Fixes bugs, many general improvements like fast walk in town in Multiplayer, nearly all monsters in caves and lower have bosses, added alot of new town gossip, no longer can you be stunned by magic attacks when you have resist and a shield, many monsters (mostly in hell) are more challenging (and slightly more rewarding), there are books for resurrect and identify, Diablo doesn't stop the game when killed and drops an item. Many new monsters, main places to visit after defeating Diablo is The Abyss as it has most of the new monster.
Summary on Changes to the Hellfire.EXE
General Changes:
1. Bugs (thanks to Crystalion for the codes)
-In Original Diablo and Hellfire many monsters had no AC and ToHit at nightmare or hell. That is fixed now.
-The triple swing of Monk, Bard and Barbarian was more powerful than it was supposed to be. That is fixed now (sorry Monk !)
-The monsters' heal-rate was slower that it is supposed to be. Fixed.
-The random number generation was flawed due to reseeding quirks. Fixed now, i.e. you should no longer see weird monster behaviour concerning to hit/walking.
2. General Improvements:
-Fast walk enabled in town in mp
-Nearly all monsters in the caves and lower have bosses. Most of them have names that are found in the original Diablo/Hellfire.exe, but which are not used in the original game.
-We added a fair amount of town gossip that refers in most cases to new monsters, bosses or unique items (for example Izual, the Fallen Angel or Shadowfang, the cursed demonblade).
-Heroes that use a shield are no longer stunned while being attacked by magic attacks when having resist. Sierra moved the blocking check before the resist check, i.e. as opposed to original Diablo, in Hellfire you will try to block a magic attack with your shield even if you have resist. This made playing a warrior in Hellfire no real fun. (Credits go again to Crystalion)
-Many monsters (mostly in Hell) are a bit more challenging (and slightly more rewarding).
-It is now possible to find holy, ruthless and other level 35 prefixed items, but they are very rare because only two bosses and Diablo in hell and six bosses in the Abyss are able to drop such items.-There are now books of resurrect and of identify.
-Diablo now always drops an item and doesn't stop the game. He is also a wee bit more of a killer. (I remember that Varaya and me were killed about two dozen times with our level 25 rogues in normal hell before we could slay him!)
The NEST and the ABYSS
1. The NEST
We never thought the Nest any good so we forgot about it and when playing our version of Hellfire you should too. Each monstertype has a range of dungeon levels on which it can appear. The levels are numbered 1 to 16 from the Cathedral to Hell and 17 to 24 from Nest 1 to Crypt 4. We wanted some monsters to appear in the lower hell and the upper Abyss so they had to appear in the Nest too, because the Nest is located "between" Hell and the Crypt when you look at the dungeon level numbers. When we realized this we upgraded the Nest monsters to fit at least a bit into this situation. So if you insist on playing the Nest then be warned it is not thought to be like it is! (or, more bluntly: we can not prevent you from playing the Nest, so go there if you absolutely want. But be aware that we did not invest more than 60 seconds in balancing the monsters you will find there)
2. The ABYSS
The Abyss is sort of an extension to Hell, so the recommended order of playing is to go through Hell and THEN to the Abyss. We removed all Hellfire monsters from the former crypt because we think they are too comical or otherwise not fitting into the overall "flair" of Diablo.We put Hellmonsters like knights, succubi, mages etc. into the Abyss and made them more powerful than the original hell monsters. The upper Abyss is about as difficult as the medium Hell, the lower Abyss is much more difficult. In the first versions the lower crypt levels had many triple immune monsters, but that was a bit too brutal. Thus you will find not that many triple immunes there in the latest versions. Many of the new monsters are level 30 or even 31 (making 35 for their bosses). Therefore it would be a bit cheesy to roam about in the normal difficulty Abyss with your level 50 hero just to get items.
LIST OF NEW ABYSS MONSTERS:
-Hellbeast: big lava maw (mark their resist!)
-Hellstorm and Thunderlord: big Lightning Lords
-Conjuror: big Cabalist-Wizard: slightly bigger Advocate
-Dark mage: BIG Advocate-Blood Lord: big Blood Knight
-Black Baron: the ultimate knight-challenge
-Devil Spawn: big Hellspawn-Hellburner: big Soulburner (though not triple immune)
-Horned Death: The minions of Azmodan
-Azure Dragon: big Azure Drakes
New unique items
Both in Hellfire and Diablo there are item graphics which are not used in the game. Also, there are uniques which can definitely not be found. We created new (hopefully better but rarer!) unique items by replacing some useless ones. And the unfindable ones still left were made findable.All in all there are about 30 new Uniques but most of them are rare or extremely rare as many are also very powerful.The following is only a small selection. The number in brackets is the item level; 35 is extremely rare unless you are permanently in the Abyss.
AZUREWRATH (36): the ultimate weapon for the warrior and the holy runeblade of the angel Izual.
SHADOWFANG (34): the cursed demonblade which smites them like thunder but at a cost!THE EMPEROR'S PLATE (35): a plate worthy for an Emperor.
THE RING OF THE CAT (34): perfect for the rogue.
THE ARCANE RING (35): perfect for the mage.
THE RING OF BATTLE (36): perfect for those who love close combat.
LIGHTFORGE (20): apart from being a morning star instead of a mace it is truly Lightforge.
THE DRAGON (35): A mighty bow for all those rogues out there who don't think Eaglehorn and Windforce are the best bows in the world.and...
THE ONE RING! (37): The rarest of all items, only The Dark Lord himself can have it.
New Monsters
Apart from the Abyss there are a few new monsters in the upper levels. These are not new regarding graphics or sound, but they do appear in other places, have other names and rather different powers. The numbers in brackets are the dungeon levels they can appear on. All of them have a boss on one of those levels.
Brave Ones (1-2): They should have been Fallen Ones (their slot was used otherwise), but because of using another slot they now don't run away. Truly brave monsters :-)Pain Master (6-7): They use the graphics of the shredded and the name of a hidden (being in the Hellfire.exe but not used) monster and are rather powerful at level 6-7.
Mutant Lord (8-9): We think they were thought to be the biggest type of the "Hidden" (invisible monsters) for their original name was "Invisible Lord". In fact they cannot turn invisible but are now quite fast.
Undead Balrog (13-21): Well, sort of skeleton Balrogs (They have a tail and wings - just like a mix of Lightning Lords and Balrogs)
Fallen Angels (14-21): The hordes of Izual.
Fell Wing (13-14): Sort of Hell-Gargoyles
Walking Dead (12-13): You asked for them in Hellfire, too? Here they are! See the readme for the fullchangelog
Guide site: Diablo.svatopluk.com