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Keldulas posted:The thing with D2 I feel is that while the plot is essentially non-existent, the game does do some good atmosphere. It’s a very lonely place, where it’s just you and the taciturn mercenary you hired vs the hordes. And then during the moment of rest where you go back to civilization (or what passes for it), you come back to talk to Cain first so that he identifies your poo poo for you. Always talk to him first, his sound bite is memorable and goofy enough that it alleviates the repetition of it. Get attached to the bugger because he’s always there to help you and he’s a constant presence. I think the fact that his services are free helps to endear him, if he charged for what he does I don’t think he’d be as popular. This I think is the reason behind Diablo 2's charm: I have varying degrees of opinions on the places we'll go in this game, but they all look and sound very good at feeling empty and hostile. Though, I feel like this approach to atmosphere does get relied on a bit too hard, because we'll go to a real center of civilization and imo it'll still feel barren. ...Then there's Diablo 3 where New Tristram has many more corpses than they do townsfolk and the number is only increasing. It's not establishing the urgency of the plague in New Tristram. It's honestly just comical. What's curious about Act 1 is that exactly zero quests are required between you and the final one for the act. So long as you have the damage output and ability to avoid/tank damage nothing's stopping you from going to the end of the act. I dunno why you would unless you have leveling uniques handed to you, but yeah, you sure can just not rescue Cain and when you leave Act 1 he's just in the next act. You'll never be rid of him. As mentioned, he will be endearing to you whether you like it or not. As an aside, beyond Cain, the only other good character I can think of that has actual weight on the story is Tyrael, who is, interesting I like his character, but, the best way I can put it now is despite angels being a major factor in Diablo 2 they don't do a whole lot with them. I have a feeling I'll be able to better nail this down as I write more updates though.
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Oct 13, 2022 03:04
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DarkMatt posted:This I think is the reason behind Diablo 2's charm: I have varying degrees of opinions on the places we'll go in this game, but they all look and sound very good at feeling empty and hostile. Though, I feel like this approach to atmosphere does get relied on a bit too hard, because we'll go to a real center of civilization and imo it'll still feel barren. I played D2 when it came out, and I remember being impressed with how different each area managed to feel and look. Of course the game play loop is exactly the same, but I wasn't very picky as a teenager. I also never got into the meat of the game, I was happy just beating it on the normal difficulty with a few different characters and calling it a day  So this LP is quite interesting, Diablo 2 mechanics are crazy.
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Oct 13, 2022 12:06
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DarkMatt posted:This I think is the reason behind Diablo 2's charm: I have varying degrees of opinions on the places we'll go in this game, but they all look and sound very good at feeling empty and hostile. Though, I feel like this approach to atmosphere does get relied on a bit too hard, because we'll go to a real center of civilization and imo it'll still feel barren. ...Then there's Diablo 3 where New Tristram has many more corpses than they do townsfolk and the number is only increasing. It's not establishing the urgency of the plague in New Tristram. It's honestly just comical. Now that you mention it, I think that was my problem with D3 in general. It basically had a lot of decisions applied to it without much thought of the player experience or how it affects the plot. There's your point about the corpses in New Tristram. What comes to my mind is Cain's death scene. It basically has no weight at all despite Cain being a liked character, because it's drawn out way too long and the player character is just standing there picking their nose the entire time. So I, at least, ended up not giving any shits. I know that Diablo-esque games will always have that issue since the player character is too varied to have them participate in cutscenes. But.... just don't have those cutscenes then. Like the parts with the niece following you around because she needs your help to get to a dangerous location, and her giving some exposition while running around worked perfectly well. It's a good reason for your character to be participating in the plot, and it doesn't gently caress up the flow of the gameplay.
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Oct 13, 2022 12:45
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Mechanics Talk 1-Attributes (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.)  A character in Diablo II has four stats: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy. Several other stats on the character screen are derived off them, but each level, you get 5 stat points to go put in those four. Each of them do their own things when you get another point in that stat. So you may be wondering what's the most efficient spread of stats? The answer is, unless your equipment demands it, Vitality. Let me explain. Strength only exists to grant extra physical attack damage, at a rate of +1% damage per 1 point of Strength put in. Elemental damage does not benefit, it's only whatever number's on your weapon and any boosts to physical damage you may have. Each point of Dexterity adds 5 points to Attack Rating, and every 5 points of Dexterity adds...one...to your Defense. Depending on the weapon, it'll be Dexterity or a mix of both it and Strength that boosts attack damage. Bows, specifically, care nothing about Strength and everything about Dexterity, and that's actually a good thing because then, instead of just the damage boost, you're also getting attack rating. Vitality simply grants max Life and max Stamina. How much is gained is based on the class: Barbarians get the most at +4 per point. Druids, Necromancers, and Sorceresses only get +2 per point. All other classes get +3. Normally in this game our base health will increased by about 2 or 3 every level, which means to really get a Life total that can survive things, Vitality becomes very important. Energy is Vitality, for Mana. It grants max Mana and how much it grants depends on the class, with Druid Necro and Sorc getting the most and Barb getting the least. However, putting points into Energy also indirectly boosts how much mana you regenerate per second...at a very miniscule rate but I'll cover how that works in a later update. The thing is, the per-point investment of most of these stats can be either bypassed or ran without:
You see, it's not just that more Life = less dying. Think about this from a hardcore perspective, where you aren't allowed to die. 10-20 more Life per level really adds up, and there will be times where you'll get hit a lot. You don't need to devote your stats to killing faster. That's what your gear and your skills are for. You should be using them to not die. Even the crutch points in Energy can be a hard sell because there could be a matter where you could've survived if you had just a bit more Life. Since most of the good builds don't rely on a weapon and Energy does nothing to spell damage, the other stats have well-defined limits to their usefulness. And let me make sure you understand. Sure, you could improve your weapon damage and chance to hit, but then you're losing Life doing so. Your gear will demand you put points in Strength and/or Dexterity, there's no getting around that. But keep in mind that putting 100 points in Strength for double your weapon damage, means you are without, on average, 300 Life. A level 20 Assassin will have around half that unless you dump all her points in Vitality, tripling her survivability. The best argument for putting points in something other than Vitality is if you use shields, because blocking demands you put enough points in Dexterity as well to get a good block chance. Weapons that use both Strength and Dexterity may sound good, but then you realize one point is now boosting your damage for LESS than if it had just used a single stat. While this still allows you to get the benefits off putting points in Dexterity instead of Strength, it's still getting less per point. All that said, though, you know what's the best use of your attribute points is? Holding them until you're needing them. It won't be immediately apparent how much Strength and Dexterity you'll need for any gear you find, and if you're playing softcore death is a slap on the wrist early on. Having the option to adapt to problems instead of being locked in to a solution is the wise thing to do here. If you're hardcore though, yeah, the more Life the better. The rest of the character screen, like Attack Rating, Defense, those damage numbers, will be covered on a later date.   Some of our mods don't like this and will change how this works though. For example, Eastern Sun gives you this charm, which will give various damage bonuses based on your stats. Your max damage goes up with investment in Strength and Dexterity, and your Energy improves elemental damage, with how much depending on what you're using. The normal elements get 1% per 4 points, magic and wind, which is something you'll see in classes like Paladin and Druid, only get 6, and because summons are a little dumb they get +1% every 2 points. Funny enough, Median XL does nothing to these stats...all the meanwhile really increasing your base Life and Mana so Vitality becomes significantly less impactful. However! Direct damage spells will scale their damage off your Energy, (through a new mechanic called Spell Focus) meaning if you use spells Energy becomes an option for improving damage.
