I. Before getting started1. Install Plugy (infinite shared stash between characters) . Here is how you can make it work :
http://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4561 2. Pick a character and a skillplan - either try a build on of your own , either follow a guide .
2. Check the docs : compare the uniques and runewords you can access in order to see which could work for your build
3. Go to the tools section of the forum (
http://median-xl.com/tools.php ) and check the
Speed Calculator to find out what breakpoints does your build have .
4. Read the docs again and make sure you know how the cube recipes work (unique creation ,unique uptier , socketing , crafting + the others)
II. Getting started1. set /players 8 before leaving the camp : it will increase your experience gain and drop rates , at the cost of fighting vs stronger opponents , but don't worry . Proceed at killing all stuff in your way , colect all gold/runes/gems/rings/jewels/amulets you find on the ground . Keep the gold and runes , uptier the gems , sell all others for MOAR gold
2. Upgrade your initial gear with the stuff you find on the ground . aim for more damage and defence
Usefull cheap early gear :
Summit
,
Rebel
Rebel
Body Armors
'ZolSilSilLo'
Runeword Level: 100
15% Combat Speeds
Adds 6-10 Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +(80 to 100)%
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+(151 to 200) to Strength
+(151 to 200) to Dexterity
-75 to Vitality
-75 to Energy
+60 to Mana
Maximum Elemental Resists +1%
Elemental Resists +(40 to 50)%
,
Lumen Arcana
Lumen Arcana
Body Armors
'Ith'
Runeword Level: 18
+1 to All Skills
-(3 to 8)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
-(3 to 8)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
-(3 to 8)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
-(3 to 8)% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+(25 to 50)% Enhanced Defense
+2 to Light Radius
,
Pax Mystica
Pax Mystica
Staves
'Tir'
Runeword Level: 10
+1 to All Skills
+7% to Spell Damage
+(2 to 5) to Blink
Elemental Resists +(11 to 15)%
(11 to 13)% Magic Find
- a cheap way to get a source of teleport - keep it on switch gear till you can acces Jitan's gate or another source of teleport (DA)
3. Defeat the Smith as he will drop the
Catalyst of Disenchantment needed to transform useless uniques into arcane shards
3. Kill Andariel and proceed to act 2 .
III. Leveling and gear upgrading till lvl 50 LC11. Go trough the regular game and level up by killing the opponents that get in your way . Make sure to max your resistances asap in order to feel less pain when you get hit by spells
2. Once you got to Mephisto , you will go back and kill him a few times more in order to collect the uniques he drops and turn them into arcane shards -> arcane crystals -> upgrade all your gear to the highest tier you can wear (t4/t5) .
IV. Level Challenge 11. you gain NO XP in Hatred Tran athula , this means you can go there right before level 51 . you first must Kill the pirate at the entrance ,as it drops the
Elemental Prism .
2. The defence is very important here because the amazons inside hit hard . Make sure you got arround 10k defence and some physical damage reduction + a belt full of heal pots; zig-zag walk to avoid getting hit
3. After killing each amazon priestess they will drop a sunstone . cube the
3 sunstones with the
Elemental Prism you got from the pirate while the swirles are still on .
4. The challenge is easy for most builds , but for those who got trouble doing it, see next step
V. Picking the proper mercenary1. If you play a melee/physical damage build , hire a Bloodmage mercenary to help you by dealing tons of elemental damage from behind
2. If you are ranged (bow for example) and you're not much of a tank , hire a Shapeshifter to tank for you . He also casts Bloodlust to boost your damage even more while he does the tanking . Replace it with a Barbarian mercenary once you got to act 5 . He also boost your damage by casting Gift of the Wild , he is a better tank , he has aoe stun (t-slam) and SoR attack .
VI. Leveling and gear upgrading before the Ennead Challenge 1. Kill Hephasto the Armorer on Hatred (act IV - River of Flame ) as he will drop the
Catalyst of Destruction 2. Kill Shenk the Overseer (act V - Bloody Foothills ) as he will drop the
Mark of Infusion needed to create Honorific items ( drops on all difficulties)
3. After you complete the Hatred difficulty you will be arround level 65-70 .
4. Make sure your gear is all upgraded to t5/ t6 and your resistances are maxed
5. MO your gear untill you reach as close as you can to the ED (enhanced damage/enhanced defence) cap (
200% is the new cap ! ).
