Now flooding shelves at an EB near you, and I picked it and the strategy guide up today. :)

I bet when I finally get to play it in 800X600 for REAL (sorry, again), I'll exclaim, "What? No, it looked better after the patch!" ;)

It's terribly geeky, but I took a couple photos with my Visor module at the EB just to "prove" it was on sale. I'll post one later for yucks maybe.

Bought it at EB when I went out for lunch today.

-DavidCPA

This expansion makes the game soooooo mcuh better.

From what I played of the beta, I think that no matter what you may have thought about Diablo II, this is a "five star" expansion. It's everything an expansion should be and more.

It adds 25% more area (a fifth act)...actually a bit more when you consider how short act 4 is. It adds better tech (800x600 - HUGE difference). It adds two new characters, which ups your options there by 40%. It adds lots of new stuff throughout the old game in the form of class specific items, jewels, runes, crafted items, etc.

And while they're at it, they did lots of cool little tweaks. Double-size stash. Filling all your potions in your belt with a ctrl-right-click buy. A "repair all" button. Better class balancing. Better level balancing (upper levels have proper challenges and rewards). Better hirelings (though the 1.08 patch added some of that, you can't take 'em from act to act like in the expansion).

If only every expansion did for their games what LoD does for Diablo 2.

I'm sure the expansion is very good and all, but I wish Diablo 2 was a little more "random" like Diablo 1. The dungeons in Diablo 2 seem more "set" then they did in Diablo 1. Also, even with the patch the difficulty in Diablo 2 is more the tedious type... (thogh i haven't really played the full xpansion yet.. so im prejudging!)

Anyway, I'm excited to get the game soon, 2 day fed ex preorder, though Im MORE happy to have Operation Flashpoint since Tuesday!

Plus theres still the Throne of Bhall I will prolly pick up sometime... yeah this summers pc games aren't so bad i guess... though what else is next?

BTW, I heard there is an ISO of Arcanum on the net... can you believe that? Sierra should have released it around now... though either way, the "thieves" will get there hand on any game... early or late release.

aye rambling man ...

etc

It's great stuff, but Act 5 causes an awful lot of lag in MP, esp. with extra mercs and all the catapaults and what not. I'll live. :)

Is it wrong to want to throw my wife off her computer because our copy of Diablo II is installed on it and I can't install the expansion set:?

Seriously, I read up on all the features and additions last night and I concur with Jason - this is what an expansion pack should be. If I remember correctly, the original version limited the number of sockets to 3 whereas the new version has up to 6 depending on the class of the weapon. A weapon with six jewels/skulls/runes could be a very powerful weapon. I can't wait to experiment.

I'm off work tomorrow so maybe I can get to her PC before she does, load the game and get some first hand experience.

-DavidCPA

"BTW, I heard there is an ISO of Arcanum on the net... can you believe that?"

No big surprise. Sierra's handed out playable press copies to a number of people. It only takes one copy falling into the wrong hands.

"It only takes one copy falling into the wrong hands."

Or the right hands, depending on how you look at it.

Ok, ok, I'm kidding.

Heh -- it's debatable just how damaging warez is. My gut feeling is that the warez stuff doesn't steal too many sales. People that warez either wouldn't buy it regardless or just want an advance look at a game.

It may be more harmful in that the warez versions are often stripped of music, opening cinematics, etc., so a lot of the lustre is removed. All that stuff is part of the whole experience, so if you remove it the game may not seem to be as much fun. Then you start getting some bad word-of-mouth going about the game, etc.

Blizzard does a world-wide simultaneous release of their games now to cut down on piracy.

Mark - due to my college experiences Making Me An Expert On This, I can now state with confidence that recent "warezing" gives you a perfect copy of the game, including CD Covers. They even scan in the manual for big releases or games where it's absolutely necessary to have it.

The model now is just to making a digital image of the cd, split it into rar files, and seperately distribute a replacement .exe to get around the copy protection. That's it. The only trouble is that they have to keep releasing new cracked executables for each patch revision of the game, though.

Amusingly, "industry standard" copy protection schemes such as Safedisc actually make it easier: people have written generic crack utilities that will give you a version of any Safedisc executable with the copy-protection removed, so patching isn't an issue.

As to how damaging it is, I don't think it's really that much for the average game; virtually all game piracy now is by college students, who don't really have enough disposable income to buy them anyway. I haven't seen any data backing up college-gamer disposable income, though. Specific types of games get really screwed by it, though (shareware comes to mind, and maybe wargames?)

