lightbringer32

Got a question about the difficulty levels. I just finished the Normal campaign, and I was anticipating a Normal, Nightmare, Hell set of difficulties. The next I see is called Hard. Does D2 Fallen have difficulties that map to each of the Bronze through Niobium difficulties of vanilla? If so, what are they called, and are there any differences (caps, expected level progression, monster difficulty, etc) between D2 Fallen and vanilla+CM in that regard?

Finished the normal campaign, at level 61. Heh, that was with trying to beeline toward finishing the campaign. The Sorceress is very fun to play. The Ice build is very very powerful, and the benefits from Warmth and Shiver Armor stacking are tremendous. Malthael, Baal, and the Nameless Guardians were good fights -- challenging without being frustrating. Looking forward to the next difficulty (named "Hard"? I was expecting "Nightmare"), where I'll actually go through and do every quest I can find. There was lots of content I missed out on in the traditional "rush through silver to get to gold", and I'm looking forward to it. You did a good job of making questing feel rewarding with those periodic 2-3 set pieces dropping as quest rewards

Sounds great. Playing right now. I just made level 40, and am on my way to Doc Ock Galopagos. I'm glad to finally find a build that works for me! The Sacred 2 systems have enough unique oddities that I've had trouble figuring them out. I think part of the key was getting a good Area of Effect thing going. Queen of Blades seraphim (Pally) is certainly sturdy and capable, but I got bored of cutting down the hordes one at a time -- even if it was through Pelting or Zeal combos. Sorceress has true Area of Effect, and the in-combat regen from Warmth provides a startling amount of survivability. Also, now that I've experienced Teleport, I don't think I can go back to the before-times. That skill is so dang useful. With all the blind gulleys, mountainsides, and twisting city alleys in Sacred 2, being able to just slipstream my way through it all is fantastic. In the human capitol, I found myself going inside a house just so I could get a visual on the street behind it, then teleporting to that street -- avoiding the long walk out of a cul-de-sac.

Got it. Now, for what order to go for Mastery... I've read that you should try to have 3 skills hit mastery right at level 75, and a fourth by level 80. After that, just work on a particular skill in a given order until it hits 75. Here's what I'm thinking in terms of Mastery order: First 3: Cold Lore, Toughness, Constitution (heard great things about the in-combat regen) 4th, Magic Find (I had this in the first 3 originally, but conceded to have it fourth. I want this to be high on the priority list.) 5th, Armor Lore 6th, Ancient Magic 7th, Fire Lore (for all the boosts to in-combat regen from Warmth, adding to Constitution) 8th, Combat Discipline All skills except Concentration are given 20 hard points to get to the point of diminishing returns as soon as possible after acquisition. After that, they await their turn in the Mastery stack (except Cold Focus, which remains at 20). Does that order look good? Will I miss waiting on Ancient Magic Mastery so late? Thanks for all your help so far!

Good to know. Toughness instead of Spell Resist, then. I just made level 30. Would you keep the final three skills (35, 59, 65) in the current order -- Constitution, Ancient Magic, then Toughness?

Here's what I came up with. 2 Cold Focus 20 3 Concentration 1 5 Cold Lore 75 1st 8 Fire lore 75 6th 12 Magic Find 75 3rd 18 Armor Lore 75 4th 25 Combat Discipline 75 7th 35 Constitution 75 2nd 50 Ancient Magic 75 5th 65 Spell Resist 75 8th It's largely based off of GoGo's Ice HE, with a couple changes. I'm nervous about the lack of Toughness, but we'll see how it goes. His build includes Fire Focus, which I replaced with Magic Find. I just made level 22, and just arrived in the Elven capitol. I'm doing a few quests here and there, but mostly pushing through to finish the Normal campaign. I'm surprised by how well she takes being surrounded and pounded on in melee. Elites change that, but regular mobs tend to not make much of a dent. Her physical armor -- being a sorceress -- is pretty light. I'm guessing the in-combat regen from Warmth is helping. If I need to drop something for Toughness, I think Spell Resist or Combat Discipline will be my top candidates.

That's exactly what I did. I dropped Fire Focus, but kept Fire Lore, both for modding Warmth, and also to further improve the bonuses from it. Other skills will have priority for mastery, but eventually mastering Fire Lore will be beneficial.