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Oct 13, 2022 19:36
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Mhm mhm mhm hey nerd have you considered this: STRENGTH ONLY BARB. That's all bye
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Oct 14, 2022 00:58
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too bad the barb im playin is actually a sorceress 
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Oct 14, 2022 01:23
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STRENGTH ONLY SORC! YEEEEAH BOY!
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Oct 14, 2022 01:27
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FoolyCharged posted:STRENGTH ONLY SORC! YEEEEAH BOY! I feel like at some point when I get the free time I need to do exactly this and see what happens.
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Oct 14, 2022 01:50
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Ppl were getting quite creative with the dumbshit builds on the old forums. There WAS legit str only barb guide, but there was also a thread called "The Strongest Barb" and it detailed how to achieve the titular result: e.g. dual-wielding crystal swords with 6 +10 str runes each There were quite a few square peg round hole builds like vengeance melee Necro too
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Oct 14, 2022 09:07
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I am not at all surprised that a lot of these mods choose to play around in the space of what the stat points do. The original game's system had some obvious glaring flaws, as you point out; the most I can say in its defence is that it made it easier to make optimal choices because they tended to be so obvious (and I won't exactly complain about something that lowers the cognitive load, with how complicated character builds could get). That said, it was definitely possible to do some interesting things within that system if you wanted to, and some people did (as Simon's already alluded to). "Titan" builds (all strength) were a challenge/gimmick thing that I've definitely seen people do. I can't defend it from a practical perspective, unless you were doing something really off-the-wall, because the amount of damage strength actually gets you is very marginal. Damage boosts from strength are treated the same way as off-weapon (i.e., skill or gear based) "% Enhanced Damage", which all gets added together to produce a single multiplier that modifies your weapon damage. So if, for example, you put 100 points in strength thinking you're going to get 100% more damage... well, that 100% stacks additively with the probably 200% or more that you're getting from your skills (e.g. in the case of those arbitrary numbers you'd go from 3x to 4x weapon damage, or a net 33% increase). Those same points give a much better return on investment in vitality for survivability. But if you just want the biggest possible damage numbers, well, marginal increase or not, it's still an increase. You can be a glass cannon if you want to, you're just going to die a lot unless you play so cautiously you end up killing slower anyway. Pumping dexterity on ranged characters was a bit more of a thing; "glass cannon amazons" were decently popular. (For a variety of reasons: dexterity boosts AR in addition to damage, so you get other benefits as well, and then bow skills have less %ED than melee skills so you'd get more of a return from it proportionally.) I personally found these frustrating to play, as the end result was usually too much glass and not enough cannon, so to speak; Amazons definitely benefit from putting more points into Dexterity than equipment requires, but most of mine ended up prioritising Vitality a bit more. And then, of course, there's blocking. "Max block" (75% chance to block) variants of most builds existed; I never much liked them, but as I understand it they were a popular choice for people who liked PvP, and some people used them in normal gameplay too. The really weird thing is that the block chance formula includes your level in the denominator, so whenever you level up your block chance goes down and you need to spend dexterity points to get it back up. (From the design perspective, I guess the idea is to make it so low-level characters can have a respectable block chance? But in practice it felt like an arbitrary penalty or tax for levelling up.) I don't remember the exact formula but I think it often worked out to having to spend ~2-3 points per level in dexterity just to maintain your block chance. The only characters I know of that invest in Energy are Sorceresses using Energy Shield, and those were very rare in my experience (Energy Shield is a lot worse in D2 than Mana Shield was in the first game). There are just so many better ways to solve mana problems; even if you do just want to boost the size of your mana pool, gear or charms with +mana modifiers are a lot more efficient at it than stat points are. And literally the only thing Energy does is give you mana. (Okay, I'm lying, there's one other thing Energy does. It's just a bad thing. Certain lategame enemies have access to a curse called "Blood Mana", that makes you spend your life instead of mana to cast spells. They will only cast it on you if you have more maximum mana than life, which a properly built character never does.) The irony here is that in the first Diablo, Magic (that game's counterpart to Energy) was basically the god-stat, and in addition to your mana it determined what spells you could learn and how high you could raise their levels (D1 didn't have skill points, it had consumable spellbooks, and these checked your magic stat), and how much damage your spells did. And having a large mana pool in that game was its own benefit, because Mana Shield was completely busted (reducing all incoming damage by something like 33% and also directing it all to your mana instead of life). The reason the Sorcerer was by far the best class in that game is almost entirely due to the fact he had a much higher maximum Magic stat than the other two classes (one of the ways D1 differentiated classes was by giving them maximum amounts they could invest in each stat, D2 did away with this). It seems like ES and MXL are each trying, in their own way, to turn Energy back into Magic.
