/vr/ - Retro Games

Median XL 1.4.0 landed just yesterday with a new league start. Anyone else playing? Currently leveling a naginata asn, which I'm sure I'll regret as a league starter.

>>6140708
>MAGGOT LAIRS: widened all passages and rooms to prevent characters from getting stuck

absolutely based about time

what are best mods for single player?

>>6141239
PlugY.

>>6140708
Median seems like shit

>>6141239
You just install PlugY for delicious ease of use content and play the game as it was meant to be played. There is enough content to last you for ages. Any mod that adds new items, changes skills or otherwise changes the balance is probably shit.

>>6141239
If you want a pretty well made mod that changes everything drastically, play Median XL. If you want crazy shit that is still """kind of""" vanilla, then there are hundreds of options, in particular Nezeramontias, Battle for Elements and Eastern Sun.

Well there goes another complete set.

Any of you run phoenixes? How are they in themselves? Compared to others?

>>6140683
>H5
>M5
>R1
What's all this?

>>6141709
Oh, wait.
>Healing(5)?
>Mana(5)?
>Rejuvenation(1)?
Loot filters, ayy.

Widescreen D2: Yea or nay? Does it really cause monster AI to bug?

>>6141791
It doesn't bug, it just lets you cheat by seeing much farther than you should be able to. Makes teleporting and ranged attacks even more overpowered and makes dangerous boss packs and ranged monsters much less threatening.

>>6141791
I don't think it causes any change to monster AI, which is the whole problem with it: you can often see monsters way before they can see you.

If I could get it working with PlugY and D2 v1.13D then I'd be using it.

>>6141791
it doesnt cause them to bug. main issue is that mob AI range is like smaller than your screen's resolution, so it makes ranged/caster classes piss easy to play as you can kill shit without it agroing you.

Private d2 server when?

>>6141892
oh wow so now I’m wondering if this is what some casters were doing in bnet duel games a few years ago. theyd tele way off the map, be no where in sight and suddenly you’re getting blizz’d on.

Is there any way to avoid getting cursed in hell mode? It feels like every other unique has a fucking amplify damage curse

>>6141989
>be a paladin god with 10 trillion defense and block, making it virtually impossible to get hit
>be a barbarian or druid and stunlock everything
>get a buddy that is autistic enough to play a cleansing paladin
>get a necromancer buddy that is autistic enough to unally you and chase you around cursing you with life tap or some other benign curse
>play a ranged character because basically everything in this game is designed around fucking melee characters as hard as possible
These are your options.

>>6142031
That sucks. I'm playing as a sorc so it's not that much of a problem, but I already know my merc is likely going to die when he gets cursed.

>>6142031
Or be a necro/sorc and use bone armor/energy shield and laugh at the resist reduction that will never do anything.

>>6141554
>play the game as it was meant to be played
>Blizzard explicitly discourages muling and twinking items in the instruction manual and PlugY / Atma / whatnot's main feature is for doing just that

>>6142206
>drop griffons but cant use it
>no place to put it in shit vanilla stash with no muling
>better leave it because it is how blizzard intended
>ill just farm for it when time comes
>literally million years later drop it again
>wow awesome way to make players play the game for a long time it is totally not superfluous at all

>>6142206
I thought it was clear I was talking about the balance side o things? Apparently not.

I've got a hardcore fire sorc who beat D2X Normal a couple weeks back. Thinking of continuing through Nightmare and maybe Hell, but there's a serious risk of dying on those difficulties.

If she dies, can I just use a hero editor (I think I've got Zonfire's...) to uncheck a hardcore tag or something and continue playing?

>Try Median XL
>One of the bow skills shoots wyverns
>no shared stash
This mod is dumb as fuck

>>6142471
>D2X
why ask us? boot it up and look, retard

>>6142471
Don't play hardcore in the first place.

>>6142471
Play softcore.

Try your best not to die as if it was hardcore.

If you eventually die, pretend that's how far you got in hardcore and then just continue as softcore.

My best ever character, a level 93 softcore Trap Assassin, has never once died. I wasn't aiming for it to be a hardcore style playthrough, she just ended up surviving everything thrown at her on players 8.

>>6142529
>why ask us? boot it up and look, retard
I'm away from my compooter.

>>6142540
Dang, that's pretty neato. I don't think I've been past Nightmare difficulty without dying.

what does players 8 actually do drop wise?

>>6142515
Old versions of Median work with PlugY's shared stash. I think "Median XL 2017" was the most recent.

>>6142552
It lowers the chance of no drop, therefore increases the chance of dropping anything. This happens in increments of +2 players (players 1, 3, 5 and 7). Drop wise, there is no difference between players 7 and players 8.

>>6142552
Nothing over players 7.

Players 7 gives extra drops from each monster compared to players 1, you should try to MF run with at least players 3 if possible and players 7 if it won't slow you down too much. It's better to do two runs at players 3 than 1 at players 7 for example.

The main exception is if you want runes from the Countess, do players 1 for that.

>>6142552
It lowers the chance of no drop, therefore it increases the chance of dropping anything. This happens in increments of +2 players (players 1, 3, 5 and 7). Drop wise, there is no difference between players 7 and 8. It's worth mentioning that there is a big difference between players 1 and players 3, small difference between players 3 and players 5 and negligible difference between players 5 and players 7. That's why you should play on players 3 if you can.

>>6141554
>play the game as it was meant to be played
D2 post LoD has lost the original vision in its chase to appease its retarded playerbase, who want absolutely nothing else but teleport to baal throne room and clear it 1000000x times at super fast speed. So basically the same thing that happened to path of exile after it left beta.

>>6142693
Nah, not really. Diablo 2 plays even slower now than it did in the older versions since enemies are stronger and more dangerous. It only falls into the clearspeed autism, one-hitting rooms meta if you play on Bnet. That they introduced new, rare items to acquire doesn't really change anything.

>>6142693
What was this original lost vision. I gotta confess I played pre LoD D2 for a very short time and was too young to understand it's design, anyway. But from what I remember it was the same. Get items, kill Diablo. Then get more items. The game was always a farming simulator, there was just smaller amount of items to get. Also, there are so many more locations you can purposefully visit other than Bhaal's crib.

>>6142807
Kind of in the same boat as you, but as I understand it the items you were farming back in the day were high-quality rares - with randomized attributes - instead of the fixed attributes on elite uniques and high-level rune words.

REMINDER

>>6140683
Just lost a level 78 paladin in single player act 1 hell. Playing with PlugY and a mod that increases rune drop chances and uniques. Even with all the great loot, hell difficulty is still fucking ridiculously hard

>>6142471
Why play Hardcore if you don't want to play Hardcore? One life restriction is all it provides, if you want to come back after getting killed, just don't play on Hardcore, simple as.

In Diablo, Sacred series, Hellgate, Torchlight and other games I play only hardcore or make a self-imposed challenge to that end even where there isn't such an option, but there's no need to make it anything but what it really is, a role-playing token and self-imposed challenge.

>>6143029
I want to see how far I can get in hardcore, but not lose everything if I'm yawning while moving around and get rekt by a boss pack. Respawning after dying is so second-nature to me in D2 that I might not even notice if I died playing a softcore character.

The simplest way I can put it is: I want to see that red name text and the active character stance on the character select screen for this character, and especially those special hardcore character titles like "Destroyer" and "Conqueror".

>if you want to come back after getting killed, just don't play on Hardcore, simple as.
Half the reason I game on PC and not console is so I don't have to take advice like this if I don't feel like it. Nothin' personnel, kid.

>>6143048
Hero Editor can tell you if your character has ever died before, so just use that to occasionally look if you ever died and didn't notice it or not.
It's the only reason I realised my level 93 Assassin has somehow never died before, when I looked back on it.

>>6142540
>Trap Assassin, has never once died
Not surprising. Trapsins are practically the easy mode in PvM, alongside with certain sorc, necro and druid builds. Don't get me wrong, she's still fun to ride, but you'd have to be really dumb to get seriously injured anything. Well, maybe to Duriel, but only if you're playing the first time ever and don't know that he's that one fucking boss devs decided to lock you in a tiny room with and needing a potion made solely for him to beat.
>>6142693
>LoD has lost
At least it was a proper act. Act IV was a real fucking travesty with its one optional quest and two main, and nothing good but eye candy in Tyrael and Jamella.
I mean, were it just the final dungeon it'd be fine, but as an act it's woefully lacking, only good for vanilla grind that you seem to so hate.

>>6143064
Well that's kewl.

I dunno, I guess I'll test out if a hero editor can revive a dead hc throwaway character sometime.

If a dead hc character really is gone for good, maybe I'll just backup this hc sorceress once per difficulty level.

If I were making a mod for D2, one of the first things I would do is work out a way to enter a game with a hardcore character, with a few restrictions:
>can't deal damage to anything
>can't unequip or equip items
>can't drop or pick up any items from ground, inventory, or stash
>can't gain exp or advance in quests
>CAN enter that dead hardcore character's game with other characters and press F to pay respects, updating a counter showing how many players have done so
>This allows a player with a badass hardcore character who fell too soon to show themselves and others what kinda gear and stats they had, showing up in-game as a ghostly phantom or something. The robed figure in the character select screen is cool, this just extends the idea further.

>>6143074
>Don't get me wrong, she's still fun to ride
L-lewd.
>Act IV
>one optional quest and two main
Technically, the first and second quests are optional, though the second quest is canonically completed.

But yeah I'd love it if Act IV got expanded into a full act. I always get the urge to go into heaven and explore it, at least before I venture down into hell.

>>6143048
I still don't see the point, but whatever, resurrecting the character should be as easy as unchecking the flag with whatever program you use to cheat. If you still don't feel secure enough, just make a backup subdirectory in your save folder and copy your character save there each time you play the game without dying.

