|
 Q: Hasn't this been done already? What do you plan to do with this one? A: Two video LPs and an abandoned screenshot LP, as a matter of fact. I plan to do something different with mine. Back around 1998 or so, about a year after Diablo came out, a guy named Woody decided to make the game a bit more challenging by playing multiplayer using nothing but cursed gear (i.e. equipment with malus to stats instead of bonus). And so the cult of the Beyond Naked Mage was born. A long time ago, I was a part of that cult. It's time to dust off my CD-ROM and get beyond naked once more. Q:  A: To quote the man himself... "Playing a Beyond Naked Mage has absolutely nothing to do with sitting in front of the computer in your bare rear end. If that's what your looking for here, go get some help, your [sic] a sick bastard." Q:  A: But that's not all! I'm also going for a second bullshit achievement in my playthrough of this seventeen-year-old game: I'm going to beat the game on the hardest difficulty as soon as I'm high enough level to access hardmode. Won't that be fun? Q:  A: Trust me on this one. It's a screenshot LP and I have enough Diablo 1 lore and other things to keep an audience entertained--so I hope. Also, since Blizzard hadn't quite figured out the secrets to autorun technology, my character moves like a snail on Oxycontin, and who wants to watch that for fifteen hours? The plot: Group of old wizards stop Lords of Hell from corrupting humanity by imprisoning Lords in crystals. One--Diablo's--gets buried. Centuries later, local king builds cathedral over site. Diablo gets loose, corrupts archbishop, king, and prince. Cathedral goes to hell. Your job: go through cathedral, catacombs, caves, hell, kill Diablo. The rules: --Cursed gear only--spells, potions, elixirs are fine. No casting spells from uncursed staves. --Beat the game on hell difficulty at level 30. --A third requirement that I'll explain when (if) it happens. A MAN, A PLAN, A PINK BATHROBE: DIABLO. LET'S PLAY BEYOND NAKED! 1 - More walking than a Roger Corman film 2 - Following my own advice 3 - Covered with READ posters 4 - A bit of light reading 5 - Taking a page from LizardWizard's book 6 - The long way around 7 - From tables in the sky I brought my Drake fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 22, 2014 |
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 16:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:27 |
|
|
I'm going to save this post for any Diablo-related stuff I find that won't otherwise fit in the LP, as well as how to make D1 run on Win7/Vista/Win8 machines without bugging out. EDIT: There are two ways to make D1 run on OSes past XP. One: dork around with compatibility mode settings. I can't recommend a perfect setting because what works for one person may not work for someone else. The other solution: quit explorer.exe while playing and restart it or reboot after playing. Here's a Battle.net post explaining how to make a batch file for the whole thing. RickVoid posted:This... this is not the best option. I brought my Drake fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 8, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
1 - More walking than a Roger Corman film Beyond naked magery and about 95% of the other variants were designed for the multiplayer environment. You can play one in singleplayer if you enjoy dying a lot--the monsters are much tougher on SP and give out less experience.  Since I have no desire to play on Battle.net (if it even exists for the original Diablo anymore) I'm going to pretend I'm  Me and my starting stats. Lots of magic (for using spells and reading books and carrying staves), decent vitality (for hitpoints), and terrible dexterity (to-hit and dodge) and strength (melee damage). The (BNM) at the end of my name is a variant tag, required if I was playing in public. It was the secret nerd handshake.  I'm eventually going to Hell but I need to be level 30 to get there. I need to be level 15 to enter Nightmare difficulty. Not sure when I'm going to try Nightmare with this character; I need a certain setup of spells to slay monsters effectively and I may not be ready when 15 happens.  Matt Uelmen - Tristram theme  (h/t to fleshweasel for the Tindeck hosting) Ah, Tristram. The more things change, etc. I'll start here when I first enter a game and I'll reappear here when I get killed in the dungeon. (And it's going to happen. XD) Cast of NPCs, most of whom we may never see again after this update:  : You'll definitely be seeing more of him after this update. According to DiabloWiki, he's from the east. He also has a cameo in the sequel involving a urinal or something. : Cain's the wise old fart who hangs out by the town well, handing out quests and identifying magical gear at 100 gold a pop. Never shuts up. Will only visit when absolutely necessary. : Ogden runs the tavern, which we don't need, and has a quest in singleplayer mode, which doesn't matter because I'm not playing it. He's outside someone will talk to him or rent a room but most of the other NPCs have houses and lives and the ones who don't are drunk, invisible, or dead. (Spoilers.) Has an invisible wife named Gerda and doesn't talk about her. : One of two women in the NPC cast, Gillian would be waiting tables at Ogden's if he had any customers. Instead, she takes care of her invisible grandmother and gossips. Guess who we'll never be seeing again after this update. : Griswold buys and sells all equipment except staves and repairs everything except cursed gear.  Also has a cameo in the sequel. : Pepin sells healing potions, healing scrolls, elixirs, and heals you to full health just by talking to him. Conclusion: Pepin is secretly Jesus. : Listen to enough gossip around town and you'll figure out Farnham here was a part of a failed expedition to rescue the missing prince. He drinks. He says some drunk stuff. Drowns his cowardice in drink. Would be at Ogden's but he can't pay his drinking tab. Did I mention he drinks a lot?.gif) : This peg-legged fucker hangs out at the edge of the map behind some creative and interesting scenery (read: gently caress-you-pathing rocks) and sells an overpriced piece of vendor trash you can't even see until you pay him 50 gold. Supposedly, there are gear pieces only he can sell. Personally, I think the critter who gnawed his leg off took too drat long to finish the job.Farnham's about another screen to the southwest of the start position and the rest of the townies ('cept that pegleg pissant) are one screen north. I have no interest in them yet. Click to embiggen--'tis important.  We finally made it.  : Get used to seeing Adria ("I SENSE A SOUL IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS!") because we're going to be seeing a LOT of her. Sells all the sorcerer stuff plus elixirs. Recharges staves--but not cursed ones. Lives in a tiny shack at the opposite corner of the map, away from all the other NPCs, a choice that makes canon sense: she's the scary witch lady, after all. (Another reason this is an SSLP: I'd say about a third of this game is walking from the dungeon to Adria's place and I think I'd run out of jokes after the second trip.) Plays M. Night Shamalan in the third game. We can gossip with her, buy and sell staves, potions, scrolls, and books, or get her to recharge the spells on a staff like the one I'm currently carrying.  I start with 100 gold, two small mana potions, 100 red health, 200 blue mana, and a piece of gear verboten to BNMs. Most staves carry spell charges and Charged Bolt is handy for a starting sorcerer. Per the variant rules, I can't cast spells off staves unless the item's cursed.  I'd rather have two more mana pots anyway. There's no point buying full mana potions until I'm higher level: a small pot gives a random refill to my bowl, often enough to fill it 2/3 of 3/4 full. When it takes 2-3 small blues to fill my mana--and I can afford a full belt of big pots--I'll switch over. (I also have to manually fill my belt by clicking and dragging, and any new potion or scroll I pick up will go to the belt if there's an empty spot. XD)  : I sense a soul in search of answers! I'm tanked up, so I'll take the footbridge behind Adria's hut north.  The reason for the secret cow level in D2: there was a persistent rumor in D1 that clicking on the cows in a certain order or giving them an item or something would open a portal to a secret level. (Their moo also sounds like an intern went out to a field and held up a tape recorder.)  This is the entrance to the catacombs, levels 5-9 of the dungeon. Each part of the dungeon--cathedral, catacombs, caves, and caHell--can be accessed from the Tristram map. We need to be level 6 to enter the catacombs. I need to be more robust before poking my head down there and saying hello, so it may be level 10-12 before I go.  The graveyard wall isn't as big of a gently caress-you as trying to visit Wirt (as if you'd want to) but still a pain to get around.   : You can talk to this guy or enter the cathedral, but after you talk to him (or return to town if you didn't) he'll be dead. We're just going to leave him in a pool of his own fluorescent blood. Part of Farnham's group. Someone at Blizzard must've felt sorry for him because the Diablo tabletop RPG gave him a name: Kael Ellis. Each dungeon area has its own themed loading screen. It takes less time to load a map in this game than it does to walk to Adria. See you at the bottom of the stairs! EXTRAS: Tristram town map (originally found here)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 16:18
