Now that I am in a slightly more lucid state, I’ll post a short list of things we found:
Valkyrie Wing (U Winged Helm)
Shako (mentioned)
Blood Raven’s Charge (U Matriarchal Bow)
Warpspear (U Gothic Staff)
Tal’s Belt (vol got)
Hwanin’s belt, which I took for my collection of gear.
a rare Decapacitator with fairly good ED, some cold and other elemental dmg, and leech. It’s like 176-346 (dmg, not leech) or something.
A +2 skills necro shield with other fun mods (+3 iron golem, among others)
other stuff I can’t recall right now.
I am also a member of the d2.net fora (at rpgforums.com) and don’t read it often, but I do read it from time to time.
Who_me?, far as I am concerned you can have the bow and the helm.
I’ve got something like 25 skill points. W/ modifiers, I’ve got Nova at about 17, I’ve got Warmth at 7, Frost nova at 3 and Lighting Mastery at about 10. Where should I put the rest?
Ditto with attrib points. I’ve got ST 60, I’ve put nothing into Dx and I’ve split the remainder of the points I’ve used so far between Heath/Energy at about a 2::3 ratio. I’ve currently got 100 points to spend. Where should they go.
What’s that floaty sphere thing that hovers about some sorc’s heads?
Any good sorc belts? I’m using an over-the-counter belt I bought that…well…sucks.
Fenris: You should definitely max your primary attack skill (nova, I take it?) and the associated mastery. And you probably want telekinesis and teleport at one point each, if you don’t have them already. One or more points in Energy Shield and/or the lowest level cold armor can also be nice (don’t bother with the higher level cold armors). And you might also want some in Thunderstorm: You cast it before battle, and every so often your enemies get hit by lightning without you doing anything further.
I agree with STR 60 and minimum dex. For the rest, put enough in energy that you’re not a total potionaholic, and all the rest in vitality. Staying alive is a good thing.
The floating sphere is energy shield. Whenever you get hit, a portion of the damage will deduct from your mana ball instead of from your life. Since you have a ton of mana and it regenerates much faster, this is a good thing.
And for a belt, you might want to make a caster crafted belt. Take a magic Light Belt, Sharkskin Belt or Vampirefang Belt (gamble light belts until you get an exceptional or elite), along with a perfect amethyst, an ith rune, and a jewel, and cube them. You’ll get faster cast, plus to mana, and plus to mana regen, along with rare attributes. You might also want to check out the other caster recipes, as they’re pretty good for a sorc.
And just as a nitpick, but it annoys me when people call the Harlequin Crest just “shako”. Shako is the item type. You could have a nonmagical cracked ethereal shako. Harlequin Crest is specifically the unique shako.
Well, after a reasonably long hiatus, I got back to my necro Tachor today. Finally got fed up with being home sick, so I decided to do something fun. Tachor’s up to level 24 now, and getting ready to kill Diablo. I’m a bit nervous. Mephisto took way too much effort, and I’m afraid to see what D will do to my little skelly army.
Anyone want to help me kill him? I’ll probably give it a shot later tonight.
Well, Mr. Stringfelowhawk, when you get to lvl 43, call me. I found a nice axe for you. Islestrike will give you a lot of bonuses.
My necro soloed Baal in normal, then went on to kill Andy and Diablo in nightmare alone, killing Duriel and Meph with the valuable assistance of Fenris. Skeleton mastery and raise skeleton are maxed and those little suckers are awesome. I lost exactly 1 skeleton fighting Meph and Diablo, each.
I decided to go for poison nova for an offensive weapon.
Damn, I forgot. The Blood Raven bow is cool, but I still can’t kill anything in hell. punha, Voltaire, if either of you want it back to try your hand at a zon or to trade it, feel free. It looks like the only thing that will let a bowazon in hell be anything other than a supporting character will be one of the new runewords. The only thing she can do in hell is shoot freezing arrows to let others do the actual killing. Nightmare she can solo easily with the other two bow she has.