Business application piracy is an area of huge loss, though, I think. AutoCAD, Photoshop, half the copies of Office - if anything, if the piracy rate for these if 50%, if everyone bought them they'd cost half as much. Maybe.

If everyone in the world made a decision tomorrow to buy legal copies of Adobe and Macromedia products, the stock prices of these two companies would triple overnight.

I assume rogerw means "everyone in the world that uses an illegal copy of Adobe and Macromedia products" because I think the stock would more than triple if just everyone in California suddenly bought those products.

Let's not quibble about the "overnight" part.
-Andrew

Ah warez... I know a couple of coworkers who get games (and everything else) ONLY thru warez. Just a bunch of cheapskates and freeloaders if you ask me... but then again I'd be lying if I said I NEVER had a cracked game ever. Anyway, its the mentality of warez that confuses me... its theft pure and simple...

Just imagine every game you bought, then imagine a friend who asks to burn every game you bought... a cheapskate. these are generally the same people who never tip in a restaurant and thus get there food "specially delivered"!

etc

I was on an unexplainable mission to get a copy of Trespasser: Jurrasic Park.

I scoured eBay and found a seller. The picture of the game box looked pristine and all seemed right. I won the auction, paid my money, and got... a burned copy of the game and a photocopied manual.

I cried foul and demanded my money back. I got my money back, thankfully, but then recieved a 3 page email lecture about how "this person" was bringing corrupt developers and "fat-cat" producers to task by making their games available to the "often-screwed" public!

I quietly point out that "this person" was also profiting from doing so. (and shook the "often screwed" mental image that had gathered)

Then I LOUDLY FILED A COMPLAINT WITH EBAY.
Occasionally, I still get hate letters from this cretin. I sometimes mourn that Daily Radar (and my column there) are gone, I could have made her "nobility" and "Often Screwed" plight even more public than it was.

I've since obtained a legit copy of that game (no mean feat). It rests on a special shelf with Tom Chick's Deus Ex, Brett Todd's Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, Bruce Geryk's The Sims, Steve Bauman's Black & White, Desslock's Ultima 9, Old Man Murray's Rune & Drakan Multi-pack and Andrew Bub's John Romero's Daikatana, a Stevie Case Design.

-Andrew

You should add Tim Royal's Battlemage: Magic the Gathering piece to that list Andrew, it's a classic article! Just don't drink hot coffee while reading it... or you'll be asking for a visit to the ER. Should still be up at cgonline.com...

Getting back to the D2 expansion, I love it. That's why I haven't updated the site since Thursday. I got the expansion on Friday and I've been playing it ever since whenever I'm in front of the PC. You can certainly nitpick at the game and lower the review score, but as far as fun goes, it's a 5/5.

Yeah, I kind of wish my beta character was still around. I don't really want to have to play all the way through again :(

But seriously, I didn't really like classic D2, but the expansion is excellent.

Mark, I agree with you both on the warez issue and the score for the D2 expansion pack. I am digging my new druid. For all it's repetative gameplay it is great!

I'm playing a druid too. The new feature that allows the mercs to gain levels makes a huge difference. I'm playing with my original rogue merc and she's really almost as powerful as my druid.

I'm really having fun with the druid too. I have a nice bow for him and he and the rogue sit back and plunk the enemies with arrows while my dire wolf and poison vine melee, with a spell now and then from my druid tossed into the mix as well. It really feels like a combat group instead of just a main character with some weak summoned beings.

I like the summoning as well but also like the shapeshifting. I have a mana stealing bardiche that does a good amount of damage and together with bearform and maul (it stuns too) I can take out monsters pretty quick. The other cool thing about bearform is I have about 250 hit points at level 15. :) I still summon everything I can (oak spirit, health generating vine, a couple of wolves, etc.) and have a rogue along as well.

You are right about the combat group feel, my posse and I roll up and smack the crap out of just about anything. :) Andariel went down in less than 10 seconds when I was level 14. With my barbarian and my son's necro we had to run like crazy and nip at her and we were both 16th or so.

I have been playing the expansion mostly on battle.net as compared with my prior Diablo II play time of single player only (ah, the wonders of DSL). I have not tried the expansion characters yet, but the parties I have joined with druid characters are very crowded with just two players. He has a merc, the wolves, the vine and I have a merc.

