____ _ _ _ ___ ___ | _ \(_) __ _| |__ | | ___ |_ _|_ _| | | | | |/ _` | '_ \| |/ _ \ | | | | | |_| | | (_| | |_) | | (_) || | | | |____/|_|\__,_|_.__/|_|\___/|___|___| | | ___ | _ \ | | / _ \| | | | | |__| (_) | |_| | |_____\___/|____/ ---------------------------------------- - DIABLO II: LORD OF DESTRUCTION - - TERMINOLOGY GUIDE - - FOR D2 LOD VERSION V1.10 - ---------------------------------------- Author: Sashanan (sashanan@gfmods.com) Date: 21 June 2004 Version: 1.10 DISCLAIMER This document is a copyright of Sashanan, 2001-2004. All rights reserved. You are allowed to do the following with this document: - Make copies (electronical or physical) for your own, personal use; - Post this FAQ on a non-commercial, freely accessible web site. My permission is not required, however, the FAQ must be posted in its full, original form, including this disclaimer in full, and credited to Sashanan. - Posting this FAQ up on a commercial site, or requiring payment for its access, is not permitted unless my explicit written permission is obtained first. Using this FAQ (or part of it) on a commercial site, or in a magazine, guide, book etc. without my explicit written permission is a copyright infringement. Editing this FAQ in any way, using it as a basis for your own FAQ, or posting it without giving proper credit is plagiarism. Both are violations of international copyright law and will result in legal prosecution. ============================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ============================================================================== - About this FAQ - Terminology list - Item nicknames list - Other trading terms - Acknowledgements - Revision history - Final words ============================================================================== ABOUT THIS FAQ ============================================================================== "Not even Death can save you from me." -- Diablo, Lord of Terror When they are not busy clobbering demons or each other, Diablo 2 veterans typically exchange stories, tactics and hints in the chat channels or on messageboards. In their discussions, they tend to use many abbreviations and Diablo 2-specific slang terms. To a newcomer in the Diablo 2 community, the massive use of such terms can be quite daunting, and a very common delurk question is "Ok, what do the following 20 terms mean?" This FAQ exists to help the newcomer get acquainted with common Diablo 2 terminology. I have gathered abbreviations and slang terms often seen in strategy guides or on discussion forums, and given brief explanations for each. The purpose of this FAQ is not to give any kind of strategic advice to players. The character builds mentioned are not explained in detail, I have merely pointed out what kind of character the terms typically refer to. Those who seek actual strategy advice should consult some of the character-specific guides on GameFAQs, or visit some of the better informed Diablo 2 sites, such as Arreat Summit (http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp) or DiabloII.net (www.diabloii.net). Please note: the information in this FAQ was up to date at the time it was last updated (21 June 2004). If that last update has been a while ago, some of the information in this FAQ may be outdated. As of this writing, the elusive v1.10 that took so long to come out is finally here, and I have updated as much info as I can to reflect the new status of the game since this major update, as well as added new terms that came into being after its release. Thanks go out to the members of GameFAQs' Diablo 2 forum for their suggestions; specific contributors have been named in the acknowledgements section at the bottom of the guide. The ASCII art header of this FAQ was created with the help of Figlet (www.surfplaza.com/figlet). ============================================================================== TERMINOLOGY LIST (total listed: 175) ============================================================================== All terms are listed alphabetically. In the descriptions I often refer to other terms in the list. Those have been marked in CAPS. This list NO LONGER contains the various shorthand nicknames for Diablo II items; there's a new chapter for that! Check "Item nicknames list" coming directly after this chapter. Other terms that refer directly to trading have likewise been moved to their own section. ACCOUNT SCAM An attempt to steal somebody's account password on Battlenet, usually with the intention of relieving him of his items. Popular methods include web sites which promise free items or other advantages, and require you to enter your account name and password, or private messages sent on Battlenet chatrooms, pretending to be system messages requiring you to give out your password for one reason or another. An attempted account scam reported to Blizzard staff with proof (such as a chat screenshot) usually results in a MUTING for the scammer. ANDY Andariel, Maiden of Anguish, the final boss in the first act of Diablo 2. ANDY BOT Following the example of PINDLEBOT and other popular bots back in v1.09, the Andy Bot is a v1.10 AI script that has your character do runs on Andariel, completely automated, while you spend your time doing something else. This form of online cheating allows players to find items passively, while they sleep or work. Often defended by the claim that the bot does nothing the player couldn't do himself, the use of bots on Battlenet is nonetheless cheating and a violation of the Battlenet EULA, though Blizzard rarely takes decisive action against this activity. It is often speculated that it is hard to detect and prove. ANNIHULUS (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) One of the two unique charms introduced to the game in v1.10, Annihilus further distinguishes itself from the other (Gheed's Fortune) in two ways: first, it is the only item in the game to increase the bearer's experience gains, and second, it can only be obtained through a special subquest on the realms, namely beating the so-called Diablo Clone. Spawned by conditions that still aren't entirely clear, but seem to have to do with the selling of Stones of Jordan to ingame merchants, the Diablo Clone appears in the place of Super Uniques on the map in random games, and drops one Annihilus charm when killed. Which, incidentally, is easier said than done as he has killer stats, far more powerful than the regular Diablo. See also WORLD EVENT. AR This can refer either to Attack Rating, a statistic in the game determining your chance to hit, or the popular Diablo 2 mod Ancestral Recall. This mod changes many aspects of the game for an entirely new Diablo 2 experience in single player mode, or multiplayer over TCP/IP. Ancestral Recall can be downloaded at http://www.planetdiablo.com/teknokyo/ ARREAT SUMMIT Apart from being the area in Act 5 where you fight the Ancients, Arreat Summit is the name of the official Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction FAQ. Statistics, item lists and other useful information on the game can be found here, and this is definitely a site that should be in any Diablo 2 fan's bookmarks. It can be found at http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp ASN One of the abbreviations often used for the Assassin class, along with SIN. Referring to them as 'ass' obviously caused confusion and flame wars. AVENGER (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A Paladin build relying on the skills Vengeance, Conviction and sometimes Fanaticism. This is a popular Paladin build for playing in Hell mode, because Vengeance is an excellent source of elemental damage, giving the Paladin a much better chance to deal with physically resistant or immune monsters than, for instance, a ZEALOT or MARTYR could. One drawback of the Avenger build is that massive mana supplies are required to keep using the spell. For this reason, many Paladins are hybrids between the Avenger and the ZEALOT, using the latter skill build mostly to recover mana. In v1.10, the Zealot and Avenger builds have lost popularity in favor of a revived classic from older D2 versions, the HAMMERDIN. BAAL RUN (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A game with the specific intention to kill Baal, the expansion set's master villain at the end of Act 5. These runs, while lengthy and more difficult than MEPH RUNS, are popular because they yield far more experience, and Baal generally drops the best items in the game. With the rise of bots for the purpose of running Mephisto and Pindleskin, Baal runs have become a lot less popular than they once were. Even those people who refuse to use bots and do their runs manually generally prefer Mephisto and Pindleskin as targets, and Baal running has become quite rare. Baal runs once again became popular in v1.10, not specifically for items but for the experience. Baal himself, as well as the groups of super unique minions coming before him, give large chunks of experience in v1.10 and repeated group runs of the final area of act 5 are one of the better ways of levelling up quickly on all difficulty levels. Some people actually prefer to leave Baal and run only the minions. BARB Short for Barbarian, one of the game's character classes. Typically used in combination with another term to describe a specific build, such as FRENZY BARB, WW BARB, THROWING BARB or SINGING BARB. Barbarians are also sometimes referred to as 'baba', but barb is preferred by most. BARD A somewhat popular term for a SINGING BARB. BF (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Short for Bloody Foothills, the first area of act 5. This area used to be notorious for having large collections of puny monsters which are nevertheless good for experience, and was a popular experience running location in v1.08 and to a lesser extent in v1.09. Particularly FW SORCS thrived here In v1.10, however, the Bloody Foothills have become a lot less popular because of the appearance of GUEST MONSTERS in Nightmare and Hell mode. The area is no longer necessarily a cakewalk, removing its main attraction as an experience spot. See also BLOOD RUN. BLACK WALL A realm problem caused by lag, where your character is unable to advance further because the area does not expand before him; it's like he is facing a "black wall". The actual cause of this is either that you have pinged out but your computer is not yet aware of this, or that you are not actually in the location you think you are; your computer let you walk on, but on the server you got stuck around a corner or something. In the latter case, black wall problems can often be solved by backtracking, and when you get near the point where you got stuck your character will suddenly "teleport" to his actual location. Another way to figure out where you really are is to drop an item, as it will not fall at your feet, but at the place where you actually are on the server right now; obviously this should not be done with a valuable item, particularly not with other players around! BLOOD RUN (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A game with the specific intention to clear out the Bloody Foothills area. This was the the most popular level building technique in the online Diablo 2 community back in v1.08, but lost popularity in favor of COW RUNS in v1.09 and BAAL RUNS in v1.10. BO Battle Orders, a lvl 24 Barbarian skill from the Warcries skill tree that temporarily increases maximum life, mana and stamina for the Barbarian and any nearby allies. This is a very party-friendly skill, and makes Barbarians very popular in party games. If you get enchanted with Battle Orders, it will look like your life and your mana drop, because the maximums are increased but the current totals remain the same. Don't panic, you're still as sturdy as you were, except you can now use a well or leeching to get your life up to a higher total than normal (easily twice what you normally have if the Barbarian has maxed out Battle Orders, and most do), and mana will now regenerate faster. If you are enchanted with a second Battle Orders while the first is still in effect, and it has the same level as the first, the duration is reset. If it is of a different level, however, the first Battle Orders is cancelled, life and mana return to normal, and THEN the second one takes effect. This can be a needless waste of life and mana, so if a party has multiple Barbarians it is best if only one of them uses Battle Orders. BOTD Breath of the Dying, a new runeword in v1.10. Pretty powerful one, too. BS (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) This refers to either of the Necromancer's two most powerful ranged attacks, the Bone Spear and the Bone Spirit. In v1.09, since the latter skill was more popular, the abbreviation usually applied to that one. In v1.10, it's vice versa; Bone Spear is now the preferred skill with most players. Incidentally, if another player tells you that the tactic you are using is 'BS', he is typically not referring to either skill. :) BOS Burst of Speed, an Assassin skill which boosts both her walking, running and attack speed. BOWAZON An Amazon build using a bow as her main weapon. This build has become incredibly popular in the expansion due to the existence of the Buriza. Bowazon is also probably the first instance of a build name made by combining the weapon/skill used with the class name to create some sort of horribly unenglish hybrid word (other examples including HAMMERDIN and SUMMONMANCER). BUGGED ITEM (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) An item with mods that it shouldn't have, created by a server glitch or a hack. These items typically have impossible mods, and can be quite powerful as a result. One particularly popular mod on bugged items was decreasing dexterity, because of the SKILL BUG. Various exploit to create bugged items have existed in the past, but v1.10 seems to have finally gotten rid of them for good. Either that or any bugged items that are created are deleted soon after. At any rate, whereas bugged items were all around during various intervals in v1.09, you do not see them all over the place anymore, a definite plus. See also MELDED ITEM. BURIZA-DO KYANON An extraordinarily powerful crossbow that is relatively easy to find, the Buriza-Do Kyanon quickly became one of the most exploited weapons in the D2 expansion. The name is Japanese and translates to 'Blizzard Cannon'. Since v1.10, it has lost most of its popularity in favor of the Windforce; probably due to the fixing of the GA/PIERCE BUG. BURIZON A somewhat mocking term for a Bowazon using the unique Ballista, the Buriza-Do Kyanon. Nearly every Bowazon in the expansion used to use this weapon, and they became common enough that they got their own name. In v1.10 they are much less common since the Buriza has lost most of its popularity. Heck, Amazons in general have lsot most of their popularity. CB Charged Bolt. Initially thought to be a fairly mundane skill for the