Archived from groups: alt.games.diablo (More info?)
After reading all these postings about Ironman I have decided to try
something like it myself. I am not following all the rules I have
read here, so I call my variation tinman. The rules are:
- No buying, selling or gambling at vendors, except a tome of id and
some id scrolls very early in the game. I did sell something to pay
for that.
- No talking to healing NPCs.
- Id-ing at Cain is ok.
- Reviving the Mercenary is ok. Buying another mercenary is ok, too.
The money for that has to be collected during the game; it cannot come
from selling items.
- Using the stash is ok.
- No tome of town portal. Going to town should be the exception, not
the rule.
- /players 1
- No rerunning of areas, except as necessary by waypoints. Game
sessions should be set up to minimize this kind of rerunning.
I am playing a sorceress in 1.10 SP that should eventually become a
hydra/orb sorc. I have just finished act 2 normal, and she is almost
24, and her rogue mercenary is 22.
The thing that I expected to be challenging was to get the mercenary
to level fast enough before we get in areas where the monster level is
so high that she gets too little experience. This always used to be a
problem for me (at least before 1.10), and I used to deal with it by
using high /players, and sometimes by rerunning areas.
However, I found that if I do a clean sweep of all areas, and let the
mercenary do most of the killing, she levels fast enough. Lately she
is leveling faster than I do.
Now the thing about letting the mercenary do most of the killing is
something I did not have the patience for in 1.09 and earlier. I
think the rogues got smarter and more survivable in 1.10 (I have not
tried other mercenaries). This actually leads to a playing style that
is great fun:
It's like being a mafia boss who has somebody else who is a little
braindamaged but does the dirty work. I lead Muscle (her real name is
Annor, but everyone calls her Muscle) to the monsters, chill them with
Frost Nova, then hide behind Muscle, and she does the rest. It was
actually quite funny now and then in the tombs: I led her into a room,
chilled everyone, walked out, and let Muscle work at it; when she was
done, she came out: there was nothing left alive in the room. My own
skills were mainly needed when reviving monsters were around.
That rather passive style is very useful for tinman play. It means
that most of the hits go to the mercenary, who usually heals without
drinking potions (unlike my main character).
- anton
--
Britton Robbins' D2 PDF Guides: http://www.brittonrobbins.com/D2Info.htm
After reading all these postings about Ironman I have decided to try
something like it myself. I am not following all the rules I have
read here, so I call my variation tinman. The rules are:
- No buying, selling or gambling at vendors, except a tome of id and
some id scrolls very early in the game. I did sell something to pay
for that.
- No talking to healing NPCs.
- Id-ing at Cain is ok.
- Reviving the Mercenary is ok. Buying another mercenary is ok, too.
The money for that has to be collected during the game; it cannot come
from selling items.
- Using the stash is ok.
- No tome of town portal. Going to town should be the exception, not
the rule.
- /players 1
- No rerunning of areas, except as necessary by waypoints. Game
sessions should be set up to minimize this kind of rerunning.
I am playing a sorceress in 1.10 SP that should eventually become a
hydra/orb sorc. I have just finished act 2 normal, and she is almost
24, and her rogue mercenary is 22.
The thing that I expected to be challenging was to get the mercenary
to level fast enough before we get in areas where the monster level is
so high that she gets too little experience. This always used to be a
problem for me (at least before 1.10), and I used to deal with it by
using high /players, and sometimes by rerunning areas.
However, I found that if I do a clean sweep of all areas, and let the
mercenary do most of the killing, she levels fast enough. Lately she
is leveling faster than I do.
Now the thing about letting the mercenary do most of the killing is
something I did not have the patience for in 1.09 and earlier. I
think the rogues got smarter and more survivable in 1.10 (I have not
tried other mercenaries). This actually leads to a playing style that
is great fun:
It's like being a mafia boss who has somebody else who is a little
braindamaged but does the dirty work. I lead Muscle (her real name is
Annor, but everyone calls her Muscle) to the monsters, chill them with
Frost Nova, then hide behind Muscle, and she does the rest. It was
actually quite funny now and then in the tombs: I led her into a room,
chilled everyone, walked out, and let Muscle work at it; when she was
done, she came out: there was nothing left alive in the room. My own
skills were mainly needed when reviving monsters were around.
That rather passive style is very useful for tinman play. It means
that most of the hits go to the mercenary, who usually heals without
drinking potions (unlike my main character).
- anton
--
Britton Robbins' D2 PDF Guides: http://www.brittonrobbins.com/D2Info.htm
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