------------------------------------------------------------ Current LoD Version used: 1.10 Final ------------------------------------------------------------ Current mod version: 1.10 B1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Current website: http://www.newdawn.d2mods.com/ ----------------------------------------------------- Current number of modmakers: 1 ------------------------------ Special thanks to: http://www.planetdiablo.com/ http://www.d2mods.com/ http://www.tauniverse.com/ ---------------------------------------- *-------* | Notes | *-------* You will need to turn the gamma down to somewhere between 1/6-1/4 of the way to be able to view the new interface properly. Thankyou! *--------------* | Installation | *--------------* 1) Run the installer, browse for/type in your Diablo II directory, and then add 'New Dawn X\' onto the end. 2) Feel free to make/copy shortcuts to wherever you like. If downloaded the mpq version, simply unzip the files to your Diablo II directory, rename the patch file to keep it as a backup, and then rename New Dawn X.mpq to either patch_d2.mpq (if you're running a PC) or Diablo II Patch (I think this is what it's called for macs) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had to remove cubemain.txt from the mpq. The recipies are designed so that powerful ones are hard to guess... not having rare ingredients. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: Not all changes to the readme are in Version History!!! You will find some updates in other sections, but for more beta-ish version most changes will be there. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *-----------------------* | Guide to item colours | *-----------------------* Blue: Cyclite, Magic items, Thawing Potions. (white capitals) Red: Health potions, Rubies, Agate, TP stones/gems. Purple: Rejuvenation potions, crafter items, Amethysts. Green: (light) Set items, Emeralds, (dark) Runes, Kelgon, Starter items. Dark Gray: Socketed (normal) items, Skulls, Opals, Ethereal (normal) items. Yellow: Topazes, Starga, Rares, Stamina Potions. (white capitals) Orange: ID/TP Stones/Orbs, Arlite. Gold: Uniques, Mana Potions. (blue capitals) Bright White: Gold. *-----------------* | Version History | *-----------------* v. 1.10 B1 ------------ CHARACTERS FROM PREVIOUS NDX VERSIONS ARE INCOMPATIBLE WITH THIS ONE!!! That means you will have to start fresh. This is because I re-ordered some of the files from the 1.09 version, and I also cleaned up the itemtypes- your character MAY be compatible if you first sell all of their items, altough there is no guarentee. This version is very incomplete and probably buggy as it is my first version on the new patch- so I'm sorta relying on feedback :) Hit those forums! As always I highly recommend NOT using normal LoD characters in NDX. Greater mac compatibility - no dll changes this version. (most have been added to the texts) Admit it, you all wanted greater mac compatibility. Even if you didn't own a mac. New set- The Trinity. Composed of three rings and thus uncompletable. You can choose two rings from it if you want the set at all. Some set items have new base items. This is because the LoD sets are back in, and having TOO many set items on the same base item isn't generally a good idea. (eg. Zzan's Shadowy Skin is now on Plate Mail) Skills.txt had to be reset with the patch, however the removal of prerequisits remains. Level requirements for skills are not in multiples of 10 like before, nor in multiples of 6 like in regular LoD. For now, they are in multiples of 7- if this is too unbalanced it will be 8 or 9. At least you get to revise your times tables. Overhaul of Theurgist. His summons have been changed a little, and his system for casting spells is now very different from the sorceress'. All the Ranger's basic 'Elemental Arrow' skills no longer require arrows- and in return Magic Arrow now does magic damage somewhat akin to Cold Arrow. Lightning takes the place of Charged Bolt, Chain lightning takes the place of lightning and Charged Bolt takes the place of chain lightning. The skills have been adjusted somewhat to accodmodate this change. Increased restoring power of small rejuvs by 5%. Added Phoenix/Misty potions. They're for Health/Mana, and work like rejuvs, except with the smaller potions being another 5% more powerful. New item- Dragon Blood. If you can find it, you'll like it... Drops have been reworked. They should be somewhere between LoD and previous versions of NDX. The ancients have a chance to drop items from the set 'The Ancient's Power.' Items from the set 'The Trinity' have a chance to drop the first time you kill Baal on each difficulty. New unique jewel- Double key. Added a few level up skills to Natalya's Word. Gems changed. Elemental runes now add to your chance to pierce resistances rather than your absorbtion when placed in helms. Regular gems give elemental mastery instead of weapon damage for that element. (note: amethysts do enhanced damage. The perfect amethyst has a slightly different effect...) Opals now use all five elements. Some demon heal mods have been replaced with heal per kill mods. Runes have been de-überfied. With the exception of Ya which is hard enough to get anyway. Rune names are changed! Some have had their pronounciation altered, but most of them are now simply written to be both pronouncable by english-speakers and to look runic :) Continued adding uniques, now with 1.10 modifiers. Went through some uniques and sets and gave them appearance effects. German version finished. Will be released once this version is finalised, and translation for new items is done. Redid skill-icons- but only the basic set. No plans yet as to when new skills will be added, however I am modding the old ones. Fixed the gambling bug that wrapped around the Ancient Armour price when gambling. Converted 1.09 files to 1.10 files, some things will be changed/lost in the process. Rearrangement of monsters lost in conversion. Specific stats of monsters lost in conversion. Removing the experience slowdown is no longer a dll change in this version. Changing potions is no longer a dll change in this version. Changed sound for skeleton helms to a bone sound not a metal sound. Removed buggy cube recipies for crafting LoD exclusives. -HOWEVER- Cube recipies are currently disabled as this file is buggy at the moment, preventing the game from loading. New affixes did not make the conversion, but there will be some re-added in a later version. These files in specific were converted: (in case of interest) Gems.txt Itemtypes.txt Misc.txt Experience.txt Automagic.txt charstats.txt Runes.txt Hireling.txt Gamble.txt Inventory.txt Levels.txt Uniqueitems.txt Cubemain.txt Armor.txt Weapons.txt Sets.txt (previously part of setitem.txt) Setitems.txt v. 1.09 R10b ------------ Added in new magical affixes. Adjusted Diablo's block and defense rating stats. Fixed a small bug in one set of cube recipies. Nobody had appeared to have discovered these yet anyway. Added in the base scroll name for all transformed runeword scrolls. Act 3 mercenaries that reach level 61 will now have blizzard instead of two glacial spikes. Added in some more exceptional uniques, namely armours. Started some elite uniques. Reduced the group number for Oblivion Knights, to make the Chaos Sanctuary bearable when they spawn. Added in some new graphics for an elite unique shield and some elite unique gloves. Cold Mastery now minuses percent from resists, so that it will be more effective, especially vs 0% cold resist monsters. (dll change, does not function with the mac version) Telekinesis restored to it's original state. (dll change) Removed that pesky experience penalty for characters over 75. (dll change) Extended the maxes for werewolf/werebear skills and bonuses to the point where it shouldn't be possible to crash using them. v. 1.09 R10a ------------ Added many new Runeword scroll combinations. They now work with Dragon items. The total is now 108 different scrolls. New interface graphics. Things not yet changed: Class skill icons, (waiting for 1.10 and new skill abilities) multiplayer screens, upgrade promts, and the quest screen. Mana colour changed again. (gold now) Basic skill icons changed. (character skills unchanged) Waypoint icons changed. Experience in normal doubled. Damage of orbs and wands upgraded. Sorceresses, Necromancers, and Druids all get five more strength when starting off, as these classes all started with 80 statpoints beforehand. Amazons also got upgraded. Greatly increased mercenary strength and dexterity. Switched Druid item to Clubs and Mauls instead of staves. They will still be usable by Barbarians. Clubs give dex instead of AR, like staves did. Increased the level of starting skills on Sorceress, Necromancer, and Druid starting items. Increased innate mana regeneration of Sorceresses, Necromancers, and Druids, in descending order. Changed the maximum percentage drop with lower resist from 70% to 95%, to stop it capping out (or seeming to) at lower levels. Enabled Cyclone Armor to be cast while transformed, and all shapeshifting attacks to be cast in both forms. Tweaked Armageddon damage. Changed Arlite graphics. Cleaned up new Cyclite graphics. Added some colour to the Opal graphics to distinguish from Diamonds. v. 1.09 R10 ----------- NOTE: Please sell the M'Avinas set if you have any parts of it. NOTE: Please move any NDX savefiles to your new C:\Diablo II\New Dawn\Save\ directory, so that the VBS scripts can work. I have no idea how mac-compatible these scripts are, (I'm guessing that they aren't mac compatible but I could be wrong) so you may have to run the mod in the normal fashion if you are running a mac- apologies in advance! NOTE: Since the experience curve has been adjusted once more, if your character is a low level, they may have a lot of experience left until they level up. Levelling may be too slow at first. For characters at high levels, they may find they gain a few levels in this version, and that nightmare and