Sorceress, its popularity increased immensely when it was discovered this skill can do massive damage at high levels, when combined with the skill Lightning Mastery. This has resulted in the rise of a new Sorceress build, the CB SORC. Note: CB can also stand for Colossus Blade, see CCB. CB SORC A Sorceress build that relies on the skills Charged Bolt and Lightning Mastery. The idea of this build is to either spread lightning damage over a large field, hitting many monsters at once, or hitting one big enemy like a boss point blank, causing him to take damage from 20 or more bolts at once. CB Sorcs typically have Energy Shield and a fairly high Vitality to protect them from harm, as the effective use of their skill forces them to get pretty close to their opponents. CB Sorcs usually have a powerful backup skill in either Fire or Cold as well to help them deal with lightning resistant or immune monsters. CE Corpse Explosion, a Necromancer skill. It was once considered the most powerful skill in the game, but a variety of different nerfs have turned it into a shadow of what it once was. The only reminder of what this skill could once do lies in the boss Nihlathak, who uses this skill with considerably more power and range than a player Necromancer could. CGEM Chipped gem (of any kind), which used to be part of a popular horadric cube recipe in v1.09 and was thus used as a currency for player trades as well. Pretty much not used in trading anymore, although perfect gems still are. CHARGER (or CHARGADIN) (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A Paladin build which relies on a powerful two-handed weapon and the skill Charge to cause as much damage as possible with a single attack. The damage of the Charge is normally boosted with Fanaticism. While extremely powerful, this build is not very effective against groups of monsters, and therefore usually reserved for PVP Paladins. These typically use Holy Freeze to slow their target, and/or Vigor to increase the speed of their Charge (switching to Fanaticism just before the Charge impacts), and aim for one hit kills. The Charge build gained new popularity in v1.10 due to the fact that Paladins charge much more quickly now and charges have thus become hard to avoid. CHIPPED GEM ECONOMY (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) An alternative to the familiar SOJ ECONOMY, introduced in v1.09 when the CHIPPED GEM RECIPE was added to the game. Since many people used this recipe to try and create powerful swords, and the chances of getting one are so low that they need a lot of chipped gems, these common items actually gained some trading value. Ideally, low level players would find a lot of chipped gems early in the game and can trade those for the many unique items experienced players come across in their item runs. Originally the chipped gem and SoJ economies were apart, but SOJ INFLATION then caused the two to touch. Many people considered 40 chipped gems (the maximum that can fit in a trade window) to be equivalent in value to one Stone of Jordan, and trading one for the other is common. The above information refers to v1.09 trading only; v1.10 has shifted the economy drastically with the addition of many new items and horadric cube recipes. Also, the chipped gem recipe that made chippies so popular for trade no longer exists in v1.10. CHIPPED GEM RECIPE Introduced in v1.09 and removed in v1.10, this was a Horadric Cube recipe that gave chipped gems a new use. By putting 3 chipped gems (any kind, including skulls) and one magical (blue) sword of any kind in the cube, a new magical sword of the same type was created, guaranteed to have two mods (both a prefix and a suffix) as well as 3 sockets. With a few of the elite swords in the game, this recipe had the potential of giving the Cruel mod which greatly enhances the weapon's damage. The most popular kind of sword to use for this recipe was the Colossus Blade (see CCB). The existence of the chipped gem recipe created the CHIPPED GEM ECONOMY in v1.09. While this probably overpowered recipe no longer exists, a great many new recipes were added in v1.10 and gems of all kinds remain useful. CLOSED (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Refers to the Diablo II Battlenet REALMs. The main difference with playing on OPEN is that on closed, characters and their equipment are stored on the server rather than on the user's computer. This makes the use of item and character editors impossible. As a result, while open battle.net is literally swamped with hacked characters and items, the realms are free of this kind of cheating - although certain hacks exist that even work on closed, so calling it cheat-proof would go a little too far. While there has pretty much always been cheating on the realms, v1.10 definitely took care of much of the problems that v1.09 had in this regard. Many kinds of cheating still exist, but it isn't nearly as bad as it once was, and certainly not comparable to how bad it was back in Diablo 1 (which basically only had OPEN Battlenet and did not have any realms). We can only hope that things will continue to move in this direction and future Blizzard products will leave even less opportunity for online cheating. CONC (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Can refer to either Concentrate (a Barbarian attack skill) or Concentration (a Paladin aura). In most cases it will refer to the latter, which wasn't very popular in v1.09 but sees mass use again in v1.10 due to the reemergence of the HAMMERDIN build. Concentration is unique in the fact that it normally only boosts physical damage, but it also provides a solid damage bonus to Blessed Hammer. It also stacks neatly with Fanaticism, both providing the party with a damage bonus, so that having two Paladins in the party with these two auras can really boost the party's damage through the roof. And you can probably imagine what happens if you add a mercenary or a third Paladin with the Might aura, as well. CONSTRICTING RING A grossly overpowered ring thought up by Blizzard, but then disabled from dropping before LoD was actually released. The stats to the Constricting Ring are in the game code, can be found on DiabloII.net, and were even up for a long while on Arreat Summit before the webmaster was informed that the item didn't actually make it into the game. Summed up, the Constricting Ring gradually drains life from the caster, but adds a ton of resistances and magic find, and had a required level of 95 to use. Constricting Rings eventually found their way onto the realms anyway due to the efforts of hackers. The most likely theory is that they are MELDED ITEMs much like Occy Rings are - rings on which the stats of the Constricting Ring (which were still in the game code, just not active) have been moved. Some people claim the Constricting Rings on the realms are in fact legitimate finds made in v1.07, but this isn't possible for several reasons. First of all, there never *has* been a phase in which v1.07 ran on the realms, not even "for a few days" as many people claim. Furthermore, as you will see if you install LoD right off the CDs and then take a look in the game code without patching to v1.08 or v1.09, the Constricting Ring is already disabled even in v1.07. Finally, the Constricting Ring "conveniently" showed up at the exact same time the common melded items like Occy Rings and Wizardspike Gauntlets did. If they had existed all that time, they had certainly been duped and showed up before. Not that it matters all that much how they made it into the realms now, of course. They weren't meant to be there, but they are, much like the waves of hacked items that exist these days and turn the realms into a mockery of the "cheat-free environment" they were supposed to be. In v1.10, most MELDED ITEMs seem to be gone at the hands of the RUST STORM, but I've so far been unable to confirm if the same thing happened to the many Constricting Rings flying around. COOKIE CUTTER A generic term referring to a character that uses a specific powerful skill, item and/or bug exploit to gain power very quickly. Examples from previous versions of Diablo 2 are the Blood Golem/Iron maiden Necromancer and the WW BARB (neither of which is as powerful as they once were). v1.09 examples included the BURIZON and the FW SORC. CORPSE POPPING (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A common phenomenom back in v1.09, Corpse Popping referred to the loss of currently equipped items upon dying, due to the fact that you already had a corpse on the ground. This game mechanic was sometimes used by malicious players to attempt to steal your items - they'd kill you, drop a collection of mundane items on and around your corpse, then distract you with attacks while you'd make a run for your corpse. The risk here was that you accidentally picked up and auto-equipped one of the mundane items just before getting your corpse, in which case not all items from your corpse are retrieved and it stays on the ground. If you were then killed, the items that you did get from your corpse "popped" and could be stolen by the other player. This problem was fixed in v1.10 in a somewhat questionable way, by allowing a player to have multiple corpses. Every time you died, the items you carried then remained on your corpse, and your previous corpse remained also. While this sounds great in theory, if you exited the game and entered a new one, only your most recent corpse would travel with you to appear at your feet in town, and so any items that were on older corpses could not be retrieved. In other words, once you have died more than once in a game, you *have* to get to your old corpse somehow if you want your items back; and that can be hard if there is a player killer camping it. CORRUPTION RIFT One of the earliest famous hacked items on OPEN Battlenet, the Corruption Rift is a small charm that adds 100% to MF and +7 to all skill levels. This is of course an outrageous addition, especially since many players pack 20 or more of these items and reach levels of power that are completely off the chart. The Corruption Rift can only be created using an item editor - it is not part of the actual game and can never be found legitimately. No charm in the actual game, not even the largest ones, can add even +1 to all skills (the closest thing is +1 to a particular skill tree). The Corruption Rift is of course only one of many such widespread hacked items on Open Battlenet, as anybody with an item editor can make and dupe all the gear they desire, and it probably pales in comparison to some of the other crazy stuff that has been made, but it's still among the most famous ones. COW RUN (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A game with the specific intent to clear the not-so-secret Cow Level. This was usually done in Hell mode in v1.09, when the cows were worth a lot of experience and also about the only monsters found without any kind of resistance. Various changes in v1.10 have all but killed off the Cow Level as a source of experience or items, once again turning it into the easter egg it was always meant to be; for fun, not for profit. CRAFTING The creation of special rare items using the Horadric Cube and a number of set recipes involving a magic item, a rune and a gem. Crafted items have a number of automatic mods and a couple of random ones in addition to them, making crafted items potentially very powerful (for example, a crafted ring which has life leech by default could have a very high leech percentage if life leech is rolled as a random mod as well). Due to the existence of crafting recipes, certain perfect gems and low level runes actually have some trading value in large numbers, because crafting a good item usually takes quite a few tries. All crafting recipes can be found at Arreat Summit at http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp. CS 1. Short for Chaos Sanctuary, the final area of act 4, and the one where you will fight Diablo. This is generally considered to be the toughest area in the game. Even high level characters will think twice about going in here in Hell mode without backup. 2. Since v1.10, the Amazon skill Charged Strike has become more popular, so CS now often refers to that instead of the Chaos Sanctuary. SPEARAZON builds centered around this skill are often referred to as CS Zons. D Diablo, Lord of Terror. Figures that only the demon who gave the game its name would get the privilege of being abbreviated to a single character. DENTIST A somewhat mocking term for a Necromancer build focusing on the use of Teeth. These are mostly experimental builds not intended for serious play, though some people have achieved astonishing results with this usually ignored skill. DEX Short for Dexterity, one of the four primary statistics of any character. It is particularly important to Amazons, whose bow and javelin damage is increased by it, and Assassins, whose damage relies on both Dexterity and Strength. DIMINISHING RETURNS This refers to certain mods in the game making less and less of a difference if you pile on more of it. Two examples are MF and IAS. The system of diminishing returns also applies to nearly every skill in the game - the first few points you put in a skill make more of a difference than the last few before maxing it out. A common misconception about diminishing returns, particularly in relation to MF, is that having "too much" of it would actually decrease its effectiveness. This is never the case, just like putting more and more points in the Amazon skill Critical Strike wouldn't suddenly start decreasing the % chance after a certain "turning point". With MF, like with every other point where diminishing returns apply, as the stat increases it starts to make less of a difference. It never stops making a difference, nor does it ever invert. DR Damage Reduction, a modifier found on items that directly reduces physical damage taken in combat. DR is generally much more effective than a high defense rating, which merely reduces the chance to be hit and needs to be very high to be of any use late in the game. DR is only found on certain specific unique items. The most popular of these are (these are all v1.09 items): Stormshield (shield) Shaftstop (armor) Harlequin Crest/Vampire Gaze (helms) String of Ears (belt) There are a few more items with DR, but those mentioned above are considered the top v1.09 DR items in the game. New popular DR items in v1.10 include Leviathan, Verdungo's Hearty Cord, Crown of Ages and the Enigma runeword. NOTE: There are also items that reduce physical damage by a set number, including magical and rare ones. These, however, are not nearly powerful enough to have a significant impact on the damage taken in hell mode or from other players. Only the items with percentage based DR are considered useful, and all the items mentioned above have some trading value because of it. DROPHACK This particularly nasty hack allows you to crash the D2 client of another