Barbarian Madness Continues - My SC untwinked 99 barb Holy Grail project

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

I decided to spend some time and create a thread for my untwinked 99 barb Holy Grail project. As you probably know, my barb hit 99 on 14th of December. He lvled up as untwinked and his target is to finish the grail us untwinked. Lvling and early gear farming got me to ~35 items left. That's actually a good result if you ask me, considering the fact that baal, his minions and nihla have terrible chances for most rare items. You can find links to my posts in UT99ers thread with pics and clips of some items that i found in the spoiler below and can also check my youtube playlist dedicated to this particular barb at the link below that spoiler.

Spoiler: Posts

https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8872668
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8874016
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8874339
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8874972
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8875699
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...read-revenge-of-the-99ers.923384/post-8875983

Playlist link:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeontGtZce94pLJGDZhRa0ARSsqX_32L5

Enough of self-advertising... Let's do some serious stuff XD

Preparation​

Beginning

After getting max lvl, i had to do some random stuff like cubing up gems to reroll SCs (more about that later), crafting some caster amulets, farming essences etc. I had some perfect amethysts, so i decided to use them. Got some +2 barb crafts and 1 troll amu that you can see below. I still have over 400 flawless amethysts, so more crafting incoming (will do it right before starting pits).

Wish it had +2 skills...

Rerolling SCs

Rerolling SCs is probably weird to many of you. The thing is that this barb was made mainly to finish the grail as untwinked char (getting to 99 was just a cool addon to it). I already did the lvling, so i don't need to reroll any GCs. The most important affix for me is "of good luck" suffix which gives 6-7 mf and can spawn on ilvl 61+ SCs, so that's my minimum lvl for rerolling. Note that it can already spawn with "Fine", "Iron", +11% to individual res and +5% to all res affixes. I checked what are the other interesting affixes and it turned out that with ilvl 62 i can get "Stalwart" prefix which gives +20-30 def (irrelevant) and "Serpent's" prefix that gives 13-17 to mana (that one can be useful actually, cause i can run into mana issues when using dual Suicide Branches). Later i can get "Steel" prefix with ilvl 71 and there are no other interesting affixes above those i mentioned. At ilvl 77 new affixes can spawn, so 76 is max ilvl that i am interesting in. Finally decided to aim for ilvl 71-76, cause it felt the most profitable to me. After that i had to pick up some target to get those SCs from. Checked drop calculator and discovered that Hell catacombs lvl 4 is a super nice area for that, especially since Andy is lvl 75 and has high chance to drop SCs overall. I farmed her for like 1,5 hour and got 8 charms to reroll.

Got those 2 charms for my pitzerker from rerolling and a few more interesting ones for other chars that i don't have a screenshots of:

Grail status

Currently at 34 items left.

List of missing items:

Cow King's Set
TC 3: Bane Ash, Sander's Paragon, Blinkbat's Form
TC 45: Arm of King Leoric
TC 51: Gerke's Sanctuary
TC 78: Stormlash
TC 81: Halaberd's Reign
TC 84: Steel Carapace, Ravenlore
TC 87: Tyrael's Might, Griffon's Eye, Steelrend, Shadow Dancer, Death Cleaver, Executioner's Justice, Ghostflame, Earth Shifter, Cranium Basher, Steel Pillar, Death's Web, Mang Song's Lesson, Death's Fathom, Darkforce Spawn, Griswold's Valor, Griswold's Honor, Immortal King's Soul Cage, Bul-Kathos' Tribal Guardian, M'avina's True Sight
Facets: Lvl Up Fire, Die Light, Die Poison


Summary

I think that's everything i have for now. Got some good charms and ok amulets. I will try to update this thread like once per week. Could post a little bit more, but i want to spread this in time, so this thread won't become dead in like 3 weeks (it eventually will when i am at like 2 items left or something, but whatever... xD).

Hope you like that project and how i present it!

See you soon!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

The time for an update has come, so here we go.

Cow King's Set Farming​

Beginning

After crafting and rerolling charms i decided to farm Cow King's Set, so i don't have to do it later. For most people it would be normal to just make a new char, open LAN game or whatever and kill the king over and over again. My problem is that i only play with this barb and will do it until the grail is completed (hopefully XD). Help of other chars is not an option, so farming The Cow King is out of the question. I had to come up with some good cow farming builds. Did some digging, drop chances analysis, statistics and test runs. Set items drop chances are capped (check the picture and the video below), which is nice, cause i was able to use some other gear than just pure mf items.


Those are the reciprocal dropchances (if you have the chance 1/10, the reciprocal drop chance is 10) from normal cows for 3 set items i was interested in. As you can see, going above 400 mf grants almost no benefit in normal and literally no benefit in NM (Farming Hell was out of the question at this time, cause why would someone make their farming harder xD). Helmet has the best drop chance in NM and trash in normal, armor has super nice chance to drop in normal and ok in NM and boots are mediocre everywhere. I was mainly focused on those setups in bolded text, especially on the coloured ones.

