Normal and nightmare

Even when just playing through Normal and Nightmare, things can sometimes slow down when you play with /player 8, but I am going to use the same gear strategy for both difficulties, since it takes time to farm decent uniques (farming is for the end game).

Therefor, unless you find decent unique items along the way, I have found the easiest way to deal decent damage is by creating rune words, or by upgrading rare and unique weapons. Rare and uniques are the only items that can be upgraded using the cube. So, you might need to recreate the same rune words later, using exceptional and elite weapons.

You do not have to go crazy, like me, and clear all areas. This is mostly a waste of time, as the drops will be much better on Nightmare and Hell. I am not sure I will clear out everything on Nightmare/Hell as well, but I have done on Normal, and it took a few days of "slowly" playing the game, mostly not doing the same area more than once.

If you are playing with /players 8 all the way through normal, then you end up leveling very fast. I was around level 50 when I completed Act 5 on Normal. The game will also be harder, but if you stick to a good gear strategy, it will not really slow you down much.

Creating Rune Words

Creating rune words works well for all dificulties, but it can take a very long time to farm the runes you need. Luckily, even if you do not find the exact runes, you can still upgrade from lower ones. For normal and nightmare, there are quite a few decent rune words, but they tend to get replaced quickly by better rares or uniques.

While I was still on Normal difficulty, I managed to find enough runes to create a Malice in a Giant Sword, which I ended up using all the way to Nightmare.

Malice has a 100% Chance Of Open Wounds, causing monsters to bleed for 8 seconds. The amount of life they loose depends on your character level, so the weapon scales pretty well while leveling up. The sword is shit compared to the best in the game. But, this is also about enjoying the process of leveling and the challenge of beating the game on Hardcore.

The Drain Life -5 effect can be countered with some Replenish Life. I am not entirely sure, but I think the effect is just the opposite of replenish life, that is, equally shitty in reverse.

Replenish Life is actually not completely useless in early game, but later it will likely provide too little healing for any noticeable benefit. Early on, you can at least use it to counter poison.

You can create the Rune word by placing the following runes in a 3 Socket Melee Weapon: Ith + El + Eth

Another easy rune word to make early on is Lore. It can be made in any 2 socket helm, which is useful if you find a helm with +skills on it.

I found a nice Avenger Guard with 3+ to Schout, boosting my defense and the duration of the Schout War Cry. You can create the rune word in a 2 socket helm with these runes: Ort + Sol

It is disappointing that many cube formulas are so expensive, and that items with rune words can not be upgraded like rares and uniques. Torchlight seem to do a better job in this area, with more options for item customization.

Ladder-only rune words

To great annoyance, I discovered that certain rune words only work on battle.net when playing on the ladder. I solved the problem by installing a mod that enables ladder-only rune words on single player. I do not think this is cheating. It is simply solving a "bug" in the game left by Blizzard.

I would also like the Über quests, but that can wait until I reach Hell with at least one character. The problem is that I likely have to install another mod, and I am not sure how to do that while keeping the rune-word mod intact.

The reason I do not play on battle.net is, my CD keys have been banned for no reason.

I have not played the game in years, and when I started playing again recently, I found my CD-keys had been banned. I remember getting temp-banned was a huge problem when playing on the ladder, which basically defeated the purpose of the ladder competition. In any case, Hardcore was (maybe still is) pretty much broken on battle.net, due to disconnects and lag.

Rare items

Rare items are actually some of the best in the game. The ones with good stats are really rare, and tend to be outperformed by uniques. But, before Hell difficulty, even the weak ones tend to perform quite well. Get something with mana steal or life steal, and use the Cube formula to upgrade it for more damage.

I found a rare sword, Pain Bite (Giant Sword), which I upgraded to the exceptional version using a Horadric Cube formula: Ort Rune + 1 Amn Rune + 1 Perfect Sapphire.

If I do not find anything better, I also plan on upgrading it to the elite version.

The Perfect Emerald (+100 Poison Damage over 7 seconds) is likely not the best option. I mostly did it for fun, since I like poison damage. But, it seems it works well when combined with the Open Wounds affect from the Malice sword.

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