Re: Diablo II - Lord Of Destruction (1.13d Direct Play) Torrent
Angie Troia
Finally, the player fights Baal in The Worldstone Chamber, after defeating his pack of minions at the Throne of Destruction. Tyrael appears after Baal is dead, congratulating the player and opening a portal to Destruction's End, the conclusion of the game. As the Worldstone is corrupted by Baal, Tyrael has no choice but to destroy it before its power of Hell takes root; the consequences of the Worldstone's destruction would not be fully known until twenty years later.
Her Shadow Disciplines tree contains a mixture of passive skills (such as Claw Mastery or Weapon Block) and buffs (such as Burst of Speed or Venom), along with a few spells such as Mind Blast which stuns and confuses the enemy. She also can summon a Shadow Warrior or Shadow Master, two of the most powerful minions in the game. The Warrior variant can use the normal attack in addition to the two skills the player has readied for herself, while the Master can use any Assassin skill, including those the player does not know herself. Both shadows have skill levels proportional to the player's level in the skills, and the Master will favor the higher level skills. The ability to direct the Warrior's skill usage allows a degree of control over her, unique among Diablo minions.
A lot of other changes have been made under the hood of Diablo II in The Lord of Destruction. Some of these are very specific and will apply only to a small percentage of players. The point is that all such changes are the direct consequence of a year's worth of player response to Diablo II. Lord of Destruction clearly shows that the designers at Blizzard North know what its players want.
2nd segment: I did not plan on doing rakanishu-runs as bimanc did because I think my "extreme-leveling-on-the-way-method" is much more effective than just massing segments on one to two bosses early in the game, because I can at least proceed through areas while leveling, and the early areas (Cold Plains/Stony) don't give me as much xp as the later ones can do. So as a rule of thumb for later segments I can tell you, that I almost always optimized my segments in terms of experience per segment without loosing too much time on it of course, until I reach level 20 (at least, a very fast level 12 to use traps and level 17 to allow me to equip stealth is VERY important for me right from the beginning). As for this segment, you can see again in the Cold Plains/Underground Passage (like in the 1st segment), that I do not shy away from small detours that are not directly enroute if there is an almost certain bossgroup waiting for me (you can scout those likely boss-spots before starting your "real runs"). Bosspacks always give such AWESOME experience that it would be absurd not to kill them, when they are only a little bit out of the way. You gain even more experience per boss/minion than killing a normal monster in an eight-player-game alone, 500 % instead of 450 % xp with eight-players to be precise, so when you've killed a six monster bossgroup, it is equivalent to having killed 30 normal monster of the same type in just that time and with your experience shrine it's even more extreme (equivalent to having killed 45 normal monsters without a shrine!) Not much else to say about this segment, only that again, I think I could have manipulated one more bosspack in the Black Marsh, but sadly I realised these improvements much too late, so all I can do is complaining now... ^_^
At least I found a belt early in this segment, which makes the following segments much easier to handle, and the experience over time and total time was not bad, just not as ultimate as I later wanted them to be. ;)
Diablo II game is plotted after the events of the first game has occurred. The warrior who has defeated Diablo has become corrupted by the demonic spirits. He is now the cause of entrance of demons in the world and they are causing havoc. In the present day a group of explorers pass through Rogue Encampment. They hear the stories revolving about the destruction and then they decide to find out the real cause of this evil and demonic force. Diablo 2 game is mainly divided into four different chapters or acts. In every chapter you will have a prearranged way. You will progress through the game. When you complete the quests given in every chapter. You can play this game in three different difficulty levels. The weaponry and items are random and are very similar to the first game. The characters also have five different classes from which you can select. Amazingly built graphics and audio engines give you the immense excitement and horrific environment. Altogether a very thrilling game to play. Lichdome battlemage is another action RPG game that you can download.
There is at least one Diablo 2 game object that does not display correctly in directx but does in glide. Kurast Docks, in the middle somewhere there is a blue sphere on a stand. After a certain quest completion this changes to a dagger if you are using glide but not if you are using directx. Not a big deal except for us perfectionists.
Otherwise I used to be convinced glide did look better and was far smoother on older hardware [not necessarily contemporary with D2 release], but with an lcd screen and modern hardware there is probably not much difference. Of course the dagger issue means I would only use nglide. Glide may be refresh-limited to 25fps [certainly is on glide hardware]? And I'm not sure whether the higher resolution setting [800x600], perspective etc work in directx as well as glide.
I recall that athlon 2000 + voodoo2 + glide gives far smoother gameplay than athlon + mx400 + directx. But I also recall that it was the Lord of Destruction expansion that really seemed to cause the directx renderer problems with choppiness and lags.
More annoying is that 3d sound effects [Aureal A3D] won't be available on modern kit/OS and probably not environmental effects [Creative EAX] either [latter may work with Creative Alchemy, not sure].
glide looks better for diablo 2, exception may be when you force some filters on directx via drivers; also iirc diablo was made for glide in the first place, directx was only an idditional option to widen the potential userbase;
Battle.net Realm characters are stored in the cloud and are tied to the Battle.net account; however, they are only accessible on the realm (regional server) on which they were created (US-East, US-West, etc.). They are not playable in singleplayer, LAN, Open Battle.net, or direct-IP connection online play.Realm characters expire after 90 days of inactivity; to reset the inactivity timer, you will need to perform basic activity, such as buying or selling an item or killing a monster. In addition, newly created Realm characters expire after 10 days unless they are played for at least 2 hours during those 10 days."Open" (non-Realm) characters are used for single-player, LAN, Open Battle.net, and direct-IP-connection online play; they are not playable on the Battle.net Realms. They are stored locally in the "save" folder in your DII installation folder. Note that there is no hack protection for Open characters.
Q: Is multiplayer supported?
A: Yes. The game's netcode has not been changed in any way. Obviously, the official Blizzard battle.net servers don't have the mod installed on them, so you can't play Median XL in closed battle.net. However, you can still play in open battle.net as well as direct TCP/IP mode. Please make sure everyone is using the exact same version of the mod. If you are playing on open battle.net, at the very least password-protect your game so that non-mod players will not accidentally join and crash your game.