I was kind of bored with older versions so I start offline HC Grail on 2.4 and will be reporting here about my progress. I am really interested how new mercs and some skill changes affect playthrough on individual classes.
Wish me luck and no deaths.
RULES
Finish Hell with all 7 classes
Grail will be completed after finding all Set and Unique Items and also all runes
Items can be switched between characters
MY CHARACTERS
Paladin - Zax (Hammerdin build)
Barbarian - Zax (Berserker)
Sorceress -
Amazon - Amber (bowazon, later Javazon)
Necromancer -
Druid
Assassin -
FOUND ITEMS
I will be listing items I am missing in grail instead of listing everything I founded. Since its too many items now, I will be posting updates here when i will have a lot of found already.
Hmm, cool idea. Tempted to join you on this one but not sure I can bring myself to take 7 characters up to lvl 85+ again, perhaps over the next years.
Was thinking of starting a HC Assassing when 2.4 hits. Based on my SP HC tests, she’s quite balanced as a kicksin/trap hybrid and can do quite a bit of content.
Anyway, good luck! I’ll bookmark this and take a look from time to time. Wish there was an easy way to track grail (outside spreadsheets and forum posts )
I found some gems and starting to making my MF equip. Holy fire is very strong even at players 3 and I destroying enemies very easily.
When I killed countess, I decided to run her 10x to gain same runes for runewords early or benefit from rune bonuses in equip.This is result of these runes:
I dropped my first unique item for Grail in Pit. Stoutnail Spiked Club.
When I was clearing Jail, I found this amazing shield:
I eventualy made it to end of catacombs and went to kill Andariel on /players 3. It was hilarious how easy it was. I coul kill her in 3 hits, I could even kill her even just by running around her as Holy fire aura was doing enough dmg to do it. But I am switching to Holy freeze aura in act 2 and plan to saty with it for rest of normal, maybe even later. It depends how much better it is now.
Here is video from Andariel:
I plan to finish it in 2022
I am very excited about changes to assassin as I didnt test her yet.
If you want, I can always include you in quote so you have it as notification. Just tell me if you would want to stop it at any time
When I started act 2 I switched my mercenary the one from Luth Gholein, used skill/stat reset and went to kill Duriel. Holy freeze is certainly weaker than Holy Fire now, but its a a lot more safe for my HC paladin. Merc I picked had Prayer Aura which I mostly prefere to have on Normal difficulty. I killed duriel, cleared two outside zones and got:
so I could finaly cube this :
And done:
When I was in maggot lair, I found nice weapon, Axe of fermach. I love it because it completely freeze enemies, sadly its two handed and i already slow enemies with freeze so i dont need it. I will save it for HC start on barbarian or Druid.
Nothing interesting happened for a long time but I almost died at Summoner. I was kind of blocked and he lowered my hp to like 30 at one point. I saved myself with rejuvenation potions. Then in Tal rasha tombs dropped Angelic Sickle Sabre. Few moments after unique Sabre dropped.
Another set drop in tombs: Milabrega Shield
Greater Mummies alsomost killed me again when I lost life to 21 so I upgraded my armor. I lost 18% MF but gained +72 Life.
When I cleared all tombs, I made helm with dexterity to boost my block little bit, drank some thawing potions a gambled better gloves, belt and boots with MF. I also pick up some full rejuvenation potions just in case and killed Radament on /players 3. It was not hard at all and here is my video from that:
It was kind of funny that I found wo pieces of same set Berserker from Duriel, now only armor. But Berserker was not improved sadly so it is still useless.
ACT 3 Next, cant wait to test how are new mercs holding up in playthrough to help to my characters.
Well, i take screenshot and just cut the piece from it and ctrl+V on imgur and post the link to picture. You can post pictures if your forum level is high enough.
I just tested and it seems PTR progress is going to stick for SP. I loaded my existing SP characters on the PTR and found a couple items, I then loaded the same characters on the normal client and the PTR items were still in their inventories. I guess offline players don’t have to wait for 2.4 to go live?
Nothing really interesting happened in Spider forest, but I found Hsaru´s Belt in Great marsh.
When I was in Flayer dungeon this nice weapon dropped, too bad I am not going Holy shock:
When I was doing Lam Esen´s Tome quest I found 2 socket Breast plate so I decided to give my merc Stealth RW armor as I already found like 2 Tal runes. I must say that improved ACT 3 mercs are holding on great even on /players 3 setting and they are usefull. I am using Fire version for increased attack ratting and decent AoE dmg different than mine.
I found Sigon helm in kurast so it went to my merc and shortly after I found last piece of Berserkers set:
I have to say that fire mercenary was very helpfull in travincal as he helped me to kill Toorc Icefist. I found very decent weapon for act 2 mercenary there which you can see below but I am not going back to Act 2 merc, I will try to use elemental merc for rest of normal. I will actualy test lighting merc on mephisto, I am really curious how well his static field will work there.
I had great find in Durance of hate and I really hope to eventualy find Angelic Ring for better attack rating in combo with Angelic Amulet:
Another good item dropped from object in next floor, Coif of glory which helps against mephisto as it has lighting resist.
I eventualy made it to mephisto so you have fight below in video. I wanted to test lighting merc but he sucked, idk if he even tried to use static field at all. I will keep using the fire merc from now on again. Mephisto dropped Uniuqe Broadsword Griswold´s Edge and Ethereal Unique Gorefoot Heavy Boots. And btw, I hate the vampires in durance of Hate and temples, they do so much dmg with fireballs and meteors, I almost died twice because of them.
THe PTR stuff is on Single player. Even new ladder only runeword. But I am not sure how long will PTR last and if patch will go right away to live servers. This should not be any issue for my characters, but if they remove PTR I will probably have to stop playing them until they release 2.4 for live servers to play them again. Just to be sure something will not be messed up.
I just tried to make obssession and then run live pre 2.4 patch with it, it it deleted it from inventory because previous version doesnt know that item.
I guess that was to be expected. I just don’t want to do anything to corrupt my existing saved characters. I guess backing up character files should be step one. Hopefully the PTR stays up until 2.4 is ready and the SP progress all comes over.
Load the PTR and switch to offline characters. It seems the character progress will remain after PTR has ended since it shares the same save files as the regular client (one offline character list accessible by both versions of the game). 2.4 content is only on PTR now.
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