So Although I know many here are most likely purist I'm going to suggest with D2R coming out that the mod moves into a different direction to stay alive. I think that you should if anything port it forward. They have the advance stats but you could do things that many requested in the D2R polls. You could add separate charm inventories and new skills and rebalancing. You already have the mercs almost completely rebalanced and plans to add more. Now if you go too far with recipes you may become another cool but short lived mod that is fun but maybe not taken seriously. You could probably add a few recipes to help things along like being able to remove a gem without destroying it for example. More QoL things. And of course if D2R keeps that stupid no rune words from ladder in single player or no uber uniques add those. You should go with it in that direction to keep people wanting to play your mod and not have it disappear. This all looks so professional and it would definitely be the smarter way to go. You initially may have wanted the game to look better but with D2R coming out that will kill this mod if you continue in that progression. Instead look into those polls and give people what they wanted near the beginning of the release and this mod would take off! Another thing I would suggest is again in the D2R polls many wanted to see that the cow portal can be reopened and that the pindle portal remain throughout the whole game. I don't think the devs for the project are going to do this. So you could fill in the gaps for this new game version that is brining tons of people back into it. It has some of what people have suggested wanting here, some of what you were working on, but the direction you are in progress on for your updates is where the D2R lacks greatly and may never change since the original devs want to keep the game pure. Just a thought. Once you have been able to do that maybe end game changes or content additions to make it pop over others. Again this mod and website looks really well done. It looks very professional so please don't let it die.
Also reading through others suggestions the special items for a specific quest isn't bad but the idea of alchemy as a profession. There is an amazing mod that was left dramatically unfinished if you wanted to explore this idea. It's called Rebirthe. It is such an amazing idea. You wore a ring or placed it in your inventory/cube to hold onto it where you added a scroll to beginning the level for different professions from cooking, alchemy, crafting and such. Then recipes, new and old in the game, were inhibited by not only ingredients but by the cube and profession level. Every recipe you did gave you an xp flag. you placed the xp flag and ring into the cube and it gave xp. This also made each profession boost some in xp. Once one or more of the professions or the cube level itself reached the necessary xp to level up you need were given a recipie needed to level them. Very cool idea. It was continued with mathematics and insight where mathematics core was for giving you an item needed for insight but both sections were greatly unfinished... The insight was cool because there were items with tons of secret recipes and instead of telling you the new ones the insight was suppose to counter this. You could add the item and two others, and of course with the require insight level, you could produce a purpose card. You could read it, keep it or whatever but it told you what the item all could be used for recipe wise and how to make it. So if you decided to move in that direction I strongly recommend you look into this mod and talk to the creator if he is around anymore about it. I attached the manual file that was included with the latest rebirthe mod download. It's his documentation for the game. It is very cool and worth a look. To me one of the most ingenious designs from original D2.
Manual.txt
