Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

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Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Developer(s)	Blizzard North
Publisher(s)	Blizzard Entertainment Sierra Entertainment
Latest version	1.11b (September 13, 2005)
Release date(s)	(PC) / / / June 29, 2001 (Mac) / June 29, 2001 June 29, 2001
Genre(s)	Action RPG
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Mature PEGI: 16+ ELSPA: 15+ OFLC: MA15+ OFLC/NZ: M and R16+
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS Mac OS X
Media	CD-ROM
System requirements	Mac OS: G3 processor or better, System 8.1 or later, 64MB RAM plus Virtual Memory, 650MB drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, 256 color display capable of 800x600, Diablo II Windows: 233 MHz Pentium or better, 32MB RAM, 650MB drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX compatible video card, Diablo II
Input	Keyboard, Mouse

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (commonly abbreviated LoD) is an expansion pack for the popular hack and slash Action role-playing game Diablo II. Unlike the original Diablo's expansion pack, Diablo: Hellfire, it is an official expansion designed by Blizzard North.

More than a standard expansion, Lord of Destruction not only added content in the form of new character classes and an additional scenario, it also dramatically revamped the gameplay of the existing Diablo II for solo and especially multiplayer. As a result, LoD is largely considered a "must-buy" instead of only being an addition, making it a huge multiplayer success and one of the most successful expansion packs of all time.

[edit] Story

The story continues where Diablo II ended. Two of the three Prime Evils, Mephisto and Diablo, have been defeated and their Soulstones have been destroyed, preventing their return. However, the narrator Marius was tricked into surrendering the last Soulstone to a false Archangel Tyrael which was revealed to be Baal, the third brother and last remaining Prime Evil. Marius was subsequently murdered.

Baal is leading an invasion against the northern barbarian lands. His first attack, against the city of Sescheron, capital city of the Barbarian homelands, leads to the stage where Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is set: Harrogath. Situated at the base of Mount Arreat, it is home to the humans who are sworn protectors of the mountain. Baal is currently besieging the city and destroying any settlements along the way towards the mountain's summit.

Baal, the Lord of Destruction, is seeking the Worldstone, a massive crystal of great energies, built to prevent the High Heavens and Burning Hells from consuming the mortal realm completely into their respective folds. It is the source of all the Soulstones and their powers, so Baal wishes to obtain it, corrupt it and complete his brothers' plan to conquer the mortal realm and use it as a staging area to besiege the Heavens in the endless war between the two.

[edit] Features

Lord of Destruction adds a number of new features to the core gameplay of Diablo II. These include:

• A fifth act taking place in and around Mount Arreat in the northern Barbarian Highlands, with an additional act boss, Baal.
• Ethereal items: These items do not fully exist in the mortal plane and appear translucent to the human eye. Because of this, they cannot be repaired and will eventually "deteriorate", so they cannot be used anymore, but they also have better characteristics and lower requirements than their repairable equivalents. However, some magical ethereal items are self-repairing, and some have sockets, and can be made indestructible by inserting a certain rune.
• Runes: stones that give powerful attributes to a socketed item when placed in it or even more powerful bonuses when placed in a certain order forming a "runeword" (see Rune Words section below for more information).
• Jewels: items serving a similar purpose to gems in that they can be placed in socketed items, but which have random characteristics as opposed to the set characteristics of gems and runes.
• Charms: items giving boosts to character's stats when kept in the inventory of the player.
• Two new character classes: the Assassin and the Druid.
• An expanded private stash for storing items (double the size of the Diablo II stash).
• An alternate mainhand/offhand setup that can be switched between via a hotkey in gameplay.
• Hirelings (mercenaries) as well as summons can now follow the player outside of the Act in which they were hired. They can also be equipped with armor, a helm, and a hireling-specific weapon (as well as a shield in one case). Hirelings also gain experience and can be resurrected (for a price proportional to their level) when killed.
• Class-specific items: new items that only a specific character class can use. These items often contain class-specific bonuses, often adding additional skill points for that character class.
• Elite items: more powerful versions of items following the Normal and Exceptional items.
• New unique items, including many Exceptional and Elite Uniques.
• New set items, including sets that use Class-specific items (ie. only one character class can complete certain sets).
• The game can now be played at 800x600 resolution, up from the standard 640x480.

