I like to think of myself as someone who enjoys silence. At least that’s what I tell my friends. I’m all like, “if I’m alone I like to sit down and just listen to the silence and let my mind wander”.

It’s a lie, though.

Well, maybe it isn’t exactly a lie. It’s more like… well, it’s what I would like to be like, if you get what I mean. I would love to be one of those really philosophical guys who can just fill their world with a huge glop of nothing and enjoy it. I, however, cannot.

When things are silent around me, my mind starts working instead of winding down. I start to hear music – my own music – growing in my brain, trying to search for new paths and instrumentations. It’s not at all unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night with a song in my head that I just can’t get out, realizing much later that it’s actually my own work (or something like that). This essentially means that, while I can certainly shut down sounds around me, I can’t turn off my inner composer.

True silence would mean something horrible. I’m afraid even to think about it. What would happen if I woke up one day and heard nothing? The thought is unbearable.

Well, it’s late and my girlfriend has already gone to sleep. I should, too. I will write more eventually (and it’s not at all impossible that the next update will be the next part of my Diablo II series). Also, I’m playing MOTHER 3 at the moment and loving every single second of it. I will write more about that later.

Wherein Phoenix sets out on his epic journey and runs like hell from arrows.

Why, hello there! Welcome to the Sanctuary Revisited blog series, where I write about one of my favourite games of all time: Diablo II. There is an introduction post available further down, where you can read up on how I will be doing this. Let me just give you a quick heads-up before we begin: This is not a screenshot Let’s Play, even though it looks like it. It’s more like a diary with some pictures here and there. A journal of my exploits, if you will. I hope you will enjoy it. Also, I will not be playing as a hardcore character because that would send me to Arkham Asylum prematurely. Well, now you know. Let us begin this exciting saga!

A depiction of Phoenix doing what I was forced to do several times during this part of the game. Picture by Emma Grahn.

“Good day!”

That’s the first thing you hear in Diablo II, assuming you skipped the opening cinematic. I did, because I’ve seen it before, and also because I was anxious to get some slaughtering done. Phoenix is a busy barbarian, after all. Well, the speaker – called Warriv, for those who want to know – assaulted me as soon as I beamed in from planet Vista and tried to tell me things. I didn’t listen. I never really do. I knew, however, that I needed to go talk to the head honcho, so I lurched up to her and tapped her on the back.

The woman’s name is Akara, and I think she has some plot relevance. She has no butchering relevance, though. Anyway, she told me something about a “den in the wilderness”, which I took to mean “slaughter everything that moves outside of camp”. On my way out I bumped into the resident blacksmith, who ogled me for what felt like half an hour and drooled on her apron. Charsi scares me. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t even stop to talk to Gheed (because he’s a jerk) or Kashya (for pretty much the same reason.)

Having successfully ignored anyone standing in the way of my fun, I journeyed into the wilderness.

The first enemy I ran across was a lone Quill Rat, who obviously thought he was all o’ that. He wasn’t. In fact, Phoenix swiftly axe-crunched him into a small puddle, gaining his first bit of experience (and absolutely no loot).

The rest of the journey through the Blood Moor went in a similar fashion. Zombies and more Quill Rats tried their best to stop me, but they quickly fell to the axe. After a little while, Fallen started to appear. I dealt with them thusly:

It was beautiful.

Well, apart from that, the following happened as I hacked my way through the moor:

• I found a pair of really low-quality boots, which broke after ten hits.
• The first shrine I came across was an experience shrine. I marveled at this for several seconds and then walked away, completely forgetting to use the shrine. I had found my second shrine, which was ironically enough a stamina shrine, before I realised this.
• The first chest I found was locked. I had no key to open it with. Once I had found a key I backtracked to the chest, opened it and found a key.
• There was not a single mini-boss enemy in the entire area.

"Hi there! Do you want to meet my axe?"

