2020 Spring RFL Sign-Up and Running Thread

[PhineasB]

Originally posted March 8, 2020

Hey SPF! It's time for RFL. Round 1 sign up is here. (I'm pinch hitting for @Grape and hopefully he returns to properly supervise this tourney )

What is RFL?
RFL stands for Rune Finding League. RFL is a free for all rune finding tournament that has three individual parts. You can participate for every three round or pick only one or two.

During this contest we farm runes in various areas during 3 weeks periods, with one week of rest and planning between each round. Players get points based on rarity of the rune (not its level) and at the end each player posts top 5 highest scored runes to get the final score.

For the first round we run Cow level, second is about running Travincal Council Members and for the last round we run area of one own's choice.

When is RFL?

• 1st round, "Moo Moo Farm": 13 March - 2 April
• 2nd round, "Travincal": 10 April - 30 April
• 3rd round, "Areas": 7 May - 28 May

So, this first round starts on Friday 13 March at 0.00 and ends on Thursday 2 April at 23.59. Sign-up is open for each round until the end.

General rules
These are the rules that stand for all the three rounds. Specific rules for the first round are posted below.

1. For each round, running time is limited to 20 hours of playing (when you mule to stash or in ATMA/GoMule, you can pause clock/counter/online stopwatch or whatever you use). However, when you finish your 20 hours of running, you can start a new batch of running which is again limited to 20 hours of playing. You can play as many batches as you want.

2. You are not allowed to start a new batch as long as you don't finish full 20 hours of the previous one.

3. Every batch is scored individually, and you will get points towards the league according to your best batch from each round.

4. Best batch is the one where your top 5 runes give the most scores. Scoring can be found below.

5. Screenshots of runes are not required, but I assume people would like to see them anyway. You are encouraged to post your findings...

6. ... but only after each round is finished! Don't post your qualifiers when the round is still going. You are warmly welcome to discuss your other findings however. But remember: Don't post your qualifying runes!

7. Runes qualified (giving scores) are all Pul+ runes.

8. Cubing runes into higher ones is not allowed. In other words don't cube Pul runes into Um to get a higher score.

9. Versions allowed: 1.13-1.14. Also version 1.07 is allowed.

Specific rules for the 1st round:

Spoiler

For the first round we will be running Moo Moo Farm AKA Cow level.

All qualifiers from Cow level area counts. Runes from Tristram or Stony Field (when picking up the leg), do NOT count.

Picking up the leg COUNTS toward the total running time however!

You don't have to collect legs and kill cows on a same character, as long as you remember to have your clock running all the time spent in the game!

Scoring
Scoring is based on rarity of runes. System is the same as we had during the earlier RFLs and during RFOs and Zodthon. Combine the points of the top 5 runes from your best batch each round.

Pul 3.4
Mal 5.0
Um 5.1
Gul 7.1
Ist 7.5
Ohm 10.1
Vex 10.6
Sur 13.7
Lo 15.1
Jah 18.3
Ber 20.5
Cham 27.5
Zod 71.8 (not available for the 2nd round)

1.07:

Spoiler

Pul 19.4
Um 29.1
Mal 38.7
Ist 58.0
Gul 77.2
Vex 115.7
Ohm 153.0
Lo 229.6
Sur 308.2
Ber 462.3
Jo 615.8
Zod 739.3
Cham 923.7

Towards the whole competition, however, you will get points after each round depending on your placement.

Scoring towards the whole RFL:
After each round is done, you will get points toward the whole RFL depending your placement that round.

1st: 10 points
2nd: 8
3rd 6
4th: 5
5th: 4
6th: 3
7th 2
8th: 1

And remember, only your best batch from each round counts. While we crown every winner from each round, the biggest champion is of course the overall winner.

The Champion of the RFL is the player who has the most points given by placements total.

In case of a tie after three rounds, the winner is the one with a higher scoring rune from Areas. If that is a tie as well, we check the Travincal, and then Cows. If all three are still the same, it's 2nd best from Areas etc.

Sending results
PM me your top 5 runes from your best batch. Please do this immediately after you have stopped running so that we can have results and standings after each round ASAP. Also PM me if you didn't run. Your PM should include: five runes, five scores, and the total score.

Example:
1. Zod 71.8
2. Cham 27.5
3. Lo 15.1
4. Lo 15.1
5. Ist 7.5
total: 137

After receiving your results, I'll make the results thread for each round. There you can brag about your runes, and also post screenshots of your top 5 runes, at least. This is not mandatory however. Claiming to have found 5 Zods may seem strange without screenshots though.

Prize
Eternal glory and the seal of approval from the Zod God.

Participants
Please state IF you are running 1.07.
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WoRG (1.07)
Ghonn
D2DC
ffs
Hutton
Luhkoh
ESDv2
Kstil3227
maxicek
CaseyJones
Pb_pal
Arctodus
Babyhell
zemaj
Gripnoob
NanoMist
art_vandelay
TwentyMuleTeam
Xios
Peytron
squidder
MrBlonde
Locohead
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There will be a sign-up and running thread for each round individually. This sign-up stands for "Moo Moo Farm" only.

Please post if you have comments or suggestions. You are also warmly welcome to discuss your builds, running tactics, finds apart from qualifiers etc.! Everything regarding the tournament in general.

Good luck and HAVE FUN!

 

[PhineasB]

Sign up is below. I am sitting this round out to focus on untinwked 99ers . . .

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Yup, I'm in...time to harvest some aged (1.07) beef!!!!

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WoRG (1.07)


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Ghonn

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Ghonn
D2DC
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I may run 1.07.. I dont have 1.07 on this cpu. But, I will have my old cpu next week. I assume that I should just restart round 1 in 1.07 at that point? Could I mix and match the rounds? Trav is where its at in 1.07 but I would rather run rounds 1 & 3 in 1.14..

Thanks for getting this started @PhineasB... @Grape get your **** together.

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So what are you guys going to run with this year?

For me it's going to be Trapper this year. Hoping I'll manage to level her to 94 before this starts, so I can keep track of efficiency with both XP and drop method.

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Gladys will be back for Round 1 this year, but this time as a bowazon. Not because it's efficient (it's definitely not) but for fun!

I'll probably find nothing, as I found 2 Sur runes in <10 runs testing p3/p5 since I started dabbling with D2 again after Christmas and used up all of RNGesus' blessings.

Of course I'm in. RFL is likely my favorite SPF thing .

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I'm planning on running trapper too. My only qualm is that I only have 4 skillers. But I'm just short of a full build on my other good round 1 chars too (no dweb, no griffons), so I think she's my best option. Not only that, but I feel like necro and java have other runs where they are a top contender for "best", whereas assassin only has this one.

How do you factor in rakinishu to the exp tracking method? Unfortunately, I do not think I will have my assassin to 94 before the round starts, but maybe I'll try to get her there. We'll see. I'll definitely use the rune method either way. I kinda of enjoyed picking up all runes last year and think I might do the same this year.

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First time entering this, lets see how it goes.
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I got my Javazon or Trapper ready to make ground beef.

@Luhkoh what's with the Lvl 94 being so key for your trapper?? Gear? or is it XP related to the cows?? just curious cause my trapper is lvl 91 and not sure if I should try to push her level this week hard to get to 94 if it matters that much...

still learning the finesse of this game even if I've been playing for 20+ years when it comes to certain things.

@Kstil3227 it doesn't matter much at all for performance. Being 94+ just opens up a way to use your exp per run as a way to estimate number of cows killed per run for efficiency tracking purposes. Before lvl 94, there's a huge difference in exp gained from minions as opposed to regular cows, so that this method becomes too volatile to be of much use. So it's only for efficiency tracking/run analysis. I'm not sure I'm even going to try to for 94 beforehand, but we'll see!

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I'm in for as much as I can run...may not he complete sets...

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Going to be running my UT99 light sorc, Renet_Tilley...she is just about to hit 94 (aboit 40mill xp to go) so shooting for that before friday.

@Luhkoh I usually just open up char screen just before entering cow level and at the end of each run, to see XP gained only from cows, taking screenshots or recording runs.

@DiabloTwoinDC it's no problem to run v1.14 for Rounds 1 and 3 and v1.07 for Round 2. The issue would be switching between versions within the same set. Good luck, @everyone!

@ffs Ah that makes sense. I can't play while recording all the time. Slows down my game too much, and I don't see myself remembering to ss all the time, so I may just stick to the fuzzy rune counting method. Thanks!

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I'll be in with Klaus. Hoping to finish an entire set!

Oh, and not kill him...

@Luhkoh if you want to track for many runs, I'd just clear Rakanishu 50 times or so and subtract average XP gained thereby from XP gain per run.

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Arctodus
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Been quite busy the last few weeks, so I hope to complete a set !

However, I don’t have a dedicated Cow runner yet. I have enough wealth to twink someone okish, but nothing out of this world. Should I respec my Blova with full Lightning or take the time to build myself a Trapsin ? I have an untwinked Kicker/Death Sentry Assassin, but I could respec her into full traps instead and twink her (this project id going nowhere anyway). What do you guys suggest ?

Edit : Don’t have Infinity yet.

@Arctodus I don't think full lightning is top-tier for cows even with infinity. Trapsin will work ok without infinity, but wont have nearly the clearing power (might want to run p3 if you go that route). My suggestion is just ole blizz sorc. Cold mastery makes her the best budget cow runner imo. If you have cta and enigma, a necro is workable for sure, and ofc an hdin is workable, but I bet those will be slower than blizzy and you already have a sorc made. Blova is likely the best sorc variant for cows, but thats considering infinity. I'm guessing pure blizz is better without it. If you go this route, be sure and stat static field for a huge range. Good luck!

 

[PhineasB]

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@Luhkoh Thanks ! If I go pure Blizz, I’m afraid I’ll kill the King by accident. Heh. That’s why I was thinking about going pure Lightning. Not as dangerous.

You may well stay out of his fort, when i ran with novamancer a bit least year, i kept far from it. In fact, i do so also with Furyzon, just in case the merc does the kill...

@Babyhell I guess I’ll do that. Thanks !

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Think I might try something different this year... anyone have any thoughts on how Firewall should work for cows?

Do 20 quick runs on collecting legs and do average xp gained on those. After that run the normal way just counting the runs done and deduct the calculated xp from every run you did. You could run for hours this way and just calculate total xp gained in amount of runs you did and then estimate minions and so on.

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I don't know will I use trapper or just go with necro. He is just too convenient for this. And I don't use necro anywhere else. Same as trapper. Oh well.

What trapper setups are people using?

@maxicek both of the following with max fireblast, doing that fb+ds style of play nanomist started doing a while back. Im planning to do more chill runs on what I would consider a "normal/comfortable" setup (hoto, phoenix, shako etc with no weapon swapping). But ffs's praise has convinced me I should at least try out the beast variant. Mine will look like beast, phoenix, 2/20 traps circlet, with teleporting on spirit/cta swap. Might merc with fort andys and infinity ofc. Is this just the year of the cow trapper? Get on board gripphon!

@Arctodus just don't kill any cows when the fort is on screen. Especially with sorceress where you control your dmg a lot better than a CE necro or DS trapsin, you should be fine. But take a first run through the map to make sure you know where the fort is (recommend setting it on p8 for this just in case merc somehow gets a poke or two in). I have a video of some slow and very undergeared runs I did for last years rfl like this (was using occy, whistans, tarnhelm etc).

Also thought a bit more about it, and, assuming you have enigma, fortitude, cta, and an eth elite insight (or eth elite obedience, merc gear and cta important for necro), I'm guessing blizz sorc and necro are the top contenders for non-infinity runners. p3 vs p5 would have to just test runtimes. Then I know infinity-less trapsin works well at least on p3 since thats what @sir_cyclops ran last year and it worked fine for him. Might also be a top contender, not sure. And then I'm sure hdin and mayyyybe fissure druid would work too.

@zemaj
Poorly . But if you somehow manage to make it work, it will be fun to see for sure.

@Gripphon @ffs ok great thanks for the advice. Good idea on the raka runs. But I don't think there's any chance of me getting 94 beforehand. Just got my barb to 95 and am doing my first ever runs with non-budget pitzerker these few days before round 1 .

Also forgot to say thanks for taking the initiative and getting this signup thread up! @PhineasB

@maxicek I will be using this:

• 2/20/adds or 3/20 traps circlet +fire facet
• Enigma
• Trap/main switch: Beast + Phoenix (65 FCR BP)
• Tele/cast switch: CtA + Spirit (102 FCR BP)
• 2/FCR/str/adds amulet
• Arach
• Magefist
• Raven
• SoJ
• eth Treks

Merc: Infinity Thresher, ebug Fortitude, Cham'ed Andy's
Inventory: 6 skillers + ID tom, no SCs. Just like in Trav IMO it actually makes sense to not use SCs unless needed.
Build: max DS, LS, FB + rest into FB synergies, otherwise just BoS.

Playstyle is simple. Lay down DS (depends on group size but generally 4 seems best amount), don't teleport after herding so that Merc is attacking cows without interruption, just throw FBs to Merc's location, profit.

Here's a couple of runs with that approach:

Spoiler

With the Beast setup I had my best cow runs yet. Last couple of days I made a spreadsheet to theorycraft different setups, apart from the above including setups with stuff like Hoto, 6-facet weapon, 4-facet Monarch.... But the Beast variant is stronger according to both numbers and in-game running. So far I swapped to 102 FCR switch for teleport which resulted in faster running than just using 65 FCR on Beast switch, but that also works well and makes for more relaxed gameplay. I can share the spreadsheet at a later point if people are interested in Cow Trapper stuff.

I ran Trapper and Necro last year; I'll probably rotate in Zon and/or Sorc this time to keep it fresh.

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I'm gonna try trapper with 105 fcr on main switch also using +30/-30 weapon and Phoenix. Cham in 1.07 Valk, rest you know.

Sounds very interesting. Did some test runs just to try out the character. Beast definitely feels faster, but I like not having to weapon swap. I see I said above something about shako on the hoto variant. That ofc doesn't work to maintain 102fcr with phoenix, so my 2/20 traps circlet is used either way. Could use cham shako and 2 fcr rings instead i suppose. Might try that actually since BO running out quickly and low mana seemed a tad annoying, but would be a trap skill less. We'll see!

@ffs ofc share dat sheet

Tried trapper. Solid character, but the problem is nec is just too good for this. Easier to play and kills more cows and faster at the same time. It is also more satisfying to blow cows myself than see traps do it. So, I kinda won't join the trapper bandwagon for this.

I wont touch that with a 10 ft pole .

But ok ok maybe I should take my necro for a spin in cows before friday to see how fun it is. And why not zon too?

Stop trolling @Gripphon, cow running tier list is clearly Trapper > Java > Wolfbarb > passive naked Pally > Necro.

