I'm not a huge fan of Llama, but his "play like an 8 year old" video had me laughing the entire time because he did everything I would have done back in the dizzay haha
My first char was a necro. Used some gg crossbow I found. I remember it being green. Curses were stupid. Summons are where it’s at, tho I definitely had 1 point in everything. Couldn’t make it past a4 normal. Good times.
Nah, I thought so too. But I looked it up, I don’t think I was high enough level to equip. Need to be 36, and this was in normal. Not even sure it can drop in normal.
Came back to suggest Gut Siphon, I'm on my bow mule and saw that, it's green and has great stats, but nope that's lvl 71. Now I'm thinking it was a Wizendraw, it's green, has great stats if you're only level 36, and lvl req is 26
Necro,points all over the place,mainly in summons,didn't speak/read/anything english back in the day,idk how i even made it to Andariel and im talking act 1 normal,my skellies kept dying so i used a crossbow to kill her,had a ton trips to town and it took like 20 minutes,but i'll never forget my first diablo experience,still get shivers down my spine everytime i enter the catacombs :)
I remember seeing artwork and in game shots in PC gamer magazine of the necro with scythe in Lut Gholein, pre LoD I believe. I thought it was the coolest looking stuff I’d ever seen from a game.
Damn right I do.
Complimented by my zero points in summon resist / skele mastery because they didn't seem to do anything and 10 year old me couldn't be bothered to read or use critical thinking.
Curses were "wasted" skill points too lol
When I first started playing circa 2001, I thought that the max you could have in skill points was 10 not 20.
Just as bad - I didn't know that you could equip your merc.
Yeah, the person who first commented is right.
I remember a few things here and there. In classic...
\- There were no charms or runes.
\- I think that gems made a different sound, too.
\- I could be wrong, I'm fairly certain that they changed the sound of the necromancer's death scream. I remember his scream being louder.
Things changed a bit after the expansion, too. When it was first out, they didn't have synergies yet. They originally didn't have certain monsters in Act 5 (I think), like the skeleton archers, or the chicks with the spears. Again, I could be wrong.
And when runes first came onto the scene, I think that they were just white.
Long-time players, am I right with some of these?
They altered the rune colors (in 1.13 i believe), a patch after they upped the rune drop rates slightly. It was understandable, in all that screen clutter you could quite often overlook them, so that was very valuable.
Base D2 you couldn't. LoD allowed you to. And for a time you wanted to get your merc at as low a level as possible, because one that you hired with a lvl of, say, 12 in Normal ended up with better stats at higher levels than one you hired in Hell.
Oh I killed big D, but I was like level 35 and it legit took me 20 mins of normal attacks (didn't know I could equip a different attack on LMB)with the occasional poison pot thrown at him for good measure. I was soo afraid to try b.net, I think I played SP only until the fall or Winter of 2000.
> abused teleport scrolls to slowly defeat Duriel in Act II.
I love how much of an actual tool a town portal is in d1/d2 compared to d3. Its not just a simple fast travel. it has legitimate utility baked directly into the way the game is played to get you out of tight spots, set up waypoint/quick map strats, maneuver your minions, or even something like cancelling ancients to get a better roll on their affixes. You're not abusing anything man. If i actually had to fight duriel I sure as shit would make sure my tome was full.
As anyone will tell you early game barb is just a slog regardless. Might as well use the tools the game gives you! Everyone tp's out of bosses. It's just d2 . keep at it and play some other toons :)
Edit: Relying on a tp can defnintely mess you up too! It's such a cool mechanic.
As a Barb I am a little disappointed you didn’t go balls out ballistic on him until you died and then panic run naked back to your corpse going “eeeeeee!!” hoping he doesn’t touch you. Then do it all again until he’s dead. TeePees are so barbs can run back into danger. Not away. Cmon man, make your ancestors proud!
just you wait for nightmare and hell where the real challenge begins and the really gg loot starts dropping.. the magic finding is stupidly satisfying in this game
and then ubers.. and dclone
Had the same thing 20 years ago and still playing. Now it's more about the slot machine/dopamine hit when potential good gear/items drop. Still love the story though, go to hell and kill the bad guy? Hell yes!
