1.00 News, Info and Gossip

[Albatross]

Originally posted by Treeharl on Feb 15, 2017

Thought I would start a thread for general 1.00 news, info and gossip! Hopefully we can update this whenever we have something interesting to report, or just to say hello. (Awefull copy paste by Treeharl from the 1.07 News Info and Gossip thread by Alienboyz).

Anyways since there isn't such a thread on the SPF form I decided to create it. Since I personally reached level 90 it is kinda my honor to do so. I saw 1.00 information getting shatteered all across the forum so yeah this topic is just a why the hell not topic. For all your 1.00 needs what do you need to know etc etc with pinatasauce and pharblades or like the lame Treeharl way. So yeah may this topic serves your 1.00 endeavors well.

Treeharl King of 1.00 and slayer of 1.00 extra fast Lord de Seis.

Also why you should play 1.00:

And because its the best ring ever (aigain)


Links:
Helvete's Time traveling guide:

[Guide] The Time Traveler's Vortex - Part 1 - A guide to SPF Time Travel

Originally posted by helvete on Jul 9, 2016 [Allright, here goes! I'll continually update this for as long as I'm around. I'll authorize in advance whoever may be the authority at whatever time to edit this guide, for the purpose of keeping it updated] (best read with the accent of Londo...

www.purediablo.com

Cow King run guide (by me):

[Guide] Treeharls 1.00 Cow King running guide

Originally posted by Treeharl on Jul 23, 2016 Welcome to my guide. Today we are looking at Cow King running at version 1.00. (Also works for version 1.01 but who is playing that version, lol). First let us start with some important facts. - You can open the cow level indefinitatly on version...

www.purediablo.com

How to get some items + what should you looking for (by me):

[Guide] 1.00 item guide (how to gain certain items)

Originally posted by Treeharl on Jul 31, 2016 Not going to write a whole introduction here, this information will be pretty straigthforward. The use of this (mini)guide is concerning how to get certain items and certain items only on version 1.00. I only list the best scource. Unique Items...

www.purediablo.com

 

[Albatross]

@Lemma Good you bought the maggot point up but I get 281 exp from a maggot with the 1/5 exp penalty at players one. So your 1k xp at level 84 with a full game matches what I was telling you as 5% exp rule. The one with the killing blow always gets 10% xp on top of that. But with the bug you should change your powerleveling a bit indeed. (It was a bit coincidence I found out this bug actually happens).

Also I would like to know how your cpu can handle 7 gamefolders as I can't get past 5 without getting trouble.

If you have more than 1 core (very likely), then make sure to set affinity for each game.exe in such a way that you have at least one core free of any game.exe process. Bad programming will otherwise cause the game.exe processes to hog all the resources of your computer over time.

Myself, I run 4 cores (pretty common) and leave 2 of them free of game.exe processes. I only get trouble if I leave 8 clients up overnight.

I've been eyeing your 1.00 adventures, nice going! Maybe also link to your Cow King running guide and helvete's guide to 1.00 in the opening post if some future readers happens to start from here?

I thought the other day that I should at some point venture to pre-LoD classic.

My main interest (apart from the experience as a whole, maybe) would be to improve my 1.13 gold finders belt and boots. How hard are those 11x GF belts and boots to come by? At what level can I gamble those?

Are the LK racks stable in 1.00 btw? Could you run some armor rack for example for fast(ish) gold?

They're not hard to come by, what is hard is to decide which one to use

When you can get drops like this on a regular basis:
View attachment 4731
(the two handed sword wasn't dropped by the king)

You get a lot of stuff like this:
View attachment 4732

This one isn't even close to its max potential:
View attachment 4733

Good advice Grape, links are up .

About rackrunning on LK. Yes they are very stable, very very stable.... So stable they get decayed after 7 drops.... They don't drop exeptional armors I believe and they don't drop wands (RIP Grim Wand hunting!!!) Generally Lower Kurast hell is usefull for superchests which spawn rare Tower Shields and Pavises but thats about it.

Also this happened when leveling up my necro....
View attachment 4734

Damn, @helvete.

So oh well, maybe I'll start this after RFL is over. I have also got itch to play some 1.07 again, but we'll see.

lol what happens when your necro saves and exits? talks to akara?

IN theory it may be plausible that wands can drop from racks since they can bug out in later versions (unsure about early versions, but 1.10+ certainly can). The reason is a bug, I'm sure, but it happens very rarely. You can make it happen more often by running a rack early in the game like in countess's area. You can even get stuff like exploding potions.

This looks decent for level 22, eh?
View attachment 4735

....FCR is missing, though, and this was a drop, so couldn't get +2 all.

Well its decent for 1.07 (mf is actually usefull there on a sorc) but frankly not that decent for 1.00. I figured out normal dmg reduce is the most important stat on a sorc amu (even more important as sorc skills or fcr!). Why, because dmg reduce is applied indefiniatly before es. Works aigainst all monsters in the game (even dia and his inferno). Aaand as I promised, this is my best find while hunting for level 90. If you want to utilise that amu its just for a normal grim wand hunting sorceress.

View attachment 4738

Also when the nec gets another batch of leach his hp jumps to full aigain. That bug triggered in a 5 player game aigainst izual. Izual hp overflows and as such my hp underflows.... 1.00 is crazy!

Yeah after doing a bit more farming I've noticed that the xp gain dropped off a lot more than I'd initially thought after I hit level 84. Before hitting 84 I was leveling fast enough that I never really bothered to check how much xp I was getting per maggot. I'm convinced now that I was wrong and the maggots are in fact level 74. And I didn't know about the 10% bonus for the killing blow but that seems to explain the lower xp my barb got when I had my sorc get the killing blow.



I'm guessing it's because I use Linux and its process scheduler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Completely_Fair_Scheduler) deals with this type of situation better. Running 8 processes will keep my CPU (a quad-core i7-4770K) running at max, but won't affect the performance of Diablo II, or of other things I'm running at the same time. The kernel only lets them hog as much CPU as isn't needed by other processes. I haven't done anything to manually set the process priority or core affinity, this is just the default behavior.

Still strugeling a bit, I can setup 5 clients after that desinc gets gather bad.

Buttt.... here is some gameplay of my new necro, 211 mf. He is still leveling though so don't get your hopes too high up. Gear etc is shown in the videos.

Gameplay:

Bonefarming:

In addition to ensuring at least one core isn't used to run the games at all, try using this: http://mion.faireal.net/BES/ (on windows or something equivalent for mac/linux)

Essentially, what it allows you to do is to pick out the instances of the game running and limits their CPU time by periodically forcing them to sleep. The lack of sleep commands in the game code tends to be the big reason various D2 versions will hog all the CPU they can, so this works out nicely. So, for mules/rushees that you don't really need to swap too past setting up/moving acts you can severely inhibit them (10-20% or so); And any characters that are going to be 'in area' for xp leeching or something, you can set to 50-75% or some such. Whichever process is hosting the game, should also probably be allowed 50-70% as well, depending on your cpu speeds (it may also be helpful to set the game host to a higher priority than the others to reduce desync and such).


Something else to keep in mind is:


The latest version apparently increases the number of processes that can be limited in this way, making it more useful to this purpose; though I haven't tested it yet, myself. It doesn't directly interfere with the software or cpu directly either, but more like stands between them like a border checkpoint. Periodically making the line of processes wait, so that the cpu doesn't get too busy/crowded.

@Espr that sounds really great.. But, I am playing d2 nowadays with a laptop with a monocore i3 in my case and as such I can't distribute process affinity within cores. What I also would like to know is do I have to set these affinities every time while joining with every single clients or does it work straight from each game.exe indefiniatly. Still thanks for the info though.

Some finds I haven't shown:
View attachment 4749

I don't know of a way to set affinities/priorities permanently in windows, especially, not for a specific instance of X copies of a single executable, sorry.

Irrelevant as long as there is just the single core, at least with affinity.

Cow King normal running to get a frostburn for Crescent.... This one dropped, I challenge you all to find a better normal armor on 1.00. Even the 75% pdr is there!

View attachment 4762

Is there a drop calculator for 1.00 somewhere, similar to the one ATMA provides for 1.07+? And/or any information on how exactly MF works in 1.00, apart from only affecting normal monsters and not bosses? I've been experimenting with clearing Act 4 and cows in 8 player games with 200 MF and so far the results have been pretty lackluster. I'm trying to get Rattlecage but I'm starting to wonder if I should just suck it up and gamble for one. At least it would mean less time spent popping in and out of the cow portal to refresh the gamble screen if I was burning 400k+ in one go when a Gothic Plate showed up. I'd also be interested in data on bonefarming odds if any exists.

Also, any thoughts on whether it's worthwhile to max another poison/bone skill after CE on a necro? My necro spends a pretty high percentage of his time waiting for IM+Blood Golem to produce that first corpse, especially in areas where monsters are more spread out, and only really shines in areas like cows where conditions are ideal for CE. This is especially true in 8 player games, where I spend most of my time, since CE kills just as fast, but getting that first corpse becomes a lot slower. It'd definitely be nice to have another offensive skill, I just don't know if any of them are viable in 1.00.

There isn't such a drop calculator but I can give you an estimate on rattlecage (I found two myself). First we look which monsters actually drop the most gothic plates, we find out Urdars, Cliff Lurkers and Dark Familiars drop only 25% the amount of gothic plates we should expect. If you encounter those monsters in your mapseed don't bother. Then we move up to some actual chance:
Act4-HtH is responsible for Gothic Plates. Due to a "bug" all act4 monsters also drop partially from "Act4-Caster". I believe your chance of finding a Gothic Plate would be combining the odds of Act4 HtH, Act4 Caster and Act 4 Misc which results in a plain value of 52, them we should apply the good drops aswell (30 possiblilities with low odds, lets estimate 10%) we get 55. Now we have always a 10% nodrop at p5+ so our 55 increases to 61. Now if we apply 0,33% uniques with 200 mf% your rattle cage has a drop of 1 in 18518 with 5 players in the game.

Buttt. Is Rattlecage that good? Imo if you want to hurt things bad you need to switch your lovely pike with a Partizan or a Bec de Corbin and use a rare ornate with FHR, high def and dex and if possible also 4x lr (fhr matters when going in ww).

I play a CE necro and I accept the fact I can't beat Lord de Seis and Diablo. This fact doesn't hurt my playstile as I REALLY DONT WANT my nec to get ABOVE LEVEL 74. A ce necro is by far the best option passing xp down to other charcters. You have to accept the wait with Corpse explosion and imo run p5 (which results in the same amount of items anyway!). If you want to skill something skill Fire Golem or Golem Mastery for Cow Level. A CE necro shines with 200 mf in cow level (done in less than 4 min. P8 is overkill and slows you down unless you really want to pass as much xp possible.

I was thinking of using the Rattlecage for a gold find barb, with the CB helping to kill champion packs with dual patriarchs. I figured with how often WW hits, the CB would trigger so often that the low weapon damage would hardly matter. I've been saving gold find rares and gambled a pair of chance guards and a couple tarnhelms, so I have something at least decent for every other gear slot except for an amulet, and I was also thinking that farming urdar champion packs would be a really good way to get to a high level for gambling amulets, so gambling Rattlecage instead of amulets now might help me gamble more amulets later. I gambled Goblin Toe awhile back, so I could use those for CB, but I have some pretty good rares with gold find I'd much rather use instead.

And I'm not sure how many act 4 full clears it takes to kill 18518 monsters but considering it's kind of a pain to do with 200 MF (either on sorc or necro) compared to how fast a barb just tears through everything except CS, I'm thinking I might want to go ahead and gamble it after all. Just selling the drops from one act 4 clear nets enough gold that the barb's faster killing speed probably trumps the MF, though I could also do pretty well with a lesser amount of MF on the barb, say 100. At the very least, I can easily use my 48% tarnhelm over wormskull, especially since my current pike has 5% life leech so I can definitely afford to give up a little from another slot.

The other thing to consider is that I'm going to be doing a bunch more cow king runs regardless, since I'm still looking for a lot of stuff he can drop (including a good rare ornate plate like you mention), so I can use the gold I make doing that to gamble Rattlecage. And if I'm going to wait to gamble mass amulets until I have a higher level character (highest currently is about two-thirds of the way to 86), there's not that much else to spend gold on right now (not counting sashes and boots since I always grab those when they show up on the gamble screen, but they are so cheap it hardly makes a difference).

I'm certainly keeping an eye out for any good rare polearms that might drop, especially once I get my gold find barb farming urdar champions since I think they have a pretty decent chance to drop rares (though a Grim Scythe with -40% requirements from cow king could work too). But I'm still using a relatively mediocre pike since I've had pretty bad luck with them so in terms of difficulty vs benefit I think it makes sense to keep trying for a better pike from cow king for now.

And yeah CE tears through cows, MF gear or not, and there's definitely no need to put points in anything else for cow runs but that's pretty much the ideal environment for CE and I was hoping to make my necro kill faster elsewhere, especially since it seems like there are plenty of skill points to go around. What's the logic behind putting points in fire golem though? I don't see the reason to use it over blood golem.

 

[Albatross]

Well the main reason from fire golem is the holy fire aura taunts Cows to attack your golem instead of you which expecially helps at the start of a run, though you need a hefty chunck of points in Golem mastery to stay alive. Another factor that should be mentioned is mf doesn't work with kills from iron maiden as it is reflected damage, but MF does work with kills fron CE.

Really don't gamble rattlecage.... You can gamble 15 rings with the same amount of gold and have a chance of a 60 lres ring with leach which is far far far more usefull as rattlecage. If you want to gf you could also run normal or nm and totally not need rattlecage at all.

Also if we look at rare pikes the fast way to get 155-160 max damage would be cow king normal. If you have a sorc just roll a stable pikeseed on normal and kill him about 50 times and your good to go. I don't know how bad your pike is but I do have a spare 15x with leach (unfortuniatly at 25 dura) and 143 with 125 dura (no leach).

Also if you want to get a rare Partizan you also could concider running lower kurast superchests hell but they also drop from regular hell cows (I leave that one up to you).

Couple days ago while going to kill Duriel strange bug (?) happened - after putting Horadric staff in place red portal appeared. It actually led to Canyon of the Magi despite saying Tal Rasha's chamber in its name. Can this happen only in 1.00?
View attachment 4884

I definitely might have to try for a partizan from hell cows at some point soon since MFing them with a necro is way more fun than doing LK chests. I'm already working on leeching xp with a polearm barb. I don't think it really matters much in practical terms that MF doesn't work on kills from IM considering the vast majority end up dying to CE. Maybe a few percent of the cows are going to die to IM in any given run. And interesting idea with the fire golem but with how slowly the cows move, if they come after me I usually just run around and draw more in to the pack for CE and I can always recast blood golem to reposition it if needed.

Also I thought the best pike affixes were only in NM and hell so I stopped doing norm after I got a 125 dura pike. Didn't realize norm went up to 160 but I do have a sorc so I'll probably give that another try. I'd been mostly doing NM but was thinking of switching to hell for better chances of getting good rares for other slots. One problem though is with how many more patterns there are it's harder to decide when to reroll the map.

Is there something special that happens at 200 MF, like how it works in 1.07 where there are key thresholds where having less than that amount does very little? Because if not I'm thinking 100 MF on a barb might be the way to go, since I've been clearing RoF and City of the Damned for xp anyway now that I've reached 10 levels above the RoF maggots.

Speaking of maggots, I've also noticed that once you reach level 84, the maggots in act 2 give almost the same amount of xp as the ones in act 4 since they are both subject to the same level penalty and the base xp is similar. But in the maggot lair it's a lot easier to fight them in huge groups whereas in RoF sometimes tons of them spawn in a small area but other times you're running around killing one or two egg packs at a time. Also the maggots in Coldworm's room seem to respawn much more reliably when you go to town and come back whereas in RoF sometimes you leave a group of large maggots alone while you clear the rest of the map, then come back and they've only spawned one or two eggs. And if you're looking to leech xp on lower level characters, you can just skip RoF completely and powerlevel exclusively in the maggot lair since with the xp penalty bug it's actually a good thing if the character killing the maggots is getting less xp, and the leecher should get a similar amount of xp in both places as well.

Killing higher level monsters in act 4 hell that you're less than 10 levels above is of course faster xp but the maggots do have some advantages. The maggots in act 2 also seem to have the same drops as the ones in act 4 including the high drop rate for gems so it's a good way to get skulls to send to 1.06.

What the....! Never seen that!

were you summoning your blood golem or anything? If I had to guess for a possible source of a bug like that's where I'd start. No reason beyond 2 things coming into existence at once (an entrance opening) and a golem... maybe that tricked the game and made a portal instead.

To be honest - can't say for sure if I did it or not at the exact moment. By looking at the screenshots that I made it is clearly visible that blood golem was resummoned - there is red corpse right to orifice.

If this bug would be present in LOD there would be a possibility for portal to become perma-portal (as Arcane Sanctuary to Canon of The Magi is). Imagine the speed of Duriel runs when you could go to his chamber directly from WP. But this probably was silently fixed in early versions anyways.

Now imagine further that Duriel was even a viable target for anything

@pharphis On 1.00 he is worthless, you can't even questbug him as questbugging doesn't work pre 1.07. His only function on 1.00 is to instagib your non es sorc with a single charge so you lose 10 mil xp at level 87 (luckely I did skill es and that saved me so many deaths due to that cause!).

On 1.13 he drops nearly the same as mephisto hell which isn't too bad. Its just a hasle to get to duriel when you can moat trick meph in half the amount of time. Still duriel gave me once a Ber when I played on bnet.

Bit wall of texty, but here's a report of on a wee sorta-restart I thought I'd share:

I had some issues with my previous barb and sorc, and kept stalling/losing motivation, so I decided to remake them. This time with polearms (as I found a battlebranch to make normal breezy), and instead of going static/orb I decided to go for a blaze sorc.

Primarily, this is for two reasons: One, an orber is all to likely to be my 1.07 sorc again, and two, blaze is significantly more mana efficient than anything the cold tree has to offer (and even static takes a little too long to get online for my spoiled-by-infinite-mana-potions-self's liking).

Stationary and some erratic/inconsistent enemies can be frustrating to deal with using blaze. Guardians/shamans in particular proved pretty frustrating. I had some success with making a big bonfire next to such monsters and then telekinesis'ing them into the fire, but the knockback on that is too inconsistent at 1pt to be relied upon long term. That said, it was still faster and more sustainable than static/cold, and it makes quick and easy work of pretty much everything else.

In the end I decided my 'stationary' killer will be meteor. I toyed with going into the cold tree, but blizzard also has issues with stationary targets, and orb wouldn't really solve my issues with trying to snipe guardians/shamans. I also considered some lightning spells, but ultimately I found meteor's sniping ability too attractive to pass up on. It also has the added bonus of sharing a mastery with blaze.

While thunderstorm wouldn't have solved the weaknesses of blaze very well at all, I was still pretty tempted as it seemed like a natural fit with the 'always moving' playstyle of blaze. And really, there's no better time to use the skill than in classic. Perhaps if I have extra points at higher levels, it's something to consider.

Going heavy into weapon mastery from the get-go made such a huge difference for this barb, particularly insofar as making leech much more effective.

I'm also finding a 2 char party much nicer to manage, with a much more enjoyable game pace than the previous 4 char party. Thus far I've only slowed to level twice, once at the tombs in act 2 to get them both to Lv20, and once at LK to Lv24. Lv23->24 was the only one that took any length of time, really, but it was mostly secondary to farming some gold/potions in prep for Meph and act 4. In particular I wanted BO and mana shield to give me a bit more error-forgiveness/safety when dealing with undead dolls.

Sadly, the gambling (~400,000 gold) didn't turn out anything all that useful, but Ormus was reasonably kind:

Also found this while questing:

Though I really wish that poison resist was lightning.

I'll likely keep the tweaker sorc for later forwarding purposes, and definitely the necromancer as I did find the blood golem + mojomancy fairly entertaining. I'll probably just delete my coversion pally, enchantress, and other barb.

tldr; Blaze is really fun in classic, and barbs really do need early investment in a mastery to not be terrible.

Don't mean to ressurect, but as I am not playing Diablo anymore I felt like sharing a few very good 1.00 items (or commented if otherwise) with you guys.

See you!

