Anything Goes D2 Lounge!

So far compatibility changes nothing. Kind of running out of options. Even a CD isn't one since, well... my laptop doesn't take CDs (and since mounting is fine for installation but doesn't help to start, yikes). This wasn't a problem until now.
 
@Burgomaster3
Very nice write-up. Not sure how do you throw your first blizzard, but before rolling map, drop first blizzard at closest minions to you, second blizzard in the middle to also cover the further minions with it. If you didn't drop first blizzard like that, try it out.

If merc dies too much, someone can easily use some lifesteal armor instead of Fortitude. Forty is for damage anyway and doesn't have big impact or anything.

Not 100% sure my setup is the best of the best, but I couldn't find better which covers both desired MF and safety at the same time like that. Also nice idea with Dwarf Star. Another idea is to use those fire absorb gloves (whatever name is) instead of Chancies or Wisp Projector ring for MF and for some lightning absorb. That is like super safe variant, but only for those who have problems with survivability.

EDIT
Ooops, I figured this will make fcr fail since it is not chancies that are used, but trang claws. Okay, just have in mind those fire absorb gloves exist and they heal you from hydras if someone can make use of those. Meh, seems like too big trouble with CoH setup or if you use Shako and not fcr circlet. But could be an option for some other setup.

There indeed are several options to cover all weaknesses.

Thanks. I did few tests and I think the way you described is pretty much how I try do it, most of the time. I think the biggest problem with my map is that the council has too many directions to scatter, and sometimes they just randomly decide to move to the sides of the balcony, making it impossible to hit them all at once. The closer the council I teleport the less they seem to scatter, but that also puts me to the harm's way, mana burn being the biggest problem (also related to my biggest annoyance with the council: they don't drop full rejuvs). But I admit that there are still some ways to improve my playing, so I'll probably keep this map for a while, at least until I'm somewhat sure can't improve my time any further.

(btw, first "test" run netted me another Ohm, and couple of runs after that 30str/9ll Andy's Visage. Better haul than with 200 timed runs before, go figure.)

I used to use Ral'd eth Guardian Angel (which works very well) for the merc, then decided to test Forti and just stuck with it. Most of the time his deaths are more my fault, and he still doesn't die that often. i think he died once during the 200 runs I did earlier. I have the runes for another CoH but I'm not yet sure about it.

If I find better Fathom (~25csd), I'd put an Ist in it and then swap some res/MF charms to res/life. My plan is to farm beta BKWB at some point, and this char is on the top of the list to receive one. Better skillers with life are an obvious improvement. I could forward 1.07 Shako at some point, but I'm not sure about losing the mana. Also, not sure how much the facet in my Shako actually helps. Might switch that for something else if I find better Fathom. I guess 1.07 Arkaine's could also work, but it's hard to beat CoH. Could go for more damage with Nightwing's and more skillers, but meh. I kinda like the current setup for the MF and safety, like you said.

Also, I tried removing the screenshots and the files from the save folder, and while that helped with S&E time and other loading times (between acts etc.) the save loading still seems to lag. It kinda lingers an extra second or so on the character screen before going to the "door" loading screen, which isn't exactly fast either. Might be just my crappy laptop. Thanks anyways, still better than nothing.
 
If you forward 1.07 shako, I really think you won't need that Dwarf Star anymore, so you could use dual SoJ to have even more mana than you do now with more life and better survivability and then you will have more damage than you do now. Not that damage matters much though.

Facet in shako - no help really. It helps only mathematically, but if you use non-facet shako, you won't see anything different. Better solution is to use Ist/Ptopaz Shako instead, even at this very moment. Your damage will drop by 4%, and cold damage is only part of your damage output (static).

It is hard for me to answer when is loss of damage felt. I just know once I had 13k+ damage blizzard, then rebuilt sorc for 9.7k I now have and literally same running time. Drop of damage by 35% and no difference in runtime. However, there surely is difference between 9.7k blizzard and 5.3k. That is drop of 83% damage, and at the same time my runtime becomes ~13% worse at average. Obviously, there is damage limit where it improves your running time, but I didn't test where that limit is. I would assume that any drop from say 10k damage to 8k maybe would not be felt at all in running times. No guarantee I am right though.

