2019 Spring RFL Sign-up and Running Thread: 2nd Round

[Babyhell]

Second set over. First set score will be PM'ed to Grape.

GL to the ones still running !

This Shenk running @ffs xD

 

[Belthazor]

Complaining is supposed to help, right?

Well, I have only about 2 more hours to go. Haven't seen a HR in the last 8 hours. Wouldn't mind one more to improve my score.

 

[art_vandelay]

I'm at ~11:40:00 in my second set and literally just died after surviving for nearly 32 hours straight.

I must say I don't know wether I'll finish this. Between abysmal run times (25s), very sparse qualifier drops and the general feeling that picking useful stuff destroys my score I find it hard to stay motivated.

Besides map issues the biggest problem is the picking since that delivers the final (crushing) blow to many of my runs.

'Oh you want to pick that up? I guess your inventory is full, but if you move that gem to the side it will fit. It will only cost you 2 seconds'

or my other all time favorite, the item that lies directly left of one of the balcony pillars and when you click on its name she runs against the pillar and stops without picking it up. Good times!


Sorry for whining

---

@Gripphon For science: I know you don't pick GCs but what about Ral and Sol? I feel like Countess should beat every other target when it comes to runes up to Ist and hence picking runes up to Fal anyhwere else would be a waste of time and decrease efficiency. (Obviously one would pick Pul-Ist for score in RFL...)

 

[maxicek]

If you need to run countess for those runes later, then obviously your overall efficiency is worse.

I didn’t pick up gems in Trav, but I did pick up Ral, Ort, Sol. Now I have more runes than the gems to go with them...

Lesson here is don’t pick up the crafting rune if you don’t collect the gems to go with them. Either both or nothing.

 

[Belthazor]

Every moment you spend on running the Countess is a moment you're not running the Council, who can drop higher runes than Ist. I would only run Countess if I needed that one mid-rune as quickly as possible or if my goal was to get as many crafting runes as possible. Other than that, she's a waste of time.

 

[zemaj]

I was thinking this wound down last night... guess I can coast to finish my set now, lol

 

[art_vandelay]

Since my post one and a half hours ago I ran countess on a bad map for a few runs, then spend close to 20 min rerolling to a decent map and then timed 100 runs. Yeah she might be bad in the long run but it sure is nice to get Ist, Mal, 2xUm and Pul all in such a short time span especially when Travincal has become a pain

I think I also should have been clearer in the above post: Picking anything but qualifiers in RFL is technically inefficent but if you don't do it your gear won't improve. So I'm not going to stop picking crafting materials and other useful stuff anytime soon

Nevertheless it's nice to have something to do besides council. I think I'm going to enjoy Round 3 a lot more, so many targets available!

 

[ffs]

What an intruiging technique in that video, @ffs !

Hehe, yeah it's a cute trick and fun to teleport so quickly with characters like Amazon. Unfortunately there are very few runs for which it makes sense to do – at least for me it's too annoying when there's more than one teleporting phase.

Final test for R3 (for now at least ) was FB Sorc in CS. Not that hard to get ~160-170 kills per minute range with her, in my case ~45 second runs and an average of ~35 ghosts per run. Ended up using pretty straight forward gear:

Spoiler

Shako (facet)
CoH
Hoto
Mara's
35 Spirit
Arach
2x BKWB
Magefist
Waterwalk

8 Skillers, SCs with FR and life.

FB damage after BC is 18-19.5k
~2.6k life
80 FR, 75 other res

I only attacked Storm Casters. Also found myself using Meteor – very handy when ghosts are a bit separated and FB doesn't reach all of them, so I cast Meteor on the further away ones while FBing down the others. This helps at Vizier seal as well.

As for FB damage, I can't comfortably reach an amount required to one-shot ghosts without Conviction. It would require similar (LCS) FB damage than I have now, but with faceted Weapon and Phoenix. That is quite hard to get, and if I did I'd end up with suicidal defensive stats. Curious if @Gripphon can make it work with his Sorc, and how much of an impact it has on her efficiency. Though I was very happy with the setup above, she is one-shotting under Conviction after all, and her defensive stats made for very comfortable running.

 

[Belthazor]

Well, that's me done for this round. Results sent.

Now to figure out what area to run with which character...

 

[Pb_pal1]

Got some extra playing time this weekend and finished my set early! Results sent, now to start thinking about next round.

I'll likely just runs Pits with the Venomancer again, he served me well last year and I don't know that I have the time to gear up/get a map/get used to said map with a new character in a new area.

GOGOGO to those who are still running!

 

[Gripphon1]

@art_vandelay
Here is what I think about your dilemma:

I'm 10 hours into second and what seems to be the best farming set I've ever done so far. What I changed is increased Blizzard damage by around 3k and doing slightly more focus on checking drops instead of immediately going back to the waypoint. Result is more items farmed per time invested. Comparing to my best set ever done from RFL 2017, now I'm supposed to farm 50-100 items more in jewels/charms/rings (individually) while being half second slower than before and possibly 1 second slower than I could be. So, overall 200 runs total less, but what seems to be ~20% more items farmed per item type with exception of rare rings where difference is less.

So, fastest possible runs or a better farm? 200-300 runs less means absolutely nothing for winning odds since big boys drop at average once every ~1950 or whatever runs. You are either lucky to find them or you aren't.

Mathematically speaking, second-two of runtimes doesn't hurt winning chances nearly at all due to rarity of items which actually bring victory (namely Jah, Ber and mostly Cham rune) while not picking items does hurt farming big time. Even 16 s sorcs aren't guaranteed a Cham drop which would bring big advantage to anyone who finds it (even if they do two sets!). So... only dilemma is does player trust the math I now explained or does he believe 200 extra runs are decisive for winning chances

Relax and let the luck drive your ride. That's the only way to have a winning chance. Only thing player can do is actually farm items along the way.

@ffs
I don't think I'll try fireball sorc in CS to be honest, only Blizzard. Someone else can test fire one sometime. Or maybe next time.

 

[Luhkoh]

@Pb_pal any tips or references for rolling a good venomancer map? I'll be trying to do the same for round 3. I would guess non-awful layout to get to lvl 2 and 2 devlkin alcoves (preferably with bosses in them as well) would be main priority, but I couldn't be less of an expert

 

[Pb_pal1]

@Pb_pal any tips or references for rolling a good venomancer map? I'll be trying to do the same for round 3. I would guess non-awful layout to get to lvl 2 and 2 devlkin alcoves (preferably with bosses in them as well) would be main priority, but I couldn't be less of an expert

you hit the big points, but the main things to look for will be:

- proximity to WP (obviously)
- least amount of backtracking possible (linear Pit 1)
- monster density (get a map with 2 fallen nests)

The reason for the first two points is that You'll probably be running 75% fcr, so you want to spend the least amount of time teleporting around without killing things. Venomancers are very good at getting a huge quantity of kills with CE, so getting 2 nests is a good idea. It's not as crucial as you might think though, as in my experience often one of the nests is not nearly as full as the other.

Basically you want a linear map with little backtracking, lots of bosspacks along the way and preferably 2 fallen nests on your route. You can get greedy from here and try to roll the densest lvl 2 as possible, as @ffs showed (i think last year) that there can be quite a discrepancy in how many packs show up down there.

here is a video of my map, gameplay from last year. It's sloppy as I recorded it before I had really gotten used to it. A few things to note:

1. This map may not be ideal for kills/time, but I have 2 shrines along the path to the Pits and 1 or 2 regular-ish shrine spawns inside. I'm working on leveling my necro, so that is important to me for the XP shrine regularity. The two wells just inside the entrance make it so I never have to see Akara, which saves time over the long haul.

2. I don't cast LR anymore. Just amp, Nova, CE. It's more straightforward for extended gameplay, and probably a little faster to get the first corpse from the merc, which helps CE chains. My runtimes have improved since that video too, now reliably in the 1-1:30 range, partly due to that adjustment and partly due to simply practicing.

Gear is at the end of the video, but is pretty standard stuff. Might merc with Infinity/CoH/Steelshade.

 

[Luhkoh]

@Pb_pal Ok great thank you! This will be very helpful. I start looking for a map next week and I'm sure will ask more questions during that process. My guy will be a lot more budget, but I think I finally have to gear I need to get him going. Can't wait!

 

[T72on1]

The bad news: I didn't have 3+ hours to play today like I thought I would, but only 1 hour or so. The good news: I finally managed to get sub 23s avg runs.

It will be tight, but I still should be able to finish the set.

I hope I'll have plenty of time for round 3, as I'm looking forward to running with a lot of different characters: AS Javazon, Pit Necro, CS Hammerdin, maybe CS Fire Sorc.

 

[ffs]

Just tested 200 FCR Fire Sorc variant for Chaos Sanctuary. 174 kills per minute over 8 run batch, faster than 105 FCR. More fragile though. Went with this gear:

Spoiler

Griffon's (fire facet)
Hoto
Viper (fire facet)
2 Fire skills/10 FCR/9@ craft amulet
35 Spirit
2x FCR/resist/life rings
Arach
Magefist
Waterwalk

CtA/Spirit switch

Merc (HF) Infinity/ebug Forti/Andy IAS/FR

80 FR, 50 PR, 65 LR/CR.
FB damage 14.2-15.4k
Meteor damage 29-30k
2193/1617 life/mana after BO.

I liked the balance of offense and defense with that. Also played around with FB Ormus and 1/20 amulet (don't have 2/20 for Fire tree). But even with Viper she's still a little fragile, I need to pot a bit and lose time picking up purples here and there with TK. That being said, with 105 FCR variant I also had to do that, albeit to a lesser extent.

 

[Jocular]

@Pb_pal how often does your iron golem die?

 

[Pb_pal1]

@Pb_pal how often does your iron golem die?

Not really at all. The only times I remember him dying are when my necro himself has died. Keep an extra Insight or two on hand just in case, but you should be able to pick up ingredients for more quite easily as you farm.

 

[Gripphon1]

Now that the strong chess tournament is over, I can finally focus on actually finishing the set! Where were we... ah yes, farming for that fourth Cham.

 

[DaveW]

@Pb_pal, nice SoJ and 30% Nagel .... and that special chest drop in level 2 was sick.