One thing they're doing is adding a second character stats screen. I don't think this is going to show breakpoints, but you will be able to see at a glance what your faster hit recovery, faster attack rate, faster cast rate totals are. One of the problems with showing breakpoints is that many of them are dependent on several factors. For example, the sorceress lightning spells have a slower cast rate than her other spells. The paladin's block frames get a boost when holy shield is active. A shapeshifted druid has different break points. Even wielding different weapons has an effect on some classes.
They absolutely could find a way to integrate frame rates into an advanced stats screen, but it will require coding in a bunch of flags for various things -- more than even what I just listed. I think that's a perfectly fine goal for a future patch, but I think it's not something that should be focused on pre-launch.
I feel like getting access to these advanced stats is already a huge step forward. Even if/when they do show frames on a screen, I still think players that care about min-maxing are going to take the time to learn the breakpoints -- i.e. consult online tables. So, imo, it's not *that* necessary.
Late in the week, the patch notes for the next season in Diablo 3 indicated the theme was Ethereal Weapons modeled after classic Diablo 2 items. This was a pretty big hint a release of Remastered was imminent within 3 or 4 months, as it seemed very similar to a WoW expansion pre-patch. Lo and behold, 3 days later, it's made official. The game is officially releasing on September 23, and if you pre-ordered, you will get Beta access sometime in August.
The system requirements they just released are quite daunting. My computer *barely* meets minimum, much less recommended, and that's assuming it will work on Windows 8, since they support nothing but Windows 10. That makes two games of interest to me - Baldur's Gate 3 and now Diablo 2: Resurrected, that I would probably need a new computer to play.
I looked at Best Buy, and their bottom of the line (under $1000 USD) "gaming PC's" also don't meet system requirements. It says it "recommends" 16 GB system RAM and 6 GB (!) dedicated video RAM. Best Buy's lower end "gaming computers" have only 2 GB dedicated video RAM on some of the graphics cards.
It's hard to believe such an old game could be "remastered" to the point of needing that kind of computer power, but apparently this one is.
I'm sure that's very exciting to a lot of people with plenty of disposable income who already have or will soon buy top of the line new computers, but that's not me. I'm not even sure I would like BG3, and while I'm sure I would like D2:R and had been planning to buy it, I'm not paying $1200 or more for it!
The system requirements they just released are quite daunting. My computer *barely* meets minimum, much less recommended, and that's assuming it will work on Windows 8, since they support nothing but Windows 10. That makes two games of interest to me - Baldur's Gate 3 and now Diablo 2: Resurrected, that I would probably need a new computer to play.
I looked at Best Buy, and their bottom of the line (under $1000 USD) "gaming PC's" also don't meet system requirements. It says it "recommends" 16 GB system RAM and 6 GB (!) dedicated video RAM. Best Buy's lower end "gaming computers" have only 2 GB dedicated video RAM on some of the graphics cards.
It's hard to believe such an old game could be "remastered" to the point of needing that kind of computer power, but apparently this one is.
I'm sure that's very exciting to a lot of people with plenty of disposable income who already have or will soon buy top of the line new computers, but that's not me. I'm not even sure I would like BG3, and while I'm sure I would like D2:R and had been planning to buy it, I'm not paying $1200 or more for it!
The problem you're running into is being a fan of 20 year old games (or in the case BG, a series) being revived after two decades of tech advances. The particle effects alone will make Diablo 2: Resurrected require at least a 1060. 16 GB of RAM is pretty standard nowadays.
If you have a last-gen console, I would guess it will run D2 at 30 fps in 1080p with some pretty annoying load times. IF you can mange to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X, for $500 you will absolutely be able to play it in 4k at 60 fps. I may play this on console just for the simple fact that it allows you to have 4-6 skills on screen at one time and not have to use keybinds. Diablo 3 was surprisingly awesome on consoles, I don't see this being much different. That said, unless you get lucky or are willing to pay a 50% mark-up, getting one of those consoles in 2021 may be near impossible.
Another thing I should mention is that many recent remasters of classic games are doing a hi-res, widescreen graphics upgrade, getting the game to run well on modern systems, and bug fixes. That is basically what Beamdog has done with their 5 D&D games, and even what Blizzard themselves did with Starcraft and also happened with Command and Conquer and HoMM 3.
However, this is NOT what is going on with Diablo 2. David Brevik himself said a straight hi-res upgrade just wouldn't be feasible given how they made the game. The widescreen patch for Diablo 2 fans made was pretty much worthless, because while you may have been playing in 1920x1080, the enemy AI was still playing in 800x600, which could trivialize content. What Vicarious Visions has done is completely rebuild the game from a graphical standpoint, while essentially tying everything that happens on screen to the old version of Diablo 2 running underneath it. They stated when the game was announced that their goal was to remain 70% faithful to the original design, while adding 30% new touches to give the more pizazz.
To boil it down, this isn't just a situation where the assets from the original game have been rendered into more pixels. The characters, enemies, and locations have been rebuilt from scratch with modern graphics power. The game itself doing the numbers (damage, drops, randomization) is identical. But the visual portion has been completely replaced.
However expensive the effort is, to me that still only sounds as a resolution update. Whether you achieve new visuals by resampling the old graphics or rebuilding it from the ground up, no one cares if you get nothing extra from it.
The game is about its mechanics, I still enjoy playing it with the old grainy graphics. They really need to give more content or features or balance.
@BelgarathMTH Indeed, from what I know, a modern console, PS5 or Series X, will be able to provide you with an experience of a PC with a 3080 GeForce graphics card, for ~500 USD. This is the beauty of consoles, if you have a TV.
@lroumen They NEED to launch the game as is. If the interest is sufficient, they might continue to tweak abilities and stuff.
I feel the strategy is off.
They chose to dump all the effort into graphics with little additional features. That is not very balanced product design.
I mean, it's graphics alone that bloats this 2gb game to 30gb and ups requirements into the newer pc format.
@Iroumen , If it at least has all the storage benefits of PlugY without having to actually install and troubleshoot PlugY, that would sell it to me. Can anyone in the know give us a short list of expected quality of life updates?
I set up plugy without any issues by following the instructions so I still don't know what the added value is of d2 other than graphics and I guess the gold grabber (or is that d3 only?).
