Diablo 3 Guide

Diablo 3 is the long awaited successor to Diablo 2. We all waited 12 years to see what Blizzard Entertainment would conjure up to renew the franchise. It was well worth the wait! Return to the town of Tristram with new classes, weapons, loot and beautiful graphics.

Follow my step-by-step guide on installing, configuring and optimizing Diablo 3 in Linux with PlayOnLinux.

Note: This guide applies to the Battle.net version of Diablo 3. Other versions may require additional steps.

Tips & Specs:

To learn more about PlayOnLinux and Wine configuration, see the online manual: PlayOnLinux Explained

Mint 18.3 64-bit
PlayOnLinux: 4.2.12
Wine: 3.0

Wine Installation

Click Tools
Select "Manage Wine Versions"

Look for the Wine Version: 3.0
Select it
Click the arrow pointing to the right

Click Next

Downloading Wine

Extracting

Downloading Gecko

Installed

Downloading Battle.net

Go to: www.battle.net
Click "Get the desktop app for Battle.net"

Click Download

Click Windows

Navigate to your desktop
Click Save

PlayOnLinux Setup

Launch PlayOnLinux
Click Install

Click "Install a non-listed program"

Click Next

Select "install a program in a new virtual drive"
Click Next

Name the virtual drive: diablo3
Click Next

Check all three options:

• Use another version of wine
• Configure Wine
• Install some libraries

Click Next

Select Wine 3.0
Click Next

Select "32 bits windows installation"
Click Next

Wine Configuration

Applications Tab
Windows Version: Windows 7

Graphics Tab
Check "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows"
Click OK

PlayOnLinux Packages (DLL's, Libraries, Components)

Check the following:

• POL_Install_corefonts
• POL_Install_d3dx9
• POL_Install_tahoma

Click Next

Note: All packages will automatically download and install

Installing Battle.net

Click Browse

Navigate to your Desktop
Select "Battle.net-Setup.exe"
Click Open

Select Language
Click Continue

Uncheck "Add desktop shortcut for Battle.net"
Click Continue

An error about Battle.net Helper.exe will pop up

Battle.net installation will crash, but its still installed
Uncheck "Send to Blizzard"
Click Close

PlayOnLinux Shortcut

Wait for the shortcut dialog to appear
Select "Battle.net.exe"
Click Next

Name your shortcut: Diablo III
Click Next

Select "I don't want to make another shortcut"
Click Next

PlayOnLinux Configure

Select Diablo III
Click Configure

General Tab
Wine version: 3.0

Note: Click the + to download other versions of Wine. Click the down-arrow to select other versions of Wine.

Display Tab
Video memory size: Enter the amount of memory your video card/chip uses

Installing Visual C 2015

Miscellaneous Tab
Click "Open a Shell"
Copy/Paste:

wget  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks

Press Enter

Copy/Paste

chmod +x winetricks

Press Enter

Copy/Paste

WINEPREFIX=/home/username/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/diablo3 ./winetricks -q vcrun2015

Press Enter

Note: Replace "username" with your login

Close Shell

Close Configure

Launching Diablo III

Select Diablo III
Click Run

Click the Gear
Click "Continue without logging in"

Select Diablo III

Click "Start Install"

Wait for Diablo III to install...
Click Play

Login

Optimization

Press Esc key or click Settings icon
Click Options

Adjust:

• Display
• Resolution
• Lock cursor
• Letterbox
• Vertical Sync
• Reflections
• Fax Foreground FPS
• Max Background FPS
• Texture Quality
• Shadow Quality
• Physics
• Clutter Density
• Anti-Aliasing
• Low FX

Click Apply
Click Accept

Conclusion:
Diablo III ran perfectly once I realized Battle.net could be launched without signing in. There is a bug with something related to authenticating and I was never able to sign-in to Battle.net. So you can still download Diablo III in Battle.net and then sign-in after launching the game. Then I was able to play just fine, even co-op worked great.

Gameplay Video:

Screenshots:

 

I dont know about Visual C 2015 (have to be downloaded separately or is it included on Wine ? ) but I appear to have avoided the problem. I had the CD hanging around so I basically copy/paste the Diablo 3 installer.exe file that it was containing on a USB stick and then asked Wine to use this exe instead of the basic battle net exe showed in the tutorial. Seems to be working atm. Its downloading and still has 12Gb left to fetch. Wait and see, I guess.

 

Awesome!
In our case with Wine, you can just use Battle.net to download Diablo 3.
After that you can make a shortcut to Diablo and login from there.
If they ever decide to require Battle.net login to play Diablo, then we need to troubleshoot why we can't login.
Until then, happy gaming!

 

Well actually i tried to launch it when partially downloaded (you know the thing that lets you play while the game is still being downloaded in the background) which made it crash and broke it....so i had to restart it again... I guess thats gaming on linux, you have to deserve what you want !

 

Yeah, so true... I didn't even try that because I assumed it would cause issues.
But it works in Drakensang though.

 

I never heard of that game, looks cool. Might not even need to use PoL as apparently it runs on browser ?

 

Drakensang is amazing! But, of course, there is a recent patch with the mouse that makes it unplayable.

 

I followed the guide (mostly) and got the Battle.net app running. It downloaded Diablo III, but the game won't launch. When I click Play, the button changes to "launching", then "game is running." After a few seconds the button turns back to "Play." I had to do a 64-bit Windows 7 and wine v38 to get this far. I couldn't get any of the 2.x staging versions to work (missing DLL error launching B.net in 16 and 32 bit installs). I tried Wine 30 but that also threw the DLL error. I feel like I'm close, but I'm new to POL and at a loss. I'll spend some time educating myself, but if anyone has any suggestions that might speed the process, I'd be most appreciative! Thanks in advance.

 

Same for me bud' :'( Anyways i realised it only gives you the first chapter of the game. If you want the full game, you need to use your activation key...which is single use and i my case was allready used for my father's acount...

 

Same for me bud' :'( Anyways i realised it only gives you the first chapter of the game. If you want the full game, you need to use your activation key...which is single use and i my case was allready used for my father's acount...

 

Well, darn! I was hoping you'd gotten it solved for me! I may fiddle with it some more, but I went through this a little over a year ago - finally got it to run but the performance was horrible; completely unplayable. I guess I'll keep the Windows box around for D3 and one or two other games that don't play well on Linux. Thanks for the response!

 

You are wellcome

 

My wife and I are using Wine 2.21-staging to play Diablo III
We are still currently playing it without issue. I definitely tried Wine 3.0 vresion and got crash errors, so "staging" is required for now.
Were you both able to manually install Visual C 2015 like in the guide?

We also do not sign into Battle.net
When you get a login screen, you can click the "gear" and select "continue without logging in"
So you are basically not signed in, but can download and launch Diablo III. Once its launched you have to sign into Diablo III. We are good after that and can play just fine.