Diablo II is an action role-playinghack-and-slashcomputervideo game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and macOS. The game, with its dark fantasy and horror themes, was conceptualized and designed by David Brevik and Erich Schaefer, who, with Max Schaefer, acted as project leads on the game. The producers were Matthew Householder and Bill Roper.
Building on the success of its predecessor, Diablo (1996), Diablo II was one of the most popular games of 2000[5] and has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Major factors that contributed to the game's success include: its continuation of popular fantasy themes from the previous game, and its access to Blizzard's free online play service, Battle.net.[6] An expansion to the game, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, was released in 2001.[7] Another sequel in the series, Diablo III, was announced in 2008 and released on May 15, 2012. Diablo Immortal, the fourth installment in the series, was announced during Blizzcon 2018 and is set after Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.[8]
Gameplay[edit]
Diablo II's storyline progresses through four chapters or 'Acts'. Each act follows a predetermined path, but the wilderness areas and dungeons between key cities are randomly generated. The player progresses through the story by completing a series of quests within each act, while there are also optional side dungeons for extra monsters and experience. In contrast to the first Diablo, whose levels consisted of descending deeper and deeper into a Gothic-themed dungeon and Hell, Diablo II's environments are much more varied. Act I is similar to the original Diablo; the Rogue Encampment is a simple palisade fort, while plains and forests making up the wilderness area, and the Monastery resembles the typical Middle Ages fortress. Act II mimics Ancient Egypt's desert and tombs; Lut Gholein resembles a Middle Eastern city and palace during the Crusades. Act III is supposedly based on the Central American jungles; Kurast is inspired by the lost Maya civilization. Act IV takes place in Hell and is the shortest, with just three quests compared to the other Acts that have six.
The Lord of Destruction expansion adds the fifth chapter Act V which continues the story where Act IV left off. Act V's style is mainly mountainous as the player ascends Mount Arreat, with alpine plateaus and icy tunnels and caverns. Occasional portals can take the player to dungeons in Hell (seen in Act IV) for extra monsters and experience. After reaching the summit of Arreat, the player gains access to the Worldstone Keep (whose architecture may be reminiscent of Angkor Wat and other Hindu temples).[9]
In addition to the acts, there are three sequential difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell; completing the game (four Acts in the original or five Acts in the expansion) on a difficulty setting will open up the next level. On higher difficulties, monsters are more varied, stronger and may be resistant or immune to an element or physical damage; experience is penalized on dying, and the player's resistances are handicapped. However, better items are rewarded to players as they go through higher difficulties. A character retains all abilities and items between difficulties, and may return to a lower difficulty at any time, albeit it is not possible to re-play the quests that are already completed.
Players can create a hardcore character. In normal mode, the player can resurrect their character if killed and resume playing, while a hardcore character has only one life. If killed, the character is permanently dead and unplayable. In addition, all items and equipment on that character will be lost unless another friendly character has the 'loot' icon checked. Standard and hardcore characters play on separate online channels; as such a hardcore player can never appear in the same game session as a standard player.
Item system[edit]
Diablo II uses a system of randomly generated equipment similar to the original Diablo, but more complicated. Weapons and armor are divided into several quality levels: normal, magical, set, rare and unique. Normal quality items are base items with a fixed set of basic properties, such as attribute requirements, maximum durability, armor rating (on armor), block chance (on shields), damage and attack speed (on weapons). Magical quality items have blue names and one or two randomly selected bonuses, such as bonuses attributes, skills or damage, indicated by a prefix or suffix. Rare quality items have randomly generated yellow names and 2 to 6 random properties. Unique items have fixed names in gold text, and instead of randomized properties, they have a set of 3 to 8 preselected properties. Green-named set items have fixed names and preselected properties like unique items, and belong to specific named sets of 2 to 6 items. Additional properties known as set bonuses are activated by equipping multiple or all items from the same set. These are themed on individuals, like Civerb's cudgel, shield and amulet each provide individual bonuses which are enhanced if two or more of the items are used to equip a character. It is unusual to encounter more than one item from a set in a single playthrough of the game, so collectors need to play the game many times to accumulate all items from a set, or purchase them online from other players who possess them but do not need them. Additionally, items can possess sockets, which can be used to upgrade items by adding gems for various bonuses.[10]
Diablo II includes an item crafting system. An item known as the Horadric Cube is used to combine two or more items to create a new item. For example, 3 identical lower quality gems can be combined to create a single higher quality gem, and 3 small rejuvenation potions can be combined to create a single, more powerful rejuvenation potion.[11]
Character classes[edit]
The five character classes in Diablo II as seen during the opening selection animation. From left to right: the Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress, and Paladin.
Diablo II allows the player to choose between five different character classes: Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress, and Paladin. Each character has different strengths, weaknesses and sets of skills to choose from, as well as varying beginning attributes. The maximum level that any character can obtain is level 99.
Two additional character classes, the Druid and Assassin, were added in the expansion.
The player can enlist the help of one hireling (computer-controlled mercenaries) from a mercenary captain in the town; the Rogue Scouts, Desert Mercenaries, Ironwolves, and Barbarians, from Acts I, II, III, and V (expansion only). The expansion allows players to retain their mercenary throughout the entire game as well as equipping them with armor and weapons. Hirelings gain experience and attributes like the player, although their level cannot surpass that of their master character.[18] Typically players choose a hireling that provides something missing from their character class; for instance the melee-focused Barbarian may choose an Ironwolf for ranged magical support.
Multiplayer[edit]
Diablo II can be played multiplayer on a local area network (LAN) or the Blizzard's Battle.net online service. Unlike the original Diablo, Diablo II was made specifically with online gaming in mind.[19] Several spells (such as auras or war cries) multiply their effectiveness if they are cast within a party, and although dungeons still exist, they were largely replaced by open spaces.