Mark is right about the changes to how mercs work. Before they were primarily cannon fodder (or would that be spell fodder?). Now they are an asset. My rogue has a great bow, better armor than I do and can be resurected if she dies - great work Blizzard.

I think I am cheating a little right now, or at least benefiting from a bug. I have a socketed long bow filled with 3 chipped emeralds. The chipped emeralds alone give 6 points of poison damage for 1 sec. With 3 chipped emaralds socketed, I have something like 53 points of poison damage. I could be wrong, but it works well right now.

-DavidCPA
"Ezrellette" on battle.net

Yeah its a great expansion, though ultimately whats next for Diablo is I want more more more. I like the new classes and the new act... and the ending cutscene is the best I've seen in a long time. But really, the Diablo games could be so much more with just a few more stuff (interactive, more multiplayer option, a semi massive online world)... I expect at least an editing tool with the next Diablo ... imagine playing a Diablo game bigger than the original you bought. NWN, Morrowind and Arcanum are doing it, Diablo 3 or what have you, should follow suit. Look at how much Half Life is milked and Valve hasn't made anything new or original in over four years!

a biut of rambling... but with 4 million copies sold, and nothing to stop them, Blizzard can make something truly innovative instead of a roguelike copy with 2d graphics. But again, they're the ones selling the 4 million copies, so who cares?

etc

"I think I am cheating a little right now, or at least benefiting from a bug. I have a socketed long bow filled with 3 chipped emeralds. The chipped emeralds alone give 6 points of poison damage for 1 sec. With 3 chipped emaralds socketed, I have something like 53 points of poison damage. I could be wrong, but it works well right now."

There was a picture on Diabloii.net of a six-socket pick with six perfect emeralds, which did something like 2500 points of poison damage. However, they said it is necessary for a melee character to kill a physically immune monster on hell difficulty.

Here is a link to their Gems page. It says, "Six perfect emeralds in a weapon yields (29.3 x 36) 1054.8 poison damage over six seconds. Big socketed emeralds with other poison damage is the best way to deal with most Physical Immune monsters."

Found the picture of the pick. Pic of a pick?

I'm playing a Paladin this time. I've only gotten to level 12 so far though (got to level 46 with my Druid in the beta at least). I really like the expansion, and the tweaks to most of the game it brings with it.

I'm near the end of Act 3 now with my Durid, who's level 24. Duriel kicked my ass at the end of Act 2. I went into her little cubbyhole and she rushed up and killed me so fast I didn't even have time to react. I died about 10 times before killing her. I just whittled down her hit points.

Act 3 is better now with the 800x600 resolution. Those jungles were a bit confusing at the lower resolution.

I hope to finish Act 4 sometime tomorrow and then get to the new content. Then I'll probably try an Assassin on Bnet.

IMHO, killing Duriel at the end of Act 2 has always been the toughest quest in the game - no room to run, no time to cast a town portal. I am in Act 2 on battle.net with my expansion character and don't look forward to that quest. I will probably join a party to complete that one so I have a chance to stay alive.

I ported my level 37 Paladin right into the expansion, so that I can immediately experience Fresh New Content.

I've only finished the first quest in Act V, but since I'm doing the BG2 expansion, I couldn't help but notice that both expansions start out the same way when it comes to "first town and its problem" (no further elaboration, unless people don't mind being spoiled about either game). It's really bizarre.

-Thierry

They both also sort of feature a villainous God-Like being named "Baal (Bhaal)", an interesting Biblical reference/coincidence.

-Andrew

>Business application piracy is an area of huge loss, though, I think. AutoCAD, Photoshop, half the copies of Office - if anything, if the piracy rate for these if 50%, if everyone bought them they'd cost half as much. Maybe.

That points to the big flaw in piracy concerns, though... they always assume that everyone who stole it would have bought it if they had to. How many people who warez Photoshop would just go without it if it was warez-proof and they HAD to pay $600? Or even $300? or $100? You can't just multiply the number of pirated copies of a piece of software by it's price to figure out how damaging piracy is. It's more complicated than that.


Speaking of Diablo 2 - if anyone is playing the expansion, I'm using the username jasoncg on USEast. I forget my character's name (I usually care about my name in an RPG, but naming your character in Diablo is like naming it in Quake. I could care less). Begins with an "E" though.

If anyone wants to kill stuff with a level 20-something Assassin on US East, just type /whois *jasoncg to see if I'm on, and /msg me.

