Are you playing old version? Level cap is actually 150, though you are not expected to go past 140.
They use 1.14 as base, meaning no PlugY - which is enormous drawback, especially since laucher has a bug where it only allows two instances and does not decrease the counter when you exit an instance. Dealing with TCP/IP twink inventory management makes me want to swallow a phone battery.
The mod is a ton of fun until you hit end-game content, which is mostly trash. Majority of end-game boss mechanics is just running away from either crazy fast or stationary cast-spam untargetable immortal adds, until you kill the boss or die. And if you die - you have to re-enter the game to try again, since most boss areas have level lock. Also, purple potions are not instant and can not be crafted.
They've done away with death penalty (both gold and exp) which is great. If I were a masochist - I would play hardcore in the first place.
Leveling until level 105 (Hell, Act 1, Andariel) is a breeze and is greatly enjoyable, and can be done in two evenings or less, and does not require any tedious farm at all.
Past lvl110 exp curve goes crazy steep, and leveling 110-130 (130 is the last new non-Samael area) might take over a week, and requires grinding same areas a ton.
Skill system is kind of boring. Most characters have exclusive skill branches where when if you pick one - it blocks most of the rest. Ex.: Amazon has five weapon branches and one neutral. When you go deep into one of the weapon branches - you block out the other four. Neutral is always available.
This is not that big of a deal, since it makes it more difficult for a newbie to fuck up and make a gimp. And most builds in this type of game usually stick to related adjacent skills anyway. There are respec potions too, but they are rare.
I've never played vanilla that much, but I've played a ton of Grapes of Wrath, some Zy-El and a bit of Eastern Sun. This one is by far the most well-developed mod. The game plays nothing like LoD. For some reason, they've removed champion monster packs, which makes no sense - hunting those bastards was always a lot of fun. There are some annoying bugs here and there, but compared to the amount of changes they've made, some minor jankiness is more than forgivable.
Tiered Unique system and related crafting is great, streamlines gearing until lvl100, and makes sure you don't burn out hunting Uniques during that period, until Sacred Uniques and Set Items begin to drop in Hell.
Farming eng game areas like Teganze and Fauztinville is utterly tedious though, and requires a speedrunning kind of autism.
And there's Ladder server (free) with a ton of people, by the way.
Overall - great mod, I just wish PlugY support was there and end-game had more originality to it.
