The Untwinked Level 99 Progress Thread, The Saviours of Sanctuary Rise Anew
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ResTTe
Well-known member
@Pax1990 No problem. If you have some troubles fighting specific mobs, just take it slow or reset the run. It's better to waste a few seconds than die ^^
The best possible setup is probably something like dolls + horadrims + souls and might + conviction + curse + fana combo. Damn it must be so much fun to clear that stuff. Even dolls with curse can be enough to kill you instantly if you aren't paying attention.
The best possible setup is probably something like dolls + horadrims + souls and might + conviction + curse + fana combo. Damn it must be so much fun to clear that stuff. Even dolls with curse can be enough to kill you instantly if you aren't paying attention.
@Everyone:
If people want to play this their way, that is their right, even if it isn't the most efficient. Sure they may fail, but sometimes you have to learn by making the journey yourself. I'm all for unusual approaches to this, I hope people do try something different and document it.
If someone asks "What is the best way to do this?" then by all means tell them where they may be going wrong. But they don't have to accept your advice either, even if they will be inefficient. If they want to argue that their way is better, healthy discussions is fine, as long as it stays civil.
Please respect other members. If you join a thread about untwinked 99ers, I would expect you to respect the members in particular who have completed this, some multiple times.
If people want to play this their way, that is their right, even if it isn't the most efficient. Sure they may fail, but sometimes you have to learn by making the journey yourself. I'm all for unusual approaches to this, I hope people do try something different and document it.
If someone asks "What is the best way to do this?" then by all means tell them where they may be going wrong. But they don't have to accept your advice either, even if they will be inefficient. If they want to argue that their way is better, healthy discussions is fine, as long as it stays civil.
Please respect other members. If you join a thread about untwinked 99ers, I would expect you to respect the members in particular who have completed this, some multiple times.
@ResTTe When did you start this Sorc again? 
Pretty much half way there already!
Regarding Merc setup: If you don't need it for safety, I'm not sure Delirium is ideal tbh. While I know many swear by it, personally I'm not a big fan because it stops monsters from running towards you (and into your Blizzard). So it makes runs a bit slower. I must admit I didn't hang much in CS with an untwinked Sorc so I don't know if that kind of safety is needed. (My 99er Sorc found an almost perfect Griffon's early on, I felt it was a shame not to use most of the time, so I went Lightning/Baal until 98.) But for 2 seal runs you're skipping the dangerous DeSeis pack, which in my book is the main reason to use Delirium in CS. In fact on my Hammerdin's Merc I ended up using the typical powerhouse setup with Andy/ebug Fort/Insight and he was completely fine, even for 97-98 when including DeSeis.
As for aura I think all of Defiance, HF and Might have pros and cons. In most cases I prefer HF just to get some crowd control when seal locations are really packed. Defiance adds a ton of defense which helps Merc in particular, but similar thing, not sure defense is really that helpful vs. Infector/Vizier. The only real danger from Infector is the fire damage (with Conviction) roll, and Vizier attacks are kind of "aww cute"... Might helps Merc survivability with higher leech plus the occasional Merc kill that could save a second here and there. Never actually did a significant number of runs with Might, though... In any case all 3 auras should work fine.
Steelshade is another choice that helps Merc survivability against Infector. I believe Gripphon also used it in his original 2 seal run tests together with CoH to provide leech.
Pretty much half way there already! Regarding Merc setup: If you don't need it for safety, I'm not sure Delirium is ideal tbh. While I know many swear by it, personally I'm not a big fan because it stops monsters from running towards you (and into your Blizzard). So it makes runs a bit slower. I must admit I didn't hang much in CS with an untwinked Sorc so I don't know if that kind of safety is needed. (My 99er Sorc found an almost perfect Griffon's early on, I felt it was a shame not to use most of the time, so I went Lightning/Baal until 98.) But for 2 seal runs you're skipping the dangerous DeSeis pack, which in my book is the main reason to use Delirium in CS. In fact on my Hammerdin's Merc I ended up using the typical powerhouse setup with Andy/ebug Fort/Insight and he was completely fine, even for 97-98 when including DeSeis.