|
|
|
2 - Following my own advice I assume I'm in the cathedral's basement. The low visibility's intentional--the gloom does a good job hiding enemies just on the edge of the map.  Chests can be empty or full of 1-3 items. Both empty and full traps may contain traps. Rogues can detect and dodge traps. I am not playing a rogue. XD Another reason I'm doing a screenshot LP: I'm going to be picking up everything that isn't nailed down, and if I can pry up the nails, it doesn't count as nailed down. White (nonmagical) items sell for less than blue (magical) items but every single gold piece is a piece of a spell book or a drop of a potion, precious commodities for one such as I.  I open a sarcophagus to the north. Sarcophagi are just chests with the chance to spawn monsters. Guess what this one does? Dungeon levels can randomly spawn 3-5 different monster types depending on the level of dungeon and level of monster.  It's hard to tell from this screenshot that Capt. Skeleton hit me hard enough to freeze my character in place for about half a second. Monsters can easily stun mages wearing low-level armor. Me and my pink bathrobe, this weak enemy can successfully land hit after hit and prevent me from recovering after stun long enough to move away and heal. And Tyreal help you if you wander too far ahead into an unexplored area and become surrounded by monsters. What I'm saying is, BNMs fear stunlock more than Diablo.  I can't heal but I can kill Jack Sparrow up there with my only learned spell. Mages start the game with a level 2 firebolt. This is a one-hit kill for most of the monster types here on dungeon level 1 (dlvl 1). Select the spell from the menu and click on what needs killin'.  Skeletons also close distance without stopping. He got in another whack before I dispatched him. And gold rains from the sky. I also look like I escaped from a Big Daddy Roth lithograph and that's fine with me. The Fallen One to my left is not impressed by my pyrotechnics. Fallen Ones are the name of this enemy type as well as these specific little green gremlins. We'll encounter the other types of Fallen Ones on deeper dungeon levels.  If I kill an enemy directly in front of a Fallen One, it'll panic and scatter for about five seconds. You can distract an entire pack this way if they're close enough to your target. I took the opportunity to back away and line up a shot. (The mace is red in my inventory because I don't have the requisite skill points to use it. If I'm empty-handed and I pick up a weapon I can use, it will automatically drop into the weapon slot--the rectangle on the left. The right-side one is for two-handed weapons or shields. Body armor and hats are self-explanatory. The square hovering near the paper doll head is for amulets, the last two for rings.)  I pulp the Fallen One and continue on. Monsters aren't guaranteed to drop anything upon death other than experience. Leveling is faster in multiplayer than singleplayer. A few more kills and I should level up.  Heading south reveals more sarcophagi and more things that want to eat my face. Strategic retreat!  The skeleton's an easy kill but the scavenger's a bit more of a challenge. Like the Fallen Ones, Scavenger is an enemy type and the name for the red-colored ones. Injure these critters and they scamper off to eat a corpse and regain health.  It drops a small red pot, which I immediately drink. Good thing too.  My drag-everything-back-to-the-stairs tactic seems to be working. (It's also a dickish thing to do with other players around.)  Murder enough monsters of a specific type and you can mouse over them to see kill counts, stats, and resistances. Fortunately, a low-level fireball or two can clear out most of the first two dungeon levels.  Cracking the tombs and their skeletized occupants gives me a magical staff and a nonmagical dagger. Nifty. I'll wait on getting the staff identified, even though the cathedral's the best place to find cursed gear. Identifying things at Cain isn't worth it until I have lots of blue items. Also, I can play a trick on Griswold with this when I get back to town.   Heading south, I find what's likely the last monster type on this level: zombies. These guys are immune to magic but two firebolts do them in. Besides, I only have access to three spells the game considers "magic" and once I'm high enough level to use them, I'll be able to beat up zombies with my bare hands. (Or better yet, a nice cursed weapon like a bent staff of frailty.)  The procedural dungeon generator really likes connecting two large rooms with an archway corridor like this one. It's a nice place for monsters to ambush you.  After the inevitable trip back to the stairs for murder lure, I finish exploring the first room. You can just barely see a zombie outline just above the blue pot in the second slot on the belt.  All the critters in the game make distinct noises, so when you wake something up, you can figure out what it is and adjust fire accordingly.  Barrels are like chests but with a chance of exploding. Death by barrel is a common early-game fate no matter which class you're playing. No shame in skipping them, but this is a let's play, so let's play like there's no tomorrow!  I am going to punch this barrel SO HARD.  Erg.  Huh. Well.  That's it for my let's play, guys! (Not really--we've only just begun. See you back in town.) EXTRAS: Matt Uelmen - Cathedral theme  (h/t to fleshweasel for the Tindeck hosting)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 16:21
|
|
|
3 - Covered with READ posters This place looks oddly familiar. Didn't I have health and mana the last time I was here? Ah well. Death takes all of your mana, all but one of your hit points, all your equipped items on the paper doll, and half of your gold, though you can return to where you died and pick up your missing money and gear.  Might as well go talk to the townies while I'm here.  I'm going to sell off the dagger I picked up and trick him with the staff, which I helpfully forgot to screencap.  Griswold won't repair a known cursed item but he WILL repair unidentified magical items. I also decide to repair the mace and save it.  Now for the walk to Adria.   : I sense a soul in search of answers!I can afford two small blue pots.   I'll cut across behind Griz's blacksmith shop here...  ...take the path here...  ...and walk past the fountain to Pepin to save 150 gold.  That's better. I'll slam a mana potion once I get back to the cathedral.  Still not talking to you, dude.  Back in the dungeon proper, I notice a sarcophagus I haven't looted yet.  And an occupant I haven't murdered yet.  My pile of gold, just where I left it. In the original Diablo, money stacks in your inventory with a max of 5000 gold pieces per stack. Later sessions may involve barfing out my inventory of books I can't read, gear I can't wear, and tons of gold and potions before heading downstairs.  Don't judge me. I'm not an addict. I swear.  Fifteen screenshots in and I'm finally back to critter bashing! The kill count doesn't reset after death, only when I quit the game. Also, the tally doesn't carry over to different monsters of the same type.  DING! I'll take care of the critters before leveling up.  It's been a long time since I played this game--got the starting life and mana totals in the previous post wrong.  Many players and guides suggest sorcerers max out vitality at 80 before dumping points into anything else, mostly to avoid a bug I'll talk about later. I'm a fragile sack of meat full of monster chow and that won't change even if I triple my current HP. I'd rather have more mana and I'd like to read spellbooks when if I find them. I'm going to add all five points to magic now and probably for a while to come.  Scrolls are a one-time use of a spell and you can use scrolls with spells you haven't learned yet. This scroll of healing won't fully heal me but will heal more than a small red potion.  Behold! The stairs down to level 2. I'll fully clear the level before doing that, though. I'm not done shooting and looting up here.  On the other side of the room, I come across a blue staff in a coffin chest. This could be my first cursed item but I don't want to go to town to find out what it is yet. I'm hoping to find a scroll of identify down here and use that instead. (Seriously, Cain, a gaming session's worth of identifies at 100 a pop could pay for a wagon ride out of here and you wouldn't have to put up with any of the shenanigans in the sequels. Trust me on this one.)  