If you are talking about normal on a new char, it’s not really worth farming gear. You want to move forward to black marsh and farm the tower for xp + runes. Stop farming there when you got the runes for your build (tal+eth+ some tir+ral runes for caster) and you reached lvl 12. Now you can just naturally progress through the rest of act1 and act2 and you will be around lvl 20 when you reach duriel.
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I am playing offline, on normal difficulty. I about to enter the underground passage, to find the bark needed to use the Cairn (sp?) Stones. I have been doing grinding so far, trying to get as many experience points as I can, to be prepared for what the game throws at me. I see your idea about not farming at this point, I have been getting low gear (compared to what others have posted in the forum), but I am still new to the game, so I am not surprised.
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which class and build are you playing?
Do not have any reservations as long as you are having fun!
As Odin said, the most efficient farming in Normal, is the Tower. You will find far more there potentially, and get greater exp up to about level 14.
Countess also provides a guarantee drop of lower runes and tons of gold from level 5.
Depending on what character you have, you can make many lower level runewords to get stronger. Stealth is Tal-Eth in 2 open socket armor that you can purchase from Akara, and its pretty much a meta option for any character.
Once level 14-15, move on from Countess and head right for Andariel.
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keep in mind that champions with their minions are good xp mobs, while normal “white or trash” mobs aren’t worth your time unless you find big packs you can kill very fast.
You will find your gear on your way through normal. Low level runewords or socketed items with runes/gems will help you get the necessary resistances and damage.
Poison works very good in normal. You just want to get past normal and maybe farm some levels end of act 2 (tombs) till 25 and then end of act5 (throne+baal) till about 35. It is easier when you outlevel your area a little bit. Especially as melee character.
Drops start at the end of normal. Act5 baal +
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Ohh yeah thats a good point, killing everything is actually not the best answer, unless you want to lol, this is better at Hell level.
I personally only take out Champ packs on my way through normal or mobs that are just in the way.
I envy your fresh faced perspective on the game. I hope you have a brilliant time. If you are melee, you will need some gear for sure.
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Revenant309 - I am having such a great time!! I am a newbie, but this game is great! Is the Tower in Act 1? I am currently about to enter the underground passage, and am excited to see what is on the other side!!! I plan on farming the countess for a while, so I can get better gear and such. How do runes work? Odin, you mentioned champions - are they the enemies with a different color name than normal enemies? I mean, when their name shows on the screen, most are white, but some are other colors. I have been doing some grinding from where I am to get some more skill/stat points. Mizzo - I am playing a sorceress classed character, putting skill points into cold and fire magic.
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yes. Champions are either “blue” “yellow like rares” or “golden like unique”. It’s the same category as items except for “green” sets.
You can put them into items with sockets. If it is a base item (gray) and you put them in the correct order in the right item, you can create runewords, which have powerful and mostly useful stats.
You might want to google D2R runewords to know which runewords exist and which bases are needed.
As sorceress you want to put 1 point in the lvl 6 skill static. It’s a very powerful 1 point wonder. You also don’t want to spread too much of your skill points because the game is now designed around synergy points. So you might want to set priority on one skill and only skill a second element for immune monsters.
Static + Telekinesis + Teleport are 1 point wonders. Same goes for warmth in the fire tree. The first 3 are pretty much a must have on any PvM sorc.
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To expand on Odin’s (very good) answer a bit:
Runes are similar to gems and jewels in that they can be put into socketed items (grey name text) to gain a bonus. Each rune will tell you what bonus it gives to various types of items, the same way a gem does. Jewels are similar, but their bonus doesn’t change based on item type like runes, and they can be magic or rare, giving you randomly generated bonuses.
The cool thing about runes though is that they can be used just to get their individual bonuses (this is common with Tir runes that give + mana after each kill (MAEK) for classes that are mana intensive early on) but ALSO be inserted in a specific order to gain additional bonuses, creating a runeword.
To build a runeword, you need to look up the runeword recipes (or trail and error, but this can be very costly in runes/bases, and given the age of the game all runewords are known at this point (or so we think!)).
The socketed item that runes are inserted in to make a runeword is known as a “base”.
