Roll call for "hidden" bonuses/features
#1
Partly because of a lack of technical documentation and partly because of the "lying character screenS" ™ there are quite a few neat features/quirks of the game that aren't obvious at a glance that "inquiring minds want to know". Some of this is new in v1.10 and some old. I thought I'd mention a few and hope for more posts to enlighten me...

(my definition of "hidden" is rather loose here, so I'm sure I'll mention many things that are "well known" to LLers--but I only recently learned Grim Ward doesn't work on Skeletons, so who knows what someone will/won't know?)

v1.10s Assassin skill Fade actually grants slvl% phys damage reduction (capped at 50% in combo with all phys reduction% items).

Sorc Thunderstorm pulses a lot more frequently with high slvl.

Barb Leap (not "Leap Attack") expands with high slvl to knockback a huge radius of enemies.

"missile" range is typically a function of its time-out duration and speed. What you see on the screen with (Amazon) Slow Missiles isn't always visually correct (actually even the sound effects can be wrong) and I suspect, therefore, that even without SM occasionally what you see isn't "reality" (e.g. I often see missiles "pierce" when no piercing is possible--its just an illusion)...

My big question here is: what "missile" effects (aka player skills) have a missile speed that varies according to something (e.g. slvl or AR or ?). I noticed a Guided Arrow pvp thread on the AB that couldn't figure out why one player was typically more effective with their GA range, and I'm wondering if perhaps that player somehow had slightly faster missile speed.

v1.10s some skills have "hidden" bonuses, e.g. to AR, that mpq readers have seen and are apparently real, even though the LCS (lying character screen) doesn't reflect the feature.

I've seen stacking threads on Barb Battle Cry + Taunt stacking to reduce enemy damage output to nearly nothing *before* you apply -damage items, resulting in no-damage taken uber tank status for the Barb. Been meaning to test this myself while using either a Nadir helm (Nef+Tir) with 9 charges of Cloak of Shadows or charges of dim vision (I'm hoping the Taunt will overwrite "blindness"--needs testing--so I can stop everything and pull one defanged thing to me at a time). I remember there used to be some weird interaction between "flee" effects and Taunt, so I'll need to retest that also.

v1.10(s) has improved Inner Sight (Amazon) such that your Rogue hireling is now dropping the monster DR quite a lot at high levels.

(One of my favorites, as I made this build and enjoyed it, is that) Necro Bone Prison gets cheaper with slvl, dropping to only 1 mana a cast around slvl 26/27 iirc ("free" at or before that as your mana regen during the casting time will typically exceed the cost of the spell).

Amazon Freezing Arrow gets freeze duration time boost from your chill duration time adders (charms etc.).

The Amazon Freezing Arrow, Exploding Arrow, and Immolation Arrow splash effects, and Lightning Bolt, all carry the damage adders (charms etc.) of their particular type (cold, fire, lightning).

Assassin Blade Fury and kick (finisher) skills don't visually appear to use your weapon, but they use attributes of your weapon. This is a complex topic, but for illustration: using a Serpent Lord staff (v1.10beta1) an Assassin does normal kick damage (i.e. a lot) and does 100% mana steal on it.

Paladin Smite always hits (no to-hit needed, no blocking allowed). Although it won't leech it can use Life Tap and does trigger effects. The other "auto-hit" skills (v1.10s, iirc) that transmit effects are Amazon Guided Arrow and Lightning Bolt.

Speaking of Life Tap, buying daggers, throwing knives, or rods with charges of this is fairly easy (and not too spendy, not even for repair, imho). This is a miracle spell for tough toe-to-toe fights as it is one of the curses that works on basically everything (e.g. Act bosses also). (fyi: Life Tap curses the monster such that when you hit it in melee, 50% of the physical damage you do is handed back to you as hit points, with no reduction for nm/hell or monster leech nerf factor). (In general, the shop-available charged items of value, apart from Teleport, are all from the Necromancer line: Terror, Dim Vision, Confuse, Attract, Life Tap, Lower Resist, Weaken. Other (shop buyable) class skill charges I admire are: teleport, telekinesis, Multishot. Additionally, if you want to gamble circlets/amulets you can also buy charges... my fav here would be an amulet with charges of Grim Ward).

