Roll call for "hidden" bonuses/features

[Guest]

edit: Oh, I noticed from v1.10s skills.txt a few more possibly uninterruptible skills (that might apply to players and pets) of interest...

i thought those were kinda useless to know :P

smite is the almighty ignorer, it has 100% to knockback anything except act bosses. does phychic hammer maybe work on those!?

for ordinary weapon knockback, it's 25% chance for large, 50% for medium and 100% for small monsters. i have a list, but i've gotta clean it up a bit.

[lemekim]

Did I remember to mention that Shiver and Chill armors do *not* require the Sorc to be hit to trigger their (chill or ~ cold bolt) effect? This is "hidden" in that it isn't at all clear from the in-game or Arreat doc.

The same goes (or at least went in 1.09) for Bone Armor (you don't have to take damage for it to start depleting), and Energy Shield (Monsters can eat your mana without actually hitting you).

all the uninteruptable skills

* kick (for destroying stuff, maybe not assys?)
* fend (d/a/e interupts it)
* smite
* charge **
* concentrate (well, duh)
* frenzy

Some other attacks that were uninterruptible in 1.09 include Elemental Charges for Assassin (FoF, CoT, BoI, but not phoenix strike), and Jab seemed to be better at being "uninterruptible" then fend was. Whirlwind is still uninterruptible as well.

On a side note, Fend never worked properly against single attackers, and from my meager testing still does not. One required a decoy or Valkyrie in close proximity for it to work, otherwise just the normal attack animation was used. Would that be considered a bug or a hidden feature? Zeal, after all, does work against single attackers.

Somehow I'd failed to notice, that, like the old days pseudo-corpse explosion for Fire Golems (dying--used to be tempting to chain cast them for this), Assassin Shadows are doing an (Assassin-style, not Sorc) Nova on dying. It sure appears to do damage, albeit not a lot. I can't readily test pre v1.10s, so I don't know if I missed seeing this before or if it is a new feature.

I can confirm that this was a feature (hidden I suppose) in 1.09 as well. Even with the meager damage the shadow master explosion or Fire golem might create, one can still wonder if some of the new elemental damage enhancing items can increase the Fire or Lightning damage from these two.

Another hidden feature is that while normally casting town portal from a book or a scroll requires the casting animation, if you cast it from belt, the portal open instantly without any animation. (true in 1.09 and and 1.1s)

[apandapion]

I can't help wondering if the various effects triggered by events (the famous poison nova on breath of the dying, for instance) are aided by synergies. This would definately be an interesting hidden feature. Anyone know?

[Crystalion]

Another hidden feature is that while normally casting town portal from a book or a scroll requires the casting animation, if you cast it from belt, the portal open instantly without any animation. (true in 1.09 and and 1.1s)

Actually I suspect this changed a bit, iirc, at some point. Currently, v1.10s single player, I'm seeing casting (and therefore additional delay) only when I right mouse click for having selected Town Portal. The key shortcut (scroll in belt) as well as right clicking (no matter where the source) on a scroll or book doesn't show a cast animation. IIRC the only way to avoid the cast animation at one point, was by using the key shortcut in your belt.

I'm assuming it was well known in prior versions that putting a TP scroll in your belt and using the key shortcut for it before you even showed interface descending into Duriel's chamber was an excellent way to assure getting a portal up in spite of lag/death).

As for questions of what synergies work on (charged items, procs, IGs cast from, Shadows, Valks, Hirelings), I think more testing is needed, as there are a number of oddities and unanswered questions there. Should I ever test for some of those, I will, of course, report back.

edit: since I've already shown Shadow Master's synergizing off of your skill points (+#shots/3 Fire Blast to their cast of Death Sentry) and tested pvp synergy of Amazon Fire Arrow to Exploding Arrow granted by bow (Kuko/Raven Claw) I am inclined to believe (though I didn't test the "lying character screen" by pvp) the game indicating that *yes*, charges of level 1 enchant are being synergized by having skill points in warmth.

So the general answer is probably: synergies work. And the odd answer(s) for hirelings/summons/minions being synergized (i.e. by *whom*) will have to be tested individually, which is a fair amount of work.

(p.s.: I think a key question here would be--and I assume the answer is favorable--does the +chill adders to duration for Freezing Arrow freeze work for charges of FA (like it does for the native skill. If so, buying a bow with charges of FA when you have access to a lot of cold duration sources could be very worthwhile (v1.10) for certain nasty multiple boss pack situations)

edit #2: dumping points into exploding arrow (20) v1.10s didn't show any increase in damage as tested pvp with a fire Rogue (Fire Arrow synergy test); testing Shadow Warrior trying to synergize Fire Blast was a no go; however, like Death Sentry, Charged Bolt Sentry (cast by Shadow) # of shots was synergized by my points into Lightning Sentry. So my results are odd/mixed for the Shadows, but suggest the reasonable possibility that Hirelings, if synergized, probably self-synergize. Still more testing needed.