hell experience is too high. Please leave notes on the forums about experience balancing. Re-adjusted the experience system. May still need tweaking. New icon, and vbs scripts- your saves will be kept in a seperate directory :) Redid the title and character select screens. New installation file- automates the install process. Please install to a folder under your Diablo II directory :) ( eg. C:\(extra directories\)Diablo II\New Dawn X\ or C:\Diablo II\NDX\) If you run Win 2000, or Win XP, and you didn't install Diablo II to either C:\Diablo II\ or C:\Program Files\Diablo II\, then you'll need to copy patch_d2.mpq into your New Dawn X directory. Lowered experience gains in Normal. This should bring levelling back in line. Increased difficulting and experience from Cows. Inventory expanded further using the North Star inventory.txt. You get another 2 rows. Changes to item colours: Mana potions now (bright) white, (there were requests to change them from orange) and gold text removed from gold, rings, and amulets. The mana orb was changed to conform with the new mana colour. Thawing potion now blue, stamina potion now yellow. In order to be less confusing the first letter of their names are coloured white. New item graphics for Flawless & Perfect Cyclite, and also for Armswing Armors. Used javelins/throwing weapons will never dissapear automatically- you now have a chance to repair them. (dll change) Raised the experience earned from the Ancient's quest, and greatly lowered the amount earned for killing each ancient. The quest is now 2 000 000 / 25 000 000 000 / 50 000 000 000 in normal/nightmare/hell. (dll change) Cleaned up gem graphics. They should have completely lost those lovely black speckles now. :) Replaced the godawful graphics that elite gems used to have. They've been coolified. (with the exception of the Assassin gem, which is like, impossable to replace due to pallete difficulties) Fixed various Diablo II: Lord of Destruction bugs, and changed gameplay annoyances- including the following: (these fixes rely on the d2game.dll, and were copied from NS) You will continue to get the bonuses from Malah's resistance scroll after you die. (it displayed that you did previously, but you wouldn't get the resistances) The Cow Level portal will re-open multiple times, even if the King is killed. Magic find now works as it did pre-1.09. Inner sight works as a percentage not as an absolute value. Fixed the bug with werewolf and werebear having skill levels that were too high. (this fix relies on the d2client.dll, and were copied from NS) The assassin is now faster than the other six characters, but her stamina drains faster. Added in a recipie to wipe sockets- but otherwise keep the item intact. Just like the socketing recipie, but uses a dragon eye, instead of normal eyes... The type of odd key that doesn't upgrade gems to elite should (hopefully) add a socket to unique and set items. It's enchant to rare recipie should add a socket. Reduced occurances of treasure items. People already have quite a bit of gold... Fixed a 'typo' type bug which gave a not xlated error whenever somebody found the best type of elite sorceress shield. This bug is now fixed. Also, Bastion Guards will take on their proper name. (before they displayed as Thunder Guards) More uniques added. Treasureclass changed so that uniques drop more often. [54x: I'm waiting for someone to find Natalya's Word/Azaria's Shade now. heheheh.] Normal Items: Done. Exceptionals: Started. Elites: Not Started. Class items: Started. Jewellery: Done. Jewels: Added, and Done. New Set: Tera's Storm (ALL new sets added by LoD now replaced, except the Cow King's set) Tera's Cloud (Elite Armour) Tera's Cyclone (Elite Amazon Javelin) Tera's Rain (Elite Gloves) Tera's Thunder (Ring) Weapon damage increased. The gap between one and two handed weapons' damage has also increased, due to the fact that NDX characters can get more dex than LoD characters- thus a shield is more of a sacrifice. Thrown damage was increased in line with two handed damage. Attempted some mercenary fixes. Offense desert mercenaries will upgrade from Might, to Concentration, to Zeal, instead of from Might, to Might, to Concentration. Cold mage mercenaries will now use Glacial Spike instead of Ice Blast, after a certain level. Fire mage mercenaries will now use Armageddon instead of Inferno, after a certain level. Fixed an incredibly stupid bug with Ghost's Refuge- it now has NO requirements, instead of double... As with all set item fixes, this applies only to newly found items. Sorry. Fixed the bug which caused set War Gauntlets to crash the game. (Dragon's Kingdom) Fixed a bug which caused set Embossed Plates to crash the game. (Dragon's Kingdom) It should now be possible to complete the Dragon's Kingdom set. Removed another property which caused set item crashes. Fixed the bug with Sol's Beacon not displaying properties correctly. Rebalanced the Ancient's Power set, especially 'The Summit.' The ring now ranges greatly in it's properties, and it's hp bonus is a lot smaller. This will not effect existing copies of this item. Slightly improved Vengeance to assist Hell Paladins. Spell casters have all had mana costs for many of their skills increased. Use more potions. Blizzard's damage increase was lowered, it's cold duration increases per level, and it is on a very small timer. This should balance it a lot better. Firewall's timer was increased, and has had it's damage per level lowered as well. Removed the timer from Meteor and upped it's damage a little. The timer on Hydra was decreased. v. 1.09 R9 ---------- Fixed a tremendously annoying bug where the gambling percentages in the altered made the gambling screen crash, this being a Bad-Thing™. No more adjusted gambling percentages. Please sell the set Trang Oul's Avatar on any NDX characters before installing this version. Due to a bug fix, many characters will gain a large amount of extra levels this patch upon killing one monster. This is unavoidable. I'm sorry if this in any way impairs your enjoyment of the mod. Halfed the occurance of Unique drops to reduce the current chance that buggy uniques will crash the game. Replaced the old adjusted gambling dll with a new dll altering potions. Potions heal more now than they currently state they do. Mana potions are now orange. Fixed a bug which prevented people gaining the experience required to get above level 153. Reduced the amount of drops, so that people could once again pick up stuff without being buried. Removed some affixes from unique items. This should reduce crashes. Shrunk the horadric cube a little more. (it's now 1x1) Got rid off all those annoying speckles on some items. Started with a fresh Mercenary file. This should eliminate mercenary crashes. As a result of this mercenaries will now work slightly differently- Combat Desert mercenaries now have Salvation instead of Prayer and Thorns instead of Holy Freeze. Sorceror Mercenaries and Rogue Mercenaries are more or less the same. Barbarian Mercenaries are unchanged since the original game. Fixed a bug with spell states. Sorceror mercenaries should now be safe. Increased experience gain for mercenaries. Increased the cost to hire/resurrect mercenaries. Fixed a big which would stop three of the more powerful sets from dropping. You will now begin to see the the Exceptional (The Dragon Kingdom) and Elite (The Legacy of Honour) sets, along with Twilight's Sonata. Fixed a data entry bug that showed "T'Cherk's Implement" twice in the set "T'Cherk's Trappings", and didn't show the armor at all. "T'Cherk's Casing" should now show up as the armor's name, in both the set list and the item's description. Fixed a bug where one of the lower level set items would overflow it's modifier limits. Started fixing pallete problems with some items. New Sets: Sol's Shining Light, (Sol's Beacon - Amulet, Sol's Infinite Pearl - Orb, Sol's Silkskin - Armour, The Reflection Shield - Shield) and Ghost's Whispers. (Ghost's Lies - Necromancer Helm, Ghost's Refuge - Armour, Ghost's Vex - Wand, Ghost's Memory - Ring) Increased the damage of many assassin traps/other skills. Increased damage of many elemental skills. I haven't fine-tuned these yet. Kicked up the thorns damage on some sets. Coloured runes in dark green. The word 'RUNE' is no longer in capitals. (this is different from set colour green) Changed Thawing potions from gold to dark green. (so they don't get confused with uniques) Lowered the level of some sets to make them easier to find. Increased the power of some Druid elemental Skills. Lowered the cost of Ancient Armor a little because it was wrapping it's price around in the gamble screen. v. 1.09 R8 ---------- Before you install this version, please sell any of the following LoD sets: Aldur's Watchtower Natalya's Odium Tal Rasha's Wrappings Griswold's Legacy Coloured in the names of potions. Crafter items are coloured purple. (Rejuvenation potions are also coloured purple) Raised the chance to gamble rares, sets, and uniques. Sets and uniques now have an equal chance of being gambled. Below they're listed in the order the game checks them. (Will item be unique? 1/20. No? Will item be Magic? 