Hi, new to D2

[pulli]

Hi, new to D2

Hi everyone, I "just" installed Diablo 2.. (My first PC couldn't run it, then I forgot about it, and now I finally found it again). - Problem is that with all Battlenet games I simply can't connect to it.. (Says "unable to connect") - So I'm "limited" to the single player stuff (along with TCP/IP).. Now I do have (a lot) of questions regarding that:

-First of all when looking at the trading forums I often see this: "FAM/FTS" - what does that mean? (Ow and I take "iso" means in search of, and not "international standarisation organisation")
-Secondly I believe ATMA is allowed..? - Also as an "extra" bank?
-Thirdly, at a price-check I read something like "100 P-gems" - How would anyone go about that? - Your inventory only allows for a small number of items..

Also I would like to get some gameplay/stragestic advice,
I started as necromancer, and basically chose what skills seemed best (didn't read anything about it), and I went very fast through the game (got to baal at lv 35) - Now I'm kind of stuck, being lv 50 and not capable of doing any damage to baal (even with /players 1 & normal difficulty), this is the way my character works atm:

Character name  : paul
Character type  : Necromancer
Character level : 50

Strength        : 75
Energy          : 49
Dexterity       : 86
Vitality        : 120
Stat Points Rem : 0
Skill Points Rem: 0

Life            : 353 / 348
Mana            : 194 / 171
Stamina         : 264 / 233

--- spells: ---
8 Skeleton mastery
7 raise skeleton
6 raise skeleton mage
2 revive
1 clay golem
1 golem mastery
4 blood golem
4 summon resist
1 iron golem

6 amplify damage
1 weaken
1 dim vision
6 iron maiden

1 teeth
1 bone armour
1 poison dagger
1 corp explosion
1 bone spear

Any advice on it?
Also, if I have on item slot 2 "+5 summon resist, +4 skeleton mastery" and I summon with that item slot, then go back to item slot 1.. Do those extra bonusses still count? (In item slot 1 I have +5 amplify damage, +2 corpse explosion).
Lastly how does everybody get those "super" items.. Even runes above "amn" I haven't seen ever!
(My best item must be "maelstorms yew wand" with +3 amplify damage, +3 iron maiden, +1 Corpse explosion).

Thanks in advance for answering my questions,
pulli23

 

[Jason Maher]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Welcome to the forums.

Looking at your skill distribution, you do have a few wasted skill points - but don't worry, we all do that first time round. The character is rescuable, though. From here on in, pump every skill point into Raise Skeleton until maxed, and then pump Skeleton Mastery. You will notice a difference. Also no more points in curses (unless you want to put 1 point in Decrepify to slow act bosses down) - they will work just fine at their current levels with + skills. Don't worry about posion and bone skills - they need lots of points in synergies to be effective. Corpse Explosion is the only skill you need from this tree - and it is VERY useful. Extra points only boost the radius, and you will find with + skills 1 point is enough.

Also go back to Act 1 and shop a +3 Raise Skeleton wand from Akara (will cost a few gold), and keep an eye out for a necro head with + Raise skeleton (you might need to run a low level area for this). The Raise Skeleton skill has by far the biggest effect on the usefulness of your skellies - hence why maxing it first and looking for additions to this skill as a priority are important. Skeleton Mastery has a much lesser effect - it's main use is to boost the Skele's life, though it does give a minor damage boost.

Minions summoned on switch will remain at the level summoned, though if the + skills on switch allows you to summon 1 or 2 extra skellies, they will crumble when you switch back (the ones that don't crumble will be the higher level).

A few tips on actual play:
- use and abuse Corpse Explosion once there is a spare body on the ground
- use Amplify Damage as your main curse - greatly increases the effectiveness of skellies, with Dim Vision as an option against nasty ranged enemies, and get 1 point in Decrep for use against Act bosses (though Clay Golem - which slows enemies - + Amp works just as well).
- skelli mages are not overly helpful alongside skellies - they benefit from different curses (lower Resist in the case of the Mages). They act only in a supporting role unless you focus specifically on them (which makes the normal skellies meatshields rather than damage dealers).
- forget Iron Maiden. Monsters life in relation to the damage they deal is far too great for reflected damage to do much good.

As for high level items - they come with time and patience. I don't have many personally. Not all builds need them, and the skelli-mancer probably least of all. What your type of necro needs above everything else is + skills. The game is very beatable with only 10 or less + skills. The high end gear which can give you 20 or more + skills is required, it just makes you overpowered.

