Dressing my WW Barb

Hi there!

I am lurking in these forums for quite some time now and usually I am not the guy to ask for help easy because I like to achieve stuff on my own but since I did not came across what I was searching for I figured why not put the pride away and ask for help.

Alright so like many of you I have played D2 for many years now but I never really got into Multiplayer (aside from playing on network with friends ofc) and playing on battle.net.

I also never was that interestet in gearing up my character, I would just play them till they reached hell and then I stopped because it got to frustrating getting smashed every 5 minutes because of crappy items.

So yesterday the hunger for D2 rose once again and I startet a WW Barb, single player ofc.

The favour I am asking for is some advice on what items to hunt with him and also what runewords to use (and what runes are needed to do so, I am pretty noob at that stuff).

Since I am not familiar with the depth of item-hunting, I would really appreciate a straight forward "To Do-List", that I can work on to give my Barb a decent Equipment.

For example: "Do countess runs on nm till you get runes x and y, Do Meph runs on nm till you get this sword,.." etc., you get the point

Also if you know some Guidline of that sort that already exists but I did not find (shame on me) then feel free to link to it.

(Edit: also I dont know if "dressing my barb" is the right way to say it lol, pls correct my if i am wrong and forgive me, english is not my native language )|||oath BB(or other 4 soc 2h sword) is the main hurty stick to aim forassuming you use the rwm, not sure where the best place is to find the mal rune, maybe hell countess|||ok i get that oath bb is a 2hand sword with 4 soccets, where do i find it most likely though?^^

also what runeword is rwm?|||rwm is the mod that single player guys use to get ladder runewords|||Start with Frenzy or double swing. I love WW but without items it doesn't work. Respec later.

Get Honor Exceptional weapons (divine scepter for example). This will be good enough to do countess runs at hell at /p1 or pit runs hell at /p1.

From the pit take any eth elite 4 sock sword or axe (you can even mix and respec later). From the countess a Mal drops pretty soon - I got 3 Mal and 2 Ist in 1 full day of play.

As soon as you make dual oath, you will be capable to finish the game, but without other decent equip, you will die often and your damage will be a bit low. Keep running the pit to find equipment and what is very important - to level up a bit.

I would advise when you reach clvl90 to move on to Travincal. I have tried with a clvl85 and clvl90 in Travincal and with low end equip this 5 lvls are noticeable in terms of surviving.

1-2 full days of game play in Travincal should produce a Lo. Make a grief, and from now on you should be fully capable to play about everywhere.

Regarding leveling: if you get lucky to get Goblin toes and a decent weapon, you can very well stay at normal Baal until clvl60+. At /p8 about 3-4 Baal runs are enough for the next lvl from clvl 50 to 65.

You can repeat the same in NM until clvl80.

Then you run the countess in Hell, then pit in Hell until at least clvl88.

Then move on to Travincal.

IMO normal and NM runs for finding items are not worth it, even though Meph for example can drop some very nice items. But it is very frustrating to complete almost all normal and exceptional items and not get the ones you need. Stick with runewords for a while - Rhyme, Stealth, Lore, Black and such are very easy to make and are a lot more findable than a certain unique.

Crescent moon elite swords are rather easy to find and are a good upgrade from Honor while you look for the Mals and the base for Oath.|||The arreat summit (http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/) can be a god place to increase your knowledge, and also understand what items people are referncing to.

For a melee character to complete hell, you'll need to trade on bnet, or be very lucky, or be very patient, to finish hell. Even oath can be tricky to get in single player.

You can try to find people selling the ik set, which is a good all-round set for ww barbs. You'll need to put 2 ias jewels/shaels in the maul to hit the last breakpoint.

The armor will be quite expensive though.|||ok, first of all thanks for taking the time to answer, I really apppreciate it!

so I should just stay with frenzy for a while until my items are good enough? but how can i respec later, I thought talking to Akara was the only way, and she offers that service only for the first few clvls, doesnt she?

also thanks for the good explanation on what weapons and runewords to go for, that helps alot getting me startet^^

do i need the rwm mod for this?

happy slaying, nils |||For Oath, Grief and quite a few nice words you need RWM, it is downloadable and there was a link somewhere here, you can also google it.

You can respec from Akara 3 times - once per each difficulty. Also you can respec if you collect tokens that drop from act bosses. Be very careful if you use ATMA with those tokens - ATMA can move them around from one char to another, but if you try to put them in an atma stash, the stash becomes corrupted and you cannot use it anymore.|||nice, I didn't knew that. thanks!