Man this old timey inventory sure is clashing with my “must pick up everything on the ground” modern instincts
Also I’m sure this observation is like 20+ years late but the barbarian sounds exactly like Leonard nemoy
Also while I love the visuals the blur when you move gives me a headache. Im also completely lost, there’s no quest markers I’m guessing? Can’t for the life of me find the first quest
Ok found it, had missed it in the first area and went way too far ahead
Also my controller vibration only works like 30% of the time on hit, and it’s not my battery
Huh, yeah apparently the motion blur thing you're describing is a thing for quite a few people. I don't see any blur at all now that I look for it (on PC), but you're definitely not the only one who's experiencing it from what I've seen by searching around. It sounds like it affects some setups on PC and maybe on certain consoles? There's no change at all on the clarity of visuals all the way to the edge of the screen for me when I look around on my display/setup; it sounds like it may be display related but I'm not seeing any obvious solutions to fix it from a quick glance around the internets.
Here's a video trying to show it. I suspect its related to whatever upscaling they are using to get 4K, maybe a temporal algorithm not well suited to 2D sidescrollers. You might have better luck going down to fidelity mode or capping output at 1080p.
Got disconnected while transferring the Horadric Cube back to my stash after I got done upgrading all my gems and runes. Now I don't have a cube anymore.
EDIT - I have a feeling that it's a one-time drop thing, too. But, on the off chance, guess I'll head back and check. It'd be a shame if this is now a broken playthrough.
I'm pretty sure if you kill the Halls of the Dead boss again it'll drop another Cube.
Thankfully, it's not a boss drop but in a sparkle chest. And yes, it will redrop if the cube is ever...'lost'
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Man this old timey inventory sure is clashing with my “must pick up everything on the ground” modern instincts
Also I’m sure this observation is like 20+ years late but the barbarian sounds exactly like Leonard nemoy
Also while I love the visuals the blur when you move gives me a headache. Im also completely lost, there’s no quest markers I’m guessing? Can’t for the life of me find the first quest
Ok found it, had missed it in the first area and went way too far ahead
Also my controller vibration only works like 30% of the time on hit, and it’s not my battery
Huh, yeah apparently the motion blur thing you're describing is a thing for quite a few people. I don't see any blur at all now that I look for it (on PC), but you're definitely not the only one who's experiencing it from what I've seen by searching around. It sounds like it affects some setups on PC and maybe on certain consoles? There's no change at all on the clarity of visuals all the way to the edge of the screen for me when I look around on my display/setup; it sounds like it may be display related but I'm not seeing any obvious solutions to fix it from a quick glance around the internets.
There is also a paralax option that exaggerates the motion which may be what you have on. Try without it.
Man this old timey inventory sure is clashing with my “must pick up everything on the ground” modern instincts
Also I’m sure this observation is like 20+ years late but the barbarian sounds exactly like Leonard nemoy
Also while I love the visuals the blur when you move gives me a headache. Im also completely lost, there’s no quest markers I’m guessing? Can’t for the life of me find the first quest
Ok found it, had missed it in the first area and went way too far ahead
Also my controller vibration only works like 30% of the time on hit, and it’s not my battery
Huh, yeah apparently the motion blur thing you're describing is a thing for quite a few people. I don't see any blur at all now that I look for it (on PC), but you're definitely not the only one who's experiencing it from what I've seen by searching around. It sounds like it affects some setups on PC and maybe on certain consoles? There's no change at all on the clarity of visuals all the way to the edge of the screen for me when I look around on my display/setup; it sounds like it may be display related but I'm not seeing any obvious solutions to fix it from a quick glance around the internets.
There is also a paralax option that exaggerates the motion which may be what you have on. Try without it.
I'm not having the issue myself, but I believe that option (I'm assuming you mean "perspective mode") is only for for the legacy graphics mode -- it shouldn't do anything with the "new" graphics.
edit: nevermind, I guess it does affect the new visuals too; my apply button wasn't activating at first, but yeah that definitely does stuff. It's not the motion blur issue people are describing (or at the very least, doesn't cause any on my end), but it is kind of neat at least. I honestly had no idea that was an option in Diablo 2; it looks crazy in legacy mode, and is confusing my brain a lot.
I’m on Xbox Series X and no blur on my end either. Been pretty great graphics wise - but I am using quality mode rather than performance. But 30 FPS is fine by me really.
