Re-introduction and Mat report

[Bazhel]

I did a small notice when I posted my trading status in January, but I never did a new introduction.

Just before Christmas I decided to start playing Diablo again. I took a 3 and a half year break because I was tired of my wife telling me I was addicted to the game. So I quit cold turkey. I never intend to be gone this long and kept my stashes. I thought about restarting several times, but first it was a new computer with Windows Vista and the game wouldn’t run, then I couldn’t find the discs, etc. Finally, with a new story about Diablo 3, I decided to get serious and bought a new set of disks and now Bazhell is back! Well kinda, because when I tried to log in the site I couldn’t remember my password and I had changed ISP sites, so it wouldn’t let me register with the double L on the end. So now I’m just Bazhel.

So, what to do now that I’m back? After doing a little item hunting with my frenzy and throw barbs, I decided it was time to finish one of the characters I had in progress or work on a new character. Initially, I thought about another throw barb, but this time untwinked. After a short start I decided to park him and see if I could finish something I had already started. The thoughts of all those juicy high rune drops were just too enticing! So, I decided to take up my Fishyzon, Honor, who was at level 27 in late Act 2 of normal. She is now Matriarch Honor as of Saturday night.

I don't remember how she played in Act 1 and most of Act 2, but twinked with all the gear she was extremely easy to play and didn’t die in normal or nightmare. I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’ve played too many barbarians over the years, because she died a number of times in hell and always because I rushed her into a room or a group instead of hanging back and firing from a distance.

Andy, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo, the Ancients and Baal were all extremely easy. I did restart the ancients in hell when they all turned up lightning immune. The second time only Mawdac was LI and they all went down very easy. Some of the areas spawned extremely easy, like no gloams in Act 4 or in the river of Ice in Act 5. However, things evened up in that some of the areas that I thought would be easy had a mix of LI and CI monsters and they were a nasty mix.

I played with a rogue merc until Act 5 nightmare when I got real tired of popping mana pots and decided to make an insight pole arm. Then I decided that if I was going to make one runeword, I might as well make another and made a Harmony bow out of a +3 Bow skill ashwood bow and a spirit shield. I finished the game with the Harmony bow, though I did finally move to the Stormshield. I also ran a large part of Hell with rare gloves, belt and boots for the immunities as the one thing I didn’t have was a Mara’s.

Thoughts on 1.13, the enticement of getting high runes as I went through normal and nightmare was there, Dol and a few Lems kept dropping and I got an Um and a Lum on the causeway in nightmare. I thought I can’t wait till Hell for the Countess, AT, LK and Hellforge. Well the game hasn’t changed that much, Hell Countess dropped an Eth and an Ith and the only other good rune was a Pull from the Hellforge. I know, I know you need to make multiple runs, but couldn't just one drop!

So, while the rune finding wasn’t that great the item finding was to me rather spectacular. While most of my characters have not been heavily twinked for MF, I can’t remember coming close to what I found with Honor and I'm sure my Fishymancer didn't come close. With only minor rerunning of areas (that really didn’t generate any finds anyway) and one hell cows run I collected a total of 104 set and unique items and that doesn’t include Act 1 or most of Act 2 normal that I don’t remember. The laugh is that Duriel, Mephesto, Diablo and Baal didn’t drop any uniques in normal, nightmare or hell. Maybe that’s why they were so easy to kill. I got a total of 47 set items which I thought was a fairly high percentage. As expected most of the items were normal or low set items. However, I did get a total of 9 items that require level 60 or higher to wear. I actually found six items for my self-grail and one for my full grail. The top three items were Bul-Kathos Sacred Charge (TC87), Steel Carapace (TC84) and Ondal’s Almighty (TC81). There were several other elite items including an Ormus with +3 to lightning and then there was a Cow King’s hooves.

Nightfish has the build right, but I did come across an alternate equipment set up that works well and actually did better on immunities and made the Harmony bow look weak and that’s to wear the full Mavina’s set. With War travelers and a Gheeds charm I was only 18% MF from 200 and easily brought over 200 with 3 MF charms and had more room to collect stuff.

[JoeBruce]

Welcome back; nice return write-up. I am pushing this same type of character through nightmare right now (although in hardcore), and I am also hoping to see some of those high-end rune drops when I get into Hell. I haven't played many high-level characters since 1.13 came out, so I have yet to score anything new in the rune department, although I notice the drastically higher drop rates for runes of all levels (last night I scored several amn runes, sol, dol, and ko all within a quick run-through of Act 2 nightmare).

Full Mavina set is nice - it's a shame you can only wear it as a bow-amazon. Any ideas on where your D2 efforts will take you next?