Median XL Hardcore Challenge - Mitsuki

Ok! some more progress.
I started going through the Nihlathak levels. As expected, I found them rather hard. My merc kept getting damaged a lot by thorn aura beasts. Halls of vaught was stairtrapped - after trying a bit I went back up, didn't want to tempt fate too much.

After that, continued through the ice cave levels. Frozen Tundra was tricky as always due to witches, and WSK had dangerous monsters. I found a cool ring and a great set item, which I haven't equipped yet but might do so if I want to respec to fire skills.

And.. conqueror is done! And here is her LCS after doing the Destruction Den of evil quest. Speaking of which, wow, that place is huge on Destruction, took like forever.

Tal Rasha's talisman is a part of the Yshari sets ( needed to kill Valthek uber boss ) , and those don't give bonuses without the full set. Seems pretty common too, I found one as well ( in Den of Evil ).

Ok list of things to do:
Run Baal to get some tokens ( signets of skill ), and level 120
Collect eyes of fairy witch, glowing blob and bane hunter
Do the countess and Nihlthak quests on terror. Also use the Larzuk socketing on something random to grey it out ( quest reward is totally not useful in MXL )
Do the three minigames ( none done yet )
Maybe respec at lvl 120 to fire/cold or fire/lightning, I'm a bit bored of current skills.
 
How are your stats so much lower than mine, but so much better? This confuses me. Congrats though, and good luck with the minigames.

Mine
Yours

Comparison:

STR: 418 vs 77 - How? Some of my items require 300+ strength!
DEX: 311 vs 199 - Again, my items require 250+ Dex.
VIT vs Life: 287 : 7692 vs 48 : 7847 - My build also has two passives that give bonus percentage to life. Railgun's Destruction life is over 8400, so I don't know the item setup. I know that life from VIT is less valuable to sorc's, but, greater VIT plus 2x passives to increase life bonus, and yet lower than 48 VIT without at least one of those passives.
Damage: 36k-43k!?! I can't think of Shatter the Flesh's damage, but that requires a corpse, so has limited use. Fire is so much weaker!
Defense: Higher dex, but probably different items - and Railgun's items have changed, so she probably has more now.
Energy vs mana: 841 : 6604 vs 766 : 6610

Not to mention significantly stronger resists.

For the record, I have to put Tal's in all my item slots, or I don't get enough +Stats to allow my items to be equipable. I know there are more runewords/crafts/cube things I could have done, but as said, I'm still exploring different parts of Ultimative. Maybe it's time to look at those recipes.

Is there a way to make item dumps in MXL? Or just screenie your gear (I'll do the same,) to compare, cos I'd love to improve some of these stats?
 
Well yeah I was a bit surprised by your high stats too. Have you been massing signets of learning?
But honestly. Don't pay much attention to the LCS. Like in D2, it doesn't tell the whole picture.

Psn damage always appears higher on LCS because it is DoT. 40k dmg over 2 sec is 20k dps. Frigid sphere 5k dmg can be cast at 5 times a sec ( 5fpa cast rate ), so it is 25k dps. Not to mention the Frigid sphere multi hits so it can even be 3 or 4 times of that. On the other hand lorenado spreads DoT over a larger area and one is not casting all the time, so even making calculations can be misleading.

On the whole, median XL is very well balanced, and same goes for the sorceress elemental trees. Still your LCS does seem a bit on the low side, given that fire tree gives you access to firedance ( do you use it? ) and have witch blood ( I have chronofield ), both are big damage boosters. Can't really comment more without knowing what items you have.

