Immersion

[boobke]

Okay it seems it's working atm. I'm at hell O_O And damn I keep dieing. -sob-

But it seems the PlugY made the game crash @ a4. I reinstalled LOD (4 times omfg.) and updated it to 1.10.

P.S. Anyone wanna play with me?

[Senor de Destruction]

Allo allo!
I like the changes you have made since 1,4. Great idea with the double angels at the orbs (beautifully recoloured). Gems and souls are fantastic too. Overall aesthetics… I like your art man Still one of the absolutely best Diablo 2 Lod mods out there.


Though…
I have had similar problems like hboobke. I experience an error entering Chaos Sanctuary on normal. The screen freezes.
No plugy. 1,12a.

The Window reads:

Diablo II Error
Location: , line #222
Expression : Unrecoverable internal error 044d4838

[allas]

Try with 1.10 patch, it's probably the problem. I run through normal without a single error.

[boobke]

Does anyone use PlugY + 1.10? If anyone does gets it working without getting any major errors, mind sharing the version or the plugy. ;]

PS. It seems I can't enter the Cow Level anymore, after I killed Icy and the two other ones. I tried cubing wirt's leg + portal tome, the tome disappeared but the leg is still in my cube.

[Sing_in_silence]

TL;DR but better explanation of what I'm trying to say about 1-hit vs AoE melee chars.

Battleship = player, destroyers = enemies.
(Edit: Of course, the original had it the other way around, but the point's still the same.)

Digression into Fundamentals of Game Theory

lets say you have 10 destroyers going up against 1 battleship.
The destroyers have 100 hp, and the battleship has 200 hp.
The destroyers each do 10 damage per round of fire, and the battleship does 100 damage (or enough to sink a destroyer).

Who wins?

Lets say the battleship engages the destroyers one at a time. Clearly this will be ten fights of one round each, each round the destroyer valiantly does its 10 points and gets sunk. Total damage to battleship = 100 points and it swaggers back to the nearest port with coaling rights (incidentally, coaling rights for the major powers is the reason Africa got carved up the way it did) - damn, this is Game Theory, not Political History!! Stay on target!

Note that going in one at a time, we'd lose 20 destroyers before sinking the battleship.

However, if all the destroyers engage the battleship as a group, they will do much better. The first round they do 100 points of damage, and lose one of their number. The second round they do 90 points of damage and lose a second destroyer (battleship has now taken 190 damage and only has 10 hp left). The third round they will lose another destroyer but do 80 points of damage. Houston, we have a problem.

So a single group of ten does much better than twenty singles. In fact, we only need 6 destroyers (as a group) to take out the battleship, they will do 60, 50, 40, 30 and 20 points of damage, and one will survive.

You may recognise this mathematical progression
1
1+2
1+2+3

as giving the sequence 1,3,6,10,15,21...

For maths fans, this is the formula (n^2+n)/2

To which someone responded:

Except battleships do splashdamage. Advantage battleships.

[Demon9ne]

Boobke -

I agree with Allas. It's definitely an error for versions above 1.10, as I do all my testing in 1.10. I do playtest with PlugY now. You can get all relevant files in the file center here. (To downgrade your version to 1.10, just replace your game.exe with the game.exe from a version before 1.10 and then run the 1.10 patch.)

On the subject of the secret level (and please do not refer to enemies there by name, for those who haven't seen it yet) the recipe is not supposed to return the leg or book to you after creating the portal. I'm testing the possibility of not being able to re-enter. I'll let you know what I come up with. Edit: If there was a limit, it's gone now. I made a couple changes, cleared the level, and re-entered in a new game on the same difficulty. Note that if you're using PlugY with v1.04-v1.04b, it will remove the limit if there is one.

Sing_in_silence -

As I said before, I agree, but chalk it up to player preference. And on the comment below what you posted, I also agree. I've been meaning to add splash damage to 2-handers for a long while now. Edit: Also just noticed that grouped values on PlugY character pages will show up if you're receiving them, but will disappear off the page altogether if zero.