You're probably used to Druids using their Carrion Vine to suck the life out of corpses and haven't seen much of their lower Poison Creeper vine. PC is pretty neat when you need a quick fix to (e.g. v1.10s) monster regen, as it is a cheap spell to cast to apply psuedo-area effect poison (the vine poisons what it touches, but also leaves a mat of poison on the ground that poisons monsters that move on it). Of course you also probably haven't seen that Werewolf Druid chain poison monsters with Rabies, either. Very cool effect visually. Next time you party with one, perhaps if you scratch behind the werewolf's ears, he'll do some new tricks for you. ;)

You can "repair" throwing potions by selling them to the shop and buying them back. (This is a reason to pick up potions from a Shrine individually, as you can then max out each one into a full stack). Throwing potions don't do much damage for their level requirement in general, but they are auto-hit (if proximate to a target, of course). The stangling gas potion is a nice twink for level 6+ characters, as 24 points of poison damage takes care of a lot of monsters at low levels all by itself. The 5-15 fire damage Fulminating potion has no level requirement, so a level 1 rushee can actually can assured of hitting something if he should find a need to do so (more on why this is useful when I finally do my rushing report).

Your newbie Amazon Javalins don't need to be repaired for a buck--if they aren't broken you can sell them to the shop for a buck and then buy them back, repaired, for a buck. Combined with /nopickup and distaining ever picking up any non-quest item (well, perhaps an exception for TP scrolls), you could conceivably play this as a no-cash/no-items variant. I wonder how far you'd get? (probably until you had to kill a poison immune with HP regen).

Apparently, at least as of v1.10s, Assassin Shadow Masters, whenever they need to decide what to attack, give preference to what you attacked last. This raises the interesting question of how all the game's minions/hires/etc. decide what to do and in what ways, if any, you can influence it. (e.g. when my Assassin "teleports" with Dragon Flight, my merc and Shadow seem to instantaneously show up overlapping me *and* attack/aura--much faster than even the monsters react to my sudden appearance in their face).

As of v1.10s Sorc Enchant at high levels/synergy/mastery looks to have taken a page from Everquest Enchanters in that people will probably get addicted to it and beg for it always to be "up" (i.e. having 1000 pts of +fire damage and a large +AR% boost for 13 minutes at a time is pretty attractive).

As of v1.10s Paladin Holy Bolts synergized with Prayer can actually do more than enough healing to be helpful (i.e. many 100s of HPs per second).

People are reporting, v1.10beta, that some Paladin skills (Blessed Hammer, Fist of Heavens) have been granted the ability to ignore the resistance of undead and demons (and certainly I'm seeing Holy Bolt not being resisted by undead). I thought I saw display text about this in v1.10 beta1, but it isn't mentioned in v1.10s.

Well, enough off the top of my head for now. What "hidden" features do you think are worth mentioning?
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#2
Hmm... Perhaps we should mention which features remain from 1.09, and which are new in 1.1? The ThunderStorm frequency increase with higher levels was also a feature in 1.09, (And I think Bone prison mana cost decrease as well).

Other things I can think of incldue;

Teeth and Charged Bolt (not sure about multishot) are capped at 25 projectiles (correct me someone if I am wrong). (new in 1.1)

Assassin's Psychic Hammer is half physical, half magic damage. (new in 1.1)

I'll add more when/if I remember them =)
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#3
Quote:Teeth and Charged Bolt (not sure about multishot) are capped at 25 projectiles (correct me someone if I am wrong). (new in 1.1)

All three skills seem to be capped at 24 projectiles.
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#4
Crystalion,Aug 21 2003, 06:33 PM Wrote:hope for more posts to enlighten me...
Zath, over on the AB, has made just such a post...

Zath's discovery that the new v1.10s Clay Golem "slow" effect is from the golem *being* hit--very useful
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#5
I would add that valk/shadows are generated with specific random gear (someone probably has a decent link to the actual info), and how their skill levels increase
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#6
I haven't seen a lot of mention about the contents of monprop.txt.

Night Marauder has level 1 fade in normal, level 2 fade in nightmare/hell.
Iron Golem has level 16 fade throughout.
Mephisto has 15% FCR and IAS in nightmare and 30% FCR and IAS in hell.
"blunderbore" has 15% CB in nightmare and 25% CB in hell. As there's no number after blunderbore, I'm not sure if this would apply to all monsters of that type or none of them.
The act 3 Council Members have +40% fire skill damage in nightmare and +100% fire skill damage in hell.
The act 5 Council Members have +60% fire skill damage in nightmare and +120% fire skill damage in hell.
Blood Raven has knockback in hell.
Quill Rat, Spike Fiend and Razor Spine guest monsters have attacker takes damage of 15-20 in nightmare and attacker takes damage of 30-40 in hell.

