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Getting started in Diablo 2 The Fallen: Building a Smith


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Part II

 

This is my character with mastered blacksmithing at level77. Campaigne in normal is finished, first 4 chapters in hard also.

All quest which give stat or skill points are done in easy and normal, also some in other difficulties.

The character was played with an empty chest and only using stuff he found.

What he did was: playing in LAN-multiplayer. This allows access to all difficulties without finishing the campaign quest first.

Buying relics which boost Divine Devotion in hell is a great boost early levels.

Even playing a smith, the NPC smith in hell is way better if the character has blacksmith not mastered and having no +blacksmith gear, but we work in PartII on this.

As you see on the short list of modifiers: most sockets are frrom NPC smith.

 

Possible builds based on the savefile above:

Singer

Playing mainly when sitting in the fire fighting building in readiness/dispatcher room. It would be my playstyle, no need for eye tiring aiming, just big radius crying

Level 50/65: Ancient Magic

Level 65/50: Warcry Lore

 

Machine Gun Preacher

Third daughter would play a machine gun preacher type: one or two grim wards and doing Warcry/Howl/Stun/Concentration Combinations

Level 50/65: Ancient Magic

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Duellist

Rarely played dual wielding characters, but a barbarian with staff and a x% life leech in the other hand, worth a try

Level 50/65: Dual wielding

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Pikeneer

Level 50/65: Polearm skill

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Tough Guy

Natural Resistance, Toughness and a bit damage mitigation gear...

Level 50/65: Toughness

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Meister Chattius

The one who fully modified all 15 Combat Arts. You can choose a more fitting name for the build if you think my real life cooking skill is too fine cuisine and not barbaric  ;)

Level 50/65: Warcry lore

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Survival Tips

Armor mechanics

The win from getting more and more armour flattens the higher your armour is. The worst case is that you are attacked and have no armour versus the damage type. This build gets physical armour from a buff and each armour piece has physical armour. This leaves fire, magical, poison and ice damage. To have always a base armour against all of these 4 damage types I place 3 of them in the relic holder:

Relics holder 1 (swap to this just for using the god power)

fire/poison/magical resist with +divine devotion

Relics holder 2 (starting hard difficulty)

fire/poison/magical resist with +x% magic find , you get these from killing elemental lords. This will be our 'allways' on setting.

There are only 3 slots for 4 damage types. So before being able to survive the On the Trail quest (probably hard difficulty) I socket an amulet with cold resist into a shield. The quest reward will be the Glacial Defender shield. It will cover our needs for cold resists, adds damage mitigation for cold and increases the range our combat art will work. By having the cold resists always in a shield there will be less sorting of equipment.

 

 

 

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Never did I ever think about doing a LAN shopping session for higher difficulty relics with better bonuses. But then again I always start broke! :D

My only remark right now would be to take Battle Orders and use it until you have Iron Skin modified. Even unmodified it provides better attack value and HP regen, both are great at lower levels.

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7 minutes ago, Androdion said:

Never did I ever think about doing a LAN shopping session for higher difficulty relics with better bonuses. But then again I always start broke! :D

My only remark right now would be to take Battle Orders and use it until you have Iron Skin modified. Even unmodified it provides better attack value and HP regen, both are great at lower levels.

I was using Iron Skin because I found it before Battle Orders, could have been the other way around. At level 8 and having Blacksmith the hit chance is given, also some evade and armour from Blacksmith.

Shopping in Hell for relics is 33 Divine Devotion to 12 Divine Devotion at level 10.  Since it is focus and lore it has a big big effect. Half cooldown, three times the damage at level 10...

For a shopper you will have 33 bargaining instead 12 just from relics.

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Yeah, I didn't even consider it to be honest. But I should've known since I even made a topic about Bargaining in Niob at level 2! :D Oh, my memory is definitely not the same as it was a few years ago...

PS: OK, so it took me this further long to realise that all the stuff I'm socketing can be bought in Hell with better bonuses. :blush2: Man, this return to work has really killed my brain as it seems. Nevertheless I shall not twink my Steve! My Steve will be strong in due time (plus I don't want to spend most of my time in LAN mode). 

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I know the feeling. When login with my assassin I wondered why I forgot to gave him an energy shield...

Since I planed this as a a guide I wanted to point out how to start the easiest way... forging and buying in hell difficulty because of the better boni. Divine Devotion has half cooldown this way, so I started some characters with Divine Devotion taken the first 3 skill choices.

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Yeah that's fair, and mind you that what I said before wasn't a critique. As long as it's made available through the game's mechanics it's a valid choice. I just don't want to go back to my Bargaining days where I'd spend countless hours twinking to the max only to find a lack of challenge at the end of that road. Probably the best case of this was a dual-wielding Inquisitor I made which in Gold by level 70ish already had more than 70% Deathblow. This was in standard I&B+CM 1.60, so you can see how fast I could kill pretty much everything. I think that was my breaking point and falling out with Bargaining to be honest, as I had no desire to continue playing like that.

Back to topic, oh I see what you did there with level 35. :D Like I said before, using a modified Concentrate to regen your spell-based CAs is very cool, plus it allows for higher CA levels since its base regen is quite high for starters. Can you multi-hit with this build? If so its efficiency is even better!

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Concentrate will do a single hit. At high levels I would prefer doing just spells and no weapon attacks. But since this guide is to show possibilities I spend 22 points in tactical warfare focus to allow this option for testing.

My Inquisitor was a mounted Black hole build. Moving all enemies in a single spot and then aiming at the spot with a multi-hit polearm which had a high range because being mounted.

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I know that Concentrate as a CA is single hit, I was asking if you could multi-hit with this build somehow. With a specific weapon or something like that.

Aye, Clustering Maelstrom plus multi-hit was my tactic as well. :)

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The area control would be howl, stun, warcry, grim ward, redemption and not weapon attacks in my favourite build. I think I can play to level 65 with just 8 skills. I will do a savefile copy at level 65 before choosing the final two(!) skills. So I can test some variants knowing that the build is good enough for level 65 with 8 skills.

 

Singer

Playing mainly when sitting in the fire fighting building in readiness/dispatcher room. It would be my playstyle, no need for eye tiring aiming, just big radius crying

Level 50/65: Ancient Magic

Level 65/50: Warcry Lore

 

Machine Gun Preacher

Third daughter would play a machine gun preacher type: one or two grim wards and doing Warcry/Howl/Stun/Concentration Combinations

Level 50/65: Ancient Magic

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Duellist

Rarely played dual wielding characters, but a barbarian with staff and a x% life leech in the other hand, worth a try

Level 50/65: Dual wielding

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Pikeneer

Level 50/65: Polearm skill

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Tough Guy

Natural Resistance, Toughness and a bit damage mitigation gear...

Level 50/65: Toughness

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

Meister Chattius

The one who fully modified all 15 Combat Arts. You can choose a more fitting name for the build if you think my real life cooking skill, ;)

Level 50/65: Warcry lore

Level 65/50: Tactics lore

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wonder if I should add savefiles:

Level 31 easy: all skill/stat giving quests done, but not campaigne

Level 59: + all skill quests for normal, no level 50 skill chosen, campaigne till desert normal

Level 75:  till mastery in blacksmith, divine devotion, warcry focus, concentration. Normal campaigne. Last two skills not chosen

 

The 8 skill base build is very universal, allowing different ideas. I played it this way to make sure that the build can be played by new players chosing their final skills way earlier.

 

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