player, booting them from the game instantly - except that the server needs a few seconds to realize that they're gone, and in that time the player will stand motionless and defenseless. The most cowardly kind of PK may use this to kill off hardcore players without giving them any chance to flee or retaliate. It is just yet another hack that makes hardcore dangerous to play with people you do not know, no matter how careful you are. v1.10 fixed the regular drophack, but a method to drop people from a game and make them unable to join a new one for several minutes still exists. I am not sure if the player character will still stand defenseless in his old game like before, but either way it's still very annoying. DUELING Combat between players which may or may not be subject to rules that have been agreed upon in advance. Duels which occur between random people who do not agree to any rules are generally known as PUBLIC DUELS. See also PVP. DUPE A clone item that has been created through DUPING. DUPE DELETION The process of deleting duplicated items, as well as the original items that were used to create dupes from. Blizzard has employed various methods to delete dupes on the realms, with varying success. Currently (April 2002), a method seems to be used that is very effective in detecting and deleting dupes, even on characters that aren't actually being played at the time. However, it seems that the Stone of Jordan is mostly immune to being deleted because most originate from classic Diablo 2. Throughout 2002, the main dupe deletion method that has been used was Blizzard's "dupe scanner", which compared your items to those of others in the game whenever you left it, and deleted yours if they were duplicates. For this method, the dupe scanner relied on a unique item ID that is assigned to each item when the game spawns it. Unfortunately, this method did not work on items that originally spawned before the LoD days, and as such it left many items alone, including 99% of all Stones of Jordan. In addition, the most recent duping method circumvented the whole scanner by letting the game assign new IDs to duped items as well. I am unclear on how bad duping is in v1.10, but it definitely still exists. DUPING Short for duplicating, duping is the practice of creating exact duplicates of existing items through illegal means: by exploiting a bug or using a hack, often a combination of both. Duping has always been around on a small scale, however in January and February 2002 there have been two massive duping sprees where easy and reliable methods to dupe items became common knowledge. The end result was that many previously rare items were now very commonly found in trades. Trading for a duplicated item is very risky because Blizzard uses DUPE DELETION methods to track down and erase any duplicated items. Unfortunately, there's no sure way to tell if an item is duped or not until it actually disappears on you. The risk of an item being duped is infinitely higher if it's a popular unique from v1.08 (such as Arkaine's Valor or the Harlequin Crest) or a very rare and powerful item from v1.09 (such as the Grandfather or Windforce). Duping in any way on the realms is a violation of Blizzard's Terms of Service and doing so may cause your account to be wiped or possibly even your CD key to be banned. Blizzard first announced taking such measures in March 2002, much to the relief of all legit players who grew tired of seeing so many people around them show off their duped equipment. Various duping methods were found and patched up in Diablo 2's history, but new ones always came up to replace fixed ones. I am unclear on how bad duping is in v1.10, but it definitely still exists. ED Enhanced Damage, a modifier on many weapons in the game. It is particularly popular if found on Jewels, as socketing ED Jewels in a powerful weapon can result in massive damage boosts. ED can also mean Enhanced Defense (found on armor). This is not quite as sought after as Enhanced Damage, though, since the difference a high defense makes for your chances of being hit is quite disappointing, particularly in Hell difficulty. ENCHANT BUG A bug that was temporarily active in v1.09 (but has since been fixed), where a character that left a game while he was still under the effect of Enchant would temporarily have a display problem with his level in the chat channels and was unable to join games for a while. ENCHANTRESS Sorceress build centered around the Enchant skill, which has become a fair bit more useful than it was in previous versions of D2. ETH BUG (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) This referred to a bug with the Eth rune. When socketed in a weapon, Eth is supposed to lower enemy defense with 25%. What it did in v1.09, however, was to create an 'Ignore Target Defense' effect, both against monsters and other players. For this reason, many CCBs had an Eth rune in one of their sockets, allowing their owners to hit opponents much more easily. It was certainly a lot cheaper than using the rune which is *supposed* to give ITD, Jah (and which didn't work against players besides). The Eth bug also contributed to the popularity of the Fury runeword, which contains the Eth rune and therefore gave ITD in PVP. v1.10 finally stepped up to fix this long overdue bug. FA The Amazon skill Fire Arrow. A rather mundane and low-level skill which would be of very little interest were it not for the FA BUG (which was, however, fixed in v1.10). FA BUG (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) In v1.09, Fire Arrow was supposed to add a small amount of fire damage to a bow attack, which is normally physical. Due to a bug, however, Fire Arrow also converted all of the physical damage to fire damage. This meant that if this skill was used with a powerful bow, an Amazon could do massive loads of raw elemental damage, making Fire Arrow a very popular skill to use against physically immune monsters. In v1.10, this bug has been removed but a feature has been added which partially emulates it. The Fire Arrow skill now converts a % of your physical damage to fire damage, and this percentage depends on your skill level. Other elemental Amazon skills have similar effects. FLASHING Commonly described in outdated Paladin strategy guides, this referred to benefiting from two auras simultaneously by switching at the right time. This technique depends on the fact that an aura that affects the Paladin works immediately (and is gone as soon as he changes it), but prior to v1.10, aura effects lingered for a few seconds on targets other than the Paladin after he switched to a different aura. In this way a Paladin could, for instance, "paint" his enemies with Conviction and then switch to Fanaticism, attacking his enemies with the benefit of that aura before the Conviction on them actually wore off. In v1.10, auras start affecting targets (friend or foe, depending on the specific aura) as soon as they are within range, and stop affecting as soon as they go out or the Paladin changes auras. Flashing is therefore no longer possible. FO Frozen Orb, the most popular cold spell used by Sorceresses. Some use it at a low level to slow enemies down, then hit them with another spell such as Nova, Firewall or Meteor. Others invest heavily in Frozen Orb and Cold Mastery and use it as a primary attack spell. Either way, this is a skill nearly every Sorceress has in her arsenal. FOH/FOTH (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Fist of the Heavens, the Paladin's primary ranged attack. Its relatively low damage makes it somewhat disappointing as a PvM skill, but in duels, Paladins specializing in Fist of the Heavens (sometimes jokingly called fistadins or even fisters) and Conviction can be powerful opponents. In v1.10, Fist of the Heavens receives a lot of extra damage through SYNERGY bonuses from two other skills, but it remains prohibitively mana expensive to use in PvM for any length of time. FRENZY BARB A Barbarian build relying on the skill Frenzy, which causes him to land blow after blow very quickly. This is what most Barbarians wielding two different weapons do (although some are WW BARBS instead). Nearly every Frenzy Barb also has the skill Berserk to deal with physically immune monsters. FW Firewall, almost from the dawn of Diablo 2 the most damaging skill in the entire game. At a high level it can span a large area and do massive damage to monsters foolish enough not to run out of it. This skill used to be particularly popular in the Bloody Foothills in v1.08, back when that was the main levelling ground, because monsters often got stuck in the trenches and were easy to hit en masse. Outside this area the spell is less effective, but can still be highly useful in party situations, where melee fighters keep the monsters in one place. FW SORC A Sorceress build focused around the skills Firewall and Fire Mastery, often with either Thunderstorm or Frozen Orb as a backup. These Sorceresses are particularly effective in the Bloody Foothills and back in v1.08 (and v1.09 hardcore) they were often found doing little else than BLOOD RUNs. Some Firewall Sorcs, however, have become quite creative at using their skill in other areas as well. GA Guided Arrow, an Amazon skill which causes an arrow to hit an enemy automatically. While powerful on its own, in v1.09 it was murderous in combination with PIERCE due to the GA/PIERCE BUG. See also BURIZA. GA/PIERCE BUG (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Guided Arrow causes an arrow to automatically home in on and hit a monster, while Pierce allows an arrow to pass through a monster, possibly hitting one or more other opponents. These two skills are not supposed to work together, but in v1.09 they did. This created the bizarre effect of an arrow hitting a monster, passing through, turning around 180 degrees, passing through again, and so forth. Needless to say this was an extremely damaging move which results in BURIZONs being the absolute masters of PVP, and doing very well in PVM as well. So popular was the abuse of this bug that those using it were very vocal in defending their position on forums and insisting, despite Blizzard's statements to the contrary, that it was not a bug. v1.10 confirmed its status as a bug, however, and removed the problem entirely. Guided Arrows no longer pierce. GC Grand charm. Traders are lazy typers. GG "Good game", a generic internet slang term used after a competitive match against another player. It's a polite phrase that is typically exchanged and can be initiated by either the winner or the loser. Although some people also enjoy saying it after they feel they just won a discussion, thereby gloating over the fact that they "beat the other". That's how it is usually used on forums. GI Gimme Itam, a notorious PVP clan. Their standard of PvP rules is followed by many people outside the clan as well. GLITCHED ITEM A generic term for items that have properties they shouldn't have, in v1.10 it typically refers to items that have the indestructible mod for no apparent reason. The cause is that in the early days of v1.10, if you socketed an item with the Zod rune and then used the cube recipe to free up a socket, the indestructible mod wasn't properly removed along with the Zod. Thus you'd have an indestructible item and the socket would be available for something else. In particularly Arkaine's Valor has been a popular item to use this trick on, and while the bug that made it possible has been fixed, the items thus created (and doubtlessly duped since) remain. GRIEF PLAYER/GRIEVER Not specific D2 slang, this is a generic internet term for an online player whose specific purpose is to ruin the game experience of others. He takes delight in getting people mad at him by a combination of cheating, trolling and generally unsporting behavior. Grievers are thankfully rare - most cheaters merely do not realize or care about the fact that they're bothering other players, and don't do it specifically to piss others off - but they can seriously get on your nerves when you do meet them. Best solution is just to squelch them and find a different game, as any attempt to insult or drive off the griever will only encourage him. HAMMERDIN Refers to a Paladin using Blessed Hammer, the Concentration aura (which boosts its damage) and associated SYNERGY skills for a high damage output. Popular in early versions of D2 (prior to the days of synergy), the Hammerdin lost popularity in v1.08 and v1.09 due to serious damage nerfs on Blessed Hammer, but was once again made a viable build by the changes introduced in v1.10. HC Hardcore, a game mode in which the death of a character means he or she is gone permanently. This forces a player to be far more careful, invest more points in Vitality, and cooperate with other players in situations where a specific character type is not very effective. Some players consider Hardcore to be a very thrilling and challenging way to play Diablo 2, others think of it as masochism as characters can be lost just as easily to the dubious efforts of a PK or due to internet latency. To them, the idea of losing hours of work due to a fluke is not a very appealing idea. In v1.09, the existence of dangerous hacks designed to kill other players, such as the HOSTILE ANYWHERE hack or the DROPHACK, have put a serious damper on the popularity of hardcore mode. These problems seem mostly gone in v1.10, but the game's increased difficulty (particularly in ladder mode) still kills plenty of would be hardcore players on its own. Hardcore is still recommended only for the overly brave or masochistic, or at least, those players who accept in advance that their character will likely die permanently along the way, and do not view that as a deterrent for the extra thrill it offers. HF Holy Freeze, a Paladin skill which automatically freezes and slows down enemies that come near, even those that are immune to cold or have the "can't be frozen" mod (in the case of hostile players). This aura is commonly used by Paladins in PVP. It is also used by some of the MERCs hired in act 2 Nightmare, as well as the act boss in the second act, Duriel. HORKING Slang for using the Barbarian skill 'Find Item', based on the sound of the Barbarian's grunt whenever he uses this. Similarly, Barbarians who specialize in using Find Items on large groups of slain enemies (like in recently cleared cow levels) are called Horkers. This may well be one of the funniest slang terms that D2 play has spawned. HOSTILE ANYWHERE (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A notorious hack among hardcore players that apparently allows its user to declare hostility (and thereby be able to attack you) even when they aren't in town at the time. This means that potentially, any ally could become an enemy at any time, making playing hardcore in public games more dangerous than ever before. Hostile anywhere no longer appears to work in v1.10; or at least, you don't hear many people complain about it