Thread: 1.17 Patch Additional Information

UPDATE (6-5-09): The Gigantes MI drops will be restored in 1.18.

Warning: this thread contains information which may spoil the gameplay experience for newer players.

One of the things that has caused a lot of problems in fixing up the community patch is how little information there is on so many of the fixes in earlier versions. This thread will offer more detailed information about the fixes in this version of the patch. This thread will be updated with more detailed information about the fixes in the latest patch as I have time.


Outsider's damage does not increase past level 15

The skill config had the max and ultimate level set to 15, though the skill had 20 levels of value. Max level changed to 20.

Liche King's Soul Blight projectile has no sound and no visible impact

A visible impact effect was made that accurately shows the radius of effect. A target effect pack was also added players could see which monsters get hit by it. Impact sound added from Spirit sound packs.

Nymph has no aggressive or defensive controllers


Nymph's weapon attack does not use flat damage from pet bonuses


Briarward does not get Epic or Legendary health boosts

The briarward creature class is "dynamicobject." This is the only way to ensure that monsters can't ignore the briar ward and run past it directly to you. As a result, the briarward fails to get epic and legendary health boosts that other pet objects get (like monster lure, battle standard, and traps). The briarward now gets those same pet boosts, but is still not considered a pet.

Shaman's Leggings still give double recharge bonuses


Spellbreaker projectile fails to affect targets half the time

The old projectile was an invisible arrow with a normal flight speed that players could not aim properly because of monsters moving. To make things worse, if you targeted the ground (or hit the ground near a monster) the projectile affected the hit effect on all monsters within a 6-meter radius, even though it did nothing to them. To correct this, the projectile is now an area of effect projectile. This dramatically improves its utility (and if you read about the Gigantes Fix below, you'll want to invest at least 1 point in it ).

Revenant Greaves still don't drop, and Epic and Legendary variants aren't linked


Gigantes defensive auras fail to activate because of an animation problem

Because of an animation bug, the Gigantes would attempt to cast their aura buffs while dual-wielding, but the auras would fail to activate. Because Gigantes are usually dual-wielding, this meant they usually didn't have their auras on. Fixed by using a different animation that properly fires the aura. The Gigantes you'll notice this on are:

Dactyls - have a unique aura that shows with the Battle Awareness effect. It grants more armor, more OA and DA, skill disruption protection, and do 50% more damage to undead.

Ephialtes (Hero) - has Earth Enchantment and Brimstone.

Polybotes (Hero) - has Storm Nimbus and Static Charge.

Warden of Souls - has Deathchill Aura.

Gigantes monster gear and monster infrequent gear is a mess
EDIT: The information below is wrong, and the Porphyrion's MI gear will be removed in the next patch.

It seems a second set of monster infrequent gear was not completed in time for release, and some last minute work was done to merge the incomplete sets. However, mistakes cropped up in this process, and has lead to people reporting 3 separate sets of monster infrequent gear dropping, 2 of which by the same name but with different stats. Essentially, there are 2 basic kinds of Gigantes, let's call them Yellow and Blue (based on armor color). Each has a set of basic equipment (common white items) that have a small chance to drop with magical affixes (like all items). And each has a monster infrequent set of equipment, one for the yellow guys. The Yellow-Guy MI gear is called Porphyrion's, and the Blue-Guy MI gear is called Alcyoneus' Armor. However, they never did the art for the Alcyoneus set, instead they just used the art for they made for the Porphyrion's stuff on the Alcyoneus Armor (this is common with MANY Act 4 MI gear, where the notes say "NEED ART" and art is used instead from a related piece of monster gear--not a problem in most cases), and set the item properties to display the basic blue-guy art when equipped by a blue-guy gigantes. Then, they also ditched Porphyrion's Helm (maybe to avoid confusion). This means the yellow guys and the blue guys both drop legs, arms, and torso MI pieces, both have the same skins, but both have different names and different stats, though only Alcyoneus drops a helm. To make matters worse, they accidentally gave the basic blue-guy armor the wrong name tags, so it drops white items called Porphyrion's stuff (which is the name of the MI gear the yellow-guys drop). Most players don't notice as they filter white items, though when one drops with magical affixes, they think they've found a monster infrequent item with different stats (monster gear doesn't display affix names).

