Diablo, Warcraft, Warcraft 2 coming to GOG

I’m with you @Rock8man. I remember being disappointed by that change in Diablo II, and feeling like it took a lot away from the sense of impact and peril from the original.

So I think it was the GOG thread that had mentioned Wizards being easy once you get manashield, so I decided to create a Wizard character for the first time, just to try him out. I did about half the first level, killed a few enemies with my staff, some with my spell. Then I ran out of mana for my spells, which doesn’t regenerate, so I drank the two potions I started with. Sadly no more potions dropped, so I didn’t have health or mana potions, and almost no health or mana left.

So I started just spamming my staff’s charged bolt which goes all over the place and sometimes completely misses the enemy in front of me. Inevitably, one of those enemies got through and I died.

D’oh! I should have saved my game at some point.

So I started a new Wizard. Funny thing is, the same cycle of stuff happened the second time. And I died.

Hmmmm, this is like Hardcore all of a sudden. I think next time I’m going to buy two health potions with my starting money in town before I go down. With the warrior that seemed like wasting money (“I’ll find all the stuff I need own in the dungeon”), but with the Wizard, loot is really hard to come by because mana is a limited resource and health is a VERY limited resource.

Yeah, D1 was much more, well, roguelike.

According to MobyGames, Hellfire was developed by Synergistic Software, Inc. and published by Sierra On-Line, Inc.

So true. I swear just a few days before Diablo came to GOG I had mentioned on Twitter that I had a hankering for it after listening to “Tree of the Dead” from the ‘300’ movie soundtrack, which has always reminded me of Diablo! Now, playing it again for the 1st time in decades the audio still blows me away and it’s something I’ve never forgotten. I’m about to encounter the Butcher with my warrior and my first meeting with him is still etched in my brain and I’m scared witless! “FRESH MEAT!”

I can’t kill the Skeleton King and he can’t kill me but I keep running out of health pots and have to return to town to stock up again. Does he keep re-healing when I leave his chamber? Hell, I’m hacking at him with a decent sword for 10-15 minutes straight before running out of pots but without a health bar I have no idea if I’m getting close to killing him. Meanwhile his little punk skellie archers are a PITA!!

Do you have any scrolls or one time damage things you can use against him?

I have to admit, this sort of thing wasn’t an issue when I played as a Rogue back in 1997. It was just a matter of clearing enough space so that if I was running away from someone and shooting back at them, I didn’t run into a corner or different enemies that I’d forgotten to clear.

GL1zdA on the GOG forums posted a .pdf link to Jarulf’s Guide to Diablo and Hellfire. It’s 172 pages long and chock full of information.

Thank you so much. This is the reason I was hoping the strategy guide would be included.

When I first played Diablo in 1997, I already mentioned that I played it while visiting my brother. Well, my brother also had the strategy guide. So every time I went to a shrine, and it gave me a cryptic message, I went to the guide and found out exactly what benefit the shrine had just given me. When I was having trouble defeating a monster, I looked them up in the guide and found out, oh look, they’re highly resistant to lightning and piercing damage, so I need to find some other way to hurt them. And on and on. There was so much more info that I found in there that I felt should have been in the manual, but it wasn’t.

But hey, all that stuff is in that guide you just linked. Sweet.

I made it through Level 1 as a Wizard, and am about half way through Level 2. Currently I’m trying to clear the area around the Butcher before I open the door, but I keep dying when I try to open barrels. Stupid trapped barrels. I just can’t resist them. They’re so dangerous as a wizard. I’m usually running around with limited health as a wizard, because I’m always hoping I’ll level up and get healing for free.

Everything as a wizard costs money. I cast spells, it costs mana. There’s no mana regeneration. So you have to drink a potion. When you find loot and money, you sell the loot to get more money, and with that money you buy more potions. Health potions and mana potions. Lots of mana potions. It’s crazy how scarce resources are early on for a wizard.

Just want to say that I LOVE these write ups, @Rock8man . I’m going to introduce my son to this game but he is obsessed with Breath of the Wild.

So after multiple failed attempts with Sword + Board and a load of health pots I finally tried a different tactic involving Holy Bolt and it literally took like 3-4 shots to bring Skeleton King down… sigh. Maybe I loosened him up with my sword on all those prior failed runs?! Anyway, now I can move on level 4

I tried to take down the Butcher last night with my wizard. I loaded the saved game, and tried to take him down at least 2 dozen times, but there’s just no way.

I even tried the suggestion above of trying to get him loose and then try to take him to a room where I can shoot at him from a window while he’s trapped in there. But there was only one room like that on Level 2, and it had a blocked door, which I didn’t learn until I got him to follow me across the level three times and finally got him in there and tried to close the door on him.

“Blocked door”.

Ack, sorry— probably should have mentioned that the door has to not be blocked by a corpse

Never played original Diablo before.

I dipped in a little last week and was surprised at how good the game is in convincingly projecting atmosphere, mood, and tone. Several indie teams have been chasing this lo-fi horror aesthetic lately so Diablo actually works well after all these years since I am just approaching it like those lo-fi indie games. Music is amazing and the gameplay is actually refreshing in its simplicity as a contrast to all of the recent Diablo-clones that bend over backwards trying to complicate and deepen the hack and slash mechanics.

Definitely tough for an early Wizard characrter, at least unless/until you get Wall of Fire.

You should spend a lot of your money on mana potions as a Wizard.

Absolutely this! To go off of what Adam_B has said, boo on those folks. Games and genres all have similar elements - it’s the “spice” that goes into the recipe that makes it unique. Diablo may be like Rogue, but it is NOT Rogue because of the seasonings that make Diablo what it is.

I have a much more lengthy and lovely analogy situated somewhere in my head, but I’m too tired to write it out now, lol. TLDR: Diablo is great, yay.

Since I was having so much trouble with the other 2 classes, I decided to start a Rogue as well. I called her “EasyMode”. And boy, did I get that name right. I breezed through the game until I got to the Butcher.

Of course, now I’ve got three characters, all unable to take the Butcher yet. Perhaps it’s time to move onto level 3. Maybe I’ll come back to the Butcher after I’ve done level 5 or something.

I’m surprised that he is completely unkillable by my warrior, basically. He swings his Cleaver, and you hear, shieldblock, shieldblock, shieldblock, shieldblock, hit. Shieldblock, shieldblock, hit. Meanwhile I’m caught in never ending shieldblock animation and can’t actually attack the Butcher. It’s not quite clear to me how leveling up will help me, but hey, it’s worth a try.

At least I’m not the only one. I knew nothing about the Butcher going in yesterday so the surprise of not landing a single blow (or rather, not being able to even try and land a blow) sure was something.

That’s the reason people still remember The Butcher yelling “FRESH MEAT!” After all these years. Encountering him for the first time we a truly traumatic experience.

He’s beatable through kiting, walls of fire, potion chugging, …

But that was a defining gaming moment for me

That and The Battle of the Stairs our whole guild later waged a few floors down, where we all got wiped repeatedly on ill fated raids to retrieve our friends’ lost inventory. Back in the day, we got people to log in and come help by calling them on landlines. :)