You can use Median XL offline tools ( or grig's online version of it ) to do readouts. I think it doesn't have a dump function though like Atma and gomule do, so you'll have to copy each item individually, which is annoying. I've not really used it much, because really who is there to read it. Ok, did a couple items below

Code: 
Verin's Dubhdroiacht
Gnarled Staff (6)
Item Level: 99
Two-Hand Damage: 64 to 78
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Dexterity: 126
Required Level: 54
Current Dexterity Damage Bonus: 25%
+164 Energy Factor to Spell Damage
+6 to All Skills
+173% Bonus to Poison Skill Duration
6% Faster Cast Rate
-37% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+20% to Spell Damage
+27 to Pyroclastic Flow
+39% Bonus to Summoned Minion Life
Increase Maximum Life 20%
Total Character Defense Plus 40%
Poison Length Reduced by 46%
+4 Required Level
+50% Damage to Undead
Socketed: (4), Inserted: (4)

Circlet (1)
Item Level: 14
Defense: 27
Durability: 9 of 10
Required Dexterity: 14
Required Level: 112
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Doubled
+30% to Cold Spell Damage
-30% to Enemy Cold Resistance
-30% to Enemy Poison Resistance
All Resists +40%
+110 Required Level
Socketed: (1), Inserted: (0)

In addition, these tools also have a skill tree planner ( Skillplan Verin (Sorceress, Ultimative XIII) ), can remove MOs from items, mass disenchanting, hardcore resurrect (<- ppl who do this are lame ), plugy stash sorter, respecs, waypoint activation and many others.

...

Played a little bit more yesterday, completed lvl 120, Baal's swirly minigame, and A1 destruction rescuing Cain. I am going to give this char a break for a while because playing too much might deed her. I will continue with my SC paladin and maybe make a HC paladin as well. SC seems a bit tame and uninteresting now, but I want to do the ultimative ubers, since I did all the classic ubers ( except laz ). I upgraded to ultimative 13 as well, mainly to play the new dragon paladin build but it turns out that one is a bit weird so went back to unholy caster paladin, lol.
 
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zaphod said:
Well yeah I was a bit surprised by your high stats too. Have you been massing signets of learning?
But honestly. Don't pay much attention to the LCS. Like in D2, it doesn't tell the whole picture.
Click to expand...
No signets of learning. Mine are all boosted by Tal runs in items, and Honorific boots+gloves. I need all the Strength and Dex to wield the items, which in turn give more sockets for Tals. Railgun is pure Energy though.

zaphod said:
Psn damage always appears higher on LCS because it is DoT
Click to expand...
Ahh, I didn't realise that was a Poison skill. My bad. I thought it was Cold/Physical - like Druid Hurricane in classic. The skill I did recognise as Leo[...something] Tornado, so again, thought it was some cold/physical damage. As to the green damage text, not sure what I thought there.

zaphod said:
given that fire tree gives you access to firedance ( do you use it? )
Click to expand...
*coughs awkwardly* Uhm... Can't say I do. In all honesty, the damage is much more than significant in Destruction. The speed monsters (non-FI) fall is very fast, and for the stronger ones (bosses/uniques/protected by FI's,) the Meteor one (sorry, mind-blank) does even more damage, and can knock them down so quickly.

I'll check the items, and try dump some of my own (with screenies), when I get back home and over this weekend (currently away with work.)

zaphod said:
. I will continue with my SC paladin and maybe make a HC paladin as well. SC seems a bit tame and uninteresting now,
Click to expand...
Haha, welcome to HC! That's why I said I wanted to play HC. Even a new mod, with a lot of insta-kills, the death -> revive -> repeat feels too easy. I like the penalty, and the feeling when you do something others may say not to even bother with. It's the challenge that compells me.

Off to dinner now, so I'll check back and post an update later. GL with the SC chars!
 
[comes out into the light from lurking in the shadows]

Nice read and nice progress! Never thought you'd last this long :p.
I also downloaded and tried some HC Ultimative with a sorc, having played some MXL in the past. These are some tricks that I've learned (although you might know all of them already):

- ~Infinite money: Buy a socketed throwing weapon (any variation thereof), socket with a rune and sell it back. Picking up 'trash' runes is not so cumbersome, and if high enough rune you will most of the time sell for max vendor value. Cheesy, I know, but its in the game, so. Then you can gamble those empyrean bands pretty easily, since rings are only 5k a pop and uniques are ~1:40!

- Res (like mentioned) over 75% reaaally helps in higher difficulties/ubers. In addition, defense is also very nice/important, and you want to use your character orb to something, right! Cubing with 15 skulls + 15 ith runes gives a nice def bonus. Especially in combination with Snow Queen.

- When beginning the game, I usually do some trav runs before mephisto, since both flails are eligble for sharding. Also cheese, but HC is HC, and tiered uniques is nice early game. T6 Staff of roses tiered unique for fire sorcs, anyone?

- Overlevelling in K3KBA (to ~70), IOTSS (to ~80) and Faust (to ~90) in Hatred is safe and fast. Terror gets so much easier.


Keep it up!
/io


[goes back into the shadows]
 
Ha, nice to know we got a lurker.

I didn't know about the socketed throwing items one. It does work, apparently, - I just bought a socketed pilum for 850, put a Sol in it ( not even a RW! ), and it sells for 30,000! On further thought, this is too much cheese for me, especially as gold is really important in this game. Not gonna use it.

The others I knew. Honestly though, I have enough arcane shards without needing to cheese Khalim's wills, and just playing through the game gets you lvl 115+ even on single pass and p1, at the end of terror. Most 'pro' levelling strategies involve things like running hatred Duncraig, or Bremmtown, but that is not only dangerous in HC, but also unnecessary.

I made a new HC paladin and completed act 1 with him. He's untwinked for now, but I plan to twink him out a little bit with higher tier items gambled/found by my sorc. LCS at the end of Act 1 ,with the untwinked items.

See the thing I really like about ultimative is that even levelling untwinked is easy and fun. Especially good for HC where one might have to restart a few times. WAY better than LoD with its nuisance of having no mana for spells and running out of stamina. Honestly I begin to wonder why I even played LoD as much as I did. MXL is a superior game in many respects, monsters are actually dangerous ( gasp! ), one doesn't have to do hundreds of boring runs to find gamebreaking items, numerous uberquests which make for a very challenging late game, skills/builds are superbly balanced. The only one thing I dislike in MXL is the visual clutter of flashy graphics (and lag due to that ).
 
Not too fussed about infinite gold. Early on, it may help, but in NM onwards, gold isn't an issue whatsoever. And gambling unique rings is still quite difficult, as there are multiple unique rings to gamble. That said, I'm gambling rings and amulets, hoping for solid rares or uniques, as gold is currently overflowing. This sort of is the reason why... 250,000 gold?

I don't think Ultimative requires re-running for levels. You progress in levels/areas so quickly compared to D2:LoD, and after a few reruns in Terror (Nightmare) WSK/Baal, Railgun reached level 120.

Railgun completed Act 2 Destruction with an undead army. There wasn't too much trouble, even though this Dark Warden made me pause for a moment. One of these guys insta-deedzed a character (SC or HC, not sure,) in Median XL (not Ultimative, which I believe has removed many danger/instakills,) but in Ultimative, it fell quite easily.

Railgun kept her distance from Radament, as he has an explosive sound effect that sounds dangerous. I'm not sure what it is, but if there's a loud explosion, Railgun will keep a safe distance. Honestly, I don't think it's too dangerous, but better safe than deedzed. ;)
Nothing that interesting here: Just a Unique Fleshdoom (Fire Tower I believe.)

And finally, Duriel.who was defeated fairly safely. Whenever his towers or rockslide attacks appeared, Railgun retreated to town for a few moments, before returning to drop a dozen more Flamestrikes on his body.

Personally, I'm finding Destruction a little easy. It's somewhat disappointing at the moment. It's the same monsters - dodge the one or two instakills (that become quite predictable,) and the regular monsters don't do anything special. That said, Acts 3, 4 and 5 should be more exciting, as they have a couple more dangers...

[highlight]LvlSix_Railgun, Level 120, Act 3 Destruction[/highlight]
 
Yeah, ultimative really upped the sale cost on sacred rares. In cMXL you can only get 35k max. Either way, it's not so much problem lategame as early game cheese, it'll get you honorifics, etc. much faster.

