[GUIDE] The Time Traveler's Vortex - Part 2 - A Guide to Pre-LoD Versions

Helvete

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Mar 13, 2020
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Welcome to the Time Traveler's Guide to pre-LoD Versions!

LINKY to general time travel guide


Slight change from the version(s) posted on the old forums, since else it would be one bigger guide to 1.00 and a bunch of lesser guides.

Quick overview of Pre-LoD patches:
1.00 - Where it all started, and where we'll start for the intents and purposes of these guides
1.01 - Same as 1.00 but with some minor crash/lag fixes which do not matter on modern systems. Also, you can now get quest credit while dead. Aaand baby maggot exp nerfed, and egg exp eliminated...
1.02 - More crash/bug fixes BUT restrictions on the Moo Moo Farm appeared
1.03 - Fixes to Mauls ED, FRW on unique boots, nerfed CE skill, no more act 4 without A3Q6, Nerf WW
1.04 - Access to Lances, Holy Water Sprinklers, Grim Helms, War Clubs, and Stilettos. Fixed Bow ED, gems poorly de-randomized, no more bonefarming, "Thief" removed from Lord De Seis, LOTS of minor fixes.
1.05 - Strafe and Guided Arrow nerfed, BH/Concentration nerf from 1.04 reverted, spell ranges fixed (star bug I assume)
1.06 - WARNING! "Ruststorm" patch; can delete items with identical fingerprints EVEN if they are legitimately found!

We'll start off in 1.00 because of the unrestricted access to the Moo Moo farm. This is a really big advantage. The Cow King is by far the best source of Uniques and Rares which would be costly to gamble for. Another reason is the fact that Maggot Young and Maggot Eggs actually give exp and drop items in 1.00. In other words, you can run around in the River of Flame all day long without creating new games. Since there is no /players command, this makes it a lot less time consuming when using self-MP to level main character and/or characters to forward to the other patches.

Quest items:
Just hold off on any quest involving items if using self-MP method. At least make sure to actually use whatever quest item obtained in that act, before you leave it. The "Gidbinn" quest can give some sick rings, but beware, completing the first quest of act 3 (jade figurine thing) and waiting to use the reward (potion adding 20 life) is NOT a good idea. I've had that one bug out on me, losing the potion and any chance of the +20 life that quest gives.

A quick note on Magic Find
It only works on normal monsters (possibly minions and some objects). No random bosses, superuniques, champions, act bosses, or racks. Exceptional items seem to have some sort of bonus to their quality, which strangely enough makes them eligible for only three qualities (at least in act 4 hell): Superior, Magic and Rare. Magic and Rare can be failed uniques.

If you have 151 MF then every exceptional drop from a monster will be at least magic quality (obviously not throwing weapons) and your chance at rare quality will take a sudden (very noticeable) dip. The chance at a rare with less than 151 MF is significantly higher.

I personally never bothered with MF because the Cow King drops really good quality anyway (and he's the only boss worth running for items). Really good MF items should be forwarded to 1.07 eventually.

Also, check this post by @art_vandelay in the old forums, if you want to know more about how the game chooses items to drop.




Let's do a short introduction to the characters, as they were back in the Stone Age:

Barbarian
The Barbarian skill Whirlwind, although mana costly, has two attack checks every 4th frame. Yes, regardless of weapon speed, Whirlwind attacks 12.5 times per second! As you can imagine, even with an average damage of 400 and a hit rate of 50%, this is 2.5k damage per second. The drawback is the mana cost; it starts at 25 and increases by 2 for each level, making for a whopping 65 mana per WW if maxed and no +skills. Luckily, mana leech items aren't that hard to come by, and neither are +mana items. If you can get your mana to around 140 points (most likely with Frostburns and Battle Orders), go ahead and max Whirlwind after your mastery.

The skill Leap Attack doesn't check for a lot of things, including damage returned, and thus is a solution for Iron Maiden. This is good, because Berserk is NOT magic damage only in 1.00 and thus a bad alternative when cursed with Iron Maiden. Leap Attack starts at +100% damage and increases by 30% each level. A good candidate for spare skillpoints. I wouldn't bother with other combat skills, simply because WW is so damn strong in 1.00. Leap Attack also is auto-hit, even if the target has moved. It is bugged to check for monster resistances (at least physical) twice, so if the monster has 50% resistance, it will actually take quarter damage instead of half.

When it comes to Warcries, you'll quickly notice that their duration is nothing like what we're used to. Synergies were years away too, so no added duration to Shout nor Battle Command when maxing Battle Orders. Battle Orders is the only one worth more than one point, and you'll probably want to max it. If you can stand recasting it every minute, then wait until after maxing Mastery, WW, 5-6 points to Natural Resist and 1 point in Increased Speed. You're holding off on maxing BO because it has brutal diminishing returns, unlike what we're used to.

Because of a bug, monsters have four times the AR they should have, so there is no use in more than one point in Iron Skin or Shout early on. And late game, there is no need for defense since you'll be leeching like mad. Defense needs to be VERY high for it to matter, and odds are you don't want to stat 170 strength for an Ornate Plate until it's too late for defense to matter anyway.

When it comes to Weapon masteries, this of course depends on your weapon. Please note that there are NO magic+ throwing weapons, so Throwing Mastery is best left untouched. Also, two-handed maces (such as mauls, great mauls, war clubs [which can't drop anyway] and Martel De Fers) all get their damage enhanced based on their "one handed" damage. Which is 1-1 min/max damage. Regardless of what the item claims, no Enhanced Damage will take it farther than +2 min/max actual damage, leaving these weapons useless. You COULD still find an awesome Battle Hammer, and just go with using a shield, but you'll do far less damage than two handed axes, spears or polearms. For my first barb, I'd leave Mace Mastery alone as well. Sword Mastery comes out a little better, but there is a bug here too. Two-handed swords do not actually have a two-handed damage, regardless of what is stated on the item or the character screen. They all have their one-handed damage displayed correctly though, so swords are more viable than maces. Only one weapon is used for WW; no alternation, so better go with a shield to pair with. Or The Patriarch, for goldfinders.

Then we're left with Spear, Polearm and Axe Masteries. Spear means "Pike". Easy as that. None of the exceptional spears can match the damage of a Pike. Pikes also have lower requirements than the exceptional axes and polearms, but exceptional axes and polearms have a little better damage. The troublesome part is, you'll pretty much need to decide on a weapon type from the get go and max its mastery, else you'll do inadequate damage and progress extremely slowly until level 30. It IS doable, though, especially if leveling a sorc in tandem with the barb.

Pikes and poles have a lot better range than other weapons, and there is a bug with whirlwind. WW tries to attack enemies based on a fixed radius, and if the target is out of range, the attack will miss. This makes a lot of attacks which would have hit closer enemies to whiff if you're using a weapon with low range (such as an axe). Better stick to Pikes or Polearms.

I recommend you max mastery as soon as you know which one to choose. This is why.

