Changing difficulties on second playthrough? (D2)

[Rattlesnark]

Hello, fellow players! As a newbie to the game, I've found this forum to be extremely helpful in getting me going on the right track - glad to be a part of this community!

I've just finished my first playthrough of D2X (Normal difficulty) - what I'm wondering is, if I were to replay/continue the game again (same character) on Normal difficulty for the secret cow level, will I be able to immediately continue to Nightmare after I'm done? I actually intend to play the game on Nightmare without having to go through the whole thing on Normal again.

To elaborate;
After clearing the Secret Cow Level, would I have to go through Acts I-V again to carry on to Nightmare, or could I simply exit back to the menu and continue off from there with all the loot I've earned? If not, are there other alternatives - say being able to teleport to the final checkpoint and simply finish off Baal again?

Thought I'd ask around before risking it and trying it out myself. Pardon me if this has already been answered time and time again, I couldn't find anything from searching. Thanks in advance.

[Greizer]

Welcome to the forums. From what I can tell, this is the best Diablo-related forum, in terms of general helpfulness/atmosphere.

As for your question, fear not: when you've finished Normal (killed Baal and got the quest for it), you can exit the game; when you try to create a new game, you must choose the difficulty and can choose Nightmare. Same thing for Nightmare; once you've finished it, you can choose Hell. You'll get to keep all your items and wps from each difficulty, but the maps will reset (even on single player, where they are usually kept if you don't change difficulties).

[Rattlesnark]

Thanks for the warm welcome

I went ahead and tried starting on Normal again, and it didn't restart the whole game (including all the quests) as I thought it would - I didn't dare to even click to have a look before, fearing I would have to finish the whole game again.

Everything is perfect now, and I'm off to mix myself a meal of grilled hell beef. Thanks for your help, kind sir!