Jason wrote:

---

Quote:

That points to the big flaw in piracy concerns, though... they always assume that everyone who stole it would have bought it if they had to. How many people who warez Photoshop would just go without it if it was warez-proof and they HAD to pay $600? Or even $300? or $100? You can't just multiply the number of pirated copies of a piece of software by it's price to figure out how damaging piracy is. It's more complicated than that.

---

Because I was lazy and had stopped playing DII for a long while, my clvl 53 Barbarian went bye bye well before the Expansion, otherwise I would have converted him, too--I screwed up his skill allocations by Diablo II standards, but he was pretty well positioned to take advantage of the stuff in the Expansion :-).


On Bnet I'm sluglord666 I think.

Because I was lazy and had stopped playing DII for a long while, my clvl 53 Barbarian went bye bye well before the Expansion, otherwise I would have converted him, too--I screwed up his skill allocations by Diablo II standards, but he was pretty well positioned to take advantage of the stuff in the Expansion :-).


On Bnet I'm sluglord666 I think.

For business applications, I'd wildly speculate that the average business only has half the licenses it should. Maybe it's just the companies I've worked at.

Another thing is that for "independent contractor" software like Autocad, I'd bet the piracy rate is 90%. After all, the only reason businesses bother paying is that they're big enough to get sued. Autocad is my favorite example here, as that thing probably costs a friggin' thousand dollars; if just the people who *actually* use it would buy the damned thing, the price would probably shuffle down to the $100 range.

Software piracy is pretty close to a "tragedy of the commons" economic model.

My druid kicked Diablo's ass last night. Well, that's not exactly accurate. It was more like around 3am and Diablo actually kicked the crap out of my druid for awhile.

I found out that the Druid, being an inbetweener character, doesn't stand up well to really strong attackers. My summoned dire wolf was killed before he could even attack. My summoned spirit heart of the wolverine also perished immediately. Only my rogue lasted, and even she died too. My druid had to do it all on his own, and in human form he couldn't last very long at all.

So I had to go to bear form and claw Diablo to death. Needless to say, it took a long time. Lots of heal potions, lots of retreating, dying a few times, etc. The druid lacks the pure caster's powerful spells, especially in bear form, and he lacks the pure melee character's brute force.

Still, it was lots of fun. I really enjoyed replaying the game. Then I sampled the new Act after beating Diablo and my druid was back to kicking ass again. I should have the new Act wrapped up in a day or two.

In the beta when I met Diablo with my Druid I had the same thing happen. My wolves bit the weenie in the first blast of D's magic and I died a lot. Druids eventually are ok in melee if you get decent armor and have the barb spirt going to return damage, but they can't take much beating really. The grizzly bear is the tank for the Druid for sure.

My strategy with the big D will be to have a cold sorc wail on him with freeze spells while me in bear form uses the maul(stun) attack on him repeatedly with a good weapon. I have about 250 hps in bear form at level 15 I figure by 30ish it should be more like 500. Hopefully this is a decent plan.

-- Xaroc

"My strategy with the big D will be to have a cold sorc wail on him with freeze spells while me in bear form uses the maul(stun) attack on him repeatedly with a good weapon."

Not a bad idea. I couldn't part with my rogue merc, though, so I had her at the end. She was worthless against the big guy. I needed better armor for her, I think.

Blizzard also beefed up Diablo. He's tougher now. The battle had a much more epic feel to it, but it was a bit frustating to have to simply wear him down. I wonder if my tactics could have been better? In human form my druid just couldn't last long.

"My wolves bit the weenie in the first blast of D's magic and I died a lot."

I think it's a mistake to invest more than a single skill point in either of the wolves. It's a bit like the necro and skeletons. At some point they're worthless. I'm sure that in Nightmare mode the dire wolf will be pointless.

I was hording some skill points at the end of the game, but I was having so much trouble with Diablo that I dumped most of them into the werebear skill.

Also, what are the good attributes to buff with points? I split them up among str, dex, life, and energy for the most part, though I stopped with energy after awhile.

"I think it's a mistake to invest more than a single skill point in either of the wolves."

I'm pretty sure that, as of the recent patch, the relative strength of summoned pets scales up in the higher difficulties. So I think dire wolves and especially the summoned grizzly are meant to remain useful for quite some time. I saw a summoned grizzly doing some serious damage in act V on nightmare.