@Luhkoh Here's the sheet if you want to play around with it. It combines @Owlie's Merc dmg calc with Trapper calculations, and then checks what is the fastest way to get the first cow kill to start CEs. It's not super user friendly, just made it for my own use considering the niche question I tried to answer anyway I tried to clean up a bit and include some comments to make it easier for you if you want to double check or correct mistakes. Some additional info:

Spoiler

The spreadsheet only aims goal to calculate fastest time to get the first cow kill after herding a group. There are lots of further intangible factors, some are mentioned in the sheet as a comment but there are more of course.

In particular when comparing Beast v non-Beast setups, by far the most important factor is when does the Merc start to attack. You will notice that changing the relevant input field (L11 in first tab) drastically changes things, and playstyle plays some role here. Beast setup benefits a lot from an aggressive playstyle and teleporting close to cows: I took a good look at my runs personally, and concluded that the Merc most of the time attacks simultaneously with me starting to lay down DS traps, and otherwise generally rather before that point in time than after it. I usually take a quick step away from cows after landing, in order to gain a little distance and to make cows converge on the Merc instead of me. If Merc attacks immediately, he may have been attacking for more than a second before I start to lay down DS traps.

For me personally I concluded anything between -1 and +1 seconds is a realistic scenario, with ~0 or slightly below being the most common instances. If you're going with a safer playstyle, teleporting further away from cows so that Merc attacks a little later, other numbers may be more realistic.

The break even point seems to be around 0 seconds, where 6-facet weapon and Beast are similarly strong. At -1 seconds, Beast blows everything out of the water by a long shot (50% to something like 150% better). At +1 seconds, Beast is still only ~10-15% slower than the ideal other setup for that scenario. Enough for me to conclude that Beast is ideal overall.

But it's important to remember that this is only looking at the small window of time after laying down DS traps to the first kill. By no means do the numbers change overall run times in a similar amount as the results it spits out for this time window.

Some other notes on the spreadsheet:

• Apart from gear stats, the first tab ("Main Build", in my case with Beast setup) is the only one that needs input regarding Sin setup and build. It includes a comparison to the other setups which automatically adjust the key paramaters to the first sheet.
• The Merc dmg tab also takes key parameters from the first tab, such as cow HP, player settings, whether or not Beast is used, etc.... Other than that, just adjust this for Merc gear you want to use.
• By default, the sheet assumes Thresher Infinity, but note that for some Merc setups GPA is better base for Infinity when going without Beast (e.g. with Cham'ed Andy + Fortitude).
• The sheet includes a "next min dmg breakpoint" section due to FB being a close range skill. However, IMO it makes more sense to just look at average numbers overall for two main reasons: (1) Merc dmg has a huge range irrespective of weapon base, and he plays a big role for these calcs, and (2) when taking Merc avg dmg, with FB range being so close, it barely changes the numbers whether I use min dmg or avg damage for FB.

In other news, I leveled what used to be my runner-to-be Trapper to 94!
In further news, she killed the cow king while rolling maps. Alas, no XP method to track efficiency for me either. Seems I'll just user another Sin and drop method this time around...

Lol what a rollercoaster. Welcome to the the warm and fuzzy rune counting crew. I guess I should start using more colors in my excel sheets. Yours always look so much better than mine . Fundamental question though. How can first cow kill be the only info? You need more than one corpse for the chain to start right? I don't think my CE's chain immediately with necro despite amp. But been a bit since I've ran him and don't think I had infinity last time I did. I would think a good assassin metric would be something like fastest time to second or third corpse. I'll have to keep an eye out during runs.

That is another question, shouldn't be hard to expand the spreadsheet to that effect – but I wasn't particularly interested in it because I've only seen it very rarely that CEs do not chain immediately with Trapper. FB deals considerably more AoE damage than Necro's PN does even with lower FB dmg setups, so that seems to solve chaining issues that Necro can have when undergeared (not really a problem for Necro with good gear).

My zon setup for the tournament - if ZerkAndDestroy doesn't find a unique non eth diadem... he found one non eth, but green today, so who knows!

Shako socketed with IAS jewel
Gloves with 20ias, 3ml and res
--> 32IAS breakpoint checked

200/8LL Titan's, Spirit 35fcr, Enigma, War travs and Razortail. On switch, Cta/Spirit
21 Mara's, a 30mf nagel, and a 20/231 ravenfrost.

For inventory, damage scs, 40 Gheed's, 15 allres gc, and 3 java skillers (plain, 21 GF, 22life).

No java gloves, no Griffon, but Fury. Didn't want to run everything with the Blizz

My goal: get HRs obviously, and also get the cow king set, why not!

Good luck, it starts soon for some of you (tonight? Tomorrow at midnight here)!

Maybe drop WT for either Silkweave or some 40 FRW boots?

I did a handful of runs (meaning 5 each) this evening with hoto trapsin, beast trapsin, Necro, java, and fire sorc. Surprisingly I was getting incredibly similar runtimes with every single one of them. All between 3:15 and 3:30 on p5.

I wasn’t seeing a time difference for beast and hoto. I’m sure I just too slow to leverage its advantage, or my 5 runs each just didn’t show the difference. But definitely supports my desire to use hoto for more chill runs.

Also I didn’t expect it, but I really find trapsin the easiest to play. Zon I was dying all the time from getting stunlocked. Sorc worked great. Much more competitive than I thought, buts it’s just a lot of work spamming those fireballs and meteors incessantly. Necro I was struggling with keeping iron golem alive but did eventually get that stable. But even then, on assassin, redemption on phoenix makes for much more comfortable running, and after the first corpse or two, you just sit there with the space bar pressed watching the loot fly out. Plus if you die yourself you don’t have to deal with the iron golem. I wanted to run the character solely for the fact that she’s good at the runs and I use all the other contenders for another type of run already, but I’m really pleased to find I prefer her regardless.

I also suspect I would really enjoy the relaxed playstyle of a nova sorc, but didn’t feel it was even worth testing without griffs.

And I did not drop any impressive runes, so rfl luck should still be intact . I did however drop a 28life pcomb . That’s a 32, 30, and 28 lifer on my hdin now.

I could roll for a better map if I want also since the assassin has no preexisting run map. What do you guys look for in a good cow map? Anything besides Stony wp near raka and cow portal close to fort?

 

[PhineasB]

FROM /TO        FLIGHT  CL DATE   DEP
BANGKOK         MS 961  V  13MAR  0050
CAIRO               ARRIVAL TIME: 0615

<<16:35 HR Layover>>

FROM /TO        FLIGHT  CL DATE   DEP
CAIRO           MS 981  V  13MAR  2250
WASHINGTON          ARRIVAL TIME: 0510   ARRIVAL DATE: 14MAR

Tonight is not an Accident. There are no accidents.

Spoiler

Nice theorycrafting and discussion of runners, @everyone! I updated the current runners in the first post. Only 27-ish hours away. HYPE!! Good luck, and have fun!

I could go with the set ones with 40FRW (Sanders?), but i will keep the MF as I hope to get the cow king set

We start tomorrow? Looks like it is going to be a Necro then. Map rolling tonight....

@maxicek what do you look for in a map when rerolling?


Also I thought about this some more while doing test runs and think i have a better understanding now. You're definitely right that the first corpse pretty much always chains because the fb has weakened the cows around the first corpse. But you still need more than one corpse for DS to clear the whole group. So i guess the question is something like: which is faster?

1. fastest first corpse, ds, new corpses fall, ds starts to clear group (beast setup best ofc)
2. max fireblast dmg gives like 4 corpses all at once, and the multiple ds's go to town on whole group immediately

Or anywhere between the two extremes. From your tests, it seems like #1 is definitely faster. I had been conceptualizing it as if number 2 would be best, and so was confused how beast was giving such better times for you.

Relevant follow up question, is there any limit how fast multiple DS's can do CE's? Like lets say you have 4 corpses and 4 DS's. Can they explode all 4 corpses as fast as they could fire 4 lightning bolts? This should be observable pretty easily, but sometimes its hard to tell exactly what's going on with DS.

I don't follow your logic. For option 2 ("FB providing 4 corpses at once") you seem to be ignoring Merc completely, or at least whether Merc is there or not makes no difference. But of course he does make a difference. There is a first corpse, and that is the one that he deals the most damage to (unless you throw FBs elsewhere). Now after that first corpse gets exploded, does that immediately kill other cows in the standard scenario that you throw FBs at the same target Merc is attacking? Based solely on observations that seems to be the usual case with any decent setup, so that's good.

There is a tiny window between after the first CE triggered but before the corpses it produces hit the ground for the CE chain. Basically the "corpses flying in the air" window. Do you mean to say FB helps in maybe providing a corpse in this window, so that DS doesn't need to wait on the corpses triggered by the first CE to fall? That would make sense to me at least, though I'd strongly assume it's not worth gearing around.

AFAIK DS works like this: It checks every 31 frames whether a corpse is within its awareness radius. If it is, it will trigger a corpse explosion, otherwise it will trigger a lightning bolt to a random target within its awareness radius. DS traps are treated individually so in theory 4 DS can trigger 4 CEs simultaneously, but only if you cast them 31 frames apart. If you lay down one every 9 frames, they will trigger their actions within 9 frames of each other. That is my understanding at least.

This "gradual CE" is very helpful in enabling Phoenix main switch, because there's a good chance that when Redemption triggers there will be corpses "in the making" rather than being available for Redemption to steal them all at once. I never tested Necro with Phoenix, but wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work simply due to the lack of this "gradual CE" nature.

Well, as for me, my light sorc dinged 94 on Diablo runs. He even awarded me my first Azurewrath and another Shako during the process (93.25 to 94)

All set for round 1. I know I don't run optimally but I do like my cow map with the cow king fort in upper right corner. Allows me to enter....do a counter clockwise path around to the fort knowing I get most cows with next to zero chance my merc can poke the king.

Hoping for a Ber drop during the round to make COH for this sorc.

Good luck everyone and have fun!

@ffs I was trying to present the two extreme examples. So #1 is merc corpse focused, and #2 is as if merc isnt there at all (or if you like fb'd cows down in a separate group, but faster than he gets his first corpse). I was thinking there were like zones between these two extremes (that would indeed be explained by your "corpses in air" time), but I think I'm wrong. What you're saying I guess is most all the time, I'm not going to kill cows completely before the DS explodes merc's first corpse anyways. So #1 is what should be happening 90% of the time with pretty much every setup.

So when I would say or think "assassin needs more than one corpse to start CE chain", somehow my mind jumped incorrectly to my #2 scenario. Then I saw your might merc/beast times, so I knew something about my rationale was wrong. I think I've finally got it understood though

And thanks for the DS info. That makes sense for sure. And the gradual vs sudden CE thing is interesting too!

First time running Cows with Java that wears 1.07 MPK ring

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Hype! 1 hour till liftoff. I better get Javazon geared up.

About four and a half hours to go for me and I'm torn between trying to get my feeling for 1.14d back and wanting to avoid any good rune drops just before the start. Going great so far...

Spoiler

I'm not the fastest, or best geared, but it sure beats doing LK runs!

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I'm gonna count all runes drop through the set to keep me occupied and provide some data along the way. It would be awesome if someone prepares some file about cows what are the real odds of them dropping ANY rune to have an estimate of cows killed after 20 hours. I did calculations with "naive method", but I'm interested in "real method" calculation for this to see how different it is.

@Gripphon can you explain the difference between the real and naive method for this? As far as I know the way we've done it in the past is the most accurate way. If you mean calculating a confidence interval for the results, I figured that out a while back and can dig up the info. But iirc it was super discouraging, and I personally think the info is more useful than the confidence interval suggests.

Again, might be overlooking something, but the "naive" and "clever" rune cubing calculations (I couldn't convince him to use a less condescending name) that @drmalawi showed us, results from the fact that you cant cube incomplete rune recipes (ie 3 surs don't make 1.5 bers). I'm not aware of anything similar going on from taking the runes * 1/(chance of rune from cows).

EDIT: and also this likely isn't the best thread to mention this, but as far as your runeguide goes, the clever cubing calc would change the "average runs or time to find a rune" somewhat, but the only area comparisons that would come into question are the LK vs trav for jah and trav vs cows for zod. Since the naive method overvalues cubing's impact somewhat.

@Luhkoh
With naive method, chance of getting ANY rune from p5 cows is 1/244.5, for p7 it is 1/216.7
For small numbers it is good approximation, although I was lazy to check it with real method, still number shouldn't be more than half a point away I guess. But I'm never sure is there something I don't understand about these calculations.

First time for everything...

thanks to organisers!

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@Gripphon what exactly are you doing that is naive to get those numbers? Adding the probabilities of each of the runes? I get the same answer. The calc looks like this (using p5 for example).

Spoiler

p = playersetting = 5

Chance to drop in Act 5 (H) Good TC
TC = Cows(H) (see treasureclassex.txt)
Nodrop = 100
Probsum = 60 (this is the sum of all non-nodrop picks in that TC)
Act5 (H) Good = 3
N = floor(1+(p-1)/2) = 3
Newnodrop = floor(probsum/(1/((nodrop/(probsum+nodrop))^N)-1)) <---surely a theres a better way to write that formula <shrug>
Newnodrop = 19
Chance Act 5 (H) Good = 3 / (Probsum + Newnodrop) = 3/(60+19) = 3/79

Chance to drop Runes17 TC
Nodrop = 0 (no need to adjust for psetting when already zero)
Probsum = 130
Runes17 = 14
Chance Runes17 = 14/130 = 7/65

Chance Cow drops rune
(7/65) * (3/79) = 1/244.5

I can do these much more easily in a spreadsheet and did calcs last year for this and for trav and other monsters (wraiths and non wraiths). Let me know what/if you want summarized beyond what's in that rune calculator I made last year and I'll make a sheet or chart.

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Parents are visiting this weekend, so not going to be able to get a solid start on the set. I expect no issues with finishing the set, I'm just eager to get on the running hype train .

 

[PhineasB]

In practice runs, tried pure blizzard (DF, Bliz Ormus w/facet, Snowclash, perfect Nightwings w/facet, Infinity merc, etc.). Blizzard doing something like 11,400+- (from LCS). Killed cow king on p5 with single cast.

Then pure fire druid: -30/+29 faceted crystal sword, phoenix, perfect raven with/facet, etc. Killed cow king on p5 and barely noticed (I think with Armageddon).

I might respec other sorc/druid toons and try again, giving the corral a wide berth, or just stick with my javazon. We'll see...

Just realised I found DWeb since last RFL, I used HoTO last time.

How much FCR are people using with DWeb? I can get to 125 just, but as I only have a 10FCR necro amulet I can only get to 125 using both rings too, so I lose +2 skills from Beta BKWB.

