The Group Rolls Through Act III and Mephisto in Diablo II

When it comes to Diablo II, Act III is kind of the misfit.

In coming from the original Diablo, Act I puts you back in the world and connects the two games.  Act II then raises the bar, showing you new places, while Act IV is the “Go directly to hell and slay Diablo” big finish.

And, in the middle, there is Act III and Kurast and jungle and a series of quests that are mostly skippable.  It feels like the team had to meet a quota for six quests and six waypoints, so kind of made some stuff up quickly and moved on.  Though, honestly, with Act IV only having three quests, it is as though a lot of work went into the first two acts and then time was running out and they had to get things ready to ship… which is, in fact, the story I have heard before.

And the other thing that came up around Act III was we were starting to feel like things were a bit too easy.  The necro with nine skeletons and a golem, the paladin with the might aura buffing up the skeletons, the druid now featuring the “mobs be gone” spell that is fissure along with three wolves, the amazon stabbing like crazy, and two Act I mercenaries providing ranged support and two Act II mercenaries providing two additional auras was a group that went into Act III bowling over any groups of mobs that cared to show their faces.  We have forged our spirits in the traditions of our ancestors and built a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude.

As noted previously, our horde frequently outnumbered the locals as we moved through zones.  We looked a bit into difficulty settings, but to get to nightmare you have to make it through normal, so off we went.  I thought that at least Mephisto, the boss at the end of Act III would give us a challenge.

It isn’t that, as a group, we never die.  But when we do it is usually because somebody is off on their own or gets ahead to the skeleton flying wedge that clears our way through most situations.

On getting logged in we did a bit of work on our gear.  I found some mail and a helm upgrade at the vendor, allowing me to join Ulfar in the horned helm club.

I’m not just a member…

But the best thing we came up with was an actual piece of runeword gear.  I had been telling the group to be on the lookout for a chest piece with two sockets because I had found a Tal and an Eth rune along the way.  Despite having played the game on and off for years, I had never managed/bothered to actually make any runeword items.  But for most of the time I was playing seriously there were not the plethora of resources on the web to look all of that up.

But now even WoW Head has a page listing out all the runeword items you can make.  So we put all of that together and made the Stealth armor item.

The first I have ever seen

I am not sure it was the bestest best gear ever, but it was an upgrade for Talon, our Amazon.  She seems to have to run a lot to get in there and stab people with her spear.

Gear set, we headed out into Act III.

We had actually gone to the first waypoint when we were done with Act II, so we popped in there and began looking for the Spider Cavern, the first necessary stop on the way to Mephisto.

Thus began the wandering in the jungle part of Act III, which is not a favorite of mine.  Lots of up and down paths, across bridges and logs, only to find dead ends.  We did find the Great Marsh waypoint along the way, but never used it.  The layout this time made the Great Marsh completely optional.

We eventually found the Spider Cavern which was, as advertised, a cavern full of spiders.

In the spider cavern, look at all those skellies

From there it was another stumble through to find the Flayer Jungle.  More running up and down paths and storming through crowds of pygmies until we found the Flayer Jungle waypoint and then, finally, the Flayer Dunegon.

Many pygmies died trying to block our way

That got us the second pieces we needed… a brain, or maybe an eyeball… and set us looking for Kurast proper at the far end of the jungle paths.

Once you hit Kurast navigation becomes simple.  The three main sections are just rectangles laid out in a grid.  We made it through lower Kurast into the Kurast Bazaar where we found our way into the sewers to get the next piece on our quest shopping list.  We also made a couple of side trips into the smaller dungeons along the way.

Making a side trip

The loot drops, while as chaotic as they tend to be in the game, did yield us up a few good items.  You can see in the screen shot above that we found a bard door sized shield drop for a paladin.

Also along the way we managed to hit most of the side quests, which was a bit surprising, but it somehow worked out that way.

Then it was to Upper Kurast and then across the Kurast causeway into Travincal, which none of us could pronounce on comms.  Another one of those words I’ve seen many times over the years and have never once had the chance to say aloud… and when the chance finally came I stumbled.

Travincal is one of the places in the game that is always laid out the same, so after we broke through the first couple layers of defenders I led the group over to where I knew the waypoint to be.  Best to have that in our pocket in case something went wrong.

From there it was time to take on the city council there on the steps of the main government building in Kurast.

A vote of no confidence is in progress

Solo this fight can be chaos and usually involves my mercenary dying a few times.  As a group we pressed on through at the cost of a couple of skeletons.

