advowson: Godly Plate of the Whale has the curious distinction of being very popular in a certain subsegment of the community, being impossible in its better forms, and being inferior to other rare armors that are easier to get.

Warrior stats: dexterity maxed, then points to strength by default; items: as many +dexterity/+all items as I can get, a good shield, a one-handed weapon (preferring +To-hit, fast attack, or both). Fire resistance can be useful if you can't separate Diablo from his supporting Advocates. Magic/Lightning resistance won't matter.

advowson: The game interface doesn't make this particularly clear, but dexterity is extremely important to warriors. Dexterity contributes a small amount to your AC, but its key role is in the chance-to-block formula. According to Jarulf's Guide, the chance to block a monster's attack is: Dex + 2·(clvl - mlvl) + bonus. Monsters always have a small chance to hit you, regardless of your AC. However, they do not have a guaranteed chance to bypass blocking. Monsters' automatic hit is why super-high AC, as from a Godly Plate, is sometimes less useful than +dexterity items.

If your dexterity is high enough (which, in single player, may not be possible, but it's very possible in multiplayer), you can get "perfect block" - a state where you block every attack that can be blocked. This led to a style of play called the Low AC Warrior (LAW): a Warrior whose AC was so poor that monsters were guaranteed to land a hit, but whose dexterity was so high that he blocked every attack. As long as he didn't get into a state where an attack hit while he was not allowed to block, he was immune to physical damage. (Magical attacks cannot be blocked if you can resist them, and are often too numerous to block effectively anyway.) Aside from the challenge, the advantages of a LAW were that it was often easier to obtain the required +dexterity items than to obtain a good enough armor class and that he could pursue other bonuses with the remaining capacity.

Considering the most extreme case, a level 30 warrior facing a Hell difficulty Blood Knight (mlvl 60), you need (30 + 250 + (2 * (60 - 30)) = 340 AC to get a 0% chance to be hit. (Note that due to the auto-hit rule above, a monster always has a minimum of 15% chance to hit, rising 5% per floor past dlevel 13, so a 30% minimum on dlevel 16. Thus, 325 AC is just as good when you are on dlevel 13, and 310 AC is just as good by the time you reach dlevel 16.) In comparison, you need 160 dexterity to get perfect block. You will have 60 dexterity from maxing out your base stats, so you need +100 dexterity from items. This is still a difficult goal, but it can be achieved, especially if you dedicate your gear to this goal to the exclusion of other bonuses.

A "perfect" (maximum bonus) Godly Full Plate Mail would give you 75 +200% = 225 AC. Dexterity 60 will get you another (60 / 5) = 12 AC. That leaves 78 AC you need to get from your, +dexterity items, shield, and helm if you want "perfect" AC in the most extreme case. Even if you get there, you still need to worry about auto-hit.

In Hell difficulty, The Dark Lord has worse To Hit than a Blood Knight, due to integer overflow.

If you take a less extreme case (stay away from Hell difficulty Blood Knights until you are a higher level), the math becomes more favorable.

aristotle61: Sorry for the delayed response, but I didn't think anyone had responded to my post.

aristotle61: Actually, according to GOG I have no posts. I don't know what that's about.

aristotle61: I never came across any Godly Plate of Mail in any playthroughs.

advowson: If I recall correctly, GOG's forum only considers a response that actually quotes your post. None of us quoted your message. We all made new posts in the same thread, which doesn't count. I'm quoting your apology just to test this, so that my post will be considered a response to yours.advowson: No posts at all or no recent posts?advowson: Mail is not a suffix. It's a description of a type of plate, such as (Godly) (Full Plate Mail) (of the Whale). You may well never see one, since Godly items cannot be dropped by monsters. You can only get one from Wirt, and then only if you satisfy the requirements for him to generate one. According to 3.9, page 46, Wirt's ilvl is your clvl. According to 3.9.4, page 48, Wirt's qlvl for affixes is [ilvl, ilvl * 2] (with some special cases that don't matter here). According to 3.4, page 24, Godly has a qlvl of 60. Therefore, to get a Godly item from Wirt, you need him to generate a qlvl 60 prefix, so you need an ilvl of at least 30. Since ilvl is clvl, you must be at least level 30 before Wirt can generate a Godly item.

advowson: Hellfire might do it, but you could also do it by replaying some or all of the game with the same character. You could do this by quitting partway through your quest (say, after you finish the first 6-8 levels), making a new game, and playing through again. You could also do it by playing a new round after you defeat Diablo the first time. Either way, beware that you get diminished experience for fighting lower level enemies. Per 2.6, page 14, your experience for a kill is: base · (1.0 + 0.1·(mlvl - clvl)). The guide goes on to state: So when your clvl is 10 levels higher than the mlvl, you no longer receive any experience for killing it. Therefore, if you replay early levels, you may get little or no experience. This is normal. Make your way deeper as quickly as you can, unless you want the easy fights for some cheap gold and the possibility of a useful shrine.

In multiplayer, it's very common to replay areas, which is how multiplayer characters can get such high levels.