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Diablo Senex
Oct. 30th, 2006 09:05 amDiablo II: LOD has gotten a bit boring for me again. And now that the new television season has started Teri is taping her shows most nights, so I haven't been able to play Zelda: The Legend of the Wind Waker. So a few nights ago I took out my old Diablo I CD-ROM and started playing again.
I'd forgotten. There's a reason why Diablo I was a smash hit. It's still a great game.
It feel slow after D2, of course, since in that game you can run. Characters in D1 just plod along. But the gameplay and atmosphere are outstanding, and once you've re-adjusted to the slower movement rate, the game is a LOT of fun.
One interesting problem is that there's a lot less information online about D1 than there used to be. A lot of sites have simply disappeared. And I needed to find out how to get a solo character into nightmare or hell difficulty games.
For those who don't know Diablo, once you've played the game in "normal" mode, you can play it again in nightmare mode, and then again in hell mode; in each of those modes the monsters are more powerful, give more experience points, and you get a lot more treasure and gold. For example, a normal first-level monster might drop 1-10 gold pieces in normal mode. That same monster would drop 100-500 or so in hell mode.
The problem is that nightmare and hell modes are available to characters on Battle.net, but not to solo characters. And there are definite advantages to playing a solo character. Response is quicker - Battle.net can be painfully slow and unreliable for Diablo 1 - and you can get quests that aren't available for Battle.net characters.
Once you've reached a certain level, there isn't much challenge to a regular game. There was a trick that could be used to make a nightmare or hell game for a solo character, but I'd forgotten it. I looked around online, but couldn't find it. So I plumbed my memory, and finally remembered the trick.
You need to have a multi-player character who can create nightmare or hell-level games; I don't remember the required level for nightmare, but for hell I think it's 30. This can be a Battle.net character.
Your solo character needs to have been created and saved in a game. I recommend that it be a brand new game, since any killing you do before putting the game into nightmare or hell mode will only game treasure and experience at the normal rate.
Start Diablo. Choose a multi-player game, and then choose Direct Cable Connection (NOT Battle.net). When you create the game, select Nightmare or Hell. Once the game has started, hit "Esc" to call up the main menu, and select "New Game". Back out of the menus by hitting "Esc" until you reach the point that you can select a single-player game. Select the character you want to play, load the game, and you'll find that all the monsters, treasure, and experience points are nightmare or hell level, whatever you picked.
I should probably mention that it's a good idea to start with the first level; if you jump straight in to fighting high-level monsters on nightmare or hell, you're likely to have trouble. And since even 1st-level monsters give hundreds of gold pieces per drop, I usually run the entire first three levels over and over to gain gold and levels.
Incidentally, one interesting thing about this trick is that while you do get marginally better magic items in these pseudo-nightmare and hell levels, the magic items you find at the low NM and hell levels usually aren't that good. Although 1st level NM monsters drop gold that's equivalent to the highest-level normal monsters, if not slightly better, the magic items that they drop tend to suck. High-level NM and hell monsters drop great items, of course.
An odd thing is that if you save the game and then start it later without doing the nightmare/hell game trick, the game will revert right back to normal mode. In other words, you can go through level one, kill monsters and get hundreds of gold pieces per drop, and then when you re-start the game, the monsters will go back to giving you 1-10 or so. You need to go through the whole nightmare/hell multiplayer character trick again to put the game back to NM/Hell equivalent.
On a related tack, there's a new trick I recently developed to pick up useful spells. It takes a lot of gold, which is another reason why I wanted to remember how to get to nightmare or hell levels. But it works quite well.
Adria the Witch sells spellbooks (among other things) at the east side of town, across the stream. Unlike Griswold the smith, her stock in trade changes every time you down down into the dungeon and come back. That makes it possible to find rare and useful spellbooks. But going down the nearest dungeon entrance (the catacombs) and coming back takes perhaps 20 seconds...an eon of playing time.
I found a much better way for solo characters. You need to have a lot of gold at hand; it doesn't have to all be in your inventory, though. You can scatter extra piles of gold all around you, in fact. Anyway, start by going to Adria (I recommend scattering your gold right there). Check out her stock, and if she has anything you want, buy it. If it's a spellbook, read it. Save the game. Then hit "Esc", and select "Load Game". You'll start right where you were, in front of Adria - but what I discovered was that when you load the game, her stock regenerates. That is, she'll have a completely new list of items for sale. Check out the list, buy and read any worthwhile spellbooks, then save the game and reload. If she doesn't have anything you want, skip saving and just reload the game until you find a spellbook that you do want. Eventually you'll use up all your gold this way, at which point it's time to go treasure-hunting in hell mode.