Got disconnected while transferring the Horadric Cube back to my stash after I got done upgrading all my gems and runes. Now I don't have a cube anymore.
EDIT - I have a feeling that it's a one-time drop thing, too. But, on the off chance, guess I'll head back and check. It'd be a shame if this is now a broken playthrough.
I'm pretty sure if you kill the Halls of the Dead boss again it'll drop another Cube.
Thankfully, it's not a boss drop but in a sparkle chest. And yes, it will redrop if the cube is ever...'lost'
I couldn't recall if you had to kill the boss to be able to loot the chest.
Man this old timey inventory sure is clashing with my “must pick up everything on the ground” modern instincts
Also I’m sure this observation is like 20+ years late but the barbarian sounds exactly like Leonard nemoy
Also while I love the visuals the blur when you move gives me a headache. Im also completely lost, there’s no quest markers I’m guessing? Can’t for the life of me find the first quest
Ok found it, had missed it in the first area and went way too far ahead
Also my controller vibration only works like 30% of the time on hit, and it’s not my battery
Huh, yeah apparently the motion blur thing you're describing is a thing for quite a few people. I don't see any blur at all now that I look for it (on PC), but you're definitely not the only one who's experiencing it from what I've seen by searching around. It sounds like it affects some setups on PC and maybe on certain consoles? There's no change at all on the clarity of visuals all the way to the edge of the screen for me when I look around on my display/setup; it sounds like it may be display related but I'm not seeing any obvious solutions to fix it from a quick glance around the internets.
There is also a paralax option that exaggerates the motion which may be what you have on. Try without it.
I'm not having the issue myself, but I believe that option (I'm assuming you mean "perspective mode") is only for for the legacy graphics mode -- it shouldn't do anything with the "new" graphics.
edit: nevermind, I guess it does affect the new visuals too; my apply button wasn't activating at first, but yeah that definitely does stuff. It's not the motion blur issue people are describing (or at the very least, doesn't cause any on my end), but it is kind of neat at least. I honestly had no idea that was an option in Diablo 2; it looks crazy in legacy mode, and is confusing my brain a lot.
Yeah this is odd. The other thing is legacy resolution, it also controls how much of the field you see in modern graphics. Tick 640x480 for a more zoomed-in view. Both seem to be intentional though because some of the legacy settings (contrast and lighting) have a tooltip explicitly saying they are legacy-only. Not so much for resolution or perspective.
I’ll try adjusting some of the settings in legacy mode and see if it effects it. I’m on series x and the blur is on both fidelity and performance, but more pronounced in fidelity, which is what I prefer to play on even with the worse blur
Hmm doesn’t really do much I can see. Might have some effect, the parallax thing, but I can’t tell. I think I’ll just have to play in shorter bursts, as it’s kind of cumulative, at first it’s fine but after a few hours my eyes strain
Essentially when you’re standing still it’s fine, but as soon as you move everything noticeably blurs. I don’t think it’s my tv or any setting like that since I don’t notice it on any other games. It seems intentional as your character doesn’t blur, so it seems like it’s an intentional visual effect that my eyes just find hard to adjust to
Also this boss you’re all talking about has me scared, my barbarian definitely isn’t specced out well at all, even after I got that free reset
Also it will take me roughly a year to get used to the closed door/open door thing, I keep reading it as “close door/open door” as a command not the status of the door, and so doing the opposite of what I want to do
Some might groan at this being IGN but there's actually a quality documentary buried in here. All about how the D2 Remaster was made, how they built 3D graphics and engine to replicate a 2D game, solving some of the visual quirks along the way. Lots of developer interviews and visual demonstrations from their tools. Really cool if you want to dig a bit deeper.
It is a remarkable achievement, if they can add an option to disable motion blur it might be one of my favourite games visually of the year, it just looks so unique.
I’m up to act 2 and with the sand raiders and skeletons everything looks like old ray harryhausen stop motion creatures from a Sinbad movie it’s awesome
I struggled with Andariel on my skellymancer, she just one shot them. But with some antidote potions i whittled her down. Then i remembered i probably could/should have taken it a notch down from /players 5
Wait what does the player limit have to do with difficulty? I’m playing solo but I think mines set on the default 4?
Ok managed to get to the second act fairly ok but the sewer level almost immediately killed me. I just take way too much damage as a barbarian. I’m level 17 should I go back to the first act and grind more levels or something?
