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Does anyone know why nihlathak's so slow with hammerdin? I'm doing key runs with hdin in d2r, and have 9k hammer dmg. Nihlathak has 25 magic res (supposedly) and 13.4k base hp. So effective hammer dmg = 6.7k, and nihla's hp on p3 = 26.8k, so should be a 4 shot. But it takes 7-8 casts. I was starting to wonder if he just actually has 50 magic res or something.

And ofc my hdin CAN run him on p7, but since the hammers then don't really put him in fhr, he moves and teleports and casts CE more, making it not worth it imo so far.

Also this question is for anyone who knows, but I'll tag @Nano and @drmalawi. What am I doing wrong with this basic d2 drop calculation? Key from p1 nihlathak: His probsum from treasureclassex.txt is 42 and his number of picks = 5. So chance for key per pick = 1 in 42 = 2.4%. Chance of at least one key per run = 1 - (1 - 0.024)^5 = 11.4%. This is too high according to all the drop calculators and my own experience. I figured I'm forgetting something obvious in the calc process.

EDIT: Sorry guys nevermind. I need to add nodrop to probsum before getting the chance of a key per pick -.-. Got it now so the correct calc is chance for key per pick = 1 in (42+19) = 1.64%. Chance of at least one key per run = 1 - (1 - 0.0164)^5 = 7.9%.
 
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Luhkoh said:
Does anyone know why nihlathak's so slow with hammerdin? I'm doing key runs with hdin in d2r, and have 9k hammer dmg. Nihlathak has 25 magic res (supposedly) and 13.4k base hp. So effective hammer dmg = 6.7k, and nihla's hp on p3 = 26.8k, so should be a 4 shot. But it takes 7-8 casts. I was starting to wonder if he just actually has 50 magic res or something.

And ofc my hdin CAN run him on p7, but since the hammers then don't really put him in fhr, he moves and teleports and casts CE more, making it not worth it imo so far.
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Amazon Basin says he has 26690 life, which is exactly twice the 13345 life that Arreat Summit says he has. Might be some sort of boss life modifier or something, or maybe just another one of those occasional AS inaccuracies.

EDIT: Yeah, he gets the 200% life modifier in Hell from being a "unique" (he's one of the 3 bosses that get unique affixes in NM/Hell, Griswold/Radamant/Nihlathak) monster.

His base life is calculated via monstats.txt and monlvl.txt as such:

monstats.txt gives him a MinHP(H) and MaxHP(H) of 191 which gets multiplied by the L-HP(H) in monlvl.txt which is 69.87 for level 92 (it uses the base level to calculate life before the +3 level unique monster level modifier), giving 191 * 69.87 = 13345 life, just like AS says. That then gets increased by the 200% unique monster bonus so it becomes 13345 * 2 = 26690 life.

The (H) refers to values used for Hell monsters and the L- refers to the values used for Ladder monsters (offline monsters use the Ladder values).
 
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I'm doing Nihlathak with my nova + energy shield sorceress. A bit static field, followed by teleporting onto Nihlathak and nova'ing him to death. His corpse explosion is irrelevant, Nature's Peace is not needed. The only issue is succubi and their blood mana curse (which isn't diminished by energy shield), as my sorceress has more mana than life, but that's perhaps 1/3 of the time. I'm usually short on terror keys because it takes so long to reach the Countess.
 
@DarkMaster you are the man. I was wondering how to calc the hp values from monstats. Thanks so much. And that unique multiplier explains it. Also idk how I didn't think to check basin. I clicked nihlathak there and it just links you to arreat summit, but I knew that they had his stats there if you looked at the area page. Just forgot. Thanks again!

@krischan I too plan to key run with nova sorc post-infinity. How do you deal with the blood mana curse? Do you abort those runs or what?

@Nano agreed. Its not too too awful because I'm happy to have him and would rather be running him than my only other option, blizz sorc. But yeah in a post-infinity world, hdin wont be seeing nihlathak again.
 
@Luhkoh: The succubi cast one of two curses and once the one is cast, they won't cast the other. If it's the blood mana curse and Nihlathak isn't about to die, I abort. It doesn't matter though, this is still the most efficient way for me to get D keys.

My nova sorc is through 95% of level 98, so I'm extremely cautious regarding dying. She is about to become my first L99 character ever. That's due to terror zones, she would never be close to that otherwise.

To my experience, terrorized Chaos Sanctuary is the best area for exp. Stay tuned for when she reaches L99...
 
krischan said:
My nova sorc is through 95% of level 98, so I'm extremely cautious regarding dying. She is about to become my first L99 character ever. That's due to terror zones, she would never be close to that otherwise.
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1743014859088.png

Done!

I almost blew it when I killed too many dolls at once in the Flayer Dungeon... life went down to 10% or so when I was about 200k exp away from L99.

I found an Ohm rune in the process, so I regard that as a special quest reward :cool:

(Edit) Her setup:

Enough in strength for a spirit monarch, rest in energy.

Maximum nova, static, energy shield, telekineses, lightning mastery, one in teleport, frozen armor, prereqs, rest in warmth (5 points).

Perfect Griffon's (except +defense) with perfect lightning facet (my PRECIOUS!), Crescent Moon, Spirit (just 33%, as she needs only 30% for the 105% breakpoint), Vipermagi with Um, Frostburn, Arachnid Mesh, rare boots with FRW and resists, Mara's, SoJ, BK ring, CtA+Spirit in the weapon switch, Annihilus, torch, lightning/fhr and lightning/life skiller, lightning sunder charm, enough lightning/life SCs to counter -res from the sunder charm, life/mana SCs.

She could wear more skillers, but I think that additional life/mana charms are better. Now that dying isn't much of an issue anymore, I could apply a more aggressive strategy, however.
 
