Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster

[Shadenuat]

the rain outside and all being shit made me inspired by llama to try something.
so I found a perfectly fine legal 1.09 Diablo 2 and tried it. sadly, problems: sound problem, and the loot tables: in this patch, mana pots are not in shops yet, but Blizzard made monsters explode in potions, so your inventory is filled with, in partcular, mana potions instantly

and so I decided to dial back time and installed 1.0
you can find it easily on utub by typing diablo 1.0 "classic", it worked no problems for me on Windows 10
I rolled a class which is considered the worst and I never played much: Paladin. named him Keldorn, equipped 2-topaz longsword, and killed Andariel (on her I had to use mana leeching 2 handed axe tho)

so, how did the loot and banalce looked on release? well, the loot system works wonderfully, ie IT DOESNT! you get shit:
- normal monsters drop like in Diablo 1. either nothing, or 2-3 gp, or quiver of arrows
- minions drop some gold, and potions (to keep you up after killing them)
- uniques drop usually 1 (one) blue item
- thru Act 1 I got 2-3 rings. 1 ring I got from Akara quest
- I got 2-3 yellows. 1 from Charsi
- and Luna Penata (artifact buckler)
- chests drop a lot so you want to click on chests, barrels, super chests, armor racks, etc.

everything is expensive. monsters drop cracked and broken shit. items in shops cost thousands of gold. a magical item can sell for less than scroll of identify

and, this does make a lot of sense. the game is quite packed with monsters, so you need very tight loot tables to keep player poor for at least a little while.
i was actually excited when I got +5 dex amulet lol.
i am stating in Energy. Godhelpme.

- mana potions are pretty rare, and yes don't sell in shops of course. because of that, I tried to stock up on them before Andariel, so I could use Charge on her freely. I use Zeal when pressed; Charge against difficult enemies, and, without mana, Sacrifice as level 1 skill for Paladin really does make sense.
i wonder if in day 1 of botnet ppl used mana pots as currency

the xp system. You get shit from whole act 1 and even cleaning tristram few times, I killed Andy at level 13. in current game, you can probably easy reach level 18 in end of act 1.

the skill system, probably unbalanced, but it has a peculiar design going through it; as if they wanted you to grab skills to help early (like elemental protection auras I might invest 1 point into each because lightning mobs are fucking devastating; Andy dropped 1 normie diamond thankfully, so maybe I will not die instantly on fucking beetles ) and then replace them with better versions or something like that. so no "perfect" skills, I am leveling zeal/charge/concentration but probably would grab some other skills because without easy access to resists it's painful.
it is paladin tho, they said he always was shite.

without access to powercreep stuff some monsters are incredibly dangerous. an ironskin monster or curse monster is already a bit of an issue. multiple fire shamans resurrecting each other, vampires seem to be behaving differently, extra strong/fast yeti and of course, an
exploding
buffed
hedhehog right on top of Inner Cloister portal was removed in Expansion, but I think that guy is great

I can only wonder how caster plays. Sorc has Warmth, so she's probably fine, but Necromancer... a caster Necro in 1.0 is probably the real Hell difficulty.

 

[A horse of course]

Titan Quest isn't generic, lol. Its setting is criminally underused and I can only think of 1 other game with the same premise for its setting - Age of Mythology. Yeah, the acts are a bit too long, but hey, they had a story to tell. I'd have skipped China and made Babylon a bit longer, but that's neither here nor there.

The mythological setting? Yeah, that's fine. But Titan Quest explicitly avoided using it because people might be offended by the concept of Greek gods and Greek Mythology(https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/why-is-titan-quest-so-bad.62700/). What is left is entirely generic

Wait le wat?

Who was going to be offended by what, and why? Wtf lmao.

Quoting from the thread

There seemed to be a constant fear during the development of Titan Quest about upsetting this or that segment of the audience or someone's grandmother. I was literally told by one of the higher-ups that the game should be designed so that his grandmother would want to play it (even though his grandmother had never played a game before in her life). We were building a game with relatively complicated and hardcore gameplay systems but trying to make it thematically and visually appealing to as wide a casual audience as possible. The end result, is that the game was a little more bland and generic in some respects than it should have been and the game world didn't do much to convey a sense of danger.