anymore. HOW Heart of Wolverine, a Druid minion that increases the damage of the Druid and any nearby allies. Along with Oak Sage, another Druid minion that increases everybody's life, HoW is the most party friendly skill the Druid has. Which of the two is better (the Druid can only use one at a time) is a subject of constant debate, although it is generally agreed that Oak Sage is the preferable choice in hardcore games. The third spirit minion of the druid, the Spirit of Barbs, is rarely used at all. HYBRIDZON Amazon players soon discovered that JAVAZONs sometimes get into spots where a bow would be handy, and BOWAZONs frequently miss the comfort of the Javazon's Lightning Fury skill. Neither build requires a whole lot of skill points, and so veteran Amazon players often make a build that has the skills of both builds, creating the Hybridzon. The typical Hybridzon is armed with a Buriza Do-Kyanon with which she uses Multishot and Guided Arrow, and a Titan's Revenge on her secondary weapon tab for Lightning Fury. HYDRA PK (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A player killer (see PK) relying on an exploit with the Sorceress skill Hydra. When Hydra is cast, it will attack any hostile targets within its range until it runs out. If the player who cast the Hydras returns to town and then hostiles any nearby players, the Hydras will promptly attack them. This allows him to launch a sneak attack with Hydras while he is safely in town, and even allows him to kill people in areas which PKs normally can't enter (most notably the cow level). Hydra PKing is considered cheap and without honour, but unfortunately that's exactly why it is so popular. Most people feel that Hydras should disappear as soon as their caster returns to town and/or declares hostility to anybody. This problem appears to be fixed in v1.10. Most duration spells now fizzle as soon as you enter town through a portal. IAS Increased Attack Speed, a mod found on many items that causes a character to strike more quickly. Both for BOWAZONS and all kinds of melee characters, this is a very important mod. Quicker attacking allows you get more damage in over a certain timespan, reduces the chance that your attacks are interrupted by monsters attacking you, and allows you to stunlock opponents, preventing them from striking back. It is important to note that IAS suffers from DIMINISHING RETURNS, so the difference between 0% and 30% IAS is greater than between 60% and 90%. IM (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Iron Maiden, a nasty Necromancer curse that causes anybody who deals physical damage to take physical damage in return. Players get to deal with this headache when duelling Necromancers in PVP, or when cursed by the Oblivion Knights in act 4. Iron Maiden can kill high damage melee characters like Paladins and Barbarians very quickly. One way to counter it is to use ranged attacks, which are not affected by IM - for the Barbarian it is important to note that Leap Attack is considered to be a ranged attack. Iron Maiden casts on players by Oblivion Knights remains dangerous in v1.10, but it's not as deadly as it was. It still pays to be careful with physical attacks in the Chaos Sanctuary though, particularly with ones you cannot end quickly (Whirlwind and Zeal come to mind). IRONMAN One step further than LLD, in an Ironman game a few players create brand new hardcore characters without any access to existing items on their other characters. These new characters then form a party and play until everybody reaches lvl 9, at which point everybody will fight each other in staged duels or a big free for all, and the last man standing wins. Different variations exist - to higher levels, mixed characters, everybody the same character class, et cetera - but this is the basic Ironman idea. The purpose of this is to not only circumvent the many cheap aspects of high level duels (just like LLD does), but also to eliminate the equipment factor. Everybody has to make do with what they find in that particular game. In Ironman, skill counts more than anywhere else. Ironman games are traditionally played in hardcore to add an extra level of finality and excitement to the duels. ITD Ignore Target Defense. This is a modifier found on certain weapons which effectively sets an enemy's defense to 0, upping your chance to hit them to 95% under normal circumstances. However, this is still subject to decrease as a result of a monster having a higher level than you, and it does not work on enemy bosses of any kind. Some enemies, such as the Minions of Destruction, also use ITD. ITH ITEMS (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The rage among less scrupulous players in v1.09, Ith items were essentially hacked equipment on the closed realms. They were created by making a runeword in an item, then using a third party hack to take the runes out again (not normally possible). The end result was that the bonuses of the individual runes are gone, but the other runeword bonuses remained, and the sockets were free to be used a second time. After putting in powerful (usually duped) runes and jewels again, this would create items much more powerful than normally possible. The 'Ith' name was a result of the game being confused about what runeword was being used here, it's sort of a default string. By now in v1.10, not only is it no longer possible to create Iths, but the RUST STORM has pretty much destroyed them as well. While strays might still exist, you certainly don't see them all over the place anymore. ITEM GRABBER (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A hack that automatically picks up any magical, rare, set or unique items dropped, before they even hit the ground. Variants of this hack apparently still work even in the latest version of Diablo 2, and are sometimes used on the supposedly hack-free online realms. Needlees to say the use of such a hack is cheating, and highly annoying to party members who only want a fair shot at getting part of the loot. Use of an item grabber is against Blizzard's terms of service and if found out, may result in reprimands. A notorious item grabber currently still in use is Pick It. JAVAZON An Amazon build using Javelins as her main weapon, usually in combination with the skills Plague Javelin and Lightning Fury.Previously, Javazons were an underdog used only by advanced players looking for a new build. However, the expansion has introduced the highly powerful unique Titan's Revenge, which has made the Javazon far more viable. Nearly every Javazon found online uses this awesome weapon. LADDER (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Prior to v1.10, this was just a list of the highest level characters on the realm. In v1.10, however, all characters on the realm are either ladder or non-ladder characters, and are kept separate from each other the same way softcore and hardcore characters are. At the start of a ladder "season", all character created previously aren't able to enter the same games that new ladder characters can, thus making sure that all characters on the ladder are new ones that do not have access to high level friends or stashed items. Thus, everybody has to start from scratch. It also neatly prevents existing hacked items from spreading on the ladder, basically giving players a brand new, clean environment to play in. Ladder mode is also more difficult than regular games, with improved monsters in nightmare and hell, but allows access to a couple of unique items and cube recipes that aren't available off the ladder. The idea is that the ladder will be "reset" every so often to create a new ladder season, mingling all existing ladder characters (now high level and outfitted with the best items in the game) with the non-ladder ones, and giving players yet another chance to start from scratch. At the time of this writing, however (June 2004), the ladder is still on its first season since the release of v1.10. All "ladder only" content in Diablo 2 is also available in any games off the ladder, so a unique item that on the realms is only available to ladder players can also be found in any single player, TCP/IP, or open game. LAGSTER (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A mocking name for Lister the Tormentor, the boss of the Minions of Destruction, because his appearance caused a massive lag burst in v1.09. This problem was finally fixed in v1.10; about time, since the MoDs are quite deadly enough without an unfair lag advantage. LC Large charm. Traders are lazy typers. LEB (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Lightning Enchanted Boss. Lightning Enchanted is a nasty mod found on some bosses which causes them to releaselightning bolts whenever they take damage. This can be devastating to melee characters who have to stand right next to them to hit them. Lightning Enchanted is nasty enough on its own, but in v1.09, a combination with Multi Shot turned into the killer MSLEB. LEECHER Term used for a player who gains experience and possibly swipes items without actually contributing to the battle. People who get their characters rushed to hell mode quickly just so they can stand in a corner of the cow level and gain big experience for the kills scored by others are good examples of leechers. Generally, experience leeching is accepted as long as the leechers don't get in the way, but quietly stand in their corner. Leechers who run after the people doing the actual killing in an attempt to grab any goodies that drop are much less appreciated. LL (or LS) Life Leech, or Life Steal. Both terms refer to the same thing: a mod found on many items which heals lost hit points based on how much physical damage you deal in combat. For instance, with 5% life leech you regain 5 lost hit points for every 100 points of damage you do. It is important to note that this does not work on all monsters (skeletons, for instance, can not be leeched from) and that it only applies to physical damage. LLD Low Level Duelling, the answer to the many hacked items and cheap skills used in normal (high level) duels. LLD characters are typically of a very low level, something like 9 or 18, and do their best to become as powerful as possible with the restrictions those levels have. It's common for a character intended for LLD to be RUSHED so that relevant quests (like those that give extra skill or stat points) can be done on all three difficulty levels. Having such a low level puts serious limits on what items can be used, but those using the best gear that such low levels could possibly get usually become surprisingly powerful, often able to beat characters on much higher levels who aren't so prepared. LOD Lord of Destruction, the Diablo 2 expansion set. It adds the fifth act, the Druid and Assassin character classes, and countless new items to the game. The vast majority of online D2 players plays Lord of Destruction. LOH Laying of Hands, one of the more popular pairs of gloves in the game. Among some other useful mods, it massively increases the damage done against Demon type monsters, which includes all the act bosses. This makes the Laying of Hands particularly useful for MEPH and BAAL RUNS. Laying of Hands is part of the "Disciple" set. MAPHACK (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A hack created by Mousepad which reveals the entire map to the player and also adds extra information such as the location of monsters, other players and items. In addition it gives maximum light radius and removes all weather effects. Unlike most hacks, this one even works on closed realms and was often used by MEPH RUNNERs to make things easier and quicker. Many players feel that Maphack bestows an unfair advantage, however, and consider the use of it to be cheating. Whether or not that is true, using it is certainly not condoned by Blizzard, and involves another risk at well: many of the versions of Maphack downloadable on the Internet have had keyloggers added which will help the hacker who added it to steal your account. In v1.10, Maphack still remains popular due to its easy availability and Blizzard's lack of action taken against its use. It is so widespread that many players who would normally stay clear of cheating have resorted to using it due to its tempting convenience and to "level the ground" as they feel everybody around them is using it as well. NOTE: since I do not condone the use of maphack, any E-mails requesting for a safe link to download it will be ignored. You will likely find a similar attitude on the GameFAQs Lord of Destruction board (not to mention the fact that asking for online cheating methods is against GameFAQs' Terms of Service), so I wouldn't ask there either. You're on your own finding it, and many versions out there may have trojans included to snare the hapless would-be cheater. You have been warned. MARTYR A somewhat rare Paladin build which relies on the use of Sacrifice, a skill that greatly boosts damage, but deals a bit of damage to the Paladin as well. When used in combination with Fanaticism, Sacrifice can deal massive damage comparable to that of Charge, but much quicker. The downside of this build is that it deals physical damage only, and that massive life leech is needed to prevent the Paladin from killing himself: 8% on Normal, and 16% on Nightmare and Hell. Generally the Martyr is just not as effective as either the ZEALOT or the AVENGER, and is only played by Paladin experts who want to try something different. MEDIC A Paladin build focused on healing other characters, using Meditation and Holy Bolt. Meditation restores mana at a much improved rate (and through a SYNERGY with Prayer it regenerates hit points as well), and Holy Bolt, with the proper synergies, heals fairly well now. Medics make decent additions to parties or to PvP teams, although many PvP rules forbid them. MELDING (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The process of using a hack to copy the stats of one item onto another, creating hacked items which are potentially very powerful. The most common example of this is the now infamous Occy Ring, which is basically a ring with the stats of the Oculus orb on it. There are many other examples of melded items, but Occy rings are probably the most common one. Note: I have been informed that the Occy Ring is actually not the result of item melding, but of a v1.09 exploit (now long fixed) which allowed for the importing of hacked open items into the realms. Either way, though, Occy Rings and most other hacked items seem to be all but gone in v1.10 thanks to the RUST STORM. MEPH Mephisto, Lord of Hatred, the final boss in the third act of Diablo 2. MEPH BOT (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Quite possibly the inevitable followup to PINDLEBOT, Mephbot is basically an automated script that plays your character for you while you're not at your computer, and is specifically designed to do MEPH RUNs. Its reliability is questionable because it requires the script to