The Untwinked Level 99 Progress Thread, Revenge of the 99ers
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Yeah I know, that makes sense for running CS or getting to Pits, some use it also for Baal, but not so much for these short distances which are more about precision.
Sorry to hear about the mishap, but very happy there was no gear loss. Hiatus had a similar delirium crash when attempting corpse recovery (the second corpse sadly) and lost gear. Due to her gear situation, that wasn't a major loss, but losing Griffon's would have been so painful. But the ridiculous pace of XP gain looks like it will keep things moving quickly nonetheless - kudos for getting right back on the horse. 
I actually wasted one on each of my 99ers by socketing too soon. It was Shako and Andy's for the assassin, and the same for the Sorc (with Andy's abandoned after CS runs ended for 98 and the Shako lost in her mishap). So she actually wasn't using any socketed items for Nihl runs. Having learned my lesson, Phaedrus hasn't used any of them yet (also still waiting for Shako, which will get socketed immediately).
Finally, on the tele-trick, @Pb_pal used it for Nihl with Eleanor as shown in the vid for her 99er writeup, but @NanoMist didn't use it with Izuna. I didn't use it either because I never felt comfortable teleporting down there with limited vision given the potential danger as @ffs discovered (and I never got comfortable going "left" with the character screen as opposed to "right" with the inventory). It definitely would save some time and potentially make it safer to tele due to fewer "jumps" needed, but it also adds lots more key strokes over the 11,000+ runs. I actually abandoned casting BC more to reduce key strokes than anything else. And my left hand/wrist has recently started feeling the effects of hitting Tab (Edit: Alt) over those last several thousand runs to check Nihl's drops, which is prompting a bit of a break from playing. So I am glad I wasn't adding [pinky-to-A] (my hotkey for character screen) and an extra Esc to each run!
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If I recall correctly, I used my 3 socket quests on Shako, Andariel's Visage, and an Eth CV. That was all I needed, so I never regretted socketing that Eth CV.
I'm in the same thought process as PhineasB with extended teleport, it is a bit troublesome with 12k runs. I was also looking for shrines, and I can't lose half of the screen.
I'm in the same thought process as PhineasB with extended teleport, it is a bit troublesome with 12k runs. I was also looking for shrines, and I can't lose half of the screen.
@Yng I also think overall it just gives you more stuff to do without being an actual improvement in the long run. Due to the imprecision of your landing, you need to move the mouse every single time to hit the exit to Halls of Vaught. Sometimes by walking, sometimes by another teleport. That's very tedious in the long run and messes up the "always the same thing" routine and smoothness that you should be looking for when running a target over 10k times. It may save a split-second here and there in the beginning of a session, but that's hard to sustain for extended stretches of running.
Same reasoning for me with as with Travincal runs actually. I know others use it there to teleport back to WP. For me it's not faster there either and I'm exhausted after 10 minutes of running due to every run being slightly different. That's why I only use it for long distances.
Considering you're also losing XP shrines in Halls of Pain, clear-cut decision and no-no for me. But as @Pb_pal showed it can be implemented, so once you get there feel free to use it!
@PhineasB The sad thing is my death would not have occurred had I used it so it may be safer in fact.
I knew Hiatus had that loss of gear, but didn't realize that it was also due to a crash caused by Delirium bug. Oh man that's even more frustrating, had I known that I might have have been more aware of the danger of this happening, was right in front of my nose. Maybe taking the helm away from Delirium Merc when attempting corpse recovery should also be included in your 99er compendium. 
Same reasoning for me with as with Travincal runs actually. I know others use it there to teleport back to WP. For me it's not faster there either and I'm exhausted after 10 minutes of running due to every run being slightly different. That's why I only use it for long distances.
Considering you're also losing XP shrines in Halls of Pain, clear-cut decision and no-no for me. But as @Pb_pal showed it can be implemented, so once you get there feel free to use it!
@PhineasB The sad thing is my death would not have occurred had I used it so it may be safer in fact.
I knew Hiatus had that loss of gear, but didn't realize that it was also due to a crash caused by Delirium bug. Oh man that's even more frustrating, had I known that I might have have been more aware of the danger of this happening, was right in front of my nose.
Maybe taking the helm away from Delirium Merc when attempting corpse recovery should also be included in your 99er compendium. 
ioupain
Well-known member
I don't like using extended teleporting either. I prefer a wider range of vision and the ability to more accurately land on each teleport. In particular, Countess runs require more accurate rather than longer teleports due to the winding nature and corners/dead spots etc. In an open map, it definitely makes more sense but even then, the loss of screen real estate is a bit much for me. Plus, there is the possibility of a misclick and dropping a key item or accidentally assigning stat or skill points.
