1.00 News, Info and Gossip

[lizard]

HI everyone.

Pushed my Hammerdin to A2 NM and hit a bit of a wall in Maggot Lair. Melee damage is not quite high enough to clear all the maggots to come into the main chamber and hammers are not quite doing it.
In the meantime, I rushed a set of durimules to A4 norm and will rush my backup chars to A4 as well and do some leveling.

Also did some shopping for scepters and found two +2 blessed hammer and +3 concentration scepters within 5 mins.

 

[art_vandelay]

Pushed my Hammerdin to A2 NM and hit a bit of a wall in Maggot Lair. Melee damage is not quite high enough to clear all the maggots to come into the main chamber and hammers are not quite doing it.

Do you have Wall of the Eyeless yet? If not you should gamble for it and when you have it stuff your inventory with health potions. Then you slowly but surely grind your way into Coldworm's chamber. This worked for me in Hell and there it took me long enough to gain a level on the baby maggots that Coldworm's minions produced. But it worked

Btw if you planned on investing in Holy Shield: don't. It costs like 35 mana per cast (not entirely sure there) and the duration is much shorter than in modern

 

[jimsfriend]

Trying to do more science on the cow king drop and whether a TP affects it, and now I've managed to confuse myself.

Can anyone tell me from their experiences running a Cow King, about how many different patterns of affixes you expect for a particular item type before you have to reroll the map?

I *think* leaving town via WP and coming back affected the affix generation of the items dropped by the Cow King, but it didn't seem to count as if just adding/removing one cast of TP in the Secret Cow Level. I'm trying to determine now if placement of the red portal in town matters when respawning it via WP use, or if I'm actually just crazy and none of this is actually doing anything.

I spawned 34 rare rings from the same king with only 4 dupes, which is way more unique groupings of affixes than I expect if what I'm doing is not having an affect, and also way less dupes than I expect.

 

[lizard]

Do you have Wall of the Eyeless yet? If not you should gamble for it and when you have it stuff your inventory with health potions. Then you slowly but surely grind your way into Coldworm's chamber. This worked for me in Hell and there it took me long enough to gain a level on the baby maggots that Coldworm's minions produced. But it worked

Btw if you planned on investing in Holy Shield: don't. It costs like 35 mana per cast (not entirely sure there) and the duration is much shorter than in modern

Mana wasn't really an issue, i just could not find a position to hit the maggots consistently enough to make any progress. But I will gamble some Boneshields and try again.

Doing some RoF and CS runs currently and gaining 250k+ exp on p1. I'll bump it to p3 or 4 and that should get me to 33 or maybe even 35 in not too much time and gives me a good source of gold for gambling.

Re Holy shield:
Does the uptime improve with more levels or is it fixed?
Any optional skill worth investing in beyond hammers and conc?
I like redemption quite a lot during my CS runs, and will drop some points into that. Was using smite in the beginning for smacking things, but the damage is quite bad now.

 

[Helvete]

I would only notice dupes if they were any good, never could get them consistently either, except for champion pack near RoFl wp

I did get some SoJs with same fingerprint though. Been a while.

 

[art_vandelay]

Re Holy shield:
Does the uptime improve with more levels or is it fixed?
Any optional skill worth investing in beyond hammers and conc?
I like redemption quite a lot during my CS runs, and will drop some points into that. Was using smite in the beginning for smacking things, but the damage is quite bad now.

The uptime increases I believe, but not by 25s per level as in modern. I don't have the exact number but I believe it to be either 10 or 15. If you want to find out you could invest a point in charge and then hover over Holy Shield to see the duration bonus you get from investing a point.
Also from @Fruit:

Most of you probably already know that the blocking animation doesn't play when blocking melee attacks, or missile attacks that would deal less than or equal to 1/12 of your maximum health in physical damage, ...

which means that blocking speed is not very important, so the bonus from Holy Shield to block rate is usually not noticeable.

I guess if you have points to spare and level past 50 or so you could test Holy Shield, for science

 

[Helvete]

Also, defense is pretty useless unless it hits the sky like some barb builds. Holy Shield only affects the actual shield, not entire character defense like later. Haven't checked how this stacks with Defiance (nor Shout).

 

[Barl]

I would only notice dupes if they were any good, never could get them consistently either

most definitely. when rolling maps and testing out maps to see if they are worth keeping, you get sooo much data for your brain to process. when killing the king repeatedly, it's hard to precisely remember (and importantly, be able to verify) when you get identical duplicate rares. maybe if they drop on runs which happen to temporally be close.

i have definitely gotten duplicate identical rares on nearly-temporally-adjacent runs (that's the only way i'd remember). maybe i should start streaming 1.00 cow king runs again (twitch.tv/n__een_n). it would be great to have video evidence of this phenomenon.

i haven't played d2 in months because of some other artistic endeavors like oil painting and speedrunning a 90's macintosh game. but those two things i'm growing weary of lately so maybe getting back into 1.00 is just what i need. i'm really pleased that people are still playing and discussing 1.00. treeharl and their original 1.00 thread were what convinced me to try 1.00 after several only-sort-of-okay attempts at multiple chars in 1.03/1.04.

fresh blood golem/iron maiden necro soon.