>>6143097
>backup subdirectory in your save folder and copy your character save there each time you play the game without dying
In fact that's the way to do it if you want to brag that you beaten Hardcore Hell without cheating at all while feeling honest about it, but too pussy to brave the odds way you're meant to. And it works on other games and consoles, too.

>>6141989
Treachery armor. Activate fade effect. Reduces curse duration on you by like 60%.
I basically cant live without having fade on 24/7 now.

>>6143074
>Not surprising. Trapsins are practically the easy mode in PvM, alongside with certain sorc, necro and druid builds.
I've played hardcore summon Necro a bunch of times on ladder, never once made it past act 3 in Hell because my skellys would always find some off screen MSLE flayer to fondle before I even knew it was there. So to suddenly go from a personal best of level 74 or so in act 3 to soloing the Throne of Destruction at level 93 players 8 without even trying made me happy.

>>6140683
>can't name a 2+ characters with the same name

>>6143162
Pure skellymancers lose some of their oomph in late Hell due to their minions being frail and needing corpses to create, yeah. Curses and auras are the absolute must, but some equipment cheesing is also all but necessary. Trapsin's traps not being brittle skellies makes all that difference. It also helps that with shadow you'd be spamming double the traps and have an extra meatshield just in case.

>>6143194
Why would you even want to?

>>6142471
Why are you playing hardcore if you're that worried about dying? That's literally the whole point of playing hardcore.

>>6143218
I started out thinking I didn't care too much. Then once she beat normal difficulty I thought "nooooo I'm attached, she can't die!!"

Even completely imaginary video games make me nervous.

>>6143227
So maybe you should stick to playing my little pony? Big boy games seem a little too much for you to handle

>>6143230
There's a My Little Pony game? Ehhhh idk I'd probably be lost without having seen the TV show.

>>6143162
every necro build is a Corpse Explosion build with some variation on how to get the first kill; be it summons, bone spear or poison dagger/nova.
by mid-late Hell your skeletons just become meat shields and don't deal that much damage on their own. you need to make sure your merc's gear is solid with a weapon like Obedience or Reaper's.

>>6143210
>traps not being brittle
traps are invisible and invincible. just spam them on the ground and run in circles until everything's dead.

>>6143316
>traps are invisible and invincible
That's exactly what I meant, anon.

>try eastern sun
>check out new amazon skills
>plague javelin and poison arrow
>"poison arrow? sounds good.."
>poison arrow has higher level req
>does half the damage of plague javelin over the same duration and plague javelin has aoe also both can be spammed
..........

>>6143497
Most ama skills are somewhat lackluster compared to jav skills.

>>6143507
shit modders

>>6143507
And bugged as fuck. The shit-eating faglord cunts at blizzard are more concerned with nerfing the balanced but good stuff, axing harmless exploits and introducing more bugs in the process than patching the bugs players told them from nearly the onset.

>>6143497
Eastern Sun has really fucked up balancing. Like 3/4ths of the "reworked" skills are worthless or really bad, and then you look at the revamped elemental druid and all of his skills do retarded amounts of damage and compose the entire range of elements, guaranteeing you never have issues with immunes.

>>6143497
rule of thumb for eastern sun, casters rule everyone else sucks

>>6144279
Oh, so like vanilla D2, then.

>>6144476
the gap is even bigger than vanilla due to itemization, even barbarian is better as a caster as he gets few lightning spells

>>6144496
>Barbarian gets lightning skills now
LAME.
I wasn't even a fan of that one Barbarian war cry that directly deals damage in vanilla D2. Seems like there should have been at least one 100% melee-only class in the game.

This reminds me of how in D1 Belzebub mod there was a Bard class or something who had Mana = 0. Only could do physical attacks, and he could solo the game. What an absolute unit.

What is the best patch for solo play?

>>6145487
1.13 or 1.14 if you have a decent sense of how to make a build. 1.09 if you aren't too sure. 1.02 if you want to be able to beat the game with a random weapon socketed with perfect gems.

For future reference, how do I level up in hell? I'm playing a meteorb and I started at lvl 74. I'm in act 5 and ive gone up 2 levels. At this point, being on players 1 am I just better off not killing anything and just doing the quests?

Who playtested Assassin and Druid and why did they lied that those are viable classes?

>>6145989
Hybrids suck. Go pure cold sorc then respec to light after getting griffon and infinity.

>>6146148
I enjoyed it for the most part. Up until act 4 when I had to start skipping mobs to avoid getting killed. I just don't want to grind for an infinity. I could item drop myself one but I feel like that defeats the whole point of having one.

>>6145989
farm in lv85 areas until lv85.
after that, do Chaos Sanc and Baal runs until 99.
adjust /players so you're still killing fast. dont waste your time on players 8 if it takes you 8x as long to clear everything.
you want to clear shit almost as easily as players 1 but with as high /players number as you can go before runs slow down too much.

>>6146146
What are you talking about? The assassin is super viable, requiring basically no gear to win, yet dealing very good damage regardless of your playstyle (barring elemental charge-ups, those are memes). The druid is alright too, literally any build he has is at least decent thanks to how wildly overpowered oak sage is, he is the essential brainless, middling babby's-first-character character. Of course, when you start factoring in gay shit like ladder runewords and high runes and end game uniques, these characters (along with the necromancer and amazon) start becoming garbage, but that is far beyond being just viable.

>>6146148
>meteorb sorc sux
What did he mean by this?

>>6145669
>1.02
Does it have a nocd crack though? I'd actually really like to play a pre-LoD version that's earlier than 1.04c.

>>6146185
players 8 gives the most EXP, though, which is very important for hell CS and Baal.

>>6146324
Only if you can kill stuff fast enough and safely enough, just like the dude said. Players 8 is almost always very counterproductive in hell difficulty. Players 3 is optimal, for some builds players 5.

>level 30 phoenix strike with full synergies

>stage 1 of phoenix strike
>uses up two attacks
>deals 2k fire damage with 4k fire damage per second over 18 seconds
>also disables enemy life regeneration
>basically 10k+ damage per hit since you'll need enemies to burn for a while due to your kind of sad DPS
>so basically 5000+ damage per attack

>stage 2 of phoenix strike
>uses up three attacks
>deals ~3k lightning damage and hits once and then again on the rebound
>barely 6k damage per use
>1000 damage per attack

>stage 3 of phoenix strike
>uses up four attacks
>hits only once, dealing 1k cold damage
>freezes enemy for a few seconds (basically for no time at all in hell)
>250 cold damage per attack (this is the same damage as ice blast at level 20 with no synergies, and that is per cast, and it actually has a decent freeze duration)

I don't fucking understand the thought process here. I find myself being able to justify the use of just about every skill in the game, but every charge past stage 1 of Phoenix Strike is just completely retarded. What the fuck were they thinking?

>>6146148
>hybrids suck, grind for this absurdly fucking rare item and also these HRs then play a build I say to play
dude, fuck off

>>6148024
I'll never understand why they didn't make all charges on phoenix strike usable at once, it really wouldn't be any more broken than a bunch of other skills

>>6148414
I'd guess that they didn't want it to completely outshine the other elemental charge-ups, but they already failed at that. Fists of Fire is worse than charge 1, Claws of Thunder is worse than charge 2 and Blades of Ice and charge 3 both deal laughable damage, but charge 3 freezes much more effectively. The only way the other elemental charge-ups can ever compare is if you factor in super high end gear, since Phoenix Strike doesn't gain from +skill damage% for some reason, but at that point why the hell would you be still be playing an elemental charge assassin.

What do you guys think about the mods for D1? I tried TheHell2 and its just a bunch of retarded shit.

>>6148408
retard

>>6146324
yeah but getting twice the exp per mob when it's taking you 4x as long to kill shit results in a net loss of exp/hour.

>>6145487
Now whats the best patch for preLOD I want to try the old school D2 before runewords etc took over.

Median XL is truly awful
>items are worthless
>no shared stash
>low level skills better than high level skills
>every class has a screen filling uber shit ability removing all challenge
>tons of skills but 80% are locked out once you pick anything
I literally spammed a level 1 spell with 1 point in it and cleared act one with everything on screen dying one hit. WTF

>>6149186
I hear 1.02 is pretty good. Personally I like 1.06b, which is the last patch to drop before LoD released. It's crazy how much the game changed since then.

>>6143162

Necromancers can clear through hell practically without gear. Skeletons quickly lose their power in Hell, but you can overcome this with revives. It makes your meat wall even larger, so that Gloams essentially become the only risk (you can eliminate Gloams with blind though).

Amp damage + CE is still your main killer but amp + revives + might merc do enough damage above what other Hell monsters do to keep corpses dropping for CE chains.

You don't need rune words or anything fancy for your merc even. The only essential piece of gear is finding a staff with teleport charges (in stores once you hit Hell). Teleport let's you clear areas that suck for the AI. It also let's you rape bosses.

The AI keeps monsters from stacking, but they can stack. If you teleport on top of Diablo or Baal with tons of Udar revives you can have 20 monsters laying stun/crush blow on them at once. Add in decrepify, clay golem, an ice weapon, and any sort of slow on your merc, and bosses can essentially get cut in a single frame unable to attack.

>>6148885

The Hell 2 has a lot of interesting shit, it's just terribly balanced. Also, having to switch weapons/spell elements for every monster is more frustrating than fun.

It's fun as a rouge variant or barbarian. The perks system is cool too.

My big complaint is that it is way too grindy. Multiplayer you have to go back and restart a level every few levels. I actually liked the really hard difficulty. It made multiplayer more fun. You had to stick in tight groups and work together to manage mobs. But then the next level difficulty jumps ridiculously and you can't kill anything and have to start over.

