History VideoGame / DiabloII

** The "Median XL" mod has a literal instant death radius in the form of the [[VideoGame/Left4Dead "witch"]] monster: a motionless ghost that announces its presence with an eerie song. It does nothing, but when you get close enough she notices you and laughs; if you do not immediately get out of range, she [[TeleFrag teleports at you and kills you]] with an unresistable and unblockable attack that deals [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 50,000 damage]] per frame.

* MirrorBoss: Nihlathak and The Ancients use skills accessible to Necromancers and Barbarians. Nihlathak in particular is fitting, as using your abilities quick enough prevents him from using the same (very deadly) abilities against you (both use up corpses).

* RevivingEnemy: The Reanimated Horde from ''Lord of Destruction'' had a chance of rising again after you'd killed them (although this could only happen a finite number of times and wouldn't always happen). The only way to be sure was to KillItWithIce, which would cause the body to shatter and evaporate.

** Median XL's Necromancers are quite fond of using scythes as their weapons, and have some nice attacks such as Angel of Death that do nasty damage.

* UnidentifiedItems: Cain will identify items for free as thanks for freeing him from a gibbet in Tristram (if you choose to be a dick and leave him there, the Rogues will eventually free him and he'll charge the standard price).

* DropTheHammer:
** Mace-class weapons include Warhammers, Mauls, and Great Mauls, plus their Exceptional and Elite versions. 50% more damage to undead, too. Scepters (many of which are depicted more as flanged maces on their graphics) also qualify.
** The Paladin's Blessed Hammer skill.

* SuperWeight:
** Type 0: Most humans.
** Type 1: Mercenaries, lesser monsters.
** Type 2: Most NPC magic-users, most monsters.
** Type 3: Most player characters, The Summoner, Blood Raven, Lesser Evils, lesser angels, [[spoiler:Human Tyrael]].
** Type 4: The Prime Evils and Angiris Council.
** Type 5: [[spoiler:Anu and Tathamet, Diablo as the Prime Evil]].

* AscendedGlitch: Hammerdins. Basically, Blessed Hammer is a nigh-useless spell on the non-spellcaster Paladin. Due to some bug, Blessed Hammer's damage was boosted by the Concentration aura (which should only be boosting physical attacks). This created the Hammerdin, making a Blessed Hammer/Concentration combo a viable character build (with the right equipment, of course). Blizzard made sure it would continue to work properly in subsequent patches: technically the bug was fixed in the expansion, then ''put back in'' on purpose. Incidentally, this made Hammerdins into one of the strongest builds in the game (some would argue the strongest), partly due to the lack of resistance to magic damage by most enemies, as opposed to other builds facing common immunities in Hell difficulty, which lets Hammerdins go unhindered by damage resistances in most zones.

* AxCrazy:
** Equip a Barbarian with an axe (or two). Cast Berserk or Frenzy. Literal example. [[DontExplainTheJoke Ax, crazy.]]
** All of the heroes from the first game. The Rogue is Blood Raven, the Sorcerer is the Summoner, and the Warrior is the BigBad (though they were all corrupted by demons to some degree).

* {{Feelies}}: The ''Diablo II'' Battle Chest came with a similar set of goodies, including the first game.

* NonPlayerCompanion: The second installment introduced the henchmen system, which allows you to hire a companion in all but one towns, though only one can follow you at any time. The companion can LevelUp and be equipped with better gear, but does not replace the PlayerParty, which consists of other players' characters online.

* DarkIsNotEvil: The Necromancer, who sees raising undead as a necessary evil for the greater good is, going by his commentary, at worst an AntiHero. [[http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/classes/necromancer.shtml The official website]] states that his own purposes are often aligned with those of the forces of Light. He may be on to something, as the years he's spent in the crypt studying the dark arts make him much more likely to resist being corrupted by Diablo's evil like the heroes of the first game. [[spoiler: You even find his apprentice in a random event in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'', carrying on his master's legacy of using necromancy for the greater good, and he comes across as being rather noble.]]
** According to the manual his order are masters of keeping themselves level-headed and strive for perfect balance. He is on the side of good simply because evil is more likely to win. In other words, the trope is played perfectly straight; Dark may not be good, but it [[{{Pun}} sure as hell]] isn't evil. The manual also states that the fact that they don't fear death and they seek only to maintain balance means that they're the only mage clan that has never been corrupted by demonic influence.
* DaylightHorror: ''Diablo II'' mostly takes place under the sunlight (when it's not BeneathTheEarth), including a desert territory brimming with undead buzzards and demonic locusts.

** The Kurast Sewers are ''huge''. So huge, in fact, that they can be entered from both Lower Kurast and the Kurast Bazaar, which aren't exactly small confined areas. If the random generation screws you over and/or you choose the wrong entrance, it will take you a while to find the lever to the second level.

