Diablo 2 [again]: Any takers for Nezeramontias mod?

[DrCrypt]

I've been kind of mulling over the idea of trying some of the Diablo 2 mods for a while, but it took me a while to find any that looked interesting enough to give a try. I've been taking a look at the Nezeramontias (www.cs.appstate.edu/~cb/personal/mod.html) mod and it looks interesting. The readme is here (www.cs.appstate.edu/~cb/personal/nezeramontias.txt).

One of the more interesting things the mod seems to do is inspired by Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. "Souls are a new kind of item in Nezeramontias. Nearly every enemy in the game (even bosses) possesses a "soul" that can only be obtained as a rare drop from that specific monster. Souls are unique items that may be equipped in the ring slot and contain enchantments that reflect the monster killed for it. Some souls grant basic stat bonuses or enchantments the monster possesses. Others grant you the skills of that monster. Some allow you to transform into that monster while others allow you to summon the monster to fight by your side." I don't know - that seems pretty cool to me, and of course it has all the usual D2 mod junk like new skills, items, runewords, gems, monsters, etc.

I know that a couple of months ago svenr, Jon R. and Mauxfaux all expressed various levels of enthusiasm in trying a mod. How about this one? Someone would have to host, but one of the advantages to playing through TCP/IP is that a QT3 group could all stay more or less at the same level. Anyone up to try this one out?

Edit: Suck me.

[svenr]

Sounds interesting. I'm in!

[Jazar]

D2? D2?! To the pit of Lost Abbreviations you go! :P

[DrCrypt]

Sven, his roommate and I are going to test out the mod tonight to make sure it doesn't suck. Initial appraisals look encouraging according to sven, who's the only motherfucker on QT3 who actually has an Annihilus Charm. To garner interest, here are some highlights from his experimentation so far

- There are equippable gatling guns. Also mags and foh-fyes.
- Collectible fruit and dolls are now a big part of the D2 experience.

[Jon R.]

- There are equippable gatling guns. Also mags and foh-fyes.
- Collectible fruit and dolls are now a big part of the D2 experience.

Yes please.

[DrCrypt]

We had a good first test session of this on a server that sven hosted. Whatever-this-mod-is-called is D2 enough to seem familiar, but tricked-out enough to seem fresh to guys who've played a a couple hundred hours of D2 since 1.10 was released. The soul system so far isn't all that helpful, but that's because we keep on getting stupid ones like for Fallens, and we don't have the Soul Amulet yet (which I guess increases all the stats on your souls depending on how many you pump into it). Sven did find an item that allowed him to turn into one of the main bosses in Diablo, though.

One advantage here is that, unlike vanilla D2, you have a lot more skill points to throw around, so there seems to be less worry that you will totally screw up your character build - level cap is 1000 and you can (for an extremely high price) buy potions that give you extra skills in the shop, so people who have tended to make unsuccessful builds on Battle.net might be pleasantly surprised here.

Leveling is quick too. Jon R. came into our game when sven, his roommate and I were level 13. We gave him a few Monster Gates (charms that can cast level 1 monsters) and some Bags of Experience (potions that boost your exp by a random amount) and he was at our level in about 30-45 minutes, which isn't bad. Every character also has access to passive skills that boost your xp gain. Some of these changes are really nice in trying to catch people up.

There's a lot here to like - Jon R, sven and myself are totally sold on this mod. Anyone who wants to play, we're going to have another session on Saturday afternoon GMT. We just finished Act 1, which was a grueling battle. So you can either play single player through Act 1, or just post here and maybe Jon or I can host a game to level you up some. Seriously, even if you're burned out, give the mod a shot - in some ways, the play mechanics are so different it is like picking D2 up for the first time.

[svenr]

Sven did find an item that allowed him to turn into one of the main bosses in Diablo, though.

Actually, I was refering to a new Necromancer skill you get at level 36. Allows you to turn into King Leoric from Diablo 1. Cool!

[MauxFaux]

sounds cool!

[DrCrypt]

MauxFaux, okay, install the mod andlet us know if you can join us at 10am EST on Saturday. You can either level yourself up through Act 1 (we're all level 19) before Friday or Jon and/or I can help level you up.

[Lokust]

I had a small lanparty at my house this weekend (4 people over) and we played this mod most of Sunday morning/afternoon, and had a great time with it. We made it to the low 20's, at the beginning of act 2. I like a lot of the changes they have made to the game. Definitely a lot of fun. The souls are a lot of fun to collect and use. Our druid ended up with 7 skeleton pets in addition to his wolves/creepers, and he got radament's soul which is pretty bad ass. I got the smith's soul on my barbarian, and my god, that is the most mods i've ever seen on an item - something like 15 different bonuses.

We checked out some of the end game content with hacked characters after our main session, and we got a kick out of some of the guns and rapid-fire skills. The streams of projectiles that can be generated at high (400+) level are just ludicrous.

[DrCrypt]

Sven, Jon and I are having a blast with this one, although it is pretty exhausting - we're finding an Act a session to be just about right before we go into epileptically spinning to the ground from the constant bombardment of spell animations. Sven's roommate simon described it as "Diablo 2.... ON CRACK!" and we all politely chuckled, squirmed and died a little inside, as we were suddenly whisked straight back to Something Awful circa 1998. But to be fair, that is probably the best description possible of this mod. Also, simon is Scandinavian, so maybe that expression has just now been imported over there - I guess we'll know if Anders starts talking about "graphics so ugly my eyeballs exploded! LOL!" or issuing forth any other watermark of a humor style that - like a cult formed entirely by the dweeb in grade school who thinks it'll be hilarious for every guy in the class to take a gang piss into a sole urinal without flushing - is more ritualistically repetitive than funny.

