Single cd-key solo play Ladder HF rushing works

[Crystalion]

I must admit that your posts on Diablo 2 quest state transition have always intrigued. Finally you've brought me out of what is close to a five year haitus from posting about diablo, whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen.

Oh dear, oh my. Here I am, off playing Spellforce, and I'm de-lurking a long time lurker back into D2land? Tsk, tsk, I should have been more careful with my teasers! "Get well soon" is all I can say ;)

This includes some fun problems such as the ability to complete act2 without a single monster kill on the part of the 'rushee'

Indeed... act 2 has the most complexity in quest transitions that are relevant for passing through, and yet--a supreme irony!--"properly" rushed the rushee may well never even *see* a monster in act 2. :D

I was pleased to find I had reached a similar conclusion to your goodself when I saw your use of the feminine pronoun.

Well, unless adeyke renews his assualt and convinces me I've been snowblind about throwing potions (I've said they do not presently seem to exist in classic) I am convinced that there is only one truly good all-around answer as low as clvl 6. Other answers mostly work, but I wanted an answer that would work even in act 3 hell (technically at clvl 6, though, as I say, I prefer 8... after all, if you were going to really do this on a regular basis, you'd likely want to bump from 6 to 8 anyway, to qualify to claim the weenie imbue).

It is, of course, possible to use a rusher who has not completed any quests and progress both through the game symultaneously.

Ah, Ruvanal sleaze solo! What an amusing idea. (Ruvanal is famous for pointing out that carry-along offers "free" benefits for the taking to people "just doing what you would do normally"). I was actually assuming that, aside from proving this whole thing is possible, you'd want to make it repeatable at high speed ("high" relative to the solo constraints, of course). This implies understanding making a Durimule (solo) and which class/skills work "best" for the rusher as well. But I didn't actually insist on that in posing the problem, so the "Ruvanal"-esque solution is quite amusing.

With no waypoints, one must accept that the rushee will be travelling, by foot (unless wariv is feeling generous) through the entire act - an obvious nit here about my use of 'entire' with so many areas off the beaten track.

Indeed. This is why, now that I'm home from my trip and can run multiple simul copies of D2, that I abandoned the project in nightmare... walking and walking and walking ain't much fun. The Daggerfall/Might&Magic style games where you can pay for a coach or ship ride "instantly" to your destination, instead of walking, would be quite appealing here. In practice people play together and grant waypoints and TPs, so its not a problem.

The rusher can map out the route from town to each waypoint to ease the amount of time one must play at one sitting.

Very true. Since we're talking early act 1 though, and I did plan to make clvl 8, I pretty much just played "normally" (though focused on travel and bypassing the Den of Evil etc.) as the rushee to get to the Outer Cloister waypoint. I'd initially thought I might need to have the rusher clear the Underground Passage but that wasn't an issue after all. So really my "rush" only starts at this point, in terms of using a rusher.

Indeed, it is useful to at least swap in and out once to allow the rushee to run to the catacombs 2 waypoint (see below).

Yes, as I noted in another reply, you can't have long marches opening up zones and then still expect a monster to be nearly dead when you finally show up (if the zone is fully closed down the monster will be recreated with full HPs, even if they are a "doesn't regen" act boss).

Access to Act 2 requires an andariel kill whilst the rushee in the game.  With one character this means the rushee must make the kill.

Actually I questioned this back in the days when I didn't know which finesse Ruvanal was referring to but keeping hush-hush. In D1 terms players occupy a 0..3 "slot" and players leaving and coming in could actually have some odd attribution effects. I wasn't certain D2 might not suffer the same quirk in some cases. However, atm, I suspect the anti-unfair-PvP tweaks to the game remove most if not all of the latitude for playing with this (poison, open wounds, rabies, etc.) Did you know, for example, that you get credit for your Rabies kills from asymetric PvP (i.e. faux foe) tranmission to monsters? In any event, this area of technical oddity is *not* part of the challenge, and we may assume your statement is true, even if it turns out that it can be violated.

The solution for this has been suggested at the time I type this: Use the rusher to wittle the boss down to a sliver of life and rejoin with the rushee, go through the catacombs 2 waypoint and head through a cleared route to the weakened andariel.  Andariel can be dispatched using a 'finishing skill'

There is also the issue of "whittling skill" as it is inconvenient to either kill the quest mob or leave them with more HPs than the rushee finishing skill can readily cope with.

The Den of Evil: I believe the rushee just has to be present for the last kill in the den.

The Den of Evil, the "kill the doors" act 5 prisoner quest, and the act 3 Council all involve multiple kills, of which the final kill is the only one that matters. Likely this is true for the Ancients as well, should one choose to test the principle by fighting them unpartied, for example.

Does the position of the bloodraven kill matter at all for the quest reward?  One would hope not - maybe she can be lured to just outside town...

I strongly suspect that she is like Diablo, and will not move past a certain point. I've never tried pulling a Council member back to the Kurast Docks, so I don't know how far you might be able to herd that quest kill. Certainly bone walls and telekinesis might be fun to toy with here... for example, if telekinesis works on BloodRaven, since she doesn't regen, could you have Flavie kill her?!

If the game is generated with the quest incomplete can the rusher, having completed the quest previously, pick up the scroll?

iirc a non-qualifying character can neither drop the scroll by touching the tree, nor can they pick the scroll up.

As long as the rushee is clvl 8+ a rusher that hasn't given the Malus to Charsi can bring one to town for the rushee to hand to Charsi, Making that one of the easiest rushes in the game, from some point of view.

Andariel: See above.

Even on the verge of Death, Andarial outputs serious damage. One would like to nail her for sure rapidly, preferably (for style points in softcore, but mandatory in Hardcore) nailing her without dying. Once you get to doing this gig in hell, the clvl/mlvl factor is huge, so anything relying on to-hit is not a great idea.

Question: I believe it may actually be possible to create a duriel mule whilst rushing your first character here.  Three characters making use of the same game.

It is most certainly possible to create Durimules on the fly, as I've done so a couple of times at need. The solo constraint doesn't hinder this significantly.

I believe the rusher can actually open the chest for the staff (although be unable to pick it up)

iirc two completely different quest state interlocks are vying here. If the game quest state allows the viper chest to be opened, then any character that has not completed the restore-the-sun quest can open the chest. However only characters that have not completed the place staff quest can pick up staff pieces. When you complete the act you are granted credit for placing the staff, iirc (and for killing Duriel, as shown by his doorway to Tyriel being open). This is similar to the backfill in act 3 done on khalim's squishy quest. Some of these backfills actually delete (quest) items from your inventory. Nonetheless, it is occasionally possible to find yourself in possession of a quest item such that, if you drop it, you will not be able to pick it back up.

I believe the rusher can actually open the chest for the staff (although be unable to pick it up) as the number of quest items that drop from 'quest chests' appears to equal the maximum number of players (without the quest?) who have ever been in the game at one time.

afaik this is run off of the game state: if a player who is allowed to pop the chest (staff/amu) or kill a council member (flail, horcube), etc. etc., then the total count in game of people "live" for the quest *drop* is counted. However "live" is generally restricted to party members. In large public games people often habitually all party up, even though they aren't adventuring together. So the issue is deterministic but rather opaque, having several considerations. In any event, were Durimules not effectively "infinite" horstaves, one could indeed "farm" them for efficiency.

You have some implied fuzziness on the interlocks for the Palace/AS. I suppose I'll have to write up my Durimule sometime to attempt, once again, (but in one post) to clear up some of these issues. Once you have my Durimule one of the things you can do is to take a new entrant to act2 and just walk through the act. Before they talk to Tyriel you can load the game with a lot of party members in act 2 and carry them all along, "instantly" as well. While there are many ways to accelerate act 2, in practice this method is very clean, depending mostly only on rusher speed of finding/clearing in AS/TToTR. The known path down clearing the palace is typically a cakewalk, taking no time to speak of for an appropriate rusher build.

It's difficult not to kill the summoner when you're the rusher as he's weak close up, but a sliver technique, as above should work here.

In classic, apart from monsters that start with only one HP, Static Field does not accidentally kill, and takes mobs down to as little as 1 HP. Regen or recreate-at-full-HPs and whether you really need to kill the mob in question are relevant. But the basic gig is to serve up any non-lightning-immune on a silver platter.

If the rusher, having completed quest 5, creates a game and clears durance 1 and 2 the rushee can get the durance 2 waypoint as the entrance from travincal will be open.

