Diablo II single player questions

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You got me there

 

My sorceress played through Nightmare Act II today. She's level 54 right now. NM Duriel was a sissy, he fell rather quick.

The loot of the day: 2 uniques, gambled some nice amulets with +skills for druid and necromancer, Sigon's Sabot and Hwanin's Justice. Hwanin's Justice is used by my mercenary now. Also bought (yes, bought) a nice Gnarled Staff with +2 to sorceress skills

Starting Act III very soon. I'm rather happy with her progress. She begins to kick some serious butt now. Looking out for flawless and perfect diamonds to use in a shield to boost up my resistance.

 

Nice

I worked my sorceress through Act III yesterday and got to Durance of Hell. Didn't do Mephisto yet. She's level 57 right now.

I found Act III much harder, especially Travincal was difficult. I died a few times there due to some champion enemies and the Council. Found 1 set item and 2 normal uniques. Nothing special.

 

Yeah, a high level barb is virtually indestructible. About the only danger with such a character is that it is almost certain that you'll die once or twice prior to the fight with Diablo as you won't notice an Oblivion Knight just off of your visible screen who will cast Iron Maiden on you mid-whirl, which is pretty much insta-death. I was away this past weekend, so I'm still in Normal, Act III with my amazon.

What's next dmc? I'm assuming you're thinking of something a bit less melee oriented for your next character. An Amazon perhaps? Or a non-melee based Druid? A Windy Druid is considered to be one of the most item-dependent builds in the game (because you need a TON of +skill items to get the damage up to high levels), but you should be fine in that department.

Drugar, as for finding Pdiamonds, you may be waiting a LONG time, as even in hell difficulty, perfects are not common drops. You're probably much better off collecting flawless diamonds (which are much more common) and every time you get three, using your Horardric Cube to transmute them to perfect diamonds.

 

I know PGems don't drop much. I'm looking for flawless diamonds to cube, but that's also slow going. I'm beginning to notice the lack of proper resistances now, cause I die really quickly.

 

It's possible to make it through NM with less than stellar resistances. However, it will be a long hard slog through Hell if you try doing that with negative resistances. There will be a lot of things that will one-hit kill you.

 

Your analysis with amazons is pretty much spot-on. Spearazons are not hell-viable. Amazons generally will not have much beyond 1000 life, and if you can't block, that simply isn't going to work. Plus, a lot of the skills on the spear/javelin tree are javelin only (i.e., they only work when the weapon is thrown, so you cannot use them with a spear).

So you really need one of the class-specific uniques for a javazon. If you don't have Titan's, the only other viable option (and some would say it's a better option) is Thunderstroke. If you don't have one of those, you will likely have a rough go of it, unless you happen to have some godly rare stashed somewhere.

With a bowazon, there are a ton of good bows out there, both as end game choices and for leveling purposes. To wit:

Windforce
Eaglehorn
Buriza
Langer Briser
Goldstrike Arch

Also, Witchwild String and Lycander's Aim are excellent levelling bows, and once you get to higher levels they can both by upped, and the upped versions are definitely end-game viable. (Of course, you wouldn't actually up them until you reached the required item level, as you could use the standard version in Normal and Nightmare.)

The other option many bowazons like is the Faith runeword in an elite class-specific bow (as they can get +3 to bow skills), for the fanaticism aura it provides. The Grand Matron Bow is considered the optimal choice here, and with a strength requirement of just 108, it's definitely doable. (However, the runeward itself is a bit pricey, as it requires an Ohm, but seeing as how you are nearing the ability of getting a Zod, you can probably swing an Ohm).

 

I knew you were being sarcastic when you said FINDING a Zod rune. I thought you were serious when you said you were getting close to upping runes to get a Zod. (You made Enigma, so it wasn't a completely unreasonable assumption on my part.)

It's rather underwhelming. You're almost certainly better off going for a combination of rares and uniques.

The most important mod for a bowazon is Increase Attack Speed. The difference is like having a semi-automatic compared to a machine gun. +skill items are of course, still important, but usually the ability to fire more arrows increases the damage more than increasing skill points. The other important thing to look for is piercing attack (regardless of whether you go with bows or javelins). You have a skill that gives this ability, but getting some percentage from your gear allows you to limit the number of points spent on this skill.

If you're going for a javazon, you almost have to use a lightning build. The level 30 jav skill, Lightning Fury, is simply incomparable when stacked against your choices in the poison skills. Every time a javelin hits an enemy, it sends out a chain lightning against everything else on the screen. Combined with a high level of pierce that allows a single javelin to pass through a monster and hit another monster, means that you'll have lightning galore.