Battle.net is divided into 'Open' and 'Closed' realms.[20] Players may play their single-player characters on open realms; characters in closed realms are stored on Blizzard's servers, as a measure against cheating, where they must be played every 90 days to avoid expiration. Originally, these closed realms served their purpose of preventing cheating, as open games were subject to many abuses as the characters were stored on players' own hard drives. Within the last few years, however, many cheats are used on these closed realms.[21] Hacks, bots, and programs which allow the player to run multiple instances of the game at the same time are not allowed by Blizzard but are very commonly used. Spambots (programs which advertise sites selling Diablo II's virtual items for real-world currency) run rampant on the service and a player hosting a public game can expect a visit from one every few minutes.[22] Due to the surplus of virtual items provided by the automated bots, which repeatedly kill bosses to obtain items, supply is well in excess of demand, and items which used to trade well are now often given away for nothing.[23]
As the game can be played cooperatively (Players vs. Environment, PvE), groups of players with specific sets of complementary skills can finish some of the game's climactic battles in a matter of seconds, providing strong incentives for party-oriented character builds. Up to eight players can be in one game; they can either unite as a single party, play as individuals, or form multiple opposing parties. Experience gained, monsters' hit points and damage, and the number of items dropped are all increased as more players join a game, though not in a strictly proportional manner. Players are allowed to duel each other with all damage being reduced in player vs player (PvP). The bounty for a successful kill in PvP is a portion of the gold and the 'ear' of the defeated player (with the previous owner's name and level at the time of the kill).
The Ladder System can be reset at various intervals to allow for all players to start fresh with new characters on an equal footing. Ladder seasons have lasted from as short as six months to over a year. When a ladder season ends, all ladder characters are transferred to the non-ladder population. Certain rare items are available only within ladder games, although they can be traded for and exchanged on non-ladder after the season has ended.[24]
The game has been patched extensively; the precise number of patches is impossible to determine as Battle.net has the capability of making minor server-side patches to address immediate issues. As of July 2016, the game is in version 1.14d.[25] Through the patch history, several exploits and issues have been addressed (such as illegal item duplication, though it still exists), as well as major revamps to the game's balance (such as the ability to redo skills and attributes). Not all patches have affected Diablo II directly, as several were designed to address issues in the expansion to the game and had minimal effects on Diablo II.[26]
Plot[edit]
Diablo II takes place after the end of the previous game, Diablo, in the world of Sanctuary. In Diablo, an unnamed warrior defeated Diablo and attempted to contain the Lord of Terror's essence within his own body. Since then, the hero has become corrupted by the demon's spirit, causing demons to enter the world around him and wreak havoc.
A band of adventurers who pass through the Rogue Encampment hear these stories of destruction and attempt to find out the cause of the evil, starting with this corrupted 'Dark Wanderer.' As the story develops, the truth behind this corruption is revealed: the soulstones were originally intended to imprison the Prime Evils after they were banished to the mortal realm by the Lesser Evils. With the corruption of Diablo's soulstone, the demon is able to control the Dark Wanderer and is attempting to free his two brothers Mephisto, and Baal. Baal, united with the mage Tal-Rasha, is imprisoned in a tomb near Lut Gholein. Mephisto is imprisoned in the eastern temple city of Kurast.
As the story progresses, cut scenes show the Dark Wanderer's journey as a drifter named Marius follows him. The player realizes that the Dark Wanderer's mission is to reunite with the other prime evils, Baal and Mephisto. The story is divided up into four acts:
In the epilogue, Marius, speaking in a prison cell, indicates he was too weak to enter Hell, and that he fears the stone's effects on him. He gives the soulstone to his visitor. The visitor reveals himself to be Baal, the last surviving Prime Evil now in possession of his own soulstone. He then kills Marius and sets the prison cell on fire.
The story continues in the expansion Diablo II: Lord of Destruction where Baal attempts to corrupt the mythical Worldstone on Mount Arreat. Upon returning to the Pandemonium Fortress after defeating Diablo, Tyrael opens a portal to send the adventurers to Arreat.
History[edit]Development[edit]
The game was originally to be released in 1999, after being shown off at E3 1998.[citation needed] According to designer and project lead Erich Schaefer, 'Diablo II never had an official, complete design document.. for the most part we just started making up new stuff.'[27] The game was slated to have two years of development work, but it had taken Blizzard North over three years to finish. Diablo II, despite having less than one percent of the original code from Diablo I and having much of its content and internal coding done from scratch, was seen by the testers as 'more of the same.' The game was meant to be released simultaneously both in North America and internationally. This allowed the marketing and PR department for Blizzard North to focus their efforts in building up excitement in players worldwide for the first week of sales, contributing to the game's success.[27]
Music development[edit]
The score was composed by Matt Uelmen and integrates creepy ambience with melodic pieces. The style of the score is ambient industrial and experimental.[28] It was recorded in Redwood City, Oakland, and San Mateo, California, from April 1997 to March 2000.
Some tracks were created by reusing the tracks from the original game, while others by rearranging tracks that were out-takes. Other scores are combinations of parts that were created more than a year after the first game's release. A single track usually integrates recorded samples from sound libraries, live recorded instrument interpretation samples specially meant for the game (guitar, flute, oriental percussion), and electronic instruments also, making the tracks difficult for later live interpretations.
While the player visits the town, the game recreates the peaceful atmosphere from the first Diablo game, so for that the theme from Act I called 'Rogue' comes back with the same chords of the original piece, reproducing only a part of the original Diablo town theme. For Act II Mustafa Waiz, a percussionist, and Scott Petersen, the game's sound designer, worked on the drum samples. Waiz played on the dumbek, djembe, and finger cymbals which gave Matt Uelmen a base upon which to build tracks around.
The town theme from Act II, 'Toru', makes strong statement of departure from the world of Act I while also maintaining a thematic connection to what had come before. It is the first time in the series to be used some radically different elements than the guitars and choral sounds that dominate both the original Diablo and the opening quarter of Diablo II. The foundation of the 'Toru' piece is found in exciting dynamics of a Chinese wind gong. The instrument radically changes color from a steady mysterious drone to a harsh, fearsome noise, that gives exotic feeling and at the same time the pacing of the second town. In all sequences of Act II with deserts and valleys, Arabic percussion sounds dominate.
The composer was impressed by two of the Spectrasonics music libraries, Symphony of Voices and Heart of Asia. He used samples from Heart of Asia in the Harem piece from Act II. The 'Crypt' track uses a sample from Symphony of Voices; the choral phrase Miserere. Voice samples from Heart of Asia, Heart of Africa, and Symphony of Voices by Spectrasonics.The 'Harem' track samples from Heart of Asia the Sanskrit Female 1 samples.[29]
Release[edit]
The game was released in Collector's Edition format, containing bonus collector's material, a copy of the DiabloDungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper campaign setting, and promotional movies for other Blizzard games. In 2000, the Diablo II: Exclusive Gift Set similarly contained exclusive collector's material and promotional videos, as well as a copy of the official strategy guide. The 2000 released Diablo Gift Pack contained copies of Diablo and Diablo II, but no expansions. The 2001 Diablo: Battle Chest version contained copies of Diablo II, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, the official strategy guide, and the original Diablo. Recently however[when?], the Battle Chest edition no longer contains the original Diablo.
