Diablo 2 Fallen Classes: The Druid

[Flix 5,184]

Druid Appearance Update

 

 

Pesmontis helped me make some alterations to the Druid so he looks more like his original counterpart. Green eyes, chin beard, and finally, a head full of red hair.

 

 

The hair is equipped as a hairstyle, which is saved with each individual character. This means that only new Druids created after installing Beta 9 will have the hair.

 

 

It remains to be seen whether we can add multiple hairstyles and colors available at character creation. Dimitrius154 is looking into the possibility now.

[Flix 5,184]

Upcoming Druid changes in v10

Hurricane: Disarm chance reduced to 50%.  Since this is a big Area of Effect spell that's capable of hitting so many opponents at once, I broke the "always 100% chance" rule for disarming for Hurricane, and nerfed it somewhat.
 

Werewolf and Werebear: now have the Concentration skill and can use up to 2 buffs while shapeshifted.  Thanks to changes in Community Patch 1.60, the Druid's shapeshifting forms can now use buffs in v10.  Speed up the lumbering Werebear with Heart of the Wolverine, or protect the squishier Werewolf with Cyclone Armor.  Or fight alongside your summoned wild bretheren. Overall, this will help survivability a good bit, which could suffer in the higher difficulties until now.

   

 

[Flix 5,184]

Upcoming Druid changes in v12

Very little is changing for the Druid in v12. He may be the character who is most fully transformed into his D2 counterpart.  The Druid has been lavished with a lot of attention since the very beginning of the mod, thanks in large part to Silver Fox's work on the character.  Thanks to him we have lots of Druid gear, as well as a rewritten class quest, although it's not quite as long as those of the other characters, it has a lot of story and lore packed into it.  I finally added something of an "ending" to it, through a final dialogue with Mer-Kil.  The Druid's quest has a lot of departures from the original Dragon Mage quest, due to how different the characters are, but the structure is the same.

• Class quest "Dratted Little Beasts" now drops Stormcrow's Hat as reward.  This quest was made Dragon Mage specific in the CM Patch, and is even more appropriate for the Druid, being about harnessing storms through prayers to Fiacla-Géar, the patron god of the Druids.  The reward is now a Druid-specific hat that Silver Fox made, Stormcrow's Hat.

  

 

• Class quest "And the Next..." now drops Aldur's Advance as reward (after talking with Elder Druid Áillen).  This is about the midway point of the chain quest, and an appropriate place for a Druid-specific reward in the form of some set boots, gifted to you by your would-be mentor.

[Flix 5,184]

A few last minute changes as I continue to tinker around with the mod. I added a beard as a selectable hairstyle in the character creation menu.  So the Druid has the option of: full head of hair, bald w/ beard, or bald and clean shaven.

   

      

 

The final quest opponent for the Druid's quest is a Dragon Mage named Varmin.  Varmin was kind of lame, so I made him more interesting, giving him some armor, a weapon, and some boss-level stats and powers.

[Flix 5,184]

Another small upcoming change for the Druid.  I've never really been happy with the muddy red-black texture of the Dire Wolves.  In D2 they were light brown.  So now I've retextured them to look more authentic.

   

[gogoblender 3,223]

13 hours ago, Flix said:

Another small upcoming change for the Druid.  I've never really been happy with the muddy red-black texture of the Dire Wolves.  In D2 they were light brown.  So now I've retextured them to look more authentic.

   

The matted, clumped up effect of the fur is great

 

 

gogo

[Flix 5,184]

I'm really happy to presenting more hairstyles for the Druid in the upcoming v13 of Diablo 2 Fallen. Through Pesmontis' hard work the Druid now has a full selection of 6 hairstyles in character creation!

Here are the 4 new ones that will be joining the lineup.  Hair color will of course be customizable at character creation.

[gogoblender 3,223]

There's a good feel to the styles... I'd call it flowing...which fits in with the windswept outside theme.  The red color is actually astonishing, good use of the highlights and shapes

 

gogo

[Flix 5,184]

A few more Druid changes in upcoming v13:

Oak Sage: "Perservere" & "Insight" modifications now grant 10 Willpower/Intelligence points per level instead of 30. I've been reviewing all the CA's that grant attribute bonuses and found many to be OP. Considering these are just modifications and not even base properties, I thought they should be scaled down some but still generous. 

