A belated introduction, confession, and OMG I got an IST from my first ever Hell HF!!
That's right! :laugh: Last night I reached Hell Hellforge for the first time in my life. I was expecting something like a Ral Ort Tal X) or at best a Shael, and hoping for something like Lem/Ko/Fal), but there it was, lying on the ground, a teeny-tiny gray blob with the loveliest of red labels saying "Ist Rune" attached to it! :jig: By far my best find so far, my other highest items are probably something like Tal's mask and Skin of the Vipermagi X) and my highest runes previously were 1 Lum 1 Io XD I have no idea what I'm going to do with this baby, at the moment I am going to just leave it in my stash and ogle at it <3 I would post a screenshot, but it appears even my game engine has gone nuts over this find. I hammer the Print Screen button yet no .jpg-s appear in my Diablo2 folder, and copy-paste in MSPaint yields this
I've also intended to do an introduction thread for a long time, and I'll take that Ist as a sign that the time has come
So... Hello, I'm Vantek ^_^ A Biology student from Estonia, 19 years of age, married to PC and best friends with Internet. I think I picked up D2 in October or November, a month or two later I found this forum and joined immediately, you just might have seen a post or two by me. Needless to say I'm loving this community *A LOT* <3 <3 <3 and keep up the greatness!
As far as my gamer history goes... (And you not only CAN safely skip this block, it is highly recommended due to extensive tl;dr I am mostly writing it for myself anyway ^^) I had the first single-player experience concentrating on atmosphere and storyline with an Amazon called Leya that didn't follow any particular build, but ended up focusing on Strafe and Freezing Arrow, and using an Edgestrike that I got as a gift from a friend (thanks, Maus!). Before I found out about windowed mode I couldn't battle.net due to some weird graphics card problems (which were causing other nuisances as well as you'll see but at least I was able to play in SP/TCP-IP), and now I can't because I have installed RRM/RWM and haven't got enough motivation for cattle.net to hassle with different versions so let's say I'm an exclusive SP-er II've done a little TCP-IP with two friends, as a paladin Vantek who wasn't following any particular build either, but that died out just after we reached Act III. I thought with that so would die my interest in the game. But I was wrong... ^_^
You see, I had heard that many Diablo players really love this thing called MF-ing. I thought I should try out this as the last thing
"Then," I thought to myself, "then I will surely have have exhausted the game completely and in every way" ^_^ I read that two single best charachters for MF-ing are a Necromancer and a Sorceress. Because hordes of minions tend to have a fairly strong freezing effect on my ancient computer, I decided to go for the latter. The build I chose was Meteorb - that one seemed like the most versatile, and I am a man of variety. And so Vanteress the Meteorb Sorceress was created. At first I also tried a little untwinked single-pass at P8 with her. It was fun for a while, but by the end of Act 1 I had had enough of that for the moment and instead started racing forward in the game on full speed, thinking my interest in the game was about to be exhausted... ^^ At the same time I did a few MF-ing Norm Act4 area clearances and then some NM Countess runs with my Amazon and reached about lvl50 with her but never found anything worthwhile apart from a load of Hels and Sols and I didn't like the build (or rather, lack of one) nor inversatility so I began using her less and less as my Meteorb reached equal lvl and went past in effectiveness. I suppose now I can say Slayer Leya the Amazon has officially retired. If I am ever going to play an Amazon again, she will be called Vanazon and she will strictly follow a certain build. Anyway I figured NM Countess and Andy are the first half-decent MF'ing targets, so I stayed in Act 1 NM for a while and ran mostly these two, occasionally clearing an area or two. And... As a mild surprise I was starting to find it more and more to my liking 8) When I felt like I had enough level to start visiting NM Mephisto, I raced through Act 2 and Act 3, and added him into my list of targets. Soonafter, I quested through the whole NM, and for quite some time, was running NM Pindle, Shenk&Elly, Council, Meph, Andy and Countess, and the occasional Act5 open area. I suppose this is where I began finding some of the majorly decent items. NM Andy gave me a Skin of the Vipermagi, NM Mephisto gave me a Tal's mask, someone I don't remember gave me a Tal's belt. When I finally felt like I was ready for Hell, I went for it. And I advanced quickly here, I entered Hell maybe a week ago and now I'm only a few hours of gaming time away from Matriarch. unlike NM and especially Norm where areas differ quite a bit in difficulty, Hell Act 5 isn't much harder than Hell Act 1 - it's just that you either are hell capable, or you are not.
