Diablo II single player questions

Grand charms are only available in single tree varieties, and are always +1. They are semi-rare finds (although nothing like top end uniques or high runes), are are quite valuable, especially for characters like necromancers and sorceresses that rely so heavily on their skills.

Then you have exceeded even me. I'm not sure what my current skill level is in raise skeleton and skeleton mastery (I know I have invested 20 points in each, I'm just don't know how many +skills I have), but I am certain that my max number of skeletons is 11. I hardly ever summon revives. If I know I'm going up against a tough enemy (like an act boss) I'll summon a few, but the fact that they come with a three minute timer means I don't have the patience to be summoning new ones that frequently, especially when my skeletons and golem die infrequently.

Oh yeah. I think my clay golem has over 7,000 life at this point. He is virtually indestructible, even on hell difficulty.

I got crap this weekend. It was very discouraging. I already have most of the low level unique items that you'd actually want to hold onto, so unless I land a high end item, it's a disappointing day.

My last good find was last week, when I found a magic (yes, really a blue!) cruel war pike of quickness. It's my merc's weapon, and it has a listed max damage of 700. (With my merc's strength bonus and might active, its max damage is over 4,000 per hit!) Don't get me wrong - I love my skeletons - but they are now there just to soak up damage. It's my merc that's killing things now.

My next character is almost definitely going to be a druid as well. I have found several weapons (all club-types) that give +skills to druids, including the unique barbed club Fleshrender which gives +1 to all druid skills and +2 to shape shifting (so effectively +3 to shape shifting). The damage is a little low (listed at 99-175), but with prevent monster heal and a 20% chance of open wounds, crushing blow, and deadly strike it should prove very adequate, especially against big hitpoint targets.

However, I'm also only one piece shy of completing Aldur's set. That's the good news. The bad news is the piece I'm missing is the armor - which is far and away the most difficult piece of the set to find.

 

Level 78 should be more than adequate for hell. Are you going to attempt players 8? While I suspect your skeletons will be able to handle the difficulty of the monsters, I'd be concerned about your character's survivability. Damage gets racheted up at higher player settings, and you certainly don't want to get into a situation where one hit can kill you. Of course, I suspect you have around 1000 life at this point, and nothing hits for that much damage (not even with lousy resists). The biggest regular damage creature you should run up against would be the stygian dolls, and I doubt they can even reach 1000 on players 8. Of course, it's not like you have to chose between players 8 and players 1. You could, for example, start at players 4, and then decide if you want to go up or down from there.

The more I think about it, I'm not completely convinced that you will have all that much trouble with hell due to your resistances. The thing is, if you play like most summoners, you aren't going to enter melee, so you aren't going to get hit much at all. That was one of the reasons I spent virtually nothing on dexterity on this character - I don't have to hit anything, and I don't have to block anything, so there's really no point in the investment. So long as your life pool is sufficient to survive a couple of hits, the resistances shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

Lightning is far and away the most important element to have some resistance to. In addition to the scarabs you mention, there are gloams in Act III and V. Also, any random boss can spawn lightning enchnated, and unlike with fire or cold enchanted where you can just stand back a bit and avoid getting hit, a lightning enchanted boss can hit you anywhere.

I just don't know with this character. On the one hand, your life pool is probaby big enough that you can take a few hits and just chug a super healing potion once in a while. On the other hand, I don't have much of a basis of comparison, as my necro has poison resistance in the upper 50s, and all other resistances considerably higher than that. So it's kind of hard to project the damage a character with resistances of ~70% takes compared to a character with negative resistances.

 

Kuko Shakaku is an excellent bow with it's piercing ability, and the fact that it fires explosive arrows. My bowazon uses a Buriza as her main weapon, but has the Kuko on switch when she runs into physical and cold immune enemies.

 

Well, I did my standard Big Three, Pit, Meph, and Baal run last night. I got a Demonhorn's Edge - a unique Barbarbian helm with the following stats:

+(120-160)% Enhanced Defense
+10% Increased Attack Speed
(3-6)% Life stolen per hit
Attacker Takes Damage of (55-77)
+(1-3) to Combat Skills
+(1-3) to Warcries
+(1-3) to Combat Masteries

My particular helm had at least +2 to all three trees so it is at the very least an above average version of the helm. It's not Arreat's face, but still very good overall. (Arreat's gives +2 to warcries and masteries, and +4 to combat skills, plus comes with life steal and 30% resist all.)

