Stupid questions? Smart answers!

[Verno]

@ Scollin. 3. There are no corpses in Duriel's lair. It freeked me out at first. I just let her kill me, then got my party together and crushed her remaining health very quickly.
4. Speak for yourself

@ Noodles 1. How dare you show me something that awesome. So Jealous right now. I am going to research that shield and hopefully find it when I make it to hell (hopefully)
3. I can't get revive until lvl 30, I believe. But that sounds like great advice for meph and diablo.
4. Cool, that should work just about right.

[scollin]

Level 45-50 seems high for nightmare. People do that online because its easy to find a good baal run and run baal till that level, but playing single player its just a waste of time to level that way. I think level 40 will make nightmare simple.

And ya homunculus is good, but rare heads can be just as good if not better.

And sorry I thought you were talking about fighting Diablo... for Duriel just town portal out, leave town get a few more skeletons and go back.

[FredOfErik]

Homunculus really is the best you can do. A more acsessable solution would be a nice magic or rare. My favourite is the before mentioned Rhyme in a head with some nice +skills.

Also I would suggest taking a look at this runeword:

"White" Dol+Io
Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25%
+10 To Vitality
+3 To Poison and Bone Spells (Necromancer Only)
+3 To Bone Armor (Necromancer Only)
+2 To Bone Spear (Necromancer Only)
+4 To Skeleton Mastery (Necromancer Only)
Magic Damage Reduced By 4
20% Faster Cast Rate
+13 To Mana

Very cheap and made in a nice wand (ex: +decrep, +RS, SM or whatever you find useful) it can be very powerful.

If you get bored with the fishymancer I will (as I always do) suggest respeccing to mouseman's explosionmancer.

As the fishymancer it also relies heavily on corpse explosion - However, it doesn't use summons but kills with the bone spells instead. It is a very safe build as you can also make very good use of bone wall, bone armor and bone prison. The bone spells deals magic damage which means you won't encounter a lot of immune monsters - the ones you do meet can easily be killed by merc and CE.

I did one in HC myself and it can be completed with very cheap gear. Here's the stuff I used.

[Flax]

I have high level summon neco and he uses Homunculus and King Leorics arm, they are both cheap and usefull.

But as some ppl say you shouldn't need to wait too much until you go into nightmare especially not with a fishymancer as you're not doing the fighting.

After you have dcereep and claygolem most bossfights will be a cakewalk.
Only archer packs and golams will pose a real danger.

One trick tho that might be nice to know is how to gather your army.
Revives tend to go poof if you run to far from them.
But try to get an item with teleport charges as when you teleport all of your army will be with you.
If you dont find one using town portal will also gather your army but its more time consuming.

Otherwise considering items you can shop for good wands.
You should primarily look for plus to Skeloton mastery and skeletons and plus to all all necro skills or summon tree

[Verno]

Whoever said Diablo was a tough fight in normal was correct. He just wipes me and my crew out in no time flat. I am only level 27 and I think I should be higher than that. I was reading on here where guys will enter in a code [/set players 8] and it increases the amount of experience you gain because the monsters are beefed up. Maybe I should have been doing this all along. Now I am tempted to redo Act 4 or maybe do some high council runs to gain some more experience so I can improve the strength of my skellies. I am thinking that I should have at least 10 points in SM, 1 point in LR and a ponit or two in Revive (when it becomes available).

RS-18
SM-4
Decrep-1
Golem-1
Amp-1

Which would you guys run?
High council, Mephisto or Diablo (up until the point where he spawns...)
HC looks really easy because of the waypoint. I was thinking that I could use this set players command and see how it works...

As always, thanks for helping the new guy. I said it before and will say it again, this is a lot nicer than the poker forum I am/was a large part of.

@FredofErik
Thanks for all the tips. The "white" RW is sexy. I haven't found a wand with two sockets yet and I don't have either of those runes yet. LOL The explosion mancer seems like a lot more fun to play, but I am going to go about my D2 experience like this...
1. Fail with a Conc Barb (check)
2. Finish hell with a fishymancer and run pindle/baal/pits so I can get some good items.
3. Find a good Sorceress build
4. Finda a good Amazon build
5. Go back and finish my Conc Barb. Hopefully by this time I will have enough good items to twink him properly so I don't die 3 seconds after I enter the pits.