1.00 Ancient Axe. Literally one shot everything.
View attachment 5114

Insane Ornate. I always considered moving this to 1.13 but never did.
View attachment 5115

"Decent" ring...
View attachment 5116

My boots on my barb. Gambled after 100000000 tries.
View attachment 5117

Gambled cap moved to 1.13 Blizzard sorc.
View attachment 5120

Another gambled item. Kinda ridiculous how good these gets after 100000000 tries.
View attachment 5121

Another set of very good gambled boots.
View attachment 5122

Yea, this sorc is pimpin..
View attachment 5123

Bugged Vidalas Rig boots with Hsarus' Iron Heel level requirement (clvl 3!) and Hsarus' color palette. They are supposed to be level 14 clvl req. Brought forward directly from 1.00 to 1.13. Many other nice combinations as well, but I like this for twinking.
View attachment 5118

My bugged blizz sorc shield. Love it!
View attachment 5119

In other words, if you want good items, you just make a gold find barb and gamble like crazy!

Time to install 1.00 ...



Gieb itemz!!

Wow, insane items!

Where did you do goldfinding in 1.00 classic?

Things like these make me want to start it so much. Just a couple of 1.13 things to do, maybe then...

Those Vidala/Steelclash bugged when you brought forward to 1.13? or they dropped like that?

I think I've explained this somewhere before, but you can get LOOOOOADS of gold in 1.00.

Basically, gear up a WW barb with GF. Mine had two patriarchs, tarn helm, 119% amulet, belt and boots, 59% rings times two with leech, chance guards and Rattle cage for flee (only want to kill minions/champions) and crushing blow. You also want 30% FRW boots! This makes up for a total of 950% GF exactly.

Then, find a map with 2-3 minion / champion packs (with 4 champions) close to City of the Damned WP and 1-2 very close to River of Flame WP. In 1.00 you get very static drops or stable patterns, so look for those who drop good base items (12,5% chance of rare) and loads of gold. Also, you can be lucky with chests on the way that regularly drops harpoons or other items that sell for a ton of gold (for some reason certain items sell for a high amount of gold).

You will get 20000+ gold piles from each champion. I don't have any numbers, but I am 100% confident I can say I could easily farm 10 Stone of Jordan's in matter of an hour. Possibly even 15. It really comes down to having a good map.

All items gambled in 1.00 have fixed price, so caps are 2500 and boots are 2500. Keep the unique part of the item in stash and you have a 10% chance of rare, that's 25000 gold for a rare helm or boot!! See prefix/affix charts for optimal clvl.




The bugged items are normal drops, just transferred (legitimately) to 1.13 without visiting 1.07 first. If you do, they will return normal. A few unique items get weird properties, all set items does however.

Thanks!

If you're a bit more lacking in gear (like me) then just going with your usual weapon works well too. Missing out on some gold, yes, but killing and surviving becomes much, much easier.

Also, gambling amulets with +2 is a sloooow process, as the gamble screen doesn't have any "always present" items, like in later patches. Amulets DO have magic_lvl 2 though, so you get 2 levels for free when gambling them.

Amazing items !! Especially those Raven Spur Boots ...

Glad to see some interest back in prelod versions, currently I am breaking a bit from d2 alltogether. I will be returning to 1.00 eventually.

This thread is great and those items above are insane. What are the bugged items about? That's not the usual mods for steelclash in 1.00? How does it form?

I've just started 1.00 and plan on bringing items forward to 1.09b classic and going through the game there with a bunch of overpowered twinked chars on / players 64.

Martels have buggy damage back here in 1.00. Is that fixed when forwarding them?

It is. I don't know exactly which patch, but this applies to a lot of weapons. Bows, 2h swords come to mind.

 

[Albatross]

So i loaded up 1.0 (was kind of a hassle to get it to work on windows 10 but its running) started with 2 chars in game (i did not try anymore) a sorc which is level 6 and a barbarian which is the same level.

Right of the bat: I like it! i miss gomule (however i didnt try to use it yet, so i am not even sure if it works) i found 2 great items already Arctic furs (set quilted) and Feloak (unique club) i racked the fel oak in the mausoleum and the arctic furs are from a minion around cold crow.

I have been plunging through the different forum threads (big thanks to @Treeharl and @helvete for the great write ups). However i am still uncertain about a few things:

WW is the build to go for a barb prefeb with a polearm/pike like weapon since pikes can get crazy
but what build is great for a sorc? Firewall? Orb? do i need to combine skills? i know static can sliver enemies (found that out from reading) but i guess i need a good finisher next to it? Hydra + TS?

Now how about items i know if i keep certain items in stash i have a bigger chance to drop a rare+ item from that item sort (so if i keep a ring in my stash i have a bigger chance to roll another ring) or did i missread that?

(i am going back to the time travelling guide now i need to make sure i got this right!)

@BKC I have also just started!

I'll let the more experienced answer, but I'll say something I know or remember from the guide without checking (so you better re-read it yourself also ).

-GoMule doesn't work. (And won't work 1.07-1.10, not sure when it will start working.. but Atma is good for early LoD patches)
- Only mule characters then, now
- Pike with WW is the go-to character, but it seems to be advisable to have at least one other Barb available if you find that one perfect polearm or something else. Remember to check and learn the types that do/do not work.
- Keeping uniques/set of certain item type is advisable when gambling, cause it will slightly up the odds for the rare. Read: have Biggin's Bonnet, Hotspurs etc. TC3 uniques in stash when gambling for those low cost armors in hope of great rares. By the time you'll progress more, you probably won't have enough space for all, so mule char definitely will come handy I believe. When gambling SoJs, you'll first have to gamble (or find) the lower ring in order: Nagel--> Manald --> SoJ. Then always when having gambled another SoJ, mule that away and keep the other two so that the next one will be a SoJ again.

I'd also like to know what would you 1.00 pros advice for the final skill and stat distribution for a sorc. Static, warmth and little Glacial Spike is going to be useful early on I think, and Frozen Orb is going to be maxed but what else, and how it should look when the build is little higher of level? What final stats to shoot for? (depends on exact build I guess, but about vita/enery levels at least. Same for Barb, do I need more STR/DEX than Pike needs or just Vita from there on (if I can take care of the energy needs of WW with let's say Frosties and enough leech?)

One more question from me also: I started with 4 characters (2 sorc, 2 barb), but left the other three after Tristram/Black Marsh because it was quite slow. I guess this was because I was stubborn and was going with the spear barb only all the time. Well now that my spear barb went for himself he has been really ok, and is approaching Canyon of the Magi next. I plan to bring the other three there also by rushing them. The others are level 7, and "leading" Barbarian is 18. Will the lower ones also get levels there when the Barb kills, despite that they are so much lower of level than the monsters and the main killer.

Hi @Grape,

Thanks for your information nice to see you also started! WW barb it is i already found a 3os pike which i gladly filled with 2x ruby 1x topaz. I use 2 chars for now (which i most likely will regret but it is okay)

I am still looking for a 1.0 sorc build that could be viable

I will report my progress along the way.

I think (and hope) it won't be a problem to rush many characters later if build x goes miserably wrong.

I expect to farm hell maggots etc. for exp and gold ad infinitum, and I believe one could level new characters there as well while the main killer does the work.

Pluto the to-be WW Barb just spent a while in the Canyon by himself and is now a whopping level 21. Next I'll test to bring other 1-3 characters to see how the experience behaves, and how can I cope with more chars in the game

Yea, nice to have another starter here as well! I may soon switch back to 1.13 to finish a char or two there before spending a whole lot more time here. But no hurries, I guess.

Lol i recognize some things from my own behavioural patterns yes i am also still in a journey to 99 and go with whatever i feel like to play. so far the 2 s/u i found in roughly an hour of play where super nice

Wearing an item instead of having it in stash also counts for the X unique in game counter i guess (i litterally answer my own question there i believe)

Haha, it's good to have many little projects going on. Eventually some of them will be finished, maybe

It was definitely exciting to get the first uniques. I happened to gamble Hotspurs and Biggin's Bonnet yesterday without sinking much gold.

Yep, you got that right.

I had to leave for work when my barb is level 29 and a half and just set foot in chaos sanctuary. So exciting times to come. I found a 131 max damage, 10 mana leech, increased speed rare pike off a normal monster in trav, which was such a ridiculous improvement on my magical spetum.

Playing players7 with only the barb killing and only he getting exp. The start of act 3 was very slow. I was also very slow in general as I was picking up everything mildly sellable and doing a lot of buying/selling/gambling in early acts. I didn't respect the guide enough when it said to get to act 4 ASAP for increased gold and exp. It's a very big difference having all the grim wands drop.

When leeching exp, the level penalty of the char doing the killing will apply to the leechers, except for hatching eggs. Which means a lvl **+ character for infinite maggot game in hell is just about pointless. However, before you get to **, the odds are good that your next char can take over, as you only need to be in your high 40s to be an effective killer, at least with WW.

As for sorc builds, they're a bit different from the +skills bonanza we're used to. There are no immune monsters, so static will take care of most anything, and should be maxed real fast. Warmth too, as it's the only really reliable way to get mana. Lightning mastery should be pushed to where static and teleport gets reasonably cheap. I personally prefer Frozen Orb as a finisher, but Blizzard, Fire Wall, Blaze (yes, Blaze...) and Thunder Storm have all been used successfully AFAIK. ES and base vita build isn't a bad idea either, unless you've been brave enough for HC.

The reason I recommended going with two chars, is that Duriel and Diablo tend to be problematic for sorcs when it comes to survival. Static a few times, sure, but finishing them is hard. Barbs don't really have that problem, but they usually do too little damage and therefore leech to little to keep up with the damage they take. Combining the two makes for an easy solution, and you'll want both a barb and a sorc eventually anyway.

About the uniques, they can only spawn once per game, be it as a drop or as a random item on the gamble screen. However, pre-existing items brought into the game, either by the char that started it, or by a mule, MUST be on character, inventory, stash or cube. Leaving with the mule(s), or dropping the pre-existing item on the ground will still allow that unique to spawn. To repeat that, even if you are wearing a SoJ with your goldfinder, you can drop it to the ground, gamble away all your gold, and get another one in that same game. This also applies to monsters such as the Cow King, however that would be a bit more hassle.

Welcome to the jurassic period of D2! I'm glad to see more people exploring it =)

Thanks a lot @helvete !

Would you recommend any points to str/dex after Barb meets the Pike's requirements? Maybe if good enough armor drops, but that's probably far away, and high defense armors aren't that much sought for in this patch it seems.

How should the levels be in normal with regards to penalty? I killed maggots in Canyon with my then lvl 24-25 Barb (now 26..), and leechers were 7. They barely got any exp, and barb only little when they were in the Canyon.

I did the first proper gambling session which netted my Barb the Hand of Broc (will probably be handy for when he can whirl) and many upgrades with some OK rares. I can almost smell the first upgrade to my 1.13 GF sorc:
View attachment 5176
Technically I already found her upgrades to belt and boots, but I'll hold to something better ofc or I'll find myself muling all the time

@VThief very nice going! It was enough of challenge to me to quest with Barb alone. I only brought my other three to the final quest. Duriel was a one angry worm, but I managed it just fine. Tomorrow or Sunday Travi & Meph and hopefully soon WW. Crazy luck with that Pike! I'm now waving three socket empty one, hope to find something similar

Don't worry about a few extra stat points in str or dex unless you're HC or going up against Hephasto on a regular basis for some reason. As soon as you get to around 2k life, just about nothing can hurt you anymore, and not that much leech is required either.

I actually put extra in str to gain a little more damage when I got past lvl 70

About levels in normal, I don't really know. I just got through to hell river of flame and leveled mules there. Should be possible to "egg level" in the maggot lair, and it should get good around level 10-12 I think. Been a while, though.

Do the mules gain exp at level 1 leeching in hell RoF?

Yes. In much the same fashion as CS are used on bnet to level from lvl 1 to lvl 80ish with no gear just following high level chars around. However, small maggot supply is theoretically unlimited, thus there is no need to create new games if a good map is found. This way, I leveled 7 mules from 1 to 60 and filled them all with normal size gems in one (long) MP game.

Small maggots can't drop gold directly, unfortunately. You still have to make a bunch of town trips to repair/sell.

Okay, thanks again @helvete , and big thumbs up in general for your work with the time-traveling guide(s)! That along with @Treeharl 's posts made me do the step now. Of course I knew about the pre-lod goodies (and that I'd like to get them someday), but having a sources like these are wonderful thing to have to actually start to play it oneself.

Good to know that about Hell and leveling. I'll most likely do that to my three other chars right now. I'm about to hit 28 with Barb, and just got City of Damned's WP so I think I'll be fine. I'm willing to play the sorc in the future though. I'm thinking to use my Imbue quest(s) to Grim Wands, as Rare Pikes seem to be nicely obtained by normal Cow King which I'm not that far away now (until CS proves to be a total Hell hole )

Judging by the Treeharl's 1.00 item guide some items are better not be gambled with high level chars in order to eliminate some not wanted affixes. Are you helvete, and others who may see this, having mules to do the gambling or is that extra hassle not worth the time and money?

My game crashed when fighting De Seis with my barb in a multiplayer game. I was only using bash on him. Since that happened I am experiencing an issue that I has been mentioned here -- if my barb hosts a multiplayer game any other window of diablo 2 joining the game will stop responding once I do anything with that character. It works OK if my barb joins another characters game. It probably won't be too much of an issue to me with that in mind.

But Seis sure causes some problems. Makes the fight vs him properly scary -- feels like I'm playing hardcore in some challenge mode. I have to avoid getting hit at all or something. I ended up doing a whole bunch of maggoty river runs to level up my sorc and after barb cleared entire CS except for Seis she took him on and got through it with only 10 deaths or so. But I've made hell difficulty and NM cows!

That sucks, especially if it starts to happen with other chars as well.

Nice going otherwise! Was NM an easy one after WW became available? I'm hitting soon 30 and may head to norm CS later tonight or tomorrow.

Yeah, I stopped leveling a paladin in his mid-30s to eliminate some affixes, mainly replenish life with its stupid high rlvl, and the "swapped" str and dex ones which have higher rlvl but lesser effect.

Also, it kinda makes sense to have a low level mule for gambling the unique rings (you'll miss out on some great affixes for rares though) just because so many more rings show up in a low level gamble window. For this reason, gambling rare jewelry is a pain. They simply aren't for sale in most gamble screens.

Yes, Lord De Seis is a pain. I haven't had any bugs or crashes with him, but then again I've only gone up against him maybe a dozen times total.

As far as imbues go, grim/grave wands and demonhide sashes all the way. I don't think any other base item is worth it, either because easy gamble or because easy cow king. You could argue that demonhide sashes are a waste too, since you're likely to not need extra potion rows, and then normal sashes will do, or you are a barb and can do with plated belts from cowruns.

For a cowrunning barb, I've discovered that you're better off wearing the unique items he can drop over rares, just because stash space is so limited. Frostburns for the mana is a no-brainer, manald for manaleech, bladebuckle, crown or bone helm for life leech, ancient armor for mana leech and its skill bonus, and if doing NM or normal runs, even the unique pike for durability. Damage only becomes a real issue in hell. Greaves are decent too, actually. Then you put the other helm, the other two armors, one or both the other unique rings in your stash, and just keep one or two of the unique weapons he drops in stash if it is a good pattern, and you get failed uniques so fast its sickening.

Quick question, I haven't started playing 1.00 yet but I am seriously considering it. When bringing characters and items forward, do you just update the client or move the character files over to the other version? The second way seems like it could corrupt the file, but I am curious.

You move the char file, then open it in whatever version you want the items and the character to update to. If going from pre-1.07 to 1.08 or later, you have to move via 1.07 (enter a 1.07 game with the character) to preserve item stats. Names of rares are still subject to change, however, nothing to do about that.

Thank you! After reading your insight @helvete and @Treeharl threads, I think I am going to try some 1.00 shenanigans.

So I'll continue my blogging here, I hope you don't mind We might learn something in the process! And maybe get some new people to jump to the 1.00 train.

Dames Juno & Venus and Sirs Pluto and Mars made it to NM. Thanks for the heads-up, I was extra cautious with De Seis, who was luckily not a problem. And CS was not the Hell hole I was afraid.
View attachment 5178
Heavenly Garb should be a nice for a Sorc am I right? Needs little str though, but some, if not most, of that can be get from items I think.

I already tried couple Cow King maps, got Culven's Point (is that used? I kept it) and Rakescar (which I left to the ground) for my troubles. I had cubed my rings and amus through normal but strangely enough I didn't keep any of the plain ML ones, as that wasn't really needed before WW as I had gambled The Hand of Broc already. I turned out that it wasn't enough alone, but couple skulls in socketed Pike solved the problem.

More to come. Though I have some unfinished business in 1.13 which will sooner or later put this to a hold.

 

[Albatross]

Since whirling through NM with a plain Pike didn't sound amusing to me, I decided to get one rare with the 5x durability from Cows.

Luckily I had already found The Tannr Gorerod from a random map that wasn't worth running when I got my first rare:
View attachment 5180
Yeah, that will do!

I did keep that map for a while but Pikes weren't that frequent, and I noticed that the next ones were 25 dura. Do I have to mule this away and keep only the Gorerod on (or in stash) when trying 5x dura Pikes again?

Next stop: maybe NM RoF and levels, or straight to NM Cows.

No need to mule anything off; the way you tell a unique drop from a rare one is the amount of items. If it's plain rare, then only one rare will drop along with the low tier magic item and stamina pots which always drop. If it is a unique, then there will be a unique amongst the drops, or exactly five rares. Superior Great Pilum counts as a rare in this case, as that is the highest quality it can drop with.

Great weapon, it should help maintaining full mana pretty easy, and allow you great freedom for rings and amulet.

So i moved my 2 chars (yes still only 2) past andariel! The barb is my main char now and that made things a lot easier! Andy was short work after slivvering her down to nothing! Sorc = 13 Barb = 15 on his way to the cube. I didnt put any definte points into the chars yet however i am thinking of going frenzy instead of WW (i like frenzy a lot better) 2 chars in a2 normal. Nothing noteworthy of finds other than a savage spear class thing which boosted my damage somewhat!

Just clear the entryway to each area and move up the other character. No need to be close to get exp like in 1.10+ you know. Just a precaution so that you don't lag too far behind with the least used character.

it is more that 640x480 in a windowed version which i cannot make "full screen" is a really small screen to play on

Pretty sure Frenzy doesn't have any damage added in early patches. My first barb was a Frenzy barb and he was unplayable past normal/NM

@helvete that makes sense, thanks for clearing that. It is a nice weapon indeed, and I feel really lucky to have got that so fast. Smashing through NM (until RoF WP) yesterday with it was a piece of cake.

I'll take a break from 1.00 now, before I forget all about what I was supposed to do in 1.13. But this has already been very nice change of pace, and even a little of a challenge to make it through norm with a spear barb alone doing the job. Now he's mowing things left and right and that is quite a sight also, I very much recommend @BKC that you try WW, it is something one should not miss when playing 1.00!

I'll be back. I'm really looking for to hunting all those great rares.

check WW it is

So a small write up to get my progress going. I boosted both the sorc as the barbarian to the canyon on of the magi, i did do two maggot lair runs for some extra experience. The barb is now 20 and the sorc is level 19 (hurray for glacial spike!). and i did some maggot young farming in canyon (that actually makes sense experience wise!) however i do not see myself farming to level 27ish this way (that is way too slow).

Noteable finds:
Iratha gloves
Cathan's chain mail (body armor)
very nice blue belt with +27 life +28 mana (shopped that from farsi(what is that female character/bs called in a2?))
21% Cold resist and 24% MF gloves (like these too!)

I am going to get some more levels on the sorc before moving on too duriel (at least grind till 24) but after that i hope the experience gains will pick up. (putting more chars in game helps and i miss the /player command)

I gambled some quite nice rares during my Act III, worth a try with all your extra cash

I've just installed 1.00, and am thinking about trying a Bowazon, but I can't find any build guides. I guess trying something on feel would be fun, but sure sucks if you reach Hell with an unwiable build. And not many people seem to play Bowas on 1.00. Why?