The question I am ponding now is just how much do I want to do with this character? If I do another full run, I likely will reach level 87 tonight. That will match the highest level I have ever attained for a character. In one sense, you want to keep going, as every level I attain gives me a better and better chance of gambling a +2 skills amulet. (I am already of sufficient level to theoretically get one, but currently there's only a 20% chance that my randomized gambling level will put me at or over 90.)

The problem of course, is that it gets exponentially harder to level once you go past level 80. That's when a second factor starts working against you. Starting at around level 40, the game starts using the 30% rule to calculate how many experience points you need to get to the next level. I am sure you are intimately aware of this rule even if you were not aware what it was called. Basically you need 30% of your total earned experience to level again. (Not 30% more than the previous level - 30% of your total experience points you've earned since level 1.) On that basis alone, the amount of experience required to reach a new level would increase exponentially. Using that calculation, I know I need approximately 1.25 billion XPs to hit level 87, and while I won't be able to know exactly what the total I'll need for level 88 until I reach level 87, I know that it will be approximately 1.62 billion with a margin of error of about +/- 0.5%

However, a second factor - the experience point penalty - kicks in once you hit level 80. Every level you earn beyond level 79 your character suffers a cumulative 5% penalty on experience earned. So you only earn 95% of the experience point for kill a monster when you're level 80 compared to what you received when you were level 79. This trend continues all the way until you are level 98, at which time the penalty is 95%, so you are earning just 5% of the listed experience points for kills. At first, the cumulative 5% penalty isn't so bad. In fact, because you are progressing through the Acts in Hell, where the creatures are worth ever greater amounts of experience points, you don't really notice at all. However, now that I'm levle 86 and the penalty is up to 35%, I'm starting to notice.

Using my above calculation, I'll need to earn about 370 million experience points to go from level 87 to level 88. But when you think about it, it's much worse than that. It's more like needing to earn 390 million experience points compared to my current penalty. And it's the equivalent of earning 570 million experience points compared to the rate I was earning experience when I was not receiving any penalty. This is why it is no one ever plans on build guides spending all 110 skill points you could theoretically receive with one character, because it is unrealistic to think you can take a character much beyond level 90. It's almost literally impossible to take a character to level 99. Just consider the numbers. Using the 30% rule, you will need 29.03 billion experience points to reach level 98, and 37.74 billion experience points to reach level 99. But the difference of 8.71 billion expereince points needs to be earned with a 95% penalty, meaning it's really like earning 174 billion experience points!

(And yes, I am aware that there are people on battlenet who are level 99, but I do not consider them normal people, as they play Diablo about 20 hours per day. If you have no life, you can reach level 99, but for people like you and me that have a job and family, it's not realistic.)

 

the keys will drop but you just can't use them unless you get a mod i can't recall the name ATM though

 

WTH? I can only surmise that Balle is correct. I never knew you could get the keys to drop on single player. Before you run out and get the mod Balle mentions, it should be noted that you have just 1/9 of the total keys you need to get to uber tristram. You need three copies each of the keys of hate, terror, and destruction. The keys are dropped by the Countess, the Summoner and Nihlathak. I don't know which character drops which key off the top of my head (well you said the Countess drops the key of terror - so I don't know whether the Summoner drops the key of hate or destruction, and vice versa for Nihlathak).

I agree that I will never formally retire my Necro. I reached level 87 with him this weekend, and while there was no individual great find, I did get an assortment of items that has provided me the incentive to build a new character. I've had a bunch of items lying around that I've been meaning to use that are paladin related, and with a couple other additions, I have a new build in mind. I'd like your take on it, and of course provide any advice you'd like.

The first thing that I should mention is that the skill set up for this build will be that of a frost zealot, but I intend to use this build for boss killing, and ultimately, this is a character that I hope will be able to take on uber Diablo and uber Tristram (which will explain why I'm picking some of the items that I have). So I'm shooting for a lot of all of the following: crushing blow, resistances and life (so by corrolary, I'm trying to minimize my strength and dexterity investment).

Weapon: I have to begin my equipment list with the weapon, in what might just be the best blue weapon I've ever found. It is a cruel mighty scepter of quickness. It has +299% enchanced damage (so 1% short of perfect) and 40% increased attack spped. It also gives +3 to holy freeze. Other than having zeal on it as well, I don't know what else you could ask for with a weapon. It's average damage is just under 200 and it's fast as hell. I may consider using my socket quest on it, and since it's only a magic item and not a set, unique or rare, there is a chance I get 2 sockets added.