Otherwise, werebear/werewolf form for the druid seem to make him a very powerful melee fighter. As a werebear, you should be able to stand toe to toe with pretty much anything. The druid's spells seem more useful for support; they do good damage, but they're hard to aim, so they work well in multiplayer when you're dealing with big groups of enemies.

I played a lot of the druid in the beta, though I've since focussed more on the assassin. Both classes seem really interesting and powerful.

--Greg

"Also, what are the good attributes to buff with points? I split them up among str, dex, life, and energy for the most part, though I stopped with energy after awhile."

For most of my characters, I have focused my points on strength. My theory is that there are more items (rings, amulets, etc) that add mana/life regeneration than there are good strength building items. The additional strength allows the non-melee characters the ability to wear high level armor which protects them from direct attack which is their most vulnerable area. The melee characters benefit from strength in terms of more hit points and for melee, it's all about the hit points, baby!

In order of preference, I add points to:

1. Strength
2. Dexterity (particularly for bow users)
3. Life
4. Mana

-DavidCPA

The thing about the wolves and bears is that they are all interrelated skills. Skill points put into one affect all the other summoning skills. To quote from www.diabloii.net's coverage:

"To encourage Druid to not abandon the lower level summoning skills passive bonuses are afforded with more points as well as the usual property increments. So for example having one point in Summon Dire Wolf will give a passive bonus to both summoned wolves and bears of +50% health. And a single point in Summon Grizzly will increase the damage dealt by both wolf and bear by 25%."

In other words, by putting points into all of the summoned critters, even if you only use the bear, you get cumulative bonuses.

Ok, but since the bear is the best pet, shouldn't you just put all your skill points you want to devote to pets into it? You have to put one into each of the pets, but won't you have a more effective bear if you slam the extra points into that slot?

"As a werebear, you should be able to stand toe to toe with pretty much anything."

Yep, that's my experience too.

"The druid's spells seem more useful for support; they do good damage, but they're hard to aim, so they work well in multiplayer when you're dealing with big groups of enemies."

Except for the bowling ball spell. You can aim that one fairly well. It's really effective if you use it and use a bow to attack. The spell pushes back the monsters so you can fire the bow longer, and then you can switch to melee when they finally get to you. Works great until you run into either big swarms or tough bastards like Diablo.

Can you summon a Grizzly and Spirit Wolves (the "basic" wolves) at the same time? I know one druid can't summon spirit wolves and dire wolves at the same time, so I was wondering if Grizzly has the same thing. My Druid's up to 21 so I haven't gotten that far yet.

I rather liked Fissure. It did quite a bit of damage for the level, and it can usually do a pretty good job on larger groups of enemies. I haven't gotten back to any significant level yet, though. Never did manage to get to Summon Grizzly.

Assassins have the same problem with Diablo. Maybe worse.

By the time you get to him, you can summon a mirror image of yourself, but it dies with the very first fire blast. My hireling (one of the freeze mages from Act 3 - the best!) can take about two or three spells before croaking.

Now, the Assassin has trouble going toe-to-toe with anything tough. You have to be able to last long enough to charge those martial arts moves up with 3-6 successful hits, then deliver a successful finishing move. Diablo will kill you before you get TWO successful hits in, because Assassins don't have great hit points or armor, generally. Baal, on the other hand, isn't so bad if you're a decent level. You can charge up and do a finishing move, and if you get three charges on the serpent strike (restores health/mana from the finishing move), you can wail on him.

So basically, you have to run around like crazy casting traps which ever so slowly whittle Diablo down. UGH.

Right now I'm going to go back to the end of Act 3 a few times and kill Mephisto.

The experience you get for monsters higher level than you is (your level / moster level) * monster experience. It's a measure to keep newbies from grouping with high-level guys and leveling up super fast doing nothing. I'm just starting Act 5, and at level 24 I'm only getting like 75% exp (and taking longer to kill stuff). I need to earn a few levels.

Not to mention my hireling, who is a few levels lower, and get a whole 4 exp or so for each act 5 monster he kills. I need to go find some level 20 creatures for him to kill so he catches up a bit.

If you are at level 24 or less when taking on Diablo alone, it will take a long time to beat him. I am working my Amazon out to beef her up to take on Act 4 and beyond. I am still taking care of quests in Act 3 and have her at level 24 I think. I still expect to get to Diablo, run around like a screaming little girl and maybe, just maybe, kill him on the second or third try.

