Patch 1.10 Update on Arreat Summit

[DralaFi]

New info and summerized changes on the 1.10 patch. You can read it all on the arreat summit.

Regarding the Secret event/Quest mentioned in the update. 9 SOJ's. Thats a hefty price. Especially with ladder characters.

I personally will convert my mules from 1.09 and see what this secret thing is to determine if it is worth doing for ladder/hc characters.

May be that unique small charm is related to this.

[Olon97]

Improved Quest Rewards - The first time a player defeats an Act-ending boss monster, the creature will yield significantly better treasure than in subsequent encounters. Some of the other quest rewards have been improved as well.

I know the 'Quest Kill' was exploited a bit in D2C, but I have always missed that feature. Better to have to re-create new characters, possibly even trying different builds, than getting stuck grinding away at pindle (or whoever) with the same character 1000 times just to feed an item find lottery addiction.

[DralaFi]

I hope that also improves the rewards from quests such as Khalims flail, and others that were avoided for their annoyances. Maybe on normal Akara will no longer give +1 light radius rings from the save cain quest.

[DeeBye]

Regarding the Secret event/Quest mentioned in the update. 9 SOJ's. Thats a hefty price. Especially with ladder characters.

No kidding that's a hefty price! And who says it's only 9 Stones? Maybe you have to cumulatively sell 20, 50, or even 100 Stones before the secret quest reward is triggered (I'd bet the farm that the Annilus Charm is the reward).

I think I know where Blizzard is going with this, and I'm not sure I like it one bit. They obviously want to rid the realms of Stones of Jordon, but this ain't the way to go about it.

What about the players that don't want to get into the whole duped SoJ economy? I mean, I'm not a "poor" player -- I have some nice and rare equipment. But I don't have accounts full of SoJs. I always prefered to trade item-for-item, the way I believe it was intended from the start. My "wealth" is tied up in items, not some stupid ring-currency.

So I'm screwed for this quest reward, as are all the other legitimate players out there. Who benefits? The dupers, as always.

Now there's even MORE incentive to dupe as many SoJs as possible, while the getting is good.

I guess the good news is that the Ladder realm won't be seeing this any time soon. That is assuming, of course, that no one finds a duping exploit (which is a very big assumption). I really doubt anyone will find that many SoJs during the normal course of play. Trading for them will be hard as well, as no one will really want to give them up with this quest reward hanging out there.


-DeeBye

[CelticHound]

I personally will convert my mules from 1.09 and see what this secret thing is to determine if it is worth doing for ladder/hc characters.

I really don't understand you here.

This quest will only be available on the realms. And if you are on a realm, you don't have any choice about converting to 1.10 when the time comes.

And if you meant converting a char to ladder/hc, you can't. The character type is fixed when you make the character. No importing of items from the other economies.

-- CH

[DralaFi]

Erm. Yes. Sorry I misunderstood. I thought I would need to convert the characters like from D2C to LoD. But I realize now that this is just a patch.

What I mean't is that I will use some spare SOJ's early on with my level 99 zon to do this quest and see if it is feasible and really worth it. Because i plan to play Ladder characters when the patch comes, but first look at all my high level characters from 1.09 to see all the changes done to skills, and such. Then move on to ladder. And start fresh.

[Kevin]

Hmm, if that clue about 9 SOJ's is right they really better beef up the drop system since I have never gotten one since LOD has been out and I have 15 chars that I have beaten Hell Baal with (all L73 to L85) and several others who are big enough to get one. I got 2 of them pre LOD when you could still gamble them, but those are long gone.

If they are trying to get rid of the old SOJ's, what is the point? The Ladder will be clean, and of the old chars pretty much only the cheaters have that many anyway, so why reward them? I don't get that at all. If they want the ladder economy to be SOJ's I guess this might be a way to kick start it. Again since it just a clue there could be a lot more to it.


I can hope that when you sell the dang things it will check if they were duped, if they were it will say "sorry that was a duped SOJ, it doesn't count, please try again." That would make me happy.

[Brista]

OK, so we know that the quest involves some SoJ counter

We can infer the game designers are doing as much as possible to encourage people to actually play through the game

We also know that the new patch favours Ladder play

The conclusion would seem to be that it's possible and reasonable to get 9+ SoJs in a no twink Ladder realm

Gambling, drops or quest reward?

