This was so long ago that all I remember vividly is the first time I ran into the butcher.
Still a kid, first game I bought with my own money.
It was nice crawling different dungeons and then...
"Fresh meat"
That was the first time in the game where I started to frantically try to just... get the fuck out.

Other things I remember in no particular order:

• Fuck Lazarus
• Cloning Godly Plates of the Whale
• Mashing mouse buttons
• Spamming potions

D2 is less of a clash for a modern player I think

I was quite young when I played the game but that is pretty much the game experience I remember and nobody I have spoken to has given me a different experience.

Diablo 1 is very very difficult and from an era of videogames where you would need to farm experience and drops in order to progress to lower floors. By design you will likely clear to the butcher 2-3 before you are able to defeat him. Spells are quite important, so break barrels looking for tomes, as well as an ungodly amount of health potions. If I am remembering correctly you want buffs, fireball and chain lighting. Keep an eye out for ranged monsters, they can be hard to see, at higher levels be aware of curses over your player. Unlike most modern RPGs, the best items in d1 were mostly blue and mostly armor/hp stats because of how spells scale.

I know you didn't want to hack, but if you get an elixer of stats, I would recommend duping it 5-10x before drinking it as a "house rule", just to reduce farming. Squirt is a rip off, but has the best items in the game so check his wares. Duping to afford Squirt/potions is another potential house rule.

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.

The only way you're going to hit any ranged attacker is by backing them against a wall. Be sure to get them between you and a suitable obstacle so they spend less time running away and blasting you for free.