Yeah, I hope you keep at it. If you are fighting blood knights it shouldn’t take too long now.

Either way I recommend Carbot’s Diablo 1 cartoons for everyone new or old to the game: https://youtu.be/Odi5iR9Ni50?si=i7LIEWEwzN73foZN

I’d say you can try the Witcher 3. It’s story rich so could be interesting to just watch too. Lots of violence though, but most of it is quite cartoonish imho so maybe it’s still okay.

I think Diablo 1 is much more punishing than Diablo 2. I don’t think you can get away with not chugging potions. The sorceror is even worse than the warrior because he’s completely dependent on mana. So until you get the mana shield spell you’ll need to have both mana and healing potions ready on him.

The best you can do is try to get as high resistance and armour values as you can so you don’t take as much damage when you get hit.

For example, if you find a high lightning res ring that you don’t have much use for now you might want to keep it and put it on when on a later level has enemies dealing lightning damage. Stuff like that.

For ARPGs if you feel burnt by Diablo IV, I can recommend Path of Exile. Arguably the king of the genre today.

Others mentioned Grim Dawn, which has a bit slower gameplay, but a good choice nonetheless.

If you’re looking for indie ARPG, then there’s Chronicon. Nice little game that I really want to go back to again.

Exactly true with it not being a primary hobby for most people who game.

When I was a kid gaming wasn’t as widely considered as an acceptable hobby in general, but as a kid you just didn’t care what grown ups thought (games make people violent anybody?). By the time I hit university, people got shamed for it by non-gamer peers and I did a computer science degree too so it wasn’t a group of non-tech people who did the shaming either. By my early twenties I learned not to talk about it and just mention gaming as a hobby if asked and never elaborate further…

Good for you if that’s your experience, but I cannot say the same. The difference I found is with the way those people ignore arguments and insult you.

I can talk to a person from a technical field and come out of that conversation feeling like shit because I was called all kinds of stupid indirectly.

In the last few years I started actively trying to stop myself from thinking about company code (and other work stuff too) when I’m not at work. You know, work life balance and all that. Did wonders to my mental health.