4/5. No? Will item be Rare? 1/10. No? Item will be Set) Unique 5% Magic: 80% Rare: 10% Set: 5% Uniques drop less than before, sets more. New skilltree graphics, copied directly from the other mod. Look better than current ones. Changes to item prices: Armor and Weapons sell for more in general, items with skills sell for less. The Druid may now use Rabies in his Werebear form too, allowing him to deal double element damage simply from his skills. Changed the auras used by some Act 2 mercs to fix a bug with them. Changed Cold mercenaries on Hell difficulty to use Hurricane as well as Frozen Armour and Glacial Spike. Attempted to give the Barbarian Mercenaries some warcries. Fixed a bug which caused the unique Military Pick to crash the game. Disabled certain uniques that were crashing. Boosted some Ranger skills. Elite Gems aren't quite so good to socket any more. New sets: T'Cherk's Trappings Twilight's Sonata Zensunni Sky Valrak's Legend v. 1.09 R8 ---------- Notice: This version contains changes to the experience system. Your characters will level up noticably on their first kill. This is because levels are worth different amounts, to avoid the problem of Negative Experience from Hell monsters. (if not avoid it, then at least allow people to play on higher levels of players x) Note: Some Theurgist skills will only display their damage properly in the character screen display. This will be fixed at a later date, if I can be stuffed. Rest assured they actually work fine. The cubemain.txt and Runes.txt files are now included. Those people who would like to look now can. Many of the recipies however, are not balanced for this open format. I'd ask you not to abuse this please. Began to add in the graphics that have removed the speckles from items. Not finished yet, sorry. Removed the overlap from the Strang Bow's graphic. Added an elemental sword to help combat Physical Immunes. Made sure all items using that graphic had 2x3 as their size. Monsters drop less items on higher difficulty levels than before. This should make it easier to pick things up. Sorry :) Monsters are now more likely to drop a magic or rare item in Nightmare or Hell. Uniques have been made easier to find, sets somewhat harder. Monsters now walk and run faster. Melee attacks now hit a lot harder. Made some adjustments to life and mana gain per level. Mana gain per energy was increased. Made the Theurgist start with a buckler. Changed some internal things around so that the game can tell between light, medium, and heavy armour for magic affixes and runewords. All types of armour now give more defense. Changed Arcanna's Deathwand to give + 1 to Shaman Skills, not Sorceress Skills. Forest Armbands should now display correctly. Doubled the elemental damage, and the level increases of all Amazon spells. This should hopefully allow Amazons to reach/play hell. Decreased the cap on Static Field slightly on Normal. Spirit Nova now kicks ass. Poison Dagger (or whatever I renamed it to) is now a level 30 skill, and does 4 times the (poison) damage. Because of this change, Poison Explosion is now a level 10 skill. I haven't changed it's properties, because it already sucked enough. Fiddled with the damage of a few sorceress missile-based skills. No lowering though :) Inferno consumes slightly less mana. Holy Fire does burn damage. So each cast of Holy Fire will do damage over 1 second, but the damage is slightly improved as a result. Burn damage cannot be resisted. There are no Burn immune monsters. Tripled the base duration of Blade Shield. Lowered it's mana cost to 14, and increased it's minimum damage. Improve the damage of Revived Spirits slightly. (The mages) (Hopefully) lowered the damage dealt by Electric monsters! Yes, I found a way :) Raised the fire damage done by Fire Golem. Increased the Valkyrie's Base damage, (it increases each level) but lowered her hp% per level increase. Lowered the hp% per level gain that Shadow Warriors and Shadow Masters get. Meteor now does 'burn damage.' Like fire damage but over a duration, burn damage is unresistable. Made lightning a bit better. Minions, in general, do more damage than before. Strengthened a few monster spells that I had weakened too much... Allowed Sorceress and Barbarian belts to gain sockets properly. I have completely fixed the bug with Act 3. Now, ANY remaining issues are definately a result of not rerolling a map from a previous version. Added the completed Runewords file by Sozo. We now have 175 Runewords. Go out and find them :) And if you were wondering, the previous count was about 110. Attempted to fix problems with Runewords designed for Katars. Improved Boss drops slightly. v. 1.09 R7 ---------- Fixed the 43RNhth bug, and the nmin nmax bug. Got rid of wolves. Fixed a bug that caused Gold to overlap other items. Fixed a bug causing scrolls of resistance to drop. Fixed a bug causing some treasure items to look wrong. Switched from Gold to 0 Gold. Much funnier. Made Blood Raven drop treasure items in Nightmare and Hell instead of the cube. If for some odd reason you need to get it on nm or hell, go do it the usual way :p Please reroll your map. Fixed a bug that made it too easy to get pearls. Renamed the Necromancer to the Theurgist. Renamed many of the Theurgist's spells to fit his new theme. His skills trees are now: Summoning Elemental and Spirit Miracles Fixed a bug with Canine White, and the nmin nmax bug with other uniques. Still looking for the fcanbeittemeffect bug. If you find it while looking through uniquestxt, PLEASE post it in the forums! :) The recipie for the Ancient's Set belt appears NOT to work, despite the fact that it couldn't have been made any clearer to the game... apparantly Larzuk doesn't work either. Therefore I will make it a special property of some set and unique items to be socketed class belts :) "Talic's Wrap" will already be socketed when found in this version, as well as future versions. There appears to be problems with using the socket recipie on SOME set items, specifically sets involving class specific belts or discs. Started coding "Tokens." They are class-specific charms for the Theurgist. They increase his proficiency with certain skills. Unfortunately, I ran into a big bug with them- currently they aren't included. In response to reports of Mephisto not dropping soulstones, I've forced Mephisto to always drop at least one soulstone. Don't be surprised if he drops two. Reduced the defensive property of Arlite to 3 defense a level at perfect grade. Arlite's chipped and flawed versions give more defense than before, and the other two remain unchanged. Improved the base defense of some of the earlier Berserker Wraps. v. 1.09 B7a ----------- Fixed all magic affix bugs. There may be some magic affix morphing. Sozo has fixed some bugs with runewords. Fixed a bug with treasure items. Made the treasure items behave differently. Increased the value of treasure items. Increased the amount Pearls and SoJs drop. Fixed a bug where using the Cube to socket Talic's Wrap would result in a bad sorceress cord. It will now spit out a Talic's Wrap with one socket. v. 1.09 B7 ---------- Please sell or socket any Elite Gems you have before upgrading. Please sell or use any chipped or blank runes you have before upgrading. Please sell or morph any Gemlike Shapes you have before upgrading. Renamed Elite Skull to Runic Skull. Added in Pearls. They have various purposes. Allowed Mana Potions to spawn in stores. Malah sells Super potions now. Alkor sells Healing and Mana potions now. Added a way to upgrade gems, like with Blank Runes. Added a similar recipie to make Rare Jewels. Increased the damage done by Quill Bears. All Berserker Weapon masteries require level 5. Fixed a small bug- Crusader Exclusives and scepters would still say: "Paladin Only." Fixed spelling eorrers :) Items now upgrade to their Exceptional/Elite counterparts when you reach the next difficulty. Made stackable "Treasure Items." They'll sell for a bit of gold, but otherwise have no purpose. Rusted Coins Gemstones Ancient Emblems Silver Gold Clarification of which gems upgrade to elite gems, and craft items for classes: Assassin - Amethyst - Shadowspike Berserker - Ruby - Heartstone Crusader - Diamond - Horns of Valor Ranger - Emerald - Earthtail Stone Shaman - Topaz - Thunderstone Sorceress - Sapphire - Ocean Tear Necromancer - Skull - Runic Skull Changed the Horardric Staff quest slightly. It involves three new items, but they still occur in the same places. Removed black speckles from some images. Please post images that still have speckles in the forums. Fixed a bug which caused Forest Bands to have no graphics. Blood Raven now drops three Horadric Cubes so that people in multiplayer games are more likely to get a cube. Changed (the Necromancer's) Venom spell to "Air Spirit." It does cold damage now. Made the fireballs hurled by Hydras look slightly more impressive. Increased the minimum damage of Poison Dagger. Changed "Bone Spirit" to "Star Spirit." It now does a combination of fire and physical damage. Changed "Poison Nova" to "Spirit Nova." It now does magic damage. There is now an explosion to show you where the centre of your curse hits. Made monsters with skill-based attacks a bit harder. Filled in all of the current Runeword Scrolls. They are no longer all specific as to which type of item the Runeword must be made in. Guess! In some cases the name may help. Fixed it so that the Ancients now give more experience on Hell difficulty than on Nightmare difficulty. Fixed a bug with magic affixes. I don't actually know what error this bug would've given, but it's possible that it was the fcanbeitemeffect bug. Tried to solve the nmin nmax problem, again. v. 1.09 R6 ---------- Converted this readme into it's current, html-based format. Please sell any items in the 'The Diciple' set, before loading this veraion. This includes items in your stash, cube, on your mercenary, or in your corpse. You may need to start new characters. Any characters you currently have will recieve about 20 or so levels on their next kill, dependant on their current level. This may crash the game for high-level characters. Please be careful, and get someone to help you move items between characters. Added "Armbands." In a nutshell, they are to gloves what circlets are to helms. They are always socketed, always magic rare or unique, and draw from a pool of NDX only affixes, and a few LoD ones. Raised the attack strength of physical damage monsters. Added 30 new prefixes, all of which are available on bands. Added 25 new suffixes, all of which are available on bands. Switched the property of diamonds in weapons to magic damage. Switched the third mod of Agates to walk/run speed. + All Skills wasn't working properly. Nerfed the amount of elemental absorbing that is given by high level runes. Nerfed the damage % runes. Increased the amount of