Need some advice... Well my first hc-char (a polebarb) made it to lvl 49... He had pretty much no gear at all... mostly magic items. So now I'm back att square one :clap: I need some tips on a viable character that dont need good gear to survive. Remember I have absolutely nothing at all. /Cinslayer
Yep, summon based necro. You can shop good wands and heads/shields drop at pretty good rate. One of the few characters that can SAFELY go anywhere in Hell difficulty. TM
PoleBarb has to be one of the most difficult to get done safely. They can come out like gangbusters and devistate and then all the sudden you look at the requs of poles and sao OH MY (thoughts are different). Nercos Trappers Druids or most designs Pallys Barbs Javas Sorcs All of these can go a long way on nothing but what you find. The deal is eventually you must get some things for some of them to go further. I always look at my first guy on a new relm, or ladder start like recently in this fashion. I want to OWN NM!!! Hell is Hell, I can get there later but for now I will OWN NM and find what I need to finish Hell from NM. So this means smoe things are basically impossible to have, but at the same time a hughe % of the items this game has falls in NM. I usually suggest ppl to make a NM Meph runner and build like there is no Hell. Get your rez for NM and load up MF and life stuff and go find things. If you want to get thru Hell so you can get to a higher lvl like 85 for more stats then by all means go for it, find a party and go. Use every resource you have to make sure you get your resists in Hell even if taht means taking a 3-4 socket armor and slapping runes in it for resists, or Gems for stats, mana, life. There is no prize for style when Baal Dies or the Ancients go down in Hell. There is only one prize and it is you living thru it! Now if you lost a lvl 49 Barb, it sounds like "without knowing" you may of ran off to NM with less than solid resists?!?!?! Or possibly pumped up some strenght or Dex for some better weapon and went with rather low life and instead of playing conservative you leed the chargs liek most barbs like to do. Once again, there is no prize for leading the pack and trying to be the King of Killing, there is only one prize which is living thru it. Now this doesnt mean leech like the King of Leeches either, it means do what you can and succeed. If you like barbs, then go for a Barb but this time look at a sshield. This isnt for block it is solely for resists. The resists to get you thru NM, become higher lvl like 70+ and OWN NM baring those darn FE or MultiEnchants which can kill at any time. It is very possible to build a Barb with NO MASTERY and do very well in Norm and NM. Mastery only adds a small critical strike, small ARe and in the end it is actually a small ED bonus. This will allow you tow switch weapon classes on demand......oh cool I got this 2 socket sword lets make Steel Runeword and kick butt....OH MY Rakescar Fell cool, toss steel on ground and go AXE......BTW, Rakescar if you find a high ED one is a very good item to upgrade to exceptional, Sol, Ral, PEmerald can you say hello NM Countess give me a SOL....not a difficult thing to get. Other items that can make a STRONG NM character are Steel Driver!! Very low req, up graded can be 300+ Damage with the same runes, and only needs 15 IAS Jewel to hit max speed WW. Rixots Keen.....oh you laugh at me now!!! 100 ED Deadly Strike or Crushing I forget, can you say a Bloodletter wiihtout leech and +skills? Hey we allknow a Bloodleter isnt bad when you are broke! People trade stuff for PGEMs all the time, items in this catagorey that are good to look for are Buthers Pupil, Headstriker, Hwains Justice (Ya its a pole but masteryless who cares change later). Hsarus set pcs, sigs, many other things along wiht some really good things also, so save those gems. Charms......dont throw away charms, mule them. Ya those lvl 9 charms are worthless to a lvl 70 but if ya croak isnt it nice to have a bunch of charms to help ya? Besides if you watch the trade forum you will find some of those charms you might normally throw away are actually very tradeable! Crafting, gambling.......do you ahve to wait till 65+? Hell no! Do you ahve to use Exceptional items to craft? No! Can you get excellent items at lvl 30 gambling and crafting? Well Hell yes you can! Triple resist boots can go a LOOONG way with a character. So pick up all those runes and jewels, pick up armors and wands and sell them and sock up the gold and GAMBLE!!! There are a ton of ways to succeed at this game and the one that never makes you a success is begging! Another things that doesnt help is being concerned about DAMAGE, be concerned about living first and jsut swing more! Use your brain, any character can succeed, just most need to be with a party for good success! Resists and Life are KING! GL and have fun!
Cin, I am in the exact same boat as you for different reasons: I got tired of always having all my items saved up, so I gave everything away, deleted all my characters and started over. I do this each time I play a new character, and in my opinion its MUCH more fun and challenging that way. So. Read Stinger's post... he is 100% right on. Any character can definately make it through nightmare. I am currently working on a Tiger Strike/Dragon Tail martial arts assassin using nothing but rares and crafted items I found/made myself (and a twitchthroe I found) who is in act 5. The keys to item finding: craft when you can and gamble, gamble, gamble. Low level runewords, especially super-useful things like Nef + Lum (runes you can easily get from the hellforge and normal drops) will serve you very well. Hell is another story - gear becomes a little more important. Since you'll probably be doing baal runs to level up, here is my advice: find some good FAIR people to do runs with and split the drops. You can definately find friendly players here on diabloii.net. If everyone takes what they need from baal each time, eventually each person will be well-outfitted enough to move on to hell. Lastly, remember the order of importance for hardcore! 1. Life 2. Resists 3. Blocking (not as important for some builds) 4. Diversity (you'd be amazed how many 1 point wonder skills people neglect in softcore that you'll start using) 5. Damage Best of luck to you; dont give up!
1 point wonders Battle Cry read it, learn it, love it, use it! Taunt/Howl very handy, range attackers ticking you off? Taunt, they stop shooting and come at you. Howl, cant kill boss, all are FANTA, Howl, kill boss, no more fanta kill his buddies.....bosses dont run when you use howl! Find Item/Potion NR......you know, only 1 here works most the time but if ya got crap gear it wont kill you to add a couple more!! Cleansing.....very handy Dim vison, attract, confuse.....all curses There are many more, they just arent coming to me right now.
Thanks alot you guys! :worship: Very helpful posts stinger, kitriara Been reading a little about trapassin, and it seems like an interesting choice. Never played an assasin before so I think it will be a nice change. Gonna make it to nm meph this time :thumbsup: //Cinslayer
