Diablo II

[Gelsamel]

I wonder how d2jsp is going to handle d3? Will they have seperate gold with maybe conversion or fusion of the gold types after d3 has a more established economy or will they just keep the system in place?

I'm trying to find my D2:LoD CD Key but I can't find the case anywhere... don't suppose anyone has one they're not using? Or do we -have- to use authenticated accounts? :<

[Obby]

I think in order to use battle.net you have to have your own copy of the game now, since they implemented that Real ID thing. But I could be wrong, I haven't tried to play any of Blizzards older games since they implemented Real ID.

[broken_escalator]

Finally started playing and decided to start off with a not serious character I can go through as fast as I want. So I made an exp charm for my assassin and started maxing burst of speed, claws and a select few traps. I'm so glad I found a set feet piece that gives 30% run/walk. I'm loving the fast movement.

Also me and my friend made 2 barbarians. I am Mr Bubbles and he is Dr Punchems. I've never made a barbarian but I've decided to max jumping for funsies and whatever warcry is fun to scream. Because who doesn't want to be the jumping, yelling barbarian?

[Bakemaster]

Dr. Punchems != Weaponless Zealadin?

Fail. :P

[Shadic]

Also me and my friend made 2 barbarians. I am Mr Bubbles and he is Dr Punchems. I've never made a barbarian but I've decided to max jumping for funsies and whatever warcry is fun to scream. Because who doesn't want to be the jumping, yelling barbarian?

..Why would you max "Jump" ? Just put one point in Jump Attack for full distance.

[broken_escalator]

Because I can't get jump attack yet! And akara can reset my skills when I can. What kind of barbarian doesn't want to soar through the air and land screaming? The first act is so easy I can clown around and not worry about my stats honestly. I'm not going for some specific build; I enjoy optimizing gear+stats but not in diablo 2.

[Menacing Spike]

Just put one point in Jump Attack for full distance.

It always amazed me how the barbarian could squeeze through grids with Jump Attack.

[Kag]

Dr. Punchems != Weaponless Zealadin?

That's actually pretty viable.

[Gelsamel]

Okay so I rebought LoD. Making a trapsin to start off. Currently level 47 in Hell, hoping to slowly meander my way into Chaos.

[Bakemaster]

Dr. Punchems != Weaponless Zealadin?

That's actually pretty viable.

I am confident you are correct.

I'm tinkering around in Median XL a bit this week. I'm surprised by how much it expands the content of the game, but I have to say I don't like how much complexity was removed from the skill trees by making them all separate and linear. I'm also not wild about the feeling that things across the board feel sped up from CLOD, which may make things more challenging, but doesn't really make them more fun. Kind of reminds me of the transition super smash brothers made from the original to later iterations.

I'm fiddling with a summoner necro 'cause it's one of the simpler trees to figure out while I get a hang of things, plus the defensive advantage made starting up much easier with the hugely decreased selling prices (since I don't have to buy pots). Think I might go back and try another class once I get used to the changes; my laptop can't handle the hordes of summons that well (though I could try suspending uT and WCG I guess).

[EmptySet]

I'm tinkering around in Median XL a bit this week. I'm surprised by how much it expands the content of the game, but I have to say I don't like how much complexity was removed from the skill trees by making them all separate and linear.

Yeah, that's the main reason I don't use Median XL. It just felt even more shallow and grindy than the regular game, because it didn't seem like I had to plan a build or proiritise much.

[Menacing Spike]

I'm fiddling with a summoner necro 'cause it's one of the simpler trees to figure out while I get a hang of things, plus the defensive advantage made starting up much easier with the hugely decreased selling prices (since I don't have to buy pots). Think I might go back and try another class once I get used to the changes; my laptop can't handle the hordes of summons that well (though I could try suspending uT and WCG I guess).

There is a recipe that allows you to respec very easily - check the website.
You might try melee necro, he's devastating with godly defense (but very fragile, so this makes for an interesting challenge).

[broken_escalator]

Man I did not know about the /players 8 option. That makes the game a lot more fun imo. Having 2 barbs running around made it waaaaay too easy, but now the unique/magic/special/whatever-they-are-called monsters are actually dangerous.

