Random Thoughts on D2:LoD

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Got mine Friday night. Turns out my current system is too slow for 800X600, so I’m stuck with the old resolution.
I started two new games, one as the Assassin and one as the Druid.

Things I’ve seen so far in Act I and in the hint book:

[ul]
[li]One new moster subtype–Ghostly. Being instubstantial, these things are difficult to damage.[/li][li]New class specific items[/li] preserved heads and shrunken heads (shields) for Necromancers
claw-blades for Assasins.
animal heads (headgear) for Druids
skulls (headgear) and shields for Barbarians
eagle orbs (weapon–similar to wands) for Sorceresses.
[li]Ethereal armor – cannot be repaired.[/li][li]Some added magical effects, self-repair for example. Quite useful when the item in question is ethereal.[/li][li]Required level for some unique items have been raised.[/li][li]Runes – these are used in socketed items like gems. Runes in a certain order will yield additional effects.[/li][li]Sockets are now available for armor[/li][li]Players can recieve partial benefits from wearing 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5 set items.[/li][li]Charms–similar to rings or amulets, but are not worn. Keep in inventory for benefits.[/li][/ul]

I imported some of my Act IV characters and my Paladin made it into Act IV. Love having NPC Barbarians fighting with me, and noticed ones nearby benefit from my auras.

2

Of course, I meant to say that my Paladin made it into Act V!

3

So I take it you like the expansion pack? I have been playing Diablo2 recently to “practice” for the release of LoD, and DAMN this game has me hooked! I didn’t realize how deep and interesting the game was when I stopped playing it the first time, not long after it originally came out. First game since Doom2 to make me “jump” whenever certain monsters suddenly appear, or to visibly get nervous and sweaty in anticipation of some of the bosses.

4

Played a Druid this weekend, both single player and networked with a friend. Love the new character classes; being a werebear suits me well.

New items, more room in inventory, and NPC’s that you can equip and heal, and who gain more abilities as you go up in level. New shortcuts, even. Now you can repair all your equipment at the click of a button.

The best expansion pack I’ve ever seen.

Make sure to download the patch, too. v1.08 at the moment.

5

I purchased my copy Friday night also, and have logged ~4 hours creating a new assassin (level 6 yeah!) char. There is much coolness in this expansion set.

  1. Alternate weapons - hit the w key, and you have another set of weapons at your disposal. I haven’t died yet, so I don’t know if you lose them upon death… but it’s nice to have a spare set that you don’t have to carry around in your inventory or save in your stash.

  2. Nifty little “Repair All” button at Charsi’s workshop (and I assume at all armor repair npc’s.)

  3. Monsters are pussies. At least for me. Those charge up moves are awesome!!

  4. Oh yeah, and kinda good, kinda bad. A message doesn’t pop up when you level. There are 2 buttons at the bottom of the screen that turn red when you level, or have skill/stat points to use. It’s less intrusive, but you can run around and not notice you’ve got points to spend.

  5. The 800x600 Res is sweet. I was running it on a PIII 450 with no problem, but I was playing single player so that might make a difference.

It’ll be nice to play my higher level sorceress later on. I like the look of those orbs.

6

Playing hardcore mode, dreading the descent into Duriel’s tomb. My blood pressure must have been through the roof.

The game is incredibly addictive and the expansion pack is worth the cost of admission (which is rare). At heart, this is just a character building game, and the expansion gives you a lot more options for customizing your character.

7

the expansion is nice, but i personally don’t like the druid.
his skill set is nice, but those spells are real laggers. firestorm gives the same problems as firewall used to, and that poison creeper… ugh. it moves underground, so it occasionally ‘surfaces’ so you can see where it is. it leaves a sprite image of stirred earth whereever it comes up, leaving lots of sprites on screen. it also coughs up a mass of detritus whenever it attacks so the screen gets filled with junk from the creeper. lags like hell, having hundreds of sprites on screen at the same time.

i like the assassin’s charge mechanics, but it seems way overpowered. couldn’t Tiger Strike get up to 1,500% damage bonus on three charges if it were maxed? that would be a one hit kill on the act end bosses… bit much for a level one skill.