[edit] Rune words

Placing the runes "Jah", "Ith" and "Ber" (in that order) into an armour item with exactly three sockets produces the powerful Rune word bonus "Enigma".

Rune words are a combination of specific runes that are inserted into a socketed item in a specific order, producing an enhancing effect on the item. Rune words are especially powerful in versions 1.10 and 1.11, although many of the more potent, higher-level rune words are restricted to realm ladder play only.

[edit] Act V Boss Levels

There are several major bosses in Act V.

The player fights Shenk the Overseer in the Bloody Foothills, just outside Harrogath. He is an "Overseer" unique monster and is surrounded by Enslaved.

The player has to find and execute the fallen Barbarian elder Nihlathak in the Halls of Vaught. Nihlathak has the power to summon Ice Boars, as well as the Necromancer skill "Corpse Explosion". Nihlathak also possesses the Sorceress skill "Teleport" and the Druid "Arctic Blast" ability.

The Ancients await the player on the Arreat Summit, blocking further progress into the Worldstone Keep. The player must defeat all three Ancients in a single round of combat. Korlic the Protector utilizes "Leap Attack" in conjunction with a large polearm, Talic the Defender uses an axe and shield, and is a master of "Whirlwind", and Madawc the Guardian is skilled in the arts of thrown weapons, and uses the skill "Shout".

The player fights Baal in The Worldstone Chamber, after killing his pack of minions in the Throne of Destruction. Tyrael appears after Baal is dead, congratulating the player and opening a portal to the completion of the game and commencing of the next difficulty level.

[edit] New Classes

One of the main features of Lord of Destruction is the addition of two new character classes.

[edit] Assassin

The Assassin

The Assassin relies on her martial arts skills and her ability to lay passive traps. Her melee attacks rely heavily on timing and skillful switching of skills, whilst her traps suit a fire-and-forget style of gameplay.

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 stun and confuse 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.

The Trap tree provides a few direct attacks, and more importantly, a number of summonable traps. The traps are stationary minions who cannot be targetted by enemies - they will attack any hostile target in range a certain number of times before breaking. Traps are generally either based on fire or lightning, though the level 30 skill Death Sentry both shoots lightning bolts and uses a skill similar to the Necromancer's Corpse Explosion. The blade trap skills are notable in that they confer a portion of the Assassin's melee damage into their own damage - the Blade Fury, easily the most useful of the three, does 3/4 of the Assassin's normal melee damage, but at a large range and at a very fast rate.

The Martial Arts tree consists of charge-up skills and finishing moves. Attacking with a charge-up skill builds up charges on the Assassin, up to three per skill, and then the finishing move releases the charges in a single powerful blow. With the exception of the final charge-up skill, Phoenix Strike, however, each of the charge-up skills is no more effective than the normal attack; only the finishing blow receives any bonus (Phoenix Strike has a greater Attack Rating than the normal attack, in addition to building its charges). The charge-up skills include attacks like Blades of Ice and Fists of Fire, which add elemental damage to the finishing blow, and also skills like Cobra Strike, which adds life and mana stealing to the finishing attack. The ultimate charge-up, Phoenix Strike, uses a different spell for each level of charge (a Meteor for the first, arcing lightning for the second, and a Frozen Orb-like explosion of ice for the third), and typically requires practiced timing for releasing the combo points efficiently. The finishing blows are, for the most part, kicks, such as Dragon Talon, which releases a number of kicks in quick succession, and Dragon Flight, which teleports on to a target and kicks them, releasing any charges. Despite this intricate system, however, many Martial Arts Assassins will use Dragon Talon exclusively, as a kind of Zeal/Smite hybrid.

[edit] Druid

The Druid

The Druid specialises in nature-based magic, which provide a very large spectrum of possible character types. The Druid can effectively be melee, both small and fast and large and heavy-hitting, or any of several types of caster, with direct damage spells, offensive minions, and support minions. Druids are characterized by large life, even when built like a caster.

