The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

CelticHound wrote:

If the rushee gets Baal credit via exploit by someone else on the level getting credit, can't they just ignore the Ancients entirely?  That way, if you want to level later, you can wait until you are high enough that you get full exp from that quest.

That is correct. However Ruvanal and I are hopeful this will be fixed for release, without us spelling out in entirety how truly awful this exploit is (for example, in Hardcore with a trick I won't detail at this time).

Walkiry wrote:

Malus: 30:12 lvl. 8
Andy: 51:20 lvl. 10
Staff: 1:32:56 lvl 14
Amulet: 1:37:15 lvl 14
Canyon: 1:57:27 lvl 16
Duriel: 2:13:18 lvl 17
Jade Figurine: 2:17:44 lvl 17
Gibbdin: 2:39:41 lvl 19
Tome: 2:51:18 lvl 20
Khalim's guts: 2:52:36 lvl 20 (time when the last piece was obtained)
Khalim's Flail: 2:55:15 lvl 20
Mephisto's Soulstone: 3:00:05 lvl 20

and I promised to post, for comparative reference, sample assistive times, ala...

act 1: watch Andariel die
act 2: touch viper temple chest to lift darkness; use summoner portal; talk to Tyriel
act 3: watch Council die; watch Meph die
act 4: watch Diablo die
act 5: (non-exploit): be level 20 and watch ancients die then watch Baal die

so here's timings for phase one...

v1.10s, Windows XP pro, Athlon 2000, 512Meg DDR, Nvidia Ti4200 (i.e. a soso system by 2003 standards), running two users (three in Duriel segment) tcp/ip.

Timer started initially after game load when Rusher waypointed out of town. Rushee level 1 before and after rush.

• 03:00 Andarial dead, enter act 2
  <>
  
• 06:18 Viper temple chest touched, amulet picked up for fun, darkness "ended"
  <>
  
• 09:42 Summoner dead and Canyon waypoint acquired
  <>
  
• 11:33 New game started by "Duriel" character and Rusher and Rushee joined and ready to go
  <>
  
• 15:02 Duriel dead; Tyriel talked to etc etc.... in Kurast docks.
  <>
  
• 16:00 new game hosted by Rushee, and joined... ready to go
  <>
  
• 17:57 Council dead and rushee picks up Horadric Cube
  <>
  
• 19:03 Meph dead, rushee in act 4
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• 25:59 Diablo dead, rushee in act 5... end of phase one; awaiting phase 2 = rushee clvl => 20<>
  [st]In other words, since I don't have two people or two computers, 26 minutes is an *inefficient* run time to rush a char to act 5, in prep for either clvl20 ancients, or clvl1 ancients exploit. I could, with two side by side computers and two accounts (I have two CD keys, of course) probably get this down to an average of twenty minutes a rush. Someone with eight side by side PCs could probably do 7 rushees in half an hour.
  
  So, since my rushee was a Sorc, I'll probably save her and try various techniques to time getting her Great Race to level 20, ala Walkiry and my posts. Once that's done, I'll do yet another rush (but timed for your reading pleasure) to give you an idea of how fast an act 5 clvl 20 can harvest their nm Hellforge reward.
  
  Edit: fyi, my "rusher" is a level 71 assassin who was created and played untwinked, starting in beta1 (and then naked in beta s but recovered quickly). At present, for these timings, I have "cheated" and given her an amulet of 25 charges of teleport which I used at most half a dozen times in the course of the timings reported above.
  
  Edit: I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a guess: if phase 1 takes less than half an hour I bet phase 3 + 1 combined with be less than an hour. Based on Walkiry's notwink phase 2 times I bet a twink (already phase 1 rushed) can level up to 20 in under 2 hours. So my prediction would be (non-exploit) that a single assisted rushee from creation to NM Hellforge reward can be done in under 3 (man) hours (assuming you have two accounts and two side by side computers)... that's a uniform distribution of pick one random rune: r12 to r22, aka Sol to Um, for 3 man hours work. Very reasonable, imho (though multiplying that by 7 ala exploit in roughly the same time isn't), and, afaik, a better bet for the near Um runes than Countess runs.
  
  Edit: another reasonable but indirect way to "fix" the exploit worry and also make the rushing less attractive: require clvl 14+20*(diff-1) for Hellforge (aka 14, 34, 54 for normal, nm, hell) or some such.