New Diablo player :P

[DJDiablo]

Hello,

Wanted to give Diablo a try - never played it so I bough the chest pack w/ Diablo 1 and 2 w/ expansion.

I just started playing tonight - so far just did a level 1 run and killed everything went back to town and bought stuff.

Right now I am a warrior - what are good stats to level - I did strength and vitality - usually what a warrior needs.

Also when playing I get really low FPS - usually sits at 20-sometimes goes to 28- is there a max FPS on the game? I have a quad-core 2 radeon 4870's so no problems there - maybe to old of a game to get good FPS?

Either way so far having fun!

[HegemonKhan]

raising dex for a warrior seems to be very important. maybe i'm too used to d2, but seeing only 60% to hit scares me. so i raise dex a lot for higher to hit (and dex raises your ac too) for the warrior. also, vit (life) isn't very important. for the early clvl (character levels). a warrior with base vit dies in the same time as a warrior with 75 vit (personal experience, grr). in D2 (diablo 2) life helps a lot to keep u from dying. but at least under clvl 20 vit (life) doesn't seem to help any. its your gear (ac and resists) and careful play tactics that keeps u from dying not a larger life pool.

so right now with what i know, u should raise dex and str. not sure about magic. i don't know how important spell lvls are for the warrior in the beginning. having to put stat (err attribute) pts into mag, takes away from str and dex. so i'm not sure if its worth it for early clvl.

how well your character does, mainly depends on your gear and its mods. the stats (attribute) pts help but they make less impact it seems in D1 than in D2 (at least vit).

monster attacks in D1 (diablo 1) will decimate u, regardless of how high your life is, only your gear and its mods has any effect like high ac (to prevent powerful phys melee damage by monsters) or resists (to prevent powerful "elem" spell damage by monsters).

* for early character level anyways.

[DJDiablo]

OK great - I guess I will need to farm for money, I have the basic equipment. Level 1 was easy, but did not move on to the second yet. I will go back to town and buy some stuff. Thanks for the help.

[Kunzaito]

I go against the grain here, but I am pretty experienced at playing warriors, and plan for the long term.

Strength: - You get the largest bucket here, 250, and it will take the longest to max. Also, armor and most weapons have a strength req. I pump it right from the get-go

Magic: - I ignore it entirely in the early game, with the caveat that if you save any +magic gear you find you'll be able to read most books you find and you won't need much more than the heal spell for awhile. By the time you need higher magic you will be finding/buying Elixirs.

Dex: - I also ignore it early except if I need a few points for a dex req on a sword. The deal is you can pretty much hit anything effectively with base dex and maybe a good +% to hit mod on your gear until the caves. Gear is a much more effective way to raise your to-hit, and you only can put 40 more points in here anyway - you will be able to find/buy plenty of Elixirs of Dexterity to take care of this.

Vitality: - Your second biggest bucket, with a max of 100. Also, you CANNOT buy Elixirs of Vitality. THerefore, after I get Strength to around 150, I put all my level-up points into vit until it's maxed.

[DJDiablo]

I go against the grain here, but I am pretty experienced at playing warriors, and plan for the long term.

Strength: - You get the largest bucket here, 250, and it will take the longest to max. Also, armor and most weapons have a strength req. I pump it right from the get-go

Magic: - I ignore it entirely in the early game, with the caveat that if you save any +magic gear you find you'll be able to read most books you find and you won't need much more than the heal spell for awhile. By the time you need higher magic you will be finding/buying Elixirs.

Dex: - I also ignore it early except if I need a few points for a dex req on a sword. The deal is you can pretty much hit anything effectively with base dex and maybe a good +% to hit mod on your gear until the caves. Gear is a much more effective way to raise your to-hit, and you only can put 40 more points in here anyway - you will be able to find/buy plenty of Elixirs of Dexterity to take care of this.

Vitality: - Your second biggest bucket, with a max of 100. Also, you CANNOT buy Elixirs of Vitality. THerefore, after I get Strength to around 150, I put all my level-up points into vit until it's maxed.

OK excellent - I will take that advice with further playing.

Also as far as the FPS go - is there a way to raise it from what I am getting now- 20-28 max - very low - but maybe its an old game and its capped?

Looking forward to playing more.

[DJDiablo]

Another question -

I did not realize that the monsters do not re-spawn. So on level 2 I am getting crushed by the Zombies. - Is there a way to grind and level up some before going on to level 2 or what do I do to fight the monsters. I do not have much money so can not get better gear.

[DJDiablo]

I went back and took my time - tried to pull just a few monsters at a time, and then go back to town, heal, and now I have a lot more money and have some better equipment ;p

I cleared level 2 - now on to 3 - game is really a lot of fun for such an oldie!

