Newbie restarting need advice

[Mantis]

Newbie restarting need advice

Hi all...

I picked up D2 ages ago (1998 or 1999 I think) and I got an Amazon to level 21 or 22. I haven't found my old saved games yet, but I'm pretty sure I screwed the build up. Now I'm looking to start playing D2 again and I picked up a LoD box for $12 US. I don't remember enough about the game/monsters/bosses/secrets to pickup where I left off so I'm basically starting from scratch. However, I do remember my progression being very, very, very slow. Judging from my WoW experience (WoW 3+ years) I'm betting my Amazon was pretty under geared which slowed my progression.

I plan on playing solo... no B.NET at first, but I may hop on B.Net to give it a spin. What I'm looking for is: how does one level quickly and efficiently in the solo game? The guides I've read seem to be slanted toward playing on B.NET and being carried by other high level chars to level rush. If there are per class specifics please let me know. Also, how are you guys allocating stat points each level? Is it something like: always 2 points in str, 1 point dex/vital/energy (or some other static allocation approach)?

All of the classes look fun but I'm thinking of playing a few toons Necro, Barbarian, Sorceress. I want to try the Druid and Assassin classes after I can beat the game in normal difficulty.

My game time might be limited with work + family and going back to school part-time. Any other advice on solo play please let me know.

Thanks
-M.A.N.T.I.S

 

[jiansonz]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

More recent patches have made the levelling more in-line with the monsters further into the game. In Single Player, you can also use the /players command (hit Enter, then type "/players x" (without the " and x being a number from 1 to 8)). This simulates extra (unpartied) players in the game. Each extra player adds 50% (compared to base value) to the experience gained, but also adds 50% to monster HP. You will also get more item drops on higher settings (from regular monsters and containers).

Extra players simulated or not, there really is no need to do any pure "levelling" any more, if you clear out each area once. On /players 1 (the basic setting), a single plass full clear gets you to level 37 at the end of Normal difficulty, level 67 at the end of Nightmare difficulty, and level 84 at the end of Hell difficulty. On /players 8, you reach level 49, 75 and 89, respectively (but do know that to be able to make decent progress on Hell difficulty on anything higher than /players 3, you need a really strong character).

As for the stats, I prefer to get Strength as I need it for items, so I usually pump it so I have 36 ASAP (so I can wear a Ring Mail, which is the only shoppable item in the first act that can have 3 sockets). I put many early points in Vitality so I get a decent cushion of life. For Dexterity, I either take as much as I need for the weapon types I plan to use, or if I have a shield I set myself a goal which blocking percentage I want, then I add DEX as I level to keep that blocking (and put most of the rest in Vitality).
(v1.09 added a formula for blocking, based on character level and DEX, that is still used. In order to have the actual blocking percentage that the shield says, you need to invest almost half of all stat points in Dexterity (and/or get a similar amount of it from the equipment). You can see your current blocking if you hold the mouse pointer on the Defense value on the character screen.)

 

[whitejack]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

welcome!!

i'm not an expert but i can give you some advice. if you are starting from scratch, it is better for you to start with summon necro. In my opinion it is kind of boring cuz skeletons do all the work but it gives you time, opportunity to know the game, monsters and etc. Safest build for news i think.

About the guide thing look at this thread. This is SP thread and more doable than B.net guides.
http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=734413

If you have any problems, this community will help you happily, feel free to ask any questions that in your mind.

i hope you will enjoy both d2 and forums

WJ

 

[DZJB]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Welcome to the forums! Be sure to read the stickies and the rules!

In single player, you can use the /players x command to simulate being in a game with more characters. That way, monsters will be thougher, drop more items, and, give your more experience. You'll level faster, but the game will be harder. The x varies from 1 - 8 btw, so type in "/players 8" for the hardest gameplay.

For different builds, check out the pat/mat thread in the stickies. It's filled with characters that us SPers have made, that were able to take down the final boss on the final difficulty (Hell).

Allocating stat points differs from char to char. Necros and Sorcs don't benefit much from Strength, as they won't be going into close combat. They just need it to equip their gear, nothing more. Dex is used for blocking, and if you're not going for a high blocking setup (which requires a good shield), you don't need to put ANY points in dex for say, Sorcs or Necros. Barbs will need Dex to meet weapons requirements, and it'll raise their base attack rating. Don't put any points in Energy with any char. You'll get more mana as a caster, yes, but at higher levels you'll have a big enough mana pool anyways, so you'll regret putting points in Energy. For some very specific builds, you may need Energy, but not in most cases. Everything else goes into Vit. More life = more safety.