find the stairs down to third level of the Durance, whereas Pindlebot doesn't have to deal with any randomized areas. Nevertheless, this bot does apparently exist and work properly, although it's not nearly as popular as its counterpart. In v1.10, most old bots have lost popularity, although MEPH BOTs are still around and new ones like the ANDY BOT have come into play since. All of them are considered cheating by Blizzard but decisive action against their use is rarely taken. MEPH RUN A game with the goal to kill Mephisto, usually on Nightmare or Hell. These runs are popular because Mephisto drops good items, is relatively easy to kill, and can be reached very quickly. Most characters can do Nightmare Meph runs in mere minutes. Hell Meph runs are more hazardous because there are many powerful monsters in the area around him, but can still be done very quickly by Sorceresses using Teleport or Barbarians using Leap Attack (either skill can be used to get past groups of monsters without a fight). Many MEPH RUNNERS make use of MAPHACK to be able to do their Meph Runs even quicker. MEPH RUNNER A character specifically intended to do (usually Hell) MEPH RUNS with. These characters are almost always Sorceresses, using Teleport to get to Mephisto quickly and Frozen Orb to kill him. The purpose of these characters is to gather rare and valuable items to use on other characters, trade with other players, or even sell on EBay for real cash. MF Magic Find, a mod found on many different items which increases the chance to find magical, rare, set or unique items as opposed to normal or socketed ones. It is often hoarded by MEPH RUNNERS to increase their chances of finding good items. Many characters have both standard combat gear and MF equipment, switching to the latter only when they are trying to find good items (MF gear tends to be less effective in combat). Particularly Sorceresses and Barbarians are popular MF characters: Sorceresses because their skills are deadly even without any combat equipment, and Barbarians because they can dual wield weapons with high MF values such as the Gull Dagger or the Blade of Ali Baba, and have the skill Find Item which basically gives them a second chance at a good drop whenever they take down a boss. Once Magic Find goes beyond 110%, it suffers from DIMINISHING RETURNS, however more MF is always better than less. ML (or MS) Mana Leech or Mana Steal. Both terms refer to the same thing: a mod found on some items which helps recover spent mana based on how much physical damage you deal in combat. For instance, with 5% mana leech you regain 5 mana points for every 100 points of damage you do. It is important to note that this does not work on all monsters (skeletons, for instance, can not be leeched from) and that it only applies to physical damage. Many melee characters rely exclusively on mana leech to be able to keep using their skills, and do not invest in Energy at all. MOD In lowercase letters, 'mod' refers either to an enhancement on a boss or an item, or to a patch used to modify the game in single player mode for a new gaming experience. (AR is a popular example of the latter.) Spelled as MoD, it refers to the Minions of Destruction, a group of very quick and powerful monsters fought just before the final confrontation with Baal. They are feared not only for their quick movements, ITD and high damage, but also for the high latency their appearance tends to cause online and/or on low-end systems. This final problem has been largely fixed in v1.10, however. MR (or MDR) Magic damage reduction, a mod found on many items. It reduces the damage any magical effect deals to you by a set amount. For spells which linger for a while, such as Firewall and Meteor, this applies every second. In previous versions of Diablo 2 it applied to every frame, which resulted in even a few points of MR significantly reducing or even eliminating the damage from frame-based spells, including Diablo's lightning hose. MS Multi Shot, a property found on some bosses which causes them to fire whatever projectile they might use multiple times with every ranged attack. This is generally not such a dangerous mod, except when seen in combination with Lightning Enchanted. The combination of these two results in the feared MSLEB. MSLEB (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Multi Shot, Lightning Enchanted Boss. Up to v1.09, a boss on Nightmare or Hell that spawned with both of these modifiers was easily one of the worst monsters you could encounter. Due to Multi Shot, the boss released far, far more lighting bolts than he normally would whenever he took a hit. In v1.10, Multishot and Lightning Enchanted mods no longer affect each other, taking this particular danger out of the game. MULE A character specifically made to hold spare items in his inventory and stash, either until a character intended to playing can put them to use, or to be used in trading. The process of bringing items found by playing characters to mules is known as MULING. MULING Bringing one or more items to a character specifically created to hold them: a MULE. This is common practice with online players who always have less stash space than they seem to need. There are three common muling methods: 1. Muling alone. The player creates a passworded game and stays in it for at least five minutes, then drops the items he wishes to transfer and leaves. Due to him having been in at least five minutes, the game will stay up for five more minutes even without any players in it. This gives the player the time to log on with his mule and reenter the game, picking up the items he left. This method is somewhat risky because disconnections, time outs and other nasty surprises can result in the game being wiped or the player being unable to log on in time, resulting in the loss of the items. WARNING: Muling alone is *not* possible on Open Battlenet, where a game will disappear the instant you leave it. 2. Public muling. The player joins a game where other people are playing, finds a safe spot where nobody is likely to stop by, drops his items, logs off and quickly brings in his mule to retrieve the items. This is a very risky method of muling, as you cannot be sure the game will still be up when you return (or, even more frustrating, full), and if another player comes across the items you've dropped, chances are he'll take them. This risk can be reduced by finding a good spot to drop the items to be muled: towns are bad spots, but deep inside large open areas (like the deserts in act 2) or optional dungeons are typically good places. Of course the mule needs to have the proper waypoints to actually reach the equipment you left for him! 3. Muling with a friend. This basically involves starting a game with somebody you know and trust, giving him your items, leaving the game, coming back with your mule and getting your items back. Needless to say doing this with a stranger is a naive and risky move, but if you frequently play with friends you can rely on each other for absolutely safe muling. Even if a disconnect occurs, your friend will still hold the items he took from you so he can give them back to you in a different game. MUTING A commonly used reprimand by Blizzard against people attempting to scam accounts or generally creating havoc in chat channels. When muted, a player can no longer chat or send private messages, they can only talk in games. In particular, this makes setting up trades next to impossible as this is usually done outside games. NECRO Short for Necromancer, one of the character classes in the game. The general impopularity of the Necro, caused by several NERFs over time, has resulted in no particular builds having become famous. NERF The term commonly used for the downgrading of a skill or item in Diablo 2. Nerfing is Blizzard's usual response to skills or items which turn out to be overpowered. This is much to the dismay of players who have built characters based on these skills/items, and see their hard work being destroyed overnight because suddenly they deal only half the damage they used to. As a result, every patch results in at least some players complaining. NG 'Next game' or 'new game'. Used by a player to suggest or announce that a new game be made. For instance, if a cow run has just been completed and one of the players wants to suggest to the others to do a new one, he'd say "ng?". Runs are often numbered as well, and in that case people often just call the next number to indicate a new one is being made. For example, if a game called cowrunz-005 was just completed people who intend to make a new one will usually call out "006" and leave to make it. NK Naked killing, the act of killing a player who currently has no equipment because he died before, and has not yet been able to get his corpse back. Repeatedly naked killing a character so that he cannot get to his items is considered to be in poor taste and very unsporting, and thus popular among GRIEF PLAYERS. NM Short for Nightmare, the second difficulty mode out of three. Normal and Hell are not normally abbreviated, Nightmare is. Diablo 2 players tend to be lazy typers. NRG Short for Energy, one of the four primary statistics of any character. It is particularly important to characters who use mana-eating skills regularly and cannot leech it back in melee combat. Particularly Sorceresses and Necromancers need to build up their Energy. OPEN Refers to Open Battlenet, as opposed to the CLOSED REALMs. Characters created to be played in single player mode and/or TCP/IP can be taken to Open Battlenet as well, and can be played there. The disadvantage of Open, however, is that because characters and equipment are stored locally, many people use character and item editors to create godly characters with hacked, overpowered equipment. It gets a little frustrating to try and play a legitimate character when you are surrounded by cheaters, which is why most online players choose to play on the realms instead. PALLY Short for Paladin, a popular character for use in parties because his beneficial auras help party members in addition to himself. Paladins have had their skills strengthened and weakened a lot over the various patches. Currently the Paladin is considered one of the more challenging classes to play - while powerful, he is forced to engage in melee to be truly effective, and has no good way to deal with large groups of enemies. Physically immune enemies can be a pain for him as well, hence the AVENGER build. PERSONALIZED An item which has had the name of its owner added to its name, which is the reward for one of the quests in Act 5. Personalization does nothing except adding the name, and is therefore a rather mundane quest reward. Furthermore personalized items may be worth less in trade to those who do not wish to have to look at another player's name on their item. Because of this, and the fact that a very tough opponent needs to be defeated to finish the quest, many players skip it. PI Physical Immune, a boss mod which results in complete immunity to any physical attacks. Magical damage (raw magic, poison or one of the three elements) is needed to damage these enemies. Physically immune enemies are of no concern to Sorceresses but can be a real pain for melee characters. Some monster types found in act 5 spawn with physical immunity by default in Hell mode, resulting in entire packs of these annoyances. PIERCE An Amazon skill which allows her arrows and javelins to pass through an enemy, possibly hitting one or more foes behind him. This skill is great for crowd control. It comes by default on the unique crossbow BURIZA, which is one reason for it having been as popular as it was back in v1.09, before the GA/PIERCE BUG was fixed. PINCERS (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Cleglaw's Pincers, a commonly found and rather mundane set item except for the fact that one of the modifiers behaved strangely up until v1.10. It was supposed to slow a target by 25% upon hitting. When used in combat against other players, however, it first negated any faster walk/run mods and THEN slowed the target even more; some people have also reported that it stacked, causing further hits to make you slow down to a crawl. Fortunately, the various bugs with slowing mods seem to have been mostly fixed in v1.10. PINDLEBOT (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Pindlebot is basically an AI script that plays your character for you, doing magic find runs on PINDLESKIN. It is through Pindlebot that suddenly, many more people than ever before do endless runs against Pindleskin, now that they don't actually have to face the tedium of doing it themselves. With Pindlebot, people can leave the computer on before going to school, work, or bed, and find Windforces on their account upon returning to the computer. The use of programs like Pindlebot is illegal per the Battle.net terms of service and also frowned upon by most players - although the number of botters is growing steadily, with obviously significant impacts on the realm economy (the supply of previously rare items has gone up, dramatically dropping prices). Many players also believe botters to be responsible for more lag on the realms,which is probably true because with so many people running bots, the realms have more players logged in on them than usual. Whether or not a bot-run character, creating new game sessions every minute for hours on end, actually creates more lag than a normal player would is unclear. In v1.10, Pindleskin is no longer a viable MF target, which has pretty much put an end to pindlebotting. But not to botting in general, as new bots were created to run new popular targets; ANDY BOT, for instance. PINDLESKIN A super unique monster at the entrance to Nihlathak's temple in act 5. There would be nothing particularly interesting about him, except that in v1.09 on Hell mode, he was capable of dropping items in the weapon lvl 90 and armor lvl 90 classes, something which even Baal could not. Thus Pindleskin, being an easy to reach and even easier to kill target, could drop virtually every item in the game, although the odds were hopeless. Nonetheless, a great many players would run Pindleskin for hours on end in hopes of finding something, and eventually an AI script (PINDLEBOT) was created to do it for them. In v1.10, Pindleskin is not a viable MF target anymore and people have looked to new places to satiate their everpresent hunger for more loot. PK Player Killer (the person), or Player Killing (the action). This refers to the act of seeking out and killing other players in regular games, as opposed to PVP, which is mutually consenting duelling. Particularly in hardcore PK'ers are considered a menace. Nevertheless Blizzard has willingly included the option to kill other players as a design feature and has so far been unwilling to add any protection in the form of hostility needing to be mutual to allow players to attack each other, or placing a "no PK" option on a game