My journey to level 90 with four stash tabs

Since everyone likes to complain that premium tabs are pay-to-win, I figured I'd try out just how hard the game is without them. Traditionally circumventing pay-to-win elements through gameplay takes hundreds of hours, if it's possible at all. My goal is to reach level 90 and unlock a substantial portion of the atlas using only four normal-sized stash tabs.

Rules:

• I will play in the SSF legacy league to begin with.
• I reserve the right to move to non-SSF legacy league should my friends wish to play with me. I will stay self-found even if that happens.
• I've marked the first four stash tabs for use by this character.
• Because I like hoarding useless junk in standard, I'm allowed to put uniques, overflowing currency and divination cards in the other tabs. Those items will be forever inaccessible for this character.

I will try to post at least one update for every day that I play. I won't necessarily play every day if I'm otherwise occupied.

The character I have planned for this is a bow-wielding duelist. I will post a link to the planned tree a bit later. Due to SSF I haven't planned on having any specific uniques; I will use whatever items I may find while playing. I'm not a speedrunner so don't expect me to break any records.

Edit: Here's my planned tree for level 90.

With the pleasantries out of the way, let us proceed to today's update. I won't bore you with the details of the early game but here are some highlights.

Hillock dropped a bow for me so I took that into use and discarded the sword I had been given at the beginning of the game. In the mud flats I found an ice shot gem to go with the bow.

Found my first rare bow in the Climb. Decoy totem made Brutus an easy kill at level 11.

Found my first unique item somewhere in the Ship Graveyard. Forgot if it was from Stranglecharm or Fairgraves. Unfortunately it was a claw weapon (Wildslash, Awl) so not useful for me.

Merveil killed at level 14 or so (forgot to make a note). She dropped Fairgraves' Tricorne. Nice! Picked Rain of Arrows as the quest reward to use as AoE skill.

I reached the act 2 town at 1 hour 20 minutes /played. Visited Nessa to buy Barrage, which is to be the main single-target skill of this build, as well as Siege Ballista.

Found my first chaos orb in the Crossroads.

Found my first orb of fusing in the Western Forest.

At level 19 I got my life and mana leech going with the Vitality Void cluster. It's barely noticeable for now.

I was a bit ahead of the leveling curve at this point so I skipped a few areas. Act 2 was completed at level 22 and 2 hours 14 minutes /played.

Impressive! But if you're doing it everyday why not stream?

I've never streamed anything before. I dunno if I'd make for an interesting streamer, as I have some trouble talking alone to no one in particular. I also can't stick to any kind of schedule. But if there's interest in watching me play, maybe I'll try it.

Good Luck to you sir (:

me and my friend playing this game using only 4 stash tabs.(we don't have credit cards)
it's really hard but we enjoy this game and we can't quit playing because of that reason.
so we used the extra free character tabs to hold/put other trash/junk items. we play SSF legacy league hoping we get good currencies not trash/junk items to full our stash tabs. hehe
God Bless ^_^

Upon venturing into act 3 I realized that leaguestones have a level limit and some of those were at hand. So I spent a bit of time using up the earliest leaguestones. Besides having to repeat some areas to avoid going over the level limit my progress was also slowed by wanting to make the most of the leaguestones. Nemesis in particular required practically full clears.

Breach was a lot of fun; I skipped breach league so it was all new to me. Rampage was kinda meh alone but cool in combination with things that spawn lots of enemies such as breaches or strongboxes.

A Reverberation Rod dropped in the Marketplace from some random enemy.

Finding a prophecy leaguestone caused a bit of a chuckle. "Next area will contain a silver coin." Yeah, I have seven of those already.

I noticed that essence and domination leaguestones state that the area will contain "up to 1" essence or shrine. I wonder if that means they can contain zero.

When I got to Lunaris Temple I had caught up with the leaguestones sufficiently and could pick up the pace again.

Piety dropped Bated Breath.

My first Vaal Orb dropped in Sceptre of God.

Dominus fight was uneventful. On normal there isn't even need to roll a staunching flask for it. He went down at level 34 and 5 hours 25 minutes /played.

Somewhere along the way I organized my stash a bit. Currency was left in tab 1, vendor recipe items in tab 2 (mostly hammers thanks to GGG's default filter) and jewelry and other miscellaneous items in tab 3. So far there's plenty of room.

I should start paying attention to sockets sometime soon. At the moment I only have 2-links.

I pressed onward to act 4. Using a beyond leaguestone on Dried Lake gave me a good scare when I got three rares and two beyond packs at the same time very close to the start. I briefly considered giving up and resetting the instance, but decided to face the challenge and kill the enemies.

In Mines level 2 I found my first Vaal area. It dropped a Vaal Cyclone gem, which sadly is useless for my build.

Upon entering Kaom's Stronghold I decided to do my first crafting. I had found a 5-socket 3-link field lamellar and a 4-socket decurve bow. I figured it would be a waste to use alchemies this early on and I didn't have any good essences, but some transmutations, alterations and augmentations gave decent mods. The bow especially turned out quite nicely. The new weapon, third support and general increase in available sockets gave me an 80% increase in dps, although some defensive upgrades soon reduced it by 10%.

My damage was getting high enough for leech to do its job too. I still needed to sometimes use flasks, but not so much as before.

In Crystal Veins a rare artisan's strongbox dropped me my first GCP.

In Grand Arena I completed my first full stack of orbs of alchemy.

Shavronne dropped me a Growing Agony. Not very useful for my build.

Malachai fell rather easily. Act 4 and the normal difficulty was completed at level 42, with 8 hours 3 minutes /played. At this point I had 1625 life and my barrage had 516 tooltip DPS. That seems to be calculated for a single arrow, so actual DPS is about 2k (assuming all arrows hit the target).

So far I'm completely deathless, although there has been a few close calls.




Next up is likely normal labyrinth.

Is it really that hard to play the game with only 4 Stash Tabs?

I got to 90 with just the 4 and had no problems at all. Not to mention 2 other chars at 87-88 with the max stashes.

"

dfajardo1 wrote:

Is it really that hard to play the game with only 4 Stash Tabs?

That's what I want to find out. All of the pay-to-win complainers certainly make it sound hard.

"

dfajardo1 wrote:

I got to 90 with just the 4 and had no problems at all. Not to mention 2 other chars at 87-88 with the max stashes.

There isn't such a thing as max stash tabs. I have 52. Some people have 300+.

Haven't played Barrage yet (so many skills, so little lifetime to try them all). Is it a good bow skill? Is it better than Frostblades? I got it early and thought "haven't tried a cold build in years" so my duelist will be a cold melee build (at least for now).