New version developement

[Elafar]

Nice, big thx for fixing it into d2SE .

Posters and scrolls....I am playing Barbarian already 3 days...not even close to assemble full poster. And scrolls ? ....compared to old zy-el I managed to cube 4 uncommon scrolls which is about 5 -10 time less than in old zy-el one, It may be better if I played druid summoner or ama ...but imo even if you increased drops in this patch it still may be not OP.

Nevertheless I am enjoying it so far...thx for your efforts, you are really doing nice job

[Al-T]

Nice to see you are still providing both a "standalone" and a "D2SE" version for download. Please continue to do so as I don't use D2SE. I have my own set of batch files set up which only require a couple of mouse-clicks for me to install any mod, any base version.

I got as far as rescuing Cain using Patch 5 and nothing to report other than..."Loving it"

Will use Patch 6 from now on.

[Montex]

It has been one week since the official release of the unofficial mod
To celebrate that i have made patch 7:
minion overhaul: less health and damage
reduced unique drop - it was fun until i found 2 unique charms in act 1 without any MF... At that point the fun ended...
cain charges for id but hopefully doesnt crash anymore
missing set item names
missing knight animation
duplicated unique names
monster damage on P+: monster deal more damage on higher player settings (the way they did in 4.4c). Somewhat managed to softcode it. I will be able to enjoy P127 yet again

[Elafar]

nice one, again all changes seem to be improvement..

apart from removing food....transforming food early in the game gave you Normal health or mana pots...while now, if one wants to get some stronger pots even more hassle of cubing is needed ...not a big deal if you ask me but still my vote would go for food back or increased chanced of better quality flasks drop early in the game..

After you fix / balance that stuff you find necessary I may have a few suggestions that I would like to share with you if you are interested ?

[Montex]

Atm all potions are x2 better than before (since initial release). I may have to increase that even more but i would like to avoid spamming super healing in act1.
EDIT: added healing bonus based on vitality and energy: x2-x4 of vitality for healing and x2-x4 of energy for mana. But so far that's the only change since patch 7 so it isn't worth uploading it for now.
Thus if you have any more ideas i'm ready to hear them out.

[Elafar]

Ok, here is what I've been thinking....and those ideas came few years ago while I've noticed that most of the rune words I've never used simply because jewels were so much better. While low lvl rune words are actually useful, those in middle or late stage of the game lack appeal.
Solution may sound simple in theory, but not sure how much work would take in praxis to implement them, if you would even consider later lvl runewords worthy of balancing ?

One way would / could be to give better / additional stats to runes
Another would be to buff rune words..


Second thing, I think it may be worth of looking is lowering prices for collector extracting for some items.
and maybe even enabling upgrading extracting cards ?

[Montex]

I do have a few ideas about runewords but the changes would be too big for now. I'll probably leave those for 4.6 (if that is ever released).
As for collector i may balance things little by little.
Though for now i'd like to play the mod myself. Been starting at data tables more than playing the game. Cant say that modding isn't fun but playing is important as well

[Elafar]

I do have a few ideas about runewords but the changes would be too big for now. I'll probably leave those for 4.6 (if that is ever released).
As for collector i may balance things little by little.
Though for now i'd like to play the mod myself. Been starting at data tables more than playing the game. Cant say that modding isn't fun but playing is important as well

Can't say that I am blaming you for that , just take your time and enjoy
---------
I just got squished by Jem hadars at last room before Andariel. They have now some Insane poison Dmg ?? compared to them Andariel was piece of cake. Maybe you should balance those a bit, make Andariel stronger and Jem Hadars a bit weaker in therms of dmg ?

[Al-T]

7 patches already....yes it is time for some serious playtesting of your own Montex. Take the time out to do just that and you will come back refreshed when you start modding again

I can't do this just now due to too many other commitments both here and in RL but if you would like, I would be happy to look into the "ExtendedLevels" plugin and maybe try to add some more Insanity Levels etc., once I have more time I will say at the outset, it is likely to be at least 2-3 months before I could do so but should have enough time at that point if it is okay with you

[Montex]

Are there any Jem hadars in act 1? I thought those were first seen in durance...

