Anything Goes D2 Lounge!

Given the general lack of mentions of surviving mercenaries I think it will be challenging enough to do twinked.
 
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We are talking about playing an untwinked(or twinked) playthrough and not letting our merc die at all costs? Like save and exit or go to town if he is in imminent danger? That does sound like normal Durial, or especially Diablo, could be a quick normal restart lol. But twinked, I think it could be done not that difficultly... maybe I am underestimating the difficulty. But it seems if you can twink and stack resists for every situation, it wouldn't be too crazy. I'm probably wrong lol.

I know save and exit is a touchy subject for HC? I've never done the save and exit and haven't lost one of my two HC Characters yet. It's gotten dicey, but I've gotten out the situations. Are we supposed to be able to save and exit on HC, or is that cheap lol?
 
I think I'm going sorc for easy repositioning. My other thought was druid for oak sage extra life. I want to pick up an act 1 merc right away for the spirit of the challenge and I'll just try to keep her the entire time. Not easy and no insight so mana will be an issue, but at least she'll sometimes try to get out of the way. Eh if it doesn't work I'll try something else.

I'm going to do a playersX run mostly just on players 1 for ease. I'm going to build dual ele sorc for fun, not sure which 2 yet.

In my head it seems too easy but I guess I've never tried before. Some of those bosses might be an issue, the whole CS is a tough spot, council members anywhere. Blind teleporting might be an issue since she'll get spanked proper. But I imagine if you take it slow and clear and use Tele for positioning it can't be that bad right? Right??

All areas is a tough part of this challenge for me because I'm spacey when I play, doing random crap around the house watching shows chatting with my wife etc. Can't just over level and port through tough spots.
 
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Been hopping around characters a lot lately.

Pally reached 95. Calcing my exp/run it's another 30some hours of CS runs till 96 Edit: nah mistake - only 9 hours. I don't remember it taking that long on my other guys but it's not so bad I guess. I need a better map I think, there's so many champ packs on the way, but not many near the seals, or in weird locations around the seals, like tightly packed into corners which sucks for hammerdin. So I'm getting the seal bosses/packs, and then maybe 1-3 champ packs more per run. Just been doing /p8 the whole way, merc feels good, I feel good never any real threat of dying except to de seis pack sometimes when them guys go fast. Runs on this char go quick though, I think the map is the thing that needs improvement now. Oh and up till this week I've only had 6 combat skiller GCs, but I had one drop in CS on this pally and another drop in LK! Lucky me!! So I can finally fill out my inventory with combat skillers at long last. Meanwhile sitting on like 14 useless defensive skill charms.

Sorcy is 97 making steady but slow progress towards 98. Tried doing some /p1/p7 CS runs on her to see if that'd be faster, but yeah at this level baals are still quicker significantly. I'm pullin some real spicey baal times, runs as low as 2:20, usually in the 2:30 area and pulling 279k exp per run so just a cool 900ish runs to go. It feels so much faster, like I still see my bar move in a session so it feels like I'm making progress even though I have so many hours/runs ahead of me. Thinkin about doing nihli at 98 possibly? is it a good idea on lightning sorcy? Just thinking the shorter more action packed runs might feel a bit more tolerable. I've never done them before so I have no idea - is he light immune sometimes and if so is it breakable with infinity?

Been doin some LK runs for fun, highest drop been a vex rune, only in the like 500ish run range though over the past week.

Also been doing some Pindy runs on my blizz sorcy, also in that 500 run range only, nothing good.

MFing pits on the windy druid for fun, slowly leveling him as well up to level 91 now. Lots of characters at 91, basically all my main "meta" d2 chars.

Putting off working on my Keep the Merc Alive challenge till next weekend.
 
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@NorthDakota you should check out phineas's 99er compendium. On hdin, it can be fun/nice/productive doing more full runs like that, but you'll get a lot faster exp/hr doing just infector and vizier (and any bosses within their alcoves) on p8. Called gripphon runs in that 99er compendium. The only SUPER important thing on the chaos map is that you have a "y-shaped" vizier wing, because the hooked shaped one spawns fewer minions. Not that different maps can't be a lot better or worse in addition to that point, but thats the biggest must-have.