So, back to facet shako. Loss of 4% damage if you don't use facet? Meh, you won't feel any difference, and you can profit more from Ist.
 
@Burgomaster3 What version of the game are you running, what OS are you running, and are you using the glidewrapper? What are all your target line commands (-direct -txt, etc)? Your load times can be faster (like other people) but I need that info first, and you're going to have to do some tinkering. It would also be helpful to know computer specs.
 
@maareek Thanks. I watched your gold find setup video, but not the other one, which obviously is the one I'm looking for (although the difference isn't that big).

@Burgomaster3 Thanks for testing. My setup isn't as good, and as a consequence damage is a lot lower: some 6500 - 6800. Although this is really low compared to yours and that of others, I didn't have the feeling that is the main reason of my slow running times, and maareek's and Griph's posts seem to confirm my gut feeling that it has more to do with the map. Also, I don't have Infinity on my merc, but again I don't think that does so much for my running times (after all, lvl 36 Cold Mastery already puts all monsters at the maximum of -100 CR), it only makes the CI boss a factor.

Time will tell if map is indeed the major factor, when I have rolled a proper map. That, and the fact that I used to be an incredibly slow player (I did full clears for a very very long time after getting D2). I'm working on it for the last few years now, but you know what they say about old habits.

Btw, I only have a bit more life than you (some 2250), but haven't died against the Council, or even came close. Not sure why. Maybe I don't play aggressively enough? Or is it because of the fact that my Sorc is level 97? Or because my merc is using Reaper's?
 
Check out Bliss VersionSwitcher.

EDIT: Nevermind, have to pay attention to how many more posts have been made on the next page before posting....
 
@Gripphon Dual SoJs is a plan, only problem is that I don't own even one. I've had a terrible luck when it comes to unique rings. I'm still not quite ready to forward the Shako anyway, so that's a problem for another day.

And you're completely right; tested with PTopaz Shako instead the faceted one, and there are indeed no discernible difference in running speed. MF is now at 215. Is there some optimal amount I should go for with the council? I see plenty of unique drops as it is, so maybe I could switch some mf charms for life ones?

@NorthDakota I use Bliss Version Switcher, and currently run 1.13d and 1.07. I run on Windows 7 64-bit. I use Glide wrapper. My target line commands for 1.13d are "-w -ns -direct -txt". I run on windowed mode most of the time. There are no difference on the save loading time either way. My CPU is dual core AMD E-450 1.65 GHz, 4Gb RAM, Radeon HD 7400M.

It's a crappy five years old laptop, so that might be the thing alone, dunno. Still, I don't really remember the loading times ever being faster. I'm ok with tinkering, as long as it doesn't break my game any further and is not more complicated than what extra second of speed is worth :)

@T72on1 I don't really die, or come close to dying, that often. After all, I've leveled the char from halfway to 94 to halfway to 95 on council alone. Lately, I've been just slowly pushing the boundary of how suicidally I can actually play while still being relaxed enough to be viable. That is, testing how close the council I can actually teleport. 2080 hp is completely fine 99.9% of the time, but sometimes the council can surprise you with extra bad mods, maybe with the help of some Heirophants spamming lightning and blizzard, and then 2080 is suddenly not enough at all to be comfortable. At that point, even the 200 extra hp can mean a lot.

Also, almost always when I die, it's because I'm too tired or don't pay attention and can't react accordingly. It's the price I'm willing to pay, to be able to run Trav on "autopilot", not stressing too much :).
 
@Burgomaster3 Okay. Well that sort of rules out a lot of things that have worked for me personally to make load times faster. Since W7 is already pretty spectacular at running the game. I had windows 7 on an old laptop that had the fastest load times I've ever had near instantaneous regardless of windowed or fullscreen.

I'm not sure how you do it with BVS but I had mine running in compatibility mode Windows XP SP2. The other neat setting in there is "Keep Desktop Composition" which is a MASSIVE help if you're running in Fullscreen mode, but I'm unsure if it will help you in windowed mode. Microsoft dropped "Keep Desktop Composition" from the properties menu with windows 8 and was never to return, which is largely why I stopped playing (I smashed my laptop, got a desktop, wanted to keep the updated OS). I love playing fullscreen but without that setting, my load times increased dramatically. Unacceptable. Still worked great in windowed mode though.

