D2 thread inspired by the EQ thread

I don’t have EQ and won’t be getting it anytime soon because of the monthly fee. I know some of us have at least the base version of Diablo II, a few also have the expansion. Would anyone be interested starting new server-side characters for weekly gatherings of D2 or D2Exp games? A small group of us could get together for some demon-bashing with a couple of quests per week.

We’ve sorta been doing impromptu games on B.Net USEast for some months now, Jeff, but far be it for me to deny the same opportunity to someone else:)

Among my (admittedly pretty shitty) chars are a lvl 81 paladin, a lvl 35 (or so) necro, a lvl 6 sorc, a lvl 30 barb, a lvl 6 barb, and a lvl 20 assassin. Paladin has beaten the entire game, barb has beaten baal in normal, and necro, I think, can get to act 3 but does almost nothing there, damage-wise.

I usually play at night or very early in the morning (c. 10 pm-8 or so am).

I play occasionally, but on on any kind of regular schedule.

Concerning Bnet, how in the world do you get a game to stay open long enough to trade equipment between characters? Every time I try the game is gone by the time I get back into Bnet! Can I do this with open characters as well? I know people have mule characters, but I can’t ever get it to work!

Regarding first the difference between open and closed B.Net:

I have a character named Stol, who is a lvl 60s barbarian. I can play him on my computer, which does not have an internet connection. I can also play him on open battlenet (B.Net, same thing), where you can also hack (cheat) to your heart’s delight.

Gaudere, my paladin (don’t ask), is on closed bnet. The only way I can access him is if I go to the bnet useast server. I cannot modify him with Jamella (funky program) or give him unique items or suchlike.

Now then. Muling.

Muling is best done with a friend who is willing to sit for a few minutes in a room while you unload items off one char and load them onto another. In this way I was wable to assemble the entire sanders set for my necromancer before he was a lvl 12. I also have collected the entire berserker’s set and parts of the arcanna set.

If we were to play a game in normal (say, I were poweracting someone), I would be willing to go make soup or something for five or ten minutes while y’all muled. It has been done for me before, so I would be willing to do it for y’all.

I play, lost all my good char to a HDD crash so I don’t have any multi-player chars made yet so i could start a new one. I mostly would play online mon and tuesdays on the US West server.

Eh, I’m more of a TCP/IP kinda girl. I haven’t even tried B.net – it’s so much more fun when you can yell across the room instead of typing.

Damn that expansion and those cold immune baddies. Stupid useless lvl 65 ice sorc.

And damn this IE6 that keeps losing the status bar!

YES YES YES. I am classic-only. I was suggesting this very thing in Number Six’ Pit thread about online games where we all talked about getting together. I think a regular SDMB game of D2 would be FANTASTIC. It would even motivate me to go out and buy the expansion, if we were going to play in that mode.

Muling: the whole ‘you need a friend’ isn’t true. It’s much safer to do with a friend (my worst loss: An entire Sigon’s and a Culwen’s when the server crashed while I was switching. Ouch), but you don’t by any means need to have someone else anchor the game.

Games don’t ‘stick’ unless they’ve been open for five minutes. Open your (private!) game, go do an arcane run, come back to rogue’s and drop your stuff. Exit, switch characters, come back, pick up stuff.

I almost always do a dry run first – i.e. I’ll wait my five minutes, exit without dropping stuff, then come back in to make sure the game stuck. Then I drop my stuff, switch characters, etc.

I’m not sure how long the game will last with no characters in it. I think it’s another five minutes, but I can’t say for sure. It’s more than long enough to switch characters, though. I routinely mule stuff to different accounts, so it’s even long enough to log out and log back in.
I really want to do this. Maybe I’ll make some characters on USEast and come look you guys up sometime soon anyway.

Cold mastery, my dear girl. Cold mastery. Lower immunities:D

Forgive the hijack, but I thought cold immune meant that no amount of anything cold could do damage. Even with mastery (which I have, but not maxxed out.)

Hmm…

Ah well, my Assassin’s much more fun to play!

We already have a fairly regular SDMB US East game going. There are seven or so of us who play in game SDMB pwd Cecil every now and again. Myself, Nen, lno, Rasa, FunkDaddy, Caldazar, punha, and a few others. The odds are pretty good that someone will be around in the evenings EST.

Not really, no. Immunity means that the monster’s resistance is so ludicrously high that it is very difficult to do elemental damage. But with enough cold mastery and a nice necro Lower Resist curse, you can still pound away at cold immunes with your Frozen Orb.

Personally, I think single-tree sorcs are not such a good idea. Rather than pump cold mastery, just drop a huge firewall. :slight_smile:

MR

It worked well enough to kill Diablo in Hell, before LoD came out. And that is, unfortunately, why she is the way she is. :frowning:

I’ve gotten to enjoy firewall, as long as those blasted razzenfrazzen baddies stay in it…

Gosh, I haven’t played for a month and I still like talkin’ about D2.

Thanks for the mule information guys. I have always played on closed Bnet without using a mule, but I have a couple of items that I really want to trade to other characters right now.