Recommended build: max (spear) mastery, WW, BO, with 1 in the 1-point wonder skills. Spare points go to natural resist. My barb is at lvl 91 now, and has no idea of where to put further points. Find Item is a bad skill, don't go for it. Find Potion can give full rejuvs, so 1 point is a good idea, especially for your first playthrough.

1.00 barbarian was recently speedran by MrLlamaSC so there's something to watch if you need inspiration. Just don't get inspired by the chat, since they mention unspeakable things.

Sorceress
The 1.00 sorceress is somewhat of an art to play. There are no immune monsters at all, but some have very high resistances. There also are no cast delays on anything, so Fire Wall and Frozen Orb can be spammed really fast. This will quickly deplete mana, though, and mana pots cannot be bought. The solution is Static Field and Warmth. Static has low mana cost, and cost even less with points in Lightning Mastery. Furthermore, there is no cap on Static Field in classic in any version, so every single monster in the game can be slivered by it. Just note that some are heavily lightning resistant, and this can't be helped when self-MP or single playing. This is why we have Fire Wall and Frozen Orb.

You'll need to stat a LOT of energy, and you should probably sink some points in Energy Shield because of this. Warmth needs maxing eventually, or you'll be going back to town to refill mana twice a minute. Savour items that add to your mana, and get a Tower Shield, either Sigon's or one with 3 Perfect Diamonds. Possibly Wall of the Eyeless late game.

Recommended build: 10+ points in static, max Frozen Orb and warmth. Otherwise, a LOT of freedom. Putting even 20 points into a skill with low late-game efficiency won't break the character, as long as you max FO, W and have decent static. Fire Wall rocks. There are NO casting delays, so you can burn through your entire blue orb in seconds. At high levels, this doesn't matter much, because if you do, and you used static a few times first, everything will be dead.

1.00 sorceress was recently Speedran by MrLlamaSC so there's something to watch if you need inspiration. Just don't get inspired by the chat, since they mention unspeakable things.

Necromancer
Corpse Explotion! Every point in this skill adds a yard to the radius, which is insane. It scales with players in the game, and can kill enemies off screen when maxed. Also, when using Blood Golem and Iron Maiden in conjunction, the game believes that the damage monsters do to themselves when hitting the Blood Golem is damage done by the golem, and heals you both from it. Which means immortality when fighting melee monsters. IM/BG/CE necros can walk the entire game if played correctly.

Skeletons have their AR fixed in the low single digits, so they can't really hit anything past the first half of act 1 normal. Revives are pretty juicy, though they have poor AI. Also, you CANNOT walk through summons (or mercs) in 1.00...

Bone Walls drop items, based on which difficulty you're in. You do have to leave the area and come back for this to work. Possibly also damaging them somewhat. Monsters cursed with Iron Maiden do not give exp if they die by hitting a Bone Wall / Prison.

[Need to gather more info. Perhaps... even play one :p]

Recommended build: Blood Golem + Iron Maiden. Stat a lot of vita; ranged monsters and spellcasters could pwn you if you don't.

There's a 41 page walkthrough on... another forum, which we didn't mention before. Not sure if it's OK to mention it now. But google-fu will take you there regardless. Good screenshots, bad language.


Paladin
These guys can be built in a number of ways. None as effective as barbarian or sorceress, and they have a lot less life than barbarians and no teleport to get out of harm's way. Thorns/Conversion was popular, but it's a bit slow since when monsters convert back, they retain their thorns aura for a while, and thus finishing them off can be dangerous. Hammerdin is certainly possible, but won't be the 1.10 killing machines we know today. Zealots suffer from three annoying drawbacks; no %ED on Fanaticism, no cap on zeal swings, and when a swing misses, every subsequent swing will also miss.

None of the elemental auras do anything but their (weak) pulse damage, and conviction is much less powerful. In short, fun to try, but not very effective compared to barbs or sorcs.

Recommended build: Max thorns, get decent conversion. Otherwise, Blessed Hammer / Concentration with some melee combat skills can do well.

Amazon
There's a bug with bows which means %ED has no effect, which makes bowazons a lot weaker than they should be. Still playable (because strafe is bugged the other way around...) but ineffective. Lightning Fury has a graphic which will make you go blind or epileptic in 3 seconds, and I believe there are bugs with jab and fend similar to the zeal bug. Weapon speed is ignored, though, so some serious damage can still be dished out. Overall, Amazons are the weakest class in 1.00, but VERY strong in 1.04 where bows were fixed, but bow skills were untouched until the next patch.

Recommended build: Strafe / Multishot. But seriously... Just do Amazon in 1.04. If you find a killer bow pre-1.04, forwarding it will fix the bug preventing %ED working.




Beating the game
If you have 4 or more cores on your processor, you should start all 8 instances, then task manager. Right-click each game.exe process and choose "Set affinity..." and then deselect one of the cores, the same for each process. This is because game.exe WILL use any available processing power if allowed to do so, and this will make web browsing etc. extremely sluggish. Keeping D2 away from one core should allow other programs to function when you decide to take a break or want to check resources like this one.
NEW INFO: A fix exists now, but I can't remember where I found it. The game menu still eats any resource it can, but ingame it is a lot better. Future linky goes here.

Cheese and future rushes
If you want to cheese a bit, remember this: 1.00 has no difficulty check for quest items, like 1.10+ does. Thus, if you are questing with a party, you unparty the character using quest progress items from act 2 and 3 normal before you cube/use the Horadric Staff or Khalim's Will. Then, your other characters will retain those items (Shaft / Tip of the Horadric Staff, Khalim's eye/brain/heart/flail) for when you need them in NM and Hell.

For future rushes, these items aren't needed if you create a set of durimules. A durimule is a character which has used the Horadric Staff, then just exited the game. This makes it so that when that char hosts a game, Tal Rasha's Chamber will be accessible from the get go. Make three of these; one for each difficulty. After beating act 1, host a new game with the durimule, and enter with the rusher and 6 out of 7 rushees. Kill Duriel with the rusher, and bring one rushee down after Duriel is dead. Exit game with rusher, and join with the 7th rushee. Then, and only then (rusher out) you party up all the rushees, and talk to Tyrael with the rushee you brought to Tal Rasha's Chamber. Durimule should stay in act 1, unpartied the entire time, so as to not get the quest, breaking the durimule. Then make new game to progress. Quick and easy!

ACT I
I would start right off with an 8-player party of at least two barbarians, and the rest sorceresses. Perhaps a Necromancer. The reason we're doing two barbarians is that we want a backup one IF that perfect exceptional rare weapon should drop, and we have 20 points in the wrong mastery. If your computer can't handle 8 games simultaniously, try for 5. 5 players maxes out item drops for normal monsters (90%). Do NOT host the game with a main character. You want the option to tap out and rejoin.

You'll want to level one barb and one sorc simultaniously. This can be done in one of two ways:
1 - Clear the first area with the sorc, then pop back into town and clear the next area with the barb. Keep going like this throughout act 1.
2 - If you have a strong preference for either barb or sorc early game, park the other one in the beginning of each area and clear with your preferred character. The "must be within couple of screens to get exp" thing wasn't invented until 1.10, so both chars will gain experience. Note that clearing the first part of an area should usually involve luring the monsters there into the previous area before killing them, else lvl differences will start to appear.