Poison Creeper: Regen per hit effect from "Solar Creeper" modification now scales with CA level. Really no reason not to have the mod scale as it levels up. It's very gradual, but will add up over time.

[Flix 5,184]

Here's the final batch of Druid changes in v13. I have balanced some of his combat arts.  Some properties were scaling too quickly and some were not scaling at all.

• Fissure: Base chance for burn decreased from 50% to 25%. Deadly Strike effect from "Fury" mod now triggers at 35% health instead of 50%.
• Fury (Werewolf CA): Chance to hit additional opponents and chance for open wounds scale more slowly.
• Twister: Increased regeneration time. Range is now fixed.
• Tornado: Increased regeneration time. Critical chance from "Critical" mod scales more slowly.
• Poison Creeper: Critical chance from "Intent" mod now scales with level. "Poison" mod chance to poison reduced from 50% to 40%.
• Beard introduced in v12 is removed due to display issues. This beard was made for the Barbarian and had issues with clipping and not fitting on the Druid's face properly. So now there is the option to have a bald & clean shaven Druid instead.
• Helmets from the "cloth" armor sets no longer give the Druid red eyes. He now keeps his green eyes.

[Flix 5,184]

I should learn to never say "final."  More in-depth testing of combat arts and modifications revealed a few more things that needed adjusting:

• Maul (Werebear CA): Nova range now scales with level.
• Armageddon: Increased critical chance on "Devastation" mod from 10% to 20%.
• Twister: Swapped places of "Torpid" and "Velocity" mods.

[Tharkun 40]

Hey Flix, could you take a look at firestorm? I find it very weak compared to other combat arts, I know it is suposed to be a level 1 skill like in diablo but still it has a long regen time and does little damage even with damage boost (base damage and critical damage) mods and regen time reduction mod applied.

Thanks.

[Flix 5,184]

3 hours ago, Tharkun said:

Hey Flix, could you take a look at firestorm? I find it very weak compared to other combat arts, I know it is suposed to be a level 1 skill like in diablo but still it has a long regen time and does little damage even with damage boost (base damage and critical damage) mods and regen time reduction mod applied.

Thanks.

Absolutely.  IIRC it should be almost identical to Blazing Tempest which was pretty awesome in vanilla.  But we'll see.

[Flix 5,184]

On 3/4/2020 at 9:42 AM, Tharkun said:

Hey Flix, could you take a look at firestorm? I find it very weak compared to other combat arts, I know it is suposed to be a level 1 skill like in diablo but still it has a long regen time and does little damage even with damage boost (base damage and critical damage) mods and regen time reduction mod applied.

Thanks.

Ok I checked and the damage was quite low compared to Blazing Tempest (almost half!).  

Firestorm will basically be twice as strong in v14.  

[Flix 5,184]

Well it's been over 2 years since the last D2F release but the time for version 15 is fast approaching.  I'm ready to start posting about what I've been working on for 2 years. I'll start with the Druid since he's my favorite.

• Firestorm: Fixed a transparency issue with the flame VFX.

There were some blocky transparent shapes around the ground flames because I didn't adjust the black levels correctly.  Now the flames have proper transparency. I also made new textures for the floating embers.

 

 

• Twister/Tornado: Improved A.I.

You should notice these two spells being much more swift to chase down enemies, with much less aimless wandering.

 

 

• Hurricane: Disarm chance decreased from 50% to 25%.

Disarm is a stronger property than I gave it credit for in the past.  Since Hurricane is a potentially massive Area of Effect spell, I've cut the Disarm chance even further.

 

• Heart of Wolverine: Summoned spirit has new FX.

I've finally been able to make Heart of Wolverine resemble the original design, replacing the blue wisp with an orange fiery blob.  I had to leave the "tether" blue otherwise all mana leech FX would be recolored.

 

• Texture tweaks to Dire Wolf and Grizzly

These summons were a bit too over-saturated and reddish before.  Now have they have light brown fur more similar to the original designs.

