VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

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BEYOND NAKED

BNM / BNR /
BNW

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

Fist step is to create a brand new character and totally strip him down!

Beyond Naked characters are only allowed to wear and use cursed items!
To put it in a nutshell, if it’s not cursed you can't use it! (class specific exceptions are stated in the details-section of this variant) Some items however combine the Good and the Bad, in example “Masters sword of trouble”.

BN’s may not use such an item, because even though it is cursed (trouble), it is also blessed (Masters). Therefore, a BN may only use items that can be called the Ugly, meaning it has a cursed prefix, a cursed suffix or both at once.

Staffs that are cursed yet, but also have the ability to cast a spell are usable by Beyond Naked characters, but you have to "recharge" them dry. Casting spells from a staff is not allowed, so you have to permanently remove a staffs ability to hold charges, simply by using the Sorcerers “recharge” skill until no charges are left on it.

BN’s are only allowed to cooperate (trade,mule,exp) with other BN’s. In addition I have to point out, that Griswold will not repair cursed items. So be very careful with your stuff and above that, it is very advisable to keep looking for “hidden” shrines.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

Rogue[BNR]  Sorcerer[BNM]  Warrior[BNW]

ORIGINATED BY

“Woody(BNM)” and “Hairy(BNM)”

click this link to access further details and hints for this variant

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BUNNY HUNT

Hunter / Bunny

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

“Bunny Hunt” is definitely one of my all-time favourite FFA PVP variants, because it greatly combines the aspects of classical “regulated” PVP as well as the savage aspects of “PK” PVP, in an incredibly entertaining and challenging way. It can already be played with two players, but the ideal is absolutely to play it with the maximum amount of players.

Basic Rules

One player takes the role of the hunted “bunny” and all others are the “hunters”. The main goal is to hunt the bunny down, kill it, grab its ear and drop it in Town. The first hunter who is able to accomplish this, is the winner of the “Bunny Hunt” session. On the other hand, the bunny wins the game if all hunters find their tragic death during the hunt. As said before, this is a FFA variant so all players are absolutely called to attack and if possible kill each other. Alliances among the hunters can be made; the bunny however is thoroughly on its own!

Every player, no matter what role he plays, has only one life. In case a player dies, he has to remain on the ground until the current “Bunny Hunt” session comes to its end. Furthermore, it is only allowed to carry a strictly limited amount of potions, and the inventory has to be free of anything else! (only necessary additional PVP items -such as resistance equipment etc- are granted) 8 potions in the belt and 16 in the inventory is the maximum; no re-shopping allowed and also in general no usage of any town-services.

However, everything (shrines, items, potions, scrolls etc.) you can find in the dungeon is allowed to be used.

It is in general forbidden for the bunny to ever enter town, only the hunters are allowed to use TownPortals to quickly access different dungeon areas, and of course to drop the bunnies ear in town. In case a hunter should be lucky enough to kill the bunny and grab its dropped ear, other hunters can try to kill the concerning hunter (before he’s able to enter town) and steal the bunnies ear to drop it themselves in town and thus win the game.

Because it is game-technically not possible to get the real bunny ear of the concerning hunter, the ear the “bunny-ear-holding” hunter (yeah sounds confusing I know) drops, is treated as the “new” bunny ear.

A Session begins …

A session begins classically with the role assignment. As soon as it is determined who is playing the bunny and who plays a hunter, the bunny is allowed to make its way into the depths of the dungeons. Which entrance the bunny picks is his own free choice. Down in the dungeon, the bunny (as well as the hunters) is free to change his current dungeon level, ascending as well as descending wise. It is strictly forbidden for the bunny to ever tell his current position to one of the hunters, but what stupid bunny would ever do such thing? :-)

After one minute has passed, also the hunters are allowed to enter the dungeon. Which entrance they pick, is also their free choice, but it clearly is advisable for every single hunter to pick a different dungeon-entrance. For the simple reason, to avoid a direct confrontation with another hunter, and also to increase the chance of finding the bunny quickly.

Additional Rules & Facts

°In case all participating players should be on a high character-level and are very well equipped, “Bunny Hunt” has to be played on hell difficulty. In case characters are lower levelled, it certainly is also possible to play on normal or nightmare difficulty.

