So I cleared act 1 a few days ago and have hit the wall most other players have hit in inferno of not being able to progress very far into act 2.

The gear I need for act 2 doesn't seem to be available in act 1 so I need to grind a bunch of money to hit the AH ... but where?

I've done skele king and butcher runs a bunch with 5 NV stacks and MF gear equipped to try and get items to sell but not really getting anywhere with that. Am I just having shitty luck or is there better thing to be doing?

Unfortunately this broke ass game requires you to farm gold to buy progress unless you want to play a ranged character.

If you stack gold find gear and run the dungeon before skeleton king just breaking pots and restarting you can grind out like 300k-400k a day, or just keep doing runs and hope you get items you can sell on the AH.

If you really feel like getting abused, you can do bridge runs in act 3 after you get tyreal, and let him clear everything for you. He hits for like 30k and is invincible, but that is fucking painful.

Hit the same wall. I've heard people say they had to farm for hours to get good gear. I just found a legendary that I hope will sell for a couple of million, so I can buy a decent weapon. The prices for good weapons are ridiculous on the AH right now though. People want like 200 million for them. So far I've been unlucky finding gear as well, the only gear I find has strength and dexterity on it, which sucks considering I'm a wizard. So, if anyone has any tips on how to make money, do farming runs, I would love to hear it.

Act 2 treasure goblin.

I started doing skeleton kings first, as it's way easier to get 5 stacks for it (since the mobs early game generally suck). But once I had decent gear to chop through anything it was quick warden+butcher runs. I'm not 100% positive, but MF gear doesn't really seem to affect boss drops, it is however good for champs and elites.Also, I did a few runs through the entire act and equipping like 200+ mf for every pack I could find and it really felt like I got way more rares that way than doing straight boss runs. However I heard rumors that bosses drop higher base level loot. I'd have to dig through my AH history to confirm it, but I remember getting a very distinct feeling of getting way less useful stuff after I had done 2-3 of those full runs and then started doing butcher runs.

Currently sorta stuck in the same rut in act 2 myself. What's even worse is that the early part (for doing Maghda runs) has those awful flies that just ruins me if they are elite, while I can't consistently kill Kule or Belial. And in act 3 I can barely even kill any elite pack.

@kimj0ngil said:

Unfortunately this broke ass game requires you to farm gold to buy progress unless you want to play a ranged character.

If you stack gold find gear and run the dungeon before skeleton king just breaking pots and restarting you can grind out like 300k-400k a day, or just keep doing runs and hope you get items you can sell on the AH.

If you really feel like getting abused, you can do bridge runs in act 3 after you get tyreal, and let him clear everything for you. He hits for like 30k and is invincible, but that is fucking painful.

all you need for a melee char is resistance, and trust me ranged chars also got a problems so its not just melee. lets say you are a barb who tanks then you basicly only need hp ressist and armor. and a bonus is thorns for taking them down faster. high dps for that char is really not the way it is supposed to be played.

and have you ever played a diablo game since you call this problem and game broke ass req. you really dont need to farm gold to buy stuff at the ah you just need some good gear a decent idea of what your char need and how to use him/her and if in a puplic game good team play and CC

also inferno is not meant to be a breeze though its the end-game until the expansion comes out.

@kimj0ngil said:

Unfortunately this broke ass game requires you to farm gold to buy progress unless you want to play a ranged character.

If you stack gold find gear and run the dungeon before skeleton king just breaking pots and restarting you can grind out like 300k-400k a day, or just keep doing runs and hope you get items you can sell on the AH.

If you really feel like getting abused, you can do bridge runs in act 3 after you get tyreal, and let him clear everything for you. He hits for like 30k and is invincible, but that is fucking painful.

all you need for a melee char is resistance, and trust me ranged chars also got a problems so its not just melee. lets say you are a barb who tanks then you basicly only need hp ressist and armor. and a bonus is thorns for taking them down faster. high dps for that char is really not the way it is supposed to be played.

and have you ever played a diablo game since you call this problem and game broke ass req. you really dont need to farm gold to buy stuff at the ah you just need some good gear a decent idea of what your char need and how to use him/her and if in a puplic game good team play and CC

also inferno is not meant to be a breeze though its the end-game until the expansion comes out.

Currently The Butcher.

I am about as consistent at killing the butcher as I am killing trash mobs in Act II. It is ridiculous.

@Grillbar: A barb with a full blue set of vit+res won't get anywhere in act 2. Not only would his dps be abyssmal, but he wouldn't have enough armor. I don't agree with ajamafalous that barbs have to get gear beyond their means, but the rarity of good pieces are just insane. A decent barb item must have 3 stats (rolled well) vitality, resistance and either strength or armor. For it it be good it needs all 4. Compared to what the ranged people need (main stat rolled well + optionally some other good dps stat) it just takes way more time for barbs to get geared. I've seen plenty of ranged dps classes farming act 3-4 inferno that can't take a single hit, but they have so much dps it doesn't matter. And sure, while there are glass cannon Barbs out there too, they're doing butcher runs with gear far beyond their means and have no chance at all in act 2.

