How I made $10,000 with D2 the summer it was released

Year 2000, me a 16 year old boy, had been waiting for Diablo 2 to be released every since playing the first Diablo.

I started with a Paladin and when I got to Act 2, the game was impossible! I could barely kill any monsters and had spec'd into the wrong skills and stats.

Next I started over with a Necromancer which was much easier and I got up to mid 80s levels fairly quickly. At some point I was accumulating items too fast and for different classes. I looked on Ebay and items were selling for quite a lot.

The most expensive item was the

Buriza-Do Kyanon which was selling for $1,200 and had multiple bids. It was advertised as being crazy fast for killing monsters. From what I researched, it could one shot almost any enemy.

I then began to sell excessive items that I wasn't using on Ebay. After farming each day I would post the items and guess a price based off other auctions. The items began to get bids and I started making some money!

I would arrange times to transfer in game after the auctions were ending. Since I was online playing most of the time anyways, it was easy to make the transfers and still grind to get loot.

At some point I decided I needed to upgrade my own gear and what better place then to reinvest then to buy from Ebay myself. I bid on a

Stone of Jordan and won that auction. The guy transferred in game, and he told me: hey, if you need any more of these SOJs I can get them for you.

I told him I would be interested in buying as many as SOJs as he had, and he said he could sell me up to 50! I was incredulous how he had 50 SOJs, but I negotiated a price of $3 per SOJ and started buying them this way. This guy became my SOJ dealer.

Only later I realized he either figured out how to dupe them, or knew someone who was.

I started buying the SOJs in mass, usually in quantities of 25 or 50. Then I'd create a game like "SOJ for trade" or such and see what people would offer. A lot of times they'd offer something that was going for $10 or $20 on Ebay. If I traded a SOJ for a $20 item, it was an immediate $17 profit for me. Eventually it became more profitable to make trades like this rather then playing.

However, I still wanted to play to get loot and my necro was horribly inefficient. I created an Amazon because it was the fastest for farming. Reinvesting my money I spent $200 on the Buriza as prices had come down on it a lot as more people found them. Once I got my Buriza I was unstoppable! I could farm

Chaos Sanctuary solo and clear it by one-shot nearly everything.

In the long run it was more profitable just to keep buying the SOJs from my dealer rather then play. But I enjoyed playing as well.

I played and traded for maybe 6 months and in that time I profited about $10,000. Maybe a year later the economy for D2 had already crashed and items were not worth that much. The following year I wrote about this experience for college applications as evidence of "entrepreneurship" lol

Funny enough I never played the expansion and when I started with D2R I didn't realize there were "runewords". I thought they were just another form of gems u socket, and didn't understand the big deal.

Also the second week of the game I found a

Stone of Jordan farming cows! I saw in the lobby someone had "Buriza 4 trade" or similar title. Went into the game and said I could offer an SOJ. The guy snap clicked accept the trade.

I only found out a little bit later I was the one getting ripped off Someone then explained to me that SOJ was incredibly rare, and only in the original D2 was Buriza worth anything. He said "Faith" was a better bow, and then I looked that up and started seeing what runes were all about.

Using the game for monetary benefits just doesn't bode well for me.

of course there are suckers out there that would because #time.

So meh. #NotForThatResellerLyfe

The

Buriza-Do Kyanon is still the best weapon!

*cries*

[Edit]
For anyone curious, it just happens to be my favorite weapon in the game.

I know it is far surpassed by other options, I just don't care. I've kept one in my stash since I found one.
[\Edit]

Money was probably needed to feed those flux capacitators required to get a buri in 2000. But i'd grabbed some WFs or GFs. If those Classic Peasants paid this much for a Buri, imagine how much you'd have gotten off some real weapons.

But i hope you've brought along some Razors on the ride, without those Buris were only half as fun


Edit:

WAIT i've just read you've never played the Expansion. Not only a Time Traveler, a full on Wizard you seem to be, getting as far as Farming a Buri without ever setting foot into

Harrogath. Was it the Ancients? Did they bully you? I've heard them being dicks if you try fighting them as anything but Baron (god how i would love to get that Title for LoD, Patriarch sounds so lame). Did you, at least, save up your Hellforge quest? For three easy runes?


Edit2:

Year 2000, me being a 12 yold brat. Shortly after i've got my first Victor's i discovered this awesome Loophole:

With the Victor's Silk equipped on my sorceress (what do you mean, that's to much Strength? You envy? Go get yourself an own Silk first before you dare talk to me), Tancred's Hat in Horadic Cube n that stash framed by one

Perfect Ruby on every side (or two? can't remember. stash needed to be full, so probably like more of 2

Perfect Gems of every type in Rainbow Pattern.... Yeah that's it...). then i swapped that Tankred's

Cap out for a leg and a tome and low and behold:

The Cow Level opened.

And there i've got my first

Cham. Because it was the fabled future Cow Level!

But i must have taken a wrong turn because it was 1.12 and i landed in No Ladder

Saddest High Rune drop of my life

Flippy wrote: 1 year ago

Money was probably needed to feed those flux capacitators required to get a buri in 2000. But i'd grabbed some WFs or GFs. If those Classic Peasants paid this much for a Buri, imagine how much you'd have gotten off some real weapons.

Out of curiosity, I just poked around and you can still find them listed for hundreds of dollars... for Open.

^_^

While the overall concept holds true and I know many a folk who did just that for "teenage profits", a good part of your story seems either highly misremembered or just made up, sorry to say.

Exceptional uniques didn't exist in classic, let alone the summer of release. So you couldn't have run around with or traded for a buriza while never having played the expansion. Same reason you won't find one in classic mode today.



