Since that time, the adventurers have become 3D and updated their wardrobes.
(a somewhat belated update)
Patch v1.11 was released (8/1/05) near the end of the 2nd Ladder Season with a good deal of new content, most of which involved new Uber monsters. By hunting certain bosses in the game, players were able to collect 3 different types of Keys:
Act 2 - the Summoner - Key of Hate
Act 5 - Nihlathak - Key of Destruction
Furnace of Pain - fight Uber Izual - drops the Relic Mephisto's Brain
Forgotten Sands - fight Uber Duriel - drops the Relic Baal's Eye
+3 to all skills (class specific)
+10-20 (varies) to all attributes
+10-20 (varies) to all resistances
25% chance to cast lvl 10 firestorm on striking
lvl 30 hydra charges (10/10)
+8 Light Radius
Only one Hellfire Torch will drop but a SoH will drop for each player in the party. Is it a small charm...? *shrug* No one seems to know. It has a lvl 90 requirement but as of yet has proved to do absolutely nothing. Feel free to contact the webmaster with your outlandish theories.
The first Ladder Season (7/8/04) has officially come to an end and Season two is well under way. The top 10 players from each Class, and the overall top 10 in each Realm, have been immortalized on the Blizzard website. Congratulations to Vampirella, who ranked #7 on the US East Assassin Ladder despite several months of retirement.
Shadow-Kos
small_fire
Taynk
Deathkvlt
Nismo_ZX
Nicotine_Fiend
&
Ratmao
so long and thanks for all the 6-packs ^^
Since I've last been able to update, v1.10 went live on the Realms and the first Ladder Season began (10/28/03). The most surprising thing about the patch was the insane amount of time spent in the Worldstone Keep. Baal runs became the "new" Cow runs, with a few major differences. The most glaring of these was the quantity of runs necessary to gain any kind of experience. High level death took a tremendous toll and could erase a day's work in a second's time. Besides that, Baal runs required a certain amount of social engineering to be successful. I'll simply call it the "politics" of a run; anyone who was there knows what I mean.
Well, it's almost Halloween and still no patch... Am I surprised? Not really. But it does make the "tribute" a little premature. Despite the uncertainty, people on the realm have been keeping busy. Here are a couple of photos taken by a certain camera-happy sorcy.
For those of you who just happened to stumble upon this page and don't quite get what the deal is with Diablo II, you're in luck. Some kind soul has written an analysis for you. If you're perusing this page partially because you've already been bitten by the D2 bug, there's also hope. Read "Diablos in the Mist: A sub-cultural analysis of the psuedo-genus Homo Diablus" by clicking below, for some insight into just what kind of creature you've become.
(thank-you to BattleAngel for recommending the link)
Beta testing is in progress for 'Diablo II: Lord of Destruction', and the 1.10 patch is imminent. I'm sure many will miss the old, but are looking forward to what the future holds.
Things to miss
old characters
all-night cow runs
the tri-sorc, the bowazon, and other v1.09 builds
Things not to miss
iths
bots
dupes
did I mention bots
Due to the release of v1.10s beta (8/4/03) and the corresponding skill re-balancing, many v1.09 characters will become relics of the past. One is the sorceress to whom this write-up is devoted, Ji-Shivayah. The classic melee/orb-sorc was later rebuilt as a nova/orb caster-sorc and will remain as a memory of my first character. To date, she is the only one to reach level 99.
A name familiar to Final Fantasy enthusiasts everywhere, Shiva is the ice-elemental summon of that particular world. Like many characters in games, her real origin is mythological. In contrast, her mythological namesake is associated with Agni, the god of fire.
- Brahma the Creator (the creator of the universe, known as the passion that creates)
- Vishnu the Preserver (the preserver of life, known as the goodness which maintains balance)
- Shiva the Destroyer (the destroyer of ignorance, known as the fire which destroys)
Shiva is a figure of renunciation. A favorite image portrays him as an ascetic, performing meditation alone in the vastness of the Himalayas. There he sits on a tiger skin, clad only in a loincloth, covered with sacred ash that gives his skin a gray color. His trident is stuck into the ground next to him. Around his neck is a snake. From his matted hair, tied in a topknot, the Ganges river descends to the earth. His neck is blue, a reminder of the time he drank the poison that emerged while gods and demons competed to churn the milk ocean to butter. Shiva often appears in this image as an anti-social being, who once burned up Kama, the god of love, with a glance.
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