Ouch, that's a nasty pick. It's a bit of a shame it rolled Flee, but like helvete said, the monsters it works on at all typically won't last too long anyway.
For me that would basically be a reason to start a Barbarian, if I didn't have one already. :>
Agree with @helvete, Flee is annoying but should be counteracted somewhat by using Iceblink on the Barb. I have not tested this to see if hit freezes target overrides flee though. The damage is tasty and you should get it close to 1K max per hit on WW after maxing all skills. Good work @Tatterson.
Does anyone have info on why the rushing bug happens? I had a tcpip game open rushing my other 7 characters, didn't have durance level 2 waypoint so I went to a singleplayer game and got reset from Lord to just normal. I still have all normal quests completed, even a4 q3 but still cant access nm. Do I need to kill diablo?
Someone mentioned that Diablo quest can drop +2 skill amulets somewhere in this thread, but I think they said its not sustainable to run him. Can you not open a tcpip game with a character that has completed the quest, and go kill diablo with a character that hasnt? That way the killer cant complete the quest and still should get the quest drops.
Agree with @helvete, Flee is annoying but should be counteracted somewhat by using Iceblink on the Barb. I have not tested this to see if hit freezes target overrides flee though. The damage is tasty and you should get it close to 1K max per hit on WW after maxing all skills. Good work @Tatterson.
Made a good point there with Freezes Target. I would guess that both get applied since they are completely different effects, but the freeze should make sure that the target can't run away. But if freeze wears off before Flee, perhaps they immediately start running? I've put it on my todo list to check it out.
Note that the character screen is totally off on damage for a Barbarian that uses a Mastery: The character screen adds the damage bonus from Mastery to those from strength and attack skills, but in reality the bonus from Mastery is a separate multiplier -- you get an absurdly big damage boost from every skill point in Mastery.
I also read that the chance to deal a critical hit with a Mastery is (slvl*2)%, but I haven't it yet verified myself. From memory playing Barbarian, i assume it's correct.
Btw, I do believe that Hit Blinds Target overwrites Flee. Not sure, though. Will check it out. :>
Does anyone have info on why the rushing bug happens? I had a tcpip game open rushing my other 7 characters, didn't have durance level 2 waypoint so I went to a singleplayer game and got reset from Lord to just normal. I still have all normal quests completed, even a4 q3 but still cant access nm. Do I need to kill diablo?
Someone mentioned that Diablo quest can drop +2 skill amulets somewhere in this thread, but I think they said its not sustainable to run him. Can you not open a tcpip game with a character that has completed the quest, and go kill diablo with a character that hasnt? That way the killer cant complete the quest and still should get the quest drops.
Edit: Ah, so you left the game before completing the quest. I wonder if that is the bug? As if the character assumes the "game's" state on the quest is his/hers.
I've been trying to replicate the bug by killing Diablo (outside party, inside party with no rushee nearby, etc), but so far it hasn't worked. Maybe I just had the wrong idea of what the cause might be.
Hopefully if you complete the quest now for the rushees, his quest will be fixed.
If you have any more details to share, please do!
Boss drops work quite differently in earlier versions, you can't repeat them like you can now.
I think Izual, The Summoner and Blood Raven also have boss drops, but I don't know if those are any good, or if they can drop their boss drop more than once.
Anyway, quoting myself on the boss drop thing:
Act bosses have a bonus (quest) drop, which is dropped alongside their regular drop if killing them completes the quest for a character. However, this happens only when the killing blow was dealt by a character who had not completed the quest yet.
Andariel her quest drop is 3 gems. Almost entirely useless.
Duriel, Mephisto and Diablo their quest drop is a unique/rare item.
Andariel, Duriel and Mephisto will drop only one "set" of their quest drop, regardless of how many characters are completing the quest.
Diablo however will drop a set of his quest drop per character that completes the quest. This means that if 7 characters that have not completed the quest yet are in town, and are all partied to an 8th character that kills Diablo to complete the quest, then 8 rare/unique items will be dropped by Diablo.
And to add to that (see the last bit): Monsters that kill themselves by hitting a Bone Wall/Prison while cursed with Iron Maiden, will not grant experience. Magic find also will not apply. If a boss is killed this way, it will not drop its quest drop.
Minions are whimps too, though. (Flee affects minions.)
