README for Diablo 1.07 mod
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If you want to mail us, use this address: jens.baumann@s.netic.de or khan@s.netic.de

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First, the long overdue "credits" section:

People who helped us in one way or the other, big or small:

Jarulf

Biggest help. First, his guide - without it, it would have taken at least two times as long.
Then, he has been a really good replacement for Crystalion, who has bailed out of the Diablo
community a while ago. Much of the way the game works has been discovered by him and many of 
the modifications you enjoy have actually been done by him, especially when it comes to 
modifying the game code.

Crystalion

Great help, especially code modification. Lots of cool ideas, sometimes even too 
enthusiastic :-) Sadly, he decided that Diablo is over and gone for him.

in no particular order:

Flux
Elly
Bostic
Sourceror :-)
Finnan :-)
Da O'Toth
t'kron
Dalai Lama
Tanja[BWO]
Cathrin[BWO]
Moritz
fdx
Charlie for the dat file idea
Caspian
SubSpace for the F1-F4 hotkey hack
Rand'al
Stu
Gorakh

... and all the other people at the DSF, diabloii.net, the Sierra RPG forum, 
alt.games.diablo and on b.net. And, finally, to Blizzard for making such a great game !

(I am sure I have forgotten somebody important, which would be REALLY
embarrassing, but hey, you all know who you are :) )



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10/28

Not many changes just some minor changes to improve overall playability.



- Maximum gold pile raised to 65000

- Maximum resist 85%

- Precious Rings replaced by scroll of nova (because of the greater gold piles)

- Fallen Angels, Fallen Paladins and Horned Death weakened a bit

- Fallen Angels are level 31 again

- Griswold's max itemlevel is 30 again

- Griswold's price limit is a bit higher (to allow awesome plates of something)

- Armor Class of some of the new items raised very slightly
 

09/20

The "final" version, unless we come upon some really cool new things we could
include into the mod or unless somebody finds a major bug in this one. This
does not mean there will be no more mods, it just means that _this_ mod has
probably come to an end.

Preface:

We have received really, really lots of mails concerning this mod. Some
players thought the mod was too restrictive for players, others thought it
was too easy because players could exploit some things, still others thought
the unique items were too powerful. Others really liked the mod, but were
a bit "pissed off" because there were so many changes to the mod, which meant
constant equipment changes. And of course there were those (the majority,
to be honest) who simply played it and liked it, no matter what we modified.

Well, we wanted to do a final version to make the game "stable", i.e. so that
players could really concentrate on figuring out the best equipment without
fear that we, the godlike mod creators, could maybe change the unique items
around _yet_again_. Another reason for the final version was that it is now
really possible to do a guide for the mod, because there will not be any
new changes to items or monsters.

We changed lots of things in this version and took out some of the things we
put in in earlier versions of this mod, simply because we two, V&K, had
some discussion about what we would like to see in the mod. One of us liked
a feature, while the other did really NOT like it. I have put the reasons for
why we changed something in the following list of changes.

- Changed sorcerer min/max stats back to normal
- remove item requirements (class restrictions)

These two changes were made because the majority of players did not like
these features. We tried to restrict the items available for the sorcerer to
make him less powerful, but we now think along the lines of "if somebody
really likes the super-powerful mage, so what". Also, the item requirement
feature did not work 100%, it had some cosmetic bugs and it looked a bit
buggy in some situations.

- Hellstones taken out of the game (if you have one, it will morph into
something funny, I think)

Hellstones were too powerful. Also, I (V) did not like the idea of items
you put into a inventory slot, but which have the prefixes/suffixes of a
different slot. Leads to confusion. But the main reason was that they were
simply too powerful.

- Hidden shrines from dungeon lvl 5 (cats) on

Well, you need them for some items (e.g. crossbows) and it is a real pain if
they only appear on cauldrons in hell.

- 2-H swords no haste, 2-H weapons no AC, all 2-H weapons (except staffs) have
now harmony, 2-H weapons (except staffs and bows which were already changed)
now do MUCH more base damage

"haste" and AC on weapons could lead to the funny situation that you have an
item that has a suffix (e.g. "swiftness" or "warding") which conflicts with
the built-in ability. Also, "haste" and AC on big&bulky items is plain silly.
And of course it is very confusing if you have to memorize which items
have which (not shown on-screen) built-in ability. 2-H weapons now have
harmony because they really need _something_ to make them more attractive,
and we increased the base damage _mucho_. It will look really perverse if you
see e.g. a war axe for the first time in this mod, but you have to realize
that it is only _base damage_ of the weapon, and that you lose the benefits
of a prefix, a suffix and of AC if you have no shield.

