[Singling] 2024-04-08-2300 is now available. 1.08 Runewords Removed.

fearedbliss

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Hello all,

Today I’ve released Singling 2024-04-08-2300, which is the first release in almost a year, and there still isn’t anything new other than me removing the 1.08 Runewords. Notes as follows:

Removed 1.08 Runewords from Singling.
While 1.08 did have all of the 1.09 Runewords on Battle.net (with a small modification to the Leaf runeword), only Ancient's Pledge was available on Single Player. I'll no longer be trying to maintain "parity" with what the online experience had at the time and will instead focus on what was available at the time in the Single Player version. The 1.08 and 1.09 patch notes both mention issues that Blizzard North was attempting to fix with them as well. It's also my subjective opinion that Runewords actually had a negative impact on the game's itemization systems, and thus I would prefer to keep this change out of Singling.
As always, you can download Singling as part of Cactus.

- fearedbliss
 
Cool to see an update. I've come to agree with this change as well. The thing is, SP 1.08 isn't the same as battle.net 1.08, which based on reports and such from the time, seems to have been an older build. Possibly late 1.07 (1.48 or 1.47). There are pictures of crafted paladin CBF rings from then, which the recipe is disabled in SP, but apparently all the disabled recipes still worked on battle.net either due to a server bug or they had enabled it in the txt. Then there was also MF which worked like 1.07, so you could easily force sets or uniques and such. My theory is that they hotfixed updates in during the Battle.net Beta, and whenever that ended, they used that build for the official servers, which was a trunk build. SP got a proper non-nightly release as 1.08.

Pre LoD and 1.07 have really grown on me with time because of the lack of runewords (Ancient's Pledge is more or less a weak quest reward so that's fine). When they added cube recipes and guaranteed rune drops from countess, they completely trivialized the spirit of the game by making a straightforward predictable way to easily farm/cube runes and then make items with guaranteed stats. Diablo is a game of randomness, both in experience and loot. Having to work with what you find, rather than everyone farming for a guaranteed Stealth that's BiS until hell is good.
 
Thanks for that @galaxyhaxz, I didn’t know that regarding all of the other changes that may have happened on 1.08 battle.net but I’m not surprised at all and if anything makes sense given everything that happened between the 1.07 beta period, the 1.07 retail release (which we basically proved that it was a beta build), and 1.08 including the changes that were mentioned in various 1.07.4X patches. Adding that the 1.09 patch notes explicitly mention that the Runewords added to Single Player were basically the one that were on the live servers, it definitely opens up the question to what other changes were available on battle.net during those 59 ish days before the 1.09 release.

As for the 1.07 and prelod and randomness aspect, I completely agree. Sometimes it’s hard for me to come back to LoD and Runewords are one of those reasons. Even though from a polished perspective 1.09 is the patch to play, there is something nice about 1.07/1.08 and prelod. It was a simpler time. I actually updated the Singling descriptions yesterday for a few of those patches and I have new beliefs I guess you can say on the whole “broken boss drops” and “broken mf”. For the former, in all prelod versions we couldn’t farm bosses since their gear sucked. You basically found items only from monsters around the world and mf only worked on white mobs. So 1.07-1.08 still having the same boss drop tables just makes me believe that even though the expansion was released, the drop tables still were using prelod design. It was only in 1.09 when we explicitly see the following:

  • Improved drops for placed (super) Unique monsters such as Bishibosh, Rakanishu, et. al.
  • Improved drops for certain quest monsters such as Blood Raven, The Countess, The Cow King, et al.

This just makes me feel that this was intentionally done so people can now be able to target farm bosses easier rather than keeping the prelod design. Both approaches are fun but target farming bosses reduces the need to explore.

As for the broken mf, yea that prolly was broken but I haven’t confirmed the MF behavior in prelod since MF only works on white monsters and so it was never a stat I cared to optimize for. Eventually I will. But because of this, if I just play 1.07/1.08 like 1.05b, things make a lot of sense and it doesn’t necessarily feel broken (excluding incomplete TC system in 1.07 which 1.08 fixes).
 
To be completely fair though, 1.08 did not have rune cubing recipes nor countess, so that leaves only Hellforge/Qual khek as a guaranteed rune source. But still, I don't like the idea of items having fixed stats like that. Even if you roll a low ball Grief or Call to Arms, it still beats out all other gear in the game that would drop.

To add more to the 1.08 ambiguity, we have this from the 1.09 Patch notes:
- Fixed bug which allowed certain Horadric Cube recipes that were meant to
be disabled to continue to function.
- Fixed a bug where items could give characters skills that are exclusive
to another Character class.
As far as I know, neither of these are relevant to single player. None of the disabled recipes work, nor is there a bug to trigger them. I'm also not sure about the skill bug either. So most likely its related to the server version of 1.08. Additionally, we know they use a different set of text files for online. For example, CubeServer.txt instead of CubeMain.txt, and likely one for runewords too. Sadly we don't have any of those beta patches nor the server versions, and Blizzard likely has long lost them.

