- Feb 24, 2006
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I wonder: how does my "noob D2 LoD" experience compare to others?
Guide writers: your target audience is not me. I purchased game CDs at a retail store back in the early 2000s, but our new D2R players will almost certainly purchase and download the game online. However, our new PureDiablo visitors may have experiences similar to mine, so would you please indulge my reminiscence, and let me put myself back in the "new player" situation. Here is my attempt to humbly introduce "to whom you might be writing:"
Starting out as a single player
The paperback manual that came with the CD suggested I start an Amazon, to get a feel for gameplay. So that's what I did. As she leveled, I put a point into *every* skill of *every* tree, just to try it out and see what it would do. At level 11, she had already spent one point in each of the ten lowest tier skills, and I still had another skill point to spend, so I put a second point in Multiple Shot, because I thought it just looked so cool when she used that skill!
Multiple Shot would drain her mana more quickly than before, so I invested some stat points in energy. I examined (and usually sold) every item that every monster dropped. If I thought it seemed like a neat thing to try, I stashed it, until I could spend enough strength or dexterity to equip it. If I already had enough strength and dexterity to try out the new toys, I would spend stat points in either vitality or energy, depending on whether I felt the red bulb or blue bulb needed attention. I found certain "superunique" monsters particularly challenging, especially Pitspawn Fouldog, and later Andariel. I grew very adept with what I then imagined to be the most useful skill in the game: cast a town portal periodically, so that I could more quickly retrieve corpses!
When my Amazon finally completed act 1, I felt a such sense of accomplishment. I had found a whole new desert location, with new horrors and new adventures! But first, I wanted to start another single player character and see what other ways I could fight through act 1. My second character was a necromancer. Wow, such a different playing style, and such fun! Again, I tried every possible skill, just to see what it would do. When I had an unspent extra skill point but no new skills to try, I spent another point in the skill I thought looked coolest: Bone Armor!
Enjoying the game's replayability
And so it continued, until I had tried all five characters, all 150 of their skills, and almost every armor piece and melee/thrown/missile weapon available in normal difficulty. Out of sheer stubbornness, I defeated normal difficulty Diablo with each of those five characters. Not long after that, I obtained the LoD expansion CD. I can't remember whether I converted any characters to play the expansion's act 5, but I'm pretty sure I actually started over, with seven new characters, one of each class. I tried out all 210 skills on those next seven characters, and practiced with them until I normal Baal was defeated seven times.
I was still figuring out how to properly "hack and slash" with a mouse and a few keystrokes. I was generally just using these keys: [Tab] and [Space] for the automap, [Alt] to find loot to pick up, [ B ] to look at what I picked up, [R] to walk or run, and [1] through [4] to stay hydrated.
I really appreciated having a mercenary help out with fighting. I also quickly developed affection for "minion" skills that could take some of the heat away from my character: my Amazon's Valkyrie, my Assassins' shadow clones and traps, and a variety of my Necromancers' and Druids' summons. My sorceress didn't have independently fighting minions, at least not quite like those, but she could summon hydras and a lightning storm. Those spells helped to fight her enemies while she was free to do something else. My barbarian had only one "summon" skill, a Grim Ward, which didn't help out much with monster killing. It looked really cool, but alas, it only dispersed monsters rather than attack them. I was also disappointed that the Paladin had no minion to summon, except for a really stupid hammer missile which briefly floated around in a spiral and bonked whatever bad guy happened to cross its path.
So as a "noob," I guess you could say that I tended to use summoned minions and mercenaries quite a bit as "training wheels," to help me learn to navigate the game. I perceived other skills as more advanced challenges to master when I was ready to try playing the game "without training wheels" (that is, without minions, making more use of characters' direct skills.)
Exploring new experiences
As I began to try playing Nightmare difficulty, I naturally began to look for more info about my new favorite game on the Internet. My first searches led me to Blizzard's official Arreat Summit site, now at https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/. There were some forums there once, but it looks like they're trying to migrate them yet again. Also, fans of the game had set up their own forums, with interesting names like Phrozen Keep, Lurker Lounge, or D2jsp. I wasn't impressed enough to dive very deeply into those. But two other forum sites successfully captured my attention. One of those, "The Amazon Basin," is still there, and still active, although not nearly as active as it once was. I still have my account there, and I even authored one of their build guides. In addition to their forums, the Basin's primary asset was a system for playing private (password-protected) Battle.net game instances, with which they kept out public game "riff-raff" from spoiling their fun. I played quite a bit on Battle.net, but I never successfully joined a Basin game, and anyway, Battle.net was never as satisfying to me as my Single Player accomplishments. Another favorite feature of mine at the Basin is onderduiker's comprehensive and very geeky wiki. The other fan-built forum that I grew to love most was DiabloII.net, later absorbed into a concern called IncGamers, and as of last year, now recovered and rebuilt better-than-ever here at PureDiablo.com.
The first things I consumed at these sites were the build guides. I got very frustrated with most of them, because they seemed more like "wish lists" full of hard-to-find equipment, rather than realistic suggestions of how to pursue success without insane item wealth. But along the way, I learned some great lessons:
Guide writers: your target audience is not me. I purchased game CDs at a retail store back in the early 2000s, but our new D2R players will almost certainly purchase and download the game online. However, our new PureDiablo visitors may have experiences similar to mine, so would you please indulge my reminiscence, and let me put myself back in the "new player" situation. Here is my attempt to humbly introduce "to whom you might be writing:"
Starting out as a single player
The paperback manual that came with the CD suggested I start an Amazon, to get a feel for gameplay. So that's what I did. As she leveled, I put a point into *every* skill of *every* tree, just to try it out and see what it would do. At level 11, she had already spent one point in each of the ten lowest tier skills, and I still had another skill point to spend, so I put a second point in Multiple Shot, because I thought it just looked so cool when she used that skill!
