Beating Diablo 2 With Only Poison Dagger

Poison Dagger is a terrible skill, let's try to beat the game with it!
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#Diablo2 #D2R #Diablo #Diablo2Resurrected

[@zarfen]

-Thanks for watching!

[@FiLepsy]

No, thank YOU for watching.

[@gabbonoo]

emilio?! >o>

[@arsenskavin130]

I still can't believe you made this challenge, just because some dude in comments. Bravo my friend!

[@averageaf4321]

Love your videos! thanks for uploading!

[@deadaij]

thanks for letting me watch

[@simeontodorov9353]

"Left it in the dungeon for other necromancers to find" is such a cool idea that unpicked loot would get redistributed to other players. Such head canon makes the world feel slightly more lived in and global than it actually is.

[@SCDJMU]

dark souls 1 does this

[@momchilandonov]

The offline videogame Subnautica was having something similar and quite cool. You are able to find time capsules from other players and they contain cool loot/equipment that can help you a lot and can also contains a picture with text from whoever left it.

[@eliaslaban]

​​@@momchilandonovOh ye. I remember this! It was an amazing thing to experience and take part in. There was alot of cool stories. I remember keeping a peeper in my inventory through my playthrough that someone put in a time capsule. The short written story and nice picture made me feel part of something larger 😂

[@welcome_to_the_own_zone]

I was cruising youtube at 3am just hoping for something worth watching, and then you arrive, like Tyrael descending from the clouds with a video.

[@abeshonest]

Go to sleep, your body will thank you and the video will be there in the morning.

[@welcome_to_the_own_zone]

@abeshonest my body gave up on me a long time ago

[@spltorky]

And did you tell Tyrael: "I thank you, angel, but I was expecting you sooner..."?

[@to_tire]

This happened to me too lol he was my Tyquil

[@lachlank.8270]

HERO... WE MUST DESTROY THE WORLDSTONE. FOR...... REASONS. DON'T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT IT OKAY

[@kubiczer7427]

I love Mephisto's mischievous plan of baiting You with a unique ring. Great video as always!

[@zarfen]

He’s learning to exploit my weaknesses… Thanks!

[@JC-zx5li]

Wish he would try that on me

[@vumasster]

The most damage a bagelring has ever dealt

[@MertBert]

0:58. As a video editor, this was my favorite cut in this fantastic video essay. Well done overall!

[@matiasvarpanen9203]

That caught me so off guard that it's amazing. 😂

[@KaneCold]

I'm curious, is there some term to describe this type of cut? I guess it's a part of elocution, but maybe somebody knows?

[@MertBert]

@ It was a straight and messy cut, but on purpose. the script/what he said was in contrast to each other and made it funny - but the edit itself was a normal cut :) hope that helped

[@KaneCold]

@@MertBert many thanks :)

[@ActuallyEric]

"We can see why nobody uses Poison Dagger. It's just a terrible skill choice. Honestly, I can't think of any reason to..." "HI, I'm Zarfen!" Goddangit, that made me laugh out loud. GG

[@Xenozfan2]

Honestly my favorite part of the video.

[@Robot-Overlord]

I dont get why old blizzard would give poison dagger to necromancer and then druid gets rabies which does more damage, prolif, and can eat ubers.

[@aidanc9396]

I love my fortnightly Masochism simulator

[@zarfen]

😂 New channel slogan??

[@gabbonoo]

my coffee brand has a slogan "escape the daily grind". i grind it daily and enjoy the smell.

[@zmdeadelius]

"What's your strategy for hell difficulty?" - Emilio. Great content as always, dude!

[@kristopherleslie8343]

Years ago when I played this build a few things happened for me: One I used open wounds which stacks with poison just well. Was absolutely worth getting the runes for the 2 early Runewords that provide it. Two I had for extremely lucky with my runs and Goblin toe along with Rattle Cage dropped. I had eventually also used a dagger that actually had a 100% chance to make monsters flee. I hit them, they ran away and they died. 😂❤ In today’s time I’d use hustle more.

