Diablo II single player questions

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I found 3 Cathan's Rings in a row once while playing Ladder Multiplayer. One each from Act 2-4, but Cathan's is pretty common tho.
If you kill the Cow King for a particular difficulty your character will no longer be able to open the portal again for that difficulty. As long as you don't kill him you should still be able to open a new portal in a new game, you just need to get a new Wirt's Leg.
I've seen pieces of the set drop from non-unique cows, but I'm not sure if you need to kill the Cow King to complete it.

 

Not only is it possible to get the same set item to drop in the same game, it is theoretically possible for an act boss to drop the same set item twice (although this is admittedly a very unusual occurance). You'll never get the same unique twice in one game, so a boss cannot drop two of them. With rares and magic items, while it's certainly possible to get two of the same type of item, just from the number of potential modifiers involved, finding two exactly the same would be absurdly long odds. So while the chance is remote, the best chance of having a boss drop two duplicate items is a set item.

Regarding cows: Not such a great run for high level anything, so you're really not missing much. Hell cows drop from TC 60, and the Cow King from TC 66. (For comparison's sake, Hell Andariel drops from TC 72, and you never see anyone running her repeatedly.) Hell cows are run for only two reasons: 1.) Experience points. It's not that an individual cow is worth more than a typical monster you'll find in Act V Hell, it's that you'll find so many cows, and there are many characters that can kill cows very quickly (a summoner necro is NOT one of these characters). 2.) They are great for gems, pretty good for mid-level runes, and can drop any exceptional piece of equipment in the game, and some elite stuff, although the odds are poor. I'm not sure what their top rune drop is, but it isn't Vex (I believe I heard Um was their top rune drop), so I'd say you did better with your alternate run than if you had done cows.

Now that my sorceress has come into her own, I can start making some comparisons between her and my necro. Both can load up on MF equipment and both are capable of dealing with everything in the game. The difference is this: sorceresses have to be much more careful to not get killed because they don't have an army in front of them. However, once you get the hang of it and are able to teleport to safety when you or your merc are hurting, the sorceress is MUCH faster than the necro. (When you cast teleport, the merc is also transported to that location. So it's good if a boss is pounding on him and you need to give him a breather while the healing potion goes to work.)

I haven't got to hell Baal yet (I'm only in late nightmare), but I can still kill most things with one casting of Frozen Orb (and Meteor hits for way more than Frozen Orb, although at this point I'm really only using Meteor on bosses, because Frozen Orb clears the screen). There's no way a sorceress is going to get into a battle with any act boss that's going to last for several minutes (like the necro does with Baal). The reason for this is simple: a necro is pretty much done in terms of maximum damage output from his minions once he maxes out raise skeleton and skeleton mastery, which typically happens in late nightmare - his damage output is pretty much constant throughout Hell.

Sure, he still maxes out corpse explosion, but other than Andariel, that's not going to help you against act bosses. And he has a clay golem that he'll invest in, but the clay golem is there to slow the boss down and soak up damage - not to inflict significant damage (in fact, I'm not even sure the golem does as much damage as a skeleton). Conversely, the sorceress gets improved damage every time she levels up. She can easily average several thousand points of damage per second with meteors interspersed with fireballs during meteor's 1.5 second cool-down period.

I'll let you know more as I progress through hell, but my initial thinking is that a sorceress will be faster, but a necro will be safer.

I also did an analysis of the damage output between the two helms, and it's not even close. To do this analysis, I went conservative and assumed I would not acquire any +skill items beyond what I currently have. I then did a damage comparison using Meteor with both fireball and fire mastery synergies (I didn't do the same thing for fireball, but the damage ratios should work out to be the same). What I found out is that the initial impact damage of a meteor using the hexfire setup (level 28 meteor and fire mastery, along with 20 synergy points in fireball - only hard points count for synergies) would be 5191, while the initial impact damage for a meteor using the Tal Rasha setup (level 24 meteor and level 26 fire mastery, same 20 fireball synergy points) is 4572.

Then I did a little table with various monster resistances to see how that damage would translate in-game damage, and basically the higher the monsters fire resistance, the better Tal Rasha's setup looks, and ends up totally blowing the Hexfire setup away, even though initially I didn't think it would be nearly this big of a difference.

