What other new features could spice up Diablo 2 Resurrected? We have some ideas

Recently, Diablo 2: Resurrected added Terror Zones, a means by which the jaded D2R player can level to 99 without the usual farm end zone bosses strategies of the past, adding a fresh new twist to the revived title. This new development — a brand new feature, not something that was already developed decades ago but never implemented, like the previous addition of new Rune Words in patch 2.4 — has me thinking about the future of D2R content.

Now, I’m not expecting something like a new expansion or anything that profound or large in scope. Blizzard already has a big Diablo release we’re just biding time on til we hear more news in the upcoming Diablo 4. But we saw with Diablo 3 that a lot of new features and content could be added with the various Season themes and the Rise of the Necromancer pack, and it has me thinking about what could be added to Diablo 2: Resurrected and the Ladder Seasons to keep them fresh and interesting without changing the feel too drastically.

Ahead awaits a few ideas I’ve had to address that issue, from new features based on existing ideas, to just a bit of zaniness from rolling the dice.

New features that might be fun to explore while still fitting in

For another example from patch 2.5, we need only look at Sundering Charms. Sundering Charms reduce the Resistance of a creature in Diablo 2 from above 100% — effective Immunity to that damage type — to 95%, which means you can now damage that creature with that attack type.  The trade off is that you take increased damage from that type of attack yourself. This allows players to pursue a greater variety of builds as viable in D2R, especially in Terror Zones where the creatures are specially empowered to be more challenging. This kind of risk/reward set up gives us a glimpse into ways D2R could gain new features.

Extrapolating from there, imagine a Ladder Season which added a battle royale style feature, where your character empowered a totem that summons waves of monsters to come do battle with them. As the battle rages on, the player gains a buff for each monster slain, but the next wave of monsters is correspondingly empowered as well.

Perhaps the players can choose what kind of buff they get — increased damage output, higher health, or increased resistances — and the enemy that are rushing to kill them get either a corresponding buff, or an inverse buff — if you gain increased resistance to something, the enemy will start dealing more and more damage of that type to overcome your resistance. Or maybe the buff and the enemy buffs are both randomized, so you may get lucky and get increased damage against mobs who get increased health or unlucky and get increased resistance to fire damage against waves of cold damage dealing beasts.

I’d prefer if this mode was accessible from certain locations on Sanctuary in each act — perhaps the Rogue Monastery in Act I, the tomb of Tal Rasha, and so on — making it something you had to actively travel to, maybe even fight your way past some demons to get access to each new level. This wouldn’t really alter D2R gameplay, it would just be another option, like the Terror Zones, for players who want to level up to 99 for a new Ladder Season.

Randomness that you can choose can be fun

Another feature that could spice things up without really making it feel like a different game would be a character randomization feature that would allow (not compel) you to push the random button and have the game choose the class for the character you’ll be playing on that season’s Ladder. Left to my own devices, I tend to play Barbarians over and over again — it might be fun for the game to decide No, you’re a Sorceress this time or Have you met Druids?

It might also be fun if you got a random buff for actually playing the random character — like bonus XP or increased health/resistances for a few hours, making it a little faster or easier to gain some levels and get a sense of playing this character you’d never played before. I know this would lead to some players always randomizing for every Ladder Season, but face it, those players are going to game the system hard to get to max level anyway. There’s no reason to keep a fun idea at bay due to players doing what players will do.

Finally, an idea I have that might be too much work to implement — Terror Zones could create areas with increased difficulty by randomly buffing various Demon types. What if a portal opened in a random part of Sanctuary and spawned one of the big boss monsters like The Butcher, the Skeleton King, Archbishop Lazarus, and even the original Diablo itself? They could drop the various weapons updated to D2R stats and maybe a special Rune Word. I think it would be a fun way to bring the original Diablo game back for players.

These are just some of the features I think could be brought into Diablo 2: Resurrected without breaking the game or making it feel different in a way that would break it. If y’all have your own ideas, the comments await you.