Well, this was quick. Sometimes things just go right.
Ric decided to reroll his LK map again, and found this one after 5 minutes.
Not quite as good as his pre-RFL one, but I thought it will do! About 20 minutes later:
He cubed a 4os eth Cryptic Axe during RFL round 1, and had been meaning to use it for Infinity unless an eth Thresher/GT showed up. Well, it (again) was not happening... But as he thought this base to be worthy, he Hel'ed out the Insight in it and did this:
Third Infinity in this challenge (the previous two being in CV and eventually Thresher half way through 98-99 for HelpYourself).
Naturally he took it to a Pits tour immediately, and boy what an upgrade! Ready for RFL round 3 - check. And I can run with HelpYourself with a clean conscience in between the round 2 set and round 3 start.
I am sure this has been mentioned somewhere in this thread, and I checked the first post as well to see if some info was there. But anyway, a quick question: If I take some skillers from my 99er and use with my other Sorc, can I then place them back into my 99ers inventory? Would the skillers be tainted, in other words, from being used on another character? I have a few cold skillers I have never used that my 99er found, and wont ever need them for her, so those can go to the other Sorc, but I was thinking of loading my Blizzy up for Trav.
Doesn't seem a problem to me. The 99er sorc found them, so ... As long as you make certain to keep track of all your items, so that your 99er sorc doesn't get any items she didn't find herself.
Personally, I feel uncomfortable with the idea of items coming back to an untwinked character once the have left. However, it is not stipulated in the rules and I''m not suggesting that it needs to be. I think that it is a personal choice, so go ahead I think, unless there is mass disagreement. Be very careful though and track them vey specifically
It’s all good man. After I thought about it, I’ll just keep the skillers on my 99er. I would rather not take the risk of items getting mixed up. Besides, I can make up the difference in dmg in other ways.
One week later and i'm again little bit closer to first goal - getting Infinity RW...thus far picked up more then 1000 runes (Atma says ) and more then 700 gems...those are waiting for some Baal GCs
Finds:
Basically i'm SUR + OHM away from Infinity, also need base item which might be different story...Really want to finish it as i'm sick of LK already
Other finds:
Code:
Amber Small Charm of Fortune
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 32
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xc686907e
Lightning Resist +11%
4% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Pestilent Large Charm of Anthrax
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 58
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x5c2899b
+451 poison damage over 12 seconds
Volcanic Amulet of Life Everlasting
Required Level: 45
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x5ed57f3c
Damage Reduced by 22
+3 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
Amulet should be nice for melee Enchantress i guess
I'm not brave enough to run Nihlathak with HC character (no esc rule)...Thanks anyway, i will probably try my luck at Pit once i get all required runes...
Good progress @RIP - it's only a matter time for those last runes!
As for me, weekly update is pretty minimal due to busy work week and then RFL this weekend. Phaedrus continues to plug away in CS, but I'll hold off on a proper update until he's 97.25.
Pestilence hit 94 with a major upgrade for the merc:
As mentioned in the last update, he cubed an eth Dusk shroud, and then the Lo dropped about 3/4 of the way through the level. The only other exciting item from the second half of the level was a Sparking GC of Sustenance. So pretty solid skiller luck for this level, with the fourth PnB and that one, which is an upgrade for my overall stash.
He's back in LK, picking up a Greyform and Gul #4 on a few minutes before bed on Thursday. CS runs with Phaedrus and LK runs with Pestilence will be limited for the next two weeks as I try to finish a 20-hour set for RFL round 2.
I guess it will be late May before things really pick back up due to RFL. But good luck to everyone else who's running in the meantime!
Small update as I'm now 2/3 of the way to 98. I've removed Lebron from the table as I'd like to focus solely on Sophie to 99 and I think I'll roll a new HC character when/if I finish. Not much to talk about in terms of drops as even runes have been almost completely non existent in the last 400-500 runs but I'm hoping to make up for that with something nice in the last ~1000 runs.
Gwynt is joining the race, a windy druid. Quick question for those of you who use Delirium on mercs... The doll situation, how does that affect the merc?
Not sure what You want to know about it, but its not happening often and not for long time...Windy with his Bear and Oak should not have any problems...Actually, i've played two Windy druids during last two Years, both reached lvl 93 (HC) and i strongly sugest using Barbarian with Lawbringer as a merc...Its very cheap solution, but Decrepify is triggered so often and has so nice range that i actually think is better then standart Desert merc...I've used Delirium/Treachery/Lawbringer merc and with this dude and huge life pool from Oak and CtA, and also 2.5k+ absorb from Cyclone armor, this char has been extremely safe to play...and enjoyable too...GL
He is fighting yes, but his dmg is much lower then in his usual form...at least according to my observations (no hard data behind my statement, though)...To me, his purpose is to be a tank, which he serves very well, no matter on shape or form he takes
Sorry, my bad...I did not thought about it, and because i have no longer access to my previous chars, i can't say which helmet my Barb mercs used...It was either Guillaumes or Andys i guess, but can't be sure...Played too many characters since, so informations are somehow mixed up in my head...My apology for that
Happy to report that HelpYourself is moving again and just hit 98.75.
While I could barely play her recently due to several reasons (last but not least the RFL), it may have been for the better: With both a renewed sense of motivation as well as "total efficiency mode" carried over from those Travincal runs for RFL, she is delivering her fastest runs so far. Her last 1 million XP (plus ~8k) took ~13m40s, despite two unbreakable LI rolls, with 3 XP shrines going through and no items picked up, but still that extrapolates to ~4.38 million XP per hour.
She's generally cut back on picking up stuff quite a bit, going only for good S&Us, GCs (still at only 2 skillers ), and a few potential runeword bases for my "twinked by untwinked" sept, with SCs, gems and jewels only being picked up when landing in front of her feet. Drops from the ~24M XP since last update:
Nice addition to eth grail:
HHG #3 (1os)
She has a knack for nice lightning facets:
Cool CtA base for a Paladin:
This would have been a contender for an Ice base for the FA/Strafer in the "twinked by untwinked" sept I'm currently planning, but of course total socket number fail.
Wow, almost there @ffs Good luck for the last stretch. It seems that it won’t take too long.
Phaedrus is a quarter of the way to 98, with no bad excitement for the last bit. Highlight came right before 97.25:
It was Cranium Basher, which is an overall grailer for me, leaving Earthshifter, Grandfather, Mang’s, and Tyrael’s. So grail -4
Runes were Mal #5, Vex, and Ist #4. The Vex led to a second HoTo (35@), which is in the stash for body recovery kit. The other two nice finds were:
The SoJ is stashed because Mara’s with a 10 FCR ring is still better than 2/10 caster ammy/SoJ due to resists and +all skills for Battle Orders. Other finds meriting screen shots were Tomb Reaver (2os) and the Gnasher.
Pestilence also got a little more than an hour LK, with Ohm #2 and Um #6. The Ohm actually came from a monster, I think (you almost can see the dead body). No charm upgrades sadly. He also burned through 70 pamethysts with nothing to show for it.
He’s dabbling in p5/p7 Nihl runs in the hopes of getting a Nihl skiller to start burning through the 500 pgems he has stashed. It’s surprisingly safe with only ~2200 life, with a quick bail when amped and vipers and lots of witches around. He just slugs it out with Nihl’s CE, winning the battle due to 125 FCR with the HoTo. He hasn’t lost the merc or golem yet and has a couple pixels on the XP bar. I’m hoping lightning strikes and he gets a high rune.
Nice progress @ffs @PhineasB
I have a few days off coming up so plan to get some time in. Actually curious to see how Blizzard/Nova compares to Lightning/CL for Nihlathak. I only have 1 respec left so if I want to save the Ancients for the end then I can’t experiment with both. Unless I get a Griffon’s drop or some serious luck with +Lightning GCs (I do have some P Gems saved but I spent a good bit trying some crafts) I’m leaning towards Blizzard/Nova.
@Yng - the major drawback to Blizz/Nova will be reduced drops from Nihl runs. Without Griffon's and lightning skillers, lightning build is probably less efficient, but you will generally only take down Nihl each run with the other option. Over ~12k runs, that's a lot of drops. I went with the weaker lightning option largely for that reason. Another route could be pure fire, with meteor taking out the mobs nicely.
Not particularly worried about drops (I’d like a Ber and a Zod to finish runes and I suppose grailers from there, but I’m still a ways off having started my extended stash use with this character) so much as XP/hour and finishing 99. Definitely thinking Lightning wins out in a perfect world with -LR being easier to manage with items than Fire and no delay on Lightning like Meteor has. Blizzard is hindered by Nihlathak naturally having 37% more CR than LR/FR and like you said missing out on potential drops from CIs.
@T72on1 You're right, I think I'm going to delete her now, there's just no point to this.
Nice progress as usual @PhineasB, interesting to hear about Nihl running with your Necro. Ric has rolled a really nice Pit map, so he will stay there at least for RFL round 3, but I was also planning to start comparing different targets for XP gain after that.
@Yng Yeah Griffon's makes a huge difference, both on its own and by enabling reasonable CM setups in the first place. Otherwise different Sorc builds are probably about equal for Nihl running. I'd think Blizzard is maybe slightly behind fire or lightning, but then again @Pb_pal ran Blova to great success (though IIRC she had Death's Fathom, Blizzard Ormus and NWV + skillers, so Blizzard damage was really high especially for an untwinked Blizzy).
I'd look into Lightning/CL for P1/P7 CS running also without Griffon's. Such runs were not far behind Nihlathak XP gain for me, and might be even better if experiencing that Nihl S&E delay issue. Didn't have an ideal CS/shrine map either. The difference between Hoto/Shako and Griffon/CM setups should be much smaller for CS than it is for Nihlathak. Hiatus was basically in that situation and ended up running Nihlathak though, don't know how CS compared to that for her and @PhineasB.
TLDR, I'd say you can't really go wrong with Lightning even without Griffon's. At the very least it's fine for both Nihl and P1/P7 Diablo. (Of course with e.g. 6 cold skillers and 0 lightning that's different, but generally speaking...)
Wow, great progress to @PhineasB and @ffs ! The pace you guys can do is astounding, I love it.
@Kitteh - Welcome (back) to the fold! Looks like you sorted it already but Reapers means no Delerium, the decrep is too valuable.
@Yng - As ffs said I ran Blova with success in both CS and Nihl. It's now my favourite sorc build, so you know where my advice will lean. If you haven't seen already, I'll leave a couple Nihl running videos (shrine route and non-shrine route), and you can decide if it looks like something you want to do. Gear is quite good as ffs said, so take that into consideration. Basically Blizz should be your main killer by far, with Nova as a (serviceable) backup for when he's CI. Here is a general list of what I looked for in terms of when it's worth it to complete or abort a run. Nova is by no means a fast killer, but it worked well enough for my liking as a backup.
I'm not sure what I will do with the helmet to be honest... Possibly CoA if it drops, or VG until then. My socket quests will go on Shako, Reaper's and Stormshield, so not Andariel's.
Unfortunately, this cannot be said about Kairas journey, still level 89, still hunting runes for Infinity in LK...Only one highlight during last week, this stone
Which means, that she found already 5x MAL, 4x IST, 4x VEX, 3x OHM, LO and 2 SURs...No GUL, only 2 PULs and one and only UM...strange distribution i guess, but it is what it is...Insane D2 world
Back to business i guess, hopefully D2 gods will smile upon me once again and give me BER rune which i really need...
Thanks @Pb_pal I’ll take a look after work. Was considering 105/86 with Glad’s Bane and heavy emphasis on PDR for my setup. E: A little worried about damage output with so much focus on PDR. Blizzard should be fine (~5.5-6k) but Nova may not be where I want it.
@Yng Don't know if that much integer damage reduction is necessary honestly, that's coming from someone who died a couple of times early on when starting to run Nihl. It's nice to have for sure, but gameplay tweaks can be so effective... For me the biggest turning point was starting to run with a finger already resting on Esc while teleporting to Nihlathak. Ever since adopting that from ~15% into the level, she very rarely dropped below 60-70% at all despite being rather fragile. S&E was always ready at the literal fingertip. The way I think about it is the ability to for example hit Esc after 0.1s instead of 0.3s essentially triples effective life. This singlehandedly took away most of the fear.
Then @T72on1, @PhineasB and @NanoMist all had great tips that were hugely helpful in terms of safety (e.g. holding alt while teleporting through Halls of Pain, or the mandatory side-step after landing at Nihl's platform to avoid next hit collide from clouds).
Edit: @Pb_pal's "abort list" also belongs here, it's very helpful to know what others have been afraid of.
@ffs with 13 PDR from Amulet (which is roughly mid roll, I have a 3/12 Cold) you’re at 58 PDR with a 20 roll on Glad’s Bane (which is what I have) and the listed setup. 58 is pretty damn effective vs Vipers but even then the more shitty situations can still run through ~2500 HP ridiculously fast. Being that I’m going to instantly abort most of those I’ll probably use CoH over Glad’s Bane but I’ll at least test both to get a feel for the difference in speed. Maybe I’m just over valuing safety but is the trade off of a little more speed worth the threat of dying at all? (Which is a matter of losing hours at the least, potentially 10+ hours if corpse recovery isn’t possible.)
Just something I’m going to need to test myself and get a feel for/tweak along the way.
Nice finds @RIP! And I forgot to say @Kitteh glad to see you joining again! Will you be going HC or SC this time?
@Yng For sure you will get a feeling for it and decide what feels right for you. HelpYourself had to learn a few things the hard way, I hope Sophie won't have to. Nihlathak is a special target, and everyone seems to approach him in a slightly different way. For me, after adopting the "finger on Esc" thing I felt confident that I can always hit S&E in time, resulting in more aggressive gearing and playing and thereby being more efficient in the end. Of course iDR is very useful, definitely wouldn't mind some more, just thinking sacrificing a significant amount of killing power for it might be overkill in light of other effective techniques to improve safety.
Decided to record another batch of runs with HelpYourself because why not. Of course, exactly zero XP shrines on kill in this session, despite having two shrines directly en route.. "below average" indeed. But hey, still at a decent ~4.2m/h.
The wind druid is pretty safe, I can't imagine many being safer and certainly not by much. If you decide to level him without refunding the skills it can quite boring until you start actually getting the skills you will use. Having said that I have died a couple of times, but I can be very sloppy. I like Jalal's over Shako, but the difference is slight. if the Shako had a set +life/mana I would probably use it instead.
Speaking of wind druids Natur got to level 96 after I took a sizable break from levelling. Now the ancients are dead and I plan to start running the throne of destruction.
Welcome @Bewitch - good luck on the journey; looking forward to hearing about itsreal's progress!
And I just have to say again how great those Nihl videos from @ffs are. The Mac seems to make a difference on S&E times, and the gear and technique is so impressive.
And @Ashenshugar - unless I'm missing something, Natur isn't in the table. I think level 96 is a big enough occasion to add him!
To add a little more to the discussion with @Yng - as you noted, it's all about testing, but that assumes you have multiple respecs available, which it sounds like you don't. So here are a couple thoughts from my experience with Hiatus (and Mercy for Nihl runs generally).
-As @ffs noted, p1/p7 Diablo runs are an option. I actually did a fair bit of that with Hiatus after the mishap and early on when I got annoyed with successive LI Nihl runs. In total, Hiatus probably got only ~20M from those, but it wasn't much slower than Nihl given her gear limitations for pure lightning. The real issue was rhythm; I just found it much easier to settle into the quick Nihl runs than the longer and slightly less predictable Diablo runs. This is why I focused exclusively on Nihl fairly quickly, despite the early dabbling and thought I might use Diablo runs as a change of pace.
-For Blova, Hiatus was pure Blizz with Death's Fathom, CoH, and Shako and 5 skilllers. Nihl dropped quick when not CI, but I couldn't deal with the number of unbreakable CIs and the longer times and risk involved with taking down a breakable CI. Like you, I had only one respec, so didn't give Blova a shot. But I think it would still work with slightly less top-end gear than @Pb_pal 's Eleanor had.
-On the iPDR question, thankfully this is something that you can test with a build, shedding safety gear as you get more comfortable and going back if things feel unsafe. But my view was that the faster Nihl drops, the safer the character will be. In general I didn't have iPDR (except for Hiatus with Nature's Peace), and I didn't notice the difference and am pretty sure it would not have mattered for the death each experienced. The longer you're standing around waiting for Nihl to drop, the more chances something can go wrong!
The things that led to each character's death from 98-99 were straight-up mistakes in nasty situations, and the iPDR wouldn't have made enough difference to change the outcome. I found there was plenty time to bail (with the finger-on-Esc technique @ffs notes) for regular vipers or even might/fanaticism vipers, assuming the character somehow finds herself in the green clouds (which is a mistake to begin with). It's only not enough time if the character is also amp'ed (which is generally a mistake to have not bailed already, so a compounded mistake). And I don't think 55 iPDR would change that significantly - the hit points just drop so fast in that scenario.
So my general philosophy was (1) don't teleport once the character hits the "landing spot," using the step-sideways technique (2) with the corollary of always running to pick up drops to avoid getting in habit of teleporting and mistakenly ending up in a green cloud, and (3) bail immediately (a) when amped and not secure in the landing spot with Vipers around, and (b) with Might and lots of witches around if merc's confuse doesn't trigger immediately; other scenarios were played by ear, but I wasn't shy about bailing.
I think, in total, that most runners will be faster over ~11.5k runs with more offensive fire power to take down Nihl quicker at the expense of bailing a little more frequently in situations where iPDR gear would allow a completed run.
But that's why we test, and ultimately it's about comfort level and what works best for each player. I look forward to seeing how it works out for Sophie!
Loving all the suggestions, thanks for the feedback. Honestly just ready to move on from CS, so I’m hoping to stay away from P1 Seals/P7 Diablo if Nihlathak works out.
@Bewitch Very cool, welcome! Looking forward to reading about your progress. Definitely quite the challenge, but surely doable! You've come to the right place, lots of great information and experience in here that will help if needed.
@PhineasB is spot on I think. Just as a last point that's obvious but still easy to forget, the most important thing is running with what you personally want to run. If you enjoy running Blizzard, that's the way to go irrespective of gear. If you're tired of it and want to try Lightning or Fire, that's better also without Griffon's Eye and lack of skillers, etc. -- The real challenge here is to not get bored and lose motivation over the duration of ~11k runs. That's the biggest obstacle to progress, much more so than limited gear options, or deaths even.
Nice drop to start things off @Bewitch! Took me quite a few dedicated Andy runs at a later stage to get the first + skill ring.
@Pb_pal Haha yeah she has sort of an unfair advantage. It's a love-hate relationship with Nihlathak generally. Painful early on, but not suffering that S&E delay most people seem to have, and the map is amazing with two shrines on her direct teleport path. Also while I was confident that a Griffon's/CM setup would be a strong option for Nihl, I had no idea she would deliver this kind of unheard of numbers.
HelpYourself has gained another 15m XP since the weekend, now past the 98.8 mark. So close!
She found an unexpected upgrade when she finally rolled a third skiller. Of course, also the third plain one. But happy nonetheless, no idea how many GCs she's rolled... She's using it of course, despite the cost of ~100 life after BO. Haven't decided yet, but she might drop War Travs (and MF altogether) in favour of Aldur's and a higher life setup for the last stretch.
Generally, this has been a very nice strech in terms of drops:
After a rather long drought regarding high runes, she started off with two Surs in quick succession. Those will help with the "twinked by untwinked" sept I'm planning.
Second Schaefer's Hammer. Now how about double Schaefer for the Frenzy Barb in my upcoming sept.
Another BKWB. She now has three of them as well as three SoJs.
Nice TC3
Hoping to finish her before RFL round 3 starts, which should be possible unless I do something stupid.
I don't know, with a level 96 untwinked character, a forumite can hardly be considered a child anymore (especially one who joined the forum more than a decade ago) or things early by any standard!
Edit: Great progress for @Yng and @ffs. But @ffs - what's up with the screenie of the spiked club?
Great progress everyone. I wasn't sure what to do after I finish that last hour on round 2 of the RFL: doing some Infernal Pit chest runs, continue my Sept Paladin, try my Venomancer at Travincal or continue my 99er. Seems like people are telling me I'd better do the latter ...
@PhineasB About the Spiked Club ... Maybe @ffs has the same deficiency in his brain as I have, always thinking it's a special item (for some reason I always think it's a TC3, even though I know it's not, but the regular unique Club is)? Otherwise my guess is that the cursor is pointing to the place where his third Zod dropped, right after he picked it up ...
But before we get to that, allow me to spew some info. Gnosis, for those of you who weren't aware from the previous IFT, has finished his tenure in LK! He has made his enigma in a beautiful DS base
Code:
Enigma
Dusk Shroud
JahIthBer
Defense: 1240
Durability: 18 of 20
Required Level: 65
Required Strength: 77
Fingerprint: 0x365af3d9
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+2 to All Skills
+45% Faster Run/Walk
+1 to Teleport
+775 Defense
+66 to Strength (Based on Character Level)
Increase Maximum Life 5%
Damage Reduced by 8%
+14 Life after each Kill
15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
89% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based on Character Level)
3 Sockets (3 used)
Socketed: Jah Rune
Socketed: Ith Rune
Socketed: Ber Rune
Perfect +defense on a high base defence of 465. Not that I care about it, but it's something. Additionally, he's sitting at 2 ele gcs. He can also now wear the great spirit monarch he rolled way back, and equipped the lawbringer he made. He can equip both SoJs without losing a casting frame for now while holding lawbringer. By the time he needs to drop a SoJ for fcr, I foresee him dropping the lawbringer in favor of HoTo or spirit to run different areas, so it's no big deal. Right now, he's sitting on the sidelines, but he has most recently been seen running /p8 Vizier/De Seis runs to fair effect.
Now I've more recently picked up Ayura again (whom I had left a little short of 93 before I stopped playing for a while). (Also I dinged). More pindle, more easy EXP. Found a handful of items in the meantime, the ones I'm most excited about were:
Code:
Soul Sunder
Winged Axe
Throw Damage: 10 - 205
One Hand Damage: 16 - 199
Quantity: 180
Required Level: 82
Required Strength: 96
Required Dexterity: 122
Fingerprint: 0x6521ecd6
Item Level: 92
Version: Expansion 1.10+
49% Enhanced Damage
+116 to Maximum Damage (Based on Character Level)
+1534 to Attack Rating (Based on Character Level)
Adds 6 - 30 Cold Damage Over 1 Secs (25 Frames)
7% Mana stolen per hit
4% Life stolen per hit
+19 to Life
and
Bramble Barb
Flying Knife
Throw Damage: 98 - 230
One Hand Damage: 98 - 230
Quantity: 177
Required Level: 48
Required Strength: 48
Required Dexterity: 141
Fingerprint: 0xa5d0f74a
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
327% Enhanced Damage
+67 to Attack Rating
4% Life stolen per hit
Poison Resist +13%
Replenishes quantity
The flying knife displays black, which looks pretty cool alongside my blood red mainhand knives, but it would look perhaps even cooler alongside a mainhand warshrike should I ever find a set. Currently using the winged axes because decent damage and ML. I get to use a high LL/AR blood craft instead of my dual leech blood craft ring because of it. But I like to hold on a couple pieces of jewelry and throwing pieces at any given time to maintain some level of flexibility.
Now all of that wasn't the mistake, clearly. The mistake was muling off some certain items that I reflected on during my drive home from work this morning:
Huge wall of text behind the spoiler, so counted yourself warned, but there is a TLDR at the end if you are so inclined:
Code:
Kraken Shell
Defense: 981
Durability: 25 of 25
Required Level: 61
Required Strength: 164
Fingerprint: 0xece137d8
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Ethereal
4 Sockets (0 used)
Crescent Moon
Ogre Axe
ShaelUmTir
Two Hand Damage: 125 - 648
Durability: 26 of 26
Required Level: 47
Required Strength: 185
Required Dexterity: 65
Fingerprint: 0x9cff2731
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
10% Chance to cast level 17 Chain Lightning on striking
7% Chance to cast level 13 Static Field on striking
+20% Increased Attack Speed
199% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
-35% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+9 Magic Absorb
+2 to Mana after each Kill
Level 18 Summon Spirit Wolf (30/30 Charges)
Ethereal
3 Sockets (3 used)
Socketed: Shael Rune
Socketed: Um Rune
Socketed: Tir Rune
Now you may ask me: "Hey Zen, why would that be a problem? Those items aren't that great." Well, I'm looking at end-game. And end-game for this tournament will typically be one of three things: Baal, Diablo, or Nihlathak. And when you think about which among those it makes sense to run, you're down to two options, because Baal runs involve waves. Those waves will eat up my stacks, and I don't like repairing more than once per run. Diablo is an option, but I don't believe that ranged physical attacks make particularly good boss killers in general (read: modern era Bowazons). A couple of things with diablo make are going to make him a headache to run for EXP. His health at /p7 is fairly high, and CB doesn't scale with player settings. On top of that, no leech, which is a real sucker. so I'm left with Nihlathak, who I'm getting practice runs on right now just to test the water. And my preliminary results indicate that with some gear optimization, he will the prime candidate for achieving that coveted 99. What gear optimization am I looking for then? Well, it's kinda clichéd, but Warshrike and Lacerator. Both for their unique effects. Piercing will let me clear a path more quickly, as will that high ctc amp. What I will be losing in raw damage I can make up for in finding more and better max damage charms along the way, but moreover having the higher output of damage against multiple enemies in a straight line (curse his meat shields).