Support and legacy[edit]
Blizzard continues to provide limited support for Diablo II, including occasional patches. Although the original CD retail release worked on Windows 95/98/Me/NT4SP5,[30] the current version downloadable from Battle.net requires at least Windows 2000/XP.[31]
Around 2008, the announcement of Diablo III renewed the interest in its predecessor and brought more attention to the many mods available for the game.[32]
In 2015 an unofficial port for the ARM architecture based Pandora handheld became available by static recompilation and reverse engineering of the original x86 version.[33][34]
On March 11, 2016 Blizzard released the 1.14a Patch, which added support for Windows 7 and newer, a macOS installer and support for OS X 10.10 and 10.11, although there is currently no support for macOS 10.13.[3][35]
Commercial performance[edit]
In its debut day on shelves, Diablo II sold 184,000 units.[36] The game's global sales reached 1 million copies after two weeks,[37] and 2 million after one and a half months.[38] It was awarded a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records 2000 edition for being the fastest selling computer game ever sold, with more than 1 million units sold in the first two weeks of availability.[39] Its sales during 2000 alone reached 2.75 million globally;[40] 33% of these copies were sold outside the United States, with South Korea making up the largest international market.[41]Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Diablo III have since surpassed Diablo II's record to become fastest-selling computer games ever at their times of release, according to Blizzard.[42][43]
In the United States, PC Data tracked 308,923 sales for Diablo II during the June 25âJuly 1 period, including sales of its Collector's Edition. This drew revenues of $17.2 million.[44] Domestic sales reached 790,285 units ($41.05 million) by the end of October 2000, according to PC Data. Another $4.47 million were earned in the region by that date via sales of the Collector's Edition.[45]Diablo II finished 2000 with 970,131 sales in the United States, for a gross of $48.2 million.[46]
Diablo II's success continued in 2001: from February to the first week of November, it totaled sales of 306,422 units in the United States.[47] It was ultimately the country's eighth-best-selling computer title of 2001,[48] with sales of 517,037 units and revenues of $19.3 million.[49] Its lifetime domestic sales climbed to 1.7 million units, for $67.1 million in revenue, by August 2006. At this time, this led Edge to declare it the United States' second-largest computer game hit released since January 2000.[50] It received a 'Gold' sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA),[51] indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies in the United Kingdom.[52]
Diablo II became a major hit in the German market, and debuted at #1 on Media Control's computer game sales chart for June 2000. Speaking with Havas Interactive's public relations director, PC Player's Udo Hoffman noted that the representative 'had to make an effort on the phone to avoid singing and jubilating' over the game's commercial performance.[53] The Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) presented Diablo II with a 'Gold' award after three weeks of availability,[54] indicating sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.[55] It maintained first place for July and rose to 'Platinum' status (200,000 sales) by the end of the month.[53][55][56] The game proceeded to place in Media Control's top 10 through October, peaking at #2 in August,[53] and in the top 30 through December.[57][58] By the end of 2000, roughly 350,000 units had been sold in the German market.[53]Diablo II continued to chart in January 2001, with a placement of 24th,[58] and its Limited Edition debuted in second place for February.[59] That April, the VUD presented the game with a 'Double-Platinum' certification, for 400,000 sales. This made it one of the region's best-selling computer games ever at that time.[60]
As of June 29, 2001, Diablo II has sold 4 million copies worldwide.[61] Copies of Diablo: Battle Chest continue to be sold in retail stores, appearing on the NPD Group's top 10 PC games sales list as recently as 2010.[62] Even more remarkably, the Diablo: Battle Chest was the 19th best selling PC game of 2008[63] â a full seven years after the game's initial release â and 11 million users still played Diablo II and StarCraft over Battle.net in 2010.[64]
Reception[edit]Critical reviews[edit]
Diablo II has a positive reception. The PC version of the game achieves an overall score of 88/100 on Metacritic and 89% at GameRankings.[65][66]GameSpy awarded the game an 86 out of 100,[5]IGN awarded the game an 8.3 out of 10,[68] and GameSpot awarded the game an 8.5 out of 10.[76]
Awards[edit]
Diablo II earned GameSpot's 2000 runner-up Reader's Choice Award for role-playing game of the year.[67] The game has received the 'Computer Game of the Year', 'Computer Role Playing Game of the Year', and 'Game of the Year' awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences at the 2001 Interactive Achievement Awards.[69] In August 2016, Diablo II placed 21st on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list.[77] It was placed at No. 8 on Game Informer's 'Top 100 RPGs Of All Time' list.[78]
Secret Cow Level[edit]
The 'Secret Cow Level' is the result of a running joke from the original Diablo that spawned from an Internet rumor about the cows that appear in the game, seemingly without purpose. Supposedly, if the cow was clicked a certain number of times, a portal to a secret level would open. The rumor turned out to be a hoax, but the legend was born, and player after player asked Blizzard about how to access the level.
In Diablo: Hellfire, an add-on for Diablo created by third-party developer Synergistic Software, it was possible to change a parameter in a specific text file, so that the farmer was dressed in a cow suit, with appropriate new dialogue ('Moo.' 'I said Moo!'). To stop the rumors, Blizzard included a cheat in StarCraft that read 'There is no cow level', adding to the official denial of the cow level.[79] On April 1, 1999, a Diablo II Screenshot of the Week featured cows fighting. People wondered if the screenshot was an April Fool's joke or if there really was a Secret Cow Level planned for Diablo II, which turned out to be true.[79] The 'Secret Cow Level' is considered one of gaming's top ten Easter eggs according to IGN.[80]
See also[edit]References[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Diablo_II&oldid=903661331'
So here we are. You have a vision, a clear idea of where you want to go with your game. How the difficulty should evolve across the experience. You have a layout with your main values which will drive your entire work from there (see part 1)
Before we move on, itâs important to remember that one cannot always think about everything or plan for every situations. This preliminary work is not destined to be set in stone. Should you realize later that you have gravely underestimated some factors, you may have to return to this part and change some of the base values. More often than not, there will be a lot more rules governing the statistics of the player avatar than for their enemies. Hostiles will probably be influenced by fewer global multipliers for their damages and resistance. So if you need to do quick yet radical adjustments, keep in mind that it will probably be simpler to change the curve of difficulty for the environment rather than the curve of power for the player.
