Don't forget steps 7 and 8, "Grind until you are high enough level to use it" and "Wonder why you're still in act 1 at level 18"
My characters are usually 20-ish when leaving Act 1. Then, again, I almost exclusively play with players set to 8 turned on. The level bar is filling up really fast, though not quite as fast as Lister the Tormentor's life bar who has some ridiculous regeneration rates. IIRC, to have any chances of killing that foul son of a beach Baal, the character needs DPS in the lines of 800 and above.
the character needs DPS in the lines of 800 and above.
Or a some equipment that prevents monster healing (or just some longer duration potion, a poison gas potion as backup weapon e.g.)
Act 2 went pretty uneventful and slow. Lots of undead that were not impressed by my poison, my guy Gulzar did most of the work instead. But as soon as the first corpses were available I cut the fighting short by using amplified damage and corpse explosions. Fire and physical damage was much more effective!
Despite having the 100mf I only did find 4 items, one of those was a surprisingly good shield from Drognan
Hsaru's Boots from a mummy, guarding the Horadric Cube
Isenhart's Breastplate in the tomb of Tal Rasha
The most useful treasure came from Duriel directly. Altough I cleaned up act 2 very well, I still was only early lvl 22 when I went into the last tomb. The fight was very manageable though. I used weaken on him (our physical damage wasn't that high for Amplify Damage), but his reduced damage was very manageable with health potions and some occasional reju. He seemed very weak to poison too, fight didn't last very long.
Stats at the end
Act 2 would have been nicer with some additional quests. 5 quests are directly linked to Duriel. Only the first has a nice reward.
the character needs DPS in the lines of 800 and above.
Or a some equipment that prevents monster healing (or just some longer duration potion, a poison gas potion as backup weapon e.g.)
That's right. However, it's worth noting that Prevent Monster Heal is only an option for weapon-using characters, as it doesn't affect spells and won't work if the item is carried by a mercenary. Of course, poison is a staple of survival past Normal difficulty, as monsters' regeneration rate scales with their maximum health and sooner or later becomes simply impossible to outdamage by conventional means.
On the Assassin, if you go with Cobra you don't get as much damage as if you go Tiger. The best finishing moves are the double claw one (you should always be using double claw, and take a bunch of points in the double-claw Block bonus skill was well, besides the Claw damage increase) and the one that teleports you to the enemy. In Hell difficulty you might need Phoenix against creatures immune to physical damage if you're using Tiger. Take points in both Fade and Burst of Speed. Without Fade, most creatures dealing elemental damage destroy you. Without Burst of Speed, you attack too slow, besides, the movement speed is nice for kiting with melee weapons (yes, you can do that). Don't even take a single point in traps. Get the most damaging Claw-like weapons you can find and use those, for your equipment and points, focus dexterity, barely enough strength to use items, enough vitality to survive more than 2 hits, and getting mana/kill or manasteal on items so you can spam your skills without spending a single point on energy (which is useless IMO on anything that isn't a Druid/Sorceress).
Without Burst of Speed, you attack too slow, besides, the movement speed is nice for kiting with melee weapons (yes, you can do that).
It's worth noting, however, that monsters can hit a running character regardless of defense and only a block (performed at 1/3 of the normal chance while standing) or the Amazon's Evade ability can effectively prevent that.
without spending a single point on energy (which is useless IMO on anything that isn't a Druid/Sorceress).
Even for a sorceress it's a waste of points (especially on Hardcore). Maybe for some mana shield builds, but I never had any issues since the Insight rune word became available.
Instead of doing a traditional Let's Play update, I'd like to do some deep digging into how the game and classes work, one by one (if this thread lasts that long). One of the amazing things about Diablo 2 is that, perhaps more than any game ever made, the 7 classes can all be played in AT LEAST 3 different ways, and most of them offer much more than that. Because of the way levels work and the skill allocation, you can never really be a master of everything in D2. You typically must focus on one or two skills to be your heavy hitters, with skills on the side that provide buffs, utility, and a fallback for immune monsters.