Are there some cheats that work on battle.net? I was playing with an assasin that was using spells that cleared a whole room while I was taking two or three arrows per monster and we were both at the same level (21 or 22). It was my understanding that Blizzard was very good at preventing things like this situation. The guy was very nice and gave me a couple of things from some of his other characters (his assasin had very, very, very good equipment). I don't think he was cheating to move up the ladder or anything, but was doing it because he could. Am I interpereting his performance wrong? Are the assasin skill such that you can take out a whole room of Act 2 monsters at level 22?

-DavidCPA
Ezrellette on battle.net

I had my Druid at level 23 in the beta before I moved him to Act 3. Even then it was pretty difficult. The expansion makes the game ten times harder.

No, Mark, because things like upgraded life I think only come from points put into the wolf abilities; putting all your points into the bear won't get you the full benefits, if I read it correctly. Each skill--the two wolves and the bear--apply to each other, but each has different benefits. Putting all your points into just one will not get you the benefits from the others. Theoretically, fifteen points spent 5/5/5 are better than 15/0/0 in this case, but I haven't run the numbers on it.

My druid is 22nd just a few maps into Act 3. 24 for taking on Diablo is pretty damn low.

Robert is right about the upgrades, you get extra life, attack, etc. from more points in the earlier wolves. While pumping everything into bear gives you just extra damage. So a 13/1/1 bear would do a ton of damage but would have little life and attack(?).

I'd say the avg level to beat Diablo on normal now should be about 26 - 32... I had my new amazon take him at level 28 and had lots of problems... same as usual. Though beating Baal was ten times easier than beating diablo on Normal mode.

My Assasin gets her butt kicked easy (on normal act 4)... though she dishes out the most dmg of any melee characters i've ever had, at least on normal... her hps and ac suck though. And act 3 was a pain to play with melee, hadn't played act 3 with melee in a while... damn those pygmy guys!!!

etc

A level 20+ Assassin with a lot of points in traps and maybe some good items can indeed clear out whole rooms of Act II monsters with little difficulty. Sometimes when my Paladin lags behind, I come into the room only to find my wife already looting the corpses and nothing left to kill :-). And we're like level 19.

As to wolves and bears, nope, it's one summoned mammal per. Either the wolf types, or the bear, but never both. Ravens don't count, you can have them in addition.

My druid now does more per melee attack than my Barbarian. I have a Bardiche with two Tal Runes (20 poison over 1 second) and an emerald (14? poison over one second). Plus I have two poison charms 5 damage over 1 second each. The net effect is 450-500 damage with Maul in bearform. It is complete overkill. As long as I hit what I am swinging at it is pretty much dead. :)

DavidCPA - Are there some cheats that work on battle.net?....Am I interpereting his performance wrong? Are the assasin skill such that you can take out a whole room of Act 2 monsters at level 22?


Robert Mayer - A level 20+ Assassin with a lot of points in traps and maybe some good items can indeed clear out whole rooms of Act II monsters with little difficulty.

My bad. The guy I mentioned in my original post isn't a cheat. He just knows how to allocate his skill points.

-DavidCPA

Act II monsters aren't generally that tough, though some of them (the nastier walking corpses, and the leapers) pack a wallop. Most are easy to kill if you can hit them, and traps of course don't have to "roll to hit," being resistance based attacks.

Question: Is it just me or are there very few socketed item (helms, armor, etc.) in acts 3 and 4? Acts 1 and 2 seemed to have more variety of socketed items, but I didn't have good gems, skulls or runes. Now I have good items to put into sockets but nothing to put them in. My bowazon is in desperate need of mana generating gear. When I am in a party, I grab every mana potion and that usually isn't enough. My theory above about life/mana regenrating items being numerous in the game may not be holding true.

The answer may be on battle.net but I am too lazy right now to look.

-DavidCPA

One of my favorite things about the expansion is the overall game balance change away from "skill perfection." Now, items are more powerful and important than they ever were in basic Diablo 2. Which is nice... to have a good character, you don't necessarily have to min/max your skill point allocations toward a particular play style. It helps, but you can go a long way with good items (particuarly once you start to get into Nightmare difficulty).

Which is a refreshing change, since you can't go back on skill selections, but you can always change around your items.

Assasins are one of the hardest character classes to play well, once you get beyond the first 25 levels or so. Those traps get to where they do good damage, but don't just wipe out enemies. And as has been noted, you can do a lot of melee damage with the right martial arts, but you're not much for taking damage.

