Well, I'm asking here for a bit of strategy.

I have this sorceror on the second level of hell. He has done pretty well until now (though under heavy consumption of potions).

I am now facing blood knights and I can't figure out what to do about them.

See, my problem is that my sorceror stinks spell-wise. For some reason I have only found a few books and Adria hasn't been to willing to sell books too so I'm stuck with following:

Fire Bolt level 10
Charged Bolt level 4
Healing level 2
Holy Bolt level 3
Inferno level 2

Fire Wall level 2
Lightning level 3
Flash level 3
Town Portal level 2
Phasing level 5

Guardian level 1

Golem level 1

and a total of 279 mana to burn.

I have NO mana shield, NO teleport, NO fireball and NO flame wave.

I have little money (only around 7000) so I can't just wait until Adria gets something good.

I DO have a blessed gothic plate that I can't use due to strength requirements.

What should I do?

Wizard in hell will be in trouble no matter how many spells you have, as that's where the magic resistances really start to kick in.
As you only have a little gold and hardly any items to sell, I assume you spent most of it on healing and mana potions. Normally, combing through the first levels of the game should get you a decent selection of spells to start with, items to sell (although those in the upper levels rarely make a profit) and Ardia should have some books on sale too. Her selection changes each time you go down and come back up again. In hindsight, you should probably have spent more on books.
Now that you can't change it, there are three options.
1) live with it, and try to kill the knights as best you can, as well as any others, constantly running back to town.
2) start a new game with the character. This is probably the best option. The upper levels will be easy, almost a waste of time except for the books you may find there. After that, enemies will become tougher once again and you'll get more gold off them as well. Experience, gold and new items should strengthen your character dramatically.
3) toss that armour on the ground, get yourself some cheap healing potions and exploit the duping bug (a search on duping and diablo should get you more on that) to get more suits and sell these for gold, which you trade for new books.

I won't do the restart thingie unless I'm restarting from scratch.

The only item of any worth I have is Wizardspike (a dagger)

My resistances is in the 25 range and I have 85 AC.

You got problems, all right. I never bothered with many spells in this game. My wizards always had mana shield, Fireball 5, Lightning 5 and Holy Bolt 5. Every point went into the magic stat to build up the mana pool.

As to getting books: in case you hadn't noticed, Adria's inventory changes every time you leave the dungeon. So I'd open a portal, save the game and go through. If she had nothing I wanted, I'd restore and try again. Boring, but eventually she had the books I was looking for.

Also, I'm surprised you have so little cash. By this time in Diablo, all my characters (regardless of class) usually had piles of gold all over the town square.

As for Hell itself, I used mainly Fireball and Lightning Bolt. Some monsters resist one type of spell, so I used the other. The Big D himself is very susceptible to Holy Bolt, so that's the one to use against him.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

It's just that I am trying to refrain from cheesy (and boring) tactics like going back and forth between Hell and Tristham until Adria has what I want.

Anyway the answer showed itself: My favourite spell, Firewall.

Now, could anyone point me in the direction of a good firewalking tutorial?

It's not necessary to be in the dungeon and come into town for her to change inventory. It changes every time you load a game. So you could as well stand next to her and save the game and load until she has something you need.

That's too much cheese for me.

Anyways I got through alive anyway.

The answer was to find in that blessed gothic plate i was carrying around all the time. I pretty much scrapped all of my mana and magic items just to get the strength necessary to wear it.

When carrying good armor beating blood knights become a simple question of standing still with a Fire Wall right in front of you.

I also did Diablo in with firewalls by walking around inside a field of them with Diablo hot in my heels. When done right you take suprisingly little damage. I believe that method is called firewalking.

Well, kudos to you for saving the world [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]
Very well done, especially considering the situation you were in a few levels up [img]smile.gif[/img]

Fist, arrrgghh! Never thought to try that. Would have saved me a lot of time, if I'd known you didn't have to do the teleportal polka. Oh well, a bit late now.

