The only game that can have you addicted for years!

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How I Came Across This...

About 6 years ago while in school my friends were gathered around a desk in the back of class looking at a book. Out of curiosity I went back to see what it was and they started showing me a game. Since I was going out to WalMart the next weekend, I thought I'd buy it and play. Well, I wasn't sure what to get since there was a “Diablo II” then in a larger box was the “Diablo II Battlechest”. Since I wasn't sure, I went ahead and bought the battlechest since it included both the classic Diablo II and the expansion set, Lord of Destruction. It cost me $50 but, I believe it was worth it.

At first, like with any other game, I did not enjoy it. Myself starting out in something new, like Diablo, where you have a quite large world and have no clue what to do, being confused gets very frustrating. I am not a person for the single-player games, so I went straight to Battle.net. This is actually a good way to start being that you have other players to help you. Well it turns out that many players in Diablo are very rude and will not help you. Actually, you usually wind up just getting made fun of for being new and not knowing what to do, or they'll take advantage of you and scam you, if by luck you found something worthy. Eventually I did find someone kind enough to help me out, and soon I was addicted.

Ladder Seasons

While playing online, you will choose a realm, which will locate you with people near you, or where ever you choose. But one thing you will notice when creating a character is that you will need to choose between ladder, or non-ladder. If you play in non-ladder, you will be dealing with a lot of hacked items, although everything is cheap and easy to do. Many people will help you more often, because they are not working on a schedule to fight against others for a top spot on the ladder, but you don't have too much to work for in there.

I myself have always stuck to the ladders. They last anywhere from one to two years, and spare you much time to get yourself to the top. You will fight against others, racing to the highest level, which in expansion would be 99. Unless a glitch is found, classic players usually will not reach that high, although they will get close, around 95 to 97. This will give you something to try for, but even if you don't want to do that, it's fun to play with the people in ladder. They are much funner since they actually do something, as in non-ladder, most people are “lazy” and do not play very much. If you do play ladder, the one bad thing is starting over each time the ladder ends. This is something a lot of people don't like, but it is something me and my friends enjoy. This will give you something to work for once again, because by the time the two year season is up, you're starting to get bored.

Places and Quests

Like I have said earlier, there is a rather large world in Diablo II. You will find that it is necessary to acquire the help of others in order to get anywhere quickly. Unless you're a person who is into playing alone, and doing everything by yourself, you will not want to do this solo. First of all, the farther you go the harder it gets, obviously, but leveling along the way is not as easy as you would think. It takes a long time to naturally level starting in Blood Moor and continuing as you get through. Another thing you will run into along the way is immunes, which you will not be able to harm, therefore you just run past them quickly. Basically what I'm getting to here is that, you do not want to do this. Get the help of a friendly player and they can help you through the game in about 30 minutes, not including the work you will need to do to level.

There are 5 acts you will need to get through, or 4 in classic. In each act you will get 6 quests to do. Most are necessary to advance to the next, but that's only if you play in single-player. In multiplayer, since only the last (6th) quest is needed to advance to the next act, players usually do each of the mandatory quests to advance and finish the game to level in Hell Difficulty where they leech experience from the work of other players. This is considered a “rush” and is the quickest way to level and advance through the game.

In every act, there is a “town”. In town you are not allowed combat, making it a “safe zone” and you may use the shop to buy and sell, heal yourself, put items in the stash (bank), or just hang around and talk. The second you step out of town, monsters and hostiled players can attack you. To hostile a player you show the party screen and click “hostile”. When hostiled it will display a warning message letting you know you are in danger. You can now attack the one hostiled to you, but remember that they can attack you as well. This is better known as “PvP” or Player vs Player.

Dueling

As said above you are able to attack one another. To do so, you must show the party screen and click to hostile. You can now duel, but remember that town is a safe zone and you are not allowed to fight, so to do so you each must step out of town and attack each other. This often causes a result of people guarding the small opening players have to go from town to the outside. Not to worry though, many players will duel in a fair way. Many people exit town, and when each player says “go” they will start dueling. Also to avoid saying go and attacking directly when said, they usually stand on opposite sides of the map. This helps everything so smoothly.

When you die, you will notice that your coins will fall to the ground, even if you have them stashed you will lose a percentage of them. Next, after spawning you will notice you have no gear on, but don't panic because you can go pick up your body and get all of your gear back. If you exit without it, it will spawn with you the next time you enter a game and you are able to pick it up. Lastly, each time you die you drop an ear. This will be labeled with your characters name and level, for proof of defeat the other player can pick this up. For most people, they, will not take them since they are worthless.

Character Classes

In classic you will have a choice of choosing between five different character classes. Your choices are a necromancer, amazon, paladin, sorceress, and barbarian. You can choose a character based on different skills depending you what you will be using it for. For example, if you are building a character to rush others, you would use a sorceress due to being able to teleport, it's much quicker. In expansion, you will be able to choose form the classic characters or an extra two, the assassin and druid. They, like any other character have their own special qualities and will assist where needed.

Character Skill Classes

Necromancer – Poison & Bone, Curses, and Summoning & Control.
Amazon – Bow & Crossbow, Passive & Magic, and Javalin & Spear.
Paladin – Combat, Offensive Auras, and Defensive Auras.
Sorceress – Fire, Lightning, and Cold.
Barbarian – Combat Skills, Combat Masteries, and Warcries.
Assassin – Martial Arts, Shadow Disciplines, and Traps.
Druid – Elemental, Shape Shifting, and Summoning.

As you can now see, there are many different reasons you would want each character. For example, seeing that the necromancer and druid have a summoning skill, you could use that to get help killing, while you do not have the assist of another human. You will learn these as you play and see how you like to play the game. Everybody plays differently and that means everybody will choose different characters.

Hacking Diablo II

Unfortunately, hacks for Diablo II do exist. They have a warden protection system to ban hackers, yet they do not apply it 24/7. This allows many people to get away with hacking for over a year without being caught. Many people have worked to make hacking simple for the public. They have created RedVex and BlueVex which are two very popular hacks for Diablo. Since it runs on packets, everything you do is sent to your computer in a packet, and you then send it back to the server. Well, RedVex is a proxy with add-on support. This allows you to monitor everything that passes through, and change whatever you would like, therefore changing your experience. Very few players are legit anymore due to hacking being so simple and popular, but you have the choice to do what you want.


Items

I do not have time to go over every item you will encounter in the game as there is a list so large that, as far as I know, a list don't exist. They have many classes of armors, weapons, and much more to help you if you want to be strong, or stylish, although that does not help you very much. Now the main difference between classic and expansion, which I have not touched on too much is that there are runes in expansion. There are a few more items, but this is the main difference. These allow you to create a much larger variety of weapons and armors. Many players, such as myself do not like this concept though. They have provided you with too much and make the game extremely easy for anyone to win, while in classic you will see it takes much more skill in order to survive.

Bosses of Diablo II

Act 1 – Andarial – Located in level 4 of the Catacombs.
Act 2 – Duriel – Located in the tomb.
Act 3 – Mephisto – Located in level 3 of the Durance of Hate.
Act 4 – Diablo – Hidden in the Sanctuary.
Act 5 – Baal – Added to expansion, located at the very end of the game.

Highlights of Diablo II

Well, after playing for a bit, you will notice that the main part of the game is dueling. Unless playing single-player, you will spend most of your time leveling, in order to be able to duel higher level characters. This better you are at dueling, the better your reputation will be. Being the highest level will also help you gain popularity due to placing yourself high in the ladder. This game is very fun, and I have played it for years, but it does have its downfalls, such as easy hacking. This game is worth the money to have this much fun.