Playing caster chars to start with is a good idea, as they rely on skills to kill, not so much on gear. And if you're starting anew, you won't have good gear to start out with. Check out some builds as the 'Fishymancer' aka 'Skelliemancer', and 'Meteorb', 'Blizzsorc', Blizzballer' etc...

Enjoy your stay here!

*kicks shins*

EDIT: gah, way too slow.

 

[QED]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Jiansonz speaks the truth and is a very experienced player. I have always found his advice to be spot on.

My own personal advice would be to pick a character that you enjoy playing. For me, this is the most important aspect of starting and sticking with the Diablo experience. I personally love Amazons and have made plenty, albeit, mostly in my b.net days.

As for building a viable character for hell, there are two main options. The first one is to check out the character guide here. There are scores of build options for each character class from people with massive experience and insight into the intricacies involved. It is worth a read.

The second is to pick a character class that interests you and dive right in. I would recommend not placing too many points in attributes and skills until they are needed. As you progress through the game, you may notice the need of a particular skill or stat points. You can always come back to the forum and ask for help or read the above mentioned guides. This method will be slower than the first, but you will learn much more about the game and the strengths/weaknesses of your chosen character class.

Remember, have fun.:smug:

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. What is a "pat/mat"? Sorry my n00bness is already showing. I figured the stat points would vary based on class/build with some sort of static allocation pattern such as:
Skelly-Necro: dump 3 points per level into str for levels 1-15 then swap to 3 points per level in vital. The other two points are in vital lvls 1-15, then the other 2 points are in dex after lvl 15.

Are there any web-based character profiler sites. I know there are several WoW char profiler sites.

 

[DZJB]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. What is a "pat/mat"? Sorry my n00bness is already showing. I figured the stat points would vary based on class/build with some sort of static allocation pattern such as:
Skelly-Necro: dump 3 points per level into str for levels 1-15 then swap to 3 points per level in vital. The other two points are in vital lvls 1-15, then the other 2 points are in dex after lvl 15.

Are there any web-based character profiler sites. I know there are several WoW char profiler sites.

Pat/mat reffered to the Patriarch and Matriarch titles that your char gets after killing the final boss. Defeat him in Normal, and you'll get the Slayer title, in Nightmare that'll be Champion, and in Hell it'll be Patriarch or Matriarch, depending on the gender of the class.

And nope, no patterns in stat attribution. It's very gear dependent. What it really is for a skelly necro: Str enough for gear, Dex none or enough for max block, Energy nothing, and the rest in Vita.

As for build guides, there aren't many in the SPF, so I suggest you check the Pat/Mat threads for most info. Though this is a very popular one: Nightfish's Skelliemancer

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Oh boy now I'm cooking...

Being a pack rat is paying off. I found a CD backup of my saved games. I have lots of good stuff to build on. However, based on what I found I'm surprised that I didn't beat the game on normal mode.

Here is what found on my CD:
- a Lvl 27 Bow_X-Bow Amazon in pretty good shape skill point wise at the start of A4 (not sure stat wise).
- a Lvl 30 Necromancer in almost fishymancer state (skill point wise) near the end of A3 with some +skill items.
- a Lvl 20 Necromancer with a more mixed build with semi slightly better gear, still in A1 but I have the last way point activated (this might be first necro and the other a rebuild).
- a lvl 1 Barbarian gem mule with loads of perfect gems (original D2 stuff only).
- my Amazon turned into a mule with some rares, uniques, set items (sigons items, mage fists, Stone of Jordan, Nagel ring, loads of cash, the H-cube, etc.)
- my lvl 20 Necro turned into a multiple mules with some rares, uniques, set items, cash, etc.

I remembered that I brought my sister a D2 box (and several other PC games) when I brought her a PC many years ago. It seems that I borrowed her D2 CDs and was using LAN games to mule it up. A winzip archive I made is approx. 16 megs. The expanded folder tree is about 29-30 megs due to the "save" folder just being copied with multiple toons in the folder.

I would be willing to share my archive with others if there is an interest. I didn't use any mods back when I played and I suspect I was playing the original un-patched version of the game. The folder tree can be split into smaller pieces/archives of course.

Also, I got a copy of my sister's lvl 27 Paladin still in Act-3 normal mode. She also has a Lvl 3 Sorceress with only 1 point in Warmth spent (all stat points saved), and a Lvl 9 Barbarian no skill or stat points spent. Her toons are all LoD versions.

So my big question now is should do some runs in Acts 1-3 and try to level and maybe find some items before diving into Act 4 (Amazon + Necro specifically)? I plan on grabbing my sister's Sorceress and Barbarian and leveling those as well.

(Hopefully the offer to share saved games isn't a violation of the forums' Terms of Use policy. If it is a Terms of Use violation please accept my apologies and disregard my offer.)

