Diablo 2 & Sorceress builds

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Once you have 3 thuls you need 1 chipped topaz and the next ones require something else. And if you don't have the gems, a few Countess runs should fix that (and net you with new runes at the same time).

It takes time, but may be your only chance of getting the rune in a legit way.

 

The best drops I've ever got were Mal and Ist, and they were Hellforge drops.

 

@Wordplay - that can't be right. Thul is only like rune #10 - there's no way to get a Ber from 3 Thuls and a chipped gem. Unless you mean that starting with Thul you need to add gems. Still, you're looking at several hundred thuls to get all the way to Ber. Actually, you probably need several THOUSAND Thuls to get a Ber, as you looking at powers of 3 for each advancement until a certain point. I think once you get higher than rune #20 or so, it requires two runes and a gem to upgrade.

Also, does the countess ALWAYS drop gems? I know that she always drops runes (although usually the best runes you get from the chest she guards, and you can only do that once).

@Tassadar - the hellforge drop is the best guaranteed rune drop in the game. Sadly, you can do it but once.

 

Well Wordplay didnt exactly say that 3 thuls = 1 ber....he just said 'next ones' which I assume simply means the next rune in order

 

No, Countess doesn't always drop gems (even she sometimes does). What I meant is that on nightmare it is easy to kill several monsters on the way to her. I have almost always been a few gems richer after a quick Countess run.

Personally, the highest rune I have ever got is Gul and that was from Hellforge. Whatever you do, you chances are really slim of ever even seeing Ber.

 

So after Dol you can't make these runes in v1.11?

From my general experience in playing, I break the runes down into subgroups.

The first 9 runes, so El through Ort (this includes the Tal, Ral, Ort you get for the Act V quest) are all quite common. You can start seeing some of these from Act I Normal, and you'll be choking on them if you hold on to everyone you find.

Runes 10-15 (Thul-Hel) are semi-common. You can and probably will find at least one copy of each during your time in Nightmare.

Runes 16-21 (Io-Pul) are where they start to get much more uncommon. These are findable as early as late Nightmare, although you probably will be waiting until Hell difficulty to collect any of these types. Even on Hell difficulty, you will see many more of the other groups of Runes than these.

Rune 22-26 (Um-Vex) are even more rare. While it may be possible to find these on Nightmare, I've never found one of these before Hell. However, containers in the Hole Level 2 (Act I, Tamoe Highlands) and the Third Level Maggot Lair (Act II) all have the possibility of dropping as high as Vex. Therefore, with enough runs (and I mean hundreds in most cases) you can find these.

Finally, Runes 27-33 (Ohm-Zod) are truly rare finds. Even on Hell Difficulty on the Hellforge where you are guaranteed rune drops, because the odds of getting the highest rune types are so remote, more often than not you'll get something from one of the previous two groups. I know of no way to increase the odds of getting these type to drop. I've had Ohm and Ber drop for me, but the only time I've seen any of the others in this group is from a screen shot.

One of the main reasons that Runes (especially high level ones) are so rare is because they use a different treasure class (TC) from all of the other items in the game. All other weapons, armor, etc., are dropped from a treasure class table, with each monster having a fixed maximum TC level it can drop from. However, rune drops are calculated from a completely different table. There are 17 rune treasure classes, starting with Rune TC 1 which contains El and Eld. It continues upward, with two runes in each class all the way up to Rune TC 16, containing Jah and Cham. Zod is by itself in Rune TC 17.

The problem is that even through Boss monsters have "force drops" of up to 7 items, none of the bosses are forced to drop from any of the Rune TCs. Hell Bhaal for example can drop from TC 87 (which is the highest as of v1.11). However, Runes aren't in TC 87, so you can literally do hundreds of Hell Bhaal runs, find tons of the rarest equipment in the game, and not get a single Rune to drop.

Finally, this is an odd quirk with runes. All of the rune TCs have two runes in them except Zod. Your odds are exactly 50% of getting either rune. So, since Hel and Io are in the same Rune TC, you should find equal amounts of both, even though Hel is 15 and Io is 16. As you move from Rune TC 1 to Rune TC 17, each later Rune class is about one third as common as the previous. To put that in perspective, you are about 127 million times as likely to find an El or Eld as a Zod. However, since Rune TC 17 only has Zod in it, it is proportionally more common than it should be. If you get the Rune TC containing Zod, you'll always get a Zod, because that's the only thing in it. You're more likely to get Rune TC 16, but from that class you have a 50-50 chance of getting either a Jah or a Cham. Therefore, Jah and Cham are proportionally less common than Zod due to the chance of getting either of them being reduced by 50% once that Rune TC is selected.