@Iroumen , If it at least has all the storage benefits of PlugY without having to actually install and troubleshoot PlugY, that would sell it to me. Can anyone in the know give us a short list of expected quality of life updates?
The stash space of Plugy is unlimited. The stash space of D2: Resurrected is more on par with something like Torchlight 2 without mods. It's ENOUGH if you make enough characters to transfer the gear to, but it isn't endless. But as I've said 100 times, the stash in the original game is laughably small.
- new graphics
- 3d models
- wide screen, or at least 16:9 instead of 4:3
- surround sound
- more hotkeys
- recreated cinematics
- interface/menu change
- load old saves
- cross platform play
- auto gold
- slightly larger stash
- extended statistics screen
The price is 40usd.
I bought the originals for 18.99eur and 15.95eur, both in the first week of release, and with the exchange rates taken into account from then vs now, the price of resurrected is even slightly higher than what I spent. So that is a concern, hence I would need to care about the new features.
My assessment for me.
Graphics are impressive but not needed.
3d models, don't care.
Wide screen, don't care.
Sound, don't care.
Hotkeys, don't care.
Cinematics, don't care.
GUI, don't care.
Saves, don't care.
Cross platform, don't care.
Autogold, nice to have.
Slightly larger stash, can use plugy for that.
Extended statistics screen, nice to have.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
@Iroumen and @jjstraka34 , I just tried to install PlugY onto a fresh install of 1.14b downloaded directly from battle.net, and yet again, it doesn't work. It brings up an error message that says "PlugY is not compatible with 1.14b" even though the documentation in the download clearly says it is. Something like this has happened *every time* I've tried to install PlugY on any computer, on any version of LoD, so any similar quality of life improvement without it would be welcome.
This is why I hate modding and almost never use mods any more.
EDIT: Well, I did get it to work finally by downloading a patch to 1.14d. I have no idea why Blizzard doesn't make that the default download. Also, the PlugY documentation says it should be compatible with 1.14b, but whatever.
The game itself shows its age big time, and I wouldn't say it runs all that well (jerky motion, sluggish mouse response, stone age UI). I don't think I'd play it again without performance enhancements for modern systems, which is probably one of the big things D2:R is for. I just wish there were an in-between that doesn't call for a 6GB graphics card.
EDIT #2: Well, I took another look just to give the gameplay a bit more of a chance. I had a level 4 paladin come up from a previous test save file that was still in there for some reason. (2016 was the date on my old install.) I intended to run around and kill a few monsters around the rogue encampment just to feel it again, and wound up in there almost an hour. The gameplay sure is addictive still. I guess that's why people have still been playing it all these years.
I played it a few months ago when someone pointed me to d2 and plugy and that already described 1.14d as the recommended patch.
And the game is addictive. Early game you level fast so the skill progress is fun. Then mid levels will drop fun loot (if you are lucky), and the end game sucks you in to challenge your skills.
@Iroumen and @jjstraka34 , I just tried to install PlugY onto a fresh install of 1.14b downloaded directly from battle.net, and yet again, it doesn't work. It brings up an error message that says "PlugY is not compatible with 1.14b" even though the documentation in the download clearly says it is. Something like this has happened *every time* I've tried to install PlugY on any computer, on any version of LoD, so any similar quality of life improvement without it would be welcome.
This is why I hate modding and almost never use mods any more.
EDIT: Well, I did get it to work finally by downloading a patch to 1.14d. I have no idea why Blizzard doesn't make that the default download. Also, the PlugY documentation says it should be compatible with 1.14b, but whatever.
The game itself shows its age big time, and I wouldn't say it runs all that well (jerky motion, sluggish mouse response, stone age UI). I don't think I'd play it again without performance enhancements for modern systems, which is probably one of the big things D2:R is for. I just wish there were an in-between that doesn't call for a 6GB graphics card.
EDIT #2: Well, I took another look just to give the gameplay a bit more of a chance. I had a level 4 paladin come up from a previous test save file that was still in there for some reason. (2016 was the date on my old install.) I intended to run around and kill a few monsters around the rogue encampment just to feel it again, and wound up in there almost an hour. The gameplay sure is addictive still. I guess that's why people have still been playing it all these years.
If the overused line about Heroes of Might and Magic III is "just one more turn" then for Diablo II it should be "just one more Baal run". Everything you kill is pulling a lever on a slot machine, and the odds you will get what you are looking for on any one kill are probably lower than a casino jackpot. Even after MILLIONS of kills people still haven't seen certain drops. But the main thing D2 does is perfectly space out release of a chemical that gives certain people pleasure. Add on top of that a peerless soundtrack, a pretty damn good story for a ARPG, and the fact that you get to kill demons and undead with 7 different archetypes of fantasy heroes, and there you have it.
Other ARPGs have never gotten the specific formula just right, despite decades of refinement and more advanced systems. It's the once and future king. It will be the biggest gaming release of the fall by a wide margin, 20 years after it's initial release. That is a pretty unprecedented feat.
I thought civilization had coined the "just one more turn" thing?
About a zillion kills... Can we go back to a creature kill counter like in diablo 1, and at certain cut offs you learn more about creature stats like resistances and health. I replayed it also a few months ago (after d2), and thought it unfortunate that that had been dropped for d2. It immersed me more into the game.
Maybe after the umpteenth bhaal run you finally get to see the stats of him on a hover. That would be cool, then you can see how often you would need to hit him with your puny attacks. I guess you need to be able to turn those extra stats off too.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
I can see why some folks won't buy. I'm going to prepurchase here shortly. Once it comes out, I'm happy to online play with folks on hardcore mode if anyone is interested. I'm also happy to respond to questions on here about builds or overcoming challenges or just fun ways to play.
For me, the big "feature" is the upgrade from old battle.net to the new system. Unfortunately the normal D2 battle.net experience is rife with cheating. And I expect Blizzard to have more tools to police that aspect. So, for me, that's the biggest selling feature. It will also all be one giant realm too, as opposed to split. I look forward to ladder play that's going to be fun and challenging in a way that D2 hasn't been in a very long time.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
I can see why some folks won't buy. I'm going to prepurchase here shortly. Once it comes out, I'm happy to online play with folks on hardcore mode if anyone is interested. I'm also happy to respond to questions on here about builds or overcoming challenges or just fun ways to play.