I also decided to roll some insights and got this:

Normal

I did some calculations and testing and it turned out that normal is the way to go until i have boots and armor, then i should farm NM. I could do that the other way around, but P7 cow singer in normal was so fun to play that i decided to do it first (you can see the playstyle below). I went with that gear: Shako, Enigma, Hoto, Spirit, Dual Nagel, Arach, Chancies, War Travs and +1 barb/10fcr/20 mf crafted amulet (1196-1242 war cry dmg, 889 mana, 542 mf, 105 fcr, 3 mpk).

Singer clip:



Nightmare

When i got the armor and boots it was reasonable to switch to NM. I had 2 builds in my mind: WW and singer once again. Did some testing (P3 vs P5 for both setups) and i think they are pretty close together. WW gear was: Dual Grief PB, Enigma, Dual Hoto, Gface, Highlord's, Goldwrap, Chancies, War travs, Nagel and dual leech ring. Singer gear: Shako, Hoto, Spirit, Enigma, Arach, Dual SoJ, Chancies, War Travs and fcr amulet with +Warcries and mana. WW was similar on P3 and P5, singer was slower on P5 comparing to P3, but not by much. Unfortunately i killed The Cow King when testing WW setup. I have no idea how that happened, but he spawned like the whole screen away from his normal spawning spot. I don't have any clips of those 2 builds. I can just say that singer was pretty much the same as in normal, but slower and i had to focus more on mana to make this build viable. WW was pretty ok, but even if you get to the last ias breakpoint, it kills big packs of cows pretty slowly, so it is better to go around them and not straight through them. I also tested some weird builds like reaper's on the merc and insight on the barb and i must say it looked pretty ok, but would have to test a little bit more to be sure if it can compete with those setups i mentioned above.


Hell

Since i killed NM Cow King, i had to switch the difficulty. It was singer in normal vs zerker in hell. Did a few runs with a singer and decided that i have to try the zerker. His gear: Gface, Highlord's, Enigma, Trang belt, Rare gloves with res and mf, Nagel, Rare ring with FCR, res and mf, War travs, Grief+Beast on kill switch, dual wizzy on tele switch. I was trying different maps, teleporting paths and such. Finally found a really good map with consistent pack spawns close together. It was arguable if that setup is better than singer in normal, but i thought it's cool and i can find some nice stuff in hell (found eth gaze which is nice and second Cow King's Armor XD). After like 200 runs i found the helmet and completed the set.

Zerker clip:



Grail status

Currently at 31 items left.

List of missing items:

TC 3: Bane Ash, Sander's Paragon, Blinkbat's Form
TC 45: Arm of King Leoric
TC 51: Gerke's Sanctuary
TC 78: Stormlash
TC 81: Halaberd's Reign
TC 84: Steel Carapace, Ravenlore
TC 87: Tyrael's Might, Griffon's Eye, Steelrend, Shadow Dancer, Death Cleaver, Executioner's Justice, Ghostflame, Earth Shifter, Cranium Basher, Steel Pillar, Death's Web, Mang Song's Lesson, Death's Fathom, Darkforce Spawn, Griswold's Valor, Griswold's Honor, Immortal King's Soul Cage, Bul-Kathos' Tribal Guardian, M'avina's True Sight
Facets: Lvl Up Fire, Die Light, Die Poison


Summary

I spent over 11 hours on farming cows overall. You can see a screenshot from the runcounter below (note that i did more runs than it says, cause i wasn't always using it). Was it worth it? Well... I needed it for the grail, so obviously it was worth it XD Cows aren't the best place to farm with a barb as you can probably tell, but i must say that P7 normal Singer is a ridiculous build and you can find some gems, jewels and low runes with him. Nightmare Cows can be a good source of mf SCs i think, cause you kill a lot of them, they have pretty high chance to drop SCs overall and are lvl 64 so you can get "of good luck" suffix together with "Serpent's" prefix. Unfortunately i was not meant to farm them long enough to find something interesting... Hell cows are pretty tough even on P1, cause they have a lot of HP and can hit hard. The next problem is that Howl has pretty low range in open areas, so you have to cast it many times to be relatively safe (you can see that in the video above).

Run Counter screen shot:

I hope you like that update. Special thanks to @Luhkoh and @drmalawi for help with the setups, statistics and more ^^

See you soon!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

Next update will be about Travincal, Countess, Gem shrines and Crafting. Let's go ^^

Final upgrades​

Travincal

After getting Cow King's Set i decided to farm a cham rune to put in my shako. I could go with Rare gloves + Trang's belt + isted shako, but i am planning to make HoR entry with that barb this year, so i need as much mf as i can. Did some calculations considering cubing sur, ber and jah and getting cham rune directly to check what is the best place for me to farm. You can see the results on the graph below.

