The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

However, if anything can be thrown, there are indeed many interesting items.  The few build plans I looked up laughed at Blade Fury.  Seems like you might want to issue a correction someplace popular.

(edit ^ = emphasis mine)

Our host seems pretty tolerant, judging by what I see go unremarked in posts, but after a meditating upon your implication here I am left with the conviction that we shall soon see you smited by the Moderator's Fist of Heavens... not out of vengence, but in his zeal to preserve this Bolty's Holy LL Sanctuary.

Amen.

[Ferengi]

Oh, I remember the invasion of the barbarians. I guess I should have included "anonymously".

[Crystalion]

I was annoyed that the assy was basically a 'chat screen gem'.  So I tend to lose interest fast when encountering Assy posts.

Well, I personally considered the Assassin horribly broken prior to v1.10. So much so that I stopped playing mine at clvl 32. A quick summary of the major v1.10 design changes would be: Death Sentry nerfed (still good); Shadows, like Valks, much improved; kicking much improved; Blade skills much improved (except Blade Shield nerfed and also bugged); some synergistic help in the trap tree elementals; Venom much improved (e.g. fast high damage, doesn't compete with fade/BoS auras; possibly slightly bugged in apparent partial conversion of physical to poison); claw mastery always crit bug removed. CoS (slightly changed) and Mind Blast remain uber skills. Edit: also interesting is that, like the diamond socketed paly shield with automod resists trick to create Iron Golems with immunities, Shadows casting Fade can also go immune (inherent resist + fade resist + rare items rolled resist >= 100).

My best guess about the Assassin would be the same as the Druid: weak in hell difficulty if you focus purely on the elementals (i.e. Assassin trap and elemental charge ups) but pretty good as a fighting class. If we compare the Assassin as a fighting class to the Barb, Paly and Druid we see each having strengths and weaknesses compared to the others. If your playstyle doesn't mind the Assassin's weaknesses (poor DR/HPs compared to the possibilities for the others) then the damage output, v1.10, looks quite good (while being one of the three best crowd control classes in the game). Additionally, since so much was fixed, v1.10, there are several reasonable build/variants for the class now.

If lvl30 skills enter the picture and the goal is clvl 40, I'm be surprised if the tweaker sorc (and I mean the original) is not best overall.

For specialty builds, like the Enchantress, you want to rush them to the mid to high 50s to get maximum utility and you are constrained to not blow skill points except per plan. These, therefore, might be the least flexible and most interesting rushes to finesse. But for the hell hellforge, any clvl 40 will do (at present) so you might be right... a Blaze Sorc upgrading to a FO Sorc with teleport for safety and speed of prey/play seems like a good thing from 30 to 40, in the solo unassisted category (and pretty good in the Static Field Assisted category also, for that matter, post 30).

I did just note, from the AB, the thought that PJav skills benefit from the monster's (lack of) resist at the time of poisoning (and it is a very long duration poison, so this is a relevant technical point). So (at clvl 36+) you can get a nice bonus to poison damage by using a rod or dagger of lower resist charges. While at clvl 30 the PJavs are putting out way more damage a second than the newly minted FO Sorc, it does seem that the Sorc catches up and surpasses pretty quickly, even given the recast timer nerf.

...

One subject we've not touched upon yet, in rushing, is whether the Anya class specific rewards are worthwhile for any class (and what their sensitively to clvl and cap is, for each difficulty level). My recollection about the Akara/Cain and Ormus rings is that they are capped and no big deal (given gambling). But perhaps, if one is already rushing for runes, the class rewards from Anya might suggest a bias toward rushing a particular class.

[Ruvanal]

Venom much improved (e.g. fast high damage, doesn't compete with fade/BoS auras; possibly slightly bugged in apparent partial conversion of physical to poison)

This was an error in interpetation of the earlier testers due to their choice of a 'test subject' (act 5 doors with 1,000 poison resistance). There is no conversion of physical to poison being done. See page 2 of this thread.
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...ST&f=56&t=31001

Might be something for one of your threads on "hidden" things in the game. ;)

[Grimjack]

As for Anyas quest rewards, In 1.09 at least they are connected to your level. Noticed that a level 1 sorc stick is nothing to shake at snakes, nor to write home about....

