Out of curiosity and a desire to correct a blind spot in my d1/hf knowledge, I started a
barbarian a few days ago, and had some time to level him up over the weekend. He's proving pretty fun, thus far. He plays like a super strong, no-magic Monk, but the lack of magic is kind of interesting to try to overcome, instead of totally annoying, as I feared it might be.
Most obviously, the character is absurdly overpowered on offense. At least in SP, with the monsters at 50% of their MP hit points. My Barb is level 35, with about 110 str and not even a very good axe yet, and he does around 145-180 dmg with a Soldier's Axe of Haste. With the Barb's critical hit bonus I'm already killing hell/hell Blood Knights in 2 hits, and at this point, with lame armor and far from my max stats, I can essentially ignore malee attackers. Well, not ignore them, but there's no chance that they can hurt me, if I'm swinging in their general direction.
Mages are a pain, though, and even with max res to all and 500 hps, I have to heal a lot during battles, especially on level 16. I couldn't cast a spell until about level 31, and even at 35, with a drakes/heavens ring and serpents/zod amulet, I only have around 100 mana. The killer is healing; mine is level 7 and it's like 53 mana per use, since I have 120 vitality. I usually wait until my hit points are under 100 and then heal twice in rapid succession, cheating the 2nd spell with insufficient mana. This gets me to full health and about -12 mana, but since a full blue fills that entirely, no worries.
I'm yet to cast a stone curse or any offensive spell, and I don't even bother with Barrier since nothing melee ever hits me. I have a teleport book, but don't have the equipment to read it yet, so I walk, and try to do levels in orderly procession so I don't have to retrace through cleared areas. At least I can now cast town portal; the few times I forget to buy TP scrolls and had to walk through a couple of empty levels were a couple of times too many.
If there's anything that annoys me about the char, it's the attack animation. The overhead chopping axe swing looks silly, since it only reaches about neck height when I swing repeatedly. Plus it's very clearly a straight ahead hit, and yet things to the sides die just the same. The Monk has the same 3 target hitting ability, but at least his staff strike is a full sweep from side to side, that looks like it could theoretically hit three things at once.
I may try a Bard next, but all the cool tricks with them require dual wielding of specialized equipment I'm unlikely to find. Dual dreamflanges, KSoH/Civerb's Cudgel, etc. So I don't know how informative that play session will be.
Linear Mode