As for (some of the) stuff mentioned earlier, I took a quick look at them:
Freezes Target and Flee are both applied simultaneously, but since Flee lasts such a short time, you can expect it to have worn off before the target thaws. Thus, FT practically "overwrites" Flee. (Smite also applies these, as well as HBT -- FT can be used to nullify the knockback from Smite.)
Hit Blinds Target overwrites Flee, so this is a straight nullification. HBT is always applied by successful melee hits, and so is FT. (Flee probably is too? I haven't checked.)
Barbarian Masteries indeed give 2% chance per slvl to deal a critical strike. Deadly Strike can potentially quadruple damage if pared with Mastery.
Blood Raven seems to be the sole exception to "magic find does not apply to unique monsters". She seems to be treated as a regular monster in that regard. This probably doesn't yet make her interesting to run, though. Izual and The Summoner seem to drop only Magic items, but since I had already completed the quests I don't know if they drop any differently when you kill them the first time.
Some other misc stuff:
Leap attack is bugged to check for resistances twice. So if you roll for 100 physical damage, but an enemy has 50 physical resistance, you end up dealing only 25 damage because it gets halved twice. This also applies to elemental damage. And just to mention it, Leap Attack is not a "ranged attack", even though some guides say it -- but it is true that it does not check for Thorns, Iron Maiden, Life Tap, and also does not apply stuff like Flee, HBT or FT.
The resistance columns in monstats.txt wrap around 0-255, so Andariel who should have -50 fire resistance on all difficulties, actually has 206 fire resistance. Luckily this gets capped to 75. This also applies to -50 poison resistance for The Smith (all difficulties) and -50 poison resistance for Hephasto (normal and nightmare). This was fixed in 1.04 by having the colums wrap around -128-127. (This was later changed to a larger range, I'd guess in 1.09 or 1.10.)
Most of you probably already know that the blocking animation doesn't play when blocking melee attacks, or missile attacks that would deal less than or equal to 1/12 of your maximum health in physical damage, but it turns out that this is true for monsters as well. So a Carver for example will block your melee attacks, but no animation will be played. This makes me think it was never a feature to begin with, but just a nasty bug that wasn't fixed until 1.07.
Conviction does not apply its resistance de-buff to players -- I always figured it was just a character screen display bug, but now I've checked it out, and it simply does not do anything to players. It does work on monsters however, so the Paladin's Conviction is still a valid PvM skill.
Again I could not replicate the Diablo quest bug. :/ Will definitely give it another go when I have time, I really wanna know what that's about..
Edit: Just thought I'd edit this in real quick.
I was going through skills.txt to look up some value, and noticed that in the effect column of Valkyrie, it says:
"oooh scary valkyrie beast. Comes to fight for amazon"
Developer fun. :'D
[i only ask questions like this because i know there are members here who enjoy code-digging]
There exists a glitch in 1.00, and possibly further on into classic, where if you transmute a Horadric cube recipe with superfluous items in the cube, they disappear. e.g., you put 3 rings and a helm into the cube. THe game recognizes the 3 rings = 1 amulet recipe, and executes that. but the helm is apparently outright deleted? Anyone have any insight as to why or how or if the superfluous item has any bearing on anything? What if you put 3 rings and 3 amulets in at once and hit transmute? Is it based on position in the cube? Or the order in which you put them in chronologically? My brain is amazed by it.
the cube function in 1.00-1.06 is very simple and small.
the function simply deletes everything that's in the cube, and it doesn't keep track of the order you put items into it. in fact, the cube never uses anything of the items that were put in the cube, not even their ilvl.
in the case of 3 rings + 3 amulets, it will always go for the "3 ring = amulet" recipe.
the reason is simple: when you click the transmute button, the cube function starts going through the list of recipes, comparing the contents of the cube with what a recipe demands. this always happens in the same order.
as soon as it sees a match, it deletes everything in the cube, and generates a new item defined by the recipe it found a match with.
