Diablo II General Information Thread - slap a Zod in that beast!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Diablo II General Information Thread - slap a Zod in that beast!

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Khorne: May 1, 2002

THE BAR posted:

So all it did was hitting those who weren't exploiting the system, fantastic.

There were legitish players who made goldfind barbs and cleared trav. Usually, as a real player you gamble for rings/amulets/circlets. Rares are 1/10 or so.

Gambling is one of those "best kept secret" things where it actually is useless for most builds and players besides burning off excess gold, but you could also do it legitimately and make a fortune if you focused on it hard enough. I've no idea how it compares to mfing or leveling, because I tended to just grind out chaos sanc and the areas where you slay stuff. I like playing the game.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Nov 14, 2018

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 20:08

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 21:09

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Star Man posted:

Jeweler's Monarch of...?

Equilibrium probably. Faster hit recovery. Charms and other items have this suffix.

Deflecting or Deflection (jmod) is block chance and recovery.

I don't know why I remember stuff from 10 years ago.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2018 22:41

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Star Man posted:

Those must be for dueling then. I'm a lame rear end softcore PvM kid.

They're good in pvm too when faceted but so drat expensive and hard to get that you usually just use something else or a 4os.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2018 00:51

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Star Man posted:

I typically just use a Spirit monarch.

Same, I know for pvm javzon and lit sorcs the socketed shields are great though. Not sure if the use jewelers monarchs or a different one in pvm.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2018 01:35

Khorne: May 1, 2002

manpurse posted:

I'm in for classic. Ill either go bowazon or hammerdin

Reset is in 5 minutes, you can whisper me on that server at: *gglok

edit: drat what a disaster. Server keeps crashing.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Nov 17, 2018

# ¿ Nov 17, 2018 00:55

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Star Man posted:

I'm putting together an LP for Diablo II. The plan is to get through all three difficulties with all seven classes. I'm playing on Battle.net ladder and am doing magic find runs (by following a bot around in a public game and leveling up a bit and picking up their scraps) in between certain points just for convenience. I have recorded videos of all of normal difficulty with a Zeal paladin so far.

Is there anyone that likes talking about video games in a recorded format and just loving loves Diablo II and can get together once a week-ish?

You can reach me at Star Man#4508 on Discord if you want to get in touch.

I'm up for trying this. I added you on discord, watlok#I don't know but you'll see the friend request. D2 is a difficult game to get into, or back into, in 2018 but once you get rolling again it's still pretty fun. Just there's this whole window of "dear god this game sucks more than I remember" until you acclimate.

I've been playing d2 classic since the reset on slashdiablo. I greatly prefer that server due to no bots and nodrop chance being 0% (8 players or 7 players is around 1% on officials, so it's pretty much like 8 player drops all of the time). If we did a let's play it'd be a nice play to do it in my opinion, but I'm down for officials as well.

I think I have working key sets, and I could for sure get an install that works on real bnet if that's where you want to play. I think the reset on bnet is soon. I'd even be up for hardcore at some point because it's exciting.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 30, 2018

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 05:54

Khorne: May 1, 2002

ZenVulgarity posted:

What's good in median xl

That mod is confusing as gently caress

Just make something and you can reset stuff later. Everything is decent for most classes. There was a giant list of builds pre-sigma on the forums. Maybe it's still there.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2019 08:07

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Julio Cruz posted:

Does Median (or PoD or any other mods) work on Mac? I had a look around their site but their docs seem to be non-existent.

PoD should. There's a guide there. And it works on linux.

Median who knows, their new release doesn't work on xp or vista which kinda means I'm having a hard time playing because I play d2 in an xp vm.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2019 07:21

Khorne: May 1, 2002

sevenflow posted:

PoD is back and I'm really happy. Were those D2 mod threads back in the day (like Eastern Sun) in this forum or the general forum? I sort of want to start one for PoD to get more folks interested.

