It’s totally possible to play Diablo 2 as a pacifist, even if it’s not easy to do so. Speedrun enthusiast DrCliche decided to take his pacifist playthrough to another level by playing the game as fast as possible without attacking a single enemy.
The whole playthrough archive, streamed live first on Twitch, is on YouTube in its full seven-plus-hour glory. It takes DrCliche seven hours, 41 minutes exactly to finish Diablo 2’s Lord of Destruction expansion on normal difficulty, with the added challenge of never intentionally killing a soul.
There’s a catch, of course, as DrCliche explains in a detailed guide to the pacifist run. He equipped his character with thorn-covered armor, so that any time an enemy hit him, his gear would just hit them right back. Based on DrCliche’s defined set of rules, that didn’t count as a kill; as long as he never took any intentional aggressive actions, he was in the clear.
There’s one enemy that nearly threw the whole run into peril. One of the big bads in the game’s fourth act is Lord De Seis, who’s both unskippable and only has ranged or elemental attacks, alongside some major healing powers. That made for some difficult pacifistic play.
“But De Seis's elemental attacks do proc Chilling Armor, and at level 30, with Cold Mastery, 6 points in Chilling Armor, and a +2 staff, you do damage quickly and consistently enough to keep Lord de Seis from ever casting Bestow,” DrCliche explained.
Sounds anxiety-inducing, if you ask us. Start watching the full run above to judge for yourself, or check out DrCliche’s guide on Reddit to figure out how to recreate your own pacifistic speedrun through Diablo 2.