1.00 News, Info and Gossip

[Barl1]

Assuming you still have the bugged Nec save file, could you perhaps be bothered uploading it someplace?

Yes, the file is still as it was at the instant I realized what had happened. I've internally referred to it as "finding a new way to die". The only things I really did quest-wise in the MP game where this occurred:

-A semi-rush of act 2.
-A full old-style cheat rush of act 3 where I just simply went straight to Mephisto.

As for the Sorceress, have you considered Inferno as a fire skill?

Honestly, I don't recall ever casting this spell. I'll look into it, though.

[Edit: She just turned 18, and learned fire wall. This... is an amazing spell.]

As a friend of Dorothy, I approve of this message.

n_n thanks

 

[Fruit]

@Barl
When you talked to Tyreal with Flamer, was Dorothy still down there in Tal Rasha's Chamber..?
Because that actually seems to be the problem. :/

I'm not too familiar with quest-related stuff, but it seems that talking to Tyreal will update the quest flag(s) for every character in Tal Rasha's Chamber, regardless of what the quest status is of the character that talks to Tyreal, and regardless of party-status. Everyone down there is affected, kind of like how Cow King works in later patches, with the difference being that in this case the game doesn't consider the quest status of the initiator.

You can avoid it in the future by making sure the rusher is not in Tal Rasha's Chamber when a rushee talks to Tyreal. You don't have to leave the party though.

 

[Barl1]

When you talked to Tyreal with Flamer, was Dorothy still down there in Tal Rasha's Chamber..?
Because that actually seems to be the problem. :/

Yeah, that's exactly what happened, now that I recall. Good to know, thanks.

My normal-locked sorc is doing well, managed to hit level 40 this morning.

View attachment 11061

From 39 to 40 took about 5 or 6 full CS clears in eight-player games. My initial goal was level 50, but it seems like that will take a very long time. On a typical more-or-less single-pass playthrough with a new character, in SP, I tend to reach hell act 4 by lvl 40 about, so it's amusing to me that I've reached that in normal only.

 

[cheerupemokid10]

So I’ve been having the itch to get back into some D2 and am thinking I’ll start all the way back in 1.00. I’ve read through the time travel guides but haven’t had a chance to get through the entire post here. I’ve got a few questions before I get started and am sorry if some have been covered throughout here.

What are some goals for things like life and damage in hell? It’s been a while since I’ve played D2 and compared to D3 with their super inflated numbers I don’t fully recall what’s actually decent or what’s crap. Plus it feels like numbers might be quite a bit different than 1.09/1.10+
How important are resists once you get to hell?
Are these kind of things not really of any concern as long as you are making the progress that’s outlined in the guides?
Has anyone tried or is working on patching gomule/ATMA to work?
Any preference over trenshadow vs bliss switchers? Why is the newer bliss a no go and is the one linked in the time travel guide still the newest allowed one?

I suppose that’s it for now. I’ve got all the files downloaded to my laptop but haven’t gone through and got it all working yet. Thanks in advance for any and all replies and look forward to sharing more once I get going.

 

[Barl1]

What are some goals for things like life and damage in hell?.

When I play a caster class (e.g., necro, sorc) by level 40 I typically have around 400 hitpoints. Depending on how much you grind for levels, you may find yourself lagging behind in level (i've baroned characters routinely at level 45). This might be mitigated by re-running areas or multi-boxing the emulate the players setting but, I don't do either of those things so I can't speak to that. Monsters in general have far less HP than in later versions. Classic in general just simply has lower HP values. Urdars are the highest regular-level monster at lvl 82 in hell. (see the archived battle.net strategy guide from 2000: http://web.archive.org/web/20000815065211/http://www.battle.net/diablo2/)

They list Urdars as having from 577-1040 HP. Not sure if that's accurate but it's the official strategy guide, right?

For any character other than a two-handed barb (pike/polearm), you'll want to find a socketed tower shield (all socketed items have a fixed number of sockets so they don't vary) and cube up 3 perfect diamonds. The resistance penalty only being -50 in hell can still be hard to overcome, and the ~57 resist all from a 3-pdiamond shield helps a lot.