I started a Druid, which is one of the two classes added by the Lord of Destruction expansion. It's a class that really got a lot of love visually, as it's set of spells, shape-shifting, and summons really take advantage of the claymation-type look of the game.
The Druid, as in most other fantasy RPGs, is a jack of all trades while not being a master of any. You can do melee combat as a Werewolf or Werebear, though it will never have the same versatility in that category as a Barbarian. Elemental allows you to cast spells, but their area of effect and pathing make them far harder to use and master than a Sorceress. And finally, Summoning has a ton of options (Ravens, Vines, Wolfs, Bear, Spirits), though you will never have the massive army of the Necromancer.
In the end, the best way to be a Druid is to pick either the Shape-Shifting or Elemental Tree to focus on heavily, and supplement it with Summoning (though you can't cast spells in either Shape-Shifting form and must cast them beforehand). It is likely entirely legit to play the game as a strict Summoner, but it really comes across as a supplemental tree that especially helps with the spell-casting of the Elemental Tree.
On my Druid I go with Firestorm and Fissure. Firestorm if they get too close otherwise Fissure, and then have the Vine creeps give me back my health/mana. You don't even need to use Normal attacks. On low levels throw 2 Firestorms and they're dead, then one Fissure or two and they're dead. Then run around spamming like crazy and hoping you don't get killed.
If you want to play on Hell that is. Other builds require a lot of items to to the same as those others with cheap stuff.
They didn't even try to balance things out at the end. I had a pretty well equipped Necromancer[lvl90], close to the best possible stuff, even a Bramble armor. And his dps was shit in a solo Hell game... ( compared to a fresh lvl 60 sorc with basic items)
I'm still stuck in Kurast, haven't even left the docks Not my favorite area of the game ^^
I think the fun of the game is to actually SEE if your build can beat Hell difficulty. Not fast, mind you, but enough to get it done. You're right about there being a totally optimal build for each class. But not everyone is a min/maxer. Most aren't actually.
Unfortunately Bodhi reached as far on the road to Diablo, as her brother. At least, she was not the prey of some random mob, but the Summoner. However she didn't actually saw the Summoner, just some ice blasts, so maybe that's not an excuse for me.
Thruth to be told the assasin's fighting style with the power attacks and the finishing moves was a little difficult to me (i had to press more than one button), but i will miss her speed.
Next try: an amazing amazon!
DM: So what class would like to play?
B: Uhmm... I think i can't be a ponie right? No, ok... Well, how about a half-orc bard then?
DM: You can't be half-orc, and there's no bard class in this game. Please choose something else.
B: OK, a gnome sorcerer then.
DM: You can't be gnome either.
B: What? What race can i be then?!
DM: Mmmm... Human?
B: ?????? You are kidding me? What a game is this?
DM: Trust me, it will be good! Just choose a class!
B: Ok... I will play a short sorcerer guy, and pretend that he is a gnome then.
DM: You can't be sorcerer, just sorceress. If you would like to do magic as a male you can be a druid or a necromancer.
B: Crap... No magic then. Ok, what about a green barbarian girl then?
DM: Barbarians are males, but you can be an amazon (you know that you can't choose your skin tone, i told you that once).
Hi guys. I was about to get to Diablo Nightmare today with Zaraki, but the game crashed each time I tried to took screenshot with the snapper. I gave up after few tries (for today).
Not a Diablo II Enhanced Edition update this time.
I just found this strange pre-D2EE video on my desktop. Must have been some sort of a test run, judging by the drops, the 7 raven cap and an invincible barbarian 'spirit' used to lock Andariel in place. If you're curious of Yatta-ihhuitl's gameplay with corpses exploding into ravens, feel free to take a look. He's 70-something here by the looks of it, with Fissure and Firestorm nicely synergized to wreck the hell nightmare out of everything. But struggling.