VII. The ennead challenge 1. go to K3kba by entering the red portal close to the entrance of the
Torajan Jungles and kill the Necromancers found in each corner of the map untill your class charm will drop (rerun if needed) . You will do this Challenge on /players 1 on hatred difficulty in order to avoid leveling to high and miss the challenge (before level 81) . You must first destroy the totems that provides an immunity shield to all types of damage in order to kill the skeletons and Necromancers (or use bear stance if you are a barbarian/paladin - it ignores the physical imunities of the undead ) . Sometimes the packs of skeletons are protected by 2 , even 3 totems , so make sure you destroy them first .
2. Put your class charm inside the cube along with any jewel and transmute .
*If you skipped this challenge by accident (overlevel ), put your class charm inside the shared stash , create a new character , take the charm from the shared stash and transmute it with a jewel inside the cube . Put the charm back in the stash and take it from there with the overleveled character . Problem fixed . VIII. Leveling untill level 90 for LC2Advance trough the regular game by killing all monsters in your way . make sure your /players setting is not too high , in order to prevent
overleveling.
IX. Level Challange 2One of this level challenge parts is the level itself that can easily be failed as you can get beyond level 90 since act 2 terror if you keep the /players 8 setting ! in order to prevent overleveling i recommend doing act 2 terror on players 1 so that you may reach act 3 Flayer Jungle before level 91 for the chalenge .
Once you got to the swampy pit level 3 (Death Projector location) , open a portal at the entrance . The DP is protected by a pack of Mechanics and those hit very hard ! in order to ease your work , you must park almost all of them in top righ or top left of the map as you can't tank them all when you attack the Death Projector . Get them inside those small rooms then either blink over the wall or simply run away (if you can run fast enoug) so they remain behind and don't follow .
You still need at least 1 arround (try not to get more than 3 as they hit you very hard) to remove the DP immunities . DP deadly beam
always starts at the same spot (4 o'clock) and rotates clockwise so
the fight must start at the opposite place of the beam starting location . Make sure to move along behind the beam as it rotates in order to avoid instant death . The DP heals if you die so it must be done from first attempt . Bring a belt full of heal pots + arround 10k attack rating for a decent chance to hit if you play a weapon damage build .
After you destroy the DP , cube your class charm with a perfect gem to get the bonus , while the swirles are still on .
Good luck !
X. Leveling to 120 1. Now that LC2 is done you can increase the players setting back and gain more xp.
- once you got to late act 3 you can start power leveling and looking for better gear in terror K3KBA/Tran Athula/Fauzinville (if your build is tanky enough)
- you will start going there on /players 1 and only increase that if your build can handle more pain
- once you made some re-runs in those places and you hit 120 , use the runes up to level 100 you found so far to get some good runewords , and use the Shrines you have collected to craft the gear parts you need untill you can acces usefull SU's / Great runes . Aim for higher defence , higher damage , more stats , damage reduction and increased resistances .
- if you play a summoner build , get some crafts focused on minion life and minion damage after you got 75% minion resist .
2. Defeated Izual (act IV - Plains of Dispair) as he will drop the
Catalyst of Learning needed to transform SU's and set parts into signets of learning . If there are useless set parts that you have found while leveling to 120 you can now use this catalist to turn them into signets and increase your stats .
XI .The Black Road Challenge (BRC)One of the important steps here is killing the Summoner inside the Arcane Sanctuary on destruction as he will drop the "Dark Tome" (aka book of summoning)
Trial of fear - You must kill the Butcher and transmute the class charm while the swirles are still on - you will find him in Tristram (the place where you must save Deckard Cain from) - one of the burning houses has a trap door on the floor trough which you can enter his room . You may bring some summons for him to hit instead of you (his hits deal heavy damage , he may 2-shot you if your build is squishy , so be careful) in order for him to cast the pentagram . You must lure him to step inside of it as there is the only spot where you can damage him .
