some hopefully constructive criticism and an assertion

[starbreaker]

well firstly i'd like to say theres nothing like the feeling of starting out anew with a mod and having no idea what to expect, and rapidly being surprised over and over. just seeing the skill trees the first time left me with a sense of wonder. started out with a paladin because i favor them as starting characters from habit, and i ran out of town at players 8, as i've had the habit of running at for months now. i think most of the people having the huge issues with weapon durability are probably at players x above 1 .i was losing full durability on weapons at player 8 left and right too. now as to the fallen's firewalls....
well with less then 4 into fire resistance or less then 400 life, or if theres more then one stacked they can be an issue if you spend any amount of time in them .. personally i kinda like that , seems appropriate. i do kind of wish that minions had a weee tiny bit more life , or else some fire resist inherent..at levels below 15 6+ jihad will atypically drop just trying to run through those firewalls to the fallen types , and if the fallen stop next to a firewall.. well your armies gone ...

all bow attacks do seem like 2-3 hit kills. block irregardless. oddly it seems like total life doesn't change that much, but i know from the mechanics that can't be really true..
want to ask if the chance to be hit and to hit readouts on the char screen are correct as well, because it seems i am hit a great deal more then 5% of the time by monsters reading that as their to hit, even when walking or standing.. most notably by ranged attackers...

keep wishing i had SOME kind of aura myself too because these jihad and crusaders feel like they'd be perfect as minion skills if i just had some auras to augment their fragility with based on situation..

goat men with ce ?? jeez that was a nasty surprise. they're real real good at trashing a small army too...

gold issues seem fine in normal. got frustrated after my second paladin in the lvl16-20 range hit act 2 was saved when i quit play for the day and then would lockup with an assert error over line 3402 in skills\skill.cpp whenever i opened their stash or rather tried to.
duno why since they were fine before i quit but it seems to start once i hit act2 with a paladin.

so in my frustration i tried item editing to empty my stash and try and recover the chars.

they will still load after all so i figured maybe its something in the stash (though why it would result in an error in a skills file gods only know why, but hey better ideas? right?)

atma, jamella,and shadowmaster don't seem to take .d2s files used in this mod, just for reference, know you know.

so i decided i'd see what i could see through the rest of the mod despite that. took the d2x library for 1.10beta and used atma to move the cube the lvl99s from that pack have to the same spot newbs start with it in this mod then deleted the starter gear the packed chars included . worked fine in the mod like that. most of the skills in 2 of the trees seem like a waste to a melee based character. but most interesting was testing in n.m. and hell since those packaged chars are capable of all difficulties all acts.. wow was i surprised in hell.
monsters with 5 immunities were normal critters. sorta put my issues with some of the normal acts having so many immunities in perspective to have critters in the mod you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT KILL.

played with the runewords a bit then too they seem ok. (runes.txt is a good thing to read, really it is) finding multi socket normal items was kinda painful however..

the charms are wild and i kinda like them.

never found a unique or set toy. so pondering why there would be a magic find skill without any toys to be found, i also checked uniqueitems.txt,uniqueitems2.txt, and cubemain...

woo boy were they enlightening. no uniques??? just quest related items? guess thats why mf was capped so low from skill..

still trying to figure out blood raven quest reward recipe though .. i think i know what "laz" is now, but i'm still trying to figure out "mad".

sidenote . if crusaders grow at 1 per 10 levels whay at lvl 99 are there only 4 max?;)

that and the seeming cap of 20 on jihad ..

read about an item to raise your minion max , but still looking for it.


hmm what else..
think i read somewhere this forum that you had capped str/dex dmg bonus at about 50% .. is that te case still? too lazy to look for it at the moment i suppose..

gamble costs could use some attention as could sell costs ...

umm, what else..

possibly consider ressurrecting some of the old clod skills as growable perclass skills, else use them as charm oskills possibly? imparticular i think relatively low level auras, and such wouldn't be unreasonable. or too terribly unbalancing.

any hints on where one can get a "brain" its still enabled and spawnable , with a carry limit of one and the mods look nice ...

oh yeah for those who can't live with the small inventory using the goro maga inv plugin and going direct txt mode works fine..

doesn't seem to fix the problem i've had in act 2 with paladins , but its simple to add that capacity to the mod. full cube and need to quest cube something? drop the cube. at least this way you probably have stash space for it ... just try and remember you may become overpowered with the extra charm space...


bah in general i guess its a hell of a lot more like d1 in feel which rocks, but 2 of the trees and some balance issues still need some work. if this is a beta its better then some release mods. but even so it ain't done yet...

still feels like a good thing thats not finished. don't give up yet its coming nicely..

oh yeah any info i can send you to try and work around that assertion?

[Brother Laz]

Alrighty.

now as to the fallen's firewalls....
well with less then 4 into fire resistance or less then 400 life, or if theres more then one stacked they can be an issue if you spend any amount of time in them .. personally i kinda like that , seems appropriate

The combat skill Sankekur gives invulnerability to attacks [including firewalls] as long as you keep hitting. Try it, that's what it is there for.

i do kind of wish that minions had a weee tiny bit more life , or else some fire resist inherent..at levels below 15 6+ jihad will atypically drop just trying to run through those firewalls to the fallen types , and if the fallen stop next to a firewall.. well your armies gone ...

I can't help their AI, and if I boosted their life enough to survive those AI brain farts, they'd be uber when they do decide to be smart. Crusade actually does get resist per character level, but probably not enough? Anyway, try running at the mob with minions in tow [so they shoot you instead] and then try to stunlock with Holy Thunder so they can hit without getting hit back. Crusade teleports when struck, btw.

all bow attacks do seem like 2-3 hit kills. block irregardless. oddly it seems like total life doesn't change that much, but i know from the mechanics that can't be really true..

If they all shoot at the same time, you will obviously die when you eat it.

want to ask if the chance to be hit and to hit readouts on the char screen are correct as well, because it seems i am hit a great deal more then 5% of the time by monsters reading that as their to hit, even when walking or standing.. most notably by ranged attackers...

The random generator of D2 is wacky, eg.: chance to cast going off a lot less than it's supposed to [2% on striking worked only once in the den of evil!?], affixes and items being chosen over others depending on their row number in the files... can't help it, it's an LoD thing... regardless, you do want at least sub-50% defense in act 5.

keep wishing i had SOME kind of aura myself too because these jihad and crusaders feel like they'd be perfect as minion skills if i just had some auras to augment their fragility with based on situation..

Which will be in Median 2.0... stay tuned.

goat men with ce ?? jeez that was a nasty surprise. they're real real good at trashing a small army too...

Ya know why? That yellow ghost attack [my Bone Spirit] does more damage when they've taken more damage. Minions do basically damage over time. I guess every bone spirit was a one-hit kill on your poor crusaders. And be glad you weren't standing there, or decided to use Ring of Fire on them like I tried once.

monsters with 5 immunities were normal critters. sorta put my issues with some of the normal acts having so many immunities in perspective to have critters in the mod you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT KILL.

Or have to put points into EVERY ELEMENT to get by, which is the purpose. Ever tried to survive Hell/Hell in D1 as a mage without Golem and Stone Curse? So there.

played with the runewords a bit then too they seem ok. (runes.txt is a good thing to read, really it is) finding multi socket normal items was kinda painful however..

And when you look into weapons.txt and armor.txt you'll see why.

never found a unique or set toy. so pondering why there would be a magic find skill without any toys to be found

Because of the other toys... there are about 800+ base items, so I'd have to add like 800 uniques.

still trying to figure out blood raven quest reward recipe though .. i think i know what "laz" is now, but i'm still trying to figure out "mad".

I'm both. Anyway, those are disabled and if they do anything it's by accident.

read about an item to raise your minion max , but still looking for it.

The big one is the Brimstone runeword with piles of minion-helping bonuses. There are more... don't know them by heart, but just search runes.txt for 'minion' which will turn up most of the minion affecting modifiers except 'extra-zealots' which does just that.

hmm what else..
think i read somewhere this forum that you had capped str/dex dmg bonus at about 50% .. is that te case still? too lazy to look for it at the moment i suppose..

It's 250%...

gamble costs could use some attention as could sell costs ...

Why...? WHY...? What's wrong with running out of money halfway through act 1...? That's why they even put in gold, after all...

possibly consider ressurrecting some of the old clod skills

NO!!!!

any hints on where one can get a "brain" its still enabled and spawnable , with a carry limit of one and the mods look nice ...

Nowhere.

oh yeah any info i can send you to try and work around that assertion?

Yeah, the error log file.

*but* try and isolate the part with the assertion error and send me only that; because of an issue with monsters.txt [I know what, but I can't be bothered to fix it; Median 2.0 is higher priority. ] the error log file fills up with 'cannot find [animation].cof' type strings and inflates it to 40+ Mb. Don't mailbomb me, please.