I hope I'm actually interpreting the file right.
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#7
It may be "hidden" to some players not familiar with particular classes...

...that Shadow Warriors (Assassin) is a copycat (some limitations) of the skills you've selected for left/right mouse.

...that Iron Golems (Necro) get the properties of the item they are created from--create them from a runeworded item, for example. You can transform set and unique items. As a "safety" feature, you can't transform an un-IDed item. (Only "metallic" weapons and armor can be transformed, which is not always an obvious property)

...that Revives (Necro) can be made of many monsters that can use their special skill (quite a few restrictions on revives/what-can-be-revived because of this)

...(v1.10beta1) Attract and Confuse (Necro and charges on items) can be used as "dispel aura" on monsters (except bosses/champs).

some more misc...

if people don't read the v1.10 patch info, it will be "hidden" that the thawing, antidote and stamina potions now have extra benefits (+10 max resist thaw/cold, antidote/poison, cap 95) on a use once, (iirc) 30 second timer (stamina potion acts like short duration stamina shrine).

Health potion rates appear to average, so if you want to have a longer duration (aka slow and steady healing) out of that 320 HPs super healing (v1.10s) slurp a weenie 30 HPs heal potion immediately afterwards. This would be useful in cases where you are taking steady damage with the occassional big damage and wish to conserve on potion usage (only so many belt slots; perhaps limited rejuv supply) because you can keep your HPs near full for longer (once you touch full HPs all the remaining healing from a Super is discarded--thus, occassionally, you might want its heal rate to be slower because you *don't* want to wait until you're down a lot of HPs before healing yourself just to avoid "wasting" some of the potion).

Shops generate items at clvl+5 (character level plus five) and this means that you might wish to use a lower level character to shop for a non-magical item (that can be imbued or socketed/runeworded). However some of these items (like rods/scepters/staves) can be more expensive than the low level character can afford. In multiplayer LAN (so I assume realm?) the character that creates the shop goods (at their clvl+5) has created the shop for any other players to come buy from as well. This also means, for example, that if you come into some cash as a lower level player, you might want to run to town when another player goes to town to sell--not so much hoping to buy their loot (though that works also) but to see a higher (clvl+5) level of goods offered to you. In normal the shop also have caps per Act (which means you can see some amazingly studly items in shops as early as Act 5 nm--I recommend the Anya Portal shoping method). Don't drool too much, however, you can't rush a low level character and get arbitrary "non-magic" base items from later act shops (you end up with no items at all, typically, if the character isn't high enough for the shop's TC).
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#8
Barb Double Swing's mana cost goes to 0 at slvl 9 or so....
--Mav
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#9
Mavfin,Aug 24 2003, 01:37 AM Wrote:Barb Double Swing's mana cost goes to 0 at slvl 9 or so....
Interesting. I see Arreat Summit lists Magic Arrow (Amazon) going to 0 mana cost at slvl 13. It has been a while (versions) since I tested Bone Prison (Necro), but last checked, the cost went to 1 and never lower.

I just played a bit with a slvl 29 Find Item (55%) Barb with over 200% MF in the normal Pindle area, and it sure looks like that is a worthless skill (just tested in v1.10s--it has been an amazing skill in various versions of the game).

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. (For you really old timers, yes, the "Laser" still works, though I've not had the time to see if it also now procs striking/struck effects).
(old pic of the Laser--those are hundreds of overlapping bolts)
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#10
Just noticed from Bradosol's the AB post and confirmed myself in v1.10s: Decoys (Amazon) are *solid*. That is, you can hem yourself in and be unable to get past them (dangerous at high levels when they last for a couple minutes). You can, however, unsummon them. Additionally they dissapate if you teleport (or die or town portal). They also look just like you, *including* (tested v1.10s single player) if you weapon switch. Clearly I need to test if they trigger procs and if this changes from *your* weapon switches (edit forthcoming).

edit: the AB valk/decoy post that I got some interesting info from (which I partially tested v1.10s) suggests that pumping Decoy, aside from its Valk synergy, is potentially a good idea. The Decoy slvl * 4 seems to be the decoy's resists (capped at 85) and the decoy life seems to start at half the caster's (slvl 1) and ramps up by 10% per slvl--depending on whether that 10% is applied to the inital Decoy base life or the caster's would make a big difference--resulting in multiples of the casters life for the decoy at high slvls.

