Hey there, so this is actually my second walkthrough here, although the first one got interrupted due to a nasty hard disk failure (it was also an amazon walkthrough but in v1.07).

Why did I change my mind and decided not to stick to 1.07?
Although that version has very nice feature and interesting glitches and so on, the downs are heavier than the ups:
- There was no players x command, had to join the game with mule characters
- Even though some mechanics were favourable, the game was still in a really cheesy and unforgiving state in terms of mechanics
- High end items were not attainable in a normal fashion way, rack running hundreds of hours to get a Shako for example is pretty much runing the fun factor

Why 1.09?
A lot of these nasty mechanics were fixed by this version and also allows to play with fun builds like the hybrid Amazon or zerk/ww Barbarian and even a tri-element Sorceress could be viable unlike in 1.10+ where synergies were introduced which pretty much hindered the terms of versitality.

Why Amazon?
Probably the most fun character to play in this version and the most efficient one in terms of farming the cow level or just in general and is also a lot of fun to play. Was my favourite character back in the days.

Goals?
- Complete all quests
- Grab all the waypoints
- Defeat Hell Baal
- Clear the Secret Cow Level
- Farm Countess till getting hands on runes for Silence (will get back to Countess in detail later on)
- Level 90

Endgame goals?
- Viable endgame gear for both Bow and Fury trees
- Farming the Cow Level till reaching level 99

Rules:
- Basic v1.09 without any kind of mods or third party applications
- Hardcore
- Players 8 (will get into this in detail later)

So let's get going!



This post was edited by text_killer on Jul 17 2013 03:18am

So back in 1.09 when the "players x" command was introduced you could actually go even up to 64, although that would be rather cheesy and not recommended to anyone without a proper group of twinked characters, but never the less, it was a great challange back in the days.

Also, as you can see I just typed "players 8" and get no confirmation at all whether it did work or not. Although it does, since even back in Act I, even a normal pack can be a real pain in the ass.

Managed to find an XP shrine just at the beginning so I decided to rush to Cold Plains to get a little advange over the foes down in the Den.



Which I eventually cleared and also reached level 6 in the meantime.



Getting my first somewhat useful bow for a while, gemming it with a topaz for damage and a saphirre to slow my foes down.

Hmm tracked to see were this goes, i would love to see you hit all your goals and Best of luck

Just only at the second quest when you really notice that this is going to be one hell of an advanture in terms of difficulity, even Blood Raven gave a hard challange.



Also found my first rare in the meantime which rather blows actually.



Also got my first set off Rakanishu. Cleglaw's shield which is completely useless.

Thanks, I suppose I will really need it!



Got lucky with the passage entrance at least.



Treehead down, grabbed scroll.



Decided to farm Treehead in hopes of some basic, yet useful gear for a while due to the plain fact that the map roll was just perfect for this.

This post was edited by text_killer on Jul 17 2013 03:10am

Treehead was rather a douce and decided not to award me anything close to useful for my efforts. Screw him, let's go save the old guy instead!



Which was rather straightforward, although it took a while to clear the whole place.



Gave Treehead another shot since I'm such a nice guy, he eventually noticed how good I was treating him, so he awarded me with my first rare ring!

(which turned out to be complete waste, although I cannot complain because I had none equipped on one of the fingers before)

This post was edited by text_killer on Jul 17 2013 03:14am

I'm really lucky with the map roll so far. Would be perfect to farm the Countess for some low-mid level runes. Although in 1.09 she only drops El or Eld, so I decided to kill her only once.



Which wasn't that hard at all, only time consuming. On a sidenote: the levels of the tower are the same size on all three difficulities, so I'll be visiting her rather often in Nightmare where she can drop runes up to Shael or so and on hell where she can drop anything up to Vex as well. Even though her drop rates are worse than they are now in 1.10+ but the small size of the maps compsates on this, making re-running her a lot quicker!

Heading directly to the Barracks to slay the Smith who gave me my first unique.



Also grabbing the malus which might come in handy when I get my hands on some class specific javelin later on.



Awesome for a newbie sorc, 5000 gold for me.

This post was edited by text_killer on Jul 17 2013 03:21am

Went gambling.



Two in a row! Decided to quit on the top. For a while.



Always have a bad feeling when going downstairs.