Made some progress on my SC sorceress, unfortunately I died to countess- I just think I'm not as focused when playing SC. It is far less interesting now. This time, I'm going lightning sorc. Well a sort of tri elementalist actually, lightning main skill, fire backup, and ice tree just for summons and snow queen passive. Lightning tree damage is kinda scary actually.

Good call on the reanimates. They are really useful to tank.
Edit: looking forward to reading your item build/readouts.
 
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Are you using Oskills for the third tree to work around the 2-tree limit for hard points?

I'm following the progress in this thread and playing, but only SC and moreso focusing on the endgame parts. Currently trying to get a character together that can get through Yshari Sanctum.
 
Yeah. I'm using apocalypse oskill from magister TU long staff.
Actually, I found that apocalypse kicks so much butt that I'm now making fire as my primary element, with lightning ( thunderstorm, thunderstone for bosses ) as backup, and ice tree is just for summons/snow queen.

Good luck with Yshari. It's one of the hardest ubers.
P.S. Did you ever beat Laz on classic? That's the only one I couldn't, though I tried a lot. It's said that Laz is easier on ultimative, but well everything seems easier on ultimative, at least till now..
 
I haven't done Laz at all yet, so it's still on the list. Yshari is mostly for farming now since the trash in the first couple of areas is so easy and has good drops. It will be a long process to get any further though.
 
Act 3 Destruction came and went. Railgun didn't suffer too much danger. In fact, I believe she was very lucky. After going through with Railgun, I ran through with the SC sorc to check out Act 4 Hell, Landmasses and Firebloods. The SC character rolled Manglers spawns in Kurast and Travincal, which killed her several times. I know (and purposely) have her weaker than HC Railgun, but those Manglers tore her apart.
I'm very glad they didn't spawn for Railgun.

Act 3 was more challenging, with Mephisto summoning a bunch of Que-hegan and Peace Warriors, which began to overwhelm Railgun once or twice. Retreating to regroup, before pressing her attacks, and Railgun made it through.

Act 4 Destruction was started, and Izual fell without a challenge (beware his Iceshard Blizzard though - I've heard it's dangerous, but Railgun kept her distance.) And these Landmasses were dangerous to large groups, but versing casters, are weak as. All it requires is hit and run tactics, and a large cleared area behind you. Lotsa running. And more running. Just keep out of their melee range, and they won't cast Avalanche/Rock slide.

Also, came across these Stained Glass Windows (a part of D2:LoD,) but when they died, they fired off that starfire/stardust spell. Do you guys know what that spell is, and what it does?

Edit: Some item pics/readouts coming next time. Promise!
 
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The stained glass windows used to be a minigame/challenge in earlier versions of the game, so the stars are just a neat visual associated with that. Unless it does damage, but I don't think it does.
 
Nah, I don't think it did any damage. I kept some distance though, so at its center, it may or may not do anything.

As this is 'next' time, I have to post some gear info, so...

A4HMercweapon_zps8d073995.jpg


LvlSix_Railgun is also using two pieces of the Warmage Set:

Warmage's Fireblade
Battle Staff (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: 121 to 131
Durability: 94
Required Dexterity: 187
Required Level: 100
+(8 to 10) to Sorceress Skill Levels
-(31 to 40)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(51 to 60)% to Fire Spell Damage
+150 to Energy
5% Chance to Avoid Damage
(11 to 15)% Reanimate as: Fire Drake
Socketed: 4
Requirements -20%

Warmage's Breath
Full Helm (Sacred)
Defense: (2937-3671)
Durability: 45
Required Strength: 327
Required Level: 100
+2 to Sorceress Skill Levels
40% Faster Cast Rate
-(21 to 25)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(201 to 250)% Enhanced Defense
+100 to Energy
Socketed: 4
Requirements -40%

More items (and perhaps exact readouts,) coming sometime soon.
 
Nice set items! I also have a warmage's staff, found in Terror Baal throne room, but haven't used it yet.

