File fiddling on D2

[unobeef]

Im an old hand at D2 who just decided to rejoin battlenet.

Last time, I recall, by copying music.mpq from the playdisk, it was a good move as the disk wasnt needed after starting play.

1) With LOD (which Ive just got recently), which files should I copy over to the D2 folder?

2) what do I do again to get rid of duriel's sound as you enter his tomb? (Im hardcore, I recall if you didnt do this move, duriels voice greeting would cause lag and kill you)

3) any other file moves I should do?

4) is there a no-cd hack avail?

thanks a great deal for your help

my old D2 hardcore barb was 'callofthewild'

[Skie_M]

Copy ALL the .dll files from the CD to your installation directory ... click "no" for each time it pops up asking if you want to overwrite a file...

Can't get rid of duriel's voice ... can do what I just mentioned to put it on your hard drive so that it plays much much faster...

See #1.

Hacks are a bad thing ... Hacks are always a bad thing ... That having been said, there are good programs out there called Virtual CD-ROM drives. Several of the better ones are Alcohol 120% and Deamon Tools. These can allow you to mount an ISO of your LoD disk as an image file on your hard drive ... essentially giving you a 150x cd-rom drive that never has to spin up. Use of the proper security emulation is neccessary, with D2/LoD (Securom version 4.x, specifically).

[Zingydex]

[nit] Technically, programs that let you play without the CD fall into the category of cracks, not hacks. [/nit]

Duriel death via lag often functions much the same way as most stair traps do - the automatic slowdown when you enter a new area gives the monsters a head start in doing whatever they have planned. Best advice I can give is have a throwaway minion/merc handy to absorb the initial charge.

I believe there actually are gimmicks you can add to the startup process to make the game run without sound effects and/or music, but you'd need someone more familiar with that sort of thing to get it to work.