Pretty much title im new so I wanted to know what the differences are.
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Online allows you to play with other people and has two distinct modes, non-ladder and ladder. Ladder is a competition to be the first to reach level 99 (most play it for a fresh trading economy rather than the race though) and is slated to last 4 months in D2R after which it will reset.
Online also currently has exclusive content that offline currently doesn’t have. These features are Terror Zones (available to both non-ladder and ladder) and sunder charms (ladder only).
Offline is local single player (SP for short) where you can’t play with other players. In original D2 you could by using the included LAN functionality (TCP/IP) but this was unfortunately removed from D2R before launch.
In SP you can use the “/players x” command (replacing x with any number from 1-8) to simulate a higher player count meaning monsters will have more life, more damage and more attack rating but they will also give more experience and a greater chance to drop loot when killed (only on odd increments like p3, p5, and p7 and it doesn’t affect monsters that are guaranteed to have a drop [uniques and superuniques]).
SP also has the benefit of static maps (online maps are not permanent, it will always be random between games) which means you can target farm things more efficiently because you don’t have to explore the map each time.
If you’re on PC you can also use mods in SP, as I mentioned above because they removed LAN functionality from D2R there is no way to play mods with other people (currently/officially anyways).
Also note that offline isn’t completely offline, D2R has DRM that requires you to log in with a Bnet account (requires internet) every 30 days to verify you own the game, then you can play those 30 days without an internet connection until it comes time to verify again.
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Ty for the indepth reply but I have some questions. What are Terror Zones? And I plan on playing a Shapeshifting druid so when it comes to loot how many “players” should I have so its not too hard but also gives good XP/Loot? And what type of mods are there? And would you recommend any for a new player? or is it for more experienced players?
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Good questions. Terror Zones are a new feature that were added in patch 2.5 around 3 months ago, since you’re new I wouldn’t worry about them just yet since you’ll probably want to get a feel for the basic game and its mechanics first.
If you want to look at the patch notes for them you can find them here, but it might not really make any sense to you and that’s okay. I would’t worry about them.
As for the player count, that’s up to your discretion. If you feel you’re killing monsters too easily you can bump up the “difficulty” so to speak and get some more experience and loot. If it starts getting too tough then you can lower it as needed. Personally when I start a new character I like to run on p7 or p8, but p3 is a pretty good baseline I think. Play around with it, see what feels good to you.
For mods there’s all kinds of them, visual mods, quality of life (bigger stash, bigger inventory, etc.) mods, difficulty mods, randomizers, complete overhauls, etc. You can find them on Nexus Mods, there might be another place that also has mods but I can’t recall at the moment.
For a new player I’d suggest to stick with vanilla D2R until you build a solid understanding of the game mechanics, a lot of mods depend on the player already knowing how the base game works.
That reminds me, another difference of online vs offline is that online is limited to 20 characters per account, offline can make infinite characters (on PC only, consoles are limited to 30 offline characters). You can make “mule” characters to store items by using the shared stash to transfer items to them.
For single player you can also use a program called GoMule to stash items but it’d probably be quite confusing for a new player, I’d stick with character mules until you get more comfortable with the game then maybe you can try using it.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do decide to try offline be sure to back up your characters on a regular basis, you can find your D2R save files in C:\Users\your username\Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected, I’d recommend backing them up to a separate drive if you have one and it’d be really nice if you could do occasional backups to a cloud service like Google Drive.
D2R has a nasty bug where if you have a hard computer crash (power outage/surge, holding down the power button, etc.) while you’re ingame with a character then it will corrupt that character and also your shared stash making them unrecoverable. The only option is to restore a backup save.
I try to back up every day if I can, sometimes I get lazy and go a few days between.
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okay and im not super tech savvy. How do i back up files? Just make a copy and put it in a new folder on a differnet drive? that it?
Yep, it doesn’t have to be a new drive but it’s just for a bit more safety. You only need to back up the files that have the .d2s (Diablo 2 Save) and .d2i (Diablo 2 Item) file extensions, those are your character files and shared stash files respectively. It doesn’t hurt to copy the other files though.
So for a quick example let’s say you have your character named Jasem and you put a sword into your shared stash. To back up your files you’d go to C:\Users\your username\Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected and find Jasem.d2s and SharedStashSoftCore.d2i or SharedStashHardCore.d2i (depending if you make a softcore or hardcore character), then you can copy them to another location.
You can even make a back up folder right in the same spot like this: C:\Users\your username\Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected\Backups and copy them to the Backups folder. That would be a simple and fast setup that would provide a good safety net.
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To add to what DarkMaster listed, offline also gives you the option of enabling unlimited respecs. If you assign points to your character and you make a mistake… or you want to experiment with a build… you can reset them and re-allocate them as many times as you want.
You can’t do that if you play online. You have to farm for materials to craft a respec… which is easier said than done if your character isn’t good enough to kill the monsters needed to get the materials. Or you can buy one.
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I see thank you then. Doesnt seem too complex.
So would i type /respec in chat to respec or how does that work?
In the base game you get a respec from completing a quest in Act 1, there’s 3 difficulties (think of New Game+ basically where you continue the same character and do the same quests but with the same gear and stronger enemies) where you can do the quest 3 times, once per difficulty.
Much later in the game once you’ve reached the end of the third and final difficulty then you can create tokens that allow you to respec, but it requires materials from the Act bosses.
What SirEyck is talking about is the -enablerespec target line launch parameter which allows you to respec as many times as you want by holding Alt and left clicking one of the attribute buttons in your character screen (e.g. the red + button where you add strength/dexterity/etc.).
Where you add this parameter depends on how you launch D2R, if you launch it from the Bnet launcher then you’ll need to find the little gear/cog that’s next to the play button to go to your options, then go to Game Settings and check the box that says Additional command line arguments, then add -enablerespec to the text box that appears.
If you launch D2R directly from the executable then you will need to right click the shortcut you use and find the Target: box, then add -enablerespec to the end of it. In my case it would look like this:
Target: "H:\Games\Diablo II Resurrected\D2R.exe" -enablerespec
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/900949574095634512/1061531381039120474/image.png
Here’s an attached image, it’s cut off at the end but I think you get the idea. 
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Okay so ive hit lvl 6 and wanted to make a backup. I found the Jasem.d2s and sharedstashsoftcore.d2i . Is there anything else I need or just those 2? Im seeing Jasem.key, Jasem.ctl, Jasem.ma0, Jasem.map, etc. Should i save those too? Or just the things that end in .d2s and d2i?
.d2s and .d2i are the main two types but it’s fine to copy the others too. The .key files are your hotkeys, .ctl is for controller hotkeys, .ma and .ma0 are for your discovered automap (for example if you delete these then your automap would be “undiscovered” again).
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Ty man I really appreciate it!
Just want to say thank you very much for the well thought out, detailed answers to OP’s questions. I am new as well, and this thread was immensely helpful.
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Since that thread…fyi…Terror Zones are available in Single Player. Not sure what else is available and what remains exclusive to ladder.
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Glad it helped. 
Currently in 2.6 single player has access to everything that ladder does.