Hi everyone, recently my friend brought up audio in Diablo 2 and how it causes lag in game and is a "known issue" in the community. He is convinced that running sound causes lag because the game has to work harder to load it in the more stuff that is happening in game. I wanted to find more answers but only have more questions.

I have seen the thread about speed running -ns and this causes overall load times to be faster but it doesn't delve into whether or not this affects other aspects of the game such as other audio present in game like sound effects for characters, spell effects, and enemies (notably cows).

For example, would running -ns cause running players 8 with a cow level/map with lots of spell effects to run faster or would it only affect the loading between portals, wps, and joining a game.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help shed some light on this topic!

I think there is a really strong case for sorc speedruns. I’ve been practicing 200fcr teleporting, as well as playing and watching others do sorc hell runs and there is certain In game lag that comes with Aggressive teleporting. Other spells and classes are pretty rare though... only other scenario I can really think of is aoeing massive groups of beetles.

Sound definitely lags the game. It's a common fix to use -ns to improve game performance. Saw a lot of people running -ns in Median XL, Path of Diablo and Project D2 to make the game run more smooth. Mods have a lot more animations flying around in maps and the improvements with -ns are very noticable in these mods.