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When people ask me about my favourite music, movie, book, tv show, etc, I have a hard time deciding. When asked about games, the answer is unashamedly Diablo II with total conviction. This is basically me just doing a somewhat informative playthrough or log, even for people who haven't played the game, it is 16 years old after all. Diablo II came out in 2000 and an expansion, Lord of Destruction, quickly followed in 2001. It's hard in some respects to say why I like the game so much, because I'm going to be outlining its flaws here just as much as its strengths, but this game was pretty much the definition of crack cocaine throughout my adolescence and I still go back to play it to this day. I understand that there may not be the same interests especially on a site like this but really I'm just trying to have some fun myself and if anyone is interested in the game, I will try to do my best to explain some core mechanics without going too far into it, but the beginning may be a little slow for those familar with it. If you want to play along in a log-style as well, I would absolutely encourage that too. If you would like to buy it, then it should be relatively inexpensive, and playable without the discs, if you create a Blizzard Battle.net account and then buy it from the store: https://eu.battle.net/shop/en-us/product/game/legacy-games Plus, I was looking through some old character logs of challenge runs in Diablo II, and I was pretty inspired from them. Check out this page, last updated 2001. Jeez, long time ago. http://sirian.warpcore.org/diablo2/diablo2.html http://sirian.warpcore.org/diablo2/ember.html Or, probably more accurately, I just want to play some fucking Diablo II. If you want to hear someone who isn't even really that good at a game they played for 16 years and clocked well over 10,000 hours at an estimation embarrassingly gush about it, then I hope that you do enjoy. Here's my overview on the classes, in order of how much experience I personally have with them. [spoiler=Classes] Paladin Defensive Auras Offensive Auras Combat Skills The paladin is the man, man. I'm pretty sure I will never get tired of playing this class, and he's my favourite by a good margin. He is primarily a melee character, having the secondary focus of being able to give his party members 'auras' as support. I would definitely call him the most versatile character. The paladin generally will use a certain attack from the Combat Skills tree, and there's quite a few attacks that entire builds are based around. Since the idea of auras is pretty integral to the paladin, they have two tree devoted to them, Offensive and Defensive Auras. They generally can help party members in some ways, such as greatly increasing mana regeneration rates for everyone in the party, or increases melee damage and attack rating. While most do benefit the entire party as long as they remain in range, some of them will only affect the paladin. Regardless, he is always greatly appreciated in any group. I definitely have played paladin the most. In fact, I'm playing one on the side of this currently. Sorceress Cold Spells Lightning Spells Fire Spells The sorceress is considered one of the stronger characters in Diablo II, and for pretty good reason. Her ability to use three elements of spells sufficiently without having to rely too much on gear makes her a prime candidate for searching for gear (known as 'magic finding' in the community) for other characters. The reason for this is that she has two of the most ridiculous skills in the game, teleport, which can allow for very fast runs and avoidance of tough enemies, and static field, which is used to immediately take off 25% of a remaining enemies health in range - including bosses. And it used to be even stronger. With exceptions, Cold tends to be the most useful defensively for freezing enemies on higher difficulties, Fire is the most consistent but quite often has enemies that are immune to it, and Lightning is the biggest range of damage but not necessarily consistent or the most accesible. However, she is rather fragile and will require some decent cast rate and hit recovery gear in order not to be instagibbed in some cases. Sorceress is very effective past early mana problems and so I've played quite a bit of her. Her massively useful teleport spell means that she is usually the fastest to run specific areas of the game without high-end items. Barbarian Warcries Combat Masteries Combat Skills The most prevalent melee class, the Barbarian is one that can definitely be strong, but does struggle on higher difficulties if his gear isn't particularly good. Warcries are his buffs to allies and himself, and his debuffs to his enemies respectively. His Battle Orders shout is one of the most useful in the game as it gives huge bonuses to life, mana and stamina to himself and his party. They generally focus on a few combat abilities from the Combat Skills tree and almost exclusively deal physical damage for most of them. Combat Masteries is a tree that allows specialisation into a particular weapon, including the ability to critical hit with that weapon. The masteries can also include physical selfbuffs, such as higher natural resistances, or increased running speed. I like the Barbarian, but he is rather standard. I think of his skills as mostly basic or just statistical improvements even if they are very helpful. Despite that, I've played a decent amount of him and like I said unless I'm doing something terribly wrong I would say he was one of the most gear-dependent classes. Amazon Javelin and Spear