Multiple Questions from a new player

[Ed A]

Hi...
Diablo is my first venture into RPGs. I bought it a week or so ago at CompUSA for five bucks. Saw it in the bin and decided to see why it had gotten such acclaim over the years. I was glad, and a bit surprised that it installed and played so easily on Windows XP. Mostly, I am an adventure gamer..Myst, Riven, Rhem, etc and have played dozens and dozens of those types of games over the years. I've also played Tomb Raider 1, 2, 4, and the new one Legend and liked those a lot (although I still liked the first one best...picked that up the same way as Diablo and for the same reason...)

Anyway, I am having a great time with Diablo! More than I expected since I didn't really know what to expect...Spending way too much time with it (per my wife)....and I've got some questions that maybe one of you veterans can help me with:

So far, I am playing single player as a Warrior. I have two different games (characters) going but both are warriors. I started distributing level up points fairly equally across the four attributes but found that my magic ability still stunk...I just couldn't hit anything with a spell, or rarely. ..The only one that works "well" is Firewall and I found a staff for that...man, I love to fry those acid spitting dogs!! I started the second game (character) and leveled up just the vitality, dexterity, and to a lesser extent strength, and put very little effort to magic.

1) Some of the posts on this forum and elsewhere on the site talk about level 35 or higher warriors. How do you get that high? I am stuck just starting dungeon level 13 (more on that in another question below) and am a level 20 in both games. I can't believe that I am going to get a whole lot more levels in trying to finish the game.

2)What can I do about the Snow Witches? I just started on dungeon level 13 and these pale babes with blue thongs and wings are shooting blue balls of something at me that just kill me. I am getting drubbed time after time. Is there some strategy or whatever? There are way too many to just wade in and club while using healing scrolls, spells, and potions...I think.

3) Does anyone else use the ground near the Town Portal location as a storage dump? I've got that area littered with stuff I want to keep but don't want to carry...extra armor with various special properties, scrolls, potions, magic rings, staffs, books I can't read yet, weapons, gold, etc.

There are a bunch more questions but I think I'll hold them for another post.
Thanks for any help you can give,
Ed A

[Phredreeke]

1) Some of the posts on this forum and elsewhere on the site talk about level 35 or higher warriors. How do you get that high? I am stuck just starting dungeon level 13 (more on that in another question below) and am a level 20 in both games. I can't believe that I am going to get a whole lot more levels in trying to finish the game.

You can't. Not in Single player. You'll kill Diablo at about character level 26. Those people talk about multiplayer characters, which can play in Nightmare and Hell difficulties. You can also play those difficulties with the Hellfire expansion pack.

2)What can I do about the Snow Witches? I just started on dungeon level 13 and these pale babes with blue thongs and wings are shooting blue balls of something at me that just kill me. I am getting drubbed time after time. Is there some strategy or whatever? There are way too many to just wade in and club while using healing scrolls, spells, and potions...I think.

Telekill. Look it up.

3) Does anyone else use the ground near the Town Portal location as a storage dump? I've got that area littered with stuff I want to keep but don't want to carry...extra armor with various special properties, scrolls, potions, magic rings, staffs, books I can't read yet, weapons, gold, etc.

Yup, the single player infinite backpack.

[Hammerskjold]

>2)What can I do about the Snow Witches? I just started on dungeon level 13 and these pale babes with blue thongs and wings are shooting blue balls of something at me that just kill me. I am getting drubbed time after time. Is there some strategy or whatever? There are way too many to just wade in and club while using healing scrolls, spells, and potions...I think.


Having a high to maxed Magic Resistance would be a high priority. Telekill is good, but there are other ways as well. Having\making a safe area where you can lure\ambush them is not as flashy as telekill, but it's not as mana intensive.

If you haven't read it yet, this link still has some good info.

http://www.arewehavingfunyet.com/diablo/diablo.shtml

[Brother Laz]

Welcome!:)

To go above level ~25, you'll need multiplayer - but you can make a multiplayer character, choose tcp/ip, and just play on your own.

Going from single player to multiplayer is like moving up from Duplo to Lego when you were a kid. The game is harder, but also more rewarding, and you can replay levels and go up to the higher difficulties.

