Lindon - Twinked SC Hammerdin on a Mission

[Luhkoh]

Copying this post a good bit from @T72on1's thread on the old forum here. I remember getting pumped about an hdin 99er after reading it early on my time on the forum, and now here I am.

I've been doing a good amount of pits and tunnels runs over the last year or so, which has been great, but chaos was always probably my favorite area in the game. And despite spending many hours there with my untwinked 99er sorc, I want to get back to it. Also hdin is probably my second favorite character in the game (after a few different sorc builds), and he just feels born to run chaos on high players settings. Sorc is fast too of course, but always felt like she wasn't the nicest fit in chaos with the constant danger and cold immune oblivion knights taunting me . Combine all that with the fact that I'd like to make some more progress toward completing my runeword grail, and a 99er hdin is a great idea.

And untwinked 99ing is ofc mega cool and impressive, but I like the idea of putting to use the good gear I've found so far... not to mention that I don't love the idea of walking lk for an enigma anyways, so I wanted to just get straight to chaos domination with this character. But I did want to start a new character and track his progress from the beginning in this thread, in order to make it feel more like a journey.

Lindon is the name of the main character in the fantasy series Cradle by Will Wight, which I have been absolutely loving lately .

Goals (no Luhkoh thread is complete without a list of goals ).

1. Sub 200 hours for 1-99
2. Don't die at all**
3. Save all pul+ runes till after 99
4. Use those runes to complete the runeword grail
5. Track Lindon's grail progress
6. Find stormlash
7. Sub 6 hours to hell eldritch

**If I do die, I will keep track of the total number of deaths and keep that number as low as possible. I give myself like a 30% chance of not dying once.

I plan to update probably every ~15 hours of play or so on the character, and have been making many plans for the playthrough which I will post about in (probably excruciating) detail on the first update. Or I might actually post before I'm 15 hours for this first stint just since there's so much more to talk about, with the playthrough and the gear choices, than there will be afterwards. Happy running to everyone. Cheers! .

 

[HanShotFirst]

Woohoo!

Sounds great! Given that since my return to DII I've been all about creating and playing my own twinked Hammerdin I greatly look forward to reading about your journey (excruciating details and all).

 

[Babyhell]

Sub 6 hours to Hell Eldritch...sub 200 hours saving all Pul+ runes for after 99...crazy goals.

There's another @D2DC in da place!

Looking forward to read about your strategy - I do have to make a Hammerdin too, not decided about un/twinking status yet

 

[Luhkoh]

Thanks guys! In reality I got too eager and started this character on saturday before I had a thread up, so will post about the playthrough & plans for it today or tomorrow.

@HanShotFirst sounds great I look forward to hearing more about your hammerdin too!

 

[Pb_pal]

Awesome! Looking forward to following along. Good luck!

 

[Kinkara]

Soon there will be no more space for stuff in your forum signature haha

I want to hear all about your low lvl twinking gear choices. I hope there is some interesting stuff in there

 

[MizzouFTW]

Very interested in seeing this man

 

[Luhkoh]

Ask and you shall receive! Let's get started shall we (well I really started on Saturday, but don't worry about that).

Start Date: Saturday November 21, 2020

The Goal: get to hell eldritch in 6 hours

The Plan
I actually printed off these 3 pages of a "cheat sheet" and had them sitting next to me for the playthrough: LINK. On those sheets are the common directional map-reading reminders, and notes for my plans and twinking/questing procedure, which I'll also outline below.

Build
Envy gear till lvl 12, then holy fire with 4 points zeal and 1 point charge until lvl 22, at which point respec to hdin

Gear
lvl 1-12 - envy gear (5 jewels in bow, 3 in mask, 3 in breast plate, deaths sash and gloves, hsarus boots)
lvl 12-18 - 6ruby military pick, mana gear, diamond shield (rondache with 3 regular diamonds for 71@ total), eye of etlich, manald heal
lvl 18-22 - grab 6x ptopaz mil pick for more dmg
lvl 22-29 - grab maelstrom, stealth, tele staff
lvl 29-65 - vmagi, dual spirit, insight partizan merc, sustenance sc's, fcr stuff for 125fcr
lvl 65+ - enigma, hoto, maras, cta etc …(lvl 67 for maras)

Stats
30 str immediately for hsarus boots and breast plate
Before lvl 12 need 49 str, 33 dex for military pick
After hammers, just need 45 str (zero dex) for magefist
After enigma zero str and max block

Quests
Den in normal
Caine in hell
All others only if stumble on them
Do other good quests after enigma (see plan)
Good Quests
1 - den, imbue (clvl 83 for any circlet type)
2 - radament
3 - golden bird, lam essen
4 - izual, <forge in hell>
5 - shenk, anya

Playthrough
Rush through a1, but stay on p8 until outer cloister, except can do underground passage on p3.
If not lvl 12 by outer cloister, can rerun rakanishu.
Equip and stat for holy, run through rest of a1 on p3 (except p1 on andy).

