Brother Laz

Putting only jewels into a socketed item results in additional bonuses. This also applies to two or more jewels, not just one, but the item needs to be nonmagical (grey).

Btw: I see you're using maphack. I'm offended.

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Almost correct.

Actually, 'an evil force' is the default string used if a monster lacks a name. This means that the mod got through 72 patches (because I didn't touch that guy since the original Median 2 0.01) and nobody noticed this. Which goes to show that I'm way too perfectionist, and explains why a certain mod that crashes when you kill a particular monster type is so popular.

The players seem to suffer from mass tunnel vision when they start up Median or something.

If you have an earlier version, upgrade to 1.23 B - that particular monster type did insane damage with Crucify in earlier patches.

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Improved in 1.23.

Unlike in earlier patches, mercs don't rule the whole game. Their good early game survivability is due to their high base defense, but it doesn't go up with level anymore, and once their chance to be hit goes above ~30%, they pop very easily.

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There are some graphics-intensive attacks, but you can avoid them in the skill tree, and few monsters use them.

- Meteor Shower. Duh.
- Anything with a timer between 1 and 6 seconds at level 1, because those skills got their timer to reduce lag (ie. Avatar, Plague Avatar, Shadow Avatar, Lightning Wall, Meteor Shower).
- Fire Fountain, if you spam it.
- Deathcore. It may not look like it is going to lag much, but it consists of 8 stacked effects so you get 8 times as much framerate loss.
- Holy Trap and Ring of Light, because you can endlessly stack them and get a massive amount of fire that may well lag slower computers.

The only monster that really uses a laggy skill is Andariel and her Meteor Shower. If you let the Summoner or Mephisto chain summon for a while, you may end up with a pile of monsters that may lag you, but by then you're going to die anyway. And the Summoner uses Lightning Wall, but it is tiny due to the narrow walkways, and should not cause significant lag.

No, it just means you won't get any flashy light effects.

1337-Orange

lol yeah i use mh sorry. I seem to be stuch at Duriel right now. Any tips on how to beat him? I know not to have summons because he has like a 50% chance to heal when he kills a minion or a person right? I do 243-320 with Catharsis. He owns me so fast lol

Additional Comment:
Oh and 1 more question can you really get 4 soc gloves to get the Jewelword Icarus?

Brother Laz

Duriel is a nasty surprise for summoners in particular. Most summoners don't care about things like defense and hit points, and are weak as chicks without their minion wall.

Let this be a lesson for the higher difficulties, by the way.

Now as for how to get past him: he doesn't do all that much more damage than one regular monster, and neither does he have an excessive attack rating. Get a decent amount of defense (you can gamble for tier 1 ancient armor!) and at least some life.

His stats in Hatred (Normal) are:
Level: 22
Damage: 70-94
Time Strike damage: 140-188 (*)
10% chance to cast Fortress on striking
Fortress damage: 35-47
Attack rating: 386
Defense rating: 102
Hit points: 57244
Resistances: poison 100%

(*) The delayed damage part (the green sparkle), but if you get hit by that, you are an idiot.

The big one is the Time Strike hit, which does loads of damage even if you avoid the delayed hit. With 50 vitality and ~350 life, this kills you in 3-5 hits.

On the bright side, that's only 386 attack rating. By now, you should have at least that much defense - if not, good luck in Act 3. If worst comes to worst, gamble for tier 1 full plate mail (91 str, level req 11) or ancient armor (97 str, level req 11), both of which can have over 300 base defense.

You have minions, which means you have either Nightmare, cold spells, or a physical attack (with a cold damage weapon on switch). If you can slow him down enough, you can stay far ahead of him and he never gets close enough to attack you. This is how most people beat him.

Don't ever tank him. If he doesn't just pwn you in a few hits, he will drop Time Strike on you and this will kill you if you don't move away - at worst that 10% proc will go off and you get mowed down by Fortress. You have to do everything possible to avoid his attacks. Use ranged attacks, preferably damage over time attacks (Legion) and set up a town portal to escape when you run out of potions.