[Alamara]

1) Some of the posts on this forum and elsewhere on the site talk about level 35 or higher warriors. How do you get that high? I am stuck just starting dungeon level 13 (more on that in another question below) and am a level 20 in both games. I can't believe that I am going to get a whole lot more levels in trying to finish the game.

As someone else said, multiplayer mode enables Nightmare and Hell difficulties. It's basically the same game, but it becomes much more challenging, especially for a warrior. What you play in single player is called "Normal" difficulty. Be wary, though, because there's no save game feature, and when you die all of your items just fall to the ground for you to recover. It's a process, sometimes. Basically you lure them away from your stuff and die again on purpose until it's clear. That's what I do with a warrior, anyway. -.-

2)What can I do about the Snow Witches? I just started on dungeon level 13 and these pale babes with blue thongs and wings are shooting blue balls of something at me that just kill me. I am getting drubbed time after time. Is there some strategy or whatever? There are way too many to just wade in and club while using healing scrolls, spells, and potions...I think.

Basic strategy is simple exploitation of the witches AI. As I'm sure you've noticed, they tend to follow you once you "activate" them. Simply run around a corner, get a few to shoot at you, and run back to the other side. You can stand immediately around the corner and simply use shift+attack to kill the monsters.

3) Does anyone else use the ground near the Town Portal location as a storage dump? I've got that area littered with stuff I want to keep but don't want to carry...extra armor with various special properties, scrolls, potions, magic rings, staffs, books I can't read yet, weapons, gold, etc.

In single player, yes. Be careful to pick up anything you might want before killing Diablo, however. If you don't do so, the items on the ground will be lost when you want to play another game. There are ways to use a bug to allow you to play single player in Nightmare and Hell difficulty, but you will need a level 20 or level 30 in multiplayer, respective to the difficulty, to do so.

[Phredreeke]

There are ways to use a bug to allow you to play single player in Nightmare and Hell difficulty, but you will need a level 20 or level 30 in multiplayer, respective to the difficulty, to do so.

And then you might as well play multiplayer ;)

[Brother Laz]

Multiplayer is more interesting because it's more dangerous - in single player, you die, you reload. In multiplayer, when you die, your items are now on the floor for you to extract from the pack of 20 monsters that killed you. This makes you play more carefully.:D

Also, the levels are regenerated with each new game, and you can play on Nightmare and Hell difficulty after reaching the level limit.

What's missing is some of the quests and preset drops (but I'd rather hae a random drop from the Butcher in multiplayer than that useless cleaver in single player).

I guess the moral of the story is: play through single player once to see the storyline, then move on to the real game.;)

[Nystul]

2) Many people have advised you to kill witches using the "telekill" technic. This leads me to believe that these people have never actually played a single player warrior, or else did so long ago that they have forgotten everything about it. Clearly, your warriors do not have the magic or mana needed to jump around like bunny from witch to witch using teleport! In fact, in the very rare possibility that you were able to get a book of teleport, you probably weren't able to read it at all.

So then, how do we kill witches with a single player warrior? There are a lot of possibilities.

One possibility is the "peekaboo" tactic. Walk forward slowly until a witch sees you. Then retreat around a corner, quickly stop, and ambush that witch by attacking her as she goes around the corner after you.

Another possibility is the more standard cornering. Walk forward until a witch sees you. Retreat back into a previously cleared room. When the witch enters the room, loop around her and force her to retreat into a corner. Now stand diagonal to her so that she has no place to go, and finish her off. A great variation of this is to lure them into a small "room within a room" which are often seen on level 15, and finish them off in the corners of this smaller room.

Against succubi and snow witches only, you could use this line of fire trick with a bow:

It takes a while to figure out exactly where to stand so you can hit them and they can't hit you, but once you figure it out, piece of cake.

Against hell spawn and soulburners only, you can use Tanja's tactic. Basically this means you hide behind any obstacle... stalagmites, corpsekabobs, chests, barrels, etc. and start swinging. These types of witches will fire a couple bloodstars and then chase around the obstacle to get to you. You can hit them as they come past the obstacle. If you have enough damage to stun them, you can kill them right then and there. Otherwise you will need to corner them to finish the deal.

No matter what tactic you use, one thing is always consistent. You never want to chase a witch into an area unless you have already cleared that area. Doing that will only wake up more witches, multiplying your problems. Ironically, this is exactly what people do when they use telekill. (Of course, they do it with warriors so powerful that witches are about as dangerous as black ants.)

