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Great start to this LP! I played the poo poo out of D2 back in the day, though I theorycrafted a lot more than I actually played. Definitely the game of my youth. I did try a few mods, but most of what I saw was too much at once, more skills more numbers more monsters. Basically like Path of Exile ended up being, and I hate PoE  . I'll be happily following along here! Great idea for a project, best success!
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Oct 3, 2022 14:16
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 22:31 |
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I did try Eastern Sun for a bit, but it was too maximalist for my taste. I either also gave Median a shot but didn't like it from the outset, or people in the community did play and talk about it, it is only vaguely familiar to me. The others look great, actually. I really like the idea that equipment thresholds give you bonus to skills that are not just damage! Finally, of course I loved Necromancer, so much that I wrote a full fanfiction (in German, sorry) about one and his Golem.
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Oct 6, 2022 16:52
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I once did a proto-LP of a Melee/Poison Amazon all the way through Hell for the German forum I used to post obsessively in. You can play everything in this game, but it might just take forever. The melee skill? Impale, of course.
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Oct 8, 2022 11:09
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This was a great write-up, really reminds me of spending hours theorycrafting builds on the indiablo.de forums. Really cool that you know of them! I'd link the poison Amazon playthrough, but all the image links are looong dead ;( I can give you a good summary tho: it loving sucked lol. I don't think there were any proponents beyond "you can make this if you really want to but it's going to be agony waiting for enemies to die", and most of the first page of my thread were "but...why?" variants. There's two poison spear skills: one that leaves poison clouds in a line, and one that makes a big cloud on impact. The first has super high damage...over a super long amount of time. The second, other way round. Its DPS ends up being insanely better though, so it's the skill of choice, and it's rightfully lower in the skill tree. However, because the first skill's poison lasts so insanely long (I remember something like 10 minutes maxed out), you can just poison big bosses once, then hide in a corner forever, assisted by your Decoy skill which if maxed (and it's not like you got anything better to do) has bazillions of HP. I remember kill Hell Baal while talking to my dad on the phone for about 45 minutes. On the melee side of things, I specifically chose Impale because it might be the single worst skill in D2 that is not obviously useless (like grim ward). Its claim to fame is very high physical damage. Its "balancing" factor is that it has the slowest melee attack animation in the game. It literally takes over a second for an attack to go through. You cannot ever kill a Fallen with it. Most enemies can just walk away. Special fun in the CS: getting decrepd makes the animation take about three years, then while you're s l o w l y stabbing, you get IM'd, and you got a while to contemplate your life choices as certain doom awaits you at the end of the animation. It was a lot of fun . Oh, and solo selffound, of course!
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Oct 9, 2022 19:30
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Explopyro posted:The lightning aura version is absurdly powerful, dealing potentially hundreds of thousands of damage each hit. But unless you are cheating (either using save editors or trading for duped items online), you are very unlikely to obtain the necessary materials to make Dream runewords that grant the auras. Even post 1.13, when rune drop odds were increased by something like a factor of 4, the highest runes are still absurdly rare. Feel free to cheat and try it out in single player though, I won't judge you; my past self might well have, but I'm older now and don't give a poo poo any more. Explopyro posted:...Simon, I think I remember reading that writeup back in the day! It sounds at least somewhat familiar (and incredibly painful Explopyro posted:I can potentially help fill in some of the gaps there. I, uh, may have written some books on druids back in the day. (As far as I know the information in them is still good, though I can't vouch for the tone or writing style, I was much younger then. And I didn't exactly cover every build.) weird flex I know I played a shitton of Necro too, but people had already written extensive guides for most builds on that, so I decided to write Druid guides instead
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Oct 10, 2022 23:01
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I admire your patience). I'm not sure, though.
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You're highlighting a constant issue with the story in this update: it doesn't make a lick of sense if you think even for a second about it. When I wrote my big fanfiction thing, I wanted to stick quite close to the story, and I had to twist myself into several knots to explain stuff beyond "well they're evil so they decided to do stupid poo poo for shock value". By the time I wrote Act 5, I had almost burned out during Act 4, taken a long break, matured, and just skipped about two thirds of it because a siege from behind is probably the least of the story's problems at that point.