My Barb is currently (self-buffed) at 40k health, 11k DPS, 550-650 in all resistances, and 9k armor. I can pull and kill the entire dungeon before Butcher without trouble, and I kill Butcher in less than a minute.

Yet I run away screaming like a little girl from 90% of the mobs in Act 2. :(

I've put on a bunch of gold find gear and gone to act 3 nightmare - kill azmodan quest. On the short run up to him you make about 8 - 10k, kill him, teleport back to the fort and hit the fort dungeons, the fields and their dungeons, and the bridges, and net about 100k in around half an hour to 40 minutes. Doing it on nightmare means one shotting nearly everything and whizzing around collecting gold. Average gold drops seem to be around 500 gold, and can be as high as 1200 or so. As long as you keep going at a good click, it's real easy money.

I'm 60 monk just about to beat Hell, what should I be looking for gear wise going into Inferno? From what I see, DPS and Resistance gear is pretty much everything. 

@Bobby_The_Great: Personally, I haven't had a lot of luck with maxing out resistance. I bought a full new set of armour with 50 all resist and 50 poison resist and then used the passive skill (can't remember the name) to equalise all resistances to the highest one. Was able to take a little bit more damage, but I wasn't doing enough damage to balance it out. I think you'll want to save up for something that has all that + high armour stats + dexterity, and use the other passive skill that improves your armour relative to your dexterity. That way you'll be able to get the benefits of dexterity for your DPS and also boost your defence with armour in conjunction with resistance. However, stuff with all those stats don't come cheap.

@Marz said:

Act 2 treasure goblin.

I'm doing the same thing

Butcher runs..so many Butcher runs. I don't know if it's a luck thing, but the rares I've acquired from 40-some Butcher runs have been mostly vendor trash. I'm talking absolute garbage no one in their right state of mind would purchase on the AH for even 1000 gold. Best thing I've found was a Legendary Tal Tasha chest piece, worth maybe 75k, but that doesn't make it feel like I'm spending my time wisely.
 
I recently grew fed up with Butcher runs and decided to give Act II a shot. Was that ever a mistake. Game after game of being grouped with nothing but Wizards and other Demon Hunters. Without a tank, DPS just basically flees every encounter attempting to kite kill, which basically results in picking up more impossible situations. What a waste of time. I shelved my DH and am currently leveling a Barb to be purely a group tank. It's just like WoW..everyone wants to be "deeps". F that noise, I'll tank, as I did in WoW.

Butcher runs..so many Butcher runs. I don't know if it's a luck thing, but the rares I've acquired from 40-some Butcher runs have been mostly vendor trash. I'm talking absolute garbage no one in their right state of mind would purchase on the AH for even 1000 gold. Best thing I've found was a Legendary Tal Tasha chest piece, worth maybe 75k, but that doesn't make it feel like I'm spending my time wisely.  I recently grew fed up with Butcher runs and decided to give Act II a shot. Was that ever a mistake. Game after game of being grouped with nothing but Wizards and other Demon Hunters. Without a tank, DPS just basically flees every encounter attempting to kite kill, which basically results in picking up more impossible situations. What a waste of time. I shelved my DH and am currently leveling a Barb to be purely a group tank. It's just like WoW..everyone wants to be "deeps". F that noise, I'll tank, as I did in WoW.

Act 2 champs and Belial.

Alright, I've started farming gold in that ash pot area. If I do it real quickly and am luck enough, I can make 50k in about 10 mins. I went from 1,183,000 to 1,242,000 in a ten minute span earlier today. Boring as fuck though.

Dang, and here I was hoping I could avoid tanking with my Monk/Barb... it seems Blizzard repeats itself...

I've been doing Siegebreaker runs in Act 3. Getting the NV stacks is actually harder than killing the boss, and I'm getting to the point now where my DH can mow stuff down in the siege weapon area pretty easily. Siegebreaker himself is a joke, unless I'm lagging or just do something dumb, I don't really die on that fight.

Been playing with the idea of switching to Azmodan runs, since DHs completely wreck him, but I think I want a better weapon before I start doing that (and I'm not sure the look is any better).

Either getting 5 valor stacks before warden/butcher farming on my wizard. My wizard has 40k damage and if i can get a party going with a tank + any other DPS classes, runs will be quite fast.. Or i could just run siegebreaker for Resp Chests with 220+ magic find on my barb.

My friend showed me an ok spot today.

