It took me only a week to get to Diablo in the Diable rpg. Have I missed something? Its been all too easy, until now.
I am finding battling Diablo the only real challenge in the game. I would like a few opinion on how to defeat him as a rogue. I dont seem to have enough hp to last more than a few seconds when I encounter him.

Diablo or Diablo 2? I think the best tactics to beat Diablo in D2 is to use the old "hit and run" tactic.

I think your talking about D1? Rogues are not in D2. In any case, you really dont want to melee with either the D1 rogue or the D2 amazon. In the D1 final battle, gulp potions like theres no tomorrow, run like hell and fire arrows at everything that moves.

Diablo is fast , but you should be able to outrun him. SInce he has no ranged attacks, if he cant catch you he cant hurt you. But it has been a *long* time since I played D1, so I could be mistaken on the no ranged attacks part.

Ranged attacks will do to wear Diablo down in D. Then just go toe-to-toe. It also helps to have a convenient Town Portal cast at a safe distance so you can get back to town and heal.

Once you have killed Diablo, you then must install the Hellfire add-on, set up the command.txt easter egg and play as a bard with KSoH and KSoB bastard swords.

Oh the carnage!! [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

It is Diablo 1 that I am playing.

Diablo does in fact have a very strong ranged attack which is a fireball. I think it may be an apocalypse spell. It takes only 2 hits to kill my rogue & Diablo can fire these off before I can even be in sight range of him.

If I sneek up on him I can start hitting him with arrows which stops him from using his ranged attack, but then he gets me with his melee attack. If I stop firing arrows to run I get blasted again.

Is there any way to reduce the effect of apocalypse? I have max fire protection. Is there any weapon or spell that is particuarly effective?

I hadn't heard of the hellfire addon I will have to look for it.

If you are really desperate to hack the old D into bite size pieces, go to www.avault.com to get the cheat. Sometime ago I downloaded a cheat tool (I can't remember where) to creat a 2000-2000 damage sword and whacked Diablo in one shot. :D

[ 12-26-2002, 09:43 PM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]

Well I can give you more detailed suggestions if you list your rogue's stats, what equipment she has, spells, etc. However, here are some basic tips to help you out [img]smile.gif[/img]

BTW, Diablo is rather unique in that he has both ranged and melee attacks, which cannot be resisted but can be blocked if your Dexterity is high enough (chance to block is related to DEX) and higher armor class will help avoid some damage.

The most important thing I can tell you is that Diablo is definately much easier to defeat when he is by himself. Try to clear out a battle ground where you will later fight Diablo. Before throwing the final lever, make sure you kill all the monsters around his room. After you pull the last lever opening his lair, you have two options:

1) Probably the easiest of the two. You can draw Diablo out by himself without awaking the monsters that surround him. How? Well any lightning based spell or Holy Bolt will do the trick. You see, Blood Knights and Advocates are immune to lightning, and Holy Bolt will only affect Diablo. Diablo spawns near the center of his room, so standing at the edge of the screen, fire off lightning spells or Holy Bolts into the center of his lair. If you use this tactic of soloing Diablo out, then you can park him in a nice remote corner of the level and go to town to prepare for the fight by buying potions and swapping out resistance items for anything more useful. Resistance against Diablo is useless so things like +to hit%, +hp, +all, etc. are much better assuming there are no pesky Advocates remaining to shoot fireballs at you.

2) Or you can do it the other way around, and slowly lure out the monsters from Diablo's lair and kill them one by one. Just slowly approach his room from one of the four directions and wait patiently for a couple monsters to come out. Take a step closer until more monsters come out, then repeat the process for the other three directions making sure to keep the center of the room out of sight. Be careful because Diablo's room is packed with monsters! This strategy is a little harder than the first and you can often attract too many monsters at once, or even accidentally trigger Diablo himself. If this happens, you should retreat to a safer location to try to thin out the enemies and avoid fireball projectiles.