As for aura I think all of Defiance, HF and Might have pros and cons. In most cases I prefer HF just to get some crowd control when seal locations are really packed. Defiance adds a ton of defense which helps Merc in particular, but similar thing, not sure defense is really that helpful vs. Infector/Vizier. The only real danger from Infector is the fire damage (with Conviction) roll, and Vizier attacks are kind of "aww cute"... Might helps Merc survivability with higher leech plus the occasional Merc kill that could save a second here and there. Never actually did a significant number of runs with Might, though... In any case all 3 auras should work fine.
Steelshade is another choice that helps Merc survivability against Infector. I believe Gripphon also used it in his original 2 seal run tests together with CoH to provide leech.
Kinkara
Well-known member
Of course you can! Let's fill the UT tables with barbs! All kinds of barbs are welcome! The more the merrier!
One of my 2 deaths from 97-98 was being 1-shot by a fanaticism vizier minion. Just my opinion, but its a totally different ball game compared to hdin (though I never did try stormshield sorc for these runs). Delirium is definitely a smidge less efficient, but I think it will cut number of deaths in half for CS sorc, whereas I don't see any need for it on hdin. So I would only go non-delirium if you basically aren't dying at all with delirium. Also it just changes the average run from being pretty high-octane and stressful to mostly chill.
Even after all that practice of CSing to 98, I did runs to 95 on my twinked sorc with steelshade merc. Was definitely faster but I still would've gone delirium if more xp was risked per death (97-98),
Agreed on the auras. I used prayer for the qol. For me it was the difference between needing to drink a healing pot once almost every run and not needing to. But I probably would've gone holy freeze if that weren't the case, and it might not be the case since I think @ResTTe's most recent stints had quite a bit faster runs than mine.
Also huge congrats @ResTTe! You're blazing. Have you started coming around to the "sorc is best" viewpoint yet?
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Jpy
Well-known member
Agreed with @Luhkoh for untwinked Blizzard 2 seal runs, Delirium was huge for QoL and safety. I was using it + HF but in hindsight I’d probably opt out of HF if I did it again just to push the bar for efficiency. On the other hand, after the Nihlathak stint, save and exit prowess shot up quite a bit so perhaps desire for pushing the bar again would warrant a change from Delirium too but it’s risky lol.
e: so I apparently I convinced Indrek to try for sub 200....the mad lad is doing it HC with no save and exit lmfao, what a guy
e: so I apparently I convinced Indrek to try for sub 200....the mad lad is doing it HC with no save and exit lmfao, what a guy
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@Luhkoh Not saying it's impossible to die at Vizier, but the same is true for any boss pack in any random area... While DeSeis and Infector need to be reflected in gearing approach, Vizier can really be treated like any other random boss pack IMO... in most cases at least you don't go overboard on safety for those either at the expense of efficiency.
Of course in the end QoL aspects are a matter of personal preference. With the exception of Nihl, I personally just don't like using Delirium anywhere. For skills such as Blizzard, monster AI is your friend, not your enemy. You want them to keep wandering around and towards you and die. For twinked Blizzy at least, HF provides enough safety on its own. I understand you guys all used Delirium (with or without HF) but not HF only? If so, could be worth trying to just use HF and see whether Delirium's extra safety is still required.
Of course in the end QoL aspects are a matter of personal preference. With the exception of Nihl, I personally just don't like using Delirium anywhere. For skills such as Blizzard, monster AI is your friend, not your enemy. You want them to keep wandering around and towards you and die. For twinked Blizzy at least, HF provides enough safety on its own. I understand you guys all used Delirium (with or without HF) but not HF only? If so, could be worth trying to just use HF and see whether Delirium's extra safety is still required.
