I may have to reconsider my whole, "I only want to play computer games that take a few minutes for quick break now and then." theory. It works at times, when I'm really into my writing and just want a 10 or 15 minute break every couple of hours. But at other times, when the creative juices aren't really flowing and I'd like to completely distract myself for an hour, a longer, more intense game session can be useful.
I speculate on this since Malaya played some Diablo II a couple of days ago, as a reward to herself for finishing most of her writing projects. At first I was surfing and blogging some, but as she ran around Act One with her new Assassin and tried to remember what the the skills did (she hadn't played the game at all in months), I finally admitted to myself that I would enjoy playing a new character as well. I didn't want to do a big one though, one that would last forever and that I'd feel a need to set up with great equipment from my other characters, etc. So I did my first "live off the land" character. Hardcore, of course.
Rules for playing a LotL character vary in purity, but the basic concept is that you make a brand new level 1 character, and play them while using only what you find in the game, and without ever going to town for healing, to buy equipment, to repair your items, to sell anything, etc. Some people allow trips to town to identify items with Cain, and some allow potions to be bought, but I did neither. I could only use what I found, I could not repair it or buy any other equipment, and I never went to town other than to click on the NPCs required to advance in the quests.
For my first try I picked a Paladin, and found it pretty easy. Going on "Players 8" for the first half of Act One, I was lvl 15 or so before I even entered the Barracks, and from there I went on "players 2" and quickly got down to Andariel's lair. I did her on "Players 1" and had little trouble tanking her. I even kept my quest reward rogue alive for the entire act, and leveled her up decently in the process. I had no close calls with death, and my only differing play style was to put a few more points into vitality than I usually would have.
Act Two wasn't much harder, though I had a hell of a time in the Arcane Sanctuary. It wasn't hard to kill things, but there I realized that I'd been getting most of my potions (red and blue, since I didn't have any leech I had to keep drinking a lot of both to keep using Zeal and Smite) from barrels and chests, rather than monster drops. And since there aren't any chests in the Arcane, except for at the three tips of the branches that do not have the Summoner on them, I was soon going very slowly, letting my rogue merc get the kills from a distance, and standing around with Warmth on all the time, to try and heal up a bit.
My first big mistake was being careless and letting the merc die in the temple on the way to Duriel. I had endless skeletons and greater mummies there, and I kept running into rooms to lure the skeletons away so I could kill them out of resurrection range. That worked fine until I ran around one very large room, and my merc followed me in and got hung up somewhere and never made it out after me. Since I was playing LotL I couldn't just go to town and get her resurrected, anymore than I could have hired one of the superior Act Two mercs in the first place. (Even having a merc at all is sort of dubious in the LotL rules, since talking to Kashya to get one as a gift isn't strictly required to advance through act one.) So she was gone forever, and I was alone... alone... alone...
My second mistake was more costly, in that I found the entrance to Duriel's Lair at about 6:25pm, Tuesday evening. Kali is at 7, and I usually leave around 6:15 since it's a fair drive and there's traffic, but I didn't want to fight through the whole damn tomb again later on, and I had a fair stock of healing potions, so I figured I could either do Duriel now, or not at all. As it turned out it was not at all, since I went down and started beating on him, and I wasn't taking that much damage, but I wasn't hurting him that much either. I went toe to toe and had him about 1/3 dead, but all of my healing potions were gone, I was low on blue potions, and after trying it for a bit, I realized I didn't have the patience to run around him in circles with Warmth on as I tried to heal up organically. I also needed to leave for class, and I didn't want to be pussy and exit that game, so I just stood still and hit him until he killed me off. RIP Forager_I, lvl 23 Paladin.
It was fun to play the guy though, and he gave me what I wanted going in; some distraction, some fun, but nothing too involving or long term. In retrospect I should have leveled up to 25 or so, filled my entire inventory and cube with red potions, and found some sort of weapon with crushing blow, or at least socketed something with a sapphire to slow Duriel down. Keeping my merc alive wouldn't have hurt either, since the best weapon I found in the entire game was a rare bow, and she was using it with excellent effect.
I found some funny things while playing that way too. Besides the discovery that most of the potions fall from chests, rather than monsters, my most desired commodity in Act One was... ID scrolls. Through out the entire act I had ten things in my inventory that I wanted to ID, but couldn't. Eventually I stopped picking up jewels at all, since I didn't have the space (can't use the stash in town) and didn't think I'd ever find enough ID scrolls. None of the ones I ID'ed were useful anyway, and overall there are far fewer ID scrolls dropped than magical items in act one.
This changes in act two, when you have a few decent items and are therefore no longer picking up every magical cap, sash, leather gloves, etc. Then I ran into the opposite problem, when I began to develop a huge backup of ID scrolls, and had 9 or 10 of them clogging my inventory. Eventually I went back and hunted through the Jail in act one until I found one of those rooms with a bookshelf, and got an identify book just for the space savings. I died with about 15 charges in it too, lot of good those did me.
Invigorated by that two day experience, and the solid amount of writing I got down between play sessions, I started Forager_II off last night. She's an Amazon, one I'm going bow with, though I'm using Jab with a rare spear for nastier creatures in close. I considered doing Jab only, since that's a very effective technique early in the game, but realized it wouldn't be viable simply because so few spears drop. Not being able to repair the good items you find really changes your strategy, and my Paladin must have broken 15 or 20 weapons even during his brief two acts of life. Using a bow is more sensible, since it won't break and I just have to find arrows, but since far fewer bows drop, getting a decent one, much less two so my rogue merc can help, is going to be a challenge. I also don't see how I'll beat Duriel, unless I can find some damn nice spear to dice him up with, but at least I won't make the mistake of going in without being fully prepared. I can't see leveling all the way to 30 in Act 2, which would give me a Valkyrie to use as a tank, but I can make it to 24 and use Decoys, if I need to stand back and shoot him with arrows for a bit.
Best of all, I wrote for two hours last night, played the new Amazon for an hour, then wrote for another solid hour, before playing her a bit more just before bedtime. I often write a bit, then head off to play a quick game, and next thing I know it's two hours later and I've been surfing half the Internet. I suppose that's the danger of browser-based gaming; it's so easy to take interesting detours. I have no idea how long I'll be entertained by starting up new characters and marching them along until they die, but I'm just going to try and enjoy it while it lasts. They're certainly more fun than playing any of my lvl 90ish v1.10 characters, who have no fun other than boring Baal runs to try and find one of the very few super high level items I might actually have some use for.
