- Mar 13, 2019
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A while back I completed three untwinked barons in 1.00, but only bothered to post two of them, the paladin and the barbarian. Now I'm rectifying this over half a year later. For my third baron I chose a necromancer and he is easily the safest out of the three. The basic build idea is to go for the Blood Golem/Iron Maiden bug together with Corpse Explosion and Bone Spirit.
The BG/IM bug goes somewhat like this: If your Blood Golem is hit by a monster under the influence of Iron Maiden any damage that is reflected is treated as if the Golem had done it, in particular you leech everytime the Golem is hit, meaning that you become nigh invincible as long as your Golem gets hit with physical damage. This way you can for example take on the hardest monster in 1.00: Hephasto the Armorer. He hits like a truck but that will be his own demise as he is not smart enough to target you over your Golem. So instead of two-shotting you he slowly kills himself.
The best thing about this is that IM is actually good in 1.00 as the life to damage ratio of most monsters is much more favorable than in later patches. So they will eventually kill themselves hitting your Golem and once that happens you can use Corpse Explosion to kill the rest.
Sometimes you will have to deal with ranged fighters and that is when Bone Spirit comes into play. It doesn't deal a lot of damage and it is kinda mana intensive but when you can't get a corpse any other way it is your best bet, this applies for example to Oblivion Knights or the blow dart Flayers. In spoilers I included a short table of the damage values I observed while investing in Bone Spirit.
So you get 16 extra average damage per level as well as an increase of mana cost by 0,5. Still a good deal all things considered.
Normal
This character is absolutely horrible before he gets his best skills and there is not much you can do about it. The skeletons are so weak that they die to the monsters in the den while a single point into teeth does basically nothing. So the only option I had at the beginning was whacking stuff with a sword and hoping to gain some levels that way. I roamed the Cold Plains and the Stony Field until I was level 6 and then invested a point into clay golem. It goes without saying that he is terrible, since he does not have the slow effect yet in this patch.
By the time I reached the Outer Cloister I was only level 10 and bashed stuff with a club. I decided to get some more firepower and thus began the long journey of shrining perfect emeralds in the Black Marsh to make a poison bow.
This took forever and I was extremely lucky to even have three chipped emeralds in the first place. Luckily in 1.00 the poison stacking bug is alive and kicking and so the game adds the lengths together as well as the rates, which results in 52 poison damage over 9 seconds. This bow easily outclassed every weapon I had so far. Sadly this bow meant that I had to invent 3 points into dexterity but I consider it a good investment. With this bow I could full clear Tamoe Highlands and the Barracks and nearly reach level 13 on Andariel, which was a rather long fight, considering that she kills the Golem so quickly.
In act 2 I was able to clear my way more easily and immediately went and snatched the cube. I reached level 15 by the time I hit Dark Elder and then went to level on a boss/champion pack next to the Far Oasis waypoint. At this point it was already possible to use corpse explosion on large crowds as they would just melt. It's around this time that I started gambling Bone Shields (no Wall of the Eyeless yet) and some other items (and getting lucky with Arctic Furs).
Once I hit level 18 it began. The Blood Golem makes absolutely inhuman noises when walking around but together with Iron Maiden there is little that could stop him. From this point onward things got a lot easier and the way to Duriel was clear. While Duriel killed the Golem a few times too often I make it through regardless. By the time I reach the Arachnid Lair I gambled three more bone shields but got Greyform instead, the armor I would wear until the end of the game. Running Arachnid Lair was fruitful and I reach level 23 running it. Before I move on I decide to gamble a bit more and what do I get? WALL OF THE EYELESS! (and a bit later Nightsmoke)
At this point I shopped an MPK wand with +2 to corpse explosion and +9 to mana which I would wear until the end of the game. From now on it was a breeze and I reached level 26 in the RoF. I even manage to kill Hephasto who commits suicide on my golem. I ran RoF until level 29,5 so I could use bone spirit on de Seis who is "immune" to my golem. Sadly Diablo doesn't want to play with the golem either so I have to pelt him with bone spirits for minutes.
Nightmare
I have no real recollection of act 1 and most of acts 2 and 3. Before hitting Duriel I invested in golem mastery to reach 400 life on the golem (up from 280) and thus Duriel became astonishingly easy. Via some RoF farming I reached level 35 and then took on CS. De Seis is much easier if you have corpse explosion and he spawns on top of a pile of corpses! This time around Diablo takes away a third of his life on the golem before I decide that it is too tedious to recast and use bone spirit again.