when you create it. Minor fixes were introduced to try and put a stop to PK attacks relying on flaws in the game to make clean, unavoidable kills, but stories of players getting killed without ever having a chance to flee or fight back are still commonplace on D2 forums. PLAYERS X (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A powerful command available in single player mode, that allows a player to simulate having more players in a game. That means more items are dropped and monsters give more experience, but they also have more hit points. This command can be used to create a more challenging game, but it also allows a player to do more level building than usually possible on single player, which is especially useful late in the game. To active the command, simply type the chatline 'players X', without the quotes, where X may be any number between 2 and 8. For instance, to simulate 8 players you would type: /players 8 The game gives confirmationo that the game has been taken place, and you'll soon notice the difference if you come out of town. Note that using the players X command in the middle of a game works, but it does not affect the monsters already on screen or close to you. If you are playing v1.09, skip the / (so just type players X where X is the number of players desired), and note that there will be no confirmation. It still works, though. Before v1.09, the command has no effect. PA Short for POWERACTING. PGEM Perfect gem (of any type), usually used in horadric cube recipes, and as a trading currency with other players. POWERACTING Another term for RUSHING. PRIV Private game, i.e. one protected with a password that only the players you gave the password to can enter. PUB/PUBBY Public game, i.e. one without password protection that any player on the same realm can enter. PUBLIC DUELLING Duelling in an uncontrolled, open environment with players you do not know. To most people, public duelling means having to deal with people who not only use every cheap skill in the book, but frequently rely on hacked items as well. To some, whopping an Ith user with legit gear is the greatest PVP fun that can be had - many others prefer to steer clear of public duelling and play in controlled environments instead. PVM Player vs Monster, the way most people play the game. This is done either solitarily or in parties with other players. PVP (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Player vs Player, aka duelling. This refers to two (or more) players fighting each other. This is different from PK in the sense that both players agree to the duel in this case. Duels generally follow a set of rules, which include no potion using, no running into town, and sometimes, no use of certain items like the PINCERS and no use of mercs. Many players build characters specifically intended for duelling. I have never been much into PvP myself and haven't been keeping up with developments on this front in v1.10, so I cannot really make any recommendations regarding good PvP characters. However there are many FAQs on this subject (and as many different opinions as there are FAQs), and most forums have a couple of PvP experts as well. QUARK A set of Ith items on USWest personalized by a character named The_Quark, this was a new generation of ITH ITEMS. Like most other hacked items, they have been largely removed by RUST STORM and if they still exist, they do so in relative obscurity. RANGER An interesting Paladin build using a bow. Some of the Paladin's skills, most notably Fanaticism and Holy Shock, work remarkably well with bows, making this build somewhat viable. They are not as powerful as BOWAZONS or more classic Paladin builds like the ZEALOT or the AVENGER, but for an alternative build, they are surprisingly capable. REALM Any of the servers on closed Battle.net, where characters and items are stored on the server and cheating is far less common than on OPEN. Currently there are six realms in existence: USWest, USEast, Europe, Asia 1, Asia 2 and Asia 3. Interestingly Asia 3 has only existed as long as the expansion has, and as a result no SOJ ECONOMY exists there. Rather, runes were the currency on that realm in v1.09. RES Resistance, a mod found on many items. Resistances help to reduce the damage taken from fire, cold, lightning and/or poison attacks. This is particularly important in Nightmare and Hell mode, where the innate resistances of your character are reduced well below zero and elemental attacks can cause massive damage if you do not find the right equipment to counter this. RB Short for rollback. ROLLBACK This is restoring a database to the state it was in at an earlier time. For Diablo 2, this can mean that several hours or even days of realm play are "reset" and everythins is returned to what it was like before. This is an extreme measure that has been taken in the past to fix severe realm bugs or duping. Since a rollback cancels everything that happened in the meantime, there is always somebody who found a great item or levelled up their characters a lot, and will not be amused when all that progress is gone. Hence, rollbacks are rare. In v1.09, various exploits existed to force a rollback situation on a specific game, and these exploits were central to various duping methods. It is unclear if there are any forced rollback methods currently known and used in v1.10, but it seems likely that if there aren't any now, new ones will be found eventually. D2's cheating history certainly suggests that cheaters tend to be one step ahead of Blizzard. RUSHING (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Also known as POWERACTING, this is the process of having a high level character get a low level one through the game, killing the act bosses for him. This can have several purposes, such as making this low level character ready for duelling (by giving him access to all the quest rewards), to allow him to gain levels quickly in hell cows without actually playing most of the game, to ready a character for MF runs, that kind of thing. There are people who frown upon rushing and insist that every character in hell mode should have gotten there on his own, but this kind of cooperation is inevitable in online games, and many players who enjoy being high level more than getting there are thankful for the possibility to reach Patriarch status in less than 30 minutes. v1.10 has made rushing somewhat harder and more time consuming by placing stricter requirements on which quests must be completed in order to advance, but with a little extra effort it is still quite possible. RUST STORM (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Blizzard's code name for their operation to wipe hacked items from the realms with the release of v1.10. It was almost as effective as people hoped it would be, destroying most of the hacked items present on the realms and continuing to keep their numbers low. While it probably didn't get all of them, hacked items are no longer all over the place the way they pretty much always were in v1.09. How it will work, what exactly it will SC Small charm. Traders are lazy typers. SCAM A generic term referring to tricking other players. Most commonly seen in the online community are ACCOUNT SCAMs and TRADE SCAMs. SHOCKADIN Paladin build centered around the Holy Shock skill and its synergies. Also sometimes known as a TESLADIN. SIN An act that is wrongful in the eyes of God. Er, no wait, the Diablo 2 definition. 'Sin' is one of the two common abbreviations used for the Assassin character class (the other one is ASN). SINGING BARB An alternative kind of Barbarian who does not use his weapon in combat, but relies exclusively on various War Cries. Unlike other Barbarian builds, singing Barbs (also known as BARDs) require a vast supply of mana. If that can be provided, they are surprisingly effective for what is essentially an experimental build. SKILL BUG A bug exploit that flared up in February/March 2002. It involved using a BUGGED ITEM to decrease your dexterity stat below zero, after which it was possible to boost your skills up indefinitely. The result was people with ridiculous skill levels (up in the thousand rather than the normal maximum of 20) running around creating havoc in Hell games: Sorceresses with Charged Bolts filling the entire screen, Paladins with a Holy Fire that clears out the entire Cow level within three seconds of him entering the portal, Barbarians with a Battle Orders giving you six digit hit points, et cetera. The exploit has been fixed by Blizzard and not been seen since. SKILL SYNERGY A featured introduced in v1.10 to make skills give passive bonuses to each other. See SYNERGY. SMITER (or SMITADIN) An interesting Paladin build based on the skill Smite, which uses the Paladin's shield to attack. While normally low in damage, Smite can be powerful if used with the right shield (the class-specific Paladin-only shields in the expansion can do good damage) in combination with the skill Holy Shield which boosts Smite damage. The true power of Smite, however, lies in the fact that it automatically hits and stuns the target. Smitadins are sometimes seen in PVM as well as PVP, and while they are rare, the players who use them claim they are highly effective. SOJ Stone of Jordan, the most famous unique from classic Diablo 2 which continues to have a great impact on the expansion. Back in previous versions, it was possible for a high level player to use a gambling trick to collect these useful rings at a steady pace. SOJ ECONOMY (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) This refers to the Stone of Jordan being the currency in many high-level trades in Diablo 2 and the expansion. Previously, when they could still be obtained easily in gambling, many high level players had a good stock of these. Now, however, they are much harder to come by, and the stock decreases for various reasons while unique and set items become more and more plentiful. The unfortunate result is that there is massive deflation and many items previously worth X SoJs don't even fetch a single one anymore. Nevertheless many players persist in using the SoJ as currency, even though it has already become one of the most valuable items in the game. This has made trading harder than ever. The Stone of Jordan dominated the economy in v1.09 as a form of currency on many realms for an extended period of time. Nothing changes more quickly than the player economy in D2, though, and thus the value of SoJs went up and down a lot over time, usually in response to new SoJ duping causing inflation, and at certain time intervals on certain realms the SoJ ceased having any trade value altogether. Nonetheless, in v1.10, the SoJ is still often used as currency in off-ladder trades. SORC Short for Sorceress, one of the game's character classes. In the early days of the expansion this was the single most commonly seen character, but when people started to discover the potential of the Buriza Do-Kyanon, the BURIZON became very common as well. In v1.10 the Sorceress is not at her peak, though she remains to be a viable character. SP Single Player. Refers to playing alone with a locally stored character, as opposed to a character stored on a closed realm. Single player mode means you will not be able to party up (except on Open Battlenet or in TCP/IP games) and makes trading non-existent, but it eliminates the issue of lag and gives you access to the powerful PLAYERS X command. Successfully taking a character through Hell difficulty in single player, without any cheating or outside help, is generally considered an impressive feat. SPEARAZON An Amazon relying on the use of spears in melee combat. This was once a popular build due to the skill Jab being bugged - it allowed them to use even the slowest of weapons at an awesome pace, stunlocking single opponents and leeching life by the bucketful to survive against enemy groups. When Jab's speed bug was fixed, the Spearazon sort of faded away, and is now rarely seen. Nearly every Amazon in existence is either a BOWAZON or a JAVAZON. SPEEDZON One variation of the BOWAZON, the Speedzon strives to achieve the fastest attack speed possible with her bow. This is done by using one of the fastest bows in the game (ideally Windforce, though most have to settle for cheaper ones) and a lot of equipment with Increased Attack Speed mods. The ultimate goal is to achieve the maximum possible bow fire rate, which allows one arrow to be fired every 7 frames. Once every 8 frames is more common, though. Speedzons avoid using the BURIZA, which is powerful but much slower. Many of them have become Speedzons because they feel using the Buriza is cheap, and want to try something different. STR Short for Strength, one of the four primary statistics of any character. It is particularly important to characters who use melee weapons. Normally it is built up to match the requirements for whatever equipment the character intends to use at a high level. For Paladins and Barbarians this tends to be far higher than for Necromancers and Sorceresses. SUMMONMANCER Term referring to Necromancers specializing in the summoning tree. A more popular term for the same set of builds is ZOOKEEPER. SYNERGY Synergy in general means that the total is more than the sum of its parts. In Diablo 2, it refers to certain skills providing passive bonuses to another; for instance, the Paladin's Zeal skill gets a damage boost based on how many points that same Paladin has put into his Sacrifice skill. He doesn't actually have to *use* Sacrifice for this, just having it gives his Zeal the extra damage. Introduced in v1.10, synergy bonuses have been added to a lot of skills for all the characters and are mainly intended to encourage players to sink points in the lower level skills too, rather than saving them all up until a high level skill becomes available. It also makes a lot more builds viable and has generally increased the range of different class builds used on Battlenet. Some builds remain clearly superior to many others, but it's a good attempt. TANKAZON An interesting Amazon build meant specifically to perform TANKING for another character. These Amazons typically have damage reduction gear and invest heavily in the three passive dodging skills (Dodge, Evade and Avoid) to allow them to survive close encounters. Some of them even use one handed melee weapons and shields, which is of course against the default nature of the Amazon. TANKING Getting up close to a monster, keeping it in place so that long distance attackers can strike it safely. For instance, in v1.09 COW RUNs, it was common for tough Paladins or Barbarians to get up close and keep the cows from overrunning the Sorceresses and Javazons that fight from a distance. A character used for tanking is also referred to as a tank. Tanks are often mentioned in Sorceress guides, since a Sorceress is much more effective if she doesn't have to back off all the time. With a good tank (for instance, a Barbarian mercenary or a tough party