Finally, with your specific problem of beating Baal, I would look to increase my skelli level - go back to Act 1 to find a wand and head (you can buy the wand) that boost your skelli levels, then run some areas in act 5 to gain level or two and put the points in Raise Skelliton. Make sure you use either Decrepify or Clay Golem + Amp Damage to slow Baal down and deal more damage.

 

[udgard]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Hello, welcome to the game, and to the forums =)
Disclaimer: -I don't usually kick shins/steal wallets-

- FAM/FTS is the abbreviations used on the trading forums only. FAM means forum accepted mods, which is comprised of the runeword mod (allows ladder battlenet only runewords to be made on single player), the red rune mod (turns the display color of all runes to Red), and the color rune mod (the same as red rune mod, but you can choose a number of color for individual runes). FTS is full trade status, which is the term given for traders that have been on the trade forums for a while. New traders may not trade for a week from their registration on the forum, and after that they are classified as NTPP (new trader probation period) for 3 months, after which they are considered FTS.

-Yep, ATMA is allowed both as an extended stash and as an extra bank. Do note that only the .d2s (character file) and the .d2x (stash file) is accepted by the community. The d2i (item file) is not.

-We use atma (or gomule, another muling application made by silospen, an old member of the forum) to trade the items via email, and usually use the stash file, which can hold an unlimited amount of items. That amount of Pgems is usually transferred to a character only when they are about to be used (for rerolling, for example)

-After patch 1.10 and above, blizzard introduced synergies that basically 'forces' you to specialize on a few amount of skill instead of getting a large variety of it. For a summon-mancer, the basic staple is to rely on the physical damage done by the skeleton warriors, and increase the damage further with amplify damage. Thus, since the skeleton mages does elemental damage, they usually don't go really well with the skeleton warriors, as their damage does not get amplified by amplify damage. There is a good guide around here about summon-mancers, dubbed as the fishymancer as a homage to the build designer's name, nightfish. I don't have the link, but I'm sure someone will come up with it in just a few moment..
As for the +skills, the skeleton's stats are determined when they are summoned, so yes, you can summon with the 2nd slot and retain the power when you switch to the 1st slot. Do note though that if your skill point drop causes a reduction in the maximum amount of skeletons you can have, some skeleton will automatically be destroyed until the number you have is equal to the maximum number allowed by the new leve of skill. The strength of the skeleton remains the same as when it is summoned though. +5 summon resist and +4 skeleton mastery is juicy, btw.

-For the items, we typically do magic find (MF)runs, by equipping items with %chance increase on finding magic items (this include set and uniques), and then run some areas/bosses to gather their loots.

Edit: I was wondering how many posts I will get pwned by when I finish writing this. Glad it's just one =D

 

[pulli]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Well the main problem with "baal" is that once I enter the chamber it does a few attacks and *boom* my skeletons are gone (without even reaching baal).. Also Corpse Explosion won't work there ).. Also: how do you train lol, even at /players 8 I get minimal amounts of xp these days from anything except baals minions.. (and everything dies in like 1-2 seconds).

Also, if sending by email, how do you prevent items from being copied (Just trust the sender to delete it's file?)

 

[TopHatCat64]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Also, if sending by email, how do you prevent items from being copied (Just trust the sender to delete it's file?)

That's basically how it works, you gotta trust your trade partner.

 

[essojay]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Baal is pretty tough for a Skellymancer. I haven't played one in a while, but here are some tips:
1) You can do other monsters in p8, but use a lower setting for Baal. I recommend 1 or 3.
2) Keep Clay Golem Alive. Every times CG hits Baal, Baal slows down.
3) Once Baal is sufficiently slow, TP out and get more skellies.
4) Kill Baal. You might have to join in the fun and hit Baal yourself.

Welcome to the forums!

 

[pulli]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Point 3 spawns an interesting other question: How to quickly get more skellies? - I mean even teleporting to A2, and going into the dungeon takes quite a few minutes? - Won't baal become very fast in that time again?

Another idea I had: maybe I should start hosting MP servers, I'm on a 1 GBs up/down stream glass fibre connection, so pings for those of us in europe should be "low".. Or maybe I should wait some time untill I basically beat the game at least once? (Is there an advantage of going to baal in parties?) - Ow and how does pvp actually work (Not that a skellymancer would be any good there I guess, seeing basically all curses are disallowed) - still battling over the lan with my brothers would be fun .

