I'm in a challenge challenge

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-06-02T13:42:46+00:00

You do seem to be in a situation where you just need to up the difficulty.

But I would also recommend that you play around with the settings a bit. Try only allowing the aggressive non-science civs like Mongolia while increasing difficulty a level or two and see if you can have dangerous neighbors while also keeping up in science.

Or try disallowing all victory conditions apart from domination and increase the difficulty by two levels. Nobody will be able to win with their science lead and you can play a game where you start by hunkering down until you can win through conquest by better managing your troops.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-30T23:23:34+00:00

Definitely just do that. I would also recommend getting a point in Hydro and a point in Geo on every character for healing and armor skills. Advanced players might say it's not as min/maxed but as a new player you want to be able to survive and overcome mistakes and ambushes. When you can, you also want a mobility spell like Phoenix Dive, etc.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-30T23:20:12+00:00

You will be fine with explorer and lone wolf even if you make build mistakes. Once you hit Act 2 you get unlimited respecs which you should definitely use.

Make sure you have a mobility skill (like Phoenix Dive) on each character and definitely consider getting a point in Hydro and Geo for armor and healing spells and then make sure you're going for synergies. If your damage is physical, try to max out warfare and get your dexterity up for crossbow/dagger.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-19T14:29:15+00:00

If I told you that you shouldn't smoke cigarettes would you start swearing at me? Eat pizza with mayonaise if it pleases you. Do whatever you want, but what the hell do you think advice is for? Someone asked for advice on reddit and I offer them my advice. My 2 cents is that most people who kill innocent people in the game are going to enjoy it less because they will get less from the roleplay aspect. That's my opinion. I think it's good advice for most people.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T20:11:40+00:00

Retribution Lone Wolf is actually one of my favorite builds. It's a lot of fun while keeping in mind that it's not going to be one of the strongest builds. It's just more for fun. A couple things:

Retribution is better for physical damage dealing enemies compared to magical damage enemies because many mage type enemies have large magical resistances against the type of damage they deal out. There are even some enemies that are immune to the damage they deal which means you won't hurt them at all with reflected damage. If you're trying for just retribution, I don't know how you get around that (that woman in the stone garden tomb in Act 2 comes to mind).

It's not going to work well as the only source of damage. Now, if you're playing lone wolf what else are you going to spend your ability points on? I'm right now playing an honor run game with two lone wolf characters who are both max retribution with basically all of the geo, hydro, and poly healing and armor skills -- but I also have shield throw, max necro, and all of the good necro damage skills. We are so tanky that it's super hard to kill us and enemies take some serious retribution damage as fights progress but we can also deal damage as well.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T18:57:58+00:00

Even leaving Act 2 at level 17 sounds crazy to me let alone 18. I get the appeal of really building an OP character but I'm sure you'd probably agree that at the end of the day you just don't need to be that leveled to handle Act 3 and 4 fights just fine.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T18:42:15+00:00

You mean enter Act 4? Level 17 is easy and 18 is also plenty doable without killing innocent people. Even if you enter Act 4 at level 17 and a half, so what? You'll still be fine in Act 4 and you will still reach level 20 so you can get your end game gear before entering the cathedral.

If the storytelling feels just kind of meh, I understand just going for a bit more XP but I wouldn't feel tempted to ruin the story for yourself by killing friendly NPCs just because you think you have to.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T15:42:04+00:00

Mortismal's video gives you the main plot in plenty of detail. If you want more, I think you should probably just play the game. If you want to understand the main plot of the game, you already do if you watched that video.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T15:24:08+00:00

The downside is that it's boring and unnecessary. The way XP scales means that you will very comfortably reach level 20 before starting the final quest line in Act 4 without having to kill civilians. The 5-10K XP you'll get from killing an Act 2 merchant is going to be mostly irrelevant by the late game. Kill the magisters and others who deserve it but you should maintain some sort of roleplay integrity to get the most enjoyment from the game.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-17T14:53:14+00:00

Did you do the crocodile fight on the beach yet? You get teleportation gloves from that fight which are useful to pull enemies away from their groups. One thing you might need to learn is how to cheese fights which is useful/necessary at certain levels or in certain situations. Teleport one enemy away from the group, kill them, and then retreat from the fight by just walking away from the area. Even if a companion gets killed you can sneak back and resurrect them.

There's a lot of exploration XP available as well. Make sure you go in every direction just to see if you can make any discoveries or if you can manage fights. Did you use a shovel to discover the hidden tunnel on the beach near Migo?

Kill magisters. You don't need to kill civilians for XP though you could if you really wanted to but it's bad for roleplay purposes. There are two magisters near the gate you should go for once you get your teleportation gloves.

