Diablo II Urban Legends


While playing on the newly-reset ladder of Diablo II, it was not long before the Hellforge was upon me. From my childhood, I distinctly remembered unfounded superstitions surrounding the drops, things like: "Repair the hammer! Repair the hammer!" and "Kill some more monsters first!" Knowing better now that I'm past those years, I gathered concrete absolution about myself and whacked Mephisto's soulstone into oblivion.

Or was it? My superstitious notions of gameplay quickly returned when I got a Thul rune.

Not surprisingly, such irrationality continues to this very day, nearly ten years since the game's launch. Repair-the-hammer is a common, but needless, practice whenever I'm involved in a forge-paid rush, but it is by no means the last. In this article, I will lay out a few that seem most popular to me, and some famous ones that are now in the past.


Moar Cows!

It might be good to start with one of the most bizarre features of Diablo II and work outward from there. With that in mind, the journey for shibboleth starts in the DiabloWiki.com - Moo Moo Farm Moo Moo Farm (or DiabloWiki.com - Secret Cow Level Secret Cow Level, whichever you prefer).

Experience, drops, insane cattle swinging monstrous poles tipped with blades bigger than a human head- it's little wonder the sideshow has remained popular even to this day, and if there is a way to produce more of these kooky cows, all the better.

The legend is that manipulating pieces of the DiabloWiki.com - Horadric Cube Horadric Cube formula to open the mystic gateway to cow country, which includes DiabloWiki.com - Wirt's Leg Wirt's Leg and a tome of DiabloWiki.com - Town Portal Town Portal scrolls, can cause more cows to spawn and better drops to ensue. The main three ways of doing this are:

  • Filling the sockets of a socketed Wirt's Leg with desirable gems or other socketables.
  • Repairing Wirt's Leg, much like the DiabloWiki.com - Hellforge Hammer Hellforge Hammer.
  • Using a full Town Portal tome.

In addition, it is rumored that the DiabloWiki.com - Chat Gem Chat Gem can affect cow quantities and riches, as per a response from the server when the button is mashed enough times, responding back with a nice long "Moo[insert o's here]!" To date, I have not been able to replicate a successful response of this kind since 1.10.


Make it Where?

http://diablofans.co...id=1529&thumb=1
It's common knowledge that many of the most powerful items in the game, runewords, can also be incredibly expensive to make; just look at DiabloWiki.com - Infinity Infinity- that's four high runes! Each time you make a runeword, you take a gamble: either you spend expensive and rare runes and end up with optimal attributes, or you end up with very, very terrible ones, a disquieting and disheartening result.

When the stakes are high, players want to be sure they have the best odds. Sometimes, that can translate into an interesting urban legend.

The idea is that in order to have the highest chances of getting the best randomized attributes for a runeword, a player must complete the runeword in the most extreme areas of the game, namely Hell mode and usually in DiabloWiki.com - Act V Act V. Some have argued that areas with high iLevels, such as the Worldstone Keep or various other dungeons in various acts (like the Pit in Act I), can affect runewords.


Just Click it One More Time...

http://www.diablofan...id=1528&thumb=1
It's "working as intended," they say. It's featured on the official Diablo III website. It's settled itself cozily between the chat and game list areas in Diablo II's GUI for nearly a decade. But what does it do?

The lack of a known purpose has led to, among some, a religious fanaticism for a number of things:

  • Getting the Perfect Gem Activated state improves gem drops.
  • Getting the Perfect Gem Activated state improves chances of finding a Gem Shrine.
  • Activating the Mooooo! state increases the number of Hell Bovines or the drops of monsters in the Secret Cow Level.
  • Garners better drops from bosses when the Perfect Gem Activated state occurs.

Numerous Diablo fansites have done excellent studies of the chat gem, including statistical analysis of the various rumors when states are activated, and even to this day, questions and rumors abound. For more, see Chat Gem Through the Ages.


And those are just a few of the crazy ideas floating around teh internets and Battle.net. Have any interesting ones of your own? Do any of these seem plausible? Are they possible? As is the saying, there's a bit of truth in everything, even legends.

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