1. First of all, welcome to the newsgroup! Feel free to have a look around, read the FAQ, use Google Groups ( http://groups.google.com/advanced-group-search) to see if a topic has been touched or answered before already, and maybe even visit our neighbours in alt.games.diablo. You can ask any questions you want, but please be nice to each other. All files linked in this post are currently clean, but you should check them for viruses anyway. If you don't have any antivirus software installed you can use Kaspersky's Remote Virus Check: http://www.kaspersky.com/remoteviruschk.html
  2. Orchid's Acronym Guide should provide you with all the important acronyms: http://users.zoominternet.net/~shorts/Orchidsguide1.htm
  3. On USWest: public chat agd2-uswest
    On USEast: agd2
    On Europe: public chat agd2
  4. A mule is a character created specifically for item storage purposes.
  5. ATMA, a muling program (fairly complex and sophisticated) for single player and LAN modes using Windows, has been released for 1.10 (the final release). You can get it from the author's site at: http://atma.diabloii.net/
  6. The most common method is as follows:
    • Create a passworded game in Normal difficulty.
    • Stay in this game for more than five minutes. After that the game is in general stable for some more minutes even if nobody is in the game.
    • Leave the game.
    • Return to the game to make sure it is still there.
    • Drop the items you want to mule.
    • Leave the game.
    • Return with your mule character to the game and pick up your items. Please note sometimes games just crash, so only mule items with this method that you can accept to lose in case the server screws up. And items tend to disappear quite quickly when lying on the ground (between 15 and 30 minutes), so better drop them in small portions. A safer method is to ask a friend to hold your items while you jump in and out of the game.
  7. There are accounts on USWest, USEast and Europe that are available for item donations and retrieval. http://home.austin.rr.com/vermillion/publicmules/
  8. When you change characters too quickly the Battlenet interprets the repetitive actions as an attempt to flood the servers and locks you out for a little while. There are two ways to avoid this:
    • Take your time when changing characters, count to five when you are in the character selection screen.
    • When you get the error message try disconnecting from the internet and reconnecting again. In many cases your ISP then gives you a new IP address, and you can log into your account again. There are ISPs (afaik in Switzerland or Austria) where you have a static IP, but somehow can change it manually, this works too.
  9. Press the "PrintScreen" button (on a PC) or Shift/Option/3 (on a Mac) on your keyboard, D2 then automagically places a screenshot in JPG format in your D2 installation folder.
  10. Please don't try to post screenshots directly to the newsgroup. Instead upload it to some webspace and provide us with the link. And if you can, please crop the picture or compress it a bit as the default screenshot size of 400-500k is quite large. Possibilities for upload:
    • Install D2 and LoD with key set #1
    • Copy the folder contents to a new folder
    • Uninstall D2 and LoD in the original folder
    • Install D2 and LoD with key set #2
    • Exchange d2gfx.dll in both directories with a modified version that can be downloaded here: D2gfx_111b.zip
    • Start both installations via game.exe and enjoy
  11. The keys are encrypted and stored in the MPQ files, there is a tool that displays them, it can be downloaded here: ShowCDKey_111.zip
    In order to make it work you have to place the file in the respective D2 installation directory, otherwise you will get an error message "Missing storm.dll".
  12. Probably on a sticker attached to either the jewel case or the manual of your D2 CDs. If you don't own those please go and buy them, they are not that expensive any more. By not asking you are going to avoid flames from the regular posters.
  13. Not here. Please see question 13. If you just want to try out the game you can download a demo version directly from Blizzard's web site: http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/demo.shtml
  14. Not here, but if you have the original CDs you can make a virtual CD-Rom drive and place the CD content on your hard drive with Daemon tools and BlindWrite.