Grimjack

[Crystalion]

As for Anyas quest rewards, In 1.09 at least they are connected to your level. Noticed that a level 1 sorc stick is nothing to shake at snakes, nor to write home about....

Ah, but, iirc, difficulty level grants exceptional and elite base items for nm/hell, no? This means the qlvl on alvl effect would occur, which is probably especially useful for the sorc and necro rewards (even though the rewardee might be level 1). This also might be a novel way to get very good assassin claws, as the high end elites qlvl could allow cruel at the same time as (if I understood Ruvanal correctly) the low ilvl might be used for the +skills automods, giving desired pluses to lower skills, like Dragon Talon.

In other words, the issue isn't at all obvious, just because the reward bears relation to clvl.

[Ferengi]

I just tried a slvl 20 Poison Creeper in Normal against Andy. :lol: :lol:

The only useful thing I learned was the wall trick still worked for that skill. After Andy killed the 3rd vine and was only about 60% dead, I decided to buy the ice skating consession in Hades.

I should also note that killing speed of that vine elsewhere in the Cats was slow. Unless there is some stacking or synergy method, this looks like a slow route. Very simple to play, crowds not a problem.

[Rakanishu]

First try for Malus with an Amazon:

twinked, solo, players 8, v1.10a, 17min 30s

Items transfered:
Arctic set, Biggin´s Bonnet, Hsaru´s Heels; socketed chipped sapphires in armor + cap, jewel of envy in bow, large charms of str and dex (with irrelevant prefixes, level requirement of 2), a few super mana potions

Notes:

- I put skillpoints into CS and MS, stat points into dex
- I was lucky in the UGP, took no wrong turns
- I assume using players 1 would´t make a big difference since the zon was level 10 when she got the Malus
- I made a couple "mistakes" so one could easily improve on the time, however, as has been noted before, the UGP (and outer cloister) are keys for a short run

[DarkPhenomenon]

Alright, let me take a crack at this thread, I'm new around here so I may sound like a fool (But I do bring long term hardcore experience with me). There seems to be a lot of things in this thread that seem to be common knowledge that I know nothing about. It seems as though most of those things are unique this this lurker lounge community. I'm probably going to be around for a while so bare with me as i become aquainted :D (This is a lot different from the bnet forums I *use to* frequent :D)


The first couple questions I asked myself while reading this thread are:
Is this “Great race” In 1.09 or 1.10? I thought about this and realized since rushing in the currenty beta is virtually untouched, it doesn't matter right now because the way I rush characters, it being 1.09 and 1.10 makes very little difference (Aside from the ancients quest reward, but that's a small snag from 1.10 and doesn't alter the overall process very much at all)

The second question was... what is the purpose of this Great race?
I'm guessing from the previous posts that the purpose of rushing a character is either to quickly start up a new char for a specific task(magic finding, looting, rushing, fun etc) or for looting specific quests(malus, hellforge, socket, cain, gidbin etc). If your doing either of these it makes sense to me to use a twinked char and power them through with one or more higher characters (which coincidently is what I do with all my new Hardcore characters). In fact I've gotten quite proficient with rushing and if all goes well I can get a new char to 20, ancients then to NM hellforge in about an hour. My record is getting a new char to lvl 50 in 3 hours with him killing 90% of the enemies (Although my 50ish javazon *aided* him in NM cows for a couple levels).
As for these "Secret hush hush techniques* for certain things certain people can do such as the lvl 1 ancients or Ruvanal's sleaze, Obviously you two has specifically said you won't say how you do them, I'm jsut curious as to WHAT they do?

Level 1 ancients, is that bypassing the ancients somehow in order to rush a char past a certain difficulty or actually getting the ancients quest at level 1?

