The Untwinked Level 99 Progress Thread, Revenge of the 99ers

[Old_Frog]

I make De Seis look like a punk on /p5 at level 90. It's Infector's group that hassles me at that difficulty level, so I usually pop that seal and take on Diablo at /p3 to save some time and big purples. Diablo really focuses on Njord due to his high elemental damage I'm guessing.

 

[Kitteh1]

@zticazzy - Yikes! He sure knows how to greet his friends, that's for sure. What gear set up have you decided on, or are you still testing? I assumed EBotD + offhand Beast would be best, but it would be cool to know how the other combos/gear worked too.

--

After hitting 97, I had to make a pretty tough decision with Eleanor. With the upcoming MFO she will be converting to Blova (thanks again @Grape for the suggestion!) and running Baal. There is very little chance that I'll have enough time to get to 98 before then, so it looks like Eleanor will be hitting the Ancients "early" and moving on to Baal to find a good map and get used to the build and runs before the MFO arrives. First though, it's time to look at some numbers and theorycrafting!

After some testing with my other sorceress, I've decided once and for all (I think..) that it doesn't make any sense to get an Infinity for Eleanor for either CS runs, Diablo runs, or Baal runs. I do believe it could be slightly quicker with an Infinity (Baal especially), but the convenience of having essentially infinite mana from Insight is just more valuable for me personally. Not to say this would be the case for everyone, but for me it stands.

Before we bit the bullet and converted, we did some running in the CS to see what the numbers looked like:

Spoiler: Chaos Sanctuary

These runs are standard "Gripphon Run" style, killing only The Infector and Grand Vizier packs, as well as convenient boss packs along the way. CI bosses and champ packs (unless stacked on a boss pack and killed by consequence) are ignored. One thing to note is that my previous map usually had 2-4 extra boss packs per run, whereas I seem to have rolled a rather bare-bones version this time, averaging only ~1 additional pack per run. Probably not an optimal setup for XP gains, but for now having it so straightforward is kind of nice (and great for data collection!).

XP Numbers:

65595.4 XP/run
53.72 s/run
73263.66 XP/minute

These numbers seem to line up nicely with @NanoMist's previous data, which is nice. (Thanks again for those Nanomist, great resource!)

We then used up a respec and converted to Blova to test out some Baal runs:

Spoiler: Baal

These runs were done as /p1 Throne + first 2 Waves (for easy skelly clearing), /p8 final 3 waves, /p3 Baal.

XP Numbers:

215593.8 XP/run
212 s/run (anywhere from 3:15-4 minutes, depending on throne spawns and CI Lister)
61017.11 XP/min

Again, very very close to Nanomist's numbers from his data (213203, for comparison on the same type of run)

So as you can see, CS is a fair bit quicker for Eleanor in terms of leveling speed. This isn't surprising as it's been pointed out on several other occasions, but it's always nice to be able to say once again that @Gripphon was right all along!

Basically, to be as efficient at Baals as she is at the CS, she would have to average just under 3 minutes per run, which just isn't possible with her current gear set. If I were to try leveling from 97-98 start to finish on pure Baals, it would take ~11 hours extra with my current numbers. Luckily for me, the free 40M from the Ancients knocks the difference down to only 0.2 hours in favour of the CS. That's nice, since it makes it sting less using the quest early, although I'm sure I won't be saying the same thing when I can't use it on 98.

Now for some details about her actual journey! Since we had decided on not getting an Infinity, it meant we didn't need her LK map anymore. We popped back into NM and socketed her Fathom with an Ist to give us a little MF boost (up to 160 now). We're hoping to find ourselves a nice golden Shako before the MFO hits, but we're not holding our breath. She did, however, FINALLY find an Arachnid Mesh! This means her jewelery slots are now free to be used however she pleases, which is a welcome change.

After an easy rout of the Ancients, Eleanor finally became a Matriarch at the young age of 97, with a pretty decent drop (the valor is +2 all skills) and a Baal Charm to boot.

