I’d do some levelling up to get to l24. Duriel’s usually a bear for me unless me and my merc are at that point. Are you playing with /players 8 enabled? That makes farming your level up quite a bit easier. Just remember to turn it off before you step into Duriel’s portal unless you feel confident you can handle him with x8 the normal hit points.
Hm…the way I’d do it, then…I’ll assume you’ve been picking up curses as you go–even with only 1 pt in each, they’re indispensable…get an act 2 defiance merc–you really need a tank. Equip him with high def armor that boosts his life and some sort of pike, preferably with life leech. Cast your blood golem. Enter Duriel’s layer and run like hell as soon as you enter so you don’t get hit by him. Let your merc and golem tangle with him. Alternate bone spears with either amp damage or life tap, depending on what your merc’s life bar is looking like. Recast blood golem as necessary. You’ll probably need a lot of blue potions for this strategy. The idea is to get the golem to take the brunt of the attack. Sure, it’ll die a lot, but it’s cheaper than the merc dying (or you). Keep a tp open at all times to make sure you can run if you run out of potions (or your merc dies).
Not sure where I’d take the golems in your build. I’d probably focus on something recastable like the fire golem or clay golem. Anything to take punishment while I lay waste with bone spirit/spear and ce.
Iampunha, I am trying to level up in US East also…My amazon is 26 and Im trying to finish Normal Act 5 (could use a little help with wp’s to speed things up)…I only put one point on each skill thats available and save the rest for distribution when I feel confident on which way to go (javazon, magezon, bowazon), usually what uniquies I find will determine which way I go. And I usually allocate ability points when I need them (finding a weapon or armor that has STR/DEX requirements). It’s kind of like having an undeclared major in college. Usually getting a hold of a uber unique weapon/armor/set will determine where to dish the rest of my points on…I wouldn’t mind tagging along with you and fenris to level up once I get to NM (I think that’s where Fenris is now)…
If someone is already on “SDMB” game that is NM or higher, I’ll start “SDMB1” using the same password “cecil” since I’m still in Normal…maybe we’ll meet up once I get higher up.
I really appreciate the info from you, Madawc, Voltaire and other “uber veterans” on this board!
I’m going to be on from now until whenever if someone needs help or any equipment that I can supply. I don’t have much compared to punha, but whatever I’m not using is yours for the asking.
I’ll be using either my numbnut2 or numbnut3 accounts, just msg or whisper me.
Yeticus, if you can find your way onto Bnet tonight, chances are good I’ll be on. I’ve got a few chars built specially to rush/tank (there being a good bit of loot to be acquired tanking/rushing strangers, though you’re not one:)).
I’ll try to get on US East tonight, only problem I have is my middle son just had his 7th birthday and he got the Pirates of the Carribean PC game and my computer is the only one in the house that can handle the game and he wants me to go sink other ships (I shouldn’t complain, huh?) in the game. I’m still getting used the command tree (1st person ship, 3rd person ship, 1st person land, etc.) Every night I get home, he hits me up with “Maybe you can sink that first pirate ship tonight dad!”. How can I say no, huh?
Anyways I’ll try to get on at 9pm PDT, Midnight EDT. and catch up with guys…
Hey Yeticus, I’m on in the mornings and/or early afternoons and I’d be happy to help as far as I can (which is through the Arcane Sanctuary in nightmare ).
Why don’t we all designate
sdmb1 for normal
sdmb2 for nightmare
sdmb3 for hell
password cecil for all three
and sdmb for whatever, that way, it’ll be easy to find other dopers to join. Sound good?
go to your d2 file folder and use the Revertto109.bat file to get yourself back online.
I personally play on the first version of the 1.10beta since for some reason i cant create new chars or use old ones using the second beta. I don’t revert back and forth to get online. I have 2 separate folders to play 1.10 and online1.09d, so i don’t have much problems other than lag for online play.
So far I’ve gotten a barb to lvl77 with no transferring or tweaking and a lvl72 hybrid zon to lvl70 without tweaking 70-72 i transferred some old gear that’s decent but not godly.
oh and the barb is a patriarch, the zon legitly (non-tweaking) got to the end of act1 killing andy. She’s currently at teh beginning of act3.
Funny thing is, either crushing blow is massively bugged, or it is the godsend of 1.10 mods.
It works really well versus bosses of any type, whether it be a champion, unique or super unique act bosses. You can take out chunks of their life out. Mind you it isn’t the 50% life on normal monsters, but it still takes chunks out of them. Meph is easy, Duriel was easy, Diablo was easy (gettin to D is a different story tho), and the Ancients and Baal were breezes. Crushing Blow is going to be the HOT ticket mod for 1.10, just wait and see. With all the boosted baddies in 1.10, it’ll help a great deal.