5.5 hours in.
PhineasB said:
"For the first round we run Cow level
"During this contest we farm runes in various areas"

Running Cow level for runes. Ok, just wanted to be sure. And cows can drop these.. what are they called.. roons?

Kind of feel your pain DiabloTwo....4.5 hours in...none qualifiers Though I must admit my run times are horrid...so by Gripphons numbers here I only should have likely seen 1.

Gonna start on this later this evening, but wanted to confirm some things... Last year, @Grape said that it was fine to run this MP, as 1.07 has no /players function, and because my Zon had already killed Elvis and can't open a portal herself... I keep seeing people retiring characters from running because they killed Elvis and can't open a portal anymore. It IS still ok to do this in a MP game, right? I'm the only active toon, the others just stand around, raise the player count, and suck up XP...

Just wanna confirm before I get started...

WoRG

4.5 hours in, first data with necro on p5.
Last RFL data: 300 runs, 579 runes, ~470 cows per run

This RFL current data:
123.5 runs ( I died once in the middle of the run)
Avg time: 131.8 s
223 runes found --> 1.8 runes per run, 0.822 per minute
Approximately 440 cows per run and 201 cows per minute

Only different thing is I tend to skip cows a bit more and focus on heavy herding rather than killing 20 isolated cows here and there
Not enough running for relevant data yet, 10 hours mark will provide better estimation.

@maxicek
125 fcr is important for a few reasons, more important than extra 2 skills.

I'm 3.5 hours in, qualifiers are crap so far but got pretty good non-qualifiers. 37 ED RJoF, decent skillers, couple of nice SCs:

Spoiler

For me after 3.5 hours Trapper is at 194 cow kills/minute based on rune drop count, but I don't trust that number yet either. According to drop count she started with 258 kills/minute after 20 runs or so because during the first hour in general runes dropped left and right, then last hour very few runes dropped at all, long stretches where I got runes not even every other run. Let's see how things look after 20 hours.

Thanks for sharing your data @Gripphon, good to have some comparison (in particular my rollercoster in rune drops had me wondering what was actual average of rune drops per run, but my numbers aren't very different in the end).

It took me about 1.5 hours to I realize that FB dmg even with Beast setup is enough to put P5 cows in hit recovery – that's pretty a important thing and triggered a change in gameplay. Now teleporting directly onto the edge of the cow group on Beast switch to max Merc dmg, staying next to Merc while laying down DS and throwing FB just next to her on Merc basically. As long as cows don't encircle her, they just stand there looking stupid and inactively awaiting death. Overall runs became smoother despite 1 frame slower teleporting with Beast switch. Only issue with this playstyle is when I'm Amp'ed – then I sometimes have to take a step away or use Mind Blast to keep her and the Merc safe until the curse wears off.

Run times currently at +/- 2m20s on P5, picking up jewels, amethysts, Rals, rare rings and charms... so could be a little faster when only going for qualifiers. Recording of new playstyle to follow when I don't run the risk of embarassing myself by dying. Still getting the hang of what she can and what she cannot face tank, had two deaths and two S&Es following the change in approach...

I didn't test it in details, but for me ~180 cows per minute seems to be for both trapper and javazon, blova sorc is around 170 according to last RFL data.

Checked my 2019 RFL round one post for Java, seems I had diverging counts with rune drop method (200 cows/min) and XP method (182 cows/min). Assuming the truth is in between, it's pretty similar to Trapper with current numbers. Don't know about picking behaviour though, will have to compare crafting mats etc.

In any case it appears the difference between Trapper/Necro/Java is as little as 5% or so. Small changes, variance across maps and running technique can swing things either way it seems. Will try to push the Trapper harder.

Two hours in, already got two qualifiers, but let say that they're not big heavyweights... Anyway, my run times is around 5m/5m30s. I'm ok with this time, because I use a budget Blova, not really maxed for this task. I probably could shave about a few seconds or so if I were a bit more focused on big groups, but not much more, because I still have a long way before I ever hit sub 2m30s. I soften the cows with a level 11 Static Field and throw Blizzard/Nova on them moomoos. Still, I have the feeling I'm getting my groove now.

I guess I could reskill her into full Blizzard, but I won't go see Normal or Nightmare Akara to respec her, because she has a great Baal map that I don't want to lose, since Baaling is gonna be the main purpose of this character. I guess I could have farm Essences, but I figure I'm just too lazy for that.

Anyway, have fun everyone !

@WoRG the rules are the same this year as last, so go for it if that’s what @Grape okayed last year. And good luck!

Lol...I definitely need to roll a new map, I'm running - well mostly for xp, on p7, but times are somehow as bad as 8'. But well, I also take too much time on little groups, so it doesn't help at all. Anyway, as my set has already started, I may just work on gameplay more than on map, or time top find a new map shall be counted in. I'll see!

Recording of more refined Cow Trapper approach:

Hit recovery FTW. Makes runs faster as well as picking thanks to standing closer to the action.

I started running only in a circle instead of randomly checking bulges and outer corners as well, because I felt they don't spawn enough cows to be worthwile on average. And backtracking loses time of course. This resulted in a couple of sub-2 min runs and overall close to 2 min average.

Problem with such short run times is they start to more negatively impact the proportion of the "getting leg" part to the "cow running" part of the run, and whether drops over time make up for that remains to be seen (or rather estimated, based on drop method fuzziness). Currently doesn't seem to adversely affect runes per run average, but only did that for 30 minutes so far. It's definitely a more relaxed routine to always teleport the same path though.

I'm with @DiabloTwoinDC and would just like to clarify that it is the cows that drop these qualifying runes, right?

Think my highest so far is Io... though I'm only a couple hours in. Respec'd to Javazon, as p5 runs with the bow got a bit dull after an hour- she's too safe!

Did get one good drop so far- lightning skiller #6. Pretty locked in on my next twinked character being a lightning sorc- she will be started as soon as I find any Gul+ rune to make CtA as I have everything else!

Is someone able to make cow counter killer? That's the only way we can properly count cows and I don't know how hard is it to create such program.

10.5 hrs in. When your rune luck is in the doldrums:

Spoiler

AKA the Dol + Lums..

I wasn't planning on participating, but figured I might as well throw my name in-- I could actually benefit from some runs even if it's just for other things, and I recall last time I played in the RFL I stumbled my way into a Zod so sillier things have happened.

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On this current stash I only have a handful of Mats/Pats, but I got my old Blizz Sorc to go and kill Baal so that I had someone to run, even if they're not optimized for it. Just casually doing a few runs here and there. My map is really weird-- I'm already in the pen and the King is the closest monster to the portal. Guess it makes it easier to know where he is at least.

Scooping up plenty of gems, charms and bases at the moment which was the real goal, less than an hour in so far.

Also just had an amusing coincidence-- every single unique during one run was CI/PI. Needless to say my Sorc and Merc were not impressed.

7h in my first set. Not doing too great rune-wise, but that dropped :



It only rolled slightly above average, but I'm ok with that.

Only one day late to the party.

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2020 is all about Death Fathom xD

 

[PhineasB]

Currently about 6,5h in with p7 Java and I'm respecing her to remove the points in Decoy and Dodge, the later feels like it is hurting me by interrupting my throws (even though it only occurs after Defense and Block have failed).

I can't tell my real average time because of aborted runs (and a single death) and one mistimed run at the beginning but it should be in the 3:15-3:30 range with the run counter telling me the false time of 3:14 average. Compared to other people's times this seems awfully slow but maybe that is just because I don't do the fast run style where I skip anything but huge packs. I herd smaller packs together if it doesn't take too long.

My Stony Fields WP is 3 teleports away from Rakanishu and when I enter the Cow level I can see the King's pack on my screen. Equip before respec was:

99fcr/86fhr/20ias setup
Enigma
Upped Titan's
Spirit
Griffon's 'Cham'
2/19 Amulet
10/30 MPK ring
FCR, Mana, @ rare ring
Razortail
Eth Sandstorms
3/20 Gloves
12FHR/100Def GC, 4 Skillers (only one with life)
Rest are Life SCs with nice adds (def/res)

Merc (Defiance)
Infinity
Forti
Andi's

The MPK ring is just crazy, the only time I need to drink mana potions is immediately after I get hit with mana burn. I wish I had grinded more for a beta CtA, the BO runs out in the last third of the run and it is kinda annoying if I forget to renew. I even had a NDE with 1 HP but I couldn't get a screenshot to taunt the HC crowd

Now after the respec I have about 300 more base life and I switched the amulet for HLW, replaced upped Titan's with regular Titan's, added Phoenix on switch and dropped the fcr rare ring for one with LL/CR/@ but I might come back to SoJ here. I only have one Griffon's so 15% IAS jewel isn't an option just yet I'll try this new setup out now, it gets 68fcr/86fhr/30ias and I hope that Phoenix switch makes up for the loss of upped Titan's.

I'll post final data for now. I don't think I'll continue with this since it is a bit distracting to do and have relaxed time running at the same time.
p5 data for necro:
Runes found: 181
Avg time: 131.08 s
Cows per run: ~430
p5 cows per minute: ~197

p7 data for necro:
Runes found: 72
Avg time: 145.1 s
Cows per run: ~446
p5 cows per minute: ~208

If smaller groups are skipped and focus is on bigger herding, then perhaps p7 does offer some advantage in this regard. Still, not enough runs done to draw any concrete conclusions. I also tested p3 but had terrible luck. Still, going by the runtime alone it is comparable to p5 and p7 running.
As for data interpretation, let's just say real average for necro is between 190 and 210 p5 cows per minute.

Found this troll charm

Spoiler

Shimmering Small Charm of Fortune
Small Charm
Required Level: 25
Fingerprint: 0x11b6bd2a
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
All Resistances +3
3% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Grail -47

30 minutes of running after my last post and I found my first and thus far only qualifier, which allowed me to craft a CtA...

So I took the plunge, cubed my 4 Sur runes into 2 Bers. Crafted CtA and Infinity, respec'd my AT Blizzard sorc to Lightning and killed Baal with her.

After leveling to 89 (to allow my merc to equip his Fortitude sacred armour) I rolled a really solid map and started electrocuting some livestock.

Was immediately rewarded with Lightning skiller #7...

Will post some screenshots of my new goodies next week once I am not restricted to only having internet on my phone! And perhaps a video of my map.

5.5 hours into my first set. 2 qualifiers so far, funny thing is it’s the same rune Runs are averaging around 4 minutes for the runs so far. Picking up way more than qualifiers slows the run time down considerably. Running on P3 comfortably with my HC 91 trapsin. Tried a couple of p5 runs and noticed a considerable difference in the safety with certain boss pack rolls. The map I rolled, is a nice circular path ending right before the “Lone surviving Steak”. More to come later in the week.

4 hours in no qualifiers . In better news, I have found a trap skiller (need these and ele druid skillers badly), at least two 7mf scs, and just found this bad boy a few minutes ago.

Spoiler: ck armor

That was the last piece I needed for the ck set, and makes grail -19! Obviously can't compare to some others luck (deaths fathom...grumble grumble), but was glad to see it!

Also I said before I thought I would enjoy nova cow sorc but didn't bother testing it since I dont have a griffs. Well now I'm running a griffonless nova sorc and think she's def my fav cow runner so far . Am running cmoon, spirit, shako, maras, vmagi, magefist, arachs, dual soj, and war travs. Infinity merc. Build is zero vita ES with max nova, light mastery, es, tk, a couple of points in static to reach 20 soft points, and the rest in warmth. This has 2800ish mana (shes lvl 90) and seems to regen mana fast enough to work fine. Would like to try the infinity self wield with insight merc someday I think. I thought about just trying it self wielding an infinity thresher, but I saw @Bewitch run this cmoon nova setup on twitch and thought id try it. Much easier gameplay than assassin. I'm thinking I'll split time between the two but we'll see.

I feel like I'm finding out over and over that I'm just a sorc fanboy.

@Luhkoh
Did you try p3 with her? I would argue that is the best approach for undergeared character. Even my top tier characters have comparable p3 and p5 settings while p3 is considerably easier to run.

@Luhkoh inspired me to try nova/es instead of vita/light since I had most of the same gear. I had to farm up an essence from Andy (actually 2 so I could respec back if I didn't like it). I am missing out on any light skillers though so I had to drop from p5 to p3 but run times did go from 8 minutes to 6 so should even out (yes my running is that bad) In the process though I mistakenly selected normal and lost my map. Rerolled a map to try it out but not happy with it so going to do more map hunting later.

Running untwinked sure doesn't compete with the ultra geared top tier runners here. I just look at the numbers they post in disbelief. 12 hours into set and only 155 runes/ 1 qualifier though I am hopeful I'll get into a good groove with the nova spec and have a slightly better finish.

After this set I think it will he back to LK for this sorc until I can find/reroll a healthy set of skillers.(Some nice runes wouldn't hurt either, I want to make another infinity in a bill for self wielding use)

Good luck everyone!

@Gripphon hadnt tried it yet. P5 seemed comfy and my times were a little better than my assassin (getting 3:15ish) so I was pleased, but I’ll definitely give it a try! So thanks for the recommendation. Even on p5 cluttering is for sure a slight issue. You think it would be worth trying the self wield variant with an eth thresher infi. I can’t decide if it’s worth trying. Should prob just calc my health and mana.

Well, almost exactly 6h in I somehow managed to kill the Cow King with this Assassin as well. (After I already managed to do that with a Sin I specifically leveled to 94 before this started.) Honestly thought I stayed way clear of him all the time and knew the map well enough, but well..

Not going to prep another Assassin, but I'd like to stick with the CE gang this time around – will go with Necro for the next 14 hours to finish the set. Maybe fool around with things like Beast and Phoenix with him as well.

Assassin data:
After about 1 hour of warmup running, I started tracking all rune drops and run times for the remaining ~5 hours. At the moment of her unnoticed king slaying mishap, numbers were like this:

Runs tracked: 131
Run time (s) average: 142 (~2m30s with 1st half approach, ~2m10s with 2nd half approach)
Picking behaviour: Jewels, Rals, SC, GC, FAmethysts, rare rings
Average runes per run: 1.84
P5 Cows/minute: 190.53
(equivalent to 168.87 P7 Cows/minute)

About the first half of her runs was done with what I think was a suboptimal approach, though I'm still not sure which run time/clearing strategy is ideal.

To illustrate the variance problem with the drop method: If my next two runs had above average drops of 5 runes each, that would change P5 kills/minute to 195.79. If next two runs had 0 drops, the number would be 187.46. That's the variance of only 2 runs – and that is why I don't like drawing too many conclusions from this method based on few hundred runs. Though of course it gives a general ballpark idea of how well a build does.