[@technocolossus]

Ooh yeah hustle

[@OrgusDin]

'What are you gonna do? Poison dagger me?' - quote from Prime Evil poison daggered.

[@robofish312]

Lmao

[@1thevm1]

I remember my first build in PD2 being necro poison dagger thinking it's still a meme tier, but it turned out to be one of the top builds for him lmao, great vid!

[@Unsubtlenod]

Yeah! My build currently does 28K per stab and its not even maxed out gear. Its so fun in PD2

[@rainbowlemon]

I've been playing D2R again recently and it's been fun watching all your challenges! Even with all my hours played, there's still a lot of skills I completely overlooked in this game, and it's really interesting seeing these 'xyz skill only' runs.

[@zarfen]

Glad you like them!

[@tallowick6082]

Mephi's fiendish trick was definitely a higlight of this vido 😂 Obviously a bit late now, but I remember reading that venom (the assassin skill) has a strange interaction with poison dagger. Normally it caps all poison duration to 0.2 seconds, meaning all other sources of poison deals substantially less damage. But with poison dagger it apparently condenses all the damage into that 0.2 second window instead of cutting it short. There are a couple of rune words that give venom, so a build with that could substantially boost the damage, at the cost of having to spend much more time in melee distance.

[@siosilvar]

Vice versa - venom normally adds a whole lot of poison DPS but sets the duration to 0.4 seconds, but poison dagger adds to that 0.4 seconds making it a huge amount of total damage.

[@keymaster2502]

Exactly the comment I was looking for.

[@snipermagoo]

Venom was one of the wonkiest skills in D2, and that sure is saying something.

[@koutz1987]

Currently suffering from restlessness. Woke up at 2 am to find this video. It calmed me right down. Great content!

[@baazarafa]

I love that every kill shot involves your character cowardly running away from the enemy as they die

[@pretoria2688]

Little stories about the chalenge are hilarous 😂 I love your content so much ! Thank you for that good time !

[@NurseTony]

Remember guys, ALWAYS use Emilio. Then you can retire him and hire Emilio.

[@harleyfagan9637]

Never played a single Diablo in my life but I found your channel a week or two ago and I'm hooked. 👍

[@zarfen]

Glad to enjoy the videos! Super happy to hear people who don't/haven't even played the game watch my channel.

[@joshuamoore4410]

Join us!

[@matmodaboss]

So nice of him to post this for my sleep schedule

[@108u9]

Deckard Cain: Don’t bring a dagger to a hell fight. Necromancer: Hold my beer

[@iLikeBergerz]

I got recommended you Hell at level 1 -video and got hooked. I've been watching through your whole catalog. Diablo 2 is my all time favorite game and you inspired me to start a single player account for the first time. It has been a blast. Great stuff, keep it up!

[@zarfen]

Glad you like the videos! That’s awesome, thanks for sharing. D2 is a special game :)

[@vivalavalley7930]

Dude, I love your content, and I would love to see a set items only run! Keep up the amazing work!

[@ApuyaEucherius1994]

Man, your videos are absolutely amazing! I always watch them, and I can’t even imagine the difficulty you faced using a Necromancer with only a Poison Dagger to finish Diablo 2 on Hell difficulty. The patience, strategy, and dedication it must have taken are insane! How long did it take you to complete this challenge? Seriously, you’re incredible. Keep up the great work!

[@zarfen]

Glad you like the videos! This was a grindy one, probably took north of 50 hours which is definitely on the longer side for a play through even for me. It gets a bit lost in the highly edited video but a lot of fights later in the game required me tagging every monster with poison dagger multiple times, meaning looong battles whenever I decided/had to fight

[@wrathfirex]

Your video has given me the confidence to beat both nightmare and hell which I have never done before. Well done!

[@yearzer0]

You got this!!!

[@wrathfirex]

@yearzer0 thanks!

[@riograul2043]

I've had fever dreams where I came up with concepts like this, but I never thought it was possible! 🎉 Thank you for making the impossible possible!!!

[@Tharoffnik.]

