Amazon Levelling Guide - D2R 2.6

Amazon Levelling Guide

This guide will take you through an efficient method to level your Amazon and complete the game on Hell difficulty.  There are various approaches to levelling and the method will change depending on your situation (for example if you have been rushed, you will level differently), this guide presents a method for playing through the game yourself and levelling the traditional way.  We will also discuss an efficient way of allocating your skill points and useful items to collect / farm along the way.

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Normal Difficulty

The Amazon is a slow starter as the early skills are all single target spells, meaning the kill speed is not as efficient as other characters. However, once you gain a few levels the single target damage becomes high enough to one shot a lot of monsters making it more viable.  When you level for the first time take a point into Jab, this won’t be our main damage dealing skill in the long run but is required to gain the Power Strike ability at Level 6.  At Levels 3 and 4 take a point in Critical Strike and Inner Sight – neither skill is very useful to us at the moment, but they are prerequisites for skills we require later in the game.  Save your skill points now until you reach Level 6 and gain the Power Strike and Poison Javelin abilities – Power Strike will be your main spell for the next few levels, and place as many points as you can here until you reach Level 18 and Charged Strike is available.  At Level 18 you can start putting points into Charged Strike – this spell has the highest single target damage potential in the entire game!  Use Charged Strike as your main spell from this point onwards.   

As you level up and gain additional skills from quests it is worth gaining a single point in every spell in the Passive and Magic Skill tree – all of these spells are useful and improve our survivability and damage potential.

For your stat points, the general rule is to put enough points into Strength and Dexterity for the equipment you need to use then spend the remainder into Vitality.

In Act 1 the best place to gain early experience is in the Forgotten Tower beneath the Black Marsh.  Each level in the tower has at least 1 Champion or Elite pack, so you will find a minimum of 5 packs and the Countess herself on level 5 making it very efficient.  Killing the Countess also provides us with early rune drops and there are some very strong low level Runewords that we can target for the Amazon.  You will need to farm Countess until you find a Tal and an Eth rune to make the Runeword “Stealth” (Tal Eth) in a 2 socketed armour (you will find one of these as you play, and if you don’t Charsi sells them).  “Stealth” is a strong runeword for every character, whilst the Faster Cast Rate is not so useful for us the additional movement speed is very handy.  We will be using Javelins as our weapon, the damage is not critical on these as the majority of our damage comes from lightning – just keep a look out for a magic or rare set of javelins with increased attack speed.  Act 5 Quest 2 will provide you with a Ral, Ort and Tal rune which we can socket into a shield to make the “Ancient’s Pledge” Runeword which provides a big boost to our resistances (I would recommend a Large or Kite Shield for this).

When you fight Andariel in Act 1 drink 5-6 Antidote potions before engaging, these provide a passive boost to your poison resistance.  Similarly, when fighting Duriel in Act 2 drink 5-6 Thawing potions which has the same affect on your cold resistance.  Continue working your way through the game with the above build and you will have very few problems.  I mentioned at the start of the guide that the Amazon is a bit slow to work through the game with, however the single target damage makes it a lot of fun and bosses are easy to kill.

Once you have worked your way through Normal difficulty you can start doing Baalruns to gain experience and prepare yourself for Nightmare difficulty.  You should ensure you reach level 40 as a minimum before entering Nightmare, this can be done either playing solo or with a group.

At Level 30 the Lightning Fury skill will become available and from this point onwards place all of your available skill points here as this will carry us through the rest of the game.

Nightmare Difficulty

Nightmare is straight forward for the Javazon build as we won’t encounter many monsters that are immune to lightning.  You can purchase a wand from Akara in Nightmare that has Lower Resist charges, cast this on champion / elite packs and also bosses to gain a big boost in damage!

There are 2 Runewords that are useful in Nightmare for the Javazon – “Lore” (Ort Sol) and “Insight” (Ral Tir Tal Sol) for a mercenary.  Once you reach the Countess you will want to farm her until you gain a set of each runes.  Lore can be made in any 2 socketed helmet, it really doesn’t matter which one you use.  “Insight” can be made in a 4 socketed Polearm (farmed in Normal Cows) and give this to an Act 2 Mercenary, providing him with the Meditation aura and sustaining our mana.

When you finish Nightmare Difficulty, you will want to do more Baalruns and reach a minimum level of 60 before progressing into Hell.  Max out Lightning Fury first, then Charged Strike and all the synergies.  Use Lightning Fury for larger packs of monsters, then switch to Charged Strike for small packs and bosses to deal huge single target damage.

Hell Difficulty

The method for Hell Difficulty is very similar to Nightmare.  You will occasionally find monsters that are Immune to Lightning, use your Lower Resist wand on these which will sometimes remove the immunity and if not your mercenary should have enough damage to deal with them.

The Javazon is the most efficient Cow farmer in the game and you will want to focus your farming in this location.  Round up as many cows as possible and cast Lightning Fury on the pack, the more cows there are the faster they will die and you can reap the rewards!