1.11 (Guardian Greengod - Set Only Melee Barbarian)

[broxigaarr]

Hi guys,

I just finished this big project so I thought I could share screenshots and a little story about the background, rules, etc. I am wondering though - since this forum is dedicated to 1.00 to 1.10, is it fine to share here since it was finished on 1.11?

Many thanks

 

[Manny]

Hey @broxigaarr,

Yes, absolutely, please feel free to post here. I'll be looking forward to seeing it. We're definitely fans of the original Blizzard North patches, but that doesn't mean we want to deter anyone from playing their patch of choice, or sharing that fun with the community. After all, it's still good ole 'pre-resurrected" Diablo II. Thanks for asking!

 

[fearedbliss]

@broxigaarr Yup as Manny said, we focus on Blizzard North patches but you can still share your progress for pre-Resurrected D2. Although I'm curious why 1.11 specifically? Pretty much all of the important stuff happened in 1.10. 1.11 has some bug fixes, some new runewords (although nothing crazy), has the torch but that's online only, and some other tweaks/improvements. 1.12 is just no-CD, so I would imagine next big one would be 1.13 specifically for the respecs and higher rune drop rates.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

Well, 1.11 technically was the last blizzard north patch, although it released like a week before north shut down for good (and 1.11b released just after north merged with south). I guess one reason is that they bundled the runewords from 1.10 ladder season 2, so you can more easily enable those in 1.11, combined with the new class runewords like Treachery that some people like. It's also possible to use PlugY to get the uber quest working in 1.11, but it doesn't support 1.10, and would require much more work since 1.10 fully lacks the code for it. (In 1.11 single player, the code for all of it is there except diablo/baal/mephisto's AI and the code for spawning the portals, which Plugy implements in 1.11 almost perfectly from what I played on bnet).

 

[fearedbliss]

I don't consider 1.11 as a Blizzard North patch which is also why many years ago I removed the 1.10 ladder runewords from Singling. This is described here:

Cookie monster!

TLDR: The Blizzard North Core Leadership left around August 2003, and Peter Hu stayed behind to finish patch 1.10 which he released on October 28, 2003. After the release he left and went to work with everyone else at the newly created Flagship Studios. The 1.10 ladder runewords were introduced in the second season of 1.10, which I believe at that time Peter Hu was no longer there, and I don't even know if he would have approved of those changes. Thus, everything after October 28, 2003 is what I consider the death of Blizzard North. The "Corporate Vehicle" of Blizzard North did continue to exist until 2005, but the leadership had already left in 2003 as I described earlier. Thus 1.10 Ladder Runewords and 1.11 are no longer canon Blizzard North.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

The definition of canon in this case can vary a lot. Brevik had little to do with LoD, LoD is mostly the work of Peter and a few others. Then you could argue 1.09 was the last patch that had general involvement from the main team. By then nearly everyone had moved on to Diablo 3 or another expansion, and 1.10 was largely the work of Peter himself. Once the main leaders left, there were still some people who worked on d2 around that kept working on it, Morhaime himself worked on d1 (and probably d2, but don't quote me here) and didn't leave blizzard until a few years ago before the whole scandal thing took off. So I guess you can see 3 periods of canon, <= 1.06, 1.09, and 1.10, with 1.11 being some what of a bonus round. One of the devs that worked on 1.13 was also around during the early devs. That said, in terms of actual content and just enjoying the game, I'd pick 1.11 over 1.10 as long as you have mods to get the new runewords and ubers. Otherwise you might as well play vanilla 1.10.

 

[fearedbliss]

I already defined my definition and cut off point. I don't really care if people agree with me lol.

 

[Manny]

Lmaoo you guys crack me up. I appreciate the shared passion demonstrated for the ancient prophecies, lol.

 

[broxigaarr]

Hi guys,

Thanks for approving my intent. To get the first question out of the way - there is no particular reason why I chose 1.11. My small community on Discord and I mostly play 1.13 and Resurrected, but some of us who are more old-school oriented chose to enjoy our playtime on older patches as well. We play mostly 1.11 due to the slightly calibrated FE bug (=not all Fire Enchanted monsters instantly kill you upon explosion, which is good, since we play HC only). Also right now, I am testing the waters in 1.07 with another HC solo project, but that is for another time and thread I guess

The idea to go ahead with the set-only challenge came from a YouTuber named looter. In one of his videos, he chose to beat the game using only set items. I found this an interesting idea, but decided to modify the rule set further to establish an even more difficult challenge. Here are the rules I followed:

- HC only (version 1.11)
- Melee character only (=for my attempt I chose Barbarian -> good variety of combat skills + very good self-buffing & crowd control).
- An obvious one - only set items are permitted.

