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12-Let's go to Kehjistan and find love in the jungle.
Presenting to you the next cinematic: Mephisto's Jungle.
Now with 0 Mephisto and 0 Jungle.
Instead, we finally meet Tal Rasha...well I mean we met him last cinematic and he has since ran away but here's Diabl-I mean Dark Wanderer breaking him free. ...Or would've if Tyrael wasn't on top of things. We wouldn't have an issue and everything would be fine if Diablo didn't bring a butt monkey with him to get manipulated by, another demon.
All according to plan. ...I uhh think. Diablo doing this on purpose is a lazy device of storytelling, but here at least there's some rationale behind it: Diablo has a lot of experience bending mortals and demons alike to his will. Diablo's probably also very aware that, by now, the angels have figured out where he's at and what he's doing. If one loser broke him out of his jail, another loser can break his brother out of jail as well, and that's exactly what happpened while both he and Tyrael try to Gandalf eachother. Course when Baal was released, Tyrael absolutely lost that battle, and the two Primes...kinda just left him there. It's not that they can't kill him, and killing him is probably not a good use of time anyway, but they just high-fived eachother went neener-neener at Tyrael and buried him. If Baal or Diablo bothered to talk to Tyrael during this cutscene, I'm pretty sure they would be taunting Tyrael with the exact prison Baal was put in, but no, this is just bad writing. I'm sorry. I can't sugarcoat this bit.
Anyway, realizing that that dumb-looking mortal is actually a demonic ploy and mortals have fucked everything up again, Tyrael then chokes Marius and tells him, "YOU WILL GO TO MOUNT DOOM AND SHATTER THAT SALTLICK YOU JUST PULLED OUT OR SO HELP ME LIGHT" And so Marius goes. By himself. Into the Kehjistan wilderness. After Diablo, again.
Scene missing.
Music-Kurast
I like these cinematics. There was definitely a lot of production quality put into them and they still look great even remastered in Resurrected. My issue is my opener for this update: you're saying we're going to the jungle, of Mephisto. I only see Baal pulling a prank on me. It's significant, it's important, but we're not opening up Act 3 with a shot of Kurast, unlike the shot of Lut Gholein. It's just Marius is gonna run east, to somewhere we don't have the time nor money to showcase in cutting edge 3D animations.
My name is Hratli. I am a sorcerer skilled in metal work. It'd be a pleasure to help you... I don't have many customers these days.
As you can see, the populace has been brutally decimated by the forces of Mephisto. The canals run red with blood and demons roam the land.
The wretched jungle-hell has already reclaimed much of Kurast. The only safety you'll find is here at the dockside, where a magical warding holds the jungle evils at bay... but I don't know how long it will last.
To make matters worse, the Children of Zakarum are in league with the forces of Mephisto. The Zakarum have concentrated their power in the Temple City of Travincal, located within Kurast deep in the jungle wilderness.
It's true... Their zeal is unmatched. But I say the so-called 'Warriors of Light' are nothing more than the twisted puppets of a hidden hand.
Which is why if they wanted to make a better remaster of Diablo II they would've put in a fucking shot of Marius arriving at Kurast and stumbling around like a methhead into the jungle, despite every mortal telling him that'll get him killed. They even got new voice acting done for Resurrected. There's plenty of ways to take this story and make it better. They didn't need to stay faithful. Who the fuck would argue if they did it right? I know I am implying they can even do something like that right without fucking it up, but I'm still gonna make fun of them for thinking not touching the story is the best course of action.
But by all that's still holy, I wish I'd never returned to this accursed place. This fetid jungle can't be the fair Kurast I left behind.
I don't know what all this evil is, my friend, but it's obvious that you must stop it. I only pray that you can before the jungle consumes the last vestiges of my beloved homeland.
Anyway, welcome to Kurast. It's a shithole.
At some point it was the magic capital of Sanctuary, teeming with many different factions of mages and effectively being the birthplace of wizardry, that spread all across Sanctuary. Nowadays, after operation "Let's plant some evil seeds in our world.", it is now 50% jungle and 50% ruin. I left 0% for the mortals still clinging to what remains of their settlement? Maybe I did.