To clean things up, instead of trying to patch their patch, what little work was left was finished; Porphyrion's Helm was already made, with a skin and everything. All values for all armor pieces was already set and labled. All loot tables were already made and linked. So, to fix this,

1.) the tag on the blue-guy armor was changed to say "Gigantes" armor like the yellow variant.
2.) Porphyrion's Helm was added back to the appropriate loot tables.
3.) the skin on Alcyoneus items was changed to something distinct from the Porphyrion's set.

All 4 sets of gear drop, are properly named, and each visually distinct from the other.

Normal Scepter of the Liche King has irregular damage values


Monster Infrequent leg armor from Act 4 monsters can drop without affixes

Because of a dev mistake, all monster infrequent leg pieces that drop from Act 4 monsters have a very high chance to drop broken, or with no affixes at all.

Background:

Non-MI monster gear have these weightings set:

bothPrefixSuffix - 2
noPrefixNoSuffix - 30
prefixOnly - 6
suffixOnly - 6
brokenOnly - 40

The implications of these numbers should be self-evident; most will drop broken, then common, then with one affix, then with both.

MI gear (all MI gear) have these weightings:

bothPrefixSuffix - 2
noPrefixNoSuffix -
prefixOnly - 9
suffixOnly - 9
brokenOnly -

This means they have 100% chance to drop with at least 1 affix.

All monster item loot tables follow these exact weightings except for the MI leg tables in the xpack, which are:

bothPrefixSuffix - 2
noPrefixNoSuffix - 30
prefixOnly - 9
suffixOnly - 9
brokenOnly - 40

Note they got as far as changing the prefixOnly and suffixOnly weightsfrom 6 to 9, but failed to remove the 30 and 40 from common and broken. The fix was made, and it affects all MI legs dropped from these monsters:

Anouran Mage
Anouran Melee
Empusa
Formicid Mage
Formicid Melee
Gigantes
Keres Mage
Machae Melee
Melinoe Mage
Troglodyte Melee

Percentage poison damage completion bonuses on relics and charms do not work.
Percentage poison damage boosts on Battlemarker shrines do not work.

There are 2 types of poison damage: flat and duration. Like elemental damage, boosts to flat poison damage do not affect poison duration damage, but display the same (both say "poison damage"). As flat poison damage isn't used (except in very few cases, like on plague), values set to increase flat poison damage are clearly a mistake. Of the records with values set, these records were changed:

offensive_%poison_01.dbr item\lootmagicalaffixes\relics\bonuses
offensive_%poison_02.dbr item\lootmagicalaffixes\relics\bonuses
offensive_%poison_03.dbr item\lootmagicalaffixes\relics\bonuses
shrine_battlebuff.dbr skills\shrines
shrine_typhonbattlebuff.dbr skills\shrines

This affects the poison damage completion bonuses and the poison buff from Battle Marker shrines (sidenote: battle marker shrines increase all damage types by 100%, except for the battle marker shrine in Typhon's arena which only increases damage by 50%).

Ravages of Time icon is too large


Traps became dumber in 1.1.16

In 1.1.16, someone who shall remain nameless accidentally included some experimental AI changes he made to the trap AI to fix the problem it had with targetting hidden monsters. The result was the trap sometimes not attacking monsters near them. Although the original problem has not been resolved, the original AI has been restored, so now the trap is back to being stupid in it's original, more-effective way.

Inzu the Dune Raider is a Beastman (should be Demon)

Ppdated gigantes aura to indicate it was DW problem only.

Sorry, that's sort of outside of the scope of what we can do with the patch. We can't just start changing the names of items and stuff. The only reason I changed the name of the basic Gigantes gear is because it was misnamed.

But, as strange as you find it now, I'm sure you'll get used to it; besides, wasn't it stranger that there were two sets of armor that dropped from the same monsters, with the exact same model and skins, and yet different names and stats?

Nothing to see here. :O

Heh, sorry. It was a big mess, and had I not already been mucking around in those files for a new gigantes in occult, I prolly never would have noticed the problem to begin with, as I have never gotten many pieces of the equipment either. I mean, I had players reporting that they dropped 3 MI's, and that there were two different MI's with the same name and stuff, but hadn't really seen the problem.

And, funny note about the warden of souls; his naming and stuff in the database suggests he was a secret passage monster at first. Likely you had to kill him to get the key to unlock the gates so you could kill the remaining monsters. Then they nabbed him for the main game (prolly cause they thought he was too cool to just sit in the SP).

I do believe that diseased plumage completion bonus didn't work, but the base charm bonus did. Gitar3's the one who discovered this; I was pretty surprised too.