When to continue to Hell in 1.12 with Cold/Fire Sorceress

[pharphis]

enlightenment isn't really worth it imo since smoke is better for res or vipermagi which is reasonably easy to find (meph, ball, in nm (maybe Andy, too?)

It's also not worth your time to cube low low runes (such as tal and lower) since these will drop often enough from nm and hell countess while looking for higher runes. It's certainly worth having a handful of them for runewords or cube recipes, though (tir for insight, etc.)

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

I've just been keeping a separate character with ATMA to dump all my runes in and the I just go in and cube them up every once in a while. Keep in mind, I'm not really doing many runs on monsters--basically just questing through the game, leveling up as I go, and keeping whatever I find on the way, so I don't have a ridiculous amount of runes or anything.

The main reason I'm looking at Enlightenment is that it will just be a move up from what I'm using at the moment, and I have all the runes, and I don't think I'll be using any of the runes for any other runewords. I can easily dump it if I find a Lum and can make Smoke (I thought I had one, but I don't), but my resists will be maxed or close if I just put a few runes in a socketed Helmet + the fire resist from Enlightenment. And it'd be great if I found a Skin of the Viper Magi, but I haven't really been doing Ball/Meph runs since questing through Hell has been viable. My primary goal is just finishing the game, and I don't have much time to play, so I'll probably just push through Hell as long as I can and if I run up against a wall, then I can start doing runs for better equipment.

 

[Loot Skywalker]

I think you misunderstand how atma works. In battlement, it was necessary to use characters as mules. Popular mulling programs in SP use stashes, eliminating the need for characters while allowing you virtually limitless storage.

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Perhaps I did--so you're saying ATMA was designed for battlenet, and you're just suggesting I use a different program that just allows the stash to become bigger? That would certainly be more convenient I suppose--I am a newbie to much of this. I'll take a look at GoMule, since I see that one mentioned a lot.

 

[maareek]

Nono. No mod that affects the in-game stash is accepted here. What ATMA does (and GoMule as well, for that matter) is allow you to make multiple separate stashes saved to your hard drive that contain as many items as you want per stash. So you can have a stash for runes and dump every rune you ever find for the rest of eternity in there, or you can break them up as much as you want (one stash for every different rune, if you wanted). You can make a separate stash for each of your characters, or for X run target or whatever you want, which is why those programs are so much loved (absolutely no way I'd play D2 without ATMA or GoMule ... preferably both although I can't seem to get GoMule to work right anymore :/).

What Loot was saying is: with ATMA or GoMule there's no need to put items on other characters to store them, as you can use stashes in the program instead.

 

[Loot Skywalker]

Maareek said it much better. I'd never played sp until recently, and the mulling process amazed me the most... It was so easy that initially I was picking up nearly everything that could have the remotest possibility of value. Moving items around and organizing all your godly finds becomes nearly effortless.

 

[japanzaman]

If you are just interested in beating the game on Hell. then you're probably set as is. The Ancients are bound to give you some grief, but if you keep rolling them you'll eventually get a setup you can succeed against.

I would suggest gambling or crafting a +skills amulet with some resist all. You could also run Nightmare mephisto for Skin of Vipermagi and Magefist, both which could help you out a bit. Probably a ways off from any better gear, but as long as your are killing things in Hell you never know when you'll get lucky.

 

[maareek]

Enlightenment really isn't worth it as you really want the armor slot to do something really good for, and +2 skills isn't really enough. The armor I would most want in your spot is Skin of the Vipermagi, as mentioned, but my backup option would be the Stealth runeword because even though the 63% breakpoint for faster cast rate is alright, I really like having 105% because of how much it helps with teleporting and even with not-so-good rolls on the Spirits it doesn't take a lot to get there with Stealth. If you are okay with the 63% FCR breakpoint, then I'd still rather have something like Goldskin or Smoke or just a 4 socket armor with runes thrown in for resistances over an Enlightenment in any situation I can think of.

You can get +1 skills from the Lore runeword, which shouldn't give up much for you (there's not really a better helm for a sorceress until you start talking about Elite Uniques or crazy magic/rare circlets) and, honestly, +5 skills should be enough to finish the game. As japanzaman says you can try gambling amulets (at your level you can gamble blue amulets with +1 to all sorc skills or +3 to any sorc skill tree, or rare amulets with +1 to all sorc skills or +2 to any sorc skill tree, though all gambles are completely random on their stats) but it's not a requirement.

Do keep an eye out for better white and grey polearms that drop, though, as upgrading the merc's weapon will do a ton to help you out in places you need him.

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Thanks for the continued input! I'll look at the ATMA program again and try to figure out how to save in the program stash. I'm all for a fairly vanilla playing experience, but that would certainly make stashing things a lot easier instead of the silly way I've been doing it.

Also, I'll look up the FCR break points, but I think I'm already at 105%, with two Spirits @ 55% each and a 10% FCR ring? Would that put me at 115%, with the next break point at 200%?
EDIT: I see I was misremembering the stats. The 55% is the FHR, not FCR. I'll have to check what % of FCR I got with the Spirits.

I'll certainly look into Stealth and Lore!

For the meantime, I just made Enlightenment, and then put Runes into a 3 socket helmet to supplement my resists. So the outcome is +6 skills, with my resists at 75/75/73/73 in Hell. My poor merc needs some better gear now, and I'll keep an eye out for some. Duress and Insight are working fairly well for him, but I'd love to stumble across an Elite Ethereal socketed polearm to put Insight into. I found a Colossus Voulge (not ethereal), but I don't think my merc will have the strength to use it before I finish the game--he needs something more like a Giant Thresher.

By the way, I beat Act II of Hell last night--dropped Duriel pretty easily just casting Blizzard and walking him through it. And to think this boss used to be the scariest of the game for me!

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Just a little update to note how Enlightenment works for posterity's sake.

I made Enlightenment and Lore, and found a 3 socket Dragon shield and added Pgems to supplement my lacking resists. The result:
-Maxed resists in Hell!
-A total of +5 to Skills (+2 from Spirit Sword, +2 Enlightenment, +1 from Lore)

I couldn't make the next FCR break point even with pooling all my best stuff, but for the meantime this should take me through Hell pretty easily. There are still a few pesky runes that I can't find to make some Runewords that would be good for me, but I think I'm okay for the moment. I'm in the Kurast Bazaar, and I've even been doing a little playing on /players 8 in easy places like the Arachnid Lair! Thanks for the help everyone. I think my next post may be to announce my first Mat.