… but first I’d like to know, if it is ok to discuss such single player modifications here on the official forums. I wouldn’t want to be hit by a banhammer by some overzealous forum moderator…
the mod itself does not contain any binary editing, only simple spreadsheet modifications made in the old D2excel program, plus some edited .json files (agin plaintext files) and a couple of updated graphics files…
features:
-all mercs get full gear slots including “both” rings, ammy belt boots and gloves
-both act 5 merc and act 3 mercs have the sword restriction and one handed restriction removed ( haven’t tried anything stupid yet like giving them a bow as it would prolly crash the game but yeah you can don full ik set to act5 merc and he even gets the glance aura)
-act 3 merc can benefit from +sorceress skills items plus probably wield sorceress only items.
-.act 3 merc gets two new passive skills: one sunder power, each respectfully to his specialization and one other passive with multitude of survivability bonuses:
1…manashield overlay( just for the classic look doesn’t do anything since merc has no mana)
2.absorbs 63% from fire,lightning,cold and magic spells, +max res cap up to 95% for all elements+ massive poison length reduction
further usability improovement via monstats.txt:
increased walk and run speeds by a lot. this prevents merc from lagging behind toomuch,and also improoves the clunky AI since he now spends waay less time kiting mobs and more actually engaging in combat, simply by walking faster to kiting destination.
made him block without the need of a shield ( since shield blocking ate up shield’s durability) and overriden the shield block chance up to 95%
masive boost to physical% and magic% damage reductions
ocasional physical attacks he does with the weapon now always crits ( deals double damage).
5.boosted his life regen rate by “a lot”.
additionally I also made act 5 merc to always roll with the toughest possible look with metal shoulder pads, leather stripes on the back, and thickend leather on the waist/pants area.
I’ve been urging to make a third usable act 5 merc using only axes, but i haven’t got the slightest idea what skills would i give to him ( possibly leap attack if it works or concentrate, I’m out of ideas on this one), however since I’ve unlocked the weapons for previous mercs. there’s really no point in this anyways. ( but blizz could easily make a 2 1handed axe wielding barbarian, as there are graphics for that already available in the game, it’s just the question what skills to give to him. leap attack with it’s massive aoe seemes best candidate, especially if paired with leap as a passive bonus for the synergies.
act 3 mercs are best equipped with full rainbow facet gear with additional items providing FCR ( you can make a 200% fcr a3 merc if you wanted to but 86% breakpoint fares waay better with rainnbow facets and some +skill gear.
one thing to note though cold merc fares better with godly rolled doom runeword than with crystal sword with 6x -5/+5 facets since -enemy res>+ele dmg.
As long as you only use softcoded modding methods (no code injection, hardcoding/binary editing, etc.) and as long as you’re not using them on Bnet then you’re fine. I wish modded multiplayer was officially supported on D2R, rip TCP/IP…
It was kinda cool to put gold skin on my Diablo 3 Merc and then gold farm in random nephalim rift runs. But in D2 the Merc dies if you go all magic or gold find gear on him and neglect resistance and life suck attacks. I guess I could see it if the mercenary did not get weaker in regards to lame self preservation against mobs… my level 90 Barbarian mercenary still dies to fire wave and - if surrounded destruction monsters at Baal throne room. Actually that is good since I have disunity set and not Fortude and Andarel Helm on him.
It’s in monstats.txt, merc ID is “actxhire” (replace x with act number) and you’ll find their equippable weapon type under the “rightArmItemType” and “leftArmItemType” columns.
One of the things they changed to softcode in D2R.
Just as DarkMaster said it’s in monstats.txt it used to be hardcoded in D2Lod but it is no longer the case for D2R…
simply go to line 360 and clear the field in rightArmItemType.
try to leave leftArmItemType as shield so that he couldn’t dualwield ( he still graphically wields a shield).
the next column is a bolean “canNotUseTwoHandedItems” 1=true empty= can wield 2 handers.
a3 is crap in d2r because:
he walks too slow. he walks while kiting mobs and he does that too slow. instead of engagnig mobs he kites, and when it’s time to attack the monsters are at his back agin so AI tells him to kite agin. so i uped his walk speed from 4 to 14 and run speed to 15. this causes less time spent on kiting since he gets faster to destination point, and has time to engage monsters b4 they catch up on him. this is a must.
he’s too squishy. with his low health and no physical protection hes instakiled once he gets cursed with decrep or amp damage. so in turn i upped his physical dr and magical dr in mostats.txt. now he only gets 20% of the damage when amped and 10% when decreped.
lore wise this is the effect of wearing manashield orb above their heads . also upped his res cap to 95% (via new passive skill giveen to him) so now he sits at 78% on hell and can be easly topped at 95% with an 20% all res amulet.
this should be easily explained lore wise too thanks to manashield, and their study on elemental matter.
his life sustain sucks. beeing a caster he rarely can rely on life steal, so he relies on regen. to combat this I’ve added absorbtion% from fire, lightning, cold and magic damage (all maxed out at 63%) as a passive from a new skill given to him, to help him get better healing off mobs, as an addition in monstats.txt i’ve upped his life regen, formula is (life+ value)/16 so i set the value to 16 from 4.
he does not block attacks despite having shield. ( due to a bug when set to block damage using shield his shield would chew durability. so i set hi to block even without shield ( same way as bosses). this way shield is intact, and you can override the value of bock chance even beyond 75% cap. ( set to 95%).
poison duration kills him quickly. in hell this is prolonged by additional 100% so i cut it down by 200% so that now he only gets poisoned for a fraction of the time, this helps a lot with his sustain.
made him a sorceress class equivalent in hireling.txt so that he benefits from +x to sorceress skills, and together with no weapon restiction, this could enable sorceress orbs in his mainhand.
Damage wise ( if geared properly) i think he’s ok’ish players1 wise. all three of them, seem to do ok with -85% or more to enemy damage reduction to their element, and similar bonus to their element damage.
but man giving a -60% to enemy cold resistance Doom runeord axe plus cold facets and enaugh FCR for his 86% breakpoint does the job even better than lightning merc with grifons and facets elswhere. although fire is the clear winner damage wise, as he can one shot some fire immune monsters like the fallen.
one bug i’ve encountered i that if i don’t hit baal at least one time, and just let merc kill him ( easy… it takes around 5 minutes or more so he’s not that op), ball drops no loot.
Btw about the act 3 merc. I think what would help si to give him maybe energy shield or maybe teleport when hit so he could get from situations where he is just surrounded.
energy shield won’t work. it’s a server-client side effect, and requires mana else it despawns. merc has no mana.
however be cool i’ve added an overlay to one of the passives so he has that orb above his head:D
He’s quite a tank now, the only time i had to feed him potions was wheen he aproached the fish factory Listner and his gang, he still probably wouldn’t survive ubers
oh yeah one more thing ZAX…
if you open the game casc repository in the excel folder you’ll find a file that is only openable in microsoft web browser, do open and read it… it contains all of the info on columns of all .txt files so it’s no longer a hit or miss mystery for anyone…
I’m doing this in hopes the devs do take note of this, take it up on their workbench for internal testing, and perhaps… just perhaps… we’ll all see theese changes in some future patch
it would be really cool to have a3 merc viable online…
modding in the changes to single player is fun, but it’s online the experience that actually matters, in a place where no hero edited items can reach my hands.
. also upped his res cap to 95% (via new passive skill giveen to him) so now he sits at 78% on hell and can be easly topped at 95% with an 20% all res amulet.