What I don’t get is I play self found to begin with… and have to deal with sporadic ping. Why would offline be any harder? lol
You can run straight though the game with a pally in 2 spirits, a lore and a stealth with zero issues…
While as a fellow offline solo self-found player I agree that the drop rates are comedically low and not balanced with SSF in mind, it is absolutely possible to beat Hell with basically every build without best-in-slot gear. You may not be able to efficiently farm a lot of areas in the endgame, but you can at least beat it.
You just have to grind more. Your level matters a lot, especially for melee. For casters, +skills are massive increases in power. Leveling up and farming for a long time in Nightmare is totally standard before entering Hell, if you’re playing solo.
Farm NM bosses and get the Vipermagi, Gore Riders, Gface, Spirit weapon, Wizspike, Insight, Tal’s mask, etc. That will boost you and your mercenary’s power. You won’t be able to get a lot of things that many online players take for granted (HOTO, CTA, Enigma, Grief, Fortitude, Infinity, Eth Reaper’s Toll, Andy’s helm, etc.) but you will get enough to proceed. It won’t be fast, it won’t be easy, but it’s absolutely doable.
Later on, find a Hell area you can farm half-decently and upgrade with the slightly more accessible runewords for you and your merc, like Oath, Pride, or Treachery. Grab that Monarch for Spirit shield, stack some IAS or FCR (depending on your build), find a Shako. Maybe luck into a good +2 skills rare amulet or even Mars’s.
It’s not extreme endgame gear, but it’s enough to get somewhere.
You will probably still hit a wall at some point. Eventually you get to a point where you need to farm super efficiently to have a decent chance of getting the true endgame gear… but you need the true endgame gear to farm super efficiently. That’s the wall I’m banging my head against at the moment. Hundreds of hours into D2R with no high rune drops (so no Infinity, no Grief, no Fortitude), no Arach’s, no Griffons, just a few low-rolled facets with nothing to put them into, barely any useful Skillers, etc.
It can be frustrating, because the RNG is so intense. In some cases a single Lo rune can be the difference between painfully slogging your way through p1 and dying all the time versus efficiently clearing p3+ areas. An inventory of skillers can triple your damage. Enigma is absolutely broken. D2’s power curve gets pretty screwy at the high end!
So yeah, I can’t tell you everything will go smoothly, and I certainly won’t call you a whiny baby like a lot of people on this forum will. I really understand your struggle. But you do need to put in the work in Nightmare, as much as you can, before making the leap to Hell. It’s just that kind of game.
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Have you ever considered that perhaps you just suck and you should get a guide online and follow it?
You can get some of the best items in the game (uniques and sets) from Nightmare Andy, Meph, Diablo, and Baal. You can get some great items from Normal Andy, Meph, Diablo, and Baal.
Do I play offline? Hardly ever. But I play solo and find my own stuff pretty much all the time. You’re going to have to farm a lot more than you may want to though. But I’ll tell you this: even if you could farm Hell the stuff doesn’t rain out of the sky.
Try running more players3 runs in NM to build gear stock
Offline is shared stash now also right? Then mf sorc is your first toon.
without shared stash its hard, all toons need to be mf.
Hey, check character guides and sorceress walkthrough, maybe it will help.
The main problem everyone has when it comes to self-find is that they try to build their character hyper-specifically to some guide. The guide will tell you to use a certain shield or amulet and people will pull their hair out trying find those exact items.
The key to enjoying self-find is to be flexible and creative. Build around what you find not what you need. I couldn’t for the life of me find a Ravenfrost, so you know what I did? I just made a Rhyme shield and stopped worrying. If I find a better cannot-be-frozen modded item I’ll use that, but I won’t run that one boss with the best drop chance a million times to find it.
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Oh I don’t disagree, if I needed best-in-slot meta items in order to have fun, I would not have played the game for 20 years… because I have never ever even once dropped 95% of those items.
But they’re still the goal, and there’s a reason I tend to play for a month or so, hit a wall, put the game away for 6-9 months, then come back and repeat. I’ve been doing that for two decades now lol. Because D2 has essentially no endgame content, farming is everything. And sitting down for two hours to repeat runs and coming out with nothing at the end gets demoralizing eventually.
I keep coming back because it’s still the best game ever made, though. And D2R has especially motivated me, thanks to the QoL updates and balance changes and better resolution. This is in many ways the most fun D2 has ever been.
I’m definitely starting to hit that motivation wall again, though, as high runes and skillers still refuse to drop, and as the pace of new holy grail acquisitions slows to a crawl. I’ll get another burst of motivation from 2.4 however (so excited for the FoHdin!). And when that motivation runs out I’ll put the game away for six months before I come back and try again… I’ll probably never permanently quit this game, no matter how much it keeps hurting me, lol.
Ya man, so many people getting angry because really they just don’t understand the game. My buddy quit the game after not being able to progress past act 3 NORMAL. he died multiple times and then gave up and tried to refund. Hes a diablo 3 fan boy so I expected nothing less.
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Umm you need to level up. In offline mode you can go into game options to scale up the player count, which increases the monster life and xp.
You need to tweak it to balance you level so its challenging yet doable and have enough xp progression. Without end game gear, you shouldn’t really start hell below level 80.
Yes, off line is actually harder than online because you can’t trade for gear. In online even the poorest can trade using pgems. In offline you earn everything.
What? Not lol.
You can beat hell at level 60-70 on every class in absolute garbage gear. If people are unsure of how they need to go watch some speed run videos or something like Llama’s guided playthroughs.
Tip one, you don’t need to fight everything.
I can do it in some builds like a hammerdin and a summoner. Others will struggle. I’m currently playing offline a cold sorc with crap gear and is struggling.
There’s not much thinking to an cold sorc or skills really - crap gear is crap. I’m not at level 80 yet and I die a lot. That’s a show stopper to a lot of folks like OP - not to me.
I have spirit sword&shield, but the main problem is no drop for merc (have 1 insight) and 1 good bill, but that’s all. Can’t reach Black Marsh, all are mana burner or my chars weapon resistant. Melody is the best bow I have, Javazon hasn’t had any good drop, my Cold Sorc can’t do sh’t.
If you want loot drops like candy, go back to d3
what are you referring to?
Umm man sorc is legit the easiest class. You literally just need 2 spirits and you should probably never die again. Sorc only needs 63% FCR, 86% FHR and preferably non negative light resists to never die again…
I’m sorry to tell you this my dude, but if you can’t do anything on a sorc, it’s 100% operator error. You can beat the entire game on a naked sorc. I’ve done it before and it’s not very hard to do either.
Read the context mate, 2 spirit is not crap gear…
Considering you can farm all but the monarch base off of NM countess… and monarchs drop in act 1 hell… it absolutely is.
No offense but if you think getting 2 spirits is a hard task, and you can’t kill things in act 1 hell… then straight up this isn’t the game for you. I can kill most of the things in act 1 hell on a naked level 42 pally…