You have to carefully and quickly change active skills to dish out damage without getting swarmed. A favorite new tactic of mine is to use the Psychic Blast thingy to stun a few enemies (and possibly convert one or two), which makes them stand still long enough for two traps to do full damage without them moving out of range. Combined with a hireling wizard guy from Act 3 that does cold blasts, it's a great way to keep large groups of enemies from surrounding you. Then you can take on the particularly tough guys as individuals, where your martial arts stuff shines.

Now I'm level 35, just killed Baal one level ago with my Druid friend (didn't even break a sweat, just ran up and beat the snot outta him). My hireling is a few levels behind, and it's hard to find a location where he gets good exp - everywhere I look he gets very little because monsters are either to high or too low level. I need him to catch up. Gotta get to level 40 before doing Nightmare...

I agree with Jason that with playing the Assassin you have to really shuffle your hotkeyed skills around to be really effective. In a big battle I am constantly switching around from my chargeup, to the shock net, to a trap, to a final blow. It definitely makes things interesting, if confusing, at times.

I have my assassin set up mainly with martial arts ALL martial arts and she does kick butt. Just that compared to my old barbarian she just takes hits much harder (low ac/hps). however here dual blades with no charge up are almost at 65 dmg each! Also, the expansion has made me a CHARM whore... i only have 8 spots open in my amazon THAT IS IT!!! She has 2 books Town and Identify, the Cube and the rest is ALL charms. Without these charms I would be half the amazon. These charms do add up... without them I prolly would do about 30 - 40 % less damage and run slower and get hit easier. with charms my new bowazon is MUCH better in nightmare then my level 60 or so old Amazon was ... the charms and new items make a big difference.

also what i do with my assasin is left click is set with chargeups and right click is set with finishing move... i hardly switch from that. also, the assasin seems to be king of fighting the mini bosses (at least the non-Diablo, Mephisto, Baal bosses), with her i can kill mini bosses real easy! though im up to act 5 normal.

and now i started a druid, i was thinking of focusing on summoing monsters and were wolf. nothing else... is that good?

btw, anybody want to get a battle net, or non battle net expansion group going? im mtkafka on battle.net east coast....playing a new assasin and paladin...

etc

I too am a charm whore. It gets out of hand though. At some point I am going to have to at least clean out my cube to hold booty. I have taken to skipping most blue magic items that are not amulets, rings, armor, staves, or class specific items (scepters, shrunken heads, etc). Standard blue weapons I am just not even identifying anymore.

Why you don't want to die right before dinner ...

I was playing my Druid in Diablo's lair and ran up against Lord DeSais. He killed me so I grab by backup gear and head back in to take him on again and recover my corpse. Well I die again, I am pissed but no problem. Just then my wife yells up that she is back with dinner. I figured ok I can wait until after eating to grab my stuff ... bad idea.

I lost my backup bardiche (156 poison damage over 3 seconds) and backup helm (+3 to fissure) because they stayed on the ground too long (over 15 minutes) luckily I didn't lose the other stuff because it was rare or magic where as the other two things were gemmed and normal. Serious bummer.

For those of you who have killed Baal, are there monsters in the last quest that can kill you on contact? I took my lvl 30+ amazon into the last quest (2nd level Worldstone) and was killed instantly twice, but I didn't catch the name of the monster. Twice was enough for me to decide that I needed a stronger character.

I am leveling up my amazon to make the trip a little easier next time (I hope). I don't know about the rest of you, but I have spent way too much time with game since it came out. I got the "No more games." threat from my wife again, but we bought a puppy yesterday, so that should keep my daughter and her happy for awhile:) Of course I was the one outside at 6:00 AM this morning saying, "Good boy" when he peed so she may be accomplishing her goal indirectly.

-DavidCPA

I don't remember my druid being insta-killed. You'll run into a named monster now and then who can inflict a great deal of damage.

Make sure your resistances are all pretty high. Lightning and fire attacks seem to kill really fast if you have low resistance.

Yeah, I've spent too much time with it also. My druid's now in hell in Nightmare mode. The improvements in the expansion really have rounded out the gameplay.

David CPA quote, "I got the "No more games." threat from my wife again, but we bought a puppy yesterday, so that should keep my daughter and her happy for awhile:) "

Sounds like you're ready for Murph's gamersclick article (sorry can't find the link). I loved the article, but I haven't been able to live by it yet.

