Low level guides to leveling and playing

[felixbavaria1]

Arctic armor + belt is quite useless, as it's MF is almost beaten by a 3 flawed topaz breast plate, leaving other options for the belt (life, FHR, gold find, ...)

Arctic belt + gloves + topazed armor is a nice combo if you can live with the 2 rows of potions. Usually not an issue in SC ...

Gambling for MF boots in Act II is a waste, go for circlets (up to 35 MF possible, as well as Static damage, +skills, etc.) and buy boots + gloves of fortune from the vendors in Lut Gholein.

Repeat the cube recipe until you get a Poleaxe, Halberd, Lochaber Axe, Bill, or Partizan (the latter can only be equipped in Act V Normal or so). You are probably talking about a Scythe (a Thresher in Act II Normal would be hax). Scythes suck indeed since they do almost no damage.

Don't put points in energy, use Tir runes, other +mana per kill gear and Sapphires in armor if needed. If you did, respec once you reach Nightmare Assassins do need dexterity and strength to equip the higher level claws.

 

[Smancer]

I am pretty sure it was a Lochaber Axe that I rolled. I'll double check when I get to play again.

I'll look for Circlets once I get some more gold. As for the Artic combos, well, I need to find them first.

There were some really nice wands that I wanted in act 1, +2 to SM and +1 to Raise skeleton along with something else that I can't remember, but I didn't have the gold for it. I think it was like 40k and I had about 1.2k lol.

 

[felixbavaria1]

Yeah, just wanted to highlight that the belt will be not very useful if you only have the armor (apart from the hefty cold resist, but you can drink thawing potions anyway).

 

[pharphis]

Oh! You said tht your old merc weapon did about the same damage with the emerald. The LCS (lying character screen) can be misleading, and this is one part where it's very easy for someone new to the game to be a little tricked by it (even if it's being honest).

Remember, poison damage is over a duration, so what it shows in your merc's stats is misleading and more often than not you will want to have your merc do lots of physical damage. A tiny bit of poison on yourself (if you attack) or on your merc is all you need in hell to stop monster regeneration, so by that point it's usually a good idea to find some.

 

[mr teach]

Nice to read that you enjoy it.
I am playing a Fishymancer myself (also my first character) and i promise you if you follow the guide it becomes way more fun once you are starting to explode all those corpses lying in you way - right nor i trave with an army of 10 skellies and 11 revives.
Are you using GoMule - or Atma - with that you are able to keep items that wouldn't fit in you stash anymore - so you can keep the artic armor if you are just into the item collecting stuff.
Once you are on a higher level you might want to look into the trading section if you are not strict about going selffound - i myself might be able to give you one or two crafted amulets that i dont need - they wont be the best of the best but they are better than most of the stuff you will find yourself

 

[pharphis]

^This.

Also, if you don't want to start muling things because you're not sure if you'll ever want to start aiming for a grail/trading/twinking, i would just suggest doing it anyway, just in case you change your mind

 

[mr teach]

And because it is fun to see all those Isenhart items collect dust in you stash ( i just can't get myself to sell them)

 

[Smancer]

What does grail mean?

 

[Moar]

What does grail mean?

Grail means that you get one of every Unique and Set item in the game. Nearly impossible since it is veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery hard to find Tyraels Might. Most of us here attempt that goal though. We are crazy.

 

[Smancer]

I had the chance to play a little more. I reached level 24 with my Assassin. I was very excited to get lightning sentry. But with just one point in it I can't kill anything and it drains all my mana doing so. I am in act 3 normal. I can kill basically everything with my kicks and with my merc. I really just have huge mana problems.

I am currently relying very heavily on mana pots just using my kick. I have two tir runes. If I can find an amn, I can make a 'Strength' runeword from some hatchet hands that I can buy from a vendor. I think the plus to mana after each kill will help. Since someone mentioned it is better than leaching. I was wondering if I should do hatchet hands or look for a different weapon? Since I only do normal attacks with the claws if I run out of mana.

I've found some more diamonds, and I have rerolled my merc's weapon 3 times now. And I have one that he can't use yet, but has awesome dmg on it. I think it was around 25 - 90.

I am going to reroll all the rings and ammy's I have collected so far. And hope something good pops up. I have a pair of rare heavy boots. But I want something that does more than 6 to 12 kick dmg. Any ideas? Is there a cube recipe or something for better boots?

I didn't play my necro, because I was just too excited to get lightning trap. Since that was really lackluster I might go back and get him through act 1.

 

[felixbavaria1]

Relying on kick damage is quite hard if you go untwinked. May I suggest that you put some points into Tiger Strike to give huge amounts of +%ED at only 1 mana cost per charge.

You can upgrade your heavy boots to exceptional (Sharkskin Boots iirc) using a cube recipe but it requires two runes and a perfect gem which you likely won't have before Act IV or V.

Instead of re-rolling rings and amulets I would cube them (3 blue amulets --> 1 blue ring and vice versa). Level 24 is perfect for that since you can get high resists at that level.

