Diablo 4 Builds
Build Planner
Map
Diablo 2 Guides
Forums
Support PureDiablo
Vessel of Hatred

An Introduction and a Journey

S

Seaborgium

New member
Mar 17, 2016
4
0
0
Hello, I'm new here and looking to share the story of a personal challenge I've created for myself. I'm going to be exclusively playing in the Blood Moor on Normal difficulty and seeing what I can accomplish. That includes the Den of Evil; I won't be going in there. Leveling will certainly take a long time, as well as building up a wealth of the items available. The Players8 command will help, but this will still take dedication.

My plan is using a Paladin based heavily around Holy Fire as that will be the most efficient build for clearing the area. I also will be able to collect some nice gear through gambling as I level up, and perhaps even get a couple set or unique items. Charms aren't very useful, but fortunately both the prefix "Rugged" and suffix "Greed" offer useful bonuses, so collecting perfect Small Charms is a nice goal too, especially since the values vary on both of those affixes. I'm bound to find some rare Jewels as well for additional gold, poison damage, stamina, and more.

I'll be periodically giving updates on my progress to share with the community, and I hope you enjoy reading them.
 
Hi Seaborgium, and welcome :).

That sure is a different kind of challenge you are taking on !!! Holy Fire Paladin is a very good choice though. I'm quite sure you'll be able to stock up on those jewels of envy with this challenge.

Good luck, and especially dedication, as that is what you'll need most :). Looking forward to hearing about your adventures. Do you have a name for the character already? RunninInCircles maybe?
 
Sup Seaborgium, welcome to the forums. I'm gonna take ur moneys and ur wallet dawg ..... lol
wat exactly are u hoping to achieve btw? Jamming around in the Blood Moor on Normal diff aint exactly that difficult.
 
Hello and welcome!

Have fun with your journey in Blood Moor. I imagine you are trying to see how high a level you can get and what items you can gamble or find by just staying in the the very first area. It sounds like a great challange! Let us know what level you reach and how your progress goes. It's nice to see more new members like myself. :D
 
Hello and welcome! Happy hunting perhaps to speed up the process you could do the -act 5 hack and portal back to act one for an omni-powerful dragon reborn with your one true source already close to maxed out.
 
DaveW said:
Sup Seaborgium, welcome to the forums. I'm gonna take ur moneys and ur wallet dawg ..... lol
wat exactly are u hoping to achieve btw? Jamming around in the Blood Moor on Normal diff aint exactly that difficult.
Click to expand...
He doesn't have any moneys because he is in the Blood Moar and did you not see he is there to see what he can achieve!

*steals level from Akara for clearing Den of Evil*
 
I've been busy this the last week and haven't started yet, but I'm now ready to begin. I spent some time doing thorough research and studying to make sure that my build design is optimal.

The best build is certainly a Holy Fire Paladin, as the pulse attacks and the damage boosts are very efficient at killing. 54 is the target amount of damage as a Zombie with the Players8 boost has that as his maximum possible health, and it's critical that I can kill with 100% consistency. Ideally, Holy Fire itself will get to a strong enough point where I no longer need to attack, and I can simply run around and everything will die. With 4 points going to Resist Fire, Holy Fire will need to be at least level 26, which is certainly feasible. I may consider putting in additional points into Resist Fire once Holy Fire is maxed out in order to give some leeway. With 5 points, Holy Fire must be 25, with 6, 24, and with 7, 23, which is very easily achievable using a +3 Scepter. On the other hand, getting Holy Fire as high of a level as possible is also important to improve its radius.

Following Holy Fire, Vigor and eventually Charge will become important due to movement speed. Vigor is nice and simple to use, but Charge will require an investment into Mana through equipment and Energy. Charge should only be slightly better than Vigor, but nothing else is helpful so there's no reason not to use it.

I also spent some time re-creating my character until I got a map that is optimal. The opening to the Blood Moor is in the top-right, which gives fast access and is near Akara. The Blood Moor itself is also incredibly compact, there's a Shrine right by town that can be an Experience Shrine, there are four Shrines total, and there's a simple route that covers the entire area. This will help a lot in the long-term.

As for equipment, anything health-related will become negligible very fast, and the only things I'm looking for are FRW, Mana, MF, +Skills, and a few other minor bonuses. It's also possible to get Gem Shrines (though rare), so I can potentially get Perfect Topazes and Perfect Sapphires. I believe it's also possible for Monster Shrines to appear by the Shrine re-rolling its type enough times until it gives up, similar to the Holy Shield Scepter bug. A level 4 monster would give some extra Experience, but in terms of item drops, only a few useless bonuses become available in Jewels and Grand Charms. Certainly, they would make for good show-off items.