Should have focused more on testing than having 90 classes .

Still good because D1 > D2

>>6149186
Runewords were pretty meh before 1.10. also no synergies. It was all about uniques back then.

Pre-Lod you're mostly looking for high end rares.

>>6149419
I don't know what you are talking about. My skelies raped through everything and were almost immortal even on hell difficulty. Revives are too big and clunky so they prevent your merc and skeletons from reaching their target. Unless you have enigma for stacking, they are quite shit. I would rather stack crushing blow on my merc and be done with that.

>>6149468
Also, if you have a LOT of minions, once you stack them through teleport, they refuse to scram. Happens with like 15 skeletons + 20 revives. It's not a problem when you kill act bosses but it gets annoying while doing anything else.

>>6149474
That only happens if you choose bulky revives. Size 3 monsters lock-in size 2 monsters. So if you only revive size 2 monsters, nothing gets locked-in. Revives are incredibly strong as long as you only use size 3s for bossing.

>>6149507
I would like to say it happened with bunch of doom knights, which should be small enough, but I could have had an accidental venom lord in there somewhere. I didn't know that, cool thanks. But I still say I don't like a lot of shit running around. Revives just don't do enough damage normally and they block skeletons and merc.

>>6143074
trapsins are so cool

Yes! 18 remain.

>>6149228
>No shared stash
Try an old version, like Median XL Ultimative 2017. That one works with PlugY.
>Low level skills better than high level skills
>Tons of skills but 80% are locked out once you pick anything
I think the idea in Median is that you invest your points into fewer skills than in vanilla, but use those skills you do have basically constantly, changing it up based on the situation. As opposed to vanilla where you just spam Frozen Orb and Meteor. You can get through vanilla alright just assigning your spells to the F1-F8 keys, but Median kinda requires you to rebind those hotkeys to Z,X,C,V, etc.
>every class has a screen filling uber shit ability removing all challenge
Try the uber quests. Since Ultimative, the mod has been focused around those, and not the regular mobs, anyway.

>>6149749
18 items for your holy grail quest?

>>6149669
>that pic
Whoa, has that been shooped? It looks almost like there's some HDR bloom with the lava. Aesthetic af. What renderer you using?

>>6149924
>18 items for your holy grail quest?

Das rite.

Tyrael's, Nightwing, Steelrend, Dancers, Ward, Ghostflame, Schaefer, Cranium, Stormspire, Astreon, Pillar, Mang, Azure, Grandfather, Web, Fathom, Griswold's Caduceus & Vortex.

Standard setup.

>>6149959
Feels good when I have items other people need for their grail.
On the other hand I still have 53 items left.

Decided to start stockpiling all the Shakos I drop that are not Harlequin Crest.
Just to show my unluck.

>>6149924
>>6149959
>>6150206
>holy grail quest
The fuck?!

jesus christ how much damage to goddamn souls do? just 2 or 3 on screen and i have to start chugging pots, even with max resist. meanwhile the cowards in act 3 that use lightning, i just ignore them shooting at me when i do council runs.

>>6150238
It means you try to gather at least 1 copy of every unique and set item in the game.

>>6150237
That's... not very many. Also there are better helmets for blizz sorc.

>>6150268
Oh, that. Well that is nice.

>>6150270
I just started collecting them.
I've been doing grail for like 2-ish years with no unique Shako.
No Tal Rasha's armor either but I don't drop Lacquered Plate that often.
I drop Shakos all the time.

Who the fuck plays HC characters offline?

>>6150305
Why would you play HC on battle.net?
In fact, why would you play ANY character on battle.net?
Single player is better in every single way.

>>6150310
>Why would you play HC on battle.net?
This. Permanent death and unpredictable lag spikes go together like nuts and gum.

>>6150305
>no lag
>no trading
it's literally the best way to play

So besides the class specific sets like IK and Tal's, are any of these other high level sets good for building a character around? Like "The Disciple" or whatever pic related is part of? I dont hear people mention them much.

>>6150604
BK, Griswold's and M'avina's are alright. Natalya's would be decent if it didn't have such dogshit boots. Aldur's would be amazing if an Assassin could use it.

>>6150604
None of the non-specific LOD sets are worth using outside of a single item, if that.
>cow king's leathers
Trash.
>the disciple
The gloves are better than dracs if you can survive without life tap for the given content, or are using a life tap wand.
>heaven's brethren
Trash.
>hwanin's majesty
Trash
>orphan's call
The helm is top-tier.
>sander's folly
The boots are okay.
>sazabi's grand tribute
Trash.

>>6150629
>orphan's call
the shield isn’t half bad either, especially if you stick a perfect diamond in it or something. that set is nice for its individual items. I think the belt gives dual leech as well.

>>6150604
There's no item set that's worth using every single piece.
Tal Rasha's for example is only worth using 3 out of the 5 pieces.

>>6150854
The helm bums me out.

>>6150874
Yeah Tal Rasha's helm is not worth using at all.
Neither is the weapon.

>>6150907
The two just really don’t go together, which doesn’t make any sense.

>>6150948
I know. The helm really isn't a caster helm.

>>6150250
IIRC their damage is swapped between mana burn and lightning by a bug but Blizzard never fixed it - just like Nihlathak vipers >it's working as intended
And of course when you run into boss packs with element enchanted which add to the base damage, and on Hell difficulty often end up being Cursed variant (amp curse=double dmg), and extra fast extra shot, you're in for a treat. Oh yes, forgot the Conviction aura :D

However, if you know how to maneuver around them, you won't have much problems. I'm running a lightning sorc with infinity merc and 55 light res, Souls die in one shot, but I have full rejuvs ready. Mostly they focus on merc, but you can take few hits.

If not willing to gamble, put on max lightning res, and Tgods belt and Souls will actually heal you.

>>6149297
i mean, it has but it hasnt
>necro was still 'skeleton spam'
>barb was still the same 3 builds
>the only good amazon build was still javelin
>hammerdin or bust
it's only really Sorc that's changed the most.

Can anyone post screens of gear they use in 1.6 patch and before?

Where the fuck are the servers?

Are there any mods to swap the player models around in Diablo 1? Like to use the sorcerer as the warrior, or the archer as the sorcerer, etc.?

>>6151456

What?

I don't remember seeing any hammerdins before 1.10 and synergies. Everyone ran zeal and fanatacism.

Pike WW barbs were the most popular by a huge margin. After LOD it became sword and shield due to how they changed blocking and mauls were more popular for 2H.

Frenzy was viable at least.

Javazons weren't common at all until LOD.

The biggest change has been to keep widening the gap between casters and melee. With no runs do gear and decent magic and rares you could have a viable end game zealot or WW barb before. Now melee is trash without rare gear and runewords, but a necro can run Hell naked.

>>6151497

High end exceptional rares. Elite items didn't exist and everyone could get to exceptional strength reqs.

So every melee character is rocking a rare version of ancient or full plate. Casters might have lighter plate.

Barbarians mostly used pikes for range and damage.

Rare + to all skills and + to key skills staves and wands for sorcs and necros and SOJs for rings.

>>6151941

Oh and twitchtrobe for pvp barbs. Block was based on shields not Dex, so you needed that unique for 75% block during PvP.

Didn't whirlwind used to not depend on a weapon's attack speed? Making pikes and other slow-attack but high-damage weapons OP?

>>6152059
Yup.

Pikes had the perfect mix of higher WW range and lower dex requirements than polearms.

>>6151936
To add onto this:

>holy fire did no damage
>holy freeze literally did no damage
>lightning/chain lightning used attack speed and were completely worthless
>lightning mastery used to reduce mana cost (of lightning spells only)
>corpse explosion scaled with players
>static field had no limit
>no spell timers
>blessed hammers constantly changed patch to patch, sometimes it gained from concentration sometimes it didn't
>iron maiden + blood golem (was considered absurdly overpowered at the time, but in retrospect it was a complete meme)
>corpse explosion had retard huge radius
>strafe and guided arrow used to multiply final weapon damage instead of acting as enhanced damage
>zeal used to have 20+ fucking swings making it borderline unusable if you upgraded it too much
>auras lasted for a good while after flicking, so you'd be constantly swapping (might have just been conviction, not completely sure on this one)

It is kind of funny to go back to, but it is also kind of boring with how effortless it is to win and how worthless most skills were.

>>6152059
IIRC the first three hits are not dependent on aspd. It should apply even today but don't quote me on this. I never liked WW so I've never used it.
>zeal used to have 20+ fucking swings making it borderline unusable if you upgraded it too much
One attack per skill level. It was hilarious, especially in CS.

Today I learned that corpse spitters have a weird AI that likes to move in and maintain (mostly) straight lines. So polite and orderly.

>>6152183
I remember theae. Also:

>You used to get 1 skeleton or skeleton mage per point up to 20+ of each. A necromancer could have 60 minions running around but of course people were still using dial up so this caused massive fucking lag waves
>CE scales with players making amp damage redundant. Skeletons had shit damage so iron maiden became the primary way to use them. Blood golems fed iron maiden damage back as leech to itself and the caster making both immortal as long as they kept getting hit.
>Iron maiden used by mobs reflected the full 250% damage back on attackers, meaning a hardcore WW barbarian or zealot who got cursed mid attack was fucking toast.
>Amazon was initially pretty shit due to lack of good weapons. Then 1.08 LOD comes out and Burzia makes them the most common PvP character. Strafe and guided arrow can be spammed off screen and hunt down players and mobs with insane damage. Spear and javazons essentially unused until 1.10.
>Ancients initially give like 10 fucking levels if you clear them at the lowest cap.

Also, necromancers were essentially useless in PVP because bone spirit is slow as fuck and bone spear didn't do damage.