I played Barb (not WW though, Frenzy IIRC) 1.00 for the first time, when It came out, so maybe that would be fun. But I just never played Bowas before, so thought It would be fun to try 1.00

And, how do you guys run it? Just (tiny'ish) windowed mode?

i use the full screen mode, i cannot stand the small windows, so my mules/leechers in small windows and my main char playable in full screen

edit: about bowazon there was something about it... check the time travellers guide helvete made (its in the first post)

@helvete mentioned in the Timetravellers guide that %ED for Bows does not work properly.
However, I am not sure if anyone has tested a CB setup at all and no one have the effect of KB and slow effect for Cleglow's Pincers. Getting a decent damage bow is not that easy. I have seen few rare long War Bows drop from the Normal CK with max of 68, but I have not seen many rare Exceptional bows . I guess NM is the best option for gothic bows or cedar bows.

I prefer windowed mode mainly across I like to self multiplay and it means you can switch between characters screens. The native 640 x 480 screen setup as the only option can be dangerous with a character with low life as the dangerous extra fast mobs swam quickly and ranged monsters abyss K, OKs can shoot you from a long way of the screen. Maybe decoy can counter that danger

Well I am not pro but I will share my experience with sorcs. I started with 8 characters as mentioned in @helvete s TT guide and 5 of them are sorcs. 3 Cold, and 2 experiments 1 Nova SF warmth ES and 1 Enchant and Hydra SF and ES build

With the Cold sorcs as the serious builds I have those at lvl 60+ in Act 2 Hell leveling using self multiplay. I am using Blizzard, Orb and SF for 2 of these which I find is effective against most monsters then the straight orb SF sorc. I find blizzard is good for smashing maggots and generally good against melee monsters because it can be stacked using FCR and the blizzard duration is skill lvl + 3 in seconds in 1.00. So I stack between 4 to 8 blizzards then static to reduce the hit points then tele around and in the blizzard to watch them croke it. You can then find more monsters draw then towards the blizzards and stack some more bllzzards. The one drawback. It is difficult to see what is in and coming through the blizzard to attack you. I found orb annoying to use against maggots because the shards seem to often miss the small maggots at closer range and if the glitched orbs passes over a monster it also does nothing. If the SF AoE is too large, she cant effectively maggot because your static range destroys the adult maggots off the screen also. However, orb is a must against ranged monsters, especially OKs and Abyss Ks. So my planned end game build is Blizzard and Orb 20, SF and warmth 15 , cold mastery 10 (-70%) and ES and LM 1. If i get +1 or +2 skills in gear that build should work With the stats it can be gear dependent. I pumped more into Vit and less to energy because I found gear with +Mana, planning about 650 - 700 life and whatever manas that gives

With the Barb, try to find rings and amulet with +mana to ampify the frostburn +% mana effect. I used a Wyrms Amulet of the leech, a blue amulet. This was extremely effective until I found a 10% DTM, 5% LL, +37 mana and +Fire res Rare Amulet. I still have the blue amulet. I also followed Helvete's guide on to getting enough vit until you can get about 2K+ life after BO because it is easy to get smashed by a mana burn pack if your WW gets interrupted. I think with a Spear Dex creates %ED as well as AR so my plan to put a few stats into Dex and just STR for gear. I hope that helps

Correction; That Dex calc is for Amazon Spears only at 0.5 * Dex / 100 from a 13 year doc in 1.10, not all Spears, Darn these complex calcs.

Many weapons, among them bows, have a "hidden" 1h damage of 1-1 or at least really low for some reason. %Enhanced Damage will enhance this value instead of the 2h value. You'll see it if you look at a 2h sword with a barb before you ID it. 1h damage updates as expected, but then the exact same numbers are added to the 2h damage.

There are also some display issues to make things more complicated. I'm no code digger, unfortunately, but some weapons will display damage they don't really have.

However, there aren't any weapon damage penalties for zons like there are in later patches. This helps a bit. But getting damage high enough to be effective in hell is very challenging.

Thanks for explaining the weapon glitch problem @helvete

@BKC, @T27on1 and @Grape I know you have recently started and are going well
I found it slow going before hitting lows 30 with my crew and it was just keep grinding running areas for experience until I found a stick and leech and mana items for the Barbs and some decent rares and an SoJ, frostburns and a Tarn Helm and some Pdiamonds for shield for the Sorc
A lot of hard slog started in late Jan and but mainly through early Feb and into March when taking the main characters through leveling and questing. I also tried to keep their levels around the same so we progressed and could be levelled together in the one area which probably slowed me further.

I am some way progressing my 1.00 octivate to. 8 main characters, 2 Barbs, 5 Sorcs and a Necro all around lvl 60 and several mules/support characters, all amazons who are L1-3 except as mentioned. The 8 main character started Hell difficulty on the weekend and I plowed them to Canyon of Magi "rushing" with the Barbs.

The WW Barbs specialise in Polearms and Spear Mastery and have 8 WW, Max Mastery, close to maxing BO, bet 8- 12 pts NatRes and 1 pt wonders except increased speed

2 Sorcs - Orb/Blizz - Orb and Blizz 13 will max , 15 warmth 13 SF get it to 15, 1 ES and LM - Like the play style better than the pure Orber
1 Sorc - pure Orber, Max Orb 15 CM, 10 Warmth, 12 Static 1 ES May send her to 1.07 in the future
1 Nova - Max Nova and Warmth, 3 LM, 15 SF and ES 1- She is ok through NM,
1 Enchantess/Hydra, Max Enchant and FM,10+ Warmth, 15 SF, 1 ES, 1 Hydra next skill to Max - She is just a support character for new characters, enchant being useful for only Normal Act 1 with RavenClaw

and the Necro - 16CE(20 after + skills and + wand autostaff mod), 3 BSpirit, 1 BG, 5 GM, 1 SR, 3 revive, 4 RSM, 3 RS, 3 SM, 12 IM, 7 Attract, 1 AD and 1 Decrepify. He is the area level MF character. The revives are the tanks and killers, the Mages are artillery

For these characters I complete all necessary quests and the skills, life and Charsi quests which takes some time to complete

The support characters include Mules - All Amazons
2 for Pgems, 1 PSkulls, 2 full Rejuvies, 5 for general Uniques, 1 for SoJs, 1 for Tarnhelms, 17 for Rares, 7 for Sets, 3 for character Twink items for rushing characters to about L20, 1 for plain Wands, 1 for Sockets and War Sceptres,
Gamblers at levels 5, 8, 14, 31 and 33

I also rushed several, but not all, of few support characters through NM so they can join a Hell game in Act1
For the leveling Amazons I used Poison Javelin for killing maggots in normal which got me to L31 comfortably and L33 which was a bit of a struggle time wise, sunk extra pts into charged strike if I got surrounded. Otherwise the toons were quest rushed. That was a most of April project

For the sorc, at low levels I used Blizzard more as it used less mana at lows levels. It kills a little slower but Static helped a lot

But now the challenge tonight is Hell Duriel. Should i party all 8 players to try to go past him with one kill? I think my spear barb will be safer than the Sorc.

Nice going there @TedDeeBoy !

If Hell Duriel sounds like a too bad challenge in an 8 players game, you could take him to sliver with only one character in the game and then take the rest of the group to the game. They will get the quest if you take them to the party before Duriel is dead.

I'm interested to hear from your sorcs in the future, especially if they ever reach higher levels! Will be nice to get any more info there's available, cause my own two sorcs have been left unstatted and skilled for now, but I'd love to try a sorc in Hell CS.

When I continue my own adventures I'll continue with just that one Barb being the killer and questing character. Two sorcs and one Barb will be there along the way, but I'll have to level them when I reach Hell RoF I think. NM was really a breeze (well, CS still awaits) so I'm not afraid of Hell. But maybe I'll level my Barb to 4x-50 before it and maybe try to find some upgrades from NM Cow King.

They'll get the quest if they party and are in act 2 before you talk to Tyrael, like it's always been. They don't need to be in the game when Duriel dies.

Awesome information there @helvete. There is some stuff about party play I am still learning, especially order and the difference of when to party players when questing

I wished I had of known this last night. I did use the Barb in a 7 player party game to beat Duriel. I had a pair of Goblin Toes that I gambled in a previous games so I got those on the Barb the CB seemed to help a lot even in the high players party. It still took a while but with leech and no mana burn the Barb will whirl all day. He dropped a Blacktongue, a useless unique.

I pushed on to one through the collect on the Khalim's Bits and smacked the Council and finally Meph in the game, Meph was an anti climax smacked in 30 seconds os so
But not before having an NDE with the 2K barb, slithered by a Cursed, Mana Burn Maffer and a room full of Vampires in the Durance 3. I wished I took a screenshot but the EF,ES, Cursed MB Maffer was chasing my whirl or smacking him if not got stopped and my whirl kept hitting the Vamps and not Maffer. I had to Leap attack out after many rejuvies then TP and went to a previously found combat shrine near Trav to buff him before coming back and whipping him 2nd time around. I kill him and Bremm because they often interrupt the Meph fight and it is difficult to move the other weaker chars to act 4 when they crash the party. I leave the Teleportation council boss because if he can spawn MB it is a painful battle

@Grape, she is decent. But even with 3 steps of FCR it is not enough to escape monsters in a continuous teleport in a rush. I teleported into a mob of A3 version of Black Locusts and got stunned locked to death, even after using all my full rejuvies after 10 seconds and with an active lvl 4 ES, trying to get a teleport or GS off in the crush. @Treeharl Tera Lvl 90 thread shows that he used 5 steps of FCR to be safer. Also the lag in a party game in a problem for most and that is PC dependant, For example, I never run an
active char is the host character because of lag is unbearable.

I got some pics, the Meph screen shot. Now just 1 waypoint away from levelling heaven

tView attachment 5248

And this is stick found in Act2 NM false tombs. It will be difficult to give up this, Bramble Thirst, must have been a Beta version

View attachment 5250

That is a one mean stick!

Congrats

 

[Albatross]

this!

Highest damage I've seen so far. Shame they break so fast unless failed uniques, but dat damage!

I picked up 1.00 again last night, as a break from rune hunting. Managed to push my team (sorc & Barb levelling, rest partied only) through to Act 2. Characters are level 17 now.

I'm wondering about tips for weapon progression? I find the Barb durable but slow at the moment. The sorc is better thanks to static, but I have mana problems and she is quite fragile.

It is very slow going, can't wait to hit level 30!

Edit: Also where can I get some leech?

If you're picking up every magic ammy and ring you find and saving them to cube you'd have to be pretty unlucky to not get any leech jewellery by the time you're hitting level 30 I think. ML and LL spawn on some very low req lvl rings.

I used socketed spears all the way. You can buy a Pike from Act III. I put a sapphire in it for some little cold dmg and freezing and then couple skulls for some leech. It is slow going indeed before WW. You could get lucky and find some nice rare spear, but at least Pikes are still really slow until you can whirl with them.

e: Gambling The Hand of Broc might be also a worth a try, as well as Greyform.

Thanks everyone . I could (and probably will) play 1.00 for the rest of this year and I am not likely to find a bigger damage pike. Treeharl likened it to a Jah if it was a failed unique. In theory I should kill more stuff per breakage, or that's the way I look at it

@maxicek
The going is slow on players 8 because your damage is low and the monster regen fast

Apart from the advice Helvete gives in the guide

I tried to gamble 2 Hand of Brocs (+20 mana and dual leech), Bloodfists and Gorefoot 20 FRW 2 ML. and lenymo Regen mana (30%) to help mana. Get one char to lvl 5 and gamble all with it. Don't be tempted to gamble anything that costs more than 7K gold per item, not rings and amulet unless you have one of the above items. Sometimes you are lucky and if not you should still end up with Deaths Guard and Hand.

Edit pwned by Grape

Id all rings and amulets, you might find that +mana and ML or LL ring or ammy. That is all you need for the barb
Sorc pray for +mana items. try to get a 3 soc shield with diamonds for protection

Try also to shop a spear weapon at Fara with 30 damage with PMH
Try to get any MF on the levelling characters and hope for a lucky drop as you go.

With the Sorc to save points I looked War Staves with one, few or all of +GS, +Tele and +FW . GS is good for Canyon of Magi Maggots after static.

If you can cube up some Sapphires and put them in a helm or body armour as gem armour as no lvl requirements even Pgem armours but the gems give lower stats than in later patches

Then if you hit the Maggot Lair I levelled the Barb and Sorc on small maggots L3. Then used the Necro to clear the Staff of Kings chamber after saving a stash of Mana potions. The party gained a lot of XP

Then just sheer single mindedness. It is slow but don't give up


Other news I had the invulnerable attacking vulture bug happened a few times through A3 Hell. I think this was an older bug that probably seen lots before but I had never experienced before only playing newer versions of DII
So the game got a vulture confused between walking and flying. The vulture walks in the flying position and can attack you but you cannot hit it. These are extremely dangerous

See the screenie below and notice the vulture position to its shadow on the ground. The damage the barb received was from this one vulture

View attachment 5257

For me tonight I will advance the group to City of Damned WP and kill Izzy quest GL to all

Not sure if it's the same bug, but while running arcane sanctuary in 1.07 recently I run into the same issues with ghosts. They get "stuck" on my merc and ALMOST die (static field and FOrb) but refuse to take anymore damage until I tele away and let them move or something. I haven't figured out all the details.

@helvete @BKC @TedDeeBoy Tanks for your reply! (Sorry about the late reply, I am not spending much time on these forums atm.)

How do you guys run the game in fullscreen mode? I get the DirectDraw Error 22 And Svend's Glidewrapper don't work for 1.00, I guess..?

It is a daunting task!!

So the sorc is 25 and the barb is 23, i got a really nice blue drop staff +2 firewall +28 mana some nice set and uniques:

Clegclaw's sword
Duriel dropped me a Bonesnap
Black tongue sword from LK
Gull dagger (WOOHOO) from alkor yes that is a gamble!

Been farming the young in a2 and i did all the tombs. And i moved through a3 up till upper kurrast (got the parts, so i am ready to face travincal and meph) however i decided to run some LK I hope to drop a set of Frostburns. and ofcourse a spectral shard would be nice!

@NamelessPenguin i do run sven's and its is running smooth for me. However i play full screen with my main and windowed for the tag along party.

@helvete is there a reason not to pick blizz over orb? I hate the 1 point skills

@BKC Ok, cool, I will try the wrapper One more question: How do you run multiple instances? n00b alert, I know..

Orb is better for stationary targets, but I didn't actually test blizzard, just went with orb out of nostalgia.

is orb not broken like it is in 1.07?

It's broken, but enemies seem to have way less HP, so after static has done its job, enemies fall pretty quickly. Larger area of effect as well, if used correctly.

I am not a DII coding expert but I think the Vulture bug is a separate from the ghost bug but the effect is the same.
With the vulture bug, the vultures do not seem unglitch themselves even after when teleing away. The vulture just chases you around When I get some more characters to Act 3 Hell and and this happens again I'll try to CE kill it with the Necro. Also I think this was fixed in later patches because I have not seen at in the bit of 1.07 I played and definitely not 1.10 final or later

@BKC and @NamelessPenguin +1 for Sven's Wrapper as well . When I multi play I am switching between chars lots so I just use windowed mode all of the time and accept that occasionally I will die after clicking after that foreground window. If I were play single player in hell I would try going well full screen mode. @NamelessPenguin did you get FearedBliss' version swicther. I should contain the modified .dll to run multiple instances if IRC

@BKC I also have 3 Cold Sorcs in Hell, 2 are Blizzard/Orb builds, I use Orb as mentioned by Helvete and Blizz for moving melee monsters especially Maggots. I did some leveling Sorc in the RoF on a Hell p8 game after clearing the other monsters with the Barb and it was decent experience. I used only 16+ Blizzard with an 11+ CM plus a L14 SF after + skills with the freezing from GS. I use teleport to lure monsters to the stacked Blizzards each Blizz is lasting about 20+ seconds in Hell. Now the 2 Blizz/Orb are little bit experimental because if you spend 20 Blizz and Orb it means you cant max all SF and Warmth and CM then have hard pts for ES. I think I will go with a lower Warmth and Max Static at this stage once I am done with maggots. Also the game play is lot back and forth teleport so for players game play style often is a deciding factor for your char build

I use windowed mode but I also lock the mouse ("mouse capture") into the main window I use. When MPing, I just make sure the other windows don't do so

Yesterday I had an interesting De Seis game crash in a multi player game on just one of my characters

So I had 2 Sorcs and a Barb in the lvlling game I used to Lvl in RoF . Decided I wanted to move on in the next session, I so had cleared out (slowly) the CS, activated the first seal boss,De Seis. Then I killed him (slowly) with one of the Sorcs in a non party game. I know he was dead because 1) His drop is on the ground and 2) The conviction aura under my Sorc feet was gone. So there were 4 potions on the ground together about in the same spot the Sorc was standing when fighting De Seis. I think these came from my belt. I waited about 10 seconds then I went to pick up one of the potions and boom, game crash. De Seis is not even in the game yet the game crash still happened. I checked the party log and it said "OrbtressIOO was disconnected to due timeout" or something like that. The good news was this only the affected the joined char and the host game continued uninterrupted. OrbtressIOO rejoined OK.

Weird so if you are playing SP , watch for that bug and maybe leave healing potions on the ground that were thieved
I did not think to try starting her own SP game, I will need to check it tonight to see if the game crash corrupted her file.

Easy answer there the Bliss version switcher has a modified .dll ready for you sir



How... i have been screaming and yelling at my PC this weekend you do not even want to know! (hitting right mouseclick outside the frame accidentally starting my AMD graphics setup that way GRRRRRRRRRRRRR and ofcourse dying because of it!

Blizzard removed thief because it was buggy. It can crash when using certain skills such as whirlwind. Best kill him with a standard attack then leave the area. I'd kill him last as well.

Edit: there is also a modified dll to keep it from minimizing when doing MP

It is an option within the wrapper.

Yes, and I believe to get it to work only for one window I add the -w tag to the other instances (as well as -ns) that usually contain just my mules. For whatever reason, the -w tag cancels it.

I also have it set to windowed IN the wrapper, as well. For my main window, I don't use -w
View attachment 5280

The problem with this is that afaik you can't move your main window around. It will be stuck in the top left corner (for me). You can move the other windows around and I typically just put them all under the main one (they minimize when you click out of them anyway)

 

[Albatross]

@pharphis and @helvete

When you say the mouse capture the main window is that host of the multi player game or the "rushing" character

I don't use window mode, but I have two monitors, so it's still necessary for me to capture mouse.

The rushing character, since I want to be able to tele safely or just merely be able to click wherever without any risk. I always play with mouse capture except for the mules/rushees

Tele is what got me screaming last weekend so i definitely going to find this feature in the wrapper thanks guys!

I'm now at the Canyon of The Magi. Barb and Sorc are level 25 & 24 respectively. I found a 4 life leech amulet, which helps a lot. Gear is still poor though.

I will probably add another level or two to the sorc before going for Duriel. Static and warmth both at 9, one in the rest.

The rest of my team hardly level at all if parked in the canyon. Do we have a list of area levels for classic?

this i have the same thing. Or is the level gains in a4 insane?

Just bring them all with you to act IV hell, and park them in the RoFl while killing the endless supply of zergs there.

Area level is of little to no importance, as monster levels aren't based on them until patch 1.10 and no area is lvl 90+ which means no +2 class amulets from chests.

Thanks for the info pharphis and Helvete

@maxicek What amount leech items do you have?

When I studied the tables of item lvl affixes in the TT guide, Lvl 6 is the what you need to aim for to find leech items. I guessed the monsters in Black Marsh were about Lvl6 and maybe a good source of low level leech amulet and rings . I found those blood hawks that come from nests good for rings and amulets. I got the main sorc a socketed helm and armour with about 30 to 40 MF depending on your gem luck, then killed on players 4 in the Black Marsh. If the sorc is lvl 25 she should have access to GS and Blizz by now and that will speed up killing
I ran it 3 times and found a +7 mana, 7ML ring, an 6LL amulet and same plain ML and LL rings enough to get me to Normal Act4 when gambling is possible. This did stop the levelling process for about an hour or so however I did not worry about restarting a new hosted game

Thanks for the tip, maybe I will have to back track to the Marsh for a bit. My only leech so far is the 4LL amulet. I need to shop a pike in A3.

I killed Duriel last night, just got the Jade figurine in A3. I am thinking to get to Trav with just the sorc and barb, then bring the rest of the party in for the council and Meph.

Be sure to get the Gidbinn, as those low lvl rare rings spawn with high leech and low lvl req pretty darn often. Bring entire party before turning it over, ofc.

