I would think Pits maybe, focusing on the 2 Fallen nests? Never really played a trapper in a tournament, and it's been a while since I played one at all, but I think that would be your best option.
I think Nanomist tried CS with his trapper, but indeed his conclusion was it wasn't worthwhile when it comes to xp compared to Baal runs.
I would think Pits maybe, focusing on the 2 Fallen nests? Never really played a trapper in a tournament, and it's been a while since I played one at all, but I think that would be your best option.
I think Nanomist tried CS with his trapper, but indeed his conclusion was it wasn't worthwhile when it comes to xp compared to Baal runs.
Right, that was the conclusion I came to as well. I’ve been running p5 and p7 pits. It’s just that ffs’ experience gain at CS has been pretty mind blowing so that’s why I was curious if there’s another location with decent rune drops but better exp.
Indeed what @T72on1 said could be an idea. Last year's RFL before switching to AS, I ran some Javazon in Pit focusing on Fallen camp/nest areas. If you get a map that also spawns boss packs in those, that should make for a decent mix of XP and runes. Vizier seal runs shouldn't be too bad either as you said.
In the end it just depends on maps, gear, number of kills, run times etc. – no way around testing things for yourself if you want to know for sure.
Since I got carried away a bit too much, TooMuchEnergy has made quite some progress .
The rest of Act 2 and Act 3 were very easy, and went by unnoticed. TooMuchEnergy did suffer her first death, due to me not really paying attention and some serious misclicking. She is very fragile though, so at that point I already knew that more deaths would follow, at least until ES would be at full strength. This would turn out to be true, as 3 more deaths would occur over the course of Normal, Nightmare and early Hell.
RoF and CS turned out to be quite hard. Not so much for TooMuchEnergy, but for the merc, who is even more fragile than the Sorc. So I had to constantly use a tactic of spamming CB, Teleport a bit back, rinse and repeat. This meant I had to make quite some town trips, to stock up on potions, and sometimes to revive my merc.
I made it through without any deaths though, and killed Diablo at level 25. Far lower than I'm used to, but Eldritch was the first main goal, so I played on /p1 or /p3 for most of the time.
In Act 5 I finally made my first Stealth armor. Once I got to Eldritch, leveling went really well. First on /p3, but after I got to level 30 I could play on /p7 due to the boost by LM and a +1 Sorc skills Orb I got. Next to that I also found some nice rare items, like the helm below, so things were shaping up nicely.
The low fcr wasn't an issue at that point, the perfect mana roll more than welcome . Later on I would also make a second Spirit, this time in a Crystal Sword, which got 33% fcr.
The Insight didn't take much longer. I was about to cube socket an eth Superior Voulge, when a 4os Bill dropped. Perfect !!
Not the best roll out there, especially on the Meditation aura, but it would have to do for that moment. Any Insight is fine at that point !!
Around that time I also found Magefists, which brought me at the 63% fcr. As you can tell from the screenshot, I had been doing some Countess runs to get some much needed runes. After that it was pretty much non stop progress through the rest of Nightmare, often skipping entire parts by teleporting through.
No real drops of note anymore, until I reached the Forge. I definitely got a good drop there:
I leveled up on Eldritch and a bit of Pindle. At level 70 I proceeded to Hell, after 10 hours. Again, that's fast for my untwinked standards.
So far Hell has been ... entertaining. Killing speed still is good on /p1, but TooMuchEnergy remains fragile, and her Merc, even though I switched to a Holy Freeze one, even more so. So I have been mostly been using hit and run tactics, although I can easily stand my ground against weaker enemies. This makes clearing out fallen camps my favourite activity with TooMuchEnergy in Hell .
I have grabbed the Outer Cloister waypoint and I'm now doing Countess runs, hoping for some good runes. No luck yet, with a Fal as only decent mid quality rune. I'm mainly looking for a Lum rune and a 4os Staff for Memory on switch, and then another one for Lionheart or Smoke, to up my resists. A Lem, so I can make Treachery for my merc, would also be nice.
Gearwise I'm using the usual suspects Spirit/Rhyme, Lore and Stealth. Rest consists of rares, except for the Magefists.
I'm not sure how I'll proceed. Probably some more Countess runs, then quest further through the game. Initially the plan was to stop at AS to level and hope for good runes, but seeing how I already struggle in early Act 1, I probably won't be able to run that area properly. So I might (I never thought I'd say this) proceed to LK right away and start hitting those chests.
