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

Yng said:
I don’t dislike people just because they disagree with me or make a suggestion, not sure on how anyone is being unfriendly/lame by mentioning C/T but if that’s how you take it I apologize. From your post I can tell you’re still not getting my point but that’s fine. Good luck anyway.

E: there are numerous pvp videos of people consistently managing blind spotting etc with C/T in a real time pvp environment, I can assure you Halls of Vaught is manageable ;)
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Look man, just can't help but to challenge statements like that because that's just clearly not the case. Teleporting to Nihl's platform without vision means certain death and you would know that if you had tried it for just 20 minutes.

I don't think using the teleport trick is an abstruse suggestion or anything. In fact it's a reasonable and thoughtful suggestion and I think it's good that you brought it up! I was just responding to it by laying out the reasons why IMO this specific adjustment is ultimately not an improvement in practice. Can't see anything wrong with that or why you get the feeling I thought you were unfriendly, which I didn't think at all. What I considered "lame" is not your posts, but generally us arguing about the teleporting trick over a whole page in this thread just seemed silly. ;) I'm sorry that my responses apparently conveyed a different impression to you, didn't mean that or to discourage you from contributing in any way -- please continue to do so, we're all helping each other out here! Sorry @ all for these unfortunate vibes, hope we can just bury the hatchet now and move on. :)
 
No bad vibes felt here, respecting both opinions, and in this particular case (and Nihl is very particular !!!) agreeing with @ffs about not including the teleport trick but keeping it in the back of my head for future endeavors. Even if that means getting out of my comfort zone ;).
 
I spent a few hours last night leveling and questing Pure, the fishymancer. I made it through Act II with little trouble. I got to the chamber at level 20 and decided to push through to 24 before Duriel. I went through and cleared each tomb. It was incredibly easy.

Killed Duriel, who dropped 5 rares. I moved onto A3 and got the Gidbinn, brain, eye, and trophy. Going to do ruined temple and push through to act 5 tonight.

Does anyone know if a staff can spawn at Drog with +3 enchant and +3 fireball?
 
@MizzouFTW Forgot to say, welcome to the awesomeness! My alternative character here is also a Fishymancer, cool to see another one! I have a similar to do list for him ;) though currently I only play him when I need a break from my Sorc. He's chilling in Hell LK right now and did luck a Ber there early on, but hasn't gotten too much play time since then. Good luck to you grinding those runes!

@PhineasB What kind of mother doesn't recognize her own thread? Shocked. ;)
 
@ffs Thanks! LK isn't going to be a focus for me, it will just be something I force myself to do once each game in Hell. I spent 12 hours farming LK on my softcore sorc the other day. 12 hours of essentially wasted time. Won't be repeating that again.
 
Neverland is almost back to where she was before the windows crash, just beyond the lvl 98.25 mark :). Some more noteworthy stuff since last time.

View attachment 7678

The session after the DWeb dropped, some 15 minutes in. Nihl as good MFO target confirmed !!! Grailer for me in SC. No pic from the item on the ground, as I was happy enough being able to grab it, with all the vipers around.

View attachment 7679

Shako, and the next run a Lightsabre. I actually should have screenshotted the Lightsabre, but only realized afterwards that it's a peculiar drop. Why? There's a few items whose CTC slvl depends on the ilvl of the item. Of those, there's one that only gains it's highest slvl at lvl 94+, and that is Lightsabre. So it can only happen if it drops from Hell Diablo, Nihl and Baal. This is the result, which is very likely my first ever:

Code: 
Lightsabre
Phase Blade
One Hand Damage: 98 - 129
Indestructible
Required Level: 58
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 136
Fingerprint: 0xe1a8c42f
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
5% Chance to cast level 20 Chain Lightning on attack
+20% Increased Attack Speed
184% Enhanced Damage
Adds 10 - 30 Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
Adds 60 - 120 Magic Damage
Adds 1 - 200 Lightning Damage
5% Mana stolen per hit
Lightning Absorb 25%

Another peculiar drop:

View attachment 7680

I don't recall having seen a triple key drop before. Then again my memory is fuzzy at times, so there might as well be a very similar screenshot of mine in this thread already ;).

I did a one hour test run, in which I got 2.5M / hour. Quite some lower than @ffs ... Today I did another one, which gave me a little over 2.8M / hour. Still a lot lower, but more or less in line with other people like @NanoMist and @Pb_pal iirc. Speaking about Pb_pal, where is he btw? Haven't seen him in a while.

Anyway, during that first test run I had a very nice drop, which I forgot to screenshot ... eth Torch of Iro !!!