Table Update
The Fallen
I zipped up my Softcore stashes and characters. Decided that if I am going to do this, I am going to stick to what I played for years: Hardcore.
Pure, THE Fishymancer, was created yesterday evening. He's level 13 and just tackled The Countess. First drop netted a Ral. I'm going to run her for a while longer until I get the runes for Stealth and have enough diamonds to comfortably cube a weapon for an Act 2 Merc.
Plan:
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Corpose Explosion
20 Iron Golem
1 point wonders
I'm going to speed run to Act 5 Normal, completing only the necessary quests and those that give stats/skills. Then I'm going to farm Act 5 Normal until I have the runes for Spirit and Insight. In each of my last 6 untwinked plays I found the runes for each of those fairly quickly. Once I have those runes and I'm leveled to roughly 45, I'm going to move on to Nightmare.
The plan here is to speed rush to Act 5 Nightmare. From there, I'm going to farm NM Andy/Meph/Diablo/Eldritch/Shenk/Pindle/Baal. This is severe overkill but I definitely need to get back into the Hardcore mentality. Once I'm properly leveled (honestly I'm expecting around level 80) and properly geared, I'll move onto Hell.
For Hell, I'm going to slowly make my way to Act 5 and repeat the steps for Nightmare. I'll incorporate Pits into the mix as long as I feel like I have adequate blocking. LK will be added in once resists and blocking are to my standards. I won't be doing LK runs alone. They're just a quick stop incorporated into my already planned MF routine.
Top priority runewords are, in order: CTA, Enigma, Beast, Obedience.
Nightfish's Fishymancer guide was my first experience with Hardcore many years ago. Cheers to him and cheers to the Hardcore forum here and our home channels, Op Gauss and Op XbananaX.
It's been a while since I've played Hardcore. I need to get myself back into the rhythm of things. The last hundred or so hours have been spent playing Softcore. I died. A lot. I'm going to definitely have to relearn some things. I'm sitting on 2 months of time off available to me so I will probably use a few days here and there just to dedicate time to playing. This will probably come later on down the road once I have the gear to run quickly so my time is better utilized.
I like to set deadlines for myself so my expected completion date is August 31st, 2018. I would set it a lot sooner but with my work schedule and the lack of new patrolmen being hired it's looking like my work schedule is going to stay busy.
Side note: Wouldn't it make more sense to separate the SC and HC characters into different tables?
Code:
Name (C) SC/HC Class Level/exp Extended Stash #of S/U Grail/504 #of Deaths # of Hours
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zticazzy Perkele SC Barb 99 No - - - -
Pb_pal Eleanor SC Sorc 99 No 3068 437 5 -
NanoMist Izuna SC Sin 99 No 5109 470 4 360
PhineasB Mercy SC Sin 99 Yes - 475 11 -
PhineasB Hiatus SC Sorc 99 Yes - 471 21 -
Neksja Aura SC Paladin 98.50 Yes 8606 464 - -
T72on1 Neverland SC Sorc 98.25 Yes 2190+? 477 13 270?
ffs HelpYourself SC Sorc 98 Yes - - many ?
