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

[nobbie]

The "LoD" Classic Style MOD got another major update!

The most significant change is that IMMUNTIES for normal, non-boss monsters don't exist anymore, which eliminates a lot of annoying quirks and limitations in the Expansion, and brings back true "classic" Diablo II feeling back into the game!

Quote from the ReadMe.txt:

- Replaced all Immunities (100% or more Resistance) of all normal, non-boss Monsters by Resistances of 80%

NOTES:

1) The original concept of random immunities for normal (Hell) monsters made certain spell-caster builds like a Fire-only Sorceress rather senseless, because 1/3 of all monsters on the map had to be simply skipped later in Hell difficulty, even if the new skill synergies have been used. This has been solved now by setting a cap of 80% on all resistances. Also, spell-casters who are limited in their elemental spell choices, i.e. an Elemental Druid with his fire/cold spells or a Necromancer with his Poison spells, will be much better playable.
  
2) In the original 1.10 patch, some Physical Immune (PI) monster types in Hell difficulty, i.e. Wraiths or Swarms, posed a real problem for several "untwinked" solo characters without high elemental damage skills or weapons, i.e. for Werewolf Druids. By setting a cap of 80% on Physical Damage resistance, this imbalance has been solved, too.

3) Constructs still retain their original stats, i.e. Catapults, which are "Immune To Poison"

New Monster Changes/Updates:

- Reduced the Group-Size of "Scarab"-type monsters and the Minions (Skeletons) of "Unraveler"-type monsters

- Reduced the Number of Minions of some Superunique Boss Monsters

- Removed or replaced some Monster types that caused imbalances in certain areas, i.e. the "River of Flames" Maggots with their excessive amount of Maggot Babys

- Reduced the frequency of Boss Monsters with the "Immune To Physical", "Stone Skin", "Mana Burn" and "Cursed" properties

- Reduced the "Mana Drain" value for the monster-classes "Wraith" and "Wisp"

- Removed the "Iron Maiden" curse casting ability from the "Oblivion Knight" monster-class

NOTES:

The superunique monster "Lord De Seis" is now the only "Oblivion Knight" who can still cast this "cheesy" curse ;)

New Gameplay Changes/Updates:

- Decreased the Life-/Mana-Steal Penalty for Hell difficulty to that of Nightmare (50%)

- Increased the Experience Points for every killed Monster by 25% in all difficulties

New Chapter: "General Playing Tips for the MOD"

General Playing Tips for this MOD
=====================

In the following, you can find some general playing tips for this MOD.

- Gambling items is now again - like once in "Classic Diablo II" - a good way to get decent armors and weapons (early on), because the gambling chances for rare, set and unique items have been increased significantly. Also, rare items can get better stats. The higher the level of your character is, the better are the chances on good rare stats. Gold for gambling can be collected much quicker now, because valuable items like staves, wands and class-specific items can drop with the same frequency as normal items in the MOD.

- The availability of "Tempered Items" (see above) allows you to get started much smoother now, because i.e. Mana and Life leech are no more dependent of your luck in finding or gambling special magic items that have these properties.

- Upgrading rare, unique or Set items (see above) is a very good way to make your weapons and armors more powerful as you progress in the game. Since the runes for the upgrade recipes drop more frequently in the MOD, make use of this feature as soon as possible!

- The MOD has 10 new, original Superunique Boss Monsters (see above). These bosses have particularly good chances on dropping good items, so visit them often ;) Tip: In Single-Player, the game's actual automap will NOT be regenerated every time you start a new game, so finding the location of the bosses is much easier than in the Battle.net because you can always use the same map. The map only gets deleted and regenerated if you change the game difficulty or delete it manually. "The Countess" in Act 1, by the way, is a hot tip for good runes because her drops have been improved as well!

- The game has a multiplayer simulation option that allows you to simulate any number from 1 to 8 players in the game. When you notice that things become too easy, or the experience points for killing monsters start to drop, increase the number of players using this option. The monsters will then get more hit- and experience points, and items drop with a higher frequency. The command is "/players X", where "X" is any number from 1 to 8. The command must be typed on the commandline in the game. Note that there is a "/" at the beginning of the command. If you forget the slash, the command will not work!

- Even though the item drops have been improved in the MOD, finding the items that are especially useful for your character class can become very time-consuming. In fact, it almost seems that the game drops just the good items that you cannot use, i.e. a unique Barbarian helm for your Sorceress ;) So, here's a tip: "Virtually" trade the good items that you find, but can't use, by using the integrated CubeMOD recipes for the creation of items that you can use! If, for example, your Sorceress finds an "Arreat's Face" Barbarian helm, you can "trade" that helm for a similarly valuable Sorceress item, i.e. "The Oculus" unique Sorceress Orb. The recipes for creating an "Oculus" with the CubeMOD can be found in the file "D2X110_CubeMOD_ReadMe.txt". After you've created the item, throw the Barbarian helm away (or sell it to a vendor), and the "trade" is complete. This is fair solution without cheating that you can use at any time when you would have made a trade in the Battle.net.

- Some items will drop much more frequently in the MOD, i.e. (valuable) runes, but the size of the stash and inventory are quite limited. Here's a tip to "increase your stash" in Single-Player: Take a pencil and a sheet of paper, or create a text file on your computer, and write down every valuable item you would keep in your stash. After you've written down the item, throw it away (or sell it to a vendor), so that it doesn't occupy the valuable stash space anymore. This way, your stash size is virtually unlimited, and any time you need the items again, because you've just found i.e. the last item that completes the "Tal Rasha" set, or the third FAL rune for a rune upgrade, simply re-create them using the integrated CubeMOD recipes! The recipes for creating all kind of game items with the CubeMOD can be found in the file "D2X110_CubeMOD_ReadMe.txt". After you've re-created the items, delete them from your list again and you're done. Note that some items can have varying stats when they drop, i.e. "The Grandfather" Colossus Blade, but the CubeMOD allows you to re-roll such items until you get about the same stats as the original drop. More about re-rolling items can be found in the "D2X110_CubeMOD_ReadMe.txt" file. Rare items, for example, will hardly be reproducable using this method, because their stats are completely random. Such items have to be kept in the stash then, in case you want to use them later.

In addition to the above mentioned changes, the drop chances for runes, gems and set items have been tweaked again for better balance.


You can download the updated MOD as always here:

1.10 LoD Classic Style MOD

Due to the significant changes in this update, I'd be very interested in your impressions and opinions, especially about the removed Immunities for normal monsters!

Have Fun! :D