Update

Immersion v1.04c (many fixes, some new features) is a reality. Bugs in v1.04b are updated in my first post.

[Sing_in_silence]

First off, I'd like to apologize if my last post felt like I was pushing. I was merely trying to explain my argument better.
Bottom line however, is that yes, it's a matter of player's preference.


Bloodraven is now officially a challenge.

Also, the Tenebrous Rogues kick my hiney.
(The global increase in missile speeds is EVIL ^_^
It also makes the Amazon's Slow Missiles much more useful.)

Edit: Woops! Spoiler >_<

Did you know that Smite apparently reduces your *weapon's* durability rather then your shield's? I didn't.


Splash on 2handers is an incredible incentive.
(Just be sure that you don't put it on 1handers. It'll kill the competition between 1 and 2 handers, as well as between 1handers themselves, unless more then 1 have it.)

Edit: Also just noticed that grouped values on PlugY character pages will show up if you're receiving them, but will disappear off the page altogether if zero.

Yup.
But it'll list them seperately if the values are different.
(For example, like on items, +%spelldamage will list as a single entry if all elements gain the same amount (not showing the specific elements), but will list separately for each otherwise.)


Edit:
What exactly does the 'hidden belt slots' on the river Tattoo mean?
If it means that they don't show/are inaccessible (for example, when mouse-over-ed, or the tilde (~) key is pressed), did you/whoever try changing to a 'regular' belt, and then changing back?

(If that's the problem, there's a similar issue in Median XL with Sacred belts. This makes the problem 'go away' till S&E.)

[Demon9ne]

Your previous post was appropriate and if anything was the push I needed to add splash damage to 2H weapons. 2H Axes, 2H Swords (If I can restrict it when wielded 1H by barbs), Maces, and Polearms anyway. I'm not sure if it makes sense to give splash damage to spears, being that they aren't wielded in wide arcs... I'm still working out the details.

Blood Raven is unstoppable if you let her do her thing. ...and you're wrong about the Tenebrous Rogue description. It's one of the mod's discoverable cube recipes. (Quit posting spoilers!@!! haha)

Missiles get way worse on Nightmare and Hell... Fallen Shaman become less and less fun to deal with.

The belt slot problem with the River Tattoo is just as you described it. In fact, it might be a problem with the new Bone Belts too, with the exception that the River Tattoo is not a belt - but is worn in the waist slot.

[Sing_in_silence]

Oh. In that case... Glad to help?

True, you don't swing a spear around (Unless you're Spartan, anyway... (Yes, I know that those are actually Javelins, I'm just trying to make a point! >:[), but consider the effect this will have on [weapon]-required skill users. In this case: A spearazon.

(Oops! Removed spoiler.)

Re: Belts.
I promised some quotes.

i miss having more then 2 slot belts i dont know why laz took them off.... sorry if it was mentioned b4

It has. About a million times: more belt slots are hardcoded to the original belt types.

(Source)

and

Sacred belts are unfixable. (So are two row normal belts) Blizzard decided to hardcode some stuff to regular belt types.

(Source)

That should cover both the 2-slot belts, and the invisible belt slot.
(Did you check about swapping belt? I think it should work.
I would, but I don't have any of the tattoos yet >_>)

Missiles get way worse on Nightmare and Hell... Fallen Shaman become less and less fun to deal with.

Which leads to something I was considering.
Of course, I haven't gotten far enough yet to check it out myself... >_>
(Oh nose! He's going all theoretical again!!111)

From your comment about them become 'less and less fun' I assume that this isn't an issue, but just in case...

...too fast missile speeds lead to missiles warping through the target instead of hitting it. The 15% seemed about right.

Tests with Sharpshot seem to indicate that this isn't a problem.
(Missiles will pierce target (with 0 points in pierce), though.)

Cheers.

Edit:
Oh yes, I remember.

While I love the fact that the level-req on items has been removed (the dual stat/level reqs in D2 always annoyed me), this makes Immersion a twinkers paradise.
Be advised.