For me, the big "feature" is the upgrade from old battle.net to the new system. Unfortunately the normal D2 battle.net experience is rife with cheating. And I expect Blizzard to have more tools to police that aspect. So, for me, that's the biggest selling feature. It will also all be one giant realm too, as opposed to split. I look forward to ladder play that's going to be fun and challenging in a way that D2 hasn't been in a very long time.
Here's an honest question - how much min-maxing and theorycrafting goes into your (or anyone who is a BIG fan of D2) builds?
I played D2 back in my highschool days, and I genuinely enjoyed the game. It didnt change my world, and I havent really bothered to go back in a long time (I'm also one of those people who felt D3 was just fine. Maybe not great, but plenty good enough).
I'm tempted to get D2:R, as it looks really good, but I'm a little worried about the online aspect given that there's like 20ish years of people theorycrafting and figuring out the absolute best possible way to play the game - most of which it sounds like wont change.
Do you think there will be space for someone like me, who will put in the effort to be pretty good at the game but isnt so driven that I'll probably never research loot tables, and learn all of the ins and outs to squeeze every last bit from my character?
I guess I know the answer that initally, plenty of people wont know a ton about the game (like me). I guess I'm wondering what the playerbase will be like in a year, when maybe the only people still playing the games are the ones who have played for the last 20 years, plus a few pick ups that fell in love for the first time.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
I can see why some folks won't buy. I'm going to prepurchase here shortly. Once it comes out, I'm happy to online play with folks on hardcore mode if anyone is interested. I'm also happy to respond to questions on here about builds or overcoming challenges or just fun ways to play.
For me, the big "feature" is the upgrade from old battle.net to the new system. Unfortunately the normal D2 battle.net experience is rife with cheating. And I expect Blizzard to have more tools to police that aspect. So, for me, that's the biggest selling feature. It will also all be one giant realm too, as opposed to split. I look forward to ladder play that's going to be fun and challenging in a way that D2 hasn't been in a very long time.
Here's an honest question - how much min-maxing and theorycrafting goes into your (or anyone who is a BIG fan of D2) builds?
I played D2 back in my highschool days, and I genuinely enjoyed the game. It didnt change my world, and I havent really bothered to go back in a long time (I'm also one of those people who felt D3 was just fine. Maybe not great, but plenty good enough).
I'm tempted to get D2:R, as it looks really good, but I'm a little worried about the online aspect given that there's like 20ish years of people theorycrafting and figuring out the absolute best possible way to play the game - most of which it sounds like wont change.
Do you think there will be space for someone like me, who will put in the effort to be pretty good at the game but isnt so driven that I'll probably never research loot tables, and learn all of the ins and outs to squeeze every last bit from my character?
I guess I know the answer that initally, plenty of people wont know a ton about the game (like me). I guess I'm wondering what the playerbase will be like in a year, when maybe the only people still playing the games are the ones who have played for the last 20 years, plus a few pick ups that fell in love for the first time.
I mean, the difficulty only scales to a certain level. It isn't like Mythic Dungeons or Greater Rifts, which have essentially infinite difficulty scaling and, at a certain point, REQUIRE certain builds. The absolute highest difficulty is Hell with 8 players. But unlike the version that is played now with mods, that is only going to come into play if you actually team up with other people. Hell difficulty itself is certainly no cakewalk, but most classes have multiple way to defeat it that do not require the kind of bleeding edge theorycrafting we saw for essentially no reason in WoW Classic raids.
The seasons are just a race to level 99, and then total EXP points after that. It's far more of a fresh start than any type of real competition. Unless you want, there really isn't any incentive to play in multiplayer other than higher drop rates. Trading will be what it will be, but every patch from 1.12 on significantly increased the drops of the rarest runes, so it's not like it will be required either.
So yeah, just like they have for the last 15 years, certain people are gonna only use Hammerdins for Uber runs, have a Frozen Orb Sorceress for magic finding, and have Enigma on to teleport past everything. But none of this NEEDS to be done, and a person who spends enough time with their character can do everything in this game by themselves with items they find themselves. And the idea that you would need to be min/maxed to beat Uber Tristram with 4 or 5 people in a group just seems laughable to me.
The reason this is a question that is coming up is because of what we saw with WoW Classic, where streaming culture and years of min/maxing revealed the 100% optimal build for every class and situation, and since you were dependent on being accepted by 40 other people to experience content, you had to play along or not see it (even though no WoW Classic raid outside maybe Naxx actually required such optimization, and was never actually used at the time). Diablo II not only has far more randomization (after all, all loot in WoW is static), but nothing is DEPENDENT on grouping with other people. It just may take more time to go solo self-found. Whether you consider beating the game defeating Baal on Hell difficulty or defeating Uber Tristram, every class can do it by themselves with patience. It's just a grind. Which is the absolute essence of the series anyway. If you don't enjoy the grind, you won't play in the first place.
I PERSONALLY recommend people stay away from online aspects of most games because mulitplayer in general is just so unbelievably toxic (I think you do Mythic Dungeons, and this is why you likely have a tight-knit group of friends). The only series that has ever done PvP in an interesting way to me is Dark Souls. Alot of people like to talk about PvP in Diablo II, but it amounts to nothing but people flagging themselves in town and dueling. It's never been the core of the game, no matter how many people like to claim otherwise. Diablo II is a complete, endlessly fun experience whether you want to play with friends or are a complete introvert.
Normal and nightmare can be played without theory crafting, and hell can be played if you are careful.
However, it just becomes a whole lot more efficient if you go with the well known builds.
The biggest theorycrafting that goes into a "normal" D2 build is about speed breakpoints. Knowing which weapon to put that runeword in so your shapeshifting druid will squeeze out that extra frame of attack speed, or how much faster cast speed to look for on your sorceress, is a big deal. Then there's basic planning like "how will my melee character deal with physical immunes".
For raw viability, that's only an issue if you're doing a weird variant build or taking on some of those special challenges. You can clear the game with some pretty low-power builds.
I might get the new version, if only so I can play the game on a computer that isn't fifteen years old. Of course, my current computer (six years old) probably isn't up to the system requirements ... but that's about my replacement cycle anyway. We'll see where I am at summer's end.
