Difference between revisions of "Fotds: September 2001"

Revision as of 10:04, 28 June 2009

The information presented in these archived FotDs is now outdated, but that's often the most interesting thing about them, seeing how much the game has changed from then to now.

The original FotDs are indented and italicized. Explanatory comments below them were written by Flux at the time the FotDs were archived, usually a couple/few months after the original FotDs had been presented.

• FotD archives main page.

September 6, 2001

Shopping is quicker in v1.09, with automatic fill ups of potions, scrolls, and keys.
Just visit the NPC merchant, and right click on the item you want to stack while holding "shift", and you will automatically fill a stack Scrolls will fill the book to 20, potions will fill all available belt slots, and keys will fill a stack to 12.

Back in the old days, we had to click 20 times on a scroll. The time-saving technique then was when they offered you a book with 4 or 5 charges, and you'd buy a few of them, and then stack them up in your inventory.

September 11, 2001

In the Expansion, you can join games of the next difficulty level (by typing in the name of an active one) once you beat Diablo, but you must beat Baal to see them in the Join menu, or to create them.
So you can get to Act 5 in Normal or Nightmare, then join a game of the next diff level, move all the way through it, and never have done Baal on the lower diff level. It's not known if this is feature or bug.

This was a feature, so that characters who had beaten Diablo on various difficulty levels in D2 could join higher difficulty level games in D2X.
For a time in D2X you could do this with new characters as well, but it appears to have been fixed as of v1.09d.

September 17, 2001

The Act Five quest that requires you to kill Nihlathak is very dangerous, and the quest reward isn't anything great.
Nihlathak is the highest level monster in the entire game, other than Baal, so he can drop big, but it's not worth the risk.
A further problem is that once you complete the quest, in games you create on that difficulty level Anya will not open the red portal, so you can't pop over to the zombie garden and get the quick Super Unique kill in Pindleskin and the easy experience there.

As several people pointed out in emails, the red portal goes away once you kill Nihlathak, AND find the waypoint in the Halls.
You can kill Nihlathak and still do quick Pindleskin runs as long as you don't get the waypoint. And yes, you can still do Pindleskin even without the red portal, but you'll have to find the stairs up on two very large levels, which defeats the whole "quick run" purpose of it. Nihlathak is actually Mlvl 95, the same as Baal, but he can't drop everything due to how the Treasure Classes work. The only item they could drop that nothing else could would be the Constricting Ring, which isn't enabled anyway. Everyone, especially Hardcore characters, by now knows how deadly Nihlathak is, and he's very seldom toyed with. Those 1500+ damage instant death from a full screen away Corpse Explosions aren't much fun.

September , 2001

Lightning-Enchanted monsters are even nastier in v1.09 D2X than they were in the past.
Just normal LE's aren't changed, but many other mods will stack damage on top of the LE bolts, including Cold Enchanted and Fire Enchanted, and Conviction now lowers resistance as it should, so you'll take more elemental damage when a boss has it.
Be very careful with LE's, and just imagine the horror of an MSLECE with Conviction?

My Barb, pictured in the Graveyard here, had recently croaked to this, so my tragedy turned into an FotD for everyone!