Poll - What’s “your” experience level?

Hey y’all, where do you stack up in your player’s exp? No shaming, just want to see where we’re all at!

Love to hear more!

this is kinda fun ^^

Kinda missing the "I've been theorycrafting the entire game to hell and back for over 2 decades now" option.

Or alternatively just "I'm old ". ^^

Why would you level a smiter up to 93? The ubers are pretty casual at 85 or even lower

moot11 wrote: 2 years ago

Why would you level a smiter up to 93? The ubers are pretty casual at 85 or even lower

True, but if you run them often enough you're going to level. Mine's at lvl 91, not because I worked to get him there but because I also use him to run

Mephisto since he's almost immune to the Stygian Dolls.

I remember a time before respecs

My experience level is really weird.

I started playing the game as a pre-literate little kid with my parents. As in, I have memories of knowing what zone I was in by what monsters were in it because I couldn't read the zone labels. As such, I learned some of the basic mechanics of the game through pure intuition and memorization.

"First is red guy land. You gotta go underground and stab everything to get a red plus. When you come here the 3rd time, you can't burn the red guys. Next zone is running grey people. On the 3rd time, swingers can't be cold and stabbers can't be zapped. And you have to find the danger grey person with the zombies and fire

Arrows. Beat that, then you go to lots of skellies and some magic rocks, but the magic rocks are for later when you save the old guy. So, you gotta go underground and fight zap spitters. Then..." You get it.

This early playing style resulted in a lot of great useful knowledge, but also a bunch of absurdly dumb characters and misunderstandings. As I got older and figured out the whole reading thing, my characters got progressively less stupid, but it was more years of trial and error than actual comprehension of the game mechanics and rational theorycrafting. Over time, I did start actually learning how the game worked, and as such, I'd consider my experience to be high in terms of mechanics and the lived experience of playing different characters, builds, and whatnot.

However, due to playing D2 as a kid, I never played online until D2R. As such, I'm absolutely moronic when it comes to making good trades, understanding the value of items, knowing what weird items to keep because they're secretly worth 20

Ber and how to count ring points and etc. I learned the game's itemization purely through the SSF lens of "can I use it? No? Trash!" and trying to get away from that so I can actually have cool things has been tough. So, even though I feel like I understand the core game itself very well, I'm permanently poor because I suck at the economy side of the game, which is where you actually get Wealth.

I'm bad at identifying good rare rings/

Boots/gloves/etc as well.

Heh, Iove that Winterkill ^^

I played when it first came out when I was 11 or so, absolutely loved it but my parents were quite strict when it came to screen time so ultimately I never progressed very far and never understood the game at all, my characters were dreadful.

I've subsequently been making up for it since the launch of D2R, although I'd still consider myself a noob compared to many here. That being said, I've cleared the game with something like 12 different builds and have acquired some high runes (that's what I selected in the poll, no Enigma yet for me).

One thing that holds me back a bit is that I like to play the game as slightly unpopular builds, more than simply farm. I like starting new chars, and when I do, I also like to level as the build I'm trying, rather than always level in the same way and respec later. I think this has helped me enjoy and understand the game far more than if I always took the most efficient approach, but it also means that I have been accumulating Wealth far slower than if I simply went blizz sorc / hork barb / hammerdin and then farmed relentlessly with that char. I think I have 5 chars at level 90, but none higher than 92.

A-Z runes,Enigma and COH on decent sacred armors, Fury,BOTHD,Grief,Death,Oath and all other Unique swords, couple of Hrs dozens of unids etc.

I'm in kind of a weird place.

I used to do speed runs on Normal difficulty using a Sorceress or Paladin. I never had a world record, but I chased it hardcore.

I now had to get help to polish the skills of my Sorceress just so she could do Hell because I've forgotten basically everything and so much has changed. The less said about my Paladin the better.

Somewhat like poor Winterkill, I'm constantly almost broke because I don't think anything would be worth much if I personally wouldn't use it or due to giving decent stuff away.

This was a great thread idea by the way.

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

This was a great thread idea by the way.

Thx! Something I’ve been thinking about for a while and decided to put up after a few beers

Happy to hear the common stories of how we all played as kids.

-I wish I kept a bunch of the old rune word bases/rares I’ve chucked just because it wasn’t bis for the build I was playing at the time.
Now I basically check every White item that can auto-roll skills, every rare weapon that could be useful, nearly all blue/yellow “light” armours and almost everything in grey

I routinely held a #2 - #3 HC D2C paladin ladder spot for more than a month in 2001.

He was a hammerdin, back when hammerdins sucked (before the expansion).

However, I kept being invited to groups because I ran

Conviction for the sorcs clearing CS. These were high-end groups. People kept BNET accounts on their friends list and the groups often had top #30 players. We knew each other and ran together to climb the HC ladder.

I asked my first D2 question on a forum in 2000, wanting to know whether gemming a

Skull in a staff would leech when casting.



I first played a hacked version of D2. No music, no cinematics.
I downloaded the .zip of the game overnight, but had no room to unzip on my hard drive.
FTP'd it to my uncle overnight.
Drove to his place, unzipped and burned on a CD.
Copied the CD to my own hard drive and made a

Leap Attack barb.

pizza wrote: 1 year ago

FTP'd it to my uncle overnight.

I don't want to turn this into one of those threads, but you must have had one heck of a connection to upload anything like that in 2000. I realize you said no music or cinematics; that's still a big upload for the time. I remember those days... sucked for trying to download patches.

I'd say I'm doing ok with my online char

Frenzy barb. going through hell no prob.

but, my ssf chars are still having problems.
hammerdin is too slow, even though he's a beefy guy.
my javzon is very weak against immunes. I don't know, I think it would be boring to detail all this..

but i can play a mean bowzon.
really good at dodging(not as a skill, but as me running around from fights)
and shooting stuff.

pizza wrote: 1 year ago

I routinely held a #2 - #3 HC D2C paladin ladder spot for more than a month in 2001.

He was a hammerdin, back when hammerdins sucked (before the expansion).

However, I kept being invited to groups because I ran

Conviction for the sorcs clearing CS. These were high-end groups. People kept BNET accounts on their friends list and the groups often had top #30 players. We knew each other and ran together to climb the HC ladder.

I asked my first D2 question on a forum in 2000, wanting to know whether gemming a

Skull in a staff would leech when casting.



I first played a hacked version of D2. No music, no cinematics.
I downloaded the .zip of the game overnight, but had no room to unzip on my hard drive.
FTP'd it to my uncle overnight.
Drove to his place, unzipped and burned on a CD.
Copied the CD to my own hard drive and made a

Leap Attack barb.

No, no leech on anything that is not a physical attack or component of attack (spells / elemental damage...) (thanks Moot, read too fat, thought it was an actual question, my bad)

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

pizza wrote: 1 year ago

I asked my first D2 question on a forum in 2000, wanting to know whether gemming a

Skull in a staff would leech when casting.

No, no leech on anything that is not a physical attack or component of attack (spells / elemental damage...)

Only 23 years late with the answer!

No one can beat that level of Necromancy...