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 Post subject: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 2:12 am 

Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:56 am
Posts: 2
Hello fellaz, i'm a new HU player and i'm currently playing the 1.6c solo version, playing for 5 days and i'm still in act 5 normal, lol, progressing somewhat slow, at lvl 58 with throw barb, struggling to kill the monsters from worldstone.

So, the question is, what's the place / txt that i need to edit to reduce the damage of bosses in my hirelings?

My guess is that i need Mpq editor to open Patch_D2.mpq inside the mods folder and edit some txt file? I tried to look further, but failed to find the value for boss dmg to hirelings.

Keep in mind that i'm familiar with scripts and edditing in general, i work as a DBA, but i've never looked into d2 edditing, so i'm kinda "lost" here.


My reason for the change:

Right now, hirelings seens pretty useless in this mod, my hireling can't even survive a single attack, actually, he can't even attack once, and he's with 75 all res, etc... there's no point of giving runewords to your hirelings or using another items that would slow down bosses and buffs me if he dies with a single hit without even landing one attack.

I would like to edit it so they can still get around 2-3 shot, making a more strategic use of my potions between me and my hireling, i think the fight would still be hard because i can't teleport back to refill potions, so hirelings will start to be useful, and somewhat a resource drainer. (sometimes i use like 20-40 potions against bosses, and if half of those are used to heal my hireling, it would be a cool negative effect to keep my merc up and boosting me in the fight, and if i screw up and my merc dies, i would have almost no potions to keep fighting)


Currently playing the solo version because i'll need to travel for 20 days, so i'll have just hell unleashed to play with no internet connection, but i would like to make this change before i go, maybe a 3-4x more dmg to hirelings instead of 10? i'll have to do some tests i guess.

Thanks in advance and i'm probably joining with you guys in 1.7 MP after i learn how to play the game and return back home.

P.S. This is the best mod i've played for d2, even better than Median XL, so keep up the good work, been enjoying it a lot, also, sorry for the long post and grammar mistakes, english is not my native language and i'm self taught.


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 Post subject: Re: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 2:29 am 
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Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:28 am
Posts: 1136
Location: Vancouver, BC
Once you've decompressed the mpq file via some MPQ editor, and extracted the Data folder, you'll be looking for monstats.txt found in
/data/global/excel/

All the text files are just tab delimited spreadsheets, so you can open them with any spreadsheet application (I use OpenOffice Calc) as long as you remember to save it without accidentally introducing extra characters (make sure Excel doesn't convert numbers to dates, etc).

In monstats.txt there is a column "primeevil" which does nearly nothing except allow that monster to do extra damage (I think it's +300%) to non-player characters. Just clear that flag for the monsters you feel shouldn't be getting bonus damage to hirelings or pets. It's likely that the bosses will still kill your mercs, so don't be afraid that you're removing all challenge, but it'll probably take a couple hits. If you're curious, the "Boss" flag does most of the things people associate with the act bosses (crushing blow resistance, etc).

Once you've saved the change, you'll need to start HU using the "-direct -txt" arguments (checkboxes in D2SE, command line arguments if you're starting D2 with a shortcut). Those arguments tell D2 to search for a Data folder and convert the text files into .bin files to play the game.

In the future, look into the Homemade Modifications forum for information like this.


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 Post subject: Re: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 3:53 am 

Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2016 12:56 am
Posts: 2
Looks like i was going into the right direction, i didn't thought about the command line parameters tho.

Thanks for the quick reply, i'll take a look into the forums once i return and sorry for not looking a bit more further in the forums for the answer, i tried to search and look at some posts but couldn't find it, and as I'm in a hurry, I thought I'd better ask while i pack my things.

Also, one last thing, i would like to know your thoughts about the extra damage to mercs, what's so op in the endgame that you guys made that decision? I know that mercs tanking the bosses all day everyday was a bad design in vanilla, but in this mod they are null in boss fights, would like to know your opinion in that subject.

My bet is that this mod is focused on MP, and everyone having a merc stacking debuffs would be OP?

@Edit: I ended up reverting it back to the original state, without the boss damage the merc just tank everything actually, pretty retarded. Well, thanks anyway for all the help.


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 Post subject: Re: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 11:23 am 
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 9:01 pm
Posts: 1413
There are several reasons, but it mainly comes down to simply not allowing mercs to down a boss rather than the player.
There have been a lot of small changes to also not be able to (ab)use terrain to overlysimply fights.
Your bet is basically correct, but it could be done by small parties or even solo in a lot of cases.

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 Post subject: Re: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 3:14 pm 

Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:24 pm
Posts: 1031
It doesn't really apply to 1.7, but for 1.6 you can craft or find a lot of items with DR and particularly absorb for certain boss fights you need help with (for example stack him with lightning absorb vs Mephisto) and it really increases their survivability. There are also items like Enigma (and Sorcs) with Teleport that can help you easily reposition your merc. In normal they tend to die a bit easier because you don't have many options to stack their absorb, but you also shouldn't need their help as much in normal either.

Overall its the same old argument as necro/druid/zon/sin summons being somewhat ineffective vs bosses because we don't want people just going AFK while their pets beat the game #grizzlyunleashedRIP.


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 Post subject: Re: Help tuning boss damage to hirelings.
PostPosted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 8:06 am 

Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2010 1:36 am
Posts: 971
My merc in 1.6 could tank just about every boss that wasn't an act boss or an undead. The key to making them live is massive defense(diamonds in armor, defiance aura, etc), max DR, max resists, absorbs, and PDR/MDR seems to help as well. Then it's just a decent weapon that has alright damage with stacked lifesteal and they usually won't drop to anything but a few select bosses.

Act bosses will just wreck them, don't bother with them there. I ran sanctuary on my character and my merc which made almost every undead trash mob irrelevant, but the bosses you can't lifesteal they tend to die on. Lastly a very select few bosses, off the top of my head, the fire boulder boss in act 2 when you're collecting the staff knocks him back over and over.

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Overall its the same old argument as necro/druid/zon/sin summons being somewhat ineffective vs bosses because we don't want people just going AFK while their pets beat the game


It's a slippery slope, mainly because if mercs or pets could tank bosses indefinitely it would remove some of the difficulty. But I also don't think summons should be virtually useless outside of little 'bugs' like creeper tanking or sword spamming.


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