Once you have Diablo where you want him, here are some simple things you can do to improve your chances of survival.

* Run away and back yourself against a wall. Being next to the wall ensures that Diablo cannot knock you back with his attack. If you have the spell or scroll, then cast multiple Firewalls directly in front of you. Firewalls can stack on top of each other and Diablo will take some serious damage from standing in them while he attacks you. I'm not sure if this works in single player, but in multiplayer mode, a high spell level Firewall can last even after your death and can kill Diablo even if your character is lying dead on the floor!

* If you have the spell or scroll, then cast Mana Shield on your self before the fight with Diablo so you can use your mana as hit points for a while (damage is taken from mana instead of hp). The shield wears out when your mana is depleated, so it might be benefitial to put some full rejuvenation or mana potions on your belt, preferably full rejuvs. Mana Shield also has the nifty bonus feature of reducing damage by 30%. You probably haven't spent many points boosting up your magic skills, but even if your shield goes down instantly, that's 100 or so extra hit points more than you had otherwise [img]smile.gif[/img] If you don't already know the spell then you can buy scrolls of it at Adria.

* Rogues are actually very versitle, and casting spells (in the right situations) or slinging a sword and shield (helps if the shield has "fastblock") may be to your advantage. However, you leave yourself vulnerable to attacks when you cast a spell, so besides using non-fire based spells to draw out Diablo and then setting up some Firewalls for him to stand in, I would not recommend using any other spells. If you have found some decent weapons, armor, shield, etc., then it might be to your advantage to go sword/shield instead of bow/arrow. Rogues have naturally high DEX which helps blocking and will enable you to last longer against Diablo while he roasts in your Firewalls. However, if you have a nice bow then sticking with it may be better. You'll just have to get over the fact that you won't be using it from ranged because Diablo will close on you fast. Don't try to run away, instead back yourself against a wall and pluck him full of arrows. You can use the shift key to hold your position will attacking/casting.

That's about all I can think of right now. Hope that helps [img]smile.gif[/img] If you tell me your rogue's stats I can give you some better ideas as far as equipment setups go. Good luck!

Oh and here's a nice set of novice guides to Diablo that may help you out if you're interested:
http://www.arewehavingfunyet.com/diablo/diablo.shtml

By the way, if you liked the single player Diablo game then I'd highly recommend you try playing in multiplayer mode. You can play by yourself offline by selecting Direct Connect or IPX game. Multiplayer has a lot of advantages over single player, namely that there are 3 difficulty settings and you can acheive character levels as high as 50. You can also play in whatever areas you want whenever you want, with the exception of a couple character level restrictions (you have to be L20 to unlock Nightmare difficulty for example). You should keep in mind though that there are no saved games in multiplayer, only your character and what is in his/her inventory is saved. Also, if you die, your equiped items and half your gold are spewed out on the dungeon floor. This makes for quite an interesting challenge in retreiving your lost gear from the monsters that killed you [img]smile.gif[/img]

Let me know if you want to play some time [img]smile.gif[/img] My screen name on AOL is dasmerritt.

Oh and here's another nifty Diablo site if you're interested:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com

That was a pretty good reply Darkman,

My rogues name is Gabrielle after my daughter.

base stats
strength 55
magic 50
dexterity 61
vitality 58
life 151
mana 104
ac 138

weapons

bow fleshstinger dam 1-6, +15dex, +80% dam, +40% to hit.
armour Awsome plate ac42, +149% armour
helm Obsidian helm of presision armour 14, resist all +35%, +20 dex
ring of truth
ring of the moon aa att +7

I have stashed a lot of armour & weapons near the town portal. Do you think anything else would be more effective than what I am using?

your stats is good enough, stock all your inventory with healing potion or rejuvenation potion and keep on shooting him with your bow. run away if he get close . immediately heal yourself when he does appoclypse. repeat and repeat.