Now that I've veered significantly off the path I set for myself, let's circle back around. Why are those items listed above some of the things I want most? Let's start with the Kraken Shell. I have the runes for CoH. The reasons I didn't make it yet are as follows: Not gonna unsocket the fort I made earlier, especially since it's in a plain DS, but also especially because it cost me a Lo to make... The other reason is I didn't know I wanted to make a CoH. Ebugging isn't the most important thing to me, because I don't value defense all too highly. But I still like to roll ebugged armors. Then when I didn't have a plan for it, I muled it off to open up that valuable stash space. But it wasn't until this morning that I realized I really want to make a CoH for this character. I suppose I can explain that, too. I will want CoH mostly for the damage, resistances, and LL (I'll need that last one). Those will make up for the loss of Reaper's. Why lose to the Reaper's? To make way for the Crescent Moon, of course! Well, actually because the biggest benefit it provides is decrep. I won't need decrep if my amp is constantly going off. So what the best weapon to assist me if I don't need him carrying Reaper's? I thought about the humble Crescent Moon, and its ctc Static Field. That AoE is probably the biggest benefit I can get from him, aside from carrying delirium as well for the ctc confuse on all things not being peppered by my throwing weapons.
It's not the end of the world, let's call it an opportunity for improvement: Replace the above-mentioned Ogre Axe with a superior base (threshers are one frame faster on standard attacks, no change in FPA on jab at this level of ias. Cryptic Axes are one frame slower on jab, two frames on standard attack. So I'll be looking for Ogre Axe or GP on the new one, but with some ED), and the other improvement could be in armor defense, I guess... It was a low roll on the base defense of the Kraken Shell to begin with. Not that it particularly matters to me :/ ...not too much on the bright side of this revelation, all said.
A few stipulations to what I've written above: I stashed the CM long ago, after having found the Reaper's in the first place, so it was unlikely that I would have found myself reaching this potential gear setup before that time. And until I really make up my mind on it, at least I have the stash space to play around with. After all, these aren't the first items I've regretted muling off of this guy. I'm serious, playing without an extended stash is no joke, lol. That, and this is all contingent on me finding Warshrike/Lacerator... *seething*
TL;DR: I want to equip the simpleton with CM/CoH/Deli while I wield Warshrike/Lacerator. Call them long term goals.
...or I could take my chances with a faith rogue merc and skip the static field.... or switch up his armor and go even more along the unbeaten path... Oh, options, options....
Oh goodness, if I go for maximum rate of static and keep the safety of deli, I could potentially ditch the simpleton's LL entirely and pick up something like treachery. So long as he doesn't die during the runs.
...Okay, new bright side: think of more options before deciding for sure what to go for, or maybe he test some things out on my old pat'd throwbarb before I put serious effort into a single gear set for Ayura
And a special farewell to Ayura having the oldest date in the active runners column!
(Should I order myself by EXP in my current level group, or should I put myself lowest because I'm most recent for my level group? My guess is order by EXP for future reference, but what I've done is good for now?)
Gogogo @ffs !!! Good job everyone else! I may as well join the train of people who have picked their char back up. I've been plucking away whenever I need to break up the RFL monotony.
--
The Pindling begins.
Klaus is running him on /p5 for a couple reasons. It keeps the runs safer, and Pindle has a natively high FR which makes him just painful to kill on /p8. The process is quite easy; cast minions, tele in, lay down a Fissure and start Firestorming Pindle. Rinse and repeat.
As everyone knows, Pindle runs aren't exactly exciting so there isn't a ton to report from this latest session. His minions have however been quite generous with elite polearms. Nothing ethereal yet, and mostly CV/GPA instead of the favourable Thresher family, but beggars can't be choosers (Unless you're @PhineasB of course ).
By the time he hit 84 Klaus had amassed 6 suitable polearms and 3 Monarchs for re-rolling. No luck on the polearms, but his 3rd roll on the Monarchs got him 4 sockets, awesome! He promptly made himself a Spirit. Brutal roll, but it doesn't matetr at all for him right now. He took this chance to head back to NM and switch out his merc for a Might merc since his current map is disposable, and got back to running.
Level 86 found him an Andy's Visage, which the new helper appreciated quite a bit.
Level 87 arrived, and with it another 3 polearms to roll. Klaus figured it was time to try it out since the Andy's he just found put the merc at enough strength to use a CV. On the last roll, low and behold, 4 sockets! Finally an Insight upgrade for the merc, which helps the run speed a bunch, as well as his general survivability.
That's where he sits now, still hoping for a Thresher/GThresher for a future Infinity, but feeling pretty good for now.
Other finds:
- P&B skiller (4str)
- 6-socket Berserker Axe (not useful, but still fun to see)
- Spectral Shard
- Trangs belt (currently using it)
- Ormus Robes (Lightning)
As for me, i finally have runes for so much needed Infinity...But i've decided to wait a little bit longer, as i dont want to waste every single rune VEX+ (or almost, VEX and GUL could be probably highest after this session)....I really want to keep only LO i've found for mercs Fortitude, also third reroll of CtA would be nice...All in all, its LK time once again
Finds:
Also Pindle and his minions has been generous
Only missing parts from Tals set are helmet and Orb...Funny
Well, i actually have two Tals ammys in Kairas stashes...First one dropped in LK NM i believe, second is from gamble Pretty easy to get this useless amulet (unless You are sorc, though )...Overall, i've found certainly 10+ Full Tals sets, even finished FO/FB around it long, long LONG time ago
Edit: The reason for not having Tals mask and Orb is pretty simple...Only areas i've visited more then once were NM LK, Hell LK, Pindleskin and Eldritch (Hell)...In other words, no Mephisto...I don't want to run this guy enymore, too many runs in the past (dozens of thousands i believe)
So, after some meph runs, highlights are Stormshield, arach and wizzy!
<-dropvideo of arach if interested
Funny to find storm and arach before shako and viper^^
So her current gear is: (just respecced her, went for 850 life rest dex which is 55% block atm)
Tarnhelm/lore, +1 20 str 18 allres amu, Wizzy, Stealth, Stormshield, Cgs 35/mages, nagel26/dwarf, SoJ, arach, Trecks 15 15
€ alibaba and shael eth shield on switch
I will go on with som mephisto, which is fine with 63 fc, but currently i dont have an alternative armor for stealth.
ah, merc (which i dont use for mephruns atm) eq is: Talmask (got andy in stash as well), shaft, aricos +4
Pretty funny, today i went for a few p3 AT runs, just to get a random 4 sox armor and Topases (never kept them cause no space^^)
So, the plan was just get 4 flawless, then search 4 shines to make em perfect. i found a random 4 sox wyrm pretty fast and then i found a Ist and a Ohm rune haha
dropvid:
It actually took me much longer to get the 4 gems then haha
Eq is the same i guess, just that new armor and maybe one or another charm. Mephisto gave me nothin today
@Bewitch nice to see the good drops continue for itsreal!
Minor pun -- it's getting super real for HelpYourself. After pushing quite hard since last weekend, she's hit a major milestone (her last, hopefully) and reached 3.5b XP:
Can't deny I'm getting a bit nervous.
She has dropped War Travelers along with some FR/MF SCs and swapped in Aldur's and more lifers, putting her at ~2460 life after BO. Doesn't make much of a difference really, but it calms my mind a little bit in this phase. But despite going down to just ~65 MF, drops have continued to be nice, including more HRs as well as two grailers for her:
First grailer (she also found the shield before, but is missing the caddy)
Second grailer, as well as overall eth grailer for me. This is what I'll beat @Grape as Zod God with.
Nice rune drops:
NWV #6 (rolled low at 8% CSD)
+4/-3 Cold facet (9th facet for her)
Other drops of note included 3rd Arreat's Face, 10th (!) Cerebus' Bite, Pul, Stormshield and Reaper's Toll (non-eth).
20m to go! Let's see how much time I'll find tomorrow. Until it's done, kindly include her well-being in your thoughts and prayers.
@ffs very nice progress lately! Take care. And that efficiency of yours is just out of this world. I haven't touch my own 99er lately, seeing those runs almost make me want to re-spec to lighting for the last stretch... but let's keep it this way.
Sorry about the delay guys, stupid social calls keeping me from the important things.
It's done!
Matriarch HelpYourself and Fazel the Holy Freeze Desert Mercenary - Level 99
(Well, the moron is still a lvl 98 rookie actually.)
For the sake of good order, drops from the final 20m:
(5th Stone Crusher)
Other drops included P&B skiller (plain), another Pul and Hellcast, which was actually another last minute grailer for her.
What a relief to get this done! 99er write-up will follow shortly, been keeping track of her progress update posts so maybe I'll be able to put it together today even, otherwise tomorrow. But now we're both tired and exhausted after that final Herculean effort of ~95m XP in less than 10 days, so I'm going to have a well-deserved beer in the sunset first.
Thanks so much for the motivation and support everyone, it has been a blast and an amazing ride!
Excellent job @ffs -- very impressive to complete, period, but especially with such style and speed over the the last level. Looking forward much to the 99er write up!
I have been holding off on correcting some typos and fixing a couple links in the compendium until we had at least one more 99er to add. This is a good occasion!
Thanks guys! Write-up is here, and the final moment:
@Kitteh well, Ric my untwinked Fishymancer has made good progress as well, with all the core gear pieces assembled. Not sure I'll see him through though to be honest. But then again, that's what I thought about HelpYourself not too long ago.
Terrifying to suddenly see me at the top of the runners list, especially after the very impressive 98 to 99 rush of @ffs . I guess I'll have to make short work of my sept, so I can finally get back to Neverland. With some RFL action in round 3 in between.
Man, expectations. It's been only a week since the last update, and there's RFL going on . . .
Phaedrus picked up 20M. I'm picking a stretch goal of 3.1B before RFL round 3, which should see him to almost to level 98 after one 20-hour set, allowing the second to get him to the ping before focusing on Pestilence for as much of the second set as I can complete.
I'll hold off on a proper update for Phaedrus until 97.5 or pre-RFL, whichever comes first. But let's just say that he's squandered some run luck so far!
Pestilence picked up two GCs from Nihl and then burned through his pgems, with nothing of use to him to show. He got a Trainers of Vita, which was promptly rerolled, and then a Burning of Sustenance that went into the general stash.
He then set out to do 1000 LK runs, with at least 500 before going back to Pit runs. He got some more runes from LK, with Ohm #3 and Mal #5. He also picked up a fun eth Eschuta’s from a corpse and a 4@ SC with gold find. With cubing, he has a Sur-equivalent, so 1/4 of the way to Infinity! The highlight was a Plain PnB skiller (his fifth overall!):
Let's keep up the progress, @everyone! One runner off the chart, but plenty XP to be had for all
Inspired by all the recent progress here and also @Kitteh 's hot Hydra sorc, I decided to enter this challenge with a Sorc namned "Liv" (which means Life in Swedish and is a pretty common girl name here)
The plan is to start her off as a traditional meteorb sorc, get the Pindle portal and then respec to pure Fire Sorc.
Reasons for fire sorc are i) I don't think anyone is doing one right now and I want to have some kind of novelty going on and ii) Meteor is my favorite spell in d2, I just love the sound of a deadly meteor approaching!
She will grind LK for Hoto, CtA + Infinity runes, then targets will be Andy, Maggot Lair, Meph and Durance level 3 (those councils huh), Pindle, and finally Nilathak for the final push. Possibly I also add Eldritch and Shenk in the mid 80's. I plan to save the ancients to level 98. Any more suggestions are very appreciated.
I will add myself to the tables once I start to play with her abit more, the picture below serves as an introduction.
Later on, I will make a thread dedicated to her and make some diary posts on my YT channel.
I think I wrote Nilathak, I think that is the best option, perhaps I can do Diablo for variation but I really need a Fortitude merc then I think for the seal bosses... I need a strong merc for the Ancients aswell, since I am planning on saving them for level 98.
Cool @drmalawi, welcome to the madness! Seeing your activity and involvement on the forums, I'm sure Liv will enjoy nice and consistent progress once you start going.
If you haven't already done so, the first stop should be an in-depth read of the 99er compendium by @PhineasB. It basically contains everything you need to know for this project (and then some). Probably you will need another target for early/mid 90s to 98 leveling though, Pindle can only take you so far... CS is probably out for pure Fire and Pits likely won't work either, so AT maybe? Or respec to pure Fire only for Nihl and run CS Blizzy until then? Anyway, lots of choices and even more time to make them. For now just start off and see where the drops take you! This is a long journey, unexpected things and direction changes are very likely to happen along the way.
As for Kaira, she finaly reached lvl 90...Runedrops were not optimal, but stilll some
+UM, PUL and 2x LEM
Unfortunatelly, still some key parts were missing...So i've decided to upgrade all runes in IO - UM range with hope, that these aditional runes can help me get Infinity AND Fortitude at the same time...Unfortunately, it was not enough...Right now, i'm sitting at 2x BER, OHM, VEX, GUL, IST and 2x MAL...Which means, that i cannot create both RWs at the same time...Damned...I think, time for LK again ...Fortunatelly, anything GUL+ can help me enough to finish phase 1 of this project
As for other drops, only one interesting
Well, this sounds familiar...Last time i've said, that only missing parts from Talrasha set are Mask and Orb...Now, thanks to this drop, only parts from Mavinas set that i already have are this bow, and green Diadem No gloves, no belt...and yeah, no green Kraken shell...this one will be next, very likely
@ffs yeah I have studied the 99er compendium quite much actually. One thing is for sure, I will not use Blizzard or Lightning at all :O Who knows, if if I get two Jah's I might do a dual dream passion sorc :O The default plan is to go full fire after I have obtained the Pindle portal.
@RIP thank you for the welcome! What runewords do you have in mind making now?
@drmalawi: Infinity and Fortitude for the merc...Anything GUL+ will be enough to do this...Then i want to leave LK for good, and start long phase 2 in Pit...then, probaly at lvl 96 or 97, last phase at WSK
Those set drops are really funny. As to runewords, what's wrong with just making Infinity now and take a however long break from LK, but hold off on Fortitude? Thing is, I strongly suspect you will go want to make Enigma at some point and this may involve more LK running.
Hmm yes, something I would have noticed had I used any sort of reading comprehension. I'll still follow closely, fire sorcs are awesome. Best of luck regardless!
Hmm yes, something I would have noticed had I used any sort of reading comprehension. I'll still follow closely, fire sorcs are awesome. Best of luck regardless!
Well, i've started to think about second character for this quest, just for resting from endless running with trapper, but can't decide which one...
Certainly not melee, as this is way too slow, and at the same time very dangerous, but can't decide which caster...I've played most of builds, so its very hard to choose, but Bone necromancer seems to be very interesting...Unfortunatelly, his dmg is low compared to other chars, and there is no way to improve it, even with lots of +skills ...anyone tried this build in p7/8 Hell?
Well, my Dualizt_Ann has updated her diary for a bit, she is level 48 for the moment, act 2 nightmare, no good drops on Andariel, the viper 35 as i mentioned earlier was a amazing find on Pindle normal
Well, i've started to think about second character for this quest, just for resting from endless running with trapper, but can't decide which one...
Certainly not melee, as this is way too slow, and at the same time very dangerous, but can't decide which caster...I've played most of builds, so its very hard to choose, but Bone necromancer seems to be very interesting...Unfortunatelly, his dmg is low compared to other chars, and there is no way to improve it, even with lots of +skills ...anyone tried this build in p7/8 Hell?
I've done a bit of running around with Bone necros before, and you're correct in assuming it will be slower than other chars. Still very feasible though, playstyle will be similar to a PNova Necro and likely a decent (though worse than Pnova) area killer. The downside is not having PNova to soften up all the monsters for quicker CE chains.
1. Tele to pack, cast Amp
2. Bone Spear the hell out of the pack
3. CE like hell once the first corpse falls.
I know with mine I had no problem in the Pits since monster life is low enough. I tried CS as well and it got a bit hairy, but I wasn't really high enough level to give it a good go in there. CS seems like it would be doable theoretically, however staying Pits until 98 is also an option.
Gear is pretty straightforward and definitely attainable untwinked, especially if you go for the 75FCR breakpoint.
I was thinking about a Bone Necro before I decided on the Fire Sorc "Liv"
What made me thinking about that was that very few monsters have magic resistances/immunity and thus makes more areas viable for exp farming until 98 which me personally needs for the sake of (some) sanity. What turned me off is the "requirement" of both Infinity and Enigma. Maggot Lair is build for bone spear, but I don't know if it is more efficient than pits.
Well technically Infinity isn't a *must*, since you're going to be using Amp that will boost the physical half of your CE damage quite a bit. Infinity is nice to help the fire damage portion of it along, but it isn't necessary (I don't think). It doesn't reduce magic resistance anyways, so I'd say it falls into the "don't grind for it if you don't want to, but make one if/when you find the runes" category. That would free you up to use Insight on the merc in the meantime and run something else in the IG if you so desire.
A bonemancer is a great hardcore option, running Diablo (maybe Nihlithak?). Bone prison makes basically everything safe. One of the safest untwinked guardians in my opinion.
I sometimes think about starting a second character as well. Then I start to doubt to do it in hc or sc. But then I wonder if it doesn't make more sense to do it twinked instead, which would save me a lot of LK runs.
And then I start thinking about all the other stuff I want to do in D2 vs the playing time I have to do so ...
@Pb_pal: Thanks alot for the info, its really appretiated...I've figured some details myself (speaking about gear mostly), as i've played all kind of usual necromancers before (Summon, Poison and even Bone), but its always huge advantage to have better info from someone, who really tried exactly same route i want to try...
Thanks alot again...Well, when feeling tired from Trapper, i think i can give this second project a chance
I've been following this thread for a while now and I have to say, I'm sorely tempted to add my zon... She's one of the few untwinked projects that I've genuinely enjoyed. I will probably keep it pretty casual in terms of progress, but she's already made some. Is it cool to add a character that I've been playing for a while already? She's level 90 at the moment and I wasn't sure if it was against the spirit of the project to use a character that wasn't initially intended for this purpose. The push for 99 seems pretty daunting, but I'd certainly give it a go!
Congrats to ffs - it's inspired me to throw my hat in the ring. Long_Term is a sassy Sorc who hopes to one day ding that final level. Rummaging around in Act 1 Normal atm.
Yep I've gone SC for this coz I tried to bring a HC char in 2x but deeds 2x as well. Ain't going there again. Wish me luck. Man this table can give one headaches .....
@CrustyRusty As long as the character is untwinked, it's good to have a go here. As @DaveW said, our very first finisher of this journey, zticazzy's barb, only joined very late on his trip to 99.
@DaveW Cool !!! Good luck.
PhineasB said:
Are you also thinking about finishing your first character?
(Just sayin')
I know, I know. Yes I think about it ... a lot. Too much stuff coming in between though, with the RFL and my sept. My current plan is to finish my sept before round 3 of the RFL, and then continue Neverland after I finish that round. Problem is that I am someone who tends to get so much into a new plan quite easily, like getting a second entry in this tournament or doing a twinked 99er, participate in another tournament or start my own (TC3 one), make new builds (I'd rather start that Doom/Phoenix FuryWolf today then tomorrow ), ... In that respect, this place isn't a good place for me in the first place (hah), you guys and girls being very inspirational and such.
Problem is that, the longer I'm away from a character, the harder I find it to get back into it, and the easier it is to start something new.
So yeah, hopefully soon. It's definitely the plan. Let's see if I can stick to it. I'd say: get Phaedrus up to lvl 98 and beyond and give me some competition, that will be a further incentive for me to get Neverland at full speed again. @ffs pretended to compete with me for a while too, but given his Road Runner blastspeed for that last level, it never really was .
Cool @CrustyRusty please do join, and welcome again @DaveW! Glad HelpYourself has made a couple of fans. And definitely looking forward to @T72on1 getting back to it! No pressure.
Good points about Necro recently here, wholly agree with @Pb_pal. Bone should be viable, it's a Necro after all, with access to CE.
In that regard: After finishing the Sorc, I've been thinking about how to continue with my Necro as well to be honest. Not sure how far I'll push him, but I will at least play him for RFL round 3 (most likely running Pits). I was briefly considering running Travincal for RFL with him, and given he has farmed Beast and Infinity, I was wondering: Why not respec to Novamancer and still use the exact same gear? I briefly mentioned such a Beast Novamancer approach in the RFL thread as @Pb_pal was running with PN Necro.
I found out @Gripphon had tested that for Travincal, but seemed to have dismissed it quickly because it was 0.3 seconds slower than the DWeb setup. Gripphon doesn't do "0.3s slower". Kidding aside, I found it quite intriguing how close Beast was to the DWeb setup. Since summons are little more to me than meat shields anyway, I'm inclined to mess around with PNova or a hybrid approach and see how it works out. I suspect it may actually turn out to be stronger for area running.
But I will need to check XP gain generally, if Baal turns out to be the only reasonable route I guess I should stick to (pure) Fishymancer. Well, Ric has already killed Baal in order to be able to run cows, so I can freely respec around and test things.
I'd say: get Phaedrus up to lvl 98 and beyond and give me some competition, that will be a further incentive for me to get Neverland at full speed again.
That's a dangerous game to play T. What's that saying again? Don't poke the bear.
@ffs - Venomancer is a great candidate to get to 99, and that Beast variant should be no different. Pitnecs are super efficient levelers (I'll be using mine in the 3rd round of the RFL), and if you have the right gear and gusto they can run the CS too. Nihl should be possible too, though I think the strategy would just be a CE competition between the two.
@Pb_pal Nice, as I've said I'll also run Pits with him for RFL round 3 (with his current Fishymancer build). I'm expecting @PhineasB to do the same, so hopefully we'll have quite the Necro gang assembled!
Ric is currently at 93.5 and at the moment Pits is good XP, just wondering how to proceed going forward. I think after RFL ends I'll start by comparing XP gain for Pits, Baal and CS, each with three different approaches: (1) Current build, i.e. full Summoner, (2) Novamancer using Beast and (3) Novamancer using White or Hoto. For option (2) I'm also curious how a hybrid variant compares to fully synergized Nova...
Again, I'll take it easy him with though. But when playing him going forward, I'd prefer not to lose out on too much XP.
I'm actually going to do a full 20-hour with Phaedrus in RFL round 3, which should leave him a couple hours short of lvl 98. I hope to finish off the level with the start of a second set, and then I may transition to Pestilence if I have time left before the round ends.
But Phaedrus should be starting into level 98-99 by the end of May, so Neverland may have some more company
Damn, just died to random dolls while teleporting unconcentradet to meph. i actually had more then enough time to leave, but somehow i didnt^^
found another arach and a reapers today before she died.
not sure when i start new one
GL to the new runners and sorry to hear about your RIP @Bewitch. I’m considering having a go at a HC 99er as well when/if I finish Sophie, but I’m very undecided on which class to attempt it with.
Well, fhr was on 30, 20 from Sands, 10 from 2 smallcharms.
Y, i had time, dunno. Was on "alt" while teleporting, then i pressed ESC, but it didnt work cause i was still on alt^^
@Bewitch Oh no!! Sorry to hear about the deeds, RIP itsreal. She'll live on in our hearts.
@everyone Good to hear about the zon! I'll see if I can figure out how to edit tables and add myself in, I don't want to mess up the formatting. Seems like witchcraft at the moment, but I'm sure something will turn up with a search or two.
She just found her fourth occy and third arreat's today. Such weird luck with this character.
Sorry for the deeds @Bewitch - hope you have another entry.
@CrustyRusty - Check out the opening post in the thread It has a concise explanation of good approach to editing tables. That's the method I use. Welcome to this challenge, and glad to see more entries continue!
Just added my amazon Space_Oddity. Also, just finished my last pit run for the evening and found the fourth Cerebus' Bite on this character. Now if only I could find some amazon related stuff...
Alright, i actually made a new char, this time pretty regular softcore sorc with ladder runewords + i wanna use that "extended stash"
So, im new to that, on my old sorc (which died yesterday), i just played without ladder runewords and no muling at all so i didnt need that ladderruneword txt and also not that gomule thing.
Before i joined this forum i did play with that "mod", with the shared stash where i can go into with all singleplayer chars and ladderrunewords where also alrdy inculded there so i didnt need that things as well.
So now i made a new d2 install, mainly to not get confused in anything with the gomule stuff and prolly do accidently mix something up from my hc chars etc.
So, go mule thing seems to work fine i guess, at least i can open it and see my character, so i guess its correct. i just watched that guide on youtube from "Alara Shade", same for the ladderrunewordthing, but im not 100% sure if im correct there.
What i did, i created the folders "data/global/excel" and put the runes.txt file in there and on the desktopicon i added -direct -txt after the -w.
So can mby just some1 tell me if thats correct? otherwise ill see it when i make the first spirit/insight
Try to make edge instead. If you PM me, I can send you a package of 3sox bows and edge runes. It seems that you have done it correctly. You can do separate projects in GoMule so you don't accicently xfer SC and HC items.
After finishing up a ~13 hour shift Thursday night and knowing I was off all today I decided to really make an effort for that final push to 98. I played about 5 hours in a single session last night (good bit of streaming, can still find me at
) and a few separate ~1 hour sessions today to finish off the final 5%. I had started to stop for Flawless in an attempt to stockpile for charm rolling which dropped me down to about ~5m/hour and at the very end (last ~10%) I really started being picky about what drops I was stopping for to push the issue and we moved closer to ~5.6m/hour. All in all I think I did around 5-6k Vizier/Infector runs and the journey to 98 was a blast but I'm definitely ready to move on to something new.
Drops continuing to be decent, especially from runes with Pul, Pul, Ohm, and Lo. We also had first (and second) time drops with our first Aldur's Boots (and in similar fashion to Gheeds, a second soon after) and The Grandfather.
I've considered Blizzard/Nova heavily during my 97-98 running and I think I've firmly decided to go Lightning for farming Nihlathak even though I wasn't able to get lucky with Griffon's. I had two ethereal elite polearm bases lying around so now that I finally had a break from running I decided to roll them both and both rolled 4 sockets (Cryptic Axe and Thresher). I already had the one Thresher from LK rack rolling but this worked in my favor as I didn't want to Hel the nice Insight roll I had earlier. From here I plan to cube up all my gems and roll some GCs, hoping to bolster my nearly non existent (1) inventory of Lightning GCs. Then I'll use my last respec and try my hand at rolling a good Nihlathak map to start the grind.