Also i am planning to play with at least one class through all the game before doing any further big changes. Haven't been to insanity levels since 3.8 i think...

[Al-T]

There should be no Jem Hadars until Act 3. There are invisible "Boogey Men" in Act 1 Catacombs though which is what I suspect Elafar has encountered

[Elafar]

well, either they miraculously migrated from act 3 or some weird bug happened.Anyway They were doing proper dmg that I could imagine mobs in act3 are expected to do. It was only 7-8 of them, so-I would call it one pack.I clearly remember seeing their names , and yes they were invisible too but appearing from time to time. I also recognize them because they were named after fierce legendary warriors from another galaxy from Star Trek ( they appeared a lot in Deep space nine If I remember correctly).

I installed patch 7. On players 127 mobs hit really hard, however, from some reason loot seem to be worse than in patch 6 . It is not unique I am referring to, but there were fewer scrolls.

[Montex]

Patch 8:
improved loading screen image quality
different char select screen image (seems Kato wanted to use this one as title screen for his 4.5). I included the old image as well if you dont like the new one: replace data\global\ui\CharSelect\characterselectscreenEXP.dc6 with data\global\ui\CharSelect\characterselectscreenEXP old.dc6
Fire eye monster had wrong class
increased Summoner hp and damage
potion effects and prices - heal more and cost more
wraith and invisible monsters drop reduced (they were dropping too many scrolls / posters compared to other monsters)
lowered kobold damage boost with p+. I could not do fresh start on P127 while i could do that on 4.4c. The tactics is a bit different now but its doable again. Who's up for the challenge?

checked Catacombs 4 map but could not find any traces of Jem Hadars there. A screenshot of where you encountered them would be helpful.
Edit: messed up 'create new character' screen really badly. will fix in next patch

[Elafar]

when next time i venture down, if I encounter them again I will screenshot them..

thx for another update

[Eberhardt]

Thanks for the updates and for the D2SE version, Montex. There are however some serious problems

The progress on my druid now is 220+ lvl, act 4 (killed Diablo). But: I can't get to act 5. The red portal opens and as I try to get through it, the game crashes. The same happens when I specify "-act 5" in the command line and create a new character. Mephisto now drops perfect gems instead of Zy runes which makes Mephisto runs redundant (except for some exp and mf drops as the amount of monsters there is just staggering). Well, I don't mind, just saying. Leveling is super fast. My necro got to the end of act 4 at lvl 145 in 4.4 while in 4.5 my druid was at 200+ already.

Well, the most important issue is the impossibility to get to Harrogath The installation is fresh, act 5 is accessible in vanilla D2 LOD but not in Zy-el. D2SE version has the same issue.

P. S. I did meet a Jem Hadar in Catacombs 4, he was in the room with mana and health shrines, there are traps in the wall too. I believe there are Dark Souls monster (lvl 96 I think) in the Forgotten Tower 5. It was in older releases however so no guarantee now (but I'll go and look if they are still there).

[Montex]

patch 9 out:
harrogath crash fix
cain relocated in act 5
no more Jem Hadars in cata 4 (hopefully)
Experience (player / monster level difference) - while Kato had some custom exp table at what level difference exp is reduced i do not know it and i am simply guessing the values. The first guess wasn't that good it seems...

Delete data folder from path 8 (or earlier) before copying patch 9

As for Meph drops. I have only started act 3 so that will have to wait a bit til i reach him to test. As if i read somewhere that there is a drop limit of 6 items per monster while most bosses have 10 items specified in their drop. Not sure how this affects boss drops.

