Rock and hard place

[rdjw]

I am on new ladder season, and i have no gear. i as well have no MF. so, between dieing on mf runs and no mf, i never find good gear, so i cant mf sucessfully very well...any ideas?

[Sammyboyz2]

hey, everyone starts with nothing. u just gotta start from the bottom. make a character that can waste everythin up to act5 nightmare, which is pretty easy to do with base equipment. i find a pure orb sorc the best. ive got one on lvl 70, who will take out anything until u get into the end of act5 nm. then just set back and run meph, shenk, pindle and normal baal till u get some decent stuf. then make a character who can go into hell, and take on hell meph, baal, whateva u want. u do not have to have magic find to get good items. every item in the game can drop, whether u have mf or not. mf just give better chances. so work ur way up. im no expert, but ive played the game enough to know that. the other option is get together heaps of pgems, and buy some decent stuf. pgems are so useful to buy stuf with, its great. but u needa start from the bottom, and work ur way up. its not always easy, and takes a lot of patience, but it pays off when u reach the point where u can solo hell baal and find those beautys he drops.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Pick up all the topaz you find and all rare boots and gloves. Act3 Council Runs are good for getting gems and runes. You can shop for a 3 socketed ring mail at Charsi in act 1 normal to help you get going.

I'm using a 4topaz armor, 40%MF tarnhelm socketed with PT, rare mf gloves that give some resists, boots I bought from Anya that are about 35%MF and aabout a 23%MF amulet. Oh and a couple of MF rings that aren't spectacular but give a little resists/mana. I am maxed or close to it on all resists now in hell using charms to help me out and a wiz spike I just traded for today. NM Cows is a good source of charms. Unfortunately somebody killed the King while I was there so I can't make the portal anymore.

It takes a little while to get your MF gear going so hang in there.

Also if you are playing a sorc are you using the moat trick on Meph? If you post more info on your MF char we may be able to offer more pointers.

[xanth]

like they said...dont try going for hell baal or andy or whatever first...start in normal, build ur character up then when u get to nm you can start running the weaker bosses (since u prolly wont do well in hell) and find some decent stuff to trade with...ladder last time lasted 6 months+ so u got plenty of time

[rdjw]

yea i use moat trick, but right now meteor is strongest attack, and with 75 res...takes FOREVER

[Cyriene]

I am on new ladder season, and i have no gear. i as well have no MF. so, between dieing on mf runs and no mf, i never find good gear, so i cant mf sucessfully very well...any ideas?

Here is what i did, and it has worked quite well
I made a blizzard sorc to do nothing more then meph runs and some pindle runs if i feel like it. being a one tree sorc can be tough while lvling, but once you get lvled, mf runs are all you need to do and bliz works great with meph and pindle and andy too.

Start off by just playing and trying to collect rare and magic items with magic find on them. also things like res and life, mana help. i usually try to have as much mf as possible and still be able to live and kill.

During normal, the bliz sorc can be a little slow going. try to get into party games in act 2 like tomb runs or arcane runs to lvl up. you can get to lvl 24 just doing those. pump up ice blast as you lvl. then at 24 put a point in bliz. i also put a point in tele and static when i can to help out. after 24, do ancients and leech in baal runs. after a few lvls you wont even be leeching as yuour blizz will become more and more powerful. put points into blizz and cold mastery. then just keep lvling up until you have all the synergies maxed

as for stats, this can be more tricky. block or no block is the question everyone likes to ponder. well since this was my first sorc and i had started one last ladder, i knew that mana would be a problem and without sojs it would be a bigger problem. so i put energy. my sorc has 125 energ and base dex. i do not regret it at all, in fact i didnt do this with my first ladder sorc last season and it sucked. i had to drink like 3 mana potions trying to find mephs stairs and then more just to kill him, which i dont like. so i suggest no block vit/energy and enough str to wear your stuff, about 100 usually is good.

basically what you have to do is get so you can do nm meph runs. once you can do these without dying all the time you are golden and will find good items. also, i noticed a big jump in the quality of items once i got to about 250 mf.
basically milk nm meph until you get all the things to need, occy, lidless, viceraunt, frosties, and so on.
then once you think you can handle it try to hell meph. if you have enough fcr and a good connection its not much harder to get to him than in nm, but if you dont then you may die a lot. dont worry if you die either, just quit and remake anohter game, as long as you can do 8 or 9 out of 10 runs then youll be finding lots of goodies.
i know this strategy works and today i found:
shako
reapers toll x2
dwarf star x3
raven frost
natures peace
lidless
titans
unique cerimonial and matriarch psears
razors edge
gore riders x2
tals belt x2
mosers shield (this is good to use, put in 2 pdiamonds for soem res)
cats eye
ik weapon x3
wizardspike
valk wing
19% mf nagel :/
and probably some other stuff i forgot
i did about 250 runs to get that stuff so i was really lucky today, with about 400 mf, it changed as i ofund new things like the shako and so on
anyway, start with the rares and build your way up
in fact, the ammy i use is a +2 martial arts skills/23% mf ammy lol so you dont need the best stuff, you just gotta work your way up
oh and my sorc hasnt even killed hell diablo yet hehe, shes lvl 81
anyway this works just takes time doing the runs to yield the items

[BIGBEN]

Are you serious? You did 250 in one day? You killed meph 250 times?!? In one day??
I know yesterday was sunday, but still, you must have been playing for....ages!

[Bond[Nz]]

250 runs not worth the shako imo :/

[Harby]

i just feel pity for you my dear friend who was lucky enough to get 6 unique rings and not a soj :(

2 days ago after an hour of hell andy runs I got 4 set amus and guess what, non of them was tals. you can imagine my mental status after that :/

[aclockworkprple]

I've been playing this game for years, and have never once gotten a Tals ammy, my first soj 3 days before ladder ended. GG.

Anyways, good baal runners can do 1 run in about 1 minute, so 250 runs would really only take 2-3 hours.

[Harby]

I suppose you mean meph runners instead of baal and anyway I dont think its possible to do meph run in 1 minute (unless using maphack or something).

[cynicalcat1]

yea we all start out with nothing,unfortunately i have most of it left. :lol:
but seriously all the guys here are right you just gotta keep plugging away at it.

[HipHop Automust]

I suppose you mean meph runners instead of baal and anyway I dont think its possible to do meph run in 1 minute (unless using maphack or something).

Heh, it is quite possible. In the latter part of season one, my mf sorc was hitting Hell Mephs in under a minute each... without maphack. I think it's still applicable but starting from the wp and going clockwise get you to Dur3 easy.

[aclockworkprple]

Hmmm....I have this weird problem where I type baal practically everytime I mean meph...go figure.

[Edeas_Knight]

Hmmm....I have this weird problem where I type baal practically everytime I mean meph...go figure.

yeah that happens to me sometimes too....weird.

but on-topic, it is true that you do start out with nothing. a good strategy is to make a skelly-mancer, load up on mf gear and run shenk,eldritch,pits, etc. until you get a decent item base. then when you make a sorc, you will have all your gear ready for her. but, i guess everyone has different playing styles, but for me i like to have all my equipment ready for the char im going to make. It helps me with stat points, what my res are gonna be like, and so on.

[melianor]

When you start untwinked its important to not rush your char too much. If you see yourself dieing go back to NM and do some runs there.

My favorite MF starter gear:

3 socket crown with 3 Ptopaz (those perfect gems are not hard to get up until NM, just cube them from lower version)
4 Socket body armor 8) / or Stealth runeword for teleporting and such
Rhyme Shield (Shael Eth is not hard to get)
Amulet with MF
Rings with MF (Amu and rings can be gambled)
Rare gamblede boots with MF

With that you are already pretty set. Have your kill gear ready and when you have brought your boss of choice down to a sliver of life on his healthbar, TP to town and put on MF gear. Then kill boss. Voila 8)

I did that with my first char on Ladder season one and it worked wonders.
If you lack killing power you can always by staves with +2 sorceress skills and some other nice mods, like +3 Shiver Armor, which also helps.

There is a lot of non-unique stuff that is very good for untwinked playing!