Heading east. I line myself up for another shot. Positioning is key: projectiles fired in cardinal directions have a better chance of hitting than intermediate ones. You can easily miss with a diagonal shot.  Like so.   This is another frequently recurring room type: a room walled off with bars instead of stone, stuffed with goodies. Opening the door, turns out the goodies are zombies. (I can also shoot them through the bars. I'll save that technique for enemies that can outrun or outshoot me.)  One of the few times I'll actually pick up junk like this. (It sells for a whopping 3 gold.)  This find, however, could be valuable! (To me anyway.) Rooms like this one often contain a random blue item on the floor. Rags are the worst armor in the game--1 AC and 6 durability--so I'll make Griz repair it before I wear it for the 5-10 minutes it lasts.   More enemies to the north, dispatched like everything else: wake up a few monsters, drag them back to the previous room, aim and firebolt, repeat until the way is clear. I'll eventually get a spell I can cast down hallways and such as a monster finder, but not on this level, and probably not for the rest of the cathedral.  A library! Let's go get educated. Libraries are guaranteed to contain one book and might contain some other books and scrolls on pedestals as well as a bunch of monsters.  Not from this direction. I'll crack open this door and see what I find.  A Scavenger and an empty room, lovely. (Sometimes rings and amulets spawn in empty rooms. I spent a minute moving my cursor over the floor, just in case.)  Back at the dlvl 2 stairs. That hole in the wall to my left is a trap arrow, probably for the sarcophagus below me. You can walk along the walls and look for traps that way, but traps don't do enough damage to kill most of the time. (Then again, I *did* end the last update with death by barrel.  ) And I don't learn either.  There's a short animation when a barrel spawns a skeleton, and a smart player would be out of melee range by then.  Explains why I need that library. (You know you're not paying attention when zombies catch up to you.) I'm hoping this corridor will turn north but it's a dead end. (And I can't get enough firebolt. That or my arm's on fire.)  Heading back to the area with the stairs out. Is that an unopened chest down there? You'll get that in a town with no sheriff. Let's open it.  My second learned spell is...not the one I wanted it to be. Healing at spell level 1 costs more than my slvl 2 firebolt--emergency use only, for now. Your spell levels max out at 16 and cost more magic to learn from books as well as mana to cast at every higher level.  You can also assign F5-F8 as hotkeys. Blue are memorized spells, red are from scrolls, and the tan icon is my staff recharge ability. (Works like Adria's except the number of total charges goes down per use.) The far left red spell is resurrection, which can revive other dead players. It's also worth 62 gold, so it's not completely useless.  I never explored up here after murdering all those skeletons in the first update.  I'll take care of that now. Inferno shoots a column of DoT fire three tiles wide for about 5 seconds. Another spell that doesn't really work diagonally. I'd rather have the 25 gold it's worth.  Hypnotically drawn to barrels.  I'm a bit northwest of my previous position. Any door you use as a bottleneck becomes blocked by dead monsters and can't be closed again. A nice touch.  I'll go north for now. I have a good feeling about it.  Racking up the kills now. By the time I'm through with the level, I should be able to see resistances, if not HP totals, on these guys.  I think this is a neat shot, so here it is.  I finally killed enough zombies to learn they're immune to magic. Big deal--there are maybe three magic spells in the game, I'm not going to find any of them in the cathedral, and two of them suck. The third is highly situational.  Nearly out of mana. Maybe one of these guys will drop a potion for me?  Maybe not. Hi Griz. His inventory resets every time you enter the dungeon, same with Adria, Pepin, and Wirt.  Selling the cap pays for the rag repair.   : I sense a soul in search of answers! I fill my bar back up. I could spend 200 gold on a town portal scroll but gently caress that noise. I need four small blues more than a fast trip back to town. (Works the same as town portals in Diablo 2.)  I walk down and get back to work. Dungeon ain't gonna clear itself.  Level 3 means a point of life, two points of mana, and five points into magic.  I set a bottleneck and someone is kind enough to drop a blue sword.  More stuff I can't use. If those rags weren't magical, I would've already ditched them. (6 slots for 1 gold piece? Bleah.)  No way across to the library. Dammit.  Southward this time. I don't bother using bait-and-drag with zombies anymore.  I waste too much mana trying to run-and-gun here.  Dead end. Well. How do I get to the library?  TAB brings up the map and the arrow keys move it around. I chose not to use it before now because the map can hide monsters, chests, items, etc. and makes for messy screenshots.  Oh yeah, I could've gone right from the cathedral entrance instead of left.   And guess where the library is.  Room full of zombies and at least one possible book or scroll on a pedestal, nice. But first...barrels!    Thirty zombie kills and I can see their HP.  A scroll of healing from the bone pedestal...and a book of firebolt from the bookcase! Must read immediately.  Another dead end up here. The big blue pot is all the mana I have left, so I'll drink it.  Thank you, random dungeon generator, for putting a barred wall in front of another barred wall. And that's not the weirdest thing the PDG can come up with, not by a long shot.  But are you immune to firebolt?  Another library!   guys stop chasing me i have some overdue books i need to turn back in  Ever visit your local library right after storytime lets out? It's a tidal wave of anklebiters.  Better than nothing I guess. And that's level 4.  I stand corrected. I've got a blue sword, staff, and rags. I've been holding onto the staff the longest, so let's ID that.    More magic.  I think I have the area west of the library to clear out and then I'm done with dlvl 1. (In the future, I won't spend this many updates on a level, I promise.)    The funky-looking dagger in my inventory is my very first unique item. I know what it is--and I know how much it sells for! See you back at Griswold's!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2014 22:28
|
|
|
Veloxyll posted:How many Barrel Packs did it take to find one that would kill you for the first update? Just one. I'm that awesome. Seiren posted:Considering this run, everything I just posted is completely irrelevant, but interesting nonetheless. I'm rather curious to how bad the cursed items can be, so I look forward to seeing you fully kitted-out in cursed gear. Not useless at all. You reminded me of several discussion topics for the grindy and less interesting parts of the game. As for my kit, I hope I'm spoiled for choice.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2014 22:35
|
|
|
Had a death in the family, so I'll be another couple days before putting up another post.Xenoborg posted:Wow, I did not remember Diablo 1 having no natural mana regeneration, thats got to be brutal. I'm fine with drinking potions. It's the belt mechanics that'll do me in. In D2, you can shift+click potions to your 4x4 slot belt and like potions will stack with like to fill holes. I need to click and drag ever single friggin potion from my inventory to my belt. Looking forward to doing that in Hell with azure drakes trying to gnaw my legs off. Pierzak posted:What are the exact rules regarding cursed gear? Do you have to wear one from the moment you find it? What about if you wear a lovely robe and you find one with a truly assholish curse that would make your life hell? Do you have to wear the worst equipment you find, or does it just have to be cursed (i.e. slightly below-zero stats)? There's one piece of cursed gear you MUST use as soon as you find it--and I'll get into that when/if I find it. The rest of the time, any cursed gear will do. Playing on Battle.net with my buddies, we'd save our truly awful pieces of gear for important stuff like Lazarus/Diablo runs because Griswold couldn't repair cursed gear. (Warriors have the ability to repair durability at the cost of making the item less durable; it was a polite thing to offer when teaming with a beyond naked rogue or mage.) I'll probably devote a post down the road to popular D1 bugs and exploits. Phosphine posted:Are you sure about this? I remember the opposite, and Diablowiki agrees with me. Yeah, DiabloWiki's right. I need to reread Jarulf's Guide. XD WinterSteel posted:EDIT: I found one way to do it. I'll hold off until queserasera posts about it; wouldn't want to step on any toes. Done and done on the second thread post. Let's discuss.  quote:This makes me wonder if a run like this could even be possible with another class...might have to test it out for fun. There are rules for beyond naked warriors and rogues. Rogues are easier to play than warriors: spend points in magic and dexterity, get yourself a nice cursed shield or two, and block projectiles while firing back your own spells. Rogues and warriors also rely heavily on items affecting visibility, as waking the entire map and not being able to see a drat thing around you are considered curses. Torrannor posted:Is this from Realms Beyond Civilization, formerly Realms Beyond Diablo? Kind of. Over the years, Realms Beyond became the archive of D1 and D2 player culture as people moved on and hosting sites like GeoCities stopped working. Griselda and KingofPain were known for their insane Ironman Diablo runs back in the day. The Diablo forum on RB is still going, and looking at the front page, there are some old-timers still there, still posting, still creating and playing variants. quote:Will you show off the Diablo 1 expansion? Never liked Hellfire. But if I can suicide by barrel for the sake of the LP, I can play Hellfire for the LP. Randalor posted:I don't think Diablo had anything that was locked to a class, so if the game decided to drop a really awesome bow or spell and you're playing a Warrior, you could drop points into agility or magic until you could use the awesome weapon. I know there were hard caps to stats that would stop you from using the absolute top-tier items, but other than that the sky was the limit on what you could do with each class. There are a few limits. Warriors swing melee weapons the fastest, likewise with rogues shooting arrows and mages slinging spells. There are some optimal builds for each class requiring top-shelf unique items and lots and lots of Wirt/Laz/Diablo runs. But yeah, all characters can use all items as long as they meet the stat requirements. Veloxyll posted:Friendly fire is MOST CERTAINLY a thing in Diablo 1 Multiplayer, and wizards have a habit of blasting everything that moves until it stops. A mage that uses AoE spells on Battle.net will soon find himself without friends. XD There were a few commercially released Diablo soundtracks but they're long out of print. Matt Uelmen also did the music for Torchlight 1 and 2 and they have a similar dark fantasy vibe. Buying and installing the games through Steam or GOG, you can find all of the soundtracks as .ogg files in the install folder. (The GOG version comes with the official soundtrack as bonus content and Runic made the Torchlight 2 soundtrack available on their website. Both are MP3, I believe.) RickVoid posted:Is there any room for Mod discussion in here? I've been messing around with The Hell mod, and it has been a fun change of pace from vanilla. Sure. I'm not even sure which D1 mods are still available--now I'm curious. Sir Shion posted:Could you guys elaborate on Hellfire for those of us who never played it? Hellfire is the official D1 expansion (I don't think it's canon anymore though) and IIRC came out a year after D1. It introduces three new character classes (one in the release, the other two available after some file tweaking), two new dungeons, and a new boss. Hellfire also added Runes that act like spell-based floor traps and oils that give temporary or permanent bonuses to items kinda like how runes and jewels work in D2. Hellfire doesn't have multiplayer, so if I do it, it's going to have to be a singleplayer run.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
4 - A bit of light reading Welcome back! I believe I was going back to town. Might as well pick up Jarulf's Guide for some catchup reading. (Here's a link to a well-formatted PDF version if you care to follow along at home.)  According to Jarulf's Guide...
 And you're looking at it. (It's always a good idea to have Cain ID uniques, as they always sell for more. I'll wait on the rags and sword and mace, but since I'm here, I'll repair them.)  Now, when I used to play this game 4-6 hours a day, I could tell you the best places to grind for certain pieces of gear. After a 12-hour day of commuting and work, I'm lucky if I can tell you my own name sometimes. My numbers may be a bit off.  But I'm not here to do math--I'm here to get beyond naked. So let's do some more of that. Off to Adria's!   : I sense a soul in search of answers! I didn't even have the option to sell the staff of readiness to Griz. I sell off the resurrect and inferno scrolls and fill my belt. Adria, are you selling secret tech I need to make dlvl 2 easier?  Of course not.  Here, Cain, take this money Adria didn't want and give me a frail set of rags and a clumsy sword.  oh for pete's sake  Fine, you losers. I'm going back to the monster-filled church. I thought you were my friends.  You, don't go anywhere.  Back in the dungeon, straight for the stairs.  Interesting stair placement. Hokay, level 2 is like level 1 but with a slightly different mix of monsters plus the hardest boss in the entire game. Big D's going to be a pushover once I get to him. The boss on this level can shred a full multiplayer group in seconds. Luckily, he's also the dumbest of the four bosses and he's locked in his own little room until I choose to let him out. I'm not going to do that until I clear the level and (hopefully) assemble the tech I need.  Slightly tougher skeletons. Note that revealed stats don't apply to a monster group, just each type within that group. (Not that I'm deeply invested in the stat count; if I really wanted to know this guy's HP or TH%, I'd look it up in Jarulf's.)  New type of zombie. I think I can get into the library from this direction.  Or not. Unlike the last level, I can see a path around to the door.  New monster group! Winged fiends attack like bored cats: wander close, lazily swat a few times, wander away. Fiends are the weakest. The other types in this group are more of a challenge. Also, winged fiends can't drop items (with one exception) but make up for that with higher experience per kill.  I forgot to screencap the new type of fallen one, the carver, until after I killed it.  Dark blue, moves about the same speed, doesn't run away as far after it sees its buddies get murdered. BARRELS FOREVER.  Dlvl 1 has fewer monsters than other levels. Expect to take a few steps into a new area and immediately retreat from 6-8 different critters. Skeletons move the fastest, so roast them first. If fallen ones are nearby, they'll scatter. After that, just put down whatever comes close. Tactical strategies will gain importance once enemies gain speed and damage resistance and other fun tricks.  I haven't even gone halfway into this room, and look at all the dead monster parts around me.  Why yes, this is my second death to an exploding barrel. Toughest enemy in the game, right here.  Restart in town, visit Pepin...  Earlier, after I sold all that positive-enchantment blue gear ( ), I dropped my gold in town for safekeeping. I sell the random junk in my inventory, pile the gold back on the ground, and head back to the dungeon. (Looking back, I should've gone to Adria and investigated her scrolls and books. Ah well.) No barrel's going to keep me down.  I clear out more of the room and reach level 5. Just a little bit more in MAG...  Uh-oh. I'm gonna conga line these five skeletons around the room so I won't get surrounded.  I'm on the other side of the room with low health and that was me doing my best to keep away from them. I'm made out of pink bathrobe and tissue paper. Fortunately, I know Healing, so I can repair myself as long as I have the mana. An ability I forgot about when I was whacking those barrels earlier. Barrels give me tunnel vision, what can I say.   And back to where I was pre-conga.  I circle the room, kill everything that moves, pick up what little there is in the way of loot, and go south to that library I saw earlier.  Bottlenecks can save your life.  Ah, someone dropped another spell book for me. Telekinesis is a support skill that does what you think it does.  In addition to picking up any item or gold pile in range, I can use Telekinesis to open doors and chests remotely.  I don't have much mana but I forge ahead anyway. I'll get a little mana back when I read what's in the bookcase.  YES. Holy Bolt is the cure for those fast and scary undead. At low levels, its damage is on par with low-level Firebolt, but at higher levels, I can take down undead in just a few hits. Plus, Holy Bolt has a high chance to stunlock. I'll still need two hits to take down a skeleton--for now--but I'll have an easier time with crowd control now that I can freeze those fuckers long enough to run away.  This area's south of the library. This area also has barrels.  One releases a skeleton and gives me level 6.  More bottlenecking. These kinds of grating-plus-door setups can help thin out crowds on higher difficulties.  Getting my bearings. I have what looks to be another big open area to explore past the archway. (The small square room with the yellow door is the library where I picked up Holy Bolt.)  