 

[Smancer]

Relying on kick damage is quite hard if you go untwinked. May I suggest that you put some points into Tiger Strike to give huge amounts of +%ED at only 1 mana cost per charge.

Maybe I will do this and respec. I think there is a strike that leaches mana and health as well. If I am going to put some in tiger strike should i put in the leach strike as well? From what I have read I think you can have more than one strike active at a time.

You can upgrade your heavy boots to exceptional (Sharkskin Boots iirc) using a cube recipe but it requires two runes and a perfect gem which you likely won't have before Act IV or V.

Oh well, I'll just wait for better boots.

Instead of re-rolling rings and amulets I would cube them (3 blue amulets --> 1 blue ring and vice versa). Level 24 is perfect for that since you can get high resists at that level.

Oops that is what I meant by re-rolling them.

 

[felixbavaria1]

The mana/life leeching skill is Cobra Strike. Yes, you can have charges from more than one skill. IMHO Cobra strike can be very useful to solve mana problems in Normal but in the long run it's better to kill enemies as fast as possible rather than attempting to leech. In any case, 1 point is enough.

 

[Cartesius]

Thanks a lot Smancer for creating the topic and all the people who gave some contribution, I am new here as well and I needed a topic like this. I created a fishymancer, stopped at hell act 2 (around lvl 76), then a meteorb sorc, because of some items i found with the fishy, the sorc is now at hell act2 (around lvl 72) as well. I did a respec to a only fire sorc, she has 20 fireball, firebolt and meteor, maxing fire mastery, did this for Hell Andy runs, is it a good strat? I'd like to have some good items, and I think i read somewhere that shako wont drop from night meph, so thats one of the reasons I'm doing this.
Any better idea of how I should continue this is appreciated, sorry for bad english

 

[pharphis]

Hell Andy is a decent target. If you can, Hell meph is even better

Also, Pure Blizzard in ancient tunnels is also really great, and you can get anything there.

 

[felixbavaria1]

Hell Andariel is decent if you have a good map where you can bypass Catacombs 2 and 3 in a few teleports. Hell Mephisto can drop more items and is very easy to kill with a pure Blizzard Sorceress (he has 75 resistance to all elements, which is broken by the Sorc's Cold Mastery).

 

[RobbyD]

Hell Andy is AWESOME for what she can drop (if you have a good map) cuz you probably already drop-bugged her and she drops exceptionals and low elites very well.

 

[Cartesius]

I took the fishy from beginning act2 to PAT today, it was really nice, when I was doing night meph runs with the sorc I found some good items:
Skin of the Viper with +35 all resist +1 all skills
Arm of King Leoric (best thing that ever happened) +2 to summoning skills +3 to RS +3 to SM

and a little before my last post i identified an amulet, and it was a golem lord amulet +3 to summoning skills
so I was ready to continue with the fishymancer

some other items that i was wearing
Peasant Crown +1 to all skills
Sigons Guard +1 to all skills

on switch I had a battle staff of teleport, I didn't know we could repair the charges from it, when I discovered that was also happy to do Maggots Lair and Arcane. So the game was flowing, then on the Council they dropped a Nai's Puzzler so I started using it on switch it has some nice stuff: +1 all skills +30% FCR +35 energy +70 mana and the best: lvl 11 teleport (x/69 charges), so it was expensive, but felt like a sorc, going really fast whenever I wanted.

lots of deaths from teleporting into boss packs, or any packs haha and from gloams and alike crazy monsters snipping from outside the screen, but i finally did it, so... back to the sorc:

I don't know if I dropbugged Andy, how do you do it? I had some bad times running hell andy, just to get to catacombs4 there was some risk areas and sometimes a pack would lock me dead, and when i got there, since she is now pure fire, i had a bad time with the zombies and the rakanishu-like guys, is it supposed to be that way?? I don't like it, do you think I should respec her to something else? I want to have some nice set Items, shako, maras, sojs, enigma... even if it isn't so fun, I want the fastest way to get to those stuff...

thanks for reading this long post haha

 

[redragon]

The Andy bug = quest drop every time you kill her.

To bug her, kill her for the quest (first time with that character, if you've already killed her and not bugged her you will have to bug her with a new character.) wait for her Town Portal to open, go through her portal back to rogues camp, talk to no one except Warriv and go East. Save and exit.

Andy should now be permentaly bugged for that character for that difficulty. This is the way I do it and it works for me.

The bug removes all the junk drops she gives when unbugged, arrows and bolts, scrolls, etc.

To check if you've bugged her, after save and exit after the first kill with the character, load up again and kill her, blue drops should have double durability, and she shouldn't drop junk. (You can check durability of items at arreat summit)

As stated the above way is how I do it.

More info here.

 

[pharphis]

I always thought all you need to do is talk to him afterwards, and it has nothing to do with any other npcs. Most people activate it because they normally talk to him and go east before leaving the game, if they decide to do so after their quest kill.