0% Fire Resistance: Hex: 5191, TR: 5258 - 67 points better
20% Fire Resistance: Hex: 4153, TR: 4343 - 190 points better
40% Fire Resistance: Hex: 3115, TR: 3429 - 314 points better
60% Fire Resistance: Hex: 2077, TR: 2515 - 438 points better
80% Fire Resistnace: Hex: 1038, TR: 1600 - 562 points better
100% FIre Resistance: Hex: 0, TR: 686 - 686 points better
Neither do damage if fire resistance > 103%

So this is a no-brainer now. I thought I was going to have to chose between more damage, versus resistance and magic find. Not only do I get more fire damage out of Tal Rasha's set, I get more resistances, more magic find, and I also will get an additional +1 to Frozen Orb, and +2 to Cold Mastery so even my backup attack will be more powerful. The Hexfire setup with Harlequin Crest only gets used for levels 62-70.

 

Aldeth, is this comparison between Hexfire+HC and the complete Tal Rasha set, or the incomplete one you have at the moment? If it's for the incomplete one I cannot imagine how powerful the set is once you have all the items!

Regarding unique items, what do you mean by "twice in one game"? Does this refer to having the unique drop twice with the same character, with the same character on a particular difficulty, or just in-between starting (or reloading) with a character and using "Save & Exit"? The reason I'm asking is that I do have 2 of the same unique (Crushflange) that dropped twice for my Necro (although they dropped on different days, so if the game only keeps track of uniques for a particular session that would explain it).

ION I finished the Normal game with my Necro yesterday. Act 5 was surprisingly easy, my small army of skeletons made short work of the Ancients, Baal's minions, and Baal himself. On /players 8 Baal took a while to go down, but I got lucky and he started hitting my Golem instead of my skeletons, so he wasn't doing any real damage to my minions. Decrepify is amazing though, it made both the Ancients fight and Baal much easier thanks to its weakening and slowing effects. Having an Ice skeleton mage helps too. I'm curious to see how much I can slow bosses down once I get a Holy Freeze merc as well! Unfortunately Baal did not drop anything interesting (well, he dropped a couple of sets, a unique and 2 or 3 rares, but nothing that any of my characters will be using). I might run the cow level tonight and maybe start Nightmare, or go back to my Paladin and Sorceress, who are still stuck in Act 2 Normal.

 

It's assuming I use three of the five items - specifically the armor, orb, and helm. You get -15% enemy fire resistance once you add the third item, so three pieces are the sweet spot. The partial set bonus for a 4th item is -15% enemy lightning resistance, which doesn't do a meteorb much good. The complete set will offer +15% cold damage (I assume it's not -15% enemy cold resistnace because cold mastery already does that) and a very nice +3 to all sorceress skills and +50% resist all. So yes, it's very nice.

The last option you listed. Once you "Save and Exit" it is considered a "new game". If the game rolls for the same unique that has already dropped since your last "save and exit", instead of getting the unique you will get a rare of that item type with double the normal durability. This is termed a "failed unique".

There is one other way to get a failed unique. All set and uniques have quality levels associated with them, and a monster's level must equal or exceed the quality level of the unique in order for a monster to be able to drop the item. (However, magic and rares do not have quality levels.) Some set and unique items have quality levels that far exceed their treasure class, so a monster would be able to drop that item type, but would not be able to drop the unique or set of that item type.

An example makes this much easier to understand. Let's look at the unique heavy belt Goldwrap. Heavy belts are in TC 21, meaning you can start seeing them drop late in Act II Normal. However, Goldwrap has a quality level of 40, and monsters in late Act II Normal aren't anywhere near level 40. The first monster you encounter that can actually drop Goldwrap is Normal Diablo. So if a monster is less than level 40, picks TC 21, and picks a heavy belt from the TC, it will then roll to determine what kind of heavy belt drops. If the roll comes up as a unique, it then checks the quality level, and since the monster is less than level 40, you will get a rare heavy belt with double normal durability.

I would recommend against that. You already have a ton of sources of slowing with your merc, decrepify, and having a cold skellie mage. Slowing penalties are additve, up to a maximum of 95%. Decrepify gives you 50%, and a high level clay golem gets you another 50%, so even before you factor in the skeleton mage you are already going to be at the max. You are much better off taking a might merc, as his aura will increase the physical damage of ALL of your skeletons, your golem, and of course the merc himself.

EDIT: dmc beat me to it....

 

Are you sure about that dmc? Last night I got another Steelgoad (voulge) and Bloodfist (gloves) in the same session.

 

My knowledge is limited to battlenet. Single player may be different, but on battlenet, dmc's explanation is 100% correct. It is certianly possible to get two uniques in the same session, and you can certainly get a unique to drop that you already have equipped assuming it dropped in a previous session. You just cannot get two of the same unique drop with doing a "save and exit" in between.

