Save Games for Diablo II, patch version 1.09d

The save games for Diablo II have been backed up right after having activated
certain waypoints in the various acts (but not necessarily all of them). To use
a save archive, find the "save" folder in the Diablo II installation and unzip
the archive of choice into it. When you start then game, just select the single
player character named "Nailpad" to play.

The character in the save games is a Paladin (I named him as an anagram of his
class hence the odd name "Nailpad") where I placed the majority of the skill
points in "Thorns" and "Concentration". Yes, I actually specialized - although
I have to admit I didn't really get very far in skill levels anyway.

And now for the ultimate confession. I have sinned. Cheated. Behaved badly. As
Gamespot mentioned in their review of the game, it became a lot harder in the
end of first act (in the catacombs) and I died for the first time in the game.
Later in the catacombs I tried dying a few more times, sometimes quitting the
game to restore my body back in town, sometimes going for it. It soon became
too apparent that I just couldn't cope with this unfair save game system, so I
decided to cheat - albeit very subtly. I loaded a save game editor that was
compatible with the patch version I was using, then changed the health from 84
at the time to 5000. This was the *ONLY* change to the character, and I played
the rest of the game with this alteration in place. However, I tried to be fair
to how I would otherwise have played the game (for instance by buying armor and
other means of protection), so it should be perfectly possible to load any one
of the later save archives, use a save editor to restore the health back, then
play the character as you normally would. I will leave it up to you whether you
want to make this change. Should you want to continue with the enormous amounts
of health, rest assured that you will practically never die in the rest of the
game. I admit that it did take away a lot of the tension, but I really wanted
to see the rest of the game, and I did respect all other limitations such as
collecting gold, buying things and upgrading skills.

To change the save game settings, whether it is to restore the health or maybe
to cheat even more, I recommend you use "Diablo 2 Character Editor 1.861" by
Burton Tsang. This was the only editor I could get to work with version 1.09d.
Remember that Google is you friend when you want to find it. If you want to use
it for restoring back to the normal number of health points, deduct about 4916.

Here are the attributes and settings for "Nailpad" as they were when I finally
completed the game by killing Diablo in the fourth act:

	Title			Sir Nailpad
	Difficulty		Normal
	Level			27
	Class			Paladin
	XP			2.738.631

	Strength		114
	Dexterity		60
	Vitality		31
	Energy			15
	
	Life			5061 (deduct 4916 to set it back to normal)
	Mana			54
	Stamina			121
	
	Gold in Stash		150.000
	Gold in Belt		227.460

	Quests			All completed
	Waypoints		All activated (see below)

	Skill: Blessed Aim	1
	Skill: Concentration	10 (used as the specialized skill later)
	Skill: Might		4
	Skill: Prayer		2
	Skill: Thorns		13 (used as the first specialized skill)

Although I activated all waypoints, I only archived about 90% of them. Some of
them were too close for archiving while some of them were quite far apart.

JCH, 20 May 2004