As far as skills go, I have maxed CB, Lightning and LM. Currently I have been alternating points between Telekinesis and ES. After those are maxed, I'll put remaining points into Warmth. I hope that ES will start to work better when I get both ES and Telekinesis maxed out, and I get more +skills. For now even a few hits from normal monsters drain my mana too much to my liking.
I'll try to add a screenshot of the screen filled with Charged Bolts next time. Like I said in my previous post, it's just so visually pleasing !!!
Nice going @T72on1! I'm also being carried away a bit with Lucid. I meant to post another update after RFL is over, but figured it's warranted given good drops and good XP progress, moving to 97.3. The Merc setup is living up to expectations, though this drop after RFL made me briefly think about CoH again:
Almost missed this one – only saw it when going back form A1 to grab an XP shrine before killing Diablo. One of those "I wonder how often I missed drops like this" moments.
For now I'm happy with the Andy + Forti Merc, and I'm not sure whether Ber'ed Shako is worth it at this point (given I will likely run Nihl for 98-99 and might want to socket Shako with Sol then).
So I'm thinking best use is eventually making a backup Enigma as part of his corpse recovery kit.
No SoJ/BKWB in sight and crafting amulets still didn't provide a 2/10 (now at 210 amulets crafted), but I keep at it. In the meantime I tried to craft an FCR/life/FR ring and actually succeeded, albeit with low rolls:
Other drops and crafts included a 2/20 Necro circlet with useful adds (plus another 2/20 P&B one), Metalgrid #3 and a pretty cool Barb 2 WC/9 FCR/25 MF amulet:
Since it's been a while since I recorded some gameplay, here's a couple of P8/P7 CS/Diablo runs:
Only two XP shrines in this batch of runs with ~6.5m XP/h. So far I still really enjoy CS runs and they're quite comfortable with >3800 life and 75@ (80 FR). I dropped to ~210 MF for now but maybe I'll include some more if I don't encounter any dangerous situations for a long time.
So, now let's get SoJ/BKWB. In fact I might go for a few Andariel runs at some point since he hasn't found Nature's Peace yet either (which would be handy if running Nihl for 98-99).
@Pb_pal Yeah that Diablo screenshot is really neat.
@ffs 3800 hitpoints? My fully twinked Hammerdin is at 3100. I'll have to compare gear to see what causes the difference. Although 3100 feels safe most of the time. Surely paired with max block and 95% Fire Res.
Well I only have few skillers (2x Combat, 1x OA) plus Gheed's, so that leaves a lot of room for life SCs. I'd assume yours probably uses more skillers. Getting +6 BO on second CtA roll helped of course.
Waterwalk add quite a bit as well (up to 65 life plus 15 Dex = 15 Vit = 45 life before BO). They also get me to 80 max FR, which is convenient but IMO it's not really that important either. The way I think about it is that fire damage from Infector is not dangerous at all unless he rolls Conviction, and if he does that brings me below 75 anyway so max FR doesn't help all that much...
Sweet map and even better playing @ffs I like the approach to taking out de Seis, the extra hit points help for sure, but you do a really nice job of allowing his pack to come toward the pally to make telestomping safe. And amazing progress on the XP front
Heh, yeah I found that's the best way to approach De Seis. Simply too dangerous to teleport right in there no matter how tanky, and let alone for Merc. It can still get hairy though when he spawns around my usually safe landing spot after popping his seal, but that only happened 2-3 times so far. His minions walking through hammers back and forth moreover means most of them drop and provide XP (whereas normally hammers are prone to miss those knights with their small hitboxes in comparison to other monster types in CS).
I use a similar approach for all three seals most of the times: teleport, spam some hammers, reposition by teleporting onze, spam more hammers. Makes me miss far less enemies and usually they die faster too .
I'm just going to put it out there now; a CS hammerdin is by far the most relaxed, simple and reliable endgame runners that I've used, especially if you're going for 99.
Sometimes you just get lucky. I guess that's what happens when the drop gods don't treat you well during a tournament .
Things started out really well for TooMuchEnergy, who went on to do Countess runs, when a white Monarch dropped in one of the first runs, and that very Monarch, only her second one, got 4os in the Cube.
Big chance obviously, as that allowed her to get to the 105% fcr breakpoint. I had to use a respec to get her to 156 strength, but that shouldn't be too much of a big deal.
Not much later I first got this one from the Countess:
This brings TooMuchEnergy to more qualifiers than I got in the 12 hours spent on RFL3. So yeah . But hey, I don't mind TooMuchEnergy making up for some lesser luck in the tournament.
It didn't stop there though. I decided to push on, so I teleported through Act 1, killed Andariel, and did the same in Act 2. Arriving in AS, I had a drop I had definitely hoped for, but to get this so soon, without any mf runs at all ...
Terrible 21/10 roll, but even then it's such a great drop to get, untwinked, at this stage already.
AS went well, but not good enough to do some dedicated running, so I only did a few runs before proceeding to Duriel, who had a bit of a funny drop ...
Act 3 was uneventful, just picking up the parts to assemble the flail, get the flail itself and proceed to Mephisto. I didn't even kill all the council members, as my merc still dies when monsters come a bit too close. Meph actually wasn't too hard luckily enough.
Btw, I had my first elite unique drop in Travincal:
Not useful for her, but always nice to get nonetheless.
Act 4 was easy for the first part, as I found Izual right away and didn't get any Gloams. Forge only was a Ko rune, luck couldn't keep lasting . CS was hard, or better, slow, because I had to use hit and run tactics all the time to keep the merc alive. I also had to do it twice, because for some stupid reason I hit esc just before taking on the last seal, and clicked on S&E.
In Act 5 I only went to Eldritch so far. Ran him a few times, but he isn't worth it for now. /p1 goes easy, but doesn't give much xp. /p3 is possible for my Sorc, but again my merc dies too easily.
So after some more Countess runs, in which I got 2 Lum runes and a Lem, and also got to level 79, I'll be rerolling maps and start doing LK runs for a while. I also hope to find a base for Treachery for my merc and one for Memory for myself on switch. This might not be needed if that Ohm drops fast enough, although of course I forgot to pick up any CtA bases ...
TooMuchEnergy died two more times. She still feels fragile, although it's better now that I have more points into ES and TK, as well as a bigger mana pool and more +skills. So I have good hopes that I won't die much anymore now.
Plus a few more in the Pul-Mal range. I was hoping to include a haul with RFL drops, which haven't too shabby either... but @Grape is too slow so it will have to wait a bit longer!
This 97.3 to 97.5 stretch was big overall, with very cool S&U drops including Metalgrid #4 (!), eth Titan's #2 (!), two +3 skill/2os Heaven's Light and my first ever eth Andy's. He also got a Nature's Peace, just in time to make Nihl runs possible for 98-99, and made a second Enigma for his corpse recovery kit with the Ber from the last update.
Still no amulet craft upgrade (now at #235) nor skillers or + skill ring, but that's fine. Pretty happy with his current setup, very safe and fast. Busy weekend but at his pace I should still find some time to hit 98 within a couple of weeks. In my mind I'm already preparing to compare Hammerdin vs. Smiter setups for Nihl.
Right off the bat he found a LoH and this nice little ring:
both of which were of course immediately equipped. I'm hoping to find lots of his end-game mid-tier S/U along the way rather than farming them specifically, so it's a very appreciated find. He then found an Um (nice!), and another couple levels later right after he hit 83, his 2nd Um rune dropped.
Cubing time!
6 Ko made the 2 Fals we needed to add to our previously found one one and make a 3rd Lem. 3 Lems and the 2 Ums made a Pul and Mal, leaving Stevesy ultimately with:
The base is nowhere near ideal (neither is his first one!), but that doesn't matter as these are just temporary weapons anyways. Stevesy's rune stores are completely depleted, so it's time for some questing!
Killing actually went smoothly now (relatively to before anyways), so Radament, Coldworm, and Fangskin all dropped easily before Stevesy offed Duriel and took on the jungles. Sszark soon fell and before he knew it, Stevesy had killed Stormtree and cleared all the way to the Trav WP. Sadly, trav is not runnable right now as both Stevesy and merc are way too squishy, even on /p1. Bit of a shame since he's going LK-less, so Trav is his go-to spot (hopefully) for HRs.
He's going to break there for now, and come up with a game plan in the meantime. Most likely he'll level a bit in the Pits while looking for some items/bases for his future self.
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