This part of the work is probably the trickiest. One could debate indefinitely about what you should or should not do here. How far you should or should not go. How complex it should be. Well, it really depends on your initial vision, again⦠You only can decide the kind of audience youâre targeting. And this, in turn, will decide how much efforts you can require of your players to experience, understand or master your game. Iâm not one to think that everything in a game must be crystal clear and written explicitly in little pop ups. I can live and appreciate some kind of mystery in the inner workings of a game. If it makes sense, if you can decipher how it works given the right amount of effort⦠fine by me! But youâll find people to disagree veeeeery strongly with that choice, game creators and players alike. You just need to be aware of the consequences of your choices.
That being said, weâre here to create a Diablo-like experience. A game where you make choices, a game where you create builds, a game where you have to analyze game mechanics and try to optimize your way through. Because YES, playing a Diablo-like by blindly following a build found on the internet is a disgrace. You would not be playing the game or not the entire game⦠certainly not the interesting part. But to be an interesting challenge your game systems must be significant, coherent and generate interesting choices.
Significant because each one of your systems must add a real value to the whole. If it does not bring new ways of making things right or wrong for the player, itâs probably useless. Cut it.
Coherent because all systems must work together, avoid being antagonistic and have enough logic or be sufficiently explained to be understood (provided the players made the kind of commitment you were expecting of them of course)
Generate interesting choices because thereâs no point in creating complex systems if you canât actually play with them. Creating an armor system to soak part of the damages do not make sense if you donât have things like light armors, heavy armors, with very different efficiencies but also very different requirements or penalties. If you have globally just one type of armor, you should probably just add upgrades to health points instead.
I wonât be able to cover all game systems in Drifting Lands but Iâll explain how Armor is handled for your ships. Why some equations were chosen and how values were defined. Hang in there, thereâs a lot to say!
What can we say about armor? Letâs retrace the different steps in the reflexion process I went through in a very condensed form
Diablo 2 Hell Difficulty Tips
What now? How do you chose the Math and numbers for your game? Well first, you should play a lot of aRPG and dig deep enough to learn and understand how they actually work. Then you make game design decisions: significant choices or behaviours you want for your game. You tell yourself stories of how the game will unfold for different types of players, for different types of strategies. How it must react to different builds across all your difficulty levels. Then you find the Math and choose values that will fit in your pattern.
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Back to our armor. As I said, we need the effect of armor to be non linear across all values. With a linear effect thereâs no reason to have a damage mitigation system when itâs similar to just x% of additional health. Very often armor effects use a mildly complex mathematical function causing diminishing returns. It means that the effect is tending to a maximum and that each point has less and less effect than the previous one. This maximum effect is usually reached by an increasing value of armor with each new level of difficulty.
For Drifting Lands, I wanted to keep things very simple and choose values or limits with a clear meaning. For each level, there is a set of 3 values, 3 targets for armor with different effects.
Between those values the effect is linear. So if you have a total armor average of No Modifier Player Armor and x2 Damage Player Armor, youâll take 1.5 more damage. Here are the actual values for the game :
Where do they come from? Well the first column is really just a set of purely arbitrary values. 100 is a good value to start from because we know that several items will give armor to the ship (6 for a Sentinel, 4 for an Interceptor). So we need a minimum of granularity here. Then we ramp up more and more rapidly to reach a linear slope around level 70.
These values are the primary target players must reach for their ships if they donât want to be severely punished. It must be a fairly easy objective to reach or even overcome at first. These values are just here as a âcheckâ that you are equipped with items of the correct level.
The second important column of values (x2 Damage Player Armor) is just half of the first column. These values are fairly close because we want the penalty to apply really quick if you donât match the no penalty requirement and then cap at x2 damages.
The third colum of values (-90% physical damage armor) is the objective to reach the maximum damage mitigation. Unless youâre playing at a level inferior to your stuff level, we wanted this be nearly impossible to reach. These values are 6 times the âno modifierâ values. Why?⦠well mainly because since the effect is linear between these 2 values, we wanted to keep a damage mitigation of 25% for an armor which is a bit over 2 times the armor with no mitigation. Through the rest of our work, weâve tried to keep this target of 25% mitigation really easy to overcome with a Sentinel and a bit hard to reach with Interceptors.
Now that weâve got those target values, the really important part is how we break them down into bits for players to collect. Hereâs another very important table for armor values in the game.
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The first important column, Max Target Armor Total, defines the maximum we want you to be likely to reach for each range of levels. Well, likely to reach with a Sentinel. As you can see, at first itâs very close to the 25% damage mitigation target for armor then it quickly ramp up to 30 000. Why is that? Since the game difficulty is still growing after level 65 and items wonât get any better after this, we wanted to let you reach the 25% damage mitigation level even at difficulty level 100. It does mean that between level 50 and level 80, itâs probably quite easy to reach a fairly good damage mitigation if you farm a bit, but it also means that you can still progress quite rapidly even if you donât always maximize your armor. On the other hand, armor is only effective for physical damage and you have to take care of your resistances at the same time so itâs not THAT easy.
The 3 following columns defines base armor for ships themselves. In Drifting Lands, at least for now, you have 3 levels of quality for each class : basic at level 1, premium at level 20, elite at level 40. Each ship has a base armor stat, highly influenced by the class. Itâs very much on purpose that those values are not very high compared to the Max targets. Itâs a loot based game remember? We want players to look for items, not just buy better ships. And thatâs about now, that you exclaim : âhey! Your table is wrong! It says here that the armor for ships changes at level 30 and 60 not 20 and 40.â
Aaaaaand, youâre right. I havenât updated these values on purpose to make a point: all this work is temporary. Thereâs no way to be sure youâve thought everything through. Weâve changed those levels to unlock better tiers of ships for a reason that became apparent later once the game was pretty much done. 30 levels to unlock a better tier was too long and I suddenly discovered that i wanted it to be possible (even if hard) to skip the premium level entirely. It was way too hard with an elite ship unlocked at level 60. And yes, weâve kept the original values of base armors for those ships. Because, well because it rarely hurts a game to be a little more forgiving than what you first imagine as its designer. Believe me: most people will find your game MUCH HARDER than you do right now. Want to know exactly how hard? Easy: once the game is complete, stop playing it for 2 or 3 years and then try again. If you donât want to wait, have your game tested by a total stranger to the project.