loot that drops. Increased the density of monsters. New cube recipies: Rune + Chipped rune = Downgraded Rune, and 3 Health/Mana Potions = Upgraded Mana Potion. Stopped ammo (quivers and arrows) from dropping in Nightmare and Hell. Streamlined the drops a bit more for misc. items in Nightmare and Hell. A bit less junk. Made Urns and Evil Urns appear in all acts. Changed the spell that Fire Mage Mercenaries on Hell use to attack. Removed the flame that accomanies Hydras, to make them usable without substracting 40 from your framerate. Removed shadows from torches. (whose dumb idea was that?!) Attempted to fix a bug with Rogue mercenaries crashing the game at level 75. Made multiple attempts to resolve persistant problems with Act 3. Changed the Nightmare/Hell Cold Mercenaries temporarily. They'll get better spells when I sort out what I want to give them. Fixed a bug with the way runeword scrolls drop. They should now drop properly in Nightmare and onwards. Fixed a bug that made Ash look like a scepter. Fixed a crash bug with some affixes that added negative manasteal. They had to be de-randomised in the process. Fixed the bug below with Dragon items. Fixed the bug with the exclusive recipies. Fixed a bug with the recipie that upgrades cracked items to normal, and normal items to shining. Fixed a bug that prevented Elite Gems from dropping. Fixed a bug with Bastion Guards. If you're holding an elite Storm Guard, then it may morph. Nerfed Fire Wall's damage, decreased it's timer. Increased the damage of Frozen Orb. Increased the damage of Hydra. Increased the rate at which Lighting Mastery adds more damage each skillpoint. Enabled Teleport, Leap, Thunderstorm, and what I consider to be "defensive warcries" to be cast in town. De-randomised the damage on Hydra (raised it's minimum damage to meet it's maximum damage) and increased the damage per level. Changed the mana cost on Charged Bolt to 18, and decreased the addition to the cost to 1.5 per level. At level 7, Charged Bolt is now cheaper. Attempted to give Shuriken a "Shuriken Class" description. Nerfed the drops on Baal's Minions. Made all end-of-act bosses drop TPs and Gems the way Duriel does. Made the Ancients drop gems on their death. Changed the Barbarian to the Berserker, and the Amazon to the Ranger. Changed the way stamina works. You start off with more, gain less per level, and the same amount per vitality. Thus, you need to either get faster running boots, items that add to stamina or decrease drain, or pump vitality if you plan to run everywhere. The barbarian now gets the same bonus to stamina per point of vitality as the Assasin does. v. 1.09 B6 ---------- -Known bugs: Some exclusive making recipies don't work quite right, making dragon items will instead make druid items- Please sell any of the Heaven's Bretheren set your character has, before loading this version. This includes items in your stash, cube, on your mercenary or corpse. The eye socketing recipie now requires you to add in some ash to make it work. Added in a recipie to make ash. Removed the timer on Volcano. Fixed a bug which might cause players to crash in certain areas of Act 5. Greatly increased the damage of some of the Druid's elemental skills. Cold duration was also increased. Added 'Dragon Items.' They'll be used in crafting recipies. Removed some suffixes in an attempt to fix a crashing bug. (Hopefully) fixed all of the previous crashing bugs. NOLSireno made some modifications to the uniques, in case they were causing a crashing bug. NOLSireno fixed some buggy uniques. Added a file for newer players. v. 1.09 R5 ---------- BEFORE LOADING THIS VERSION: Please sell any of the Immortal King's set that you may have. This includes items on your corpse, mercenary, or in your stash or cube. Replaced this set with Sara's Vow. (Sara's Vow: Sara's Prayer, Sara's Path, Sara's Vision, Sara's Heart) Please sell Oriraya's Shuriken, if you have them. (Not Oriraya's Star, Oriraya's Shuriken) They have been replaced with 'Oriraya's Guard,' a Gothic Shield. Please sell any assassin armour you have. This is nessecary to fix the bug with them. CHANGES: Attempted to fix a bug that crashed people when items with a certain affix were generated. Got NOLSireno to fix the buggy uniques for me, with Zeek's assistance in finding the bugs in the first place. Increased the chance to drop sets, uniques, and rares from some of the harder monsters. Barbarian Helms no longer automatically come with sockets. They now get life regeneration, and better than the Necromancer shield's life regeneration, too. Added Flux Enhancers for Throwing/Archer Characters, and for Mages. Melee - Orange pyramid Thrower - Orange Triange Mage - Cyan Sphere Added gemlike shapes. Gamble for chipped blizzard gems. Changed the Amazon Exclusive weapons so that there are 15 for each Amazon subtype. As a result of this change, Amazon Javelins you have may change names, and bows you have may become weaker, but you should now be able to find better Amazon weapons in general. Added cube recipies to make exclusive items. You'll need two of your class' gem, (the type that upgrades to your class' elite gem) any grade, and an item of the same type. (helm for a primal helm, belt for a wrap, etc...) This'll make the worst exclusive of that type. Then transmute it with any two runes and it'll upgrade. (blank runes don't work) Including these recipies, cubemain.txt is now a decent 623 lines long. Note: You can't make items this way that you could already buy, (Staves, Orbs, Wands, Scepters, Katars) and using these recipies will give you WHITE items, even if you input a different type of item. Be careful. Modified the damage and speed of regular spears. Removed the dexterity requirement from Shuriken, and changed them back to a throwing knife graphic. Redid monster resistances and immunities. You'll now do more damage to most monsters if you experiment with what elements they are weak to. Some are even weak to magic, or physical attacks. Monsters with immunities will always have at least one weakness. Changed the Druid's name to the Shaman. Made it more likely to face boss monsters. Added a few new monsters to the Chaos Sanctuary. Added a 2 second timer to Fire Wall, and a 1/5 second timer to Charged Bolt. Fixed a bug that made the Azarian Force lose some modifiers. Added more to the redone story. Act 2 is finished, more or less. Stopped Warped Fallen/Shaman from dropping loot that was far too good. Reduced the gain of experience. Fixed a bug that accidentally made Amazons start with a Short War Bow instead of a Short Bow. Fixed a bug with Armswing Armors, hopefully once and for all. More runewords, put more coding into the runescrolls you will soon see dropping. Lowered the level requirements on Original Blizzard Gems. Attempted to fix the bug with certain magic affixes (again) Attempted to fix a bug with perfect Agate in helms, by rearranging the order of it's properties. Fixed a bug which accidentally gave Amazon Gloves +damage%, instead of IAS. Lowered the damage done by Charged Bolt a bit. Increased the damage of Poison Nova a bit. Fixed a bug which prevented people from using the Elite Gem upgrade recipies. Worked out a system to get Runeword Scrolls to drop. They should only drop in Hell difficulty, or from boss monsters. Transmute them with an organ to make a scroll that tells you about a runeword. (NOTE: Some of them are currently placeholders) v. 1.09 R4 ---------- Lowered the experience gained from monsters on Nightmare and Hell. Removed Cows from the Chaos Sanctuary and the River of Flame. Fixed ANOTHER crash bug in Act 3. Turns out that the entire MONSTER I was using was bugged. Raised the movement speeds of Werewolves and Werebears. Modified the automod on Assassin armours. They now give +dmg% instead of IAS. This fixes the bug where they had a damage rating, which would replace that of your weapon. Enabled the recipie to make a C'yanni Signet. Lowered the properties on Elite Gems, and lowered their level requirement to 100. The recipies that previously required one/three perfect gems to make elite gems, now require two/four. Changed Suriken back to being 'Star-class' weapons. This means they will be throwable, but not effected by Claw Mastery. Please sell any set items from the 'Harimenja Relics' set. It has been redesigned as a set for melee fighters in Nightmare. Please suggest names and properties (not amounts, just properties) for set items on the boards, I want to finish them off :) Note: Suggestions should be appropriate to the theme of the mod. v. 1.09 R3 ---------- Fixed a bug crashing players in Act 3. Fixed a bug that would make skeletones crash players. Attempted to fix a bug that would crash players when identifying certain items. Attempted to fix a bug where Act 2 hirelings purchased in normal could not level. Attempted to fix a bug where Shuriken would not throw. Fixed a bug with the uniques that had knockback. They now have all of their properties. Fixed a bug that made Glory Helms into Primal Helms, by accident. Fixed a bug that stopped Assasin Armor from getting sockets. WARNING: They socket as Weapons. Added the names for Glory Helms. (to fix the not xlated bug) Borrowed a D2game.dll from http://www.jbdotcom.com/, to increase the chance of gambling sets and uniques. Added new interface graphics for the Character screen, the Trademark screen, and the Titlescreen. Attempted (again) to make Shuriken look like Shuriken when thrown. Gave all characters throwing potions to start with, and decreased the level requirement. This should help decrease the 'first kill' time. Amazons also get a bow to start with, to increase the amount of ammunition they have. Changed various monster's names. Attempted to make player TPs red, and quest ones blue. The Druid's bear is far more powerful than before, sporting doubled DR, hitpoints and DR that scale with difficulty, resist to everything, and some smiting and regneration boosts. Increased the max of the Amazon's dodging skills. Increased the mana cost for Charged Bolt Decreased the mana cost for Lightning & Chain Lightning Added some physical damage to Nova. Made Lightning Mastery add the same damage as Fire Mastery. Telekinesis is slightly useful as an offensive spell, being a magic-type spell now. Increased the lightning damage of Death Sentry. Boosted the Attack Rating boosts on Assassin skills. Increased the base duration of Blade Shield. Added more damage to Fire Blast, Wake of Fire Sentry, Lightning Sentry, Wake of Inferno Sentry, and Shock Web. Beefed up the Druid's Shapeshifted forms. Werewolf should now be lightning fast. Vines gain more life than before from extra skill levels. Boosted the hp of the Necro's skeletons, and added extra velocity and DR to the Skeleton warrior. Lowered the cap on how many wolves the Druid could summon, again. This time feels about right. 