I usually start a sorc on ladder to farm up some gear, but thinking about trying a different method on the next ladder reset. I like to try to create my builds without spending fg on items at start, so pretty much a self found build.

I've considered a barb to farm trav, but I haven't made a barb in years, so leveling and even cheap builds, not sure where to go. I've looked up some leveling guides. Is this effective route?

I know people do javazon to farm hell cows, but I tried with super budget self found gear leveling and she seems pretty weak farming hell cows and slow at the start until you get a decent amount of gear. maybe im doing something wrong.

I've considered doing a holy fire/hdin leveling strategy, switching to foh to farm chaos for a bit, then going back to hdin when find better gear or enough to make enigma. If I play with friends that are playing a sorc, I was thinking a foh would be nice for the conviction aura for the sorc too.

I am not good enough with necros to use them as a starter. I think assassin could be a good starter for the speed she runs, but maybe I do my builds wrong, I find them kind of weak in hell with crap gear at the start, or farming the wrong areas.

What routes do you all find the easiest and most fun to keep yourself entertained while farming early ladder? What guides do you find best to follow for leveling the characters you mention? I also play a lot solo and can normally join a group at the start of the season to get a good start on day 1.

start on a vita fb sorc and level to 24 swap to blizzard and do norm ancients, while in norm level to 40 here with baals. the goal is to not be weak getting into nm also it does give you some chances to get a few decent items from norm baal. now we do pretty good bliz damage we kill norm baal get into nm and just fast teleport the all acts and start doing nm baal runs. after about level 50 or 60 kill nm baal and head into hell. now back track into nm for nm cows, the goal is to find a cs or broad sword + 4 sockets and make spirit, make a lore helm, and find (any) 4 socket pole arm for the merc for insight for any level of meditation so you dont blow your mana teleporting as your drinking thousands of mana pots. use support chars, when you make your starter sorc make a bo barb. keep an eye out for any wc+ items even +1 is good. pull your support war cry barb into throne for leaching during any baal run and get battle orders and battle command and shout it makes nm and hell much easier. when your starter items are found from cows go back into hell and slowly rush all acts, at this point your gonna be tired and running on caffeine and the char might die a few times dont worry no one gives a shit just finish the act boss via some vet tricks like killing andy from across the wall, moating meph, static duriel and predict where he will be and cast bliz so he walks into it while you run in circles. now your in act 4 so clear chaos carefully and cast bliz on diablo a few screens away until its dead make sure to static him well. now were in act 5 there is not much to do here at our level with our build so if you want ancients grab all warps, if you want the char title or first blood kill for hell its fine but no one cares or remembers at this point. go back to chaos and defensively kill monsters and skip cold immunes, the goal is monster pack area clearing and not popping seals. farming chaos is difficult but for a bliz sorc you can pull it off and expect to die a lot. high runes do drop in chaos its the best area in the game and its tc 85 also the monsters do not have ranged attacks like arrows or souls lightening, fire is highly damaging but no where near as bad as light. now that your 70-80 you can try and kill ancients and get a team together and make sure your not all vita bliz sorcs as that does happen a lot when ladder starts. kill ancients, get character title and go back to clearing chaos. some people will attempt to "level" while trying to make hell baal runs just ignore them and run chaos they are tards. you will find a lot of good starter items, and also use caster crafts for useful temp items. after you found a few hrs you can either make a infinity and use your mf sorc or make a enigma and switch to a pally either way you need a strong mfer. and that is how you start d2

Hard to pass on a hammerdin for self farming. Can walk hell chaos with minimal gear and clear it.

I'd like paragraphs in the future but this is the right answer.

I ran a ssf barb and let me tell you, it is considerably more difficult then just running a sorc. You will find more gear for your ssf barb on sorc, then you will in the same time spent on barb.

But if you are set on doing barb, swap to singer barb when you get x2 spirit swords and deck out the merc. He will be doing the majority of the killing. Then respec to zerk or hybrid when you get budget killing gear ie - IK/Obedience/Lawbringer/Cresent moon etc.

Norm your using runewords again - malice/strength/honor/black etc

My starter was Bladesin on HC this season. So was on SC.

And I made a sorc on HC, and noticed Tele was great 😃

On HC i normally start fire Druid with oak people will just let you leach in the corner most of the game
then switch to windy and you can do everything hdin can do but safer

Good post, pretty basic sorc starter, just 1 question. How do you level the bo barb at the same time? In order to level him in throne, he will need to be at least 20 to kill ancients before going into throne. Yes, you can pause and spend the hour leveling him through trist and tombs, but wondering if you have another method that works when it is an alt your are carrying through.



I appreciate your input on the Barb as a starter. It is hard to not go sorc at least for the first few days. As you said you can find way more gear and gear another character.




I haven't tried a martial arts sin yet. I was actually looking into a mosaic build to possibly use as a starter.

go download sandboxie and get some extra keys 8 cdkeys / 1 ip-proxy

you can use both d2 windows at the same time if your doing trist runs to level him up or you can use a follow bot script to have him run after your char/ take tps ect - both methods work