Monster health, XP, and drops go up a lot with players, and damage goes up a bit.
The default for a new game is always players 1, you have to explicitly set it otherwise. It's not a traditional difficulty setting, players 4 in single player is the same as if you're in an online game with four players.
When I look at the settings it was set to default 4 players? Unless I’m looking at the wrong thing. I’m playing online in a private single player match? If I set it to 1 will the game be easier? I’m looking at the max player count thing, is that a different thing?
Player limit and the “/players #” command are unrelated.
If you are playing an online character, by yourself, the game and rewards are scaled for 1 player. If you had people in your party, those would increase up to your player limit.
The latter is a way to raise the difficulty and reward for offline characters. So “/players 5” raises the difficulty and reward as though you had 4 players with you, even though you don’t.
Unless you are both offline and explicitly type that command, a solo character is always on “/players 1”.
I ran across some enemy called Pit Wolf, it was a an Itchies cloud and had stone skin, I can’t seem to kill it or do any damage? I’m a barbarian so I don’t have any magic if that’s what’s needed. It also basically does no damage? It’s just following me everywhere being annoying
I finished Normal tonight and my buddy and I grabbed Crystal Swords out of normal cows to make a couple Spirit runewords. We managed to have our two Amn runes drop "naturally" in the last cow run we did (2 together, I did 2 before I teamed up). I also had the runes to make a Lore helm.
The power spike my hammerdin just got from those two runewords is ridiculous. I went from 61 mana to ~200 and I'm chugging way fewer potions now, while doing significantly more damage and casting much faster.
I'm not really sure what I need to work toward next yet, but I'm chewing through act 1 nightmare right now and loving every second. Might try to find a pally shield for a second Spirit...
The talent trees are so confusing in this. You have to spend points in abilities that you might not want in order to unlock the ones you do? Im pretty much just buying axe skill because I like axes and none of the other abilities jump out at me. I have the jump and the bash but that’s it, and the shout that sends enemies running
Also I’ve heard skill resets are rare, and I screwed up my free one, cos all the damn icons look identical
Also god damn it stings to lose so much money to death
You get 1 resepc per difficulty, so 3 total then no more. Diablo 2 was a great game at the time, but it suffers from not having the improvements in game design over the last 20 years.
I expected a lot of issues, since this is my first time playing it and its so old, so I’m just going with it, I probably should’ve looked up builds but I’m fine at the moment, getting through with just potion spamming
Also so there’s a limit on your held cash? Does depositing it change the amount taxed on death? Also I accidentally deposited and withdrew my entire cash twice and instantly unlocked the “pick up 500,000 gold” achievement
My god the palace level looks stunning. Any interiors with like tiles, blood slick surfaces, lots of detail for the shadows to bounce off, just looks incredible.
It’s also a delight every time there’s a new creature, they just look so good
Unfortunately tho I think I may be reaching my limit for the moment, need to take a break. It’s just too tedious getting through some areas, I have to spam health and mana potions and it just takes forever to get through enemies, taking a mercenary is often a waste of money cos they die so fast. And Jesus that death penalty on money is expensive.
I’ve died like 3 times trying to get to my corpse in the arcane sanctuary and it’s just chewed through all my money and patience
Prohass on
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
The talent trees are so confusing in this. You have to spend points in abilities that you might not want in order to unlock the ones you do? Im pretty much just buying axe skill because I like axes and none of the other abilities jump out at me. I have the jump and the bash but that’s it, and the shout that sends enemies running
Also I’ve heard skill resets are rare, and I screwed up my free one, cos all the damn icons look identical
Also god damn it stings to lose so much money to death
But use your knowledge of this character (along with gear and stuff) and make a new one knowing what you know now. It's kind of a souls game when you first play through it. You fumble around finding things that work and don't until you hit a roadblock. If you can't overcome the block try a new char maybe you'll happen upon new runes, gems, gear that will help your other char succeed.
Following a guide is a valid tactic but I feel like it kind of takes away from the first time experience. Try a new class! Honestly the barb isn't a very fun class until you get the right gear. Try an assassin or Amazon to get some elemental attacks and flashy group moves.
Unfortunately, Barbarian is probably the hardest class to start with nothing. Casters have a huge advantage by not having to worry about accuracy, especially the next his always misses bug, and are way less gear dependent for their damage.
