The Untwinked Level 99 Progress Thread, Revenge of the 99ers

Thanks all for the advice. I applied it. Ran Pindle, AT, LK, & Rakanishu (he was less than a tele away from WP) until 87. Decided I was wasting time on LK because lots of teles for 1 fire so I rerolled multiple times (and got VERY frustrated dying 5 times while scouting LK by blind tele into packs... rage quit 2 days ago). After 10+ rerolls today I found a beauty - 2 fires, first is 2.5 teles SE of WP the second is 2 Teles NE of first. So, now my LK runs dropped 10 seconds and I hit 2 fires. Not to mention my AT map improved (closer to WP and still has reasonable loop through packs).
Found Chance Guards and killing fast enough to swap +2 sorc Tiara for 3 sockets of Perfect Topaz, got enough resist charms to swap Tearhaunch for 20%runwalk/21% MF boots. So, MF significantly better.
CanBeOnlyBlizz is a happy sorc. Next goal 90.
Cool finds: uh. Nothing compared to others
Ohm on my 5th LK run. That means a have a few hundred runs before another good rune...
Everything else has been gambled:
+2 skill hats for every class - But drooling over that one you found @Southpaw8668
An interesting array of +2 all or +3 specific attack Assassin weapons
My finding skills are lacking. Hopefully it will change with the new map.
 
That could be interesting. If I ever decide that I don't want an Insight anymore, this might be an option. Certainly gets some style points!
Also with all that life leech on BotD, you free up helm and armor for p much anything you want. Helm would probably best be Delirium for area running and Guillame's Face with a sexy IAS Jewel/Cham/Ber for Bosses. Armor can go cheap with Duriel's Shell for the cbf, Duress for extra CB against bosses, or Treachery for the IAS+Fade+Venom. Looks like either 2 IAS Jewels or Treachery would hit the max IAS bp for you merc (5 frame standard, 10 frame Bash/Stun).
 
I agree with Brak except that with a BOTD it is doing so much damage already that I think the CB is wasted a bit on the Duress. I think a Fortitude might be better, especially if running a Delirium (which I would do personally, chaos on the battlefield is awesome). Since I have the runes for all of the RW discussed, that will be my path (if I ever get any of the base items)!

On Battleforge's progress, he decided to make a CTA in a 5 socket War Scepter (it got +4 to BO) so his LK runs are a bit safer. He had been suffering too many white knuckle escapes when sniped by some enchanted extra fast apes, which seem to happen a lot. Good thing he did, because in one run, maybe 5 runs after I made the weapon and started using it on every LK run, a pack of might enchanted extra fast apes took him from 1800+ HP to 150 in less than a second. Whew! Deeds for sure without the CTA I'd just made, as his hit point total without BO is just over 1200.
 
@OldSoldier - Close call! Glad Battleforge is still with us. :) I'm thinking I'm going to stay Insight/A2 merc for now, but once I hit 98 and the running dynamic changes (I'm planning on doing Diablo runs for the last level) I might just switch out to a Barb with a big hurty sword, as he'll probably help more with taking down D than the A2 one will. Also, you know, style is important.

Since I already made my current merc a CoH, I'd be running Delerium/CoH/BotD most likely.

Guess I should start keeping an eye open for Colossus Blades, although I have no room for it in the stash at the moment..
 
@OldSoldier - Nice save, stay safe out there we'll surely miss the HC Hammer man if he meets the reaper.

I usually try to stay out of a building if I see enemies come out of one as I approach, and move on to the next one. I'm sure I've left some Bers on the table doing that! Sometimes though, with the amount of FRW I have on, I run headlong into groups before I can react. When doing LK runs I have FRW as follows: 40% from Sanders Boots, 25% from Stealth Armor, 25% from Zephyr crossbow, 20% from Mavina's belt, 43% from Vigor aura, 30% from a circlet, and (I think) 18% more from charms. That's over 200% for sure and when they come at me from the opposite edge of the screen there is pretty much no reaction time.

I feel like doing LK it is almost like having a SC character, I've had to panic S&E several times. Seems to me to be against the spirit of HC but if I didn't do that, I'd either die or never get the runes and the slog would be too great to even try for 99.
 
@Southpaw8668 : This rare weapon is nice, but as i said already in this thread, Decrepify is the key for Your Windy, and the best source of it is Barbarian merc with Lawbringer...I've played this druid under same rules like You and this merc and his weapon has been the key to my success (i won MF oriented tourney with him, starting from scratch, and we have to find as many grailers as possible during one month - found cca 80% of the grail and got him to lvl 92 - it was on the different Czech only forum though))So if You are considering switching to Barbarian merc, please, at least consider and try this option, its cheap and very effective ;)
 
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Perkele reached 98. The real struggle begins.
Code:
Name (F)     Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy     Perkele         SC      Barb      98             No            -          -            -           -
NanoMist     Izuna           SC      Sin       97             No         1458        391            2          175
Pb_pal       Eleanor         SC      Sorc      97             No         1194        354            5           -
T72on1       Neverland       SC      Sorc      95             Yes         459        232            11          65
PhineasB     Mercy           SC      Sin       94             Yes           -        273            9           -
hasuprotoss  Reina           SC      Sorc      94             Yes         503        255            -           -
Tarantella   Tarasha         HC      Sorc      93             Yes           -          -            -           -
Southpaw     Njord           SC      Druid     90             Yes           -          -            -           -
OldSoldier   Battleforge     HC      Pala      90             Yes           -        236            -           -
Gambit       Mallenroh       SC      Sorc      81             Yes           0          0            0           0
logo         Digimon         HC      Nec       76             Yes          85         65            0           -
Darke Rahl   Bells           HC      Ama       74             No           19          -            0           0
Kitteh       Cyanosis        HC      Assassin  45             No            -          -            -           -
Tenecabo     OldShatterhand  HC      Druid     40             Yes           -          0            0           -
Gambit       Colossus        SC      Pal       39             YES           0          0            0           0
Ergroilnin   Erilinda        HC      Sorc      20             No            -          -            -           -
Smancer      Smancer         SC      Necro     26             Yes           1          -            -           -
XyleneCyanol Fishie          HC      Sorc      23             No            1          -            -           -
[highlight]The Fallen:[/highlight]
Code:
Name (F)    Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coju        NintyNine_orRiP HC      Sorc      81             Yes           -          0            0         a few
coju        fB              HC      Sorc      29             Yes           1          1            0           2
Kitteh      Verallus        HC      Druid     26             No          N/A        N/A            0          N/A
logo        Rolex           HC      Barb      21             Yes           0          0            0           1
No fancy rune screenshots this time, the runs have been quite relaxing and uneventful. The only notable runefind was an Ist (just what I was looking for to make delirium, thanks RNG ;)), the only keeper a small charm +11 cold resist / +16 life. Somewhat interesting uniques I got: fleshripper, ravenlore, (2nd) azurewrath, and a perfect eth bonehew as last Baal drop, a symbolic souvenir from him I suppose? Anyway I didn't have enough space in my inventory so no Zod God hype I'm afraid.
I never died on this level, which is sort of strange given my sloppy gameplay, but I got rather close once having a 2nd wave with fana and manaburn spawned around me while I was distracted by tv. Manaburn Lister on p8 was ok after a bit of practice, and in the end I've always been able to kill him without quitting or losing too much time -- speaking of which, I was disappointed to notice, after a while, that my first estimate of 3.5 m exp per hour was the right one, so the journey to 98 took me more than I initially expected. But hey, here we are now, and Perkele's next target is Nihla, so let's have a look at my checklist:
  1. have a few countess runs to get Lem and make delirium in some random helm;
  2. make a new enigma in breastplate, perhaps;
  3. find more Lovecraft audiobooks;
  4. start to experiment on Nihla with different settings:
  • Main weapons: etomby or ebotdz+beastz? Tokens will be used...
  • Switch weapons: I have dual hoto, dual wizzy, one suicide branch. Dual hoto: overall good but lacks 20%fcr to hit the last tele bp; dual wizzy: good, but I have to waste hardpoints in dex; dual branch: maybe the best, but I still miss one of those;
  • Highlord or magic ammy of everlasting? Vamp or Guill? Damage reduction and killing speed are both important down there.
Let's see what the future holds... in the meantime, happy grinding everyone.

