1.00 News, Info and Gossip

[jimsfriend]

I just wish there were more weapons with the appropriate reach :[

Is there a limit to how early an soj can drop? Could it hypothetically drop in normal blood moor, or unique ring has like a qlvl or something and wouldn't drop before andariel for example.

I have in mind to farm sapphires in 1.00 by forcing rakanishu to drop a sapphire every game, and was curious if such thing could also theoretically be done for soj (to then roll rare diadems in modern patch).

 

[d2lover]

@art_vandelay wow, how did you test that?

 

[art_vandelay]

Is there a limit to how early an soj can drop? Could it hypothetically drop in normal blood moor, or unique ring has like a qlvl or something and wouldn't drop before andariel for example.

I have in mind to farm sapphires in 1.00 by forcing rakanishu to drop a sapphire every game, and was curious if such thing could also theoretically be done for soj (to then roll rare diadems in modern patch).

The main problem here is that champs, uniques and super uniques do not drop unique items, so Rakanishu couldn't give you an SoJ. (Assuming the "usual" drop of these monsters, I think there is an astronomical chance of them dropping out of line)

But assuming you have Nagel and Manald, you could theoretically force SoJ from regulars and minions. That being said it would be incredibly unlikely to get such a seed and losing it eventually would be painful.

As to your idea with the sapphires, why not run council in Hell? If you approach them from the same path they have relatively "stable drops" and give a lot of gems. I definitely noticed a bias towards certain gems on certain map seeds. So a sapphire seed should be easy to produce and very fruitful. (Remember that conviction has essentially no effect in 1.00, so council has a lot fewer "worst case" rolls and is easy to farm for a WW barb)

Also rolling Diadems with SoJ's is pointless. They can always get all affixes, and assuming a high enough rerolling character their ilvl "bottoms" out at a value that is high enough to ensure 2os.

@d2lover Fruit tested it, not sure how.

 

[jimsfriend]

The purpose of rolling diadem (or any circlet) with soj wouldn't be to maintain the ilvl, but rather if soj dropped that frequently, to be more efficient than using 6 skulls. I didn't know named monsters don't drop unique, so that's good to know.

I'll look into your hell council idea, but "relatively stable" could end up being less fruitful than "100% stable" that I could get from rakanishu near wp with holy fire.

 

[d2lover]

@jimsfriend I find it hard to believe that a SoJ is only worth 3 Pskulls given that:

getting a rare circlet from any gambling vendor takes roughly 1 million gold (which with high enough clvl is equal to any rare diadem)

 

[d2lover]

I mean timewise gambling is a timesink, but still

 

[ziambe]

Another idea is to just imbue white diadems in a modern patch. In CS they arent all that rare, and as @art_vandelay pointed out, they have a high enough 'magic level' to be eligible for all affixes.

You could even self mp 8 mules and do the malice quest, as they can imbue a godly diadem already at level 8. And level 8 takes less than 10 min with a nice 6 os twinking weapon in the cold plains...

 

[art_vandelay]

You could even self mp 8 mules and do the malice quest, as they can imbue a godly diadem already at level 8. And level 8 takes less than 10 min with a nice 6 os twinking weapon in the cold plains...

Problem is that lvl 8 mules can't get 2os on the imbue. However one ancient quest in 1.07 should remedy that.

 

[d2lover]

(must first ask mod)

 

[jimsfriend]

Yes there are other ways to get rare diadems at a reasonable rate, the whole point of being able to farm soj literally once every 30 seconds would be that it's an *unreasonable* rate

Anyway that's a secondary and much lower priority for me. The sapphires are the real goal, here.

 

[d2lover]

Hey folks, did you try out Max Howl in the Cowlevel?

To get rid of all cows except the king

 

[Mjarr]

Even when we thought it was once per frame, it "was" only twice as fast as modern. So the only good thing about 1.00 WW is that you attack at max speed no matter the weapon, nothing else really.

Back when I used old forums' threads for reference ages ago, I thought it was very odd how long that claim persisted before it was ultimately debunked as all it takes having bit of modern D2 knowledge of Nihlatak's snakes' poison cloud (which is per frame damage relative to game logic) and it simply does not match. It took me only few WWs to notice that the information simply was not true when I did some 1.00 adventuring some years ago.

 

[DariusTriplet]

I am 99.99% positive 1.01 was day 1 patch, or realistically ready pre-release but discs had to be pressed in advance and whatnot since 1.00 was impossible to play on bnet to begin with, D2 has release date of June 29 or 30th 2000 depending on region, while 1.02 probably came out early July, since going through some extracted old files it claims date modified 7.7.2000. This would make it pretty educated guess that 1.01 = day 1 patch, 1.02 = one week+ after release.

Regarding builds, having played 1.00 bowazon (1pt jab ofc for jabbing with any kind of spear on some occasions) for giggles and change of pace fairly recent at simulated players 3 (aka two mules idling in game), it basically is just maxing out strafe, herding enemies, having valkyrie and decoy to keep targets still and then unleash strafe preferably at angle you can make most of pierce. On top of that guided arrows to check targets or against individual targets, magic arrow can be useful against single high hp targets so you don't have to use two stacks of arrows. As obligatory reminder, spacing or positioning matters because if you thought strafelock in modern D2 is bad, try D2C strafelock. Also strafe is very wonky against single targets unless it's large, so essentially you are wasting loads of mana for a single arrow that does slightly more damage, hence why guided or even magic arrow is your go-to source, latter so you do not have to go pick more arrows every half a minute while slowly whittling away a boss or so. Depends really on the situation.

