Usefull beginning 1.10 builds?

[Crystalion]

I think creating an adventurer who will basically fool around in NM while gathering hand-me-downs is the best bet for a first char.

Another thought, if I've understood Ruvanal correctly, is to dip into hell just far enough for the xp/drop sweetspot: Mausoleum and Crypt. This, of course, means vs. undead stuff works quite well.

Another favorite run for me, if you're "slumming" to get goodies (partly because of some of the uniques I want that he can drop) is Fire Eye, since waypoint to Arcane Sanctuary then portal back into his area is pretty quick. From what Ruvanal posted I suspect the niceness of Andariel drops in beta may have been fixed for release, but she's probably worth a shot.

In the beta it was clear to me that farming the pindle area for base items (imbue or socket/runeword fodder) was pretty reasonable.

I neglect, of course, to mention all the (historically) obvious slumming runs for goodie acquisition.

The Barb Find Item skill hasn't failed me  in the past

Yes, that seems like a pretty time efficient idea, as long as the barb has good mobility and killing speed. A slumming teleporting MF equiped FO sorc seems pretty efficient as well.

Since the early (Ladder) MF gear will be heavily biased toward topazes... I think one possibility is an enchantress, teleporting to give her fire arrow rogue "direction" and safety, while both of them wear topazes to the max (that is, the sorc doesn't make any of the kills, and the rogue is a one-shot kill wonder, especially once you (trade to) get her a ravenclaw or kuko). In this scenario I'm assuming that trading for topazes won't be that hard early on (partly because I'm assuming any group of knowledgable players will have Andarial and Hellforge farmers, who will generate some gem surplus).

For nm farming, aside from Walkiry pointing out the poison jav centric build and my mention of the (Ferengi inspired) Frozen Orb build I have to put in two cents worth for Assassin WoF and Druid Fireclaw builds as also being fast killers without heavy item dependency. Unless they nerfed it hard for release, I suspect the skelemancer will be stellar in that category as well. My impression (non-expert) of Lightning Fury builds is that they don't work so well in the absence of crowds (and, afaik, you have to be much higher level than most of the aforementioned builds before you really rock). Still, like my HolyFist build, situationally their rate of kill is phenomenal. A Holy Shock zealot seems pretty reasonable for this purpose, as it is fairly easy to shop some item of ITD with decent attack speed.

As for what items you really want to blow gambling money on, from the profits of non-item-dependent... how about trying to nail "of life everlasting" on circlet type crowns and amulets? Circ/amu gambles are already potentially very worthwhile, especially if you trade the class specific ones around. Life Everlasting, at up to -25 physical damage, times two (both slots), is a huge boon to nm MF/lousy gear builds.