Inde, in a game where almost everything is randomized, I'll take all the cheese I can get ;) Anyway, congrats on finishing!

<center>Nightowl2</center>

I might just try playing one of the "variants" now.

Any good suggestions? I have my eyes on the Muscle Mage.

Why do you say it's too late? Don't you intend to play Diablo ever again? I actually thought so for a long time after BG1 was released, but now I'm playing Hellfire and I'm enjoying it. After all it was the first RPG I ever played.

Yes, you can try that. But didn't you just finish the game with a mage? Try some other class for example. If you have Hellfire use monk. It's my favorite class in the game.

I do not have Hellfire and I HAVE finished the game with the other two classes.

This time was fun because I won on an unlikely tactic (being denied most essential spells).

I might do an axeman once.

Well, I've tried to go back to Diablo/Hellfire, but Diablo 2 has me spoiled. My fave class in D1 was the rogue, and the Amazon in D2 just has too many nice abilities. Plus, my characters can run! And the store stocks turn over every time you leave and re-enter town. I can't go back to the older game :(

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Well, I started Manbolt the Muscle Mage and I must say: Never have I experienced such a grueling transition between level 1 and 2.

See, muscle mages may only equip items with a strength requisite (unless they are jewelry in which case they MUST work to increase either strength or hitpoints (preferrably both).

Also they disdain all spells except Healing, Town Portal, Teleport and Stone Curse (once they beat Diablo on core they might also utilize the Mana Shield).

What this means for a level 1 muscle mage is that:

1: You can't equip any items (until you reach level 2 and gain some strength).

2: You can't use any spells (since the one you start with is disallowed).

Thus I had to do with the sorcerer's lame 1 damage bitch-slap and a a whopping ac of 3. If I ever met more than two skeleton captains simultaneously I was in deep trouble (restart pending).

Hey, if my Muscle Mage dies and I don't have time to reclaim his stuff (I had to uni) do I have to start him over from scratch?

no but you do, have to go get new items. me and my friend were playing a cooperative game and some bug made us lose all our items and money. So we had to go back to the begining and start punching creatures. well actually me being a fighter i did, he was a mage so he could use spells

It's just because playing a level 1 naked sorcerer without using any spells is such a pain.

Having to build up a new EQ is an excellent excuse to try out some new combination.

BTW, I am playing a Diablo variant so I am deliberately playing by a set of made up rules. I read that Muscle Mages are very vain and would do almost anything to reclaim a good set of battlegear. I couldn't make out if this was an excuse for them to use otherwise forbidden spells or if I am actually obligated to fetch my equipment if it should be lost.

[ 03-28-2003, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: Indemaijinj ]

Whoa sorry I'm a bit late here. Congrats on getting past those tough Blood Knights (Blood Knights are the toughest of their type and they resist Fire and are immune to Lightning & Magic), and then even beating Diablo. I was going to recommend that you cruise through with your Firewall but looks like you figured that out just fine! By the way, you can stack Firewalls on top of each other for extra damage. I'm guessing you used that tactic on Diablo [img]smile.gif[/img]

As for your Muscle Mage, it is actually a rather tough variant... and also a pretty slow one. You might want to try some other variant as your first one, but if you are ready for the challenge then it should be great fun. As with any spell restrictive mage variant, they are slow to start. I would recommend using a shield with no weapon to clear the first couple levels of the Church. Sorcerers swing faster when using a shield as a weapon, so you can usually dish out damage before receiving any. Shields only do like 1-3 dam, so this tactic doesn't work past the first few dlvls. Be sure to use the shift + attack to get the first hit in on the monsters.

