cickentrigger

[Rhydderch Hael]

...I gotta practice finding my way around all the different maps and stuff, as well as (and I've already learned that this is the hardest part!!!) get used to dealing with boss monsters in Hell diff. WITHOUT knowing ahead of time what their abilities are!!!! ...

I know what you mean about re-learning the game's tactics. Not to say that I was using anything that generated sloppy tactics—I've been out of it so long that I had no tactics to fall upon.

LoD does something funky to endgame confrontations: all the neat little gizmos and doodads built into the Expansion allows a player to prgress through the game faster. No one can deny that tossing an Act III merc into Act IV made blasting through the Plains of Despair and the City of the Dammed a much easier proposition from stock D2. Charms and whatnot got me through the game faster than I ever went before in the classic version, which only made me hit the wall ever so harder. The Chaos Sanctuary, which I had handled so confidently before, became a timid crawl-through as I was suddenly forced to re-establish the "creep forward a step—fight—creep forward a step" style of battle I had forgotten so long before in D1. If DeSeis hadn't humbled me to the fact at how underdeveloped my charcter truly was, Diablo was surely happy enough to pound that fact into me. Over and over and over again.

Ran through about 24 TP shots, and burned away 140K in gold with Ressurects, penalties, and potions. But that's to be expected with a level 25 Paladin with no Resists, no appreciable DR ("Chance that Diablo will hit you: 95%"), a mediocre sword, and a level 1 Concentration aura to power it. The fellow's so weak, he couldn't heft the Rare flamberge Big D dropped when he finally dropped.

I can appreciate the neccessity of re-learning tactics, and hope your course goes better than mine. I'm so rusty that, after the fight with Diablo, I came back to the Pan Fortress destitute, devoid of potions and in need of some good repair. I got back to my stash to deposit the gold I garned from the sale of the Diablo loot, and what do I see there? A whole column's worth of Full Rejuv potions I had completely forgotten about. During the Diablo fight I was scraping up gold from the Soulstone drop (selling a PRuby) in order to buy new potions from Jamella—and I had those purples sitting stupidly back in my stash. All the better a reminder to myself that I really suck at this... ;)