Just when I thought I was done with D2, they pull me back in.

So I’ve decided that enough is enough, it’s time to go on to a new game and pack it in for Diablo2. I’m going to give all of the items in my 4 mule accounts away to whoever wants them, and give away all of my main characters.

So I take Mme. Frost, my level 95 Blizzard/Glacial Spike sorceress to kill Hell Diablo one last time (he’s not the last boss, but he’s much tougher than Baal; especially for a solo Sorceress). I find an open 8-player Hell cows game and head for Diablo’s lair (I want the 8-player game to up the difficulty, but want to take on the big D solo, and with everyone else killing cows, I get him to myself). It is, as usual, a cruise (Level 38 Blizzard, Static field x 3, Blizzard, Level 37 Glacial Spike at 11 fpa kills anything not cold immune in a few seconds). And then I see it, lying next to Diablo’s remains: SACRED ARMOR.

I don’t even have to have it identified to know what it means. I now have a legitimate set of IK armor. Not some massively duped perfect socketed piece of crap bought off of E-Bay that’ll disappear the first time I’m in a game with some tweener who bought himself an uber character, hacked rings, and ITH gear with daddy’s credit card, an actual set of IK armor that dropped in a game.

Ordinarily, this’d just be reason enough to say that’d now that I’ve found one of the rarest items in the game, I can quit happy. If it had said, for example, **GIANT THRESHER ** I’d have been pleased to aquire the rarest unique in the game, (I don’t have a Stormspire, and my Might and Thorns mercs could make good use of one) but I’d still have been prepared to walk away. A Stormspire is nice, but not “make a new character just to use it” nice.

But this is the sixth, and final, piece of the Immortal King set, which I have now completed, by myself, all dropped in games. This was truly a sign from the Diablo gods that I was meant to make a new Barbarian and play him up to level 76 so that I can put everything on (I have a mace Barbarian, but he dual weilds Shaffer’s Hammer and Baranar’s Star, which means I’ve maxed out Frenzy–no good for a two handed weapon). I’ve got Jon-Henry up to level 60 so far, so I’m a little better than halfway up it terms of time.

And then Blizzard “accidently” uploads the 1.10 patch info to the official site for a few hours before putting back up the offical 1.09 info. But it’s long enough for fans to download everything and the nice folks at diabloii.net to put it up for all to see. New uniques. Upgraded sets. Synergistic skills (adding points to low-level skills will now make related high level skills more powerful).

Sigh. No newbie scholarships from Number Six for a few weeks, or possibly months if the Diablo gods decide I’m worthy of a **LAQUERED PLATE **.

Any news on when 1.10 goes live?

The official word from Blizzard is “When it’s finished.” I suspect they want to make a big splash at E3, and it’ll be uploaded shortly after, but then again I’m optimistic enough to believe that Epic will someday finish Duke Nukem Forever, so I may be deluding myself.

Lots of discussion about that in the D2 thread.