Everyone seems to think that addictions to such things as drugs, alcohol, and violence are unhealthy, unproductive, and destructive. Well, that may be true for those examples, but everyone enjoys gambling, don't they? Sure, it may be the cause of bankruptcy and emotional stress, but you can get so many good things out of it... like the feeling of happiness for your contribution to my fund for... uh... "ghood will-eed" and benefiting the world by keeping my temper down. Oh, and you occasionally receive some of the items you're actually gambling for. Hey, I should set up shop in Las Vegas, someday.

- Gheed.

Update: It has come to my attention that for once, I am wrong. Yes, all of you fans must be shocked (terribly), but I did make an error answering one of the following questions -- the one regarding transferring items between single-player characters. The five minute rule only works on the Realms, and not on Open Battle.Net. If you have lost items because of this, I apologize, but, of course, this is just extra incentive for you to gamble for more great wares! To transfer items between single-player characters, you must have a friend to hold the items you want to transfer, because if you leave a game on Open Battle.Net, and there are no other players in the game, it will end immediately. Once again, I apologize to anyone who has lost items from the error.

From: Mak'taka
Subject: Why Korea? -OR- Is hit recovery necessary?

This has two parts. Part the first, you said you didn't know why Blizzard games are so popular in Korea in your second response to the "Why Korea?" e-mail. From what I've heard, Korea has a very repressive society. Kids don't like their situation so much that they spend their lives in online worlds. Games with such incredible online worlds as StarCraft and Diablo II are adored by these kids. In fact, kids are becoming so addicted to their online worlds that they spend entire weeks online, not going to school, sleeping, or even stopping to eat. AA-like groups have been set up to get kids off of their addiction. The internet is just fun and games for them. For many, the internet IS their real life. On a less serious note, I have a question about hit recovery for Barbarians. I know that in Diablo I, hit recovery was extremely important for melee combatants. But I haven't really noticed any use for it in combat. I'm currently using a light belt of stability with a bit of fire resistance, but should I dump the stability and just look for more fire resistance?

Thanks!
Mak'taka

Mak'taka,

I think you provide an excellent point -- thanks for enlightening the readers of Ask Gheed as well as me. An oppressive society can leave only certain choices available for people, and I guess that StarCraft, other games, and the Internet are based on freedom. Certainly, North Korea would be the more oppressive situation, so I believe that the majority of the craze (based on Communist restrictions) actually originates from South Korea. On the addiction side, I think that anyone from any society can develop addictions to the Internet and general computer life -- the guys at PlanetDiablo and the GameSpy Network certainly have. :) But, seriously, Koreans may have a more intense addiction as you described, and that is very tragic.

If your fire resistance is quite low, or if you find a belt with a a large bonus to resistances, then I would recommend going for it. However, if you don't need that extra bonus, every addition to your hit recovery does help. The more items you have with "Fast Hit Recovery," "Faster Hit Recovery," or "Fastest Hit Recovery," the more you will notice a difference.

From: [none given]
Subject: [none]

Greetings Gheed. I've just beat Diablo II on normal mode with a Cold/Fire sorceress. But I'm not planing on playing through again with her. After suffering 20-30 deaths in Act III from those & * & # & $ blowdart midgets, I don't have the tenacity to work through THaggravationion again. My only question is this, is it possible to transfer items from one of my characters to a new one? My sorc. found a really nice rare pike w/ mana drain and very fast attack speed, And I'd like my new spearazon character to have it. Any way to do this?

Hello! Sorry, you're stuck if you are looking for a method to transfer items between characters in single-player mode. However, if you want to transfer the items, you can bring your single-player characters on Open Battle.Net (Diablo II Menu - > Other Multiplayer - > Open Battle.Net). Here's the process: First, take the character you would like to transfer items from and bring him/her into a game. Play in there for five to ten-minutes, and drop the items. Then, exit the game, and go back to select the character you want to transfer items to. Load him/her up and join the same game you were in before (you'll have to remember the name to type in at the Join screen). This works because Battle.Net keeps a game active five minutes after all the players have left, giving you a short period of time to do what I described.