You slowly became my favorite d2 channel, mr Goblin. Keep up the good work :D Great vid!

[@cameracoughlin]

love your narration and story telling my dude

[@ThePuppyman12]

Absolutely love watching your runs and I barely even played the game. Just something so cozy about it!

[@zarfen]

Happy to hear that!

[@Robolewa]

16:15 or so - proud of you for overcoming the hoarding reflex. I know how hard that can be. Loving the run so far! I happened to be awake when it dropped, on my way to bed, was very excited to watch it when I woke up. It has, as usual, delivered like that chest in Mephisto Normal.

[@prophetezekiel]

Mick Dagger approves this message ❤

[@laszlomiskei9138]

I knew you would be here :D "We Will Watch Your Career With Great Interest"

[@erick3755]

Golem dad has entered the chat.

[@ulroxvladtepes4023]

Was checking to see if you were here, you were, heh.

[@InsPoE]

Me: Mom, can we have Poison Dagger? 🥺 Mom: We have Poison Dagger at home. 🗡 Poison Dagger at home: 1:40 💀

[@RNGesus_Channel]

It's cool to see how someone else did this run. I did a poison dagger only run using the Gidbinn and it was the most miserable run i have ever done. Good stuff man

[@Preacher_.]

Your editing is god tier and your voice is pleasant. 10/10 vid

[@zarfen]

Thanks! I appreciate it

[@AwesomelySimple]

My dude, that was an amazing cut and intro. Had me in stitches. 0:51

[@x0rc1st]

Team Zarmelio truly made me laugh out loud. Thank you for that!

[@RafalBorowski]

25:20 Nooooooooooooooo Emiliooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

[@miasma82]

Another great video from the goblin. Hope you are doing well! ☺️

[@trevorkreutzer4305]

Your videos hit the best spot!nostalgia with a new twist, Soo good!!!

[@lodagin]

Me: gives up on a build if I don't fully clear the screen at level 10. Meanwhile, Zarfen:

[@derBenIsPlaying]

I love the accent of this Diablo 2 player. I also love the challenges. I suck too much to attempt any like this, but it is awesome to see.

[@Gorvinhagen]

1:44 lmao brilliant

[@AtrociousNightmare]

My god what a grind haha you madman. Loved it. How about a no skills run next? Everything else allowed :D Btw that cut at 1 min or so made me laugh IRL XD

[@shdwza]

If you mean not using the character skill points, then that sounds really fun

[@wedgeantilles8575]

Haha, I love the bit at 08:30, where you were drawn to the unique ring and died because of that :D I guess we can all relate to that...

[@scrubtronics6948]

54k views in less than 20 hours is quite an accomplishment. I'm happy to see your success. Also - these challenges are brutal dude. Big fan of watching your suffering :)

[@RicoGamer54]

Fun fact small charms with poison damage over time are going to lower your poison damage aswell as venom is going to boost it up a good amount

[@zarfen]

I’ve heard about the interaction with venom but didn’t know that poison charms would lower my damage. I hope I wasn’t wearing any, have to check my inventory at the PC later…😅

[@RicoGamer54]

@@zarfen haha I think it’s most sources of poison damage over time so ironically a poison facet hurts melee poison builds.

[@zarfen]

@RicoGamer54 oh… looks like I still have stuff to learn in good old D2 😁

[@siosilvar]

Not 100% correct... DPS always goes up with more items, duration can be hurt by running more than one. Once you have Venom, it doesn't matter and you can run as many as you want. (Specifically, this is because Poison Dagger's length is added to all your item poison lengths, then divided by the number of poison items you have. Venom effectively gets rid of all your item poisons and replaces them with one 10 frame poison, so the total duration is always Poison Dagger + 0.4s with any number of items.)

[@erick3755]

I would be really curious about the formula when using charms to boost venom and how that would effect poison dagger since venom is applied over the length of poison dagger. I love all the random rabbit holes this game can provide.