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Oct 11, 2022 17:27
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Mhm mhm mhm hey nerd have you considered this: STRENGTH ONLY BARB. That's all bye
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Oct 14, 2022 00:58
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Ppl were getting quite creative with the dumbshit builds on the old forums. There WAS legit str only barb guide, but there was also a thread called "The Strongest Barb" and it detailed how to achieve the titular result: e.g. dual-wielding crystal swords with 6 +10 str runes each There were quite a few square peg round hole builds like vengeance melee Necro too
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Oct 14, 2022 09:07
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The Countess is such a weird quest because it turns the protagonist into the player for a bit: greedy rear end in a top hat who couldn't give a poo poo about the main quest When I wrote my big novel following the story exactly, this was the first point where I had a writing block: I couldn't really figure out how to make five chapters in a row - one for each floor of the tower - interesting. The obvious answer of "just cut the entire thing" didn't occur to me, of course Speaking of, why DOES the tower have five basements? Why are we not going up instead? There's another, even stupider "tower" later on with the exact same issue
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Oct 16, 2022 00:41
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You could justify having to earn your reputation again and again in a lot of ways - in my story, I had the protagonist necromancer be a Lut Gholein native, and the local authorities knew him as a street urchin orphan so that's why they distrusted him (the necro thing didn't help, but wasn't the main reason). Act 3 starts with you spotting the Wanderer who teleports away and leaves a bunch of lovely demons behind, I had the necro actually lose to that real bad and be out of commission for weeks, so people were like "what a loser". However, the game never does anything like that, so As for the gameplay, I fully support the message that Andy can and will kill your really easily. She's the first big difficulty jump, in fact all of the Act bosses are quite hard, unless - of course - you know what you're doing. And for some classes, even that won't be enough. Looking at you, Duriel. I didn't know or forget that the superunique in the Inner Cloister went away with the Expansion! It used to be a Quill Rat with All The Enchantments, super dangerous out of nowhere, they probably felt it was overtuned for the point of the game and deleted it. I remember dying to it a LOT, definitely more than Bone Ash.
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Oct 18, 2022 09:34
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Hey Drognan, you happen to have a wand with +3 Bone Spear for sale? No? 's cool ... How about now? ... How about now?
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Oct 24, 2022 23:38
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Hey Drognan I rewrote reality so that the town gate is next to you now, just so that I can visit more often! No, no, just about 5 times a minute. I'm still practicing
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Oct 25, 2022 07:08
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Good Lord do I ever hate crafting. Of course, modders and especially the people who made Path of Exile think it should be the whole point of the game, so by extension I hate PoE...
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Oct 26, 2022 10:57
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The player character in D3 repeatedly does what an obviously bad guy wants, then upon the inevitable betrayal goes "yeah I saw that coming" and just relies on knowing that they will always be able to just beat up the bad guy because that's how being the protagonist of an ARPG works
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Oct 26, 2022 23:31
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The eclipse quest never made sense to me, because in order to finish the staff, you'll have to go into the snake temple anyway. Them cursing the sun away (which everybody is a bit too chill about) doesn't actually add anything!!
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Oct 30, 2022 23:58
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I actually really like the Lut Gholein sewers, they're a good level of difficulty where you have to be a bit careful with your young character, but it's not a huge spike with specific enemies being big outliers. It's open enough and no character build has a big issue there. Maggot Lair...I love summoner Necros. Nuff said
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Oct 31, 2022 09:52
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I don't actually dislike Act 2 at all, it's true though that the desert areas all being split in two by that weird cliff with one stairwell means that you often end up backtracking a lot. Secret technique to make it less boring: don't wait for the vultures to come down on the first pass, get them on the runback . Also, there is an actual sewer level in the game and it DOES suck rear end
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Nov 1, 2022 14:14
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Portal area rules with Summoner because it ports all your skellies with you in a nice clump around you (also why teleport on necro is busto), so enemies waiting for you? Hell yeah
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Nov 5, 2022 13:00
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Life Tap does work on everything, yes. Like skeletons. I also think leech shouldn't be underestimated. There's plenty of big HP sacks that you CAN leech on, and that won't kill a well-built character instantly, but will wear your potion stock down fast if you don't replenish your life. That's where leech shines: so you can do Baalruns, 4/5 waves and the big boy himself, without having to go back to town once.
