Diablo 1 mod - Raiden (a bit of whining)

[gooddragon1]

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[Corlindale]

Mana Shield usually helps a lot. I frequently build sorcerors with every single point in Magic and this spell is what enables them to survive later levels. As long as you have plenty of potions you don't really need lots of fancy gear.

[Winthur]

I must be used to games being too easy...

I made a mod where nothing (though the player could get it) has any immunity or resistance to lightning. Also, all lightning spells (charged bolt, lightning, chain lightning, and flash) cost 0 mana. And yet I have trouble because I assign all my stats to magic and I'm level 13 going into the caves. How would you gear up to survive?

As a sorcerer, you're already playing the most broken overpowered class in the game. With free spells you nullify resource management and kill the tough part of your early game the moment you find or buy a proper book.

Now that I passively-aggressively told you how much I hate your brand of fun , here's things:
Sorcerer can beat the game naked (and there are challenges for him: Naked Mage and Beyond Naked Mage [the latter only equips cursed items, i.e. ones that lower your stats]), so you don't necessarily need any gear. Useful stuff, however, will certainly be:

• Mana Shield, because it's extremely overpowered in Diablo 1. A mage equipped with end-game gear (coincidentally, almost all of it findable in Normal difficulty) reaches over +1000 mana. For your needs, it will still surpass the total HP count of a fighter anyway. Remember to recast it at the start of every dungeon. Remember that once you get Mana Shield, Full Mana potions are your healing.
• Teleport, if you don't have it already. Makes for very easy hit'n'run and there's an abundance of lava rivers and other obstacles in Caves, so it's very easy to just teleport to them for tactics.
• Learn proper footwork. Diablo 1 is a pretty slow, tactical game, compared to Diablo 2 at least. Move slowly and uncover monsters one at a time. Scroll your mouse along edges of the screen. Fire spells blindly (you have infinite lightning, remember?) into uncovered open spaces and wake up monsters this way.
• Use corridors. Stand in front of the doors and fire at everything.
• Regarding footwork - know that there's a thing in the game mechanics where if you walk horizontally (directly left to right or right to left), projectiles cannot hit you at all. It's useful.
• You will most certainly want magic resistance the most in Caves. Caves starts spitting out Spitting Terrors - those little dog-like (they always reminded me of Zerglings) creatures that spit huge yellow blobs that really, really hurt. If you meet an unique Spitting Terror with a pack, they become a heavy machinegun nest (not even kidding) that is really hard to defeat if you're pinned at some spot.
• Caves also has Storm Lords that chuck lightning at you from large distance, so some lightning resistance is nice.
• The least you need in Caves is Fire resistance IMHO, because the early versions of Balrogs aren't very threatening and their attack is decidedly short range. Keep them at distance and you'll be fine.
• Be very wary of the Hidden, especially Illusion Weavers - this monster type disappears and moves up to you invisibly, stopping invisibility as soon as they're close. Illusion Weavers are the Hidden type that is allowed to come up to you fully stealthed and only reveal himself when he's already right next to you. Whenever a Weaver unveils, you still have some time to teleport away - do that. An Illusion Weaver really hurts and can stunlock you badly.
• Play slowly and conservatively. Kinda as if you were playing a roguelike.
• Check for useful stuff at Adria all the time. If you're playing multiplayer mode, she'll sooner or later start selling potions of permanent stat gain, 5000 apiece. Make sure to keep boosting your spell levels with new books, too.

Also note that Flash is a magic school spell, and it's also buggy (it deals damage in a square around you, but the "northeast" edge of that square only deals 1/3 damage, so if you really want to use it - and there's rarely a point to do that - you want to use it on people coming from the south and west edges).