Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Cover art
Developer(s)	Blizzard North
Publisher(s)	Blizzard Entertainment
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS Mac OS X
Release	(PC) / / June 29, 2001 (Mac) / June 29, 2001 March 31, 2003
Genre(s)	Action role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is an expansion pack for the popular hack and slash action role-playing game Diablo II. Unlike the original Diablo's expansion pack, Diablo: Hellfire, this is an official expansion designed by Blizzard North.

More than just a standard expansion, Lord of Destruction (LOD) not only added content in the form of new character classes and an additional scenario, it also dramatically revamped the gameplay of the existing Diablo II for solo and especially multiplayer. As a result, LOD is largely considered a "must-buy" instead of being just an add-on and this makes it one of the most successful expansion packs of all time.

Story

Template:Spoiler The storyline picks up where Diablo II left off, with Baal now leading an invasion against the northern barbarian lands.His first attack, against the city of Sescheron, capital city of the Barbarian homelands, leads up to the stage where Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is set: Harrogath. Situated at the base of Mount Arreat, it's home to the people who are sworn protectors of the mountain. Baal is currently besieging the city and destroying any settlements along the way up the mountain towards its summit. The hero stands tall, fighting the three Prime Evils, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal.

Baal, the Lord of Destruction, is after the Worldstone, a massive crystal-rock of transcending energies, created to prevent the High Heavens and Burning Hells to consume the mortal realm completely into their respective folds. It is the source of all the Soulstones and their powers, so Baal wishes to obtain it, corrupt it and complete his brothers' plan to conquer the mortal realm and use it as a staging area to besiege the Heavens in the endless war between the two.

New features

• A fifth act taking place in and around Mount Arreat in the northern Barbarian Highlands, with an additional act boss, Baal.
• Ethereal items: These items do not fully exist in the mortal plane and appear translucent to the human eye. Because of this, they cannot be repaired, but they also have better characteristics and lower requirements than their repairable equivalents.
• Jewels: items serving a similar purpose to gems in that they can be placed in socketed items, but which have random characteristics as opposed to the set characteristics of gems and runes.
• Charms: items giving boosts to character's stats when kept in the inventory of the player.
• Two new character classes: the Assassin and the Druid.
• An expanded private stash for storing items (double the size of the Diablo II stash).
• An alternate weapon/shield setup that can be switched between via a hotkey in gameplay.
• Runes: stones that give powerful attributes to a socketed item when placed in it or even more powerful bonuses when placed in a certain order forming a "runeword" (see section below for more information).
• Hirelings (mercenaries) can now follow the player outside of the Act in which they were hired. They can also be equipped with armor, a helm, and a hireling-specific weapon (as well as a shield in one case). Hirelings also gain experience and can be resurrected (for a price proportional to their level) when killed.
• Class-specific items: new items that only a specific character class can use. These items often contain class-specific bonuses, often adding additional skill points for that character class.
• Elite items: more powerful versions of items following the Normal and Exceptional items.
• New unique items, including many Exceptional and Elite Uniques.
• New set items, including sets that use Class-specific items (ie. only one character class can complete certain sets).
• The game can now be played at 800x600 resolution, up from the standard 640x480.

Rune words

Placing the runes "Jah", "Ith" and "Ber" (in that order) into an armour item with exactly three sockets produces the powerful Rune word bonus "Enigma".

Rune words are a combination of specific runes that are inserted into a socketed item in a specific order, producing an enhancing effect on the item. Rune words are especially powerful in versions 1.10 and 1.11, although many of the more potent, higher-level rune words are restricted to realm ladder play only.

Assassin

The Assassin either will focus on her melee abilities or her ability to lay traps. If she is built to be a melee chacarter, she will be more subtle than the barbarian and the paladin and will not rely on brute strength. If she is built to lay traps, she will simply put them one the ground and stand back, letting them do the work for her.

The assassin introduces a very different style of play into Diablo II. Her shadow disciplines consist of Amazon-style passives and barbarian-style masteries, along with a few spells such as Mind Blast which confuse the enemy. Traps are a new way of attacking enemies; she can lay five at a time, and once laid, they fire (or activate) a given number of times at nearby enemies before dissipating.

The Assassin can cast spells from the Martial Arts, Shadow Disciplines, and Traps skill trees.

Druid

The Druid is the second class added to the game with the Lord of Destruction expansion. Druid skills revolve around either an elemental, shapeshifting, or a summoning skill trees. The Druid is often considered a combination of the Barbarian, Paladin, Sorceress, and Necromancer.

A Druid who chooses the path of an elementalist can use skills such as Volcano, Firestorm and Molten Boulder, while the latter choice of Druid focuses on summoning beasts (such as ravens, bears and wolves), spirits, and vines/"creepers" to slay enemies. Shapeshifting Druids have the ability to change into either Werewolf or Werebear form, similar to Lycanthropy, with each form offering unique advantages.

The elemental skill tree is largely criticized as a watered down version on the Sorceress's Cold and Fire spells. It is also unpopular because players cannot cast elemental spells while shapeshifted. The summoning spells are moderately effective in Normal difficulty but summons are easily wiped out in Nightmare and Hell levels; though high-level Druid players still supplement their primary skill tree with spirits and vines. The shapeshifting skills are considered the most effective and powerful; the werewolf is quicker and attacks faster, while the werebear is stronger (i.e. attacks do more damage) and has more life.

