Often I’ll come up with an art series that has been inspired by Diablo 2, and the “Alien Portraits” portfolio is one of those ideas that never reached the public, but is sitting there, ready and waiting, for a publishing opportunity.
Sometimes it takes a while to get out there with a good idea. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on teleporting tonight.
It’s not that I forgot how to teleport or something — I’m trying to come up with a set of TRAINING DRILLS that will work here, and I think I have a few ideas that you’ll find very easy to implement, very effective to use and have a definite spillover effect in your daily life, which is all to the good.
See, the idea behind the TELE is the SWAY.
The idea is generally to use a series of gaming drills that help you find your “TELE-LEGS” — that’s professional “teleport talk” for achieving that gaming sway and swerve that makes you stand out as an excellent player.
But you want to develop your skills without pain and without injury, so you work within a situation where things are such that you don’t get swatted like a fly while trying to learn the aforementioned skills.
And what skills are they?
They are primarily skills of relaxing and moving without involvement in conflict, and that means skirting great mounds of howling enraged mobs of vicious unregistered and unlisted creatures ravenously biting at you from every direction.
Avoiding the Christmas Rush, you TELE in and TELE out.
Speaking of Christmas, we can use the BARDO SAFARI operations as a way of putting the “X” back in “Xmas”.
It’s all about the SWAY, and that comes with PRACTICE, and there isn’t any other way to get it — there is no mental substitute for PRACTICE.
Best way to get some practice in the TELE would be to find a gaming space that matches the general conditions of what it will be like in the area to which you think you might be teleporting, and duplicate that space, but do it in a quiet zone, no enemies about.
The very first thing you want to do is to TELE — teleport — where NOTHING can possibly happen to you, there are no enemies alive, and where there are no surprises.
First Lesson:
Problem is, you need an open space, without ANY opposition whatever to bother you, and that, of course, would be “Rogue Encampment” or any of the other towns, where nothing can attack you and you’re perfectly safe, but unfortunately, that’s also where the “Other End” of your Town Portal, the mechanism by which you can teleport from pretty much anywhere back to town in the level where you are currently operating.
In short, it won’t take you from “A” to “A”, it can’t, or that is to say, it already has.
So you can’t teleport in town. You have to go out into the wilderness, if there happens to be one handy, and in the case of D2, there always is some place you can go to level up, farm for items and to get yourself killed when you get too frisky.
Best and safest place to start teleporting, which you can’t do until Level 18 anyway, is back at COLD PLAINS, where hardly anything will bother you.
If you’re really freaked about those Speedy Little Quill Rats, you can exterminate the whole level before you attempt to TELE, but that’s really carrying things just a bit too far, which is perhaps even farther than an OCD would take it, although I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.
What I mean is, I didn’t mean to set off a whole chain of neurotic commands and considerations. Take it easy, just, just take it easy.
Just a few monster clusters should do it.
If you’re not bothered by taking a “HIT” now and then, you’ll just teleport, feed yourself some LIFE pots and keep going.
That IS the best way, the way of choice, for most Sorcs, and certainly you’d take the same route with any teleporting ring, amulet, back-weapon or armor, when teleporting in another character class other than “Sorceress”.
Make sure you have plenty of MANA, because you’ll certainly need it, especially with just one point to Tele, and in the case of items that give TELE powers, they give you a definite amount of “CHARGES”, one teleport per charge, and you have to get those charges back by REPAIRING your item in town at the local blacksmith, such as Charsi.
It costs in MANA and it costs in GOLD to TELE as anything but a SORC, and that makes the Sorc a tempting Character Class solution in spite of the SORC’s profound limitations — not the least of which is running into multi-immunes and having only FIRE, COLD or ELECTRIC with which to deal with them.
In the end, you’ll have to have a second power to take care of those immunes, and that indicates “ELECTRIC”, meaning ONE POINT to STATIC, which you’ll use on the really tough hombres in HELL.
Okay, so bop around the level and don’t get involved with monsters, and do this until you feel TOTALLY CONFIDENT that you can teleport every single time you hit that RIGHT MOUSE button.
