Howdy!





Now, I really don't know how interesting this playthrough will be to follow, since one of my rules allows me a fair degree of cheesing.
But I figured I might as well share it, since it's not a common patch to see a playthrough of.

I'll try not to bore you with all the differences between 1.00 and 1.14, because I know there have been 1.00 playthroughs posted before that listed (at least) the basics.
Though, some stuff I'll share because of it's relevancy to this playthrough. :-)



The info:

- Every extra player increases monster health by 100%, so at P5 I'm up against monsters with 500% health. For comparison, P8 in 1.14 is 450% monster health.
- Every extra player increases monster experience by 2/3. So at P5, monsters will give ~367% experience. In my case, this experience will be divided over 5 players.
- Unique monsters have 800% health on all difficulties. For comparison, on Hell in 1.14 it's 200%. Note that this actually multiplies the P5 (500%) health by 8. These monsters can definitely take a while to kill, even with good gear/damage.
- There's a bug that causes monsters to have 4 times the Attack Rating they should have, making Defense Rating immensely under-powered.
- Mana Potions can not be bought from vendors. (They didn't add this until 1.10!)
- The "netcode" is terrible. Even as the host, there is severe de-sync.


The rules:

- Hardcore.
- Players 5.
- Allowed to use all players.
- Allowed to re-run anything (at P5).


The goals:

- Destroy Diablo on Hell, crown Mate to become King.
- Find or Imbue a decent rare Bec-de-Corbin, for Corbin.


The playthrough:

There's no command (like /players) to simulate a higher number of players, so I have to create and join a TCP/IP game and fill the game that way.
I'm actually taking the 4 filler players with me, dumping them in the same area to leech experience. I intend to turn them into projects later, but for now they'll primarily be mules that will also give me more Imbues, more gems from Hellforge, more (Quest) drops from Diablo, and more rare rings from Ormus and Akara.

Mate is central to this playthrough, but he is not actually the Paladin I've started out with.
In stead, I started out with Hem. Why? Mostly, the inability to re-spec.
The idea is to pump Might to deal semi-solid melee damage until Mate is level 18 for Blessed Hammer and Concentration. At that point, Hem will basically retire, and I'll continue with Mate.

I'm not using Zeal with Hem, because it has a nasty bug: If the first attack of the sequence misses, they all miss. With how low my chance to hit currently is, this is just a bad idea.

In 1.00, Blessed Hammer benefits from 100% of Concentration and Might. Furthermore, Blessed Hammer deals physical damage, and thus its damage can be increased by Amplify Damage or Decrepify.
My cheesy rule of allowing all players to be used will(could) allow me to reach absurdly high Blessed Hammer damage. (Of course this is just relative -- it's still nothing like a 1.14 Hammerdin.)
The two downsides of Blessed Hammer are both caused by the fact that it deals physical damage: 1) It can be blocked and 2) monsters with medium-to-high physical resistance are not uncommon.
Physical resistance of monsters caps out at 95, except for those "Swarm" monsters, for which it caps out at 99.

Espado can potentially be used for Battle Orders once he reaches 24.
Though, it's likely that I'll only use it at bosses, because the duration of BO is significantly shorter than in 1.14, and I just can't be bothered to re-cast BO every minute. The bonus of BO is also noticeably tinier than in 1.14 (+64% vs +92% at level 20).
Corbin is just a mule for now. He'll be my next project (reach level 93). Since Lances don't drop, and Partizans have a shorter range, the plan is to have him use a Bec-de-Corbin. It's his destiny.


An important bit on blocking:

The blocking animation will only play when a missile would otherwise deal more than 1/12 of the player's maximum hitpoints in physical damage.
This does not mean that you do not block other attacks, it's just that the animation won't play.
This practically means: Never interrupted by blocking, and never block-locked.
Blocking worked like this until 1.07 (the release of LOD).
Yes, this is overpowered, but since Defense Rating is so under-powered, they balance each other out, to some degree at least.

The Paladin is obviously in a great spot because of Holy Shield.
The plan is to use a Tower Shield with 3 Perfect Diamonds, and use Holy Shield so that I don't have to use Twitchthroe.
Level 16 Holy Shield with a Tower Shield would give me 75% chance to block.

So far:

Unfortunately no screenshots from before Inner Cloister, as I figured it wouldn't be a fun playthrough to follow.
But later I figured, "why not", all I really have to do is take a screenshot and dump it here.

Ymp (Necromancer) over there is actually Ymp the Second. The First died in Dark Wood (at level 6 I believe) since I didn't realize his fragile physical form was being attacked by a group of evil little dudes.
I wanted to stick to P5, so I leveled a new Ymp and added him back to the crew. An ugly set-back in time, but that's how it goes sometimes. Lost nothing but a few gems and mana potions.


The boys have reached Inner Cloister. My 4 companions are essentially mana potion mules for when I hit 18.
They carry a few chipped gems as well, but I predict those will just be sold at some point. For some reason, Super Mana Potions drop as early as Cold Plains (on Normal).




Bought from Charsi after using a 5-8 Scepter for the longest time.




I specifically shopped for this as soon as I reached lvl 9 (which is when the +20% block affix becomes available at vendors).



This post was edited by Fruit on Jun 20 2018 12:25am

This is my only rare so far. 19 cold resistance and 20 FHR are very welcome.




The belt, armor and hat give me a total of 60 FHR, which put me at the 5-frame breakpoint. Awesome!
(Breakpoints in 1.00-1.06 are different from 1.07-1.14.)

The rest of the gear is trash. Stats like +1 Dexterity or +10 Attack Rating.
The reason I'm not using Death's Guard is because the partial set bonuses don't exist yet. I keep it in my inventory only for the Cannot Be Frozen. (Though, I might as well just sell it, because I keep forgetting to put it on when I encounter a Cold Enchanted monster.)

I will follow this.

If you have CPU issues with running 5 games at the same time, PM me, there is a solution to that.

This should be entertaining, loving the squad and please keep up the 1.00 info

I appreciate the replies, guys! :-)


@-joey-
Thanks a ton for the suggestion/offer. I already have something in place that fixes the CPU usage. I don't know what the rules here are with regards to mentioning stuff like that, so I guess I'll refrain from mentioning names or specifics. (Though I bet you know exactly what this is.)
I've been greatly enjoying your playthrough, and it's one of the reasons I decided to share my own here.
I'm still undecided on whether I'll bother running The Cow King. Maybe I'll save that for after I've reached the goal of Kinging the Hammerdin. :-)


And a little progress:

This time, I didn't forget to put on my Death's Guard. You don't chill me, Bone Ash.
Notice the Amplify Damage? I can't express how addicting it is.
I've been dragging the Necromancer along with me almost everywhere I go, to help me deal with Champions and Uniques. It just makes such a big difference.
(Though, even with the AD, some packs just take forever.)




Very anti-climactic.




After slaying these two rude muppets, an enraged brother started attacking me from the North-West.
Turned out they were quadruplets!
Green is a nice color, but these angry guys were dangerous, and I take no prisoners.
They had no useful loot, however. Schmucks.



This post was edited by Fruit on Jun 20 2018 02:33am

It's safe. C'mon guys.




Even with AD, these guys took a [.......] hour.
Beautifully blue, but now extinct.




Third rare. Not exactly what I was looking for.

Idiots forgot to lock this door.




Took a while. Took a few potions. Took a bit of durability.
Those 3 gems are her quest-drop. THANKS.




10 FCR will be nice once I get to to use Blessed Hammer.




The Falchion was the fourth rare. It was terrible. Charsi ate it.

This post was edited by Fruit on Jun 20 2018 03:04am

And there we are.
Can you imagine the awesome Act 2 Town music playing?
I know I can, but I don't have to!
Always a pleasure, Jerhyn.

Sold! It'll be waiting for when I level up, as I lack 3 strength at the moment.
That should be a noticeable DPS upgrade, mainly because I'll be attacking slightly faster.




This (chance to hit) is starting to become a problem.




Casually leeching from this skeleton. (6% from my Amulet.)
Leeching penalties weren't added until 1.10.
One of the worst enemies for builds that sustain (life) through leech is a monster with high physical resistance. Amplify for that purpose is an fantastic tool.
Of course this will be irrelevant once I start using Blessed Hammer.