Diablo: Hellfire

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Diablo: Hellfire is an expansion pack that Sierra On-Line (now known as Sierra Entertainment) produced for the computer game Diablo. It was released in 1997 and developed by Synergistic Software, a Sierra division. Image:Hellfire.jpg

Hellfire's storyline occurs as an aside to the main story arc of the original game. It concerns the powerful demon, Na-Krul. The expansion pack adds an additional monk class, two new dungeon tilesets, additional quests, several extra game items, noticeable buffing to Diablo, and a number of interface improvements.

Hellfire was considered a failure by many Diablo players. Such players would argue that:

The game's atmosphere was not as effective as the dark, gothic environments of the first.
Most monster designs were uninspired, and of little relevance to the source material of the first game (for example, a certain enemy in Hellfire resembles a leaping pumpkin with feet and glowing eyes).
The majority of the new spells were unimpressive, as they had a tendency to be simple modifications to existing spells (Firewall -> Lightning Wall), or unrealistic utility spells, such as Search and Warp.
Hellfire had no support for Battle.net, the online service utilized by Blizzard's online multiplayer games. This is arguably the most flawed aspect of the Hellfire expansion, given the impressive popularity of the first Diablo.
Frustrating pathing problems, especially pronounced in the Crypt levels, resulting in "dithering" behavior while trying to pursue ranged-attack monsters (e.g., liches).

The Hellfire storyline was ignored by Blizzard in Diablo II and neither Blizzard nor Sierra mentions Hellfire anywhere on their website.

Two* additional characters – the bard and the barbarian – can be enabled with a special text-file edit in your Hellfire installation directory if the player has patch 1.00. If the game has been patched to 1.01, one needs a modified .dll file as well. As test characters, these warriors have new skills & attributes, but do not have unique character graphics developed for them, appearing in-game as the rogue and the warrior, respectively.

Hellfire was the only official expansion pack released for Diablo.