I find my idle mind keeps returning to giving this a go. I haven't thought or read (it seems to me making plans by myself would be half the fun) about it in any detail, but current frontrunner is a CS hammerdin (inspired by Neksja's Aura). Or an assassin. Both would be new to me, and hence, interesting.
However, having a lvl99 Pitbarb would be pretty sweet and would act as pretty good motivator. On first thought, it should be viable. But I would be concerned about leveling past 95-96. I'm not sure I could suffer through Baal runs. Maybe Concentrate barb running Nihl (only slightly less mind numbing)? I see there's a 99er barb, but that seems to have taken quite a bit of perseverance.
I'm basically looking for a quick answer: roughly how much of an ordeal would be to get a barb to 99?
Barb to 99 is WW to 98 and then Concentrate at Nihl to 99. It took him a lot of time, but he did it in vanilla, hence putting loads of time in Trav runs for dual BotD. It will be slower than Sorcs, Hammerdins, Trappers and the like. But it should be doable.
Lol, probably yes. I am running with Neverland again since the MFO. But time has been very limited. Moreover I've had a few session which, due to tougher spawns and overall sloppy play (not sure why to be honest), just felt slow and not safe enough, so I've been alternating with ShouldBeEasy. As a consequence, I have only gained some 9M since my last update of the table. And absolutely nothing in terms of drops, so hence no updates yet.
Long story short: current ETA on lvl 99 for Neverland: end of October maybe? So yes, even now at this stage there will probably be people surpassing me.
I have to say it again: it's very cool to see continued entries and progress in this thread almost 2.5 years later. Keep it up @everyone!
* * *
Phaedrus has been plugging away here and there, with the MFO warm-up tourney and then MFO limiting the time for CS runs and then a very busy work week. But the here-and-there allowed him to reach 98.25, as he was a little past 98.2 before MFO, getting roughly 12M this week. He’s still doing straight p7 runs, hitting boss packs in CS, averaging somewhere around 2.2M/hour. I think I'll be able to keep this approach at least for the next quarter level, but at that point may transition to more XP-efficient approach.
Finds for the past 0.15 of the level continued to be solid. For runes, we picked up Lo #3, Vex #4, Mal #9, Gul #7, Sur #4. But the major drop was this, giving him three: View attachment 10813
Finally It fell right at 3.290, and the difference was noticeable. Another nice charm upgrade was this Ruby SC of Vita. In terms of drops, TC87s from boss packs were Executioner’s Justice and Death’s Fathom, which both fell after 98.2. Other notable finds were Spirit Keeper #2 and #3, Boneflame, Boneshade #2 and #3, and Demonhorn’s Edge #2. TC3s were Lemyo, Rixots x2, and Knell Striker. Here he is at 3.30B.
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Next, it’s time to introduce my fifth entry in this challenge, Quinta, a LF zon. She’s currently level 93.4, with a few gear upgrades needed ahead before she settles into Baal runs.
I started her in February 2018 as my entry in the S/U tourney hosted by @jiansonz . The idea all along was that she might become my zon entry in this challenge, and she also ended up being my 2018 Summer MFO entry along the way.
She progressed as a passive/Valk zon, eventually settling on Charged Strike spearzon as the build in A3H. After some early challenges in that tourney, she finished without a death early last month. Major milestones in the tourney progress are in the spoiler.
After Mat’ing, Quinta was the main focus of my time, with Pindle and Eldritch runs in preparation to be my entry in MFO. She also mixed in 500 Meph runs and 500 LK. She made it to level 90 level pre-MFO, with very basic gear. But that’s all you need for Pindle!
She ended up winning the Pindle category, which was pretty cool, with reflections on those 10 days here. Bottom line was very lucky drops for MFO, but virtually no item upgrades for her untwinked journey: View attachment 10812
The plan is to get to level 94 at Pindle, probably mixing in some LK, as a break from Phaedrus as he pushes to 99. The idea with her was that I could roll a Baal map that makes Enigma not-essential, as some of the earlier SPF 99ers have shown you don’t need to teleport if running Baal. After three untwinked Enigmas, I was hoping to minimize LK runs even if it takes longer in the grand scheme of things.
She has the nice Ber drop from Pindle, so if she can pick up Infinity from LK runs, she’ll move to WSK and Baal, hoping for rune drops along the way to open up Enigma. I’ll probably break down and go back to LK for Enigma before it drops from Baal runs, but we’ll see.
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We leave for a three-week vacation tomorrow, so there won’t be any progress until October at the best. No wifi or cell reception for most of it, but I'll try to check in on progress of others when I can.
