The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Occhidiangela]

Are accounts now tied to CD keys?

I used to be in on a shared mule account on West with some friends in Hardcore, where I dropped off all kinds of gems, set items, and uniques for their new HCers to use for twinks (there was a lot of death in that group). Any of us could log on to the account and add or subtract stuff.

I took the precaution of leveling all of the mules up from level one to levels 8-10 in the assumption that having a level greater than 1 on a mule would make it less likely to be hit by a server scan if Blizz went after mules one day.

[whyBish]

I took the precaution of leveling all of the mules up from level one to levels 8-10 in the assumption that having a level greater than 1 on a mule would make it less likely to be hit by a server scan if Blizz went after mules one day.

Thanks Occhi for sharing your 133t h4X0r tricks :P

[Occhidiangela]

If that 's l33t h4X0r trick, the Houston Astros will win the World Series.

I imagine my assumptions were completely groundless in re clvl and Blizzard's various and sundry "anti damned foolishness" meaures. All mules are subject to eventual evaporation, since Blizzard "does not support muling. "

[whyBish]

Blizzard "does not support muling. "

Doesn't mean that they oppose it though...
and even if the do, it is all really irrelevant unless they do something about it.

P.S. Canada is drawn in our pool for the rugby world cup... they are resting all their top players for the A.B. game :D Go the Astros!

[Crystalion]

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).

I have partially tested my fav twink gear concept, which largely consists of sockets everywhere with jewels of Envy (v1.10s 20 poison over 2 seconds, no clvl req). As I suspected, it works so well the real issue is application (touching monsters and getting to them). Hsarus boots and Assassin Burst of Speed for running quickly and Blade Sentinel for application were my "promising" candidate for this idea.

It works pretty well, but I'm not convinced it is superior to Walkiry's Poison Javelin or Blaze concepts (and those don't require mondo twinking). Unfortunately I'm not really skilled enough at running these races to provide an absolute comparision.

I've also, as you might have noticed in other threads, been toying with Skelemancer builds, since they ultimately work very well with uber Enchantment. I found playing such a build from scratch (untwinked) to be easy and quick. YMMV.

My next test is probably going to be an Assassin with a point (or two? depends on breakpoints, hmpf) in BoS that concentrates in Fire Blast for early mass killing, switching at level 12 to Wake of Fire (synergized already by the FB). I strongly suspect this build deserves to be in the company of the Blaze and Poison Jav builds for untwinked leveling speed.

As for the Envy twink scheme, while Blade Sentry is in many ways very effective, I'm inclined to believe that (with mana prob solution like +mana/kill) a Multishot approach is more useful past ~ clvl 10.

[Ferengi]

If the race is to 8, twinking is not worth the time. However, I think the only race is to 20 (which when twinked right is not much longer than 8 when total time is considered). For 20, what works fast below about clvl 9 is immaterial. Unless there is a fast way to 20 (and 40), this whole approach is not worth the time. Even the agony of cubing hell countess runes will be more efficient than the Hellforge. NM countess runs are fast and easy, so I guess the race is really just to clvl 40 in order to get the sweet runes. Once you get the runes for Enigma, you can bring melee characters to the Countess and thus bring the runtime down to nearly NM times (you lose the fast cast tricks potentially).

To get to clvl 40 fast, it's all clvl 30 skills with rapid AOE attacks. I think that immediately narrows the field to the orb sorc and the javazon. I know that the orb sorc is a very slow start, so I think the best char is the javazon (the one that I least enjoy playing alas) overall.

Reading alternate builds is fun BTW, but every once in awhile I like to pretend to see a big picture too.

[Occhidiangela]

How is it that Static Field is not the skill of choice for fast killing things, particularly with a bit of fast cast? By mid 30's, you have a finisher, be it Nova or Orb or Firewall. Static speeds up the process thanks to its scaling, but Maybe I am missing something here.

[Crystalion]

If the race is to 8, twinking is not worth the time.

Well, while I'm considering the twink and build starting at clvl 1, I've been thinking about getting to 20, 25, 40 rapidly in all of my recent thinking, fyi.

However, I think the only race is to 20 (which when twinked right is not much longer than 8 when total time is considered).  For 20, what works fast below about clvl 9 is immaterial.

This is probably a good rule of thumb which could be stated more precisely and accurately if we benchmarked a character using nothing but ordinary attacks (e.g. throwing)--the point being that no effort purely to get to a low level "faster" should be expended if it doesn't improve on that net time significantly and without sacrificing later leveling speed (i.e. don't waste "valuable" skill points).

Unless there is a fast way to 20 (and 40), this whole approach is not worth the time.

If someone correctly claims to have gotten to clvl 50 in 3 hours, then I think that's an existance proof right there. I ran the xp/minute numbers for that claim and realized that any short sample run with my HolyFist character once he made clvl 25 and (later) nm Zombie Garden generates more xp/minute. I'm afraid I've been sloppy and not gone back with "lessons learned" and proven just how incredible xp leveling is clvl 25+ with Holy Bolt builds. For 25 to 40 I'm convinced this is not the best build for leveling, unless, possibly, you're very constrained (e.g. getting only location rushed, no other assistance/twinks). However I do consider the build a probable clvl 40 efficient "proof" for hell Hellforge...

Even the agony of cubing hell countess runes will be more efficient than the Hellforge.

Doubtful. I think you should peruse the backlog of posts on just how bad this gets. If you want below the best of the nm Hellforge runes then it could go either way. In my mind Um is the first key rune. As the top of the nm Hellforge it is 1/11th of such a rush. A *hell* Countess run has less than 1/11th of 1% chance (yes, 1 percent) chance of dropping it (I'm being generous, even allowing for the multiple drop picks: her single pick chance is ~ 1/38th of 1% and she is the mostly likely drop for the rune from a monster in the game). So, if we're after an Um, can we do 100 hell Countess runs in the time of one nm Hellforge rush??! Based on the numbers people are citing so far, I don't think it's even a close contest.

NM countess runs are fast and easy...

But only relevant up to (r16) Io (about 1/5th of 1% per pick) and not Lum Ko Fal Lem Pul Um which are each 1/11 for nm Hellforge. In addition the rusher can pick up Tal, Ral and Ort if desired in a reasonable "sidetrip" amount of time. While I'm glad the Countess runs are available, they are still very thin lottery tickets.

To get to clvl 40 fast, it's all clvl 30 skills with rapid AOE attacks.  I think that immediately narrows the field to the orb sorc and the javazon.

I'm not convinced, for a paltry goal of 40, that the list is so short. I don't think a v1.10 synergized WoF build runs out of steam before 40, for example. And I don't think a Necro has much trouble with corpses before then to roll over crowds with CE. Basically *any* scheme also has the 25+ location rush, party with a mass-murdering god trick as well (in other words, I'm generally not impressed with clvl 24 and 30 skills at all, on the *rushee*).

the one that I least enjoy playing alas

Since I'm not interesting in being a free R&D facility for EBay drones, I'd have to say *this* is a large part of...

I like to pretend to see a big picture too.

As the people I'm interested in (myself, other Lurkers) are not going to play mindless, joyless builds. We can, after all, mod the local game to be as Gods, so why in hell would be want to hold our hands in the flame on Realm--just to be in the misery-loves-company of fellow xp-slave sufferers?!

Reading alternate builds is fun

Agreed. As is thinking them up. And playing them. Viva la Race!

[Ferengi]

How is it that Static Field is not the skill of choice for fast killing things

Ah, because I play Hell pretty much exclusively and have dismissed SF as useful.

But you are very right in Normal difficulty, probably enough to tip it back to the sorc.

[Ferengi]

3 hours is 180 minutes. A tuned Orb sorc kills NM Countess in 2-3 casts as I recall (Nova is the same), most of the run time is lost in teleporting. The mazes fell into general shapes, a few exploritory teleports reveal maze shape and probable exit. 1 minute runs were possible in 1.09 for NM, so Enigma Leap Attack barbs can be 1 hit kills in Hell at similar runtimes. Thus this runner is getting about 150 chances for every 1 at the Hellforge and this runner is willing to invest (i.e. pay big) for Enigma. A3 provides the goodies for such a trade (and is reportedly a source of good runes too).