In conclusion, this Beast/Phoenix Trapper could now be my first choice cow runner. Fantastic clear speed and at the same time much safer than Necro/Java when cows get close. Being able to face tank more means she can generally position as she pleases, which makes for easy running because engagements don't require much concentration. Plus as a result I was picking up a lot more without being slowed down as much in comparison to when I ran with other characters.

OK, Necro time!

EDIT: Remaining noteworthy non-qualifiers from Trapper runs below. No awesome RJoF or the like this time, but not too shabby either.

Spoiler

9 hours in, more levels than qualifiers, but some points nonetheless. I shall break the 10hrs this evening, probably pushing to 11 - I may decide to play some Zerk beside to take breaks, I haven't yet and well I start get bored on long sessions and make mistakes/some NDE.

Non qualifiers are not good anymore since a while, hopefully I'll find something soon just to break the bad streak.

It is about time to find a Zod!

I don't know how rare such maps are, but best maps are those where red portal spawns inside Cow King's home. Chance of that is low sadly, but such map is golden mine because King will be alone in the castle isolated and no other cows will spawn inside due to red portal mechanics. That makes killing King highly unlikely. I don't know can I even accidentally kill King, he is alone in the middle of castle and unless I teleport inside, he can't be dragged out at all.

The question is practicality of finding such map, but I would if I want to run with non-lightning based characters.

Blova running cows p5

Gear:
Griffon's (joool)
Enigma
Amulet
Eschutas (joool)
Spirit
Arach
beta BKWB (SoJ otherwise)
fcr mpk 1.07
Dracul Grasp
Silkweave

Skills:
Warmth 1
Teleport 0 lol
Nova 20
Lite Mastery 20
Static Field 14 (don't want too big range, it screws herding)
Blizzard 20
Spike 20
Blast 5
Armor 1

I skip smaller groups and focus on bigger, although hard to resist to kill some smaller herds too sometimes

Yep. I’m also using a Blova and it looks just like @Gripphon. Yep.

No, seriously, absolutely fascinating stuff. I wish I had at least half the efficiency shown there. Enigma for the big lpk and strength (thus more hp) I guess ? Can we see the stats on the 1.07 fcr mpk ring too ?

Anyway, awesome stuff.

@Arctodus
Thank you.
Here is the ring

Spoiler

Triumphant Ring of the Apprentice
Ring
Required Level: 3
Fingerprint: 0x48701e3b
Item Level: 5
Version: Expansion
+10% Faster Cast Rate
+36 to Mana after each Kill

Enigma + Dracul Grasp offer 24 lpk together, ring + Silkweave offer 41 mpk, so my idea is to make sorc sustain herself. I don't know how well this works with worse geared sorc, but with good gear this is done without too much problems. Another important thing is to reach the hit recovery damage number against cows. I forgot what it is, but I know my sorc has it now by default.

Yeah I never had a map with portal next to cow king, but it's not that important IMO. Sure in an ideal world you want that but that's far down the checklist for map rolling. I'll happily skip 20 cows near him each run if the map otherwise is great with corridors that I just teleport along, so that I can easily herd big groups and make runs quicker.

Re hit recovery: I believe it's also 1/12 of max HP, same as for player character right? If so: Max cow HP on P5 is 46347, so when they take a minimum of 3863 dmg they are put into hit recovery. Actually on P5 that is not that hard to achieve even without top gear. On P7 the min dmg number is 5150 for dealing guaranteed 1/12 of HP damage for sake of completeness.

About 2 hours into Necro part of the set. Haven't played him in a while and almost forgot how fun he was. Using this gear:

Spoiler

- 2/20 circlet (facet)
- DWeb (Ist)
- 2/20 P&B amulet
- Spirit
- Enigma
- FCR bloodcraft with high life+mana
- BKWB
- Arach
- TO gloves
- eth Treks

Solely based on run times and rune drops over time, he is actually faster than Sin. Thing is, I only track completed runs with both Sin and Necro, and he has to S&E more often. Teleporting into cows while Amp'ed means he often gets hit to <10% life immediately, whereas for Sin that was not a meaningful factor at all. His map is awesome though, foolproof circular route and easy to herd big juicy groups, and as long as he is not Amp'ed it's smooth sailing. @Gripphon do you mind sharing your Necro setup? Just wondering if I'm overseeing any options to make him at least a little bit tankier maybe.

I finished the first 10 hours of running with the Java and for the remainder of the runs I adopted the 'fast running' that ffs and Gripphon do where you ignore small packs completely. I also started to throw much more (maybe due to more IAS) and ended up repairing once per run but in the end the run times where much lower than before even though I had to make a small detour to Charsi each run.

Now for second half of this set I started playing Fissure Druid and am now 12,5 hours in. Just like with Java he can be closer to 3 minutes for me if I focus on big packs only and ignore small ones or he can go up to 4 minutes if I kill too much.

I run without Grizzly and even tested out dropping Oak Sage because minions cause cows to stand still and then they don't take proper damage from fissure. That wasn't a smart idea; the bonus from Oak pushes me over 4k life and apparently that's enough to have significantly lower chance to go into hit recovery and thus stay alive after a bad teleport.

I still died like 5 times in 2,5 hours but one was a teleport into a fana pack while amped and the last one was literally due to me not looking at the screen, so it's within reason. The gear is mostly standard:

My map has CK alone in the middle of the fort with only small amounts of cows around him, major packs spawn outside the fort.

99fcr/42fhr
HotO
Enigma
Phoenix
Ravenlore 'Shael'
2/10 Druid Amu (no other good stats)
SoJ
fcr/9@/89 mana ring
Magefist
Arach
eth Sandstorm's
4 Elemental Skillers with 21 to 31 life each
Vita SCs
5% fhr SC with fres

Merc (Might)
Infinity
Forti
Andariel's

I decided against a facet in the Ravenlore and added the Shael + fhr SC in order to gain two more hit recovery frames. This isn't optimal and in a better world I'd use two skillers with fhr instead.

@Gripphon Did you try Fissure Druid with facet weapon yet? I think 6 facet weapon + Spirit should be a lot better than HotO + Phoenix but I can't quite afford it right now

@ffs Check out this post by @NanoMist and the page he links to for the exact hit recovery mechanics.

Ah that is interesting, something new learned. Somehow I missed Nano's post back then. So numbers for 16 divisor spells would be 5794 for 75% chance and 2897 for 37.5% chance of GetHit on P5. Seems the former is out of reach for Nova whereas the latter is easily achieved. Also worth noting that Trapper FB damage range is apparently convenient in this regard, pretty much always in 75% territory even with low FB dmg Beast setup. FB dmg focused setup could even go for 100%, though I was perfectly happy with the 75% range.

@Gripphon thanks for the p3 tip. I don't love it since I was hoping to feel like I was not so much a budget player this year, but p3 feels sooo much nicer on the nova sorc and assassin both, even though both are totally doable on p5. Big enough difference that the runs changed to very relaxing. The less clutter is nice too. Getting ~3:30 runs on p5, and ~2:50 runs on p3 so pretty similar rune efficiency. Guess I'll stick with p3 for most of the time.

15 hrs in. I played most of this set on airport benches, on the airplane tray table, and sitting in bed. Also, cubing and ID-ing is certainly not going to help the efficiency. Despite all this, I'm still kinda disappointed in rune drops so far. Leveled from 85-90 (almost). So, if she finishes on lvl 90, I may opt out of a second set. At least there have been some decent finds along the way.

Spoiler

 

[PhineasB]

@ffs
Identical setup with Silk boots. For survivability I keep bone armor running, 86 fhr and active teleporting until I land on spot without cows. They usually don't swing fast enough to hit necro if he just teleports. 5-6 Revives + Iron Golem for stack.

@art_vandelay
I did, it is in last RFL running thread somewhere or results thread with some details.

Currently nearly 17 hours into my first set and the Druid is starting to feel efficient. He's only level 90 so no XP method possible yet. I made a short video of two runs and to my suprise they both turned out to be very fast (usually I'm in the 2:50 to 3:10 range) with the second one being super clumsy in the beginnging and I'm actually cursed in both of them

Runs are 2:45 and 2:36 according to VLC player which is far below my average.

Two things I noticed while watching:

• I don't just teleport in a circle, I mostly zig-zag to not miss big packs but that costs time and maybe a strict circular route would be faster.
• In order to keep moving I teleport back and forth over packs and in that process I sometimes overshoot so that some Cows on the Fissures aren't convicted anymore. I think the technique of 'hopping over packs' is good as it keeps them moving but the loss of conviction is problematic. I think this is where Facet Weapon+Spirit would really outshine HotO+Phoenix, with the +% FSD partly making up for the lost -% EFR.

Here's a comparison where I assume that I already replaced Shael in Ravenlore with FHR-Skillers and added a perfect facet:

1. No Conviction, Phoenix+HotO: 50-28-25=-3 ; Res Bonus: *1,03 ; FSD: *1,05 __ Total: *1,0815
2. Conviction, Phoenix+HotO: 50-85-28-25=-** ; Res Bonus: *1,** ; FSD: *1,05 __ Total: *1,974
3. No Conviction, Facet Weapon+Spirit: 50-30-25=-5; Res Bonus: *1,05 ; FSD: *1,35 __ Total: *1,4175
4. Conviction, Facet Weapon+Spirit: 50-85-30-25=-90; Res Bonus: *1,9 ; FSD: *1,35 __ Total: *2,565

I technically lose +1 Skill from the HotO but one could argue that replacing SoJ with beta BKWB solves that and makes it a fair comparison. The most staggering difference is in the case where conviction didn't trigger yet. This should be a definite improvment and so I will not be skimping on MF in the second round

Hit the 10 hour mark. Tracked runs and rune drops with Necro for the last 4 hours, with the following numbers:

Completed runs: 115
Average runes per run: 1.73
Average run time: 122s
Runes/min: 0.85
P5 cows/min: 208.08
P7 equivalent: 184.42
Cows/run: 423.09

Cows/min generally bounced heavily between 205 and 220 most of the time based on rune drops, with a below average stretch towards the 10h mark. Drop variance aside, major reason for good numbers I think is his extremely convenient map. Braindead circular teleport route with lots of density and no bulges or corners that need to be checked, no backtracking = faster runs = win. I didn't have such a map on Java/Sin yet, at least during a tournament, so not sure what's the takeaway here regarding build comparison. But yeah, Necro is not bad for cows – no news there.

Gameplay vid:

Not the smoothest batch, constantly Amp'ed plus a couple of screw-ups with casting sequence, but it gives a general idea of how runs and map look like. Overall survivability is not as big of an issue as I had feared in the long run, it became more routine once I got used to his more fragile nature and adjusted playstyle accordingly. Can definitely recommend the "middle way" route between Golem Mastery and Amplify Damage, at least with DWeb. PN damage is high enough that one PN cast is enough to allow for quick CE chains, so there's time to cast Amp several times per engagement. I do want the Insight IG and to keep him alive, so for me that build works well.

Nice stuff guys! I will try and make a video later today too to show how my runs look and get some advice and such. I would love to see a couple of runs with the mini map on (the corner mini map is less intrusive), especially on @ffs's map he likes so much. Its really tough for me to visualize the shape and the routing without that. And shew, you guys get closer in on the klng's fort than i do.

@art_vandelay that fissure druid looks pretty nice. I might have to add him to the rotation and try him out. Fissure and phoenix seem perfect for cows.
@ffs i guess that extra life per kill on dweb is super noticeable? Your life regen after a pack looks so much nicer than mine did when i was trying him out.

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: also idk if this is complaining or a question. I'm not getting anywhere near the total runes I was expecting. My p3 runtimes are ~2:40 and i'm 8.5 hours in. So if we assume 380 cows per lvl, that's expectation of 8.5*60/2.67 * (380/303.3) = 240 expected total runes. I'm right around 175. What gives? This implies I'm killing ~275 cows per run. Seems dire. I'll put up a vid tonight or tm and hopefully we can figure out if im terribly un-thorough, or just unlucky on total runes.

@Luhkoh here's the map:

Spoiler

Blue = Cow King
Pink = locations where biggest groups can be herded
Yellow = sometimes I end here if I felt density until then was not stellar; it often has okay-sized group, but not sure it's worth going there.

LPK/MPK from DWeb is a big help for sure.

15 hours in approx. Things are shaping well I guess, clearly not the most efficient runs, I tried p5 and p7 and it's a map issue, I am always between 5' and 6' based upon my gameplay feeling, a bit more including legs that I get on separate run sessions with the sorc.

Anyway playing on p7 must help a bit for rune drops, I don't take everything, but I feel the numbers are fine. Not taking things as seriously as I should due to the lack of Griffon, I don't see that set as a real contender - but hey, a Zod can do much afterall!

@ffs really nice graphics on the map thanks! That does seem a nice map! I did the first few hours with my assassin on one where i had a significant backtrack portion so was rerolling maps yesterday. Took a fair bit of time to get one with close leg and no "backtracking due to fort location". Was lucky enough to have a reasonable one on my sorc on first try.

EDIT: also just a random note, but I totally forgot about fhr on both my cow characters somehow. @art_vandelay asked me about it. It's definitely not a big deal on either one, but slapping a sc in on my sorc (to reach 60) and running treks plus a fhr large charm on my assassin (for the 27 bp) were a noticeable difference.

5 hours in. Getting a lot smoother. After a few hours I switched to a mouse rather than the touchpad - big difference!!

Thanks to ffs for the video which helped me man up and stand my pn necro nice and close to the cows, resulting in herding them tighter. Plenty of revives reduces risk.

My insight IG dies regularly, mostly when amped, despite 27 points in GM. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there. Drinking pots is fine anyway with death's web.

Found a druid elemental skiller with +25 to life.

Re-signing up 'cos my name got missed the first time, apologies.

Sign Up
Please state IF you are running 1.07.
-------------------------
WoRG (1.07)
Ghonn
D2DC
ffs
Hutton
Luhkoh
ESDv2
Kstil3227
maxicek
CaseyJones
Pb_pal
Arctodus
Babyhell
zemaj
Gripnoob
NanoMist
art_vandelay
TwentyMuleTeam
Xios
squidder
-------------------------

I never ran cows for this long before so I never really thought through the Leg portion of the run but here's a few things I noticed:

• Since the red portal in the Stony Field takes a while to open before you can enter it is not a waste to lure Rakanishu's pack out with one tele before entering. I guess some characters can also kill him very quickly but e.g. Necro or Fissure Druid don't have that option.
• S&E after picking up Wirt's leg only helps if you have next to 0 load times and completely messes up the run times in the run counter. (So only ffs does it because no S&E lag on mac and runcounter's broke there as well)
• Keeping Tomes+Cube in Stash is totally viable and reduces the amount of visits to Akara drastically. Not necessarily a time save (maybe even costs a few seconds) but it makes running for a long time more comfortable and allows one to get into the 'groove' for like 10+ runs without worrying about supplies.
• Opening the town portal takes a little while during which you can't use it. So it's faster to open the portal and then click Wirt's leg than to do it the other way around.
• Technically 'Cannot be Frozen' is useful for any character that doesn't S&E after the leg or carries cube in inventory (except sorc who has telekinesis) to avoid running from Tristram TP to the stash while frozen. Realistically it shouldn't make a huge difference unless your run times are super short. Luckily Java doesn't face this problem!