9 Spirit wolves, 6 Dire Wolves. Boosted various Paladin skills, including his Undead-hunter ones, and his low level skills. Holy Bolt is now quite good for healing your merc. Switched Faith to do instant healing for everyone in it's radius. Raised the min hits of Fanaticism, and gave it more damage each level. Increased the potency of the Amazon's level 50 lightning attacks. Raised the AR given by several Paladin and Assassin Skills. Sped up the aura animation for all the castable Paladin Auras. Increased the DR of Protector Plates. Decreased the cost of Scepters. Increased the cost of Staves. Added a couple more automods to Druid staves for higher level Druids. Changed Kelgon to do more AR%, but not to do ITD. Replaced the AR% on Arlite with lifesteal. Adjusted Starga to only absorb lightning, and changed energy and vitality by level mods to simply be flat amounts of energy and vitality. Hp and Mana by level mods on gems now add a very small percentage to hp or mana. Lowered all gem costs, and removed them from stores. SoJs drop less frequently, and only from act-end bosses. Increased the quality of drops from ALL of the minions you must fight before Baal. Fixed a bug that stopped Amethysts from dropping. Fixed a bug that stopped Chipped, Flawed, and Normal gems dropping. Decreased the amount of gems dropping in the Cow Level. Elite gems require level 120 to use now. Added two cube recipies that involve spleens. Added many more cube recipies. Adjusted or replaced some existing cube recipies. Made more magic items drop. Added more magic affixes, rearranged which items get some old affixes. Added Chipped Runes (0). Two transmute to a blank rune. Added Flux Diverters, and Flux Enhancers to the gamble screen. Flux Diverters will transmogrify into other items. The more common ones become healing potions. Flux Enhancers turn a magic ring into a crafted ring- they all give the same modifiers, but the chance to get them, or how good the modifier is, will increase for better Flux Enhancers. Added Runelike Shapes to the gamble screen. Removed the 'A' rune from sale. Runelike shapes will transform into various runes lower than Rune 26. Lowered the amount of runes needed to upgrade to 2 for all runes. Fixed a bug where the last 10 runes couldn't be reached through upgrading recipies. Resized the cube. 1 square wide, 2 tall. Added Scrolls. Transmute them with organs or elixers and you'll get Runewords. Watch out - scrolls can be one of a few types. If you find two tattered scrolls, don't transmute them with the same organ. (35/50 scrolls have recipies on them, if you come up with 'wet glowing scroll' it is a placeholder) Certain Superuniques now bear names that you may find familiar if you owned Diablo I or Hellfire. v. 1.09 R2 ---------- Fixed the bug which caused game crashes when fighting some monsters. I had to redo the file that controls monsters for this, so difficulty of some monsters may be off, and the experience they give may also be odd. Please post any balance problems in the forum, it helps me make the mod better for you to play. Fixed a bug that would stop you upgrading A Runes (1) to E Runes (2). Changed Kelgon's Chipped -> Flawless properties to try and stop the gem crashing people... Spells no longer require each other as prerequisites. You can now (if you are good) save all of your points for lvl 50 skills. Assassin Martial Arts Tree Changes: Increased the radius of Fists of Fire and Blades of Ice, Assassin Shadow Arts Tree Changes: Increased Mind Blast damage, increased the damage of Psychic Hammer. Assassin Traps Tree Changes: Blade Shield has an increased radius to attack in, and requires level 20. Blade Fury no longer requires Wake of Fire Sentry. Applied a general bonus to traps damage. Doubled the damage of Blade skills. Druid Shapeshifting Changes: Doubled the plague damage of Rabies. Lowered the damage penalty for Hunger. Added extra damage to shockwave. Increased Druid's mana cost for shapeshifting skills. Fury attacks 6 targets at max, now. Other Druid Changes: Poison and mana vines get 25% life each level rather than 20%, mana steal of mana vine doubled, poison damage of poison vine doubled. Twister's damage with additional points has been increased, it emits four twisters, and it now has a two second stun. Increased the levelup damage later on (slvl 16+) for Armageddon and Hurricane, to allow elementalists a shot at hell. Also notice that all the twister spells do both physical and cold damage since a few patches ago. Attempted to add Lightning damage to Beserk. Doubled Poison Nova & Poison Explosion damage. Increased the damage of all other Necro magic spells by an extra 35%. Upped the progressive levelling of Bone Spear and Spirit. Revives now start with two minutes before they die, but their timer will gain 20 seconds each level. They also have slightly lower HP than before.(7/8 of previous HP) Increased the damage done by Telekinesis, and switched it to magic damage. Increased the Amazon's Lightning skills that work with her spears. They should all contend with the Javazon side of the tree, and fend now. Converted Ice Arrow to Shock Arrow, and Power Strike to Chilling Strike, to help allow Amazons stick to one tree without relying on gems. Improved the Crusader's vs. undead skills- you should now be able to be a hybrid undead-slayer effectively. Increased the tohit rating of some of his combat skills. Increased the amount of Holy Bolts FoH emits. Improved the max curse/poison lowering ability of Cleansing. Added more to the per level increase on Meditation. Fire Bolt is now renamed, and does Physical damage as well. Nerfed higher levels of Fire Wall, added more power to Blaze, especially at higher levels. The Barbarian's Combat Skills tree is completely redesigned. New skill tree graphics to reflect the removal of prerequisites. Added "Glory Helms." They are helms for the Crusader which improve his attack rating, and give +to skill tabs. Changed the automods on Crusader Shields a bit. They're now quite useful, with one of the best automods giving ITD. Daggers are now Necromancer exclusives. They do poison damage, and I doubled their base damage. The names for the new runewords are coded in, and in the runes.xls file. Nerfed Starga's weapon property slightly. Increased the minimum amount of DR on masks. Potions and crafters only drop half as much as before. Also, crafters buy/sell price has fallen a lot, to reduce the amount of excess gold stockpiling. Not that you'll want to sell them if I ever release all of the recipies I've done with them :> Attempted to fix problems with crafters and jewellery dropping too often. Shuriken are now affected by Claw Mastery. Shuriken now get skilltab bonuses AND individual skill bonuses. This is intentional. Their price has been lowered. Added ten new runes. Added new Runewords. Redid the socket maximums for some items (including helms, shrunken heads, paladin shields, shields, armour, daggers) Most Superuniques will drop a gem and a rune. Fixed a problem with some uniques displaying their name as "An Evil Force." Added cold or random elemental attacks to certain monsters. Cold resist is more of a constant threat now. There's a mystery item added, (if you find it/look at the files, please don't tell everyone) that has an interesting affect. Added "Elite Gems"- there is a one in seventy five chance that you will get one of these dropping instead of a perfect gem, and they will drop quite a bit in Hell, too. They are designed so that there is one for each class. Ocean Tear - Sorceress Earthtail Stone - Amazon Heartstone - Barbarian Shadowspike - Assassin Horns of Valor - Paladin Thunderstone - Druid Elite Skull - Necromancer Changed Elite (Champion) monsters to display their name as: " Elite" rather than "Elite ". v. 1.09 R1 ---------- WARNING: Cubing three hearts with any magic item will remove it's magical status, making it a normal white item... Be careful. This recipie is designed to give you normal items that you can socket, to use for Runewords. Sell prices are back to normal. Hopefully fixed a bug which caused only Blizzard's original gems, Cyclite, and Agate to drop. Belts now socket as shields. Added two new sets of class-specific gloves. One for Druids, with +cast speed and staffmods, and one for Amazons with +attack speed and staffmods. Added a whole pile of new graphics. There're unique graphics for Heavy Boots, Light Guantlets, and Guantlets now. There are also new graphics for the class specific boots, and the two new class specific gloves each have their own set of graphics. Various changes have been made to the gems added by New Dawn. They are all better, including such things as improved opals- their tri-elemtental damage is doubled, and they now give some resist all in helms, and kelgon reducing/ignoring monster DR. New cube recipies added. We're currently at 128 new lines worth of recipies. This includes 39 recipies for rune upgrading, forty recipies for blank runes, five recipies for adding and removing sockets, and 28 recipies for gem upgrading.