At that point it was time to talk to Deckard Cain, use the cube to create the flail that would let us into Mephistos dungeon, and get started finding him.  We came back and beat on the orb to get in.

The orb awaits

We got into the Durance of Hate, the final dungeon for Act III and had our usual luck, finding our way through in what seemed like record time to me.  I have spend long stretches trying to find my way through that dungeon, but as a group we found our way to the waypoint and then down to level three, where we put up a portal in order to unload and resupply in town.

That done we put up two town portals, just in case, then launched ourselves into the main chamber, hacking our way through the restored town council again, then working our way around to Mephisto.

The Mephisto fight was soon on.

Fighting Mephisto

And, honestly, soon finished.  Once again the might and size of our group were more than a match for the final boss.  We lost five skeletons and my minion, but otherwise came through intact.  Having brought him down, we sorted through his loot.

The loot of Mephisto

From there it was through the portal and into the Pandemonium Fortress and Act VI.

We did use the waypoint to go back to Kurast to wrap up the sixth and final quest, so we managed to knock them all out, which is something I almost never bother with.

Then it was back to Act IV where we sold loot and went shopping for better gear.  Talon joined the horned helm club, finding a deal on one at the shop.

The might of our horns

Now just hell lays between us and Diablo.  We will see how tough he is.  The game is supposed to scale up in difficulty as your group size grows, but I think we might have picked a sent of complimentary classes that let us scale up more than the difficulty.

Nostalgia and the Legacy of Blizzard North Keeps Blizzard Strong in the Q3 2021 Results

For Diablo, our plan to enter an era of unprecedented content scale for the franchise has experienced a strong start with the September release of Diablo II: Resurrected, the return of one of the most acclaimed titles in PC gaming history. First week sales of the title were the highest recorded for a remaster from the company.

-Activision-Blizzard Q3 2021 Presentation

As anticipated, yesterday saw the Activision-Blizzard Q3 2021 financials announced, which covers the period from July 1 through September 30 2021.

I put those dates in there just to be clear as to why I expected at least a little drama on the Blizzard front being that is the timeline when the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing hostile workplace lawsuit was headline news in the gaming community.

If players were really mad at Blizzard for being a horrible company, then it feels like there should have been some pain on their bottom line.  Instead, Blizzard posted its strongest quarter in 2021, bringing in $493 million, up $60 million from the $433 posted in Q2 and $10 million ahead of the $483 million posted in Q1.

Those were not “launch a new WoW expansion” numbers like Q4 2020, but they were still ahead of “its a pandemic and we’re all stuck at home playing video games” numbers.

Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 13

Margins were down a bit, 38% in Q3 compared to 43% in Q1, but still up when measured against Q2, when they dipped to 33%.

Overall, things were looking up for Blizzard in Q3, which might have been expected to have been the summer of their discontent.  What saved Blizzard’s bacon?

Apparently Diablo II Resurrected is a very popular title.  According to the earnings call it was a huge hit in South Korea, which might explain why I see Battle.net queues close to midnight Pacific time.  While people have been upset about BNet’s performance, it is apparently one of those problems related to being too successful.

That, however, was the extent of the good news at Blizzard as their achievements slide in the presentation deck shows.

Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Financial Results Presentation – Slide 8

It opens with the quote I have at the top of the post, which honestly could have been taken as faint praise given how the Warcraft III remaster went.  Even the StarCraft remaster wasn’t a huge hair deal.  But Diablo II Resurrected, which launched on PC and consoles in September, was enough to carry the quarter, because the rest of that slide is excuses and qualified successes.

Diablo Immortal, which I keep reminding people had a playable demo at BlizzCon 2018, is now slated for some point in the first half of Q2 2022, while Diablo IV is nowhere in sight.  It seems unlikely for 2022.

The Overwatch 2 entry is likewise vague on when it might be a thing that can generate revenue.  2022 doesn’t seem to be the target anymore.

Hearthstone is hard to judge, so whatever “stable” means, that was what it was.  We’ll see if the new game mode warrants a big mention when they review Q4.

And World of Warcraft, which is running both retail and classic modes now, recorded the strongest engagement for a non-expansion year which, given the cliffs the subscriber base has been driven off of for some of those years, might not be as big of a brag as you might think, especially when they’re running Shadowlands and Burning Crusade Classic in parallel.  That the Monthly Active Users for Q3 2021 stayed stable at 26 million for Blizz while D2R was booming probably means WoW was down by quite a bit.