Except you could kill a barbarian with too gear at level 24 because if they whirlwinded into a bonewall they were fucking done. It wouldnt say you killed them though it would say "x was killed by a dark force"

>>6151497

Rare ornate or full plate with highest + % to defense possible + resists, stats, and life. Casters wanted rare mage plates for lower requirements.

Rare amulets and rings with + skills and resists. I don't think leech could spawn back then.

Rare weapon with grandmasters (up to 200% ED and some attack rating) + 2 class skills, dual leech, and increased speed were ideal. Whirlwind didn't use speed so it didn't matter.

Rare crowns with similar stuff to the armor, although casters went for grim helms.

Cruel and haste could only pop up on blue items to people would use those at high levels when attack rating didn't matter as much.

Actually, the current patch has one again made rares competitors. You can get a rare with cruel and grandmasters for near 600% ED, with dual leech, +2 to skills, and mods for extra damage versus demons or extra max damage, +40% speed. People just focus on runewords though.

>>6152183
Iron maiden and blood Golem was pretty OP against anything that wasn't a boss or dealt massive nonmelee damage. Just a single point in each along with one point in Golem mastery gave you a near unkillable decoy.
>>6151936
I am still butthurt about this. Had a single player maul concentration barb on act IV Hell and the revamp made him hilariously worthless on Hell difficulty. The game became way too gear dependent for physical attackers.

>>6152273
>Be descending lower into deeper and darker realms
>See a literal corpse eater centipede train
>"Ah yes, this is surely Hell."

>>6151705
Uh, bump?

>>6151705
I know nothing of D1 modding, but I can at least be that unhelpful guy who asks:
>WhyY WoUld yoU wAnT tO Do Taht!?

Do you just find the sorcerer more aesthetic than the warrior or something?

What patch killed guided arrow with pierce?

>>6153538
I'm just looking for variety.

>>6153924
I think it was 1.10 but don't quote me on that.

So I found this:
https://d2mods.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46725
and it seems in D2 it's pretty easy to do a low-tech Skill Tree swap from one character to another. I'm more than happy to do something like this in D1, if anyone has any insight into how.

I made a copy of my d2 folder that I use for slash. Once I install PoD is it going to fucking work , and even if it does am I going to have to fuck with gateways to be able to play both?

Why do they have to use this launcher instead of shit I actually know what it does?

>>6153956
D1 everyone has the same spells. The changes are all to stat caps, blocking formulas, to hit formulas, life to bit points, mana to magic points, and most importantly frames per attack and cast.

The rouge can already be played as a warrior thanks to high dex letting them block and hit well.

>>6154145
Yeah, I hadn't played in forever and was going off old memories. I was hoping to secure whatever mod I needed before I reinstalled, but I went ahead and started playing a couple hours ago.
I'd kind of like to be able to swap the characters' special skill, but, yeah, what I really need is an attribute cap remover/cap min-max swapper, something.

>>6140683
can someone spoonfeed me a download link of diablo 2 with all the patches and mods please

>>6153956
I would love a mod that lets you pick any class and have access to every tree in the game. imagine the builds!

Fuck man, trying to google this sprite swapping stuff is depressing. Modding D1 seems to be totally dead, with anyhing that was ever done back then just lost. Everything points to Bezlebub or D2.

>>6154335
From what I can tell, the modding is pretty similar to Diablo 2. Something simple like a sprite swap shouldn't be hard to pull off.

>use an MPQ extractor to extract stuff from MPQs that you want to work with
>in this case, character graphics
>find the files named after characters
>you'll see a shit ton of folders with 3 characters, each one is filled with what I'm guessing are different sprites or sprite sheets
>you can probably just rename the sprites to another character, rogue has a subfolder called rha, sorcerer has a subfolder called sha; if you want to swap, name them after each other, then go into each individual file and change the first letter of each graphics file from r to s and s to r)
>then after you've finished renaming like two hundred files, repack it and you should have your sprite swap
>you'll then want to find the audio folders and rename those too so that the rogue doesn't sound like the sorcerer and vice versa

>>6154335
The Hell developer was still going strong and just finished The Hell 2.

There are a lot of changes, a perk system, boots, belts, gloves, new weapons classes, the warrior sprite can now dual wield, etc.

That's the only D1 mod still going though. It's a shame. I always thought the original was a better game.

Better pacing, not so much empty space. Better atmosphere and art direction. The grid system made movement, manipulating the AI, and using doors and terrain more important than gear for warriors.

D2 is loads of fun too but sprawls a bit too much, and later patches totally fucked the difficulty and viability curves of melee classes.

>two titans javs and an arreat's face since last night
picked the wrong class bros

>>6154242
There would have to be some limit to the number of skills for a mod like that. The game only allows 60 different skills in the quick bar at a time (including charges, attack, throw, etc). You could have as many passives as you want though. I think it would be more interesting with limits anyways, like maybe you get to choose 10 skills from one character, 3 skills from a single tab of a second character and 1 skill from a third character. Otherwise you'd just be looking at a clusterfuck of a zillion summons and all of the passives and all of the strongest spells all at once.

>>6152358
>People just focus on runewords though.
well yes because godly rares/magic items are retarded difficult to find rares have always been the best items in the game

>tfw new windows installation on new ssd with a new video card

I wonder if I can run my old custom D2 plugy mod with my savegame on a new D2SE installation. I just copy pasted my old install on a flash drive and havent tried it since. Too scared to see it not work. So deep in my grail too.

ever wonder why you couldn’t get that name you wanted on battlenet, despite only a few hundred active players left?

>>6154759
Fucking turbo likes. Stop making a game into work.

>>6154387
If I had any idea how to do that, I would certainly try.

>>6154395

Diablo is better than the sequel. There are few things better in gaming than playing Diablo through start to finish with 3-4 friends. It was never meant to be a loot treadmill. Just an infinitely repeatable dungeon crawl where you use different techniques and items each time based on drops and enemie types.

You used to need LAN to enjoy it, but since it came out on gog I've had a few trips through with parties on Hamachi and Discord.

>>6155136
Download MPQ master. Use it to extract stuff from your mpq files. Rename the stuff you extract.

>>6155205
Diablo 2 is great, but it wasn't a complete loot treadmill until later patches in LoD. Though I do agree with you. Diablo 2 ruined the genre because after that the genre seemed to take the looting and itemization aspect and ran wild with it. Then they have to be flashier, more action packed so they were also speedy and you end up smashing a half a screen worth of enemies with a single AoE skill.

In Diablo 1 magical items feel much more impactful, and that you just don't reclear old areas since everything stays dead you just make due with what you find.

You unironic boomers or hipsters need to stop pretending d1 is in any way better than d2. Enjoy it for what it is, but stop tipping your fedoras trying to act cool and sophisticated by pretending it's a better game than 2.

>>6156151
Dark Souls is just HD Diablo 1.

>>6156172
Literally how?

>>6156151
While it lacks the quality of life changes games introduced after it, there are various things that make Diablo 1 great. What does the energy stat do in Diablo 2 versus the magic stat in Diablo 1?

>>6156210
>What does the energy stat do in Diablo 2 versus the magic stat in Diablo 1?

This is your one reason to say d1 is better than d2?

The problem with energy stat is that nothing ever uses it. There's no reason to put points in it.

>>6156548
Why do you talk about things you don't understand? That's a plain lie.

>>6156558
It's not a lie, energy really is useless, besides increasing mana which can be done through items. Now if it increased spell damage or/and there was equipment that used it as a requirement, then it would have been a different story.

>>6156559
Your own fault for only playing a couple of cookie cutter builds.

>>6156559
>what is energy shield sorc

>>6156612
>dat terrible penalty for using it tho
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/sorceress-lightning.shtml#energyshield

>>6156615
What’s the penalty? You can basically hit a point where you take no damage and your mana regen is insane.

>>6156634
Mana Burn exists and the penalty is death.

>>6156829
Meh.....poison is what really sucks.

>>6155916
So I got MPQ Master, but... How do I use it? The only things in my Diablo folder are the .exe, the readme, a couple .dlls, and my save. No .mpq files or even any folders.

>>6156864
It will be in your CD as diabdat.mpq

>>6156869
Ok. Upon opening that, I'm greeted by a huge list of sequentially named File000xxxxx's, about half of which are .wav, the other about half being .xxx, with a few .gif and .pcx.

>>6156887
Yes, because you didn't select Diablo 1 as the Listfile.

>>6156869
>>6156887
Nevermind I figured it out. How do I actually effect the changes? Do I have to like, extract all these files, rename them, and 'put them back', or like, what?
I'm totally clueless here, I'm sorry. I have zero idea how all this works.

>>6156905
That should work. I'm pretty sure the game reads the diabdat.mpq directly if you put it in your Diablo folder, since this is how it allows you to play without a CD. So if you make the changes and repack it, it should read your modded mpq and implement your changes to the game.

I'd also recommend doing a test run first by doing some easy, obvious swaps just to confirm that your changes actually are being read by the game. I have no idea how to open a .cl2, but there are audio files as .wavs in the sfx folder, so I'd recommend finding some that you can test really quickly (like the too much baggage sound or pain/death sounds) and try swapping those first. Just be aware that their files are kind of messy, just from quick looking I've noticed that some .wavs are misnamed, most warrior sound files are named "warior##.wav", but some are called "wario##.wav" and probably aren't actually used by the game. As such, I'd probably try testing a swap between the rogue and sorcerer first.

Is there anyway possible to play diablo 2 online ?

>>6156941
I'm renaming files now but I'm not sure how all this .mpq stuff actually works. I just extracted the rogue's plrgfx folder from the .iso to my desktop and started remaning stuff, do I need to actually copy the entire .mpq file to my install folder and do the renaming from inside MPQ Master? Again, I'm sorry I'm so clueless. This is the first time I've done anything like this.