Managed to push through to the River of Flame. Barb is now 29, Sorc 27.

I shopped a Massive Pike of Swiftness, which is quite useful. Unfortunately I found out the way items are equipped when you die in 1.00 is different to later versions. I got swarmed at the RoF waypoint and had to restart the game.

Unfortunately not all my items were on the body when I made a new game. In fact only the Pike. The armour was nothing special, but thanks to Helvete's tip above I had a couple of useful rings, now gone.

Hopefully I will hit 30 tonight and finally get to Whirlwind!

How much mana leech do I need when I start WW? Probably with a 3os Pike to start with.

I really miss jewels and charms in the early game. A few mana charms would be priceless. Resists are much tougher without being able to socket a cheap rune of jewel.

Also didn't realise that the 3 small rejuves to one big one does not work! That was a shocker when I got the cube!

I would say the levelling to 30 is the toughest I have played so far. Definitely harder than 1.07 - No MPK rings, rejuv trick, charms etc.

totally with @maxicek here! Levelling in 1.00 until 30 is really really hard.

Small update:

the sorc hit 32 and the barb is 29. I did some RoF runs (great exp there considering all the other places) all in normal ofcourse. After hitting 29 with the sorc i decided to move the whole gang to nightmare. So i got 5 chars in NM at the moment (3 mules 1 sorc and 1 barb) i got some decent rings from ormus which really helped the sorc.

Did some normal cow runs and using a 3 pointer FO + 1 point CM and that is really a blast (in both NM as at the cows). One or two orbs and they all melt away (litteraly!) i am happy that i went the FO route as it is a better killer in my opinion than blizzard is in 1.00.

However my other sorc will be a blizzard sorc and i am thinking about making a fireball hybrid with something. And i will make a hammerdin (more on that later!)

Diablo dropped me a tanner gerrod (yup) and a yellow pike next to it (yup) the 90 seconds to pick up all the stuff was merely enough (mules are pretty much full i was happy that i had a necro there with nothing in stash!!)

Off to NM where i saved deckard for both the sorc as the barb. I am playing MP games but i am soloing everything with my sorc until i hit a place where i move over to a new act or move over to an important part of the game (ormus rings, charsi imbue etc). As soon as i hit that i will move in the whole gang!

Most noteable finds:
+3 glacial spike staff
+1 barb skills yellow pike
Tanner gerrod
Arcanna's staff
White devine scepter with +2BH +1 to concentration (this can get better i know but i am hanging on this one for now!) the level 18 req makes it a very very nice hammerdin weapon!

I still am not sure how that i have one item in stash so one other item cannot be that item thing works in 1.00 i have 3 or 4 arctic bows so far! And i litterally found a bazillion war staves at the RoF from the maggots (plated belts, bone shields an war staf was all that dropped). The staves did good for my gold that is for sure

I like this game however i do miss the charms and runes and early tweaking options we have in later versions

Only applies to uniques; sets are more common even than rares.

About the yellow pike, if it has any enhanced damage or leech, you should have a decent durability questing weapon right there.

My tip for you who just made 30: Go kill the Cow King in normal over and over again, and keep equipping the uniques he drops. Get your mules in there and keep every unique. Before long, you'll get a LOT of rares with quintuple durability. Of course, don't bring your SoJ(s) at first, as you'll want a few.

this is the pike that dropped next to tanner
View attachment 5343

Huh...I'da thought it'd have 5x dura... still, nice toothpick!

WoRG

yeah considering the dura it is not a failed unique however i am still happy to poke this into nightmare creatures

Act boss drops don't work the same way as cow king then. I had suspected this, but never tested it.

Finished Normal last night. Cow King next. Diablo dropped some useful rates, the best was a 5% Mana Leech, +52 Mana rare ring. Barb is much stronger now and has a reasonable mana pool to keep whirling.



Are you saying I should run the Normal Cow King in multi player all the time?

I'm still not sure I understand Treeharls guide, hopefully it will become clearer as I do more runs.

@maxicek

you open the game first in a multi player, and check the map. If the map is worth running or at least trying again, let the multi player game running but leave with Barb (or whoever is the King runner). Now Barb will have the same map when doing single player games, and can visit the multi game for some muling sessions. Map was not good? Start a new multi player game. It is also a good idea to open the multi player game's portal next to Gheed, so you can also do some little gambling between running. With your level, you're able to start gambling some of the very best rares already!

That ring will help for sure. My biggest problem at first with the Cow King was mana and leech because the damage with normal Pike wasn't that great yet. With some more ML it became bearable, and when my first rare Pike dropped everything was really easy.

Congrats on beating the normal, that is indeed quite a grind!

Thanks Grape, that is much clearer!

 

[Albatross]

I'd only keep the map if it's really great (short distance to tristram and short distance to king). Else, keep doing the multi games. Before long, you'll have one of each unique he can drop (even war staff, great axe, etc). When he then tries to drop those uniques again, he'll fail, produce a 5x dura rare, and try up to four more times, resulting in 5 rares every 3-4 runs. Which can produce a LOT of rare plated belts, pikes, light plates, bone helms, greaves and the like. You should be able to get close to end game gear this way.

If you do find a great map, and the king regularly produces a pattern which goes something like "pike pike ring plated belt greaves", then by all means, run that map dry. Probably the most effective way of farming SoJs too.

and if king goes 1 blue, one yellow and the rest stamina potions? While you have all your uniques in game? keep trying?

Yeah, that's his rare drop. He always tries to force a quality for his entire drop except the one blue. I don't know the exact figures, but it's something like 30/10/60 unique/set/rare.

Forcing a rare is easy, and only fails in NM or Hell where he can drop a Great Pilum, the only possible base he can drop which can't be rare, only superior at best.

If he forces set, then that rarely fails either, as only a few of his drops would fail in Normal. Pikes and Great axes come to mind as having no set version. However, as sets aren't limited to one each game, a set drop failing on all five tries would be extremely unlikely in Normal.

Forcing unique is the key exploit. Items worn on character and items in inventory/cube/stash *at the time of item generation, which in this case is when the king dies* will flag as already dropped. So if you have them all, or all except for SoJ, then his drop will fail five times, resulting in five rares, or it will fail until one of his five attemts result in a SoJ. This happens approximately 30% of the time. You'll really want that 5x durability on your weapon when you start WWing a lot.

look at this thing of beauty....
View attachment 5357

Edit: Found waaaay more including:

The ward
Heavenly garb
steeldriver
Undead crown
Silks of the victor

a few failed uniques and an even better staff

Yes things are dropping

The uniques can be anywhere in game I assume? So if I bring the mules in, do I need to party them?

they can be anywhere and do not need to party sir

Thanks BKC. I have a few uniques now, starting to mount up.

Are FCR & FHR breakpoints the same as in LoD? I know the items do not list numbers, but I assume Apprentice = 10FCR, Magus = 20 FCR still.

At least when you gamble, you need to have uniques on or in gambler's stash/inventory. I was thinking it was the same when killing Cow King.

Besides, you are killing them in single player games with the desired map anyway. They will actually soon take most of your stash/inventory space. I think @helvete recommended earlier to wear most of them by yourself -- barb will kill just fine that way.

I suppose the Apprentice and Magus would mean the same, but I recall the breakpoints being somehow different?

Breakpoints are different, yes. Uniques can't be *anywhere*, they need to be in someones inventory. NOT on the ground, and if you bring in a mule, then exit it again, then its items will NOT count as spawned.

Aaah not on the ground figured something like that now that i have 2 doomslingers

Hit 30 on the barb and with the pike i already found earlier i am whirling like a little baby through the cows. Nothing worth mentioning other then repairing an ancient armor hurts the gold pool!!!

When away from a week so much is missed. @BKC and Maxi, great work getting through to 30s. @maxicek , that rare +mana and leech ring is end game worthly. So much easier to get them to high 30s killing in MP games . The cow king is very good but some end of game come running the Normal CS like this

View attachment 5387

So not as much time for DII last over the last 2 weeks as I would like but enough time to finally use the finished 24 imbue quests i collected. I also have a mule just collecting grim wands from Normal act 4 running for the purpose . The prize is to find a stick with 2 or more of following mods, +2 Necro skills, 20 FCR, +mana or +res. For this you need to have toons over lvl 40 but less than lvl 70 when you imbue so you don't get the replenish life mod. I had levelled many of mine up to 60 and got carried away a bit

Spoiler: The imbue results

3rd run up - this was close

View attachment 5388

just missing FCR

2nd runner up, splitting hairs really, one better away from winner, one of sorcs is using that now

View attachment 5389

1st runner up - again very good - looks good on the Necro. Nice stick actually and awesome name too

View attachment 5390

winner 3 categories covered - but not as useful currently as Havoc Smasher for the Necro currently

View attachment 5391

These were the only 4 worth keeping. The rest of the wands were Charsied. It was totally worth spending time collecting the quests and wands. I think my imbues were on the lucky side though. May be the 1.00 veterans may have some thoughts on this. Now I really don't need to hunt Ume's at all

My necro now has +3 skills which is very good in 1.00 for hell. That allows the Necro to mule around a respectable 163MF for area clears on his other gear and save from pts on the curses.

I still have 6 imbue quests from chars lvls 31 and 33 on the gambling mules which I still save for a sharkskin belts and demonhide sashes.

Next continue to level all of the original 8 to 70+ in the Hell RoF and find those belts

Okay Okay Okay,

I know there can be a lot better most likely (at least tri-res) but i really like these failed uniques:

View attachment 5392

Yep, those are pretty good. 10% more FHR than in LoD, and you can see the potential for 49% single resists. The life could in theory be up to 19 str as well, or even 119% goldfind, but GL finding boots this good in LoD.

Got my first SoJ from the Cow King last night. Uniques are slowly filling up, I'm still looking for the Pike though.

Item spam is really annoying, so much junk gets dropped.

Is there a full list of Normal Cow King unique drops? Just curious how many I need to find.

Edit: Found it in the image in Treeharl's guide. Shame it is not as text.

@BKC those boots are amazing. Best FHR/FRW combo I have found so far is FHR, Faster RW (20%), FR 25, CR 16, + 1 Dex and I have gambled hundreds of boots, and ran the normal CK lots

@helvete, the competition is often Nat's boots, or Treks in the latter patches. So any boots do need those stats, fhr, 30 FRW, and Res to beat those

@maxicek, once you have most of the CK uniques, sometimes the Cow level can drop the occasional useful unique. Curious if you have found Iceblink or Twitchthroe yet, as I did find these as well. These don't drop from the CK but found from normal Cows with some MF and luck

My last week of 1.00 action played on and off was spent leveling 5 Sorcs in the RoF from between 63 to 74. Got 3 them at lvl 71 one at 72 and one at 73. Started on the lvl 63 one, then partied her once she got to 67 with her to catch up with the others. In a 8 player game maggot farming it is taking about an hour to level all them one level currently when partied. Some of the builds are more difficult to lvl. eg Hydra, Enchant build 1.00 build and nova, SF build are just leeching XP in Hell. Just using the blizz/orb/SF builds and twink on as much FCR,+skills and mana as I fit with gear. I have low and negative resistances while maggot farming

Current setup
Rare Wand, 20 FCR, +21 Mana, 21 PoiRes
Tarnhelm (+1 Skills)
Rare Ammy, +1 Sorc, +1 Ama, +36 life, +12 FR, Replenish Life +5, +51 GF
SoJ
Rare ring +36 Mana,+25 Life, 36 CR, +1, Dex, 12 MF
Sigon's Shield
Rare field plate , PLR 75%, 23 CR, 22 FR, 17 LR, +53 Life
rare Belt +99 GF, FR 19, PoiR 13, +5 life, Attacker dam of 2
Tearhanch
Frostburns

Probably could squeeze another SoJ on this setup but not sure if it will add to much to kill power/speed if the increased mana pool

In each game, the necro clears Act 4 to the RoF, then a Barb clears non Maggot adults and the first small section part of the CS and the the maggot farming can start so the 2 Barb and Necro are gaining lvls also.

So I've decided to quit putting it off and finally do a 1.00 playthrough. But there's a twist: the game is set (modded) to players 8 and is unchangeable. So if it gets too hard, then there won't be anything to do about it! Getting through hell is going to be a helluva challenge. I went with a sorceress, in order to make use of Static Field. I might go Hydra/Orb since there ain't a delay. I've managed to get to the stony field so far. Blood Raven wasn't that bad, but the Rashankshu pack nearly had me. I had to use all my rejuvs. Wow, this brings back some memories, I haven't touched CD2 since 2005ish.

The game has glitchy colors and I have to run it in Direct2D (and kill explorer.exe) anyone else have this issue??

Blood Raven was recruited by her own army...

good luck with that @GalaXyHaXz i am really curious how the vultures will be

@BKC Duriel and Hephasto are going to be pals

Ok I figured out why the game won't run in Direct3D. This issue affects versions 1.00-1.02. From the 1.03 patch notes:

- In 3dfx/Glide mode, colors are not as washed out and cinematics
  look better.

This can be fixed by using the D2Direct3D.dll from 1.03 (and 1.03 only). The game will now run on modern computers. As usual, here is the essential fixer pack (No-CD, CPU bug fix, multiple windows). I've included the D2Direct3D.dll from 1.03 as well, if you can't get the game to run. Click

I'll do the right up later, but for now here is some interesting tidbits regarding broken drops in 1.00:
So I was looking at the code in 1.06 to see what all was changed. Along with maggot young XP getting nerfed, the "upgrade" types for some base items were fixed. You can get a Lance drop in 1.00, however, it will "fail" and change into a different item. Unlike in LoD, exceptional items are not in the TC but rather a % chance that a normal drop will be upgraded. There is a 25% chance an item will upgrade to it's exceptional version, but due to typos some items are given the wrong code. This was fixed in 1.04 to allow some items to drop.

The following base types are upgraded incorrectly. So if you get a great pilum drop, there is a 50% chance it was supposed to be a lance.
Bone Helm -> Winged Helm (instead of Grim Helm)
Grand Scepter -> Tusk Sword (instead of Holy Water Sprinkler)
Maul -> Flanged Mace (instead of War Club)
Pike -> Great Pilum (instead of Lance)
Blade -> Not specified in TC table at all

 

[Albatross]

Actually, when you get those from the cow king (winged helm and great pilum) there is a 100% chance they were supposed to be grim helms and lances, as he can't even drop great helms and pilums =)

Do I think I have all the normal uniques now, except the one I'm really after - the damn Pike.

I have 2x SoJ from The Cow King too, and Iceblink.

More runs tonight.

The pike in itself isn't very good, but is sadly needed when looking for the 125dura ones which makes repairing so much more bearable.

Iceblink is a nice find; it can't drop from the king himself. Awesome for mitigating damage taken when running cows, and very handy for questing/maggot leveling.

I've found several pikes got a 175 dmg 125 dura one last night and one SoJ. But no ice blink... Are rushers with bosses better for getting that then cows?

Got mine from cows, but that was sheer luck. Only ever got one. However, I've been wearing it a lot.

i got mine from diablo (see earlier posts) and then lost it in a muling incident (sadface)

Racking one might be a viable option. Unique odds are 1:600 I believe. I'll try when I get to NM.

Ouch BKC... Hopefully the game will cough up another!

not yet it did a cough up a lot of other usefull stuff like frostburns, the unique staff etc

I got iceblink on my first gamble in both 1.00 and 1.06b.

Third SoJ, still no Pike. Item spam is really annoying. The SoJ was nearly missed, buried under tons of potions. Maybe the Pike has dropped already, but I missed it. Short names are more difficult to spot.

I may start NM for a break next week. Or hit 1.07 / 1.13 Trav. Depends what the weekend brings.

Are you reusing the same map? If so, try changing it, or allow the king to move to some other spot on your current one.

i always pull him out of the pack (kill the pack first)

Arrr racking odds are actually 1:1000 (just like 1.07). So that's a waste of time. Gambling works great though. Maggot leveled all the way to 70's. Hope that lasts until 84. Then I'm off to 06 for that GG lance!

P.S. I gambled before the Seis pack and save and exited (had to restart chaos again). I didn't wan't to risk the game crashing.

I'm playing in multiplayer games with all my uniques in, as you recommended.

I'm not sure I get Treeharl's guide though. Is this correct?
- I run in MP games until the Cow King drops a Pike
- If I then run the same map in SP he will keep dropping Pikes
- Eventually he will do his Unique drop and give me a unique Pike
- After that I put it in inventory and hit him again

I was actually two Uniques short, but now I have them all except the one I need....

Well, even if the drop is truncated heavily, it isn't limited to one item type per map. However, if you get a pike in your MP game, the chance is very good for you to keep getting more in SP games. However, you won't be able to bring all the uniques (lack of space) so you run the risk of getting a repeating crossbow every four runs, which you don't want to pick up because the next item in that pattern is a war staff or something else you aren't interested in.

However, the method you describe is essentially correct, and works for any unique he is able to drop.

The Cow King seems to work an awful lot like a rack. The path you take, and the location you kill the king seems to impact his drops. I had a map where one path luring him out of the pen always gave a Pike, Mask, and Crossbow. But killing him in the pen nets a Ring/Crossbow. I wouldn't bother with MP. Just do single runs until you get a Pike. They drop pretty frequently.

MP games are mostly for keeping ALL of his uniques, so that any unique drop (around 30% I think) will net five rares, or x rares plus the unique you're looking for.

However, with a mostly clean stash and inventory, one can just keep the "key" ones on the runner, and get a decent success rate for five rares. This gets a tad easier with NM and hell games, since there are no exceptional uniques.

What would you say were the key ones?

4 SoJs now, so I'm keeping it in the stash to farm rares.

I also get "disconnected" periodically when I S&E, resulting in no save. Anyone else get that, or is it just me?

Key ones depend on map. If you constantly find a unique Long War Bow, even though you don't want bows whatsoever, it will be necessary to keep one in stash or inventory if the pattern goes: Long War Bow -> Ring -> Pike -> Pike -> Greaves (or something similar with regards to useful base items).

Only applies to single player (static map) though.

As mentioned, the Cow King works a little like a rack, in the regard that where he is, and what other monsters have spawned is a key part in determining what he drops. Killing him in the exact same spot, and taking the exact same route to that spot, will result in very limited amount of patterns, which again can be exploited.

I haven't had trouble with that disconnect bug, but I have heard of it before. Solution could be to do more SP and less self-MP as soon as your rare mules have decent rares for each slot, and you start hunting those really specific rares like the big pikes, closest to perfect boots, prismatic dual leech rings, etc.

@maxicek have a read through this thread, which might clear up a few things:
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/cow-king-v1-00-drops-are-truncated.933863/

Yes I have had a similar issue happen to me. It only seems to happen in 1.00 (not 1.06 or later). Whenever I went into MP to mule, the game crashed on one instance. The other disconnected. Thankfully nothing was lost or duped.

Not sure what the options are to prevent this. The only decent program for D2C is Jamella, and it's a character editor as well. But that could be a way to mule.

Difficulty Bug: I was rushing a barb with my sorc to Act 4 for maggot leveling. My sorc had beaten Normal and was able to go to nightmare. But after I exited out of the TCP game, the sorc lost her ability to go to nightmare. I think the quest state from the mule bugged my sorc so she was stuck on normal. Now, to fix this, I found a (non-FAM?) way using Jamella:
1) Backup character to be safe and open in Jamella
2) Select character stats page
3) Change max difficulty back to the way it was before the game bugged (N, NM, H, H Done)
4) Save and if it didn't fix it restore backup

@helvete The drops in Classic are really linear I've noticed. When taking the same path and killing the same monsters in every game, they usually drop the exact same items. This happens to me for uniques, regular, council members, etc. To bad this isn't the case in LoD!

 

[Albatross]

Finally got the unique Pike last night. Now hopefully I don't have to wait so long for a 5x durability version!

Bad news I lost the Iceblink due to the error above. I muled it on to try against cows and got a disconnected at S&E

Aw, that's bad news. However, as soon as you have a reasonably comfortable life pool, use one of the three unique armors the king can drop. The Light Plate, maybe, as it requires the least str and has no run/walk penalty. The more of the stuff he can drop you already have, the more rares you'll get in the long run.

I've noticed the disconnect bug seems to be random. It happens when you hover the mouse over the host player with a client player. Not sure how different it is for you. But it maybe a good idea to backup even before local muling. On the other hand a few sources of cold damage is almost as good as iceblink.

