1.00 News, Info and Gossip

[BKC]

So i levelled (rushed) my chars further 1 barb (32 now) 1 sorc (34 now) and a necro and an amazon mule im in act3 nightmare now whirlwinding through a1 and 2 nightmare was easy found a spectral shard for the sorc (gamble) and i love it! now i need to find some more diamonds to complement that shield

Going for a4 later this weekend!

 

[SilvioDante]

Just getting back into D2 while I am taking a break from D3 and thought I'd give 1.00 a crack. I have a quick question regarding the best place to level. My Barb is level 21 and up to RoF - is maggot farming going to be the quickest way to get to 30? Or should I be running somewhere else (Canyon of the Magi?) until a certain level and then move to RoF? And does anyone have any anecdotal evidence re: how long it'll take to hit 30 doing RoF runs - leveling has been painful already and it's only gonna get worse....

 

[GalaXyHaXz]

Welcome back!

I posted this a few days ago, this is what my barb did:
https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/1-00-news-info-and-gossip.937736/page-11#post-8801274

I'd recommend doing Outer Steppes until 24. Then get Frenzy to help speed it up. Continue doing any place in act 4 until you hit 30. Then you can get WW and do maggots. Maggots are pretty slow before that, so other monsters can give more XP. Here's a level table for you: https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/anything-goes-d2-lounge.839624/page-283#post-8800302

Act 2 maggots are great until 23-25. Leveling isn't bad until you hit about 87-90. Then your only good source is Diablo. This is an oversight on Blizzard's part, where in the beta the max Clvl was 50 so that was balanced. But they raised it to 99 without adjusting monsters to compensate.

 

[SilvioDante]

This is perfect. Good advice on the War Swords - I am currently Leap Attacking everything because it always hits and my AR is terribad. I'll keep that up till 24 and then go the Frenzy route. Will go on /p1 and then try upping the players 1 at a time and see if I can find a sweet spot.

The level table explains why I was getting next to nothing from the bigger, badder monsters in RoF but good exp from the maggots at clvl 21 - thanks.

 

[pharphis]

Sweet, my barb reached 30 and learned WW, after killing council for ~4 levels. WW is so much faster at killing them I might even go to 31 but I will probably finish the act (with my mules) which I've been delaying. I still need to learn nat res and battle command!

edit: will WW insta-kill me against LE monsters?
Do any knights use IM before chaos sanctuary?

I'm hoping outside of CS I can just whirl through everything without thinking. HC, after all

 

[SilvioDante]

Sweet, my barb reached 30 and learned WW, after killing council for ~4 levels. WW is so much faster at killing them I might even go to 31 but I will probably finish the act (with my mules) which I've been delaying. I still need to learn nat res and battle command!

Nice one! What was your strategy for the council, i.e. skills/weapons etc? I tried them and the exp was decent but I was dying a lot...

I can't speak for 1.00 but in recent versions the Abyss Knights can't use IM and Oblivion Knights's are only in Chaos Sanctuary.

 

[teddeeboy]

@pharphis
1. Very unlikely in normal. Of course MSLE,cold Es, low lightning and no leech later on could but i am sure you will cover this before NM.
2. The RoF Abyss Knight do not cast IM as mentioned by @SilvioDante . However, when you approach the RoF exit and CS entry be careful I have had OKs on the front steps of the CS which wander into the RoF . On Friday night my L82 Barb was insta-killed mid whirl in the RoF from an offscreen OK. groan from the game and groan from me a microsecond later in the RoF. I am SC so no permanent damage done but still annoyed to lose XP, gold and time. Of course you running HC chars is a totally different lvl of risk

@BKC, a Lot more fun lvling in NM. So easy compared to the grind of normal. With the Shard hopefully you have some +dex gear so you did not need to many hard dex pts to equip it. The stats are useful but several others in the 1.00 community use a rare wand / specter with a combo of FCR, mana and resists. Also you can shop Ormus NM in a MP game for a magic wand, specter with no dex requirement with some patience. I got a Lightning res (+24) Sceptre of the Magus and a Dragon's (+34 Mana) wand of the Magus and a Wyrms (44) of the Apprentice and they do not require a single pt in dex. I think they are as good as shard. Cold and fire gear one are useful too for some equip setups.