I'm guessing the latter

There might also be implications about buying things back from vendors. Maybe selling will become a one-way process (this might shut down some potential dupe loopholes)

[Vash]

I'm concerned about the skill changes and the whole synergy system. It can turn out to be a very limiting feature. Players may be forced to play with certain skill combinations because other combinations do not support each other. If one plays with non-synergetic skills, one may not be able to have the damaging power to survive Hell. The difficulty of monsters may be scaled up to the point where one cannot survive with maxed skills unless those skills are augmented by synergy bonuses from other skills.

This is assuming that synergetic effects are much less powerful than putting an actual point in a skill. If, hypothetically speaking, adding a point to Bash gives a 5% bonus to damage and adding a point to stun also adds 5% damage to Bash as a synergetic effect then one will not sacrifice anything by splitting up one's points between the two skills. Perhaps the new system will allow players to put lets say 10 points in two different skills but still have them be as powerful as level 20 skills because of bonuses the two skills receive from each other. If this were the case, maybe players can have 3 or 4 "main skills" (instead of just 2...like Whirlwind and Berserk :P ).

But the example I gave is unlikely. If that were the case, why add any points to Bash at all? One could just put one point into Bash and the rest into Stun. Perhaps a skill stops giving additional synergy bonuses after a certain level.

Thoughts?

Edit: Another thought...about the game in general. I think the worst part of the game right now is the crap: the sheer amount of crap items and crap skills that nobody uses. What's the damn point of even allowing people to put more than one point in Firebolt if you know that nobody's going to be using it in Hell? What's the point of putting all these crappy normal and exceptional uniques into the game if you can't find them until it's way too late to use them? And Blizzard [I]looks down[I] at muling??? All of these uniques would be COMPLETELY useless if people weren't allowed to mule.

The point is that the game is so rich with variety...but most of the choices aren't real choices at all. I hope Blizzard addresses this in 1.10.

[Elric of Grans]

Hail DralaFi,

I just found out what that new quest is! It's entitled "The Quest to Clean up the Realms of Duped Stones of Jordan." When a player destroys 100 Stones (bug present in 1.10a: they don't have to be dupes - they can be legit!), they are rewarded with the following item:

Cracked Sash
Normal (ie non-magical)
DR: 1
Dur.: 1
(Uber Item)
(Only Spawns in Patch 1.10)

OMG i want two spek lik a lame pubby now and wet my pants in this items uberness

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

No kidding that's a hefty price! And who says it's only 9 Stones? Maybe you have to cumulatively sell 20, 50, or even 100 Stones before the secret quest reward is triggered (I'd bet the farm that the Annilus Charm is the reward).

What reward, exactly? You're all working with WILD speculation.

So I'm screwed for this quest reward, as are all the other legitimate players out there. Who benefits? The dupers, as always.

What benefit? Having "X Stones of Jordan sold to Merchants" on your screen?

You're guessing, postulating and then foaming at the mouth over the possibilities when you don't even have a bloody clue what the possibilities to foam over ARE.

You want my guess? By the time you hit "10 Stones of Jordan sold to Merchants" you get your account banned.

Faith, Dee. We've all played this game for 3 years... I'm willing to wait for the actual product and PLAY it before I start expressing my opinion. At least then, I could possibly attach the label "informed" upon it.

*tips helm*

[the Langolier]

You want my guess? By the time you hit "10 Stones of Jordan sold to Merchants" you get your account banned.

This is a smart move by blizzard (or could have been). Trick people into thinking you get some great reward for turning in all these SOJ's, then do whatever you want with it. Let's just hope that they didn't forget you can buy things back from vendors once you sell them.

Edit: What if it doesn't have anything to do with a quest. You can just keep selling, and selling, and selling and all you get is this silly message about how many you have sold. How many would it take before people stop trying?

As for the charm, it looks powerful enough to have a level 95 requirement. I think we will much quicker see rare charms than unique. Even if they did make this jump, I doubt the version we saw is the real thing.

[Roland]

I love how you can criticize us when we've been dealing with the ins and outs of this game since it came out, and have watched it slide from good, to bad, to unspeakable.

