This blog is for that tiny group of people that are using Diablo 2 as a vehicle for working with their Avatars in the Multiverse — the expanse of nearly infinite parallel worlds.
So what happens when your character dies and how do you deal with it? Here is one proposal.
When a character dies in hardcore diablo, you cannot use that character to log into a game. That means when the character dies, you cannot select the character from the account screen and you cannot enter a game. All assets, experience, waypoints, equipment, all everything is inaccessible. You cannot use that character.
Does this mean the character is dead in the parallel world?
First of all, the character you see is a sticky cursor, a projection into a non-existent middle realm that will allow overlap between this world and an avatar in a parallel world. The avatar extends a bubble of isness where there is nothing, you extend a bubble of isness where there is nothing. These bubbles of extension overlap allowing you and the avatar to be in “contact”. So the sticky cursor (as I mentioned at the start of this paragraph) is a component, a part of the bubble extension thrust into nothingness. That character is not the avatar.
So NO, the character is not dead in the parallel world. How can I be so sure? Because the character was never in the parallel world. It is just an extension into the interstitial non-existence between worlds — the intervening nothingness.
But, what about the avatar? Does this mean the avatar is dead in the parallel world?
In the parallel world the avatar is unborn, incarnated, and dead — all coexistent. People think of time as the sparkly flame of a dynamite fuse cord. One lights the fuse at the beginning, the flame travels the linear length of the fuse moving one direction never able to reverse. Time is not like that. Your experience of time might be like that. But, time itself is not like that.
The imposition of our relative understanding of time gathered in our limited experience of this world onto a different parallel world is beyond silly. There is no guarantee that the physics of this world and that are the same — they can be different. Heck, it’s possible for time to be running in a direction you would consider backward from your perspective. But, keep in mind, you have no perspective on a different parallel world. There is no facet you can look through, on, or at another parallel world. The parallel worlds are separate. There are no portholes through which to view another world. There are bubbles of extension into nothingness through which we interact with bubbles of extension from another world. But, that means you are looking into something you built. A cyber world created from mathematics and imagination standing on the fulcrum of a dream.
So, don’t worry too too much about whether or not the avatar in the parallel world is dead or not. Besides that is not your real question anyway. Your real question is probably something along the lines of: “oh sh*t, did I totally mess up that avatar’s life by my screwed up play in diablo?”
If it helps you to think you did, then sure you did.
If it helps you to think that you didn’t, then sure… you didn’t.
Bottom line, you have a job to do. So get on with your job. What, a job to do? What job? If you are part of that ultra small group of explorers that are using Diablo 2 as a means to explore the multiverse then you should by now have some partially formed answers to the question of “What job?” And, if you are not part of that group, then perhaps exploring the possibilities of answers could be part of your job.
So, as I was saying, you have a job to do. So get on with it.
Also don’t rush past the part about how you suddenly recognized that you did “mess up.” When you mess up, take that as a clue that something might need to be handled. You might need to change your tactics, work better with the group, assign skill points differently, play a little more defensively, grind more before heading in to fight Andariel, maybe even consider the possibility that not all of your habits developed in soft-core are suitable for hardcore play. Also, you might want to consider that perhaps it was just “one of those things.” You know the expression: “Shit happens.” Well, it does.
So how do you handle this death?
Here is one suggestion. Delete the slot for the character that just died, and remake the slot using the same name. This has one benefit of keeping you from filling up your account (8 slots only) with ashen cyber corpses from fallen characters. The other, more important, benefit of remaking the character slot is that it will allow you to create a new interstitial link with another avatar.
Think of each Diablo 2 account slot as representing an interstitial link into another world. Each one granting a link with an avatar.
If I remake an account slot with the same name will that link me to the same avatar?
Yes, no, all of the above, none of the above, and other. Each of these can be true and not true. Never mind what happens after a character death and account slot remake, what makes you think every time you log in to the same account slot you are accessing the exact same avatar.
If you have seen the two television series “Sliders” and “Quantum Leap” the following comments will make sense.
In Sliders the lead character was obsessed with getting back to the world he left. Every episode revolves around his attempts to find a worm hole that will lead him (and his friends) back to the exact world which he left at the beginning of the series — the one true world. Everything else was subservient to that.
In Quantum Leap the main character never really concerned himself with “which world was he in.” Rather, in each episode there was a task that needed to be accomplished. Not for his benefit, but for the benefit of someone or something else. He was like a cosmic janitor jumping from cellar to bathroom to furnace to trash bin to radiator to kitchen sink — fixing bits of creation according to a plan not of his making. He was a participant.