WIPE OUT TRUMPISM!
Yes, you can totally and completely wipe out any vestige of the existence of Trump simply by using Diablo 2 as a meditative field of concentration, mindfulness and effective iron-age combat skills plus a seriously developed sense of winning battle strategies.
I view D2 not only as a learning field and skill developing area but also a way of immersing yourself in another completely different world, a world in which Trump and Trumpians simply don’t exist, and if they did, they wouldn’t last long among the other dungeon monsters.
I make money from Trump. He feeds my comedy needs and keeps my blogs interesting, just because the guy is dangerous enough to get your full attention, like someone with their hands around your most delicate body-parts.
Let’s be perfectly clear here — I am not a “nevertrumper” — never heard of Trump before he was elected — nor am I a Trump-Hater, although it’s hard not to be, due to his incessant need to have his branded name in the news cycle every single day.
It’s reminiscent of the constant blaring of loudspeakers in countries which have fallen to dictators, talking constantly about their “Beloved Great Leader”, usually just another dumb shmuck with a talent for mass murder and some friends in high places, generally along the lines of some religious fanatics who feel the need to control everyone and make them all either be exactly like them, or push up daisies.
Generally, as is the case with wise-ass standup comics like myself, the case for daisies is easy to make. I have to have SOME frigging escape from the Mad King of Amerika, and D2 is my first choice.
I am highly skilled at very deep levels of meditation and mentation, but nothing works against Trump, Trumpies and Trumpism as well as Diablo 2.
Keep in mind that you’re battling the forces of Hell and that the demons are out there, more or less the entire GOP, and they’re busily swarming and devouring the wheat all over the world, and there are zombies and hate-filled vermin everywhere, and all you’ve got to stop them when you first get into the world of Diablo 2 is the equivalent of a fist-axe or a blunt instrument resembling a lead pipe.
Armor? What is ARMOR???
You’re born — we call it “respawned” — almost naked, in a thin muslin shirt and heavy rough-wove leggings and a cloak and something that passes for a hat.
You’ve got to arm yourself and dress yourself in protective gear, and quickly, or you will learn more secrets about repeated and incessant Death & Dying than you ever wanted to know.
In short, you’ll die a lot, which is NOT the object of the game, although there are players who, through sheer incompetence and inattentive idiocy, will manage to convince you otherwise.
You won’t be able to achieve the placing of fingertips in ears and repeating aloud the “la-la-la” mantra to get the Trump-Free Effect unless you use a powerful Beta-Blocker to stop the thinking mind from thinking.
You need something totally absorbing and thoroughly compelling, that catches you and holds you fast without letting go for a single moment as long as you’re in the cyberspace world, and that’s gotta be Diablo 2.
It’s too bad the people at Blizzard never got back to me when I tried to warn them that they were about to lose their public due to their need to copy another successful game rather than continue to develop D2 and get the commercial sales into place for items, but they chose to take the path of Diablo 3, and it led to disaster.
Okay, so here we are with a New Ladder for D2, which means the game engine is still being supported by Blizzard Entertainment, and it makes it a new game about four times a year.
What happens when there’s a New Ladder is the relative ranking of each player is reset and the upward struggle begins, but also the RUNES and other RARE and MAGIC items are now available.
There are only a certain number of high runes and MAGIC items and sets, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Also, in Non-Ladder, you can’t CRAFT UP most of the items in Ladder, and the RUNEWORDS can’t be made for the best stuff, like the FAITH BOW and the ENIGMA ARMOR.
The whole point of playing D2 is the Immersion Effect.
I call the Immersion Effect “Trump-Blocking”, or “Beta-Blocking”, meaning THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about Trump, Trumpies and Trumpism, and it’s super-easy to get into the space of Diablo 2, and to get lost in the Other World.
The Devil is in the Details, meaning that the more exquisitely you can involve yourself in the many hundreds of details at every level of game, the better the Immersion Effect will be, until you achieve TOTAL IMMERSION, which affords a complete and FEELABLE escape from TRUMP WORLD.
BETA-BLOCKING TECH:
So here’s a complete step-by-step rundown — the levels of challenge are laid out from easiest to hardest to complete.
First, you’ll have to download the game and install it. Having done that, open a new playing account and invoke a character from the choices of seven possible character classes. You might want to start as an assassin, but if you’re operating in one of our Bardo Safari groups, you’ll settle out who needs to be what class.
So you’ll go to the Battlenet screen and name and add a character, then open a game and go in, preparing yourself to learn what the various graphics mean and how they translate into action and circumstance.
