Diablo II single player questions

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Act 1 with a necromancer should be quite simple indeed. There is no point - even the battle with Andariel - where you should run into problems. The only thing I would suggest to you in terms of skill placement is that you do place at least 1 point in corpse explosion, and I would recommend boosting raise skeleton over the mastery.

Corpse explosion is very useful for tight areas. You will notice that your minions can't all get to a monster that is standing in a doorway. It takes forever if you just wait for each monster to die one at a time as they come single file through the door. I usually wait for the minions to kill the first one, and then blow up its corpse to clear the way into the room. I actually ended up maxing corpse explosion on my necro, because after you get your skeletons and the mastery maxed out, there really isn't much else worth working on.

Concerning raise skeleton vs. skeleton mastery: I like maxing raise skeleton first, because while both skills make your skeletons more powerful, pumping raise skeleton actually gives you more skeletons. At level 20 you will be able to summon 10 skeletons. It doesn't matter much which you pump early, but as you advance through the game and enemies become more numerous, more skeletons is quite helpful. (For example you will want more than 4 skeletons in the flayer jungle.) Needless to say both of these skills should be maxed before selecting a third skill to work on.

There are two and only two potential problems in Normal difficulty: Duriel and Diablo. Duriel isn't too bad as long as you remember to keep him decripified. The combination of decrepify and having a clay golem working on him makes him move in slow motion. You definitely don't want to mess it up, because if your army starts getting killed off there are no corpses in the chamber to raise.

Diablo is a little more tricky. Decrepify and a clay golem are the strategy here as well, but there is the potential problem of Diablo casting immolation as your army runs up to him, which probably will kill off the entire army. The work around for this is using an amulet of teleportation to get next to him immediately - and therein lies the problem. While amulets of teleportation are relatively common, it is very difficult to find one with a level requirement less than 40. And you almost certainly will not be level 40 when you reach Diablo. There is no magical work around here - with my necro I had to do it the old-fasioned way. Me (armed with that unique maul that has 40% crushing blow), my merc, and a repeatedly cast clay golem - I eventually ran out of corpses in the area to raise as skeletons. I died numerous times, but at least in normal there is no experience point penalty.

Once you're next to him, he's not too bad, but watch out for the PLHoD (Pink Lightning Hose of Death). With your relatively low life total, you won't be able to just take it while chugging a super healing potion like you did with the Paladin. You're going to have to run away, and then teleport (or run) back. He wasn't nearly as tough on Nightmare difficulty if it makes you feel any better.

I think you do have to type /players 8 every time you play, but I typically play online, so I'm no expert on this.

My necro is currently level 76 in act I hell. He is definitely my best magic find character ever, because he can gear everything towards magic find. I devoted my wand, necro shield, and amulet towards getting +skills, but every other slot is geared towards mf. I'm using Chance Guards as gloves, Goldwrap as a belt, rare boots with 24% mf, my armor is the unique linked mail (that comes with two open sockets that were filled with perfect topazes), and I burned one of my socket quests to add a perfect topaz to a circlet that gave +1 to necro skills and resist all 18%.

From my experience up to this point, I would recommend not spending any points in dexterity (or a minimum amount if you want to have a crossbow on your weapon switch - some people advocate a missile weapon so you can help in combat). I went the high life route (I have way over 200 points in vitality), and I have about 750 life currently. It's enough to take a couple of hits, even in hell difficulty.

There were a few reasons I went for high life over max block. First, the base blocking percentage on necro heads is terrible. By the time you are level 70, you would need around 250 points in dexterity to have a 75% blocking percentage. While it is possible to find a necro head with the "of deflecting" suffix, you want to be picking a necro shield based on the +skills it comes with - not whether or not it has the "of deflecting" suffix. It's hard enough to find a necro shield with two or three useful +skills on it. To try to find one with useful +skills *and* a specific modifier is an unrealistic goal.

Secondly, the only time you should be in melee combat is if you screw up. So most of the damage you take is from elemental missile attacks - and you cannot block most of those types of attacks anyway. (You can block physical missile attacks - an arrow for example - but not elemental missiles like a fire bolt from a skeletal mage.) So since you cannot block a good chunk of the damage you will be receiving anyway, being able to take the hit seemed like the better idea. You can also spend some points on strength to be able to equip some armors and a decent weapon (preferably one with crushing blow) on weapon switch. Since you won't be spending anything on dexterity or energy, it's perfectly fine to take your necro's strength up to 100 or so - with items my necro actually has 156 strength (which is probably more than I need).