I guess this is nothing new to the old cow runners but I still had to figure it out (after mostly reading Round 2 and 3 Threads of previous RFLs and neglecting Round 1)

Also another thing I found is that when Druid gets amped it's better to resummon Oak instead of keeping amped Oak. The amped Oak that still has BO is weaker than the non-amped one without BO. It sucks to lose Oak in times were you need it the most, and being amped is definitely one of those.

Since lvl 90, XP is not so good anymore, but I may end the set around mid lvl.

Still no CK set piece yet... well i didn't want to make a second set, so it may be a failed goal. But as it is low TC parts, wouldn't it be more efficient to farm it in NM or even Normal for the lower pieces? I mean in the long term, when no HR is needed anymore.

For now, I still need no qualifiers, and I found some little things like bases, charms/skillers. Will try to make a non-qualifiers haulpic tonight if I can complete the set today

Late start for me, just started running last night with Nova Sorc. Zon had a Baal map I wasn't quite ready to part with.

About 5 hours left. Continued tracking Necro runs, numbers changed a little:

Runs tracked: 244
Run time avg: 126s
Runes found: 419
Runes per run: 1.72
Runes per min: 0.82
P5 cows/min: 199.93

Changes in comparison to previous numbers don't make a lot of sense sense (longer average run times would suggest more kills/runes per run on average instead of fewer), though I guess could just be the rune drop variance again. Or maybe I'm just getting sloppy.

As for his non-qualifiers so far, he completed the CK set and got a few skillers, otherwise nothing too crazy. The RJoF I got earlier will be hard to best anyway.

Spoiler

Results sent. First across the finish line? Don't worry, I've set the bar nice and low for everyone..

A couple more nice finds to keep this from being a total bust:

Spoiler

Decent roll.

I knew these were gonna be juicy when I saw the red color. Too bad it doesn't include lite resist.

I paused my running temporarily. First, I'm al ready at half and secondly I already found couple of Chams.
@ffs
Nice data. Can you try him on p7 to see is it better? It could be on such small map.

Chams are cute, but... last RFL I found a Zod, recent OBP tournament I found a Zod, and when playing Necro I basically find Zods all the time, so...

I tried P7 now for a little bit. Based on run times it's more or less equally efficient, but cluttering is really an issue (tbh even on P5 it sometimes is on his map). Same for keeping IG alive, I had to babysit him a lot. That's with 12 hard points in GM and all other remaining points in Amp; maybe with max GM it's better, but if anything I want to shift a little from GM to bigger Amp range. I'm running Ist'ed DWeb, not sure maybe facet makes P7 noticeably smoother. Anyway, overall too many things in favor of P5 so I'm sticking with that.

12 hours down....8 to go....found 2 more qualifiers since my last update at 5.5 hours. Hoping the last 8 bring at least 1 more qualifier. Found 3 eth grailers (Rattlecage, Todes. Flame, and Bloodletter), 3 skillers (Plain Light GC, Druid Summon +19 life, and Passive Zon +1 Max Dam) , 2 set War Hats. 65 life Waterwalks. Lastly I found 3 Ruby jewels (38, 36, and 35), no fervor or other mods at all but better than none I guess. Last update will come after the 8 hours are complete. Good luck and may Blessed RnG be with all.

Here's the Haul Pics.

Nice bragging everyone! My first set is guaranteed third place or better but I will keep running nonetheless

For the second set I'm starting with Blizzard and I'm two hours in now. It's going smooth with 2:19 average and very few dangerous situations (pretty accurate since it only includes one death and at most one S&E due to NDE). I wanted to start out with full damage outfit but I realized that Blizzard Sorc is too fragile for that so I replaced Ormus with 1.07 Arkaines pushing my life from 1,7k to nearly 2,5k and replaced Spirit switch with Phoenix. She is still a powerhouse and I don't regret making her safer at all.

105fcr/86fhr
Fathom '29% CRes jewel' (really)
1.07 Arkaine's 'PRuby'
Spirit
Griffon's 'Cham'
Mara's 30@
TO's Gloves
SoJ
Snowclash
fcr/89mana/9@
Waterwalk 65 Life
5 x Skiller
5 FHR SC
4x4 free space

CtA/Phoenix switch

Merc (Defiance)
Insight GPA
Fortitude
Andariel's

That's nearly 2,5k life, decent resists and Chilling armor from Snowclash together with Defiance from merc. Arkaine's has like 1,5k def alone and with Defiance and Chilling Armor I have over 10k def. Due to my high life the chance to go into hit recovery from one regular cow (no aura, amp or crit) hitting me is 37,5% in roughly 5/6 of hits and 0% in roughly 1/6 of hits (rough numbers!) so I can get out of bad teleport situations safely.

There's not much to say about playstyle, it's Blizzard after all. Instead I will say some stuff about Telekinesis in Rogue Camp, Cow AI and Attacks as well as Hit Recovery:

First off when Sorc gets the leg and TPs home there is a sweet spot to TK the stash from. It's right below the campfire and if you TK stash from here and cube the leg and then exit the cube she will NOT run towards stash and hence you can click on the red portal in peace. I'm currently trying to get this every run but it requires precision and I'm tired. I will try to capture it on video in the next days.

***

Secondly Cow AI is known and it explains what attacks they use. A cow has two attacks, A1 and A2 with A1 doing more damage. Here is their AI:

• If a Cow is out of Melee Range it has 99% chance to approach you.
• If a Cow is within Melee Range it has 99% chance to attack you.
• If a Cow chose to attack you it has 33% chance to use A2 instead of A1.

This is info gained from Nefarius' AI compendium, a great read if you haven't done so already.

***

Thirdly to get FHR relation to life for Cows (regular, no aura, no attack bonuses, no crit) one needs to look at how much damage a regular Cow does. Their attacks A1 and A2 have the following base damage and AR according to basin wiki:

• A1: 120-167 Damage with 4232 AR
• A2: 111-158 Damage with 4232 AR

and at p5 this gets a 4*6,25%=25% bonus:

• A1: 150-209 Damage with 5290 AR
• A2: 139-198 Damage with 5290 AR

I will assume worst case of 209 damage hit for FHR calculations but from the AI consideration we know that in 33% of cases it's 'only' at most 198 damage. Using the FHR resource I linked earlier to ffs I get the following:

• In order for the chance to go into Hit Recovery to be at most 37,5% the max life of the character must be at least 1672. If it is lower there is the possibility of getting into the 75% chance for Hit Recovery case.
• In order for the character to never go into Hit Recovery the max life of the character must be at least 3344.

Both of these are without any % Damage Reduced or Integer Reduce on equipment. If you want to never go into hit recovery from regular cows you can either reach the (very high) amount of 3344 life or you can socket Sol, Ber or wear Shako (or other % DR/PDR gear). If you only have PDR gear but not %DR then any point of PDR will reduce the above 3344 by 16 points (so Sol reduces it by 112) whereas if you only have % DR then every 1% of DR will reduce the above 3344 by 33,6 points (so Shako reduces it by 336 life whereas each Ber reduces it by 272 life).

For comparison a PRuby (+38 Life) with 74% BO only increases life by 66. So the order of socketing is PRuby, then Sol and then Ber for the rich man who doesn't want to die from bad teleports at all costs. (with Sol probably better if one were to factor Amp in)

Finally it's not necessary to reach this value above exactly (or the reduced version). Each damage reduction/life increase also increases the chance that an attack will result in the game chosing the 0% chance for FHR path instead of the 37,5% one. (because damage roll on cow attacks is random and we assumed the very worst case)

Little late but just noticed this thread, lucky or unlucky with the virus around have some more down time.

This is a perfect incentive, I'm in need of a ber/sur for infinity/pride and this seems like a great incentive to hunker down and hope for the moo moo farm lottery.

Not 1.07 btw and prob run this on a brain dead blizz sorc

Well here are the videos:

Trapsin

Nova Sorc

The trapsin I was a bit more sloppy than usual since I was just coming off of playing the nova sorc for a while before the video. But not a very big difference. Definitely feel like I have to be killing more than 275 cows per run. Of course I'm accepting general advice as well. @art_vandelay you're getting 2:19 runtimes on a p5 blizz sorc? That seems really really good.

Also not sure whats up with the messed up right border or phantom mouse pointer on my video. Apparently I need OBS advice too .

@ffs
How about p3? According to my data and runtimes, it is equally efficient as p5 too while being much easier to play.

@Luhkoh
Apart from runes, you could also count all jewels/small charms you collect to have even more data for more precise numbers. Both jewels and small charms drop at the same odds (as do grand charms actually too), so having more items is better and would eliminate luck factor in a better way.

 

[PhineasB]

@Gripphon true I've thought about that and I do try not leave any jewels or charms on the ground, but since they aren't a unique color I figured I probably leave enough on the ground to impact the results significantly. It's not a huge deal to me if I'm just unlucky on total runes found, but I just wanted to make reasonably sure that's what was happening. Because if I'm only killing <300 cows per run, i should probably change something .

And obviously I'm not pushing run efficiency like you and ffs, but I second trying p3 (so thanks for that tip earlier!). if its even pretty close to as efficient, I would want to play it. 1. cow runs are too long anyways 2. no clutter issues 3. less deaths.

Don't worry, none of my tests suggested any build kills less than 350 cows per run unless player skips tons of them.
Only way to know cows killed number is to have program which counts it. Every other method will have +-15 variance in estimation unless player spends many hours counting items. However we already know number of cows to a good degree. I believe most builds can aim 380-410 cows per run while few can aim up to 450.

@Gripphon don't tell my boss, but thanks to home office I tried P3 for a bit. Rune drops were actually similar, but judging by run times with same playstyle, I'm very far away from the speed increase needed to make up for lower drop rates on P3. Very comfortable running though. No cluttering issues and everything is safe for Necro + his gang. I don't have Amp maxed as I said, I could see how P3 is closer to P5 with max Amp (and on P3 the IG doesn't have any issues anyway it seems). Because on P5 I have time to cast Amp 2-3 times before the first corpse is there, whereas on P3 first corpse is much quicker and having max Amp range could help more in reducing run times.

Might be able to finish the set today. Probably will go for another one – what's that famous book by Garcia Marquez: D2 in the times of Corona.

Kind of want to try 200 FCR Nova Sorc, anyone did some cow running with her?

I completed my first set...had some reasonable luck anyway...may run another since I didn't get any CK set items and now I have a better handle on the process...Running 105 FCR ES/Nova now but only at P1 for about the last 8 hours (runs are soo much smoother mainly because I don't have enough +skills gear to put cows into hit recovery reliably at higher settings - still seeming to average 1 rune per run)

Unfortunately early runs were as light sorc and took longer than 5:30 seconds so my run counter numbers aren't reliable (some runs counted as 2)...however, the run counter stats claim 299 runs, 3:36 second run time average.

Run Summary:
Total Runes: 272
F Amethysts: 54
Grand Charms: 115 (2 x Gheeds, 4 Skillers - Fire Sorc, PComb, Bow, Traps - no good secondary mods)
Small Charms: 105
Uniques: 65 - 5 rings :nagel, manald, dwarf star, raven frost, carrion wind - 13 elites

All in all, fairly happy with the set

Gear:
Shako (PTopaz)
Spirit (35 fcr)
Eschutas (+10% light dmg - no socket) (CTA + Spirit on switch)
Tal Rasha Ammy
VMagi (no socket)
Frosties
BK Wedding Band
SoJ
War Travs
Dual Res Rare Belt with +59 life and 9 str
Charms - (life/mana, fhr, gheeds)

I don't have the gear to run 200 FCR in any form but I may put on Silkweaves, Magefists, and 2x FCR rings and try that with Crescent moon axe at higher players settings. It really hits my mana though with no soj and frosties.

I'm not sending results just yet as I may run that second set.

Finished first set. Final Necro data:

Completed runs tracked: 378
Runes/run: 1.66
Sec/run: 126
Runes/min: 0.79
P5 cows/min: 193.43

Numbers continued to bounce around a lot, but generally the downwards trend of rune drops per run continued for some reason. Probably he was just a little unlucky, considering most of the time I cleared one location more than in the beginning (when he got around 1.75 per run, and Sin also got 1.74 with basically same running approach).

Remaining non-qualifiers included another full CK set as well as these:

Spoiler

View attachment 54426View attachment 54427View attachment 54428View attachment 54429View attachment 54430View attachment 54431View attachment 54432View attachment 54433View attachment 54434

Really I don't see any separation between Java, Necro and Trapper – at least with what I currently think is the ideal approach with each of them, they're so close in performance it's basically impossible to make out some kind of order among them. So bottom line, just a matter of playstyle preference IMO. Problem is I really like gameplay with all of them. Think I'll run Nova Sorc for another set to see how she compares to the trio.

So I just did my first Cow counting via XP method. I did 20 runs and didn't throw Blizzard on Raka (except one time where only he and about 1 minion died) and for the most part merc didn't get minion kills from raka but one or two times he did, also he killed 1 or 2 regular fallens per run next to Wirt's leg. To deal with all of this I just assumed one full Raka pack kill and measured how much XP that gives (just killing him and his minions once).

Before the test I had 76 runs with 2:19,710 average and after I had 96 runs with 2:19,298 average, that makes for a difference of 45:54,648 in time. XP after Raka correction is 864564 and my sorc is lvl 94 so p5 cow gives her 108 XP. So without accounting for minions/champs I would arrive at a naive number of 8005 cows in total over 20 runs.

Now I don't know how to guess minion number correctly or what people use for estimates commonly. I would say I kill about 5 packs each run with 20% being Champions and 80% being Unique (so 1 to 4). Champion has on average 2,5 members and 3x XP of regular Cow while Unique pack should have one leader and about 6 (???? no idea) minions on average all of which give 5x XP of regular Cow.

So I have to substract per run 2,5*1*2+6*4*4=101 (format: avg members of pack * rarity of pack type i.e. 1 or 4 * XP multiplier minus 1). That is 2020 cows in total which seems super high. So I arrive at 5985 Cows over 45 minutes and 54 seconds, i.e. 45,9 minutes roughly. So that would mean 130 Cows/min?

This seems super bizzare to me because this would mean I kill only 300 Cows per run but if THIS is my standard run I can't believe it:

I don't often teleport into the area behind the fort, maybe that's a mistake... In any case the wide open area in this cow level is not good at all.

Also in this video you can see how Sorc is in exactly the right spot to TK the stash. She does not move at all after I exit the cube.

First and only set completed. In total found 8 qualifiers which I'm content with. The last 8 hours brought another skiller, 3 eth grail items (Nightsmoke, Serpent and Battle) and 1 regular grailer (heaven's light) to bring it to -25 among other decent drops.

In the midst of all this, found some green antlers....Almost had a GG find...so close just needed +2 more Nado

@art_vandelay Average number of mininos is 4.5 (3-6) except for Cow King who has 8. XP method tends to underestimate cow kills because you don't actually kill all those monsters you subtract. One option is to count exactly the number of champions/minions/bosses in a run (by reviewing recording). Thing is, if there's a boss pack with minions within a big group you have no way of knowing how many cows were minions, so that doesn't work every run. The more practical option if you want to track a bunch of runs is to observe how many of those do you kill, e.g. you normally don't kill possessed champions or immune bosses, and some minions/champions will end up as stragglers left alive etc.... Then subtract accordingly, e.g. only subtract 80% of average bosses/champions/minions on your map. Also maybe your average boss pack is lower than 5 – that's a number you want to observe closely and not just guess. I usually counted boss packs for ~20 runs or so and then worked with the average of that going forward.

All in all, it's a lot of work to properly apply the XP method, and while it doesn't have the variance problem that drop method has, it is still based on averages that also require some time and effort to determine...

First set non-qualifiers haulpic Items were chosen for balance on the pic, i found it quite nice that way


Death and Doom are pretty nice ones, Death being a failed unique!


75 durability

Regarding qualifiers, i topped at... 5. The remaining valuable runes were Lems, so it's a somehow good pick as i hoped less in efficiency.

Brought her to lvl 90.5, starting from 85.something, almost everything on p7, so i can be pretty happy with it too.

I haven't sent results due to COVID...i may go for a second set if i feel so - especially if i find some golden diadem in the pits!

I would substract around 50 cows for necro, but I tend to skip two packs most of the times while getting 3 to 4 of the rest not killing everything from them either. For Nova sorc also around 50 cows since she doesn't usually kill all minions, although depends... At first I also overestimated minions killed and thought around 100 cows must be substracted, but in reality it is half of that, maybe up to 60 depending on a build.

Are you sure runes from stony field dont count?

Spoiler

That's basically Zod right there!

Oh good, I can get back into some D2 while shut away from the rest of the human race. (RIP Titan Quest + Immortal Throne which I just installed today from the discs, lol.)

And we can use different characters for different segments, right? Probably gonna run my cowzon here, but we'll see.

Also...... any bonus or penalty for finding a Crown of Ages? (i.e. unique Corona...)

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Just over half way through my first set. 4 qualifiers so far, though half of them are very much more filler than thriller!

Still no internet on the PC (adapter should arrive next week) so no 'proper' post just yet...

I respec'd to full Nova/ES. Run times on p5 are 3.5-4 minutes which is quicker than with Lightning though not massively so. However, the runs feel a lot smoother as the only thing that's threatening is Mana Burn so I can be much less careful teleporting in areas I know boss packs don't spawn.

Will try some /p3 tonight, though I don't think it will make the runs much faster. With 7 lightning skillers (maybe it's 6 actually, I can't remember) kill speed on p5 is pretty high, I think my runs are mostly slowed by the fact I play HC so my merc has Holy Freeze and I can't be super aggressive with positioning in areas where boss packs spawn, both of which significantly slow down the herding phase.

So... I checked the number of jewels and sc's in addition to the numbers of runes:

item      qty    recip drop   cows/min   p5 cows/min
------    ----   ----------   --------   -----------
jewels    92       708          91.2       73.5
sc's      103      708          102.1      82.3
runes     241      303.33       102.4      82.5

The sc's matching up with the runes led me to believe I'm not that unlucky with the runes and am rather just slower than I thought. But wanted to hold out some hope and double check. So I wanted to try the exp method, but the sorc I've been using is only lvl 90. So I respec'd my lvl 99 sorc. Yes... to use the exp method. Think a second longer than I did and you'll realize why that's a bad idea . So 2 tokens flushed for nothing. But I have a lvl 94 sorc as well. Repec'd her, and tried it out. Got 91 p5 cows per min (subtracted 75 cows due to minions/champs). So that pretty well confirms to me that my rune total isn't too unlucky and I'm just slow, especially since the total runes method giving ~82 would factor in the occasional bad run and not-too-infrequent death.

So I spent 4 tokens (respecing two sorcs to nova and then back to blizz) to confirm I'm slower than I'd hoped, and that I'm killing less than 350 cows per run (probably closer to 300). Womp womp. I came into the round wanting to do ~3:30 p5 runs with ~380-400 cows per run, so approx 120 p5 cows/min. And my runtimes were suggesting I was right on that target, but I'm a lot further due to the lower cows/run. Ah well at least it's an improvement from last year (where I was running with a blizz sorc with nearly no gear). Maybe next year will be close to the mid 100's. Unless someone has some advice for improving a lot immediately. I think I'm 13 hours in so far.

@Luhkoh, you're already light years ahead of how I am running this year...Of course, this year is better for me than last year...I didn't have any characters that could even enter last year So improvements for us both over last year!

My second set is going smoother, though I still die more often than I would like....mana burn is the pits Oh well, into a smooth routine and run times are just under 4 minutes so I should get over 300 actual runs in vs whatever I managed in set 1. I could improve that to 3:30 most likely but I would have to skip a bit more cows than I like, hard to override that gotta kill em all instinct

@Luhkoh Yep. I'm on the same boat as @CaseyJones right now. Well, an actually worse boat than him, when I look at his numbers. I thought I was doing 5m30s run on average, but I was actually slower than that in reality. 5-30 was probably my fastest run time. So, I switched my Blova to p3 and only targeted bigger packs. Now, I'm probably at that 5min. average now. Obviously, my gear is not on par yet, thus why I aim for better times next year, but I guess it's due process; getting those insane numbers posted by the top players doesn't happen overnight. I aim to get there eventually, but we have to accept to make due until then.

Realised my Meteorb Sorceress has been doing this all wrong. Last RFL I was using Static Field then Fire Ball, this RFL I switched to Static Field then Meteor. After the first hour of running I discovered I should be casting Meteor and THEN Static Field. Oh boy . I'm only 90 minutes into the set but this revelation may help inspire me to play a bit more.

Theorycrafted and tested some Nova Sorc with ES build. Here's the routes I tried and what I ended up with.

Build and gear used in all/most variants:

Spoiler

- faceted Griffon's
- faceted body armor (Nova Ormus, Viper, Arkaine's, Enigma and Que hegan are other optoins...)
- Silkweave for 5 MPK
- 3 MPK caster gloves unless FCR is needed (e.g. Infinity setup)

Defiance Merc with Infinity, ebug CoH, Andy

7 skillers in inventory

200 FCR: Tried for a little bit, but IMO this is only feasible for time travelers with OP 1.07 MPK rings. Balancing both FCR and MPK with current patch gear is not possible in a way that really keeps up with the huge mana spending. So I only looked at the below 105 FCR setups, with current patch mana upkeep options.

Self-wield Infinity: avg Nova dmg ~3.8k, no built-in FHR, no MPK needed
Offers the major convenience of Insight Merc, but at the cost of a good chunk of damage. Also lack of FHR unless socketing it or getting some via charms.

All other setups need to take care of MPK, which if you're not time-traveling can be a bit tricky. I used Silkweave and mostly also MPK caster gloves. Lidless Wall and CM are weapon/shield options with additional MPK.

Eschuta's + 4-facet (18/18) Shield: Nova dmg ~4.8k, 8 MPK, no built-in FHR.
Highest damage from the setups I thought were reasonable, good built-in Static range, at the cost of some MPK and no FHR.

Eschuta's + Spirit or Lidless Wall: Nova dmg ~4.6k, 8 MPK (13 with Lidless), 60% FHR with Spirit + FHR SC.
Slightly less damage, a bit higher Static range. With Spirit, MPK is a little lower than with CM setup below, whereas with Lidless MPK is better but no FHR.

Crescent Moon + Spirit: Nova dmg ~4.5k, 10 MPK, 60% FHR.
This is what I prefer at this point. Damage only slightly lower than Eschuta setups, but on P5 it doesn't make a difference for casts per kill after Static – all of these setups need 5 casts when assuming 2 preceding SF casts. Advantage is getting both sufficient MPK and at the same time good FHR.

Below a couple of runs with this on P5 (without sound, forgot to adjust input) but on a map that will be rerolled – layout is good, but way too many small groups scattered too far from one another, just takes too long to herd bigger groups. If you're constantly wondering whether a group is worth killing, that's not a good sign.

Re FHR: Technically this is basically irrelevant as long as ES is up. However, it becomes very relevant when mana burned with cows swinging at you – because in that situation you're pretty much guaranteed to be knocked into hit recovery. Instead of just dying whenever that happens, I do not want the ability to teleport away and re-cast ES, so IMO it should be taken into account for sure even though it's "just" a safeguard for that situation.

P3 seems to be a great alternative for her given the relatively low damage main spell. The previously discussed FHR mechanics make P3 a lot smoother too, Nova can easily achieve 75% chance of GetHit on P3 whereas it will only have 37.5% chance on P5. So far it seems to me P3 is not quite fast enough to make up for lower drop rate, but much easier gameplay while not sacrificing a lot.

@ffs VERY nice post. Really enjoyed that. I would guess main convenience of self-wield infinity is that you can run with lower total mana, leaving a lot more points to put in vita, making mana burn much more survivable. I am surprised the dmg is so much lower with that huge -elr, but I guess it makes sense since you'd have to get more fcr and no skills from spirit. What is the nova dmg number you cite as well? Is that taking into account -elr or something? Interested to see what kind of cows/min you end up with!

 

[PhineasB]

Nova damage numbers are after Conviction and with -ELR from gear in each case. CM setup takes cows to (or at least very near to) -100 with Griffon's and facets, so Infinity doesn't offer an improvement offensively. Regarding cows/min I'm currently at ~170 based on rune drops, but only kept track for ~80 runs so far. Currently using this:

Spoiler

faceted Griffon's Eye
3/10 FCR amulet
CM
Arkaine's with 3 MPK/-req jewel
35 Spirit
Magefist
Arach
2x SoJ
Silkweave

Swapped Nova Ormus and gloves out include Arkaine's, I really like it for Nova/ES Sorc. Gets me to the 86 FHR breakpoint with Spirit and SC, iDR pairs well with ES, and higher BO/life/mana is always nice to have. Some ~200 lower dmg than previous setup with Nova Ormus, but on P5 again it doesn't matter – same "max 5 casts after 2x Static" breakpoint.. if you want to call that a breakpoint.

Overall I'm 4 hours in with Nova Sorc, with first 1.5-2 hours mostly experimenting with gear and rolling maps several times. Think I got her setup and map now and will at least play her for half the set, then maybe another char for second half.

Running a very similar setup to @ffs

Griffon (Facet), CM, Spirit, Viper (PRuby, didn't have another facet around), Mara, 2 x SoJ, Arach, TO gloves, Silkweave, 7 skillers.

Standard Merc setup but with Holy Freeze.

As predicted dropping to p3 had almost no effect on runtimes (maybe 20s at most) but it does feel significantly smoother. I think this is just down to being able to effectively stunlock cows by putting them in to hit recovery- while I still can't teleport on top of Minion cows unless I'm certain they don't have Mana Burn, it does mean you can teleport near them and not have to worry about them making it into hit you, whereas on p5 you still need to "keep an eye on them".

@Hutton Think you can drop the TO gloves since you're at the 105 FCR breakpoint regardless – e.g. for Frostburn or MPK gloves? If FCR is needed on gloves it's normally better to go Magefist with her, for the mana regen and +1 Warmth.

Also I'd give Defiance Merc a shot really. HF Merc = slower cows = slower runs. Defiance is a massive defensive boost. In my case it decreases cows CtH from 51% to 29% (with Arkaine's and Frozen Armor).

Yeah, it's just for the cold res (a hangover from when I was Lightning, it's definitely not needed now with ES). Perhaps Bloodfists?

Agree that Defiance is best, 100%. Holy Freeze is purely down to playing on HC (for safety elsewhere, again as Lightning), but I'm considering just leaving her as a dedicated cow runner in which case maybe I will grab a Defiance boi.

@ffs Is that 29% CtH on p3 or p5? I'm only reaching 31% with fire sorc here on p5 although she has lvl 12 Chilling Armor, lvl 16 Defiance Merc (from Hell, normal gets lvl 18 base) and wears Arkaine's as well (total 10203 def with Andi's on merc).

Since flame carpet for Meteor is pointless (everything dies after static+meteor) I'm thinking about investing the rest of my points in Chilling Armor and to give merc CoH instead of Fortitude so I get to 29% CtH. Beyond that l can only try to add life/def SCs and maybe rerolling map for normal defiance merc. (that would push it to 28%)

Fire sorc is very enjoyable to play, she can stand safely in a pack of cows while everything dies around her And she's faster than Blizzard! (at least for me)

Just over the 5h mark. Need to put some effort in or I won't finish. Nothing interesting to report, I could really use a decent drop to give me some motivation.

Finished the set. Not my favorite, but a few decent drops made it better that terrible anyways. Don't think I'm doing a second one. After making that post about my efficiency 12 hours in (~82 p5 cows per min), it at least got better. For those last 8 hours, the rune drops showed just under 100 p5 cows per min. So still not great, but at least better. Heres some stats for the set:

runes           439
jewels          168
sc's            172
skillers        8
flawless ameth  103
total flawless  519

runes/hour      21.95
p5 cows/min     89.4

est runtime     2.8 min (p3)
est runs        428
est cows/run    311

3 hooves 3 hides 1 horn

So now I geared up my trav sorc, just using the vmagi setup atm. Rerolled maps maybe 20 times total. Got this bad boy. Keeper?

Spoiler: new trav map

Goal for round 2 is sub 24s run avg. This seems easily achievable. Current setup has only 1 point in static and in cold mastery because I'm scared to commit points yet. Other goals for round 2 are poison and cold die facets for grail, and bk and wisp rings for grail, so I want at least some appreciable mf.

Gear is 14% nwv with a +5/-3 facet, ptopaz 30@ vmagi, 30maras, 40@hoto, spirit, hellmouth, soj, nagel, snowclash, war travs. Have gheeds and 5sk in the inventory with two shimmering scs of vita and 4x mf scs. Has just over 150 mf and max blizz dmg is 8100. I probably need to clear more inventory space, but looking good so far. Tough to see how much I need in static.