Skills Passive and Magic Skills Bow and Crossbow Skills The amazon is a character mostly focusing on javelins, spears, bows and crossbows. They are a character that is a hybrid between melee and ranged combat, and can be effective at both. Bow and Crossbow Skills is exactly how it sounds, and enhances their bow or crossbow ranged attacks to include different elements of damage, such as cold, fire, magic and physical. Javelin and Spear skills are the same for the latter, except in this case some javelin skills are ranged as thrown weapons, and others are close range. While some of the attacks remain as physical damage, they also use lightning and poison. Passive and Magic skills is a tree that has some very useful effects in regards to having a critical hit chance, avoiding enemies attacks, hitting or piercing the enemy, or gaining utility abilities such as a follower Valkyrie. Also known for having huge tits and barely wearing thigh armor until heavy armor sets. I've played a bit of Amazon, but that was mostly a long time ago, and was usually using bows. I've never really seriously tried a javelin using amazon, which I've heard is very effective without the greatest gear, but I don't have experience of it. Assassin Martial Arts Shadow Disciplines Traps The assassin is a character that I've always found to be rather unique and cool looking, but never really played them very much. They typically use claws, which is their class-specific weapon, and some abilities do encourage them to use them (Claw Mastery, Weapon Block, some attack skills). They primarily focus on two aspects, though one is generally more common. The cooler one (in my opinion) is the Martial Arts tree, which allows for close combat skills, some of which generate up to three 'charges' which can then be spent on a finishing move, or a normal attack if you wish, for greater benefits. The other more common type of assassin is one that uses traps, which can be placed on the ground and fire at nearby enemies, but are stationary. These are either lightning or fire damage, and most players tend towards the lightning traps as they are capable of higher amounts of damage, so a trap assassin works quite well as being able to stay at a safe range and just place traps to kill enemies. The Shadow Disciplines tree is a tree that has some great supporting skills, and the assassin gets two great buffs from this tree, Burst of Speed, which increases running and attack speed, and Fade, which increases resistances heavily, physical damage reduction, and lowers curse duration. They also get access to two 'shadow' clone skills which inherit quite a few assassin skills themselves. Like I said, I've not played that much of the Assassin. I have played a trap assassin before, but haven't really dedicated the time to a martial arts assassin. I don't know why, because that seems pretty awesome. Necromancer Summoning Spells Poison and Bone Spells Curses The necromancer is a caster class like the sorceress. Their Summoning tree can be a major part of their class, allowing them to hide behind a wave of minions, which can be very effective. Their other offensive tree, Poison and Bone skills, is direct damaging abilities when compared to minions which, as expected, usually deal poison or magical damage, though there is an exception. A necromancer specialising in direct damage spells can do well into higher levels. The third tree, Curses, is a spell that is placed over a certain range, and will debuff any enemies within it. These usually work well in combination with the other two trees to either boost damage from other sources, severely cripple the enemy, or for utility purposes. I surprisingly have played very little of the necromancer. Ashamedly, I have not really played a summonmancer seriously, ever. Usually they tend to be more passive, so I generally liked more active characters, but the necromancer is very powerful in his own right. Druid Elemental Shapeshifting Summoning The druid is a strange sort of hybrid class that has summoning abilities, elemental abilities (though primarily fire and cold, some are counted as physical damage) and the ability to shapeshift. It's definitely the class that I am least familar with. I saw a lot of the time that people said that the druid sucked, and I'm almost inclined to agree because I have no idea how to build them. That said, I have seen some very effective builds that utilize either Elemental abilities like Hurricane and Tornado, and physical-oriented builds that use either the werebear or werewolf forms in their Shafeshifting tree. Their Summoning tree tends to be more of a support tree that benefits both, but does have a lot of useful summons that give various buffs. i don't know how to play the druid okay. And I rarely have. You may have noticed something about these descriptions, and that is that a lot of the classes contain one 'support' skill tab that isn't generally used as a primary build source. Even for the classes that don't, like the sorceress, they generally want to focus on two skill tabs heavily at most because while going into all three is possible, it isn't going to make any of your skills very effective at higher levels. That's a problem that I think a lot of older Diablo II veterans overlook - I've heard quite often about how the build variety and versatility was great in Diablo II, but I have to disagree. Generally classes are locked into 3-4 builds each at most if they want to be effective in Hell, and even then a lot of them can struggle. Sure, most builds will be able to clear Normal and perhaps Nightmare even if they are completely stupid, but I would consider