Growing up, and even into my early adult years, I continued to play Diablo II because I liked it. At the time, and for the longest time, Diablo III wasn’t out (splitting hairs, 2? 3?), so it really was the newest Diablo game out. I’m pretty sure that it was here that I mentioned that I could blog about some of the more… colorful experiences that I’ve had as a result of the game, much as I like it, and much as I like Diablo II: Resurrected. Almost all of them came about as a result of one person who I had entered into a long-distance relationship with, actually met, and realized not long after that this person was not someone that I needed to be around. The relationship did not last far beyond that point, for which I continue to be thankful leading up to this day.

One of the experiences that I describe is the fact that I had to turn this man’s mother in to their home state for food stamp fraud. For some reason, she felt like she “trusted” me enough to tell me how she was literally getting one over on the system — having friends of hers tell the state or provide documentation to the state about them allegedly giving her money or helping her pay her bills because she had been telling the state that her children’s father (whom she still shared minor children with) was not in their lives and was not providing them with any support when he was out of the house for weeks at a time due to his job, not telling the state that she still had a joint bank account with him that his pay was deposited into, not declaring his income anywhere on her application and getting the maximum amount of food stamps for her family size.

I sought out counsel as to how I would go about informing their home state of this, which I did not take lightly because of the simple fact that I did not want to do it. I literally wish it hadn’t been happening. But it was, and I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to continue to live with myself if I didn’t report it, because had she been honest about her husband’s income and her access to it she would not have been eligible for the food stamps that she had been getting at all. I mean, this isn’t exactly something that you plan for. But it got reported, and I gave their home state all the information that I myself had been given. Someone working the investigation made contact with me to let me know that one had indeed been started based on that information, and that apparently she’d moved out of the state within days of this. She packed up that fast.

I mean, I can only imagine what he must actually have come home to, as he’d had no idea about any of this.

And peculiarly, events with this one family were the only outliers in otherwise good experiences that I’ve had playing the Blizzard games that I play, let alone Diablo II. The rest of my experiences have been pretty great.

So I had to tell someone in Diablo II Resurrected that if you make a cow level game on normal difficulty with no level cap that you are going to get people of all levels in your game, to include people who see the game name, have no idea what a cow level is, and want to learn because they are curious. I am not surprised that I had to have this conversation with someone. I’m sure that a lot of people who play this game are new to it and did not play Diablo II growing up like I did, so hey. I’m not going to fault the majority of them for this.

Also, regarding more Supernatural fandom wank: I keep my fandom life separate from my everyday life, but that is in large part due to the fact that the people that I converse with in person on a regular basis know absolutely nothing about fandom and would not even in the slightest be interested in anything fandom-related. I think I could probably talk shop about The Walking Dead to a few of them, but I have not gotten to that show yet because migraine treatment keeps getting in the way of shows that I actually want to watch (light hurts my soul, as they say, so I have to be careful about what light sources I expose myself to). I keep my online life separate from my real life, at least living where I do right now, because my online life involves a lot more geekery than people who know me in real life can handle or would want to be interested in. I can guarantee that not a single person that I know in real life knows what a fanfic is, and I’m not explaining the intricacies of fandom life to people who are not at all interested in it. The same goes for autism groups that I am a part of, and parenting groups as well, aside from “I like Supernatural”. That’s all any of them get…

It seems like finding active cow level parties in Diablo 2: Resurrected is a real hit and miss.

Knowing me, I’ll probably participate in Ladders once those start (although I need to figure out how Diablo II is going to do this before I commit to anything). I’m actually surprised that Ladders didn’t immediately start with the launch of the game, because there have to be people who got their characters up to level 99, and they should be rewarded in some way. I also feel like the Lobby could be improved, as you only have access to one chat at a time depending on where you’re at in the game. The older, classic Diablo II had more than one room that you could go to chat in depending on what you were looking for or what struck your fancy.

One day I may also tell the story of the person who I actually met in Diablo II in person… it didn’t, and doesn’t, change how I viewed the game or view the game, but it’s still proof that there are people out there who aren’t exactly good. It’s similar to the story I told of the person I used to know who got, and probably still is, so addicted to World of Warcraft that they permanently threw away the chance at getting a really good job that they could have turned into a really good career. I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of a year ago or so that I told that story. But I need to find some way to tell this story as vaguely as possible…

So we’ve found a few interesting glitches in Diablo 2: Resurrected.

I let someone from a Discord server that I am on rush my sorceress through Normal mode with the intention of me using Mad Cow games (the Secret Cow level, whatever it’s called) to level her up because the requirement to access them is that you had to have defeated Baal, the big bad at the end of the game, at least once. However, we found out that the Ancients quest, which is supposed to spawn a portal into the Worldstone Keep where Baal hides, has a — what seems to be new — level requirement of… twenty, I think. You can’t even access the Worldstone Keep if you aren’t level twenty, even if someone goes in and throws up a Town Portal for you. The game simply will not let you walk through it. But strangely enough, as alluded to in my last post, if you simply stand around in town while your party members go kill Baal, you get credit for the whole quest and the game “sees” you as having completed Normal mode. And then, if you or someone in your party gets the required items (Tome of Town Portal, Wirt’s leg in the Horadric Cube), you can go right into the Mad Cow level. Secret Cow Level, whatever. Make it make sense. Because, right now, it does not…

The… whatever you want to call the cow level (your mileage may vary), is really, really fun to play though.

Bub and I broke the fourth wall and decided to play Diablo 2: Resurrected!

It seems as though they’ve made some changes in terms of level requirement for various quests, as I had a friend rush me through Normal so that I could begin leveling up in the Secret Cow Level (I’ve played this game off and on since I was twelve, I figured that I didn’t need to go through all of the quests if I could help it… as Castiel from Supernatural once said, “I’m old, I think I’m entitled”). We found out that I was not a high enough level to do the Ancients quest in Act V, but somehow, for some strange reason, if I sat in town while partied up with someone who was defeating Baal, I got credit for that quest. You’re supposed to do the Ancients quest to get access to the area where Baal is at, the Worldstone Keep. And yet somehow you can still skirt around that even with this new level requirement if you are crafty and clever enough. This is equal parts amusing and annoying. But I do find it refreshing to be able to choose my character’s skill path…

I had convinced myself that you had to pay more to get the DLC in Diablo II: Resurrected, and I was going to do that at the start of this month. But… to the best of my knowledge, you don’t have to pay anything extra. So that actually saves me money that I had intended on spending to give Bub the fullest experience of the game that we used to play together with him sitting on my lap as a baby, cooing. Yes, we installed it with the original CDs (gasp!), and there were still people playing the original Diablo 2 back in the day. And surprisingly, our current PC does not have a native CD-ROM drive… I had to buy a Blu-ray/DVD player that hooks up to the USB that requires its own power source to give Bub the fullest experience of those things. To reacquaint myself with the mechanics of the game since I haven’t played it in awhile I might stick to the sorceress class for my own personal character, because that happens to be what I’m the best at. (Blizzard. Literally. All over the place.)

I might also begin playing Diablo 3 with him a little bit more, both on PC and the Switch, just because.