Running out of money with Barbarian...

I finally got my

Frenzy Barb geared just enough to actually be able to run in Hell. He's now up to 73. I started Hell at level 62, and could not even do much of anything, so went back to NM and farmed a bit until I got to 66, at which point I could wear

Tal Rasha's Crest, then I finally got my first

Lem rune on a different char (local PC) after farming

The Countess like 20 times. I did clone it to make Lawbringer and Voice of Reason. I had no other source of Cannot be Frozen, so VoR was a big upgrade if for nothing more than CbF.

Lawbringer was a huge upgrade and big help and is what turned the tide to making the character actually playable. I've got Lawbringer in a

Legend Sword, and VoR in a Zewihander. I killed Andriel and figured it would be good to farm her and the Pits for a while, so I leveled from 69 to 73 doing that. BUT, I've actually been losing money on those runs and am now basically to a point where I'm about to entirely run out of all money across all my chars. The repair costs are insane.

I think I recognize one mistake I made. I made Lawbringer in a Superior

Legend Sword with 10% increased damage. Seemed like a good idea, but maybe that's what's driving the repair costs to insane levels. It seems that now just a single Pit run costs me about $250,000 in repairs, that's killing everything. Now I'm going to move on to

Radament, but I'm worried I won't be able to actually fund progressing the character. Oh, also I've stopped using a merc because I can't afford the resurrection costs when they do stupid things to get themselves killed.

Any advice?

Runewords in superior armors/weapons tend to get insane repair cost.
You can avoid repairing at

Charsi and use

Recipe: Fully Repaired and Recharged Weapon instead.

i got 10 million gold if you want, will create a private game with a pass and dump it all in

Rogue Encampment

edit - done and pm'ed, glhf

Yeah, so I just got to level 2 of the sewers and got the way point there, and just getting to the level 2 waypoint and going back to town cost $150,000 in repairs. I picked up everything of value along the way and that only sold for about $100,000, so now I'm down to only $30,000 across all my accounts. So obviously this char cannot afford to keep going. What's going on here?

Zelym wrote: 3 years ago

Runewords in superior armors/weapons tend to get insane repair cost.
You can avoid repairing at

Charsi and use

Recipe: Fully Repaired and Recharged Weapon instead.

That could help, but it seems to be a losing proposition as I'd eventually run out of Orts. Is it really just the Superior sword? I guess I need to just remake Lawbringer in a non-Superior sword. I can do that without too much Grief since this in a local character. I can just copy stuff around to not really lose much of anything. I'll try that and see how it goes. (I think I have a backup of a char with the

Lem on it).

Yes, using a non-superior sword as base will keep repair cost much lower.

Phase Blade are also nice since they are indestructible.

Well, now I don't have a

Legend Sword on hand. Is there a way to edit the files to just remove the Superior attribute? If not I'll just stop using it until I can find a

Legend Sword to replace it with. I think I've sold several of them, so shouldn't take too long, but Lawbringer is a huge help in Act 2, so hopefully wont' take too long. Guess I'll use

The Vile Husk in the meantime...

Yeah, I just haven't found any Phase blades yet. I like the

Legend Sword because its very fast, has long reach, and is guaranteed 3 sockets. But yeah, when I can get Phase Blades I will certainly attempt to use them (if right number of sockets can be obtained). They are kind of essential for Grief since Grief isn't Indestructible. However, I have found an Ethereal Superior 5 socket

Colossus Blade that I'll probably put Death in when I can make it. It's got base 105 max 1 handed damage. Its only fast, but in the off hand it won't matter.

I use Grief PB + Lawbringer PB. The real issue is repair cost of Fortitude armor (more than 1 000 000 gold). So only option is to use the recipe with

Ral rune to repair it.

I'll recommend to make both runewords in phase blades. No repair issues at all.

NitroFossa wrote: 3 years ago

I use Grief PB + Lawbringer PB. The real issue is repair cost of Fortitude armor (more than 1 000 000 gold). So only option is to use the recipe with

Ral rune to repair it.

I'll recommend to make both runewords in phase blades. No repair issues at all.

Wow, I had no idea armor repairs would cost so much. I guess they need repair less than weapons though, but still.

Frenzy barbs need lots of repairs.

Yeah, that's the goal, its just a matter of finding 5 socket PBs solo. I guess 3 sockets may not be too hard, since I should be able to repair a crude/cracked one.