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Oct 14, 2022 19:40
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Time for a new update, where we decide that loot is more important than saving the world for a brief moment.
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Oct 15, 2022 18:07
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Enjoying this thread! I've never played any of the D2 mods and seeing them makes me so sad that Diablo 3 is completely unmoddable.
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Oct 15, 2022 19:20
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DarkMatt posted:Time for a new update, where we decide that loot is more important than saving the world for a brief moment. This intro to the update is comically appropriate to something I want to add to your commentary here. quote:Wraith | CR: **** There's one other reason I hate this enemy type above all others. Their death sound is incredibly similar (to my ears, at least) to the sound made by a dropped ring. So every time I kill one, I think I got a nice bit of above-average loot, only to be bitterly disappointed most of the time.
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Oct 15, 2022 19:40
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Gnoman posted:There's one other reason I hate this enemy type above all others. Their death sound is incredibly similar (to my ears, at least) to the sound made by a dropped ring. So every time I kill one, I think I got a nice bit of above-average loot, only to be bitterly disappointed most of the time. Oh, I have something very similar in that sometimes when a Wraith dies my mind tells me I leveled up, and then I look down and get disappointed. This has been an issue since the very beginning and I have never been able to stop myself from thinking that.
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Oct 15, 2022 21:49
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The Butcher returns in Diablo 3 along with at least one other boss from Diablo 1 (the Skeleton King). They’re both pretty tough early game foes. I don’t think they repeated any Diablo 2 bosses in 3 other than the title character but I could be wrong.
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Oct 16, 2022 00:23
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The Countess is such a weird quest because it turns the protagonist into the player for a bit: greedy rear end in a top hat who couldn't give a poo poo about the main quest When I wrote my big novel following the story exactly, this was the first point where I had a writing block: I couldn't really figure out how to make five chapters in a row - one for each floor of the tower - interesting. The obvious answer of "just cut the entire thing" didn't occur to me, of course Speaking of, why DOES the tower have five basements? Why are we not going up instead? There's another, even stupider "tower" later on with the exact same issue
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Oct 16, 2022 00:41
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I always assumed because it was a lovely, old rear end tower and the top was in too poor repair to raid. And as for why the basement is so deep? It's the spooky tower of an evil wizard lady unnaturally extending her life, of course it has a massive basement descending into the depths.
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Oct 16, 2022 00:51
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One of the other things that makes ghosts (Wraith et al) so terrifying at times is that their ability to phase through walls also allows them to phase through other enemies (and each other), and they can stack on top of each other. That can get very deadly very quickly. "Jewels are trash" was a very common opinion, and while it's very often the case I think overall it's a misconception. You do find a lot of terrible ones, but that's like every type of magic item, and the good ones are very good. Some of them offer affixes you can't get any other way, and especially when they combine well (a rare jewel can get 3-6 affixes at once), you end up with something unique and powerful. When you're really trying to optimise things to get some wacky build to work, the right jewels can fill in gaps you can't otherwise. (And as you say, there's crafting. Which in vanilla didn't care at all about the properties of the jewel, so a lot of people just kept stashes of garbage jewels to use for this purpose.) And then, Imbuing. Oh god. There's a major rabbit hole there but it's not necessarily worth going down. If you were clever and really knew the item creation formulae (including some special quirks that only applied to imbues) you could make some awesome stuff... sometimes. You'd get a lot of duds even then, because it's ultimately still a randomly-generated item, but imbuing gave you a few different ways to put your thumb on the scale. I have a whole bunch of notes on it somewhere, I'd meant to write a guide at some point back when I was active in the D2 community but I never got around to it. There is a lot of technical bullshit (which I can get into if anyone really wants me to), but the biggest benefit involved much higher chances to get multiple staffmods (those inherent skill bonuses certain items come with), and certain item types would have much higher chances of getting good modifiers when imbuing relative to normal drops. The best candidates for imbuing tended to be class-specific items (especially the Sorceress' orbs), and circlets. These formulae did incorporate the character level, so usually it was better to use a high-level character (although, also, there were some items that benefited from imbuing with a low-level character or didn't care, so some people would rush characters through Normal to this point just for imbuing). If you didn't know all the minutiae necessary to really optimise it, well, imbuing still gets you a rare item where you get to choose the base type, and that's perfectly good in and of itself. It's definitely one of the more distinctive and interesting quest rewards Diablo II has to offer.
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Oct 16, 2022 02:08
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Explopyro posted:There is a lot of technical bullshit (which I can get into if anyone really wants me to), Isn't that the point of this conversation? 