The Elemental tree consists of the magic of earth and sky. The 'storm' spells have effects like Cyclone Armor, which protects the Druid from the elements, and Tornado, a vortex of swirling winds that moves somewhat randomly and can deal massive damage. The 'fire' spells are more earthly than the Sorceress's, with spells like Fissure and Volcano. The final Elemental spells are Hurricane and Armageddon; both create a storm that follows the Druid, damaging all who come too close. Hurricane is more consistent, damaging and chilling enemies within range. Armageddon, on the other hand, rains meteorites from the sky around the Druid, dealing substantial fire damage to any unlucky enough to be caught under them. Armageddon is also notable in that it is the only skill in the game that requires each and every other skill in the tree, including Hurricane, which is also a level 30 spell. In the v1.11 patch, "Windies" are very popular, as they are extremely durable for a caster, and a fully synergized Tornado can do very high damage, while Hurricane provides not insubstantial damage, and slows nearby monsters.

The Summoning tree governs the calling of natural allies to the Druid. Druid summons are notable for often being more for support than traditional minions. While the wolves and grizzly that the Druid can summon are traditional melee summons, the other summoning spells are a bit different. The first summon, Raven, does marginal damage, but is far more useful for the fact that they cannot be attacked, and will blind enemies by pecking out their eyes. In addition, the Druid can summon one of three Spirits, which provide Paladin-like Auras. While Spirit of Barbs is practically useless, Oak Sage provides massive life bonuses for all allies within range, making the Druid very party friendly. The Heart of Wolverine greatly boosts melee attack abilities, but usually the extra life afforded by Oak Sage is more valuable. Druids also can summon one of three vines. The Poison Creeper lurks underground, poisoning enemies as necessary. At high levels, the Poison Creeper can clear rooms of enemies in Hell difficulty by itself, a feat no other single minion can duplicate, and even at low levels, it is surprisingly durable, as it spends most of its time underground, where enemies cannot attack it. It is also smart enough to stay away from danger if everything has already been poisoned, making it far smarter than most minions in the game, second only to the Amazon's Decoy. The other vines, Carrion Vine and Solar Creeper, consume enemy corpses for life or mana for the Druid, respectively.

The Shape-Shifting tree gives the Druid the ability to become an animal himself, with gigantic bonuses to life. Druids may either become a Werewolf, who is small and quick, or a Werebear, the hulking behemoth. Each form has its own special attacks, such as the Werewolf's Feral Rage, which causes the Druid to get faster and faster as he continues to attack enemies, and adds life steal to his attacks, and the Werebear's Maul, which makes the Druid swing harder and harder as he attacks, and adds Stun to his attacks. The two forms also share attacks, such as Hunger, which only does 25% damage, but has very large life and mana steal built in. It is worth noting that all of the Druid's equipment functions as normal when shifted (though the shifted forms have different animations and therefore different speeds for everything), so he continues to have his item's stats, and he can still block, for example. On the other hand, the vast majority of spells cannot be cast while in Wereform. The Druid's Summons, and the spell Armageddon, are the only exceptions to this.

[edit] Class histories

Main article: Diablo II: Lord of Destruction Class Histories

[edit] Critical response

This section is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Lord of Destruction is listed at Metacritic with an average rating of 87 (with one perfect score from Computer Games Online).^[1] It is described at Metacritic as an expansion that "should reinforce the staying power of an already legendary RPG." Gamespot awarded the game an 8.2 out of 10,^[2] IGN awarded the game an 8.8 out of 10^[3] and Gamespy awarded the game an 88 out of 100.^[4]

Within the Diablo 2 community the expansion caused some controversy when Blizzard patched the original game with a patch that made Nightmare and Hell difficulties particularly harder than before; some players felt that Blizzard was effectively forcing them to upgrade to the expansion in order to find the items and gain the abilities necessary to deal with the new challenges.^[5]

Many players are also angered by restrictions set on how often games can be made: creating too many games in too short a time span results in a temporary ban of that player's IP address. This was implemented in an attempt to stop bots, which would do incessant runs of certain characters, and to soften the impact of such play on the servers; many players will receive a temp ban often, as the most effective forms of item-finding involve repeatedly killing the same boss characters as quickly as possible. More recently, the Battle.Net servers have been configured to drop games in which players get their latency too high, in an effort to prevent duping. While it is effective at preventing the public dupe method, and therefore has done a lot to reduce lag on the Realms, some players find that they get dropped during normal play, and others abuse the system to maliciously drop others from play.

