EPTFor those of you who don’t know, I’ll go over the basic concept of Diablo 2:
-This is a click and kill 3rd person RPG-type game… not that dice-rolling DnD shit, but just click and kill, using whatever skills/weapons that are at your disposal (specializing skills/weaps is optimal… ofc).
-There are 3 difficulty modes, normal, nightmare and hell. You must beat the respective lower difficulty to gain access to the higher difficulty. “Beating” the game means you clear all 3 modes. In higher difficulties, several things happen:
-Monsters are higher level, meaning more HP, more attack rating (chance to hit), more damage, higher level skills. On the bright side, they give more experience when the die
-Certain monsters appear that don’t appear in normal mode… some of these are the most dangerous in the game.
-You have lowered resistances. Resistances basically reduce the damage you take from elemental… naturally a strong character will have HIGH resistance (maximum resistance to an element in 75 percent in most cases). In normal mode, you have no penalty and start at 0 resistance. In nightmare, you start with -40 percent base resistance. In hell, you start with -100 percent base resistance. So not only do monsters do more damage in higher modes, but the higher damage is also boosted by your drop in resistances.
-Within each mode, you must clear 5 acts. You “clear” an act by completing key quests (you don’t have to do all the quests) and beating the act boss (which is always the last quest of the act). Beating the Act 5 boss means you have beaten that difficulty, and get to commence to Act 1 of the next difficulty.
-In this game, a level up = a small HP/MP boost, 5 extra stat points, and 1 skill point. There are 4 stats, strength, dexterity, vitality, and mana. In 90 percent of cases, you want as few (preferably none) points in strength as possible, and either zero points in dexterity, or enough to reach max block. You need pump vita as MUCH as possible. With pre-gearing, it is possible to put none in str/dex and wear all good gear… yet without good gear, this is not possible in most cases.
-You level up by grinding, referred to most D2 players as “runs”. In D2, the primary leveling venue is clearing the last boss area in Act5, known as “Baal Runs”. These give the most experience. Runs are expedited by having somebody with the skill teleport (you must be a sorceress to hve this skill unless you have expensive gear that grants teleport) get to the boss area vey quickly for you… much faster than running there on foot.
-Towns are safe havens, where monsters/other players cant attack you. You can reach town from the wilderness by physically running in through the entrance, using teleport pads found throughout the wild called Waypoints, and through town portals, which is a purchasable spell that allows you and party members to travel through the created portal to town/given spot in the wilderness.
-In Diablo 2, when you save and exit a game, it does not save the “map” you had. The map is always randomly generated… the constants are areas in the wilderness (ie, ther will always be a Cold Plains, or a River of Flame, or a Crystalline Passage), but each new game you join, the “look” of the area is always randomly generated. Thus, Waypoints are basically the way to “retaining” your progress in terms of explored areas.
With that in mind… lets go on!
So beating the game itself is not very hard... I could solo Diablo 2 in a few days time given I play a lot every day (though I hope to not go through this…. Grueling, not as fun, and I DON’T WANNA SIT MY ASS ALL DAY). So we have three extra challenges
1. we are doing this in hardcore mode. for those who dont know what hardcore mode in d2 is, if you die once, your character is dead forever. So basically, you have to run through the whole game without ever dying. Not the easiest feat without good gear.. you have to play very safe.
2. So two of us have good experience with the game and know what we are doing (me and another buddy. I have a fairly thorough PvP knowledge/experience base (even though im not the best... i do well in pubs) as well as good gear/build knowledge. My experienced friend was number 2 zon on ladder at lvl 98 in one of the 1.10 ladder seasons...as for the rest… they are 3 people who have basically never touched the game ever. I was really skeptical as to how far wed get in hardcore mode without someone dying due to lack of experience... we had three deaths before level 20, and I was getting worried... id be so pissed if someone died at like level 40 and we had to rush him back all over again. Surprisingly however, we all survived after those few early deaths.
3. We are playing untwinked. That means… we have no pre-gearing allowed, no buying gear/trading with other players, and only using items that we find. In D2, it is VERY difficult to find “good” gear by yourself… it is almost always achieved via trading, or else it takes a very long time to attain a good setup. Thus, this is a big limitation in terms of our killing power/survival.
So heres our 5 man party:
Me: Hammerdin... This is a paladin that uses the skill blessed hammer, which shoots out in torando-like spirals around you. Very high damage, good tanking ability, and very few monsters have immunity to this type of damage. as I played almost exclusively this class for years on D2, i chose my best character. i basically carried the game through middle of nightmare as fire sorcs are sort of slow in reaching really effective damage.
Experienced friend: Fire Sorc... A sorceress specializing in fire skills... mainly fireball and meteor. hes well experienced with cold sorcs, which are VERY effective with shitty gear... fire sorcs not as much, but he insisted on it. He also insisted on playing in hardcore mode despite the lack of experience of the other players and the wave of early deaths. However, its been working out so far
they are learning fast.Not so experienced friend: trapsin (lit ofc) - An assassin utilizing lightning based traps.. you can lay down 5 "traps" anywhere on the ground, and they shoot at anything that moves
. he played this char through a single non-hardcore single player run, and he kept almost dying on a cold sorc which he was originally supposed to be, so we gave him a trapsin instead... so the fire sorc and trapsin cover 2 elements, fire and lit, to deal with immunities easier).Zero experience friend 1: summon necro. A necromancer that summons undead minions from corpses to tank for the rest of the party. so basically, we dont trust the 3 non experienced people with chars that go in front, so we gave them the sit-in-the-back-and-chill chars... summoner naturally is one of the easiest... and fucking useful too.... revives can take sooo many hits before they die... meatshields are sooo nice to have in HC mode. He died twice early on as like a lvl 5, but he learned quickly after that and has been very very good about playing safe/staying behind the experienced players.
Zero experience friend 2: BO barb. A barbarian with high level battle orders skill, which increases the life/mana of party members... by close to three-fold if you have really really good gear! basically, hes not really allowed to fight unless its an easy easy area (cuz we dont trust him with staying alive as mmentioned.) Again, he's been learning fast, and plays very safely. He has battle orders at level 33+, which is a skill that increases HP/Mana of party members... VERY useful. Thanks to his high level BO, my health goes from 1k to 2.3k+... has saved my ass MANY times.
I will now list the tenets of being a successful character in Diablo 2:
1. High HP. It is a huge mistake to pump stat points into strength…. Especially as a spellcaster, it is only useful in meeting equipment requirements. It is also a huge mistake to pump into Energy (mana) except in very specific builds… you just have to suck it up with your low mana pool early on in the game. You want all your points in vitality, because HP = you can take more hits = you survive better!
2. High resistances. So having high HP is good to ensure that you don’t die. However, this is an internal approach to death prevention. There is also an external approach: reducing the damage done to your character from attacks. You achieve this by wearing equipment with +% resistance to an element. The cap is +75% resistance in Fire, Lightning, Cold, and Poison. The ideal character has maximum resistances in all elements… so it is crucial to collect/work towards/wear items with resistance bonuses.
3. Damage output. In a party, all characters must be able to survive. Yet if you have a surviving party that does little damage, it will take forever to progress. The necro/barb do very little damage in our party but play crucial survival roles. The trapsin/sorc/hammerdin have high damage output and do most of the fighting. You achieve higher damage by leveling your skills, and wearing equipment with + to skills. For melee classes, you can further increase damage by having a strong weapon (duh?).
4. Meat shields. For most classes, this means a mercenary. Mercenaries in Diablo 2 expansion are gear-able and resurrectable… even in hardcore mode. So it is always a good idea to have a mercenary tank for you… most people go with the Act 2 polearm mercenary for high damage and aura provision (a skill that benefits the whole party ). Some classes like amazons/assassins/necros/druids can summon creatures to tank for them, which is very helpful.
5. More aspects exist… IE max block via high dex/good shield, physical damage % reduce (basically resistance to physical… but spawns much less frequently than ele resistance), energy shield, speed, teleport, mana recovery…. But this covers the basics.
Now in hardcore mode, there are many things to watch out for that normally arent as important in normal mode as you are allowed to die and have all your shit. I will list them:
-Dolls. God i hate these motherfuckers. they are these midget size skeletons that run superfast.... but their melee attack isnt the scary part. when they die, they EXPLODE, doing a SHITLOAD of damage with their kamikaze blast... it has cost me a few chars in previous hardcore runs, and puts me in super alert/paranoid mode when i see them. thank god there are summons from the nec to tank them.
-Fire enchanted unique monsters: there are bosses in diablo 2 that spawn with random properties. if there happens to be fire enchant... YOU KEEP A BIT OF ROOM BETWEEN YOU AND IT WHEN IT DIES... cuz just like dolls, it has a kamikaze blast, sometimes NASTIER than what dolls do... it is a no-no to recklessly charge against these... let your mercenary/revives/long range casters handle these.
-Souls: these are nasty motherfuckers... they start showing up in Nightmare mode, and are very dangerous in hell mode... basically they shoot lightning. The thing about lightning damage in d2 is that it has very high possible damage output... lightning damage always has a high variance, like 1-1000 lightning damage, while fire will look something liek 400-500 damage. So Lit damage has very high damage potential, and when there are MANY of these souls floating around, thats a LOT of damage you can take. So far, we have been good about these... however hell mode will be a bitch.
-Death lords: these guys are dangerous because they are fast, have a lot of HP, and have HIGH physical damage… you are in big doo doo if you get mobbed by these. These run abound in the Throne of Destruction, the primary area of high experience/leveling… but so far no deaths Your best bet against these guys is to stay in motion while casting, never standing still to let them mob you.
-Conviction aura: remember what I said about resistance and how important it is to survival? There is an aura some monsters can spawn with called conviction that lowers your defense and all your resistances! Very dangerous to be around, especially in the presence of elemental monsters (ESPECIALLY SOULS).