Almost forgot this, the start of the transition in that shiny new Thresher:
Great @Yng!! Of course I fully support the Lightning route. Hope you'll have better luck rolling skillers than I had. Started out running Nihl with two and got a third one only at 98.8. Best of luck for the last level!
@ffs I think I’ll have a little under 300 pgems after cubing and I’m probably just going to go to NM Act 3 and find the base charms there. If I can get 1-2 skillers from that to start I’d be stoked. Planned on rolling shrines en route for Nihlathak so I can stash a few extra base charms and carry a Flawless in cube for the hundreds of Gem shrines I’ll see.
I rolled Baal/Nihl GCs for the last level, while they can roll higher life they're chances of rolling a skiller are lower ofc. I thought about going with lower level GCs also, but figured it wouldn't make much of a difference for the relatively small amount of cubing during 98-99. But indeed that's probably a good idea to go with NM GCs when burning through a huge pile of PGs.
Shrines is kind of a double-edged sword. My Nihl map was awesome that way with 2 shrines on the direct teleport path, including next to Halls of Vaught entrance. I rolled it relatively quickly so no idea how common such a map is. I only hit the HoP shrine if it was XP, because stopping there to check for Gem shrines (which don't have a symbol) would have meant longer run times. So I'd just fly by most of the time. But since the HoV shrine was directly next to the entrance and on the way to Nihl's platform, I could always check it without losing any time. Such a shrine placement in HoV is what I'd be looking for when planning to roll GCs.
Kinda difficult to explain. You can check the vids I posted in the 99er write-up, I think those explain shrine handling much better.
Very nice @Yng - congrats on making that last push! It sounds like Sophie will be right where Hiatus was in terms of fire power on lightning. Once you get comfortable with your map, the 2.5M XP/hr benchmark is very attainable, even with only 1-2 skillers
My Fire Sorc gets close to 3M xp/hour with only 2 skillers if my play isn't sloppy. Unfortunately that doesn't happen often enough, but the point is that 2.5M should easily be attainable with Light Sorc.
If I can’t manage 3.5+ I’m going to be disappointed. Idk too much about more than that, we’ll see what loading screen time looks like in Act 5 after I get comfortable.
Huh, pretty nice
After i made some nm baals and still didnt have a 4 sox sword i thought i could do some nm cows to find one, after 3 rounds
i found a occu instead haha
Then i moved on through hell and Duriel dropped me a MARAS 30!!
That's a pretty great Duriel drop @Bewitch - congrats!
As for me, Phaedrus hit the stretch goal before the start of RFL Round 3, just reaching 3.1B XP or a little past 97.5:
At his current rate, one 20-hour set will see him to 3.205B or so, leaving just under 5 hours to finish the level (all this, of course, assumes no deaths ).
Drops from the last 50M were very disappointing, but the first 20M for this update more than made up for it. Actually, his first 20M didn’t see anything good except runes: Ist #5, Ohm #4, Sur #2, Mal #6, and Lo #2. That wouldn’t be a terrible RFL score actually, and from just over 4 hrs. Only other item of note was unique Shadowplate.
The second Sur allowed Phaedrus to cube a Ber, which went into his Shako and has since been personalized. That also was when we rerolled maps, looking for more stable boss pack density and landed on the current map.
There are always 2 boss packs immediately on entering the lava-path part of RoF right after the WP (sometimes three) and then one stable boss pack just northwest of the pentagram (sometimes up to three) and another (sometimes multiple if there weren't extras to the northwest) to the northeast of the pentagram toward the de Seis seal. Finally, there are three stable shrines (one by WP, one at entrance, one on Vizier’s arm).
Phaedrus is doing p8/p7 runs, with XP anywhere from 180k-250k per run. Even with targeting groups of finger mages, he is netting a little more than 5M/hr. His MF is at 204, still reasonable. So I think he will keep this map for the last half of the level.
But the nice XP progress has been offset by a dry spell of drops: only Mal #7 on the rune front, a 5/3 lightning facet, Azurewrath (his first), and a plain 20 vita SC (to replace a plain 19 one).
He will not risk a great rune drop by progressing any further before Friday. I have a busy work week anyhow, so I may just try to get a few LK runs in with Pestilence before RFL Round 3 starts.
Edit: We decided to burn the Ohm and are very happy with the decision (upgrade over +4 BO/+5 BC one):
@PhineasB I am assuming that number of 180-250K XP per run is for porting from RoF waypoint to the pentagram and then clearing the three seals at P7 and changing to P8 for Diablo? If I port to the pentagram and kill all the boss packs that spawn(along with alot of the other monsters), clear the three seals, and kill Diablo on P7 for the whole run, I get somewhere between 250-350K XP per run. Now, I know I am not as fast as you, so my hourly XP rate varies between decent and poop. One of the things I am working on is not picking up as much stuff, and in general being more efficient, which for me is always a work in progress.
As for an update, I am still plugging along at 96. Several nights ago, I made a very stupid mistake. I am fairly comfortable running CS, and very rarely get in trouble, but this time I ported a little to the left of the pentagram, right into a cursed pack of OK's and DK's and got stun locked or something, and died. At this point I was pretty pissed, since that was my first death in level 97, so with little thought, and still being very pissed, I decided it would be a good idea to try for the corpse. I made it through the RoF, but as soon as I got into the CS, death. So..... I sit there in my chair cussing everything around me, and decided the loss was just too great to not at least give it one more try to get both corpses back. Over probably the next half hour, I methodically went through the RoF and CS with a few vendor items on to at least give me a chance, and got both corpses back. Bonehead move. Yes. I know I should have a corpse recovery set in my stash. I put myself in the corner with a dunce cap on for good measure.
Over the last few days I have gained back most of what I lost, so its all good. Right before that unfortunate series of events, I did find something that will be useful, should I decide to go lightning for Nihl, on a Pit run(I like to throw one in every now and then to break things up a little).
About a middle of the road roll stat wise, and way better than the only other one I've ever found many moons ago that rolled the minimum on both. I just need a lighting facet now, which has alluded me thus far. I have the Runes for Infinity so we will see if I can pry those stones out of their stash.
@PhineasB really good xp for untwinked Hdin, your map must be quite nice. I’d love to see some runs if you record at all? On that note, is anyone using OBS to record? My computer doesn’t have software to open the type of file it saves recordings as, was wondering if anyone had experienced this?
I had today off as well so I decided to put my foot in the level 98 door last night.
Started by going to NM and rolling a quick 2 campfire LK map. I ran a portion of Flayer Jungle and LK for maybe 30 minutes and had all 8 GCs ilvl 50-52 range that I desired, two of which ID'd as skillers. Unfortunately, I had significantly less flawless than I thought so I ended up with ~200 P Gems after cubing. I wasn't able to roll a single Lightning GC and I ended with 5/8 as skillers (none worth mentioning). I still have them stashed for future rolling but after entry level running I'm not sure that I want to bother with stopping for Gem shrines and the time advocated towards managing it all. I have D2 EXP Meter that I mentioned earlier, and there's something about seeing your XP/hour rise and fall that makes you want to completely focus on improving the number. It shows your XP/hour calculated over the last 10 minutes and updates ever time you Save and Exit, among other things.
But before I could actually start running I had to roll an acceptable map. I settled fairly quickly (definitely will consider rerolling) on a nice combo map to give me options if necessary. The Nihlathak map has 2 shrines directly en route but the WP to Halls of Vaught distance is a bit long. It makes up for that by having a CS map with 4 shrines in the vicinity (1 slightly SW from WP, 1 at WP, 1 at entrance, 1 towards Infector seal). I haven't verified how stable the CS shrines are yet but its promising at the least.
Nihlathak Map:
CS Map:
I started with a HotO/CoH setup with 24k Lightning, 3k HP/900 mana, and max resistances across the board. I was quite surprised by the stats of this setup but it didn't take long to realize that breakable LI Nihlathak was going to be a serious deterrent to pushing the XP/hour, to the point where I would probably consider skipping it immediately if I ever go back to HotO. The obvious answer was to make a Crescent Moon. As @ffs pointed out with before, it's extremely effective for that specific problem and breakable LI rolls too often. Without Griffon's I faced an obvious dilemma of meeting the 117 FCR breakpoint so I searched through my Gomule stashes for an answer. I stumbled upon a craft from a batch of caster amulets around the time I was running LK IIRC (explains my overestimating the number of Flawless I had) that essentially solved most of my issues. It could be better but it'll work for now and I'm not sure I want to farm Flawless for the sake of a small chance of rolling a better Amulet. Pray to RNG gods for Griffon's. I was a little lacking on FR and LR so I swapped some SCs and burned a socket quest on my Shako for Um.
The new setup has worked quite well and I'm satisfied with it, for now. I haven't tried any P1 Seals/P7 Diablo yet as I just checked the map prior to this post but I have finished the first 2%. Drops have been welcoming with Tal Rasha's Armor #3 or 4?, Thunderstroke, 15% Wisp, IK Armor, and Dracul's all dropped within those runs.. Nothing higher than Fal in regards to runes.
Don't plan to post again until around 10% so may be a while as we're getting more busy at work. I was able to meet my initial goal for XP/hour and I hope to improve on that on the way to 99.
XP/hour:
For the entire 2% I probably averaged 3m/hour but it increased fairly quickly as I tinkered with items and found the best place to land etc. At the very end I was averaging about 3.6m/hour with 20-25s runs (30-35 for breakable LI) and unfortunately a 2-3 second delay on loading screen. I think there's still much room for improvement.
On that note, is anyone using OBS to record? My computer doesn’t have software to open the type of file it saves recordings as, was wondering if anyone had experienced this?
@PhineasB so impressed with that consistent good progress with all your characters. I already look forward to what you will come up with for the last level with him. Are you planning to stay in CS or go to Nihl?
drmalawi said:
@darkstarhub I thought Diablo xp was capped at p7?
As for me, not touched Kaira for almost two weeks, which is bad i guess, but sometimes RL and D2 wolrd are not co-existing nicely...
Just started second (refreshing character), Bonemancer named Espada, same rules like with Kaira, which means HC, not using ESC for escaping death, no respec, etc, standart HC rules i guess, and his pretty much first good drop has been this
Promissing MF career is waiting for him
GL to all, hopefully i will move much further with both characters till next update
@Yng I'm so jealous of that xp/hour rate. I did some more running myself, and would be at about 3M xp/hour, if it weren't for not efficient enough running most of the time. So while the difference between us is still huge (I'm at some 43% towards 99), I still wouldn't be surprised if you'd catch up on me. Which would be totally fine with me, to be clear .
@T72on1 Come on, get it together and finish her!! Why not run RFL round 3 with her? I think @Grape is doing exactly the same thing so you guys can have a Fire Sorc Nihl running side-competition.
Indeed those are nice numbers @Yng, in particular considering no Griffon's. Keep it up! (Also this really shows how important loading times are, considering the correlation between the numbers of the three Lightning Sorcs here so far and their respective S&E loading times.) But make no mistake, if you get close to 4m I'll get HelpYourself out of the garage and make sure of a healthy striking distance.
@Yng - Congrats on 98! Gogogogogogogogogo. Also, run RFL Round 3 with her, Nihl was fantastic to Nanomist for runes (fair warning, he was a pile of hot garbage for me).
@T72on1 Still quite a long way away from you and with work picking up it could be a while before I’m close. I also wanted to try my hand at some speedrunning in the near future so if I get carried away with that it could take away from my 99er progress. In the end, @PhineasB could pass us both with his dedication!
@Pb_pal I considered participating when the first event came around but I didn’t want to run targets that would take away from my XP progress (IIRC I was already well over 97.5 at that point) but now that it’s pick your own area I signed up for the last one.
@ffs still much to tinker with and try to improve it!
Also, curious how other people feel about untwinked speedruns? We could have a thread similar to this one with a table that tracks everyone’s personal bests.
Me running Nihl for round 3 of the RFL? Nah. So far, at level 98.43, I have gotten Jah and Vex from him when it comes to HRs, and not many Pul - Gul either. Despite the fact that I'm running a build with quite good area damage, and almost never any enemies immune to it. If I have the kind of runes drop that I have gotten on average from him over 20 hours, I'd be happy to find 2 qualifiers. Not worth it to be honest.
@T72on1 that means runes will rain from the skies for the next 20h of Nihl running! He’s been generous for me also in that regard.
Except for Trav I ran/will run the whole RFL with untwinked 99ers and personally wouldn’t think twice about it! But given your awesome start and chances of overall victory, I would forgive you... but only because of that.
Also, curious how other people feel about untwinked speedruns? We could have a thread similar to this one with a table that tracks everyone’s personal bests.
Today after some mephisto runs i got Arach and Shako!
Dropvid:
Dropvid:
That were arctually the items i need from mephisto, armor should be coh somewhen and shield spirit etc.
So i decided to make at runs for some bases like monarch, elite insight polearm etc
i ran some hours but actually didnt find anything beside a Windforce, which is great, but useless for me
and a 5 sox cs.
Wow, love the activity in this thread! Very cool to see.
But I will have to quote because I'm responding to something from this am that is now on the prior page
Yng said:
At the very end I was averaging about 3.6m/hour with 20-25s runs (30-35 for breakable LI) and unfortunately a 2-3 second delay on loading screen. I think there's still much room for improvement.
Wow, I guess I should have figured out a way to make Crescent Moon work with Hiatus even though she lacked Griffon's. I just couldn't get comfortable with it due to the sacrifices elsewhere. But that is ~1M/hr faster than she averaged with HoTo. Will shorten the number of hours needed for that final level quite a bit if that average holds (or especially improves). Very nice, indeed!
I don't record regularly (have only done it for ping videos on 99ers, I think, and a handful of times to watch and figure out possible improvements to approach) and haven't done it in a few months. But I will try to remember how and post a couple runs once Phaedrus gets back to CS this weekend.
Congrats to @Bewitch and @RIP on the early drops for the new characters. I hope the luck keeps up!
@PhineasB IIRC I was at ~3m/hour with HotO. Sometimes it’s really streaky with no LI spawns or consecutive LI spawns so it’s hard to make a reasonable judgement on the real number which would balance out over a long span, but I’d put it at 3m/hour as my guess going by the highs and lows I was seeing on EXP meter. Worth noting this was early on before I had started to dial in the smaller details (Ex Figuring out where I needed to land on the last Teleport to barely clip with Static Field, how many teleports exactly to see first shrine at/near max range (a pack spawns right by it quite often), second shrine, how many teleports from second shrine to landing spot etc) so it could’ve definitely been improved. All those little things are what make running so fun to me personally. God knows you need something meticulous to keep you occupied for this kind of running. I also think it might even be worth it to skip breakable LI with HotO setup.
As for recording, download OBS, it’s very user friendly. As @Nanomist pointed out to me earlier, there’s an option to change the output format if that’s a problem for you. (Thanks for that BTW, can’t believe I didn’t notice that!)
@Yng Agreed, trying to find minor tweaks keeps those runs interesting especially for the first ~20% or so until you've settled for a specific routine. I think it's the right approach to find out what is the fastest way for you to run first, and go from there to see what can be improved further, i.e. when it's worth to spend a split-second here or there. For example, I eventually decided to go with a routine including checking for XP shrines in HoP (because it was worth it mathematically on her map) and in particular casting BC and Frozen Armor. That's because I found things don't always go according to plan, and in this case I found that extra Static range from BC and defense from FA more beneficial in the long run.
@PhineasB Out of curiousity regarding loading times I watched Hiatus again, and I must say that's a brutal S&E delay... Given you knew what you were doing, pretty sure she also could have been in the 3m+ range without that.
@Bewitch man those drops are so very convenient when starting out, grats!
I've also been running Mephisto with Ric, and decided I will continue to do so until RFL round 3 starts, at which point he will run Pits at least until 94 and then possibly switch to Baal. Hopefully Meph will be kind enough to drop some missing uniques (looking for Andy's Visage, +1 rings and in particular Arachnid Mesh). I haven't updated him in a long time, will do so before he transitions back to Pits, with hopefully some of those drops to be reported.
Personally, I find speed running to be among the most boring things in Diablo, but based on the recent tournament I think that you should get a decent amount of interest for that
After 3 test runs yesterday and today I can confirm: I just should stop doing Nihlathak casually and really focus instead. That way I got xp/hour of 3M, 3.1M and close to 3.2M, instead of just a bit over 2.5M. @Yng says this about run times:
At the very end I was averaging about 3.6m/hour with 20-25s runs (30-35 for breakable LI) and unfortunately a 2-3 second delay on loading screen
I'm at 29.5s average runs according to run counter, but it has been steadily improving now that my runs are faster. 20-25s runs and 30-35 for breakable Nihl sound like what I'm doing too, but it depends on monster spawns around Nihl. With lots of vipers or other dangerous monsters around, a few seconds sometimes need to be added. For the rest I guess the difference is shrines (I only have one shrine, right at the entrance of Nihl's level, and don't feel like rerolling maps) and maybe S/E time. I think my loading times are longer than 2-3s, but I should measure it to be sure.
Abandonned runs are quite rare, as I only quit with unbreakable Nihl (FE and Magic res mod at the same time), LE FE (although I still clear that one if monster spawn around him is easy), and only very occasionally when things are just too dangerous.
All in all I'm still very happy with my choice for a full fire Sorc, and I can recommend it to anyone, especially to those not having Griffon's like I do.
Nice T, happy to see you're doing some running with her. Gogo!
T72on1 said:
All in all I'm still very happy with my choice for a full fire Sorc, and I can recommend it to anyone, especially to those not having Griffon's like I do.
Agreed. Also there's the strong option of Phoenix vs. FI rolls as described some time ago (and tested with a twinked Fire Sorc to work nicely). Despite the HRs it can be farmed untwinked also, as opposed to Griffon's which requires you to get quite lucky.
I have quick question for You guys...I'm not very skilled with item generation, never cared about it really, but is it posible to get some kind of Venomous (type some Voodoo head) of Bone spear?In other words, +6 to Bone Spear on Necromancer Voodooo head?...I know, the chances will be really low, but is it possible to use +3 Perfect gem + magic item formula to create this?My question leads to affix (Bone spear), as Venomous spawns on Voodoo heads, according on information Arreat summit gaved me
As for recording, download OBS, it’s very user friendly. As @Pb_pal pointed out to me earlier, there’s an option to change the output format if that’s a problem for you. (Thanks for that BTW, can’t believe I didn’t notice that!)
That was NanoMist, I am unfortunately no recording genius
RIP said:
I have quick question for You guys...I'm not very skilled with item generation, never cared about it really, but is it posible to get some kind of Venomous (type some Voodoo head) of Bone spear?In other words, +6 to Bone Spear on Necromancer Voodooo head?...I know, the chances will be really low, but is it possible to use +3 Perfect gem + magic item formula to create this?My question leads to affix (Bone spear), as Venomous spawns on Voodoo heads, according on information Arreat summit gaved me
Small note, Bone Spear wouldn't appear as an actual affix, but as a staffmod.
1. It is possible to find those heads, yes.
2. It is also possible to re-roll a head with them, as long as it fits the proper criteria. See this post quoted below for more info on that:
Orphan said:
Note that bonespear is a Tier 4 staffmod, so you'll want to find items that have an ilvl between 25 and 36, to increase the chances. In this event, the odds of getting a Tier 4 skill is 50%. If the ilvl is greater than 36, or between 19 and 24, then the odds of getting into that Tier is 20%. If the ilvl is less than 19, then you can't get bonespear on that item.
That said, the "Venomous" (+3 to poison and bone skills) prefix has an alvl of 60, while the "Necromancer's" (+2 to necro skills) prefix requires an alvl of 50. This means that you need to make sure that the necro head has a high enough ilvl to be able to get these as well.
There's quite a few necro heads, so I'm not really going to go through all of them to list all the required ilvls :wink3: Still, in the end your going to have to kill monsters in an area who's ilvl is greater than 36 anyway.
- ilvl can be viewed in GoMule
- qlvl can be found here.
With all that you can figure out where you need to go to find an appropriate head. Assuming you search in an a85 area (ilvl 85 items minimum), as long as your heads qlvl≥49 you will get an alvl≥60 (enough for Venomous). Using the link above for qlvls, that leaves you with these as possible candidates:
Unfortunately, you are stuck with a 20% chance of re-rolling the correct Tier of staffmod, but hey, it's better than nothing! If you want to search somewhere other than an A85 area, just plug the numbers into the formula and see if it's possible to meet all requirements.
Today i went on with at runs to get that stupid monarch, rly took some more hours, but somewhen i got it.
highlights in AT were:
4/5 cold rbf, another arach, eth duriels, 13 allres 7 frw gc, pala off sk, 15 ias 5 lr jool and a Lo rune!
also found a 4 sox flail, so mainly 4 sox coh base and a elite (eth) polearm for merc left. and ofc some runes
Dropvid:
So, since i got main items now i decided to start LK, just did some runs and there i had another Lo lol
funny thing is, a mate just came back on teamspeak and i told him i found a Lo rune in AT etc and while i was speaking
the next one dropped xD
We left him after I ran him during RFL round 1, which (as expected) didn't result in a great score, but (as hoped) in almost farming an Infinity, including the base. This was his haul pic:
It was funny how it then only took some 20-30 minutes of LK map rolling and running to get the missing Sur, which enabled him to roll his Infinity. Still looking for Arachnid Mesh, Andy's Visage and ideally some +1 rings, he has been occasionally running Mephisto since then -- without success. Since running Pits of course makes more sense in terms of XP while also providing good drop chances, he has now switched back to doing that.
I've come to realize that his Pit map, which I considered average at first, is actually very good. About 5-6 boss packs average on level 1, almost always 3 packs on level 2, and 4 shrines on the path to Pit entrance (though that is somewhat long). Typical case of how ones perception of Pit maps can change after running them for a while I guess. He is currently going with a ~360 MF setup which seems to be OK in terms of survivability (though there have been close calls with it). Runs look like this at the moment:
He will continue with these runs for the final RFL round, hoping to find the abovementioned uniques (and ideally a couple of HRs ).
After that, there are XP tests to be run and a few choices to be made in terms of his build and run target going forward. I am still considering switching to Poison Nova (with Beast), continuing to run Pits at least until some of those uniques are found. I ran a simulation in that regard, stripped my twinked Venomancer of his Death's Web and skillers and ran Pits (though without Beast) to see how PN does without being boosted so much. Conclusion was that it's definitely an option, but not clearly superior either, at least with the gear available to him at the moment. He does have full Trang's now and could go with the 3-piece combo which might put it over the Summon spec, but before I find Arach's I'm not going to respec.
Also I strongly suspect that Baal/waves will be the best XP option for him up to 98, for which I expect the Summoner spec to do better. But that remains to be tested after the RFL.
Drops worth mentioning since his last update:
His charm collection is getting respectable. Already at 11 life/res SCs (mostly with good ones too, i.e. LR and in particular FR) and a couple lifers with useful other mods. Skiller count is at three Summon and one P&B at the moment, currently he is using all of them along with 6/7 MF SCs.
Update on Liv. Got her to level 24, just so that I am not in last position in the progress table
We got a nice pair of bloodfists and a sorc orb with +2 Fire Ball and static field. Also a corspe in the desert dropped the runes for Steel (El, Tir) which I thought was funny.
@ffs - Summoners at Baal are very strong and probably faster than a PitNec overall. I would imagine a PN Necro who can run the CS would be faster up to 98 doing Gripp Runs though, but that may be tough to pull off untwinked. Also, nice map!
@Zelator Welcome back, and welcome to the 99er craziness in particular. Good luck!
@Pb_pal Yeah as I've said I also think Baal Summoner will likely be the most efficient route for Ric. (Are we having reading issues again? Just kidding but that is kind of funny lately! ) At the moment I'm running Pits mostly for the MF. For now I'd like to have better chances of finding those uniques mentioned, and I think on P8 the XP from Pit is acceptable for the time being. He will most likely run Baal more than I'm comfortable with anyway and his Pit map is very nice indeed.
Very good point about CS actually. I've tried it, but the IG died rather quickly despite max Golem Mastery. I know Grip tested a CS Venomancer to be viable (though not confirmed to be faster than Baal Summoner IIRC). But without DWeb providing MPK in particular, being untwinked I need the Insight IG to spam CE, so yeah it's hard to make it work properly I'm afraid.
@Pb_pal Yeah as I've said I also think Baal Summoner will likely be the most efficient route for Ric. (Are we having reading issues again? Just kidding but that is kind of funny lately! )
Now that I finished my Sept, I need something else to do between repetitive runs from Neverland and tournaments like RFL and MFO. So I'm entering this with a second char, ShouldBeEasy the HC Hammerdin. I have never ever played a Hammerdin, so that should be interesting.
What's that you say? 99ers do repetitive runs as well? Well, not at first . I'll have to see after that .
Looks funny to be at the top and at the bottom of the table btw ...
Loving how active this thread is getting!
Haven't been able to make much progress myself with an extremely busy weekend but I did manage to record a small segment of runs a few days ago. I am however off the next two days so hoping to push this RFL set a little further. (39m 59s currently invested..)
It's censored by the forum software because it's a nazi reference. Silly, because most people (including me) probably didn't know in the first place, and now it gets asked all the time, but I'm afraid that's how it is.
@T72on1 Good luck with the Hammerdin, though I must admit it would be pretty funny to see a character named "ShouldBeEasy" end up all the way at the bottom of "The Fallen" -- so I don't know at which point I'll be starting to root for him!
Very nice to see some more gameplay vids! @Yng it's strange how you seem to also have that S&E lag, but the game seems to run super fast otherwise. Seems I actually had some delays in comparison when switching areas... but I'll gladly take the "not having the S&E lag" of course.
@ffs yea it’s usually 2-3 seconds but sometimes it’s ~5 seconds randomly which is really frustrating. IIRC it was one second or better leaving from Act 4 when I was running CS. Someone in my stream chat commented that it could be glide so I’ll try some soon without it but I don’t think that’s the issue.
