Starting grail hunt

Well, I just crunched some numbers to get rough estimate, but if you want to gear up best char to find Tyrael's, why not using best estimation about lvl 99 char? :)

1-90 is doable in couple hours.
90 - 98 = 2025 Baalruns. Assuming lite sorceress can do 2:30 runs, what is easily doable, and can go much faster then that - that is 84.375h.
For 98-99 you switch to 200 fcr litesorc running p1 seals/p7 diablo (53k XP according to my javazon, and you need total 5100 runs with saved NM ancient quest) That's about 60 second per run at most. That's another 85 hours. 170 total. 170 x 3 = 510, and you still can get at least lvl 97 char with remaining time :D

Yeah, finding Tyrael's is possible with some extreme dedication, but it varies hugely up and down on scale. I wouldn't really count it ever, even when statistics are on your side. With lvl 99 you are sure to get it cause you see that XP bar moving. With Tyrael's there is no guarantee, and effort is much higher. I'm not sure if people are brave enough to go hunting for it knowing it might never happen. You will probably end up in tears with PTSD, vomiting rainbows after thousandish hours without it dropping.

I do think that ~930h would net you RW grail if you run travincal, and if not, you would have good chunk of it to show off. With Tyrael's, you either win or loose. If you win, it's to be expected considering effort, but if you loose, you loose big time.
 
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@frozzzen I was really looking for some support and the idea of vomiting rainbows isn't helping much haha.

I've decided to start running AT as well with my blizz sorc. Should I just be clearing the uniques/champions instead of full clears? And how do I know what a food AT map is?
 
Just hit them bosspacks.

Good AT map is when you can get ~40 sec average runtimes.
Ultimately you should aim for something like :crazyeyes: this. :crazyeyes: - 35.6 sec avg runs.
 
Just the uniques and champions (not everyone goes for the champions, as they can't drop everything, iirc). Find a map that takes at most only a couple of teleports to get to the entrance. From there, run it a few dozen times and figure out where the bosspacks most frequently spawn. If you can clear them in under a minute (with an optional special chest opening, especially since you want runes, which drop up to Lo in act 2 I think), then you should be fine. When you think you're ready and may want a better map, then I would say you can always reroll it. You can have the AT entrance visible from the wp, too, as my map has that.

^Oh my. I didn't know people could go faster than 40 with apparent ease. I was happy with anything under a minute, but I was a bit under-equipped, too.
 
Wow... Thanks for the imput and numbers!
Weel, I wouldn't say I have stuff...

Story of my recent D2 life: restarted on oct 2011, matted a sorc, stopped playing for a while to follow dreams, etc. Then, after blizzard announced d3 release date, I thought: "Hey, what about doing pat/mats of the cookie cutters I loved?" I never really did MF runs after restarting... My sorc matted with dual spirit, 4pt armor, 3 pt helm, etc. 65 FCR, 300 MF and no +skills (which means a very sub-optimal killing speed). I got so used on matting untwinked blizballers/coldsorcs that I really don't need to mf to mat 'em. So, that means some preparation for the t-mighty task...

Judging by frozzzen numbers, it looks like I should focus on Tyrael's Might and the rest will show up eventually. I never was a super-dedicated MFer. Before restartin I put 40+ hours on pindle, 40+ hours on hell meph and thats it. Right know, I plan to pindle a little bit, in order to find the pieces I miss from partial tals (aka tal armor) and hope to find an occy in the process. I'm not really into go for AT with a 4 PT armor/4 PT helm...

And a sounding OMG for people doing AT in less than 40 seconds... 1 minute seems to be a good mark for start.

On LK: I believe it's cool on paper (you end up with an insane number of PAmethists, Charms, Jewels, etc.) but I just can't stand it. I'm more a trav person.

The plan seems to be:

- gear a sorc and do AT runs,
- spend some time (aka hundreds/thousands of hours) looking for Tyrael's Might, possibly using a pit runner to take a break from AT
- if there's a runeword missing (which isn't likely, probability wise), look for runes on trav.

