Best use of my time? - Currently Act 1 Hell

Sorceress
1

So I have a Orb Sorc at level 64 currently. Act 1 Hell is pretty rough - a lot of cold immunes and my merc just gets 1-shot and dies.

I’ve been farming Nightmare bosses to see if I can get a lucky Shaftstop, Vamp Gaze or something like that. I know there’s a few good merc helmets that can drop in Nightmare. Any kind of leech would probably help a lot.

My resists also fairly poor - wouldn’t mind an Occy or Viper.

I realize though that these things are not going to drop very often… I might get one of them.

I have been farming the Mausoleum, and it’s pretty safe to do that. The only thing I found so far is a 11% cold resistance, 15 life small charm.

Progressing into the Underground Passage is fairly hopeless though - I’m not doing any damage in there and my merc is just hopeless right now. I would farm the Mausoleum non-stop if I could since I am able, but that overlapping map problem is a real pain in the butt.

What is the best use of my time right now?

2

Smoke is an easy way to get +50 all res. It requires a LUM rune which you can get by running nightmare countess for 3x IO runes and cubing them. Also if you’re pure cold, you might want to respect into Orb + fire if you’re having difficulties with some type of enemies. And also - teleport, use it to skip annoying packs. :smiley: Getting full rejuv potions might help too. Make use of such runewords as spirit, ancient’s pledge, lore.

3

Okay, so hopefully Blizzard fixes the map overlapping issue so that I can non-stop farm countess then. I was trying to do that, but I can’t play properly if the maps overlap. Smoke seems like a good idea though - I will also be on the lookout for some decent bases.

I could respec to Cold/Fire, but I do some damage to the cold packs because of Cold Mastery. If the merc could just hold his position and leech health and not die, I think I would be okay for the rest of the game. The problem with teleporting is that it’s dark and I often find myself teleporting into a pack. I’d rather just take it slow. I do agree teleporting will be efficient in more open areas. I’m not dying so much as my merc is dying, and that’s the main problem.

I am using Spirit as my weapon, Lore, Ancient’s Pledge, and using Stealth.

For gloves, I’m using 23% mf and 27% fire resist gloves depending on situation
For belt, I’m using 24% fire resist
For boots, I’m using 29% mf and 27% lightning resistance
For Rings, using 10% fcr to hit 63% breakpoint and just random resist ring
For ammy, using 34% mf

1 Like
4

Nice stuff, I personally prefer Frozen Orb + Firewall for playthrough, firewall melts cold immunes in hell if I can get them to stay in one place. :smiley: But definitely go for Smoke, base is not too import, you don’t really need defense anyway. And just a some points into strength, rest into vitality, having about 1k HP certainly helps.

5

Just a reminder: Hell countess is immunity to cold and fire. You need your merc to kill her.

1 Like
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They said the runes were in nightmare countess though. I don’t plan on doing hell countess with this character. I mostly just want to do andariel, mephisto, mausoleum and ancient tunnels later. Not quite good enough right now to do most of that on farm - still too tedious.

7

As others have said:

-Get smoke by running nightmare countess for resistances.
-Skip underground passage by teleporting.
-Put points in Firewall with one point in Fire Mastery, but try to shop a +FireWall 2os staff in act2 normal first for a new leaf that you can have on swap for firewall with at least 2 to firewall.
-Skip cold immunes mostly if you can.
-Don’t forget to check FCR breakpoints on d2r.guide
-Skip optional quests for now and come back when you’re stronger after Baal.

No need to keep farming Act 1. You can progress through the game with this stuff, then respec into whatever you want after baal is beaten.

8

If you kill the pack around the countess your merch can easily handle her with a bit of lifesteal. I’m in your level range as well (Orb/firewall) and countess is no problem in hell, you can help with static field.

1 Like
9

So, I’m getting really frustrated with act 2 - like the temples where there lots of fire or cold immunes. It’s really stupid how its setup. The undead are immune to cold, but the resurrection guys in the back are immune to fire. They resurrected so many so fast, it makes tackling these problematic.

Also, the snakes in the viper tempel are awful. Again, they are immune to cold, but the red ones basically kill the merc or me in 1 or 2 hits. It took me a long time to randomize a map where the stupid red vipers weren’t just standing near the 2nd floor entrance ready to gimp me - that made it possible.