That said, Concentrate always seemed pretty solid to me, and the mana cost is ok to manage with either mana steal or +mana on kill.
Check your resistances; you may need to socket some gems for now, get a point in natural resistance, or try to get Ral+Ort+Tal in that order in a shield. Having Barbarian spears with +Battle Orders on weapon swap is also a good source of life and mana.
If you don’t already, get a merc from act 2 because they can give you accuracy, defense, or life regen. Ethereal items will not break on them so they can take advantage of the damage and defense bonuses. They can get pretty sturdy and have very good damage, and you can feed them potions from your belt but I forget the keyboard hot key, shift maybe? It’s L2+Dpad on controller.
Played through a couple of Chapters and. . .I don't think the game is for me. Looks good, music is fantastic and the story I'm actually interested in. It's just everything (seemingly unchanged from the previously version) else that just feels. . .old. Inventory management, the skill system and hooboy that movement. Several times I think I'm dropping inputs when it's just that the game (I think) has limited movement compared to current ARPG's. A good game (that I would have preferred a remake of) that just isn't for me.
. . .honestly the entire time I am kind of thinking "You know, I really just want to play Diablo 3." Hopefully Diablo 4 takes the best of the two previous games (narrative from Diablo 2 and new-ARPG player niceities from Diablo 3) and smashes it together.
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
But use your knowledge of this character (along with gear and stuff) and make a new one knowing what you know now. It's kind of a souls game when you first play through it. You fumble around finding things that work and don't until you hit a roadblock. If you can't overcome the block try a new char maybe you'll happen upon new runes, gems, gear that will help your other char succeed.
Following a guide is a valid tactic but I feel like it kind of takes away from the first time experience. Try a new class! Honestly the barb isn't a very fun class until you get the right gear. Try an assassin or Amazon to get some elemental attacks and flashy group moves.
I do actually have fond memories of figuring out how to min-max the skill trees when I was playing ye olde D2
Its sort of a neat puzzle but that kind of design just feels so dated now, having to spend points to level a skill up and then spend points in other skills you dont care about for minor %increases is something I hope they leave out of D4 (along with manually spending stat points please god)
I'm just happy to have this game. I'm sad that it's bouncing off people who are new to the series though. There was something raw about this game that kept me going. D3 is a fine game but I really didn't like a majority of it. Also couldn't get into Path of Exile or Grim Dark like I thought I would.
Honestly it's probably the atmosphere, music, and the difficulty. Choices matter in this game and I low key love how difficult that makes it.
A lot of builds stall out even on Nightmare, especially ladder difficulty which is what the single player seems to be set at now. There's just too many garbage options. Case in point, physical Barbs are basically frenzy or whirlwind, any of the simple one-target skills are just frustrating slow even in good gear. War Cry spam is actually viable enough in bad gear, but that's probably not why you rolled a Barbarian...
Another place guide really helps is picking up cheap runewords, they can give you a huge leg-up when you got nothing. Malice and Strength are great starters with high attack speed (like frenzy and whirlwind), Lore helm is always a go-to, and Insight on your Act 2 Merc will fix any mana issues for your character. And you definitely do not want to trial-and-error rune combinations.
I don't know that its the best system but I missed it in Torchlight 2. Skill pre-requisites get you to try more skills out as a newbie, and they give you some tools to lean on if you are saving up for later skills. Simply removing pre-reqs while leaving everything else intact is objectively bad.
Casters have a huge advantage by not having to worry about accuracy, especially the next his always misses bug, and are way less gear dependent for their damage.
I think D2R might have fixed NHAM. It was always a client sync bug after all. And it affected casters equally as long as they were forced in a block or hit animation. (really, its advantage here to long-ranged damage.)
The act 2 Nightmare defensive merc is really strong, they bring a holy freeze aura, slowing all movement and attacks by up to around 50%. You won't kill as fast as with might or blessed aim from the offense merc but it can still be more than worth it if you are struggling.
I'm sorry I don't mean to downplay anyone's complaints about the game. I understand the frustration of it and it's valid. But there's something about that frustration that feels good when I get through it.
Also another tip: move your cash into the stash before you run to bosses. You don't drop it then. I'm actually happy they removed the actual stacks of gold that used to take up your inventory. Was that a d2r change or LoD? I can't remember at this point.