(i take no credit for digging up the function, i can't read Assembly.)
it's a shame that the cube is so lackluster in the earlier patches, especially before it got the 6-p.skull recipe in 1.04.
luckily it got a massive overhaul in 1.07, and continued to evolve. it's one of the coolest things in the game imo.
and in case you were curious, i'll dump the list that the function goes through (from top to bottom). i copied it from my notes, so it's a bit messy, sorry!
there used to be complaints about a bug where the 6p.skull recipe didn't work with swords, and as you can see in the list, the function will see a match for "6 gems + sword = socketed long sword" first, thus the contents of the cube are deleted, the socketed long sword is created, and the function ends, never even reaching the 6p.skull recipe to compare the contents with.
also note that in 1.00-1.03, all the recipes that generate a Magic item with non-randomized stats will not be saved properly, and are basically re-rolled when you exit the game you made the item in. the recipes that randomize the stats are fine, though.
Shaft of the Horadric Staff + Top of the Horadric Staff = Horadric Staff (ilvl=clvl+4)
3 amulets (any quality) = Magic Ring (ilvl=⌊clvl*3/4⌋+3)
6 gems (any type and quality) + 1 sword (any type) = socketed Long Sword (ilvl=clvl+4)
1 Small Shield (Magic or better) + 1 Spiked Club (any quality) + 2 skulls (any quality) = Small Shield of Spikes (ilvl=100)
1.04-1.06: 1 sword (magical or better) + any ruby + 4 health potions (any type) = Long Sword of the Leech (ilvl=100)
Diamond (any quality) + 1 staff of any type and quality + 1 kriss (any type and quality) + 1 belt (any type and quality) = Savage Bardiche (ilvl=100)
1.00-1.03?: 1 Strangling Gas Potion + 1 health potion (any type) = Antidote Potion (ilvl=clvl+4)
2 Arrows = Bolts (ilvl=clvl+4)
2 Bolts = Arrows (ilvl=clvl+4)
3 gems (of same type and quality, except perfect) = gem of same type of one higher quality (1.00-1.03: ilvl=clvl+4, 1.04-1.06: ilvl=0)
1.04-1.06: 6 perfect skulls + 1 rare item (any type) = 1 rare item of same type (ilvl=100)
and 2 small misc things i ran into (something related to gidbinn, and something related to an "off-map" area):
i was trying to reproduce a bug that i read about in the official patch notes, and even though i found nothing, i found:
if you don't talk to asheara after giving the gidbinn to ormus, the gidbinn-pedestal will not be lit in new games that you create. so, you can just click the pedestal again to spawn a free monster pack. the gidbinn will not again be dropped after you gave it to ormus however, so you can't farm rare rings this way (damnit).
the following may apply to more areas than the Flayer Jungle, but as i was teleporting towards the gidbinn-pedestal, i suddenly teleported "outside" the map, and there was a huge rectangle that was absolutely filled with flayer guys. there had even spawned a chest, Well and a Shrine. the mini-map gives you an idea of how far away i was from the "real map". unfortunately the area is not actually drawn on the map, so it doesn't show how enormous it was.
fyi i was investigating a bugfix from 1.04: "Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented the Golden Bird and Gidbinn quests from giving their rewards."
(but didn't find anything.)
Hm. I've never teleported to such an area. Is that a classic-only map bug?
Anyone else ever see this? I would have assumed some people have trying to get through A3 quickly (as I have many times) but I haven't seen these glitchy teleport areas other than in cellar tower, some tombs, RoF/CS, some A5 places from what I can recall from memory.
Hm. I've never teleported to such an area. Is that a classic-only map bug?
Anyone else ever see this? I would have assumed some people have trying to get through A3 quickly (as I have many times) but I haven't seen these glitchy teleport areas other than in cellar tower, some tombs, RoF/CS, some A5 places from what I can recall from memory.
i have no clue myself, it's the first time i've seen this one.
the 1.04 patch notes say: "Removed "invisible islands" from the River of Flame, Tal Rasha's Tomb, Spider Forest, and Tower Cellar, preventing Barbarians/Sorceresses from leaping/teleporting onto them."
perhaps this silly area i teleported into was also fixed with that patch? there were a million undocumented changes after all, so perhaps this was one of them. :>
Never seen that, and I have done my share of Flayer runs in 1.00. Neat find!
Edit:
I know the islands are in River of Flame in 1.00 (teleport down under / east of the sanctuary and you can get a free pass all the way to the seals) and of course in Viper tombs and Tal Rasha's tombs (which is still present in 1.14 or whatever the latest patch is now).
they're fun areas because of the lack of obstruction, there's pretty much nothing in-between you and a big gang of evil dudes. it can also happen in great marsh, i can inform thee, so probably in spider forest as well.