And there's this to explore.  Good choice. Those skeleton book stands have a chance of dropping books and are guaranteed to drop scrolls. Appropriately, the room also could be full of skeletons.  A grating-plus-door setup means I can pick them off in relative safety.  One of those tomes dropped an ID scroll. A shame I have nothing blue.  A few more kills and my inventory's full. I walk back to town and sell my crap to Griswold. I won't lie--the early game is tedious. The only reason it's worth my time to sell every bit of loot I find, even the caps and rags, is a certain spell that will make the Catacombs manageable. I want to buy that book as soon as Adria stocks it.   : I sense a soul in search of answers! It's not the Catacomb-crushing book I wanted and I don't need it now as much as I thought I would before entering level 2, but I might as well grab it while I'm here. Fire wall: says what it does. With that and a full belt of blues, I'm ready as I'll ever be to fight the Butcher.  Just for grins, I look at the other stuff she's selling. Phasing is a short-range and randomized teleport, more of a novelty than anything else. Mana shield turns my mana orb into an extra health orb, depleting that first. As I'll always have more mana than anything else (including sense), it's the closest thing I'll ever have to armor as a BNM.  I finish clearing out this side.  Wake up a ton of monsters, kill them, fill my inventory with their item drops, sell them, buy more mana with the profits, repeat ad nauseum.  My first shrine. They're like a Deck of Many Things, just with more beneficial effects than harmful ones. There are three shrines I won't ever touch: they raise a low-level spell by two levels at the cost of 10% of your base mana. I'm not going to permanently cripple myself for 2000 gold worth of spells.  This one will give me a free mana shield for the rest of the dungeon, provided I don't leave the level.  Sometimes the only clue to a shrine's effects is a cryptic phrase that appears on-screen when clicked. When the spirit is vigilant, the body thrives. Not so here. The golden ball over my head is my new best friend. I feel better knowing my life total is now about four times the normal size.  Ding.  This is a dead end, which means the room I'm looking for is on the other side.  You know you've found it when you enter one of those big square dungeon rooms with a smaller room with a single door inside it. Now's a good time to tell you who I'm up against.  : Lives in a room full of body parts on the second dungeon level. Wields a cleaver but doesn't drop it in multiplayer. Chopped off Wirt's leg. Arguably scarier than Diablo himself if you don't know how to trick him...but I know how.  Screw you, barrels.  Hey, magic rags.  I clear out the rest of the level and realize my inventory's stuffed. Some variant players cheat a little bit and put on gear just to mule it back to town.  Time to top off my mana and head back. Notice the glowing square in the room. That's where he's standing. I could use Telekinesis to open the door but the Butcher's not going to move until he sees me. I have to poke my head in and say hi.  So I open the door and run like hell. (Playing the game off the CD-ROM, I was afraid the disc would spin up and the next thing I'd see would be the red screen of death and the Butcher standing on my corpse swinging his cleaver around.)  The first part of my Butcher-killing plan involves the stairs down to level 3.  A debate from days-gone-by: is this pathing abuse? I say it isn't because the Butcher can't open doors, and if he can't master doors, what makes us think he can master stairs?  cmon dammit get in your hole  There we go.  As long as I don't move, he won't move either. If the path from the Butcher's room to the stairs wasn't a straight shot or the stairs themselves spawned next to unbreakable pieces of scenery--the torch or sarcophagus down there, for example--I'd risk getting cleaved in two due to my own pathing issues around objects. That's where the scroll of Fire Wall comes into play: find a hallway or room with a grating and dance the Butcher along it like a shooting gallery, using Fire Wall to drain health and maybe even stunlock him while spraying Fire Bolts from the other side of the grate. (You can cast Fire Wall in areas you can't see; I would've barbequed the Butcher in his own room if not for the mangled corpses and other obstacles. You can also cast a AoE spell centering on an invalid target like a scenery piece and nothing happens. Half baked butcher means dead BNM.)  Most bosses are resistant to fire, lightning, and magic, if not immune on Nightmare and Hell difficulties. Much as I want to show off the strategies for dealing with triple-immune enemies in Hell, I hope I don't run into any of them down there.  Might as well put the scroll to good use.  The fire lasts for about ten seconds. A very minor bug: if I cast a spell off a scroll and I haven't read a book of it yet, the spell produced by the scroll is the spell level 1 version, unless I have a slvl 2 or higher spell hotkeyed. As my active spell is my level 3 Fire Bolt, I produce a level 3 Fire Wall. (Not like it really matters--I think it's maybe an extra four seconds worth of fire.)  And Fire Bolt does him in. Boss monsters always drop items and their items are always good magic items. Whatever it is should sell well.  Once the Butcher is dead, the dying guy disappears. (Playing on Battle.net, his status was a clue to what the other players in the game were up to: was the Butcher still alive, was the person a new player who actually talked to him and killed him, etc.)  I can't remember what it was, but it sold for a decent amount.  And here we are, at the end of my first recorded segments. Next recording session, we find out what's on levels 3 and 4 of the dungeon, meet interesting monsters (and Fire Bolt them), and try to hunt up some cursed items. If there's any content you want to see in particular, or suggestions for this LP, just let me know. EXTRA HELPING OF BONUS CONTENT: Lochnar(ITB)'s Freshman Diablo is a classic D1 information site with various play tips, including information on BNMs and 3@30s. Some of this content can be found (with appropriate credits) on DiabloWiki. The Diablo Page of Virgil Tibbs is another ancient D1 site, this one written by a dedicated naked mage. It also includes fanfic and crossword puzzles. (This was long before ubiquitous image hosting--we had to get our jollies somehow.) Not much on OCRemix for Diablo. Blizzard released a few D1 parody songs and they're lost in a sea of Diablo III raps. I probably have them on a CD somewhere. If I find them, I'll upload them to Tindeck.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 17:17
|
|
|
Thanks for the support, everyone. RickVoid posted:This... this is not the best option. Hmm. Sounds like something to futz around with this weekend before another recording session. I'm also going to set Fraps to capping every 2 seconds instead of every 3, try to catch more of those Kodak moments. If you test out windowed mode, let us know what happens.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 17:27
|
|
|
Sindai posted:Wait, how are you hitting him with fire bolt from there? Do the stairs not block it? It sure looks like they should. Shots from the side won't pass through the wall, but standing at that exact spot, spells pass through the stairs.  It goes back to the whole abusing-a-bug argument from back in the day, i.e. why is the Mana Shield bug considered exploitative and stairtrapping the Butcher isn't? From what I remember, the Butcher is coded to get within melee range of the player using the shortest route possible, not taking into account scenery objects. He's simply not smart enough to open doors or walk around gratings. By that reasoning, he's not smart enough to know how stairs work. On the other hand, the Mana Shield bug is a programming error, as the game bases its stun check on your remaining red life pool total, not your combined total with Mana Shield. Besides, this is the only boss in the game who falls for that trick. The guy on level 3 is way too smart for that. He'll probably be my first death-by-monster.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Sindai posted:IIRC, there are five groups of 2-3 quests each, and one quest in each group is randomly left out of each game. Since the Butcher is part of group 1 and there are three quests in the group, there's a 33% chance of no Butcher. Jarulf's Guide, p. 151-152 posted:In single player, the quests that will appear in a single game are chosen at random. But there is some structure in the way they are chosen. Three quests are always present in every game: The Chamber of Bone, Archbishop Lazarus, and Diablo. If you play Hellfire, all the new quests will also always be present. The other quests are all organized into groups. From each group a specific number of quests are chosen for every game. The table below summarizes the different groups and how many quests from each group are chosen each game. Just for fun, I started a singleplayer game with a warrior and played to dlvl 2 so I could fight the Butcher. If you're playing normally, upgrading your gear, buying potions, and clearing both levels before cracking his door, you can fight him in melee and survive without getting stunlocked.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2014 15:09
