Why do you think mods for this game are popular OP?
Unfortunately the mods go too far in changing the game. There has not yet been a single mod that makes light but sensical changes to the base game. Instead they just go add like 900000 new features and it’s barely the same game.
lol those uniques came out the same time as runewords…
No they didnt. You must not have played D2 when LOD first came out
Yeah, runes for the endgame runewords like Enigma. But low tier runes are easily found and can make ridiculous strong runewords.
Ancients Pledge, Lore, Stealth and Rhyme can simply be made in Normal and are enough to even carry you through Nightmare. But that isnt enough, becaus in Nightmare you usually get to make Insight for basically infinite mana and Spirit to just make you more powerful.
Its actually ridiculous and makes loot during Normal and Nightmare rather pointless. It doesnt matter what drops because your runewords are superior, even to many uniques.
rune words are in the d2lod manual lol yes they came out with runes at the launch of lod i have played since release of d2 maybe it’s you who didn’t
manual page 26
Runes: Runes are small stones inscribed with magical glyphs that can be inserted into Socketed Items. Runes are different from other Insertable Items: not only do individual Runes have magical properties, certain combinations (or Rune Sets), when inserted into an item in the proper order, give that item even more wondrous abilities.
enlarged the important part and yeah they were called rune sets when they were printing the manual but arreat summit called them rune words.
actually that has always been the case.
In 1.09 without runewords, you also moved on to hell, but just with whatever magic/rare trash you found.
Even before runes, 90% of uniques were complete garbage. With runewords, well 98% of uniques are garbage in comparison.
Stormshield got replaced by spirit
arkaine/viper got replaced by CoH/Fortitude/Enigma
Hoto/Spirit replaced oculus in some cases. New caster builds that now use Hoto (hammerdin, windy, etc.) didn’t even exist before at all.
At the same time they implemented some new powerful items that compete with runewords and are as strong
Death Web
Griffons
Death Fathom
Arach
Nightwing
Facets
Unfotunately the old uniques just didn’t get adjusted.
In my opinion they should have changed them in a way they changed them from 1.08 to 1.09
E.g. spirit monarch is a great budget option and maybe they should have removed the +2 skills. Another approach would have been to add +2 skills and 35% fcr to stormshield, so basically the rarest shield is still the strongest.
They also heavily undertuned the class sets. While some class sets are easy to get, others are quite hard (e.g. grisworlds), yet it is complete garbage because they failed to tune it.
Engima was just a general fail and cannot be balanced. It would still be used if it had 0 stats exept +1 tele
guys no no expansion guys
you want to play classic
Old school godly for me was my quark bow, demon machine, hexes, white rings, etc…
Disagree. There would be no end game without runeword and perf unique roll farming. Post is beyond dumb. Runewords allow for really crazy build experimentation which is also a part of end game. Runes are the closest thing to currency since sojs were massively duped / gambled easily and they were the old currency.
Expensive runewords are MEANT to make your character powerful, otherwise what would be the point? If you want the game to be strictly about uniques/rares you can play the other mode without A5 or runes, oh wait hardly anyone plays that.
I haven’t played in along while until now but it seems in the later patches (last time I think I played was 2004?) like after 1.10… they added a load of insanely powerful and cheap runewords that did not exist in the original LoD release. Actually, most of the runewords weren’t that great at first and the LoD uniques were much much better. I agree though, I personally will always remember the game more prior to the launch of LoD. Although it only lasted a year, that was my favorite time in D2 and that’s where my best memories come from, however, I personally liked the elite items they added in LoD. BTW: Duping didn’t really become widespread until after LoD had been out for awhile. In 2001 - 2002 I was selling new uniques and runes on Ebay for literally several thousand dollars. I made $3500 in less than a few months. Mostly selling IST runes and SOJ lots. I could sell ONE, yes, ONE IST for $60.00 and they would sell out instantly w/ buy it now on ebay. This was when Ebay did not restrict game purchases whatsoever. I also sold DAoC accounts as well lol… but that’s another story. At one point, I had over 150 legit SOJs as well. Could sell 40 for like 700 - 1000$.
