recursively cubing weapons

[Crystalion]

if the exceptional to elite rare cube recipe works on crafts, then

No go. I finallly got around to checking, since I hadn't seen the info: crafts are not rares and runewords are not uniques, in so far as the recipes which allow normal to exceptional to elite. I'm sure this seems like a "well, duh!" to many of you, but I wasn't sure.

However, in continuing my thinking along recursive cubing lines and reading what people have to say here and on the AB, I have a suggestion for you all that I have tested in SP v1.10s...

Let's say, for example, that we really want to spend lots and lots of regular gems recursively rerolling a Caduceus, which is the high level elite (Paly mods possible) 1h blunt weapon whose "normal" form is a War Scepter. Our fantasy, since a Caduceus has a qlvl of 85, is that we are going to get really lucky and roll a Cruel Caduceus of Piercing with some lovely Paly pluses also--assuming we can ever get the weapon out of the hands of our Blade Fury Assassin.

So, if we assume we have a very high level player with access to appropriate Acts in hell difficulty, we could expect to eventually turn up the initial Caduceus to process by shopping, right? I might be fairly expensive, but if we have such a high level character, I'm sure they're happy to spot us a couple million gold.

Please note that I picked a Caduceus for this example partly because you can't gamble for them (because we're going to reroll the item over and over, relying on qlvl instead of ilvl, it wouldn't matter what ilvl the initial item was, so a preference for shops instead of gambling does not pertain).

But there is an alternative. It doesn't require a lot of gold or time shopping with a high level character. It does, however, require some runes that are valuable. It is very important to note, however, that the runes needed are in "the sweet spot" for nightmare hellforge rushing acquisition (that is, only up to Um) and thus may be considered, in some sense, to be practical to use, if the results merit it. Potentially, therefore, no high level character needs to be available for this project...

If we acquire, by drop, a War Scepter that isn't special (unique, magical, set or socketed:non-LQ) then we are in business. I suspect War Scepters, at qlvl 21, are a hair too high to ever just be buyable, plain, from a shop, but I have not researched this (anyone know off hand?).

If the WS is socketed but (fortunately) Low Quality (LQ, cracked, crude) then we normalize it with the gem chip + Eld recipe and continue.

If the WS isn't rare we have Charsi make it rare for us. (A character rushed to level 8, iirc, can qualify for this imbue).

We now proceed to use the Perfect Saphire + Ort + Amn to make it an Exceptional rare.

That wasn't too costly, but now we get a bit more serious: we use the Perfect Saphire + Fal + Um to make it an Elite rare.

If using a weenie character to do an imbue hasn't prepared you, get ready for more weirdness...

Now, since we don't have SoJs just lying around we want to get rid of, we blow a Larzuk socket quest reward to socket the rare (this could have been done earlier, if you wish). Some people feel socket quests are valuable. I will have to ask you to forgive me for not publishing my rushing research yet, but I ask you to take it for granted that there will be, as things stand now, a huge surplus of available socket quests (the effort/reward ratio for rushing characters to nm Hellforge is high you see, and they get norm Larzuk therefore basically for free).

It should be obvious at this point that we are finally done, as this item now qualifies to be cubed with three regular gems over and over to try for our dream weapon.

Under the present economy, where you can't sneeze without startling a rich level 90s player in Realm, it would make far more sense, probably, to attack this by shopping for the initial item. However, for a new SP or when the new v1.10 ladder starts, the method I have outlined could be commonplace far far sooner (i.e. by time some characters are in their 60s, as opposed to characters in the 80s).

Naturally the Caduceus was just an example (interesting because of the Cruel/Piercing combo with class mods) whereas the technique is general (excluding only weapons that can not be socketed).

Unfortunately Wirt's Leg suffers the same (==> hand axe) upgrade problem that I reported in the Maggot Lair as a bug for the 2exceptional, 2elite recipes with the various unique quest weapons so you won't be able to use this technique with it. However the 3 regular gem recipe does make it magical so you can then keep hitting it with 3 perfs to try to get your Cruel Wirt's Leg dream weapon. ;) (edit: this is j/k, as WL qlvl is 0, and the ilvl is, iirc, 30, if you started by making it magical with the 3 gem recipe... thus your alvl is limited to 30 on the perf recipe and you can not possibly get Cruel... in other words, this edit is to avoid misunderstandings of my little joke, so no one goes off and spends endless hours cubing Wirt's Leg only to blame me when nothing good comes of it).

Edit: according to what I've been reading at AB and here at LL it probably should be mentioned for those that have missed it, that rare's are much better in v1.10s (allowing affixes previously restricted to magical). So if you have a plain high qlvl elite weapon then it would be well worth it to spend a very short time to rush a new character to level 8 and then the Charsi quest/imbue reward for it. Naturally you can't recurse that, but if you don't like the output, you can save it until you can socket it and then you can recursively plug it into a reroll cycle with regular gems. However there is a chance now with the weenie imbue of getting just an insane combo of damage mods (e.g. cruel + grandmasters).

Really everything comes down to what is easy or acceptable for you to find/consume?: plain elite base weapons; magical elite base weapons; plain or rare normal base weapons upgradable via decent runes. Depending on the base item and your character's level and luck in drops you may favor one path over the others. The way alvls/qlvls and imbues (rushed) work though, far and away the "luckiest" drops are the "plain" ones of exactly the topflight elite(s) you want--either for uber imbue chances or for runeword socketing. This suggests that players will concentrate on farming the latter parts of act5 hell and work on rune acquisition (passively, or by Countess runs, or by nm/hell hellforge rushing).

Another oddity that I saw Ruvanal bring up, is that staffmod generation works with ilvl, so for some imbue/cube recipes you can profitably use a low level character to deliberately trash this, while your alvl for affixes is held up by (elite) qlvl, thus accessing the low tiers of skill +mods. While Necro skills (curses) in low tiers and Skelie stuff are obvious things to want pluses to, it was not predictable as of v1.10 beta1 when Ruvanal was discussing the subject that Paladin Holy Bolt would become an uber skill, to which a +3 is quite welcome to a specialty healer or vs.-undead build as of v1.10s.

[Ruvanal]

If the WS is socketed but (fortunately) Low Quality (LQ, cracked, crude) then we normalize it with the gem chip + Eld recipe and continue.

This should not normally be happening. Low-quality items should only be appearing form random item drops. The random item drops are only checking the normal and superior quailty items for a chance to spawn with sockets.

I suspect War Scepters, at qlvl 21, are a hair too high to ever just be buyable, plain, from a shop, but I have not researched this (anyone know off hand?).

At clvls of 16-19 try the following Ormus, Jamella and Malah. They should be having non-magic versions at times.

So if you have a plain high qlvl elite weapon then it would be well worth it to spend a very short time to rush a new character to level 8 and then the Charsi quest/imbue reward for it. Naturally you can't recurse that, ...

You can recurse the item if it is 6 spaces or less using the 6 perfect skull formula. Since you are trying for the high alvl based on the item having a high qlvl, the resulting ilvls from using this formula will be inconsequential. The only thing is that skulls have half the chance of dropping compared to the other 6 types of gems. But if you 'horde' the skulls for this and just use the other six gems for all the other formulas, you should be able to aquire an adequate supply. Even in 1.09 there is a fair amount of misinformation on what the skulls will work on (I have had refusals to except chipped skulls because 'they will not work in the sword formula' and similar cases with the magic item reroll formula; makes it easy to aquire extra skulls that way).

And yes, the change in Holy Bolt was not predictable at that time.

Edit: P.S. from what little Crystalion had listed so far on what he is looking at for 'rushing', it can be much, much easier to do than what most will expect. I have not (and will not for a while) have an opportunity to test the speed of the of technique that I referred to for 'rushing' in an AB thread. But I suspect with a couple of living bodies and the right mix of characters and equipment (none uber, most just magical and a low calaber runewords like Leaf) it should be possible to push characters into hell in hell in around 2 to 4 hours of play. NOte it will take at least one character that has played at normal speed prior to this to 'pathfind' the way for the others. This is based on what I seen already being done by others for rushing compared to what my actual skill is (which is some what lower than the 'elite type' rushing characters).

[Crystalion]

This should not normally be happening.  Low-quality items should only be appearing form random item drops.  The random item drops are only checking the normal and superior quailty items for a chance to spawn with sockets.

Okay, I confess. Now that I've been caught, I'll stop entering newbie games and selling my Larzuk socketed crude, cracked and low quality items to the shops for them to offer to confuse the newbies. :D

At clvls of 16-19 try the following Ormus, Jamella and Malah.  They should be having non-magic versions at times.

Thanks for the info. Probably a LL FAQ for shoppers thread would be a good idea at some point.

You can recurse the item if it is 6 spaces or less using the 6 perfect skull formula.

Now that's *expensive*. Of course, nm Hellforge rushing players might accumulate enough surplus perf skulls to blow on this from time to time.

from what little Crystalion had listed so far on what he is looking at for 'rushing', it can be much, much easier to do than what most will expect

Yes, but actually all my rushing research has presumed that 20xDiff_level will be added as a restriction to quest credit for killing Baal (a fair no-brainer change) for v1.10 release, as it is just too silly to easily get +6 (or +7 with extra work) multiplier to rushee to nm. Even assuming that I need to also xp rush each char to 20 to reap nm hellforge, I have no doubt whatsoever that in a new v1.10 ladder economy it is worth it.

This is based on what I seen already being done by others for rushing compared to what my actual skill is

Rushing is accelerated in a fresh economy the most by understanding techniques for efficiencies in the face of restrictions. Later on (and not so much later, for nm rushing) large efficiencies can be had by assuming certain levels, skills and items are easily at the disposal of the rusher. In all cases the focus and play expertise of the rusher will help or hinder. The greatest skill and cleverness for rushing efficiently will be needed for the Hardcore Ladder (unless my suggestion to limit Baal quest credit is ignored and the game released as is--then even a poorly executed rush pays off bigtime).

The real problem with publishing my rushing research (other than the fact that I'm still finding neat new wrinkles every few days so I'm not ready) is that there is so much information to present. I am not interested in presenting cookie cutter recipes for mindless exploiters--my whole interest was caught by rushing as being a complex problem to study with interesting and sometimes surprising solutions. OTOH, if Blizzard for some strange reason won't restrict Baal credit before release, then Ruvanal's gloomy prediction (AB thread) that the new v1.10 Ladder economy could quickly become wildly distorted is made more likely by publishing. Personally I'm giving the crew at Blizzard working on v1.10 very high marks for effort, so I expect the Ladders will be a lot of fun and reasonably balanced if they are reset around the time the first player makes clvl 99 (I think that should be the reset trigger, actually, and that Player "enshrined" on a hall of fame battle.net webpage).

[Crystalion]

Let's say, for example, that we really want to spend lots and lots of regular gems recursively rerolling a Caduceus, which is the high level elite (Paly mods possible) 1h blunt weapon whose "normal" form is a War Scepter. Our fantasy, since a Caduceus has a qlvl of 85, is that we are going to get really lucky and roll a Cruel Caduceus of Piercing with some lovely Paly pluses also--assuming we can ever get the weapon out of the hands of our Blade Fury Assassin.

After replying to Ruvanal's reply I created a level 16 "Shopper" character via -act 2. His only problem was he couldn't visit Ormus (-act 2 only has access to act 2 or a one way ticket to act 1 Rogue Encampment). So I performed a rush on him: darkness/claw viper amulet; summoner; (new game hosted by "Duriel" char...) Tyriel sleeze; Travancal (incl. drop a cube); Meph; Diablo; Shenk; Andariel; Malus.

His first visits to both Ormus and Jamella had non-magical War Scepters for sale (I didn't bother Malah).

Using v1.09 warehouse characters to give Shopper some perf Saphires and runes (and SP duping by char save/restore for lots of regular gems) set him up with an inventory/cube ready for 10 trials of 3 reg gem recubing a shot.

I did ten runs, restoring Shopper after each one, for 100 total rolls. At the beginning of each run I had him imbue, then, usually, Larzuk socketing (the first 20 or 30 trials I socketed the rare once it was elite).

Of 100 rolls I can definitely say that Sturgeon's Law holds (90% of everything is cr*p). A few of the rolls were Ferocious, a few soso high elemental adders, one an "of piercing" and the 92nd roll was:

Cruel Caduceus of Craftsmanship
+234% enhanced damage
+1 to maximum damage
+2 to Blessed Aim (Paly only)
+50% damage to undead (always, due to weapon type)
2 sockets
for listed damage of 123 to 144.

I don't consider this very exciting, overall. A close runner up (around roll 95) was:

Ferocious Caduceus
+190% enhanced damage
+3 to Zeal
+50% damage to undead (always, due to weapon type)
1 socket
for listed damage of 107 to 124.

Because, if you're a Zealot, that +3 Zeal (in v1.10s) is going to give you +30% AR bump and +18% damage bump (on the 107 to 124). Still, it probably is a net loss in damage because of the way Str and aura bonuses really want to see high base damage on the weapon.

I didn't see a roll with enough elemental damage to really merit a screenshot, but clearly you could also get some reasonable Zealot weapons.

Seems to me you would need a *lot* of regular gems, so the trade economy in them ought to be brisk For example, I'd probably consider one roll--3 gems--to be at least at valuable cashwise as blowing 63000 on an amulet gamble, so that suggests a price of at least 21000 per regular gem. By this reckoning, my experimental trials ought to have set me back 6.3 million gold. This doesn't seem out of line to me, even though I wasn't overly thrilled with the Cruel rolled. Think I'm wildly off-base here?

[Crystalion]

Really everything comes down to what is easy or acceptable for you to find/consume?: plain elite base weapons; magical elite base weapons; plain or rare normal base weapons upgradable via decent runes. Depending on the base item and your character's level and luck in drops you may favor one path over the others. The way alvls/qlvls and imbues (rushed) work though, far and away the "luckiest" drops are the "plain" ones of exactly the topflight elite(s) you want--either for uber imbue chances or for runeword socketing. This suggests that players will concentrate on farming the latter parts of act5 hell and work on rune acquisition (passively, or by Countess runs, or by nm/hell hellforge rushing).

Hmm, I probably shouldn't have said this without (what seemed to me an obvious) disclaimer...

The luckiest drops are uber uniques and key runes for runewords or for upgrading a good unique into a uber-unique. So a relevant point, for the discussion of weapons, is that Lum and Pul (plus perf emerald) are the lucky drops if you already have a proto-uber exceptional unique weapon you'd like to upgrade (there are quite a few). Naturally the nm Hellforge rush can acquire these runes and you are far more likely, unless you're really high level, to be seeing proto-uber exceptional unique weapons drop than the new uber-elite unique weapons.

As I've been part of other discussions on which runewords are reasonably reachable but very powerful, I won't go into that in detail here. But Crescent Moon, which is still only ShaelUmTir as of v1.10s (they nerfed Call to Arms appropriately in beta-s but didn't adjust CM or Delirium, both of which are too easy in my opinion), is kind of the "baseline" to think about there, as you aren't unlikely to be able to make it (runes) before you even find a suitable base elite for it.

Edit: and even before you can make Crescent Moon, you have an excellent chance of being able to make Passion (my Assassin was barely over 50 when she could make it, but at 69 still hasn't accessed deeply enough into the game to have a good elite base item to put it into--this is normal play, not rushing Hellforge quests, for example).

[Ruvanal]

Seems to me you would need a *lot* of regular gems, so the trade economy in them ought to be brisk For example, I'd probably consider one roll--3 gems--to be at least at valuable cashwise as blowing 63000 on an amulet gamble, so that suggests a price of at least 21000 per regular gem. By this reckoning, my experimental trials ought to have set me back 6.3 million gold. This doesn't seem out of line to me, even though I wasn't overly thrilled with the Cruel rolled. Think I'm wildly off-base here?

Your results are about comparabel the case of using the 1.09 sword+chipped gem formula in terms of the number of iterations you will be typically looking at. Even though the chance of getting a 'cruel' has been increased some, some of the other non-dmg% affixes have also had some increase in their frequencies also. There is a net increase in the chance of getting a 'cruel', but it is not as great as some might believe from just looking at the chnge to the 'Cruel' frequency itself.

This also ties in with my comment about the accumulating the skulls for the rare re-rolling. With the amount of gems you are going through to try to get a decent result, i can be practical to siphon off the skulls for using only for the rare rerolling as that will only reduce the amount gems availble for this formula by about 1/13 of the gems that come by.

On rushing, orginal concern was for what is currently happening in the 'normal open' games. Yo enter a game (even one labeled "NO Rushing") and shortly thereafter some player comes in and starts rushing all the players through the game. Then 15-30 min later all primary quest for act advancement are done and the buld of the players leave. Then when you get to Hell didfficulty all that is available to join are games of "UberArea run XXX" games that have all act advancement quests completed and many of the others also. These games also usually only last about 10-15 before they depopulate. The only thing that I think of as lacking right now in the v1.10 beta games is knowledge of an area in hell to be the next "UberArea" this do this in. It took a few weeks to recognise the Bloody Foothills as the first recognised spot a couple of months after that before doing 'cows' was recognised as being an even better place for this. Once a spot for this and a character build that can obsenely exploit the area is worked out, I expect that the rushing of this form will have an opportunity to resume. This would be for the detriment of the all those that would prefer a more normal pace of play.

Crystalion's take on what it will be doing for the 'economy' (especially from the rune availablity perspective) is just another gloomy aspect to consider. The technique that I had used will really only require 2 people to use and could potentially be used for up to 6 others (these can be just extra logged in accounts). This makes it something that the ones doing item selling for $$ will want to exploit in private. But it will distort the availability of some of the "rarer runes" if used in the ways described by Crystalion.

[Occhidiangela]

You socketed a rare, and used regular gems to change its affixes? Not Skulls?

*confused* So, as I understand it, the socket formula does not care if the item is rare or not?

Let me know if I misunderstood this point. I ask this since I have had a number of rares drop, from Andariel for example, in 1.10s that had two sockets already in them.

Had I understood this point, I could have re rolled with normal gems over and over. Wait a minute, since it was armor, maybe not. :P

[adeyke]

The regular/standard gem recipe is this:
3 standard gems + socketed weapon -> magic (i.e. blue) weapon with ilvl 30 and 1-2 sockets

The "socketed weapon" means that any weapon with sockets works. The "colour" of the item is irrelevant, as long as it has sockets. The output, however, is always blue.

[Crystalion]

Crystalion's take on what it will be doing for the 'economy' (especially from the rune availablity perspective) is just another gloomy aspect to consider.

The amazing thing is that my techniques only need slight modification to also work for Hardcore. Since I strongly prefer having the Hellforge quest/reward in the game as a way to ensure that you will eventually be able to make decent runewords, I have to hope that they insist on 20xdiff to get Baal credit before release (aka before they are presented with fait accompli economy disaster, on Ladder, even in Hardcore, by rushing exploitation).

People willing to do boring xp harvesting (or MF runs) don't bother me so much, ala...

The only thing that I think of as lacking right now in the v1.10 beta games is knowledge of an area in hell to be the next "UberArea" this do this in.  It took a few weeks to recognise the Bloody Foothills as the first recognised spot a couple of months after that before doing 'cows' was recognised as being an even better place for this.  Once a spot for this and a character build that can obsenely exploit the area is worked out, I expect that the rushing of this form will have an opportunity to resume.  This would be for the detriment of the all those that would prefer a more normal pace of play.

Although I do sympathize with the complaint that finding decent (public) games to play in is very iffy. I suspect the best group games tend to be between family/friends/clan when there is a like-mindedness about general style of play. And in this situation it is sometimes nice to be able to quest or xp rush a bit to help put the players "on the same page" to play together normally.

The biggest improvement I see in v1.10 relative to your complaints is that MF has been hugely nerfed for SuperUniques, and drops improved (and MF still operative) for regular monsters. Those of us that prefer regular play to SU MF runs thus benefit by being able to do as we like without feeling totally behind the curve compared to the uber gear the repetitive MFers were getting pre-v1.10.

As for mindless xp farming, the Cow Level and Pindle area still seem good for that, though supposedly the drops are nerfed so players can't have their cake and eat it too. (I say supposedly, because my Pindle experience thus far is to see a lot of non-magical base items, which is often ideal).

As to mindless power in general, I don't see why Corpse Explosion should be back to scaling with players X. Certainly the Assassin trap version (Death Sentry) needs this, now that DS is nerfed bigtime (down to 10-25% of corpse life). But CE itself? Geez. (Just add a low level Necro with most of their points into CE blast radius to *any* killing party to reduce all battles to just the first couple of kills then blam-o!, everything dead).

By comparision the "game breaking" builds for Barbarians (taunt/battlecry) and Paladin (insane BH; insane HB) require lots of points and have situational problems lending them some balance.

For two player combos I should probably mention that while the Act 5 monster mix-up zaps cookie-cutter firewall Sorcs (the Bloody Foothills sleeze) you can still have a Necro team with her, now that monster AI is altered w.r.t. bonewalls, to create the same concept elsewhere (bonewall, monster line up, fire wall, monster death, CEs, mass monster death) where fire immunes can be avoided (cow level perhaps?). This at least requires a fair number of points from the Necro (to get the bonewalls strong enough and CE radius up). The Sorc will have points to burn (ahem) so she could become an Enchantress, which is a very very useful party (or summoner) aid. Indeed, with better skelies and bone armor, a "hit and run" teleporting Necro, given high level enchant, looks to be a winning play style (Necros: the new Boss killer class--when you teleport all your enchanted minions come with you to one point, which, if it is suitably next to an enemy, causes them *all* to focus their might on that one opponent without fanning out (you can still leave, however)).

But again, even if we criticize effective builds for their "cookie cutter" play tendencies, I don't think that ruins the game by itself. If you'd spent a couple of years playing EQ you'd see how much worse a model/economy is possible (that people will still play). The key thing is finding ways for people with compatible playstyles to enjoy effort/reward in the game, while ignoring/avoiding other people who might spoil that. Between v1.10 play balance, rust storm, and the promise of recycling Ladder only play, Blizzard does seem to be addressing this problem.

[Occhidiangela]

But again, even if we criticize effective builds for their "cookie cutter" play tendencies, I don't think that ruins the game by itself. If you'd spent a couple of years playing EQ you'd see how much worse a model/economy is possible (that people will still play). The key thing is finding ways for people with compatible playstyles to enjoy effort/reward in the game, while ignoring/avoiding other people who might spoil that. Between v1.10 play balance, rust storm, and the promise of recycling Ladder only play, Blizzard does seem to be addressing this problem.

Fun is where you find it, I have always thought, and Ebay sales will once again be a factor, at least on the Ladder. It's a people thing. :)

[Crystalion]

Fun is where you find it, I have always thought, and Ebay sales will once again be a factor, at least on the Ladder.  It's a people thing. :)

You heard it here first, so prepare to grab your designer name characters as soon as the ladder starts...

I want to see Ebay items up for auction solely because they are specially Anya reward personalized, such as:
Britany's Spear,
Onan's Shocking Rod,
dorw's sword (double edged)
etc.

[Ferengi]

if one finds a good polearm (e.g. Giant Thresher) in the latter stages of hell where monsters are over 75th level?

Ah, if you mean a white GT, it took me 3 months to find one and I never found another (I was rich enough for Silence).

If you mean a Blue GT, you can buy them. It's best to look for them around your first opportunity. I used to reroll them for awhile, but then I got rich from crafting zon gloves.

[Ferengi]

if they are reset around the time the first player makes clvl 99 (I think that should be the reset trigger, actually, and that Player "enshrined" on a hall of fame battle.net webpage).

ooooooohhhh :rolleyes:

The team that made it in Classic used a Mace Barb on Diablo. That will work again. If Nilathak remains mlvl 95, he is the other run, since Leap handles the minions. Maybe I could take a little time off from work.....