If you want to be more safe about your items, you'll need the help of a friend. Instead of dropping the items in the instructions above, have a friend bring a character into an Open Battle.Net game, and give him/her the items to transfer. Then, come back with the character you want to transfer the items to, and have your friend give you back the items.

From: Lopht
Subject: One last question...

Hey Gheed,

This is the 3rd time I write to you. Im becoming a ask-gheed-aholic or soemthing. ANyhow this is another question that came up to me recently. Lets say I max out Bone Spirit. Then I get a wormskull. This adds +1 to all my skill levels so Bone spear becomes level 21. Does this add more damage to BOne SPear, or is Level 20 the absolute limit? Thanks again.

Lopht - Death Nights

Lopht,

Third time? Well, you're quite the developing fan. :) The Level 20 skill limit only limits the amount of skill points that you actually place in a given skill. If you get items that provide a bonus to skill levels, and you have skills at level 20, then their effects will still be raised the appropriate amount. So, for Bone Spear, it would do more damage with Wormskull, even if you had placed 20 points in it.

From: Krimson Hellkite
Subject: Questions

Dear Gheed, Hiya Gheed! It's me, Krimson Hellkite. Anwayz, I got some Eastern Sun questions.

1.Is Eastern Sun gona feature the Assassin, Druid, and Act 5 after the expansion comes out? Because I don't wanna waste my money on the expansion if it will...
2. I have 2 fire sorceress in eastern sun- one of them was originaly from patch 1.03. Is there any way to use the older one?
3. Why can't Jamella and the other one in act 4 talk to me? Are they dumb? Or just spanish?

Thnx!

From, (Wait, who am I again? Oh yeah...) Krimson Hellkite

Krimson,

Hello again! So, you are one of the many fans of PlanetDiablo's hosted Diablo II mod? Well, before I get to your questions, I'd like to say that Eastern Sun is quite a phenomenon in the Diablo II community -- it has been around for a while, and still has maintained its integrity, the support from fans is great, and it just keeps getting better and better. For the other readers, if you're new to Eastern Sun, you can read all about it and, possibly, test it out for yourself at the official Eastern Sun mod's website.

Now, to your questions. Eastern Sun will probably be updated so that it will support the Expansion Set, and two internal parts of the Expansion are the two new character classes, Assassin and Druid. I'm sure that the mod will support the Druid and Assassin, but you'll actually have to have Diablo II: Lord of Destruction installed to be able to play the new character classes. Unfortunately, the version 1.04 patch changes were drastic enough to prevent functional use of pre-v1.04 Eastern Sun characters with Eastern Sun. You can read more specifics on this in PlanetDiablo's interview with the current ES mod director.

Jamella and Halbu are strange characters that aren't sociable at all. From a technical side, I'm not sure why Blizzard North decided to not include conversations for these two NPCs of the Pandemonium Fortress. Maybe there wasn't enough development time (*cough*), they weren't happy with the resulting voice acting, or some other reason. I'm not sure.

From: TheGenesis
Subject: Poison

Good evening Gheed,

I have a very questioning question for you. But before Id like to thank you for the heavy belt of the lizrad, of the fox, of light, oh stability, and of thorns, its amazing how bad items get when gambling for a nighsmoke heavy belt. Anyhow. My question is this: All poison dealing weapons say x amount of poison damage over x number of seconds. Lets say I do 12 poison damage over 4 seconds does it mean I deal 3 points of damage per second. Or that for every second I deadl 12 points of poison damage witha total of 48? Another question Gheed. Is there anywhere were I could find the estimates of the possiblity of me gambling an item. Like 1 /35 times I gamble for a ring I will get a Nagel Ring. ANd so forth. ANyhow, thanks for your time. Bye.

The "X Poison Damage over X Seconds" effects don't actually deal the X damage each second; rather, X damage is gradually dealt to foes over that period of time, though depending upon the enemy's resistances. As for the chance to gambling a certain item, there isn't a specific, different chance for every single unique item -- there is just a general chance. Each time you gamble, you have an 85% chance to get a magical item, 7% chance to gain a rare item, 5% chance to get a set item, and a 3% chance to get a unique item. Find out more about gambling in PlanetDiablo's Gambling guide.

Previous | Next