After the Blood Moor had been duly cleansed I went down into the Den of Evil. Shortly after I’d entered it, I found a dead rogue. Being the kind gentleman that he is, Phoenix immediately decided to relieve her of her personal belongings. It turned out that the rogue had, at the time of her death, been carrying three gold pieces. That did not please Phoenix in the slightest.

"Wish granted!"

Then there was the matter of actually “cleansing” the Den. Phoenix painted the cavern walls red for a few minutes, killing the mini-boss zombie Corpsefire along the way, and then he expected light beams to come in from the sky as the quest was completed. So did I. This, however, did not happen. It turned out that I was missing one enemy (yes, I had to press the ‘Q’ key once to check this), so I had to run around for about fifteen minutes until I found a stray zombie that had wedged itself into a tight corridor and wouldn’t budge. I introduced him to Phoenix’s axe and the quest – along with the problem – was solved.

I returned to Akara. She was thankful. I didn’t care.

As I was heading out again, I was accosted by Ms. Kashya Cynicism. She told me that I needed to kill some broad called Blood Raven, and since that sounded like heaps and droves of fun, I decided to oblige. Since this quest gives you the sidekick which I intend to keep with me until the very end I had little choice, really.

This mess used to be Bishibosh and a few of his goons.

The Cold Plains is not really an important area as such; it houses The Cave, which is a good place to get some loot, and quickly branches off into two other directions (The Burial Grounds, which houses Blood Raven, and The Stony Field which leads onward). There is one funny thing about the plains, though, and that is Bishibosh. He is essentially a sort of Fallen demi-god or suchlike (you can hear the different Shaman enemies chanting his name idly, just as the different variants of Fallen shout Rakanishu – and yes, we will meet him as well), and he always appears in a camp filled to the brim with Fallen. Being a Shaman type, he can resurrect Fallen (and, as far as I can tell, other Shamans). That’s why you run straight for Bishibosh before even considering the other guys. Mr. Bosh is fire enchanted, and that means that when he dies, it does not look pretty. Or, well, it does, but that isn’t the point here. Stop looking at me like that!

Hellooo, ladiesss.

Apart from Bishibosh, you can also find the lovely Corrupted Rogues from this point onward. Their attack pattern consists of running at you at high speeds, poking you with a spear and dying horribly as you smash them to pieces. They die in an immensely satisfying way: their bodies are hoisted up into the air where they are split apart and a blue, fanged ghost erupts from them and roars as the dead rogue lets out a scream that is either pained or slightly horny (I have yet to decide which). Combined with the THWACK of the axe and the growl from the ghost thingies, killing these enemies becomes a very enjoyable experience.

The only other interesting thing that happened in the Cold Plains was me killing a Fallen and finding my first gem: a chipped skull. I found this funny.

Coldcrow. The reason why we can't have nice things.

Well, after the plains it was time to head down into The Cave, which is an optional area only good for two things: A treasure chest that always uber-drops some decent stuff, and Coldcrow. Coldcrow is a corrupted rogue who is cold enchanted. This is not fun in the least, especially since she has about six or seven rape-happy friends with her and they all benefit from her cold enchantment. This battle took me about ten minutes as I ran in, tried to lure one of them out, got a face full of arrows and limped away in a frozen state (not made easier by being chased by these damn women). When I had dealt with Coldcrow and her minions I immediately ran into a mini-boss rogue with multiple shots (and, of course, a throng of minions with the same ability). At this time, I was convinced that the game had decided to kill me. After running away from millions of arrows and dealing with the enemies one at a time I finally prevailed.

Some other fun things happened down here:

• After the fight with Coldcrow I noticed that I was doing very little damage to the enemies. At first I thought this was because I hadn’t distributed any stat points, but then I looked at Phoenix properly and realised that his axe had broken.
• I came across a mini-boss skeleton called Black Hack, and his special skill was the ability to use teleportation. This made me chuckle.

She's pretty ugly.