PoD is pretty much diablo 2 patch 1.18.

Despite its name, it really doesn't deviate from LoD.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 01:37

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Sorc is the go-to but early levels are somewhat tedious. Dump points into charged bolt, fill your inventory with mana potions, grab static for bosses (and telekenesis/teleport if you're sticking with CB for a while), and slay away. Respec to blizzard later, making sure to dump synergy points into ice blast because it's great to spam in between blizzards. You can also optionally respec to nova at ~14. It's even more mana intensive.

The speed runners do charged bolt -> respec nova -> respec FO. Personally, because I tend to play with 4-8 players, I tend to go cb -> blizzard. If you spam ice blast blizzard is fast enough compared to FO.

With sorc, you're going to tp to town often to buy more mana pots. You're going to chug mana pots all the time for your early levels.

Gear-wise, you want stealth armor asap on pretty much every character. Lore helm, but you can temporarily use the highest rubies you have instead which is what I do in hardcore anyway. Insight polearm on mercenary.

The problem with other classes is they don't have teleport. Trap Assassin is also pretty fast without gear.

Hammerdin, Elemental Druid are both pretty solid with poor gear also, but sorc will go through the game the quickest.

I'd avoid amazon, probably avoid necro unless you really like it. You can magic find in cows with necro, especially if you're playing on a server or slightly modded game with nodrop turned off. Which I'd highly recommend for self found.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Mar 12, 2019

# ¿ Mar 12, 2019 15:14

Khorne: May 1, 2002

chaosapiant posted:

I'm in act 2 now, and focusing on a skelesummon Necro. One QoL feature I miss from D3 is that skeletons are auto summoned. My squishy necro is a very efficient killer when his summons are out, but I have to actually kill a few things first to get them. Makes the first 2-3 minutes whenever I log in pretty crucial. I do think that D2's punishment for dying was better than D3's. In D3 there is pretty much zero repercussion for dying, unless you play HC. Which isn't usually my bag when the game need an always online connection. But having to go retrieve my corpse to pick up my poo poo is a pretty good incentive to not die.

You can save+exit and just grab it in town.

Make sure your mercenary has decent gear and he'll get the first few kills for you. Mercs are stronger than summons.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2019 16:53

Khorne: May 1, 2002

BoonyPC posted:

I've been playing again for the first time in 10 or more years, up to nightmare act iv.

I'm playing a blizzard sorc and thought I would respec to add a bit more dex for max block. I have clicked something that's added all points to dex and wouldn't let me change.

I'm pretty much screwed until I reach hell now, right?

You held shift or control or some modifier key.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2019 13:58

Khorne: May 1, 2002

THE BAR posted:

Okay, Resurgence looks stupidly competent, I like that they've put an emphasis on area effect and cone attacks for those classes, that lacked them in certain situations. Paladins only having Zeal as a way to hit multiple things in melee has always been terrible, and they've changed the effective, but insanely boring Vengeance to an area effect.

Also, the new items looks like a nice mix of what's interesting in Path of Exile and Diablo 3's gear, excellent.

Resurgence used to be "Slash Diablo Events". They've been doing this vanilla but expanded thing for years, started over, etc, and overall it's competently done.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2019 16:06

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Slash diablo ladder is resetting on friday if anyone is down for playing some.

Instead of playing hardcore classic I might play softcore expansion. Or hardcore expansion if anyone wants to play that instead. Doesn't matter to me.

Slash diablo has no drop pretty much disabled so you get a poo poo ton of loot, 1p games are slightly better than 8p for drop rates. That means things that can kill cows are real viable for finding runes.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2019 03:48

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Vakal posted:

Path of Diablo is having a server reset on August 2nd.

I'd like to point out that despite its name it's actually more like Diablo II 1.20 than Path of Exile. Its name is a tad unfortunate, because it's pretty much 95% diablo II 5% some neat PoE features added in a very Diablo way.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 01:06

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Are there any mods that, among other things, rebalance rune drop rates to the extent that you can actually use the more interesting runewords without having to do 15,000 kurast runs?