And let's hope it doesn't take lots of years... (Obs.: I really don't know how many hours I will be able to put on this weekly)

What you all think? Sounds like a plan?
 
I think that sounds like a pretty solid plan. You're right in assuming everything else should show up before Tyrael's (or that other random item you may not find before it), and taking a 'break' is a great idea :P
 
Just posted on IFT, but wanted to post it here as well. After 10 runs on pindle, with 250 mf, I found this.
Not a Tal Armor, but a start... :jig:
Go! Go! 1:68909. 1 "other random item" less...
 
lol 10 runs. move to AT right now and you'll be done in 4 days :)

Edit: Btw when I calculated the amount of time it'd take to average a Tyrael's, I checked what the chance of finding a dweb/astreon's/mang's in that same time was (this is for a Pitbarb, but same principles apply no matter what), and it was roughly 97% per item. So I guess you just got rid of a 3% chance of not having a Astreon's by the time you find Tyrael's (on average) ;)
 
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Excellent discussions here- the relative rates are quite important, particularly before deciding to devote so many hours. One thing to remember is that if you are trying to play a build you don't enjoy, not matter how efficient it is, it won't be as effective as a slightly less efficient build that you do enjoy. I've been fortunate that I enjoy my AT runner. I haven't made a full-blown poison necro for dedicated Pits runs yet, but I am quite happy with my current arrangement and have made a lot of progress on the grail. That's in 1.12, so I haven't made as much progress on the rune front as in 1.13, though.
 
So I got lucky and didn't even have to change my AT map from I had it at. Have done a couple runs and have already found a rainbow facet, tomb reaver, and hone sudan. Really starting to see the capability of this area. One question I had though was does the map always spawn the same amount of uniques/champions? I feel like sometimes I'll have one more or less then the last time and I waste time trying to find the last one.

Edit: Thought of another question. If I go to the regular spawn spots which are very close to the entrance and only get say 2-3 uniques/champions, should i just restart the map, or go deeper into the map to hunt them down?
 
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There is a range of bosspacks per area, and it seems to vary game by game. I never actually counted, but you'll have a pretty good idea if you're short a few more than usual, and depending on how you feel after a couple fo runs, you'll know whether or not they are liekly to be in the other areas you don't normally explore (when the common areas are lacking, I mean) and then you'll have a better idea.
At first I covered the entire map, but I slowly realized they were rarely in one of the locations,a nd never in another one, so I dropped those 2 unless an aura pointed them out. Hrus's crazy mf analysis has a list of the number of bosspacks in each lvl85 area, iirc. Linky someone? It should be an easy google search, too.
 
@Fabian: Your pitbarb has a pat thread? I would like to see the build and plan for the future, as I enjoy some barbarian action. I'll try to roll an AT Map and see how my sorc is performing...

@Purple Locust: Probably one of the reasons of my lack of results on pits is not being a major fan of common builds. Poisonmancer is the only one I like a little...

@everyone on this thread: can I add you guys as friends and bother you all for the rest of your lives with questions? Also, I have no friends on this boards yet. :jig:

Seriously now, can I add you in order to trade info on grail findings, results, etc. and ask questions sometimes?
 
OMG... That's a monster! Awesome barb! Thanks for posting the link. I should be playing d2 now to enjoy the luck strike. D3 server is down, but I already found a legendary item on 3-4 hours of play, so the d3 grail has begun (even if it becomes a screenshot one...). After finding an Astreon's I did a bunch of pindle runs (100+, I think, I'm not using run counter anymore). Lots of magical/rare high TCs and 1 Aldur's Armor ("Why not tal armor, pindle?").
All things considered, I believe I should be doing Hell Andy for shako/tal ammy instead of pindle with 250 mf...
 
I have the Grail minus Tyrael's (all self found) and have been for a very long time now. Took around 4-5 years of play to get there, so If you are up for it, prepare yourself for thousands of hours of MF runs. Of course it will be far easier to acquire a traded grail. Though the magnitude of that also requires loads of time investment.
 
