End of Act 2 - out of money, armor toast...how can I get more money?o

[dpfranz]

Fighting Belial. I'm in Normal, level 24. Belial has killed me several times. No money to repair my armor. No quests to earn more money? Is this truly a dead end for my character? Any help appreciated. Thanks much!

[Valeli]

Really? Repair costs for your gear in normal are really cheap still. Well. There's not easy way to instantly get more cash. If all your gear is broken, you're going to have to go back to the earliest stuff you can kill until you get a usable weapon drop. Maybe someone on your friend list can just loan/give you a level 20ish weapon if you ask nicely. Once you have that it shouldn't take too long to get the repair gold you need from monsters (rerunning quests should get you the money they gave the first time I think, but they give terrible gold so that's not really the point. Just kill monsters for the gold).

Once you have your gear fixed, you've got to figure out what's going wrong for you with belial. Spamming him until your gear breaks isn't a good idea, and clearly shows you're doing something wrong. (I don't know how death repair works since I play HC, but I assume you aren't forced to keep fighting till your gear is at 0% from consecutive deaths? Unless you are, just make sure you keep some durability for repair cost farming).

Also, make sure to sell stuff on the AH. You missed the initial boat a bit if you're just starting, but if you sell low enough most level 20ish stuff with decently paired stats will find a buyer. (Offload items for ~3 or 4k if they're passably useful for someone. It won't get you rich, but it will easily cover repair costs).

I think the real issue is just Belial though - you shouldn't have too many problems getting your gear repaired. So want to talk about what you're doing to die so much? What's your class/what skills are you using/are you avoiding his attacks/what's your max hp/what's your dps? That's what really needs to get sorted out.

In general, there's a "Tips for Belial" thread on this page. I'd make sure you read that too.

[TheReadMenace]

Certainly not a dead end, just a speed bump.

As Valeli suggests, just change your quest back a couple spots and rerun areas. Sell every blue/yellow item that isn't an upgrade to vendors and rake in the gold. So long as you're not salvaging every item you find, or subsequently spending all your gold on continuously crafting/upgrading the blacksmith, maintaining spare gold isn't all that hard to do. I have never used the AH to either buy or sell, and while I've done every jeweler/blacksmith/stash upgrade I can I still have hundreds of thousands in gold saved.

And yes, read up on some of the Belial threads in the Newcomer forum. I've made a particularly good post recently, so let's give it some attention.

[krischan]

Fighting Belial. I'm in Normal, level 24. Belial has killed me several times. No money to repair my armor. No quests to earn more money? Is this truly a dead end for my character? Any help appreciated. Thanks much!

Pick up a bit gold somewhere, repair doesn't cost much. Always have an iron reserve of let's say 10*level*level of gold in your stash.

Regarding Belial, avoid the green spots on the ground, you have about 2 seconds for that. Also, change skills to those which are good versus single targets.

[dpfranz]

Thanks for your suggestions folks. I have been salvaging every blue or gold item since the beginning of the game unless it's better than I have equipped, trying to save up subtle essence for the blacksmith, allowing myself to get almost broke by training him. Until Belial, I had never been killed more than 2 or 3 times by a boss, so didn't see this coming. I guess I need to keep a few reserves of armor repair money. Costs about 750GP to repair my stuff at this point, so I'm going to keep about 3000GP in my pocket just in case. That's not much really. Thanks again for the help - I'm going back through the last level a couple times to get money saved up again. Cheers

[Valeli]

Just to give you a heads up - Blizzard is going to drastically reduce the price of early jewelcrafting in the next patch and (I believe?) Blacksmithing as well. So you may want to give some serious consideration to putting those on hold temporarily. Especially if you're low on cash.

[Diab]

You seem to be assuming that quests are your biggest source of gold income. That's incorrect. Farming areas you've been through, especially coupled with older quests, will be; as is the AH.


My advice: Forget the blacksmith entirely, until you get into Inferno and can make some really sought-after endgame gear. Farm lower/older areas for gold and gear. Then use that gold to buy your gear off the AH.

Using the AH takes a bit of practice and a lot of page turns and in the end, your progression gear will end up costing you a TON less than if you were to use the blacksmith. Just pick out one piece of gear you need to upgrade at a time, put in some filters in your search (eg. for a barbarian, Vitality xx and Strength xx; level range; rares), and sort by buyout price (with the exception of weapons for DPS). Then go through each page of the results, training your eyes to quickly skim down the list of buyout price, ending time, and if the ending time is under an hour, the bid price. For lower levels like 45 and below, I always look out for gear with a bid or buy price of under 5k, and ending within the hour as that is easiest to spot. It takes me about a second or two to skim all that on a page of AH results.

Below level 50 or so, all the gear that I bought for my barb has cost on average 2-3k a piece. I bought a new gear set about every 10 levels or so. That was enough to give me the ability to clear normal through the first half of hell with ease with this first character over the period of about a week and a half of casual play. No farming for gold in previous acts or anything like that and I have a few hundred thousand gold to spare from drops and quests alone.

[krischan]

My advice: Forget the blacksmith entirely, until you get into Inferno and can make some really sought-after endgame gear. Farm lower/older areas for gold and gear. Then use that gold to buy your gear off the AH.

I agree and I generally did it like that in D2, with crafted items and rerolling materials. However, that was the late phase of enjyoing D2 (whic admittedly took much longer than the early phase). I'm still in the early phase of enjoying D3, however, so I will not buy my gear in the auction house until I'm so seriously stuck that it becomes too frustrating to continue without help and spand my gold on crafting items. My smith can craft rare bows now, maybe that's what I'm spending my crafting materials on.