Heirlooms – Low level / Fresh ladder / New player - Gear insight

I'm looking at writing more for personal reasons, I believe it to be a good habit personally and one I've not really respected much since school. I figure why not better a habit by sharing in a way that I enjoy. I'll touch on tips that help improve ladder resets for people along with single player friendly adventures. So to start it off I'll go over some various armor and weapons that I like to use early on.

- Easing the early game pain -

Heirloom items are in essence handed down gear for new class alts. Term I know more-so from world of warcraft where Heirloom gear is a jumpstart boost to help you through the game before the need game.

In almost every case I'll be starting out with a

Holy Fire based paladin using a shop rolled 3 open socket

Short Bow. There’s pluses and minuses to this, I also take a sorc through act 1 alongside my pally once the act has been cleared though. (Self-rushing if anyone had read my previous post.) I’ll go into detail on another post, but for now this is meant to be universal gearing for my classes while at a lower level.

As I level I attempt to kit it with 3 chipped gems.

Chipped Topaz >

Chipped Ruby /

Chipped Emerald >

Chipped Sapphire (Mainly for the slow sometimes I put 1)

This ladder I managed to get a

Chipped Emerald ->

Chipped Sapphire ->

Chipped Emerald, not my ideal but it worked, and this is a baseline for my personal preference. If you plan to use one for

Andariel you can opt for

Ruby.

My first Heirloom has been completed! I follow this format for flawed (level 5) and base named Gems (level 12) and that's when I tend to translate off these, holding them on an alt until I'm ready to level another. As I progress through the game and difficulty I'll remake these into long bows with 4-6 open sockets making for some insane low level damage on new characters. I just dislike having to chug mana pots to be effective early on.

An example of this I saw on reddit would be

Spoiler

Another common thing others do is make use of

Fulminating Potion and

Strangling Gas Potion and later variants for their AOE capabilities. These can be sold as singles if manually placed into your inventory and sold to a vendor to "repair" the stacks back to 12.

The next best part of making these bows is your Act I mercenary can use the lesser versions as you out level them adding up some nice DPS between the two of you. Later it turns into set items and various uniques more than statless socketed items. That said, getting 2 open socket

Quilted Armor and/or 2 open socket

Skull Cap allow for more HP with

Chipped Ruby or MF with

Chipped Topaz, both great options depending on class, gamemode, and players difficulty.

I tend to try and get 100% MF asap after a starter weapon most normal set and uniques aren’t going to be super amazing hell items, but they can go a long way when used correctly or used lazily, looking at you full sigon’s users.

The first 100% MF is the most impactful and if you’re playing offline players 3 is the best Ground for speedy clears and increased drops. 0% MF on players 1 is drastically different from 100% MF on players 3. Keep your +players on odd numbers, with the exception of 8 if you’re trying to maximize your experience. This is because players added is misleading and players 2 offers only experience benefits, loot benefits seem to be on odds 3/5/7 where 1 and 2 are the same, 3 and 4 also the same, and so on. So being on an even number is almost purely for experience boosts IMO.

Luckily for me I added to a post about my personal heirloom combo I use universally on any new class I make.

- Set-up - Get it? setup, SETup?

I tend to use a combo of 3p angelic and 3p sigons, once I acquire them.

Angelic Halo

Angelic Mantle

Angelic Wings

Sigon's Gage

Sigon's Sabot

Sigon's Wrap

The Angelic gives you:
+20 HP/Ring
+6 HP regen/Ring
AR/Ring (with 2 pieces, if needed)
+50 MF/Ring (with 3 pieces)

20% damage taken goes to mana on ammy
+75 HP on the ammy (with 2 pieces)
+1 all on the ammy (with 3 pieces)

3 DR on chest
+50 fire resist (with 3 pieces) (oops it’s +50% for anyone who read my original post.)

The Sigon's give you: +50 MF that's all! (no, but seriously it's the main reason I use it)
+10 Strength on gloves
+30 IAS on gloves (with 2 piece)

+20 life on the

Belt
+20 fire resist on the

Belt

+20 run/walk on

Boots
+40 cold resist on

Boots
+50 AR on

Boots (with 2 pieces)
+50 MF on

Boots (with 3 piece)

The

Key things you get is +150 MF, 135 HP (by level 12 BTW which is for most classes like 40+ vitality), +1 all, +10 strength, +30 IAS (good on some "casters" like trapsin), Tons of AR, some fire & cold resist and some faster run/walk.

The 6 listed items are available once you’re level 12 at the latest. It should be noted that I pump strength until a base 65 because I tend to also use Sigon’s Guard and it’s 75 Strength. Giving me +2 skills between the items and goes a long way.

Any other low level items I find that have value I tend to keep and pass down. This may be +4 strength grand charm available at level 1, low level small charm / large charm / grand charm with +damage. This may be something like +15 psn over 4 Grand charm with a level 4 requirement. The more gear you save the more likely you’ll need an alt dedicated to holding all the gear for future classes. This is unless you level the class to where you want, then haul off the gear to the next, only cycling once the class is where you want it.

A few quick notable lower level items include:

Raven Claw,

Tarnhelm,

The Eye of Etlich,

Nagelring, Stealth, (last 3 listed as alts for 3p Angelic, keeping some MF and +skill)

Hotspur,

Bloodfist,

Biggin's Bonnet,

Knell Striker,

Rixot's Keen,

Pelta Lunata, and

Hsarus' Iron Fist. That all comes to mind for sub 20 gear.

This was meant to be an overview of how I go about starting ladders, alongside what I try to shoot for and may not be for everyone. I’ll be putting out more stuff as I find the time to and as always thanks for reading and have a great time farming.

I really enjoy replaying this game it's been an enjoyable one over the years.

Learned something new, even after all those years. Thx

Hey, glad it could be of some use.
Ty for taking the time to read it.

Jewels are also worth twinking (by the way, this is the term used by D2 community). Look for ones with no level requirement:
- Cinnabar (+10% enhanced damage)
- Nickel (+20 AR)
- of Envy (+20 psn dmg)
- of Freedom (-15% requirements)

The last one can be socketed into high damage, high req items (such as

Maul), and since most likely you'd need to invest some stats into str or dex anyway, you may look for jewels with slightly higher level req (for example Tin Jewel of Freedom - req lvl 6, +40 AR, -15% req).

Obviously, to use those jevels, look also for low req bases with max number of sockets.

Some examples:

Another nice super-early item is the

Stoutnail

Club. When it rolls ATD of 10, low-health monsters hit you and then die. The regular damage of 10-16 is also respectable for an item that is only Level 5.