D2 multiplayer ... cooperative is the way to go, if you can get a group together. A lot of classes do have abilities built for party play, and higher-level monsters have immunities so overspecialized characters can't kill everything. Not that I've ever played in a party myself; I've always been single player only.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
I can see why some folks won't buy. I'm going to prepurchase here shortly. Once it comes out, I'm happy to online play with folks on hardcore mode if anyone is interested. I'm also happy to respond to questions on here about builds or overcoming challenges or just fun ways to play.
For me, the big "feature" is the upgrade from old battle.net to the new system. Unfortunately the normal D2 battle.net experience is rife with cheating. And I expect Blizzard to have more tools to police that aspect. So, for me, that's the biggest selling feature. It will also all be one giant realm too, as opposed to split. I look forward to ladder play that's going to be fun and challenging in a way that D2 hasn't been in a very long time.
Here's an honest question - how much min-maxing and theorycrafting goes into your (or anyone who is a BIG fan of D2) builds?
I played D2 back in my highschool days, and I genuinely enjoyed the game. It didnt change my world, and I havent really bothered to go back in a long time (I'm also one of those people who felt D3 was just fine. Maybe not great, but plenty good enough).
I'm tempted to get D2:R, as it looks really good, but I'm a little worried about the online aspect given that there's like 20ish years of people theorycrafting and figuring out the absolute best possible way to play the game - most of which it sounds like wont change.
Do you think there will be space for someone like me, who will put in the effort to be pretty good at the game but isnt so driven that I'll probably never research loot tables, and learn all of the ins and outs to squeeze every last bit from my character?
I guess I know the answer that initally, plenty of people wont know a ton about the game (like me). I guess I'm wondering what the playerbase will be like in a year, when maybe the only people still playing the games are the ones who have played for the last 20 years, plus a few pick ups that fell in love for the first time.
My personal suggestion for having fun with online, ladder play is to not chase a high ladder ranking. Instead it's the fact that you have to start with zero gear, zero levels every six months.
Personally, I've found that playing mostly self-found gear and solo running while in public games has been the most fun. With some cooperating and some trading in there. But, imo, just running pub Baal games just so you can get levels is just not a fun way to play. Trying to solo walk all of hell difficulty in hardcore mode is an extremely fun challenge.
I think every season you'll probably want one cookie-cutter min-max magic find character. But the beauty of ladder is that you'll get interesting and rare drops that can allow you to make some of the less effective or more rare builds out there. For example, last season I ended up, randomly, finding a bunch of martial arts assassin gear. It's not a popular build, and one I had never made before. It wasn't particularly strong, but I was able to push all the way into hell difficulty with her. Each new season can be an adventure that will be unlike the previous one, because of the random loot.
There's also tons, imo, of "cookie cutter" builds out there. Whirlwind barbarian, various cold-fire sorceresses, lightning sorceress, many variants of the summoner necromancer, the hammerdin, fury druid, wind druid, javazon, trap assassin. All those are the "overpowered" builds, all of them can be your chief magic find or rune find character. All of them can solo run parts (if not all) of hell difficulty without too much gear investment. And there's a bunch second-tier builds out there that aren't all that much worse. And if you haven't played in awhile, these builds will be alot of fun.
As Jmerry said, the only serious theorycrafting you have to do outside of the basic character sheet info are the speed breakpoints -- faster attack speed, faster cast rate. You just have to keep track of those. As for the loot tables, you don't actually have to study them that deeply. There's a few highest level areas and that's really all you have to memorize, and that's just for grinding in hell difficulty. And they're pretty intuitive. Moreover because of the enormous value of high runes, many of which can drop almost anywhere in hell, simply farming almost any area of hell on a high player count is giving yourself good odds with regards to drops. Sometimes it's even better to not farm the highest level areas, as you can solo those in public, high player count games. One key to pay attention to, for example, are the immunities in certain areas versus what your main damage output is.
My favourite aspect of D2 is hardcore play. A mix between MF builds and survival. I'm still not ready to risk a HC character in an online play. And I look at D2, because of its D1 roots, as a PvE game, not PvP, so this "ear" business doesn't interest me.
When I play D2 I don't look for "ideal" builds, I like to go with what I feel fun with and what will help the character to survive. Just as in other games, actually.
The first character on an account I would recommend to make a "cookie cutter" build; high survivability, cheap in terms of items, fast moving and/or fast killing (ie hammerdins). It will make all other characters more fun to play if you have one of these characters to item hunt for your other characters and do some trading. This is if you want to play MP I mean, SP is whole other bag.
Many builds in D2 require items to work, some require very expensive ones, but many builds require a decent selection of uniques, kits or rares with certain affixes. But when I say "work" I mean 8 player hell. Anything before or less than that doesn't require much other than patience.
Personally I've never played Ubers, I quit before that patch, so have no idea what it takes to fight them. I found the rune bloating and rune word inflation to break the delicate economy and item balance that was before that patch (was 1.13? Can't remember now). So I don't know anything what's required to do them, but one thing that I enjoyed so much about D2 (and miss in ie grim dawn) was how easy it was to find other players, join games and do quests together without any hassle. And it wasn't much PK'ing either, at least not back in the day when I played.
Hey everyone; I wasn't previously aware that there's a D2 hc thread around here, but since discovering it, I've gone back to the game in preparation for D2R. In the past, I've only played HC on the ladder (even some documented runs in an old German D2 forum), but I decided to go single player for this, so there would be no chance of lag. Now, this is completely umodded, which means that I can't use ladder only runewords, so no 2*spirit combo. This makes playing an elemental druid, which would be my usual choice, a little bit less attractive, so I'm going for a summoning necromancer instead, because I can at least get +2 to all skills via easily shoppable wands.
Enuhal, summoning necromancer, normal difficulty
My basic bulid is very simple: 20 raise skeleton, 20 skeleton mastery, 1 amplified damage. After that, one point into every summoning skill, decrepify and corpse explosion, before maxing out dim vision (my primary curse for hell difficulty). I didn't plan much further than that. Stats: Some strength for gear (it's 70 for now, in order to wear a nice pair of rare greaves), everything else into vitality. Goals for my gear: Getting some magic find early on (using topazes), gradually building up my resistances and some FHR in order to increase survivability in hell. Also, some early wands/heads with decent summoning skills.