Select the legacy of cain quest and warp to the old ruins. Run back towards town and check to see if the first cellar door you come across is open, go in if it is and kill the named quillfiend. The group drops a fair amount of cash and some blues and gems. Now leave the cellar and run south to check to see if the well is there, then south west to check the other well spawn location if not. Rinse and repeat.

Running that with gold find gear (110%) on got me 100k in 30 minutes. It's best to set your skills up for max mobility and something to burst the quillfiend down as fast as possible.

Been doing Butcher runs.  I die in seconds in act 2, but I can pretty easily kill the butcher with 5 stacks.

Pfft, I can't even get past Act 1 in Hell mode. My 51 Monk gets his shit shoved in by random yellow guys constantly. I'm bad at this game.

@GunslingerPanda: You're not, though. Anyone who doesn't have those problems is a liar or sploiter.

There's no way in hell (no pun) you can get through act II hell without buying a TON +VIT gear on the AH as a melee character. Wasn't fun getting one-shotted. And blizz thinks it's "balanced", they're only going to "balance" act 2+ in inf.

Actually got to the point where I'm progressing nicely through inferno ACT 2 on my barb, being able to kill the majority of the packs. The start with those horrible bees was the worst part. So I guess i've slowly started farming act 2 now :)

Putting the itemlevel 61 cap on act 1 gear turned out to be a poor decision by blizzard, I'm glad patch 1.03 will remove it. I had to spend quite some time grinding together stuff to sell in the AH so I could buy what i've got now. Wouldn't mind being able to actually find that stuff myself.

Travel back in time before those 100% resplendent chest got patched, those 100% treasure goblins got patched, those exploit builds/gear setup got patched.

@Xymox said:

@GunslingerPanda: You're not, though. Anyone who doesn't have those problems is a liar or sploiter.

There's no way in hell (no pun) you can get through act II hell without buying a TON +VIT gear on the AH as a melee character. Wasn't fun getting one-shotted. And blizz thinks it's "balanced", they're only going to "balance" act 2+ in inf.

Well I actually didn't have a ton of trouble with my Monk on Act 1 in Hell apart from the shielded invincible mobs - but for a long time now I've been buying only gear that has super high DEX+VIT ratings. Almost all my armor has +60 DEX/VIT where the key pieces give me over 100 DEX. Even with all that at level 54 I only have 5200 DPS dual wielding fists. Even on the AH I can't find fists my level that do more than 280 damage, have +130 DEX and a socket. To be honest it's a good thing that there are no other games coming out for a while because I would have been done with the game a long time ago. I keep playing with a friend but with each difficulty level my patience as well as interest has been eroding.

@Xymox said:

@GunslingerPanda: You're not, though. Anyone who doesn't have those problems is a liar or sploiter.

There's no way in hell (no pun) you can get through act II hell without buying a TON +VIT gear on the AH as a melee character. Wasn't fun getting one-shotted. And blizz thinks it's "balanced", they're only going to "balance" act 2+ in inf.

Of course you can :p. I'm doing siege breaker runs with like 20k hp. Got to the point where everything was one hitting me anyway, so I just stacked damage.

@Humanity said:

@Xymox said:

@GunslingerPanda: You're not, though. Anyone who doesn't have those problems is a liar or sploiter.

There's no way in hell (no pun) you can get through act II hell without buying a TON +VIT gear on the AH as a melee character. Wasn't fun getting one-shotted. And blizz thinks it's "balanced", they're only going to "balance" act 2+ in inf.

Well I actually didn't have a ton of trouble with my Monk on Act 1 in Hell apart from the shielded invincible mobs - but for a long time now I've been buying only gear that has super high DEX+VIT ratings. Almost all my armor has +60 DEX/VIT where the key pieces give me over 100 DEX. Even with all that at level 54 I only have 5200 DPS dual wielding fists. Even on the AH I can't find fists my level that do more than 280 damage, have +130 DEX and a socket. To be honest it's a good thing that there are no other games coming out for a while because I would have been done with the game a long time ago. I keep playing with a friend but with each difficulty level my patience as well as interest has been eroding.

Honestly, it started at NM act 2 for me, @belial. That's when I realized I have to buy a ton of DEXVIT gear because he just instagibbed me. I'm fine with going through normal - hell once... I'm not going to do that with all my characters (made one of each, probably wont go further than normal, no point unless they intend to release content packs). I'm almost in the zone of "I play because my friends still play and that's still kind of fun" but that's a fading star if any.

I am doing late Act 1 Warden/Butcher runs with 5 stack of NV. Works great especially in conjunction with the MF on my gear which is already at 30%. If you get your NV up you get massive stacks of gold from mobs and you get a tonne of great loot to sell or trade in the AH. Each run lasts about 20-30 minutes depending on the Champion packs that might spawn.

The drops will be substantially better once patch 1.03 hits as well. So that's just gravy.