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Nov 5, 2022 15:40
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Tyrael is the most incompetent moron in a game full of them. He trained the Horadrim wrong as a joke, never checked back on them after they fulfilled their initial purpose, ignored Sanctuary entirely while the Prime Evils tried taking over - twice - then tried to do something way too late and hosed it up so badly he now has to beg mortals for help. And he's all "you gotta hurry" about it. gently caress you, do your job better. In 3, they write him as openly stupid, sometimes to the point of comic relief instead. I don't even know which version is worse. What a terrible loving character.
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Nov 8, 2022 00:55
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Really nice summary!DarkMatt posted:X% Chance to Cast on Y
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Nov 9, 2022 22:51
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The jungle loving sucks! Every part iirc has three side areas: one optional dungeon, the waypoint, and where you actually need to go. The waypoint will never be next to the latter (in spidertown at least), so that's cool if you thought finding the waypoint means you can stop for the day. Less of a problem in SP, but online ofc the map rerolls every time you start a new session. And there's one more big gently caress you but I won't spoil it just yet.
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Nov 12, 2022 00:44
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Come to think of it, I don't think I ever read the D2 manual. I usually do for games, but D2 I first borrowed off a friend, got hooked, and when I finally bought it myself, it was a bundle with LoD and I think that didn't even include a manual. I do remember, when writing my story about the game, that I often googled stuff (usually reaching Arreat Summit) like "Diablo 2 Sorcerer clans" if I wanted to name-drop something. A few of the readers were like "so you're reconning [x] in your version of the world?" and I'm like "I've never heard of [x] in my life, is that a thing? I'd have retconned it anyway because it sounds dumb". All of this isn't helped by the fact that I simply don't care about worldbuilding and I also don't want to write it. I don't give a poo poo about a magic academy existing far away and there's internal strife between different schools bla bla there's not a single sorcerer/ess character in the game unless you play one! What would it matter!
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Nov 12, 2022 09:25
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I'm pretty sure you only need the CD keys, then you can download the game itself for free
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Nov 14, 2022 00:21
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EDIT: DarkMatt posted:Strike of the clock it's day 4 now. New update is now instead of when I go to sleep. What I'm saying is the sooner we escape this jungle the better. I didn't hate Act 3 as much as most people, but yeah, the Great Marsh Detour and the Flayer Dungeon can gently caress off
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Nov 15, 2022 09:51
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I spent most of my late teens on a D2 forum theorycrafting like a mofo, but I also never heard of double heal chance, wow! Personally as far as Act 3 is concerned, I always kinda like initially going into the jungle, because I do like how it looks and it's a good contrast after a lot of beige n brown to have some (if muted) green. My enthusiasm for the new area quickly wanes halfway through the second jungle area, of course. Reaching Kurast is always a big sigh of relief, and I always anxiously look for the first waypoint in Lower to never have to do the jungle again. Then I have to do the sewer -.- The end of Act 3 is great, though. I like Travincal a lot and the final dungeon is also o.k.
