Diablo II: I eat my words. It's fun!

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by LordAzreal
Last time I played as a paladin, I struggled against Baal. Playing as a barbarian however, I mopped the floor with Baal's ugly face, and at the lowly level of 36 (normal difficulty obviously) and didn't die once (in fact it was no longer than a minute and a half before Baal was the one to die). My struggling paladin was level 40 and died at least 30 times before I could beat the SOB.

Anybody have a decent approach to developing a paladin so that he has little to no trouble at that point in the game? I'm so tired of being discouraged from using a paladin.

I really didn't have any trouble beating Baal as a lvl 37 Paladin. I had put points into prayer in act I, but that didn't really serve me very well for combat later on. it became a way to recharge between battles. I then put about 9 points into thorns, which delivers a respectable 570% damage back to melee attacks. I had put a few points into a couple other things, but Vengeance was really my payoff. I made vengeance my leftclick standard, and thorns my right. By the time I went against Baal My vengeance level was 14! Act V teleporting demons fell in one blow, most others in 2. Good War scepter helps a lot, too.

Oh, that's right, don't forget the equipment! I made a prismatic amulet, and used the RalOrtTal runes to make an Ancient's Pledge Shield. Between the two of them and that 10% resist all scroll, my resistances to all were maxed out. so magic attacks didn't hurt me as much as might have otherwise. I just waded in past those magical waves an started beating on Baal.

One last thing. Had a full belt of full rejuvs. whenever I ran low, would replay lesser levels for a while to save mana potions and build up a full belt of full rejuvs.

[Dis]

I did better against Diablo as a paladin than as a barbarian. my barb was geared towards attacking multiple enemies but he struggled against the big D. A paladin can beef up his damage fairly easy without burning too much mana. As for bhaal I struggled more with my paladin than I did with my barb. Go figure.

[Father Beast]

for everybody that helped, thank you.

My wife beat Duriel with her lvl 24 sorceress and moved on to Kurast. She says she expected to be killed at least once, and kept hitting him with static field, all the while drinking mana and health potions. She had kept all the rejuvs back in her stash for when she got killed, so she could finish the job, but she looked and Duriel was about down to nothing, so she swithched to chain lightning and finshed him off.

[FrustratedPoet]

Told you so.

Glad to hear that she has made it to Kurast! She shouldn't struggle too much there since she's a pretty high level now. Most people complete Act 3 at about Level 24-26 ... although Act 3 can be the most annoying because fighting your way through the jungle can be really tough because of all those little beasties running around. I forget their names ... the little dudes with blowpipes. Once you get to the town area of Kurast it gets a little less frustrating. It depends on her skills I suppose, her Chain Lightning should be good for getting rid of the swarming mobs.

[SnowFire]

Yeah, the dart guys can be nasty. They aren't so bad for a Strafeazon who auto-targets them all, or a Sorc who just tosses Glaical Spikes/Chain Lightnings in all directions, but I understand that Barbarians have the darnedst of times with them, since you have to kill each one indivdually. My roommate, who went for a slow-attack speed Maul that is one-hit kill on virtually everything, had the biggest of problems there because he could only one at a time, and slowly, and he had to catch up with them (presumably it'd be easier in Nightmare, because you could Whirlwind through). While somebody with projectiles can let them do the work.

[Sharpe]

Yeah, I bought the Diablo Battlechest a while back and I am just finishing off Act III as a Paladin - the Fetishes (blow dart guys) were a pain for me until I switched from Thorns to Zeal. The multiple hits really helped! Their shamans with the inferno attack were also irritants until I used a charge attack on them. Amazing game! Almost as good as civ (but will probably become a little repetitive eventually).

[DinoDoc]

Personally, I like to use Golemancers. They remove the need to even have a merc until you get access to a barbarian.

[Chowlett]

It's quite humourous really. I have a problem with my Barbarian because I increased a skill or two too much. He's exceptionally fun to play, and deals a hell of a lot of damage (including something in the region of 50 poison damage/second), but he's too damn fast!

I invested a point or 2 into the faster run/walk skill, and my main attack is Frenzy at about level 5 or 6, and I'm wearing items that give me +2 skills. Once he's hit about 3 things, he's nearly uncontrollable. I think a lot of the next few points will be going into stone skin and natural resist - I dual-wield, so he needs them.

