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This is the strategy I use.
Using a Blizzard Sorceress (Also works with Fire/Orb)

Look for basic uniques and runes/bases for runewords such as:

• Lore/Peasent Crown as a helmet
  
• Vmagi/Stealth/Treachery/LionHeart/Enlightenment/Smoke/Duress for Armor, you or your Mercenary
  
• Rhyme/Splendor/Lidless Wall/Ancient's pledge for shield (Spirit is the absolute best, but it will be expensive at the start) (you actually get the runes for Ancient's pledge from the barbarian quest in a5)
  
• Wizzy/Spirit Sword/Occy or Insight (It's actually very nice as an early sorc weapon if it has a low strength requirement, or you can use on a mercenary)
  
• Magefist/Trang/Chance gloves
  
• FCR rings/ammy (Also Any unique Amulet or Ring that isn't expensive, those should be sold)
  
• Any boots I can get (Hotspurs, travs, wwalks, etc)

Then I level with:

• 0-13/16 in Trav
  
• 13/16-20ish in tombs
  
• Teleport with others through A3,
  
• Scramble through A4+5
  
• Do shenk/barb , quests,
  
• Make sure I'm level 24 (run tombs if not)
  
• Do ancients to get 25
  
• Make 'I Tele Baal -xx" games and teleport to Baal for the group and get easy EXP
  
• Level to 35-40
  
• Run Nightmare Countess to get runes for several of the runewords above
  
• Rush through nightmare as fast as possible
  
• Baal to ~50-60 the same was a Normal
  
• Rush through Hell,
  
• Run Hell Baal the same way it was done in Norm/Nightmare
  
• Run meph/andy over and over

All of the above can be done in less than 12 hours of grinding. Take the day off if you can, and DON'T KEEP EXPENSIVE ITEMS AT FIRST.

After that, I either:

• Try to get bits and pieces of the Tal's set, Spirit shield and keep with a 105 FCR Cold Sorc + Upgrade to Infinity Light sorc w/ 117 FCR later
  
• Use the fg from the items I sell to equip a basic hdin, then run Hell baal/chaos.

And boom, FG!

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Leveling:
Starting a ladder reset right from the beginning is one of the easiest times to level. The best way to do this is to get a party of 7-8 friends that you know and can conversate with throughout the walkthrough. Start by all agreeing on who will be which character (make sure they are all characters that can help each other, i.e. summoner necro (amp), zealer (fantacism), sorc (static field), charge strike zon (boss killer), oak druid (massive life from oak),bo barb (massive life/defense from his shout and battle orders), and an assassin (for mind blast to knock back enemies). Of course to cause no fighting in between the walk through group, try to split the drops evenly between each person, don't be an item hog, just enjoy the reset and spend time with friends.

If you start late into ladder season but still want to walk through in pub games, here is what you want to do:
-1-14 (Normal Trist Runs)
-14-20 (Normal Tomb Runs)
-20-26 (Normal Cow Runs)
-26-40 (Normal Baal)
-40-50 (Nightmare Walk-Through Act 1)
-50-60 (Walk through all of Nightmare)
-60-99 (Magic Find in hell or do Hell chaos/baal)

Magic Finding:
The best ladder magic finder is a CE necro (corpse explosion) because they have a very high AoE (explained in the paragraph below this one). The best places to magic find at the beginning of ladder is cows, chaos, and mephisto (these being the easiest to do).


When you are magic finding, there are a lot of factors you need to add together. These would be your % to find better magic items, AoE (Area of Effect, simply meaning the fast you kill monsters, the better items you find), and the number of people in-game. The best amount of magic find for any character is 300-450 magic find. If you go above 450, you will find more magic items then rare/uniques. The best places to magic find would be ilvl85 (Level 85 monsters) areas. These would include:

☆ ☆ ☆ LVL 85 MONSTER AREAS☆ ☆ ☆

ACT I

Mausoleum
Take the Cold Plains to the burial grounds.
Pit, levels 1 and 2
Take the Black Marsh waypoint to the Tamoe Highland.

ACT II
Maggot Lair, level 3
Located beneath the far Oasis.
Ancient Tunnels
Located underneath a trapdoor in the Lost City

ACT III
Ruined Fane / Disused Reliquary
Take the Travincal waypoint to the Kurast Causeway.
Sewers level 2 / Forgotten Temple
Continuedown the Causeway to Upper Kurast.

ACT IV
River of Flame
Chaos Sanctuary

ACT V
Worldstone Keep levels 1-3
Throne of Destruction

This chart shows how often items (rare, magic, set, and unique) will drop with your xxx amount of magic find (however much you want, but remember, the best is 300-450)
-- http://www.diablowiki.com/images/9/95/MF_Graph.jpg

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Ways to Make FG after you have completed A5 Hell and are at a decent level (70-85):

• Make a character, run through and continually grind andy/meph/pits/shenk/pindle and chaos/baal if possible.
  
• Run Nithalak, the Countess, and the Summoner, and collect keys. You can either sell the key sets on jsp, as a smiter, collect the organ and sell them (worth maybe 25-35% more), or go all out and get torches, possibly selling them unidentified, though you could get very lucky selling ID'd ones.
  
• Collect crafting sets, such as 40x p amethysts/rals/random jewels and selling them in a pack.
  
• Collect Unidentified rare pelts/rings/amulets or unique amulets/rings and sell them as packs
  
• Do rushes, especially classic ones, as they are missing an act and don't require bumpers, you can rush every class but druid/assasin to act 3 hell and then they can convert and do chaos runs to get XP.
  
• Get several characters up to a level where you can join Chaos and later Baal games, some people start late and want to catch up

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List a tips :

- First characters : You should always start with a Blizz sorc and a Gold find barb when ladder resets. This will allow you to go threw the game really quick.

Blizz sorc : high dmg, range spell = great survivability and having the ''teleport skill'' is a must to help your team finding level doors in all acts.
* Remember : Always put points into static field and warmth. Static field skill will make boss fight easier and warmth will allow you to say : Why do people use Insight? :)

Gold find barb : When your blizz sorc is high level and act 5 hell, start to build this character as soon as possible. This will allow you to get infinite gold supply to help repairing your main character (aka blizz sorc) and to gamble nice rare items that people will drool over!
*Remember : Especially on a ladder reset, you will not be able to have perfect high end items for your merc to kill stuff for you in hell. Keep in mind that the difference in gold drops from hell and nightmares isn't that much, so running gold runs in nm will make things much easier for you while still getting alot of gold. Lem runes will be your best friends here.

Keep your account clean and clear : Make mules for everything your find threw your first playthrough (norm + nm + hell on your first main character). People will want to start crafting as soon as possible when they are high level enough to do so, so having bulk of crafting supply will sell easily on jsp and they are (most of them) easy items to find. As most people will pay for easy ''mid'' end items in the first week of the reset, i suggest you make a new account will 8 empty character slots to keep alot of stuff you will normaly don't keep. You will most likely find a buyer ;)

I would suggest these characters for your ladder reset account :

1) Main character (blizz sorc)
2) Helping character (gold find barb)
3) Mule 1 : Runes
4) Mule 2 : Gems (get a horadric cube in stash for this guy, you will need it to convert gems without always transfer it from your main character)
5) Mule 3 : Jewels (most of the time, you will keep the rare ones either to sell for in game golds (iig) to merchant or to trade will d2jsp / ingame users.Keep the the magic ''useless'' ones on that mule for crafting supply packs)
6) Mule 4 : Empty sockets items (keep the ones that are used to make common ladder-only runewords such as Insight, spirit, fortitude, etc.)
7) Mule 5 : Set items
8) Mule 6 : Everything else that you might want to keep (good gear for future characters you would like to make or just goodies you want to trade).

- Team playing :

If you start to play by yourself, just go ahead and follow my blizz/goldfind start tips.
Your friends want to start new characters with your on the ladder reset? Then read this few tips.

Always make sure your party is not 8x sorc with the ''blizzard'' skill, or else you will not be able to finish the game at all.
Keep in mind that a team is meant to help all his members while going through the game, so try to have all kinds and types of characters that will make a complete and strong party in any situations you will encounter.
- Tanks : Barbarians with crys buff and Paladins with their auras will greatly help your team. Having them on the front line doing high damage while helping everyone with these skills is a must.
- Rangers (single target) : Necromancers with their bones skills will do high damage, especially whit their curses, Focus the stronger monster and kill it quickly while your peers do the rest of the work.
- Rangers (multiple targets) : Either bow or jav Amazons are great to push waves of monsters back (knockback). Same thing with trap Assassins (mind blast).
- Elementals (high damage) : Try to get a party with all the elemental damage types possible. In hell, if there is an immune monster to cold (i.e.), the fire damage Sorceress will be able to take it down quickly.