Code: 
Torch of Iro
Wand
One Hand Damage: 3 - 6
Durability: 8 of 8
Required Level: 5
Fingerprint: 0x873865d3
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+1 to Necromancer Skill Levels
Adds 5 - 9 Fire Damage
6% Life stolen per hit
+10 to Energy
Regenerate Mana 5%
+3 to Light Radius
Ethereal

Today was a fine day, in which I got to play some 2.5 hours (and some more in a bit :)), and, next to the triple key drop, also got 2x Um in quick succession, then this one (again confirming Nihl as mf target ;)):

View attachment 7681

Then a +3 Eschuta's Temper and another TC3:

View attachment 7682

Hopefully I can keep things as safe as they have been so far, because I never had any close calls. Still hoping for a HR to drop to keep me motivated, particularly a Ber to make Beast for the Paladin in my Sept.
 
Very nice drops, huge grats on the Fathom in particular! Always a special find, only found two ever and yours is actually bit better than both. :)

Honestly, I'm also surprised as to what a good target he is for basically everything (runes, S&Us, charms, even decent amount of gems). Running with only some ~110-120 MF I'm getting loads of stuff. But I guess it's also because my most recent targets on this journey have been so much worse for farming, so maybe that perception would change if running Pindle/Pits/AT again.

Also you might have unwittingly just added another valuable tip -- running without cube but free inventory space. There were a few moments where I felt a bit uneasy picking stuff up with open inventory, because hitting Esc would not have brought up the menu immediately. Will try and see if that feels more comfortable in the long run!
 
Ah yeah, I always do it like this. I hate it to have to open the inventory and drop things in the cube, and for Nihl runs, it might even be plain dangerous.

I'm also sporting some 115 MF, and also happy with Nihl's drops lately :).
 
But not using the cube would mean giving up 4 small charms! On the other hand, it would save key strokes to avoid having to open inventory every time you want a drop and minimize a slight risk to safety. Tradeoffs . . .

Actually, I used the cube and had to open inventory to pick up drops (usually just S&E-ing with item picked up but not put away and then putting it in cube at start of next game). But for both Mercy and Hiatus, if there was a drop I really wanted and was amp'ed, I'd just open a TP to hit Malah and/or clear things out if there were lots of nasty monsters around the drop. The slight delay to the next run was worth it to me for a nice drop (and don't think I would have changed strategy without the cube). For other things (like charms or jewels), I'd just S&E and not bother if I saw any risk in trying to pick up the drop.

I also definitely found Nihl to be solid enough on the drops front to help provide motivation throughout the many, many runs.

And finally, @T72on1 - please clean up the charms in the inventory; it hurts, it hurts! :eek: It should look like this, or perhaps this, or possibly this ;)
 
PhineasB said:
I used the cube and had to open inventory to pick up drops (usually just S&E-ing with item picked up but not put away and then putting it in cube at start of next game).
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That’s what I do most of the time as well. Actually going to stick with it I think, dropping cube does mean loss of life from SCs and I’m cutting back more and more regarding items I pick up anyway, so probably makes more sense to stick with cube. Don’t think I’d stop clearing the area when in doubt anyway.
 
@T72on1 Regarding XP gain at Nihl - you haven't tried to include a Phoenix Monarch in your setup by any chance? Apologies if this has been discussed here before, but I'm thinking:

The reason for HelpYourself's XP gain (apart from not suffering the S&E issue) is that immune rolls are not only doable but also relatively quickly due to the massive -ELR from Griffon's and CM being applied in full after Conviction breaks it. As Conviction on its own only lowers the resistance to some ~90% or so due to operating at only 20% efficiency when breaking an immunity, pushing through immune rolls without -ER gear is not nearly as effective. (Mechanics for reference.)

If running with Fire Sorc, Phoenix would have a similar effect and even provides Redemption and fire absorb. That sounds incredibly convenient for running Nihl and makes Nature's Peace obsolete. Also resists lost from Spirit are barely an issue because it doesn't provide FR anyway, which is the most (maybe the only) important resist for these runs. The only downside I can identify is hitting 105% FCR may require some tradeoffs, but seems perfectly doable to me. For example 80% from weapon, gloves and belt and the remaining 25% from ring(s) (one of which would have been blocked for Nature's Peace anyway) and a craft ammy. The idea of using a rare FCR circlet or Viper might be worth entertaining as well.

I know it does involve quite some runes and we're untwinked here ;) but if you should happen to have them and some FCR gear I would certainly try it (it has other applications as well so it's not a waste of runes in any case). Definitely when playing twinked with all the gear in the world available (looking at @Grape :)).

EDIT: Rough example calculation regarding the difference vs FI:
Assuming 8k average FB damage.
If Nihl rolls breakable FI from being fire enchanted he will have 108% FR (33% base FR + 75% from being FE).
Infinity's lvl 12 Conviction will work at 20% efficiency and lower his FR by 17%, bringing him down to 91% FR.

Without Phoenix, FB will thus deal 720 damage (9% of 8k).

With Phoenix, Nihl will be at 63% FR and FB would deal 2960 damage (37% of 8k). That would be an increase of ~311% vs FI Nihl.