[Gelsamel]

You know I always played /players 8 on D2:LoD... I can't EVER, EVER remember it visibly increasing my EXP or my the difficulty of the monsters except in MEDIAN XL. Maybe I'm just weird but I never noticed it :-/.

[Shadic]

It's pretty obvious. Especially against bosses and the like.

[Gelsamel]

It's pretty obvious. Especially against bosses and the like.

Which is weird that I've never noticed it. I tried killing mobs with and without it on and it was pretty much the same. My players 8 runs through normal end me up at the same level as my non-player 8 runs, and generally weren't any more difficult. Maybe Hell would be different, I don't really spend that much time on SP except for sometimes randomly hacking some chars for builds so I don't have much experience with /players 8 on Hell.

[achan1058]

You know I always played /players 8 on D2:LoD... I can't EVER, EVER remember it visibly increasing my EXP or my the difficulty of the monsters except in MEDIAN XL. Maybe I'm just weird but I never noticed it :-/.

Monsters have 4.5x the HP compared to 1 player, it would be rather easy to notice...... As for the amount of exp? You should try something like a bnet Baal run to really notice the difference.

[Gelsamel]

You know I always played /players 8 on D2:LoD... I can't EVER, EVER remember it visibly increasing my EXP or my the difficulty of the monsters except in MEDIAN XL. Maybe I'm just weird but I never noticed it :-/.

Monsters have 4.5x the HP compared to 1 player, it would be rather easy to notice...... As for the amount of exp? You should try something like a bnet Baal run to really notice the difference.

I play on Bnet, but you cannot use the /players 8 command on battle.net. You just actually have 8 players. My doubt whether /players 8 even actually simulates 8 players on SP or not, my experience is that it absolutely doesn't and /players 8 is akin to holding A to increase the chance of catching Pokemon.

[Gopher of Pern]

/players 8 works for SP. Start a new character, and note how many monster it takes to level up. Then start another new character, turn on /players 8, and note how many monsters it takes to level up. There is a big difference. IIRC it only takes about 5 or so monsters to level up to level 2.

Note that after turning it on, any monsters in the immeadiate vicinity will still be on the old setting, so you may have to walk abit out of the rogue camp to find a beefier monster.

[achan1058]

/players 8 works for SP. Start a new character, and note how many monster it takes to level up. Then start another new character, turn on /players 8, and note how many monsters it takes to level up. There is a big difference. IIRC it only takes about 5 or so monsters to level up to level 2.

Note that after turning it on, any monsters in the immeadiate vicinity will still be on the old setting, so you may have to walk abit out of the rogue camp to find a beefier monster.

Also notice how much longer it takes to kill a monster. it's ridiculous when you are using a necro's with his pitiful wand.

[EmptySet]

Yeah, it definitely works. It's really noticeable early in the game when you're trying to chip things to death with a L1 Teeth or Fire Bolt. I've also noticed a clear difference in level by the end of the first act using /players 8. The differences may be lower for the rest of the game, however, since being "too high" a level gimps your experience - you'll probably just end up a couple of levels in front of where you would be otherwise. If you're not seeing any change with a new, untwinked character I can only conclude you're doing something wrong.

I'm not sure that it ultimately makes leveling much faster, though, since it makes it slower to kill things - at least until you raise you skills enough to be dealing massive overkill against normal enemies. It does make the game slightly more challenging, if that's what you want.

[Bakemaster]

There is a recipe that allows you to respec very easily - check the website.
You might try melee necro, he's devastating with godly defense (but very fragile, so this makes for an interesting challenge).

I've never been overly fond of any non-summoning Necromancer builds; it just seems pointless to me to play necro if you're not going to actually reanimate stuff. I can understand clod PNB because at least you're still using a lot of death magic and hey, bones are cool. But I never really got into playing one myself.

Decided to try a holy caster paladin. Very interesting build, if somewhat reminiscent of the clod hammerdin. More versatile, definitely. Rising sun is kind of meh - sort of an orthogonal frozen orb, without the punch at the end or the passive skill to lower enemy resistance. But I like the mix of physical, elemental and magic damage, and the Heirodin build looks like it could be fun later on.

