Do it...Really, i've rebuild my sorc for Mephy and with 105% breakpoint is much faster...Not just teleporting speed is better, but higher Ice blast cast rate makes huge difference (at least for me, w/o DF atm)
I'll probably do that sometime next week. I'm working on building a Frozen Nova sorc and I'll take her to Meph to see how she compares but she needs a Spirit first. So, once I find myself a white Monarch, punch some holes in it and roll myself a 35% one, I'll really start to get the itch to rebuild
eth 167% Titan's Revenge
299% Ribcracker (slight improvement on the one I already have)
The Stone of Jordan
Carrion Wind
Vampire Gaze
eth Bloodthief (This one's significant because it was the first ethereal one I've found after 80 non-eth ones)
The stash is growing nicely. The only normal Uniques I'm missing now are all TC3's.
All right, so I decided to rebuild and now I've got a new, faster 105% FCR Blizzard sorc. Equipment is pretty much the same setup as before but I've swapped in a 35% Spirit for the Splendor shield. In the ring slots, I'm currently using 1 SoJ, and 1 rare with 10% FCR. After I gain a few more levels, I'll probably swap in one of my 30% Nagelrings for the SoJ. I'm also thinking about adding a couple of Cold Skillers to the backpack but for now it's all SC's of Good Luck.
I never timed the previous incarnation when I was running at 63% but before I added the DF and such, she was probably running around 40-45 seconds/run (including muling) and when I really concentrated in the "1-hr Meph Contest", I was just under 39 sec/run. The new incarnation was averaging around 29 sec/run without really trying and my kill power will still benefit as I gain levels. This has really increased my efficiency.
Metalgrid: 0
Angelic Wings: 2
Atma's Scarab: 1
Cathan's Sigil: 2
Civerb's Icon: 1
Iratha's Collar: 5
Nokozan Relic: 2
Tal Rasha's Ajudication: 2
The Cat's Eye: 1
The Manhim-Oak Curio: 1
The Rising Sun: 1
Vidala's Snare: 7
Ammy:Ring ratio - 25:90
Cool stuff I remember finding: perfect Titan's Revenge, 1st rainbow facet (3/-4 lightning) of the runs at about item #2900, a good twinking rare ring with FCR and AR that will be useful for speed runs, a HoZ.
Unique Stuff Meph can drop that he's holding back on still:
Normal Uniques: Biggin's Bonnet, Greyform, The Gnasher, Pluckeye, Gull, Felloak, Knell Striker, Bane Ash, Torch of Iro. (All TC3's)
Exceptional Uniques: Stealskull, Valkyrie Wing, Shaftstop, Skullder's Ire, The Fetid Sprinkler, Warpspear, Blade of Ali Baba, Suicide Branch
Elite Uniques: Arkaine's Valor, Head Hunter's Glory, Eaglehorn, Horizon's Tornado, Stormlash, Doombringer. (All TC78's)
Class-specifics: Firelizard's Talons, Alma Negra
Rings: Bul Katho's Wedding Band
Amulets: Too many to list. I've cursed myself :whistling:
For those of you that are going to run Meph in the MFO: Good luck and don't steal my Metalgrid!
Glad to hear you're managing to find some interesting things, making good progress/lots of runs, and while it's eeeeevil of me, also glad to hear you haven't found a metalgrid quite yet :evil:
Current S/U count is 4003. Wow, just from this bit of craziness, I'd be at grail -96 now.
Amulets:
Metalgrid: 0
Angelic Wings: 3
Atma's Scarab: 1
Cathan's Sigil: 5
Civerb's Icon: 3
Crescent Moon: 1
Iratha's Collar: 6
Nokozan Relic: 2
Tal Rasha's Ajudication: 2
Tancred's Weird: 2
Telling of Beads: 1
The Cat's Eye: 1
The Manhim-Oak Curio: 1
The Rising Sun: 2
Vidala's Snare: 7
Ammy:Ring ratio - 37:120
Cool stuff I remember finding: 2 Knell Strikers within 50 runs of each other which tripled the total number of this item I've ever found, Telling of Beads (2nd ever). Everything else is starting to run together I'll probably take a mini-Meph break and run AT to get up to level 90.
Unique Stuff Meph can drop that he's holding back on still:
Normal Uniques: Biggin's Bonnet, Greyform, Gull, Bane Ash, Torch of Iro. (All TC3's)
Exceptional Uniques: Stealskull, Valkyrie Wing, Shaftstop, The Fetid Sprinkler, Warpspear
Elite Uniques: Arkaine's Valor, Head Hunter's Glory, Eaglehorn, Horizon's Tornado, Stormlash, Doombringer. (All TC78's)
Class-specifics: Firelizard's Talons, Alma Negra
Rings: Bul Katho's Wedding Band
Amulets: Too many to list. I've cursed myself :whistling:
So far, I think I've only seen one Metalgrid from the MFO. Shame on you.