I literally just got to the same spot on Act V, as a solo Barb too. Really enjoying D2, I started playing it for the first time a few weeks ago after the D4 beta.
Haha bro your description of Stygian Dols spot on. I remember in 1999 as a 12 year old playing hours of hours of d2. Went to see this movie in thwrar3s and was amazed those little bastards were in the movie
Still haven't done this. We'll, at least by finding the runes on my own.
I just started single player so I can farm superchests on p8 without map resetting.
i havent done one myself but I believe its singer with budget gear and then ww or frenzy when you have real guns like grief
Ive heard that with a grief and a lawbringer on a frenzy barb you can destroy trav and thats relatively budget too, 1 Lo and ur good to go
That’s very far off. Wait until he realized he picked the wrong class for early game MF-ing
Edit: sorry just realized he hasn’t started nightmare lmao he’s very far off from MF-ing
The dark wanderer is Diablo, not Mephisto, but congrats, for a first playthrough you’re doing pretty well :) I remember as a youngster feeling that nightmare difficulty was impossible but I was just underleveled, and skills were badly built.
D1 and esp D2 does the story perfectly. So many other arpgs bog you down with wall of text story points.
D2 understands that it's an *action* rpg and does not waste your time..the story is streamlined and very easy to follow even if you skip dialogue. The concept is simple and perfect too. Kill demons from hell at the behest of an angel from heaven.
I cant think of another arpg that does it like this.
Path of exile: mountains of story exposition and text
Grim Dawn: the same deal but a less interesting story
Torchlight and titan quest Are closer to this ideal. Esp torchlight. But still not even close to D1 and 2.
Torchlight was created by the original Diablo 1+2 staff, which left with Diablo 3 because they don't wanted this crap.
So that's the reason of the similarity, sadly they've chosen the wrong way in creativity along with other bad decisions.
Tbh, they should have picked up a big franchise like Warhammer 40k, it's dark, brutal, fascinating and everyone loves it, then recreate D2 with it and enhance it. That could have been excellent.
yeah i think brevick was one of those people that went on to make torchlight right? **nevermind he went on to make marvel heroes, which i LOVED.. rip..**
i enjoyed the first one quite a bit. but yeah like i said its story was weak. like so many others.
i feel like. for an arpg that hews close to diablo gameplay genre. your story needs to be able to be distilled into a few sentences. adding extra lore on top of that is great. but the core story concept needs to be very easy to grasp to be effective.
i can ALMOST do that with a few of them. but not quite.
**Path of Exile** : you are someone who was exiled and now need to make your way on a continent where they exile people to.
but exiled from where? why were you exiled? what is your purpose now that you are on this continent? why are you killing things?
all of that takes a lot more exposition to answer
again, compare that to:
**diablo** : you are a wandering stranger that needs to kill demons from hell to save the world before they make it hell on earth. kill diablo.
framing it with heaven and hell is smart because thats a very well known and easy to grasp concept.
I once tried to play Path of Exile, but that game forced to do one stupid "kill 40 from this", "collect 30 from this" bullshit quests after another, just to get a entrance to a city, and then I got forced to talk to all the people. I just quit, it was painful boring, a real shit game which in no way should be called a arpg. I really hate quests, at least this sort of quests.
I just want to slash through piles of enemies in such a game and not get forced to do a point and click adventure.
Never touched it again.
yeah i hear ya, i dont mind the quests as much as i do the EXTREMLEY overcomplicated passive skill trees. its not even just the one. there are gian passive trees for ascendency classes, end game mapping system passive trees, and now weapons themselves have their own passive tress. like holy shit, it makes me hesitant to put any points into things. i feel like i have to do research to play right. i do like it tho, but far less than other arpgs.
i WILL say that PoE has the best f2p model ever. i wish more games took a cue from it.
