Not sure how this post will turn out, I just wanted to write about my experience and the things bothering me about the game.
So currently I play with my brother, seasonal hell act5 which we will finish this week.
I’ve read all the guides, the gearig, game mechanics, how you should play, watched the stream videos you name it, I done it. Most of the stuff I’ve read and seen about builds and gearing is a big fake carrot, a mirage, a lie dangled in front of you because the actual progress is a very different experience for the average player.
All the endgame builds? you can forget about those, because all high end and useful runewords are all tied to the rarest runes.
Sunder charms only drops in hell.
You would expect in hell difficulty to have elite gear drops, but the same gear also drops which are in normal and nightmare.
Rune drops in hell become almost nonexistent to the point we gave up trying to get any of the end game runewords.
There are no midrange runewords consisted of only mid level runes.
All in all the above listed things contributed to a very grindy and boring experience which honestly heavily discourages me to play this game again for a long long time. Why do I have to finish a character in hell just to start farming for the end game gear? What is the point to that? I’ve already finished the game by then. Normally I would like to enjoy the end game builds before the end game.
It would have been a much better experience and nice if at least normal difficulty drops only normal gear, nightmare only drops exceptional gear only and hell drops elite gear only. At least then I could rule out rng, which sits on top the normal rng. The missing midrange runewords are also given, since i could have something competitive untill a good elite unique drop. I could list at least a dozen other things but I wont because it will be flamed and trolled for doing so.
Probably reading wrong guides which ate not designed for begginers.
Well its end of season so generaly speaking it might be harder to buy them from others as you dont have good knowledge of items. We will get new season in a month probably so you will get good chance to try it at start of season.
If hell would be dropping just elite gear, everyone would have everything in few days and would be bored. Item chase is what makes game great.
How hard you tried? What did you run?how many runs?
Of course there are, this is just false statement.
You dont. Not sure from where you have that information.
Look Zax I understand where you are coming from, but I the average player who sinks time into this game does not want to sink in hundreds of hours into farming so that I could play the build I want. It’s just unrealistic.
I’m playing this game since last christmas, almost every day for a minimum of 1 hour on weekdays every day, on weekends on average 10 hours a day. I spent farming nightmare countess for runes at least 10 hour a week. then moved on to hell countess when I leveled up enough. We started out non seasonal went to hell just to realize some endgame runewords just wont work since they are seasonal only, so we restarted the game and did it all over again. We did the game almost five times twice in normal twice in nightmare and soon once in hell. Non seasonal drop rate was abysmal. I was lucky to have an elite unique weapon drop in seasonal, but that is literally all which dropped from hell so far, but my brother is stuck in the same exceptional gear he finished nightmare the only exception is a single annihilus which we got from killing uber diablo hell act one.
And to the runewords of course there are not. There are of course level 45-67 level requirement runewords which constitutes your line of “reasoning”, but as I wrote, you need a prerequisite hell finished character to grind those runes sinking in a ton of time not playing the game but grinding.
Let me give you an example: Dream runeword. Lvl65 midrange right? No. It requires 2 Jah rune which is one of the rarest rune drops in the game ergo no dream. Maybe once, when you grinded hell act 5 baal like 50 times. and you need two. But like what is the point to do so at that point?
Buying runes is literally cheating. I cannot understand how could it come up as a suggestion.
You should use leveling guides instead. Endgame builds are a trap for beginners and won’t work without hard to get items. Without trading or long farming bosses with magic find Blizzard Sorc to get minimal gear you’re mostly limited to 1 best build per class that can beat game with easier to get items during leveling.
If you spend hundreds of hours its realistic to be totaly loaded with stuff. What you lack is knowledge. When i play online, i can have enigma runeword in 1-2 weeks. Or different high end runeword. Your problem is that you dont ask questions i guess and play not effectively and them complain its boring. Of course it is boring to do hours of NM countess runs. Nobody does that. Who suggested that to you?
No big deal, these new runewords are not important to have good char.
There is no difference in seasonal vs nonseasonal drop.
Dream is not mid range rune word in any way. Its high end runeword. Also quite specific one for basicly just one build.
Dont look at level required. If runeword have ohm+ in it, its high end runeword.
Its online, there is market with peopoe trade ng items for items in game. It has nothing to do with cheating.
I think that main issue is that instead of finding your own way and enjoying game with your brother trying to find the build you will like, you looked up some not so common build which require very specific expensive high end gear. I guess tesladin/dreamdin or how its called.
I realized that by the time we went the second time. My problem is not the ability to finish the game in hell. My grief is that in order to have the marketed experience - and I’m not talking about normal and nightmare difficulty here - you have to start fresh in the beginning of a season and build a vast amount wealth in gear, gems, gold, and runes, so that when you want to try out a cool build you have all the necessary items pre farmed.
Ok maybe so. Then what would you suggest to do? I’m open to ideas.
I tried to farm from countess, to nightmare difficulty terror zones, to bosses nightmare , and even running around killing random elites to champions. What do I do wrong?
Balance is an issue too. Even when you farm those entry items for melee or bow build and are ready to swap to it then the result will be that character performs overall worse than before switching to it from caster leveling build with cheaper items.
Well that’s how it is in Diablo 2. Most played classes are Blizz Sorc and Hammerdin since long time now. Not much you can do about it tbh.
To give you proper answer I would need to know what do you want to play. I could give you some general tips if you want. To show how i play online to get good results.
Why did you pick build which require dream runeword, where did you read it?
You should play what you enjoy btw, not something people in guide say is most op with high end runewords.
The point is that you don’t need gear to finish the game and all those endgame items are the longterm incentive for grinding after finishing the base game.
None of the items change how the skills you use work, except for mosaic, which is clearly a D3/D4 item that doesn’t belong to D2.
You say that you play with your brother and you haven’t even finished act5 hell yet. So basically you haven’t really played the game yet. But grindy games aren’t for everyone, so if you don’t enjoy, you don’t have to play it, but you might want to give the endgame grind at least a chance to be fun.
from their few posts so far it seems like diablo 2 is definitely NOT the game for them. lol. i just found my second death’s web today eeeeek. still unid.
Another why does this game need to suck so much time thread…
There are options.
Use your credit card. As much as people hate this option on this site, it is perfectly legitimate. No one is blaming you if ya got 8 mouths to feed and need to be working all the time.
Play single player and give yourself all the items you dream of.
Join d2jsp, trading for FG can allow you to get all the items you want in a relatively modest amount of time.
Play a different game. Not every game must be catered to people with less time, that sucks for the rest of us… luckily there are MANY arpgs that cater to folks who struggle with d2r’s itemization systems.
Lucky indeed. I played D2LoD for about 10 years (on and off, through version 1.12 or so) and D2R for several years now (bought it that first weekend…) and I have found… ah let me count first… ah yes: 0 Jah runes.
For a new player, I would start with a Blizz Sorc (for teleport), or Hammerdin, or LF Javazon. Meta builds yes, but great gear not needed to level and get through Hell. Should be able to farm certain areas until TZ’s are reached in Hell to drop sunders… which allow farming more areas. And then the grind for the end game gear to build other crazy characters begins. You should not start with building a crazy build.
Personally the leveling guides on Icy Veins or Maxroll have worked for me. I sometimes follow them exactly, sometimes not.
Also as above, high level rune drops are exceedingly rare. I started playing D2 when it was released and every version of D2 since (LOD, Resurrected). I have found: 1 Lo, 1 Cham, 2 Ohm’s, 2 Sur’s, 1 Ber and 1 Zod. No Jah’s. And D2LOD/D2R combined has been out how long now…
eeeeek. still unid.