He was once a great mage, but now lives like a rat in a sinking vessel. You have questions for Ormus and doubt in yourself. Ormus sees a strange dichotomy in you... as he does in all would-be heroes.
Speak to him and he may grant you wisdom in turn. Or turn from him and seek wisdom in thyself.
Before I discuss the gameplay of Act 3, I'll admit, I love the Kurast Docks. I love that we're definitely approaching the parts of Sanctuary that is more Hell than Sanctuary. Once upon a time seafarers would go from Lut Gholein to Kurast to continue the line of commerce, but nowadays it's pretty easy to conclude that now that road ends at Lut Gholein, and this entire eastern continent is cut off from the other. We're not even in a remotely secure place anymore. The docks is only secure because of wards being placed to keep the rest of the jungle out.
So much to my disappointment, a lot of the lines in this Act barely address Vanir's place in this fallen civilization. You know what dialogue is different from the townsfolk walking in here as a Paladin? Just Ormus's, and he adds 2 words to his intro: "Good Paladin".
My name's Asheara, and I lead the mercenary band of mages known as the Iron Wolves. We've been hunting down demons in the jungle for months, but no matter how many of them we kill, they just keep comin'. Seems this whole place has been overrun by evil.
Rumor has it that you've come here to help. If that's true, then I'll let you hire some of my mercenaries.
But be careful... If you piss them off, they can be worse than those monsters out in the jungle.
Here, the mercenary outfits have more going on for them than Vanir does for returning to the birthplace of his religion. Which allows me to pause dunking on the missed opportunities and talk about our shiny new mercenary hire.
Which I don't hire across all 7 characters. There's a couple reasons for this.
(Resurrected portrait included here for posterity.)
Iron Wolves, in basegame, are our source of secondary elemental damage. Each of them have a subclass that mimics one of the trees of Sorceress: fire, cold, or lightning. Fire wolves use Fireball (fire projectile with aoe blast) and Inferno. (flamethrower) Cold wolves use Frozen Armor (Extra defense buff + freeze melee hitters) and either Glacial Spike (freezing cold projectile with aoe) or Ice Blast. (...freezing cold projectile without aoe) Finally lightning wolves use Charged Bolt (arc of erratic sparks) and Lightning. (piercing lightning projectile)
The first reason why I have never hired these mercenaries is definitely, at the moment, my other options for Mercenaries are already giving me benefits and being effective secondary sources of damage. Iron Wolves have, uhh, many issues. You give them swords and shields. They're casters. They hardly if ever use melee, so you need to give them...oh wait you can't just give them wands or staves to boost their skills. They require, lategame, blanket +skills, because swords aren't gonna roll +skills to specifically Sorceress skills.
Second, hirelings are normally bottlenecked by the weapons you give them: something you can control. Iron Wolves are bottlenecked by their skill levels, which is pretty low, and something you really can't control. Your best bet is stacking cast speed instead. But then there's also, despite being called Iron Wolves and being able to equip a shield in addition to armor and a helmet, they're squishier than Rogue Scouts! You think that's funny. What if I told you that they can't block, despite wearing a shield!?
This is why Iron Wolves are bottom tier normally. Being the squishiest hireling, giving no benefits to you or anyone else, and being harder to outfit to their strengths, most people never use them. It can be inticing to have a source of elemental damage but they're seriously starved for damage boosts. They fall off hard. You are hardpressed to help them. They belong in that trashcan.
So, it's up to our mods to fix this. Resurgence makes just one change: give them an aura that lowers the relevant resist of nearby enemies. It doesn't solve their problems, but, you get to deal extra damage of that element. Not a whole lot mind you but every little bit helps. That can be enticing enough for certain builds that focus on a single element, and with Resurgence doing away with immunities, I can see them having a place, just, not being a default goto option, still. You sure won't see me using one in place of Arty's Rogue anytime soon, what with me just, giving the Withersting to her when I get an upgrade and now she's applying Lower Resist to help me out.
