Diablo II Remastered: A Guide to Mercenary Armor and Equipment for Early to Mid-Game Progression

Jan-29-2024

 

In D2R, if players are prepared for the long haul, they will truly begin to delve into the game as they successively complete the normal, nightmare, and hell difficulty levels. Leveling up your character and improving their equipment is a lengthy process, during which having a capable and durable mercenary can significantly enhance your character's survival and monster farming capabilities. It is recommended to choose a second-act mercenary with specific auras.

 

 

 

Most gameplay strategies involve upgrading both your own equipment and that of your mercenary, as even a moderately equipped mercenary can provide substantial improvements in survival, damage output, or support.

 

To ensure the mercenary's survival and damage output, it is essential to upgrade both their level and equipment as much as possible. The best equipment should have attributes such as high base attack (base attack speed) weapons, damage-increasing properties (e.g., "Increased Damage," "Critical Strike," "Crushing Blow," triggerable curses, etc.), life steal, attack speed, fast hit recovery, resistances, physical damage reduction, health points, defense value, and properties that enhance defense (such as "Enhanced Defense," "Ice Armor").

 

 

 

For mage-type gameplay paired with a second-act mercenary, a relatively inexpensive and practical weapon choice is "The Wand of Fulminating Divine Power." A decent "Wand of Fulminating Divine Power" with good base materials and attribute variance can last a long time even in hell difficulty. Pair it with a helmet with a life steal attribute (such as "Andariel's Visage," "Vampire's Gaze," or a crafted orange life steal helmet), and there are plenty of choices for armor, including dark gold armor with multiple attributes mentioned above or rune words like "Invulnerability."

 

However, if you haven't been lucky enough to find the rune 28 (Ral) needed to craft "Invulnerability," it is highly recommended to farm or compose a rune 20 (Lem) beforehand, along with a gray/white quality 3-socket armor (preferably invisibly), to create the so-called poor man's god armor rune word "treachery."

 

 

 

The rune sequence for "treachery" is 13 (Shael) + 10 (Book) + 20 (Lem), offering 45% attack speed and 20% fast hit recovery attributes. The +2 Assassin skill is irrelevant and can be ignored. It's called god armor because it has an extremely high attack speed attribute and a passive trigger effect of "5% chance on being hit to cast level 15 Energy Shield (Shadow Dispersion)."

 

"Energy Shield" (Shadow Dispersion) is an Assassin skill that makes the character transparent when cast. At level 15, the effect reduces curse duration by 79%, increases all resistances by 60 points, and provides 15% physical damage immunity (this effect is not displayed in the skill description but is actually present). It is clear that a mercenary equipped with "treachery" will see a significant boost in survival capabilities once "Energy Shield" is triggered.