  15. There are a lot of game servers on each of the realms. If somebody sells a unique ring called Stone of Jordan (SOJ) on one of the servers all games on this server get the above message. After an uncertain amount of SOJs sold the so-called World Event is triggered, and a super-unique monster is spawned, the so-called Über-Diablo (commonly called Diablo Clone or DC). His complete stats are listed here: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act5-uberdiablo.shtml
  16. Please read through http://www.battle.net/info/friends.shtml
  17. You can only whisper people that are online. The commands are
    /w *account or /msg *account or
    /w character or /msg character
    If you have the recipient on your friends list you can whisper him instead of his account name with a shortcut. Use /w %f[number] with the recipient's number on your friends list instead of [number]. Additional commands can be found here: http://www.battle.net/info/commands.shtml
  18. You have to press Ctrl+M simultaneously. Due to a weird bug sometimes just typing M toggles the music, and there is nothing you can do to prevent that from happening.
  19. There are different kind of bots, not all of them bad:
    • Chat bots idle in a channel to hold it open and serve the visitors with information. There are different builds, but in the channels they all look like blond girls. Most bots react to commands executed with an exclamation mark in front of them or a similar prefix. If you come across a bot just type !version in the channel, that tells you the bot's build. The bot used in "Public Chat agd2" on Europe and "Public Chat Mickey" on West are made by SubSpace whose web site can be found here: http://www.subbot.net/
    • There used to be so-called Meph bots, Pindle bots or shop bots that basically played the game for you. Probably they still exist, but then people are more careful with their use.
      The bot is told what items to look for and what actions to perform (eg go down Anya's red portal, teleport to Pindleskin, kill him and his buddies, check items on the ground, pick up the valuable stuff, go back to town, place it in stash, go to Larzuk for repair, exit and create a new game.
      Botting is in this group considered cheating by a lot of people, but some people have openly admitted using bots, and we still talk with them...
  20. The item you want to use must not be unique (golden text), set (green text), rare (yellow text) or magic (blue text). It has to be grey, and it must be the right item type (don't mix up spears and polearms, and "mace" for a Heart of the Oak doesn't require a mace class weapon, but a mace type such as a flail).
    The number of sockets must correspond exactly to the number of runes you want to insert, and the runes must be inserted in the exact order, otherwise you only get the bonus of the single runes. Don't get upset though if the rune you wanted to insert ended up in a different socket than the one you targeted, as the local arrangement within the item cannot be influenced by you.
  21. You probably have a non-English game version, and at least the German version crashes if you try to look at an item that gives you an aura when equipped. A German guy developed an unofficial patch though, it can be downloaded at http://www.ingame.de/filebase/index.php?action=file&cid=325&fid=1467.
  22. You probably have exchanged the original d2lang.dll with a different language version. Replace the substitute with the original for account creation.
  23. (Written by Babe Bridou)
    Either a bug, a glitch or a feature, charges in items of skills you don't possess at all give you a synergy level equivalent to the level of the charges...
    To be more precise, Marrowwalk has charges of level 33 bone prison. So if a necromancer doesnt put a single point into the bone prison skills, he gets 33 levels of synergy to each of bone armour, bone spirit, bone spear, bone wall and teeth while wearing Marrowwalk boots. Kinda buggy in this case, because it's fairly overpowered, even if you cant spam any bone prison.
    Another item like this is Moonfall, with level 11 meteor charges. Give it to a fireball sorceress who hasn't invested any point in meteor, and she gets 11 levels of synergy for free. (glitch in this case, because it allows a sorceress more versatility and is the only viable way to build a successful multiplayer hell capable tri-elementalist, but she'll never be more powerful than a pure FB sorc).
  24. Short for "duplication". Or in other words, using hacks or glitches to make copies of weapons, runes, armor, etc. Basically it is cheating.
  25. (Written by Babe Bridou)
    Q: What about maphack?
    A1) A neologism roughly equivalent to "troll" in AGD2.
    A2) The reason for half of the flame wars in this newsgroup. Please think twice before posting about maphack, or even mentioning it.
    A3) Most people think it should have been (banned from)/(bundled into) the game since the beginning. This is a (disastrous cheat)/(convenient tool) designed to (ruin)/(enhance) the gaming experience. Blizzard's stance against maphack has clearly been stated even though (they should be more aggressive)/(they tacitly recognize its contribution to gameplay). Diplomacy recommends that posters should not mention maphack in any way.