Every subclass has their own aura, and Iron Wolves gain either Cleansing, (less poison/curse duration) Prayer, (increased life regen and lifegain on hit) or Holy Shock. (Holy Fire but lightning. Notable for dealing much more damage than Holy Fire.) All solid picks, except for Holy Shock because, remember, they hardly ever melee so they hardly ever benefit from the added lightning damage to weapon, and PD2 nerfed the hell out of the damage pings each holy element aura does. So instead they trade one of their spells for massively upgraded damage and better spells: Meteor for fire, Blizzard for cold, and Static Field for lightning. All of these are normally top-tier picks for Sorceresses, and they'll also sport the damage amplifying Mastery skills from Sorcs, meaning they can actually fulfill their role as magic dps now. They still have all the other issues, but they can compete now and aren't as squishy anymore. (still the squishiest though)
Why do you ask me about data I have to look up archive.org for and hope and pray it's current? But each Wolf has their own Protection from X Element aura, and more varied spells to sling. Their damage buff is they are not limited to just one element. (Though some are more free than others.) The Protection auras are noteworthy because they all grant elemental damage boosts and percentage elemental absorb instead of resistance, (which is much better than just resistance) and the Protection from Cold aura, specifically, makes you and your other minions chill and freeze immune, for free. Lightning Wolves however have Static Field and a very powerful new spell to use in their laundry list: Time Stop. It is effectively a screen-wide, mass freeze of every monster. Though those chill resistant/immune will resist it as normal, it will turn plenty of monsters into sitting ducks. ...All this and they still have all the issues of Iron Wolves. But hey, they are interesting supports.
Iron Wolves are, as a matter of fact, Iron Wolves now. They still can't block (I mean can you even???) but they have passives that stack Defense and stack Spell Focus to amplify their spell damage and actually dodge stuff. Bloodmages are a combo of fire damage and healing. Necrolytes, aren't summoners, but they run poison and cold damage. Abjurers use lightning and throw rocks which break into more lightning. Since they're all capable of wearing Crystal Swords and Sorceress armor and those can roll elemental damage boosts, it's also easier to gear them. Really with how much MXL has changed Rogues and Desert Guards, I'm surprised the original shtick of Iron Wolves is mostly intact and embraced. They just do the same MXL gratuity as everyone else.
Exhale. I'm done with this act's mercenary. Don't worry, there's only one more merc past this.
I am Alkor, the Alchemist. I dabble in potions and salves, and I can sell you some if you really need them.
But don't make a habit of coming here. I don't like to be disturbed while I'm studying!
This does mean I get to go back to what could've been. I know the reason why the game is starting to struggle to worldbuild, but I don't think this was ever a good approach in the first place. Some class-specific intros have more effort put into them than others. Some are just 
.
My name is Natalya. I am a hunter of Evil, part of an ancient Order sworn to hunt down corrupted sorcerers.
If I could, I would gladly join your quest to stop the Three. But I must wait here for further news. I can't predict what will happen, but the danger is greater than we can know.
Until I receive my orders, I'll assist you with the information I have.
For example, this NPC. Here's our teaser for Assassins before Lord of Destruction ever came out. Do you know which class she has a specific intro for? Correct. No one. I would have more to say about her, but, I can just point at our Assassin: Chloe Nightmoon.
Certainly, this must be Mephisto's work! You'd best get going, my friend. Diablo and Baal are still out there and you must find them.
You may have noticed a lot of NPC chatter already and you're already starting to raise your hand, but my issue is not with the setting. I didn't need the dialogue to establish the mood. It already did that with its captivating aesthetics and leadup into what we're doing now.
Early on I highlighted that the memorable characters of Diablo II begins with Diablo and ends with Deckard Cain. Tyrael's in there somewhere as well, but that's it. You can see the attempts to build other characters, to give personality to everyone like they did with Tristram, but it's just not there. Heck one can argue that it wasn't there in Tristram either and what people will remember is what they remember with Cain: catchphrases. "Stay a while and listen," has been repeated more times than can be properly comprehended by modern culture.
Well that's all the NPCs of the act. Do you know what's missing?
That's right: a quest.
There isn't one to start with. If you've been requiring the game lead you by the nose to make progress, you're out of luck. You're gonna have to swallow your fear and take matters into your own hands, because Act III has no quest to signpost you on where to go. You are going into the jungle.
Music-Jungle
And you're getting l-wait, is that who I think it is?
IT IS! WE FOUND HIM LADS! 