- ROGUE ENCAMPMENT — Sure, it looks and seems simple enough. It’s a safe space where you can get items, have weapons and armor repaired by a blacksmith, obtain life and mana potions — they’re called “life pots” and “mana pots”, by the way — and get news and information from the inhabitants of the encampment. If you’re attentive to the exclamation points over the heads of some villagers, you’ll find that they have things to tell you that might help you on your path, but of course, you seldom listen to good advice, so go ahead and blunder on forward without finding out what’s happening, it’s okay with me … I have a large capacity for humor. Make sure you talk to ALL the NPCs — that means “Non-Player Character”. They are there to provide information, weapons, armor and all manner of magical devices. You’ll find a STASH BOX in Rogue, where you can keep your stuff, but it’s very limited, so don’t cram it with everything you happen to find. You can get pots from Akara, repair from Charsi, gambling with Gheed, resuscitating your merc with Kashya, and identifying items with Deckard Cain, all of whom appear in Rogue Encampment.
- BLOOD MOOR — Blood Moor is just outside the Rogue Encampment, and clearing it of EVERY SINGLE MONSTER is the goal, although if you miss one or two, nothing horrible happens. Start by walking to the left, following the outer wall around in a circle until you come to the starting point again. You’ll note a large blank area on the map, which you call up by hitting your middle mouse button, mouse wheel or the TAB button on your keyboard. Make sure the entire map shows up, indicating that you’ve been everywhere in that particular area, also called a “universe”. As soon as you have enough money, you want to buy a BOOK OF TELEPORTS and BOOK OF IDENTIFY to carry a large number of scrolls in a smaller space. You have only a very few squares in your pack, and you need to fit everything in that you’ll need.
- DEN OF EVIL — It’s more than just a den — it’s a place where your newbie character can get money, armor and weapons from monsters, who drop them when they die, just like your character does when it dies, which it shouldn’t, if you play with a good level of conservatism and patience. Yes, patience. Without patience, your char (that’s short for “character”) will surely die, and you will lose money, which you will dearly need to buy pots, repair stuff and get items that will help you reach your objectives. There is a main group of mummies in there somewhere — there are several variants of the interior maps of all worlds and levels — and one of them is tougher than the others, so step back and get him from a distance. You don’t yet have a companion mercenary — we call them “mercs” — to help you, so you’ll have to get smart and clever and stay out of range of clubs, knives, swords and bashing fists. If you don’t achieve hand-eye and basic keyboard and mouse motor skills fast enough, you’ll tend to die a lot — please don’t complain. I’ve heard it all. So after you completely clear every single monster from the DOE — that’s the Den of Evil — the lights will come on and you’ll be given an award by Akara, whom you’ll find in the lower right of the Rogue Encampment screen, which would be the South-West Corner. She gives you a special magical ring just for clearing the Den of Evil, and now, armed with your brand-new ring, you’re ready to blunder onward to the next level of challenge. In general the rings you get from Akara are just garbage, but you probably won’t have yet found any rings, so wear what you’ve got, not what you’d like to find.
- COLD PLAINS — The Best Practice here is to first clear Cold Plains of all monsters, while at the same time locating the path to the Graveyard. This is a great opportunity to build your items up, get better armor and find better weapons. Don’t get too hung up with equipment in NORMAL — everything you get here will soon be dumped, when you enter into the challenge level of the world of NIGHTMARE D2. You will find a road that leads to the Cemetery, where Blood Raven holds court. She is a tough old bird who takes a lot before she goes down for the third time.
- BLOOD RAVEN — Blood Raven is a seriously Evil Bitch From Hell who has an entire army of zombies ready to pile onto you, but of course you know better than to wander into a band of wild zombies, right? You might have to learn some combat techniques to be able to actually kill Blood Raven, but when you do, you are rewarded with a companion, a mercenary. You have a choice of accepting whichever merc is assigned to you by Kashya, who stands at about the center of the Rogue Encampment. You can always find things by clicking up the map with TAB or mouse wheel. The names are clearly displayed. You’ll have to work out where you are on the map as you move, and this will be an important skill, so you’d best learn it now. That little blob there in the middle of the map is YOU. Get used to the overhead view. Now that you have a MERC to help you, you’re ready to tackle something more challenging. It’s time for Something Stronger. If you don’t figure out how to keep your merc alive, you will soon run out of money, and when you’re dependent on the MERC to provide an AURA or MANA or DIVERSION, you won’t have her there to do the job. Keep the Merc alive, and Let The Merc Do The Work! Your main job is to keep everything going, not to fight fist-to-fist.
- STONY FIELD — Somewhere in Stony Field, you’ll find a stone henge or circle, which is comprised of five very large monolithic uprights, each emblazoned with a rune, which lights up when you get the combination just exactly right, which you can only do by obtaining a scroll, which you won’t find here. You’ll have to locate the Underground Passage, which is somewhere in Stony, but its location changes every time you play, so you’ll have to go looking for it. While you’re at it, might as well clear the entire field, and that’s not a bad idea, considering you can get some pretty nice drops here, and don’t neglect the loose stones, loot boxes and various sorts of treasures and caches all around the area. Most have garbage or nothing at all, but you’ll be surprised when a nice RUNE pops out unexpectedly from the most unlikely sources.