Travincal was clearly a winner, so i respeced my barb to WW and geared him up with Dual Grief PB, Enigma, Arreat's, Highlord's, Arach, LoH, Gores and Dual Rare rings with some mana leech, mana, res and fcr. Switched to Gface later for more DMG, cause i went with full vita build and res from arreat's wasn't necessary. You are probably wondering what that vertical green line is... Well, i got what i needed in around 680 trav runs which is about 9 hours, so you probably already figured out what's going on XD Was prepared for way more than that, but was definitely hoping to get it fast. I don't remember getting anything interesting in Trav beside that cham rune and 2 ohm runes. Got some SCs with mf (1 max/10 AR/6 mf and a plain 7mf). Rerolled Grief with those ohms after cubing them, but the roll was terrible... You can check those drops in the spoiler below. I will make a video with some of my Grief rolls soon, cause this is a little bit ridiculous xD

Spoiler: Clips of rune drops

Countess

Good pitzerker needs a decent crafted amulet. I needed some ral runes to make it, so i went to normal and farmed Countess a little bit. Before that, i decided to farm Hell Countess to make 6 isted PB. Got a very good map, did some runs and made HoR entry with that barb. You can see a video with a few runs below:

Lvl 1 and 2 aren't a bug. They were the same and the stairs to the next lvl were 1 teleport away from the entrance. Pretty sick. Spent 5+ hours farming countess.


Gem Shrines

I picked up almost every flawless amethyst i found on this char, so i had plenty of them in the end. Didn't want to cube them, cause it would result in 1/3 of the number of crafts, so i decided to farm some gem shrines. I had to learn about it first though. It is probably a little bit more complicated than most people think, but the most important thing is that you can farm gem shrines in every area of the game, the chance for them is the same everywhere except Blood Moor and Cold Plains. The difference between those 2 areas and the rest of them is pretty small and i wouldn't particularly care about it, cause the main problem is the map. You want to hit as many shrines as you can in the shortest time, so you need a lot of shrines near the waypoints. I think it isn't very hard to roll a decent map, but that's subjective of course (note that i spent like 13+ hours farming them XD). You can see my final map in the video below.

After some time i decided to run Dark Wood -> Black Marsh -> Cold Plains -> City of The Damned -> River of Flame which resulted in around 20,5s runs with ~7,8 shrines per run (2,6-2,7s per shrine).

I have some experimental data if anybody is interested in shrines and i think i figured out how they work ^^


Crafting

This is probably the most interesting part of this update. After i got everything, i tried my luck in crafting. Crafted at least 500 amulets (think it should be 600+, cause i did about 100 long ago after cubing all of my amethysts and remember having 500 flawless gems at some point after that). Unfortunately +2 barb amulet with mf was not meant to happen, which is a little bit disappointing, but i got some interesting ones, so i can't complain. You can see some of the amulets i've got in the spoiler below.

Spoiler: Crafts

As you can see, i've been trolled by Amazon, Druid and Sorc pretty hard... Wish any of those amulets had +2 barb on it. I am currently using that +2 Warcries/15 FCR/8 MF amulet paired with 40 res Hoto and isted wizzy. Can use that +1 barb or the one i showed in the first post and switch from hoto to suicide branch, but i am not sure if i want to socket it with an ist rune now (i have only 1 socket quest left, so i have to use it wisely). I had Dual Branch setup in my mind at the begining, but that requires some nice mana from charms and amulet and as you can see, i don't have any of those, so i went with wizzy ^^

Hope you like that update, Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

I said that the next update will be during the weekend, so here we go ^^

Pits​

Gear

I had everything i needed to start farming. My first setup was: Enigma, Isted Shako, Trang's Belt, War Travs, Dual Nagel, Rare Gloves, FCR amulet (see those 2 below) + Suicide Branch/Wizzy on tele switch and Grief/6 Isted PB on kill switch. I didn't want to socket my items right away, cause i was hoping to get something interesting like crafted amulet with mana which would change my build. I had Isted Shako, cause it was the only piece of gear that was sure i will be using no matter what. I wanted to wait with chaming it, cause i wasn't sure if i can menage playing with negative res and pretty low mana (i was used to playing with 900+ mana, so something like 700 was pretty low for me).

Spoiler

Runs were pretty ok, but i wasn't particularly good in playing a pitzerker after 8 month break. Later i decided to try Hoto/Wizzy setup with that 15 FCR War Cry amulet i got from crafting and this is my setup till today. My calculations say that running Isted Suicide Branch and Isted Wizzy together with +1 barb/FCR/20 mf amulet is better, but the difference isn't big and i want to wait with socketing my Branch (maybe someone will tell me to do it XD). I am currently at 745/595 mf, which isn't particularly bad (especially for untwinked char), but i can definitely go higher than that. I lack a lot of mf from charms, but don't think it is worth it to farm for 7 mf SCs to boost my unique yield from 185% to 187% on kill XD Maybe i will rethink that later, cause i am planning to make HoR entry and every mf i can get matters there. We will see...