Hey. Hey Dark Wanderer hey. Hey. Gimme your autograph hey. Hey hey, hey have you seen Marius I wanna point at him hey do you know of other cool dudes as well i heard you're well liked by many people hey.
He-HEY! That's not nice! 
My whimsy aside, this is funny. Dark Wanderer has a chance to just walk into the water and stand there for a bit before deciding to go poof and prank you at the same time. You know what else you can do with the Dark Wanderer?
Ignore him.
And if you come back, he's still there. Still expecting you to interact with him. You can still run by him. It doesn't change anything.
As much as I would like to call my primary quest complete and go home, an old nerd is telling me to kill a demon. I can't get him to leave otherwise.
Which means we must now confront Act III in earnest.
Ah yes, just like that Guns N' Roses song: welcome to the jungle. It fucking sucks.
Hope you like Fetishes because now they're everywhere and you'll be swarmed by them on the regular the entire time you're in the jungle. Also because we're in their realm, there's new ones!
Fetish Blowdart | CR: **
==Shoots darts
You would think these fast annoying gnats getting a ranged attack would be a nightmare, but they do hilariously low damage and they're still just as frail. They're more an utter annoyance than anything.
Oh but also new friend over here.
Thorned Hulk | CR: **
==Uses Frenzy.
It's our Wendigo standin for the Act. They have all the issues of Wendigos, but, they are capable of patching up some of those issues if they get a hit off, which will activate Frenzy. It's a Barbarian skill that, upon hitting something, shoots their move and attack speed up, making them considerably dangerous. There's just some problems: they're very slow to move and attack until they do that, by which point, you'll probably hit them first and take them down in a few hits...or you can just shoot them. They aren't as dangerous as they sound.
Oh but there's another addition as well.
Giant Mosquito | CR: **
==Fast
==Drains Stamina
==Poisons on hit
==Slow to attack
Have you heard of "moves very fast but you can just walk away from" before? That's right, it's the Saber Cat standin. Their stamina drain however can really lop off your stamina later on, meaning you have to dredge through the jungle even slower. The poison damage is very lackluster to the point where I wondered if I should even comment on it, because it's 3-6 over 8 seconds, while the attack itself is 7-17 physical damage.
So yeah. The jungle. The Spider Forest is the first section of it, and it follows an understandable but incomprehensible formula for map generation: it's all rivers. You're going to be going down river lines and constantly hopping from riverside to riverside to find forward progress. The game unapologetically turns this into a maze, with most paths along the rivers being deadends you have to backtrack from.
But wait, who's that peeking out of the corner of this screenshot?
Why, it's a shaman! But for Fetishes.
Fetish Shaman | CR: *****
==Can revive dead Fetishes
==Doesn't Attack
==Leaves a Fetish on death
==Casts Speed Aura, Inferno
The aura specifically is actually just a buff to boost the attack speed of affected Fetishes. I don't care about that, or their ability to raise Fetishes...which is really hard for me to notice.
It's Inferno. Have no fire resist?
This is what happens.
Here's another thing that by all accounts should not do this much damage but they never bothered to nerf. You've been thinking fire resist isn't a concern right now? Well now it is. Get dunked. Inferno obliterates life because the listed value for Fetish Shaman is they'll do 90-97 fire damage with it. Your Inferno lists this number as damage per second. I'm pretty sure theirs does not. That's damage per tick of the Inferno hitting you, which is something like every other frame. I do not know the exact number. I just know it's too much. This will come out of left field and at bare minimum almost kill you. You'll find other sources of fire later in the act that are insultingly tame compared to this. This was never fixed in patches 1.14d and earlier. Meleeing these sure is fun as a result.
So fear for your life here! There's this shitty shaman that can just kill you.
It doesn't end there. I'm pulling up the map in this screenshot to illustrate how Act 3's jungle shakes you: the river's a maze, and to find progress you'll have to duck into these areas beside the river. Sometimes they are on the opposite side and you have to backtrack, and because they're on the opposite side you can just miss them completely because you were going along the wrong side of the river so they won't show up on your map. Furthermore, some of these areas just have nothing.
Spider Forest in particular has two areas we need. Okay, well, one we need, but I'll take any waypoint to speed up going through the jungle because it's massive. One of them's the waypoint but also a side dungeon that, because you have no quests and no directions, you're going into on the first go and just doing an optional dungeon instead of progress.
