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Incline Diablo 2 - a write-up

octavius

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After more than four months :negative: I finally completed Diablo 2 with all seven classes on all three difficulty levels, using patch 1.09. I think it's worth more than a quick posting in the "What game are you wasting time on" thread.

I have some vague memory of completing Diablo 2 Classic (that's the base game without the expansion) on Hell difficulty with the Barbarian (Whirlwind build), and that I lost steam when trying the same with an Amazon (bows) when the expansion came out. I remember the ice caves, but I don't remember ever fighting Baal and his waves of minions, nor using any Runewords.

Speaking of Runewords, how they are implemented is very lame indeed. With one exception there's abosulutely no way of deducing any of them in-game, so instead you have to rely on online sources which are not always reliable (I wasted the highest Rune I ever found, an Um of item level 47, trying to make a Duress Armour). Wouldn't it have been much more fun if you first needed to find a recipe and have it in your possession before make a Runeword, at least in the SP game?

And speaking of Runes, even with seven characters I never once found any of the high level (49-69) ones! That's crazy. Reminds of the chance of observing Proton decay...

Of the seven classes I'd say the Necromancer (Amplify Damage + Corpse Explosion for crowd control, and Lower Resist + Bone Spirits on bosses) was overall the most powerful, but also the least fun (as in too much micro management) to play. He was the only one who dared go up against Hell Nilathak (he's more scary than The Ancients). He was the one having the least problems with the Hell Ancients, thanks to them thankfully ganging up on the Golem while Abracadavra cast Lower Resist and spammed Bone Spirit.

The Amazon was more unlucky in that they ignored her Valkyrie, so she died thrice (twice due to getting stuck on the "furniture). With the exception of the Paladin the rest of my characters beat the Hell Ancients on first try.

The Paladin (Zeal + Fanatacism) was easily the weakest of the seven characters for soloing the game, with neither any meat shield to summon or good ways of crowd control. He was the only character I had to "cheat" with, in order to get past The Ancients. He had to borrow some gear from other characters to get a damage reduction of 31% and I cast TP at once if any of The Ancients had Curse or a nasty aura like Freeze or Conviction.

The Assassin was very powerful thanks to Phoenix Strike which works like Frozen Orbs and is wonderful for crowd control agains all monsters that are not Cold Immune. And she can summon a meat shield. She ripped through those stupid cows like they were made of paper, while the Werewolf Druid really struggled.

For those interested here's screen shots of my winning characters and their gear.
I'd like to see others' characters, but only more or less "untwinked" ones, with no bought items.
I did no "farming" myself, except running twice over a couple of Hell bosses near Wat Points, and my Necro doing about 20-30 Pindleskin runs just to try it. It left me feeling dirty afterwards, and with no new useful items to show for the effort.

Amazon


Assassin


Barbarian



Druid



Necromancer



 

octavius

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Many.

I completed the following sets:
Arctic Gear (my Amazon used for a while, until Nightmare Kurast)
Berserker's Arsenal
Cathan's Traps
Cleglaw's Brace (my Druid used it for a while)
Infernal Tools
Isenhart's Armory
Milabrega's Regalia
Sigon's Complete Steel (very nice bonus with +30 IAS on the gloves, 50% MF on the boots, massive boost to Attack on the Helm, and 10% Life Leech combined, which I used to the end of Hell. Shield is not bad either, but the whole set is not worth it.)

So I completed 1/3 of the Sets. Not very encouraging...
 

Gregz

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Playing vanilla without multiplayer or mods isn't very satisfying, as you mentioned, it puts you at the mercy of an RNG setting that's tuned for multiplayer.

There are so many build opportunities lost when you can't trade with other players, or craft/farm your own gear.

That's why I always recommend mods like Median XL, or playing LoD online after you've capped your level.
 

agris

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octavius how familiar with D1 are you, and if familiar how do you compare the D2 experience vs D1? I realize this is very much an apples vs oranges situation but I’m curious.

D2’s runewords and crafting felt very Skinner box to me, while missing the dark gothic art and freeform character development of D1 (ie warriors who can cast apocalypse and no class-gated gear).

I’ve played a decent amount of D2 SP, although not completed it to my recollection, and it felt pure garbage as compared to D1. I saw the spark when playing D2 in MP but it was a temporary thing, it became a grind after a bit with uninspired itemization and class-gated gear.
 

octavius

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octavius how familiar with D1 are you, and if familiar how do you compare the D2 experience vs D1? I realize this is very much an apples vs oranges situation but I’m curious.

