I feel the earth Moo under my feet

[Crystalion]

I really don't thing anyone could take at clvl 1 on cows in 1.10, mainly because of improved speed and damage.

Well, when you have crazy (highed skilled) people like MongoJerry running around and strange theoreticians like myself I think it is useful to come at this problem with a "can do" approach and then see it if you run into a brick wall, ala Yoda:

So certain are you... always with you it cannot be done!

Your objections are excellent. But if we come at this from a "how can X be overcome" and then (later) apply restrictions, we may surprise ourselves.

So, from your post, Problem 1: if (not "when") the cows hit a lowbie, bad stuff happens (hit recovery or death)

Example solutions thinking: "Even death can not save you from me!"; "I recover faster than you can possibly imagine"; "HaHa! Missed me!"; "Can't catch me!"

With the possible exception of Hardcore (I say "possible" deliberately, but won't digress here) dying might not be so bad, if one is still making progress (some of us got quite good at D1 corpse recovery where death might be a *necessary* part of the maneuvers).

I notice from Tommi's excellent hit recovery/blocking times webpage that some clvl 1 characters have pretty good timings and from d2data I see non-crits from the Hell Bovines coming in at 43 or less phys damage, which is certainly within the bounds of reason to be able to survive with a twinked clvl 1, so in some scenarios we might be interested in considering we should keep "getting hit" in mind (and not just dismiss it out of hand).

"Missed me!" can happen in a lot of ways. I fondly remember MongoJerry pointing out the zombie boss pack in the Den of Evil were easy for Irene/Aliza because he finessed their AI and attack speed timing. The cows have a fairly large melee range, but their swing frames are still fairly slow, full cycle at least. Their AR is not ultra godly compared to what we could twink for DR (and assisted one of the things we can do is nuke their AR, so shouldn't dismiss... blah, blah, blah) so the real issue is mlvl/clvl (which is not in our favor, of course).

Clearly, with assist, we could avoid having the cows ever get to us, so the question is: what clvl/skills/items for lowbies might accomplish the same thing? If we consider only clvls 1..6 then, iirc, Dim Vision, Howl and Taunt are obvious skills to examine. Frost Nova at clvl 6 might deserve a look. Burst of Speed at clvl 6 is an obvoius big one. Hsarus boots at clvl 3 is a huge twink.

The only thing I mentioned for unassisted/untwinked clvl 1 is Howl, and that might not work (clvl vs. mlvl might be a factor in its success). However, in the hands of a MongoJerry terrain-use-expert stamina potions might be sufficient for keep away (I don't know, not having tried it myself--yet).

If only one cow were approaching us, it is likely that other lowbie tricks are relevant (chill, cleglaws gloves) including such tricks as shift-attack smiting an approaching cow (auto-hit stun before he'd stop and attempt to swing). Having read many of his tales, I would not put it past a player like MongoJerry to be able to extract just one cow from a herd.

To recap, if we limit ourselves to considering clvl 1 (and this was not the intention of my post--I meant to include consideration of any very low clvl player builds/tactics) then we have...

1) actively assisted: Ha! no contest. The cows can be totally manipulated/controlled by the assister(s).

2) passively assisted: interesting case, as Enchant, Conviction, Vigor, and Battle Command are a few examples of "passive" assistance that can make a big difference (remember that I never said we had to limit ourselves to getting good xp from the cow kills, so Vigor, Meditation, etc. requiring being partied with an assistive Paly are not excluded prima facie)

3) twinked: there are some pretty good clvl 1 twinks for life/mana/thorns/weapon. The cows are so studly, however, that thorns is probably not a good option. :blink: A bunch of grand cold charms and massive ranged Envy setup is an obvious "solution", stumbling only over the to-hit & keep-away logistics. There are also rare/exotic items with charges of level 10 Firestorm or Teeth (usable by clvl 1 Druid/Necro respectively).

4) no assist, no twink: well it is technically possible to earn a Den of Evil skill point by yourself without leveling up first (I leave the details as an exercise for the reader) so we can assume a single clvl 1 req skill at slvl 3 (point invested plus 2 for the skill shrine--remember I'm asking what is *possible*, not what is necessarily easy or likely). You could also scavenge enough cash by cowardly tactics to buy +3 skill wands/scepters/staves from Akara (or have the patience, potentially, to get +3 skills from drop-only class items, but those might all have clvl 3 req at a minimum?). The cows regen is likely to be relevant (although once again MongoJerry surprised me in his adventures in this regard) so Poison Creeper is interesting (remember that I'm also willing to consider parties of lowbies confronting this challenge, so noting things like this are important, as one party member is potentially good at keeping a cow's regen off).

#4 is a pretty challenging case. Clearly, however, if you relax constraints to either clvl to 6 or twink just Hsarus boots to clvl 3s then #4 is dramatically transformed.

In other words I think all the "action" is from clvl 1 to 12, which is pretty much in line with "normal" clvls people have while in act 1. Perhaps the "standard" (for fun that is) quest to complete after Andariel with new characters (in a play group) should be to clear the cow level? B)