- Feb 24, 2004
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Originally posted by squidder on Oct 9, 2013:
My First Guardian: Sue the single pass orbitaller
Dying quickly in Random Tourney 2013 made clear that my HC skills were craapp to nonexistent.
So I did a bog standard orbitaller single pass untwinked to practice.
Massive shout out to the forum, to HCGunther and Jiansonz for their guides on single pass MF, Jiansonz's and others' guardian writeups, etc, etc - I wouldn't have come close without all this info.
Dual spirit, 105 FCR, max vita, smoke armor, yada yada. Once I found a Lo(!), e-bug fortitude on the holy freeze merc Chalan made it all very easy. Finding a reaper's toll (in hell with very little MF) gave the choice of copious mana (from insight) or permanently decrep-ed crowds (reapers). Found a kelpie snare too so act bosses became trivial.
Other good runes found: 2x um, 1 x mal. Merc wore duress for early Hell until the Lo dropped and a suitable base was found for forti.
Players set to 8 until Hell, then began reducing slowly, particularly for below ground areas. Most of Act 5 done p1.
Rare jewelry (fcr rings, +22 str +21 mana +19 res all +32 fire res ammy (is that a good ammy?)), blue archangel's coronet, russet whale plated belt, magefist and tearhaunch.
Must have made 6 or 7 spirit swords but couldn't get one above 31FCR - think that's about a fifth of a percent chance, compensating for my other good luck. Luckily the spirit shield I made was 34 FCR!! 105FCR breakpoint was then easy, with magefists ofc.
Reaching guardian with this cookie cutter build, + lots of drop luck, + no tourney restrictions + GoMule,... makes me realise just how incredible the achievements of some in this forum are - Insane Wayne's naked zon, Jiansonz's and others' guardians in tourneys with crazy restrictions, NF and his various absurdities, the list goes on.
Although it seems obvious now, and is obvious to most in SPF, it took me a while to understand that +skills, big damage, etc, etc, that are discussed in the various build guides are not important for single pass untwinked HC. A 'glass cannon' char doing big enough damage so that enemies die before getting close enough to be dangerous is unlikely (especially at player settings other than 1). Preferable to aim for some way to keep battles safe, even if they are slow as a result. Crowd control or a reliable way to escape trouble is a must. This is all implicit in the various guardian writeups, but I hadn't quite got it. Plus of course life life life life life, & max resists.
I still need to learn crowd control, Sue basically tele'd away from danger (using big FCR and FHR), so didn't improve my cc skills really. Glacial spike (1 hard point, fully synergised from ice bolt) was helpful but I don't think it could have saved Sue from dangerous door traps or similar.
Several NDEs, only memorable ones were a boss Horadrim Ancient in NM amped and multishot Unholy Bolted Sue without me noticing, when I finally got around to looking at Sue's life bulb it was empty!!! I wore earphones from then on. Also an evil urn in Hell drifter cavern launched a boss pack of misshappens right on Sue, think her mana bulb got drained slowing down teleporting away, full rejuve presumably only just in time. Hell Nihlathak wasn't comfortable - maybe should have made Black runeword just for this - but he went down anyway.
Presumed that the guides advising to pick up everything and sell it to raise gold for gambling implied that your standards for what was worth picking up would raise as you went through the game. Was shocked to find a comment from Jiansonz saying that no, he kept picking up and selling white junk always. So Sue got with that program up until early hell then had had enough.
In the absence of crazy tourney rules, I'm not sure I should have been pushing MF as hard as possible in Normal and NM. It seemed unlikely that I would find endgame gear, or that the extra gold generated through selling magic stuff would enable extra gambling for endgame gear. Particularly when you will likely need good bases for runewords (so low MF) for your/mercs weapon/armor/shield depending on build. However,
Chalan spent way way too long using an eth war scythe insight, I was waiting for an elite base, but should have used a socket quest, or at least the cube, on an ilvl 37 eth partizan - very little difference between eth exceptional and normal elite. Again common knowledge but hasn't spotted it.
So overall think it was pretty easy - carelessness and impatience were more dangerous than anything in the game. I didn't use any socket quests, nor imbues. One respec (for spirit). Sue still has 14mill gold & 735 gems & lots o stuff saved for later selling all sitting in GoMule for gambling/crafting/selling respectively. I should have been more careful to avoid the NDEs but hey. Sue's equipment was good enough that I could have played more aggressively, teleporting through levels, reducing players settings & reaching Guardian much sooner, etc, but didn't want to park any monsters, thought it was a bit safer being at as high a level as possible, and also the merc's level seemed to make a big difference to his tank-ability, independent of his great gear.
Best gaming fun I've had in a long time, d2 is awesome!! Now gotta do something else for a while, d2 takes over your life. Hopefully back for Random Tourney 2014 all going well.
Thanks for reading if you got this far!
Squidder
My First Guardian: Sue the single pass orbitaller
Dying quickly in Random Tourney 2013 made clear that my HC skills were craapp to nonexistent.
