So I bought Diablo 2 and need a bit of help

So after playign around a bit, I find that early game is frustrating as hell, and feels just like the first time I played PoE. I decided to buy he game because I really enjoyed PoE, and hear that this game was a big inspiration to it.

I've seen some of the stuff that can happen in late game, and that looked pretty cool. So far I have 2 characters, a level 11 Paladin, and a level 12 Barb.

I can't kill anything very fast at all, and don't know what area's to farm, what class to use, etc.

I was wondering if anyone here can help me out here to get past the early game.

Thanks in advance

"

Moonyu wrote:

Its been years so I may not be much help.

Are you playing physical (Barb)

Necro (Surprising strong early int he game, can suffer end game)

Witch (I'm clueless there.)

But http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/ should help a lot.

I've heard of WW Barbs. Is that a fine build for beginners?

strafe bowazon was my favorite with windforce

We'll I appreciated you giving me some advice, So ill try to give you some of my advice as a player of D2 for around 10 years.

First of all, WW barbs are probably one of the most gear dependent classes, they are also mainly a pvp class, I would avoid them as a first character.

For a first character I would strongly recommend going with a sorceress. One of the main reasons is, in D2 everyone plays with teleport, you're definitely going to want to do the same. As a sorc you will get teleport in your skill tree, where other classes need the runeword "enigma" to teleport, which is fairly expensive for a new player.

Out of cold, fire and lightning sorcs, I would suggest fire or lightning. As a fire sorc, your main skills will be fireball (single target, small AOE) and meteor (AOE). As a lightning your main skills will be lightning (signle) and chain lightning (AOE). Look at the skills I mentioned on your tree, on the bottom of the description it will say "This skill receives bonus' from:". The skills listed are your synergies, these will increase the damage of your main skills. After maxing your main skills you want to max your synergies. As a lightning you will also want to go for Lightning Mastery. No matter which element you go with make sure to pick up teleport and static field off of the lightning tree. Static field will quickly cut down any bosses HP down to 30% with in a few seconds.

My next set of advice would be to google sorceress breakpoints. Each class has separate breakpoints that need to be hit in order to actually gain the bonuses. Also, what you're going to want to do is use as much points as you can on vitality, on any class avoid wasting points on strength, only add strength to be able to use your gear. The only exceptions to not putting all your points into vitality is to go max block(dex), or if you are an ES sorc (energy) or if you are a melee going for more attack rating(dex).

Sorcs can deal good damage with pretty cheap gear and will give you good options as a new player. Yes the game is difficult for new players but you will get past that.

The cheapest gear I can recommend for a new sorc:
Wizard Spike Bone Knife or a Spirit (runeword) Sword (weapon)
Vipermagi Serpentskin Armor
+3 Fire Magic (blue writing) circlet, then use a socket quest to get 2 sockets
+3 Fire ammulet
Magefist gloves
Sandstorm trek boots
Get some 10% cast rings with resist or Stone of jordan if you can
Spirit Shield or Splendor Shield

That's what comes to my head for cheap starter gear.

Well, that was quite the wall of text, so I hope you actually feel like playing a sorc lol.

Tl;dr a sorc is probably your best bet. Although summon necros can be very good for soloing through the game, or surviving with minimal gear.
If you have anymore questions Pm me or post here and ill do what I can.

Thanks for your help, gonna start up a new Sorc.

"

Fire_Kid wrote:

Thanks for your help, gonna start up a new Sorc.

Cool, hope you enjoy it. I've always found them to be one of the most fun classes. And like MoonYu suggested check out his link to the arreat summit website. It will show you all the runeword recipes, cube recipes and a lot more.

I've always found zeal paladins to be the easiest starter class, and they don't need great gear to do good. But they can be pretty slow to start out.

As for the sorc, she's pretty much always powerful (I actually like cold the most) BUT...in hell difficulty you're going to run into monsters that are immune to your single damage type. Getting a strong mercenary will be a good idea if you run a sorc.

Summoner necro with curses can pretty much destroy the entire game. I'd say stay away from barbs, amazons and assassins until you're familiar with the game. Druids are awesome but require a bit of work to play.

Edit: Now that I think about it, sorc will be your best bet at first char because she's the easiest MF char. Once you get to hell you can start farming bosses/uniques and buy 3 piece tal rasha's set and start MFing like a champ.

What is wrong with early game? I always like it, new char, you get new levels and new gear every 5 minutes. No problems with progressing through the game

I was a druid once in d2 it was my first char... really love the feral wolf and lycanthropy. don't have a problem leveling and finding gear.