It needs to be tested and finely tuned for balance, but I think it is close to finished. Download link at the bottom

General
- Changed minimum spawn to 8 players hp multiplier set at 350%
- Maximum resistances reverted to 75% from 85%
- Maximum damage reduction reverted to 50% from 60%
- Fixed boss drops, they drop all uniques again
- Boss locations reverted to normal places
- Bosses have new attacks that HU has never seen
- Remade/Reverted Baal Chamber map changes
- Reverted Arreat Summit map changes
- Reverted Mephistos Chamber
- Reverted Durance of Blood
- Remade/Reverted Catacombs of Anguish
- Reverted Arreat Andariel's Chamber
- Remade/Reverted The Sandy Hollows


- Buffed "old skills" based on 1.3 values

- Greatly rebalanced life on Characters

Class..........Life per level.....Life per Vitality
Barbarian......40...............7
Paladin........35...............7
Amazon.........35...............7
Assassin.......35...............7
Druid..........30...............7
Necromancer ...30...............7
Sorceress......30...............7


Class.........Level 101, 500 Base vitality, No gear
Barbarian.....7500
Paladin.......7000
Amazon........7000
Assassin......7000
Druid.........6500
Necromancer...6500
Sorceress.....6500
Werewolf......7500
Werebear......7750


Monsters
- Reduced boss attack rating based on my previous changes so that high defense has more impact when tanking a boss
- Bosses returne to their original locations
- Buffed physical attacks by 30% of 1.3 values
- Revamped several boss skills
- Added new boss attacks

Hirelings
- Increased Hitpoints to be similar to player values; a1 and a3 have 7000 base hp at level 100; a2 and a5 have 9000 base hp at level 100
- Merc base stats are now the same whether you hire them in normal, nm or hell
- Rebalanced merc skills, all mercs should have a smooth power curve now
- A2 and a5 combat mercs have a buff to increase their dmg%, ar% and def% similar to wolf and bear mercs
- A5 combat merc now has berserk and merc frenzy (gives no dr% deals 3/4 weapon damage with a 1/3 weapon damage nova)
- Physical Rogue is back; she has magic arrow and merc shot; reduced merc shot from 3/4 to 1/2 weapon damage


Cube Recipes
- you can now craft using a crafted item instead of a blue
- Added cube recipe to downgrade runes: 1 rune = 1 lower grade rune (making 1 rune = 2 lower runes would trivialize the farming aspect of runes)
- Elite Crafted Melee Weapon + Zod rune = make the item ethereal
- Magic weapon/armor -> normal quality; magic weapon/armor + mithril hammer + adamant hammer + jewel = same item type as normal quality

Items
- Armors with 150 str requirement or higher can spawn with hp% and dr% as a magical affix.
- 150-160 str = 12-15% hp; 12-13 dr%
- 161-169 str = 16-20% hp; 13-14 dr%
- 170-180 str = 21-25% hp; 14-15 dr%
- 200+ str = 26-30% hp; 15-17 dr%

- Wirts jewel now -5% requirements
- removed -requirement mod from affix pool
- Rubies now give only a flat hp bonus
- Added 30% hp auto mod to 2handed axes, mauls, spears and polearms (some uniques do not have this bonus example: spellsteal) twohanded swords do not have this bonus beacause generally only barbs use them as a 1 hander
- Increased cap on life replenish
- hp% mod is exclusive to torso armor and 2 handed melee weapons with some exeptions
- Completely new set items (as seen in my other thread)
- Revamped Runewords (as seen in my other thread)
- Edited 99% of Unique items
- Removed most OSkill party buffs and auras from items
- Items with piercing attack show the % chance to pierce now
- Removed ctc amp from helms and added it to gloves instead
- CB affixes on 2 handed magic/rare mauls, polearms, spears, axes can roll higher than 1 handed weapons
- Increased quality of all rune drops, addtionallu Countess and Nihlathak have been increased as well
- Countess can drop Eth-Sol in normal, Ko-Gul in NM, Mal-Ber in Hell (25.86% chance for lowest quality and 1.72% for the highest)
- Nilathak can drop Lum-Ist in Normal, Um-Sur in NM, Gul-Cham in Hell (25.86% chance for lowest quality and 1.72% for the highest)
- Removed Soul, Crystal and Scarlet bands, will add them back as random drops later. (I don't like the idea of guarenteed drops from a boss that you have limited access to during the game; the drops either have to be overowered so they make all other items useless or they are underpowered and at that point why even have them. They seem uneccessary as well since I balanced this mod around not having them.)


Class Charms
- Ama unchanged
- Bar 25% DS -> 2% ele absorb
- Sor 25 all res -> 5% ele pierce
- Pal 100%undead/demon dmg -> 4% DR
- Nec unchanged
- Dru 50 mana regen -> 35% fhr
- Ass 25% ias -> 40% PLR

Health Potion
- Restores 33% maximum life + strength*8 life over 6 seconds

Mana Potion
- Restores 33% maximum mana + energy*8 + 60 over 5 seconds

Diamonds
- Reduced PDR and MDR early game and buffed it endgame

Skulls
- Now give 1-3% magic resistance, Hp Regen, Mana Regen

Small Charm
- Maximum life bonus from 20 to 40

Large Charm
- Maximum life bonus from 35 to 75

Grand Charm
- Maximum life bonus from 50 to 110

Return Tome
- Challenge bonus changed to 100 maximum life per difficulty

Arrows and Bolts
- all arrows and bolt now have replenish
- Now spawn with same properties as grand charms
- Addtionally they can spawn with Ias, ele and magic pierce, life and mana steal and frw
- Now have a chance to spawn with 1-2 Bow and Crossbow/Passive skills

