Hey Ahli, I wanted to know if you were planning on wiping all characters for the upcoming character skill update for the map. I would rather not have to start over again, but I would understand if you had to wipe them all to prevent problems from old characters.

I noticed you were planning on putting more unique items into the map. I wanted to know if you needed help coming up with names or if you already made them up.

I was also wondering if you were planning on putting unique rings/helms into the game. I don't think we have any of those right now.

P.S. Is it just me or do blacksmith oils seem to now have a nerfed chance to drop from before.

No wipe. I will take away some spells and skill previews and give you skill points instead. Then you can spend the points on skills.

The sorcerer will be fairly empty tomorrow as I have only a few skills so far. But Warrior is complete and Rogue is nearly complete... Maybe you all give me cool ideas what else the heroes could use.

But since I won't have multiple difficulties ready till the end of the month, you might want to start a new char instead and level with skillpoints instead to test that.

I plan to do that, but I haven't come that far right now. Most likely the item costs might end up weird as most likely I will create a lot of them in one day close to the end.

I have no idea. I don't remember changing anything.

Greetings Ahli, I wanted to mention I really like the new skills you added in. I was wondering though if all of the skills max out at level 15 like the sorceror skills do. The other thing I was wondering is if you could possibly change the window Wirt starts on when you click trade. Since he now sells a few items, I believe it would make more sense to start his window on the normal items tab similar to Grizwold.

The last thing I was wondering about was on the depth Diablo is on. I remember in the vanilla game that there were many more monsters inside of the indented square area. Did you decide that there were enough enemies spawning in that area that it was unnecessary to crowd that area? I was also wondering the same thing about Diablo's spawning location whether you decided not to fill it with mob spawns.

Finally, I noticed you mentioned that the magic element was going to become "more useful" yet I haven't really seen much change in immunities. Did you simply lower the magic resistances of some of the monsters to make them more susceptible to magic based attacks?

Edit: I noticed that under the skill tree for the sorceror there is a small bug. It doesn't display the correct value for how many levels of the spell "Flash" in the flash skill tree box for flash. I had around level 6-7 and it said I had no levels in the spell in there. Figured I would let you know about it. I suppose I could have taken a screenshot with me having the spell equipped and showing the skill tree but I spaced it out. Sorry for that Ahli.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on May 19 2014, 10:57 am by SeraphicStar.

I've lowered the number of magic immune monster types.

I will change wirt's starting tab.

Most mobs are placed randomly, so there might be a low amount or just no monster inside the rooms.

edit:
fixed the flash levels, thx for finding it.

Ah I see, thanks for the info. I also was wondering what monster level Diablo himself is. If you don't feel like answering, it's okay. The reason I was wondering is that I ended up getting around 200k exp one time from killing him on my sorceror(level 36 atm). Of course I was playing essentially "players 4" mode since I had the 3 other players "active".

I also wanted to mention another bug I found along with a curiosity. I noticed that the sorcerors blood golem is considered a "monster" when you attempt to spawn another blood golem. What I mean by it being considered a monster is that it is able to drop items equivalent to around level 30 monster drops (he dropped a mcduck amulet which of course has req lvl 30 on it). He also could drop regular quality gems like Emerald/Amethyst etc. I also remember he dropped a rare gothic plate. This of course allows the sorceror to indirectly "spawn" items by simply resummoning the golem while standing next to the healer. I hope you are able to find the cause of this, because I believe it could be abused pretty easily.

The curious thing I wanted to bring to your attention lies in the ending videos after you defeat Diablo. I noticed that the first video attempted to "replay" after it is finished running the first time, but ends up giving an empty cinema box where the video is supposed to be. I was able to get out of the video using the esc key you designated, but I had to spam it like 4-5 times to get back to my hero. I didn't see this same issue with the second video that happens when you take a tp back to town. Hopefully this means that that triggered cinematic is working correctly and you might simply have to use the method from that one to fix the cinema after Diablo's death.

I'm not looking it up now, but I think I ended up giving him level 34. The level of the other monsters are 30 or slightly lower than that.

