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Warrior Leveling Tatic - the Langolier - 05-07-2003
Warriors can be the most fun class of them all, but they are also the slowest to gain experience. Sorcerers and rogues can rely on powerful spells to level, something along the lines of: *teleport* *fireball* *fireball* *fireball* *teleport* etc. Warriors require the most skill to play and most tatics call for a lot of retreating and patience.
But what if you just want to level up as fast as possible? What if you could level up as fast as a mage (ok... almost)?
The idea is nothing new. Equip stealth items and clear hell. Most normal characters don't tend consider it, but when you come from the right angle (literally) it can be suprising how fast a warrior can clear hell. Here is what you will need:
-80% light radius
8 scrolls of infrasion (per game)
haste weapon
High AC and/or good blocking
minimum one slvl 15 spell
Equipment setup 1 (no resistances with high block / high AC):
Gotterdamerung
Kings sword of haste
Armor of precision
(or Awesome FPM <of precision> if you want AC)
Awesome shield of the tiger
<Dragons> Amulet of perfection
<Dragons> Ring of perfection
Ring of the dark
Equipment setup 2 (resistances):
Thinking cap
Kings sword of haste
Obsidian armor <of suffix>
Emerald shield <of suffix>
Dragons amulet of the lion
Ring of the dark
Ring of the dark
Enter a new level with your stealth items equipped. Select an slvl 15 spell in the speedbook, then cast an infrasion scroll from your belt. This will cast a level 15 infrasion, which will last for 7 minutes 43.5 seconds (with the thinking cap, the duration will increase by 2 minutes per scroll). Although you can't see the geography of the level, you will be able to find a group of monsters easily. This group will lead to another group, then another, and so on. The majority of the level can be cleared this way with some occasional castings of Town portal / firewall to light up the level, and can be cleared easily in two scorlls if infravision. None of this is new of course. When you take advantage of a feature of stealth, however, you can many times dispatch a group of monsters in a one-way battle.
Stealth doesn't actually lower the activation radius to 1 tile; it works a bit differently. In the N W S E directions, a monster will actually be activated two tiles away. Also, enemies to a diagonal (or up, right, left, down with respect to the monitor) will not be activated even a single space away. Interestingly, when you attack them (you will have to hold shift) you can even hit them without activating them.
You will be able to kill most enemies in a single group using this tatic of attacking from the diagonal. Occasionally it will be necessary to activate one or two monsters due to the their formation (with 2 tile activation radius. With a little practice, you will be able to quickly decide how you need to approach a group to activate the least number of monsters. Take the ones you activate one at a time. Melee attackers should be no problem one on one. Don't worry about activating witches. They will be caught in an endless loop - first moving closer to be within attack range, then moving away because of their AI. They will rarely fire a bloodstar, and with no resistances you will be able to block it. Lazurus' chamber is a pushover. Only lazarus himself needs to be activated to clear the chamber. You will want to stone curse him to avoid his powerful fireball, especially if you choose to go with no resistances.
The only enemies that will prove a challenge are advocates and balrogs (if you don't have fire resistances). Try not to activate them if you can avoid it. When activating monsters, you will have a choice to activate one monster or the other - many times the other enemy will not be a balrog. As for advocates, never allow them to be more than one square away from you. Once activated, they will shoot fireballs at you even if they teleport away beyond 1 tile. It is a better idea to teleport to a tile and activate three at the same time (each one next to you) than it is to activate only one that will shoot fireballs at you.
I have found that Hell/hell can be cleared roughly in 35-40 minutes solo, including time indentifying drops and buying potions (personally, this is not much slower if not equal to the time it takes me to clear hell with my mage). Each hell/hell clear also gives over 5 million points of experience, so you can roughly gauge how much time it takes to get a certain amount of experience. Don't forget you will have to spend time shopping for scrolls of infravision too.
This build isn't the most exciting and not very difficult. It can just be used to gain experience much faster than normal (who doesn't occasionally like to level up quickly). Plus, looking at the equipment requirements, most of it is normally used anyways, so the only extra equipment that may be needed is a gotterdamerung and a ring of the dark (perfect block or high AC is not really required when facing one enemy at a time). On top of everything, you don't have to chase down those damned witches! Unless, of course, you like that sort of thing.
Edit: LOL can a mod. please fix the title?
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Elite - 05-07-2003
It seems you have put a lot of time and thought into this. I am impressed. As a warrior myself, I have tried the -80% light radius. For myself, I didn't care for it. I prefer an Emmerald/Obsidean Tiger sheild, AFPM, and RC myself (personal preference). However, I was curious while reading this, how does stealth work from within Laz's lair? Is it possible to teleport in and not set off any demon?
Note, as a warrior, never chase a witch. Why go to them when they go to you? Always use your surroundings to your benifet.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Nystul - 05-07-2003
A few comments:
- AFAIK, powergamers actually aren't big fans of fireball. It only kills a few monsters per cast. :) They mainly cast teleport, CL, CL, teleport, CL, CL, etc. in hell/caves. Since I'm not a powergamer, most of this post is secondhand knowledge.
- It's possible, although somewhat cumbersome, to powerlevel warriors the exact same way that people level sorcerers. Major +magic and +mana equipment, CL and teleport through caves. It may be faster to level a warrior in a more traditional style, however, and I don't have enough experience to compare the two.
- Intentionally setting your hotkeyed spell to a high-level spell before casting infravision is cheating IMHO.
- Full stealth gains you safety, but does it really gain you speed? I would think that with infra shopping time included, it would be slower than a more traditional, medium AC/telekiller setup. Or just a purely traditional high AC setup if playing in hell/caves.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Sir_Die_alot - 05-14-2003
Quote:However, I was curious while reading this, how does stealth work from within Laz's lair? Is it possible to teleport in and not set off any demon?
Yes you can. Another thing you can do that I did once for the fun of it was I teleported into, and then cleared out, Diablo's box without ever activating Diablo himself. :)
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Occhidiangela - 05-14-2003
I realize this subject has been pounded into dust on other occasions.
However . . .
Quote: Intentionally setting your hotkeyed spell to a high-level spell before casting infravision is cheating IMHO.
I'd call it cheesey, but I accept that it is a 'bug exploit' in that it took some careful testing by players to figure this whole exploit out some time ago. And, scrolls are allegedly set at X slevel, IIRC from Jarulf's Guide, and this method gets around that. How is that different from using Fireball, a legit spell, that has the slightly odd feature of doing double damage to its primary target due to splash damage? Isn't that too a bug exploit? MSfe is a bug exploit, not going there, however, it can be set up entirely by an 'innocent' NM who, never having read Jarulf's Guide, simply puts no points into vitality due to a min-max build approach, and uses only MS/high mana as a means to keep life from hitting zero.
Was the spell/Infra slvl link confirmed as an unintentional feature? I seem to recall a discussion that proves that position, but it has been quite some time. Memory cloudy.
I might poke aroung Jarulf's guide a bit later and see what I can do to shore up my memeory loss. :o
Edit: added thought.
Hmmmm, Nova.
Quote:When casting a spell from a scroll or staff, it will have the same slvl as the slvl you know the spell (including any modifications from items). If you donât know the spell it will be cast at slvl 1 (plus any modifications from items). There is a bug, however. If you cast a spell from a scroll and currently have another spell hot keyed, it will use the slvl of the hot keyed spell instead of the spell you are casting. This is true even if you donât know the spell.
I had forgotten that it was any scroll-spell. This means that using Nova from a scroll could also exploit the same bug.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Moldran - 05-14-2003
Quote:Was the spell/Infra slvl link confirmed as an unintentional feature?
I think it is very obvious that this was not intended. No need to further confirm it.
Contrary to what JG sais, unknown spells from scrolls and staves are cast at slvl 0 , not slvl 1, btw.
Moldran
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Yogi_Baar - 05-15-2003
Occhidiangela,May 14 2003, 10:30 PM Wrote:MSfe is a bug exploit, not going there, however, it can be set up entirely by an 'innocent' NM who, never having read Jarulf's Guide, simply puts no points into vitality due to a min-max build approach, and uses only MS/high mana as a means to keep life from hitting zero.A popular myth on Battle.net these days is that your current life needs to be below your clvl in order for the bug to work. That would mean that any NM (whose life > clvl, which is always) would always get into hit recovery. But, as I understand JG, to get into hit recovery while using MS:
1. the received damage needs to be over your clvl
2. the current life needs to be higher than the received DAMAGE (prior to the MS reduction), not just your clvl
Therefore against a blood knight in hell difficulty (106 - 146 damage), even 100 current life would cause the bug effect?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Nystul - 05-15-2003
I'll try to keep this short and simple... don't want to start another long "legit" thread if I can help it. If someone picks up an infra scroll and casts it without thinking about what they had hotkeyed, and as a result end up with infra that lasts a day and a half, that is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned. What I object to is someone taking the time to actually make sure they get the benefit they aren't supposed to have. And for a strat to be more or less built around this idea, I don't think it's a good thing.
I personally think the combination of stealth and infra alone is very cheesy, but I wouldn't consider it cheating unless that person knows they don't need very many infra scrolls because they can just take advantage of this bug every time.
In the unlikely case that you don't already know my position regarding your MS bug example, here it is: Whether the player has read JG and gained knowledge of the bug is entirely irrelevent. They are only cheating if the primary purpose of {using cursed items/ not pumping vit/ etc.} is to lower their life in order to take advantage of the bug. Or in other words, they are only exploiting the bug if the actions they take are different because of their knowledge of the bug. This is only my opinion, whereas several people here have made it very clear that they believe the BNM/NM in this example would indeed be cheating.
Regarding fireball: It does roughly the damage listed on screen, and is applied to an AOE such that the target is hit twice and the surrounding area is hit once. That is not how a fireball works in D&D, but I haven't seen any clear evidence to suggest that it's a bug. But in the case that the double damage is unintended, I would still not be willing to change my playing style to avoid the bug... Just like people do not avoid killing hell/hell Diablo just because his AC is too low.
From the same standpoint, I don't expect people to stop using scrolls because of the bug we are discussing in this thread. And I don't really expect people to stop what they are doing, change their hotkey to the scroll they are about to click, and then cast, every time they choose to use a scroll. I just think it crosses the line for people to take the time when reading a scroll to ensure that they have some high level spell hotkeyed. Now in most cases, the effect of changing the spell level of a scroll is so minimal that it doesn't matter much anyway. But in this particular case it has a great impact, which is why the idea was mentioned in the first place.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Nystul - 05-15-2003
Well, add in:
3. the character does not have any resistance to this type of damage
and you are correct.
The significance of (life < clvl) is that at that point, your character can never be stunned at all. Once we reach life > clvl, it is just a matter of how frequently the effect will happen. Virtually any character who would bother to use mana shield will have low enough life that the effect will happen in some cases, but obviously the higher your life the more often you could get stunned.
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Something Dutch - 05-15-2003
I use to clear hell/hell very quick, together with my other high lvl warrior buddy. Yesterday i was like "come stand right next to me, i need to test something", then i cast a nova scroll that killed him at once! He had like 450 hp and we were both surprised to find out that i killed him with 1 lousy scroll:( Reading this thread made me realise that i probably had my lvl 15 heling spell hotkeyed before casting the scroll:)
hehe tx for the info
(next target: my other buddy with the demi-god mage)
Warrior Leveling Tatic - Occhidiangela - 05-15-2003
Quote:In the unlikely case that you don't already know my position regarding your MS bug example, here it is: Whether the player has read JG and gained knowledge of the bug is entirely irrelevent. They are only cheating if the primary purpose of {using cursed items/ not pumping vit/ etc.} is to lower their life in order to take advantage of the bug. Or in other words, they are only exploiting the bug if the actions they take are different because of their knowledge of the bug. This is only my opinion, whereas several people here have made it very clear that they believe the BNM/NM in this example would indeed be cheating.
I am pretty much on the same page with you.
I found Stealth to be a fun little diversion when I first discovered it on my own BEFORE I ever read Jarulf's guide: Sniper is what I called the Rogue in Question. I had, at the time, no clue as to why infra was variable in length, nor why sometimes the monsters could not see me, when other times they could see me before I saw them, since I did not understand the importance of when you put on the equipment, and where.
What was funny was that having arrived at the DSF an getting involved in reading JG and learning all sorts of stuff, I learned all of the loopholes anyone could ever want! From legits. I think I was actually 'more legit' before I ever looked at the DSF: up until that point, I simply played the game as I found it, learning as I went. Kind of fun, really. Sometimes, I think we know too much. :)