And Ruvanal's sleaze, is that just some technique he uses to rush new chars? If so I doubt it's much faster if any faster than what I do to rush new chars (As I've never seen anyone power level a char with my technique). Which is 1-20-25(from ancients) in under an hour. I'd like to think of myself as being able to do it in 30 minutes, but since I've never timed myself i'd probably have to say 45 minutes. After ancients it would take 5 minute to rush that new char up to the NM hellforge.
Just curious is all :D



Now, I get the feeling from the general community here you guys want rushing hindered quite a bit or even stopped. I think the 20 levels*difficulty would be a good enough deterant for rushers.. although the more restrictive, the area level * ½ sounds like an intriguing idea. People will attempt to rush as much as they can regardless to what preventative measures are taken. As long as people actually have to kill monsters themselves in order to level (Which is how I have leveled ALL my characters from Day 1 in hardcore), I'm happy with that.



I've always have been (Since d2 classic was released) and always will be a hardcore player. I’m not sure if that is part of the reason, or maybe it’s just slang used around here but I don’t know what exactly you guys are talking about with terms like
Carry along characters
Suicide simplicity
Ravanal's *sleaze*

I'm guessing carry along characters are just chars rushed along for high level quests?
Suicide guys I'm assuming they die in any given quest area parties with others (The Carry longs i would imagine) and eveyone gets credit for the quest.
As for ruvanal's *sleeze*, is this just some sort of power leveling/rushing technique?

Now, If i totally misunderstood anything or got something completely wrong, just let me know :D

[Crystalion]

Alright, let me take a crack at this thread, I'm new around here so I may sound like a fool

Well, roughly speaking, foolishness = ignorance; ignorance = lack of questing (for knowledge) and failure to ask questions. Geeks and gamers tend to argue a lot and have bizarre rituals and social (aka posting) conventions but if you just attempt to be polite and take everything with a grain of salt, you'll be fine here at the LL.

There seems to be a lot of things in this thread that seem to be common knowledge that I know nothing about

The Workshop is indeed the place for some very obscure observations about D2, many of which have little ultimate importance. Unlike "guides" posted on other D2 sites, much of what is presented here is never expected to be of particular use to the masses, or even to expert players. No biggee.

Is this “Great race” In 1.09 or 1.10?

I am focusing on v1.10 because of two things:
1. Blizzard announced anti-rush changes (most of which are bypassed quite easily--but they are slightly interesting)
2. v1.10 introduces new (as in Ladder only) features, some of which beg for rushing (e.g. Hellforge rune drop improvement and cool new runewords; Enchantress build)

I find these interesting to puzzle over and fun to try fooling around with. Thus this thread. We are not creating a "rushing guide" or "exploit the new ladder economy to oblivion" thread. When we veer in that direction because the game seems mis-implemented, we are usually clear (in the sense that Isolde could grok it) as to what we think is seriously a problem that needs fixing.

the way I rush characters, it being 1.09 and 1.10 makes very little difference (Aside from the ancients quest reward, but that's a small snag from 1.10 and doesn't alter the overall process very much at all)

Well, what is so fascinating is just how many different ways there are to rush. Some techniques and problems exist in v1.10 that didn't in v1.09. However, as you say, there is a great deal of overlap.

The second question was... what is the purpose of this Great race?

...and then you go on to hit the mark in most of the particulars. However the overview is that the Great Race is an interesting problem to ponder, providing an excuse to enjoy discussing technical points and obscurities in the v1.10 game, as well as a charmingly simple "race" benchmark to have fun spending some time playing. The fact that this knowledge and practice might be useful to someone who takes "working" on their personal wealth/items/levels in the new ladder quite seriously is really only a secondary consideration.

As for these "Secret hush hush techniques* for certain things certain people can do such as the lvl 1 ancients or Ruvanal's sleaze, Obviously you two has specifically said you won't say how you do them, I'm jsut curious as to WHAT they do?

Ruvanal's techniques, given the accounts/computers of course, can be used to put eight characters into nightmare difficulty in a few man hours, and potentially not hugely more than that to repeat it to get them all into hell. The techniques are not necessarily difficult to understand or to execute. Ruvanal's position--if I may be so bold as to summarize it--is that since this *can* be done it inevitably *will* be done, to the detriment of "ordinary" players, who might prefer to not have a wrecked or EBay dominated economy for the new ladder. He and I, therefore, are in agreement that certain aspects of rushing probably should be reined in a bit for v1.10 release, prior to the start of the ladder.

The times you cite are probably a bit optimistic, as v1.10 does make several things a little more time consuming than v1.09.

People will attempt to rush as much as they can regardless to what preventative measures are taken.

Yep. The neat thing about v1.10 is that it loosens up and makes it more likely, without cheating or boring drudgery, that you can get nice items (rares dropping; rare upgrades; rune drops; runewords; unique drops less a function of act boss MF runs; etc.). Ruvanal and I are among the LLers that appreciate this direction, and would like to see it "succeed". But the game is just for fun and not "secure" in a compsci sense, so really all one can hope/work toward is avoiding the disaster that is the current D2 public economy.

I don’t know what exactly you guys are talking about with terms like
Carry along characters
Suicide simplicity
Ravanal's *sleaze*

These are made up on the spot terms. As we are not writing a guide we often couch our terms expediently just clearly enough that we know that other LL "experts" will be able to puzzle out what we mean without having to spend lots of extra time being clear. A great example of this is my Hireling XP misc. info thread, which was not meant for "popular" consumption, but which has an almost understandable post summarizing the important gist of how it works and what to do about it because someone at the AB asked for that.

Your understanding of the impromptu terms is pretty good, apart from not knowing Ruvanal's ultimate sleaze, which both he and I have probably made about as clear as it's gonna get, until Blizzard fixes either the Baal or Hellforge clvl=1 sleaze.

[Ruvanal]

Ruvanal's techniques, given the accounts/computers of course, can be used to put eight characters into nightmare difficulty in a few man hours, and potentially not hugely more than that to repeat it to get them all into hell. The techniques are not necessarily difficult to understand or to execute. Ruvanal's position--if I may be so bold as to summarize it--is that since this *can* be done it inevitably *will* be done, to the detriment of "ordinary" players, who might prefer to not have a wrecked or EBay dominated economy for the new ladder. He and I, therefore, are in agreement that certain aspects of rushing probably should be reined in a bit for v1.10 release, prior to the start of the ladder.

Good summary of the point. The only thing that might be added is " within a couple of weeks of the ladder starting."

The times you cite are probably a bit optimistic, as v1.10 does make several things a little more time consuming than v1.09.

They do not seem to be very optimistic from what I have seen beening done players already. From the looks of it, I would guess that DarkPhenomenon probably 'knows' already what you have termed the "Ruvanal's sleaze", just not by a term like that. ;) When I wrote that first post about it a while ago, the general opnion among many of the more knowledgable (but not the more expert like yourself Crystalion) was that the changes in rushing had put a definate end to the ability to rush; particualrly without having to level every character involved. I wnated to make sure that some saw that assumption was completely wrong.

[DarkPhenomenon]

So in a grander scale I get the feeling that most LL'ers (woo i'm picking up the lingo already :D) simply want D2 to basically be a fair game where people have to actually put forth effort in order to recieve rewards. Thus the issue of cheating and rushing to more or less effortlessly recieve rewards.

This brings two issues. 1) Rushing ahead in order to gain massive amounts of experience and 2) rushing ahead to gain rewards quite easily (ie quest rewards).

In order stop these they would simply have to make both of these things worthless (or unattainable) at lower levels. Seems easy enough to do with level caps (as has been suggested).

Unfortunatly as far as I know, neither of these have been given hard cut off points (WHY they haven't, I don't really know), for if rushing a character to the middle to the end of the game had no purpose, no one would do it thus we wouldn't have to worry about getting around any anti rush changes they put in. Afterall, stopping the reason's for rushing a character would essentially fix the problem, not simply try and hamper the users journy to the problem.