8

I agree on the elemental part of the druid’s spells, but only up until you start getting that cool armor. And I can’t wait to see what the volcano does.

I did notice the lag with the creeper, too. But being able to change into a werebear makes up for all of that. The attributes of your equipped weapon carry over to your attacks in bear form. So, say you’ve got a Bardiche of the Leech, you’re hitting for huge quantities of damage, and stealing life at the same time. Carry a Fire Charm, add some fire damage to the attack, and wade into crowds of enemies like a deranged bear.

Maybe I spent too much time playing this weekend…

9

I agree with MrVisible, Blizzard did a great job, and even got it out on time! Tattva, yeah, both options are lost when you get killed. Found this out when my Paladin was killed several times by Diablo. I just have a Celeron 333 right now, but my motherboard is capable of 500. Yeah, saepiroth, I’m not much for that vine, either. I’ll stop using it when other minions are available. Also, the problem with charging up opponents is your Assassin has to be within striking distance in order to do so. That’s not easy with just the minor bosses!

I like being able to equip hirelings. The program also maintains separate experience points for hirelings so they’re not leveling up the same time you do.

10

I got my copy on saturday, and converted all of my previous characters over. I also created an Assassin (which I’ve only played multi-player with my room-mate’s druid - both are now around level 9) and a Druid, which I’ve gotten up to about level 10.

My observations, first about a couple of the changes made:

Monster Immunities:
These suck. Well, actually, these suck in the sense that they make the game more difficult :stuck_out_tongue: They also make specialty mage-types (e.g., sorceress) impractical. I have a level 56 Ice Sorceress. Immediately after converting her, I took her into Act I in Hell difficulty. She was killed. By Zombies. Zombies! Turns out, they are immune to cold. Isn’t that lovely? I shudder to think what the Chaos Sanctuary mages are tricked out with now…
Having said that, my Charge-Bolt Sorceress is pretty much walking through Act V in Normal difficulty. The fact that they changed Lightning Mastery to increase damage rather than decrease mana costs has much to do with that. Of course, it’s just a matter of time until she encounters a Lightning Immune creature. That will suck.

Poison:
Poison is now a viable method of killing things. I have a high-level (mid 50s) Necromancer that I used to test out things like Poison Nova (he was one of my first characters, so his skill development wasn’t planned out before-hand; as a result, he has all available necro skills) - with greatly increased damage and a time-interval of only 2 seconds, it only takes a couple of blasts in Hell difficulty to drop Act I beasties. I like it!

As for new stuff, the Assassin is very cool. I haven’t messed around with the traps yet, so I don’t know how well they work. As for the single-shot kill that saepiroth mentioned, it won’t happen. You need to hit a creature three times to build up those charges first, then a fourth time to release the charges (whether with a normal strike or one of the Finishing Moves). Granted, it will do a lot of damage, but it will still take 4 hits to get there. And, you have to take Tiger Strike up to 20th level to get that 1440% damage bonus. Certainly no worse than Corpse Explosion, which can take most things out with only two castings.

My druid is concentrating on Bear stuff. So, he’s going to do the Werebear thing, as well as work towards summoning a really nasty Grizzly when he hits level 30. I’m not worrying about the Elemental skills this go around.

The socketing of items is pretty cool, too. The aforementioned Charge-Bolt sorceress has a Wall of the Eyeless, which among other things, gives +5 mana/kill. She found a rune which gives +2 mana/kill. One of the Act V quest rewards allows you to add a socket to any item, so she added one to the Wall, and popped the rune into it. She has to work very hard to run out mana now.

11

Darwin’s Finch, I hope you made a backup of your Ice Sorceress in case you decide not to keep her in the expansion. Once a character is converted, they can’t go back.

12

My brother was in town this weekend, and lugged his laptop all the way from Oregon because he couldn’t be parted from D2:LoD. Now my wife’s addicted. I had to go out and buy the whole thing (She’s been running D1 for some time now), as nothing but the full set would do. I may need to build another computer if I plan on getting any work done at home… Thanks, Bro! :stuck_out_tongue:

13

Actually, I do have backups of all my characters, but I probably won’t be going back to them. I’ve made the plunge, as it were, and will have to cope. She does have Static Field and a low level Blaze, so she isn’t completely helpless against Cold Immunity. It just looks like the next few levels will probably be going into a back-up skill tree (probably Fire Skills).