This is the gear that I should be able to get: Stealth => Smoke, Lore, Ancient's Pledge => 3 PD shield, some shopped wand with +2 to necro skills, a staff with teleport charges, some belt with +life and resistances, boots with FRW and resistances, gloves, rings and an amulet with resistances (propably via the cube recipes). Also, some charms with FHR, FRW, resistances and life. Obviously, an act 2 might merc, propably with some kind of Honor weapon (unless I find something better). Not sure if I can get the runes for a decent piece of mercenary armor. Helmet might just be something with more resistances. The one things here I can't easily shop or farm might be the Lum rune for Smoke and a good base for Honor, though some pit runs might help with that.
In normal and nightmare, I plan to mostly play on players 8 (except maybe for duriel, diablo and bhaal), but in hell, I will switch entirely to players 1. I don't like to do experience farming all that much, and players 8 will help me avoid that.
Here we go: Making it to the Black Marsh, with a perfect tower/wp location:
Took me about 8 runs to get my stealth. Also got some more tal runes and a ral in the process:
I'm already using a topaz helmet for that extra mf, and a wand with +2 raise skeleton. Later on in act 1, I found a nice off-hand head to go with it:
Down goes Andariel:
And here we are in act 2, getting a defensive mercenary, which gives us a way to use our spare runes for some elemental damage on his weapon:
Rubies in the helmet, topazes in the armor (he tends to get quite a few killing blows), and a quick visit to Radament:
The maggot lair was not as terrible as it coul've been. Luckily, our only time we will have to do this without teleport charges:
And we were able to shop this amazing new wand:
Made our way to Duriel, and he dropped not one, but two Isenhart's Case:
Not much to tell in Act 3 - we're cruising through the game, as is to be expected. Shouldn't get into trouble until hell with a summoner. Oh, and another Isenhart's:
Mephisto finally dropped something different - still nothing useful, but different:
We did find a very nice ring in Act 4, with 29 fire resistance, which I equipped for diablo:
This saves me from having to craft one, using a perfect ruby. We also upgraded our merc weapon to a nice rare ethereal poleaxe. Diablo didn't give us any loot, but the ice caves in act 5 got our merc the valuable CNBF stat:
Aaaand our fourth Isenhart's Case:
The ancients were only able to get rid of a single skeleton, and Bhaal was the first to suffer our decrepify curse - and there we go, making our way to NM:
Early on in act 1, we found a nice ethereal lochaber axe for our merc - I ended up putting a decent jewel and an ith rune in there:
Later on, a green sharkskin belt: M'avinas Tenet, which, sadly, has no good stats except for some FRW. Still, I would use it for some time, and also to speed up shopping later on:
We had MF on our helmet, our boots, our gloves and some rings - added to by finding Milabrega's Orb:
In act 2, I made sure that I had the appropriate level in order to shop +2 necro skill wands - I did, and so we got our hands on this beauty:
Also bought a staff with teleport charges. Very helpful:
Now, we went back to Act 1, and players 1, in order to do some countess runs. I wanted to get my stealth, runes for honor and runes for Rhyme (in case of a good base, which I never ended up finding) - another perfect location:
Took me a while to get a sol rune:
I put Lore into a circlet (for style reasons), farmed a few more runes until I found Shael (and ended up finding enough Amn+Sol for 2 Honors) and moved on to act 2, where I got my hands on a great shield for blocking, but with no resistances or skills, I decided against keeping it:
Maggot Lair with teleport charges: So much easier. One if the reasons I didn't do gambling in this run: I wanted to be able to teleport without worrying about gold (also, for mercenary resurrections in act 2):
After checking an imbue guide, I waited until level 54 before taking a pair of chain boots to charsi on normal and nightmare (chances for triple res rares) - the results weren't anything special, sadly:
I kept my previous boots, which have FRW, magic find and poison resist. Also used a perfect topaz to craft a (weak) lightning resist ring:
Duriel got the players 1 + decrepify treatment:
Found my first exceptional unique in Act 3 - sadly, for melees. This would go on to become a theme:
Mephisto was weak enough, so I used AD for him.
Nightmare hellforge provided me with some decent loot - finally. Got enough gems to craft a prismatic amulet:
Also a Lem rune! Lem is great, because it allows me to craft Treachery for my merc. For now, I planned to farm a good base in Act 1 hell, together with the base for Honor. At level 65, I went back to act 2 in order to shop. This is the level you can buy those belts with up to 100 life and up to 30 to one resistance. Didn't get too lucky, and kept this one for now:
While shopping, I also found new gloves:
These boots are also decent:
I ended up selling them by accident, though, because I wanted to keep my old ones with MF while still only in nightmare difficulty, where resistances aren't as crucial yet. Wouldn't stay in NM for long, though: I made my way through act five to Bhaal, who was propably the first boss who forced me to tp out in order to raise a few new skeletons, but in the end, he stood no chance:
My goal for hell: Get to the pit and do runs until I get an elite base for honor and for treachery - and maybe some other items. Move on after that. I had the trouble of extra skill points, after maxing out dim vision. I decided to put them in monster resistance, in order to increase the survivability of my skeletons.
Things in hell started off pretty good in terms of loot - while making my way to the pit, I found this amulet:
Strictly better than the prismatic amulet I had crafted earlier on. Here are my resistances with this thing equipped, at the start of hell:
Not too bad, but not perfect. Notice that I haven't found a Lum rune yet (but two Io runes), so no smoke. Not much later, while travelling through the underground passage, I found the highest rune I have ever found in the entirety of my diablo 2 history:
Now, that was a surprise. Sadly, there is nothing I can do with a single Ohm rune. The closest might be Call to Arms if I also farm Ist and Mal - but I do not have the patience for hell countess runs with a gearless summoner. So the Ohm rune ended up in my stash. Next up, in the same area, an upgrade for my mercenary weapon:
We made it into the pit. In principle, this place is fairly easy, especially when scouting with the clay golem or casting dim vision at the edge of the screen. Generally, I tend to fill the whole screen with dim vision, waiting for my army to attack, using my low level AD on nearby enemies until a few of them are dead, now casting some more AD and finally corpse explosion until everything is gone. Dim vision is the most crucial part here, because it keeps me and my summons/merc safe from ranged opponents. Aside from dark archers, the pit has nothing dangerous in it. Still, some boss combinations can be tricky, and I ended up leaving the game throughout these pit runs at least a few times, when I realized that my mercenary was dead and the skeleton army crumbling. This is also where I had my closest call: Getting hit by a frost nova from a frost enchanted boss while under the effect of a conviction aura:
Luckily, the situation was stable after that, so no trouble. Now, for the loot - we started off fine, with our first elite unique weapon:
Nice, but not for us. After that, two superior monarchs, one of them really good:
Sadly, this is unmodded SP, so no spirit for us. I would end up finding some more white monarchs later on - never find them if you need them, always get them if you don't. In terms of a treachery base, I got this amazing thing early on:
Sadly, there's a big issue here: There's no way the merc will get enough strength to wear this - so, with heavy heart, I sold it. The hunt for a honor base went better: We eventually found a white mancatcher, guarantedd to get 5 OS from Larzuk:
Also found a white Diadem, which prompted us to due the hell imbue quest - the result, sadly, wasn't for us:
We made our Honor and also found an amazing belt while shopping:
We ended up finding green demonhide boots, a 3os ethereal cryptic axe, demon machine, goldwrap (which I used for the remaining pit runs), and a white cryptic axe, whould would make a slightly better honor, but I wanted to save NM Larzuk in case of an ethereal base. At this point, no good treachery base in sight, so I decided I would cap these runs at level 80. Still, quite a few to do until then.
