I figured I would post this here, so that people know that it exists.
The Sanctuary Legend is a LOD 1.13d mod. Simply put, it attempts to condense the game into Normal difficulty and streamline some LOD additions. Runes, runewords and cube recipes are mostly jettisoned, charms are all very rare and unique, increasingly more powerful items drop at a good rate. You play through the game and beat Baal, then create a new character and do it again. So it's a bit like D1 mixed with D2. If you feel like you're done with the whole item farming, cube recipe material hoarding and Normal/NM/Hell division angle, you might like going back to the basics with this mod.
Besides the described general strategy with this mod, there are also loads of new modifiers and uniques added, new base item types including exclusive monster items (styled after the similar item type in Titan Quest), rebalancing of gimped skills, monsters and the like and increasing versatility and breadth of abilities for all classes.
Since the game is intended to be played through Normal difficulty only, certain aspects of item balance are thrown to the wind. If you find something really powerful, you can enjoy it, but every character's lifespan is short since there's no point to keep grinding after Baal.
Classes
Characters usually end the game at level 44 or 45, and the cap of most skills is 10 points. Thus, late-game builds will be similar to finished LOD builds in terms of skill points. However, pre-req skill points will effectively cost more, so you have to think about that.
As a general rule, with few exceptions, skill timers are removed.
The focus is on buffing up underpowered skills. Typically strong skills are only nerfed if they strongly overpower other choices. Examples of skill changes:
-Paladin's Zeal only starts gaining AR after it hits 5 attacks. Sacrifice has a negative mana cost; you will regain mana upon attacking an enemy. Synergy from Cleansing reduces damage to self and increases damage, while Sacrifice points increase damage, AR and mana gain from hit.
-Holy Bolt's damage scales with skill points: it gains a damage synergy from all skills, including itself. Defensive Auras give a greater boost. Skill points in Holy Bolt itself also reduce its mana cost, down to a minimum of 0, after which the damage further increases. Thus, basically any Paladin will have access to a decent anti-undead spell, but you need either mana or skill point investment to use it more often.
-Might also causes melee attacks to stun. Defiance also replenishes a flat amount of mana per second. Blessed Aim also increases missile piercing. Sanctuary's ambit effect affects all types of monsters, but the aura drains increasing amounts of the Paladin's mana.
-Barbarian's weapon masteries have a maximum of 1 skill point. Admittedly a stopgap solution since there is some hardcoding involved with these skills, but it does make the Baba much less restricted to a specific weapon type. Iron Skin reduces damage taken by a flat amount rather than increasing defense. Increased Stamina also increases maximum damage (best used with big weapons) and Increased Speed also increases attack speed.
-Stun is replaced by Cleave, which allows the Barbarian to deal good AOE damage before Whirlwind.
-Buff shout overlays don't cycle, and a sound plays when a shout state ends, making them are easier to track.
-Necromancer's Golems gain a synergy from Golem Mastery, allowing the summoning of 1 extra golem per 3 skill points; with 9 points spent in Golem Mastery, you can have 4 golems of any combination active at once.
-Skeleton Mages gain a synergy from all Curses: +1 summon limit per 4 points in curses. Curses also cost less mana with more points in them.
-Multiple Teeth can hit a single target, and also benefit from Piercing Attack (Ice Bolt and Fire Bolt do too)
-Amazon's lightning skills can be used with any melee/throwing weapon, Fend usable with any melee weapon, Jab and Impale usable with any thrusting weapon. Impale also stuns for 1 sec/level and gains a damage and reduced durability loss chance synergy from Critical Strike, to compensate for its hardcoded property of being unable to crit.
-Notably, Amazon's frames in general are notably poorer for non-thrusting weapons and blocking with swinging weapons especially is comically slow, so you'll still have to think about which weapons to use. Swing-blocking Amazons will be hungry for faster block which is offered by items like the new "Parrying Gauntlet" (shield with no character graphic)
-Sorceress Fire Bolt is a hybrid weapon and spell attack: it uses the swinging animation, always hits and deals fire damage plus a small portion of weapon damage. Notably, it conveys weapon effects such as Open Wounds and Blinds Target, so Sorceresses can benefit from weapon bonuses in a new way.
-Telekinesis stuns instead of doing damage. Inferno is fixed, it deals nice damage if you can stomach standing still.
-Assassin's Burst of Speed, Fade and Venom last much longer. The Assassin has to juggle a lot of skills as is, so these have been lengthened a great deal, but not so much that you can cast them at +2 from a skill shrine and benefit from it for the rest of the session.
