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This may well be common knowledge or practise, but I just stumbled upon it and thought I would mention it here.
Preliminary Confession: I am a bit of a pack rat. I keep finding things that just look like "someday it could be useful". I mule them off and usually forget about them unless someone says: "Dang, this character of mine wishes he had a thus-and-such". (Of course, then there is the horrible process of trying to recall where I put it, but that is another story. :P )
Burning in a mule has been an annoying process heretofore. If I am not handy to 'refresh' the game every 29 minutes or less, my new mule will drop out of the game and fail to achieve the 2 hours in-game time that will prevent it from expiring after 10 days of inattention.
But now:
Muahahahaha :lol:
Make or enter a public game called Mule Parking.
Walk away from the computer.
Two hours later, come back to a fully burned in mule.
Those annoying 'bots that pop into public games to advertise the wares of various and sundry websites where one can spend real money to instantly acquire all the uber-gear will refresh the game often enough to make it require no babysitting at all. :D
And you may call it righteousness
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake
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I will call you...
THE INVENTINATOR!
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I commonly use the "mule park" games to play solo in high player count games. I love the fact that you can join them and quest solo or with 1-2 other people for hours in an eight player game. None of the quests are usually cleared, because the creators are mules.
There seem to also be fewer PKs in those games, I guess because most people in them are lvl 1.
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I have never used level restriction before, but now one can use that feature to eliminate all the bots from the game. Just make the game with a level restriction that does not allow lev1 players to join, and you get no more distraction.
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Thank you. I've been registered less than a day, and already I have learned something. :lol:
". . . and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth."
-- Walt Whitmam
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Now that's making lemonade when life gives you bots! :)
-- CH
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You can also have a character do an "impossible" run to Charsi, which will have the same general effect. If you stand between the stash and the little stone wall between it and Charsi so that you're close enough to the corner so you can still highlight Charsi when she goes into her hut (and stands next to the forge) but not in the actual corner. When you click on Charsi to run over to her you'll be caught in an endless run, running into the corner. That will keep the game active as long as you want/need, but you should either turn off the monitor or alt+tab out of Diablo 2 because the screen jitter will hurt your eyes after a while (starts giving me a headache after 5-10 seconds).
Found that on the Amazon Basin a while back, used it several times. The only slightly annoying part of it is that Charsi never seems to go under her shack when you want her to and it takes a little while to get into position so you can target her and not wind up going around the wall instead of into it.
Oddly enough you can do the same thing in Act 5 with Larzuk, if you stand in the right spot between him and the 2 stairways leading to his platform, but that's a lot harder to get to work and isn't very useful for breaking in characters, since chances are, to get a char to that point you've already played them longer than 2 hours (unless they were rushed).
Alea Jacta Est - Caesar
Guild Wars account: Lurker Wyrm
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I have a question about the two hour burn-in for characters, mule or standard.
Is the beginning burn-in a total of two hours or is it two hours, all at once?
". . . and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth."
-- Walt Whitmam
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Myztyk,May 20 2004, 10:31 PM Wrote:Is the beginning burn-in a total of two hours or is it two hours, all at once? It is a total of two hours.
And you may call it righteousness
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake
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Thank you. It was just one of those "curious" questions. :)
Your thread has saved me many, many Cain runs. (I use to just work a mule until he rescued Cain.)
Now, I can burn one in while I'm at work and another while I'm sleeping and prime time is for gaming. :D
". . . and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth."
-- Walt Whitmam
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IF you have 2 copies of the game, another useful way of burning in mules is to rush them to hell. This allows them to "pick up" stuff anywhere, and also gives you 2 runes.
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The last mule I made, i rushed through hell. The best part was that I named him after my necros eth gaze, eth shaft, eth ariocs thorn merc Hazade, so i could personalize all 3 of my mercs items. Some of the quest can come in really handy, especially hellforge, socket, and personalizing. The boss drops on all the act completion isn't bad either.
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I'm so cheap, I use personalization and socketing to repair my items. Go go Ironman!
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OK It seems to me that rushing mules to hell would be a gigantic pain in the butt. You have to level the mule to at least level 40 to get there, and by that time you are practically on your way to making a new player character. Did I miss something? Can you get to hell as a lvl 1 character somehow?
Schuey
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*Nominates ShadowHM for Lurker of the month award*
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You need to be level 20 and 40 for the ancients in Normal and Nightmare, respectively. However, you only need the ancients quest to take a town portal down to the WSK. If a person were to kill all the monsters from the Ancient's Way to WSK level 2, you could then take the WP down whenever you wanted.
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Are you sure that works? Can you actually enter the WSK without having completed (or even being eligible for) the Ancients quest?
There is a way to get a low-level character to hell, but it involves skipping the Ancients entirely. If someone kills Baal for quest credit while a mule is partied in town, the mule also gets credit, even if he hasn't gotten the Ancients quest. Note that this doesn't work if the Baal-killer already completed the Baal quest.
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I think it does. I could be wrong, though. I seem to remember hearing about it.
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Quote: I think it does. I could be wrong, though. I seem to remember hearing about it.
You are :)
We did try it (heck, all you needed to to would be to set up a single game, where you cleared everything from Ancients WP to lev2 wp, and walk all your mules down the line). The key is, that without the quest, you cannot leave Mt. Arrerat.
The solution Adeyke mentioned does work, however. If you have multiple instances of the game, you can "pull" some mules along with you. While this is of paramount importance to low level duelers, it also comes handy when you try to do rune-runs.
I NEVER kill Baal in public games these days. I have an account set up for Rune-mules, and it is filled with characters whose only purpose in life is to grab the hammer and smash the stone (ok, they do drill OK holes in uniques, too.) When I am about to cross a difficulty, I ask my friends to "help" me, and they log in with that account's characters, party me, and then we all cross over to the next difficulty.
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