Diablo 2 Resurrected attracts not only veterans but also new players and fans of other Diablo games. However, newcomers to Diablo 2 might be taken by surprise by death, as it works a bit differently here. MeinMMO explains what happens when you die.
This is what happens when you die in Diablo 2: Unlike in Diablo III, death in Diablo II is a real punishment. When you die, you lose a lot of what you have earned so far:
- all equipped items are gone, you start naked in the town of the respective act
- your gold completely disappears from your pockets
- the mercenary you had with you also dies
Depending on your character level, you can permanently lose up to 20% of your gold as a “punishment.” The rest lies next to your corpse at the place of your death. You can regain the lost items by looting the corpse, and you can also pick up the gold again.
Items in your chests are generally protected. A larger chest is part of the changes in Diablo 2 Resurrected. As long as you are in the game, up to 16 corpses can be generated.
What happens at higher difficulty levels? Once you reach the difficulty levels “Nightmare” or “Hell,” death is punished even more severely. Every time you die, you lose a portion of your experience points. However, you can never lose a level entirely. You will regain 75% of the lost experience when you pick up the corpse.
Death is particularly severe in Hardcore mode. Because Diablo 2 makes a distinction in the types of characters.
Hardcore vs. Softcore – What is Permadeath?
This is what happens when a Hardcore character dies: If you chose to play “Hardcore” when creating your character, you activate permanent death. This means: if your character dies, you will not be resurrected in the town.
Instead, the character becomes unplayable. It doesn’t matter whether you play online or offline; Hardcore characters remain dead. Consequently, you cannot get back collected items and gold – technically, however, you also do not lose XP at higher difficulty levels.
By the way: The same can happen if you’re not careful when creating new characters. Some players accidentally delete their heroes in the menu, even though this should happen less often due to one of the patches. If your character has “disappeared” due to server issues, just try again. Usually, it is not completely deleted.
Items gone after death – What to do?
This is how you secure your items: If you don’t want to or can’t run back to your corpse, there’s a simple trick. Save and log out. Once you reenter the game, your corpse with your gear will lie at your feet and you can loot it. However, this has 2 disadvantages:
- the gold that lay next to your corpse is gone
- the map resets and you have to explore everything anew
Also, you must be careful not to die again. Only the corpse with the highest converted gold value will be saved. This means: if you use your “emergency gear” and die again, it may happen that when you log out, you only find the second corpse.
Certain items like legendary items and weapons can have a higher gold value than, for example, the coveted runewords from Diablo 2, which are actually stronger. Be careful not to lose your best items.
If you find the wrong corpse, you cannot change anything about it. The items from your first death will be gone.
This is how you secure your gold: The amount of gold deducted from you is calculated based on the gold you carry and the amount in your personal chest. The more you have on you or stored, the more you will lose. Even gold from the chest can be reduced.
To prevent this, you can distribute the gold into the shared chest slots. These do not count towards the base amount. You should always have a little emergency cash to resurrect your mercenary or to buy potions for the return journey after death.
Other players can collect the gold lying next to your corpse in a multiplayer game, by the way. However, the items on your body are normally protected. Teammates can also guard your corpse to make the return safer. However, you should always be careful when managing your items:
Player farms for weeks for a rare item in Diablo 2 Resurrected – Gets stolen after 4 days