ResTTe
Well-known member
@ffs Should be 10th of september iirc. I know people that could finish UT sorc in a month, so i am not that impressed with my progress honestly xD I keep my avg number of hours per day at over 2, so that's pretty nice. Have a lot of free time to improve that, but i just don't feel like grinding for hours is that fun. Always wondering how can all those streamers push 8h+ daily. I would rather play for 2 hours and do 10 other things during the day. My friend is doing 8h of baalruns per day on his barb. He is almost 98 and i barely got to 97 on my sorc and we started roughly at the same time. I'm sure you would love to do that many baalruns considering the fact how much you like them XD
@Luhkoh I am not even close to view sorc as the best class by my personal taste and i don't think i will ever be. Can change a little bit when i start Nihla and move on to AT later, but it's unlikely. She is objectively the best class of course, but i don't like her that much personally. Melee builds have a special place in my heart, that's probably why i prefer barb over all of the classes and why i was thinking about making melee assassin or paladin at some point.
When it comes to CS farming... I was thinking about what setup to use for some time. After a few conversations with Luhkoh, @Bewitch and others i decided to go for Deli + Prayer (got Ber in LK, so i was able to make CoH for my merc). I have some thoughts that i collected during my farming:
@Luhkoh I am not even close to view sorc as the best class by my personal taste and i don't think i will ever be. Can change a little bit when i start Nihla and move on to AT later, but it's unlikely. She is objectively the best class of course, but i don't like her that much personally. Melee builds have a special place in my heart, that's probably why i prefer barb over all of the classes and why i was thinking about making melee assassin or paladin at some point.
When it comes to CS farming... I was thinking about what setup to use for some time. After a few conversations with Luhkoh, @Bewitch and others i decided to go for Deli + Prayer (got Ber in LK, so i was able to make CoH for my merc). I have some thoughts that i collected during my farming:
- Deli is definitely a big thing when it comes to safety. Merc procs confuse and you can basically walk around like all of the mobs turned into traffic cones XD It is really helpful when you want to pick up something that is trapped, especially when you kill Vizier from far away and see that GC drop. It would be a different story without Deli, cause all the mobs would rush to you and you would have to kite them which isn't something desirable imo. HF should help with that, cause everything would move slower, but i still don't think it will be the same as confuse proc.
- Deli slows you down and you can clearly see it, especially against infector when all of the minions scatter like the whole pack is made of glass. It is annoying, but it also doesn't happen that often and most of the time they will run towards you or you can make them do it by playing more aggressively. You may say it puts you at risk of dying, because you have to teleport near the mobs to make them go after you, but you definitely won't do it when there's might/fana or some other condition that makes you doubt your safety and i don't think you can die that easly to regular mobs. I know it's P8 and minions can hit hard, but i can tank quite a lot of hits with my 2,6k life and i have full rejuvs, teleport and glacial spike on top of that. What i like to do it to cast blizz where i want to move, so that the monsters coming at me die before they reach me.
- You can go without deli and rely on other stuff to make up for it of course, but i don't think it is worth it. It will make things more complicated and, what's the most important, more demanding. I don't think you want to fight for your life constantly for 100 hours.
- Prayer is cool, cause you don't have to drink health potions out of the fight to keep your life high. That's why i went for it. Switched to HF recently, cause i want to test it to have some comparison between the two. Haven't done any runs yet, but will do some today and will definitely share my thoughts. In theory it should improve my merc's safety, cause mobs will attack way slower but on the other hand, will make it less convenient for me, cause i will have to drink more pots to stay alive. It's always better to got hit by the Vizier pack with 2,5k life rather than 2k ^^ Wondering how it will work together with all those delirium procs, but i think it will make killing infector faster. What i've observed is that those minions like to run around quite a lot when i am teleporting around the spawn. Could always cast some glacial spikes to prevent that i guess, but i couldn't include it in my farming schedule even though i have it on the left click XD HF should make the minions less mobile, which should allow me to focus my blizzard casts in one place rather than spread it across the whole Infector spawning area and kite all those mobs into it.
@ffs ofc I agree vizier is the least dangerous and not worth gearing around. But saying his attacks are cute is gonna get a response from me haha. I had that one-shot death (with 2400 hp and shako) when I was at 97.98, so that's a sore spot. They can randomly crit you for a load of dmg, and even more so if it was might instead of fana, or god forbid, both of them. Defensively, compared to hdin, sorc feels like a toddler in CS.
I played holy freeze no delirium on my twinked sorc that i mentioned. And when I say twinked sorc, she had the same level of gear as my untwinked one unfortunately, except more skillers. Just trying to make it clear it wasn't my 99er sorc. Those runs are much more stressful and I would expect I'd die about every 500-1000 runs doing that, whereas I died about once every 2k runs on the deli merc.
And ofc there's the qol/stress level I mentioned, but you're totally right that is just a matter of preference. I just see people trying out sorc CS runs in this thread and elsewhere and having a very tough time. I had the same experience, and delirium merc made the runs go from seemingly unsustainable to approachable. And again, I don't say the same for hdin. I don't see why people run delirium on hdin myself.
It's absolutely true that dragging the monsters through your blizzard is extremely desirable and delirium interferes with that. But I don't know what to say other than its easy to die as sorc in CS. ResTTe is saying normal mobs aren't that dangerous, but I know he has a decent handful of deaths in chaos so far. I do wonder if stormshield sorc, no-delirium merc could potentially outperform spirit + deli merc. I assume it would be significantly safer, and you don't have the herding interference, just for the the cost of 2 skills.
@ResTTe haha yeah I didn't really think you were gonna switch to liking sorc the most. Mostly just playing around. I love that you're a barbarian through and through.
EDIT: @ffs really you said it all with this "If you don't need it for safety, I'm not sure Delirium is ideal tbh. While I know many swear by it, personally I'm not a big fan because it stops monsters from running towards you (and into your Blizzard). So it makes runs a bit slower. I must admit I didn't hang much in CS with an untwinked Sorc so I don't know if that kind of safety is needed."
I guess the only thing we're debating is whether the safety is needed, and in my opinion that can be determined pretty easy by how often you die while using the delirium merc.
Sorry I keep adding things to my post, but maybe restte can run the first half of the level with delrium and second half without and tell us which half takes longer. Now that would be fun to see.
I played holy freeze no delirium on my twinked sorc that i mentioned. And when I say twinked sorc, she had the same level of gear as my untwinked one unfortunately, except more skillers. Just trying to make it clear it wasn't my 99er sorc. Those runs are much more stressful and I would expect I'd die about every 500-1000 runs doing that, whereas I died about once every 2k runs on the deli merc.
And ofc there's the qol/stress level I mentioned, but you're totally right that is just a matter of preference. I just see people trying out sorc CS runs in this thread and elsewhere and having a very tough time. I had the same experience, and delirium merc made the runs go from seemingly unsustainable to approachable. And again, I don't say the same for hdin. I don't see why people run delirium on hdin myself.
It's absolutely true that dragging the monsters through your blizzard is extremely desirable and delirium interferes with that. But I don't know what to say other than its easy to die as sorc in CS. ResTTe is saying normal mobs aren't that dangerous, but I know he has a decent handful of deaths in chaos so far
. I do wonder if stormshield sorc, no-delirium merc could potentially outperform spirit + deli merc. I assume it would be significantly safer, and you don't have the herding interference, just for the the cost of 2 skills.@ResTTe haha yeah I didn't really think you were gonna switch to liking sorc the most. Mostly just playing around. I love that you're a barbarian through and through
.EDIT: @ffs really you said it all with this "If you don't need it for safety, I'm not sure Delirium is ideal tbh. While I know many swear by it, personally I'm not a big fan because it stops monsters from running towards you (and into your Blizzard). So it makes runs a bit slower. I must admit I didn't hang much in CS with an untwinked Sorc so I don't know if that kind of safety is needed."
I guess the only thing we're debating is whether the safety is needed, and in my opinion that can be determined pretty easy by how often you die while using the delirium merc.
Sorry I keep adding things to my post, but maybe restte can run the first half of the level with delrium and second half without and tell us which half takes longer. Now that would be fun to see.
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ResTTe
Well-known member
Viezier is more dangerous than a random pack for 3 reasons. You have to fight him, he hits harder and i have a hard time figuring out where i should stand in order to not end up in the middle of his pack when he spawns. Got one shotted once, because he spawned on top of me with fana ^^
As i said before, you can't compare confuse proc to HF imo, cause there is a difference between some mob going after you, getting confused and start attacking his friends and some mob going for you but slower. It's like that story with getting a lot of money, but also getting a snail constantly coming at you and when he touches you, you die XD
Yeah i died a few times but i am doing stuff you can see in the video below quite often, so nothing weird with that.
gfycat.com
As i said before, you can't compare confuse proc to HF imo, cause there is a difference between some mob going after you, getting confused and start attacking his friends and some mob going for you but slower. It's like that story with getting a lot of money, but also getting a snail constantly coming at you and when he touches you, you die XD
Yeah i died a few times but i am doing stuff you can see in the video below quite often, so nothing weird with that.
2020-10-17 23-08-14 GIF by restte | Gfycat
Watch and share 2020-10-17 23-08-14 GIFs by restte on Gfycat
gfycat.com
Jpy
Well-known member
ResTTe
Well-known member
Yeah, i've figured out that their spawn locations depend on the already existing mobs on the tile and where i am standing. I guess this is what determines the TK thing too, right? Basically what i mean is that they will spawn where there's some place for them XD
I also got a few of those tiny infector spawns when he gets like 2 minions and spawns near his seal. Don't know if it's something unusual, probably not. Don't have any picture or video of that, but he was spawning where the big blue X is on the picture below and his minions appeared where the yellow X is. It was happening when there were small packs of mobs all around the place and i teleported where the red X is. Was creating like a grid of mobs of some sort that was preventing him from spawning on top of the other mobs. On the other hand, he was able to spawn on top of me when i was standing where the purple X is.
PS That's a lot of Xs, but i think i made it pretty clear XD
I also got a few of those tiny infector spawns when he gets like 2 minions and spawns near his seal. Don't know if it's something unusual, probably not. Don't have any picture or video of that, but he was spawning where the big blue X is on the picture below and his minions appeared where the yellow X is. It was happening when there were small packs of mobs all around the place and i teleported where the red X is. Was creating like a grid of mobs of some sort that was preventing him from spawning on top of the other mobs. On the other hand, he was able to spawn on top of me when i was standing where the purple X is.
PS That's a lot of Xs, but i think i made it pretty clear XD
@ResTTe That clip is a nice demonstration of what I mean: After you popped the seal and cast the first Blizzard, the right half of the pack didn't take any damage for a handful of seconds -- because Confuse stopped the right side minions from walking into the Blizzard AoE. Then you teleported to the right, placed another Blizzard on the bottom group, and now the upper/left side minions didn't walk into the Blizzard AoE and again you lose a lot of damage. Then you still died despite Confuse having procced... so in summary Delirium cost you a lot of damage/time and on top of it didn't save you.
By the way here's Gripphon's original post when he first explained the 2 seal run approach. On Blizzy he also used HF Merc, with Steelshade, CoH and Insight. He was running with 1.07 Ark though, mentioning Stormshield for Sorcs that don't use it. I always ran with CoH didn't really feel the need to include Stormshield... When faceting it, one doesn't lose much damage though in comparison to Spirit. But not sure you want to spend a Larzuk quest on Stormshield.
With Viper it's easy to stay on 105 FCR though. Still not sure whether %PDR really is the game changer for 2 seal runs.
Another safety option is Reaper's on Merc, anyone tried it for untwinked 99er Sorc? I used it on Pally for a bit before concluding he didn't need the extra safety. But the extra potting was actually not too bad really. Never went down this route with Blizzard Sorc, but other guys like Nano often ran it, and it does add a ton of safety as well..
@Luhkoh Don't get me wrong, I totally agree hdin is much tankier (and needs to be when including DeSeis). But I had a different experience from yours with twinked Blizzy. With good gear at least she didn't really feel super fragile.
By the way here's Gripphon's original post when he first explained the 2 seal run approach. On Blizzy he also used HF Merc, with Steelshade, CoH and Insight. He was running with 1.07 Ark though, mentioning Stormshield for Sorcs that don't use it. I always ran with CoH didn't really feel the need to include Stormshield... When faceting it, one doesn't lose much damage though in comparison to Spirit. But not sure you want to spend a Larzuk quest on Stormshield.
With Viper it's easy to stay on 105 FCR though. Still not sure whether %PDR really is the game changer for 2 seal runs.Another safety option is Reaper's on Merc, anyone tried it for untwinked 99er Sorc? I used it on Pally for a bit before concluding he didn't need the extra safety. But the extra potting was actually not too bad really. Never went down this route with Blizzard Sorc, but other guys like Nano often ran it, and it does add a ton of safety as well..
@Luhkoh Don't get me wrong, I totally agree hdin is much tankier (and needs to be when including DeSeis). But I had a different experience from yours with twinked Blizzy. With good gear at least she didn't really feel super fragile.
ResTTe
Well-known member
@ffs Yeah, everything is cool, but the main reason i died is because i played with might/extra strong infector when being amped XD Nothing will save you from him except quitting pushing him.
As mentioned before, things like that rarely happen, so the time loss is very small imo. To me it isn't worth it to swap delirium to make your runs 1s faster on average. You also have to keep in mind that your runs will be probably slower by a bigger margin, cause you will end up being hit too much without delirium when you want to pick up something etc.
There are many different setups for CS sorc merc. You can do insight with deli, insight without deli, many different armor and helmet combos, you can go with reaper's and maybe even infinity if you want to. Hard to tell what would be the best but i would stick with insight, deli and CoH. Can test how HF + deli compares to pure HF, but i think someone did that already and deli helps too much to abandon it. I wonder how much CBF helps merc to saty alive and proc his aura. I think it would be very important to have your HF always on when going pure HF ^^
As mentioned before, things like that rarely happen, so the time loss is very small imo. To me it isn't worth it to swap delirium to make your runs 1s faster on average. You also have to keep in mind that your runs will be probably slower by a bigger margin, cause you will end up being hit too much without delirium when you want to pick up something etc.
There are many different setups for CS sorc merc. You can do insight with deli, insight without deli, many different armor and helmet combos, you can go with reaper's and maybe even infinity if you want to. Hard to tell what would be the best but i would stick with insight, deli and CoH. Can test how HF + deli compares to pure HF, but i think someone did that already and deli helps too much to abandon it. I wonder how much CBF helps merc to saty alive and proc his aura. I think it would be very important to have your HF always on when going pure HF ^^
Jpy
Well-known member
@ffs but the clip isn’t a good example for the argument because he fucked up pretty hard. You can get the map where you can spawn the whole Infector pack across the river from you and still Blizzard them, never having Confuse/Merc **** with that pack at all and the whole pack running around trying to figure out how to get to you and still having confuse/MB for landing in nasty packs en route to seals
Exactly. This is why I said the thing about judging your "need for safety" by number of deaths with delirium merc. If you're dying more than once every ~2k runs with delirium merc, I don't think there's reason to consider using something else. Can we agree on that? I know ResTTe has been dying about every 500-1k runs, so I would not advise him to switch. Even more so with less experienced players trying out these runs.
Most all the deaths in CS will be from might/fana in some form (restte told me most all of his were from might), so yes max block stormshield will increase safety for that situation 100 fold. If I had to do it all again, I think I'd try out that route. But since I don't have to do it all again, I just plan to keep sorc out of CS and save that area for hdin
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