I'm only on Act I Hell difficulty now, and there have been a couple of things that have given me difficulty. Obviously, on hell you run into monsters that are immune to physical damage. Amplify damage can break the immunity on the regular ghosts, but sometimes you cannot break the immunity of the boss of the pack. What I've done to kill them is kill all the other members of the pack first, and then use corpse explosion repeatedly to kill the boss. (Corpse explosion does half physical and half fire damage.) There is one boss that I ran into that was immune to both physical and fire, and after I killed all the other members of the pack I had to run away - I could not harm him.

Sorry for the long message. One more thing - while it should go without saying, you definitely want to grab a might mercenary once you hit act II in nightmare. The aura affects all the skeletons and skeletons hitting for triple damage is a very nice thing. Up until then you can pick whatever merc you want, although I would advocate getting one of the paladins in act II as their auras help everyone in the group.

 

Attract does not work on bosses, uniques, champions, etc. The biggest use for attract is for things like gloams. You attract a member of the pack and everyone starts attacking that one creature. Of course, since Gloams are immune to lightning they won't actually kill the attracted creature. That's not the point though - the goal is to get them to stop firing lightning bolts at you.

Which brings me to another point - while it isn't worth pumping, a point or two in summon resist is a worth while investment.

 

Yep - if you do it right - with a hefty dose of decripify - he's not too bad. Act 3 should not prove particularly challenging either. Your next test is Big D.

 

Griswold's set is the ultimate set for a paladin. As far as how hard it is to complete the set, two of the items are much more rare than the others, and you already have one of them: the shield. Class-specific items drop with only 1/3 the regularity of other items, and as such, the shield and scepter and much rarer than the other pieces. The helm (which I believe is a Corona) is a bit tricky to find but not too bad.

I'd recommend throwing 3 perfect topazes in the armor to greatly enhance your mf rating if you plan on using your paladin as your primary mfer. Although, there are certainly other options to consider, as you may find the necro more suited to that task. You can pack on the life by adding perfect rubies. Other things to consider would be if you have any enhanced damage jewels lying around (yes, enhanced damage jewels added to armor increase the damage on your weapon).

The infernal set will last you a good long time, and it adds to skill levels which is the primary concern for the necro. The wand may last you into nightmare difficulty just for the +1 skills on it. My necro is currently level 78 (or is it 79?) in Act II hell difficulty, and is still going strong. As I stated, my equipment is completed geared for +skills and magic finding. I now have over 800 life (I have armor that gives +1.5 life per character level which really helps).

My defense is bad, my chance to block is bad, my attack rating is bad, and my damage dealt is bad - all of which is irrelevant because the only thing I do is throw curses around and blow up corpses. This character is easily my best mfer ever. It's got to the point that if I play for an hour or so I actually expect to find something pretty good.

---------- Added 19 hours, 51 minutes and 5 seconds later... ----------

I just found the headgear to Griswold's set last night. It is a corona, and it gives even more magic find and resist all.

Now that I'm thinking about it, when you complete the set, one of the complete set bonuses is +50% resist all. That, combined with the crown and shield loaded with perfect diamonds should take you very close to the maximum amount of resistance you can get. That should free up the rest of your gear for things like +skills, life, and mf. Finally, the set has sockets galore. Just like the shield and armor, the crown and the scepter also come with sockets. (You want to go shael-shael with the scepter - that makes the weapon crazy fast - you'll be able to get off two complete zeal cycles per second.)

 

Yeah - that's the one bad part about building up a new character - you are unlikely to find anything of particular value in normal difficulty. Once you do a run or two through normal difficulty, you pretty much have all there is to have in the way of quality items. The top end, very valuable items simply cannot drop in normal difficulty. (Both Diablo and Baal have a maximum treasure class drop of TC45, which isn't even close to top quality items).

 

I too remember Baal being not nearly as difficult as Diablo. The same was certainly true in nightmare difficulty as well. Still, three minutes - that's really fast.

As for being level 45, that is probably because you are playing a /players=8. For each player added beyond the first, you get +35% experience bonus for each slain monster. So 7 * 35% = 245%. So, since players = 1 is 100% xp, you are getting a total of 345% xp for each monster you kill. Your xp total should be about three and half times higher than playing with players = 1, which sounds to me to be right around level 45. If you played through at players = 1, your level would be in the high 30s, and tripling that would get you around 45.

I completed Act 3 in hell a couple of nights ago with my necro. A lot of people said that I would probably start seeing some problems with the build at that point, due to the sheer number of enemies that you encounter. However, corpse explosion still works as well as it always has, and when you cast it on a flayer or two, it kills the rest of them in the pack.