Pump Warmth, Static and Weapon Mastery, and leave the rest at 1 point. Stat points need to be spread around a little, heaviest in Energy for the sorc and Strength/Vita for the barb. You may want to move all characters to just outside town, else you will have trouble resetting merchant inventories. Try to resist the urge to open the gamble screen. One or more of the items could very easily spawn as unique, and if it does, it cannot spawn again in that game. Don't gamble in the MP game; exit and create a single player game, gamble, then rejoin MP game. This will prevent the "any unique spawned cannot drop in the same game" feature from affecting your MP game.

Before long, you'll notice that the barb gets slow, while the sorc kills reasonably fast due to Static Field. When this happens (and it WILL happen if you chose spear mastery or to hold off on choosing a mastery), switch to playing the sorc only, but still moving the barb up as it is safe to get exp. We'll want to get to the Canyon of the Magi, or at least the maggot lair for some power-leveling. (Power leveling only needed if you skip a lot of monsters).

There really is no point to cubing gems until Nightmare difficulty, except for diamonds, since you'll want 3 perfects for a shield. Amethyst can be left on the ground, but I'd drop every topaz/sapphire/emerald/ruby of any quality in town to be picked up by one of the rushees. Items don't disappear in town.. Don't sort them; you'll be using ATMA by the time you forward them. Except for skulls, those need to be cubed/shrined to perfect and later sent to 1.05b.

Repair items before you sell them. This exploit wasn't fixed until 1.08, so take full advantage of it. Do NOT repair items if [current value + repair cost > vendor max pay]. Rings and Amulets sell for almost no gold, so keep them for later cubing. You'll want all the chances of getting high mana or high leech that you can get. And FCR.

ACT II
Even if you had decent luck with weapons for your barb, this will start to get tough. BEWARE of the vulture type monsters! I'd use the sorc for killing, Static Field and Glacial Spike shines against undead who might be resurrected. Sorceresses need all the skillpoints they can get, so don't go too heavy with Glacial Spike, and leave static at 5-10 points. Consider Fire Wall; it is a great skill except for in Act IV. Rest still in warmth to cut down a little on those trips to town, which should have been quite a few already.

Get the cube, and cube up diamonds and skulls if you kept them, and start cubing 3 rings to 1 amulet and vice versa. Look for leech for barb and improvements to your sorc.

Push your way through, preferably to the Canyon of the Magi, but Maggot Lair is good too. Especially Maggot Lair lvl 3 can be exploited to spawn a LOT of maggots, which all give exp and items, even the eggs upon hatching (no need to kill them) and the young. You can clear everything but the last chamber, use a rushee to set up an everlasting portal, and just pop in and out of it to level, occationally killing some young. When this gets slow, you should push on to Canyon of the Magi, clear a corner for safety, leave the barb there and run around killing anything but large maggots and eggs. If you can get into the high 20's with both characters by doing this, you should be fine against Duriel, as Battle Orders become available at lvl 24. Note that you only need to power level if HC; else you can just get a TP up with another character, and suicide-static Duriel to a sliver before getting the last hit with either another spell, or the barb. Mercs can be used to draw fire while you static / last hit. Also, remember that there is NO NEED for a full game against Duriel, as quest progression depends on talking to Tyrael, NOT killing Duriel. Exit the mules and rejoin them after little D is dead (but of course before talking to T. Everyone should be partied for that).

HC players: Use both sorc and barb to handle Duriel. Hire a merc with the sorc, BO right before Duriel's Chamber, and proceed to enter with the sorc. Static like mad, then get out of there and switch to the barb to finish off the last of Duriel's HP. Full game is NOT recommended. Get the drops and proceed to the next act.

ACT III
Just a little further to lvl 30 and WW ownage. Park the barb just outside town, and proceed to clear the Spider Forest with the sorc. When you hit a new area, clear a bit and move the barb up.

You really want to do all the quests in act III, since the 20 HP from the first quest is sorely needed, 8 rare rings will have a great chance for much needed leech and other stats, and the 5 stat points will also be a nice boost. Don't talk to Asheara (the final part of the Blade of the Old Religion quest) unless you have to, because if you want to rush characters later, you will be able to activate the Gidbinn with the rushing character. If you really need a cold merc though, you should get one, but remember that they can't be equipped and vanish when changing acts.

Regarding act 3 mercs, these can be a HUGE help. But only if they are the cold variant. Cold variant uses Glacial Spike, some cold armor, and if close, occasionally melee. Having the merc casting Glacial Spike frees up a LOT of mana and time for static, and makes it a lot safer stabbing stuff with a Pike, which should be available by now.

Do NOT let the Shamans close. Their inferno attack is insane. Also, some monsters can have high HP/resist/regen. To deal with these, spam Blizzard after you got them as low as feasible with static. (Yes, you can spam blizzard...)

As soon as you hit lvl 30, put a point in WW, Natural Resistance, Frozen Orb, and all the elemental masteries. You should be able to shop pikes by now. Even with no added damage, Pikes are scary weapons. If you went with Spear Mastery, it should be almost at max, making one point in WW and some leech of each type all you need to start using WW to speed things up considerably!

Act III will be where your gold account starts to ramp up. I'd gamble for boots, belts, leather gloves, caps, quilted armors to get good rares with life and resists. Remember to exit the game and use a Single Player game to gamble.

Push forward as best you can. Mephisto is dangerous, but can be killed slowly by Fire Wall from across the moat. Fire Wall staves can be shopped if you skipped the skill itself. Fire Wall can also be spammed, so if you have a lot of mana pots, this fight is quick. Act bosses only drop anywhere close to good when killed by a character to complete the quest, so don't bother thinking about running him.

Note for future characters: You don't HAVE to get quest credit to go through the Infernal Gate. This could be exploited in hell, to forward a character to 1.10+ for MP MF games. Access to both A3Q6 and A5Q6 can let you "quest bug" both Mephisto and Baal on the same character. More of a novelty, but it can be done.

ACT IV
For the final act, I should give you one tip and two warnings:
Tip: Little maggots are a great source of exp, far better than in act 2.
Warning 1: Hephasto the Armorer is VERY dangerous. I can't stress this enough for the HC people out there.
Warning 2: Oblivion Knights cast Iron Maiden, which makes the Chaos Sanctuary in general very dangerous to barbs, and Lord De Seis (who spawns with Oblivion Knight minions) extremely dangerous.

In a full game, lvl 1 Glacial Spike is just barely enough to finish off most monsters. This can be very mana intensive, so whether the sorc or the barb is best depends on which monsters spawn, and if you've had some luck getting +skills for the sorc. Decent leech and Leap Attack can deal with single monsters or smaller groups if you have a good weapon, but larger groups must be split up. If the going is tough, maybe using the lvl 1 chars to put up several permanent portals with some space inbetween can help split up monsters. If HC, I'd do this. Better safe than sorry.