Run through a2 on p3, only stopping to kill boss packs.
Before a3, level up to 22 on dark elder and respec to hammer.

Rush through a3 and a4 on p1, but make sure am level 25 before a5.
Can level at sarina if not 25 at end of a4.

Rush to eldritch, farm till lvl mid 30s.
Finish normal, get to lvl 38-40ish on baal/eldritch before nm

Nm rush to eldritch as fast as possible on p1.
Farm him till lvl 65, equip enigma and rest of gear.
Get lvl 67 on baal to equip maras before hell.

Hell rush to eldritch as fast as possible on p1.
Farm him till lvl 88.
Farm chaos forever and ever .

How it went
Splendidly .

0:35 - start a2 lvl 14
1:18 - start a3 lvl 22
1:46 - start a4 lvl 24
2:01 - start a5 lvl 25
2:37 - start a1 nm lvl 38
2:47 - start a2 nm lvl 38
3:04 - start a3 nm lvl 39
3:25 - start a4 nm lvl 41
3:36 - start a5 nm lvl 42
4:27 - start a1 hell lvl 67
4:48 - start a2 hell lvl 68
4:58 - start a3 hell lvl 68
5:08 - start a4 hell lvl 69
5:15 - start a5 hell lvl 69
5:16 - made it to hell eldritch

5:16 - start hell eldritch farm lvl 69
7:33 - lvl 88 at eldritch, start chaos 3620 hp with bc
82 eldritch runs from 87-88 @ 19.1s = 26.1min

Made it to hell eldritch in 5 hours and 16 minutes and beat my goal! Then, as planned, I farmed him to lvl 88 to get a decent level before starting the CS runs. I made it to lvl 88 at 7:33. I included a smidge of data about that farming process above as well. It had been awhile since I quested a pally and I had quite a bit of fun charging through the game, especially once the merc got insight and I could skate around without thinking about mana.

I even took a little action video of Lindon farming nightmare eldritch:

Here are couple of screenshots of his two nice finds during the playthrough (first was andy quest kill):

Spoiler: finds

And after all that, Lindon was lvl 88 and finally ready to make himself at home.

 

[Babyhell]

Congrats! Impressive oO

 

[Babyhell]

I launched my own one tonight, you kicked things out.

I had only eight Jewels of Envy, and opted for 1.07 Ravenclaw to be allowed for my run. Currently at 35', just arrived act 2, but clvl 16 already O Here is his own following thread - under construction ;-)

 

[Luhkoh]

Update 1
Hours in: 15
Level: 94.08
Grail: 108/504

General Notes
Wow wow. I of course know that 97-99 will be well more than half of my journey, but I somehow still didn't expect to be 94 already with less than 10% of the time done.

But anyways, I went ahead and wrapped up Lindon's first 15 hour stint. I forgot to note that this time tracking mostly will include muling time too and I'm not pausing the counter when I go to repair my gear and when switching out setups in gomule. Want it to include most all of the time I spend on the character period. I'm sure there's a bit of slop, but in general, if I'm doing anything with the character, the timer is running.

Also, I'm picking up all rare rings, gcs, scs, etc. I considered picking up less items than I usually to, to try and push harder on the time to 99, but I decided it wasn't worth it for me and I'd rather have the chance of picking up something nice. That being said, I plan to test my exp/hr a time or two each lvl while picking up little and trying to go fast, just to see where I'm at. Furthermore, as long as it doesn't sacrifice a lot of exp/hr, I will lean toward hitting extra boss packs on the horizontal part of CS rather than just focusing on the seal bosses. I don't think it will sacrifice exp/hr at all, but just saying I will generally err on the side of stopping too much. Because I want those extra chances at tc87s .

Gear
I started off with the gear you can see in the "lindon's first chaos run" video above. Which is: ber shako, 30 maras, 40 hoto, enigma breast plate, spirit in 40@ sacred targe, trangs, 10fcr 41fres ring, arachs, bk ring, waterwalk, gheeds, 6 skillers (some with nice life), fres/life scs, plain life scs. Merc is defiance, insight, steelshade (ral), and coh.

I was super super pumped about this setup, since it really leverages the best of what my gear can offer. The high resistance rolls on my gear (especially the 41 fire res ring), and the nice fire res/life small charms I have, made it to where I could wear waterwalks (which are worth a TON of life with their 65 life and an extra 45 life from the 15 dex), and still be overstacked on fire res so much as to have 66 fire res after conviction. Pretty boss! And the max plus skills I can get without using a caster amulet.