So as it stands, at the moment I am concentrating on MF-ing with just one charachter, Vanteress the lvl 82 soon-to-be Matriarch who is just about to rescue Anya. She is wearing Skin of The Vipermagi and Tal's Mask (both PTopazed), Tal's Belt, a Rhyme shield, /a nice rare orb with 20% FCR, +2 all skils, +1 Frozen Orb and a bit of life,/ {rare boots which give 20% FRW, a little MF and resists], \rare gloves with a little MF and resists\, some unique amulet which has +1 to all skills, and two rare rings which both give 10% FCR, a little MF and resist. She was lucky enough to find a fire skill GC with 12% FHR, but she has no other skillers, only life and resists. She is accompanied by a Desert Mercenary with Might aura wielding an Insight made in a superior Partizan, and wearing a plain Skin of the Vipermagi and a rare Circlet which gives him some life leech. Once I've rescued Anya I intend to be running Pindle, Shenk&Elly, Meph, Andy, Countess and a few high lvl areas (especially Crypt&Mausoleum and Tunnels) for a long-long time. (Any suggestions at that?) I will probably tire of Vanteress at some point, but the next charachter will most probably also be a specialised MF-er, and I will twink him or her fully from the start. I might also try out tourneying some day, but probably only if the charachter can become a good specialised MF-er after he or she gets the tourney deeds
However, I need to make a bit of a confession. So far I haven't traded anything and I don't plan on trading in the near future, but I might eventually, and I am a pathologically honest man so I'll just explain it here so I can link to it when a situation arises when people might want to know about this. (At this point, skip to the end and read backward to avoid another tl;dr
The story begins with me installing my graphics card (nVidia Riva TNT2) into this computer. I knew from the start that the drivers were a bit iffy - to this day I get a nVidia error message every time I start the computer. But until I got Diablo 2 I just hit 'OK' and didn't seem to ever experience any problems. But with Diablo 2, I finally ran into some. It started already first time when l played, when I wanted to change the resolution from 640 to 800 - namely the PC froze completely the moment I hit the right arrow key on the resolution option. When I restarted and ran the game again though, I was on the desired resolution, so this problem was solved. Also I would occasionally get a total freeze upon exiting the game (the program that is), but that wasn't so much of a problem to begin with. However I ran into a serious problem when I reached the end of Act 1 (first time ever that is) - the game would consistently freeze when I wanted to travel to Act 2. I think I was TCP/IP'ing when it happened. I was the only one out of the bunch whose connection was good enough for hosting, and I didn't want to let my buddies down so I brainstormed it a bit, and this was the idea I got: what if I use a charachter editor to move my charachter from Act 1 to Act 2, and continue from there normally? And that's what I tried. I downloaded and installed the evil program, edited, rehosted. It didn't really work. My Paladin would indeed start in Act 2, but the quest as well as waypoint screen for Act 2 were inaccessible. We randomly killed some monsters and called it a day. Frustrated from this setback, I would still try to think of a solution, happened to lay my eyes on the video test program and ran it. And it gave me options between different graphics modes that I had completely forgotten about! I quickly switched to the 2D option, ran the game, and it worked! =D So, thank god, this problem was solved completely as well. The 2D option had its problems too though, heh. The game was overall slower, and about every 5 minutes the colours would get screwed up into a mess looking like an LSD experience and I'd have to change the resolution (I could do that in this graphics mode) to fix it >< And in certain areas the game would slow down to an utter crawl. (The worst was Baal - after killing him you are forced to eat the cinematics even if I just hit save&exit, so when I first killed him on the option (which took a YEAR because my Amazon and her pal lacked anti-boss power even if they did have excellent crowd control) that didn't slow down do a crawl but crashed on cinematics, and saved&exited, I was promptly kicked to my desktop, had to restart, and upon entering the game found my charachter with the quest incompleted -_- And it took ANOTHER YEAR to kill the dude on the other option. Okay maybe not a year but combining the two kills it was still a good 45 mins of tedium.)