Remember that Leap Attack sort of counts as a missile attack, and that you do have a sorc. The warcry Taunt can be used to progress safely, albeit very slowly through the Chaos Sanctuary. Fire resist and MDR will help in act VI in general, and a lot against Diablo himself.

THE MOO MOO FARM
You probably noticed by now, but I'll mention it anyway. Drops don't work the same way as in the expansion. I don't know exactly how or why, but the same area tends to drop the same items over and over again unless the map is rerolled. This can be heavily exploited, since the Cow King will drop rare/unique items very frequently, and his drops per map seem to be pretty limited. This is how I got my hands on Frostburn, Tearhaunch, Bladebuckle, The Face of Horror, SoJ, Silks of the Victor, the Tannr Gorerod and many more costly-to-gamble items:

Start a multiplayer game with one of the other characters, and keep it open. Join with the barb, go get Wirt's Leg and proceed to open the portal. WW until you hit the king, and kill him. Take a mental note of what he drops, pick it up and ID/sell/keep, then exit the MP game with the barb. If the map was good (short distance from WP to Tristram, king close to red portal, king dropped desirable base item) then keep the MP game still running. You can now create a Single Player game with the barb, and the map will be the same. Run this map until the king drops the item(s) you were looking for. If you need to mule, just join the MP game again.

If the map was bad, or you got what you were looking for, start new multiplayer games with the other characters, and repeat until you have some good gear. Remember to keep The Tannr Gorerod unique pike in your stash even though it is a weak option for use. All uniques have five times base durability, and so do rares which are failed uniques. Pikes have 25 base durability, and need very frequent repairs, but if you can get a failed unique with at least 100+ max damage, you are pretty much set.

NIGHTMARE
Don't be afraid of NM; you can teleport past all of act 1, most of act 2 and 3, and ~all of act 4, just stopping to complete quest objectives. Leave the Hell Forge alone; gems have no use in this patch anyway. If you feel underleveled, feel free to stop in NM Canyon of the Magi or hell River of Flame to level to 40-50. The same monsters which were dangerous in normal are still dangerous in nightmare, but WW should demolish anything and if you have gotten enough leech, you should only need to go back to town to sell/repair. If you got Frostburns from the Cow King, and leech is good enough without the Hand of Broc, your mana should be enough to start putting points in WW now. Your mastery should be maxed, BO at around 10 points, natural resist at 4-5. I never felt the need to get strength high for more damage, so get to a comfortable HP with BO and save unneeded points. You will never have use for more than 2k life, so might as well save points for strength. Nightmare Cow King should get a visit, especially since he can drop Ancient Axes and Bec De Corbins (for your other barb).

HELL
Same as nightmare, tele past anything unimportant and complete quests as you go. The goal is the River of Flame. When you get there, the leveling should start. If underleveled (as in 50 or less), prioritize your barb and leave other characters in town. If 50+ and you can handle maggots, go ahead and clean one corner of the river, place all remaining characters there, then proceed to kill anything which isn't a big maggot or an egg. This makes for potentially endless leveling, and not at a bad speed either: Maggot leveling in River of Flame MP game

MOVING ON
When your rushee sorcs get to around level 65, consider moving one or two of them to expansion 1.07. If you've collected 12-18 perfect skulls, slap some useless rare amulets, a cube and all your perfect skulls on a fresh made character and forward it to 1.04 or higher pre-LoD. This will likely be your first +2 skills amulet. When you get one for sorc, forward it to 1.07.

Keep cubing amulets, though, the potential is very high. You should probably get 2 SoJs, some decent rare boots/belts/gloves/armor/helm for each of them. Also worth forwarding is MF gear if you have it, but be advised that it will take some racking first before you can MF efficiently in 1.07, so prioritize cast rate and safety. Be sure to kill Diablo with the entire party before moving on, so that hell act 5 will be readily available.

Some levels to shoot for (if you have the patience):
- lvl 61: This allows use of the 1.07 Wizard Spike, which will greatly increase rack run speed. Also grants the best chance of a SoJ when cubing rings in 1.07/1.08
- lvl 62: Allows use of 1.07 Harlequin Crest, which greatly increases kill speed and survivability, should you choose to do more leveling in 1.07
- lvl 67: Allows use of +2 skill rare amulets; recommended for just about any sorc, and especially if you by any chance have a good +2 sorc amu in 1.00 (rushes).
- lvl 76: Allows use of Tal Rasha's Guardianship, a highly recommended MF armor in 1.07 and beyond.
- lvl 91: Cubed amulets in 1.07 will be ilvl 60, which allows +3 skilltab prismatic. I dare you to level this far in 1.00 though....
- lvl 93: Stay pre-LoD to gamble awesome rare amulets


Your initial barb and sorc should stay in 1.00 indefinetly. You'll want to rush more characters after a while, and 1.00 is the safest and quickest place to do it. You'll want to be able to create full games for leveling purposes, as leveling past the mid 80's is tedious enough as it is, and you need as high a level as possible for eventually gamble +2 skill rares for use in 1.00.

Leveling into the 90's
4 urdar champ pack as close to the last wp as possible is the way to go. You'll get tired of the same rares over and over, but gold and exp is great. If you do get a map like this, backup your character. Those maps are rare. Another approach is repeated 8-player games, and clear all of act 4 with the leveling char. Better for high 80's chars, but worse for chars already in the 90's


Items to look for in this patch which are valuable in later patches:
- Any quality ruby/topaz/emerald/sapphire: Forward to 1.07
- Exploding potions: buy from Lycander in act 2 and forward to 1.07
- White War Scepters with +3 Holy Shield/+x Redemption: Forward to 1.10s (CtA base)
- Perfect Skulls: Forward to 1.06b to cube rare amulets
- Rare boots/belts/gloves/rings/amulets: Pay attention to stats vs. level req! Great twinking gear, and some stats which are impossible to get in LoD.
- Stones of Jordan
- If you play classic patches 1.07+, you'll want +stat uniques (Face of Horror) in addition to other useful uniques, since they have no lvl req even when forwarded. Lvl req is added only when converting to LoD.

How to get items for use in 1.00
(or 1.01, but I will use 1.00 for all intents and purposes)

There are only three effective ways for getting the top-end gear you'll want to use in 1.00, or forward to a later patch.
1 - Finding stuff by chance during normal play
2 - Gambling
3 - Cow King runs

During normal play
This is the least efficient way, however, it is the only way of getting certain items, like unique wands. Also, there is sort of a "mid-tier" of items which the Cow King can't drop and which are still very costly to gamble. Iceblink and Wall of the Eyeless falls into this category. There's no big secret to this, kill speed outweighs MF most the time, especially as MF only works on normal monsters. Uniques/Champions/Act Bosses all have really poor drops, except for act boss' first kill drops. Look for the unique items where their base items are most common. For Ume's this would be act 4, but for Iceblink, act 4 is a very poor choice. See the tables [which will be posted in the future] for where to look for certain bases.