Crossbows
- No longer spawn ethereal
- Increased base damage by 50%
- all crossbows spawn with 20-25% pierce

Bows
- No longer spawn ethereal
- Increased base damage by 50%

Throwing Weapons
- all throwing weapons spawn with 40-50% pierce
- Fixed Rep Dur from spawning on throwing weapons

Characters

Poison Skills
- I changed the way the poison length scales on the following skills:
- Poison Strike
- Poison Javelin
- Disease Spray
- Rabies
- The poison duration of these skills start at 8.08 seconds at level one and are lowered by .12 seconds per skill level after skill level 16. At skill level 50 they have a 4.08 second duration. This is so that as you get stronger and gain more pierce to reduce enemy PLR you still must regularly re-apply your poison every 4-5 seconds instead of every 10 seconds. Since the duration starts at 8.08 seconds and scales down slowly this actually helps poison builds early while reducing their incredibly safe mid and late game.

Amazon

Poison Javelin
- Now a melee skill similar to poison strike; it has no cloud since amazons are inherently more durable than necromancers

Disease Spray
- Now releases a poison cloud that has about 66% of the dps of poison javelin

Plague Javelin
- Releases a Poison nova on hit with damage slightly weaker than poison nova due to the larger aoe this skills has

Strategy
- Removed health bonus

Evade
- Fixed resitance synergy from Strategy

Guided Arrow
- Removed delay

Decoy
- 50% of caster hp + 2%/level
- 10 second duration / 10 second skill timer

Valkyrie
- slightly reduced durability and damage
- casts innersight on attack of equal power to the casters

Magic Arrow
- Synergies are now Inner Sight and Valkyrie at 15%

Charged Strike
- Synergy capped at 800%
- Lightning Strike gives 40% synergy per level (now it is possible to build a pure melee lightning zon without wasting skill points)

Lightning Strike
- Charged Strike is the only synergy now at 20% (now it is possible to build a pure melee lightning zon without wasting skill points)

Assassin

Fade
- Removed health bonus
- Removed dr% (it seems over kill with the higher hp now)
- Reduced max cursed reduction to 50%

Barbarian

Frenzy
- Deals 5/4 Weapons Damage
- Attack speed max increased to 100%
- duration reduced to 10 seconds

Shout
- Base duration to 180 seconds

Battle Orders
- Reduced gain from soft points to 1% hp/mana/stamina per 5 soft points

Increased Stamina
- No longer provides health bonus
- Added 4 life per kill per level

Battle Command
- Removed life steal
- Added 1 magic pierce per 2 hard points

Battle Cry
- Now available at level 36

War Cry
- Now available at level 28
- Synergies changed to Battle Orders and Battle Command
- Added blvl/2 magic pierce

Gale Force
- Now available at level 1

Increased Speed
- Removed Ias

Sword Mastery -> Flurry
- 10-40% IAS

Polearm Mastery -> Blood of the Ancients
- 10+1% PLR per lvl

Spear Mastery -> Impale
- 10-40% Openwounds


Druid

Feral Rage
- Dmg scaling and stun of maul
- Same lifesteal and run speed

Maul
- removed dmg% and stun
- Main hit deals 1/2 weapon damage
- Deals 1/3 weapon damage to enemies in front of you

Werewolf
- 0-50% Critical Strike
- 75% + 15% damage per level
- 75% + 15% defense per level
- 60% + 25% attack rating per level
- blvl*clvl/2 health bonus
- 30 life replenish per base level of Lycanthropy

Werebear
- 0-50% Critical Strike
- 100% + 20% damage per level
- 100% + 20% defense per level
- 30% + 15% attack rating per level
- (5+blvl)*clvl/2 health bonus
- 40 life replenish per base level of Lycanthropy

Lycanthropy
- Added life replenish for wolf and bear form

Oak Sage
- HP Bonus reduced to 4%+1%HP per 4 soft points

Wolverine
- Removed summon hp buff

Summons
- Totally reworked Wolves and Bear. They are now indpendent skills with no synergies, and they each have a different effect.

Grizzly Bear
- Added area damage; deals 1/3 weapon damage to a small area

Spirit Wolf
- Added spectral hit; max of 3, buffed stats

Dire Wolf
- Added very small stun on attack

Necromancer

Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit
- reverted old synergies; if people think bone necros are too strong early game then there are other ways to adjust it that doesn't restrict skill points

Iron Maiden
- reduced magic res reduction to 1% per hard point for a max of 10; bone necros do not really need more pierce now it is an added bonus for going full damage and less of a must have skill for magic builds

Poison Dagger
- Removed health bonus

Bone Armor
- Increased bone armor scaling from 50+25 to 200+75

Golems
-increased base damage by 50%
- buffed clay/blood golems damage more in NM and Hell to be closer to iron/fire golems

Paladin

- Moved the bonus damage for FoH to Concentration and it is now part of the actually aura; so if you have 2 paladins only one needs to run concentration and both the the bonus damage for FoH

Holy Shield
- Removed health bonus
- Added 50 life replenish + 25 life replenish per level

Zeal
- increased ed% to 100%+20%

Sacrifice
- Deals 3/2 Weapon Damage

Vengeance
- Updated graphics

Holy Fire
- Added Attack Speed based on soft points in Fanaticism
- Added sLvl/2 fire pierce if bLvl greater than 10 for Paladin only

Holy Frost
- Added Attack Speed based on soft points in Fanaticism
- Added sLvl/2 cold pierce if bLvl greater than 10 for Paladin only

