Diablo II single player questions

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Would a high level of fanaticism work well here? If the aura breaks physical immunity, would a high level of resistance reduction be enough so that Zeal deals decent damage?

 

You are confusing Fanatacism with Conviction, Ziad. Conviction can and does break immunities, but it functions at 20% of its capacity if it does. I'm also not sure if it affects physical resistance at all, I know it affects defense and elemental resistances but I dont know if it affects physical resistances. I wouldnt bet on it, otherwise the Zeal/Conviction combo would be a lot more common.

Fanatacism doesnt affect your enemies in any way.

 

Completely mixed up my auras there. Sorry about that.

 

You're kind of correct, although your explanation could use some more detail. First, you are completley correct that he seems to be confusing conviction and fanaticism. Fanaticism improves your character's attack speed, attack rating, and damage dealt.

Conviction has two main attributes: 1) It lowers you enemies' resistance to elemental and magic damage and 2) It reduces your enemies' defense rating, making them easier to hit. It does not effect resistance to physical damage, so a physical immune would still be physically immune.

Finally, allow me to expalin the "working at 20% capacity" comment. It is possible for monsters to have an excess of 100% resistance to an element(s) or physical damage. In order to "break" the immunity you need 5 times the amount of resistance reduction as the creature is above 100%. An example will make this easier to understand:

Assume you run into a creature with 110% cold resistance. (You cannot tell exactly what a monster's resistance is in-game. It is listed as immune regardless of whether it is 100% resistant, 110% resistant, etc. So this is purely a hypothetical example.) Further assume that your paladin has conviction active, and it is reducing the monster's resistance by 75%. The first thing you need to do is "break" the immunity. Since the monster has 110% resistance, you need 5 * 10% = 50% resistance reduction to get the monster down to 100%. Now that the resistance is "broken", the remaining resistance reduction of 25% works at full strength, so the monster would now have 75% resistance to cold.

If the monster had 120% resistance to cold, you would need 5 * 20% = 100% resistance reduction to break the immunity, and so in this example, the creature would remain immune to cold.

It is also possible for resistance to go into negatives. If, for example, the monster had 50% cold resistance, the entire 75% would be applied at full strength, and the monster would have -25% cold resistance.

There are some very powerful tag teams that you can have in reducing a monster's resistance. However, you cannot have more than one paladin with conviction affecting the same monster. If, however, you have a paladin with conviction and a sorceress with cold mastery, both skills would work additively to break the immunity. There is no monster in the game that stays immune to cold against a maxed out conviction paladin and a maxed out cold mastery sorceress. This pairing of character should be able to mow through just about anything.

EDIT: Sorry Ziad - you posted while I was typing!

 

Its also common to give Infinity runeword polearms to Act 2 mercenaries, because these polearms, when equipped, give you a conviction aura. Certain high level runewords and unique items give players auras. Using them, you can have multiple auras active at once.

 

I have no clue why they are so devalued, but I absolutely hate it, at times it seems like all I get are claws!

 

Congrats dmc. The only thing I don't like about Baal runs with my necro is that it takes my army a while to kill Baal himself. Like, a few minutes of constant hacking. That doesn't sound that long, but three minutes or so is actually a really long time for your merc, skellies, and golem to be beating on something.

The arachnid mesh belt is one of the better belts in the game, even if you are not a caster.

For some reason, unless the claw has +skills on it, they are worth crap. However, the ones that have +2 or +3 to an assassin skill are worth a ton - up to 35,000 gp just like all the other +skill gear. The thing that is annoying about them is that you don't know whether a particular claw is going to have +skills until you ID it.

So you always pick them up, and you're sometimes disappointed when you get back to town. While I have long since passed the point of picking up most normal blue items, since claws have the potential to be worth 35,000 gp, those are one of the items I still pick up.

I also do not know why the normal (white) versions of the claws never come with +skills. All other class specific equipment can come with +skills even if the item itself is not magical.