[Menacing Spike]

There is a recipe that allows you to respec very easily - check the website.
You might try melee necro, he's devastating with godly defense (but very fragile, so this makes for an interesting challenge).

I've never been overly fond of any non-summoning Necromancer builds; it just seems pointless to me to play necro if you're not going to actually reanimate stuff. I can understand clod PNB because at least you're still using a lot of death magic and hey, bones are cool. But I never really got into playing one myself.

Decided to try a holy caster paladin. Very interesting build, if somewhat reminiscent of the clod hammerdin. More versatile, definitely. Rising sun is kind of meh - sort of an orthogonal frozen orb, without the punch at the end or the passive skill to lower enemy resistance. But I like the mix of physical, elemental and magic damage, and the Heirodin build looks like it could be fun later on.

Melee necro still needs void archon and shadows to survive.

[PaulAndMittens]

I played this for about a year when I was younger, but now I'm just waiting on Diablo III

[Bakemaster]

I've got my Hierodin up and running, and dang, that cast speed is nice. I've still got some work to do improving my equipment, especially since I gave up a shield, but my defense is not too shabby at all. The biggest challenge is probably that I no longer have revives from my weapon, so I tend to get swarmed more often (as does my merc) but I could fix that if it became too huge a problem.

It's especially gratifying to walk around finding Vex runes in the mid-game, even though they have a completely different value in Median.

[broken_escalator]

I used a hero editor to create a necro, DoctorBoner_PhD, because I got bored of my barb, but I didn't want to start all over with my friend. He decided to re-spec into a paladin too. I decided to try for skeletons and clay golem and he would get some tasty auras to let them kick butt. But I don't think I like it so much. I can't seem to hold my own melee and I'm not the kind of guy that will stay back and let his minions do the work.

Maybe I should have put more into bone spear or tried poison dagger approach, but melee on necro was pretty boring when trying to get mass summons too. I decided to re-spec my re-spec into a werewolf druid, Mr_Fluffums, with wolves to benefit from auras. They kicked ass for damage but I felt i was very fragile even with my glorious amounts of attack speed and life steal.


Barb was the way to go for me; I really enjoyed double-swing with sword mastery and jump attack. It's not an optimized build by any means, but damnit it was fun and really hard to die. One sword had life steal and the other was a unique sword with mana steal and 10str/dex. It meant always having mana and I could jump away from danger or jump into midst of battle. Mr Bubbles was unstoppable by all but duriel.

[Bakemaster]

If you felt flimsy as a wolf druid, you could try bear instead. They tank a lot better and have shockwave as well.

[broken_escalator]

I think I will give that a try. I didn't put a lot into health because I thought my friend would tank as paladin, but I play a bit more aggressively than he does. A lot more aggressively. I like to make things go smoosh.

[Bakemaster]

So, I've finished the level challenges in Median XL, plus Ennead and first two steps of Black Road.

But holy shit Landmasses are brutal.

[Menacing Spike]

So, I've finished the level challenges in Median XL, plus Ennead and first two steps of Black Road.

But holy shit Landmasses are brutal.

"Hey, what is that green monst..."

*Boowaoorgh* *press escape to continue*

"Oh".

[BurningLed]

My favorite part of MXL are the Unique Mystic Orbs. Some of them used to be overpowered, and I still have the +200% to Fire/Poison damage claws for my flowersin (That's +400% total). Of course, it's cheating to still use them, but it took me a week of gathering on the forums to make them, and I'm not exactly keen on letting them go.

Edit: Also, pics or it didn't happen, so http://modsbylaz.14.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=7025

[Bakemaster]

Man, I've actually got one of those UMOs in my stash and thought meh, it's kind of crap - didn't realize it was the result of a nerf.