Only now should you try the same thing in OCCUPIED TERRITORY, something a little more challenging, but certainly by no means deadly — you’ll want to tele around in STONY for a while, maybe doing the TRIST RUN while you’re at it — you never know what might drop, or where it might drop.
You can get some amazing drops, even in NORMAL, although I wouldn’t hold my proverbial breath while waiting for the Blessed Event. It’s very, very unlikely that you’ll ever get a decent drop in NORMAL.
Now in NIGHTMARE, it’s very different — in the Nightmare Meph Run, you can pick up some amazing high-level stuff, and there are other areas that yield high runes and open-socket weapons — they’re called “Weps” — and of course, helms and armor.
HELL has great drops — all you need to do to get them is to go there — not all that easy, is it? But don’t sweat HELL before you’ve even killed Baal in NORMAL.
What now?
Now we try the same thing in a DUNGEON. We’ve been working in the open air, in what is called the “OVERWORLD” in gaming terms — videogames came from tabletop games such as “Chess”, which has been played since antiquity, mostly to teach young Lords how to conduct warfare; the World War II tabletop multi-player classic, “Normandy”; and the fantasy-based game, “Magic – The Gathering”, and those are just the best-known of the bunch — there are tens of thousands more.
Yes, tens of thousands. People can’t just sit around waiting to die, they have to keep busy somehow, and making a living isn’t enough to keep the mind alive, so they play games, and so do you, if you’re smart, because games — not all games, but some games — are incredible teaching machines.
Diablo 2 works like an “Initiation Machine”, and if properly treated, can provide a solid foundation in the Shamanic Sciences.
Yes, Shamanic Sciences. What? You didn’t know it was a science? It sure is, same as painting, sculpting, pottery, weaving and dance.
Yes, dance is a science — ask any choreographer.
Now you’re ready to try teleporting in a dark space, the DUNGEON, and the first place you can try it with ease and without fear of getting whalloped by some lurking super-demon would be DEN OF EVIL, the first DUNGEON you encountered when you first came into the game.
That’s where you basically get most of the stuff you’re going to need in order to defeat the BOSS of the DEN.
Yes, the BOSS — don’t be afraid.
There’s nothing in the DEN OF EVIL that will offend you, by the time you’re Level 18 — nothing here can kill you with a single blow, but then, it never could.
If you haven’t learned how to take hits without panic, it’s time you learned.
If you’re still panicking when you’re attacked, you haven’t yet learned the basic lesson — NOTHING happens THAT fast in the game, nothing.
You always have time to react, to take action — sometimes it’s to bug out of the game and open a new one.
Sometimes you just want to back up a bit, especially when you slam head-first into a packed throng of monsters, a veritable mob of hurt and danger.
Yes, danger. You’re taking the game seriously, remember?
Okay, so the first DUNGEON has been mastered, so now we go to another one which has a few more monsters, somewhat more deadly and dangerous, somewhat more likely to catch you with a HUNGER MAGNET, which draws you in toward them the harder you struggle to get away.
If you have a teleport handy, this would be the time to use it.
Just get a short distance away from the immediately attacking monsters — no need to go hysterical and wild.
Just point with your RIGHT MOUSE button to a spot a short way off, taking advantage of the fact that they can’t see you for a second or two which, although it’s only momentary, is plenty of time to WALK away from danger, or possibly to TELE out of range — just far enough to be safe for the moment — at least far enough away from the ACTIVE MONSTERS to reset yourself, get your armor back up, refill your pots or get more pots from town, and to prepare yourself to move on, so you take the moment to do whatever you have to do in order to re-stabilize.
Stabilization is the key to teleporting, as well as to general happiness & wellness.
It’s often hard to achieve stability, once lost, so the simple solution here is to not falter, not to go unstable during TELE, and that’s not all that easy to accomplish, and CAN’T be mastered without practice.
You can’t expect to just USE the TELE and it does all the work for you, the looking ahead and making continuous “PLAN B” options as you go, taking into account the hits you’re taking and the amount of MANA you have left in your belt and pack.
You want to get all your extra powers, summoned creatures, armor buffing and such all together and activated — ready for teleporting — in case you DO run into a mob, and it DOES happen to every teleporter sooner or later.