On slash diablo nodrop doesn't exist so it's always like a slightly better players 8 in terms of drops. And rune drop was buffed significantly on official a few years ago. Those changes are present there. I only played to ~84 and a few high runes drop.

I believe a lot of people deliberately farm cows to get HRs early in the season there. Usually the big nerds have enigma before the end of the weekend.

If you're talking single player, there are probably edits to disable nodrop there for you.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Jul 31, 2019

# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 15:37

Khorne: May 1, 2002

soscannonballs posted:

Does slash diablo change skills at all?

No it's pretty much normal d2 except for the nodrop thing. It just makes mf easier and supports maphack.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jul 31, 2019

# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 17:06

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Audax posted:

I've been playing on slashdiablo for a week now. I have a lvl 70 light sorc that can effectively clear hell pit. My first nightmare Andy run dropped me a SOJ, and I found a nice HOZ and shako within my first 5 hell pit runs.

One thing I still do is run max block, because I spent a summer doing hc characters and the habit stuck.

The maphack is a really nice QOL for a 30something gamer that works 60 hrs a week. If I can't progress father I'll do a second char, either a summon necro or a budget hammerdin to get to hell Baal.

You can run up to 4 clients total there. So you could even rush yourself or use the hammerdin to clear immunes while playing the sorc otherwise. Just open a tp for the hammerdin, slam down some hammers, go back up, and then keep sorcing.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2019 02:24

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Im_Special posted:

Speaking of Maphacks, is there one that someone here would recommend me to use for offline play, (LoD v1.13d) + (PlugY v11.02) + (Glide3-to-OpenGL-Wrapper v1.14e) is pretty much how I play Diablo 2 nowadays, but I just wanna rush through stuff as fast as possible.

planqi's slashdiablo maphack works on 1.13c and 1.13d and is the best there is as far as I know. It's also open source.

Never use it on real bnet though you'll get banned.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2019 14:54

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Im_Special posted:

I just wanted something simple but after reading over all those QoL features... once I get used to some of those things I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to plain mode. Potions from inventory, Shift + Click item moving, my God.

So do I just drop the .dll into my install folder and that's it?

I think you have to run the injector after d2 is open, but there's also a way to get it to auto load that I never bothered with.

I just created a batch script that opens diablo 2 then waits a few seconds then injects.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2019 19:16

Khorne: May 1, 2002

soscannonballs posted:

Make sure you put it in a Polearm and not a Spear.

And double check because there are spear class weapons that have polarm names and pictures.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2019 00:11

Khorne: May 1, 2002

kazr posted:

Are there active hardcore d2 communities around?

When slash diablo ladder resets a bunch of people play. Botting is 110% not allowed, but the server has a sanctioned maphack.

Next reset is Nov 22nd @ 7pm. I forgot what timezone. I'd be up for playing and hopefully we can trick a bunch of other people into playing diablo2.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2019 06:02

Khorne: May 1, 2002

chaosapiant posted:

I'm thinking of starting a fresh Barb in D2, after playing a Paladin and Druid for a bit. I'm also playing the season in D3, so D3 barbs are fresh in my brain, sort of. Are D2 barbs as fun as D3 barbs? At least in regards to leaping around and smashing and yelling and killing?

There's more yelling and still a lot of smashing. Leaping is a bit more scarce although you can spam leaps in d2 if you want.

They mostly nailed the barb in D3. They only really missed the mark on frenzy and how "impactful" the shouts look/feel compared to d2. I guess D2's whirlwind feels more like smashing things real hard while D3's is more like floating around.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Nov 25, 2019

# ¿ Nov 25, 2019 18:44

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Kazvall posted:

We do now. Horadric Goon discord: https://discord.gg/w8AxQMV

I play median xl hardcore and tchernobog diablo 1. Both are updated regularly. Tcherno even has a linux port coming. Oh mai!

I'm in too many drat discords. How about we ask for channel(s) in the d3 discord?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2020 15:28

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Diablo 2 is going through something of a resurgence if only because it's a strangely popular game for speedrunning

I posted some youtube videos of a few games I was okay at and the diablo 2 one has a crazy number of views compared to the others. If I were looking to be a "content creator" I'd probably make more d2 videos.

I noticed most d2 videos have people who aren't that good at the game. Except for the speedrunners. But speedrunners don't usually do too many normal things that people actually playing d2 do. For example, most videos showing people clearing cows or chaos sanc have players who are really inefficient and lost even if it's a really high level or geared character. There are also very few classic videos up although 99.9% of people don't play classic.

Llama has some videos of a single player character he mfs with, but it's really geared. There seems to be very little content geared toward people actually trying to play d2 from people who use their time effectively without being speedrunners.

It's kind of interesting because d2 existed during a time where sharing this information or even approaching the game that way wasn't a thing. At most you had builds and maybe vague guides for "join these games at these levels". Even things like tomb mules weren't well known for a long time, although they've since been patched out.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Feb 29, 2020

# ¿ Feb 29, 2020 14:59

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

There's almost definitely going to be a remaster if there's anyone competent still at blizz.

A D2 remaster has unbelievably massive hurdles. They apparently lost original assets, the network code is going to be wc3 x 1000 in terms of effort required to clean up and bnet2.0ize it - even the single player uses the multiplayer server:client structure, the rendering engine's best form is glide, and a proper d2 remaster would require significant changes to netcode to clean up massive desyncs.

I'd love if they just released an "HD" client as a remaster that was interchangeable with the old client. Something even more basic than sc:r. That's the only way I could see a d2 remaster by modern Blizzard working.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 06:34 on May 20, 2020

# ¿ May 20, 2020 06:31

Khorne: May 1, 2002

wet_goods posted:

Yeah I have this weird brain tick that says if I didn't earn it on ladder it's not "real". I almost never play with randos online and rarely trade, and I don't bot. Maybe if I can get over that mental hurdle I can have a better time offline not cheating.

Herstory Begins Now posted:

i used to prefer online, but last time I played a bunch of D2 was singleplayer and using plugy for the qol and added stash space and i don't think I could ever play online again. The game works really well self-found and the progress feels a lot more tangible.

tbf though, i do really, really hate muling and will do anything to avoid it.

My solution to this is slashdiablo and other pservers. No botting, you can play with other people if you want, and you're still playing online and competing with others but frequently in a single player way if you want.

Otherwise, I'd play offline. Bnet is kinda awkward unless you want to bot or play with bots or rmt I guess if that's still a thing.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 05:00 on May 25, 2020

# ¿ May 25, 2020 04:22

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

I get like 100 ping minimum to slash diablo or I would've played a ton of it. I need to try path of diablo at some point though, hopefully i can get some non-miserable latency

They added game servers in the following locations:

quote:

GS1 - US East (New York)
GS2 - Europe (Amsterdam)
GS3 - OCE (Sydney)
GS4 - US West (Silicon Valley)
GS5 - US South (Dallas)

Just put "gs4" in the description of your game to use them. It's all one realm. They're notably missing SEA/Asian servers despite having some players from there, but 100 ping is too low to be from that region.

Median XL and Path of Diablo have crazy server lists with so many people playing. PoD even has web-based trading now.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 25, 2020

# ¿ May 25, 2020 14:49

Khorne: May 1, 2002

If you can farm efficiently on players8 you can do cows / chaos sanc for high runes. If you can't and are playing single player, I'd look into modding no drop to 0 so you get players 8 drop rates all of the time. It's genuinely a better experience playing that way if you're just farming high end loot. Even if you're not, all of the extra potions that drop are awesome.