I totally agree wtih trapassin and hammerdin, as well as, hurricane druid and the ever so prevalent lightning throw amazon build.
But I've never heard of a "Shout-Barbarian" (pretty much all barb's used shout with at least 1 skill point, but do you mean Concentration barbs?) and I disagree with the sorc since the classical fire-orb sorc was inferior in Hell due to lack of damage synergies on frozen orb. You needed INSANE items to make the frozen orb viable in 8 player Hell, which made it expensive and uncommon after Nightmare.
Edit: I stopped playing once everyone and their mother starting using the best rune words though. Seeing every class using BO on item switch and having teleport just ruined the fun. To be more precise, teleporting, BO'd hammerdin bots ruined the game.
Ok, so I caved and installed Dii + LoD just now. Had to DL the game since I have no cd-drive on my computer. edit: I even went up to the attic and found my old discs before realizing I didn't have dcvd drive, haha! I used my license key though.
I need help though.. even though I picked full install the game prompted me to put in the Play Disc in my cd drive. I used daemon tools to mount the ISO's, and mounting the disc didn't solve the problem. Then I updated to 1.13 and now when I try to start the game it says something about a critical error for direct 3D or similar.
if you're not one of those guys who gets glowing red eyes at the mention of registering on another distribution platform you could register your cd key with blizzard and use the digital version they supply. it worked cleanly for me.
if you're not one of those guys who gets glowing red eyes at the mention of registering on another distribution platform you could register your cd key with blizzard and use the digital version they supply. it worked cleanly for me.
I tried to find that, but didn't!
But anyways, found the solution for my problem - had to play the game in windowed mode.
I have to see if there's a high-res mod. Playing this game on a 27'' monitor hurts my eyes, even in windowed mode.
And to further increase B's magic find she put into use those two gem shrine found earlier with two chipped topaz, and one socketed helm.
After defeating Blood Raven a mercenary named Aliza joined to B'. They managed to open a portal to Tristram and put Griswold to rest for good.
Aliza and B' reached the bottom of the Tower Cellar together. The Countess dropped some nice runes:
B' gemmed a ring mail too, to use some of those numerous chipped topaz she found.
The Smith proved to be a big, but easily overcomeable obstacle.
A shiny amulet from the lower jails:
Some horned demons on the lower catacomb levels treasured one green gauntlet:
It's slowing ability proved to be handy, especially in boss battles. B' could test it out at once against Andariel.
From Andariel drops was only a rare amulet noticeable.
B' could travel to Lut Gholein with Warriv. There she hired another mercenary named Fzael in Aliza place. Fzael helped B' to get rid with Radament in the sewers.
To B's fortune, the Halls of the Dead was on the corner of Lut Gholein exit, so she could grab the horadric cube without much delay.
She found the sabre from the Angelic Raiment near the chest containing the Horadric Cube.
Also, B' now got the skill Plague Javelin. It seemed to be the same like it's poisonous counterpart on paper, but in use it proved to be surprisingly deadlier.
@O_Bruce I'm still hoping to hear about Zaraki one day...
@lolien Sad to see the fall of Bodhi, but I guess each time you, as a player, acquire more XP...
Now, let me return to working playing
The adventure of Hexxat
Of her life beyond childhood, Hexxat says nothing, other then that her immediate assignment was given her by someone known only as L. One of those assignments involved a trip to a distant land, full of demons and undead.
As you remember, after beating D2 on Normal with Xzar, I wanted some change of pace, so I rolled an assassin and got a perfect topaz as early as Black Marsh.
At first, after reading through many sites, I've decided to try an assassin focusing on Cobra Strike (leeching life and mana), thus the vampire theme, and using Dragon Claw (thus attacking with 2 claws), as @CrevsDaak had suggested. But as it will be clear from the following reports, that build is not ideal, at least to me.
