Diablo 2 Resurrected: Difficulty levels Diablo 2 Resurrected guide, tips

Last update: 27 August 2021

On this page of the Diablo 2 Resurrected guide, you'll learn about the difficulty levels available in the game, the differences between them, and their unlocking requirements.

• Basic difficulty info
• Nightmare difficulty
• Hell difficulty

Basic difficulty info

There are three difficulty levels available: Normal, Nightmare, Hell. To unlock a new difficulty level you must finish the game on the previous one by defeating the final boss - Baal - in Act 5.

After finishing the game on one of the difficulty levels you can start the game over on the higher one with your current character and all of your items. The enemy levels scale to your character's.

Nightmare difficulty

The Nightmare difficulty introduces following modifications:

1. Some of the explorable areas become larger.
2. If you die on the Nightmare difficulty you lose 5% of your current experience; you can regain 75% of lost points if you find your corpse.
3. The enemies are stronger: they have more health, more defense and deal more damage. Usually they also have higher elemental resistance.
4. The resistances of your character, hired mercenaries and summoned creatures are lowered by 40 points.
5. Health / Mana Drain properties on skills / items are only half as strong.
6. Mercenaries and summoned creatures deal only 35% of their usual damage to story bosses (bosses encountered at the end of an Act - on Normal, they deal 50%).
7. Status effects that slow down enemies, like Chill or Freeze, have their duration halved, decreasing their effectiveness.
8. One of the Sorceress Spells, Static Field is less effective (won't reduce enemy HP below 33%).
9. You can encounter additional enemies in Act 5.

Hell difficulty

The Hell difficulty features the same handicaps as Nightmare difficulty but makes them even more significant.

1. Some of the explorable areas become larger.
2. If you die on the Hell difficulty you lose 10% of your current experience; you can regain 75% of lost points if you find your corpse.
3. The enemies become even stronger (level, resistances). Additionally, almost every monster gains complete immunity to at least one element.
4. The resistances of your character, hired mercenaries and summoned creatures are lowered by another 60 points (100 points in total).
5. Health / Mana Drain properties on skills / items are only quarter as strong.
6. Mercenaries and summoned creatures deal only 25% of their usual damage to story bosses (bosses encountered at the end of an act).
7. Status effects that slow down enemies, like Chill or Freeze, have their duration reduced by 3/4, decreasing their effectiveness.
8. One of the Sorceress Spells, Static Field is less effective (won't reduce enemy HP below 50%).
9. You can encounter additional enemies in Act 5.