[2015] A Lack of Information (A S/U Worshipper Tournament) [by Pb_pal]

Jan 3, 2007
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DISCLAIMER: Please do NOT post in this thread yet. We still need to migrate all posts from the old thread on diabloii.net to this thread. Once all posts from this thread have been migrated, the disclaimer will be removed and the thread open to new posts. :)

This tournament has already ended. It was originally started by Dazliare on Apr 29, 2016. The last post was made Oct 6, 2019.
(link to original thread on diabloii.net)

Ulric always felt the education system had it wrong. There was so much emphasis put on this silly "reading" thing, and never enough time put into learning how to swing a sword. He knew in his heart that reading was only for those who couldn't fight properly, and spent his time finding ways around the system. All his classmates spent hours trying to figure out how to read equipment, deciphering magic affixes, only to find out that they had an armour with +1 to light radius or some other no-doubt useless mod. What a waste of time! Who needs to spend their time with all that garbage when you can be out smashing Fallen in the face and finding gold? He didn't know much, but he knew one thing: you're not going to get rich by reading books, that's for sure!

Luckily for Ulric, the end-of-year exams focused on his favourite type of items, Set and Unique items. He figured out quickly that their characteristics were always the same, with only fluctuations in the individual stats. This meant that all he had to do was memorize what equipment came with what stats, and he could ace the exam! Ulric was determined to never touch a book again, and instead worked on his skills as a warrior. He felt this would benefit him much more in the end. Besides, monsters aren't going to stand around and wait for you to read some recipe, or flip through your affix manual before attacking you. He didn't need all those stupid blue and yellow items anyways, green and gold would be his colours of choice.

He would show his teachers he knew best, and save Sanctuary his own way. The bookworms could stay in their libraries, he was going to go and do something meaningful!


--

Welcome to the Lack of Information Tournament! A tournament where books are useless and reading is banned. Set and Unique (S/U) equipment is what you will be searching for, and will be the (almost) only equipment you will ever wear. Green and gold is what we crave, and we will make it to the end that way, or die trying.

Let's get to the rules!


General Rules

1. HC, or SC with disqualification upon first death (feel free to continue to update, although you cannot win the tournament.)
2. Single-pass, untwinked only. (You may, of course, sprint from a WP to an uncleared area when starting a new session. Keep kills to an absolute minimum while maintaining safety, but all drops are off limits)
3. You may defer completion of non-item "rewards" quests (Larzuk Socketing, Anya Personalization) and return for the rewards at any point. You may also return to previous acts/difficulties for shopping purposes as you please.
4. ATMA/GoMule may be used as an extended stash (you may also hot-mule off, as long as you adhere to the rules. Please take extra care to avoid any problems. Here is the relevant quote from the SPF Rules FAQ:
Hotmuling

Hot muling is muling while the character you are muling from is in game. It's rarely done because of the risk of creating duplicate items (aka 'duping'). It's usually done with Gheeds because you can only carry one at a time. This is acceptable but should be declared and care must be taken so that the items are not duped.

So you are playing Teagan and she has a Gheeds. Another Unique charm drops.

Minimize to desktop and open ATMA or GoMule. You open Teagan and another character which doesn't have a Gheeds or any stash file.
You move Teagan's Gheeds to the other character or stash. You save that file and exit ATMA or GoMule.
Back in game you drop Teagans identified Gheeds on the ground and pick up the UnID'd one.
You play as normal and when you next exit you can put the 'new' Gheeds in the stash and get the first one back. Same as you would swap any other item.


However, it is not - and never has been - acceptable to restore backups with the intention of having a second chance at making an item whether through cubing sockets, crafting or making runewords. Similarly if you trade an item away, you delete the one on your hard drive. Duping is NOT acceptable.

5. You may re-enter as many times as you wish, or enter multiple characters at once. You may sign-up any time.
6. Version 1.10+, RRM/RWM/FAM allowed. No MP, no Trading.
7. Any /players setting may be used at any time.
8. Save + Exit to avoid death is NOT allowed, and results in disqualification from the tournament. (you may, however, S+E if running from a previously cleared area and you get yourself in trouble.)
9. I will make and maintain a table with progress. This will hopefully eliminate mix-ups and missed updates.

Tournament Specific Rules:

10. You may not read the book of skill obtained from killing Radament.
11. You may not take Lam Esen's Tome from the Ruined Temple in Act III.
12. You may not read the Resistance Scroll obtained by saving Anya.
13. You may bring the Scroll of Inifuss back to Akara to read in order to save Cain. You may also read Horazon's Journal, as there is no other way to progress to the Canyon of the Magi.
14. You may not use Tomes or Scrolls of Identify. This means that you may not identify anything until Cain is saved. You may not return to a previous difficulty to ID items.
  • Exception being Set/Unique items. These may be identified and used upon finding them as you already "know" what they are.
15. Scrolls/Tomes of Town Portal WILL be allowed, as even the most basic warriors learn to read these. (I'm not THAT sadistic!)

