Well, as I said there, there's more info than appears, that floating
banner on the left contains all of the readme, in a couple different
forms, once you click on it. And it *isn't* an independent install, as
a matter of fact it works better than any other mod I've tried, in
that the installer loads a changer into your start menu programs file,
which you use to change to and from the mod. Like I said, I've only
made it to the first (viable) WP with each of two characters, a
Bowazon (of course) and a Druid, but ...

Well, first let me put a little spoiler space, in case some people
*don't* want to know what's coming

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Ok, that should be enough. You start out with a cube, 3 (I think)
Horadric Scrolls, and a huge stone that you *have* to put into the
cube, otherwise you're not going to have any room to pick anything up.
You *also* have to transmute it, else you won't have much room in the
cube, but you want to, as the Tome of Revelation in the new town tells
you (no stash in town (more on that in a bit), two shortcuts to a PvP
area that's otherwise empty, and shortcuts to the new Graveyard and
the Underground Passage (I'm *pretty* sure that's standard, it says so
in the readme and the Druid found it, even if the Bowazon didn't, but
I may not have been clicking in the right place with her)), but you
want to, as that gives you your starter set (both of them have had one
item that requires level 14, but when you have the full set it gives
you some really nice bonii, including plus 1 to all skills).
Definitely read the Tome of Revelation, it tells you how to make your
personal Teddy (remember him from Hellfire?) add another 1 to skills.

The minimum players is set at 13 (in other words, that's the default),
and I haven't tried setting it to the max, which is players 20 (not
sure if you have to type that or players 8). The Bowazon did *not*
find the Den by the usual method, following the path to where it
branched, but the Druid did, so I'm not sure if that was a deliberate
change or just a fluke. Either way, the Den was the area that gave the
Bowazon her first death (which you *do* lose experience for even in
Normal, but it's coming so quickly at that point that it wasn't even
noticeable), she almost immediately ran into two Shamans (Shamen?) and
the -25 res all (-20 to fire for her at that point, again one of the
starter items had given her +5 to fire resist, which I think the Druid
got, too) was too much for her (well, that and trying to figure out
how low her life was with the new graphic, but I've gotten used to
that by now). Backtrack a hair: She'd followed the path to the Cold
Plains WP, and found out that it was one way: the WP normally there in
the list says Tristram, so you can go through it to go back to town,
but you can't go back. Ok, back into the Den: Corpsefire drops about 6
unique small charms, which must be because of the players setting,
since you can only pick up one. Do *not* waste one of your ID scrolls
(more on this in a sec) on this, you don't need to in order to follow
the directions given to you in the Tome of Revelation.

Ok, scrolls: The readme tells you that Tomes are unbuyable, but unless
I read it wrong it doesn't tell you that neither are scrolls! You
start out with 8 ID scrolls and 2 TPs, and so far there have been more
than enough TP scrolls dropping so that this hasn't been a problem,
although I can see that if the game goes through one of it's dry
spells it could be. The Druid managed to get a Tome of Identify out of
a bookcase in one of the huts in town (if it was there for the Bowazon
I missed it, and there are at least two chests in town (one locked for
the Druid, which is how he happened to be checking inside the hut
again later)) but *he'd* already found the Stash, so didn't need it as
much (the Bowazon didn't, but I'm getting to that). The Bowazon ended
up selling a *lot* more stuff un-ided, simply because she'd not only
run out of room in the expanded inventory and cube but had also almost
run out of ID scrolls, and was saving the last one or two in case
something that looked *really* useful dropped before she finds Cain
(speaking of which, the Druid had a unique Short bow drop, but it was
*quite* disappointing, adding something like 200% damage to demons and
some to attack rating, and that's all).

