If you are the kind of player that wants to know about EVERY possible combination of weapons and equipment, then the guide can be useful. The 'tips and tactics' provided in the guide are pretty basic - you'll figure them out on your own very quickly.

If you just want to play the game and discover things for yourself as you go, then the guide is not worth the extra money - the game is simple enough to navigate without it, and there aren't any hidden areas, quest secrets, or special monster abilities that require the assistance of the guide to find/complete.

Still, I find the compatibility issues this has with newer operating systems to be a real shame. After that I believe you have to collect three items dropped by the bosses after that to do it again. This can keep you from having to rebuild the character from scratch, but you only get one free reset per character. With or after 1.09 they added the 'synergies' were one skill would passively give bonuses to another related skill (this may have been removed in 1.13 as I don't see it anymore) and even later they added the stat and skill reset rather recently which allows you to essentially reset your character if you don't like your build. Sorry I can't help you more but there were some improvements after 1.09 that were kind of cool. Bowazons were really broken back then because of a programming flaw with penetrate and guided arrow. When I did most of my on-line playing years back it was with 1.08 and man, there was some funky/broken things back then. However, 1.09 was a pretty long time ago as they are currently on 1.13. The one I got in 2009 had Diablo 1 with it (which is no longer included) so it was far from being one of the newer battle chests. I bought one back in 2001~2002 (which I think came with 1.07) and the other back in 2009. I've had two copies of the battle chest over the years and I can't recall what their initial builds were when I installed them.

To be honest I'm not sure if you get the same (initial) build of DII/LoD with each version of the battle chest or if newer versions come with a newer build.

Diablo 3 battle chest pc review