1) The damage-in-line system a little bit improved. Mages do less damage to creeps, and more to heroes and bosses. Those who played the older versions, and did not play in 1.0, remember that the imitation of attack itself was not very comfortable. During the cooldown skill that should replace the attack, if you right click on a unit, then the hero was sometimes walking to him. This has been fixed, and now the hero awaits cooldown in his place, and after the cooldown shoots towards the enemy. Just the same way as should be with normal attack normal attack. The only thing that I could not fix, is when the hero click an icon of a spell that requires a target or a point, at the same time casting his "attack", the target cursor gets "cancelled", and you will need to select the spell again. But do not worry, that's why there are hotkeys
2) Items have been fully replaced. Equip consists of new weapons, armor sets, and other items. No more restrictions on the carrying of weapons or items for specific classes. Hero can buy or carry absolutely any item. It remains only to restrictions on the wearing of identical items - a hero cannot carry identical items. And there are also restrictions associated with sets of armor. Read down more about them.
3) Weapons and other items (accessories) are crafted by combining bonuses. Merging item with bonus A, and item with the bonus B and paying gold, you get an item of bonus AB. Same bonuses cannot be merged for one simple reason - it is impossible to carry two identical items in the inventory. There are 3 levels of Accessories and, 4 levels weapons. Level 3 - 3 bonuses. 4th weapon bonus is the Socket, which is inserted into the weapon.
4) The first level of items is Normal, which has 1 item bonus. Their names are written in white. The second level is the Rare Items - items with 2 bonuses. Their names are written in blue. The third level is the Unique Items - Items with 3 bonuses. The names of accessories are written in yellow, and names of weapons - in gray. Third level weapons called Socketable, not Unique, and can be socketed by 4 of the following socket types: Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Amethyst. Socket bonus is the 4th bonus.
5) Socket bonuses: Ruby - 15 STR, Emerald - 15 AG, Sapphire - 15 INT, Amethyst - 5 to all stats. The Socket can be inserted by the same NPC as in previous versions, but now the hero can carry more than one weapon in his inventory, so when the player clicks on Socket,a dialog window pops up, where there is a choice of all the items (weapons), which are currently in the inventory, and can be Socketed.
6) Sets of armor available only on level 20. Hero of level below 20 will not be able to carry/buy such a thing. Their names are written in green. Collect a set that consists of armor, helmet, gloves and shoes, and these items will be merged into one item with the bonuses of all 4. This is the reward for collecting the set. And now about the restriction. If you've collected a set, what means that your hero has a Full Set Item (the name is written dark green), then you can not carry/buy an item that is a part of a set. The same thing is about the opposite, if you have items from different sets, and one of the sets lacks only one item to get the full set, then you will not be able to pick up/buy it, because you have items related to other sets in your inventory.
7) Added the Horadric's Cube (Storage or Vault or Stash). It is not visible to the player while the player himself does not "open" it. The Cube can opened by the D hotkey, or an icon in the orders panel in the (1,1) position, which of course, has a description that says, that this button opens the Horadric's Cube. This cube is needed to store items. For example, you have found an item that can be worn only at lvl 20, and your lvl is lower. But you still want to pick up this item, and use it later, when your lvl becomes 20. Or you have a similar item in the inventory, and you want to pick up the found item to sell it to a Merchant. So, the item does not go to you in your inventory, but goes into the Cube. However, if the Cube's inventory is full, you will not be able to pick up the item at all (it is referred to an item that currently can not be used by the hero for the reasons stated above).
8) The restrictions of the wearing identical items and armor sets DOES NOT APPLY to the Cube. In Cube, you can store the same items, as well as sets together with set parts. However, items stored in the Cube, cannot be merged or crafted, as well as 4 parts of a set WOULD not merge in one. Cube itself has an inventory, and can sell and pick items from the ground, but can not buy items from Merchants. It cannot move, but when a hero opens it, the Cube will always appear in front of the facing of a hero, and if there are items close to it, Horadric's Cube can pick them up. It will not follow the hero, but will stay where you had opened it (unless it was closed). If you are far away from the Cube, and suddenly you need it, you do not need to return to it. Just close it and reopen, and it will appear in front of the hero.
9) I was often asked to make creeps and bosses drop items. Well ... I did it! Bosses can drop any items, except for Socketed Weapons and Full Sets. Creeps do not drop items, but Mad Cows in the Cow Farm do. Cow Farm is a place, where you can get only by purchasing his Wirt's Left Leg. Mad Cows too, can drop any items, except for Socketed Weapons and Full Sets. But, these mobs give less exp and gold than creeps that are equal to them outside of the Farm. The reason I did it this way, is to make sure that players will not be always stuck at the Cow Farm, and will go killing creeps and advancing to the enemy base either
10) Many times people told me that STR based heroes were too strong, compared to AG and INT heroes, which was caused by the previous equipment system. It was limited to certain equip-builds, giving players not many choices. Well, for this purpose, I have changed all the items, which would give the players more freedom of choosing equipment and it would also balance the classes. And it worked. At this moment, the classes are more balanced than in the previous version.
11) The hero can buy or craft any item, but some items are not profitable to certain classes. For example there are items with +10 bonus damage, and items with a 25% damage bonus. 25% bonus damage works ONLY for archers. For melee classes it is not working at all. Archers initially high damage, so it is much more profitable to buy an item with 25% damage bonus, because it would give him more than 10 damage. Melee of course would by the +10 damage bonus, because the other one does not work for them. Mages don't need no +10 damage or +25% damage, because they do not have a normal attack. They have skills, that provide them the damage-in-line attacks. The damage of mages depends on the formula INT - HeroLevel - 10, so guess which Stat is most important to them