Seeing this thread has inspired me to play 1.00. I played 1.03 quite a lot a few years ago simply because those were the oldest install disks I had at the time but I acquired some 1.00 disks awhile back and forgot about them. The only computer I have that can run 1.00 is an old G4 Powermac, though. So I'm working on setting up two of them so I can literally multibox and have a mule ingame over tcp/ip.

Thinking about starting with a blood golem/iron maiden/corpse explosion necro, simply because I've never played such a build and it seems really broken and fun.

Since I'll be playing with 2 characters in-game, anyone have any knowledge of what the level gains will be like? My experience with straight-SP in 1.03 was that I was about level 40-45 by act 4 hell. How much of an increase will I gain by having another player in the game while leveling?

I look forward to running the cow king!

I don't know anything about mac, but with the Bliss version switcher pack, no disks are needed anymore, as long as you have a legit D2 to begin with. Sven's Glide Wrapper is more or less a must to get it to run well, at least for me.

I really like howl for this. Killing the pack takes time and litters the ground with other drops. A few levels in howl scatters all except the king and you can get him in the spot you want, kill and loot in peace.

Next stop Nightmare.
View attachment 5542
Leech would have been nice, but you can't argue with the damage.

that's a lot of cows

Not bad at all. Seems to be hard to find a leech one though. Isn't 187 the max damage (63+198%)? Either way, this pike seems to work just fine all the way through hell. Can't say that about LoD.

Can still get +max, so around 200 should be the absolute max. Anything 150+ max dmg with 125 dura will work well, though. There are other sources of leech, and mana is insta-refill with very little % leech.

I estimate that I found about 10-12 rare pikes, only two had leech of any sort.

How much mana leech do you think I need to aim for? I only have one point in WW so far, currently pumping BO

If you pump WW last, 5% ML should suffice. High lvl ww takes quite the toll on your mana pool, so having a good lvl BO first is wise. However, BO has diminishing returns, so maybe not max it at first. Get it to a decent percentage, then put enough points in WW that it no longer has a damage penalty.

I put 9 points into BO then maxed WW. Even without BO just 3% leech is enough. Hand of Broc is all you need. Rest of gear can be life leech. It works so well because there isn't any leech penalties. 20% of 1k damage with WW hitting twice? Immortal King is proud.

View attachment 5550
More drop patterns like this plz.... This is NM, using a sword/shield barb. Kinda wish I'd gone for mace mastery; that would allow me to use Ironstone as weapon, eliminating another unique.... Hmmm... Maybe I need to create one, if only for runs in normal.....

EDIT: Or just make a really high lvl sorc, as to make equipment irrelevant. Then she'd use Cow King unique drops in every gear slot....

I feel the difference in killing speed between a pike and a unique like ironstone and the greater amount of runs you can do per hour is probably worth the tradeoff in not blocking an extra unique.

Perhaps. I'm using Executioner Sword with shield at the moment, and for NM that's more than sufficient. For hell, probably not so much. Then again, the chance to upgrade items to exceptional is much greater in hell, so less "blocking" uniques should be necessary. The biggest difference would be in normal, where exceptional items don't drop. Far greater chance of getting plated belts/greaves/bone helms/rings but missing out on the best damage for weapons, and prismatic rings.

Maybe do one just for normal cow king.

In either scenario, a lot of the run is spent in transit, not doing any killing. Maps with short distances is key. Maybe even with King pack by itself. I've found that Howl doesn't work very well when there are a lot of enemies tightly packed.

Ok so here's some bits regarding the TC system. First, all uniques/bosses are hardcoded. Unique monsters get one item from magical act TC (armor/weapon/misc) and one potion from act TC. Bosses all get ONE pick from their special boss TC and one potion/pick from the unique act TC. The first time you kill a boss, they will also get one more extra pick from their special TC with great chance of unique/rare/set.

The Cow King is an exception however... He drops one item/potion from his act TC but also gets up to 5 picks from Diablo's TC. On top of 8 stamina potions. Here is the entire table for Diablo's TC and Act 1/4 Unique TC. As you will see, amulets can drop from both sources but only under their act TC, which gets 1 pick. This is why they are so rare.

Diablo -> 1 Pick from "Diablo" and 1 Pick from "Act 4 Unique"
Diablo Quest -> Additional 1 Pick from "Diablo"
The Cow King -> 1-5 Picks from "Diablo" and 1 Pick from "Act 1 Unique"

Spoiler

* Diablo *
- Armor:
Ancient Armor
Bone Helm
Crown
Full Plate Mail
Gauntlets
Gothic Shield
Greaves
Light Plate
Mask
Plated Belt

- Weapons:
Giant Axe
Great Maul
Great Sword
Long War Bow
Pike
Repeating Crossbow
War Axe
War Hammer
War Scythe
War Staff
War Sword

- Misc:
Ring

* Act 1 Unique *
- Potion:
Minor Healing/Mana Potion

- Armor:
Boots
Buckler
Cap
Hard Leather Armor
Heavy Boots
Heavy Gloves
Helm
Large Shield
Leather Armor
Leather Gloves
Light Belt
Quilted Armor
Sash
Skull Cap
Small Shield
Studded Leather

- Weapons:
Axe
Bardiche
Club
Dagger
Dirk
Hand Axe
Hunter's Bow
Large Axe
Light Crossbow
Long Bow
Mace
Sabre
Scepter
Scimitar
Short Bow
Short Staff
Short Sword
Spear
Spiked Club
Trident
Two-Handed Sword
Wand

- Misc:
Ring
Amulet
Rejuvenation Potion
Book of Identify
Key
Book of Town Portal
Minor/Light/Regular Healing/Mana Potion

* Act 4 Unique *
- Potion:
Greater Healing/Mana Potion

- Armor:
Crown
Field Plate
Full Plate Mail
Gauntlets
Gothic Shield
Great Helm
Greaves
Light Plate
Plated Belt
Tower Shield

- Weapons:
Flail
Great Sword
Halberd
Long Battle Bow
Long War Bow
Maul
Pike
Repeating Crossbow
Two-Handed Sword
War Staff

- Misc:
Ring
Amulet
Full Rejuvenation Potion
Key
Super Healing/Mana Potion

How does this relate to players (partied?) in game? I'm pretty sure I've seen at least Diablo do some very fancy drops.

Great info, I'd love to see more in the future! We've been in short supply of code diggers for years now, ever since thrugg, dr. Tenshi and RTB left the scene. @onderduiker has been filling in, quite nicely, but has stated that he won't help with older patches.

(I think onderduiker does most of his stuff experimentally, rather than code digging.)

Now in A2 NM.

@helvete did you write a guide for 1.06? I'm interested in the differences with 1.00. My main interest in starting classic in the firtst place was getting great boots, although it has mainly become about the journey. Not sure what the best way to do this is?
Does the gambling screen refresh properly in 1.06?

Most obvious differences are listed in the patch.txt. I wrote a guide, but it was solely about cubing rare amulets. The differences I care the most about is that in 1.06
- WW is nerfed
- Lances CAN drop
- Cow King can't be rerun
- All monsters no longer give exp (maggots, eggz, etc)
- 6pskull recipe works, and always gives ilvl 99

 

[Albatross]

So, I started a necromancer in 1.00 last week. I'm now at the outer cloister in nightmare at level 27. And I have to say, blood golem/iron maiden/corpse explosion is a really fun combination of game-breaking fun and slight challenge (in areas with many ranged attackers/monsters that cast spells). I ran the cow level in normal a few times as well, (about 20 so far) and already managed to get magefist (from a regular cow), the ward, and a bladebuckle as well as some decent rares. I'm in the process of rerolling the map now to get a good one.

The only real trouble came from the fight with Diablo, but even that only took about 15 minutes of cursing him with IM and recasting the golem a lot. I'm a bit worried that the Diablo fight will be vastly more difficult in nightmare and hell, but by then I should be able to invest some points into revive.

The rare light plate that Diablo dropped was actually alright and I decided to wear it.

edit: right after I made this post, I fired up 1.00, did a cow run, and got a heavenly garb! hopefully the mana regeneration will help. +10 all res is nice too.

The gambling window works the same way in 1.06 as it does in 1.00

Oh, that's annoying. Gheed and a Cow Portal then.

On the plus side, it doesn't look like I need to start another version.

And here we are with a nice complete affix table for 1.00-1.06. You can view the PDF online HERE or download it from my mediafire.

@helvete I cleaned up the table I had sent you. This one is better for releasing alongside the guide.

Thanks! No real surprises there, but very nice to have. Is the chance to select each affix equal to number of possible affixes, or are they weighed in some way?

Nope! What's makes it all special is that there is no rarity category. Everything has an equal chance of spawning provided the right ilvl and itype. Some affixes will only spawn the better version on higher level items though.

So, i decided to stop normal cows for a bit after I found a wormskull and frostburn. Got through to act 4 nm, lvl 33. Put one point in revive, which is at lvl3 now due to the wormskull and a plain +1 necro ammy i found. And after using revive a bit i found i really do not like the skill. So, I end up using it only in risky situations and boss fights that would otherwise take a long time to get through, such as the Izual fight.

I'm having a lot of fun with this so far.

Attached are some rares i've found, an "action" shot of my character waiting for Izual to die, and the character screen.

@Barl awesome that you started 1.00 . Good work with getting that stuff

Interested to hear how many players are in your games with Bloodbag. With my Necro in I use a 4 player from early NM ito hell and he levels about oked but I stop pick up everything worth decent gold. A tarnhelm can help with MFing and gold collection while lvling and free up the wormskull for a barb if if plan other characters. Also a WW Barb is useful to kill monsters than are slow but necessary for the necro (Izual)

I'm playing strictly single player. I don't own a modern Windows computer so multiboxing isn't really possible for me. I've been gambling for a Tarnhelm but haven't gotten one yet. I'm getting ready for another update post soon.

I have updated the affix table, you can download it using the previous link. I fixed several typos and cleared up some definitions to make it easier to understand. I'm beginning to feel like blizzard now releasing all these broken things.

Now there is info about the "n-1" bug and which affixes are effected by it.

Also, you can view the table online HERE
This website is better than the last one.

Link is kinda broke, but the pdf itself is a masterpiece! Exactly the type of info one needs when trying to figure where to get a specific rare, and if it is even possible.

Thanks for informing me. I wanted to move away from ScribD since it's becoming a money-hungry monster. The links have been updated with a free site that lets you download or view it online.

Edit:
Information regarding rare items morphing

So why do rare items change stats if directly brought forward? Well, pre-Lod before 1.07, rare items did not save their stats on the item. Instead, every time you made a game, the game would generate the stats based on the item's fingerprint. Up to patch 1.09, rare items will generate their affixes from the "Classic" affix pool. In 1.10+ however, rare items will generate their affixes from the new affix pool.

Thus, you can forward a rare item to 1.07/1.08/1.09, the game will generate the right stats and actually save them on the item. Then when brought to 1.10, it will retain them. I thought this was interesting, and it explains why "Jamella" character editor has to brute force rare items. It can let you bruteforce different rare seeds to see if an item is possible.

So, I've made it to act 3 hell. Though, I've taken to calling it "heck" difficulty because I had forgotten about the changes in 1.10 (?) that made hell much more difficult. So, by comparison, this is much easier and therefore more like heck than hell.

I found my second soj ever, too. Last weekend, i set aside some time and in about an hour I was able to roll a good map for normal cows, get nagelring and manald heal, and then the soj!

I've also attached some images of some of the gear I've been using, including a +3 corpse explosion wand that I've been using for pretty much the entire game.

Endugu was basically unkillable so I had to lure him away then run past him to get what he was guarding.

Also, I discovered an interesting bug. When you open the skill speed bar, while hovering over a monster, the name and health bar disappear but their attributes are still shown. Shown here with some unique monster.

I'm not sure if I ever shared this here, but, in 1.03 (and probably 1.00, I haven't made a sorc to check yet), there exists a bug with skills. In my example here, I equip a staff with +energy shield on a sorc that does not normally have that skill. I cast it, then remove the staff. When you hover over the skill in the skill speed book, the game crashes.

See here:

Weird bug.

Well, I got the cube and a much hurtier stick, now. I plan to get to canyon and then kill maggots for awhile but I have some questions:

1) If I want to level my mules, will them being 10 levels lower than me ruin this?
2) Does maggot young exp depend on player setting? If so, does it matter what p setting the area is when I initially join or can I clear the level then add my mules so that any new spawns give more exp?
3) What can I do with my cube and what should I do? Which gems should I cube up and which ones should I mule off?

Some other random questions: does prayer boost meditation aura passively? Cleansing? Is an enchantress worth considering to help boost my barb dps in nm/hell? I'm not sure how much ~23/23 would add to fire dmg.

Witchdoctor looks really mean in that photo. Not sure what the global res cap is, I think 95% or so. Interesting bugs also.

@pharphis
1) Not entirely sure about this one. Personally I power leveled each of my rushed toons doing inner cloister runs. Get them to at least level 23-25 before maggots.
2) Yes and yes. Maggot young and other spawned monsters get the current player setting.
3) Ask Deckard Cain. He's fascinated by it... xD On a serious note I'd save it for pdiamonds/topazs.

I think they need around lvl 12 before maggot leveling (off the eggs in maggot lair) becomes decent, probably more for canyon maggots.

As for gems, you'll want to focus all gem shrines on skulls (for 1.06 to cube rare amulets) and then cube yourself 3 pdiamond shield. After that, since there is no way to gain a socket in anything, gems should be sorted and muled off. They're all somewhat useful, except for flawed diamonds and amethysts, which has only one use: the rune upgrades in 1.10+

Enchantress should be unnecessary. Haven't checked the damage, but surely pitiful.

@pharphis and don't you mess around with Hephasto. That guy hits like a truck. I think it has been my only death so far (I stopped at NM RoF WP). Duriel is also one angry worm, take care.

I'm planning to do some rolling in 1.07 with all the chippies and flaweds. I noticed that norm cows dropped a lot of chipped gems, when I was not targeting only the King group... one of the fastest ways to farm those I suppose, but muling them is a bit of a hassle with such a limited space etc.

If it wasn't for the WSK tournament, I think I'd be back to 1.00 now. Maybe after that

Hell small maggots drop tons and tons of normal gems. Good for cubing skulls to flawless/perfect (good to keep some flawless ones in case of gem shrines) and very good for 1.07 stockpiling of craft supplies. Diamonds and amethysts could go to 1.10a for cubing, I suppose, so no gem is really wasted =)

I've reached canyon but now I've got to go back to level my other chars, somehow. Maybe Act 1? They're only around level 7 -_-
I'll try the outer cloister or something with all of them at the wp I guess.

At lvl 7 I believe clearing catacombs 2 might be the way to go. With all of them at WP.

 

[Albatross]

@pharphis

Good to see you trying 1.00
What characters have you started with in the 1.00 playthrough and what plans do you have for them?

Just to emphasize Helvete's point on enchant, I have an Enchantress/Hydra 1.00 sorc build experiment with 7 other characters and the enchant damage to only useful for early mid act 1 normal due the low base damage and no fire mastery bug. If I recall correctly the LCS gave me 37-40 fire damage for a lvl 26 enchant and the theoretical max lvls is 29, 28 with a +1 skill ammy and max other gear.

While this is ok for the den and cold plans I do not if this is faster just rushing the characters to act 4 hell and lvling in a MP game

Also I needed a leech ring, used level in the black marsh in a p5 game with some MF to find rings or ammys because they are so expensive to buy when you are start out before you get the gidbinn quest
.
@Barl
Bloodbag is taking shape, what are your build plans for skills after you finished adding skills pts to CE and IM

I have 2x sorc, 2x barb, pally and necro. Only really using the barb but will of course use the sorc eventually I'm sure.

Are you saying fire mastery doesn't boost enchant at all? If so, that sucks! I was thinking it would at least add a few hundred damage

Yep the damage is worse than I thought originally for a Lvl 26 enchant 32-35 12 min duration on a partied character. I have the screenie on a lvl 1 mule

The Enchantress is equipped with Culwen's Point, Tarnhelm, +1 Sorc Rare Ammy, SoJ, Magefist, Silks of the Victor, Bladebuckle, Tearhaunch.

+5 all skills, +1 fire skills,

She also has another Soj and Sigon's Shield lent to another character while she levels

max dam possible is 35 - 38 at lvl 29 in a partied character which would include a +2 Sorc ammy.

The Fire Mastery bonus is included in the LCS calc if that Sorc is enchanted

I made her a Hydra,ES Sorc after experimenting with Enchant. Hydra and SF can kill stuff but not efficiently like orb. But ok for normal and she will be just a char to rush normal characters and Hydra is for a change from Orb

Just had an awesome day just loading up some revives for a cow run with Necro and

View attachment 5645


That got more awesome after gambling all of the sales for the last weeks in one go and got
View attachment 5646

Number 4

View attachment 5648

However, a muling mistake meant that the ammy and another nice 5%ll, 100+ AR , 49%CR and 45% FR and some other gambled grailers such as eye of Etlich were lost as cyber dust and the day is now less than awesome, but good because the Ume's and SoJ were not lost

The toons lvled are on maggots 80-81, Necro made 77

@pharphis I am finding a pally weapon difficult to find so hopefully have some better luck

my pally is just an aura mule for now I don't plan to actually use it

So load him up with Sojs culwens Tarn sigons silks and a +1 Pally ammy and get a Level 27 concentration or might for the OHKOs before WW, or lvl 27 meditation for the Sorc, manas problems gone but relocating him could be a bit painful

So how much dex does my barb need? I've finally leveled everything enough to kill some canyon maggots (barb just reached 21) and it's annoying killing 1 target at a time and missing 20% of the time...

It says ~80% cth with 45 dex for lvl 21 monsters and the maggots are lvl 19... any idea ho high my cth is? Is it worth boosting dex further? Can't wait to get WW!

Oh, and is there any useful recipes I can use to reroll a pike I gambled into something else or?

@pharphis if I recall correctly the cube does very little in 1.00 compared to 1.06 or later. Gems, 3 rings and 3 ammys and quest items

If you can spare the gear and the chipped topazes, cube and create some MF armour and a helm and hope for a lucky rare to drop while lvling. Getting 50+MF is enough IMO and works on normal monsters

Also once you get a rare weapon it usually comes with AR which boosts the CTH a lot so try to avoid boosting dex too much. My L81 barb has str 80 , 60 dex vit 285 saved pts 75. If a godly rare ornate plate drops in hell, you need up to 170 str to equip it and still keep life over 2k after BO. Keep at it the first time around is slow but unavoidable without a lucky drop such as a rare poleaxe with leech and good damage which I got but it still took a long time with a single attack. Act 1 2 and 3 normal first time around is a grind

What weapon is the barb using at the moment?

I also lvled the sorc with 1 pt GS and 8 pts SF with 1pt wonders and the rest in warmth which was painful because of mana problems but getting blizz at 24 helps. Party the main barb only and find a quiet part of the Canyon for the rest of the toons. If the sorcs can find a mana shrine and well nearby that helps and wells regenerate super fast compared with later patches

If you don't mind turning one of the toons into a useless mule in hell I heard blaze or firewall with SF can also kill maggots in normal and is available because the maggots chase you everywhere. I also used a Nova SF sorc which was dangerous but killed ok. Again mana problems though. Keep in mind once the group gets to A4 hell, you can quickly create another toon to get the builds you want quickly. I just continued

my barb is just using a spetum with increased dmg and attack speed which is serviceable but if I can get a fast pike it should make a huge difference. I just want to kill huge crowds of maggots faster since it will be ages until I get WW. Maybe i'll run into a rare spetum or other spear that is better than what I currently have...

My barbarian was using Frenzy and 2xwar swords with like 15-30 damage each up until act 4 hell. Then, I painfully did maggots until 30 then got a pike to finish off Diablo. Frenzy is a quicker solution, but definitely level in normal!

@GalaXyHaXz maybe that is something to add to the guide for starting to lvl between 24 and 30. I used concentrate, with howl and taunt to break up the groups. A war sword should be easier to come by than a spetum. Death's sash and gloves is obtainable but you either end with the wrong weapon mastery for your main character at end game or sacrifice the use of weapon mastery for those lvls.