In general high resists and high block are what you'll want. As well as simple avoiding getting surrounded by monsters since they can stunlock you and you'll just die. I've been playing 1.00 off and on for like, the past year or so? There is a LOT about it that's different from current D2/1.09/1.10/etc. I forget exactly what's covered in the guides for time travelling, though.

Also, the sorc I posted about above has decided to leave for nightmare! I got bored I guess.

 

[cheerupemokid10]

Thanks for the quick reply. I think I’ve got a hard copy of that strategy guide packed away somewhere. Or maybe it was for 1.07... whichever came with the older battle chest.

As I’m reading through the threads and looking at the gear mentioned and snapshots from people I’m thinking to myself, “is that really that great?” And then feeling really disconnected from how much I used to know about this game. I’m sure it will all be coming back in due time.

 

[Barl1]

Evaluating rare items in classic is difficult if you haven't played the game like that before. Usually desirable rare items have fhr, life, good resists like fire and cold (lightning resist seems more abundant so you'll likely have that maxed a lot of the time or at least that's what i end up having). and in classic boots and belts found in hell can often have 12 str, 11 dex, which if spawns on low requirement boots can help conserve stat points into strength so they can be put into energy or vitality instead.

That's another thing: you can't buy mana potions. That didn't happen until 1.10. So for caster classes you often end up with 400-500 life and over 1000 mana by endgame hell (if you find a pair of frostburns and maybe a soj. both are easy enough to find if you grind the cow king for hours a day for months like i have been!).

I don't like plugging my twitch channel, but i sometimes play 1.00 on stream, if you happen to pop in feel free to chat if there's anything you want to know. I think i linked it in the streaming thread.

 

[cheerupemokid10]

Well I managed to get everything up and running with multiple instances and no cd all configured in. Yay! Didn’t get much further than that though. Ran through the blood moor and took a few guys out then called it quits. I was just reading through the link about skills and damage along with the enemy info. Which raised some further questions about skills and game mechanics back then.

I know I saw a little bit about it, but does lower resist/conviction effect magic res? The necros bone spirit has some of the highest spell damage, albeit single target, and I always wondered about Hammerdins pre1.10. IIRC most monsters had little to no magic res anyways and it’s was the elemental res that some had? I like to play the oddball character builds.

Also, does stun get docked in nm and hell? Or do champs/uniques/bosses get stunned the same or less?

I’m also hoping to stream some once I get the glide wrapper figured out. That’s my last thing to figure out before delving too much deeper.

Lastly, charge had a crazy ed% has anyone played around with that? And I’m done for the night.

 

[Barl1]

Hammerdins are good. They deal physical damage instead of magic, though. Charge is broken and different.

I'll have to do another d2 stream soon

 

[pharphis]

does the physical dmg leech?

 

[Barl1]

nope! + mana per kill is nice though. trying to gamble a unique bone shield and a spectral shard for the past two weeks. sometimes they're hard to get but, if you just keep gambling you'll eventually get what you want:

When you want to find a Unique or Set item of a certain type, Gamble on items of those types. You can find out the Item's type in the Set and Unique items sections. If you spend enough time and gold, eventually you will get them. It may take a long time or a short time depending on how lucky you are

 

[cheerupemokid10]

Might or concentration buff the damage at all? Thinking about hammer/shield bash for a pally build maybe?

Another thing I forgot to ask, does hydra only allow one on screen at a time or can you cast multiple of them at a time?

And for necro haven’t seen much mention of Skellies of any kind so I’m guessing they’re a complete waste of time.

Edit: answered own question about CE: it’s 50/50 physical and fire.

 

[Barl1]

Concentration works with hammers but the LCS doesn't reflect it in 1.00 ("fixed" in later patches). Since you only need to max conc and bh, you'll have extra skill points so i usually get a point in redemption, some in holy shield, and a couple in smite. smite is okay in late normal or nightmare but for crowd control later on it's not very safe. at least that's my experience.