3) Yes, the town portal area is nice for storage in a single player game. Another convenient area for storage is the town square (the general area around Deckard Cain).

[Nystul]

Duped post. I thought it was legit, but the scanner says otherwise.

[Ed A]

A couple more things..
First, thank you everyone for your help and suggestions. I am not sure that I am ready for multiplayer, but we'll see after I finish (if I can finish) single player. I am finding that my reflexes are not what they once were...had to get my 15-yr old son to get me through a couple parts of Tomb Raider Legend..

I don't see a spell called Telekill. In one of these replies someone described it as a technique. Can anyone elaborate?

In recent discoveries in my unfolding saga with this game...I found that I could start a new game and keep my same character with his armor and level and stuff (yeah!)..Found that the stuff I'd left laying on the ground disappeared (oops!)...found that the dungeons have been restocked with monsters and items (yeah!)...but that killing the monsters in at least the first 6or 7 levels didn't give me hardly any level up points (sigh..)...but now I have more gold than Midas and several of my spell levels are advanced so we'll see.

A couple more questions..
What is a "trainer"? I saw this in some posts and gather that it is illegitimate or something but what...
What is a hack or a mod?
What is a "legit" game?

Thanks again for your help and suggestions. Last night I had "my guy" on levels 9 & 10 for his second visit and did the anvil quest and the black mushroom quest and finally leveled up to 21...woo-hoo!

Ed A

[Merlinios]

Nice find on the game. And the site, I guess, though I haven't been posting that long. Was a true Lurker until a few months ago.

Telekill is a technique based on the skill Teleport, correct positioning, and stunlock. By no means am I decrying your single-player character, but I seriously doubt you have the means to utilize it effectively. Essentially, you teleport to a witch and stunlock and kill her before she can run away.

In addition to Nystul's witch-killing tactics firewall is quite good against the non-fire immune variety. Just be sure to line it up correctly. Most of the other spells aren't particularly useful for your warrior, so I'd stick to the slashing. Witches are more about positioning and luring than anything else. If you have a spare bow, you can also try firing a few shots into a room you haven't activated yet to lure witches out of the depths. This is for a room setup as follows:

You
|-----.....------|
|...................|
|...................|
|...................|
|...................|

If you enter the room and there are witches to the left and right, you might be able to stunlock one or two before they take off and fry you. But if you walk left and right of the door and hide behind the wall to lure a few at a time, you'll do much better. A corollary here is the bow. Fire it into the room at different angles to draw them out (though I may be speaking out of my posterior here--it's been SOO long since I played a single-player warrior).


A trainer is probably best defined as a cheat program. You'll find little commentary on them here beyond the obligatory insults following the explanation.

A mod is a modified Diablo executable file. There are plenty of Diablo lovers around, but killing Lazarus over and over gets a little stale. They essentially play like expansion packs (albeit some go in an entirely different direction). They are user-created and non-Blizzard supported.

"Legit" has had a disputed definition for as long as more than one person has been using the word. A general consensus is a lack of hacks, cheats, bug exploitation, and whatnot. Some people choose to include PKing in that list, while others are somewhat fuzzy on what "hack", "cheat" and especially "bug exploitation" actually mean.

I'd recommend that you eventually beat the game with all three classes. Just playing a Mage or Rogue will give you a lot of insight about tactics (provided you don't try to apply them directly) to your Warrior. The Mage in particular will help you learn resistances and immunities of enemies you might want to, for example, Firewall. He has mana to burn, so you mise well find out what hits and what doesn't.

The multiplayer game is generally thought of as where the replay value lies. Beware of cheaters if you enter Battle.net, though. Virtually every public game will contain them. You might try the channel Diablo LE. I've been offline for awhile (harddrive's dead), but I believe activity was re-emerging there when I left.

--me

[Phredreeke]

I don't see a spell called Telekill. In one of these replies someone described it as a technique. Can anyone elaborate?

You teleport in front of the enemy, then strike it. Sorry for the poor explanation, I usually play rogue.