@art_vandelay CtH numbers were just LCS actually I think they're correct for P1. On P5 it should be 34% with Defiance (9.2k def) and 56% without it.

Managed to hit the 10h mark with second set this weekend. Nova Sorc data so far:

Runs tracked: 214
Runes found: 336
Avg run time (s): 132
Avg runes per run: 1.57
Avg runes per min: 0.71
P5 cows/min: 174.49

Above numbers include runs on previous mediocre maps and less optimized setups. The last 58 runs were done with above Arkaine's setup and on a better map, numbers there are better: 1.67 runes/run with 129s runs, i.e. ~189 cows/minute. Pretty good numbers, but based on just a low number of runs. I'd estimate real long-term average is around ~180, I think @Gripphon said the same for her. Great runner with very fun gameplay.

With new setup and after ~10 hours of running with her, runs look like this:

Spoiler

Timer wasn't running when I recorded, so that Gul drop doesn't count...

Things got smoother with above setup and some practice. Amp and Mana Burn are rarely dangerous, she didn't die since switching to the Arkaine's setup. Also after killing a wave of cows, I learned it's often a good idea to teleport in place, cast SF or even just wait. That way it's faster to kill the "second wave" that's coming in, instead of attacking (and stunning) just the first row of them while the ones behind don't walk into the Nova radius.

Non-qualifiers from first half of the second set included SoJ, Bow and P&B skillers with life, 19 FR RJoF, 7@ IAS jewel.

Spoiler

View attachment 54473View attachment 54474View attachment 54475View attachment 54476View attachment 54477View attachment 54478View attachment 54479View attachment 54480View attachment 54481

I did comparison of drops and xp method for p5 and p3. I have never had similarity between the two yet, xp method gives worse results than drop method. Either reducing 50 cows from the total is still too much or drops are continuously on a lucky side.
Either way I don't really see how can we get more precise. I dislike xp method because it largely depends on a running style. If I hoard more, then I naturally kill more minions. If I try to run faster, then I kill less minions. I also kill more cows on p3 than on p5, both regular and minions. But how much, I can just blindly guess some random number that seems nice to me.

Either way, p5 is barely better than p3 while at ~ 2 min running time, so I guess p3 might be simply superior for any runner that is above 2.5 mins mark.
I would guess precision of these methods is somewhere around the +-5% from a given result. Or it could be as bad as +-10%. It could be 215 or it could be 185 cows per minute. Of course mathematically difference between the two is significant, but there is nothing we can do about that sadly.

Klaus is about halfway done his set, like max I'm gonna have to dial it up a bit to finish. I can report though that he is still, in fact, alive. So far so good!

I hate this game. 16 hours into the second set and I have to switch characters again

Setup for my firesorc was:

42% fhr, 105% fcr
HotO
1.07 Arkaine's 'PRuby'
Phoenix
Griffon's 'Cham'
Mara's
Magefist
2xSoJ
Arach
Waterwalk
3-4 x Fire Skiller
12% FHR/100 Def GC
life/def SCs

If I manage to craft a +2 Fire/Sorc amulet with +15% (or higher) faster cast I will switch HotO for Fortitude. The reasoning here is that I calculated the damage FB and Meteor do and compared it to cow life after static and Meteor is a one hit kill whereas FB does it in two hits. So I can drop HotO and Mara's with Fortitude and 2/15 craft to gain a huge def boost while not loosing killing speed. In fact I might even keep the same damage numbers if I switch the two SoJ's for beta BKWB's (assuming I'll have them by then).

I calculated that I could drop my chance to be hit from 28% to 23% and potentially lower if I replace skillers with defense GCs. Those can have more life as well and together with Fortitude, a potential Ber in Arkaine's and beta CtA I might be able to never go into hit recovery from regular cows while staying close to 20% chance to be hit overall.

I died quite a few times with her so defense is worthwile. At least if I want to keep up my reckless playstyle of standing inside cow packs

My take on fireball sorc for cows, p5. Gear is a secret of course, but I can be persuaded to reveal it.

I hit 86 fhr too. Playing can be improved, there are more combinations Meteor + Fireball can be used in. In either case she is not entirely terrible cow runner.

EDIT

Tried p7. Speed with this playing style is the same. Easy 200+ p5 cows per minute

EDIT 2
20 runs xp runs testing, I deducted 50 cows as usual from total, but I do think 40 better approximation. Anyway, got 195 p5 cows per minute. I can't tell if this is maintainable since I didn't really play fire sorc, but it is definitely comparable to necro. If anything sorc can be only improved now.

So, conclusion I have is to go p7 with fire sorc, collect bunch of cows and blast them with meteors and fireballs to finish off. I got 345 p7 cows per run killed with this method which sounds reasonable.

People take it too seriously, methinks. As long as your runs are in the ballpark of fast, it's going to mostly come down to luck. I'm sticking with my cowzon, just trying to find the motivation to run (only managed 70 minutes so far, not looking good lol.)

I'm thinking he killed the king....again.

@Gripphon very nice gameplay (and very nice map). I literally prepared a Fire Sorc yersterday because I was leaning towards finishing the 2nd set with a fire character. So far I focused more on Fire Ball, not even used Static much (just herding with Teleport) because on P5 it's always 2-shot FB and 1-shot Meteor. But your approach with Static and Meteor seems better, also P7 makes sense given it leads to the same 2-shot/1-shot scenario when using Static.

I also gave Fissure a serious try for the first time – better than I thought, there are some tricks and techniques with him that aren't really explored yet IMO.

Good to see that fire sorc lives on Also slightly jealous at those three FHR skillers @Gripphon

I'll be finishing the rest of the set with Javazon, can't go wrong there.

@Locohead Drops are just fine, what's not fine is clicking on the transmute button one run and the portal not opening up. Turns out I must have killed CK without realizing... Just very frustrating to have to leave a perfectly fine character by the wayside for nothing basically

@ffs
Gogogogo. He is a solid character to run with.

@art_vandelay
One fhr skiller, all small charms have fhr/mana. Griffon's is with lightning facet while Eschuta's is with fire facet. But, facets aren't really important for Meteor and Fireball while they do offer something for Static.

I also equipped Griffon's on Fire Sorc, but just because 25 FCR from headpiece is very convenient for this build, namely to reach 105 with Phoenix and + skill rings, as well as no FCR needs from amulet. As far as I could tell -ELR amount is not relevant, because in any case FB 2-shots and Meteor 1-shots, irrespective of exact Static damage.

For reference, I currently have her set like this:

Spoiler

faceted Eschuta's
Phoenix
Enigma
Griffon's 'Shael'
Mara's
2x BKWB
Arach
Magefist
eth Treks

Enigma and Mara's just for higher life basically. Arkaine's, CoH, +3 Fire etc. are options of course. Also not sure about Shael in Griffon's (maybe rather Ruby, Cham, Ber etc.).

With above setup, 5 skillers in inventory guarantee 1-shot Meteor after 2x Static (and 2-shot FB of course), leaving a lot of inventory space to adjust FHR, life or whatever. Not sure yet how much Fire Sorc really profits from FHR. That was a priority for Nova, but with Fire Sorc it depends on playstyle...

With potential 190+ cows/min floating around I think I'll have to test her some more as well. Maybe will split my remaining ~8 hours between her and Fissure.

EDIT: Ran with Meteor focused Fire Sorc style for a bit. Really no issue going P7, so far averaging just under 2 min runs on a "pretty good but not super great" map. Definitely feels like same league as Necro/Java/Trapper. 60 FHR breakpoint seems perfectly fine, running that with 3k life with the above setup – basically just changed the playstyle to what @Gripphon showed above. She has more leftovers than the other builds, so run times alone don't give the full picture. But the potential is very clear indeed. Don't want to ruin the score for my second set, so I think I'll run with her till the end and collect data along the way to see how she compares. Fissure Druid has to wait for some later testing... or a third set.

Also, finally what seems to be a real top tier build that I can use my best skiller collection with.

Spoiler

Burning Grand Charm of Vita
Grand Charm
Required Level: 83
Fingerprint: 0xfa20d672
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
+45 to Life

Burning Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 53
Fingerprint: 0xdb7f0dd4
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
+33 to Life

Burning Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0xecc8059
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
+24 to Life

Burning Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0xb19c187a
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
+28 to Life

Burning Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0x5460e075
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
+25 to Life

Today has been a terrible day. No qualifier dropped in 1 hour of playing. It is hard to explain this amount of bad luck.

Lolwut? I got no quals so far in more than an hour, and that seems normal to me. (but then I guess I'm only about half the speed of ffs )



Ugh. My condolences. See that's why I don't really get all these ice and fire sorcs out there. Killing CK has to be a real danger. I'm happy with my enigma'ed (she barely ever teleports) cowzon because I won't have to face that.

 

[PhineasB]

OK, I finished my set, and well....it REALLY sucked!! My internet was down most of the weekend, and combined with COVID isolation, that made for LOTS of D2 time...I finished my 20 hours, without a single damned qualifier!!! Oh, I did get an Ist from Rakki's pack once while getting a leg, but that doesn't count....

Well, obviously, this cannot stand, so I sulked and fumed for a few days and started a new set today...

I ran in 1.07 with my MultiShot CB/Amp Zon... I really enjoy her, she's a lot of fun! She is slower than Furyzon, but also much safer, with MUCH less desyncing (important in an MP game...invisible cows suck!!) I check WAY too much stuff, and run in MP games (no static maps), so I'm nowhere near as fast as some of you guys, but she definitely slaughters a LOT of cows fast, and with a very high degree of safety (NO NDE's!!)

As for non-qualifying runes, my RNG trolled me pretty hard, dropping 9 Lems (the highest rune that is NOT a qualifier), plus the Ist from Rakanishu, and no Lums (amulet crafting rune in 1.07). Lots of trash runes dropped, and a fair number of crafting runes, but most of my crafts turned out mediocre at best. The one exception was when I got a Fal (greater weapon crafting rune) right after a few cows almost killed my stand-around toons while I was off running...I decided to craft one of their mercs a good weapon to help keep them safer. Well, the result was TOO good, with an rlvl thats way too high for him to use, due to the high lvl elemental prefixes on it:

Spoiler: Awesome Crafted Cryptic Axe

Note that base damage on 1.07 CA is 59 - 98...forwarded, damage goes up by almost 50%!

Other great non-qualifiers were a maximal P&B/Vita skiller and a very nice lightning/Sustenance skiller, plus a shadow/FHR skiller, a couple nice circlets, and several nice mana charms...

Spoiler: Charms, etc. & readouts

Prefix 1176 Coronet of Life Everlasting
Defense: 33
Durability: 28 of 30
Required Level: 37
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 90
Fingerprint: 0x5f9b8b85
Damage Reduced by 20
+3 to Elemental Skills (Druid Only)

Prefix 1246 Coronet of the Whale
Defense: 36
Durability: 16 of 30
Required Level: 60
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 90
Fingerprint: 0x67af81e2
+98 to Life
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels

Prefix 1250 Coronet of Luck
Defense: 38
Durability: 28 of 30
Required Level: 27
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 94
Fingerprint: 0x5cebfa68
35% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+2 to Sorceress Skill Levels

Superior Shadow Bow
Two-Hand Damage: 14 to 66
Required Dexterity: 195
Required Strength: 82
Required Level: 61
Bow Class - Normal Attack Speed
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 90
Fingerprint: 0x358d15ad
+15% Enhanced Damage
+3 to Attack Rating
Socketed (4: 0 used)

Prefix 1130 Grand Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 83
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 94
Fingerprint: 0xe01dafa0
+45 to Life
+1 to Poison and Bone Skills (Necromancer Only)

Prefix 1118 Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 53
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 94
Fingerprint: 0xf15f0ab7
+33 to Life
+1 to Lightning Skills (Sorceress Only)

Prefix 1178 Grand Charm of Balance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 90
Fingerprint: 0xeae6b759
12% Faster Hit Recovery
+1 to Shadow Discipline Skills (Assassin Only)

Prefix 974 Large Charm of Maiming
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 40
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 94
Fingerprint: 0x48655f87
+32 to Mana
+12 to Maximum Damage

Prefix 978 Small Charm of Good Luck
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 33
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 93
Fingerprint: 0x263b126e
+17 to Mana
4% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Prefix 978 Small Charm of Inertia
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 27
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 90
Fingerprint: 0x7dd42011
+17 to Mana
3% Faster Run/Walk

WoRG

I'm trolling

Well you can actually get maps where you start out in the fort next to the CK. On those you don't have any cows next to the king at all so you only need to teleport away from him at the beginning and never return to that spot to be safe. On my map there were some cows next to the King and I usually drew some of them out and I guess one time I caught the king by accident

Also I wouldn't still be running Cows after 40 hours if I hadn't switched chars around, preserving my sanity and all...

Spoiler

Don't trust Gripphon, he's lying!

Good old days when runes actually dropped.
Two fun facts connected to that tourney.

1. I found Cham right before that tournament on a map I borrowed from sorc to test paladin and had to leave it on the ground

Spoiler

2. I didn't find Cham in Travincal ever since, so for 5 years now

2 hours so far, no quals and also nothing else of value. Even shut inside my house, I doubt my heart will be in this one. I need a little tasty crumb of SOMETHING to push me forward...

(edit - found a cold skiller. I guess that's something. Also died though... hopefully will still at least make a level up)
(edit -now found a Jav + FHR skiller for my runner. Well that's a bit of tasty cheese anyway.)

I'm sure there must be a rational explanation (i.e. some sort of cognitive bias) as I'm basically certain this isn't how the game works but I could swear that my map has consistently and noticeably higher mob density on p5 than it does on p3...

Since I finished my cow set and only wanted to do 1 set, I decided to level my sorc from 94-95 in chaos. Within like 30 min of playing yesterday:

Spoiler

I mean I'll take high runes anytime, but cmon.

Welp, I finished my first and only set. No beginners luck this time, because I got no qualifiers in my last 8h of running... So, I only got 3 and no heavyweights either. That's disheartening because my times were getting better and better. It was reasonable to expect a full set at least. Well, I think. I won't be participating in the "war of the Zods" like the top runners here, but still.

I won't be running another set, because I can see that my characters are not optimized for this area. I need to find Griffon's Eye to up the efficiency of my Blova. I think I have better chance at being competitive later. I'm seriously thinking of respecing my Frenzy barb into WW for Trav.

Anyway, here are the grailers and fun stuff these runs got me :

Spoiler: Stuff

View attachment 54492
View attachment 54493
View attachment 54494
View attachment 54495
View attachment 54497
View attachment 54496
View attachment 54498

...and my most prized drop :

View attachment 54499

Good luck to the rest of the participants !

