Welcome to a concrete world of Diablo strategy!

Yet more about Diablo, a game that's been around since late 1996 and is covered by literally hundreds of web sites? Well, apart from the fact that I wanted to learn HTML and would have done a page anyway, most Diablo related pages don't really offer any information on strategy and tactics, and aren't very useful if you want to acquire a deeper understanding of the game. In fact, most of them more or less only have cheat downloads - to give it to you straight, that's something you will not find here. Instead, I put some useful strategy guides up, all of them written by well-known Diablo and Battle.net experts.

concre+e (webmaster), 1999

Now that Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction, the expansion pack, are out...

...few people still play Classic Diablo, even fewer play it "as is" and not as a mod of some kind, and many people come to this site through search engines or links hoping to find some Diablo 2 infos here. Sorry. This site is just for Classic Diablo. Do not despair though: Check the links section, I know what's good for ya in D2, trust me ;)

However, some folks started playing Diablo because of Diablo II. Welcome! Have fun, develop strategies and maybe learn why many things are as they are in the sequel - many of D2's features go back to Classic Diablo. And, in many aspects - not all, mind you - I believe Diablo I is the better game. I am aware that this has a lot to do with the personal circumstances though.

concre+e, 2001

That said,...

...some infrequently asked questions:

• Why this site is called concrete Diablo pages:
  
  That's because concre+e is the name of a Warrior character I played with on Battle.net. So it's the name a part of the online community knows me with, and the name I'm using here as webmaster.
  
  
• Where is the download section for cheats, hacks, trainers etc?
  
  There is none. We're talking about an online game here, that means global interaction - if anyone wants to cheat, go ahead, but don't do it playing Diablo on Battle.net. At least there, only use legit characters. Cheating at online games ruins the idea of having fun together and playing cooperatively and comparing skills and wits in a fair match. It will not only ruin the game for others, but eventually for the cheater as well. Good players don't need to cheat, and no one has to cheat to become a good player. Learn to play well, then you're guaranteed to have fun with Diablo for a long time. All you need is some good advice and an idea of strategy and tactics: for that, you've come to the right place :)
  
  
• How old is this site?
  
  Um.. I just wanted to squeeze in a "how" question, anyways: I started in August 1998 with Bolty's High Level Warrior Guide. He had just posted it on the Diablo Strategy Forum as plain text, and I was experimenting with a home page. So I asked him if I could 'HTML it' and use it here and he said yes, though Flux of diabloii.net had asked him the same thing just a couple of days earlier. Bolty had agreed as well, making diabloii.net the "official" home of his guide then. I had my version up before diabloii.net went online though, making it the first HTML'ed version on the WWW. The same holds true for all other guides on this site, as far a I know.
  Some months later, Bolty started his own site, called "BDSC - Bolty's Diablo Strategy Central", and of course he did his own version of his guide there. More and more regulars retired from Blizzard's Diablo Strategy Forum at that time, and only came back for an occasional post and a quick read, thus being called 'lurkers'. One of them (besides Bolty himself and yours truly) was Van_Damned who signed his few posts as "Lurker Lounge Lizard" (or "LLL"). Pretty soon, Bolty used that as a name for his site, and unlike me, he played D2 when it came out and kept building his site... the Lurker Lounge !
  
  
• When will you stop rambling and where's the beef?
  
  Right now and right here. These are the strategy guides and articles I have on my site. I picked them because of their quality - they're helpful, well written, and fast loading (I hope)!