When I found a 3OS tiara, I decided to give my merc a new helmet: using a 15 IAS jewel I had previously found, and ort + ral for much needed resistances:
Now, I did find an etheral loricated mail, with no open sockets - I used the socket recipe, hoping for 3 sockets, but got the more realistic 4 instead, eth-bugging it in the process - I decided to keep it in case I had no luck with treachery:
Still, I was mostly finding some exceptional uniques, but NEVER geared for casters. Quite a few of them in fact:
I also finally decided to replace my Ancient's Pledge with a 3 PD shield:
Thanks to some new charms, and that one, my new resistances:
In the end, I made it to level 80 without finding a single usable treachery base - so I ended up putting shael, shael (for FHR) and thul + tal in the loricated mail, in order to almost max out merc resistances and get him to the 30 fhr breakpoint:
One thing I DID find, though, was a third IO rune, so I went hunting for a flawed topaz in normal difficulty, in order to finally get my Smoke:
And that's it for item farming - both me and the merc had our resistances basically maxed, and Enuhal had above 1k life - seems save enough for hell:
Comments
They could show the break points for the currently equipped weapon and main skill. Otherwise it just becomes a statistic.
I feel like getting access to these advanced stats is already a huge step forward. Even if/when they do show frames on a screen, I still think players that care about min-maxing are going to take the time to learn the breakpoints -- i.e. consult online tables. So, imo, it's not *that* necessary.
I looked at Best Buy, and their bottom of the line (under $1000 USD) "gaming PC's" also don't meet system requirements. It says it "recommends" 16 GB system RAM and 6 GB (!) dedicated video RAM. Best Buy's lower end "gaming computers" have only 2 GB dedicated video RAM on some of the graphics cards.
It's hard to believe such an old game could be "remastered" to the point of needing that kind of computer power, but apparently this one is.
I'm sure that's very exciting to a lot of people with plenty of disposable income who already have or will soon buy top of the line new computers, but that's not me. I'm not even sure I would like BG3, and while I'm sure I would like D2:R and had been planning to buy it, I'm not paying $1200 or more for it!
The problem you're running into is being a fan of 20 year old games (or in the case BG, a series) being revived after two decades of tech advances. The particle effects alone will make Diablo 2: Resurrected require at least a 1060. 16 GB of RAM is pretty standard nowadays.
If you have a last-gen console, I would guess it will run D2 at 30 fps in 1080p with some pretty annoying load times. IF you can mange to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X, for $500 you will absolutely be able to play it in 4k at 60 fps. I may play this on console just for the simple fact that it allows you to have 4-6 skills on screen at one time and not have to use keybinds. Diablo 3 was surprisingly awesome on consoles, I don't see this being much different. That said, unless you get lucky or are willing to pay a 50% mark-up, getting one of those consoles in 2021 may be near impossible.
However, this is NOT what is going on with Diablo 2. David Brevik himself said a straight hi-res upgrade just wouldn't be feasible given how they made the game. The widescreen patch for Diablo 2 fans made was pretty much worthless, because while you may have been playing in 1920x1080, the enemy AI was still playing in 800x600, which could trivialize content. What Vicarious Visions has done is completely rebuild the game from a graphical standpoint, while essentially tying everything that happens on screen to the old version of Diablo 2 running underneath it. They stated when the game was announced that their goal was to remain 70% faithful to the original design, while adding 30% new touches to give the more pizazz.
To boil it down, this isn't just a situation where the assets from the original game have been rendered into more pixels. The characters, enemies, and locations have been rebuilt from scratch with modern graphics power. The game itself doing the numbers (damage, drops, randomization) is identical. But the visual portion has been completely replaced.
The game is about its mechanics, I still enjoy playing it with the old grainy graphics. They really need to give more content or features or balance.
@lroumen They NEED to launch the game as is. If the interest is sufficient, they might continue to tweak abilities and stuff.
They chose to dump all the effort into graphics with little additional features. That is not very balanced product design.
I mean, it's graphics alone that bloats this 2gb game to 30gb and ups requirements into the newer pc format.
I'll do a search on d2 resurrected for features.
The stash space of Plugy is unlimited. The stash space of D2: Resurrected is more on par with something like Torchlight 2 without mods. It's ENOUGH if you make enough characters to transfer the gear to, but it isn't endless. But as I've said 100 times, the stash in the original game is laughably small.
- new graphics
- 3d models
- wide screen, or at least 16:9 instead of 4:3
- surround sound
- more hotkeys
- recreated cinematics
- interface/menu change
- load old saves
- cross platform play
- auto gold
- slightly larger stash
- extended statistics screen
The price is 40usd.
I bought the originals for 18.99eur and 15.95eur, both in the first week of release, and with the exchange rates taken into account from then vs now, the price of resurrected is even slightly higher than what I spent. So that is a concern, hence I would need to care about the new features.
My assessment for me.
Graphics are impressive but not needed.
3d models, don't care.
Wide screen, don't care.
Sound, don't care.
Hotkeys, don't care.
Cinematics, don't care.
GUI, don't care.