Last night I completed hell Izual and hell Haphasto - I was very disappointed in my rune from the hell forge, as I only go a Ko, which is #16, which you can actually get from the Hellforge on nightmare difficulty. (On normal you can get runes up to 9, up to 18 on nightmare, and up to 27 on hell. The hellforge cannot drop the top runes - I think #28 is Gul, so Gul and higher is unavailable.)

I'll try to do hell Diablo night if I have time. I have to obviously do the entire River of Flame first, which I expect to be more time consuming than difficult. I'm concerned about the Pit Lords that will spawn when I open the seal on the southeast side of where Diablo appears. They hit for a ton of damage with their fire attack, and I have only invested one point into summon resist (it's level 4 or 5 with some +skill items). About the only minion I have where I'm confident about its survival chances is the clay golem. I have almost maxed out the clay golem, and it is approaching 5000 life - yes, you read that correctly - it's not a typo. It still doesn't hit for much damage - about the same as a skeleton - but it's pretty much indestructible. (Then again, maybe I should spend one point in fire golem, as fire golems are healed by fire attacks...)

 

I put one point in it, so it's like level 4 or 5 with +skills. While it seems like a great skill, I am not a big attract fan. It has a very short duration, and typically it works best for things that have missile attacks (like gloams) to allow you to close the distance.

Are you talking about the 3 rings to 1 amulet and vice versa recipe? Item input level = item output level for that formula, so rings aquired in normal difficulty will never be able to get great modifiers. (Or are you rerolling rares? That's a very expensive recipe requiring a ton of perfect gems to do repeatedly.)

Top runewords are extremely powerful, but are laso extremely expensive. I too stockpile every rune I find. I currently have a few um and fal runes lying around as my top prizes at the moment. So I can upgrade exceptional items to elite items, and the top runeword I can make would be crescent moon, which is actually quite a useful weapon.

 

Dol is a high rune to drop in Normal. I think it's #14 - so that's a rare find for normal indeed.

I don't know what the runes required or the modifiers of the Bone runeword offhand, and I cannot access the Arreat Summit at work because it is labelled as a game site. If you can provide that information, I'd be happy to tell you if the cost is worth it or not.

Since you are playing Single Player there are a few runewords (and a few very high end unique items) that are not available to you. However, the ladder runewords are all unbelievably expensive, and I have never been able to create any of them. They are all 5 or 6 rune runewords, and typically there are multiple very high level runes involved in crafting them. One of the them requires a Ber (#31) and a Jah (#30), and another one requires two(!) Sur runes (#32).

I took out hell Diablo last night - died once out of stupidity on my part. Not too bad at all. While fighting big D, I got a world event "Diablo Walks the Earth", in which the next Super Unique you encounter will be Uber Diablo (this only happens when you play online). I tried him with my necro - I got owned. Brought up my level 82 Amazon - got owned. Finally brought out the big gun and sent my level 86 concentrate barb after him - which turned out to be a draw (I'll explain forthwith). The problem with the Uber Diablo is that he has 64,000 life (which is about double what hell Diablo has) 90% resistance to all (including physical damage) but unlike hell Diablo he has a massive regeneration rate. My barbarian literally could not deal damage to him quick enough to kill him. After about a full minute of attacks, he still had nearly full life, and on the rare occassion that my barb missed, I saw his life bar creep back up. Now, my barb has massive life leech, so I was dealing damage (and therefore leeching) quickly enough that he couldn't kill me either.

I'm not even sure how you can kill this thing. I'm thinking maybe if you had something like a zeal paladin or a fury werewolf with tons of crushing blow may be able to do it, because the attacks would be so fast that the crushing blow would activate very frequently. If you are able to kill him (and I obviously do not have a character that can at this point), he drops an annihlus charm, which is a large (2 inventory space) charm that gives +2 to all skills, +15-20 (variable) to all attributes (str, dex, vit, ene), and +15-20 (variable) resist all. So yeah, that's an appropriate reward for such a tough foe.

 

OK, so we're talking about one easy to acquire rune, and two moderately (but by no means exceptionally) rare runes.

The first thing to take note of is since there is no +% defense attribute on the armor, it really doesn't matter what kind of armor you make it in. I think I've mentioned before that you need a few thousand total defense to make a difference in hell difficulty, which is tough for a necro to attain under any circumstances, and nearly impossible without some significant +% defense on the body armor.

I'll go through the modifiers from least to most useful:

The first two "Chance to cast" attributes are non-factors in the decision of whether or not to use this armor, mostly because you probably are not struck much, nor do you do much striking. (Besides, if you wanted the protection afforded by Bone Armor (I'm speaking of the skill not the runeword here), you'd just cast it. You wouldn't rely on the 15% chance of it activating when you are hit.)