You’ll have to fight your way out or manage to back out of the crowd before they draw you in and surround you, making escape impossible except by Jettisoning out with the ESCAPE button, which I would definitely leave yourself as a “Last Option” before overwhelm.
Mobs. You know I love ’em.
I’ve got a few surprise weapons ready for overrunning mobs, but that’s only in D2 — the other mobs will have to bring their own, I’m serious.
Now that you have a little handle on the mechanics of TELE, you’re ready for the big time — go to ROCKY WASTE, run through it with your TELE, then do the same with FAR OASIS.
You should come up with some good drops even though it’s only NORMAL. Remember this bounty when you’re playing in the NIGHTMARE level of difficulty.
You are now ready to tackle the HIGHLANDS run. Go into ACT 5, HIGHLANDS Waypoint, and use your teleport there — can you take out the clusters of monsters while teleporting?
I don’t mean taking them out in the middle of a teleport, but just after, when you land. This little maneuver is going to save you time and again when you teleport to the THRONE ROOM in your BAAL RUNS, which you’ll need in order to both level up and gain some good drops for NIGHTMARE.
Don’t wait until you’re in NIGHTMARE to learn how to TELE — as soon as you’re a Level 18, you should be starting your practice.
Yes, practice.
What? You thought that MASTERY of TELEPORT is built into the mouse? You gotta be kidding.
The ultimate TELEPORTING PRACTICE is to tele into the THRONE ROOM. That’s where you will be of most use to a Penetration Team.
Oh — don’t forget to load up on TPs — Town Portals — BEFORE you land in the THRONE ROOM, or you’ll have to go all the way back to get one, then all the way there again to give the tele to your teammates, who have been waiting on the side until you got it together to get some TPs in your backpack.
Happens too often to not have mentioned it.
Teleportation is one of the most interesting and compelling aspects of Diablo 2 — but how can you teleport if you’re not a Sorc?
Actually, before we figure out how to put “Teleport” onto a non-Sorc character, let’s first examine the REASON you’re teleporting in the first place.
There are only a few reasons why you might try to acquire the Power of Teleportation, and in a HELL game, you’d be mighty loath to use your teleporting power.
Sometimes you just have to.
Those times are few and far-between. Mostly it’s about getting through a very dense throng of monsters at every turn, all along the route to your destination, the THRONE ROOM or MEPH, for instance.
You’re deep inside a DUNGEON, and you can SEE where you want to go, but there’s no way to get there without a long detour through demon-filled halls and treasure chambers, unless you dare to TELE through it, and that’s a big risk, especially if you never practice using your TELE until you actually need it.
That’s never a good plan.
TELE is a way of going over walls without passing through a door, portal or archway.
You might use TELE to grab an object that sits in the middle of a bunch of unkillable creatures, such as the Horadric Staff in the worm lair, or the ammy in Snake City.
There’s nothing in the book says you have to kill the main boss when you’re actually only after the treasure, not the experience points or the drops that come from killing the boss.
Really, you shouldn’t over-use TELE — walk mostly, TELE when you absolutely MUST, and you’ll do fine.
Of course, with UNLIMITED MANA from an INSIGHT Merc, you can TELE to your heart’s content, and if you’re clever and have great hand-eye coordination, you can blast around just about ANY dungeon without pain, grief or Respawn Regret, for that time when you got just a touch over-confident and they wiped you out at a single blow.
Happens.
That’s why you practice TELE, and that’s why you don’t TELE just anytime, and you don’t TELE so much that you run completely out of MANA, which is exactly when they get you, when you’re standing there, helplessly trying to get some MANA so you can TELE out there, but they’ve got you in their grip and you can’t wiggle out.
That’s when you hit the “ESCAPE” button and BUG OUT of the game and respawn back in.
Of course, you’ll have to go back over your trail again, but presumably everything that lies in your possible path is already dead.
If you’ve barreled through there upsetting and annoying every horrible creature in the area, you’re in for some pain.