I finished Black Road and the four minigames today. Fauztinville is kind of obnoxious, but man, finally a nice source of runes! I've been bumming around being a completionist before moving on to Destruction... where I hope to get my shit wrecked again, at least somewhat. I accidentally wandered into Bremmtown while running through Hatred... that was a shock. Maybe I'll go back there before I abandon Terror and lose my maps. Or maybe I'll respec.

It'll have to wait until after finals, I guess.

[BurningLed]

I ran a lot of those a couple of years ago, the UMO projects were the reason most UMO's were nerfed hard. Other ones:

Vizjun's Ball Bearing
Endless Light
Eye of Malic

Though the applicable skills might be nerfed, I haven't played MXL since 1.A9

[Bakemaster]

Destruction... where I hope to get my shit wrecked again

AND SO I HAVE

adkgdlhakfh

[Cloud Walker]

I used to play D2 a lot many years ago (like, 2001-2005). I decided to pick it up again a few months ago. Single Player. Going through all of the difficulties on players 8. Building my end-game equipment in an editor based off of what would be possible to find in Single Player (so, for example, no ladder runewords or Annihilus). Each character class will go through twice, a different build each time, with one using its class-specific set and the other using mostly uniques or whatever works best. Before the character is leveled enough for pre-built equipment, I use items found with previous characters (via ATMA).

I've just gotten my 3rd (of 14) build through Hell. On players 8, it really is hell. So I have done the following:

"Uniques" Barb: Frenzy
"Set" Sorc: Orb/Fire Ball
"Uniques" Pally: Smite/FoH
Next up:
"Uniques" Necro: Poison & Bone

It's quite fun planning and making the best kind of a build possible and seeing how well I do on Hell players 8. If I die, I drop it to players 7, then players 6, and so on. Never had to go past players 6 (damn Nihlathak and his temple). If anybody wanted to join via TCP/IP, I would be more than happy, but when I play is so off and on. I suppose we could schedule games. . .

[Bakemaster]

That seems kind of boring. I mean, the game is repetitive enough as it is... Are you a completionist or do you just rush the acts as fast as you can?

I've finished Destruction now in MXL and am working on collecting uber charms. Did the first six summoning ubers and the first four dungeon ubers, enough K3BA runs to have plenty of SU and SSU that I can't use, one IOSS run for the charms and a couple runs through Kalimgrad without an ear yet. Most recent was Azmodan, which took a lot of deaths to pull off, but that +5% max res was worth it. Maybe later I'll look for one with a better skill on it.

Bear shamans and Horadrim are really useful resurrects to have around, I'm finding, and every time I go get some I have a chance at picking up a charm with a more useful skill. Much better than repeated farming.

The toughest thing seems to be finding any usable SU and SSU equipment for my build. There are so many of them... at least I can burn the sets for signets, but so far all I can do with the uniques is collect them, laugh at the silly ones, and curse Laz out for that fucking Void Seeker (an incredibly powerful spear with what basically amounts to a 5% chance to cast PARTY SUICIDE WOO on striking)

[Cloud Walker]

That seems kind of boring. I mean, the game is repetitive enough as it is... Are you a completionist or do you just rush the acts as fast as you can?

More of a completionist. As I said, I used to play this game a lot, so I have a lot of experience and patience with it, coupled with plenty of nostalgia. Regardless, each build plays differently. Dealing with all the different immunes in Hell is a real challenge. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for subtleties.

[Bakemaster]

I've played probably a dozen builds through Hell, but mostly on Bnet and not at the same time. If I was sitting down and doing them one after another in SP, I'd lose interest.

There are those builds which are far more potent in a multiplayer game. One of my favorite characters on Bnet was a hybrid conc/shouts s/s barb. Could solo just about any part of the game, but not effectively on /p8. Very appreciated in multiplayer games, with ~30 various shouts.

[Cloud Walker]

Finally leveled up my P&B Necro enough to find out that the Marrowwalk bug was fixed! Argh! I couldn't live with that, especially since I've got 67 levels already invested in a build that's supposed to utilize the bug, so I set my Bone Prison skill level at 33 with an editor.

[Mighty Jalapeno]

Fudgesnarfle... the sticker finally got lost.

Does anyone have a Diablo II / LOD Key I can use?