Map

I spent probably over 12 hours rerolling maps and did 400+ runs during the process. The procedure was quite simple: go to Outer Cloister, teleport to The Pit, check if the map is linear: if it isn't reroll and start over, if it is, do some runs and check how many packs it spawns and how fast you can kill them. Getting a linear map can be a challenge sometimes and getting a good map on top of this is really hard. They often split or have some weird tiles sticking to the main path and you don't want things like that. The whole process was kinda weird if you ask me. I was getting pretty much the same maps after rerolling, which is odd... You can see some of the maps i got below.

Spoiler

Rolled this very small map

Rerolled it and got this... I know that the final tile (which is not fully visible here) is different, but i got similar maps directly after rerolling like 10 times during those 12 hours...

Another map

and after rerolling. This one is totally different, but it has basically the same shape which was kinda interesting to me.

Also got this one but it turned out to be trash...

I have no idea how many maps i checked. Probably a few hundred? Only 3 of those i got were worth checking more. I threw them all away after a few runs, cause they turned out to be total trash (not many packs)... Finally i got something really interesting and worth checking.

This one is a 4 tile map, which is what you should aim for (small and dense). It does not have a well and has some not particularly good spots where packs spawn, but it stays at 8,27 average after 625 runs, so i will definitely check it more. I got 8 packs in the first lvl the first run i did and 4 packs in the second lvl the run after that. I knew it is something worth checking, because of that information alone. What is interesting is the fact that it has 2 shrines (marked in the picture with green "crosses"). They make up for the lack of a well, cause i can get rid of amp and pick up Combat Shrine, Skill Shrine or Refill Shrine which is nice. What's more is the fact that it spawns 3 packs in lvl 2 around 66% of the time (sick).

I marked the spawning spots on the picture together with some other things.
Dots:
Red - pretty much every run
Orange - often
Yellow - sometimes
Purple Circle - Devilkin Nest
Blue line - my teleporting path

As you can see i do a little bit of backtracking, but that area above the second shrine can spawn a few bosses and it happens quite frequently. Devilkin Nest on this map is weird though. I got nothing there most of the time. There are runs that i can find 1-2 packs there and sometimes there are like 4 packs. I will have to check more if it is worth it to check those 2 areas and maybe i will change my teleporting path.

You can check a google doc spreadsheet i made (if you are interested in statistical data) in the link below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yapOA3viIjKICrB_XUCbBWzoHco4lv2B--rrY6idx-8/edit?usp=sharing

My effciency is kinda lame at the moment, but it will get better with some practice. I am already getting some pretty ok results most of the time. I usually do series of 25 runs and will have to try to make 50 runs straight if i want to make an entry in HoR.


Drops

I had some nice luck when rerolling maps and got a few interesting drops (clips with the best ones in the end ^^):

Spoiler

Grail status

Currently at 24 items left.

List of missing items:

TC 3: Bane Ash, Sander's Paragon, Blinkbat's Form
TC 78: Stormlash
TC 81: Halaberd's Reign
TC 84: Steel Carapace, Ravenlore
TC 87: Tyrael's Might, Steelrend, Shadow Dancer, Death Cleaver, Executioner's Justice, Ghostflame, Earth Shifter, Cranium Basher, Death's Web, Mang Song's Lesson, Darkforce Spawn, Griswold's Valor, Griswold's Honor, M'avina's True Sight
Facets: Lvl Up Fire, Die Light, Die Poison

I got more drops than those posted here, but you have to wait until the next update to see them ^^

Hope you enjoy this post!

Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

Further updates will be kinda boring, cause i will basically farm pits till the end of time and only show some drops XD I will reroll my map a few times probably, make some crafts or HoR entry etc. Nothing spectacular anymore... (if the previous things i did were spectacular...)

I've had a lot of luck since i started farming pits. Found 2 cham runes, 2 griffons, 3 death cleavers (1 eth), mangsong's, death's fathom othe TC 87 uniques, some TC 87 set items and TC 3 uniques together with some nice eth items. A lot of stuff... You can see some of those drops below.

Spoiler: Grailers

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Spoiler: Rare Drops

I also made HoR entry which you can find in the link below together with some efficiency talk, theorycrafting and such.

https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/spf-hall-of-records.851922/post-8877615


Grail status

Currently at 17 items left.

List of missing items:

Uniques:
TC 3: Bane Ash, Blinkbat's Form
TC 78: Stormlash
TC 81: Halaberd's Reign
TC 84: Steel Carapace, Ravenlore
TC 87: Tyrael's Might, Steelrend, Executioner's Justice, Ghostflame, Earth Shifter, Cranium Basher, Death's Web, Darkforce Spawn

Set items: Griswold's Honor, Sander's Paragon

Facets: Lvl Up Fire


Hope you enjoy this update!

Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!