Hit lvl 90 on my SC sorc, here is her LCS after doing Tal Rasha quest. I was finding it a little hard and wondering why, then I realized I had bumped it up to p5 a bit earlier for faster experience and forgot.. wow, fail haha.. but anyway I lured Tal Rasha out by himself and killed him.

Already died twice on this character ( once to witch ). Guess I'm not in a HC sort of mood while playing SC characters, don't know why, just how it is.

Edit: I don't know if you know about it, but Destruction Baal has a heroic shield. Act 5 is hard as usual but I guess you know that. Frozen Tundra has witches.
 
Small bump. I completed lvl 120 on my SC sorceress. LCS.

Went full damage build on this one, fire/lighting and played quite recklessly. Enjoyed it, but not the way to go for hardcore. Many deaths.
I will practice some character builds for ubers and such with this before trying it with the HC sorc.
 
Progressed the SC sorc into Act 5 Hell, to see what Railgun would be up against. Damn! That's a shock. Trap Rats are still a major danger, and the Wolf Riders can be as well, as they survive longer to cast their towers. So, danger increases dramatically from the Ancients Way to Baal himself.
Baal also has an attack himself in the room where he summons his five waves. I couldn't tell what it was, but SCSorc died instantly, and then numerous times to the waves.
And then Baal himself... What are you meant to do? There's a small, random chance that he drops one immunity? Meanwhile, his Shardspawns have been amped with mad speed and damage. Oh my, I was not expecting that type of danger. I'm glad it's more difficult, but unlike the other insta-kills, I can't think of a good way to dodge that, while doing damage. I'll push Railgun to where the real danger is, but no idea how she's meant to beat Baal himself, let along that Throneroom and his waves.
 
Yep, D-Baal is one of the bigger changes in ultimative. The idea behind it was that it was kinda stupid that the mighty lord of destruction was easier than the easiest ubers. And you don't really get anything out of it except a cool title and the ability to open cow portals. That's why, for instance, I'm not rushing to get there.. just taking things slow.

Anyway, Baal is just a standard heroic uber. I believe he is listed under heroic bosses in the latest documentation but not sure. Heroic ubers are best beaten by casters stacking a powerful single target skill in one element, getting -199% enemy res in that element and spamming that skill and hoping for the immunity to drop. I haven't really got to that point yet ( in ultimative ) so I don't have a detailed strategy, but I think that reanimates and summons should be avoided because he summons more shardspawns on seeing them. Still, it can take a looong time, and the HC restriction is problematic too.
 
I agree that he should be harder than previous (including Hatred/Terror, as they were easy with employed tactics,) but the level of difficulty seems rough, and relies too much on luck. Relying on a small, random chance that he could drop a random immunity, and I could damage him? There's a chance I could beat at him for 30-60 mins, and he wouldn't drop that immunity so no damage would go through. Then, very quickly, the immunity comes back, so only a small amount of damage goes through. That's rough and relies more on luck than skill, experience or knowledge. Railgun will run through a few areas and challenges, and may not go for Baal just yet. That is her ultimate goal though.

Given how fast the Shardspawns and Baal are, it seems like a lot of running, and if he does drop that element, there may not even be enough time to do any damage.

The strategy so far for tough hitters has been spam Ice Elementals, and Flamestrike - after a few Flamestrikes, spam up more Elementals. With Baal summoning more Shardspawns, that obviously won't work out well. I'll up the SC sorc's gear a bit more, and give it a go at another time. Something to quest towards.
For those strong hitters who could demolish minions (Landmasses etc), it became a hit and run - Flamefront a couple times, maintain distance, flamefront.
 
Ultimative bros,

I'm considering playing some Ultimative. I would like a recommendation on a starting build (quick outline here/link to guide/whatever). I would like for it to fit the following criteria:

1. Can get through the game untwinked at least reasonably well (starting from scratch obviously).

2. Can transition into doing the difficult end-game stuff when appropriate (level 120 I'm guessing) at least reasonably well.

3. Can hopefully do some (all?) of the earlyish game challenges too.

In general, my preference is caster > melee type thing, if that matters/changes your recommendation.

Thanks!
 
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