[@bahur47]

"I chose Emilio" - hell yea , the only right choice :D

[@deadasfak]

Yeah, but he traded in Emilio for Emilio later on

[@Ravnesss]

10 seconds in, " it's a cool skill " proceeds to buy a dagger a minute later that does the exact same thing.

[@Iridium-77-g]

Every time I see some of these insane challenge videos from you, I remain convinced you are the best Diablo 2 player in the world. I am struggling with BlizzOrb Sorceress in Hell and here you just destroyed it with Poison Dagger Necro.

[@Wraize1]

"can I beat D2R only using poison dagger?" "no... no I can't"

[@AtrociousNightmare]

Omg yes I can't wait to watch this! I remember doing a Normal run myself with poison dagger and it was a bit of a pain but fun. Can't imagine Hell with it!

[@darianclark3980]

No joke, when i was a kid, my first Necromancer was all about Poison. And i found the Jade tan do Unique Kris on that first go around. Unfortunately, i never got to finish it due to computer crashes. . .

[@Roman500]

Ive been playing diablo since i was 10 years old, never would i have thought someone would dare to do this. You did it haha, insane

[@Acocalalaponix]

I love your d2 challenge vids so much man and i didnt even play d2, ever, hope youll come up with manyy more interesting and hard ones ❤

[@CptChoucroutte]

Your channel is a special gem. Kind regards from a french viewer

[@Arkta5]

I spent some time min maxing the hell out of Poison Dagger a few years back: You need a Teachery Runeword for the Venom as well as a lot of Small Poison Charms. Venom normally caps Poison Duration at 0.4 seconds, but Poison from either Poison Dagger, Rabies, Poison Javelin or Plague Javelin will ignore this and add their durations normally. This means you can stack the Poison Damage of Venom + Poison Dagger + Poison Small Charms with zero downsides. From there, you stack Crushing Blow to supplement the Poison and use the strongest damage daggers possible - in this case the best option would be the Fleshripper Fanged Knife which provides 25% Crushing Blow Chance on it's own. Then you combo this with Gore Rider War Boots for another 15% Crushing Blow Chance. To combat the issues with Hit Chance, the Angelic Halo Ring and Wings Amulets are taken for the massive amount of Attack Rating p/cLvL and the +1 to All Skills. To deal with Monster Poison Resistances, we focus on leveling Lower Resist which can reduce Poison Resistance by 62% at level 20. To reduce Poison Resistance even further, we take the Trang-Oul's Wing Off-Hand socketed with Poison Facets, Trang-Oul's Claws Gloves, and Trang-Oul's Girth Belt for: minimum -25% Enemy Poison Resist, +2 to Poison, Bone, and Curse Skills, 25% Poison Skill Damage and Cannot Be Frozen. By having 3 pieces of the Trang-Oul's set, we also gain a partial set bonus which grants Level 13 Fire Wall, which can do considerable damage. Curse your target with Lower Resist, place your Fire Wall Directly on top of them, and stab away with Poison Dagger repeatedly for Crushing Blow while the Poison works in the background to whittle away at their life bar. It is recommended that you also gain some Life and Mana on Hit as well. Early game Act 2 Merc with Blessed Aim is great, but after getting the 2 piece set bonus of the Angelic Raiment for the Attack Rating boost, you can more safely swap to another A2 Mercenary with auras such as Might or Holy Freeze.

[@Hammerite]

Another challenge well done :) Suppose it was to much to hope for a blackbogg sharp drop but White runeword was a nice bit of nostalgia for me. My old D2 necro had a White wand. Just because it was nice.

[@zarfen]

Always hoping for those uniques that are a perfect fit for the theme of the run, but of course it’s a big ask from d2 RNG 😅

[@rainbowcrash6990]

Always enjoy your challenges and breakdowns! Thanks for another video

[@JeanMarceaux]

Not even 2 minutes in and Zarfen is already searching for loopholes lmao

[@ArchonKain]

Really amazing stuff! Not much else to say other than I'm excited to see what you got cooking next!

