A quick look at the bowazon's superior skill tree will give many players pause at the sheer multitude of choices there are to make. While I push for a well-balanced bowazon with heavy passive skills, there are other viable choices to be made as well, based on a few key skills. There is no more room for specialization of skills in LOD. At best, templates will sacrifice the development of certain skills, but with the numerous resistances and immunities, they can't afford to ignore them. The bowazon, with her three damage types on the bow/crossbow skill tree alone, will have to spread her skills; how she decides to spread them out is what will make her unique.
Your approach to designing a bowazon — or any character, for that matter — should be very much like the old masters' approach to painting: You learn how to do things classically, according to all the rules and then if you want to go off and paint like Picasso, fine. But you learn to play things like a classical master first. In other words, you play through the entirety of the game, look beyond the elementary "skill rocks-skill sucks" mindset and get a feel for your character before cheesing it all the way to your endless cow levels.
OK, we've read about the skills, you know where you're going to put those attributes, now let's get going! Er, wait…all you've got is a lousy clvl-1 amazon with a shield and javelins: where's this power? Patience, grasshoper: let's get started first.
Your amazon starts out javelins and a shield: use these for awhile, perhaps even switching out to a light one-handed melee weapon, as they're stronger than most of the bows you might find. With her low scores, skills, and AR, as well as a lack of good bows, using the javelin and shield might actually help you get out of A1 faster than using a bow. (That is, unless you're using the Arctic Set and a lot of twink gear. If not, you can't afford to be picky, so make do with what you can and sell everything you find and don't need.) If you're low on weapons, keep an eye out for a long bow with anywhere between +15-40% enhanced damage or a set of chipped gems and any three socekt bow for some fast damage. At this point in the game, your amazon's low physical damage won't make any amount of leech show results, so just get whatever damage you can.
Don't buy any equipment until you hit clvl-5 or so because monsters keep dropping better and better stuff as the act progresses. Just upgrade, sell, and move on. Because of the relative ease of the enemies in A1, items that add to your chances of finding more gold and magical items are recommended. As soon as you can access Multiple Shot and Cold Arrow, you're going to want to obtain a long bow, preferably with cold damage. You needn't bother with short or hunter's bows, since they don't do nearly enough damage, and a long bow is cheap enough to be readily purchased. Using MS at this point requires discretion; you can start practicing and investing early in A1, but you only want to use it at times when you know you're going to hit every target. Otherwise, arrows will be wasted, and if you're using mana leech, that potential mana and damage gone down the drain.
Your stat points during this stage will mostly go to strength and dexterity, to allow you to equip the better items that you'll be finding. After clvl-2, I'd suggest a steady 2/3 distribution between strength and dexterity until the desired strength score is reached; your eventual strength goal will be 50, just enough to use a long war bow. Your skills during this early stage will largely be going to prerequisites for other skills and passives, so don't put too many points into them. With the exception of Critical Strike (for physical damage builds) and Multiple Shot, none really need more than a point.
Most of A1 should be fairly easy, except for the occasional boss or champion. Keep looking for better equipment, but your choices are rather severely limited this early on. When you've defeated Blood Raven, a rogue will join you: while she is helpful, don't invest too much time looking for gear unless you mean to keep her. The Smith can be a challenge, make sure you have lots of running room. A nearby well or jail cell (as the Smith can't open doors) can make this battle much easier. Alternatively, you can rush the Smith with a high-blocking shield (like Civerb's Ward), a fast one-handed weapon, and a lot of healing potions. For Andariel, stock up on antidote and stamina potions. Be sure to take out her lackeys with MS first, as they're there to take divert your attention, then slam away at Andariel with Fire Arrows.
In the case of jewelry, get whatever you can find, but keep an eye out for a life leech ring. A mana leech amulet will be nice, but isn't necessary until clvl-11 or so. Leech isn't the most useful thing at this moment because your damage is so low, so try to find rings that add to strength, dexterity, and most importantly, life, mana and chances to find more gold. (Once you get to A2, the situation will most definitely change as your enemies become harder and more numerous, but by this time, Multi and Ice Arrow will be available, which is when the leech rings really begin to shine. In the long run, don't wear a ring that doesn't add any sort of leech unless you're absolutely sure that another piece of equipment has that leech type adequately covered! Jewelry that would be most appreciated at this point include the Eye of Etlich amulet and Cathan's Seal and Manald Heal rings.
In A2, you'll start to find some better equipment. Buy yourself a nice short battle bow, the increased damage will make things a lot easier. If you've reached clvl-18, Ice Arrow works great against the undead, as does Exploding Arrow (just remember that you can't leech from skellies). Where you place your stats depends a lot on the items you're finding. If you find a great piece of light armor, go ahead and bump up strength; otherwise, focus more on Dexterity. Your skill points can continue to go into passives, but you should start saving some of them for Penetrate, Pierce, Strafe, and valkyrie. (Yes, you're planning this far ahead!)
You'll also be able to hire Greiz's town guards here: because you're still in Normal, any of these guys will prove helpful, though I'd recommend a Blessed Aim (offensive) mercenary with some form of leech. Because he can boost your AR, this gives your bowazon a little help to her AR and she can now start adding a point or two into Vitality. By the time she hits A2NM, she will want to dump this guy for a Might merc, but for now, a Blessed Aim merc is almost perfect. A Prayer Merc (defensive) is another possibility.
Most of the enemies in this stage are skeletons; because you can't leech from them, you'll either have to depend on your normal attacks or carry a lot of mana potions. The universally-despised Duriel awaits at the end, and he can be maddening for a straight bowazon. However, his melee attacks are nowhere near as damaging as his charge, so a point into Jab will be well-used at this point, as will a good sword and a high-blocking shield. If you're playing with a group, it isn't as important, since you can get someone else to engage Duriel while you pelt him with arrows.
A3 can be frustrating, since the fetishes are small fast-moving targets. Multi or Strafe is helpful here, since you don't have to target accurately with them. Continue to upgrade your equipment, placing your stat points as necessary to equip the stuff you find. By now you should be close to activating Strafe, if you haven't already, so place some points in there. Make sure you save a couple for clvl-30, because there are three nice skills you want to get. The Council Members can be tricky, but Decoy and your merc can help to take some of the load off.
Do not skip Travincal. Everyone else does it, and for good reason: they suck. Every unskilled, overpowered, number-crunching, whiny, little Frozen Orb-lobbing sorceress, Whirlwinding barbarian, minion-needy, Iron-Maiden-flinging necromancer and strafazon would rather just go straight to the Durance and kill Mephisto because their little one-trick pony ride is over the second they set foot in Kurast's capital and start getting fire walls, blizzards, poison spit, lightning bolts and those zealots thrown at them. Travincal is by far the hardest test of your skill in the entire game thus far: elemental damage coming from all eight directions, too many walls, obstacles, and levels for any one skill to be effective, at least two butt-kicking uniques and scattered mobs of capable melee monsters and spell casters, all set up in an even battlefield. No hard drive lag to work against you (àla Duriel), no excuses about entry lag (àla the third level of the Durance), no one really powerful unique to worry about (like the seals of the Chaos Sanctuary), and no excuses for losing. This is about as fair a fight as the monsters are ever going to give you, plain and simple, and most players can't deal with it. Deal with it. This is your test; you may be ready for A4, but if you're so scared of Travincal that you'd rather just waste three entire stages of experience to get past it, then you just can't play the game. There are a thousand ways to kill everything in Travincal: find one.
Your mark, Mephisto, isn't a problem; the Council Members and annoying blood lords are the problem. Against Mephisto, you can either use Ice Arrow and try to dodge a lot or simply spray his general direction with Multi or GA. With life or mana steal, you can tell when you've found him by the swirly effect. By this point you should have some mana steal; if not, you should consider gambling for rings or Hand of Broc.
By A4, you should have Strafe, but at this point, it's still inferior to Multi for coverage. You want to use Strafe in situations where you might get swarmed, like the Plains of Despair with those annoying burning and black souls. If you find a nice rare long war bow, you should be doing enough damage to keep your mana full. Izual will take a long time to kill, just keep casting Decoys in his lap, he'll die eventually; this is one of the few cases you'll want to use Magic Arrow - because of Izual's high life, the chances you'll use up 250-750 arrows are good, especially if you're in a multi-player game. Hephasto is a dangerous opponent, use Ice Arrows and Decoys to slow him down. If you have it, Immolation Arrow is useful against these monsters.
Diablo isn't that tough…if you know what you're doing. Take down a lot of arrows, run to a corner of the Chaos Sanctuary which looks like a "+" (the walls extend from the corners slightly) and get Diablo on the other side of one of the "short" walls from you. Make sure you have some mana steal, then happily plink away with GA (fire at an angle - the arrow will "bounce" back and hit him), settle down, drink a cup of coffee, and wait for the Quest dialog box to appear. You may need to shift positions once in a while, as Diablo sometimes has a tendency to poke his head around the corner. Do not use Decoy, don't use valkyrie if you don't know how to use them as tools to reposition Diablo back to his proper spot. If you think it takes too long to waste him with a bow, you can max your Lightning resists, and take out Jab again with a nice pikeor a 3DT and a good one-handed melee weapon.
And then there's Act 5, also known as "the cakewalk." If you can do Act 3, you can easily wipe the floor with Act 5, trust me.
last updated: Thursday, August 19, 2004
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