BUT, if all blizzard's doing is trying to stop the journey to the cheese, I suppose finding the loopholes in thier blockage and bringing it to thier attention is the best to hope for.

So the first inquiry is to what all the rush blockers are. As far as I can remember, you have to kill the council now (which takes a whopping 20 extra seconds for a high level character to do).
Is there a thread or anything outlining all of the anti rush features in the 1.10 patch?

[Crystalion]

Earlier DarkPhenomenon wrote:

In fact I've gotten quite proficient with rushing and if all goes well I can get a new char to 20, ancients then to NM hellforge in about an hour. My record is getting a new char to lvl 50 in 3 hours with him killing 90% of the enemies (Although my 50ish javazon *aided* him in NM cows for a couple levels).

Then I wrote:

The times you cite are probably a bit optimistic, as v1.10 does make several things a little more time consuming than v1.09.

Then Ruvanal quoted that and wrote:

They do not seem to be very optimistic from what I have seen beening done players already.

Then DarkPhenomenon wrote:

So the first inquiry is to what all the rush blockers are. As far as I can remember, you have to kill the council now (which takes a whopping 20 extra seconds for a high level character to do).
Is there a thread or anything outlining all of the anti rush features in the 1.10 patch?

And this is the context I'm replying to here...

If you search on the AB (Amazon Basin) or here you'll find some summaries of the changes in v1.10 that are "anti-rushing". However they all are still subject to efficient coping/bypass tactics. The clvl 20x interlock on Worldstone Keep is the only one with any real teeth to it, which is bypassable at +7x freeloaders by the "Ruvanal sleaze"™. Because there isn't an interlock on the quest rewards that matter (Charsi has one, but clvl 8 rushing and elite base item qlvl almost make a mockery of that) this Baal interlock failure is a big deal.

I think your time to clvl 50 is excellent. However, I still suspect it can be improved and in any event clvl 40 is, imho, the Holy Grail. So my earlier comment refers to clvl 20 and nm hellforge complete in an hour. That character has to traverse (aka finesse) the act2 interlocks twice while also taking the time to get to clvl 20. I don't think your suggested time is way off, but I think a man-hour average is, v1.10, slightly optimistic. I have no doubt that two players can consistantly bring it in in well under two man-hours however, so I'm not saying it's impossible.

A character that doesn't have Summoner credit *can* still go to Canyon of the Magi and Tal Rashas' tombs and Duriel's chamber by walking through the red Summoner portal (v1.10s) but they *can't* town portal *into* those areas. Yes, this means that once they walk through they *can* gain the waypoint and even use it both ways. This backs us up to the Palace/Arcane Sanctuary interlock, which is to require ending the darkness quest credit (touching the Claw Viper chest).

Since a Duriel staff-placed game creator character is useful this is relevant, because they can not create a game for which a "newbie" can still claim the end-the-darkness credit (as they had to already get credit for that). So a Duriel drone is still useful, if you break the problem into two parts (games: first game newbie claims end-darkness; second game Duriel char makes staff acquisition irrelevant). Ruvanal's sleaze™ applies here of course, if you had a EBay production team working the gig. Old sleaze, like the talk-to-Tyriel trick, have not been anti-rushed in v1.10s (indeed the "anti-rush" vis a vis the Council/Durance interlock in act 3 seems to me to be a pro-rush change as of v1.10s).

FYI, because I *like* the phrase "Ruvanal's sleaze"™ so much :D , I loosely apply it to (the combination of or either/or) both techniques he alluded to in his original post (the carry-along +6/7x clvl 1s in town as well as the "mystery" twinker-effort no-risk kill credit sleaze).

This brings two issues. 1) Rushing ahead in order to gain massive amounts of experience

For the "Great Race" I only consider this especially important for the 25 to 40 push (as of v1.10s). However it is a key concept for unbalanced builds (e.g. xp or ladder ranking rushers) like my HolyFist character (see other workshop LL thread if you're interested). As Ruvanal has documented, v1.10s has areas eariler in nm/hell than previously possible to get higher level monsters and drops (e.g. mlvl 81/83/85 +2/+3 minion/boss in Burial Grounds/Crypt/Mausoleum in act 1 hell), and this is especially beneficial to a location-rusher bent on xp rushing a twinked/aided 25+ character by taking them to early nm or hell.

AFAIK v1.10s nerfs xp and drops, at least relatively speaking, for areas like MooMooFarm and ZombieGarden. However rapid mass killing combined with fanatical 24/7 play is still going to rule the ladder (ranking). I've never been much interested in that. YMMV. By toying with HolyFist in the ZG however, I have noticed a lot of "white" base item drops, which, ironically, are very very good drops in v1.10s, as both rares and runewords for elites are now highly desirable (not that any upgradable base for a white isn't *good* for high clvl imbue, as you can then upgrade; just that high qlvl imbue allows a clvl 8 rushee to be made to do the job).

My impression is that MF doesn't work on act bosses and superuniques in v1.10s. I also think Find Item is nerfed from what it was when I last tested it (a long long time ago). But the drops from "regular" monsters seem to have been improved, and MF still works on them. And v1.10s nm/hell has champ/boss packs *everywhere* like flies. So, as I've said before, I think the *direction* Blizzard is moving is great, and would just like to see a few implementation loosenesses or omissions cleared up.

[DarkPhenomenon]

Hmmm, there's several "buts" and "what if's" and "I thought otherwise" going through my head when reading your last post (from what and where I thought you could rush someone), but I shall test my thoughts out in a game before potentially making an ass out of myself on this forum and see what I come up with.

I'm going to read up in the AB about the anti rush features and do a couple of these races full on twink/assistance and see what I can come up with (provided I can find one of my elusive friends to help me out)

I'll be post back in a little while (Working many many hours so I have little time to actually do this kinda stuff, will probably have to wait for a weekend)

[Crystalion]

Hmmm, there's several "buts" and "what if's" and "I thought otherwise" going through my head when reading your last post (from what and where I thought you could rush someone

Well, without going into huge amounts of detail, here are a few tidbits relevant to v1.10s act (elsewhere referred to as "location") rushing...

When rushing something isn't too time intensive, most people will probably opt for the simple one-on-one model (rusher-rushee) because it is easy to understand. However, whenever something takes enough time, using game creator and carry-along tricks can be a worthwhile time savings.

Imagine the case, however, in between, in which I don't mind time savings or complexity required by same, but I really only care about being able to rush a single character easily, whenever I wish (i.e. also repetitively). This is an easy case to talk about, without getting too picky about time comparisions or being forced to look seriously at carry-along.

The following assumes v1.10s, with the rushee creating the game unless otherwise noted...

Act 1 rushing is trivial as the rusher waypoints and travels to Andy rapidly and parties with rushee so they can TP in to the area for the Andy kill and thus quest credit.

Act 3 rushing is nearly trivial, as the rusher waypoints to Travincal, parties with the rushee so they can TP in to the area for the council kill and thus quest credit... this entitles the rushee to a "pass" for the new v1.10 Durance interlock so the rusher can: waypoint to Durance 2, proceeding rapidly to Durance 3, TPing the rushee into the area for the Mephisto kill and thus quest credit.

Act 4 rushing is straightforward, as the rusher waypoints to River of Flame, and kills the Chaos Sanctuary seal bosses rapidly, so the partied rushee can TP into the area for the Diablo kill and thus quest credit.

Act 5 rushing (*without* carry-along remember) is straightforward: rushee must be level 20+, rusher waypoints to Ancient's Way, rapidly ascending to the Arreat Summit, where the rushee is TPed in to the area for the Ancients kill and thus quest credit and release of the new v1.10 interlock on Worldstone Keep et al... rusher then waypoints into WK and rapidly gets to Baal's throne, disposes of the waves of Baal's minions, and TPs the rushee into Baal's chamber for his kill and thus quest credit.