@ffs Yes, obviously there could be quite some irony in the name I have given him, but I hope it will turn out well .
I shouldn't be doing this until I get to the later stages of the game with him, but since I can't help it ... what do other people with more experience than me when it comes to Hammerdins (about everybody, I guess ) think about the best way to level him and play him at the later stages?
Skills are obvious for a Hammerdin, but I'm thinking that getting a few points in HS asap is very important because it's HC. Right now I don't think it's worth it to max that skill right away, but I'm not sure. Next to that, I guess it's 1 point in Concentration, then max BH asap? After that, Concentration or Vigor first?
As to gear, is the 125% fcr breakpoint something I should really aim for? Or is the next breakpoint good enough, and should I focus my gear on my defensive stats and +skills first? Also, I'll obviously have to rely on what I find in the first place, but if I would find a HoZ, is that better than Spirit, since it's HC? Same for Reaper's: if I find one, is the added safety preferable over the convenience of Insight? I actually wouldn't have thought about this option, assuming Insight is the way to go, but I noticed that @Kitteh used it.
As to the leveling it shouldn't be too hard: get to normal Pindle asap, level until 40-45, rinse and repeat in NM until 70-75, then proceed to Hell. At least, that's the route I'd take in SC, with most other chars. I don't know if Hammerdins are any good vs Pindle to be honest, but I assume they are.
Then in Hell it's getting to LK asap, roll a good map, be happy that Vigor is maxed because it's a BH synergy, and grind for CtA, HotO and Enigma. When acquiring the first two, I can even proceed and run other targets if I get bored of LK I assume. Thanks to maxed Vigor I should still be able to run other areas at a decent pace as well, unless merc not being able to keep up with me is a problem.
Somewhere along the way, I might also try my luck at Hell Meph, in search of Shako and especially Arachnid's.
So yeah, that's where I currently am as far as theorycrafting goes. Like I said, I probably shouldn't be thinking ahead so much, as it might be a curse on my HC character, but I can't help it.
Btw, currently I'm leveling ShouldBeEasy as a Holy Fire Zealot, since I think that is the easiest way to start out untwinked. I plan to respec once I have a few points into BH though, or until I get my hands on an Insight for the merc, if Holy Fire is still strong enough to keep until then. Early leveling gear consists of Stealth, Steel, probably Lore and Rhyme when I'm a bit further down the road. He is currently level 16.5 and has killed Andariel. I'll throw in some pics when I have more of an update. At this moment, RFL still comes first obviously.
@T72on1 sounds like a solid plan! There are 99er Hammerdin experts here with @Kitteh and @PhineasB who can surely help out a lot! Just my 2 cents:
IMO 125% FCR is definitely worth it and not too hard to achieve untwinked with e.g. Hoto, Arach, gloves, Spirit and either amulet or ring. Spirit has great stats also, good block and good resists in a suitable base, so I wouldn't necessarily consider HoZ to be that much superior defensively (and HoZ doesn't drop that often either). If you're unlucky with Arach (as I now seem to be with Ric, beginning to feel @PhineasB's pain in the past in that regard), you still have other options. Apart from the obvious FCR rings and craft amulets you can also craft FCR belts with good stats.
He is so great for CS, I'd say basically as soon as you're tanky enough for it and probably all the way till the end. Unless you want to respec for Nihl in HC. There are little other options also: Pits and AT are kind of narrow and Baal has those Magic Immunes; yes they can be taken down with Holy Bolt but it's tedious. But that's not a bad thing at all given how good CS is.
I'd also shoot for high level HS, took that route also for my SC Hammerdin.
For SC I definitely prefer Insight over Reaper's. But maybe in untwinked HC and running CS Reaper's makes sense? No idea. Though when running 2 seals and skipping De Seis, I'd think Decrepify is not required for safety at least until 98 when probably P1/P7 CS runs become most efficient. But that's thinking far ahead indeed.
@T72on1 Reaper’s with Guillaume’s is going to speed up your Diablo kill time a bit for 98-99 P1/P7 runs but you should be running Vizier/Infector + packs nearby until then and honestly unless you’re positioning poorly for De Seis seal he’s really not an issue to the point where you need Reaper’s for him, particularly for P1. With that said, it’s HC, and positioning mistakes do happen so perhaps it’s just better to “have it and not need it” considering you’re not super Insight reliant anyway.
Spirit is a much better shield option than HoZ IMO, especially considering how good 9 frame casting is.
The only problem that I ever had in CS was De Seis, and I liked having decrepify, but even then it was my merc in danger, not me. The runs are really very safe so long as you pay attention. My spare points at the end went into HS because there was nothing else that I really benefited from. I guess you could go for some extra max resist. Also, less in dex = more life, although I can't remember how much dexterity I actually needed for max block in the end.
Keep in mind that I was doing P8 full clears for a large portion of Fordyl's journey, and then swapped to P1/P7. The primary reason that I used Reaper's was that I simply didn't need Insight, so the decrepify was an extra bit of safety (I often had my eyes on youtube whilst playing if I'm honest ).
As far as faster cast rate is concerned, definitely go for 125fcr, and thus spirit. Unless you have a nice 2/20 amulet and want to use Wizardspike I guess.
Came back to D2 again after yet another break. Seems like the runner I had going got deleted at some point, dunno why. So I've started her up again, though I'll be going HC instead.
Someone lock the SPF door so that I can't leave again.
I'm thinking of joining! The current idea is to go with a Druid. Probably in HC just because that's where I've been playing lately. How do I officially sign up for this? Do I need to post a copy of the progress table and edit myself into it?
Ric has made it to 95 running Pits for the last level.
Things are fun, by now I enjoy the Fishymancer gameplay quite a bit! Found a couple of more life/resist SCs which is cool, now at a very nice total of 15 of those. He also found a fourth Summon skiller, and I'm beginning to like using them actually, in particular they'll probably be very helpful for Baal runs.
Still no luck regarding Arachnid Mesh, Andy's, SoJ/BKWB. But drops have been good generally, already posted most of them here and here (including Crown of Ages, 2x Steel Pillar, Stormspire, Giant Skull, 5/5 cold facet, Boneflame, Cranium Basher, 20% FCR craft amulet and second Trang Oul's Wing). I'll stick with Pits for the remaining 8 hours of RFL in hope of getting some of those missing uniques.
Whether I find them or not though, I plan to focus on XP after the RFL. Been running initial comparisons yesterday. As expected, Baal waves are the most efficient route. Also compared Ventar and Lister runs, with the result that in fact Ventar runs are the most efficient. I guess it makes sense, given the Lister wave being fire immune and having high physical resistance, which doesn't exactly help CE. XP gain comparison of different areas for Ric (though based on very short samples) in spoiler if interested:
Numbers are approximate and only initial tests, so definitely they will change (and hopefully improve) in each case.
That's in each case when things go right (i.e. rather empty throne room, fights go as planned). But even when adding a flat 30s to the relevant times, running the waves is still more efficient than the below candidates.
P8 CS two seal runs: ~200-210k/min
Generally CS works, but Infector seal just takes a little too long for it to come close enough. It's also more dangerous than Baal or Pits and requires more concentration.
P8 Pits: ~180-230k/min
This I'm not sure about yet. I timed a few runs because of his very good Pit map, with 4 shrines en route and good boss density. But seems at lvl 95 I can't really justify running it for XP anymore. Very high variance in XP gain ranging from ~200k to ~350k per run in the short samples I took, and run times vary as well from around 1.5 to 2 minutes. It all depends on boss density and XP shrines, resulting in very different results per run. But even based on high estimates it's still some 10-20% worse than Baal waves.
Will keep track of numbers for RFL round 3 and see if it's actually better than that, in which case I might run Pit for 95-96 as well of course, given drops are better and it's more fun than Baal of course.
Really beginning to feel the pain of not having Arachnid Mesh actually, it would have quite an impact also in terms of XP gain options I think.
I'm thinking of joining! The current idea is to go with a Druid. Probably in HC just because that's where I've been playing lately. How do I officially sign up for this? Do I need to post a copy of the progress table and edit myself into it?
Pyrestarter the druid has started the journey! So far he's been using mostly Molten Ball. I had no idea how awesome that spell is at low levels. It's just amazing. He's gonna use fire spells for now, and eventually some kind of Were-skill, probably Fury. Think I will enjoy a character that's more relaxed than my rule-bound spear barb.
@T72on1 for a HC Hdin, I would not go with Spirit, unless I craft some godly saftey amulet with dex. For HC, I would definitely go with 75% FCR and HoZ, Skipping the 125% FCR, means you could use another belt than Arach like some rare with lots of life and FHR, or skip the Trangoul/magefist gloves for Bloodfist (life and FHR)
@T72on1 for a HC Hdin, I would not go with Spirit, unless I craft some godly saftey amulet with dex. For HC, I would definitely go with 75% FCR and HoZ, Skipping the 125% FCR, means you could use another belt than Arach like some rare with lots of life and FHR, or skip the Trangoul/magefist gloves for Bloodfist (life and FHR)
It isn't needed, you will have max block, stacked resist, increased max resist for fire if using HS and a huge life pool. The higher cast is better offensively (and thus defensively) and allows you a better a chance of escaping any problem you find yourself in
@drmalawi I only thought about the fact that Paladin shields can have inherent res all, and as a consequence you get massive resists on a Spirit made in such a base. As such I agree with @Kitteh that HoZ doesn't offer much over Spirit, while Spirit has a lot going for it, like the fcr and the higher fhr. In the end I'll have a Spirit before I find that HoZ, so will be running with that first anyway. If I ever find that HoZ I can always try out to see which setup I like most.
@DaveHutt Very nice !!! Welcome to the fun.
I didn't have any deaths myself yet, although already one close call. Early game can be quite challenging indeed, depending on the build. Keep it safe. I cleaned up the table a bit, as you can put yourself above me and Vildecor, since you are higher level. Under 'Exp' you can add your real xp number. Doesn't matter that much at early levels, but tells a lot when it comes to progress later on, when two level 97 characters can have a difference of several hours in reality.
Btw, the easiest way to get the table right, is to copy/paste it in notepad and adjust it there. Then copy/paste it again here.
It isn't needed, you will have max block, stacked resist, increased max resist for fire if using HS and a huge life pool. The higher cast is better offensively (and thus defensively) and allows you a better a chance of escaping any problem you find yourself in
That is true, that strong offence = strong defence. I have a lot of trouble getting to max block with Spirit (sacred targe 60% block). I have about 140 dex and level 38 Holy Shield, clvl 94 still only 58% chance to block.
So if someone can tell me how to get max block with Spirit and Enigma on a Hdin, I would be delighted!
That is true, that strong offence = strong defence. I have a lot of trouble getting to max block with Spirit (sacred targe 60% block). I have about 140 dex and level 38 Holy Shield, clvl 94 still only 58% chance to block.
So if someone can tell me how to get max block with Spirit and Enigma on a Hdin, I would be delighted!
Finally a first real update from me for ShouldBeEasy. As I said before, he'll be a Hammerdin in the end, but for now I started him as Holy Fire Zealot, since that is the easiest way to get those first levels done in my opinion.
I started out at /p3, to get through the first part swiftly. First key parts I wanted to get were a Steel Scimitar and a Stealth armor. So I was very happy to see this map:
I needed exactly 2 runs to get the runes for both runewords and the base for Stealth. This was the first one:
Not bad, not bad .
I continued, and the first drop I got was a 2os Scimitar. Now that's what I call a good sign !! So not much time into the game I had my first two runewords:
Luckily I was almost level 13 at that time, so I didn't have to wait too long to use the Steel.
Andariel was an easy fight. I ran her a few times to get to level 16.5 before going to Act 2. There I hired a Defiance merc, which should be my endgame one already.
Act 2 was quite uneventful, until I reached the Lost City. There the waypoint was right next to the entrance to AT. I decided to check it out, and it turned out that the special chest and the boss pack were only one left turn away from the entrance, with one other boss pack always there as well, at the crossroad where I turned left. Ideal situation to do some quick leveling. And then, on the second run, bam ...
First unique, best one I could possibly get on a HFire Paladin !!! I immediately cranked up to /p8 and did some more runs. Then I rushed to the tomb of Duriel on /p3, at which point I switched to /p8 again. A full clear later I dinged 24, ready to take on Duriel. The bug didn't have a chance (at /p1 admittedly).
So here ShouldBeEasy is now, at the start of act 3. The plan was to switch to Hammerdin before doing the Tomb, but with the Raven Claw drop, I think I'll just stick to Hfire and see how far the bow takes me.
I think it might be first HC bowadin 99er ever, actually! I stayed off my computer as much as possible outside of work this past week, so I'm just getting caught up on the progress. Nice to see more continued entries and progress from others!
On the hammerdin discussion, I would definitely go for 125 FCR as soon as possible, even if it's at the expense of +skills or defensive stats. It made such a difference for Phaedrus. So definitely +1 to the spirit shield recommendation.
I'd also recommend running LK until getting Enigma rather than leveling past A3, as I did for extended breaks from LK. Enigma makes that much of a difference and RoF/CS is really the best option due to openness and monster levels for getting XP, in my opinion. I wish I'd just bit the bullet and focused on LK instead of leveling into the 90s without Enigma.
drmalawi said:
So if someone can tell me how to get max block with Spirit and Enigma on a Hdin, I would be delighted!
See spoiler below for stats for Phaedrus (who has Enigma, Spirit shield, HoTo, Shako with 18%DR with Ber, with max block and still has >3900 HP with Battle Orders active). He's also over-allocated in dext due to putting skill points toward Holy Shield after last respec. So he will use another respec to rebalance after hitting 98 and pick up some more vita as a result, getting close to 4000 HP if not above.
Celia started out with a socketed Long Sword, switching to a gambled rare kris and 3xcDiamond shield later in Act I. Unfortunately, I chose to spend 2 hours shopping Drognan for a Mechanic's Bone Shield of Deflecting. And then I figured I could just farm NM Blood Raven for the shael to make Rhyme, and instead settled on a plain Bone Shield of Deflecting to later accompany a 'Steel' Broadsword.
I plan to keep Raissa, my Fire Rogue, and eventually get her a 'Faith' bow. I shouldn't need a tanking merc when I'll have access to maxed Valk and Decoy.
Originally planned to progress through Normal/NM on p7 to help find decent items, since I'm using a melee character. Switched to p3 in the middle of Act III, however, and took care of the rest of normal with my 'Steel' Broadsword, and lots of help from my mercenary's Static Circlet (1-94 lit damage).
A nice find in the Far Oasis:
Very handy against Act Bosses, that is!
Nothing else really too exciting to report. Killed Baal at 38, will probably run him to 40 before heading to NM. If I could do this character over, I would probably have just quested at p3, leveling up at Pindle, given how easy it is to take down foes with 'Steel'. That's how I plan to handle NM, with some countess running to get some mid-level runewords going.
Very safe so far, with high blocking (@11 frames), D/A/E, and of course the castable tanks. I plan to stick with a 1-hander. 'Rhyme' by itself will give me a 10 frame block rate, and endgame-wise, I should be able to get that down to 8 frames.
That is true, that strong offence = strong defence. I have a lot of trouble getting to max block with Spirit (sacred targe 60% block). I have about 140 dex and level 38 Holy Shield, clvl 94 still only 58% chance to block.
So if someone can tell me how to get max block with Spirit and Enigma on a Hdin, I would be delighted!
The difference between the dexterity it takes to max block with Spirit and HoZ at level 99, the highest it'd ever get, is 29 dex. You can probably judge for yourself whether 35 FCR, 55 FHR, +mana, and higher cold/lightning/poison resists are worth trading for 25-29 vitality worth of life depending on level, faster block, and an extra +2 combat.
Life and skills are something you can make up from charms, but FCR isn't.
Forumite Character SC/HC Class Level Exp Date E/S S/U Grail Deaths Hours
--------------- --------------- ----- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --- ---- ----- ------ -----
Bewitch itsreal HC Sorc 87 1.xx 2018-04-24 No - - - -
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 86 1.15 2018-01-10 Yes - - 1 -
coju NintyNine_orRiP HC Sorc 81 0.74 2016-04-07 Yes - - 1 -
TwentyMuleTeam Valus HC Barb 76 0.48 2016-10-27 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Pala 76 0.48 2017-06-19 Yes - - 1 -
weezaard Cypher SC Druid 66 0.00 2018-02-21 Yes - - 20+ -
Tenecabo OldShatterhand HC Druid 49 0.04 2016-06-16 Yes - 0 1 -
coju fB HC Sorc 29 0.00 2016-04-09 Yes 1 1 1 2
Kitteh Verallus HC Druid 26 0.00 2016-03-25 No - - 1 -
logoutzero Rolex HC Barb 21 0.00 2016-03-26 Yes 0 0 1 1
Sitting in ACt 1 Hell atm, levelling up on Andy, Pits, Maus and Countess. Jeez thoses targets are bloody tuff for an untwinked char, even SC. I was sooo frustrated trying to get any 4 socket Polearm. The merc is using an Insight Poleaxe (not a Greater Poleaxe, not ethereal, not anything man) which I got in Act 5 NM! Are you kidding me D2? After all these years, you gonna play me like that? Sorc is BlizzBaller with minimal +skills (Spirit sword, Eye of Etlich, SotV), so things are chugging through slowly but surely. Merc is sporting Wormskull 4 the LL. lol
Been there @DaveW. Getting en elite eth polearm can take some time, people have experienced different degrees of luck and/or frustration in that regard. But it really only becomes annoying when you want to make Infinity, until then I wouldn't bother to be honest. You mostly only need the aura, so with a Sorc it's OK in a non-elite base for quite some time.
HelpYourself was a Blizzballer as well when questing through the game. Actually wasted a few respecs, so don't do that. I pretty much rushed to Meph and then ran him (without Merc using the moat trick) to get those first essential uniques like Shako, Viper, Arach. Next step was getting Hoto in LK. From then on things got a lot easier. Pick up and cube roll Monarchs and Flails (ideally eth ones) along the way and you're good to go!
I might have messed up my math somewhere and been off by 1; punched numbers back into a calculator and came up with these dex values for max block at level 99:
HoZ + Eld 132
HoZ 139
Spirit Sacred Targe 167
The Eld rune definitely isn't worth it; the socket is worth 22@, which is saving you 4-5 charm slots of resists. In the hypothetical ideal situation where you have unlimited charm availability, it might be less of a concern since you'd have your bottom row stuffed full of 5@/MF or life SCs, but playing untwinked, I imagine it'd be a ton of equipment flexibility.
@ffs, why eth flails? Is it to distinguish them on weapon swap? Plus after Blizzballer, I was thinking Blova for CS runs. Merc with Delerium for CC, Insight and high defense armour. Wats ur thoughts?
Eth Flail is just so you can use it with base dexterity. (And for style of course. ) Blova should work for CS but it will be slower than pure Blizz, same for Blizzballer. As for Merc, some used Delirium in CS also for the extra safety so it's definitely a good choice. Personally though I'd go for the eth bugged Fortitude + Andy's setup which turns him into a really hard-hitting tank. I used Delirium only for Nihlathak.
I’m at 5-6 Eth Elite 4 socket Polearm (2 Threshers and a GPA) and still haven’t found an Eth 4 socket Flail. I think I rolled 10-15 in cube by now lmao.
Haha, though it's really not that important and more of a style/minor min-max thing. Worst case (10 hard points in dex) the actual improvement is some ~35 life after BO.
This made me feel like I was at least contributing to the fight...somewhat. Gave this to my rogue after I gambled a 21 all res, 4 PDR circlet.
I didn't even need to run Countess for the Shael for Rhyme. It dropped off some mob on the way up the tower. Still ran her a few times to get some Amns and such.
The Steel broad sword survived all the way to Act III, though I spent most of my time casting Decoys and letting the Valkyrie and Raissa demolish everything. I managed to get Raissa a Riphook in the Maggot Lair. I spent over 2 million in gold trying to get a semi-decent rare sword. This is what I ended up with:
I upgraded this to exceptional once I had enough strength. It definitely makes a difference. Instead of constantly switching to Rixot's Keen every time I took on an Act Boss, I rolled a few Blood Gloves. Here's the winner:
I ended up running Eldritch for the levels rather than Pindle. We just don't kill fast enough before all the zombies in the yard decide they want to show up for the party.
I just finished saving Deckard Cain in Hell difficulty. Things started out a bit rough, and then a Skin of the Flayed One dropped in the Cold Plains. The extra LL and replenish life makes things much more bearable. I still have a ways to go before I get to do anything more exciting than Normal Attack. Every time I see a rare javelin drop, I think my blood pressure goes up. I may think about boosting my strength up faster to use the Dangoon's Teaching I got from NM Halls of Anguish. Or maybe another goodie will drop.
At this point I'm doing full clears on p3 since I could use every bit of useful gear I can get my hands on. I definitely do not want to be running LK underleveled or unable to kill at least a regular mob in less than 15 seconds.
I regret to inform everybody that Pyrestarter the druid has fallen. It was in act5 normal. I was playing aggresively and my gear wasn't good, and those moon lards, they got me. I shall now remove myself from questing heroes, and add myself to the ranks of the felled.
Sophie has finally reached the 10% mark. Progress is slow thanks to the last two weeks of work being very busy (Mother's Day and many graduations) but we should be slowing down a bit and just maybe I'll be able to finish a full 20 hour set for RFL (I'm doubtful but I'll give it an honest effort). Speaking of which, I won't be posting any runes with my updates until after RFL to avoid spoilers. Currently a little under 4 hours in with 1 qualifier. If I'm even remotely efficient, the remaining 16 hours for a full RFL set would net me some 50+ million experience.
Drops:
Drops are....deja vu. Verdungo's and Verdungo's, another Tal's Armor, and another Dracul's all showing their faces again. Schaefer's rounding out the group as a grailer. Still no luck with Lightning GCs but I do have a sizeable collection of ilvl 95 GCs now.
New Map:
Somewhere around 7.5% I decided to roll a new map with at least 2 shrines en route, the shortest distance from WP to Halls of Vaught (the one with pillars near WP), and the Nihlathak platform in the NE or NW direction (for maximum benefit from C/T). With this map I've been able to reach peaks of ~3.8m/hour when heavily focusing on experience but I'd say its probably more so around 3.5m/hour considering I've slowed down to check a little more thoroughly for runes and starting clearing Wraiths when they spawn near the platform. I don't think I could get the xp/hour much higher (outside of streaky Shrine luck and lack of breakable/non-breakable LI rolls) without better gear.
@Pijus Condolences on the loss . Will we see another entry?
@Yng] Great progress !!! I still need to complete some 8 hours on RFL first, and then I'll divide my time between my two 99ers. Can't let you get too close !!! Although that will be hard with such good xp/hour rate.
Yes. At 97 I was tempted to do them anyway, but I'm really glad I didn't .
ShouldBeEasy made some good progress and is now sitting in early act 1, nm.
Act 3 went by uneventful, as I went by on a low player setting and the Ravenclaw took care of the rest. This was Mephisto's drop:
The boots were a nice upgrade for ShouldBeEasy:
Act 4 again flew by without any trouble or particular stuff that happened, except for the Amn that dropped, which allowed me to make:
This was used on switch, combined with Smite, to bring down Diablo to about 1/2 health. Then Ravenclaw took care of the rest of his life, from a safe distance.
Once again the quest drop was actually useful, as the Circlet had +51 life and +1 defensive auras as mods. O yes, forge gave me a Tir, so that was disappointing.
ShouldBeEasy was level 29.5 when he reached the first waypoint in Act 5. Since I knew that I was close to level 30's Redemption aura and was getting bored of shooting stuff with the Bow, I decided to respec to Hammerdin at this stage. I started running Eldritch at /p5 and hit level 30 after a few runs.
Redemption definitely helped to solve most of my mana problems, so I ran Eldritch some more, soon at /p8 instead of /p5. This way I gained levels really quickly. I moved on a bit and tried Pindle too, but couldn't get BH to work in that tight space. Not sure if that's the way that BH works or if it's me not knowing the ins and outs of the skill yet. Anyway, it doesn't matter much, as Eldritch provided xp just as good or at least without much difference, and I have never ran him in the past, so it was fun to do.
I then proceeded, did Ancients on /p1, which was way too easy, and went on to kill the waves. For Lister and his gang I had to be a bit more careful, but other than that my defensive stats were good enough to keep things very safe.
Baal? I killed him at lvl 41, but he was stingy:
I did some more Eldritch runs to get to 42, then proceeded into NM.
There my resists were ok: 22/22/75/30. Early on in the act however, I'd get two drops, who would make those much better, and also provide ShouldBeEasy with a big boost. First I got a Sol to drop, so I could use that 2os Circlet I had been keeping for the occasion:
Not much later the biggest change came, when this beauty dropped:
Being spoiled by the Spirit runeword, I had never realized just how good this item is: fcr, res all, high life, incredibly high amount of mana, ... the item has it all . The only downside was that I couldn't use a shield anymore, but other than that it's just so awesome. Similar to the Ravenclaw in normal I consider it to be one of the best or maybe even the best item that could drop for ShouldBeEasy at this stage. Other than a 4os sword and Polearm for Spirit and Insight obviously. Those will mean an even bigger boost, but until then I'll gladly take this one .
This way nm so far, up to Rakanishu, has been very easy going. I could probably play on /p8 even, but decided to go for /p5, to keep things more safe.
ShouldBeEasy, level 43, 6 and a half hour into the journey !!! Like I said, I never played a Hammerdin, but currently I absolutely love it .
Nice progress @T72on1 I had same experience with Hammerdin of Pindle not working well due to tight spaces, and also found Eldritch to be a great alternative for leveling.
@Vildecor - very quick progress with a non-cookie cutter, and HC to boot! Well done and looking forward to Celia's continued progress.
And finally condolences to @Pijus - but hope you consider another entry!