Never seen that, and I have done my share of Flayer runs in 1.00. Neat find!
Edit:
I know the islands are in River of Flame in 1.00 (teleport down under / east of the sanctuary and you can get a free pass all the way to the seals) and of course in Viper tombs and Tal Rasha's tombs (which is still present in 1.14 or whatever the latest patch is now).
The file levels.txt has the colums "MonUMin" and "MinUMax", which define the minimum and maximum amount of random champion/unique packs that spawn in an area. Unfortunately, it's always 0-1, 1-1 or 1-2 (in 1.00-1.06), and in the case of Spider Forest, Great Marsh and Flayer Jungle, it's 1-2.
So even if Great Marsh spawns 2 packs, the chance is that both packs spawn outside of the funny area(s).
It's also possible that the density of a level is so low that no packs spawn at all. (Ever seen a Tower level without a pack? Even though they should always have 1.)
Some levels can/will generate map-segments that come with packs, though. For example Tristram, which is why you typically see 3-4 packs there, in stead of 1-2. (Super Unique monsters are also not included in the min-max for each level.)
I never really paid attention to it before, but I noticed now that Barracks is a map with a tendency to spawn multiple segments that come with a pack. It's great for XP at lower levels.
1.14 has separate min-max columns for Nightmare and Hell, which is why you see so many more more packs on those difficulties, in that patch. These columns don't exist yet in 1.09, so they were added quite late. (Perhaps 1.10? I have nothing installed between 1.09 and 1.14.)
This is one of the things I really miss in older patches. The amount of packs is so low that it's generally more efficient to roll a map that has a pack close to a waypoint, and then just kill the pack -> make a new game -> repeat.
As for XP.. I noticed that all the (Necromancer's) Golems grant it. And so do Decoy and Valkyrie. (This was fixed in 1.03.)
They actually give quite a bit of XP, but since it's just 1 monster at a time, it's probably not worth yours.
so much of what i have learned from playing 1.00 for so long is:
-lord de seis is the hardest boss for every class. harder than diablo.
-killing diablo requires either being a barb, or having a very thought out plan and good equipment. after that, it's just luck and following his pattern to damage him.
-grind cow king for weeks to get enough equipment to start your next character
edit: lord de seis is the only must-kill-to-advance monster/boss that does not have a melee attack. so that's why the blood golem/iron maiden/corpse explosion necro has such a hard time. (i'll often gather revives just for lord de seis) witch doctor endugu is also pretty scary in hell mode.
From my experience that's not really true. Killing Seis is easy with barbarian. I would say that Hephasto is the hardest one (for barb at least). Main problem is his damage and cursed+extra fast tags. Even having >2000 HP can't ensure that you will survive second hit (at that point you are already cursed).
Tips for barbarian killing Seis:
Remove all potions from belt (to lower possibility of game crashing)
If you had potions and Seis stole them from your belt - dropped on the ground - do not pick them up (they can become bugged and crash the game as well)
Don't engage Seis pack once in visual range - let them throw curses on you. Once initial curse barrage is over start killing the pack
Prioritize minions first (to lower the chance or iron maiden)
in case anyone felt like trying something other than a WW barb, Berserk happens to be bugged to allow for absurd tankiness.
the TLDR is that if you have ≥ 442 +% enhanced defense from skills, then Berserk will actually increase your defense.
what's even funnier, is that it does this every hit, exponentially increasing defense. (as long as the last length had not expired yet.)
note that the character screen stops updating after the first Berserk swing.
to give you an idea:
with 1000 defense from items, 90 dexterity, lvl 20 shout and lvl 20 iron skin, you'd have 6,234 defense.
attack once with berserk, your defense will shoot up to 21,369! the hit after that, 83,422!! then.. 337,840!!! then.... 1,380,953. this continues to escalate very rapidly.
i haven't tested yet to see what happens if you reach extreme Defense values, but it's possible there's an overflow bug eventually, if you keep on swinging. my bet is that it wraps around and becomes a super low value (thousands or even millions into the minus), but hopefully there was a cap implemented.
Just thought I'd edit this in real quick.
this continues to escalate very rapidly.