One example of this would be the mandate that enemies not use language or build anything that would make them seem like they had more than animal intelligence. It was felt by one of the higher-ups that people might feel wrong killing enemies that displayed any obvious intelligence. I guess somehow it is wrong to fight intelligent enemies but okay to slaughter dumb animals? We also weren't originally allowed to have humans die, ever, in the game and no human corpses.

One area where this handicapped us was in the creation of environmental assets that visually demonstrated the enemy's war against humanity. We originally wanted to create enemy siege-works outside Athens but were told that would make the enemies seem too intelligent. It was a struggle just to monster camp assets. All of the ruins were also removed from Greece at one point because someone was afraid that players might not understand why, if the game took place in ancient times, that there would still be ruins... I had to fight for both of these things. Without them, Greece would have just been a featureless expanse of wilderness with occasional human towns that never really appeared to be in any serious danger.

At the same time, we were told that enemies should seem like noble adversaries, not evil or demonic creatures. It was highly controversial when the designs for the Limos and Arachnids were first presented. I had to personally fight to get those approved because they were considered too grotesque and scary looking even though they were based on actually mythology. Undead and the Spirit Mastery were also a struggle to get in the game. I was told that Spirit Mastery was too "Necromancery and evil". We managed to push a few more things like that through over the course of development but it was always frowned upon.

Basically, my belief is that Titan Quest never had as much style and character as it could have because we were afraid to do anything even remotely controversial. When I first designed the skill masteries, they were all based on Olympian gods, with skills modeled after the powers or attributes associated with different gods in mythology. This was rejected because it was potentially too religious and people might not want to feel like they were worshiping mythological gods to receive their powers.

We ended up with a game set in Greek mythology that barely contained any actual mythology other than the inspiration for some of the monsters and dialog on peripheral story-teller NPCs stuck off to the side in the towns. The first quest I put in the game, when we were prototyping it for THQ was modeled after one of the 12 labors of Heracles. The Erymanthian Board was terrorizing a town and the hunters they sent after it hadn't returned. You had to ascend mount Erymanthos, discover the wreckage of the hunter's camp, and then continue on to the snow-capped summit to battle the monstrous board. Of course, I was told we couldn't have snow on the summit because people might not realize it snowed in Greece and then later the whole quest vanished and was replaced by generic crap like retrieving a dowry ring so some chick can get married while monsters are overrunning the world.

Sadly the original post from the dev was on a forum that seems to have been wiped.

This is sad and comical. I always thought it weird there was no sense of an actual, organized "war" on the part of the enemies.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

The scariest monster back in the day was one that had Multi-Shot Lightning Enchanted mods. Coldcrow and a lag spike are also a great tag team.

 

[ArchAngel]

I mean, the concept was very nice first time around, when they expanded in D2 it become questionable imo,

Yeah, I can't lie that D1 is simply more immersive.

This debate is so old.

They are both great games, play both.

Yeah, well, the which Diablo is better debate is old, but it just got...




Resurrected

Reminds me of Bg1 vs BG2 discussions. Luckily there everyone knows BG1 is better.

 

[jackofshadows]

Shadenuat yeah, great idea imo for a REMASTER would be to give the opportunity for people to play 1.0, the fucking classic version. Minus some bugs. Because D2 with all the loot in the world (set items etc etc)/rune words and the vanilla where you've had scrapped the most basic shit you could find and used traders a lot are two different games. Ironically enough, D3 shared the same fate but for the different reason: the auction introduction. They really overtuned the difficulty and fucked the loot tables over in general (Belial on Inferno... I still have nightmares about that). And in the patched D3 you're swimming in legendaries/set items even on basic difficulties, it really is a different game about different stuff (and no one cares about any act bosses anymore for a long, long time).

And yes, I remember even maxing warmth on sorc like a retard while necro gameplay was very weird, pain basically (at least no one around knew how to properly build him). But paladin was even worse although it was very subjective since we had so little meta-knowledge and I personally wasn't that big of a D2 fan/hadn't had the time to play 24x7 it anyway.

On this note, could anyone recommend me a mod for patched D2 which "fixing" loot tables for a single player experience? No twinks/fucking single player farm, just a casual road to hell. And remind me please about median: when were the breakpoint after which it has changed significantly for the worse, at least according to some people?

 

[Harthwain]

That's why I generally prefer D1 to 2. The concept of continually descending a dungeon until you reach hell conveyed a sense of real-time progression. D2's globetrotting epic felt a little unfocused in comparison and the sense progression was explicitly made due to the change of scenery in each act.

I always found the earlier layers of the dungeon to be the best. As soon as I hit earth-like tunnels and demonic areas the game gets significantly less creepy for me.

 

[Kruno]

Just a reminder:

 

[Hace El Oso]

I always found the earlier layers of the dungeon to be the best. As soon as I hit earth-like tunnels and demonic areas the game gets significantly less creepy for me.

Act IV of D2 did Hell much better.

 

[Desiderius]

I used to think D2 was better than D1, but a decade ago or so, I realized D1 is a more prestigious, tighter and atmospheric experience.

I think a big issue with D2 is that like 90% of monsters are fodder.

for people interested, here's some information that can show you how Diablo 2 basically killed itself (Diablo, the Scary Postapocalyptic Satanic Fantasy Rogue Game) in a way; later all these things went into diablo clones including PoE

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/bag4m6/diablo_ii_100/ how it played on release
https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo_2_R...which_diablo_ii_era_patch_you_liked_the_most/ people voting for versions
and importantly https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/bqah0p/diablo_ii_a_brief_patch_history/ the patch history

Personally I am interested in 3 things

1) Introduction of skill trees into Rogue game
In D1, anyone venturing into great Unknown, did it on similar rules - fighters and mages both were reliant on RNG to get weapons or spells. I think Divine Divinity 1 did something similar as well? With adding skill trees and "builds" the caster-type (regardless if its not even class who is caster or, say, still uses javelins to throw around lightning bolts) could run game neked
I guess wecan also discuss synergies: while they allowed builds, they also streamlined character building into less swiss knife and more 20202020 for +much damag

2) Mana potions to buy
but, some crazy grog dev made a strange decisions. you could't buy mana in shops. sounds weird? you get all these abilities but you are limited by what you find, or resting in camp or... wait, is that resource management, almost like memorisation in D&D?? time to actuallu put points into Energy mebbe??

https://youtu.be/H0nzwt8nyZc

but indeed, if your mana is limited, what if, say, you had to then carry a sword or bow when you're outof mana, or craft mana potions? in the end you regen mana very quickly, but early game would be a lot different. I am sadly too young to remember how it played although I did play game beginning with 1.0. played a lot of era when finding Windforce was like finding a grail

3) Enigma runeword.
I think there is a argument that Teleport skills should not have existed in game at all, because you basically hop over challenges. So, the great Equaliser. there are also rune words that give u barb shouts, etc. so now high level character can tele like a sorc, buff like a barb, run multiple auras like pal, and so on.

before usually it was sorc who teleported your party to farm things (could it be that some developers thought that players need to combine different classes to beat challenges? that did make sorc OP but hm, limited mana potions at least make it look a bit better), now it looks like: a bunch of super sayans, all buffed to stratosphere, teleport around, with buffed to shit faster cast rates, wiping whole screens of mobs. does this gameplay remind you of anything? yeah, welcome to the new pwn Era. it's all about muh BUILD

MUH BUILD is Fun but it's just one Fun. perhaps, an alternative timeline could have been made where there is also another Fun: limited resources, no (op)tele, classes need to cover up for each other, every class carries more weapons/tools, uses more skills.

Thankfully, after Diablo, I still played a nice single player game that felt like Diablo, had limited casting, and even open world where I could go at wrong places and die, and where it was difficult to just skip challenges.

because how could one skip

Spoiler

such a FLUFFY TAIL

First time I saw Diablo dude's playing it on his laptop in game store. Sorc of course. Was always on the edge of running out of mana and getting owned. So nervewracking just watching I didn't play it myself until a year later.

Nothing like it. It was like discovering Sabbath when you're eleven.

 

[Desiderius]

Are mods going to be possible at all online? A fix for the negrodin would be really nice.

The entire reason they removed TCP/IP support is so you COULD NOT connect to other people and play with mods. The ONLY WAY to play it is through Battle.net.

The only way to mod the game is single player, or somebody puts in a huge mod to add TCP/IP back in.

What are you talking about? I have the option in my game!

Spoiler

Lol that font. Drawing me back in...

 

[Desiderius]

Diablo was just Berserk Resurrected.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

D2 Hell was generic lava lake shit. D1 Hell being all flesh and bone was infinitely cooler and more original.

