Hey OP, I realize you're already decently far into the game, but I figured I would drop some tips on starting Diablo and Diablo 2 anyway since both are some of my favorite games of all time (Diablo 2 is certainly my favorite, and the original is a contender for the top ten).
Diablo
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Don't play the expansion, at least not at first. Play the vanilla game. The expansion was developed by a different team and it seriously messes with the balance and atmosphere of the original game. Blizzard North rightfully disowned this expansion and learned from their experience when developing the sequel. I know that you're decently far into the game, but I'd honestly suggest starting over anyway since you're not quite at the halfway point yet and... well, starting over in Diablo is really cool anyway.
- I saw a suggestion to play in a solo multiplayer game instead of a singleplayer game posted in this thread.
Don't do this. Many important features of the game are singleplayer only. For example, in SP the game will give you a semi-random assortment of quests from the quest pool (such that not every singleplayer game will contain the butcher, for example), whereas in MP you will get the same quests every time. Also, certain items can't drop in MP for reasons that aren't worth explaining. The main incentive to play MP (...besides the other players, which I would avoid for your first playthrough anyway) is the ability to play on the harder difficulties, but it's actually possible to do this in SP anyway. Google it or PM me if you want to know how to do this, although it's important to note that this is only a practical option after you've beaten the game once already.
- The shift key is your friend. It prevents you from moving while attempting to attack or cast a spell. You should use it often.
- Although it's perfectly acceptable to start the game as any class, you may want to know that while the warrior starts out the easiest of the three it rather quickly becomes the most challenging class to play. Rogues are pretty strong throughout but require a fair bit of finesse and patience to play as the game goes on. Sorcerers have a hard time in the early game but by the catacombs or so become
completely broken
.
- You can grind in this game by choosing the new game option when you load your character. This will cause the game to retain your stats and inventory but reset the game world, meaning that if you have any items on the ground in the town they'll be gone, any quests you've completed will be reset, and the game will randomly generate a new world (with new quests as mentioned above as well as a new monster pool). This is one of the game's main features, and you would be wise to take advantage if you find yourself having trouble after a certain point in the game. Having said that, it's very possible to play through the game entirely in a single pass if you so desire.
- This game has a
lot of quirks. Although I probably wouldn't recommend doing this while you're still early in the game, you might want to look up Jarulf's guide. It's a very detailed guide that outlines all of the game mechanics in exhaustive detail and it covers all of the strange gameplay things you can do.
- Watch out for the black death enemy type (they're bright yellow zombies). They're the only enemy in the game that can permanently lower your stats. Note that there is something of an unintentional thing you can do with this particular enemy that's quite interesting, but you're not going to find it by accident.
- Save before you kill Diablo.
- There is no cow level.
Diablo II
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Do play the expansion first. Although there's nothing wrong with the base game, the expansion is viewed by the vast majority of the player base as being a massive improvement over the original. Consequently, I think it makes more sense as a starting point and if you get curious about what nonx is about you can always check it out down the line.
- Diablo 2 is a considerably more complex game than its predecessor, but the basics are still pretty straightforward. Accordingly, don't get bogged down googling stuff and trying to figure out how to min-max your character, at least not at first. The current version of the game is designed such that you can beat the game on normal difficulty doing just about anything.
- With that in mind, you
really shouldn't treat the game as over once you've beat normal. In Diablo 2, the fun really only begins when you get to the third difficulty, where the challenge is stepped up considerably. This might sound like a slog, but the second difficulty takes comparatively little time to get through. Incidentally, you will probably find at this point in the game that unless you happened upon a very strong strategy for the first two difficulties that whatever you were doing up until this point will stop working.
- Play singleplayer, at least at first. Diablo 2
does still have an active multiplayer scene but it's really not a newbie-friendly environment and it's a terrible way to experience the game for the first time. If you do heed my suggestion, look into the runeword mod and gomule. You're probably not going to understand what these things do at first but they're very handy utilities for singleplayer. You
can certainly play the game completely unmodded, but both of these tools simply allow you to access inexplicably multiplayer-only "features" in the singleplayer game. As an aside to this, singleplayer characters can be played in multiplayer and there is a rather lively Diablo 2 singleplayer community (including myself), so if you have the yearning to play with other players or you find yourself stuck, that's something to keep in mind.
- The first thing you should do when you install the game is go into the ingame options and change the resolution to 800x600. Also, look into setting up the glide wrapper as it will make the game look and play much better.
- There is no cow level...?
If you've got any questions about these games, don't hesitate to ask! I'm very passionate about both of them (although I think Diablo 3 is garbage and my advice would be to avoid it entirely) and I highly encourage people to check them out.
Also is 640x480 the native res of the graphics?
The original Diablo caps out at 640x480, yes. Diablo 2 can go up to 800x600; it's possible to increase the resolution beyond this but it breaks the AI in pretty fundamental ways.
