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I had a couple of hours free this morning and after posting here yesterday, D1 thoughts were in my head. so I dug out the CD and installed it on my laptop (first game installed on it). I was going to go up to Hellfire, but I couldn't find the CD so I said what the hell and just did Diablo. It wouldn't let me make an MP char; kept giving a weird error message, so I had to go on support.blizzard.com and find the old v1.09 D1 patch. First 4 dl links were dead, too. Including the version on blizzard's own FTP. heh.
Anyway, I made a sorcerer and he was fun. I played totally legit; no duping or anything, and I never even did any adria runs; just bought what she offered and used what I found. I did almost full clears, took a break to do other things after each dungeon level section and used the short cut stairs next game. In total I made it down to lvl 15 @ clvl 22 before I had to quit.
I'll sorta recap progress and spells, in disjointed fashion.
At level 22 I had 1 chain lightning, 8 charged bolt, 3 firebolt, 2 firewall, 5 holy bolt. Those were pretty much all I used. And yes, you can do the caves quite easily with level 6 or 7 charged bolt. I got illusion weavers on 9 and 10 and charged bolt just owned them. I'd fire off a little burst every time I turned a corner or went through a doorway, and the bolts found them very nicely. I had about 330 mana at that point, without any equipment good enough to mention. No lucky item finds at all. I was using a plain +29 str titans club since I needed the STR to wear an amber/sorcery gothic plate I found on lvl 13.
I was surprised the lvl 3 firebolt was enough for support, but for the occasional frost charger or other lightning resistant or immune, it did the trick. I got succubus on level 12 and had to use firewall on them.
level 13: I got Dogs, the black lightning demons, and black witches. charged bolt worked fine on the dogs, and I mixed a lot of firewall with firebolt to get the lightning demons and witches. even just level 2 firewall would kill a monster w/o fire resistance in like, 1.5 seconds.
level 14 I had steel lords and red witches. had to start using chain there. charged couldn't get it done against the steel lords, and even lvl 1 chain was much better. I'd never found a regular lightning book.
15 I quit on. i had soul burners and couldn't kill them with lvl 1 chain lightning. They're fire immune and lightning resistant, and it was taking me 3-5 full blue pots to kill each group, and that was just silly. Not dangerous, just boring. So I quit and started a nightmare game, popped right down to the cats, and leveled up to 25 by level 7. Easy there. NM/cats is MUCH easier than normal/hell. Easier to kill, less dangerous to survive.
My build was pretty basic. I put every point into magic until about level 15, when I started mixing in some strength since i knew I'd need to wear plate in hell. I didn't find a mana shield book until around lvl 18, and didn't need to use it until lvl 12 in the caves, when I got succubus and their blood stars were hurting me too badly to play safely with my 70 or so hps.
I don't know if this is of any use to people having trouble with a mage, but shoot a lot, buy your inv full of partial blues every time in town, and use low level spells with some points in them instead of wasting time trying to find higher level books. Burn the hell out of charges on staves too. I use those constantly to save on mana, especially early on. Just recharge them yourself; the whole point is to save time and have fun; if I wanted to go back to Adria for repairs I'd just buy more pots. I usually hotkey the recharge to F8, so I can fire the staff dry and then recharge it in a second and keep in the action. I burned through the whole charged bolt staff you start with, and then a 60 charge holy bolt, and then a staff with Flash that I found in the Cats. That was surprisingly useful; I didn't have Flash yet, and it sucks end game, but even lvl 1 is deadly that early on.
You don't need big spells to succeed on normal. Firebolt and charged bolt are plenty to fly through the cats and caves on normal. I was doing hell monsters with level 3 firebolt. They've only around 100-150 hit points, and even low level firebolt does like 17-25 damage. that's just 7 or 8 shots per monster, and if you start hitting them at a distance, they won't hit you more than once or twice. I had 300 mana by then and firebolt was only 5 mana, so I shot as fast as I could click, non stop.
I had over 60k gold by level 20, mostly since Adria was just failing to offer me any books worth buying. I didn't do anything special to get gold; just picked up every stack and sold all the valuables. I think it's actually easier to get gold with a sorc, since you don't need to buy equipment, and you've got to go back to town every level or so to refill on blues, so you might as well sell when you go. I tend to stay down much longer with a rogue or warrior and only return when I need repairs, so I end up selling less frequently.