The lightning damage is so much that seeing a javazon build using poison is almost unheard of. Specializing in poison compared to lightning is unnecessarily handicapping yourself.

The lightning javazon is also considered the premier cow-killer. Cows never spawn immune to lightning, and so a Lightning Fury javazon with a high pierce skill can take out entire herds of cows with a single javelin. Lightning javazons actually run around a bit on the cow level to try and get multiple groups herded together and then take them all out at once.

The combination of dual Ali Babbas and find item is really THE WAY to get the most out of a barbarian in terms of MF. Especially for uniques like Pindleskin, who can drop anything in the game, and getting two chances at getting some great item.

EDIT:

One more thing - you have every tight at being ticked off for receiving a Hel run from your Barb run. On Hell difficulty, Hel is actually the lowest possible rune you can receive from the Hellforge. (Of course, it's not like you can receive all runes from that Hellforge either. The highest possible rune you can get is a Gul, which I believe is #27.

 

Played a little further with my sorceress this weekend.

I ran NM Mephisto a few times. I found him easy to kill, especially with static field, frozen orb to slow him and lightening to kill him off. Found nothing special on him though.

I'm in Act IV now, killed Izual and making my way to the Hellforge. No problems so far.

Not found anything special yet, although I gambled a nice rare coronet with 23% to cold, fire and lightening Just what I needed to boost my resists.

 

Other than shields, headgear is probably the best source of resistances, especailly anything in the circlet class which can come with %resist all.

Too bad you didn't get anything from NM Mephisto. He's probably the first boss in the game that is worth running repeatedly.

 

Regarding that, I know there is a whole system behind the drops an enemy can do and this depents on the lever of your character. Seeing my character is level 57 at the moment, could this be the reason why Mephisto didn't drop as much yet?

 

Actually, drops are based on the monster's level. The items you'd get from killing Nightmare Mephisto are the same, reagrdless of whether your character was level 1 or level 99. (We will, for the sake of arguement, ignore that it isn't possible to be level 1 when you reach NM Mephisto, and also that there would be no reason for a level 99 character to run NM Mephisto.)

The short version is that based on the monster's level, it can select up to a certain treasure class to drop from. Treasure Classes (TCs), are all sorted into multiples of three, from TC3 all the way up to TC 90. Monsters from level 1-3 can only drop from TC3, Monsters from level 4-6 may drop from TC6 or TC3, and so on. The reason why the Pits in Act I, Hell are so popular is that all of the uniques and champions on that level or level 88, meaning they can drop from the highest TC in the game, and all of the regular monsters are level 85, meaning they can drop form the second highest.

What your level DOES effect is what items you can purchase and gamble. With vendors, your level +5 determines what level of items you can purchase, whereas with gambling, you get a range of +/- 5 to your level, and there's no way to tell when you open the gambling screen what level you were randomly assigned. It's re-rolled every time you open the gambling window. So if you're looking for a rare amulet with +2 to all skills (level 90 requirement), you cannot possibly gamble one if your character isn't at least level 85.

 

to add on aldeths post.

your characters level is also a factor when crafting items, where as a rule of thumb, the higher is the better

 

Balle is correct. One more thing to add: When I'm referring to item level, that does not mean the level your character has to be to use that item. For most items in the game, the level requirement is significantly lower than the item's level. The exception to this is very early in the game, when it's not odd at all if you chance upon a rare or better for it to have an level requirement in excess of your character level. It is difficult to keep all of these concepts straight, but item level is based on TC, which is based on Monster Level. (Which is determined by what area in what act you're in - all regular monsters in a given area have the same level, with uniques, champions and bosses having higher levels.)

By means of example, say NM Mephisto is a level 60 monster (I dont' know if he actually is, but he's about level 60). That means he can drop from any TC up to TC60. It doesn't mean he necessarily will drop from TC 60. The actual odds of him dropping from TC 60 are probably less than 1%. But again, for the sake of arguement, let's say he does in this example. The item he drops probably will NOT have a level requirement of 60 - it will probably be less.

 

Thanks for explaining this guys. Seems I did not have my facts straight.

NM Mephisto is level 59 to be exact. I'll run him again a few times tonight.

EDIT:

Did a few NM Mephisto runs yesterday and found a nice unique belt Snowclash with some nice stats

Defense: 104
+15% to Maximum Cold Resist
+2 to Blizzard (Sorceress Only)
+2 to Chilling Armor (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Glacial Spike (Sorceress Only)
+15 Cold Absorb


And, the best find as of yet: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest

Furthermore, found some unusable normal uniques. Nice finds for 10 runs I think

 

tal rasha is an excellent helm for any phys. dammage type character, lots of res. and 10/10 % of leech, plus some other nice stuff IIRC.
congrats