My hardcore exp was last season partway through after I got everything I wanted and more in softcore and decided To make a hardcore barb so I could feel something again. And boy I did feel. He never messed with Leap Attack or warcry just Double Swing and then ww. I did it the hard way, out of ignorance, which I later realized when starting this season with a barb who used the aforementioned skills which made it 10x easier and faster… He had many close calls slowly creeping through normal and nightmare. The goal was to get beefed up running nightmare trav before running constant pits with item find but after a close call with that fire enchanted Council Member, I started running Mephisto with no Teleport…. Seems like suicide looking back, but I memorized the damage that the Stygian dolls did at Death (fyi they can deadly strike and do double damage, quite frequently) and walked meph until dropping the unique Barbed Club, flesh render or something which rocks deadly stroke and crushing blow. That, along with my Rattlecage and an Andy’s Helm was enough to get to hell pits where I found Death Cleaver and made Oath. Bought a Stormshield and crept to hell trav, respeced to Berserk and did that before affording Grief and eventually getting completely geared up after around a month. The hardcore trading market was terrible. I got extremely lucky on some drops and got only a fraction of the price you’d get on softcore. It wasn’t until I scored a martial arts charm with 38 life and created a pretty killer sorc Caster Amulet. The first of which sold for BerVex and the latter for JahLo. Sometimes I had to wait days to weeks for a trade to happen. Trading runes was painful. You could seriously look for Jah runes and only have like 7 different offerings, all of them inflated. I probably got to the party too late, no one really responded to supply and demand, having probably moved on to other games and I think d4 probably swept a bunch away also. For trade Pretty much you had to let yourself get ripped off to get what you wanted.. public games were almost non existent. Everyone was paranoid and for good reason. Even during trade name games I’d get hostiled. I was only able to make one in game trade without external platform happen, one which ended very fortuitously for me, when I was seeking sigons relatively early and scored a Bloodletter in the process.
The overall experience was, higher intensity, greater stakes and rewards but lonely at the top of the mountain. I have some pretty rad gear from just a single season, but damn did I grind.
I’m the end, my level 95 barb was retired when summer came into full swing and I finally started going outside again. He is my highest level character ever. I attribute that not only grinding, but also just not dying, something I don’t pay as much attention to in sc
wrathwinger wrote: 3 years ago
Who thinks there should be a 10 second timer so you cant save and exit before Death? Kind of like d3 has?
I do. What kind of hardcore is it if you can just close the game at the slightest sign of danger? Or have a cheating tool to do that for you...
Speaking of D3, I oppose all kinds of "cheat Death" mechanics. Being able to run away to the cleared part of the map and then back to town to wait for the "cheat Death" skill cooldown expire is no longer hardcore.
And yes, I am aware of lags. But I can honestly say that most of my HC deaths were caused by my stupidity and overconfidence, not by technical issues.
wrathwinger wrote: 3 years ago
Who thinks there should be a 10 second timer so you cant save and exit before Death? Kind of like d3 has?
I do. What kind of hardcore is it if you can just close the game at the slightest sign of danger? Or have a cheating tool to do that for you...
No. Just, please no. Whatever exists in D3 can literally just stay in D3 and not come any closer to D2! xd
Anyway... What I wanted to say? Oh yeah, this still only works for offline tho. Also no cheating tool is needed, you can just manually backup your character after each session for example, and if you die well whoopity-doo just pull the backup back if you really want to do that (but that kinda beats the purpose of HC in the first place). Although bs deaths still happen even on single player where everything is suppose to be "frozen" when exiting -- I think I saw some short video recently about that. Here:
Ma neeeeeeema veeeeeeeze! xd
Someone much smarter than me already said once: "The real value of something doesn't reflect in a number of how much a seller can ask for it, but on how much a buyer is willing to pay."
My first HC experience can be called a successful experiment. My friend's skellymancer and my zealer, while untwinked, had little trouble getting through all three difficulties. I had a good run alternating between the Pit, The Countess and later some Terror zones until finally succumbing to those rotund, ball lightning-spewing demons in TZ prison. Conviction is a hell of an aura to contend with when you're a melee character. Those guides don't tell you to overcap resists for nothing. Still, by the time of his untimely demise my pally had recouped the effort spent leveling him many times over, not to mention the most valuable item on him was a modest Crescent Moon PB: I kinda had a feeling he'd kick the bucket sooner or later and deliberately kept him in third-rate equip, may the poor bastard forgive me. For what it's worth, his deeds will indeed be remembered, and the stuff he found will be put to good use.
The highlight of his short-lived but intense career was venturing into the Pit on his own for the first time. I felt naked without an army of skellies backing me up and considered turning back multiple times, but boy am I glad I didn't, for there was a present waiting for me on the second level.
That was my first high rune since a Zod that I found in the legacy game many years ago, so it felt quite rewarding. To top it off, The Countess I visited immediately afterwards graced me with an Um. She must've appreciated how hard it was for me to reach her. Much later she would give me an Ohm too. Never has a woman been so generous with me.
The bottom line - a Death that drove home a useful lesson and enough plunder to equip two-three new characters. Mission accomplished, I'd say.
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