Game News You can't have too much Diablo

[Paula Tormeson IV]

You can't run in original Diablo. That game has not aged well.

You also can't escape enemies as easily in Diablo, since you can't run, which makes it more interesting.

And there aren't large wide open outdoor areas.

Diablo II was clearly developed to be mainly a multiplayer game. The original Diablo was mainly a single player game.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Every decent D1 mod had running in town + teleport, and I would manually add an infinite use teleport skill to my character anyway, so thats really a nill factor in determining whether I would play hellfire. But it sounds like it would be worth it for the new dungeon's and/or enemies at least. I'll find a way to not remove it from an inventory sometime.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I'll find a way to not remove it from an inventory sometime.

isn't Hellfire an unofficial mod?

 

[Sceptic]

It's status is... undecided. Blizzard authorized it, so that makes it official. They have since refused to acknowledge its existence and just pretend it doesn't exist, which is made easier because they didn't develop it or even publish it. However it was available through regular retail channel (this was Sierra at their peak after all), so I guess it's about as official as it can be for something not made by Blizzard themselves.

 

[Xor]

Just like the zelda i-cd games.

 

[Zeus]

Just like the zelda i-cd games.

Only, Blizzard can blame Sierra for Hellfire, while Nintendo has no one to blame but themselves.

 

[Satori (original)]

Every decent D1 mod had running in town + teleport, and I would manually add an infinite use teleport skill to my character anyway.

What mods were they and how did you do that?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Every decent D1 mod had running in town + teleport, and I would manually add an infinite use teleport skill to my character anyway.

What mods were they and how did you do that?

http://www.guardiansofjustice.com/diabl ... ilemod.htm

I used the Abysmal mod, which adds a bunch of items, monsters, and generally makes the game a bit harder (but also removes stupid things, like some random shrines or monsters that permanently damaged your character). That said, the actual difficulty increase is vastly overstated in the readme. Its harder, but not the lolureraped that the author implies.

To edit characters, get the doomgaze hack here and you can give yourself an infinitely castable no cost teleport and town portal.

Keep in mind that most diablo mods only work with v1.07.

 

[Satori (original)]

Cheers mate.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Let's not forget that Diablo is as hard as you make it, that's without mods. The faster you play through it, the harder it is, and there's naturally a point at which it becomes impossible. You can usually skip a few levels and still beat the game, but that's about the best ordinary players can do without huge luck.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Yeah, but standard D1 was pretty easy unless you REALLY cut corners. As long as you made sure you did all the quests and cleared out the (relatively small) levels, you were almost always prepared for the next area. Its not like you ever reach a floor where its required that you grind 10k monsters to have a chance. It may simply be a stiff challenge that requires you to adapt your tactics a bit or change your equipment slightly for better resisting a certain attack.

D2 takes this ease to new levels of course, where even a drooling retard could complete normal difficulty, even nightmare became piss easy as long as your build was mildly focused on SOMETHING (even if it was a melee sorceress or whatever). You know its bad when a game entirely based around item farming is easy enough to be beaten by a character wearing absolutely nothing.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

I've downloaded a few Diablo mods, but I always end-up just stomping through the vanilla. Cutting corners, as much as you can, is what Diablo is all about for the real veterans. 80% of the time it's not at all difficult to find the stairs that lead to the next level. Usually you find yourself backing up a bit at some point, because after skipping four levels in a row, the next level usually turns out to be too tough to even skip. But it's extra fun when you can kill SOME monsters in such a level before running out of red-drink (and your gold if you're feeling especially adventurous), because the amount of experience you get from killing creatures far above your own level is huge AND they might drop something really cool.

 

[PlanHex]

I think there's a trick where you start a game in nightmare or hell with a lvl 1 char, kill a single goblin and BAM! - instant lvl 14. Worked best as rogue or sorcerer, because you don't wanna get too close and get insta-killed.
Might have been a multiplayer-only trick though, cant remember...

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

You can't start a game in any other difficulty level than normal in single-player Diablo, except through a trick where you make a 20 lvl character, or whatever allows you to start a multiplayer game on nightmare, then start one, stop, return to the mainscreen and start (or continue) a single-player game instead with one of your single-player characters. The single-player is now on nightmare difficulty as long as you don't exit the game.

P.S. You can't start a multiplayer game with a one-level character on nightmare, but through this trick you can start an SP game on nightmare with a one-level character.

 

[Jim Cojones]

You can play nightmare/hell in single player if you have Hellfire installed.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Doesn't Hellfire make the game buggy? What is the version of your original Diablo with Hellfire installed?

 

[Sceptic]

Hellfire is weird because it sets Diablo to version 1.06 or some such, which isn't the latest version of the game. And then it adds its own patch which branches away from the vanilla Diablo ones. I did not encounter any bugs with Hellfire installed and patched but there's probably some of them still lurking in the code if you go this route.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Apparently there is a diablo: Hellfire mod that fixes things up.

http://www.thehell.narod.ru/main.html

Wouldn't think people would still be modding this, but the fuckers released a new version last month. They also appear to still live in the 90's when you needed to split a compressed file up into multiple downloads. I'm going to try it.