>>6156954
Whether you extract the folders/files, rename them and pack them back into the mpq or rename them directly via MPQ Master should ultimately produce the same result so long as you place the finished product into your Diablo directory.

>>6156990
Ok. How exactly do I repack these? I don't see an option for it anywhere.
And so, I only put the modified DIABDAT.MPQ into the install folder? Not the entire contents of the .iso?

>>6157001
>How exactly do I repack these?
Right click within the file listing section, select add files/add directory.

>And so, I only put the modified DIABDAT.MPQ into the install folder? Not the entire contents of the .iso?
You can put in all of the iso as well, it shouldn't matter. But the point is that the game should be running off your mpq and not the original mpq, as otherwise it will probably just ignore what you've changed.

>>6157027
It's not working. I copied diabdat.mpq to the install folder and added the modified files, but it seems to be reverting back to the original state every time I reopen it or something. I delete the sorceror folder from plrgfx, make a new folder and rename it sorceror, put the modified folders into it, and close. But when I reopen the .mpq, the original sorceror direcory is back, and the new one I made is titled new folder.

If I unmount the .iso the game won't start, giving an error saying that Diablo was unable to open diabdat.mpq.

I'm stumped.

>>6156947
yeah guy. you play on battlenet. there’s still a decent handful of people playing on ladder.

>>6157069
Yeah, turns out Diablo sucks for modding. I tried it myself and was able to get the changes to save, but this only crashes the game when you get to the parts that were changed. So from this, it seems that Diablo is extremely hardcoded and requires hexediting to do anything.

What are you even trying to achieve anyways? If you just want to swap sprites so that you can have different character stats/speeds, then you'd be better off using some old modding tools, like ModStudio or Ezmodmaker.

>>6156612
>What is a single build that is often discouraged
Thankfully dexterity deals with what items you can equip and your block chance. Strength is a stat that doesn't matter as much as well, not as bad as energy but you just fill it until you can equip an item you want. You need to put a considerable amount of strength to gain a little damage and that damage is negliable compared to Diablo 1 in which strength, dexterity, and magic were useful to pump depending upon the class.
>>6156565
You can blame it on the player, but ever since the revamp with synergies there is more of a focus on just being able to tank hard hits in hell. There is no doubt that a decent amount of the community figured out pre-LoD that the other stats don't matter as much and the main stat you'll be pumping is vitality.
>>6156220
Finding a magical item is a lot more impactful in Diablo 1 than a lot of games in the genre that took note from Diablo 2. It eventually came to the point that people either mod in item filters or the game inherently has them because at a certain point the player cannot be bothered with the bulk of magic, set, rare, and at times unique items.

>>6157302
Yeah, I just wanted to swap sprites for variety's sake. Was hoping somebody had made something that let you choose your class, and then choose which sprite you used. Something like that.

>>6157306
>single build
There are multitude sorc builds you can do with energy shield. Actually, pretty much any single element sorc build can incorporate ES at it's full capacity.
>discouraged
Yeah, nah.

excuse the stupid question but how can I reliably run my vanilla D2 that I use for Bnet and also another at the same time that's patched for PlugY? And on top of that, can each copy use different Sven's glidder options? Windows 10 irrc give me cancer when running 1.13

>>6157391
I do want you to give me more examples. A single skill on one character in one branch of the skill tree that is often over looked. Energy shield wasn't as debatable in Diablo 1 due to the magic stats role in spell acquisition and influence of spell damage.

I'm not saying Diablo 2 is a terrible game, but Diablo 1 is a game worth playing and can has some different design choices that can make it more appealing to others. I think Diablo 2 is one of the best and worst things to happen to the genre all at once.

>>6157504
>The problem with energy stat is that nothing ever uses it. There's no reason to put points in it.
I don't need to give you more examples. I gave you a reason why your statement is dumb and that's enough as far as I am concerned. But fine. The ironman challenge.

>>6157563
>The ironman challenge.
wat

>>6157414
I think there's something called D2SE for mod management. It's a launcher that lets you check boxes for which version of the game you want to launch, as well as PlugY [x] Yes [ ] No.

>>6157613
Obviously a restricted challenge that doesn't reflect the average playthrough of the game that hardly anyone does. Diablo 1 has such challenges as well, but I assume most games have that fanatical niche in the fanbase that puts limitations on the way they can play the games.

>>6157734
Ah yes, of course.
But I do wonder what exactly those specific restrictions are. I guess I've heard of ironman runs of Fallout 1&2 where you have to hit yourself on the head with a hammer, or erase your save file if you die.

>>6157734
>give me more examples
>no, this example is not good
Bye.

>mod introduces what seems to be retardedly overpowered gear
>turns out it is only useful in a few very specific scenarios
I'm impressed.

>>6157798
You are driving this to something that is completely niche and a super majority of the players will not do to say that the energy stat isn't worth anything. There is an energy sheild build which I don't encounter sorceress using at all in favor for vitality and no other class like the barbarian, paladin, necromancer, amazon, assassin, or druid want to invest points into energy unless they are a minority of people that just want to put a bunch of restrictions on themselves because the base game bores them and they need an additional challenge.

>>6157617
Thanks brosky
I'll look it up. I think it's time I had a D2 copy just to spend a couple of hours a day without worrying about much.

>>6158183
Cool beans man, just be sure to back up any save files you care about before testing it out. Takes just a minute and can save you if it breaks anything!

I think you might need to have old patch .mpq files for D2SE to use if you want to switch versions around. I haven't used it myself, just heard about it and seen guys like MrLLamaSC use it.

In fact, embed related is a video I just found of MrLlamaSC talking through how his setup works. Hope that's useful.

>>6158253
FUCK
here's the embed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rvwvo4mTAY

I wonder what's the progress on Aussiebro's grail, or if he even plays anymore.

>>6158150
Why have they fucking scaled the town portal to one square icon but left weapons and charms the same???

Look at this shit. Dropped even before horking. Imagine if the amulet was unique too.

>>6158254
I just did that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgqX5W4jEgM

seemed simpler and didnt require 4 keys instead of 2 as most guides do. Just tested and both 1.13c PlugY and bnet work.

My only problem is that while I have 1.13c installed the D2 icon on the desktop stops working and looks like pic related so I downloaded another

Is there any mod that can make the text clearer? Preferably working online. I remember something that made 5s and 6s distinguishable but other than that I got nothing

>>6158582
You should be using D2SE.
>>6158673
What's wrong with the text?

>>6158778
doesnt 5 look like 6 ? Also the font is kind of weird when you look at it on a modern display

>>6158284
>weapons
Weapons can only have as many sockets as they are large (up to 6). If you scale all weapons to one tile, then you are basically making runewords non-existent.
>charms
If you make all charms one tile, then there is no reason to use small and large charms.

>>6158778
How is your shit crisper than mine? I'm using glide with supposedly good settings.

>>6159024
>>6158778
I tried recreating a similar image for comparison.

>>6159024
>>6159070
Bumping for interest, I would also like to know this.

>>6159070
Do you have the vaseline bilinear filtering enabled in your glide settings?

>>6159392
not him, but should I? I quite like how my game looks at the moment, but I want to see if I can make it better

>>6159551
No, bilinear filtering makes everything a blurry mess.

Are there any differences between median xl singleplayer and multiplayer?

>tfw lvl85 areas dont always have same amount of boss packs

Just

Why doesn't someone mod better graphics?

>>6160871
no lag spikes in single

>>6158673
you can mod in polish version font, I remember people did that when I played median xl the 5 and 6 complaint was common and it's much more clear on that one

>>6159392
I do, but I tested it with and without, and it makes literally no difference. The supersampling does though, but I can't tell if it's really better.

>>6161278
You don't want any kind of scaling or filtering. No scaling at 800x600 will give you a perfectly crisp image 100% of the time. If it isn't your glide settings, it's your gpu drivers.

Does anyone know if -skiptobnet works with D2SE and plugy? Because I can't make it work.

Just started playing a few days ago. Didnt think to check /vr/ for a thread. So many hackers now its kinda lame. I make games looking for other to play with then random dudes will join and drop a bunch of good shit, or lvl1s join, somehow have all TPs and kill my boss and take loots. Fuck just wanted some classic fun.

>>6161390
You should just get plugy and farm your holy grail in single player.

>>6161390
There's no longer any benefit to playing mp over sp. If you want to play with friends, use your sp character on open bnet with them.

>>6161469
>use your sp character on open bnet with them

And always back up your save game before doing this, because it can get corrupted.

>>6161390
Play Path of Diablo since it's mostly the same game just with some skills added or rebalanced, and some runewords/uniques rebalanced, but overall the same experience as the original, not an ugly complete rework like Median.

>>6161716
>Play Path of Diablo

I'd rather watch paint dry.

>>6161720
Make sure to pick a nice paint color then.

>>6161726
Don't need to. Anything would be better than playing pod.

>>6161720
I would rather just play plugy D2.

QUICK! Post your rune stash. No cubing.

>>6161729
>implying PoD is that bad or bad
Finally, some decent bait

>>6161790
>anything I don't agree with is bait

go back

Is there a utility or cheat engine table or something to increase the drop rate of specific items? I just don't have the free time to kill mephisto 1000 times to only maybe get an item, but I also don't want to just inventory edit it.

>>6160871
sp has increased drop rates to compensate for the lack of trading.

am I the only person here who still plays online on regular bnet? its not so bad.

Redpill me on crafted items

>>6157739
D1 Ironman is basically once you go into the labyrinth, you don’t come out until you or Diablo is dead. No trips to town to buy things.
It’s fun because the character skills now actually mean something, and a good drop can make your game.
I’ve never been able to win. I managed to get a sorcerer to Hell once, but I ran out of mana/spells and got messed up.
3 players could probably do it.

