The Tomb Vipers in Halls of Vaught are clearly bugged and make farming Nihlathak increasingly frustrating as their poison literally one shots you. This bug has been around and known for quite some time, is there any upcoming fix for this?
They claim that they are working “as intended”. Try not to move through the poison clouds. It’s better to stand still inside them. Give your mercenary a lot of integer damage reduction gear. Someone found out that the damaging effect even lasts longer than the visuals so remember where the poison clouds where and avoid those regions for some more seconds after they vanish.
1 Like
my merc with fortitude gets one shot by them, theres no way they are working as intended.
1 Like
My merc would too with Fortitude. You need an armor like Gladiator with a Sol in the socket for INTEGER damage reduce. That’s how my mercenary survives them.
Aim for around 40 damage reduce in total. 50 would be ideal but is hard to get.
i started to farm him and noticed that too
most of the times i exit when i see the serpents lol
1 Like
Hopefully I can find a Gladiators Bane then, otherwise I just have to remake when I see vipers I guess.
Tomb Vipers are working in D2R exactly as they always have in D2LOD. That is simply just how difficult they are. Their poison javelin attack works in a unique way where it deals both physical and poison damage, not only just on contact but also on collision with the cloud. That’s each collision. That is why you hear the “machine gun” like sound effect when walking through the poison cloud, each of those procs is dealing both physical and poison damage. This effect does indeed last for a couple seconds after the visual cloud is gone, as the Tomb Vipers’ attack leaves and invisible poison cloud where their poison javelin attack was for a couple of seconds. None of this is new to D2R, all of this is exactly how Tomb Vipers have always worked.
The question of whether or not this is bugged has been debated. However, in the early 2000s a Blizzard Dev was asked specifically when they were going to fix “those pesky Tomb Vipers” and the response was “Working as intended.” That was the last and only official word from Blizzard on how Tomb Vipers work and no changes have ever been made. Therefore any statement of them being bugged is just players pointing to things we think are odd or unfavorable in the game code. Perhaps it could be that when Tomb Vipers got launched, their attack did things that wasn’t they way it was first intended to be and the Blizzard Devs at the time decided that they didn’t want to alter it and liked the difficulty they added, choosing to keep them as they are, thus making it a game feature and a monster ability. Or perhaps the Devs who created the Tomb Vipers knew exactly what they were doing. We don’t know, and until someone from the time comes out and tells us or some source material becomes available we won’t know. What we do know for sure, is that the only statement that stands is: “Working as intended.” coupled with a 15+ year history of no changes to the Tomb Vipers behavior or abilities.
4 Likes
Thank you for that explanation, I was unaware of the history involved with these Tomb Vipers. I will just have to remake game until I get the gear to deal with them then.
I always play with a friend of mine (he is a Hammerdin and I play a Holy Shock Zealdin). Our strategy while gearing up is to let our mercs die and not go resurrect them until after we kill Nihlathak. We take it really slow, retreat when we have to and stand still. He throws hammers and runs backward or away from the poison attacks, to try to get the Vipers to run into his hammers. As a melee character, I stand still and let them bash into me and then attack them from there. This tends to work well, they are still difficult, but manageable.
Tomb vipers are for sure bugged, you can run max block shield and you can hear 1 attack being blocked 8-10 times. I shouldn’t be getting 1 shot by a tomb viper when i have 2k hp.
The tomb vipers need to be looked at, it doesn’t always proc the 10x hits, but if you get a mob that does it, you die instantly . Makes Hardcore Dkey runs more spicy though 
You are speaking from a higher position .
You know that these things charge you and you can be moved by them , and within that 0.01 sec your char is going to die without you knowing it . You have no controls , no ways to avoid them .
I have godly gears on my Sorc and 2.5k health from CTA , I still literally die from these things from times to times .
Mind you , I have compiled a 5000 run drop list from Nihlathak . Meaning ? I am extremely proficient at killing him . Yet I still die from these tomb vipers from times to times . The corpse explosion is deadly enough but they have never killed me once .
I am all about retaining classic flavors but these are not flavors , they are bugs . Annoying , frustrating bug that turns ppl off . It turned us off back then , and it still do .
It is baffling to see people defending laziness as an excuse of being classic .
And to that guy who said there was a debate ? No , there never was a debate .
Especially among the HC player , we simply skipped the whole process entirely because bliz has completely halted all development on d2 back then.
In fact , some of the private servers of D2 actually had these fixed .
There is a difference between liking a game or being a cultist , clearly we have so much more of the latter in this forum .
Saying ‘it’s always been like this’ because a dev said ‘working as intended’ is not the same as ‘game hadn’t had sustaining bug fixes in x-number of years’.
The mechanic is a bug and was listed as a bug when LoD launched.
It was fixed by modders in their mods when Blizzard shipped numerous baselines out to the modders and they identified that it was indeed… a bug.
Just because it’s been this way since 2000 and a dev said that… doesn’t mean anything.
1 Like
Can you produce any proof of their behavior being identified as a bug by Blizzard? I ask because that is not something I have ever seen. If they did, and as you said it was when LOD launched, as I stated above, the trouble with your argument is twofold: 1) a Blizzard dev is on record post the launch of LOD saying that the Tomb Vipers are “working as intended”. As I stated, it could be the case that the launch was not the intended design, however that they made the conscious decision to not change or fix them. At which point, it is no longer a bug or issue, it is now a game feature and design element. This is a concept that people seem to struggle with. If the devs at the time decided they wanted to incorporate this behavior into the monster’s move set, it is no longer a bug, but a feature. 2) What modders do has no bearing on whether or not something is a bug or not. Modders making changes is the whole purpose of modding, any change a modder makes has no bearing or relevance to a conversation about a bug or not. The sole authority on the topic of whether or not a mechanic in a Blizzard game is working as intended or not are the Blizzard devs. Conveniently for the topic of Tomb Vipers, we have a statement from a Blizzard dev on that very topic.
It’s totally cool if you don’t agree with the design or behavior of Tomb Vipers and want them to be changed. That’s totally cool. I wouldn’t even both posting a response if there was a thread in General Discussion asking for them to be changed. The thing is that this is a Bug Report thread, and this is not a bug for D2R. Tomb Vipers are doing exactly what they do in D2LOD 1.14D.
You said '…At which point, it is no longer a bug or issue, it is now a game feature and design element." which makes me believe you have no gauge on any of the software engineering or game development process.
In fact, I do, in fact, I’ve worked in software development. My point is very simple, this isn’t a a matter of Blizzard saying “It’s a bug, we will fix it” and then ever fixing it. It’s a matter of them saying it’s “Working as intended.” and then never changing it. That is exceptionally clear language. I’m not saying you have to like it, I’m just saying it’s not a bug. When something is working as the developers intent it to work, it’s not broken, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If a change is desired, then a new build needs to be done.
1 Like
https://diabloii.net/forums/threads/massive-1-13-bug-list.754786/ Not every bug gets fixed. Everything gets a priority and lumped into buckets and gets fixed/implemented accordingly.
Here’s a list of bugs for the 1.13 drop that were on the docket to be in the release. This was pulled from Blizzard’s old archived forums. Later on in the thread, a blue post saying what they DID in fact fix. It was officially listed as a bug.
That list is written by a player, not Blizzard, so again, your source there is not official, it’s a player calling it a bug. The official record therefore still stands as a Blizzard Dev saying they are “Working as intended.”
Again, I’ve got no problem with a discussion about changing Tomb Vipers. The issue I have is calling it a bug in the Bug Reports of D2: Resurrected, when there is absolutely nothing different about them in D2R than in D2LOD 1.14d.
There are enough issues and actual bugs in D2R to address, legitimate actual bugs and server issues for the Devs to fix that trying to chase down a non-existent issue between D2R Tomb Vipers and LOD 1.14d Tomb Vipers is just a waste of time. If a change is done to Tomb Vipers at some point in D2R because the fan base overwhelmingly wants them to be easier, then so be it, but we have much bigger issues to solve right now.
Please provide said official record. I agree with you on your last statements, but the Claw Viper issue will still be a bug to me and thousands of other players.
Do you know what a glitch is?
Do you know what laziness is?
If Blizzard knows about how it’s working and chooses not to change it, it’s not a glitch
I rest my case. After all, Blizzard has clearly fixed every single glitch/bug they know of, right? RIGHT?
Anyway, I see no point in arguing over something like this. I’m just one of those crazy people who doesn’t believe everything Blizzard says. Btw, you know those poison clouds can still hurt you sometimes even after they have disappeared? I’m sure that part is intended too (the fact that the poison cloud is invisible for 60fps (2.4s) of the 120fps (4.8s) duration).
Due to the removal of the old forums, the closest I can come to providing it at this point is this:
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/nihlathak-viper-problem.799564/post-7883096
On that page you can see where it mentions the original forum post and quotes it. Sadly, as you already know, those forums are gone. However, there is overwhelming evidence of Blizzard using the phrase “Working as intended.” to speak directly to this, both in this post that I linked, and even in the post and thread of the post you copied above - for example by the use of the sarcasm in the phrase “I’m sure that part is intended too”.
And yes, I’m aware of of all that, and that what you copied and pasted there written 11 years ago. In explaining the whole Tomb Viper thing, I mentioned how the poison clouds remain even after their visible effect is gone.
MichaW was not a developer, but a community manager. I’m sure you know there’s a huge disconnect in the development team, GMs, CMs, etc. and deflection happens everywhere, especially on the forums.
They’ve done it a lot, all over the forums saying some thing is working as intended, especially as a game gets phased out. Even in WoW, they’ve said certain bugs are/were WAI but then were fixed on subsequent releases.
Right, the sarcasm was indeed intended as you picked up.
My argument here is that I think you’re putting too much faith into what one person said back in ~2010. They’re known to pass the blame off or say ‘WAI’ just to shut the community up.
And FYI, that bug list was in a blue post that was scrubbed off the forums soon after it was brought over to diabloii. There’s also occurrences of Blizzard doing this exact thing.
Keep an open mind about things.