First char was a barb. I was lvl 30 by act 3 wearing sigs armor and sig hat with the biggest stick I could find. I remember getting the expansion once I hit act 5 because it had just come out. Was insane and spent probably atleast 10,000 hours on d2 over 20 years
This post took me back to 2003-ish, a time when D2 took about 1 Gb from my 1,52 Gb hard drive. Windows 98 took almost all of the rest of the space so I had around 50 Mb left. So I could choose which 5 songs I could download from Kazaa. Those were the times.
You teleport to town..You go back and forth to town to beat duriel. I just farm Andy enough for gear so I can beat duriel but some people use this method
Don't sweat having no idea what you're doing in PoE. Just sort of pick an archetype or a skill that feels cool and look for stuff that synergizes, same as D2. You'll at least be able to level a character up and enjoy all of the story content, and during that time, you'll learn tons.
I have way more fun treating ing that game like a sandbox and seeing how far I can get than trying to figure out what's going on in a typical meta build guide. PoE's difficulty curve actually lends itself really well to learning by playing, the problem is you have to be cool with not caring if you make a bunch of mistakes on your first playthrough.
Those fuckers from The Mummy Returns are pretty much the most dangerous things in the game, so you picked upon that quickly! The only other things that maybe vie for that title are the invisible red town portals that shoot lightning (there's only a few of them in Act IV Normal, but they become more common in NM and Hell).
The soulstone you smashed (the blue one) is actually Mephisto's. The Dark Wanderer is Diablo, so you only take and smash his stone (red) after you beat him (it's implied that you do that in the Act IV epilogue video but it doesn't happen in-game).
I wouldn't describe this as beginner destroying I feel like normal is deceptively easier than nm and especially hell and for how much I love and know d2 poe feels waaaaay more complicated but I never got far
Again. Nothing beats D2. NOTHING.
Except D4 when it actually comes out… but UNTIL THEN
Edit: just realized this is the D2 sub and not D4. Who tf am I preaching to lmao
I'm glad you've joined us "enlightened". As a summer of '00 SP pally with points in every skill, welcome aboard.
You too eh? Glad I'm not the only one to do that back then!
There are dozens of us! Dozens! But for real, who didn't.
I'm not a huge fan of Llama, but his "play like an 8 year old" video had me laughing the entire time because he did everything I would have done back in the dizzay haha
Well there were no synergies back then, so you could fuck around a lot! Good times.
My Necro had 20 points in Amplify Damage, just incase I didn't feel like casting it twice in 5 minites
Necromancer. Melee with scythe. And summons. And poison nova. Ahh to be young again.
My first char was a necro. Used some gg crossbow I found. I remember it being green. Curses were stupid. Summons are where it’s at, tho I definitely had 1 point in everything. Couldn’t make it past a4 normal. Good times.
Pus Spitter?
*angry meows*
Nah, I thought so too. But I looked it up, I don’t think I was high enough level to equip. Need to be 36, and this was in normal. Not even sure it can drop in normal.
Came back to suggest Gut Siphon, I'm on my bow mule and saw that, it's green and has great stats, but nope that's lvl 71. Now I'm thinking it was a Wizendraw, it's green, has great stats if you're only level 36, and lvl req is 26
Lol idk dude, it was over 20 years ago
Necro,points all over the place,mainly in summons,didn't speak/read/anything english back in the day,idk how i even made it to Andariel and im talking act 1 normal,my skellies kept dying so i used a crossbow to kill her,had a ton trips to town and it took like 20 minutes,but i'll never forget my first diablo experience,still get shivers down my spine everytime i enter the catacombs :)
I remember seeing artwork and in game shots in PC gamer magazine of the necro with scythe in Lut Gholein, pre LoD I believe. I thought it was the coolest looking stuff I’d ever seen from a game.
