Alrighty dokie. Time to refuel my love for D2 with a sp frenzy barb. Gonna give it some limitations. Gonna give it some freedoms.

- P8 at all times, save Countess reruns.
- Axes only. No unique or rune-word weapons except BotD, because that'll never happen anyway. I'm hoping to create some nice crafts to share, but if I find a ridiculously good rare axe, I'm allowing its use.
- Plug and junk. Matters of convenience. One will be obvious, but if you're wondering about it, you can pm me for details. Please don't talk about it here. I've already spoken to a mod about the appearance of its name (which I can do nothing about) and have gotten the ok. PlugY will be used solely for the stash and detailed character tabs. No twinking or goofy respecs.

We're going to be running this character softcore. I'll be treating it as if it were hc, that is, doing everything in my power to avoid death and any carelessness that would lead to it. Still, the thought of getting crazy far with this character, acquiring legendary gear, and dying to something stupid, whether it be dropped frames, some broken corpse explosion, or me just being faded and falling asleep with the game open, doesn't sit well with me. I'm more anxious about snakes in the Halls of Vaught and their bugged-ass poison clouds than any uber.

All that having been said, let's have some fun. Time to do barb things and hork all the stuff.

Here I go killin' again.





This is pretty much the play for the first half of act 1. Find target, bash it out of the way, slap it 'til it dies.

Corpsefire contained nothing. Not the most exciting start you could ask for.



I will kill oblominalation.



Never underestimate the usefulness of Howl.

Bibooshu



Howl made this breezy.



We explore this hell hole for grand loot.

Sure, why not? First thing to call an upgrade, albeit small. Can we get this on a rare high roller? Let's call this a good omen.



I'm not sure if Ilmarinen can actually read, but he makes an effort.



Found this blue man.

If I don't post the stats of an item that dropped, just assume it's garbo.

I'm always looking for this base to make Edge in the future, whenever I start a new character. We'll be doing a lot of gambling and axe shopping eventually for crafts. 15% off everything is nothing to sneeze at. (Who tf came up with that saying?)



I hate this place. Fuck this place. This is what you want though. Straight shot along the right wall. No exploration needed.



Fisthead Treewood.

We bring Griswold back to his smithy before putting him down, because sentiments and all that.
Then we accidentally shatter his corpse into a thousand pieces...



The Barbarian in this game sounds like South Park's Al Gore, because voice acting / 10.



It's at about this time the game decides to remind me that cold is the ultimate enemy. We're going to be itching for a source of CBF for a while. As much as I want to avoid Raven Frost, because you can't hork corpses that don't exist, anything with CBF will be top priority, as being frozen is going to be the most painfully tedious bottleneck in this playthrough. Maybe we'll get lucky and run across an easy Death's sash, Hawkmail or Duriel's Shell sooner rather than later.

Going to prioritize Stealth before moving on from the Black Marsh, as always. So, seeing a Tal rune when quest killing the Countess is nice.



Very first rerun yields Eth. Fantastic. Wasn't too fond of the floor layouts, so I'm glad no more reruns are necessary.



Of course I found a 2 socket ring mail soon after I made this, but it's of no real consequence. Don't need to worry about defense too much for the time being. Resists, Dexterity, FRW and Hit Recovery breakpoints are all lovely jubbly. A little mana regen is an underappreciated nicety as well.

And this is what we'll be prioritizing on our merc above just about everything else. 5% procs often enough. Amp damage is tremendously helpful on /p8. And yeah I know I forgot to post a screenshot of the player settings, but you'll just have to take my word for it.



Is tiny hammer and cannot craft mighty axe.



Foulpits Pawndog.

We stand back and let the merc take the kill, because she needs the xp, not because we're scared.

Skeleman shootymancer. He uses wuss magics.



The first unique of the game turns out to be an axe we can't and wouldn't use. I don't know if this is a good or bad omen.



Snot Skull. We meet again.