A few tips for new players from a new player

[MadMerlin]

pza: Actually, that's what I planned to do - I was just waiting on some more hints to pile up.

Edit: It's done.

[Barbarino]

Excellent job so far. Some other things that might be useful:

Check out the new mods. There are several modifiers on items that don't spawn in cLoD which you will reeeeeally want to get. While +%[element] damage showed up in cLoD, it was much rarer than it is here.

By a similar token, some of the mods that are really important in cLoD aren't so much here. The penalty for leach in Destruction (Hell) is large (I think 1/40).

This one's for Paladins. Once you pick Holy or Unholy, you're stuck. HOWEVER, if you find an item with a bonus to a skill on the other side (you're Holy and find an item with a bonus to Mind Flay, for instance) you are able to use the skill. This means that if you really hunt for certain skill bonuses, you can use skills from both holy and unholy alignments, which is pretty powerful.

Don't do the uberquests till you're ready. Look through the PDFs and Laz's page and check the monster levels. You're level 90 and the monsters are level 121? Don't go there.

Experiment! Just about any build can be effective getting through Baal on Hell. The uberquests can be much harder for some builds, but you can get through the whole game with almost any build. Try several different characters, experiment with the skills to see which ones you like. On the other hand, the most powerful builds won't use just one main skill all of the time. This isn't Frozen Orb time, be ready to use lots of your skills at a moment's notice (this means get used to using the hotkeys).

Hotkeys can be reset from the F1-12 default. Instead of reaching up the keyboard for quick switching, try setting the skills on A, S, D, F, Z, X, C, V, etc. Find a layout that works for you.

Don't rely on skills that freeze enemies to keep you alive. When you get to Act 3, there will be cold immunes. Moreover, on Destruction (Hell), 50% of the rest of the monsters will be immune to freeze. This means less than half the monsters can be frozen.

There are some skills that are close to one-point-wonders. Experiment to find which ones you want to max, and which ones you drop a couple points in. Example:
Perfect Being (an Assassin skill) has huge diminishing returns. However, every Assassin should max this skill. It gives you a chance to avoid any type of damage. Here's an example of why you should max it. Say you have a 98% chance to avoid damage. That means that you'll get hit 1out of 50 times. If you increase that by only 1%, to a 99% chance, you'll get hit 1 out of 100 times. This is not a one-point-wonder, despite the huge diminishing returns.

IF you use plugy (which is neither required nor encouraged by Laz), DO NOT attempt to reallocate skill points. This will do bad things to your character.

[Barbarino]

A couple more I forgot:

Shrines can now stack. Want enhanced damage, +skills, and mana regen? They'll all stack.

When you look at the skills with elemental damage, like Snake Stance or Way of the [blank], the best way to use them is with an attack that's a weapon damage multiplier. If you have a skill that says x2 weapon damage or x[something], that's good! This takes ALL of your damage (weapon, strength/dexterity bonus, enhanced damage from skills/equipment, elemental damage from skills) and multiplies the whole thing by the number. Thus, if you have a Snake Stance that does 15k-30k poison damage, and you use Bear Claw or Stampede (x2 weapon damage), you're doing 30k-60k poison damage.

Fortress says its 1/4 weapon damage, so it must not be that great, right? Wrong. One of the best skills in the game. If you fully synergize it, you can get 8 towers that each fire 5 arrows simultaneously, with a few second spell timer and large range. Thus, you have your 1/4 damage * 8 towers * 5 arrows = 10. This is the same as a x10 weapon damage attack if the arrows all hit one enemy. If they don't hit one enemy, you're spreading that insane damage around the screen. Good, huh?

If you want to be able to have a guaranteed kill on anything non-poison immune, max Gamma Field and its synergy on the Druid. It takes a long time (10-15 minutes and much more), but it'll easily do over 1000k damage. Yes, that's over one million damage. If you're patient, you can cheese almost all of the uberquests and pretty much any monster like this.

Mercenaries from act 1: do great damage. The Ranger will do very good damage from her skills the entire game, as long as you use something else (a summoned minion or yourself) to tank and keep monsters away. The Priestess has a healing spell so she can sometimes keep herself alive. Even so, you'll have to tank for these two, but they do verrrrry good damage if you give them good gear.

[Lillis]

Er... regarding the Mausoleum (Blood Raven's non high-level area) where you guys mentioned there were a sparkly chest; I went down there in Nightmare (Terror?) and got totally raped by a few poison spitters the very instant I entered. They were doing insane poison damage; and by insane in this case I mean really imba... Maxed protectors (@ CLVL 70) died instantly. Merc too, and my own life (2kish) was gone in one second or less (@35ish Poison Resistance). What's the deal? Nothing else managed to even scratch me even close to this before.