D2’s runewords and crafting felt very Skinner box to me, while missing the dark gothic art and freeform character development of D1 (ie warriors who can cast apocalypse and no class-gated gear).

I’ve played a decent amount of D2 SP, although not completed it to my recollection, and it felt pure garbage as compared to D1. I saw the spark when playing D2 in MP but it was a temporary thing, it became a grind after a bit with uninspired itemization and class-gated gear.

I love Diablo 1, and I've finished it several times with the Warrior, and at least once with the other classes, even one of the "hidden" classes.
D1 has better atmosphere, and better implemented shops, but apart from that I think D2 is superior in all other ways, with more options and more builds.

After completing D2 with the 1.09 patch I patched the game to 1.13 (PlugY doesn't work with 1.14) to test the differences. It looks like "the experts" that I've deried earlier were right in later pacthes being markedly more difficult than 1.09 on Hell difficulty, with monsters having more HP (and/or my character doing less) and doing more damage.
Since it's recommended that you start Hell difficulty with 1.10+ at about level 75 I toyed with the idea of taking my seven characters through Hell again, but it doesn't seem possible to use old PlugY'ed characters with a newer patch, and I can't go back to playing with no shared storage.
Overall 1.10+ seems more geared towards multi-player, while 1.09 was more balanced for SP play. I like the bug fixes (the LE + MS and Conviction aura+LE bugs in particular) and extra options of 1.10+, but not that it should be mandatory to grind and farm/trade for items to survive Hell.

So my next foray into D2 will probably be Median XL in some years' time.
 

Watser

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
...and im stuck with my amazon on lighting immunes in act 3 hell :negative:
I played a javazon recently and I found plague javalin to be excellent against lightning immunities. There are very few monsters resistant to both poison and lightning, but one worthy mention are the gloams in the frozen river which pops up at act 5 hell. For this, jab + mercenary solved it.
 

janior

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...and im stuck with my amazon on lighting immunes in act 3 hell :negative:
I played a javazon recently and I found plague javalin to be excellent against lightning immunities. There are very few monsters resistant to both poison and lightning, but one worthy mention are the gloams in the frozen river which pops up at act 5 hell. For this, jab + mercenary solved it.
My merc keeps dying even though he has maxed resists, good armor, insight. Its just I couldnt find a life leech helmet for him.
Valkyrie is nice for tanking but she really doesnt do enough dmg.
I really regret vendoring all the good bows I found doing mep runs on nightmare, couldve respec into some other elemental bow skill and deal with lighting immunes that way.
Ill try throwing some plague javs and running around in the circles for 5 minutes, could work.
 

Watser

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May 8, 2014
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
...and im stuck with my amazon on lighting immunes in act 3 hell :negative:
I played a javazon recently and I found plague javalin to be excellent against lightning immunities. There are very few monsters resistant to both poison and lightning, but one worthy mention are the gloams in the frozen river which pops up at act 5 hell. For this, jab + mercenary solved it.
My merc keeps dying even though he has maxed resists, good armor, insight. Its just I couldnt find a life leech helmet for him.
Valkyrie is nice for tanking but she really doesnt do enough dmg.
I really regret vendoring all the good bows I found doing mep runs on nightmare, couldve respec into some other elemental bow skill and deal with lighting immunes that way.
Ill try throwing some plague javs and running around in the circles for 5 minutes, could work.
Yeah I had merc issues as well, especially to ranged monsters nuking him before he even arrived. I had 20/20 in posion/plague javelin since I played a dedicated hybrid, so it will probably require a rather large investment if you dont have a bow backup for cold arrow. There are some pretty good, and cheap, bow runewords iirc.
 

ciox

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Feb 9, 2016
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I'm impressed you cleared Hell with all 7 classes so quickly. It took me a few years on and off just to clear with a lvl.83 paladin, not sure if honorable or just bad but there it is.
https://i.imgur.com/DDvsRQ4.png

And speaking of Runes, even with seven characters I never once found any of the high level (49-69) ones! That's crazy. Reminds of the chance of observing Proton decay...
The metagaming aspect of D2 is extreme, just like you need to look up runewords, you need to look up the best areas for looting runes, and the non-cheat tricks that improve the odds. Like using "/players 2" to increase the game's difficulty and improve the drops including runes, and clearing Lower Kurast repeatedly when it's rune time. With that I was able to find runes up to Sur (lvl 61) without much trouble. At that point you can use cubing to make a bunch of runewords and even use some cool recipes like upgrading rares/uniques from normal to exceptional and elite.
 

