Hello, Diablo Forums


I am having a blast with Diablo 2, but I must say, sometimes the amount of enemies I face at once is positively insane.

I am currently stuck on Tal Rasha's tomb. Right off the bat, I face what seems to be 100 Ghosts and 50 Blunderbores. As a matter of fact, the sheer number of enemies has been a problem for me the whole game.

It is even more infuriating that Barbarians do not get any good AoE's until level 30.

Can anyone give me a tip on how to effectively manage large crowds?

P.S: I have tried Terrifying Yell, or whatever it's called, but it didn't work because the area I was in was very small.

I'm assuming you are playing one player. Just wait till you get to Duriel...thats when the real fun begins...

I'm personally not a big fan of Barbarians in this game...they tend to be so gear dependent that they struggle without at least mid-top end gear. In your situation I would get a merc, get him a life steal pole/spear and try and keep shout going at all times. The only early skill that can even handle small hordes is double swing, but even then the weapons you use need to be doing good damage OR have some life steal of their own, which won't work against most undead and skeletons. Try not to get surrounded. Most of the enemies in D2 move pretty slow. You should be able to stay along the edges of a horde while making hit-and-run style attacks around the edges and then moving before they begin to swarm you. And shift-# will give that slot in your belt's potion to your merc...this can be the difference between getting through a room and having to make a trip back to town to rev your merc.

You could try using Leap to knock back enemies when they get too close to you, and kill them one by one. You could also use Leap to get to the big mummies that revive other undead.

Other useful skills I can think of are Howl and Grim Ward (to drive enemies away from you), Whirlwind and War Cry (stuns nearby enemies), though War Cry may require some investment to be really useful for stunning enemies.

Also, items with cold damage, slows target, freezes target can be helpful in such situations.

There's a couple of things that have helped me with that area.

Taunt. You can snag them individually, and if they have special abilities like lightning bolt, revive, or missile weapons, they'll stop using their special attacks and march right up to you. It also works slightly off screen, so the likelihood of being mobbed is greatly reduced.

Go a bit slower and don't run into ambushes, but withdraw to safer ground when you encounter a swarm. It may take you longer now, but later you can go swimming.

I used the cold act 1 hireling until I could pick up the cold act 3 hireling to help shatter monsters to keep them from being regenerated. In places like Tal Rasha's Tomb, I inched my way through, got the attention of a small group of monsters then ran back to pull them away from the larger group and then fought them a small group at a time. May be time consuming at times but is a lot easier than fighting them all at once.