In recent discoveries in my unfolding saga with this game...I found that I could start a new game and keep my same character with his armor and level and stuff (yeah!)..Found that the stuff I'd left laying on the ground disappeared (oops!)...found that the dungeons have been restocked with monsters and items (yeah!)...but that killing the monsters in at least the first 6or 7 levels didn't give me hardly any level up points (sigh..)...but now I have more gold than Midas and several of my spell levels are advanced so we'll see.

You get 10% less for each level you are above the monster. So if you're 5 levels above the monster, you only get half the experience. At 10 levels above the monster, you get no experience. This is a bad thing with non-Hellfire Diablo, you can't go directly to Cats, Caves or Hell in a new single player game!

A couple more questions..
What is a "trainer"? I saw this in some posts and gather that it is illegitimate or something but what...

Very naughty (at least in multiplayer), can do a lot of stuff, from importing items to make you plain invincible. This of course takes no skills, so you'll quickly bore of the game.

What is a hack or a mod?

Mods are modifications to Diablo, usually to make the game harder.

What is a "legit" game?

A game played without trainers, duping and abusing glitches (such as using ms with low life to avoid being stunned)

Edit: Gah, too slow...

[Alamara]

And then you might as well play multiplayer ;)

Unless, of course, you wanted more than three quests.

[Alamara]

Duped post. I thought it was legit, but the scanner says otherwise.

My scanner is giving me different item ID's. I think you actually unduped your post.

[Griselda]

http://www.arewehavingfunyet.com/diablo/diablo.shtml

I'd like to second the recommendation to have a look at the Freshman Diablo page. It really has a lot of good information.

[Ed A]

A further report from the front...
Last night my Warrior cleared level 13 with all the Snow Witches and a bunch of big winged guys that belched fire balls. I tried the telekill thing but it cost a lot of mana and I kept dying so I switched over to the bait and hide method....threw one of them demons by Vargas a come hither look and then hacked her to bits when she came a callin'...big problem was that the sword I had with me knocked enemies back which gave them a chance to run for it...Also used Firewall but had trouble getting it aimed just right and they kept walking and shooting through it.

Interesting that the big black flying fire belchers had a glass jaw - only took a couple of shots to do them in.
On to level 14 and beyond!!! When (if) I can finish I'll probably try the other classes to what they are like.

[Ashock]

A further report from the front...
Last night my Warrior cleared level 13 with all the Snow Witches and a bunch of big winged guys that belched fire balls. I tried the telekill thing but it cost a lot of mana and I kept dying so I switched over to the bait and hide method....threw one of them demons by Vargas a come hither look and then hacked her to bits when she came a callin'...big problem was that the sword I had with me knocked enemies back which gave them a chance to run for it...Also used Firewall but had trouble getting it aimed just right and they kept walking and shooting through it.

Interesting that the big black flying fire belchers had a glass jaw - only took a couple of shots to do them in.
On to level 14 and beyond!!! When (if) I can finish I'll probably try the other classes to what they are like.

Ok, some of this has been covered already, but I will try to summarize it at least as far as some things.

1) Forget Telekill completely. Telekill is really only useful when you get to at least the low 30's with decent gear, which means no Telekill at all for Single Player (SP). Peakaboo is nice, but you are new to the game and it will be difficult for you. As suggested above use Firewall. You can stack one Firewall on top of another for maximum damage. Try to get Firewall as high as you can as far as lvls. This will require you to read as many books of it as you can. Keep in mind that some monsters in Hell are fire immune or at least resistant.

2) Keep so called Reading Glasses around. You are in SP, so you have plenty of room in town to leave items from one session to another. Reading Glasses are items that add to you Magic. As a Warrior, you have very low Max Magic, the lowest of the 3 classes. Reading Glasses will help you to read Spell Books that you would otherwise not be able to read. Just equip the item(s) in town, read the book and switch back to you normal items.

3) The sword that you have is called Grizwald's Edge. It is an SP-only quest item with the annoying knockback ability. It is not really great and the only time it might come in handy is possibly against Diablo himself, on lvl 16. Of course, then your stacked Firewalls will not be as effective against him, so it's a trade-off.

4) If the firebreathing monsters are red, then they are Balrogs. They really are weak, and only might be unpleasant to you if you have no Fire resistance. Speaking of Fire resistance, you will need it for lvl 16, so do not throw away you Fire resist items.