Best in that case to invoke a new game and start over, but that means FEELING YOUR WAY again, all across the map, but that’s the game in a nutshell — you WANT those things to occur — it makes the game more interesting to have unexpected things happen, and they do.
Your TELE efforts might turn up some interesting and unsuspected talents, but it has another very exciting aspect — you can improve your certainty.
There’s nothing quite as instantaneous as TELE, and decisions must be made literally ON THE FLY — no time to calculate the odds or figure out another way to go.
Commitment and Judgment are the goal here, like catching a fly in midair — you have to be there, fully committed to the action, in order to actually capture a fast-flying buzzing little fly, and the same is true when teleporting.
IS THERE A SECRET?
Damn right, there is, and I’ll give you the SECRET free of charge and right here in front of God and everybody.
Every time you press the TELE button, have a TARGET IN SIGHT.
If you can’t see monsters in there, you hit the button, but sometimes they are there and you just couldn’t see them.
You’ll learn to detect them by the colored lights they cast through the walls and doorways, or you’ll land in clusters a LOT.
Learn or die.
That IS the lesson, and it’s just demanding enough to actually build character — or at least to convey a sense of timing and rhythm.
Just like the game itself, there’s a definite rhythm and beat to TELE, and when you break that rhythm, you fail and generally die ignominiously, to the hoots and general laughter of your teammates, because they’ve had that happen to them, too.
You got overconfident and you didn’t have a definite TARGET.
You also need to learn to RETURN to spaces that you KNOW are safe enough to land there — that would be where you’ve already been, not a space to which you haven’t yet been.
When you’re working in a group and you get in trouble, find yourself surrounded by monsters, what do you try to do?
First thing most new players do is run where they haven’t yet been, and so they run into huge mobs of riled-up pissed-off monsters, all headed their way.
Best to run TOWARD your friends, not AWAY from them, and best to WARN them that you’ve riled up a bunch of creatures and they are MAD and headed their way, primarily because they’re following YOU.
Never fear, running toward, not away from, your POG is the right action to take.
You’ll soon discover that MANA is the main thing on your mind, that and landing somewhere that’s NOT occupied by a howling, raging mob of fear-crazed Right-Wing Zombies?
Relax, all the monsters in D2 are non-political, except when it comes to healthcare and retirement benefits — about those things they ARE quite belligerent.
As exhilarating as it is to TELE in and breeze along without incident, if you’re NOT a Sorc and you’re running on an ITEM that gives you one point to TELE, you’ll soon run out of MANA and you’ll be constantly annoyed to hear “I need more MANA” or some such complaint coming out of your character.
Yep, that’s you, complaining to you. And you’d better have an answer. You need to solve the MANA problem right away, in order to use TELE as a non-Sorc.
Every move is gonna cost you.
If you have a MERC running, you might reconsider the TELE, because MERCS have a way of getting the locals all crazed and wild-eyed.
In short, the MERC can tickle what might have been quiescent creatures into relentless attack.
In the case of those tiny little bastards in the MEPH RUN, they don’t actually hurt you much when they bite your ankles, but they DO kill you FLAT OUT when they die and explode, so the smart teleporter doesn’t rouse them up with an overenthusistic MERC and, short of UN-INVOKING him — there’s a thingy for that, one of the buttons to the right of screen — you have no choice but to fight those demons they stoke up as you try to silently slip by.
I mentioned the MERC as an “Arousing Factor”, but I should possibly also mention your SUMMONED helpers, such as the Valkyrie or Bear, neither of which is properly considered a MERC — they’re summoned, and you need to keep them summoned, unless you’re in the middle of a serious teleport mission on behalf of your Penetration Team.
To understand “Penetration Team”, you might want to read “Satan’s Shrine”, a Galaxy short story, easily available online, somewhat available in print. I believe the author was Daniel F. Galouye — I’ll go check that on google, brb — sure enough, it was Galouye.
Using the TELE is easy, if you take it one step at a time.
Don’t be in a hurry. Take the time to practice as I’ve outlined above. It happens faster when you slow yourself down a bit and take your time to learn it right.
Main thing about TELE is DON’T PANIC!