Anyway, so in the end the editor turned out to be useless, but I still didn't bother with uninstalling. This once I edited a lvl 99 hell-capable paladin with 20 points in each skill and maxed stats because I wanted to see what a fully synergised hammer really does, but he ended up having his base health and mana (both less than 100 lol), and you can imagine what happens to someone with something like 50 health and 0 resists in hell
This lvl99 crazydin doesn't matter because no item ever came off this guy and I promptly deleted him.
But here's the important part. When I was building my Meteorb, I twice misassigned skillpoints, and used the editor to reassign them. Once straight in the beginning when I put like 9 first skill points into Ice Bolt (because it synergises Frozen Orb I got confused and thought I wanted to max it while I really did not), and then second time when I put the skill points from lvl25 and 26 into Blizzard, I have no idea what I was thinking, but it happened. So I have these two incidents in my record which don't smell good. They're not downright obvious cheating because I didn't GIVE myself anything, I only undid a stupid mistake, and in any case it was only very slight taint, but it still is a taint.
So there you have it. I very slightly but equally clearly tainted everything I own with the editor because at the time I thought I would soon dump the game, a very sillly delusion I attribute this to two mistakes: one, I knew nothing of MF-ing which doesn't exist in this form in any other game I have ever played, and two, I hadn't quite realised how awesome this community is. But it happened, I do not have the stamina to go through the tedium of a complete restart (I assure you if I attempted that, my interest in this game surely WOULD wither ), and so I first of all just want to just be honest and state this, and secondly I'd like to know how bad a taing do you all consider it to be.
In any case, I'll be seeing you folks around, as it appears, for a long-long time :azn:
That's right! :laugh: Last night I reached Hell Hellforge for the first time in my life. I was expecting something like a Ral Ort Tal X) or at best a Shael, and hoping for something like Lem/Ko/Fal), but there it was, lying on the ground, a teeny-tiny gray blob with the loveliest of red labels saying "Ist Rune" attached to it! :jig: By far my best find so far, my other highest items are probably something like Tal's mask and Skin of the Vipermagi X) and my highest runes previously were 1 Lum 1 Io XD I have no idea what I'm going to do with this baby, at the moment I am going to just leave it in my stash and ogle at it <3 I would post a screenshot, but it appears even my game engine has gone nuts over this find. I hammer the Print Screen button yet no .jpg-s appear in my Diablo2 folder, and copy-paste in MSPaint yields this
I've also intended to do an introduction thread for a long time, and I'll take that Ist as a sign that the time has come
So... Hello, I'm Vantek ^_^ A Biology student from Estonia, 19 years of age, married to PC and best friends with Internet. I think I picked up D2 in October or November, a month or two later I found this forum and joined immediately, you just might have seen a post or two by me. Needless to say I'm loving this community *A LOT* <3 <3 <3 and keep up the greatness!