This area is really short, but a lot of things happen here. First of all, of course, there is Blood Raven to exhume (can you exhume someone who’s dead? Perhaps re-kill would be a better word to use in this case). She wasn’t really difficult. The only problem with BR is that she runs fast and she can summon undead, but as long as you keep the pressure on her she won’t be able to do much. In my case, all she did was tell me I should “join her army of the dead” and then promptly run into a corner where I could easily dispatch her.

Oooo... pretty lights.

When Blood Raven dies, she does so with a very pretty, colourful display. Bolts of lightning shoot out of her, and any undead creature that’s still “alive” gets instantly deep-fried. The light show goes on for at least fifteen seconds and it is very satisfying to watch, albeit a bit over the top for such an early (and easy) boss enemy. Oh, well. You also hear a bit of choir music, and Phoenix grumbles “good riddance… Blood Raven”. Oh, snap!

I shall call her Squishy, and she shall be mine, and she shall be my Squishy.

Now that we’ve overcome that obstacle, we can return to camp and claim our reward. In my case, her name turned out to be Amplisa (which is easily the most ridiculous name in the history of anything). Phoenix didn’t seem too happy with the change, but he didn’t voice his complaints so I chose to ignore the look on his face. It was a look of sadness, though. Sadness and just a hint of anger.

As it turns out, though, Amplisa was just as useful as any of the rogue companions. Her training grounds come up quickly and they can both be accessed from the Burial Grounds (the Crypt and Mausoleum). At least one of them features fire shaped like a pentagram in a big hallway.

Amplisa’s role in the party of two is, in fact, twofold; she can kill things at a distance and whittle down enemies so that Phoenix can etch-a-kill them with ease, and she also act sort of like Hewie the dog from Haunting Ground (i.e. when you see Amplisa fire arrows in a random direction, you can be sure that she has seen something you haven’t).

Phoenix defiled it. It contained a hand axe.

In the Crypt the duo found a skeleton called Bonebreaker. He went down without much of a fuss, even though the game told us that he was both extra strong and magic resistant. Well, we’re not using any magic, and nothing beats a barbarian from Harrogath when he’s pissed off. Bonebreaker quickly lived up to his name.

Little known fact: King Leoric had a brother called Keith, and he was buried here for no reason at all.

Phoenix and his trusty sidekick made pretty short work of the two bonus levels and they gave Amplisa a decent amount of experience (enough, in fact, to kick her up a level or two). Once they were done re-killing undead and defiling graves to get useless loot, the two went back to camp to get their next reason to live. It turned out that by now, Akara had started to grasp the fact that something evil was afoot (no, really?) and wanted us to fetch Deckard Cain from Tristram. Cue contrived description of how to do this (something about getting a scroll from a tree, giving the scroll to Akara, going to some stones and then getting to the town from the original Diablo game).

Well, to actually get to Tristram, one has to go through a couple of areas, fetch that roll of parchment from the Dark Wood, have Akara translate it, and then click on the Cairn Stones in the Stony Field (which you go through to actually get to the Dark Wood in the first place. Yeah, it’s a bit contrived).

Was that Colonel Campbell just now?

The Stony Field is home to the Cairn Stones, which will call up the portal to Tristram assuming that we’ve collected the parchment from the Dark Wood. There are some other things in this area before we get to the main event, though. First of all, there’s a completely random book in the middle of nowhere that, when you open it, speaks to you in the voice of someone very familiar to anyone who has played Metal Gear Solid. You get an extra quest for this (something about killing a broad in a tower somewhere), and it will eventually give Phoenix a lot of gold. It will be done in due time.

One of these corpses was Rakanishu. He was lightning enchanted. Not for very long, though.

Also, close to those previously mentioned Cairn Stones you will always find a certain mini-boss going by the name of Rakanishu. This bastard is usually a huge pain in the hiney because of his lightning enchantment (basically, he spews highly damaging lightning bolts every time you hit him), but this time he didn’t really stand a chance. I got a very fun piece of loot from him, however; the “Corpse Shell” (which is funny all on its own). It was yellow, which means it’s unique, and it gave Phoenix, among other fun things, a 10% chance of casting a level 3 Charged Bolt spell when struck. Essentially, it looked like Phoenix absorbed some of Rak’s power, which I found amusing.