[Barbarino]

That was your first taste of a chameleon level. Many of the side dungeons are chameleon levels in Terror and Destruction but normal in Hatred. Be prepared for a tough fight (I think they're around level 95 on Terror). Not imbalanced - just the same level as the hard uberquests.

[Lillis]

Ah, ok, that explains alot, lol! I've read a bit about the chameleon levels, but not looked very deep into it, since I'm just starting up. So that IS a high-level area anyway, then? Thanks for clearing that up to me.

[Brother Laz]

It isn't an uberlevel in Hatred, though, which is why it doesn't have the text. Those strings are the same in all difficulty levels.

[PopizzdioJazz]

i had a really bad day that resulted in two things:
1. it gave birth to a very good newbie advice!
2. proved that i'm a total newb!!

i tried those amazons with my assassin.
died.
went to pick up my corpse.
picked it up. BUT NOT ALL!
died again.
picked it up.
exited and saved.

guess what happened!!!
i lost 6 tier 6 fully buffed uniques!

lesson of the day:
do not be an idiot like myself and i you're to lame to do a hard level, be sure to die close to the door!

thank you

[Doabli]

IIRC the same thing happened in vanilla LOD too (happened to me once, I had to rebuild the character) . To summarize : Don't pick up junks when you just die or when you pick up your corpse you won't be able to pick up some items, resulting item loss should you die again. I think this may also happen if you use lift gears instead of raising your attributes.

[Zhade]

Thanks for your help. I started a hermit druid (lvl 38 normal act 3) and hes doing fine even on Players 6.

[Jest]

I am having a really hard time finding good items, and it is making me not want to start a new char because I want good gear to try the 1k challenge. What are some good places to farm for uniques and sets, and some good builds for farming.

[DemonicAngel]

You should probably put a new player shouldn't attempt the level challenges on their first character, just like the 1k attribute challenge.

[Jest]

I already have a lvl 119 Hermit, hes just so boring.

[fiyawerx_dj]

With the new gambling rules, gambling at low levels is _very_ worth it, if your going to mule something over, mule over cash (easy to get if you have a high level) and just gamble at low levels for the specific unique you want. Between 5-10 you can get almost all the uniques and onyl costs you 800-1000 per shot, not 50k+

[DemonicAngel]

I already have a lvl 119 Hermit, hes just so boring.

Start a new character!

I am having a really hard time finding good items, and it is making me not want to start a new char because I want good gear to try the 1k challenge. What are some good places to farm for uniques and sets, and some good builds for farming.

- Kurast 3000 BA is now biased towards sets.
- Khalimgrad is now biased towards rares.
- Fauztinville is biased towards runes.
- Tran Athulua is biased towards uniques.

And those are on all difficulty levels, except for the set one, because sets can only drop in 121 areas (meaning destruction.)

[Cloud123]

Heres a tip
Collect every rune a gem and any useful jewel u can find a cube them. Later on when u find magic items you can cube them with a gem thats not chipped and make a rare. This is helpful. Also you never know when you need that eld rune for a nice runeword.

Also if you got a magic/rare/unige/crafted/set item and its got socs, then fill them up. Dont worry you dont lose the things u put in it. Later on when u want them back out cube them with 3 tps and bingo you got your items back. This helps in normal a lot when you just need that extra boost. (btw in a soc item thats used for runewords if you put anything in it you have to use 3 tps AND 3 perfect jems to get the things out. Careful)

[Sing_in_silence]

Very useful set of tips, nicely set out. Cheers, MadMerlin.


A small contribution of admittedly limited use:
*Until you start getting items from mid-tier one - i.e. the start of act 2 - your largest income will be:
(Sorted by size in inventory. Can we guess that I'm a packrat?)

Throwing Potions (Depending on quality, 120ish ~ 300 or so per full stack)
Keys (5 gold per key, 12 keys per stack)
Superior items with +% attack rating. (starts at 140 gold per item)


It's not much, but with the improved gambling it might be helpful.
(Especially if you don't use PlugY, and are trying the level challenge)

[hisbluness]

Hey there

First post here.
I love this mod and started with a sorc. Its kind of fun and i stick with the following skills:

- Cata... The fireball area thingy (cant remember the name hehe) with fireball synergy
- cold blood with frozn crown and the first cold skill which i cant remember either
- vortex
- mage armor

So far im lvl 42 in act 4 and its getting really tough. I tried crafting items with regular shards but all results are for lvl56 and above so thats why im stuck to some rare items which really suck. My resistances are all below 40, my spelldamage is poor and im kind of confused what to do.

Any idea where and how, I can farm for good items in the first place? And what merc would you recommend for a sorc?

I started saving my attriubtes for the 400 attribute challenge, but that might be a stupid idea right? Got 110 now, and im not sure if its worth it...

i really would appreciate any ideas how to improve my char. Thanks

[Hauki]

The easiest way to find decent items at your level is to simply gather as much gold as you can & gamble, gamble, gamble.
Make use of the sockets available, you can always cube stuff out later to get it back... think pdiamonds in your weapon for %spelldmg, and whatever other stats you might need in your other slots.