Don’t kill the messenger, but maybe you could farm with a different character class, and keep the barb for fun???

dilbert383 wrote: 3 years ago

Don’t kill the messenger, but maybe you could farm with a different character class, and keep the barb for fun???

Yeah, but right now this is my fastest killer in Hell. My Sorc doesn't do Hell because without Infinity the immunities are just too difficult to deal with. I have Nerco Bonemancer, in Act 4 Hell, but he kills kinda slow, so not really great for farming. I have a Zealot in Act 1 Hell, but again, kinda slow at killing, though he's not too bad.

Anyway, I switched to

The Vile Husk and did a run on Andriel and the repair costs were only $2,000, so not bad at all. But, it was definitely much more difficult without Lawbringer. I'm sure the Pits will be more difficult still. The problem with the Pits is I'm level 73 with 10 points in

Howl, so

Howl still doesn't work in the Pits, and without Lawbringer I need

Howl even more. We'll I'll make it work. I'll find another

Legend Sword soon enough and just make a new Lawbringer. Lessons learned, NEVER use Superior weapons (unless Indestructible).

Don’t make a javazon…

It’s like the methamphetamine of farming.

Ral runes

rgp151 wrote: 3 years ago

dilbert383 wrote: 3 years ago

Don’t kill the messenger, but maybe you could farm with a different character class, and keep the barb for fun???

Yeah, but right now this is my fastest killer in Hell. My Sorc doesn't do Hell because without Infinity the immunities are just too difficult to deal with. I have Nerco Bonemancer, in Act 4 Hell, but he kills kinda slow, so not really great for farming. I have a Zealot in Act 1 Hell, but again, kinda slow at killing, though he's not too bad.

Anyway, I switched to

The Vile Husk and did a run on Andriel and the repair costs were only $2,000, so not bad at all. But, it was definitely much more difficult without Lawbringer. I'm sure the Pits will be more difficult still. The problem with the Pits is I'm level 73 with 10 points in

Howl, so

Howl still doesn't work in the Pits, and without Lawbringer I need

Howl even more. We'll I'll make it work. I'll find another

Legend Sword soon enough and just make a new Lawbringer. Lessons learned, NEVER use Superior weapons (unless Indestructible).

I can give you plain 3 OS

Phase Blade,so you don't need to worry about the repair cost anymore.If you don't have runes I give you Lawbringer.

Manowar wrote: 3 years ago

rgp151 wrote: 3 years ago

dilbert383 wrote: 3 years ago

Don’t kill the messenger, but maybe you could farm with a different character class, and keep the barb for fun???

Yeah, but right now this is my fastest killer in Hell. My Sorc doesn't do Hell because without Infinity the immunities are just too difficult to deal with. I have Nerco Bonemancer, in Act 4 Hell, but he kills kinda slow, so not really great for farming. I have a Zealot in Act 1 Hell, but again, kinda slow at killing, though he's not too bad.

Anyway, I switched to

The Vile Husk and did a run on Andriel and the repair costs were only $2,000, so not bad at all. But, it was definitely much more difficult without Lawbringer. I'm sure the Pits will be more difficult still. The problem with the Pits is I'm level 73 with 10 points in

Howl, so

Howl still doesn't work in the Pits, and without Lawbringer I need

Howl even more. We'll I'll make it work. I'll find another

Legend Sword soon enough and just make a new Lawbringer. Lessons learned, NEVER use Superior weapons (unless Indestructible).

I can give you plain 3 OS

Phase Blade,so you don't need to worry about the repair cost anymore. If you don't have runes I give you Lawbringer.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm playing solo with all self-found stuff. This is a local character, so I could just download everything for that matter if I wanted to :p Anyway, I made a new Lawbringer, so its going good now. I just need to find something with Cannot be Frozen so I can stop using Voice of Reason :p

rgp151 wrote: 3 years ago

dilbert383 wrote: 3 years ago

Don’t kill the messenger, but maybe you could farm with a different character class, and keep the barb for fun???

Yeah, but right now this is my fastest killer in Hell. My Sorc doesn't do Hell because without Infinity the immunities are just too difficult to deal with. I have Nerco Bonemancer, in Act 4 Hell, but he kills kinda slow, so not really great for farming. I have a Zealot in Act 1 Hell, but again, kinda slow at killing, though he's not too bad.

