Diablo II single player questions

Any melee character could make use of the Angelic Set - it gives you a huge bonus to attack rating. It would probably best serve a paladin, although the damage output of the weapon is too low for it be useful much beyond normal difficulty. Excellent low level set though.

I started Act V with my paladin last night. The only thing I've done so far is the Shenk quest. My necro found another shako last night - so now I have two HQs. That one will probably go to a sorceress if I ever get around to making one.

 

Kind of. You cannot find the same unique during the same game. Once you "save and exit" you can find the same unique again. Given the amount of time you've been playing, you must have found some uniques more than once, right? Normal uniques aren't that uncommon.

And you'll be able to add Pindleskin in the not-too-distant future as well. I'm rooting for you. I've never been devoted enough to get a character to level 90.

EDIT: Remember when I mentioned the necro specializing in Bone skills? I did some research and it's definitely viable. There's Bone Spear (physical damage) and Bone Spirit (magic damage) would be your two main attack skills. They synergize with each other, and they both receive damage boosts via synergies from Bone Prison, Bone Wall, and Teeth. In fact, if you spent all your points on just those skills and those prerequisites you'd get insanely high damage. Realistically, you'd probably want a few one-pointers to help you out. You'd want amplify damage, clay golem, the golem mastery, summons resist, and corpse explosion. Meaning you'd probably have to settle for maxing out Bone Spirit, Bone Spear, and Bone Wall as a co-synergy. (An interesting point here - Bone Wall goes all the way across the screen, and at high levels takes a tremendous amount of damage to break through. I wonder if a point or two in Iron Maiden for be useful here... Would a monster doing physical damage to the wall kill themselves with Iron Maiden cast on them?)

 

Not cool. I just finished nightmare with my paladin, and I definitely have to keep doing some Baal runs because my resistances are definitely not where I want them to be. The whole point of this build is to get me resistances to 90%. On hell difficulty, fire is at just 58%, while all of the others are in the 70-80 range. I can, of course, load up on charms to get all the way up there, but I hate having over half of my inventory packed with charms. Maybe a few more runs and a few more gambling sprees. The two main things I still need are a ring and a belt. My belt is just a regular rare, and it has just 6% fire resistance and 10% lightning resistance. That can be a lot better. One of my two rings is a Stone of Jordan, and while that's nice for upping all my skills another point, it offers no resistances whatsoever.

I must admit that I am surprised that your necro does Baal runs with such ease. Half of the time I abort a Baal run with my necro, simply because I have no desire to deal with the creatures I encounter. I absolutely hate Oblivion Knights (not that they pose that great of a threat to my character, but they certainly do for my army). Last night, level 3 of the Worldstone Keep was filled with Oblivion Knights, and those minotaur things, that have frenzy attacks - no thanks.

I'm still considering putting my next skill point for my necro in the skeleton mages. I have +6 in those skills with items, so one point will put me at skill level 7, which should give me 3 or 4 mages.

 

It's a frozen orb, but it's a different graphic than you get with the sorceress spell. On hell difficulty, it does massive damage, and if your resists are down around 20, that would hurt a ton.

I have never seen a jah drop. I've got mal runes before, but that's a very nice drop from Shenk. Nihlathak can drop anything, including jahs, but the odds of him actually doing so are remote to say the least. In all the hours I've spent playing D2, I've got exactly one Ber rune, and I think it was from the Hellforge quest on Hell difficulty (although it's been so long since it's happened, I forget the details).

But yeah, if you get the runes for Enigma, that's really, really, sweet armor.

Weekend? If you find nothing else until May it was a pretty successful month!

 

Well, I put my +2 skill amulet back in my stash, took out the one that gave big resistances, and started hell. It is a little unfortunate, insofar as I lost about 140 points of damage per whack by removing the amulet, but I couldn't put myself through another Baal run. I assume I'll eventually get my resistances up where I need them, and at that time I'll start using the amulet again.

