They say great ideas come in the shower. Well, David Brevik says so, at least.
Sometimes, they also come from playing Path of Exile and wishing Diablo II had just this one tiny QoL tweak.
Thanks to a Discord suggestion (and a bit of quick code magic from a valiant member of the modding community), now it does: hold or toggle Alt to show items, PoE-style.

This is the first in a series of short dev blog posts about the upcoming update to Diablo 2 Enhanced — sometimes known as Diablo 2 Enhanced Edition, mostly to those who are here since the beginning.
Thanks for your continued interest and support!

In this Alpha T-6 update, the work continues: make the game feel the way you remember it feeling. Or maybe even very slightly better.

I'm not trying to resurrect Diablo here. Diablo is alive and well, always been.

A major part of what I personally do for the project is user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) work. Some of my changes are very noticeable, at least until you get used to them.
Others will just make your time smoother, faster, and a little more magical — without you even realizing why 

Much to the dismay of hardcore Diablo II purists, my UI changes are radical and often even gameplay-altering — but I see them as obvious, natural evolution of the original Diablo II designs.
As you may already know, unlike Diablo II Resurrected which kept the same dated 2000s UI layouts while establishing a completely new art style, I focus on extending and enhancing the original Blizzard North vision.

The character statistics panel serves as an extreme example. Diablo II's old layout showed barely any stats, solely due to the technological constraints of the 640x480 era.
My redesign aims to rectify that and display all stats that the players may want to know. Many of us D2 players sure do love knowing detailed stats when playing the game.

200000 stats are ready, with a million more well on the way.

Diablo II UI is not just my canvas — it's also my paint and brushes 
The secret sauce is that I work directly with existing game assets, thus my absolutely mediocre skills in what some would call photo manipulation and matte painting techniques allow me to craft a nice interface.
I hear that it feels almost like it was made by Blizzard North — just with a higher screen resolution than was available in 2000.

The inner archaeologist in me likes to think of it like this:
I collect the scattered pieces of pottery made by an ancient people, carefully piecing them together, and letting them shine again as if in a museum —
rather than just making a new clay pot like the Resurrected team masterfully did 

The occult scribbles on the Quest Log (currently purely cosmetic) world map come from the Diablo II manual.

As you traverse the world of Sanctuary, you will notice menus, panels, inventories, and other interface elements have changed — but they still look and feel like Diablo II.
And at some point, you might stop noticing.

That is when UI serves its ultimate purpose: not getting in the way of your flow.

Quality of Life in Alpha T-6

There are the quality-of-life improvements you already know and love, like the larger inventory space (so you can actually pick up some loot and play without rage-quitting or going to town every 5 seconds), faster item transfers from inventory into the (much larger) stash, automatic loot sorting, or auto-loot pickup from the ground for those precious piles of gold and rares. But there's more coming up.

Same club. Different party.

So, here's the fresh upgrades coming up:

• Hold or Toggle for "Show Items" (PoE-style Alt Key):
  This highly requested feature was suggested by member joesmash_ on Discord.
  In the finest tradition of heroic modding effort, I then embarked on a long and perilous journey... which ended in about 5 minutes when I found a code plugin from rnd2k who is the real hero of this story 
  A quick integration later, and I genuinely can't imagine playing without it.
• Buff/Debuff Icons Now Visible:
  You may not know it, but the infrastructure for buff and debuff icons — programmed by the amazing Mnw1995 — has been quietly humming under the hood of the mod for a long time.
  What’s new is that I finally sat down and completed the last missing visual assets to fully cover the applicable character states. Took me a while.

The mystery of the Thawing Potion revealed. Shrines will also be less cryptic about what the hell they actually do.

• Enhanced Loot Filter Panel:
  The loot filter panel, a component of Revan’s awesome d2tweaks project, was not necessarily problematic. But some of you reported not quite understanding what it does.
  This should be clearer from now on with my new design. And if it isn’t, you can shout at me because it’s my fault now.

Sorry, fans of magenta and cyan. The items are in another blog post.

• Skill Minor Changes (With Big Impact):
  Speaking of shouting:
  • Barbarian Shouts can be cast safely before you head into battle, letting you prep properly instead of panicking outside the gates.
  • Teleport, whether via Sorceress powers or the much-coveted Enigma runeword, is now usable inside towns to zoom around in style.
  • Offensive pre-casts like Armageddon, Hurricane, and Thunder Storm can now be fired up before you delve into the wilderness.
  • Finally, many skill descriptions were changed based on the work of the wise Cypress.

Ever wanted to know the damage your Skeletal Mage can deal? Thank Cypress.

Not Quite the Bugfix Galore You Anticipated (But Hey At Least I Tried)

This patch also brings a (small) grab bag of assorted minor fixes for things that were broken:

• Scroll of Inifuss Panel Now Displays Correctly:
  Thanks to Ijiin, who kindly fixed the code while I focused on more exciting things 
  (Not that anyone actually reads the scroll instead of just randomly clicking the Cairn Stones, right?)
• Necroskeleton and Necromage Sound Fix:
  Your skeleton army will no longer make weird squealing noises.
  Why they even did that in the first place is a mystery — but then again, you can’t really argue with the dead 
• Inventory Sorting Button Placement Fixed:
  The “Sort” button was obscuring potion belt slots due to a layering issue.
  That’s been corrected by moving the button rightwards, so your belt management should now be as slick as your potion chugging.
• Cows No Longer Called "An Evil Force":
  But they’re still evil...
• Necromancer Skill Prerequisite Arrows Fixed:
  Somehow I forgot that you need to know how to make a golem before you invest in golem mastery.
  Or that reviving dead monsters requires insight into metallurgy.
• The Waypoint Panel Close Button:
  Wait, no. This one is still in the wrong place. Uh, sorry 

The Alpha T-6 release — and this entire project — follows Blizzard North's philosophy of iterative development, or "tinker until it feels right."
Because Diablo II was never about spotless perfection.

Well, unless we’re discussing David Brevik’s showering habits 

@Mike

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Coming Up Next: The Jewel City Anew
Join me in the next blog post, we'll travel to Lut Gholein, where you'll see more richly layered architecture, dating back to its origins as a fortress of the Vizjerei mage clan — a place dubbed "The Jewel City" for good reason.