TC3 Hunting Tournament - Interest Gauge

art_vandelay

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Mar 13, 2019
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It's been four years since the second TC3 hunting tournament now and the original host, @T72on1 , has vanished. I would like to resurrect this tournament from the dead because I believe it would be a lot of fun.

The idea is simple, you have 15 hours to find as many TC3 items as possible with a newly created character but you may not progress to the Far Oasis and beyond. (so that you can get the cube!)

The rules are as follows:
  1. Areas allowed are: all areas up to Normal Halls of the Dead level 3; this includes the Sewers level 1 - 3 and Dry Hills.
  2. Only version 1.13+ of the game and D2R.
  3. HC or SC
  4. Untwinked; muling items from the character to an external stash (GoMule or Atma) is allowed though.
  5. MP game to reset a map is allowed.
  6. Player setting is free; no increasing the /p setting just for chests or other poppables though (I doubt anyone would do this).
  7. Max amount spent with one character is 15 hours; you can however enter the contest with multiple characters.
  8. No prizes, hence no trading profile required, you have to be FAM though.
  9. Every different (e.g. not already found) TC3 item grants you 1 point; readouts of all items can be posted here after the event; tiebreaker is the number of total TC3s found.
  10. Gambling is allowed. TC3 items found while gambling, follow the same rules as TC3 items that drop
  11. Reset at Akara is allowed.
and if you forgot what the TC3s were, here is a complete list with links compiled by @T72on1:

Any suggestions are welcome, maybe there is something that needs to be changed in the rules or about the format, who knows ;)
 
Love it. Would definitely join. Already thinking about strategies.
WoF Assassin must be a top contender, i think.

Same as other Tourneys, that you can run several sets but only submit 1?
 
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Love it. Would definitely join. Already thinking about strategies.
WoF Assassin must be a top contender, i think.

Same as other Tourneys, that you can run several sets but only submit 1?
That strategy is definitely viable, she just kills so fast, but I think sorc should be strong as well.

In the two TC3 tournaments so far you could do as many characters as you wanted and submit them, they would then be ranked accordingly. Nobody did more than 2,5 though if I recall correctly.
 
The first TC3 tournament was my first ever SPF experience. I'd love to do another. Mid-February, perhaps?
 
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Nice idea to revive this. Personally I have too little time at the moment and too many D2 projects lined up to get sidetracked by this, but hope it will happen so that I can follow along! :)
 
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So, I went through my recent finds and updated my self grail list. There are 4 TC3 on my missing list. I even rooted around and found my TC3 hunting guide.

I'm curious about the hard stop to questing at the Halls of the Dead. I probably won't leave Act 1.
 
I would maybe be interested, but with the restriction of the areas to Act I Normal and early Act II, you won't be able to find some of the TC3s at all: Vidala's Ambush, Sander's Paragon and Tancred's Hobnails - if I am not mistaken?
 
@LouB the idea with Halls of the Dead was so that you can cube Topazes. Otherwise the targets that people ran were all in A1.

@Grisu indeed, but you can gamble them :) IIRC @Nano won both of the previous iterations of this tournament and found all TC3s by gambling the ones that couldn't drop.
 
@ffs: by gambling? really? That is awesome! 😄That is a lot of gold you need to find with an untwinked character who can't go farther than Act II Dry Hills 😅

But yeah, I'd start a Barbarian and try that route (hork hork).
 
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oh, that makes sense.

@GrisuThe best place to look for TC3's is Act 1 normal. It's not that monsters above can't drop them, I recently found a Gull while in Hell Act 5. The problem is that the percentage of their dropping is too low to make it worthwhile.

This is a part of information from Thrugg that I copied a long time ago:

If you have read a little bit about TCs, you may know that generally speaking the game tries to drop from the highest TC the monster can, then if it fails it drops down to the next one, and so on. It is a little bit more complicated than that though.

In fact it is more accurate to say the game tries to drop from the 4 highest TCs a monster can drop from, then if that fails it tries to drop from not the next 4 highest, but the 2nd-5th highest, then if that fails, from the 3rd-6th highest, etc, a kind of descending window.

Because of this you only get 1 shot at the highest TC, 2 shots at the 2nd, 3 at the 3rd, then 4 attempts at all the lower ones. This is why monsters generally aren't expected to drop from their highest TC very often.

Now, the same problem happens at the lower end. If you drop down all the way, you eventually get a chance at dropping from the TC12-TC21 range, then from the TC9-TC18 range, then from the TC6-TC15, and finally from the TC3-TC12 range. But after that there is no more dropping down. So you get 4 chances at TC12, but only 3 at TC9, 2 at TC6 and 1 chance at TC3. As a result, monsters that can drop high TC items are really very unlikely to drop TC3s - usually about as unlikely as they are to drop from their highest TC.