I don't need to "speculate" anything. It's called reading history; something you're fond of, Nico, no? I don't need to know what's in store. I know what they've done in the past, and I know what the momentum is going to carry into the future. That's all I NEED to know. Blizzard isn't going to reverse their thinking, nor their way of doing things. So, regardless of what is rumor and what is truth, one thing will remain a fact for me: 1.10 is just more rubbish that I don't want. PERIOD.

Like I said to TaiDashir: You don't like my opinions? Fine. Don't. But don't you dare criticize me for them. I've watched Blizzard throw D2 down the toilet for years; I don't need to "wait for the patch to see what comes". I know what's coming. And I hate it.

Save your own "high and mighty" speeches for someone who cares, or doesn't have the balls to tell you to cool your own jets. I'm neither.

[CelticHound]

You're guessing, postulating and then foaming at the mouth over the possibilities when you don't even have a bloody clue what the possibilities to foam over ARE.

I swear, as I read your posts, you are turning into Nihlithak before my eyes. :o

-- CH
(We don't even know what we're up against, do we?)

[Vash]

Instead of being asses...maybe somebody can respond to my post...

[FenrisWulf]

For you, Vash:

Originally posted at diabloii.net
As you know, the updates that were posted on the Arreat Summit are not final, but we've been told by Blizzard that the Synergistic Skill Changes and the Runewords are especially inaccurate, compared to how they will be in the final patch.

So stop worrying. :)

EDIT: Hm, need to work on spacing my Quote boxes.

[Vash]

Yes I read that already. It says "compared to how they will be in the final patch". Meaning there will be at least some form of interaction between skills in the patch.

[Kharohz]

You know... Im surprised no one has thought of THIS meaning of:

"9 Stones of Jordan Sold to Merchants"

Speculation seems to be the subject of the day. So let me speculate. This is just the opposite of your theories.

Battle.net has sold 9 sojs (throughout the >ladder< realm) for YOU to buy. So several thousand players has to gamble rings (with highly increased odds, but no definate). And 9 lucker winners will recieve a Soj.

And this doesn't just has to be a Soj, it could be any given item. This makes far more since to me than selling SoJs. ;).

My thoughts,

Oh btw, Blizzard gave us clues so we WOULD speculate Nico. They wanted us too. And that is the very point of these forums. To talk like old men playing chess gossiping about useless things. ^^

[the Langolier]

As for what was leaked, I am not looking forward to. Look at the druid's summoning tree, how the each summon enhances the rest. If you plan on investing in the bear, it is nice to know that the previous skills will eventually help your bear. You may even put 5 and 3 into the respective wolves in order to be able to summon the maximum number, and also improve your bear in the long run. But how many are you going to put into it? It can be easy to put too many skill points to improve one area, and end up limiting your character severely

I can see that blizzard wants to make the lower skills be worth it in the long run, but this isn't really the way. I have never missed my firebolt skill. Although 100 skill points is a lot, it really isn't, but it is balanced. It gives you just enough to be strong in a few chosen skills (like a sorceress with orb/firewall or a mastery/WW barb), but be weak in other areas. It can be too tempting, however, to put bonuses on lesser skills and force people into mastering only one area. It can be a nice little bonus if you are disciplined enough to build a character as if there were no synergetic effects, but I still think it will cause the mastery of one skill to use a greater of number of skill points for it and reduce the strength of other diverse skills.

I would prefer to see other skills become more effective and fixing the annoying little things about them. How do you make golems more effective? Don't have each golem boost the others, so you end up with 80 points for a single tank. Change little things like "faster run/walk" to "faster attack speed" in the mastery. As it stands a fire golem with 40 skill points invested can't even kill a single enemy in act 5 / hell, let alone the PI's. Increase the minimum damage of chain lightning and base its attack on casting rate, not attack rate. Make leap attack "bash" even if you don't leap (instead of reverting to normal attack). Make the duration of increased defense rating slightly longer for concentrate so it is doesn't flip between high and low DR even as you are continuously using it. Make hydra fire bolts as soon as it is summoned. The list can go on and on - I'm sure you can think of plenty.

[CorwinBrute]

Edit: What if it doesn't have anything to do with a quest. You can just keep selling, and selling, and selling and all you get is this silly message about how many you have sold. How many would it take before people stop trying?

Selling Stonages as the new chat gem ? That would be nice... :P

"Perfect SoJ activated"...