Diablo II Secret Cow Level: the D2R portal and the 1996 hoax

Diablo II came out for Windows on June 28, 2000 in North America, developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Its most famous secret is a level that players invented as a rumor and that Blizzard kept joking did not exist. It is called the Moo Moo Farm, and a guide to opening it was online within a week of the 2000 launch, well before the 2001 Lord of Destruction expansion. Blizzard has now pulled the same trick twice: Diablo IV's team denied a cow level in 2023, and players found one in May 2026.

The cow level started as a hoax in the 1996 Diablo

The original Diablo shipped to some stores on December 31, 1996, and other shops got it in early January. Three cows stood near the Catacombs entrance in Tristram. They mooed when clicked. After eight clicks the hero says "Yup, that's a cow all right!" Further clicks cycle through "I am not thirsty!" and "Hey! I am no milkmaid!"

The rumor said that clicking the cows enough times opened a portal to a hidden level. Photoshopped screenshots with a red portal and demons went around as proof. Blizzard employees found the trolling funny and began joking about it too.

Diablo: Hellfire, a November 25, 1997 expansion made by Synergistic Software and published by Sierra On-Line, contained a quest called Jersey's Jersey. Lester, dressed in a cow suit, gave out Bovine Plate armor, but the quest only switched on if a player edited the game's command.txt file. Programmer Jim Edwards voiced the character and described it as tongue-in-cheek, included to please fans and win positive reviews.

StarCraft followed in 1998 with a cheat code that reads "there is no cow level". On April 1, 1999, Blizzard posted a Diablo II Screenshot of the Week that showed cows fighting.

Blizzard North built the level into Diablo II. A guide to opening it was online by July 4, 2000, within days of the launch.

How to open the Secret Cow Level

The portal only opens for a character who has finished the game on the difficulty being played. In D2R that means killing Baal on Normal, Nightmare or Hell, and each difficulty has to be finished on its own.

Opening the portal takes four steps:

1. Take the town portal to Tristram and find Wirt's corpse. Wirt's Leg is the item you want.
2. Buy a Tome of Town Portal from Akara in the Rogue Encampment, the Act 1 town.
3. Put the leg and the tome in the Horadric Cube and transmute them while standing in the Act 1 town. Doing it in any other act does nothing.
4. Step into the red portal that appears.

The recipe will not make a second portal in a game where one is already open. Start a fresh game first.

What is inside the Moo Moo Farm

The level is full of Hell Bovines, cattle that walk upright and carry polearms, with the Cow King at the end. Monster level is 28 on Normal, 64 on Nightmare and 81 on Hell. The drops include runes up to Ber and crafting bases. The Cow King himself drops Cow King's Leathers.

In the original game, killing the Cow King shut the portal for that difficulty, and groups often left him alive to keep farming the level. In Diablo II: Resurrected, the portal can reopen and the level stays playable after he dies.

How to play it today

Diablo II: Resurrected came out on September 23, 2021 for Windows, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. On Steam it is now sold as the Infernal Edition, which bundles the Lord of Destruction expansion and a Warlock class DLC. It needs the Battle.net desktop app.

The 1996 cows can still be clicked. Diablo + Hellfire on GOG includes Hellfire as a free add-on, which Blizzard released on GOG in June 2019.

In an April 2021 interview about the remaster, game designer Andre Abrahamian said, "There is no Cow level."

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Diablo III skipped the cows, and Diablo IV hid them for three years

Diablo III has no Cow Level. It has Whimsyshire, the "Pony Level", and a May 2015 anniversary event added a stage named Not the Cow Level. In 2008 Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson said the cow level's content had a purpose but nearly overshadowed part of the game. The cows left one trace in the files anyway: in September 2024, Wowhead's Diablo III database turned up a Bovine Bardiche, described in its own text as a weapon that "reeks of manure."

Diablo IV started with a denial. In May 2023, general manager Rod Fergusson said there was no cow level and that the team wanted the game "as grounded as possible." Later that year a player who had killed 666 cows got a relic tied to a cellar called the Forlorn Hovel.

That relic was step one of a hunt that ran across the base game and both expansions. Members of the Not Finding a Cow Level Discord uncovered the path. YouTuber LoatheBurger laid out the route: 666 cows inside 666,666 seconds (just over a week of real time), then a chain of keys and sin quests. One of them is fishing a coffin out of the water in Hawezar. The last step borrows Diablo II's recipe idea: Neyrelle's Arm, a Stamina Potion and a Rusted Bardiche go into the Horadric Cube, and the cows behind it have to be killed on a Tuesday. The Cow King drops the Cow King's Crown, a helm whose bonuses change with the day of the week. One Redditor was "a little disappointed" and had expected something more "wacky." The original Moo Moo Farm was also just a field of cows with polearms.

Questions people ask

How do you get the cow level in Diablo 2?

Beat the game on the difficulty you want, then put Wirt's Leg and a Tome of Town Portal in the Horadric Cube and transmute them in the Act 1 town. A red portal opens on the spot.

Can you enter the cow level without killing Baal?

No. The rule is to finish the game on that difficulty, and the D2R guide lists a Baal kill for each one.

What level for normal cows in D2R?

Monster level 28 on Normal. Nightmare is 64 and Hell is 81.

Is there a secret cow level in Diablo?

Yes, in Diablo II and in Diablo IV. The first Diablo had only the cows and the rumor, and Diablo III swapped in Whimsyshire, the "Pony Level."

Is there a cow level in Diablo 4?

Yes, despite the 2023 denial. Players mapped the full route in May 2026, and once a character has cleared it, the Moo sin opens a repeat portal without waiting for Tuesday.