Holy Shock
- Added Attack Speed based on soft points in Fanaticism
- Added sLvl/2 lightning pierce if bLvl greater than 10 for Paladin only

Sorceress

Firewave
- Increased range
- Increased number of missiles

Masteries
- Reduced absorb from 1 per base level to 1 per 4 base levels

Hydra
- removed delay
- cap of 2 hydras (6 heads)
- 8 second duration

Energy Shield
- Max Mana bonus reduced to 2.5%+0.5%/lvl

Ice Bolt
- Synergy from Chilling Armor moved back to Cold Mastery

Mraw Patch Download Run with -direct -txt

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nice work sir, should name spear mastery sodomy since impale is already taken

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I'll rename it Rend

- Items with piercing attack show the % chance to pierce now

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Awesome ill try it tommorrow and keep you informed if there is something

Just finished some more changes:

- Finished buffing weak unique items

- Removed ctc amp from helms and added it to gloves instead

- CB affixes on 2 handed magic/rare mauls, polearms, spears, axes can roll higher than 1 handed weapons

Class Charms
- Ama unchanged
- Bar 25% DS -> 1% CB
- Sor 25 all res -> 2% ele absorb
- Pal 100%undead/demon dmg -> 3% DR
- Nec unchanged
- Dru 50 mana regen -> 35% fhr
- Ass 25% ias -> 40% PLR

Arrows and Bolts
- all arrows and bolt now have replenish
- Addtionally they can spawn with Ias, ele and magic pierce, life and mana steal and frw

Crossbows
- all crossbows spawn with 20-25% pierce

Throwing Weapons
- all throwing weapons spawn with 40-50% pierce

Grizzly Bear
- increased level 1 damage to 40-120

Spirit Wolf
- increased tier 4 and 5 damage by 15%
- increased base hp and def by 50%
- added spectral hit

Dire Wolf
-increased tier 4 and 5 damage by 15%
-increased base hp and def by 50%

Bone Armor
- Increased bone armor scaling from 50+25 to 200+75

Golems
- increased base damage by 50%
- buffed clay/blood golems damage more in NM and Hell to be closer to iron/fire golems

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doin a clean playthru on single player for this patch. its really refreshing so far!

yes, its fun, i tried a quick test on vengeance and i think its broken

new items are fun

I have been playing through as well and testing enemies and bosses. I am at norm dury so far. Been making adjustments. Overall I have made a1 and a2 enemies hit harder since hp scales quicker than before early game. I will upload a fresh file soon and you can see.

Vengeance was not changed, only the animation is different.

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I updated the link in the first post. Balanced bosses a bit more up to norm dury

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left flail dropping council member suicides (stone skin one).

belial in flayer dungeon 3 doesnt spawn the tp to get the flail piece.

edit - belial appears to be lvl 60 in flayer dungeon. hes dropping a5+ uniques and took a real long time to kill.

I will add em to the list. Thanks

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ive been playing this on openbnet with ao2005, so anyone interested in trying the patch out can join in at any time. i'm quite impressed by the huge amount of changes, including the fact that almost every boss has several new skills. my only gripe so far is that bosses might need a bit of extra power, but that can always be adjusted in small increments.

on my way...

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Im level 59, should be geared enough for baal, at AW wp. Ill be on later. I do agree the bosses need to be buffed, i like when im scared to go at a boss, but we are playing sc, but at the same time we got a dexzon and sorc.

I agree, but i havent tested as much as you. If a boss is weak tell me what attacks seem weak and i will edit them. Thanks for the help testing guys.

Edit: I fixed the two bugs you found and updated the link.

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baphoment crashes game.

pleasantly surprised by nm. bosses do fair dmg compared to norm.

Fixed

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Throwing weapons still seem to have a problem replenishing when a repair durability over time mod is present. Thanks for the hard work!

I will double check magic affixes. Maybe i missed something.

Edit: Found and fixed the problem. Thanks

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I've been messing with my own changes since I was introduced to HU a month ago, and I just discovered some of these issues a few days ago and was about to start working on them. You've done a better job than I would have. :)

For some reason flawless diamonds are buggy for me. The damage reduced by # is fluctuating rapidly between 4 and 5.

Fixed it, thanks.

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I installed the files from this thread but can't seem to join the OpenBNet game that's up. Are you guys using a different fileset?

My Bnet ID is *SakujoNoJidai, chara is SakujoNoJidai

(Edited to change chara name. Made a new one specifically for Mraw's patch.)

Edit2: These are mods to the 1.14d patch, right?

Edit3: Do I need to rename my subdirectories to match the case of the patch files? (e.g. my Patch_D2.mpq for 1.14d has "local" but this patch has "LOCAL".)

Edit4: Perhaps it has to do with me using D2SE? I made a copy of my D2SE 1.14d Patch_D2.mpq and overwrote the changed files with Mraw's stuff (by building new .bins from the .txts, then replacing the whole lot). All of my folders are still named according to the normal HU1.14d names (e.g. "local").

hi saku , i think they are just using arimyths server and making open games on there.

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'may the force be with you' - Yoda??

Yeah, I meant on Open. There was a game, and I couldn't join it. I had no problems hosting my own with the new files, though.

Edit: And I'm sure it isn't a router/firewall/etc issue. I've been playing other games on Open with other people before now.

that person probably had a different patch or didnt have ports open

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szak spider still spawns inside anya tp where acaste used to be.

Fixed it, Thanks. I will update the files soon with some more changes and fixes.

