I finished up act 1 yesterday and ended at level 11 Barbarian. The Barracks and Catacombs gave me some real trouble. Just normal blue or yellow elites got me town portaling multiple times to buy more potions.
I was able to take down Andariel after a few deaths.
Just wondering if I should keep running catacombs to farm? Or should I just find a nice dungeon in act 2 I can farm for xp and loot?
If you clear the areas of monsters you will have enough XP from that to progress smoothly.
The limiting factors being your character build and luck with items.
It’s possible to make a character build that will make progression near impossible in Nightmare and Hell difficulty.
If you’re brand new this will help a lot.
Your Guide to All.
https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Main_Page
Your Guide to Builds
Go act 2, you will get lot of exp there. Get act 2 mercenary its more helpful than archer from act 1
The start of any playthrough is definitely more random than later on, as you have time to farm and flesh out your build due to more item drops allowing a variety.
At the beginning of the game you don’t know what’s going to drop and so progression can be rocky, this can be ironed out by knowing your build order and efficiently spending your skill tree points.
The game gets easier not harder. Keep at it.
pick up every pot and keep ypur inventory more than half full of pots.
melee is definitely a bit harder than any other caster.
if you’re on multiplayer, trade an angelics amu+ring for the huge attack rating boost.
In offline mode, set the game to 8 players and you will be level 16 to 18 by the end of A1.
You can almost hit level 6 just in the starting area and den of evil.
As a melee, high block is your friend. You can melee down almost anything if you have the block. Let the merc take care of lighting enchanted mobs.
For a brand new start, a holy fire paladin is amazing. First point in might, than rest into fire resistant until level 6. Than all else into holy fire. Pickup and vendor everything. When possible, buy a +2 or 3 holy fire scepter from Akara
Thanks for the replies.
Remember.
Who has the stronger will? You or the game?
Hope to see you back when you’ve complete Hell difficulty.
Melee is typically the more challenging ‘role’ (besides as amazon maybe…), expect to be more gear reliant and slightly more skillful compared to a ranged user (Which is pew pew). Being on controller may give you a slight advantage over mouse and keys 
P.s. don’t pay any attention to me, I don’t know what I’m talking about 