Noob Barb has questions.

[SaharaDrac]

Ok, so I have loved Diablo II for many years, since it first came out. That being said, I've always been more of a "casual" player. I would like to excel beyond that point, but I have some basic questions that are puzzling me.

1. What is the measure of "wealth" in this game? Some builds are "cheap", some are "expensive", but I don't know what accounts for wealth or how you use that wealth to get the gear your build needs. Is it literally money, to buy items online? Is it perfect gems? Stones of Jordan? Do you just hope someone will trade with you?

2. Seriously...what the heck does "IK" stand for???

3. I have been using Hal's Concentrate Barb guide (very fun, very cool, thank you Hal!), but now I read that it may not cut the mustard in Hell difficulty. Should I start anew? Maybe the "Uberdin", since it seems to be the easiest "cheapest" way to complete the game?

I'm sure I have more, but until I remember them, thanks for your time!

[Elyxthaxzus]

1) basically, wealth comes in 3 forms: pgems, which is a basic standard and very easy to accumulate at first and thus trade for items, runes, which basically have a value relative to pgems, and then items, who's value is based upon how much the trader/tradee wants them. pgems are the base and the best to go with. You can build a set decent enough to run hell with just pgems. Good to farm early on (most of nightmare).

2)IK = Immortal King's. Its the barbarian high level set, and one of the only ones still used frequently, and a good one at that. A few pieces are hard to find tho, but can be got through trading. Most of it pgems really, save the armor.

3)I wouldn't suggest hammerdin, but im anti-conformist :) and nvr really been into easy mode play. An IK barb is a blast, and though he's not as fast a killer as the uber specs, he is far more tankable...i've waded thru areas that kill hammerdins and sorcs with ease. But WW does take time to get used to...if your looking for a spec to use s ur runner and MF'er, then ya go for one of the caster specs, hammerdin-meteorb-windy druid kind of thing.

[Ed from Russia]

I think by uberdin he means the zealot/smiter, not a hammerdin.

The Concentrate barb is viable in Hell, but definitely not the easiest to play. If you want to stick with barbs, either a Whirlwind (IK) barb or a Frenzy barb are the best choices, at least until you know more about the game.

But it depends all on (1) your personal preference and (2) your wealth. I assume you like melee builds since you started with a barb... Cheap melee builds are normally based on elemental attacks, like the Frost Zealot, Lightning Javazon or Fireclaws Werebear. Physical-damage melee builds require better gear so are more expensive; e.g. Zealot/Smiter (= uberdin), Fury Wolf, Frenzy Barb. The IK barb is relatively cheap although you still need to pay do some MF before you can afford the armor.

[SaharaDrac]

I think by uberdin he means the zealot/smiter, not a hammerdin.

The Concentrate barb is viable in Hell, but definitely not the easiest to play. If you want to stick with barbs, either a Whirlwind (IK) barb or a Frenzy barb are the best choices, at least until you know more about the game.

But it depends all on (1) your personal preference and (2) your wealth. I assume you like melee builds since you started with a barb... Cheap melee builds are normally based on elemental attacks, like the Frost Zealot, Lightning Javazon or Fireclaws Werebear. Physical-damage melee builds require better gear so are more expensive; e.g. Zealot/Smiter (= uberdin), Fury Wolf, Frenzy Barb. The IK barb is relatively cheap although you still need to pay do some MF before you can afford the armor.

Thank you for the replies. I do like melee builds, and the fire claws druid and the IK barb, as well as the paladin you meantioned all sound cool. What do you mean by "pay to do some MF" though?

[lumpor]

MFing, is something many people do at new ladder resets. Make a sorceress, take her to hell, reach the 105% fcr breakpoints and kill mephisto/stuff in the pit or ancient tunnels like 200 times a day until you become rich.

Most people don't MF that much, but basically and MFer sorceress specialized in getting items from bosses and high level dungeons

MF stands for magic find btw

I suggest you don't start MFing until you're familiar to all difficulties. Javazons can generally complete hell untwinked, as long as you can handle lightning immunes

[Elyxthaxzus]

I think it was just a miss-communication sahara, i think ed meant "although you still need to... do some MF before you can afford the armor" Ik's armor is the only piece of the set that is a hard to find drop, and thus usually the trading is very competitive (read pricey) on the forums for it.