The tiara you gave me, punha came out for a zon. It’s okay, it has a +1 to skills and life, but nothing to write home about. I also found the IK gauntlets. I imagine you have them already, but if you want them, they’re yours.
… but I just lost all my saved characters and items to a faulty hard disk.
That’ll be several hours of downloading from the D2 Items Bank, and I still won’t get back my +2 to skills Athena’s Wrath or my PSkulled Buriza and Spire of Honour.
A) Thinksnow–I found a unique hammer for you too. Remind me about it next time we bump into each other.
B) AAAAAH!–I need Thul, Io and Nef runes! I just found an "Aldur’s Rhythm (set item) with 3 sockets! Since when do set items have sockets??? Anyway, imagine turning it into a “Black”!
I do hope you didn’t learn that the hard way, Fen. Knockback in a melee weapon is most annoying (as is the chance to flee from Dol in my Passion). And you can get more cold dmg from a P Saph than a Thul. And losing an Io… (no, I don’t have much respect for Black as a weapon)
Well, I may be impatient, but my necro is in hell. He did Anya, the Ancients, and Baal solo in NM.
He didn’t drop great, but I did get another Visceraunt shield and a unique long sword (the one with +2 to fire skills). The way he’s going, it looks good for him. He’s up to level 59 now. Hopefully he’ll be able to hold his own in hell (at least Act 1).
Are you playing SP? Let me know if you need anything specific, as I’m more than happy to make donations of legit gear. I have a spare Buriza (I think it’s around 165% - not great).
Fenris, another decent sorc belt is Leynmo, the unique sash. Lots of mana regen and some resists. It’s not spectacular, but it is cheap. Got me to Act II/Hell (well, not all by itself). Works well with the Cathan’s Set.
Now I have to worry about trying to kill the first thing in hell. Even at lvl 9, poison nova doesn’t do much damage yet. I’ll have my little gollem, but between us it may be difficult to build my little army. Once I get the first one down, it’ll get faster as I add skeletons to help.
The lower resist curse looks good, with only a couple or three points in it so far (plus mods) it already knocks down resistance 49%. No more immunes to get in my way, although I don’t believe it works on PI’s, but I could be wrong.
Can a necro have more than one curse active at a time? I’ve seen barbs do Battle Command, then Battle Orders, and both be in effect. Do necro curses do the same?
(yes, one day I’ll actually read the various informational sites…maybe)
If it turns out that I need more levels to do hell, I guess I’ll mule my pathetic magic-finging stuff over to him and do solo NM Baal runs for a while.
Necro curses are exclusive on each monster, unfortunately, but you can get some interesting cumulative effects by combining different curses on different monsters. I’m also working on a summoning Necro, though I’m not going to be catching up to you any time soon. Just not enough time to play. Anyway, my current favorite is to cast Iron Maiden on a group of monsters, then cast Attract on one or two of them. The Attracted monsters get killed by their fellows, while the fellows take damage from killing the Attracted ones.
I find it to be a good combination for reducing the amount of attrition my skelly army takes.
Who, you can only have one curse on one monster at the same time.
Necros who use a lot of Corpse Explosion need to utilize both Lower Resist and Amp Damage, since the CE is both fire and physical damage. But in a group of monsters, you may run into both Fire Immune and Physical Immune. A strategy that I’ve heard (as I’ve never played a necro before) is to cast Lower Resist and then Amp Damage on a group. The Amp won’t catch on the PI monsters, leaving them with LR. Then you Corpse Explode, maximizing your damage done.
'Course, that’s only with a group of mixed immunities.
I’ve also heard of LR breaking elemental immunities, but I can’t be sure of it.
Yes, I do know that LR breaks elemental immunities. And thanks, I never checked up on Attract, so I don’t know what it actually does. I will read up on it when I get home, it could be the answer to what I need.