Are your hands sweating so much you can hardly hold the mouse? Well, that means the game is working! You’re involved enough to get sweaty and shaky, and that’s what IDENTIFICATION is all about.
On examination, analysis shows that nothing is really happening, it’s just a bunch of pixels, but somehow, your body has gotten involved in the action and is taking it AS IF REAL.
There is no actual physical threat from the game, but your body doesn’t know that, and that’s what makes it possible to achieve total immersion in the game, and that IS what you want to achieve, remember?
Total Immersion is Total Beta Block.
Without that feeling of threat, there would be no deep immersion. It’s just lucky that the brain registers the screen action as “real”, or you’d have no sweaty palms, not ever.
When you land in a bunch of monsters, there isn’t time to switch over to F12 “Static” or to hit them with your main weapon on F5 — of course you’ll use F6 for TELE, and that’s where you want to leave it as long as you’re in TELE mode, so that leaves you with your F1 left mouse weapon if you need to fight, but I don’t recommend it.
Fighting means you’re not TELE-ing, and that means trouble. Learn to TELE without getting into fist-fights or fire-fights, not that it’s easy, but TRY to remain out of combat mode.
There are times when it’s just too much. It’s a mistake to try to fight your way out of a jam like that — best to start over rather than pick up the pieces, unless you’re in NORMAL, in which case, nothing matters, no discount in experience points, so you might consider fighting in that event.
Again, I wouldn’t. Waste of time, energy and maybe money.
That’s another issue — money. You’ll be using some money to TELE, at least to buy pots and TELE scrolls and such, and maybe repair, if you get too close to a group of dungeon guys and you took a few hits to your armor, helm, boots, weapons and shield, if any.
Oh, that’s another thing. The shield.
You won’t be very hardened with armor and such, not typically as a Sorc, unless you’re a Skirmish Sorc who doesn’t and won’t use magic.
That’s too much like “I Married a Witch”, copied on tv as “Bewitched” without giving credit to the original theatrical release film, but what the heck, it’s a valid point.
Some Sorcs just won’t use magic. They insist on blade weapons. This is downright silly, and should spark some serious inquiry into the mental health of the player.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that this game is based on “Lord of the Rings” and has a lot of the same characteristics, among which is the “fact” that Magic-Users don’t use bladed weapons.
Sure, they CARRY a sword or knife into battle where they DO use them stabbingly, but they primarily use their weapons and other items in magical ritual.
Bladed Sorc Weapons are not for stabbing. I recommend the Orbs for Sorcs, for a variety of reasons, but the most compelling reason you should use an Orb is that it isn’t a LONG STAFF.
Now, there are some short staves, but they’re also TWO-HANDED, and that’s not good. You want a serious amount of DEFENSIVE ARMOR on your Sorc, and that means you want to carry a SHIELD.
With a two-handed weapon, you can’t also carry a shield, so something has to give, and what gives easiest is to carry a ONE-HANDED weapon, leaving the other hand to hold the shield, see?
Try to SEE what’s happening with your character, what’s going on in that dimension, and you’ll get a sense of what’s needed.
It’s obvious that a one-handed weapon leaves room for a shield, but how much do you pay to switch out of a two-handed Sorc weapon into a Single-Handed Sorc weapon?
Depends on how lucky you are.
I generally land on a One-Hand Orb within a few minutes of starting out from Rogue. Well, I’m exaggerating a bit — actually, by the time I hit “STONY” I always have some sort of one-handed weapon.
Once in a while, I’ll get the idea of making myself into a FIRE SORC, just because it’s so easy to find the equipment for a FIRE SORC, but I’m fully recovered now.
I no longer give in to the urge to become what I happen to find.
It takes a little longer to get hold of the equipment you want, and a lot of it depends on luck.
You really shouldn’t worry about equipment until you get into NIGHTMARE, and even then, you shouldn’t concern yourself about equipment.
Sure, equipment is helpful and in some cases absolutely necessary, but it’s also true that it’s how you use it that counts, and it would be well to remember that as you go along in life.
If you’re giving a younger character a RUSH or some help recovering their body or getting through a tough level or past a tough BOSS, you’ll be using TELE a lot, to cut the time down that it takes to get to the objective.
