[Release] Diablo 2 Immortal ~ v1.64

[Violos]

Which heroes do you have in mind?
Because in some cases, that is intended.

You see, quest bosses need to be beatable by all classes in order to progress. So while challenging, they should always be manageable at that point in the game if you use the resources at your disposal.
And most regular heroes themselves are also mostly unchanged, just generally stronger or endowed with a new ablility or two.

There are, however, some well rewarded side quests (Beast of Legend) or infrequent bonus encounters (Hildisvini) which are meant to be hard, and an achievement if you beat them early.
But you are free to go around them until you are ready - kind of like the Hydra in TQ.

[Nightmare14]

i dont really remember their names as i dont pay that much attention to them (trying to survive against them :P) but like every 2/3 mob has a hero/boss monster and like half of them are hard and you can't really avoid them because they are part of standard mobs

for example the most recent one is one of those wierd muscle monster thingys near the raptor side quest, the raptor was easy but the hero monster in the mob surronding the raptor killed me 3 times before i killed it, and i haven't died once to any of the quest monsters yet, except the beast of legend and that yeti that protects the weapon side quest

sorry i can't remember the names of anything im usually just running through the game and killing :P

[Cleglaw]

If you are playing a Paladin, put a point or 2 in smite; it will stun lock many/most of the heroes and keep them from blasting you.

[Nightmare14]

i'm playing paladin/sorceress, but i'll keep that in mind when i make a full paladin thanks

[Violos]

You mean Yerren. Well yeah, those are kind of tough.

But do not let a few deaths bring you down. One of the german players who beat Hell solo so far had over 300.
(It did not help that she was playing D2I over Underlord, but still... first time around, it's always hardest.)



P.S.

Another tiny update, this time to XtraStuff.arc
(Also goes into either mod's /resources)

This adds -at last- a nice, custom made animation for the Staff Attack, instead of the more or less fitting existing ones that have been used before.
With this being the first skill people see of the mod, it was about time it looked good.

I am also planning to remove the cooldown after all, but that will require a new version.

[Cleglaw]

I didn't post here for about 5 months, because I had stopped playing video games. But I picked this up again a week ago and after playing a lot of different Pally variants, I have some feedback and questions.

Charge -- high damage skill. It seems like the damage comes from the weapon, not the shield. It will one shot kill for a couple of acts, but once I got to Act IV, I could not find any variant (tried various auras as well as BH and FotH) that worked to my satisfaction; either you die too easily or constantly run out of mana.

Smite-- Wonderful skill. Keep it on the right click mouse button. It will stun lock most monsters (not Act Bosses -- a good thing) and often save your life.

Zeal -- imho, the ability to limit the strikes to a single target is an advantage, not a drawback.

Vengeance -- As far as I can tell it just adds some flat elemental damage. I haven't tried it at higher levels, but it would appear to be underpowered.

Excellent mod -- good job Violos!

Blessed Hammer -- woefully underpowered. One third of the time it will do no damage at all, and when it does do damage, it doesn't do much. We won't see any Hammerdins in D2I.

FotH -- Disappointing. Of course, I never thought it was that good in D2 either.

Holy Bolt -- OK for what it does. The healing effect on allies is gone which is a potential disadvantage for group play.

Holy Shield -- Question here -- Does the block animation have to actually visually occur for blocking to occur? I tried it on my Pally charger, but I could never see that it was doing anything, so I dropped it. But the shield comes into the charging animation, so I couldn't tell if the charger simply could not block after a charge or what. On the other hand I did observe what I thought was an improvement in blocking on my zealot -- when he wasn't busy attacking that is.

The 3 passive resist auras are great must have skills for every Pally, I think. But with all 3 constantly working passively, what good is Salvation? I will confess that I have not actually tried Salvation.

The inability to have a Merc is a disadvantage for all of the classes. For the Paladin it means that we are limited to only one active aura. Of course in D2, one can get a desert merc with an aura -- so in D2 it is possible to run both a defensive aura and a defensive aura at the same time. Have you considered making a hirable pet available to all classes as a quest bonus of some sort? I miss my merc.

There is more, but that is all I have time for atm on the Paladin.

I haven't played a melee assassin because I don't understand many skill descriptions in the assassin tree -- Tiger Strike and Fists of Fire for example. They do not change for the first 5 levels? So you put points in with no increase until you get to level 6? Then it also says they increase at level 8. Please explain.

[jaelrin]

Holy Shield -- Question here -- Does the block animation have to actually visually occur for blocking to occur? I tried it on my Pally charger, but I could never see that it was doing anything, so I dropped it. But the shield comes into the charging animation, so I couldn't tell if the charger simply could not block after a charge or what. On the other hand I did observe what I thought was an improvement in blocking on my zealot -- when he wasn't busy attacking that is.

Not sure about blocking animation while charging, but while running I think it works. But, as I wrote earlier, block effectiveness depends on how many monsters attack you, and on their attack speed. For example, against Duriel in Grim difficulty I took very little damage, because most of his attack were blocked, and due to slow attack speed shield could recover in time.

In Hell difficulty - got to Nessus and already died two times, both to crowds of monsters. HolyShield is a huge part of survivability, and when there're a lot of fast attacking monsters - it gets "overloaded" (can't recover so fast), so some hits aren't blocked. For now I have lvl 22 Holy Shield, maybe at higher skill lvl it'll be better.

Charge -- high damage skill. It seems like the damage comes from the weapon, not the shield. It will one shot kill for a couple of acts, but once I got to Act IV, I could not find any variant (tried various auras as well as BH and FotH) that worked to my satisfaction; either you die too easily or constantly run out of mana.

Are you talking about specific build around these skills, or paladin in general? I got to Hell difficulty untwinked using Zeal, Concentration aura, Holy Shield, some points in Charge, Sacrifice and resist passives.
This is a most "direct" build that uses standard STR gear and ADctH. I decided not to use HolyBolt, but used Persephone's Tears relic in jewelry, so Ghosts weren't a problem.

P.S. I agree about some underpoweredness of Blessed Hammer. Don't know about FoH, because it requires an INT build and caster gear with cooldown reduction.

[oneeyered]

Hi,

I was running UL and Soulvizer last. I cleared and wiped all my files and reloaded TQ and TQ:IT, hit the read me and copied the drI folder to my games doc custom map folder. However, every time I try to run a custom map the game never comes up. Could use some help thanks

Update: I dumped and reloaded again and everything is working fine now.

[Cleglaw]

Are you talking about specific build around these skills, or paladin in general? I got to Hell difficulty untwinked using Zeal, Concentration aura, Holy Shield, some points in Charge, Sacrifice and resist passives.
This is a most "direct" build that uses standard STR gear and ADctH. I decided not to use HolyBolt, but used Persephone's Tears relic in jewelry, so Ghosts weren't a problem.

P.S. I agree about some underpoweredness of Blessed Hammer. Don't know about FoH, because it requires an INT build and caster gear with cooldown reduction.

With regard to Charge, I am talking about a build built around the skill. I do have a thus far successful (Act IV normal, Hades palace) Zealot with Holy Freeze.

[Nightmare14]

isn't holy freeze meant to be slowing all aspects of monsters down? because it seems to only slow down their movement but do nothing to their attack speed