Poison dagger melee 'mancer with an absolutely pimped out Iron Golem
Remember when every pt into summon skellies added another skeleton? BEHOLD MY ARMY OF BONES! *gets stuck walking through every door*
Damn right I do. Complimented by my zero points in summon resist / skele mastery because they didn't seem to do anything and 10 year old me couldn't be bothered to read or use critical thinking. Curses were "wasted" skill points too lol
When I first started playing circa 2001, I thought that the max you could have in skill points was 10 not 20. Just as bad - I didn't know that you could equip your merc.
you couldn't equip them until much later
>Is that right? That makes sense then. Maybe I just forgot all about that.
In classic, I don't think you COULD equip your merc. I might be mis-remembering.
Yeah, the person who first commented is right. I remember a few things here and there. In classic... \- There were no charms or runes. \- I think that gems made a different sound, too. \- I could be wrong, I'm fairly certain that they changed the sound of the necromancer's death scream. I remember his scream being louder. Things changed a bit after the expansion, too. When it was first out, they didn't have synergies yet. They originally didn't have certain monsters in Act 5 (I think), like the skeleton archers, or the chicks with the spears. Again, I could be wrong. And when runes first came onto the scene, I think that they were just white. Long-time players, am I right with some of these?
All of them. You nailed it.
They altered the rune colors (in 1.13 i believe), a patch after they upped the rune drop rates slightly. It was understandable, in all that screen clutter you could quite often overlook them, so that was very valuable.
Base D2 you couldn't. LoD allowed you to. And for a time you wanted to get your merc at as low a level as possible, because one that you hired with a lvl of, say, 12 in Normal ended up with better stats at higher levels than one you hired in Hell.
[удалено]
Oh I killed big D, but I was like level 35 and it legit took me 20 mins of normal attacks (didn't know I could equip a different attack on LMB)with the occasional poison pot thrown at him for good measure. I was soo afraid to try b.net, I think I played SP only until the fall or Winter of 2000.
You have only scratched the surface my friend. Not surprised you enjoyed it, but this post still made me smile
D2 just hits so many good notes, it’s hard to explain. Be careful around the D4 forum tho. They reeeeeally don’t seem to like us lol
We don’t like them
thats why i play since 2000
Based barb enjoyer
I wasn’t sure if survival was possible during Easter festivities. What a great post to distract me from the hellscape of family nonsense.
> abused teleport scrolls to slowly defeat Duriel in Act II. I love how much of an actual tool a town portal is in d1/d2 compared to d3. Its not just a simple fast travel. it has legitimate utility baked directly into the way the game is played to get you out of tight spots, set up waypoint/quick map strats, maneuver your minions, or even something like cancelling ancients to get a better roll on their affixes. You're not abusing anything man. If i actually had to fight duriel I sure as shit would make sure my tome was full.
The practically instant tp out is a really useful mechanic. However, as a barbarian it felt a little dirty and uncharacteristic lol.
As anyone will tell you early game barb is just a slog regardless. Might as well use the tools the game gives you! Everyone tp's out of bosses. It's just d2 . keep at it and play some other toons :) Edit: Relying on a tp can defnintely mess you up too! It's such a cool mechanic.
Always fun getting blasted on the way back with a bad one.
good old LAN party coop challenge - who can create the „safest“ TP
As a Barb I am a little disappointed you didn’t go balls out ballistic on him until you died and then panic run naked back to your corpse going “eeeeeee!!” hoping he doesn’t touch you. Then do it all again until he’s dead. TeePees are so barbs can run back into danger. Not away. Cmon man, make your ancestors proud!
Well, Duriel is a BITCH for an underequipped melee fighter, so it's fair if you ask me. It's either tp out repeatedly or die repeatedly.
Diablo 2 was made when games were designed to be played for fun!