Edit:

Made some updates:

Class Charms
- Bar 25% DS -> 2% ele absorb
- Sor 25 all res -> 5% ele pierce
- Pal 100%undead/demon dmg -> 4% DR

Return Tome
- Challenge bonus changed to 3% maximum life per difficulty

Poison Skills
- I changed the way the poison length scales on the following skills:
- Poison Strike
- Poison Javelin
- Disease Spray
- Rabies
- The poison duration of these skills start at 8.08 seconds at level one and are lowered by .12 seconds per skill level after skill level 16. At skill level 50 they have a 4.08 second duration. This is so that as you get stronger and gain more pierce to reduce enemy PLR you still must regularly re-apply your poison every 4-5 seconds instead of every 10 seconds. Since the duration starts at 8.08 seconds and scales down slowly this actually helps poison builds early while reducing their incredibly safe mid and late game.

Amazon

Poison Javelin
- Now a melee skill similar to poison strike; it has no cloud since amazons are inherently more durable than necromancers

Disease Spray
- Now releases a poison cloud that has about 66% of the dps of poison javelin

Plague Javelin
- Releases a Poison nova on hit with damage slightly weaker than poison nova due to the larger aoe this skills has

Decoy
- 50% of caster hp + 2%/level
- 10 second duration / 10 second skill timer

Valkyrie
- slightly reduced durability and damage
- casts innersight on attack of equal power to the casters

Barbarian

Frenzy
- Deals 3/2 Weapons Damage
- Attack speed max increased to 100%
- duration reduced to 10 seconds

Druid

Wolverine
- Removed summon hp buff

Summons
- Totally reworked Wolves and Bear. They are now indpendent skills with no synergies, and they each have a different effect.

Grizzly Bear
- Added area damage; deals 1/3 weapon damage to a small area

Spirit Wolf
- Added spectral hit

Dire Wolf
- Added very small stun on attack

Sorceress

Masteries
- Reduced absorb from 1 per base level to 1 per 4 base levels

Hydra
- removed delay
- cap of 2 hydras (6 heads)
- 8 second duration

See first post to download

If anyone out there is testing it I would like to see how summons builds and psn builds are doing with these changes. Thanks to everyone who is helping.

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I may have missed it, but I can't seem to get a physical rouge to spawn in a1. Is it NM only, or did I miss a previous edit that removed them?

works for me. make sure you run it with -direct -txt

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Ohh I am. I don't know, I tried to re-install it and it still didn't work. Meh... I want one so bad! :< lol.

EDIT: Also, I just did a fresh install and they still aren't there... odd?

wow its been a blast so far. although we've been having to use weaken with 30~ ish sorb to fight some bosses (maybe a lot for norm dunno) but nova and i made it to normal baal. thats where the train ended.. multi ele was quite powerful and i had no means of stacking 30 dual sorb on my sin. we'll have to re group and go from there!

I can tone norm down a bit. I don't think normal should be super hard are require tons of perfect gear. NM and Hell should be where the real challenge is.

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Which bosses did you find were a bit too strong so far?


Edit: Updated link with some skill desc fixes and some other bug fixes. Also balanced druid summons so their damage does not scale too quickly.


- Increased quality of all rune drops, addtionally Countess and Nihlathak have been increased as well
- Countess can drop Eth-Sol in normal, Ko-Gul in NM, Mal-Ber in Hell (25.86% chance for lowest quality and 1.72% for the highest)
- Nilathak can drop Lum-Ist in Normal, Um-Sur in NM, Gul-Cham in Hell (25.86% chance for lowest quality and 1.72% for the highest)


- Added cube recipe to downgrade runes: 1 rune = 1 lower grade rune (making 1 rune = 2 lower runes would trivialize the farming aspect of runes)

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^ Nice changes!

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I was playing a zealer, and Pious an assassin. We may differ on which bosses were too strong, but here is what I thought.

Going through a1-2, things hit hard but it's not going to be a game stopper. Things start to get real when you get to General. We even went back and tested him when I was level 59 with max light res, and 20+ lightning absorb and 80+ dr/mdr. He was still hitting me for over 1k a pop with his sky lightning attack. Mephisto has one or two attacks (I'm not sure which ones) that are about the same.

For A4, the TP boss on bridge (his name eludes me at the moment.). When he uses his lightning that goes in a 360 degree radius, anything close to him is going to take multiple hits. It would eat through 4k life with 15 light absorb/max res each time he would use it. For the seal bosses, they all have one or two attacks that would do insane damage. Moloch's sky poison for instance is just something that would obliterate us. Desis's lightning was also extremely painful. You would have to ask Pious for Diablo and the other seal boss.

For A5, I went straight through with Dan. Ancients were okay. The first real pain we encountered was Guardian. The issue with guardian is when he uses his fireball throw (I think it's the same one diablo uses, like a fire orb) because he's multy shot he throws three of them. They are -extremely- painful. With stacked fire res/absorb they would nearly kill me each time he threw it.

Baal waves. This is where it got fun! The first wave didn't seem too harsh. There was one or two hard hits but that's to be expected. Glaysha had a very painful attack. We think it was her version of a sky attack, it looked like someone throwing a ton of rocks. It would hit for 2-3k each time. Baphomet was the same way. He had one or two attacks that would just do an insane amount of damage, but we had to insanely stack light res and absorb which is normal for him I think. I think the real broken boss is the fire wave. We decided to be extra careful for him after Baphomet. We each had 20+ fire absorb (I had over 30) and insane maxed fire res. Nothing could have broken it for normal Baal. When we were fighting him, his fire nova would do 1.5k-2k damage each time he would cast it. It would hit for 1/2 or more each time.