This leaves us with act 2. It should be fairly obvious that act 5 rushing is very tempting for carry-along, since that requirement of being level 20 (and of doing the ancients) can be bypassed. However, until I describe the gory details of the act 2 interlocks, it may not be obvious that you'd want to squirm past them by carry-along (as this is both more efficient and less time consuming than the "good" techniques I'm about to outline).

A simplistic and inefficient act 2 one-on-one rush would look like this: rusher waypoints to Far Oasis and delves into the Maggot Lair, TPing in (partied) rushee to loot Staff of Kings from sparkly chest; then waypoints to Lost City and proceeds to bottom of Claw Viper temple, where TPed in rushee loots Claw Viper Amulet; then lends rushee Horadric Cube to combine those; then waypoints to Arcane Sanctuary and finds Summoner, TPing rushee in for the kill and thus quest credit; then proceeds (red portal or waypoint) to Canyon of the Magi and enters the true Tomb of Tal Rasha, proceeding to the Duriel staff holder, where rushee is TPed in to place the staff, thus opening Duriel's chamber; Rusher then steps down, kills Duriel, and rushee proceeds to come down and talk to Tyriel, then Jeryn, then Meshif, thus completing the sail to act 3 quest.

If that seems messier than prior to v1.10 it is because from the top of the Palace to the bottom of Duriel's lair anti-rushing is in force with two separate anti-TP, anti-entry interlocks. The implementation of the second interlock is weak, in that without Summoner kill credit (the proper key to the interlock) you can still walk through the red summoner portal and acquire the Canyon of the Magi waypoint (and rights to and from it). In the first interlock though, protecting the Palace levels and Arcane Sanctuary, I know of no weakness (i.e. you must get life-the-darkness credit by opening the Claw Viper Temple chest).

Once again, keep in mind that I'm deliberately ignoring finessing techniques using carry-along for the sake of this discussion.

To simplify the messy procedure a quite a bit, you can create a reusable game creator drone (which I suspect can create the game on realm and immediately exit, providing you enter the game with another character within one minute of game create time). I call my drone "Duriel". He has two interesting quest state requirements for the sake of rushing assistance: he has *not* gotten Summoner credit (this is optional, but slightly useful) and he *has* stuck a completed Horadric Staff of Kings into the Duriel receptacle (but has not gone on with that quest).

This allows us to rush a character to act 2, then TP them so they can open the Claw Viper chest to lift the darkness (they don't need to pick up the amulet fyi). We don't need to get the staff or the cube (they'll get a cube later "for free" when we rush killing the Council in act 3 fyi). We just have "Duriel" start a game and rush the Summoner, skip the staff into receptacle (already done), kill Duriel and have the rushee talk to Tyriel et al.

There are slight detail differences/optimizations between having Duriel have summoner quest credit depending on whether you find it easier to run one, two, or three characters in a game at a time (yes, these procedures can be tweaked effectively using some odd finesses to rush a realm game where only the rusher or rushee but not both are in the game at one time).

So, ignoring carry-along, you see why I'd be focused on the time loss in rushing act 2 twice (en route to nm hellforge)? It's messy and tedious.

[Ferengi]

The only thing that might be added is " within a couple of weeks of the ladder starting."

I'd be very, very surprised if it's longer than a week. I've met a handful of very clever players and only seen glimpses of well oiled teams. This class of people have the beta in hand to work upon, so ways around various obstacles are already known. The week is for the trick to start leaking out (the headiness of success and the need to brag will win out over security). For instance, upon hearing the lvl 20 lock on Ancients- Worldstone, I had 3 guesses on beating it with a couple minutes of thought...and I'm not even motivated in such a goal -- I've never tried out the best guess for instance. Think of what the "no life but Diablo" would do.....or more to the point, has already done.

In the long run, the various locks that Blizz has introduced make little difference (I twinked like mad with levelless uniques, when that went away, after a short regroup period, I was even faster at lvling new chars than before). Once the chars started into the clvl 40s (i.e. the majority of their lifetime) the level limits rarely made an important difference. The exception here is the Cubing of Runes and the powerful Runewords available (the former being far more important in the long run). A Rune foundry is likely to be very important in the rush to 99 -- which is also being mapped out now by the types of teams that did it in Classic.

Even if the level locks are ironclad, they will impact any serious effort to gain game advantage in only minor ways. Either the teams will expand and farm out more subtasks or the ebay sellers will revamp their bots. My experience in these move-countermove games is always that your opponent gets wiser and more successful each time and that the turnaround time grows shorter. While I certainly agree that the LL attitude certainly gives one more enjoyment out of the game, I think that only comes from personal choice. Making a rule that I cannot do it usually is a challenge. Leaving me without any rules is when I stick with a game for enjoyment.

However, all of the above does not keep this thread from being an interesting challenge in creative thought -- which is all I do anymore in D2.

[MadScientist]

About the "rushing to level 8": Could you do in cascades? Level one character to level 8 once (whatever time it takes) and twink him with any of the gear mentioned before, then make a party of "rusher" Lvl 8 and rushee Lvl 1. The Lvl 1 guy just stays near the Lvl 8 guy and should get enough experience to level up quite fast since the levl difference is not too big. When the rushee attains level 8 he inherits the equipment from his "mentor". Lather, rinse, repeat.
After creating a horde of level 8+ guys get a real high level character to kill the smith repeatedly to gain a lot of imbues.

Do you think that could work even faster?

The Mad Scientist

[Occhidiangela]

Killing the Smith is not what makes the Malus quest go. Picking up the Malus, even without killing the Smith, is what makes it go, but you can't pick it up until you hit level 8. I have frequently, on Hell, with weak variants in HC in D II previous to LoD, picked up the hammer without fighting the Smith in Hell to get the imbue. Me no likee one hit kills, which a cursed extra strong smith can be versus some level 40 chars in Hell diff.

[Occhidiangela]

I think that most regs of The Lounge would refer to themselves, in the context of this group, as Lurkers, capitalized, rather than LLers. Indeed, Bolty not infrequently addresses the collective group as Lurkers.

Maybe at The Basin the LLer appelation is frequently applied? :)

Oh, and I gotta say, luv yer show! :D Good stuff.

[Crystalion]

About the "rushing to level 8": Could you do in cascades?
[snip]
Do you think that could work even faster?

Alas, no.

As Walkiry has demonstrated convincingly and from my own experience, even *solo* GR to clvl 8 (unassisted) the real time factor comes down to travel and damage application times. Your example would indeed level faster due to Players N, but would lose out in net xp speed gain by having only one game's worth of monsters (i.e. Players N doesn't, unlike the -seed pic Bolty has up, increase monster *density* and thus having more players locally killing worsens the "critical path" which is the movement and killing logistics--to make this density divide clear: it is far far easier to quickly hit clvl 8 in Players 1 with -seed than Players 8 without -seed no matter what assistance or twink or technique you use--yes, I'm assuming your PC is beefy enough to not lock up from the mob lag :blink: ).

However, in a game like Everquest your idea has great merit (although EQ has very comparatively little motivation, ala D2x's quest rewards, for producing a mass production stream of leveling newbies).

Even in D2x your "mentor" idea still has merit, if you apply it in the limited hand-me-down sense to a hard-to-put-together set of uber-newbie twink gear (I have my current "3rd generation thinking" list scribbled out, and once I test it out I'll post it here for comment). It might be rather "easy" for a small group to put together the gear and then timeshare it.

IIRC the lounge did a shared account experiment once? I've just read through the end-user license agreement and while I see that you're at greater risk for being banned (the shared account only) it looks like sharing an account isn't by itself a violation. Since I have access to a couple of unused D2x CD-keys it is very tempting to have an inner cloister of Lurkers (man oh man that takes so much longer to type than "LLers", but I wouldn't want to abuse the lingo, eh?) toying around with one of them collectively once v1.10 is released. Clearly "sharing" useful twink items into this account from our regular accounts would be a great deal of fun and would save on wear and tear for our personal mules. It's a thought.