Via gambling, I can obtain most items in the game, and my plan in particular is to get a Plated Belt of some kind for full belt slots, and by some stroke of luck, Kinemil's Awl for the +6 Holy Fire it offers. With this, I'll want 60 Strength and 34 natural Dexterity, with the rest going into Energy. I don't believe there is anything I would realistically want that requires more.

Charms won't be particularly useful, with the best one available being a Lizard's Large Charm of Strength (+4 Mana, +3 Strength), especially as I'll want space for items to sell for Gold, but I'll definitely hold onto any helpful ones I find until they become obsolete.

My major goal with this project is to achieve the highest level I can, with minor goals on gambling Unique and Set items. Once hitting Level 11, the highest Experience available is from Zombies at 7 per (or 11 with an Experience Shrine). It will take a lot of dedication to get up to a respectable level, but I'll see what I'm capable of pursuing. By no means do I expect to accomplish this quickly, and I'm also not going to put in countless hours of my free time into this every day, so it will be slow progress. Hopefully, it will make for an entertaining thread and story.
 
Good luck :). I'm a bit pessimist about this character being able to reach the levels you want to reach, but I sincerely hope you'll prove me wrong !!!
 
I've started and made some progress with leveling and items. My Paladin is now at Level 11, which is when the Experience gained becomes minimized, but it's not too bad yet. The next level is also a major breakpoint as I can then use Charge (via Scepter) and regular Gems.

With my map, each run flows very well and doesn't take long at all. Here's an image of how close one of the Shrines are to the Rogue Encampment. Here's another demonstrating how I can do full runs (luck-based of course) with an Experience Shrine the entire time. It's common to see at least one. I've also had quite a few Gem Shrines, which has allowed me to upgrade all the way up to a Perfect Topaz. Magic Find is important as it's tied to how much Gold I earn, in turn allowing me to gamble for more in the future.

My equipment mostly consists of items raising Stamina, sockets filled with Chipped Topazes, and my +3 Holy Fire Scepter. My next big purchase will be a similar Scepter that also has Charge, ideally also with the Readiness suffix for 10% IAS. Damage itself is well over 54 minimum, and the pulses from Holy Fire are frequently killing Fallens and Spike Fiends, which is very nice. My Mercenary who has MF gear and a 3x Chipped Emerald bow is also able to quickly kill everything. Eventually, I'll equip her with 3x Jewels of Envy.

I've also found 2 good Large Charms so far: #1 and #2.

One of the joys of this challenge so far is that every improvement is very noticeable. As the numbers involved with damage, pulse radius, Stamina, etc are all very small, each increase is large proportionally, compared to a high-level character. Each Level so far has made Holy Fire significantly more useful and continues to do so. The frequency at which I kill enemies in one hit, the number required for those I don't, how far I need to be, etc all are appreciated with each point put in.

I'm having fun so far and hope it continues.
 
Seaborgium said:
... I'm having fun so far and hope it continues.
Click to expand...

The only thing that really matters :).

Good to hear it's going so well. This definitely gives me faith in the upcoming TC3 hunting tournament.

Good luck on the rest of your journey.

O yes, btw ... it's probably in one of your posts, but I seem to be overlooking it now ... what's the name of your character?
 
Great work so far! Do you have a goal you are trying to reach? If you get to level 30 in just blood moor will you be happy with that or try to go further? I would be interested to know how many runs it will take you to get from level 29 to 30.
 
T72on1 said:
O yes, btw ... it's probably in one of your posts, but I seem to be overlooking it now ... what's the name of your character?
Click to expand...

Seaborgium.

Silver Moon said:
Great work so far! Do you have a goal you are trying to reach? If you get to level 30 in just blood moor will you be happy with that or try to go further? I would be interested to know how many runs it will take you to get from level 29 to 30.
Click to expand...

Most levels act as breakpoints on their own by opening up more options. I have no pre-determined goal as each additional level is simply more runs. 18 at the very minimum should be reasonable.

A very rough estimate on 29 to 30 is approximately ~1600 full clears of Blood Moor.
 
Man this takes me all the way back to the D2 Demo

I remember trying to eek out lvl 12 to unlock the new tier of skills
Actually I don't even remember if that's true. Could you even replay characters in the Demo?

Good luck on your journey, can't imagine going so high in just the Moor
 
i'm pretty sure in the demo you could save and restart. you had the blood moor, the next place and it ended with blood raven. SUch a small part of the game.


Some game demoes were so small you had no real idea what the game was you could play. I had some games I played the full game later and if I only judged by the demo i would have missed it!

I got the deaths belt in the demo and loved it!
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account or log in with BattleNet
 Discord
 Twitch
 GoogleGoogle
PurePremium
Remove ads & support the site - Get PurePremium
Top Bottom
Back
Estimated market value
Low
High