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Oct 16, 2022 11:36
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Explopyro posted:There is a lot of technical bullshit (which I can get into if anyone really wants me to) I am making the occasional update that is nothing but technical bullshit. By all means, keep it coming. Speaking of: Mechanics Talk 2-Attack Rating, Defense, and Running (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.)  So, you've heard me shittalk melee and anything using Attack Rating quite a bit already. Today we're here to explain why and also lump in how running works as well because you may not think it, but it also has a factor in not getting hit. First, Attack Rating. It's a massive number that doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of trash item affixes in basegame will just give a paltry amount to AR, which sounds like it's good when you use weapons/physical damage, but when I say paltry, I mean "Eeeeh that +10 to AR might give you an extra percent chance or two to hit...early on." Percentage boosts to AR make a bigger difference, and incentivizes getting a good base AR so that you get a better multiply bonus. However, these are mostly available through skills that multiply AR, like Sacrifice and Stun. There's some ways to get AR multipliers off items, but most of those are sets and uniques. But, here, let me finally break down what AR's deal is. This is the formula to see if you ever hit someone with a physical attack: Chance to hit% = 100 * 2 * ( alvl / (alvl+dlvl) ) * ( AR / (AR+Def) ) alvl = your level / dlvl = defender's level AR = your attack rating / Def = their defense Chance to hit is clamped between 5% and 95%. In layman's terms, the 100% base chance is doubled, then reduced based on how greater their level and Def is over yours. I want you to realize something important: character level matters for hit checks. It actually matters just as much as AR. Later on, these numbers will get much larger, and as a result, small differences will matter much less. But there's a problem in this: you see, if both of you have the same level, and the same AR and Def, then what happens is your chance to hit comes out to 50%, or, you miss half your attacks. This is because, if your levels are 20, then (alvl/(alvl+dlvl)) is worked out to be (20 / 40) or 0.5, which means that 200 is dropped back down to 100. The same thing will happen if your AR and Def are the same, and now you'll have crap accuracy. How do you escape this? By having several times the AR as their Def, and that just does not happen in Diablo II, especially when higher difficulties will jack these numbers way up. Guess what having double their level equates to? About a 17% boost so it's around 67% chance to hit. If you have twice of both their level and their defense as AR, then that goes up to a ~88% chance to hit. One of these factors is going to cap at 99. Highest monster level tends to be around the 85 range, so being level 99 and having equal AR to their Def means your hit chance is...53%. Twice their Def is 71%. Worse: as these numbers get higher, it becomes much harder to get the double, triple, and greater quantities of AR to completely overwhelm their Def and have a reliable chance to hit. And finally we'll always have at least a 5% chance to hit and a 5% chance to miss. The issue here is that we don't attack nearly often enough early on to shrug this off. Later, if we choose to swing or shoot weapons, increased attack speed, or IAS, will typically be the solution to monsters that will have significant edges in level and Def, and that's almost a guarantee. The monster numbers scale but your Dexterity bonuses do not. They're so insignificant and the item affixes so minute that it's really not worth it to try to boost your AR without the use of a skill that multiplies it. It's also just not something to seek on gear. There's much better mods to run in its place. All of this applies to Defense as well, but Defense is more straightforward to increase. For starters, you really do not get much of a bonus from putting points in Dexterity. (1 point of Def per every 5 Dex baybee) It's instead off using gear with higher base Defense. Just enough points to put on the heaviest armor or whatever's appropriate is the solution to dodging attacks. Another solution is to just never get into melee range and dodge arrows like you dodge spells. I'm not saying these two mechanics are useless. I'm saying trying to focus on them takes a lot more effort than other mechanics to focus on. Your level and your choice of skill will be the biggest contributions to using a weapon. Item affixes won't add much, especially not points in Dexterity. Even when you get it you will have the hardest time in the world figuring out if it made a significant difference, and the answer is usually no. This is why whenever you want to hit monsters more, you should consider swinging more often first before deciding to increase AR. They're both relevant for melee, and when you're swinging fast enough, your statistics on hitting versus missing will normalize so that that ~3% increase can translate into a more tangible boost to damage. But eventually you can only do so much. It is possible to get the AR necessary though. 5 digits in AR is feasible and will make most everything hittable. Even around 5,000 AR will give you a good enough chance to hit near the end of the game. The reason why AR is unpopular is, instead of devoting parts of your build to that, you could be devoting those parts fo other things like oh I dunno, life, raw damage, not having to roll to hit. Course, none of this applies if a monster hits you while you're running. Stamina is a resource that is only lost when you run or are hit by monsters that drain stamina. It's only used to run, and there's something about running you need to know if you plan to dodge hits. Did they swing at you? Yes. Are you running? Yes. Okay. They hit. Guaranteed. They don't even roll for the attack so if you were running when they swung and you're still in range, it doesn't matter if you have yes Defense, you're still hit. So don't run around in combat! You can run around all you want between combat and you can run to break away from enemies but when you're in the middle of a horde don't run unless you want to get hit! This will not only solve you getting hit despite having a lot of Def, it'll also make sure you don't run out of stamina...in a game where you should be putting more of your points into Vitality and bringing stamina potions if you're running that often. I'm sorry the game or even its manual never tells you running's weakness. If it makes you feel better it's mentioned in Arreat Summit. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 17:18
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DarkMatt posted:
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Oct 16, 2022 17:37
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After re-reading the intro for the Countess quest along with seeing the actual quest itself unfold, it strikes me that the Diablo II writers put their spin on the folk tales attributed to Elizabeth Bathory (bathes in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth, accused of killing/torturing hundreds of women, sometimes referred to as female Dracula or otherwise being very bloodthirsty, etc).
