It took me about 1.5 years to complete lvl 99 character with very casual approach. If I'd have to give you numbers, I'd say you would need anywhere 170 - 800 hours to get 1-99, depending on your build and amount of teamplay.170 hours if when you are center of team and they leave you diablo/baal/nihilatak kills + hunt you XP shrines etc. For well geared and well played character that can do very fast baal/diablo/nihilatak runs I guess it would take 250 hours, but if you want innovative builds, don't have access to 8 player games or solo XP, it can skyrocket upwards to 800h for sure.I was playing single player, 8 players game settings, 2:20 average Baal run times or 1:45 Diablo runs times and it took me about 250 hours with mixing those two targets. Bear in mind I had no deaths and no XP losses so if you screw up and die, or just die due to lag, it can cost you up to 400 Baalruns per death on lvl 98.There is a lot more to this but this will give you rough idea of what it takes. It's not something anyone can do (people that can do it are broken in head, believe you me). Click to expand.I've played an untwinked hammer through to level 97 and died many times at high levels, mostly due to a faulty computer or lag and each time i got pissed, the worst was when i was about to reach 97 and the computer decides to crash in the throne room with only a single OK lord as an advesery. Ofc when I got online again my hammerdin was naked and i had lost a good chunk of the xp.
Diablo 2 Lvl 99 Char Download Links
This was a rule for a while tho until i found out that one of the hard drives was the culprit that made my computer crash.- D.J. You cannot get to level 99 from 98 by just solely doing ancients. It’s impossible because the exp caps out past the low 90s or so - believe me I’ve tried in single player. You get decent exp, but it’s not even enough to move the bar much at all, and you cannot do Baal runs if you haven’t done ancients legitimately.It took me about 50 days of non-stop gaming back in 2004 to get from 1-99 in 1.10, and that was from scratch on ladder Expansion soft-core USWest realm. It may take you more/less time to do because there are more items available that can boost you and you have re-spec and UBER’s possible whereas I did not back then. I used the more traditional Baal techniques- Diablo + Baal, Ondals Wisdom, Experience Shrines, and 2 PCs; one for teleporting and the other for the actual level grinding. The only thing slowing me down back then was the temporary restrictions - yes I Baaled THAT FAST because it was a competition.
Kick+trap assassin is my favorite. Very versatile build that can solo any area of the game and take on any immunities, and kills both large trash packs and the toughest bosses fast (not true of all builds).You can choose to start as either kick or traps, then build into the other later. Traps first is stronger, but doesn't hit its stride until around level 40, like many caster builds. There should be plenty of guides out there for the build. I really like the gameplay where you play as a hybrid most of the time (drop lightning traps, kick 1 dude in the face, entire screen blows up to death sentry corpse explosion chain reaction), but have the option to play as a pure ranged caster or pure melee depending on what is best for the situation.K/T assassin has great crowd control, defensive skills, and mobility too so you can get by on just your skill even with awful gear in tough areas.
Fade, cloak of shadows, mindblast, dragon flight, and good shadow warrior usage can make you pretty much invincible when it gets rough. Quite a few easy to obtain starter items that will make you powerful quickly like like goblin toe, black runeword flail, insight merc, any +skills caster items you find, and a blue wand with life tap charges on swap for hard bosses until you get dracul's grasp gloves.It is one of the most involved builds in the game to play though. You end up using something like 10 different skills regularly when played correctly. It's not a hammerdin where you just run around and hold right-click. This guide at the top of a quick google search covers the basics:I prefer a few different choices, but for the most part the impact of those differences is small and you could always respec at the endgame based on your own preferences.The great thing about the build is that you can customize it toward more of a caster or more of a kicker VERY easily based on what kind of farming you're doing or your preferences.
Most of that customization can be done with gear, so you can experiment and switch back and forth too. You can even look up a trapper build and just use full trapper gear with say gore riders and a black flail on swap to knock over bosses if you want. Or go full kicker with max physical% mitigation, high IAS breakpoints, and mostly just use your traps to pop corpses.That guide suggests leveling as a kicker, and transitioning into trapper. Either way can work, I've done both. If you want to blow a respec, the path of least resistance is probably to level to 30-40 as a kicker, then go trapper and move into hybrid as you approach level 60 and hell difficulty. You will need to save trapper gear as you approach the respec point of course, if you do this.One thing I disagree with is the guide's comments on shadow master.
I think shadow WARRIOR is far more useful than master, requires less skill points, and is great as a 1-point wonder. What most people don't know is that shadow warrior uses the skills currently selected on your left and right click slots only. Shadow MASTER casts whatever the fuck it feels like, which can be quite annoying (overwriting your traps, not casting fade on itself so it dies for no reason, mind blast converting stuff you don't want it to).This means you can control what the warrior casts with practice, and you can manipulate its AI as well. In particular, this is very powerful with cloak of shadows, since it allows you to recast it on-demand while the skill is still on cooldown. Basically you cast CoS yourself, then quickly switch your right-click to another skill, such as fade, so that your warrior doesn't cast CoS and has the cooldown available (and will cast fade itself so it becomes more durable!). When your CoS is expiring (or if you moved away and need to apply it to monsters that weren't in range of the first), you change your right-click to CoS, and your warrior will cast it. Then you can resummon your warrior and set r-click to CoS again, resulting in three back-to-back CoS casts because the newly summooned warrior has its own separate (refreshed) cooldowns.
Resummon-casting is also more reliable because it always attempts to cast your r-click skill right after summon, while it may take a few seconds for the AI to decide to cast from a warrior you had out for a while. During this time you would have already placed your traps on the ground, and are just using your dragon talon on left-click to kick mobs, leaving your r-click free to control your shadow warrior.You can also use this AI manipulation to have your warrior put enemies into hit recovery with mind blast while you kick them, or to refresh death sentries without spending a cast animation yourself so you can kick more. I have even gotten myself out of bad situations where I was stuck in hit recovery, such as vs.
Frenzy axe dual wielding death lords, but I set r-click to mind blast and my warrior would put the enemies into hit recovery, allowing me to escape. It takes practice and is one of the more complicated things to master, but it's pretty satisfying once you get good at it. Here's another guide I stumbled on that focuses on survivability over all else:Nothing new to me there, but you may find it helpful.
The most important points are 1. Don't undervalue flat PDR/MDR, they are very powerful (tomb vipers say hi) and 2.
Diablo 2 Premade Characters
Put points into fade if you want easy survivability (the%physical damage is great, and allows you to max resist extremely easily even in dumpster magic find gear). You can always respec out of the fade points later if you cap physical% with stormshield or something later, and no longer need the resists.Between that guide and the previous one, you should be able to find a happy balance between how much you want to focus on survivability, kicking, and traps.