Edit: lol 2nd Suicide Branch dropped by Nihla himself during a test run :)
 
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@zticazzy Congrats on reaching lvl98. If I remember correctly, it takes longer from 98 to 99 than from 1 to 98, very interesting game design.

Yesterday, Conqueror Fishie reached lvl 80.

View attachment 3337
.

At the same time, Mephi says hi to me :D:

View attachment 3339

She has now finished Izual quest, and got back to Act III for some nice gear and runes.

She started with a standard MeteorOrb sorc, and the journey was very smooth so far. I have to say, untwinkled play is really refreshing: every piece of drop counts, and even having a Stealth and Leaf runeword made me happy :p.

One notable drop from Hell Duriel. I've never expect anything good from him (or her???), because most of the time Duriel dropped me things like this. Yesterday, this dropped:


Huh, you are capable of dropping goodies ;)

Showing some current gears:


Update table:

Code:
Name (F)     Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy     Perkele         SC      Barb      98             No            -          -            -           -
NanoMist     Izuna           SC      Sin       97             No         1458        391            2         175
Pb_pal       Eleanor         SC      Sorc      97             No         1194        354            5           -
T72on1       Neverland       SC      Sorc      95             Yes         459        232           11          65
PhineasB     Mercy           SC      Sin       94             Yes           -        273            9           -
hasuprotoss  Reina           SC      Sorc      94             Yes         503        255            -           -
Tarantella   Tarasha         HC      Sorc      93             Yes           -          -            -           -
Southpaw     Njord           SC      Druid     90             Yes           -          -            -           -
OldSoldier   Battleforge     HC      Pala      90             Yes           -        236            -           -
Gambit       Mallenroh       SC      Sorc      81             Yes           0          0            0           0
XyleneCyanol Fishie          HC      Sorc      80             No            -          -            -           -
logo         Digimon         HC      Nec       76             Yes          85         65            0           -
Darke Rahl   Bells           HC      Ama       74             No           19          -            0           0
Kitteh       Cyanosis        HC      Assassin  45             No            -          -            -           -
Tenecabo     OldShatterhand  HC      Druid     40             Yes           -          0            0           -
Gambit       Colossus        SC      Pal       39             YES           0          0            0           0
Smancer      Smancer         SC      Necro     26             Yes           1          -            -           -
Ergroilnin  Erilinda         HC      Sorc      20             No            -          -            -           -
[highlight]The Fallen:[/highlight]
Code:
Name (F)    Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coju        NintyNine_orRiP HC      Sorc      81             Yes           -          0            0         a few
coju        fB              HC      Sorc      29             Yes           1          1            0           2
Kitteh      Verallus        HC      Druid     26             No          N/A        N/A            0          N/A
logo        Rolex           HC      Barb      21             Yes           0          0            0           1

Next goals:

Find Occy, Viper and Arach
Find/Cube Ist, Vex and Ohm
Respect to pure blizzard for AT runs to participate MFO
Chaos run for leveling (hopefully, I could get a Fathom during this :p)
 
Reina and I decided to try a few different things. Unfortunately, we didn't like where we ended up and had used up all of our respecs from Akara... So we pushed on and killed Baal, losing all of our Ancients XP to gloams. So, uhh... she's not happy about that, but I'm sure we'll survive the several hours we lost from losing all of our Ancients' XP before 98...