- modified lots of high-end unique items

They all were too good. Face it, you find unique items _much_ easier than
a good "plain" magical item. And, in the spirit of the original game, a
very good "plain" magical items should always be better than the best unique
item. Thus we modified most of the high end unique items and made them less
powerful.

- modified range of thunder/burning

- general to hit bonus of monsters was reduced by 10 points

Because the high end monsters were too powerful.

- no Nova traps in church anymore

funny, but we all laughed enough by now.

- Reduced AC ranges for most of our new base items

They were a bit too high, especially the high end items (they got reduced
the most)


And, in the spirit of the original game, NO data tables for this mod. Find
it out yourself :)

Another reason for the removal of the data tables from our page is that
because of the many code changes we put into the mod, the data from the dview2
program is simply not correct, e.g. mlvl for bosses.




09/13

- fixed a small bug concerning the increased hit points
- 2-h weapons give harmony
- removed some of the item class requirements. Royal Plate is still only useabls by
warriors, and mages are still crippled, though.


09/03

- Fallen Paladins, Arch Mages and Horned Death + their bosses have their
original lvl back (i.e. 34 or 31). They are hard enough to justify this and
we frankly do not care whether anybody does 100 item runs per day and spoils
his own fun.

- Gorgur is replaced by Malignus (go and have a look, he's a mean one)

- Hellstone are now jewels and they can be put in the helm slot.
Previously they were weapons you could put in the amulet slot, but that was
too good ("king's" on an amulet, etc.)

- max block is now 80%, not 100% as in the original game

- Diablo, Fallen Paladins and Necromancers are a bit less dangerous now
(slower)

- some monsters now can have more hit points than previously, namely
Witch Queens, Fallen Paladins, Fallen Angels, Horned Death and True Balrogs

- New unique royal shield

08/23

-Teleport back to normal. Nice try.

-New Base item "Mage Robe" AC 10-15 gives harmony and fast block

-New Base item "Guard Helm" AC 12-18 low Dur not usable by mage

-New Monster "Necromancer": fast shooting Undead Advocates (not as much dmg) lvl
30, hard to stunlock because they are a bit faster than normal mages (graphics look 
a little bit choppy when they stand next to you, but we could not prevent that)

-New Monster "Doom Fire": Magma Ball shooting big skeleton lvl 27

-Bosses for these two

-Auto toHit raised to 10/20/30/35 for missiles and melee in 1-13/14/15/16
(this is a tiny bit harder than in normal D, but a big improvement from our
previous mods - we there raised the AC requirements, but lowered autohit, which
made the game easier when you had high AC, now you need high AC, but it's still
harder than normal Diablo when you have it)

- Too many people "complained" about the high lvl uniques being too easy to find.
Thus we lowered some monsters' levels a bit:

Fallen Paladins, Arch Mages 32 (as they appear in every game)
Horned Death, Fallen Angels 30 (Fallen Angels are not the high end ones, 'rogs are,
and horned death are pretty easy)

Their Bosses' mlvl lowered accordingly

-The hell bosses that appear in every game have lower mlevels now (for base
items): they have -4 making their mlevel equal to their basetype's mlevel. This e.g.
means that Sir Gorash no longer can give very high end items.

-identify is readable by all again as it didn't work the way we wanted (worked when
you buy the scroll and try to read it, but not when you drop and pick it up)

08/22/99b

- scroll of identify is now REALLY only useable by mages

- teleport has min 80 and max 150 mana cost. happy telekilling.

- changed Gorgur a bit, he now has a ranged lightning attack

- Diablo is resist magic/lightning and immune fire. 

- Wraith Claws are one frame slower now when walking, makes them look less ridiculous.

Modifications to items due to player demand:

- Royal Plate Mail only for warriors

- Azurewrath only -50 mana, not -100

- Naj's Puzzler has sc charges instead of teleport

- Battleplate gives +10 all attributes instead of -15 all

- Changed Nenya a bit, got rid of +lr. 


