With GOG offering Diablo 1 for sale, more attention has been brought to this old game.

Why not present our new monster here then

Here's what the beast brings to the table:

1. 24 basic dungeon levels and even more special quest levels (20+) in Singleplayer mode.
2. Upgraded engine: full support for HD through adjustable resolutions, windowed modes, borderless, fullscreen, switching them on the fly, higher framerate cap (up to 1000 fps).
3. Functioning multiplayer (through "radmin").
4. Most of original Diablo 1 bugs fixed.
5. A lot of content and modernized gameplay features: items, monsters, music, randomizations.
6. Darker atmosphere of the game. Even more diabolic than original.
7. 6 classes with subclasses: 29 total.
8. Rich options to configure: adjust the style of play to your own individual needs.
9. 8 game modes to choose from: Easy, Normal, Hard, Ironman, Speedrun, Soft Iron and Nightmare.
10. 3 new item slots: gauntlets, greaves, belts. 3 weapon slots to alternate between.
11. Expanded inventory. 10 x 7 instead of just 10 x 4 now.
12. Perks as an additional improvement on level-ups, and Traits as additional character features, to make your builds truly unique
13. Crafting (gem socketing) and enchanting of items (adding magic effects on white items)
14. System of game changers to further individualize your experience: add or remove game features when you create a new character.
15. Synergies that combine Perk effects and make them even more powerful
16. Thousands of new unique items to hunt for. There are sets too.
17. New and improved monsters, with better looks, sounds and improved behavior which depends on the game modes you chose.
18. Unique monsters aura effects that present additional challenge ("stench of death" around zombies that depletes life regeneration, "static field" around thunder demons that reduces lightning resistance, and so on)

Homepage https://www.patreon.com/thmod

Community: https://discord.gg/9Mk3yXw

On the ModDb page it says that the music expansion is required for The Hell 2. Is it really required to get an additional 1.24GB of music or can you play it without?

Many areas will be mute without this music expansion.

I will also recommend playing through The Hell 1 first.
The music is worth the extra download size.
Also there was a HD version of The Hell 1, but for some reason it got taken down from moddb and I have no clue why.

https://www.patreon.com/thmod

https://www.moddb.com/mods/diablo-the-hell-2

And a little funny thing :

Tchernobog is by far the best mod ... and it offers full multiplayer and HD diablo1

A word of warning on The Hell. It gets hard, like really, really hard. I had to give up on it around character level 16 because the grind became horrific. The difficulty goes up exponentially each dungeon level and you need to spend hours upon hours in a single level grinding for XP. This was in MP, but I imagine that single player is similar.

It wouldn't surprise me if it takes you over 100 hours to beat the game on normal. Spending 20 hours on a single dungeon level is way too much for me.

I switched to Diablo + Hellfire and have had a lot more fun with it. I disagree. I hate the new dialogue, level changes, and boss fights they added to the game. They are super cheesy and dilute the foreboding feel of the game way too much.

Also, the convenience features are unnecessary IMO. Who needs a way-point feature for a single, tiny town? And the zoom out breaks the feel of the game and makes it too easy to see and plan for enemies from afar.

First off, there is no "difficulty goes up exponentially" shenanigans in The Hell. Each level has random layout and bosses, that's the key feature and it stays the same throughout all the levels.

Multiplayer is much harder than singleplayer in any Diablo, classic or modded.
For those who never tried it, monsters have much higher HP and hit harder, while you lose access to unique rewards from quests which are NOT present in the multiplayer mode. The real difficulty starts when you switch to Purgatory and Doom difficulty. Dude, get your facts straight. It seems you're talking about Belzebub, while the quoted guy says Tchernobog. Tchernobog is the multiplayer version, there are NO quests and NO new dialogues except the basic ones, identical to multiplayer classic Diablo.
All dungeon levels in Tchernobog are also still identical to classic Diablo. The "new" levels you mention are only in Belzebub, not in Tchernobog.

Lastly, I'd like to hear your opinion on the new levels in The Hell mod. You know, the remade Leoric's Tomb, new Maiden of Anguish floors, and the rest. Do they provide you with the "foreboding feel of the game" ?

I only play in multiplayer and I've played vanilla, and Hellfire completely through and I can tell you that The Hell was vastly more difficult than the others. It wasn't even close, I was getting my butt handed to me on level 7 of the Catacombs over and over again. The author even tells you that you have to replay each level many times until you are not losing many potions before progressing to the next. So it's much more than just "multiplayer is much harder than singleplayer", as you say. The Hell is a grind by design. Okay, fair enough, but I still don't see the point of Tchernobog. All it adds are so-called quality of life features. I don't see them as necessary to this game at all. This is a small game, it doesn't need way points and zoom-out features. And in most cases it hurts the game as it was intended. Zooming out gives you a big advantage, it's like a free search skill. Ditto with bigger inventories, transmutations, etc. To me, that is a huge change to the core experience. It's easy mode. The vanilla game is already pretty easy, you can beat it in an afternoon. This stuff isn't necessary unless you're a whining child. Seriously. I've seen a few of the new levels played through on YouTube and I think they are cheesy as F. The space level stupid, hearing the hero monologing out loud is dumb. The new bantering from the bosses is like a Power Rangers episode. And what's with the teleporter in the Butcher's room? Why not just fight him like usual?