I've fixed the problem with the videos. The problem was that the slaying player starts the video as often as there are players in the game. I've used the wrong variable to start the video and they queued up then.

I've fixed the golems dropping items.

Thanks for finding these problems.

No problem, I also had one other small thing I discovered and that involves the rightmost portion of the sales box. I may have mentioned this before but I suppose it isn't really that big of a deal. I found out that socketed items when displayed on the rightmost edge of the trade box for Grizwold have an alignment error. As in, the sockets look like they are floating outside of the menu. I will post a screenshot of what I am talking about. Not sure if it is worth fixing or if it can be fixed, but I figured I would inform you of it.

[attach=9498]

I also wanted to inquire about how the higher difficulties were coming along. Are you going to have character level limitations for them similar to how Diablo 1 had them? Or were you going to instead go for the requirement that people must beat normal Diablo to reach nightmare difficulty, and nightmare Diablo in order to reach hell difficulty (which would be more like how Diablo 2 did it). I remember you mentioned that the difficulties would likely be out at the end of the month, so does that mean they are almost done?

The other thing I wanted to know about the difficulties was if there are going to be higher tier versions of weapons similar to Diablo 2. Like, for instance, a better version of the bastard sword, or the addition of the crystal sword so people would have access to a six-socketed single handed sword. I also am slightly worried about how higher difficulties will affect the damage output of some classes. Will you be boosting the golems hp for the higher difficulties as well, so he can actually take multiple hits from the more dangerous monsters? In addition to these things, will there be a nightmare and hell version of the spectral elixir quest so a person could potentially reach +9 extra stats? Or did you have it at +3 to begin with to offset the fact that no higher difficulties existed.

P.S. If you were planning on adding in crystal swords I'd like to call dibs on naming the unique. I would name it "Seraph's Dimensional Tempest" (Name is WIP). Of course this name could be shortened if there was a lack of space.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 21 2014, 12:32 am by SeraphicStar. Reason: Trying to get image to show.

Difficulties won't come at the end of the month. I have no time to do that. =(

I'm trying to add more skills till the end of the month and maybe throw in some unique items. That's all I have time for.

I will add more content with future patches as usual. Basically, the release is just there for me to be able to enter the contest. I don't consider this a fully done game at release.

Nightmare and Hell spectral elixir stat bonus will exist in the higher difficulties.

Today I found a hacker: [RANGR] TheGoldPer. He was playing lvl 51 sorcerer and talking like it's the max level. When I checked his xp bar in replay it showed -93345219 / 13270579.
The replay is in attachments.

Just want to report this if it can help you to prevent this kind of thing.

Attachments:

It's not max level anymore for quite a lot of time.

His xp is weird. His xp is most likely broken due to a change in the experience system to allow a max level of 76. But it's very odd that he reached such a high level before that change. I don't know if he really hacked or found a bug. At least he seems to have acquired a lot of playing knowledge, so I don't know.
His charged bolt spell had level 17, so maybe my bank patching didn't work fine. I will patch the banks again to ensure a max level of 15.

Oh, btw, I've noticed that you aren't using the shortcut clicks for selling and stash-inventory movement (and maybe the potion into belt hotkeys). Using them might speed up some of the boring inventory management tasks.

If that was his exp to next level, his true level would be something a little past level 36-37 before he cheated I believe. Either way, it's pretty sad that some people cheat like that, imo it just ends up killing the game for them and others if they play with them.