And on we go! The next columns decompose our Max Target Armor Total into the different sources of armor :
Letâs study only the highest level of difficulty. We want you to be able to reach about 30k armor. Your base hull at this point will grant you 500 to 1000 armor whether you have an Interceptor or a Sentinel. From there, we imagine 3 archetypal scenarios :
Heavy Sentinel at level 100
you have 6 items armor related with a main Structure requirement. We want to attribute 10k armor to these items so roughly 1700 each. These are the heaviest pieces of armour in the game. We will grant a maximum of 7680 armour points via an absolute bonus for items which can be present on 8 items for Sentinels. Finally the same 8 items can grant a maximum of 75% of increased armor. So the total is : ( 1000 + 1700*6 + 7680 ) * 1.75 = 33 040. Weâre a bit above our 30k target. This is ok.
Medium Marauder at level 100
Marauders can equip any kind of armors provided they have the right requirements, but for the sake of our reflexion we will consider a Marauder with medium items requiring Structure but a lot less than heavy armors. Marauders can have 5 pieces of armor (3 plates, 1 thruster and 1 engine). We will aim a total of 7500 so 1500 armour per item. Marauders can only have 7 items granting absolute or relative armor bonuses, so itâs not 7680 and 75% you can reach but 6720 and 65%. For this case the total is : ( 750 + 1500*5 + 6720 ) * 1.65 = 24 700 Itâs well under the value for a Sentinel but itâs still doing good even at level 100.
Light Interceptor at level 100
Interceptors can only have 4 armor pieces of armors and 6 items with armor bonuses. Letâs image, it has the pieces of armor with the lowest requirements in Structure to maximize a damage oriented build. The total will be more like : ( 500 + 1250 * 4 + 5760) * 1.55 = 17 453
Ok so you might think that these are pretty forgiving scenarios. Gosh, even the Interceptors can go well over the 12 000 armor mark defining the âno penaltyâ target for a difficulty of 100. But what you have to remember is that we have considered each time the maximum values for stats and modifiers. 4 absolute units of the apocalypse 2. More often than not, youâll have to equip items with sub-optimal values: because some of them have bonuses you want to have, effects you havenât yet found on high level gear. Because some of them are unique items with special effects and youâre reluctant to replace them just yet.
These values are born from a lot of tweaking, a lot of studied potential cases. They are the consequence of my will to make differences between difficulty grades quite significant, my will to make a difference between classes⦠yet to keep it possible to equip a lot of different items whatever your ship. The whole thing is certainly not perfect and sometimes I made late changes to further improve some aspects. A good example for armor is that we added a flat bonus of 5 points per Structure points you get (bought or granted by items). Another way to strengthen survival oriented builds if you spend most of your experience on Structure.
To fully study the whole thing, I would have to cover how Armor interacts with Health, how levels gets harder and harder with more bullets or more damage types⦠Thereâs no end to this. In the end, unless youâre a large team, you must try to cover whatâs more important for you. You take a guess at what part is unaccounted for as best as possible and then you roll with it. Your first iteration might not good but it must not stop you.
Drifting Lands is a loot based game first. Yeah I know it looks a lot more like a shootâemâup. My bad, I thought most people could get over it and I was probably wrong. If i wanted to get one thing right above everything else, it was how we handle items. Items must be the main source of your power. Your equipment must define your build as much as the skills or powers youâve chosen to play with. As youâve seen above for armor, the vast majority of what you can get is brought to you by your stuff and not by the simple act of leveling up a characteristic.
In Drifting Lands items can have a main characteristic (Armor, Skill power, Shield, Weapon Damage) and modifiers. These modifiers and base characteristics are the main sources of firepower and survivability. There are 42 modifiers in Drifting Lands to increase some of your stats. 27 of them are primary (structure, navigation power, health flat, health %, armor flat, armor %, fire rate %, cooldown reduction %, etc.) and 15 are secondary (movement speed %, resists to different damage types, shield cooldown reduction %, etc.). Ok, it may seem a lot, maybe a bit overwhelming, but it was how ârichâ we wanted our system to be. Each of them serves a purpose and deeply influence some aspect of the actual gameplay.
Beware though! Choosing how many modifiers you have will deeply influence how likely your players are to get the exact combination they want. Because of course, all items have a maximum number of modifiers. So this is not a competition of how many modifiers you can pile into your game. There must be a balance between how hardcore you want your game mechanics to be and how easy it should be for your players to get what they want.
For all our modifiers, very much like described above for armor, we had to define maximums you should be able reach for each grade of difficulty. Those maximums are not independent. Like armor canât be isolated from health, shield or resistances, weapon damage is linked to fire rate, critical damage probability, etc. Your main table of difficulty curves, discussed in the first part, must help you to define global maximums for firepower, toughness and other âhigh levelâ values of your mechanics. Then you break it down into individual maximums for each modifiers. For example if you combined ALL damage related modifiers of Drifting Lands, you would end up with a grand total of 600% increased damage. Itâs very unlikely that you will ever reach this maximum. But if you were able to do it, since the best weapon of the game do 25 times more damage that at level 1, you would end up with roughly 150 times more damage. 150 is also how many times a level 100 enemy has more health than at level 1. Coincidence? Again, we donât talk about average stuff here but about the maximum damage optimization you can reach probably sacrificing any chance of surviving at level 100 in the process. If you remember correctly the only thing we wanted to guarantee was that a level 70, players would do an average of 25 more damage.
Once you have your maximum by modifier, you have to define a maximum per item. This maximum should of course depend on how many items you can actually equip with this particular stat or modifier at the same time. At this point you can start to create a biiiiig table looking a bit like this: (click to enlarge)
In most cells of this table, you can see two values. Youâve probably guessed these were minimums and maximums for modifiers. Because yes, so far weâve mostly talked about maximums you could or could not reach for a stat. But of course there is some variability to all our values. Finding the perfect item is not only a question of getting the modifiers you want but also getting the best possible ârollsâ. Since we did not want Drifting Lands to be particularly punitive or extremely demanding in terms of farming, we chose a fairly limited variability for most stats. Except for very small values, the minimum is often 80% of the maximum. Itâs enough to create a significant difference between whatâs best and whatâs worst but itâs not so big as to create a real chance of having a higher level item being less interesting than an inferior one. Again, this is a very personal choice. Feel free to think that a wider range could be more fun / interesting / rewarding.