|
|
|
5 - Taking a page from LizardWizard's book Finally had a couple hours to record an update. Tinkered around with the resolution settings, not having any luck so far.  My original plan: do a quick pass through levels 1 and 2 of the dungeon with a grand tour of level 3.  I scooped up a Cloak of Light from Griswold for +20% light radius. Items with the "of light" suffix are considered cursed items because the higher your light radius, the more critters you activate. 100% light radius means monsters just beyond the edge of the map know exactly where you are and prepare the rotisserie accordingly. Light items are the only cursed items with an enchantment the game considers positive. The opposite, "of dark," gives -20% light radius. Remind me to dig up the stories of Arnold Layne, the "blind flashlight" BNM, who carried a full set of both Light and Dark gear to activate all the monsters with one set (thanks to a bug) and put on the other set so he saw nothing and the monsters saw everything. Good times, those.  I leveled to 8 while wandering around dlvl 1 looking for books. I think the points went into VIT?  Dlvl 2 spawned the stairs down right next to the Butcher's room. An interesting setup for a stair trap. Misclick and I'm at the mercy of his cleaver. I decide to use Telekinesis to open his door and give myself as much room as possible to survive CD-ROM spinup and running like the dickens afterward.  I manage to trap him and use a scroll of Fire Wall on him...and then I misclick. He's out of the trap, taking off 2/3 of my life in one swing, but he doesn't stunlock me. A few more laps around the stairs and I get far enough ahead to stick him back in the trap and Firebolt him to death.  I decide to go for broke and visit dlvl 3. First, a trip to Adria.  : I sense a soul in search of answers! I'm torn between two useful books. (I'll never buy a book of Phasing.) Lightning casts a single long bolt of  TP it is.  Clearing the first part of dlvl 3, I find three scrolls of Town Portal.   And a bunch of undead. Level 1 Holy Bolt gets it done.  Also a bunch of empty skeleton tome rooms and vacant dungeon space. Where the heck is everybody?  Glowing squares behind doors are a good indicator of boss monsters. I think I've found the Skeleton King.  Like the Butcher, he's resistant to fire, but unlike the Butcher, I can't confuse his pathing and park him somewhere. I get out of range of his big-rear end sword and fire Holy Bolts. I have just enough mana to keep him stunlocked and make him dead.  The Skeleton King has a group of twenty or so skeletons around him. And they're archers. loving arrows. Fortunately, the same grating wall letting their arrows in will let my Holy Bolts out. I figure out where they're standing off screen by their arrow trajectory and aim true.  And then I run out of mana. I have no money to identify the King's drop. I have a choice. I could cut my losses and start a new game, scum up more cash on a newly-spawned dlvl 1. But I distinctly heard a ding on the other side of that door. Some skeleton dropped a piece of jewelry, and if that's a cursed ring or amulet, dammit I want it.  So I decide to do something stupid. I pop a TP scroll, top off my health at Pepin, and head to the catacombs entrance in Tristram. Maybe I'd get lucky and find either mana or gold for mana or items to sell for gold for mana? At this point I have nothing to lose.  I'm lucky to start in an area with three chests. One of them drops a unique ring...and I have no way to identify it.  I sell an unidentified Constricting Ring for 250 gold.   After that, I come up with a strategy. Return to the dungeon, cast TP. Use remaining mana to kill skeletons. Run into the room and scoop up items and gold. (Telekinesis costs too much.) Take the TP topside, turn items and gold into mana. Repeat until everything's dead. Time: about 45 minutes.  Ran into four--count 'em, four--unique monster bosses in that room. Every monster type has a unique boss, and if that monster type is present on the dungeon level, there's a chance a boss will spawn with a monster pack of the same type. I ran into Pukerat the Unclean (Fallen One boss), Skullfire (Skeleton Archer boss), Brokenhead Bangshield (another skeleton boss), and Goretongue (zombie boss).  And...nothing else interesting happens. I eventually level up to 10 (all points in VIT) and find a single sword of light among all the blues I hauled back to Tristram. Next time (this Labor Day weekend maybe?) we'll visit the catacombs proper and I'll figure out how to work FRAPS correctly.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2014 15:36
|
|
|
6 - The long way around Welcome back! Here's where we are now. Barring any amazing book drops, my MAG will stay where it is until my 20s. For now, points will go into VIT, and possibly into STR and DEX if I can find cursed gear to wear.  I picked up another cloak of light from Griswold during the last session. I'm starting to outlevel the suffix. Soon I'll be able to purchase "of radiance" items for +40% light radius. I also have about 6K in gold and a couple scrolls, probably Healing or Town Portal. Now that I can reliably buy a belt of potions, I tend to forget I'm carrying them.   : I sense a soul in search of answers!I buy the Firebolt. I wouldn't buy the book of Mana Shield even if I could afford it--I don't have the mana pool to make it worthwhile. (Now, before anyone feels like going all  about all the broken poo poo you can do with the Mana Shield spell, I'm going to devote an entire update to it when I learn it and start buffing with it. Please hold off till then so we can all together.) On the path from Tristram to the cathedral, there's a little side path that seems to go nowhere. Town Portals appear here, and since I'm flying solo, it's a safe place to keep my gold so I don't lose it in the dungeon if I die. (Remind me at some point to screencap my spellbook.)  Today, we're going to start in the catacombs and traverse backward through the dungeon as far as I feel like going. So let's get started.  Catacombs load screen. The spiral staircase reminds me of the sound booth loft in my college's old theater: straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon with less canned laughter.  First level of the catacombs, level five of the dungeon. The bright tiles around my feet mean the cloak's doing its job. The layout down here isn't as square as the cathedral and there are far more paths to nowhere. This isn't to say there aren't familiar features. See that circular thing near the top?  It's a goat shrine. They act like the cathedral shrines except goat ones aren't named. You don't know if you've activated a bad shrine until it's too late.  Speaking of too late, I hate this drat level already. Black Deaths are the fourth and final class of zombie-type monsters. These guys move fast (for zombies) and have a chance of decreasing your total hit points by one with a successful hit. PERMANENTLY. Given the twisty nature of the catacombs and its love of narrow corridors, it's only a matter of time before I'm ambushed and short a few HP.  I'm going to be avoiding sharp corners as often as possible today, hence the title for this chapter.  Walking around to the other side, I creep close enough to the room opening to get a monster on screen, aim, and fire.  What's a goat shrine without goat demon guardians? Like many other monster classes, these come in four varities, and like skeleton, they come in ranged and melee versions. Unlike skeletons, if you break line of sight with goats, they give chase. Snipe them from a distance to thin out the herd, then wake the rest of them up and pick them off at your leisure.  Scoop up the gold and/or items, and don't touch the shrine. Black Deaths are bad enough.  Only a lone Stone Clan archer on this side. Never hurts to be cautious though.  Say hello to another type of scavenger: the Shadow Beast. The only major difference between scavenger monster types is agility. Hungry Shadow Beasts can take a few bites out of you, run away to gobble up a monster corpse for health, and come back to finish the meal.  After a while, the number of doors, entryways, and room openings get a little Escher-esque.  I beat up a few bats and get to 11.  Glooms are the fourth-tier winged demon but they're not the most obnoxious--that honor's saved for their third-tier cousins and Tyreal help us if they're down here too.  Now that I have Town Portal memorized, I'll be casting one whenever I think I'm about to get my rear end handed to me. This kind of closed-door-with-empty-open-area setup sets off my hand-me-my-rear end alarm.  More Glooms and the other type of scavenger, not bad.  