Diablo 2 1.0 In need of help

[Purplekush]

Hello everyone, I just discovered this site and I am new.

I want to first give a shoutout to someone named "FearedBliss" for helping me get set up and being able to play Diablo 2 1.0 cactus, so thankyou soo much!

That being said, I'm having a blast.

The game however is very difficult, With the the earliest version of the game not having any runes, mana potions at vendors, or any respecs. I'm currently running a barb and just completed normal difficulty and now entering nightmare. Apparently this is where im starting to get confused....

I finished normal difficulty at level 24 but was way to underpowered to push through nightmare so all I've been doing is chaos runs until I level up more, and right now i made it to level 34 and still feel to weak to push through nightmare, Also I don't know where to distribute the rest of my skill points from here on out. After maxing out mace mastery with 20 points, i'm slowly beginning to add points into whirlwind and will probably try to max that out.....but so far with only 3 points into whirlwind, it's hardly doing any damage and it costs way to much mana!

Double swing has carried me all the way from normal difficulty to nightmare act 2, that's where it kinda starts slowing down a bit......

So if anyone on here has any helpful guide tips on how to progress or where to farm for better gear or maybe a specific build I should use? I'd really appreciate and love to hear it!

 

[fearedbliss]

Hey @Purplekush. Welcome to the forum. I'm happy I was able to help .

I normally play 1.05b so I don't have much experience with 1.00, but the builds are similar since they both are pre-lod. The thing that I know will impact you is that 2 handed weapon damage is bugged IIRC, and also Lances don't drop (I'm not sure if Martel de Fers drop which are a Mace class). One thing to note is that exp is completely different than 1.07-1.09, and it's also different than 1.10. If you are using Singling you'll want to start using the 'players' command when you get enough damage to kill the monsters since p1 leveling will be extremely slow, and I'm sure you are already feeling it. You can check the progress I made when I was recently making a 1.05b Barbarian (I'm gonna make a new one soon most likely).

I would say this was the build that helped me a lot and I will do it again when I remake it:

1 Bash
1 Stun
1 Concentration
1 Leap
1 Leap Attack (You can put extra points into here if you high enough - Target: 20)
20 Whirlwind

-----

20 Spear Mastery (But Lances drop in 1.05b and they don't in 1.00. So I'm not sure if you are just gonna be chilling with a Pike instead).
1 Increased Stamina
1 Increased Speed
1 Iron Skin
1 Natural Resistance (You can put extra points into here if you high enough - Target: 10~)

-----

1 Howl
1 Taunt
1 Battle Cry
1 Shout
20 Battle Orders

But I would say try to get your core mastery maxed and your whirlwind maxed first, and put some points into Natural Resistance so you can start nullifying the Hell Difficulty -50 res while you are leveling up. I tried to put a few points into Energy so I can have a slightly bigger mana pool while I also have mana leech gear since the mana pool is low and you'll basically be at the point where you need to aim your WW and you have to hit at least one monster per WW or your orb will be empty and won't be able to cast another one without manually attacking the monster to charge up again. However, after putting the points into Energy and noticing that it only goes 1 Mana per hard point, I decided it wasn't worth it to put it into mana and I would rather just concentrate on gear that increases my mana. P sapphires would be good as well but at the same time pre-LOD classic doesn't really have gear that generates sockets like what we have in 1.07+, so you probably would be concentrating on mana leech and rare items that have +mana.

Good luck, hopefully this was a little bit helpful.

 

[Purplekush]

Hey @Purplekush. Welcome to the forum. I'm happy I was able to help .

I normally play 1.05b so I don't have much experience with 1.00, but the builds are similar since they both are pre-lod. The thing that I know will impact you is that 2 handed weapon damage is bugged IIRC, and also Lances don't drop (I'm not sure if Martel de Fers drop which are a Mace class). One thing to note is that exp is completely different than 1.07-1.09, and it's also different than 1.10. If you are using Singling you'll want to start using the 'players' command when you get enough damage to kill the monsters since p1 leveling will be extremely slow, and I'm sure you are already feeling it. You can check the progress I made when I was recently making a 1.05b Barbarian (I'm gonna make a new one soon most likely).