Ill try to explain what i did to drops in earlier patches.
in 4.4c one of meph drops was named as 'Zy Rune' that had:
* 95 chance to drop nothing ~48.8% on P1
* 50 chance to drop Zy rune ~25.6% on P1
* 50 chance to drop DKey ~25.6% on P1
on p8 the no drop would be reduced to 0.488 ^ 4 = 5.7% (not sure if is is further reduced after P8) thus the new chances were
5.7% drop nothing
47.15% drop Zy
47.15% drop DKey
in 4.5 'Zy Rune' treasure class has:
* 60 chance to drop nothing ~33.3% on P1
* 20 chance to drop empty treasure class ~11.1% on P1
* 50 chance to drop Zy rune ~27.8% on P1
* 50 chance to drop DKey ~27.8% on P1
on p8 no drop is reduced to 0.333 ^ 4 = 1.2%. new chances are
1.2% drop nothing
16.5% empty treasure class
41.1% Zy rune
41.1% DKey

[Eberhardt]

OMG thanks! I've already done several meph runs out of boredom. I'm glad there will be zy rune drops eventually off to testing the new build \o/

[Elafar]

It is nothing but impressive, your dedication and work speed all while you are playing the mod in addition.

I just hope that showing you gratitude will keep you motivated

[Eberhardt]

The first (minor) issue is that NPCs don't talk at all. I'm not exactly happy with nerfed summons too but - well, more challenge then, huh?

Also the pesky miniboss in Bloody Foothills oneshot me :X I better watch out.

Everything else is smooth so far

EDIT: A bug with dire wolves. Despite the description that at skill lvl 90 you can summon 10 wolves, you can summon only 9.
EDIT 2: Qual-Kehk gave me random runes, namely Ort, Ral and Tal. I know I know, you haven't got there yet, just saying

[Montex]

I removed all the custom start wars speeches from NPCs. Other that that they should talk. Check options if you have text + speech enabled and you have the required mpq.
didn't find anything unusual about the siege boss in the tables that would indicate that he does some insane damage. Whats your health?
the summon descriptions are off by 1 lvl i think. will fix that.
I know about A5Q2 - and i can't do anything about it for now besides editing dlls.

[Eberhardt]

As for NPCs - maybe I was trying to fix some things myself and relocated text and sound MPQs. I'll check that. DLL editing sounds like fun

Also, quite sometimes I get this annoying exception:

I tried to circumvent it by porting to town more often and getting rid of items in inventory but I'm afraid it's out of my control. Well, tbh my inv is cramped with charms, could be the reason.

the miniboss is ok, I managed to kill it by summoning oak sage and staying away as much as I could. My hp is at 3k, 8k with oak sage.

[Elafar]

....about to many items bug......since it seems that game from time to time does autosave, in addition to stuff you are wearing and having in your inventory it attempts to save also your private chest page 1. To somehow remedy that crashing I use to keep clean both first pages in plugy inventory. It is not perfect solution, but it helps.

[Montex]

i think i smell a wipe...
The crash is caused by reaching 8 kb save file size.
To reduce that i will have to heavily edit itemstatcost.txt which will cause all the previously played characters invalid.
I think its still a good time to do that since it only the beginning of what your items will look like in hell and also the beginning of mod (9 days max). i may try one thing to edit the itemstatcost and keep the saves valid - not sure if this is possible though.

At act 3 i had 5k hp on necro. So 3k in act 5 is kinda low

[Eberhardt]

Thanks for the suggestion but I think I'll keep things the way they are as this exception doesn't come up too often. Besides I noticed (though it has to be confirmed first) I get it when I drop something from the inventory.

As for HP - I died only twice during this game. The first time was in cold plains when monsters kept hitting me and I was in hit recovery. When hp becomes the issue, I have oak sage and werebear form

Wipe doesn't sound good but well, I love leveling fresh start chars

EDIT: the amount of rare drops is insane:

That's what I get for a mere 350% mf. I don't know if it was intended - after all, you can't charge the collector with magic items anymore. Still it feels like too much.

[Elafar]

before wipe, you may check Xaphans attempts to fix the same issue. Although he managed to increase size of save file, if I remember correctly, bug still prevailed, not that frequent though, that is if something wasn't changed past few days.