°Usually, “Bunny Hunt” is played in a fresh game, which means that everything has to be “alive” in the dungeons. A few people however prefer to clean everything in the forefield, to decrease the challenge significantly.

It is definitely a matter of taste how you prefer to play, but I personally favour to play in a fresh game, because it is absolutely entertaining to “use” the creatures to cause chaos and to find additional “tools” to survive, or to harm/kill your opponents. Use your creativity!

°Camping in general is absolutely allowed and a very important part of the game. However, direct stair or TownPortal camping shouldn’t be granted, because it simply is not fair to kill another player while he’s “loaded” to another level/area and therefore not able to defend himself.

° TownPortal is only allowed to be cast from scroll and the scrolls have to be found in the dungeon! This rule makes it much more complicated to bring the bunny ear to town. Furthermore, libraries become great camping zones : -)

° It is not allowed to enter dungeon-level 16, simply because no ears can drop there. All other levels however (1-15) are allowed to serve as hiding- and/or battle- ground

° The bunny as well as the bunny-ear-holding hunter(s) are obliged to state their death instantly and call the ear holders name and his current location!

° Always create a backup of your character before you play “Bunny Hunt”! This is advisable, because you will often run into dirty situations which may damage your character permanently. Black Deaths, negative shrines, shattered items … to name a few scenarios.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[Hunter]YourName or [Bunny]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

“Ascurion” and “Shade”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

HARDCORE

HC

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

This classic variant is the official “grandfather” of the well known and very popular “hardcore-mode” of Diabo II. The rules are very simple: If your HC character dies he is dead and can’t be played any further!
Immediately quit the game where you found your tragic end, and delete the deceased character. Your dropped items can naturally be picked up by another HC character, so it is clearly beneficial, to play this challenging variant in good company. I have to point out, that you are only allowed to cooperate (trade,mule,exp) with other HC characters. 

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[HC]YourName or YourName[HC]

ORIGINATED BY

“Pete”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

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 HEALOTHER DEATHMATCH

HD

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

“HealOther Deathmatch” is a very special and admittedly crazy PVP variant, which however can be a lot of fun, especially in a four player game. Two to four characters with negative HP (negative HP can be reached by Black Death attacks, which constantly damage your characters HP by one point with every hit, and in combination with life reducing items e.g. Messerschmidt’s Reaver) and exactly 10.000 gold-pieces start in town. Additionally to the gold, a few mana potions should also be in your inventory, just to minimize the risk to run out of mana while in battle. Before the deathmatch starts, all participants split in different cardinal directions of Tristram.

As the name of this variant already tells, your weapon is the HealOther spell. Due to a bug, it is possible to kill players with negative HP by casting HealOther on them, even if they are in town!

Consequently, each of the “HealOther Deathmatch” participants is anxious, to cast this spell on the others to kill them and rob their dropped gold. Dead players simply restart and try to get their money back by HealOther-killing everything in their way. 

A game lasts five, ten or fifteen minutes and when the time runs out, all players meet at Cain and show how much gold they have "captured". The player with the highest amount of coins wins the deathmatch!
Camping in general is forbidden, especially near the respawn-zone!

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[HD]YourName or YourName[HD]

ORIGINATED BY

“Caradoc”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

IRONMAN

IM / IRON

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

Without any doubt, IronMan is one of the most entertaining and challenging variants you can play. It is the ultimate test of skill, endurance and team play. In addition, it is one of the purest and elitist forms to play Diablo.

Here is a short and very basic version of the rules; look at the details-section of this variant to learn more:

Every team-member (IronMan should always played in a group, but it surely is also possible to play it solo) starts with a brand new level 1 character. The only access to town services is immediately at the start of the game (or difficult-level, see below!). Armor, weapons, staffs, potions and scrolls may be bought, limited by the low starting gold of the party. After leaving town and entering the dungeon you are never again allowed to return to Tristram! The party is thoroughly (external characters are not allowed to aid or even join the IronMan game) on its own, and proceeds form dungeon level to dungeon level until the whole team is dead.

You are allowed to use your collected / pre-bought resurrection scrolls / staffs to bring your comrades back to life, but the “restart in town” -option is strictly forbidden!