Found Isenhart's Case #100 tonight. Also saw a perfect Tal's Orb (2/2/2) and sometime since the last update, Mephy was kind enough to drop a Mara's for the prize stash.
I think that was mine, I don't want to be too cheeky, but .... ummm I kinda found my second one earlier this week! And that was while doing P1 Meph runs.... I do P3 runs now, but I don't think I realized how lucky I was until I read your post here.
I've already planned to give them to me and my girlfriends Zealot and Fury Druid, I've saved up HEAPS of windhammers and IK Maul as golem food too, unfortunately we are lv.77 and lv.78 respectively so don't meet the requirements yet.
Sorry to hijack there, I will stop running Meph for a while so he will give you one of those Metalgrids he is hiding in the back of his stash
I think that was mine, I don't want to be too cheeky, but .... ummm I kinda found my second one earlier this week! And that was while doing P1 Meph runs.... I do P3 runs now, but I don't think I realized how lucky I was until I read your post here.
Congratulations on all of yours and thanks all for the encouragement. Don't stop running him though on my account
I'm actually not minding the runs as my ethereal grail is really growing nicely and I suspect that I'll be able to push my perfect grail score up some more. Now if I end up in the MuddyWaters guess range before I find one, I might start getting a bit cranky but for now, it's still strangely enjoyable.
Lots of progress over the past week and now we're at 5434.
Amulets:
Metalgrid: 0
Angelic Wings: 5
Arcana's Sign: 2 (what's up with that? I've found 3 in the past week (1 at AT))
Atma's Scarab: 2
Cathan's Sigil: 6
Civerb's Icon: 4
Crescent Moon: 1
Iratha's Collar: 7
Mara's Kaleidoscope: 2
Nokozan Relic: 4
Tal Rasha's Ajudication: 2
Tancred's Weird: 3
Telling of Beads: 1
The Cat's Eye: 2
The Manhim-Oak Curio: 3
The Rising Sun: 2
Vidala's Snare: 7
Ammy:Ring ratio - 53:165
Unique Stuff Meph can drop that he's holding back on still:
Normal Uniques: Biggin's Bonnet, Greyform, Gull, Bane Ash, Torch of Iro. (All TC3's)
Exceptional Uniques: Shaftstop, The Fetid Sprinkler
Elite Uniques: Arkaine's Valor, Head Hunter's Glory, Eaglehorn, Horizon's Tornado, Stormlash, Doombringer. (All TC78's)
Class-specifics: Firelizard's Talons, Alma Negra
Rings: None!!
Amulets: The Eye of Etlitch, Saracen's Chance, Highlord's Wrath, Seraph's Hymn, and of course, Metalgrid
Setwise, I think I've got all the Expansion Greens and am still waiting on 3 of the TC3's from the Normal Sets.
Cool additions to the prize stash: The 2 Mara's were 25% & 21%. The 25 is better than what I have so unless I find better, I'll swap that for what I currently own. BKWB was a pleasant surprise and rounded out the ring collection. Got my first 5/5 facet (lightning I think) but I'm not sure if that's an improvement on my perfect grail.
Meph was streaky today. I think I saw 3 or 4 Stormshields, got the "double-double" twice (two green double axes on the same drop), a lot of golden Flails, and a bunch of Tarnhelms real quick.
I'm probably going to take a short break from Meph and do some questing for a couple of days now and then resume the quest.
According to the contest rules, the winners may claim prize stashes as follows:
1st: 1268 items
2nd: 634 items
3rd: 317 items
4th: 190 items
5th: 95 items
Also, before taking in bulk, 1st place can take any two items, then, 2nd-5th can claim a single item before the bulk claims begin. Although I don't really care, I'd suggest that the winners of the "larger" stashes spread their picks around and only take what they need. Also, once the prizes are sent out, I don't care what you do with them i.e. trade, delete, etc. Finally, I am going to make one "minor" change to the list of items you can take in that I am going to keep the Wisp Projector I found and not replace it with the one I currently have. In the middle of my runs, I wanted to try out a build that I think will need to wear dual Wisp Projectors and unfortunately, the one I found in this project was my second. Everything else is still fair game according to what I spelled out in post one of this thread.