Speaking of picking things up, what stuff do you guys take with you, and what do you leave lying on the ground? With my necro, so many blue items drop that all I would be doing is running back to town if I pickup up everything. I always pick up rares, uniques, and sets - even if I know what they are - because they are usually worth decent coin and rares/uniques can be upgraded to exceptional or unique status making them potentially very useful weapons. I also pick up all blue items that are of at least exceptional quality. I also pick up all exceptional and unique armor (even if it's white) as they are almost always worth 35,000 gp. Finally, I always pick up all gear that has the potential to come with +skills. I'll even pick up white orbs and staves if they have +skills on them, because they take up just two spaces of inventory, and are worth 35,000 gp. (Plus it doesn't hurt that you can pick white ones up and see if they have skills on them, and decide based on that if it's worth a lot to sell.)

 

You see, I have 3 +1 to summoning skill grand charms, so my inventory space is pretty full. I'd say it's somewhat more than half full, but of course I carry the cube with me, which provides additional storage space. I have two fully open columns in my inventory, three columns with a small charm at the bottom and the three spaces above the charm open, the cube, and that's it. I used to do what you do with the scroll of town portal, but it seems like I all-too-frequently forget to buy a new one on my return trip to town, and the times you don't have a tp are always the runs where one doesn't drop. So I do carry a tome of tp, although I refuse to ever carry a tome of ID. (Although that theoretically would help in determining what is/is not valuable enough to take back to town. Then again, if I ID everything before taking it back to town, am I really saving any time? The whole idea of taking back only the most expensive stuff is that I spend more time killing monsters, gaining experience, and finding the high end items, and not messing around by picking up a blue long sword.)

 

Too bad you don't play online, as I could then GIVE you a SoJ. I have several on one of my mules.

 

The IK set is DA BOMB. I had one a few years ago, and I made a whirlwind barbarian to use it. There's just one small issue with your theory of finding the reamining pieces: The IK armor is far and away the most rare piece of the set. In fact, with the exception of Griswold's set for the paladin, the armor is far and away the most rare piece in all the class-specific sets. (In case you're wondering the cedecus is the most rare piece in Griswold's set.) I would not recommend planning on completing any class-specific set if you don't have the armor for it.

The IK armor is sacred armor (which is the elite version of ancient armor, the highest level regular armor available). Given the infrequency of seeing a white version of sacred armor dropping, you can imagine that you won't see the set of that item type dropping with any regularity. It's in TC 87, meaning it's one of those items that can only be dropped by Diablo, Baal, Nihlathak, or a champion or unique monster in a level 85 area.

I took a break from my paladin this weekend. I started up a sorceress. I don't have a firm plan with her (other than I'm going with a cold/fire combo, and most likely the commonly used Meteorb build). I have some items for her, and while I have several pieces of Tal Rasha's set (including the armor - all I'm missing is the amulet in fact), I do not plan on using the entire set. The armor itself is too good to pass up:

833-941 Defense
60% Item Requirements
-15 Magical Damage Taken
+88% Magic Find
+40% Cold Resistance
+40% Fire Resistance
+40% Lightning Resistance
+400 Defense

All for a strength requirement of just 84. I also may use the helm:

+30 Mana
+60 Life
+45 Defense
+15% Resistance To All
+10% Life Stolen Per Hit
+10% Mana Stolen Per Hit

because I am going to melee a bit with this sorceress, and the combination of resistance, and life and mana steal is nice. You see, the reason I'm not using the completed set (even if I had the amulet) is because the weapon I'm using is Hexfire, the unique shamshir:

61-102 damage
+140-160% Enhanced Damage
Adds 35-40 Damage
Ignores Target's Defense
Fire Resist +25%
+10% to Maximum Fire Resist
Level 6 Hydra (36 Charges)
+3 to All Fire Skills (All Chars)

Strength and dexterity requirements are both just 58. The attraction of this weapon is twofold: 1) the ignore target defense means that even my measily sorceress with a low dexterity will have a hit rate of 95% against every monster in the game and 2) since a Meteorb is primarily a fire sorceress with a backup cold attack, the +3 to all fire skills is just dandy. By comparison, the weapon that comes from the set is a sorceress orb (obviously), that offers +1 to all sorceress skills, and +1 to fire, cold, and lightning mastery. The big advantage of the weapon is if you have the complete set, it lowers the fire, lightning, and cold resistance of monsters by 15%.