Stealth was mentioned, it requires a base that is a body armor type and has exactly 2 open sockets. To create Stealth, you insert the Tal and Eth runes in the 2 open socket body armor, in that order. The new item created will have a gold name similar to a unique item, with the name of “Stealth”. It will have the separate bonuses that each rune gives to a body armor (Tal gives 30% poison resistance, Eth gives 15% faster mana regeneration) but also give you additional runeword bonuses.
So the new Stealth armor will give you:
Magic Damage Reduced by 3
+6 Dexterity
+15 maximum stamina
Poison Resist +30%
Regenerate Mana +15%
25% Faster Run/Walk (FRW)
25% Faster Cast Rate (FCR)
25% Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)
The bonuses I’ve bolded are from the RW and additional to what you’d get from just the runes by themselves.
If you accidentally insert the Eth rune before the Tal rune, you’d end up with a “socketed body armor” that just gives you the Poison Resistance and mana regen bonuses, and none of the others. Similarly if you insert Tal then Eth in a 3 or 4 socket body armor, you will fail to make the runeword and end up with a socketed body armor that has 2 additional open sockets and only has the bonues from the Tal and Eth runes. if you don’t use a body armor, but instead use a helm, weapon, or shield, same deal, you’ll get a socketed item that has the individual rune bonuses for that item type, but will fail to create a runeword.
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So, I only need one point in those three “1 point wonders”? Seems simple enough. Are there any more 1 point wonders? And what are synergy points? I should devote most of my skill points to one or two spells? Like I had said before (I think), I hate it when there are one or two skills out of the entire skill tree that are required to complete the game. I feel that, with RPGs and ARPGs, the player should be free to pick whatever skill(s) he/she wants and still finish the game.
Synergy points refer to skills that synergize each other. You’ll notice some skills will gain a bonus from other skills you have. For instance, Meteor receives bonuses from Fireball. Every “hard point” (point you spend manually, not granted from gear) you have in Fireball, Meteor gets a 5% boost to damage.
BTW did you post a similar thread in Reddit asking about maximum amount of points you could put in per skill? Your skills comment sounds familiar!
Ive done this in the past. Its fun amd works OK. Best thing early on, make some gold from selling wands, staffs, and armour. Once you have some gold you can buy the basics or gamble them at gheed in act 1. Otyers mentioned the Tower - a good spot for sure. M get a list of low level runewords suitable fpr your class (malice, leaf, stealth) and keep an eye out for socketed (gray) armours and the required runes.
I normally skip her entirely as the part to her is off to the side, and even if she’s not too dangerous, she’s quite irritating to kill at the level that you reach her at, and wastes a lot of time.
Play on 8p, get some levels and you can kill andy with a few TP, farm andy then everything will be easy.
Yes, I did post on Reddit with the same question. I did not mean to annoy anyone, I only posted here and on Reddit so that I could get a quicker answer to my question. If I need to refrain from doing that, please let me know. Again, I did not mean to annoy anyone or to troll, if that is the case, my sincerest apologies!!
Here’s how I progressed my first offline character when it entered Hell.
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If your character is too weak to even reach Hell Andariel. Farm Nightmare Mephisto/Diablo/Baal. You get more levels and if you are lucky, some exceptional quality unique items. You can also farm Mausoleum in Hell because all mobs in there are weak and it’s not hard to get there. You can get some levels. Don’t stay here too long though.
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Hell Andy/Meph Farming (2-3 Weeks). My blizzard sorceress was too weak to even reach Act 3 mephisto, so I just farmed Hell Andariel. I killed her 500 times. I got some nice unique items like Duriel’s Shell, Shako, rare boots/belt with some resistances, magefist, nagelrings, and etc. Farm her just enough that you can reach Hell Mephisto. Once I got to Hell Mephisto, I farmed him 2000 times and got even nicer unique items like Arachnid Mesh, Oculus, War Trav, skullder, Reaper’s Toll, and etc. Farm Mephisto until you feel like you got 50-70% of all items you need that meph can drop. After you farmed Mephisto for a while, you and your merc should be strong enough to advance to Act 5 and even finish it.