I'm still debating if I should continue to plan on using Passion or if I should consider Grief instead. Grief will definitely outperform damage-wise, but using a Faith-wielding mercenary I'll run the issue of waiting for her fire arrows to kill physical immunes. But then if I go with grief, I may not need to use the fanaticism aura at all. I suppose I'll be able to try out both setups, assuming I don't die before then!
Prime example of why not to Teleport to check drops at Nihlathak. I've caught myself doing this a few times already and told myself this was going to be bad one day. Won't happen again..
Got body with corpse recovery kit so minimal XP loss but really stupid.
@Yng I feel you, been there! Not teleporting around to check drops was something @PhineasB was very quick to point out when I initially started out to (clumsily) run Nihl, and rightly so: Good job of getting back the corpse, get back to it!
But that's why I liked a Nihl map with the platform in lower right. Items clutter in that direction. So if you kill from bottom right you will see his drops without having to teleport around at all.
@ffs I normally land to the lower right of him, maybe just clutter that run. And you can see all of Nihlathak’s drops in the video, I’ve just been looking hard for runes because I’m 7 1/2 hours in RFL set with 1 qualifier. I’ve let it impact my XP/hour pretty heavily too. Think from here I’ll just run Nihlathak with XP and safety as priority and whatever runes come along the way will be a bonus.
Made yesterday and today a few runs, found a Ber!
So i got all the hrs i need + 3 Lo runes. Found 2nd Gul to make a vex for the hoto, its a hoto 31.
The annoying thing is, i still cant make cta and coh cause im missing ist runes ... haha
@Yng - Condolences on that death. Conviction vipers are very scary.
@Bewitch - Congrats on the Ber!
And now my fast progress will be coming to an end. Celia has killed Mephisto and I'm now in gear-hunting mode. So far no real close calls, just maybe a couple of hairy situations.
Maybe I should have just cast a Valkyrie at that shaman... Getting surrounded by melee is really the only dangerous situation for this character, only being able to dodge/block an attack while the others go through. Made it out of here alright though. Once one fell and the others ran away in fear, I was able to weave through them out of the building.
I did somewhere around 100 countess runs, looking for a Lem rune to make Passion. No luck. I decided to press on since I didn't have an elite sword base yet to put the runes in, and because the runs are painfully slow. The first Ko rune I got went into a Harmony Blade Bow for Raissa. The vigor made it very easy to run through the tower levels and helped her kill any ghosts on the top floor quickly. We still have to kill anything between the door on floor five and the upper left hallway where the countess spawns, which sometimes means an additional three boss packs.
Andariel focused on me while my minions killed her. Easy fight. She dropped a Carrion Wind, which replaced a 4% LL rare ring I was using.
I was happy to see this. I'd had no luck gambling a better damage weapon. I eventually replaced this with Dangoon's Teaching which performed much, much better, even with the loss of the additional 278 AR before the Penetrate bonus. Duriel also dropped a unique ring, Ravenfrost. I may eventually use this, but I really like the rare ring I'm using: +11 str, +9 resist all, +27 fire resist.
Before starting Act III, I cubed 3 of the 4 Io runes I had and made a Lionheart Mage Plate. I now have maxed fire and lightning resists, 73 cold and poison, max block (replaced the Rhyme Bone Shield with a Rhyme Tower Shield), and over 900 life. Playing became much more comfortable, and I really only had to be careful around Fanaticism and Extra Strong might packs. Even amped I can hold my own against one or two creatures as long as they aren't Extra Strong. I still stayed far away from Flayer Dolls in the sewers and Durance of Hate. No thank you. Mephisto focused on my Valkyrie, which had spawned immune to poison, and was easily taken care of. His drop was useless.
I gave Raissa back her Harmony Bow and I started running Lower Kurast. Without rerolling maps, I had two huts practically next to the waypoint. Only two, but without teleport, I was happy with this setup. First high rune I got was a Sur. Half a Ber, I guess. I'd completely forgotten to use my Run Counter during the first session, but started it up for the next session of 150 or so runs. Only a Pul from those, but plenty of mid-range runes that happily let me know I can safely ignore Countess running now. I was able to cube a Lem rune and started running the Pits to search for a Phase Blade for Grief eventually, and either a Conquest or Cryptic sword for Passion. P7 was much too slow, and p3 turned out to be much more manageable, only slightly slower than clearing at p1.
I stopped after 10 or so runs and was highly, highly tempted to respec to Lightning Fury just to search for the sword bases. So I took a break. It's still tempting, but I think it would make me feel more proud of the character to keep true to form, even if the killing is slower. Once I have that Passion weapon, I think the killing speed issue will mostly be taken care of.
@T72on1 - ShouldBeEasy should have plenty of time to catch up to Celia's progress. Even with a few pieces of gear, your lvl 85 area clear speed will be something she could only dream of.
@Vildecor that’s actually my Conviction and just a normal pack of Vipers that stacked clouds while I was watching Nihlathak’s HP bar. Imagine the EDPS of Might or Fanaticism Vipers— the physical portion is what hurts you.
@Yng Eventually I'd just S&E in a potentially dangerous situation and didn't use rejuvs often. Normally only when I wanted to pick up an item and I wasn't 100% sure I could just pick it up, given life amount at the given time and monster spawn. I refilled when running low by just grabbing small ones, cubing them to full rejuvs every once in a while.
Good luck with Griffon's, not easy to find I was quite lucky with my Sorc. Though probably you'd have to find it within a couple of hours for it to overall speed up 99? That would be an interesting calculation actually.
@Yng I agree with @ffs . Once you get to the routine of Nihlathak runs, most of the times it's either safe or S&E. Using Full Rejuvs doesn't happen that much for me.
@Vildecor I'm not too worried about 'catching up' on you . It's a journey, not a race, and I will (or at least should) spend time on my other 99er as well. Having said that, I agree that my area clearing speed, and as a consequence my level progress, should be fast. But I'll be camping in Hell LK for a long time as well, so ...
About LK ... it's still a long way off for me at the moment, but I'm not sure what I'll be doing for LK, so in other words, what's best for a non-teleporting character: 1 campfire or 2 campfire layout. I suspect the latter, especially with the maxed Vigor I will have by then. But some testing might be needed.
I wanted to play more with Liv this weekend, but decided to go all in on Arcane Sanctuary and perhaps complete a full second batch for the Rune Finding Leauge...
About LK ... it's still a long way off for me at the moment, but I'm not sure what I'll be doing for LK, so in other words, what's best for a non-teleporting character: 1 campfire or 2 campfire layout. I suspect the latter, especially with the maxed Vigor I will have by then. But some testing might be needed.
2 campfire for sure. You're spending more time running through town which means you want to maximize the time spent in actual LK. Like you said, Vigor will make you fly. I would also recommend a linear map instead of a circular one for running (ie don't go to A4, just run through the docks each time), but whatever you roll with 2 fires decently close to the WP should be fine. Since it's HC just make sure you have a quick S+E finger, and don't be shy to skip a chest or entire hut if there are scary monsters in there. That 1 chest out of the several thousand you hit is not worth a deeds.
Another bonus of running vs tele is that it's really easy to incorporate lots of regular poppables into your route.
You should easily be able to get ~40s run times, or even below with Vigor and a good map. Oh, and make a CtA as soon as humanly (Paladinly?) possible.
Qn re: LK> Ive made it there myself with my sorc Long_Term. There was only 1 campfire but was right next to WP. Im after Hoto, CtA and maybe CoH. What do you guys think? Re-roll for 2 campfires or stay with this one, given how close it is?
Ok, progress from ShouldBeEasy . Nightmare is finished !!!
It didn't take long in act 1 to make an Insight. I did 5 Countess runs for a Sol, and in that time a 4os Battle Scythe also dropped.
Obviously that made life a lot easier, so I cruised through the rest of the act without any issues. A bit before Andariel I had another very useful drop:
20% fcr gloves? Check !! I didn't use them right away though, as I needed the resists from my gloves too much.
Other than a Shael for Rhyme and a Fal from Radament
I didn't get any more noteworthy drops. It would take until act 4 to find a 4os Crystal Sword. Obviously after that it didn't take long to find a second one ...
The Spirit I made out of it only rolled 26% fcr.
It didn't matter too much though, as I was still on the same breakpoint as with the Razorswitch (30% fcr) anyway.
In act 5 I rushed through the first area again, to be able to level up at Eldritch. It didn't take long before I was level 67 and proceeded through the rest of the act. After killng Baal I did a few more Eldritch runs to get to level 71.
Before this post I tested the waters in Hell a bit. Resists were low, so I created this nice little runeword with the Lum I found in NM:
Maxed resists? Check !!
This way I did the Den of Evil on /p1. No issues, but to be honest Hell still scares me a bit. It seems like it's for real now . I hope a good Paladin shield with 2os or 4os will drop soon, so I can make Rhyme or Spirit for a major upgrade.
Not sure how I'll continue. I might try out Mausoleum and Crypt with all it's undead. Or just head straight for LK, but I'm a bit too low level to my taste for that.
After my last double death mishap(got corpse back for both, thankfully), I have been cruising along pretty well for my standards. I decided to do some switching up on gear a little to get some more damage after finding another SoJ, and bringing myself to roll an Infinity( I figured what the hell, I found the Griffons and it will come into play later on I suppose).
Got a poop roll DPS wise, but its still an Infinity. I switched to Magefist gloves to give me the needed FCR to get to 105 after adding both SoJ's(had to drop a FCR ring I was using to hit the BP). The additional max mana and mana regen from the SoJ's and Magefist helps with the loss of Insight, but I still drain the mana bulb sometimes. After CTA, my FO is over 800 on the LCS, and definitely hits harder now, as well as FB. This sped up my CS runs quite a bit.
I think that I got a little to cocky, and fat fingered a teleport right into DeSeis's pack, and instagibbed. My dumbass still hasnt put together a corpse recovery kit, and this is a must since teleporting past the Rof and first part of CS means I have to go back through it to get my corpse. I ran into a dense packed group of Knights going into CS, and could not get around them, so I was hanging back trying to keep the Merc alive and felt relatively safe. As the merc was finishing off a named monster I decided to get a little closer to help with a couple FB's and a Nova death effect killed me AGAIN!! I was tired last night, and this was definitely not my finest moment. I did manage to recover both corpses, which eased the hurt feelings, but damn, those two deaths along with the last two sucked. I dont even want to add up how much XP I lost, but at least it wasnt the whole amount. Still though, I think that actually losing something for dying is better than how D3 was with just losing durability on gear.
@Vildecor Yes I think so. I still have to reposition every so often, but it's not too bad. Definitely love the skill so far. Going back to a shield after making the Spirit was much needed though. So much safer that way.
Forumite Character SC/HC Class Level Exp Date E/S S/U Grail Deaths Hours
--------------- --------------- ----- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --- ---- ----- ------ -----
Bewitch itsreal HC Sorc 87 1.xx 2018-04-24 No - - - -
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 86 1.15 2018-01-10 Yes - - 1 -
coju NintyNine_orRiP HC Sorc 81 0.74 2016-04-07 Yes - - 1 -
TwentyMuleTeam Valus HC Barb 76 0.48 2016-10-27 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Pala 76 0.48 2017-06-19 Yes - - 1 -
weezaard Cypher SC Druid 66 0.00 2018-02-21 Yes - - 20+ -
Tenecabo OldShatterhand HC Druid 49 0.04 2016-06-16 Yes - 0 1 -
Pijus Pyrestarter HC Druid 36 0.00 2018-05-21 Yes - - 1 -
coju fB HC Sorc 29 0.00 2016-04-09 Yes 1 1 1 2
Kitteh Verallus HC Druid 26 0.00 2016-03-25 No - - 1 -
logoutzero Rolex HC Barb 21 0.00 2016-03-26 Yes 0 0 1 1
So Long_Term has hit Act 5, rescued Anya and levelling on Pindle atm. I want to re-spec to pure Blizzy soon but will wait til I can piece together some of her end game gear. I cube socketed the first white, plain Monarch I found and luckily got 4 sockets. Will hold off on making Spirit coz I can't wear it atm and perhaps I can get away with less strength if I can make a CoH (+20 strength iirc) and perhaps a nice FCR rare with +strength as well. My merc has upgraded from his Poleaxe to a CV Insight. Diablo was generous with the unique Kraken Shell, Leviathan, which gave dumbo the added strength needed to wield that awesome polearm. And his helmet has been upgraded to an eth Undead Crown. (Same LL %age as the Wormskull but at least his defense is better.) Usually a Crown of Thieves or Tals Mask have dropped by now but no, that would be too easy.
She stills seems underpowered so alot of Pindle running has been on p1. May mix in some ATs as well. You guys think I should respec to Blizzy now? I feel like I could then do some serious grinding for XP and items with three targets: Pindle, Meph and ATs. I just don't want to invest in strength for Spirit Monarch and then respec again at a later date when I do have my gear together.
@DaveW Pure Blizzard and using Spirit is going to speed up everything so it's probably a good idea to do that soon. If you're worried about wasting a respec or strength points, you could farm CoH now in LK and then respec? Oh yeah and definitely 2 camp fires!
@darkstarhub Sorry to hear about the deaths. But seems things are going well otherwise, time to ding and start the final push!
Ran Mausoleum and Crypts for a while trying to get an elite base for Passion, without much luck yet. Decided @Pb_pal's advice to @T72on1 about getting Call to Arms asap sounded great to me too. Rerolled my LK map *once* and got a 2 campfire, linear map I can run in around 50 seconds. First 1000 runs netted me 1 Ber, 2 Surs, 1 Ist, 1 Mal, 2 Ums and 1 Pul. I think I'm missing a few in between Ist and Sur... At least I'm only 1 Ohm away from CtA. And other Ohm away from Faith. Lots of set/uniques from the poppables and plenty of nice charms as well.
Once I make CtA and before I head back to the Pits/Maus/Crypts, I might do some Hell Mephisto runs. I tried a few out before running LK. It doesn't matter much at this point if I have a good map or not, there are plenty of poppables in Durance Level 2 than can get me the bases I need.
Back to the grind! Hopefully an Ohm before another 1000 runs goes by.
Edit: Make that only 1 Sur from these runs. The first Sur I got days before, mentioned in a previous post. I was looking in my rune stash instead of the log I kept during the runs. Oops!
Actually, going back to my logs for the runs, I only got 1 Sur from those 1000 runs. The other was the one I got before I re-rolled maps and started using the run counter. But yeah, still pretty nice.
Nice map, although you could still consider to try and get a better one. With the huts in between the two campfire zones and the right campfire being in the opposite direction of your starting teleport direction, you're still losing some time. Whether it's worth it or not depends on how long you plan to spend your time in LK obviously.
ShouldBeEasy has seen some more playing time since last update, where he finished nightmare.
I started out by killing Bloodraven and checking out the Crypt. I had a very good map there, with 3 - 4 stable boss packs in the rather short distance between the entrance and the special chest room, so I decided to run that for a while, for some xp and hopefully good loot. Since it's Undead monsters only, I decided to check if I could run it on /p5. I guess not:
To be honest though, it's not like that player setting was too high for ShouldBeEasy. In that particular instance I wanted to take a full Rejuv, I also had plenty of time for it, as there weren't any really dangerous mods, but due to holding shift to stand still (which is needed to cast BH properly) I gave it to my merc instead. I thought I already had the routine to quickly release shift when taking potions, but apparantly not always. Glad I can live to tell the tale, as that would have been a very silly death.
After that I toned down to /p3, but even then the merc kept on dying. So I tuned down to /p1, because I was running out of gold and rejuvs. That way things went better, which also resulted in ShouldBeEasy's first TC87 unique !!!
Since it was still hard to keep the merc alive, and both his and my gear didn't really result in good defense numbers, rendering his Defiance aura more or less useless, I decided to go back to NM and hire a HF merc for the time being, even though that meant giving up my good map.
Trying out that merc I found out that my new map had excellent Crypt and Mausoleum maps, both with the special chest room only 1 left turn away from the entrance. So I ran those some for some more xp. Luckily the HF merc worked out really well, so I was finally getting good progress again.
As I was about to move on, I finally found a good Paladin shield for a runeword. In this case it was 2os, so Rhyme it would be:
This way I reached max block and maxed resists, but as you can see in the pic, I decided to give the Smoke armor to my merc and start using my Stealth again.
Arriving at the pits, ShouldBeEasy's luck turned out to continue, as he had a incredible map there. Lineair, no big open spaces, good amount of boss packs. Really ridiculously good. So I decided to gain a few levels there as well. Not soon after I got another interesting drop:
Obviously not useful for ShouldBeEasy, but always a nice find nonetheless.
I then proceeded to finish the rest of the Act, find a small Insight upgrade (still not an elite base though) and get through Act 2 by just rushing most content with maxed Vigor on. Only area that really slowed me down was Maggot Lair. That one isn't a favourite area for a lot of builds, but for Hammerdins? Horrible, plain horrible !!!
The tomb of Duriel wasn't a walk in the park either, with all those revivers being magic immune, so after a bit I decided to just rush through with Vigor on, holding a finger on the Esc key just in case. Duriel himself was a pushover.
The drop, except for the obvious '1 key less than @Smittyphi got', was a very good one, because that helm is my favourite low end merc helm, and definitely an upgrade for him at this point, until I find one with life leech. And the good thing: it even was ethereal .
Btw, other interesting drops were a Tal's belt and a Demon Limb.
In act 3 both the routine and the luck continued: run past most content with Vigor on, and luck with my maps, where I had a shortcut from the Spider Forest straight to the Flayer Jungle. The only quest I did was the Tome. For once I even remembered to not hit the waypoints before and after LK, to avoid misclicks when running that area .
I proceeded to Travincal without obtaining the body parts, which must be a first ever for me, killed the Council and then rerolled maps for a good LK one. After 20 minutes I had a lineair one which is really good, although not perfect. A first, short batch of about 20 test runs resulted in 43 seconds on average. I still had 10% frw boots on though, which I switched for 30% ones. I also plan to make a Zephyr bow to use on switch for even more frw, so I hope to get it down to some 40 seconds. Not sure if that is good or not, but for now it will probably have to do.
Nice map, although you could still consider to try and get a better one. With the huts in between the two campfire zones and the right campfire being in the opposite direction of your starting teleport direction, you're still losing some time. Whether it's worth it or not depends on how long you plan to spend your time in LK obviously.
I make a nice oval and the rack isn't so stable so I could possibly be in for a treat with that rack if something interesting comes along. Given that it took me only 3 rerolls to get that map, I'm not changing it anytime soon. Mephisto is about 6 teleports away so not too bad. All in all, it's a decent map seed.
That is true, I forgot that you switched to Hdin Stealth can also be used for some FRW doing LK runs, I remember I used that on my old untwinked non-Frenzy Barb for fast transport, then I switched it for Trechery when I needed to go into combat
It didn't take another 1000 runs to get my Ohm. It took 1428 more. Well, to get a Vex and cube up 2 Guls. After 1500 runs I took a break and made a new toy:
It's now super-easy clearing the Pits on p1. I can take my rightful place back in the front line, even while amped. Still have to be careful around Might/Fanaticsm/Extra Strong Archers, but otherwise it's all good. It feels so good dealing meaningful damage again.
Between runs 1600 and 1700 I fat-fingered 'N' on the character screen and lost my LK map. A few re-rolls later and I got an even better map.
I can easily run this in under 40 seconds. Probably faster if I equipped the Harmony Bow myself. As an added bonus, the weapon rack in the first hut liked to cycle through different swords, one of which was a Conquest Sword. The second one popped out of the cube with the desired 4 sockets.
I haven't played around with it yet (tempted as I was) and just noticed the ED roll is very bad. I've got plenty of Lem runes I can burn to get a better roll. I really wanted to get CtA before heading back to the pits, so I kept going for another 700 runs.
After 2458 runs:
2 x Pul
2 x Um
2 x Mal
2 x Ist
2 x Gul
1 x Vex
1 x Lo
1 x Sur
1 x Ber
Plus 16 skiller GCs, 2 of them P&M.
How was my roll on Call to Arms?
Not quite what I was hoping for. Next Ohm will still go towards Faith first before I start re-rolling CtA however. I hope to not have to visit LK again for a while. I shoved too many runs in too small a window, but I was very, very anxious to get rolling once I was able to make that Fortitude.
Will be spending most of my time in the Pits now. Hope to see some +1 to all skills gear as well as some %dmg reduction for the next upgrades. With Battle Command active, I get 3 hits for Zeal. The next 2os helm I find I'll make Lore to bump that up to 4. I probably won't bother with Splendor so I can keep the 40% FBR and CBF.
Only a couple of levels gained, but will go ahead and update myself in the table.
@Vildecor Wow, quite the time you put into it !! Too bad about the CtA roll. I hope you'll be able to upgrade soon.
Any idea on your average running time for LK? New map indeed looks nice (although it would even be better if you could make a hole in the backside of that first hut, the one below the wp, for even faster entrance ). Was the first one non-lineair as well?
Average run time across all runs was 48.9 seconds. This included time spent IDing/selling charms & jewels and cubing gems. I stopped cubing gems around the same time I decided to stop grabbing runes below Hel (somewhere around the 1000 run mark). If I had reset my timer or started a new one with the new map, I'd guess the average would probably be closer to 44 or 45 seconds or even less.
Edit:
And yeah, first map was also non-linear, just a further trip between campfires. Downside to the shorter map was I really couldn't justify hitting containers. I'd hit the corpse at the last hut if I saw mobs in it, but the sets/uniques pretty much stopped.
I decided to return to LK for a bit to fish for another Lo and/or Ohm. Kill speed was okay, but only for p1. I figured I would probably end up needing the extra damage from a Grief PB. Decided to speed things up by a few seconds and equipped the Harmony Bow. I knew there was a reason I didn't do that before. 4 runs in and I ran straight into a Might enchanted Extra Fast pack of vultures that killed me in 2 quick hits. Thought I took a screenie, but I couldn't find it. Celia is now listed among The Fallen.
TBH, I was expecting this to happen earlier. She proved even sturdier than I thought, until I got rid of the shield. I have a whole batch of untwinked cookie-cutters started (also HC, one for each class) just for this reason. Celia may have been able to push for 99, but I'm afraid the kill speed would still have been terribly slow and taken a few years. I plan on rebuilding this character, but she'll be twinked and won't push for 99.
My next contender will likely be the Fishyzon I have in Act I NM. I believe it will be a nice change of pace killing screens of enemies with Lightning Fury. I'll give a progress update once she's started farming runes in LK.
I wasn't sure if I was gonna do this again, since my last druid was not very good to level. I was going to use Armageddon, and put 10 points into Fissure. It was good for a while but past level 30 it suddenly was not. And Armageddon is a pain in the bum to cast!
So now I'm sitting at the beginning of NM with the revised variant. This time I went 100% Fury wolf. It was sooo much better! To start out, I put all my points into Lycantrophy, then some into Werewolf, and now in the process of maxing Fury. My gear progression was: gambled rare axe, rare scythe, rare great axe(act2), better rare great axe(act3), Soul Harvest(unique scythe, act4), Woestave(unique halberd, dropped from Diablo).
I had mana problems here and there, but no other problems really. I was a little concerned with whether I could acquire good weapons, but basically any rare axe, mace or polearm with a decent base speed(-10) was good enough to keep the gameplay smooth. The Woestave proved to be an extremely good weapon. Despite low-ish damage, it freezes slows and blinds enemies, so act5 was a breeze and totally safe. Also, with 5 points in werewolf it's not terribly slow, even though it's base speed is slower than -10.
My most played character recently is my spear barb, and getting weapons for him is an epic ordeal. When I think about all the stuff I could use as a Furywolf, it seems too good to be true. Insight, Crescent Moon, Obedience, Oath. Piles of unique 2-handers too! It's an embarrassment of riches!
Current plans are to find a random unique 2-hander, maybe upgrade it if it's not exceptional. Or make insight in an exceptional base.
Oh, and I found Chance Guards from mephisto's quest drop, and Iceblink for the merc, from Diablo I think. Good start.
ShouldBeEasy has done 331 LK runs so far, still averaging a little under 43s per run. Like I said last time, fastest run times are about 10 seconds faster than that, but id'ing, cubing and stuff takes that down quite a lot.
First skiller to drop was a Paladin one ... although Offensive auras, not Combat Skills. Other ones were Amazon Bow & XBow skills and Assassin Shadow Disciplines.
As for runes: three RFL qualifiers, each with some 100 runs in between:
That's in chronological order, which means that the next one is Ohm or higher .
Sadly dont hav a lot of time for playin atm, but just did some countess runs to get the 2 ist runes i still need for coh and cta and found a Jah rune... lol
As for me, did not played D2 at all for couple of weeks, but finally i'm back determined to move my characters a little bit further...Started with main char, Trapsin, and reached level 91 relatively soon
At first, i've finished my job in LK (as i mentioned before, any rune equal or higher then GUL would be enough for Infinity + Fortitude), and found what i've been looking for
Then i've spent whole day changing the maps, looking for stable Thresher rack in LK/Bazzar/UK, but had no luck...This dissapointed me so much, that i've stopped playing for couple of weeks...then, after my return, i've started running AT (p1) with hope, that it can drop eventually, and i can get some good items and most importantly experience during the process...First part failed unfortunatelly, but second helped me reach previously mentioned lvl 91...All in all, slowly moving forward, still no Infinity or Fortitude one level after i've found all required runes Hopefully lvl 99 is high enough for such task
Other finds:
I really liked running AT, have nice map with 5-6 stable Bosspacks nearby the entrance to this area, also killing Dark Elder during every run (he is very close to WP), so i will probably continue for one more lvl...then, probably rack running again
Also, adding my second character (Bonemancer) to the table
So it's summer, and I've found I've got some extra time in my hands again. What better way to celebrate it, than to start an untwinked 99er and spend all the sunny days inside, endlessly grinding?
So, meet Hastur the Wind Druid. Softcore with extended stash, because I'm actually planning to finish this thing and need to have my sanity in check. The one restriction is, that I don't "loan" items for another characters. If an item leaves his stash for another char, it's gone for good.
I had couple of reasons for choosing Windy for my first entrant. First of all, Wind Druid is one of the "no-brainer" builds I never actually finished the game with before. My only experiences with the class were some brief Pit-tests with my respecced Fissure Druid, and that is never quite enough to fully grasp a build. This time, I'd get the full-on Tornado experience. After leveling through Normal and bit of Nightmare as Fissure Druid first, that is
My second reason was, that the gear options for Windy are fairly flexible, and thus lend themselves easily for the untwinked play. For example, HotO is probably no. 1 choice for the weapon, but Wizardspike or Spirit can carry the char a long way. For merc, you got a choice between Act 2 merc w/ Reaper's or Act 5 merc w/ Lawbringer, or just use Insight for places like Pits, where physical immunes are rare. No need to farm Infinity, which is a boon. Overall, plenty of options for gear, which should make the grind more enjoyable.
I'm still not an expert when it comes to Wind Druids, so if anyone has any pointers or thoughts
***
So, off we go. Like I stated above, Hastur started his journey as a Fire Druid, placing points in Firestorm before Fissure came available. Plan was to go through Normal and NM as quickly as possible, so player setting was at 1 most of the time. This javelin turned out to be pretty useful during early levels, and progress was fast. I briefly contemplated about leaving Cain hanging in Tristram, but my Stony Field map disagreed.
After rescuing the old geezer, it was time to visit the Tower, to get the runes for Stealth armor and Leaf staff. Map was alright again. First run gave me Leaf in one drop, and it took me about six more runs to get the rest.
Was around level 16 or 17 when I killed Andariel, and level 19 when I claimed the Cube. At this point, Fissure started to show it's strength, so Act 2 went past quickly. Although of course it took me four tries to find the Summoner. Duriel was Duriel.
Right at the start of Act 3, I go my firsteek S/U, Golden Studded Leather!. Twitchthroe was very useful indeed and went straight to the merc (whose other gear was abysmal at this point. Also made my first gambles, and got these rather nice gloves with resists and MF. Also got a Teleport staff from Drognan, which speeded up the progress considerably.
So I speeded through, and thus nothing very worthwhile happened in late Act 3 or Act 4. Mephisto fell. Hephasto fell. Ral fell from Hellforge. Diablo bit the dust. Drops were forgettable.
That changed a bit in Act 5. I ran and teleported to Frozen River, rescued Anya, and started running Pindle, only to notice that Eldritch is much faster due to Pindle's fire resistance. Anyway, grinded those two a while to get my level somewhere between 30 and 40 before Baal. Somewhere along the way, Eldritch (or some creep around him) dropped Magefist and Pindle Bloodfist. Nicefist! Two possible end-game gloves, and Magefists obviously extra useful while I was still using fire skills.
I guess I was around level 40 when Baal fell. So that's it for Normal.
***
Not much to say for Nightmare, really. Found 4 socket Broad Sword quite early on and made Spirit (33fcr). Ran Countess for some Shaels and Sols. No 4os Polearms yet, but shopped 2 socket Bone Shield form Normal Drognan and made a Rhyme.
Around Act 2 Fissure started to lose steam. Still, I pushed on, wanting to get Insight before respeccing. Started NM Act 3 at level 51. As a nice surprise, Lem dropped inf Flayer Jungle. Very useful rune, if I decide to go with Act 5 merc wielding Lawbringer. Speaking of mercs, in LK, 4 socket War Scythe dropped from rack. Low-damage base, but that would have to do for now. I promptly made an Insight (lvl 17 Meditation, yay!) and finally respecced to Wind Druid.
It's a nice feeling, switching from slightly underpowered skill to slightly overpowered. Tornados mowed enemies down left and right, and progress felt super fun. Game decided to congratulate me on that feeling, by dropping a Pul in Kurast Causeway!
Rest of Nightmare went by fast. Hellforge was Sol. Meh. Found first pieces of unique jewelry (Manald and Saracen's) while doing Eldritch runs. Hastur was level 73 when Nightmare Baal dropped.
Then it was time for the Hell to begin. And oh boy did the things get trickier. I was underlevelled, but decided to push on towards the ample chests of Lower Kurast. Did couple of not-very-efficient Pit runs and found my first Elite unique, Spike Thorn. Visited Ancient Tunnels and took my first dirt nap. Ouch. Still, pushed on, basically skipping all the content from Arcane Sanctuary to Lower Kurast, where I entered at the ripe age of level 79, flat.
***
I started to run map with just one fireplace, just to see how it goes. After few runs I found my overall third Lum rune, and was able to make Harmony in a 4 socket Long Bow I found earlier. Other gear included Stealth (25frw), random rare Circlet (30frw) and rare boots (30frw). Run speed was great. Survivability not so much, but hey, that's why I roll Softcore
After around 30 runs I decided to roll for two fireplace map. Found one that was not so great, but decided to roll with it for a while. Runs were between 40 and 50 seconds, sometimes longer. Things started with Um. Next day, Gul. 40 minutes after that, Gul #2. After that: Mal #1 and Mal #2.
Great! At this point I decided to roll better map. After maybe 15 minutes of rolling, I decided to settle with this:
And off we went: Vex, Mal #3, Gul #3, and finally, to finish the first set, Mal #4. Also found 4 Ko's and a Lem, and to top it all, 31mf Gheeds and a Wizardspike from the previous map!
So, after ~6 hours of running, I was already able to cube up CtA! Very nice indeed. Still, I decided to keep my eye on the prize: It was Enigma I was looking here, and I'd better hold on to these lower level runes for a while longer.
At this point I decided to get rid of the Council and Mephisto, with help from some newfound charms. Those Zakarumite made tricky area trickier with the Compelling Orb still intact. I also did couple of Pit runs to get Hastur to level 80. Found first white Monarch, but it rolled 3 sockets . As a consolation prize however, Lidless Wall dropped!
So after I gained the level, back to LK I went. First Um #2, then Gul #4 and next up my first Ohm! Wow. This was going better than expected. But there were still things to come.
Last night, I was gonna go to sleep, but decided to push 50 more runs to put the counter to 750 (I had done around 100-200 runs without counter). Good thing I did. Run 706:
Then, three runs later:
Now that's what I'm talking about! After that, I still found Um #3
Still long way to go, but it's a good feeling, that after ~12 hours of LK I've secured HotO, CtA and 1/3 of Enigma!
(I'll add myself to the table asap when I get it figured out, now I gotta run.)
Hastur, level 80 Wind Druid with Mizan the Prayer Merc, Pandemonium Fortress, Act IV Hell
With my shiny new laptop its time to make a long term entry on here so for now merely welcome Nena the future orbiballer. When i make some decent progress i'll update the table but for now i did a short bit part way round first area merely to check everything was running ok. Still to cross check gomule works and be a fair while before i have the runes to test RWM.
@drmalawi Its ok i'll get there soon enough plus i cna check with my own stash files from a older laptop if i really wanted. Thanks for the offer though.
Were you guys aware that monsters in CS don't disappear if all the seals are hit and all the bosses are dead if they're under the "confuse" proc from a merc's delerium? I thought I may have a bad install or something until I recreated it.
Back from a long hiatus + my account here mysteriously not working here for a while. I'm bringing back my amazon and necromancer which are, in different ways, my two strongest characters, and adding in a sorceress. The latter I'm not sure what to do with yet. She is still cruising through nightmare.
The Amazon named Verisimilitude is an ordinary level 90 lightning javazon capable of clearing anything at /players 8 that's not lightning immune, and the merc + valkyrie can clear up individual LI mobs due to Bonehew + Guillaume's Face + Treachery runeword. Even so, this is a pretty glass cannon character from my experience. I've been alternating between Pindleskin, Shenk/Eldrich, and the Pit. Notable gear is a Lancer's Maiden Javalin (+6 J/S skills), Lancer's Leather Gloves (+3 J/S skills), Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest, Peace, Rhyme, and a Bone Wand with lower resist charges I forgot existed until writing this. Highest runes found are Cham (nearly useless), Gul, Ist, Um.
The Necromancer named Cruise_Control is level 87. While very durable, I have trouble clearing above /players 3 without deeply fortifying myself with bone walls due to low damage output. He has been pretty successful in the Chaos Sanctuary since Bone Spear is well suited for the area. Gear is a bit strange on this. The mercenary has almost no gear, and the character himself has a mixed bag between White+3 bone spear, Smoke on a breast plate, Dwarf Star, Natalya's Soul, a magic +2 to poison/bone skills circlet, etc. Highest runes found are Jah, Um, Lem, Fal. I hope to eventually make an Enigma but that would require I find a Ber rune first, which I have never done on any character.
Agreed at how cool it is to have continued entries and returning entries like @Lord Molybdenum . As for me, it's time for an update:
Champion Phaedrus and Waheed the Might Desert Merc, Lvl 98 (pic)
Since his last update at 97.5, Phaedrus was my entry in RFL Round 3, getting 100M XP over some 19 hours and 40 minutes. Top item finds are here, with a more complete rundown of the RFL set, including runes, here.
I had actually hoped to finish a full 20-hour and then start a second to finish the level and then move back to Pestilence. But I hurt my left hand and ending taking a nearly two-week break to make sure it was okay (which it is ). So we finished the last >30M over the last three days. The last 4M were very lucrative, with an eth Shako and 5/4 lightning skiller dropping from Diablo and an SoJ from a boss (Edit: turns out he had found two SoJs prior to this):
Code:
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defense: 163
Durability: 7 of 7
Required Level: 62
Required Strength: 40
Fingerprint: 0x80073e5e
Item Level: 94
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+2 to All Skills
All Stats +2
+147 to Life (Based on Character Level)
+147 to Mana (Based on Character Level)
Damage Reduced by 10%
50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Ethereal
Rainbow Facet
Jewel
Required Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0x21a95e2f
Item Level: 94
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
100% Chance to cast level 41 Nova when you Level-Up
Adds 1 - 74 Lightning Damage
-5% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+4% to Lightning Skill Damage
The Stone of Jordan
Ring
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0xa82a91f0
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+1 to All Skills
Adds 1 - 12 Lightning Damage
+20 to Mana
Increase Maximum Mana 25%
Other notable finds over the last stretch were Torch of Iro, Nightwing's, eth Demon's Arch, and Trang's helm.
Combined with the drops up to 97.25, 97.5, and the RFL round, I can confirm the hammerdin gives some solid drops while on the journey to 99. Runes for the level were a tad disappointing, I guess, but hardly complaint-worthy:
Code:
Mal x4
Ist x5
Gul x2
Vex x2
Ohm
Lo
Sur
He also picked up an overall grailer, Cranium Basher, so I’m now at grail -4 overall. And he got lots of TC87 items, including some relatively rare ones, plus lots of eth uniques to contribute to my eth grail. The biggest disappointment was charms, with still only 2 skillers and minimal SC upgrades.
Reflections on 97-98. As I speculated before diving into the level, p8/p7 runs ending being more efficient for Phaedrus than Gripphon runs, by a pretty significant amount. I think it’s a combination of two things. First, the map I eventually settled on, which I really like (except I really would have preferred the other de Seis layout for safety), spawns a lot of the map’s boss packs up by de Seis. So it wasn’t optimal for Gripphon runs. Second, being somewhat underpowered (only 10k hammer damage).
That said, the math is pretty interesting, with as much XP from Diablo alone as Vizier + Infector at level 97. Adding in XP for de Seis and occasional shrines for Diablo, I’m unsure it won’t be faster for builds that can handle de Seis in many cases. For me, it was. I was averaging 5.2-5.5M/hr when I checked periodically over the last half level. By comparison, two 10-minute test sessions of Gripp runs were on pace for 4.6M and 4.7M. Small samples, I know, but pretty close together and well below the p8/p7 rates.
I think @Yng requested a video a while back, so I made a short one with two runs for anyone who’s interested. I know the standard approach is to finish on Vizier, but I decided to shake things up because he'll have >5000 counter-clockwise runs for the last level (and the seal shrine was unstable if starting at Infector). I'm also still being cautious with my hand, so that's why I didn't use the tele-trick.
Edit: vid should be working now (had it set to private apparently )
Next Steps. First up is a break from CS. But I think I’ll get back to him to start testing things out, first sticking with the current map at p7. With the SoJ, and I am pretty sure I will drop the Mara’s in favor of 2/10 caster ammy, which means we’ll need to drop the 86 FHR breakpoint and go with Aldur’s boots for fire resists and +life or Waterwalk and fire resist charms. Better charms would provide more options here. I think the merc may get the Shako in place of delerium (which finally got annoying at the end); p7 makes the seal bosses less scary, and I may even end up going down to p1 for de Seis.
I guess I had forgotten that seal bosses and Diablo don’t appear to drop TC 87? That's a bummer. But I think rune drops and eth grail will keep things engaging. I also will probably hit boss packs at times for change at some (or multiple points) over the course of the final level.
I had thought about respecing to a tele-smiter for Nihl, but I haven’t even really looked at his stash for such an approach and realized he has only one respec left. I may test it out with another pally I have at level 92 (my former hammerdin), and if it’s so much faster, I can always look at the stash and see if I can make it work.
Pestilence is still in LK, having completed another 500 runs. But nothing major, so we'll hold off on a full update for him until there is something to report.
Played few hours today and finally got the first ist rune from countess, and later a mal rune, which was enough to make another ist rune.
Had to make some runs to get that normal amy to upgrade the mal runes, kept all normal gems beside amys somehow^^
The cta roll is pretty fine with 4 4 4, coh base was a perfect non ed AP (524 def) which is also fine, although it doesnt rly matter to me^^
Tomorrow i prolly finally start doin some XP if i have time
Sophie has reached the 20% mark. I finished up shortly after the final round of RFL as I wasn't able to invest as much time as I would've liked. Speaking of which we had only one qualifer drop in some 13.5 hours (the only Ber I've had drop on SP) and one Pul shortly after it ended. I've now peaked at some 3.9m/hour (over 10 minute intervals this was the best time I could manage so far) with the new map. I've contemplated rerolling and trying for a 3 shrine map but it may take a while to roll that so I'll wait until I have a better Vipermagi to burn another socket quest and beef up on some PDR. It continued to rain sets/uniques with anotherTal's Armor, an eth Bone Shade, 2 facets (a 5/3 Lightning and a 3/5 Lightning), an Alma Negra, and a Gris Caddy.
I've also been a little more wise following the death and tend to be a little less picky with my Save and Exits but we still had quite a few close calls and need to be better about abandoning some mid-level sketchy mob spawns, even if it deters my exp/hour.
A small update to get back into the swing of things with Klaus:
The merc's new elite Insight has allowed Klaus to run Pindle at /p8 comfortably. It's a bit more dangerous so care must be taken that nobody from the garden sneaks in behind us without Klaus noticing. It's still entertaining and the XP is alright so he stuck it out at Pindle for a while.
Um what. Wow. I guess the break gave Klaus' luck a chance to fill back up a little bit, hopefully this continues with some more useful finds! Another failed Monarch roll for the switch spirit, but I'm in no hurry for that one so I don't mind.
Klaus hit 89 and the XP really slowed down. However, I really didn't feel like rolling AT maps and I like round numbers so Klaus pushed on at Pindle until he hit 90. Only 9 more levels to go!
Next up: roll an AT map and hopefully don't die while getting used to the runs.
Other finds:
- Nat's Armor
- Plain 18 life SC
- Eth Cryptic Axe (tempting to re-roll, but I still want to wait for a Thresher/GThresher)
- Gimmershreds
Glad to see you are back on track, @Pb_pal !!! Keep that guy alive, will you?
As for me ... after what seems like ages, I finally reached the next milestone with Neverland:
That's right, level 98.5 !! Actually, when I play Neverland, xp progress isn't too bad, averaging 3M/hour lately. I just should play her much, instead of getting sidetracked by RFLs, Septs, other 99ers, ...
Well, at that 3M/hour rate, which I'm quite certain I can maintain, it's less than 50 hours to go . Can't be that bad, right? Well, with only Neverland and ShouldBeEasy as D2 goals for now, progress will hopefully be steady on both.
As far as drops go, things have been incredibly sad for a very long time now. Besides the Ohm I posted about earlier, nothing in terms of runes. Nothing that would count as RFL qualifier, but most of the times not even higher than Amn or Hel. How @Grape managed to do so well in RFL round 3, running Nihl, is a mistery to me. Then again it was about time our one and only true Zod God got rewarded, so ...
As far as S/U go, it's the same story. Which makes the grind really a grind. Good thing that Nihl requires constant focus, and I can alternate with ShouldBeEasy.
Speaking about him ... nothing to report I'm afraid. Some more LK runs, putting him at some 660 runs in total, but no sign of the Ohm, Sur or Ber runes I'm looking for. He's patient though.
Working on it. I think ~3k life should help me in that regard, you just make sure you do the same with your hammerdin! Also, gogogogogogogogogo 98.5!!!!!
Usually, i'm doing updates after quite some time, but what happened to me now (few moments ago) made my jaws dropped down, despite the fact i'm playing this game for more then decade
Bugged Pindle drop, seen it many times, but never with such high quality item...almost worth of new IFT Now i'm forced to finish this character all the way
Also this
Considering only 100%MF or so my character has, these are incredible drops
GL
Edit:
Just in case, there are readouts of items:
Code:
Immortal King's Soul Cage
Sacred Armor
Defense: 1301
Durability: 48 of 60
Required Strength: 232
Required Level: 76
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0x265ec60a
+400 Defense
Poison Resist +50%
+2 to Combat Skills (Barbarian Only)
5% Chance to cast Level 5 Enchant when struck
***Partial Set Item Bonuses***
25% Faster Hit Recovery
Cold Resist +40%
Fire Resist +40%
Lightning Resist +40%
+50% Enhanced Defense
***Partial Set Item Bonuses***
Immortal King's Soul Cage
Sacred Armor
Defense: 1301
Durability: 44 of 60
Required Strength: 232
Required Level: 76
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xd5fca442
+400 Defense
Poison Resist +50%
+2 to Combat Skills (Barbarian Only)
5% Chance to cast Level 5 Enchant when struck
***Partial Set Item Bonuses***
25% Faster Hit Recovery
Cold Resist +40%
Fire Resist +40%
Lightning Resist +40%
+50% Enhanced Defense
***Partial Set Item Bonuses***
Dragonscale
Zakarum Shield
Defense: 562
Chance to Block: 42%
Smite Damage: 46 to 46
Durability: 35 of 65
(Paladin Only)
Required Strength: 142
Required Level: 80
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xd353d475
+20 to Strength
+190% Enhanced Defense
+5% to Maximum Fire Resist
Adds 211-371 fire damage
+10 to Hydra
16% Fire Absorb
+15% to Fire Skill Damage
Hey! Lurked this thread for a little while and it urged me to start playing some D2.
I rolled an Amazon last week, and after a few solid sessions, I quested all the way through to Baal for the first time in my life.
Arizona the javazon is now sitting at level 31, and I'm still deciding whether to jump headfirst into nightmare mode, or run Act IV a few times more before I save Sanctuary in full once again.
Baal took me about 20 minutes in total, and I was TPing back and forth for a lot of the fight, so I feel like I could benefit from the extra runs.
The lowlight so far has been rerunning Countess numerous times to make Ancient's Pledge, but then putting the runes into body armour because I mis-remembered the wiki article I'd been reading.
I'm not sure just yet when I'll get another chance to sit down and play for a solid session. I'm going to set my goal as climbing the ladder one rung at a time, and I'll update with each movement up the ladder
@Burton Roberts Cool, welcome here and welcome to this fun little project.
Level 31 is too low for NM. I'd gain some 10 - 12 more levels before going there. This will go fastest at Pindle (through the red portal next to Anya in Act 5) or Eldritch, just north of the first waypoint in Act 5. Bump up the player setting as high as you can while still maintaining decent killing speed and staying safe. I assume you are using Lightning Fury, which should clear both packs fast enough, even with junk gear.
Also, the runes for Ancient's Pledge or a quest reward in Act 5 when you rescue the barbs, so you wouldn't have needed to run countess for it. Not much lost though, you don't need good resists to do Pindle or Eldritch, and the runes for Ancient's Pledge will drop soon enough. Personally I'd go for Rhyme in a Bone Shield though, as soon as you find a Shael and a 2os Bone Shield. Res all, cannot be frozen, increased blocking and some mf = win. For the head slot, make Lore (Ort Sol) in a 2os Helm. Please do it in a circlet type though, as Amazons look stupid with most other headgear. As body armor, Stealth (Tal Eth) is a very good choice, giving frw and fhr.
Last but not least, remember that Decoy is your best friend. Put a few points in it and let it take the heat of you, while at the same time attracting monsters. After all, more monsters = more efficient Lightning Fury.
@Burton Roberts Cool, welcome here and welcome to this fun little project.
Level 31 is too low for NM. I'd gain some 10 - 12 more levels before going there. This will go fastest at Pindle (through the red portal next to Anya in Act 5) or Eldritch, just north of the first waypoint in Act 5. Bump up the player setting as high as you can while still maintaining decent killing speed and staying safe. I assume you are using Lightning Fury, which should clear both packs fast enough, even with junk gear.
Also, the runes for Ancient's Pledge or a quest reward in Act 5 when you rescue the barbs, so you wouldn't have needed to run countess for it. Not much lost though, you don't need good resists to do Pindle or Eldritch, and the runes for Ancient's Pledge will drop soon enough. Personally I'd go for Rhyme in a Bone Shield though, as soon as you find a Shael and a 2os Bone Shield. Res all, cannot be frozen, increased blocking and some mf = win. For the head slot, make Lore (Ort Sol) in a 2os Helm. Please do it in a circlet type though, as Amazons look stupid with most other headgear. As body armor, Stealth (Tal Eth) is a very good choice, giving frw and fhr.
Last but not least, remember that Decoy is your best friend. Put a few points in it and let it take the heat of you, while at the same time attracting monsters. After all, more monsters = more efficient Lightning Fury.
Oh, yes! I forgot to mention -- I went after Ancient's Pledge while I was still in Act 3, because Mephisto one-shotted me on my first attempt. Thus it was a little too early to get the Act 5 quest reward.
Thanks for the NM advice!
I haven't invested too heavily into Lightning Fury. At least not yet. I think I put something ridiculous like 10 points into plague javelin, just because I thought it looked cool, and I saw a cool video on YouTube of someone using it. I'll likely respec eventually, but I was able to persevere with my current build through to unlocking Valkyrie, and that helped a fair bit in bringing down Baal.
I think I already have a Shael and Thul as it is. I was planning to make Peace in body armour for the +2 to Amazon skills. Just waiting on an Amn.
I'll see how I go with some Pindle runs over the next week, although I did feel like taking out all the skeletons took quite a long time, because I'm somewhat ranged, and their lunges really penalise me for that. Thus the thought to do Chaos Sanctuary, because my combat routine gets interrupted less frequently.
It's nice to see the increased activity! I can tell the RFL finished.
@Burton Roberts - Welcome to the SPF! You should make an introduction thread and let everyone say hi. Nice choice on the character.
For myself, after killing off my other HC amazon, I decided it's probably best for me to continue this in SC. Trina has finished Hell Act III and is beginning the long process of collecting the runes for Enigma + Conviction. Went the pure lightning path with a lvl 17 Valkyrie to help out my mercenary with lightning immunes while I jabbed and pretended I was helping.
No exciting finds while questing, but found an Eschuta's Temper during my first 50 LK runs. So far just an Ist after 300 runs.
After a good start at LK, with a Vex and several other Pul+ runes, the last 500 runs only gave me a Pul, so that is disappointing. I really hope to find that Ohm soon, so I can leave LK for a while to level up some more. LK with a running character isn't really exciting. On the upside: it is very safe !!!
O yes, also ... so close ...
Code:
Expert's Grand Charm of Vita
Grand Charm
Required Level: 69
Fingerprint: 0xec2bb387
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+1 to Combat Skills (Barbarian Only)
+38 to Life
Btw, I'm also still looking for a suitable base for CtA and HotO. Can I have a shot with Low Quality items in the cube, converting them to normal first and then try my luck in the cube to roll some sockets? The ilvl=1 thingy in that recipe always confuses me ...
When we left Arizona, she was a lowly level 31, on the verge of the risky move of jumping straight into Nightmare.
But, thanks to great advice from one @T72on1, she instead turned her mind to some power leveling, to get some much-needed experience before embarking on the quest to save Sanctuary once more.
The original plan: Rain down retribution upon Chaos Sanctuary once more!
But, for some reason, the Sanctuary turned out a lot harder the second go around. The Infector of Souls was the main culprit. He and his mob chalked up two extra deaths against our hero while she tried in vain to end the Lord of Terror.
So, following the sage advice of the forum, we shifted attention to Pindleskin.
She grinded. And as she grinded, she invested more and more of her talents into Lightning Fury. Initially, there was confusion. Is a "Pindle run" just about killing the big skelly himself? Or is it about killing his friends as well? But as the Lightning Fury skill grew, the answer became apparent. Kill everything. Because it looks amazing.
In the course of the grind, Arizona discovered a piece of 3-socket body armor. This was a good place to store the Shael and Thul runes she'd found earlier.
Reaching level 40 and feeling confident, it was time to go back to the Chaos Sanctuary and show Diablo (and more importantly the Infector of Souls) who's boss.
This time, there was success. The seals were open, the fight was on. Valkyries dropped left, right, and centre, as Diablo unleashed his hose lightning. The ordeal took a dishearteningly long time, but finally, she put Normal Diablo down for a second time.
From there, I loaded up a Nightmare game. Found an Amn rune to go with Shael and Thul for the Peace runeword.
After a fairly long session, which saw Arizona die at the foot of the Tree of Inifuss, I ended up clearing the first four quests of Act 1. I also switched one of my javelins out for one which gives +Javelin Skills which has been a fun addition, although it replaced a javelin that had +Quantity and Replenishes stack. Thanks in part to taking the time to clear out extra dungeons on the way, she is now level 47.
The big issue for me is that the Blood Raven fight took an awfully long time. Maybe it's because she was moving too fast to be caught by any of my missiles. In the end my valkyrie and I just put her in a corner and we meleed her to death while she just stood there shooting us. That was a gruelling fight, but I'm not sure of any other bosses that move as fast as her, so it might not be too big of a problem.
Anyway, as promised, an updated ladder, since I moved
Ric has hit 96, guess it's time for a small update possibly the last one for a while.
After hitting 95 and finishing RFL round 3 in Pits at 95.3, he's been doing Ventar runes almost exclusively. Reported his RFL non-qualifier drops here, here and here (though some of these were before 95), and he hasn't found anything worth mentioning from 95.3 to 96 running Ventar. Apart from the Pul and Vex from chests, I never reported his qualifer finds since the last RFL round started though, so these are his meager two RFL R3 Mals and another one from Baal waves:
He's using this gear currently for Baal:
Shako (PTopaz)
Enigma BP
Beast Double Axe
Spirit
Magefist
Verdungo's (10% PDR )
Mara's (20@ )
2x rare rings with FCR, 14/15 MF and other stats (res, life...)
Aldur's
Inventory: 4x Summon skillers, Gheed's, bunch of life/resist SCs.
So yeah, still missing Andy's for Merc, Arachnid Mesh and + skill rings.
RNG has been failing me a lot lately, not only in terms of rune drops during RFL but also regarding S&Us. Pits delivered a couple of sweet S&U drops to be fair, but nothing he can use and no upgrades for my twinked characters. Also regarding speed, especially in comparison to my Lightning Sorc, this guy is obviously less of a Ferrari but more like a family van. Somehow Baal waves began to bore me much quicker than they did with the Sorc. I am considering going back to Pits actually, despite my aversion of knowingly giving up on quite a bit of efficiency. I'll have to check is XP gain numbers again now at 96, though now I expect Pits to be at least 20-25% worse than Baal waves. But it's much more interesting to run of course, so I might at least mix it in going forward.
Generally, the lack of exciting drops recently, combined with the dullness of Baal waves is not great for motivation I suppose. As a result he'll likely take a small break for now. I still have my sept project and will start the Paladin for that as I had been meaning to after RFL ended anyway. But finishing the 99er Sorc and RFL was a lot of D2 recently, so I might take a break from the game for a little while. Once the nice weather stops and some rainy weekends come around, I'll try to pick up speed with him again.
Forumite Character SC/HC Class Level Exp Date E/S S/U Grail Deaths Hours
--------------- --------------- ----- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --- ---- ----- ------ -----
Bewitch itsreal HC Sorc 87 1.xx 2018-04-24 No - - - -
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 86 1.15 2018-01-10 Yes - - 1 -
Vildecor Celia HC Ama 84 0.99 2018-05-30 Yes 125 97 1 -
coju NintyNine_orRiP HC Sorc 81 0.74 2016-04-07 Yes - - 1 -
TwentyMuleTeam Valus HC Barb 76 0.48 2016-10-27 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Pala 76 0.48 2017-06-19 Yes - - 1 -
weezaard Cypher SC Druid 66 0.00 2018-02-21 Yes - - 20+ -
Tenecabo OldShatterhand HC Druid 49 0.04 2016-06-16 Yes - 0 1 -
Pijus Pyrestarter HC Druid 36 0.00 2018-05-21 Yes - - 1 -
coju fB HC Sorc 29 0.00 2016-04-09 Yes 1 1 1 2
Kitteh Verallus HC Druid 26 0.00 2016-03-25 No - - 1 -
logoutzero Rolex HC Barb 21 0.00 2016-03-26 Yes 0 0 1 1
Edit: Moved a couple of older entries to the inactive table to clean up the table a bit so that the scrolling disappears. Feel free to move Ric also if you don't hear from him.
Edit: Moved a couple of older entries to the inactive table to clean up the table a bit so that the scrolling disappears. Feel free to move Ric also if you don't hear from him.
I just want to correct the record, because last night I said Arizona had completed four quests in Nightmare, but I realised that I hadn't actually found the Countess's Tower yet. I just made the mistake because I had the Horadric Malus quest in my log.
So, this morning, she made three adventures into the Tower. First to complete the quest. Second to level up to 48. Third to collect some runes, because the first two drops weren't stellar.
Things were going quite quickly, though without much loot, until the third run when I had another signature brainfart moment and opened a normal game instead of a nightmare game, meaning I had to re-roll the map and take significantly longer.
But there was a payoff this time with 1x Io rune and 1x Nef rune.
What's so exciting about a Nef rune? Well, I also had 2x of Eth, Ith, Tal, and Ral in my stash, and no need for them at any time in the future. So I spent a good minute in front of the Horadric cube having the satisfaction of clearing up a bunch of space and levelling up my runes.
I might run Countess one more time for a Sol rune soon, because I have a two socket circlet lying around that I want to turn into Lore.
The loot from this run.
First run had some disappointing loot.
Second run was a bit of an improvement, but I forgot to screenshot before picking it all up.
Third run! Don't know if I have a need for the Io rune yet.
My stats
And I know it's a bit cheeky, but I've updated the ladder to put myself on top of the other level 48
[ tables removed to reduce post size to < 100000 characters ]
It’s been a while since I had an update for Pestilence. He finished up his 1000 LK runs and is halfway to the next level. So I figured it was time for an update.
When last we heard from Pestilence, he had just finished 200 LK runs toward the goal of 1000 runs before returning to the Pits. The next 300 runs saw Mal #6 and three Ums (up to #9), with a nice eth Unique Sash dropping. He also got a 3/20 circlet but for the wrong class.
I almost broke down and went back to the Pits, but managed to press on to 750 runs, with Vex #5 and two Puls (up to #10). He then finished up the 1000 runs yesterday, with Ist #3 the only drop of note besides this FCR ring upgrade.
With cubing, he has a Sur, so kind of disappointing on progress toward Infinity makings. But at this point, we moved on to pushing for level 95 before deciding whether to return to LK. Things started off nicely with Stormspire followed by this beauty:
This was enough to give up his map and return to Normal to socket and personalize his DWeb :
Code:
Pestilence's Death's Web
Unearthed Wand
One Hand Damage: 22 - 28
Durability: 18 of 18
Required Level: 66
Required Strength: 25
Fingerprint: 0xf4413a6c
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
100% Chance to cast level 51 Poison Nova when you Die
+2 to All Skills
+2 to Poison and Bone Skills (Necromancer Only)
Adds 37 Poison Damage Over 2 Secs (50 Frames)
-48% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+5% to Poison Skill Damage
+9 to Mana after each Kill
+9 Life after each Kill 1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Rainbow Facet
Rainbow Facet
Jewel
Required Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0xd99b342a
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
100% Chance to cast level 51 Poison Nova when you Die
Adds 37 Poison Damage Over 2 Secs (50 Frames)
-5% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+5% to Poison Skill Damage
Rerolling maps took a while, with a unique Sacred Armor dropping along the way to finding his current map. It's a very compact t-shape, and he just focuses on the left arm to level 2, with decent boss pack density but sometimes only 2 boss packs on level 2.
Only other drops of note were two Eaglehorns within an hour of each other earlier today. He’s now at 94.5, and I’m hoping to get him to the level by next weekend. We’ll see.
Phaedrus also has gotten a few test runs, quickly dumping the map he used for 97-98, and settling on another three-shrine one for now to test out various p-setting combos. Without more skillers, he is probably going to stick with p1 for Infector and de Seis and p7 for Vizier and Diablo.
* * *
Oh yeah, the Sacred Armor was another Templar’s , so now 3 out of 4 of my untwinked 99ers have found one (and my fifth overall). Still waiting for Tyrael’s!
Found the 3. Jah today and onother ist and some lem-mal runes. Also my first (non eth) reapers but i think im gonna stay
on my non eth insight gt setup for now, its just very comfortable. Also lvled her to 95 now.
@Burton Roberts Congrats on the progress. The other people as well of course !!
If I were you, I'd respec your skills. Only put 1 point in the poison javelin skills, as a prereq. You'll only have lightning skills, but you'll just skip LIs at first, and after you have hit LK for the runes for Infinity, even those won't be a problem anymore. Max Lightning Fury first. Next skill to max is Charged Strike, which is the boss killer of choice. With that one you won't find that fights like Blood Raven take long anymore . After that it doesn't really matter which of the other LF synergies you max first.
I personally prefer to max Decoy at some point and leave Valk and D/A/E alltogether. But that is a matter of taste. No extra points in Critical Strike or Penetrate. Enough skills in Penetrate to reach level 9 (69% chance to pierce) after +skills. The unique belt Razortail will take that to 100% Pierce in total.
As for stat points it's either 156 strength at some point (not now though, only by the time you reach Hell) if you want a Spirit Monarch, or much less if you don't. I wouldn't put many points in it at first though, as you'll want to use Enigma, which already gives a lot of +strenght. Dex I'm not sure to be honest, but I'd say enough to use Titan's. Rest in Vita.
Good luck !!!
As for ShouldBeEasy, he finally had three more good runes after a dry streak:
OK, now that I have made it to Act 5 and not brought shame upon my family by dying to Normal Diablo, my HC untwinked Barbarian Terrahork can 'safely' join in the fun...
I played through Normal this weekend using the standard speed run setup of scavenging enough gold for a pair of Scepters from Akara, then switching to a Steel Flail with a 3x Tal Flail in the offhand.
This worked pretty well up until the end of Act 5. I had to park Lister's wave, and Baal took a while to whack to death with my pair of noodles. On the plus side, my efforts were rewarded with the first decent drop for Terrahork:
After this I whacked Eldritch, Shenk, and Pindle a few times in the hope that RNGesus would bless me with a Unique Maul.
My prayers went unanswered, though I did find an Amn rune and Civerb's Seal Clubbing Club.
Equipped with my new Strength Flail and Civerb's Cudgel combo I decided to make a 'brief' foray into Nightmare in order to try and procure myself some better weapons.
Terrahork cleared up to the Black Marsh without much issue, and ended up with a pretty nice BM waypoint right by the Tower.
The Tower was somewhat precarious, thanks to the abundance of archers. Unfortunately, the weapon rack on level 1 right by the door seemed pretty stable on something useless, so I was forced to venture deeper...
Eventually I made it to The Countess, and en route my fortunes took a turn for the better when a 4-open socket Partizan was dropped by a wee Fallen dude. A quick browse of my runes showed I was only short of a Sol for Insight. Things were looking up, I thought, a couple of runs and the Countess will surely drop a Sol for me!
Needless to say a clown fiesta ensued in which I did probably 10 runs or more with my noodle weapons making a run take 5-10 minutes. I did have to perform a hasty S&E thanks to a Lightning Enchanted archer pack on level 5 (my mighty -17 light res probably didn't help here). Eventually I found 3 more Amn runes to make my Sol, before realising I was short of a chipped amethyst despite saving all my chipped gems on the playthrough.
I was at least rewarded for my extra runs with a nice amulet from a chest:
Thankfully Arcane Sanctuary on /p5 yielded the required chipped amethyst almost immediately, and with that I was able to craft a lovely new whacking stick and respec into Whirlwind.
Terrahork is now level 35, and my current plan is to farm a pair of Sigon's Gloves from Council/Mephisto/Eldritch/Shenk/Pindle for that juicy 30% IAS and 10% LL bonus (I have the belt already) before settling in to a bunch of normal Baal runs. Also I'm hoping to find a new helm- the Fanged Helm dropped by Baal turned out to actually be very good (+1 Barb skills, +40 Life amongst other mods) but has the serious downside of being unbelievably ugly.
When we last left Arizona, she was a few quests into Act 1 of Nightmare, and still without a Sol rune to make Lore.
I am pleased to reveal that the rest of Act 1 went a breeze, and not only that -- Act 2 was insanely fast. I blinked and I missed it. Duriel felt almost too easy, and I'm not entirely sure how it happened.
After killing Duriel, I went back for a Countess run, and somehow died to a Fallen. Sad how quickly heroes can fall.
But regardless, she still got that Sol rune
From there, things got sketchy. The first couple of quests in Act 3 went quickly, but a surprise unique mob in the Flayer Jungle claimed her life.
Pushing on, an Undead Soul Killer ambush in the Kurast Sewers claimed her life again.
But she pushed on, completed that quest, and then headed into Upper Kurast. Here, she was again killed while investigating one of the temples.
This was all happening during level 55, which was my target level for this update.
So, she left Act 3, and headed back to the fake Tombs of Tal Rasha, hoping to clear out some mobs and collect some extra experience.
After reaching Level 56, I jumped into Act 1 and reset skills and stats. I went for a more streamline build with 20 points in each of Lightning Fury and Valkyrie. I have tons of +Skills to make this work for now.
Going to get on the grind a bit before heading back to Act III. Five deaths in a few days was pretty brutal.
[ tables removed to reduce post size to < 100000 characters ]
Decided to start some AT running now, so I bit the bullet and rolled a semi-decent map. The runs are okay for now, though still a bit clumsy due to the FI Invaders that like to romp around in there. Even though Pindle's XP is no longer great, I'm still mixing in some runs here and there as they are less stressful and dangerous than the AT for Klaus right now. It's tough to justify leaving him for good when he keeps paying Klaus back with finds like these. His minions have also been the best source for elite polearms so far, so I'm still holding out hope for an appropriate base for Klaus' future Infinity. So far we've got a couple non-eth ones with 4-sockets, so at least I have options if I get truly sick of waiting.
This level seemed to have a class-specific theme to it in terms of finds. During this level Klaus found the entire Mav'sset minus the bow, Wolfhowl, Homunculus and 2x Bartucs. Weird. As he was approaching 92 he made up his mind this would be the last level he bothered white Pindle, since the XP just isn't enough to justify it any more. Well I guess Pindle caught wind of this and decided to leave Klaus with one last parting gift (and another class-specific item to boot!):
Amazing! I don't ever remember Pindle being this fruitful for MFing, he has far outclassed the AT so far (though that sample size is small). Even better? Look at the roll on this thing:
Code:
Ravenlore
Sky Spirit
Defense: 361
Durability: 12 of 20
Required Level: 74
Required Strength: 113
Fingerprint: 0x7e5a6a7a
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+3 to Elemental Skills (Druid Only)
-20% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+7 to Raven (Druid Only)
+132% Enhanced Defense
+30 to Energy
All Resistances +23
Perfect -eFR, and almost perfect resistances. Wow!
In terms of wishlist items for Klaus, this is right at the top. Literally, the top item. It's a grailer for me too, as I've never found one in SC either. It was immediately socketed and a PTopaz put in there as a placeholder for a Fire Facet if we are lucky enough to find one.
As a thank you, Klaus spent the remainder of the level at Pindle. Does that count as thanks? Killing him a pile more times? Whatever, I think Pindle liked the company.
Wow, Klaus has really had some nice luck, grats!! Now PLEASE don't deed him.
Pb_pal said:
Amazing! I don't ever remember Pindle being this fruitful for MFing, he has far outclassed the AT so far (though that sample size is small). Even better?
Pindle is a better MF target than AT/Pits in most scenarios no? He just can't drop Tyrael's which is a big factor of course... But I was never able to roll a Pit map (or AT) that was so spectacular that it beat Pindle efficiency in general. Might try again though, maybe before hopefully MFO taking place in late summer.
In other news, I had to leave my MacBook at the Apple Store for repair today, no D2 for a while I'm afraid.
Pindle is a better MF target than AT/Pits in most scenarios no? He just can't drop Tyrael's which is a big factor of course... But I was never able to roll a Pit map (or AT) that was so spectacular that it beat Pindle efficiency in general. Might try again though, maybe before hopefully MFO taking place in late summer.
Yes that's true, I should have said Pindle has never been that fruitful *for me specifically*. Then again, I haven't spent a ton of time with him so maybe he just needed time to get to know me a bit.
I really hope to find that Ohm soon, so I can leave LK for a while to level up some more. LK with a running character isn't really exciting. On the upside: it is very safe !!!
Hmm, interesting suggestion. However, I'm not sure how comfortable it would be to do RoF with a running character, without crowd control and only 1300 life, on /p7. Moreover, ultimately it's also Enigma I'm after, so my best bet probably still is LK. That Ohm will drop eventually. I even don't need that many of Gul/Ist/Vex anymore to cube up to Ohm, I think.
Speaking about Enigma ... had another Sur drop only 200 runs after the first (run 1281) and then Lo from a corpse at run 1299. Definitely a very lucky stretch there . I'll post screenies when I'm at home.
Edit:
@Pb_pal Congrats on the Druid pelt, that is awesome !! Didn't you also find a DWeb quite early on for you Blizz Sorc?
DFathom, but yes. I think Eleanor was 93 when she found it. This thread seems to have some sort of mojo for getting people the drops they need, I know a few other chars have lucked out too. I'm fully expecting a complete drought of luck for the foreseeable future, which is troubling since I still need quite a few gear pieces (Arach, a 2nd 4s Monarch, a good polearm for the merc + Infinity ingredients, and more).
HelpYourself - Griffon's: More common but almost perfect 15/19 and a 5/5 facet to go with it. I didn't complain!
Neptune found Griffon's also recently, though she is not spec'ed Lightning currently I think.
Pestilence is absolutely disgusting: DWeb, several Vita skillers and a 2/20 amulet. Though I guess that was overdue as @PhineasB had a tendency before to find stuff like DWeb, DFathom and Griffon's with the wrong characters. Or lose them due to deaths during corpse recovery.
Runewords are just a matter of time of course considering LK, but still cool to see people just grinding those untwinked Enigmas and Infinities without it taking all that much time actually. That's what I love about this "tournament" - thanks to all the accumulated knowledge and testing here over many years, we have a very good idea of what to do and when to do it in order to make the most efficient progress in theory. And this is the place to make the most use of all that.
In hindsight I could’ve definitely made more use of Pindle prior to Nihlathak kill/farming. A bit risky now with the step down the stairs right into the pack and the desire to gain XP being more than ever with the end in sight. To be fair, it could’ve been essentially wasted hours with only one real target drop in Griffon’s and it’s not like Shako is terrible either.
Hmm, interesting suggestion. However, I'm not sure how comfortable it would be to do RoF with a running character, without crowd control and only 1300 life, on /p7. Moreover, ultimately it's also Enigma I'm after, so my best bet probably still is LK. That Ohm will drop eventually. I even don't need that many of Gul/Ist/Vex anymore to cube up to Ohm, I think.
Ah, I forgot you aren't running a sorc. Makes sense to avoid it. In terms of Enigma, RoF isn't too far off LK. I think its 3.5 Jah equivalents vs. 4.0 in LK (assuming you cube from Sur). But if you kill some Finger Mages this helps make up for it, and gives you some experience. Main problem is 2 chests vs 6 will rarely be competitive.
Drops were Windforce and a wisp protector ring.
Still using a nagel 30 cause i didnt find any useful non fc ring so far (no dwarf..) but well, why not take the mf.
I also made a dream and tried it with reapers and duriels armor on merc, (1 Lo rune missing to get a ber for coh, and also dont have
any eth bugged armor so far) but i rly got used to insight, so i switched back to my current normal setup with insight gt, duriels and gaze
until i find that runes to make CoH.
Decided to start some AT running now, so I bit the bullet and rolled a semi-decent map. The runs are okay for now, though still a bit clumsy due to the FI Invaders that like to romp around in there.
Man, I wish I had lucked out like that . . . oh, right!
ffs said:
Pestilence is absolutely disgusting: DWeb, several Vita skillers and a 2/20 amulet. Though I guess that was overdue as @PhineasB had a tendency before to find stuff like DWeb, DFathom and Griffon's with the wrong characters. Or lose them due to deaths during corpse recovery.
For the record, Hiatus didn't lose any real top-end gear from her mishap. Only the socketed Shako was really a loss that couldn't be replaced fairly easily. But I agree with everything else @ffs said
As for Mausoleum, @Tarantella actually ran all the way to level 96 focusing mostly there before he seemed to abandon the project. His HC sorc is in the resting heroes table.
Low monster density and too far from any WPs for fast running. Once I get an Infinity it will break normal Invaders' immunities too, so it will just be the occasional unbreakable boss that I can't kill.
Finally hit lvl 96! Only took me about 4 months. =P
Most of the level as been played whenever I felt like squeezing in some runs in between other games; which was less than a handful of runs at a time. The progress was very slow, and I expect it to get slower from here on out.
Some exp numbers :
- /p8 2-seal runs = 6m/h
- /p5 2-seal runs = 4.5m/h
- /p3 2-seal runs = 3.5m/h
Note, this is just a rough estimate based on what I remember, and the exp/h varied greatly on higher player settings. The kill speed was very slow on higher settings, and I ran out of arrows more often than I liked with some unlucky streak of no arrow drops. The sweet spot for being able to kill fast enough while not running out of arrows seemed to be /p5. Thus, most of the level was ran on /p5.
Some drops from this level :
- 2x Jahs; posted here and here. That's 2 full Faith-worth of runes with cubing some lower runes.
- eth Demon Head, also posted above on the 2nd link. I did forget to post the stats there though, so here it is. I plan on equipping the merc with Guilliaume's, so I decided against using Larzuk on it.
Andariel's Visage
Demonhead
Defense: 464
Durability: 11 of 11
Required Level: 83
Required Strength: 92
Fingerprint: 0x81f7a72c
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
15% Chance to cast level 15 Poison Nova when struck
+2 to All Skills
+20% Increased Attack Speed
10% Life stolen per hit
+100% Enhanced Defense
+27 to Strength
+10% to Maximum Poison Resist
Fire Resist -30%
Poison Resist +70%
Level 3 Venom (18/20 Charges) Ethereal
- this sweet sharp gc. Dropped earlier today, just a couple runs before the level up.
- Another life skiller. Will be in my giveaway as soon as I update it.
- Shimmering GC with life. First I've found I believe... Also going to the giveaway.
Future plans :
- I had moved out Hone Sundan and Guilliaume's thinking i'd never need them, but it looks stacking CB on the merc is the way to go for p1/7 CS runs. Will be running /p3 Pindle for the next little while before switching to p1/7 Diablo runs.
Wishlist :
- 4os GMB. Every GMB so far has been 3os or 5os... I have enough runes for 2 Faiths, so I'll even settle for +1x/bow for now.
- Cat's Eye. Apparently rarer than Windforce from mobs in CS. Will settle for Highlords, Maras, or even some rare Ammy with ll and resists. The rare ammy will free up a ring slot for a Dwarfs to let me tank Diablo's firestorm.
- Fleshripper. Why would I ever tank the firestorm? So I can poke him with this dagger. lol.
- 3os/30frw tiara. I'd love to try socketing +max damage jewels in them. I have some 20+ max damage jewels in the stash. +70max damage tiara anyone? =D nvm I guess it wont be really worth it.
- aforementioned Guilliuames and Hone Sundan.
- eth Elite armor to e-bug into 3os for Treachery.
Question :
- Reapers vs Hone Sundan for Boss killing? I can melt rest of the CS mobs on /p1 with multishot, so it just comes down to decrep with CB just from Guilliaumes versus the extra CB from Hone sundan. I'll test it out myself once I find Hone Sundan, but any info on it will be much appreciated.
Forumite Character SC/HC Class Level Exp Date E/S S/U Grail Deaths Hours
--------------- --------------- ----- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --- ---- ----- ------ -----
Bewitch itsreal HC Sorc 87 1.xx 2018-04-24 No - - - -
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 86 1.15 2018-01-10 Yes - - 1 -
Vildecor Celia HC Ama 84 0.99 2018-05-30 Yes 125 97 1 -
coju NintyNine_orRiP HC Sorc 81 0.74 2016-04-07 Yes - - 1 -
TwentyMuleTeam Valus HC Barb 76 0.48 2016-10-27 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Pala 76 0.48 2017-06-19 Yes - - 1 -
weezaard Cypher SC Druid 66 0.00 2018-02-21 Yes - - 20+ -
Tenecabo OldShatterhand HC Druid 49 0.04 2016-06-16 Yes - 0 1 -
Pijus Pyrestarter HC Druid 36 0.00 2018-05-21 Yes - - 1 -
coju fB HC Sorc 29 0.00 2016-04-09 Yes 1 1 1 2
Kitteh Verallus HC Druid 26 0.00 2016-03-25 No - - 1 -
logoutzero Rolex HC Barb 21 0.00 2016-03-26 Yes 0 0 1 1
EDIT: moved @darkstarhub to Resting Heroes to get rid of scroll bar in the main tab. Also updated my date to correct year. lol.
EDIT2: One wasn't enough. moved @drmalawi as well.
- Cat's Eye. Apparently rarer than Windforce from mobs in CS. Will settle for Highlords, Maras, or even some rare Ammy with ll and resists. The rare ammy will free up a ring slot for a Dwarfs to let me tank Diablo's firestorm.
@Hutton You are right! I had spent all my P Rubys on Blood rings, so that hadn't occured to me. I'll keep that ammy in mind as I test out the p1/7 runs.
In the late stages though, it'll have to be The Cat's Eye for the extra frw.
Haha yeah the table is getting somewhat difficult to keep clean. It's definitely cool that so many people join the awesomeness in here, so that takes priority! But maybe we should just move characters that haven't been active for say ~3 months to the "resting" table instead of randomly kicking people out? (Seeing as e.g. @darkstarhub is in fact active )
@ffs oops my bad. I just went with whoever seemed months behind their neighbours. =P I agree it's cool seeing this many participants for the 99 madness. lol. And yes 3 month period of inactivity - or any set period - sounds great as a separator between resting and questing tables. I know for one I will bounce between the two quite a bit myself, seeing that I'm definitely on the slower end of general updates and progression.
@Kitteh since you are the host, what do you think?
3 months without an update seems perfectly reasonable to me for the drop down. If anything you could post a small update anytime within that window if you’re bent on staying “active” while playing minimally.