-Psychic Hammer's mana cost decreases each level, eventually becoming negative. It still requires a valid target.
-Claw Mastery expanded into Combat Mastery, affecting one-handed claws, swords, daggers and spears. Frames are still favorable with claws and some skills still explicitly require them, so this also amounts to more choice of equipment.
-Shadow Warrior has a much shorter AI delay than Shadow Master, which gives it an edge in one area and makes its mimicking behavior more responsive.
-Druid's summons improved. Spirit Wolves properly appear translucent, can float over gaps and through thin walls like ghosts and have a chance to apply Open Wounds. Dire Wolves can hit with Crushing Blow. Up to three vines of any combination can be out at once, but note that because one deals poison damage and the other two require corpses, stacking them is not as powerful as with other pets. The main idea is that you can have different combinations of them. Spirit of Wolverine has been beefed up. Spirit of Barbs deals flat thorns damage and a chance of Crushing Blow thorns - as a global change to the thorns-like properties excluding percentage thorns, they only require the attacker attempting an attack, not actually hitting.
-Altered Elemental progression. Twisters are moved up while Fissure has been moved down. Fissure has been changed: for a flat mana cost you can keep channeling it to open vents near yourself. In this way Volcano and Fissure no longer share a very similar sphere.
-Fire Claws changed to Fire Slash, usable in any form, human included.
And so on.
Items and properties
Almost all cube recipes disabled - the point of this mod is instant action, not consulting lists of recipes and hoarding materials.
Inventory and stash space NOT expanded - sell what you don't need anymore and move on!
Item suffixes in general almost always have two or more properties, for example "of the Apprentice" boosts cast rate and mana regeneration. Gems are beefed up, and can be bought from merchants beginning with Act 2. The stronger variants can only be found from monsters. Once you get the cube, you can add sockets to any nonmagical item by cubing it with any gem, even a chipped.
No new set items, as more would lead to more hoarding and make completing each set more difficult. Monsters sometimes drop from special treasure classes the more difficult set items to get, like jewelry and high-end armors.
As stated, loads of new uniques. The end goal is at least 6 uniques for each item type. All exceptional and elite uniques have been converted into normal uniques.
New item types, including the very low-end Rags, caster-oriented Spirit-Robes, and one-handed spears, using existing javelin graphics.
New item properties: all kinds of thorns like crushing blow, open wounds, cold and fire, fear and blinding, all activating upon being attacked rather than being hit, like Shiver Armor. (Ranged attacks like arrows still require a hit.) Defense multiplier, global weapon damage on weapons, dodge, avoid and evade and so on.
All magic items always spawn with a prefix and suffix, and rares always spawn with 3 affixes. Since affixes in general are buffed, the prospect of magic items competing with uniques is no longer so fantastical.
Characters begin with a purse containing 550 gold worth of electrum to buy some basic starting equipment with, like a weapon. If you want to be a Bow Paladin, you can do so from the start. Caster classes also begin with some weak throwing potions to hold them over until they get a spell.
Heavier armors also give damage reduction and physical resistance in addition to increased defense.
Staves also grant Replenish Mana and faster cast rate. Battle Staff is considered a low-end 2h mace, "War Staff" is now "Mage Staff" and always comes with a socket, in addition to its other properties.
Rarely dropping attribute elixirs and skill books.
Very rarely dropping charms, which are all unique.
Monsters
Poison damage is no longer a joke! Nuff said...
Monsters are beefed up in general. The mod is balanced around the default players setting.
More commonly seen, predictable non-physical damage from the early game. As an example, Hungry Dead also deal cold damage, Foul Crows can poison, and Fallen Shaman fireballs can really hurt.
More specific abilities to nondescript or weak monsters: Baboon Demons have many resistances, Zakarum Zealots sometimes have defensive auras, Gargoyle Traps are much sturdier and shoot Magic bolts instead of Fire. Monsters that look fast also think fast because they have a shorter AI delay.
Slight changes to optional dungeons like Hole and Swampy Pit to make them more attractive: subtly altered lighting and exclusive monsters including their own monster items.
Well that's for starters... there's a lot to see I think
Even so there is still a lot that could be implemented, but I had released this a few months ago because I saw someone asking for a mod that only has Normal difficulty. That's why I had begun making it after all, I looked all over and couldn't find a mod like that, so I made it myself
There's more information in the readme file.
No fancy plugin thingy yet, just directories and -direct -txt so bear with me on this too...
Download:
https://archive.org/details/the-sanctuary-legend-v-12