.
I wish I could keep the valor, but i had to mule it off due to space constraints. So @Kitteh, there's my new most painful thing to let go of, just in case you're keeping track

In case anyone is wondering, after the respec she is rocking:

6-6.2k Blizzard
1.3-1.8k Nova

Other than that, nothing too exciting. She got herself a decent Baal map and has been getting used to the runs so that we can hopefully go on full-out robot mode for the MFO. Not to mention the change of scenery from the CS is nice too!

Other finds:
- Sur
- Lo

Happy running everyone!

I certainly am haha I just enjoy the suffering of my fellow players

 

[T72on1]

... For sorcs, I had wondered if doing P1 De Seis was worth it to get to Diablo. Reason being that P7 Diablo provides experience equivalent to P8 Vizier + Infector at level 97. But De Seis is still dangerous even at P1 setting. Maybe not worth it from a risk/gain perspective. ...

Even at level 95 I have already been including Diablo in my CS runs for a while now, whenever Infector doesn't spawn CI. Probably not the most efficient thing to do, but for me it breaks some of the monotony of straight Vizier + Infector runs. De Seis at /p1 is something to be careful around, but he's not too hard, at least not for my Sorc, if I play careful. I'm some 15 - 20 runs from reaching level 96 now, and haven't had a death since reaching level 95 and doing only CS runs, so in that respect it has been a good strategy for me.

@Pb_pal Congrats on becoming Matriarch. I sometimes am tempted to proceed to Baal as well with my Sorc, to be able to mix my CS runs with Baal runs. Your number crunching once again shows that I shouldn't, so I won't. After I hit level 96, I might take a break from CS and just do LK instead. Not that I would need any HRs at this point, but it would be a good change of pace, and you never know what other useful stuff like some more skillers might drop there. Then after that I could do the MFO with my Sorc (either AT or Pindle), after which I'd return to CS.

At least that's the theory. I've been known to change my mind in the past ... a lot ...

@Southpaw8668 Do you have maxed fire res? I used to have problems in the CS, until I got 75% fire res. Now I can usually stand just behind my merc and kill things fine from there. The occasional physical attack still hurts, but if playing carefully, that doesn't happen too much.

 

[hasuprotoss1]

The quest for HotO is over! After a good number of hours running LK finding nothing more than a few Lems, I finally found the Gul I needed! 4 Mals, 2 Amethysts, a Sapphire, a Ruby, and that Gul became the last rune for Heart of the Oak I needed. 32 on the Resistance roll but it's good enough for me currently!

 

[d2ayyy]

The quest for HotO is over! After a good number of hours running LK finding nothing more than a few Lems, I finally found the Gul I needed! 4 Mals, 2 Amethysts, a Sapphire, a Ruby, and that Gul became the last rune for Heart of the Oak I needed. 32 on the Resistance roll but it's good enough for me currently!

Grats dude!

 

[Old_Frog]

@T72on1 Do you have maxed fire res? I used to have problems in the CS, until I got 75% fire res. Now I can usually stand just behind my merc and kill things fine from there. The occasional physical attack still hurts, but if playing carefully, that doesn't happen too much.
Yes 75 @resists and I always stay right on the rear of the Grizzly and mercenary, which is quite safe usually. Unless the creeps are extra fast, which makes it more tricky to hit them with Tornados and Hurricane. I'm guessing it's because Infector usually amps us quite often and that breaks our fire resistance and his group attacks quickly swarming us. The Tornados don't seem to pound them nearly as fast as the majority of all the other non-PI monsters in CS.

 

[zticazzy]

@Pb_pal yes, testing has come to an end, and the winner is conc ebotd + beast. I also tried conc etomby and frenzy dual ebotd, the first had huge damage (nihla down in 5 hits sometimes) but low life and missed hits, the latter... well, that was a mistake, let's forget it.
Ebotd + beast is actually the best combo for several reasons: 12% extra life leech, faster confuse triggering, fana AR and -25% target defense -> hit and leech more, lower reqs -> more vita. As fast as etomby, but safer and with a huge lifebulb. If I'll ever make enigma in breastplate I'll be able to respec my hardpoints like this: str=0 / dex=0 / ene=0 / vita=all. Cool huh?
About the safety gear like the everlasting ammy and vamp: no need for those, just give delirium to merc and hope for the best. I've already died once to this bug, so I'll most likely fire the moron someday and wear the helm myself.

 

[T72on1]

@T72on1 Do you have maxed fire res? I used to have problems in the CS, until I got 75% fire res. Now I can usually stand just behind my merc and kill things fine from there. The occasional physical attack still hurts, but if playing carefully, that doesn't happen too much.
Yes 75 @resists and I always stay right on the rear of the Grizzly and mercenary, which is quite safe usually. Unless the creeps are extra fast, which makes it more tricky to hit them with Tornados and Hurricane. I'm guessing it's because Infector usually amps us quite often and that breaks our fire resistance and his group attacks quickly swarming us. The Tornados don't seem to pound them nearly as fast as the majority of all the other non-PI monsters in CS.

Amp doesn't break your fire res, it only has an effect on physical damage. But yeah, once you are amped (which happens a lot in the CS, due to all the cursing around), any physical hit hits really hard.

Infector and his minions almost always focus on my merc. As a result I only get hit by their fire breath attacks, not by their physical hits, so the latter usually aren't a problem. However, this attacking priority might be different in your case, which obviously would make it a lot harder.

Also, Infector dies quite fast for me. The trick is not to use Glacial Spike or Ice Blast, but just Blizzard and then Static. Due to the fact that they keep moving, they die a lot faster to Blizzard. If I freeze them with GS or IB, this is not the case.

 

[Pb_pal1]

About the safety gear like the everlasting ammy and vamp: no need for those, just give delirium to merc and hope for the best. I've already died once to this bug, so I'll most likely fire the moron someday and wear the helm myself.

Any reasonable chance of getting a body back down there with a non-sorc (ie no native teleport), or is it a lost cause?

 

[zticazzy]

Any reasonable chance of getting a body back down there with a non-sorc (ie no native teleport), or is it a lost cause?

When I died I was still experimenting and with a very low exp margin, so I didn't even care to try to recover the body. IMHO if you died to vipers once they can kill you and your merc again with ease, so taking a chance against them seems very hazardous. Luckily there are some crowd control tools like delirium and howl that could be useful, but I hope I won't ever need to find out if they work.

 

[Tenecabo1]

I finally had the time to play a bit more (first time dad to a 5 month old = very limited time) and my wife asked me to log on LOTRO to check something. Seems like I was tired enough to forget to escape in the middle of mobs in act 2. Oh well. Next try will be a SC for now, a wolf druid since I wanted one to pvp with anyway .

Name (F)     Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy     Perkele         SC      Barb      98             No            -          -            -           -
NanoMist     Izuna           SC      Sin       97             No         1458        391            2         175
Pb_pal       Eleanor         SC      Sorc      97             No         1194        354            5           -
T72on1       Neverland       SC      Sorc      95             Yes         459        232           11          65
PhineasB     Mercy           SC      Sin       94             Yes           -        273            9           -
hasuprotoss  Reina           SC      Sorc      94             Yes         503        255            -           -
Tarantella   Tarasha         HC      Sorc      93             Yes           -          -            -           -
Southpaw     Njord           SC      Druid     90             Yes           -          -            -           -
OldSoldier   Battleforge     HC      Pala      90             Yes           -        236            -           -
Gambit       Mallenroh       SC      Sorc      81             Yes           0          0            0           0
XyleneCyanol Fishie          HC      Sorc      80             No            -          -            -           -
logo         Digimon         HC      Nec       76             Yes          85         65            0           -
Darke Rahl   Bells           HC      Ama       74             No           19          -            0           0
Kitteh       Cyanosis        HC      Assassin  45             No            -          -            -           -
Gambit       Colossus        SC      Pal       39             YES           0          0            0           0
Smancer      Smancer         SC      Necro     26             Yes           1          -            -           -
Ergroilnin  Erilinda         HC      Sorc      20             No            -          -            -           -

[highlight]The Fallen:[/highlight]

Name (F)    Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coju        NintyNine_orRiP HC      Sorc      81             Yes           -          0            0         a few
Tenecabo    OldShatterhand  HC      Druid     49             Yes           -          0            1           -
coju        fB              HC      Sorc      29             Yes           1          1            0           2
Kitteh      Verallus        HC      Druid     26             No          N/A        N/A            0          N/A
logo        Rolex           HC      Barb      21             Yes           0          0            0           1

 

[T72on1]

@Tenecabo Ouch, that's no fun . Condolences. Good luck with the Wolf Druid !!! Not sure which road exactly you want to go, but I surely had a lot of fun with my Grief Fury / Rabies Wolf. Probably my fastest killing melee character.

Neverland finally hit level 96. It took me 23.5 hours to go from 95 to 96, including 4 hours and 45 minutes of LK runs and a bit of crafting. Looking at numbers which Gripphon posted in the 'road to 99 theorycrafting thread', that's really slow. But then again, I'm only starting to get the hang of it, and I don't have near the gear that he did. Also, keeping rescue gear in my stash and keeping every single S/U means I have limited space there, so I have to mule away to GoMule quite often. I might be better of just keeping track of all S/U, instead of actually keeping them. No deaths involved on the road to 96, so that's definitely a very good thing .

I already posted pics of my finds from 95 to 96 earlier in this thread. In the last stretch to 96 the only noteworthy finds were a Stormshield and a near perfect String of Ears (8% ll, 15% DR and 15 MDR, but 'only' some 165% ED).

The items I found most so far are:

1) Cathan's Seal: 20
2) Isenhart's Case: 16
3) Tancred's Crowbill: 15
4) Isenhart's Lightbrand: 15
5) Angelic Halo: 11

So the same top 2 as I think Nanomist and Pb_pal a while back. The uniques I found most are Ironstone and Venom Ward, both of which I found 7 times. Just as much as the IK Maul .

Like I said earlier, I'm not sure what I'll do at this point. Either continue CS runs, some LK running, already some practicing for the MFO, start another character as a break, take a short break from D2 alltogehter, ... The latter isn't very likely though ... . And I'm actually still not bored of doing CS runs at all, I'm actually starting to get better at them at times. I just would hate it to build up xp now, only to loose it in the MFO if I'd die. But maybe the chance of that happening isn't too big at /p1?

Name (F)     Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy     Perkele         SC      Barb      98             No            -          -            -           -
NanoMist     Izuna           SC      Sin       97             No         1458        391            2         175
Pb_pal       Eleanor         SC      Sorc      97             No         1194        354            5           -
T72on1       Neverland       SC      Sorc      96             Yes         781        301           11          89
PhineasB     Mercy           SC      Sin       94             Yes           -        273            9           -
hasuprotoss  Reina           SC      Sorc      94             Yes         503        255            -           -
Tarantella   Tarasha         HC      Sorc      93             Yes           -          -            -           -
Southpaw     Njord           SC      Druid     90             Yes           -          -            -           -
OldSoldier   Battleforge     HC      Pala      90             Yes           -        236            -           -
Gambit       Mallenroh       SC      Sorc      81             Yes           0          0            0           0
XyleneCyanol Fishie          HC      Sorc      80             No            -          -            -           -
logo         Digimon         HC      Nec       76             Yes          85         65            0           -
Darke Rahl   Bells           HC      Ama       74             No           19          -            0           0
Kitteh       Cyanosis        HC      Assassin  45             No            -          -            -           -
Gambit       Colossus        SC      Pal       39             YES           0          0            0           0
Smancer      Smancer         SC      Necro     26             Yes           1          -            -           -
Ergroilnin  Erilinda         HC      Sorc      20             No            -          -            -           -

[highlight]The Fallen:[/highlight]

Name (F)    Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coju        NintyNine_orRiP HC      Sorc      81             Yes           -          0            0         a few
Tenecabo    OldShatterhand  HC      Druid     49             Yes           -          0            1           -
coju        fB              HC      Sorc      29             Yes           1          1            0           2
Kitteh      Verallus        HC      Druid     26             No          N/A        N/A            0          N/A
logo        Rolex           HC      Barb      21             Yes           0          0            0           1

 

[Brak]

you could run RoF Superchests

 

[Lord Molybdenum]

Hello, is this thing working? I've been locked out of my account for months.

I think I might try getting to level 99 for the first time. I've only ever reached level ~84. I think I'm going to start a necromancer and/or an assassin.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@T72on1 - Congrats on 96! Don't worry about those Gripp times, even with my almost 10k blizz I was nowhere near him. The main difference is that we are all human, and he is Gripp.

@Tenecabo - Sorry about the deeds, good luck on your next go!

@Lord Molybdenum - Good luck!

 

[T72on1]

@Lord Molybdenum Cool !!! Good luck . Hc or Sc?

 

[Lord Molybdenum]

Decided on Necro named Cruise_Control, SC, level 15, 1 hour so far.
No extended stash (dunno how), 1 S/U (Cleglaw's claw), what's a grail? perfect S/U item?, no deaths yet 'cause I'm not that bad.

 

[Malevolent]

Decided on Necro named Cruise_Control, SC, level 15, 1 hour so far.
No extended stash (dunno how), 1 S/U (Cleglaw's claw), what's a grail? perfect S/U item?, no deaths yet 'cause I'm not that bad.

A grail item is just a S/U item that you previously didn't have. So to complete a grail you need to find every S/U in the game. The next Cleglaws's claw you find will increase your S/U count, but not your grail count.

 

[Lord Molybdenum]

Oh, that makes way more sense.

Name (F)          Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lord Molybdenum   Cruise_Control   SC     Nec         23            No          3           3           3              3.5

 

[hasuprotoss1]

Halfway to 95! Reina hasn't died since we've made the switch to Heart of the Oak and Chains of Honor (turns out maxed out resistances are really awesome...), although we've had a few close calls. Found out that the xp in AT is still coming in quite quickly as well, so we bounce back and forth between killing Vizier/Infector and clearing out the bosses in AT. The number of bosses seems super variable in my current map though, but with a pretty good LK I'm not willing to reroll it yet in case I do want to farm up an Infinity.

Onto the finds since last time!:

An improved Insight for Durga. Unfortunately, we haven't found a good ethereal polearm for him to use, but this is an upgrade over his previous Halberd (and a higher Meditation roll, too!)

Hitting a few corpses while trying to reroll a decent LK map...

The Gul that would become the Vex...

A few steps away...

Beautiful! Reina loves it!

Another beautiful upgrade!

Sadly no skill charms in the LK running but Reina is fine with her damage being half of Eleanor's... for now!

Name (F)     Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy     Perkele         SC      Barb      98             No            -          -            -           -
NanoMist     Izuna           SC      Sin       97             No         1458        391            2         175
Pb_pal       Eleanor         SC      Sorc      97             No         1194        354            5           -
T72on1       Neverland       SC      Sorc      96             Yes         781        301           11          89
PhineasB     Mercy           SC      Sin       94             Yes           -        273            9           -
hasuprotoss  Reina           SC      Sorc      94             Yes         801        305            -           -
Tarantella   Tarasha         HC      Sorc      93             Yes           -          -            -           -
Southpaw     Njord           SC      Druid     90             Yes           -          -            -           -
OldSoldier   Battleforge     HC      Pala      90             Yes           -        236            -           -
Gambit       Mallenroh       SC      Sorc      81             Yes           0          0            0           0
XyleneCyanol Fishie          HC      Sorc      80             No            -          -            -           -
logo         Digimon         HC      Nec       76             Yes          85         65            0           -
Darke Rahl   Bells           HC      Ama       74             No           19          -            0           0
Kitteh       Cyanosis        HC      Assassin  45             No            -          -            -           -
Gambit       Colossus        SC      Pal       39             YES           0          0            0           0
Smancer      Smancer         SC      Necro     26             Yes           1          -            -           -
Lord Molybdenum Cruise_Control SC    Nec       23             No            3          3            3           3.5
Ergroilnin  Erilinda         HC      Sorc      20             No            -          -            -           -

[highlight]The Fallen:[/highlight]

Name (F)    Name (C)       SC/HC   Class   Level/exp   Extended Stash   #of S/U   Grail/504   #of deaths   # of Hours
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
coju        NintyNine_orRiP HC      Sorc      81             Yes           -          0            0         a few
Tenecabo    OldShatterhand  HC      Druid     49             Yes           -          0            1           -
coju        fB              HC      Sorc      29             Yes           1          1            0           2
Kitteh      Verallus        HC      Druid     26             No          N/A        N/A            0          N/A
logo        Rolex           HC      Barb      21             Yes           0          0            0           1