So I did a bog standard orbitaller single pass untwinked to practice.
Massive shout out to the forum, to HCGunther and Jiansonz for their guides on single pass MF, Jiansonz's and others' guardian writeups, etc, etc - I wouldn't have come close without all this info.
Dual spirit, 105 FCR, max vita, smoke armor, yada yada. Once I found a Lo(!), e-bug fortitude on the holy freeze merc Chalan made it all very easy. Finding a reaper's toll (in hell with very little MF) gave the choice of copious mana (from insight) or permanently decrep-ed crowds (reapers). Found a kelpie snare too so act bosses became trivial.
Other good runes found: 2x um, 1 x mal. Merc wore duress for early Hell until the Lo dropped and a suitable base was found for forti.
Players set to 8 until Hell, then began reducing slowly, particularly for below ground areas. Most of Act 5 done p1.
Rare jewelry (fcr rings, +22 str +21 mana +19 res all +32 fire res ammy (is that a good ammy?)), blue archangel's coronet, russet whale plated belt, magefist and tearhaunch.
Must have made 6 or 7 spirit swords but couldn't get one above 31FCR - think that's about a fifth of a percent chance, compensating for my other good luck. Luckily the spirit shield I made was 34 FCR!! 105FCR breakpoint was then easy, with magefists ofc.
Reaching guardian with this cookie cutter build, + lots of drop luck, + no tourney restrictions + GoMule,... makes me realise just how incredible the achievements of some in this forum are - Insane Wayne's naked zon, Jiansonz's and others' guardians in tourneys with crazy restrictions, NF and his various absurdities, the list goes on.
Although it seems obvious now, and is obvious to most in SPF, it took me a while to understand that +skills, big damage, etc, etc, that are discussed in the various build guides are not important for single pass untwinked HC. A 'glass cannon' char doing big enough damage so that enemies die before getting close enough to be dangerous is unlikely (especially at player settings other than 1). Preferable to aim for some way to keep battles safe, even if they are slow as a result. Crowd control or a reliable way to escape trouble is a must. This is all implicit in the various guardian writeups, but I hadn't quite got it. Plus of course life life life life life, & max resists.
I still need to learn crowd control, Sue basically tele'd away from danger (using big FCR and FHR), so didn't improve my cc skills really. Glacial spike (1 hard point, fully synergised from ice bolt) was helpful but I don't think it could have saved Sue from dangerous door traps or similar.
Several NDEs, only memorable ones were a boss Horadrim Ancient in NM amped and multishot Unholy Bolted Sue without me noticing, when I finally got around to looking at Sue's life bulb it was empty!!! I wore earphones from then on. Also an evil urn in Hell drifter cavern launched a boss pack of misshappens right on Sue, think her mana bulb got drained slowing down teleporting away, full rejuve presumably only just in time. Hell Nihlathak wasn't comfortable - maybe should have made Black runeword just for this - but he went down anyway.
Presumed that the guides advising to pick up everything and sell it to raise gold for gambling implied that your standards for what was worth picking up would raise as you went through the game. Was shocked to find a comment from Jiansonz saying that no, he kept picking up and selling white junk always. So Sue got with that program up until early hell then had had enough.
In the absence of crazy tourney rules, I'm not sure I should have been pushing MF as hard as possible in Normal and NM. It seemed unlikely that I would find endgame gear, or that the extra gold generated through selling magic stuff would enable extra gambling for endgame gear. Particularly when you will likely need good bases for runewords (so low MF) for your/mercs weapon/armor/shield depending on build. However,
- what else are you going to do in normal/NM other than push MF, they should be pretty easy anyway
- the transition to give you enough resists/safety in Hell will likely kill your MF at about the right time to find good rw bases anyway
- The magefists (found early) were endgame after all, and I probably should have gambled some tri-resist boots at the appropriate time which could have been endgame (I'm not thrilled with tearhaunch, burned a few mill trying for something better late in Hell, no success)
Chalan spent way way too long using an eth war scythe insight, I was waiting for an elite base, but should have used a socket quest, or at least the cube, on an ilvl 37 eth partizan - very little difference between eth exceptional and normal elite. Again common knowledge but hasn't spotted it.
So overall think it was pretty easy - carelessness and impatience were more dangerous than anything in the game. I didn't use any socket quests, nor imbues. One respec (for spirit). Sue still has 14mill gold & 735 gems & lots o stuff saved for later selling all sitting in GoMule for gambling/crafting/selling respectively. I should have been more careful to avoid the NDEs but hey. Sue's equipment was good enough that I could have played more aggressively, teleporting through levels, reducing players settings & reaching Guardian much sooner, etc, but didn't want to park any monsters, thought it was a bit safer being at as high a level as possible, and also the merc's level seemed to make a big difference to his tank-ability, independent of his great gear.
Best gaming fun I've had in a long time, d2 is awesome!! Now gotta do something else for a while, d2 takes over your life. Hopefully back for Random Tourney 2014 all going well.
Thanks for reading if you got this far!
Squidder