hasuprotoss Reina SC Sorc 97 Yes 1751 384 - -
Tarantella Tarasha HC Sorc 96 Yes - - - -
Grim Furious_Blonde SC Ama 96 Yes - - - -
darkstarhub Neptune SC Sorc 96 Yes - 452 - -
XyleneCyanol Fishie HC Sorc 95 No - - - -
ThomasJohnsen xInTheBuffx HC Sorc 95 Yes - - - -
Dezrok Salome SC Sorc 95 Yes 792 318 - -
Yng Sophie SC Sorc 95 Yes - - 7 -
NamelessPenguin Rockatansky SC Barb 95 No - - - -
PhineasB Phaedrus SC Pala 95 Yes - 292 12 -
Gynli Amazon SC Amazon 94 Yes - - many -
Reyz Qty SC Sorc 93 No - - - -
Zenigma Ayura SC Barb 92 No - - - -
Chaostar Prairie SC Sorc 91 Yes 659 261 12 126
OldSoldier Battleforge HC Pala 91 Yes - 236 - -
tokerdin tokeress SC Sorc 91 yes - - - -
Southpaw Njord SC Druid 90 Yes - - - -
Qwernt CanbeOnlyBlizz SC Sorc 90 Yes ? - Dont want to know
MercMan Este SC Ama 90 Yes 1212 278 2 Classified
Me2Nik Fugu HC Ama 90 Yes 80
Lynchgrinch Tattersail SC Sorc 89 Yes ? 321 too many lots
LiquidClear Sally SC Assn ** Yes 225 - 1 -
liquid_mage zDadColdSorc SC Sorc ** Yes - 160 - -
Neksja Turirao SC Druid 87 Yes 191 124 5 -
Gladstone Socrates HC Druid 86 ? - - - -
Zenigma Gnosis SC Druid 86 No - - - -
Lord Molyb Cruise_Control SC Necro 86 No 115 94 19 idk
hackedagain Hugo HC Necro 85 Yes - - -
Naturallog Athos HC Barb 84 No 159 105 0 -
Lord Molyb Verisimilitude SC Ama 83 No 28 25 0 idk
Qwernt AmaAgainstAll SC Sorc 81 Yes - - - -
Gambit Mallenroh SC Sorc 81 Yes 0 0 0 0
Lord Molyb But_Why SC Sin 81 Never 55 51 53
aarrgus Acala SC Barb 80 Yes - - 5 -
Jean Avila SpeedAdict SC Ama 77 No - - - 50
logo Digimon HC Nec 76 Yes 85 65 0 -
TwentyMule Rayne SC Sorc 76 Yes 195 140 ? ?
Gripphon Ryu SC Sorc 76 Yes - - over 9k 13
ffs Ric SC Nec 76 Yes - - - -
Darke Rahl Bells HC Ama 74 No 19 - 0
ioupainmax Durnik SC Paladin 67 Yes 87 61 0 -
Vildecor Celia SC Ama 59 Yes 52 43 0 -
Xul's Gull Araphel HC Necro 54 No ? N/A - -
TrU Henryk SC Barb 41 Yes - - 22 12
Gambit Colossus SC Pal 39 Yes 0 0 0 0
Smancer Smancer SC Necro 26 Yes 1 - - -
BKC FearsomeFreddie SC Nec 23 Yes - - - -
Ergroilnin Erilinda HC Sorc 20 No - - - -
Kitteh Kaylin SC Ama 19 Yes - - 0 -
Sleepybear123 Rob_theBarb HC Barb 29 yes - - - 10
MizzouFTW Pure HC Necro 13 Yes 1 - 0 -The Fallen
Code:
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
TwentyMule Valus HC Barb 76 Yes - - 1 -
Pb_pal Stevesy HC Paladin 76 Yes - - 0 -
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 1I zipped up my Softcore stashes and characters. Decided that if I am going to do this, I am going to stick to what I played for years: Hardcore.
Pure, THE Fishymancer, was created yesterday evening. He's level 13 and just tackled The Countess. First drop netted a Ral. I'm going to run her for a while longer until I get the runes for Stealth and have enough diamonds to comfortably cube a weapon for an Act 2 Merc.
Plan:
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Raise Skeleton
20 Corpose Explosion
20 Iron Golem
1 point wonders
I'm going to speed run to Act 5 Normal, completing only the necessary quests and those that give stats/skills. Then I'm going to farm Act 5 Normal until I have the runes for Spirit and Insight. In each of my last 6 untwinked plays I found the runes for each of those fairly quickly. Once I have those runes and I'm leveled to roughly 45, I'm going to move on to Nightmare.
The plan here is to speed rush to Act 5 Nightmare. From there, I'm going to farm NM Andy/Meph/Diablo/Eldritch/Shenk/Pindle/Baal. This is severe overkill but I definitely need to get back into the Hardcore mentality. Once I'm properly leveled (honestly I'm expecting around level 80) and properly geared, I'll move onto Hell.
For Hell, I'm going to slowly make my way to Act 5 and repeat the steps for Nightmare. I'll incorporate Pits into the mix as long as I feel like I have adequate blocking. LK will be added in once resists and blocking are to my standards. I won't be doing LK runs alone. They're just a quick stop incorporated into my already planned MF routine.
Top priority runewords are, in order: CTA, Enigma, Beast, Obedience.
Nightfish's Fishymancer guide was my first experience with Hardcore many years ago. Cheers to him and cheers to the Hardcore forum here and our home channels, Op Gauss and Op XbananaX.
It's been a while since I've played Hardcore. I need to get myself back into the rhythm of things. The last hundred or so hours have been spent playing Softcore. I died. A lot. I'm going to definitely have to relearn some things. I'm sitting on 2 months of time off available to me so I will probably use a few days here and there just to dedicate time to playing. This will probably come later on down the road once I have the gear to run quickly so my time is better utilized.
I like to set deadlines for myself so my expected completion date is August 31st, 2018. I would set it a lot sooner but with my work schedule and the lack of new patrolmen being hired it's looking like my work schedule is going to stay busy.
Side note: Wouldn't it make more sense to separate the SC and HC characters into different tables?
Not trying to offend anyone but I think a lot of people just don’t have enough experience/comfortability with C/Ting.
@ffs “Imprecision of landing” is a matter of personal mouse control, if you are able to line-up teleports without C/T to land directly on stairs to next levels or get to the next pack in the minimal amount of casts then you can surely do it with C/T as well after you’re accustomed to it, it’s just going to take less teleports to do so. To be blunt it’s roughly a 1/3 a screen further, that’s not quite “saving a split-second” over the course of thousands of runs, especially runs that consist of the majority of your time being spent teleporting. For every 3 teleports you get an extra teleport worth of distance covered. @105 FCR that’s 8 frames per Teleport saved. You're teleporting about 20 times per run with your map. You can save 5 teleports per run or 5*8, 40 frames (1.6 seconds).
If you ran 10000 times to get to 99 (just an example) you would save 16000 seconds. That’s about 4.5 hours. Obviously this is a rough calculation but the point is to show there’s quite a noticeable difference in 33% more distance per Teleport.
On the matter of safety, you’re blind teleporting in your video (directly into packs at some points) to try to get to Nihlathak as quickly as possible and on to the next run. Without C/T, that’s 20 separate instances where you land from your last Teleport and stop for an instant (8 frames) before casting the next— a window to register a hit check from a mob. There’s only 15 “windows” for a hit check per run with C/T.
Like I said before, though, to each his own. If you don’t want to use it that’s fine, but there’s no point in arguing you can’t further stretch your xp/hour by incorporating it, because you certainly can.
@ffs “Imprecision of landing” is a matter of personal mouse control, if you are able to line-up teleports without C/T to land directly on stairs to next levels or get to the next pack in the minimal amount of casts then you can surely do it with C/T as well after you’re accustomed to it, it’s just going to take less teleports to do so. To be blunt it’s roughly a 1/3 a screen further, that’s not quite “saving a split-second” over the course of thousands of runs, especially runs that consist of the majority of your time being spent teleporting. For every 3 teleports you get an extra teleport worth of distance covered. @105 FCR that’s 8 frames per Teleport saved. You're teleporting about 20 times per run with your map. You can save 5 teleports per run or 5*8, 40 frames (1.6 seconds).
If you ran 10000 times to get to 99 (just an example) you would save 16000 seconds. That’s about 4.5 hours. Obviously this is a rough calculation but the point is to show there’s quite a noticeable difference in 33% more distance per Teleport.
On the matter of safety, you’re blind teleporting in your video (directly into packs at some points) to try to get to Nihlathak as quickly as possible and on to the next run. Without C/T, that’s 20 separate instances where you land from your last Teleport and stop for an instant (8 frames) before casting the next— a window to register a hit check from a mob. There’s only 15 “windows” for a hit check per run with C/T.
Like I said before, though, to each his own. If you don’t want to use it that’s fine, but there’s no point in arguing you can’t further stretch your xp/hour by incorporating it, because you certainly can.
ioupain
Well-known member
@Yng I can certainly accept that I have limited experience C/Ting and yes, it would be more efficient. For me, there's several other considerations, some of which you have touched on:
- Muscle memory - I do some things that are not the most efficient, but instead are due to habit and almost 20 years of playing a certain way.
- Comfort
- Preference
ioupain
Well-known member
The numbers are what they are, can't argue against facts. However, there are always intangibles that come into play since we're not robots (although some of the biggest runners are pretty close! ).
There's also the element of focus and task switching - takes more brain power and sometimes you just want to 'switch off' or go to 'lower power mode' and play some D2. Other times, doing a 'few actions well' is better than doing 'lots of actions less well'. In some cases, you've built up steam/a habit/patterns doing it one way and the cost of changing is worse than the benefit.
).There's also the element of focus and task switching - takes more brain power and sometimes you just want to 'switch off' or go to 'lower power mode' and play some D2. Other times, doing a 'few actions well' is better than doing 'lots of actions less well'. In some cases, you've built up steam/a habit/patterns doing it one way and the cost of changing is worse than the benefit.
@Yng Not trying to offend you either, really
But you can safely assume most people here have experience with quite a few things.
I use extended teleporting all the time for runs like CS or Pits as well as Baal runs, depending on map. Even did it with HelpYourself but quickly realized it didn't improve run times on her Baal map. Also experimented with it a long time for Travincal runs, another short distance target where some players use it and others don't. I ended up being faster without it, actually coming pretty close to the fastest runners on SPF. And Travincal is a better target for it than Nihl because you can TK the WP.
Nobody debates that it means less casts of teleport. The point is that doesn't necessarily mean it saves time.
As for Nihl, you're talking about ~20 teleports and thus seem to assume that you can do this in Halls of Vaught -- which you can't, that would be simply suicidal. The notion that it benefits a majority (or even 90%) of the run is off in general. We're only talking about the time between casting BO until hitting the exit to Halls of Vaught. In case of my runs that's about a ~4 second duration (so about ~20% of a run). Say you cut that to just under 3 seconds by using the TP trick. Landing in a slightly different spot all the time, it will be worth it only if you manage to hit the exit to Halls of Vaught within 1 second. Each time. So yes, we are actually talking about split seconds. Now as I said I do use the teleport trick all the time for numerous types of runs, and I'm almost positive I wouldn't be able to do that. Depending on where you land, the distance you have to cover and corresponding mouse movements are always very different and the direction is also different each time. Moreover, sometimes it's faster to walk, sometimes it's faster to teleport. Can't really build up a routine (und thus speed) for that situation. Again, factor in that's it's incredibly tedious and the fact that you're missing out on XP shrines in Halls of Pain, and consider me convinced it's not worth it for Nihl runs.
Now, please do feel free to prove me wrong with some incredibly precise machine-like extended teleporting - but for now can we please stop this incredibly lame conversation and just all be friends?
But you can safely assume most people here have experience with quite a few things.
I use extended teleporting all the time for runs like CS or Pits as well as Baal runs, depending on map. Even did it with HelpYourself but quickly realized it didn't improve run times on her Baal map. Also experimented with it a long time for Travincal runs, another short distance target where some players use it and others don't. I ended up being faster without it, actually coming pretty close to the fastest runners on SPF. And Travincal is a better target for it than Nihl because you can TK the WP.Nobody debates that it means less casts of teleport. The point is that doesn't necessarily mean it saves time.
As for Nihl, you're talking about ~20 teleports and thus seem to assume that you can do this in Halls of Vaught -- which you can't, that would be simply suicidal. The notion that it benefits a majority (or even 90%) of the run is off in general. We're only talking about the time between casting BO until hitting the exit to Halls of Vaught. In case of my runs that's about a ~4 second duration (so about ~20% of a run). Say you cut that to just under 3 seconds by using the TP trick. Landing in a slightly different spot all the time, it will be worth it only if you manage to hit the exit to Halls of Vaught within 1 second. Each time. So yes, we are actually talking about split seconds. Now as I said I do use the teleport trick all the time for numerous types of runs, and I'm almost positive I wouldn't be able to do that. Depending on where you land, the distance you have to cover and corresponding mouse movements are always very different and the direction is also different each time. Moreover, sometimes it's faster to walk, sometimes it's faster to teleport. Can't really build up a routine (und thus speed) for that situation. Again, factor in that's it's incredibly tedious and the fact that you're missing out on XP shrines in Halls of Pain, and consider me convinced it's not worth it for Nihl runs.
Now, please do feel free to prove me wrong with some incredibly precise machine-like extended teleporting - but for now can we please stop this incredibly lame conversation and just all be friends?
A drop to maybe bring this thread back on track
View attachment 7676
I actually like the idea of using as many HRs she finds as possible on her gear and not mule it over to main stash, so maybe this will go into Merc's Andy's after 99 is done.
I actually like the idea of using as many HRs she finds as possible on her gear and not mule it over to main stash, so maybe this will go into Merc's Andy's after 99 is done.
I don’t dislike people just because they disagree with me or make a suggestion, not sure on how anyone is being unfriendly/lame by mentioning C/T but if that’s how you take it I apologize. From your post I can tell you’re still not getting my point but that’s fine. Good luck anyway.
E: there are numerous pvp videos of people consistently managing blind spotting etc with C/T in a real time pvp environment, I can assure you Halls of Vaught is manageable
E: there are numerous pvp videos of people consistently managing blind spotting etc with C/T in a real time pvp environment, I can assure you Halls of Vaught is manageable