I died about 5 times total. 3 of those in hell; twice in about 3 minutes when I started on 14, to my annoyance. first time when I got about 6 steel lords at once and was trying to use charged bolt on them. FAIL! Then I went back down and used chain, and was careless and lost mana shield and one single steel lord hit me twice in a row and killed me. I laughed. Other deaths were twice to explosive barrels on level 3; I had like 30 hps, and kept forgetting the barrels did far more damage than the monsters. I laughed at those too. Died once in the caves when I was careless and let illusion weavers come up behind me while I was charged bolting a cave viper boss pack.
Oh, one last tip. Get Auto Hot Key. Just google that and you'll see it first link. It's a little program that lets you remap keys; I can't stand the F5-8 spell hotkeys on Diablo. Those suck in any event, and I use an ergonomic keyboard, so it's really impossible with F678 way over on the right side. With AHK I just map F5678 to WERT, so I can juggle hotkeys and instantly switch. Much more fun and effective to use fire spell or lightnign spell or holy bolt spell when it's appropriate.
did u get archer (goatmen?) monsters in teh caves ? those laid waste to me as a sorceror and no mana shield or life (all pts into magic of course, well actually i think i maxed out str too, jsut so i could wear stuff and not deal with hassle for low char levels). the archers really killed me lots of times and even brought my progress to a complete halt for a bit.
also special mosnters are quite deadly if u can't kill them quikcly in a only a few shots
I always sell every magic item I find, every time. I would keep playing until my INV was full, then when I found the next item I'd take a TP to town, sell what I had and come down and pick the new item up and keep going. So I never had a gold problem.
i got goatmen archers a lot in the cats and on at least 2 caves levels. I didn't have much trouble with them there; I'd just retreat around a corner and set out a carpet of charged bolts and they'd run right into it and get zapped. I never got any big mobs of them over lava, though. Firewall works very well for them too; just cast it and walk side to side to dodge their arrows; just don't move so that they run or pursue, and they'll cook quickly. That's how I dealt with the succubus on level 12.
The hardest monsters I got in the caves were horned chargers, who came after me so quickly that my slow-acting spells weren't able to put them down. I had to use firebolts mostly at melee range and took a fair number of hits from them. I had mana shield by level 10 or 11, from scrolls before I found a book, so with 300ish mana I wasn't in too much danger of death, though.
Is there any chance you can incorporate this, or rather a slightly rewritten version of this into your mage guide @ The Wiki? I think it'd come in real handy for people starting sorcs.
My own sorc is doing quite well since starting it 4 days ago. I take it laid back, slowly learning the class of which the highest lvl I played waaay back was lvl2. I felt like restarting in lvl1 church quite a few times. As a result I got plenty books and lvl10 holy and lvl10 firebolt by the time I set foot in the dlvl5. Also I was lucky to be able to blow my saved 20k gold on a book of manashield from adria, yay
Looking forward to using high-lvl spells and dying a lot down in ~16 and such
that's a useful suggestion. I just resist it since I don't want to take the time/effort to do a proper beginner mage guide, and I don't want to post up something half assed. Still, I suppose something okay beats nothing at all...
Also, I wish I'd done a more patient job on my old expert mage guide. reading it now I find a lot of it confusing, just since I'm not steeped in the D1 experience anymore. things in those old guides are almost written in shorthand, since everyone knew the basics, but after years away...
I always sell every magic item I find, every time. I would keep playing until my INV was full, then when I found the next item I'd take a TP to town, sell what I had and come down and pick the new item up and keep going. So I never had a gold problem.
That is what I do. I just started and I sell everything that drops. Use Town Portal, then sell. I think I am like level 7 with 14k or more.
Oh, one last tip. Get Auto Hot Key. Just google that and you'll see it first link. It's a little program that lets you remap keys; I can't stand the F5-8 spell hotkeys on Diablo. Those suck in any event, and I use an ergonomic keyboard, so it's really impossible with F678 way over on the right side. With AHK I just map F5678 to WERT, so I can juggle hotkeys and instantly switch. Much more fun and effective to use fire spell or lightnign spell or holy bolt spell when it's appropriate.[/QUOTE]
Flux, I you could spare a minute a share the script to to this, that would be awesome. I dont think I capable of doing it myself and I am in great need of easy F5-8 access.
Usually when i try a mage. the first levels are hard until i find Lightning and some good mana items. usually beef my mana up to 300-400 and lightning everything up til hell. i hate succubus!
Yeah, lightning is a spell that really helps a low level sorc probably more than any other. Slvl 1-4 fireball is pretty worthless, and firewall can't really be used on the run, whereas lightning can take out a big group of enemies quickly for a low mana cost.
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