»5th September 2005

The Diablo 2 Quest


I've not exactly been swamped with things to do recently, so rather than occupy my time with more 5-day plans I thought I'd do something interesting on Diablo 2. Diablo 2 can at times take up worrying amounts of my life. Despite having better things to do than go hunting for magic items in Hell difficulty all day, I must say I do enjoy the online Diablo 2 experience. My quest, which would not seem so remarkable in the eyes of hardcore Diablo players with level 90+ characters and no life, was to get one of every class of character into Nightmare difficulty, which basically amounts to killing the end boss Baal in a normal difficulty game with a Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Amazon, Sorceress, Assassin and Palladin. Now I had been aiming at this at a while, so my primary battlenet account already had two ex-ladder characters who were already in Nightmare difficulty, a Sorceress (Tentara) and a Palladin (Vondoro). I find Palladins and Sorceresses easy to play as so I did not have as easy a start as may seem. With the new patch and the new ladder season however I had to start five new characters, having no other characters in the new ladder this meant I had no items which I could transfer between characters to speed up the early stages of the game and make things that little bit easier.

	Character Levels
Time/Date	Vondoro (Palladin)	Tentara (Sorceress)	Undoro (Necromancer)	Clentara (Amazon)	Kantaro (Barbarian)	Wenderra (Assassin)	Dendoro (Druid)	Average Level Of All Characters
17:28 24/08/2005	41	44	37	3	1	35	1	23.1
00:28 25/08/2005	42	47	37	20	1	35	1	26.1
01:08 26/08/2005	42	47	37	37	1	35	1	28.5
03:15 26/08/2005	42	47	37	37	12	35	1	30.1
01:29 29/08/2005	42	47	37	38	26	36	1	32.4
00:30 29/08/2005	42	47	37	38	43	36	1	34.8
22:13 04/09/2005	42	47	37	38	43	36	41	40.5

I'm sure you're all bright people and I don't need to explain what that table is on about too much, so I think I'll jump straight into the discussion and analysis.
First things first, it seems I only started to record stats about a third of the way through the quest hence 4 characters already been nicely on their way. Secondly, I didn't exactly make a routine out of recording stats, I tended to note down results at what I considered important milestones (getting a character into Nightmare or a position in which he/she could start Baal runs and level up quickly to name two examples), at the end of a session of play or about once or twice when I had nothing better to do. Thirdly, the names are all similar because the first character I played on Battlenet was called Undoro and I like to stick to the naming convention because the names tend to sound cool and it makes it all one big happy family, there's nothing quite like a great naming convention.

The Characters

I'm going to try and describe the build of each character and how I remember progressing through normal with this character to have been, plus anything else that may be interesting. Hopefully you won't need a PhD in the History of Diablo and a exhaustive knowledge of Applied Diablo 2 Theory. Hopefully.

Vondoro the Paladin


Vondoro was a humble Frozen Zealot, which means he uses the Holy Freeze aura and Zeal combat skill. His strategy was to quickly deal a lot of physical damage to monsters by bashing them with Zeal whilst Holy Freeze slows down approaching monsters whilst adding cold damage to Vondoro's attacks. Whilst I believe this build to struggle later in Nightmare and Hell, it did fine for Normal, doing lots of damage and being quite a durable, safe and enjoyable character to play. As I remember, Vondoro's progress through the game was quite quick, Zeal and Holy Freeze are both comparatively low level so Vondoro could invest his skill points early in the game and become powerful quickly. The fact he was the first character and had no items to transfer from other accounts did not hinder him too much. Vondoro was on the old ladder and so is now just a regular non-ladder character now that the new ladder has started.

Tentara the Sorceress


With Tentara I returned to my old favorite and pretty powerful Meteorb sorceress, that's a sorceress that uses Frozen Orb and Meteor as the two main attacks with the sorceress regulars of Static Field, Teleport and Energy Shield for support. I've played this build several times before and despite only being able to start improving main skills after level 24, making a slow, difficult and tedious early-game, as this build matures it can do lots of damage and does not require excellent equipment to survive in the later difficulties. Whilst I find the early game exceedingly tedious if I am racking up skill points I can't spend on anything useful, the sheer power of the two spells is a joy to behold once you've got to level 24 for Meteor and level 30 for Frozen Orb. I chose such an easy build as I was planning on doing a little searching for magic items as this build does not suffer from being loaded up with magic finding equipment, being both a high-damage ranged attacker and fairly powerful regardless of equipment. Tentara's plans for MFing (Magic Finding) went awry when I found the ladder to have been reset and seeing as I wanted to make the new characters as ladder-only characters. When the ladder is reset, all ladder characters are converted to regular characters who cannot join future ladder games.

