'Zy-El: Trial by Fire' Reviewed

[Eisead]

I did the mod Review of 'Zy-El: Trail by Fire'. I'll most likly do a follow up on Zy-El 2 when it comes out and stick on with the frist one. But until then you can find the review here

Feel free to post your comments on the mod as well as my writing style. Both would be useful.

[KillerForm]

hey Eisead! i think that you have done a wonderful job on the review... but you had to make it much better because you didnt mention much of the bads (that is a good sign) but i think that people dont like those kind of mods just because the graphics arent changed much! people this days like new graphics.. something that will own some other mod.
what i seek in mods is being a high level... that is why when i saw the feature list on the non-hosted mods thread i got almost shocked to this high level.. and another aspect that i like in this mod is the items.. the uniques are overpowered because in about level 2000 i could have done 200k-500k damage without any problems

well.. nice to see more players of this mod.. keep on your work Eisead (and know elsewhere as E is Dead)

[jbouley]

*This topic has been moved from Member Announcements to Mod Reviews*

[Kato]

Zy-El Version 2.1 will be released in a few days.

@Eisead: Don't bother reviewing version 2.0. A number of bugs were corrected in the upcoming version and a lot of new stuff added too - new maps, new items and new recipes.

[Kenshin]

The review is very good! As good as the mod is! Good work!

[mistegirl]

The above review was for Zy 1, but I'd like to throw in my thoughts on the current version, 2.4.

What drew me to this mod was the 5,000 level cap and the 100 skill point cap with the promise of harder monsters and more crafting abilities. Now, weeks later these same features have me completely addicted. You have to really work and put time into your character to make it though even the normal difficulty of the game.

For the sake of ease and staying on track I'm going to break this review into a few areas.

Monsters
The monsters have been beefed up to amazing proportions in this game. When starting in the Blood Moor you have to lure quill rats out one by one to have a shot at killing them. This is the most frustrating part of the game and it took me a few times before I had the patience or the time to get past level 3.

Not many monsters were added, though the ones that were are done well. Don't be surprised when something invisible hits you or if you run into a swam of Andarial look alkies on the way to Diablo.

Overall? Anything you see will be stronger and faster with more life.

Items and Crafting
This is where this mod shines like no other. The new recipes and runewords added give everyone the ability to make a character exactly the way they want. Playing a Paladin and want a Valkyrie or Shadow master following you? There's a runeword for that. Playing an Amazon and want to use corpse explosion? There's a recipe to give you charges.

You have the ability to socket everything fairly easily and there are hundreds of runewords to use in them. As anyone can expect these words very from the really weak to pretty impressive. Charms can also be socketed and there are words for them.

The crafting lets you do more than I could ever tell you here. One good example is you have the ability to stack runes into jewels (Finally! A use for jewels!) to make amazing use of your sockets. Too easy to make godly items you say? Not so. While this process will pay off immensely it takes a lot of time and a lot of collecting. I know people that have spent days making the perfect jewel.

That's just scratching the surface of it. For more info I would recommend downloading the documents.

Balance
The balance of this mod is shaky. If you don't craft or make use of the runewords it will be impossibly hard. If you are obsessed with crafting you can reach the point where the game is too easy. I have not had any complaints overall about the balance. When it gets to hard I know I need to craft or level. If it's too easy, well, I have not run into that just yet.

Character balancing is not something I can give much input into. I normally play an Amazon or Necro. Both worked very well though the Amazon was obviously the more powerful of the 2. I can say that on server play I see more Amazons and Sorceresses than any other class, leading me to believe that they are still the easiest to play.

Summary
The difficulty of this mod is it's biggest stumbling block. For me the only way to really enjoy playing I had to go to multi player. Starting some of the underused classes like an assassin will be anywhere from hard to making you beat up your mouse in frustration ubra hard.

For the meticulous, the people that will put hours of time and love into making the perfect character, the perfect equipment and playing it through, you can't ask for much more. For anyone just looking for shiny new graphics and skills I'm sorry you probably won't have the patience or desire to play this mod through.

[noELrunes]

perhaps I should do my reviews in that sort of content at my site mistegirl.

I also like the fact that almost any random of runes in a weapon could yield something.

Although regular crafting I like, since its a form of safe gambling so to speak.

[mistegirl]

I like the layout of the review on your site, though maybe not the big "CURRENTLY INCOMPLETE" that it ends with.

This was easiest for me becuase left to my own devices I could babble on and on and no one would understand what I was trying to say.

The runewords are great becuase they're so easy, if not a bit expensive. You can roll something back from unique to regular with just a key (but you'll of course loose some of the stats along the way) you add sockets with just jewels and gems and then you can buy the runes.

The crafting will give you much more powerful items, but will take longer, cost more and you have to collect, rather than buy most of the supplies.

I have an extensive list of all the runewords and recipes that I use and fine I'm always crafting to make something bigger and better. It's like I find something new I can do every time I play it!

[Myhrginoc]

Not surprising. Zy-El is the first mod to break the "4096" barrier with Kato's ever-expanding Cubemain. Soon enough, nobody can possibly know all the recipes...including Kato.

[Kato]

Actually, it does get a little hard going through the massive cubemain.txt when a recipe fouls up and I have to find the specific one that blew up. But they are organized in a logical manner that makes sense to me. I do thorough documentation in the first column of each recipe line; makes it a lot easier to understand what is going on and I removed all of the hokey Blood, etc recipes that came with LOD that made no sense at all.

As far as the players are concerned, most of the recipes are in set formulas. <mag item> + <mag ring> + <mag amu> + <mag jew> yields <rare item>. Very straightforward. I tried to rationalize all the recipes into set formulas making it easier to memorize. Still, I'm constantly flipping back to the guide to check the recipe format on the few occassions that I'm able to play my own mod.

However, with this limitation no longer in existence, there's no telling how far I will go now. If anyone knows my mod, they know that when I add something, I don't just add a little bit. When I decided to add runewords, I added over 400 of them. When I created cube scrolls, I didn't just make 10 or 30 of them, I made 960 of them. When I added new unique items, I added over 1000. I don't tend to do things in small steps.

Currently, I'm at about 4100 lines in cubemain . . . how much further can I go? hehehehehehehehe

[jbouley]

I admire anyone who can make that many runewords and not have a stroke. Just assigning runes and powers to all of Blizzard's 200+ unfinished words gave me major headaches.