When a MM dies, he is allowed to clear the area with otherwise restricted spells to reclaim his gear. This is usually a last case senario though, because as you already figured out, this allowance could lead to some cheesy game play. I once knew a MM who definately took advantage of this rule. He would attract a huge mob and have his mage die, then proceed to clear half the level to "recover" his items :rolleyes:

Anyways, for future characters I would strongly recommend playing in multiplayer mode. You can play by yourself (and indeed you should since Battle.net is full of cheating lamers) by using Network IPX, Direct Connect, Modem, or even a password protected Bnet game. The advantages of multiplayer mode are too vast to mention them all, but the biggies are: higher difficulty settings, chars can advance to L50, and levels/areas can be replayed at will (since only your char is saved at the end of a session)... not to mention cooperative play with trusted friends is why many people still play this game after 6 years. Send me an email if you want to play some time [img]smile.gif[/img]

My website hasn't been updated in a long time, but I have a pretty comprehensive Links page that has links to the best Diablo sites out there:
http://www.geocities.com/daslonghorn/linksnew.html

Since you seemed interested in spell strategy, check out the Spellcraft 101 guide at this site:
http://www.arewehavingfunyet.com/diablo/diablo.shtml

Oh and here's an excellent Firewall guide:
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/diablo/stratcdfirewall.html
More guides from this site here:
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/diablo/cd.html

And lastly, here's a good D1 forum for you (they also cover D2, but the D1 section is still pretty active):
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/

Let me know if you have any more questions. Have fun!

I chose the Muscle Mage primarily because his rules are simple and easily remembered.

Well, I did follow the rule about items having STR requirements rather strictly so I actually cleared first level of the church completely naked without the use of any spell what so ever (but some red potions).

Well, I think he picked up rather quickly from that. I just lost all my eq from a corrupted savegame, but it didn't really hinder my progress. I just did a short potion run through the first two levels of the church, bought some non-magical gear from Griswold and dived directly into the cats. In no time I had a dream setup with a glorious mail, a badass kite shield and the Bonesaw (plus some jewels of the Sky). He was about as effective as my warrior of the same level. Hit points was a non-issue since he didn't get hit. Only dogs (I avoided fast spit dog heroes) and familiars were sometimes effective. I did get stunlocked a lot by horror archers though.

Then disaster struck: As you know muscle mages are more interested in flexing their muscles than actually being good at combat and wirt suddenly spouted a big meaty Axe of the Titans. How am I to teach a MM common sense? He, of course bought it right away. So now I am stuck with an axe-swinging Level 16 mage that swings dreadfully slow and hits air most of the time (I did find a silver jewel that could help on this, but as you probably know, muscle mages refuse to wear any jewelry that does not aid STR or VIT). I had some pretty baroque situations with overlords. Overlords a peculiar that they have good AC and many hitpoints, but are otherwise worthless fighters. It commonly resulted in me being mobbed by overlords hitting air while I was hitting air too yawning at the lethargic swing-time of an axe-wielding mage. It was a relief not being constantly stunlocked by archers though, now I take the damage instead.

BTW, the monster type that has caused me most grief is in fact the skeleton captains (corpse, captains, horror captains und so weiter).

It sounds like you're getting along just fine, Indemaijinj [img]smile.gif[/img]

Here's a couple pointers to help you out with melee combat:
* Blunt weapons do 1.5X dmg to undead monsters (skeletons, zombies), but they do .5X dmg to animal monsters (scavengers, fallen, etc.)
* Sharp weapons do 1.5X dmg to animals and .5X to undead
* damage against demons (goatmen, knights, witches, mages, etc.) is 1X with both blunt and sharp
* doorways are great places to fall back to if you become overwhelmed with a mob because you can limit yourself to fighting only one opponent at a time!
* axes can be fun for a while, but in the long run you will want to find a good weapon & shield. +dmg/+to hit% weapons with useful suffixes are ideal.
* try to find a magical shield that gives Fast Block (of Blocking). These can be found in the Catacombs or bought from Griswold early on (before L20). There are also two unique shields (Storm Shield and Holy Defender) which give Fast Block.

Have a good one [img]smile.gif[/img]

Thanks, but I have already read Jarulf's guide twice.