(That's 72 lines worth of upgrading recipies, and 22 lines worth of other recipies) Fixed a bug which made any recipies generating rares to use an itemlevel FAR too low. Made changes to try and fix assertion errors with Baal's skills. Crashes involving superuniques are currently NOT fixed. I will patch this version as R1.5 later, to fix this crash, along with any bugfixes I complete in that time. Static Field can do up to 75% damage on normal now. On Nightmare and Hell you will gain back all (if not almost all) of your experience if you get your corpse. If you still loose experience- then you've only lost half as much. Switched around the sizes of Arya Discs and Pelta Discs. They match their graphics now. If you're running short on one type of scroll, but have plenty of the other, you can cube two TP scrolls into an ID scroll, or vice versa. New cube recipie revealed: Heart, Fang, Eye + Ring = C'yanni Signet New cube recipie revealed: Cubing eyes with items will craft sockets into them. New cube recipie hint: Five organs + Rare helm = Vision of Onslaught (unique helm) New cube recipie hint: Three organs + Any item = Self-repairing item Blood Raven now drops the Horadric Cube when killed. Made organs drop. Cube recipies that previously used "The Stone of Jordan" now use the "C'yanni Signet." Fixed a bug that made the 2 rune recipies to require an extra item to upgrade your runes. Fixed a bug where the Greater/Super Health potion + Rejuvenation potion = El Rune recipie would require an extra item to make your rune. Set items drop less frequently, uniques drop more frequently. Added new gem, "Starga." See gems section for info. Added new items, Laryan Boots. See excluves section for info. Renamed some Amazon boots to leave names open for the Barbarian boots. Added dodging skills to the amazon boots. Gave Druid Helms the orb automods. Runes renamed. Guide to runes and pronounciation attached as an .xls (excel) file. 7 new runes added. They all have new graphics. Rune properties have been rearranged/remade. Added 'Blank Runes.' Cube these with another rune to made two of that rune. v. 1.09 B1 ---------- -This version actually works. Sorry to those who downloaded a non-working version. I've fixed the problems and added a few more features to make up for it!- Please sell any and all LoD or D2 uniques that you have. They're all being replaced. Not selling them before you upgrade may cause unplayable characters. I'll leave 1.08 up incase this happens. Please sell any items from the "Orphan's Call" set. If you own the set shield Ana's Tears, please sell it before upgrading. The base item it uses has changed. New sets: The Harimenja Relics, Ring (Renjan Band), Ring (Atarian Force), Amulet (Raindrop Chain) Fixed the blizzard bug that will add 50% to the base physical resist of EVERY monster on nightmare. This should make the Ancients killable :) Gambleable Charms and Jewels. Assassin Armor now adds walk speed. (May not work due to changes in 1.09) Increased damage of throwing pots. Added some new cube recipies. I've begun using the crafter items. They now sell at shops. Added normal uniques for all items but jewels, and circlets. (By NOLSireno) Experience given on Nightmare and Hell has increased since last version. A lot. It will compare with Act IV- except the monsters will be closer to your level (hopefully) and therefore should give MORE exp. Monsters, in general, are harder. Harder to catch, harder to hurt... however they are slightly easier to hit with Melee attacks than before. Experience model changed slightly. Normal should seem like a levelling haven as a result, but that shouldn't bother you too much. Monsters will eventually be brought back up to the level I like (harder than LoD, easier than HoE or Fusion or ES) CLARIFICATION: Stromguard is not misspelt. It's spelled as Stormguard in uniqueitems.txt because NOLSireno must've thought I typoed it. Stromguard is the intended spelling :) Treasureclasses have been totally redone. Hopefully, in general, magic items are no longer very common. I might make uniques a bit more common now that we have some to find, but we'll see... Skeletons have recieved a nice upgrade. Because the damage of mages is harder to upgrade, they have been switched to be the level 1 skill, and warriors are the level 20 skill. The runes that don't upgrade in 1.09 have been changed to require 3 runes to upgrade. (These runes are from rune 10 upwards) Runes now have their numbers next to them, to help you know what you can(not) upgrade to. Bows have increased damage, and the damage vs. demons modifier. Fixed a bug which would make certain mercanaries crash your game. Sorceress Lightning skills: Lightning and Charged Bolt change positions. A good time is had by all. Stats adjusted considering new positions. Sorceress Cold skills: Blizzard no longer has a timer, but requires slightly more mana. Glacial Spike has a larger radius, freezes for four seconds, and costs a bit less mana to cast. Chilling armor adds a lot more AC, and does damage comparable to Glacial Spike. Ice Blast and Glacial Spike increase at the same rate. Sorceress Fire skills: Fire wall now gives diminishing returns for extra skill levels, meteor has a slightly increased radius. Druid skills: Fire claws no longer suck so hard. Timers for Armageddon and Hurricane have been increased to 75 frames. (3 seconds) Their mana cost has been reduced to compensate. (Note: Armageddon and Hurricane were designed to work with timers. The timers are in here because otherwise the skills will kill everything, fast) Assassin skills: Claw mastery is a lot more effective, Martial Arts Assassins are still too weak. Blade shield is better. Phoenix strike is better on the meteor and ice nova charges. Burst of Speed works a bit better (trying to get rid of the diminishing returns a bit), and Weapon Block kicks more ass. Bows have 3/4 Strength requirements compared to before. Minion and Death Mauler type monsters have less health and do more damage- the Foothills should be more interesting now. Along with the more deadly Catapults. The Ancients have less physical resistance. Books stack up to 75. Keys stack to 50. Throwing items stack 100/125/150 on Normal/Nightmare/Hell. Gave up on the Blade fury animation for now. It doesn't work properly on weapons- yet :> The chance of your drop 'rolling back' to an inferior one is now 1/4 of the LoD level, not 1/2. Ancient Armor should sometimes drop/be sold in Act 5. Flattened out set item rarity slightly. The extra experience for killing each Ancient Barbarian has changed: Normal: 200,000 Experience Nightmare: 2,000,000 Experience (Plus the bonus to Nightmare exp) Hell: 40,000,000 Experience (Plus the bonus to Hell exp) Only perfect agate gives plus to skills. Zzan's Dark Power is weaker. Mawdawc's Shell is stronger. Removed a lot of unused strings from string.tbl. Reduced filesize by a kb or two :) Added a lot of new strings to string.tbl. Size is almost back to normal. Small changes to the credits screen. Added Bdark as a staff member :) The 'Rune' in the item name for Runes is now 'RUNE' to make them stand out more. Didn't like the name 'Po' for a rune. Changed it back to Io. Jo is now 'Ja' to distinguish them. Champion bosses renamed: Champion -> Elite Ghostly -> Ethereal Fanatic -> Zealous Possessed -> Insane Berserker -> Enraged Some descriptions were made clearer. Absorbs/Leeches on monsters renamed to "Syphons" Iron Guard became "Steel Skin" The drops from Baal's Minions should be better. Bears and wolves will now show up as enemies in Act 3. There's about a 1/5 chance to see one of them in each overground area before the Kurast Causeway. The damage on claws now scales properly - the base damage for each claw is ALWAYS better than the earlier one. Shuriken now get staff/wand/scepter mods. Diablo and Baal are now quite likely to drop socketed items. This should make it possible to make runewords in Nightmare/Hell difficulty. Static field can not hurt monsters past 35%, no matter what difficulty you are on. Static field now only does 35% damage. Rogue skills upgrade each difficulty. (Cold arrow -> Ice arrow, etc...) Sorcerors will ALL upgrade skills with difficulty. Fire sorcerors will only get higher levels- Lightning ones will gain Chain Lightning, and then Thunderstorm. Barbarian belts now leech life and mana instead of adding it after each kill. You can buy as many gems as you like without leaving town. Gems should also sell in ALL acts of ALL difficulties now. Rejuvenation potions (only normal ones) are on sale. Sorceresses now have class specific shields as well. (Staff mods, +mana after kill, +mana) Opals in weapons do cold, fire, and lightning damage, instead of magic find. The starting stats of hirelings are slightly lower. Crafter items should now drop occasionally. There are no Lightning Enchanted Superuniques anymore. Minor change: "Whisper shoes" are now "Whisper Shoes". v. 1.08 R3 ---------- Assassin Shuriken now look like throwing knifes, not potions, when you are holding them. Assassin armors now have the correct sounds/flippy files. Drops are better balanced. Assassin starting items can be used at level 1 now :) Earlier claws have slightly lower requirements, so that they smooth out better. Switched the position of Dragon Tail and Dragon Claw. Dragon Tail keeps it's current stats. It sucked. Dragon Claw will now make dual wielding a very viable option. Mercs have lost their nerfed status, and now have 2.5 times the stats. Cold sorcerers also lost the ice blast on nightmare, and gain Frozen Orb in Hell. I may change Rogues as well, in a future version. All cows will drop better items than before. Static Field now does only 40% damage. Fanaticism does less damage % / level, starts off at -16%, and can hit more targets. Smite damage was doubled. Item stat requirements are now 1.5 times their LoD level, not 2 times. Quill bears have 3/4 their original hp, and give 5/4 their original experience. Andariel's attacks are weaker. * The council now drops less items. } } Bye bye council runs :) * Baal's minions get improved drops. } Diablo's drops are better. Duriel is easier. Mephisto is easier. Izual has less health, and no longer