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Oct 16, 2022 18:02
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NGDBSS posted:Putting aside a probable typo (guessing the last factor is AR / (AR + Def)), that's...the same as before? Unless there's some rounding in how Median XL does that calculation I don't see how this gets around the commutative property.  Well it's edited now.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:41
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Right. So. Imbuing tips and tricks. Where to start? First, the basics. As DarkMatt said in the update, imbuing takes a non-magical base item (white item name) and uses it to generate a rare (yellow name) item of the same type. Nearly all characteristics of the input item are ignored, and the output item is randomly generated using ilvl=clvl+4. (ilvl is item level/item creation level, clvl is character level, you'll see me using these a lot) Picking a base item type and randomly generating affixes sounds a lot like Gambling, right? (In 1.1x you have a 10% chance to get a rare when gambling, and gold is plentiful while imbues are at most 3 per character.) For certain item types, it's not too different, but they use different formulae. Gambling picks an ilvl randomly in the range clvl-5 to clvl+4, and otherwise generates the item exactly the same as if it dropped with that ilvl. So what are the differences? What cool stuff can you do with imbuing? Staffmods Firstly, let's talk about "staffmods". What are staffmods? This was the most commonly used term for the inherent skill bonuses certain item types (e.g. staves, hence staffmods) have. The Sorceress starts with a staff that has +1 to Firebolt and the Necromancer starts with a wand that has +1 to Raise Skeleton, for instance. Those are staffmods. A staffmod-eligible item can have bonuses of +1-3 to up to three different skills. Normally, the number of staffmods an item gets is determined by generating a random number from 1 to 100, >90 gives 3 staffmods and >70 gives 2 staffmods, otherwise you get 1. When imbuing, the ilvl (clvl+4) is added to this random number before the check, which greatly improves your odds (and also means you can guarantee 3 staffmods by imbuing with a level 86 or higher character). The level of each staffmod uses a similar check. Random number 1-100, >90 is level 3 and >60 is level 2. When imbuing, it instead adds floor(ilvl/2) to the random number before checking. You can't get this to 100% odds even with a level 99 character, but they are significantly better. So the first big benefit of imbuing is Much better (potentially 100%) odds of getting 3 staffmods and Much higher chance of those each being +2 or +3, especially if your character is high level. (This does get a bit more complicated depending on which skills you care about, because there's a tier system that keeps skills from too far apart on the tree from appearing together, and weights toward higher-level skills as ilvl increases. This mostly means summoning necromancers are screwed here, because Raise Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery will not appear at ilvl 24 or above.) The enigmatic Magic Level Second: There is a special hidden property called "magic level" or "magic_lvl" that makes some specific base item types perform much better. Not every item has this, but the ones that do are very good picks for imbuing. It's a bit tedious to explain everything it does, but here goes: It simplifies the affix level formula, making it easier to get access to high level affixes. (The affix level is normally computed from the item's ilvl and qlvl, qlvl or "quality level" is a hidden value each base item have.) The regular affix level formula is a complicated mess that's hard to explain, and is no higher than the ilvl or qlvl (higher qlvls reduce the affix level in certain ways relative to the ilvl), but if you have a magic-lvl it instead becomes max(ilvl, qlvl)+magic_lvl. This makes a few items turn out very powerful even when imbued at low ilvls. Items with a magic_lvl also change the weighting formula for which affixes appear. Normally, affixes have a "frequency" stat, which works like this: imagine there are affixes A, B, C, and D in the pool, A has a frequency 2 and B, C, D each have 1. The probability of getting the affix is (affix frequency)/(total frequency) so A would appear 2/5 of the time and B, C, D each 1/5 of the time. When there is a magic_lvl, it uses frequency*alvl instead of frequency as the weighting factor, so high-level affixes appear much more frequently. The full list of items with their magic_lvl values is: Circlet-class helms: Circlet 3, Coronet 8, Tiara 13, Diadem 18 Sorceress Orbs: all orbs have magic_lvl 1 Necromancer Wands: normal and exceptional wands have magic_lvl 1, elite wands have 0 Diadems are the obvious stand-out, and probably the most commonly known imbue target. They have qlvl 85, and combined with the magic_lvl 18 this guarantees maximum (99) affix level at any ilvl. You can imbue these with a low-level character and get the same results as a max-level character. You can also reroll them with the 6 perfect skull cube recipe until you get something you like (this cube recipe gives a "low quality rare item", which actually means "output ilvl = floor(input ilvl/2) + floor(clvl/2)", this makes most item types degrade over time but not diadems!). Circlet-class helms in general are a decent imbue target, but you can't do the reroll trick with any other type, so you're better off gambling them instead (and saving imbues for Diadems or other things). The other fun thing about circlets is they have a much wider affix pool, and can carry things like +2 to class skills, faster cast rate, life or mana steal, etc that don't otherwise appear on helmets at all. Better stuff is available and, thanks to magic_lvl, the odds are even weighted toward the good stuff! Orbs and wands are in the sweet spot of having both magic_lvl and being staffmod-eligible, though in practice it's mostly just orbs; the runeword White (Dol Io) exists and is very easy to make, and gives better bonuses for most of the skills necromancers actually use, and it's not that hard to get base wands with good staffmods (e.g. by shopping from Drognan in Normal). Some number crunching: Years ago, I crunched some numbers on the odds to get desirable affixes on certain item types, if you want to see how much of a difference this makes. I didn't keep notes, so we'll have to just trust that my maths was good back then... Orbs/wands: +2 class ~7.7%, +2 tree ~9.3%, of the Magus (20% FCR) ~25%, 2os ~1.32% Assassin Claws: +2 class ~1.75%, +2 tree ~2.61%, IAS ~20% (10-40% roughly equal odds), 2os ~1.34% Sceptres: +2 class ~1.57%, +2 tree ~1.57%, 10% FCR ~5.55%, IAS ~20% (10-40% roughly equal odds), 2os ~1.2% Druid Pelt: +2 class ~4.57%, +2 tree ~6.85%, 10% FHR ~20%, 2os ~3.75% Barbarian Helm: +2 class ~4.57%, +2 tree ~6.85%, 10% FHR ~18%, 2os ~3.75% Necromancer Shrunken Heads: +2 class ~3.46%, +2 tree ~5.19%, res all ~30%, +blockchance ~20%, FHR ~13%, 2os ~2.75% You can immediately see the impact of magic_lvl when comparing orbs/wands to claws or sceptres, because these have very similar affix pools otherwise. The other class-specific items come out a little better despite not having a magic_lvl, but this is due to having smaller affix pools. (Orbs and wands weren't that unlikely, comparatively, to turn out with a net +5 to multiple useful skills, and faster cast rate on top of that. It's wonderful.) Note all claws are not staffmod-eligible, there are actually two different item classes for claws: h2h and h2h2. Only the claws in h2h2 can get staffmods, or specifically: Hand Scythe, Greater Claws, Greater Talons, Scissors Quhab, Suwayyah, Wrist Sword, War Fist, Battle Cestus, Feral Claws, Runic Talons, Scissors Suwayyah. Or, in other words, a few Exceptional claws and all Elite claws. That said, I don't consider claws particularly good targets for imbuing, because you can shop them from Anya (in Nightmare or Hell), and reset her inventory nigh-instantly by jumping through the portal if you don't close it. You can't get rares this way but you can get magical ones, which are eligible for the +3 