After watching frozzzens video I've determined I've been doing my AT runs all wrong, I take way to much time to kill pretty much everything in there thats in a large group, and like to check out the charm/jewel/etc. drops to much to be an effective runner. Only have ~350 mf too so I guess thats probably a hinderance. All this talk of "only" 900 hours to find tyraels though is pretty darn depressing.
 
If I end up with grail minus tyrael, I don't know if I'll have the energy to look for one. Maybe I'll trade, but I don't know how the d2 trading community will be on 5+years.

Before restarting, the 24+ hrs of pindle to find tal armor gave me glimpse of how insanely difficult would be to find the really hard-to-find stuff. Based on that, I belive Tyrael's requires ~900 hrs + lots of lucky. It's the way of the world and I see it as a reason to replay the game for 10+ years, since I don't plan to do MR runs superfast like frozzzen.

(Insane part is: If someone asked me where I plan to be on 10 years, the only answer I could give is: looking for runeword + items grail on d2. MF is the only 10-year life plan I have)
 
Running D2 for a single set/unique item takes a long time no matter what on average, which is why we all should have backup plans for when Tal's Armor doesn't drop :) (Skullder's, 4Topaz etc are all fine in AT as far as I'm concerned)

How long it takes to average a Tyrael's will depend hugely on your MF character. There are MF characters considered good to decent which would probably take 1200+ hours on average (I remember there was a lvl85 tournament last year where some people kept track of # of qualifiers for the 20 hours, the top barb had like 120, then jimsfriend's AT sorc and kestegs Singerbarb had like ~75, then the rest had like 50 or less I think*? That's more than a 100% increase, so more than halving your average playing time), then as you move up the ladder you might arrive at 600 hours or lower for the very best builds. This obviously gets more complicated when you want to balance Tyrael's Finding Power with Rune Finding Power, which we've discussed already. My best advice is to start practicing efficient AT runs; maareek, Nagisa, bassano, Corrupted (?), frozzzen etc are all superb MFers who have uploaded very good blizzsorc AT runs on youtube through the years, looking at those videos will probably give you an idea what to do and what not to do. Might want to consider the same for pitnecros (zerth, Nagisa, Jaedhann (?)) and possibly Pitbarbs (Fabian, Kimppi) somewhere down the line. Hopefully other people have links to some of those videos handy, I don't unfortunately. Also when your sorc is ready to go AT, spend a lot of time rerolling when you don't like your map. A good map is obviously super super key for efficiency.

* These numbers are based off memory and might not be super accurate.
 
TheNix said:
GoMule comes with a built in Flavie (grail checklist). You'll need it to mule all your items, so, if you already don't have GoMule, download it and drive yourself mad trying to complete the grail.

*only 7 more to go*
*only 7 more to go*
*only 7 more to go*
*only 7 more to go*
*Arrggggghhhh!*
Click to expand...

TheNix said:
I've been working on the self-found grail for a while, but it seems to have come to a screeching stop.

Code: 
Metalgrid
Halaberd's Reign
BKWB
Tyrael's Might (hard to believe I know:tongue:)
Stormlash
The Cranium Basher
Death's Web

Sorry for the hijack Hybridreamer, but a grail IS an acceptable passtime for the insane.
Click to expand...

Haha yes.
It gets insanely hard to find new items when you have only 50 or so left. I have been at 89% grail for a while but then I haven't really put any effort in magic finding for months. Of your list I have a metalgrid and cranium basher but that's just luck I suppose.

I agree that one must probably be obsessed or insane to do grails, runeword grails, level 99ers and whatnot. Personally I have much more modest ( but still ambitious ) goals- to make a 'breath of the dying' runeword. And enigma, and maybe faith and pride. Things like 'Brand', 'Destruction', 'Phoenix' would maybe be fun for a while but not really effective and certainly not worth grinding for hours over. As for unique items I almost don't care about them anymore except that a Death's Web would be nice.

Fabian's writeup and video was very nice, thanks for the link. I was planning a MF barb along those lines for a while, except with whirlwind. I thought of using a 5 Ist rune master for CBF+MF ( instead of cham ), and Immortal King's Will / ptopaz stealskull instead of shako.


 
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