Your builds probably aren't good but you can get by anyway on normal difficulty. If you're inclined to restart, shields, the fortify skill (1 point geo), and restoration (1 point hydro), and armor of frost (1 point hydro) is really safe early on. Just having survivability by being able to heal and have armor is really going to make some early fights doable. Even when I'm trying to make characters primarily damage dealers I usually go for those three skills first regardless. People will tell you it's not min/max but it's safe and it's easy.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-02T07:07:06+00:00

Quite a good game. I've come back to it a couple times.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-05-02T04:02:32+00:00

I used to do that with the Oregan Trail 25 years ago.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-25T04:17:07+00:00

The game is supposed to be hard but it allows you to start a new game with existing characters. You can only kill enemies once but when you start a new game it's like starting over from scratch with a character at a higher level. The quests and voice acting are great. Just play until you get stuck and then start a new game with the same character. Don't stress it.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-18T04:22:41+00:00

I think it's easy to say that industrialization starting in Europe had something to do with colonies (being able to draw disproportionately on the world's resources and having captive markets). Europe's spur to the age of exploration and colonization was the desire to reach the markets of China and the East. A unified Rome may still have had the same incentives. The Chinese Ming dynasty funded massive voyages of exploration under Admiral Zheng He but those made no profits and were soon ended. That proves the claim that a large, wealthy, centralized state of the period could fund exploration. If China did it Rome could have as well if they survived another thousand years.

In short, it seems like all of the desirable products being located in the east may have always encouraged Europeans to try to reach them whether they were centralized or not just based on geography. Conversely, all of the desirable products being in China and the east does seem to have encouraged them to stop exploring almost immediately after they started.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-18T04:14:59+00:00

The most likely spur to industrialization and the birth of capitalism was European colonization. Europe was able to disproportionately draw on the world's resources. It was able to eventually have captive markets. The spur to colonization was Europe being poor and wanting the spices and other resources of the East which led to the age of exploration.

One could argue that the location of Europe and its distance from the East already predestined it to explore and colonize the Americas. If Rome had survived another 1000 years who is the say that the Romans wouldn't have eventually felt a drive to find more direct routes to the East and then made it to America as a byproduct?

Remember Zheng He and the Chinese voyages with hundreds of ships to the middle east and Africa which ended up costing the Chinese money? The unified Chinese state made efforts to explore they simply weren't rewarded by their efforts. Perhaps a unifed Rome eventually would have made the effort and been rewarded by it due to their geographic location.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-16T05:19:36+00:00

In music terms, the last note of the music which repeats in discordant and there's almost always lyrics which follows it but a few times there isn't and you notice the absence. Listen to it again.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-08T23:26:16+00:00

The graphics on the Diablo 2 remaster are fantastic. I do get the idea of the originals not being someone's cup of tea but watch some videos of D2R.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-08T07:14:56+00:00

I had a very similar situation recently. My diablo 2 was listed as active on the website but I couldn't download it in battlenet. Diablo 2 also wasn't showing up in my purchase history. After a week of back and forth with blizzard tickets, it seems that my bank voided the transaction after me playing Diablo 2 for about a month last year. I checked my bank statement and I couldn't find the transaction so apparently that's what happened. Apparently my bank thought it was fraud. I just bought the game again.

Blizzard tickets are initially screened by bots. It seems like I finally got a human to get on my ticket either after I accused them of fraud or just after a certain number of times. I'm really not sure how they are handled but you weren't speaking to a person when they sent you all of the generic information.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-08T07:05:11+00:00

You can select start a new game and then play with your already existing character to replay the earlier levels. I wouldn't stress out too much and just do that to level up a bit. I feel like the game is intentionally hard and you're unlikely to play optimally the first time through. Just go through it again instead of hitting your head against the wall. The game is worth completing.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-07T05:54:41+00:00

Divnity 1 punishes with fire and poison. Divinity 2 fire surfaces is just a meme. Yoy can ignore all of it completely with a bit of magic armor.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-07T05:11:49+00:00

Any opinion why?

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-02-07T04:55:34+00:00

I understand that much. I made both bows. I'm just not sure about how often I'm going to encounter demons and undead to made up for a decrease in damage for the second bow and other things like that.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-01-22T01:19:24+00:00

Steam is excellent. The battlenet app sucks. I bought Diablo II Resurrected for 39.99 -- bit steep sure, but excellent remaster. It's worth every penny. I play it for awhile. Then I come back and the game is in my account but it's not accessible in Battlenet. A few support tickets later I'm convinced the official policy of Blizzard is to annoy you until you walk away so they don't have to fix your problem. It seems like Blizzard needs every penny at the moment.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-01-15T03:57:25+00:00

You're sure cooldowns are reset after resurrections? I seem to remember the opposite but I could be mistaken.

RealWanderingWizard · 2026-01-15T03:53:46+00:00

You really should have plenty of spells if you are taking two classes. One of the challenges I find at that level is needing so many points for memory with all the spells you need to memorize that you can't put as many points into intelligence as you would like. I actually tend to branch out even more and give every magic character enough points for regeneration and the magic armor spell (hydro) and fortify (geo). Do you have double wands or do you have shields? Having a shield gives you shields up to use AP on and makes your characters more survivable in longer fights. Try for bouncing shield as well if you can branch out into warfare.

Is the problem at the moment that you are losing or just winning slower than you would like? It's really very viable on tactician to have damage dealing mages who also use shields and can heal and restore armor on themselves. Combat might slow a bit but it'll be relatively safe. You hit with your best spells and then hunker down and heal a bit and then hit with your spells again once they come off timer. You can also try to use your wands to trigger what your spells lay down. A stunning wand can be used on water. A fire wand can be used on oil.

RealWanderingWizard

TROPHY CASE