Trial of Greed - option 1 : run terror IOTSS to colect the amount of gold needed (666.666 gold) . Equip "gold find gear" to get the job done faster (
Lionpaw
Lionpaw
Chain Boots (4)
Defense: (49 - 54) to (71 - 78)
Required Level: 4
Required Strength: 29
Item Level: 7
(10 to 40)% Movement Speed
+(18 to 29)% Enhanced Defense
+(7 to 10) to all Attributes
+(31 to 50) to Life
+(16 to 25) to Mana
(3 to 5)% Bonus to Defense
10% Gold Find
Socketed (1)
Defense: (203 - 218) to (267 - 288)
Required Level: 22
Required Strength: 58
Item Level: 25
(10 to 40)% Movement Speed
+(41 to 52)% Enhanced Defense
+(15 to 18) to all Attributes
+(71 to 90) to Life
+(36 to 45) to Mana
(9 to 11)% Bonus to Defense
15% Gold Find
Socketed (2)
Defense: (519 - 554) to (667 - 712)
Required Level: 39
Required Strength: 202
Item Level: 46
(10 to 40)% Movement Speed
+(64 to 75)% Enhanced Defense
+(23 to 26) to all Attributes
+(111 to 130) to Life
+(56 to 65) to Mana
(15 to 17)% Bonus to Defense
20% Gold Find
Socketed (3)
Defense: (759 - 807) to (974 - 1036)
Required Level: 48
Required Strength: 403
Item Level: 79
(10 to 40)% Movement Speed
+(75 to 86)% Enhanced Defense
+(31 to 35) to all Attributes
+(131 to 150) to Life
+(66 to 75) to Mana
(18 to 20)% Bonus to Defense
25% Gold Find
Socketed (4)
,
Summit
, tir runes , other stuff) . Get the gold needed in your pockets and transmute the class charm
- option 2 : socket runes inside throwing weapons and sell them for a good price
Trial of contrition - go to the Arreat summit on terror and kill Talic , cast the dark portal and enter it . Make sure you got the latest patch version in order to avoid the portal bug that makes it unaccesible while under the effect of a morph
- here your opponents deal heavy physical damage so you should bring some high defence and damage reduction gear + a source of heavy damage
- Kill King Koth and transmute your class charm while the red swirles are on
Trial of knowledge- you must acquire the 5 brains from the main Necrobots inside Fauztinville , put them inside the cube along with the class charm and transmute
- you will deal with 3 types of monsters there : Harpylisk (immune to poison and magical damage) , Neon fiends (immune to fire/lightning/cold damage) and Necrobots (immune to physical damage) .
- you have to either bring heavy defence and damage reduction to tank a few hits or a source of very high aoe damage to kill your opponents faster than they may reach to hit you . A source to slow your opponents will also be nice to have / tanky minions / reanimates .
- this is the most dangerous trial , the opponents hit very hard , so you should only do it after you make sure your build is strong enough .
Trial of Blood - Go to terror twin seas
- the trick here is making the two priestesses follow you to a place from where you can reach fast from one to another
- lure the first one in the said spot , then run away/blink so that she stays there and won't follow you .
- go for the other priestess and lure her close to the first one . when she's close enough , kill her , then rush for the other and kill her too . try not to kill the first one too fast/too far from the second one in order to avoid restarting the trial .
After all 5 trials are done , cube your class charm with
2 arcane crystals to get the bonus .
XII. The Signets of skill - You may find the Signets of skill while farming trough the Torajan Jungles .You can use 3 of them and spend those extra points as you wish .
XIII . The Veteran Tokens - close to the end of each act you
might encounter Veteran monsters (packs) - they don't spawn all the time , so in that case you will have to save&exit and run those arreas again . Kill them to get their Eyes . Cube the 5 eyes coresponding to each type of Vetarans with your class charm .
*They are stronger then the normal opponents you encounter in the places they spawn and they usualy spawn in packs , so you must be carefullXIV . Late game Destruction / Farming - after you got about 75% of the charms , it's time to farm for signets to increase your stats . Pick a spot where your build has no problem farming at a decent speed and re-run it untill you eat the 500 extra signets .
- doing such re-runs may also provide some SU's that you might want to use or trade with for the gear you need .
- after you ate all the signets and got most of the late game gear parts you can now attempt the rest of the ubers , the hard ones .
- you will probably fail a lot untill you will get to know the maps/how strong your opponents are and how to kill them faster/stay safe . It's a part of the learning process , so i recomend you don't give up even if it takes a lot of hours . With enough deaths and re-runs i'm sure you will figure out the proper strategy to suit your needs and get the charm you want . You don't need someone to tell you how to do it ; most of the times someone else's strategy won't work for you because you have a different game style , different experience or slow fingers . I am convinced that doing the ubers "your way" you will feel the most rewarded and will apreciate the build/the mod more . Only seek for help / someone else's strategy when you feel like you hit a wall and there's no way you can advance to better results by youreself.
Good luck , have fun !
( Bloodlust )