In the happy case, a victory against “Diablo” himself is obtained, the contestants are allowed to continue on the next difficult-level. At the very start of these “continuation games”, it is allowed to use every kind of town services available!

It is not carved in stone, that an IronMan game has to end with the death of all team-members, but most of the time it does end this way. In fact, there is a very improbable chance to actually “win” an IronMan, by defeating "Diablo" on ALL three difficult-levels.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[IM]YourName or [IRON]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

unkown

click this link to access further details and hints for this variant

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

 LOW AC +
TWO-HANDED

LA2H

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

To play on low armor-class and use a two-handed weapon at the same time, is admittedly not a true “variant” but rather a very popular and above all very challenging equipment-variation.

The main idea behind playing a LA2H warrior, is to increase the challenge in the high-end section of the game drastically. In case you should have the necessary experience, you can of course play LA2H ab-initio.

The unique fascination of this way of playing, arises primarily of the combination of the extreme filigree of your character in contrast with his very high damage potential.

There are plenty of different concepts to play LA2H. The major variance already starts with the choice of weapon. Some players stick with “fast” two-handed weapons like Mauls, Swords and even Staffs. Others prefer the significantly slower Axe, which however offers by far the highest damage potential. It clearly is up to the personal taste of each player, how to equip your LA2H character, but according to my experience the Axe-variant is by far the most challenging and most entertaining one. Thus I would call it the “royal road” of LA2H.

To illustrate precise tactics about how to play LA2H would definitely break the mould of this variants-section by far, but I present you a few common equipment suggestions in the details-section.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[LA2H]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

unkown

click this link to access further details and hints for this variant

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

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 LIVING OFF THE
LAND

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

“Living Off The Land” is basically an optimized combination of the two all-time classic variants “UltraPure” and “Hardcore”. Thereby LOL is clearly one of the most versatile and challenging hybrid variants ever conceived. The rules are likewise simple and ingenious:

° No Gold may be used.

° No buying any items from Griswold, Wirt, Adria, or Pepin.

° No repairs/recharge at Griswold/Adria.

° No ID's from Cain.

° No restart after Death! In co-op games you have to be rescued (resurrected). Solo you have to Start a “New game” and use your equipment remaining in your inventory and continue the search again.

°You are only allowed cooperate (trade,mule,exp) with other characters who LOL.

° No repairs or recharges from non-LOL characters.

° It should be noted that the economics of trading is somewhat different from normal Diablo, even potions have a high value and "of the Ages" is one of the most precious suffixes.

° You may heal at Pepin, after all it is free (however, most LOL’s choose not to do)

°  If you lag out while dead before you can be resurrected, you may rejoin the game but may take no action until another character sacrifices a resurrect scroll/charge to represent the resurrection that would have been used if you didn't lag out. If another character does this you may pick up objects and play in the game again. Also if you lag out, you are allowed to buy a TownPortal scroll to replace one that was used to get you back. (Assuming they threw a TownPortal to allow you to return to the dungeon level on which you were gaming.)

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[LOL]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

“Bostic”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

 MATRIAL
ARTISTS

MAR

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

One of the very few pure „fun” variants I consider being worth listed here. The basic rule of this variant is explained very fast: "You are only allowed to use your bare hands or -in a Rogues case- feet!"

No weapons and no offensive spells!
It definitely is a lot of fun and also an insanely tough challenge, to rely entirely on your characters pure physical power. Besides the extreme tough difficult-level of this variant, it occasionally is just absolutely astounding how far you can get without using any weapon at all.

Over the years, a few additional rules were added to this variant. I personally tend to stick with the above listed “classic” ruleset, but in case you should be curious about these addenda, simply take a look on the details-section of this variant.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[MAR]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

unkown

click this link to access further details and hints for this variant

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

NAKED MAGE

NM / Naked

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

The Naked Mage is a brilliantly simple variant. Moreover, it's an excellent character to play in public games as it has nothing to lose in case you die, or get saved by item-thieves. The rules are the following:

“You may not use items that can be equipped”. And that's pretty much it! It is clearly one of the simplest rulesets in general

Items

"Auto-equip" is a term used to describe what happens when a character picks up an item and it is automatically equipped. This only happens when a character is not using a weapon and the character has high enough base statistics to equip the picked-up item.