[@starbomber]

It's always interesting to see how people choose to do challenge skill runs at level 1 before they've unlocked a skill. There's a bunch of different ways to do it, but I love that you went and bought a literal poison dagger :P

[@zarfen]

I like trying to find ways to get there within the theme of the challenge if possible. It’s a fun ”side quest”.

[@michaelmcclung1829]

shout out to the 2 to 11 damage, gotta be the first time ever i heard a d2 player say that. your videos are the best

[@MartinLindman-zc9rj]

One of my new favorite channels :D keep the good work up please

[@LimitBreakr424]

Thanks for running this. I have never attempted a play through of this and probably never will.

[@uidsea]

Ah my new favorite niche diablo content creator's new video.

[@gozo1985]

Cool vid :) Have you ever tried a potion thrower only challenge?

[@BenLaakkonen]

Years ago I made a poison dagger Necromancer and it was a lot of fun. I somehow had a mana drain on attack so I would just use bone shield to tank enemies in melee and then I'd burn everything else down with bone spells. I went off the deep end when I wound up with some field plate and then spent the next 20 levels putting points into strength so I could use. I just could not die.

[@Ronny411]

Fun and interesting to watch your videos :). I have an idea for you, an old friend made a sorc once with an energy shield, and he equipped everything he could find with "Attacker takes damage". So he did not use any spells, or attacks. He just walked around and everything died. It was viable all through nightmare I know, not sure about hell. Although it was hilarious to watch melee characters try to pvp him, he won every duel because as soon as someone attacked him, they died, lol. Anyway, would love to see how you would tackle something like that. Always wanted to make a Sorc like that, but I never get around to it. Entirely up to you how you want to go about doing it, because of course his build was done with several unique items, not from scratch, but I do think it's doable. Anyway, keep it up, much love

[@HaibaneKuu]

I do wonder what was their thought process when making this skill for a necro. Although maybe it worked better before synergies were introduced

[@kristopherleslie8343]

There wasn’t a “their” it was just 1 guy unfortunately. Unfortunately without getting too technical, diablo shipped broken and unfinished because they lost the code before it was burned for CD gold mastering. 25 years and nothing done shows you blizzards commitment to ignoring us. Most likely with many of the skills including this it was a previous iteration and shows they couldn’t do QA to determine how under performing it was. Try out Psychic Hammer which actually was turned to trash as well. But when done right is ok but still needs buffing and a synergy with mind blast. PD2 iteration finally made it viable.

[@DerRofflers]

babe wake up, a new Zarfen challenge video just dropped

[@Mokkatomic]

No-spear melee amazon?

[@liamholt5623]

When you play so much D2 you start to make up canon for your different characters xD

[@MonsieurNab]

so this is a "skaven assassin" run

[@zarfen]

Yes yes

[@dessyjodark517]

Another Zarfen video so soon? Hell yeah keep ‘em coming dude!

[@Schmidt54]

Poison enthusiast hits the spot, yet I feel it is the weakest (?) damage type. Nice challenge as always!

[@zarfen]

It’s hard for damage over time to compete in a ”hack n’ slash” type of game I guess, but something is so appealing about poison builds

[@JordanACanuck]

Liking the more consistent uploads

[@zarfen]

Im gonna do my best to improve consistency this year. Not gonna be able to keep a 2-week frequency most likely but last year I had some way too long gaps in uploads

[@Jason-fp4ob]

Ever since I started watching your videos, I can’t stop farming. All I want to do is farm, farm, and farm some more!

[@EvanFarshadow]

That loophole for level 1-5 was hilarious xD

[@BabycakesBeats]

I laughed so hard i spilled my drink at 0:58 hahahaa

[@slamcreper]

Sure enjoyed that Spiderman reference! Good stuff as usual.

[@Ironeagle21]

you got this zarfen! after all you beat hell gearless just punching demons to death!

[@Azguella]

Talking about chance to hit reminded me that you can miss even the inanimate objects like doors

[@zarfen]

Something very funny about attacking a door - and missing

[@dino6080]

Noice lol try only psn nova next lol

[@zarfen]

Thanks!

