I still fail to understand how this makes balancing easier.
And save scumming as was possible before is *not* possible any more, it might not be something people would want to do, but there is a limited number of permutations, at some point all possibilities are exhausted (although it might take quite a while to exhaust them ;-).
Also, as my tests showed, it always requires different treasure tables involved, if you loot 5 barrels next to each other with the same treasure table, the outcome is always the same over all 5.
In all my playthroughs of EE, I don't remember mob (boss) drops that did *not* suck, except for the fixed stuff like the uniques. (And I'm pretty sure, I used a 'seed' ... ;-)
I used traders and crafting exclusively to gear up my characters. (Mostly crafting)
My opinion is still that the gear and gear boost system used in D:OS (and D:OS2 too?) is not really made for a game that has no continuation after the finish. As said before, it's a Diablo style system without the replayability of Diablo, which I consider necessary to make such a system work.
This 'defective system' was the reason why I greatly reduced the some of the possible boosts on gear in XC_Bags, which made the bad RNG - if seeded or save scummed - matter a lot less. Which is in my opinion the way to go for a game with a 'limited lifetime'. (Means, you cannot start over again with your built-up party and collect better replacements for bad gear with every new start. But then, I guess most people would go crazy if they had to do Cyseal again with a restart ;-)