Well I'm also running 6 skillers. I'm not making too many tankiness or dmg compromises for more mf, but I just can't bring myself to run without a gheeds. So the mf total will be 180ish, from ber shako, gheeds, and enigma. And then I sacrificed one skiller for some extra lifer scs. No specific reason, but I liked my life total and dmg proportion best with this setup.

However, I quickly realized that 80 max fire res didn't mitigate fire dmg enough for my taste. Ofc it's just fine and workable, but I would lose a very significant amount of hp fighting infector's pack even when they didn't have dangerous mods, and would have to rejuv a bit more frequently than I'd like, and would wait around for redemption to tick more often than id like. So next, I switched bk ring to dwarf. This was a big improvement and made the runs just fine. Great great. However...

Then just for fun. I tried out a rising sun setup, and I've talked about how much I love rising sun hdin before, but my god. I'd forgotten how nice it is. Fighting infector is so nice, and even when you are over on vizier's side, if there are a few venom lords around, they will keep you life total high and improve safety a load. And to get this you sacrifice about 80 life and 2 skills worth of dmg. I hate to say it, since my rising sun setup is less "cool" imo than my maras waterwalk setup, but I think I'll probably end up sticking with rising sun as my main setup. It's just too nice.

However, I do plan to test the three "main" setups, probably on the next update, versus one another and see if I get any significant efficiency differences. Maybe run each for an hour, and note the efficiency, the feel, and the life total. The three setups being 1. maras waterwalk dwarf 2. maras hotspur bk ring and 3. rising sun waterwalk bk ring.

Finds
Runes: vex, ist
Noteable s/u: alma negra, gris corona, gris shield
7mfsc: 1
Skillers: 4 (acrobatic, chilling, entrapping, trainers)

Spoiler: screenies

Will probably take a few weeks break from Lindon before doing the next 15 hours, but who knows! Hope everyone is well. Cheers .

 

[CaseyJones]

Very impressive! One day I will have time again...one day...

 

[Babyhell]

Very impressive! One day I will have time again...one day...

Well in fact as he demonstrated, a couple of hours is enough...so to speak xD

 

[ffs]

Very nice pace will be interesting to see how much time is needed for twinked 99er Paladin.

 

[Luhkoh]

Update 2
Hours in: 30
Level: 96.19

General Notes
This stint went well. Still no deaths and tested several things. Feels good being partway into 96. But I'm looking forward to at least the first several hours of lvl 97 when the runs will likely change and there will be a lot of testing to do.

• Got lvl 95 at 18:48
• Got lvl 96 at 26:54

I decided to stop tracking Lindon's grail progress. Lol that didn't last long. But I quickly got very annoyed with having to pick up set crowns and set rings and the like. I'll just track his numbers of rare s/u finds from here on out.

For the duration of lvl 95, I avg'd just under 8k xp/s. Just for comparison, I ran for a little under an hour picking up very little and not running timer during muling and got ~8750 xp/s. So seems like I could probably get ~10% more efficiency if I played my actual best for xp. I don't think I'll be doing this as I'd rather keep picking up rare gloves and gcs and the like, but still is good to know. For comparison, gripphon was getting ~9400 xp/s on his pala at the same level.

I also tested full runs at lvl 95 and lvl 96 just to see how they compare to the 2seal runs, just for fun. Fully expected them to be worse as is common knowledge these days. And by that I mean p8 all three seals and p7 diablo, checking shrines before diablo. Ofc it must be noted that my current map isn't the best for these full runs, as I only have 1 shrine in rof, and then I would check 3 shrines in cold plains before fighting diablo. I only tested this for like 20 minutes each. Anyways I got ~5k xp/s at lvl 95 (compared to ~8k for 2 seal runs), and got ~3.2k xp/s at lvl 96 (compared to ~4k for 2 seal runs). So as expected, definitely not worth it at lvl 95, and probably not worth it at lvl 96.

Gear
I ran a few tests this stint on the 3 main setups I would consider. I ran them for just over an hour each while I was level 94. I respec'd with a token for each one to get the stats just right so we could see the true hp difference. All setups using the same ber shako, sacred targe 40@ spirit, 40@ hoto, bp engima, trangs gloves, arachs, gheeds, and 6 skillers, with defiance merc using ral steelshade, insight, and coh. Got the following results:

• Setup 1 - maras, dwarf star, waterwalk, fcr/high res ring, fire res/lifer scs
  • HP - 3747
  • fres - 80
  • fres (convicted) - 66
  • dmg - 11k-11k
  • xp/s - 14198
• Setup 2 - maras, bk ring, hotspur, fcr/life/dex ring, lifer scs
  • HP - 3674
  • fres - 90
  • fres (convicted) - 77
  • dmg - 12k-12k
  • xp/s - 14080
• Setup 2 - rising sun, bk ring, waterwalk, fcr/life/dex ring, lifer scs
  • HP - 3693
  • fres - 17
  • fres (convicted) - N/A
  • dmg - 10k-11k
  • xp/s - 14186

So in my mind anyways, those are all exactly the same. And not only is rising sun by FAR the most comfortable of those setups, but I also think the healing from venom lords make it the safest setup. I think that healing from the fire absorb is worth more (purely with regard to safety) than the 50-60 hp, better dmg, and better cold/light res from setup #1.