Now it may seem like I'm bitching a lot about the elemental damage stuff, but please keep this in mind. I was playing a paladin and using not only gemmed absorb shields for these fights, but also the corresponding resistance aura for the extra absorbs. I couldn't tank with very good gear for my level even with 20+ absorb and max resistance. I would loose 3/4 or more of my life with each attack in A3-4, and at least 1/2 in A5 when we were super stacked.

Now for Baal. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was sad once we got there. We couldn't tell what all he was using, but I know that his immo arrow is insane. You take multiple arrows at close range when he uses that attack. Makes it impossible to melee him without risking death. I know Dan was doing a lot more to him than I was so he will be able to give you better feedback in regards to the rest for him.

have bosses been buffed since pious and i's first run through?

since i basically boosted nova thru a1-a3 i'll give the run down.

a1: andy's poison rain is a bit ouch during the first encounter. i tried her with a barb and suffered heavily, then used the clawblock sin and found it considerably easier. point being, with the new hp values normalized the zon avoid for spells and the sin clawblock for spells make them by far the best tanks in the game. no1 else will compare except maybe a salvation pally because of the massive absorbs.

a2: seemed fairly straight forward. nothing really outrageous.

a3: general is ow. but given that hes so near a wp thats kind of OK. meph is even more ouch. most instances of fire/lightning rain that hits the ground for lots of DOT dmg hurt a lot.

a4: diablo's fire rain from the sky hurts. moloch poison rain hurts. seis lit rain hurts. left seal boss didnt seem to hurt mysin much but merc melted fast. bridge boss with 360 lit is harsh in melee range.

a5:the 4th baal wave fire nova was absolutely punishing. by far the nastiest attack of any baal wave. the biggest issue i encountered with baal is that i could no longer abuse clawblock to tank him. hoarfrost knocks me back and while i'm being pushed that is considered movement so i eat full dmg. in combination with immo arrow + hoar frost i was getting virtually destroyed so we had to abort. this was with weaken and i was wearing about 24% fire sorb, no cold sorb. granted i could improve the hp a bit on gear but i found myself wondering if any other melee would stand a chance at all given how effective clawblock is.

ao2005: when we played sc the decoy tanked everything and we just kited. if you try playing on hc with a melee you'll see just how much dmg the bosses can really dish out. i believe kiting builds have a clear advantage except vs bosses that teleport on you as a counter. also remember that the hp difference between your sorc and say a barb will be virtually nil, so when you'd get wrecked by some spells while kiting any other melee will just get demolished trying to face-tank it. our judgement was very clouded with those chars we had on sc!

edit: nova died to deseis on his din and remade. we are playing hc.

Thanks, guys. I will make some changes. I will leave clawblock alone for now. I agree it can be very strong, but it has weaknesses that shields do not have.

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Okay, I made some changes to the bosses you gave feedback on and reduced their power to a hopefully good place.

Updated download link.

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Not sure how much you nerfed Glaysha... I just got 1 hit PK'ed by her. :\

Hmm all i did was reduce her skill levels. Do you know what spell killed you or was it a combo of different spells all hitting at once?

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It's whatever skill that falls from the sky with her. I don't know what it's called.

The rocks or the cold one?

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its difficult to tell which one it was that killed nova. the new spells have a very flashy graphic so seeing exactly what did the KO isnt easy. my merc + nova were killing minions, so soon as they finished em both came over and starting chopping away at glashya. almost immediately after the fireworks started flying (presumably counters) and thats what killed both.

with a big gear overhaul i took out baal. seems like a very well geared sin can do it alone in normal, though we'll see how things turn out in nm.

edit: baal wave 1 has a pretty laggy psn counter too. dropped my fps by a lot.

I will reduce the chance of counters a bit for bosses.

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Congrats on Baal Dan!

I'll be honest, I've enjoyed playing this patch with Dan (And I will continue to do so) but sadly I think unless I make an assassin, melee characters are out for now. The counter damage/spell damage is so great that it's pretty much impossible to play melee. Without the ability to block spells, the damage they take is just too high while having to use weaken. I love zealers, but being able to tank bosses with them is meh. I will give a sorc or amazon a try next

I am glad you guys are giving feedback. I will redesign the bosses so that melee do not take a ton of damage while trying to make bosses hard if you do not have a tank. I love playing melee and i want the to be viable, so dont worry. Thanks for helping.

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I believe I've found two bugs with the amazon. When I use Valkyrie she uses some kind of spell that lowers the physical resistance of everything nearby, including me. Also, the all resistance skill for perfection doesn't work.

Valk is casting inner sight, which i think should be removed. Amp>low level inner sight. Inner sight doesnt stack with curses

I will look into it

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the all resist bonus from perfection applies to valks, which makes them rainbow immune after enough levels invested.

rip lvl 58 frenzy barb to diablo normal! 6.4k hp fight lasted about 10 seconds. yea i feel for melees atm that arent sins or zons.

I fixed the perfection res problem and removed inner sight from valks.

I am working on rebalancing bosses so tanks become important and kiting is a lot less effective for soft ranged characters.

I didn't update the DL link yet but I will soon.

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Also, here's a suggestion for you If you're going to limit it to two hydras, you should probably put it back to fireball instead of firebolt. Only having one hydra really limits the usability of the character.

I didn't make the change that limited it to 2. To clarify when i say 2 hydras, that means 6 heads total since they are spawned in groups of e heads. I also suspect that hydras will continue to be a very strong skill because they do no cause counters directed towards the caster, but if you test it and can tell me for sure they need to be buffed then I will.

