The Time Of The Year - Chronicles Of A Temporary Diablo II Addict

As I wake up on a Saturday morning, I know something is missing. I didn't have this feeling in a year and as I rise from my grave, I think to myself that this must be the instinct ice bears have when they wake up from their hibernation. I crawl to the percolator, no powder, great. Without even realizing, my body performs a motion sequence that it has been doing for many years now and brought it close to perfection. It has a tough enemy though, the chaos of my PC-Games shelf.

While my computer is booting, dozens and dozens of game CDs fly around in my apartment, but I'm only searching for one. Well, technically three, it has an expansion and finding three CDs in every remotely imaginable corner of my room is an epic quest in itself.

"Got it!" I scream as I find the last needed medium oddly enough in the CD-cover of Anno 1503. Don't ask...

I start to install and now I have the much needed time to prepare me and my social surrounding for the time again. I can't leave the house for too long, since I need to change CDs a couple of times and I need my dose as soon as possible. It's just enough to run to the cash dispenser across the street and get enough hard money for three days of delivery food though. It's Saturday and you have three days to space out? Yes, only two temporarily unimportant lectures, nothing I can't catch up with again.

"NO!". The installation was all by himself for at least a minute and it required the next CD and I feel like I forgot to feed my first born. "Insert GameCD2" it says and I have no intention of letting it wait. Alright, small break again, what's next? Answerphone! I don't want to be disturbed and the people who know me are familiar of what's going on.

As the last couple of percent are in the making, I open a chat tool I haven't used since the last "outbreak", called ICQ, a very popular program in Germany. I immediately go invisible (I don't want to be interrupted) and scroll down to the group called like the addiction I will have for the next few days. Even though the game is so old, the amount of people online in this group didn't really decimate over the years.



Yiska (10:53am):
It's time.
Friend (10:53am):
Alright, let's go.



As I'm loading the patch of the game that you most definitely found out by now, I'm asking myself the more or less rhetoric question which character I want to create. I giggle like a little schoolgirl and of course click on the Sorc who raises her arms to welcome her old buddy.
The real question is, what kind of Sorc?

Three viable options again and at that point, I'm certain that this number hates me passionately. Hydra, Firewall or Frost sphere. Probably not even playable anymore but I'm an oldschooler, I don't know better.

The general procedure of my yearly Diablo II addiction (uuhhh I said it) is getting shuttled and at a certain level, most likely around ~90, I stop leveling and try to scrape every mf I can get together and start doing what I like most about this game: Finding uniques.

I pick firewall this time since I really only do one thing in this time of the year anyway, farming Mephisto. We in my group call it "Mephi" or the German form "Meppel"-runs and I simply can't stop playing this game until at least one condition is fulfilled. Finding Harlequins Crest Shako. I can't trade it, I have to find it. I'm a hunter and gatherer, mind you.

First I have to creep to this level, but luckily at least one of my friends has a high level character at that time and I get the easy way out. By Sunday night I reach level 89 and I feel tired. A power nap and half a bottle of coke that the friendly Chinese women brought with my food is more than enough to keep me going again. I didn't play the whole night, but let's just say it was significantly less than my usual 9 hours of beauty sleep.

I'm ready. I only have ~250 MF but that doesn't concern me much at all. As I port from room to room, I begin to feel the pattern of these unholy tombs again and I'm able to find the entrance to the next floor relatively quick. On a sidenote: Maphack is for *******.

First these annoying council geezers and of course one of them is fire immune. Only way to still kill Meppel on hell is to kite them in a different room and port to the master. Needless to say it fails and I have to tele all the way back to my corpse, which isn't all that unpleasant since my sorc is almost naked.

I skillfully pick up my equipment and this time I'm able to fool them. I see him now, this white unique filled thing. I kite him to the edge and my firewall burns him like the sun did to my basement tan last friday, without the slightest chance for him to hit me. Outplayed.

"I share your pain, Meppel. But I need Harle". He dies and a blue ball on a yellow-brown stick jumps out of his leftovers and as it hits the ground, one of my arms is already up in the air cheering while the other one is pressing the alt key. The Oculus. YES!

As I perform my victory dance towards the toilet, thinking about finding Harle next, I look at the answerphone. Three unanswered calls, all from my mother. Damn you three! I guess I will have to call her back...





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