Critical response

Lord of Destruction is listed at Metacritic with an average rating of 87 (with one perfect score from Computer Games Online). It is desribed at Metacritic as an expansion that "should reinforce the staying power of an already legendary RPG."

Within the Diablo 2 community the expansion caused some controversy when Blizzard patched the original game with a patch that made Nightmare and Hell skill particularly harder than before, some players felt that Blizzard was effectively forcing them to upgrade to the expansion in order to find the items and gain the abilities necessary to deal with the new challenges. The controversy was mentioned in nearly every review of Lord of Destruction at the time.

Patch history

The expansion was released in Summer 2001 as version 1.07, the same version as the beta, but the 1.08 patch was available for download on the same day. Within a few months, 1.09 was released. This was the last patch for two years.

The much hyped patch 1.10 was released on October 28 2003, which radically changed gameplay. The main change was the introduction of "synergy" bonuses that would increase the power of one skill by investing in a different skill. The difficulty of monsters (especially in the Nightmare and Hell difficulties) was increased accordingly. This resulted in a greatly reduced variety of "builds" for each character, since only specific, greatly "synergised" skills were capable of dealing the large amount of damage needed to complete the game. Several high level unique items and new runewords were also added. While the most powerful runewords often required multiple rare runes, duping of rare runes made these high-end runewords widely available to the public. A new hidden Realms-only quest was also introduced. When enough Stone of Jordan rings had been sold back to NPCs on a server, Uber Diablo would appear, dropping a powerful unique Annihilus charm upon death. The Annihilus charm was untradeable and only one could be held on one character at a time. The general consensus amongst Diablo II players is that this quest was introduced to reduce the number of "duped" Stone of Jordan rings on the realms. Many believe that this plan has backfired, as the Annihilus charm is much more valuable than the Stone of Jordan, and that they have caused more duped Stone of Jordans.

The patch was preceded by the Rust Storm, a sweeping clean-up of most hacked, duped, and otherwise illegitimate items on the Realms. The patch also introduced the Ladder, officially a competitive mode of Realm play that lets you get your name on a list akin to the "High Score" listing in arcade video games. Several runewords are only available on Ladder. The Ladder is reset periodically – when this happens, all Ladder characters are converted to normal Non-Ladder characters. This creates a separate, initially 'dupe-free', economy on Ladder, and a fresh and equal start for all Ladder players. It was reset twice in two years, at which time a batch of new rune words was also released. The last reset was on August 5, 2005, for the release of patch 1.11.

Patch 1.11 was a surprise for many Diablo II players, since many people from the team who made the game (and the patches up to 1.10) had left the company to found Flagship Studios. The patch introduced, among various enhancements and minor bug fixes, another Uber-quest – this time involving all three Prime Evils.You kill all of them to get a reward. The reward is the Hellfire Torch, another unique, untradeable charm. On face value this charm is more powerful than its predecessor, but some players contest that the slight bonus to experience gained makes the Annihilus charm more valuable, especially when both the difficulty involved in obtaining it, and the high experience penalties in 1.11 are taken into consideration. The Annihilus charm is far rarer than the Hellfire Torch, since the Annihilus charm can only be gained with the collective sale of some 100 Stones of Jordan (exact numbers are 80-120), an expensive ring (and an item that was heavily duplicated by exploiting bugs in earlier patches, as it serves as a form of high-end currency). The Torch however just requires a player able to slay certain bosses on Hell difficulty, which is a much cheaper (albeit, harder) method.

In early June 2006 there was a server side patch installed that allow the movement of Gheeds Fortune Grand Charm, Hellfire Torch Large Charms, and the Annihilus Small Charm into the trading window. A few weeks later, another server-side patch was introduced that fixed a notorious bug involving the illegitimate stacking of damage-dealing auras on a mercenary.

In mid-August 2006, a Blizzard Representative posted a list of suggestions about things players have wanted to change. He stated that a patch is not guaranteed, but it is looking more hopeful, along with a Ladder reset (read a few paragraphs up for more information about Ladders).

Trivia

• Some undead enemies, such as Zombies, Ghouls, etc., utter words every once and a while. You usually hear them moan, but sometimes you can hear them saying "Brains," especially the unique zombie "Corpsefire" in the Den of Evil.
• Enemies such as "Carvers" and "Fallen" will utter names of different super unique monsters such as "Rakanishu", "Colenzo"--both of which are super uniques of the general Fallen type--and occasionally the name of the weapon "dagger".
• Fallen (or upper class equivalent) Shamans utter the name "Bishibosh," which is another name of a super unique monster--and again, one of the same base type as the Shamans.
• When fallen shaman die, sometimes you can hear them mutter "coward"
• Fallen Shamans will often say "Mephisto" and "Rakanishu," names of unique monsters in the game.

See also

• StealthBot is an application designed to chat in private channels on Battle.net.

External links

• Official site
• DiabloII.net
• Diablo II: Lord of Destruction at MobyGames