Gambling
Gambling is the best way to get around half the useful uniques and most of useful rare items. Seeing as Defense Rating has very little use, since monster AR is bugged to be quadrupled, you can use low defense items for boots/armor/gloves/head and even belt if you can stand having less than 4 rows of potions. Gambling odds are pretty good, are as follows

30:999 Unique (or 5x durability rare if the unique was already generated OR is in possession of a character in the game)
50:999 (or 3x durability magic if there is no set version)
70:999 regular durability rare
849:999 regular durability magic

As you can see, WAY better odds than in LoD, and the real treat is that prices do NOT scale with character level. They stay at 2,500 for boots, 3,250 for Quilted Armor etc indefinitely.

There are drawbacks, though. The gambling screen doesn't refresh simply by closing and reopening it; you have to leave town as if it were the vendor inventory you aimed to reset. This is tedious, but can be done efficiently by opening a cow portal next to Gheed.

Do NOT gamble randomly for uniques. If you're looking for several specific uniques, and it spawned on the first gambling screen, it will count as having been in the game even if you did not actually buy it.

Also, rings/amulets aren't forced to spawn. This makes for tedious gambling of rings/amulets at higher levels, because as more items become eligible for gambling, the odds that a ring or amulet is one of the twelve items offered will decrease. Rapidly. Again, this can be circumvented if looking for uniques, as they don't have a qlvl and thus can be gambled by a lvl 1 character. Level 5 or 7 is still recommended, as you'd need to start an MP game, drop gold from one or more high level characters, then pick it up with the low level character and gamble with that one.

As mentioned in the general guide, unique rings and amulets spawn in a set order: Nagel -> Manald -> Soj, and Nokozan -> Etlich -> Mahim Oak. This is why you'll treasure Nagelring and Manald Heal; if you already have them, every new unique ring will be forced to be a Stone of Jordan. Just mule off the SoJs as you get them, or drop them on the ground, and keep going. Also, this will force rares if you carry all three uniques, which is very useful for high level characters gambling for rare amulets, but can still provide enhanced odds for rare rings if you're looking for those.

Do not throw away the low level uniques (Hotspur, Biggin's, etc.) but mule them off. You'll want to gamble for rares in an MP game and enter that game with a mule with uniques you'd rather see as a rare item. Or you could simply carry them, but then there is less space for keeping rares. And believe me, space really is at a premium pre-LoD!

Getting gold for gambling
There are generally three ways of doing this:
1 - Hoard gold from selling items during general play
2 - Creating a Goldfind character, running champions adjacent to waypoints
3 - Run the Cow King and sell his drops

In 1.00, gold is worth its weight in... well, gold. Learn which items sell the best, generally superior items and those with staffmods. The higher defense, the better. Also, some sets/uniques with +defense (not %enhanced defense) sell VERY well. Repair/Sell these during general play and try not to die, as the gold loss is painful.

Creating a dedicated goldfind character is probably the most efficient way of getting gold, however, it is more difficult than one might suspect. Especially since the best goldfind weapons have really low damage. However, at really high levels, this is less of an issue. You will need maxed mastery though.

Running the Cow King is less efficient, but here you have the added potential of him dropping something desirable directly. And speaking of the Cow King....

Running the Cow King
In patch 1.02, restrictions were added as to who gets to open the Red Portal, but these restrictions DO NOT apply to 1.00 or 1.01. You only need to have quest credit for Diablo on that difficulty. Which is one of a few major reasons to play 1.00 and not 1.04 or 1.05b.

The Cow King will drop as follows:
One low tier magic item, just like any old unique monster in act 1, which counts toward max items dropped by one monster (six).
A bunch of Stamina Potions (milk bottles) which do not count towards the max items dropped
In addittion, he will choose one out of three possibilities for his "special drop", which always occurs.

His special drop chooses items from "Act 4 end game" tier of items (Or something. I don't code dig). These items are:
Bone Helm, Crown, Full Plate Mail, Light Plate, Ancient Armor, Gauntlets, Greaves, Plated Belt, Gothic Shield, War Scythe, Pike, War Sword, War Staff, Great Sword, Long War Bow, Giant Axe, Great Maul, War Hammer, Flamberge, Mask, Repeating Crossbow, Ring... And their exceptional upgrades in NM or Hell. Do note that until patch 1.04, Bone Helms upgrade to Winged Helms and Pikes upgrade to Great Pilums.

As for his three possibilities:

#1 - Set special drop - 1 out of 10 kills
The CK will drop a set item, and if that fails (say the item chosen was a Pike), he'll try four additional times, before his drop maxes out at 6 failed set items (magic with double durability). This is usually not very easy to notice in normal difficulty, but can be in NM or Hell.

#2 - Rare special drop - 6 out of 10 kills
This can only fail if he tries to upgade a Pike to Great Pilum. In that case, you'll get the superior Great Pilum, and the next item will be a rare.

#3 - Unique special drop . 3 out of 10 kills
The CK will drop a unique item, but oh man how horribly he can fail to do so due to the fact that uniques in possession of character(s) count towards uniques dropped. You could frequently force 5 rares, especially on NM and Hell, and all of them will have quintuple durability!

When running the Cow King, I usually equip one of the three possible unique armors, the ONLY possible boots/belt/gloves, one of the three possible headpieces (and keep the other two in stash), the ONLY possible shield, and I keep all 3 rings in stash. This leaves 2 headpieces, 2 armors and the rest weapons. It is not possible nor practical to keep all of these, but due to poor RNG, you can often predict which items will drop, based on route to the king and where he dies. This makes it manageable to keep a few unique weapons, if that makes the unique failing go on, providing rares or uniques (rings) you want.

So which items should I be looking for?
Short version: Rares! There are no "magic only" affixes pre-LoD, so ANY blue item is potentially beaten by a yellow one. This goes for green ones as well, with the exception of Sigon's Guard Tower Shield and Death's Guard Sash. Rares also have a much more limited affix pool than in LoD, and thus the good affixes (stats, life, mana, resists) are selected more frequently. See the table in the next post for what affixes are available at which item levels.

Long version:
There are maybe a dozen uniques which can't be beaten by rares due to their stats. From the top of my head:
- Iceblink (Splint Mail) - Freezes Target is really, really awesome.
- Frostburn (Gauntlets) - 40% more mana can really help
- Magefist (Light Gauntlets) - The only FCR gloves. Also helps mana regen a good bit.
- Chance Guards (Chain Gloves) - 200% Goldfind. MF is always 24% and can be easily beaten by rares.
- Undead Crown (Crown) - 5% Lifeleech is great
- Wormskull (Bone Helm) - 4% Lifeleech isn't as great as 5% but it's still leech.
- Silks of the Victor (Ancient Armor) - 5% Manaleech and +1 skills. Dencent defense. Only armor with +skills or ML.
- The Eye of Etlich (Amulet) - Lifeleech, Cold Damage and +1 Skills at lvl 1. Great choice for Amulet.
- The Stone of Jordan (Ring) - Shouldn't need further explanation.
- Nightsmoke (Belt) - 50% Damage Taken Goes to Mana. Some resists too.
- The Hand of Broc (Gloves) - 3% Dual Leech. If you're short on leech, these are good. Otherwise, get rares.
- Bloodfist (Heavy Gloves) - 30%FHR and 40 life. Good for the FHR, but Frostburns or rares can be better in most situations.
- Ume's Lament (Grim Wand) - 20%FCR and 40 Mana. Can be beaten by blues and rares, but not very easily, especially not if you're a Necromancer.
- The Patriarch (Great Sword) - 100% Goldfind. Use as offhand weapon on goldfind barbs, otherwise sell.
- Goblin Toe (Light Plated Boots) - 25% Crushing Blow. Rarely useful on 2H WW barbs (as they have enough damage that it almost never triggers) but I can see other builds making good use of these.
- Twitchthroe (Studded Leather) - bugged to only 1% IAS, but has 25% increased block, which is OP.
- Wall of the Eyeless - 5 MPK and 20% FCR makes sorcy happy panda.