I’m almost certain that the barb is going to be the first char I make on ladder. And most likely a Sword user. I mastered the barb so I intend to make one slowly but surely. Barb synergies aren’t great but at least now, Battle orders gives an instant boost of life rather than a half full orb to be filled later. Oh well, see you online some time.
Guillaume’s Face and Goblin Toe both give % crushing blow, off the top of my head.
My first ladder char will probably be a paladin, since I don’t want to dump points into a weapon mastery and then be fuxx0red, don’t want to have to rely on random +skill gear, good bows are hard to find, etc. Paladins are good at combining magic and physical attacks. Not the best of either, but then I can’t rely totally on either.
Oh. Per Who_me?'s comment, y’all feel free to post your wish lists here. Can’t guarantee that I can please everyone, but it’s at least a starting point.
Seriously now… Fenris, to explain a body pop better, it goes like this… After you resurrect yourself, you try to pick up your body to re-equip yourself. If you’re in a hurry (and I was) you can pick up some armor or a weapon on the ground instead of your body. If you pick up your body then, anything you can’t carry stays on your body and your body stays where it was. If you die again, then all the stuff you did pick up goes flying all over the ground, free for anyone to pick up, or to lose if you can’t get back to pick them up. I wasn’t afraid of you getting the stuff, but trying to fight through Lord DeSeis naked was not the easiest thing in the world. If the realm went down or I lagged out, I wouldn’t have been able to get the stuff back unless i got back into the same game before it ended.
Sorry you didn’t get the Diablo quest, but punha, me, or someone else will get you through it.
I have a Valor, Who_me?. I found it running the crystalline passage/icy river several months ago (with my then-mf burizon. that should tell you how long ago it was). When I convert the frenzybarb he’ll probably use it.
Fenris, I should be clear most of tomorrow for playing. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get you to hell cows:)
Thanks Who_me and Punha! I appreciate all the time you’ve taken to help and tutor me! (I never knew about body popping)
Like I said, I’m having so much more fun this time around that it’s hard to even start to describe how big the difference is.
Couple of questions:
My first 'zon (the one you said was fubar, Punha) may be my MF character (she only needs to get tough enough to survive Hell Mephisto). She’s got 3 sockets she can add. Should I have him add them to Millegraba’s (sp) Orb shield and/or the Tarnhelm (it’s got one socket already, I assume I can add more) and put in perfect topazes, or save the sockets for some other purpose?
With all the gear you gave me, I’ve only got 250 and other than boots (mf 34), everything I’m wearing is an artifact! The MF aspect of the game is what seems to appeal to me the most. You mentioned you’ve got a character with MF 700+…how?? Lots and lots of sockets w/ perfect topazes? What sort of equipment gives those types of bonuses?
Punha, after I get my Zon and Paladin built, I gotta make a Novasorc. Watching you play yours was so damned cool. Whatdo I do? How to start? Where do I put points? What items should I start looking for?
It’s weird: the drops seem way different on east/west. On west, I got a pretty even distribution of gems. On East, I’ve got like 6 perfect sapphires, a bunch of emeralds and diamonds and nearly no topazes or skulls. Also, low level runes seem a lot harder to find here (not that I care about low level runes, but it would be a rare normal Meph run that wouldn’t generate one or two bottom-level runes. Anyone else notice this? Or is it just me and improper sampling?
I’ll be around after about 3:00 PM mountain time Punha–but I’m almost tempted to call in sick so we can play! (gawd, I’m addictied!)
A sudden thought - are any of the characters in D2 black? The Sorcerer was in the original game.
Like I said, I’m having so much more fun this time around that it’s hard to even start to describe how big the difference is.
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No, you can’t. You cannot socket an already-socketed item. (And it’s Milabrega’s Orb, BTW.)
**
I’d save the socket quests for runewording.
**
Perfect Stealskull socketed with PTopaz, Skullder’s Ire (I think) socketed with PTopaz, dual-wielded Blade of Ali Babas, a pair of Nagelrings, Chance Guards, Boots of Fortune 35%, 32 7% MF small charms, and at least 35% from an ammy … I think that’s about as good as MF gets without hacking, and that’s about 850% at Lvl99 IIRC.
**
Points mainly go into pre-requisites. You’ll want to have 60 Str by level 29 so you can use Frostburn, but no more - trading 15 stat points to use Sigon’s shield isn’t worth it. Dex is not required to use wands or staves, so you’re pumping Vit and Energy for the most part; my Sorc alternated between 1-0-1-3 and 1-0-2-2 until she hit 60 Str, then went 0-0-2-3. Skills should go into Warmth and the prereqs for Nova and Frozen Orb. You’ll want Warmth at around 5-7 IIRC, but save as many points as you can because while you need to pump Nova up pretty quickly, there are other skills you’ll need at 24 and 30.
