All Screwed Up
some prominent Bugs in the game
No claim of completeness here!
Tomb Vipers
Unnoticed for quite a while, but famous since Nihlatak Rushing is famous due to the Hellfire Torch Quest. The special subspecies of Tomb Vipers down at the Vault do tons of damage and are quite able to insta-kill any unaware character.
Reason is the somehow crude implementation of their poison cloud attack. Graphically similar to Amazon's Poison Javelin (well, without the javelin, obviously) their viper_poisjav missile carries all effects which Zon's Poison Javelin just carry on the javelin itself. But the snake missile is classified as poison damage, thus any effect including physical damage is applied again and again each frame you are poisoned. You won't instantly die when you stand still in a cloud, since the missile has a collision detection routine preventing this. If you or an allied unit of yours - hireling or pet - moves in the same cloud this routine is skipped. You'll die, listening to the repeatedly played sound of a hitting javelin.
Since the damage is mainly physical your main concern to prevent dying is primarly damage reduction, secondary - of course - poison resistance and poison length reduction.
A druid specialized in Poison Creeper relies on the very same skipping of collision detection.
see also:
Credits
- GaiaCaT
Willowisps
Better known as Souls, Gloams or (Black or Burning) Souls.
This monster class terrifies especially lots of Baal Runners.
Most probably the insane amount of lightning damage they deliver is caused by some wrong pointer. Instead of using the lightning damage column in configuration data the mana damage column seems to be used, which has way larger figures.
Let's have a look at MonStats.txt's willowisp7 row (Burning Soul), for Hell difficulty.
El1Mode=A1 El1Type=mana El1MinD(H)=200 El1MaxD(H)=300 El2Mode=SC El2Type=ltng El2MinD(H)=5 El2MaxD(H)=190
El1, El2 and El3 are configurable columns for adding 'El'emental damage. El3 isn't used in unmodified game. El1Type defines kind of damage, minimum 200, maximum 300 (also mana damage is buggy), used when attacking with A1 animation.
Player tests indicate the game refers to El1 when it should use El2, additional lightning damage of 5 to 190 when doing a spell cast.
Most monster units don't show very big differences in El1 and El2, but those dealing mana damage do so. So if this explanation is true it also applies to Afflicted, which are set up quite similar to Souls.
see also:
Credits
- brianc84
Valkyrie and other Pets as Trigger
The 1.11 armor runeword Peace / ShaelThulAmn offers a chance of casting a Valkyrie, if the unit equipped with that armor is hit (see chance to cast - CtC). DiabloII can't handle minions having minions of their own, so the game always crashed if a hireling wearing (or an Iron Golem made out of) Peace got a Valkyrie due to being hit.
1.11b fixed that bug by globally removing Pets' ability to have Pets of their own.
The item property Reanimate as: Returned doesn't cast the Returned Skeletons as pets. So an Act2 Hireling equipped with Tomb Reaver won't cause problems here.
A peaceful Valkyrie doesn't like to be yelled at, she'll instantly vanish then. Namely this includes Shout, Battle Orders and Battle Command. She's not choosy, there's no difference if a Barbarian yells at her or any wheeny crossclass-skill character.
If an Amazon with hard points in her very own Valkyrie skill wears Peace the triggered Valkyrie is not so irritable.
Via runeword Heart of the Oak / KoVexPulThul called Ravens disappear instantly, again with the exception of a druid with hard points invested in his own Raven skill.
This is only confirmed for HotO.
Credits
- DybrarH
mistaken by principle
A wrong entry in Runes.txt causes the loss of +100-150 Life and +50 % damage to undead boni of the armor runeword Principle / RalGulEld.
Patch 1.13 removed this bug.
Credits
- MMAgCh
ethereal armor pieces and cube recipes
During 1.10 ethereal armor pieces lost the defense bonus granted by ethereality, if they were cubed with upgrade recipes. This was fixed in 1.11. Instead of this you gain since then a cumulative defense bonus for being ethereal, when you socket an ethereal piece of armor via cube. Larzuk's quest reward isn't affected by this feature.
Armor pieces include everything you wear besides your weapon(s), but of course in unmodified game only armors, helmets and shields can be socketed.
Credits
- adeyke
- DybrarH
oskills an identifying items
If you're using an oskill and you hover your mouse pointer over any stash, inventory or vendor screen item which grants a bonus to this skill, the oskill vanishs from your spellboard and hotkeys and cannot be used anymore. You must reequip your item to gain its oskill bonus again.
This is especially annoying while shopping or identifying items.
Credits
- Lanx
- madmurdock
shifted treasure class
Griswold, the Smith and the Cow King are - along with Baal - the only boss monsters who already will drop from their Hell treasure class when being killed in Nightmare. However, those three are the only bosses who aren't forced to drop at least something magical.
Credits
- adeyke
Fangskin nodrop
Superunique Fangskin in Viper Temple drops nothing in Hell, since there is a wrong entry in SuperUniques.txt, respectively TreasureClassEx.txt.
Patch 1.13 removed this bug.
Credits
- adeyke
- DybrarH
error messages in battle.net
If a player in battle.net suffers timeout the other players in that game get three error messages, two times the timeout message and one time the 'playerX has leaved game' message.
Credits
- DybrarH
- Elim
- Ragnarök-GF
fatal error 'decompressing sprite...'
Well, I won't list every existing c00..05 error ...
... but I like this one.
Halt Location : C:\Projects\Diablo2\Source\D2CMP\SRC\Codec.cpp, line #1627 Expression : Error decompressing sprite
This is caused by a corrupted graphics file inside the mpq. Sprites are the single 2D pictures of which almost everything (besides spells and missiles) is constructed.
Decompressing these files seems to be a more instable routine of the game, which causes this error a lot. Since it could be any file which is corrupted you encounter the error either always with the same character's equipment and animation, or always on a certain location, or everytime a certain kind of monster should be drawn on the screen. When everything other fails the only solution is a new CD or a new CD-ROM drive.
Or both.
In either case a fresh installation is recommended
Credits
- Isolde
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