We now have a list of modifiers and bonuses all items can grant. They have to be combined to create actual equipment youâll find in the game. For Drifting Lands, Iâve decided to take a LOT of inspiration from Diablo 3 and more precisely Diablo 3 post Loot 2.0 (the patch just before the release of Reaper of Souls).
I think itâs necessary here to take a few lines and explain why I personally think that Reaper of Souls is my favorite HackânâSlash while I didnât enjoy Diablo 3 vanilla that much (except for its kick ass art direction of course). Itâs all about how the loot is generated and how the Auction House was a necessary evil in the initial draft. In the first Diablo 3 iteration, loot was really, really, REALLY random. You could find pretty much any modifier on any item with huge variations even for a given level. And it was by design: the goal of the first game designers was really for any player to spend literally years on the game and still continue to find better items. Because they had this notion that Diablo was necessarily a game you SHOULD play for years and that it would be cool to keep finding better items years after the release. I really encourage you to watch this GDC conference by one of the lead GD behind the revolution that is Reaper of Souls for Diablo 3. It explains in details the evolution of the game and why this initial design was chosen⦠Now, Reaper of Souls is pretty much the opposite. There is loot, it is random, but by no mean as much as the loot of D3 vanilla. Because all items follow far stricter templates when they are generated. Templates with generation rules. Yes, it means that youâll find good or optimal stuff, much more quickly. Yes it means that you can see nearly all there is to see in Diablo 3 in a few âpitifulâ hundreds of hours. And for that, Iâll choose RoS over D3 Vanilla every single time because I was able to actually enjoy the experience while having a family life and a job (feel free to disagree).
Sorry, I got carried away⦠back to our item templates! Templates are sets of rules to define the numbers and types of modifiers you can roll on each item. The most famous addition of Loot 2.0 in Diablo 3 (which i shamelessly transferred to Drifting Lands) is the classification between primary and secondary modifiers. In a few words, primary modifiers are very powerful or very useful in nearly every builds. Unless youâre looking to create a very specific or extremely optimized build, most combinations for primary modifiers should be ok for you. Secondary modifiers are more circumstantial. You might or might not need them but you are guaranteed to have at least the primary modifiers to make for it. This way, when you drop items of higher levels than what you have right now, it is very unlikely that it will be completely useless.
Hereâs how it work for Drifting Lands :
Each time the game creates a new item it will roll :
Simple! And of course you can even control how likely it should be to roll this list of modifiers compared to this one, or inside the list how likely this modifier is compared to the othersâ¦
All these rules bring control to your loot system. By fixing rigid or very lax rules, youâll change drastically the influence of RNG in the experience, how easy it can be to find optimal items for different builds. The number of modifiers you allow by item is also crucial : you need enough modifiers to reach average or top values in different stats to keep up with the difficulty of your game, but you donât want too much modifiers and make it possible to max everything! You need to keep an eye on that and wire calculators in your balance documents to track what your current maximums are for⦠well for nearly everything!
Your game is now able to create interesting and balanced items but you still have to hand them over to your players! Now is the dreaded time to decide what should be your drop rates. As always itâs really up to you to decide how generous your game should be. A few key things to keep in mind :
In Drifting Lands each enemy as a loot table, a list of possible drops with different probabilities, different bonuses to the rarity of objects and sometimes a list of possible unique items available. On very small and numerous enemies, you want to keep drop rates really low (beneath 0.5 or even 0.25%) and ramp up towards bigger mid-bosses or bosses. Those tougher, larger enemies have often one or more âguaranteedâ drops with a few more that may happen or not.
Itâs usually not desirable to change drop rates over the course of the game. It would probably mean that you would have too low drop rates at the beginning or far too high drop rates during the end game. Instead you will probably want to offset the quality or the rarity of items over the difficulty scale. In typical Diablo-like games a higher rarity is synonym of more modifiers rolled on the same item. With time, players will expect a minimum of modifiers to keep up with the difficulty of the game. Unless they find an item with base statistics that are far greater than what they already have, they wonât consider anything less than a given rarity. With time all your common and uncommon items become automatically junk. Hell, at the end, anything that is not a unique item is junk!
Diablo 2 Preparing For Hell
Hereâs a table fixing rarity ratios for the different difficulty grades in Drifting Lands :
You can see how rare items represent only 5% of the items at level 1 and 27.8% (17/61*100) at level 100. You can also see how unique items vary from 0.5% to 6.5% according to this chart. And unique items are really a key part of a good loot based game for me, so we added an additional mechanic here.
At first, you want your uniques to be really rare. You donât need them: you have many things to keep your players interested. You can reward them with new skills, new environments, new enemies, new ships, etc. But with time, you want your players to drop them more and more regularly because they have to become those little moments of excitement. And once the routine of the game is there, you donât want these moments to be too spaced in time. Itâs a classic trick but we added a small invisible counter increasing with each item you grab. This counter increases more for with rare items and less for more common items. With this counter, your chance to drop a unique grows until it reaches 100%. Once the bonus is enough to actually make you drop a unique item, the counter is reseted and you start over.
Why did we chose this method?
At very very high level of difficulty and for longer levels, this counter can trigger several times in a single mission!
And once more, Iâm slowly realizing that thereâs still too much left to say⦠So Iâll take a break here and come back soon with the 3rd and last part of this modest summary of what Iâve learnt about balancing a Diablo-like game.
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From United States
Or Hell difficulty for that matter..
Is it me or are the other difficulties like completely unplayable? Like cant get out of the first room unplayable? Like takes 40+hits to kill a level1 skeleton unplayable? Whats the point? Seems insane to even bother with it. I do like the expansion though, thats cool
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mk47at
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From Germany
kronikdaheghog: Or Hell difficulty for that matter.. The higher difficulties are only playable if your character has high enough stats and good enough equipment.