Milabrega’s shield is decent for MF only if you have nothing else. I used it on my first few MF chars until I used either Rhyme or another weapon. Putting a perfect topaz in Milabrega’s shield would give you lightning resistance. While nice, that’s not MF;)
My advice would be to abandon that amazon and work only on Luorno.
You cannot add another socket to something that already has one, else my Skullder’s and Shakos would have max sockets (4 and 2 respectively) And my buriza would have 6. Or at least, there is no legit way to add sockets like that.
Right. Lemme walk you through:
74% mf from PTopazed (Perfect Topaz in it) Harlequin Crest.
116% from Skullder’s Ire and another 24% from having a P Topaz in it.
40 and 30 from Chancies (chance Guards) and Goldie (Goldwrap)
34% War Traveler (max is 50. I have one pair. I’m not complaining)
32% +3 masteries amulet
I use a raven frost and a dual leech ring so I A) don’t get frozen and B) don’t die from lack of leech.
93% from each ali baba and an additional 28% from jewels I put in them.
That brings us to 564. Already higher than my amazon ever ran, but we’re not done yet because … we didn’t even begin to add in charms yet.
2 4% smfc (small magicfind charm)
6 5% smfc
12 6% smfc
12 7% smfc
(other 8 inventory slots taken by keys, a cube, tome of town portal and a 5% frw/50/3 smfc)
Bringing us to 188% MF from charms. For a grand total of … 752. Huh. I didn’t know it was that high. I thought I was scraping 700.
BTW, Who_me, Nagels top out at 30% MF and I have a 36% mf ring in my stash. I have a sneaking suspicion that the ring I use for leech is hacked, and if so it’ll disappear at some point in the patch, so I have a crescent moon and that 36% mf ring in my stash for in case that suddenly happens.
That character requires at least as much leet gear as my frenzybarb. IE I don’t even have what I need to make her as good as possible. I have:
Oculus
Umed Shaftstop
Rare circlet (FCR, FRW, +2 sorc skills)
Tal’s amulet
Stormshield
Frostburn
Dual SOJ
Gloom’s Mesh belt (I should have gone with a Thundergod’s … see below)
Rare +res boots
Lotts charms, mostly adding mana and +ltg skills.
I had to commit my str to 156 to equip the Stormshield, and if I could do it over again I’d use Thundergod’s Vigor, which in addition to absorbing lightning damage also does +20 str and +20 vit. I could take that 20 str I used for stormshield and out it in (probably all in) vit.
Now, I have several +2 sorc skills orbs. You’d probably be using either a Rhyme or a +1 skill shield, because I have only one stormshield. I have a few +2 sorc skills helms left, and +2 sorc skill amulets are not hard to get. You can have a spirit shroud or something similar, and I should have a pair of frostburns for you somewhere;)
But really, it takes a lot of gear to pull off. I’d recommend focusing your energies on that amazon, getting her to kill as quickly as possible with as much MF as possible. Remember that she’ll have to have some +res charms because she doesn’t get a barb’s natural resistances. And she can’t be using dual ali baba (or even one) for last hit.
I have previously entertained the idea of making a MF party … a zon (or sorc) to do all the killing, a paladin with good auras (an auradin, if you will) and a barb for BO and FI (Battle Orders and Find Item). I have a barb with lvl 39 BO and lvl hi 20s FI, and his gear will probably go to the frenzybarb when all is said and done. Such that your amazon, who will have let’s say 1K life, will be walking around in hell cows with around 2500 life. Or more.
Work on Luorno. A lot. Let me know when you hit lvl 42 and 110 str and I have a 196% buriza stored for you (if I didn’t already give it to you). I socketed my buriza with a Nef (knockback), and it has worked wonders.
I actually prefer better chance of finding excep. or elite uniques to finding a few low-level runes each run. But I haven’t any experience doing runs on UNWest, so I wouldn’t know.
We’ll have time, I expect … you need what to get Lurno into Hell cows?
PS Who_me the paladin is black. Or so I’m told. I never really noticed.
Not a lot at this point. Who_me? got me to Diablo, but I died (and restarted…I didn’t knon my corpse got credit for quests done in my presence) So all I need is Diablo, the third socket quest, Baal and then hellcows!
I’ll be on in about 5 minutes.
PS: So, you’re saying I should abandon my current amazon except as a mule? Or am I misunderstanding
).
Watching you play yours was so damned cool. Whatdo I do? How to start? Where do I put points? What items should I start looking for?