Hi!

My native language is not English, so please excuse me in the future for mistyping and errors in this article. If you can help me to make this guide more readable and distinct, please tell me and I'll fix it.

This guide was written after about 150 hours of hardcore elite play. And more than 300 hours total time played.

Honestly, there is not much variation to choose from. Berserker is a melee fighter, and that makes him very diffucult to play.
Outlander and Embermages are glass cannons, so they will die in act II or III with a single critical hit.

The toughest character is the Engineer. He has a lot of HP, armor, strong passives and most importantly: Force Field and 25% damage reduction!

The main goal is to stay as far as you can from enemies and take as little damage as you can. You must avoid all projectiles. If you notice that tough enemy preparing for strike - stay back. Survival is key to winning this game.

Until level 14 you must use your cannon to kill enemies, because your main attack skill is not available.
Healing bot skill must always be maxed. At higher levels it will give you a nice boost to resists, armor and mana regen.

After level 14 you must change your weapon to something that gives you +%damage, +%fire dmg, and +% crit chance. Don't look at other stats and damage. Do not use your weapon to fight; it will only be used to boost skills. If this weapon is one-handed then you must take a shield.

Playstyle will be like this:

• Summon healbot
  
• Summon Immobilization copter (at high lvl's)
  
• Cast ForceField
  
• Spam with Spider mines
  
• As I said - stay avay from troubles
  
• If you need backup summon GunBot

Main stats is Focus and Vitality.

Put stats like this:
2 Focus
2 Vitality
1 Dexterity

and next level:
3 Focus
2 Vitality

and so on.

Vitality is needed for block, additional % resists, and HP. At the end of the game you will need at least 4K HP.
Focus the main skill booster. Mines do fire, physical and lighting damage so elemental damage will increase with additional %magic damage from Focus.
Dexteritywill give some dodge and crit chance. Why do we need crit chance? Because mines do physical damage and can crit with it. You will love dodge when every attack can hit you for 3K dmg.

Okay Spider Mine is a pet. Seriously. It's a pet. So every item that gives you +% Pet damage is welcome. Also these items will boost GunBot and your own pet.
But the most valuable stats are %dmg reduce to all, then +HP, resists and so on. The last one you need is +%fire dmg.

For Example my Engineer has 51% physical reduction, 41% electrical, and 37% all others. This means that I take only 2/3 dmg.

Let me explain why it's so important:
Resistances are very useful at low levels, because they lower damage by the given value. When you get hit for 3K lightning damage, your resists (even if it will be 500) reduce that value (to 2500, in this case). Damage reduction of 33% will reduce it to 2000. It does not mean that you shouldn't need to raise your resistances, because resist and reduction works together.

Do not forget to respec your default skill in town. You will not need it.

• GunBot - Additional damage. Very helpful on champions and bosses.
  
• HealBot - Every level it will cast heal 0.5 earlier and heal more. After lvl 5, it gives mana regen. After lvl 10, it will add armor and resists. This bot will help you keep your HP topped off.
  
• Immobilization copter - Slow enemies. That's enough.
  
• Spider Mines - main and single attack skill. Spam as you can. Every lvl reduces the cooldown on it. And note thet cast speed modificators will not work on this skill.
  
• BullWark - %physical damage reduction. Very useful.
  
• Fire and Spark - %fire and lightning dmg. Boosts your mines.
  
• ForceField - If you keep this field always on, you will almost not take damage at all.

Do not enter zones that are higher or equal to your level. Try to keep your lvl 2-3 levels above it.

Do not go to Frozen Caverns with the yeti. He can insta-kill you with 1 hit. (Act 1)

The most dangerous place in act 2 is the first Djinni portal with the moving circle. By the way, when you finish this location, do not enter the portal at the place where the circles stop moving. Just wait. There is a hidden switch to a secret place.

Always try to gamble items if you have extra money.

You can clear zones again for XP and money if you reroll world (start game on LAN with reroll checkbox).

If you play Single player, you can pause the game at any time by pressing ESC and quit. This is a kind of cheating, but you can reroll world and save your character from death.

This build does not need it, of course.


Have a nice day!