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.