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Just wanted to pop in here and say thanks for continuing to work on this. Median released a new patch so I downloaded it to see what Median is like, and I much prefer HU. Getting HU to a state that is both fun and playable on servers is very much appreciated.

Median is great a great mod that adds a lot of crazy stuff, but I think HU is much more enjoyable. I like HU because it stays closer to its D2 roots and I want to keep it that way.

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- re-designed the act boss and baal minons fight

-reduced the attack rating of bosses so that high defense has more of an impact for tanks

- added 30% hp auto mod to all 2handed axes, mauls, spears, polearms (with some exceptions)

- increased the % hp bonus on all unique and set tank chest armor

- changed rubies to a flat hp bonus

see OP for new download link

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New patch gives all my characters bad inventory data.

yea my chars appear busted too, and it doesnt appear to be related to rubies or 2 handers either because some of my mules have both and still work.

Here is some research I did for ya. I went through and did some digging swapping items and what not, and I had 5 characters that were bugged. Removing items (not armors) that had %life on it seemed to fix my issues. I removed bloodfist, chromatic ire, ring of truth, and isenhearts boots and that fixed them. It could be an issue with %life on items other than armors. Hope that helps.

whoops,my bad should be fixed now. download some new files.

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ok we're good then.

Getting a ton of more errors now. Bad hireling, bad dead bodies... lol?

That tends to happen when you change items, the real question is can you make a new char and it works fine.

I should also mention that I can load my older characters with no problems.

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are you playing open on realm? id join for a couple of hours.

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'may the force be with you' - Yoda??

Before I go lay back down I thought I would post this. I figured out what was bugging my two main chars. The insight r/w on my sorc had her merc bugged. I just emptied the pole-arm and remade it with the new patch and it was fine. Also a goldskin I had on my amazon was bugged out, had to toss that bad boy all is good now.

Glad you were able to save your chars.

Updated the download link:

Items
- Armors with 150 str requirement or higher can spawn with hp% and dr% as a magical affix. Hp% is based on str req.
- 150-160 str = 12-14% hp
- 161-169 str = 15-17% hp
- 170-180 str = 18-20% hp
- 200+ str = 23-25% hp

- Wirts jewel now -5% requirements
- removed -requirement mod from affix pool
- hp% mod is exclusive to torso armor and 2 handed melee weapons with some exceptions

Return Tome
- Challenge bonus changed to 100 maximum life per difficulty

Assassin

Fade
- Removed health bonus
- Removed dr% (it seems over kill with the higher hp now)

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so just to clarify, maul does not work in conjunction with ferale rage and fury in wolform correct? there is no green ball on wolf anymore.

also...lycan only gives 3 regen per lvl and nothing else correct? it says it adds life,but it doesnt.

The dmg and stun from maul was added to feral rage and maul was turned into an aoe melee attack. It still works in wolfform.

I fixed the lycan description error, It will be fixed in my next update. Thanks.

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I am playing through on a melee bear druid and the boss attack rating reduction really helps melee stand toe to toe with a boss when you stack defense even when you do not have block.

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What else was changed? Every single character I have now has a bad inventory data and I can't fix it. Do you have any idea what might be bugging them out?

did you get rid of your old return tome?

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No, but not all of them have a return tome. Like my level 24 barb has very little on him and he's corrupt too.

I increased the cap on flat hp so that it can be used in place of hp% on items so that hp% is more effective for tank chars.
That is likely the cause. If you can get rid of all the items with +life (it will probably be most items you have, sorry) and re-find them, then it should be fixed.

Sorry if this causes you to lose a lot of items, but that comes with the territory of testing a patch like this that changes so much.

Edit: If it makes any difference, I do not predict any more changes that will corrupt inv data.

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Well I removed everything with +life (including charms) from my amazon and she works. WHY did her bow have to have +5 life on it D: sadface... I suppose it's time to go through all the chars and remove +life items. Thanks for throwing that out there

:::EDIT:::

For anyone upgrading to this patch that already has characters, everything with +life has to go. Charms, rubied gear (I just hammered out my rubies), everything. Not ditching all of these items will cause characters to get BID.

love the new blood mana curse!

It's absolutely evil! Really keeps you paying attention in places like WSK.

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- Fixed boss drops, they drop all uniques again

Paladin

- Moved the bonus damage for FoH to Concentration and it is now part of the actually aura; so if you have 2 paladins only one needs to run concentration and both the the bonus damage for FoH

Holy Fire, Holy Frost, Holy Shock
- Added Attack Speed based on soft points in Fanaticism

Assassin

Fade
- Reduced max cursed reduction to 50%

- some more minor item adjustments

See OP for download link

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-5 on wirts joolz is too op i think
-30 -30 -20 -20 + gheeds and the amount of gold inner gives, thats insane

im playing right now if anyone wants to hop on

-5 requierments

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o
edit: im dumb

darkness cold meteor in normal 1 shot druid with 8k hp, also 1 shot merc with 10k hp. considering how much more dmg it does than baal i'd think it needed a small adjustment.

Oops, never meant for it to deal so much damage. I reworked it and it is working properly now, may change the graphics in the future but for now it is working as intended.

OP download link has been updated.

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game crashes when i try creating a new sorc

I'm not having this problem. Anyone else having this issue?

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no problems makin the soso here.

I am having a lot of fun playing a Holy Shock paladin. It finally feels like a viable build.

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hellforge dragon in nm suicides

I already fixed it, just didn't upload a new file yet. Thanks.