resists physical damage. Boss resistances are rearraged. Each of the first four bosses have a weak element. Baal resists all the elements equally, and on Nightmare & Hell difficulties he gains magic and physical resist. You may notice that exclusive belts do not display how many rows they have. They all have four rows, despite what you see, your potions are there- if you've picked up enough potions, you will be able to drink/move four from the same position. You may also notice 'organs' being dropped- these are, I guess, organs- but they will have a use in the 1.09 release- crafting sets, uniques, and new crafting recipes. Planned things like: Heart + Eye + Tower Shield -> Courage Guard v. 1.08 R2 ---------- Removed Kela's Way. Please sell ANY items from this set before you upgrade. Doubled base stat and level requirements for items. (non-jewelery, non-charms) Please make sure you can still wear your items. I'm sorry to all I have deprived of good items, but this change was going to be implemented anyway. Please sell any items from the LoD sets before loading this version - about 3 more of the sets have been replaced. Please DON'T keep the normal LoD sets. Superuniques have been edited. There are no more Fire enchanted or Teleporting superuniques. Made flying scimitars spawn. Fixed everything for the tower, it's back in more or less it's original state. Smashing the compelling orb now gives an experience reward half as good as the Ancients do. (Hopefully, not ENTIRELY sure about this one) Increased the general level of experience gained, so that people were no longer fighting Baal at level 50 or 60. Changed some strings I didn't like that I had left in from ND classic (including the strings for the old Barbarian "wind magic" tree) Added new graphics for the first three Wraps, and Winged Greaves. Got these from the items plugin, thanks guys! Added new graphics for the Assassin Armor. Each item has it's own graphics now. Lowered DR and blocking rate of Diablo and Mephisto. Diablo's blockring rate was well over 100%- just slightly excessive :) I also lowered Baal's blocking, but I raised his DR seeing it was quite low. Despite Baal being weakened in some ways, he will now do more damage against you when in the worldstone chamber, and will have more health. Baal's Clone is harder, but now gives experience. Fanatism (Zeal in LoD) starts at -5% damage, but gains 5% per level. Blessed Shield (Holy Shield in LoD) adds more block percent Paladin elemental auras (Divine Freeze, Holy Shock, and Blessed Fire) are now all castable. Boosted damage for shock and fire, Freeze will do cold damage. They require a fixed amount of mana. If you're going to be a mageadin, I'd suggest mana-kill items :) Static field can no longer hurt a monster more than 90% on normal, and requires more mana. It's mana requirement increases each skill level. Added a new set, Ana's Cry(Ana's Song, Ana's Tears). It replaces Kela's Way atm... Added sets: Oriraya's Nova, (Oriraya's Star, Oriraya's Shuriken, Oriraya's Starburst) Larin's Touch, (Larin's Focus, Larin's Visor, Larin's Guard, Larin's Defender) & The Ancients' Power. (Talic's Wrap, Korlic's Helmet, Mawdawc's Shell, The Summit) Added Shaken, (Ninja Stars(ex) or Shuriken(el)) exclusive throwing weapons with +traps. They also have either Knockback or +% Attack Rating. Increased life of Succubi Decreased life of Consumed/beserker/whatever minions, to decrease explosive damage. Baal's Decrepify won't be so annoying anymore. Monsters give more experience Ghosts won't regenerate health very fast Nihlathak's Corpse Explosion and Artic Blast aren't as evil anymore. Gloams (lightning ghosts) don't hurt as much and give more experience Act IV monsters give more experience. The veils are gone. The class exclusive belts will not drop as normal items, only magic, rare, set, or unique. Armor sockets like shields now. (it was too hard to get resistances in D2X, and boots as helms works far better with this change :) ) Gloves and boots (including Amazon Boots) are now socketable. Gloves socket as weapons, boots as helms. 2 sockets is the max for normal, 3 for nightmare, 4 for hell. This is an old change but I forgot to mention it: The sell maximum will increase at the same rate throughout the last two difficulties as well, ending up on 75,000 in Act 5 Hell. Another old change, but not listed in the readme: Primal Helms (Barb item) now have sockets as their innate quality. Fixed a typo which made the non-exceptional/elite Shrunken Heads (Necro item) do poison damage instead of Life regen. Fixed a typo with needing one extra item to cube two runes together. Fixed a typo that caused you to need 5 chipped cyclites to transmute. Added the new gems to the file that controls item drops. Forgot to do this for 1.08R1 :( Made chipped gems sellable in normal. Nightmare you can buy normal Gems. Hell you may buy Flawless gems. Price are adjusted so that the next highest gem will cost 3 times as much, ala the Cube. Fixed a bug which made the new exclusives un-droppable. ( :( ) Fixed a bug which made charges(Storm bow ammo) sellable. Added Rune Words. (They should work) Finished up to Doomsayer. v. 1.08 R1 ---------- Despite not being included in the readme at release, two runes can be cubed together for the next rune. The new Gems upgrade in the cube properly. The tower works, and is back to three levels :) The Veils also work, and you will probably find yourself challenged in them. Hopefully experience should now be sufficient to get past Act 1 with no worries from scratch... If this doesn't fix the problem, there'll be a 1.08R1.5 :) A lot more new gems are in the game now. Arlite, Opals, Pyrite, and Kelgon respectively. Problems with starting items have been sorted out. Druids start with both a club and a staff, and sorceress orbs no longer have to be magical. In case the Sorceress doesn't get an offensive spell on her orb, she starts with a 'Chilling Bow' and some charges which can be used to deliver devastating damage to the first few monsters in Act 1. This is so Sorcies can actually level up to a decent amount. Orbs can be normal or superior now. Runewords will work with orbs when I enable them. There are now 6 total new gems added. Scroll down to 'Gems' to look at their properties. A few new things added into the 'Plans' section. If you don't like any of these ideas/have some yourself, please post at the forum :) Instead of Druid staves doing +Druid skills, they do +to a whole druid skill tree. This is the best solution [to fix them], but hopefully they won't be too uber. v. 1.08 B1 ---------- WARNING: The tower quest is currently NOT completable without being of Act IV level. Sozo hasn't rearranged the levels so that the veils are in the right place yet. So if you see a "Veil of Shadows" or "Veil of Nightmares" when you try to enter the tower, don't go in. Some of the new gems have black speckles. I will fix this before I add more new graphics. Just enjoy Cyclite and Agate for now :) Agate is great for use with merc weapons :) The difficulty and/or experience might not be quite right. Post in the "New Dawn" forum at the Keep's forums if you don't the difficulty or experience curve properly. You will have trouble as soon as you find your first group of monsters. This happens with any increased difficulty mod, but you will be fine after a level up or two. Each class now has a second exclusive item. Assassin Cloaks (Increased Attack Speed) Amazon Boots (Faster Run/Walk) Druid Staves (converted from sorceress staves, these now do more damage, +% Attack rating) Paladin Protector Plates (+DR based on character level) Sorceress Cords (belts with four rows, Increased Cast Speed) Necromancer Skull Helms (+Mana regeneration) Barbarian Wraps (belts with +mana after each kill, or +life after demon kill) Spell timers have been decimated (divided by ten) Some monsters have been rebalanced (fetish class, The Summoner) Monster health was multiplied by 3.5, and all monsters have an added 15% damage. Unique, champion, quest, or Boss monsters now have a greatly increased chance to drop rare or unique items (set items will depend on your level) Drops at the moment will be FAR too good. This is simply because I am not working on the drops until 1.09 comes out. It is a huge file and I won't want to work on it twice. The chance of item drops 'rolling back' to a far inferior items has been halved, in in the case of runes, it has been capped at a 50/51 chance. Necromancer shrunken heads no longer give poison damage. Instead they give life regeneration. Assassin Claws now give poison damage. The added life or mana on orbs is now based on character level. The increased stash/cube/inventory by Fusman and Phalzyr is included. The experience model from New Dawn 1.06/1.08 has been ported to the expansion. Level requirements for skills have been changed to meet the new experience model- they are now 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. Monster levels were multiplied by 2.5 to match the experience model. Nova and Static Field have switched positions in the skill tree. Thunderstorm does not require Chain lightning to put a point into, and now requires Static Field instead of Nova, because of their swapped positions. Because of it's new position in the lightning tree, static field now reduces health by 50%, and always does at least 5 lightning damage. Re-implemented almost all level changes from New Dawn classic. There will be monsters placed slightly more randomly. Fixed a bug where Assassin and Druid skills had their LoD level requirements. The Ancients have more life, but they also give experience after killing them. If this is abused I will remove it. Made orbs sellable. The sorcies need them now that staves belong to druids. Begun attempts to make new gems. If you notice invisable items, these are them :) Got some more of the story on to paper. Some time I will try and extend it into Act II. I'm tossing up on whether to leave the sounds in or not. Speed has returned to playable weapons. Note that if you're an