Now comes the spicy stuff:
- Looter and most other D2 YouTubers tend to milk the farming spots for gear before going for higher difficulties. Since the release of Diablo 1, I really enjoy the uniqueness of each run due to RNG and being challenged to try to progress only with what the RNG gods give away. So I decided to play with a single pass rule (=no repeated area runs at all).

- Since I knew I would be limited in experience gains and a chance to get a nice loot from boss / area runs, another very important rule was to clear all areas in the game. Put simply, slay all monsters corrupting the Sanctuary. In all difficulties, no matter the time, effort and risks it takes.

- No respec allowed (can´t do it legitimately in 1.11 anyway, so just for the record).

Having solid experience with challenge runs like this, I was confident it can be done even under a restrictive rule set like this one. The big question was the 1.11 melee experience as one of my fellow community members warned me the game is way more difficult for melee characters compared to 1.13.

Another concern was item drops. There is always a huge chance you get nothing great from the game even on multiple reruns. Luckily, this one was never a big blocker for me - I simply thought things will figure themselves out eventually. I created the character named GreenGod and entered the game not knowing how many difficulties lay ahead...

View attachment 1195

 

[fearedbliss]

That sounds good @broxigaarr. Hopefully you are all having fun! Stay safe out there.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

The big question was the 1.11 melee experience as one of my fellow community members warned me the game is way more difficult for melee characters compared to 1.13.

I wouldn't say way more difficult per say, but there's definitely two nuisances for HC players. You already touched on the FE bug, but also Iron Maiden from the OKs, this is more or less just instant death. One way to avoid it though is to use leap attack if using a barb as it counts as ranged, and to just in general be very careful in that area. Melee in general got much more difficult after 1.09, as they added synergies and greatly raised monster life to compensate, but base weapon damage stayed the same so all melee is effectively still doing 1.09 era damage against 1.10 difficulty. So yeah, 1.11 is somewhat of an odd choice as most just go with 1.13, but I also understand. I started playing d2 around 2006 so I have a bit of nostalgia for 1.11/1.12 as those are what I played a lot. If you use Plugy to get the uber quest, 1.11 also has 2 nice things: the summons in uber tristram give XP (useful for power leveling) and the hellfire torch has a 25% proc rate instead of 5%. Super cool on a kick-sin build!

 

[broxigaarr]

I wouldn't say way more difficult per say, but there's definitely two nuisances for HC players. You already touched on the FE bug, but also Iron Maiden from the OKs, this is more or less just instant death. One way to avoid it though is to use leap attack if using a barb as it counts as ranged, and to just in general be very careful in that area. Melee in general got much more difficult after 1.09, as they added synergies and greatly raised monster life to compensate, but base weapon damage stayed the same so all melee is effectively still doing 1.09 era damage against 1.10 difficulty. So yeah, 1.11 is somewhat of an odd choice as most just go with 1.13, but I also understand. I started playing d2 around 2006 so I have a bit of nostalgia for 1.11/1.12 as those are what I played a lot. If you use Plugy to get the uber quest, 1.11 also has 2 nice things: the summons in uber tristram give XP (useful for power leveling) and the hellfire torch has a 25% proc rate instead of 5%. Super cool on a kick-sin build!

I find 1.11 more difficult for 2 reasons in particular:

1) Significantly reduced drop rate for all runes, making even the mid-game runewords way less accessible.

2) Dual / triple enchanted bosses often feel quite OP. Especially their on-death explosion effects dropped my HP dangerously on many occasions, even though my barbarian had around 2k HP with Battle Orders up.

For this specific build, the Iron Maiden did nothing, since I specced into Berserk which deals 100 % magic damage. Reviving my mercenary got quite expensive, though

Speaking of the build, at first, I started with a vision to specialize as a Concentration Barbarian. I liked the idea of solid damage & high defense.
However, the damage output happens only if there is gear available. That wasn´t the case for me. So I decided to put 1 point into Concentrate and start maxing Berserk after level 30.

