Diablo Monsters

This page houses general information about the monsters in Diablo and Hellfire. Click to the individual monster pages for full stats and images, along with some strategy and other tidbits. See chapter 5 in Jarulf's Guide for even more detailed formulae than this wiki provides.

Monster Type

Monsters in Diablo and Hellfire are divided into three types: Animals, Demons, and Undead. The type of a given monster is generally easy to tell in Diablo, though the lines are more blurred in Hellfire's bestiary. Generally speaking, Undead are skeletons and zombies, Animals are lower life forms like scavengers and bats, and Demons are the more advanced humanoid enemies like Knights and Mages. The monster type is listed on every individual monster page and every boss page, and these designations do matter. Here's a quick list of regular monsters and special boss monsters, divided by type.

Animals	Undead	Demons
Fallen Ones	Skeletons	Balrogs	Lightning Demons
Horned Demons	Skeleton Archers	Gargoyles	Mages
Hell Spawns *	Skeleton Captains	Goat Men	Magma Demons
Scavengers	Zombies	Goat Men Archers	Overlords
Spitting Terrors	The Skeleton King	Hidden	Succubi
Winged Fiends	--	Knights	Vipers
--	--	The Butcher	Diablo

• * Hell Spawns are Animals in Hellfire. All other Succubi are Demons.
• ** Familiars are Demons. All other Winged Fiends are all Animals.

Hellfire Monsters

Animals	Undead	Demons
Arachnon	Arch Lich	Biclops
Devil Kin Brute	Bone Demons	Crypt Demon
Firebat	Gravedigger	Felltwin
Hellbat	Lich	Flesh Thing
Lashworm	The Shredded	Hellboar
Necromorb	Skullwings	Hork Spawn
Psychorb	--	Reaper
Satyr Lord	--	The Defiler
Spider Lord	--	Hork Demon
Stinger	--	Na-Krul
Tomb Rat	--	--
Torchant	--	--
Venomtail	--	--

Weapons and Damage Determination

One of the main factors when evaluating monster type is determining weapon damage bonuses and penalties. Swords do 150% damage to Animals and 50% to Undead, while clubs do 150% damage to Undead and 50% to Animals. Demons are 100% to both, and bows, axes, staves, and spells do 100% damage to all three types.

Weapon Type	Animals	Demons	Undead
Swords	150% damage	100% damage	50% damage
Clubs	50% damage	100% damage	150% damage
Axes/Bows/Staves Hands/Feet/Magic	100% damage	100% damage	100% damage

Monster type also determines if a monster will take damage from the spell Holy Bolt. Only undead monsters (and Diablo) take damage from it; other monsters can not be touched at all by the spell. Also, some weapons (mostly Uniques) have higher AC or deal bonus damage against one type of monster. For instance, Bloodslayer, the unique broad axe, deals 200% damage to Demons.

Hover Information

Flesh Thing stats revealed at 15 and 30 kills.

Monsters in Diablo and Hellfire immediately display their names when hovered on, and the game keeps track of how many of that monster you have killed in that game. (The counter will run for multiple games in the same multiplayer play session.) Information about their resistances and immunities is displayed once you have 15 kills, and after 30 kills you are shown the hit points for that monster type.

Incidentally, the resistances and immunities are correctly displayed, but the hit points are only approximate, and are considerably inaccurate on Nightmare and Hell, thanks to various bugs in the way the game adds extra hit points for higher difficulty levels. The basic problem is that the hit points displayed are pulled from one data table, but it's not the same data as that which the game actually uses to create the monsters. The actual, accurate, hit points are displayed in the tables on the various monster pages in this wiki.

Monster Counter Work Around

There's a slightly complicated way to trick the game into counting your monster kills forever with a multiplayer character. Thanks to Lochnar for the following method:

The first time you play your multi player character and want to tally kill counts:

1. Start the game(s) as always and play through for that session
2. When done with the game gather up all your goodies as you would any other time you finished a game
3. Instead of selecting Quit Diablo from the menu, select New Game
4. Cancel out of each selection until you get back to the screen for single or multi play
5. Select single player
6. Select new hero and create your kill count character
7. When the game is started, don't bother playing
8. Select save game from the menu
9. Quit Diablo

All games after that which you want to tally:

1. Select single player
2. Load your saved game for your kill counter character (not new game)
3. When the game has loaded select new game from the menu
4. Cancel back to the single or multi player selection
5. Start your multi player game (any difficulty)
6. When done with session (can be any number of multi games but no single player loads) select new game
7. Cancel back to single player selection
8. Pick your kill counter character but select new game NOT load saved game (load will revert kill count to that save)
9. When new game with kill counter character has started, select save game

Monster Resistances

Monster resistances in Diablo and Hellfire come in only three values. 0%, 75%, or 100%/immune. Monsters who do not display a resistance have no resistance and take the full elemental damage. (The damage listed on many spell hovers is inaccurate. See the Spells and Spellbooks page for the actual damage done by every spell in the game.)

Monsters that list a resistance always have 75% resistance to that element. There are no spells or item properties that lower resistances in Diablo or Hellfire. (Wait for Diablo II for those.)

Monsters that are immune to spells take no damage from that type of element, and will not even be touched by it. A fire immune monster won't be hit by or notice fire damage of any type, will walk straight through a Firewall, etc. This can be used to your advantage in some cases; players can shoot lightning or fire into a room and draw out all the non-immune monsters, while the immune ones remain quiescent.

Holy Bolt will only damage Undead monsters, and Diablo himself. These monsters do not resist this spell in Diablo. In Hellfire, Diablo and Skullwing demons resist Holy Bolt. (At 75%, of course.)

No monsters in Diablo have any resistance to physical damage, so melee weapons and arrows (not counting the elemental damage found on some weapons) will almost always deal 100% damage to their target. (Exceptions include weapons that deal 200% damage to Demons or Undead and the weapon bonuses/penalties on swords and blunts vs. undead and animals.)

Monster Attack Type

Monsters are divided into different types, and each type has its own AI for movement, attacking, retreating, and so forth. These types are not specifically defined by the game, but are easy to envision if you've played a fair amount. Players just "know" how skeletons, or goat men, or vipers, etc, behave. This table lists which monsters use which type of AI, and since there are fewer types of AI than there are monsters, some monsters use the AI of another creature. Monsters with the same behavior type may still differ; some spell-casters move the same, but use different spells which changes the feel of the battle; Diablo uses the AI of a Magma Demon, for instance. Monster behavior changes with distance; Balrogs behave like Skeletons until they are within 3 squares of a character.

• Monster behavior does not change with difficulty level.
• All monsters of the same type use the same behavior, though their IntF rating affects how quickly they react to stimuli. IntF is listed on the individual monster and boss pages.
• Some boss monsters use the behavior of a different type of monster which can substantially change their behavior (adding charging behavior, for instance). Those are listed on the individual SuperUnique pages.
  • The minions of a boss monster use the same behavior as their boss. Even when it's different than their usual type behavior.
• All Hellfire monsters use the behavior type as one of the Diablo monsters. (Usually skeleton, which is why most Hellfire monsters seem pretty boring with their default "walk straight at the enemy" movement.)

Diablo Monsters

Monsters found in Diablo and Hellfire.

Monster Type	Attack Type	Monster Type	Attack Type
Zombies	Zombie	Horned Demons	Horned Demon
Fallen One, Spear	Fallen One	Spitting Terrors	Spit
Fallen One, sword	Fallen One	Lightning Demons	Magma Demon
Skeletons	Skeleton	Balrogs	Balrog
Skeleton Archers	Skeleton Archer	Vipers	Viper
Skeleton Captains	Skeleton	Succubi	Goat Archer
Scavengers	Scavenger	Knights	Skeleton
Winged Fiends	Winged Fiend	Mages	Mage
The Hiddens	Hidden	--	--
Goat Men	Goat Man	Golem (The spell.)	Golem
Goatmen Archers	Goat Archer	The Butcher	Butcher
Overlords	Overlord	Skeleton King	Skeleton King
Gargoyles	Gargoyle	Diablo	Magma Demon
Magma Demons	Magma Demon

Hellfire Monsters

Monsters found only in Hellfire. There are no changes to the AI of Diablo monsters in Hellfire.

Monster Type	Attack Type	Monster Type	Attack Type
The Shredded	Skeleton	Firebat	Goat Archer
Felltwin	Skeleton	Hellbat	Goat Archer
Hellboar	Skeleton	Skullwing	Skeleton
Hork Spawn	Skeleton	Bone Demon	Magma Demon
Stinger	Skeleton	Lich	Goat Archer
Venomtail	Skeleton	Arch Lich	Goat Archer
Psychorb	Goat Archer	Satyr Lord	Skeleton
Necromorb	Goat Archer	Crypt Demon	Skeleton
Arachnon	Skeleton	Biclops	Skeleton
Spider Lord	Spit	Flesh Thing	Skeleton
Lashworm	Skeleton	Reaper	Skeleton
Torchant	Goat Archer	--	--
Gravedigger	Scavenger	The Hork Demon	Skeleton
Tomb Rat	Skeleton	The Defiler	Skeleton
Devil Kin Brute	Skeleton	Na-Krul	Skeleton