So I guess a qualified good quarter for the Blizzard side of the house, even if they are the third place studio, such that people are starting to refer to the company as “ABK,” for Activision Blizzard King.

It also seems that bad behavior didn’t harm them as much as it might have.  But gamers are not, as a larger group, an especially politically aware group I imagine.  I noted yesterday that Riot didn’t seem to suffer from bad behavior, with League of Legends remaining hugely popular even as headlines haunted them.  Maybe being a bad place to work doesn’t hurt your bottom line, which I am sure will make everybody toiling in the video games industry happy.

You can certainly argue that the lack of a strong plan for Shadowlands and having no other fresh titles on deck hurt them as much, if not more than, the investigation by the state of California did.

We will see have to see what Q4 looks like, with the new Hearthstone game mode, WoW Classic Season of Mastery, and the cat mount being the only big items visible.  I’m surprised the cat mount didn’t get a mention on the Blizzard slide.

But we won’t get the Q4 news until February, so we’ll see what happens then.

Related:

• Activision Blizzard Investor Relations Quarterly Results Page
• Massively OP coverage including notes on the investor call topics
• Ars Technica Coverage of the state of the company

The Group Pushes on to Duriel in Diablo II

Having made it through the narrow tubes of the Maggot Lair previously, the group formed back up to tackle the back half of Act II.  The last waypoint we had found was in the Far Oasis, so we went there to get started again.  We just had to collect some corpses for Kevin so he could raise his skeleton army to support us.  This left quite a loot pile in the middle of the desert.

Starting to see more runes drop

From there it was the usual search around the edge of the Far Oasis looking for the path to the next zone, the Lost City, with its waypoint and connection to our next quest objective.

As tends to happen, we found our way back into the Dry Hills zone before finishing our circuit and finally finding the path that led in the right direction.  Entering the Lost City zone saw the lights go out as a new quest was triggered.  Moving in the darkness in the new zone seemed to get us more spread out than usual and we managed to lose first Talon then Ulfar to the groups of mobs lurking in the dark.

Covering Ulfar’s corpse

Portals back to town helped reunite us, as well as getting the quest update about the darkness from Drognan in town once we found the waypoint, but we kept on the run around the edge of the zone until we found the pathway down to the Valley of the Snakes where the Claw Viper temple is located.

Now enter the Valley of the Snakes

The valley is quite small and the temple is in the center.  The temple is also built out like most of the underground areas of Act II, with plenty of room to maneuver save for the occasional doorway.

Getting down to the second level we found our way to the room of the Tainted Sun Altar.  Once the room was cleared, clicking on the altar yielded up the Amulet of the Viper, one for each of us, and updated the quest from Drognan as well, restoring light to the zones of Act II.

The amulet obtained

Back in town we took the Staff of Kings from the Maggot Lair and the newly obtained Amulet of the Viper and combined them in the Horadric Cube to create the Horadric Staff, which we would need later.  Until then that went back into our respective stashes as we headed next to the palace, where Jerhyn wanted us to do something about an infestation issue.

Now he deigns to let us visit

The palace is kind of a quick pass most of the time when I play.  It looks nice, but the levels are small and there are two ways down at each level, so it is often very easy to just bypass most of the mobs loitering around waiting to surprise you.

Some stairs down in the palace

We managed to grab the waypoint in the palace cellar, but it is one that I often don’t mind missing.  There isn’t much reason to revisit the palace that I know of and when you get down to the bottom level you’re going to leave via a portal anyway.

We found the portal at the bottom floor, but had once again managed to get spread out enough that it took a minute to get everybody back together.

All over the map looking for the portal

Through the portal lays the strangest part of Act II, and perhaps the strangest location in the whole game, the Arcane Sanctuary.

Fortunately there is a waypoint right where you enter it from the portal, which is part of why the palace waypoint generally isn’t missed.

The Arcane Sanctuary waypoint

We took a minute to go back to town and get ourselves prepared.  We were on a bit of a time limit that afternoon and I was expecting that we might only just finish up the Arcane Sanctuary before we had to stop, the zone being a bit of a slog at times.  The place is made up of narrow paths and single file stairs and little portals.  It is also sizable, being laid out like a four leaf clover.  The waypoint is at the center, with four stems leading out, each of which split after a way, leading you around in loops that form the leaves of the clover, coming back around to the stem when you complete them.

At the tip of three of the leaves is a platform with several chests.  At the tip of the fourth is the lair of The Summoner, the target for this part of the adventure.