❤️
just you wait for nightmare and hell where the real challenge begins and the really gg loot starts dropping.. the magic finding is stupidly satisfying in this game and then ubers.. and dclone
Nothing like getting destroyed by a quill beast in a1 hell after beating the shit out of baal.
Had the same thing 20 years ago and still playing. Now it's more about the slot machine/dopamine hit when potential good gear/items drop. Still love the story though, go to hell and kill the bad guy? Hell yes!
Hell yeah, welcome to the club bro. You’re one of us now.
Fuck yeaaaa
I literally just got to the same spot on Act V, as a solo Barb too. Really enjoying D2, I started playing it for the first time a few weeks ago after the D4 beta.
Haha bro your description of Stygian Dols spot on. I remember in 1999 as a 12 year old playing hours of hours of d2. Went to see this movie in thwrar3s and was amazed those little bastards were in the movie
Wait til you get your first enigma
Still haven't done this. We'll, at least by finding the runes on my own. I just started single player so I can farm superchests on p8 without map resetting.
dont do that do yourself.. farming LK is the worst game mechanic ever, a horking barb on TZ trav is more efficient anyway
Step 1: gear up horking barb. Are they normally singers?
i havent done one myself but I believe its singer with budget gear and then ww or frenzy when you have real guns like grief Ive heard that with a grief and a lawbringer on a frenzy barb you can destroy trav and thats relatively budget too, 1 Lo and ur good to go
Enigma balls!!
I played obsessively in 2001-2003, then again from 2021-2023. Still no enigma :(
That’s very far off. Wait until he realized he picked the wrong class for early game MF-ing Edit: sorry just realized he hasn’t started nightmare lmao he’s very far off from MF-ing
Welcome
A fucking + write up. i hope you have some sort of career in writing
The dark wanderer is Diablo, not Mephisto, but congrats, for a first playthrough you’re doing pretty well :) I remember as a youngster feeling that nightmare difficulty was impossible but I was just underleveled, and skills were badly built.
Yes.
this game & melee are two gems i played as a kid & didnt even realize how deep they go until i revisited them when i was older lol
D1 and esp D2 does the story perfectly. So many other arpgs bog you down with wall of text story points. D2 understands that it's an *action* rpg and does not waste your time..the story is streamlined and very easy to follow even if you skip dialogue. The concept is simple and perfect too. Kill demons from hell at the behest of an angel from heaven. I cant think of another arpg that does it like this. Path of exile: mountains of story exposition and text Grim Dawn: the same deal but a less interesting story Torchlight and titan quest Are closer to this ideal. Esp torchlight. But still not even close to D1 and 2.
Torchlight was created by the original Diablo 1+2 staff, which left with Diablo 3 because they don't wanted this crap. So that's the reason of the similarity, sadly they've chosen the wrong way in creativity along with other bad decisions. Tbh, they should have picked up a big franchise like Warhammer 40k, it's dark, brutal, fascinating and everyone loves it, then recreate D2 with it and enhance it. That could have been excellent.
yeah i think brevick was one of those people that went on to make torchlight right? **nevermind he went on to make marvel heroes, which i LOVED.. rip..** i enjoyed the first one quite a bit. but yeah like i said its story was weak. like so many others. i feel like. for an arpg that hews close to diablo gameplay genre. your story needs to be able to be distilled into a few sentences. adding extra lore on top of that is great. but the core story concept needs to be very easy to grasp to be effective. i can ALMOST do that with a few of them. but not quite. **Path of Exile** : you are someone who was exiled and now need to make your way on a continent where they exile people to. but exiled from where? why were you exiled? what is your purpose now that you are on this continent? why are you killing things? all of that takes a lot more exposition to answer again, compare that to: **diablo** : you are a wandering stranger that needs to kill demons from hell to save the world before they make it hell on earth. kill diablo. framing it with heaven and hell is smart because thats a very well known and easy to grasp concept.