Anyways, we've done a bit of planning recently and think we see a way to get some decent upgrades to gear, get our resists above the 5 lightning and cold resist we currently have, and get back to killing things quickly! We have a 4 socket Archon Plate that we can make Chains of Honor into. This gives us a 38 resist boost over our current Vipermagi, and another skill. We also need to spam LK runs for that final Vex rune that we've been searching for, since about forever. This will grant us a Heart of the Oak, which gives us another skill, 10% FCR over our current Spirit, as well as 30 resists. We lose a bit of life, though but I think the increase in resistances will be fine. Both of these will push our lightning and cold resistance to at least 73 or so, as well as maxing out fire and poison. We need to do a bit of gear changing to hit 105 FCR with this setup, though. I swapped out Magefists for Frostburns since I was comfortable above 105 FCR but I can swap those back on and find a 10 FCR ring to replace my current Nagelring to get there. I don't see the point in having too much MF anymore, I think I've found the vast majority of gear that I'm interested in and now we just need to kill things as efficiently as possible.

Then, we'll go back into either AT or CS, (I think Reina prefers CS, she enjoys killing strange Demon Statue and weird lightning bug thingies a lot more than Zombies, skeletons, and hulking weird buggy sword wielding things) until we get up to... I dunno 97/98? Then go back to LK to get Infinity, Fortitude for the Merc, hopefully some light skillers, etc. Then, we'll equip our Griffon's and go to town on Diablo until we're about 100 runs from 99. Then we'll go kill Baal, since he's a lot cooler to run in the end :)

We've gotten back to full Blizzard, and have another Token ready to go. We're also missing two Baal dusts from making two more tokens, so I think we'll be fine if we decide to change our minds again.

Reina really wants more skillers. So far the only Sorceress skillers we've found was a single cold skiller, which helps now. Hopefully that ramps up and we get a good number in the five runs it takes us to find a Vex rune in LK :)

Anyways... a few pictures of interesting finds from the past few days (no Baal kill pictures because I forgot to take them!):
GYZiHAE.jpg

Our new amulet! Could have better rolls but for now I'm fine with the 2 Sorc skills. Will keep trying to reroll these things (LK should help replenish our diminishing Ral and P Amethyst supply)

qRYMSQK.jpg

Another Mal from LK

H78UljX.jpg

An Um from LK

tZJ7Ukg.jpg

I think that names already taken...

a8CqYwA.jpg

Courtesy of Andy

k85HXav.jpg

Courtesy of Baal, an improvement in every regards from our previous Gheed's

JlUDi2F.jpg

The coveted first Sorc skiller!

Finally, good job all of you guys, especially you @zticazzy!
 
@hasuprotoss - Congratulations on all the wonderful finds and that's a sweet caster amulet. Those Gloams and Dolls are the most annoying creatures in the game for me.
 
Due to a mistake, Conqueror Fishie is not vanilla anymore. So, I will change my rules for this char now:

No extended stash
Use RWM

I think I'm still eligible for this tournament, but correct me if I'm wrong ...
 
@zticazzy - Yikes! He sure knows how to greet his friends, that's for sure. What gear set up have you decided on, or are you still testing? I assumed EBotD + offhand Beast would be best, but it would be cool to know how the other combos/gear worked too.

--

After hitting 97, I had to make a pretty tough decision with Eleanor. With the upcoming MFO she will be converting to Blova (thanks again @Grape for the suggestion!) and running Baal. There is very little chance that I'll have enough time to get to 98 before then, so it looks like Eleanor will be hitting the Ancients "early" and moving on to Baal to find a good map and get used to the build and runs before the MFO arrives. First though, it's time to look at some numbers and theorycrafting!

After some testing with my other sorceress, I've decided once and for all (I think..) that it doesn't make any sense to get an Infinity for Eleanor for either CS runs, Diablo runs, or Baal runs. I do believe it could be slightly quicker with an Infinity (Baal especially), but the convenience of having essentially infinite mana from Insight is just more valuable for me personally. Not to say this would be the case for everyone, but for me it stands.

Before we bit the bullet and converted, we did some running in the CS to see what the numbers looked like:

These runs are standard "Gripphon Run" style, killing only The Infector and Grand Vizier packs, as well as convenient boss packs along the way. CI bosses and champ packs (unless stacked on a boss pack and killed by consequence) are ignored. One thing to note is that my previous map usually had 2-4 extra boss packs per run, whereas I seem to have rolled a rather bare-bones version this time, averaging only ~1 additional pack per run. Probably not an optimal setup for XP gains, but for now having it so straightforward is kind of nice (and great for data collection!).