If worst comes to worst, use consumables! Spam Elixirs of Vitality or buy a Spirit of Divinity (6 seconds of invulnerability) for ~90K gold. If you get in trouble, use the Spirit and dash for the portal.

25% in Hatred (Normal), but being a boss, he has a x10 damage multiplier against minions.

Well, that's ~150 shots. Just stay out of his jaws and you'll be fine.

Yes, you can. Not that early, though.

1337-Orange

I killed him. I ran in circles after my merc got owned casting Legion in the top part of the tomb and it does ~200 damage. Took awhile to kill him but i got it. I got through a3 almost with ease. I died a few times trying to run it though. I didnt know meph summoned either lol. I let my merc tank him while i ghost arrowed through a wall. So many summons though. Que-Hegans piss me off lol they shoot hammers at you and it knocks you back so far lol. After i killed Duri those traps casted and killed me cause i wasnt paying attention. It was sad cause i had to run all the way from arcane entrance because im an idiot and didnt grab Magi wp.

Bloodangel26

it was kinda fun till i realized it was single player and single player is boring :-/

1337-Orange

You can play on open with other people though. What level are you?

420 Posts

jedimaster86

I was sur.prised when I got to the Ancients. There is nothing really special at all about them, and I just kept on running around and using Legion/Barrage/Catharsis until they went down. I forget, but I believe I am either 35 or 36 now. I was ok in Worldstone 1 (however I got the annoying Fallen-type enemies so after I try to run from the billion of them and kill the shaman it bugs me), but pretty much as soon as I stepped into Worldstone 2 I got swamped and killed by monsters. I tried using some oil potions (i didn't notice until now that throwing pots damages are way up - oil pots are like 1250) to clear the way, but they killed me before I could really throw a ***, so I couldn't get my body. This mean I now have to trek my way back through Ancients Way (takes me awhile to get through a level, but at least I know the way through the already unveiled map) and try to at least unveil more of the map in WS 2 so I can find the way to the waypoint.

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1337-Orange

Ouch im stuch in a4 atm. I tried to run to izual and i got owned lol

Brother Laz

So it was fun until you realised that single player is not fun?

That's what this thread is for: to set up tcp/ip games. However, most people there wouldn't approve of the maphack you are likely using.

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In 1.23 B, they do have various on-striking and when-struck abilities, most notably Blast Wave and Fortress. Their AI is sadly required to make them work properly, so the usual AI-swap is impossible. The procs were the only thing I could do.

If you don't have 1.23 B yet, you may want to upgrade, because the Obsidian Lords in the previous patch or two did excessive damage with Crucify.

The monsters don't really spawn on top of the stairs, but close to them, so you are likely to wake them up if you move even a short distance. So move slowly.

If you still get stair trapped, use damage over time skills and just corpse zerg them. Every class has a mainstream damage over time skill, and you can break out of the pack by just going down, casting it, dying and going back twenty times over. Eventually they will drop.

The best skills for this purpose are Gamma Field, Shadow Avatar, Legion, Nova Bomb and Bloodstorm, but many others will work.

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Don't run to Izual.

jedimaster86

Thanx Laz for the help; yeh I upgrade to 1.23 B when you released it. One of my probs is that I really don't have my zon skills spread out into all of the trees (just the second and third columns in the first skill tree, and not all skills are maxed; i have about 5 free skill points); is this the type of mod that really does require you to spend a point into most of your skills? All of the skills I have points in require equipment to be worn to use them (and all are basically purely focused on how high damage my bow is - the only thing that changes with skill points placed is the range and sometimes amount of arrows if it is a skill that utilizes multiple arrows like legion or barrage).

I think I was wrong in saying they were spawned there; sorry. Yeh, it was that I walked a bit to far and large groups swamp me quicker than I can escape. Thus I die, and rescuing a body once you die (I was playing again last night; at least 100 deaths before I gave up) is rather difficult. At times I tried to arm myself with any oil pots I had with me, and at times I also tried to buy and arm myself with some armor and another bow so I could cast legion.