I don't think kurast chests are the most effective way to farm since they upped high rune drop rates a while ago. They were back when high rune drop rates were dreadful. But, the chests don't have great drop rates for other loot or give exp so it's arguable whether they were ever really worth it.

also worth noting an 8p game is not the same as the players 8 command in single player and will have a worse drop rate

Khorne fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 7, 2020

# ¿ Jul 7, 2020 14:31

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Adult Sword Owner posted:

So what maphack are you using for us playing at home and does it work on Bnet, or is this solo?

Slashdiablo's maphack is a great iteration on the bh maphack but you'll get banned if you use it on bnet. I don't think there are updated offsets for 1.14x but I don't pay attention. It works for 1.13c and 1.13d.

Some single player streamers use it without the maphack and without things on minimap as a loot filter. PoD's loot filter is based on the code.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jul 14, 2020

# ¿ Jul 10, 2020 15:17

Khorne: May 1, 2002

gradenko_2000 posted:

that's because some things in the game are exposed in the MPQ files and can be changed readily, while other stuff is buried in the game's executable and can't be changed short of getting the source code

Median XL and many of the pservers have assembly patches for the game. A significant amount of reverse engineering work on d2 has been done over the years, and especially in the past 10 or so it has been shared among the community instead of used for profit.

There is a decent amount of sharing between PoD, Median, and what remains of the pserver community behind the scenes because they all face similar problems and sharing fixes/code they come up with saves them massive time later when other people in that community share theirs. There's also a sort of positive feedback loop where if someone plays d2 anywhere, even bnet/single player, they're more likely to try Median, PoD, slash, etc.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Jul 15, 2020

# ¿ Jul 15, 2020 13:49

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Median in particular is apparently about 100k additional lines of code and is impressively polished and not buggy. I'd be surprised if there is much at all beyond their ability to alter.

The lower defense while running thing I assume is meant to make you easier to stun/put into hit recovery while running so you can't just run past the entire game. It also makes positioning have higher stakes. At least for those reasons I can see why it's left in

Block chance dropping to 1/3 while moving is a good mechanic. It encourages you to deliberately stop moving before bone spirits hit you in chaos or mobs everywhere. You stop moving for a few frames then resume moving, and the game has such a great core mechanics that even though blocks have a large number of frames the movement feels right after. Defense not working while moving I have far more fixed feelings about. Defense and to a lesser extent attack rating are questionable systems in D2 that are made worse by inaccurate tooltips and just how opaque they are.

D2 has a ton of little things like that block thing that make the game really engaging to just play even after thousands of hours. Tons of active, dynamic minmax stuff and optimizations that are there if you want but invisible otherwise.

I haven't played the latest iteration of Median, but even before their massive revamp they had by far the most custom code of anyone.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Jul 15, 2020

# ¿ Jul 15, 2020 14:41

Khorne: May 1, 2002

slashdiablo ladder is resetting tonight at 7pm est

if anyone is interested in playing hc let me know

I will probably be playing solo so there's plenty of room to tag along. You can drop in/out and I can even rush you later.

edit: eh, ducked out. Not feeling the grind. I played a lot last season.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jul 25, 2020

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 16:30

Khorne: May 1, 2002

soscannonballs posted:

Is it possible to have multiple d2 mods installed? Ive had median xl installed for the past 2 years or so and jump on it once every couple of months, but it would be cool to mess around with PoD or even Eastern Sun.

Have separate d2 installs.

D2 can run from any folder. The only annoying part is registry settings if it's reading those. I think most launchers for pservers have the registry settings handled automatically now, though. PoD + MXL + SlashD all do at least.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jul 31, 2020

# ¿ Jul 30, 2020 18:39

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Ineptitude posted:

Out of the blue i got the sudden urge to play D2 again. Played ES with goons several years ago but other than that have not played D2 since 1.09!

Ant other goons playing EU HC ladder?

EDIT: Well that was a short lived stint of D2.

