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Diablo: Azz Elbows In
I've been having some fun with Diablo 2 lately. My level 32 Paladin seemed to have stalled out; he's wearing a nice set provided by the clan, but right now it's very hard to do much damage. He doesn't get HURT much, if at all, but it takes a lot of hits to take down almost any foe.
That's boring (and a strain on my mouse finger), so I started up a necromancer. Had some fun with him, and got him up to level 24 or so; I specialized in summoning, skeletons and such. He's pretty effective.
But space is at a premium, so I started my first personal mule. A "mule" in D2 is a character who exists to store equipment that you don't want to sell; stuff that might be useful later, or for a different character. This is possible because if you play a private solo game for at least five minutes, you can drop stuff on the ground in a safe area, log out with one character, and bring another character into the same game to pick up the dropped stuff.
I used this technique to consolidate gems from all of my characters, for one thing. Very useful.
Since he wasn't going to be an actual playing character, I made my mule a druid. Out of sheer curiosity, I took him out for a spin. I'd played a druid once before, and it had been kind of boring; the werewolf form looked interesting, but didn't seem to be too effective. But this time I took the poison creeper skill, and it was pretty cool.
So I made a new druid, a non-mule one, and have been playing him almost exclusively. I think it's my best character so far; he has remained consistantly effective. I've mostly been using equipment I've found myself, rather than stuff that the clan has given me. I've been finding a lot of great stuff lately, including set pieces and uniques.
Quick explanation for people who don't know Diablo 2: Set pieces are magic items which belong to a named set. They are rare, and you only find one item of a set at a time. But if you use more than one item from the same set (for example, Angelic armor & an Angelic ring) you get extra, bonus magical enhancements. Wearing all the items of a set simultaneously gives you even more bonuses. The thing is, set items are so rare that a single player by themself would need to play for many hundreds of hours to complete just one set. That's when being a member of a clan is particularly useful, because if you're missing one or more items, someone else in the group may be able to fill in the gap. Unique items are extremely rare and powerful items, more powerful than "normal" magic items.
Anyway, I was doing some solo online playing on Battle.net recently, when someone came into the game. I should explain that clan people customarily create games with a particular name and password; that way if any other clan people come online later, they can join right in. But the password seems to have gotten out among non-clan members, some of whom are pretty obnoxious.
One guy was abusive to other players if they didn't do what he wanted. Another actually STOLE set items and SOLD them on eBay!
The thing is, there are a lot of people in the clan. And it's not always easy to recognize names. So when Azz_Killer entered the game, asked to join my party, and asked for a town portal, I thought twice - and let him in. There was already a town portal open near me anyway, since I was about to try a quest that I had never done before - one that I feared could kill me.
It was the Summoner, a corrupted mage who does a huge amount of damage with his elemental bolts. I rushed towards him with my dire wolves, poison creeper, spirit of wolverine, and raven just as Azz_Killer appeared behind me. I killed ALL of the Summoner's henchmen myself, as well as the Summoner himself...and at that moment Azz_Killer teleported in FRONT of me and emptied out all the treasure from the Summoner's horde.
He did it with amazing speed, so quickly that I didn't even get a chance to see what he was stealing.
"Was there anything good in those chests?" I asked politely. But there was no response. Feeling decidedly robbed, I decided to drop out of the game.
Later, I confirmed that there was no Azz_Killer in the clan, and as a result I'm not using the standard clan password (I posted my own variant on the clan discussion board, along with a warning about the thief). But here's the strange thing: Azz_Killer was a level 46 sorceress. I was in normal mode, playing a level 24 druid. What was a challenge for me would have been literally NOTHING for Azz_Killer. So why did this jerk bother to steal the fruits of my quest, when he could have done the same quest at incredible speed for himself any number of times?
What a punk.
That's boring (and a strain on my mouse finger), so I started up a necromancer. Had some fun with him, and got him up to level 24 or so; I specialized in summoning, skeletons and such. He's pretty effective.
But space is at a premium, so I started my first personal mule. A "mule" in D2 is a character who exists to store equipment that you don't want to sell; stuff that might be useful later, or for a different character. This is possible because if you play a private solo game for at least five minutes, you can drop stuff on the ground in a safe area, log out with one character, and bring another character into the same game to pick up the dropped stuff.
I used this technique to consolidate gems from all of my characters, for one thing. Very useful.
Since he wasn't going to be an actual playing character, I made my mule a druid. Out of sheer curiosity, I took him out for a spin. I'd played a druid once before, and it had been kind of boring; the werewolf form looked interesting, but didn't seem to be too effective. But this time I took the poison creeper skill, and it was pretty cool.
So I made a new druid, a non-mule one, and have been playing him almost exclusively. I think it's my best character so far; he has remained consistantly effective. I've mostly been using equipment I've found myself, rather than stuff that the clan has given me. I've been finding a lot of great stuff lately, including set pieces and uniques.
Quick explanation for people who don't know Diablo 2: Set pieces are magic items which belong to a named set. They are rare, and you only find one item of a set at a time. But if you use more than one item from the same set (for example, Angelic armor & an Angelic ring) you get extra, bonus magical enhancements. Wearing all the items of a set simultaneously gives you even more bonuses. The thing is, set items are so rare that a single player by themself would need to play for many hundreds of hours to complete just one set. That's when being a member of a clan is particularly useful, because if you're missing one or more items, someone else in the group may be able to fill in the gap. Unique items are extremely rare and powerful items, more powerful than "normal" magic items.
Anyway, I was doing some solo online playing on Battle.net recently, when someone came into the game. I should explain that clan people customarily create games with a particular name and password; that way if any other clan people come online later, they can join right in. But the password seems to have gotten out among non-clan members, some of whom are pretty obnoxious.
One guy was abusive to other players if they didn't do what he wanted. Another actually STOLE set items and SOLD them on eBay!
The thing is, there are a lot of people in the clan. And it's not always easy to recognize names. So when Azz_Killer entered the game, asked to join my party, and asked for a town portal, I thought twice - and let him in. There was already a town portal open near me anyway, since I was about to try a quest that I had never done before - one that I feared could kill me.
It was the Summoner, a corrupted mage who does a huge amount of damage with his elemental bolts. I rushed towards him with my dire wolves, poison creeper, spirit of wolverine, and raven just as Azz_Killer appeared behind me. I killed ALL of the Summoner's henchmen myself, as well as the Summoner himself...and at that moment Azz_Killer teleported in FRONT of me and emptied out all the treasure from the Summoner's horde.
He did it with amazing speed, so quickly that I didn't even get a chance to see what he was stealing.
"Was there anything good in those chests?" I asked politely. But there was no response. Feeling decidedly robbed, I decided to drop out of the game.
Later, I confirmed that there was no Azz_Killer in the clan, and as a result I'm not using the standard clan password (I posted my own variant on the clan discussion board, along with a warning about the thief). But here's the strange thing: Azz_Killer was a level 46 sorceress. I was in normal mode, playing a level 24 druid. What was a challenge for me would have been literally NOTHING for Azz_Killer. So why did this jerk bother to steal the fruits of my quest, when he could have done the same quest at incredible speed for himself any number of times?
What a punk.