[Sarxis]

I too was unimpressed with the demo for D2. Maybe I should reavaluate this game?

[Father Beast]

I was looking through the collection of mods for D2, and Phrozenkeep had a method of using a separate shortcut via direct mpq to access a mod, instead of replacing the mpq file, so the original would be available for use and the mod also.

Unfortunately, I can't get it to work. I try it and the game asks me to check if the CD is in the drive (which it is). I am nervous about switching the mpq again because of the expanded stash we are using. if somebody loaded one of those characters....

any hints on this process?

[ravagon]

I've pretty much always used a subdirectory just to store each of the individual mpqs (or .txt files as the case may be) due to the possibility of loading up the wrong character (I don't think there's any way to access different save directories using the shortcut method).
I've never run into the problem with the disks though ...
Are you sure you're loading a mod for the same version you have installed? 1.09d I imagine.

Copying mpq files around may seem tedious but it does get you into the habit of doing the same for your characters. I always create a save directory in each of my mod directories and copy/backup my savegames whenever I'm moving mpq's around.
Either that or start a character with a code in the character name specific to each mod - can get very messy though when you have a lot of mods.

[ravagon]

Incidentally the expanded cube/stash/inventory plugins are available on Phrozenkeep (somewhere). Along with tutorials on how to, well, plug em in, in case you were thinking of upgrading to 1.10 (if it ever comes out )

[Father Beast]

I ended up making .bat files for switching between mods. I never did get the direct MPQ version to work, even following the instructions at phrozenkeep.

I don't know how to have a separate save directory for a mod, either. wish they had something like FW for this. The only mod we have yet is the Harry Potter mod, which levels you up fast and buries you in hordes of creatures just by walikng out of town. I started a new character and was up to level 8 before I found the den of evil!

My wife decided to load her lvl 26 sorceress in harry potter mode ( now alvl 26 hermione ) and abruptly leveled up to level 41!!!! unfortunately, it now freezes if she tries to play it in our normal xpstash mode

Ah, well. can anyone suggest a few good mods? I muist say, I'm not looking for something that rebalances the game, as so many seem to do. stuff like this harry potter mod that redo the character classes. I heard about one that allows you to play as several kinds of demons, but I can't seem to find it.

[ravagon]

Highly recommended:

Ancestral Recall - either the classic or the enhanced skills versions - both are compatible with standard LoD characters although only the enhanced version uses the expanded stash/cube/inventory plugins (IIRC?).

SG's Rune mod - No magic/rare/set etc items of any kind. Find runes and use your cube to add their stats to your items. Very innovative.

BG mod - Integrates graphics/monsters etc from Baldurs Gate. Looks very good although I haven't tried it yet.

The Ancients (buggy)/The Fury Within - upgrades to AR above. More new monsters/items etc. Again haven't gotten around to it yet but this one looks very good too. I don't think these characters can be put back into std LoD though.

The "Demon Trip" mod allows you to play as various demon classes but is still in closed beta testing - check out the Mod announcements section of the Phrozen forums.
Also take a look at the "Apocalypse Mod" - again still in beta testing.

Most of these can be found on either Phrozenkeep or its hosted sites.


Re: The Harry Potter sorceress - it shouldn't be the stash thats causing the problem - not in going from a standard size to an enhanced size anyway. More likely a new item or two were picked up that are of course incompatible with the original mpq file. Try divesting your character of any of these first.

[Father Beast]

Thanks for the reccomendations, ravagon.

My wife did lose 2 out of 4 charms when going back to regular LoD (xpx stash), so I didn't think it was the item thing. What also suggests otherwise is that it always freezes when she kills her first monster. The HP mod uses the same size stash, cube, inventory as the XP, although the cube in the inventory is only 1 square!

She says she doesn't mind just playing in that mod, anyway.

odd thing about this crash. the screen freezes right in the middle of her chain lightning strike. you can't ctrl-alt-del to quit. you CAN, however use ctrl-tab to return to desktop, where a message says something about the diablo2 program having had a fault. it's not the standard windows message, though. it only has the one button, marked "OK". the mouse cursor disappears over this message, but if you position it right, you can still use the invisible mouse to click the OK, which closes the message and the D2 program