Advice for end game?

Hey all. I'm running a level 87 summoner druid. I've maxed Grizzley and

Heart of Wolverine. They're both 37 when wearing my max gear (not MF gear). I have a level 87 desert merc with

Holy Freeze wearing

Crown of Thieves,

Duriel's Shell, and Reaper's toll. The merc does damage and the bear tanks damage while I stand back and collect loot. My Mf gear is

Blade Of Ali Baba with 2

Ist,

Harlequin Crest, Wealth in a

Dusk Shroud,

Goldwrap

Belt, and Splendor in a

Troll Nest. Non magic find gear is

Islestrike

Axe, Spirit in a

Monarch,

Steel Carapace, and

Thundergod's Vigor.

The issue I'm having is mainly from drops. I run cows several times a day, diablo,

Baal, and meph runs also. I'll occasionally do countess runs just to get runes to upgrade. I'm just not getting any good drops/gear. I want to do

Uber Tristram, but I'm not getting any keys either.

What do you suggest I do to make the game fun again? I understand farming is a big part of the game, but after probably 1000 cow runs, I've never gotten a high rune or anything else worth bragging about. Any advice?

Try different buiilds maybe? In general you don't run

Baal for drops becasue he just very rarely drops anything useful besides essences. If you want to MF I think horker barb in Trav is best in the long run. You can also try cold sorc (she needs almost no gear and you can stack high MF) - she can clear

Mephisto in 30 seconds when a good map rolls.

Summon druid seems inefficient for farming in general, because of low damage output. By the time you clear 1000 cow runs with summon druid you would probably do 5000 or more with something like a javazon or even necro with

Corpse Explosion

louner wrote: 2 years ago

Try different buiilds maybe?

I get what you're saying. I was just hoping that I wouldn't have to start over to have better odds.

hav0c_2 wrote: 2 years ago

louner wrote: 2 years ago

Try different buiilds maybe?

I get what you're saying. I was just hoping that I wouldn't have to start over to have better odds.

I have different builds to farm different areas. Cold Sorc for

Mephisto and

Pindleskin, barb for

Travincal, FOH paladin for

Chaos Sanctuary and Pits, fire druid for Stony Tomb, Trapsin for

Baal, etc. That makes the game fresh for me, because when I'm bored with one char and I still want to play D2 , I switch to another and farm different things in a different style. And if you tailor your builds to specific areas you should be really efficient = more drops

sometimes good items can be hiding in plain sight.. ive probably vendored so many items that were worth

Ber+, but wasn't aware of their value at the time.

for example, sold some stupid +3 combat skills (paladin) / +100 life amulet for

Ber the other day. After 1000+ cow runs, maybe you're just not seeing the good items? i feel like that could be the case for a lot of people. can take a longgg time before players learn what things are worth, myself included. and best way to learn is to play different classes/builds

I’d also consider respec-ing. The Fury Druid will allow you to do stuff on p7 fairly easily or focus on either fire/Wind and do pit/tomb runs. The

Key to successful mfing is efficiency, and thus specialization. It takes my sorc 30 secs to do a LK run where it took my summon necro like 5 mins

When you are playing more builds, you will learn which items are good.
I started with a summon necro. That was a bad choice. Than i switched to a blizzard sorc because of

Teleport and running

Mephisto fast. That was the start of farming effectiv. Than when i had enough runes for my first Enigma. I made my first hammerdin (easy nila and cs runs, because he is tankier). Than i was going for torches, annis etc. The next was a java for cows.

Keep an eye on those topic.
forums/bunch-of-planned-korean-dclone-w ... 65495.html
forums/uber-diablo-occurrence-record-ke ... 99601.html

Ask for help here if you can't kill Dclone yourself.
forums/trusted-dclone-killers-t955189.html

Unidentified

Annihilus can be sold for

Lo or more on non-ladder.

I can help you kill DClone or hell-rush your new character if you need it.

so unid annis on non-ladder can be make your way faster. Within the last days there were some non ladder dclone walks. For example i got 4 unid annis easily and sold them for a

Lo each. So you can make your First

Ber really fast and we have a nice community. The People will help you to kill your dclone And dont think that High runes are only dropping from bosses. My First

Ber was not dropped by Nilathak, it dropped from a monster next to Nilathak. Another

Ber dropped from the monster near countess. So Areas with many monsters are good for you => more monsters => more kills => more drops and higher chance for high runes or something else. At the moment i have lots of

Tal Rasha armors and shakos. The First ones are hard to get and than it will go easier and easier

hav0c_2 wrote: 2 years ago

The issue I'm having is mainly from drops. I run cows several times a day, diablo,

Baal, and meph runs also. I'll occasionally do countess runs just to get runes to upgrade. I'm just not getting any good drops/gear. I want to do

Uber Tristram, but I'm not getting any keys either.

What do you suggest I do to make the game fun again? I understand farming is a big part of the game, but after probably 1000 cow runs, I've never gotten a high rune or anything else worth bragging about. Any advice?