* RandomlyGeneratedLevels: ''Diablo II'' does this in the same fashion as the first game, though single-player maps do not change unless the original is deleted, or if the player plays online. These levels were more random before the first few patch; later on, they changed the random generator to be less annoying.

* RoadRunnerPC: The player is essentially the fastest thing on the map. He has a SprintMeter, but at higher levels it's too big to make a difference. Except in very enclosed spaces, running is nearly always an option. This is why the most dangerous enemies in the game are the very few who are faster than you (mainly Undead Fetish and uniques with the Extra Fast affix), those that do ice damage (causing you to slow down,) SpamAttack quickly enough to [[CycleOfHurting stunlock you]], or mob you tightly enough to [[InterfaceScrew obscure the Town Portal you're frantically trying to click on]].

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The pace of experience slows down to a crawl by the mid-80s. A handful of people do reach 99, but it takes an insanely long time. Most characters will have attained optimal skills long before this. This is because shortly after it was released, ''Diablo II'' ended up with hundreds of Level 99 Hardcore Barbarians on Battle.net, much to the chagrin of the game designers who were certain reaching level 99 in Hardcore (where dying even once permanently ended your game) was impossible. Several nerfs to the signature Barbarian skill (Whirlwind) were applied, only for other game-breaking abilities to be uncovered in other character classes. Finally, they simply applied a patch that set all experience gains for level 80 or higher characters to be 1/10th normal, all past level 90 to be 1/100th normal, and past level 95 to be 1/1000th normal (most non-boss enemies, even on Hell difficulty, give only one experience point per kill at that level). By mathematically guaranteeing that players would need to kill 10 enemies per second, 24 hours a day, for nearly a year to go from level 98 to level 99, they finally succeeded in killing off interest in attaining the maximum level.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: ''Diablo II'' introduced a number of these:
** When you die, you respawn in the nearest town with no equipped items or gold. To get your items back, you need to go back to where you were killed and recover your own corpse. This is often unfeasible, especially on higher difficulties, because the enemies that killed you are still hanging around your corpse and now you have no weapons to defeat them or armor to survive them. Thankfully, you can restart your game and your corpse will appear in town with all the items intact and only the gold gone. This was a consequence of not having this option in the first ''Diablo'' in multiplayer mode. Imagine your prized gear on the floor surrounded by monsters right at the entrance of the level waiting to chomp down on you.
** Running, and the ability to highlight items on the ground.
** When the game was first released, [[ArtificialStupidity minions had a nasty habit of bumping into each others]] and clogging small passageways. A patch addressed this by allowing them to clip you.
** [[GridInventory Inventory items are now visible graphically]] rather than in text form. [[WeBuyAnything You can also sell items to any vendors rather than chasing specific vendors for certain type of items.]]
** Monsters have visible health bars when you pass your mouse over them.
** Unlike its predecessor, gold no longer take inventory space.
** Weapons or armors that lose their durability are broken, but can be repaired by the blacksmith. In ''Diablo'', a broken item was gone forever, even unique ones.
** In multiplayer games, friendly fire was a constant problem in the first ''Diablo'', especially with rogues and sorcerers involved. In ''Diablo 2'', it is disabled for all adventurers of the same party.
** Added in the expansion, the "repair all" button which will repair all your equipment at once, saving you the hustle of repairing your gear one by one like in ''Diablo''.

* ArmorAndMagicDontMix: In a roundabout way. A character's ability to wear a piece of armor (aside from level and any specific class restrictions on an item) more often than not depends on how many stat points are in STR. The result is that the 'pure' mage classes (necromancers and sorceresses) can't wear the heaviest armor because the player has likely put most of their stat points into INT. In other words, they can't wear the armor because they're squishy, and they're squishy because they train their minds more than their bodies.

* ArtificialStupidity: While the enemy AI is okay, the ally AI is definitely not. Hirelings clearly fall into this trope. They don't seem to understand basic concepts like [[{{Wallbonking}} "I should use that door just a few steps from me instead of trying to walk through the wall"]], they have the annoying habit of wandering around all the whole time in a world where just walking a few metres triggers a new wave of dozens of enemies. And monsters by the Necromancer are even worse, as getting too far from them (and they aren't good AT ALL at following you) makes them disappear. After numerous reports of necromancers getting stuck in a corner by their minions, Blizzard added an Unsummon skill to remove them when needed -- and that turned out to ''not be enough'', so now they let players noclip through their own minions. Sometimes, [[FailedASpotCheck they'll just stand still and won't attack enemies standing near them]]. Players with access to the Teleport skill, either from the Enigma runeword or charges on another item could get around this, as teleporting gathers all your minions to you.

