Someone still plays this? =)
I do, or at least plan to. LoD v1.07 has kept me busy for now.
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Here's a writeup of my experiences in 1.00.
It's late summer of 2019 and once again I felt like "it would be nice to play some D2". I wanted to try something different though, so I went to dii.net to check if the forums are still alive. Soon I noticed discussion threads on playing certain old patches and a plan was born: go back to classic 1.00 to experience the game as it was when I first played it almost 20 years ago, try to collect some items which are harder or impossible to find in current patches and then move onward to next old patch of interest, ultimately bringing everything to 1.14d.
I Installed the game, launched it... wow, this resolution is so tiny, gotta find that glide wrapper I used with 1.14d. Fortunately the wrapper worked and I got the game to run smoothly in a 1024x768 window with mouse capture. I also managed to get multi-instance dll to work. The next moment of shock and horror awaited around the corner: you cannot create a HC character right out of the box, you must have a character who has completed normal in your save folder. After serching the web and asking dii.net, there's no way to bypass this
I bit the bullet, created a SC barb and proceeded to kill Diablo ASAP to get where I wanted to be. Completing the game wasn't exactly fast or easy, but it didn't take too long either, because that was the only goal I had. There was no need to save skill points for higher lvl skills or anything, just smash Diablo in the face and be done with it. Playing through the game in SC first was also useful for safely scouting the dangers that lie ahead (some nasty unique bosses like Endugu).
Now, with the HC tick available I created 8 HC characters: 3 barbs, 3 sorcs and 2 necros. I knew the progress on p8 would be painfully slow until Whirlwind is usable (lvl 30 + enough mana leech), but on the other hand, I need a decent sorc in 1.00 and a decent sorc + barb to forward to 1.07. So at least 4 high level characters are needed. Leveling all of them individually would be even slower. Also, if my main barb happens to die, I would have a backup barb right there and looting the corpse of the dead main barb would be possible too. Playing on p8 would also make it easier to keep the character overleveled and thus making everything safer. Sounds like a plan?
Because experience sharing in 1.00 is not limited to 2 screens or anything like that (being in the same area is enough), this is what I did through all of normal: use the main barb to clear the entrance to the next area, bring the "rushees" standing there, kill everything with main barb, clear the next area entrance etc. I cannot remember everything correctly anymore, but I think on normal difficulty the River of Flame was the only place where I stopped to do runs (maggots) to level up some more.
Lucky drops: in the beginning of act 2 (Dry Hills I think) this thing hit the ground:
I think that spetum was used until lvl 30 (= switch to pike + WW).
Another great thing dropped in Tal's tomb: unique pike:
That stick got equipped at lvl 30. The slow speed doesn't matter with WW and the durability is yummy. When attacking with Concentrate the rare spetum was better (not much difference in dmg and the spetum is faster).
After killing Diablo it was time to start bullying the Cow King. Got some nice rares with resists, life etc from him, also a bunch of uniques. Nagelring and Manald Heal were pretty easy to get and soon the first SoJ followed. I ran the Cow King until I felt the main barb was adequately equipped for both NM and Hell. Never managed to get a good failed pike, this was the best:
These are the pikes I actually used (and still use):
Decent damage and the life leech is great, knockback doesn't really bother me when running maggots.
Better dmg and faster when not using WW, but no life leech.
On NM and Hell I didn't bother dragging the rushees along the main barb to every area, I just went through the quests ASAP to get to River of Flame maggots. I think I leveled to 60 something on NM maggots, then moved on to hell RoF maggots. Also tried a firewall sorc at Coldworm the Burrowers lair - it works, but clearing the mess of drops from that one small room is cumbersome. Now I have reached lvl 84 with main barb + got the 7 rushees to lvl 78. One of the sorcs and some gear has been forwarded to LoD 1.07 already.
I skipped the Hellforge on both NM and Hell. I read enough horror stories of Hephasto "hitting like a truck" and also remember hell Hephasto killing my first ever "successful" character in one hit (1.2k life battlehammer-wielding Bash Barb with stats and skills all over place - still managed to kill diablo and reach lvl 87!). I'm not going to fight that guy, staying alive is too precious... if I ever accidentially manage to aggro Hephasto on my RoF runs, I immediately S&E.
Some random notes and thoughts along the way:
- That narrow, vertical, alphabetical character selection menu is harmful for one's mental health
- Aaaaaahhhhh, those lightning strikes melt my eyes!
- It's so empty in here...
- ... and these drops suck, even on p8
- Repairing each item individually is a pain in the ass...
- ... but that pain in the ass pays well
- You can leech off of skeletons
- Hello Flamespike Crawler
- Thank god I'm not a sorceress
- Shaman/healer/etc packs are nuts
- Maggot spawning is nuts
- Teleporters are nuts
- Nuts are nuts
- Mobs have a really weird aggro range, I guess this is the "star bug"
- Lightning spires in Arcane Sanctuary work differently
- Greater Mummy "unholy bolt" doesn't do noticeable dmg and the sound fx is different
- Duriel can Charge - thank god I'm not a sorceress
- What's up with the act 3 shamans attempting to cast a curse? Doesn't seem to work...
- Durance 3 is manageable in size
- Hellforge hammer must be identified before use
- Hey, there's a health shrine in the middle of the deadly lava lake *jumps in*
- The drops are so patterned it makes my head hurt - there's nothing like finding the exact same rare on two consecutive runs
- Accumulated gold will last a looooong time if you keep gambling those low TC bases
What next?
- Build a gold find barb
- Gamble the gold, I could use some great rare boots...
- Level up the rushees/backup characters more
- Prepare Hellforege Rushees for collecting the rewards in 1.10 beta
So far, I haven't got any truly great rares. I think this is the best:
I have enough SoJs for now though:
32 of them on the mule, 2 on my 1.00 sorc and 2 forwarded to 1.07 for a total of 36. Most of them I got from Cow King. I suspect there's going to be at least a few identical fingerprints...