In the first Act, everything went well, and Hexxat even managed to get probably the best gloves for an assassin in terms of bonuses (a drop from the Smith) - *10% increased attack speed.
For an assassin, especially attacking with Dragon Claw, attack speed is the main thing. This skill is quite slow, but Act I on Normal was not the place to witness the negative aspect of the skill. As for Cobra Strike, it proved very useful, nearly always keeping Hexxat on top of HPs.
The battle against Andariel was won without problems in 15 seconds (I've decided to try recording videos):
I have to see if there's a high-res mod. Playing this game on a 27'' monitor hurts my eyes, even in windowed mode.
I might announce and release a pre-alpha of my Tides of NumeneraDiablo 2 Enhanced Edition sometime next week. Supported resolutions are 1280x768 and 1024x768, though I still have a couple of interface screens waiting to be overhauled.
And there's more than just that. Like, a cosmetic overhaul of Diablo the Lord of Terror, who will be taunting you with his Heroes of the Storm voiceovers, and Xul the summonable NPC necromancer who will raise you a host of skeletons other extra features currently in early implementation phases.
@O_Bruce I'm still hoping to hear about Zaraki one day...
Zaraki's Nightmare III Puny Lord of Terror
After many pleasant (maybe not so pleasant for Lord of Hatred) visits to Uncle Mehpisto, Zaraki finally decided to face Diablo in Act IV.
His first quest was to slain Izual, and that was rather easy. With 50% chance of crushing blow on hit (25% Goblin Toe +25% Rattlecage), even Izual's tons of HPs were kinda pointless. He wasn't a threat at all. 2 free skillpoints for Battle Order and Berserk.
Next, to destroy Mephisto's soulstone. The road to River of Flames was rather easy. Granted, it was still Act IV Nightmare, so I preffered to avoid being surrounded by multiple monsters, use Leap Attack to escape being surrounded and be smart about which monsters I attack first. Due to my break, I also (for a time)forgot to use Find Item skills on corpse of minibosses. Regardless, Hellforge welcomed Zaraki rather warmly.
Hephasto died quickly, but I almost died as well. He was Fire Enchanted, meaning it dealt huge fire/physical damage on it's own death. I might had 75% fire resistance, but it still hurt very badly. Luckily, Zaraki survived and smashed Uncle Mephisto's soulstone.
The time has come to hunt down and kill Diablo himself.
Zaraki slaughtered everything on his path, feeling strange from time to time. Zaraki's amulet has a chance to cast Iron Maiden on being hit, and hearing it's iconic sound effect in Chaos Sanctuary gave me feel like I've been playing the pre-1.11 game build. Zaraki opened all seals and killed the three superuniques.
Now, time for duel with Diablo. No video this time, since still I was experiencing the problems with Snapper and ShadowPlay combination. I didn't want to risk my game crashing again. But, it was easier than Normal difficulty. Yet again, high crushing blow chance won the day. And also the fact that Diablo's Lightning Breath is bugged in Nightmare and Hell difficulties. Perfect game, huh?
Unfortunately, Diablo didn't drop anything worth mentioning
These are two uniques and 1 set, but they're good for Normal and early Nightmare difficulties. Not further. And that's with 212 magic find on my part....
To be continued...
...
...
...
IMMEDIATELY
Act V, quest 1 it is! Nothing too special.
The randomnized mix of monsters I encountered was Slingers + Foul Crows. Pretty weak one, but it worked well for Zaraki. Naturally, it didn't took long for our mighty Barbarian Warrior to reach Shenk the Overseer.
After losing his minions Shenk lasted only few seconds in combat. The siege has been ended, and Zaraki reached the nearest Waypoint to call it a day.
To be continued. Seriously now....
----
Ok, few things about my gear. As you noticed, Zaraki is wearing two swords instead of two-handed one. That's because when visiting Uncle Mephisto, I've rolled these swords that granted me much upgrade to my damage, and I haven't managed to find any good two-handed sword. When I do, however, I will switch weapons once again.