* AscendedGlitch: Hammerdins. Basically, Blessed Hammer is a nigh-useless spell on the non-spellcaster Paladin. Due to some bug, Blessed Hammer's damage was boosted by the Concentration aura (which should only be boosting physical attacks). This created the Hammerdin, making a Blessed Hammer/Concentration combo a viable character build (with the right equipment, of course). Blizzard made sure it would continue to work properly in subsequent patches. Incidentally, this made Hammerdins into one of the strongest builds in the game (some would argue the strongest). Technically the bug was fixed in the expansion, then ''put back in'' on purpose.

** The Sorceress' awesome-looking Thunder Storm is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin but even maximum-twinked damage from it is relatively pitiful compared to more boring utility lightning skills. The multi-headed Hydra spell is a fireball-shooting stationary turret that does little damage at maximum and many monsters are immune to fire anyway. She can also activate a skill that leaves fire in her wake wherever she walks that when used, even if you ''again'' take max-twinked damage into account, is effectively cosmetic.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: The necromancers base their actions on the notion of a Balance. The novels attempt to (not always successfully) play with this. In one book, the villain is a necromancer who points out that all the necromancers do is fight evil, which doesn't adhere to the concept of a Balance. The hero of the book, another necromancer, continues to fight him, [[DesignatedEvil but doesn't bother to explain why he's wrong.]] In another book, the Balance is interestingly defined not as Good and Evil, but Good and the absence of Evil. It's explained that light and dark are not necessarily good and evil, and while the balance tipping to evil would mean torment, the absence of evil would lead to stagnation. One additional point to consider that the Balance is sometimes portrayed (though not described as) not as being between good and evil, but making sure that neither the angels or the demons of the series gain too much of a foothold in the world, as both are jerks. It just so happens that at the time of the second game, the "evil" forces are much more overt in screwing with mortal reality, and only one angel is bothering to do something.

*** Fortunately, [[https://www.diablonext.com/wiki/Traducciones_Diablo_II:_Resurrected a new translation]] for made for ''Resurrected'', being MUCH better, with any mistakes seemingly being because of being referenced by original audio files (which aren't being replaced) or because of attempting retroactive consistency with ''Diablo 3''. This didn't prevent [[https://www.diablonext.com/foros/d/3089-cambios-en-la-traduccion-de-diablo-ii-resurrected/17 some people]] from complaining, however, mostly [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks because of mere nostalgia]], and partly because of laziness to check a ''supposed'' error.

* BoobsOfSteel: How the Amazon can move around without her assets getting in the way is truly something. Other females in the series are more realistically endowed. This is lampshaded in one of the dialogue options with Larzuk.

** In act 5 you can hire most of the protagonists from ''Film/The13thWarrior''.

* MagnetHands: Cows wielding [[BladeOnAStick bardiches]]... with their hooves.

* BladderOfSteel: You cannot pause ''Diablo II'' when playing online, as with most multiplayer online games. This becomes especially rough when you play "hardcore", where when you die ''the game deletes your character''. However, your character cannot be attacked in town, so as long as you carry some town portal scrolls, you can use them as a sort of pause.

* BladeOnAStick:
** Players can equip a large number of bladed polearms, such as glaives, halberds, and scythes. These weapons tended to have the widest range of damage, with high highs and low lows. Act 2 mercenaries can equip these as well but their graphic will always depict them with a stabbing spear.
** The cows in the Secret Cow Level wield [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardiche bardiches]].
** The Amazon class can wield spears and javelins, which can only stab, thus avoiding SliceAndDiceSwordsmanship with a spear. Also, only Javelins can be thrown. The other polearms in the game, on the other hand, always slash.

* CanonName: While ''Diablo II'' hints at the fate of the three possible characters from the original game, it only explicitly states that one of them (hinted to be the Warrior) became Diablo, and [[WakeUpCallBoss Blood Raven]], the Rogue (maybe), is the only one given an actual name. The Sorcerer from the original game also reappears in the sequel, where he's called the Summoner (more of a title than a name, but that's as close as a unique identifier as we got). ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' states that the warrior of the first game is named Aidan.
** You can name your hero as whatever, but it takes ''VideoGame/DiabloIII Reaper of Souls'' to confirm the name/identity of the Sorceress, Isendra. And it takes ''VideoGame/HeroesOfTheStorm'' to give one for the Necromancer, Xul, and then the Amazon, Cassia.

* PreviousPlayerCharacterCameo: The champion from the last game was possessed by Diablo and is always a few steps ahead of you. He mostly shows up in the cutscenes, but you do encounter him once ingame.

* RaysFromHeaven: When you clear the Den Of Evil, the place gets illuminated with rays of light apparently breaking through the stone roof of the place as a heavenly-sounding choir can be heard above the music. If you're playing a Paladin, the quote he gives at this point is quite fitting: "My duty here is done."