XP Numbers:

65595.4 XP/run
53.72 s/run
73263.66 XP/minute

These numbers seem to line up nicely with @NanoMist's previous data, which is nice. (Thanks again for those Nanomist, great resource!)

We then used up a respec and converted to Blova to test out some Baal runs:

These runs were done as /p1 Throne + first 2 Waves (for easy skelly clearing), /p8 final 3 waves, /p3 Baal.

XP Numbers:

215593.8 XP/run
212 s/run (anywhere from 3:15-4 minutes, depending on throne spawns and CI Lister)
61017.11 XP/min

Again, very very close to Nanomist's numbers from his data (213203, for comparison on the same type of run)

So as you can see, CS is a fair bit quicker for Eleanor in terms of leveling speed. This isn't surprising as it's been pointed out on several other occasions, but it's always nice to be able to say once again that @Gripphon was right all along!

Basically, to be as efficient at Baals as she is at the CS, she would have to average just under 3 minutes per run, which just isn't possible with her current gear set. If I were to try leveling from 97-98 start to finish on pure Baals, it would take ~11 hours extra with my current numbers. Luckily for me, the free 40M from the Ancients knocks the difference down to only 0.2 hours in favour of the CS. That's nice, since it makes it sting less using the quest early, although I'm sure I won't be saying the same thing when I can't use it on 98.


Now for some details about her actual journey! Since we had decided on not getting an Infinity, it meant we didn't need her LK map anymore. We popped back into NM and socketed her Fathom with an Ist to give us a little MF boost (up to 160 now). We're hoping to find ourselves a nice golden Shako before the MFO hits, but we're not holding our breath. She did, however, FINALLY find an Arachnid Mesh! This means her jewelery slots are now free to be used however she pleases, which is a welcome change.

After an easy rout of the Ancients, Eleanor finally became a Matriarch at the young age of 97, with a pretty decent drop (the valor is +2 all skills) and a Baal Charm to boot.

4S2sjZM.jpg

.
I wish I could keep the valor, but i had to mule it off due to space constraints. So @Kitteh, there's my new most painful thing to let go of, just in case you're keeping track :p

In case anyone is wondering, after the respec she is rocking:

6-6.2k Blizzard
1.3-1.8k Nova

Other than that, nothing too exciting. She got herself a decent Baal map and has been getting used to the runs so that we can hopefully go on full-out robot mode for the MFO. Not to mention the change of scenery from the CS is nice too!

Other finds:
- Sur
- Lo

Happy running everyone!
 
@Pb_pal - You're welcome. I'm glad to see the exp. tables are accurate and are of some use. For sorcs, I had wondered if doing P1 De Seis was worth it to get to Diablo. Reason being that P7 Diablo provides experience equivalent to P8 Vizier + Infector at level 97. But De Seis is still dangerous even at P1 setting. Maybe not worth it from a risk/gain perspective. Anyway, welcome to Baal runs! Certainly is refreshing running something different and also in time for MFO preparation.
 
@Pb_pal - You're welcome. I'm glad to see the exp. tables are accurate and are of some use. For sorcs, I had wondered if doing P1 De Seis was worth it to get to Diablo. Reason being that P7 Diablo provides experience equivalent to P8 Vizier + Infector at level 97. But De Seis is still dangerous even at P1 setting. Maybe not worth it from a risk/gain perspective. Anyway, welcome to Baal runs! Certainly is refreshing running something different and also in time for MFO preparation.

That's interesting, I hadn't thought of that. My gut tells me it won't be worth it since I'd have to kill both De Seis and D in ~ 1 minute for it to be effective and I'm almost positive I wouldnt't be able to do it with my setup as Nova is just too weak (and De Seis is always CI). A different build (full light) might be able to pull it off, but as you say, the risk might outweigh the benefits. CS is dangerous enough without a /p8 De Seis, and deaths at these levels are no joke.
 
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