Diablo 2is filled with monsters, quests, and treasures, all the elements that will fill your journey through Sanctuary. After picking your class, you’ll arrive in the Rogue Encampment ready to investigate the corruption that plagues the land.
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To aid in your quest, these tips & tricks are designed to jumpstart your knowledge and make you a more formidable adversary. By keeping these ideas in mind, you can ease the learning curve and maximize your loot. Streamlining your item management, combat priorities, and character resources will aid the forces of light and send back the demons to where they came from.
8Pick Up Everything
As you begin your journey into the Blood Moor and beyond, you should pick up everything that drops. You can skip the normal quality items (White text), but you will want to at least look at everything Blue or better. Most magic items will be upgrades, nearly all rare (Yellow text) will be bigger upgrades, and Tan text indicates a Unique item.
Unique items will be of the highest quality, except for certain Green text items (class Sets). Through Normal difficulty, pick up everything and identify it. Anything that isn’t usable, will be a nice Gold sale.
7Check All Gray Items For Sockets
Items labeled with Gray text indicate that they are either Normal with Sockets or Ethereal. Normal items with Sockets are the base components for Runewords, some of the most powerful items in the game. From the very start of the game, you should be looking for 2 open socket helmets, 2-3os body armor, and anything else your class needs.
Ethereal items are stronger than their normal counterparts, but can’t be repaired (once they lose their durability, they are destroyed). Ethereal items aren’t generally good for your character but are great for mercenaries as they aren’t affected by durability loss.
6It’s Never Too Early To Make Runewords
Some of the most valuable Runewords in the game require very low runes to craft. Steel (Tir + El) is great for physical damage classes in the early game, Stealth (Tal + Eth) is fantastic for all classes, and Leaf (Tir + Ral) is a dream for a Fire Sorc or Druid.
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From the start of the game, collect all runes your find and look for open socket armor pieces. Don’t socket any runes in random pieces of gear, save them all for Runewords. The power spike of some early-game Runewords can be a game-changer.
5Always Have A Mercenary
Diablo 2 has Rogue Scouts, Desert Mercenaries, Iron Wolves, and Barbarians available for hire. Regardless of which merc you choose, you should have one by your side at all times. Equip them with the strongest gear you may find and always revive them when going back to town.
Mercs will get themselves into troubling situations as you fight throughpacks of monsters, so be prepared for them to die quickly and often. The utility of a mercenary is well worth the hassle, as their power scales sharply when they level up and get gear.
4Light The Waypoints
Throughout your journey in Sanctuary, you will come across Waypoints that enable fast travel. These patches of dirt surrounded by a set of torches are activated when you discover them. Once activated, you can return to these points at will from any other Waypoint (including all Act towns).
Although some Waypoints are more important than others, you should aim to collect them all. Many quests and objectives will have you backtracking to older areas. These areas would otherwise take a long time to run back to, so go out of your way to find every Waypoint.
3Save Items For Other Classes
When you play your first character, you may be tempted to only save items that are applicable to that class. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever make a Barbarian, you should still save all Immortal King’s Set pieces that you find.
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Whether you end up making a Barbarian or not, items for other classes can still come in handy. The Act 5 mercenary uses many of the same items as a Barbarian and the Immortal King’s Set can trade for items that you do want (if you’re playing online). So if you find a rare item, save it.
2Attack High-Priority Enemies First
The monsters of Sanctuary are usually clustered in groups. The Fallen that you come across will often have a few Fallen Shaman around, and Blood Hawks are never too far from a Blood Hawk Nest. Identify the highest-priority enemies and eliminate them first, don’t just take on the pack as a whole.
Fallen and Blood Hawks often just distract you from attacking their more powerful counterparts. When you encounter a pack of Fallen, locate any Fallen Shaman and take them out before they can cast their spells.
1Farm Before Moving On
If you complete each quest and continually move forward, you will eventually be under-leveled for the content. When you finish an Act or unlock a new difficulty, you should replay completed content before moving on.
Areas like Tristram in Act 1, the Tombs of Tal Rasha in Act 2, and the Chaos Sanctuary in Act 4 are perfect spots to grind some XP and gear. Once you completed Act 1 Quest 3, start a new game and clear out Tristram a few more times. This will give you the boost you need to continue your journey and extinguish the Prime Evils.