Nah, I just think there's a wide range of game styles and players of ARPG's - even within a series (I mean why wouldn't there be). Honestly something told me D2 might not be for me, with Diablo 3 (which I knew at release was controversial for being a departure from Diablo 2) and Torchlight 2 my favorite games of this type. Much prefer those two over Diablo 2 or something like PoE (which I actually enjoy just not as much as D3 or TL2) so I'm probably on the more "casual" spectrum of ARPG players.
Also another tip: move your cash into the stash before you run to bosses. You don't drop it then. I'm actually happy they removed the actual stacks of gold that used to take up your inventory. Was that a d2r change or LoD? I can't remember at this point.
I just drop the gold on the floor, if it’s in stash you still lose that percentage of gold from your stash total when dying.
I think stacks of gold in inventory was D1, max 5k per stack.
Also another tip: move your cash into the stash before you run to bosses. You don't drop it then. I'm actually happy they removed the actual stacks of gold that used to take up your inventory. Was that a d2r change or LoD? I can't remember at this point.
I just drop the gold on the floor, if it’s in stash you still lose that percentage of gold from your stash total when dying.
I think stacks of gold in inventory was D1, max 5k per stack.
There's a shared stash now with a separate gold inventory, maybe it can be hidden there?
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Here's a video trying to show it. I suspect its related to whatever upscaling they are using to get 4K, maybe a temporal algorithm not well suited to 2D sidescrollers. You might have better luck going down to fidelity mode or capping output at 1080p.
Thankfully, it's not a boss drop but in a sparkle chest. And yes, it will redrop if the cube is ever...'lost'
There is also a paralax option that exaggerates the motion which may be what you have on. Try without it.
I'm not having the issue myself, but I believe that option (I'm assuming you mean "perspective mode") is only for for the legacy graphics mode -- it shouldn't do anything with the "new" graphics.
edit: nevermind, I guess it does affect the new visuals too; my apply button wasn't activating at first, but yeah that definitely does stuff. It's not the motion blur issue people are describing (or at the very least, doesn't cause any on my end), but it is kind of neat at least. I honestly had no idea that was an option in Diablo 2; it looks crazy in legacy mode, and is confusing my brain a lot.
Yeah this is odd. The other thing is legacy resolution, it also controls how much of the field you see in modern graphics. Tick 640x480 for a more zoomed-in view. Both seem to be intentional though because some of the legacy settings (contrast and lighting) have a tooltip explicitly saying they are legacy-only. Not so much for resolution or perspective.
I’m swapping between 4k@60hz on tv and 1440p@165hz on monitor.
In Halo MCC I never used the legacy graphics toggle but I find in Diablo I’m using it all the time to do comparisons. It’s quite enjoyable.
Hmm doesn’t really do much I can see. Might have some effect, the parallax thing, but I can’t tell. I think I’ll just have to play in shorter bursts, as it’s kind of cumulative, at first it’s fine but after a few hours my eyes strain
Essentially when you’re standing still it’s fine, but as soon as you move everything noticeably blurs. I don’t think it’s my tv or any setting like that since I don’t notice it on any other games. It seems intentional as your character doesn’t blur, so it seems like it’s an intentional visual effect that my eyes just find hard to adjust to
Also this boss you’re all talking about has me scared, my barbarian definitely isn’t specced out well at all, even after I got that free reset
Also it will take me roughly a year to get used to the closed door/open door thing, I keep reading it as “close door/open door” as a command not the status of the door, and so doing the opposite of what I want to do
I’m up to act 2 and with the sand raiders and skeletons everything looks like old ray harryhausen stop motion creatures from a Sinbad movie it’s awesome
Ok managed to get to the second act fairly ok but the sewer level almost immediately killed me. I just take way too much damage as a barbarian. I’m level 17 should I go back to the first act and grind more levels or something?
The default for a new game is always players 1, you have to explicitly set it otherwise. It's not a traditional difficulty setting, players 4 in single player is the same as if you're in an online game with four players.
If you are playing an online character, by yourself, the game and rewards are scaled for 1 player. If you had people in your party, those would increase up to your player limit.
The latter is a way to raise the difficulty and reward for offline characters. So “/players 5” raises the difficulty and reward as though you had 4 players with you, even though you don’t.
Unless you are both offline and explicitly type that command, a solo character is always on “/players 1”.