Oh I just realized, add "-3dfx" after your string of commands. See if that helps. If I'm not mistaken, unless you're using that command the wrapper won't be doing anything. Edit: I was looking through his website and it seems it may not be required (until 1.14 when it absolutely is required), although in my experience it did seem to do something when running with different settings in the wrapper enabled. I know that it certainly won't hurt anything to add that to your commands and I'd recommend it if it isn't there.

Additionally, go into your glidewrapper settings and also manually select "windowed mode" if you haven't already. The guy who makes the wrapper says, if running in windowed mode, to use both the "-w" command and to select "windowed mode" in the wrapper settings. There are several other settings in there that may be helpful, but those things that I mentioned I think are the first things to try.

Also you could try downloading an updated version of glidewrapper. I kept transferring my old version across platforms through several years and I'm not sure when he updated it last. But the newest version should be best for whatever version of the game you're running.

Sorry if you already have tried this or I said anything stupid. I love windows 7 and I ran the game without any delay, and I am very passionate about having quick loading times, since slow times bother me a TON. Like I'd rather not play if my load times are delayed even a short amount. This is the reason I switched from 1.13d to 1.14 and started playing again. Better load times specifically with fullscreen. Lemme know how it goes!
 
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@Burgomaster3

There are some amounts of MF that is worth to target when running Travincal.

First breakpoint is when you aim to have highest chance to drop rare rings. That happens when your MF is from 168 to 184. Anything below or above that makes rare rings to drop less frequently. That MF range gives 1:149 chance for rare ring to drop from Council. If we don't care about having 1:149 but also say 1:150 is good enough for us, then we can normally target for more MF.

Second breakpoint is to aim to have highest chance of having rare jewels drop. That happens when your MF is exactly 170 when chance to drop is 1:589 for p3. But, to give more sensible interval, from 170 to 175 MF you have 1:590 chance to get rare jewel.

To maximize both rare rings and jewels, ideal is to target between 170 and 175 MF.

If you don't care about rare rings or jewels, you can simply pump MF to any value you want. Obviously higher MF brings you more unique rings, amulets and jewels. Not bad at all. Normally you will also get more set rings too and set amulets, also more Gheeds. As for rare stuff, chance does not drop much as you increase MF, so no worries. With higher MF you will also get more rare claws and such stuff. Overall, aiming for higher MF is better since Travincal can drop useful unique stuff. Only loss is you will get less magical grand charms, but whatever.

Obviously, all those points are to say that aiming for 170-175 MF is enough. More than that is not needed, but ok if you can get.
 
Question for you guys...

So I wanted to try playing 1.07. However my CDs are long time gone (found out that downloading another install from bnet puts the 1.14s version by defaults).

So then I tried to torrent the Cds, got them alright. Mounted the 4 iso., installed everything, all seems okay. Moved the .MPQ files to the diablo 2 folder, and yet, it keeps asking for the expansion CD when starting, mounted or not. Anyone experienced this? The official answer from blizzard is to moves those .mpq files like I did so now I'm not sure what to do.

Hmm maybe the trick with adding the MPQ files wasn't working for versions earlier than 1.12. ?

Edit: damn, haven't noticed another people's replies...
 
Okay, here is I hope definite answer on how damage influences running times and how important Infinity is for running Travincal with sorc on p3.

3 tests were made:
Sorc with lowish damage (anyone should be able to have more than her)
Sorc with lowish damage with Reaper's merc (let us pretend we don't have Infinity)
My normal sorc from RFO

Test were done to be as similar as possible. Each sorc visited stash same amount of time, cubed gems etc. So, most typical Travincal running there can be. Also each sorc did same amount of runs. Without Infinity I always waited for merc to kill all bosses that were cold immune, usually it is only Torc. It could as well be more efficient to skip him every run since waiting was quite long from time to time.

