Edit: Lots of things have happend since I post this. Aught aka Maks, Sky and Thaison aka Vietnam joined the team. With currently Maks focusing on skills, Thaison on Code edits and Sky working on items related stuff, which allows me to focus on graphics in the meantime.
[Base Items]
I am currently working on a new base item system where every base item will have its own itemtype. This will give us three big opportunities, first the usage of a D2Mod Plugin called NoSock.dll, which allows to control what can be socked into what itemtype. Second we will get a better control over cuberecipes and can go deeper into details here and third a bigger variety of base graphics. Those are mostly taken from Two Worlds, Titan Quest and Grim World. Mixing those might be not for everyone, but that's what I wanna do in my mod.
Different to LoD I splitted armor items in four groups plus two for shields so far. We have leather, chain, halfplate and plate armor sets. They all are taken from Two Worlds. I splitted shields into wood and metal. I took them from Titan Quest, but not really happy with their look. So I made end up changing those. Belts are currently taken from Grim World, but will require some more work too.
In the end we will have a similar amout of types for armor/shields and belts as in LoD and a higher variety for helms/gloves and boots. Those items will serve as the backbone. On top of that I wanna add more itemtypes for hell only. Seriously we all spend most time there after all. No need for thousands of low tier items. Those basitems will be more specifc. Featuring automagics, special sock requirements (see above), requirements etc. Right now I am not playing to have as many char specific itemtypes as in LoD, but maybe one for every type (helm,armor,boot,etc.).
Similar measures will be taken for baseitem weapons. However, I havent put much time into those yet. On a related note. I wanna limit certain skills to certain weapontypes. Which can result in more useable items in endgame. For rings and amulets I will use the same system as we have now, but might redo/rework certain graphics as I wanna take some for unique items.
Finished items for the new special slot. We'll have shoulders for melee chars, armbands for range chars, spellbooks for caster and heads for summoner. You can also see some new belts and shields. I have finished all the basic armor itemtypes and working on weapons now. Weapons will see a drastically reduction in itemtypes. To give you an example, LoD has 13 itemtypes for spears, polearms and scythes. I reduced this to 6. As such we will have less "unused" basetypes.
Edit: Finished all weapons. Need to redo char specific weapons though once aught finish the char skills.
[Uniques and Sets]
I really like the idea of every unique item having its own distinctive graphic. Those will come from all kind of sources, like Path of Exile, Diablo 3, Gondal, etc. or altered / selfmade like those from Barby.
They will also feature special itemstats which in some cases can only be found on them, more about them later. The following example was made by Ogodei for showing exactly this. Beside we can see that this item has a different colored name. I wanna use this for super rare uniques (everyone who played MedianXL should be familiar with what I mean). I really like the idea in Path of Exile where uniques often feature such special itemstats, but lack important stats like life or resistances. I wanna recreate the same here to ideally prevent players only using uniques. See Kaom's Heart for example.
I never was a friend of set items as they are especially hard to balance. All sets will have they own fitting graphics, so that we dont have to resort to palshifts in order to creating fitting items. Both sets as uniques will be loosely based on previous Easten Sun and LoD sets. Be it the whole theme of an item or simply the name.
[Magic, Rare and Craft Items]
They should be the players main source for fundamental itemstats like previous mentioned life and resistances. They can also have their own sets of exclusive Oskills or Triggers to make them more attractive. Also the potential of more sockets will be important here. I also wanna spread affixes here. Again like in Path of Exile to have more groups of affixes giving itemstats like enhanced defense/damage. Instead of locking them all behind one group. Also dual max has to go. There's no way around it. Nobody will pick any weapon over a dual max weapon right now in Eastern Sun.
Secondly I wanna have more magic/rare items drop and limit the drop of white/grey items, especially later on. This will require quite some testing, but should be worth in the end to reduce the itemclusters we often get in with higher magic find / higher player count. On a related note I wanna keep improving the current changes I already made to several misc/junk items.
[Runewords]
Not much to say here yet. Will keep them to not render white/grey items useless.
[Runes and Gems]
As said before, all LoD runes will be removed. Even with just the Eastern Sun runes remaining we still have to many. I wanna remove all itemstats from runes, so that they will only be used to create runewords, still with the option of NoSock.dll we could create a itemtype which can only be socked with runes, cannot drop as a white item and has special itemstats based on how many, or which runes, a player has socked.
Gems will be improved to stand a chance versus jewels when it comes to sockets. While jewels feature a spectrum of itemstats, gems will focus on one, but on a higher value. This is also where the NoSock.dll really comes in handy. As it allows us to make gems, runes and jewels all worth to be used in items. I will pretty sure cut down the grade of gems to three from six. One for each difficulty. Also making the first grade unable to drop in hell.
[Jewels]
Jewels will be seperated into two categories. "True" and "fake" jewels. While first will be jewels as we now them, the second will be a new type which look more like gems and will mostly come in unique form. Those will use graphics from Path of Exile jewels which are currently used as jewel graphics. I wanna resemble the Cornerstone of the World jewels from MedianXL with those. However, there will also be fake jewels which feature a certain group of affixes which cant be found on "true" jewels, or at least not in that combination.
[Misc Items]
I wanna try and cut down the numbers here. Collection so many different items as we have now, is more work than fun for most players. Items which can be cut in my mind are Ancient Decipherers, Ancient Scrolls, Ancient Tome, Coupons, Cookbook some Organs etc. Also I wanna reduce the number of secret scrolls to about 25. Those all should focus on endgame gear improvements. Removing those items together with Decals will free lots of itemstats rows, as the txt cant hold more than 512 and we are currently at 503. This brings me to new itemstats.
Edit: We decided to rework all stockers and as said removing some misc items. Most affected will be the multistocker which will lose all but decipher points at the current stage. All organs will be removed. Cookbook/Elixir/Anvil Stone might be changed but kept. Gem / Crystal Stockers will stay as they are. The Rune Stocker however will change to work similar to the Gem Stocker. It will have 7 Tiers and in every Tier runes give a certain amount of points.
Example:
I Rune 3 Points
U Rune 4 Points
Shi Rune 5 Points
The stocker will only display the total points. To extract a certain rune you cube it with a new Can Opener. As such Runepoints between Tiers cant be converted anymore.
[Itemstats]
Thanks to our cut on those stockers and misc items we can add a wide range of new itemstats. Lately more and more Mods starting to use those. See Resurgence or Path of Diablo for examples. To give you a few ideas what is possible:
We can add new itemstats which increase sth based on another itemstat.
+X additional Skeletons per X Strength
X% Increased Maximum Life per X Strength
x% Fire Damage to Enchant per X% Fire Resistance
We can add new itemstats based on counters. (similar to first type)
X% Increased Elemental Damage per Rainbow Facet socked
X% Enhanced Defense per Wo Rune socked
X% Elemental Resitance added to Iron Skin per Gems socked
we can add new itemstats which function as passive skills.
%Life Regenerated Per Second
% increased effect of Auras
Reduced Curse Length by X%
and last but not least itemstats which improve certain skills (without any conditions as above)
+X additional Fireballs
+X additional Hydras
Glacial Spike freeze for X additional seconds
[Craft Recipes]
I wanna rework the three main concepts of Eastern Sun and add another major concept. First one is tinkering, which has substantially flaw right now, runewords. If we remove Tinker Points as an automagic (for all itemtypes sockable with runes) we can fix this. Instead we can make it a normal affix. We can also create some highly customizable unique items with a high Tinker Point count.
Second is dstoning. Dstoning adds another variable to balance items, the level requirement. With the possibility to reduce those by Secret Recipe 50 we have another flaw which can lead to OP items. Also either the level requirement or the added level requirement has to be reviewed to reduce the number of possible dstoning. I can also image to add special items which consume either Tinker Points or add to the level requirement as unique Mystic Orbs in MedianXL.
The third one is forging. I will probably remove the possibility to forge + All/Char Skills as in most cases this render all other options useless. Also I wanna limit it to equipable items. Beside no changes are planed here.
The new concept I was speaking of is corrupting an Item. Everybody who played Path of Exile should be familar with this. Basically we roll the dice to either improve our item with a random itemstat, getting no change or wasting our item by turning it into rare. Different from Path of Diablo I wont include sockets as a possible outcome, as this prevents using curroption on all items with sockets and second can lead to some rather OP items. Unlike Path of Diablo the item can be modified in any way after, but the corruption cant bed changed, once its done. I really like this concept as it gives the player use for copies of items he already found, also making it harder to get that perfect item everybody is aiming for.
Secret Recipes for basetype changing as well as those for sets will also be removed. Both limit the number of actual items being used by players and as such rendering lots of items useless.
[UI]
As you can see I recolored the whole UI to fit better with the frame. This is mostly done. Some parts might need be fixed here and there. Beside you can see the charm inventory on the left side (credit to dav92 and ogodei). Charms wont work outside this zone. For once we can better balance around this and second playerrs can keep some inventory space for drops.
Other than that you will notice a 2x2 itemslot next to the helmet. This former ringslot will be our new special itemslot. I thought about creating various items certains characters or builds share. Options could be a spellcaster book for casters obviously or shoulders which give extra defense, useful for melee chars. This also means players will only be able to equip one ring, as such we can give them better itemstats as people cant equipt the same one twice anymore.
[Skills/Skilltree]
The skilltree will be rearranged and several skills will be changed/replaced. I already have a general plan written down, but havent started working on it yet. I wanna reduce the overall numbers of skills (at least for the first versions) and introduce a new kind of charskills. Pretty much like Wearbear right now. I count as a Druid skill, but isnt on the skilltree. Those skills can be found on items which enable new builds an will also have synergies like other skills, so you wont end up spending it all on passives. For other skills players usually seek after, I will add slighty worse versions as oskills.
I wanna reduce the overall number of passives and also make them all mainly work via hardpoints. I hope to achieve +skills beeing less mandatory on your equipment. Also I thought of anyother system on giving player two possible builds with one skills. Lets take fireball as an example:
From 1-20 Fireball will be as we all know it. However, if we put any hardpoints beyond that point it will change in its function. We will get an extra fireball every X hardpoints after that, but also the damage will drop, to prevent it from being OP. Now our 20 hardpoints fireball can serve as a single target skill (if needed), while our firenball with more than 20 hardpoints can hit multiple targets at once. In the end the 20+ hardpoint fireball will be overall stronger, but our 20 hardpoints fireball will be a legitimate seconde choice for immunes or bosses.
[Drops]
As said before, I wanna reduce the overall itemcluster we get with a higher player count / mob density. Beside I wanna bound certain items to certain areas (rather than mobs), so player are encouraged to farm elsewhere, beside the main spots.
This will be all for today, will talk about monsters and maps another time. I havent given much thought to it yet. I hope to get into a discussion with you guys and look forward to your ideas and feedback. I will continue to expand each topic as I make progress modding.
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Thaison was able to remove the Spirt Overflow bug which might lead to some fancier skills. Also once you die you respawn in town with your stuff on. We also added another D2Mod Plugin which allowed us to increase the stack size and replenish and repair rate of items. No more trips to town to refill your throwing weapons.
Cheers
AlphA