 

*Shakes fist at Blizzard for making runes so difficult to acquire*

 

Aldeth wrote:

Talk about underestimating the odds!
You need 91 million Thul to make one Ber.

The only reasonable way of getting high runes (In Europe usually defined as runes above Gul) is by doing Hellforge-runs. That means making new characters that you rush to the Hellforge quest in Hell which gives you one random rune from Hel to Gul. You then cube these runes. Obviously many such rushes are required.
You need to either be part of a group that does this or have multiple computers to "self-rush" your new characters.
Of course you could just do it on your own (one game/one computer), by creating new characters and playing them to the Hellforge quest in Hell, but that will take lots of time compared to the "rushes".

In roughly two years of playing I've found one Vex and one Ohm. This is considered lucky.

In summary: unless you trade for high runes (and accept the probability that these runes are non-legit) you can forget about the runewords that require high runes. The exception to this is if you spend an ungodly amount of time playing the game.

[ September 08, 2006, 15:25: Message edited by: Earl Grey ]

 

I suppose there goes my idea of making an Enigma for my Sorceress

 

Hey, millions of people play lottery too, don't they? And every time one person wins.

 

@Ziad
If you want to make an Enigma you've got to trade. Then it's not that hard. You've just got to learn what makes an item valuable so you don't throw such an item away once you stumble across it. It's magic and rare items that can have really high trade values and their values are not as obvious as the unique ones.
One easy way of building wealth is to collect pgems, crap jewels and rals. In bulk these are easily tradeable for mid level runes like Pul and Um. This is not a fast way but you don't need great equipment to do it.

 

I'm not playing online, so this severely limits my ability to get items. If I don't find it, I can't get. I've actually got some good MF gear at the moment, but I don't know whether that increases the chances of getting higher level runes too. Ideally I would like to get the full Tal Rasha set by the time I'm midway through Hell, but I don't think that's going to happen. Unless I win the lottery

Speaking of items, I know that uniques have blue names, but I'm coming across items that look like uniques but have names in brown (sort of like quest items). I don't remember these from my last playthrough (with LoD 1.08). They seem to be much more powerful than the uniques I come across, but also rarer. Are these a different class of uniques?

For those interested, I'm in Act 3 Nightmare at the moment, in Kurast. I'm still walking around carrying Leaf and wearing Stealth. my resistances vary widely between 0 for Lightning and 70 for Cold (I know, I need to get these higher soon). I've got a +1 to all skills amulet, and a very nice ring that gives me huge life and mana regeneration (it's one of those brown-named items). Life is at 400 now, more than twice my mana pool, but it's still not enough. I've saved a very large number of stat points (>70) in case I suddenly need to pour them all in Strength for a very nice item. I've found a fantastic weapon (again brown-name) for my merc that gives increased attack speed, increased damage and life leech, and he's being an incredible asset thanks to it. I have no idea how I would have dreamed of surviving against those awfully annoying Dolls without him.

My sorceress is level 57 and has maxed out Frozen Orb. I've put 10 points into Cold Mastery and am now trying to max Ice Bolt for the synergy. Meteor is at a decent level (~10 thanks to Leaf) and Fire Mastery is at 5 from just one point in it. Meteor has made short work so far of cold-immunes. Duriel was a pain because I tried to kill him with Meteor, and he ended up killing me seconds later. I settled for spamming (as much as you can spam them) Orbs until he dropped. The combined effect of chilling and Holy Freeze slowed him down to a crawl and made the fight rather easy, considering he couldn't even harm my mercenary. I'm hoping Mephisto will be just as easy.

 

Normal magic items are blue. Rares are gold. Uniques are brown (and uniques are typically the most powerful items, unless you get a phenomenal rare). The typical meteo-orb maxes fire mastery, meteor and firecall. Ice bolt offers a mere 2% increase in dmg if I'm not mistaken, points which can be used to boost fire dmg to greater effect.

