The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

[bassano]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

I am finished too
Unfortunatelly I had no time to run meph for lightsabre beacuse I had board games training

Congrats to victory sequana :thumbup:
btw. impressive screen of megademons, that is really unique case have 6 bosses in CS in same time

 

[maxicek]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

OK everyone, I think running is now closed for all time zones. You have until the end of Sunday to finalise any results. If everyone posts a inal score before then, I will declare the winner earlier.

Well done to everyone who posted scores, "Bah Humbug" to all those who signed up and failed to post a score (I'm including myself in the second category).

 

[Raskah]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

It's seems that Sequana is going to win this year. So congratulations :congrats:
Impressive shot of the megademons! Those bone prisons are handy! Why didn't I think that? Also good job with the swords.

Once again, thanks Maxicek for hosting this tourney! I hope that we have another next year.

 

[nualum]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

Wow, congrats sequana! I didn't think anybody would finish task 7. :thumbup:

Did anybody find any +1/1 useless charms? I had several grand charms of craftsmanship, but none red/jagged. The closest I came was the 2/2 lizards small charm of strength I mentioned a few posts ago.

Thanks again max for setting this up, and thanks to the other participants. :wave:

For posterity sake, here were my ideas/strategies for the things I did manage if anybody is interested... I'd be curious to hear what techniques you guys used, particularly screenshot builds:

Spoiler

For pictures, I tried to get qualifiers early on, hoping to improve down the line... and never came back to it. For the most part, they were just opportunistic shots in places I happened to be anyway: for 12 mods I just looked around durance 3 as I was running Mephisto - whenever there were a few extra bosses I'd check the mods until I got my qualifying picture. Similarly for leapers, whenever I saw two bosses on my way to the LK chests, I'd scan the rest of the map for more. It didn't occur to me (until seeing sequana's shot) to drag the wave bosses out of the room and bring them together for a reliable source of mods and bonuses - seems so obvious now :banghead:! I was running cows in 1.09 leveling, but never came across more than one non-king boss there... meant to go back in 1.12 where I knew I could find more (is that a restriction in 1.09 or just luck?). My eventual plan was to go back to specific areas with a more controlled setup (either my avenger or trapper) since I don't have any bone necros or barbarians in my character lineup yet (seems like either one has better a combo of defense, crowd control, and controlled killing for photo ops). I tried a couple with my poisonmancer, who was effective with curses, but his damage is a little too wide/uncontrollable.

For MF purposes, I started with Hell Andariel, hoping to knock out 5 quick rings (and improve my woeful jewelry stash)... had bad luck finding rings, but did manage two highlords (probably my top ISO at the start), atma's, saracen's, and a cat's eye (plus several mid level grailers) - all in all I was happy with that. Pindle was run /p1 until a TC87 dropped (earthshifter), I think it was only a couple hours. Otherwise, did a few WSK/Baal runs (photo'd some ghosts on the way), but focused for the most part on Mephisto and AT. Several good finds, but not enough qualifiers: vile husk, crainte vomir, flamebellow, 0os colossus blade, 4os balrog blade, 0os champion sword, and a couple potentials that never found their pairs (nightwing's & lightsabre).

I only recently finished my LK runner (200FCR sorc), so I don't really have the technique for quick runs down yet, and I didn't help that cause by stopping to pick up all the class specific drops along the way. It did net a reasonable set of oskill qualifiers, but was not quick enough for runes, gems, and charms. I found zero skillers in the process, and the gems only netted one in rerolling (though it was entrapping, which gets a :thumbsup.

The swords got a bit of dedicated attention... I found a Pul and two Io's in LK that would have made one of the upgrades, so I figured I'd run the countess a bit hoping for Lems for the runewords. I hadn't touched my nova/orb countess runner in a long time, so it was good to go back and regear her (in full tal's since I found a second armor from baal and the orb from andariel during the month). Sadly I didn't do enough runs to have any real luck, and annoyingly the barb I finally got to the NM forge yesterday popped a Lem. I would guess when the tourney finished I was 4 Lems, 2 Shaels, and some major luck with socketing away from a minimum score... yikes.

 

[sequana]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

I would rather wait until all final results are completed, but true is that this year I was quite lucky in this tourney, on both part (screenshots and MF). I expected that either Raskah or bass would win this event. Now I can see that I did good decision to give up improving task 2 and concentrate on task 7.

@naulum: good idea to share startegies

For hunting leapers I had the same strategy as you, to catch them while running LK.
Surprisingly task 12 I had to repeat 3 times, as although it was good tactic to lure Baal minions out, in first 2 attempts I didn't have all 12 mods together, I ended up always with 11. I was also trying other places for this task (WSK, Ancient's way), but in the end my first successful attempt was in the Throne, so I let it be then.
Task 8 (moo moo) I had to also repeat 2 times, because at first I always accidently killed some unique cow (I used Forber for this).