I also tested delirium on the merc for a bit just to see how much it hurts the efficiency. I would not consider using delirium merc on an hdin in sc. He's just safe enough that there's no reason to do so. However I could see it being a great option in HC. It makes things absurdly safe. I got ~7200 xp/s using it, so about 90% the efficiency I was usually getting. One thing I didn't like was that the merc died every handful of runs with this setup as opposed to steelshade, where he almost never dies no matter what I do. I'm sure this can easily be fixed by just paying more attention to the merc, but I wasn't used to having to do that so he died a fair few times during this testing. So anyways, idk. I could see this setup being worth it in HC. Not sure if I'd go that route or not. Have you tried that out on Ned @Pb_pal?

Finds
Runes: vex, gul
Noteable s/u: 35/13 vmagi, ravenlore #2 (-10 efr ), death cleaver #7 (the number is how many I've found overall, across all my characters)
7mfsc: 0
Skillers: 6 (2x lionbranded, trainers, shoku 17life, spiritual 33life, trainers 38life)

Really underperforming on runes compared to my hopes/expectations. I think I've just always been lucky with finding runes in chaos, so I guess I was due for a dry spell. But was definitely hoping for more pul+ overall and at least one Lo+ by now. With only ~13-14 more hours of 2seal runs ahead of me (after which the runefinding efficiency will decrease), I'm sort of annoyed. Ah well, MANY more hours to go, so plenty of time for juicy rune drops.

Spoiler: screenies

Runs Video

Now will run some other characters a while. Probably get back to Lindon after the new year. Hope everyone is doing well. Cheers .

 

[Pb_pal]

So anyways, idk. I could see this setup being worth it in HC. Not sure if I'd go that route or not. Have you tried that out on Ned @Pb_pal?

I haven't tried it, no. I did try it briefly on my SC hammerdin a while back and didn't really like it. The Confuse, while wonderful crowd control, messes up bringing monsters into your hammer field more than I'd like. Predictability is very important for an in-your-face type of HC character like an hdin, and Delerium has always felt a little clunky with them to me.

That said, I may just try it again once I start including De Seis (at 98 most likely) as his minions scare the pants off of me in HC. I could see the crowd-control aspect being more heavily weighted there as hammer fields are less important (since you're basically just telestomping bosses on /p1) and a timely Delerium proc would render his minions essentially benign. The tricky thing is if it would proc fast enough to be useful on /p1.

Interesting thought and I'll definitely be paying attention to this thread to see if it gets tried before I get there.

Great work so far, keep it up!

 

[d2lover]

Can unique berserker axe only fall from champs/uniques?

still looking for an eth one after all those years^^

 

[PhineasB]

Great progress! Assuming p7 all seal/Diablo runs for lvl 97, runefinding efficiency should actually increase for that level. Seal popping mechanic will lead to extra drops, including runes and it’s quite a bit of runs for those runes to drop.

 

[Luhkoh]

@Pb_pal Gotcha. Yeah it was definitely slightly clunky and a little slower (but less so than I expected tbh), but did seem to improve safety a huge amount. But idk if I'd use it or not even in HC just because hes already so safe for 2 seal runs anyways. Will be fun to see how you approach 98 with Ned. I'm not sure if I want to change gear for 97 (when I'll add in de seis, but I def agree it makes sense to wait till 98 in hc). Or if I'll just keep truckin with rising sun. We'll see!

@d2lover any monster in CS except the seal bosses themselves and diablo can drop it. But it's definitely most likely to come from a random boss/champ. I actually found an eth one a few months back, but it rolled super low on ed .

@PhineasB interesting! I was planning on doing p8/p7 runs that would look something like (but probably slower than) ffs's runs here:

Spoiler: ffs's lucid at 97

The runefinding efficiency has to be less for that right? With ghosts taking up a smaller portion of the run and the time spent waiting for diablo to spawn and kill.

But I know I've had nice rune drops in the past playing all 3 seals and diablo (including a cham from diablo himself), so hopefully I'll get some good ones ^^.

 

[Babyhell]

HammerMessiah is 94, and... well, I will check your gameplay again, now that Rising Sun is available and allows a more aggressive play.

My xp/secs was around 12k5 for 93->94, and 8k for 94->95 initially (see below) with 58.8s per run...so if I read your last session report correctly, I have a full level shift of efficiency, that is huge!

Putting that here to stress the performance ;-)