As far as my gamer history goes... (And you not only CAN safely skip this block, it is highly recommended due to extensive tl;dr
I am mostly writing it for myself anyway ^^) I had the first single-player experience concentrating on atmosphere and storyline with an Amazon called Leya that didn't follow any particular build, but ended up focusing on Strafe and Freezing Arrow, and using an Edgestrike that I got as a gift from a friend (thanks, Maus!). Before I found out about windowed mode I couldn't battle.net due to some weird graphics card problems (which were causing other nuisances as well as you'll see but at least I was able to play in SP/TCP-IP), and now I can't because I have installed RRM/RWM and haven't got enough motivation for cattle.net to hassle with different versions so let's say I'm an exclusive SP-er II've done a little TCP-IP with two friends, as a paladin Vantek who wasn't following any particular build either, but that died out just after we reached Act III. I thought with that so would die my interest in the game. But I was wrong... ^_^You see, I had heard that many Diablo players really love this thing called MF-ing. I thought I should try out this as the last thing
"Then," I thought to myself, "then I will surely have have exhausted the game completely and in every way" ^_^ I read that two single best charachters for MF-ing are a Necromancer and a Sorceress. Because hordes of minions tend to have a fairly strong freezing effect on my ancient computer, I decided to go for the latter. The build I chose was Meteorb - that one seemed like the most versatile, and I am a man of variety. And so Vanteress the Meteorb Sorceress was created. At first I also tried a little untwinked single-pass at P8 with her. It was fun for a while, but by the end of Act 1 I had had enough of that for the moment and instead started racing forward in the game on full speed, thinking my interest in the game was about to be exhausted... ^^ At the same time I did a few MF-ing Norm Act4 area clearances and then some NM Countess runs with my Amazon and reached about lvl50 with her but never found anything worthwhile apart from a load of Hels and Sols and I didn't like the build (or rather, lack of one) nor inversatility so I began using her less and less as my Meteorb reached equal lvl and went past in effectiveness. I suppose now I can say Slayer Leya the Amazon has officially retired. If I am ever going to play an Amazon again, she will be called Vanazon and she will strictly follow a certain build. Anyway I figured NM Countess and Andy are the first half-decent MF'ing targets, so I stayed in Act 1 NM for a while and ran mostly these two, occasionally clearing an area or two. And... As a mild surprise I was starting to find it more and more to my liking 8) When I felt like I had enough level to start visiting NM Mephisto, I raced through Act 2 and Act 3, and added him into my list of targets. Soonafter, I quested through the whole NM, and for quite some time, was running NM Pindle, Shenk&Elly, Council, Meph, Andy and Countess, and the occasional Act5 open area. I suppose this is where I began finding some of the majorly decent items. NM Andy gave me a Skin of the Vipermagi, NM Mephisto gave me a Tal's mask, someone I don't remember gave me a Tal's belt. When I finally felt like I was ready for Hell, I went for it. And I advanced quickly here, I entered Hell maybe a week ago and now I'm only a few hours of gaming time away from Matriarch. unlike NM and especially Norm where areas differ quite a bit in difficulty, Hell Act 5 isn't much harder than Hell Act 1 - it's just that you either are hell capable, or you are not.So as it stands, at the moment I am concentrating on MF-ing with just one charachter, Vanteress the lvl 82 soon-to-be Matriarch who is just about to rescue Anya. She is wearing Skin of The Vipermagi and Tal's Mask (both PTopazed), Tal's Belt, a Rhyme shield, /a nice rare orb with 20% FCR, +2 all skils, +1 Frozen Orb and a bit of life,/ {rare boots which give 20% FRW, a little MF and resists], \rare gloves with a little MF and resists\, some unique amulet which has +1 to all skills, and two rare rings which both give 10% FCR, a little MF and resist. She was lucky enough to find a fire skill GC with 12% FHR, but she has no other skillers, only life and resists. She is accompanied by a Desert Mercenary with Might aura wielding an Insight made in a superior Partizan, and wearing a plain Skin of the Vipermagi and a rare Circlet which gives him some life leech. Once I've rescued Anya I intend to be running Pindle, Shenk&Elly, Meph, Andy, Countess and a few high lvl areas (especially Crypt&Mausoleum and Tunnels) for a long-long time. (Any suggestions at that?) I will probably tire of Vanteress at some point, but the next charachter will most probably also be a specialised MF-er, and I will twink him or her fully from the start. I might also try out tourneying some day, but probably only if the charachter can become a good specialised MF-er after he or she gets the tourney deeds