Sorc with lowish damage blizzard damage: 5520-5772, 5646 average
Normal sorc blizzard damage: 9744 average

Lowish damage sorc gear used: (2k life, 1k mana)
Ist 1.13 Shako (could be Ptopaz)
Ist 1.13 Skullder's (could be Ptopaz)
2 sorc 10 fcr amulet
Hoto 36@
35 fcr Spirit
Arachnid Mesh
Chance Guards
War Traveler's
2x Dwarf Star
Inventory: Gheed's, 3x skillers with GF, 1x mana/gf GC, 5x GF/res SC's
Merc: Infinity, Fortitude, Steel Shade

Merc without Infinity: Reaper's, Kira's Guardian, Guardian Angel

Normal sorc gear:
Cham 1.07 Shako
CoH
2 sorc 10 fcr amulet
35% csd Fathom
35% fcr Spirit
Arachnid Mesh
Trang Claws
War Traveler's
2x beta BKWB
Inventory: 4x skillers with life, Gheed's, 2x mf/mana SCs, 3x SC life/res

Results of testing:
HKysi9d.jpg

Test analysts:

Drop of blizzard damage from 9744 to 5645, aka losing 73% damage, results in having 11% slower running.
Comparing sorc with and without Infinity, I ran 16% slower. So, if without Infinity your running time is ~35 seconds, with Infinity it could possibly be at ~30 seconds.

Final conclusion is: map masterrace. It is by far most important part of your Travincal sorc. Gear comes far second as these demonstrations has shown running times do not drop as much as one would expect by reducing your damage output by this much as I did. Perhaps I should now test will I see any difference between having 9.7k damage and 8k damage. It is not possible to estimate that since drop in running times is not linear to drop in damage (obviously!). Maybe I will test that later, maybe I wont. For now this is enough Trav running. ^^

Hopefully this info is helpful.
 
Here you guys are talking about lowish damage Blizzsorcs with 5k+ damage, when I just got mine to lvl90 and have 3.5k damage...

Currently running Mephi for Shako, then I'll probably go back to Pindle for Tal Armor and TC87s or start running LK if I could get together some better runes and possibly some juicy runewords. Probably need to find someone who would be able to roll some RWM runewords in 1.14, or try to figure out Wine/D2.
 
Haha yeah. Normal sorceress gear. Yeah normal that looks normal to me. I don't know if normal is the best word for that sorcy.

I still haven't found a death's fathom. Pain in the butt since cold sorc is my favorite build. I'm grail -13 and no death fathom. Also I don't know how yall are getting these life skillers. I mean, I know how to roll them but the time investment has got to be huge.
 
Things should be put into perspective. Here I talk about Travincal runner sorcs who as a very minimum needs some basic gear to do it. Basic gear includes: enough LK running to make CtA, you might probably also make Hoto along the way too. Only hardish part of gear is 2 skills 10 fcr amulet and I admit that might be a problem to get (fcr ring + 2 skills non fcr amulet anyone?), but anything else is really common and easy. If someone does not have at least that kind of gear I listed under lowish damage sorc, he should rather spend more time farming BASIC gear instead of hitting Travincal. Note that merc does not need Fortitude, you can very well use Guardian Angel to great success. But, I assume anyone who has Infinity will as well be able to make Fortitude armor.

More importantly, even if blizzard sorc can hit Travincal without Infinity, I would not really recommend doing so until you farm Infinity. And well, if you farmed Infnity, I'm pretty confident by that time you will farm 3 plain skillers for sorc which I used (okay, mine had goldfind) and will probably have some of other listed gear in multitudes. Even better, I'm very confident that anyone who can farm Infinity will be able to build stronger sorc than I presented here.

My HC sorc has sub 3k blizzard damage, but she lacks gear and I'm aware of that. I wouldn't hit Travincal with her until I can meet some basic gear recommendations, and by then I'm very confident I'd have to nerf myself on purpose to not hit over 5k blizzard damage.