I think my best bet would be to keep on trying to level in A5 (I'm 37 now) and place points in new skills, esp defensive ones like good 'ol Catharsis - which is my usual main attack for the ability to be one of my best offensive and often used after I Blindside and stun everything.

Leveling is slow, but hopefully if I can build up new skills I can utilize them and one day perhaps I'll be able to survive a higher "/players X" command (I usually have no problem with something like "/players 4", but it just takes so long to kill a guy after I stun him; did I read somewhere correctly that you had lowered bow drops? It's hard to find a good bow I can actually use and doesn't require an immense amount of dex to use it. (this mod really doesn't want people to spend points in vitality; nice job heh).

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Bloodangel26

close...it was sorta fun till i realized that on single player you cannot mule items, play with other people without doing the work of setting up the tcip things, and it wont do anything for my account on bnet.

1337-Orange

You can always mule things on open if you have 2 cd keys if you really need to...


A4 is really hard the dark knights own my and my merc so hard >< I use a Earthquake bow and do about 200-300 with Carthisis. Takes me a while to kill things and those monsters that tele when you hit them annoy me lol.

Brother Laz

Yep... most skills utterly fail at some point against some enemies. You need to diversify to get past them all. One point may not be enough, though - I usually have ~5-7 skills maxed.

Bow skills are fairly easy on skill points - you can get by with 1-4 points for most of them. This is on purpose. Means you can get several of them and still have points left over for things like Mana Sweep, Death Coil et al.

Or you could get Bloodstorm, Stormtouch or anything else that doesn't rely on weapon damage. Getting your corpse back as a weapon user is and has always been difficult. Be glad it isn't like D1, where you lost your items if you couldn't get them back.

You do have Death Coil, right?

It isn't your god-given right to play on /players 14902180910241031 and get away with it. This mod is balanced for /players 1 - both in terms of monster stats and also experience gained and drops. You don't need higher player settings.

There are jewels with -8% requirements, and some runewords have additional -reqs. However, the best thing to do is not try to lower requirements, but to increase your dexterity, usually through socketables and certain runewords. Eld runes into everything would be a good start. It should be not at all impossible to get +40 dexterity and +30% bonus to dexterity at your level.

Neither did Blizzard, but...

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You are aware of the existence of PlugY, an addon to Diablo 2 that gives you a shared, infinite stash?

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Your damage sucks, man... Just because Catharsis shows the biggest number on your character screen does not mean it is the highest damage thing in the game. Scatter Shot does only slightly less damage, but does this damage to everything in a large radius. Single targets are torn to pieces by Guided Chain. Wraith Arrow owns large packs. Deathcore just owns, period. And don't forget the Nova Shot/Mana Sweep combo. Etc.

Catharsis is good early on, but way overrated in the later game. If you can't get resistances from other sources, you suck. If the physical resistance comes into play, this means you're tanking, which means you're going to die. Double damage in a line is great against bosses, but it does lack area coverage.

hellsing293

omg this sounds awesome dude. just a few minor questions. can i install/use it like i do my plugY and put it in my d2 folder or do i have to do it the way jedi says to in his mod guide(which i have to read xD)\?. there are new runewords? how do i know how to make them, would i have to guess or does it say it in the game?

wow this sounds really fun, last tiem i played single player i had a 56barb in act4 nm and my computer lost all its memory so i quit single player, but i am defiantly gonna try this(and spread it to all my friends if you don't mind lol)

EDIT: reading your website for sry about the runeword question. can i use plugY with this for stash space(and ubering with this would be cool someday)?

EDIT: i installed it fine, but when i want to go on bnet do i need to uninstall it? And i was thinking a battlerage/vanquish combo with titan strike. would this be a good combo, and will the durations increase enough to actually be able to not have to keep recasting them every second?

__________________
As long as darkness flows through my veins, I will never cease, As long as my dreams still haunt me, I will never show mercy, and as long as evil lives I will never die.....

Brother Laz

I don't know what jedi pretends to know about mods, but you just plunk the .mpq file into your D2 directory and run the game.