[Guest]

anyone tried if the valkyries synergies is effected by +skills?

i mean like prayer gives a direct bonus, it might be the same for the abilities which say that just the skill is added.

[adeyke]

All the synergies for Valkyrie in skills.txt have .blvl at the end. That means it isn't affected by +skills. Valkyrie will have, for example, the Dodge skill equal to your base Dodge skill.

[Crystalion]

(I am assuming you aren't playing Hardcore--you can read on for fun if you're a HC player though)

There are quite a few reasons you might not lose any experience when you die in v1.10s. The common ones are:

1) you are playing normal difficulty, where there is no xp penalty for death
2) you died due to pvp action (so "MK" is still a factor in D2, though less of one than D1)
3) you had no xp into your current level (and you can't bust a level in D2, unlike EQ)

I believe I have, however, discovered a rather odd one...

4) If you are sufficiently high level to be suffering a substanstially increasing-by-level xp penalty, and you can level up before touching your corpse (touching, not looting/fully looting, is what triggers the xp regain), then it would appear that you are moving the xp "saved" in your corpse, albeit at a 25% penalty, into your new level, where, interestingly enough, you are suffering roughly a 25% penalty to xp over your previous level. Thus these should effectively cancel out, which means you essentially died "for free" in terms of xp. (The big "if" here is whether doing without the equipment on your corpse poses a problem for you in time-to-level efficiency).

(Please remember that you do *not* regain xp for looting a corpse in town after you leave a game.)

Indeed, it would seem possible, should one game have enough xp available to do a full level up for you when you are at high level, to deliberately die 16 times during a level (16 is the max number of corpses you can have in v1.10s) in hell difficulty, then level up and loot all those corpses to level up yet again (in merely a few seconds--note that when you level up this way you don't get the "chung" sound announcing it). At sufficiently high levels this would seem to be a wash in xp except when you consider that xp is also diluted in the event that you are fighting monsters "too far below your level" and this technique basically allows you to harvest them more efficiently for xp for one additional level.

I have done some testing on all this and it seems right, but I'm lacking the final confirmation for, say, the level crossing test vis a vis xp penalties for my level 83 amazon. Someone else can certainly run the test though: with a character in the 80s or 90s about to level up, get yourself killed instead (hell or nm) and then level up before looting the corpse, being sure to record your xp before and after the corpse loot. I suggest you die unequiped, so that you are not impaired in your leveling efforts by temporary loss of equipment.

Of course, if I find time amidst all my theoretical testing schedule to actually level a character that is already 80+ then I'll report back by edit.

[Charon the Hand]

I've seen this alluded to but never explicitly stated. There are some synergies which gain from +skill items (Prayer, Skeleton Mastery, Summon Resist, possibly the sorc elemental masteries, can't think of any others offhand). These skills are the ones that don't have a specific amount of benefit stated. Say, Iron Golem gives +35% defense per level to all other golems, but SM adds an amount to hit points, AR, etc which is stated in the skill description itself, not the synergy description. It boils down to: skills which say "Gains synergy from Skill_X" and don't say "Adds Y% per level" are the ones which keep adding from +skills.

[Occhidiangela]

Against one defender, it gets one attack, against two defenders, it gets two attacks, one attack per defender. It seemed to me that I still got the AR and DR bonuses from Fend, but the char screen may have been lying to me.

Fend is NOT Zeal, its routine is to hit once per target. With only one target, only one attack.

[lemekim]

Fend performs not only one attack per defender, but also one additional attack for an ally within certain close small range, including decoy and valkyrie. Perhaps we should include strafe in this description as well, since it also shoots extra arrows per minions nearby.

So against single defender a fend attack would indeed look like a normal attack, but it's other things that made me doubt whether it's fend or not in 1v1 situations... I did not experience any significant damage boost when I was using fend , and another thing that struck me as odd was that with single attack, fend is interruptible, whereas usually it shouldn't be. But if your experience indicates otherwise, then you are probably right.

[Walkiry]

Fend performs not only one attack per defender, but also one additional attack for an ally within certain close small range, including decoy and valkyrie.

Do these extra attacks, in fact, hit and do damage?

[Occhidiangela]

Ages ago, I stopped using Fend on single critters and would revert to Jab. What with Jab now doing three attacks, all the more reason to do that.

I had never experienced the added attack bonus for party members, and I don't think I ever saw an extra attack due to my Valk and my Decoy. I will say that the Hit and Damage seemed consistent, but I must confess that detalied testing data is not on my HD. I messed with this right when LoD came out, and won't swear that my testing was a rigorous exercise in eliminating variables.

