Why ethereal cryptic axe?

I finished hell Act 2 with my necro last night. I must have died 20 times. I will never step foot in Arcane Sancutary again. I actually 'bustoed' my diablo account - I gambled down to ~100k, and then had some deaths and ran out of money for merc resurrecting! I was running around the rogue encampment with a golem selling potions and 'white' drops, lol.

Here's my 'stuff' thread:
http://forums.diii.net/showthread.ph...17#post6661517

If anyone wants some of it, let me know. It doesn't look like I'll be able to trade anything except for the gore riders and the pgems, so I might as well give it away.

I got an Arm of Leoric and Trang's Armor if your playing on East ladder. It's just taking up space on my mule.

I could use any beginning necro junk.

No, I'm playing west ladder. East was a little laggy for me, and I've too much invested in this toon.

It's going on a merc and merc's don't use durability when attacking. So eth items never wear down from use on a merc.(notice how you've never had to repair any equipment on your merc?). Anyway, eth items do a heck of a lot more dmg than non-eth items, especially ones that get a perf roll of ED% and are superior(meaning they can have an extra 15% enhanced damage on their base dmg).

For instance, my best suggestion for merc equipment for those that can afford it is: Ral'd Eth Andy Helm + Eth 'Stone' Runeword Armor(kraken shell is good for a hell of alot of def, bugged armors are even better but obviously cost more) and any eth Cryptic Axe or Colossus Voulge(CV's are easily equipped with Andy helm and Stone as both will give plenty of +str for the weapon) and your choice of runeword in it(or you can get an eth unique elite polearm that would do well too).

With this type of setup the Merc has extremely high defense and damage. This is when they become very good helpers.(their defense can get ridiculously high if you use a defiance merc or are a barb)

I knew that, but I thought ethereal was strictly inferior to non-ethereal. I didn't realize it had an upside of being necessarily implied more damage. I guess the same is for armor.

What's an "Andy helm"? Also, Ral Eth is a rune word I don't have listed?

Sorry for muling so much ****. I'm just packratting every unique and set item I find unless of course I already have it. I can pimp out some low-level characters (1-30).

Should I keep all gems? What about runes? I'm running out of inventory space and don't know what to throw out.

I dump most gems and most low level runes.

I only keep perfect (and some flawless) gems.

Chipped gems worthless now? I thought they were worth something the last time I played.

Also, any large charms wroth keeping?

I pretty much auto-cube any rune when I get to 4 of them.

Chipped gems are used in some of the higher rune transformation recipes, but how often do you have, like, 3 Amn and need a Sol? Not very often. I'd vendor the little gems and cross that bridge when you come to it, rather than try to keep an inventory.

God, the market/inventory system of this game is so insanely gay. What was Blizzard thinking with that stash size? Is there some gameplay-enhancing element here I'm missing?

Yeah, the inventory system is pretty terrible. Why not let me buy a house or something and stash as much stuff as I want to? Also, if D3 still makes you manually reconfigure your inventory everytime you pick up an item that you have room for but not in the current configuration, I'll be extremely annoyed. I guess those are just the things you run into when playing old games.

So is there a game that is permanently up for muling? If so please pm me.

Also, if someone could rush my rune/gem mule to a horadric cube I'd very much <3 you.

Andariel's Helm, it gives +str and +life leech. You put a Ral rune in it because Ral gives +fire resists and andy has -30 fire resists. By Eth I meant Ethereal, not ral-eth. Its one of the better merc helms.

just give the cube from one of your 'good' characters.

they can easily get another one from the halls of the dead (or maybe even travincal!? i havent tested that one though)