Thursday, February 6, 2025

A Snowy Day in Hell: Diablo

Out of nowhere, yesterday, I decided I wanted to play Diablo 1 again. I fiddled around until I got it to work - and oddly, it didn't seem to love sitting on my main partition so I stuck it on a USB key and it worked fine. I patched it up to 1.09, used a patch to keep it stable on Windows 10, and fired it up. And then a good chunk of my day was back-filled and front-empty thanks to a snow and ice storm. So I played Diablo for breakfast today.

Mirado the Warrior is now level 9 and slogging his way through the upper 4 levels of the dungeons below the old church in Tristam. I spent a good deal of time getting sucked into the loot rewards, just one more fight to level, and the OH SHIT RUN of it all. I don't feel overwhelmed but I sure as hell feel a little nervous with every door I open and every corner I turn.


I played D3 for a little bit a while back, the demo anyway . . . and I wasn't enjoying it. I felt like I was just clicking and hoping. It looked good, but I didn't feel that existential fear of my guy getting popped like in Diablo 1. I felt like I couldn't beat the Skeleton King, but not like I was afraid of losing my guy or like I had any real stakes other than some time. I could have gotten the upgraded D2, or installed D2 and the expansion from my disks . . . but it was Diablo itself that seemed like a great way to spend some time. Much simpler - Warrior, Rogue, Sorcerer - and less worry about skill tree builds.

I played this game so damn much back in the day. I think I capped out at level 48 with one of my guys - Cthulbert - and played with my lamented lost buddy Ed, Don, my coworker Jesus (not Hey-soos, rather Gee-Zus), and a few others here and there. Fun stuff.

If anyone knows a way to get rid of the need for the CD, that would be nice, as my main play machine doesn't have a CD-ROM. If you've done it, let me know what worked - I tried searching for all sorts of methods and tried them to no avail, so don't drop me a link unless it's described what you had work for you. Thanks guys, and see you in Hell! (Aka levels 13-16)

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