Saves, don't care.
Cross platform, don't care.
Autogold, nice to have.
Slightly larger stash, can use plugy for that.
Extended statistics screen, nice to have.
Given the high price and little extra concent that I personally care about, I will pass.
I like the idea of the resurrection, but to entice me it would require item, skill and drop rebalancing. I cannot justify spending 40 usd, months and of play to find everything for the few runewords or uniques I would enjoy playing with. I don't even care about the high end stuff, finding the generic stuff already takes too much time. Without reduction it is just a time sink unfortunately.
This is why I hate modding and almost never use mods any more.
EDIT: Well, I did get it to work finally by downloading a patch to 1.14d. I have no idea why Blizzard doesn't make that the default download. Also, the PlugY documentation says it should be compatible with 1.14b, but whatever.
The game itself shows its age big time, and I wouldn't say it runs all that well (jerky motion, sluggish mouse response, stone age UI). I don't think I'd play it again without performance enhancements for modern systems, which is probably one of the big things D2:R is for. I just wish there were an in-between that doesn't call for a 6GB graphics card.
EDIT #2: Well, I took another look just to give the gameplay a bit more of a chance. I had a level 4 paladin come up from a previous test save file that was still in there for some reason. (2016 was the date on my old install.) I intended to run around and kill a few monsters around the rogue encampment just to feel it again, and wound up in there almost an hour. The gameplay sure is addictive still. I guess that's why people have still been playing it all these years.
And the game is addictive. Early game you level fast so the skill progress is fun. Then mid levels will drop fun loot (if you are lucky), and the end game sucks you in to challenge your skills.
If the overused line about Heroes of Might and Magic III is "just one more turn" then for Diablo II it should be "just one more Baal run". Everything you kill is pulling a lever on a slot machine, and the odds you will get what you are looking for on any one kill are probably lower than a casino jackpot. Even after MILLIONS of kills people still haven't seen certain drops. But the main thing D2 does is perfectly space out release of a chemical that gives certain people pleasure. Add on top of that a peerless soundtrack, a pretty damn good story for a ARPG, and the fact that you get to kill demons and undead with 7 different archetypes of fantasy heroes, and there you have it.
Other ARPGs have never gotten the specific formula just right, despite decades of refinement and more advanced systems. It's the once and future king. It will be the biggest gaming release of the fall by a wide margin, 20 years after it's initial release. That is a pretty unprecedented feat.
About a zillion kills... Can we go back to a creature kill counter like in diablo 1, and at certain cut offs you learn more about creature stats like resistances and health. I replayed it also a few months ago (after d2), and thought it unfortunate that that had been dropped for d2. It immersed me more into the game.
Maybe after the umpteenth bhaal run you finally get to see the stats of him on a hover. That would be cool, then you can see how often you would need to hit him with your puny attacks. I guess you need to be able to turn those extra stats off too.
I can see why some folks won't buy. I'm going to prepurchase here shortly. Once it comes out, I'm happy to online play with folks on hardcore mode if anyone is interested. I'm also happy to respond to questions on here about builds or overcoming challenges or just fun ways to play.
For me, the big "feature" is the upgrade from old battle.net to the new system. Unfortunately the normal D2 battle.net experience is rife with cheating. And I expect Blizzard to have more tools to police that aspect. So, for me, that's the biggest selling feature. It will also all be one giant realm too, as opposed to split. I look forward to ladder play that's going to be fun and challenging in a way that D2 hasn't been in a very long time.
Now where is that thumbs up emoticon...
Here's an honest question - how much min-maxing and theorycrafting goes into your (or anyone who is a BIG fan of D2) builds?
I played D2 back in my highschool days, and I genuinely enjoyed the game. It didnt change my world, and I havent really bothered to go back in a long time (I'm also one of those people who felt D3 was just fine. Maybe not great, but plenty good enough).
I'm tempted to get D2:R, as it looks really good, but I'm a little worried about the online aspect given that there's like 20ish years of people theorycrafting and figuring out the absolute best possible way to play the game - most of which it sounds like wont change.
Do you think there will be space for someone like me, who will put in the effort to be pretty good at the game but isnt so driven that I'll probably never research loot tables, and learn all of the ins and outs to squeeze every last bit from my character?
I guess I know the answer that initally, plenty of people wont know a ton about the game (like me). I guess I'm wondering what the playerbase will be like in a year, when maybe the only people still playing the games are the ones who have played for the last 20 years, plus a few pick ups that fell in love for the first time.
I mean, the difficulty only scales to a certain level. It isn't like Mythic Dungeons or Greater Rifts, which have essentially infinite difficulty scaling and, at a certain point, REQUIRE certain builds. The absolute highest difficulty is Hell with 8 players. But unlike the version that is played now with mods, that is only going to come into play if you actually team up with other people. Hell difficulty itself is certainly no cakewalk, but most classes have multiple way to defeat it that do not require the kind of bleeding edge theorycrafting we saw for essentially no reason in WoW Classic raids.
The seasons are just a race to level 99, and then total EXP points after that. It's far more of a fresh start than any type of real competition. Unless you want, there really isn't any incentive to play in multiplayer other than higher drop rates. Trading will be what it will be, but every patch from 1.12 on significantly increased the drops of the rarest runes, so it's not like it will be required either.
So yeah, just like they have for the last 15 years, certain people are gonna only use Hammerdins for Uber runs, have a Frozen Orb Sorceress for magic finding, and have Enigma on to teleport past everything. But none of this NEEDS to be done, and a person who spends enough time with their character can do everything in this game by themselves with items they find themselves. And the idea that you would need to be min/maxed to beat Uber Tristram with 4 or 5 people in a group just seems laughable to me.
The reason this is a question that is coming up is because of what we saw with WoW Classic, where streaming culture and years of min/maxing revealed the 100% optimal build for every class and situation, and since you were dependent on being accepted by 40 other people to experience content, you had to play along or not see it (even though no WoW Classic raid outside maybe Naxx actually required such optimization, and was never actually used at the time). Diablo II not only has far more randomization (after all, all loot in WoW is static), but nothing is DEPENDENT on grouping with other people. It just may take more time to go solo self-found. Whether you consider beating the game defeating Baal on Hell difficulty or defeating Uber Tristram, every class can do it by themselves with patience. It's just a grind. Which is the absolute essence of the series anyway. If you don't enjoy the grind, you won't play in the first place.