>>6162007
I just use a character editor to mod up the magic find +% on a few charms and do mephisto/diablo/baal/whatever runs with those.

Do some runs with +3500% magic find and you'll get some preddy kewl stuff.

>>6162084
I bet that'd be pretty fun if you let yourself make an unscheduled (as in, not related to a quest) visit to town ONCE during the run. Or maybe twice, but a limited number all the same.

>>6162203
Maybe something like you can use every shortcut on the way down once, but only when you find it. You can't "save" it, you find one, you have to use it or walk away like nothing happened, so you are kinda RNG dependant here. That gives you 3 trips back total.

>>6162221
That'd be pretty decent, it would still enable the player to get quest rewards and such, but not always at the most convenient time.

Although, that sounds like a pain in the ass if you're playing a rogue. Can't repair your bow, so if it breaks and you don't have a spare, you're done for.

>>6162275
If you had no spare that means you played wrong, start again, simple.

>>6162275
Hidden shrine could help that.

>>6162082
>hit power
Garbage properties. Only kind of interesting thing is knockback gloves if you are playing a bowzon I guess.
>blood
Helmet is useful for a mercenary. All of the pieces are useful for a very poor melee character, especially the helm and gloves.
>caster
Garbage except for amulets, which are the best amulets you will get, and the belts, which are bretty good since there are only two other belts that give cast rate.
>safety
All of these are pretty great for resists and mitigation except for the body armor and weapon, which are both completely outclassed by cheapo runewords.

>>6163158
Story on that webm? Link to mod?

>>6163190
I got bored and curious while working on my mod and decided to set values very high to make sure that I can actually change the skill in a meaningful way. No link exists yet because I still have to change almost everything.

>>6162007
>Is there a utility or cheat engine table or something to increase the drop rate of specific items?
Hero editor + Item Pack

>>6163238
What kind of mod are you making? Is it just character skill rebalance? Or is there more to it than that?

>>6163238
If your mod makes Skeleton mages do more than gently tickle enemies in hell with their damage, I'm interested.

>>6163547
speaking of mages, would they benefit from infinity, or are they still mostly useless?

>>6163716
1.8 x 0 = 0

>>6163716
I'd rather put those points into golem mastery for an unkillable insight IG so my merc could comfortably use infinity.

Diablo 2 is the best game of all time. Fight me irl if you disagree. I literally feel like this game was made especially for me. It's so perfect.

>>6163527
Planning on changing a little bit of everything.

>update all skill descriptions so that they describe nextdelay, lastcollide and any other hidden functions that massively impact how they work
>make curses feed some of their stats into each other and into summons/spells, giving a reason to actually upgrade them
>make auras work by casting them instead of having to rely on permanent RMB placement (this will also allow for silly stuff like hybrid auras, so something like an aura that casts the radial damage of holy shock, holy freeze and holy fire without giving added damage is possible)
>improve bad skills with new features, properties or just plain numerical values, and without totally replacing their identity
>add in a tiered crafting system vaguely like 1.09
>remove +all skills and replace them with +character or +element skills to encourage more diverse usage of equipment (although truthfully this is because there is no way of controlling what skills do and do not gain from all skills)
>assign every skill an element and add in a few elements
>add in more properties to scale skills that usually aren't scalable or are weakly scalable
>rework all uniques by making them stronger or giving them new abilities
>upgrading uniques now gives new properties and improved values, allowing for upgraded normal and exceptional uniques to be somewhat comparable to elites
>rework all sets so that each full set is at least barely viable through the whole game
>remove the 0.6 second delay between actions for most summons
>disable low level magic properties from spawning at high levels
>add in new, powerful magic-only properties
>make all monsters more threatening with new abilities and/or improved AI function

>>6163547
I plan on making them unlock new spells with improved function at higher levels. Also buff their damage massively to be comparable to necroskeletons, especially poison since they do virtually no damage outside of stopping enemy regeneration.

>>6163985
>>make auras work by casting them instead of having to rely on permanent RMB placement

Is this really possible though? They're gonna work like a buff with a set duration? I was thinking about this some years ago but never figured out how to make it work. Are you using some gimmick, or is it gonna be legit?

>add in a tiered crafting system vaguely like 1.09

What was that like? Also, if you nerf enigma you're a big gay.

>>6163985
There is one thing that I somehow never seen done in any game or mod, unless I missed it, but doubt it at this point: all those fire/cold/lightning/poison damage on hit affixes you get on equipment usually get pointless fairly quickly because they never scale or get big enough. Why not make them multipurpose with spells? You got a weapon with 50-100 fire damage? It will add to your every hit with melee or range weapon, but casters' fire spells will also get 50-100 more base damage, which then further be increased with synergies and passives %damage. On top of that you can add an affix, let's call it "special damage %", and maybe increase it by 1% for every point of energy, that will scale all that elemental, poison and magic damage found on gear, but not the spells themselves. So with +100% special damage the previously mentioned 50-100 fire damage will now be 100-200 damage. That way you can make caster weapons with some elemental damage, which in some situations and builds will be better than +skills

I liked X-Men legends a lot, any more Diablo-likes that have a more modern setting?

>>6164167
Just play D2.

>>6141353
Then you shouldn't talk until you play it.

>>6141239
Hero Editor

>>6164167
Warhammer 40k inquisitor

>>6164067
There is a (unfortunately very incomplete and crash-prone) mod that "tried" to do it called Dominus Rex, but the "added" damage was actually just a multiplier, the same as a synergy, which isn't actually added damage.

It is actually really easy to add yourself though, all you have to do is go to missiles.txt and set MissileSkill to 1. This is why Exploding Arrow and Freezing Arrow add fire and cold damage to their explosions, respectively, from the player's damage. I've considered adding it, but it is a huge amount of work to add it in without it being overpowered.

>have to make it so every single spell shoots out an extra missile on collision that transfers the elemental damage (a "transfer missile")
>give different added damage multipliers to every single transfer missile, since a skill like ice bolt gains 1x benefits from it, frozen orb ~16x, charged bolt ~24x and blaze 100x+
>have to devise a system to make sure that the transfer missiles are only hitting their intended target (and ARE hitting their intended target and not just whiffing) and then check every single skill since most of them behave very differently
>have to create a new skill for every skill to properly control the added damage, otherwise it won't scale at all

>>6163995
>Are you using some gimmick, or is it gonna be legit?
It is very gimmicky and might not work at all since it is based entirely on theory. I'll know soon if it works well or is just trash.

>1.09 crafting system
Basically, you got bigger benefits from the pre-defined properties with higher tiers of equipment. This allows for crafting to be cheaper at lower levels for crappier equipment, and more expensive at higher levels for stronger equipment.

>if you nerf enigma you're a big gay
Well +all skills don't exist in my mod, so I'll have to replace it with something like +2 to a random character's skills, giving only a 1/7 chance of it being the same for a given character, so it is kind of nerfed.

>>6164403
I was refering to the teleport, but your mod is actually kind of fucked up. Imagine having to pray to god you get the character skills you want before crafting an expensive rw like enigma or coh. Brutal.

>>6163985
>update all skill descriptions so that they describe nextdelay, lastcollide and any other hidden functions that massively impact how they work
That actually would be very useful for build planning. No mod ever describes these. Hopefully you will extend this to character stats as well. If you'll figure out how to realize this, that is.
>make curses feed some of their stats into each other and into summons/spells, giving a reason to actually upgrade them
I believe curses would heavily benefit from a rework like this.
>make auras work by casting them instead of having to rely on permanent RMB placement (this will also allow for silly stuff like hybrid auras, so something like an aura that casts the radial damage of holy shock, holy freeze and holy fire without giving added damage is possible)
This has potential to become something absurdly broken, if not done carefully.
>add in a tiered crafting system vaguely like 1.09
1.09 had something like that? Please tell more.
>assign every skill an element and add in a few elements
How would that work? Not all skills would be applicable.
>improve bad skills with new features, properties or just plain numerical values, and without totally replacing their identity
Good luck with that.
>rework all uniques by making them stronger or giving them new abilities
Aw yis! This will be quite something to witness
>upgrading uniques now gives new properties and improved values, allowing for upgraded normal and exceptional uniques to be somewhat comparable to elites
Aren't some of them are already comparable like upped Steeldriver?
>rework all sets so that each full set is at least barely viable through the whole game
Please do! D2 sets and most LoD sets need heavy buffing.
>make all monsters more threatening with new abilities and/or improved AI function
Just don't end up overdoing it. Though, harder NM and Hell would make things a lot more interesting.

Maybe this is a retard question, but how do you get the version to play with others? do you guys play together? i only saw the off realm version

>>6164403
>...so I'll have to replace it with something like +2 to a random character's skills, giving only a 1/7 chance of it being the same for a given character, so it is kind of nerfed.
I hope you'll change rune droprate while you're at it. Considering how time consuming it is to assemble an Enigma, this would help out immensely.

>>6163985
Make sure to check in here periodically to let us know how you're progressing. This mod sounds super kewl!

Or maybe you could set up a development blog and give us a link to check up on it.

>>6166045
>super kewl!

>>6166006
Nobody in here plays together. The chads play single player plugy, some people play on bnet, some people play random mods, and the redditors play pod.

>>6166097
5/10, but you forgot to include
>reddit spacing

>>6166124
Who are you quoting?

>>6163158
>blood gloves are bad
Okay buddy, cb + life leech is total garbage to have on gloves...

>knockback is okay on bowzon
Have you ever played a bowzon? Knockback is extremely good.

>>6166127
If you put an empty line between lines of text when you post here, sometimes anons will accuse you of "reddit spacing".