My very first drop was a unique club (classic RNG trolling in a set only challenge, right? )

My second drop was a pair of Cleglaw´s Gloves. This drop will become very important in the later parts of the game, almost until the very end, actually.

In Nightmare Blood Moor, I got especially lucky, finding 3 set items in total: Hwanin´s Belt, Tancred´s Amulet and Hsarus Boots. The boots added some nice Fire Resist, while Tancred´s Amulet was a second part of the set I carried already, activating the +78 % Better Chance of Getting Magic Items bonus. Stat-wise, things were looking pretty solid. But I knew I would soon need a weapon upgrade. And because I had no guaranteed way of getting one, I could only stick to the rules and pray that RNG gods are generous with future drops.

 

[fearedbliss]

@broxigaarr You can use the attach multiple images feature so your images get uploaded faster and are also compressed into a nice little "slideshow". That way you save vertical screen space and people can navigate left/right on your images collection.

It will look something like this.

 

[broxigaarr]

So I went on through the rest of Act I and most of Act II without much hassle. In Claw Viper Temple, Fangskin dropped Hel rune (spoiler: this turned out to be the highest rune till the end of the game, excluding Hell HF which gave me a Gul rune). Yeah, I could definitely feel the difference in drop rate for runes compared to 1.13.

I was really glad to incorporate the full area clears rule. Why? One of the branches of Arcane Sanctuary rewarded me with Cleglaw´s Sword. Having gloves equipped from Act I Normal, this one unlocked the partial set bonus, massively increasing my damage and attack rating! Sure, the damage range was huge but I was positive this combo can carry me through the rest of the game if nothing better dropped. Or so I hoped.

Through Act III, I found almost nothing, maybe except Haemosu´s Adamant. A solid piece of gear, but I was already equipped with Isenhart´s Case combined with shield and helmet for a +16 All Resistances bonus. Also, Sewers and Mephisto rewarded me with 2 pieces of Sigon´s (Belt + Gloves) - which will come into play later.

NM HF gave me Shael and yeah, that was it. The rest of Act IV was without any significant set drops (or unique drops I could at least drool over). So I finished Nightmare and went back to visit Cows. Glad I did - found IK belt during the beefy slaughter. Not bad for a single pass run

 

[galaxyhaxz]

Fun fact, Fangskin doesn't drop any items on hell in 1.11/1.12, because they assigned him a treasure class that doesn't exist. Likely--when they were implementing the uber quest, they originally had him drop the act 2 key, and decided to later change it to the summoner but forgot to revert the change to Fangskin (until 1.13). And yeah, if you've never played seriously pre 1.13, you're in for a big surprise in just *how* rare high runes are. They were essentially balanced around the fact you had tens of thousands of people playing on battle.net at any given time, and they only wanted a few to come up every now and then (and the 1.10 runewords were balanced around this fact, that almost no one would see them). 1.13 finally made them a bit more reasonable to find, since by then the playerbase shrank to almost nothing.

Still, you learn to appreciate and seeing even a Lem or Pul is pretty exciting, but seeing an actual high rune drop is really exciting, as they are easily 10-20x more rare than 1.13.

 

[broxigaarr]

Fun fact, Fangskin doesn't drop any items on hell in 1.11/1.12, because they assigned him a treasure class that doesn't exist. Likely--when they were implementing the uber quest, they originally had him drop the act 2 key, and decided to later change it to the summoner but forgot to revert the change to Fangskin (until 1.13). And yeah, if you've never played seriously pre 1.13, you're in for a big surprise in just *how* rare high runes are. They were essentially balanced around the fact you had tens of thousands of people playing on battle.net at any given time, and they only wanted a few to come up every now and then (and the 1.10 runewords were balanced around this fact, that almost no one would see them). 1.13 finally made them a bit more reasonable to find, since by then the playerbase shrank to almost nothing.

Still, you learn to appreciate and seeing even a Lem or Pul is pretty exciting, but seeing an actual high rune drop is really exciting, as they are easily 10-20x more rare than 1.13.

Right, I got no loot from him in Hell, I was pretty pissed Didn´t know he was supposed to drop a key, that´s quite interesting!

Yes, even mid runes make my heart pound in 1.11. My secondary character is a Holy Bolt Paladin running Hell Mausoleum on P7. After around 2k runs, I found nothing higher than Io (not Lo, but Io) rune. Then I accidentely opened a chest in Cold Plains and found Fal. Was super happy even though I have no use for it.