Do sorcs have sub 5k blizzard damage? Yes. But question is what kind of gear do they have. You definitely do not want to get to Travincal if you are unable to get CtA or don't have Shako/Mesh or other really basic gear. Is 5k damage blizzard lowish? For typical sorc, no. That is probably even stronger than most untwinked or undergeared sorcs have. Is that lowish for Travincal? Definitely YES since for that kind of damage you need only most mandatory gear listed. Travincal blizzard sorc is not char you can make overnight, it does need some basic gear to work nicely + Infinity. I never said such sorc will be super cheap to make anyway.
 
Well, I made my Sorc four years ago when I started with my current install. Found my first and only Fathom last january, and I only have 2 life cold skillers, with only 22 and 26 life, and I think I found the second one this year. All other cold skillers are plain or have useless other suffixes. I have thousands of LK, AT, Trav etc. runs under my belt, so I haven't been that lucky either with skillers or high level uniques (damn you Death's Web!). Some items just play hard to get.

Her amulet though, that is one really lucky and early drop. I think I got it while questing with her, haven't been able to craft/gamble better since.

In fact, now that I look, I only have two skillers of Vita (Acrobatic and Sounding). I should really roll some charms. It's just too boring :p

Also, in comparison, my AT mf sorc does only 4k+ blizz damage in she kills fine in p1 AT.
 
Also, in comparison, my AT mf sorc does only 4k+ blizz damage in she kills fine in p1 AT.
An AT blizz sorc and a Trav blizz sorc are not even close to the same build. I think mine overlap on 3 items + a couple charms? You can compare them, but it's not a useful comparison.

The point is that running Trav is difficult and for any build has a reasonably high level of entry to do it efficiently. If you don't care about efficiency, then you can do the runs at a lower level and have various problems but it makes no sense to try to speak to all those different build combinations from an efficiency stand point because there are too many to accurately depict and none of them are worth the time compared to other options. You can always choose to spend your time how you want, but for showing how you can most effectively spend it, talking about setups below what Grip was showing just don't really make sense.
 
Haha yeah. Normal sorceress gear. Yeah normal that looks normal to me. I don't know if normal is the best word for that sorcy.

Har har har.
That was intentional ofc ^^

Her gear is godly, I don't know how to improve her further except to find better skillers with life. So, she is pretty much top of the hill as the gear goes.

Regarding skillers with life, most of mine I found by hitting Travincal/LK, while minority I got by doing rerolling with gems. Rolled below 5k gems I think total. Most of life charms I have are 10 lifers and such. You could also find 6 strength skillers (which is 12 life) etc. But, farming those is very long-term process. I self-found total of I think either 6 or 7 chilling with life, that number rises well over 10 if we include dexterity/strength charms too.

But have in mind I rolled near 5k gems and did I have no idea how much Travincal runs and LK runs combined. Somewhere I estimated that, but have no idea where. Could be near 30k LK and 30+k Travincal. All that and skillers I use have 40, 28, 20 and 20 life, next best has 11 life etc. So, aim to make sorc with plain skillers and work your way up as you run certain areas. Progress will be very slow. Could be faster with trading though.
 
An AT blizz sorc and a Trav blizz sorc are not even close to the same build. I think mine overlap on 3 items + a couple charms? You can compare them, but it's not a useful comparison.

The point is that running Trav is difficult and for any build has a reasonably high level of entry to do it efficiently. If you don't care about efficiency, then you can do the runs at a lower level and have various problems but it makes no sense to try to speak to all those different build combinations from an efficiency stand point because there are too many to accurately depict and none of them are worth the time compared to other options. You can always choose to spend your time how you want, but for showing how you can most effectively spend it, talking about setups below what Grip was showing just don't really make sense.

Yeah, I didn't mean "compare" compare, as in that they would be any way comparable in terms of effiency and whatnot. What I meant to say, was that sub 5k damage BlizzSorcs are completely fine for other targets, but Trav indeed needs a bit more expensive gear. Just thought I'd mention that because I was under the impression that people above were talking about Blizzsorcs in general, not just about the Travincal running variant.

It took me finding the Fathom (which itself took about three years) to start running Trav seriously with Sorceress, and I haven't even tried without Infinity. If I'd have the "lowish" gear in Grip's example but no Infinity, I'd probably hit LK to find runes for it instead of trying the Council without it.
 
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