Multiple Shot would drain her mana more quickly than before, so I invested some stat points in energy. I examined (and usually sold) every item that every monster dropped. If I thought it seemed like a neat thing to try, I stashed it, until I could spend enough strength or dexterity to equip it. If I already had enough strength and dexterity to try out the new toys, I would spend stat points in either vitality or energy, depending on whether I felt the red bulb or blue bulb needed attention. I found certain "superunique" monsters particularly challenging, especially Pitspawn Fouldog, and later Andariel. I grew very adept with what I then imagined to be the most useful skill in the game: cast a town portal periodically, so that I could more quickly retrieve corpses!
When my Amazon finally completed act 1, I felt a such sense of accomplishment. I had found a whole new desert location, with new horrors and new adventures! But first, I wanted to start another single player character and see what other ways I could fight through act 1. My second character was a necromancer. Wow, such a different playing style, and such fun! Again, I tried every possible skill, just to see what it would do. When I had an unspent extra skill point but no new skills to try, I spent another point in the skill I thought looked coolest: Bone Armor!
Enjoying the game's replayability
And so it continued, until I had tried all five characters, all 150 of their skills, and almost every armor piece and melee/thrown/missile weapon available in normal difficulty. Out of sheer stubbornness, I defeated normal difficulty Diablo with each of those five characters. Not long after that, I obtained the LoD expansion CD. I can't remember whether I converted any characters to play the expansion's act 5, but I'm pretty sure I actually started over, with seven new characters, one of each class. I tried out all 210 skills on those next seven characters, and practiced with them until I normal Baal was defeated seven times.
I was still figuring out how to properly "hack and slash" with a mouse and a few keystrokes. I was generally just using these keys: [Tab] and [Space] for the automap, [Alt] to find loot to pick up, [ B ] to look at what I picked up, [R] to walk or run, and [1] through [4] to stay hydrated.
I really appreciated having a mercenary help out with fighting. I also quickly developed affection for "minion" skills that could take some of the heat away from my character: my Amazon's Valkyrie, my Assassins' shadow clones and traps, and a variety of my Necromancers' and Druids' summons. My sorceress didn't have independently fighting minions, at least not quite like those, but she could summon hydras and a lightning storm. Those spells helped to fight her enemies while she was free to do something else. My barbarian had only one "summon" skill, a Grim Ward, which didn't help out much with monster killing. It looked really cool, but alas, it only dispersed monsters rather than attack them. I was also disappointed that the Paladin had no minion to summon, except for a really stupid hammer missile which briefly floated around in a spiral and bonked whatever bad guy happened to cross its path.
So as a "noob," I guess you could say that I tended to use summoned minions and mercenaries quite a bit as "training wheels," to help me learn to navigate the game. I perceived other skills as more advanced challenges to master when I was ready to try playing the game "without training wheels" (that is, without minions, making more use of characters' direct skills.)
Exploring new experiences
As I began to try playing Nightmare difficulty, I naturally began to look for more info about my new favorite game on the Internet. My first searches led me to Blizzard's official Arreat Summit site, now at https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/. There were some forums there once, but it looks like they're trying to migrate them yet again. Also, fans of the game had set up their own forums, with interesting names like Phrozen Keep, Lurker Lounge, or D2jsp. I wasn't impressed enough to dive very deeply into those. But two other forum sites successfully captured my attention. One of those, "The Amazon Basin," is still there, and still active, although not nearly as active as it once was. I still have my account there, and I even authored one of their build guides. In addition to their forums, the Basin's primary asset was a system for playing private (password-protected) Battle.net game instances, with which they kept out public game "riff-raff" from spoiling their fun. I played quite a bit on Battle.net, but I never successfully joined a Basin game, and anyway, Battle.net was never as satisfying to me as my Single Player accomplishments. Another favorite feature of mine at the Basin is onderduiker's comprehensive and very geeky wiki. The other fan-built forum that I grew to love most was DiabloII.net, later absorbed into a concern called IncGamers, and as of last year, now recovered and rebuilt better-than-ever here at PureDiablo.com.
The first things I consumed at these sites were the build guides. I got very frustrated with most of them, because they seemed more like "wish lists" full of hard-to-find equipment, rather than realistic suggestions of how to pursue success without insane item wealth. But along the way, I learned some great lessons:
- Putting stat points in Energy is usually what noobs do, not experienced players.
- Spamming skill points all over the trees is for noobs. Good players plan skill investments carefully.
- Picking up and admiring every item is for noobs. Skilled players discriminate, and choose wisely what they pick up and identify.
- Stash space is limited, but Single Players can get a utility called GoMule for unlimited collectible packrattery and for trading items between characters.
- Pets aren't just training wheels for noobs - there are lots of fun builds that complement direct skills with summoned minions.
- There are function keys, [F1] - [F8], that can be assigned to used to spells and skills. Also, if you keep dying, because in your moment of panic you accidentally hit skill key [F1] instead of the potion drinker key [1], you can change your keyboard controls to map other keys that work better for you.
- Prize gear that improves resistances, in order to survive more effectively in Nightmare/Hell difficulty.
- As you play, try to notice how your attack rating, defense, attack speed, cast rate, etc. contribute to your character's effectiveness.
- longevity
- active discussions full of courtesy and cameraderie
- a simple system for item traders, with rules that help keep trading fair
- tolerance for certain mods and tools that maintain or improve the game's replayability
- intolerance for mods or practices that promote "cheats," or otherwise diminish the game's challenges and replayability.
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