Side note:
I do miss OG buriza..man that thing was glorious back before the pierce-cap nerf!

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

While the overall concept holds true and I know many a folk who did just that for "teenage profits", a good part of your story seems either highly misremembered or just made up, sorry to say.

Exceptional uniques didn't exist in classic, let alone the summer of release. So you couldn't have run around with or traded for a buriza while never having played the expansion. Same reason you won't find one in classic mode today.



Side note:
I do miss OG buriza..man that thing was glorious back before the pierce-cap nerf!

call out call out!

LOL.

Buriza with that piece (GA FTW) that zig zags for multiple hits was indeed...glorious.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

While the overall concept holds true and I know many a folk who did just that for "teenage profits", a good part of your story seems either highly misremembered or just made up, sorry to say.

Exceptional uniques didn't exist in classic, let alone the summer of release. So you couldn't have run around with or traded for a buriza while never having played the expansion. Same reason you won't find one in classic mode today.



Side note:
I do miss OG buriza..man that thing was glorious back before the pierce-cap nerf!

Really interesting how it could possibly be, because I’m 100% sure it was the Buriza. It’s one of those details that was burned into my Memory after spending $200 for it.

I’m sure I never played the expansion too because I never touched the runes. The first couple days of D2R I didn’t get why all the lobbies were rune trades.

I remember checking prices for uniques when LOD was released and Buriza was going for a few dollars at that point.

Wondering could the original Buriza have been an Elite rather then Exceptional weapon and then patched later?

Love hearing tales like this, honestly could care less what the exact "true" story is.

Online gaming (and the internet generally) used to be such a wild west sometimes I miss the shenanigans. There's still fun to be had but it's definitely more of a padded room these days.

rampage101 wrote: 1 year ago

Wondering could the original Buriza have been an Elite rather then Exceptional weapon and then patched later?

Elite uniques also didn't exist in classic.

Odds are, your memory is playing tricks on you and you either remember the buri from someone/somewhere else or you did play expansion after all.

Mind you, most of the truly worthwhile runewords weren't introduced with lord of destruction but were added in a later patch (1.1.0 to be exact). So if you did play early expansion (and who wouldn't have?! the game was baller AF!) but stopped with 1.1.0 (which a lot of folks did), you would've had a timeslot where you could've found/used a Buriza but still largely (if at all) didn't bother with rune words. To some extent, that holds true even after 1.1.0 if you didn't play ladder.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

rampage101 wrote: 1 year ago

Wondering could the original Buriza have been an Elite rather then Exceptional weapon and then patched later?

Elite uniques also didn't exist in classic.

How could they when Elite Items themselves weren't present

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Mind you, most of the truly worthwhile runewords weren't introduced with lord of Destruction but were added in a later patch (1.1.0 to be exact).

Yeah, the set of original rune words weren't what anyone would call OP (point being, it wouldn't be too surprising if someone didn't remember them at all from back then). Some were (and still are) useful, but yeah, nothing like the ones that came after.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 year ago

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Mind you, most of the truly worthwhile runewords weren't introduced with lord of Destruction but were added in a later patch (1.1.0 to be exact).

Yeah, the set of original rune words weren't what anyone would call OP (point being, it wouldn't be too surprising if someone didn't remember them at all from back then). Some were (and still are) useful, but yeah, nothing like the ones that came after.

Lionheart, Silence, Wealth and Ancient's Pledge (+Rhyme i think... For Shields and with MF?), everything else might aswell not have existed in my books because i can't name even one more. I have vague memories of some runeword that went into a helmet or armor and gave quite a big amount of +all Res but i my mind could also play tricks on me about that.

And "the ones that came after" could easily be divided in Ladder and No-Ladder. While BotD in 1.10 sure was quite an upgrade over most (if not all) Melee Weapons, this was still introduced with some kind of balancing in mind (Needing a

Zod etc...) or Enigma with it's

Jah and

Ber (which had to be found, because upgrading those was a ladder thing).

Ladder 2 is where they've probably said: "Ah fuck it, Grief + Fortitude are looking good, time to ship them" while Infinity was catering to Casters and non Phys Damage people (and Stuff like Spirit + Insight being as cheap and early achievable as they are).

Almost as if Blizz wanted to give people a good reason to play ladder

Flippy wrote: 1 year ago

I have vague memories of some runeword that went into a helmet or armor and gave quite a big amount of +all Res but i my mind could also play tricks on me about that.

That's Smoke you're thinking of.

Flippy wrote: 1 year ago

Lionheart, Silence, Wealth and Ancient's Pledge (+Rhyme i think... For Shields and with MF?), everything else might aswell not have existed in my books because i can't name even one more

There was the Fury

Balrog Blade too, it was all the rage back in 1.09. Along the bugged ethereal swords. I don't remember well now but both items could be related, I dunno I never knew how to make one. But I saw many of them, and in my memory they had

Ith as display name.

I spent hours upon hours dueling in public games with my top of the line barbarian with such swords. It's true that Buriza was very good and valued in PVP.

Guided Arrow just melted players several screens away.

Edit:
Now I'm beginning to doubt myself because I remembered that

The Grandfather was (also?) the mother of all swords at the time. So maybe Fury was a bit later than that, I'm not sure anymore. Def. remember bugged swords though.

I played very similarly 20 years ago. Was really into trading and did so on USEast/West and Asia 1-3. I never once fought monsters and leveraged my trading to boost the power of a pvp barb.

Today I play extremely differently. I do trade on this website but I love magic finding and actually killing monsters. I seldom pvp and love theory crafting. Funny how you grow as a gamer and what you do for fun shifts.