Revision as of 20:18, 24 October 2006

The quest to find new and better items was one of the high points of Diablo, and item-hunting in Diablo II will be even more compelling, for a number of reasons: There is a much larger variety of item types this time around, with additions such as crossbows, spears, polearms, gloves, and boots. To the new item types, add lots of new and interesting modifiers, many more Uniques, Rares, and Item Sets, and making "just one more" dungeon run will never be enough. Also, there are higher quality items and modifiers that can only be found on higher difficulty levels, so there's a great boost to replayability, and an incentive to keep progressing.

FAQs

How do I take a screenshot? -- This is a frequently asked question, and the answer is quite simple. You just hit the PrintScreen key, and they are saved to your Diablo II folder in .jpg format at very high quality. You can set a custom key for it if you so desire, for in-game screenies, but be aware that ONLY PrintScreen works for screenies of Battle.net chat.

Can I wear two Item Sets at the same time? -- Yes, a couple of the sets have no overlapping items, and can be equipped simultaneously. However there are bugs with it; the bonus for a full set will only be displayed for one set, and sometimes no sets, usually the one you've equipped first. We have mixed reports as to whether you actually get both bonuses, though this issue came up during the Closed Beta, since there were a couple of people who managed to get two entire sets together, and Blizzard North did a programming fix for it at the time that appeared to work.

Where can I find Horadric Cube recipes? -- We have a page with every known cube recipe, and a number of unknown recipes.

What are Exceptional Items? -- Exceptional (abbreviated "Excep")items are higher quality versions of normal items that can ONLY be dropped by monsters (never bought from NPCs) and only on Nightmare and Hell difficulty. There is a 5% chance an item will be Excep on Nightmare and 10% chance on Hell. There are no set or unique Excep items, but there are Rares and socketed Excep items, and Rare Exceptionals make up the majority of higher level character equipment. There are no Excep rings or amulets, and several Excep items are not dropped in the game due to an error in the programming code. Whether this error is an accident or was put in on purpose by Bliz to keep these items from dropping is unknown.

Weapons

In Diablo II, every item has a different range, down to the pixel. Polearms and spears reach much farther than swords, and on down through mauls and clubs and short swords until you reach wands and daggers, which have the least reach of all melee weapons.

In addition, nearly every weapon has a different swing speed, with variety even within a given weapon class. Smaller, lighter swords will swing faster than larger, longer ones, lighter weapons like a club swing faster than heavier war hammer, and so on. This sort of logical swing rate is present in nearly every weapon class. This item swing speed has to be figured in with the swing speed of the character, and of course this speed varies widely between the characters, and also from item to item. Melee characters tend to swing faster than the weaker, mage characters, Amazons are faster with bows or crossbows than the other characters, etc.

To strike a target you will need to actually point out/highlight the monster you wish to strike, and though you can hold the shift key to stand still and swing, there is a substantial penalty to accuracy if you don't aim for your particular monster. This is less of an issue with ranged attacks. Spells and arrows are more accurate if you hover on the intended target, but they don't always miss if you just shoot in the direction of a monster.

Weapon class is just an organizational system, telling you whether an item is an axe or a polearm or a sword, for example. This is mainly of importance to Barbarians who wish to use a weapon appropriate to their Mastery, and to other characters with greater skill with a sword than a mace, or item-specific skills, like the Amazon with spears/javelins. Also, as was the case in Diablo, bladed weapons do less damage to the undead than blunt weapons, and there are some other weapon type bonuses and penalties to particular monsters. You can of course generally tell what weapon class an item is at a glance, since swords and axes and staves are clearly different items, but having the name avoids there being any confusion between a large axe and a small polearm, or a sword and a dagger, for example.

Armour

The range of possible Armor Class on items is vast. In addition to Armor Class being variable as it was in Diablo, (for example, Full Plate Mail varied from 60-75AC) durability is as well. So a sash, an 8-slot type of belt, could have from 1-5 AC, and 40-52 durabilty.

