I started playing yesterday afternoon, and now I can’t seem to play anything else (beside about 15 minutes of the Quake Shareware). At this moment, I’m a Level 19 Barbarian and about half-way through Act II. It’s taken around 17 hours of play to get to my present position and I’ve only died 8 times. Half of my deaths came from those gay Fallen Shamen; put a crap load of them into a area (such as the monastery in Act I) and they start raising each other before I can kill them all without running into a massive death plummet where potions only slow the coming end. What it came down to once was selling 2 of my special stashed items to buy the best armor available and a Scroll of Town Portal. Once I got back to my corpse (with mucho goodies on it), I’d run like hell to a place to town portal outta there and regain my health and prepare to take those flaming faggots. Needless to say, it worked.
But, that’s not the point. The point is, I’m gonna play through the rest and then go on to Nightmare setting and then Hell! I can barely contain myself. As a tip: It is a good thing to allocate a lot of skill towards Bash (Barbarians) in the beginning. Once I got to the Maggot Lair in Act II, an excellent two-handed Battle Axe coupled with this skill put down all of the maggot worm thingies in only one blow. And since the maggot tunnels are mostly tight and linear, you need not be worried about the speed at which you take them out. That was one of the few times in Diablo 2 that I didn’t have any health worries. Normally now, I just keep my Battle Axe on me for safe measure. If you examine this screenshot, you’ll see why.
As you can see, that Broad Sword is using the skill Double Swing with a Damage Enhanced Falchion (max damage of 28). The Gemmed Broad Sword will usually inflict a good poison attack on the first swing and Falchion will follow up. If the monster isn’t dead from that pounding, the lightning/fire attack from the next will finish him off. Because my defense is so great, I can get away with not using a shield. I can usually dispatch of any skeletons and zombies without them even attempting to hit me. Tomorrow, I’ll be well into Act 3.
Greg Vederman finished the game in 27 hours and with 14 deaths. I challenge myself to beat that.