Many Naked Mage dislike auto-equip and, for sake of convenience, they will find a weapon that they cannot equip, use +stats gear to equip it, and then remove the +stats gear. This causes the item to be equipped, but it turns "red" because it cannot be used. With this item in place, auto-equip will not occur. Note that if the Naked Mage is afterwards slain by a monster, item will be dropped.

"Reading Glasses" is a term used to describe items with +magic that are used to help read books. The Naked Mage is allowed to use reading glasses if he wishes to. This allows the Naked Mage to easily maximize his spells. However, some Naked Mages do not use reading glasses. They consider it item usage and they want nothing to do with it.

Shrines
For Naked Mages that do not use reading glasses, “Enchanted Shrines” are the only way that they can maximize most of their spells.

Stun

"Stun" is a term commonly used to describe "hit recovery," or what happens to a character when it takes damage greater than or equal to its character level. The character will stop its current action to do an animation showing that it has been hit. That is "stun."

Because of a Mage's low life-total, in later difficulties he can easily escape being stunned. This has to do with what the game checks for before putting a character into a hit recovery animation. This is because of a bug. Knowing this, many Naked Mages have begun to pump their vitality statistic early on. This helps them to be stunned in later difficulties. You may wish to consider pumping your Naked Mage's vitality so that he does not passively abuse this bug. Another way some Naked Mages avoid this bug is to use +life and +vitality jewellery. (The jewellery may not have a prefix.) Getting your life to around 126 is sufficient to be stunned most of the time in hell/hell.

Has your mage taken Black Death hits? Use this formula from Jarulf's Guide to find out:

(Vit Stat) + (Vit from Items) + (Clvl) + 9 = Total Life

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[Naked]YourName or [NM]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

“the regulars of the Diablo Strategy Forum”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

 PATRONS OF
WIRT

POW

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

In case you should also have developed a healthy hate towards Wirt and his exorbitant prices for the garbage he is offering, this variant may is a good therapy for you, to either lessen, or maybe even to intensify the pain!

“Patrons of Wirt” live their lives only to help the poor peg-legged guy in any way they can. This means they only go to the dungeons to earn money so they can buy the things that Wirt offers. The character can be of any subclass. You can judge for yourself which of the three is penalized most.

Items
Patrons of Wirt only use items bought from Wirt. Only exception of this rule is jewellery, because Wirt unfortunately is not selling these.

Town-services in general are allowed, as long as it has nothing to do with buying equipment.

No gifts or trades are to be accepted from other characters - except for gold! It's like a donation for a good purpose.

Obligations

“Patrons of Wirt” are obliged to buy every single item Wirt offers to them, even if they do not need it!

If they can't afford an item, they have to go to the dungeons and earn the money.

They don't force themselves to use items they cannot properly handle, meaning for example a Rogue doesn't have to use a sword and a warrior doesn't have to use a bow. But they always have to use the most annoying item of a kind they bought from Wirt. That means the best prefix and suffix in combination with the worst base item. You have to decide this for yourselves, but anyway you will never be able to wear a full plate, a bastard sword or a war bow, or any of these high base items.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[POW]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

“Armin”, “StrayArrow”, “Werner” and “Wormwood”

VARIANT NAME

COMPATIBLE CLASSES

TAG

 PURE &
ULTRAPURE

 Pure /
UltraPure

DESCRIPTION / RULESET

“Pure” as well as “UltraPure” are two of the most popular and entertaining variants, in all Diablo history.

Their great success is probably based on the very -as the name already implies- pure and challenging gaming experience they offer.

The rules are very simple and ingenious at the same time:

Pure

° The highest principle for all Pure characters is to find their entire equipment on their own. Therefore trading, and in general taking items from other characters (no matter if they are Pure or not) is strictly forbidden!

° It is only granted to cooperate with other Pure characters!

UltraPure

° UltraPure characters basically refer to the same restrictions which are valid for regular Pure characters, but they also don’t use any town-services at all. Therefore they have to find everything (items, potions, scrolls etc) in the dungeon!

° Unlike IronMan characters, they however are free to start new games at any time.

TAG FORMAT EXAMPLES

[Pure]YourName and [UltraPure]YourName

ORIGINATED BY

unkown