My goal upon returning is to focus on Phaedrus, with Quinta as a break (and maybe some Pit runs with Pestilence). I’m thinking he may be able to get 99 by the end of November, with Ancients XP bonus available, and my hope is that Quinta will be at 94 from Pindle and Pestilence will be at 97 at that point. But we’ll see!
Just moving my second character Bone necro Espada to resting heroes list, as i do not plan to play him in near future...However, i have two other ideas in my mind (thinking about one kind of septavirate and about melee char for this quest), so i need to decide which route might be better atm...So many plans and not enough time for it
I'm questioning whether or not I want to place Orion on the Resting Heroes list, or perhaps even consider moving on from him altogether and try a different character, as I'm struggling heavily in Act 2 NM with my gear. Nearly every boss pack kills me or gets me very close to a death, and drops have been horrendous. Holy Freeze was incredibly powerful in Normal, but despite continuing to slow everything down, every monster hits me, and hits me hard, and since I still have not been able to find better items than Steel or Strength flails, I can't leech enough life to tank for very long, and have to chug potions like a madman. How I've forgotten how brutal this game is for melee characters, and even more so for untwinked ones.
Forumite Character SC/HC Class Level Exp Date E/S S/U Grail Deaths Hours
--------------- --------------- ----- ----- ----- ---- ---------- --- ---- ----- ------ -----
Bewitch itsreal HC Sorc 87 1.xx 2018-04-24 No - - - -
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 86 1.15 2018-01-10 Yes - - 1 -
Vildecor Celia HC Ama 84 0.99 2018-05-30 Yes 125 97 1 -
coju NintyNine_orRiP HC Sorc 81 0.74 2016-04-07 Yes - - 1 -
TwentyMuleTeam Valus HC Barb 76 0.48 2016-10-27 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Pala 76 0.48 2017-06-19 Yes - - 1 -
weezaard Cypher SC Druid 66 0.00 2018-02-21 Yes - - 20+ -
Tenecabo OldShatterhand HC Druid 49 0.04 2016-06-16 Yes - 0 1 -
Pijus Pyrestarter HC Druid 36 0.00 2018-05-21 Yes - - 1 -
coju fB HC Sorc 29 0.00 2016-04-09 Yes 1 1 1 2
Kitteh Verallus HC Druid 26 0.00 2016-03-25 No - - 1 -
logoutzero Rolex HC Barb 21 0.00 2016-03-26 Yes 0 0 1 1
Slowish going really need to get into Nightmare then things speed up once i get spirit and/or insight up and running. Did get a +1 CM +2 Fr Orb from Anya though so not too bad. Not done massive amount of play time and also spread over several characters. Nothing of note has dropped or even green or gold that i recall. May or may not splat Pindle for a bit to see if i get lucky but thinking more practicle to ignore Pindle and get on with ancients and Baal and getting into Nightmare to get my 4 socket items with some luck as i dont recall you get these until then.
Time for an update on StormRider. He is now about 10 hrs in farming LK. The good news is I am still enjoying it, probably due to the fact that in 2 weeks I managed to only play 10 hrs, which prevents me from getting LK-boring-itus.
I guess the drops have been somewhat okay-ish overall, I got about 10 skillers, of which one elemental , about 250 Pgems, some nice resis charms with usable secondary mods
Shimmering Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x46cfd5e0
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
All Resistances +3
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
, which should help with getting my resist stats up later on with Enigma.
Speaking of which, I am now 1/6 in with having found 1 Sur. I also found a Vex rune, with which I can make a Hoto later on.
Time for an update on StormRider. He is now about 10 hrs in farming LK. The good news is I am still enjoying it, probably due to the fact that in 2 weeks I managed to only play 10 hrs, which prevents me from getting LK-boring-itus.
I guess the drops have been somewhat okay-ish overall, I got about 10 skillers, of which one elemental , about 250 Pgems, some nice resis charms with usable secondary mods
Shimmering Small Charm of Good Luck
Small Charm
Required Level: 33
Fingerprint: 0x46cfd5e0
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
All Resistances +3
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
, which should help with getting my resist stats up later on with Enigma.
Speaking of which, I am now 1/6 in with having found 1 Sur. I also found a Vex rune, with which I can make a Hoto later on.
You should invest in a teleport stick or an amulet if you happen to find one.
Also if you save your flawless runes along with all of your other low runes, I'd be interested in knowing how many you have compared to how many high runes you have. Im at 1k flawless + low runes and 2 sur, lo, vex, gul, mal, mal, pul
Alright, so after gambling a +24 to all resists circlet, switching out that God-awful Isenhart's armor for a rare plate mail with fire and poison resists, and putting a few more points into Resist Cold to boost my Holy Freeze damage, I appear to be having a better time progressing through NM, though it's still a slog and I have to be extremely careful around boss packs, and consistently playing through NM on /p8 is totally out of the question at this point.
Orion has just reached the Arcane Sanctuary, where the chokepoints should actually help instead of hurt. I just need to keep pushing through to Mephisto, and once that's done, it's NM Meph farming time.
One of the main issues with Paladins is that they have next to no crowd control. Especially in an untwinked setting, and even more so on a non-physical based melee build, that makes it really hard to pull off.
If you happen to luck out on a Ko and Lem rune or can cube them up, I would definitely consider a Lawbringer. Ideally in a Phase Blade (you'll probably have the Dex for it to get max block anyway), but since this is NM, your first one would go into an exceptional Sword, Hammer or Scepter. Since Scepters can net you some +skills, those might be the ideal weapon. However, you'd have to get lucky finding a 3 os one with good +Holy Freeze to begin with (although cubing sockets into a white one has a 2/3 chance to get 3 sockets as well), and the possible options either require quite some strength (Divine Scepter - 103 str) or are quite slow (Holy Water Sprinkler - 10 WSM). In that respect a Dimensional Blade can be a good middle of the road alternative. But you should check out Zeal breakpoints anyway, with the gear you have, maybe a Holy Water Sprinkler is a very good option in the end.
The runeword itself requires level 43, so you should be able to equip it at this point if you meet the weapon reqs.
+ gul gul vex ohm that I've previously gotten from LK
=
I think this makes up for my other bad grief
Also a nice helm upgrade from LK
On other news, I beat diablo and frozenstein. Wasnt very hard with grief + oath. Running pindle is doable if he doesn't roll bad mods (amp dmg, might aura)
I should wear the 36 ias grief in my glove side slot first right?
Speaking of Trav vs Lk in an untwinked environment. My untwinked blizzard sorc is a Sur short for Infinity and I'm debating if I should jump to Travincal when its done since I'm still missing some key pieces of equipment like sov, df, nightwings, mara and sojs. What would you guys do if you were on my shoes?
Speaking of Trav vs Lk in an untwinked environment. My untwinked blizzard sorc is a Sur short for Infinity and I'm debating if I should jump to Travincal when its done since I'm still missing some key pieces of equipment like sov, df, nightwings, mara and sojs. What would you guys do if you were on my shoes?
I'd try to do travincal now for the sur. Iirc infinity is not a huge boost for travincal killing speed, so if you can do 25-35 second runs on a good map id do that.
One of the main issues with Paladins is that they have next to no crowd control. Especially in an untwinked setting, and even more so on a non-physical based melee build, that makes it really hard to pull off.
I've certainly been noticing that lately as I've started Countess and Pit runs with DirkStruan. I really have to tread carefully and separate mobs to take care of some of them....especially when the Might or Fanaticism aura flickers on. It makes for some longer timed runs for sure. I got very lucky with my Tower map though. The exits from L2 to L3 and from L3 to L4 are both very close to their respective entrances, which helps a lot. My Pit map is not good at all, but at the moment I'm loathe to give up my Tower map. To wit - these were the drops on two consecutive Countess runs:
It seems I have way better luck with the Countess than I ever did with LK.
If you happen to luck out on a Ko and Lem rune or can cube them up, I would definitely consider a Lawbringer. Ideally in a Phase Blade (you'll probably have the Dex for it to get max block anyway), but since this is NM, your first one would go into an exceptional Sword, Hammer or Scepter. Since Scepters can net you some +skills, those might be the ideal weapon. However, you'd have to get lucky finding a 3 os one with good +Holy Freeze to begin with (although cubing sockets into a white one has a 2/3 chance to get 3 sockets as well), and the possible options either require quite some strength (Divine Scepter - 103 str) or are quite slow (Holy Water Sprinkler - 10 WSM). In that respect a Dimensional Blade can be a good middle of the road alternative. But you should check out Zeal breakpoints anyway, with the gear you have, maybe a Holy Water Sprinkler is a very good option in the end.
Would a Lawbringer Phase Blade be a viable weapon in Hell for a Fanatic Zealadin? It feels like it wouldn't have much Life Leech power....though the Decrepify would be a much-needed help....
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