 

My caster Druid in Hell met some Meteorb sorceress while exploring Tal Rasha's Tombs yesterday, and their Meteor is a lot more powerful than I thought. They are frail though. They can kill faster than me but have problems dealing with some immunes and some Lightning Enchanteds. Ghoul Lord-type monsters appear very resistant to their attacks.

Main reason you would not want a cold Merc is because they can shatter a lot of useful corpses.

 

Thanks for the merc recommendations guys. I don't use the Clay Golem much anymore, as the Fire Golem has more life and deals much more damage (against non-fire immunes of course), but if I'm getting enough slowing down from Decrepify and an Ice skeleton then a Might merc would make my skeleton army much more deadly, especially once I've maxed the skill. I'm not too concerned about losing corpses, as it is I already use a very tiny percentage of all the corpses I generate. In fact I end up wasting tons of mana against resurrecting monsters to get rid of the corpses, so I wouldn't mind that side effect at all.

Meteor is very powerful if maxed out. It's true that the Sorceress is very fragile, but she should never be within melee range anyway. Unlike the Druid she doesn't have a skill tree to complement her spellcasting abilities, so she's a pure caster (though I've heard of people who run pure Enchant sorceresses and manage to survive; can't imagine how they pull it off though). The Meteorb doesn't have such a big problem with immunes as she can deal 2 types of damage, and even against double immunes (not that many around unless you're in Hell) a good offensive merc and Static Field work pretty well.

 

You don't use the clay golem for the damage it does. It serves two functions: 1.) It greatly slows the creature it attacks. 2.) It can soak up HUGE amounts of damage. A maxed out clay golem can have something like 10000 life - I'm not even kidding.

I still maintain that the holy freeze merc is a bad choice - but it's your character...

There are a few preset double immunes in hell. The Countess and Bishbosh spring immediately to mind (but you are correct that you static the hell out of them and then start swinging an ITD weapon).

 

Aldeth, I was actually swayed by your argument and deciding to use the Might merc. As for the golems I guess using the Clay golem now that I've entered Nightmare will be much more useful. In Normal I really needed the high damage, especially since it takes a lot of skill points investment before the skeletons start doing some real damage. Now that I have invested lots of points in both skeletons and skeletal mastery, I don't need to rely on the Fire Golem damage as much, especially since IIRC enemies get a huge health boost in Nightmare and having one golem dealing slightly-above-good won't make much of a difference when the 10 skeletons are dealing good damage each. I put top priority on maxmizing Raise Skeleton and Skeletal Mastery some time ago, and that's the way I'm going. I don't want to max out the golem (whichever I end up using) until then.

dmc - I'm not sure about the golems when you max them, but I think the Clay and Blood golems have the highest life and the Fire Golem doesn't even come close. A maxed out Fire Golem does insane damage (we're talking 1500+ per hit, not counting the Fire Aura) but that's about it. IIRC the Blood Golem gets the most life, with the disadvantage that if it dies your Necro is a few hit points away from joining him. A Clay Golem would probably be the best to soak damage in late Nightmare and Hell.

 

Bone skills can be very powerful, but they really rely on synergies to get to a high amount of damage. Every single bone skill synergies with every other one. (Even bone wall and bone prison are synergies for other bone skills.)

I just looked up bone spear, and a level 8 bone spear does 77-85 points of magic damage, and has synerigies with all the other bone skills at 7% per point spent. I'm assuming the only other point you have invested in a bone skill is teeth, so that would up the damage to 82-91 with a casting cost of 8.75 mana. (Every point invested in the skill raises it's casting cost by 0.25 mana - I didn't know until just now that there were skills that had increases of less than 0.5 mana.)

Compared to what your minions are doing, it would seem to me that doing an extra 90 points of damage is pretty insignificant. I suppose if you ran into a stone skinned physical immune that you couldn't break with amplify damage, having bone spear would allow you to assist your skeletal mages in taking them out, and bone spear does go through targets, so theoretically you could hit all the monsters in the pack with a single spear. But it's not like those type fo creatures are at all common. Their minions don't get the same bonus, and so you usually just take out the minions and corpse explode the boss to death.

It's not like I have a great idea on what to spend that point on, but here's what I came up with:

1. All the golem skills synerigize with each other, and so spending a point on one of them would make your clay golem even stronger - or spend it in golem mastery for basically the same effect.