That side dungeon is literally the same as this one, down to the theme of spiders.
Music-Spider
You can also just miss this or the waypoint or both and blunder into the next area. With no signposts to get you to not miss these, that means you'll have to backtrack to the Spider Cavern later because the gold chest has a macguffin inside.
I want to say there's something to the Spider Cavern, but there isn't. That's what happens when all of the monsters are recolors: Sand Maggots, Giant Spiders, and Bat Demons are all here. None of them I've noted as dangerous and they won't really stop you. I guess I have a notable difficulty parsing walls here? If it's any consolation, what's interesting about this place is it's one floor, the floor's relatively small compared to others, and you don't have to look far for the chest.
It's guarded though. ...Except with the way the Spider Cavern is, you can very well just open the chest, grab this eye, and book it before it ever notices you. That happened with Arty, which is why Vanir's here instead.
Sszark the Burning | CR: **
==Superunique
==Extra Strong
==Cursed
==May flee at low health, leaving webs as it moves
Okay I want to illustrate a previous point I made:
Do you think they're hostile? I guess if I throw my face directly into them they might attack me, but come on. Monsters in Diablo II are dangerous because they come in groups and can swarm you down. When a monster doesn't do that last part, they become very easy to handle.
But shoutouts to Median XL for taking this superunique and giving him yes amounts of fire damage and a spell to leave yes damaging fire ground.
It took me too long to read the screen and I die to this. This is highlighting a problem in Median XL I've been ignoring: the game is starting to throw high elemental damage at us. We are needing to cap resists.
At this point, we should have a good stock of gems, resist runes, and the sockets to put them in. At this point, this is how you get the resistances you want, and right now we are going to need to cap fire resist, followed by cold and lightning, but definitely fire for this act. With unsocketing being as easy as buying a crafting ingredient and getting everything socketed back, this is what we should be doing.
This is what I don't do with both Chloe and Jane. I just slam my face into this problem because I think it's working.
It takes me until next act to finally get off my ass and insert stuff into my gear to stop getting pounded by elites.
I'm good at this game.
For Chloe, killing Sszark drops this curious gold item.
Hm, a jade statue. What should I do with it?
It does, nothing. But, it starts our very first quest. Quick, wiggle this thing in front of our bookworm to scan it.
Music-Kurast
The value of this ancient artifact is....nothing. It's art. If Cain says nothing about it then it's probably worthless.
Of course, one man's trash...
...gets us another man's trash. Let's look this up on cain.com.
If I remember correctly, his ashes were ensconced within a golden statuette. It was a very strange tale.
Slightly less worthless. However, Cain doesn't know crap about what to DO with it. There isn't a big mystery here. The quest will tell you to throw it at Alkor. I don't even know why Hratli has a gossip option for this when it's literally, "You want Alkor for this." It's honestly such a waste of time Natalya thinks it's funny.
Well I'm about to show her by completing a quest.
Finally, some headway. Alkor is gonna take a dead man's ashes and make something for us.
This quest is bizarre. The jade figurine for starters can drop from any single unique in the Act. It can be that spider, it can be some random Fetish, it can be near the end of the Act, but it's typically very early on. There's also a fair bit of gossip behind it and talking about Koolaid Ku Y'leh. Who the fuck is Ku Y'leh? Someone who wanted to be immortal. As you can see from this golden bird, he is not.
It's such a lackluster concept that it's actually a conversation piece that builds character with the NPCs. Have we perhaps found the secret sauce to writing better characters? Shame that, with the bird, we threw the chance at really characterbuilding away. Shame I keep on forgetting that there's quest dialog and they actually bothered to write reactions to our bird jockey quest.
And shame that, by the time I have explained this, it's ready. You don't have to wait. I just like flipping an hourglass around a bit.
Our reward is...
this potion. You know, 20 free life? It's something. It's not, skill points, it's not an imbue, but it's useful.
...Okay I can't lie this is what the quests are like in Act 3 and I don't like them on a personal level.
I'm sick of this jungle already. Time for a break.
Next time: Now that we successfully wasted time, Cain yells at us about demons again.