 

[fearedbliss]

I'll note that when I do play post 1.09 patches it's only 1.10 since that's my childhood patch. I started playing in 2003 during season 1 of battle.net, and from what I remember playing online back then, botd and all of these other Runewords seemed common. So even though they had power drop rates, it seemed like you could trade for it relatively easily (depending what you got to trade for it). It's a weird feeling lol. I also remember people talking about the marrowwalk bug I think it was. Equipping the boots on a Necros specifically. I don't remember if you had to be a ghoul as well.

 

[galaxyhaxz]

Scarcity was Peter's intention anyway, but not necessarily how it played out. Especially in 1.10 as there were quite a few more dupe methods at the time that have long since been patched. Combined with botting and hellforge rushes... yeah it's no surprise people had them even then. In single player though you definitely won't be seeing them anytime soon unless you forge rush like mad (LK runs also work, but take a lot longer than 1.13+). And yeah, charges act as synergies in 1.10, which was fixed in 1.11. Hard to say if feature or bug...

 

[broxigaarr]

Act 1 Hell went quite safely. The combination of 100% magic damage + HP boost from Battle Orders proved to be a viable combo. I downed Andariel with not much trouble (no significant set drops during Act 1) and went on a hiatus. Act 2 Hell is where most of my characters get stuck, and Greengod was no exception.

From December 2024 to March 2025 I did almost zero progress. I remember taking down Radament and finding Tancred´s Skull, unlocking the +Magic Find bonus again after being forced to replace Tancred´s Crowbill with Cleglaw´s sword. The journey slowly continued through Dry Hills and into Maggot Lair - which, fair to say, is a real nightmare for a melee character with not much gear to work with - see attached screenshot. That is a typical scenario I encounter during full-clear playthroughs. A real nerve-wracker and a test of patience

Lost City rewarded me with Gheed´s Fortune. I was really excited since charms did not violate the ruleset, so I gained slightly better MF and improved vendor prices. Always a good thing. Fangskin dropped nothing, now I know why thanks to @galaxyhaxz, hehe

The Summoner gave a Ribcracker, later a random Crusher dropped Jade Talon and a boss inside one of the false tombs dropped a Rune Master! Now that´s some unique... Germans would call it "Durchfall". All was capped with a final nice little find - Wizardspike. Duriel was a quick business with no loot worth mentioning. It´s safe to say the Tombs were the most tedious area to clear out. Tons of high defense skeletons combined with Magic Immune mummies are not the monster mix you wish to encounter with this build.

After completing Act 2, however, my momentum with this character was back and I was really looking forward to progressing further.

 

[broxigaarr]

Hi guys, long time no see Sorry about that — I’ve been dealing with some work and personal stuff.

I remember having an excellent flow throughout the entire Act III. No urge to put this character on hold despite the difficulty and the fact that I’m not a big fan of A3 in general.

Nothing particularly attractive or useful dropped, except for:

• Laying on Hands (IAS and Damage Against Demons <3)
• Raven Frost (of course it drops now that I can’t use it )
• Sigon’s Guard, Sabot & Shelter (the entire set is complete so now I can juggle between different set bonuses situationally)
• Djinn Slayer (I’d love to use that but it isn’t green :-( )

Mephisto closed the run with a generic drop, so I moved on to A4, somewhat reconciled with the idea that I would finish the game with Cleglaw’s Sword.

It’s in moments like this when the RNG gods decide to tip the scales in your favor. I was just casually strolling through Act IV — Izzy dead, Hephasto dead — and hacking through hordes of Grotesque Wyrms. I usually don’t use Find Item on vermin like this, but this time I did. BAM! All of a sudden, a green Mythical Sword lay at my feet — Bul-Kathos’ Tribal Guardian! Resist, IAS, ED — everything you could wish for. I didn’t have enough DEX to equip the bad boy, however:

• I had around 25 unspent stat points
• Both Larzuk socketing quests were unused so far
• Remember the Hel rune from NM Fangskin? Guess it’s time to use that

The killing speed went up significantly and I was now 100% confident I could finish the game. What’s funny is that in Chaos Sanctuary I found a green Cryptic Sword from Sazabi’s set. The Bul-Kathos was a bit better, but man… two drops like that before the final act — I could not have wished for better RNG.

Oh btw. I found my first ever Highlord´s Wrath. In a single pass game. Who would have thought?