16.
This is the bread and butter of the tournament. Once they have been found, your character and mercenary may ONLY equip S/U items. As this can get complicated, I will add some extra notes below that should hopefully clarify any confusion:
  • White or grey (socketed or ethereal) items may be used until a S/U item is found for each equipment slot. After an appropriate S/U item has been found, you must immediately use that item for that slot. If you cannot equip the item, you must leave that slot empty until you can either equip it, or find a suitable replacement. Once you find multiple appropriate S/U items for a specific slot (helm, armour etc), you may decide which one you wish to wear.
  • S/U weapons you find can be used towards any of the three weapon slots (primary, switch, merc) at your choice. The third S/U weapon you find must fill the last slot. If your merc cannot equip any of the three, he/she must go weaponless until an appropriate S/U item drops. Once one drops it must be equipped on the merc. This means there will most likely be some merc-switching depending on available gear, so don't get too attached!
  • The same applies to armours, so if you have found two S/U armours, the merc must either wear one, or go without armour in that slot if he/she cannot equip it.
  • No magical/rare rings or amulets may ever be worn. These slots will remain empty until an appropriate S/U is found.
  • If the only S/U item you have found for a specific slot is ethereal and breaks before finding another appropriate S/U to replace it, that slot then reverts back to its original status, and white/grey items can once again be equipped until another S/U is found.
17. Runewords are banned.
18. Crafted and Rare items are banned.
19. There are no restrictions on charms, although if you do find a Gheed's Fortune, you must have it in your inventory at all times. All other Magic items are banned.
20. You may socket any equipment with Gems, Runes(as long as you adhere to Rule 17), or Unique Jewels. No other socketables are allowed.
21. Quest reward items (eg. Ormus Ring, Anya's reward, Charsi Imbue etc) are NOT allowed to be used. You can use Quest items such as the Horadric Staff/Khalim's Will if you want while you have them, as they are Unique items. They are not, however, required to replace any existing white/socketed items if you are still using them at the time.
22. There are no Skill restrictions.
23. There are no Stat restrictions.
24. There are no additional restrictions on Mercenaries aside from equipment restrictions listed under Rule 16.
25. Respec is banned.
26. Gambling for S/U is highly encouraged!
27. The winner(s) is/are anyone who makes Guardian status. The prize is unending pride and a whole whack of admiration from the SPF.
28. Have fun! May all your drops be green and gold. :)

The tournament starts now, good luck!
 
I was originally going to wait a bit to start this tournament, but I though it might be interesting to see it run alongside kestegs' Committed Tournament. With the MF restriction in the Committed Tourney, the focus is more on items you can shop/create, whereas this tournament banks entirely on what you can find along the way.

I will enter with Karna, the Phoenix-striking assassin with a self-imposed rule of no skill points into the trap tree. That means no DS for corpse removal, and no BF for ranged safety. Should be fun!

Good luck to all participants!

Karna, the Phoenix Strike Assassin - lvl 1, Rogue Encampment[/b]
 
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I'll join, I just hope it doesn't become as boring as my Passive Aggressive druid, so I can finally finish a tourney character. I've started... 5 I think and the furthest I've gone was with a Blizz sorc in the last Set/Unique worshiper tourney. Then I found Steelgoad and everything went so wrong in Act 1 NM.

This time I'll do something slightly less mana dependent and hope I don't hate her.

Zoey, the Hydra/FO Sorceress - lvl 1, Rogue Encampment
 
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SunsetVista said:
Do the rules mean that as soon as I find a 3rd set/unique shield I must use an Act 3 merc for the rest of the game?
No you are free to use whatever merc you want. However if your merc can't use any of the weapon types you've found by the third, they must go weaponless. The 3rd S/U weapon only designates that the 3rd weapon slot is now a "S/U items only may be equipped" slot (ie. no more whites/greys). You are free to leave those slots empty as you wish, or are forced to.

EDIT: Obviously this may indirectly force you to switch mercenaries as you find weapons and certain mercenaries become more obsolete, but you are more than welcome to take a weaponless rogue all the way to Guardian if you never find a S/U bow. I hope that helped to clear it up, instead of just confusing everyone more...

EDIT2: Welcome srrw, hopefully she is more enjoyable for you! I specifically left no constraints on skills so that people only had to play sluggish characters if they wanted to this time. ;)
 
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Very interesting restrictions. They clearly favor caster builds, but I wonder how other builds will fare :)

As I said before, I definitely will join this. My class will be determined randomly, but I'll plan a build once the class is set. Unfortunately, the Barbarians Tournament takes up all my playing time now, and considering my slow playing pace it will probably be several months before I can join here. Hopefully it will still be on then, otherwise I'll just post the updates here if nobody will mind.

