Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

I started Diablo II plus LOD this weekend! Can you believe this is my first time playing it, yes, after all these years? I am playing as a sorceress and am about to enter the monastery, right after I finish clearing out "The Pit." The dungeon names are so creative, aren't they? A fun game, especially when a body's just in the mood to kill stuff

A couple of tips:
Make sure you have installed the latest patch.
Hold down the Option/Alt key after every battle to see the dropped treasure.
Don't leave stuff laying on the ground for long or it will disappear (pick it up and carry it, or stash it in your cache in town.
You can save your Imbue quest bonus until you find something nice (Normal with no sockets, remember) to use it on.
Use quick keys for spells you use a lot; also you can have a different set of spells ready on each "switch" -- not just different weapons and shields. (Use "W" to switch quickly.
Hit the Esc key to bring up the preferences and you can see (and change if you want) a list of key controls)

Go to my Diablo II page on my website to download some helpful lists:
http://www.wondrousuniverse.com/d2x.htm

Have fun. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to help.

Jude

EDIT: updated website URL

No patches, 'cause I had no internet all weekend. It seems to be running just fine. It shouldn't be too out of date, though, 'cause I just bought it on Friday (Battlechest, with strategy guide that I haven't even opened!). I knew that about the Alt key; I knew that about the disappearing items (learned it the hard way).

I did not know that about the W key; I've just been using the spell that smacks enemies with a circle of frost, always to good effect. For melee, I use a long staff with an emerald in it that causes poisoning, plus two other gems for this and that (unmemorable, which is why I don't remember ).

Needless to say, the manual remains uncracked right alongside the strategy guide

The most important thing I've learned is to leave the game running, because save and exit causes all of the monsters to respawn, and it seems like they come back harder to kill than the first time around. That last might just be my imagination, though. I am playing on my old Alienware laptop, so I can just close the lid to suspend the game.

Thanks for the advice, and I'll definitely take a look at your site.

What other RPGs do you like?

Oh, you REALLY should get the patch. It adds all sorts of content and subtle but useful changes, and most importantly, synergies between skills, so that points in skills that you later do not use are not necessarily wasted. It's not just bug fixes!

Here's the latest for Windows:
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2exp/ ... h_112a.exe

and for Mac OS X:
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2/pat ... taller.dmg
AND
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2exp/ ... %20(Carbon).zip

Jude

Oh, definitely get the patch. I've played with and without and the patch really adds a lot. It's so nice to have company down here in DLOD land!

And Jude is the absolute best for tips and tricks. Have fun, Jen!

Thanks for the compliment, Draclvr!

Jen, somehow, I forgot to answer the bottom part of your post.

The secret to handling the respawning monsters is to play until you reach and activate a waypoint (the things that let you "teleport" to town and back). That way, when you start playing again, you can jump right to that waypoint and skip the parts you already did, which are now full of monsters (and treasure) again. I really hated the respawning at first, too, having played Diablo I first, and I think it was mainly made that way for the multi-player games, but it does have some advantages. For example, you can replay areas to build up experience to get a little tougher before tackling a hard quest, you can keep doing the Forgotten Tower (the Countess) quest to get more runes, and if the monsters that spawned are too hard, you can save and when you restart, it may be a different mix of monsters.

BTW, I had some bad luck. I have been playing a Sorceress, lately, too, named Opal (Glacial Spike/Shiver Armor/Chain Lightning/Fire Wall). I had gone back to town to sell the loot, and left nearly all my charms (4 grand, 2 large, and a small) lying on the ground for what I thought was going to be a minute. But the lights flickered, the game crashed, and when I restarted my Sorceress was in town and the charms were gone!
I considered going back to my last backed up game (I regularly make a copy of my saved game folder after every session and store it on another hard drive, just in case my hard drive crashes), but I had found some really cool unique armor (Darkglow) this session, and decided it was worth more than the charms I lost.

Jude

Ye gads, I'd have had a heart attack if I lost my stuff!

Well, I used to dump just about everything on the ground and fill up even my equipment slots when I had a lot of good stuff to take back and identify and/or sell. But after I lost most of my equipment, including a socketed bow and my armor from my Amazon who just defeated Diablo and was gathering up loot when the lights went out, I decided that taking a couple of extra trips to sell stuff is the safer way to do it. The trouble is that you can accumulate quite a few charms that have to stay in your backpack to work, so they use up most of the carrying space. That's what happened this time; I put the charms down for just a minute...

That's another thing that bothers me about Diablo II as opposed to Diablo I -- you can't save to return to wherever you are; you always start out again in town, with unfortunately, everthing you left on the ground, gone!

Jude

I think Opal's going to be okay (knock on wood). In the last hour of playing, I've found a grand charm of +11% all resistance, and a large charm of +6 to life. In addition to the 2 small charms I didn't lose (+5 to life, and Add 1-2 fire damage), she's starting to get a nice collection again. I probably would have had to sell one or two of the others to make room for these new ones, anyway.

Jen, what's your sorceress' name and which skills are you pointing points into?
And who have you been playing lately, Draclvr?


Jude

My sorceress is named Je. I wanted just J, but I had to put in more than one letter. I stink at naming. That's why my screen name is none too imaginative

I started out spreading my skill points around, so I have some ability in each of the three elements, but then I started putting them all into the one attack I use the most, the frost circle (I don't know the exact name of it). I also have held a couple of points back just in case I run up against someone/something that is immune to cold and need to beef up another kind of attack.

I am not very high level yet, only 13 or 14. As soon as I can, I'm going to take some of those beefier attacks, probably all still off the cold page.

Yeah, Frost Nova is a lot of fun! But it doesn't do enough damage at later levels. But you can still use it then to slow everyone down while you hit them with other spells and weapons.

If you are worried about running into something that is immune to your skills, put a regular (preferably long-range for the Sorceress) weapon in your other weapon slot, with a shield. I usually gamble for (or sometimes I'm lucky enough to find) a throwing spear or axes that have life-steal or poison, or knockback or something that will give an extra bonus. Or you can choose a bow or melee weapon with sockets to add poison or whatever. This also comes in handy if you run into monsters that drain your Mana, so that you can't cast spells.

Remember to hire a Mercenary. If s/he gets killed you can resurrect them at the same places you hire them. Try to get one who is as close to your level as possible, because they will level up as you play. With the patch, you can equip them with armor and weapons, too, but only weapons that match what type of Merc they are (look at their image to see).

Jude

One game I have going is a Sorceress with fire paired with a Merc with Cold. The Merc freezes them and the Sorceress fries them. Excellent team...

I just started a new game today on my 64-bit Win 7 OS and it's playing better than ever. I've never played a Druid before, so I Damon is happily bashing monsters with his wolf companion right now. This is going to be interesting!

Did you ever get into this one, Jen? It seems no matter how many time I start LOD, I get sucked right back into the game...

Yeah, I got pretty far, probably about two-thirds of the way through the main quest. Then I got distracted by something shiny.

Must have been really shiny!