I wanted to post another curiosity I found recently though while playing on a new character. Apparently when you finish the king leoric quest, it says you finished the diablo quest instead. I will post a screenshot of this. I was playing solo so I know it couldn't have been someone else beating Diablo when it happened.
[attach=9505]

The other thing I wanted to mention regards the rogues flaming weapon skill. Whenever I fired an arrow with it active it would print "received" at the bottom of the screen to the right of the health orb. I don't know if you left that in for a reason though.
[attach=9506]

Edit: I just got finished playing through a game of this map with a friend and we encountered a couple bugs that I would like to bring to your attention. Two of these actually have to do with the Halls of the Blind quest. The first one being that the Optic Amulet had a required level of 9 and my friends character was only level 8 yet he was able to equip the item. The screenshot illustrating this is below:
[attach=9507]

The second issue involving this quest was that a doodad was spawned in front of where the door appears. I believe this could be fixed by either preventing doodads from spawning in front of the door, or allowing two doors, one on the top of the first room like you have, and another one on the bottom opposite room. It is highly unlikely that both entrances would be blocked if you did this. The screenshot is below:
[attach=9508]

Finally, one last bug we encountered is related to the rogues Thrill of the Hunt skill. Apparently my friend never got the buff from me casting the skill and his character was standing right next to mine on multiple occasions that I tried using it. I couldn't post a screenshot of this since I was the one casting it. He was the same character class as mine (a rogue) which I don't know if that matters or not. I also wanted to comment that I think the skill should give a 2% boost to critical per level instead of a 1% boost. I was also wondering why the speed bonus wasn't increased as well when skill points are added. It doesn't have to increase for every level, but I think at max level maybe it should give a 15% movement speed boost so that both of the bonuses increase as the skill improves.

I hope these were able to help you polish your map and make it even better!

P.S. I also wanted to mention something I noticed in your item id text file. I see that you have 4 different oils listed for improving items, but the list looks like it's outdated. I have found 2 of each type so far, so I was wondering if you decided that 4 of each type was too much? I was also wondering if you were still planning on implementing jewels or if you decided not to.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on May 22 2014, 8:31 am by SeraphicStar.

Thank you for the great reports. I've fixed all of those bugs.

I will update the map later today on all servers. Atm I've only updated NA with skills. Also, I will add mana shield alterations and whatever I can finish till tonight, too.

Different movement speed can be a problem as that is applied via data module in the editor and all other effects are created via triggers. That's why the speed bonus will remain static for now.

edit:

Btw, if you have ideas for spell alterations or for skills for Rogue, please let me know.

edit:
updated the map on battle.net.

edit:

I've played in multiplayer on battle.net today and the performance on battle.net is horrible... I will see what I can do about it...
It seems the vision system that helps you seeing in a dungeon causes these issues... 100ms per game second just to create Circle regions for 3 players are horrible.

I will optimize the worst aspects and update the map later...

jesus, that was/is laggy...

edit:

updated the map with a performance fix and sounds, fireball damage nerf, sorcerer spell to hit bonus fix

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on May 23 2014, 11:08 pm by Ahli.

Hey I had a couple of questions about the newest version. The first is with regard to the energy shield skill. The tooltip says that mana takes 100% of the damage, yet occasionally monsters still hit the sorceror every now and again for damage. I was wondering if you implemented a small chance for monsters to deal meager amounts of damage in order to require the sorceror to repair armors in a similar manner as the other two classes. It would definitely help with balancing for sure if that was the reasoning for it.

My second question was about the damage reduction per mana point. Since the damage is supposed to be 100% absorbed by your mana pool during the energy shield skill, does that mean the damage reduction simply means you end up taking less mana damage total? For instance lets say normally you would take 10 points of damage without the energy shield skill on. With a level 1 version of the skill active instead (20% damage reduction), that 10 damage would translate out to only 8 damage actually received right?

I also wanted to inquire about when you expect character skill point resets. I know you stated that if you added in major skill additions to some classes you would offer skill point resets to characters of that class that were already created prior to the patch. Was this only with regard to completely new skill trees though? I was thinking maybe you could have the normal 3 point reset per character level, but also possibly have an item similar to the item altering stones for character respeccing purposes. This item would of course be extremely rare and you could even limit the number of uses of this item per character level if you wished. The way the item would work is you first right click on the item just like when you use a stone of stuffing/accretion. Then you would choose a skill that has points in it already and the skill is lowered by one skill level (would only work on skills you have learned by adding skill points). That point is added back into your total number of unused skill points for use later on. I am unsure if it would be easier for you to transfer the point directly to another skill or simply return the skill point to the user for later assignment.