>>6166135
But who was being quoted though?

>>6166139
The greentext
>reddit spacing
In >>6166124 was me pointing out something that >>6166097 forgot to include.

>>6166103
aww, i wanted to play necromancer and raise skelebros together

>>6166145
So you weren't quoting anyone?

>>6163985
No offense but you know this will turn out terrible. Half of the things you mention here sound outright retarded or overpowered and will not improve the game but rather destroy it. I mean it's nice to theorycraft but what's the point of wasting time creating a bad mod that no one will play?

>>6166134
I say "okay" because it is only useful for a bowzon and maybe a javazon. And I never said blood gloves are garbage, rather I said they are nice on poor melee characters. And they are still nice on rich characters if you roll attack speed or are playing whirlwind.

>>6166234
What in particular sounds retarded or overpowered? I'm trying to keep it somewhat reasonable, so any advice would be helpful.

>>6166443
Just the first ideas that come to mind.
The most obviously overpowered are hybrid auras. First of all, you can have this even now as there are numerous runewords, which allow your merc to have an aura of his own. By doing this, you will either make these runewords irrelevant because you can have your multiple auras all from yourself but more likely you will also break the game because you will be able to have even MORE active auras.
Necro summons are already strong as fuck and need no buff. They especially don't need innate abilities coming from curses You can provide these abilities by using the curses yourself. There is a reason why you can have only one active curse at a time, which is similar to the reason why you can only have one aura active at a time.
Disabling low level properties from spawning on high level items will make really good rares come too easily. They will stop being special.
Reworking items and skills in general is retarded. You will do a bad job and make the game into your power fantasy. Even if you don't intend to.

I didn't see a link in OP but where can I download Diablo 2? I'm too paranoid to just pirate and it's like $20 on the Blizzard store.

>>6166689
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgqX5W4jEgM

Fuck you retard, just spend the $20. Only spoonfeeding you because it's the best game of all time.

>>6166694
Why use Plugy instead of vanilla?

>>6166719
Are you not familiar with PlugY? It adds a lot of stuff the vanilla game practically cries out for:

>shared stash and infinite stash
>see above
>players X setting auto-applied to next game
>a bunch of console commands
>ladder-only rune words outside of realms
>keep playing secret cow level even after killing cow king
>displays item level in pop-up
>can lock mouse cursor in game window (I have no idea how people can stand to play in windowed mode without this desu)

>>6166620
>hybrid auras
I probably just explained it poorly. A hybrid aura is not all three auras at once. It is a singular, independent aura. This means that (1) it is not mutually exclusive with the auras it is based off of, (2) the paladin can still only have one aura activated at a time, (3) it need not carry over all the properties of the auras it is based off and (4) the hybrid's stats need not necessarily be 100% of the value of the auras it is based off of, thus allowing fine-tuning. The main benefit to this method is that it can give justification for investing in multiple auras instead of just "me x damage type, me +x damage type aura". As it stands, almost all of the defensive auras are borderline useless outside of being on equipment, Vigor for moving in town faster and Salvation for doing the ubers; and for an individual, vanilla build, you will probably only be making use of 1-3 different auras.

>Necro summons are already strong as fuck and need no buff
Nah. Necromages suck badly. Lightning and fire deal half the damage of skeletons, cold 1/4th and poison 1/400th. On top of that, they have 1/5th the life (and thus also regenerate 1/5th slower), have a retarded, cowardly AI and require you to use a much worse curse to get the best effectiveness out of them. And then you have golems, which deal basically no damage and are just hunks of meat that you either use to slow enemies, draw aggression or (if you are incredibly rich) get auras from. The real problem is how overpowered Amplify Damage and Corpse Explosion is, without these skills everyone would think the summonmancer (and probably the necromancer in his entirety) is a stupid meme character. I'd even go as far as to say the summonmancer is pretty fucking bad even still, since bone spear/spirit are just better for getting kills faster, which means faster corpse exploding which is (currently in vanilla and since the game came out) the only important metric of a necromancer build.

>>6166620
>Disabling low level properties from spawning on high level items will make really good rares come too easily. They will stop being special.
This is actually a very good point. This can be fixed by increasing the frequency of middling affixes, but reducing the frequency of the highest affixes, thereby making it just as unlikely to get very good affixes while still making the average item better. I just don't want completely worthless affixes like +3-7 fire damage spawning in Hell. It is true that it makes the average item stronger, but that is fine, I don't expect anyone to play this mod over vanilla Diablo 2 for the sake of sheer longterm grinding, from my perspective, mods are generally just something you play to completion once or twice then never again.

>They especially don't need innate abilities coming from curses
Yes they do. As it stands, investing in curses is a joke. Probably the only reason I would ever consider putting more than one point into a curse is for Dim Vision and only if I were playing a hardcore necromancer. Buffing curses individually doesn't help, it'll just result in the same old "ME CAST AMPLIFY DAMAGE" or, should you be fighting a boss and have crappy equipment, "ME CAST DECREPIFY", or if I should overbuff another curse, maybe it'll turn into "ME CAST IRON MAIDEN" or something that is still equally boring. Giving small, incremental synergies via curses (e.g. Lower Resist passively gives only necromages -2% to enemy resistance per point) would allow for more diverse builds without strengthening those that are already broken. I also intend to have curses give a portion of their curse benefits to other curses, in the hope that this gives justification for more diverse curse usage (and not amplify damage 99% of the time).

>>6166620
>There is a reason why you can have only one active curse
I did not mean to imply that you can have more than one curse. The "shared" benefits of curses will act more as synergies than they will as curses. You can still only have one curse on an enemy at a time.

>Reworking items and skills in general is retarded. You will do a bad job and make the game into your power fantasy. Even if you don't intend to.
Obviously. This is the always true premise of every mod, every Diablolike and Diablo 2 itself. The game just has too much content to ever be properly balanced and it wouldn't be particularly fun if it was perfectly balanced, being able to come up with and create retarded, broken builds is genre defining. If I end up making it so less people use the trite vanilla builds and use something else, then I consider that a success, even if it is wildly unbalanced.

>>6166798
>>6166805
Don't let the detractors get you down, brah. You have some good ideas for this mod, and I for one would like to play it if/when you've put something together.

>>6163985
while you're at it, change all the useless lv83 and lv84 areas to be lv85 so they're viable options for farming in.
fucking sick of only having Ancient Tunnels, Mauso and CS to farm in.

You can make one new character class for Diablo 2, but you must delete an existing character class to do so.

Do you take the offer? If so, which character class do you delete, and what's your new one like?

I would delete the assassin or druid and add some kinda class that doesn't use mana at all, just has skills on cooldown timers or something.

>>6156151
Diablo 1 has better pacing, art direction, and difficulty curve. It is superior.

People talking about a Diablo 1 playthrough focus on the variance in monsters and shrines they got, and the big game changing spellbooks or items they got.

D2 is all about gear, gear, gear, and endless runs for gear. A solid 75% of the game is dead space you run through once and try to skip, and running and the elimination of the grid system made AI variance basically meaningless since you just run around and skill spam everything.

>>6157734
Ironman works a lot better in D1 since the game is short enough to finish in a sitting.

It's also significantly harder, so you often are only getting into the catacombs.

>>6168254
That's completely subjective. Also, I don't see myself playing Diablo 1 for 15+ years.

>>6168254
>D2 is all about gear, gear, gear, and endless runs for gear. A solid 75% of the game is dead space you run through once and try to skip, and running and the elimination of the grid system made AI variance basically meaningless since you just run around and skill spam everything.
The 75% skippable thing was nicely addressed by Median XL, making some areas biased towards dropping set or unique items, or lots of gold. I think it just happens in the uberlevels, but I thought it was a nice touch.

>>6168591
Of course it is. While the slow walking speed and grid system makes combat far more skills based (knowing the AI is far more important for a warrior on Hell than elite gear), I also realize why it would be very frustrating to anyone who wasn't playing D1 back when it was ground breaking. It is fucking slow and makes you click constantly.

Obviously some people love the gear and build aspect of D2. You have people doing Grails and single player botting lol. If you actually enjoy killing Meph and reloading over and over, getting a rush from the drops, it's a better game.

I like that Diablo is short, you can finish it in a session. Different quests each playthrough is a nice touch. The game plays different every time you start because you can't run any areas and gear is mostly limited to RNG for that game.

Builds not being a thing in D1 doesn't matter as much because you're getting different spells each playthrough.

>>6166097
Would've been way funnier if it had said "Up your ass and to the left"

>>6168757
More accurate too, now that we know Trump had multiple private parties with just Epstine. McCully was prime rape bait to the elites back then.

anyone want to play diablo 2 together?

>>6140683
Okay real quick, was there another replacement for Vnet? The /vg/ private server that used to be running. Is there something else like it?

>>6169042
I want to, i'd need a download link though, and a heavy helping of willing to deal with a N00B who only knows a tiny bit of necro

>>6169174
Not him but check out the old games thread on /t/
>>>/t/914258
That's where I got my copy since I can't read my CDs anymore.

>>6169225
>no links in the thread, and the link in OP has been vandalized
dang

>>6169240
Unfortunate. The google doc that I used to get mine was taken down by google.
Welp, idk what to do next.

>>6169270
I'll just have to hope some kind anon will up their version

>>6169174
Just pirate it for fuck sake

>>6169304
>>6169174
Yo hol up.
Look what I found
https://yuki.la/t/919249#p919249

>>6167732
I'd replace the druid with a less shitty druid.