This problem doesn't apply to low-level monsters though. For those who can't drop as high as TC9 or TC12, there are special TCs that only drop TC3, and TC3 or 6. Monsters that drop from those TCs are by far your best source.

These monsters typically have another problem though - low mlvl. Remember, to drop a set or unique item, you need to drop the right TC and have mlvl >= qlvl for that item. And many TC3 items have annoyingly high qlvls.

From Hakai's excellent 1.10 TC list:

Pelta Lunata (qlvl 3)

Rixot's Keen (qlvl 3)
Arctic Furs (qlvl 3)
War Bonnet (qlvl 4)
Felloak (qlvl 4)
Hsarus' Iron Fist (qlvl 4)
Gull (qlvl 6)
Hotspur (qlvl 7)
The Gnasher (qlvl 7)
The Hand of Broc (qlvl 7)
Knell Striker (qlvl 7)
Bane Ash (qlvl 7)
Torch of Iro (qlvl 7)
Infernal Cranium (qlvl 7)
Death's Guard (qlvl 8)
Death's Hand (qlvl 8)
Lenymo (qlvl 10)
Greyform (qlvl 10)
Pluckeye (qlvl 10)
Blinkbats Form (qlvl 16)
Vidala's Ambush (qlvl 19)
Sander's Paragon (qlvl 20)
Tancred's Hobnails (qlvl 27)

So to find a given TC3, you need to kill a monster with high enough mlvl but as low a max TC as possible. The prime candidates are Act 1 normal Superuniques, as they drop 2 items and have a good bonus to item quality. This is a list of them, with their max TC first, and their mlvl:

Corpsefire 3 4
Bishibosh 3 5
Coldcrow 3 7
Blood Raven 6 10
Bonebreaker 3 5
Rakanishu 6 8
Treehead Woodfist 6 8
Griswold 12(6) 8
The Countess 12 11
The Smith 12(6) 13
Pitspawn Fouldog 6 14
Bone Ash 12 17
Andariel 15 12
The Cow King 12(6) 31

The 4 that can only drop TC3s are great - except they can only drop the first 6 items (up to the qlvl 4s) apart from Coldcrow. She is possibly worth running for up to the qlvl 7s, if you can find a good map for her. She is often deep in the cave though.

Among the natural TC6 droppers, Blood Raven is not bad - easy to find, plus she can actually drop up to 5 items, although she doesn't have the fixed 2 item drop that other Superuniques have, she drops more like an act boss (ie randomly). If you are going to run her, higher players setting is worth it. Pitspawn Fouldog is the other good choice - he can drop up to the qlvl 10s too, and always drops 2 items. If you can get a good map for him he is worth a run.

To get the 4 highest qlvl items though, you need to go to a higher TC creature and just hope to be lucky. Bone Ash is an OK choice, he can drop all TC3 uniques and is very very easy to get to - always in the same place, a short run from the Inner Cloister WP into the Cathedral. But because he can drop TC12 he is already pretty stingy with the TC3s.

Andariel is hopeless - high TC and low mlvl is the opposite of what we want.

Last of all though I draw attention to the 3 guys with 12(6) as their TC. By this I mean they get a drop from up to TC12, but they also get a second drop which is only up to TC6. From this second drop you have a pretty good chance at TC3s also. The Smith is much better than Griswold, but best by far is the Cow King. His mlvl is high enough to drop all TC3s but he still has that nice low TC6 drop. If you can organise a way to run him (MP, or self-MP with a cow opener who just sits in camp) then he is easily the best source.


There is one small issue with those second drops though - they are only ever melee items. Which basically means no Pluckeye Still, not a huge disadvantage by comparison.

 
Count me in if there's enough interest. I have to defend my title afterall. :D

There are 4 TC3s with high Qlvls that cannot be found from the top Act 1 targets. I was only able to gamble 1 of those 4 during the second TC3 tourney, and that's using gold collected over the 15 hour set. It'll be interesting to run this in D2R since I won't have to deal with the long save & exit delay at Andy..
 
Count me in if there's enough interest. I have to defend my title afterall. :D

There are 4 TC3s with high Qlvls that cannot be found from the top Act 1 targets. I was only able to gamble 1 of those 4 during the second TC3 tourney, and that's using gold collected over the 15 hour set. It'll be interesting to run this in D2R since I won't have to deal with the long save & exit delay at Andy..
It seems like there are 5-6 people who are interested and the old tournament started with 4 interested people, so I think it's happening :D

***

As for the timeframe, since this is more low key, I would give it at least a month of running time, if not two. Sign-Up is open all throughout. This way anyone can participate if they want to and have at least some spare time. As for the start, how about friday the 28th?
 
I'm in. 99 percent of my D2R time has been on my summoner Necro, this will give me an opportunity to take a break from him 😁
 
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