member), she is much more effective because she can spend all of her time casting spells rather than running to create more distance. TCP/IP GAME An online game session in which one player hosts and other players join his IP address. This allows players to play together online without using Battlenet. Locally stored characters can be used to play on TCP/IP, and as such it is not cheatproof per s‚: however TCP/IP games are usually played among trusted friends. This is the preferred mode of play for players who wish to be able to play with their friends, but also want to be able to play the same characters offline. TESLADIN Paladin build centered around the Holy Shock skill and its synergies. Also known as a SHOCKADIN. THROWING BARB A Barbarian build using Double Throw and Throwing Mastery to cause as much damage as possible from a distance. This was perhaps inspired by the Ancients in act 5, as one of them uses Double Throw and actually does a lot of damage. Nevertheless, throwing barbs used by players can only deal physical damage and typically do not last in late Nightmare and Hell. They are somewhat effective in PVP, though. TP Town Portal. Often when somebody says 'TP' they are asking you to send them one. Unfortunately many players think they will get quicker results if they ask it twenty times per second. TRADE HACK An old hack which has recently become more popular. It allows a malicious player to pretend he's trading an item to you when in fact his trade screen is empty (you only see the item but it isn't actually there). This results in a nasty surprise when you complete the trade and find you have gotten nothing. The trade hack can be recognized by the fact that if the trade window is opened, the item that's supposedly for trade is already in the window (due to the way the hack works it must be placed before the trade is actually initiated). If this happens, do not trade. Blizzard obviously does not condone the use of this hack and will hopefully find a way to shut it out in the next patch. Until then, it is safest only to trade with people you know, and if you must trade with strangers, to pay very close attention. Not much is heard about trade hacks in v1.10, suggesting most or all of them have been fixed, but TRADE SCAMs remain ever popular. TRADE SCAM (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) A generic term applying to people trying to steal your items through false trades. In some cases people use a TRADE HACK for this, but a more common scam which does not require any hacks is to replace the item to be traded with one that looks alike, but is of less quality. For instance, somebody might offer you a SoJ for your item, place it in the window, but then when you are about to finalize the trade claim that he has to make room in his inventory, and abort it. After a few seconds he opens up the trade again and once again places a ring in the trade window - but this time it is a mundane magical one, not the SoJ he placed before. Many players carelessly forget to double check and just hit agree, trading away their valuable goods for a worthless item. Unfortunately this kind of trade scamming is not illegal in any way (assuming no hack is involved), and Blizzard can do nothing about it. The responsibility to look before you click agree lies with the player. ALWAYS pay attention while trading, and do not trust a stranger if you have no reason to. Never put yourself in a position where the outcome of the exchange relies on a stranger keeping his word. One relatively new scam in v1.10: the Annihilus and Gheed's Fortune are two charms that cannot be placed in the trade window, so a popular scam now is to tell people you'll trade them one if they drop their item first. You can probably imagine what happens if you do. TREASURE CLASS (TC) (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Items in Diablo 2 are sorted in various treasure classes, and every monster has certain odds to drop from certain treasure classes when they die. This is how the game determines which enemy can drop which item, and how likely they are to do so. The ground rule is that as an item is in a higher treasure class, fewer monsters can drop it, and the odds of it dropping are lower too. Treasure classes are multiples of 3, with TC 3 being the lowest and TC 90 the highest. In v1.09, even Baal could not drop any TC 90 items and had very poor odds for TC 87 items, so for items in those two treasure classes (this included Windforce, Grandfather, Stormspire, Immortal King's Soul Cage and various others), people relied on act 5 super uniques instead, with PINDLESKIN being the most popular target. Major changes in treasure classes and the item finding mechanics in v1.10 have shifted the focus away from Pindleskin and back to either boss running or quickly clearing out areas with multiple easy to defeat enemies which nonetheless have good odds. One surprisingly popular area these days is The Pit in act 1, for instance. TROJAN HORSE A variant of a standard virus, trojan horses are introduced into software deliberately (they do not infect and spread on their own like viruses do), and sleep there until the program is activated. When the program is run, the trojan horse activates as well and does whatever it was programmed to do. In most cases, this is a form of interaction with the creator of the trojan horse. Whereas a virus would just start spreading itself through your E-mail and then probably delete files or mess up other things, a trojan horse typically does such things as log your keystrokes and mail them to its creator, or disable your firewalls, open your ports, and set you up to be hacked by the trojan's creator. Trojan horses are named after the mythological Trojan Horse because they do basically the same thing: you think you are running a harmless file, but within lurks a threat you did not see. Trojan horses which are of specific interest to D2 players are those that are frequently added to various third party programs (mostly hacks) relating to Diablo 2. SubSeven is a good example. These trojans are typically keyloggers specifically geared to logging your account name and password and sending it to whoever added the keylogger to maphack, pindlebot or whatever else you were using. The end result is obvious: one day you log in and your account is no longer yours. Protection against trojan horses can be achieved in much the same way as against viruses: use an active virus scanner that scans all incoming files and anything you are about to run, keep it updated, and don't download files unless you know exactly what they do. For a Diablo 2 player, that means: hands off the cheats. Every time you download a hack or a bot, you are putting your accounts at more risk from trojans than Blizzard's wrath, and you can expect very little pity or assistance on forums if your attemps to cheat on the realms cost you your account or your items. TS Thunderstorm, a Sorceress skill that's very popular to use in addition to her other attacks. Thunderstorm works passively over a certain duration, hits automatically, and at a high level, causes quite a bit of extra damage for only a little extra mana. While Sorceresses generally don't use Thunderstorm as their main attack, it is a part of almost every build. v1.07 VALOR Making good use of the gullibility of some online players and the fact that many people think all v1.08 UNIQUES are better than their v1.09 counterparts, some scammers have resorted to the trick of selling an Arkaine's Valor as a 'v1.07 Valor' with different stats. These Valors have the same regular mods as v1.09 Arkaine's Valor, but have +1 to all skills. They are, in fact, just regular v1.09 Valors on which the skills spawned particularly poorly - +1 to each of the seven classes, instead of +2 to some and +1 to others as you usually see. They are the worst kind of Arkaine's Valor around, but are often offered as a novelty 'v1.07' item, and too frequently sold as such to people who are easy to fool. There is, in fact, no such thing as a v1.07 unique for two reasons. First, v1.08 didn't change any item stats, so they're the same. Second, v1.07 was never playable on the realms. It is the version you are running if you install LoD off the CDs and never patch it, but on the realms, v1.08 has been active from the very moment LoD was available (barring the beta, but all traces of beta characters and items have been deleted in realm wipes prior to LoD going up). This also disproves the rumour that the CONSTRICTING RINGS widespread on the realms in v1.09 were in fact legitimate v1.07 finds. v1.08 UNIQUES When v1.09 was launched on the realms in August 2002, it brought many changes to the game in general, but in particular to unique items. Nearly every one of them was overhauled with new stats. The majority of items were improved to make them more tempting to collect and use, but a few that were considered overpowered in v1.08 were downgraded. What Blizzard did not do, however, was to apply these changes to existing items. So any items that had been found in the v1.08 days just kept their old stats. This was considered fairer to the players that had found them, but Blizzard apparently underestimated DUPING. Instead of there being a handful of very valuable and prized v1.08 versions around of the items that were toned down in v1.09, they are all very numerous and very duped. When you see a v1.08 version of an item for trade, it's typically one of those items that was more powerful in v1.08 than it is now - most notably the Harlequin Crest and Arkaine's Valor, but there are others. Do keep in mind that v1.08 cannot be found anymore, were found in small numbers in the v1.08 days, and as such any one that finds it way into a trade now is very, very likely to be duped. As in 99% chance. No item is more likely to disappear on you one day than a v1.08 unique is. V1.10 (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The big one! Diablo 2: LoD has run on version 1.09 for a very long time, and since April 2002, Blizzard has officially announced the attention to overhaul the game significantly in the (possibly final) v1.10 patch. The patch was a very long time in coming, but eventually arrived in late 2003 and sparked new interest in the game among many players, both oldtimers and newcomers. Apart from a host of balance changes, new features (including many new unique items) and a variety of bug fixes, v1.10 involves a major rewrite of the code which rendered existing editors and MODs useless, but made the creation of new mods easier and made more aspects of the game possible to be modded. By all expectations, v1.10 will be the last major Diablo 2 patch. V1.10 BETA (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) With the long development cycle of v1.10, a public beta was eventually released both to appease the masses and to help iron out the bugs, of which there were still many. There have been two beta versions of v1.10 out (the second one being named v1.10s), and both were made available in the middle of 2003. In october 2003, v1.10 finally came out on the realms. V1.10S (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The second and last v1.10 beta, this fixed a lot of character skill issues (but not all) and other important bugs prior to the release of the full version of v1.10 in october 2003. VIT Short for Vitality, one of the four primary statistics of any character. It directly determines your hit point total, which makes it a popular stat for every character. Typically, characters build their Strength and Dexterity only as far as their intended equipment requires, put only as many points in Energy as they really need (and rely on mana regeneration and/or leeching instead), and dump everything else in Vitality. The Bowazon is the only exception: she typically builds up both Dexterity and Vitality, and some daring Bowazon players do not touch Vitality at all, building Dexterity exclusively. On Hardcore, Vitality is valued more than ever because death is permanent there. WB DRUID A Druid build using the Werebear form and the appropriate skills. Werebears deal a lot of damage and have a good crowd control skill, but many players feel they are too slow. Because of this the Werewolf build is considerably more popular. WHITE RING/WRING One of many hacked items in v1.09, the White Ring was nonetheless one of the more ridiculous ones, granting stat gains beyond belief (including total immunity to elemental damage due to 95% absorb). v1.10's RUST STORM seems to have torn through their numbers to the point where you rarely hear about them anymore. WORLD EVENT (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The 'world event', one of the biggest rumours when v1.10 was close to release, refers to the spawning of the Diablo Clone in random games and his consequent dropping of the ANNIHILUS charm if he is defeated. The exact conditions for the world event to occur aren't clear, however. It is obvious that it has something to do with random messages popping up saying "X SoJs sold to merchants", however nobody seems to be quite sure if these messages are actually the result of people selling Stones of Jordan, or just random server messages that merely *imply* they have to do with selling SoJs. Either way, though, this happens on the realms only. WW This can refer either to Whirlwind, a popular Barbarian skill, or Werewolf, a Druid skill. WW BARB A Barbarian build based on the powerful Whirlwind skill. Whirlwind Barbarians exist in both single and dual wielding variants, are sometimes combined with the Frenzy build, and usually have Berserk as well to deal with physically immune enemies. WW SIN An Assassin build based on the Whirlwind skill. While normally only available to Barbarians, a v1.10 Assassin can also get this skill by using the Chaos runeword. WW DRUID A Druid build using the Werewolf form and the appropriate skills. Werewolves don't deal as much damage as Werebears, but they are incredibly fast and can amass amazing hit point totals. They can deal effectively with both single enemies and groups, but their major weakness is the lack of a good skill to deal with physically immune enemies, as the Druid's elemental skills cannot be used in a wereform. ZEAL BUG In v1.09, when a Paladin using the Zeal skills misses with his first strike (or it is blocked), none of the other strikes could still hit the target. They would all automatically miss too as if the Paladin was cleaving thin air. While this bug was apparently fixed in v1.10, Zeal remains a chancy skill that just doesn't appear to work the way it's supposed to, and misses more than you would expect it to. This is one problem that v1.10 just didn't get right. ZEALOT A Paladin build using the skills Zeal and Fanaticism to achieve an incredible attack speed. With sufficient life and mana leech this kind of Paladin can just keep going. Dangerous enemies are those who are so quick that the Paladin can get stunlocked by a group of them, bosses which are