2. Add another point to skeletal mage. I would consider this option especially if the additional skill point would allow you to summon an additional mage.

3. You can go the resistance route, either adding a point to summon resist to make them more hardy, or perhaps lower resist (if you don't already have it) to help your mages take out stone skinned physical immunes.

I would also recommend maxing them in that order - working on RS first, and SM second (although make sure you do get at least one point in SM early on), as RS increases the number of skeletons, their damage, and their life totals, whereas SM only does the last two. I would also recommend maximizing corpse explosion before you work on a golem. You don't really need a golem to tank for you until you get to hell difficulty, so working on a golem can be delayed for some time. Corpse explosion is extremely useful, and you'll start casting it regularly in nightmare. It's especially great in trying to get through a doorway - as soon as the first monster falls, you blow him up, and it usually kills the rest of the pack which are all clustered around the doorway.

 

I am familiar with that armor, and yes it looks totally bad ass. (As an aside, the IK set is all jet black - including the maul - and having a barbarian decked out completely in black with a glowing aura about him is the ultimate in character appearance IMO.) For some reason all the class-specific sets are uniquely colored - Aldur's for the druid is orange, Tal Rasha's for the sorceress is purple, etc.

That said, you criticisms of Corpsemourn are valid. It has a high defense, but not that high. High defense armor is only useful to a character that is going to specialize in defense, like a shout/iron skin barbarian, a werebear, or a paladin with a high level holy shield or defiance aura. It's light on resistances, doesn't give life steal or life regenration, does nothing to improve your combat ability, and the bonuses to strength and vitality are fairly low IIRC. The casting iron maiden is nice, as melee characters are well... in melee a lot so they get hit. Iron Maiden returns a ton of damage even at a low level, so that's not a big concern. Even if it's level 3 or something it probably returns more than 100% damage.

However, the biggest turnoff for me is the strength requirement on ornate plate. Unless it has a modifier of reduced item requirements (and I do not think it does) the strength requirement of ornate plate is 170. If you are going to invest that much into strength, there are a ton of elite body armors that you can get your hands on that are clearly superior to Corpsemourn. Besides, you'd never invest that much in strength just to use that body armor. Unless you were planning on using a weapon with a strength requirement that high (and there are a couple of mauls, axes, polearms, spears, and even a sword or two that have requirements that high), it is unlikely that you'd make the strength investment for the sake of using that armor.

 

I don't know if Gambling is the most amazing element in Diablo 2, or if I'm just lucky.

I gambled for a plate armour yesterday, trying to get one of the set items. Instead I got a unique called Guardian Angel. It's a Paladin armour and it's got a steep level requirement (won't be using it anytime soon), but here's a rundown of its stats.

Defense: 778
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 118
Durability: 60
+20% Increased Chance Of Blocking
+30% Faster Block Rate
+ To Attack Rating Against Demons (Based On Character Level)
+1 To Paladin Skill Levels
+4 To Light Radius
15% To Maximum Poison Resist
15% To Maximum Cold Resist
15% To Maximum Lightning Resist
15% To Maximum Fire Resist

Now I'm sure there are better armours around, but the insane amount of defense, the increased blocking, the +15% to ALL of the MAX resistances sound really good, and the +1 to skills is just icing on the cake. I'll need a lot of good resistance items to make full use of it in Nightmare, but having potentially 90% resistance to all sounds pretty powerful!

 

OMG You gambled a Guardian Angel?!?!?! The odds on that gamble in nightmare with a character around level 50 is insane. Base gambling odds for a unique are 1 in 2000, but that's for normal items. The odds of getting a plate mail armor upgraded to an exceptional AND be unique have to one in a couple hundred thousand.

As far as paladins go, no, there aren't better armors around! That is end-game top-shelf, totally *****in' armor for a paladin. Barring a high-end runeword, you'll wear that until the end of the game.

 

I hate you, Ziad.

 

the ama got through baal relatively easy after players 1

but now my Frozen arrow / Strafer has problems in act 1 on hell

she puts out enough dammage, would like a more physical oriented bow, but her survivability is really lacking, despite the 700 life and i suspect this is because of weak res. she has -70 in all...

so i really lack in equipment, and are considering making a necro, i can make the lore helm, spirit RW, found a +1 necro skille amu with +20% all res. and found a +2 necro staff, still need rings and other stuff, but i think he would be easier until i get good enough equipment?

@dmc yes that is a really cool armor! i used it on my barb in the old days, when i did not have anything better