Changes

It's also an amusing area to visit, if only for the sight gag of walking cows with polearms, and to hear the voices of the cows. They were recorded by various Blizzard North employees, and must have required many takes to edit out the laughter.

[[Image:Quest-cows-early.jpg|thumb|300px|First look at Cows, April Fools, 1999.]]There were player-created rumors/jokes about a Secret Cow Level in Diablo I, based on the cows in the pasture in Tristram, that would moo, or cause your character to say something amusing, if you clicked the bovines long enough. There is no secret level or anything related to the cows other than an Easter Egg style joke in Diablo: Hellfire, and Blizzard repeatedly denied its existence in both serious and humorous ways, such as the Starcraft cheat code "there is no cow level." However, the Diablo II team apparently drew upon the rumor for inspiration, and worked the whole level into Diablo II.

The first hint of a secret cow level came on April 1, 1999, over a year before Diablo II was released, when [[:Image:Quest-cows-early.jpg|this screenshot]] was released. It was taken as simply an April Fools' Joke at the time, but the joke was clearly on us, as things turned out. The cow level in the final game does not take place in the Act One caves, nor are any of the cows brown in coloration, so clearly there were some changes made during development.

[[Image:Quest-cow-recipe.jpg|frame]]You must finish the game first (Kill Diablo in D2, Kill Baal in D2X), and then go back to Act One on the same difficulty level, and execute the recipe, Wirt's Leg + a Town Portal tome, while your character is standing in the Rogue Encampment. You do not need to carry around Wirt's Leg forever; just go back to Tristram any time and click his corpse to get a new one.

Somewhere inside or just outside of the "fort" as it's called, you'll find the Cow King. He is always Lightning Enchanted, and should be avoided if you wish to retain the ability to open the portal to the level.

[[Image:Quest-cow-king.jpg|frame]]You can open the red portal to the cow level as many times as you like, providing you don't get credit for killing the king. Credit is given if you kill him yourself, or he dies at the hand of another player who has never killed him before, while you are in the Cow Level. Being partied or not has no effect on the credit for the quest, it only matters who actually gets '''the last hit''' on King.

If you've already killed the king or gotten credit for killing him when someone else did, you can't open the red portal anymore, but you can still enter the red portal when someone else opens it up.

The boss monster for the level is The Cow King, and he's there every game, always spawning somewhere inside or very near the wooden fort. He has minions as well, just like any random boss in the game.

Prior to v1.08 the Cow King was a guaranteed special drop, like the Act Bosses, though only two items. Uniques and Sets were almost guaranteed from him with some MF. In v1.09 he was toned down a bit, but he still has the ability to drop a random array of up to five magical, rare, set, and/or unique class items as well as a half-dozen stamina potions (milk anyone?). On Hell his Treasure Class is much lower than that of the normal cows, so while he will never drop top level items, he can drop quite a few low level Elite items such as Bramble Mitts, Dusk Shrouds, Shakos, etc.

The Cow Level requires some unusual strategy. First of all, the only way in is through the red portal, which does not always spawn in a safe location. It's a good idea to get away from it as quickly as possible, since if it gets swarmed and you leave the level through it, or die, you will not be able to return safely.

The fun of the level for items is that there are such huge numbers of cows that doing the Cow Level gets you more kills in a small area than you will ever get anywhere else in the game.

Very few things changed for the Expansion. A character must kill Baal to be eligible to enter, rather than Diablo, but that's about it. The value and difficulty of the cows has fluctuated from patch to patch, and may yet change again in future versions of the game. In v1.09 the Cow Level was among the most profitable areas in the game, and was the most popular since it was so easy to rack up huge experience quickly. It became less valuable in v1.10, when the experience given by the cows was cut and their item dropping lowered.

[[category:quests]]

[[category:levels]]