CLIPPING ABNORMALITIES

PART 1: CAST SPELLS THROUGH WALLS


An extended look at the hole-in-the-wall phenomenon

Pretty amazing stuff! Spells go through completely enclosed rooms.

And then again, there’s an even bigger surprise waiting just around the corner.

Now, when I stood right up against the corner, the Flamewave got its maximum spread. Notice the flame kinda went right through to the bottom where it is solid!?

Firewall

Now, this gets a bit more powerful yet, as far as low lvl chars and church are concerned.

You can cast firewalls through these holes in the wall.

The animation below shows that you can cast over the wall at the diagonal and you can cast it parallel to the wall (a surprise to me). However, I was not successful at casting it against the Southwest wall in this particular room.

Also note that I was standing on the second square and casting straight forward in this animation. So much for the Line-of-Sight requirement.

Addendum

There are 2 ways you can look at the rows of potions, vertically or horizontally to the screen orientation. The following observation pertains to the horizontal rows (same as the Flamewave orientation). I am not sure if this is the cause of the blind spots, but... Each flame graphic (of the wave) loops from small to big and again throughout its travel. While studying this sequence of pictures, I noticed that the flame graphics reach their maximum width while on the blue rows and the smallest when they are on the red row, which enables the flames to pass in-between the reds (seemingly) without touching them.

Invisible Walls

Invisible walls in hell and holes in the catacombs are actually quite common. What’s more is that they can be recognized once you know how to identify them.

These walls are all over the places. You have probably been detoured by them often and not realized it. This happens when you are moving forward hugging the walls, you(the program) would walk around them automatically. Even monsters have to walk around them - which in turn make them tactically beneficial fighting grounds.

The invisible walls are randomly generated every game. Although some of them are undetectable until you bump up against one, most of them can be anticipated. If there is a shish kebab on the wall, there’s a good chance an invisible wall exists at or a couple of squares from that location. Some shish kebabs near a wall can also create invisible walls as the one in the first animation.






Arrows or spells don’t go through these walls either. As a matter of fact, you cannot even see the monster or partner on the other side of the invisible walls. The one exception being.... Lightning or CL, they can go through some (but not all) invisible walls like the one on the picture above. Note- the CL gap is where the wall is.

The invisible walls are randomly generated every game. Although some of them are undetectable until you bump up against one, most of them can be anticipated. If there is a shish kebab on the wall, there’s a good chance an invisible wall exists at or a couple of squares from that location. Some shish kebabs near a wall can also create invisible walls as the one in the first animation.



However, I have not come across any invisible walls other than in the Y axis orientation (bottom-left to top-right screen) as shown in all the pics. There are at least four consistent invisible walls in every game though, one is located right outside of Diablo’s chamber as the above picture shows, two inside and on top of the maze, and one outside on the bottom of the maze.


Using Invisible Walls

Here are a couple of good examples of how to use invisible walls to your advantage whether you are swarmed or not. The one on the first picture shows me swarmed by a pack of BKs and a strayed witch but only 2 can get at me at the same time. The invisible wall prevented the approach of the other knights, even the Bloodstars stopped short splashing on the wall.

Invisible Walls in the Butcher's Room

First discovered by "Cyrene". The gaps in the lightning strands (both ways) are the invisible walls. When standing at that spot, the Butcher will just pace back and forth along the x (east to west) axis.

The weird thing is, the Butcher will always stand still after I cast a Firewall on him.





PART 3: HOLES IN THE WALL


Holes in the wall

They are everywhere, well, surprised me how many and how easily recognizable they are. All spells as well as arrows can pass through these holes. I am using Lightning to demonstrate only because the continuous strands is the easiest to grab and uses the least amount of frames.

The holes are identifiable by examining the game tiles inside the container wall. If the game tiles, as a whole, have the same shading pattern as the one below then there are holes in the wall. Well, not really ... it’s actually a combination of two things - leak in game tiles and false perspective.

When position against a wall such as the one below, it would seem one is standing and protected behind the corner column when in reality the column is two game tiles back (toward the bottom of the pic) where it meets the floor. The red spots are the tops of heal potions I’ve placed to mark the coordinate of the tile where I was standing. Also note that the highlighted tiles underneath the strand of lightning is the actual tiles affected by the spell; so (judging the bearing by the highlighted tiles) the origin of the lightning strand is tile #2 which indicates a (semi?) hole in the wall. Btw, this is a two way street, the monster can see you and shoot at you from the angle of the lightning. It helps to remember that you don’t have to move further into the room to attack and exposing yourself to more monsters. You would be completely exposed even if you move forward by one game tile.

The animation below shows definite holes on both sides of the wall. Now I am standing even further away from the corner tiles.

Poor Black Jade

The most useful discovery in hell, so far, is the leak in Lazarus chamber. I have found a hole where you can fling Fireballs at Black Jade. Fireballs!? Yes, only Fireballs and Firebolts get through this hole.

Nothing else works, not arrows, Lightning or even Flamewave. It’s a very narrow slit of opening where the Fireball will go through, you would have to be standing right at the second square from the corner for this to work.
You will also need Slvl 17 for that. Instead of aiming at Black Jade, there is a more consistent way of doing this. The picture above shows the aim with most successes.
Line up the cursor where the wall meets the base of the extrusion and fire away.
Imagine a line from the base of the caster pass the tip of the cursor, the line hit smack middle of the square where Black Jade stands.


Hell Stairs as Walls

Notice none of them are firing, and one witch is just totally confused? You may remember from your own games when you hide behind a normal wall, the witches will still seek you out until they have Line of Sight and fire at you. But not so with stairs, they'll stay put where they lost sight of you.
So, next time you advice people never to retreat back to the stairs, think again :-)

Source:

http://realmsbeyond.net/diablo/stratcddfilez.html