Anyway, I switched to

The Vile Husk and did a run on Andriel and the repair costs were only $2,000, so not bad at all. But, it was definitely much more difficult without Lawbringer. I'm sure the Pits will be more difficult still. The problem with the Pits is I'm level 73 with 10 points in

Howl, so

Howl still doesn't work in the Pits, and without Lawbringer I need

Howl even more. We'll I'll make it work. I'll find another

Legend Sword soon enough and just make a new Lawbringer. Lessons learned, NEVER use Superior weapons (unless Indestructible).

You don't need Infinity to survive in hell. Just do a hybrid sorc. (Lightning/Ice or Fire/Ice). You can farm pretty much any area just gotta beware of archers and ranged monsters.

just gotta ask, did you put a value point in

Find Item? It can essentially double your drops for you

Why not just pop it in cube with

Ort rune ? Instant repair.

Seamus McNugget wrote: 3 years ago

just gotta ask, did you put a value point in

Find Item? It can essentially double your drops for you

No, I haven't. Not sure if I will or not, but if I do it would be after I max

Double Swing.

But I'm actually pretty well set now, considering this is self-found (but twinked) single player.

My Sorceress finally found

Duriel's Shell, which I upped. Then I decided to finally roll up all my runes and was able to make Death. This was really like several years worth of runes I had collected from D2 and been keeping using Mule. This is the highest Rune Word I ever made and its made a huge difference.

When I found that

Eth 5 socket

Colossus Blade in The Pit I knew I wanted to put Death in it. When I got

Duriel's Shell then I could use a better weapon than Voice of Reason, but figured I wouldn't be able to until I did ton more farming and got to the Hell Forge, but I also had tons of lower runes and gems around, so I did the math and figured I could get to

Vex so I did it and it was worth it. The sword is doing 158-415 1H damage, which is a heck of an upgrade from a Voice of Reason Zewihander :p And I also found another

Legend Sword I was able to re-make Lawbringer in, so now I've got Lawbringer in the main hand (faster) with Death in the off-hand. I assume that's the best way to do it.

I've got

Laying of Hands,

Goblin Toe,

String of Ears and

Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest. I'm using a crafted

Blood Ring, a crafted Coral Ring, and a Crafted Prismatic Amulet. So right now my resists are ok, all over 50%, with 75% CB and decent Deadly Strike. I could use more Life Leach, since Death has Mana Leach, and more resists, but all in all no real complaints. I've also got War Travelers for farming.

I was barely able to step outside of camp when I came into Hell with this char. The first turning point was making Lawbringer, but I foolishly made it in a Superior sword so that screwed me, but now that I've got that straightened out, he's doing good. I'm in Act 3 now, about to hit Trav.

I'm honestly not sure I'll be able to really do much more upgrading. I doubt I'll find the runes for much else. I'd like to get Fortitude, but who knows if I'll get a

Lo. I've got armors for it. My plan was to get Faith for my Act 1 marc, but again, I doubt I'll get the runes for it. Still, I like using the Acts 1 merc. I've got the

Fire Arrow one, with

Witchwild String and

Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest, so between her shooting magic/fire

Arrows and the occasional

Amplify Damage,

Glacial Spike from Death, and Lawbringer, I haven't had any issues with immunities. I've got no points in Beserk, I just power through with

Double Swing on the Left and

Frenzy on the Right and let Amp Damage and

Decrepify do their thing.

I honestly don't know why more people don't use the Act 1 merc for Barbarians. I think they rock, and the weapon choices are great for them. Wrath, Brand and Faith are all killer for Barbarians, better than the Act 2 merc options IMO.

Anyway, thanks for the help. Yeah, getting rid of that Superior Lawbringer was the ticket and now that I've an indestructible weapon, my repair costs are well under control.

Just killed my first true physical immune in Hell. This was a Grotesque Unique with Stone Skin, who, even after the application of

Decrepify it remained Immune to Physical. I just kept on him with

Frenzy however, and spammed

Howl from time to time to keep everyone else away, and my merc focused him. I guess between the merc and bit of elemental damage I was doing, it got him down. Again, I'm not spec'ed into Berzerk. Not worth the 3 skill points IMO. This kinda proved that to myself. I think between

Howl and other means of dealing with physical immunity, Berzerk isn't worth it for a

Frenzy Barb.