The reason I bring this up is the fact that the sorceror appears to be missing a fair amount of future possible spell modifications. However, my main concern here is that since he possesses all of the skill trees already, based on the indication you made earlier, he would not be given any skill resets. This would lend to the idea that sorceror characters created prior to future patches won't have the ability to test out any new skills added in to their full potential. I very much hope that this isn't the case.

Edit: I also found another peculiar issue recently. Apparently when you have a scroll of town portal and a nearly full bottom row of skills, it will generate a strange gap between the town portal scroll selection and your other skill selections. I am not sure if this was intentional or not but I figured I would make mention of it. The screenshot depicting this can be found below:
[attach=9511]

Edit 2: I also just encountered another rather strange occurrence regarding the sale of items with curses. The item I tried to sell said it's sell value was only 1 gold. However, when I checked the items buy price in Grizwold's sale inventory, the item now cost around 3400. I don't know what causes this anomaly to occur, but I will post screenshots to show this.

This first screenshot is the value of the item in my inventory:

[attach=9512]

This second screenshot is the value of the item in Grizwold's inventory:

[attach=9513]

Edit 3: I discovered the item cost likely has something to do with the + damage taken curse effect. The reason why is because I received another item later on that had this same curse effect and it gave the same result.

I also wanted to inquire about the crystalline prefix. Did you believe that this prefix was too OP for your map? I was thinking that maybe you could add it in, but make it a high-level prefix you could only find in hell difficulty or something. I believe a reason why you decided not to add this prefix in is because then there would be 3 possible % damage boost prefixes that could land on weapons. Also the durability debuff could be circumvented by using the durability oils already in the game. It may be a good idea to make the durability curse effect harsher than vanilla, or just make the effect a true tradeoff for such a high % damage increase that couldn't be bypassed by oils.

I forgot to ask a question as well about runes. Were you planning on implementing them into the game still, or did you decide not to add them in. Of course since you decided not to add in magic find, the ist rune would instead grant a large defense boost to armor. The problem with that though is the fact that pul runes already grant defense bonuses to armor. I believe you most likely decided not to add in runes simply due to the sheer number of additional effects that would be required to be implemented into the map. Since a great deal of these effects found on runes aren't in your map already, you would be required to do one of two things. The first would obviously be to implement the bonuses as rune-specific effects only found on certain runes. The second would be to implement alternate effects on the vanilla runes using pre-defined bonuses that already existed in your map. The second option would most likely be preferable if you could determine similar bonuses compared to the vanilla runes. For instance the open wounds effect on the Um rune for weapons could instead use a variation of the rogues poison knife skill effect to simulate damage over time.

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on May 27 2014, 1:02 am by SeraphicStar.

Thx for the reports.
- I've fixed the costs, NPC selling prices are now respecting curses. Only the repair costs ignore them.
- I've fixed that gap.
- fixed the energy shield letting damage through. But now I made energy shield give a 75% chance that the durability of your armor can be lowered
- fixed missing damage numbers when damage is dealt to your energy shield. These values now appear in grey-purple to the defender.

It will go live with my next update...

No problem, sorry for my crazy long post last time. I will try to make them more short and to the point.

I have a couple of things to report today, one of which is that it seems short bows can spawn with the town portal spell suffix as if they were staffs of town portal. I found one of these on dungeon level one but it apparently should have been a scroll instead since the price to sell it was only 50 gold. I would post a screenshot but apparently SEN is having trouble right now with attachments.

The second issue I want to report is regarding the synergies just added into the game. I really like that you added the ability to receive synergies but it appears that some skills don't properly increase their values when you read a book. They might actually be increasing the values, but the values themselves don't seem to immediately update. An example is if I read a magic tree spellbook, the holy shield skill doesn't display an increase to defense even though it's supposed to. I also wanted to add that I believe the sorceror should also gain some kind of synergy bonus from similar skills like how diablo 2 did synergies for the sorceror. I know you are probably worried about the sorceror becoming OP if you do this, so you could likely just limit the max number of synergy boosts each spell could attain. Of course base spells would be synergy bonuses to spell alterations, but skill boosted spells would not. That is my idea for synergies regarding the sorceror.