However, I need to make a bit of a confession. So far I haven't traded anything and I don't plan on trading in the near future, but I might eventually, and I am a pathologically honest man so I'll just explain it here so I can link to it when a situation arises when people might want to know about this. (At this point, skip to the end and read backward to avoid another tl;dr
The story begins with me installing my graphics card (nVidia Riva TNT2) into this computer. I knew from the start that the drivers were a bit iffy - to this day I get a nVidia error message every time I start the computer. But until I got Diablo 2 I just hit 'OK' and didn't seem to ever experience any problems. But with Diablo 2, I finally ran into some. It started already first time when l played, when I wanted to change the resolution from 640 to 800 - namely the PC froze completely the moment I hit the right arrow key on the resolution option. When I restarted and ran the game again though, I was on the desired resolution, so this problem was solved. Also I would occasionally get a total freeze upon exiting the game (the program that is), but that wasn't so much of a problem to begin with. However I ran into a serious problem when I reached the end of Act 1 (first time ever that is) - the game would consistently freeze when I wanted to travel to Act 2. I think I was TCP/IP'ing when it happened. I was the only one out of the bunch whose connection was good enough for hosting, and I didn't want to let my buddies down so I brainstormed it a bit, and this was the idea I got: what if I use a charachter editor to move my charachter from Act 1 to Act 2, and continue from there normally? And that's what I tried. I downloaded and installed the evil program, edited, rehosted. It didn't really work. My Paladin would indeed start in Act 2, but the quest as well as waypoint screen for Act 2 were inaccessible. We randomly killed some monsters and called it a day. Frustrated from this setback, I would still try to think of a solution, happened to lay my eyes on the video test program and ran it. And it gave me options between different graphics modes that I had completely forgotten about! I quickly switched to the 2D option, ran the game, and it worked! =D So, thank god, this problem was solved completely as well. The 2D option had its problems too though, heh. The game was overall slower, and about every 5 minutes the colours would get screwed up into a mess looking like an LSD experience and I'd have to change the resolution (I could do that in this graphics mode) to fix it >< And in certain areas the game would slow down to an utter crawl. (The worst was Baal - after killing him you are forced to eat the cinematics even if I just hit save&exit, so when I first killed him on the option (which took a YEAR because my Amazon and her pal lacked anti-boss power even if they did have excellent crowd control) that didn't slow down do a crawl but crashed on cinematics, and saved&exited, I was promptly kicked to my desktop, had to restart, and upon entering the game found my charachter with the quest incompleted -_- And it took ANOTHER YEAR to kill the dude on the other option. Okay maybe not a year but combining the two kills it was still a good 45 mins of tedium.)
Anyway, so in the end the editor turned out to be useless, but I still didn't bother with uninstalling. This once I edited a lvl 99 hell-capable paladin with 20 points in each skill and maxed stats because I wanted to see what a fully synergised hammer really does, but he ended up having his base health and mana (both less than 100 lol), and you can imagine what happens to someone with something like 50 health and 0 resists in hell
This lvl99 crazydin doesn't matter because no item ever came off this guy and I promptly deleted him.
But here's the important part. When I was building my Meteorb, I twice misassigned skillpoints, and used the editor to reassign them. Once straight in the beginning when I put like 9 first skill points into Ice Bolt (because it synergises Frozen Orb I got confused and thought I wanted to max it while I really did not), and then second time when I put the skill points from lvl25 and 26 into Blizzard, I have no idea what I was thinking, but it happened. So I have these two incidents in my record which don't smell good. They're not downright obvious cheating because I didn't GIVE myself anything, I only undid a stupid mistake, and in any case it was only very slight taint, but it still is a taint.
So there you have it. I very slightly but equally clearly tainted everything I own with the editor because at the time I thought I would soon dump the game, a very sillly delusion
I attribute this to two mistakes: one, I knew nothing of MF-ing which doesn't exist in this form in any other game I have ever played, and two, I hadn't quite realised how awesome this community is. But it happened, I do not have the stamina to go through the tedium of a complete restart (I assure you if I attempted that, my interest in this game surely WOULD wither ), and so I first of all just want to just be honest and state this, and secondly I'd like to know how bad a taing do you all consider it to be.In any case, I'll be seeing you folks around, as it appears, for a long-long time :azn:
). I'm 1.11b HC RRM/RWM btw.