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I'm planning to do another untwinked playthrough with all classes in d2r, like i did in lod here. For that project I loved my strategy and build for 5 of the 7 classes
  • assassin - trapsin
  • barb - zerker
  • sorceress - meteorb
  • necro - bone (not summoner)
  • paladin - hammerdin
Nice, comfortable, easy(ish) hell playthroughs with pretty much cookie-cutters. Barb is slow and annoying to farm a weapon but super fun after that. However I played a regular wind druid, and a fishyzon (lf/fa) for druid and amazon and didn't have a good time at all. For windy you have to get way too close to hit with the nados, and untwinked hurricane basically does nothing. For zon, with crappy gear, the light javs worked fine but didnt feel powerful, and fa was just mana drain central. And she had a tough time in a3 jungles as well as with ancients. However, I didn't get valk (or use it from peace) this playthrough which I think was a mistake.

So I see a few options to do these better but wanted to get your all's thoughts. The goal here is a playthrough with very achievable gear untwinked, and that doesn't take forever to get through the game. And after that, max comfort for p1 hell playthrough. The goal is almost meant to be like a guide too. "Do this to get your first Druid through hell". Here's the options I see.

Druid
  • fire/wind hybrid - weak but versatile and I like fissure.
  • pure windy - I could consider farming a lem for lawbringer merc this time
  • fury druid - i think this would be fun and comfy but definitely the slowest. would require farming a good weapon from nm andy

Amazon
  • pure lightning - (least fav), don't like the idea of running past immunes with no teleport
  • lightning/poison - poison skills seemed terrible in hell when i tried in LoD, but i think they improved the poison skills in d2r and plenty of people used this in LoD anyways
  • lightning jav/cold bow - what I did before but this time with valk and decoy, and take the time to farm harmony or wizendraw or something. plus I hear in d2r the mana is better for FA.
  • physical bowazon - would target something like riphook and clegaws gloves for crowd control. requires mf'ing
  • magezon - now that fire arrow skills are a bit better, could just go full cold/fire arrows

What do you all think? Looking forward to hearing any experiences/input.
 
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Thanks to all of you!

OK, Grail finished some time ago, including runes, L99 character done. After all those decades, I'm feeling a bit empty regarding D2R now, but even then, there's always a need for more runes and facets... and perhaps something like an ethereal 3 socket Tomb Reaver together with another 40ed/15ias jewel (I have one on my Gomule stashes). That would be something worthy of upgrading my two Cham runes and Zod it... although I already have a WW barb with a BotD GPA and I'm not sure if an ethereal Zod + 2x 40/15 Tomb Reaver would be better.

There are still goals to reach, but there are less of them left. Well, after 25 years, that's to be expected, but the fact that I still haven't accomplished everything tells me that D2 is a gorgeous game!

I'm not saying that it's a great day to die, of course :-)
 
@Luhkoh In D2R you can have all of the Wolves and the Grizzly active at the same time. Combine a healthy level of Dire Wolves and Grizzly with a Werewolf or Werebear and even without twinking it should be an easy build. You some planning you can have enough points for healthy pets and some points for Fury, but also consider Fire Claws

For years I had a Hunter Druid (summoner carrying a Bow) paired with a Rogue Merc and even with a Faith Bow I could not get past the Ancients. Decided to try one more time when I moved to D2R and took them down easily the first time because I had all the wolves and the Grizzly acting as a meat shield.
 
Finally managed to get Linux to understand the RWM txt file, what a nightmare. Currently have a sorc running around struggling for mana so the insight poleaxe will be huge benefit.

Unfortunately my bowzon and frostadin are well and truly parked until I get some better gear.
 
I am thinking of doing an untwinked 99er sorc and have a sort of subjective question: with Sunder Charms, can you actually run a pure Fire sorceress in Terror Zones without much problem? I'm assuming you'd need a Sunder Charm plus some fairly specialized / pricey gear. Something like "Flickering Flame" / "Phoenix" shield / "Infinity" on the merc, etc? Does anyone have experience running a sorceress like that and know how viable it is? I feel like it could still be slow in some TZs. When I was doing D2 before the Sunder Charms were sort of a turn-off for me so I didn't utilize them in my builds, but I'm thinking something like that could be fun now.

Right now I am doing a Firewall / Frozen Orb combo to play through the game (just something a little different than the Blizzard / Fireball and Meteor / FO combos I've done in the past) but was thinking it could be fun to respec to a single element if the sunder charms and other gear would make it where the build could run various TZs without having to slow down too much.
 
I guess you can go with 3-piece tal rasha set (weapon one of the items)+ Flickering flame (1 Vex Rune should not be that grindy to get, you will get one for sure when LK'ing for Ohm for CtA), this will net you 20%-25% reduced enemy fire res.

Or be a king and self wield Obedience! No need for spirit shield and such, you can get 120 fcr by other means ! (has anyone done this?)
 
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@drmalawi lol I love it. same idea as self wield infinity i suppose. Minus the aura and with a lot less minus res. Fun idea though.

@BBS_Agonistes I would think you'll definitely want flickering flame and infinity. But really I'd want phoenix too. Blizz would be perfectly doable more budget, but i can't wait to see how it goes whatever you do!
 
Regarding infinity and such here, you think it could be worth it? We are talking about a ~100h project here. Would farming LK for 10-20h for infinity actually make that large impact here? We are talking about 10h here and there I think. I do not understand the ones doing UT99er with TZ's now spending hours and hours farming LK, torches and such... I would just try to get CtA and then continue with the exp grind.
 
@drmalawi great point. Yeah if you’re fine only running a handful of tzs, would be ok without Phoenix etc. but infinity ups your dmg and speed so much vs non immunes too. I would definitely want it for fire or light sorc.
 
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