You can also find good staves that way, but of course staves are generally not worth using.
Good grief. I wonder if anyone who reads this will find any of this useful? And does it sound as pathetically geeky as I think? Jeeze.
I'd forgotten. There's a reason why Diablo I was a smash hit. It's still a great game.
It feel slow after D2, of course, since in that game you can run. Characters in D1 just plod along. But the gameplay and atmosphere are outstanding, and once you've re-adjusted to the slower movement rate, the game is a LOT of fun.
One interesting problem is that there's a lot less information online about D1 than there used to be. A lot of sites have simply disappeared. And I needed to find out how to get a solo character into nightmare or hell difficulty games.
For those who don't know Diablo, once you've played the game in "normal" mode, you can play it again in nightmare mode, and then again in hell mode; in each of those modes the monsters are more powerful, give more experience points, and you get a lot more treasure and gold. For example, a normal first-level monster might drop 1-10 gold pieces in normal mode. That same monster would drop 100-500 or so in hell mode.
The problem is that nightmare and hell modes are available to characters on Battle.net, but not to solo characters. And there are definite advantages to playing a solo character. Response is quicker - Battle.net can be painfully slow and unreliable for Diablo 1 - and you can get quests that aren't available for Battle.net characters.
Once you've reached a certain level, there isn't much challenge to a regular game. There was a trick that could be used to make a nightmare or hell game for a solo character, but I'd forgotten it. I looked around online, but couldn't find it. So I plumbed my memory, and finally remembered the trick.
You need to have a multi-player character who can create nightmare or hell-level games; I don't remember the required level for nightmare, but for hell I think it's 30. This can be a Battle.net character.
Your solo character needs to have been created and saved in a game. I recommend that it be a brand new game, since any killing you do before putting the game into nightmare or hell mode will only game treasure and experience at the normal rate.
Start Diablo. Choose a multi-player game, and then choose Direct Cable Connection (NOT Battle.net). When you create the game, select Nightmare or Hell. Once the game has started, hit "Esc" to call up the main menu, and select "New Game". Back out of the menus by hitting "Esc" until you reach the point that you can select a single-player game. Select the character you want to play, load the game, and you'll find that all the monsters, treasure, and experience points are nightmare or hell level, whatever you picked.
I should probably mention that it's a good idea to start with the first level; if you jump straight in to fighting high-level monsters on nightmare or hell, you're likely to have trouble. And since even 1st-level monsters give hundreds of gold pieces per drop, I usually run the entire first three levels over and over to gain gold and levels.
Incidentally, one interesting thing about this trick is that while you do get marginally better magic items in these pseudo-nightmare and hell levels, the magic items you find at the low NM and hell levels usually aren't that good. Although 1st level NM monsters drop gold that's equivalent to the highest-level normal monsters, if not slightly better, the magic items that they drop tend to suck. High-level NM and hell monsters drop great items, of course.
An odd thing is that if you save the game and then start it later without doing the nightmare/hell game trick, the game will revert right back to normal mode. In other words, you can go through level one, kill monsters and get hundreds of gold pieces per drop, and then when you re-start the game, the monsters will go back to giving you 1-10 or so. You need to go through the whole nightmare/hell multiplayer character trick again to put the game back to NM/Hell equivalent.
On a related tack, there's a new trick I recently developed to pick up useful spells. It takes a lot of gold, which is another reason why I wanted to remember how to get to nightmare or hell levels. But it works quite well.
Adria the Witch sells spellbooks (among other things) at the east side of town, across the stream. Unlike Griswold the smith, her stock in trade changes every time you down down into the dungeon and come back. That makes it possible to find rare and useful spellbooks. But going down the nearest dungeon entrance (the catacombs) and coming back takes perhaps 20 seconds...an eon of playing time.
I found a much better way for solo characters. You need to have a lot of gold at hand; it doesn't have to all be in your inventory, though. You can scatter extra piles of gold all around you, in fact. Anyway, start by going to Adria (I recommend scattering your gold right there). Check out her stock, and if she has anything you want, buy it. If it's a spellbook, read it. Save the game. Then hit "Esc", and select "Load Game". You'll start right where you were, in front of Adria - but what I discovered was that when you load the game, her stock regenerates. That is, she'll have a completely new list of items for sale. Check out the list, buy and read any worthwhile spellbooks, then save the game and reload. If she doesn't have anything you want, skip saving and just reload the game until you find a spellbook that you do want. Eventually you'll use up all your gold this way, at which point it's time to go treasure-hunting in hell mode.
You can also find good staves that way, but of course staves are generally not worth using.
Good grief. I wonder if anyone who reads this will find any of this useful? And does it sound as pathetically geeky as I think? Jeeze.