Diablo 2 is killing me. The game has completely frozen every character that gets higher than 15th level. Blizzard tech support has written me off as un-helpable, and they've probably put a block on my "begging for help" emails. It is so ironic because suddenly Anarchy Online is pretty darn stable, and that is the game I really wanted. I only bought D2 Exp because AO wouldn't run. Now I have been deprived of priceless Diablo brain candy (Turkish Delight no less), and the ugly reality of AO stares me in the face with lifeless eyes: AO has no gameplay (Gosh, I hope I'm kidding, but compared to Diablo it feels awfully slow and pointless).

Allow me.

Click here.

There's a little follow-up here, but it's not essential...

Rob, your problem really sounds strange. I'm sorry you can't run the game. I haven't had a single crash.

Diablo is high octane. I can't imagine playing a slow-paced MMORPG after coming off Diablo. You need to detox first or something.

How odd... after installing LOD on the Fourth of July (who the hell needs fireworks anyway?) it's crashed on me about five times at random (well, it seemed random) but after each time I had no problem getting right back into the mayhem with my lvl 22 Assassin.

Ok, your concern has inspired me, I'm off to the Blizzard Tech forum boards. There must be an answer somewhere! I will wield my multisocketed wristblade once more!

AH-HA! I am not alone. It appears there are numerous people just like me who are having the same problem. Of course reading a message board is like having anecdotal evidence, but there are plenty of threads. Here is the interesting part: it is a very recent problem. As best I can figure from the threads, it appears the problem began not long after patch 1.08. I can attest that the problem happened to me both with Diablo 2 before the expansion, and after installing the expansion. Blizzard definitely has no current solution, but some people are hoping they will patch the problem soon (no word from Bliz about this though). Some people have some pretty funny theories: it only happens to certain mobos combined with certain vid cards, or it only happens if you point at your character's feet! No kidding. The guy who posted that said he could still play as long as he was really careful during combat. *snicker*

Anyway, I'm glad to know I'm not alone, but I still don't have a solution.

Message board posts are like cockroaches. For every one you see, there are dozens more like it you don't see.

I hope Blizzard figures it out. I'm sure they'll try, but it does sound like a tricky one.

I get up at 6AM or earlier to walk our dog all the time. Dogs are great, but damn it if they aren't the world's most annoying alarm clocks.

I'm playing some LoD and finally getting around to BGII with the Throne of Bhaal expansion. The contrast is pretty extreme, from a slowish, incredibly big and deep traditional RPG experience to a fast-paced gimme gimme gimme hack and slash loot fest.

Fun though.

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I get up at 6AM or earlier to walk our dog all the time.

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Dogs are great, but damn it if they aren't the world's most annoying alarm clocks.

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My dog adheres to my schedule now. He used to wake me up at 6am by clawing at my arm. One morning I was in the middle of some kind of martial arts dream and I punched the dog when he tried to wake me up. It was one of those half-asleep accidents. I didn't hurt him badly, but he doesn't claw me awake as often anymore. He waits for me to get up on my own unless he REALLY has to go. When he does need to wake me up, he's more catious. He claws and then quickly backs off about 4 feet, then darts back in to repeat if I don't show signs of stirring.

One videocard-related lockup tip. If my desktop is at 16-bit color when I run the game (D2's a 256 color game), I've gotten random lockups on my GeForce. When my desktop's at 256 colors, I don't have problems. I realize the game "sets" the desktop to 256 colors before it runs, or seems to, but apparently with the expansion that causes some weird glitch, at least for me. I've not had a lockup since I did that.

These days I'm focusing on my Level 36 javazon, JoanOfArc, who's taking out hordes quickly, and having fun bouncing it off walls, with Lightning Fury. Try it sometime. :)

Also, D2 generally runs more reliably without the overrated "3D enhancement" junk (and it actually looks clearer as far I can tell). So if you're getting lockups and freezes, run the video test thing again to select which type of drivers to run and go with plain ole' 2D.

I've been playing in 2d too. I can't really tell the differance. They also had me check to make sure I was playing in 32 bit. The unhandled exception is something that Blizzard has to get around to fixing I'm afraid.

Our dog sleeps in the bed, sometimes, or usually on the floor by it. She reacts, I think, to the ambient light levels. In the winter (which in Vermont is dark, long, cold and full of snow), she doesn't get us up early because it stays dark well past our getting up time. In the summer though, it is often very light by five, and she'll think it's way past walking time--our attempts to get her to read the alarm clock have proven futile.