Merc-wise, I would recommend either an A2 shapeshifter merc or an A5 merc for a sorc. I'm partial to A2 mercs myself, but either would probably help you out a fair bit in normal play, they're next to useless for überquests unless you have an excellent setup for them.

The attribute challenges are pretty easy to do - I would definitely aim for the 400 one and probably the 600 as well. The 1000 point challenge is a little difficult for your first character & probably impossible for you to do at this point, although I did manage it with an unholy judgment paladin as my first Median character.

Some ideas to ease the attribute challenges - Eld & Tal Runes boost all attributes, either %wise or by a flat amount. Dreamcatcher is a great amulet for doing the attribute challenge and since amulets have a set gamble cost, they end up being really cheap to gamble for at higher levels. You can also gamble rare rings with +attributes, +skills, +%spell dmg, and other useful attributes - the same thing about gambling cost applies to rings as well.

In sum, fill your item sockets, I'd check the runeword/cube recipe .pdfs to see if there's anything useful you can do there, and gamble until you're broke, farm some more gold & do it again. And yea, a merc is actually pretty useful for normal play even with random rares for equipment. Get a high damage weapon for him & that's about all you need.

[Incompetent]

Can someone with experience of Tran Athulua tell me how hard it is to do the level 10 challenge? Are we talking 'everyone should do this with their second char', 'hard stuff, don't bother unless you're already very good/well equipped' or 'only for completely anal nutters who are prepared to spend months preparing for it'? What about the 15 and 20 challenges? I ask in this thread because you have to decide more or less as soon as you create a new character on whether or not to attempt them.

[Brother Laz]

Level 20: probably on par with the 1K ATC or slightly easier, depending on build.
Level 15: much harder than the 1K ATC.
Level 10: do this, then relax in Ureh at HMC +11.

They all got much easier in 1.55c, though, due to the monster life reduction.

[Incompetent]

Level 20: probably on par with the 1K ATC or slightly easier, depending on build.
Level 15: much harder than the 1K ATC.
Level 10: do this, then relax in Ureh at HMC +11.

They all got much easier in 1.55c, though, due to the monster life reduction.

Fair enough. I suspect lvl 20 will prove to be the limit of my abilities at the moment (not least because I lack the patience to spend years hoarding and gambling so I can get sufficiently powerful low-level items). But then again, all subsequent Lazquests are much easier if you have previously done all three parts of level challenge 1, because you have a crazy uber charm to make you stronger when you attempt them...


Thinking of low-level items has given me an idea. Would it be possible to make some kind of 'fixed item' Lazquest? What I mean is, to do the quest you must be wearing a special set of mediocre items, and not carrying any charms. This would be an answer to those who find Lazquests easy because they always have the best items.

[TestSubject]

As for spending years getting low level gear- my first character did the level challenge. It took about two days to beat act one, then about one day to get money for gear, then one day to beat Tran. Admittedly, I was spending about 7 hours a day (i so kewl), but it would be easier if you could twink gold. (and I no longer spend 7 hours a day... )

[Hauki]

Can someone with experience of Tran Athulua tell me how hard it is to do the level 10 challenge? Are we talking 'everyone should do this with their second char', 'hard stuff, don't bother unless you're already very good/well equipped' or 'only for completely anal nutters who are prepared to spend months preparing for it'? What about the 15 and 20 challenges? I ask in this thread because you have to decide more or less as soon as you create a new character on whether or not to attempt them.

It was definitely a challenge, but I completed it on my first char - untwinked, with no prior experience with Median (unless you count ages ago, when it was an entirely different mod).

I would say definitely try it, although be prepared for some frustration - I found the easiest way to do it by far was with a Druid using Blindside, a point in Charm and a few points in Dire Charm.
A throwing Barbarian also worked quite well, but prepared for far more frustration with other classes.

Once you've completed the level 10 challenge, the 15 & 20 should be a piece of cake - you have the charm, 5/10 more levels, and the appropriate experience of having finally killed a boss in Tran Athulua.

My only real preparation was in running for gold & gambling - I grabbed some useful T1 uniques, socketed everything I could, gathered an inventory full of potions & went for it. Timewise, I'm not sure how long the challenge took me, but prepared to spend a while trying to get the Sunstone of Thunder if you're untwinked & trying it for the first time - the others will take far less time though. Definitely take a look at the map of Tran Athulua posted in the thread about the level challenge - it'll help immensely.

[Evilpanda]

ive not been playing this mod very long, but my sorceress has a much easier time killing things when hiding behind a shapshifter act 2 merc, as sorcs dont have any summons until being lvl 90...