Although the decoy looks like you it does *not* seem to benefit from attributes on your equipment like: can not be frozen, 10% chance to cast Nova when struck. Nor did it seem to benefit from drinking a antidote potion when it was poisoned. That is, despite appearances, it is not a perfect nor ongoing clone of you.

However, testing level 20 Poison Javalin against it seems to indicate that poison does not stop its regen, and that its regen rate is indeed huge. (The AB thread estimated complete regen heal in ~11 seconds).

Since many Amazons might consider maxing Decoy just for the new synergy to Valk life, it looks like Decoy's are a big win (apparently they also rate higher on the monsters' targeting "threat" list than anything else as well).

In my testing I did think I saw it animate an occassional mini-dodge vs. my melee attacks, but I really didn't test that new v1.10 aspect of the situation.

A friend has suggested that Decoy's might double benefit from Druid and Barb +life--once when created based relative to the caster's life, and again when the oak and war cry are cast on it. Testing this is awkward for just one person, as the cursored HPs of the Decoy always (deliberate lie) reflect that of its mistress, and I'd have to run a bunch of characters at once.
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#11
Here's a couple I noticed in testing only recently...

Standing in flames (recent test: fires burning by the Hellforge) I take decreasing damage as I get lower and lower on HPs. When I started the flames were taking off dozens of points per grunt/second and towards the end only a point or so a second. Very noticable. v1.10s. Not sure if this applies to other "trap" damage as well. Looks like Blizzard is trying to be nice to the player. I wonder what the details are.

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.
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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#12
Quote:Just noticed from Bradosol's the AB post and confirmed myself in v1.10s: Decoys (Amazon) are *solid*.

Yup -- this can be a little dangerous, but I think once you're aware of it, it may actually be a good thing. Another thing is that although valks aren't solid, they never seem to walk through you, but you can walk through them (don't know how it works for other player characters in multiplayer games). So if there are monsters in front of you and your valk is behind you, you have to walk back through your valk so she can get to the monsters; she won't do it on her own.
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#13
Heiho,

as for the decoy, you can simply recast it on another place, if it's still alive after the job at that first place is done, it doesn't cost much mana and has no delay.

You are solid for your minions, even for your hireling, that is fact as long as I can remember (and I remember the days all of your minions were solid to you, a rightful pain in the arse to bring a summoner through the Maggot Lair, excuse my wordings).

Talking about delays, a not so hidden feature, but maybe not very well known to all players, is the fact that when you mixup spells with delays the longest delay will count. So if you cast a Wally and want to fire an Immolation Arrow afterwards, you'll have to wait for the Wally timer, not the (shorter) Immo timer (not sure if this is with all delayer spells, I'm pretty sure it works like this with the whole druid elementalist tree, but I heavily dislike sorcs, maybe there are some spells which don't interact that way).

_____________


Maybe these will also count in Crystalion's intention, pure poison attacks don't trigger LEBs, but the so-much-loved FG does trigger them according to his Holy Fire aura. Especially this FG feature seems most unnoticed by lots of Necro players. This should be considered even more, since in 1.10 the aura flash intervals in general are shorter than in 1.10.

Badly documented in 1.10 is the IG Thorns damage, he has now Thorns of his own even on sLvl1, but this is still neglected (and it is not just graphics, it does real damage).
so long ...
librarian

Check out some peanuts or the
Diablo II FAQtoids
current status: re-thinking about HoB
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#14
All minions and hirelings (except decoy) view players and other minions/hirelings as solid, its just the player that doesn't see minions/hirelings as solid
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#15
Quote:Talking about delays, a not so hidden feature, but maybe not very well known to all players, is the fact that when you mixup spells with delays the longest delay will count. So if you cast a Wally and want to fire an Immolation Arrow afterwards, you'll have to wait for the Wally timer, not the (shorter) Immo timer (not sure if this is with all delayer spells, I'm pretty sure it works like this with the whole druid elementalist tree, but I heavily dislike sorcs, maybe there are some spells which don't interact that way).