New types of armour are boots, belts, and gloves. None of these account for a very large percentage of your total Armour Class, but they all can add some modifiers, and other useful things, such as fast walk on boots or haste on gloves. There are Rare, Unique, and Set Item types of all three, but they are limited in their magical modifiers, so that they add some minor bonuses, but don't have the really useful prefixes or suffixes that you will find on weapons and helms and such.

Durability and Repairs

When an item you are using wears out completely, it turns red and becomes unusable, but it does not vanish, as they did in Diablo. So less of a penalty for being careless now.

Speaking of repairs, they work just like they did in Diablo. You must get an item 100% repaired, no option to fix something halfway, if you can't afford the full repair price. Though there are several NPC's in each town who sell items, somewhat like Griswold and Wirt in Diablo, only one will do repairs. Generally speaking, Diablo II is designed to have the best items found, rather than purchased, so there's not as much need to always be checking the NPC's for new items on sale.

Selling Items

Buying, selling, and repairs are made easy by the new NPC interface, where you see your inventory window on the right, and the NPCs on the left, and all items are visible, with their full requirements and whether they are one or two-handed. When you are at an NPC, your items when hovered on display their sell price, and if you left click on an item, you get a pop up yes/no confirm box for buying or selling, while a right click will buy or sell immediately.

The base item has a price, which is adjusted by whatever prefixes, suffixes, or other modifiers are on the item. In Diablo II, Uniques and Set Items have multiple modifiers, but they are the same every time. Rares however have multiple modifiers, and are totally random. There is no way to pre-set their sell prices, so the sell price algorithm calculates them dynamically.

The NPC merchants pay out 1/4 the new price of an item, so rather a rip off there, but we're all used to it from Diablo, right? There are generally two or three merchants in town that will buy items from you, but the prices are identical, and they are also consistent from act to act, so no bargain hunting.

Modifiers

Prefixes and Suffixes are found on magical items. There are four or six modifiers for most types of effect, a new one every 20% or so.

In addition to Prefixes and Suffixes, there are other sorts of modifiers, such as "Gain one mana point per kill." which isn't really a prefix or suffix, but has a somewhat similar effect.

There are higher level base items, as well as modifiers, that can only be dropped by the hardest monsters, on the highest difficulty level. So there is a great feature for extending replayability, as well as a reward for players who take more risks. This "better items exclusively at higher levels" applies to Rares, Uniques, and some Set Items as well.

Gems

Gems are usable in "socketable" weapons, shields, and helms. Socketable items are non-magical ones that gems can be inserted into, adding new properties from the gem to the item. All weapons in the game, from daggers to bows to staves, have the possibility of being socketed, and from one to three sockets can be found on items. Generally speaking, when you add a gem to a weapon, (not a shield, those are next) it will add some form of damage to the weapon. Fire damage, poison damage, etc. There are five quality levels of gems, and as you upgrade your gem (gems can only be upgraded by gem shrines or Horadric Cube, and only before they are socketed.) the damage they add to the weapon will go up.

Shields are socketable also, but rather than adding various forms of elemental damage, gems in shields increase resistance to that type of attack. So diamonds would add to your lightning resistance, for example. I

Helms are the other socketable item, and gems in helms tend to add to attributes, or hit points or other such things.

There are other types of gems than the basic elemental gems. Skull gems, which drain mana and hit points.

Uniques, Rares, and Item Sets

Golden text names, pre-set stats, multiple modifiers, mixed quality. They are fun to collect, but most of them aren't much use at higher levels. Which is only fair, they can't all be great items; lots are meant to be of use to low or mid-level characters.

Rares are a sort of cross between Uniques and Magical items. They have multiple modifiers, as many or more than Uniques can have, but the modifiers are randomly determined. However they have names like uniques.

Item Sets are comprised of from three to six items, all with similar names and properties. The fun of them is trying to collect the whole set, since if you do, large secret bonuses will be bestowed upon your character. Nothing is known about what sort of bonuses, but Blizzard has promised that they will be very noticeable, and powerful as well.

To add to the fun, Uniques and some Set Items will have unique graphics on your character, so they are potent items, and a fun fashion show as well. Remember that your character will be seen in the Battle.net chat channels in their current outfit, so a very nice look will be appreciated by more than your playing partners, and showing off a new item set or unique will be fun, and make for good conversation.