@jiansonz: Nice to see you again in this tournament :).
 
Hi SPF!

It's some time ago i have been at this forum, but the lack of good games like diablo2 made me return once again. I still have the atma files from my last comeback but this tiem im not planning to grind for perfect grail anymore, but was just planning to relax some in tournaments, since I love those.

Awesome to see you are still showing in every tourny Jiansonz! You are an example in d2 for me :)

PS: Besides doing tournies ive also been considering last summer about a HC naked paladin, I think he is somewhere in early nightmare difficulty. Is there anyone who made a naked paladin guardian achievement?

Anyway. Ill join this tournament :), likely with an assassin, but its so long ago I played d2. First i need to see if the game starts up and how the skilltrees looked like :p

edit: I rly wanted to make a blade sentinel assassin but i know that just wont work selffound and likely without a claw for claw mastery and a weak summon. So im going for a melee barbarian, praying for those good weapons. Im not yet decided on skills yet.

one question: Are runewords allowed until we find an s/u replacement?

Ignorant, the Concentrate Barbarian - lvl 1, Rogue Encampment (with 1 gold from vendoring ID scroll :p)
 
@djmbbandie - We will see you once Natasha makes Guardian and has some time to relax. :)

@kestegs - Yeah, the missing quest rewards will make skill planning a bit tighter obviously, but I think it will be an interesting change. Hope to see whatever it is you've got planned, you usually pick great builds.

@jiansonz - That sounds awesome, I've always wanted to build a FoH'er, so I'll be very curious to see how it turns out!

@epaminondas - Don't worry about joining later on, no matter the state of the tournament. My playing time will be taking a hit in the next little while, so I'll be going nice and slowly too.

@EasyG - Great to see you back! Welcome, and you'll have to let us know how the naked pally goes! :)

@SunsetVista - Hopefully my answers before cleared up the merc issue. If not, just let me know :)
 
Pb_pal said:
  • Exception being Set/Unique items. These may be identified and used upon finding them as you already "know" what they are
Is this true even for those where there is more than one S/U of the item type?



@Pb_pal: yeah, it will be interesting to see how FoH works out. Never used the skill at all, maybe I'll hate it...
It would probably have been a better choice in a tourney where a merc with Insight would have been allowed, but I'll try anyway.


@EasyG: no runewords alloweed (see rule # 17).
 
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jiansonz said:
@EasyG: no runewords alloweed (see rule # 17).
Oops :D, missed that one I guess :D

I already started my adventure and so far realised 2 things:
-concentrate costs 2 mana at all lvls so I guess no mana leech wont be any problem.
-The repair costs of whatever weapon I will use are likely going to be a serious problem :)

Ignorant, the Concentrate Barbarian - lvl 8, Cave level 1
 
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kestegs said:
How do we treat an eth unique that breaks if it's the only one we had of that slot. Like a broken eth lenymo with no other found s/u belts yet?
I think in this case (if it does come up), that slot can then revert back to it's original state (able to equip white/greys). We will consider a slot to be S/U specific only if there is an unbroken, wearable S/U to fill it.

EDIT: I have updated the rules accordingly. Thanks for the catch kestegs!
 
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Wolfswift hasn't found any s/u items yet, but he's already running with five chipped topazes in his kit. Have full cleared up to Cold Plains, but then ran ahead to rescue Mr. Cain so we could identity all the rare items and charms building up in the stash. Currently doing pretty good damage with a purchased scepter with a chipped sapphire and emerald. When facing Red Raven, she immediately amped us, but Wolfswift does enough damage that she dropped soon enough once the curse wore off.
Raven.jpg

Wolfswift, Level 12, Cold Plains
 
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Ignorant has been bashing as a true barbarian through the early battlegrounds. Kasya awarded him with company: Kyoko the archer. Pretty soon the equipment was 2 skull helmets, 2 leather armors, all 4 filled with 2 topazes. Superior hunters bow filled with 2 rubys, 1 emerald and superior scepter with 2 rubies. We stayed away from any cold gems in order to make max usage of the find item skill that ignorant picked up. Boots, gloves, belt and shield were all ethereal to max out the defense.
There was a litle confusion when scroll of inifuss was found, since both Ignorant and Kyoko are not able to read, but Akara translated it and later we met a nice traveler called Kain which identified all our charms.

There were a little mixed feelings when our first s/u dropped after Kyoto sniped Pitspawn Fouldog:
g1Li8NJ.jpg
Since Ignorant kinda hoped to use a socketed barbarian helmet with weapon masteries on it. However the 10% resistance is a very nice pickup aswell the mana sustain, which allows him to actually use concentrate, which is more usefull as the passive from a weapon mastery.
Also as bonus, it is my first infernal cranium with perfect stats (5 defense).

Ignorant, the concentrate Barbarian - lvl 19, Inner Cloister
 
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