 

[The Exar]

Apparently there is a diablo: Hellfire mod that fixes things up.

http://www.thehell.narod.ru/main.html

Wouldn't think people would still be modding this, but the fuckers released a new version last month. They also appear to still live in the 90's when you needed to split a compressed file up into multiple downloads. I'm going to try it.

I've played The Hell mod and it is fantastic.

Here are some of the features:

-severely increased difficulty;

-a lot of new monsters in every area of the game;

-improved AI;

-a lot of new items;

-balanced character progression - you should be doing your best to pass some areas. And that's just on Normal. As the creator says, Normal is just for warm up. Nightmare difficulty is hard and Hell is recommended for a party.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

They also appear to still live in the 90's when you needed to split a compressed file up into multiple downloads. I'm going to try it.

You can't get more 90's than this

 

[Overweight Manatee]

My thoughts so far on The Hell:

Item's stat requirements were increased a bit too much, and strong stuff drops WAYYYYY to early. Case in point, the first weapon I found on dlvl 1 required something like 60 strength and 40 Dexterity. That means it would have taken me a minimum of like 10 levels putting points into nothing but STR and DEX to wield it. Even now, I'm in the catacombs and my character is level 13. No way I can have any hope of wielding this shit that's dropping with 130 req strength/magic/dex. Leather fricken armor should not require a 100+ strength hulk to wear.

This also applies to spells. 45 Magic to cast Town Portal is a PITA, though eventually you can get most of the magic from items if you want nothing more then the low level stuff.

Items sell for way too little. Even the strongest item that's like 20 character levels beyond me sells for 1/100th of what any random magical item in the base game would be worth. We're talking hauling back a full inventory of items and getting a total of around 150 gold. Keep in mind that to buy a single potion (which restores about 20-40% now), you need 100 gold each, and identifying an item costs 100 gold each. If it weren't for the fact that my assassin has identify as a character skill, I would be broke. As it is, I've been able to buy one (1) item so far and I'm almost halfway through normal difficulty. And that item was just to boost my magic stat so I could finally cast Town Portal and Heal... also I found this Fury spell that temporarily increases my strength, dexterity, and vitality which is pretty damn awesome. Too bad it doesn't count for equipping weapons.

I think playing a full caster would be murder. It seems like 95% of enemies are immune to at least magic and lighting, with a resistance to fire. There are a lot of triple immune enemies as well. Do they expect sorcerers to melee or something? Regenerating magic is nice but if they are immune you can't really do a thing.

Some/most the quest bosses are ridiculously overpowered. Butcher has something like 8k health and will pretty much one shot me half the time even now when I'm at level 13 with over 180 health. He also spawns on dlvl 1, that's just evil. For comparison, the base butcher has like 100 health and might do 15 damage, spawning on dlvl 2. The random unique bosses are pretty well balanced, though. Very tough fights, having about 3x the health and 2x the damage and a strong horde behind them. Guaranteed strong magical drop too (though keeping in with my previous complaint, it usually ends up TOO STRONG).

I don't like some of the sounds and music that were taken out, but I believe this is actually Hellfire's problem so I can't complain. At least the footsteps should really be added back in, that can't be too hard.

Other then that, it is indeed pretty awesome. I just think that not being able to buy much stuff and the equipment problems tilt the balance against certain classes a bit too much. In fact, I think that if I had been playing anything but the Assassin I would be having much, much more troubles then I am now. Their dual wielding makes you incredibly strong even with sup-par equipment.

 

[Serus]

Yeah, but standard D1 was pretty easy unless you REALLY cut corners. As long as you made sure you did all the quests and cleared out the (relatively small) levels, you were almost always prepared for the next area. Its not like you ever reach a floor where its required that you grind 10k monsters to have a chance. It may simply be a stiff challenge that requires you to adapt your tactics a bit or change your equipment slightly for better resisting a certain attack.

D2 takes this ease to new levels of course, where even a drooling retard could complete normal difficulty, even nightmare became piss easy as long as your build was mildly focused on SOMETHING (even if it was a melee sorceress or whatever). You know its bad when a game entirely based around item farming is easy enough to be beaten by a character wearing absolutely nothing.

Maybe because Diablo 2 was a multiplayer game meant to be played... in multiplayer (on a Battlenet REALM preferably) and on HELL difficulty level 99% of the time ?
The single player mode for Diablo 2 (unmodded) always sucked terribly anyway.
It doesnt make sense - i know. Ask Blizzard why they deicided to add TWO levels of difficulty and forced you to finish them before starting the game. A simple "start new game" [in big shiny letters on main screen] option is the usual choice of most developers.

 

[Wise Emperor]

Diablo I was masterpiece.

Diablo II is shit.

Diablo III will be shittiest shit ever.