Diablo 3 Announced!!!

Finally getting around to playing Diablo 2 in preparation for Diablo 3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEB2BvOpAS8

Are you using the vanilla D2 program or the expansion's (the character creation screen didn't have the new classes...)? If so, I'd highly recommend using the LoD program... it includes everything from the original plus so much more. And don't forget to patch.

My first character was a barb too (lots of fun). You might find the paladin class easier though... (you can use any one handed weapon, but with a barb you really should specialize and you never know what good drops you'll have when playing SP).

Just plain old vanilla.

I have the LOD Expansion, but am playing through without the extras. I want to face Diablo again before I face his brothers. I have heard there is a whole other story that is missed if you go straight to the expansion, and want to see it all. ^^

What does the patch fix? Will have to check it out. Thanks for the heads up.

Edit: That was a small patch (less than 10 KB). Couldn't find any posts that say what it addresses though.

Edit 2: Found the info
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21358

But it doesn't want to install. Just goes to the MSDOS screen and flickers for an eternity without doing anything. :?

Edit 3: Followed the second link and got the correct (9.26 MB) patch.

me =

LoD is the exact same story / quests as vanilla, but with an extra act tacked on to the end. The main differences you'll see in the first four (original) acts are no persistent mercenaries and a smaller stash (plus no LoD loot, less classes to choose from...). I don't know who told you the expansion is a different story, but it isn't.

The patches add lots of cube recipes, new items and lots of gameplay tweaks (like skill synergies and rebalancing). To get the patch all you have to do is connect to battle.net (it downloads and installs automatically). Be sure to check out http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/ if you want to look up any game information (sets / uniques / formulas / rune words...).

Time to start a new game then. Planned to change my Barbarian's weapon specialty from axe to mace anyways. The first few go throughs are always the preliminaries for me as I discover how I want to play it.

Been a while since I played anything other than DS, and I forgot how much harder Diablo is. I died about four times in about 15 minutes last night.

Guess I have to learn how to use their powers to my advantage, and quit trying to bull my way through.

My boss is thinking about getting all the office computers hooked to the internet, so until/if that happens, I can't connect to the internet and get the automatic patch upgrade. The computer that has internet connectivity has problems with the sound card so I play on the main office one without access to the internet.

Mace or sword would be my recommendation for a starter barb. Save your chipped gems too, because there is a recipe for re-rolling magic weapons once you get something special (part way through act 2).

I went ahead with the mace because of the flails.

One of our recent clients where I work is a BIG Diablo fan and told me to either go with swords or mace as well.

It almost feels like I installed a cheat mod after playing vanilla. The rings, amulets and gems drop so easily now. ^^

I went with swords for my first barb (because of the ability to use a 2h sword in one hand), but maces are a good choice (note: scepters count as maces too). Also, keep an eye out for anything with life leech or mana leech (very handy later when you're doing more damage), and #% chance to find magic items is great to have as well.

I have two scepters, one for each hand, that give better bonuses for a Paladin than a Barbarian. But for early game tactics all I need is their power without bonuses.

Back at my friend's house for a couple of days so I started an Assassin. Just made it to the last waypoint on my way to Andariel.

Right before I entered the Monestary I noticed the second slots for weapons/shields. So my primary is dual Katar, and if I need some quick extra AC, I hit "w" and switch to One Katar with a shield. Saved my hash a couple of times.

And it didn't a couple of times also. ^^

The second weapon slots were added with the expansion. When talking about defense, also keep resistances and chance to block (very important) in mind.

Resistances especially. Remember D1 monsters would kill you before you could blink because of their powerful spells.

And Andariel is toast (barely). ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qoLh23eOtE

Just got through "turning the lights back on" and heading for the Palace with my Barbarian.

That quest has to be my least favorite... running around looking for a waypoint with potion throwing cats, and then the next region with the charging / stunning snakes.

Got really frustrated while chasing down Tal Rasha's tomb. I died and was surrounded by about 6 Wraith Champions and a few mages fireballing me. They were blocking my corpse so I couldn't left click on it to get my gear back. After dying about 6 times in a row, got so mad I just alt-tabbed out of the game. Took a smoke break to cool down, came back, and when I loaded the game, Warriv had my corpse for me. ^^

but dont forget ya have a merc in d2 than can be resurrect at each merc seller, that can serve as a meat shield in situations like that as well, i personally liked the act 2 paladin dudes carrying the polearms with the heal, mainly cause i never could use potions well.

hehe just wait till ya see the giant bug boss duriel, ya will be crying "Mommy" he was really tough single, with a group, hes a pansy but solo, better pack a lunch and lots of pots cause Duriel is tough especially since ya cant run out of that tomb, unlike the other bosses ya can move to a lower level if ya have to but not duriel!.

anyways back to the topic for a second i think the witchdoctor in d3 looks promising as a necromancer replacement. lots of people are gonna be upset when they dont bring back most of the d2 characters, but they got to understand how world changes, so do the character choices. ya can pretty much guarantee it will have the basics from Diablo original - melee (Warrior), ranged (Rogue) and magic (Sorcerer).

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So it has been written, and so it shall cometh to pass! Quothe The Darkelf, forevermore!

The corpse was right at the entrance to a level, so there was no way to let my merc act as bait.

And Duriel was really tough. Did like you said and packed my inventory full of heal potions.