I would say this was the build that helped me a lot and I will do it again when I remake it:

1 Bash
1 Stun
1 Concentration
1 Leap
1 Leap Attack (You can put extra points into here if you high enough - Target: 20)
20 Whirlwind

-----

20 Spear Mastery (But Lances drop in 1.05b and they don't in 1.00. So I'm not sure if you are just gonna be chilling with a Pike instead).
1 Increased Stamina
1 Increased Speed
1 Iron Skin
1 Natural Resistance (You can put extra points into here if you high enough - Target: 10~)

-----

1 Howl
1 Taunt
1 Battle Cry
1 Shout
20 Battle Orders

But I would say try to get your core mastery maxed and your whirlwind maxed first, and put some points into Natural Resistance so you can start nullifying the Hell Difficulty -50 res while you are leveling up. I tried to put a few points into Energy so I can have a slightly bigger mana pool while I also have mana leech gear since the mana pool is low and you'll basically be at the point where you need to aim your WW and you have to hit at least one monster per WW or your orb will be empty and won't be able to cast another one without manually attacking the monster to charge up again. However, after putting the points into Energy and noticing that it only goes 1 Mana per hard point, I decided it wasn't worth it to put it into mana and I would rather just concentrate on gear that increases my mana. P sapphires would be good as well but at the same time pre-LOD classic doesn't really have gear that generates sockets like what we have in 1.07+, so you probably would be concentrating on mana leech and rare items that have +mana.

Good luck, hopefully this was a little bit helpful.

Thank you for the reply my friend! truly appreciate the helpful feed back!

 

[thrasher_565]

you can shop for a pike with say mana steal on it.

pike has the best chance of hitting things as ww is kinda buggy in classic as most weapon have a low range and the ww attacks in this star patren

pike is best but when you get thow normal you want to go kill cow king. pick up the The Tannr GorerodPike and keep it in the stash. the game will only drop one item and it being in the stash it will drop a rare pike instead witch has bugged durability. the makes repairing more doable... killing the king in the same spot can drop the same item so move the king around when killing it. reset maps to get a closer red portal to the wp and close king to portal to make runs faster. 100 damage is good enough for 1.00 + skills still is nice to have.

other items you can gamble then for like 1in 10ish. Infernal CraniumCap is a game changer for mana problems.

river of flam is a good place to level as magos give xp and easy to kill. reset map still you get magots.

if you play multyplayer it increases the amount of xp and you can level other up too as you get xp from many screens away same with auras the distance in insane.

to get gold you take spider way point in act 3 and look for a cacoon close to it. click and and if you get an item that sell for 19to 25k gold. re set map till you get a good drop.

i think Silks of the VictorAncient Armor and frostburn gloves drops from king. look for life/mana steel ammy and rings. look for a good rare boots with resist on it.

lance is in the game just not the Spire of HonorLance so no way to bug the durability. i guess you could use it for say killing 1 mob over and over or something but clearing you be rearing evrey 2 minits

thing to note is once you gamble a Unique the game think you have it on you so that item wont drop from a monster even if you thow it out. so not the best to gamble rings unless you dont want sojs...but you get a rare ring instead and they can be gg... but you can keep and soj in the innovatory and you get rare rings that drop so... and keep the soj from king.

you can ingress your odds of rares by keeping the Unique in your innovatory as it wont give you 2 of the same item that % change to get a Unique now gets added to rares.

items can be kept on a mule too, or dead body, think it works on the ground but dont remember.

 

[fearedbliss]

@thrasher_565 Don’t forget that I’ve implemented the players command through Singling for 1.00-1.08, so you can just use that rather than doing LAN multiplayer and opening 8 Diablo processes. That burden is no longer necessary.

In regards to drop mechanics for uniques, I believe as long as you have the unique item in your inventory, equipped, or in your stash, the next time that unique would have been dropped it will be a rare instead. I’m not 100% sure of this but I believe the unique will only drop once per game if it already dropped and you threw it out. But if you start a new game and you don’t have that item anymore you should be able to find it again. But someone can confirm this. So in the example of the SOJs, if you keep a nagelring and manald ring in your stash, the next will be SOJ. You can then mule the SOJ and do it again to farm SOJs. It’s easier to do this in 1.00 than 1.05b because you can farm Cow King. But in 1.05b you will just be gambling rings instead. You probably can gamble it on a lower level character so you can probably have a higher chance of a ring showing up in the store, but transferring gold will be annoying because they can only hold 50k in bank and I think they can only pick up 10k at a time lol.