Dancing of the Souls Easter Egg - Infinite Magic Find

[fearedbliss]

@oli Monsters looking nice .

 

[oli]

Thanks FB! Black oblivion knight is from unused pallete, there is also red one:

White oblivion knight boss looks like he's wearing full sigons Hmm, maybe I should add super unique monster named Sigon with this looks lol

 

[fearedbliss]

@galaxyhaxz I've decided to completely avoid using this in all versions, given that it is an Easter egg that needs to be explicitly activated in this manner, it definitely is a cheat code. Only difference is you aren't typing "scrollhack1" or like in StarCraft "black sheep wall". The 1.08 example makes sense to use but gonna avoid it either way, I guess it will feel even better if it naturally drops and I win the lottery.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

Yeah that's a fair point. It reminds me of the rosebud cheat for the Sims as well, where you type it over and over and get free money. For 1.08, getting a legit Windforce would certainly feel like winning the lottery, but in terms of just min-maxing your character a good 1.07 craft can beat it out anyway. I certainly feel a less excited just seeing all the uniques in the game after 5 minutes.

I guess that is to say, if there was a similar easter egg that could somehow make high runes drop easier, you could easily get a Zod drop which also requires lottery luck. So at that point it's no different than just using hero editor.

 

[fearedbliss]

Pretty much @galaxyhaxz. And yea the 1.07 crafting possibilities are insane. I've thought about if you craft a nice bow, and then do an imbue and a max socket with larzuk, then put some bers on it, it would be crazy cause of the rares on crafts, crushing blow from the ber, and then crushing blow isn't nerfed for ranged weapons and in general for 1.07. IIRC the physical resistance penalty in the higher difficulties doesn't affect CB in 1.07 but will need to double check 1.08 patch notes again.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

1.07 is my favorite patch post 1.06 because of the crafting. What made pre LoD so great was unveiling great rares, but LoD broke that by nerfing existing affixes, and adding new ones which only spawn on magics. So 1.07 crafting is essentially a glimpse into what the game could have been if they kept that aspect. What makes crafts *really* juicy though is that you get 3 sockets from Larzuk and have runes which give much stronger powers than gems. In 1.08/1.09 rares and crafts are capped to 1 sockets, and in 1.10+ only 2 sockets. Imbuing a craft doesnt help sadly, it just creates a rare item of the same base.

In 1.07-1.09, rares can get a max of 300% enhanced damage (200% Ferocious+100% King's). Crafts can get an additional 60% so max ED% is 360%. In 1.10+ they can get (300% Cruel+150% Master's), and with 60% from craft a max of 510%, coincidentally just 1% off the max save bits (511) for ED. Plus 2 sockets, but only if the craft rolls that.

Now let's look at 1.07 crafts: up to (300%+200%) from base affixes, plus 60-80% from crafts. This makes it much easier to hit the 511% cap. Then guaranteed 3 sockets from Larzuk. Then, 2 suffixes on the craft. A perfect bow which could beat out Windforce might look like:

Crafted Grand Matron Bow
- 511% Enhanced Damage
- +300 Attack Rating
- +63 to Maximum Damage
- 20% Increased Attack Speed
- 6% Life stolen per hit
- +20 to life
- +3 to Amazon Bow Skills (Staff mod)
- Socketed (3)

Now imagine then putting 3xBer in that. However, getting such a roll would take forever, especially as the crafting ingredients are harder to get. That isn't even getting into finding 3xBer, or any rune Mal+ really is considered a high rune pre 1.10 due to no cubing recipes.

So as you can see, the possibilities are endless, just like pre LoD, the best possible items can exist, but in practice wont as the odds of getting them would only happen once in an entire realm of people playing. Thus it gives you a reason to always come back, there's always a better rare (1.05) craft (1.07) to be found. It's a huge shame they destroyed crafting with 1.09 and made runewords the best in 1.10. This just results in the same cookie cutter. Why bother looking for a godly rare/crafted sword if Grief hands-down does more average damage than the best possible anything?

 

[fearedbliss]

Yup exactly. A lot of items made the rest of the items in the game feel meaningless.