[HegemonKhan]

u should try not to use your gold much. always try and wait if u can to find all your gear from the monsters' drops. you have too little gold and everything is too expensive for its help to u.

also, if at any time, if anything is too tough, u can always create a new game (this resets the game for u and u can do dungeon 1 and on all over again)

for example, some times u really don't get any good drops from monsters (or u didn't get enough or the needed books or need high levels of book spells for your character like the sorcerer) and u need better items to be able to venture deeper down the dungeon levels.

some times u get lucky and powerful items that will be good for you for a long time. but if u don't, u might have to do new game and re-do the levels in hopes of gettting better or more item drops or certain/different quests that u didn't get last game. like say u want the butcher cleaver but it didn't generate that quest in the game u did. so u can do a new game and this time it may generate the butchers quest for u, so u can get that butchers cleaver or arkaine's armor or griswald's edge...(these are really nice for early character levels, if u don't get better drops).

for item drops u wanna try to find and kill any of the special monsters and some certain quests. if your first game didn't generate many special monsters or they didn't give u any drops do a new game and try your item harvesting again and again until u get better gear/items letting u do a deeper dungeon level that you couldnt do before...like gettting resists for the warrior as u get further, as these spell damages really hurt u if u dont have resists (especially the dogs that spit at u. their spit is magic damage so having a high magic damage type resist is very helpful, etc).

ps,

if u don't know already, do NOT let the black death zombies (dungeon level=dlvl 3-5?) (yelowish color) hit u. they take away your total life permanently. good time for a warrior to use a bow or spells, especially like holy bolt. also beware with two shrines (fascinating and ornate?), they take away your total mana.
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i also maxed my str when i first tried d1 briefly years ago (at a friend's house who had it, but than d2 came out and hadn't really played d1, so i'm still very new/noob to d1). and it actually worked pretty well. this time i tried raising my vit because i thought it would be good since i can't buy vit potions but i'm dieing jsut as quickly with 75 vit as your base vit at clvl 1. also, i been putting pts as i need to into magic since i don't like having books laying around not being used, but this, as well, makes my warrior really weak.

so, i know think it's best to raise str and/or dex for the early levels. than move on later to vit or magic after u do whatever u need for str and dex.

[DJDiablo]

Thanks for the info - so far I have done pretty well - getting a lot of tomes which I sell except for the holy bolt one. I need to raise my magic to learn it. I will keep going and if gets to tough and do not get enough good drops I will do a new game and start over.

[HegemonKhan]

i'm not sure if i'm telling something u already know. i can't discern that from reading your response.

but anyways, if u do a new game, it still uses your character with all the same gear (ON you and your inventory screen) and clvl and spells and everything. u jsut have to re-do the dungeon levels again. i don't mean that u create a new character and start completely over.

u probably are aware of this already, but just in case, i am mentioning it for u

[DJDiablo]

No I didn't know that :P

That's good, so now I can farm for gold and better items/weapons.

I know you said to save gold, but what should I do w/ it?

I just beat the King on level 3, but I think I might do the first few floors again for some better items.

[HegemonKhan]

well, at the very least, u could save/use that gold for life/mana potions (the cheapest ones).

but the real reason is if u find something u wanna get. maybe u see a really good item in shop that is much better than u currently have or for later u wanna be buying the stat (atrributes=str, dex, mag) (sorry more of a d2 player, still get terms confused between the two games. i keep wanting to call magic, energy, and attributes, stats) increasing elixers or buying spell books. i just like to have as much gold availible as i can if something should turn up where i need it.

oops i forgot, REPAIRS require lots of gold. gear (gear=items, sorry again for d2 terms) gets pretty expensive to repair quickly once u get some decent gear/items with good mods (bonuses/effects on items/gear. technically known as affixes: prefixes and sufixes) on them.

though some one pointed out that for normal (norm) difficulty u don't get much gold. they said that in nm (nightmare) difficulty u get real (big) amounts of gold where u can really start to build up your gold amount.
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there's a few early quests that give item drops. these can be good to farm for good items. the chamber of bone quest? i think its on dlvl (dungeon level) 6?

btw (by the way), jarulf's guide has everything u wanna know about d1 pretty much, but its a lot of info and all actual mechanics and equations, so it can be a bit heavy (difficult) to read and understand.

there's also many guides too u can find on this forum. though most are more geared for high level chacters, without too much mention of what u do or should do for early character levels.

u should be able to find a link for it on d1 forum, pretty easily. if not, i or anyone can give the link for u here.

[Kunzaito]

FPS is irrelevant in this game. If you're playing on Battle.net, as long as you don't have any lag (and I can't see that happening with this game on a broadband connection, as it was designed with modems in mind) you're fine.

