repetitiveness.
4.5 Monsters: Act bosses now drop equivalent to their quest drop every time you kill them. I consider the effort to find and kill the boss deserves the same reward whether you are doing it for the first or the tenth time. But this change is not set-in-stone. Just something I'm experimenting with.
Resistances of most mosters have been reduced. This is to enable more builds to successfully complete hell difficulty. I have tried to remove all immunies from hell difficulty, however monsters that were formerly immune to an element still have very high resistance to it. Example: frozen creepers are no longer completely immune to cold damage, but they are 89-97% resistant on hell mode. Only a sorc with decent cold mastery will be able to efficiently kill them with cold damage. Wraiths are no longer physical immune, but they may have up to 99% physical resistance. Unique monsters, however, may likely still be immune. Also, I have left in place some certain immunities blizzard made for rpg purposes.
Still to do: I have yet to balance the monsters' stats with the revamped character skills. But since this is a BALANCE mod, I do not wish to overpower characters. The game needs to be difficult, but not impossible, and overall more enjoyable for the lone adventurer. Also, if the character is to be moveable back into vanilla lod then monster stats need to be similar to what they were.
4.6 Code Edits: Currently I have tried to stay away from code edits. #1, 1.11b doesn't have much info on ce compared to other versions of the game. #2, I've never done code editing and do not currently feel comfortable with it.
4.7 Plugins: No plugins are required to play this mod. Since currently the only things to be modified are .txt files, the mod SHOULD work with any plugin, no guarantees though.
. Names might be hard but some times you can be straight on and blunt like for a ice weapon Frost Blade or some thing or even Blazing (insert weapon here). If you really want to use features that blizzard made that people don't really do is press the (W) key (Weapon Switch). Every one knows that people go for uniques on end builds. So add uniques that have bonuses so like a fire weapon gives you lots of fire res but low ice res so when your going to wards Diablo add some monsters that do cold damage so people would have to switch to there water weapon which gives ice res but has low Thunder and poison. so people have to really pay attention to what there doing and having a finger over the (W) key. I hope i helped
