Note: all screenshots open in a new window.  Every attempt has been made to keep the report plot-spoiler free.  I am aware the screenshots are dark; apparently, it doesn't save my gamma rating with the shot, because it's not THAT dark as I'm playing.

More on socketing.  I didn't mention gem shrines in the previous beta report.  Well, that's because they're pretty rare and I forgot about them.  :)  You can upgrade your gems at a gem shrine, and they increase the effects of a gem in your inventory (or give you a gem if you don't have one, so always make sure you pull one out of your stash before you touch a gem shrine).  In a public game, a very kind player offered me a normal Ruby (a twice-upgraded gem).  I slapped it in a shield of mine and it gave me +19% fire resistance, stacked with a Chipped Ruby which gave me +10% resistance.  As you can see, they total to 29% fire resistance.  Not bad in Act 1.

When you socket gems to items, they change color based on the gem color.  That even shows up on the character when they equip the item!  Yes, there's so much variety in equipment looks that you rarely meet two characters who look exactly alike, a very welcome feature.  A Barbarian dual-wielding a green axe and a blue sword looks impressive in the game and in the chat interface, let me tell you.

Economy: D2 has it!  Let me try to set a stage.  I was in a public game a few days back when a level 17 player entered and immediately stated, "I'll pay 5000 gold for an Emerald gem."  My first reaction: "pfft, gold is meaningless, someone probably will just dupe the gem anyway or he'll steal my gem without paying."

My second reaction: "wait, people can't dupe in Diablo II."

My third reaction: "wait, I can use the trading screen to prevent stealing."

My final reaction: "wow, I better get that 5000 gold!"  So I ran over to my stash and was happy to see a Chipped Emerald inside, digging it out and trading up for it.  We both thanked each other and he left.  I sat there contemplating my reactions based on three long years of rampant cheating in Diablo and what it did to me, and how it's affected my attitudes towards public games and other players.  And I threw it all away.  You have NO idea how amazingly refreshing the entire small exchange was.  Suddenly, the game had an economy to me, and, well, it blew me away.  I'll stop harping on that now, and move on...

Public Game Experiences
I've been playing a lot of public games lately.  This is a case of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  I'll start with the Good.

The Good: Pressing Join, finding a game, and joining it; partying up with a bunch of complete strangers and having a total blast.  As mentioned above, no cheating.  A lot of testers out there are pretty amiable, and it's a treat to find someone out there who is also tracking down bugs instead of developing ultimate characters or wasting time pk'ing people.  I've met a few players who I wind up comparing notes with, akin to "have you tried doing this yet?"

The Bad: Joining a game and meeting someone who has absolutely no idea what they're doing, and who makes you wonder why they even signed up for the beta.  I met a Paladin who didn't know what Skill points were (had to show him how to assign skills to his Prayer Aura; his reaction: "WOW, cool!").  I met a Sorceress who assigned every single skill point into Warmth, and never cast a single spell (he kept complaining that the Sorceress was too weak and "died a lot").  Yes folks, these are people beta testing your soon-to-be favorite game.

The Ugly: Creating a public game (for low level characters) and having a few players join until someone named "reKP" (level 20) joins the game.  It takes me all of 2 seconds to figure out his unbelievably witty name (sarcasm alert).  It takes him all of 3 seconds to declare hostility to everyone in the game.  But, get this: he tells us all that he has something to give us if we meet him outside of town.  Unbelievably, 2 players go there and are immediately slaughtered.  Then you get the usual "***hole" comments.  However, reKP wasn't done yet, he still had a Bolt to kill.  I used this unique opportunity to teach the PK a few lessons on how difficult it can be to kill someone with intelligence.  I enjoyed walking out to a remote location, setting up a Town Portal, taking it to town, and watching him immediately enter it.  I would then walk over to the Waypoint teleporter and head off to some totally different area and continue playing.  After doing this for about 5 times (with him waiting at my portal for a few minutes each time), I decided to get more creative and gathered the most ungodly horde together, ran until my stamina gave out, and portaled to town.  Sure enough, he went in; I took a waypoint, cast a new portal, and 5 seconds later heard of his demise to a pack of monsters.  He left the game.  I chuckled, satisfied that he lost some gold from that affair.

The overall impression I get of the majority of beta testers is what you'd expect.  Most of them are beta playing, not beta testing.  This is why Blizzard accepts 1,000 applicants, after all, knowing that they're lucky if 50 (5%) of them actually test for bugs.  I keep asking myself, "what's the last thing Blizzard would expect me to do?" and act on it.  Some of the things I've tried I can't say here as they'll be spoilers, since most of the silly things I try I do in the quests.  But it makes me wonder why Blizzard wanted Hardcore mode in the beta.  Let's face it, if you're worried about getting your character killed, you're probably not trying to find the stupidest thing to do in any given situation.  End rant.

Random Tidbits
Equipment shots.  Always fun.  Check out the Ghoul Blow.  If I recall correctly, the highest number of special abilities granted on a unique item in Diablo was six.  So far after seeing many rares, uniques, and set items, that seems to be the case again in Diablo II.  Death's Hand, a set item, is for the poison-haters.  And finally, one of my Necromancers shows off his triple-tiered belt.  Although you only have potion keys 1 through 4, stacked potions on the belt drop down to fill up an open slot when you drink one.  So I effectively have a 12-potion belt there!  Oh, in case you're wondering, those things circling the Necro are the graphic of his Bone Armor, which absorbs melee damage.

Bugs.  Believe me, there is a reason Blizzard needs a beta test.  It was discovered last week that anyone who wears a whole set of items immediately crashes all the other players out of a game.  Fun.  And lately, people have been having trouble (myself included) selling socketed items in town.  Another gamer I know had trouble where his Necromancer's minions kept attacking his own Bone Walls!  There's lots of crazy things going on, and it's always fun to see a new bug in action so it can get reported.

In the beta, the Sorceress' fire tree is rather wimpy compared to her lightning tree...hope to see how that balances out later on.

I was watching my roommate play a Barbarian with duel-wielding axes.  It was rather sickening to see how much damage he could dish out quickly.  The Howl aura is indispensable as a tool for preventing swarming, as it will scare monsters into running away from you.

Lag keeps improving.  I notice it less and less in this third week of the beta.  There are fewer snapbacks and less monster teleportation.  I played a great game with two Swedes (I bet you can guess who one of them was) and it was fantastic on both ends.  The best thing is that the peer-to-peer lag system of Diablo I isn't in place anymore and a game's speed isn't dictated by the player with the slowest connection.

I know you don't want to hear this, but it's frustrating to only get to play Act 1.  :)  Not only do I only see 1/4th of the game over and over, but I never get to test out any of the juicy higher-level skills.

Resistances are much more important early on in the game as compared to Diablo 1.  You will face fire-flinging monsters (even low level fireballs!), lightning-spewing beasts (some shoot balls of lightning, which is a good thing, as multiple lightning bursts would make it impossible to see what's going on in the screen; other bosses spew charged bolts when you HIT them, making them very annoying to kill up close), poison-shooters (some bosses and the Act 1 final boss), and cold-dispensers (ok, I'm running out of verbs).  Without resistance, they can hurt.  Quite a bit, especially if you have low vitality.  A Paladin's resistance auras are a huge boon in Act 1 since good resistance equipment is difficult to find (in fact, near impossible).  Have I mentioned enough how incredibly useful it is to have a Paladin in your party?

As usual, thanks for reading.  Hold on, only a few more weeks and that open beta will be there...