I won't go over 84 for my strength score, and 58 is the highest dexterity I'll need, so there will be ample points available for vitality. The sorceress gets 2 life for every point spent in vitality, which is the same exchange rate you get for a necromancer. So I should be able to get up to about 1000 life by the time I reach level 80. I'm thinking of getting a defiance mercenary, because I do plan on entering melee, and the main thing I need from my mercenary is survivability.

 

Strange occurrence, and question: does beating the game effect other characters who have not?

I've been doing a few countess runs lately on Regular and, much to my surprise, I'm getting 2-3 runes from her every time, and some of mid-level quality. Either this is something new with a new patch, or I've never noticed it before. (By the by: this is a new Frosty Zealadin I'm playing – I'm trying to do it right this time). I've done 5 countess runs in a row now, and now I have more gems and runes than I can handle! It's still Act I, I haven't even gotten to the Catacombs yet to take on Andarial, and my stash is completely full of gems and runes. That's NEVER happened to me before. I'm now reduced to keeping Wirt's leg in my secondary weapon slot because I have no more room in my stash. Even now - I have about 10 gems in my personal inventory because I'm out of room. Historically, I only have about 10 gems/runes TOTAL by the time I beat Andarial. I never thought I'd have to make a b-line to act 2 for the Horadric Cube just to upgrade all my gems, but that's what I'm now doing. I have one item that increases my chance of finding magic items by 10%, but that's not powerful enough to trigger this windfall, is it?

So I guess my question is: should this be happening, or am I getting some kind of freak lucky streak?

 

I've noticed something similar in my games. Do you happen to have "/players 8" activated?
My first character (since reinstalling) only got around 12 or so gems on Act 1. My second one somehow managed to get my stash 3/4 full before I got the cube, very annoying. The rest are similar.

 

Beating the game should not have any effect on what other characters get as drops. The Countess can always generate up to three runes, and getting two is quite common. However, I think you are misinterpreting what a "mid-level" rune is. There are 33 different runes in the game, and the highest the Countess on normal can drop is Ral (#8). Low runes are generally considered to be anything from Thul (#10) and lower.

I often have a full stash of gems/runes long before I kill Andariel, (although at that point I usually transfer them to a character with a cube to upgrade them). So I don't think there's anything particularly uncommon about the number of gems or runes you have, although I generally don't have to transfer until at some point in the Monestary, so maybe you have somewhat more than you'd expect, but nothing extraordinary. I'd say you are a little lucky.

As for your magic find, it has no effect on gems or runes. The way the drop mechanics in the game work, the game first decides on what type of item to drop (short sword, cap, leather armor, chipped ruby, arrows, etc.) and then it decides on what the quality of that item is (normal, magic, rare, set, or unique). Magic find does not affect the type of item chosen, but does affect the quality chosen. However, gems and runes only come in normal (white) quality, so magic find does not enter into the equation. Here's a link to everything you'd ever want to know about runes.

 

Yes, I'll have to do that. I won't have internet access at the house for a few more weeks, but that's why baby Jesus invented the flash drive.

---------- Added 16 hours, 42 minutes and 38 seconds later... ----------

UPDATE: Can any of you share with me the ATMA download link you used? The one I found at http://atma.diabloii.net/ (version V) was corrupted and/or damaged. Is there another version out there?

 

http://atma.diabloii.net/