Two set pieces also worth a mention:
- Death's Guard (Sash) - Only source of CBF that I can think of, and sells for 16k which is a lot.
- Sigon's Guard (Tower Shield) - Only +skill shield, highest block shield in the game.

Notice the lack of weapons here? That's because most of them do NOT have the %Enhanced Damage we're used to from LoD. Rare is the way to go. If you use Pikes, keep the Tannr Gorerod in your stash at all times, since you want that added chance of getting a rare, and especially with 5x durability as pikes only have 25 dura by default and thus WW breaks them really fast. Like few minutes.

Here is the link to All uniques with their stats

About Cubing Rare Amulets

Cubing rare amulets for 1.04 and later, with ingredients usually gathered in 1.00. The only really interesting recipe is: "6 Perfect Skulls + any rare item = new rare item with ilvl 99". The recipe was introduced in 1.04, but I don't believe anything changed with regard to amulets or the recipe until the expansion, where this recipe can never yield item levels above 65.

As there is no use for skulls in 1.00, we will forward perfect skulls to 1.04 or later pre-LoD for a chance at some pretty nifty amulets
[Check gallery in post #2 (still working on this)]
As you may already know, classic has no "magic only" affixes. However, LoD 1.07 lists +2 class skills as magic only. And in 1.00, the only feasible way of getting +2 class skills amulets is gambling with a lvl 84+ character.

Refer to the list of available affixes on amulets listed in the affix tables in the next post.

Now, there are a couple things about that table which need to be clear:
1 - Anything with a RANGE in this list, such as "titan", suffers from the "off by one" bug. This entails that even if "titan" is listed with a range of 16-20, the actual range is only 16-19. This goes for ANY affix whith a "-" in it.

2 - Prefixes and suffixes are grouped. Any affix CANNOT be chosen on a rare IF another (or the same for that matter) has already been picked from that group for that item. I have no hard evidence, but from what I could gather from testing:

- Anything which grants the same bonus, but in different ranges, are in the same group. Thus, an amulet with the "titan" suffix CANNOT also have the "giant" suffix. This is what we're used to from LoD.

- Skill bonuses are in 5 DIFFERENT groups, which allows a 2/2/2 sorc/necro/pala amulet, but NOT a +3 or +4 skills amulet.

- A prefix cannot be in the same group as a suffix, so any combination should be allowed, which makes 48MF amulets possible...

- Resistances are grouped by fire, lightning, cold, poison and all. Two resist fire affixes cannot spawn on the same item UNLESS one is part of the "prismatic" prefix. Same for the other elements.



SERIOUS / GAME-BREAKING BUGS
- If you rush characters, beware of Tyrael. DO NOT TALK TO HIM WITH YOUR RUSHER PRESENT! Talking to Tyreal will reset some quest flag, which removes the ability for characters to enter higher level difficulties even if they were previously able to. This bug can only be corrected by deleting the character and loading a backup. On that note, ALWAYS make backups of your valuable characters. Not just because of in-game bugs; a lot can happen to a computer.

- Make a backup before fighting Lord De Seis. There are a number of crashes in 1.00 involving him. Odds of game crash can be greatly reduced by having an empty belt in the fight. All of those crashes are related to his unique "Thief" ability, which was removed with patch 1.04, so if you're on a higher version, disregard this info.

- When creating a game to mule in, move the host character well away from the stash, especially if it is a barbarian. There is a potential crash when a guest mouses over the host of the game. It is related to max life being greater than current max, which can often happen when exiting a game with Battle Orders active. I am unsure if this can happen to non-barbs, but better to err on the side of caution.


Whew! Thanks for reading. More to come!
 
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Tables

The term "qlvl" (quality level) was invented with the expansion, which means affix generation is based ONLY on item level. Affix lvl = ilvl+2 for all items pre-LoD.

Check out Post #7 in this very thread for a more detailed file on Item Affixes. It is in .xls format, and pretty much a must have for any 1.00 nerd. Thanks to @art_vandelay for providing!

Check out Post #12 in this very thread for breakpoints and values regarding Faster Cast, Faster Block and Faster Hit Recovery. Also info on Magic Find and Gold Find! My undying gratitude goes to @art_vandelay and @Fruit for this.

Notice how this post is entirely information provided by others. I love this forum!
 
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Gallery
Here, I will post screenshots, mostly my own, but I can post from other users as well as long as I get permission or requests.

EDIT: For old forum users I cannot get a hold of, I will probably post screenshots regardless. To any of these users who believe they have been wronged, please register, then PM a moderator. Moderators react much more quickly than Yours Truly, and can edit posts in the unlikely event that I lose interest in the forum.

Rares to drool over:
game 2020-08-08 21-16-02-12.jpg
game 2017-12-13 21-04-26-35.jpg
game 2017-07-22 19-55-08-02.jpg
game 2017-07-21 20-09-09-98.jpg
game 2017-07-21 20-14-54-75.jpg
game 2016-09-01 10-50-35-29.jpg
tomanyruns_by_treeharl.jpg
Credit goes to Treeharl for this mosaic of rares farmed from Hell Cow King. Sooo low lvl req for dual leech! Patches 1.07 through 1.09d can only get dual leech on jewelry via crafting, and gooood luck with that - Also, much MUCH higher lvl req for those.