(It should be noted that my necro found that amulet after I planned this build, so this was an engineering design change on the fly. I just don't have anywhere with my current equipment to get back those 20% resist all and 35% resist lightning. I should be able to switch back with some upgrades to existing equipment, but the best way for me to get access to that better equipment is to start hell difficulty.)

 

I had absolutely no desire to test the waters. The whole point of this character was to be able to tank just about anything, and you need resists to do that. I'm OK with losing some damage, because this character is based on crushing blow, which is way more damaging in hell that an extra 150 damage (remember non-boss take 1/4 of their total life damage).

Poison is easily the least dangerous of all the elemental attacks, because it cannot kill you. It can take you down to 1 life point, but so long as you don't get hit again, you can take a town portal back to Malah and get fixed up. (Note: skeletons, mages, golems, and your mercs CAN die from poison.)

EDIT: I took a compromise last night. I gambled a hell of a lot of rings and finally found a combination that allowed me to wear the +2 skills amulet again, while maintaining resistances around 80ish%. However, this combination forced me to stop using the Stone of Jordan, so in effect, I got a net of +1 skills. I'll need to grab an extra small charm or two to max out my resistances (or just wait until I complete Malah's quest, but that's all the way up in Act V).

 

While it certainly doesn't feel like it on the east coast (our weather has been unseasonably cool), it is mid-April. Where the heck are there good skiing conditions at this time of year?

Anyway, I have also been away for Easter so I haven't played much lately. However, last night during a Pit run, I got Titan's Revenge, the unique amazon throwing spear (and easily the best weapon for a javazon in the game). Huge damage, chance to hit, life steal, replenishes quantity, +20 to both strength and dexterity - and the really nice part - +2 to all amazon skills and another +2 to the javelin and spear skill tree (for a total of +4). That was easily the find of the day.

I'm satisfied with the way the paladin is going now as well. He is about half way through Act I in hell difficulty, level 73 (or maybe 74). Having over 80% in all resistances is nice, and the worst case scenario is I will have everything at 90% once I do the Malah quest. The hardest part is keeping my merc alive. I don't have a problem with my character dying, but losing the might merc seriously hurts my damage output.

 

I forget - your mountains are so much higher than what we have here on the east coast. I doubt there are many places (on the east coast) south of Canada that are still in operation this late in the year.

 

I'm getting annoyed at my paper mache mercenary. He's costing me a fortune in resurrection fees. He has his resistances maxed (which for him is the standard 75%), and has decent armor, but the AI is killing me. Running headlong in to a boss pack of extra strong extra fast scarab beetles is not a sound strategy. I'm really starting to question if I need a mercenary. He does improve my total damage output by about 30%, which is nothing to sneeze at, but if I cannot keep him alive, what good is it?

I literally don't think I've gambled once since entering hell difficulty with this character, because I haven't been able to save up enough money. (What I typically do is wait until my stash cannot hold any more gold, and then go on a shopping spree.) In addition to the 50,000 gold cost of raising my merc, since I'm using some high end equipment it is not unusual for me to need 20,000 gold for equipment repair for each trop back to town. I often need 70,000 gold per trip just to break even.

 

Definitely. I don't have any skeleton mages, but even with 11 skeletons and a clay golem, he is targeted infrequently enough that he very rarely dies. The best thing to get targeted is the golem, as that things is damn near indestructible. Mine has something like 8000 life.

You shift-right click? I think that takes too much time, and I definitely don't want to move my mouse if I'm engaging a boss pack or something like that. I never use the mouse the use a potion. It's the 1-2-3-4 on the keyboard (or shift + the appropriate number to give it to the merc).

 

Hmmm... That's another difference - I generally use the mouse wheel to shift skills.

You know, now that you mention it, I think 11,000 is closer to the life of my golem too. He would be cast at level 28 - that has to be a heck of a lot more than 8000 life.