[edit] Patch history

The expansion was released in Summer 2001 as version 1.07, the same version as the beta, but the 1.08 patch was available for download on the same day. Within a few months, 1.09 was released. This was the last patch for two years.

The much hyped patch 1.10 was released on October 28, 2003, which radically changed gameplay. The main change was the introduction of "synergy" bonuses that would increase the power of one skill by investing in a different skill. The difficulty of monsters (especially in the Nightmare and Hell difficulties) was increased accordingly. This resulted in a greatly reduced variety of "builds" for each character, since only specific, greatly "synergised" skills were capable of dealing the large amount of damage needed to complete the game. Several high level unique items and new runewords were also added. While the most powerful runewords often required multiple rare runes, duping of rare runes made these high-end runewords widely available to the public. A new hidden Realms-only quest was also introduced. When enough Stone of Jordan rings had been sold back to NPCs on a server, Uber Diablo would appear, dropping a powerful unique Annihilus charm upon death. The Annihilus charm was untradeable and only one could be held on one character at a time. The general consensus amongst Diablo II players is that this quest was introduced to reduce the number of "duped" Stone of Jordan rings on the realms. Many believe that this plan has backfired, as the Annihilus charm is much more valuable than the Stone of Jordan, and that they have caused more duped Stone of Jordans.

The patch was preceded by the Rust Storm, a sweeping clean-up of most hacked, duped, and otherwise illegitimate items on the Realms. The patch also introduced the Ladder, officially a competitive mode of Realm play that lets the player record his or her name on a list akin to the "High Score" listing in arcade video games. Several runewords are only available on Ladder. The Ladder is reset periodically – when this happens, all Ladder characters are converted to normal Non-Ladder characters. This creates a separate, initially 'dupe-free', economy on Ladder, and a fresh and equal start for all Ladder players. It was reset twice in two years, at which time a batch of new rune words was also released. The last reset was on August 5, 2005, for the release of patch 1.11

Patch 1.11 was a surprise for many Diablo II players, since many people from the team who made the game (and the patches up to 1.10) had left the company to found Flagship Studios. The patch introduced, among various enhancements and minor bug fixes, another Uber-quest – this time involving all three Prime Evils. All of them must be killed to receive the Hellfire Torch, another unique, untradeable charm. On face value this charm is more powerful than its predecessor, but some players contest that the slight bonus to experience gained makes the Annihilus charm more valuable, especially when both the difficulty involved in obtaining it, and the high experience penalties in 1.11 are taken into consideration. The Annihilus charm is far rarer than the Hellfire Torch, since the Annihilus charm can only be gained with the collective sale of some 100 Stones of Jordan (exact numbers are 80-120), an expensive ring (and an item that was heavily duplicated by exploiting bugs in earlier patches, as it serves as a form of high-end currency). The Torch however just requires a player able to slay certain bosses on Hell difficulty, which is a much cheaper (albeit, harder) method.

In early June 2006 there was a server side patch installed that allowed the movement of Gheeds Fortune Grand Charm, Hellfire Torch Large Charms, and the Annihilus Small Charm into the trading window. A few weeks later, another server-side patch was introduced that fixed a notorious bug involving the illegitimate stacking of damage-dealing auras on a mercenary.

In mid-August 2006, a Blizzard Representative posted a list of suggestions about things players have wanted to change. He stated that a patch is not guaranteed, but it is looking more hopeful, along with a Ladder reset (read a few paragraphs up for more information about Ladders).^[6]

In mid-February 2007, a server-side patch was installed which caused games to be dropped if anyone in the game's ping got too high. This was implemented in order to prevent a lag-based duplication method released to the public at the end of 2006 or the beginning of 2007. While dupe methods have existed for some time, most were known only by small groups, and the secret to them were closely guarded. This particular method, however, became widely known, resulting in extremely large amounts of lag on all realms as many attempted to lag the servers sufficiently to execute the dupe. While many find the game to play much more smoothly after the patch, many have also complained about being dropped from games during normal, non-abusive play.

[edit] Hacking problems

While Battle.Net recently implemented a server-side patch to prevent the public lag-based dupe method, very large numbers of dupes still exist in the economy, and it is likely that duping is still possible, though there is no publicly known method.

Almost all high runes, that is Vex, Ohm, Lo, Sur, Ber, Jah, Cham, and Zod, as well as the majority of Ists and a large percentage of Ums and Mals, that are available for trade are dupes. Nearly all Stones of Jordan, Crowns of Ages, and Tyrael's Mights are similarly dupes. Items with perfect stats, such as 40% Enhanced Damage/15% Increased Attack Speed Jewels and 5% Faster Hit Recovery/5% Resist All Small Charms, are also almost all dupes. Extremely powerful rare and crafted items with known names, such as Imp Shanks (rare boots) and Armageddon Slippers (crafted boots), are literally all dupes, as the original was unique and certainly has never dropped again. Hacked or bugged items, like Wizardspike Gloves (a pair of gloves which has the stats of the Wizardspike Bone Knife) are always dupes, since it is very uncommon for items like these to occur. An exception is e-bugged items, that is ethereal items which have been socketed using the Horadric Cube. In a prior patch, ethereal items would lose their ethereal bonus when socketed, however this has been fixed, with the side effect of the bonus being doubled when the recipe is used. This has been unresolved, and as such new, unique (i.e. not duped) e-bugged items can, and are, made fairly often.

Blizzard has implemented a process known as the Rust Storm to delete dupes. While the 'active' Rust Storm has only been run a couple of times, and has not been run in a long time, it did, in fact, delete all dupes, regardless of attempts to mask their illegitimacy.^{[citation needed]} On the other hand, the 'passive' version is run every time a character leaves a game, and may or may not delete any dupes that character has. It can be avoided, and it will not delete all dupes every time it is run. Players may seek a 'temporary perm' for their duped items before leaving the game, avoiding the 'passive' Rust Storm^[7]. It should, perhaps, be noted that players can now fairly easily drop others from a game (basically by attempting the patched dupe method), and some players who play without dupes and are hostile towards those who do will, on occasion, drop games for the sole purpose of preventing dupe users from 'perming' before they leave the game, causing many of their duped items to be deleted by the 'passive' Rust Storm.^{[citation needed]}

The overall acceptance of dupes and other cheat items, and Blizzard's own inability or unwillingness to police their own trading forums resulted in the creation of several unofficial forums. Of those, only one is considered "Legit."

[edit] Online Play

Battle.net is the online realm of chat for the Blizzard games. Starcraft, Warcraft(not WoW), Broodwar, Diablo, and Diablo II all share the system of chat-line. The several channels on every server have a variety of people. From chatting about the game to on-line role-playing. (East, West, Asia, Europe). The most used servers for such things are indefinately East and West. Other than the given channels one could choose to join "Town Square" or another private channel. The popular Blizzard games have a vast outlet for the social.

[edit] Chat Gem

There exists a purple chat gem that is only visible when inside of a chat channel. There are many theories about the purpose of this gem. There is, however, no purpose for this gem aside from a meaningless message. The gem toggles between an active and inactive state. When activated, a chat message appears stating, "Gem Activated" and likewise, a message "Gem Deactivated" is shown when it become inactive. It is also known to say "Moo" and "Perfect Gem Activated", however, the former is rumored to have been removed in a recent patch.

The gem is a common Troll used by trolls to entertain themselves in chat channels. Some are listed below, and all of them are proven false:

• Activating the gem increases the rate of gem shrines in play.
• The gem can be leveled by pressing it multiple times. A higher level gem increases the players magic find.
• Activating the gem increases the amount of gold/drops/rare monsters in game.
• Activating the gem grants administrative abilities in the chat channel.
• Activating the gem allows more games to be played before being disconnected.

[edit] References

1. ^ Diablo II: Lord of Destruction at Metacritic. Retrieved on July 28, 2006.
2. ^ http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/diablo2expansionsetlod/index.html?q=diablo%20II
3. ^ http://pc.ign.com/objects/015/015348.html
4. ^ http://archive.gamespy.com/reviews/july01/d2lod/
5. ^ http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/diablo2expansionsetlod/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary%3Breview&page=2
6. ^ "Diablo II General Discussion" retrieved October 7, 2006
7. ^ http://www.nickd2.com/index2.php?o=perm

[edit] External links

• Official site
• DiabloII.net
• Planet Diablo: Lord of Destruction
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction at MobyGames
• Diablo Wiki - a Wikia of the Diablo series