Diablo II "LoD" CLASSIC STYLE MOD for v1.10

[nobbie]

Greetings!

I thought it's patch time again, so I've now written my own, rebalanced 1.10 MOD for Diablo II "Lod":D

The MOD also includes the recipes of my previously written Item Generation Cube MOD, so that you don't need to use the game table in textmode anymore.

Quote from the ReadMe file:

Introduction
============

This MOD hasn't been named "LoD Classic Style MOD" because it modifies especially the classic, non-expansion Diablo II portion of "Lord of Destruction", but because it restores for the most part the expansion's early "classic" look and feel, especially in Act 5 of the game. In addition to that, the monster and item generation have been completely revised and rebalanced, and the gameplay set to a difficulty level that is playable by all kinds of players from beginners to pro's and all character classes/character builds in "Single-Player" and "TCP/IP Multiplayer" mode.

When the officially last patch for Diablo II "LoD", the patch 1.10, was released last year, it caused a lot discussions. Many people absolutely liked the biggest game patch ever in Blizzard's history because it was feature-wise almost an expansion of the expansion package, but at least the same number of people had controversial feelings. There were on the one hand the new game features and many new, even more powerful items, but the game difficulty, on the other hand, had increased so much that the game was often unplayable in "Hell" difficulty for solo- or single-players (even for seasoned ones). Such an increase in difficulty might make sense for party-based multiplayer gaming, and the game is actually - more or less good - playable this way, but it's an annoyance for single-players because the game's best experience gains and items are available only in "Hell" difficulty.
Reason for the steep difficulty increase in the end-game are first of all the significantly, partly dramatically increased monster and champion/boss monster stats (damage, hitpoints, defense, resistances etc) and their faster movement and AI (Artificial Intelligence) speed. The synergy of these changes alone already create a massive increase in difficulty because you now have normal and champion/boss monsters that can do more damage on top of better physical stats on top of faster movement and AI speed. The second reason for the steep difficulty increase comes with a new feature introduced in patch 1.10: the randomization of monsters in Act 5. Monsters in these areas are now selected from pools of melee and ranged attackers which contain improved versions of the original Act 5 creatures and improved versions of creatures found in all earlier acts (Act 1 to 4). Because only some monster types, usually three, are selected at random from a rather large pool of ten monster types per area, imbalances in combined monster power are practically inevitable. The previous patch 1.09 didn't have this balance problem because the monsters were chosen from a fixed set of types.
The monster types chosen for the randomization of monsters in Act 5 are furthermore a matter of taste. In the original 1.10 patch, you can now find, for example, Fetishes together with Mummys, Gloams, Scarabs and Skeleton Mages in the Worldstone Keep levels. The programmers certainly wanted to showcase proudly as many new game features as possible, but this resembles more a rather wild creature show with no attention to graphic design rules and concepts:)There is actually just a handful of non-Act5 creatures that would fit design-wise into the cold highlands, ice caves and dungeons of Act 5, and these are the Brutes (which are from the same monster family as the Act 5 Snow Yetis), the Vultures, the Goatmen, the Bat Demons, the Arachs or the ClawVipers. While the "Deja Vu"-effect created by the extensive Act 5 monster randomization in the original 1.10 patch is indeed quite funny, this effect has already been taken care of in a better fashion in Baal's Throne Room where Baal casts four boss packs which are unique representatives of each previous act: "Colenzo the Annihilator" (Act 1), "Achmel the Cursed" (Act 2), "Bartuc the Bloody" (Act 3) and "Ventar the Unholy" (Act 4). This "Deja Vu" creature show by Baal is very well designed, but it loses its uniqueness in the original 1.10 patch because the whole Act 5 is quasi a "Deja Vu" show there.
Last but not least, the quality of the rare item generation and the drop rates of high runes could still be better, at least for Single-Player. Rare items still spawn with too low or useless affixes in the higher game difficulties, and high runes (like VEX and better) are still much too rare. It makes no sense to provide over a dozen new, cool rune words when most (single-) players will never find the required runes anyway.

The "LoD Classic Style MOD" now tries to combine the best of patch 1.09 and 1.10, with a focus on Single-Player. If you liked patch 1.09, but wish that it would be a bit harder to play and offer more randomness, features and items, then you will certainly like this MOD. In addition to the original 1.10 patch features, a couple of extras have been created. These include, among other things, the spawning of the so-called "Diablo Clone" and thus access to the "Annihilus" charm, and the spawning of ten additional, original superunique boss monsters. Also included as extra are all recipes of the "Cube MOD" for Diablo II "LoD" 1.10 (see the D2X110_CubeMOD_ReadMe.txt file for more information) which allows you to create almost all game items directly on your character using the Horadric Cube. These recipes are intended to test out game items, but not to help you cheat your characters through the "LoD Classic Style MOD". You should play your characters through this MOD from scratch using the items you'll find, so show some self-discipline and use the "Cube MOD" wisely:)

Comments and critique about this MOD are always welcome, because they help to improve the MOD in future updates. Post your comments/critique in the thread of the web site where you've downloaded this MOD.

Have Fun!

You can find the complete ReadMe file with more infos and installation instructions in the ZIP archive of the MOD:


nobbie's "1.10 LoD Classic Style MOD"

(Download size is about 2 MB)