Is it me or are the other difficulties like completely unplayable? Like cant get out of the first room unplayable? Like takes 40+hits to kill a level1 skeleton unplayable? Whats the point? Seems insane to even bother with it. I do like the expansion though, thats cool
exiledalchemist
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From United States
You have to complete the Normal difficulty first, and then start a new game with a properly leveled up character. Preferrable a character you completed Normal difficulty with. This character should be at the proper level of 20 - 25+, and thus be able to survive Nightmare difficulty. Same thing with Hell difficulty you have to complete Nighmare difficulty to have a character of the proper level. If I recall Hell difficulty requires a character of level 30 - 35+, but it's been ages the last time I did a full run on all difficulties. Thus my memory could be wrong on the character level requirements for Hell.
juanp3
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From Mexico
you can actually start in level 1 in nightmare difficulty and still beat the game. its really not that hard but you need a little luck
as for hell you need to be at least level 10 to beat that difficulty. i have done the 2 above with the warrior.
advowson
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From Other
In multiplayer, entering Nightmare required character level 20. Entering Hell difficulty required character level 30. Higher difficulties are very playable with those levels.
kronikdaheghog
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From United States
exiledalchemist: You have to complete the Normal difficulty first, and then start a new game with a properly leveled up character. Preferrable a character you completed Normal difficulty with. This character should be at the proper level of 20 - 25+, and thus be able to survive Nightmare difficulty. Same thing with Hell difficulty you have to complete Nighmare difficulty to have a character of the proper level. If I recall Hell difficulty requires a character of level 30 - 35+, but it's been ages the last time I did a full run on all difficulties. Thus my memory could be wrong on the character level requirements for Hell.
THanks that makes more sense
phredreeke
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From Sweden
As previously been stated, Nightmare and Hell difficulties are meant for higher level characters.
In fact, the original game did not have any difficulties beyond Normal in single player (but there was a trick..), it was only added for the Hellfire expansion. Diablo Multiplayer always had Nightmare and Hell difficulties, but they required a character to have reached level 20 or 30. Now about the trick, if you have a high enough level multiplayer character you can create a Nightmare or Hell difficulty, leave, then create a new singleplayer game, which would now have that difficulty. Unfortunately NM and Hell doesn't actually bring that much more to the game, and the game's item generation is bugged causing item drops to have magic prefix/suffixes as if it had dropped on normal mode. So you're better off just doing hell runs (dungeon levels 13-16) on Normal than moving onto Nightmare and Hell (with the exception for if you plan to level your character to 50, in which case moving onto the later difficulties is eventually required). There is one more reason. The Helm of Sprits - one of the rarer items in the game, can only drop on the first few levels of Nightmare.
advowson
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From Other
phredreeke: Now about the trick, if you have a high enough level multiplayer character you can create a Nightmare or Hell difficulty, leave, then create a new singleplayer game, which would now have that difficulty.
Beware that the difficulty is not saved, so this trick must be repeated each time you restart the program.
phredreeke: the game's item generation is bugged causing item drops to have magic prefix/suffixes as if it had dropped on normal mode.
The game's bugs are extensively documented, and this is the first time I've ever seen someone claim that this particular aspect of item generation is a bug. Could you explain why you think this is a bug? The base items are upgraded as a function of the modified mlvl. The qlvl remains tied to the unmodified mlvl.
phredreeke
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From Sweden
advowson: The game's bugs are extensively documented, and this is the first time I've ever seen someone claim that this particular aspect of item generation is a bug. Could you explain why you think this is a bug? The base items are upgraded as a function of the modified mlvl. The qlvl remains tied to the unmodified mlvl.
Maybe it's not a bug, maybe it's just overlooked. Either way, it means item drops in early Nightmare and Hell are more or less useless to a character high enough level to venture there.
advowson
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From Other
phredreeke: Maybe it's not a bug, maybe it's just overlooked. Either way, it means item drops in early Nightmare and Hell are more or less useless to a character high enough level to venture there.
Overlooked by whom? Jarulf's Guide notes that this happens, and this effect is why you can get certain rare unique items only in higher difficulty games.
GrimjackMV
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From Philippines
phredreeke: Maybe it's not a bug, maybe it's just overlooked. Either way, it means item drops in early Nightmare and Hell are more or less useless to a character high enough level to venture there.
advowson: Overlooked by whom? Jarulf's Guide notes that this happens, and this effect is why you can get certain rare unique items only in higher difficulty games. Phree is incorrect. Higher difficulty settings result in an increased chance for higher quality item drops.
phredreeke
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From Sweden
advowson: Overlooked by whom? Jarulf's Guide notes that this happens, and this effect is why you can get certain rare unique items only in higher difficulty games.
Overlooked by the developers. And it wouldn't be the only case of nonsensical item logic in the game (the bow Deadly Hunter for example has a +200% damage vs demons property which only functions on Melee weapons)
GrimjackMV: Phree is incorrect. Higher difficulty settings result in an increased chance for higher quality item drops.
The quality of the base item increases, the quality of
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Frankâ¦
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4 Answers
I'm not sure if theres a real concrete answer to this. Different classes, built with different skills, with different items, played by different people will all function differently. Some characters (Like a minion-necromancer) will be able to handle higher difficulties at lower levels then say a mage (especially in hell when everything has multiple elemental immunities).
Without the expansion, I generally tried to hit nightmare around 35-40 and hell 50-60.
With the expansion, I tried to hit nightmare around 45-55 and hell 65-75. You'll want to be level up even higher if your playing a hard-core character.
Hope this helps
Aardvark
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One way to gauge is by using the following fact: those little fallens in act1 are level 36 monsters in NM and level 67 in H.
Apprentice QueueApprentice Queue
It really depends on how comfortable you are with fighting tougher fights, and whether you are playing HardCore or not.
I personally try and hit Nightmare as early as possible, as you level much faster if you are lower when going in. I generally enter Nightmare around level 30 if possible. I definitely wouldn't wait until 45 or higher as some comments have mentioned.
The earlier the better. It provides more challenge anyways.
Ben MacAskillBen MacAskill
Are you playing single player or on battle net?
If it's battle net, I would just recommend getting rushed till a4 hell and then leeching chaos runs to hit whatever level you want. For single player, it depends heavily on the gear/class, but try to have your bread and butter skill maxed (or at least started if its a lev 30 skill) by the time you finish normal and have most of the synergies for it by the time you reach hell. Having high resistance and leech also makes a huge difference.
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Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged diablo-2 or ask your own question.General discussionInvite to friendsInvite to friendsAccept invitationAccept invitationPending invitation..User since {{ user.formattedDateUserJoined }} Friends since {{ user.formattedDateUserFriended }} Unblock chat User blocked This user's wishlist is not public.You can't chat with this user due to their or your privacy settings.You can't chat with this user because you have blocked him.You can't invite this user because you have blocked him.