Also, I have done only a little 1.10s testing, so maybe the problem is mine: I only expect one attack on a single monster, and don't get disappointed when I don't see more. :)

[lemekim]

The extra attacks come only when the allies or minions are very close to you - within the weapon range of the monster I believe (it might be within your weapon range, I will have to make sure). Thus if your valkyrie tends to wonder around, you probably would not see this very often.

But if you manage to throw up a decoy next to some boss, and have valkyrie attack that boss as well, you can get 3 attack-fend on him, and yes, they will all do damage (provided that they will hit naturally). Thus in certain situations (Bosses), this can come in handy, because you get almost the jab attack speed with much higher damage.

[Ruvanal]

lemekim the range would be your weapons range for what gets counted. This is part fo the reason many would not have seen it in practice without some careful testing. Also note that as of v1.10 the game will not count minions, hirelings, valkyries or decoys as additional targets for upping the number of attacks for Fend or Strafe. This is due to their having a neverCount=1 in the monstats.txt file. This is a change from the way they were counted in previous versions. Personaly I think that the Valkyrie and Decoy should be changed back to being counted as a sort of synergetic reaction to the Strafe and Fend skills. Other players, hirelings and the various other minions should still stay in the not counted catagory.

Walkiry, yes the extra attack can hit and do damage. In v1.09 there was something going on with Strafe at times that effectively cut the chance the to hit in half frequently, which is what lead many to belive that those extra missiles were not really there. In testing I was able to show that they were in fact real and it is where I noted that the tohit chance seemed to be messed up (anylysis of distribution of hits to miss patterns compared to the theoretical chance to hit).

[lemekim]

Good to finally be sure, that it is the player's range and not the monster's. In testing it was actually quite hard to tell; I was able to get additional hits off with a decoy on the opposite side of the monster, but then I was also able to get additional hits with decoy located behind me, with the monster in from of me.

So other players in 1.1 will not set off additional attacks either? Shame that you cannot trigger multiple attacks against single target in 1.1 with fend.

[StateOLuvNTrust]

I'm surprised at the small number of people who know that you can vastly increase your killing speed by augmenting the skills you get from weapons. On the first level that you gain, a small painting appears on the right side of the screen. Most people ignore this and tend to forget that there was ever a time when it wasn't there, but this "painting" has a hidden feature. I don't know if it's a bug or not, but


I haven't slept at all in 2 days. I'm not always this obnoxious. I'm don't usually giggle like this either.

[Crystalion]

A couple more I forgot to mention, that though "hidden" may be fairly well known:

Similar to poison refusing to kill a player, Static Field (in normal) tries to refuse to kill a monster (monsters created with very low HPs, exactly 1 I suspect, can still be killed). This is a rather key technical point for some xp rushing techniques (especially in combination with PMH).

An interesting feature, at least in Single Player, is that when you town portal out the monsters not only seem to stop regenning, but they don't regen when you come back either, until they are damaged (yes, the test I did was paranoid about the lying screen). I'm rather curioius if this is true on Realm as well? As you might imagine, this doesn't matter much in the normal course of things, but has some interesting applications under unusual circumstances.

A somewhat "hidden" feature, is that since the game has evolved over time, some similar affixes got added in that are substantially better than their earlier version sibs. A rather important example is "of life everlasting", which can appear on circlets (type, includes coronets, diadems, tiaras) and amulets. At its best this can be 25 damage reduction (physical). At clvl 37 you could put on both for -50 damage. If you use charges of Weaken (-33% monster damage output) in combination with this, you would pretty much achieve physical immuntiy in normal and almost all of nightmare. Naturally charges of Weaken can be bought in shops pretty easily and getting the circlet and amulet is merely a matter of gambling for them once you are of sufficient clvl. Which would be, afaik, clvl 50 for the amulet and level 47 for circlets (also, if you see a coronet you're high enough, as those don't show up until then). This means, as usual, that a higher level character is needed to acquire the item for the lower clvl req char that can use it.

Since Walkiry pointed out how useful it is for early leveling, it is perhaps "hidden" that Strangling Gas potions, though thrown "at" a target (spot), really just make a poison cloud there that will poison anything that passes through it. This is nice for chokepoints and if you have a bunch of stuff chasing you that you can lead through the cloud. (24 poison damage over a short period, which kills most stuff in the first half of act 1, players 1).

In another thread, discussing charges on items, there are two "hidden" features: 1) such charges have a lower clvl req for the class whose skill the charge is for; 2) a higher level drop/shop buy gets more charges and high skill levels, but this doesn't raise the level requirement. For example, you can give a level one Druid a (usuable) club with 67 charges of level *10* firestorm. This is amusing, to say the least.