Now of course, unless you have truly special gear, you will likely lose a certain amount of + skills as a result of dropping Spirit and getting FCR elsewhere, and FB won't deal 8k damage. So let's assume +3 to all skills lost with the Phoenix setup (pretty much worst case) and FB average damage going down to somewhere around ~6.5k average. That still means ~2400 damage in the above situation and an increase of ~230% over the Spirit setup.

Not including Meteor numbers here, but I went through them as well and the ratio is the same as with FB.
 
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Another thing to consider if you’re running shrines is cube allowing you to always have Flawless on hand while keeping 4x2 for pickup and the charms.

Also worth noting that Redemption pulses every 2 seconds compared to SMRIP denying the corpse immediately upon death, which could make for CE windows.
 
Based on the last few posts, I have made a few adjustements:

  • cube in inventory, rest of inventory filled; I don't feel 100% comfortable with it, but I agree that there aren't that many drops I pick up, so it might be worth it to give it a try; the result for now, thanks to the extra SCs and the other changes (see below) is that I now have 2700 health instead of 2400
  • I was rarely using FO, if at all (FI Nihl is almost always breakable, in which case FB kills equally fast or probably even faster than FO), so I bit the bullet and respecced to full Fire; it was only after respeccing that I realized that I had almost maxed the Fire skills I was using anyway though ;) ; so the change to Meteor and FB isn't so huge, but I used the leftover points to increase my Static Field range to about 20 yards; then I decided to put the rest of the points in FW; damage numbers looked nice on paper, although I must agree, that after some testing, I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference, instead of just spamming FB
  • due to this change, I switched out my cold skillers, put on a third fire skiller (I don't have more) and added some more SC of Vita
  • the last change, based on @ffs' suggestion of Phoenix, was to Hel out the Sol in my Shako and put a -5/+4 Fire Facet in it instead

Due to all this changes, I have the impression that I'm killing FI Nihl faster. I even tried a FI/LI Nihl, which I usually skip immediately, and it was actually not too bad. So thanks all for the suggestions !!!

Phoenix could work, but I don't feel like farming the Jah I'm still missing for it right now, neither do I feel like reshuffling my gear. I could always try a 4os Monarch with Facets, but I don't have that many anymore unfortuntaly. But like I said, killing speed has increased already, it seems. I'll test this more thorougly soon.
 
Yng said:
Also worth noting that Redemption pulses every 2 seconds compared to SMRIP denying the corpse immediately upon death, which could make for CE windows.
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True, definitely requires testing to find out if that is a major issue despite the added max FR and absorb. Though CEs do go off anyway also with Nature's Peace. Actually a pretty frightening drop in life was when I got cursed by Nihl and one CE spiked immediately after that. I guess Merc gets a few kills here and there so CEs do occur.

T72on1 said:
Phoenix could work, but I don't feel like farming the Jah I'm still missing for it right now, neither do I feel like reshuffling my gear. I could always try a 4os Monarch with Facets, but I don't have that many anymore unfortuntaly.
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Yeah takes too much time for you to hit LK again at this stage to farm a Jah, but maybe Nihl will be kind enough to drop one and then you can try it, I'd be very interested to see if it works well. :) As for facet shield, for Fire Sorc I think Phoenix is just better due to the + fire damage being additive with Fire Mastery, so the -EFR from Phoenix is more damage (and has Redemption and handy further stats on top if it). Actually the only character I use with a 4 fire facet shield is a Pindle running Fissure Druid. That dude is even using 11 fire facets on kill switch :) 6s Crystal Sword, 4s Monarch and faceted Ravenlore. Was just a fun build when I decided to burn through a lot of fire facets at one point (most of them mediocre). He can't do all that much besides being good at P8 Pindle but that he does very well. ;)
 
An update on Rob_theBarb. I finished normal with him about a week ago and have been running A1 and A2 AT up until today, looking for an suitable base for Insight... those exceptional polearms seem to drop very rarely(think i found 2-3 sets of runes for insight during the week), but finally, after almost running out of amethysts, i managed to find a Bill that after cubing gave me a sweet 4-socket base for the insight:
View attachment 7696

Rob is level 50 atm and with decent mana regen and damage available, it feels like i should finally decide on my end game build that i'm going for (atm i have been pumping DS and Bash). Original plan was to go for Berserk, but the 2-handers available are modest to say the very least. The best weapons i have for that atm are Patriarch and Blacktongue, also atm i am still lacking in resists. Haven't found any decent exceptional 2-handed (swords/axes/polearms) bases for a runeword yet, so will probably be swinging that insight myself.
The further in i go, the more it feels, that a Conc barb with a shield would probably live longer, as the HP pool drops ever faster and lower, but the killing speed will suffer no doubt. Words of advice on how to continue buildwise are most welcome :)

A short overwiev of what i have available atm:
View attachment 7700
 
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