Hey guys!! Two questions here… first, regarding the opportunity to redeem skill/attribute points with Akara in Act 1 (after completing the first quest), I have been saving that for later use. That said, if I do not use it in Act 1, will it roll over into Act 2? I am still quite new to the game, and I feel that having the option to redeem my points later would be a great idea, in case I misuse my points and need to start over. My other question is… I know I can gamble with Gheed in the Rogue Encampment, would the potential to get better gear increase as the game goes on? I mean, would the gear I get from Gheed be better in later Acts of the game? Or is that potential the same throughout the game?
It will be there until you use it. You will get 3 total for all difficulties.
Second question, yes, sort of.
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you can use your respecs anytime and you get one in each difficulty after completing the quest in act 1 (you don’t lose them if you don’t use them)
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gambling at Gheed’s is dependent on your level. The higher your level the better items you can gamble for.
The 3 respecs are also not your only opportunities in the game to respec as you can farm the eessential pieces to create unlimited tokens to respec with. So if you f’d up your skills and/or stats as most newbs usually do, feel free to blow Akara’s respec anytime.
Once you move onto Act 2, you can still use Warriv or the way points to move back to Act 1 whenever you want. If you don’t use your Akara respec it will stay there until you decide you need it. Once you beat the final act in Normal difficulty, you run through the game twice more, in Nightmare and then Hell difficulties. The quests are the same, but the monsters get harder. The Den of Evil quest reward from Akara for NM and Hell difficulties will include a 2nd and 3rd respec respectively. Once you unlock higher difficulties, you can choose to join/create games at lower difficulties still, so even if you don’t use your Normal difficulty respec, you can go back to normal difficulty later if and when you decide you need it. Back before they added respecs in the legacy game, you had to really plan out characters to avoid wasting points, and sometimes people would create entire new characters if they ended up finding gear that made it so they didn’t need the same stat point allocation. Respecs have made it a lot more user friendly, and have opened the door to have “leveling builds” that work great at low levels but don’t necessarily work for end game. Now you can use the leveling build to progress quickly, then respec into a different skill setup as needed (within the 3 limit).
End game has a method for farming ingredients to create a respec token as well, which will allow you additional respecs if you so choose.
Regarding gambling, it’s fairly complex but the higher level character you use to gamble, the higher quality items are possible, however it’s still all random. If you’re searching for specific items or properties, sometimes having too high a level character is actually bad, since it can increase the possibilities that can spawn, therefore reducing the odds you’ll get the one you want. If you’re just looking for a way to get rare/magic items as a potential upgrade path and not focusing on specific items/properties, then the you’ll likely see that as your character level increases you tend to get higher end items/properties. Note that Act 2 (and all Acts) also have their own gambling NPCs, and there’s no difference between what can spawn from any of them, so there’s no specific reason to gamble in one act over the other, although some of the town layouts can make some NPCs more convenient. Back in the day you used to have to leave town and re-enter to refresh the available gambling goods, so having an NPC close to a town exit was nice. D2R has provided a button to re-roll them, so that’s less of a concern these days.