Sorry for not commenting in the thread. I was kinda busy and I felt stupid writing here if I have nothing to contribute. Yet again, I apologize. I hope soon I will have more time to continue Zaraki's journey.
I'm not sure how the ideal Assassin build goes but I like that one in particular, like the Zealot (while the Hammerdin is way better). Also, you should prioritise Hit Recovery. I discovered this recently, but it's a broken stat. Once you have enough of it, monsters hit you and you can just keeping attacking without having to worry (which is what you need with that Assassin build to be successful).
Also, since you mixed your screenshots I can see you've defeated the Act II boss, which is probably the hardest when playing that build IMO, so I think you should be good (also, watch out for Cold Enchanted and Immune to Physical in Nightmare, they can kill you very easily if you're not careful and if they are Extra Fast/Strong).
B' found another Angelic Sickle in the Stony Tomb:
The plague javelin proved to be an ideal instrument to hunt those nasty bugs in the maggot lair:
Coldworm died as ugly a death as usual:
In the ancient tunnels B' found a nice shield:
The vipers temple held no surprises this time, so B' and her mercenary friend advanced to the palace harem...
Another green item, one axe from the berserker's arsenal:
Honestly, i lost my faith to find a useful set item at this point. But @Buttercheese prevailed where all Irenicus, Retso Tnert, Lolien Rolio and Bodhi failed: she cleared the Arcane Sanctuary:
Comments
The level bar is filling up really fast, though not quite as fast as Lister the Tormentor's life bar who has some ridiculous regeneration rates. IIRC, to have any chances of killing that foul son of
a beachBaal, the character needs DPS in the lines of 800 and above.Act 2 went pretty uneventful and slow. Lots of undead that were not impressed by my poison, my guy Gulzar did most of the work instead. But as soon as the first corpses were available I cut the fighting short by using amplified damage and corpse explosions. Fire and physical damage was much more effective!
Despite having the 100mf I only did find 4 items, one of those was a surprisingly good shield from Drognan
Hsaru's Boots from a mummy, guarding the Horadric Cube
Isenhart's Breastplate in the tomb of Tal Rasha
The most useful treasure came from Duriel directly. Altough I cleaned up act 2 very well, I still was only early lvl 22 when I went into the last tomb.
The fight was very manageable though. I used weaken on him (our physical damage wasn't that high for Amplify Damage), but his reduced damage was very manageable with health potions and some occasional reju.
He seemed very weak to poison too, fight didn't last very long.
Stats at the end
Act 2 would have been nicer with some additional quests. 5 quests are directly linked to Duriel. Only the first has a nice reward.
Of course, poison is a staple of survival past Normal difficulty, as monsters' regeneration rate scales with their maximum health and sooner or later becomes simply impossible to outdamage by conventional means. I'll see if anything can be done about it.
Good luck with the thesis.
Remember you can always call Deckard Cain.
Diablo II Enhanced Edition
Development, Chapter VII, quests 1 to 6:
And Deckard Cain would phone many stores looking to assemble a special hammer. And Yatta-ihhuitl knew Charsi could improve an item with it.I started a Druid, which is one of the two classes added by the Lord of Destruction expansion. It's a class that really got a lot of love visually, as it's set of spells, shape-shifting, and summons really take advantage of the claymation-type look of the game.
The Druid, as in most other fantasy RPGs, is a jack of all trades while not being a master of any. You can do melee combat as a Werewolf or Werebear, though it will never have the same versatility in that category as a Barbarian. Elemental allows you to cast spells, but their area of effect and pathing make them far harder to use and master than a Sorceress. And finally, Summoning has a ton of options (Ravens, Vines, Wolfs, Bear, Spirits), though you will never have the massive army of the Necromancer.