Undoro the Necromancer


I don't know how many Necromancers I've had called 'Undoro', but I feel I have to honour the first Undoro and keep him a presence on Battlenet. Unsurprisingly I decided to make Undoro a skelemancer, a Necromancer who relies primarily on Skeletons with some other spells such as Corpse Explosion, and the curse Amplify Damage to act as support. Seeing as I could be pumping up Undoros primary skill right from the start of the game, his progress through Normal was slow but smooth. Gradual increases of power as he rose up the levels allowed him to fairly swiftly rise to the level where he could enter Nightmare. I have played this type of Necromancer many times before and did not encounter any problems.

Clentara the Amazon


Amazons are a character class I play less often and so I have not experimented with different builds too much. Clentara's two main skills are Strafe, a rapid fire, auto-targetting skill and Freezing Arrow, a single shot attack which deals large amounts of cold damage and slows enemies down. The early game was fairly uneventful, I did not find the game too tedious up until before I could start investing points in Strafe at 24 as I find Amazons quite fun to play as and Clentara could always hang around at the back of the party not doing too much if things got too difficult. It must be noted that early in the game I played Clentara almost exclusively in party games where I could ride under the wing of other people's close combat characters and quicker maturing builds. Clentara wasn't showing any signs of promise until I started to get Strafe powered up significantly and until mana consumption became less of a problem through my acquisition of some good mana leaching equipment. All of a sudden, I found I needn't let go of the Strafe attack button and that Clentara was doing quite a bit of damage. On bosses, Freezing Arrow was useful at doing more damage and slowing things down a bit, giving close combat characters and my mercenary some breathing space. I did not really use Freezing Arrow that much though I expect as the damage levels of Strafe level out and I acquire more mana and mana leaching equipment, I will be able to use Freezing Arrow a lot more, doing far more damage, without running out of mana. Overall, Clentara was a fun and fairly straightforward character to play and is now my primary MF character until I get a sorceress up to Nightmare on the Ladder.

Kantaro the Barbarian


Kantaro the Barbarian would be the first Barbarian I would take to Nightmare difficulty. I have previously not played Barbarians very much and so Kantaro would be quite a learning experience. Kantaro is a Conc-barb, a Barbarian who uses the Concentrate ability as his primary attack. I based Kantaro on Halciet's guide to Concentrate Barbarians on the Diablo II Strategy Compendium. His main two skills are Concentrate, to deal close combat damage and Battle Orders, to boost the damage of Concentrate and to boost the stats of Kantaro and any allies nearby. This build focuses on defence and despite only really picking up speed after acquiring Concentrate at level 18, it was a fairly slow and steady progress through the game. Kantaro was quite frustrating to play at first as he was not doing much damage and suffered from me making a mess of stat distribution early in the game when I over-estimated how useful it would be to wear the Ancient Armour (very high defence, minimum requirements and price tag) that I got one of my higher level characters to buy for Kantaro from Act 5. Basically the defence didn't count for much as I had put virtually every stat point into strength up until about level 10 and so had very low dexterity resulting in a low attack rating and low defence.
As I started to build up Kantaro's primary skills and redressed the strength imballance he shaped up to be every part the durable close combat specialist Halciet's guide promised. Whilst not doing terrific amounts of damage at the moment, in party play is where Kantaro functions best where he can take the punishment from enemies whilst more fragile allies do the real damage whilst recieving bonuses from Kantaro's war-cries. It is my belief that as I start to boost the Battle Orders War Cry to full power, the 10% damage per level bonus it bestows upon Concentrate should come into effect.

Wenderra the Assassin


I am afraid to say that previous to Wenderra, the only assassins I used were low level mules which I found were handy for muling (stashing valuable equipment found by other characters) as it is convention in low level assassins to build up Strength and Dexterity first, which allow you to wear the valuable equipment and thus store more booty, plus the assassins have a skill which lets them run faster and thus makes muling safer. Wenderra is no mule though! Wenderra is a lightning-trapsin, an Assassin who uses lightning-based traps to kill the minions of Diablo. The lightning trapsin is quite an easy build and I didn't to try anything too ambitious for my first proper Assassin, plus trapsins, like Meteorb Sorceresses, are not heavily dependant on having good equipment so can be loaded up with magic-find gear and not lose any potency in battle. Wenderra was quite hard to play initially, not having enough mana to cast the low level pre-requisite traps she had and thus often resorting to close-combat which was dangerous as she had no combat skills.
Wenderra only really started becoming useful during the level 30-35 region where in Baal runs she could keep a low profile when low on mana and let the party do the fighting. However, for future development, Wenderra looks to face a great challenge in Nightmare difficulty after an accident involving two people on a Baal run game (a game where players go straight to the end boss, kill his experience points-laden minions then leave Baal alive who doesn't yield much experience, a quick way of gaining many levels) completing the the Baal Quest shortly after welcoming me to the party, thus prematurely forcing Wenderra into Nightmare difficulty. Wenderra's build is quite fun to play and is quite powerful once primary skills and their synergies (skills that give bonuses to other skills) are powered up, though in Wenderra's case she is now at the beginning of Nightmare difficulty without the power needed to quickly and safely rise through the game on it's harder setting.