assassin, having a slower computer will help you watch your movements ;) If it actually does get bad, switch to 800x600, put shadow blending on, light quality on high, and play in Act V. Not as if you're going to be able to notice, but the 50% base physical resist in Hell has been dropped. Already resistant enemies and immunes were brought back up to their previous levels, however, and the resistance system will be redone soon, so you will not have to worry too much :) Boosted the speed bonus on Werewolf. Apparantly he is sometimes slower with a fast weapon than he should be. (note to those not in the know: Using a normal speed weapon will nullify your bonus, and using a slow speed one will slow down it's attack speeed, in werewolf form) Twister and Hurricane will now do the damage they list in both Cold damage, and Physical damage. Their cold lasts for two seconds and will last slightly longer each level. Don't expect to notice it though :) Venom is back :) Some skills will still have names from New Dawn 1.08. Deal with it :) Sozo will go over them, hopefully later. (Currently) 3 Unique Charms Fixed bugs with some monsters not being undead Fixed demon damage with axes, and added it for daggers, and throwing weapons. (this includes javelins) Doubled the damage of all poison skills. Whirlwind will now do a nice amount of cold damage and chill each hit, making it useful again. *------* | Gems | *------* Many new gems have emerged since Xas slayed Baal the first time- they are listed here for your reference. Cyclite is a rotating crystal-cluster that is closely tied to mana control. In Weapons, it will siphon mana from your enemies. In Helms, it will allow you to gain mana from the souls of your victims- and in Shields, it will return mana to you for every few points of damage. Agate is a brown-reddish gemstone embedded in grey rock. It enhances the natural abilities of the people who wear it- in Weapons you will swing faster, in Helms you will gain Dexterity, Strength, and maybe skills, and in Shields you will block more often. Arlite is an orange gem that protects or heals those who possess it. In Weapons, you will gain life as you deal damage, while in helms you will recover faster from damage, and it can increase your shield's defense based on your level. Deep black Opals have always been used for mana storage. Many of the earlier magic items were simply socketed with opals to increase spiritual power. Opals socketed in weapons will release charges of magical elements. When socketed in helms, opals will increase your maximum mana based on your level. When you socket an opal in a shield, incoming magic damage will be reduced. Recently a magical spell cast by a chief sorceror has changed the properties of Pyrite (fool's gold) dramatically- it is now a valuable aid to spellcasters. When socketed in weapons (usually Orbs, Staves, Wands, or Scepters) it allows spells to be cast faster. When you use Pyrite on Helms, it will increase your energy based on your level. Pyrite in shields will heal you over time. The dark green Kelgon is firmly rooted in the physical world. In weapons it will increase your accuracy greatly, in helms it will increase your health based on your level. And in Shields it will reduce incoming Physical damage. The star shaped gemstone Starga is symbolic of life- and shows it. It will arm your weapons with venomous poison and increased damage, or protect you from the three elements (cold, fire, lightning) in armor and shields. When inserted into helms, Starga will greatly add to the lifeforce of your character, adding vitality based on level. *-------* | Plans | *-------* Further rebalancing of skills. More NDX sets. More new affixes. "Superunique" items dropped by particular bosses that get better each difficulty- such as 'The Summoner's Robe' or 'Diablo's Eye.' *----------------------------* | Extra exclusives explained | *----------------------------* Armswing armors are ancient plates, or capes, fashioned by powerful assassins between assignments, battles, or times of need. Assassins are traditionally trained using very heavy armors, which make arm movement sluggish. These armors that allow the arms to move freely speed up the assassin's attacks by allowing her to shed the heavy plates from her arms. The shadow-magic used to make these armours has an odd effect on any gems placed inside- they give properties more appropriate to weapons than to armour... Wraps are special belts used by Barbarian elders that hide the reagents of their Druidic spells from others. Thus even Barbarian warriors have trouble seeing what they put in these belts, at times. The special magics in these belts sometimes even allow potions to remain hidden, even after the belt is removed. They are imbued to boost the abilities of Barbarian warriors or elders, and have restorative properties. Zzenian boots have been used by Amazons as part of their acrobatic dodging and attacking methods for centuries. The springy material used to make the soles of these boots allows great strides, when used properly by Amazonian warriors. These boots can also aid balance, and provide an Amazon with the means to dodge attacks easily. Shaped specifically to the builds of Amazon alone, Zzenian boots make it far easier to change direction quickly- a critical skill in dodging. Protector plates are imbued especially by the smiths of Zakarum. They allow nought but their zealous crusaders to wear them, and provide boosts to the Holy spells and auras that Crusaders use. These plates also channel the experience of a warrior into extra defensive ability, making it harder for enemies to hit an experienced Crusader in this attire. Assassin Shaken, Stars, and Shuriken are specifically designed to complement her ingenious trap devices. The longer an Assassin throws Shuriken for, the more likely she is to grasp advanced concepts to do with her traps. When thrown properly, Shuriken can even halt the advance of close-ranged threats. Cords lined with magical stones and gems are traditional among sorceresses, allowing them to focus their mana on certain skills, and to cast spells faster. They are also designed with space for up to 16 potions. Like the wraps of the Barbarians, they are designed to hide the potions the wearer possesses, to fool enemies. Oftentimes even when the belt is removed, a sorceress will find that the potions she had previously placed in it mysteriously fall into empty spaces in her belt... Mystical discs have recently been crafted by some of the best mage-smiths of the land, and it has taken little time for the Sorceresses to adopt them to aid their spellcasting, mana storage, and mana siphoning abilities. Boots smithed by the ingenious Laryan inventors using tensile vines have allowed the Barbarian art of leaping and attacking while leaping to be perfected further, and also allowed Barbarians to steady themselves more quickly after attacks. Just months ago, the Amazon guildmasters that meet deep in the basin of their jungle island crafted a variety of gloves designed to allow faster use, and greater proficiency at Amazonian combat skills. One of the glove designs is even said to be made of sponge found deep in the rivers of the Amazon, and the tough leather of the Habi'arya Jungle Apes. The way Druidic magic works allows a Druid in close contact with natural materials a greater proficiency at their powers. For generations Druids less skilled in the art of combat and spellcasting have gathered at their great tree, and using materials collected by their more adventurous brothers, have crafted aids such as these Leafweave Gloves to increase spellcasting potency, and speed. They should also allow shapeshifters to change form faster, and perhaps even remain shifted for longer. *--------------------------* | The story behind the mod | *--------------------------* Merely a few weeks ago, your companion, Xas, had delivered the final blow to the Lord of Destruction himself. Making your way back home, closer to the lands of the west, odd things began happening. "Perhaps this is Tyrael's work," you thought to yourself, remembering that he had said his destruction of the worldstone would change the world dramatically. Wildly growing trees, perhaps afraid of the evil beforehand, had grown over many of the paths back to your home. But somehow, in a mere two weeks, you had made it through the western pass. But last night... it was somehow strange. The sun had dawned early, and far brighter than you were used to. But that wasn't what was odd. The dawn had been blue. And it was quite blinding. For a few minutes you couldn't see a thing... but when your vision returned, the demons were there, once again. You made a quick dash to the one place you thought could be safe- The old Rogue Encampment. To your surprise, it wasn't abandoned, and the rogues were awaiting your arrival once again. The destruction of the worldstone had allowed Tyrael the energy to start the battle again. But this time, you would win. You could feel it. Baal would be wise to run. *-------* | Notes | *-------* This mod is aimed at adding new things and rebalancing flaws in Blizzard's patches that will eventually be fixed in (probably) a different way. It also serves to make nightmare more accessable to casual players. Do not attempt to run a 'classic' New Dawn character without using New Dawn 'classic' in your Diablo II classic backup directory. There are likely to be bugs in this version. Please email them to me or contact me about them by ICQ, or some other method. My email is 54x@planetdiablo.com, and my ICQ number is 32987700. (occasionally I have trouble with this email. If you don't get a reply for two weeks or so, send mail to awl_54x@yahoo.com. I'm slow at replying at either adress, anyway) This mod is a joint effort between 54x, Sozotrunks, NOLSireno, Zeek, etc... and would not be possible without the help of everyone at Phrozenkeep! (http://www.planetdiablo.com/phrozenkeep/) The credits contain an expanded list of everyone who contributed to this mod.