Golden rule : Play as a team, help your peers with items they might need when you don't (same goes for shrines) and the last but not least : have fun ! :D

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Budget smiter guide for Über Tristram.
Torchhunting is a good way to earn a lot of forum gold, especially at the ladder reset.
It is possible to create a decent smiter without having to use a ton of forum gold.

Mephisto's aura will reduce all your resistances by 125.
Hell difficulty will reduce all your resitances by 100.
This means that our smiter needs 300 all resitance for maximum resist versus mephisto.

Equipment:
Helm
Guillaume's Face
+120% Enhanced Defense
+30% Faster Hit Recovery
15% Deadly Strike
35% Chance of Crushing Blow
+15 To Strength

- This is hands down the cheapest and best helmet for a tristram smiter.
- Socket with an Um rune or an @res/add or light resist/add jewel

Amulet
Highlord's Wrath
+1 To All Skills
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+ (0.375 Per Character Level) 0-37 % Deadly Strike (Based On Character Level)
Lightning Resist +35%
Adds 1-30 Lightning Damage
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage Of 15

- This will help us reach 6 frames per attack (35%ias required with this build), and provide us with some highly needed lightning resist and +1 skill.

or

Saracen's Chance
10% Chance To Cast Level 2 Iron Maiden When Struck
All Resistances +15-25 (varies)
+12 To All Attributes

- This is another choice since a highlord can be quite expensive at the beginning of a reset.

Weapon
Black runeword (Thul + Io + Nef)
+120% Enhanced Damage
40% Chance Of Crushing Blow
+200 To Attack Rating
Adds 3-14 Cold Damage - Cold Duration 3 Seconds
+10 To Vitality
15% Increased Attack Speed
Knockback
Magic Damage Reduced By 2
Level 4 Corpse Explosion (12 Charges)

- This runeword is quite effective and cheap.
The crushing blow and increased attack speed are vital for our smiter!

Body Armor
Smoke runeword (Nef + Lum)
+75% Enhanced Defense
+280 Defense Vs. Missile
All Resistances +50
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Level 6 Weaken (18 Charges)
+10 To Energy
-1 To Light Radius
- This armor adds a lot of all resistance which is highly needed.
Treachery runeword (Shael + Thul + Lem)
5% Chance To Cast Level 15 Fade When Struck
25% Chance To Cast level 15 Venom On Striking
+2 To Assassin Skills
+45% Increased Attack Speed
+20% Faster Hit Recovery
Cold Resist +30%
50% Extra Gold From Monsters

- This will only be used to cast the fade skill for extra resist.


Shield
4 socket elite paladin shield socket with 4 x perfect diamonds.

- Try to get a bit of + all resistance on the shield. Do not use a vortex shield since it has low block and high strength requirement.

Gloves
Laying of Hands
+25 Defense
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+350% Damage To Demons
Fire Resist +50%
10% Chance To Cast Level 3 Holy Bolt On Striking

- Use these gloves if you cannot get your hands on a highlord amulet.

Rings
Raven Frost
+150-250 To Attack Rating (varies)
Adds 15-45 Cold Damage, 4 sec. Duration (Normal)
Cannot Be Frozen
+15-20 To Dexterity (varies)
+40 To Mana
Cold Absorb 20%

- This ring is needed because of the cannot be frozen. The dexterity and cold absorb are just bonuses.

Second ring
- You can use a double stat ring or another raven frost.

Belt
Thundergod's Vigor
+160-200% Enhanced Defense (varies)
Adds 1-50 Lightning Damage
5% Chance To Cast Level 7 Fist Of The Heavens When Struck
+20 Lightning Absorb
10% To Maximum Lightning Resist
+20 To Strength
+20 To Vitality
+3 To Lightning Fury (Amazon Only)
+3 To Lightning Strike (Amazon Only)

- The lightning absorb is going to help you survive mephisto.

or

Credendum
+50 Defense
All Resistances +15
+10 To Dexterity
+10 To Strength
- Go with this if you cannot afford thundergod.

Boots

Goblin Toe
+50-60% Enhanced Defense (varies)
25% Chance of a Crushing Blow
-1 To Light Radius
Damage Reduced By 1
Magic Damage Reduced By 1
+15 Defense

- Adds a nice amount of crushing blow and is very cheap!