Armor: Guardian Angel. This is the heaviest item in the set to wear and will dictate my strength investment. It's 118, so that's not bad as the highest requirement. The unique armor gives +1 to paladin skills, +5% attack rating, increases all of my maximum resistances by +15% each, and most importantly, 20% increased chance to block and 30% faster blocking. I justify the higher strength requirement, as this will lower my dexterity requirement.

As an aside, I found Duriel's Shell (unique Cuirass) which will serve as my merc's armor - 20% resist all with +def/level and +life/level is nice for keeping the merc alive.

Helm: Guillaume's Face. This is from the Orphan's Call set (which is actually a pretty nice set if you complete it, although I only have interest in using the helm). The two attributes of interest here are the +35% crushing blow and +15% deadly strike.

Boots: Gore Rider. +15% deadly strike, +15% crushing blow, and +10% open wounds. The use for these boots should be self-explanatory.

Shield: 4-socket (filled with perfect diamonds of course) 42% resist all paladin shield. With the diamonds, it's resist all 118%. Since I'll spend about 5 points in holy shield, and my armor adds +20% to my chance to block, there's no reason I need to find the "of deflecting" suffix on a shield. The most you can get on a shield is 75% (not just the character's chance to block, but this listed value on the shield itself). With +20% from the armor, and another +25% or so from holy shield, I should already have hit the maximum.

Amulet: rare with resist all +20% along with bonuses to attack rating and strength (which will reduce the amount I have to spend on strength).

Undecideds: Both rings, gloves, and belt.

Advantages so far: With the equipment I have on hand, I could theoretically have 90% resistance to fire, lightning and poison, along with 95% resistance to cold. Fully half of all my attacks should register a crushing blow, and with a chance of opening wounds, it should prevent that pesky regeneration from kicking in.

The strength requirment for this set is pretty low, and I should be able to keep my dexterity under 100 with all +chance to block. That should leave me with a good healthy investment of 200+ in vitality. All of the equipment has a level requirements in the 40s or lower. By early nightmare, I'll have all of my gear equipped. That should mean I could complete nightmare in record time.

The high physical damage weapon combined with crusing blow and deadly strike means I should only have a problem with creatures that have immunity to cold and physical. I have considered a couple of runewords as a swtich to counter that. Ideally, I'll find a 4-socket scepter that I can use to make Holy Thunder: ral-ort-tal-thul. So the 4-socket scepter is a lot harder to find than the runes. A more expensive option would be using a sword or axe to make Crescent Moon: tir-um-shael. Here the problem is reversed - it's easy to find the base weapon, but I don't know if I can justify spending an um on a weapon switch. Regardless, both options produce weapons with high lightning damage.

Disadvantages so far: Even with my uber-resistance shield, I don't have anywhere near what I need in total resistances. I need about an addtional +50% resist all, and that is going to have to come from the gloves, belt and rings, which may prove a bit difficult (although resist charms can supplement this, so maybe not as bad as it appears).

So the skill setup is standard:
20 zeal
20 sacrifice
20 holy freeze
20 resist cold
5 holy shield
remainder goes to salvation

 

"did a quick run on Pindleskin, the Pit"

What is so great about the Pit and who's this Pindleskin fellow?

 

@Aces - dmc's answer is complete - I have nothing to add to it.

I hope you mean that it a good way, and not a bad way.

One thing I failed to mention is that I plan on using the set Milabrega's Regalia as soon as I hit the minimum level requirement at Level 17. It's an excelent set for a low level paladin (the weapon damage is too low to go much beyond normal), and I will use it until I graduate into my better gear in nightmare. One funny thing to notice is that the body armor is ancient armor, which has a strength requirement of 100. Paladins start with a base strength of 25, which means I will have to use 75 of the 80 attribute points I will earn between the start of the character and reaching level 17 on strength. Fortunately, the set gives excellent defense (the armor's defense is 234 and doubles to 468 if you are wearing at least one other piece of the set) so I won't get hit much, gives you +50 to life, and the partial set bonuses add a total of +200 to attack rating, which will compensate for my low dexterity. So provided I can get to level 17 without dying much, I should be fine.