Experimented a bit more. The character editor has been very useful, so I don't have to create a new character every time I want to switch up a mod or a skill choice. I got a bit turned off by splitting my focus between fire and ice. I really liked what Fire Bold could do as a primary damage dealer against normal mobs, but I realized that the Lore skills was where the main damage boosts came from -- at least during the early build stages. (I know, I'm new at this ;) ) . I needed to keep more skills at level than I had room for, so I started exploring a single aspect build. Either Fire, or Ice. I ended up choosing Ice, because there was a higher volume of "ooh, I want that" on the Ice side -- though it was a tough call. For inspiration, I've been consulting Gogoblender's High Damage Ice Elf build for vanilla, and adapting it for D2 Fallen. I'm pretty impressed so far, though it's still quite early (level 13! :O ) I've really been needing a good, solid, Area of Effect build, and this Sorceress is right on the money. I know there are other classes that have good Area of Effect, but I go for female characters. If I'm going to be spending 150 levels with a character, I'd rather it be a good lookin' lady ;)

Thanks Flix. That's how I was leaning. All right! Time to burn and freeze away! By the way, I took the plunge on Diablo 2 Fallen due to the announcement of Diablo 2 Resurrected. Got into that good old Sanctuary mood. The D2 music mod alone is wonderful, let alone the rest. Thanks for your great work for the Sacred 2 community!

The Sorceress looks amazing. I'm about to give her a try, and I need a little build advice. I have eleven skills I want, so I need to figure out which to drop. Main CAs: Fire Bolt -- groups, main spell (maybe ice bolt for sniping?) Glacial Spike/Blizzard -- bosses Warmth/Shiver Armor -- buffs Teleport -- utility Skills (not in order): Ice Focus Ice Lore Fire Focus Fire Lore Ancient Magic Armor Lore Constitution Toughness Lightning Focus Magic Find Candidates for removal (unless someone points me otherwise): Toughness, Lightning Focus, Magic Find I'm hoping to not need the Energy Shield (not to mention the lack of Energy Shield Lore skill), as I've always had a tough time maintaining and relying on absorb shields in games. Because of this, I'm not sure that I can lose any of Armor Lore, Constitution, or Toughness. I'm not planning to stay in melee combat, though, so perhaps Toughness can go? Other candidates are Lightning Focus and Magic Find. Here are why I like them both: Lightning Focus -- helps me to be able to spam teleport. Modded for Invis and both heals, that's 30% healing plus invis each time. Sounds great. Given the regen buffs elsewhere in the build, am I really going to need Focus to reduce it in order to spam it? Especially if I only read 1 rune? Will I miss the lack of the mods (healing and invis?) Magic Find -- a ton of the fun of these games for me is the loot hunt. The promise of piles of uniques and great treasure all over the place is a hard thing to give up on. I'd love for some voices of experience in Sorceress play to help steer me right :)

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad to know it's not just me, and it is just Gahanka :) Perhaps I'm missing it, but I thought that, if anything, the Paladin is more powerful than the Seraphim -- with all the great auras and their mods. Synergies with the Holy Auras, Ancient Magic, Conviction and several of their attacks felt like you could make a powerhouse of a caster -- lack of broad Area of Effect being the only thing deterring me from a caster Pally. Well, that and lack of understanding how to make a caster work well, I think, but that's another topic ;)

I should add that I'm not using any of the optional Inferno or Supermob(?) addons.

First, I want to say how much I've enjoyed the little innovations throughout this mod. You've made the new classes fun to play, and seeing familiar faces from Diablo 2 all over the place is a lot of fun. I laughed when I spotted Flavie I'm fairly early in a run, having experimented with several classes and builds, settling on a melee Paladin. This early -- around level 20 -- it's essentially Antitrust's Queen of Blades. I've taken the Queen through the Silver campaign from start to finish in vanilla, so I know how she's supposed to feel and play. I'm not twinking her, with speedran Niobium buyers or anything like that. I'm just playing a character straight from the start. I don't remember the Goblin (Devilkin) Chieftain being this difficult. I'm not poorly equipped, but I'm getting one-shot by his boulder toss. I remember it hurting and trying to avoid it, but not being one-shot. I had to stop using Zeal, because of the lengthy animation. I switched to Vengeance, and started avoiding the boulders. Fine. After 81 health potions consumed, I had brought him down to about half health, and ran out of potions. Instant death. After rezzing again, I farmed vendors to buy a new batch of 100 health potions. That's over 70,000 gold worth, and not small, given that I had 440,000g at that point. Six more tries and I'm broke. I switch auras from Fanatacism and Prayer to Fanatacism and Conviction -- figuring that the Armor reduction will make me kill him faster. It did. I got him down to about 1/3 health remaining before I got maneuvered between a cauldron and a rock pile, couldn't run away from the boulder, and got one-shotted. Again. I had less than 20 potions left, so I wouldn't have defeated him anyway. In vanilla, Silver, I could face-tank the Chieftain with the Queen of Blades at this level, without going through all that many potions, and only risking death if I got too careless. Mistakes could be recovered from. Here, there's no room for error, and it takes more than all the potions I had collected to this point of play. I have 782 hp, Attack 267 Defense 124, physical armor of 236, and Vengeance damage of 156-194 -- about 40% of which is cold damage. I'm not twinked, but I'm fairly well geared -- including the level22 lightsaber that dropped at my feet upon character creation. I don't think bosses should require crazy twinking though ... Am I doing something wrong? Is there a difference in difficulty or expectations from vanilla that I missed? I remember being able to defeat every boss I came across, when I first came across them, in vanilla.