@Udgard: yeah, that's why I got that question (I saw skeletons die when switching armour).. Funny thing is revives stay alive even when the "skill level" drops!

PS: thanks again for the kind responses, let's see how long it takes till my first zod rune !

 

[essojay]

Re: Hi, new to D2

There are free corpses in Nihlathak's Garden (Anya's Red Portal). That's where I always get my first skellies. Otherwise, just go to your favorite killing spot and wait for your merc to get you some corpses.

There's no advantage to having beaten the game. You can MP whenever you want.

I'm not sure about LAN, but you can MP or PvP with others over TCP/IP. Basically you would host a game, post your IP address in the appropriate thread, and wait for others to join in the fun.

 

[maareek]

Re: Hi, new to D2

You're all the way to normal Baal and haven't gotten decrepify yet? Easily one of the nicest skills for the fishymancer (and one of my favorite skills on any necro, period). Put your next available skill point in it. Surprised you got past Duriel and Diablo without it. As soon as you see Baal you should cast Decrep on him, and keep it on him at least until the Clay Golem has slowed him down. You can leave it on even afterwards, though, for extra slow down; it still increases your skellies damage, just not as much as Amp. I think Decrep reduces physical resistance by 33% compared to Amp's 100%. You could also switch over to amp after the CG has slowed Baal down some, if you'd like, but if you're having trouble keeping your minions alive you're probably better suited by sticking with decrep.

You're not really going to be able to level up from anything in Normal except Baal and, to a much lesser extent, his minions at this point. You're over 10 levels higher than anything else in Normal (Baal's level 60, minions are 42, I think, maybe more like 45, can't remember). You're not going to level up much in NM for awhile, either (monster's won't be very close to you in level again until about Act 3 jungles.)

 

[Are]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Decrepify is the main skill to use against Act Bosses, so try levelling up enough to get 1 point in it. Cast Decrepify in Baal's direction as soon as you enter the final chamber.

By the way, good job on getting past Diablo without it!

 

[Thomh]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Congratulations on beating Diablo without Decreipify!!!

I addition to all the advice given here you should shop Larzuk(act3) for a staff with teleport charges and Mara(act 5) for a wand with decreipify(it will take a while for you to level up more). You have to get out of town to refresh the inventory in a shop, easiest way to do this is to use the waypoint in town to get to a waypoint out in the battlefield and then back (sorry if that was too basic) Then you raise your skeletons with the wand you shopped in act1, equip the wand with decreipify(don`t worry if you lose a skeleton because you unequip the +RS wand, the remaining ones will have the level at which they were summoned) and have the teleport staff on switch. Approach Baal very slowly and the second you spot him cast decreipify on him, then you switch to the teleport staff and teleport on top of him. Be sure to have your clay golem summoned. Run away a little bit(not far enough for your summons to follow you) and cast decreipify before it wears off (also recast your clay golem every time it dies).

If your merc is lacking in damage you can also use a little trick with the horadric cube. Place a kris, belt(both of these can be bought from Fara in act2), any staff(can also be bought in act2, from Drognan) and any diamond in the cube. That way you will get a pretty good weapon for the act2 merc. Repeat this until you get a Lochaber Axe, Partizan or until you run out of diamonds.

In addition, here is the guide from Nightfish everyone is talking about Well worth a look.

 

[pulli]

Re: Hi, new to D2

Well I just used iron-maiden + blood golem on all act bosses (+ some pray pots/quick teles) worked quite well.. Also the equipment for my merc (melee "balanced" merc from A2) is pretty awesome (He can for example 1-hit andariel)..

DIablo went like this:
run to diablo, cast iron maiden -> boom all summons dead -> cast teleport -> cast new golem (5 times) -> tele, restock, teleback -> cast tele -> golems again -> tele back etc (repeated over 40 times). - I just let the merc/golem be cannon fodder and used ironmaiden's (and hoped diablo used melee) special

Well guess I need to get those 2 very slow lvs fast .. (Playing a whole day resulted in about 0.75 lv - but I only went to duriel/mephisto for the day)

 

[potter]

Re: Hi, new to D2

for levels at your current place, i advice on killing either Eldritch (the first unique above frigid highlands waypoint) or Pindleskin (unique dude outside nihlathaks temple).