few noob questions

[chalup]

Good day to you all.

I've started playing on bnet about a week ago and i have few questions:
1. Is there a safe way to trade the items between my characters? I have only one cd-key so i can't log on 2 different computers (or run 2 copies of diablo on 1 computer). I've read something about "perming the game" by staying there for 5-10 minutes. How long does the permed game stay open? Can i log with my main character, play for 10 minutes, drop some stuff on the ground, exit the game, connect with other character and pick the stuff up? Is it 100% safe?
2. The trade system is extremaly ineffective and bugged. It seems to me that it's possible to scam somebody by switching the items, which can be avoided by altering existing system just a bit (i can elaborate on this one if you want). Also the existence of thousands of duped items is ruining the game economy, and IMHO reducing the overall experience significantly. What is the official blizzard response? I understand that they are reluctant to invest any more resources into D2, but those problems have very big impact on the game.
3. I read about duped high runes and that i should avoid trading for them. While i'm planning to do so, i'll probably end up trading or one of those items, because i'm gonna need them for the runewords, and finding them myself can be too tedious. Will the duped rune disappear if i create the runeword with it (it's what i fear the most)? If the answer is yes - can such hole be filled later? I also thought trading for 2 lower level runes and transmuting them with proper gem to get the rune i want. Will the rune created this way from duped runes also be considered as dupe item and will disappear?

Thanks in advance for answering my questions.

[Voorhees]

1. It's far from 100% safe. It will work most of the time, but occasionally you can get a temporary restriction which will keep you from logging on before the game disappears. Safest way for a single connection would be to have a friend hold the game open, who could hold on to the items for you if something goes wrong with your connection. The reliability of this, ofcourse, is dependent on the how trustworthy your friends are. You could always try and get someone from the forum to help you with this as well. I'd go that route before trusting someone you just befriended on battlenet.
2. The system has been altered to avoid item switching. If you'll notice, whenever someone removes an item from the trade window, there will be a delay of about 5 seconds before the check mark can be activated again. This is to avoid lightning fast automated item switching. The thing with this is that as opposed to switching the item, players will have some excuse for shutting down the window, when they open it back up they will try to put a different but similar item in the window and hope you won't notice. There's no check mark delay to warn you in this scenario, so you basically just have to pay a little extra attention before you click that check mark. IMO, Blizzard's unsaid position on this matter is that we're pretty much lucky they even still support the game at all.
3. I've only had a small handful of runewords poof on me in my D2 experience, and none of them were runewords I made myself. All of them were traded for. I've never had a runeword that I made myself in an item I found poof, regardless of whether or not the runes were traded for and likely dupes.
That's about all I can say about that, I've never bothered trying to upgrade runes as a means of perming them.

[Lanceor]

Welcome to the forums! :wave:

*hands chalup some trouser suspenders and a wallet chain*

1) Once a game has been open for 5 minutes, it has been "permed". If you leave a permed game, you can return to it within 5 minutes. To transfer items, people usually perm a passworded game, drop items on the floor and log in with the next character. (Do a test leaving and rejoing the game before dropping anything!) Between server crashes, computer crashes and human error, it's not 100% safe, but safe enough for most things. Don't try it with that self-found Ber rune though.

2) It's possible to get scammed, but use common sense and walk away from any deal that seems too good to be true and you'll find it rarely happens. Swapping things around in the trade window will disable the "accept" button for a few moments, so you'll always have time to thoroughly check what you're trading for. Trading with the people here at diabloii.net is also considered much safer than some random kiddie on BNet.

3) From experience (not the official word from Blizz of course), traded high runes have a high likelihood of disappearing if left unused. I have yet to see one disappear after it has been socketed in an item. I have never tried to cube two traded high runes, so I can't say whether the rumour has any truth behind it.

Edit: Too slow - pwned by Voorhees

[chalup]

Thanks for the answers. I understand that now is bit too late to complain to blizzard, but honestly speaking, the whole battlenet is a great idea, which was executed poorly.

The whole duped items debacle should be settled months (if not weeks) after the issue was discovered. Honestly, the whole trade system should be revisited after initial success of the game. During the game every player finds bunch of stuff they don't really need, and because of the lack of better alternative, they usually sell it to NPC merchants. Imagine if the player could instead put the item into "Trading Post" where he would specify the price (xxx pgem, yyy rune, zzz gold) and the list of items for trade would be available for all players to browse. Sounds better than posting "O item N item" in game description, huh?

I also have the next noob question: if i killed baal at normal difficulty, is it possible to browse (and join) the normal difficulty games?

[Mursilis]

The character that killed baal would only see Nightmare games from then on, you wouldn't be able to browse the available Normal games. You would be able to create Normal games however.

The way around this is to create another Normal character that can browse the Normal games. Find a game you wish to join, remember the exact name of the game, then switch back to your other character and join that game.