Other interesting stuff
game 2016-05-31 21-24-53-48.jpg

Video Links
Treeharl doing some Cow King runs in Hell <--- All his videos are about 1.00, so worth at least one watch
 
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Small tidbits which didn't really fit anywhere else at first glance: (mostly copy-paste from earlier posts by @Fruit )
(to be expanded)
  • Freezes Target and Flee are both applied simultaneously, but since Flee lasts such a short time, you can expect it to have worn off before the target thaws. Thus, FT practically "overwrites" Flee. (Smite also applies these, as well as HBT -- FT can be used to nullify the knockback from Smite.)
  • Hit Blinds Target overwrites Flee, so this is a straight nullification. HBT is always applied by successful melee hits, and so is FT. (Flee probably is too? )
  • Barbarian Masteries indeed give 2% chance per slvl to deal a critical strike. Deadly Strike can potentially quadruple damage if pared with Mastery.
  • Blood Raven seems to be the sole exception to "magic find does not apply to unique monsters". She seems to be treated as a regular monster in that regard. This probably doesn't yet make her interesting to run, though. :p Izual and The Summoner seem to drop only Magic items, but since I had already completed the quests I don't know if they drop any differently when you kill them the first time.
  • Leap attack is bugged to check for resistances twice. So if you roll for 100 physical damage, but an enemy has 50 physical resistance, you end up dealing only 25 damage because it gets halved twice. This also applies to elemental damage. And just to mention it, Leap Attack is not a "ranged attack", even though some guides say it -- but it is true that it does not check for Thorns, Iron Maiden, Life Tap, and also does not apply stuff like Flee, HBT or FT.
  • The resistance columns in monstats.txt wrap around 0-255, so Andariel who should have -50 fire resistance on all difficulties, actually has 206 fire resistance. Luckily this gets capped to 75. This also applies to -50 poison resistance for The Smith (all difficulties) and -50 poison resistance for Hephasto (normal and nightmare). This was fixed in 1.04 by having the colums wrap around -128-127. (This was later changed to a larger range, I'd guess in 1.09 or 1.10.)
  • Most of you probably already know that the blocking animation doesn't play when blocking melee attacks, or missile attacks that would deal less than or equal to 1/12 of your maximum health in physical damage, but it turns out that this is true for monsters as well. So a Carver for example will block your melee attacks, but no animation will be played. This makes me think it was never a feature to begin with, but just a nasty bug that wasn't fixed until 1.07.
  • Conviction against players is completely crippled, most likely unintentional; it lowers the "+maximum resist" from your items only. So if you wear Hotspur, which has +15 maximum fire resistance, then Conviction will apply only to that 15. And if you have no items with +max resist, then Conviction will literally do nothing. It does work on monsters however, so the Paladin's Conviction is still a valid PvM skill.
  • Berserk penalizes you with -50 physical resistance, so if attacks do go through your Defense, you'll be hit very hard.
  • any rushee that makes a kill in the den does not even have to be partied, nor does that rushee has to be in act 1.
    so a rushee can potentially make the first kill in the den, then unparty and chill in act 4. if the rusher then clears the den, the rushee will complete the quest and can get the reward.
    if there are more rushees that need the den quest, then they will have to be 1) partied to a rushee that made a kill in the den and 2) be in act 1.
  • Auras take some time to "wear off"; it is not instant like in LoD. This can be exploited with the Paladin, by rapidly switching auras. There is a 3 second timer for an aura to activate (except fanaticism, which is instant), so you can "flash" monsters with conviction, then switch to Concentration for damage boost, switch to Thorns for any allies, then switch to Fanaticism for AR/IAS. Use mouse scroll to switch skills for max efficiency. Enemies and allies "stick" their auras for 8 seconds, which is basically an eternity. Yes. Auradin is a thing pre-LoD!
  • There are no restriction on Portals. ANY character can enter ANY portal it can physically reach. Don't even need to party.
  • items with +defense (pure points, not enhanced) are overpriced big time. Death's Guard sells for 16-17K, and Arctic Binding / Pelta Lunata always sell for max gold if they have max durability. (25K in NM and hell).This is because the last calculation to determine the "final base price" of an armor is a multiplication of (current_defense/minimum_defense)
  • Any Exceptional item that is dropped by a level 48+ source will be at least Superior.
  • Concentration works with Blessed Hammer, but the LCS does not reflect this. It works fully, not 50% like 1.10+
  • Blessed Hammer deals 150% damage against Undead. This multiplier is separate from Concentration, so at higher levels your damage is disgusting against undead. One downside to the fact that BH deals physical damage is that it can be blocked by enemies.
  • Gems have no level requirement. Neither do Unique Items. Use this to your advantage when twinking new characters.
  • You can leech off of anything. The skeleton thing wasn't implemented until 1.10
  • Infernal & Milabrega sets can be abused to get stupid high skill levels due to a bug. The practice of doing this IS BANNED for forum members, so if you really want to test it, don't pick up any items nor progress any character. I only mention this because it is part of the patch notes, and the question would come up sooner or later.
  • Monster drops are seeded by their own seed. This seed is used & updated at their AI checks, as well as when they attack (for the to_hit roll, the monster_critical roll, and the melee_damage roll), so if the monster does the same amount of random rolls as last game, it will drop the same item. By far the biggest factor of randomness would be the player's actions, as that can affect the frequency of their AI checks, and potentially get them to attack more often.
  • Skeleton Mastery does not help Revive. The description's lying.
  • %Enhanced Damage rolls minimum and maximum damage separately in 1.00. This can lead to some weapons having weird damage ranges. Hopefully, you didn't spend too many hours with a calculator before you found this tidbit..
  • Off-weapon enhanced damage (like on Biggin's Bonnet, Frostburn) does not work, due to a bug. It is supposed to be applied to equipped weapon, but is instead applied to the armor piece itself, which has a damage range of 0 to 0.
  • The +40% mana on Frostburn is granted even if you no longer have 60 strength. It does result in mana being displayed as a fraction which can surpass 100%. (More testing needed to see to what extent this applies to other stats and other items).
  • You can use an empty tome to open the cow level. Open the portal close to Akara to speed shop a few at a time.



A big thank you to the following people for their big and small contributions to my guide:
@Fruit @art_vandelay @T72on1 Treeharl, GalaXyHaXz, imakeigloospat, logoutzero, Eriklop (more to be added as I find them)

Also, Jarulf, RTB and Thrugg should be mentioned, as they were spearheading code-digging and spreading of information way back when!
 
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A few things:
  1. I can upload a list of all Affixes with their groups listed. There you can see that mana and life stolen per hit are in different groups and can thus spawn on the same item. In fact any item type that can spawn one can spawn the other.
  2. Whirlwind does not attack every frame. According to @Fruit it attacks twice every four frames in 1.00-1.03 and once every four frames in 1.04-1.06b.
  3. Avoid 1.01 like the plague: Maggot Baby XP was nerfed in this patch, for example the ones in RoF give 4074 base XP in 1.01-1.06b instead of 5638 XP in 1.00. Also Eggs do not give experience in 1.01-1.06b. (1 Egg has roughly the XP of a Maggot so you lose 1/13 of total XP and then the nerf for Maggot Baby XP hits)
  4. Leap Attack never counted as a ranged/missile attack. See this post by @Fruit .
  5. Another thing worth mentioning: In 1.00-1.03 Twitchthroe has 1% IAS.
If you want more space for posts I can delete and repost. ;)
 
I'll appreciate any reliable tables I can get my hands on. That includes FCR, IAS and FHR. Don't really know if there are more tables. Skill progression perhaps, but that would be BIG tables. And thanks for the 1.01 info; I'll change that right away. Along with the WW info.

1%IAS? But the block still works, right?

Don't think I'll need space for more posts; if I do, it will be time for new version of the guide anyway....
 
Before I forget it: Great guide, going through 1.00 was a breeze thanks to this info. Thanks for making it!

***

I made a table of affixes from the game files. It's kinda rough but it's in excel format so you can use it to calculate chances if you're so inclined. Also note that Helms and Body Armor have the same affix pool.

