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

@Yng Haha not bad for a day's work! If you have no other plans after Shako, personally I'd Cham an Andariel's Visage or some other Merc headpiece.

@NamelessPenguin Yeah clearing Baal waves can be annoying ;) but at least it's safe. Theoretically I could run Nihl for 97-98, it needs to be about 9x faster than Baal runs for the same XP gain, and In my case with a subpar Nihl map the factor is roughly 7x, probably around 8x with a better map. So while it's worse, it's not like it's a complete waste of time, but Baal is safer and still a little more efficient. Also I'll be running Nihl more than enough at some point, so I'm sticking with the big guy for now. :)
 
"I could get used to this, Ithera. A comfortable lodge, wintery days."
"Well... I suppose I can overlook the massive crater that's about to be outside our window. But you're cooking."

View attachment 7100

Destroyer Araphel struck the last blow on Baal just short of hitting level 49 (a complete p8 run through Normal with a few Act IV visits to accumulate gems and runes for Cupe recipes - seemed to get good drop rates there). Nothing fancy; Stealth (Ghost Armor), Lore (War Hat) and a Mojo wand from Malah's shop. Ithera's Christmas gift was an Edge on a Razor Bow (found broken and Cubed to a functional state).

She insists she'd like to see me use my Bone Spear more often. Not sure if it's a line or she's just hinting she wants a Brand runeword in the distant future...

Off to look for a good Rhyme base before moving on to Nightmare. So far, so good. :)
 
@ffs Yeah, I'm also sticking with the big crab, because if I remember correct, it takes about 13K Nihl runs from 98 to 99 :eek: But, If you can get the time down to (using @zticazzy Perkele's run time) ~40 sec, it takes 145 hours, compared to 3000 Baal runs at 3.20 min, it clocks in at 167 hours...damn, thought Nilly was faster than that. Numbers are very rough, though, since I don't really know the exact ones :D
 
I got my run times for Nihl at 33 seconds on average, and I'm definitely not the fastest runner out there. I think others who have ran Nihl for that last level 'only' needed some 100 - 120 hours.
 
@Yng -- Congrats on the Cham and the level. Also nice progress @Dezrok, @ffs (on the second character), and @Xul's Gull .

On the discussion about the last level, if you’re averaging 2.5M/hr, it should be around 116 hours (only :rolleyes:). But it’s less if you’ve saved Ancients! I haven’t focused as much on seconds per run, but Mercy was a little faster that 2.5M/hr for the last fifth. It’s faster than other options in absolute terms, but it also feels less slog-y for me because it’s different from what was used for 94-98 (which is only marginally less total time that that last level). @Kitteh had the same target for the last level, so I understand the different take there.

As for Hiatus, she’s a tenth of the way closer. This stretch was very smooth and uneventful, also with less exciting drops than last update. A double unique drop in the first couple million yielded a Mara’s upgrade, replacing the 27@ that she lost due to her mishap (scourge was another Horizon’s):
Code: 
Mara's Kaleidoscope
Amulet
Required Level: 67
Fingerprint: 0x81064460
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+2 to All Skills
All Stats +5
All Resistances +27
Then it was a whole lot of nothing for almost the next 20M, except her second lightning skiller, which resulted in some charm swapping, a slight dip in HP, but slightly faster runs due to Nihl dropping quicker. Things picked up over the last bit with Ist #2, Mal #6, and Mal #7. In the last two million she had the only other drops worth screenies: another Halaberd’s and Griz Caddy (grailer for her). Two Puls dropped during the dry spell, plus a Greyform. She also found a couple ethereal items that contribute to my overall eth grail.

We’re heading out of town this week through the weekend, so progress will slow down at least through next weekend. Good luck to everyone!
 
How is this done, though - the Ancients' skip, I mean? I only remember reading somewhere that there's an absolute minimum level you should be in so you don't "waste" their XP at each difficulty.
 
No, it's just a matter of not advancing to Hell Ancients and only doing them after you have hit 98. This is only possible if you don't do Baal runs obviously. Most of the 99er runners do 2 Seal bosses in Chaos Sanctuary for 4 levels or so before 98, but some are better of with Baal runs. For those it's not possible to wait with Ancients until 98.
 
No, player setting doesn't influence xp, nor do the usual xp penalties at these levels. Just straight up 40M. Gotta love it :).
 
That's why it's such a great bonus to hold until the last level.

For Nihl runners, it will save around 1700 runs (assuming the character kills more than just Nihl and minus XP shrines -- single target attack would be closer to 1800). For characters running Diablo, it's around 780 runs worth, not counting XP shrines.

Credit to @NanoMist for the XP tables from this post. Any errors in maths on the numbers above are mine :rolleyes:.
 
Yeah as I've noted before, discovering that post by @NanoMist was extremely helpful for me as well -- saved countless hours of timing and comparing different areas/types of runs and tracking experience numbers. That is, assuming the numbers are right. :P Very easy to quickly calculate XP gain efficiency with only these numbers and your own run times.

Haven't played too much these last days, but managed to make some progress with HelpYourself, she is about 40% of lvl 98 currently. Regarding drops the level started out nicely, but she's sort of having a dry spell recently, so I'll post another update when there's more to report on, probably just at lvl 98. Still hoping to get there before the end of the year, though of course there's a lot of stuff going on this month so I'm not sure I'll be able to do it. I'm joining this little competition in order to keep up the pace. Finishing those 20hrs should get her very close to 98 already, and hopefully a couple of nice things will drop. Even though she's obviously not an MF powerhouse. :)
 
@NanoMist's calculations matched my actual numbers for Nihl and p1/p7 Diablo at lvl 98 almost exactly. I had done my own calculations before he posted that but had forgotten to include the experience cap/bug/whatever it is.

@Kitteh -- the two seal routine is the Gripphon run as described in this post. Teleport to the star in the middle and hit Vizier and Infector seals only, killing any other boss packs between the star and their seals. I believe a number of people have confirmed it's the fastest leveling approach for 94-98 (except with certain characters like trappers).

@ffs -- good luck in the mini-tournament. Mercy got almost all the way to 98 during the first round of RFL with her 20-hour set (she was also doing Baal runs). I think she started from 97.25 or so, and your runs seem to be faster than hers were. So the odds luck good if you finish a full 20-hour set. :)
 
Some good bookmark material being posted here, thanks @PhineasB

Although I’ll probably still personally test every facet of leveling along the way, there’s a beautiful thing about doing something yourself haha
 
@PhineasB If Mercy made it from 97.25 to pretty much 98 in 20 hours I believe that's faster than my runs actually. The Baal runs I timed with HelpYourself ranged from between some 2m10s (empty throne room, things go according to plan) to 2m45s (annoying throne room, Baal teleporting several times etc.). I haven't timed enough runs to get a reliable average run time though tbh, but my estimate is it's pretty close to 2.5 minutes. Probably a bit more since of course the perfect scenario happens to occurs way less often than the most annoying scenario, at least it feels like it. ;) But based on that the ~1050 runs needed for 97-98 would take ~44 hours, so 20 hours would be pretty close to 50%. Factoring in I'm not always playing fully concentrated and efficiently, it's even less. :) Let's see where I'll be after the next 20 hours!
 
Heh, my memory was waay off. Checked the write-ups, and she was just over 98.5 when RFL started, and ended up 77 runs short of 98. She averaged around 3:40-3:45, so I knew I'd mixed things up when you shared your numbers and said Mercy must have been faster. I'd say 2.5 minutes per run average is pretty quick for sure!
 
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