The +100-150 mana is nice, but also not necessary. I have found with my necro that the more I level, the less of an issue mana becomes. I don't even carry around mana potions anymore. The only time I run low on mana is when I spam corpse explosion, and I only do this when facing a boss pack. And when you kill the boss of a boss pack, you are almost always rewarded with at least one mana potion which completely refills my mana bulb.

The damage reduced by 7 may or may not be useful to you. Damage reduction starts to make a big difference if you get it up to around 20. Since "damage reduced by X" is a modifier you can get on armor, shields, helms, rings, amulets, and jewels, it is possible that you have other sources of damage reduction on your character. Multiple sources of damage reduced by X are additive, so if you already have other sources, an additional 7 may start to pay noticable dividends.

(NOTE: Even on hell difficulty, most things don't hit for more than about 50 points of damage. The exceptions are things that blow up when the die like cold/fire enchanted bosses, stygian dolls, ice boars whipped into frenzy. When you see your life bulb emptying really fast, it's usually because you are being hit by multiple sources in quick succession. Since damage reduced by X is applied to each source individually, getting damage reduction up to around 20 can reduce the damage you take by about half.)

Which brings us to the two most useful modifiers: +2 to skills, and +30 resist all. +2 to skills is one more than you can find on most set or unique armors. (There are a couple of set and uniques that give two but are so rare that you cannot reasonably expect to find them.) The +30 resist all is only available on a few high end uniques, and no sets. (For some reason resist all is not a modifier you can get on magic or rare armor, although resistances to individual elements are possible - which means rare armors can get multiple resistances.)

So the answer to your question, "Is it worth it," I would say that if your current armor isn't giving you any +skills, and your current resistances are lacking, then yes, this armor is worth using. If, however, you are using the unique armor "Skins of the Vampermagi", which gives +1 to all skills and resist all +35% along with a few other less useful attributes, then no, it probably isn't worth it. (Skins of the Vampermagi isn't that uncommon - it's the exceptional unique version of leather armor. It's one of my favorite armors, especially since I usually use my socket quest with it and insert a +resist all jewel, which can take your resist all up to +50%.)

Oh, he definitely can be soloed. There are guides on the Arreat Summit detailing exactly the type of builds that can take him solo. In addition to a character with crushing blow that hits fast, other suggestions that work well are using a weapon with a % chance to cast life tap on striking (but obviously not having a necro being the character swinging said weapon), and having a source of long duration poison damage (ideally something that deals poison damage over at least 9 seconds). The reason for the poison damage is poisoned creatures cannot regenerate.

Uber Diablo has 90% resistance to poison, which means he won't be taking a ton of damage from the poison, and because he also has poison duration reduced by 90%, he won't be poisoned for long. That's why you still need a fast hitting character. With a poison damage source dealt over 9 seconds means Uber Diablo will have to be hit every 0.9 seconds to prevent him from regenerating, and a zeal paladin or a furzy werewolf can definitely attain that. If you have more than one source of poison damage, the duration is the average of the sources, so it's better to have one long duration source than multiple sources of varying durations.

The problem with that strategy is Uber Diablo only drops one annihlus charm (which are referred to online as "annis"). You certainly CAN get help from other people, but if you do not know the person you are teaming with, there is no guarantee that you will be the one to get the anni, nor is there any guarantee that you can rely on additional help from him in the future in getting an anni for yourself.

However, there are some conditions where you can get people to help you. The thing about an anni is you are only allowed to have one in your possession at any time - much the same way you cannot be in possession of more than one horadric cube. Unlike the cube, there are different types of annis available, and some are better than others. So sometimes, you can find someone who already has a low end anni (say one that has +16 to attributes and +17% resist all), and will offer to help you get one yourself, on the condition that if the anni that drops is better than the one he currently has, he will get the new one and you get his current one. He cannot screw you over on this, because he cannot pick up the new anni without dropping his current one, nor can he pick his old one back up if it is better without dropping the new one.

 

Yes, you can gamble both set and unique items. The chance of such a thing happening are 1 in 2000 (or 1 in 1000 of getting a either a set or a unique item). I have spent millions of gold on gambling (there's nothing better to spend your money on, so why not), and I have gambled a few set and unique items. Since I gamble rings and amulets more than anything else in the game, most of my set and unique gambles were jewelry. In fact, once your character gets to a certain point, the only things really worth gambling on are rings, amulets and circlets.

And just like with anything else, a good rare will usually exceed a set or a unique item. There are of course exceptions - probably every melee type character should carry around a Ravenfrost.