Edit:
Oh shi-! :O
I just realized that the Sorceress not only has Energy Shield, she can get up to 20% absorb (without +skills), as well as 60 iPDR (again, without +skills)!
While I don't know how damage scales here, nor do I know what affixes are available endgame, this looks like a *very* good base for an invulnerable character.
(See link to LorveN's post, in my 2nd post)

Intended?


Edit:
Forgot to mention - Stavebolt seeks targets. Skilldesc doesn't mention this.

[Maliciant]

I like this mod, I have to admit I haven't gone very far yet though, just act 2 normal (but I have covered a lot of act 1 a few times playing with diff chars). I don't know if it's been reported but act 2 mercs seem to suffer from some AI retardation, they stop moving completely... maybe they are trying to use a skill they don't have (this was a lvl 12 combat merc).

Also... something I find fairly annoying, the souls... yeah... I like souls (especially the way it was done in the nezermontias mod... I wish that was still maintained!). The problem with souls is there are MASSIVE PILES OF SOULS EVERYWHERE, and we have just an itty bitty inventory. Why not instead of the way it's done now, have souls become a stackable item, like keys are normally. Most of the time monsters would drop a single (but stackable) soul... but occassionally a nice soul cluster could show up with 10 souls... but either way so long as they stacked like keys, even if we still have to cube it with the soul deal (why is that thing 2x2 since we pretty much have to pack it around all the time?). The only time I can think of where this 'stacking' would be an issue is the special souls such (andarial, diablo, etc), those ones should probably remain as they are, and not stack... it's not like we have to pick up hundreds of those and move them to the cube and cube them. Anyway, this would streamline the soul gathering aspect of things a LOT if this change was implemented.

[Sing_in_silence]

At risk of usurping Demon9ne's place (and I apologize if it's so perceived), since I'm here...

About keys - they cannot be reagents and a stackable item at the same time.
...
I could potentially make keys stackable again in future versions (and have a different reagent do what keys do now). Would I then be atoning for my sins? I promise to think about it.

The cube doesn't like stackables. Simple as that.
(Like keys,) Souls cannot both stack and be reagent.

[boobke]

mhm, I've killed the Countess a dozen of times, but she doesn't seem to drop any keys. (see keys of terror). And about the secret locations, I've went through any possible dungeon in the game, -yes i was bored-, and I couldn't seem to find a secret location.

p.s. There's a bug with the act 2 mercenary, where they seem to get stuck. And I think the loot table is kinda mixed up, since I get loads of normal drops on hell. (i.e. longbow, long sword, crystal sword) instead of the elites.

[Maliciant]

At risk of usurping Demon9ne's The cube doesn't like stackables. Simple as that.
(Like keys,) Souls cannot both stack and be reagent.

I had kind of thought of that this morning, that it was probably an issue with stackables... for some reason I figured since you could have items with counters indicating the number stored in them (like the soul orb itself) that you could do it, but I guess all of those items that have counts, are achieved via cubing. Too bad, that'd be nice to use.

I still think that even if the original solution isn't possible, *something* should be done about the souls, even if it's just to make them a rarer drop (say reduced to 10% of what they are now, and make the minimum soul worth 10 points etc)... this would still lead to some problems since you have to hit exact numbers with the soul sphere (you can't hit 666 with increments of 10) but something should be adjusted since managing inventory clutter isn't what I think most people play diablo 2 mods for.

ETA: Also, since this mod makes walking just a little slower than running... what gives with all the +stamina stuff, and even having a special buyable potion to give more stamina? There is no reason to run in this mod, other than to make yourself easier to hit since running has that zero defense penalty (I'm not sure exactly how it works, I just know that when you are running you have significantly less defense against anything that does happen to get a swing off near you).

[DreamworldUC]

p.s. There's a bug with the act 2 mercenary, where they seem to get stuck. And I think the loot table is kinda mixed up, since I get loads of normal drops on hell. (i.e. longbow, long sword, crystal sword) instead of the elites.