On you lightning sorc, baal is no doubt the best at lvl 97 for you. Those are some sick times. p1/p8/p3 I assume? Didn't realize sorc could do them that fast. Are you using delirium merc? Doing 2seal CS runs spec'd as blizz is sort of competitive with it, but is usually slower and usually only comes out ahead when you are trying to save ancients for lvl 98. p1/p7 diablo is not competitive at lvl 97, but is at 98. Once youre 98, baal is still productive (but waves are usually done at p1), but is very significantly worse than p1/p7 diablo or p8 nihlathak. Yes nihlathaks is the best choice for 98 sorc and can be run very effectively as fire or lightning sorc, with lightning sorc probably being the best. And the nice thing about light sorc is, at lvl 98, you can switch between nihla, diablo, and baal as you get bored of one of the runs.
 
Interesting. I hadn't looked in a while I guess I thought it was normal to do all 3 seals and skip Diablo, which was faster for me than adding in Diablo, but I enjoyed killing him so I did. I tested out grip runs last night after reading your post and it's fairly comparable. I mistakenly said 30 hours when in fact it was only 9 to level. Doing grip runs gives me a slightly shorter overall time but only by less than an hour? I'm doing all sorts of testing on the fly, some packs close some far, only doing 2 seals or 3 seals, just seems like everything is so close at this level time wise, especially considering that my biggest time killer is pausing to watch TV or get food or bathroom or any number of distractions. Like those add far more to my remaining time. Like my 9 hour level time is likely more like 15 hours because of all the dinking around I do in my personal life.

Weird how the biggest obstacle is just doing it. Same on my lightning sorcy. I've got 900 or so runs to go and even doing a half hour of work towards it is like 10 to 12 runs, committing to those runs each day gets me there in 3 months. It's like all about buckling down and doing it for me. No discipline. I get so concerned about efficiency when the reality is that's not the main battle. Although it is fun and motivating to look at it and try to improve.

I'm extremely nervous about nihli runs as I've never done them on any character. I'll probably wait till I hit 98 and then test it out then so I don't have exp to lose there if I goof it up.
 
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I'll probably wait till I hit 98 and then test it out then so I don't have exp to lose there if I goof it up.
If you don't have a second character to test there, that's definitely what I'd recommend. Take the first few hundred runs to experiment and die a couple of times to see whats dangerous. And definitely read up on the snakes and how to not die (natures peace, delirium merc, integer dr, and step away from merc).

And good deal on the hdin. I thought 30 hours at 95 sounded pretty rough :p.
 
I'm posting some ruminations here:

I've been debating trying a solo ironman. I've read a bit about ironman parties back in the 1.11 days, and I know some people have accomplished it solo, and I think it would be a lot of fun to try. As much as I love tournaments, they can get really tedious with selling everything, mercenary resurrections, and often poor gear/builds. Ironman solves most of that in the worst possible way. Here are my rules:

No town, ever, except to progress an act. Some folks use Cain at the beginning and end of acts, but I won't do that. It would also mean no mercenary, no repairs, no potions, etc
You can only use potions you find in the wild
No muling, or stash for that matter
You must clear each area. This means you'll complete every quest, even though you won't turn many of them in. No running through the game just to kill the act boss.
I haven't decided on players setting. Part of me thinks players 1, since that's the "true" solo experience, but part of me also thinks that would be extremely difficult
No rerunning - this is single pass
Hardcore (duh!)

Anything I missed? Any thoughts?
 
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The idea I posted in a thread a while ago....u basically wanna set yourself a max number of hours allowed!

GL on that project if you´ll go for it! Sounds a bit like loving pain! :eek:
 
Some Druid mid 90s Exp Ddata

Been running my druid to try and get him to lvl 95. He was 93 when I started this stint, and I wanted to share some data I gathered during the process so far (still a couple of hours left till 95, but I'm done data collecting). I thought some might be sort of applicable to @PhineasB's exp compendium, but not sure if it should be posted there. Should we post 99er theorycrafting/testing data there phineas?