basically there's 2 general levels of gear purchasing. trading is usually done through the trade forums here...just read a few threads and you'll get a general idea of how the trading process goes, and read the stickies on the trade rules first --VERY IMPORTANT--

the first level is basically using your pgems to trade with, as an example i recently bought "Telling of Beads", a high level set amulet with +skills on it for 10 pgems, a very nice amulet for general and caster use. You will probably be able to collect 10 pgems in a night of running nightmare baal on your own, or just kill like crazy in act 2 arcane sanctuary in nightmare as well, kill everything, start new game, repeat process. basically any place with lots of mobs that are easy to kill fast in nightmare yields you high amounts of gems, if there not perfect you can use your cube to convert them to perfect gems. then go on the trade forums, and make an offer. by the way, a BIN on the forums means 'buy it now', and its a base price that if you the first person to offer it wins the bid.

to find out what items you'll want, just hit the forums for your class, and read the guides, most of them have a ton of info in them on gear. jsut pick a few items that are reasonable, and then start looking (the search function is great for this). to check out items that you dont know about, go to the arreat summit (blizz official info page for D2) and thay have the stats for all the normal/magic/unique/set items there.

This is the easiest way to accumulate gear, and you can often have your toon decked out in uniques and nice items with the investment of a few dozen pgems, perhaps 50 or so at the most. You wont have the 'best' items for your build or class, but they wil probably be enough to get you through hell quite easliy.

the next level of trading is the whole 'min/max' level, where your trying to get the best gear you can get for your class and level. The only real difference between this level and the previous one is many other folks are trying to get the same 'uber' gear you are, and the bidding can get quite fierce. This is where ed's comments come in. usually in order to be competitive with the high end bidding you need some serious resources, usually mid to high end runes and desirable (thus rare) gems and crafted items. In these situations, its often better to spend time MF'ing to obtain gear to trade on your own, this is where you can start collecting the masses of perfect amethysts (crafting item), ral runes(crafting again), as well as the higher runes to use for trading. But there's big payoffs here, because it wil open the doors to the high end runeword items and gear that will allow you to hit the endgame content (uber tristram and key runs and such).

Hope all that helps :D

[SaharaDrac]

Thanks elyx, that was a really helpful and informative post. Gonna go check out the trade forums now.

What does "ED" stand for on the trade forums?

[Elyxthaxzus]

Usually either Enhanced Defense or Enhanced Damage, depends on whether its on a weapon or armor. items with Ed are usually valued higher then an item without, as you could see...but it depends on the item. if its a unique, they often have a random range that they will spawn with, such as a Demon Limb, a high lvl unique, can have between 180-230% enhanced damage, it will be randomly chosen when it drops.

The other items that have ED on them are usually ethereal items, and most often you'll want to avoid those unless there going to be full time mercenary item. some socketed items are fine because runewords can put the indestructible mod on them, so they wont break. Still, the ethereal items with ED on them often go for far more then a normal version of the same if their highly valued ones, such as polearms for mercs, or armor for mercs, and some weapons that are commonly made into the high end runes also go for tons.

Usually, especially at first, i avoid items with the higher ED marks...i can often get the exact same item with a slightly lower ED for allot cheaper, and i will still get the items benefit. High ED items sort of fall into the min/max category.

[Tigerballs]

Ok, so I have loved Diablo II for many years, since it first came out. That being said, I've always been more of a "casual" player. I would like to excel beyond that point, but I have some basic questions that are puzzling me.

1. What is the measure of "wealth" in this game? Some builds are "cheap", some are "expensive", but I don't know what accounts for wealth or how you use that wealth to get the gear your build needs. Is it literally money, to buy items online? Is it perfect gems? Stones of Jordan? Do you just hope someone will trade with you?

2. Seriously...what the heck does "IK" stand for???

3. I have been using Hal's Concentrate Barb guide (very fun, very cool, thank you Hal!), but now I read that it may not cut the mustard in Hell difficulty. Should I start anew? Maybe the "Uberdin", since it seems to be the easiest "cheapest" way to complete the game?

I'm sure I have more, but until I remember them, thanks for your time!

If you can build up a good ammount of HRs A super fun build is WW

Equips Are:

Arreats
Nigma (Opinion)
BOTD C Blade (Eth Perfect)
Stormshield
Soul Leech
Gores
Dungos Belt
Atmas Scarab (Most will Use Maras)
2x BK

[lumpor]

Soul leech? You mean soul drainers? Nah, I'd rather use steel rends with a whirlwind barb

[Ed from Russia]

Sorry for the confusion in my earlier message. I messed up the sentence; I meant 'you should do some MF (=magic find)'.