Terror zones and the Quest for 99

[krischan]

I'm haven't found a Herald of Zakarum so far since D2R is out.

D2R is taunting me. I've found two of them in the last week. I needed just one, goddammit! Well OK, at least none of them was ethereal.

Next rant:

I haven't found a Ber yet...

What was the strafe bug anyways? I haven't noticed any difference with strafe I don't think? wasn't it an %AR thing? since I use faith, it would only be a problem on bosses, who I don't really use strafe on in the first place.

IIRC (recalling 15 years old memories):

The strafe bug was that if you were interrupted during a strafe round, all subsequent shots will miss and you cannot abort it. Also, if dodge, avoid or evade were triggered, it counted as an interruption in that regard, even if the attack wouldn't have hit.

Now it's working. It made physical bowazons much stronger. Also, if you have knockback (from Nef in a bow socket or from wearing a Giant Skull), the monsters will have a hard time to even reach you and if you deal enough damage, they will be in hit recovery most of the time. Strafe triggers knockback and many other effects on every hit, unlike multishot which triggers it on the middle two arrows only.

What's new in D2R (since the patch before the current one, I think): Strafe is now synergized by guided arrow and multishot and the 75% base damage penalty is removed (it was said to be removed in the previous patch already, but that didn't work). It also gets an AR bonus, bur I'm not sure isf it's bugged like it was (or still is) with magic arrow before D2R.

Strafezons are awesome! My number one terror zone runner. Once I can afford Infinity and/or get my hands on more fire skillers, my new ranged enchantress might take over, however. She's called DemonMachinist BTW.

Nothing has changed regarding next hit delay. It's still at 4 frames for strafe (which means that 4 frames have to pass before being affected by the same attack again). That's not a bug, but a deliberate restriction (as well as with many other skills), else shooting just one enemy with strafe would be too strong.

 

[NorthDakota]

@krischan since I've asked you that question I did go and look it up - and tbh even without knowing I found myself naturally using strafe in more situations where I may have used multishot before. It's hard to describe exactly how I use it but basically I'll use MS for most situations, then stragglers are strafe - usually 4-5 targets, or if targets are in opposite directions, or if they're in a straight line, things like that. But strafe is a lot stronger it feels like now, it feels like it hits and hits hard.

I can't imagine using solely strafe though! There are some situations where it's just so slow, especially big packs!!

 

[DarkMaster]

What's new in D2R (since the patch before the current one, I think): Strafe is now synergized by guided arrow and multishot and the 75% base damage penalty is removed (it was said to be removed in the previous patch already, but that didn't work). It also gets an AR bonus, bur I'm not sure isf it's bugged like it was (or still is) with magic arrow before D2R.

It was patch 2.4, but yeah. In the 2.4 patch notes they said they removed the 3/4 damage penalty and added AR%, but from my testing (Ubeogesh discovered the AR% bug, I just corroborated his findings) it turns out that neither of these actually applied and the only change 2.4 did to Strafe was add the Multishot/GA synergies. These were fixed with 2.6 so now the damage penalty is removed and the AR% applies properly.

The arrow skills AR% bug (Fire Arrow, Cold Arrow, Magic Arrow, etc.) in original D2 has been in fixed in D2R for some time, at least since 2.4 but it might've been fixed before then. I wish the patch notes were more comprehensive, there's been a couple of "hidden" changes found in the txt files for a few of the patches and even some hardcoded changes (like illegal staffmods can't spawn on items in D2R [the "6 failed skill rolls" behavior no longer applies], so no holy shield scepters).

 

[Excalibur]

Finally, got my chance to try Terror Zones.
Regarding the Sunder Charms, yeah the drop so frequently to a point you don't even want to pick them up. I tried using one and it works better than I expected. An optimized character with a Sunder Charm will literally face no problem with immunes at all. My first drop was a double Sunder Charm and already found a -70% Poison which was the only one I needed right now.



The experience is indeed massive. I did a few runs with characters ranging from levels 95-97 and the bar is moving with a few minion packs. Can't really say that I don't like it. Feels nice to eventually hit 99 and use the rest skill points and stats. The fear of dying and losing hours of progress is also gone now. There were days that I couldn't relax in case of a death..

Difficulty wise, I am using my Glass Cannon characters so it really feels the same. Even at P8 I have no issues tearing the monsters and that is a bit lame. But items aren't raining for me. Haven't found a HR or anything that rare so far so I assume the terrorized areas just act like any other 85 areas? Need to do some research on that.

All in all, I agree it feels great playing areas normally you wouldn't. Helps a lot in grinding and using characters that were retired so that's a refreshing addition which was needed. I literally join every hour whenever I can to check which area is terrorized hoping to get Cows. No luck so far! And my only problem with TZ right now is that I have to move Eni and Infinity constantly from char to char. 😅

 

[maxicek]

I started looking in the text files, as far as I can see all monsters drop from their normal drops except Super Uniques which have a special Desecrated treasure class.

