Your only mistake is not signing the in-game text chat petition. Blasphemous behavior
Hello, fellow player! Long time player here, started playing D2 after LoD expansion came out, and played lots of Battle.net Ladder games. Now I’m Single Player in D2R Switch, and been playing almost non-stop since Day 1 release.
What I can tell you is, for increasing wealth, Sorceress is the best toon. Hammerdin is a very powerful build, but without Enigma it’s very hard to position accordingly. So, I recommend building a Sorceress - you can go with a hybrid build like MeteOrb until Act 1 Hell, then respec to Blizzard and rush the game to finish Hell (tele through the non-mandatory parts, do the quests and kill Baal).
Some NM Countess runs can easily gear a Sorc with basic stuff to increase power level: Spirit, Lore, Stealth, Rhyme are good starting gear. Don’t bother with resistances, you won’t be able to max them at the moment, powerlevel is more important when farming gear (if you play Softcore, of course).
With a modestly geared Sorceress, you can do NM Meph runs offline with an adequate map (Durance 3 near WP) and moat trick him until he starts spilling the loot. NM Meph yields good loot - it’s not endgame stuff, but there’s lots of nice gear like Tal’s Helm (budget staple for Act 2 Mercs), Vipermagi, Lidless (nice stepping stone until you find a 4os Monarch), Magefist, Oculus, Aldur boots, Shaftstop, and much more. MF is always important, but so is killspeed: you’ll yield more drops when killing faster. But at start, it’s always good to use the weapon swap with MF gear to make the killing blow more effective (Alibaba + Rhyme is a must).
After gearing your Sorc and minimally gearing your Act 2 Merc, do some Hell Countess runs to find a Lem, in order to assemble Treachery (budget staple). Add Insight in an Elite base and you’re set (no need to be eth, any Elite polearm will do) to farm Ancient Tunnels until your eyes bleed, and farm Terror Zones eventually when they land in bosses (Andy/Meph). Eventually, the high-level gear will start dropping, and you’ll be able to outfit powerful characters to play in high-level zones like Chaos, Nihlathak and WSK/Throne.
I also did a lot of Meph Runs in Hell, but no moat trick because it takes too much time: I prefer (with Sorceress) to Static him until half life and then kite/blizz him until he dies. Hell Meph yields juicy loot like Shako, Arach Mesh, Treks, Dracul, and HoZ. However, my stepping stone to endgame was Mosaic: even low-rolled, those are absurdly strong, and I farmed a lot of high-level areas until I was able to cube runes and assemble Enigma.