[Patch] Diablo: Hellfire Unofficial Patch 1.21 by Several Modders 2023-09-27

WARNING: THIS PATCH MAKES CHANGES TO THE GAMEPLAY, READ WHAT IS WRITTEN BELOW FIRST AND IF YOU AGREE WITH THE CHANGES, INSTALL IT.


The unofficial 1.21 patch for Diablo: Hellfire.

CURRENT VERSION: v1.21

New Bug Fixes
-Added bugfix for Berserk
-Flash bugfix
-Due to an error on my part, Fortitude and Permeance Oils weren't dropping in v1.11. This has been corrected.

New Features
-View normal monsters Current-Max HPs
-Exp shared in multiplayer
-Hacked dll no longer necessary for multiplayer

New Gameplay Features
-Diablo always drops an item
-Search lasts longer
-Disabled Griswold's "pack peeking"
-Reduced CL gapping at high levels

Unique Improvements (designed to encourage use or expand usefulness)
-Helm of Sprits: Life steal changed to 0-12.5% life (stackable)
-Ring of Magma: 10 Fire Hit Dmg, 10 Fire Arrow Dmg, +30 Hps added
-Ring of Thunder: Swiftness, 10 Lit Hit Dmg, 10 Lit Arrow Dmg added
-Ring of Mystics: +50 Mana added
-Bone Chain Armor: +25% ToHit, -20% Light added
-Demon Plate Armor: +30% ResAll, +50% ToHit, Stability added
-The Needler: Swiftness changed to Haste
-Sparking Mail: 15-15 Lit Dmg, 15% ResAll added
-Black Razor: Changed damage bonus to 450% with 450% "decaying" damage

Other
-Monk's "Lorric" speech has been changed
-Monk's "chow!" pain sound has been changed
-Plate Mail (again) looks like plate on the floor
-Breast Plate looks like Mail when equipped
(Undocumented Change in v1.11) Player ears can be right-clicked (like scrolls) to cast Resurrect.
(UC in v1.11) Spiritual Shrine has a new shrine message.

WARNING: Do NOT use Cornerstone of the World to transfer SP quest items to MP. Many of them do not exist in MP and may cause unpleasant results.
Thanks! again to Z&Z, Dr. Zed, Kp, and all the rest. As always, their modmaking notes and know-how makes this possible.

MISC. IMPROVEMENTS

Items
-Gold stacks in piles of 10k. (No more Auric Amulet, either)
-Runes of Fire and Rune of Lightning were junk treasure. They're gone now.
-Greater Rune of Lightning/Scroll of Nova and Rune of Stone/Scroll of Stone Curse were redundant. The two scroll types no longer appear.
-Oils of Sharpness and Accuracy were crap. They no longer drop.
-Oil of Permeance can now be found. It's fairly rare at qlvl 30, however.
-Peril no longer occurs on bows (It didn't work)
-Readiness affix no longer drops (It didn't work). "Readiness" on uniques is now "Swiftness"
-Long War Bow now has its proper graphic.
-Torn Notes 1-3 and Reconstructed Note were boring. They've been replaced with quaint trinkets.
-Splint Mail AC range was raised from 30-35 to 30-40. No item covered the 36-39 AC range, so Splint was the best candidate.
-Plate Mail's graphic is now different from Field Plate, just for variety.
-Field Plate AC range was raised from 40-45 to 45-55, so it's better than Plate Mail (42-50 AC).
Monsters
-Tomb Rat, Devil Kin Brutes, Hell Bats/Firebats, and the Defiler have been given different (more fitting) sound effects. High-pitched squeals do not a gothic atmosphere make.
-Lich and Arch-Lich death speed has been increased. They died too awkwardkly.
-Black Deaths no longer permanently steal HPs
-Advocates can appear on 15
Shrines
-Fascinating, Ornate, Sacred, Murphy's, and Tainted shrines no longer appear.
-MP Only: Mendicant's no longer appears. The exp cap would prevent you from getting full exp, which is not worth the gold it'd steal from high level characters.
-Shimmering shrine now appears in MP.
-Glowing Shrine has been banished to dlvls 1-4. +5 Mag/-5% exp was too icky to show up from a Cauldron or a Goat Shrine. This way you can choose whether to use it. Beware: Occasionally Goat Shrines show up on dlvl 4, and they could therefore be Glowing Shrine.
-SP Only: Gloomy and Weird shrines do not appear below dlvls 1-4. (They seemed fairly useless down there.)
Spells
-Teleport and Town Portal can be cast in town. Why TP, you ask? Portal Tag!
-MP Only: Resurrect is now a book, qlvl 4 (perspective: same qlvl as Book of Lightning)
-ID is now a book. Rejoice. ID book is qlvl 17, which should be extrodinarily rare in book terms. Adria can't sell it.
Town
-After reaching dlvl 14 or killing Laz, Cain no longer throws a scrolling textbox at you. These were the "This does not bode well..." and "Your story is quite grim..." speeches.
-Several players complained about Adria's "I sense a soul in search of answers" greeting. It has been replaced with a less annoying sound.

UNIQUE MODIFICATIONS
In order to fix a fatal combination of BlizzLogic and Sierra's utterly confused attempt at creating a functional unique item drop system, many changes were made to base items, qlvls, and even attributes.

