Popular Post chattius 2,512 Posted August 4, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted August 4, 2020 Part 1 Welcome to D2F D2F has new items and drop lists so some items might be incompatible. Many prefer to backup their old common chest and start D2F with an empty one. Or you perhaps jumped the original and start direct with D2F. Everyone planing to spend some time with the game, trying different classes and builds quickly notices some frustrating thing: You socket all these nice amulets and rings and have a problem when finding better ones because of unsocketing destroying some items. Or you are frustrated because of all the bronce sockets you can only fill with blacksmith arts. The solution is to create a smith character. We will create it in multiplayer mode. What we want from a smith: A) Gaining mastery in forging as soon as possible for unsocketing with less loss B) Able to levelup even in hell difficulty. The smith will have to socket for your high level characters C) Nearly undestructable. It is probably a first character and you are not knowing what might await you as enemies. D) Nearly undestructable: most will play it from while to while just to keep its level high enough to socket for your other characters. So it should have an easy and safe way to play it, because in reality you want to play this good looking Paladin. But you can't socket the items you found for it yet with your smith. E) Nearly undestructable: We want to reach hell difficulty quickly for better black smith arts F) Learning some tricks: the smith should be versatile to try out tactics which you may or may not build in your main characters G) No Alchemy: I know, I am the one with Alchemy in every build, but... The smith will be high level and finding high level trophies which will be of great use for other characters with alchemy Choosing the class We take a barbarian. The main reason is that it was designed to survive heavy damage in close combat Choosing the god We take Philios: it follows the light tree. The light tree has more quests giving +x to all Skills as a reward than the dark tree. Philios has the Redemption godpower which is great to fill a hole in the defense of a barbarian: fighting several mages. Choosing the skills Level 2: Armor Lore The barbarian has no buff which multiplicates the base armour. To reach high armour values armor lore is a must have. Add that it unlocks some item modifiers and reduces regeneration times. We can do nothing wrong starting our barbarian with armor lore Level 3: Divine Devotion D2F reduced the cooldown of godpowers compared to the original and it brought new gods and godpowers. So taking this skill -and this early- sounds strange. But we play a smith. We can use the cooldown phase of the godpower for forging and sorting items. Divine Devotion is both: a lore and a focus for the godpower. By mastering it we get both mastery boni, better damage, more combat art range and better banish spells. Redemption is a modified 'expulse magic' from the original game. To make it really shine it needs a level comparable to the enemies level, even better if boosted by the lore. The wiki says it is the most powerful defensive CA in the game: expulse magic explained. When you have some money, login in hell difficulty and visit a shop selling relics. Buy relics with Divine Devotion. Each of them should boost Divine Devotion by 9 (level2) or 11(level8). Make sure that you buy relics with different resists: fire, cold, poison, magic. Choose 3 of them to avoid peak damage, because no resists has a very bif effect in damage calculation. So with the 3 relics the cooldown of our godpower drops from 400s to areound 200s. We have also more damage, more dispel power, ... So Divine Devotion is useful, extremely useful. Even as an offensive weapon. By doing it right you can do your first levels by moving into groups of monsters (best undead melee fighters) and do Redemption. Level 5: Warcry Focus This build will use all 3 skill trees and their foci. So the question is which should be taken first. I am a big fan of Howl. So I want to modify it as soon as possible. Reducing stats from enemies makes that they have less hitpoints, less resists and defense, less damage and hit chance... They are slowed, not only movement but also attack and spell speed. Modifying gives more range, makes them attack even slower and lowers their chance to hit. Using Redemption and Grim Ward will do damage while constant 'Howling' will reduce the maximum hitpoints of hard enemies. This way the Hellfire Arena can be finished at level 9 at full modified Howl. But I would wait with the final till you are at a way higher level. Drops in arena are from enemy level (level 2 in easy), quest reward is from your character level. Level 8: Blacksmith This early in game we will not use our own blacksmith power. We enter the game in hell difficulty and use the NPC smith which is yet a way better smith. So why taking Blacksmith so early if we don't use it? The answer is: It unlocks a third modifier for each blacksmith art. When socketing damage it will add a '- x% to opponents evade chance'. Which is very very nice, because we won't need a weapon skill to hit enemies. To kill an enemy more easily you can either boost your weapon damage or make sure the enemy is weakened and has less hitpoints, or both. Blacksmith takes care of more damage and hitting, while howl reduces enemy hitpoints. I would prefer a pistol (not possible) because warcry, grimward, redemption make enemies run. So best take a staff. In my opinion the character is at this level as good as a fighter character with tactic lore. After the first point we won't put another point in it before we have two modified buffs Level 12: Tactical Warfare Focus Enemies get harder. So we modify Iron Skin: blocking spell damage/decreasing dtrimental magic effects/reflecting melee damage Level 18: Concentration We take a second defensive Buff Level 25: Berserk Combat Focus Modifying Natural Resistance as second buff: more hitpoints/blocking root effects/damage mitigation Level 35: Combat Discipline It gives more damage to all combat arts, even the god power. It allows 3 Combat Arts in a combination - for example: Howl/Warcry/Concentration. And by level 35 Howl and Warcry are full modified. Concentration has two modifiers: better hit chance and recharging combat arts on hit. So if Howl and Warcry are kept low in recharge times Concentration may recharge them right away. I played the character to level 77 with only 8 skills. The last two skills can be freely chosen. Part II is about possible builds based on these first 8 skills. 1 1 Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 5, 2020 Author Share Posted August 5, 2020 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. 1 Link to comment
Androdion 870 Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 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! 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. Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 5, 2020 Author Share Posted August 5, 2020 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! 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. Link to comment
Androdion 870 Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 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! 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. 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). Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 6, 2020 Author Share Posted August 6, 2020 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. Link to comment
Androdion 870 Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 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. 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! Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 6, 2020 Author Share Posted August 6, 2020 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. Link to comment
Androdion 870 Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 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. Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 6, 2020 Author Share Posted August 6, 2020 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 Link to comment
chattius 2,512 Posted August 17, 2020 Author Share Posted August 17, 2020 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. Link to comment
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