Those damn 12 yr olds on Bnet aren’t any help. “give me something!” Ugh.

I generally play a Paladin or an Assassin on USeast.

I love my assassin, but my connection is crap right now and the claw attacks tend to hang on the server. Same with anything that is thrown. I really like to use throsing spears and such on thise damn imps in act V, and I waste 3 spears on the damn things before my computer tells me that they are dead!

–==the sax man==–

I forgot to ask, does anyone know if there are anymore good strategy sites like the (now defunct) Lurker Lounge? I used to post there at least as much as I post here, but it shut down after 9-11.

I had a static field/frozen orb combo sorc in classic. I converted her when she was somewhere in the mid 60s.

What a disaster that was.

v1.09 seriously nerfed static field: it can only reduce hell monsters to 50% of their maximum hit points. And all of the cold immune monsters were just handing me my ass. And my 500 DR imbued armor with neat little mods, a spectral shard, and Sigon’s Guard were not exactly cutting the mustard.

Now Daggergirl’s in the mid 80’s, packs fairly substantial firepower, and has some excellent gear. No Oculus, sadly, but close enough. It takes some work to convert high level sorcs to the expansion.

I do prefer expansion sorcs, actually, because you have more viable build options. In classic, you were pretty much foolish to do anything other than one of three or four established builds. Now the door is wide open for alternatives.

And if your firewall is high enough level, they baddies don’t have to stay in it very long to get toasted. :slight_smile: Nothing like dealing out almost 3k damage per second. Oh yeah.

See you on US East!

Darn you people and your spendthrift ways.

How much is the expack running now, like $20?

Well that’s $20 that I don’t have!
[sub][sup](it’ll be $20 that I actually don’t have as soon as I buy it…)[/sub][/sup]

I used to play D2 and LoD a lot. Still play regularly, only on USEast these days.

I’m was pretty into it at once stage. I built up half a dozen expansion characters to level 80+ and collected damn near every unique item in the game (and there’s a lot!). Nowadays, I mostly play ‘variants’ (read: melee sorcs, player vrs player duellers) and I play hardcore mode. (In fact, I’ve become a little snobby when it comes to the ultra-powerful unoriginal builds. “Another orb, firewall sorc… and a Buriza-zon. That’s so last season!” :))

SMUsax, some more information on muling. You spoke of difficulty getting back into games you created to mule items. The crucial thing to know is Battle.net keeps empty games (no characters in the game) online for 5 minutes, but only if the game has been occupied for at least 5 minutes. I’m guessing you did not linger in the game for this minimum period in your attempts.

Nonetheless, iampunha is correct: it is far better to mule with a friend’s help. Battle.net is known for unpredictably ‘dumping’ games at times where the Realms are instable. I still solo mule, but I don’t risk valuable items to the vaguaries of B.net.

Also, if you miss the Lurkerlounge, I highly recommend checking out The Amazon Basin. It’s like the old 'Lounge, only bigger and friendlier. Strategy forums aside, we have organised Basin games and a B.net channel on every realm. I’ve met some fantastic people - aged anywhere between 15 and 55 - and would never go back to playing public games.

Nonetheless, I’d be honoured to play a time with some Dopers. Acccount name on USEast is narrad, FWIW.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Maeglin *
**Not really, no. Immunity means that the monster’s resistance is so ludicrously high that it is very difficult to do elemental damage. But with enough cold mastery and a nice necro Lower Resist curse, you can still pound away at cold immunes with your Frozen Orb.

Personally, I think single-tree sorcs are not such a good idea. Rather than pump cold mastery, just drop a huge firewall. :)**
[/QUOTE**[/QUOTE]
Errr… no.

From Blizzard’s own site:

Single-tree sorcs are more than not so much a good idea. They’re completely unviable in LoD if you want to play in hell mode. (That is, if your sorc uses spells only and is not a melee-type variant character.)

Interesting. I even verified it on diabloii.net. I wonder whether this was always the case or whether it was changed by a patch.

This is curious, as some time ago I used to do blood runs with a high level cold sorc. His cold mastery and frozen orb were both ridiculously high. It certainly seemed to me that he was damaging the cold-immune Enslaves. Furthermore, the apparent myth that immunities can be beaten is extremely widespread.

Hmmm…

I have never really cared one way or another, as my sorc is a tri-elementalist.

MR

whimper

waves fist at sky One of these days, I tell you, I’ll be playing D2 again with the best of them!

I haven’t played in a few months, but I’m always game for a game. I don’t have any uber-characters - I think my highest level person is a level 60 (70?)-ish(?) sorceress, followed by a 50-something-ish Necromancer (no specialization, really - actually, he has all 30 skills at various levels).

I don’t play cookie-cutter characters, and never bothered with following any guides. I’ve also only ever played in either single player, or TCP/IP. My roommate and I have quite a collection of stuff, scattered across about 12 characters whose sole purpose is to act as storage space. We haven’t played a great deal since the expansion (all characters are converted, by the way), so I haven’t come across too many of the “new” uniques and set pieces.

I also have a smattering of lower level characters from each class.