- Full Plate Mail
Demon Plate Armor (qlvl 25) is now the only FPM.
Demonspike Coat (qlvl 25) is now Studded Leather. (Interesting, eh monks?)
Armor of Gloom (qlvl 30) is now Gothic Plate. Additionally, AoG no longer has 225 specified Armor Class. Instead, it has 75 AC and +200% AC. It must be ID'd for the 225 AC.
- Amulet: Amulets previously existed as two separate items with identical in-game characteristics. (They sold for the same amount unid'd, they had the same name, and they had the same graphic.) The two base types are now separate both in name and in graphic: Amulet and Necklace. The two unique Amulets are similarly separate. Amulet of Warding is a qlvl 20 Amulet. Acolyte's Amulet is a qlvl 8 Necklace.
- Bovine Plate no longer has 150 specified AC. It has 50 AC and +150% AC. It must be identified for the 150 AC. It's now Field Plate base, so it should be possible to drop in the dungeon.
-AC: This attribute was bugged. When left in town, the AC would rollover to somewhere in the neighborhood of 247 AC. Celestial Star and Gnarled Root have been given alternate curses, +2 DFE and +4 DFE respectively. Scavenger's Carapace now sports -100% AC.
- ToHit Bonuses: Many melee weapons gained a Qlvlx3 to Qlvlx4 ToHit attribute (based on original qlvls). Weapons that did not receive this modifier were those that had sufficient ToHit, those that had -Dex or -ToHit% attributes which would cancel out a ToHit bonus, and "channeling" weapons like Mindcry and Dreamflange. This should make uniques weapons viable (even desirible) for younger characters.
- New Graphics: Most uniques that lacked a unique graphic have been given a unique graphic.

RINGS
These were an absolute MESS. There were SEVEN qlvl 8 unique rings, two qlvl 1s, a qlvl 2, a qlvl 5, a qlvl 10, and a qlvl 11. On top of that, they were positioned in the code so wrongly that Gladiator's Ring (qlvl 10) would override Ring of Engagement (qlvl 11) despite the latter having the higher qlvl. This mess has been cleaned up.

The biggest problem with the unique rings was that all 13 rings used the same base type - "ring." This in and of itself is one of the most blisteringly idiotic ideas you're likely to see outside of "The Grandfather is a good sword" threads. Doubly so when you see exactly how easy it is to fix this.

In the code, there's not one but three types of rings - all identical. Like the two types of amulets, this trio of rings is the same in name, in graphic, and in unique item code. Unique item code is a data value that tells the game "Use this base type." Since there are three different types of rings, it's possible to assign each ring a different unique item code and create three distinctly different ring bases.

To help you see this more clearly, let's give these rings new names: Ring, Band, and Coil. (Bands and Coils have new pictures to boot.) We can spread the 13 unique "rings" onto these three base types more-or-less evenly: four "rings" to each base.

As you can see, the qlvls are tiered so each ring has a chance of dropping. This fix, however, required a tweak to the base types as well. "Ring" base type existed as qlvl 5, qlvl 10, and qlvl 15. To allow Bramble, Bleeder, and Regha to drop in normal the qlvl of Rings, Bands, and Coils was dropped to 1. This means you'll see a lot more rings in early church. In testing, the number of rings that showed up in late-game did not seem significantly affected. So all in all, it seems okay.

Note that the qlvls of the unique rings are not arbitrary. The qlvl 1's three are largely junk that deserve qlvl 1. The qlvl 11's aren't good enough to drop any deeper. The qlvl 21's are interesting, but not interesting enough. The 31's are the most powerful resistance ring, reading glasses, and ToHit modifier in the game. These puppies are what the Big Bosses deserve to drop.

But what about the 13th ring, Gladiator's Ring? It's gone. I'm sorry if you were fond of it, but I absolutely loathed it. I couldn't bear to see it again. It's been replaced by a new unique. I hope you enjoy it. Augenzwinkern

BOSSES
Egads, do we have bosses! More than a few bosses were on the "wrong" dlvl. That is, they were supposed to appear on a dlvl where their base type didn't. (e.g. Blacktongue, a Counselor, was slated to appear on dlvl 12. Counselors do not appear there.) These bosses have been enabled. Additionally, lots of boss slots were occupied by bosses belonging to monster types that don't exist. These boss slots were used to provide bosses in the Hive, Crypt, and one or two elsewhere.

BUGS: New and Old

NEW: Hork Demon began causing crashes at some point, so he's been removed. (I have a suspicion what the problem is, but I'd rather not fix it if it means un-doing one of the above changes.)
NEW: Hellfire: Fixed v1.11 does not drop Fortitude or Permeance Oils. This is fixed in v1.21.
OLD: The "classic" MS Bug (MS-No-Stun) still exists. Sorry.
OLD: Duplication bugs still exist. I'm no Dr. Zed, okay? Ätsch
OLD: Barbarian's Rage skill is still bugged.
OLD: Characters with 0 Magic will lose mana if they hit a Mysterious Shrine. Barbarians have been given 5 max magic as a "buffer" for this (other stats are unchanged).
OLD: In Classic Diablo, Blizzard created Deadly Hunter. It is, by far, the most unfortunately bugged bow in D1 and HF. Had its +200% Damage vs Demons affix worked DH would've been the Civerb's Cudgel of bows. If that wasn't insult enough, it was cursed by the God of Inept Unique Drops and became the rarest item in the game (next to Staff of Shadows). Bugged in functionality and nigh-impossible to drop, what can be done for it now? Well, let me tell you: Now its buggedness has been taken to whole new heights!! Can YOU spot the number of non-working affixes on Deadly Hunter? Find it and find out!