The third issue I have to report is that the new hell dungeon pallet seems not to be replacing the "doorway" pallets(the pallets you use for the button-activated wall removals). I figured I would inform you of this unless you simply haven't implemented a change to those yet.

Finally, I wanted to suggest something relating to the new synergy bonuses. Even though to some it might be common knowledge what spell tree each spellbook originates from, you might want to add in the tooltip a color coded word indicating what spell tree each spell is a part of. For instance, a firebolt spell would have a red Fire word somewhere inside of the items information box. The word would likely be just below the item name, but you could put it somewhere else if you believed another spot in the item description to be superior. I just feel that this addition would help people determine exactly what each spell will increase, it would make more sense for gold investments early on imo.

I really like all of the additions you have made btw Ahli, you have greatly improved your map in such a short time it's quite impressive! I was wondering where I can upvote your map for that map contest you mentioned you were entering it in. I believe this map is worthy of having a shot to win that contest.

P.S. I also noticed a few more strange things regarding shrines. The first one is that the sparkling shrine no longer seems to do anything(should be giving exp based on depth level). I was wondering if you added in a conditional for that shrine that checks to see if you are within a level range appropriate for that depth. This would prevent higher level characters from gaining experience from the shrine. I personally believe it should allow experience gain regardless though since it's a shrine effect and not a monster death. The second thing relates to the spiritual shrine. It seems the spiritual shrine is only allowed to give 5 gold anymore regardless of the depth you activate one on. Idk if that means the shrine effect is broken or if you decided that it was somehow giving too much gold at times and nerfed the output to a static constant.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 30 2014, 8:53 pm by SeraphicStar.

@synergies:
The improvements of the spell books is marginal. It adds x% to the number appearing in the skill's tooltip and then the value is cutoff. So, unless the change makes it go one value higher, it raises. So, overall, the spells can improve some of the skill's effects by 75%.

@wall model problem of removeable walls in hell
I will look into it right now.

@bow with town portal
weird. I will look into that. You can use other image hosting sites like www.snaggy.com to upload a picture. Then integrate it to your post using the "img" button when editing/writing a post.

A fix for the videos will come today on release. The SC2 engine stops all instances of a single video once it completes. -> I had to import the same video 4 times to have separate video files for it to work... That's like 10mb more space used just to bypass the engine bug. >_>

Today, I will try to make the spell window appear a bit better, maybe add a tooltip to the spellchose menu for spell hotkeys and add more sorcerer spells, if I can.
So, most likely no more unique items due to me having no more time left. Anyway, those low level items aren't that important, are they?

As mentioned before, I will continue to develop the map. But due to the contest, I won't be able to update the map on Americas (I've asked and they said no). The contest lasts approximately 2 months, so I will most likely update the map in a separate uploaded arcade map. It will be able to use the same bank, so don't worry.

I will publish the 1.0 version within the next 18 hours before the contest ends. AM has priority over the other regions. I might update those after I've slept.

Hmm, I did notice this, but what if the skill itself shows zero improvement yet the synergy says it's supposed to gain a 2% increase? I would believe that 150% defense given a 2% increase based on the current value would easily give an increase you could see especially since you have show decimals out to 4 places.


Yeah, I would probably use photobucket as an external image site, I just couldn't be bothered at the time. If you really want to see the screenshots though I'll see if I can dig up my password for the site and display them that way.


Lol that's quite a bit of unnecessary extra space! I would think there should be a better way to go about it but I lack the knowledge of Staredit to provide anything more than speculation.


Oh no, they aren't important at all. You got the important unique in anyway (hint: Seraph's Dimensional Tempest ). I was really surprised when I found it today, I did a double take a few times because I thought I was seeing things lol. I was trying to think of a good witty description you could add to the item as well if you felt like it. So far the best thing I was able to come up with was "A Taste of Divine Crystalline Goodness". You can change it to reflect me in some way on here though if you wanted, I just thought that line worked well since it's supposed to be a crystal sword and all.