skill tree affix (some of the best affixes are magical-only in a mostly vain attempt to not have rares be strictly better), which in theory with a staffmod can get you up to +6. Similarly, sceptres are not as good as they might seem, because you're unlikely to get a good melee damage affix and most paladins prefer that; it could be decent for a caster build using Blessed Hammer or Fist of the Heavens, but both of those builds have better options that are easier to find. Druids' and Barbarians' class specific helms have a lot of competition, especially from the runewords Lore and Delirium, which can be placed into base items that already have staffmods. I never experimented with imbuing them because I had better alternatives, but the numbers always seemed promising. (Unfortunately, circlets/diadems have a much wider affix pool, so those are also competition for these, if on a slightly different axis since they don't get staffmods.) Ethereality Ethereality is the only property that gets carried over from the base item. If you imbue an ethereal item, the item you get back will also be ethereal. Ethereal items have some benefits in return for the obvious drawback: they get either a 50% damage or defence bonus for weapons and armour respectively, and have reduced requirements to equip (a flat -10 each to strength and dexterity requirement if applicable). Items equipped to mercenaries don't lose durability, so they were a popular choice there, they're just strictly better. Also, weapons don't lose durability unless you swing them, so if you're not doing melee you can use an ethereal one for style (or lower requirements) without fear. The odds of getting a self-repair affix alongside desirable melee affixes (like enhanced damage) are very very low; I don't have exact numbers but I don't consider it worth attempting. That said, there's one really interesting trick... Phase Blades are inherently indestructible, but are normally restricted from spawning ethereal. However, you can find ethereal Dimensional Blades. If you imbue an ethereal one, you can then get a rare ethereal Dimensional Blade, and use the exceptional to elite upgrade recipe (for rare weapons it's Fal + Um + Perfect Sapphire + exceptional weapon) to end up with an ethereal indestructible Phase Blade. (I once made a Barbarian who dual-wielded these, it wasn't quite as effective as top-end uniques or runewords but it worked quite well and I thought it was stylish.) Low-level tricks: I already discussed Diadems, but there are a few other tricks you can do with low-level characters (which is nice because it doesn't take that long to rush a low-level character through Act 1). Mainly: items with inherently high qlvl (the highest tier or two of elite items in each category are best here) can get access to useful affixes even at low ilvls. This is mostly impractical, because the odds are low (you don't get the other benefits from high-level imbues, and high-level imbues tend to have a better affix pool anyway), but it's a thing you can do for some item types. There's one specific reason to consider it, and it's because many Necromancers like low-level staffmods. If you imbue a Succubus Skull or Bloodlord Skull with a level 8 character (level 8 is the lowest level you can complete the quest for some reason), you get the best possible odds of staffmods for Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, and Amplify Damage, and the qlvls are high enough to still give you a chance at the good affixes. These odds, to be clear, are very low; I tried this for a while and never actually got anything worth using (and the actual problem is the base items were too rare to try many times), but it is theoretically possible. And this is the only way to get these staffmods to appear on a late-game base item, outside of using the 6 perfect skull reroll recipe. You can do this on wands too, but between the fact high-qlvl wands don't have the magic_lvl and the fact the White runeword exists, it's really not worth it (unless, again, you're looking for style points). (The more useful trick for Necromancers along these lines was using the "repair low quality item" recipe on shrunken heads and wands, which involves cubing it with an El or Eld rune respectively and any chipped gem. The resulting item always has its ilvl set to 1 and gets its staffmods rerolled, and these could later be socketed and have runewords put in.) To conclude: I think these are most of the imbuing tricks I remember. I rarely saw people digging into these formulae to try to optimise them in weird ways; I could be wrong, but I may well have been one of the only people to ever try some of them. (It was definitely at least somewhat common knowledge that diadems and orbs were the best targets, but most people didn't know the reasons why. I certainly never saw anyone else do the ethereal Phase Blade trick.) Honestly, the biggest things to remember are staffmods and diadems, those are easily the most practical ways to take advantage. A lot of this is very marginal, and the odds of success aren't very high even in the best cases. (You probably don't want to know how many orbs it took me to get a +5 Blizzard/20% FCR, or how many Diadems/perfect skulls I ran through. I didn't keep track of numbers, thankfully.) But imbuing, properly applied, could turn out some truly one-of-a-kind items that were very powerful and useful in interesting ways, and it was a lot of fun to mess around with.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:54
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I am caught between night of the 2nd day and midnight of the 3rd day, so new update is now. It's the end of Act 1.
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Oct 18, 2022 08:06
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Talking about the hero thing, that's one thing I like about the Quest for Glory series. You start out as an adventurer who took a correspondence course, do some small jobs around a small town, and then get famous for saving some local royalty. Nobody treats you poorly, but they tend to think of you as just another schmuck until you actually start proving yourself. The second game has your reputation precede you, with some characters who have some local connections talking you up before you arrive. Most people start with a decent opinion of you, but there are people who, for various good reasons, do not. The third game is similar, with an NPC that you helped introducing you to everyone and talking you up, but with mixed reactions based on the society that you encounter. There's also one isolated society who hates you by default because their enemies like you. The fourth game sees you teleported to a foreign land where very few NPCs know of you, and the villagers have a number of exceptionally good reasons to mistrust you. And then the fifth game brings back lots of NPCs who interacted with you throughout your journey, which is a nice capstone to the tale. Overall the reputation makes sense - when you have a powerful/influential figure speaking in your favor, you start off, generally, well liked (unless that influential figure has enemies/rivals/etc.). Otherwise they're likely to be a lot less compliant, especially if you show up when the outside passes are closed off, monsters are on the hunt at night, and you traveled to town from the direction of an evil cave that is affiliated with an evil cult. I think Diablo II has a lot of those elements as well, but it's worth noting that if you're following the wanderer, you're going to an area where an unknown stranger just showed up and brought the apocalypse with them. Not only is all literal hell breaking loose, but here's another powerful stranger who has showed up and said that they'll help. Your allies burn a lot of their political capital just to get you to the next region, and the people there don't really have the time to figure out if they can trust you until the immediate fires are put out. And I think it's worth noting that most of the towns trust you more or less immediately after the first quest or two, usually right around the time the mercenary unlocks. That's usually once you've wiped out whatever immediately threatens the town.
