Back to D2, decided to finish the run I started years ago, but lost the saves so... time to start from scratch a summonmancer...

Actually started a couple days ago but saved important pics (not lucky QQ)

Rules
Hardcore
/p8 (plugy) Countess reruns in p1
Ladder runewords and extended stash
Map rerolls allowed and reruns


Goals
Have fun
Kill hell baal
Only self found gear
Will keep a copy of every unique i find.
Plan is playing a summonmancer, but if successful maybe reroll to poisonmancer mfinder, but this is end game goal, lot of work.

Here we go!

First thing I always do is finding a game that looks like this:



Why? Cause my plan is purchasing a good wand as soon as possible without leveling as least as I can. And this layout is fast. Also can open cow level right next to Akara for faster goodies reset.

How to get money without leveling up? Very easy, opening chests, checking corpses, etc... actually, in Stony field there are houses with superchests, if you are lucky there are several layouts with one next to the teleport, getting money is easy like that, best items to keep are rings, amus, charms, javelins, strangling and fulminating gas potions. Don't waste money identifying blue items apart from accessories, normally you will lose money doing it, and we need every single penny now.

Managed to get this:



Good enough.

Doing some Coldcrows looking for a lucky Gull found this:




But our purchased wand is better...



Time to stop with Coldcrow as now farming it is not efficient, will wait till i finish normal, definitely want that Gull dagger. Let's pray for a lucky drop to skip all the trouble.

Charsi quest




Some crap uniques, prefer using a bad shrunken head with some skellies skills i have though



Killed Andy several times, around 20, forgot to take pics as really got nothing at all from her...

Next trick i use at every run, as soon as I reach act 2 i go gamble a Pike, I think I was level 20 at the time, are hard to come but keep trying. Best merc weapon for normal, in act 5 you can buy some from Larzuc, now just buy one and pray for a good roll, not worth buying several as it takes many tries to find one.



Crappy but enough



I could craft some crap runewords early game(Stealth, Edge for gambling) but decided to do normal with found gear. Will craft them at the start of nightmare if i don't get anything better, will try to keep some useful socketables if i find any.

Viper amu, just cause I wanted to get rid of darkness... And strangely darkness remained... Don't tell me why...




Horadric cube, time to stop selling blue rings and amus...





This will be useful:




Maggot lair was hell... So slow, summons and merc not moving, you know... Forgot to take screen after all that pain...

Summoner gone




If I start a paladin or an amazon I bet i would not find this... So useful with the explosive arrows...




Duriel down crap loot as usual...

Act 3... Jade figurine on the way to get the eye...





This is a really bad map... So much time wasted... Gidbinn found...

Another subpar wand found... Definitely getting the summoning wand early game is the best thing... Probably this wand will take me to hell.

Btw, forgot to say it, the reason to get it at very low level is to have less possible skills in the random generator. After you get access to new skills at level 6 or so those will also appear in the wand rotation... So far easier to find while at level 1-5, feel free to use it for sorc as well (leaf socketable staff, would be far harder to find but possible)



Brain



At last Kurast... and got tome at first try... Lucky



This post was edited by cross69 on Jul 26 2020 12:56am

Heart



Council down...



And Mephisto, crap loot...