See here: View attachment 12095

192 + 390% is more than enough for hell cs. as mentioned previously monsters don't go much past 1000hp for regular monsters.

Never used hydra, dunno.

Skeletons are useless. CE/blood golem and iron maiden is the combo deck if you like that type of thing. not sure much else is possible necro wise. never really tried.

 

[Fruit]

Regarding Blessed Hammer, for any min-maxers, it's fairly easy to combine Might + Concentration for Blessed Hammer to reach disgusting damage.
The cycle for auras is 3 seconds, meaning every 3 seconds the equipped aura is "activated", and when that happens it is applied for 8 seconds.
So once your current aura is activated and you switch to the other one, you'll have both auras for ~8 seconds, depending on the timing. (This was/is called "flashing".)
And just fyi, Concentration and Might aren't calculated in until a hammer actually hits a target, so you don't even have to make sure that you switch to the other aura before you cast a hammer. Hope that makes sense.

Edit: Turns out this is not correct for 1.00. Perhaps I got the above from 1.06? I can't remember.


Urdar aren't that high-life. Grotesque can reach 1558, and there are a bunch more that can have more life than Urdar, like those corpse eating guys, those tree guys, Storm Casters, Unravelers, and a bunch more.

@cheerupemokid10
There's no cap for how many Hydras you can have up, but Fire Mastery doesn't work on them, so their damage is fairly poor. There's no cooldown on the skill of course, so you can rapidly put down a few. But they cost quite a bit of mana, so your pool drains quickly.

Lower Resist indeed lowers magic resistance, but Conviction does not. And indeed, not many monsters have magic resist.
(Also: Conviction against players is completely crippled, most likely unintentional; it lowers the "+maximum resist" from your items only. So if you wear Hotspur, which has +15 maximum fire resistance, then Conviction will apply only to that 15. And if you have no items with +max resist, then Conviction will literally do nothing.)

Blessed Hammer deals 150% damage against Undead btw. This multiplier is separate from Concentration and Might, so at higher levels your damage is pretty disgusting against anything undead.
One downside to the fact that BH deals physical damage is that it can be blocked by enemies. It's especially annoying against Diablo.

Not sure how stun works on champions/uniques. I'll check it out.

@Barl
What's the deal with Charge? Are you referring to the movement quirks, or something else?

 

[Barl1]

Yes the movement of charge allows for attacks to "chain" together for as long as you have room to do. I called it the "staff charge machine" because i made a charge/thorns paladin that had a pretty decent damage rune staff.

 

[cheerupemokid10]

@Fruit: Boo on fire mastery and hydra. That sucks. I do remember reading about flashing with auras though so that makes things even more interesting for a Hammerdin. And thanks for looking into stun, although it doesn’t seem like it will make or break any ideas I have going. I’m going to assume it’s 1/4th in hell like the guide says freeze, cold, and slows are. Are there any other fire skills that fire mastery doesn’t work for?

@Barl: When you said charge is broken I thought you meant it doesn’t work at all, not that it works like that. I’d assume that’s better after reading your last comment. Basically like a built in KB to keep a combo chain of charge going?

 

[Barl1]

Sorry yeah, I meant broken as in imbalanced and powerful, not broken as in it doesn't work. Yes, it has an inherent knockback. I think it kinda stacks with knockback if it's present on the weapon too. At least that's what I've been able to observe. i try to show how it works here on the youtube:

 

[Fruit]

@cheerupemokid10

Stun:

• Is never applied to act bosses
• Has a 50% chance of being applied to Champions and (Super) Uniques
• Is always applied to regular monsters and minions
• Always applies the full length, regardless of difficulty or monster
• Has a hardcap of 10 seconds, just like in 1.14

So there, very simple. 50% is decent odds against uniques, a lot higher than in 1.14 (where it's only 10%).
Also, except for act bosses, there don't seem to be any restrictions. So unlike in 1.14, you can actually stun static enemies like Crow Nests, Coldworm the Burrower, Mummy Sarcophagus, etc. It seems to halt their AI, so I guess they will temporarily stop spawning monsters. Might even work on those Maggot Eggs to prevent them from hatching, heh.