 

[Shadenuat]

Gameplay wise seals are wonderful tho. Lord De Seis shooting your ass, his minions cursing you with iron maiden (ha, very funny) and him stealing your items (later changed to making drop your potions on the ground. and then later completely removed hehe.). Very nice, grog 1.0 blizzard intern.

The most stylish location is imo slaughtered harem with music of lamentations of women on the background. well and some parts of act 3 temples full of corrupted priests and sacrificial pits all around.

Going through harem now armed with holy freeze and a halberd of vampire. awesome all powerful weapon: literally a magical halberd with stock damage, but 11% mana leech. that's it. got it from 1-eyed fella. very Diablo 1.
the rest of my items are like, helmet with emeralds, amulet with 6% life leech ( wow) , cuirass with +dex, gloves of dex, ring of +3 minimum damage (very good!), ring of +19 to life and fast run boots. (they just say "fast run". no numbers).
and most powerful item: rare belt from charsi with 2 resists. (actually good belt tbh, 2 resists + life; 1.0 rares are funny like that). I axe demons with zeal and charge them; switch between concentration and HF. I also picked Vengeance but here grog 1.0 designer missed the mark, it's too weak. I'd just make this skill replace most of your damage with elemental one entirely to beat stoneskins. Still p useful on ghosts and vampires though, Arcane Sanctuary is kinda harsh.

 

[agris]

It’s a shame there isn’t a 1.0-ification mod for fully patched D2, tbh. Based on the descriptions, I would play that.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Too bad they took away De Seis' thieving mod entirely, it was a pretty funny and likely very infuriating one. I could see it being a top shelf griefing technique in its original form but even if he just made you drop potions it would have been fine so no idea why they just completely kicked it. All the seal superuniques should have had a mod not found elsewhere. Would have been even better if they were also completely new, one-off monsters like the Minions of Destruction before Baal.

 

[Shadenuat]

no idea why they just completely kicked it. All the seal superuniques should have had a mod not found elsewhere

well you know, first drow matrons are not drawn by artists with 90s rock girls hair, then men drow get equal rights, and finally TSR says that not all drow are evil. many such cases

but afaik ability was buggy.

they say Hell Mephasto was Extra Strong,Fast, Cursed and even uhh teleport?
if my Paladin would ever get there, it would be interestng.

by hoarding rejuvination potions and upgrading my holy freezes, I kicked Duriel tonight. I outholyfreezed his holyfreeze. he dropped a rare Very Fast longsword with Enhanced Damage, Extra Damage Max, Bonus Lightning Damage, and extra Attack Rating. so now my paladin runs Act 3 with freeze merc, Zealing with a weapon which is close to damage to a 1-handed Pike but is also Very Fast. since enemies in 1.0 aren't very hp bloated, we look good. called Gale Bite. romantique~
I wonder if this is part of original itemization, where a "failed" unique turns into pretty powerful rare. part of it is also, that if you wear a unique no copy of it would ever drop? so I heard if you find 1 SoJ, that's the end (and after Manald and Nagelring, it's always a SoJ).

update. Keldorn from now one would be known as Sir Keldorn.
there was something right going packed in gothic plate (Rattlecage, sadly CB doesn't work on bosses), ye gothic helmet (Sigons) and with sword and shield kicking Evils butt. I also gambled some good gloves. the strict loot just means you mostly assemble your stuff at the very end of the game.

my strategy was to heavily invest into holy freeze, and 10 points into Charge, and Energy, to get good amount of mana (~150). With mana = mana pot you are not wasting any drops and I easily overwhelmed all the Evil by ramming it repeatedly like a mongol crusader - it's very OP, only act bosses are immune to stunlock from Charge. final level 26, stats 80 60 50 40 (p banalced), resists mostly capped (them 1.0 quadresist rare amulets I swear). 5 zeal to go through all the maggots which give xp, 10 charge, some 1's and 7 hf (i'd probably drop concentration and just go 10 holy frez, but maybe on higher levels 5-7 freeze 20 concentration for bosses would be neat.) Sacrifice is also viable skill imo, still not sure about Vengeance, but a few points can help maybe. hammerdin might be possible very late, not sure, needs a lot of Meditation or Redemption? getting mana through weapon damage to then cast spells might be a way for many classes - no synergies, remember. this makes some skills (Sanctuary lol) interesting places to dump potential excess points (if leveling wasn't so slow that is).
not bad for a "worst class".