08/22/99

- You will see resistances and immunities info after 0 kills and Hitpoints after one kill 
(after all anyone could look this up in Jarulf's)

- Scroll of Identify is only readable by the mage

- Some books are called Tome and Greater Tome and can only be read by rogue+mage or only by mage.

- Tower shield, Great helm, Elvenmail and Runesword are not equippable by mages

- All staffs have fastest hit recovery

- Reinforced Chainmail's AC reduced to 40-60

- Vipers are animals

- New monsters in hell:

Ghost Knights (undead knights)
Necro Lords (Undeads like Greater Corpses)
Wraith Claws (Undead Storm Lord without lightning attack but very fast)
Dread Wolves (fast shooting spitters)

- New Spell "Thunder": does three "Lightnings" in one spell. 

- New Base items:

Spiked Blade (Sword that has "thorns" (1-50 damage to enemy) and "constricting" (constantly 
lose life) built in, relatively low lvl)

Spiked Bow (Bow like Spiked Blade)

Heavy Club (just as old Spiked Club but new graphics and name, no "spiked-effect", thus no 
"spiked" in the name)

Hell Stone (a weapon that is equippable at the Amulet slot and looks like the Blood Stone 
only droppable by Hell/Hell Diablo)

Royal Plate Mail (AC 90-100 only droppable by Hell/Hell Gothmog and Diablo)


- Some new Uniques: Composite Staff, Bastard sword, Spiked Blade, Spiked Bow, Hell Stone, 
Royal Plate Mail, Full Helm, Short War Bow

- Osmosis reduced to 15-20

- Warding reduced to 5-10
  
- Bows give AC like other Twohanded weapons (AC=max damage), was necessary to support
archer rogues - we noticed that most rogue players play s/s rogue because archer rogues get
beaten up badly in hell/hell

- Bow damage raised, same reason as above

Short Bow 1-5
Long Bow 1-8
Hunters Bow 2-7
Composite Bow 5-10
Short War Bow 6-12
Long War Bow 2-18
Great Bow 1-20
Royal Bow 1-28
Crossbow 4-4
Heavy Crossbow 10-10
 
- Fallen Angels and Fallen Paladins slightly improved

- Witch Queens and Fallen Paladins only in 15

- Arch Mages only in 14 and 16

- Soul Burners are level 30

- Diablo now has a friend: "GORGUR THE HORRID NIGHTMARE"

- Slight changes to some Uniques

- Diablo is now only Immune fire. Bye bye cheesy firewall stunt :)

- Teleport and Escape spells are "a bit" more expensive to prevent people from rushing 
through the levels without paying the monsters at least a bit of respect!
Teleport will now cost exactly all the mana you have, i.e. you can cast the spell _once_.
Rogues are a bit problematic because they always have 75% mana cost, i.e. the spell effect
takes your current mana and reduces it by 75%. Thus we had to put in a min mana cost of 100.
 
- Izual, Grimspike, Ar'Gul and Dragurumil are Stone Curse - immune. They were too easy to kill.


08/06/99

- Two-handed weapons have been improved. They now give AC according to their max damage.

- Adria has been moved to Gillian's house.

- Gris no longer has a lvl cap (well, that is, it's been set to 64). His price cap has 
been reduced to 110.000. This means when your lvl 40-50 char asks Gris, he can be offered 
better items than a lvl 30 char, but you cannot get the high end/high price items from Gris.
All in all, Gris is a bit more interesting for high lvl chars than before.

- Diablo is lvl 48.

- you can now receive dots. Reason it was not possible before is that Dots are given in then
end game (video/Diablo dying/etc.) routine, and we deactivated that one. We now reactivated
the dot-giving routine.

- The divider for Dex->AC is now 4 instead of 5. I.e. you can now get more AC through Dex.
Interesting for rogues who had some problems in hell/hell.

- "of the Air" is now "of warding" (-10 to -15 dmg from enemies). Has something to do with
that we do not want sorcerors to wear high AC plates (see below).

- Sorcerors have now max str 15. If you had more, tough luck for you (not possible to include 
a routine to move the superfluous points to a different stat, i.e. the points will be lost).

- IMPORTANT ! READ THIS ! BETTER, PRINT IT OUT !

New item requirements have been introduced. Some items are now TOTALLY impossible to be used
by certain character classes.

ONLY warriors: Demonslayer, Royal Sword, Royal Shield, War Axe, Two-handed sword, Great sword,
               Great Axe

ONLY rogue: Heavy crossbow, Great Bow, Royal Bow

ONLY sorceror: all staffs

ONLY warrior and rogue: Wall Shield, War Helm, Full Plate, War Plate

If you pick up and unuseable item, it will show up red in your inventory, even if you fulfill 
the str/dex/mag requirements shown on screen. In some situations (if you fulfill the requirements
shown on screen and pick up the item from inventory, or if you switch items without first putting
down the unequipped item in the inventory), it might be possible to equip the unuseable item (it
is not "red" when it is on the mouse cursor), but the item WILL NOT give you the benefits (i.e. AC,
stats, damage), i.e. you can equip it but it will do nothing. This is a known little cosmetic bug
we could not remove. But since you were not supposed to use this item anyway, it's not that bad,
is it ? :-)

So what does this mean ? The time of the tank/battle mage is over, guys. No more full plate or
war plate for Mr Mage. The only high AC plate left is the Thinking Plate. Mages carrying war
plates were silly anyway :)

- Thinking Plate had to be moved to gothic plate base item type because full plate or war plate
are no longer allowed for sorcerors. AC is still pretty high, though. This will mean that any
existing thinking plates on your chars will morph because the base item type has been changed.

- Blood Star damage has been enhanced

- F1 to F4 can now be used as spell hotkeys. Thanks go to SubSpace for this little but pretty nice
hack ! Works like the old F5-F8 hotkeys, but there will be no text in the speedbook. Just point
the mouse cursor over a spell and press F1-F4. It will work even though the game will not show any
text for the hotkey. The settings for F1 to F4 stay even when starting a new game.

- The only triple immune monsters are obsidian lords, archmages and witch queens (no reason to leave
soul burners trip immune when the witch queens are the highest witch type)

- New Blood Knight boss on lvl 15 Sir Meliur (Windspawn has been sacked, because there were two 
Vortex Lord bosses)

- New unique Amulet "The Elessar"

- Update to the modified shrines:

All shrines not mentioned in this list can appear anywhere

Mysterious	2-16
Hidden		5-16
Gloomy		3-16
Enchanted	13-16
Fascinating	5-16
Eldritch	4-16
Eerie		13-16
Sacred		9-16
Abandoned	13-16
Creepy		13-16
Quiet		13-16
Ornate		13-16
Glimmering	3-16

- New prefix "Kaiser's" replaces Champion's. Up to +200% damage.


[...some versions removed for space reasons...]


original readme text:
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1.07 mod is NOT an update for 1.04 mod !

new/changed:

monsters:
- most of the monster classes (i.e. "knights", "witches", ...) now have a 5th
subtype, in most cases with a new boss
- some of the original but inactive bosses have been activated
- fallen angels, horned death plus bosses
- zamphir on 16
- Diablo always drops an item. You can move while Diablo does his death
animation (e.g. to cast a tp or take the item), but if you do not leave lvl
16 while he is dying, the game will end. Will maybe be changed in the future.
- overlords/goatmen have an active 2nd attack now (beware!)
- winged fiends now can drop items
- lvl 31 or above monsters include: Diablo, horned death, fallen angels,
soul burners

items:
- new prefix "shield" (lvl 35)
- 6 new base items (high end) with lvl 60: wall shield, war helm, war plate,
war axe, great bow, rune sword
- requirements have been changed (upped) for some items
- new base item "crossbow" (built-in fast attack)
- maul is now one-handed
- 2-h swords have built-in fastest attack to make them more attractive
- base armour types have been streamlined regarding AC
- scroll of etherealize is now available
- changed range of some prefixes (e.g. ruby, sapphire, diamond)

uniques:
- some new uniques (not many). We took care to put them on non-findable or not
often used uniques to prevent morphing on existing uniques on the chars.

... and some new stuff we cannot think of right now :-)

Game should be playable in sp, we did not modify the sp quest
monsters/uniques. Game should also be playable with original Diablo chars
without too much item morphing. 