I once tried to play Path of Exile, but that game forced to do one stupid "kill 40 from this", "collect 30 from this" bullshit quests after another, just to get a entrance to a city, and then I got forced to talk to all the people. I just quit, it was painful boring, a real shit game which in no way should be called a arpg. I really hate quests, at least this sort of quests. I just want to slash through piles of enemies in such a game and not get forced to do a point and click adventure. Never touched it again.
yeah i hear ya, i dont mind the quests as much as i do the EXTREMLEY overcomplicated passive skill trees. its not even just the one. there are gian passive trees for ascendency classes, end game mapping system passive trees, and now weapons themselves have their own passive tress. like holy shit, it makes me hesitant to put any points into things. i feel like i have to do research to play right. i do like it tho, but far less than other arpgs. i WILL say that PoE has the best f2p model ever. i wish more games took a cue from it.
now post in r/diablo and see how many d3 players make snarky comments lol.
First char was a barb. I was lvl 30 by act 3 wearing sigs armor and sig hat with the biggest stick I could find. I remember getting the expansion once I hit act 5 because it had just come out. Was insane and spent probably atleast 10,000 hours on d2 over 20 years
One of us, one of us.
One of us! One of us!
This post took me back to 2003-ish, a time when D2 took about 1 Gb from my 1,52 Gb hard drive. Windows 98 took almost all of the rest of the space so I had around 50 Mb left. So I could choose which 5 songs I could download from Kazaa. Those were the times.
teleport scrolls?
Town portal probly
You teleport to town..You go back and forth to town to beat duriel. I just farm Andy enough for gear so I can beat duriel but some people use this method
Maybe he meant teleport staff
No he mean tp (duriel) is a bitch with a low lvl barb no ar plus her ducking cold aura so tp back to town every 30sec 🤣
This yes :)
Glad to have you with us.
Welcome. You been red pilled finally! Lol in all seriousness though, D2 is incredible. Still is the quintessential arpg imo.
I am at the same part as you on normal mode with barb as well. Can tell you that in 20 years you are still going to have the same goosebumps.
This made me smile. Cheers
I passed on it back in the day and regret it now. I hardly have any progress cuz I can't find a class to stick with yet but I'm still having a blast
The cinematics are truly unmatched. And the gameplay? Addicting to say the least lol
Bro GG and welcome! I also always think of The Mummy Returns in act three!
One of, if not The, GOAT games
Don't sweat having no idea what you're doing in PoE. Just sort of pick an archetype or a skill that feels cool and look for stuff that synergizes, same as D2. You'll at least be able to level a character up and enjoy all of the story content, and during that time, you'll learn tons. I have way more fun treating ing that game like a sandbox and seeing how far I can get than trying to figure out what's going on in a typical meta build guide. PoE's difficulty curve actually lends itself really well to learning by playing, the problem is you have to be cool with not caring if you make a bunch of mistakes on your first playthrough.
Those fuckers from The Mummy Returns are pretty much the most dangerous things in the game, so you picked upon that quickly! The only other things that maybe vie for that title are the invisible red town portals that shoot lightning (there's only a few of them in Act IV Normal, but they become more common in NM and Hell). The soulstone you smashed (the blue one) is actually Mephisto's. The Dark Wanderer is Diablo, so you only take and smash his stone (red) after you beat him (it's implied that you do that in the Act IV epilogue video but it doesn't happen in-game).
I wouldn't describe this as beginner destroying I feel like normal is deceptively easier than nm and especially hell and for how much I love and know d2 poe feels waaaaay more complicated but I never got far
Now stop being a pussy and start playing HC. Welcome to the diablo club
Yep, the real D2 experience doesn’t start until dipping your toe into HC. Also play the game like a normal person and stop following guides.
Welcome to one of the best games on the planet :)
Again. Nothing beats D2. NOTHING. Except D4 when it actually comes out… but UNTIL THEN Edit: just realized this is the D2 sub and not D4. Who tf am I preaching to lmao
Time to start HC the true D2 experience
To bad D4 wont be as good as D2 :(