@T72on1 Hmm I do have one already made on a Thresher. What would you equip for the helm and armor? He does need lifesteal, so I'm guessing vamp gaze and Treachery? I'll have to see how that setup does compared to Reaper/Guilliaume/Treachery and Hone Sundan/Guilliaume/Treachery. Thanks for the suggestion, I had sorta tossed Obedience into the stash and forgot about it. =P
Obedience/CoH/Delirium gives you a nice balance of safety (CC from Confuse since you aren’t overlapped with Decrepify) and CB but I’m not sure it’s necessary on SC. You’re probably better off with Pride if Faith equipped.
E: to elaborate I feel like Treachery loses some of its kick in CS where curses are so common and you can’t actually make use of the nearly 80% curse duration reduction from Fade. The IAS is still nice, though.
Armed with his new Insight whacking stick, Terrahork killed normal Baal a bunch (after farming up some Sigon's Gloves from Mephisto) until I got fed up around level 45- multiple runs were required per level at this point, and I had acquired absolutely zero useful or interesting drops other than a pair of almost incredible boots that I posted in the IFT...
With vaguely respectable (+ve) resistances I decided to progress to Nightmare.
NM progress was fairly quick and easy, up until Act 3 Flayer Dungeon.
I turned my music off to enter tryhard mode, allowing me to hear the pitter patter of ridiculous damage. With Doll Anxiety at maximum I descended into the darkness.
Needless to say literally the first pack of Stygian Dolls I encountered was a Fire Enchanted and Cursed. A rather ballsy Whirlwind left me with 300 hp or so (from ~1700) after the boss and two of the other minions ran into it mid animation. The remainder of the dungeon was much less exciting, though I was even more cautious of dolls. I kept trying to let my mercenary deal with them by kiting back, but the one time you want to rely on the merc's potato brain it lets you down, and he kept just following me...
I finished the rest of the Act without anything exciting happening, including drops. Mephisto was pretty easy, as he decided to stand and melee me while I face-tanked him, and my merc applied Crushing Blow hits (via a Strength pike) from over a wall in what I'm sure was another anomalously smart decision from the merc.
So I'm now in Act 4. I'd really like to find a Lum rune before Diablo to make a Smoke, as my resistances are a bit sketchy without equipping garbage from my Normal run like 2x Ral cap.
Given how easy Mephisto was, I might farm him for a bit seeing as his loot table on Nightmare is pretty spicy. Though I'll need to reroll my map, as my current Durance Level 2 is possibly the worst one known to man:
(The waypoint is on the bottom right).
The only other interesting thing that happened was a well spawn on Travincal I've never seen before- right up on the Council's platform...
@Gynli Vamp Gaze for sure, and either Treachery or Fortitude. Delirium as helm also works very well in CS, but for D himself the merc will probably need the life leech. Chains of Honor has life leech, so that is another merc armor option. Although that's a lot of HRs in one post, considering it's an untwinked tournament .
ShouldBeEasy has made some nice progress. After last time's Sur and Lo I ran LK some more, without any good drops. Considering I was getting tired of that zone, and the fact that I needed quite some base items (4os Flail for HotO, 5os weapon for CtA, 2os Bow for Zephyr, 3os Bow for Edge, 4os elite Polearm for Insight, 4os Paladin shield for Spirit), I decided to run some areas as a change of pace.
First I went to my stash, actually with the plan to make Treachery for my merc, as I knew I had saved a 3os Light Plate at some point. I noticed however that I had an ethereal Scarab Husk in my stash as well. So I decided to try my luck rolling it in the cube, hoping for 3 or 4 sockets. Turned out to be 4, so as a result I made the first high end runeword for ShouldBeEasy:
Outfitted my merc with that lovely armor and went out to check the Mausoleum and the Crypt. I only ran them 2 times or so, since the maps weren't good, but got this one from a chest:
I played on p3, which went very well this time around. Higher is probably possible as well, but I don't want to push my luck.
After that I went on to check the Pits. It appears I have a terrific map there, with the entrance close to the Black Marsh waypoint, and a very nice, lineair map. So I ran that a few times, bringing ShouldBeEasy to level 80.5. Got a few grailers for ShouldBeEasy on the way. Nothing fancy, although Bloodfist gloves are always nice to have. No luck on the socketable items yet unfortunately, except for a 2os Bow and a Paladin Shield with 10% res all which rolled 4os. It's only a normal tier shield, not elite, but the 31% Spirit I rolled from it will do for now.
After making Zephyr in the Bow I returned to LK for some more runs, using the Zephyr switch most of the time, switching to Spirit/Rhyme with (too many or dangerous) enemies around. Got these within the first 30 runs:
That puts me at 2x Sur, 2x Vex, 1x Gul, 4x Mal, 2x Um, 3x Pul and some lower runes. I'll probably cube up the 2 Vex runes to Ohm and make CtA in the 5os Flail I have. I would have preferred another base than Flail, and I would have preferred to keep the Vex runes for HotO, but CtA is just too important in HC not to make as fast as possible. A second CtA will most likely come over time, and I'm not that far away from cubing up to another Vex. So either that or the Vex itself will most likely drop in the LK runs needed for Enigma.
@T72on1 Really? I had thought Guilliaume was sort of set in stone for boss fights. =P And just to clarify you meant life leech for rest of the CS and not the big D himself right? I don't think you can leech off of hell bosses iirc.
With Delirium and all it's procs, life leech often isn't that necessary. I know you can't leech off Meph, but I thought you could leech off the other bosses. But maybe I'm wrong.
Obedience and Guillaume's would definitley give your merc a lot of CB. Sounds good .
Apologies, I have been absent a lot recently. We actually agreed a while back that we would move inactive characters to a 'resting' table, which needn't be maintained too nicely and can be kept in spoiler tags. However, I think the length of inactivity was debatable. Three months, I would agree, is fairly reasonable. If everybody is happy then we can go with that?
Edit: I believe that NM/Hell Mephisto and Hell Diablo are the unleechables, but Hell Andariel (33%) and Baal (20%) are limited. Duriel I think is standard leech.
Nice progress @T72on1! CtA in flail for Pally is perfectly fine no? I mean he is going to stat Dex anyway for block. Only downside is it's visibly identical to the Hoto switch, but that's nitpicking really.
On another note, how is Neverland doing?
As for me, still waiting on my computer to be repaired. Before I stopped, I was going for 1000 Meph runs in order to hopefully finally find Arach and some other stuff. Actually got my Andy's for Merc finally after some ~300 runs, but still no Arach or + skill rings. I'll finish the 1000 runs and then see if I continue to push him or do some other stuff for a while..
I was actually hoping to make CtA in a Scepter, for style points. Flail is fine obviously, but indeed hard to notice on which switch I am in that case. Although it should be less of an issue with a Hammerdin, who has BH on his LMB.
I wanted to make the CtA already, but apparantly don't have the Emerald needed to cube up the Vex runes. So I'm back at LK until that one drops. Hopefully cu all soon with a pic of a CtA .
I've actually been relying more and more on skill hotkeys (such as BH on LMB) to make sure I'm on the right switch rather than equipment, and I actually find it easier. I'm sure there are classes where this might not work super well, but in a situation like this where you can't have your pick of any base any time, it gets the job done.
After getting that much wanted CtA with lovely roll, I decided to take a break from LK and continue through act 3 and act 4, so I could level some more at Eldritch. With 2600+ life, things certainly were safe enough, but still I took it slow, just in case.
Forge gave me a Ko, so that was a bit disappointing.
When arriving here:
I thought about staying, but even at p1 I had to be too careful. Besides, it wouldn't make much sense without Enigma.
So I continued, pressed on to the first WP of Act 5 and did some 50 Eldritch runs at p7, getting up to level 84. The plan is to stay here until level 87 or so and then return to LK. Or I might do so sooner as well actually, not sure yet.
O yes, striking fact ... I only found my first Isenhart's Case 5 minutes ago. Really shocking !!
@ffs Neverland? Yeah, I know. Currently on a break. But she will see some play again soon, I think. I shouldn't be pushing ShouldBeEasy too hard after all.
Just finished 1100 runs of LK. No Ber runes yet, but I was able to cube up two Vex runes to make CtA.
Almost as nice as the roll @T72on1 got. I also have the Lo rune for Fortitude, but no eth Elite base yet. I plan to continue in LK until I get 2 Ber runes for Infinity. That will make running the Pits easier and *maybe* a Jah rune will be nice enough to drop there.
Great progress, everyone! I love the bowazon at level 96; very nicely done @Gynli . And I'm looking forward to Neverland getting back in the rotation! As for me:
Champion Pestilence and Alhizeer the Might Desert Merc (and Insight IG), Lvl 95 (pic)
Pestilence finished up the last half of the level smoothly, with some nice drops. He had one S&E forced by teleporting into fanaticism enchanted bosspack with champions mixed in while amp’ed, but otherwise it continued to be pretty smooth sailing.
I think it’s time to transition to CS, probably doing 3 seal runs and hitting boss packs for the next level. So he will probably use his second respec to shift points from strength to vita and see what happens with a new Insight IG in CS. I suspect I will probably have to shift back to Insight on the merc due to IG survivability issues.
But for now I am going to see if Phaedrus can get a tenth of the way toward the last level (he’s about 6M in now) and focus on finishing -- one way or the other -- my S/U tourney character so she is available to respec to furyzon and spend her time at Pindle for the (hopefully) upcoming MFO.
Edit: My contribution to the nice CtA rolls:
First was +1 BO, so the second roll more than makes up for it!
Great progress folks! Congrats on the sweet Ravenlore @Pb_pal , I always love it when untwinked characters found something class-specific.
***
I think Hastur is north of 2k of LK runs, 1500 on the counter and rest are just broad estimate, hour there, fifteen minutes there, etc. With my new map the runtimes are just a little bit under 40s, with cubing and picking up a lot of extra crap like druid pelts and potentially interesting rares. Posted some of the finds in the IFT. Found one Elemental skiller so far.
Quite a few random sets and uniques from poppables. Mostly useless, low-level things, but few rarer items, like unique Balrog Blade, and unique Scourge (Horizon's) from a rack. Actually useful ones included Frostburns, and Trang Ouls Scales! 40% FRW and high defense were very welcome for LK, since I was still running in my Stealth made in Hard Leather Armor. I guess the heavy armor penalty from Chaos Armor results in only 5% more FRW increase (which, with the diminishing results and all, is less than that in action), but one cannot really argue against these looks:
No Sur or Ber in sight, but I'm definitely still on the lucky side. Had long dry streaks, but those were balanced nicely with nice drops in quick succession. The last three, the two Ohms and the Vex, dropped within one hour of each other. That was after I almost called it a night, so it really felt like a win
At this point, Even though the runes were dropping, LK was starting to wear me down a little bit, so I decided to branch out a little bit. Did a couple of Pit runs, and then decided to move forward to Act 4 and 5.
Act 4 was easier than I thought. Slow and steady wins the race. Even though I had nice charms to bring my life up to 2000ish with Oak, I wasn't still in a position to tank anything (Newsflash: The Oak dies a lot). Good thing my merc (Treachery/Insight in non-eth Thresher/Undead Crown) and Grizzly were able to keep the crowds off me, so I could unleash the 'Nados with ease.
With +skills form Spirit, Lidless, skiller, +1 Druid Amulet and nice +3 ele/+14life magic pelt I was at Tornado level 28, and the damage started to be respectable (for instance, Izual dropped before I even got time to properly focus on him). The hit recovery it puts the monsters in is also extremely helpful. Aiming is still horrible, but I'm getting used to it. With my current gear I'm able to hit the 99fcr breakpoint, where I'm probably going to stay until the very end.
Cyclone Armor surprised me positively in Act 4, effectively shielding me from all elemental damage and letting me focus on life, mana and MF with charm selection. Of course I have to recast it quite often, but recasting stuff is a thing with Wind Druid. That doesn't mean it's always enough, though: I managed to get killed by Diablo, of all things. That Lightning Hose still packs a punch after all these years! That combined with the Firestorm ate up my CA and I really wasn't prepared for it. Good thing I had a safety portal, and soon after that I got my retribution and moved on to Act 5.
Oh, and Hellforge was Um. Not bad, even though I was kinda wishing for a confirmation that Ist runes exist in my game.
Act 5 started as usual: Rushed through Bloody Foothills with the help of Teleport Staff, and then ran Eldritch for a while. After gaining a level, I went onward to rescue Anya. On our way there, in the Crystalline Passage, we found something great:
Non-eth, and terrible roll overall, but the real point of the thing is Decrepify, which really helps with my damage output at this point, and also makes physical immunes less of a problem. My mana reserves are at a point where I can comfortably play without Insight, so I gave the Reaper's to merc immediately.
Frozen River was horrible, with hordes of Witches and Gloams, but managed to rescue Anya after few stressful teleport-and-hope-for-the-best-maneuvers. After that, it was Pindle time. Only notable drops so far have been Blackhorn's Face and Crown of Thieves, both nice merc helmets. I gave Mizan the Blackhorn's, since he already gets leech from Reaper's Toll, and the 20% slow effect and lightning absorb are pretty nice.
Just before hitting level 84, I decided to check in on this thread, and saw all the great CtA rolls. I was a bit hesitant on rolling any of the runewords yet, in case I'd need to cube some runes for Enigma. But seeing all the luck around here I needed to check if some might rub on this way as well. Result? Find out below:
God, I was so afraid I might be the exception this time, but no! The game delivered. Really, guys, I'm telling you, now is the time to roll!
(Fun fact: I actually had multiple 5 socket bases collected during playthrough and LK running, including Crystal Sword, Dimensional Blade, War Scepter, Flail, Divine Scepter, Military Pick and SEVERAL Double Axes. Guess I don't really need those anymore (although the BC did roll low...).
Still haven't found 4 socket Flail though. Or a Monarch to speak of.
So, Hastur is currently level 84. I guess I'm gonna run Eldritch, Pindle and Pits for a level or two, but I'm ok with some more LK runs at this point, so we shall see what may come.
Here's the current equipment:
Head: Gaean Griffon Headdress of the Wolf (+3ele/+14life) Amulet: +1 Druid Skills/+8@/32fire/50%plr Armor: Stealth Hard Leather Armor Weapon: Spirit Broad Sword (33fcr, 103mana, 7 magic absorb) Shield: Lidless Wall Switch: CtA / n/a Belt: 24fhr/26lr/26pr Rare Heavy Belt Ring 1: 10fcr/6mana/21fr/2dr/7mf Ring 2: 22life/37mana/29lr/17pr Gloves: Magefist Boots: 30frw/34mana/10lr/19mf Rare Heavy Boots
Serpent's Small Charm of Greed
Small Charm
Required Level: 40
Fingerprint: 0x49a40881
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+13 to Mana
6% Extra Gold from Monsters
Natural Grand Charm of Thunder
Grand Charm
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0x2586310d
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Elemental Skills (Druid Only)
Adds 1 - 19 Lightning Damage
Gheed's Fortune
Grand Charm
Required Level: 62
Fingerprint: 0xc3cc8861
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
111% Extra Gold from Monsters
Reduces all Vendor Prices 12%
31% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x716b892a
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0xa55ece76
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x4a934ee8
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x7fe74152
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x8af1159f
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x5652f2fe
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Fine Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x3e04d06a
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Maximum Damage
+16 to Attack Rating
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Stout Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x16deeaae
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 Defense
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x7dd981c9
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x3feb99d
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x13d79645
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0xbe255f1f
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Rugged Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x6a07f459
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+6 Maximum Stamina
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Iron Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x371d41c9
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+18 to Attack Rating
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Snake's Grand Charm of Vita
Grand Charm
Required Level: 69
Fingerprint: 0xdb6d3da9
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+39 to Life
+36 to Mana
Serpent's Grand Charm of Vita
Grand Charm
Required Level: 69
Fingerprint: 0xae58ecde
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+40 to Life
+51 to Mana
Shimmering Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0xbecb0431
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
All Resistances +4
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0xf10c0b7b
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x5221cbe8
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 53
Fingerprint: 0x21309553
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+33 to Life
+45 to Mana
Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 53
Fingerprint: 0x558ea055
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+32 to Life
+55 to Mana
Scroll of Town Portal
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Gaean Griffon Headdress of the Wolf
Griffon Headdress
Defense: 57
Durability: 18 of 20
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0x271a4e3c
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+3 to Elemental Skills (Druid Only)
+14 to Life
Viper Wing
Amulet
Required Level: 27
Fingerprint: 0x186ce4c7
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Druid Skill Levels
All Resistances +8
Fire Resist +32%
Poison Length Reduced by 50%
Stealth
Hard Leather Armor
TalEth
Defense: 23
Durability: 25 of 28
Required Level: 17
Required Strength: 20
Fingerprint: 0xbf258046
Item Level: 5
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+25% Faster Run/Walk
+25% Faster Cast Rate
+25% Faster Hit Recovery
+6 to Dexterity
Regenerate Mana 15%
+15 Maximum Stamina
Poison Resist +30%
Magic Damage Reduced by 3
2 Sockets (2 used)
Socketed: Tal Rune
Socketed: Eth Rune
Eth Rune
Required Level: 15
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: -25% Target Defense
Armor: Regenerate Mana 15%
Shields: Regenerate Mana 15%
Chaos Band
Ring
Required Level: 13
Fingerprint: 0x64e648fb
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+10% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to Maximum Damage
+6 to Mana
Fire Resist +21%
Damage Reduced by 2
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Death Turn
Ring
Required Level: 43
Fingerprint: 0x6879b8c9
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Adds 2 - 1 Damage
+22 to Life
+37 to Mana
Lightning Resist +29%
Poison Resist +17%
Carrion Lock
Heavy Belt
Defense: 8
Durability: 17 of 18
Required Level: 13
Required Strength: 45
Fingerprint: 0x8623d707
Item Level: 62
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+24% Faster Hit Recovery
+23% Enhanced Defense
Lightning Resist +26%
Poison Resist +26%
Attacker Takes Damage of 1
Plague Brogues
Heavy Boots
Defense: 48
Durability: 13 of 14
Required Level: 39
Required Strength: 18
Fingerprint: 0x51ae138d
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+30% Faster Run/Walk
Adds 1 - 20 Lightning Damage
+42 Defense (Based on Character Level)
+34 to Mana
Lightning Resist +10%
19% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Magefist
Light Gauntlets
Defense: 24
Durability: 17 of 18
Required Level: 23
Required Strength: 45
Fingerprint: 0x2b9a2e10
Item Level: 31
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills
+20% Faster Cast Rate
Adds 1 - 6 Fire Damage
+20% Enhanced Defense
+10 Defense
Regenerate Mana 25%
Scroll of Town Portal
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Scroll of Town Portal
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Full Rejuvenation Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 100%
Replenishes Health 100%
Full Rejuvenation Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 100%
Replenishes Health 100%
Full Rejuvenation Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 100%
Replenishes Health 100%
Gnarled Staff of Teleportation
Gnarled Staff
Two Hand Damage: 4 - 12
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 24
Fingerprint: 0x951c7b44
Item Level: 27
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Level 1 Teleport (25/33 Charges)
Super Healing Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenish Life +320
Super Healing Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenish Life +320
Super Mana Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 250%
Call to Arms
Double Axe
AmnRalMalIstOhm
One Hand Damage: 17 - 45
Durability: 20 of 24
Required Level: 57
Required Strength: 43
Fingerprint: 0x7c61eaf6
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+40% Increased Attack Speed
253% Enhanced Damage
Adds 5 - 30 Fire Damage
7% Life stolen per hit
Prevent Monster Heal
+2 to Battle Command
+6 to Battle Orders
+4 to Battle Cry
Replenish Life +12
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
5 Sockets (5 used)
Socketed: Amn Rune
Socketed: Ral Rune
Socketed: Mal Rune
Socketed: Ist Rune
Socketed: Ohm Rune
Amn Rune
Required Level: 25
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 7% Life stolen per hit
Armor: Attacker Takes Damage of 14
Shields: Attacker Takes Damage of 14
Ral Rune
Required Level: 19
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Adds 5 - 30 Fire Damage
Armor: Fire Resist +30%
Shields: Fire Resist +35%
Mal Rune
Required Level: 49
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Prevent Monster Heal
Armor: Magic Damage Reduced by 7
Shields: Magic Damage Reduced by 7
Ist Rune
Required Level: 51
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Armor: 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Shields: 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Ohm Rune
Required Level: 57
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Enhanced Maximum Damage
Armor: +5% to Maximum Cold Resist
Shields: +5% to Maximum Cold Resist
Super Mana Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 250%
Super Healing Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenish Life +320
Super Mana Potion
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Replenishes Mana 250%
Spirit
Broad Sword
TalThulOrtAmn
One Hand Damage: 7 - 14
Durability: 32 of 32
Required Level: 25
Required Strength: 48
Fingerprint: 0xf62d28b7
Item Level: 45
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+2 to All Skills
+33% Faster Cast Rate
+55% Faster Hit Recovery
Adds 1 - 50 Lightning Damage
Adds 3 - 14 Cold Damage Over 3 Secs (75 Frames)
Adds 75 Poison Damage Over 5 Secs (125 Frames)
7% Life stolen per hit
+250 Defense vs. Missile
+22 to Vitality
+103 to Mana
+7 Magic Absorb
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Tal Rune
Socketed: Thul Rune
Socketed: Ort Rune
Socketed: Amn Rune
Amn Rune
Required Level: 25
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 7% Life stolen per hit
Armor: Attacker Takes Damage of 14
Shields: Attacker Takes Damage of 14
Lidless Wall
Grim Shield
Defense: 282
Chance to Block: 0
Durability: 67 of 70
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 58
Fingerprint: 0x83371537
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+20% Faster Cast Rate
+87% Enhanced Defense
+10 to Energy
Increase Maximum Mana 10%
+4 to Mana after each Kill
+1 to Light Radius
Lem Rune
Required Level: 43
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 75% Extra Gold from Monsters
Armor: 50% Extra Gold from Monsters
Shields: 50% Extra Gold from Monsters
Blackhorn's Face
Death Mask
Defense: 263
Durability: 11 of 20
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 55
Fingerprint: 0x4d723969
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Prevent Monster Heal
Slows Target by 20%
+203% Enhanced Defense
Lightning Resist +15%
+20 Lightning Absorb
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 25
The Reaper's Toll
Thresher
Two Hand Damage: 36 - 434
Durability: 33 of 65
Required Level: 75
Required Strength: 114
Required Dexterity: 89
Fingerprint: 0x257e081b
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
33% Chance to cast level 1 Decrepify on striking
208% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
Adds 4 - 44 Cold Damage Over 1 Secs (36 Frames)
11% Life stolen per hit
33% Deadly Strike
Requirements -25%
Getting the decripfy is a complete godsend. The biggest regret I have is stubbornly killing physical immunes that just barely take damage, even after being decrepified. I just can't seem to let them go, even if efficiency takes a dive.
For Natur the experience gain is now in the backseat. I think I am going to try reaching the next breakpoint for casting, and I need quite a few new pieces to get this. Depending on my luck this may take quite a while. I also want to try rolling up a few elemental skillers, I currently do not have any.
Before starting Act 4, I decided to do 10 Nightmare Mephisto runs in the hopes of highrolling a nice endgame Exceptional Unique or two.
No such luck- the runs passed without anything particularly good dropping. A Rattlecage dropped to bring Razan up to a nice 50% Crushing Blow, and the rack on Level 3 gave me a base for a nice new Lore helmet:
The extra Lightning Resist from Lore allowed me to swap to a Fire Resist ring, bring them to 75 and 61 respectively- plenty for Big D. This was probably just as well because there's been no sign of the aforementioned Lum rune thus far!
Hellforge gave an Io, and NM Diablo was far less exciting than his Normal counterpart. I just stood there and tanked his abilities with pots...
The rest of NM passed with very little to report. No interesting drops, and nothing particularly dangerous. I reset twice, the first to a pack of Frenzytaurs near the Ancient's Way WP (probably could have killed them but didn't fancy checking given the speed with which they put my merc in the bin), and a second time due to a double Unique pack of dolls at the start of the Throne of Destruction.
Baal was easy, and only dropped rubbish Rare items.
Back to NM for some more exp, before I progress to Hell (Countess, then The Pit most likely). I'll be looking at this Conqueror title for quite some time if I'm serious about trying for 99 (debatable), I guess!
I am definitely active. I am just not as fast at leveling as some of you guys. Is it really that big of a deal to have to scroll a little bit on the chart? If anything, characters below level 80 or 90 could just be taken off if scrolling is a huge issue because the attempt is not even serious before then IMO.
If not for the deaths I've had, my character would be dinging 97 today or in the next few days, so I will be there soon.
Is it really that big of a deal to have to scroll a little bit on the chart? If anything, characters below level 80 or 90 could just be taken off if scrolling is a huge issue because the attempt is not even serious before then IMO.
Yeah I was just thinking new people shouldn't be discouraged from posting about their progress either.. People can always add themselves back in anyway. That being said, scrolling is not the end of the world indeed.
Update for Ric: Finally got back my repaired computer and I picked up where I left, i.e. running Mephisto again. I set a target of ~1000 runs (judging by XP since run counter doesn't work for me) in hopes getting some of the uniques he was looking for. At last, the dude delivered. Around run ~300:
Rolled 10% LL and 27 Str. Went back to normal to socket it and put a plain IAS jewel in it for now to reach the next IAS BP for Merc. We'll see how it works out, maybe it will replaced with a Ral or even Cham at one point. But the increase in Merc strength (and thus overall clear speed) has been noticeable already.
Then the moment I've been waiting for the most happened after ~800 runs:
Though maybe the coolest drop overall was this (posted in IFT as well). Been looking for one of these for a long time.
Remaining drops of note from ~800 Mephisto runs:
So, with Arach's finally available, that gives me the flexibility to do some shenanigans like testing the Beast/Novamancer build, going for 125% FCR Pit runs and the like. Still not feeling like playing a lot currently, but happy to have some options and testing to do going forward.
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