So I’ll summarize how we’ve been progressing through the game:
Normal mode
Act 1: simple as pie. In act 1, you go to a very accessible area called Tristram (the town from Diablo 1 if you guys know what im talking about ), which always has a certain group of unique monsters which give more experience. We grinded this area up to level 15, with the first round of deaths I mentioned… but we got that straightened out. Then we all walked to the last boss area, and raped her ass (the first boss is a big fat naked lady with chains on her boobs and claws on her back… you thought that chick from Bruno was a dominatrix XD).
Act2: We basically just walked through the act killing shit, and leveled. Leveling is a bit slower at lower levels because you kill slower and just don’t have the power/access to clear high level areas quickly. We were around level 20 by the time we arrived at the last boss and killed him. At the moment, casters (the main damage source of the party) are limited in terms of mana, as well as skill levels of their spells (thus low damage), so the party is still “weak”.
Act3: the most annoying act because it is so big and expansive to walk through. Again, we waltzed through it killing shit on the way… I was about level 25 by the time the last boss Mephisto went down.
Act4: you start to get good experience here. It is a very short act to run through, and we were at the River of Flame (very close to last boss area) in no time. However, the last boss of the act Diablo is kinda dangerous to approach… he has this pink inferno-flamethrower move and splitting-earth fire-line move that does a SHITLOAD of damage, even despite the high resistances I managed to scrounge up from equipment I collected. However, my speed/technique from PvP hammerdin playing helped a LOT and I killed him multiple times for exp/group members absent during the first killing who needed the quest to commence. We also did the hellforge quest separately for all characters,w hich gives you gems and runes which help to make good items ^^^ We ranged from level 21-29 by the time we finished this act.
Act5: Because it was hard to get all 5 of us on at the same time, I simply ran through the act with my paladin, ignoring shit and just going straight to important areas and grabbing waypoints. I got most of the way through the act very close to the last boss in about 40 minutes. Once everyone was online, we killed the Ancients (a prerequisite in accessing the last boss area).. from there, we proceeded to the throne of destruction where aforementioned Baal Run experience grinds happen! I kept running these over and over via waypoints…the barbarian had battle orders, the life/mana boosting skill, and the sorceress had teleport to speed up the runs…. and sooner or later everyone was level 40+, a safe level to commence to nightmare as a party. During these runs, we finally scrounged up the runes for a runeword item called Spirit, which has very powerful mods for a very cheap item. And I got to use it We eventually made like 5 of these. I also found a Skin of the Vipermagi, a very nice armor with a nice combo with + skill, + faster cast rate, and +resistances!
Nightmare:
Act 1: I got here before most other people, and I expedited our party’s progress by running straight to the last boss area (the catacombs) without killing most of the shit and grabbing the waypoint.. while everyone else was still baal running for levels. I killed Andariel (the titty S&M whore) and progressed to act 2. We kind of stopped playing as a group for a couple of days here.
Act 2: everyone was still baaling for experience, so I again went out of my way to run through the Act while ignoring most of the shit… my party better thank me for soloing most of this!!!! But anyways, I called my party over once I got the staff and amulet quests that you need to unlock the last boss…. And we commenced to rape Duriel (very easy with summons tanking).
Act 3: My party returned the favor to me! They were done baaling in normal, and I went to watch a movie with family… my party, which was much more powerful than before thanks to fast leveling from baal runs, ran through this act in about an hour, and we killed mephisto to progress to act 4
Act 4: Again, this is a very short act. At this point, I was very powerful and could kill most things quickly even in nightmare mode despite shitty equipment. Not to mention, hammerdins do 150% damage to undead minions, and id say more than half of Act4 creatures are undead . So we rolled through this act thanks to me, and we commenced to act 5!
Act 5: Our party half-ran, half-killed our way through this… we progressed as quickly as possible, only killing shit that was in the way. The faster we got to the last boss, the faster we could do baal runs! With summons and shit, the ancients were cake… at this point, me, the sorceress, and the trapsin were dealing damage quite quickly. The sorceress was able to teleport baals, making the process much faster. Working as a party with the barbarian casting a high level battle orders, we grinded to level 70+ in an hour or two’s worth of baal runs. We also got the last rune required to make Insight, a mercenary weapon that gives him a mana regeneration aura… this made runs so much more convenient!
So now we are in Act 1 hell, and we called it a night. (we finish a2-a5 nightmare and leveled to 70 in one night). I will update once we progress more in hell mode… so far we have no deaths, and we have accumulated some decent items. I’m actually boasting max all resistances in hell mode due to a few good items we found and a sharp eye for resistance items
. Hopefully, nobody will die in the process of reaching and beating act5, and we will be able to finish every party member’s first hardcore ladder experience (for some, first time Diablo 2 experience ). If you got this far, thanks for reading , I hope I didn’t lose you too much or bore you :/
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