I PERSONALLY recommend people stay away from online aspects of most games because mulitplayer in general is just so unbelievably toxic (I think you do Mythic Dungeons, and this is why you likely have a tight-knit group of friends). The only series that has ever done PvP in an interesting way to me is Dark Souls. Alot of people like to talk about PvP in Diablo II, but it amounts to nothing but people flagging themselves in town and dueling. It's never been the core of the game, no matter how many people like to claim otherwise. Diablo II is a complete, endlessly fun experience whether you want to play with friends or are a complete introvert.
However, it just becomes a whole lot more efficient if you go with the well known builds.
For raw viability, that's only an issue if you're doing a weird variant build or taking on some of those special challenges. You can clear the game with some pretty low-power builds.
I might get the new version, if only so I can play the game on a computer that isn't fifteen years old. Of course, my current computer (six years old) probably isn't up to the system requirements ... but that's about my replacement cycle anyway. We'll see where I am at summer's end.
D2 multiplayer ... cooperative is the way to go, if you can get a group together. A lot of classes do have abilities built for party play, and higher-level monsters have immunities so overspecialized characters can't kill everything. Not that I've ever played in a party myself; I've always been single player only.
My personal suggestion for having fun with online, ladder play is to not chase a high ladder ranking. Instead it's the fact that you have to start with zero gear, zero levels every six months.
Personally, I've found that playing mostly self-found gear and solo running while in public games has been the most fun. With some cooperating and some trading in there. But, imo, just running pub Baal games just so you can get levels is just not a fun way to play. Trying to solo walk all of hell difficulty in hardcore mode is an extremely fun challenge.
I think every season you'll probably want one cookie-cutter min-max magic find character. But the beauty of ladder is that you'll get interesting and rare drops that can allow you to make some of the less effective or more rare builds out there. For example, last season I ended up, randomly, finding a bunch of martial arts assassin gear. It's not a popular build, and one I had never made before. It wasn't particularly strong, but I was able to push all the way into hell difficulty with her. Each new season can be an adventure that will be unlike the previous one, because of the random loot.
There's also tons, imo, of "cookie cutter" builds out there. Whirlwind barbarian, various cold-fire sorceresses, lightning sorceress, many variants of the summoner necromancer, the hammerdin, fury druid, wind druid, javazon, trap assassin. All those are the "overpowered" builds, all of them can be your chief magic find or rune find character. All of them can solo run parts (if not all) of hell difficulty without too much gear investment. And there's a bunch second-tier builds out there that aren't all that much worse. And if you haven't played in awhile, these builds will be alot of fun.
As Jmerry said, the only serious theorycrafting you have to do outside of the basic character sheet info are the speed breakpoints -- faster attack speed, faster cast rate. You just have to keep track of those. As for the loot tables, you don't actually have to study them that deeply. There's a few highest level areas and that's really all you have to memorize, and that's just for grinding in hell difficulty. And they're pretty intuitive. Moreover because of the enormous value of high runes, many of which can drop almost anywhere in hell, simply farming almost any area of hell on a high player count is giving yourself good odds with regards to drops. Sometimes it's even better to not farm the highest level areas, as you can solo those in public, high player count games. One key to pay attention to, for example, are the immunities in certain areas versus what your main damage output is.
Happy to give more advice on online play.
When I play D2 I don't look for "ideal" builds, I like to go with what I feel fun with and what will help the character to survive. Just as in other games, actually.
Many builds in D2 require items to work, some require very expensive ones, but many builds require a decent selection of uniques, kits or rares with certain affixes. But when I say "work" I mean 8 player hell. Anything before or less than that doesn't require much other than patience.
Personally I've never played Ubers, I quit before that patch, so have no idea what it takes to fight them. I found the rune bloating and rune word inflation to break the delicate economy and item balance that was before that patch (was 1.13? Can't remember now). So I don't know anything what's required to do them, but one thing that I enjoyed so much about D2 (and miss in ie grim dawn) was how easy it was to find other players, join games and do quests together without any hassle. And it wasn't much PK'ing either, at least not back in the day when I played.
Enuhal, summoning necromancer, normal difficulty
My basic bulid is very simple: 20 raise skeleton, 20 skeleton mastery, 1 amplified damage. After that, one point into every summoning skill, decrepify and corpse explosion, before maxing out dim vision (my primary curse for hell difficulty). I didn't plan much further than that. Stats: Some strength for gear (it's 70 for now, in order to wear a nice pair of rare greaves), everything else into vitality. Goals for my gear: Getting some magic find early on (using topazes), gradually building up my resistances and some FHR in order to increase survivability in hell. Also, some early wands/heads with decent summoning skills.
This is the gear that I should be able to get: Stealth => Smoke, Lore, Ancient's Pledge => 3 PD shield, some shopped wand with +2 to necro skills, a staff with teleport charges, some belt with +life and resistances, boots with FRW and resistances, gloves, rings and an amulet with resistances (propably via the cube recipes). Also, some charms with FHR, FRW, resistances and life. Obviously, an act 2 might merc, propably with some kind of Honor weapon (unless I find something better). Not sure if I can get the runes for a decent piece of mercenary armor. Helmet might just be something with more resistances. The one things here I can't easily shop or farm might be the Lum rune for Smoke and a good base for Honor, though some pit runs might help with that.
In normal and nightmare, I plan to mostly play on players 8 (except maybe for duriel, diablo and bhaal), but in hell, I will switch entirely to players 1. I don't like to do experience farming all that much, and players 8 will help me avoid that.
Here we go: Making it to the Black Marsh, with a perfect tower/wp location:
Early on in act 1, we found a nice ethereal lochaber axe for our merc - I ended up putting a decent jewel and an ith rune in there:
There we go - now for the hard part.
My goal for hell: Get to the pit and do runs until I get an elite base for honor and for treachery - and maybe some other items. Move on after that. I had the trouble of extra skill points, after maxing out dim vision. I decided to put them in monster resistance, in order to increase the survivability of my skeletons.
Things in hell started off pretty good in terms of loot - while making my way to the pit, I found this amulet:
When I found a 3OS tiara, I decided to give my merc a new helmet: using a 15 IAS jewel I had previously found, and ort + ral for much needed resistances: