Diablo II single player questions

Just found three nightmare uniques and a green with a ~20 MF character. Ridiculous since I just used my ~300 MF character for a Lut Gholein->Kurast Hell run earlier and only got 2 greens.

 

what was the drops SI?

 

I find this surprising. While I agree that using Find Item would be tedious if you intended to use it on every single corpse, I always use it on uniques. It's especially good for the super uniques that have higher chances of dropping rare or better. Who wouldn't want a second drop out of Eldritch, Pindleskin or Thresh Socket? It's not like it takes that long either. Presumably you'd set it as a hotkey, switch to your echoing weapons, and cast it.

I will concede that you are at a point in your item finding career, that there isn't much left that you can find on Normal and Nightmare difficulties that is going to be of much use to you. If you intend to continue this strategy into hell difficulty, you'll just be throwing items away. I will never pass up the oppotunity to use find item on a unique, just because of the "you never know" factor.

With all the football this weekend, I played very little. I'm still trying to get around to doing the Ice Caves and rescuing Anya.

 

I think your analysis on what to socket into AF is spot-on. The only way you'd throw a PTopaz in it is if you literally were not lacking in any other area. I have generally not found resistances to be a problem for a barbarian, even one that does not use a shield. With a single point in natural resistances along with +skill items you can usually gain enough resist all to receive a comparable boost as you'd get out of a shield from another character. IIRC, you had a TON of +skill items (don't forget to add the one you get from Battle Commands), so that skill should be netting you 40-something percent resist all. That said, if you NEED resists, an Um isn't a bad choice. Barring that, what about a %ed jewel, preferably with a second mod on it?

 

The paladin shield Alma Negra, a necro dagger with heavy poison damage, and another frostshrill(?), the mace that casts frozen orb. And one Tal Rasha's belt.
Now if I can only find the his adjudication and lidless eye...

With the ~300 MF character I only got a piece of the greater amazon set and Hwanin's gloves.

I upgraded my Woestave to exceptional BTW and my Merc is owning in Act 2-3 hell with it (I don't have a Reaper's Toll yet). He still dies against big groups of monsters though, especially undead ones. Maxed slow, cold and freeze (from Woestave) +decrepify charges (character) FTW. My present merc is Blessed Aim type, so my Enchantress doesn't miss with her ranged attack (currently testing bows without exploding arrows).

Edit:
I'm thinking of making the runeword bow Harmony with revive charges in preparation for the hell Ancients. They should make good meatshields, and might deal decent damage if I use Enchant on them.

 

My personal bane if item finding. I have the complete set EXCEPT the amulet. The kicker is that the amulet is probably the most common piece of the set. Only the sash and the amulet can be dropped in late normal difficulty, and the armor is far and away the toughest to acquire piece.

 

Mock me if you must.

Say, I forget, how many SoJs have you found?

 

I found two arachnid meshes last week, other than that I've not been playing that much. I've been somewhat busy lately. Anyhow, I started a skelly necromancer a few weeks ago and am currently going on in act 3 nightmare. I also completed Act IV Hell with my barb. Hellforge gave me Lem which is adequate I suppose.

Current wishlist in term of items: Skullder's Ire, Wartravellers, the Occulus, the homonculous, SOJ, Shaftstop, Goreriders, an additional Harlequin crest would also be quite nice and I would not mind arreat's face either although I suppose my perfect vampire gaze will do for my barb.

 

This thread goes on for awhile.

I wanted to agree with Gnarfflinger from page 1 that Rogues are worthwhile (Act 1 hirelings).

I had one and kept her. She used a ranged weapon and didn't run into the middle of a fight and get herself killed-keeping reviving/replacement costs down. Also since she started at a low level and I keep leveling her up she got some pretty good resistances going by Act 3 because the resistances build a little bit with each level she gained.

Sure it cost something to keep her armor and bow up to date, but I felt it was worth it.

Plus I felt that as a paladin my auras worked better when I had a teammate on single player they could work with.

 

Oh FFS! A THIRD Arachnid Mesh. Aren't these supposed to be quite rare or something? I can't believe this! I mean one was good, two was okay but three while certainly welcome could have been some other item. Oh well, I did score goreriders which actually were on my wishlist so those at least were more than welcome.

 

Goreriders are excellent boots. I also agree with you the Shaftstop is a very under-rated armor. The huge %DR on it is outstanding. Even if you find an armor that you would prefer to use for your character, you won't do much better than Shaftstop for your mercenary. The only thing you don't get with Shaftstop is resists.

I was busy with Dragon Age this weekend. My brother and I rented the game for the XBox to see if we wanted to upgrade our current PCs to play it. We were largely unimpressed by the game, so I'm back to D2 this week.

 

I took the druid out again last night, and made some progress. I'm now level 83, and moving all in Act V, Hell. The thing that I am finding annoying is that my merc is not having a particularly good go of it. I've reached the point where it is no longer economically feasible to go back to town every time he dies in some areas. While my performance is at its peak when he's around, I can get by just fine without him.

As is always the case with this game, I'm always thinking about my next character. I want to finish Act V with the druid first. Then I'm thinking of passing down some hand-me-down steel charms to my paladin, and finally getting him to finish things. That character stalled when his chance to hit dropped to around 60-something percent, and the steel charms should rectify that. I still have to get back to my spear-using whirlwind barb, but that is contingent upon getting the necessary runes to upgrade his weapon (although honestly, I am using the Hone Sudan, so it's not absolutely NECESSARY for me to up the equipment). And I STILL am planning on making a javazon with Titan's Revenge. (I have two copies of the weapon, so I'll have that as my primary weapon, and the switch).

 

Yeah, mercs need help to survive in hell. They either need a bunch of smaller summons running around like you get with a necro, a singular powerful summons like a grizzly or valkyrie, or at least something that improves their survivability like a barbarian's battle commands/battle orders/shout combo.

 

Gloams, gloams, and more gloams. Damn it all.