I joined a game where someone was giving away gear, so i decided to create a mule to keep the gear safe. Logged out of my "main", logged on to mule, grabbed the gear, then back to my main and i got temp banned for joining games too quickly.
How the gently caress else am i supposed to mule my gear. This is how we did it back in the day, you could keep doing this for hours without issue but now it is a bannable offense? jesus christ.

Bnet's current settings ban you for actually playing the game. If you try to level efficiently you'll also get temp banned unless you switch cdkey sets or ips.

That's a big part of why I quit bnet. The other part being all of the rmt/spamming/botting and the lack of actual players.

The good news is there are great pservers to play on. Path of Diablo, Slash Diablo are my two favorites. PoD is like Diablo II LoD patch 1.20 or maybe like a second expansion even. Slash Diablo is the normal game but they allow maphack & the drop rate is the same as 7players being in the area independent of how many people are in the game. Which isn't a downside in 2020 imo. Median XL is also good if you want a total conversion modded playstyle like Eastern Sun. I say "like" eastern sun, but the only similarity is they're entirely different games from normal d2.

All three of those servers also let you choose game server location when you make a game. They have EU, NA, SEA, and many other regions covered on a single mega server. Pservers have eclipsed officials in terms of legitimacy & features.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Sep 12, 2020

# ¿ Sep 12, 2020 19:38

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Lucinice posted:

Beat Diablo 1 today and now I'm moving onto D2. What are good newbie classes? I have no idea who I want to play.

I'd pick based on (1) the experience you want, (2) the class you think is coolest, (3) your tolerance for tedium, (4) how much research you plan on doing while playing, and (5) whether you plan on playing after beating all 3 difficulties.

How blind do you plan on going in? If really blind then:

Trap Assassin - fast, smooth curve the whole way, intuitive skill tree, maybe a little boring on the gameplay side if you really cheese
Barb - smooth power curve, weapons and having to get in melee range make this a very different experience than the other choices
Necro (summon or ce or pnb) - not fast, pretty smooth gameplay experience anyway, fairly unique class
Elemental Druid - fairly smooth power curve, will die a bit more than on some of the other choices but that's not necessarily a bad thing

Tolerance for tedium comes in on the following list. Both of these picks start out really rough but then explode into powerful characters at some point. If you plan on skipping through some speedrun videos & looking up some items to get an idea of how to play the game & are committed to playing through then you could add in:

Sorc - Archaic systems initially inflict suffering. A few massive, fun power spikes along the way until you are one of the strongest classes in the game (& you have the best mobility).
Hammerdin - Dreadful starting out, when it comes online it can murder everything. It also has okay mobility. But it's extremely fidgety, and I wouldn't pick this unless you really want to be a paladin & spin some hammers. Can't stress enough that this has the worst starting experience in the game & the worst power curve of all classes that's only redeemed by the end of it being "you deal peerless damage and are very tanky".

My new player generic recommendation would be trapsin. It's just smooth all the way through, solid mobility, really strong on p1 but can scale into higher player counts, and it's not item or knowledge dependent. It can complete the entire game 3x-4x faster than summon necro, is faster at magic finding, and is about as easy to play.

Barb, necro, ele druid in no particular order also have a decent new player experience.

Sorc eventually has a better experience than most of those choices, but the starting experience of sorc (especially for blind play) is bad enough that people might quit the game or reroll to another class. Sorc has a large burden of knowledge and is probably a better second or third character for most.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Oct 10, 2020

# ¿ Oct 10, 2020 16:18

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Is anyone playing project d2? I heard there were lots of stability issues.

I'm not the biggest fan of mods that change a lot about the game. I have played eastern sun & various versions of median quite a bit but never really fell in love with them. However, I might end up killing some time there once everything is stable.

Slash Diablo resets on nov 20th. Unfortunately, d3 does on the same day. I might just play slash instead because this season seems like a rehash of a season bonus I played to death already. I've been meaning to play xpac one season on slash and this might be it. Maybe.

