Diablo for D2 Players

[gregkennedy]

I spent a little time today outlining the differences (frustrations) Diablo II players are likely to encounter when playing Diablo for the first time. You may be interested in it here:

http://kennedy.greg.googlepages.com/d4d2.html

Suggestions are welcome. I'm interested in the big unexpected caveats that players may find so that they don't get annoyed when the game does something they didn't expect.

[Flux]

That's pretty useful; you object to it becoming an article in the wiki? I'll put a link to the source at the bottom, per standard practice. I'll also make some additions to make it apply to Hellfire as well.

One error I saw: apocalypse is not magic/fire/lightning, and works on everything.

[gregkennedy]

That's fine with me. I think it would be best if Hellfire was its own section, but I'll leave that up to you : )

[mouseman]

One major issue in the single vs. multiplayer section!

You forgot to mention that multiplayer is greatly harder than single player. There is a significant XP limit per kill in multiplayer, which makes it A LOT harder to level up. Also, all the monsters have 2xhitpoints in contrast of single player which makes MP yet again harder - it takes twice the time to kill a monster.

You can play Nightmare and Hell modes in SP - the single player just picks up whatever difficulty mode is last used in multiplayer. So create a nightmare multiplayer game, quit, and create a single player game - whoah, you've got a nightmare SP game.

On a more minor note: The default key for highlighting was ALT in D2, imho. SHIFT, on the other hand, is used to keep the character from moving, and it is really useful in Diablo 1 - Warrior can block doors and Rogues use it almost always when firing bows.

You could also stress the point that even if Sorcerer is the most powerful class in the end-game, it is very frustrating to start one. If I were to read your guide, I would assume Sorcerer is the way to go, die couple of times kicking an exploding barrel and assume that Diablo 1 is uber-hard HC game ;)

Oh, and unlike D2, some of the best items of the game are just simply blue magic items! So people won't rely on uniques too much.

[Lanthanide]

The majority of the best items in D1 are magic items, as most uniques are pretty meh. There are a few stand-out uniques, generally for sorcs (who rely on equipment the least?): Naj's Light Plate, Thinking Cap, Dreamflange, Royal Circlet, Constricting Ring, Gotterdamrung, Windforce, Eaglehorn (not sure what is so special?), Civerb's Cudgel.

None of the unique items generally have much in the way of +all stats, +all resistances or +mana/health, which are the main attributes that people try to find on items. In particulary what makes these unique items stand out are the +spell level mods which you can't get on anything but staves (Naj's +1, Thinking Cap +2, Dreamflange +1) or the high AC (Royal Circlet, Gotterdamrung), or the resist all (Constricting Ring) or the damage (Windforce, Civerb's Cudgel).

[Flux]

I forgot to post about it here, but I greatly expanded this article into a wiki page some weeks ago.

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/D1_Differences

comments on changes or omissions are welcome. I left out a lot of minor/detailed stuff, since the length was substantial already, for what's supposed to be a quick "welcome to D1" type article.

[gregkennedy]

Thanks, I like how this turned out.

[andrewsixninetwo]

That's really well done. One thing you might be able to add though: Where you say the gameplay is slower, (at least for the Playstation 1 version) there is an option for game speed. I always put it to fast, which if I remember correctly, pretty much only makes you and the bad guys walk faster. It's a very helpful tool, but it might not be available for the computer version.

[Spinns]

I may have missed it because i am very tired right now but you should mention that the stat magic unlike energy in DII has alot of use and is worth investing into