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Oct 18, 2022 08:57
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You could justify having to earn your reputation again and again in a lot of ways - in my story, I had the protagonist necromancer be a Lut Gholein native, and the local authorities knew him as a street urchin orphan so that's why they distrusted him (the necro thing didn't help, but wasn't the main reason). Act 3 starts with you spotting the Wanderer who teleports away and leaves a bunch of lovely demons behind, I had the necro actually lose to that real bad and be out of commission for weeks, so people were like "what a loser". However, the game never does anything like that, so As for the gameplay, I fully support the message that Andy can and will kill your really easily. She's the first big difficulty jump, in fact all of the Act bosses are quite hard, unless - of course - you know what you're doing. And for some classes, even that won't be enough. Looking at you, Duriel. I didn't know or forget that the superunique in the Inner Cloister went away with the Expansion! It used to be a Quill Rat with All The Enchantments, super dangerous out of nowhere, they probably felt it was overtuned for the point of the game and deleted it. I remember dying to it a LOT, definitely more than Bone Ash.
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Oct 18, 2022 09:34
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On the effects of being frozen: a lot of people don't know this, but being frozen actually has zero effect on casting speed (unlike walk, run, melee/ranged attack, or block speed, all of which are affected). Cannot Be Frozen was always a high-demand modifier (in particular, the unique ring Raven Frost was the most popular solution), but a lot of characters just don't need it. Depending on your play style and/or what skills you're using, a lot of casters just don't care if they're frozen or not. (Sorceresses can teleport anyway, and many casters spend a lot of time standing in one place and spamming spells.) On Charge: this is an incredibly fun skill that a lot of people overlook (or just use for locomotion). Using it for locomotion can also be tricky, because if you hold the button down it will just drain your mana to nothing (it's better used in short bursts). It's not too practical for combat unless you devote your entire build to it, but if you do... it has a very unique and fun play style (it doesn't really feel like melee, you tend to herd monsters to make openings and then pick them off very quickly), and does the highest damage of any weapon-based skill. There's also something hilarious about, e.g., having the paladin charging things on foot with a giant lance or hammer or something. (Fun trivia: in some early versions of the game it actually attacked with your shield! But that was pretty quickly changed, leaving only Smite as far as shield attacks go. This is also a good thing for Charge, because if it relied on shield damage it wouldn't be able to do diddly.) This Charge guide by SSoG is an absolute classic. Antidote Potions (and Thawing Potions) didn't always boost your poison/cold resistance (incidentally, they also give +10 maximum resistance, so if you have some resistance on gear you can actually get up to 85% after the potion). They used to do exactly what they said, and just cure their respective status conditions; I think the change was made in 1.11, but I could be wrong. Another fun thing about this is that while the duration is fairly short (I think it's 30 seconds?), every one you drink just stacks its duration on additively, so if you really want to you can just fill up your inventory with them and drink them all at once to be good for an entire play session. The potions are so cheap (at least once you're out of the earlygame) that this is reasonable to do, and for this reason the conventional wisdom was that poison and cold resistance from gear don't really matter. I almost never used them because I found it tedious, but sometimes they do really come in handy.
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Oct 18, 2022 22:56
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One other thing about Andy that you didn’t mention: For new players, she’s going to be your first experience with poison that matters. You encounter a few normal mobs use poison (e.g., poison-themed Skeleton Mages), but it’s both rare and also consistently less threatening than a fire-themed Skeleton Mage or fire-enchanted uniques where they die in a high damage burst explosion or etc. So the new player likely walks into this fight with zero antidotes, zero poison resist on your gear, and zero real experience in how to handle it. Then when she poisons you, there’s a moment of “oh poison, fine, whatever” followed immediately by “holy hell, my health bar is just melting, oh poo poo what do I do what do I do…and I’m dead”.
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Oct 19, 2022 03:11
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Dirk the Average posted:And I think it's worth noting that most of the towns trust you more or less immediately after the first quest or two, usually right around the time the mercenary unlocks. That's usually once you've wiped out whatever immediately threatens the town. Thing is, this is what makes the "mistrust -> hero worship" trope annoying: it just takes one or two nudges for that to instantly melt. I'm not to judge that as realistic or not, but it gets repeated in this game to the point where it undermines the weight of your actions. I guess that's the point: Diablo 2 is just about the power fantasy and not your impact on their world, but I'll still hold it to scrutiny, especially when it hasn't aged well at all. Hey thanks for being the person who knows more about this game than I do because I could've sworn I read that chill doesn't mess with cast speed at some point but then it didn't stick around for when I wrote the update. Oh well. At least I can always edit it in post. MagusofStars posted:One other thing about Andy that you didn’t mention: For new players, she’s going to be your first experience with poison that matters. You encounter a few normal mobs use poison (e.g., poison-themed Skeleton Mages), but it’s both rare and also consistently less threatening than a fire-themed Skeleton Mage or fire-enchanted uniques where they die in a high damage burst explosion or etc. I know I didn't specifically state what your expected life total is going to be for spider lady, but I did write down a number for the poison and called it, "oof. a lot poison." I imagine new players can have a good idea where their life total is at...I hope. It is pretty funny though that, outside of maybe Bone Ash, poison has never been a problem. But the poison by itself does not lead to (almost) instant death. It's definitely the "Oh so she's just like any other monster I'm gonna walk up to her start hitting her and what happened to my life?" And then when that player tries to heal, they then realize that poison is counteracting any meaningful healing they can do with just healing potions. Regardless, the poison, while very dangerous, isn't typically what causes death. (It's the point blank spray.) However, that's going to change soon. 