Ran 3 hours with Fire Sorc on P7. Got only got ~155 cows per minute estimate based on rune drops. :/

Spoiler

Runs tracked: 87
Avg runes/run: 1.26
Avg run time: 120s
Runes/min: 0.63
P5 Cows/min: 154.27
P7 Cows/min: 136.37

Maybe her map is not that great after all, and a relatively small number of runs. Still the quantity of rune drops seems pretty unlucky, clearly she must be better than those number suggest. But on the other hand she does leave many cows alive in comparison to other top builds.. In any case won't get her to 190+ territory in this set, that's for sure.

Got 5 hours left and think I'll go Fissure Druid for a while after all. For him obviously the Ravenlore/Phoenix combo is appealing, but on P5 I found runs smoother (and a bit faster) with 163 FCR. Difference is small, but minimal MPK and LPK from Enigma is apparently enough for life/mana upkeep, whereas faster teleporting/herding seems to make up for loss in damage – at least on P5. Next thing to check is if Ravenlore/Phoenix on P7 is better than 163 FCR on P5. Some gameplay:

Using this:

Spoiler

faceted 2/20 circlet
1/19 FCR/92 mana craft amulet
Enigma
Hoto
Spirit
2x SoJ
Magefist
Arach
Silkweave

Such a shame about the +1 amulet. I have several 18+ and some 20 FCR for Druid, but none with +2 Druid/Elemental... :/

5 hours remaining in my first set, should be finished by this weekend. Maybe I'll start a 2nd set after, but I won't have time to finish it.

Down to 6 hours left in my second set. Didn't expect to match the luck of my first but it looks like it may turn out better after all. I should manage to finish in the top 40 anyway

Also managed 1 of the 3 cow set pieces...maybe the last 6 hours will net me the other 2.

Nice to see the chatter and nice theory crafting / testing and videos. One week to go! Good luck to everyone still running.

No Griffon, even if i keep running my Zerker regularly, so no new cow set for me (wouldn't have the time to complete a new one).

May took my chances for two sets at Trav with blizzy sorc who is better geared than the zon. And her name is Tournamenteress, so it is her destiny after all

I really hope I'm not the only one doing a third set I'm 5 hours into this set now with Java but I'll stop once she reaches 20 hours total (in this round), so about an hour left for her.

Speaking of Javazon, there was another nice blue find:

View attachment 54508

Only ever found one 15/3 before and used it on a mediocre Griffon's. This one will go into a shield along with facets – either HHG or some 4os Monarch, though I'm still hoping to find a good Jeweler's one... Maybe it's time to for some Monarch rolling, however small the odds are of getting something.

Other finds since half-way mark in 2nd set:

Spoiler

View attachment 54501View attachment 54502View attachment 54503View attachment 54504View attachment 54505View attachment 54506View attachment 54507

@ffs . If you roll a JMoD, unicorns are real...

Doesn't need to be JMoD, but anything that helps and is an improvement over white Monarch... like -req, life, FHR, stats, eth/self-repair... Not even sure if I'd prefer blocking over some of those actually. But as of now, my best blue 4os Monarch has 3 magic dmg reduction.

I wish you the very best of luck.

I pick up every blue Monarch I come across and have done so for years. I also rolled another 200-ish., but have never found or spawned the Jewelers prefix. I have even shopped Anya for hours for 4os wards. I think I did find one, once, but with no suffix. "Easier" to get the 3os variety (Gothic Shields of Deflection), which is what my cow-zon uses now.

If not readily apparent, this is a gripe intended for the Diablo gods. It is my second most sought after item and every little bit helps...

Completed my second set. Very comparable finds to the first one
with a bit better qualifier luck.

This set completely at /players1 do to the smoothness of play, could have done a bit better if I picked only runes but soo much good stuff dropping

Total runes: 246 (11 qualifiers)
Small Charms: 102 (a couple +7 mf)
Grand Charms: 107 (pcomb +39 life, war cry +16 life,still no light gcs)
Cow King Set Pieces: 3xHide, 1xHooves,no horns

53 total set pieces (trangs helm,mavinas caster, complete naj set)
73 uniques: midling Nightwing's, 5 rings (2xmanald, 1xdwarfstar, 2xNatures Peace), saracens Chance ammy *grailer*, hotspurs *grailer*, eth Jalals
2 x Stormshield, 13 white monarchs (for twinking other chars )
A few readouts:

Spoiler

Nightwing's Veil
Spired Helm
Defense: 313
Durability: 26 of 40
Required Level: 67
Required Strength: 96
Fingerprint: 0x43c65424
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+2 to All Skills
+9% to Cold Skill Damage
+96% Enhanced Defense
+13 to Dexterity
+8 Cold Absorb
Half Freeze Duration
Requirements -50%


Blackhorn's Face
Death Mask
Defense: 390
Durability: 11 of 11
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 45
Fingerprint: 0xc5c26d40
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
Prevent Monster Heal
Slows Target by 20%
+200% Enhanced Defense
Lightning Resist +15%
+20 Lightning Absorb
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 25
Ethereal


Jalal's Mane
Totemic Mask
Defense: 404
Durability: 11 of 11
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 55
Fingerprint: 0xaaf72e81
Item Level: 71
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+2 to Shape-Shifting Skills (Druid Only)
+2 to Druid Skill Levels
+30% Faster Hit Recovery
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+173% Enhanced Defense
+20 to Strength
+20 to Energy
All Resistances +30
+5 to Mana after each Kill
Ethereal


Thundergod's Vigor
War Belt
Defense: 144
Durability: 16 of 24
Required Level: 47
Required Strength: 110
Fingerprint: 0xfdf4f042
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
5% Chance to cast level 7 Fist of the Heavens when struck
Adds 1 - 50 Lightning Damage
+3 to Lightning Fury (Amazon Only)
+3 to Lightning Strike (Amazon Only)
+173% Enhanced Defense
+20 to Strength
+20 to Vitality
+10% to Maximum Lightning Resist
+20 Lightning Absorb

62 flawless amethyst (269 total FGems)
322 - Full juvies

4 socket bill for my self wield infinity I have planned

Picked up several more grailers during this set bringing my total to: -86
Here's a handful of screen caps:

Spoiler

My Stony Field double rune drop not nearly as impressive as @Luhkoh
View attachment 54515

After getting the Hide and Hoof, there were a couple RNG troll drops like this:
View attachment 54514

Eth boots anyone?
View attachment 54518

Gotta thin the herd for those...
View attachment 54509

Lots of drops, even at p1 but less clutter to deal with
View attachment 54510

Cow Kings Hide! *grailer*
View attachment 54511

TGods plus Ral? I'll take it!
View attachment 54512

Hotspurs! *grailer*
View attachment 54513

So very charming
View attachment 54516

Nightwings! *grailer*
View attachment 54517

All in all pretty satisfied with both sets...second set was slightly better and submitted! Good luck to anyone still makin hamburg

I decided to do 15 runs on p7 and p5 with necro to finally compare the two via xp method. I completely excluded xp from getting the leg so all xp is purely from cows.

p7 resulted in 470 cows per run due to xp, then I reduced 50 due to being minion xp (assumption, or guess if you will)
Result: 420 p7 cows per run
Average time: 137.06 s
p7 cows per minute: 183.86
p5 cows per minute equivalent: 207.4

p5 resulted in 461 cows per run due to xp, reducing 50 from that same as for p7
Result: 411 p5 cows per run
Average time: 125.7 s
p5 cows per minute: 196

These results are comparable to drop method between two player settings I got resulting in p7 being around 10 cows per minute ahead. This is however inside some statistical variance. I also don't think I can possibly kill more minions on p7 than on p5 giving it an xp edge. Either way, p7 might be theoretically stronger, but not enough to justify running it compared to much easier and equalishly efficient p5.

 

[PhineasB]

Finished. This set was Tal Rasha's set by finding 4 armors. So, if you need that set piece, go cows!

Of other things, 19 qualifiers, 28 keepable charms although none is any good, 35 allres Vipermagi, mediocre Wisp, bad roll Maras.
Not entirely terrible set.

Second set done as well. After 3 hours with Fire Sorc and Fissure Druid each, I went back to Nova for the last 2 hours. Only one noteworthy drop in the last part of the set, but it was not so bad...

Overall many good drops in both sets. Will post more stuff/data etc. in results thread.

Some conclusions:
This was the first time I've run cows for an extended period of time with characters other than Java and Necro. From the other builds I tried, Trapper and Nova Sorc worked best for me, and personally Beast Trapper is my new overall go-to pick for cows I think. She has excellent clear speed and is the safest/tankiest cow runner I've played, plus her gameplay (being close to cows) means she picks up more stuff than other characters like Necro/Java who are usually positioned at some distance from the drops. The same is true for Nova, and she was close in numbers, but ultimately a little less efficient and not as tanky.

As for efficiency numbers, I didn't run with a 94+ char this time so I only used rune drops to estimate cows/min. In my first set, both Trapper and Necro averaged above 200 P5 cows/min for several hours at first, though both later dropped to the 190-200 range. With Java I had around 200 last RFL, so performance of these three is pretty much the same in my case. Nova was around 180 cows/min on her final map, Druid around 160. Fire Sorc was a little below 160, but that was probably down to bad luck in terms of rune drop quantity over the runs I tracked with her.

Great synopsis @ffs! Really nice data and testing. Maybe next year I'll be fast enough to contribute more ^^. The available character variety makes cows a lot of fun!

Finished my set, and shan't be doing another.

Three very solid qualifiers and I had the makings of a pretty good set, but alas I never quite found the last couple drops to really round it out by replacing the 'filler' qualifiers.

That said, I am quite happy with the set overall, found a bunch of good charms including 2 Lightning and 2 Jav skillers, and and SoJ on my penultimate run!

Finished! One and done.

Was romping and stomping (for me anyway) with my dweb pnecro after 5 hours: two qualifiers.

Then I killed the king. Grrrrrrrr.

Did the rest with budgety javazon, 75 fcr, no IAS, and not particularly massive damage. Noticeably slower, although could handle p7.

Merc died a lot.

End results:
4 mediocre qualifiers, couple skillers, few levels on the java. Coulda been luckier, but hey.

Good luck to all those still going! Massive respect to those doing 2 or 3 sets, and those with crazy fast run times.

As always, thanks to the organisers.

11 hours done but my brain is not functioning properly and I lost my map. Not sure if I can be bothered to re-roll another.

Results sent, there will not be another set. Looking for the top 20 (now, I don't know if I am looking from under or from inside...)!

I now look towards Travincal, and there will probably be two sets there:

- one with Tournamenteress in SC, as a blizzy.

- and one with my HC Zealer. He will not be as efficient at all, but if he gets a couple of rocks that will already be a big bump! Also he needs a better amulet - hadn't been lucky for pally so far, using an assassin rare one with 17 allres, and possibly LoH gloves, but given his MF I may have better time to trade for one pair! Also getting a Gul, Vex or Ohm will allow CtA craft, so maybe some LK runs could be done by then too, even if I'm more in the mood for variety building right now.

Waiting for the round results, GL to the remaining runners!

Just rolled a new map. I won’t finish the set, but just time to pick up two more Zods before time runs out.

... and within three runs I killed The Cow King.

Didn't even realise until the cube stopped working on the next run

Round started decently then computer issues arose after the first 3 qualifiers. Number 4 came after three blue screens. My regular computer shop is closed due to corona, but fortunately found an alternative. Limped to the 5th qualifier tonight (and message to "reseat hard drive") before computer gets packed up for repair tomorrow morning.

Results sent. GL all...

How round 1 is feeling this year:

Third set is going alright, bad qualifier luck but at least I'm still getting useful items and tons of gems... (7 hours to go)

EDIT: The runcounter save broke somehow, I lost all my times for nearly everything... Luckily I already made screenshots of the old RFL run counter every time I changed characters (3 hours missing though from this newest char's runs). Still it feels like a betrayal.

Back at it again with a Javazon. Motivation is lacking though.

May the next rune drop hype you again!

20 hours done with javazon /p5. Not a single cow set item found and quite a dry spell in general. For the next year's RFL I'm really wanting a 1.07 mpk ring. Just need to figure out how to boot up 1.07 in win10 first.

If you find, write a guide <3

VirtualBox or vmware workstation player free version and a linux with wine install and you can set up for any of the d2 versions. Not talking from experience though as I've only been running 1.14d but have used vm's of linux to run d2 on a work laptop before.

Oh yeah... I was supposed to kill some cows...

I suppose it would have helped if I had even fired up D2 in the past 2 weeks... maybe I'll remember to do so for round2?

EDIT: that's a no-score for my entry, just to be 100% clear.

Klaus is finished his set, and still alive. Results sent. Time to dust off Eleanor for her yearly Trav running!

Thanks for hosting @PhineasB !!!! And best of luck to all remaining runners.

I didn't even know this could happen, bizzarre...

Close to 55 hours now.

 

[PhineasB]

Not able to join in RFL fun this year, but after getting D2 up and running on my Windows 10 computer I dusted off my blizz sorc and found this running /p3 AT.

That's Sur-real

Results sent... 60 hours of cows behind me and I got 43 qualifiers in total. If I add up the scores of my second and third set I am 3.2 points short of the score of my first set.

Thanks to @PhineasB for hosting!

Thanks to everyone who's sent results. A little more than 24 hours to go. If you've finished running but haven't sent results, please do so. If you are still running, please send as soon as possible after completing so I can try to get results up on Friday.

Only 1 qualifier, only approaching 9 hours of run time, but still running and hanging on the hope that I'll fill out my 5, LOL.

Edit: Another qualifier the first run of today (!) There is hope

Finished my 2nd set...shocked speechless here....

Results sent. I'd wish everyone luck, but there's just no point ;p

WoRG

Squeezed those cows as best I could until my fingers hurt, ended up with 4 qualifiers - at about 5:50, 9:50, 10:30 and one final one at maybe 15:50. Ran out of time, overall I ran just short of 16.5 hours in total. This has to be the most demented set of rune drops I've seen. Just can't understand it. You'd think with the amount of cows you kill, it would be more statistically smooth?? But then some people got none... I was literally on the edge of quitting until yesterday when I got that first qualifier just before 6 hours (where I would have quit.) Just weird.

Cool non-quals I got:

Spoiler

(Bonehew is eth. Bulkathos is 5%)

Also got 5x 7MFSC which is nice.

Looking forward to the results. I have a feeling we will see some pretty crazy scores here several runners seemed satisfied with their haul, I was too, and if Worg got that OP 1.07 inflation going again... we’re in for a treat!

Well my RFL sucked, I'm not sure I will ever run cows again. Results sent.

Zou're right, @WoRG zould have zound zomezing...zomezing huze! #NoZpoilerInzide