And yep yep I concur on the 1.09 tidbit. 1.09 is the final "polished" version after the beta phase, but they really took fun out of certain aspects of the game, or downright broke others. Butchering the godly crafting of 1.07/8 is an example. My 1.09 final mod from years ago was an attempt to bring the best of 1.00-1.08 into 1.09, so you could have it all in one patch. It felt too easy for me when it was said and done though, as I failed to bring forward the painful bugs or differences of those patches, and just kept the good.
 
Runes is one of the things I removed from my mod long time ago. I have even changed Qual Kheks reward to gems and his dialog to reflect this. Prelod just feels so much better because they aren't there. Cool random rares is where the game is at.
 
Yup I feel similar Oli, although in my mod I removed the runewords but kept the runes. It's nice to be able to enhance the rares with additional customization options, which the jewels and runes themselves provide. So you get more customization options but without the rune word recipe taking a slot and overpowering other items. You do also get crafting as a benefit as well, although crafting could also technically be removed, at least crafted items, not necessarily the ability to use the cube to enhance an existing item (like upping or adding sockets).
 
I like the idea of having runes to enhance items *but* it is true they broke the design of gems and made them obsolete. Same with jewels even. For crafting I think one of the biggest problems with them is that it only requires magic items. It makes everything fungible so you can quickly turn junk into crafts more often than you'd see rares or uniques drop. Making the recipe require a rare instead might be better balanced. Interestingly enough, 1.07/08 have a huge list of disabled class-crafts, which have lesser versions that use magic items, and greater that would use rares.
 
What I don't like the most about runewords/crafts is how you have to junk all your little stash with items required for them: socketed item bases, all rune types, jewels, gems, magic bases for crafts... Prelod chest definatelly wasn't designed with this in mind. I prefer the minimalistic approach that prelod has, you have tiny stash but you also don't have to collect tons of junk to make RW/crafts.
 
Yeah it's true the game was usurped for those things, and clearly didn't design itself around it. Had they intended them from the getgo they could of had a larger stash, stackable gems, etc. I still love crafting though and find it an addicting thing. That said I abhor mods that add infinite stash pages and make the cube inventory half the screen. I think its overkill having that many items and goes against the need to pick and choose.
 
Oh for sure it's addicting, it's like playing a slot machine and adds another layer to itemization. Yeah, I agree 100% on infinite stash and huge cube/inventory.
 
My 1.09 final mod from years ago was an attempt to bring the best of 1.00-1.08 into 1.09, so you could have it all in one patch. It felt too easy for me when it was said and done though, as I failed to bring forward the painful bugs or differences of those patches, and just kept the good.

Hence why I love the shit out of that mod to this day, but yeah, I concur, it does feel too easy, or perhaps even "too good", as odd as that sounds. 😄

I'm starting to appreciate the older patches more and more, even though I've proclaimed 1.09 as being my "forever home", lol.

And not to derail, but did you intentionally retain the 1.09 stats on the 1.08 shako for final edition? It has both the huge +life bonus from 08 and the increased mana from 09. I've always wondered about that 😅
 
Actually, the change to the shako was a bugfix. In the original 1.07 uniques file, there are a handful of items with incorrect params set for certain stats so those stats do not spawn. The stat format is "Stat - Param - minimum - maximum" and in the case of mana/clvl on shako, they placed the value into min/max when it should be set in param. Below is a list of all unique items that have stats which do not spawn due to typos:

- Normal
Maelstorm - No FCR or Mana or Half Freeze Duration (param only)
Treads of Cthon - No base defense bonus

- Exceptional
Kuko Shakaku - 1% Pierce
Buriza-Do Kyanon - 1% Pierce
Demon Machine - 1% Pierce
Razortail - 1% Pierce
Stormrider - Spawns with level 30 Charged Bolt on Hit (intentional?)
Arm of King Leoric - No % for Bone Prison when struck (spawns 5% instead of 10%)
Todesfaelle Flamme - No % for Fire Bolt on Hit (spawns with 5% instead of 10%)
Butcher's Pupil - No param for indestructible
Blade of Ali Baba - Supposed to have 3 sockets (Tulwar max is 2)
Peasent Crown - No FRW specified (spawns with 5% instead of 15%)
Guardian Angel - No FBR specified (spawns with 5% instead of 30%)
Ribcracker - No Mana per Clvl
Iron Pelt - No Defense per Clvl
Lidless Wall - Spawns with Poison Absorb per Clvl (disabled mod)
Hone Sundan - 1 socket instead of 3
Black Hades - 1 socket instead of 2
Ginther's Rift - Doesn't auto repair

-Elite
Harlequin Crest - No Mana per Clvl
Veil of Steel - No Vita per Clvl
Messerschmidt's Reaver - No % Max Damage or Thorns (both per Clvl)
Stormspire - No Mana per Clvl
Eaglehorn - Has indestructible mod (no affect on bows)
Nosferatu's Coil - No ilvl/qlvl, IAS is only 3% (spawns with 5% instead)

[1.07 Only]
Highlord's Wrath - No Deadly Strike per Clvl (fixed in 1.08)

It should be noted that Highlord's Wrath was supposed to spawn with even more deadly strike in 1.07, but the stat has no param, they fixed it in 1.08 so it does spawn but lowered the amount. They could have left the rest of the uniques alone because they thought they were already overpowered, or maybe they were unaware they were bugged.
 
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