 

[jamesixgun]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Small piece of advice, unsolicited, of course: Read the Stickies.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Make sure you have the patch that matches the advice/build. If you are playing straight off the CD and have not linked to B.Net, you might have 1.07 loaded. The "Fishmancer" - a Necro with maxed skeletons and skeleton mastery + a main curse and corpse explosion - is very much a 1.12 powerhouse, but would be very weak in 1.09 or prior.

The easiest patch to beat the game in is 1.09 (and some fun bugs to exploit) - 1.12 (you will be automatically upgraded to this if you access B.Net) is more challenging and has the most items - but 1.07 does have some overpowered items not found in later patches.

Since you are a returning player doing SP, I would suggest investigating some "time travel" - playing older patches that you may already be familiar with and develop some wealth (items + runes) for later patches. 1.12 has very powerful runewords, but they use very rare runes. 1.09 is beatable with much less godly equipment and you can collect a good amount of useful stuff (especially a unique 1.09 Long Bow that is bugged to be crazy overpowered when transferred to 1.12).

If you are interested in some 1.09 MP, drop me a PM.

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

I'm playing v1.07 and based on the investigating I may have connected to B.Net a while back. My lvl 30 Necro has Dark Glove Ring Mail equipped. According to the Arreat Summit the item only spawns in v1.09. This might explain why my lvl 20 necro mule has a Stone of Jone equipped, but the slot is red and the item text says it requires lvl 29 in red.

Edit: Found the info on the patch differences in the stickies. I need v1.09 or higher to use /player x commands.

I might be stuck with an inferior merc. I have a lvl 19 frost merc from A3 which was from the last saved game my the backup. However, if I go back to A2 the highest level merc is 13. I'm not sure if its worth the trouble to go back and level a A2 merc. The A3 merc is already more than 10 levels behind my Necro.

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Ok I not sure if I'm doing something wrong or have misread something.

I installed patch v1.09d. I loaded up a single player game and while in town I pressed enter and then typed "/players 3" (without quotes). It looks as though I just typed a message randomly.
There was no notification from the game about the diablo's minions becoming stronger. I know if I setup a LAN game, once the 2nd player joins the game I get an in game notification stating Diablo's minions have become stronger.

Am I suppose to enter the slash command a different way or load a different patch?

The Time Traveler guide lists patch 1.09 as the patch that provides the /players x command for faster leveling.

Thanks for being patient.

 

[Shagsbeard]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

The /players command went through various phases... I think it didn't use the / in 1.09, but I could be wrong there. I don't do the patch switching.

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Thanks Shags... I tried pressing enter and typing in "players 3" without the quotes and no slash and it still looks like any normal chat. When the command is properly invoked does the game provide a notification or some vision response to the command?

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Ok I not sure if I'm doing something wrong or have misread something.

I installed patch v1.09d. I loaded up a single player game and while in town I pressed enter and then typed "/players 3" (without quotes). It looks as though I just typed a message randomly.
There was no notification from the game about the diablo's minions becoming stronger. I know if I setup a LAN game, once the 2nd player joins the game I get an in game notification stating Diablo's minions have become stronger.

Am I suppose to enter the slash command a different way or load a different patch?

The Time Traveler guide lists patch 1.09 as the patch that provides the /players x command for faster leveling.

Thanks for being patient.

1.10+ uses "/PlayersX"
1.09 uses "PlayersX" - no slash for 1.09

You will get no message about minions growing stronger - you will only notice when you meet freshly spawned monsters.

1.09 has some specific bugs and exploitable imbalances, such as:

• MSLE = Death if you aren't careful (lightning absorb solves this)
• Fetish Doll deaths = Death if you are too close (let merc/minions kill them)
• +3 skills Rogue Merc shoots short range Lightning Hose (VERY EFFECTIVE)
• Pierce works with Guided Arrow, so Buriza Amazon with max GA is the most overpowered character in 1.09 (but weak in 1.12)
• Barb and Sin Masteries are bugged to have 100% Critical Strike with 1 point, so they are overpowered too
• Act Bosses are leechable, making the Barb a GREAT Meph runner with some life/mana leech
• Yellow items suck for the most part (except Ammys, Rings, Circlets, and Boots)
• 3 chip sword recipe can make some of the best weapons available (I used it to make 2 Cruel Champion Swords with 3 sockets that I used until I got a Baranar's Star and a Doombringer)
• Eth rune in a weapon is bugged to be way overpowered - you basically always hit

I recently made a Mat and 2 Pats in the 1.09 patch - if you want to ask any specific questions, I would be glad to help.

 

[Twoflower]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Welcome Mantis.

I would suggest you a few things :

First, when you load the game, connect to the battlenet once. This will automaticaly patch and update your Diablo to the newest version, 1.12a.

Second : Forget your old chars and items. Start fresh. If you ever want to trade here ( using atma and the trade forum, check the stickies if you haven't allready ), you need to know where your items came from, how your chars leveled, who you played with in multi player etc. I dont want to assume anything about how you played your old chars, but the mere fact that you dont remember the details any more would ( in my opinion ) make restarting preferable.

third : Patch 1.10 ( i think it was 1.10 ) totaly changed the skill trees by introducing sinergies. Any char from before that patch would become totaly unplayable in the new patch. Another thing that suggests restarting from scratch.

Look at it this way, you can hit lvl 30 in a few days, and if you follow a guide you will have a very good char ( no wasted skillpoints ) which is ready for some serious kicking. I would suggest a Sorc, either meteor - frozen orb or fireball - frozen orb ( guides to both of those are in the sorc section ), to start doing some MF runs.

 

[Ziggyzug]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

When you type the /players X command into the chat screen you'll know you did it right when you see the chat on the creen saying something slightly different than what you typed in.

IE in 1.12a:
/players 8
looks like:
SoandSo: players set to 8

You'll know the command didn't work if the chat message looks identical to what you typed in.

 

[Mantis]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Thanks TwoFlower/Ziggy...

TwoFlower:
1) I've avoided upgrading directly to patch 1.12, because I wasn't sure if I would be missing something fun in the prior patches.
<rant>Blizzard has a nifty way of nerfing certain aspects of their games via patche releases.</rant>

2) Both my lvl 20 and 30 necros have some wasted skill point allocations. However, its very tough to dump an old toon and kill speed at low levels is quite s-l-o-w. The lvl 30 necro may be closer to salvagable because he is basically 1 skill point for each skill, in each tree. So restarting has crossed my mind.

I didn't consider the trading option yet as I was still looking through loads of saved games to see if there was anything of use for my lowbie Barb and Sorceress. I will be checking into this though.

How I played: I have loads of saved games so that if I goofed up I could go back a short distance in progression. I didn't use any mods or external tools like ATMA for muling. I used my desktop and laptop for private LAN game mule transfers. I used old saved games as a source of gems, items, potions, and cash. At one point I must have connected to b.net to get the lastest patch (probably 1.09), while getting the latest windows and A/V updates loaded.

What I don't fully remember is the intricacies of the caves, maps, dungeons, quests, monsters, bosses, and I don't remember what skill specializations I was persuing with my toons.

As far as skill/play style goes I consider myself a member of Club-Newb.

3) No synergies prior to patch 1.10?! /cry


============
Ziggy: Thanks for the info.


============
Is there anyway to set a toon to auto-follow another toon? I'm thinking maybe I can use my higher level toon to help the lower level ones if I go the restart route.

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

Thanks TwoFlower/Ziggy...

TwoFlower:
1) I've avoided upgrading directly to patch 1.12, because I wasn't sure if I would be missing something fun in the prior patches.
<rant>Blizzard has a nifty way of nerfing certain aspects of their games via patche releases.</rant>

I obviously agree with this - when I originally played 1.09, I was unaware of some of the nifty imbalances and specific aspects of the patch - I'm glad I got a chance to get the full experience.

I didn't consider the trading option yet as I was still looking through loads of saved games to see if there was anything of use for my lowbie Barb and Sorceress. I will be checking into this though.

I know at least one person with gobs of 1.09 itamz to trade

How I played: I have loads of saved games so that if I goofed up I could go back a short distance in progression. I didn't use any mods or external tools like ATMA for muling. I used my desktop and laptop for private LAN game mule transfers. I used old saved games as a source of gems, items, potions, and cash. At one point I must have connected to b.net to get the lastest patch (probably 1.09), while getting the latest windows and A/V updates loaded.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you describing here - you copied your save files to various directories?

As far as skill/play style goes I consider myself a member of Club-Newb.

You mean n00b?

3) No synergies prior to patch 1.10?! /cry

Well, there are SOME for certain characters - such as the passive bonuses for Druid summons. Thing is, the lack of synergies allows for more flexibility in builds - 1.10+ has a finite number of viable builds due to the need to pump synergies to make a non-variant character.

 

[jiansonz]

Re: Newbie restarting need advice

kill speed at low levels is quite s-l-o-w.

I do not think you have experienced the v1.09 and later mercenaries. You can give equpiment to them, and they up the early game kill speed considerably, even with eqipment that is easy to come by as you play. In fact, it´s really not hard to go through the entire Normal difficulty just "riding" behind the mercenary. This is at /players 8, and with decent kill speed. Act bosses are the exception; character needs to do most of the work against them.