Yes, that was nightmare... as painful as normal was, nightmare was easy by comparison.
Hell
By the time I reached Andariel the golem had about 520 life which was nearly enough to survive her. Other than that there was nothing special going on in act 1, it's act 2 that got interesting...
My first death in Hell was in the maggot lair when I went forward towards an egg of a maggot boss with might. The egg hatched behind me and cut off my way and the maggots finished me. This is followed by two more deaths to Duriel, despite having 600 life on the golem.
I decided to regroup before trying Duriel again and a good start to that was leveling on maggots in the Canyon of the Magi. This goes well with a level 9 corpse explosion which is just enough to be efficient but not so much that I hit the mothers. I finally reached level 50 before facing Duriel.
I invested skill points so that my golem had 800 life and iron maiden returned 600% of incoming damage. My strategy was simple, I shopped a +1 to bone prison wand and did the following:
After that I died once to a surround by flayers during a particularly painful jungle section (blowdarts...). Everything past that was easy again and I reach the RoF waypoint unscathed. I even killed the most dangerous monster in the game with ease:
He can't help himself and just keeps hitting the golem. 
Finally I took on Hell CS and it was not as hard as expected, even though I got teleport Vizier. I simply blew him up faster than he could teleport. I also noticed that casting bone prison on de Seis is a great idea, but at the same time I also saw that my own corpse explosion damaged the prison walls. Diablo was the same as usual, he died to level 18 bone spirits.
Character Stats and Items
I finished the game with these stats:
The 2 dex are what is left from investing 3 points into dexterity to equip my poison bow, I like round numbers.
My final gear:
My final skill distribution was 17 into iron maiden, 7 (+2) into corpse explosion, 18 into bone spirit, 15 into golem mastery, 1 into blood golem and 1 into summon mastery.
***
That makes 3 untwinked Barons in a bit over a months time, and I believe Paladin, Barbarian and Necro are the three safest and easiest classes in 1.00. I have a level 28 Amazon just idling in NM AS, waiting to be put out of her misery. But before I forward her to 1.05b I will probably try lightning fury and see whether that fares any better.
Thanks for reading and to everyone in the 1.00 News, Info and Gossip thread for all the info shared!
The BG/IM bug goes somewhat like this: If your Blood Golem is hit by a monster under the influence of Iron Maiden any damage that is reflected is treated as if the Golem had done it, in particular you leech everytime the Golem is hit, meaning that you become nigh invincible as long as your Golem gets hit with physical damage. This way you can for example take on the hardest monster in 1.00: Hephasto the Armorer. He hits like a truck but that will be his own demise as he is not smart enough to target you over your Golem. So instead of two-shotting you he slowly kills himself.
The best thing about this is that IM is actually good in 1.00 as the life to damage ratio of most monsters is much more favorable than in later patches. So they will eventually kill themselves hitting your Golem and once that happens you can use Corpse Explosion to kill the rest.
Sometimes you will have to deal with ranged fighters and that is when Bone Spirit comes into play. It doesn't deal a lot of damage and it is kinda mana intensive but when you can't get a corpse any other way it is your best bet, this applies for example to Oblivion Knights or the blow dart Flayers. In spoilers I included a short table of the damage values I observed while investing in Bone Spirit.
| lvl | min | max | mana (display) | mana (real, educated guess) |
| 1 | 20 | 30 | 12 | 12 |
| 2 | 36 | 46 | 12 | 12,5 |
| 3 | 52 | 62 | 13 | 13 |
| 4 | 68 | 78 | 13 | 13,5 |
| 5 | 84 | 94 | 14 | 14 |
| 6 | 100 | 110 | 14 | 14,5 |
| 7 | 116 | 126 | 15 | 15 |
| 8 | 132 | 142 | 15 | 15,5 |
| 9 | 148 | 158 | 16 | 16 |
| 10 | 164 | 174 | 16 | 16,5 |
| 11 | 180 | 190 | 17 | 17 |
Normal
This character is absolutely horrible before he gets his best skills and there is not much you can do about it. The skeletons are so weak that they die to the monsters in the den while a single point into teeth does basically nothing. So the only option I had at the beginning was whacking stuff with a sword and hoping to gain some levels that way. I roamed the Cold Plains and the Stony Field until I was level 6 and then invested a point into clay golem. It goes without saying that he is terrible, since he does not have the slow effect yet in this patch.