The far bigger problem with playing this on a modern system is that it doesn't have to access the CD nearly as much, so there can actually be some fairly lethal "lag" when it spins up the CD to, say, launch Lazarus' speech!

[DJDiablo]

Yeah I was pretty sure FPS was not going to be an issue.

Thanks HegemonKhon.

What armor do you think is better - Topaz Armor Defense 15, resist all 14% or Arkaine Valor 25 Defense, +10 Vit, -3 damage from enemies. fastest hit recovery.

I was thinking Topaz because of the resist 14% - right now in the catacombs level 6.

[HegemonKhan]

depends on what u facing. if u facing magical attacks than u'd want resist armor. if you facing hard hiting phys attacks than u want high ac (def).

[Lanthanide]

Arkaine's valor almost without question. The only reason not to use Arkaine's in this case is to sell it and get lots of gold, but truthfully that amor will be more useful to you as armor, than as gold.

You typically won't need any resistances at all until you get to the cave levels, and even then you might be lucky and not need it. That's where you start to meet magma demons and they can REALLY pummel you badly if you don't have any fire resistance. However by that stage, 15 AC on body armor won't keep you alive against the other enemies, so that topaz armor is pretty worthless for you really.

You'll definitely want to keep any jewelry that you find that has resistances on it, because jewelry can be swapped in-and-out at-will without worrying about your AC/damage too much. So keep any +resistance rings/amulets that you find, since they don't take up much room in your INV. You can leave them in town on the ground, just so you don't accidentally sell them when shopping (I accidentally sold an obsidian ring once, god that was awful).

[DJDiablo]

OK - Yeah I will wear the Valor armor and sell off the other piece. Right now I am doing good w/ gold so when a nice high priced item comes in I need I will be able to get.

Thanks for the tips.

[DJDiablo]

OK first hurdle in a long time.

Right now level 8 and I am facing a horde of poision spitters and they utterly destroy me. I tried a few firewalls, but that did not do the trick. Do I need to do a new game and level up more? Any tips? Thanks

[HegemonKhan]

the spitting dogs' spit is magical damage type. so get magic resist.

i have a hard time too with them when there's like 5+ together and ones a unique. like 10 spits coming at me. does lots of damage with out magic resist. if its too hard u might need to reset and hope u find more gear that gives magic resist.

tactically: try to separate them so u take one dog on at a time.

[DJDiablo]

Thanks for the advice.

I played around with them some and beat them. What I did was go in set a firewall and then run to a nearby pool that restored mana. Went back put up another firewall and eventually defeated them. I got a lot off good money drops, nothing to help me though.

I def. will start needing more magic resist armor - have not seen much of it yet.

[Lanthanide]

The poison boss dogs can sometimes be completely impossible to defeat. Firewall (and scrolls of) is generally an excellent way, also good is lightning if they line up enough.

The range on them is typically 80-90% of the screen, so for warriors usually the only feasible way to kill them is with bows or magic, or simply avoid them (they don't tend to move/follow you) and skip that part of the level. Or if you've got good enough gear / you're a high enough level, you might be able to dance inwards and get close enough to smack a few of them off before retreating and healing.

Similarly the magma and lightning demons in the caves / hell can be very difficult for warriors also.

[DJDiablo]

Yeah they were difficult because there was so many of them, but I found a way to defeat them :P

Tonight I am going to try to knock off levels 9-10.

[DJDiablo]

Got murdered on level 10, so going to reset and try to find some resist armor - what levels are good to farm for armor?

[Lanthanide]

There aren't really any levels that are good to farm for any particular base item types, except for books/scrolls in the church/cats because that's where you can find bookshelves etc.

Although there is a 'slain warrior' that is somewhere on dlvl 10 and he will always drop a magical breast plate of some type for a warrior. But other than that, it's all just random luck.

[DJDiablo]

Is there a certain dlvl that starts to drop good armor or at least have chance at a rare item?

I mean dlvl1 will not have anything- just wanted to know where to start killing enemies again for at least a chance for something good.

[Ineluki]

Whenever I get stuck on a certain level, here's what I usually do:

A) Reset the level and hope the monster pops are different and more manageable.

B) If A is not possible and my equipment is holding me back, I will repeatedly clean the 2 or 3 levels prior to the one I'm stuck on in hopes of either finding better equipment, or else farming gold until I can buy better equipment at Wirt or Griswold. Sometimes you'll even gain a level or two while doing that and of course that always helps!

[Lanthanide]

If you're up to the caves, then it'd be worth skipping all of the church levels - just look for the stairs down ASAP, kill anything on the way (bosses, certainly), and do any quests you haven't done before. Start doing full clears once you reach the cats.

[DJDiablo]

OK thanks guys - will give this a shot tonight - will let you know how it goes ;p