Did you lvl the barb in a MP game at all and what players setting did you play on while questing. L30 is quite low for Hell act 4

As it was only 6 lvls from 24 to 30 I used the Sorc to lvl at A4 normal maggots using SF, Blizz and GS and the barb become the XP leech until 30. I think act 2 and 3 took the longest but I quested in a 1 or 2 player MP game using the Barb so I could join the mules when needed to complete quests. Frenzy would seem to make the end of Act 2, Act 3 and start of Act 4 normal questing quicker until the City of Damned Wp and it makes an interesting experiment to find out what is faster.

@pharphis. Act 3 you can get a pike from drops. I found 2 magic pikes and a rare pike with 90 max in a LK superchest in Normal A3 . The problem is, the pike is slow with concentrate or bash so I needed lots of red potions even though I had IAS gloves. All until WW is available

I beat the game with a sorc. I used her to rush barb to Inner Cloister. There I did runs until level 18 (Flamespike, Boneash, and 2-3 uniques each time). XP is heavily weighted towards uniques pre-1.10. I then rushed him all the way to act 4 and leveled in outer steppes til 23. Finally, rushed him to act 4 hell and continued leveling until 30, then he did Diablo. I went back and did maggots until 82.

Long story short, here is my barbarian sequence (going to use this when I make a untwinked necro). XP is done at P1 until Maggots, then P8.
1-8 Tristram (had a charsi'd two hand axe)
8-18 Inner Cloister (had a bardiche)
18-24 Outher Steppes (gemmed bardiche)
24-30 City of Damned/RoF HELL (2x War Swords with Frenzy) (do normal instead)
30-82 RoF Maggots HELL (Pike)
82-89 Urdars/Oblivion Knights HELL (Pike)
89-99 See you in 10 years

I just rushed to Canyon of the Magi, leveling both the sorc and barb at the same time (clearing the entrance to each area, then moving up the other toon) and used firewall/SF to kill maggots while the barb was chilling in a corner. Didn't get them to lvl 30, but by around lvl 25, the sorc kills well enough to get to act 4, where it's far easier to level the barb one mob at the time.

My barb is a few levels ahead of everything else and I suspect I'd get myself killed if I tried playing sorc now so I'll stick with barb until at least 24-25 killing maggots. Then since I'll have BO I'll try duriel. I've been using bash but it's so boring lol

Duriel is very fond of killing mercs before he tries to kill you. Just saying. Mercs don't go between acts, and are generally useless, but as extra safety, they do pretty well.

Won't he like 1-hit them? I've got about 330 life (woo bloodfist or whatever those gloves are called) and I'm at lvl 23. 1 more for BO!

Is there any reason to believe battlecry doesn't work, btw? I think it works (I've been using it on big maggot crowds, though shout seems even better despite the tiny duration). I'm hoping I can make duriel relatively safe

Yeah (s)he will one shot them. But that's enough time you can land 2-3 hits before you need to town. Rinse and repeat. I would definitely use a sorc to static him. Then use war cry to lower his damage and finish him with leech barb. He really isn't that difficult, he's actually much harder post-Lod. Diablo on the other hand... just don't wake the neighbors.

I like the approach I think this might be faster for pure rushing.

With the Sorc beating the game through was this a rush of just the required quests. Did you complete other quests such as skill pts and stat quests also. How long did that take you and what lvl did the Sorc finish at? I think this is the important part of the 1st pass through puzzle that first time player are looking for because of the difference in rushing the sorc in 1.10+ with no mana pots and no players command and 1.13 with no respecs

One thing I found is don't forget NM Act 4 first time around if you like to MF and lvl at the same time as
1) Most of the same stuff drops in NM as in Hell, just prismatic rings don't if IIRC
2) They level as fast because they near the right level so the level gap is lower than in hell
3) Your toons can load up on MF because the res penalty is lower and the finds can be decent as you go. Maggots have limited drops and with a Barb you make less gold because of all of the weapon repairs

I think that mid 50s for lvling is best but when MFing at the same time two of my chars got to 60 for progressing to Hell

My sorc beat hell at lv 26. I played through all of normal. But then rushed passed everything in NM/Hell. Skipping all the quests. Sorc beat Normal in about 3 days of gameplay (5 hours a day). NM/H was rushed all in one day. It was very difficult later on due to mana problems. My spells didn't do jack and melee was poor with low AR. So I just did bosses only and towned for the mana.

Barb was rushed the same way. I gave him the Waypoints and let him level on his own. Sorc rushed him doing bosses only. I had a new barb from 1-50 in one day. Then 50-80 the next. 80+ took much longer.

Nightmare isn't a bad idea at all, considering you have no elite items. I assumed maggots in hell would give the most XP so I rushed to them. But a pit stop In NM til 45-50 is probably optimal. Especially on players 8.

 

[Albatross]

@pharphis better the merc than you.

Not understanding how the quests worked properly back then I partied all 8 players to kill Duriel in normal to get the quest with a L25 Sorc and used an entire belt of rejuvies and healing potions with Blizzard, GS, static and a lvl 2 BO, a 1 Pdiamond large shield and a Merc which helped a lot. The Merc bit it in 2 seconds. Just had only 10 FCR so the spells were interrupted regularly. I was 1 hit away from croaking it when Duriel bit the dust as the BO had run out. So it is doable with the Sorc. With the Barb probably LA is a good option with no to hit check, or concentrate to prevent interruption if you have leech, some +mana items and 30 sec BO and rejuvies.

Ok, got to 24 and I can't be bothered to gain another level before doing the quest. I haven't put a point into leap attack yet (derp) because I wanted to boost my AR and dmg against maggots...

So question: I know the other players should be able to get the quest by just reaching Tyrael, but do they need to be in the game before I put in the staff? Before I kill duriel? I might find duriel before joining the game with all the other characters if I have to but I'd rather not have to do that if I don't have to.

@pharphis

This is what @helvete wrote about the topic a few months back
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/1-00-news-info-and-gossip.937736/page-4#post-8794115

Awesome! I must have read that and forgot

I'm taking a break from Classic to do the WSK Tournament.

I finished NM. What next? Push into Hell for some maggot levelling or should I run the Cow King again? If yes what am I looking for?

gah tried to get the gidbinn quest to work for all my mules but it failed. Made a new game and made a mule pop the thing and my barb killed the unique monster - no gidbinn drop...

Used my imbues on some pikes and although I didn't get any w/ ias I did get one with 100 max dmg and some life leech

So this happened to one of my that I forgot party in the first run

Are you playing HC? If so, then instructions below are for SC only and come with a risk for losing one of your mules

For this quest I then did the following

- Open the MP game with a mule that still has the quest open.
- join the Barb
- Find the Flayer Dungeon area and clear it with your Barb
- join the other mules and party everyone
- Cast BO on the barb
- Have the first mule touch campfire and stay in the area and don't go back to town, Don't worry if they die unless you are playing HC.
- Quickly switch to the barb screen and kill the flayer boss pack.The Flayer boss drops the Gidbinn , collect it with the mule and take it to Ormus
- Have each mule talk to Ormus to collect the ring before unpartying them

This worked for me .

@helvete did mentioned in the guide some of the quests are buggy and to make sure you collect the almost completed quests before you leave that Act. I have not had that quest wig out on me when following the above steps

Hopefully that works but let's hear about if it does not

ya I'm in HC so no go!

I think the problem is that I returned to town before thinking I should bring my mule back just in case. That sucks.

I'm at council now, though, and might get 1-2 levels from them to improve my gear a bit. I have a nice map (shrine + well for BO) so I don't really want to mule off all my gems but I guess I'll have to...

BTW I got the unique crossbow from duriel which fires explosive bolts... worth keeping?

For the gidbinnn quest, the necro for some meatshields and CE and IM with 1 pt attract might be a better option in HC
If you don't get maggots in the A4 RoF you can redo that quest in a new game with another character after lvling

The unique xbow is only for grail purposes if that is a goal because ravencraw is not so hard to get. I think that Treeharl highlighted which uniques are useful or you should keep in the link in the first post of this thread

good luck with the lvling

Muling off isn't a problem, but muling stuff on is. You can use the write-protect trick to prevent any changes to the char, and mule off in an MP game, then remove the write protection and drop all the stuff in a new game and exit it.

In later versions, all that matters is if the hosting character has the quest.

I found that I couldn't do the den with the Barb as he already had it, even with the host character in the Den. It seems to be more like "no character in the party can have the quest" in 1.00

@maxicek In some instance of questing, I've seen the rushee needs to close to where a monster dies (e.g. Diablo and Izual) to get the quest for the party, even if the rusher also has the quest. Just then I Baroness a Lvl 33 mule with a Sorc rusher who is already a Baroness so the mule can open and enter the cow portal for gambling next to Gheed in a Hell game from now on. But sometimes such as Meph's portal or the killing council the rushee does not need the quest to progress.

With the Den quest, it is easy to check in a normal game but I think the rushee may need to kill the last monster. Not a problem if that rushee is an ok lvl with one auto hit skill and has a sorc with Static even in a hell game.

The gidbinn quest the knife seems to be dropped if the rushee is close even if the killer has already completed collected the knife

For rushing I have two rushers a Barb and a Sorc and the 6 mules because of these questing issues

And the first instance that presents a problem rushing lvl 1 mules to new difficulties in HC

I've got some examples

Only one of my mules didn't get the radament quest despite all of them being right beside each other near the entrance... it's possible he was an inch further away than the rest but I can't remember.

Only one of my mules didn't get the imbue quest (the lowest level mule, 15 levels lower). All of them were in town.

Gidbinn quest is easy to "unbug". Just never talk to Asheara with your rushing sorc.

EDIT: Following that logic, never talk to Atma either. This will not "properly" finish the quest, and it will remain open. I think my rushing sorc is even able to pick up the Gidbinn, but I don't remember clearly. Been a few pints.

EDIT 2: Imbue quest requires lvl 8 for completion, just as any other patch.

@helvete the quest point first edit does not work for me even though I never talk to Asheara. I still need the rushee to collect the Gidbinn, same with Khalims pieces, the Golden Bird and Lam Essen, if doing those quests. But I know that Khalim's quest is not required to get the rushees to and beyond the Durance WP in 1.00

@pharphis that sux the game did drop that skill book for the radament quest. I usually have only one of rushees with Radamant and other chilling in a room nearby and he drops the books all partied players with the quest open and I done the quest several times
But one weird bug I now recall. If the inventory screen is open for a character, the books of skill will not be displayed on the ground. When I close the screen it shows and I am sure I am looking at the spot where I dispatched of radament
I plan to rush a few mules from normal to Hell within the next week so I will try these in SC to show or explain the results i got.

A few posts back I mentioned rushing problems for the Big D quest in HC as I have had a few lvl 1 mules die getting that quest. You can buff your low lvl mules with life boosting gear such as PRuby helms and armour, Bloodfists, Hsarus Belt and resist @ and fire res gear such pdiamond shields and Hsarus Boots but they need to be a minimum of lvl 3 for and practically around lvl 6 or so to get enough str to equip this gear depending on the character used. There is no lvl requirment for any normal gemmed gear. But the Prubies add less life for 1.00 than in later patches if I recall correctly. Same goes for Psapphire gear which I know is +23 mana per Psapphire. Also Pam is 8-9 str and PEmerald add 8-9 dex in armour and helms for those interested in low level twinking gear without Twitchthroe

Actually, the gem effects are randomized pre-1.04 and depends on the moment of socketing.

Also, you don't even need to get credit for the meph kill with the mules, just an open portal to act 4 will do.

Figured this may interest some of you, although only the most nerdy time travelers. Here is the complete dates for patches. These are build dates though, the patch is often released a few days after it is built:

Spoiler

03/16/2000 - Bnet beta release (1.02)
05/18/2000 - Bnet stress test (1.02)
05/26/2000 - 1.00
06/26/2000 - 1.01
06/29/2000 - Classic release (Disc-1.00, Patch-1.01)
07/07/2000 - 1.02
08/03/2000 - 1.03
11/22/2000 - Shareware release 1 (1.04)
12/16/2000 - 1.04
12/22/2000 - Shareware release 2 (1.04)
12/22/2000 - 1.04b
12/23/2000 - 1.04c
01/30/2001 - 1.05
02/02/2001 - 1.05b
04/19/2001 - 1.06
04/25/2001 - Expansion Bnet beta release (1.41)
??/??/2001 - [BNET BETA ONLY] 1.42-1.44
05/15/2001 - [EXPANSION CD ONLY] 1.07 (~1.44)
05/16/2001 - 1.06b
??/??/2001 - [BNET BETA ONLY] 1.45-1.48
06/19/2001 - 1.08 (~1.48)
06/27/2001 - Expansion release (Disc-1.07, Patch-1.08)
08/16/2001 - 1.09
08/31/2001 - 1.09b
11/14/2001 - 1.09c
11/30/2001 - 1.09d
07/03/2003 - [SP BETA ONLY] 1.10a
07/28/2003 - [SP BETA ONLY] 1.10s
10/13/2003 - 1.10
07/26/2005 - 1.11
08/17/2005 - 1.11b
05/28/2008 - 1.12
10/22/2009 - [PTR BETA ONLY] 1.13a
02/23/2010 - [PTR BETA ONLY] 1.13b
03/09/2010 - 1.13c
10/18/2011 - 1.13d
02/29/2016 - 1.14
03/31/2016 - 1.14b
05/06/2016 - 1.14c
05/31/2016 - 1.14d

Also, something interesting in the 1.00 readme that was changed in 1.01:

(...) You may also
deposit into your stash up to 50,000 gold in Act I, 100,000 in Act II, 150,000
in Act III, and 200,000 in Act IV. (...).

This was a leftover from the battle.net beta and blizzard didn't fix the notes until 1.01. In the beta the max character level was also 50 instead of 99. The druid and assassin were partially coded. Class specific items also semi-existed. Guilds and the Arena were coded. I will post more info once I crack it fully and get it running offline.

Here is the beta UI:

Spoiler

BTW I had no idea set items don't give partial bonuses at all, or at least don't appear to. I was hoping I could get a huge AR bonus from angelic's!

lvl 27 from council, now, and plan to get 1 more level (maybe more if I'm crazy) before moving on. Lots of gems and occasional useful item is nice. I'm using my gold on gambling rings atm.

edit: I did gamble a nokozan yesterday of the 1-2 amulets I did decide to buy, so that's cool!

Can someone remind me what the chances are of rare, set, etc. from gambling?

Council members are a great target. They are much easier than later patches and don't use their Hydras often.

For gambling--
85% Magic
7% Rare
5% Set
3% Unique

 

[Albatross]

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!

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....

Welcome back!

I posted this a few days ago, this is what my barb did:
https://www.diabloii.net/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.diabloii.net/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.

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.

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

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.

@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

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....

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 :/

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.

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

@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

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?

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)

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.

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?

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.

@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.

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.

 

[Albatross]

uhh maybe it's my max life being higher than it should be because of BO from previous game. It usually resets to being lower after hitting shrines or something (or probably akara)

Let me see what it says for my barb

edit1: my barb did have greater than max life due to BO from previous game.. akara doesn't reset this, btw.. I had to go get hit by a monster

edit2: no crash when I hovered over my barb's character with another one

Problem appears to be solved. I was careful not to hover over my character anyway, but I think that was probably the issue.

Now I'm at RoF and might clear it a few times for fun but since I'm level 32 (I think) I may just do CS solo and leave all my mules behind for now. I wasn't planning in doing a huge amount in classic, anyway.

What level will cow king put me to if I run him enough? and what should my gambling go toward? I basically want to farm a bunch of SoJs but I'm not against farming some other useful things for future classic characters or maybe nice boots/ammies/rings for 1.07 and later. Is it worth gambling for boots at this point or would they be garbage?

Good theory about the BO vs crash. Awhile back when I was trying to diagnose this problem, it never happened on Sorc. Only barb, so perhaps that's the issue is the life bar messes up.

All cows give pitiful XP. The good ol' godly power leveling didn't happen until 1.07 boosted their levels and XP. In classic they are 28(N) 53(NM) and 78(H). You may gain 2-3 levels in normal but I wouldn't run them specifically.

Check out the affix table: http://docdro.id/41NXCYq
Gambling boots is actually ideal at your level. You can get up to 49 tri res, 20 fhr, 30 frw, and 19 str all at level 32. Aside from boots, it may not hurt to help your barb out. I would gamble a Hand of Broc, Iceblink, and a Biggin's Bonnet. Best belt is going to be a rare.

Oh, that's crazy.

I've never really understood item generation all that well so are there things I MUST gamble and things I MUSt get from cow king in normal that are worth getting?
Do I just gamble the lowest type of boots or the highest? (in later versions I think you gamble the lowest ones for higher affixes)

Great to hear this game crash problem was not permanent

I personally gamble up to light plated boots. I suggest gambling boots and heavy boots, gloves and heavy gloves, caps and skull caps because they cost the least amount of gold.

You can possibly get affix L27 and up to affix L36 on a gambled item for a L32 char, as the item lvl will be 27-36 at random based on the item lvl roll with -5 to +4 of the your character's lvl. Then each affix up to 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes are rolled individually and will up item lvl for items gambled in the 1.00.

The reason not to gambles greaves, gauntlets, plated belts, crowns and masks is they cost a lot and the normal CK drops these constantly

Also char L33 is the optimal for ammy gambling to remove the affix L40 fire damage on the amulet.

Have you checked out this guide from the post 1 of this thread for more detail. Credit to the original authors

Cow King run guide
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/treeharls-1-00-cow-king-running-guide.933908/
How to get some items + what should you looking for
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/1-00-item-guide-how-to-gain-certain-items.934938/

What I need to know please

Does the item type (magic, rare, set or unique) roll happen when you click on the gamble option at the vendor and the items are generated or when you click the item. I am sure this was answered somewhere

I'm pretty sure it's when the gamble screen is generated. I'm not sure when this is changed.

Also, isn't it possible to get the same unique to drop in-game if you drop the unique before gambling/killing? I thought I read this somewhere...

I'll take a closer look at those guides soon. I looked at them months ago

TedDeeBoy Gambled items are generated just like regular vendor items. So every time the town refreshes a new set of items generate. All items are rolled during this point. They didn't change it until 1.07, when they took out the set/unique. There used to be an exploit on bnet where you could see the gambled items identified, so they changed it in 1.07 to generate once bought to fix this.

pharphis I'm pretty sure you can drop it. But haven't tested 100%.

i would just restart sir

Actually, the item quality should still be generated upon refreshing the gamble screen, even in the current patch. I remember this being tested by modding monsters to only drop unique caps, then starting a new game, opening the gambling screen, just checking that a cap was present, not buy it, then go kill a monster. All drops were failed uniques, indicating that the unique had already spawned.

As for dropping an item to the ground to get a second unique, that only works for uniques brought into the game by a(ny) character joining. You cannot gamble a SoJ, drop it, and expect to gamble another.

Gambling just the cheapest base items is probably more time-consuming than gambling the two cheapest ones, as you'll need to refresh town so many more times. If you have a really elite goldfinder, then just gambling all available boots in a session should be the most efficient.

And it has been mentioned earlier, but I would stress again that monsters wander around a lot. *Great* care should be taken when approaching the CS.

To clarify, does this include the character hosting, and therefore singleplayer games? Basically i'm wondering if before a gamble spree I can just drop a soj on the ground rather than have to mule it, and same for killing cow king. Muling off 2-3 SoJ at a time might be less annoying than 1 at a time, this way.

Oh, and what's the scariest thing about Diablo in normal? His fire? lightning attack?
I have hotspurs so I'm guessing I should use these during the fight...

i sneezed him into oblivion with the barb (concentrate still) but his lightning attack hurts as always

Lightning hose is bad.

As for the unique thing, yes, it even works in SP. I noticed it by picking up a unique, dropping it on ground, then having the very same drop the next run.

Load up on fire res for big D, also some MDR if you can find it. MDR is more effective than in recent patches when it comes to damage/time spells.

What's the easiest way to get a few mdr? I know how powerful it is in 1.07 and figure with max lite/fire res that it will go a long way.

MDR is much stronger but harder to acquire. I would recommend gambling Greyform (quilted armor is pretty cheap). You can view the uniques here: https://web.archive.org/web/2001080...e.net:80/diablo2exp/items/normal/uarmor.shtml

Greyform gives 3 MDR 5% LL and some fire/cold res. Gtoes give 1 MDR and CB. Honestly though, you should be fine with sub-par gear. Besides his hose, the only scary part is his high blocking. His fire attacks aren't nearly as powerful as in newer patches. I beat him with about 65/30 light/fire res.