There is no advantage to fighting in those types of Missions, so you might as well TELE in, and that’s what it’s all about.
Those TELE map crossings are made ONLY in TELE mode, no fighting, no stopping, not even for a second to get your bearings and catch your breath.
It’s all one sweeping elegant motion, or it’s Respawn Time in Old Poughkeepsie.
You gotta get the rhythm. One way to help yourself understand the “D2 SWAY” is to have the Gorebagg & the Grunts CD — “In Your Face” — album playing while you’re running around in D2.
Although you’ll never get into a public game — well, you SHOULDN’T, but there’s nothing preventing you from experimenting with that particular form of misery & suffering — you should know that the TELE function is used in public games to make them faster, because the whole idea is to run as many games per hour as you possibly can without getting kicked out of the server for changing games too fast.
Yep, they punish you for changing games too fast, along with a variety of other punishments that led to Blizzard Entertainment losing its hold on the videogame market, probably permanently, because they’re arrogant — they don’t listen to their customers, and that’s always a bad idea.
TELE AS BETA-BLOCKER
Boy, if there were ever a way to totally involve yourself in a wild game of “Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive”, it’s performing a continual and risky TELE in a level just CROWDED with horrid monsters waiting to tear you to shreds and devour you alive.
In short, a TELE to the THRONE ROOM in Act 5 will keep you glued to the screen and sweating with anxiety and anticipation.
Because every second is filled with fright and fraught with danger, you’ll be sure to be as attentive as you can possibly be, especially when life and death are on the line.
If you happen to also be a Sicilian, it makes you doubly dangerous, according to the popular Hollywood film, “Princess Bride” — a somewhat entertaining but slowly developed film I definitely would not watch a second time.
Like most films, it has a few good parts, and the rest is crap.
“90% of Everything is Crap” is Sturgeon’s Law, named after sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon, but as he said to me at a book-signing event at a long-past WesterCon, “that doesn’t guarantee that the other 10% isn’t also crap.”.
Boy, that’s helpful, when you’re doing a TELE into a HELL LEVEL BAAL THRONE ROOM, and that’s where your Sorc’s METTLE will really show.
That’s “Mettle”, not “Metal” — look it up and expand your vocabulary just a little.
“God rest you, Merry Gentlemen” is how the Christmas carol is sung now, but it was originally Elizabethan Era English, so it was meant to be, “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, meaning that you’d rest merrily, as in “merry-meet”, the Wiccan greeting among the Great Unwashed, the peasantry, a class to which anyone would be proud to be a member.
“Ain’t” is a 19th century shortening of “Am I Not?”, but try to find even a college level English prof who knows that simple and most basic fact.
It’s worse when it comes to history.
Speaking of “history”, there’s nothing more exciting and immersing than getting a club of players together to discuss great gaming moments — if you’ve been there, you’ll get it — and of course, sharing secrets and short-cuts.
Short-cuts that are legit are okay — short-cuts and cheats are not. If you can only win by cheating, you might consider running for public office, otherwise leave them alone.
Not cheating is another way of taking the game seriously. On Battlenet, you won’t be able to cheat, so don’t worry about it. Only in your computer are you able to change things when you use your own server instead of Battlenet, and you won’t want to do that unless you’re eleven years old and don’t plan to ever grow up.
Have fun using your TELE powers, and remember that continual TELE is a great way to involve and immerse!
Also realize that your GAME powers will TRANSFER to some degree into the organic space in which your body lives — it’s a two-way street, so there will be some “bleed” across the intervening VOIDNESS between MEMBRANES.
BRANE-POWER is the ability to transcend and permeate MEMBRANES. You’re learning the most BASIC SKILL of a healer and teacher, and you’re going to need those skills later on.
Relentless Unbroken Rooted Attention is the goal, and TELE is your answer. There’s nothing like TELE to teach yourself to BE HERE NOW — there is no better way to do it. Your SPIRIT, your ESSENCE, is learning to take an interest in the game of LIFE, and there’s a lot to learn!
The best part is that, if you follow the simple directions, it’s FUN to learn!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby