Naksu - One of the characters in the Alchemy Of Soul series, Assassin, was, or at least was at first, ruthless, striving for her goal above all else. The first thing that came to mind when I was thinking of a name for this character was Naksu.
In the photo, she is level 1, but I am currently in act 5 at normal level 27. Of course, I want to play as Trapsin, I wouldn't want to play Mosaic, my brain couldn't keep up with that
This will be my first character that I want to get to level 99, and it will also be the first character that I want to do Uber Tristram with! I read how Maxicek dealt with Uber Tristram and how Nano managed to get to level 99 when there were no Terror Zones, so maybe I can do it too, who knows?
Why an assassin? When playing Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, I often played as a paladin, sorceress, and others, but I really liked the assassin class, so that was the deciding factor for me.
I'll probably spend a lot of time in Lower Kurast, so when I get to that point, maybe I'll start my own thread on the forum to report on my progress towards Enigma and Infinity.
I've read a lot about how you guys were aiming for level 99 on the forum even before the terror zones. Years go by, and this game is still my favorite, and activity like yours only adds to my motivation to pursue my goal of level 99. Maybe by being active on the forum and with your support, I will be able to achieve this goal.
One of the benfits for LK-running assassin is you don't need keys - embarassingly, it's something I learned after getting my trapsin into the low 90's prior to my recent restart. A new trapsin is next for me!
One of the benfits for LK-running assassin is you don't need keys - embarassingly, it's something I learned after getting my trapsin into the low 90's prior to my recent restart. A new trapsin is next for me!
I agree, I didn't mention you, but it wasn't necessary because you have every character at level 99, so you're motivation in yourself. I hope that if I go on a journey, you'll give me some advice if you notice anything, it will always be needed! For now, I have a tedious time ahead of me on Lk.
Champion Vortices, Hammerdin, Level 97, A2 Might Merc Azrael My last update with Vortices was in May 2025 for level 96.5. I got a solid chunk of time over Memorial Day weekend to around 96.8, but then gaming time has dropped due to extremely busy work, getting only little chunks here and there. I finished the last 0.15 over the last two weekends. Drops were few and far between, with only a Mal and Ist in that first stretch, but this nice FCR ring that I didn't end up using because I still have the 2/17 amulet equipped. After the disappointing drops, the last few million XP of progress delivered with a Cham and Jah in quick succession:
Other notable drops for this stretch were a +27 life Druid summoner skiller, and 7FR/17 life and 6PR/18 life SCs. We are going to do a gear overhaul to remove MF charms and focus on life and improving FR overstack, and then reroll maps for 3 shrine double straight layout with a WP with shrines so I can transition to efficient 3-seal + Diablo runs.
* * *
This appears to be the last table update (my last update in May).
It's time to introduce my first entry on this thread:
Patriarch RaaL, Lvl 87 Necromancer
At the beginning of September, I was sick with covid-19, which meant a couple of days off work and plenty of time to slay some demons. That's when, after soaking some inspiration from this thread, I decided it's time to start a new character. I lost my first HC character (Windy) few days prior to that, so I decided I'll start a Psn Necro. I found this beautiful circlet in A1 NM and a Lo rune in A5 Hell. That Necro found his death to another stupid mistake in the Ancients' Way. A couple of hours later I was already deep in the next playthrough which I managed to complete and become a Guardian. Ultimately, I decided to shelve that character for now and return to some SC playtime.
RaaL started his journey about a week and a half ago. He used teeth/bone spear (/p8 Normal), then after he found the runes & base for Edge he used his first respec and maxed revive/ce with some points in fire golem and bone armor. He progressed through the game (/p8 NM, /p1 Hell) without any troubles at all (untwinked, single pass playthrough).