Of course increased monster levels mean they have a potential to drop anything, but they are not more likely to drop runes for example.

 

[ffs]

Of course increased monster levels mean they have a potential to drop anything, but they are not more likely to drop runes for example.

My item generation knowledge is a bit rusty but I believe monster level does increase S&U drop rates as well. For example IIRC even though Pindle has an extra drop in comparison to alvl 85 bosses, for the S&Us that can drop from both Pindle and alvl 85 bosses it's not exactly 2x per kill, but rather 1.95x or somethingn along those lines. Not sure how about the general workings as to how such difference scales with higher boss levels (meaning greater difference than 86 vs 88 as in the Pindle vs lvl 85 areas case).

 

[LouB]

All right call me spoiled, but I'm officially filling a complaint on Terror Zones. Don't get me wrong, I love the experience and even the Blood Moor has dropped something nice. However, I get very tired of running the same areas over and over, while other areas don't spawn very often.

 

[krischan]

I started looking in the text files, as far as I can see all monsters drop from their normal drops except Super Uniques which have a special Desecrated treasure class.

Of course increased monster levels mean they have a potential to drop anything, but they are not more likely to drop runes for example.

To elaborate on that:

Runes come from their own treasure class which is the same for all monsters, with the same likehood for each rune, but capped by the monster/area level.

Regarding runes, there are three kinds of monsters, ghost-like monsters (higher chance to drop a rune), cows (inbetween) and all the rest (lower chance). For each kind, the chance to drop a rune is the same.

That means that terror zones will only add high rune drops of the kind that the unterrorized area cannot produce and if an unterrorized area can already produce any rune, nothig will change in that regard. Of course, if more runes are possible and their distribution is always the same while no more runes drop in total, the likehood of the other runes will decrease, but that will only be that tiny bit that applies to the added high runes. For example, if you check Zod rune drop chances with Silospen's calculator, you will see that they have the same drop probability for all ghosts and non-ghosts (except cows, as said), respectively, no matter what their level is.

Minons are like regular monsters in that regard.

It's similar for random bosses, although they have a higher chance to drop a rune and there's no distinction between ghosts, cows and the rest.

I'm not doing terrorized areas at p8, but at p3, as random bosses drop a fixed amount anyway and almost all good loot comes from them (except socketables) while p3 instead of p1 also means double exp without significant additional kill time and risk and more of the mentioned socketables). Also, act boss drops max out at p3 (except Andariel who drops less than 6 items from time to time) and superuniques have only slightly more drops at higher p settings.

Edit:

D2R is taunting me. I've found two of them in the last week. I needed just one, goddammit! Well OK, at least none of them was ethereal.

I've found my third Herald of Zakarum today. 198% ed, so I'm not complaining .

 

[NorthDakota]

The blood moor is a terrible tz.

 

[LouB]

It's not great, but it beats Tristram. I found my second all time Bul Kathos Wedding band there the other night and tonight found a Doombringer. Just run around and kill everything and collect 1-2m experience.

Found my first Bone Breaker Sunder Charm tonight from the Council in Trav. It's a good one with only 11% increased damage. So, I put it in the pack and ran Trav again. Got in a scrum with the council and zealots and watched the life bulb bounce up and down. Now ARGH was never really in trouble, but I'm not used to it moving much at all especially against a group like that. As a result the Bone Breaker won't be used full time, it will go in the chest or cube for when I know that there will be a bunch of PIs around and maybe just for when I've got a single PI left that Reaper's doesn't break the PI.

 

[DarkMaster]

I've had an idea for a War Cry barb in Arcane Sanctuary using the physical sunder and Grim Ward, the gist being that you stack up a group of ghosts and stun them with WC, pop a GW from a goat/vampire corpse, nuke the ghosts cause they'll have -25% phys res (sundered to 95 and -120% from GW with maxed FP synergy) then hork their corpses.

Sounds decent in theory with War Cry preventing GW scaring ghosts off the platform then being able the hork the ghosts, but I haven't actually tried it yet. I've tested it a bit with my WW barb and the ghosts do get annihilated by physical damage with sunder + GW but it's not ideal since I don't have any stun to keep them locked down.

I think a significant annoyance will be the corpse for GW, goats or vampires don't always spawn nearby to ghosts so I might have to drag them a bit. Also I'm sure it won't be as efficient as a sorc but I think it'll be interesting anyways.

 

[little birdy]

If you have a ‘Lawbringer’ on switch, or equipped on an A5 merc, then I think Sanctuary aura would also help soften up those pesky Ghosts.