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are the challenges still in this patch?

the tome of return was a great idea, and I realize the max resistances are gone.. but is it replaced?

yes, they add 100 hp each

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moloch's poison might need an adjustment. even with sob its still obscenely powerful.

I will adjust it a little. I assume it is the acid rain that hurts so much, yeah?

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the rain is nasty, but pretty sure its the nova. doing hit and run and completely avoiding the rain was still crazy.

the unique grim scythe has some issues: when you are shifted and try to summon the skeleton archers, you roll back, also when you summon them and then shift. The weapon also does not have % hp like most other 2handers.

maul still says it works with wolf, this should be deleted from the sentence as it encourages fury druids to waste points.

so far its been a great mod, its fresh like season one hu, there are a lot of fun surprises. normal makes you feel its really easy, then nm bosses give you a throat punch even when heavily geared.

lycanthropy is useless in its present state. thats fine with me if thats intended, just letting you know.

i like that you crushed bo and oak. it makes teams more varied instead of forcing the common bar/dru/nec team. consider replacing oak with something new and fresh. it is very fun using how though!

I adjusted moloch a little, he seems okay now in normal. How is he in NM and hell?

Maul is supposed to work with wolf.

lycan is just a place filler passive now, i didn't want to add anything too powerful since druids don't need more free stats. It is a nice bonus to have though when you have high defense and do not take hits often, though.

I added hp% to grims burning dead and fixed the issue for summoning skeletons in wolf and bear form.

I will upload updated files later and let you know.

Thanks

edit: Got any ideas on what to change oak into?

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aura based:

Attack Speed
small elemental absorb
group life/mana leech
defense bonus
magic/gold find
resistances
+skills
keep it at a small life%
faster cast rate
faster block rate (meh)



Random ideas

give it damaging auras... like holy shock,fire,ice or give it a psn aura
-negative modifiers on enemies such as -res -defense
slows enemies (although holy freeze would do this)

it was moloch in nm that we were talking about. he stripped 8k of hp right off my druid in a second. This was with sob up. The Szack melee counter bonespears were a fun surprise! 5k per spear. i think they are good though, as they only come from melee counters.

-dont know if he got nerfed but the normal smith was a rapist with his stone fall attack against chars at that level. 1 shot style.

NM-duriel was a good battle! all around i found him to be perfect.

NM-meph was an epically hard fight. mephistos spears make him fairly untankable, but he was still beatable. his lit wasnt much to worry about though.

NM-moloch is a rapist.

oak as an aura would be overpowerd as balls if you could use how with it. making it a sage that has lifeleach and or regen (based on STR like pots) that allows leaching off undead would make it worthy! thats really the ultimate bane of a character that depends on sustain to fight bosses.

Okay, moloch should be okay now. Before his skills where getting synergies from eachother, so it scaled out of control. I swapped poison vortex out for disease spray everything should be okay now.

I nerfed normal smith already.

EDIT:

UPDATE:

- Changed minimum spawn to 8 players hp multiplier set at 400%
- Removed Soul, Crystal and Scarlet bands, will add them back as random drops later. (I don't like the idea of guarenteed drops from a boss that you have limited access to during the game; the drops either have to be overowered so they make all other items useless or they are underpowered and at that point why even have them in the game. They seem uneccessary as well since I balanced this mod around not having them.)

- misc. boss edits and some minor item tweaks

OP download updated

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im liking your modding a lot so far. i would like to propose something as an alternative to the usual optional boss fights for certain charms or overpowered or underpowered items, though i dont know if you can do this.

1.I propose a revamp of the optional side bosses to keep things fresh and staying in line with the rest of this awesome mod. Create new side bosses with specific qualities which have certain themes, for instance one that chases after the lowest hp chars at an alarming speed and uses frenzy.

2.The killing of the optional side bosses directly affect your characters stats if successfully beaten. For the boss above mentioned killing it would permantly give the player a passive runspeed and attack speed buff. normal version would be small,nm more,hell,even more, or the same buff just for each diff. Killing a Phys heavy boss would give like,50 STR permanently.

edit: i havnt fought any of the optional side bosses currently in your mod yet so i cant comment on them at all.

I am all about making boss fights more dynamic and rewarding, but I don't really think free permanent buffs are what HU needs. Free in the sense that you kill the boss, get the buff with no sacrifice to any other stats since you would have them added to a charm that you would carry with you anyway. HU was never balanced around these extra stats and I didn't balance around having them either. I think all it does is add clutter.

The reason people skip bosses like the smith and shenk is because they are not rewarding enough. This can be solved by making them more likely to drop good items by editing their treasure class. For example make smith always drop items that can be a set (no more blues) and give him a guaranteed drop of 2 or 3 rare jewels.

I would farm that.

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I finally made my way to a4 NM so far on my paladin with gear that would take days to farm legitimately. Everything seems okay so far.

Here are some more updates:

- reduced base defense on mercs by a factor of 1/3
- Rebalanced merc skills, all mercs should have a smooth power curve now
- A2 and a5 combat mercs have a buff to increase their dmg%, ar% and def% similar to wolf and bear mercs
- A5 combat merc now has berserk and merc frenzy (gives no dr% deals 3/4 weapon damage with a 1/3 weapon damage nova)

- you can now craft using a crafted item instead of a blue

I may reduce merc hp a little to be more inline with player hp, what does everyone else think?

Download link in OP updated

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i like the idea of having some bosses with specific treasure classes.
any chance you figured out how to change up levels? like drifter cavern/the pit/all of the other temples in a3?
i havent updated for 2 patches yet so havent gotten the merc changes or hp increase, but from what pious and nova said it seems like their mercs were rocking it.
im only in a2 norm with a fury druid but really enjoying it, taking my time.

ctc frozen armor taken off saph crafts?