Hey man, this might not be the advice you want to hear, but you may have cursed rune drops. It's okay, my rune drops are cursed, also. Best I've seen is 5 mals, an

Ohm, a

Lo and an

Ist or two and I've got a 92 pally I've spent at least 100 hours farming on and a sorc as well (though I tend to only use that for andy, countess and summoner runs). Sometimes, even if your clear speeds are decent and your MF percentage is strong, you will still not see the drops you are looking for. That's when you start to broaden what qualifies as a good drop so you can increase your odds of finding them. I don't have the full knowledge of all the bases to hunt (hard to remember everything) and so on, but if you're not singleplayer, I do know that most elite bases are going to be worthwhile to someone so you need to start watching for those, particularly ethereal superiors. It's quite easy to formulate a list in your head of what is useful to the char you play and your merc, it's more difficult to check pally shields for 40+ all res with no or 3+ sockets when you're not a pally, or recognize extremely strong sorc skill bonuses on a potential runeword staff, or other useful class specific things (trap

Claws and so forth) but being able to do that while hunting for the good drops for you will drastically increase your chances of finding something worth trading if, again, you aren't on singleplayer. Other minor things that may add up over time, though finding folks wanting said stuff may be tricky, are things like: 40% MF magic rings, +2 class or +3 tree magic amu's with health or all res, charms of all sizes (most ignore larges, but someone wants those +5 str/dex, min damage, or ele damage charms and will probably cough up a

Lem or better for a double perfect desired) with desired stats particularly smalls with all res or 7 MF, check each and every single rare ring amu

Belt glove boot and

Circlet types because even normal rares can be upgraded and there are real gg rolls that beat uniques, even garbage uniques could be worth something if they roll perfects so you want to check those, collecting full sets can also net some trading value if the sets are good (even for leveling), and lastly, even if it's maddening, collecting every gem drop to cube up can eventually net enough to trade for high runes or desired stuff.

If you are singleplayer, a lot of the previous stuff will not apply since you can't trade with anyone, but the gem advice is still good for the following reasons: You reroll Grand Charms dropped by

Baal (ilvl 99) with 3 pgems until it gives you a desired skill and secondary, you reroll rare diadems dropped in any 85+ zone with 6 pskulls until it's a GG piece, you level to 93 and then you can use pgems to craft, though you'll probably be using mostly rubies or amethysts.

Other than those points, the advice I have for endgame is get faster with your clears and continue all the time to familiarize yourself more with what is truly a rare/valuable piece because plenty of people vend stuff that's worth multiple HRs just because they don't realize the thing is actually OP AF and beats tons of unique/set options for that slot. Continue to try to farm keys, you may experience droughts of a hundred runs or more before you see a

Key drop and that's normal, if it takes you less than 8 total hours gametime to farm a 3x3 you're either lucky or REAL efficient. Working on how long any given

Key run takes you is the biggest part, so learn the area rules regarding entrance/exit and memorize which wp means which map for halls. You're also going to need to farm at least two respec tokens if you're serious about clearing ubers as a druid, because you will likely need to respec and then spec back to

Key farm/mf again. For the moment, I would prioritize getting above 90 on Chaos or

Baal runs so you aren't missing the extra survivability, then

Key farm for ubers. Once you've dropped your first torch, you'll have a better idea whether or not you want to level a different class for faster farms or a change of gameplay. Last advice is always expect every single rune drop to be an

El, because even if that isn't the case, tempering your expectations to always see runes on the low end helps with not getting frustrated when it happens and makes anything above a

Amn feel good.

I would second louner's advice about trying new builds, I know it feels like starting over in some sense but playing through the game is fun, certainly more fun than 1000 cow runs, and I think you can experiment and learn a lot more about the game as you go. I've got 9 or so chars through hell and I plan to do many more!

This is coming from someone who also hasn't had much luck with runes but I'm still having fun so no matter.

How fast are you able to clear the high council in

Travincal? If you don’t want to start a new build this might be one of the few places to try farming that might change your luck. It’s one of the best places to farm runes especially. It’s fastest with a

Find Item barb but good regardless.

This is just what works for me, but the best advice I can offer is this; play what you enjoy, farm the areas that you like to and can do so easily (in Hell), and don't give up.

I've grown incredibly sick of MF running bosses endlessly with sorcs telespamming the whole way (did hundreds, possibly thousands of hours of that in D2 legacy).

My main playstyle is conducive to rune hunting, since I like to destroy mass swarms of mobs, and I favor farming keys from count, summon, and nihil. I also usually stay in my two favorite acts A2 and A5, I like to do tomb runs and countess runs, etc. Do what favors your playstyle and what is fun to you yet still has a chance to drop good items. Play for fun, keep at it, and the loot will come.

Just wanted to add a little regarding keys: they can be incredibly frustrating to get to drop - sometimes 50-60+ runs with no

Key drop. It's all up to the RNG, but keep at it! They will come in time. As frustrating as it is sometimes, you have to remember that this is a game where everything is up to RNG and that you'll sometimes get nothing good for hours (especially if you're looking for something specific). However, you very well may get other items that are well-worth trading for runes, which you can in turn trade for items that you want. In the end, this is really the way of the game. You can even trade for

3x3 Keyset.

As others have said, just keep playing the areas you enjoy so that you don't get burned out. Rune drops will come faster from areas with higher monster density, and games with more players will help too. The No Drop chance per-monster is reduced at Players 3+, 5+, and 7+. A "split MF" game where everyone farms different areas can help a lot with this. There's a group here for just that:
forums/looking-for-non-ladder-sc-split- ... 89074.html

I'd be happy to help with Ubers, DClone, or hell rushing a character for you, too. Please feel free to add me if you need any help