beating Hell as 'beating the game'. Alas, I will expand on this later, probably. Now, I think there is a thing worth noting: there is a character type called 'hardcore', and I feel that playing it will make this a tad more interesting. What this means is that once that character dies, they are dead permanently. One chance, one life, you die, nada. The game warns you of this before you start a hardcore character. So why should we (I) play hardcore over softcore? People who play hardcore statistically have big dongs. It's a little more interesting for a playlog. If I die in softcore, it's kind of anti-climatic by saying "oh, i died to these enemies but I came back so it's good". At least there would be tension in every update as I could potentially die permanently at any time. It's not really something I'm well adjusted to and I tend to play normally quite reckless, as all that's on the line is gold and an experience loss potentially. Hardcore is more about the journey than the destination - a lot of softcore involves getting to the endgame where you can gear up for successive runs. And the endgame is pretty poor in Diablo II. Hardcore is about seeing how you get through hell, literally with shit gear. It gives me a chance to play a character that I'm less experienced with and learn as I'm going along myself. Though I will be referring to tips on what I should be doing to survive in hardcore. It is considered an ultimate challenge for a reason, not dying once over the course of a playthrough is something that I'm not sure I've ever done... I've always made mistakes. There is much less focus on the trading and economy. Far less, in fact, because once again it is more about the journey. Thus I could play singleplayer if I choose to with no worry about trading with other players. I have a big dong. I swear. Hopefully I survive long enough for me to make a decent amount of observations or rants at least. If not, you can laugh at me dying very early. I've played very little of hardcore, but the last time I did I played an assassin who made up the final boss of Act V, and eventually died due to running out of resources. Now, on that occasion I was following additional 'Ironman' rules which included not being able to speak or buy from NPCs except to hand and receive quests. I'm not going to go that far this time. Since I have barely played hardcore through the 16 or so years I've been playing this game, I was going to lean towards one of the so-called "easier" classes to play with, so I'm not exactly gimping myself. So who can we eliminate? I would say that three easier options for a relatively inexperienced hardcore player would be the necromancer, the amazon and the assassin. Here's why. The necromancer, when specialising in summons, can be very passive in their playstyle and allow for their minions to clear most enemies. Actually, sometimes I can just afk and be writing this and taking screenshots they are so passive. They are also pretty gear independent and that's why they are considered the "easiest" choice. The amazon is a little trickier, but using javelins I've heard that she's also good at literally throwing bolts of lightning and clearing rooms. The assassin is pretty similar, as she would use lightning traps and try to stay at a relatively safe distance. So of these three, I was pondering which one to use. If there's no preference, then I might just decide myself. The other things I'm deciding on is whether to play single-player or on multiplayer Battle.net ladder. Okay, so for those don't know, Battle.net hosts different "realms" for Diablo II to this day, generally for different regions (USWest, USEast, Europe, etc). These characters on each realm are separate. On each realm, you can create a "ladder character" which is a character created in a specific time period (as ladders are reset periodically) that will gain access to exclusive items and content only available on ladder. I always thought that was pretty lame for anyone not wanting to play on ladder, so one of the mods created for singleplayer, PlugY, allows ladder content to be accessed there, with some other game changes. I'm wondering if I should play singleplayer with PlugY instead of the realms because I would hate to lose a character to lag or something, which does happen. Another thing is that singleplayer allows the use of a certain function, the /players function, in order to spoof the amount of players in the game. When someone joins the game in Diablo II, the enemies become stronger, but give more experience and I believe an increased chance for better quality items. You can't set the number of players manually in a Battle.net game but you can in single player, allowing for up to /players 8 (as the maximum number of players in a single game). If you've got any opinions on that or what I should do, let me know, but I'm currently leaning towards playing (with a summon necromancer) on singleplayer with PlugY (potentially disabling the other features added outside of the ladder exclusives) without the use of manipulating how many players in the game i.e using /players command. And if you have anything else to say or yell at me about, then I'll be glad to hear it. Hopefully you aren't completely confused if you don't know what the hell Diablo II is, and if so then maybe I will be able to explain why in future updates. Lastly, it may be a little strange to be doing a screenshot or narrative let's play or whatever you would call this of a game like Diablo, and I agree it will be a challenge, which is why I am recording my playthrough externally to upload some animated parts as well when necessary.