Ok, the stash: The Druid managed to stumble upon this in the
Graveyard, after he'd offed BloodRaven (*believe* me, the Bowazon will
be checking there next game, I'd *thought* she'd cleared the entire
area but I may have been wrong, or she may have and just not seen the
stash (it *was* somewhere between 4 and 6 a.m. at that point), and I
immediately started drooling ;-) 1000 expanded pages, if I manage to
fill one of these up it may be time to quit the game. You can also
drop twice as much gold (which actually *is* colored gold, a nice
touch) in there as usual, and you don't lose gold from your stash,
apparently even in MP (I *did* try, I still can't connect to BNut,
even through their Realm), but by the time he found it he already had
more than it could hold, due to the unbelievable selling price of
throwing potions more than anything else. Needless to say he stashed
all of the blue stuff that didn't absolutely *have* to be IDed, it'll
only be another game or two at the most before he gets Cain (unless
there are some *really* bad surprises waiting in Tristram, with the
waypoint being there I'm expecting at least *something* different).
The only drawback I see to this, assuming (as I am) that it *is* in
the same place every time and the Bowazon just missed it, is that
you'll have to kill BloodRaven every game to be assured safe access to
your stash, but she's dropped a set item both times so far (Arctic
Furs for the Bowazon, Hzuaro's (sp?) shield for the Druid), so it
might be worth it.

Heh, this is turning into a hellaciously long write-up for a game that
I've only made it to the Stony Fields WP (which *is* two-way) in, so
I'll quickly cover the eggs that got the original poster in the other
group interested and then STFU ;-) Oh, wait, torches: right-clicking
on one of these makes the gold drops about 10 times better, and almost
every item drop is blue or better! It lasts about 2 (or 3? I don't
remember for sure) minutes, and the reason there's a tie-in there in
my memory is that one of the first items to drop when the Bowazon
clicked on her first one was a lower-egg shell. I've found a *lot* of
these, but not one upper-egg shell yet. Assuming one does eventually
drop, you put those two into the cube and transmute and you get a full
egg. The Bowazon *was* managing to run out of room, so when she'd
found 6 eggs she cubed them (10 of them gets you two dolls, 12 gives
you 3) and got a Qhual Keck (sp?) doll, which is almost as fun to play
with as the Teddy. The dolls are also necessary for a few cube
recipes, and somewhere you can apparently get a doll bag (like the gem
bags described in the readme, I'll have to wait until I get to Act 2
to get those, but with the stash being so huge I don't really see why
you need them), which can fill up, since the readme says something
about if you get a faded look the doll bag is full and won't have an
effect (?!?) any more.

Just a couple more things that occurred to me that I haven't covered:
The readme says you get 85 stat points to start, I guess that means
the starting stats, since there's nothing that you can add. You also
get one skill, on an item with the Druid but I think it was an actual
skill with the Bowazon, it was Inner Sight for her and Molten Boulder
(? the first elemental skill) for the Druid. You also get 8 stat
points and *2* skill points to add at every level, so things are
really flying along, even at this point in the game. Max skill levels
are 30, and there's an extra character level you can achieve, max 100,
and I think that's all and I *know* I've been talking too long so I'm
going to shut up now. If you're still awake after reading all this and
want to know more, I'll be playing them again in the usual rotation,
so only about another 8 games and I'll be ready to start another
couple-hundred-line report about the trip to the *next* WP.

Can you tell that I *really* like this mod? ;-)

ald
"Knowledge is Power"
VK`Sister`ald level 47 Rogue (HF V&K) (RIP :-( )
Matriarch Sis-West level 82 Bowazon (US West)
Champion RingsNThngs level 61 Bowazon (US West)
Slayer ZannEsu-ald level 51 Sorceress (US West)
Matriarch Sis-AR level 99 Bowazon (Ancestral Recall Mod)
Champion Creepy-AR Level 91 Necromancer (AR)
Slayer Zan-AR Level 79 Sorceress (AR)
Slayer SisEight-AR Level 78 Bowazon (AR)
Gems-AR Level 55 Barbarian (AR)
Matriarch Sis-otSEye Level 78 Bowazon (US West, co-op)
BtaSisEight-ald Level 50 Bowazon (LoD 1.10 SP)
Aragorn-AR Level 51 Zealadin (AR)
Champion LTwoSis-ald Level 79 Bowazon (US West Ladder)
CotSRSig #16