EDIT: and yeah helvete is right, gambled items do not generate until you hit the gamble screen. But they are generated before you buy them, and don't refresh until leaving town. I never played bnet during Classic, but someone I knew who did said there was a program that let you see if the item was unique or not and he would gamble SoJ's all day

ah sounds good. I've been using zerker armor to boost BO a tiny bit but that seems like a perfect replacement.

Prodded and poked my way to level 26. Hopefully 30 tonight.

Quick question, I vaguely recall that FoH has no casting delay in earlier versions, is this correct? I didn't see FoH listed as a viable build option in helvete's time travelling guide, so I assume regardless of casting delay it's a junk skill?

No skills have casting delays pre-lod. However they are generally much weaker. I have never tried FoH but I know the paladin is weaker than later patches. If your rushing why not rush 2 paladins so you can test one out?

On paper against him as a caster

1) no bought mana pots
2) no RW and charms to make massive mana totals
3) smaller number of + skills
4) points in energy add less mana than a pure caster

but for him as a caster

1) no casting delays
2) meditation, redemption and conviction
3) aura flashing?
4) the option of a +2 caster rare specter and Steelclash compared with other classes

FoH's holy bolt would need to perform well and if so, it maybe viable in the CS

gambled a greyform very quickly, some acceptable rare boots and found unique grim wand in RoF
isn't grim wand one of the harder finds since it can't be gambled?

Might be worth a go - will try it out. I like the idea of it but the kill speed will be slow compared to Barbs/Sorcs. Is there a resource anywhere which has 1.00 skill info? As in, damage at slvl 1-20? And helvete mentioned Conviction was worse in this version, does it still reduce resistance? I fought a conviction boss pack and my res didn't drop.

On a side note... WW is pretty nice eh? Got lucky with some gambles and got a Twitchthroe and shopped a Pike with ED/IAS which vastly improved my kill speed. Only took two hours to go from 26-30 and 28-30 took just over half an hour.

Smacked Diablo and then ran the Cow King for half an hour or so. Got a good map which was dropping Ancient Armours and Pikes regularly, so now have the unique version of both of those. Will keep running him till I get a 125 durability Pike which outclasses my current one (118 Max/9 LL) and then re-roll the map to farm a few SoJs.

 

[Albatross]

@pharphis - Grim Wand is indeed one of the more rare items. Arha yoho me treasure matey.

@SilvioDante - The problem is that 1.01 was available when the game came out, so any resources will be for newer patches. The original D2 strategy guide by Brady Games *might* be accurate for 1.00. Try finding scans of it. I'll look for them later.

Conviction is worse but it is still very good. Your res did drop but it didn't display it in the character screen. This was a bug that didn't get fixed until 1.10. But conviction works great, especially with static field. The classic convict-a-din and static sorc are godly.

So far, sounds like your on the right track. For pure time traveling, farming the King is all you need to do. You only need to move further if you want to get a nice +2 skill ammy. If you want to play the 1.07-1.09 era, its also useful to stack up on dual leech jewelry since they took that out.

Thanks for the clarification on that, explains why I can't find much. Good suggestion on the Brady Games guide (link below) and assuming it's accurate for 1.00, the damage of FoH at level 20 is 153-192 and has a steady rise of +8/+8 per slvl. A quick calculation suggests that +12 to FoH is probably the max (+5 on Scepter, +1 on each ring, +2 on ammy, +1 on armour, +1 on shield, +1 on helm), so you'd be looking at 250-290 at lvl 32, with lvl 29 Conviction giving -60ish to all res. In addition, Holy Bolts would likely be around the 1-200 damage to undead.

The damage seems like it's probably close to being viable but being single target isn't great. The massive, massive 'but' with all this is that at lvl 32 the mana cost of FoH is.... 87. You'd need to be flashing Conviction, then using Meditation and Redemption. Potentially Max Redemption, Max FoH, 10 in Conviction (-res after level 10 slows right down and +skills get you to 19), 10 in Meditation and 10 in Holy Shield.

The other problem is to make the most of the no casting delay you'd need to drop some +skill gear to get to a good FCR breakpoint. Might be worth exploring though.

Link to guide: https://ia800202.us.archive.org/32/...blo_II_Official_Strategy_Guide_BradyGames.pdf

Edit: Can't find any reference anywhere to FoH being good, so that's not a good sign.

@SilvioDante

It is a good exploring point because when running for items it is good to have a character variety to cure the boredom of play repetition

Just a note on the staff mods specter. I have played A4 Hell a while and seen many Specters (and wands) drop but I have never seen one with a skill lvl 30 staff mod on anything. Either they are odds of getting one are extremely small , think 1.10 Zod rune small, or are impossible to get which rules out a +5 FoH drop

Seen several with lvl 24 staff mods and below though

@pharphis

Congrats on finding the Umes. it took me about 4 months to find that wand. It is a great item. especially good twinking item for low casters should you want to rush one

Edit : Also that Barb Battle Orders max life too high bug that you had two days ago also got me as well last night.
It happened when I was partying the Barb and other characters in the new MP game
Luckily I remembered your experience , quickly opened a SP game with the Barb and did not re cast BO the went out and tanked some hits from monsters and waited and killed these to leech back the life was just lost
Then opened the new MP and the the problem was gone. Good advice on that one

lol my char's name is "Count Grapes" now. That's rich.

Also, I gambled nagelring which gives 2 mdr so I wasn't taking any fire dmg it seems after hotspur + 4ish mdr that I had. I also had nokazon but I don't know how high the max fire res actually is so I didn't bother

edit: btw I got culwen's point from Diablo. I'm going to mule off some stuff and see if I can get a usable cow king map. I got the axe with CB already

Would've been better if your name was Dracula. I want to suckya blood gimme life leech.

A little diagnosis on the BO crashing bug. So after some testing, it appears that this bug happens whenever a character has more life then their max life, and another player hovers over them. This can happen to any character, by battle orders or perhaps an item. The bug is caused by incorrect math in the shadow bar beneath the life bar. Funny enough the life bar uses the correct function. This bug exists in patches 1.00-1.03 and was fixed in 1.04 (but not in the notes). This is good news if you're playing 1.06.

So, any time you wish to do an MP game: first make sure you can hover over all the characters. Any characters with more life should stand in the fire or get hurt first to reset their life. This will fix the bug. Alternatively, I created a hex edit to remove the shadow bar which prevents the crash. A real fix would require rewriting the whole function which I don't feel like doing.

Here is the problem:

D2Win.dll
0xBF5B -> 8D 0C 28
change to:
0xBF5B -> 8D 4D 00

Shoutout to @pharphis for finding out that BO caused it. I over-thought it

hurray!
I'm sure someone else figured it out in the past (including the coders ofc) before it was originally patched.

Got my first SoJ today which is cool. Not sure how many more I will get but eventually I plan to level up some of my mules (still stuck at 20ish) so I have a barb for norm cow + gambling and move on with the higher level one. See how far I can go!

Get all the way to act iv hell! Then collect 2x wirt legs. Open the cow portal and go inside. Cube another leg with a TP book in the cow level and it will open up a portal to act v! There you can power level to 99.

Grats on the SoJ pharphis!

Over the weekend I rushed a few characters up to Hell and then went back to running the Cow King. Didnt get as much time in as I'd hoped, but found a really nice map. Haven't had a ring drop yet but I've only done a few runs, so will keep plugging. Gambled a close-but-no-cigar rare ring, with +53 to mana,+30 to life, 27% fire res and.... +1 Dex and 1-4 fire damage.... if either of those last two mods were leech, I would have been very, very pleased, but alas.

I got a new pike (former was an imbue at level ~20) w/ 9% leech and ~145 max dmg, so a 50% improvement in dmg and more leech than before! It actually makes a huge difference.

I've gotten 3 SoJ so far and will get a few more before moving on to try to find a better map or rush chars or whatever

edit: 1 min later I do my 1st run of the day and got another soj

So what's the deal with dupes in 1.00? I mean the rares and magics that spawn from the same source from the same map with the same stats and name... Will they be given the same fingerprint in 1.07+? Does this apply to uniques as well? I think I'm at ~8 SoJs now

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. I remember seeing the same pair of rare gloves (name and stats) 3 times from the king. Drops are much more linear. I saw almost the same items drop every time. White items, gems, etc. with same durability.

I never tested it, but I would assume only rares get the same uID when brought forward. That is, the seed is the same to generate rare stats. Good thing dupes don't poof in SP except in 1.10 beta!

My understanding (I could be remembering wrong) is that these items are allowed to be used but not for trading (not that I have any rares worth farming or anything but I don't want to have to worry about SoJs too much...)

I just checked in Jamella and I don't believe unique items have seeds. Afterall, all those SoJ dupes from pre-lod were perm when lod came out! Rares and magics seem to use seeds however. But they are the only items afaik.

Will seeds be generated when they are converted in 1.07?

Just performed a quick test using edited characters. All items must have a seed in 1.00, because when brought forward they continue to have their seed. Thus, the 'duped' rares/SoJs all have the same seed.

Edit: this won't affect gambled items. Just the same "drop patterns" you get from various monsters. Since this wasn't known until recently, I don't see why an exception could be made in the trading regarding pre-lod items. Since it's easy to get two items of the same ID by mistake.

Yes, they get the same fingerprint, even if they aren't intended dupes. The good news is, I do have around 20 SoJs forwarded to 1.07, and only in one case did a fingerprint match. I've noticed the identical rares from the king too, and ANY poppable except the superchests give out just a small selection of items, always with the same fingerprint.

I wish it wasn't the case, but I don't see any way around the ban on trading pre-lod items. It's just too easy an excuse for identical items.

Luckily, for trading, just check the item in ATMA or GoMule; it will tell you which items are pre-lod.

Thanks, good to know.

My cow mules in 1.07 are looking forward to the pointless boost from SoJ (oak sage, enchant, prayer... lol)

Oh, got goldskin. 30@res is pretty crazy compared to everything else I've seen. I guess a very good rare would beat it, as usual.

11 SoJs so far and plan to get a few more before forwarding them and maybe continuing in 1.00.

Are there any problem areas I need to worry about other than MSLE in general? I figure NM should be very easy overall w/ 1k life, 20% leech, right?

Chaos sanctuary, i can tell you from first hand experience (yesterday evening) that whirling with IM on your face hurts (i already knew that form 1.09 (online)

 

[Albatross]

Aside from iron maiden it's really easy. 1k life is more then enough, just rush through NM and get to hell. You'll do just fine in act 4 hell. The game doesn't truly get that much harder unlike in newer patches. Hell is basically a slightly buffed version of normal

As always, use caution around Hephasto.

that guy hurts! 1 hit 4/5th of the 1k hp pool gone

Trick is to just avoid him. There's no runes, so the quest reward can be ignored with very little lost. More likely gained, if those characters are for forwarding to LoD.

WSK tournament is over me, so it was time to get back to 1.00.

Eagle has landed
View attachment 5739
I left my Barb (and the sidekicks) exactly at the same spot, but NM. Hell was mostly very easy going.

@pharphis when (if) you do Hell, take care with cursed unique packs. Those were pretty much the only things that could harm me, and actually Councils got me once, but that was mostly to my poor playing

Also NM cows hurt when there's dozens them around you, more so if your'e amp'd, like many times with King you are.

Oh, does anyone know if defense is set to 0 when using WW? (like with running)

I probably won't bother with NM cows unless they're good for exp by the time I get to them

I'd say NM river is better.

I didn't do much of either. (Only rolled few Cow maps without much luck..)

Now I'm lvl 46, I started Hell at 39 or 40, and I played "players 1" for the most part.

If playing HC, I'd take a few complete reads through this thread to note down any bugs which might have fatal consequences.

Also, I'd get to around lvl 50 before starting hell, at least before hell act 3 due to exploding dolls, councils and whatnot. RoFl in NM should provide the means to level that high, with reasonable comfort and maybe even drops.

With as big leech as stated (20% was mentioned), consider dumping a little of it in favor of more mana. Like hand of broc for frostburns. Unless that is the only mana leech. Some ring for a SoJ? WW gets pretty mana intensive after a while, and you'll want to hold off on maxing it if you can't handle the mana requirement.

I know I should update the original guide, and finish the ones on the LoD patches. Just so much RL going on, even when on vacation.

Btw, can you have enough leech to counteract IM to some extent?

I tried some WWing when in NM CS, no insta death under IM, but not that far...

Messing around in Hell act IV, found Infernal Torch (set Grim Wand) and this nice ring:
View attachment 5741
Now something like this with high EG% and it would be pretty much my end game ring!

"Some extent" in this case will never be good enough for HC, believe me. I personally wouldn't go near the CS except for questing, and for those "runs", I'd use Taunt for all it's worth.

Neat ring, I dream of one of those with a little higher and dual leech. And yeah, maybe goldfind instead of the +str

I haven't seen any dual leech rings, yet.

I've been gambling all my money on amulets but still not a second unique, and nothing that great in terms of rares...

Alright I got sick of my map with crappy rares and only 1 ring pattern (I think) and a very rare pike pattern (I got the unique once and a single rare after like... 200 runs?)

Already seeing some new uniques and decent rares in this next map which is a bit faster as well. Only downside is that the king has lots of large crowds around him if I don't kill him quickly enough. Also gambled eye of etlich!

on the mana intensive WW, it sucks when you are interrupted mid whirl by mana burn packs with a lvl 20 WW, because you may not be able to start whirl again without a full rejuvie. Watch out for mana burn packs and especially bosses like council members, avoid Wyand Voidbringer

Also I had the bizarre game crash with De Seis last night.

I was running the CS and 3 Seals with the Necro for xp. He spawned cold ench and after I had smashed his minions with revives, decrepify, bone spirit and CE, I was finishing off him with the revives and bone Sp when I got too close and the frost nova death explosion hit me. I heard the sound of multiple potions hitting the ground. I checked the belt and found at least 3 potions missing and they were on ground. His frost nova had thieved the potions, what the ! I went to pick up one of the potions and boom game crash. It was a MP game that the toon was a guest in so I just rejoined him. It was one of the strangest D2 moments I've had. The only reason I noticed it because the Necro gameplay was a little less intensive than other toons



@pharphis I have not seen any either. Anyone got a screenie of a 1.00 dual leech ring?

I'm going to try to gamble a dual leech rare with +50 EG, a really low level gambler should be good at the task.

helvete's guide has the affix tables. Seeing dual leech rings get probably quite rare at the higher levels as the affix pool widens

Did a few tests on the De Seis bug. Basically the crash seems to throw multiple errors. It only happens in multiplayer and seems to be caused by sending a bad packet. Interesting to say the least.

"Flux, 01/22/2003"
Unfortunately Thief was bugged, since any time he hit a character whose belt was
inaccessible (such as a Barb while in mid-WW or Leap Attack, or a Pally in
mid-Charge) the character would be crashed out of the game.  So Blizzard fixed
that bug right?  *laughter*

No, they just removed Thief entirely, since fixing it would have been, like, work.
Look for the Blizzard marriage counselor game coming soon, where everyone just
gets divorced.

@Grape Don't forget to check this one out that I posted awhile back https://www.docdroid.net/41NXCYq/classicaffixes.pdf

EDIT: you know what to do ^^

@GalaXyHaXz thanks, that's a handy reference. Seems to be on line with helvete's guide's affixe tables.

Gambled my first couple dozen rings with all the three uniques. I'll maybe mule the SoJ away for the next session, wouldn't mind few more of those. EG and leeches are frequent but not yet on the same ring.

My Barbarian has reached lvl 70 from yesterday's maggot session and today's gold finding attempts. Finding a good map plays a huge role at how quick it is to gather the gold, and it seems it isn't that easy to find those great maps with many champion packs close to the Act IV WPs.

I reached 36 (from cow king et al) and then rushed to catacombs before I had to head out. I'll get around to leveling my mules eventually but MPing is so tedious

Thanks @GalaXyHaXz Good to understand. I assume the same problem will happen if the host does the MPing and De Seis thieves a potion, but would crash the entire game instead of just disconnecting the guest. That is important info for self MP who are lvling their toons

@Grape ,nice going it was only a few days he found the Act 4 RoF WP at 40. Depending upon how often you play you will naturally get SoJs , I am up to 5 after finding another in the Hell CS last night and I am not specifically running for these any more. @pharphis was at 11 in his last count and he is. Also, I have found only two maps out of about 50 MP games in the RoF which are close to either the RoF WP or the stairs in the RoF, one with champion packs for xp and gold and one with a boss pack for xp only

I am curious about the character lvl are you gambing with for the chance of the dual leech ring

Seeing as there is no weighing of affixes, the odds for a rare ring with 2 or 3 suffixes (dual)leech/EG should only be changing with the level of the character doing the gambling, and not vary at all for a specific monster dropping a rare ring.

Since we know the item level required, and know the number of available affixes at any given item level, getting one only comes down to eliminating unwanted higher affixes, and getting as many gambles/drops per time unit as possible.

Calculations get a lot worse in LoD, when they started weighing things and making affix levels different from item levels by introducing quality levels. Pre-LoD, they hadn't thought of making anything rarer than anything else, except for the unique/rare/set distribution....

Oh I finished with like 16 or 17 SoJs. I still need to forward them but I put 12 of them on a mule. This was like... 6 hours of cow running at most? Again, not with a great map and gambling was towards amulets.

 

[Albatross]

@helvete, your point about the affixes and gambling lvl is the exact reason I am very interested in @Grape efforts to get a dual leecher and also my original point that I have not seen or heard of anyone finding or gambling a dual leech rare and several members of the SFP have been playing 1.00 for up to one year. Theoretically it should not be difficult yet there is no evidence that I found. I am tempted to break out my LL gambler once I find a better rare ammy for these toons

@pharphis good work, sounds like you will never go without an SoJ again. gotta love the 1.00 cheese

ya and I just checked the fingerprints. There are 4ish different fingerprints, maybe more. I didn't care enough to check if it was split by image (of the ring) or random. Now my enchantress in 1.07 gives 900 fire dmg! (only gained 75 more after +2 skills)

Yeah it's great how easy SoJ's are to obtain. Hell i've only ever seen like 2 in LoD SP the rest were on bnet (and you know those most certainly aren't dupes lol).

My barb is lv 84 and I've been gambling some amulets. No dual leech yet. But it's still nice and great if you want to make a LLD character. The problem is neither Diablo or the Cow King drop ammy's as there regular TC so your basically stuck gambling.

A little more info after testing with De Seis. Crashing may occur if:
1) A character picks an item up off the ground while being thieved
2) A character uses an uninterruptible attack whilst being thieved
3) Moving items in inventory while being thieved (f***s up the item buffer AFAIK)
4) Drinking the potion being thieved (partially fixed in 1.03)
5) Die while being thieved (fixed in 1.01, fully fixed in 1.03)

So long story short, if you want to avoid any crashes with De Seis, I would do the following:
1) Join game with guest and use TP to De Seis
2) Don't use any uninterruptible attacks
3) Don't pick up any item or use any item or move any item
4) Go to town to heal instead of using potions. If you can't make it S/E and don't die. Leave game and rejoin once De Seis is dead.

Thanks for investigating this. So in my case De Seis is dead.The Frost Nova death explosion hit me previously and thieved the potions . So when you say "being thieved", does that also included potions that are previously thieved by De Seis when he was alive and even if he is dead those potions are still bugged because that what seemed to happen to my necro.

I think your point 1 is important when self MPing in the CS. The host should just chill somewhere.

Also on the dual leecher topic, after further research, @Treeharl posted a LL dual leecher ring in one of the item find threads. Just scanned 200 of his posts since mid 2016 to find that. There were two

Just re-read your issue and you fall underneath #1. More testing would be needed to confirm exactly if the potion becomes bugged once it is thieved, but I recreated your issue as well. So yeah, it may be a good idea to empty your belt before doing De Seis as well. That way there isn't any conflict with the potions.