[@Johnnylas029]

Angelic Wings / Angelic Halo *Exists* Normal Mephisto *Exists* Zarfen : dang! My attack rating sucks

[@XxXuzurpatorXxX]

If PD worked like Enchant, it would be friggin awesome. EDIT - also poison duration is averaged over all sources, so you can buff the damage per second significantly by stacking short poison sources. There even are calculators for that.

[@erick3755]

I have made this same argument becuase if it worked like enchant you might be able to make a necro that actually uses pus spitter. Just be careful when stacking poison damage because non skill sources like charms are treated as a separate source so they add damage but also effect the poison length and can actually bring your tick rate dmg down.

[@siosilvar]

It's not *quite* averaged, Poison Dagger's ~10 seconds is "free" because it adds up all sources but only divides by the number of item sources. If you have, say, a 4s poison item, you'll have 14s duration. If you add a second one, it drops to 9s (4+4+10 over 2 items). Third is just over 7s (4+4+4+10 over 3 items). Have to find a good balance - when you can constantly attack, more sources is more better. If you're going for maximum damage on a single stab, just one item might be best. But if you have Venom none of this matters, all your item sources get bundled up into Venom's 0.4s duration without dividing anything so you just run as many as you can.

[@moogleking]

Mephisto was cunning and distracted you with that unique ring Zarfen 😆

[@TheTimelyTurtle]

Congratulations on your crazy Dim Vision + Emilio run!

[@magicshroom3346]

thank god the modded version pd2 has buffed poison dagger. you can roll +3 kris, can have splash damage on melee weapon and now psn dagger spread a poison cloud on kill so you can kill packs with one hit

[@gabbonoo]

does it still AoE if you miss?. would be nice if it worked like a spell that gets buffed by attack stats. like a short range bone spear. a finger of death... nah doesnt suit poison if it's like that.

[@magicshroom3346]

@gabbonoo no it's still an attack but you got other tech to help you. If you're interested, it's called poison strike in project diablo 2 you can easily find videos on youtube. Also they added a teleport ability to the necro called blood warp so it makes it even more fun to play

[@gabbonoo]

@ sounds fun, is it on Nexus mods? ...not on nexus, it has its own site. not a d2r mod but it looks cool. the community looks cool too.

[@erick3755]

I mean even in D2R you can add AOE by running plague in a fanged knife. You basically will just spam fully synnergized poison novas as you hit.

[@magicshroom3346]

@ but in pd2 ALL melee weapons has a splash damage affix. so even melee builds are viable

[@forbiddencake3989]

Thanks for the video as always, really enjoying the content! Have you considered playing something like Dwarf Fortress or Rim World? I think your story telling ability is top-notch!

[@firedrake110]

Mick Dagger's got a younger brother, and he's here to live dangerously

[@BalgaBear]

Really seems like it should have been a spell if they wanted it to act the way it does. And then again, if they wanted it the way it is, it should deal a shit ton of damage if it hits.

[@Temme142]

Phenomenal video once again. Idea for a new challenge: "Can I beat Diablo 2 using only charges from items"!

[@Nevermindy]

Cool as usual mate, thanks for the new patience challenge

[@denisbotev]

Was secretly hoping yoi'd do a run like this! Awesome!

[@kimandersson9255]

Nice one Zarfen! Now back to modding and get random skills! :D each level up brings you random skills from all classes. Go go!

[@Melgaaard]

Great content! Great editing! Great work! Great video! 😊

[@zarfen]

Thank you! Glad you liked it

[@selensewar]

I love Kelpie Snare so much. The slow is so useful on bosses, especially for weaker builds. And when paired with Clay Golem it can reliably lock them in the animation!

[@Austrian9876]

The day is safed when zarfen Uploads amen

[@RaulJake]

Amazing run, as always! You should really add a timer so that we can se how long the run actually takes!

[@hugosz283]

Challange idea: Beat D2 without attacking aka thorns all the way. Love these vids!

[@erick3755]

Kelpie + holy freeze Emilio + decrep = the ultimate boss quicksand