Hey folks,
First - thank you for creating such awesome forums, they've been so useful over the years with all the guides and research what can be farmed.
I've been playing D2 episodically since it came out, but fortunately during the recent years I've managed to backup saves.
My first character, back around 2001 in D2 classic, was a paladin. I think I managed to reach Nightmare Act 4 with that build: 20 zeal, 20 defiance, other auras as utility. He was equipped with (nm act2-dropped) holy cuirass of mammoth and I think Culwen's Point or Atlantean (it had +skills) + Sigon's Shield. (it's the funniest that I remember such obscure facts from 20 years ago!)
With expansion, I created a sorceress, unfortunately she was pure-ice (frozen orb) so she just got murdered on reaching act 1 in hell. That caused me to drop D2 for some time. I think I also tried to do something with barbarian but don't remember if I got to hell.
Around 2015 I found some guide related to summoner necromancer that supposedly could beat hell solo in single player, and that was actually possible for me.
This also allowed this summonmancer to find some cool stuff for other of my other chars (mostly ww-barb & meteorb-sorc), but they kind of ran into a wall in a1/a2 hell.
This year I actually decided to get two more chars to beat hell - said sorceress and barbarian. I did some more research, learned where to farm on my necro, got some better equipment, did some early act farming for resistance charms and so on. Also for sorc/barb I changed my typical operating model from "kill everyone" to "don't chase everything" so sometimes I just tp/ww away. With stronger sorceress I finally got to act 3 hell, where I could do some more mephisto farming (I learned about the moat trick only few days ago) and looted stuff that looked unimaginable to me before, like Duriel's Shell (compare: my necro used upped Venom Ward).
So long story short, after some farming I finally got my meteorb sorc ('suicide branch' wand + 'ward' shield) and barbarian (4 IK items, Duriel Shell) to kill hell baal
Fun fact: the highest rune I've ever gotten was an Ist (this year from random chest in A1!).
But I still managed to make use of plenty of other runes, especially Spirit or Stealth that are pretty cheap.
So this being said, thank you so much for creating these forums and doing all the awesome stuff!
First - thank you for creating such awesome forums, they've been so useful over the years with all the guides and research what can be farmed.
I've been playing D2 episodically since it came out, but fortunately during the recent years I've managed to backup saves.
My first character, back around 2001 in D2 classic, was a paladin. I think I managed to reach Nightmare Act 4 with that build: 20 zeal, 20 defiance, other auras as utility. He was equipped with (nm act2-dropped) holy cuirass of mammoth and I think Culwen's Point or Atlantean (it had +skills) + Sigon's Shield. (it's the funniest that I remember such obscure facts from 20 years ago!)
With expansion, I created a sorceress, unfortunately she was pure-ice (frozen orb) so she just got murdered on reaching act 1 in hell. That caused me to drop D2 for some time. I think I also tried to do something with barbarian but don't remember if I got to hell.
Around 2015 I found some guide related to summoner necromancer that supposedly could beat hell solo in single player, and that was actually possible for me.
This also allowed this summonmancer to find some cool stuff for other of my other chars (mostly ww-barb & meteorb-sorc), but they kind of ran into a wall in a1/a2 hell.
This year I actually decided to get two more chars to beat hell - said sorceress and barbarian. I did some more research, learned where to farm on my necro, got some better equipment, did some early act farming for resistance charms and so on. Also for sorc/barb I changed my typical operating model from "kill everyone" to "don't chase everything" so sometimes I just tp/ww away. With stronger sorceress I finally got to act 3 hell, where I could do some more mephisto farming (I learned about the moat trick only few days ago) and looted stuff that looked unimaginable to me before, like Duriel's Shell (compare: my necro used upped Venom Ward).
So long story short, after some farming I finally got my meteorb sorc ('suicide branch' wand + 'ward' shield) and barbarian (4 IK items, Duriel Shell) to kill hell baal
Fun fact: the highest rune I've ever gotten was an Ist (this year from random chest in A1!).
But I still managed to make use of plenty of other runes, especially Spirit or Stealth that are pretty cheap.
So this being said, thank you so much for creating these forums and doing all the awesome stuff!
Google