Dr, thank you once again for all the awesome information for the long walk of barb! I got couple more final questions.

Where did you farm for Gface? Also for black runewords bases, besides scourge and legendary mallet, are tyrant clubs and knouts good bases?

If you max howl, it’ll increase the radius but you still need to have higher level than the monsters for it to work right?

Do you use thawing potions and find item at all? Btw, taunt is an awesome skill! I’ve been using it a lot.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jun 8 2021 08:42am

I usually farm guillames at nightmare meph. Nightmare meph drops a lot of gear that the barb can use.

Tyrant club is the easiest decent damage weapon to get for black. You can find one of those act 5 nightmare, I usually just farm eldritch over and over for exp and he'll drop one so long as you have zero mf.

If you're at say level 75 when you hit hell and you're in an 85 area, you'll need a level 11 howl to scare monsters away (75 + 11 = 86). If you find plus 3 warcry sticks from malah in nightmare and have battle command, thatll be 4 hard points.

I used thawing potions until I found ravenfrost. Nightmare meph can drop ravenfrost too iirc.

Find item helps especially if you have the plus 3 warcry sticks on switch. Skill points are going to be tight, most decent barb gear does not have plus skills, you're going to get a lot of mileage out of those warcry sticks lol.

Thanks a lot for the great info! I’m going to try a barb with runeword/magic item rolling route! And this thread blew up with views in short period of time cause of you.

I think there’s few things that might help the barb additionally.

1. Blood fist can spawn 10 CB with possibly of getting other mods like mana leech/life leech/ stats/resistance and 20 ias.
2. Blood helm spawns up to 10 deadly strike.
3. Blood belt spawns opening wounds, possibly of life fhr strength and resistances.
4. Keeping all blue rings/amulets to roll for magic find so shortens farming bosses for gface and other items.
5. If resistance is low, one can craft resistance rings and amulets.
6. Use antidote/thawing potions for resistances( most probably already know).

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jun 10 2021 02:25am

I think you are over thinking the process.

Level 1 to 15 and hunting for good items to use. When/Where & Level can you find usable items when Playing Solo P1 on B.net or Single Player?

Also, Single player means that you have a Map reference that is constant, whereas on B.net, each new game doesn't (unless you have Maphack).

In reality, you should hunt certain Quest(s) and ensure the Waypoints are saved for each new game.

Level 1 to 6 ... kill everything in Blood Moor before completing "Den of Evil" for maximum experience point gain.
Level 6 to 9 ... at least complete Cold Plains and Burial Grounds after completing Den of Evil...

Note: you can just get Quests completed to Darkwood to open Tristram and then just carry on killing in Normal Act1 from Den, Rakanishu, Burial Grounds + Mausoleum, then Stony + Tristram and Treehaunch in Dark whatever it is until level X... then carry on with the items you have found during those levels. Also, you could practically kill all using normal javs if you have the requirements etc.

Talk to about that strategy.

Dr, thank you so much for that cruel recipe. It opens up so many possibilities for all 3 melee classes.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jun 10 2021 09:14am

All good ideas and yeah the blood recipes work great for other melee builds like for zealots, whirlwinders, etc.

One of the crafted recipes have knockback on the gloves, that and the cruel cube rolling trick works great for bowazons.

Depending on what you're looking for (like non unique stuff, runes, runeword bases) a helm with some diamonds helps a ton with attack rating early on when youre poor.

Also yeah you're welcome, I was over the moon when I learned about cube rolling for cruels, as melee builds are my favorite and it's a serious grind trying to find any gear at all with a melee build in Hell with the motley assortment of garbage weapons in nightmare like aldurs rhythm or bloodletter.

This post was edited by Dr_Lecter on Jun 12 2021 10:58am

Just finished my HC chars, will begin this barb now. Something tells me it’ll work out well.

Sometimes what makes life great is the journey. The struggle, the learning, long and difficult path that lead to your goal is the ultimate reward. Young generation probably have hard time understanding that.

This post was edited by Tarisus on Jun 14 2021 08:01am

Barbs are my favorite class to play through the game with, every equipment upgrade feels more impactful than it does with most caster classes.

barb is definitely the hardest class to play self found but it can be done
insight -> oath -> grief
gl and make sure to hold onto those stat resets as long as possible