For endgame? The drop rates are abyssmal, bosses in Hell take some time to kill (let alone traverse areas to reach) and post Hell act 3, you need a couple of skiller Grand Charms to press on (those are a freakin pain with all those prefixes and suffixes, many different skill-trees and whatnot). I always follow this pattern; breeze through Nightmare, build average runewords to make your life easy (runes up until and Lum or even higher drop easily for me) and reach a point in Hell that i need good gear to go on, but can never find any. I’ve never seen a SoJ in my entire life drop, for instance. I keep finding final set pieces of other players, but never mine. The best thing i ever found had been the unique belt with +1 skills and a Harlequin Crest, a long time ago and on an extinct character. For trade, people ask insanely high runes, or too many of mid-tier, but hard to get by ones. The saints (kind players) giving away unique items for your class for free still exist, but those aren’t end game material anymore, plus a runeword like spirit, renders them completely irrelevant act 2/3 Nightmare onwards anyway.
How do you manage to collect your ideal gear? And in Bnet, you cannot even use the “players” command… Joining a game with many players is risky too, since many rush to good item-find locations and solo, or they suddenly leave game. I am completely lost and once again, driven into a corner.
The game design way, which is the way I’ve done it for 2 decades on bnet is to grind out high density level 85 areas 1000s upon 1000s of times, and trade great stuff you don’t need for great stuff you do need.
So if you want to do it legit, what is the character class and main skill you’re using?
Took me 5342 nightmare andariel runs to drop one, with very little mf (yes, I counted). I don’t have the patience to grind like that anymore so I’m still playing the same characters since years ago lol. The RNG could have screwed me up, because most people tell me they can get it in less runs.
@Ketraies
My most sincere apologies, but i am an old timer, completely not modern programs/apps savvy. The only thing i know concerning Discord, is that many people chat there.
@AtomicPunk
Yes i know that, but with few players in game and ungroupped, not many items drop anyway. In my previous char few years ago, i got a white Monarch in Mausoleum and cube-socketed, for spirit. I could farm Mausoleum but not the Pits, because Hell Rogue Archers Boss Packs are bad stinkers. I always play Fishymancer. Ancient Tunnels were never kind to me (poor drops).
But I went specifically for a soj, which I think was unproductive. IMO its better to farm something like hell mephisto which has a lower chance to drop the soj itself but a higher chance to drop other goodies in the process.
Regardless, like AtomicPunk said, you need to make a cup of coffee or your beverage of choice, sit down, put a podcast or something to play,and grind all day. It’s pretty much like oldschool mmos in that regard. It’s not like d3 where you can realistically get all the legendaries for your build in less than 100 runs, that’s for sure.
Fix your self up with Smoke armour, Lore helm, White wand and turn a head into a Rhyme or Splendor until a uniq or rare drops. I like Rhyme for the CBF, res and mf. Craft caster amulets till you get a good +1 necro or until you find a +2 rare or +3 magic. When you reach clvl 93 start crafting caster amulets again using gambled amulets. Don’t worry about only playing in single player games, as long as you have 50 - 100 mf good stuff will drop almost every game, if, depending on how well you can handle archers, you’re farming all or as many as you can Super Uniques and all area level 83 - 85 in act 1. You can farm nm Baal to clvl 70 easy in 1 player games and you’ll easily get your necro to clvl 75 in act 1 hell. Of course keep you eyes open for multiplayer games to help you level faster.
Edit: Easy way to handle archers is to switch out the wand for Spirit sword. It, plus Smoke should solve the problem of missiles coming at you. If they are still a problem, add a Sanctuary shield if you can afford it. With these three missiles won’t touch you.
you do not know how to buils chars if you need skillers to kill anything post a3
little example for a budget fanazealot that can get through hell:
gulli, goblins, smoke, rhyme, honor, craft belt, craft rings and amu (or sth like saracens)
fill with resistances if needed, rest dmg and done… will get through the game.
or take a hammerdin:
double spirit + mages + 1 fc ring or amu, fill rest with resistances (lore, smoke, crafts et cetera), done (heck I beat the game with under 3,5 hammer damage once on a style build)
and droprates are okay and can be decent, you only need to know what you want and where to find it. (and at times be familiar with the level design and teleport routines and routes)
let’s say a new season starts, what do you do when you start from scratch?
You make a character that can basiccally get through the game nearly naked or is self-sufficient
things like a trap sin (lightning + death sentry) a summon necro, a cold sorc, a hammerdin, a holy shock zealot, a tornado stormer.
I tend to start with a summon necro because I know I can play him with a 3 ptopas helm, a 4 ptopas armor and whatever trash I find and still do mffing (and since strength, insight and obedience are dirt cheap, no problems), takes a while to kill single bosses, so you go more through areas and kill
(and never underestimate the AI curses, clay golem and your CE, ICEDEADPEOPLE is the name of the game)
that character is only there to get me to hell, or to enable me to build a 2nd and 3rd character with mid level equipment.
next up I tend to make a cold sorc, orb or blizzard with up to lvl 32 cold mastery, her only raison d’etre will be, killing mephisto.
things like a gull dagger or splendor /milabregas shield on switch
minimum 63 % fcr , does not even need ful res, merc will wear insight (normal or exceptional weapon,whatever) face of horror and things like smoke or ral ort thus black hades or gris
and then you visit mephisto and kill him with the moat trick and your merc tanking and you slap as much mf into the character and killslot as you can
that gets you standard uniques like harles, heralds, arres,etc, gullis, gores and so on…
which you can then use to make other characters
(that mephisto cold mono sorc can also be used to clear the ancient tunnels in a2, as those are arealevel 85 and have no cold immunes (though you want some lifeleech on your merc)
you can build a java and clear cows for base items, charms, runes and gems
you can do lower kurast runs for the fireplaces and surrounding super chests (cjarms, jewels and runes)
you can make a damage character, like say a meteor sorc with ES to farm keys for tristruns and either sell those or do the runs and torches
you can make craft packs (crap jewel + sol + p ruby or ral+p amy) or spirit and insight packs and sell those
you can start playing classic, make a rushsorc and offer hellfire quest rushes (aka rush somebody from a1 normal to a4 hell) and get paid in whatever
you can go and clean out the flayer jungle in nightmare and cube every grand charm you find for clean skillers (or low life affixes) and sell those
you can make a simple fire sorc and run andariel for the higher chance for rings and amus.
you can do bosses like fireeye, boneash, eldritch and shenk (because they are generally right next to a wp), heck travincal is possible
you can make a berserker barb with find item, and do things like mausoleum and crypt or pit in a1,
it is more a question of what do you like to play etc, than what to do, as methods and avenues are fairly easy.
and those are just the ways that came to my mind in ~5 minutes of thinking,
you can easily find equipment to get yourself through hell in normal and nightmare (heck people beat uber tristram with stuff only dropped in normal)
if you cannot kill in hell, farm in nightmare, loads of end game viable items like say harles, heralds, arres, mages, gores, highlords, ravenfrosts, occus, etc yadda yadda yadda, can drop from baal nightmare
my personal favourite for fairly cheap, is the CS walker hammerdin, all you need is
a 30+ res palashield spirit
a wizzard spike
a rising sun (and even that is optional)
a tarnhelm (1 skill and mf, yay)
a 4 pt armor or a skulli
random crap in all other slots to fill either resistances or to give you more mf
and then you go into the CS and simply kill.
of course you can put more into the character, get it to 125% fcr etc
I cant wait to explain to the noobs how they have to death run past multiple acts of immune mobs.
Just to restart the game over and over and over like a robot to open two chests thousands of times.