By the time I reached the Outer Cloister I was only level 10 and bashed stuff with a club. I decided to get some more firepower and thus began the long journey of shrining perfect emeralds in the Black Marsh to make a poison bow.
In act 2 I was able to clear my way more easily and immediately went and snatched the cube. I reached level 15 by the time I hit Dark Elder and then went to level on a boss/champion pack next to the Far Oasis waypoint. At this point it was already possible to use corpse explosion on large crowds as they would just melt. It's around this time that I started gambling Bone Shields (no Wall of the Eyeless yet) and some other items (and getting lucky with Arctic Furs).
Once I hit level 18 it began. The Blood Golem makes absolutely inhuman noises when walking around but together with Iron Maiden there is little that could stop him. From this point onward things got a lot easier and the way to Duriel was clear. While Duriel killed the Golem a few times too often I make it through regardless. By the time I reach the Arachnid Lair I gambled three more bone shields but got Greyform instead, the armor I would wear until the end of the game. Running Arachnid Lair was fruitful and I reach level 23 running it. Before I move on I decide to gamble a bit more and what do I get? WALL OF THE EYELESS! (and a bit later Nightsmoke)
At this point I shopped an MPK wand with +2 to corpse explosion and +9 to mana which I would wear until the end of the game. From now on it was a breeze and I reached level 26 in the RoF. I even manage to kill Hephasto who commits suicide on my golem. I ran RoF until level 29,5 so I could use bone spirit on de Seis who is "immune" to my golem. Sadly Diablo doesn't want to play with the golem either so I have to pelt him with bone spirits for minutes.
Nightmare
I have no real recollection of act 1 and most of acts 2 and 3. Before hitting Duriel I invested in golem mastery to reach 400 life on the golem (up from 280) and thus Duriel became astonishingly easy. Via some RoF farming I reached level 35 and then took on CS. De Seis is much easier if you have corpse explosion and he spawns on top of a pile of corpses! This time around Diablo takes away a third of his life on the golem before I decide that it is too tedious to recast and use bone spirit again.
Yes, that was nightmare... as painful as normal was, nightmare was easy by comparison.
Hell
By the time I reached Andariel the golem had about 520 life which was nearly enough to survive her. Other than that there was nothing special going on in act 1, it's act 2 that got interesting...
My first death in Hell was in the maggot lair when I went forward towards an egg of a maggot boss with might. The egg hatched behind me and cut off my way and the maggots finished me. This is followed by two more deaths to Duriel, despite having 600 life on the golem.
I decided to regroup before trying Duriel again and a good start to that was leveling on maggots in the Canyon of the Magi. This goes well with a level 9 corpse explosion which is just enough to be efficient but not so much that I hit the mothers. I finally reached level 50 before facing Duriel.
- Cast clay golem (because if Duriel charges the blood golem before you have iron maiden on him, you die)
- Enter Duriel's chamber and let the clay golem run towards him
- Spam bone prison on Duriel, followed by a cast of iron maiden and then blood golem.
- Repeat step 3 until Duriel is dead.
Finally I took on Hell CS and it was not as hard as expected, even though I got teleport Vizier. I simply blew him up faster than he could teleport. I also noticed that casting bone prison on de Seis is a great idea, but at the same time I also saw that my own corpse explosion damaged the prison walls. Diablo was the same as usual, he died to level 18 bone spirits.
Character Stats and Items
I finished the game with these stats:
My final gear:
Code:
1 MPK, 9 mana, +2 to Corpse Explosion wand
Iratha's Coil (Crown)
Greyform
Wall of the Eyeless
HFD, 18% CR, 113% EG gloves
52 mana ring
Nightsmoke
33 LR ring
boots, see char picture aboveMy final skill distribution was 17 into iron maiden, 7 (+2) into corpse explosion, 18 into bone spirit, 15 into golem mastery, 1 into blood golem and 1 into summon mastery.
***
That makes 3 untwinked Barons in a bit over a months time, and I believe Paladin, Barbarian and Necro are the three safest and easiest classes in 1.00. I have a level 28 Amazon just idling in NM AS, waiting to be put out of her misery. But before I forward her to 1.05b I will probably try lightning fury and see whether that fares any better.
Thanks for reading and to everyone in the 1.00 News, Info and Gossip thread for all the info shared!
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