Diablo II Strategy Guide Info:
Related Articles, focused on the October 1, 2001 ladder reset.
- Guide:Why a Ladder Reset
- Guide V1.09: Ladder Race: 7 hours
- Guide V1.09: Ladder Race: 23 hours
- Guide V1.09: Ladder Race: 39 hours -- The race ends with a 99, and numerous ladder runner reports.
- V1.09: Clvl 99 in Record Time -- First person account from the Clvl 99 winning team.
Ladder Rush
Everyone expected new characters to level up quickly, but this pace is amazing and surprising to everyone. The only way to do this, to get brand new characters to lvl 80+ in 6-7 hours, is to massively exploit the experience sharing system. Turbo to Act Five, especially Act Five hell are necessary as well. And it goes without saying that all the best equipment was twinked to the new characters as soon as they could use it.
It's possible to level up very very quickly without exploiting the party system, but not this fast. Congratulations, or something, to the people who played 7 hours straight to get their names in lights. Most likely there were endless Bloody Runs going on.
The interesting thing is how many new characters are about the same level now. It's not like the old days where GerBarb and RussBarb were the pioneers in the super high level race, getting into the upper 90's when no one else was even close. There are dozens of new characters up this high already. Most everyone on these top 16 lists could be into the top spot in another hour or two of play, if the characters ahead of them took a break.
See our initial article from Wednesday, with discussion of the ladder reset issue, and suggestions to make it harder to reach such high levels so quickly.
Of you are playing any of these characters, please email me with some info about how you did it, what equipment used, how much of a turbo you got, etc. I'll get back to you and post some of the first hand reports on the site.
 USEast Standard, after 7 hours |  USEast Hardcore, after 7 hours |
It's mostly Amazons and Sorcs this high so soon. Sorcs everyone knows about, there are many builds with many types of equipment that are super powerful. Firewall, Hydra, Nova, Charged Bolt, Meteor all can be specialized in to level faster than nearly any other character type.
Amazons are most likely all Burizons. See the article from two weeks ago for discussion about it.
 USWest Standard, after 7 hours |  USWest Hardcore, after 7 hours |
West is about the same as East on the Standard ladder, but much lower on Hardcore. No idea why, there were more high level HCs on West prior to the wipe.
 Europe Standard, after 7 hours |  Europe Hardcore, after 7 hours |
Europe has the highest Standard and Hardcore characters, which is interesting as it's the least crowded of these three servers, and the ladder reset was in the middle of the night in Europe, so in theory fewer players were awake to play. Note the big team cG going on Hardcore, some guild all playing together in the same games most likely, with them all so close in level.
Asia was not responding when I tried to log on for over an hour, but it would likely be much the same, or even more high level characters, with so many people playing from Korean gaming cafes, where the same character could be team played 24/7.
I'll update these ladders later Sunday, after 18 or 24 hours, to see how much further people have progressed.