 

• Aldur's Watchtower set now drops as intended

Despite all the work that went into designing this set somehow the armor pieces had been omitted from drop lists.  Expect to be able to find it now along with all the all other myriad drop list corrections coming.

 

• New dragonbone armor set: "Mark of the Dragon" themed after the Druid's class quest and focused on dual wielding.

This set was designed a long time ago when Pesmontis imported the dragonbone armor from Skyrim, but I never let it drop because I couldn't come up with modifiers/set bonuses. 

Dmitriy was kind enough to supply the modifiers and also reworked the armor models so they look more proportional and fit better on the Druid.  I then gave the whole thing a texture pass to make some of the details pop.

     

 

• Halgrim's Law has new black dragonscale design.

Since I was using pieces of the green armor above as Halgrim's Law in v14, now I've changed the set to use the black skin instead. Although Halgrim's Law is only 4 pieces, the other 4 armor pieces can be found as random rares.  This armor is also worn by the Druid's nemesis, the Dragon Mage Varmin:

• Varmin has received his new design from EE, no longer a generic Dragon cultist.  As each character class quest in D2F 15 now features a boss battle, Varmin will serve as the Druid's final boss.  I will leave it to the player to discover what new abilities he has in store, but I will reveal this teaser:

 

 

There will be many more mounted opponents to come, including mounted bosses who are able to use spells and special moves (previously all enemy mounts acted like horses with no special moves allowed).

 

The final note about the Druid I wanted to make is that after all these years I finally enough facility with the quest scripts to bring to life the original planned class quest that Silver Fox and I wrote almost 8 years ago.

  

In D2F v15, the Druid's classquest is expanded with more quest phases, battles, friendly NPC's, and places to discover.  I've restructured several parts to make more sense, and added some phases in places where the quest marker fails to tell you where to go. 

The player no longer has to wait until all main quests for Mer-Kil are complete before they talk about the classquest.  Instead the player will talk to the friendly dragon from Sacred 1, Loromir the Wise, who also appears in the Paladin and Barbarian classquests.

  

The dangling plot thread of the magical stone circles that was teased in previous releases is now complete, and I daresay by the very end, the Druid's classquest comes "full circle." 

 

[gogoblender 3,223]

Huge amount of work Ben.

Your mention of there being mounted enemies...bosses? The concept is astonishing... mounted bosses would be akin to Dragons!

gogo

[Flix 5,184]

On 5/9/2022 at 8:01 PM, gogoblender said:

Huge amount of work Ben.

Your mention of there being mounted enemies...bosses? The concept is astonishing... mounted bosses would be akin to Dragons!

gogo

Yes indeed, there are many possibilities here!  I remember the defunct "Chance to Dismount Opponents" that shipped with the initial release of Fallen Angel - clearly mounted opponents were a feature that didn't get fleshed out as fully as the devs wished.

The big breakthrough I had was making the mounts function like special mounts instead of just horses. This means all manner of magic spells and special attacks are now possible for mounted opponents.

I'll gather up and post all that I've added soon - it won't just be enemies either! After all why shouldn't knights be able to have horses?

[gogoblender 3,223]

2 minutes ago, Flix said:

Yes indeed, there are many possibilities here!  I remember the defunct "Chance to Dismount Opponents" that shipped with the initial release of Fallen Angel - clearly mounted opponents were a feature that didn't get fleshed out as fully as the devs wished.

The big breakthrough I had was making the mounts function like special mounts instead of just horses. This means all manner of magic spells and special attacks are now possible for mounted opponents.

I'll gather up and post all that I've added soon - it won't just be enemies either! After all why shouldn't knights be able to have horses?

lol...! Ben i was just thinking about your mod this morning.. was actually gonna make a  post about mounted enemies or bosses but you brought it up !  
Its a kind of mind adjustment (better word starts with F but this is DarkMatters   )  ..

were used to only having the *scope* of dragon size to related to only a single enemy type

...dragons.

Seeing this kind of perspective afforded to other enemies is is thrilling shift. 

Though I wonder if its laggy ? 
Its a good break through, this will affect the games deepest levels, specifically targeting our terror 

gogo