And really interesting was task 11. I did it as last screenshot task and I was fully decided to do only one Chaos Sanctuary run, with any result. I chose bone necro because he can clean the place well and especially he can aim well to kill only the monsters I need. I was shocked when I found out there are 5 packs of Megademons before opening Seal. And luckily they had pleasant mods, no aura at all (they were just cursed, but that was almost sure). It seemed to me as quite unique occasion to have there so many packs, so I wanted to take nice screens, and then I remembered I can use Bone prison. It was very comfortable, and very cheesy . But efficient.

This year I had more time than in previous, so I could spend some reasonable time with MFing. I started with intensive LK running, for skillers, naivly for 1/1 charms, pgems, runes (Pul, 2x Lem and many lower here) and items for task 10. I estimate I found around 500 pgems in total.

The only funny charm close to task 3 was this one (I know it has different mods, just it seemed to me funny to find such):

Snowy Small Charm of Shock
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 20
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x9c87ff12
Adds 1-3 lightning damage
Adds 1-3 cold damage over 1 seconds


After LK farming I start with AT for TC 87 and also I hoped to find there other items. I found only one unique TC 87, Griffon. But I found here 20,240+ Raven and Natures Peace. Then shortly I run Meph to find remaining rings and also I started to look for swords (I found those 2 exceptional unique here). I gave up the idea to improve task 2, so I concentrated on finding swords instead. I was switching among AT, Pindle and Pits (and Countess for remaining runes). In the end I found more base swords than was needed, the best place for it was Pit.

Also few items were from HC, I found them during HC tournament I was also playing.

 

[Raskah]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

I expected that either Raskah or bass would win this event. Now I can see that I did good decision to give up improving task 2 and concentrate on task 7.

Well, I'm not an expert... I won this tourney two years ago simply because I was able to finish all tasks, I had worst scores than the second placed - Darkoooo I think, in almost all categories!
Still, I’m happy with the (provisional) second place.

Since everyone is sharing some hints, I might as well do the same:

Spoiler

This year, I finished the screenshot tasks first and I did it very quickly with satisfying results. I just ran areas where the monster always spawn, like CS for the megademons, Arcane Sanctuary for the ghosts and the desert areas for the leapers.
From the other tourney editions that I participated, I already knew that these tasks should be settled quickly. Screenshots first, MF last!

Seeing Sequana using a bone necro in CS to pin monsters down, I realize how great that strategy is and it would help greatly to improve the scores (I don’t have a bone necro but the charges from Marrowalk unique boots would do the trick…)

I was hoping to do the MF tasks during Christmas time but I had less time than I thought to do it. The early Stormlash from Pindle and the Asteron’s from AT gave hope for a good result, so I decided to focus on Meph for the Horizon’s to pair with Stormlash, the rings and the swords.

Now I realize that I focused too much in task 2 when I should be focusing in task 7. I already had some bases for the runewords from cows, pindle and AT and some runes.
The exceptional unique swords eventually dropped from Meph but I mess up the upgrade recipe for unique with the one for rares, so I was looking for Fal’s and Um’s when I should be looking for Lem’s and Pul’s! :doh: So I end up with 4 swords, not enough!

About task 3, I misinterpreted the task so I thought we need 3 charms with useless prefixes OR suffixes, not both. I found several charms with an useless prefix or suffix but not a single one with both. When I realize my mistake, I thought running normal act 1 for small charms since those can have the +1 defense and +1 strength/dexterity but with the other incomplete tasks, I didn’t had enough time to do it.

So once again I realize that the most important is to complete all the tasks and try not to focus in one task too much.

 

[bassano]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

I would rather wait until all final results are completed, but true is that this year I was quite lucky in this tourney, on both part (screenshots and MF). I expected that either Raskah or bass would win this event. Now I can see that I did good decision to give up improving task 2 and concentrate on task 7.

I did not so many runs this year and some tasks really was not my storng part as rare items and swords
I did in total only 1000 CS runs on players 7 and nothinkg more (only specific monster hunting to have screen) so my tasks were limited to that. I tired every GC for task 3 but without success
I tired on the end when I saw low players with completed tasks but you and Raskah were too strong for me, but it was nice that at least we 3 did some battle for first places , thanks for that seq and Raskah , was nice to challenge you :thumbup:

 

[purplelocust]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

Well done, everyone! I made no more progress by the deadline and I won't be updating my score. I do have some screenshots in a huge mess that I didn't get a chance to sort out, but I'm not going to worry about it. I do have some twin items but they aren't high scoring and it's kind of cheesy since some are HC 1.12, some are SC 1.07, some are Classic, some are LoD, and they are more like distant cousins than twins, to be honest!

It's good to see how people approached the different tasks.

My goal this time was to get a non-zero score in every category- which I fell far short of. I realized the two hardest tasks were swords and charms. Swords I wasn't as worried about but the charms struck me as quite difficult.