I believe skill allocation has been few in obligatory DAE, maxed strafe, probably ~5ish points in critical strike, then some in pierce and few in penetrate. Most of your long-term damage comes out of dexterity while the best bows functionally are ones with just +max damage and as high IAS as possible. Even say, exceptional hunter's bow (forgot the name lol) with IAS and +15 max damage might be better than gothic bow with just max damage, as whenever not using strafe the faster you recover from shots means the sooner you can run away from that extra fast MSLE that appeared out of nowhere.

I will say it has been quite fun challenge overall, and it tends to get easier as you level up due dexterity and odds of having a bow with +max damage.

I found that summoning a Decoy+Valkyrie against single targets helped Strafe, as you'd get a third arrow and thus double damage per Strafe cycle - the first arrow would strike, the second would nextdelay on through, and the third would come in after nextdelay and strike. It's still not stellar, though; I think my Strafer would've made Queen had I used more Guided Arrow for bosses. Do very large monsters get multiple checks per arrow for nextdelay?

How are Chu-Ko-Nus for 1.00 Strafing? I don't know the breakpoints for bows vs crossbows, but they deal markedly higher damage than Razor/Double Bows and still clock in at Very Fast (although on a slow weapon class).

 

[Mjarr]

I think I tried them (repeating crossbow and chu-ko-nu) briefly and for strafing purposes it was not too bad, but it loops back to the problem the sooner you get out of strafelock (or even individual shot) and can start moving again the less likely you drop dead whenever that one nasty spawn just happens to show up. Of course in softcore it is mostly just minor inconvenience but in HC, not worth taking the risk. To be fair this probably also depends on what kind of simulated /players setting is going on with mules.

(Also honestly, the 640x480 resolution plays some role here too as situational awereness combined with strafelock and other jank is definitely limiting factor.)

As for nextdelay part, I am not sure of exact technicalities related to it but going by experience it seems to be very enemy specific. Balrogs in act4 and the walking trees in act3 at least seem to trigger consistently 3-4+ shots per target and notice decent damage output per strafe usage from max-ish distance, but this probably was also influenced by valk+decoy. But said inconsistency is the chief reason I would just recommend GA or MA at times, or if it is not too dangerous, just grab that pike from cube and jab it to oblivion.

Microedits due brainfarts.

 

[ziambe]

Had a random thought...

I remember farming gold in 1.00 from 'war scepter' maps in Act 4. I also think I recall seeing 'War Staff' maps...

Could this be a nice way to farm bases for the new rune word Obsession?

 

[art_vandelay]

Could this be a nice way to farm bases for the new rune word Obsession?

The only problem that comes to mind is that tier 6 skills might not be able to spawn, so no masteries, FO or Hydra on such a staff, should that matter to you.

I don't know where I read this, probably an archived version of dii.net, so would be hard to find again.

EDIT: Can't find source and now I am very unsure. Does anybody have such an item?

 

[Mjarr]

While I am also going by memory, I do believe if the game fails to roll proper staffmod multiple times in a row it essentially sticks to something that is not normally allowed. This is say, how you can have holy shield in pala scepter, but needless to say the odds of having repeated staffmod failures on item generation for the game to throw up its arms and just stick something in it regardless is it normally valid are rather unlikely.

In that sense I would not necessarily rule out the possibility of FO or mastery spawning in staves but have fun getting one.

 

[DariusTriplet]

The only problem that comes to mind is that tier 6 skills might not be able to spawn, so no masteries, FO or Hydra on such a staff, should that matter to you.

I don't know where I read this, probably an archived version of dii.net, so would be hard to find again.

EDIT: Can't find source and now I am very unsure. Does anybody have such an item?

Closest source I can find is this but it's not hard-and-fast.

 

[Excalibur]

How much stronger do the monsters become with an extra player in-game?
Though I would try with 2 characters inside and it felt like I couldn't kill anything anymore.

Also, am I the only who thinks Frozen Orb SUCKS

 

[art_vandelay]

While I am also going by memory, I do believe if the game fails to roll proper staffmod multiple times in a row it essentially sticks to something that is not normally allowed. This is say, how you can have holy shield in pala scepter, but needless to say the odds of having repeated staffmod failures on item generation for the game to throw up its arms and just stick something in it regardless is it normally valid are rather unlikely.

That is 1.10+ only though, before that HS was a perfectly valid staffmod and you find it all the time.

How much stronger do the monsters become with an extra player in-game?
Though I would try with 2 characters inside and it felt like I couldn't kill anything anymore.

Also, am I the only who thinks Frozen Orb SUCKS

While I do not have those numbers the fact of the matter is that they only gain HP, but not AR or +% damage. With what character did you not kill anything anymore?

FO is decent, just not as a main damage dealer, but rather as a finisher. Static is the most powerful skill at higher psettings (remember you can sliver monsters on Hell difficulty). I made the mistake of maxing it on my first sorceress, which just makes it cost a ton of mana while doing the same job of finishing monsters as it does at low levels.