Best Rune: Fal
Gems: 65 cubed Pgems + some leftover flawless and 16 Flawless Skulls (which I'll upgrade at gem shrines)
% of the Grail: 83.4% (421 items)
Skillers: Harpoonist of Sustenance, Lion Branded of Strength
Other interesting charms: Shimmering SC of Pestilence (4%), Sharp LC of Sustenance, 2 SC of Good Luck (6%/7%), Snake's LC of Sustenance (15/24), Steel GC of Vita (124/37)
This was the best ring I found and I immediately swapped it to my Bliz sorceress:
Death Loop
Ring
Required Level: 60
Fingerprint: 0x9af4eff5
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+10% Faster Cast Rate
+13 to Strength
+36 to Life
+19 to Mana
Cold Resist +24%
Fire Resist +13%
I found several decent rare ammys and circlet-type helms but nothing earth-shattering. There was a +2 Elemental (Druid)/20% FCR circlet that dropped but it didn't have any other mods besides enhanced defense or something like that.
As far as S/U's, you can check out the Flavie, but I do remember some of the more interesting items:
All the Unique rings at least once, ethereal Blinkbat's Form, 2 Knell Strikers, ethereal Kelpie Snare, Blizzard Ormus, ethereal Arkaine's Valor, a lot of Wizardspikes, 2 Azurewraths, ethereal Titan's Revenge, Spirit Keeper (rarest unique I found), 12 Gheed's, 10 Rainbow Facets covering 6 of the 8 types (but mostly bad rolls), 2 Arcana's Sign amulets, all of the S/U caps, 136 Isenhart's Cases, 79 Cathan's Seals, 2 perfect Tal's Orbs, and bunches of other interesting things. I also added 3 new Ormus Robes to my Ormus grail: Thunder Storm, Chilling Armor, and Blizzard.
Overall, I ended up keeping 39 items, 38 of which were new grailers. 34 of the items I'm keeping are new ethereal grailers. The other 5 items are the 3 Ormus Robes, the Wisp Projector, and the Metalgrid. In addition to the items I'm keeping, I also made "perfect grail" improvements on 25 ethereal items and 73 normal items. All but one or two of those were replaced with my previous most-perfect item of that type. There were one or two cases where my old "perfect" item was in use on a character and may have been "upped" or socketed. In that case, I just replaced it with something that seemed to have the best rolls after taking a quick glance. The end result is that the prize stash has 6301 items and now we're waiting on Ghazban to submit his first two picks.
For me, this has been an interesting project. Although my stated goal was the Metalgrid, I also wanted to improve on my perfect grail score and increase my ethereal grail as side projects. In that respect, this has been a very successful undertaking. My perfect grail score increased from 86.49% to 88.50% and I found 21 new "perfect" items. I hadn't been tracking my ethereal progress before but I am now at eth grail -106 with a perfection score of 44.68%. Runewise, it was about what I expected although with the number of runes that did drop (143), I should have had a decent chance of seeing one Extremely Rare rune but no biggie. I seem to recall both of my skillers falling early and then it was nothing. Still, I can't complain about the 2 that did drop.
Finally, this project made me really appreciate Death's Fathom and the 105% FCR breakpoint for Meph. When I started, I was overloaded with MF and had pretty good killing power but it was taking about 45 sec/run. So, after about 1000-1500 runs, I took a day to rebuild my Blizzard sorc (old one couldn't carry Spirit shield), used about 25 attempts to make a 35% FCR Spirit and resumed Meph. I think I started running Meph again after my new sorc hit about level 70-73 and right out of the gate I was doing about 30 second runs (including muling). At the conclusion of this project, she's level 91 and very fast. She hasn't Matted yet but has gone as far as opening up the portal to Pindle's garden and her HF rune was a Gul (so I guess I got a HR after all).
Finally, this project made me really appreciate Death's Fathom and the 105% FCR breakpoint for Meph. When I started, I was overloaded with MF and had pretty good killing power but it was taking about 45 sec/run. So, after about 1000-1500 runs, I took a day to rebuild my Blizzard sorc (old one couldn't carry Spirit shield), used about 25 attempts to make a 35% FCR Spirit and resumed Meph. I think I started running Meph again after my new sorc hit about level 70-73 and right out of the gate I was doing about 30 second runs (including muling). At the conclusion of this project, she's level 91 and very fast.
Interesting point. I'm also overloaded on MF, but might reconsider swapping MF for damage because of your progress. My biggest issue is I've been trying to minimize gear-swapping for MFers, so my Meph-runner got a lot of my substandard-damage/high-MF gear since she doesn't need as much damage to kick Meph's butt. But I'll rethink that approach now.
Did you keep track of the number of runs you did? I didn't see it, but maybe I overlooked it. Also, did you post your final MF%?
And congrats on finally finishing this off. That's a nice haul, for sure.
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