Trying to do the Math: AC vs. -DFE?

[Hammerskjold]

TP counts as “using magic”? How do you not go crazy without it?

It was more to do with my love\hate deal with book\item\shop runs. If I could just get TPortal to a decent level, maybe Search as well, then I'd be happy. That was the plan anyway.

What actually happened was after that lucky streak with the stealth gear combo, especially with Veil of Steel's minus mana property. I wound up just using a bunch of scrolls. I did buy some Warp and TPortal and Search books. But I couldn't really use them if I wore Veil of Steel and it's minus Mana points.

I tried my luck in Hell\Hell, not as a 3@30 or anything, more like a 3@34 or so. Though officially he set foot in hell at 30 IIRC. Simply to see how far he could go. Granted this is SP, and I used the benefit of save\reload a couple of times for Diablo himself. Hey I'm pretty rusty.

But he did fairly well I think. A lucky drop of meteoric Axe of haste was crucial in dealing with Advocate types. Any speed\haste would've done the job vs lawyer demons really, but the axe was a really nice touch for a barbarian. Though switching between that and the Soldier's Puncturing axe was kinda not pleasant at times.

However, considering the Puncturing axe was dropped iirc in normal caves in his early 20's, and did the job in Hell\Hell, I think this guy was blessed or something.

Though there was a fairly annoying thing where I rolled a Warlord of Blood level instead of Lachdanan, so the stairs was locked and I could not find the Steel Tome to unlock it anywhere. Thankfully I did have a low level Warp spell, using +magic adders to counter Veil of Steel -mana. (Regular battlegear loadout I was running -9 mana.)

After he survived that, he just had to try and finish all the way to 16. Granted this was SP and he still has to try Hell\ Na-Krull.
But stealth barbarian is definitely do-able. And you may not even need a lot of infra if you keep it at -lr 60.

Side benefit of stealth meleer, witches and liches has more trouble targeting you, and their AI seems to get confused the stealthier you get.

My warrior technically had nicer toys (he finally found a Shirotachi w00t) than the barbarian. Yet this stealth barbarian was doing Crypt runs at an earlier age, and had an easier time compared to my S\S warrior in crypt running.

VirtualPC with an XP-image? IPX is installed in the image? Still doesn't work? Hmm...
Maybe if you try VMWare instead of VirtualPC? Never really trusted Microsoft to fully keep the host/VM separated...

At this point from everything I read, my choices seems to be upgrading to Win 7, dual booting, or buying\building a 'vintage' machine to run older games on. (A shuttle system loaded\dual boot setup with win98 and my old classic games folder would be sweet.)

Only the first is realistically possible for me at this time, and as fun as HF:F is, it will not be what decides the upgrade budget\schedule. (Otherwise I got some serious 'splainin to do.) At this point I'm probably stuck ie just make do with what I have right now. At least there is a HF:F sp version.

re: name change and graphics change, beyond my skills. Hopefully someone with more skills and knowledge in that part can help you out.