D2 The Journey of Utter Pain

[Werebear sandwich]

A while back I had a post of doing a Druid without any gear that's unnecessary for the quests. It came down to me being able to use things like Khallim's Will, the Cube, and any other quest items. My goal was level 99. Here I will document in succesive posts, my softcore naked druid playthrough.


Act 1, Normal
Started out just fine. I got the Den with no problem, putting all my points into Firestorm. The place was roasted. I then farmed it till level 6, when I started putting points into Molten Boulder. Blood raven was rather difficult, and I died twice just trying to deal with her minions. Molten Boulder was my only saving grace, and the whole process leveled me to 7. I killed Blood Raven by keeping her in a corner with Molten Boulder.

The Search for Cain was all lemons and sunflowers until I found Treehead Woodfist. 9 deaths, and no mana and hitting him with my fists and a dead merc I couldn't res, until the dude died and dropped...

A THAWING POT AND A BLUE SWORD! I sold both, resed my merc and blew Rakenishu to goo. I went in to Tristram, freed Deckard Cain, and booked it out without killing a danged thing myself. The good thing about doing this naked is that you don't actually lose things when you die, so it's actually a free town portal in some cases.

At this point level 12 hit and I put a point in fissure. I had 7 in Firestorm, 4 in Molten Boulder, and one in fissure. I relised I needed some defense, so Akara retrained me and I put a point in cycone armor and arctic blast that came from Firestorm. This helped my survivability, and I steamrolled the countess and the smith. At this point I was level 14, and was just using fissure on everything. I started to make my way through the dungeon, and was having trouble. I drove my way down slowly.

Andariel was soon at hand, and I used Fissure and Molten Boulder to keep her back and burning. Act 1 was complete. My worn gear: A ring of defense +5 from Akara.

Edit: More to come soon!

 

[Werebear sandwich]

Act 2: Normal
Skipped Radamant out of habit, which was a mistake. Tried to get the cube, which failed miserably and drove me down to effectively no gold, no potions, no merc, and no tp.

Went back and did Radamant for a level or two, which was tough, but possible. Used gold from there to get back my town portals and potions. I had to farm Radamant for gold and exp to be able to handle the Halls of the dead, farmed that to handle the claw viper temple and maggot lair.

All told, at this point I had played for 20-25 hours in this act. I blew through the arcane sancturary at level 29. Molten Boulder and Firestorm helped a lot. The summoner was actually tough for once, though, and I only sort of managed to handle him. I had to run all the fake tombs first for experience, which chewed up some time.

Duriel was a cakewalk. Being overleveled helped, and having a big fissure and Moulten Boulder to do to him what I did to Blood Raven. The Molten Boulder was much harder to get to work on him, so mana was chewed up fast, but it worked. The process took me all of 40 seconds.

I farmed Duriel 10-12 times, getting me to level 31 at the end of Act 2.
Act 3-4 soon!

 

[mouseman]

This indeed is a Journey of Utter Pain.. Much respect.. And my condolences!