14

I just got my copy today. I waited because my roommate was going to burn me a copy when he got his burned copy. But he has a Mac, so his burner only got the Mac files, or put them in some weird-ass Mac format, or something like that. So I had to go buy it. Sigh.

Anyway, all I’ve done so far is import my Bowazon and play through the first couple of Act V quests, but I’m LOVING it so far!! Poor Dame Bubbette was having serious problems in Nightmare mode, but in Act V she’s kicking ass and taking names. I socketed my armor and put in some good stuff, so now I’m barely getting hurt, and regenerating quickly when I do. All the changes I’ve seen so far have been huge improvements, though I was surprised by how quickly I managed to fill up my extra stash space. I won’t be getting any sleep tonight…

15

i converted my spearazon into expansion earlier today, and i just love it. with the new mercs, i managed to get all the way into Act V from Act II Quest “Tainted Sun” in about four hours. and with the boosted rate item drops, my spear merc had a unique* on him before we left Act III!
in fact, after playing so long with my merc waheed i was actually sad when i had to trade him for a barbarian merc, bacause he was dying too much for me to afford.

when they said they were changing the mercs into more of a “co-adventurer” than a mercenary, they were right.

dispite any apparent dislike of the expansion in my earlier post, i can say that i really actually love it.

*[sub](for those interested, the unique in question was Bloodthief Brandistock, with 8% life steal, reduce target defense 33% per hit, +25 defense, +10 dex, and +16 over 2 seconds poison damage. i didn’t use it myself because i had something better; the Lance Of Yaggai unique Spetum: +15 resist all, attackers take damage of 12, 1-50 lightning damage adds, and twice the natural damage and speed of the Bloodthief.)[/sub]

16

I’ve liked the expansion so far - have been away for home so only got to play it on a couple days. I think A5 is great. All the quest rewards are actually WORTH something (everybody skips A1Q5, right? not to mention both “transmute the special weapon” quests).

The mercs are very cool but I was disappointed that my pet barb’s graphics didn’t change when I got him some cool stuff. Anyone seen one using WW? If not, it doesn’t seem like they are worth it for melee characters (a Defiance or Blessed Aim A2 merc would be more valuable, I would think.)
It’s also harder to find gold… and the 50% physical resists on NM/Hell are pretty killer. I like the expansion pack a lot… makes the game much harder.

For those who said sorceresses were going to be screwed with spell timers, I have seen sorceresses with firewall and hydra doing better than any other character class at killing monsters.

Druid and assassin look fun and I’m looking forward to playing them.

  • Rob
17

Well, to follow up, I installed it at work and spent a couple of hours this evening playing an assassin character. I fully enjoyed it. That martial arts stuff is very cool. It’s new ideas like that that make this game so interesting.

And, yes, I do have a very cushy job.

18

Sweet, I haven’t gotten it yet, but that’s the first thing I’m gonna do with my next paycheck. My girlfriend and I are totally hooked on Diablo 2. People, we gotta get a Straight Dope Diablo 2 game up and going!

19

Man, you think the poison creeper is bad. I play online on USeast (battlenet). I was playing with two guys in my clan that both decided to play elemental druids. Yikes! Spells everywhere. Lag, lag, lag. I though I was gonna have to ice down my video card after the first hour. But, the spells sure where neat looking and they killed well.

Has anyone tried crafting an item yet? I crafted an ammy of safty using one of the recipes I got of http://www.diabloii.net. It turned out pretty good. Can’t wait to try out a rune word. BTW, be careful about crafting and rune words on open. Many of them have been disabled until the next patch (1.09), but some are working on the Realms with server side patches.

20

I haven’t been playing much since the weekend. My free time is tied up in projects for other games at the moment, both of these games are baseball management sims (Out of the Park 3 and Baseball Mogul 2002). The programmer of BM2K2 wants me to test a patch of the game before he distributes it!