Clearing out all the loops can be a long task, and I seem to always pick the wrong stem to start with and often end up having to work through at least two of them before I find the right one.

We, however, were in luck.  We picked the right path on the first try and actually seemed to get the easy way through that loop, landing us at The Summoner in almost no time, at least relative to my usual experience in that zone.  I don’t think I have ever gotten it right on the first try.

We stormed his platform and took him down, our main problem being that of getting as many of our minions to bear in order to speed the fight.  They were all over the place.

The Summoner down as our minions mill about

That brought us to the Canyon of the Magi, the waypoint before us.  We were now close enough to the end of the act that we were going to press on, head directly to the correct tomb, and wrap things up.

In the old days I would sit and farm all the false tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but with time pressure on us, we went to the right tomb, as indicated by the symbol in our quest logs.

The symbol we sought

Inside we set about looking for the chamber where we could use the Horadric Staff to unlock access to the final boss of Act II.  The tomb is rather full up with mobs, but as a group we were able to cut through them until we found the right room, placing the staff in the orifice (literally what it is called) to crack through the wall and open a passage.

The lightning is the key

Then it was time for a bit of preparation, making sure everybody had enough potions on hand.  I changed over to the paladin frost resist aura to give us a bit of help on that front, though in hindsight the might aura might have just let the skeletons slay the boss faster.  Once we were set, it was through the opening and in to face Duriel.

Everybody on Duriel… except the necro

The Duriel fight is the first tough boss fight in the game.  It is often the point where I use the one respec you get per play through to get serious about my build.  Duriel does a lot of damage and I always open up a town portal as soon as I enter his chamber.

Our army of minions managed to take him down, though Kevin lost about half of his skeletons and his golem along the way, while a mercenary or two bit the dust as well.

Duriel down for the count… the post-fight maggots are an odd touch

From there were ran to the back of the chamber to find Tyrael and hear his speech about the story so far.

Tyrael admonishes us for our tardiness

I actually made a video of his speech from the game about ten years back if you want the original sound and graphics.

After that it was back to town to say goodbye to everybody, then find Meshif to sail off to the next part of the story.

The boat is ready to set sail

And so we will pick up next time in Kurast and Act III.

The Group Ventures Out from Lut Gholein

When last we left off the group  was headed into Act II of the game.

In case you were confused

We landed in Lut Gholein and ran about to get the measure of the place.

I always favor Act II.  The first act feels like a warm up, which it is naturally enough.  It has the mood of the original Diablo and felt very familiar when the game first launched.  The second act is where the game starts to come together with me, where it shows it can be different and better.

It is also a change up from the brooding darkness of the first act… at least some of the time.  When you’re out in the desert and the sun is up… again, there is a day/night cycle that I haven’t quite figured out yet… and sabrecats or leapers are chasing you around it feels like a different game.

There was also the option of some new mercenaries.

Ulfar and I opted to trade in our rogue archers… and I forgot to reclaim that nice bow I had given mine, but all loot is transitory in life I guess… for a couple of the polearm wielding local mercenaries.  They also have the advantage of having auras.  I opted for one with the prayer aura, which heals a bit, while Ulfar went with the defiance aura, which gives a boost to defense.

I couldn’t recall if the auras overlapped, and being a paladin favoring the might aura to boost Kevin’s skeleton army, we were going to have three running potentially.  But once we got out of town by dropping down into the sewers for the first quest, the aura effects at our feet showed we were getting multiple effects.

Down into the sewers via the trap door

The various guides to the game always seem to point out that going into the sewers to chase down Radament is optional and that act can be completed without doing so, but I always do it.  Act II flies by so fast that it feels like a positive to spend a bit more time there.

Having gone down the trap door into the sewers, we ended up having to explore a bit more to find the steps down to the second level.

We also started running into some narrow passages, which become more common ac the act goes along.  As a solo character these can often be useful to channel a group of mobs down to single file so you can dispatch them one by one.  With a mass of followers along though it can be a bit of a pain.  Getting your followers through and into a fight can take a bit of finesse and you start to learn about collision.  You can run through your followers, but no hostile mobs or other players.  Your followers, however, have collision among themselves, so you often have to lure them through a narrow bit in order to get your skeleton army into action.

We pressed on, found the third level and eventually bumped into Radament, who obliged us by being in a bit of an open area, so we were able to storm in and attack on a broad front to take him down.