I agree, The Hell is much harder than Diablo Hellfire. But we both know what you wrote, and the difficulty in The Hell does not rise exponentially with each new dungeon level.

Can't comment on your gameplay, I don't know your class and I don't know how you play, but from my experience, Catacombs are still pretty easy. I suggest you try playing the Single Player version. I have multiple characters in singleplayer and multiplayer, and multiplayer The Hell becomes vastly more difficult when you reach Hell, Abyss and Crypt levels.

And no. The author tells you that you have to start a New Game multiple times, not that you have to replay each level. Going to clear Horror church at character lvl 20 for example is pretty much a useless waste of time.

We can agree the mod gets pretty grindy. However, it's damn different when you have a level full of undead monsters with ~2100 HP each, versus single player where those same undead monsters have ~900 HP each.

I'm pretty sure this is partially your own incompetence.
Classic Diablo also has zoom. Secondly, it's not about zoom at all, you simply don't like having the huge play area. Well, why are you fkin playing at 1920x1080 or perhaps even higher resolution?! Change it to a smaller resolution, doh! You can play Tchernobog at 800x600 and it will look like the screenshot I attached to this post.

If you don't like the waypoints or other improvements, then you can either NOT use them, or you can simply NOT play the mod. But there's no need to hate on it. What's the point? It makes the game different, that's the point of any mod.

There's a bunch of other mods for classic Diablo that also add things like stash storage, monster descriptions, item highlighting and other quality of life improvements, without completely changing the game or adding waypoints. It's up to you to choose what exactly you want to play. Right now it just seems you only tried one option and didn't like it.

But whatever you choose to play, it doesn't change the fact that Belzebub and Tchernobog is the most advanced Diablo mod out there, and it's damn sad that the author stopped working on it.

Okay, one more time...

I'm asking about your opinion on The Hell mod special levels.
Space level = Belzebub.
Teleporter in the butcher's room = Belzebub.
I'm NOT asking about Belzebub mod. I'm asking about The Hell. Did you even play The Hell in singleplayer, or are you writing all this shit just from watching some youtube video and playing multiplayer?!

Here's what the author says:
"You will most likely not be able to beat the game in your first attempt. Instead, you will be required to conquer every area."

What is the difference between replaying a level and starting a new game? You're still replaying the level either way. In multiplayer that's exactly what I do. I restart a new game to re-do the same level. You're arguing against yourself.

The author also says:

"This game is extremely hard, do not overestimate yourself as you venture deeper into the labyrinth, some of those monsters are very unforgiving. While single-player allows you to take enemies one by one and reload your game in case of failure, multi-player absolutely requires cooperation. Playing The Hell in multi-player alone will be almost impossible sometimes."
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hell_mod

I said in my original post: "A word of warning on The Hell. It gets hard, like really, really hard." How is that sentence really different from what he says here? Seems like you're arguing for the sake of arguing. I use "exponentially" as a figure of speech, not in a literal sense. I didn't pull out my calculator and do math. If you want to nitpick like a bitch, go ahead.

Yeah I don't use them, by not installing the damn mod in the first place. Problem solved.

More like the most stupid mod out there.

I told you in my original post that I only played The Hell in multiplayer, ("This was in MP, but I imagine that single player is similar."). You even responded to it. Now you're asking me about single player levels and if I even played single-player. Are you fucking stupid? Also, I'm not a damn mind reader. You switch between The Hell and Belzebub every other sentence. Try labeling what you're talking about first.

My criticism of The Hell was about the difficulty, not the theme. I think the theme is fine, as far as multiplayer goes. It's just ridiculously grindy.

Is there a community for this mod for online play? Like a Discord server or something? I'd love to play the game this way.

I'm only reacting to what you write. Each level != a level. Here's what you wrote:
There's at least 23 levels of difference between "a level" and "each level". If you don't know the difference, consult a dictionary.

You never played The Hell in Singleplayer, so you have no clue how the mod actually plays. The Hell is primarily a singleplayer mod. The author's quote confirms it - "Playing The Hell in multi-player alone will be almost impossible sometimes." - and you just confirmed that you played The Hell in multiplayer, alone. Your opinion on the mod basically doesn't matter, because you actually didn't play the mod.

Thanks for confirming that. Your opinion on Belzebub or Tchernobog doesn't matter either, as you didn't actually play the mods.

It's not my problem that you can't follow the thought pattern of a written text. Á propós, it IS labelled. You quoted the label too, then responded about a different mod:
Yeah, playing something that its own author labels as "impossible to play", usually is impossible to play. I'll repeat it again. Play The Hell in singleplayer.

th2 discord link is given on th mod homepage
i still can't post links here