I thought i would post a little information on the cow level for those that might not be as familiar with it.
How do I make the Cow level portal?
You must defeat Baal earning the quest for the given difficulty in which you want to make the cow portal. Once you have done that, find Wirt's leg in Tristram and put it and a tomb of town portal in your horadric cube, go to act 1 rogue's camp and hit the transmute button; the red cow level portal will appear.
How do I enter the portal?
Just walk on in...there is no restriction -as far as quests or levels- on entereing the portal. If some one does hostile you or you go hostile on some one else, you will not be able to enter the cow portal.
How do I lose the ability to make the cow portal?
There are two conditions that must be met for you to lose the ability to make the portal, all other variables are irrelevant:
1) You must be in the cow level when the Cow King dies.
2) The person who kills the Cow King does so for the first time in that difficulty.
So is there anything I should know about the Cow King, so I dont kill him?
The Cow King is
lightning immune in all difficulties.
He will always be near his stockade and spawn roughly near it's bottom.
Below is an ascii diagram of the stockade with x representing the most common points where the Cow King will spawn.
Code:
/\
/ \
/ \
\ /
x x
\ x/
\/
What can Hell cows drop?
Runes: El - Zod
Set Items: All
Uniques: any unique with a qlvl of 81 or lower.
Cow Champions: as above but including any unique of qlvl 83 and lower.
Cow Bosses and minions: as above but including any unique qlvl 84 and lower.
Cow King: Anything from TC66 and a qlvl of 64 or lower; Vex rune or lower.
What characters make good cow killers?
I can only speak from my experience, as I have not played a wide variety of characters capable of killing cows effectively, some of my suggestions are based soley on what I have witnessed others doing.
Amazon: Lightning Fury amazons are the most effective cow killers in the game. As for Bowazons, all I can say is that Freeze Arrow is very useful.
Sorceress: Blizzard is very strong in the cow level. Fireball and Meteor are more difficult to use but work well too. Lightning or very very high level Nova might work but I have not seen anyone succesfully use either skill on the cow level.
Assassin: Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry will both work.
Necromancer: Corpse Explosion works wonders on the cow level. Lower Resistances, Amplify Damage, and Decrepify are all excellant curses to use here.
Paladin: Hammerdin's can pull their own weight here. Conviction, Holy Freeze, Fanatacism, Defiance and Concentration are all helpful auras.
Barbarian: Sorry but melee chracters do not fair well in the cow level in general, but all of the war cries are helpful to a party and Find Item can score some extra treasure.
Druid: I have not seen a druid in cow levels in 1.10 so i am not sure, but I imagine an elemental druid will do as well as several other classes here, and better than a melee character, and of course his sages will be useful.
I hope this helps. Good luck finding runes everyone
)
