Diablo 2 Beginner's Guide: New to Diablo 2 Resurrected? This guide will give you all the essential information to get started!

The death

I begin this guide with one of the aspects very specific to Diablo 2, death and its consequences. When you die:

• the equipment remains on your corpse (but not the inventory)
• you lose experience in nightmare and hell, but part of that experience is recovered by regaining your body
• the gold on you falls to the ground, taking part of it. Here it is in your personal safe, a part is taken but nothing falls on the ground. If your gold is in the shared safe, nothing is lost, on the other hand you must take out a little gold each time to buy your necessities.
• if you see that recovering your body seems complicated, quit and come back to the game, it will reappear in town
• your mercenary dies

Third party objects and rarity

Items are divided into three categories, regardless of their rarity level:

• normal
• something exceptional for you
• elite

It is important to remember this level because it will have an impact if you use formulas from the Horadrim cube. The same goes for the rarity of objects:

• white: normal, to make a runic word
• blue: magic, for craft
• yellow: rare, a good item base
• yellow brown: unique, one of the main types of objects
• green: from set, some are useful like Tal Rasha but the rest are not

Your final gear will consist of unique items and runic words.

Charms

Another specificity of the game, the charms. These are powerful items that you must keep in your inventory in order to have a bonus. Even if the first ones found are anecdotal, here are the interesting ones:

• small charms of life and resistance
• great damage, life and attack score charms
• major charms with a skill and life bonus if possible
• unique charms:
  • Gheed: MF and GF
  • Torch: skills, resistances and statistics (Uber instance)
  • Annihilus: Skill, Resistance, Stats, and Experience (Uber Diablo)

Gems

Gems are gems that you can insert into your pieces of equipment in order to receive a bonus. They can also be used in Horadrim cube formulas. You have five levels of gems, from cut to pure. Here are the different gems:

• Gem: armor, shield, weapon
• Amethyst: strength, defense, attack level - if you lack strength
• Diamond: attack level, resistances, undead damage - very useful in shields
• Emerald: dexterity, poison resistance, poison damage - if you lack dexterity
• Ruby: life, fire resistance, fire damage - little use
• Sapphire: mana, cold resistance, cold damage - little use
• Topaz: MF, lightning resistance, lightning damage - very practical in helmets
• Crane: health and mana regeneration, attacker damage, life and mana steal - practice in weapons, be careful, this is NOT a gem for cube formulas

Runic words and runes

Since Lord of Destruction, an expansion for Diablo 2, runic words are also an iconic element in Diablo. By assembling runes you will get a powerful item. You have all the Useful runic words from Diablo 2 on our guide, but what you need to know:

• you must insert the runes in the correct order
• it only works on white objects
• you must have the exact number of chases

Runes do not all have the same value, due to the difficulty in obtaining them, then due to their use in runic words. Here are the types of runes:

• base runes, all the same price, very little value: El, Tir, Nef, Eth, Ith, Tal, Ral, Ort, Thul, Amn, Sol, Shael, Dol, Hel, Io, Lum, Kol, Fal, Lem
• intermediate runes, more and more expensive: Pul, Um, Mal, Ist
• HR runes or "High Runes", all about the same price, dear: Gul, Vex, Lo, Sur, Cham, Zod
• VHR runes "Very High Runes", all about the same price, even more expensive: Ohm Ber Jah

Attack and spell casting speed

I will not go into details because the mechanisms are quite complicated, but if necessary you have the guide on attack and spell casting speed here. What you will need to know for now:

• 4 mechanisms are based on bearings
  • IAS: Increase Attaque Speed, your attack speed
  • FCR: Faster Cast Rate, your spell casting speed
  • FHR: Faster Hit Recovery, your speed of recovery after a hit
  • FBR: Faster Block Rate, your block speed
• you must absolutely reach a plateau to increase your speed
• i.e. 20% HRF for example does not increase your spell speed by 20%
• each level reached will roughly increase your speed by about 10%
• for example the level 105 FCR sorcerer vs 200 FCR sorcerer increases your spell casting speed by only 10%

Difficulty levels, leveling and quests

Each time you kill Baal, you will advance to the next difficulty level:

• normal: no penalty for loss of experience on dying or resistance
• nightmare: minor experience penalty on dying and - 40 resistance
• hell: major experience penalty on dying and - 100 resistance

You can consult our guide for easily complete story mode and know important quests.

Gold and its use

Current currency of the game, even if its market value is quite low, here is its use:

• buy and resurrect your mercenary
• repair your equipment
• buy potions and projectiles
• parier
• exchange it (you will need several millions)

Here's how to get it:

• by recovering it from the ground, not very efficient if you don't have% GF
• by selling expensive items:
  • armor
  • equipment giving +x skills (paladin's shield, sorcerer's staff, etc.)

potions

Potions will quickly become essential to your character, from start to finish with very endgame equipment. Here's some informations :

• this will be your main cost of gold during leveling
• quickly take a belt with 4 rows
• each potion gives you a fixed rate of life or mana
  • don't buy potions that give you more than your total mana (e.g. non-casters don't need a lot of mana, but a lot of potion)
• you will have to spam your potions a lot, and those for the majority of existing builds (up to EndGame)

To reduce this mana management problem:

• some spells cost a lot more mana depending on their level, you can possibly max out the synergies before, as is the case for Sacred Hammer of the Paladin (thank you SebuSan!)
• the runic word Insight gives an aura of mana regeneration, however beware of the strength required to carry the base weapon
• the Barbarian boosts are very practical because it doubles the mana, but you still have to have a Barbarian with either (or an adequate runic word)

Mercenary

Essential element of the game, its mercenaries. Unlike Diablo 3 anyone can have a mercenary in multiplayer, here's what you need to know:

• there are 4 types
  • Archer Act 1
  • Weapon Ax Act 2
  • Mage Act 3
  • Barbarian Act 5
• the most useful are those with a Weapon Ax, as they have a base aura and can also carry a Rune Word Weapon Ax giving an additional aura (usually Insight for mana or Infinity for lowering elemental resistances)
• at each difficulty level the mercenaries will be stronger, so you can replace the one you have with a brand new one
• the mercenaries of act 2 have different auras depending on the difficulty
• you can give it a life and rejuvenation potion with Shift + 1 2 3 or 4

Multiplayer and games

Although playable solo, Diablo 2 is designed for team play. It will be much easier to use the game system through the living room, for the following activities:

• the exchanges: N for Need, O for Offer, R for Read (read the description)
  • example: N Shako OR, in the description: tal amu
• experience: Tristrun, Tombrun, Diarun, Baalrun
  • example: Baalrun-05
• recover waypoints, kill bosses, etc.
  • example: Ancient Kill Hell

PC controller

Since Diablo 2 Resurrected, the game is compatible with controllers and it is frankly very successful, here is some important information:

• you can have 6 main spells and 6 alternate spells, instead of 2 and shortcuts on PC
• to give potions to your mercenary, LT + directional pad
• you have direct access to your inventory via the belt:
  • 1: potion of life
  • 2: mana potion
  • 3: rejuvenation potion
• be careful if you pick up a potion it will go in this slot, so it's very practical to have your potions in the inventory instead

By Alchemists, September 2021