All timers are connected. While one timer is still active, you can't cast any spell with a timer.
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#16
Which is exactly why I can't stand playing a Fire-based Elemental Druid as you can only get away with using one skill at a time, most of the time. :angry: Can't I at least have Molten Boulder to spam? :P
-TheDragoon
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#17
Spammable Molten Boulder would make Shockwave cheese look fairly tame in comparison, trust me, I've played timerless mods. Molten Boulder needs SOME sort of delay (or fast cast cap) if it's going to keep the knockback. Firestorm is probably too weak to be worth spamming (which makes it the perfect choice from a Blizzard perspective - let 'em spam something useless. You saw how they double nerfed charged bolt in 1.1a, right?) so I'd suggest making Volcano spammable. It's already my favourite Druid fire skill, like the Sorcie's meteor...it's a "bad place to stand" skill. If there were a skill that created a pit that monsters fell in and took 10xcharacter level magic damage, I'd use it. Constantly. I love skills that reward the player for manipulating monster movement, like Blaze.

But yeah...I'm surprised I've only seen a very little amount of talk about CB getting nerfed, and then only the bolt cap. Did no one notice they also nerfed it so that damage doesn't even necessarily go up every level? That's just terrible. :o( Now I'm waiting for them to nerf all the other level 1 viable skills just to be fair (4 masteries, fire blast, fire arrow, etc.).

Of course it won't happen and they won't restore CB either, so sayeth The Hermit.

"Don't you step outta line, don't you [edited] lie." Tool - Eulogy
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#18
Quote:Spammable Molten Boulder would make Shockwave cheese look fairly tame in comparison, trust me, I've played timerless mods.
Uh, no. :) Shockwave can shut down monsters for 12+ seconds at a time while Molten Boulder will only knock back SOME monsters for much shorter periods of time. I, too, have played (and made) mods with non-timered Boulders and they never seemed particularly overpowered. The most important part, though, is that it was about the most fun I've ever had with a caster-type character in Diablo II. The graphics and sounds for Molten Boulder are just about perfect, in my opinion, and THAT is what makes the skill such great fun.

Another way of looking at it is that my main problem is how Blizzard has all skills on the same timer... why couldn't they have used different skill clusters for timer effects so that one could actually USE the Elementalist skills in combination? Oh well, I guess I'll once again ignore the fire side of the tree and focus on the wind side where I can actually combine my skills into some form of strategy rather than "Hey, let's throw down one spell at the biggest monster every 2 seconds."
-TheDragoon
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#19
all the uninteruptable skills

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

** but if you're in block/hit recovery and charge you charge in place, getting hit slows your charge speed down(while charging), and it now has an animation(only in sp?) that also makes you charge at place if you hold your attack button.


phychic hammer knockback chance (increased with skill level)
target:
monster 100%
unique 50-100%
boss 25-99%


sanctuary has +100 attack rating base vs undead, +50 per lvl.

nihlathak's CE does 10-20% of corpse hp.
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#20
adamantine,Aug 24 2003, 08:23 PM Wrote:phychic hammer knockback chance (increased with skill level)
target:
monster 100%
unique 50-100%
boss 25-99%
I was noticing this yesterday but didn't know the numbers for it. I also tested vs. Shenk because he is a large sized Unique. I noticed that, by contrast, Mind Blast *always* put him into knockback/recovery (kinda a mana hungry way to achieve this).

Unfortunately I didn't play with Telekinesis and Leap (not LA) and Smite to see what their knockback details are. It is nice to know Psychic Hammer gets a bonus.

EDIT: Telekinesis does seem to follow the normal (25/50/100% for large/medium/small monsters) rule for knockback chance. In v1.10s the /nopickup option prevents TK from TKing items on the ground unless you are holding the alt key down. This is a really nice improvement.

IIRC, doesn't normal knockback get a reduced chance vs. medium and large monsters? (I still think, v1.10s, Cleglaw's gloves are one of the best items in the game, although crafted knockback gloves might be better for some builds). Howltusk for a merc is a fav also, until you can give them some uber helm.

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

wearwolf, wearbear (not a typo btw--druid transforming)
town portal cast (and IDs)
cry help (I assume this is Cain? perhaps the numpad "skill"?!)
bearsmite (presumably the Druid's Grizzley uses this)
Delirium change

p.s. on another topic in this thread: looks like Guided Arrow drops to mana cost 1 (min) at slvl 32? Perhaps an odd build, now that GA doesn't pierce, but certainly not a mana hungry one.
"He's got demons? Cool!" -- Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island

"Proto-matter... an unstable substance which every ethical scientist in the galaxy has denounced as dangerously unpredictable." -- Saavik, Star Trek III

"Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it!" -- Kevin, Time Bandits
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