I didn't really think of tracking my SP walk through at the start of this play through but if you guys let me, I'd like to introduce you to Oats, the Old Balls Necro.

Starting his journey at the ripe old age of lvl 64, here's a look into my Summoner/CE (Fishymancer is what they call it?) Necro. Growing up playing D2 (been a player on and off since release), I never had the glorious internet bandwidth to play a summoner necro, and in fact I was one of those guys who'd try to boot a summoner due to lag storms during Cow or Baal runs. I just got got back into playing some D2 and thought it would be fun to do a HC Summoner. I downloaded D2 on Sunday night, to give you some time length param on his progress. So here it is:

Rules:
SP HC
No PlugY
No Ext Stash
No Ladder Runewords
1.14D Vanilla
8 Players on all progression
Any Players on MF Runs
S&E is allowed

Goals:
Kill Hell Baal
Find a HR (Hopefully a Vex.. who knows maybe a Jah and Ber :D)
Find some godly swag for my merc
Don't get wrecked ofc

Here are some S/Ss I took of Oats.

(Upgraded)

Still overall just a bunch of whack garbage on this character so far. I'm hoping I'll have some good drops come my way soon. Pray to the rng gods for me.

(I'm thinking about upgrading this if i don't find a new weap for merc soon)

GL man, I admire the no ladder runewords, It really does change the game so much..

After picking up a Hel rune off the NM forge (did not need another hel...), Oats had a long intense battle with Diablo.





Decrepify is godly versus these bosses - but I really need to pick up some more +all skills items because this damage output is not going to do it for hell mode. After killing D, I did some andy/ meph runs (I have a super sweet meph map rn) and I usually just use my tele staff to get to andy. I found a unique Ghost armor (Spirit Shroud?) which had +1 all skills but it can't really compete with Stealth. Stealth has all my FCR, FWR (allows me to get away with wearing hot spurs), - I do have quite a bit of FHR on mana/fhr GCs. It would take finding a viper or something similar to get rid of my stealth armor. I guess I really just need to find a better wand too - currently just using a +2 necro skills wand.

Now Oats and I are battling through annoying mfing slingers in Act 5. I've started pumping some pts into dim vision and it's really helping with these off screen missiles. I heard the creator of D2 talk on a youtube interview about how D2 can't truly be emulated on new machines because of how the monsters react offscreen - and that if the dimensions weren't the same on the screen it would fuck up how the monsters activate. It really does seem like every missile character is sniping me from off screen and I'm wondering if it's because I'm playing this on the Mac OS loader (released with 1.14 patch)? Anyone else here playing on a mac os and notice this? It could just be a normal thing too and I'm not used to how annoying it is because I run train through the game normally.

Anyway - and help/tips for Oats would be appreciated! Remember no ladder runewords on this guy so no insight or spirit. Should I shop for +3 skelly? +3 skelly master wands or something? The +2 necro blue wand kind of helps my curses and other summons though.

+summoning/ all skills +skelly/mastery is good
3 nec +3 mastery white would give 3 nec 7 mastery total

Found a rare bardiche w/ 320%+ ed. Upgraded (P saph, ort + amn runes) and socketed w/ Laz for my merc. Looks pretty sexi.



Threw a Shael in it, although I need to check merc BPs again - also need some major leech. I thought for some reason I could get 2 sockets on this with laz but i looked just now and 1 is max - but they can spawn naturally with 2.



I just rescued Anya - otherwise before that I've been doing andy runs like crazy. I really haven't found anything great tbh - besides some rare rings and boots - but they're all meh worthy tbh. Who should I be farming for a viper magi? Norm Baal? I feel like it's not even worth it at that point. I'm going to continue progressing players 8 because the experience is good, and andy runs with Oats is kinda slow due to just having to summon the entire army every run. Hopefully NM Baal will be pretty easy and I can farm him before I try Hell.

RIP Oats. tele'd into a pack of NM Cows after finishing NM Baal.

Oh well - he was a very slow grind, and I kind of want something a bit faster to play with. Time for a new wt!!

didnt even make it past a page
kinda glad he ripped considering wasted socket q on bardiche