 

[jimsfriend]

The following things appear to not affect item generation (affix selection) for the cow king.

how many sockets does the leg have
how much durability does the leg have

The following things appear to affect item generation (affix selection) for the cow king. There is overlap in their effect, but I haven't determined the relationship of them yet.

how many scrolls are in the tome you made the portal with
what position is the leg in the cube
what position was the leg in your inventory
was there a failed unique spawn
how long have you been in the game
how many TP did you cast in the cow level

 

[Barl]

wait, really? what about:

whether a superfluous item was consumed by the cube during transmutation
the type of item consumed by the cube
etc.

for the uninitiated: when cubing a recipe, all that is required is that the requisite ingredients be in the cube. you can add any superfluous items you want, like other items, gems, healing potions, scrolls, whatever. as long as there is a valid recipe in the cube (like wirt's leg + tome of town portal), it doesn't matter what /else/ is in the cube.

so if you put a town portal tome + wirt's leg + a super healing potion into the cube and hit transmute, it will create the portal as normal and the potion will just simply disappear.


i'd be curious to know how you're determining these things.

 

[Helvete]

I'm afraid that we're seeing patterns where there are none. The only thing "ticking" the RNG that I am aware of is spawning additional monsters/minions. If someone was to mod the game to have the king as the only monster spawning, this would probably be a lot easier to check and verify. I don't have the modding skills though, nor the time to gain said skills.

 

[Excalibur]

I farmed 15 Soj, all on the same map, trying to repeat my previous steps and none of them came duplicate.

 

[frozzzen]

I farmed 15 Soj, all on the same map, trying to repeat my previous steps and none of them came duplicate.

I managed to get 3 classic SoJs but can't keep the map so have to reroll for new racks which takes longer than getting the SoJ itself. How are you muling multiple SoJs off same map? Am I missing something (I am in 1.06b so it might be version thingie)? All ideas I have for keeping the map seed are super impractical.

 

[Helvete]

It's easy to mule off. Just write protect the character file, and go ahead. Of course need to throw those same items on ground next game. Muling ON and keeping the seed requires either the seed command (forbidden) or that you got the seed from an MP game which is still up.

 

[frozzzen]

This does make sense. Also one question - can I stock multiple SoJs on this character by dropping SoJ on the ground then collect it after gambling session? I guess it's easy enough to try but if anyone know it would be useful knowledge.

 

[Excalibur]

Dropping your Soj(s) on the ground will make it possible for the Cow King to drop it again.

 

[Helvete]

Gambling works too. Items brought into the game by a character don't count if they're on the ground.

 

[jimsfriend]

@Barl I am aware the cube can take extra ingredients, but I haven't tried it yet. Been playing 1.07 a bit, will get back to this in a few days maybe.

@Helvete I don't think I'm seeing patterns that don't exist. I was able to make the same rare ring spawn from the king every time based on the criteria I mentioned, unless it dropped a set or failed unique. Following the same actions, he would drop the same two rings on a failed unique. If I changed only one of those criteria, he would drop the same *different* ring each time. This is in 1.00, perhaps his item generation is different in later patches.

I tested games where I immediately spawn the red portal on entry, and to get a Ring each time I just stand through the portal and wait for the king to come to me, so my movement path in the cow level does not change. And in fact neither does the king's path 9/10 tries or so (haven't actually counted that). When his path changes I get Long War Bow instead of Ring.

ETA: I think when I do get to re-testing, I'll stream it so I can post the vod here.

 

[Helvete]

Yeah, but the lack of difference in pathing is very likely the reason for the dupes is what I'm saying. Game duration and TP casts are likely to tick RNG, but position of, or extra stuff in cube is (to my knowledge) irrelevant.

If you have a very short map with very few other monsters spawning, you are likely to get dupes. That's why I suggested making a mod to remove all other monsters, so it can be tested properly what (if anything) else than casting TP and path taken will change outcome.

 

[jimsfriend]

I take the same path -- open game and make red portal -- to keep the path as a controlled variable. I then change one of the other things that I thought affects the affix selection, and as I expect I get a different ring. If I change that one other thing in the same way, I continue to get the same different ring.

I guess I am explaining myself poorly. An excel spreadsheet that I have started, accompanied by some video, will hopefully clear everything up.

I could be wrong, but I hope not because I want to be able to use this (or any) map to generate unlimited affix combinations.