Occhidiangela reminds me that the rules are different in Normal, but as has been noted, it is travel time that consumes much of the effort. Sorcs have teleport. With mana for purchase, the early slowness is nearly overcome and the sorc looks good in a race.

But there are probably other characters that have decent chances as a vechicle, after reading MongoJerrys necro and thinking about the experience gains for bosses, the Leap powered barb killing Izzy etc might be considered. The beta changes and normal difficulty setting probably make me less able to make good predictions, but playing more is not a option at the moment.

For time comparisons, if would be better to start at the higher clvls. I think you have said that characters can be generated at clvl 33 with -act5. Does that work for other acts choices? (still no game here, maybe this weekend).

[Deadpan]

I was thinking the same about Static Field, only I pair it up with Meteor on my meleesorc. Maybe it's the presumption that what's needed is a killer-AoE attack that's blinkering people but it's just as important to attract and weaken monsters for the final blow. Long range static seems to work quite well at this task and the residual burn of my close range meteors finishes them off nicely whilst Frozen Armour takes care of anything that gets close enough to get through my 75% block. OK, I don't get many kills when I'm partied up with a big-hitting melee-character but I'm responsible for taking off large chunks of monster life all the same.

The build has a nice logical progression to it as well: lots of dexterity so you can start off using javelins and throwing knives and by the time these start to lose their effectiveness you've moved on to rock-dropping. Hmm, not much meleeing going on there, you might say but since you're standing in the target zone I'd claim otherwise. Besides, the weapon of choice is Hexfire which comes with ITD as well as +3 fire skills so you might as well swing it occasionally.

I've not done any timed runs but my sorc certainly seems faster levelling than my other characters. These include:

Venom Trapper: really fast clearing Act 1 using javelins and BoS but progressively slower later on in the game. I get impatient waiting for the poison damage to take effect and end up wasting mana by casting too many Death Sentries. The weapon of choice is ranged: a Venom bow if you're lucky enough to have a Mal rune or a Kuko which has low stat requirements and autohits. Lots of tactical choices.

Ranged weapon werebeast: lots of dexterity for good to-hit and big damage once you graduate to a Buriza. I run around levelling as a werewolf but quest as a shockwave werebear. No realistic strategy for Hell PIs but immortal in NM. My earliest character into Act 5.

Fanatic: zeal, zeal, zeal, smite, smite, smite. Crushing Blow from the "Strength" runeword in a sceptre bought in Act 2 normal takes you a long way but enough dex to max blocking isn't enough to keep you connecting once you enter the endgame which is when I switched to Smite. Lots of survival skills.

Poison Creeper druid: where did my frames go? Your vine is very effective at finding the enemy and dying just as the lag kicks in. I find the trick is to cast and move, cast and move. Done properly, the monsters never get to kill their initial target (the creeper) and the rest of your little team of summons and rogue do the rest. This is a tactic that certainly works up to Act 1 Hell.

Bowazon: Strafe and Multi are the principal killer skills but until you get a big bow and mana leech you won't be able to spam them. That doesn't mean you can't use them though. I've found a surreptitious MS volley with a poison bow on switch works wonders especially in wide-open areas like the Arcane Sanctuary. I try to avoid other poison sources, usually going for a big elemental Normal attack on my main bow and lots of max damage jewels on my Blessed Aim merc. Once you can reach break-even on your leech it's all change and levelling in foothills and cows is a breeze. You're still a glass cannon though and getting there isn't easy.

[Crystalion]

3 hours is 180 minutes.  A tuned Orb sorc kills NM Countess in 2-3 casts as I recall (Nova is the same), most of the run time is lost in teleporting.  The mazes fell into general shapes, a few exploritory teleports reveal maze shape and probable exit.  1 minute runs were possible in 1.09 for NM, so Enigma Leap Attack barbs can be 1 hit kills in Hell at similar runtimes.  Thus this runner is getting about 150 chances for every 1 at the Hellforge and this runner is willing to invest (i.e. pay big) for Enigma.