Treeharls rings are pretty nice. I'd like to find a 15 all res dual leech stat to bring forward to my 1.09 characters (where dual leech was removed from the game)

Thanks for the explanation. one of the nice features of running a necro against de seis is the ability to create many tanks that can outnumber his pack and use the same curses he uses against his pack to even the contest. Most of the time De Seis is too busy decrepifying or shooting bone spear at the revives so very rarely uses thieve on the necro. So game crashing is not a regular problem with the build, just an unusual event. The necro gulps down the super mana potions regularly when fighting that pack. I think we are all curious the specific events that cause those crashes

Also the Treeharl's res@ stat ring may make an excellent PvP ring if character does not require FCR to hit a BP. That dual leecher wish list you describe is very rare because of the elemental damage possibility on prism rings

A wishlist indeed. Maybe Santa will bring it to me if I'm good? ho ho ho holy sh** my elves will find you one of those

Spoiler

Only 1 in 2.6B for the ammy and 1 in 2.8B for that ring. It is more likely than I thought.

^ sounds easy enough, eh?

@TedDeeBoy Yesterday I gambled with a lvl 5 char. Keeps affix pool really small. I'm now debating however should I go for little bit of higher to be sure each gamble can get the leech(es) as well, because the amount of affixes wouldn't increase so dramatically. (btw is it the even the same -5/+4 rule with the ilvls as in the LoD patches?)

I came across @imakeigloospat 's post where he explains his gold finding tactic (that is also done in this thread) and also lists equipment. There's one dual leecher.

I bet imakeigloospat has more, judging by his gear he must've played 1.00 by far the most on this forum. By far. If you happen to see this, thanks for the gold finding tips! Slowly getting there:
View attachment 5744

It's the same (+4/-5). The only thing different is the magic_level of amulets (+2).

Wow Imakeigloospat had one hell of a haul there. Maybe a GF barb is the best way to go instead of king. I might try that when I play 1.06 in a bit.

In 1.06 it would easily be the way to go. Lances drop, and I believe they fixed bows, swords and 2h maces as well. WW isn't as OP, so might not want to use the uniques.

EDIT: Yeah, @imakeigloospat really has some awesome gear, which must have taken billions of gold to gamble and tens of thousands of runs to find. And lvl 96 barb.... 96!!!

Has anyone experimented with forwarding items from 1.00 (or any classic version) directly to 1.13/1.14, to see if any items get unusual or otherwise impossible stats? Would it be considered cheating or unethical if so?

Items when brought directly past 1.09 will simply be rerolled with the new affix pool just as if you found a new rare item. Nothing unusual will happen.

I don't remember what happens but some of the set items get borked when you forward them a specific way. @frozzzen should know

That goes for rare items. Uniques and sets are a different story altogether. Doesn't really matter for LOD, but forwarding uniques to classic 1.10+ can make for some interesting items.

Sets too, they may change base item. May make for some interesting twink equip at least.

soo uhh why are life bars so weird for party members and mercs in NM?
It's different in A1 (dark green/grey) and A2 (sand coloured)

No idea, but life bars, and the exp bar.... they're not properly coded. You can think you've almost beat Izual, but his bar will keep refilling. And as soon as you go past lvl 70, try to keep an eye on the exp bar. Doesn't work properly. At all.

lol alright

Cool to classic getting some more love around here and not just for forwarding stuff to LoD!
Regarding dupes poofing I'm pretty sure that DOES happen in 1.06... its been a number of years since I played it but I remember discovering the whole identical rares/monsters spawning in LK when running objects there.
Did anyone experiment with MF-breakpoints ala 1.07? I remember reading up on them on the lurker lounge (which might still be on webarchives) but not sure if its applicable or relevant to 1.00. I didn't play 1.06 long enough to test it out.
Martels remain broken in 1.06...
As for outleeching Iron Maiden in CS. This was a goal of mine on my 1.09 HC lvl 91 Martel Barb. In 1.09 you get the partial set bonuses known from later patches so with Sigons and Deaths you can reach up to 40-50% LL which is enough to see you through a WW with 3k life.
I love the 800x600, players command and ATMA support of 1.09 but it's definitely the worst of all classic patches in terms of farming gear. Between me and the 2-3 other guys I was playing with I think we took 30+ chars to lvl 76 to imbue Martels before finally getting a decent one. If only 1.09 had the 1.06 affix table it would be perfect IMO.

 

[Albatross]

I tried 1.06 out using items with the same ID and they didn't poof. Martel's also appear fixed in the txt files (you sure it's broke?). I would also say 1.10+ is far worse in classic, and very tedious late hell using only exceptional gear. 1.09 is bad, but still doable.

Funny enough in 1.07-1.09, the "classic" affix table still exists. Since items in 1.06 didn't have any stats, there is this legacy support to generate their stats from the old affix table when brought forward. New items however skip the old table.

Is it possible to gamble an SoJ in Singleplayer in 1.00 if I already have an SoJ? Even if I drop it before gambling the ring?
Is it possible to get 2 SoJs through SP only?

It is. You can start a game, having a SoJ, then drop it to the ground and gamble another, or run the cow king for another.

....just remember that you dropped the first one before you exit.

@Grape
I might try with a lvl 9 gambler at some stage to give a good chance of a dual leecher and to give a good chance for that gambled rare ring can get lvl 6 affixes. Good find with the @imakeigloospat post.


He obviously built the barb around sword mastery. I will need a remake to get GF to 900+ as I made my two with spear and pole arm mastery. He had some great gear. Just playing classic for 5 years he said in his post. He also rolled a good map with no other monsters near the champion pack so his low damage with not a big disadvantage.

Then last night I found a nice map. So I pulled together the barb below after finding a double champion pack near the city of the damned Hell WP map in MP. One of the the city and one at the bottom of the RoF stairs. I have the host MP map still open and run this map like running the CK to mule off nice items and gold

He has 500+ GF and good kill speed and survivability. Max 920 and 2.1k life after BO. Most of the rare gear was gambled previously as I am a pack rat when it comes to items

I survived a some hits from a might, Extra Strong boss when cursed just recently enchanted. It removed between a 1/3 to 1/2 of my life that off almost instantly leeched. I found about 1.4M gold in one hour play . Not sure how that ranks for speed. This map has also dropped 2 rare mage plates, one that I keep in the screen shot

His gear and some screenshots are below

View attachment 5750

View attachment 5751


View attachment 5749

View attachment 5752 View attachment 5753

Nice going there @TedDeeBoy !

I have saved my skillpoints with the Barb I'm using, so that I could turn this one into full GF build with two Patriarchs when my other gear feels good enough. Rattlegace will definitely be needed. This way I'd still save my other Barb unskilled and statted, in case I find some great Ancient Axe or something.

I have gambled with a lvl 10 char now, and got me a 6% ML, 55% EG ring with some little res. Getting a similar but with life stolen and I'd be happily done with low level ring gambling for a while. My extra gold % is now 641, Tarnhelm, Chance Guards and the rest are rares (with a lot of potential for upgrades!). I'm using Blinkbat's Form armor for the FRW. Basically all that this seems to needed is a decent dmg and some leech and it works. Some resistances don't hurt, but the only elemental dmg that has seriously hurt me has been some MSLE bosses. And ofc cursed with mana burn can be potentially really dangerous.

Getting and keeping a good maps seems to be the key to success. This could be a little bit problematic when you hit that "once in a thousand" good map. How long can you keep the tcp/ip game running? For now I've rolled just a bunch of just ok single player maps with 1-2 boss packs next to the either of the WPs, because my low level ring gambler hasn't been rushed to Hell yet.. that's ok for now, cause there has been some interesting seeds so far. I may keep some a little longer than my gold filling lasts, gambling with the Barb some in between the runs. Your 1.4M/hour sounds about what I have been getting. Haven't really checked. Maybe couple of these maps were a bit faster. I believe the potential could be way higher though.

One of the better finds so far (I think this was dropped from a boss pack):
View attachment 5754
One of the plus sides of running many different maps is to see what kind of rares each seed can drop

And definitely remember to check all the near chests etc. of your map. Getting superior Harpoons or the like each run can speed things up nicely!

If you mule only off, and not on, you can keep a map indefinitely.

A top ring, 641 GF is good going

The TCP/IP game will eventually corrupt, you will know when you cannot a get menu when clicking a vendor in town, can't activate the WP or the end of the town map is goes void. You can keep it going for a while especially if you sleep the process with just one host on the machine when not in use. I kept one maggot game up for over three weeks on and off before it corrupted. My map has a lot of extra monsters around the champions which is a complication so I went more safety and less GF.

Helvete has another method above to save a map. I am not clear how

Write protect the save files when muling off, then remove the write protection and ditch the items muled off in a new game. Kinda like hotmuling.

I thought I imbued a really nice Grim Wand, until I realized it's only 'Fast Cast' insted of the 'Fastest'. So, what's the deal with the sorc FCR break points? Would this be enough with say Magefists and the Wall of the Eyeless?
View attachment 5755
I also got one with the fastest, but it's not much better than a plain one. I haven't statted/skilled my two Sorcs yet, but I'll start with the Forb/Static/Warmth one I think. My goal with the Sorc is to be able to rush smoothly and run some Cow King. In the end maybe even CS for levels, if my Barb finds it too hard to achieve good levels for amulet gambling. We'll see about that.




Oh, I see. That's cool, thanks!

Means we can concentrate on getting just the best possible map. I need to start paying attention how much gold my current map(s) are giving to be able to estimate what to aim for...

edit: current gives about 2.5 million/hour, if I'd be able to go on without muling. That ofc slows down a little bit. That was running only one pack though, but I'm not in a hurry to find the perfect map until I'm happy with my runner's gear...

@Grape IMO your grim wand is marvelous and end game worthy, but not the absolute godly best. I would definitely use it if I had other sources of FCR because cold and lightning are most needed in the CS. It is better than Umes for non Necros. Also compare your wand to Treeharl's Sorc end game wand it was 20 FCR, 17 cold res and 14 mana. I think is stacks up well

According to the Treeharls Level 90 Challenge thread, fcr breakpoints works differently. I interpret their discussion as it works as steps where each 10 FCR hits the next breakpoint. I would need conformation of this

From personal experience and IMO, 30 FCR is fine for careful game play with teleport but not for rushing and mad teleporting through packs in Hell. I died several times attempting this if she teleported into a champion, boss or cows pack.

Treeharls Sorc had 40 or 50 FCR (Wall of the Eyeless 10 (it says Fast Cast Rate, not Fastest Cast Rate, is that right), 20 Wand, Ring 10) and judging by the videos he was able to on most occasions so I can only conclude that 40 FCR is the minimum for doing this. If you are SC ,this would make interesting experiment. Just need to test straight after leveling and remove all gold.

Also for my Sorc builds, I prefer to carry the 3 pdiamond shield to instantly cancel the Hell res penalty with one piece of equipment and Frostburns for the gloves for the Sorc and do not have a nice FCR ammy which seem to hard to get. So that made a 20 FCR wand a must to hit at least 30 FCR of I wanted to use an SoJ.

Wall of Eyeless should be 20FCR. It does say "FastER Cast".

Sorry I missed that and I am not in front of the game to check this

I know that on rares Fast Cast = 10, Fastest Cast = 20.

So on uniques (or sets) Faster Cast = 20? This would match what they are in later patches but I don't assume anything for these earlier patches.

edit : I found this guide from Brady which @GalaXyHaXz linked in an earlier post in this thread has the stats for all items including sets and uniques for this but does not confirm Faster Cast = 20. However Arcannas Set also has a Faster Cast on the full set bonus but Cathan's has just the Fast Cast on the full set so both categories exist . Can only assume faster = 20

Thanks Helvete for correcting these errors

edit2: Spectral Shard is listed as Fastest cast so there could be a 30+ FCR category making the dex investment more worth it to hit a higher FCR breakpoint

I put together a theory below about FCR. Drawing on the info I have above and I made some assumptions which are based the discussion with @helvete in posts immediately above about Faster cast affix setting value for FCR.

I recall an assumption that getting a Spectral Shard and dex investment to equip it is not worth it for a Sorc because a rare covers that spot equally well.

Here is a table overview that I deduced. The difference in the FCR bonus for set and uniques and rares and magic and a list of items that apply FCR. The item source is the linked guide in my last post

FCR        Rare and Magic        Set and Unique
10         Fast                  Fast
20         Fastest               Faster
30+        N/A                   Fastest

Unique and Set Items (start at p 183 of the linked guide)
Fast Cast : Cathan's full set bonus (p 188)
Faster Cast: Arcanna's full set (p 189), Maelstorm Yew Wand, Ume's Lament Grim Wand (p 185) Wall of the Eyeless Bone Shield (p 184)
Fastest Cast : Spectral Shard Blade (p 186 of that guide)

If the above is true, my deduction is Spectral Shard can hit a higher FCR breakpoint than a rare in the same slot and may be worth the dex investment

We would need to confirm

1) Spectral Shard's 1.00 stats in game . I don't have one. Can someone with a 1.00 Spectral Shard please post a screenie? Does it say Fastest Cast?
2) If 1) is true, the FCR table for set and unique items. Does Fastest Cast means 30 or more FCR is applied for sets and uniques?

Edit : to fix the tables

No item in classic has more than 20% faster cast. It is simply inconsequent descriptions on blizz' part.

You count "fast cast" as one point, and anything better as two points, then add it together to get a score to check in the table reposted below:

Points*  frames per cast
0        13
1        12
2        11
3/4      10
5         9
6/7       8
8/9       7

*count "fast cast" as 1 point and "fastest cast" as 2 points

Some items are broke in their inherent rate:

- Fixed cast rate descriptions for the unique and set items: Arcanna's
  Tricks, Maelstromwrath, Ume's Lament, The Iron Jang Bong, Wall of the
  Eyeless, and Magefist.

There are 3 modifiers for rates. In this case, ca00 (Fast), ca01 (Faster), and ca02 (Fastest). All three mods may be given 10% or 20%. Some items in 1.00 use the incorrect modifier but still give the correct %. I'm not sure why blizzard used this system, they did so up until 1.10 which eliminated it.

Thanks @helvete and @GalaXyHaXz . I was half expecting that it was a blizzard bug and as I do not have much knowledge of classic or pre LOD 1.10 I thought it easier to put the theory to the test. From the table variables sounds like blizzard changed the values after initial game testing. Also the FCR table is very helpful for newcomers to 1.00. Does the FCR table apply to all classes or just Sorcs. Presumably Barb warcrys also use FCR bps like in 1.10

@helvete, you mention the table was a repost. Where was originally posted not in the SPF presumably as I did search it

Well; NM canyon maggots weren't getting my mules anywhere fast, though my main char leveled quite a bit.

So I tried a few RoF runs in normal again, and I got a map with a decent amount of maggots, and I think RoF maggots hatch faster for some reason? It feels much faster. so my mules are finally 24+ but I will push to 30ish and then try NM maggots again


edit: BTW it doesn't appear that cleansing or meditation synergize with prayer. Bummer!

I also found if the lvl gap between the xp rusher and xp leeches is too great like 11 lvls or greater it takes a lot longer to level mules. Out of curiosity what is the gap currently.

But at 24, the leeches can lvl to 30 in normal maggots without penalty. The rusher on the other hand will get the penalty and that will reduces the leeches xp anyway.

I was also reading about the outrageous radius of many paladin auras in 1.00. If there isn't an existing table I am tempted to create a will create one with these skills. It is a shame that there are no prayer synergies for other defensive auras.

well it was ~36 to 21 and IO leveled my barb to 44ish before going back to RoF. Now my mules are around lvl 27 but frankly it's just the area being so much more efficient. I wonder how soon I can move on to NM maggots.

Anyway, I still have to collect all of the gidbinn rings from my mules since the quest failed so once I've finished with normal levels I'll do that. I'm also filling up some mules with useful crafting gems for forwarding to 1.07. I think I'll do a few mules at a time.

@pharphis never thought i would say this to anyone here: Go to Hell!!

Seriously though you will level a lot faster on hell rof maggots

 

[Albatross]

Yes but I kind of want to level my other barb to at least 30 for WW before I risk having my main barb die. Don't want to have to poke one monster at a time ever again lol

oh yeah hardcore

ya I'm dumb

@pharphis when playing HC I understand your more cautious approach especially lvling mules. NM A4 can be fast too when lvling as until about lvl 55. This gives the toon a chance to increase the BO get to 1.5K+ of life and bigger mana pool and get ready for Hell. If you have Iceblink and leech covered you are much less likely to die. I suggest keeping a mule to store full rejuvies and you should be have enough to get you out some sticky situations if required and through to the A4 Hell

The lvls between 31 - 37 can go slowly in NM when leeching

ya I think I'm getting bored of leveling mules I might not ever use (don't really have much direction except try to beat hell, atm, since I got all those SoJs) so after I get a few to 30 I think I'll just move on.

My barb has about 1200 life but if I get another 10 levels or so I should be at maybe 1400? BO is almost max so not much more benefit there (maybe 1-2% more) but I plan to pump VIT from here on. I have ~50 dex and ~100 str so I think I'm fine. I also really need some nice rare rings which could easily boost me further. Thankfully I've been putting full rejuvs on my mules

You will do fine in hell with 1k+ life. The game isn't nearly the chore it is later on, and the damage/life ratio of monsters scales much differently. For example an Oblivion Knight:

1.00          1.09
(N)
HP 80-106     80-106
A1 13-29      13-29
A2 10-23      10-23
(NM)
HP 284-376    539-713
A1 34-76      28-62
A2 25-59      21-49
(H)
HP 683-905    1342-1776
A1 58-129     53-117
A2 43-102     39-92

As you can see the life is greatly increased and damage decreased. But then the damage gets applied bonuses when it hits you. This is why Thorns/Reflected damage is useless in later patches, because monsters have really high life and do low damage. Nonetheless, you'd be better off just going to A4 hell. As long as you have 20% LL or better, you'll be able to handle it.

Don't forget to gamble/Cow King a few uniques for leech, such as Broc's, Etlitch, Undead Crown, etc.

View attachment 5765

Eggs breaking here (not from me but on their own) over ~45 mins all dropping the same thing. I suppose with absurd luck you could get a map seed with a maggot who drops SoJs or Ume's or something heh

If only those linear drops applied to LoD. Then we'd all be scouting out a map to quaff Valor's or Jah/Ber's lol.

heh

BTW all 4 of them had different affixes, and I'm finally done getting my mules to 30.

That is, a sorc (with no real skill yet for killing lol), a second barb without a mastery chosen, a crappy necro which I started with and have been kinda aimless with points (some skellies, CE, amp...) and a dumb pally with 20 in prayer now pumping meditation

You'll see this when bonefarming as well; bone walls in the same spot will drop the same base item. And the Cow King killed in the same spot drop a very limited amount of patterns, etc. Poppables are limited to extremely few drops, usually one or two, with the same fingerprints, causing them to have identical stats down to the durability, and even amount of gold pieces.

When it comes to gold, the "X% more gold from monsters" means exactly that. Gold drops from objects are unaffected.

In an unusual twist, precise wording in D2 pays off!

On the topic of descriptions...
So, what does sanctuary aura do in classic? Every once in awhile I wake from a nightmare (/s) where I remember that sanctuary doesn't make paladins do 20x dmg to undead

Well, got to RoF in NM.

This time I tried the gidbinn quest with all of my mules in game and having not killed the monster or even activate the gidbinn until everyone was ready. I picked it up, and the quest failed for all the chars except the one who picked it up... so what's the deal, here? Is there a level requirement or something? Why is this quest so broken?

I think it is just broken

You had your mules partied, right? This never happened to me, it always works. Are you sure the quest actually failed? The quest screen lies just as much as the character screen at times.

Ya it failed. Maybe I forgot to party :/ because that's all I can think of that might have gone wrong.

That amulet is near perfect. If only some ML instead of rep life. But still awesome! You could make a lance zon in 1.06, since jab ignores speed.

I wanted to record a session going from 0 to max gold with my 89 pike barb, but fraps seems to crash D2 too frequently to do that. I tried the nVidia program, but my card isn't a high enough model for that to work. Anyone with advice?

It really is a great map, and it takes only 13-14 minutes to go from 0 to 1.34M gold (which is max for a lvl 89 char). I don't even have any extra gold on my rings! I suspect a sword barb with one Patriarch and one badass exec sword would be even better than my pike barb, though.

I think you can save local recordings with OBS?

I haven't made a video in years. I tried CamStudio (free) and it worked just fine. Maybe that will work for you as well? Anyhow I uploaded a little somthing...

@pharphis Jealous of my mad muling skills? I know Thyiad is ^^

Elite muling version 0.1