Waking up some goats...  Well now. I can handle the Black Death. Whoever's shooting those arrows refuses to be baited.  Yipe! Definitely skeleton archers. Down in the catacombs, large packs spawn as shrine or skeleton tome guardians.  Fire Wall only hits a few of them. If I want whatever's in that room, I need to carpet the place in fire or take potshots with Fire or Holy Bolt.  And now's a good time to go topside.  But not before I use Telekinesis to grab a blue claymore and this. Like Mana Shield, Stone Curse is pricey and unnecessary at level 11. If I want to do a successful 3@30, though, being able to transform my enemies into stone for 2-10 seconds is vital. Scrolls of the spell come in handy for boss fights. And it sells for 200 gold.  I waste the rest of my mana orb sniping skeletons before going up.  Screw you, Cain.   : I sense a soul in search of answers! (source)Flash creates a ring of energy around you that deals magic damage, and while the animation looks like a phosphorus hula hoop, only the four cardinal directions immediately around you damage enemies. Screw this spell.  And I forget to use Fire Wall. Screw this place.  Ten minutes of dodging arrows later, I find out it's a shrine room. And not even a good shrine at that. Spooky Shrines are one of the two multiplayer-only shrines. You get nothing, and your teammates get potions that completely refill their health and mana.  I hope there isn't a giant sack of disappointment on this side of the room too.  A close-up on the guys who tried to turn me into a pincushion earlier.  Another shrine room--and the stairs up! Levels 5, 9, and 13 have three sets of stairs: one up, one down, one to go to town.  So what's in the shrine room?    augh get away from me  Sure enough, I lose a hit point.  For another loving Spooky Shrine. SCREW THIS PLACE.  I try going around that other useless shrine. Now that's what I want to see: more reading material, less zombie syphilis.  Not this again. It's like the dungeon doesn't want me to be here.  Or maybe it does. #12.  I do the smart thing this time and collect the books first: Telekinesis and Heal Other, how useful :jerkoff: (And yes, Heal Other is pretty much that.)  Not again, you fuckers. Never again.  Okay, this might make up for it. Jewelry has low drop rates and high value--I'll be happy no matter the enchantment on this ring. Once space is at a premium in my pack, I'll keep >5K rings to liquidate as necessary.  That's worth a cool two grand. Not bad. Had I been playing a regular sorceror, I would've kept this for the STR bonus.  And potion money. ("Vendor trash" became a thing in Diablo 2, I believe?)  And back to the dungeon with a full belt. The Town Portal loading screen is still pretty awesome.  My original starting point's where those four parallel yellow lines are. I've cleared out most of the north half of this place, so time for the south half.  Goat demons have magic resistance, and iirc that becomes an immunity at higher difficulty. I haven't talked that much about spell progression because few spells have clear upgrades. Fire Bolt has a stronger version but I need four or five levels of it to make that version a better choice than plain old Bolt. I have yet to find anything resembling a lightning spell--kind of odd because there are three different ones to choose from. Then there are the buff spells (Healing, Mana Shield), the utility spells (Town Portal, Telekinesis), and the niche spells I haven't really found yet (like Flash).  Right below my pointer is a boss square. As I tried to describe in the previous update, you can tell where a boss is standing if you don't have line of sight because the square where the boss is lights up.  So yeah, that thing about not having a lightning spell.  Meet Foulwing. "Some magic resistances" means he's resistant to fire. (The game doesn't explicitly tell you that. How did people play this game before Jarulf's Guide?) Like all boss monsters (but not the so-called superuniques like the Butcher) Foulwing shows up with 5-7 monsters of his type. He and his accompanying Glooms have an attack pattern like a different catacombs monster I have yet to see: melee when close and make kind of a beeline/dive bomb attack when there're three or more tiles between them and you.  Keep your distance (but don't make it look like you're keeping your distance) and you'll be okay.  Nobody's resistant to Stone Curse, not even Diablo. Hopefully I can pump enough fire into Foul to kill him before he unfreezes.  Of course, the stronger the enemy, the shorter the duration. Since I haven't learned Stone Curse, I'm casting it as a level 1 spell. So that's what, 5-6 seconds? I got this.  Hrm.  This may be a problem.  No "may be" about it.  This is gonna suck.  Foulwing isn't fast but he's persistent. I run laps around the area, get far enough ahead of him to fire 2-3 shots, run away before he hits me (or just after he hits me), heal, try again.  He doesn't regenerate, but at this rate, neither will I.  Maybe Adria will sell me something lightning-related.  Or maybe Adria's conspiring with the random number god.  : I sense a soul in search of answers! Maybe this and the scroll of Stone Curse will make a difference.  He's taken enough damage, probably.  Maybe.  ♪ Maybe ♪  ♪ you'll think of me ♪  ♪ when you are all alone... ♪  ♪ Maybe ♪  ♪ the one who ♪  ♪ is waiting for you ♪  ♪ will prove  ♪ Then what will you do ♪  ♪ Maybe ♪  ♪ you'll sit and sigh ♪  ♪ wishing that I were near  ♪ Maybe, you'll ask me ♪  ♪ to come back again... ♪  ♪ ...and maybe, I'll say ♪  gently caress you, Foulwing, I'm going to level 4.  Good loving riddance.  Here's hoping there's a book of lightning somewhere on this level.  Hell, even a can of bug spray. I ain't picky.  ...wait a minute. Does this feel boss pack-like to anyone else?  Boss pack-ish?  ...you have got to be making GBS threads me. EXTRAS: Matt Uelmen - Catacombs theme (h/t to fleshweasel for the Tindeck hosting)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
HOOLY BOOLY posted:As sombody who has only played Diablo 3, it's interesting to see Tristram and how it's completely differnt than what it is in this game! Not mention the names of some of these bosses are either also in 3 or are mentioned in some way thorough journals or whatever (Lacdanaan,Leoric,The Butcher and of course Adria) It's terrible retconning, imo. I remember the D1 manual giving some neat background information on the characters and historical information about the world that made Khanduras sound grimdark as all get out. Now it feels like the place was all sunshine and butterfly farts until the Three Prime Evils showed up. Aces High posted:However that changed in D3 and it kind of soured my opinion of the game, that and it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too easy in comparison and the incorporation of WoW features kind of took away the uniqueness of the Diablo universe. Agreed. I tried to play D3 about a month after release and I gave up. I felt like Blizzard decided what was optimal for each character type and turned the entire game into a gear grind. So I played Torchlight instead and felt better. Nemo2342 posted:The Catacombs was the place where my warrior learned to love Firewall; it was so much fun dropping one on a doorway and then making the goatmen stand in it while they fought me. I lean hard on Fire Bolt because it's cheap and few things resist it. (Just my luck to find critters that do.) That FW technique is a good strategy in hell. Simply Simon posted:Did all of the people who didn't understand the D1 tie-ins in D3 miss the giant number of books everywhere meant to narrate the backstory? Usually "you just have to read the datalog!!!" is a stupid argument, but if you for some arcane reason actually care about the horrible story of Diablo, then why don't you read it? There are plotdump books in D1 as well--I plan to cover the one seen at the end of my last update in the next one. And yeah, you don't play Blizzard games for the plot. (Neat worldbuilding, gotta give 'em that.)I don't mind the Diablo series talk, just keep D3 spoilers to a minimum or under tags.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
7 - From tables in the sky Before I explain what happened last time, I'll rewind a bit to talk about some interesting dungeon features I skipped over for the sake of dramatic license.  This is an interesting layout. The stairs to level 3 are right behind me. The tan icon in the lower right means my armor is at less than 50% durability. Eventually that icon will turn red, meaning I have less than 10%. And then I have no more armor. (I have more pressing things to worry about down here than a cloak of light.)  And a book on a pedestal surrounded by lights? Must be important.   A war between heaven and hell. How original, Blizzard.  There's one book each on the last level of the cathedral, catacombs, and caves, each giving some backstory and plot. The only plot of a Blizzard game: there are things to kill and you're the one who has to kill them.  These are the third-tier winged fiends called Blinks. Hit them, even at long range, and they'll teleport right next to you and attack. Cast an AoE spell at them and you'll suddenly find yourself with a bunch of new friends.  The reason why I didn't want to see Blinks on level 5: meet the Blink boss, Moonbender. Foulwing resists fire. Moonbat's completely immune to it.  Running away from my new friend.  The fourth-tier fallen one, Devil Kin. Nothing remarkable, except they don't run away as far when they see me kill something.  Ah, good, a giant room for a giant-size game of keep-away.  Sadly, I can't get the other monsters to attack each other. They don't even take splash damage. (They can be damaged by traps--maybe even OHKOed by them--but that's rare.)  An abject lesson on the dangers of foolish exploration. In keeping away from Moonbender, I wake up the rest of the room, and I can't kill them fast enough, and I get cornered.  Fire Bolt a hole through the Devil Kin wall, retreat, heal, make everybody attack one-by-one through a doorway.  That's better. poo poo like this is gonna get me killed later, just you wait.  Good thing Moonbat waited till last to show up.  Let's try parking him in the room. (Notice the glowing square.)  Nope. Too smart for that.  Good to see a familiar face (and Fire Bolt it to death).  The rest of the Horrors are due east of me, in the direction I'm facing. The dancing fire sprinkler tactic I used in the Catacombs last time isn't going to work with Moonbender blinking around. This will be tricky.  North it is. Slowly.  And my armor's starting to die. Arrows will do that every time. (The neon pee beaker on my belt is a rejuvenation potion and restores a little bit of both health and mana. Deeper in the dungeon, I can find entire flasks of pee for full heals. ) Way to use a Glimmering Shrine when I have nothing in my inventory to identify. (I'm also not sure why I brought up the map. I'm too busy running ahead of Moonbat to care about much else, quite frankly.) Nothing but scavengers and fallen ones to the north. I lost Moonbender at some point--hooray!  Time to hose down some skeletons with cleansing fire.  Hold on--that's a book.    HEY MOONBENDER  GOT A PRESENT FOR YA  AND GUESS WHAT I USED TO WRAP IT    Oh, and lest I forget.  I am Conan the Librarian  and somebody's asskicking is way overdue.      Vengeance has been satisfied. (His drop will have a positive enchantment but it's a guaranteed doozy--bossdrops have higher qlvls. BTW, did you know that bosses are the only winged fiends who have any kind of item drop?)  I'll finish clearing this level before heading back upstairs.  Imagine if I had to dodge Moonbat and these motherfuckers on level 4.  And more of them to ding in lucky level 13.  Gonna get this one out of the way now: I'm a master baiter of goats.  Yeah, I deserve whatever I'm gettin' for that one.  Last area to explore. Hi guys.  And nothing down there but Black Deaths and non-blue items. Back to level 4.  I should give this chest a medal.  So all these guys were just chilling over here while I backtracked. Okay. Modern dungeon design wouldn't have none of that. (Then again, thinking of the other video game I'm currently playing through, Fallout: New Vegas, Diablo using the Gamebryo engine would wake up everything on the level and then get them stuck in walls, floors, doors, barrels, etc.)  I've been to town to barf out my inventory before now but it's not worth showing unless something interesting happens.  Might as well take it.  : I sense a soul in search of answers! For some reason, entering the portal back to the dungeon caused the CD-ROM to spin up for a good minute in the drive and the screen to go all  when the game finally loaded. (There's an officially sanctioned method to run the game without the disc--it lacks the 1998 feeling, so I decided not to use it.) I'm disappointed that my screenshots aren't as psychadelic. Everything has a 256 color palette rainbow edge to it. My white tights wouldn't look out of place in a head shop.  Seriously, look at what I'm wearing. A pink bathrobe, matching boots, white tights, and a codpiece that would make David Bowie blush.  I know they doubled as purses in Renaissance Italy. Is that where I'm storing my gold? Spell components? A spare copy of Jarulf's Guide?  ...I'm overthinking this.  Anyway, this is the area from earlier with all the skeleton archers. Trying to bait out anything that'll follow me.  Two connected big rooms, a ton of monsters, not a single blue item.  Here's a guaranteed magic item. Say hi to the Shadow Beast boss.  He resists lightning and he's immune to fire.  1.21 jigawatts later...  I guess this is for giving me that book of lightning earlier.  Spiritual Shrines put a random amount of gold into each empty slot of your inventory. In the Cathedral, it's 5-14 pieces. I could empty my inventory, hit Telekinesis on the shrine, stack all the gold, and pick everything back up, but with my screen  I don't want to risk losing an item or crashing my game. So I get 3-4 inventory spaces worth of gold, go to level 3, and TP to town. Adria didn't even have a book for sale in her randomized inventory.  : I sense a soul in search of answers! And this is the low-level AoE lightning spell, Charged Bolt. The spell casts at least four baby bolts, and while they don't do a lot of damage at low level, they can hit two targets and home in on them somewhat. I could've neutered a lot of fights in this update by carpeting the room in little bitty lightning bolts.  I'm running around level 3 for completion's sake.  I figured I should give y'all a good look at the Skeleton King. Not sure if I'll ever be in the Cathedral again after this update. Maybe for books?  This is a Murky Pool. It's one-time use Infravision.  Like so. Theoretically useful on unknown levels with immune enemies. (That Dark One with the hands up, I don't even want to know what's keeping the spear from hitting the ground.)  Visible range versus nonvisible range. (And those scavengers know where I am and they're headed right for me.)  I was beginning to think the dungeon didn't know how to drop magic loot anymore.  Leoric and his pack are northeast of the stairs up. Melee skeletons are much easier to handle than ranged ones.  I ready my stunlocker. Leo's resistant to everything else.  See that crown he's wearing? It's your reward for beating him...in singleplayer.  Leoric will circle around until he feels like getting into melee range. Don't bother wasting shots on him until he does. Take out the rest of his pack instead.  "Rest well, Leoric--I'll find your son!" Dead on an altar on level 15, quartered by Lazarus, but yeah, I'll find him.  The Rotting Carcass boss. Glad I decided to clear the rest of the level.  And the Plague Eater boss.   Goretongue's drop.  At last! I can finally be a bona fide beyond naked mage. (I should've gotten Griz to repair it but oh well--there are shrines for that.) Look at those stats! My next few level-ups will be devoted to STR and DEX so I can use this.  Goatsucker's drop isn't a bad low-level rogue bow. It's getting turned into mana money.  And I have a backup for if (when) the cursed bow craps out on me. I'm almost halfway to my goal and there's still so much to do. Next time: I'll give an update on my spellbook, burrow through the Catacombs, and test out my new bow on some unsuspecting barrels.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
WinterSteel posted:However, that spoiled bit...might want to double-check the facts on that one. If I remember correctly, later on, you'll find out the truth. It's not Albrecht--and I know who he really is--but the townies are convinced that he's alive down in the dungeon and Laz probably kidnapped him. I think it's supposed to be a big reveal during the quest to kill Laz.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 00:16
|
|
|
theshim posted:Oh come on, the only things that get stuck in the floors in NV are radscorpions for some reason. Heh. I'll put my various screenshots of things stuck in scenery into one of the LP FNV threads. (My favorite is falling down a rock face and getting trapped inside it, and my companion taking the long way around, climbing up to where I am, and getting stuck too.)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2014 15:25
|
|
|
So here's where I left my LP. I'm not cursed with a broken computer, just lack of free time. I'll try to get to it this week. In the meantime, peruse the end credits on YouTube. (Any idea why they credited the entire human race there at the end?)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2014 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:27 |
|
|
Heh, nobody got the reference. Blizzard doesn't literally thank everyone in the known universe. The "thanks to" section goes on for at least a minute. (The copy I'm using, the one that came in the Diablo 2 box, has longer credits in alphabetical order.)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2014 20:19
|
|