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Oct 19, 2022 06:24
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DarkMatt posted:Thing is, this is what makes the "mistrust -> hero worship" trope annoying: it just takes one or two nudges for that to instantly melt. I'm not to judge that as realistic or not, but it gets repeated in this game to the point where it undermines the weight of your actions. I guess that's the point: Diablo 2 is just about the power fantasy and not your impact on their world, but I'll still hold it to scrutiny, especially when it hasn't aged well at all. I get why this is annoying from a gameplay perspective, but as part of the worldbuilding it makes complete sense. This is a medieval fantasy society. 90% of people never go more than a few miles from home in their entire lives. You help out one village and prove yourself to them, at which point they do pretty much worship you because nobody's ever cared about them before and they've likely never met anyone as skilled, but the people down the road will probably never hear about it, because it's not like there's an equivalent of a newspaper or the internet. The whole Chosen One trope usually more or less relies on this sort of thing. You're not necessarily any more heroic than the next peasant, but you're able to travel and learn things and develop into it while most people are just trying to grow enough food to pay their taxes and hoping their kids don't die of plague.
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Oct 19, 2022 08:57
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Black Robe posted:I get why this is annoying from a gameplay perspective, but as part of the worldbuilding it makes complete sense. This is a medieval fantasy society. 90% of people never go more than a few miles from home in their entire lives. You help out one village and prove yourself to them, at which point they do pretty much worship you because nobody's ever cared about them before and they've likely never met anyone as skilled, but the people down the road will probably never hear about it, because it's not like there's an equivalent of a newspaper or the internet. To be fair maybe I've just seen too much medieval fantasy, because you are right. My complaint is this happens all the time. Though, it's more an issue of "It's a medieval fantasy and it's hard to really deviate from that," than "The writers aren't going anywhere with this medieval fantasy." I was on the fence about keeping the rant after doing the research, but I think, even if I know and understand the setting, genre, and so on, I'm still feeling like the term "hero" is just a word, and I'm 100% disconnected from the power fantasy the game is trying to do. Course, that's on me, not the game. It's also 20+ years old.
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Oct 19, 2022 20:33
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Neeeeew update. We pull up to a desert city but there's evil afoot!
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Oct 22, 2022 18:27
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I know we talked about the heroism thing earlier, but I want to point out the beginning of Act II now that we've seen it. Our goal is to follow the dark wanderer. We couldn't do that in the beginning because the caravans were stopped. We killed Andariel, and now the caravans are free to go east to Lut Gholein. Theoretically, the Dark Wanderer is in Lut Gholein. Even if he is not, there's really nowhere that we could proceed to because the port is closed. The city's Lord greets us as we arrive and welcomes us into his city. He directs us to someone who could potentially tell us more about the Wanderer, but declines to invite us into his palace for reasons that cannot yet be elaborated on. It's honestly a pretty warm welcome, and we can hire mercs right off the bat. We aren't the saviors of the land (yet?), but not every traveler gets a personal greeting from the ruler of the city. Our efforts in Act 1 were rewarded, and we definitely start with a leg up in reputation here in Act 2. As much as I generally don't like sewer levels, this particular sewer level isn't nearly as bad. The corridors are decently wide and it's more on the tier of the caves in Act 1 than what a traditional video game sewer level would be.
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Oct 22, 2022 19:45
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I actually enjoyed the Lut Gholein sewers. It's weird conceptually if you think about it (just like every sewer level), but as a dungeon, it's pretty solid. Introduces a couple new enemy types, strikes a nice balance between being a bit maze-like but not over-the-top twisty corridors, excellent end boss.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:37
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It's amazing how much of this game's dialogue has been burned into my brain. I literally cannot read any of your transcriptions of the text without hearing it in the characters' voices.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:47
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Dirk the Average posted:I know we talked about the heroism thing earlier, but I want to point out the beginning of Act II now that we've seen it. What I think happened is that I played Act 1 way too much as a child. (Because I was bad at the game at the time and I would on-and-off it, so I would see the beginning of this game a lot.) I realize now, after thinking about it enough, that why I went on a tirade about that is not because of the rest of the game, but because each character is hyped up yet it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, since, as mentioned, most people in Sanctuary don't look anywhere outside their farmstead. Like, maybe Paladins have something resembling fame??? You can also say this for Necromancers. But this is more an issue of the writing in the game than the character writing outside the game. It's really just me being too old. The game does try. The rant on sewer levels, on the other hand, I think is justified. MagusofStars posted:I actually enjoyed the Lut Gholein sewers. It's weird conceptually if you think about it (just like every sewer level), but as a dungeon, it's pretty solid. Introduces a couple new enemy types, strikes a nice balance between being a bit maze-like but not over-the-top twisty corridors, excellent end boss. My primary issue with the Lut Gholein sewers is, as mentioned, several of these new monsters can blindside and annihilate you if you let them. You can struggle with Andariel trying to figure out how to survive her, and then get through that and into the sewers and the sewers are particularly nasty if you are still fresh meat. If you stumbled through Andariel you're in for pain there.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:50
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Whaaat!? The spooky stranger that scares everyone and leaves hoards of demons in his wake is Diablo!? Mind blown.
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Oct 22, 2022 21:24
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Diablo 3 also features a desert city and a sewer level in its second act. A Horardric Mage also figures prominently. Can't say Blizzard doesn't get repetitive.
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Oct 22, 2022 21:46
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A few other things about chill (in vanilla D2 at least, I've forgotten if any of the mods change these):
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Oct 22, 2022 21:50
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