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Nov 20, 2022 10:55
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I'm with you with the story critique. My fanfiction project almost died in Act 4 because it just gave me nothing to work with. Starting with vast expanses of plain plains really didn't help, it just drained my creativity. I tackled the problem thusly: MagusofStars posted:-I assume the explanation for the hero arriving the Pandamonium Fortress is Tyrael interfering. After you beat Meph's rear end, the portal is now up for grabs so Tyrael can tweak it to bring you to a safe place rather than dumping you directly at some random-rear end spot in the middle of Hell where Diablo actually landed. It's never explained in game though so who knows. - I loving hate fighting Izual as well so I wrote him as the complete jobber that he is - Azmodan and Belial show up (I started writing it before they got speaking roles in D3 so I made them up wholesale) - the former attempts to make the heroes despair by tricking them into thinking that Natalya, who they befriended in Act 3, is being tortured in hell. He spins that into making them question what the entire point of hell even is, if ostensibly good people can end there, who even defines morality? It was a bit unfocused and after they figure out that he uses a Succubus disguised as Nat (swear to God I didn't copy that scene from Symphony of the Night either), I kind of drop him. Also because - Belial tries to also gently caress with the heroes, but he wants to instead corrupt them onto his side. In order for that to work, he actually backstabs Azmodan, removing him from the picture. He portrays himself as a "sensible alternative" to the Prime Evils - promises that if the heroes work for him, he can make a Better Hell with them at his side. The Necromancer is actually kind of tempted, especially because Belial plays into the whole "but you don't really know IF Natalya won't end up here, right?" thing. The Golem is having none of it, he's firmly the moral center at this point of the story. He has to physically fight of Belial at many points, who keeps popping up in the form of various hell knights. It's clear that if Belial manages to take out the Golem, he'll be able to sway the Necromancer, so that's the stakes here even if he clearly is not interested in killing the human - at some point the Necro actually almost falls and allows half a pentagram to be etched into his skin by Belial before the Golem manages to stop him Coming up with Belial as the actual, present villain for the Act was the solution I needed to keep going. He was a lot of fun to write and it was great to have him keep popping up like "have you considered corruption my dear friend? We offer various benefits", completely open about being the lord of lies, "but am I not making sense?". I felt particularly vindicated when Blizzard actually had a villain pop up throughout the part of D3 that mirrors D2 Act 4, but the writing sucked absolute poo poo. Somebody tell me if you want to hear after the relevant update how I ended Act 4 (including Belial), or if this poo poo bores you
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Nov 29, 2022 00:19
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achtungnight posted:Diablo is down. Now let’s see how/if Baal tops him.
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Dec 2, 2022 13:27
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Meaty Ore posted:Diablo's health won't reset while you travel between acts to raise more skeletons. Just use the waypoints to travel back to Act I and kill the easy trash monsters there; repeat as necessary until he's dead. Once you're 20/20 in skels + mastery, they are basically untouchable, however. And as soon as you are level 30 and have your one point in Revive, you can just get a stack of fatties to finish any job where the skellies might have issues. Especially Diablo, because he has crushing blow dudes in front of his door. Masterclass, however, is getting a staff with teleport charges and saving your skels like that when Diablo makes a big fire. Won't be easy with the fire ring, however, which on Normal is definitely enough to wipe ya .
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Dec 7, 2022 16:42
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 22:31 |
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Something that has been bugging me ever since I wrote the story for this act: what the hell is even the point of the siege? There is no reason for Baal to want to attack Harrogath, unless he happens to know in advance that the Hero will be ported there, however in that case the siege is a misnomer: it's then a defensive effort to slow the Hero down. Even so, Harrogath is a tiny backwater village that guards the path up the sacred mountain, so presumably, you'd kind of have to pass through it to get up there? But the siege is spread all over the flanks of the mountain, so Baal just bypassed it: how? Presumably due to Nihlathak's betrayal, which lowered some sort of barrier, but that means Baal set the siege up, on the mountain side of Harrogath, after he had already gotten exactly what he wanted. Again, it only barely makes sense if it's explicitly meant to slow down the Hero's efforts, and again, it's not a siege then. Keep also in mind that Baal effortlessly annihilated the Barbarian capital after the opening cutscene happened, so once the barrier was gone, he should have had no issues smashing Harrogath like an insect. Of course, he was busy scaling the mountain, but does that mean his army is, like, 1% as effective without him around? None of this makes any sense.
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Dec 12, 2022 15:20
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