Well, to get the scroll we need to find the Tree of Inifuss in the Dark Wood, and to get there we need to find the Underground Passage which we get to through an opening in a cliff wall. In this cavern, several fun things happened:

Apart from the armour, I replaced the first amulet I got with this one, which apparently castrates enemies a LOT faster than the old amulet did.

• A poor, fire enchanted Fallen mini-boss was nailed between the eyes by Amplisa before Phoenix could even begin to react (and before the mini-boss, which went by the name of  Steel Fang, could utter his war cry). The monster dropped a very nice suit of armour which was given to Ampy as a reward for her heroic efforts. The armour actually outclassed Phoenix’s, but I decided that since him wearing Rakanishu’s old skin would give him a chance to fry stuff with charged bolts, he ought to keep it strictly for its inherent lulz potential.
  

  This scepter is meant for a Paladin, but it'll work fine for me. It ups my damage considerably (especially since I've been using the first axe the game gives you up until this point) and it makes an EXTREMELY satisfying THUNK sound every time it hits something. It's also very effective against undead, which is something I'll be facing a lot in the near future.

• I should’ve known that the previous lack of resistance meant that I would meet a brick wall of horror somewhere in here. True enough, I ran into a grand total of ten “special” enemies, including possessed and ghostly creeps as well as champions. They gave Phoenix and Amplisa an indecent amount of experience as well as really nifty pieces of loot (not to mention absurd amounts of money). Then again, they were difficult to kill.
• One of the less good pieces of loot was a unique crossbow, and that angered me. Phoenix won’t use it, and Amplisa is far too much of an elitist to even consider anything that isn’t a bow. Its sell value was really low, too. Well, darn.
• By now I was starting to get some serious gem action. My stash was beginning to look really nice.

This area houses many interesting things, but we won’t be bothering with a lot of them this time around. Since my mission was to recover the scroll from the Tree of Inifuss, I swiftly did just that.

Despite his twinkly glow and silly name, this hulking beast is really dangerous.

The tree is guarded, however, by a huge beast going by the name of Treehead Woodfist (as if Amplisa’s name wasn’t hamtastic enough) and his jolly gang of ginormous sasquatches. Treehead himself is both extra strong and extra fast, and he has a nasty habit of running for Ampy first, which is why Phoenix ran in front of him and thwacked him with his new, shiny weapon. The damage dealt by the scepter actually came as a small shock, since I’d been using the first axe up until this point. The end result: Woodfist got sceptrefisted.

Well, that was that! Phoenix and Amplisa have the scroll, and as soon as Akara has translated it they will be heading off into the ghostly town of Tristram. There, they will (eventually) save Deckard Cain, beat the snot out of a smith, explode cows and loot the corpse of a child for his wooden leg.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first part of my blog series! Feel free to write comments. This took a lot of time to write, so I will probably update the series less than frequently. Stick around, though! There will be other fun things to read here while you’re anxiously awaiting the next episode.

Also, I will probably start the next chapter by showing you my inventory thus far. Just so you know.

One of the more satisfying things you do in Act I.

This is not related to music at all. It’s a diary of sorts that chronicles my adventures in Diablo II as I return to Sanctuary. Perhaps you will find it funny – perhaps not. It is not a Let’s Play, because doing an LP of Diablo II would be similar to eating cereal in front of a webcam for several hours while saying absolutely nothing at all. Well, in any case, you have been warned! Also, the awesome art work was made by Emma Grahn.

Ah… Sanctuary.

It’s been a long while since I last visited it, but ever since I left, the fetid jungles and arid deserts have been calling out to me from beyond the CD-case. I needed to return. I felt an urge to kill several small, gibbering devil-things and maul large, growling devil-things. And pygmies. Those damn pygmies.

When I play the wonderful adventure that is Diablo II, I usually do it as a Barbarian. That is what I’m doing this time, too. The hulking mass of flesh, muscle and more muscle is called Phoenix and even though he’s a man of few words, he is certainly a man of many killings. Also, no freaking multiplayer. Not only are 99% of the people on BattleNet complete and utter jerks – it’s just more fun going solo. Here are some other criteria I will go by, for those who want to get an in-depth look at my play style:

• I will not spend a single point on Phoenix during Act I. Nope, not a single effin’ one. All points gained through level ups and quests will be spent once the barbarian has arrived in Lut Gholein. This means that even though Mr. Barb will reach Andariel at a decent level and wearing a considerable amount of loot, he will in fact be going against her demonic awfulness in a very underpowered state. Thus, pray to Tyrael for some really great poison resistance before then.
• I will not press ‘Q’ or click on the Quest Log button until Andariel’s dead. This is just something I like to do, because all quests getting completed at the same time in Act II just looks so damn cool. It’s not like this really influences gameplay, but it might be fun for y’all to know.
• I will obsessively hoard any and all gems I come across. In Act I, this will cause quite a bit of trouble for me as I will overload my stash pretty quickly, but it will all be so much more satisfying in Act II when I get to transmute just about all of it into a glittering mound of weapon-enhancing doom.
• I will keep the mercenary I get from the Blood Raven quest all the way through the game, and if she dies I will waste precious gold to revive her. She will be completely badass and an incredible asset, as she does something Phoenix would not dream of doing in his wildest fantasies: ranged damage.
• When it comes to my skill build, I will be focusing on dealing loads of pain and horking things. Horking will be explained later for those of you who are completely unfamiliar with the concept. I will try to put a lot of points into passive skills as I really only want to plow through hordes of small, screeching things instead of choosing from millions of skills. However, I will very probably get Whirlwind. I will also very probably dual wield two really big weapons of mass demon destruction.
• When it comes to weapon masteries, I will either use axes or swords. If you’re interested, you can suggest which one I ought to go for.
• I will explore every nook and cranny of every single act. This means going through a lot of extra crap, including all of Tal Rasha’s false tombs. If you want to kick demon butt, you have to grind. It’s just like getting to Carnegie Hall.
• I will do at least ten Mephisto runs. Possibly more. Once, the huge horned skeleton dropped Azurewrath. I shall do my best to make it do it again.

Well, that’s mostly it. If I think of anything else I will tell you at a later date.

I will update as frequently as I am able, and the updates may be completely different from time to time depending on how much has happened and where I’m currently at. For instance, expect Act I to be split into at least three updates.

Now, let the slaughter commence.

Well, this is it. I think the layout looks really nice now, and since a whopping two people (one is my colleague, and the other one is my girlfriend) bothered to post a comment saying it was good I’ll take their word for it. This is really it.

So, what will I write about in this blog? Well, mainly music. I’ll post thoughts and ideas, as well as rants and arguments. I hope you will find the blog interesting. If you want to tell me something, feel free to post a comment!

Now, let the blogging commence!

Hello, there! I’m going to assume that you are, by now, rather shocked to find this page instead of what you were expecting (namely, the old site). Well, I decided to make a blog instead of a website, seeing as I’m now part of a company (www.coolcoreaudio.com) and you can just head there for your music example fix (even though that site is also in desperate need of a makeover).

For now, this place is a bit of a mess, but I think it’s coming along nicely. You’ll be able to delve into my weird mind and read about what I’m doing (this will usually concern music things). Depending on my level of skill, you might even be able to listen to example music here later! Who knows what madness lies in wait in the depths of my mind?

In any case, bear with me as I redecorate the place. Leave comments! Talk to me! Tell me how pretty/ugly this layout is! Give me tips, pats on the back or slaps in the face! For the really active posters there may be a prize coming up… you never know.