I think runewords are a good idea but IMO they should cap out at level 45 or something like that. There shouldn’t be things like enigma, infinity, etc…
All people do is obsess over runes in this game. You can’t trade for anything unless you have HRs, and it completely ruined the point of the game
I like runewords they way they are, but I would love rares to be buffed. I could also see uniques either buffed to compete with runeswords or less rare.
The problem with uniques is, that it’s pure luck and you can get a Grief for example way faster then a stormlash grandfather or schaefers. If it was more predictable to get those uniques, they would be great, maybe buff them a little so they compete 1:1 with those runewords.
Still I would prefer rares to be buffed above RW’s and uniques.
No need. Just set rune drop rate back to 1.11.
Wow, just looked at the rune drop rate changes. A zod used to be 1 in like 184,000 in 1.09. Now its 1 in 5,170. ~36 times more common.
They mean faster run walk on gear…
I feel the same way as the OP.
The rune words basically made a large percentage of the unique items irrelevant.
Yeah, I don’t really like the fact that runewords are so often clearly the superior choice. Grief is probably the most egregious example, but there are many more examples such as Enigma.
I wish rares, crafted, and even magic had a little bit more opportunity to shine.
I really enjoyed v1.06. Before synergies and LOD. This was the real classic d2. I have the version installed on single player and visit it time to time.
Even now if you try to play classic the synergies and item mods are different due to LOD changes that carried over. Monsters, items, Gambling etc. are changed. Not a good representation of “real classic”
I did think they would have tweaked the skills a bit with D2R but I guess not. Part of the reason i quit 10 years ago was it was nothing but hammerdins. Nothing wrong with the runewords themselves given the rarity of rune drops but that’s just me.
Runewords in general were a great idea and i like how they work, it gives white items a purpose as well as maes it so you can kinda gurentee know what your getting froma powerful item, and the runes are not effected by MF so you cant just automatically gear into them like you can with uniques and sets which are more reliable to get. (aside from trading this evens it out)
HOWEVER there are a handful of runewords that i think were a mistake.
Spirit - the fact it can be both shield and weapon made this runeword a powerful choice, the fact it also gives +2 to skills as well as all Res made it almost a must have, there isnt very many offhands that give plus to skills. this should of only been available to a weapon. that would have made it a decent item still but not BiS for offhand.
HOTO - the fact that its a one handed weapon and gives +3 to skills is one of the main reason almost EVERY 2 handed weapon for your character is trash as the max ammount of + to skill a 2 hander has is 3. on top of the other really good stats then combine this with spirit it basically makes these 2 for most classes BiS as it gives +5 total with super good other stats. HOTO shoulda had less skills or less other benefits if the uniqueness was +3 for a one hander.
Enigma - this one is kinda weird because while YES its basically needed for any other class besides sorc because of the teleport. they also gave it MF and other good stats. the teleport alone was already super strong (they coulda gave other items +1 to teleport if the goal was to even the playing field for non sorcs so at the very least you had options.). However as far as the overall effects of enigma i dont think its really SUPER strong its mainly just because there isnt very many other options to get teleport as to why this is powerful.
but there are plenty of non runeword items that can compete or have a place. helms for the most part are pretty versatile on most classes, as rare diadems can be some of the best items in the game, but there are many other powerful and useful head pieces.
Chest have flexability to but Teleport is hard to give up. Weapon and offhand imo are the least flexable with a few exceptions (like MF swords and alibaba and some early game things) but yeah for the most part weapon gets dominated by runewords typically the big 3-4 (Hoto, spirit, CTA, Grief) and offhand is basically ancients pledge until spirit, with the occasional Rhyme
Honestly i would have liked to see runeword gloves and boots, and perhaps similar items in the weapon / chest like diadems are (with how they roll affixes). also better crafting riders for non jewlery and gloves. As this woulda made itemization a lot more wider imo.