First off, I'm not a druid fan. There's a reason he was the last class I got to 95. Well also I wanted to save some exp to do for after I found ravenlore, which did end up working out. In this post from gripphon on the old forum, as well as his post two down from that one, he talks about exp on a mid 90s druid. Specifically, how he thought ventar runs on a windy were likely fastest exp for most people, but AT fissure runs were competitive, and both better than the pit. I had this in mind when exploring these runs. My druid amazingly has a pretty nice pit and AT map. Why can't that happen on a sorc for me? :cry:

Pit Windy
I had many people tell me they thought pits windy was fast for this sort of thing. I had done high psetting windy runs in the past and knew I don't really enjoy them. I'm not a windy fan in general, and to me they definitely feel slow. But I only recently found my 7th natural skiller, and probably only had like 3 last time I ran him. So figured it was time to re-test. Plus I recently found a pretty nice circlet (2/20, 15 life, 16@) and also recently found my first eth reapers and slapped my only rjof into it, so figured it would be fun to put this stuff to use and run 163fcr. Running standard stuff with hoto sprit etc. Reapers, gface, treachery merc. I did 30 runs, and they were ~106s which I guess isnt toooo terrible when I can only manage just over 80s with my poison necro. But they felt slowish and I hate dealing with "aiming" those nados. Came out to be 31m exp/hr.

Ventar Windy
Next I tried the ventar runs, but I only did 5 of these runs. I fully believe they are better than including lister or baal. The latter two take AGES on a druid. But wow what a terrible run. The first 4 waves are never gonna drop anything, and aren't fun to do imo. Plus takes him as long to do them as it does a zon to do a full baal run. Anyways came out to 41m exp/hr.

Tunnels Fissure
Then I respec'd to fissure finally to try out the fire druid. Was using -14 ravenlore with a -5/+4 facet, maras, hoto, enigma, phoenix, magefist, fcr ring with light res, fcr ring with cold res and mf, arachs, and rare boots with mf and res. Ran maras and fcr rinfs instead of a caster ammy and soj because I wanted more res on him. Inventory is 7 natural gcs, gheeds, and scs with mana and mf. Merc using cham andys, fort, and infinity. First 20 or runs got around 31m per hour, tying the pits. But then I got better at dragging the packs through the fissures and leaving invader packs half killed or skipping them entirely, and the exp/hr shot up to just over 40m, almost the same as the ventar runs. Good stuff and made me glad. Even found a unique sacred during this testing, but was just templars #3 :(. Here were the results and a sample runs video.

LX02PV5.png


And at level 94, this translated to 25.3 million exp/hr, about right on expectation, and 8.12 hours to do lvl 94-95. So not quite on pace with gripphon, but I never expect that :ROFLMAO:. I got pretty bored of the runs after about 40% into the lvl, but @Albatross kept me motivated to keep trucking in a different conversation, and I just got to 94.75. Should get the lvl in another couple of days. Cheers!
 
I died clearing throneroom. Forgot to BO, throne filled with souls and something with a conviction aura and I insta melted. Literally my second run of the night, I'm over tired worked 11 hour shift at work obviously not on my A game missing BO which how does that happen, I never ever do that it's like so routine for any char I play so.. yeah just tired. That hurts so badly :( I'm very sad. Haven't had a death in 2 levels and now this at 97 :(
 
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That is awesome @Luhkoh (and useful for Septimus, who's just a bit into level 94). I would definitely like to incorporate more class-specific leveling detail like this into the 99er compendium, with a caveat for untwinked 99ers that gear limitations may impact analysis. Interesting about Fire Druid in tunnels being competitive with Ventar runs. I must admit, I stuck with Pit runs for 94-95 because I didn't look forward to Ventar, so interesting to see the AT Fire Druid option comparison (and with experience of @Pb_pal for reference).
 
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@PhineasB thanks! I was just wondering since theres no "99 theorycrafting and stuff like that" thread in the new forum, would you like it if we posted such things in the comments of the 99er compendium?

Yeah fissure data for an untwinked char is pretty much useless (unless you're @Pb_pal ofc), since at the BARE minimum you need infinity. Which would be a tough sell to farm when you can just roll with engima as a windy. Man, druid is so much worse than other characters. In general ofc, but mainly I mean for untwinked 99ing. I shudder to think of lvl 97-98 with one. So best of luck with septimus! 😅
 
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The forum has once again inspired the itch. I gifted my PC to my godson a few months ago and I won’t be able to pickup a cheap laptop until post Christmas but I’m going to try for a 1-99 untwinked speedrun.
 
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