 

The first monster that has any chance of dropping Tal Rasha's Guardianship (the armor) is hell Diablo, so that's the earliest chance you have of completing the Tal Rasha set. The odds of Diablo dropping that armor is about 1 in 10,000 for the quest and 1 in 15,000 if it is not a quest kill.
With 300% magic find the odds improve to 1 in 4,000 and 1 in 6,000 respectively.

As you might guess, getting the full Tal Rasha set is realistically just not going to happen.

I agree with teh. Don't try to synergize Frozen Orb. Synergize your fire skills and let Frozen Orb + Cold Mastery be enough on the cold side.

 

Ok, so what I've been calling "uniques" is actually "rares"? Were the brown uniques there in patch 1.08?

I am simply not using any of the fire skills enough to justify maxing Fire Mastery, especially because of the decay in profit with higher skill levels. Ice Bolt doesn't give much of a synergy, but if I max it that's an additional 40% damage to my main skill (practically the one I'm using 99.9% of the time). I made the same mistake with Mephisto as with Duriel - I tried killing him with Meteor and had to beat a hasty retreat. A second attempt with Frozen Orb was much more successful. Anyway it's too late now, I've poured ~10 points in it already.

Too bad about the Tal Rasha set. I'll have to make my own custom set then. We'll see.

On an unrelated topic - does anyone have some fabulous tactic against Dolls? The little buggers are driving me MAD! I've died half a dozen times on Durance 2 because of Dolls blowing up next to me.

 

Just you wait till hell dolls...one hit and boom! You're dead. Only suggestion I can offer is to farm for a stormshield monarch, then pump dex until you achieve 75% block rate with it. Or you can pump vit to insane levels. But personally I prefer the former

 

MF has no effect (either positive or negative) on runes. What magic find does is increase the chances that a given item drop is of higher quality. Quality is rated, from highest to lowest, as unique (brown), set (green), rare (gold), magical (blue), normal (white), low quality/damaged/broken/ etc. So, with a high magic find, you might get a set or unique, where otherwise you would have gotten a normal or magical item.

In the case of runes, all of them are white items. There's no such thing as a magical, rare, set, or unique rune. Since MF doesn't effect what can drop, but only the quality of the drop, MF won't help you get runes.

While this wasn't directly asked, I'd also like to add that MF does not change what a given creature can drop. Earl's example of Hell Diablo being the first creature that can drop Tal Rasha's Armor is a good example here. No matter how high your magic find is, there's no way to get Ral Rasha's Armor before Hell Diablo. Monsters of lower level than that simply cannot drop it. Conversely, if a monster CAN drop a given item, there's a chance you can get it regardless of how low your magic find is. There no such thing as an item that requires a minimum of X% MF for it to drop.

AND

I would like to second the recommendation that a good shield will do you a whole lot more good than pumping vitality. Hell level stigian dolls can easily do several hundred points worth of damage (I'd guess it's pretty close to 1000) and that's just not a realistic goal for a sorceress to attain.

Of course, a sorceress is also going to have a hell of a time hitting 75% max block, especially if you are saving stat points for strength to wear specific equipment. The percent chance to block is related to both the item itself and the PC's class. Some class naturally get higher chance to block than others. For example, Stormshield gives a higher % chance to block if your character is a paladin compared to a sorceress. I don't remember the exact order, but paladins always had the best % chance of blocking, followed by barbarians and amazons. I think druids and necromancers were the third best group, followed by assassins and sorceresses making up the worst group.

The bottom line here is you're going to need a good, healthy amount of dexterity to get max block, even with storm shield. I'm guessing here as I don't know what stormshield % chance to block is with a sorceress (I know for melee characters, it's about 77%, but like I said, I don't think sorceresses get that value), but consevatively about 150 in dexterity around level 60, and more like 200 dexterity once your level gets in the 80s.

 

In Nightmare Frozen Orb rules and you don't need to improve it more, but in Hell you will need a really good fire attack as a complement.

 

This, of course, if you even manage to find the shield in the first place. Really, just spend your points to vitality and energy, since sorcererss is about avoiding the front-line at all costs in any case.

This means just one thing: maxing your damage output. Or: aiming everything towards skills first, res second, block third, and armor far fourth. In fact, you could make your sorc strip naked and walz through the game as long as your damage is good enough. Mercs can help a bit too.

 

I was going to say that socketable items can go for a fair bit... but then I read that you don't play online. For what it's worth, a 5 socketed ethereal thresher got me homunculus, and a 4 socketed monarch got me arm of king leoric.