@SilvioDante, welcome to the 1.00 thread. The question of the approach is a choice between faster lvling in the L24-29 range with a few skills pts spent in a skill you may not use and the Barb build does not miss or slower lvling but the perfect skill pt allocation setup from L30 and beyond with the barb. This is a personal decision and I chose the later setup as I would want to restart my main barb without that perfect allocation. I image most want to speed up the lvling part which is more annyoing to most and @GalaXyHaXz approach should help you there

For me, the 1.00 time was spent doing /p4 RoF and CS 3 seal runs with one XP mule and rusher partied full clears. one host mule , the Xp mule and the two rushers, the Necro and the XP mule for the before the RoF WP and CS and the Barb for between the RoF WP and the CS. I have to xp mules now at 84, two and 82 and the rushers are 82.5 and 80. Collect all sup body armour and magic exp body and + staff mod items for selling and the odd rare, unique and gems. More to continue later. Note the barb is faster around but the Necro is safer for killing Hephasto with IM with the golem plus revives. Just watch out for a teleporting Hephasto. I found he is "unkillable" in a MP game and extremely dangerous for all characters

 

[SilvioDante]

The question of the approach is a choice between faster lvling in the L24-29 range with a few skills pts spent in a skill you may not use and the Barb build does not miss or slower lvling but the perfect skill pt allocation setup from L30 and beyond with the barb. This is a personal decision and I chose the later setup as I would want to restart my main barb without that perfect allocation.

Ordinarily I'd be in the same boat as you, but since this guy already has one in Double Swing and 5 (!!) in Polearm mastery (because I am stupid and thought Pike's were Polearm class...), I think I'll just make him a little more imperfect. Only 4 hours of work, a bedroom to paint tonight and dinner to cook before I can fire up D2. Hurrah....

 

[pharphis]

Nice one! What was your strategy for the council, i.e. skills/weapons etc? I tried them and the exp was decent but I was dying a lot...

I can't speak for 1.00 but in recent versions the Abyss Knights can't use IM and Oblivion Knights's are only in Chaos Sanctuary.

I just used a pike with 100 max dmg and some leech. I wish it had ias!
I made sure to have a map with a well so I could refresh after BO use and I usually used BO twice. I used bash or leap attack :/

 

[pharphis]

Ok I have a problem. My other chars crash when my barb is in the game. I just lost a bunch of gems during a transfer and I was going to try to kill meph but I keep getting an unhandled exception.
any ideas?

I hope all of this effort wasn't for nothing

 

[teddeeboy]

Ok I have a problem. My other chars crash when my barb is in the game. I just lost a bunch of gems during a transfer and I was going to try to kill meph but I keep getting an unhandled exception.
any ideas?

I hope all of this effort wasn't for nothing

@pharphis
Which char(s) is/are hosting the MP? Personally I have not seen that before. Have all toons done the council quest and khalims flail quest in a previous game.

 

[pharphis]

only my barb has completed it, but the game has crashed when the barb or other chars have hosted.

edit: and I think it was the other chars that crashed, since my barb survived the first one

 

[teddeeboy]

@SilvioDante it does not matter a lot because getting a new char will be easier once you have the gear and few toons that have reached A4

 

[teddeeboy]

When exactly when do you get the unhandled exception error and it is around a consistent location in the game? Durance 3 when attacking Meph and when Meph died? entering the portal?

 

[pharphis]

I only played in A1 near the stash. First one didn't happen for about 3 mins (dropped, picked up gems and cubed them) before it crashed and the other one crashed within a min (right after I tried to party I think)

 

[GalaXyHaXz]

I have had the same issue regarding crashing before. What seems to happen is when a guest character hover's over another character they get an unhandled exception. Best thing to do is drop items on ground, then walk far enough away no one can hover over the character. Not sure if you get entirely the same issue. But I've not had problems since.

 

[pharphis]

That might be it. I probably won't try again until tomorrow but ugh. Is it only one character that needs to be avoided (my barb) then? Is it related to the council quest?

 

[GalaXyHaXz]

I haven't traced the code but if I had to guess, the bug has to do with the host character's name string/life bar. The host character may click on a guest. The guest character may click to accept trade but CANNOT hover over the character to trigger the Name/Life bar. Even if the window isn't active, moving under the guest's cursor will trigger the exception. As far as I know it has nothing to do with any quest. It's probably a bug in the syncing functions for Client->Server. I haven't had this issue in 1.01+ so they definitely put this one on the big list.

 

[teddeeboy]

@pharphis and @GalaXyHaXz. Ok good to know.

Now, I never use the host for anything other than starting and ending the game and always use a guest for running the main active character for game lag reasons on my PC.

 

[GalaXyHaXz]

The bug has only happened to me with Guest -> Host. The Host may click on anybody. This issue is entirely random, however it seems to be triggered upon joining the game. If you join the game and can hover without crashing, than that game isn't "bugged". If it crashes though, than any guest will crash it. This may be caused by terrible memory management where occasionally, the game relocates to a weird address and loading another instance, which wasn't intended, conflicts with it. IDK for sure.