You can equip them with weapons and armor, they gain experience, and you can heal them. Now, in LOD, they're like pseudo-characters. Before, when you won or purchased a hireling, their pitiful armament and tendency to get caught by hordes of attackers made them nothing more than really expensive bait. However, when all is said and done, the most significant change has been to how Diablo II handles hirelings. Plus, it gives you two more slots to store equipment. With it, characters can equip for various situations, whether you need to switch from a defensive sword-shield combo to two-handed all out offense or from short range to long-range, you can now swap with the touch of a hot key, where before you had to run away to re-equip. In addition to the stash, the ability to swap between weapons will quickly be appreciated. Now, instead of it being something like a medieval version of a dorm closet, your chest is capable of acting as a real cache, capable of fully outfitting your character with new weapons, potions, charms and the like when you die, which is very nice. It seems minor, but any experienced campaigner has experienced the agony of throwing perfectly good jewels and helms away. My favorite so far has been the increased character stash - it's twice the old size, enabling you to stash a lot more items than you used to. There are around 20 or so additions - ranging from the "Repair All" button at the smithies to new Horadric Cube recipies - but I'll concentrate on the big four: the new stash, weapons swapping, hirelings, and new items. So, as a fan and a critic, I have to say the Lord of Destruction is really good - Blizzard really revised, tweaked, and added features that will make it a "must buy" for any fan, but there are some serious caveats (actually, only one big one) that you need to be aware of before diving straight in.Ībout 80% of the improvements are gameplay oriented, and all of them are good. So this time around to spare Dan the hatemail, the EIC asked a guy who actually liked Diablo II to review the expansion pack. One of the more hostile moments in IGN PC's history has been Dan Adams's review of Diablo II - primarily because he's the sort of guy that believes that games should regularly use more than one mouse button.