After the battle

You can also see three auras at our feet in that screen shot, if you look close.

Radament done in, we returned to town for congratulations and our rewards, which is that the merchants in town won’t gouge you for things quite as hard.  A price break is always appreciated I guess.

Then it was out into the desert, which I always find fun.  The wide open spaces suited out group and followers and hangers on, which began to increase.  Kevin had leveled up enough to add some more skeletons to his entourage, while Ulfar found he found summon two ravens in addition to his three wolves… I think the hawk helm he got as a drop added that as a bonus… plus an orange, glowy, floating squid that did a bit of healing if I understood him correctly.

By the stash with wolves and the squid

We were also starting to look pretty smart as our armor got upgraded.  That your look changed with your armor choices was kind of a big deal back in 2000 and I am glad to see that they really honed in on that with the remaster.  Our characters look a bit careworn and aged in the select screen, but the gear helps hide that.

Anyway, we scoured the desert looking for our first goal, the Halls of the Dead, which is in the Dry Hills, the second desert zone.  We gabbed the waypoint, then found the dungeon.

As a dungeon it is nice and dark, but not that big and, while segmented into rooms, they are all wide enough to bring an army to bear on the hostiles, which served us well.

It is also the place where you find that most important piece of the game, the Horadric Cube.  After the big boss fight in the Halls of the Dead we ended up with four of them on the floor to loot.

Loot all over the place

I was wondering how that would work out with four of us.  It had been so long since I played with a group that I couldn’t remember, and in Act I there is a scroll drop that gives you the Carin Stone sequence, but you only get one of those among the group.  But here four cubes dropped, so we all got to pick one up.

Then it was back to town and time to explain a bit of the cube.  As Kevin summed it up, it is a bit like the crafting table in Minecraft. It does a whole bunch of things.

That secured in our stash, along with all of our loose coins, we headed back out to the Dry Hills and in search of the Far Oasis, where the next dungeon lay.

Once again, the wide open spaces lent themselves to a group that seemed to like to spread out.  We got a bit spread out, but nobody got into too much trouble.  There was yet another waypoint to be found, and then the next dungeon, the Maggot Lair.

Into the Maggot Lair

The Maggot Lair is neat because it has a very different look and feel than anything you have run into so far in the game.

It is also a challenge.  Playing through solo with my necromancer this was easily the slowest dungeon run of the game.  Remember up above where I wrote of narrow paths and collision in the sewers?  That was but a taste of the Maggot Lair.

As a dungeon it is made up of a series of single file tubes with rooms or intersections along the way.  Getting into the tube in the right order can be a bit critical, and your followers, who have their own collision properties to work through, can be a pain to get where they need to be.

Making our way through

In that screen shot above you can see Ulfar and I on the right, way ahead of the followers, though close enough to get auras, which are stuck in order because Kevin is back a ways and our followers cannot get past his followers.

The optimal ordering seemed to be to get me, the paladin, out in front, with Talon behind me with her spear.  She had the reach to attack with her spear from behind me.  Then Ulfar behind her ready to launch molten fire past us into mobs.  And, in the back, Kevin and the follower armor, ready to spill into any room or intersection when we had the chance.

Things working to plan for once

That was the ideal.  We often ended up stuck between people, or Kevin out in front and me in the back, unable to swap order without finding a room or an intersection.  And we kept leaving followers all over the place.

Followers left about the map

Still, we managed to muddle through and, once we found the final boss room, opened up a portal in the tube and went back to town, stocked up on supplies, the arranged ourselves in the optimum order to be able to storm the boss.

It went well, even if there were a lot of disgusting squelching sounds along the way.  It is that kind of place.

The room after the fight

That gave us each our next piece of the quest chain, the head piece to the staff of kings.

Then it was back to town to sell loot, repair, and resupply.  Along the way Ulfar traded in his hawk helm for a goat horned helm that looked pretty special.  All of our looks were still getting better, save for possibly Kevin, who was still a bit of the aging rocker in aspect.

The four of us in town, plus the squid again

That is a lot better looking that the original graphics, which the game lets you peek at.

The circa 2000 look

The funny thing is that my brain by this point has accepted the graphical update as the actual game.  As I play through now it feels like it has always been this way, that it is the natural order of things, the way it should be.  I guess I have to give some credit to Vicarious Visions, who did the remaster, some credit for that.  It all feels like the real deal to me and I am a bit shocked at how primitive it used to look.

Anyway, that was all we had in us for the afternoon.  The rest of Act II awaits.