My approach for the charms was the following- a Holy Fire paladin walking through A1 normal on /players 8 (actually 7) popping chests and hoping for charms. There aren't many charms around there, though, and only 10% of them have both a prefix and an affix. I did get one that met the requirements, I believe (it's on another computer) but that took multiple hours. I did a lot of normal countess runs as I think ghost-type monsters were a slightly better option for dropping charms. But there weren't many charms dropping. And was pretty tedious. It wasn't all lost time, though as it gave me a chance of getting some low tier staffmod items that were missing from my Staffmod Grail project. He did have good MF and I did get some decent twinking and TC3 items out of it but the main thing was low tier staffmod necro heads, druid pelts and orbs, for me.

I couldn't bring myself to find and burn PGems rerolling charms just for the task, so I realized I wasn't going to complete the task and thus wasn't going to reach my goal of scoring in every category. So I focused on another of my goals instead: finding 1.10a beta BK +2 rings from Andarial, along with other jewelry and items, and that part was a success, getting two BK rings that I expect to see some use! I wasn't sure if the quest Andarial bug worked in 1.10a if the character killed Andarial in 1.09 (or earlier), so the fire sorc that I built for it I rushed in 1.07 but only to A1 hell, not killing Andarial. She was equipped with disposable MF gear, brought forward to 1.10a, and then ran Andarial like crazy. She started out under-levelled (this is a SC character) but actually levelled a fair amount just on Andy runs. I wasn't able to mule things off of her without self-MPing, which reset the map, so I left a lot of low and medium stuff on the ground and focused on rings and amulets since they are just one square of space. She looked at charms and jewels but didn't have any seriously noteworthy finds for her efforts there.

On the swords front, I did find multiple Crainte Vomirs and Vile Husks running Hell Meph in HC. But they weren't great rolls and the runes I accumulated during the tourney were mostly in SC so that didn't do any good anyway. I do have some earlier found SC Crainte Vomirs that have great rolls and I would like to upgrade those at some point, but that wouldn't help with the tourney tasks, of course!

Thanks for arranging the tourney! I'm sorry I wasn't able to put more effort into it this year but I found it interesting and rewarding!

 

[omgwtfbbqpwned]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

Heh. Looks like I won't even have time to post up my results in an elaborate post. Sorry max, just pretend I didn't even participate (which shouldn't be that hard). My score is embarassing anyways. Sometime big came up IRL. =\

Congrats to the winner, and thanks for the amazing host!

 

[maxicek]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

Firstly, apologies for not posting this earlier, I was away on business when I was supposed to have closed it. Then I forgot :embarassed:

   Task Number ¦ 12  11  10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1 ¦Total
_____________________________________________________________________________
Forum Name     ¦Scores:                                         ¦
               ¦                                                ¦
sequana        ¦ 60  53  60  49  56  50  48  33  65 ...  10  40 ¦  524
Raskah         ¦ 49  39  62  41  62 ...  29  41  55 ...  10  70 ¦  458
bassano        ¦ 61  44  30  25  68 ...  42  35  55 ... ...  40 ¦  400
nualum         ¦ 45  25  56  33  29 ...  24  17 ... ...  10  60 ¦  299
Fabian         ¦ 51  37 ...  37  56 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦  181 
purplelocust   ¦... ... ... ... ... ...  15  54 ... ... ...  40 ¦  109
mosinn         ¦ XX  18 ...  33 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦   51
maxicek        ¦... ... ... .25 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦   25
tehomg         ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
Neksja         ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
nirolo         ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
bojddo         ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
wakiki         ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
mattinm        ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
Calamityy      ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
WoRG           ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....
crazymatt1     ¦... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ¦ ....

Many congratulation to Sequana for a fine win. As Raskah pointed out, it pays in this touney to complete as many tasks as possible, not score highly in a few. Congratulations to everyone who posted a score, "Must try harder" to all those (including me) who didn't.

Thanks to everyone who has played this tourney over the last three years. Although I think I have enough ideas another year, my problem is that the number of people posting good scores is getting too small compared to the number who sign up. I have a new format in mind for Christmas this year, but it will be more of a magic find tourney I think. I am still thinking about how I can incorporate screenshots. But I'm not going to rule out another 12 Days just yet. I'm interested to hear what people think.

I normally write most of the MF tasks based around what I would want to find, and then add a few annoying ones. I think the best way to tackle Task three would be to run around with a Tesladin in Normal, somewhere where there is a high monster density in A1.

Hope to see you all at this year's seasonal tourney, be it 12 Days 2010 or something else.

max.

 

[purplelocust]

Re: The 12 Days of Christmas Tourney 2009

Congrats to Sequana- that was excellent play for those tasks!

It is too bad that more people didn't make progress- for me it was a busy time right before travelling for a good stretch, so I couldn't make as strong of an effort as I would have liked.