Mostly though, I’m just frustrated that my merc keeps dying despite doing everything people have said. Right now he’s equipped with:

  • Insight Partizan
  • Duriel’s Shell
  • Tal Rasha’s Hoadric Crest

He has 74 or 75% in all resists.

I honestly would have thought this should have been good enough, but it isn’t.

As for me, I finally found a way to get to 75% resist all in hell except for poison. I’m using:

  • Spirit Crystal Sword
  • Peasant Crown
  • Ancient’s Pledge Large Shield
  • Smoke Field Plate
  • Rare Gloves - Fire and Poison resist with 21% mf
  • Rare Belt - Lightning and Fire Resist
  • Natalya’s Soul for FRW, Cold and Lightning Resist
  • 2x Nagelring
  • Saracen’s Chance
  • Various charms to fix cold and poison resist.

Mostly, I just hate things like the viper’s and other physical damage. It’s so easy to get 1 or 2-shot and die. I really don’t like the lighting in the remake - it’s really hard to see stuff, especially with the immunities. I am actually blind in one eye and 20/400 in the other, so I actually feel like the new dark lighting puts me at a massive disadvantage.

Other than Viper Temple, my sorc itself isn’t die that much - although I did die like 7 times in that viper temple because of the stupid red vipers near the 2nd level entrance every time I attempted it until I finally beat it :confused:

I am really sick of my merc dying. He’s not even worth using and like what does the developers expect you to do this early in the game? I have everything I can possibly have at this point.

I’m getting pretty frustrated. I’m not sure what to do. I try to farm the Mausoleum and stuff, but my magic find is not high enough where I find anything.

All I can really farm reliably and safely is Nightmare stuff. In Hell, it still feels like I can be killed by teleporting into a pack of monsters I didn’t see which makes fast farming inefficient, and my merc feels pretty useless too. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make you pay 41000 gold to resurrect him should be fired. It’s bad enough you lose like 200k when you die in the first place.

It’s no wonder so many players just get rushes so they don’t have to bother with this stuff. That way they can just farm Mephisto and use the moat trick to get all of their gear. It makes sense.

10

Are you mostly going full vitality? You could also do NM baal runs until lvl 70ish or so. Vipers are dangerous, I usually skip them with teleport, pop the altar, take the ammy and port out. FCR breakpoints also help a lot when teleporting.

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11

My stats with gear are:

Strength: 156 (In preparation for Spirit Monarch)
Dexterity: 25
Vitality: 244 (298 with gear)
Energy: 35 (77 with gear)

My fcr used to be higher, but I had to equip Smoke to fix my resistances so all I got right now is the 29% fcr on my Spirit Crystal Sword. That’s it.

12

Next FCR breakpoint is 37%, you could get a 10% FCR ring maybe. Also when I was doing hell, I had only 50ish str just so I can have more health. I only respeced after I cleared hell and then went for 156 str. But I guess that depends on how many respecs you have used, farming for essences is not really a thing that I personally like. :smiley:

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13

I have 1 respect left, and to be honest, I’m going to keep it around for when I get my final gear and really min-max the stat points and probably just go back to pure cold again since I’ve had enough with this dual immunity stuff. All I really want to do is farm the level 85 areas and andy/meph. That’s it. I don’t really care about anything else honestly :confused:

Going through Hell difficulty is so frustrating. They literally built a difficulty mode where I don’t want to engage or kill anything out of fear of losing more and more gold and put up with endless frustration. As I said before, I am not surprised people get rushes or even pay for gear.

I know I did a ton of endgame content as a kid - I had a ton a sick items… like 20 characters with ridiculously rare gear, charms, etc.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I probably got a rush to be honest. Or maybe I just had more time to put up with it as a kid - I don’t remember. I think modern game design has its merits though. Some of the design decisions I am not sure I agree with anymore. It’s not hard really… just so tedious and time consuming. Like the merc gold cost is honestly pretty silly… you can just farm nightmare for gold so why bother? I’d remove that.

3 Likes
14

Get a friend or buddy to help. Or ask in lobby. I have 2 guys I play with, one sorc and the other hammerdin (I run windy druid). we can pretty much cover any difficult areas with one or more of us.

I know it’s not popular, but I ran max block on my HC Meteorb, Don’t remember any specific areas that I had a hard time on, but it’s been awhile.

Merc’s just suck. Insight is great for mana regen, sucks for everything else. You could try a different weapon…perhaps a strength or black RW to help take stuff down faster, or something with 7-10% extra life leech.

15

So the life leech on tal rasha’s helmet is not enough ? :frowning: I would hoped that helmet, or a vamp gaze, or another exceptional unique with life leech would have been plenty. I remember it being plenty - my memory must be fuzzy then. I was shocked how incompetent the merc still was.

If the merc needs a better weapon than my partizan, then I’m just going to have to be more patient. I really wish the maxroll leveling guide said not to use a merc, because if I wrote that guide knowing what I know now, I’d say not to bother with him at all.

This really sucks - the game’s belt system makes mana potting really annoying and I did not invest much in Warmth with the anticipation that I would have access to Insight on my merc. Now I’m basically forced to respec to correct this because I would go pure cold and +20 points into Warmth if I knew not to use the merc. - that’s the only solution to enable so much teleporting to the level 85 areas and to andy/mephisto. It’s not fun with only 1 point in Warmth and with the gear I have access to.

That kind of sucks because if I use this respec to get more life and focus on warmth, I would have to get a token of absolution somehow for when I finally get my Spirit Monarch.

1 Like
16

Well, just to clarify, those are options you can use to get through some tough spots. I tend to keep a few polearms in reserve in case I get in a pinch. Insight is great, but as far as other stats go, it doesn’t have what a melee merc needs to survive. It’s a mana battery, and for 85% of the game, it’s good.

Don’t respec for some extra warmth. A few points in warmth is crap. carry some extra mana pots if you need to swap from your insight, and do it for that fight.

It’s those other 15% situations that you need to be flexible and try a few approaches. Hell has never been easy. It’s the proving grounds. Been that way for a few decades now.

Although teleport is a great skill, it’s easy to get too reliant on it and not learn some of the kiting and strafing skills you can use in tough spots. On my HC sorc I didn’t teleport unless it was a known safe area. I walked, and I spent allot of time learning how to kite, how to pull packs around a corner into my fire wall, how to herd adds so I could circle around them to the summoners/boss, etc.

If you teleport, your merc (and all his aggro) goes with you. or you let him bite it while holding the pack, run over to the summoners, and kill with FO. drop a fire wall, and kite the mobs down along its length. draw them back into the hall you just cleared while a few meteors are spooling up (time them so they walk into it). stuff like that.

And just as a close, those serpents have always sucked. My easiest time through that area was my max block windy druid, and it was still a pain.

1 Like
17

Yeah, a lot of people say to use teleport, but it’s so risky to do so. The game has a habit of placing monsters at or near where you teleport that in hell I basically run a little and let the enemies chase into me and THEN teleport. But the mana issues without the merc make even that unfeasible there’s just not enough mana to keep that going for any reasonable duration. I don’t know how I would teleport to Mephisto without 9+ mana pots with no points into Warmth.

I wish I made a Hammerdin at this point. He has less immunity problems in general, and if you’re walking anyway, you might as well walk with Vigor and get max block with Holy Shield and have a higher life pool compared to the sorc too.

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18

there’s a give and take to every class. Hammerdins have that whonky placement issue…currently driving my cousin nuts :smiley:

But Sorc may not be your thing as well. I tried quite a few classes until I got hooked on windy druid. I can deal with it’s challenges, and enjoy it’s playstyle. It’s my first character into hell in every league I play, HC or no.

WW Barb or Meteorb is usually my second.

19

Yeah… I don’t feel like the sorc offers anything special without teleport (and I guess Warmth). I would probably prefer a wind druid too then - I’ve built him in the past too and I know how effective he is. I usually had enigma back then, but if the sorc can’t teleport anyway, then I’d have to imagine he would be a solid starter choice. I know how good his early leveling is too - his fire tree is pretty OP compared to what the sorc has there as well.

I also know how to place the hammers - that wouldn’t be an issue for me. I’ve played him many times. The only reason I didn’t go with hammerdin is that Enigma is such a nice quality of life issue. But it seems like he would have been fine anyway. Vigor is a huge quality of life skill, and Redemption makes it possible to play him without Insight.

Damn :frowning:

20

Nothing stopping you from re-rolling :smiley:

Either way sounds like your moving in the right direction. If you need any help you can give me a holler, my druids name is Harkannon, Im usually on during the day, and late night with my dudes.