If anyone is down for playing some softcore or hardcore expansion on slash let me know. I usually rush toward an enchant sorc there so making new characters is quick & easy (at least, getting over the 1-25 hump is, and the rest of the game is fun). The only difference from official servers is there are multiple game servers with multiple locations to pick from, drop rate is like a full game (slightly better even), and maphack is legal & provided for you. The maphack used has a lot of cool features that most pservers incorporate like loot filter, auto party/auto share loot for hc, auto filling game name/password, hotkeys to put stuff in storage/cube, auto identify (I don't use this or know how it works), and of course maphack & monsters on minimap.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Nov 9, 2020

# ¿ Nov 9, 2020 04:18

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Laslow posted:

If you got teleport you can �moat� meph. Basically you teleport to a spot where you�re far enough away from meph that he can�t target you, but you can hit him from range. And he can�t go after you directly because he�s stuck behind the moat of blood.

I usually do this from the left side. But don�t go too far left that you aggo Maffer, or too far right that you aggro the rest of the council. This takes practice. If you�re strong enough to take the council members then it�s easier and their drops aren�t bad either.

I thought in pd2 meph flies and can cross the moat

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 15:19

Khorne: May 1, 2002

Inverted Sphere posted:

So how would PD2 be for somebody with the sudden itch to play Diablo 2 again after a million years? I haven't played since like, 1.09 and I don't think I ever got past normal so I don't know a whole lot about how to Diablo 2 Good. Does it have any way of respecing or anything? It was always kind of stressful feeling like I needed to have a character planned out from the start down to every last point and the exact gear they'd end up using or I'd just totally screw myself over.

I also remember really liking summon necros just for having my own pocket army murder everything, but I remember they fell off pretty hard post-normal from what I heard about, though I've heard in times since they've apparently become like the single most gear-independent class in the game and actually really drat good?

Later patches in d2 have a respec from akara after doing den of evil on each difficulty, so 3 total, and tokens to respec more times that drop from act bosses in hell. You can just dive right in.

The most popular ways to play right now that are close to the vanilla experience are Path of Diablo, Project D2 (super popular right now because it just launched), and single player with PlugY and other quality of life tools. There's also official bnet if you're a big fan of rmt & botting or slash diablo if you like maphack, 9player drop rate in 1p games, and small communities. There's also Median XL if you want heavily modded. They've done some crazy stuff.

PD2 is designed around teamwork and playing with other people. If you don't like that then choose one of the others ways to play. It has thousands of real people playing in a pretty legitimate environment and it's a new enough experience.

re:necro, in the current official patch they are the slowest class to go through the game with but you can beat the whole game with them and they aren't weak. Lots of people enjoy the play style and class design. I don't know pod or project d2 balance as much, but on project d2 I saw quite a few golem necros because you can summon multiple golems there and I also saw curse necro which looked strong and useful because you can cast multiple curses and consume them.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Nov 23, 2020

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 16:12

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Khorne: May 1, 2002

Inverted Sphere posted:

Slash Diablo sounds interesting for the improved drop rates, although I wonder if there's a mod that would do the same thing for singleplayer along with PlugY? PlugY sounds pretty wonderful to play with as well.

Path of Diablo & Project D2 have a ton of qol changes. The maphack slash diablo maintains is used in both but with maphack disabled. It is what provides a significant portion of the qol changes. Lots of people who play single player also use that maphack for the qol changes but don't enable the cheaty features.

For single player, yes. You can set nodrop to 0. There is an easy mod maker that will let you do it if you set a config option to true. That mod maker lets you do a whole lot of other qol & fun things. Scroll down to the screenshots for examples of randomly generated set/unique items and massively increased mob density.

Khorne fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Nov 23, 2020

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 17:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Diablo II General Information Thread - slap a Zod in that beast!

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