In the end, the best way to be a Druid is to pick either the Shape-Shifting or Elemental Tree to focus on heavily, and supplement it with Summoning (though you can't cast spells in either Shape-Shifting form and must cast them beforehand). It is likely entirely legit to play the game as a strict Summoner, but it really comes across as a supplemental tree that especially helps with the spell-casting of the Elemental Tree.
Even though you can built anything, each class only had 1 built that got played . And then some specialized PvP builts.
Trap-Assassin
Hammer-Paladin
Summoner-Necromancer
Fireball/Orb-Sorceress
Hurricane-Druid
Shout-Barbarian
Throwing Spear-Amazon
If you want to play on Hell that is. Other builds require a lot of items to to the same as those others with cheap stuff.
They didn't even try to balance things out at the end.
I had a pretty well equipped Necromancer[lvl90], close to the best possible stuff, even a Bramble armor. And his dps was shit in a solo Hell game... ( compared to a fresh lvl 60 sorc with basic items)
I'm still stuck in Kurast, haven't even left the docks
Unfortunately Bodhi reached as far on the road to Diablo, as her brother. At least, she was not the prey of some random mob, but the Summoner. However she didn't actually saw the Summoner, just some ice blasts, so maybe that's not an excuse for me.
Thruth to be told the assasin's fighting style with the power attacks and the finishing moves was a little difficult to me (i had to press more than one button), but i will miss her speed.
Next try: an amazing amazon!
DM: So what class would like to play?
B: Uhmm... I think i can't be a ponie right? No, ok... Well, how about a half-orc bard then?
DM: You can't be half-orc, and there's no bard class in this game. Please choose something else.
B: OK, a gnome sorcerer then.
DM: You can't be gnome either.
B: What? What race can i be then?!
DM: Mmmm... Human?
B: ?????? You are kidding me? What a game is this?
DM: Trust me, it will be good! Just choose a class!
B: Ok... I will play a short sorcerer guy, and pretend that he is a gnome then.
DM: You can't be sorcerer, just sorceress. If you would like to do magic as a male you can be a druid or a necromancer.
B: Crap... No magic then. Ok, what about a green barbarian girl then?
DM: Barbarians are males, but you can be an amazon (you know that you can't choose your skin tone, i told you that once).
B: I'm an amazon then, just let's start it.
DM: You don't need to roll.
B: ?
DM: Every amazon has the same initial stats.
B: No rolling? That's... lame...
Ok, so i rolled one amazon. I went for the javelin skills, the poison ones.
In blood moor i found a nice shrine:
And another one on the Cold Plains:
Blood Raven put up a good fight, but was easier, than with Bodhi or Lolien.
After that i had learned Poison Javelin and it became my favourite skill.
Here's one shot from the 8'th level character sheet:
I just found this strange pre-D2EE video on my desktop. Must have been some sort of a test run, judging by the drops, the 7 raven cap and an invincible barbarian 'spirit' used to lock Andariel in place. If you're curious of Yatta-ihhuitl's gameplay with corpses exploding into ravens, feel free to take a look. He's 70-something here by the looks of it, with Fissure and Firestorm nicely synergized to wreck the
hellnightmare out of everything. But struggling.But I've never heard of a "Shout-Barbarian" (pretty much all barb's used shout with at least 1 skill point, but do you mean Concentration barbs?) and I disagree with the sorc since the classical fire-orb sorc was inferior in Hell due to lack of damage synergies on frozen orb. You needed INSANE items to make the frozen orb viable in 8 player Hell, which made it expensive and uncommon after Nightmare.
Edit: I stopped playing once everyone and their mother starting using the best rune words though. Seeing every class using BO on item switch and having teleport just ruined the fun. To be more precise, teleporting, BO'd hammerdin bots ruined the game.
edit: I even went up to the attic and found my old discs before realizing I didn't have dcvd drive, haha! I used my license key though.
I need help though.. even though I picked full install the game prompted me to put in the Play Disc in my cd drive. I used daemon tools to mount the ISO's, and mounting the disc didn't solve the problem. Then I updated to 1.13 and now when I try to start the game it says something about a critical error for direct 3D or similar.