Lightning Enchanted, and worst of all, physically immune monsters. The latter are a real problem in Hell mode and that is where Zealots usually fail. Therefore this build is often combined with that of the AVENGER, which is easily possible because the Avenger uses Fanaticism as well and Zeal only needs a few points to be effective. ZOD BUG (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) The Zod rune, the rarest one in the game, can make an item indestructible if you socket it. This is obviously only of interest if the item in question is ethereal, as otherwise it can just be repaired every so often. Ethereal items can't, and Zod allows you to put some of those ultra high damage/defense ethereal items to use without breaking them. In v1.09, there was a problem with the Zod rune, however; a bug that could reset the durability of the Zodded item to 0, essentially breaking it and causing you to lose both the valuable Zod rune and the doubtless expensive item you socketed it with (if it wasn't expensive, why waste a priceless Zod on it?). This bug has thankfully been fixed in v1.10. Early in v1.10 another Zod bug existed, but this one worked to the player's advantage. By socketing a Zod and then removing it with the new "socket cleaning" recipe in v1.10, the socket could be freed up again but the Zod's indestructible mod inexplicably remained on the item. This bug has now been fixed, but existing items that benefitted from it still exist on the realms. ZON (This info has been updated for D2 v1.10.) Short for Amazon, one of the game's character classes. Since the dawn of time the three main classes of Amazon have been called BOWAZON, JAVAZON and SPEARAZON. Lately the Spearazon has become pretty rare, but the other two are more popular than ever due to the existence of new expansion items such as the BURIZA and Titan's Revenge. While they were probably the most used character class in v1.09, closely followed by the Sorceress, Amazons have lost some of their popularity in v1.10 due the lack of SYNERGY bonuses on their most popular skills. They remain popular for MF runs in crowded areas (like The Pit) though, where Strafe has become quite an effective skill. ZOOKEEPER A Necromancer build focusing on the summoning tree; specifically, one that uses a lot of different minions at a time. So not just a golem, but usually revives and both types of skeletons as well. Also referred to as a SUMMONMANCER. ============================================================================== ITEM NICKNAMES LIST ============================================================================== As I found that the terminology list was getting cluttered with shorthand names for various items, usually used in trading, I figured it was about time to separate the list into two. The main list above no longer contains refererences to Diablo II items, and this new chapter attempts to be a complete list of often used terms for items. It's perfect for a would be trader getting mighty confused by the lingo used in the channels or on trading forums. In this list, items that are not legitimate have been marked with a star. I define "not legitimate" as not being findable in the game itself, but only introduced to the realms through hacking. It does not include once legit but now 100% duped items like the Raven Spiral, but it does include Iths, Occy rings, "bugged" strings and stuff like that. These items are not legitimate and while many of them were deleted in v1.10, there may still be strays. There is no telling if such stray items may still be deleted in the future, so let the buyer beware. Be aware that the GameFAQs Terms of Service forbids the trading of hacked items on its forums, and so do many other trading forums. All item nicknames are listed in the following format: the commonly used nickname, the actual ingame name of the item, and any additional comments in parantheses. This list is far from complete but will be updated in the near future. NICKNAME INGAME NAME COMMENTS #/# [el] d/lu Rainbow Facet Example: 5/5 C die: 5% cold dmg, -5% enemy cold res, effect triggers on death (rather than level up) # rends Steelrend # is ED percentage 290 ??? Small Charm of ??? small charm with 290 poison dmg 3/20/20 Fine Small Charm of Vita +3 max dmg, +20 AR, +20 life 7% MFSC Small Charm of Good Luck 7% magic find 40/15 (#1) Ruby Jewel of Fervor 40% ED, 15% IAS 40/15 (#2) Ruby Jewel of ??? 40% ED, +15 max dmg BK ring Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band BotD Breath of the Dying runeword v1.10 only BString * "Bugged" String of Ears hacked item BValor * "Bugged" Arkaine's Valor hacked item Burrito Buriza-Do Kyanon, unique mocking name Ballista Buriza Buriza-Do Kyanon, unique Ballista CCB Cruel Colossus Blade 200-300% ED CCBQ Cruel Colossus Blade of 200-300% ED, 40% IAS Quickness CCS Cruel Colossus Sword CCB is usually preferred COA Crown of Ages COH Chains of Honor runeword CTA Call to Arms runeword Con Ring * Constricting Ring hacked item (see term. list) Fury BB "Fury" Balrog Blade runeword (Jah, Gul, Eth) GA Guardian Angel, unique Templar Coat GF The Grandfather, unique Colossus Blade Griz Griswold's Legacy rarest set (paladin oriented) Havoc * Havoc Mark Jewel hacked item Hex * Hexing Small Charm hacked item HOTO Heart of the Oak runeword v1.10 only HoZ Herald of Zakarum, unique Gilded Shield IK The Immortal King somewhat popular barbarian set Ith (#1) Ith rune not usually traded (no value) Ith (#2) * "Ith" type hacked item or hacked items (see term. list) armor Mav M'avina's Battle Hymn somewhat popular amazon set Nat's Natalya's Odium popular assassin set Occy The Oculus, unique Swirling Crystal Occy Ring "Stone of Jordan" with "melded" hacked item (see term. Oculus stats list) Shaft Shaftstop, unique Mesh Armor Shako Harlequin Crest, unique Shako Silks Silks of the Victory, unique Ancient Armor Skullder's Skullder's Ire, unique Russet Armor SoJ Stone of Jordan, unique Ring SS (usually) Stormshield, unique Monarch Tal's Tal Rasha's Wrappings popular sorceress set Tal's mask Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest, set Death Mask Tgods Thundergod's Vigor Trang's Trang-Oul's Avatar popular necromancer set WF Windforce, unique Hydra Bow White ring * Ring (white lettering) hacked item Wisp Wisp Projector YATM Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest, "Yet Another Tal's Mask", name set Death Mask mocks how common it is ============================================================================== OTHER TRADING TERMS ============================================================================== Since slang that has to do with trading is only of interest to those who actually do trade (realm players only and then only a group among them), I've decided to separate slang that specifically relates to trading from the main terminology list, as well. (1s), (2s) etc. This refers to the number of sockets available in an item, for example (2s) would mean the item has two sockets. #OS Number of open sockets; people will use this term to ask for or advertize the number of unused sockets the item for trade has. clean This means an item that has either not been socketed at all, or of which all the sockets are empty; i.e. the buyer can still customize it himself. Usually it means the item has not been personalized either, although not everybody cares about that. dirty An item that has been socketed with something; usually the term "dirty" implies that it was not a particularly common or desired way to socket it, so the value is lower. E/W/Eu/A US East, US West, Europe, and Asia realms, used in trades (on forums) to indicate where it is taking place. Adding the realm is obviously not necessary when you're in a trading channel on Battlenet. eth/ethereal This is an ethereal version of the item with boosted damage/defense, but it cannot be repaired. Usually this lowers the value, unless it is of no concern on this item (value unchanged) or actually desirable (value raised). Some items which are worth more when ethereal are mercenary pikes, Skullder's Ire, high ED% cruel weapons, Hellslayer, Bartuc's Cut Throat and Titan's Revenge. FT for trade. HC/SC Hardcore/softcore, often used in trades to indicate where it is taking place. id Identified. Many people prefer to trade for unidentified items (in the case of sets/uniques) as it is widely believe those are less likely to be duped (questionable). As such, identified items tend to go for a little less. ISO In Search Of, used to indicate the trader is hoping to get these items from others. L/NL Ladder/no ladder, often used in trades to indicate where it is taking place. legit Legitimate, by which the player usually means that it wasn't duped. Not that it means a thing, because anybody would say that if they think it increases their chances of striking a good deal. NR = NT No Reply = No Thanks, basically means the trader will not respond to your offer unless he intends to accept it. Considered rude by some players. NR = FO No Reply = **** off, basically means the trader will not respond to your offer unless he intends to accept it. Considered rude by all players. PC Price Check, means the trader isn't necessarily interested (yet) in buying/selling but wishes to know what the item in question is worth. unid Unidentified. In the case of sets/uniques where the item type leaves no doubt which item it is, unidentified items tend to be worth a little more because many people believe they are less likely to be dupes. This obviously doesn't work with items where you can't tell what it is as long as it's not identified (e.g. unique rings), or where the value greatly depends on how high a certain random stat on it is. up'd Upgraded, as in made exceptional/elite through horadric cube recipes. wug A disgusting but often used term, wug stands for "what u got", and is the lazy typer's way of asking you to make them an offer on one of their items. wuw Similar to wug, this one means "what u want", and really isn't any better. You can probably also imagine the exchanges that these two terms cause. "trade?" "wug" "wuw" "wug?" "wuw!" "WUG n00b?!" "WUW WUW WUW!" ============================================================================== ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ============================================================================== I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the regulars of the GameFAQs' Diablo II: Lord of Destruction board for their helpful advice regarding the game. Many of them have contributed indirectly to the creation of this FAQ. Also, I would like to thank the following individuals specifically for their suggestions for one or more of this FAQ's updates: ArquillWefronic, Asmodeus, dogg646464, Foxwolfe, JdK, Mafus, Marth1000, MMX, ScarWars27, SineNomine (Apathetic Aardvark), SSJ BleakFuture, Tarik92, Unknown PC. This likely final version of the Diablo 2 terminology guide is dedicated to Kao Megura, a legend in GameFAQs FAQ writing who has been an inspiration to many of us, and whose legacy will continue to help gamers and inspire new authors for many years to come. =========================================================================== REVISION HISTORY =========================================================================== The latest version of this FAQ can always be found at GameFAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com). If you found this guide somewhere else and you are looking for an update, I recommend you check GameFAQs to see if a newer version exists than the one you have. v1.0: (13 Nov '01) First release of the FAQ. v1.01: (14 Nov '01) A few minor corrections and a few more terms added in, courtesy of ScarWars27. v1.02: (16 Nov '01) Added the terms Mule and Muling, as recommended by Asmodeus, as well as SP and Players X. v1.03: (27 Nov '01) Added the terms Closed, Open, Realm, TCP/IP, Corruption Rift and Pindleskin. v1.04: (01 Apr '02) The realms change quickly, and I've updated a few outdated statements (particularly regarding Bloodruns and the SoJ economy). Also added entries for bugged items/skill bug, dupes and dupe deletion, as well chipped gems and colossus blades. v1.05: (24 Apr '02) More additions! Following suggestions made by Unknown PC, a handful of new terms have been added. v1.06: (6 Jan '03) 20 new terms added and several updates done to existing ones, to more accurately reflect the state of the realms near the end of 2002. I am sorry to say things looked brighter in April 2002. v1.07: (31 Mar '03) 10 new terms added: Constricting Ring, Havoc Mark, Ironman, Ladder, Occy Ring, Quark, Trojan horse, v1.07 Valor, v1.08 uniques and Zeal bug. Updates to 4 existing terms: Bugged items, duping, PvP and v1.10. v1.08: (15 May '03) 8 new terms added: 3/20/20, 40/15, Annihulus, CCS, dupe, skill synergy, unid and Zod bug. v1.09: (12 Aug '03) Addition of the item nicknames and trading slang chapters. Updated some information regarding the v1.10 beta. v1.10: (21 Jun '04) Major update made necessary by the changes that D2 v1.10 brought to the game. Some new terms added and countless old ones updated to better reflect which info is no longer valid now that v1.09 is a thing of the past. More terms may be listed in future updates, however I cannot say when those will be. =========================================================================== FINAL WORDS =========================================================================== For questions, comments, suggestions, praise and criticism regarding this guide, contact the author, Sashanan, at sashanan@gfmods.com. Any serious mail will be answered. Please put "Your Diablo 2 FAQ" or something like that in the topic. Note that I cannot answer any questions regarding gameplay. Mails on this subject will be ignored. This is not because I'm too arrogant to share my knowledge, but because Diablo 2 is a very large game in which many different approaches can be successful. My opinions on how to play will vary greatly from those of other veterans; besides, I'm seriously rusty and have very little practical v1.10 experience. If you're looking for gameplay advice, therefore, you're better off visiting a good information site or discussion forum. I recommend the following sites to help answer your D2 questions: Arreat Summit (http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp) DiabloII.Net (http://www.diabloii.net) I also recommend the Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction discussion forums on GameFAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com). Both have a large population of experts who will be more than willing to give you their opinion on how to play the game (if you ask nicely). If you wish to do anything with this FAQ except for just reading it, check the Disclaimer section at the top of the FAQ to find out what you can and can't do. Thank you for reading! "Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me." (Lee Wilson Dodd) This document copyright 2001-2004, Sashanan. All rights reserved.