As I noted in a prior reply, the way will be open, but the rusher will not be able to descend. I will relent enough to say that no, I did not collect Khalim's body parts for the rush, and then go back to keeping mum, to avoid spoiling it.

The Golden Bird is an odd case, and your post and mine are dangerously long, so I'll leave that discussion for another thread. The Tome of Lam Esen is trivial. The Gidbinn is amusing because the rushee must trigger the mob afaik (rusher will not be able to touch the object, iirc) but once the mob is alive, the rushee can bail and come back to retrieve the dagger dropped after the rusher either softened or killed the bugger. Leading him to a waypoint makes sense if only softened, from the regen angle. I've done the Lam Esen, of course, just for grins. The other has the technical issues you bring up, and I'd have to try it to be sure which answer is requisite.

Maybe the rushee doesn't have to be around for this kill and can simply talk to izual's spirit?

There is actually, afaik, a Ruvanalesque transition there, that is transient. So you raise an interesting point, but I suspect there is a timing dependancy. Slivering does indeed work. (Again, I did it for grins).

I'm unsure if the rusher killing hephasto will stop the hammer dropping.

Whether the hammer drops when he is killed pertains to the game state. One solution is to simply not have your rusher have claimed his/her HF rewards (ala the Malus comments earlier). There are other solutions.

That covers the quests, if you've read this far you're almost as insane as I :)

No, I'm far worse, because I did the "solo" thinking on top of what I already knew (successfully in practice, and not just in theory) about rushing purely for grins, and wasted some of my vacation time proving that I was correct. Still you get high marks for a post of crystalionesque verbosity, congrats! ;)

Before you used 'she' I had already decided it was a toss up between the sorceress and the amazon, based on a couple of things.

Also, were we not in classic, "she" would apply to Assassin Fire Blast and Wake of Fire, which are truly awesome finishers (clvl 1, clvl 12) vs. non-fire-immunes.

1. One wants a relatively potent attack available at level 8.

I was greedy, I wanted a clvl 1 auto-hit attack. Fire Bolt, Teeth and Smite all qualify. But eventually I realized AoE and psuedo-PMH were just too important in practice, esp. for the one truly hard kill (remember that my standards extend to hell, and by then it should be obvious what the only awful kill required is).

I think I'll go with poison javelin as it can be used from range, although it does take some time to deal damage.

Hmm, AoE auto-hit, decent damage per clvl, psuedo-PMH, nah, that couldn't be it. Even Slivered and making use of the regen turn-off quirk (you can easily manipulate a zone so that a monster stops regenning by leaving and coming back appropriately) you'll see regen start again as soon as the mob is damaged. This means any damage delivered that doesn't coup de grace must also stop regen. A hell Council member at 1 HP who is clvl 91 with ~90k HPs possible is hard "to-hit" and regens insanely, not to mention that he can lifesteal if you take so long as to be within his grasp. You must nail him, auto-hit, you must keep away from him at all times, you must not allow him to regen. None of this is tough, given a reasonable level character or gear. Doing it at clvl 6 is rather extraordinary. Clvl 8 is just for convenience (damage/duration, 30 more HPs to survive dinks).

Thanks for providing a problem with answers that, from the above, could not be contained in a page margin  ;)

Kind Regards,
+=30ft-Smurf=+

Efficiently doing two human multi-CDkey rushing was even more of a mental challenge. Ferengi picked up on some things I posted in Beta and we actually worked out and proved a powerful "system" for nm/H HF rushing in release ladder practice. He had to bail about a month ago (IRL issues) and I pretty much stopped playing at that time. It was all for the sake of science ;) so now I find myself procrastinating on whether to organize and give away my vast wealth, or just let it rot. :D If it hadn't been for duping we'd have been, I suppose, wealthier for time invested than any "normally lucky" person who wasn't a bot runner.

For the record, since I've been and continue to be mum about most of this, it was Ferengi's inspiration *months* ago, to explore classic for Ancients bypass. That works, of course. Ultimately I came up with a process efficiency argument for doing a hybrid of classic-no-ancients/LoD-with-Ancients rushing, but that justification is way more complicated than would fit "in the margins".

The short of it is just as my friend says, "in Diablo money rains from the sky"... its merely knowing where to run around, holding a bucket to catch it. Shared knowledge and teamwork is invaluable. Much like real life.

Glad you enjoyed the puzzle. I enjoyed reading your post (especially parts that I didn't quote back!)