ciox

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Oh, I remember some part of the reason why it took so long, D2 used to be a fair bit more extreme before the patches.
Oblivion Knights, Gloams, and some other stuff got nerfed in the past few years, making the game easier. Heck, the old Gloams alone pushed me to make a +123% lighting resist shield for the paladin, only to realise it was kind of superfluous after the patches...
 

octavius

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From what I've read, I think 1.10 was the most extreme one. It fixed the LE + S and Conviction+LE bugs (and other bugs), but it also significantly increased the stats of the Hell monsters. 1.09 can be completed with all classes at lvl 72 without farming or grinding, but apparantly that is much more difficult with 1.10 and I've seen lvl 75 being recommended for starting Hell. Also, I understand the damage from Fire Enchanted bosses dying could lead to insta kill, and was toned down in later patches.

So it seems to me 1.09 and 1.13 are the most relevant patches.
1.09 since it's more geared towards SP and there's no synergies, and thus a somewhat different experience that later patches. OTOH there's too many bugs, not so much fun stuff to do with the Cube, and very slim chances of finding high level runes.
1.13 since it's the newest patch that works with PlugY.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
Real niggaz remember when Lord de Seis had the Thieving mod and would make you drop potions at random AND he had Conviction aura.
 

Eyestabber

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Playing vanilla without multiplayer or mods isn't very satisfying, as you mentioned, it puts you at the mercy of an RNG setting that's tuned for multiplayer.

There are so many build opportunities lost when you can't trade with other players, or craft/farm your own gear.

That's why I always recommend mods like Median XL, or playing LoD online after you've capped your level.

Speaking of median, 1.40 patch notes were released today:

https://www.median-xl.com/changelog.php

Elementalist sorceress getting a late (but well deserved) xmas present!
 

Eyestabber

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Only ever finished vanilla D2 without the expac. Not sure what went wrong, but the last city feels "off". I tried proceeding the adventure many times and always gave up before the nithlarak reveal.

The pacing is awkward and bhaal feels like he is supposed to be the "funny" brother or something. Nilharak' introduction being "hey, I'm an obvious traitor" makes me care even less.
 

Gregz

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Jul 31, 2011
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The Desert Wasteland
Playing vanilla without multiplayer or mods isn't very satisfying, as you mentioned, it puts you at the mercy of an RNG setting that's tuned for multiplayer.

There are so many build opportunities lost when you can't trade with other players, or craft/farm your own gear.

That's why I always recommend mods like Median XL, or playing LoD online after you've capped your level.

Speaking of median, 1.40 patch notes were released today:

https://www.median-xl.com/changelog.php

Elementalist sorceress getting a late (but well deserved) xmas present!

Sigma is still garbage. They refuse to implement any kind of shared stash in order to trade between characters. Marco is a narcissistic megalomaniac who seems determined to destroy Laz's work. Thankfully the older versions are still available:

http://modsbylaz.vn.cz/

http://modianhelp.anhei3.net/MXLU_vXVc_Doc_v2.94/log.html#
 

Hobo Elf

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Feb 17, 2009
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Platypus Planet
From what I've read, I think 1.10 was the most extreme one. It fixed the LE + S and Conviction+LE bugs (and other bugs), but it also significantly increased the stats of the Hell monsters. 1.09 can be completed with all classes at lvl 72 without farming or grinding, but apparantly that is much more difficult with 1.10 and I've seen lvl 75 being recommended for starting Hell. Also, I understand the damage from Fire Enchanted bosses dying could lead to insta kill, and was toned down in later patches.

So it seems to me 1.09 and 1.13 are the most relevant patches.
1.09 since it's more geared towards SP and there's no synergies, and thus a somewhat different experience that later patches. OTOH there's too many bugs, not so much fun stuff to do with the Cube, and very slim chances of finding high level runes.
1.13 since it's the newest patch that works with PlugY.

Nah, Diablo 2: LoD got progressively easier with each patch as they nerfed enemies and added new more ridiculously OP runewords. I mean, do people remember when the game didn't have Synergies? Those were some rough times.
 

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