Perhaps I wasn't fair by merely pointing out that things get bad fast for Countess runs and putting a peg for you for comparision with Um. Even though nm and hell Tower are now much larger mazes in v1.10, I'll concede a one minute run time (seems optimistic to me, as it should be measured "round-trip" including game set-up/exit overhead and in some games just *finding* the tower and exiting could take a minute roundtrip).

Remember that that 3 hours was a "possible" peg for *hell* hellforge (and my drop comparision was only for nm Hellforge, which is certainly doable in less than that). So let's look at the 1/11th chance for Gul...

Hell Countess can't even drop Gul as part of her normal rune pick (has to hit for her from another TC, thus it is "off the end of the world" at less than 1/10000 of 1%) so we have to assume we are trying to get 2 Ists to cube up (ala Gunter and Maldar luckily getting back to back Guls on their hell Hellforge rewards) at ~ 1/70th of 1% per pick. This will take many thousands of runs to make our Gul. Let's be optimistic and say 100 hours of tip-top play.

As things stand now, it is likely that hell Hellforge rushing--without carry-along--beats this (100/11 hours peg per rush).

And that is without considering Hardcore, where the notion of doing thousands of hell runs per desired reward strikes me as tiring and therefore risky (some boss combinations are scary and you will, in so many runs, "run" into them).

So, to recap, the reason I picked Um is to try to give the hell Countess runs a chance of being a reasonable alternative to nm Hellforge runs... my inclination is to give that contest to "efficiency". Which is to say, (ignoring the huge benefit of carry-along) I think that one comes down to how efficient the respective races can be performed.

Since, at present, "theory" (as partially tested by those participating in this thread) suggests these two competitors are somewhere in the same ballpark, I'd tend to favor "slow and sure wins the race" myself. That is, I personally prefer the nm Hellforge method, because the distribution of results is more uniform than the hell Countess method (i.e. 22 1/11ths runs, with cube up, is much "flater" in expected results than--e.g. only--2000 1/1000th).

Indeed there is a cap on how much longer a hell Hellforge run can be than a nm Hellforge run before doing the nm runs and cubing up makes sense instead. This cap is probably not even close to being relevant however, as getting from clvl 20 to clvl 40 isn't that big a deal.

edit...

For time comparisons, if would be better to start at the higher clvls. I think you have said that characters can be generated at clvl 33 with -act5. Does that work for other acts choices? (still no game here, maybe this weekend).

Yes. -act 2, e.g., is clvl 16. I don't recall the spread for a3 and a4, but iirc it is pretty uniform between 16 and 33.

[Crystalion]

Well, the first goal was to go through the game up to the ancients as fast as possible (leveling to 20 in the meantime), but then I hit a wall and decided to just do leveling to 20 ASAP in the untwinked, one player from start to end, way.
[...]In the meantime though, I took the assassin out for a walk. Claw mastery to 6, Burst of Speed up 3 levels then pots and at 12, Wake of Fire. As usual, untwinked and unassisted players 1, 2:23:20 (I might be getting better :lol:). Wake of Fire, being "Fire&Forget", is absolutely amazing for speed leveling.

I'm not nearly so good a player as a theoretician, so my times are always going to be embarrassing compared to Walkiry and Ferengi (and others). OTOH perhaps I'm a better measure of what your "average joe" can do?

Following in Walkiry's not-location-rushed footsteps, but twinked heavily (making this a very easy build to play) my first sub-times were: (I'm not including game setup or twink item xfer time fyi)
1:41:30 made act 2 (paused at Andariel to waypoint to level up to 12 before doing her)
2:00:30 acquired staff of kings from maggots
2:15:30 acquired claw viper amulet
2:30:00 killed summoner and took Canyon of Magi waypoint
2:37:00 placed Staff to open way to Duriel
2:38:00 made act 3
3:05:14 made level 20 (had picked up Spider and Marsh waypoints, was exploring Flayer Jungle)

I took 15 minutes, roughly, worth of breaks (off the clock--my play time overlapped dinner time).

I started by doing the Den of Evil, but I skipped doing Radament.

I wasted time to town and couldn't help myself picking up and identifying some stuff... my four best drops (that I noticed) were...
jewel of: 1-5 cold; lightning resist 14%
jewel of: 20 poison over 2 secs; 11% vulpine
jewel of: +3 mana/kill; 16% extra gold
ring of: rare: 10% faster cast; +3 min dam; 3% life steal; +5 max stam; lightning resist 24%; fire resist 15%
(fyi: at present I'm wearing partial Sigon's set and full Angelic + extra Angelic ring, which comes to a *lot* of +MF)

Starting at level 12 this build rocks (especially the twinked version) so a location rush would have been very nice for leveling speed (note: in a previous post my time for a location rush to act 5 was under half an hour).

Now that I'm 20 I'm taking a break, but I will time taking the character to 25 sans location rush. Then I will location rush to nm Hellforge, timing that. Then I will time, solo once again, leveling to 40. Then I will time the location rush to hell Hellforge.

I had enough fun doing this that I'll probably try it again sometime, hoping to turn in a faster performance (also, of course, this was done all in Players 1--Players 8 and location rushing post clvl 12 are probably rather efficient).

As Ferengi points out, these times are probably more significant than the early level up times, but I'll share my build plan thus far, on the assumption that my current happiness with the character means I'll continue to get interesting baseline results...

This is a v1.10s Assassin. At clvl 1 I handed off a ton of stuff, more than filling her stash with future goodies. The key concept for the character is to move fast (Burst of Speed, faster run/walk) to get to monsters and then spam Wake of Fire to doom them (while trying to remember to continue onward instead of wasting time watching them die oh so prettily).

WoF is a clvl 12 skill, but in v1.10s it get 8% damage synergy per level of its prereq, Fire Blast, which is a weenie damage area effect spell, very good for early level mass killing. Thus my plan was to pump that to slvl 3 (every 3 points there also is a bump for number of shots for Death Sentry, which is not relevant to this build as a rushee, but is relevant if you want points to not be "wasted" for a playable post-rush character) which would help with early leveling speed and give +24% damage to WoF later.

Burst of Speed, a clvl 6 skill, has a ("wasted") prereq of Claw Mastery (I didn't intend to ever use claws).

Finally, although I've not used them in getting to clvl 20, I planned a point in Cloak of Shadows (clvl 12) and its prereq, Psychic Hammer (clvl 1) so that "messy" situations could be blinded and WoF spammed (I'm expecting this will be a standard practice in leveling from 20 to 40).

There is just one little, er, huge, I mean HUGE problem with this build... it eats mana like crazy (for spammed WoF traps, and also CoS). Sure you can buy mana at the shop, so you don't really *need* to twink this build to make it work, but I wanted to twink it, if I could solve the mana problem in a way that pleased me.

This means I added a skill--one point in clvl 1 Dragon Talon--and two mandatory items: Sigon's Greaves and the Serpent Lord unique staff. The boots are both faster run/walk and, being greaves, give good kick damage (see Assassin kick posts if you don't already know about this stuff). The Serpent Lord goes on the weapon switch, so you can switch, kick a monster for 100% physical kick damage mana leeching, then switch back. I'm happy to report this works well in practice, as long as you have the rest of the situation under control.

All of the other twinks are optional, but those above are, in my build conception at least, "required". For the other stuff:
Cleglaw's gloves
Hsarus belt and boots
A Horadric cube
gold, books of TP & ID
a circlet of +1 trap skills (Tarnhelm would be good also of course).
complete Angelic set (plus a second angelic ring)
complete Sigon's set
a mask with 3 flawed gems for +12 str.
A large charm of +3 str

The Sigon's shield and 3 Angelic items grant +2 all net, so traps are getting +3 once you can wear the +1 headgear. Because I knew I was twinking this extremely I kept 3 skill points "saved" in the build (to clvl 12). They might be best in the FB synergy, or they might be useful for BoS breakpoint, or some other use (e.g. Blade Sentry or saved for some later skill level). The down side of the Sigon's twink is that you need +str twinks and lots of stat points put into str. The upside of lots of str is that it makes the DT kick hit harder and thus get more mana. This means I am ignoring Energy entirely. After I made my str requirements I put points into Vit. I have 15 unspent points at clvl 20 and I'm not absolutely sure whether I want to ignore Dex (Sigon's shield has good blocking, if you have the dex, of course).