Anyone know what to do?
But anyways, found the solution for my problem - had to play the game in windowed mode.
I have to see if there's a high-res mod. Playing this game on a 27'' monitor hurts my eyes, even in windowed mode.
for anyone who get stuck on that in the future it looks like you have to go to battle.net -> shop -> redeem a code -> enter the cd key
The continued journey of the amazing B'
A nice ring:And to further increase B's magic find she put into use those two gem shrine found earlier with two chipped topaz, and one socketed helm.
After defeating Blood Raven a mercenary named Aliza joined to B'. They managed to open a portal to Tristram and put Griswold to rest for good.
Aliza and B' reached the bottom of the Tower Cellar together. The Countess
dropped some nice runes:
B' gemmed a ring mail too, to use some of those numerous chipped topaz she found.
The Smith proved to be a big, but easily overcomeable obstacle.
A shiny amulet from the lower jails:
Some horned demons on the lower catacomb levels treasured one green gauntlet:
It's slowing ability proved to be handy, especially in boss battles. B' could test it out at once against Andariel.
From Andariel drops was only a rare amulet noticeable.
B' could travel to Lut Gholein with Warriv. There she hired another mercenary named Fzael in Aliza place. Fzael helped B' to get rid with Radament in the sewers.
To B's fortune, the Halls of the Dead was on the corner of Lut Gholein exit, so she could grab the horadric cube without much delay.
She found the sabre from the Angelic Raiment near the chest containing the Horadric Cube.
Also, B' now got the skill Plague Javelin. It seemed to be the same like it's poisonous counterpart on paper, but in use it proved to be surprisingly deadlier.
Level 18 skills and inventories:
@lolien Sad to see the fall of Bodhi, but I guess each time you, as a player, acquire more XP...
Now, let me return to
workingplayingThe adventure of Hexxat
Of her life beyond childhood, Hexxat says nothing, other then that her immediate assignment was given her by someone known only as L. One of those assignments involved a trip to a distant land, full of demons and undead.
As you remember, after beating D2 on Normal with Xzar, I wanted some change of pace, so I rolled an assassin and got a perfect topaz as early as Black Marsh.
At first, after reading through many sites, I've decided to try an assassin focusing on Cobra Strike (leeching life and mana), thus the vampire theme, and using Dragon Claw (thus attacking with 2 claws), as @CrevsDaak had suggested. But as it will be clear from the following reports, that build is not ideal, at least to me.
In the first Act, everything went well, and Hexxat even managed to get probably the best gloves for an assassin in terms of bonuses (a drop from the Smith) - *10% increased attack speed.
For an assassin, especially attacking with Dragon Claw, attack speed is the main thing. This skill is quite slow, but Act I on Normal was not the place to witness the negative aspect of the skill. As for Cobra Strike, it proved very useful, nearly always keeping Hexxat on top of HPs.
The battle against Andariel was won without problems in 15 seconds (I've decided to try recording videos):
Tides of NumeneraDiablo 2 Enhanced Edition sometime next week. Supported resolutions are 1280x768 and 1024x768, though I still have a couple of interface screens waiting to be overhauled.And there's more than just that.
Like, a cosmetic overhaul of Diablo the Lord of Terror, who will be taunting you with his Heroes of the Storm voiceovers, and
Xul the summonable NPC necromancer who will raise you a host of skeletonsother extra features currently in early implementation phases.Zaraki's Nightmare III
Puny Lord of Terror
After many pleasant (maybe not so pleasant for Lord of Hatred) visits to Uncle Mehpisto, Zaraki finally decided to face Diablo in Act IV.
His first quest was to slain Izual, and that was rather easy. With 50% chance of crushing blow on hit (25% Goblin Toe +25% Rattlecage), even Izual's tons of HPs were kinda pointless. He wasn't a threat at all. 2 free skillpoints for Battle Order and Berserk.