From Malta
So I've started this game recently in Single Player and I'm enjoying it a lot but I couldn't find a difficulty adjuster. Further reading online I found about the Nightmare and Hell modes, can I unlock those in Single Player mode too?
I know a few of you here play/ed the game and would like your insight. Thanks PS: I have no intention of creating a B.net account, all I wish to know is if I can play those difficulties in single player and maybe LAN in the future.
This question / problem has been solved by johnnygoging
johnnygoging
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From Canada
Posted February 16, 2016
Once you beat the game you will have a prompt every time you click your character to play Normal, Nightmare, and Hell depending on how many you've unlocked.
You can play it all Single Player for sure and can play it as well in LAN I'm pretty sure but not certain. edit: it works a bit differently. it's so much a difficulty adjustment as it is a New Game+ before the notion/fad/whatever of New Game+ existed. You'll basically start the game over with all of your gear and levels. The monsters will be tougher and there will be more champions and heroes (named randoms). Uniques usually are a different color pallette. The gear is better. including some really cool stuff (not that you'll ever find it without cheating. I recommend cheating.) that you can only find in Nightmare and Hell difficulty (some of the Nightmare uniques even have their own art, Hell stuff is usually just palette of Nightmare stuff).
Post edited February 16, 2016 by johnnygoging
Grargar
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From Greece
Ganni1987: So I've started this game recently in Single Player and I'm enjoying it a lot but I couldn't find a difficulty adjuster. Further reading online I found about the Nightmare and Hell modes, can I unlock those in Single Player mode too? Completing Normal unlocks Nightmare and completing Nightmare unlocks Hell, both for single-player and LAN.
I know a few of you here play/ed the game and would like your insight. Thanks PS: I have no intention of creating a B.net account, all I wish to know is if I can play those difficulties in single player and maybe LAN in the future.
Post edited February 16, 2016 by Grargar
Ganni1987
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From Malta
Ganni1987: So I've started this game recently in Single Player and I'm enjoying it a lot but I couldn't find a difficulty adjuster. Further reading online I found about the Nightmare and Hell modes, can I unlock those in Single Player mode too? Grargar: Completing Normal unlocks Nightmare and completing Nightmare unlocks Hell. And will I be able to start, let's say any new character on a difficulty of my choosing then or just for the char I finished it with?
I know a few of you here play/ed the game and would like your insight. Thanks PS: I have no intention of creating a B.net account, all I wish to know is if I can play those difficulties in single player and maybe LAN in the future.
johnnygoging
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From Canada
Grargar: Completing Normal unlocks Nightmare and completing Nightmare unlocks Hell.
Ganni1987: And will I be able to start, let's say any new character on a difficulty of my choosing then or just for the char I finished it with? You have to beat the game first with a new character. It'd be pointless. You wouldn't be able to last against the first monster in Nightmare with a level 1 character with no gear.
yogsloth
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From United States
Ganni1987: And will I be able to start, let's say any new character on a difficulty of my choosing then or just for the char I finished it with?
I believe it's per character.Yep, that's a lot of doin' over. But you wouldn't want to start a new character on Nightmare. You wouldn't make it 20 feet from the town.
Ganni1987
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From Malta
Ganni1987: And will I be able to start, let's say any new character on a difficulty of my choosing then or just for the char I finished it with?
johnnygoging: You have to beat the game first with a new character. It'd be pointless. You wouldn't be able to last against the first monster in Nightmare with a level 1 character with no gear. Yeah I can imagine :DThanks again
Grargar
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From Greece
Ganni1987: And will I be able to start, let's say any new character on a difficulty of my choosing then or just for the char I finished it with?
Only with the specific character. Nightmare and Hell modes aren't made with low-level characters in mind (both in difficulty and in the quality of loot).
Ganni1987
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From Malta
Thank you everyone :-)
For a moment I thought the difficulty was a B.Net thing only, I guess all I'll be missing is a few unique drops found only on official servers, I can live with that.
mobutu
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From Other
Engerek01
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From Turkey
Like others said, difficulty in Diablo 2 is basically lets you restart the same game with your character that you finished before with higher level monsters. There is no way you can survive the higher difficulties with a new character.
In other words, there is no difficulty 'setting' in Diablo 2.
JMich
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From Greece
Ganni1987: So I've started this game recently in Single Player and I'm enjoying it a lot but I couldn't find a difficulty adjuster.
There is actually a difficulty adjuster, but it doesn't modify the normal/nightmare/hell modes. Assuming you have at least patch 1.09, you can use the Players X Command to make the game think there are X players in game instead of 1. This means the monsters will have more HP, they will hit harder, and they will give more XP and items as well.
Ganni1987
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From Malta
Ganni1987: So I've started this game recently in Single Player and I'm enjoying it a lot but I couldn't find a difficulty adjuster.
JMich: There is actually a difficulty adjuster, but it doesn't modify the normal/nightmare/hell modes. Assuming you have at least patch 1.09, you can use the Players X Command to make the game think there are X players in game instead of 1. This means the monsters will have more HP, they will hit harder, and they will give more XP and items as well. I read about that, feels a little like cheating to me if nothing else. I've only started this game last week ever since I bought it 3 years ago (it's about time I know) so I have plenty of things to try out.
rtcvb32
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From United States
If you want to play something a little more advanced and interesting and harder, Zy-El is a good patch, but requires a little manual work to do it.
The /players X is a good option, although until you have at least 1-2 posters you aren't going to be using it much.. well, maybe for chests to boost better item drops.
Post edited February 17, 2016 by rtcvb32
Engerek01
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From Turkey
JMich: There is actually a difficulty adjuster, but it doesn't modify the normal/nightmare/hell modes. Assuming you have at least patch 1.09, you can use the Players X Command to make the game think there are X players in game instead of 1. This means the monsters will have more HP, they will hit harder, and they will give more XP and items as well.
Ganni1987: I read about that, feels a little like cheating to me if nothing else. I've only started this game last week ever since I bought it 3 years ago (it's about time I know) so I have plenty of things to try out. It is not cheating. Diablo2 lets you play your characters on multiplayers which does the same thing mentioned. However I do not recommend it since normal game can be hard enough for newcomers. You will die alot.
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