During my playthrough of Keep Digging, a friend casually mentioned that it reminded him of Diablo II because of how much clicking was involved. I can’t fully explain why, but that comment instantly gave me the itch to fire up Diablo II Resurrected again, and I’ve been casually playing it ever since. The last time I played Diablo II Resurrected was a little over four years ago, which I wrote about on my blog. Returning to this timeless classic simply felt right.
I found it surprisingly easy to pick up where I left off. The first thing I did was complete a playthrough of the game on Nightmare difficulty using my Hardcore Amazon, raising her level from 57 to 71 and earning her the title Conqueror. To be honest, I’m surprised I had the confidence to attempt it, considering that dying would have meant losing the character and all the progress I’d made with her. Perhaps after four years away I’d simply forgotten how much effort I’d put into the character in the first place, so it didn’t feel like it would have been a huge loss.
My attention then turned to my Softcore Amazon, which I used to complete a playthrough on Hell difficulty, earning her the title Matriarch. This also unlocked the ability to farm the Secret Cow Level, also on Hell difficulty, which I found great fun. During this time I found a few cool items, including a Vex rune, and managed to raise her level from 80 to 88.
While playing my Softcore Amazon, I found farming a little slow and felt a hankering to play a Sorceress, who benefits from the Teleport spell and is generally faster, as well as better at stacking the all-important Magic Find stat. Starting from scratch, I created a Softcore Sorceress, completed the game on all three difficulties, and farmed a lot of items, including the full Tal Rasha set and several valuable runes, most notably an Ohm rune, the highest rune I have ever found.
I realise that my accomplishments are modest compared to many players who have invested a lot of time in playing Diablo II over the years. Crafting or finding perfect items, or creating perfect runeword items, is impressive, but you either need to be incredibly lucky or extremely dedicated. That said, I have noticed some changes that make things a little easier.
There are now Terrorized Zones, where monster levels scale with your character level, meaning they can technically drop better loot. In these zones, it is also possible to find Grand Charms that can sunder a monster’s immunity to a particular damage type. For example, a monster that would normally be immune to cold damage will no longer be immune if you have the right Grand Charm in your inventory, although the monster may still have high resistance to cold, so it might take a while to defeat.
The last change I have noticed is that players can now slay the Cow King in the Secret Cow Level and still be able to open portals to the Secret Cow Level. I found this to be an especially welcome change.
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