By the way, PlugY does work with Median 2007, except the shared stash will mess you up unless you remove your classic LoD items (make a backup, of course) because the item save format is incompatible between Median and classic LoD. Also, if you unassign skill points, some of them may disappear into a black hole...

http://modsbylaz.planetdiablo.gamespy.com -> Runewords...

Just because PlugY offers you the uber quest does not mean you can actually complete it in Median... After all, if you hack the mod with PlugY, you're on your own. The ubers would actually be easy, but don't expect a torch or anything like that.

You need to replace *1* file, which can hardly be called 'uninstalling'. This mod does not require 1.10, unlike everyone else's, by the way.

The duration on Vanquish does not go up, and it has this juicy skill timer. This is a burst damage skill, not unlike Arcane Power in WoW. Items with '+x% to buff/debuff/cold skill duration' will increase it, though.

Battlerage does go up with level, expect a ~6-8 second duration eventually. But it is a melee attack, so reapplying it is easy. Just hit the hotkey button.

hellsing293

for the barb there weren't melee skills etc. there were attacks like titan strike but thats like a power up and you attack regular, there weren't attacks attacks. like there were skills you use for every attack like concentrate for example on them, confused me lol. i got it so now i can play it regular or use your mod which is cool(followed jedis advice). one quick qeustion, i was thinking of using lightning wall since its one of the only skills i saw that had 2synergys off skills. seemed like a good idea. very very nice job, its like a totally new game, and very fun.

__________________
As long as darkness flows through my veins, I will never cease, As long as my dreams still haunt me, I will never show mercy, and as long as evil lives I will never die.....

Brother Laz

Let's see:

- Shadow Strike
- Blood Strike
- Claw Tornado
- Shower of Rocks
- Battlerage (~)

Most melee barbarian players use Shower of Rocks. This skill is shared with druids but barbs have a very fast 11 frame base attack when dual wielding, and Fortress. (Druids have summoned Acid Fiends to make up some of the difference, though)

The elemental melee attacks are underrated, but good if you focus on caster gear (+x% to skill damage, +x skill levels, etc.), which is not the first thing people consider when building a barbarian - and then they find out that their elemental skill damage sucks and they diss the skills.

Warning: long post

Skills with synergies are not automatically overpowered; synergies were added for a variety of reasons:

- to bridge a gap in a skill tree (eg. Rune of Fire gets a synergy from the non-damaging Rune of Ice, making it a bit stronger while you wait for level 12 and Nova Bomb. Maxing the synergy is nice, but not required);
- to improve a skill in the end game without rendering it overpowered when you first get it (eg. Lightning Wall would dominate at level 12 if it had the synergy damage bonus included in the actual damage);
- to provide an alternate way to improve a skill without increasing the mana cost (eg. the Wraith Arrow synergy: you don't need to max both WA itself and the synergy, 33 targets is overkill and useless in real life. Instead, you pick one or the other. Investing in the synergy costs more skill points to get the same result but does not increase the mana cost);
- to make a strong skill simply cost more points (eg. the summoning skills should not be something you could just pick up for 10 points, they should require a decent amount of commitment).

Most elemental skills with damage synergies above +6% per point may be useful when you get them, but become underpowered later on if you don't max the synergies. Don't get these skills if you don't have the points to spare.

-> Lightning Wall can do serious damage if you max the synergies (at level 60, assuming 70% bonus from energy, level 10+4 LW: 111-2818 damage per second without synergies, 3297-19020 per second with synergies). It kills a level 60 Nightmare monster in 10 seconds without the synergy, in about 2 seconds with the synergy, with some stray damage from the charged bolts.

Thanks!

jedimaster86

I was going to just make a new thread, but I'm sure this is just as fine keeping all of it together. Brother Laz has released the 1.24 T patch, and it is one of the biggest patches for this mod. You can download it here: http://modsbylaz.planetdiablo.gamespy.com/ by going to the "Download this Mod" area and picking your mirror. Here is a list of changes for this (well collectively 1.24 and the 1.24 T patch, but they were basically released at the same exact time):