They would come and attack, and die from the thorns. And we would just walk into a room and everything would just die before we even had a chance to react or do anything. So each of his skeleton army had thorns as part of the aura. And I played with a friend who played on the computer next to me on the same desk, and he played a Necromancer. The last time I played without Players 8 was when the Lord of Destruction expansion first came out, and I made a Thorns Paladin. Enemies don’t really have a chance to use their abilities on “Players 1”, because they’re dead already. I know a I killed a bunch of characters early, but there’s areas of the game here that I’m so used to dreading even on Normal difficulty in Act 3, but it all feels so easy because even mini-boss enemies go down so easily. I have to say, playing without Players 8 seems so… safe. When I put a Wake of Fire down and kills some little forest kids, I kill enough to almost earn my mana back. The +2 to Mana After Each Kill sounds weak, but that’s deceptive. In fact, the Forgotten Tower quest in Act 1 can be run multiple times until you get the right runes. Leaf is a very easy Runeword recipe that anyone can access.
I’m using a Leaf staff for my assassin right now. So both my biggest damage dealers right now can’t deal with the water creatures. My grenade lands in the water and doesn’t go off (makes sense), and my Wake of Fire trap doesn’t fire into the water (makes sense). My trap assassin doesn’t seem to have any way of killing the snake creatures in the water so I just run away from them. But it’s kind of glorious when it sometimes generates something so complex that I get lost. Of course, other times, you get a fairly linear level of “follow the river”.
Last night’s generated map had me going from Spider Forest into Great Marsh, back into a different area of Spider Forest, into a different area of Great Marsh, into the Flayer Jungle, and back into the Great Marsh, and then into a different area of Flayer Jungle. I really have to admire the programmers that came up with the algorithm that can sometimes (but not always) generate such a complicated web of jungle forest areas. And then Lower Kurast/Kurast Bazaar/Upper Kurast. Last night I spent hours in the Great Marsh/Spider Forest/Flayer Jungle. On the other hand, if you’re playing hardcore characters, and they die, you lost one more chance to imbue something, so maybe you should have used it after all, and maybe it would have helped you live. Again, this is based off your level, so if you save your imbue for later in the game, it can be very good. You give Charsi something Normal (not socketed, not magic) and you get a Rare item that’s usually very good. One of the quest rewards in Act 1 is a badass opportunity to Imbue something Normal. You’ll get something that’s -5 to your level to +4 to your level. So only have your highest level character do the gambling. When you gamble for stuff, it also helps to be high level. Later in the game you can have 6 perfect gems (one of every type + magic amulet) to combine for a prismatic amulet, which will have 16-20 resists + hopefully something else useful.
So save your cracked diamonds for this recipe until you get a good one. Very useful for giving your Act 2 mercenary a good weapon. So for example, your highest level character should be doing the converting for all the garbage rings and amulets all your lower level characters are leaving in the stash.Īny diamond + any kris + any staff + any belt = savage polearm class weapon that your act 2 mercenary can use. And the properties will be 75% of your level when you do the conversion, so the higher your level when you convert your garbage rings and amulets, the better the chance of getting something good in return. When you get the horadric cube, you can convert 3 rings into an amulet, and 3 amulets into a ring. Keep the bad rings and amulets around in your stash. Some more tips for people new to it, or didn’t spend hours reading and re-reading The Arreat Summit: