It essentially works that the more good things you do the less support you will get from other nobles and their soldiers. But there are many other ways in which your good deeds make the game harder as well.

For example, Shael hunts and kills a benign magical creature and it brings a curse down upon him and his lands. He is told by magical spirits that he can only undo the curse by performing an act of great generosity. That translates to Gyllioc and Shael spending all of their money to help people afflicted by the curse. Obviously that's the good way out. You don't lose any support, but it's very expensive.

Evil methods involve letting everyone suffer the curse, or using a necromantic ritual to obliterate all the benign magical creatures from existence to end the curse.

How do you get max (or even one frame off for fcr) fcr and fhr with this equipment?

Last two fcr bps are at 102 and 174.
You get 70 fcr from spirits and possibly 10 fcr from the ammy. Where do you get the rest?

Last fhr bp is at 200.
You get 110 fhr from spirits and that's it.

Listen to Enjay, Mate has no idea what he's talking about. The ONLY effective Assassin is a Trapsassin, and they are all but useless before around level 50. Martial Arts Assassins have poor crowd control and next to no survivability. I can give you a quick build and then my character as an example of how to make one.

Martial Arts

NOTHING.

Shadow Disciplines

REQUIRED

Claw Mastery: 1 point as prerequisite.

Claw Block: 1 point for when you're actually dual-wielding claws, which you will be if you're either poor or fantastically rich (but not in between)

Burst of Speed (BoS): 1 point for prereq and when you're in no danger.

Fade: 1 point. This skill will save your ass in Hell difficulty.

OPTIONAL (I don't use these, but they're not actually bad. Don't bother if you're not going to PVP or can afford an Enigma.)

Psychic Hammer: 1 point for prereq.

Cloak of Shadows: 1 point for prereq.

Mind Blast: 1 point. Amazing PVP ability and great crowd control vs. monsters you can't easily damage. Not at all necessary to beat any part of the game on any difficulty though.

Shadow Warrior: 1 point. Semi-useful distraction for difficult to harm monsters you just want to get past. Occasionally useful decoy in PVP for somebody who is really stupid.

Traps

Fire Blast: 20 points. This will permanently take up your left click slot. It does MASSIVE amounts of fire damage with synergies. Mine does 4600 - 5400 damage a shot, I throw nearly 3 a second, and their splash radius is much bigger than a fireball. They also cost next to no mana.

Shock Web: 20 points. Synergy. Never use this skill.

Charged Bolt Sentry: 20 points. Synergy. Never use this skill.

Lightning Sentry: 20 points. This will be one of your 2 attacks in your right click slot. Hotkey this sumbitch. With synergies and plus to skills it will drop anything that isn't immune instantly. Remember, the seemingly low damage is misleading as these sentries are longer range than Sorceress lightning, there's 5 at once, and you can put 100% of your effort into not dying/throwing Fire Blasts for even more damage while they fire.

Death Sentry: 20 points. A common strategy with these is to place 1-2 while you have 3-4 Lightning Sentries up. The damage they do is percent based, and so is wildly powerful against Hell difficulty monsters, and your only option for killing bosses that are immune to both fire and lightning. They do half either unresistible or physical damage (I'm not sure) and half Fire damage.

Attributes

Basically all Vitality. My Assassin has 61 strength, 40 dex, 429 vitality and 25 energy. Assassins don't use any equipment with high requirements, you just don't need any more than that. You can even get away with less than that with the right items.

Equipment

You're lucky! Assassins can fight effectively with NO equipment. Literally nothing, they do just fine. It certainly doesn't hurt to get some anyway, though!

Enigma is the only important expensive item you need. Really, it's the only armor for almost any character that isn't a sorceress. Nuthin' beats teleport. If you can't afford an enigma then try for something with +skills.

Other than that +3 traps claws are free, and can be acquired from Anya in hell difficulty at any time. A step up from that is a Spirit rune sword and shield. The faster cast rate and faster hit recovery are unbeatable, not to mention the huge pile of mana, health, and resists. No matter what anyone tells you, there are no claws with enough +skills to make it worth not having the fcr and fhr of two spirits. Even the +6 lightning Sentry ones. High damage is useless if you're dead.

My character as an example

Heptakakia
USWEST Ladder

Level: 92

Strength: 167 (61 base)
Dexterity: 94 (40 base)
Vitality: 510 (429 base)
Energy: 62 (25 base)

Defense: 1889
Chance to block: 20%

Health: 1994
Mana: 748

(These are my Hell difficulty resists)

Fire Resist: 69
Cold Resist: 74
Lightning Resist: 75 (Maxed Lit resist is EXTREMELY important)
Poison Resist: 54

(These are just the used skills, I'm not listing synergies or prereqs)

Weapon Block: 14 (1 base)
Burst of Speed: 14 (1 base)
Fade: 14 (1 base)

Fire Blast: 40 (20 base) 4602 - 5397 damage
Lightning Sentry: 40 (20 base) 1 - 8861 damage
Death Sentry: 40 (20 base)

My faster cast rate, increased attack speed and faster hit recovery are all maxed or 1 frame off maxed, depending on whether I have my claws or Spirit out.

Head: Harlequin Crest (Pretty much the best hat there is)
Body: Enigma in dusk shroud (Teleport. 'nuff said)
Weapon: Spirit sword or +3 trap claw (I've been over this)
Shield: Spirit shield or +3 trap claw (I've been over this)
Shoes: Natalya's Soul (Any 40% faster run will do...)
Gloves: Laying of Hands (for the IAS and fire resist)
Belt: Goldwrap (upgraded to exceptional for potion slots)
Ring: Stone of Jordan (Pretty much the best ring)
Ring: Raven Frost (For the cannot be frozen)
Amulet: +3 traps (...for the +3 traps)
Charms: Torch, Annihilus, Gheed's, 2 +1 trap, 2 7% magic find, 2 3% faster run. (All characters should have a torch, anni and some +skillers)

Merc: Act 2 defense aura. Carries an Infinity for the massive -resists to monsters. He is invaluable.

This character kills Baal in under 5 seconds on hell difficulty, and can magic find run (in hell, obviously) Andy, Countess, Mephy, Diablo, Shenk and friends, Nihilthak (sp?) and Baal all in a row without dying or needing to go back to town in about 5 - 10 minutes. She can kill anything in the game on her own, the only thing that causes any amount of trouble is the council due to their innate fire/lit resist, but they still go down to death sentries and the merc. There are characters that can kill bosses faster, but none can do so with equipment so cheap.

This is the only maphack that won't get you banned (as far as I know). It has worked since day one and has never needed upgrading through all the patching to diablo 2. Run it while you are in game, every time you start a new game. DO NOT MOVE until the maphack finishes running or the game will crash, it only takes a couple seconds.

http://superjer.com/atojer/epl.zip

And if you don't use a maphack you are a NOOB. That is all there is to it. The only reason to not use maphack is if you really like being bored and wasting time.

It seems that this would be the appropriate place to post my newest and most averagely spectacular dream. I'll chop through the boring semi-important parts like a rhinoceros through a department story; tolerably fast and frustratingly messily.

If I had to take stab at a guess, I'd say I was in 16th century France or England... but everyone was speaking English with no accent, so it must have really been "The Fantasy 16th Century AtoJams's Special Set A". I had apparently made a bet with the governor of the city, a young man with the look of the devil in his eye (he was actually very nice, though), to a ludicrous fencing match. He fancied my sword, and believed it should belong to him. I fancied his large sums of money, and believed a few of them should belong to me. My sword was disproportionately ornate and stylish for a man of my worth, so whether I won or lost the error would be corrected.

Apart from our complete lack of safety precautions concerning protection from fatal stab wounds, we also placed ourselves fifty feet above ground on a narrow trellis not wide enough to fit two feet side-by-side. Below was the discomforting thought of being smashed against the city's cobbled roads. We each wore a star shaped brooch on our chests and a feather in our hats. The first one to have the brooch or feather removed from their person would lose the match. Falling to death or injury would also count as a loss, but a fatal stab wound would nullify the bet.

The contest was very long, neither of us acted very defensively, but our agility kept that match alive long enough for us to both receive a multitude of minor wounds. I won't go into details, because that would be boring for everyone but me. In the end we both fell off at the same time due to a cross-counter. We landed on the crowd of onlookers and so weren't seriously injured. We decided the match was a tie. I gave up my delicately crafted (and somewhat bloodied) sword, and he gave me a handsome sum of cash.

It was enough cash to buy a large house with enough left over to live lazily and comfortably for years. Instead of doing this, I recklessly placed it all on another bet with the governor's wife... a rumored powerful sorceress. That's right, there was suddenly magic. This contest was much safer, as she wasn't pointlessly aggressive and daring like her husband. The contest was simply to see who could move a twenty ton boulder the farthest with magic alone in a single leap. She went first, and called up a massive geyser from the Earth, launching the boulder right out of the city and into the nearby farmland. There was enough flooding afterwards to cause property damage, but the citizens were so amazed they didn't voice any complaints. The boulder had flown at least half a mile, but we'd measure after I'd taken my turn. I was happy to be far away from the city, as I wouldn't want to cut back to avoid blowing people up. I had everyone get back a hundred yards and get behind cover... in case my spell misfired. I placed what I called a Hintenmann's Ruby beneath the boulder, and proceeded to cast a spell that would make it explode like a shaped-charge. The boulder flew so far that we couldn't reach it in a day to measure it's distance. In fact, we weren't entirely sure we could find it at all as it had disappeared over the horizon while still a thousand feet off the ground. It's entirely possible that it caused someone in a nearby city to have a very bad day. It was obvious I had won, and so I had doubled my money and received an offer from a military academy to educate people in the ways of blowing things up with magic. The amount of money they offered just to accept was staggering.

I now had enough money to buy a large house, a summer home in the mountains, and enough left over to have my every need catered to for the rest of my life. That... or an above-average sized mansion with a conspicuously low price-tag and enough to pay to keep it fully staffed with servants for around ten years. I opted for the mansion, filled with bothersome plot-arcs as it might be. Upon inspection, the mansion appeared to have nothing wrong with it. It was rumored to be "very creepy" even though it was in fine condition (other than some collected dust due to it's lack of residents) and there were reports of "mysterious disappearances" within it's walls. Just in case it was haunted by ghosts or possessed by demons, I cast a powerful spell over it that would cause evil creatures and spirits to be unable to think clearly... and thus giving them away as they blundered hopelessly about. I found no feeble minded demons tripping over furniture or any ghosts mistakenly believing I wouldn't see them hiding under a rug... so I assumed the place was fine. I hired a full staff and went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning I discovered the entire staff had already quit! They'd removed themselves and their belongings from the premises without so much as a word. Only my butler remained, and he had been sleeping when everyone had left as well. I assumed I must have hired a highly superstitious lot, and they had frightened themselves into departure by sharing too many foolish rumors about the place. I went out to hire a new set of servants... this time questioning them specifically about their fear of said rumors. I specifically told them to come to me about anything unusual or frightening they believed to be happening at AtoJams Manor. Within hours, still during the middle of the day, my butler came to me distressed and sweating. He told me he found out why nobody wanted to stay here and asked me to follow him. He led me to a guest bedroom at the back of the house and told me to open the door a crack and peek inside. A maid and a carpenter stood nervously back around a corner. I opened the door a bit and saw inside that all the furniture looked wrong. It was old and of poor quality, some of it was upside down and there was a table and chair apparently nailed the the wall. Then I noticed it... there was what appeared to be a woman in a nightgown... hanging by a noose... and with a leather bag over her head. She had been there long enough to rot, which was bothersome, because she was definitely not there when I bought the mansion one day prior. The air in the room unexplainably hot and humid. Her body was turning and shifting enough to look as though it was blowing about in the breeze, which was not a possibility. The leather bag had what one could see as a large mouth hole sewn into it, wide enough to reach halfway around one's head. As I stared in bewilderment, her head suddenly lifted, turned in my direction and emitted a deep and inhuman exhaling noise. As it did so the "mouth" opened and exposed a set of appropriate to it's size jagged teeth. The noose came loose from what it was hanging on and the body fell to the floor on it's front. With it's torso perfectly flat on the ground, and with the head turned up far enough to break a normal person's neck, the limbs started to reach out like spider legs and the thing crawled around the room... quite aimlessly... it just started to climb up the walls when I decided it was time to close the door and cry for a while. I had NO idea what this thing was. Demon, maybe? Ghost? Sure, why not? Fucking nightmare? Certainly.

Upon interrogation, I found that the butler, the maid and the carpenter had each individually peered into the room. The butler and the carpenter had both seen a rotting woman with no bag on her head sitting in the "sideways on the wall" chair and beckoning them to enter. The maid had seen a rotting man standing by the window and asking her to come look at something interesting happening outside. This is when I realized what was happening and what this was. The creature was actually a Mimic. A very large Mimic. It was, in fact, the entire room. My confusion spell had affected it and that was why everything looked so strange. From the misplaced furniture, to the uncomfortable atmosphere, to the rotting flesh of the fake person inside. The Mimic was trying to get the butler, maid and carpenter to enter so that it could eat them... but wasn't very convincing in it's confused state. It recognized me as being too dangerous to try to eat, though, and had attempted to frighten me away when I opened the door. This Mimic had apparently survived for decades being part of this house... god knows how it got there... and was obviously the explanation for the mysterious disappearances.

Sadly, I woke up before doing anything about it.

Just woke up from one heck of a dream at 1:00 PM PST today. This is what I managed to write down before forgetting all the details. I usually don't get 3 hours to remember and write! I was lucky today! Not nearly as good as the last one, though. I don't remember any of the dialogue except one line...

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I title this dream: The Witch of Faraxia. Because she was the only person with a name.

The Witch of Faraxia is a very old (like hundreds of years old) woman from a long destroyed city called Faraxia. Everyone just thinks her name is 'Faraxia' because of the fact that they've never heard of the city Faraxia. She is supposedly very good at summoning spirits and gods into a physical form. She wore a brown hooded robe, sported stringy grey hair, and you couldn't ever see her eyes due to the hood.

The very first thing that happens in this dream is that she tries to summon me into a physical form. I was the the sorcerer king of ancient Faraxia, long dead from the time of the terrible catastrophe that left the entire city permanently frozen in ice. As we all know, sorcerer kings are ALWAYS evil, so her summoning of me was probably a bad idea. She was unable to summon me into a physical form. She could only grant me an ethereal body that could have little effect on the world. I didn't get a good look at myself in this form, but I could see that my hands were transparent and skeletal. I can only assume I was very much like the popular image of a 'phantasm'. I looked for a mirror, but the dark hole of a room she summoned me into didn't have much in the way of decorations. Other than the magical symbols drawn on the floor, of course.

Apparently everyone who died in Faraxia is nearly impossible to summon because a god is specifically keeping them all from leaving the afterlife. In most cases Faraxia's people would be unsummonable, but I was 'pushing from the other side' so to speak, and could at least come back as a ghostie. I had been a last resort for the Witch, she really didn't want to risk summoning me. But she wanted to bring her daughter back from the dead before she herself died of old age and she couldn't break the god's curse on her own. I told her that I would help her out of spite for the god that was keeping me from coming back into the living world. This actually quite true. What I didn't tell her was that I was going to possess during the ceremony to resurrect her daughter. She'd be unable to defend herself if she wanted her daughter back, so she'd be an easy target and a very powerful physical medium for me.

Everything went entirely according to my plan. I possessed the Witch of Faraxia just as her daughter regained physical (and naked, woohoo!) form. This meant that her daughter would never even know I had been summoned, so wouldn't suspect that I wasn't who I looked like. I then had to put up with being unfortunately old, female, and blood-related to this girl. At least this body had the magic mojo equivalent of Super Gandalf. I had to use the majority of my own power keeping the Witch possessed and keeping myself from being torn back into the afterlife by the god who I'm sure was starting to get very disturbed by my prolonged presence in the living world. The Witch's daughter didn't have to worry about the god trying to kick her back to the afterlife again, because the curse keeping her dead was only a side-effect of the curse that was supposed to keep ME dead. The witch's daughter looked like Brigitte Bardot (from the 60's) with black hair. The Witch apparently had kept her daughters personal belongings for the past couple hundred years, because there was an outfit that fit her perfectly laid out on the floor. It was an ornate, silver suit of lorica segmentata with metal greaves and bracers, leather leggings, a long sleeved black tunic and cape and a silver ring that I can only assume was magical in some way. It was heavy armor and unfortunately left much to the imagination. I recognized what she was wearing as the armor of a soldier of Faraxia, probably an officer. Completely breaking with the Roman style of her armor, she carried an English longbow and a hand-axe.

I told the Witch's daughter that I had summoned her so that she could go with me to Faraxia and ask the god to free the city from the freezing curse. She apparently didn't know much about the sorcerer king or why the city had been frozen, so she obliged without resistance. I got the feeling that the Witch didn't know her daughter very well, because she didn't trouble me with many personal conversations that I'd have to improvise with. The Witch's daughter seemed obedient, but somewhat distant and even slightly fearful. Apparently the girl expected her mother to be cold and business-like, so I didn't have to fake much of anything. I thought the fact that I didn't know her name was going to be a huge boulder in the road, but calling her 'you' or just telling her to do things without addressing her didn't upset her.

We traveled to Faraxia on a very uneventful boat, we climbed a few hills and crossed a river or two and even blazed a trail through a forest. It was all terribly boring. I'd just as soon use my magic to instantly transport us to Faraxia, but that's a power that the Witch shouldn't have and it might raise questions. We arrived at the outskirts of the curse hanging over Faraxia. It got cold and fast. There had been moisture in the air so everything was covered in a thin sheet of ice, but it didn't snow here. It was far too cold. I could use a simple sort of spell to keep the both of us from freezing to death (which would've taken less than an hour) and keep us mostly comfortable. Ahead of us was a building that was not covered in magical ice, and so must have been constructed after the freeze. It was a small wooden cabin with a stone chimney, only a couple hundred square feet. The billowing black some could only mean it was inhabited. I had no idea what this could mean. There was no reason why someone would want to try to live here.

The building sheltered a dozen sorceresses in training and their teacher. They were on a pilgrimage to visit their patron god. The same deceitful god who froze my city and killed me! I can't remember what happened, but I'm positive the god had tricked me in some way and that it was the cause of my downfall. They were protected from the fatal temperature by their allegiance or some rituals or something. I didn't know or care very much. I told them we were the last living Faraxians and wished to apologize to their god for what the sorcerer king had done and pledge our allegiance to him. They didn't question my motives.

We traveled into the city, you could barely tell that the city was medieval in style due to them much thicker sheets of ice that covered it. We made our way to the palace in the center of the city. The drawbridge to the palace was completely missing, but the moat was frozen over so you could just walk across. Inside it looked like a barely symmetrical white cavern due to all the ice hanging down. Straight ahead my old throne lay under at least a foot of ice, and a seat made out of ice sat atop it. The sorceresses busied themselves with their ritual to summon their god. This actually worked out quite well for me, because I didn't have to waste any energy summoning him myself. They all merely wished to gaze upon him and receive his blessing.

The god had apparently noticed us interlopers, and would not appear before us unless we proved the strength of our will to see him. From the ice rose a frozen cat-like beast. I sent the Witch's daughter to fight it. I stayed back and imbued her with the strength and speed required to defeat such a creature. This was also a power the Witch shouldn't have, but I was SO close and there weren't any other options. For what seemed like a much longer period of time than it really was, the Witch's daughter fought the monstrosity. The ring I assumed had magical properties could be used like a shield, hold up you hand as if you were holding a shield and it would deflect blows. Her bow was quite useless at this short range, so she fought with axe and 'shield'. The battle continued until the Witch's daughter was unable to continue fighting. The thing didn't kill her, it just pinned her down. The god, fortunately, was impressed with her will to keep fighting and deemed us worthy. The creature atop her shattered into tiny shards and was no more. The god finally appeared, an ethereal cat-like humanoid sitting in the throne of ice. This was very good for me, he was ethereal and was therefore something I could fight without needing to possess the Witch. I burst forth from the Witch in a cloud of dark smoke and floated before my nemesis in phantasmal form. He just looked at me, he clearly recognized who I was, but was apparently waiting for me to make a move.

I menaced, "Shouldn't you be busy murdering your allies and destroying cities? Get outta my seat!"

At this point he stood, and the Dawn of Sorrow version of 'Dance of Illusions' started playing. An amazingly appropriate piece in name and sound for what was happening. I could see my reflection in the ice now. I was a transparent skeleton as I had thought. I was wearing armor similar to the Witch's daughter's, but it was more ornate and much lighter. The armor itself was silver with burgundy highlights. I had a long, burgundy coat on over my armor, not dissimilar to a trench coat but more flared. I had a thin robe under my armor instead of a tunic, it was tied with a belt and obscured my feet entirely. I levitated everywhere I went, so it's not like I had to worry about tripping. When I closed my right fist a sword shimmered into existence. It was transparent as I was and bright white. It was a 19th century saber like what cavalry would carry. The god remained unarmored, but lifted a somewhat crudely formed broadsword of ice out of the ground. As we circled each other for a moment, hovering in the air, thousands of phantasmal being like me appeared in the hall around us. These were the cursed people of Faraxia and the god was apparently too busy focusing his power against me to keep them from coming to watch the fight.

Our actual fight only lasted about a minute and a half. We quickly maneuvered around each other, fading in and out of sight and would clash swords, strike and parry quicker than humanly possible and then back away from each other. We did this three times until he ran me straight through the chest as I attempted to recover from a poorly executed parry. I dropped my sword, used my right hand to grab onto his sword to keep him from pulling away, and turned to face the very confused sorceresses who were watching us fight. I reached out with my left hand and magically sucked the life out of them. They fell to the floor as bones and dust. I glowed very brightly for a moment and crushed the god's sword in my hand. Before he could back away I grabbed his shoulders and similarly sucked the life out of him. He turned very pale and hung in the air barely able to lift his head enough to look at me. Without a word from either of us I rematerialized my sword in my hand and cut him vertically in two. He shattered and disappeared.

The ice faded away and the cursed spirits of the dead went with it. I used the life I sucked from the god to reform my living body and happily strolled over to my throne. The Witch hadn't died from my possession, and had managed to stand at this point. Her daughter had sat up and was obviously totally confused about what had just happened. The Witch looked angry as if she intended to do something about me, but I told her that she and her daughter were both still alive and that they had better not even complain. She told me that I would doom the entire world with my war against the gods, but I thought otherwise. It's true I had a penchant for angering the gods, but now that I had killed one it was unlikely that the others would risk themselves in an attempt to chastise me. This is where I woke up and started furiously writing.