>make it so his summons are actually the best summons in the game by far since they require a retarded amount of investment, yet for some have half the life and half the damage of necroskeletons which require way less investment
>fix his fire skills, only firestorm and fissure are worth anything, the rest are like playing the lottery for a chance to win $1 or just don't work well against half the monsters
>make arctic blast, twister, solar creeper, life creeper, poison creeper, spirit of the wolverine and spirit of barbs into something that isn't meme shit
>replace the entire shapeshifting tree with melee themed nature attacks and no shapeshifting maybe you shoot out leaves or something, as is it sucks in so many ways, it meshes like garbage with summoning outside of shockwave and doesn't mesh at all with the elemental tree since it flat out prevents you from mixing the two, it is so bad that other characters make better use of his shapeshifting than he does, what a fucking joke

>>6169317
downloaded, thanks you

>>6169042
I'd play with others, but only if we all agree to play meme builds like charge-upsins, rabiesdudes, FOHdins, meleesorcs, etc. Would be even better if it were cooperatively retarded, like a team with a thornsdin, barbdruid and amplify damage spamming necromancer.

i got it downloaded, can only play in windowed 800x600 though which is piss
>>6169786
I don't know how to do that, but i'd be down to try sometime

>>6169225
>That's where I got my copy since I can't read my CDs anymore
You do realize that you can register all of your legacy blizzard cd keys on battle.net, and download/install them whenever you want, right?

>>6169225
>That's where I got my copy since I can't read my CDs anymore
If I remember correctly, it is possible to convert old cd keys into new key format. I don't remember how one does it, tho.

QUARANTINED

>>6170306
Post cool drops.

>>6142807
> The game was always a farming simulator
it wasn't, it was just an arpg meant to be played through to the end. Kill baal, end of game. Just like D1. No one could imagine that players unironically would grind out the same content over and over for items they don't need since they've already beaten the game

>>6170618
>baal
i mean diablo, obviously
also no mana pots, no

>>6170618
>No one could imagine that players unironically would grind out the same content over and over for items they don't need since they've already beaten the game
Maybe with single player but the game was definitely made with multiplayer and pvp in mind, so obviously people are going to grind the same runs over and over to get better gear. They also made a ton of items insanely rare. You have to repetitively play that game if you ever want to play around with high end gear, and the most efficient way to farm is just autistically teleport to killing diablo and baal over and over and over. On top of that they made those runs the most generous for xp. I don’t see how they wouldn’t envision the battle.net community playing that way.

>>6170695
i dont think pvp was the focus, more like "hey let's add this cool shit"

>>6169786
this sounds fun. who wants to do this on ladder US east with me?

>>6170702
Battle.net was a big innovation and a major focus for Blizzard as a company. online play was some last minute cool stuff they added to D1 but by the time D2 was in development, it was fully on the agenda. Just adding the ability to kill another player and claim their ear is enough to make the online community focus heavily on pvp and obsess over finding the absolute best piece of loot, to give them an edge over other players. Hindsight is 20/20 but I don’t see how they couldn’t envision the online play ending up the way it did, but then again seeing how little stash space they give you, maybe they didn’t see it becoming a virtual hoarding simulator.

anyone know if this is still mostly accurate for 1.13/1.14? finna roll some blood gloves and need to see how hard it is to roll ias. i feel like affix/suffix generation has probably not changed that much since 1.11, but i'm pretty new to crafting.

https://diablo3.ingame.de/diablodb/affix_index.php?lang=en&version=lod&patch=111

>>6170618
Yeah, the whole shtick with random generated maps were there just for the sake of it. Not for the purpose of allowing people to replay the game over and over and over and over again.

>>6170724
The game has barely changed at all since 1.10f, outside of a few minor skill changes, bug fixes, 7 added runewords, and the addition of the ubers.

>>6170724
The game has barely changed at all since 1.10f, outside of a few minor skill changes, bug fixes, 7 added runewords, and the addition of the ubers. Crafting is the same as it was in 1.10f.

th-thanks..

I haven't played this game in 10 years and I've got the itch.

Do I want to use Blizzards launcher/official downloads or is there a better option?

>>6171289
>that awful scaling
Jesus christ.

>>6171463
Download the game from battle.net, you don't need the launcher, and install it normally. Then use D2SE with plugy.

>>6171467
thanks man

>Sacrifice cannot deal deadly strike or critical strike or enhanced damage against undead (on the character with an aura that increases damage against undead (which actually gives enhanced damage against undead TO the undead)) or enhanced damage against demons and effectively has -8%/-16%/-24% life steal in normal, nightmare and hell and also attacks slow relative to zeal
>Impale cannot deal deadly strike or critical strike (on the character with the highest critical strike), while also being the slowest attack in the game by far, while also shattering your weapon in a few minutes
I can almost understand Sacrifice back in the day since it was kind of funny making a squad of pissed off, sprinting black guys that are also virtually immortal, but Impale has never had a reason for existing ever.

>Sacrifice cannot deal deadly strike or critical strike or enhanced damage against undead (on the character with an aura that increases damage against undead (which actually gives enhanced damage against undead TO the undead)) or enhanced damage against demons and effectively has -8%/-16%/-24% life steal in normal, nightmare and hell and also attacks slow relative to zeal
>Impale cannot deal deadly strike or critical strike (on the character with the highest critical strike), while also being the slowest attack in the game by far, while also shattering your weapon in a few minutes
I can almost understand Sacrifice back in the day since it was kind of funny making a squad of pissed off, sprinting black guys that are also virtually immortal, but Impale has never had a reason for existing ever. Why haven't they made these skills not complete garbage?

>>6170421

>>6171957

>>6171968
Worst fucking part of the Grail...

>>6171974
And best part! 17 Remain...

>http://www.angelfire.com/games5/orderoftheworldstone/107-2.html
>grand charms give up to +40 damage and 14% faster run/walk
>laying of hands has 50% fire absorb
>all the runewords are fucked up (e.g. Breath of the Dying gives +100% damage, 9-15 cold damage and +5 mana per kill)
>magic find completely broken, enemies drop like a drop mod
>Racks have 1:125 odds for set items and 1:1000 for uniques
>corpses/chests are saved based on the map, so if you get a good one you can do runs on it to get easy almost guaranteed lot
>bosses aren't capped on immunities
>Lord de Seis is always immune to fire, cold and lightning
>chance to cast works with whirlwind, but stops you from whirlwinding
>cold pierce and piercing attack are the same stat
>crafted items can get the same affixes as magics
>you can imbue crafted items
>crafted properties randomly stack
I really need to play 1.07. Never knew it was this fucked up, sounds almost like a poorly made mod.

>>6172663
>>Lord de Seis is always immune to fire, cold and lightning
Hahaha wow.
How is a sorceress supposed to defeat him, then? Static Field + Have Mercenary Do It?

>>6172840
Static Field is resisted by lightning resistance. But cold mastery pierces cold immunes in 1.07, so the real question is: why would a sorceress ever use anything except frozen orb/blizzard with glacial spike (and occasionally static field, which was uncapped at the time)? Looking at it, 1.07 was by far the most sorceress favored version in the entire game's history.

>>6173010
OH I just realized that 1.07 was before the difficulty ramp in Hell and the skill synergies.

So a properly-leveled sorc could always afford a few levels in the cold skills you described. Derp. Thanks.

realistically how much easier would the game be on nightmare/hell if it didn't lower your resistances. It always seemed dumb to me, especially because the last reward you get in the storyline is the resistance scroll, which is made mostly pointless when you go to the next difficulty. Enemy damage is already buffed, so why are they double dipping?

>>61071195
yeah, that's what i figured, i couldn't remember what patch had all the crafting changes. rolled way too late in my run anyways. only had two gloves because i confused glove types and my first ended up like this. got a good laugh out of this here.

>>6173562
It's because every other stat in the game follows linear increases from start to finish to remain competitve, so in order to make low resistance items less useful on higher difficulties, they lower your base resists.

For example, if you found a shield that gave +70 to all resists on normal, that shield would probably carry you through NM and Hell (Assuming you didn't need the increased defenses or stats a better shield would otherwise offer) if your resistances didn't lower. Because they do, you now have to find other pieces of gear to prop up your resistances, which makes said shield relatively worse since it's not a single item solution to low resistances, although still really good. So now you have to consider kitting out a helm, body armor, or something else with resists to cap yourself out.

The older I got, the less I liked the resistance jigsaw puzzle that Diablo 2 has, because capped resistances are so useful and you take exponentially more damage at lower values (IE, going from 80 to 70 resists makes you take +50% damage from an element, going from 80 to 0 means five times as much damage), so I feel like every piece of gear I take I have to evaluate what it'll do to my resistances before any other consideration. It's not bad when you have access to a large pool of items to work with, but when you're leveling in a solo hardcore context, you'll often find pieces of gear that's tough to replace, despite being 40 levels out of date, because it gives a large chunk of resistance and you can't afford to drop below the cap. It'd have been better if resistance capped at 50 so at worst you'd take twice as much damage (0 resists) or 220% more damage (-60 resists) instead of +300%/+540% more damage, but it is really nice to hit 95 resists and virtually take no damage either. It's just you're probably not going to get to that point without spending quite a bit of time solo farming.

I'm new to diablo 2
what are some recommended mods i should get?

>>6173693
yeah, i always get a laugh when that happens

I just picked up diablo i. How high does the single attribute enchantment get on gear? I remember it being important to keep that stuff around to breach higher levels of a spell.

>>6174180
Honestly? Play the vanilla game first.
Only mod I could endorse for a new player is PlugY (doesn't work with the latest game version though), since it has a lot of quality-of-life improvements without changing the gameplay balance.

After you beat the vanilla game, consider Median XL. I think there's other stuff, like Eastern Sun, which I have not tried. Path of Diablo exists, as well, and has an online community.

>>6174471
Median XL is solid, but all of the skills unironically feel soulless compared to the original. It's still worth a hundred or so hours to do a completionist run.