Yes, I can edit levels. It is something I want to do later, for now I just want to get a good base finished for the game and then add new content.

I did remove ctc FA from crafts a long time ago. Since stacking defense is a lot more useful now having FA proc almost for free was over kill. You can see get it on items like frostburns and fortitude, though.

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i think de seis's LR is broken, if it wasnt id be a dead man. itd be cool to switch static to de seis lightning attack
maybe buff ruby craft + life

diablo was fairly easy, only problem i had was IM + cage, im playing a how fury btw, i think him tossing a meteor would be pretty good, but a cage+meteor might be op, but then again it is diablo..

mistress deathkiss before ice dragon is :DDD

- Added cube recipe to downgrade runes: 1 rune = 1 lower grade rune (making 1 rune = 2 lower runes would trivialize the farming aspect of runes)

- Increased Hitpoints to be similar to player values; a1 and a3 have 7000 base hp at level 100; a2 and a5 have 9000 base hp at level 100
- Merc base stats are now the same whether you hire them in normal, nm or hell

- Updated baal fight again

- I also buffed diablos skill levels some.

See OP for download. Getting close to a finished product I think. How is the testing going?

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I have a feeling that with DR gone from fade, cloak of shadow will become to go-to assassin defense skill. Can anything be done to make the skill less annoying to use?

On one hand the debuff it gives on enemies is absolutely massive, but it only affects a (relatively) small area and doesn't affect bosses. On top of that, the duration is way too massive to be useful on more than a single group of monsters per duration.

Is it possible to make the defense bonus a passive bonus and reducing the CD on cloak of shadow to make it more generally useful? (Or allowing it to be recast while it is still up)

Havent played a lot yet, but I like the skills overall of the first few bosses.

Quivers and bolts. They drop like mad. It kinda overwhelms every other type of magic item on any random section of the map you chose (ya know...like they are everywhere). I know this isn't 'your' doing. It is an outstanding problem from their initial implementation.

They also don't work on mercs. This makes the above more of an annoyance if you are using a melee character in act1 norm, see a million magic/rare bolts that can't even be used on something with a bow.

Don't get me wrong. I like having an entire new class of blues/rares/uniques to play with.

Can we at least fiddle with the treasure classes to not make them drop as much.

Is it even possible to make them useable on mercs? Since they are misc items and mercs have to have right codes that are compatible..blah blah humbug.

edit: Bow mercs 'can' use them, but it switches out the bow itself. Could it be fixed allowing dual weapon only in the right case? This is where i get confused on how arrows are treated.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

we pretty much stopped playing once nm moloch pk'd my paladin on hc with the uber psn. felt amazing overall up to that point.

Use udie2 to unkill yourself

moloch poison was fixed the only thing that has not been tested is hell difficulty. so besides that the patch is ready to go.

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lets get it going!

I'm currently running through in a duo to test some more and make some final tweaks and make sure everything is working okay.

I can have a realm ready patch in a few days though.

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oh is it possible to change the hell challenge from 90-101 instead of 90-95.

its still going to be a bitch it may be a bit more attemptable at a higher level.

min spawn is p8 at 350% hp now, xp will be less of a grind by default

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any thoughts on arrows?...maybe i am alone?!? (i know ya still got big fish to fry)

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

It's such a minor issue. Arrows and bolt drop the same amount as before, just they can be blue, yellow and gold now.

Its not like your finding less items as before. Nothing has changed.

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Ya, and that constitutes almost the entirety of blues and magics on any screen minus a boss.

I will stop being a nuisance.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

The easiest way to fix this is make a chance for no drop for the ammo TC or add some other items to it so instead of arrows and bolts you could have a chance to get amulets, rings, jewels, potions, whatever, as well.

edit: I set a 50% of no drop when rolling ammo

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Thanks for dealing with me. I've only played melee characters since this change was made (for really short periods at that), and I just see those dern things everywhere! (totally unbiased, and not exaggerated in the slightest).

I looked around at how other people had made magic arrows/bolts, and eventually i ran into the D2Mod.ini file that lists merc weapons. I don't know what these numbers refer to...not misc/weapons.txt etc...i think this is where i got stuck last time i was trying to get it to work with mercs properly. Maybe within the MercMod.ini but thought i only saw the .dll file for it.

There is still at least one skill that requires ammo to be used right? guided iirc? this was the biggeset problem as I could tell (thought could just make arrows act like a weapon and turn a few knobs to let bows+ammo be dual wieded, but i didn't get that far when i ran into the .ini file.

The time spent to figure the rest of it out is very lil bang for the buck, i agree. I will poke around abit more to see if i can find something that does work. Doubtful in the time i have before i leave for winter break...if it would work at all anyway.


Made it to catacombs at least witha zealer+somethin so far. Skipped Leo, but rest was pretty manageable.

Something I noticed with (at least) red potions. I think the display says 33% of life +8 per str.

I tested with these numbers last night.
1741 max life
682 current life
64 str (60 base)
final life 1533...or was it 1553? crap...anyway
The closest I could come to this is that it gives a a 1/3 of current missing 8*str...1547
otherwise something funny is happening. (the *8would be around 4.5ish to give 1533 life if all else in the equation is left alone).

Regardless, at least with some strength early game health pots scale well. Perdy nice to not have to have 17potiontypes. Mana pots feel weaker but not totally pointless...interested to see longer term. felt well balanced.

Please take me with a larger grain of salt than usual. Am on 3 days with a bout of 3 hrs sleep.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos