Diablo Levels
There are 16 dungeon levels in Diablo, with another 8 added in Hellfire. The levels are divided into groups of four, with a totally new style of artwork and level layout beginning with each new group. Each group of levels has a different feel and they play differently, based on the layout, the size of rooms, the narrow (or not) doorways, and the monsters found within them.
There are no official names for the sets of levels in Diablo, but players dubbed them the church, catacombs, caves, and hell, based on their appearance, so that's the naming convention this page adopts.
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[hide]Diablo Levels
There are 16 levels in Diablo, found in descending order beneath the desecrated Monastery. Shortcuts to descend directly to level 5, 9, and 13 become available to characters who have reached those stages. These shortcuts can be entered directly in Nightmare and Hell difficulty games.
The Church
| Church Quests |
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The uppermost four levels are called the church, since they are directly below the Monastery. These levels are marked by numerous large square rooms connected by long hallways lined with pillars, and lots of smaller side rooms behind closed doors, often filled by shrines or small libraries. The monster variety is fairly wide, and undead monsters abound. Few monsters here possess any elemental attacks, although ranged attacking skeleton archers are very common. There is very little wasted space on these maps; few internal areas are not filled with accessible rooms, so these levels feel larger and longer than some of the later areas.
The Catacombs
| Catacombs Quests |
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Dungeon levels 5-8 are called the catacombs, or abbreviated to "the cats." These dark, gray and black levels are maze-like, winding through long, narrow corridors and frequently bottle-necking at single width doorways. The cats are filled with numerous small chambers, most of which boast libraries, shrines, goat shrines, or skeletal tomes. These small rooms are usually packed full of monsters, and many players enjoy leveling up in the cats since those chambers are experience honeypots.
Most characters find these levels fairly easy, since all of the narrow passages and doorways make it easy to take on monsters one at a time. There are few magical attacks to worry about here, so resistance is still largely optional. Ranged attackers are fairly common though, with skeletal archers and goatmen archers quite common, and acid spitting dogs (magic damage) as well. Avoiding arrows and running down archers isn't tough, with all the corners and small rooms to restrict their mobility.
The Caves
| Caves Quests |
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Dungeon levels 9-12 are known as the Caves. The Caves are much more difficult than the Cats for most characters, with wide open areas and no long narrow spots to funnel monsters through. There are some gates along the low fences, but the ranged attackers will fire over them, and many monsters will pathfind around some cluster of rock when the gate is blocked, coming at you from behind.
There are numerous streams of lava throughout the caves, and despite the fact that they're easily narrow enough to step over, these act as impermeable barriers to monster or character movement. They do not stop any sort of ranged attack though, and in some places diagonal melee attacks can be carried out as well. Characters with ranged attacks, Rogues and Sorcerers primarily, can often use the lava rivers to trap enemy monsters and pick them off from safety.
The Caves can be hard to see in, since the outcroppings of rock do not go transparent when you walk behind them. Items dropped behind walls can be quite hard to find, and it's tough to target monsters or barrels at times.
Hell
| Hell Quests |
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The levels from 13-16 are referred to as Hell, though it's not clear why. The Caves are actually more like the classical Christian conception of Hell, with rocks and lava and flame. The "Hell" levels in Diablo are very clean and sterile, with walls and stairs seemingly formed from bones, and what looks like lakes of blood behind the walls on every side.
Most map layouts of the levels in Hell are divided into quadrants, with long walls along the middle of the level and four large rooms in each corner. There are exceptions, and some layouts are practically honeycombs, but the majority of areas of Hell are fairly wide open and very conducive to ranged attacks. Rogues can turn these areas into a sort of bowling alley, firing in straight lines well off the visible screen and listening for the sound of their arrows hitting. Sorcerers are very happy in Hell also, with good firing lines for their spells and long, straight stretches of level to retreat to, while still firing at the advancing enemies.
Level 16 always has the same layout and monsters (Blood Knights and Advocates), with about half of the monsters in pre-set positions. Others are spawned in random locations each game, though.
Hellfire Levels
The Hellfire expansion pack added eight more levels. They have new graphics, but use the same level formation tools (random map generation) as earlier levels did in Diablo.
The Hive
| Hive Quests |
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The Hive, as it's usually called, or the Nest, as it's officially named, uses the level generation of the Caves, but changes the graphics from rock and lava to a vaguely sci-fi, Aliens-styled insect hive. Some of the monsters are themed to that insect style; giant spiders and scorpions and such, but many others seem fairly random in design and function.
The Hive is balanced to be equivalent to the Caves in difficult, but most players find it somewhat easier. Easier to zoom through on the way down to level 4 on your mission to retrieve the Cathedral Map, usually, since this area is hands down the least popular in the game.
There are no random bosses in the Hive, and no quests, other than two versions of the same item-retrieval task. There aren't any shrines or pools or library rooms either, making the four levels something of a boring, unrelieved slog.
The Crypt
| Crypt Quests |
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The Crypt is meant to be equivalent to Hell in difficulty, and the monsters there, all newly added in Hellfire, can be quite nasty. The area is easier than Hell, at least on normal difficulty, since all of the doorways provide easy choke points to bottleneck the monster mobs. It gets harder on Nightmare and Hell though, especially for Sorcerers, since the monsters have much more varied resistances and immunities, and quite a few of the beasties are immune to fire and lightning, forcing Sorcerers to use the much weaker magical damage spells, or else stone curse and a melee weapon. The smaller rooms and areas are a pain for Sorcerers too, keeping their spells from hitting enemies at long distance.
The monsters in the Crypt are better designed and themed than the grab bag of enemies in the Hive, and there is a nice mixture of animals, demons, and undead, something not seen in the Hell levels (which are almost entirely demons, with one or two animals and no undead).
The Crypt reuses the tile set from the Church, but since there are no shrines or libraries, most of those small rooms are boring and entirely empty; of shrines and books, as well as monsters. Like the Hive, the Crypt holds zero monster bosses, other than Na-Krul on level 4. It's not known why the Sierra designers didn't include any bosses in the levels they added, but it goes a long way towards explaining why most players find those levels much less fun than the original 16.
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