5) If you already have not done so, max your Dexterity on the subsequent lvl ups. It will help you to block better with your shield and to miss less. Ignore Magic and Vitality. Just dump everything in Dex until max and then Str. Unlike in Blizzard's later games, most of a Warrior's damage comes from his Str, not from the damage of his weapon. Make sure you are using a 1-handed sword and shield btw, in case you had other brilliant ideas.


If you start another class, you should know that in the early going, especially in Church, Rogues are the strongest and Sorcerors are weakest. This changes dramatically in Hell, btw.


Personally, I do not suggest you try all 3 classes in SP. After you are done with this guy and beat Diablo, I'd suggest moving directly to MP. BTW, you do not have to go on Battle Net to play MP. You can play MP as long as you wish in solo games. Just chose Multiplayer and do not chose the BattleNet option. My first MP character was lvl 35 by the time he went to BattleNet.

I sort of envy you, sort of. You've discovered one of the greatest games ever made just now, so you have many exciting hours ahead of you, whereas many if not most here already stopped playing this game at least 5-6 years ago after pretty much mastering most or all of it's aspects. A lot of us are still looking for that "next" Diablo. D2 was a really good game, but just not as "special" IMO.... and there are no signs of D3.
OTOH, we played when there was a large active Diablo community, when we shared ideas and played together all the time, and unfortunately you will not have the opportunity to experience that. I guess it's a trade-off.

GL and HF.


-A

[the Langolier]

Duped post. I thought it was legit, but the scanner says otherwise.

Laugh. Out. Loud.

Another firewall tip: Monsters that aren't immune to fire can be reluctant to cross one. Whhat this means in practice is that if you find youself in a hallway in hell with snow witches, you can cast a couple firewalls *perpindicular* to the walls of the hallway (therefore making a box) - casting so the witches are in the box. Now, you can corner witches normally as they will tend to flee to the corners made by the firewall and the normal wall. Yes, they will cross, especially if you are chasing more than one into an artificial corner, but it will greatly inhibit their movement. I've never really been fond of trying to roast them with firewall, as it requires you to keep drawing their fire to you (so they don't walk out of the fire when trying to get a better shot at you). That tactic does make for good "happy feet" practice, which simply means dodging missles by walking around.

Another FW tactic invloves confronting melee enmies that are not immune to fire, and it is much more reliable than the one just discribed. Oh, and by the way, whenever you work with firewall, ALWAYS cast it in perpindicular angles (so the wall lines up with the N-S or E-W axis). Enemies that are not immune to fire will only try to cross the firewall one at a time. Additionally, they will prefer to cross at the tile you actually cast firewall on. So, if you cast a firewall exactly one tile in front of you and just hold your ground, as a group of non-fire immune enemies approaches, only one enemy at a time will actually step up next to you (into the firewall) to attack. The rest will wait behind the firewall for their turn. This is best used in a hallway, when the firewall completely cuts off the path between you and enemies. If there is open space at either end, the monsters behind the wall will start the long walk around the firewall to come attack from another angle. It is important that you don't move from your spot next to the firewall. If you do, the enemies will still file through the firewall one at a time, but now there is room to surround you again.

Good luck.

[LennyLen]

Monsters that aren't immune to fire can be reluctant to cross one.

Only monsters that have the "behaviour byte" (byte 105 of the monster's data) set to a particular value. I can't off the top of my head remember exactly what value ir is and which monsters have it. But I did write a modlet that changed this value for all monsters which made it easy to find out what value was required. I'll look into it when I get home from work later.

[Phredreeke]

If you start another class, you should know that in the early going, especially in Church, Rogues are the strongest and Sorcerors are weakest. This changes dramatically in Hell, btw.

I think Rogue is overall the easiest class. Not as effective as a Sorcerer with Chain Lightning and Fireball, and she doesn't dish out as much damage as a Warrior with a good sword, but overall I think it's the best class.

- For a Sorcerer, Triple Immunes are a pain. No monsters are immune to arrows though.
- For a Warrior, Ranged Attackers are likewise a pain. Especially witches that will run away if you miss a strike.
- Even though she's not as strong as Sorcerer with magic, she can still be devastating.
- Her bow doesn't match the damage of a Warrior's sword, but using any bow she shoots as fast as a Warrior with hasted sword swings.
- Her high dexterity makes CC use possible without to-hit jewels.
- Using a shield, she has high chance to block, again due to her high dexterity.