He found some amazing items along the way: 28% Chance Guards, 21% Nagelring (both in A2 Tombs in Normal) and Fal from NM Hellforge. But nothing compares to this monstrous drop in A5 Frozen River (Hell):
After completing the game at lvl 82, the next challenge was to do an Ubers run. The reasoning behind that was 1. I hate LK and never really committed to it in any of my characters (tho I understand that I'm gonna need to do that for this character a bit later on), and 2. It's just another thing to do before the usual boredom of mf'ing.
RaaL used his second respec to become a bone spear necro for key running. It took about 30-40 runs of each to collect the keyset. It also greatly helped in gearing up for the task as he found 3 Um's, a PnB skiller and many useful res/life charms.
Next up was farming a token to respec again because I didn't want to finish all my quest respecs so early, and boy it was worth it. On the very first Andariel run, RaaL found a Shako. Baal and Diablo were stingy and took a lot of runs to get their essences, but he managed to find a 21@ Mara's AND GFace in those CS runs.
So he finally had everything he need (and much more than ever expected thanks to the insanely lucky drops) and was ready to take a shot. He respec'ed to pure fishy, crafted Treachery, Smoke, Duress, Obedience in a crappy non-superior non-eth Bec-de-Corbin and dual Spirit.
First step was scouting and gathering Urdars in the RoF and DoH. After that was done, RaaL created the 3 portals for the mini ubers and started clearing the Matron's Den and Furnace of Pain on the way to the mini bosses. He led both Duriel and Izual near the red portal, and created a tp near Lilith. Then it was time to assemble the skele army and revive some Urdars, which, with the help of my merc's Obedience, killed all 3 mini bosses in no time.
The last task was Uber Tristram. Mephisto went down very quickly and without any danger to RaaL or his merc (0 rejuvs used). I accidentally managed to drag both Diablo and Baal together which made the task much much harder. He had to go back twice and get some more revives and Emilio who died.
The whole thing from scouting to the unique large charm took exactly 1 hour and 11 minutes:
After a long break I started playing my Sorc again for MFO. Score was pathetic as I barely had time to run, but it did sort of pull me back to the character and I ran some TZ bosses in hopes of finding Griffon's. After some mandatory complaining – which again, always helps – we actually got two. Reported here and here, second one with a nice 20/13 roll. Other useful finds included another cold skiller, Tal's ammy, SoJ #2 (first one kept i.e. not made into Anni), BKWB, Cham rune and 5/5 lightning facet.
After MFO I rolled an LK map and starting hunting for Ber/2x Sur to finish Infinity. Took some ~12 hours (which together with MFO brings me to ~80 hours total). Actually found both Surs from random poppables. Also did another ammy crafting session, now at 96 amulets crafted – no Sorc craft worth mentioning, but I did gamble a nice 2/10 rare.
These and other post-MFO finds:
She now has 4x cold skillers and 2x fire (including the nice vita one above) but unfortunately still no lightning skillers, despite relatively long LK stints and picking up most gems for GC rerolls.
Nonetheless, I wanted to switch to her first Nova iteration to set her up for more generic farming. Focus is now on charms/runes/crafting materials rather than uniques. I've got all S&Us I need except for a 2nd SoJ which I'll get eventually, if need be by visiting NM Andy again, but currently I'm fine with running a BKWB. Apart from 2nd SoJ, the only remaining unique from my initial goals list is DFathom, however I won't be missing that for a very long time either – generally not a big fan of Blizzy in D2R.
So with that, next task at hand is farm keys and give Ubers a shot.
For her initial Nova setup I chose to go with self-wield Infinity. For most purposes I actually prefer Infinity on Merc and I'll eventually make another one for such different setups. But self-wield Infinity is great when running various areas including with lightning immunes, especially when with current mediocre damage given lack of Torch and skillers.
Also used the first socket quest on Griffon's and socketed the 5/5 facet to get more damage for the time being.
Current setup:
Griffon's (20/13) (socketed with 5/5 facet)
Infinity eth Scythe -50 ELR
Viper 33/13 (unsocketed)
+2 Sorc, 10 FCR, 29 str, 35 CR rare amulet
Magefist
SoJ
BKWB
Arachnid Mesh
Rare boots 20 FRW, 23 MF, 20 LR, 27 FR
Switch: +6 BO CtA, Splendor
Inventory: Anni, Gheed, 38/59 life/mana GC, various SCs with MF, res, life, mana, sunder charm in LI areas
I still don't know how I will approach ubers with her but did see some approaches that should work. Figured I'd first farm key sets for 10 Torches and then get around to it.
So those 30 keys each weren't needed after all, first Uber Tristram run delivered a Sorc Torch:
Also made this for the Uber run, I'll probably need that anyway for Travincal runs at some point:
Average roll but more than good enough for now.
Glad I was in SC because I died a couple of times. First I gave Blizzard a try – had a bunch of skillers after all – but damage was simply too low and I had no reliable way to prevent ubers from healing. IIRC it was @Luhkoh who mentioned Meteor tick damage did the job, which AB confirmed, so that was the main idea and indeed worked nicely when I respec'ed to that.
We'll do a few more uber runs while in Meteor/FB spec to get a couple of torches for potential future SC chars in D2R. After that, it's probably on to the Moo Moo Farm for more runes and charms, but also keen on giving Travincal a try with Nova. I think I'll allow myself to finally go for XP once I have at least 2 lightning skillers, until then I'm in farming jail.
Glad I was in SC because I died a couple of times. First I gave Blizzard a try – had a bunch of skillers after all – but damage was simply too low and I had no reliable way to prevent ubers from healing. IIRC it was @Luhkoh who mentioned Meteor tick damage did the job, which AB confirmed, so that was the main idea and indeed worked nicely when I respec'ed to that.
We'll do a few more uber runs while in Meteor/FB spec to get a couple of torches for potential future SC chars in D2R. After that, it's probably on to the Moo Moo Farm for more runes and charms, but also keen on giving Travincal a try with Nova. I think I'll allow myself to finally go for XP once I have at least 2 lightning skillers, until then I'm in farming jail.
Not a bad torch at all, and very nice progress so far. I like the idea of farming the gear for all 3 builds... (and yes I realize it's a bit late to mention that now that you only miss DF)
Looking forward to the next update
Finally having some time on my hands at the moment, so tried to make the most of it to progress some more.
We've been running a mix of cows, AS and Travincal in hopes of getting a couple of skillers.
Cows delivered a nice drop early on with another SoJ, basically completing her gear (except skillers) for the self-use Infinity variant:
For cows specifically we actually used the first (non-eth) Griffon's we found as that had -17 ELR, which together with our -50 ELR Infinity roll puts us at the ideal -ELR amount for Static Field efficiency when running cows (as explained here).
Other drops – also from when I farmed keys for torches – included Cham, 2x Sur, 3x Ohm, Vex. These and others below:
I considered saving the Sur runes for now (will need to make Enigma and elite base Infinity at some point), but for immediate purposes they were used to make CoH. This is mainly for Trav Merc but there's a chance I'll use it on the Sorc at some point, hence made it in non-eth Dusk:
Not wanting to go back to LK for now just for skillers, and so her most reasonable target currently is likely Arcane Sanctuary, with AS ghosts dropping a ton of charms and gems for rerolling. My improved load times in D2R result in run times very close to my LoD AS runs, around the ~60s mark. Recorded a couple of runs here:
As mentioned above, I've also been meaning to try Travincal. Never seriously considered the build for Trav in LoD but I suspected it could be quite good with higher D2R Nova damage, sunder charm and big -ELR with self-wield Infinity setup. I compared running through Kurast Docks vs going through A4 and the latter turned out to be some ~2 seconds faster. Run times are around ~24s when picking up 1-2 items per run. Not really in top tier competition with Barb in D2R but IMO still solid. D2R load times will always put Barb out of reach but I'm curious as to how fast she can be with a handful of skillers further down the line. Generally I'm just a fan of Trav running with Sorc and will probably switch back and forth between AS and Trav for the time being, depending on when I get bored with one of them.
Worth noting that the Travincal map/council spawn location isn't nearly as important with Nova as it is with Barb or Blizzy. Nova radius is rather generous, so any "somewhat together" spawn where they can't easily run away is good enough really. Recorded a couple of Trav runs on a rather random map:
Can definitely say that Insight Merc with CoH and Flickering Flame works very well; that's the Travincal Merc setup I had in mind when making Flickering Flame originally for the Uber fight with FB/Meteor.
Oh, and we're now at exactly 50 skillers (including from rerolls) without a Sparking GC – not meaning to be too pushy with RNG but sorry, officially #complaining!
@ffs I never liked running Trav with my nova sorc, felt like suicide missions at least TZ players 8...
now when I got my loading times fixed with new PC I might give regular p3 trav a chance with her. Maybe I can push sub 20s.
I also got some more time this weekend and the week to come. Will try to push my canman to 97,8 doing about 200 more baal runs!
Hello everyone!
It’s been just over a month since my last update, and a lot has happened since the last post about RaaL’s journey. Let’s see what he’s been up to.
Patriarch RaaL, LVL 94 Necromancer
RaaL was created on September 17th, so it's been a month and a half since I started playing him exclusively. I can confirm that I'm still in the "obsession phase", as I always look forward to my next session with him. I know it's still early days, but I think my way of playing keeps things fresh for me. I realize the road to 99 is a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm trying to include "side projects" instead of burning myself out in Baal's throne room.
Lower Kurast
For the first time in my D2 career, I dedicated myself to LK runs. TL;DR:it was mentally painful but worth it.
I didn't even reroll the map, as my original one had two campfires pretty close to the waypoint (one to the north, the other to the west), so I decided to keep it.
RaaL was geared with +117% FRW from charms and items he smartly picked up during the playthrough. The beginning was very promising, as he found his first Vex after just 59 runs. He did the same insane thing for 2900 runs, which took over 38 hours at ~45 seconds per run on my crappy PC.
Let's see what he found (Mal+): 8x Mal
1x Ist
1x Gul
4x Vex
3x Ohm
4x Sur
#5 - Mal
#34 - Ist #59 - Vex
#67 - Mal
#112 - Mal
#195 - Mal
#296 - Um
#310 - 293% Tgods #312 - Ohm #331 - PComb (+4 dex)
#364 - Pul
#393 - Mal #506 - Jav sk (+29 life)
#663 - Jav sk #706 - Sur #720 - MA sk (+6 dex)
#736 - Ohm
#855 - Mal #962 - PnB sk
#1079 - Sur #1174 - Sur *** run 1265 - first 4os bow turned into Harmony #1483 - Sur
#1507 - Mal #1521 - Light sk (+6 str) *** run 1631 - changed to /p5 for more Ber patterns
#1666 - Pul *** run 1854 - first eth Thresher cubed to 4os #1970 - Gul *** run 2000 - return to /p7 #2035 - Ohm #2043 - Cold sk
#2106 - Vex
#2138 - Um
#2207 - Um
#2305 - Mal #2322 - Vex
#2446 - Um #2675 - PnB sk
#2712 - 17 life/3@ SC
#2748 - Pul #2827 - Vex #2830 - PnB sk
#2856 - Mal
#2858 - Pul
Unfortunately, he couldn’t complete his Enigma in time for the MFO. But worry not - he’ll get it and other key runewords shortly, as you’re about to see.
MFO 2025 & Another Short Stint at Lower Kurast
As described in the MFO 2025 Results thread, RaaL couldn't keep up with the human bots, finishing in a shameful 9th place
However, TZ Baal kicked in very early, so he had to stop running and turned back to another 58 LK runs, which yielded the following: #2939 - Gul #2958 - BER !!! DONE WITH LK !!!
Complete LK Haul:
He quickly cubed the four Surs into a Jah and created Enigma (impatiently and stupidly, in a superior durability armor), HotO and CtA.
Mephisto
Still missing key parts such as Magefist/TO Claws and Arachnid Mesh, he shifted to a combination of Trav and Meph runs. He wasn’t planning to do that many, but after checking a drop calculator, he settled on doing 1142 runs, or until Arachnid Mesh dropped, whichever came first. You guessed it right: no Arachnid Mesh yet.
#157 - Magefist
#189 - Nature's Peace
#190 - Tal Rasha's Adjudication
#229 - Harlequin Crest #323 - -5/5 light die facet
#324 - Guillaume's Face #363 - Andariel's Visage
#372 - Pul
#377 - Pul #430 - Ohm
#474 - Traps sk (+27 life) #565 - HoZ
#586 - Mara's 27@
#634 - Summoning sk (+4 strength)
#671 - The Oculus
#777 - Mal
#827 - Homunculus
#829 - Pul #1051 - Andariel's Visage
Ubers
The last part of this update was getting a Necro torch. The plan was simple: farm 10 keysets to complete 10 Uber runs.
He found some amazing stuff along the way, mostly from Nihlathak himself, with the top item being (Documented in the Runes of Ragnarok - Item Find Thread):
30x Key of Terror
31x Key of Hate
34x Key of Destruction
RaaL sold the SoJ to Larzuk and killed DClone, getting rewarded with this:
After that, he farmed all the organs needed to create 10 Uber Tristram portals.
Unfortunately, none of the torches rolled Necro. Some of them are amazing, but RNG is RNG, and at the moment, I still don’t have a Necro one after 11 attempts.
I’ll definitely keep farming keys until I get that elusive Necro torch, but for now, I think I’ll focus on making progress and come back to that later on.
This post and gear formatting were inspired by one of the best UT99ers I’ve read - Das-Omen by @HanShotFirst. I hope it’s fine, and well done on a great journey!
When I wrote my introduction in 2024, I didn't think that a year later I would be doing everything... contrary to what I wrote then. I didn't want to use GoMule and I was attached to Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction, and yet I'm playing Diablo 2 Resurrected.
Some time ago, I created a sorceress starting with... a fire build, and I thought I would play with the same build until the very end. However, I quickly changed my mind when Lister corrected my mistake with his team during baalruns. I had to take advantage of the change in skills and statistics at Akara's and decided to continue as a blizzard sorceress.
I didn't have any major problems, I finished Hell before the ancients and focused for some time on Lower Kurast, where I managed to get Ohm and Vex quite quickly, but no Pul, Mal or Ist!
Later, I decided to play as follows: Lower Kurast, Mephisto, Ancient Tunnel, and Pindleskin. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get anything interesting, so I'm still using Spirit Sword, Ancient Pledge, Lore, Chance Guard, Aldur Advance 2x rings with FCR, and an amulet with FCR. I managed to find 1 skiller to cold skills +38 to life.
What are my future plans? Lower Kurast to get the rest of the runes for Hoto, Cta. Maybe I'll stay to get the runes for Infinity if I decide to switch from Blizzard to Light in the future, especially since I managed to find Eth Great Poleaxe 4 socket, which is currently serving me as insight. Later, I will probably spend some time with Mephisto. I wonder if it would be worth going back and looking for 2-3x Soj on Nightmare Andy. After that, I'll probably just do Terror Zones to level 99. Probably somewhere along the way, I'll want to kill Dclone with one of the Sojs, and as for Uber Tristram, I don't know if I'm ‘advanced’ enough to handle it, same with finding Skillers and replacing them.
If I find a griffon's eye, I'll probably decide to switch from Cold to Light, if not, I'll stick with this build until level 99.