I tried to play game as un-abusive as possible to guess developers intent, and it was neat.

finally gambled mana leech ring on NM

Diablo 1.0 meta, it's interesting, it's more strategic, roots of D1 are very visible.

 

[Grotesque]

It’s a shame there isn’t a 1.0-ification mod for fully patched D2, tbh. Based on the descriptions, I would play that.

"I felt so much more engaged with the game"


D2 1.0 really seems fun (except for the bugs of course)

Spoiler

 

[Kruno]

The main part of his argument is that LoD took away a chunk of the difficulty out of early game and as a result it lost its role playing aspect because instead of danger everywhere and having too little resources that you have to scavenge you now simply run past things. Role playing aspects in base D2 would be frequently returning to town in order to heal and talk to townspeople, but also the immersion related to a lack of resources, such as mana, and scrounging for gold.

He also mentions that the Diablo 4 demo looked very simple to appeal to casuals and it is unlikely they will make it more difficult, just like end game D3 where it becomes a game of bigger numbers and nothing more.

I agree with the thesis of his argument, once you remove the difficulty of managing various resources it stops being an RPG and starts to become an action game.

 

[d1r]

Yeah, it really feels like as if the devs still had the Diablo 1 mindset when developping Diablo 2. Progress was much slower, every drop was kind of valuable, and it really felt like a journey from Act 1 to 4. Kind of funny how Path of Exile also started like Diablo 2 1.0 and ALSO became what is Diablo 2 LOD today but much worser with even more zoom and power creep.

 

[catfood]

How can I get D2DX to work with Plugy?

I have found this link https://bestofcpp.com/repo/bolrog-d2dx where it says that I need to "copy the included "D2DX_SlashDiabloHD.dll" and "SlashDiabloHD.mpq" into your Diablo II folder", but I can't find those files anywhere in the archive.

 

[Grotesque]

no short skirts allowed!

 

[Kruno]

How can I get D2DX to work with Plugy?

I have found this link https://bestofcpp.com/repo/bolrog-d2dx where it says that I need to "copy the included "D2DX_SlashDiabloHD.dll" and "SlashDiabloHD.mpq" into your Diablo II folder", but I can't find those files anywhere in the archive.

https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx

Installation
Copy the included "glide3x.dll" into your Diablo II folder.

Note that in some cases you may have to also download and install the Visual C++ runtime library from Microsoft: https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vc_redist.x86.exe

Usage
To start the game with D2DX enabled, just provide -3dfx, e.g.

Game.exe -3dfx

Windowed/fullscreen mode can be switched at any time by pressing ALT-Enter. The normal -w command-line option works too.

Many of the default settings of D2DX can be changed. For a full list of command-line options and how to use a configuration file, see the wiki.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It’s a shame there isn’t a 1.0-ification mod for fully patched D2, tbh. Based on the descriptions, I would play that.

"I felt so much more engaged with the game"


D2 1.0 really seems fun (except for the bugs of course)

Spoiler

 

[catfood]

How can I get D2DX to work with Plugy?

I have found this link https://bestofcpp.com/repo/bolrog-d2dx where it says that I need to "copy the included "D2DX_SlashDiabloHD.dll" and "SlashDiabloHD.mpq" into your Diablo II folder", but I can't find those files anywhere in the archive.

https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx

Installation
Copy the included "glide3x.dll" into your Diablo II folder.

Note that in some cases you may have to also download and install the Visual C++ runtime library from Microsoft: https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vc_redist.x86.exe

Usage
To start the game with D2DX enabled, just provide -3dfx, e.g.

Game.exe -3dfx

Windowed/fullscreen mode can be switched at any time by pressing ALT-Enter. The normal -w command-line option works too.

Many of the default settings of D2DX can be changed. For a full list of command-line options and how to use a configuration file, see the wiki.

Yes I know, the vanilla game works like that, but I want to play it with Plugy. When I write in the -3dfx line in the Plugy config I get an error on launch. I assume it's because I have to have those .dll and .mpq files, but I don't know where to get those from. They aren't in the D2DX archive.

 

[JamesDixon]

How can I get D2DX to work with Plugy?

I have found this link https://bestofcpp.com/repo/bolrog-d2dx where it says that I need to "copy the included "D2DX_SlashDiabloHD.dll" and "SlashDiabloHD.mpq" into your Diablo II folder", but I can't find those files anywhere in the archive.

Try this one instead.

https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx/releases?after=0.99.410