Re: Newbie SP Question - Duriel
cheeseypoof said:
Ok, I have recently purchased Diablo II, and have been making my way through single player on my own, will go online later after I finish the game.
Congrats on buying a very fun and addictive game. I would suggest connecting to battle.net (you can do this from the main game menu) even if you don't plan on playing online just yet. This will automatically update your game to the latest version, v1.11b, which is what most people play here (however, see a note at the end of this post for why you might not want to do this immediately). I recommend this because people will be dispensing well-meaning but perhaps useless advice because what holds true for one version doesn't necessarily apply for another.
cheeseypoof said:
My question is this:
Can I affect Duriel with a Choking Potion or Exploding Potion? I have a handful of both and was wondering if they would have any affect on him or it would just be a waste.
I'd sell the potions. The various offensive potions in the game aren't well done. While the idea is great in theory, in practice the damage just doesn't measure up. They might work well in very early stages of the game, but they also sell for respectable cash, so you're usually best off just trading them in.
My advice for beating Duriel: grab a shield and a fast one-handed weapon, and just keep plugging away. If you're playing in an early version, know that he's one of the toughest fights in the game. In fact, before they fixed things in a later version, you'd often find yourself dead to his Charge attack even before the level finished loading up (ie, before you had a chance to start fighting back). This was especially true on computers closer to the minimum system requirements for running the game.
If you're familiar with some online games, you might have heard the term 'mule' before. A mule in a game is a character used to hold excess gear, with the intent of moving it between characters. ATMA is a program designed to facilitate this in Diablo II. You can move your items into an ATMA stash (different from the in-game stash), or to another character. While this is a third-party program, it's accepted in the community here, as it doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't otherwise do (with a lot more effort, such as having a friend open a multiplayer game to allow you to move your gear around). If you're using an OS besides Windows, you might be interested in checking out the similar GoMule program. There should be links to both programs in
this thread here.
Back to what I was saying above, about version: you should let us know what version you're playing, and we can help you out more then. Also, are you playing with the expansion set? Almost everyone here has it, and with the exception of a few people playing classic (non-expansion) characters for nostalgia or the challenge of it, most people play expansion characters.
If you're playing classic, and you have not yet upgraded to the latest version, there is a potential exploit. I don't feel bad mentioning this, as almost any long-time player will know about it (plus it's not cheating, even if it is a bit cheesy). This exploit has two components. The first part is that in early versions (v1.06 and earlier, to my knowledge) you have decent odds of gambling a set or unique item (in current versions, the chance is very low). The second part is that when the game creates (as part of an item drop from a killed monster, opened chest, or gambled item) a ring or amulet that is determined to be unique (based on several factors), there is a pattern. The first unique ring will be a Nagelring. If another unique ring is created while a Nagelring already exists in the game, it will be Manald Heal. The third time is the charm, as this ring will be a Stone of Jordan (a highly-coveted and rare magical ring). In a similar manner, unique amulets spawn in a certain order, but the best of the lot here is the Eye of Etlich (the second one).
Using this approach, you can obtain these items with relative (key word here) ease. It's still a lot of work, especially as you need to exit town to get the NPC's 'gamble' selection to refresh, and rings/amulets aren't always offered for gambling (they are in current versions). Also, you'll need to do a bunch of killing to get the necessary gold, but all in all, it's worth it. It's also a now-or-never proposition; once you upgrade the game, there's no going back without reinstalling it (and then you'll need to remake your character if you've opened him up in the game after upgrading). Lastly, it's a real pain to mule the gear off your character (you cannot obtain a second Stone of Jordan while you're still holding the first); the easiest way is to join a multiplayer game and transfer the item to another character in that fashion. You can even do this on one computer using Windows XP's 'fast user switching' if you have this enabled; simply run an instance of the game under each of two different accounts. Switching back and forth is a hassle, but it's at least possible. The reason you need to jump through all these hoops to mule stuff is that ATMA doesn't work for these early versions. I'm honestly not sure if it works for classic Diablo II at all, which is one more reason to grab a copy of the expansion set.
Besides gambling Stones of Jordan, there are some other useful unique items that you can gamble. A few examples are Gull (dagger, gives a better chance of finding magic items), Tarnhelm (skull cap, gives more magic find, +1 to all skills), and Treads of Cthon (chain boots, lets you run fast and far). Of course, these items can be found in later versions fairly easily, and they are all rendered obsolete by better, expansion-set-only items later in the game. A Stone of Jordan, on the other hand, never goes out of style (my level 93 sorceress still uses hers, and it's super helpful).
Blah. Well that was a fairly long post. Anyways, welcome to the forum, write an introduction thread and tell us a few things about yourself. You'll find that people here are a pretty friendly lot in general.
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