The block on Twitchthroe is given as 25% in the game files, so should work just fine. There is no faster hit recovery on it though.

You wrote the 'WW nerf' in the 1.03 bullet point, it happened with patch 1.04 though.


I have an idea how FBR/FCR/FHR breakpoints can be gained for 1.00 but it will take a bit to make a table. Those tables will be smaller than the modern patch ones since it won't include wereforms and druid/assassin.
IAS tables are above my pay grade.

Finally I think there needs to be a table with explanations what 'slightly faster/fast/faster/fastest' mean for each item, that will be a pain but I think it's doable.
 

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Before I forget it: Great guide, going through 1.00 was a breeze thanks to this info. Thanks for making it!

You wrote the 'WW nerf' in the 1.03 bullet point, it happened with patch 1.04 though.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm very glad to hear my work has made at least one person's life easier =)

It's listed in patch.txt as a 1.03 change, that's why I put that WW nerf info where it is. patch.txt is notoriously unreliable though...
 
I made tables for FBR, FHR and FCR breakpoints with the help of @Fruit and the guide by Titanseal. A few notes:
  • No diminishing returns on anything animation related in Classic!
  • Blocking and Hit Recovery animations are one frame longer than in LoD.
  • The blocking animation only plays for physical ranged attacks which deal at least one twelfth of your maximum life.
  • L/CL (sorc skills) don't have breakpoints, they're just static animations, no way to improve them
I added a complete list of FBR, FHR and FCR bonuses. As you can see there's not much of a point to FBR in classic with how little the animation actually plays. On the bright side this means that block is OP. FHR has some very easy breakpoints to achieve and is potentially better than in LoD as long as you have godly rares with FHR in all slots.
maxvalues.pngroughbreakpoints.png
I calculated the maximum amount of each quantity (FBR/FHR/FCR) and then made all breakpoints exceeding it red.

I have no intention of doing this for IAS since there's so many different breakpoints there. Luckily every melee/ranged skill except for Whirlwind and Multishot is busted anyway.

I'll polish it up a bit in the coming days and also make tables for other values and what bonuses they can get like MF, Blocking or something else (anything interesting?).

EDIT: Small Glossary:
FBR - Faster Block Rate
FHR - Faster Hit Recovery
FCR - Faster Cast Rate
IAS - Increased Attack Speed
L/CL - Lightning/Chain Lightning

I'll tidy up the tables some more: FPD, AnimVel and Slowest aren't needed to read the tables.
 
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@art_vandelay This is beautiful. Almost... sensual. I will link this in the tables post for easy access right away!

EDIT: Oh, and please add a small glossary to this post. Abbreviation is a blessing only if taken in moderation.
 
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@d2lover There are some accounts of that happening, see the 'de Seis' section here:
In any case he will cause crashes if you do the things that GalaXyHaXz lists in the quote.

@Helvete I remade the tables and added one displaying MF, GF and Blocking values since they may be of value in Classic and there's no AB wiki to look them up:
breakpintsproper.png
animations.png
mfgfblock.png
 
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Some info on the "star bug" provided by @Fruit :

Most skills specify a radius r in their description, but the actual Area of Effect is calculated in a non-straigthforward fashion from that. It is actually the area specified by the following parametrizations. The x,y are coordinates in the plane, abs() is the absolute value and r is the radius from the skill description:
  • 1.00-1.03: max(abs( x),abs( y))-(1/2)*min(abs( x),abs( y))<r
  • 1.04: x^2+y^2<=r^2
  • 1.05-1.06: x^2+y^2<=3*r^2
The first parametrization gives a four-pronged star centered on the character while the other two yield circles centered on the character with radius r and sqrt(3)*r respectively. Actually the "-" in the first parametrization was supposed to be a "+" which would yield an octagon centered on the character.

I "plotted" a quarter of these four areas for r=1:
radius.png
As you can see the 1.04 area would be the smallest if not for the 'intended' 1.00-1.03 area. In any case 1.04 amounted to a huge nerf to area of effect while patch 1.05 brought us larger areas. (area of 1.05 is 3 times as big as that of 1.04)

It's not clear which skills this affects, but all auras seem to be on the list.

***

Also another fun fact: According to @Fruit, Blessed Hammer is affected by Concentration AND Might in all patches 1.00-1.06 except 1.04. Now is Might actually stronger than concentration in those early patches? Somebody should test this :D
 
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1.00 skills.txt lists 40 % + 10/slvl %, for Might and 60 % + 15/slvl % for Concentration. The skills.txt file itself is of course unreliable, but wayback machine version of 'The Chaos Sanctuary' (from Oct 2000, just after 1.03; link) agrees on these values. Curiously the CS-website states that BH is affected by Concentration but this is not shown on the LCS (which would be the case). This all probably stems from the fact that BH deals physical damage.

The same skills.txt file claims that Might adds +1 Min/Max dmg. I don't know if this is actually the case and if it works with BH.
 
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Adding to the table in post #7:
The table does not include required levels for the affixes, so I asked @Fruit about it and here is how required levels work in 1.00.
  • Uniques have no required level.
  • Set items have the required level specified in setitems.txt.
  • Normal armor and weapons as well as jewelry have a base requirement of 0 while exceptional armor and weapons have a base requirement of 25.
  • The level requirement of an affix is calculated as rlvl = max(1, [alvl*3/4]) where [ ] is rounding down and alvl is the affix level.
  • The level requirement of a staffmod is the level requirement of the skill regardless of which class you are playing.
  • The level requirment of a magic or rare item is the maximum of the level requirement of the base item (0 or 25), the level requirement of its staffmods as well as the level requirement of each affix.
That should cover all level requirement questions.
 
Here's a table of all gem effects:
gemeffects100-106.png
For anyone looking at gems.txt: The codes for mana and life leech are mixed up in itemstatcost.txt, I verified this by looking at the mana leech mod on Wall of the Eyeless. This should have no effect ingame.

I did this to decide what gem to upgrade using shrining.
From what the game displays and how it feels to me, the poison stacking bug in missile weapons is already present in 1.00. It should give you around 52 poison damage (see table for exact numbers) over 9 seconds if you socket three perfect emeralds in a missile weapon. That is by far the most damage you can get via socketing. (Excluding Perfect Diamonds vs. Undead)

For comparison: On average three Perfect Topaz in a missile weapon give 21 average damage. So in order to beat three Perfect Emeralds you have to apply your damage about 2,5 times as often which is problematic when you are having trouble hitting stuff early on.
 
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Yeah, but over 9 seconds... You should be able to land a hit every 3 seconds, right? Fighting large groups of monsters would be where poison could shine, but for singles or small groups, you should be landing hits more often, even with the AR not working right.
 
I used the poison bow with Necro were it was literally my only real way of doing damage until BG became available. CE is just so costly at low levels and going melee is not an option with him as he is so squishy.

But yeah, you have to herd a bit and then circle them while shooting, otherwise it's pointless.

Of course you also need to find the right gems, I was lucky to have three chipped emeralds by the time I hit the Outer Cloister.
 
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