- DARK WOODS — It’s somewhere in Dark Woods that you’ll find a big old tree, and inside the tree is hidden the SCROLL OF INIFUSS. Problem is, the tree is heavily guarded by three giant gorillas, and they can squash you flat. One way to obtain the scroll is to bump into the tree, then quickly without stopping, lure the big guys away, run back and get the scroll and go. Before you do all this, you would do well to locate and activate the WAYPOINT for Dark Woods. Once you have the scroll, go through the WP — that’s gamer-talk for “WayPoint” — and go to Akara for a translation, then return to STONY FIELD and go to the STONE HENGE, where you’ll open your pack and right-click to READ THE SCROLL, then follow the instructions to unlock the stones, opening a PORTAL to TRISTRAM.
- TRISTRAM — Here you must fight and overcome a huge number of foes, the first of which is an exploding cow carcass right at the Portal spot — finding CAIN suspended in a cage above, you bump the bottom of the wooden base of the high cage to free Cain, who will open a PORTAL through which he returns to Rogue Encampment. He will IDENTIFY items for you for free. All unid — unidentified — items must be identified either by Cain or by a special SCROLL OF IDENTIFY which you carry in your ID BOOK in your backpack. Keep those scrolls topped off at all times, or you’ll fight your way all the way to the deepest dungeon and find yourself without a Town Portal to get back out of there without having to leave the game.
- BLACK MARSH — There are two marshes in D2, the Black Marsh, which you encounter right away, and the Great Marsh, which is part of Act III, and is very different in nature. The Black Marsh is a wilderness between DARK WOOD and TAMOE HIGHLAND. You will find somewhere in Black Marsh — and it changes every time you invoke a new game — the FORGOTTEN TOWER, one of the best sources for RUNES in the entire world of D2.
- FORGOTTEN TOWER — This is the wrecked and ruined home of the ever-popular COUNTESS, whose minions will keep you entertained for about half an hour as you work your way down into the deepest dungeons below the tower, and here’s how you’re going to do it — put up a TP — that’s short for “Town Portal” — at every new level of dungeon as you hit it. Be prepared for groups of monsters just at the door, and be ready to jump back if it gets too heavy. Don’t leave any monsters behind if you think you might be coming back that way as you scour the dungeon for the entrance to the next lower level. In every dungeon, you’ll need to leave your overlay map to “ON” so you can see where you’ve been, which is what the map shows, not where you’re going. You can anticipate trouble when you see brightly colored lights in a chamber or around a corner — it means a super boss is somewhere in there. When you kill the Countess, she’ll cough up one or more RUNES, although once in a while, she’ll give you nothing after all that work to get down there and wipe her out. Be sure to have enough TPs to get back to town! Keep your POTS and your SCROLLS topped off every time you go to town!
- TAMOE HIGHLAND — Scour the countryside and lay waste to the planet, then locate the PIT — Yes, the Pit. Wow, the PIT is in ACT ONE, and yet you can get the same XPs — Experience Points — from the PIT as you can in ACT 5 at those Highlands!!! Beware, the monsters in here are way beyond what might be manageable at your present level of character. It’s not a bad way to find good drops, even in ACT ONE NORMAL, if such a thing is possible.
- MONASTERY — You’ll find your way here and just inside the gate in the garden you will find a WAYPOINT, which is your current target. You might spend several days getting through here, and you want a perm portal to the area, so that’s why you get the WAYPOINTS at each spot in each area. If you miss a WAYPOINT, go back there immediately, and don’t fail to GET IT. There are a variety of entrances to the Monastery around the courtyard, and it might take several tries to get in there.
- DUNGEONS — You’ll work your way downward toward the lair of Anduriel, whom we endearingly call “Andy”. There’s a WAYPOINT here that you won’t want to miss, because you’ll take others through this area if you’re a part of a Safari group, and the WAYPOINTS save a LOT of walking.
- KILLING ANDY — Of course there’s a secret to it, which I’ll let you discover on your own. It might take few dozen times before you figure it out.
With Andy dead, you’re free to move on to the next level, ACT TWO. You get there from Warriv, whom you’ll find very near your stash box which you should know how to keep clean, neat and organized by this time.
That covers the first stage of the first and easiest NORMAL level of challenge. There’s more, lots more, but get at least to Andy before even contemplating the remainder of the quest, because it goes on and on and you can get easily lost, confused and overwhelmed unless you take it step by step and stage by easy stage.
Developing your skills will happen just by itself as you try to complete each quest or “run”.
What? You want MORE? Get the first part done, and we’ll talk.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby