Dominus Rex
Working Title: Dominus Rex
Modmaker: Borgin
Game Version: 1.10 + D2Mod + PlugY
Features
While not a "complete overhaul", Dominus Rex offers a number of features currently unavailable in other mod projects.
First and foremost is the extensive character changes. Each character has a number of "special" starting stats (Thanks to CharStart.dll, or CharStats.dll). For example, the Assassin has the highest base run speed of any character- and the lowest base walk speed. The Barbarian has a permanent boost (10%) to Strength. The Necromancer has a passive lifesteal attack. Each character currently has one bonus, although I intend to expand this to two or possibly three to increase character diversity.
Upon entering a game, the second thing a player will notice is the existence of a mirror-like "charm" in their inventory, along with a special Key. Right-clicking the key morphs it into another key, and each different key is engraved with the name of a different class. Upon cubing the charm with any of seven keys (the cube is given to the player upon character creation), a new charm is given to the player which determines their "dual-class". This secondary class further increases character diversity. Any of the seven "vanilla" classes can be chosen, including your "Primary class". For example, an Amazon character may want a Barbarian dual-class charm (for Throwing Mastery, for example), or they may wish to use an Amazon charm (for further benefits to their own skills). This is entirely up to the player.
This charm gains power using special items (which I could not think of a good name, sadly) called "Growth Seeds". Each growth seed has a different name, hinting at the abilities they might give when cubed. Each dual-class charm receives a different bonus from each seed, so a "Flaming Growth Seed" might give a Barbarian dual-class charm +20% Fire Resistance while it gives the Sorceress +1 to Warmth, and a Paladin +30% Fire Damage to Vengeance. Growth seed bonuses are NOT random (yet...
). A growth seed is given to the player upon creation to add a small (+5) bonus to a random core stat (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, or Energy, depending on your dual-class). While Growth seeds drop randomly throughout the game, act bosses will likely drop much more powerful growth seeds than other enemies, and will be farmable (to an extent). These powerful Growth Seeds will increase the required level of the dual-class charm to prevent cheating. Another customizable aspect of the game will be the re-introduction of Tempered items. Similar to how Blizzard wanted tempered items originally (at least as far as I noticed glancing at the recipes for them), my idea of "limitless" crafting comes in the form of Tempered Items. Tempered items are available to all non-charm item classes, including jewels and jewelry. Each item type is only malleable to a certain extent, based on its intrinsic magical qualities. A piece of armor, for example, is usually very prone to magical enhancements, allowing for a full range (100%) of temperability. Jewels, on the other hand, must be carefully crafted as to keep their main structure intact, and are very limited (33%) in their tempering capacity. Recipes will be created to add affixes to these tempered items, while decreasing the item's temperability- at 0%, the item is no longer temperable. Tempered items intrinsically have no additional attributes, and until crafted, are the equivalent of basic (white) items. However, through the course of the game, certain players may want to use tempered items solely because they are unrestricted by luck. The luckless player shouldn't be penalized for their fruitlessness! Likewise, certain builds may be attracted to tempered items- such as melee-based Necromancers, or Bow-using Paladins, as these items allow the player to equip items with the mods they want, as opposed to other item types, which are restricted to the affixes which "normally" spawn on them.
Item system aside, the skill system has gotten a significant overhaul. No longer are the days of imbalanced skills! Each and every skill has gotten at least a major change. Also, every single elemental skill in the game (barring poison skills) now receive a damage bonus from the elemental damage of your equipment. To compensate, elemental damage is MUCH rarer, and %skill damage takes its place in most cases. For example, Fireball receives a 50% damage bonus from your average fire damage on your equipment. Say you have a weapon that grants 100-200 Fire Damage. This synergizes with Fireball at 50% of (100+200)/2, which would increase Fireball's damage by 75. Other skills have gotten basic changes- The Amazon's passives, for example, have much more complicated formulae to determine their effect, usually meaning a much less drastic upgrade curve (and therefore meaning they are no longer one-point wonders!). Valkyrie, for example, receives a bonus from Dodge, Avoid, and Evade, but also gets better quality items based off the player's Magic Find. Other strange synergies like this abound, and are not limited to already-existing stats. Like I said earlier, you may come across a weapon that gives +50% Fire Damage to Vengeance, or +2 Hits to Zeal, or +1 to the number of summonable Grizzlies at a time. Again, this is done to promote build diversity (and build specialization), in the hopes of creating a virtually limitless number of potential builds. In short, every single skill has gotten significant changes, either to damage or some other fundamental aspect.
Currently, I have not included any new skills. I have a number of them waiting in the wings (as in, they are fully coded), and will likely include a number of them in a final release. I have 3 new skills done for each class, most of them being active skills similar in usage to many skills from Median in the fact that they are completely different from any vanilla skill in execution. Hopefully this adds to the game as opposed to detracting from it!
I have not added any additional graphics, except for a small number of new item graphics. I will likely not add new monster graphics, to keep file size low. New maps are a possibility if I can manage to get a .ds1 editor for Vista (I can't find one!).
This doesn't mean that the monsters aren't going to kill you! Monster difficulty has been increased across the board- I've attempted to get a general ~x3 difficulty in the game. This doesn't mean that you have to be three times as strong to kill monsters- just three times as smart. Monsters will likely have new tricks up their sleeves in the form of casting skills upon death, casting curses on the player upon striking, or rapidly healing themselves or others if the player does not actively engage them. I'm not going to institute immunities of any form at the moment, although in higher difficulties, resistances will scale up to a maximum of 95% to some particular element. On the whole, monsters are tougher, but not because they take longer to kill or because they one-shot you. They're just "smarter" and better.
For screenshots, feel free to look at my album. I will host any new screenshots from my mod (and strictly from my mod). There is currently only one, displaying the expanded skill synergies. Enjoy!
As a final note, I would love to thank the PK community, especially Nefarius. He gets far too little credit for what he's done, and even then he's probably the most renowned Keep member. Also thanks the Brother Laz, for giving me a number of good ideas for my mod (and he doesn't even realize it!). My brother, Jon, gave me some rather valuable advice on some things, and has helped me bug fix my current version, which is a playable version of Act 1... for the Amazon (I have a lot of work to do, don't I?).
Thanks to SVR for the D2Mod System. Thanks to Yohann for the invaluable PlugY kit. Thanks to TalonRage for his expanded Properties plugin. Thanks to Inventharia, it's been a great place to grab new item graphics. Thanks to everyone else who mods, and everyone who plays mods, but thanks especially to the people who play MY mod. --Borgin
Better sooner than later, though.
- Hans