Flax,
I am going to have to research the shops. I have NEVER founds anything good in the shops, but I will be honest, I have probably only checked 5 times or so. Maybe this is a big mistake on my part?

[scollin]

Try to avoid double posting, its not as bad in the newcomer forum but in other places people really don't like it. Just use the edit button if you need to add something.

As for who to run... if you just want experience running the chaos sanctuary up to diablo is probably the best option. Upping the players works, but don't go straight to players/8, you might be overwhelmed. Try slowly increasing it. Start with player/3, that will double their health and their damage increase won't be too big. If that's easy then go higher. If you want a combination of experience and items, running the coucil works well too. I wouldn't run Normal Meph its not worth it.

As for the white wand, getting a 2 socket wand isn't hard. just pick up every wand you find (only white wands, not magic or rare) and then if its the right type of wand use the socket quest from act 5 to get 2 sockets. To see if its the right type of wand look at this page

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp...al/wands.shtml

So if its a bone wand or grim wand it will get 2 sockets. Once you get past normal all other wands except for burnt wands will get 2 sockets. So in total so long as the wand isn't a "Wand", "yew Wand" or Burnt Wand" using the socket quest will get you 2 sockets. Wait until you find such a wand with bonuses to raise skeleton or skeleton mastery before wasting a socket quest on it.

As for the runes, both Dol and Io can be gotten from the countess in Nightmare. Io is the highest rune she can drop but it still shouldn't take that long to get both runes, trust me its worth it that runeword is awesome, especially if you make it in a base wand with 3 to raise skeleton or something.

As for the shops... just check them when you are back in town. Sometimes they can sell very good wands with say + 3 to raise skeleton and + 3 to skeleton mastery, which would be a great wand until you can get a King leoric or White

[Flax]

you need to up your SM quite a bit concentrate on that.
Also get a cold mage for when you fight diablo to slow him even more.
Try to get him into melee mode and have him slowed with decreep clay golem and ice mage.

While white is a good wand for a bone necro its not all that amazing for a summoner
imho so you shouldn't waste too much time running NM countess just to get the runes for one.

I would try and run chaos sanctuary (maybe at players 3 if it feels safe) until you get some more points in mastery and one point in revive.

[FredOfErik]

While white is a good wand for a bone necro its not all that amazing for a summoner
imho so you shouldn't waste too much time running NM countess just to get the runes for one.

I disagree. +4 RS and + 3P&B (CE) combined with bonuses from the base doesn't get much better when you take rarity into account (Verno is SP if I remember correctly).


Verno: Almost everybody in the SPF completes both normal and often NM using /p8 all the way (not always if untwinked etc.). However CE doesn't work well with higher player settings as it's damage does not take the increase in monster health into account.

Edit: you could also try to cube up some runes. it's done like this.

[Verno]

More questions...
1. Is there any reason to go above 20 for any skill? I am looking at the wiki and there is no listing for anything over 20.
2. Yes, I am Single Player. I have never logged onto battlenet.
3. I have an Arm of King Leoric that is going to FishyMancer at level 36. I can't wait!!!
4. I can't believe people would run Normal and Nightmare at /8. Unpossible for me right now. That explains how you guys are getting to such high levels through normal. I think I will probably go to /3 and see what happens. There is no way I could beat Diablo on /8. I can't beat him on /1. Is there a /0 where he has just 1 hit point and I can kill him pretty easily? LOL!!!
5. I don't have enough runes to cube. I only have a few runes, probably 10 EL's is my highest amount. My best rune is a LUM and I dont' have IO's and only two HEL's. I still get excited every time I see a Rune, even if it is an ETH.
6. Do all of you already have a ZOD? I was kind of assuming that is a pretty special thing. I assume I will never get one...

[Flax]

As not to go too far off topic white gives a total of +7 to skills actually used.

Any +2 necro skills wand gives more but my all means if you doesnt find any decent wand white is an option im just saying you should grind nm countess too much to make white for a summoner when gravespine and ume's lament beats it unless you have a wtf base wand

Edit
If you have leorics arm your wand problems are over when you reach the level for it

Yes its quite nice to get more then 20 in a skill, however you can only put 20 skill points in it
so the rest of the levels have to come from items.
Thats one of the reasons necros are nice as they dont have to consider damage etc they can opt for good skill bonuses on items
My summon necre have level 47 in skeleton mastery iirc.