So does this imply there will be two versions of your map on the AM region after the contest? I really hope it doesn't mean that the AM version will no longer be able to receive updates because that's sort of how I read it. Call me a dummy if I am way off base on that one heh.

Indeed, I won't be allowed to update the AM version I enter the contest with. But I will publish another version, in case I have updates I need to get out.

Else, I might just add stuff for the next bigger update bringing multiple difficulties, missing spells, a lot more unique items, etc... basically everything that I didn't get into the release version...

So, I've 6 additional spell alterations added so far and I've like 3 hours to go before I need to release it and upload a 100mb zip file to Blizzard.

edit:
I've released version 1.0 on the Americas servers and entered the "Rock the Cabinet" contest with it. My next patch for that map will most likely arrive directly after the contest.
I may publish it with another name on Americas before that with updates.

The contest will consist out of a vote and a winner's pick by Blizzard out of the highest voted maps. So, when the votes start please vote for me.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 1 2014, 4:04 am by Ahli.

Hmm, well as long as the map uses the same bank I am okay with it. I did want to mention though that in the end 7 spell alterations is quite a few additions without allowing a skill reset for sorceror characters created prior to the patch. I'm under the impression though that this version of the map assumes that most visitors will be new players checking out the map with the possibility of voting it up on the contest. Either that or you may have believed that the new spell alterations weren't enough to warrant allowing a skill reset? I was just eager to test out some of the new skills you added in, but I suppose I could do so just as easily with a new character. I really did want to see what their full potential was like asap though heh.

I will be sure to vote for this map when the voting period comes. Oh and to anyone not currently in "the know" it appears the voting starts on June 30'th and runs until July 7'th. Anyone else who believes this map is awesome and deserves some Blizzard love, come join me and vote this up!

P.S. I'd probably prefer the idea of just adding a separate version of the map that receives updates. That way the US people (like me ) are able to test out the new additions you make to the map. I will most likely play the new version to see all of the new things you add in and help squash any nasty bugs etc.

P.P.S. I noticed something strange regarding the Thrill of the Hunt skill. It involves casting a new instance of the skill while an earlier version of the skill is still active. If the new version of the skill has a higher percent critical rate than the old version and you cast it while the character info screen is open, then the critical rate doesn't change on the character sheet unless you close it and re-open it. This seems like simply a small visual bug as I am certain the actual value is being altered. Also, I could be mistaken on this, but it seems like the walking speed bonus from this skill doesn't preserve if you go into a town portal and then back to town while the skill is still active.

I also wanted to ask about what you are currently working on with the map. It sounds like you are focusing mostly on fleshing out the rest of the character skills right now. I've been wanting to ask you how far away you think higher difficulties were from being in the map as well. Were you planning on releasing nightmare first and then hell a little later on? Or were you just going to try to finish both of them and release both at the same time.

Edit: Sorry to keep adding more stuff to this post, but I found an additional minor bug I thought you might want to know about. This minor bug regards the unique monster "Sir Gorash". When you mouse over him, the monster type says "failid: 103". I am fairly certain it should say "Knight" instead. Since SEN doesn't appear to allow screenshots to be posted within threads anymore aside from attachments, the attached screenshot illustrates this issue.

Edit 2: I just found a Nova book on level 3 of hell on my level 27 rogue. I remember you mentioned that Nova and Teleport books could only be attained from Adria at character level 42. Did you decide to add a very low chance for these books to spawn on later hell levels? Also on this same note, when I was watching the replay with that level 51 hacked sorceror, he mentioned that you could acquire any spellbook in the game from the chamber of bone quest. I don't mean the first time you do the quest, but every other time after you completed it. I am under the impression that it drops spellbooks based on your character level similar to Adria's possible available spellbooks. Is this correct?

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Jun 15 2014, 12:13 am by SeraphicStar.

Ahli what are your future plans on Diablo Mortal Shroud?