Kev, your equipment looks solid enough. Your Armor Class is decent. Your to hit% should be good enough for Diablo. The only problem areas are your hit points and your damage output. The hit point problem can be solved by using the Mana Shield spell/scroll and drinking full rejuvenation potions to keep the shield up for as long as possible. If the Mana Shield goes down, then don't try to recast it, just keep on chugging potions and plucking arrows. BTW you can press the 1-8 keys on the keyboard to drink potions while you still fight.

As for damage, I don't think you are doing enough damage with that bow to "stun" Diablo. When you deal large enough amounts of damage to a monster, they are sent into hit-recovery for an instant which usually interrupts their attacks. Dealing successive stuns to a monster will put him in "stun lock", which is a good thing because they are basically left helpless while you bludgeon them to death [img]smile.gif[/img] Doing enough damage to stun is not absolutely necessary, but it really helps a lot and dishing out more damage will bring Diablo down faster anyway.

I would suggest you check Wirt and Griswold for a more damaging bow. Griswold restocks his "basic" items every time you speak to him, so you can talk to him until you get what you want. While Fleshstinger is a decent bow, it's base damage is just too little for a fight against Diablo. If Griswald or Wirt don't have any good magical bows for sale, then you should try to buy a basic Long War Bow (1-16 dmg) or Short War Bow(4-8 dmg). They're not as fancy, but they'll do more damage, which is what you need right now.

I have to disagree with the last poster. Run & gun is usually a sound tactic for a rogue, but against Diablo running is futile. It's hard to hit him when he's moving around and his Apocalypse attack will hit you whenever you are in his line of sight. I would recommend bunkering down against a wall and letting Diablo come to you. You'll get some free shots in while he approaches and his knockback attack will not affect you because you are against a wall. If you are still having problems after you buy a new bow and try out Mana Shield, then I suggest you supplement your attack with some well-placed Firewalls for Diablo to stand in.

Good luck!

PS. If all else fails, you can always go into sword/shield mode and cast a dozen Firewalls on top of each other right in front of you. Throw in a few chops of your melee weapon of choice for good measure as you block Diablo's attacks while he roasts in flames, and he's as good as dead!

PPS. You might want to spend any left over gold you have by buying elixers that increase your stats at Pepin and Adria. A few bonus points to your stats won't hurt [img]smile.gif[/img]

I've just had to scrub Diablo from my home pc to fit on wizardry8. I agree with you Darkman, my hp is just not high enough. Diablo gets me with 3 spells or 2 melee hits.
I have a warrior on the pc at work called Sir Kev. I have done better with him & I am confidant that he can kill Diablo when the time comes.

With the good hints that I have got here Diablo is a gonna. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] Thanks a lot for all your help.

The warrior I like... that is my playing style and my warrior got the Blessed Plate of the Moon from griswold... anyway he went toe-to-toe against diablo... it was just gravy [img]smile.gif[/img] so I am looking forward to you doing the same thing [img]smile.gif[/img]

Have fun!

Glad to hear you managed to save the world ;)

Now try using the wizard for an even greater challenge.
Beating the game with a warrior was easy, with a rogue it was challenging, but to this day I never managed to banish big D with magic...

You can always select new game in the esc menu. This will start a new game with your character at the same level and with the same items, although any items on the ground will disappear. You should get a few levels up by the time you reach diablo, and you may find a quest that you didn't have before. Occasionally when I did this my rings from quests would change into scrolls of town portal... as long as I didn't take them off, I still got all the bonuses that the ring gave me.

That's pretty cool. I will try that.

Just remember to take EVERYTHING you need, as items on the ground will vanish when you choose new game. Sell anything you don't really need, and once you start a new game, leave your items in town. They'll cost more to repair than you can get each trip.

Plus, using a good weapon would be overkill. 1-3 hp skeleton gets hit with around 40 damage...

[ 02-06-2003, 06:52 PM: Message edited by: LS0158 ]