Im having the same problem with the Act 2 Mercs. They seem to do their job for a small time and then end up getting stuck in 1 place. Could some AI's have got mixed up?

Also in hell I am getting alot of normal drops also but its not as bad as boobke's may be.


Other than that fantastic job on this mod so far, and I look forward to seeing this mod in development and playing new versions!

[Maliciant]

When the A2 mercs go to attack sometimes they dissappear... eventually they will wake up and start attacking again... is it maybe an animation bug? I've never wanted an A3 merc so bad before :p

[Demon9ne]

About tattoos - To get the barb tattoos you have to either make a new barbarian character or make a new barbarian character and port the starting reagent over via PlugY. Note that the Pledge skills are restricted, and thus you cannot buy 2 different Pledges. Nor if you even found a way, could you benefit from wearing multiple tattoos. Also, there exists a bug in PlugY that doesn't pull your points out of restricted skills (Pledges) correctly. So choose wisely, even with PlugY.

On that note, if anyone knows how to disable skill/stat reallocation in PlugY, let me know. Talk about annoying. The trade-off for unlimited stash space is almost not worth it.

About spears - I'm brainstorming what property spears could have instead of splash damage... Consider that amazon spear wielders have skills to turn multiple enemies into puddles. Non-Amazon spear wielders (including Act 2 mercs) would be the ones getting short-changed.

Speaking of Act 2 mercs - I'll update the bugs list and get that fixed. Thanks for the info.

On level reqs/twinking - I like twinking. You worked for the items once - why should you do it again? Furthermore, if you want to play a character wielding the same items twice, knock yourself out. And how did level requirements EVER make sense? I've never been turned down from a job because I wasn't level 34 yet. Nor has anything leapt out of my hand for that reason either. The whole concept of finding something you can't use is ridiculous. When Blizzard came up with the idea, it was clearly just to cover their own asses, because they were the ones deciding where everything dropped. Requirements based on Str/Dex/Vit/Enr make sense, and thus are the basis of Immersion's skills, tempering, etc.

About the Sorc - You are referring to the DR of Burnout, which is a life drainer. If you were to offset the life drain with regen (good idea) and then max Energy Shield and DR% (which caps), you're still looking at hits leaving you manaless and struggling to get out of a corner. And Burnout doesn't last forever. +Skills and Burnout at very high skill levels will drain your life ridiculously too...

Edit: After checking, Stavebolt's description does say that it seeks enemy targets.

On souls/inventory - You'll notice that mods with a huge inventory are complained about for being totally IMBA because you can hold 8 trillion charms. Mods with less inventory space have criticism like this. It's unfortunate. Generally, I travel with my cube (sphere inside it) and drop souls onto it's graphic when I have enough. It works. If I need more carrying space, I transmute and throw equipment in until I get to town. Cain can ID items that are in the cube after all. About stacking items (and why souls don't): they're unfortunately poorly coded. Blizzard took enough time to finish them without allowing for certain possibilities (sockets, cube recipes, additional text on items with quantity, etc.) In my experience with these type of items, only ammunition (arrows/bolts) has not been a pain in the ass to work with. Believe me when I say I wish they could stack.

The secret location I'm always referring to replaces the secret cow level. I just don't refer to it by name (that would spoil it) or as the secret cow level (because it isn't anymore).

The Terror/Destruction/Hatred Keys are not dropping as intended. (Grr.) It'll be patched back in. My apologies and thanks for reporting it.

About +Stamina gear and Movement Speed - I just haven't gotten around to managing it one way or the other yet. But Barbarians using Pledge skills now want tons of Stamina, if they can help it. Stamina potions also grant a temporary speed buff. Maybe the weaker ones only, I'd have to look, but there's nothing wrong with unlimited stamina for a bit, is there? I often run around with one. And you are correct about walking reducing defense to zero, but it's still slower and the character looks like a douchebag.

Drop rates of item grades (norm/exceptional/elite) have not changed on any difficulty.

Phew. I think that's everything. I was actually kind of drunk when I started typing and now I think I've typed myself sober. Thanks a lot, guys. (But seriously, I'm appreciating the feedback. Changes are in progress.)

[Sing_in_silence]

Edit:
Re: Stavebolt -
Well so it does. o.o
I must be going blind in my old age, or something...

Anyone knows how to disable skill/stat reallocation in PlugY, let me know. Talk about annoying. The trade-off for unlimited stash space is almost not worth it.

Include a PlugYfixed.ini tailored to your liking (in a 'PlugY' folder, (or whatever path they'd have normally,) in the 'root directory' of the patch) in your .mpq.
You can do the same with the char-pages, and probably other things.
(Note: There are still ways to get around this, sadly.)

On level reqs/twinking - I like twinking. You worked for the items once - why should you do it again?

You're preaching to the choir here

(I was referring, however, to the effect that normal items with endgame affixes twinked onto low level characters has on balance
This is generally the case with scaling automods, in mods that still have but stat and level reqs.)

About the Sorc...

Gotcha.
Yet another thing for me to *actually* try out

Edit:
Yes, I'm talking about Burnout's DR. Yes, I saw the Life degen. Yes, I was planning on (trying to) negate it with replenish.
More detail below.

Cain can ID items that are in the cube after all.

Incidentally, he'll ID them even when your cube is in your Stash

...I was actually kind of drunk when I started typing and now I think I've typed myself sober. Thanks a lot, guys.

* Details (Warning! Pure Theorycraft. Again.):
This (the bold text, specifically) is the underlying concept:

...
At 95%R and 40%A and 20iA, a 4000 dmg elemental attack is completely canceled out.

Integer PDR and MDR act on a similar basis to integer absorb but work a little differently: they get applied before resists, %damage reduction, and absorb (both % and integer). Therefore, they usually take on much higher amounts of damage than integer absorb but can end up doing some amazing things if stacked to high amounts on the right character.

The most prominent example of an iPDR/MDR stacking character is the Energy Shield (ES) sorc. ES reduces up to 95% of physical and magic damage before iPDR/MDR is applied which makes it much easier to stack up enough to reduce all damage taken to 0. at lvl40 ES, you only need about 30 iPDR and 20 MDR to take absolutely no damage in PvM!

Since iPDR/MDR are applied before resists, if you stack enough to reduce all damage to 0, you no longer have to worry about your resistances so that things that reduce your resists (like amplify damage, conviction, hell resistance penalty) no longer matter. That is why stacking iPDR and MDR is so useful.

(Source).
Of course, the underlined comment is talking about 1.11 cLoD, so the numbers may vary.

Here's what I was thinking:
Max Burnout, Orb Mast., ES, Tk.
Variable # of points into attack spell of choice and appropriate mastery for caster-sorc.
Alternatively, split points between F.Enchant (Uninterruptable attack is a very nice bonus for this path), F.Mast. (Woot for +%spelldamage working on direct melee attacks!) and Warmth (for mana regen, and damage synergy to F.Enchant.) for a melee(/ranged)-sorc
1 pt in Teleport and Warmth.

(My favorite is Cold mastery + Conviction from merc, due to how -resists works, even though I hate the vanilla cold attack-spells >_<)

Since there's no Conviction A2 merc, I was planning on taking a Vengence/Prayer merc (+replenish, as well a dealing with immunities).


In order of priority:
Stack DRs
If possible, find another ~20% elemental absorb (due to having 20% from skill, and it's capping at 40%).
Stack elemental absorb.
Stack %resist (especially poison)/%DR.


Granted, this is very skill heavy, but while pure theorycraft, this looks to me like a very solid, umm, durable rather, character.
Only problem might be low damage. idk.


Taking a look at the Barbarian.
(Silly me. Didn't look at his inv or I'd've seen the war paint >_<)

(* 1 pt Pledge of Devotion + max Iron Skin + max Blood of Arreat (and Diamond Soul for +regen on BoE) and you have a nice tank too.)

* Is Howl supposed to increase the amount Grim Ward drains, or the frequency it does so?
If it's the former, GW's skilldesc doesn't show a change.

[boobke]

Another bug, it seems that a gold soul shard won't place sockets in ethereal unique items. And by the way. It's cool that a runeword doesn't have a level requirement. ;]

Another thing, it seems the rune drop tables aren't correct either. El and Eld could be considered as rare as Um. From the 10 runs I went to Countess the lowest I got was a Tir(4). Mhm, I want my BOTD.

'scuse me.

[Demon9ne]

Another bug, it seems that a gold soul shard won't place sockets in ethereal unique items. And by the way. It's cool that a runeword doesn't have a level requirement. ;]

Another thing, it seems the rune drop tables aren't correct either. El and Eld could be considered as rare as Um. From the 10 runs I went to Countess the lowest I got was a Tir(4). Mhm, I want my BOTD.

The Gold Shard is not supposed to, see the shards section in the cube recipes docu. Platinum Shards affect Ethereal items.

The rune drop tables are as they should be. If you're out to find an El or Eld rune, kill other enemies or kill the Countess on a lower difficulty.

[boobke]

'Scuse me for the Gold Soul Shard, I was probaly sleepy. -yeah it's a lame excuse-

About the runes, meh -thinks of the horror of doing normal again- and I was referring to Countess as in the difficulty Normal.

About the amazons, it seems the poison arrow skill, seems to get glitched at some times. (i.e. When your near a monster, and you shoot the Multiple Arrow + Poison, the enemy does get the damage -sometimes they even don't- and don't get inflicted with poison.) It might be a animation error, or just a bug within the game its self.

[Demon9ne]

No problem.

The Countess on Normal won't drop runes above Shael, on Nightmare won't drop runes above Um, and on Hell can drop any any rune. On the higher difficulties it might be true that very low runes (Ul - Tir) have less chance of dropping*from the Countess*.

The Zon blighting arrows' poison doesn't immediately activate because the skill is intended to be used at ranged distances.

[DreamworldUC]

I was also wandering if you have or are planning on changing the hirelings. Because act 2 mercs are the best and have auras, they are always used.

In other words, I think it would be fun to play through the game with an act 3 or 5 mercenary without them dying all the time because they are weak.

Im not saying nobody has played through the whole diablo 2 game with act 1/3/5 mercenaries, and Im sure those who did they would admit they had a hell of a time keeping them alive.

So I think maybe a small suggestion would be to make all the other mercs equal and just as good, of course in their own ways.(of course only if you can)

Just a thought

Also, just for a little humor I was running the tombs in act 2 and managed to find a scythe that gives +2 to dagger mastery.

XD

[the_bogan]

Not sure if that has been noted, but Assassin weapons have high level skills even at the beginning. Pity I'm stuck on throwing Fire Blast so apart from trying a higher skill once or twice I can't be bothered abusing it yet,

[the_bogan]

Double post, blame Guinness.

[Demon9ne]

the_bogan -

I assume you mean the alcoholic beverage and not the record book In v1.04c shurikens will give bonuses to Assassin skills in the same manner claws do. They're currently only set up to give bonuses to 3 skills with shuriken in the name. I noticed this again myself as I was fixing the animation bug that occurs when throwing one.

DreamworldUC -

In my experience with mercenaries (in vanilla or any mod) they're either dead or alive and not much in between. I'd really like it if I could make their health bar longer, but it's not possible. In Immersion they are significantly better (see the hirelings page in the docu) including faster movement speed, new skills, a better statistical progression, and lower resurrection costs. You can further augment their stats by filling their equipment slots with mercenary-only runes.

Try a merc from an Act besides 2 and tell me how it pans out. I've thought about replacing their auras with different skills, but it's not being true to the original (something I try to do when possible) and I don't think it would make people very happy either. I'm always interested in feedback and suggestions on things like this.