 

[dariustriplet]

So as you can see, the possibilities are endless, just like pre LoD, the best possible items can exist, but in practice wont as the odds of getting them would only happen once in an entire realm of people playing. Thus it gives you a reason to always come back, there's always a better rare (1.05) craft (1.07) to be found. It's a huge shame they destroyed crafting with 1.09 and made runewords the best in 1.10. This just results in the same cookie cutter. Why bother looking for a godly rare/crafted sword if Grief hands-down does more average damage than the best possible anything?

It's really silly how much focus there is now on useless things like base defense, because there's no other way to have a better fixed-stat item. The difference between a rock-bottom Breast Plate and perfect Superior Archon Plate is close to zero, but one commands a higher value because it's the only way to have a "better" Enigma.

Something I've come to appreciate about D2C is how much friction there is to get items. All the best weapons (wands, exceptionals) have to be found from plain monsters, or imbued using 1 of your 3 rolls. The best drops come from the most dangerous area (Hell CS), so you can't just target one area like Pits where you exploit monster weaknesses. A lot of gear can be gambled, but you have to run in/out of town to refresh, so getting an SoJ or dual leech ring takes serious time.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

Something I've come to appreciate about D2C is how much friction there is to get items.

Yep. Something that I've realized lately after thinking long and hard about how I plan to balance my Diablo 1 rewrite are the problems the expansion gave D2. The thing is, in pre LoD bosses only drop good the first time, and even then only 2-3 items. After that they drop like a unique monster. Since Magic Find only works on white mobs, that means that drops in terms of rarity are evenly distributed. Not only that, but the game capped out at exceptional items, so effectively any base item can drop anywhere in hell, and roll all affixes except +2 skill amulets (which must come from diablo).

The expansion changed all that by greatly beefing up boss drops, and then lowering the divisors (rarity) of rare items several times. First a minor increase in 1.08, then huge increase in 1.09, and another minor increase in 1.10. 1.09 further created the special drops for super uniques and other various monsters. Then with all the new elite items, only a few targets in the game can drop them, moving all farming to late act 5/cows.

Effectively they created a meta where the most efficient way to get items involves skipping to specified targets (Mephisto, Countess, Baal etc.). This by default made the sorceress the de-facto best class in the game, as she can teleport past all the trash mobs and get to the good part, giving her significantly more MF power than all other classes. On top of the fact her damage comes from skill points, so she can further sacrifice gear for MF.

1.10 tried to do damage control from the problems the expansion created. They introduced the level 85 areas and monsters now upgrade to the area's level, allowing most items to drop in a wider range of areas. Then they added Enigma, so each class could have teleport+MF to stay on par with the sorceress. But all of this is fixing the symptom rather than the cause. They should have never create this meta in the first place. PreLoD basically got it perfect. Each class was relatively equal in their MF capability, everything drops everywhere, gear is fully random. But in 1.10? Everyone makes a blizzard sorceress, tele to countess for runes, do ancient tunnels/mephisto for gear. Use her to rush all your other classes to hell and gear them, but then go back to playing sorceress because she's still the best...

 

[ZOMBY]

Hi Guys!

I have tested the ritual in 1.00 and it works, but according to my experiences its duration is limited to around an hour. To be sure about it I did 9-10 rituals one after another, it took like 30-35 minutes to collect, and doing all the work to turn like all the drops to rares, since there is no diminishing returns on mf, so all the mf got stacked.
The results were godly as expected, most of the time I got rares or sets, but more rares than sets. When I am like one hour after the first ritual the drops first turned to mostly sets and less times rares, and after like 30 minutes magic items appeared more frequently. By the end of the ritual's mf-effect all the drops were white again and rarerly magics. On this character I have zero mf from gear.

The extra mf is not working for barbarian skill Find Items, or on bosses, champs, act bosses, and has zero effect on gamble, chests.

Would be better if the stacking process could be faster, but you just need to re-do it and keep on hunting.

The time is still enough to clear cows and sanctuary in player 8 with a necro nuking up all the battlefield.

Regards
ZOMBY