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Hell Cow (After killing Hell Baal) The goal here was for me to get some runes and runeword bases as well as charms. I got a plenty of white monarch shields to make Spirit, 3-4 open socket armors, some nice polearm bases for my merc, Lo rune (Made grief), Jah rune (Future enigma), and etc. i got some good skiller grand charms too. Runes can be real RNG so dont feel too bad if you dont get many high runes here. I ran hell cow 300 times.
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Act 3 Lower Kurast super chest runs. This is a good option if you play offline, which I do. Fish for an ideal 6 superchest map. Around 5000 runs of these at player 7 should be enough to get you runes for Enigma/Infinity, whichever you choose. If you are extremely lucky, you may even get enough runes for both, but most likely, you will probably get enough for just one. I made Enigma. Also got runes to make Hoto and CTA. I got more nice charms during this process.
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Trav / Chaos Sanctuary. At this stage, I made a horking ww barbarian and hammerdin. Used ww barbarian to farm Travincal around 300 times and hork the council members for various items. Also took my hammerdin to Chaos Sanctuary to farm for more items. I farmed more runes to be able to make Infinity, second grief, fortitude, and Chains of Honor. In this stage, I also made an uber smiter.
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Key and more keys. This is all about getting keys. Farm Hell Countess, Summoner, and Nihilathak 1000 times each and that should get you enough key sets to be able to get some torches for most if not all classes. I used hammerdin with enigma here. You can use sorceress for faster teleport but I liked hammerdin for his tankiness, esp, against Nihilathak. Hammer dmg is so good that Nila drops down too fast for him to really explode any corpse.
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Nightmare Andariel for SOJ. This stage is applicable only if you are offline. In online. you should have farmed more than enough items to trade for SOJ by now. Plus, dclone spawns very often without you having to make any investment. Farm nm Andy offline until you get your first SOJ and use that to spawn dclone, which you can kill with your smiter. You can farm her more for even more SOJs to either use for yourself or roll better Anni charms. I farmed her around 3000 times and that was enough to get me 6 SOJs (I was extremely lucky here). You dont really need more than 3 SOJs though. My first Anni in offline rolled 19-19-6, which is good enough. I’m saving extra SOJs in case i want a differently rolled anni later.
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By this stage, you should have gathered enough items to make any builds you want. Fire sorc, light sorc, summoner necro, poison necro, javazon, whatever. However, you probably dont have a lot of the high-end unique items (Things that Meph can’t drop). By this stage. I only had tal armor, astreon, and grandfather as far as items that meph can’t drop. The real holy grail journey starts here. Make any MF builds you want ( I use horking barb, blizz sorc, hammerdin, summon necro, and poison necro) and just continue to farm Lv 85 Areas (Pit, Stony tomb, ancient tunnel, chaos sanctuary, WSK) and get the Griffon’s eye, tyreal’s might, and whatnot. Make sure to enjoy and make multiple viable builds for 85 areas. If you just farm with 1 class, you may get bored. This is currently where I am at.
This looks great!!! Thanks for your incredibly informative (and extensive) reply to my thread!! I am currently a level 20 sorceress, with my main skills in fireball, with a side of frost nova to slow some enemies down. I am farming/grinding the second level of the catacombs, looking for better gear and such, though I know that the good stuff comes later. Now I am just looking for experience points and maybe a good item. The reason I am playing that second level of the catacombs is because it has a waypoint in it, and I can clear it rather quickly. I was told by another player that it would be more experience and gear lucrative to grind on the lower levels, which is what I am about to do.
You waste time there at level 20, just progress further, its usualy good to really stop and repeat act 5 last quest for some decent loot for Nightmare.
Btw, check my guide, it might help you in many ways.
Understood. The enemies on floor 2 pose little threat, so yes I agree. Have I passed the point where I would now get an experience point penalty? Tonight I will play the rest of the catacombs, to see what comes next!! I heard that the loot on the lower levels is a bit better than what I have had so far with my character. My magical staff is decent. I have some money in my stash, maybe I should try my hand at gambling…? Never tried it, and am curious as to what I find!!