Regarding Fire Mastery, only Hydra is screwed.
The reason is simple; when damage is calculated (whether it's melee or missile), the function responsible for applying Fire Mastery does a number of checks.
The first one is "does the attack carry any fire damage", if yes, then the second one is "is the source a player".. the Hydra will already fail this second check, since it's a monster, so the game exits the function without applying FM.
It would also fail the third (is the source a Sorceress) and fourth (does the source have Fire Mastery) checks.
I don't think they fixed this until 1.07. Real shame. :<

Then again, not needing Fire Mastery does save up a lot of skill points. Unfortunately the skill costs a lot of mana, so perhaps it's not a good choice in the end.
But it sure is a fun build. Static Field + Hydra + Blizzard for example is quite possible. Maybe throw in some Warmth to reduce mana problems. Coolio. B)

And just fyi, FM also is not directly applied to Enchant:
If a Sorceress is Enchanted, then (if she has it) FM will increase Enchant damage for her, but when Enchanting allies, FM is not applied.
If an Enchanted Sorceress does a ranged attack, then FM is applied twice to the fire damage from Enchant, but unfortunately Enchant is reduced to 1/3 for ranged attacks, so the damage will still be poor. (The more you know, eh?)



I also took a look at auras again to refresh my memory, and the cycle is actually 3 seconds in 1.00, not 2 seconds like I said in my prior post. (I probably got the 2-second cycle from the Basin wiki, but that's of course 1.14.)

So once you equip an aura, it takes 3 seconds for it to activate, and when it does, it will be passed on to enemies or allies. Then the aura will stick for 8 seconds.
The only exception I see is Fanaticism, which activates immediately when it's equipped, rather than having an initial delay of 3 seconds.
For the provider himself however, auras are enabled/disabled instantaneous..

So unfortunately I was also wrong about flashing. (Maybe what I said applies to 1.06? -- I have developed a talent for mixing up patches.)
The "8 second aura cling" actually only applies to enemies and allies, and not to the provider himself. So it's useless to skill both Concentration and Might.
Furthermore, Concentration (and Might) are actually baked into the missile, so you want to make sure that Concentration is active when you cast the Hammer, because if you cast the Hammer first and then turn on Concentration, the aura won't affect the hammer.



@Barl
That's one cool charge-din. I love that you went with a Staff, heh.
Didn't realize that Charge always hits. Or maybe I once knew and I've just forgotten. :> I guess I'll check it out to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps it works similarly to Leap Attack, which is also quite crazy.



OK then. Back to the nerdcave!

 

[cheerupemokid10]

@Barl: Now I know I’ve read about the aura flashing before too. But maybe it was to flash conviction on mobs then swap back to something else for speed/damage? Idk... but I know it’s been discussed before in one of the time travel patches.

I figured that was the reason behind the mastery issue, it makes complete sense. Still disappointing though.

Seems like stun might be a nice option against cow king then and any other “tough” targets. War cry for the barb is sounding a lot better now.

I made it through the den of evil last night with my barb/sorc at a whopping level 4. It’s a little slower going with the sorc so far but I think it will get better once I finally start getting a little gear and skill levels.

 

[cheerupemokid10]

Blood raven is down and the crypt/mausoleum proved to be very fruitful before my game glitched due to this stupid hotel internet. I stay in lots of hotels because of my job (railroad) and this hotel has the worst WiFi of them all. But I digress.

Got a pelta lunata from the crypts and arcannas helm from the mausoleum. If only it would have been a tarnhelm! Oh well, it’s stashed in hopes for it. Only level 8 with sorc and 9 with barb but have found a nice ed/lightning trident that has made the going muuuuch better. I would have attached screenshots but I can’t even get on the WiFi now and my cell service isn’t great here either to upload them that way. So I’m calling it a night and gonna get a nap in before I get called out to work back home. Minimal progress, but progress none the less. Hopefully more the next time I have some better internet.