I wasn't playing much since the last update... Still got some nice drops though ^^

Spoiler: Grailers

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Spoiler: Rare Drops

My run counter says i did 1882 runs since i started farming pits which was on 28th of december (did a little bit more, cause i wasn't always running run counter when rerolling maps and doing some random runs; 2k at most). During this time i found: 3 griffon's, 3 death cleavers (1 eth), mang song's, dweb, fathom, dancers, 2 schaefer's hammers, 3 stone crushers (1 eth), cranium basher, 2 grand fathers, steel pilar, stormspire, multiple shako's, some TC 3 uniques, some TC 87 set items and other uniques, sur rune and 2 cham runes. That streak is insane imo. I literally found like 15 grailers in about 2,5 weeks (without playing that much). Got 3 set caps, but they were all infernal's... Still waiting for my sander's cap to drop XD


Also tried my luck with rolling Grief a few times...

Grail status

Currently at 15 items left.

List of missing items:

Uniques:
TC 3: Bane Ash, Blinkbat's Form
TC 78: Stormlash
TC 81: Halaberd's Reign
TC 84: Steel Carapace, Ravenlore
TC 87: Tyrael's Might, Steelrend, Executioner's Justice, Ghostflame, Earth Shifter, Darkforce Spawn

Set items: Griswold's Honor, Sander's Paragon

Facets: Lvl Up Fire

I wanted to get some decent entries in HoR at first, but decided that my 1,606 score is enough for now. Have a video with sub 1,6 adjeff, but i probably miscalculated a few packs and it is not sub 1,6 in reality XD Can push it more, but focusing on the grail is more important now (also more reasonable i think). I will run a bit more serious when i get better charms and gear overall. Reaching 775/656 mf breapoints would be nice ^^ Switched to more chill setup, cause i am no longer interested in pushing efficiency. Currently using dual wizzy with +2 barb crafted amulet and some low mf/res SCs instead of plain 6 mf ones. Also started to pick up more rare items like boots and gloves. This is my only char now, so i want to get some nice gear for the chars i will make in the future ^^ I tried 2480 life setup with enough str to one shot devilkins, but i wasn't comfortable at all. Additional Dex/Str saves almost no time, but you will probably hear more about it soon from @Luhkoh ^^

I think that's all i have for you today. Don't really know when the next update will be. I will try to make it during the next weekend, but we will see if that happens.

Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

So... Yeah...

Proper update soon...

Sorry dude @Mest666

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello guys!


How are you? Did you find something cool? Played some nice builds? I am ok. Haven't played much but... I found Tyrael's Might my dudes XD


Look at this shit... Isn't it lovely? Stats are trash, but damn it looks dope ^^

You have the clip in the previous post, so i won't link it again. Let's talk about some numbers now... During my D2 career i have found 12 unique Sacred Armors (came back on 19th of november 2016 iirc). On my other D2 installation i got 9 templar's (1 was lvl 85 and 1 of them was eth), so that's 8 possibilities of getting Tyrael's. It was a little bit frustrating tbh... Mainly because i was focused 95% on finishing the grail. I wasn't doing much besides farming pits with zerker. On my current barb i found 2 templar's. First one was from a random mob in pits when i was farming for PB to make the second Grief. Had 0 mf and was playing on P7 iirc (something like 1 in 2,2 million chance btw). Second one was from Nihla when i was lvling up to 99. Damn, it would be so cool to get tyrael's from him, but it was not meant to happen... Nothing surprising here, cause he has like 1 in 1,1 million chance to drop it with such low mf XD To my surprise, the 3rd unique Sacred Armor i found turned out to be Tyrael's. That's insane if you ask me, especially considering the fact that i found so many rare items recently. My grail progress is insane. I got so cocky because of this luck that i even planned to finish it before this barb turns 1 year old XD That sounds ridiculous, but i don't really need much to make it happen and also have quite a lot of time (made this char on 4th of may 2019 iirc, so i have a little bit over 3 months). You can check my grail status with reciprocal dropchances for specific items below (pit bosses on p1 with 759 mf). They should be divided by 1,54, cause i am using hork but whatever.


Grail status

Currently at 11 items left.

List of missing items:

Uniques:
Bane Ash - 266,1k
Blinkbat's Form - 138,9k
Stormlash - 131k
Halaberd's Reign - 39,9k
Steel Carapace - 31k (don't know what happened here... I probably didn't pick it up when i was farming early on)
Ravenlore - 56,2k
Executioner's Justice - 35,7k
Ghostflame - 35,7k
Earth Shifter - 71,4k
Darkforce Spawn - 74,4k

Sets:
Sander's Paragon - 193,2k

I am not playing much... Usually do like 100 runs per day, maybe 150 at most. I am done after like 25-50 runs many times though... The rarest item i need is Bane Ash. However, i can farm normal a little bit if i get other items before it drops. The most problematic items to get are Blinkbat's and Sander's Cap. They have trash dropchances in Hell and not much changes even if you farm the best place to get those two. Blinkbat's is like 1 in 2,6k and Sander's Cap is around 1 in 3,9k from normal meph on p5 with 759 mf. I really hope to get them reasonably fast and it won't be that weird to have them as the last items together with Bane Ash.