That used to work I think?
Gear is alright for the level.
Maybe I need to lean to just run past unless I need to kill them.
The power spike my hammerdin just got from those two runewords is ridiculous. I went from 61 mana to ~200 and I'm chugging way fewer potions now, while doing significantly more damage and casting much faster.
I'm not really sure what I need to work toward next yet, but I'm chewing through act 1 nightmare right now and loving every second. Might try to find a pally shield for a second Spirit...
Also I’ve heard skill resets are rare, and I screwed up my free one, cos all the damn icons look identical
Also god damn it stings to lose so much money to death
Also so there’s a limit on your held cash? Does depositing it change the amount taxed on death? Also I accidentally deposited and withdrew my entire cash twice and instantly unlocked the “pick up 500,000 gold” achievement
It’s also a delight every time there’s a new creature, they just look so good
Unfortunately tho I think I may be reaching my limit for the moment, need to take a break. It’s just too tedious getting through some areas, I have to spam health and mana potions and it just takes forever to get through enemies, taking a mercenary is often a waste of money cos they die so fast. And Jesus that death penalty on money is expensive.
I’ve died like 3 times trying to get to my corpse in the arcane sanctuary and it’s just chewed through all my money and patience
Correct, the talent trees on D2 are bad
But use your knowledge of this character (along with gear and stuff) and make a new one knowing what you know now. It's kind of a souls game when you first play through it. You fumble around finding things that work and don't until you hit a roadblock. If you can't overcome the block try a new char maybe you'll happen upon new runes, gems, gear that will help your other char succeed.
Following a guide is a valid tactic but I feel like it kind of takes away from the first time experience. Try a new class! Honestly the barb isn't a very fun class until you get the right gear. Try an assassin or Amazon to get some elemental attacks and flashy group moves.
That said, Concentrate always seemed pretty solid to me, and the mana cost is ok to manage with either mana steal or +mana on kill.
Check your resistances; you may need to socket some gems for now, get a point in natural resistance, or try to get Ral+Ort+Tal in that order in a shield. Having Barbarian spears with +Battle Orders on weapon swap is also a good source of life and mana.
If you don’t already, get a merc from act 2 because they can give you accuracy, defense, or life regen. Ethereal items will not break on them so they can take advantage of the damage and defense bonuses. They can get pretty sturdy and have very good damage, and you can feed them potions from your belt but I forget the keyboard hot key, shift maybe? It’s L2+Dpad on controller.
. . .honestly the entire time I am kind of thinking "You know, I really just want to play Diablo 3." Hopefully Diablo 4 takes the best of the two previous games (narrative from Diablo 2 and new-ARPG player niceities from Diablo 3) and smashes it together.
I do actually have fond memories of figuring out how to min-max the skill trees when I was playing ye olde D2
Its sort of a neat puzzle but that kind of design just feels so dated now, having to spend points to level a skill up and then spend points in other skills you dont care about for minor %increases is something I hope they leave out of D4 (along with manually spending stat points please god)
Honestly it's probably the atmosphere, music, and the difficulty. Choices matter in this game and I low key love how difficult that makes it.
But I'm a known masochist so lol
Another place guide really helps is picking up cheap runewords, they can give you a huge leg-up when you got nothing. Malice and Strength are great starters with high attack speed (like frenzy and whirlwind), Lore helm is always a go-to, and Insight on your Act 2 Merc will fix any mana issues for your character. And you definitely do not want to trial-and-error rune combinations.
I don't know that its the best system but I missed it in Torchlight 2. Skill pre-requisites get you to try more skills out as a newbie, and they give you some tools to lean on if you are saving up for later skills. Simply removing pre-reqs while leaving everything else intact is objectively bad.
I think D2R might have fixed NHAM. It was always a client sync bug after all. And it affected casters equally as long as they were forced in a block or hit animation. (really, its advantage here to long-ranged damage.)
The act 2 Nightmare defensive merc is really strong, they bring a holy freeze aura, slowing all movement and attacks by up to around 50%. You won't kill as fast as with might or blessed aim from the offense merc but it can still be more than worth it if you are struggling.
I just drop the gold on the floor, if it’s in stash you still lose that percentage of gold from your stash total when dying.
I think stacks of gold in inventory was D1, max 5k per stack.
There's a shared stash now with a separate gold inventory, maybe it can be hidden there?