Game EXP: Diablo + Hellfire (PC)

 

Diablo

Systems: Windows, PlayStation, macOS

Release Date: January 3, 1997

Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment

Developer: Blizzard North

I do not really have a whole to say about this behemoth of a title that started a franchise 24 years ago.

When I started this time around back on June 9th, I had just intended to start a game to get a couple of screenshots to use in my article about Diablo: Immortal.  Well, that 15 minutes of playing to get a couple of pictures ended up leading me to fully playing the game and actually beating it for the first time.

Because these articles are titled Game Experience, I will give a brief rundown of my experience playing Diablo.

I played Diablo through GOG's Galaxy client because the game is available through GOG and I purchased it a few years back.  It does come packaged with the Hellfire DLC expansion but I played the game in the standard mode with just high-resolution support.  The Hellfire expansion adds in extra quests, the Monk class, and some improved mechanics like having your player move at around twice the speed they normally do as well as a handful of other things like added magical items, spells, and dungeons.  I decided that I would just play the original game without the expansion because I wanted to focus on the primary game and not what came after.

I chose the Warrior class because I knew that that would make the early game a bit easier starting with more hitpoints and not having to worry about running out of mana.  I primarily used swords up until I killed The Butcher, then I used The Butcher's Cleaver up until I found a shield that boosted my AC quite substantially, and then I went back to almost exclusively using swords.

As far as the shrines go, I did have a wiki article pulled up so that I could find out what the effects of each shrine did.  In the case of the randomized shrines like the  Goat Shrines and Cauldrons, I would save the game, then activate the shrine and if I did not like the result, I would reload my game and either bypass the shrine altogether.  The same goes for when I would talk to Wirt about his inventory, and I do not think I actually bought anything from him.

I did have one quest glitch out on me so I could not complete it.  Around Level 9, you find a Fungal Tome that you give to Adria who then has you find a Black Mushroom.  I found the mushroom, gave it to her and she prompted me to talk to Pepin about finding a demon brain for an elixir he was concocting.  I saved the game but when I came back, the Black Mushroom quest was still active.  I tried talking again to Adria and her dialogue option still insisted that she had not been given the Black Mushroom.  So I went back to where I found it in the caves (Level 9), and found the patch of mushrooms, but there was no highlighted option to pick up a mushroom, so the quest went unfulfilled in my quest inventory.  There were a couple of other quests that I ended up not finishing like the one for Gharbad the Weak which I thought was going to resolve later in a lower level, but it didn't and I never went back looking for Gharbad.  There was also Zhar the Mad, a wizard who attacks you if you go rummaging around in his library.  Because I encountered him in Level 8 before I got a bow, I found attacking him to be annoying because he would just teleport away after swinging a weapon at him, and my magic resistance was too low at the time.  I also took him to be a somewhat harmless NPC that would get aggressive if you pushed him too much.  So I left that unfinished too.

It was not until Level 12 of the dungeon that I picked up and started using bows to fight the stupid Succubi.  The problem with Succubi is that they only have a ranged attack and will run away usually only after being able to hit them once and they move at a pace that is nearly the same speed as your character so you can hypothetically chase them forever.  I always tried to corral them into a corner where I could get in a couple of hits.  This was the same tactic I used with the Goatman Archers but because I had a decently high AC, I was never too worried about taking too much damage.  But the Succubi and their damnable long-ranged magic attacks were something painful.  Luckily, at the time I was hoping that a bow would drop, Griswold had the Silver Bow of the Stars for sale amongst his Premium Weapons and I thankfully had the 26,000 gold needed to buy it lying outside of Pepin's place.  I ended up sticking with that bow for the rest of the game even though there were some pretty good ones that dropped but often had either a strength or dexterity requirement that was too high.

When I finished the game (picture taken right before fighting Diablo), I was level 25 and had the following stats (along with modified stats) and the following gear:

• Helmet: Veil of Steel
• Armor: 18
• Durability 60
• Resist All 50%
• -20% Light Radius
• +60% Armor
• +15 Strength
• +15 Vitality
• Amulet: Silver Amulet
• Chance to Hit: +18%
• Oddly enough this was the only amulet/necklace I found in the entire game.
• Armor: Saintly Plate
• Armor: 45
• Durability: 75
• +122% Armor
• Ring 1: Crystal Ring of the Tiger
• Resist Magic +49%
• HP: +46
• Ring 2: Empyrean Band
• +2 to All Attributes
• +20% Light Radius
• Fast Hit Recovery
• Half Trap Damage
• Weapon 1: Messerschmidt's Reaver
• Damage: 12-30
• Durability: 75
• +200% Damage
• Adds 15 points to Damage
• +5 to All Attributes; HP -50
• Fire Hit Damage: 2-12
• Weapon 2: Silver Bow of the Stars
• Damage: 3-7
• Durability: 45
• Chance to Hit +19%
  
• +10 to All Attributes

I also kept a Staff of Healing from about Level 7 or 8 that had 75 charges so I would really only use potions when I could have been killed during a fight and I did not have time or space to run away and heal up in safety.  There were times I found myself having the inventory screen open just so that I could quickly swap out from my melee to a ranged weapon (or vice-versa) or swap for the Staff of Healing for quick heals while running away from a ranged monster; thank goodness Blizzard put in a weapon swap hotkey in Diablo II.  I also had a Staff of Town Portal with 12 charges that I found after reaching the Hell levels.  Out of some paranoid fear that I would run into something that would drain charges for staves, I would usually get my staves recharged before they reached their respective halfway point.  I did have my character learn a couple of spells like Heal and Town Portal, mainly so that I would not have to spend a lot of early game gold on scrolls and potions, and of course, by the end of the game, I had 90,000 gold along with all of the other gear that I thought I might need throughout the game just chilling in the town square.  I am sure that some people would balk at the idea and associated image of all of this stuff lying around waiting to be stolen, but that is one of the beauties of playing a single-player game, is that no one is going to steal your lootz, especially if the game lets you litter the ground with whatever you want when you cannot carry anymore.

After finishing this first game in the series, it does make me a little sad that the series has progressively moved away from fighting a few monsters here and there and trying to cheese a single Succubus or three out into the open so you are not fighting eight at a time, to where we are at with Diablo III and trying to kill as many enemies at the same time and racking in that sweet sweet multi-kill XP.  It really is the same progression that happened with the Dead Space series and even the Alien movies.  Everyone loves the sequel as it moves further away from horror and into action-oriented with horror elements.  Ah well.

So that was Diablo for me.  The ending, which I had gathered from Diablo II seemed very fitting for the overall mood, and the narration epilogue provided an explanation as to why my character did what they did after killing Diablo.  And as I expected, I am not somewhat eager to replay Diablo II and likely finish the DLC expansion this time around, but I will have to see if I can still access my Diablo II iso file from my old hard drive and see if the game still runs, otherwise, I would have to repurchase the game either through Blizzard's BattleNet client, or buy it on the Switch, which is rather tempting since I already have Diablo III on the Switch and the game ran great then.

I think I also just like an avenue for listening to Matt Uelman's score.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Come Bleed the Beast

P.S.  I do not think that I will go right back in and play with the Hellfire expansion as I feel like I would like to move on from the first Diablo at least for now.  Maybe I will play the new Monk class, or maybe the Rogue, which I do not think I have ever played.