Probably not very appropriate, since this is online, but if you fancy a little story about building wealth on ladder, keep reading.
SP was beginning to bore me a bit, since I only need cow boots and unique wand to finish grail, and I hate looking for very specific items, because the chance for disappointment is absolutely massive. So I thought the new ladder might be fun, and it's been a while. A little late to the party; like 20 people were already 99 when I started, but I knew I would never contend in the leveling race anyway, since I have little time and no friends. I named my first character, a sorceress "Progress" and aimed for hell mephisto quest exploit.
For those of you unfamiliar with that exploit, it only works in multiplayer games, so that would probably be why. The idea is to not complete the final quest of act 3, and join games where the quest is already done, and kill Mephisto. This causes Meph to drop his 1st kill drop, which excludes the "misc junk" TC which contains... well... junk. Ammo, keys, scrolls, and potions. It also has a floor of rare item quality, which means the only blues he drops are failed greens.
With this build, you miss out on a few things, though:
- Any quest reward from act 4 and 5 hell
- Any terror zone in act 4 and 5
- Quick leveling in a party if the terror zone is undesireable, or in act 4 or 5
- "Doing your thing" solo; you *need* to join other peoples games for meph and TZ
But not to worry. Meph is mlvl87 when not terrorized; 12 levels higher than Andariel, which always drop her first kill drop anyway. Also, you DO have access to a variety of runs, in case it is the middle of the night and no bots (which vary greatly in number) making quick games.
- Countess and Andariel in act 1
- Summoner in act 2
- Travincal and Lower Kurast in act 3
Anyway, getting a character as far as act 3 hell when online is pretty trivial. So much can be cheesed, and optional quests can be postponed. I started as Charged Boltress, then respec to blizzard fairly quickly. I was holding on to hammerdin gear, selling or giving away the rest, so as to reduce the need for mules.
First big break was an armor rack in LK. It dropped me a 4s 14%ED Monarch. First try at spirit was mediocre, but the second try netted me 35FCR 111mana 8absorb, which is only 1 mana and 1%ED off absolutely perfect. Even in a relatively young economy, this netted me BER+OHM after 10 minutes.
I would try to join baal/dia/cow/tz/splitmf games, and do LK if there were many players, and do Meph as the players were leaving. I probably missed out on hundreds of trades for stuff like Bartuc and Sigons, but I was aiming higher.
Finding The Oculus and Arachnid Mesh sped up my Progress greatly, and before long, I had 300mf and 105% faster cast, relying heavily on potions since my merc was poorly leveled and geared.
Second big break came in a cow game, which I had joined because of the exp and because many players rush to kill ASAP and will leave tradeable items of lesser value on the ground in order to level faster. I was mainly looking for flawless gems, unwanted jewels and such for trading for runes as currency, in case I couldn't find stuff like Shako or War Travelers. So I was staying back, being polite and letting the fast killers pick drops as they killed, not being grabby (because if it is one thing I do not respect, it is grabby folks). But they will not only skip items of low value. They will also skip single cows. Weak as my sorceress was, she was still capable of dealing with single cows. And one of those single, left behind cows of misery dropped me a JAH rune! With the BER I already had from the last trade, and the 5BO CtA I had made from the OHM also from the last trade, I was now ready to start a hammerdin, my fav char from past ladders.
Getting mid level gear was easy, as I was a quick learner, and gathered resources for richer players. The values were something like this:
IST = 12ral = 6hel = 6pamethyst = 40-50 junk jewels = 1x3 keys
I even started keeping normal amethysts, since no one else picked them up. Before long, I had both characters set up with self-found wizardspike for teleport switch and muling CtA for prebuff.
I found a 20/238 Raven Frost, which took a long time to trade, but eventually got me a LO rune.
Also a 5/5 lightning lvl green facet, which got me another BER.
Then, I was careless and broke my sorc. I didn't pay attention to the trade game I was in, and accidentally completed the meph quest. That got me down a little, but by now I had so much gear that I just started another. But just before she was done, Chaos Sanctuary became terrorized. I did a few runs with the hammerdin, and got lucky: Tal Rasha's Guardianship (armor) dropped. I had been running vipermagi on the sorcs up until then. Now I just needed the amulet. MF hit a little dry streak, though, so that wouldn't happen for another couple days. I did get very lucky with Dclone, though, getting near-perfect annis, but opting for self-use.
I don't remember what I found to trade for SUR rune, but i was able to trade SUR 2IST for a 15/15 Paladin torch. Also two ists for shakos. Found Seraph's Hymn. My hammerdin had become a powerhouse, lucking into two combat skillers in two hours. I almost had my second meph sorc ready when... Catacombs TZ. I opted to run with the hammerdin, since he was lvl 91, pushing Andariel to mlvl96 which greatly increases TC87 drops. And lo and behold, around 45 minutes in.... Golden Diadem!! Left a trade game overnight to see what I could get for it, and 2JAH was highest offer. Today, I sold for 2JAH fairly quickly. I also crafted this ring, which I probably should have waited to sell, but being antsy from getting good trades, I let it go for BER+LO:
If that thing had high fire resist instead of miniscule AR... it would allow a hammerdin to equip dusk enigma with the stats from torch, anni and shako (nn maras even) and still get 15dex free for max block. It still is a wonderful ring, but I sold it way too fast. Oh well, easy come, easy go, right?
So now I basically have everything I need to build even more wealth quick. Just want Dracs for uber Tristram. My 2Jah 2Ber 8Ist Mal 2Pul rune stash should in theory get me a good pair, but I'm a little stubborn and want the rush of finding them for myself....
If you made it all the way to the end of the post, congrats! I have to wake up for work in 190 minutes, and still haven't finished my last drink for the evening
deeds incoming!
nicely tying into the above re 2/20 and Java targets. Any scary situations with Nihl? I know the working as intended Vipers were fixed but wondering if you had trouble there with Java otherwise. I still have ~80 keys or so that I muled over to D2R from my LoD HC Barb who's still at 97 running Nihlathak... but at some point I guess I need to go there in D2R/HC as well.
