The total package

 

 

I told you I would get about going over the entire equipment for my Diablo 2 character, just takes me a while.  What can I say, I am old and I move slow.  That and three doubles this week, as opposed to the normal two have left me a bit behind schedule.  Still, I wanted to do this, just as a finish up on my screen shot work I was doing the other day.  Where possible I will give some background on the items as well.  Starting with image #1 in our gallery......

1) Swordguard (Executioner sword) - This is actually my backup weapon, for those rare occasions when I run out of arrows (I usually carry 300, but it is still possible to run out, trust me on this).  Note that the lettering on the sword is gold, that signifies that the weapon is unique, which are the hardest to find magic items in Diablo 2.    Unique items, unlike magic and rare items, are not randomly generated in the game, unlike magic and rare items, therefore anyone playing Diablo 2 has the chance of finding this very same magic weapon.

2) Blood Master (Ring) -  One of two rings that all characters are allowed to wear, as well as one amulet for the jewelry slots.  Unlike the sword, not the lettering here is orangish, this is the appearance of a crafted item.  Crafted items are part magic and part created in the game.  What you do is you take a magic item, one rune, one perfect gem and one jewel and place them in the Horadric Cube and a item with new and usually better properties comes out in the end.  There are specific formulas for what runes, gems and magic items can be used during this process, the process will not work with any old magic item and tracking down all of the needed pieces to craft an item can take a decent amount of time.

3) Corruption Coil (Ring) - This is the second of my two rings I wear, and the third different type of item to explore here, as the lettering on it is yellow, signifying a rare item (but not unique).  rare items are harder to come by that typical magic items, but are still randomly generated in the game itself, just less frequently that straight magic items.

4) Blood Flight (Ceremonial Bow) - This item too is rare, the slight difference being that only amazons can wield it.  Another feature about Diablo 2 is there are class specific items that only members of a certain class can use.  A barbarian could wield this bow, just as my amazon character could wear a slayer guard, which is a type of helm made only for barbarians.

5) Glyph Casque (Armet) - This is another item that I crafted.  Note at the bottom the item says sockets (2).  These are slots that are found in some armors, helms shields and weapons that can have an additional gem, rune or jewel inserted into them to give them additional abilities beyond the ones stated.  This helm current has two open slots, as I haven't filled the sockets just yet. The number of sockets that an item can have are dependent on the item itself, a helm can have no more than two, armor and shields can have up to 4 sockets and weapons can have as many as 6.  A socketed item need not be magical to begin with, regular items can potentially have sockets and if the right set runes are added to the sockets in the correct order you can create a rune word item, which is similar to a unique item in its abilities. 

6)  Hailstone Finger (War Gauntlets) - Another crafted item, and I think I have covered what that is all about here.

7) Immortal King's Pillar (War Boots) - A green item indicates that the item is part of an kit or outfit, that is, there are other items than can potentially go with this as well.  Some of the outfits in the end become class specific, others can be put together and worn by anyone.  For each item of a specific kit a character wears, an addition bonus beyond the ones stated with the individual items can be obtained.  For instance, this particular item is part of the kit called the Immortal King.  One of the items in the kit is an Avenger Guard, a helm specifically for barbarians, so I could never wear this entire kit regardless if I found all of the items or not.  hat being said, if I were to find a second item and equip it, I would get a bonus to my attack rating and would increase by 25% my chance of finding a magic item, plus whatever bonuses would come from the other item in the kit.  You can read more about the Immortal King here.

8) Glyph Cord (Spiderweb Sash) - This is another rare item and I think I have explained those pretty well already, though by now I imagine your eyes are all droopy.

9) Black Hades (Chaos Armor) - Another unique item, and also another socketed item.  Unlike the helm, I have filled in the sockets with 2 jewels and one rune, thus the "Ko" underneath the item name (Ko is the rune that I socketed into the armor).  The additional damage (fire and cold), the bonus to dexterity and the increased resistances (again fire and cold) all come from the runes that were added.

10) Lastly we have Viper Ring (Amulet) - Another of my fine crafted items (see me about a discount on your next crafted item).  While anyone can technically wear an amulet, only an amazon can obviously benefit from the +1 to amazon skill levels feature.  Anyone else wearing the amulet would get all of the bonuses save for that one, it would be useless to them.

And with that, my screen shot experiment has come to a close.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.  Those seeking more information about the geeky games I play, I would suggest looking here, they have more answers than I can provide.