That's enough numbers. Let's see some drops ^^

Spoiler: Grailers

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Spoiler: Rare Drops

Funny how i got 2 pairs of Steelrends in 2 consecutive days and the first pair was a grailer XD Also got 4th griffon's... My average is like 1 griffon's per 600 runs or something like that xD I was planning to participate in @Luhkoh's OBP Tournament, but after farming a little bit i came to the conclusion that RoF is kinda boring and Mausoleum has the worst density i've ever seen... I wanted to farm those 2 areas to keep my chances for tyrael's of course (they are both lvl 85). In the end i decided to stay in pits and found tyrael's a few days later... XD Totally worth it!

That failed set Archon Staff is from RoF when i was doing some random test runs btw ^^ I came up with a pretty nice build. In the end i was using Hoto+wizzy on tele switch together with FCR/35 life/11@res/20 fire res/15 mf rare ring, dungo's (mobs hit hard there), LoH and rare boots with res and mf. Reached 489 mf on tele switch (639 mf on kill) with maxed fire res and stacked cold/light res. I was tanky with this gear and 3k life. Pretty interesting build, but RoF is not for me i guess...


Enough said... See you in a while with the next update! Admire this cute picture of my mighty barb surrounded by the sea of lava till then ^^

Cya!



PS I changed my helmet to Gface to make this picture, cause Shako looks like shit XD

***

 

[ResTTe]

Welcome people!

Been a long time since my last update... I was running The City of the Damned with my barb for OBP tournament, so didn't want to post any items. I had some problems with finishing second and last set, cause i came back to playing Tibia and D2 was kinda meh at that time XD Nothing changed since then, cause i am still playing Tibia, so my Grail progress is kinda non-existent for like 2 weeks now... It can become kinda problematic soon, cause with all this progress i made in such a short period of time i came to the conclusion that doing UT99er and finishing The Holy Grail in 1 year is doable. It definitely isn't if you are playing a different game though XD I should really focus on farming Pits and maybe i will be lucky enough to complete this task.

Enough first-world problems, check out the drops i got ^^

I was pretty hyped about that drop, cause i thought it could be my second Tyrael's. Then i was like "Dude, you are farming Plains of Despair... It can't be Tyrael's, cause this is lvl 83 area" XD This drop kinda suits the name of the place i found it ^^ Now i have ilvl 86 Templar's without farming Pindle i guess, which is pretty cool.

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Spoiler: Rare Drops

OBP Tournament went pretty nice. I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, cause i was farming with slightly changed pitzerker and how lucky one can be...? ^^ I found too many rare items before signing in, so i can't complain... Runes were trash of course. Didn't find a single HR...

If you want my super long OBP Tournament summary with extra-detailed build write-up check this link: https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...ament-results-winter-2020.967039/post-8879383


Kidding... XD There was no that much to say tbh. I didn't do anything revolutionary and didn't find anything spectacular. Just some random useful items, some eth ones (found my second Eth Redeemer with this barb, don't have non-eth one btw), pretty rare ones and this really nice SC ^^

My build was quite simple:
Chancies -> LoH
Nagel -> FCR, 35 Life, 11 All Res, 20 Fire res, 15 MF Rare Ring (Damn, i still can't believe i found that one...)
War Travs -> 8 Dex, 31 Cold Res, 27 Light Res, 20 MF Rare Boots
Crafted Caster Amulet -> Highlord's

More DMG and Res comparing to a typical Pitzerker was a way to go imo (Yeah, you can stack a lot of res on a normal pitzerker with good charms, but i don't have them and running areas like CoD with negative Fire/Cold/Light can be frustrating...). Wasn't focusing on efficiency that much, cause i just wanted some relaxed gameplay ^^ Can't really get that with all those tough mobs in act 4, but whatever xD Got 666/516 MF after finding that SC i posted above. Was sitting at 665/515 before i think, so still plenty of MF.


I forgot about something... I found Sander's Cap when running CoD which is very very nice for my grail. Only need Blinkbat's from those rare, annoying low lvl items that have trash dropchances no matter where you farm ^^

This is my Grail status at the moment:

There are 2 problematic items: Stormlash and already mentioned Blinkbat's. I will continue with Pits till i have all items except those two + Bane Ash and then we will see. Maybe i will do some normal farming, maybe some diablo farming. It depends directly on what's left on the list ^^


Ok, i think that's all i have for now. Hope you enjoy it.

Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Long time no see...

I had a pretty long break from D2. Wasn't playing at all. Did like 100 runs during the last month and got Ghostflame. I think i came back for good though. Did some runs yesterday and got Ravenlore and Executioner's Justice. Today i did 125 runs and found Steel Carapace. The items i got recently aren't super rare, but they were all grailers and i went from 10 to 6 items left within like 300 runs... Took me a month to do them, but it doesn't matter XD

Drops below as always ^^

Spoiler: Grailers

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Spoiler: Rare Drops

My first non-eth Redeemer (found 3 total) XD

Also found my 3rd ever Eth Tomb Reaver, but... well... Now i have two with 1 sox and one with 2 sox iirc...