And yeah, I'm betting there will be a Paladin for D3. And maybe the Assassin character for ranged instead of Amazon.

For D2 mercenaries, I use a ranged merc (act 1 or 3) when playing a melee character, and a melee merc (act 2 or 5) when playing a ranged character. Give them good armor, a good weapon (doesn't matter with the act 3 merc...) and ideally life leech (again, doesn't matter with the act 3 merc...). Remember that you can feed mercs healing pots quickly using your belt hotkeys while holding down the Shift key.

For D3, the warrior class is taken care of with the barbarians... I'm really doubting that the paladin will be back "as is" the more I think of it though (scepters + shields + auras). I will say that I expect there will be an aura emitting class though... perhaps some type of battlemage. I like the change to witch doctor from necromancer too... I never played necros. Tried a couple but didn't like them at all.

Decided to try a bit of modding for Diablo. Can't believe how simple it turned out to be. Took me all of five minutes to make my first modification. Wanted some more slots for potions in my Arctic Binding belt. So now instead of 8, there are 16.

Simple to mod, but it is not as open source as DS, so there are fewer choices of things you can change.

But other things are almost impossible to mod. Adding your own terrain tiles is one of the latter because of the random level building. New monsters are a major pain because of the way the sprite animation is done. I did manage to replace an NPC or two, but it didn't add anything significant to the game so I quit trying to mod it.

As with Dungeon Siege, I found some of the later enhancements weren't. Runewords were kind of a pointless variation on gems for socketing - the idea of adding your choice of enhancements to your equipment had merit - but the methods just got too complicated. I hope they don't continue that trend in Diablo 3.

I suspect that there will be something similar... they were just too popular to scrap the concept entirely. The biggest problems with runewords that I found were that they just didn't work well in SP... you needed to pool your resources using an MP session (or play on the realms) to get anything but the basics. Stash size is just too small to save large enough quantities of runes for upgrading, while storing other things as well. I like the idea of making your own equipment, but agree that it could have been implemented better.

Thought I'd share this cool vid from you tube. ^^

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMAbNFptzAA

Decided to start a necro today... I never liked them but I guess I just wasn't using a good strategy. I'm trying this build ( http://forums.diii.net/showthread.php?t=349093 ) and things have been moving along smoothly so far. I'm amazed at how fast you can go with skellies and Amp... although he's a bit of a potionaholic though (mostly whenever I use CE).

that guide is nice, but i just cant imagine putting 20 points in skeletons, those things are so weak, i usually just put one point in them and use the mages even though they are weak their magic can hit at range instead of up close like the skeletons and higher points in the golems, cause the golems lasted longer against the baddies than the skeletons did, but heck if that guide works go for it. amplify damage is nice but i prefer iron maiden with my golems. maybe with the 20 points in skeleton mastery the skeletons will last long time, but in my experience i spent more time summoning skeletons than what they were worth

I used to think that skellies were too weak as well, but the proof is in the gameplay. Maybe there was a rebalance with one of the more recent patches that changes things but I've never had a character of any class move through the map as quickly as this one (sorcs start slow, and every other class needs good equipment). Boss kills are hard (especially Dury and big D) but this build isn't really for boss kills... it's about cruising through the game safely and quickly. I'm finding with Amp that the skellies kill so fast that they don't take enough damage to die frequently at all. Besides boss kills, only in long crowded battles does it happen to multiple summons and then there's plenty of corpses around to explode and/or to create reinforcements. Into act 5 after only about 10-12 hours gameplay (untwinked solo on b.net)... incredible.

Edit:
Baal is toast after about 3 more hours... I didn't lose any skellies vs. the Ancients, a few in WSK, and for the final kill it was just my merc who did the job (the skellies died pretty quickly). I'll probably do some levelling before moving on to NM (at lvl 30 now).

...lots of info being announced lately (not much new on the official site though).

They're changing PvP (oh yeah, and there are official D3 forums at b.net now):
http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?f...amp;#post340776
Bye bye PK/griefers. ^^

Here's an interview (video or transcript) with the lead designer, including a few juicy tidbits (inventory management, muling on the realms, character classes):
http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode5.xml

Here's an excellent interview video with a variety of information (confirms PK / griefer prevention being taken seriously):
http://www.gamereactor.eu/grtv/?id=2936

Translation of a german interview, again with a variety of information (including news about no LAN play, possibly no town portals, better loot drop system in MP...):
http://www.diii.net/n/687810/

I'm certainly liking the things I'm reading...

New monster "Dune Thresher" is unveiled with details on the community page: http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/community/

Well, we all knew the Wizard was a sure bet for one of the remaining character classes. Now waiting for the official unveiling of the other two.

Edit: The "Slow Time" spell is pretty cool, I think.

After a quick look, Slow Time does look very cool... and Disintegrate looks nasty. Some of the other spells in the trailer are quite interesting too... I think they struck an excellent balance with the SFX (looks great without going overboard with excessive "flashyness").

I was out of town for the weekend, so I missed out on all the Blizzcon news... I think I have some reading to do.
^^

I just saw this (interview about the Blizzcon D3 demo) and couldn't resist posting.

Another noteworthy bit of news is how Runes will work. They don't get socketed into items, they get installed into slots for augmenting skills. Looks to be a very cool feature.