The skill point distribution looks something like (at clvls):
1: Fire Blast
2: FB
3: FB
4: save/FB?
5: Claw Mastery (prereq for)
6: Burst of Speed
7: save/FB?
8: save/FB?
9: Dragon Talon (here because Serpent Lord is clvl 9 req)
10: save for clvl 12
11: save for clvl 12
12: Wake of Fire; Psychic Hammer (prereq for); Cloak of Shadows
13 onward: pump Wake of Fire

As I noted above, for all those "save/FB?" I choose to save them.

You should see the beauty of killing Flayers with WoF. Rapid mass slaughter without targeting. Sweet. And those pesky shaman?... after they die and release their flayer he gets toasted automatically before he can be a pain. Very sweet. Since I know I'll never have a mana problem, I can pretty much just cast WoF traps ahead of my travel path, speculatively. This means I'm often "in the middle" of three of them (WoF traps) when the little buggers rush out of nowhere in a vain attempt to swam me.

A weakness in WoF traps is that they are less effective by far in tight quarters. So they lost some power in the Arcane Sanctuary and the Maggot Lair. However they benefited in AS by being able to toast enemies that couldn't get to me, and in ML by being "round the corner; through the doorway" skills, so I could avoid beetle lightning and maggot spit. Tal Rasha's tomb, OTOH, has enough space even in corridors, for WoF to be effective, as well as the beautiful "cast through the doorway" tactic. It was really nice being able to take out Unravelers without needing to see them or even have line of sight on them.

The downside to this build, if you're going to play it past clvl 40 (hell Hellforge), is that as of v1.10s beta, Wake of Inferno, the logical "next step"--synergistically speaking--for the build, is seriously horked, by all reports. Perhaps it will get fixed, or the reports exaggerate. Otherwise, it's a "blast". :) Of course you'll need to explore non-fire damage skills as well (don't overlook Blade Fury, Death Sentry and Mind Blast, as they are "one point wonders"... I'm very very fond of Dragon Talon, pumped, but there are a number of reasonable options).

[Crystalion]

Now that I'm 20 I'm taking a break, but I will time taking the character to 25 sans location rush. Then I will location rush to nm Hellforge, timing that. Then I will time, solo once again, leveling to 40. Then I will time the location rush to hell Hellforge.

Took me nearly 2 hours to make clvl 24. I started at clvl 20 and waypointed into the Great Marsh (act 3). By time I made 24, I was close to Shenk so I finished him and took the waypoint before exiting to do this write-up.

So, not counting the twink xfer time and game start time, I have ~5 hours to make level 24. The only location rush I did was after I killed the Council, I quickly made a game to be given the Durance 2 waypoint (and then returned to SP Players 1).

I stopped at 24 both because it is a significant skill point (good time to save, in SP, when testing) and because I realized that if I'm going to location rush at 25 I might as well location rush at 24 instead and have the Ancients part of that make me 25, eh?

I didn't bother to do the Tome of Lam Esen or normal Hellforge (nor have I gone back and done Radament).

I've not tried anything but Players 1 for this test... in doing parts of Act 4 I think I would have bogged down at Players 8 as I ran into many things with decent fire resist (afaik). However, other than that, I'd have been leveling much faster, as it is clear I'm overkilling most of the time (and most battles/screens only take a few seconds). It is perhaps the case that playing Players 8 you'd want those points I saved into the FB synergy to WoF.

Soon I will run into an amusing problem: I've been playing so many characters in beta that my highest (clvl 72 Assassin) has not made it to the hell Hellforge. This makes timing a "rush" to hell Hellforge somewhat difficult. :blink:

At least I can complete the clvl 25 rush, nm Hellforge, and location rush a bit more to nm act 5 (where I can test the theory about party leeching xp from my HolyFist Paly in the Zombie Garden).

BTW, I still have not used Cloak of Shadows. IIRC I have 6 unspent skill points and 35 unspent stat points (not counting the unclaimed Radament and Lam Esen). I'm debating whether to blow 3 points to get Dragon Flight, for some movement utility and as an alternate for mana leeching (on Serpent Lord switch).

From 20 to 24 my good drop was: Sigon's shield. So I threw away my twink one and am using the one I found--which has one more point of AC even! :D

p.s. I am, of course, out-leveling my hirelings. So when I was in act 3 and level 21 and my act 2 merc was 13 I decided to hire an act 3 cold merc. I had to reload as no cold mercs were offered at all, but on the restart I became the proud owner of a level 19 Jarulf cold merc. I'm sorry to say he has died quite a few times, but I'm very fond of him. It is particularly nice that I can weapon switch and walk up to a frozen popsicle for mana leeching when I want to. He still hasn't made level 20.

[Crystalion]

At least I can complete the clvl 25 rush, nm Hellforge, and location rush a bit more to nm act 5 (where I can test the theory about party leeching xp from my HolyFist Paly in the Zombie Garden).

Well I decided to let my character kill the Ancients and Baal (but be location rushed to them). This process (players 2) took a bit under half an hour (the ancients took a while and ran me down to just one mana potion left, no heals/rejuvs). Baal was easy by comparision (his minions up top might have been harder had I done those, possibly).

Now that I was in nm I realized another flaw in my rushing plan: I don't have a "duriel mule" for nm to hold the staff passage open. So I had to do it the long way (but saved off after installing the staff). Everything else was straightforward. Took nearly an hour and a half to claim the Pul rune for the nm Hellforge reward (bringing the total time for the character at that point to ~7 hours).

I was getting tired but decided to go ahead and rush to act 5, so I could test the party xp concept with HolyFist in the Zombie Garden. Had I been more alert I would have simulated what I would do on BNet in this case by Players 1 (that is, I'd have the quest person start the game, but leave, so Diablo's minions wouldn't be as tedious to kill for my soso Rusher). It took me almost half an hour to advance to act 5 (my rusher died to a boss pack at the entrance of Chaos Sanctuary, and the return clear was slow).

So I started one of my nm Zombie Garden games with HolyFist and joined with Anna (my rushee, now nearly clvl 26). In a one of my typical runs (under two minutes ala the movie I posted, even though this is Players 2 it doesn't matter, as HolyFist is way overkilling for Players 1) Anna, who just stood in the Garden out of the way, picked up ~2/3rds of a level. I suspect this means it would take under two hours to get her to 40 in this manner (from her current 26.6). That isn't what I'm going to do with her, of course, but I did want to check it out.

[Walkiry]

Now that I was in nm I realized another flaw in my rushing plan: I don't have a "duriel mule" for nm to hold the staff passage open. So I had to do it the long way (but saved off after installing the staff).

Heh, want to know why I haven't done any act rushing or tested any further to get those precious runes? The highest level character I have in Single Player is a level 34 Barbarian :D

Good stuff indeed, I think I'll check getting to 25 with some of my chars, past Duriel and somewhere in Act 3 (possibly Kurast).

The WoF assassin is indeed a mana sink :lol:

Very interesting Crystalion.

[Crystalion]

Heh, want to know why I haven't done any act rushing or tested any further to get those precious runes? The highest level character I have in Single Player is a level 34 Barbarian :D

Oh, that's even sadder than my situation. :)

I'm reminded, for both our sakes, of Ferengi's commnent that he prefers having a character that can go anywhere and do anything (i.e. an 800 pound Gorilla). I stopped playing my v1.09 werewolf Druid when he conquered hell, so he's only in the low 70s, and thus seriously underpowered in some situations in v1.10 hell. But he's much more v1.10 compatible than my 80s something bowazon (who was a Strafe-ist, which is currently bugged, and she no longer gets any mileage out of Fire Arrow and Guided Arrow).

In short, they need to release the beta so I can feel good about choosing a *real* character to play, to conquer the game and then be a big brother (or sister).

...

One amusing thing I forgot to mention in my last post, because I was tired, was that the only exceptional set or unique that has dropped came during the location rush to nm Hellforge/act5... Natayla's boots! Sweet. Clvl 25 req (which Anna already was) and 40% faster run/walk (vs. Sigon's 20%) and much better kick damage.

Another thought that occurred to me today is that normal Ancients at clvl 20 => 21 means that you could find yourself doing cows for xp at 21, which is certainly in range (they are, iirc, 28) and should be good xp (if you can kill 'em fast) until clvl 34 at the very least. Anna is now 26 and I'm about to go see how much xp/time she gets in MooMoo vs., say, Shenk & co.

[Zofox]

Well, I decided to try a run at the level 8 time, assuming that I could always have a high level sorc get the Malus in about 2 minutes tops.....

In 6 attempts, my fastest time to level 8 was 9:48 (run 4 -- found *3* XP shrines), my slowest was 18:10 (my first run -- too much backtracking and not planning well).

The remaining ones were 13-16 minutes apiece.

This was twinking a druid with the following equipment (all gear has no level requirements):

Khalim's Will (the ultimate twink weapon)
3 socket mask with 3 chipped rubies
2 socket quilted armor with 2 jewels of envy
2 socket shield with 2 jewels of envy
A magic sash (for the extra row)
Charms with no level requirement that add +8 to str.
4 healing pots, 4 stamina potions and some TP scrolls
magic rings that I found
magic gloves that I found
magic boots that I found

Stats: All to vitality

Skills in this order:
Level 2: Werewolf
Level 3: Poison creeper
Level 4: Lyncanthropy
Level 5: Lyncanthropy
Level 6: Oak Sage
Level 7: Lyncanthropy

All runs were made on Players 2 (I had a 2nd char in the game unpartied).

Methodology
Stick normal attack on the RMB, hold it down, and start running. Autoattack monsters. Follow the paths and kill everything in the way. Once you have Werewolf, use it. Once you have Poison creeper, use it. Once you have Oak Sage, use it. Use stamina potions if you run out of stamina. No though required. FE monsters, no problem. LE monsters like Rakanishu - no problem. The incredibly quick attack of the WW is more than enough.

And as I find no level twink gear and jewelry and rings, I keep passing them to the next char. The beauty of this is that the gear can be used to twink any startup char, provided that I have enough str charms to get them to 23. I've found Hsauru's pieces, the Pelta shield, Hands of Broc, and this *wonderful* rare twink ammy with NO LEVEL REQUIREMENT:

Bone Necklace
+1 to strength
+1 to maximum damage
+2 mana
Replenish life +2
+9 maximum stamina
5% fire resistance


I'm actually going to try jumping to Dark Wood as a quicker method. Will report back with the results.

[Zofox]

Well, my first run was as follows:

Twinker started game, dropped all the twink gear, went to dark wood, made a tp, and came back to town.

Twinkee came in, and I started the clock....

Picked up all the gear, partied, grabbed the WP, unpartied, and set out into the Blood Moor.

Killed everything on my way to the cold plains. When I got to the WP, I jumped to Dark Wood.

Time to get to level 8 was 14:28 with no XP shrines. Not bad.

[Ferengi]

A modification to your build plan. Nice times.

- put the points into Werewolf, not Lycanthropy. Transforming is a nuisance, but killing faster is best.

- Twink to Cold Plains or Stony to start rather than run thru Blood Moor. I found that ignoring everything outside of a zombie right on the path was best when I ran thru Blood Moor and finally decided that I should twink to a waypoint. Looks like Dark Woods is too far to be a start point. Once I got to Cold Plains, clvl 3 was moments away, so hopping to Dark Woods at clvl 5-6 might be better.

- My builds put early points into Str for more damage and depend upon the dropped HP potions. I use more rubies to help and go for massive leech and as much damage as possible.

- Look for Attacker takes Damage mods, change your start shield to chipped skulls and use Hsarus asap.

- Collect more str charms, pump str and wear Sigons asap. You can wear it at clvl 6 (I've done the full set with a Hel in the shield then). Then travel to places where the monsters will rush you, such as Black Marsh + .

- Use the CubeMod to explore charms and other options.
---------

I think you are close to regular sub 10 minute runs. It would be interesting to see your clvl 20 runs too. Glad to see a different viewpoint appear!