Grail update:

I still have 2 TC 87 items left. Will farm pits till i find them and then we will see. I already checked what is the best place to get Blinkbat's and Stormlash. The first one will not be that hard to get from Normal Meph. Something like 1:2,7k chance with 800 mf on Players 5 (it is the same as P7 for Meph and his brothers). That's the fastest way to get it i think. Stormlash will be a little bit tricky and way harder to get. Hell Diablo is the best source, but the dropchance is like 1:5,8k with 500 mf on Players 1... Farming chaos would be cool, cause i need some essences, but doing that many runs will be horrendous XD I really hope to get it from Pits before i find the other items... I can get Bane Ash in Normal in like 1 day, so i don't even care about it ^^

Don't really know when i will make the next update. Can be soon or can be in a few weeks. I will try to do like ~100 runs per day, but we will see how it turns out. I have 1,5 month left to get that 1 year UT99 + Grail Goal. Would be really cool if i get it.


Cya!

***

 

[ResTTe]

Hello!

It's been a month since my last update. I was playing regularly and getting some rare items, but found only 1 grailer... It's funny cause i always get something shortly after i post an update on the forum xD

That drop is even better, cause i found this a few minutes before:

I wanted to get 1 more item before the next post, but it wasn't meant to be. Something ridiculous happened yesterday though. @Kinkara found Stormlash and posted his drop in discord. I still needed it, so i was kinda angry. Decided to do some runs and Unique Scourge dropped. Damn, it would be hilarious to find Stormlash after Kinkara's drop. It turned out to be my 5th Horizon's of course...

I decided to play a little bit later and did some more runs. Was getting some random items as usual, but then i found Unique Thunder Maul. It would be so cool to find Earth Shifter now. I would be able to focus on other items that i still need and farm Diablo for example ^^ I ran out of luck long ago though, so it had to be The Cranium Basher...

Getting those 2 items the same day was enough for me to make an update xD

During those 4 weeks i found a lot of TC 87 items. Most noticeable thing was getting 2 more Darkforce Spawns after the first one. Could post screenshots of all items, but it's not worth it imo... Everybody already knows how Steelrends, Ghostflame etc. looks like. I will only post the crucial drops.

Spoiler: Items

My 5th Griffon's

First ever Eth Eschuta

Only rune worth posting

Max def Stormshield

First 40% Gheed's on this barb

Failed set (still need Halaberd's)

From the same Boss

Wish those had 2 skills

All item type colors on 1 screenshot which is kinda cool ^^

My list of remaining items looks like this:

I wish that Horizon's and Cranium Basher were Stormlash and Earth Shifter. Would give my grail a huge boost. Funny thing besides those 3 Drakforces i found is the fact that i also found 5 facets in the last 2 weeks. They are basically as rare as Earth Shifter... Would gladly exchange one of those for that hammer XD

My plan for the grail remains untouched. Will farm pits till i get the second unique Thunder Maul and then we will see.

I should find something shortly after an update as always. Pray for Stormlash or Earth shifter xD


Cya!

***

 

[Luhkoh]

Nice. glad to see you got this one ported over! Hoping to see earthshifter drop for you soon because I always think it's interesting when a grail ends with something other than the standard tc87 farming. Good luck!

 

[Babyhell]

Always a nice read GL on the remaining items, I'll join back the zerker crew runners soon after RFL

 

[PhineasB]

Indeed, very nice to see this thread here. I look forward to the last stages of this journey!

 

[ResTTe]

Just a quick update...

Got this a second ago. Pits are done. Time to move to Chaos and get Stormlash ^^

Next update when i build my char, get some practice and cool drops.

Grail Status

***

 

[DaveWThe2nd]

Nice one ResTTe, GL for Stormlash!

 

[ResTTe]

Hello!

Let's talk about CS ^^

Chaos Sanctuary​

Introduction

As mentioned in my previous post, i got all TC 87 items. That allowed me to farm some other areas, which should result in finishing the grail faster (all 3 items that i need have terrible drop chances in Hell, especially in lvl 85 areas). After checking some numbers, playing with the calculators and planning my build, CS came as a clear winner. It turned out to be the best place to find Stormlash, mainly because Diablo has top 2 chance to drop it in the entire game ^^ (about 1:5,5k with 600+ mf). The chance of getting Blinkbat's from him is pretty much comparable and if i won't get it there, i will just farm Normal Mephisto (he should be the best). The chance for Bane Ash from Diablo is horrible, but i can quite easly get it from Normal Cold Crow, so shouldn't care about it at the moment. I prepared my barb for running CS, did some runs and got a grailer together with some cool items during the process.