Next, to destroy Mephisto's soulstone. The road to River of Flames was rather easy. Granted, it was still Act IV Nightmare, so I preffered to avoid being surrounded by multiple monsters, use Leap Attack to escape being surrounded and be smart about which monsters I attack first. Due to my break, I also (for a time)forgot to use Find Item skills on corpse of minibosses. Regardless, Hellforge welcomed Zaraki rather warmly.
Hephasto died quickly, but I almost died as well. He was Fire Enchanted, meaning it dealt huge fire/physical damage on it's own death. I might had 75% fire resistance, but it still hurt very badly. Luckily, Zaraki survived and smashed Uncle Mephisto's soulstone.
The time has come to hunt down and kill Diablo himself.
Zaraki slaughtered everything on his path, feeling strange from time to time. Zaraki's amulet has a chance to cast Iron Maiden on being hit, and hearing it's iconic sound effect in Chaos Sanctuary gave me feel like I've been playing the pre-1.11 game build. Zaraki opened all seals and killed the three superuniques.
Now, time for duel with Diablo. No video this time, since still I was experiencing the problems with Snapper and ShadowPlay combination. I didn't want to risk my game crashing again. But, it was easier than Normal difficulty. Yet again, high crushing blow chance won the day. And also the fact that Diablo's Lightning Breath is bugged in Nightmare and Hell difficulties. Perfect game, huh?
Unfortunately, Diablo didn't drop anything worth mentioning
These are two uniques and 1 set, but they're good for Normal and early Nightmare difficulties. Not further. And that's with 212 magic find on my part....
To be continued...
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IMMEDIATELY
Act V, quest 1 it is! Nothing too special.
The randomnized mix of monsters I encountered was Slingers + Foul Crows. Pretty weak one, but it worked well for Zaraki. Naturally, it didn't took long for our mighty Barbarian Warrior to reach Shenk the Overseer.
After losing his minions Shenk lasted only few seconds in combat. The siege has been ended, and Zaraki reached the nearest Waypoint to call it a day.
To be continued. Seriously now....
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Ok, few things about my gear. As you noticed, Zaraki is wearing two swords instead of two-handed one. That's because when visiting Uncle Mephisto, I've rolled these swords that granted me much upgrade to my damage, and I haven't managed to find any good two-handed sword. When I do, however, I will switch weapons once again.
Sorry for not commenting in the thread. I was kinda busy and I felt stupid writing here if I have nothing to contribute. Yet again, I apologize. I hope soon I will have more time to continue Zaraki's journey.
I'm not sure how the ideal Assassin build goes but I like that one in particular, like the Zealot (while the Hammerdin is way better). Also, you should prioritise Hit Recovery. I discovered this recently, but it's a broken stat. Once you have enough of it, monsters hit you and you can just keeping attacking without having to worry (which is what you need with that Assassin build to be successful).
Also, since you mixed your screenshots I can see you've defeated the Act II boss, which is probably the hardest when playing that build IMO, so I think you should be good (also, watch out for Cold Enchanted and Immune to Physical in Nightmare, they can kill you very easily if you're not careful and if they are Extra Fast/Strong).
The amazing B', next part
B' found another Angelic Sickle in the Stony Tomb:The plague javelin proved to be an ideal instrument to hunt those nasty bugs in the maggot lair:
Coldworm died as ugly a death as usual:
In the ancient tunnels B' found a nice shield:
The vipers temple held no surprises this time, so B' and her mercenary friend advanced to the palace harem...
Another green item, one axe from the berserker's arsenal:
Honestly, i lost my faith to find a useful set item at this point.
But @Buttercheese prevailed where all Irenicus, Retso Tnert, Lolien Rolio and Bodhi failed: she cleared the Arcane Sanctuary:
Reached Tal Rasha's Tomb:
And conquered over Duriel:
Level 23 shots: