The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

Have you considered using ravens?

While no matter what you do in the clvl 8 race you're only talking efficiencies on the scale of 30 vs. 20 vs. 10 minute finishing times, I do think that in general Ravens suck. As an AB poster pointed out (someone who had played druid builds focusing on Poison Creeper all the way through nightmare) the time efficiency of PC is much better if you are willing to recast it frequently (to key locations) and if, like earlier posts noted in this thread as well, you arrange to get monsters to run over the poison mats. That is, a few earlier points in Poison Creeper (instead of in Ravens) can get you a lot of mileage.

Ravens, alas, don't have any tricks you can pull to try to make them more (rate of kill) effective (I imagine they 'port along with you if you teleport, but that is beyond the scope of this race).

However, if you are doing an assisted race, with a Sorc staticing everything nearly to death, it may very well be that Ravens are useful (as any hit they successfully make is likely a killing blow).

...

I have experimented with two race to 20 ideas lately that might be of interest. In the first I revisited my Envy "solution" (clvl 1 req +20/2 sec poison jewels) with the additional new idea that slvl 3 Inner Sight is a thing of beauty. And indeed, if you are gong to twink with massive Envy or assist with Enchant and Multishot 'zon does well to have -90 DR on tap, as it is very speed efficient to not miss (unless mlvl vs. clvl is too far).

While doing that test I happened across an interesting tidbit that I think many power levelers will find useful: The Far Oasis is devoid of ranged attackers, has a waypoint, and often has Itchies, who are very nicely overlapped for any mass-kill technique. Plus the mlvl there is 15|16 making it ideal for leveling from clvl 11 to 20 with no xp dilution.

Obviously then, a location rush or self-rush to get there seems like a good idea. For Ladder zipping into a Players N game and waypointing to FO and quickly wiping it out seems like an excellent plan.

To test this concept, I decided to do something I'd been curious about: how well a completely untwinked WoF Assassin build would do (earlier I reported times for my twinked one). My concept was to get to Andarial and act 2 ~clvl 12 and proceed asap to Far Oasis, doing a clear and taking the waypoint. Then, to simulate Ladder play opportunities, I would then play at least Players 2, doing a new game every time I cleaned out the Oasis.

In practice what happened was that I made clvl 13 shortly before Andy, and 14 before I got the Far Oasis waypoint. I then ramped up to Players 2 until I was somewhere in clvl 17, at which point I did, iirc, 3 games at Players 8 and thus made clvl 20.

It took me ~1.5 hours to get to the Jail 1 waypoint, clvl 10. About an hour from there to get to act 2 (clvl 13).

It took less than an hour more to make clvl 20.

I have a lot of difficulty keeping myself from picking up goodies (gems, throwing potions, magic items) so I'm sure any sensible player would turn in a significantly better time than that (under 3.5 hours to clvl 20, notwink).

While I like my previous twink build concept of Serpent Lord staff and Dragon Talon kick for mana, in practice the mana drops plenty fast enough to fuel the hungry Wake of Fire skill, as long as you have a buffer (I ended up dedicating 6 belt spots for mana, 3 for heals, and 3 for stamina potions--which, if I had to do it over, I'd reassign to mana).

It is a bummer that WoF can't "triumph" (+mana/kill) but the v1.10 availability of mana in town makes it moot.

The only downside to the Far Oasis power leveling is that when you're toasting beetles you need to keep your distance or a terrain obstacle handy, because WoF kills them so fast the torrents of charged bolts can occasionally be super intense (my poor act 2 merc got dusted a few times that way).

To recap, the WoF build starts by using the prereq point in Fire Blast to dust weenie monsters (deliberately let them swarm, on you if need be) rapidly, then, at clvl 6, Burst of Speed to run around quickly. In this trial I made good use of a point at clvl 8 for Blade Sentry (I thought it would be fun to use the 6-15 Horadric Malus to contribute weapon damage to the skill). Of course, at clvl 12 you get Wake of Fire, and proceed to pump it.

In this test I saved surplus skill points until I was clvl 17 and about to do Players 8, at which point I dumped them all into Fire Blast (had been slvl 1) for the WoF synergy. This probably made very little difference. In the race from 20 to 40 I think it might matter, but then so could 2 points for CoS and it's prereq.

...

On a different note, for a twink I did a couple days ago I didn't have an amulet in mind (I'd planned all the other slots) so I gave the twinkee the Claw Viper Amulet (no clvl req, +10 life, +10 mana, -25% poison length, iirc). This is kinda amusing. If you don't pass it along to a younger character, at some (quest point) the game will eat it.