I had 3 builds to choose from. Conc, WW and Berserk. The problem with first two is that they pretty much require using Reaper's on merc. i Definitely prefer Meditation Aura from Insight. WW needs 2 weapon that deal DMG on top of that, so i would loose my 6 isted PB by going this path. WW is also faster, but it requires too much things to be good. Maybe i am wrong, but i really think that Berserk is the way to go. Some testing would solve that, but i am too lazy to do it XD The build i came up with feels the best though.


Gear

Gearing up wasn't super tough overall, but there are a lot of possibilities and a lot of stuff can be tested. I definitely wanted some higher res than i usually go for when i farm pits, so i went with good rare ring with res and rare boots. Besides that i used all of my mf SCs with resistances. More dmg was needed for sure, so switching to LoH was an obvious choice (was using Highlord's already when running pits due to that thread by @Luhkoh: https://purediablo.com/forums/threads/pitzerker-simulator-for-optimization.245/). I was also thinking about switching my 6 isted PB to Beast as off-hand and i did some test runs with it. Finally decided to come back to PB, cause loosing 180 mf in exchange of some DMG, AR and Attack Speed is not that good imo. The thing is that i don't spend much time killing stuff, so improving that part of the run just a little bit won't change much for my overall efficiency. Getting more AR is worthless, cause Seal Bosses die fast and i use Battle Cry against Diablo, so my CTH against him is maxed at like 3,6k AR XD You can see in the video that it doesn't look like i am hitting him 95% of the time, but that's because he has 50% block... I could use Gface instead of Shako, but don't think it's worth it. Would loose a lot of life and mana, 50 mf, 2 skills and CBF, so i would have to use some other source of that mod and since i am using Arach, that can be quite problematic. Note that it's not the final build and there's some place for testing and tweaking left for sure ^^


Strategy

Next thing i had to think about was players setting. Killing Seal Bosses on P1 is a no-brainer, but killing Diablo isn't that obvious. I did some calculations and used data from this thread by @drmalawi https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...-drop-chance-yields-mephisto-andariel.966640/

I calculated my DMG precisely in excel as i do for most of my builds and then calculated how much time i would spend on average on both player counts to kill Diablo. This is what i've got:

Considering the fact that going from P1 to P3 gives me 9,5% more items per drop (Diablo is the same as Mephisto here) and using 80 seconds runs as my average i would have to do the runs only 8% slower on P3. As you can see, higher player count should be slightly better. Also keep in mind that the longer the runs the less of an impact it makes to switch to P3 for Diablo.

One of the last things i had to figure out was if killing some radom packs in CS and using Hork overall is worth it or not. This is what i've got:

I calculated the chance of getting Stormlash per run with and without killing random packs and my final answer was that with an average of 2,5 packs (did some pack counting to get that) and all of those stats you can see on the picture above, one run should take up to 90 seconds on average to get me the same efficiency (comparing horking only Seal Bosses and horking Seal Bosses + killing and horking Random Packs). I only focus on the packs i have on my way near the seals. Don't want to change it to farming Chaos for TC 87 items...


Here you have a video with some runs and overview of my build:

Grailer clip:

Here you have some Drops as always:

Spoiler: Cool Drops

Yep, i got a grailer and 2 sure runes in 2 days from seal pop on p1 XD

I found some random Metalgrid's, BK Rings, rare boots with res, failed set/unique items and other stuff, but they aren't worth positng...


Grail Status

Hope you like my update! Next one will appear when i find a grailer ^^

Cya!

PS I had some problems with my barb's files yesterday... Have no idea why, but the game decided to corrupt them and that sweet SC you can see in the spoiler went into abyss, cause i had to load my back up from like 4 days ago... XDDD

***

 

[Luhkoh]

Now that's a good post. This whole thread rocks, but I'm so glad you found earth shifter so we get to see some chaos barb farming. Love the theorycrafting, and the runs look super cool.

 

[ResTTe]

Thanks! It would be cool to find Stormlash soon, so i can start farming Normal Meph for Blinkbat's. On the other hand i would like to find those 2 from Diablo and then start farming Normal Cold Crow for Bane Ash. Don't know which is better but i can definitely say that i don't want to farm Chaos for too long xD

 

[ResTTe]

Sup guys!


I am still farming Chaos... Trying different setups, player counts, gear and stuff. It looks like P1 runs without farming any random packs should be the fastest way of getting Stormlash, but it's barely faster than farming random packs, so i guess i will continue to kill them. It gives me some chances of getting TC 87 items and that's always nice ^^ I also made CoH for my merc, but don't really know how much difference it makes. Probably not much...

Got some items since the last update. Most noticeable one is definitely Blinkbat's, cause it puts me at 2 items left.

That Schaefer's is also nice, cause it's the rarest item Hell Diablo can drop. About 7 times more rare than Stormlash...

Also got some useful stuff and some trolls. You can see most of that below:

Spoiler: Rare Drops

Spoiler: Troll Drops

Spoiler: Cool Drops

I am currently at 1,7k runs. Really want to get that Stormlash fast, cause CS is starting to become annoying and boring...

Next update when i get something.


Cya!

***