It worked fine when patch 1.10 hit 18 years ago and I had 250+ duped High Runes, that werent deleted for crap, I was making botds and enigmas out of normal, non elite items just for the hell of it because I had so many runes. Quilted armor enigma was fire. I was rerolling botds to get perfect 415% ED because HRs were 10 cents a pop. I remember trading Lo rune for a hel rune, it was cheaper to BUY duped HRs than finding a low rune from act1 normal.
Now we have D2R, and people are selling their kidneys for a Ber or a Jah. Currency is completely broken because these runes are so rare but some of the best runewords use these runes.
I wont even mention the sorry state of trying to spawn Uber Diablo for a commoner.
Long trading story, but it involves knowing the game and how to trade.
Some of my favorable trades involved:
Shako for Vex
Vex for Ohm
Ohm+Ist for Lo
Lo for Dweb
Dweb for Jah
Jah for 2 Lo
Lo for 390+ Grief
Grief for Ber
Lo for Dweb
Dweb for Jah
So I kinda traded my shako+ist for an enigma =)
I had 2 bad trades but well, cannot always be right i guess
Thing is that you need to play the market when ladder starts, because there are so many people who offer an arm and leg for worthless items like shako or tal amor.
Shako was vex-ohm in the beginning, now it is hard to get an IST rune for it.
trading >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> playing the game.
I was never particularly lucking with drops and I don’t like grinding so much. But i do like trading a lot and that is how I have the most fun in the game; playing the market
was the price in the beginning because people valued making a CTA more than a grief. About 1 week later, suddenly every mofo wanted a Lo rune.
My first Dweb I bought for a Vex rune, I sold it for ohm+ ist (which is a bad trade for me although I won). Just a little later suddenly every mofo wanted a Dweb and willing to pay Jah or Ber for it.
I knew already in the very beginning that Dweb will be very expensive (it is one of the rarest items in the game and rolls very difficult). It is used for one of the best farming builds but kinda requires enigma as well, so people want enigma first and give away their dweb cheap to build towards an enigma. Later when people got enigma, they compete buying a Dweb now and the prices rises.
Kinda the same for many things.
CTA has a much higher value in the beginning because it makes MFing so much easier.
Grief/Fortitude are mainly for builds that require good gear and they are for characters that are not really farming anything. (no need grief for ubers anyways)
I always traded my things up. For me the only way to get rich. Now the market is very dry and you cannot trade anything anymore.
People want only super uniques and runes, which both require intensive luck or grinding.
So I am sitting now on my solid basic gear but won’t be able to get more right now
A way to get rich on non ladder is later to play ladder, farm extensively in the first 2 weeks and hope some garbo like shako drops so you can trade it for some fatty runes. Then wait till ladder is over and take those runes to Non ladder
For my play time and grinding I will never expect to find a jah or ber rune anyways^^
death’s web
necro wand.
+2 necro skills
+1-2 bone skills
-40-50% enemy poison res
7-12 mana after kill
7-12 life after kill
you can see that this item can roll absolutely terrible and the value of a 2/45/10/10+ will be very very high. Many people don’t understand that though.
if you get a 2/2/50/x/x you can probably get 3x Ber for it while it was maybe worth a Lo rune 4 weeks ago
Key sets are still overpriced (don’t know why people still buy them if already everyone have a torch). And it looks like fire elemental builds are not made yet. Expecting rise on that. What do you think?
On ladder gonna make fire sorc first, because cold and lightning insanely expensive at the beginning.
I think you can sell a 3x3 for a Gul rune or Ist+mal at the moment.
People are mainly trying to fish for a s or p torch to sell it for ohm. They are kinda gambling.
For others key sets a slow way to cube up to bigger runes, but farming a key set might take a while.
I use my engima poison necro and most runs are very fast but i got basically no key drops at all.
Also:
I would not buy any torches.
The value will steadily decrease, while barb/necro/assa/ama/druid torches are basically already only worth an UM rune or so lol
Mainly because fire builds are just awful. In hell everything is just fire immune and if you want to play fire more or less effectively you need a big fatty end game items like Phoenix and Infinity which basically cost you a fortune already.
Fire sorc is quite nice with that gear, but seems now you can just play orb/wall and don’t even need gear
I do not expect a rise for something like +3 Fireball ormus or a 3/20 echutas.
Phoenix will always be expensive, but by making it yourself, you will definitely lose value.
There are certain runewords that you should absolutely NOT make by yourself.
CTA - even an above average CTA will lose you value, while only a perf roll increase value
Phoenix - People want to get rid of it at some point to play something else and sell it under value
Faith - same a phoenix + the roll range is just god awful. With a bad roll you will lose at least Ohm+ in value
Grief - you can get an average for a Lo. If it rolls bad, you lost big value. If it rolls very well you can gain. Too much of a gamble to reliable earn
are some of those and then there are some runewords which you should make yourself because people are stupid and charge stupid values.
Best example is recently Fortitude…
Making a fortitude is quite easy and the rolls cannot really devalue it or make it’s value double, yet people charge want sometimes a Ber or Jah or 2 Lo for fortitude while it is just made with a easy armor base and a Lo rune
I would say fire druid is a very niche build that is more like for fun.
E.g. you can get a good ravenlore already for a Lem rune.
Aside from ravenlore and Phoenix, I think fire druid doesn’t need anything special that would rise.
Ele skillers are always valuable because Windy
rest is basically standard caster gear.
One thing that you could bank on that is currently cheap and will be worth much more in some (months, maybe)
basically you can look at the mega fun but niche builds (e.g. bowazon, zealer)
Those things are always a little risky to invest but can pay off.
e.g. if you can get a 15/40 jewel for a vex, definitely take it. If you don’t need to trade quickly, you will easily get more later on (probably a Ber or at least Lo)
Basically you need to wait till the rich people got their basics completed till the move on to the absolute luxury items (like above)
With the increased rune drops from 1.13, they’re really not that hard to find. You just need killspeed and monster density. Not even MF. Pick a fun build you enjoy and clear areas. I started with a bowazon - really not the best starter char, but I enjoy the grind and not having stuff for a change. A few days of intense gaming later, I lucked out and got a Lo which immediately turned into Forty and gave me a huge power spike. In the meantime I almost built an avenger with 1pt smite to kill ubers with a diet on pgems and a few Lems. It’s a new content for me as I come from SP, so I wanted to try it out with a less conventional build. Trying to get him a set of keys, killing mobs and not just blitzing the super uniques, got me some other nice stuff and runes. Up until yesterday I had nothing higher than a Pul. 3xTerror and 2xDestruction later, there are Tal Ammy, Ist, Mal, Um, and another Pul in the mix. So yeah… stuff drops. I don’t see why people complain. It took me at least 20 times longer (not even exaggerating) to get ONE high rune and a Schaeffer’s hammer back in 1.09.
So yeah… runewords aren’t the problem. They’ve been made accessible, maybe even too accessible. We should just have uniques of comparable power to bring some balance.
Last Wish is fine, it’s super powerful but also super niche and super expensive. The problem items are Spirit and Grief. Grief is better than Last Wish, Spirit is the best overall item in the game due to the extremely low cost.
As for High Runes, so far I’ve had Vex, Lo, Ohm and Sur. I’ve also traded items for Cham, Zod, alongside having Gul, Ist, Mal, Um, Pul drops. You just have to play a lot, if you play in 7+ games you will get a tonne of loot, especially if you’re farming Cows which have the highest mob density in the game.
When you have duped runes and they become worthless it completely ruins the item progression ladder. The worst thing is when mid-high end uniques are completely worthless because it’s too easy to jump straight to the most godly items in the game, the game becomes shallow. Rune rarity right now is fine, the only increase should be from allowing /players on BNET.
There are uniques with comparable power. I mean Windforce is the best bow in the game, an Ethereal Death Cleaver is a real high end weapon. For Fury druids a Ribcracker upgraded with shael (or Eth + Zod) is an ultimate Ubers weapon. Stormlash is also insane with the Crushing Blow and Static Field procs. Plenty of builds use non runeword weapons too.
Runewords are meant to be the ultimate rare items. A Zod to make BOTD is far more rare than a Grandfather sword, which is still one of the highest damage weapons in the game. Grief is an issue because it’s just overpowered broken with how the +400 damage works, while also being cheaper than other Runewords.
I wouldnt say that Grief is overpowered in any way. Grief is just simply BIS for alot of melee character simply because the other weapons are awful.
Melee classes are in a bad spot and are really expensive to make. Making a melee character viable in /players8 you will need to have the most expensive gear with BIS items and most casterbuilds with 2x spirit runewords will still clear the content faster.