Dendoro the Druid


The final character in my Diablo quest was the one I approached with the most trepidation. I have played Druids a few times before as I was intrigued by their combination of summoning skills, powerful sorceress-type Elemental skills and the close-combat Shape-shifting skills, though I have not had much success in the past. I have not experimented with Shape-shifting skills properly, though I am far more likely to do so now, I find the Druid's summoning skills too different from the Necromancer's and I have previously considered the Elemental skills too under-powered. Also, after my first attempt at creating a Druid ended in mis-spent skills and time wasted loitering in Act 1, I was quite at a loss as to what druid build to pursue. After looking at the ever useful Diablo 2 Compendium (a site no Diablo 2 player should be without) for quite a while and getting up to around the middle of Act 2 before spending any stat or skill points, I finally decided to make Dendoro into an elemental druid, specifically focusing on the wind-based skills.
It was my initial belief that wind-druids were 'cookie cutter' builds and that I'd have quite an easy time of getting one into Nightmare however all I can say for this build up until level 30 is 'endurance test'. I was coming to dislike playing poor Dendoro, up until level 12 I hadn't spend a single skill point, even at level 17 I could only spend points on Cyclone Armour, a useful skill, but a support skill that didn't make killing anything any easier. At level 18 I was finally got my hands on the Twister skill, though discovered it to be erratic and low damage, I was at this point despairing that my build would be a spectacular failure and that I'd have to start again though I persevered with low damage and having to mope around at the back in party games pretending to be doing a useful amount of damage. At level 24 I got access to Tornado and was again disappointed when I discovered it to be only moderately better than the virtually useless Twister, it did unremarkable damage and was erratic and consumed lots of mana with Dendoro didn't have a vast supply of.


Finally things perked up as Dendoro limped into level 30, I got hold of Hurricane, which deals cold and physical damage in an area around the Druid and is best deployed at the centre of a big crowd of monsters. The points I had been spending on Tornado, Twister and Cyclone Armour were finally paying off as the synergy damage bonuses boosted Hurricane up to a useful level, plus Hurricane wasn't as mana intensive as either Twister or Tornado. Things were looking up for Dendoro, as he began to gather momentum through numerous Baal runs and as he rose to level 40 I was finding him a positive joy to play. The problem of not having enough mana was no more as Hurricane did a lot of damage for little mana, this allowed me to spend stat points on Vitality, allowing Dendoro to stand at the centre of a group of monsters, exchanging blows (Hurricane? Get it?) and most importantly NOT DYING, whilst freeing up mana to be spent on the increasingly useful Tornado which I could tap into if I need an extra damage boost.
Dendoro really is a testament to the power of synergies in Diablo 2. All the points I 'wasted' on Twister and the initialy useless Cyclone Armour (I found that with Cyclone armour I was impervious to the majority of Diablo's attacks allowing me to be far more bold and durable where other characters were not) were all the time boosting the measly damage of the later skills of Tornado and Hurricane, as Dendoro approached maturity every level brought more synergy boosts and more damage to Hurricane As soon as Hurricane was accessable, every level brought more skill points to Hurricane and more damage to the forces of hell, Dendoro's damage started to soar. I am now thoroughly pleased with Dendoro who in his new position of power is a joy to play as he cuts a swathe through the monsters in Act 5, the lesson learnt here was not to doubt Blizzard who make the Wind Druid on the outset to look like a pile of shit, and to actually persevering with what up until level 30 was a really poor and unviable build. Dendoro rocks.



Conclusion

I now have seven characters all with fairly decent builds ready to take on Nightmare difficulty, I succeeded in my Diablo Quest and now I must decide on what to do next in the fair world of online Diablo. Current ideas are along the lines of making a stab at hardcore difficulty (if your character dies, there's no coming back, it's dead and you have to start again) and try to get a character into Nightmare difficulty on that, the rather more considerable task of getting my seven characters into Hell, or the third option of getting some characters into Nightmare difficulty on Diablo Classic. Hopefully the next blog update won't be Diablo Quest II though hopefully Diablo Quest II will come to fruition and I'll be able to make up more tables and type more self-congratulatory accounts of my unimportant and unenviable exploits and 'achievements' on Diablo 2. But hey, I don't make you read this blog, most of the time, and I do always keep in mind it's just a game, no matter how good a game it may be... most of the time.
Extar, over, out.

Paragraphs!?!?