The soul system is really cool - Sven's necro also has the Radament soul and he's just tearing shit up with it. What I like about the soul system is that all souls are useful: just keep pumping the ones you don't want into your soul amulet (made by transmuting a soul and any amulet in the Cube, but the product is a small charm) and that ammy's bonuses will rise, to the point that you eventually get reductions on the amount of skill points required (higher level skills can take up to 10 skill points to raise a single level).

The blank characters on diabloii.net work, by the way. As soon as you hit something, you shoot up to level 848, which really allows you to play around with the skill trees. One thing that was a little shocking was that Act 1 Hell is a bitch even with a level 848 sorceress with basically infinite mana. I'm assuming one is meant to be wearing some serious armor at that point. Area effect spells are the way to go in this game... I imagine a whirlwind polearm barb would be pretty effective too.

Lokust, do you want to join our sessions? We're going to be playing on Tuesday. We just beat Act 2, so basically, if you can beat Act 2 single player, you'll be all set to join in.

[svenr]

Sven, Jon and I are having a blast with this one, although it is pretty exhausting - we're finding an Act a session to be just about right before we go into epileptically spinning to the ground from the constant bombardment of spell animations. Sven's roommate simon described it as "Diablo 2.... ON CRACK!" and we all politely chuckled, squirmed and died a little inside, as we were suddenly whisked straight back to Something Awful circa 1998. But to be fair, that is probably the best description possible of this mod. Also, simon is Scandinavian, so maybe that expression has just now been imported over there - I guess we'll know if Anders starts talking about "graphics so ugly my eyeballs exploded! LOL!" or issuing forth any other watermark of a humor style that - like a cult formed entirely by the dweeb in grade school who thinks it'll be hilarious for every guy in the class to take a gang piss into a sole urinal without flushing - is more ritualistically repetitive than funny.

I've always suspected Simon of secretly being a Scandinavian SA aficionado, but that one little comment provided irrefutable evidence. Good work!

The soul system is really cool - Sven's necro also has the Radament soul and he's just tearing shit up with it. What I like about the soul system is that all souls are useful: just keep pumping the ones you don't want into your soul amulet (made by transmuting a soul and any amulet in the Cube, but the product is a small charm) and that ammy's bonuses will rise, to the point that you eventually get reductions on the amount of skill points required (higher level skills can take up to 10 skill points to raise a single level).

Ah, I didn't know this. Guess I should stop selling those souls then. So how does this skill point reduction work? Now that my Raise Skeleton is starting to cost 4 SP per level (in effect, 12 SP per skeleton), should I hoard skill points until I get some reduction? Should we focus on creating one amulet for skill point reduction and then pass it around?

[DrCrypt]

Should we focus on creating one amulet for skill point reduction and then pass it around?
I dunno. On one hand... the soul amulet is a small charm that benefits everyone in some huge ways, even beyond the skill point reduction aspect. So it would be good for everyone to have one. On the other hand, I don't think the skill point reduction kicks in until we pump 1024 souls into it. That's a serious amount of souls, even among three players playing on players 8. However, if we all pump up our MF, it might be doable. So I almost think we would have to all collaborate on it, then pass it around for level up. Jon, what do you think?

[Lokust]

Lokust, do you want to join our sessions? We're going to be playing on Tuesday. We just beat Act 2, so basically, if you can beat Act 2 single player, you'll be all set to join in.

We've only finished the first quest of act 2, so i'm not quite that far yet, and I don't think I'll have the chance to plow through all of act 2 tonight to get caught up.

[svenr]

However, if we all pump up our MF, it might be doable.

I don't expect MF to affect the number of souls dropped; it simply increases the chance that an item may be unique, set or magical, not its base type. If we're totally desperate for souls, we could always chea... tamper with the mpq.

We've only finished the first quest of act 2, so i'm not quite that far yet, and I don't think I'll have the chance to plow through all of act 2 tonight to get caught up.

I can set up a game using a level 1 character (on a different computer) so the three of us can help you through act 2.

[Jon R.]

There's a little .dll that allows you to run 2 instances of Diablo 2 on 1 machine. Says it's for 1.09, but it still works for 1.10 and this mod. http://phrozenkeep.it-point.com/filecenter/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=260

We're definitely going to have to pool our souls for it to get any sort of decent bonus, let alone point reduction. At around 40 souls, there's a whopping +1 to 4 of the attributes on it.

[DrCrypt]

Okay, just so everyone knows, sven, Jon R and I have a game scheduled today for 1800 GMT. Anyone who wants to join in is welcome - if you are just starting, we can give you our monster gates (items that spawn monsters) and you'll level up in no time. Lokust, we can help you through Act 2. Otherwise, we're going to try to go through Act 3.

[dannimal]

I'm totally unhip to this whole "mod" thing. How does it work, and how easy/hard is it to get back to "original" D2/LOD if I wanted to go play on BNet?

[DrCrypt]

With Nezeramontias, you run an install file to install the mod (which is just a batch file renaming the default .mpq file and replacing it with the Nezemontias one) and uninstall with another. Totally painless... you can uninstall for some Battle.net play in less than ten seconds, with all your original settings still intact.

[DrCrypt]

If anyone wants to try this out, we're starting up a game now: 195.64.95.22 .