I feel guilty advertising my mod here

[Brother Laz]

And I thought it wasn't worth bumping this dead topic to announce 1.19... then someone posts in it. Either way,
1.19 out!.

Normally I'm leery of mods that propose to raise the bar difficulty-wise in an already-difficult game.

Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction is not a difficult game. It is just full of one-hit kills.

There is nothing 'hard' about getting killed in one unavoidable iron maiden hit in mid-zeal, and if you are built for it (dim vision, shockwave, CoS, mindblast, most minions), you can go through many parts of the game without taking any damage at all. The easily available, endless back to back full heals from rejuvenation potions ensure you won't ever get killed unless it happens in one or two hits, so that's the approach Blizzard took (gloams...).

Out of sheer curiosity I tried this one, and it was a fairly pleasant surprise.

Thanks. :blush:

Only one complaint thus far - the background for the menus and subscreens has got to go.

You're not the first to report this, and it's typically due to the player having his brightness and contrast set to maximum. See the screenshot on the first page: it's not really bright or 'white' to begin with, and not all that much brighter than the default interface, which is actually really dark when you think about it.