Speaking of clvl reqs for powerful things... it must have been "hidden" because I didn't notice until recently just how much thorns damage you can get from a shield socketed with skulls for very low clvl reqs. Ranging from 8 thorns at level 1 (2 socket shield with skull chips) to 60 at level 18 (3 socket shield--Paly's can get 80 in 4). This makes streaking by monsters (autohit from running) a viable method of killing them rapidly. Hilarious. (edit: Level 5 clvl req 3 socket shield with flawed skulls is *24* thorns damage).

[Occhidiangela]

An interesting feature, at least in Single Player, is that when you town portal out the monsters not only seem to stop regenning, but they don't regen when you come back either, until they are damaged (yes, the test I did was paranoid about the lying screen). I'm rather curioius if this is true on Realm as well? As you might imagine, this doesn't matter much in the normal course of things, but has some interesting applications under unusual circumstances.

I did not see the same thing. RoF, Hell diff, Strangler Boss, LE, worked him down to about 2/3 left with a little Frenzy/Axe and then a Berserk/Bonesnap. I had to go to town, pots reload. When I came back, he was full up on HP. *Groan*

Caveat: Am I comparing "apples to oranges" here due to diff level and possibly due to regen rates? That was the same fight that told me that PMH is on a timer, since I had hit him early with a PMH Frenzy attack in axe and sat for a few seconds to watch his HP not regen before switching to berserk. Seems to me the zoom to town helped not at all.

I wonder if WP versus TP is a significant difference in this regard. Anyone test that yet?

[Crystalion]

I did not see the same thing.

Sorry, I was tired--I should have been more specific--allow me to try again...

I have seen an effect in v1.10s SP that I have seen before: an injured monster that shows the same level of injury after I town portal away and come back some time later (many tens of seconds). To be sure that this wasn't just a lying-character-screen™ issue I stood there and let the monster beat on me for a while (tens of seconds) and then tapped it (hurt it lightly). The cursored monster HPs bar then resumes climbing (showing regen) but does *not* jump (which happens in those cases when you aren't getting proper display update until you force a status change by whacking on something). This most recent example of the effect was in normal players 8 with one of Eldritch's minions at the Frigid Highlands waypoint. As my sorc had Frozen Armor up I was also able to observe that the freezing effect could "hit" the monster (no damage) without restarting the regen.

Since, in your test, you were using PMH, and don't specify if you were using OW or poison, and I can't tell if you used TP or waypoint *and* you were fighting a boss, and you were in hell diff, I'd have to say there are a rather large number of variables between our experiences.

Naturally this effect, assuming I'm not just deluded, needs further study.

edit: as an example of being tired and not recalling what occurred clearly: it is quite likely that I went to town via waypoint, not town portal...I know that I came back by the waypoint, certainly. The purpose of the expedition was: a) get my equipment deprived merc killed; b) confirmation testing on properties of Static Field and PMH (I did #a before the observation I share with you and #b after).

[Thecla]

Now you mention it, Crystalion, I also saw exactly what you described while testing PMH (see below).

I've tried out PMH on a number of occasions, including a lot of different tests on a willing PI moonlord boss in the crystalline passage, with the following conclusions:

• there is no timer on PMH as far as I can tell (I've waited up to 10 minutes after tagging a monster with PMH without seeing regeneration begin again)
  <>
  
• going to town and returning immediately dosn't reset PMH
  <>
  
• going to town and waiting about 5 secs then returning does reset PMH (and I remember just what Crys described -- I didn't see the regeneration begin until after the monster was hit -- this was sp)
  <>
  
• no difference between town portals and way points (I tried both repeatedly)<>
  [st]
  One thing I didn't test was to see if there's a distance beyond which monsters will reset PMH in the same way that going to town will reset it.
  
  As far as Occhi's experience with the monster resetting it's life, I believe this is something else completely unconnected with PMH, but I don't know what causes it. I saw this already way back in the original D2 when I was using Izual to see if enhanced bow damage was bugged. Nearly always on going to town and returning, he would be at the same health you left him at, but on one occasion his health reset completely. This also happened to me in 1.10s the first time I went through Diablo on Hell difficulty -- I took a 20 minute break in the middle of the fight and when I went back he was at full health again. This doesn't usually happen, but I've never been able to reproduce the effect consistently.
  
  I also tried open wounds recently, from a crafted belt, and was a little disappointed in it's effectiveness after all the great stuff I read about it. At least on bosses, like eldritch and shenk, the bleeding only lasts a few seconds and doesn't do much damage. OW seems like a useful supplement -- and it's nice that it can be triggered with bows -- but not much more than that. PMH on the other hand is invaluable, especially vs boss mobs -- since you now have to focus much more on monsters one on one, a lot of your damage is wasted to regeneration without it. I keep a harpoon of vileness on my weapons switch for just this purpose, and use it first thing in any long battle.
  
  Crushing blow, as far as I can tell is still pretty worthless for ranged attacks, though I haven't tried to test it in detail.