So be it. Good luck on that, but on my side I got better luck on areas with optimised characters than with LK ...never ran LK with an optimised sorc tho, it may fill the gap
Finally made my CoH, and now I'm onto Pindle, Pindle, Pindle, until I find a Reapers, Gore Riders, and Highlords. Metalgrid would be nice too, for the inevitable swap to a Fury werewolf to run Travincal for more high runes.
Some update from me. Necromancer continued in the pits, I think mostly on players 3. The plan was to stop pit runs at 93 but I respecced to poison (without any poison gear) to try players 8. I was surprised how strong this guy is with still missing some items and 94 was so fast that I thought why not go for another level.
Shuffled some iterms around and now running with 125% FCR which feels amazing. Still have some gear upgrades to find, most obvious is still using +1 necro amulet!
Hit level 95 now and not too sure where to go. There's not much experience left for me in the pits. Am I running Baals from here on?
@1have2much3time Great progress. For what it's worth, I found Pit runs the best XP option up to 97 with poison nova build and wanting to save Ancients. I couldn't get CS runs to work, and I don't think Baal runs will work very well due to relatively high poison resists for several waves.
As for me, Pestilence hit a significant milestone: View attachment 14264
The last .017 of the level was fairly uneventful, a couple NDE’s and disappointing drops compared to my prior Nihl experiences, with some gear tinkering to keep myself engaged. The merc still has an unfortunate habit of running into viper clouds right next to the golem So there are more merc resurrections with the necro than probably with Mercy and Hiatus combined :\
As noted in RFL Round 3 running thread, he picked up Lo #1 within 20 minutes of completing his 20-hour set and was followed quickly by his first BKWB, which were both nice. He gave the BKWB a shot for extra skill and life compared to Dwarf and stuck with it for a while, but eventually went back to Dwarf as Nihl’s CE was only real threat, especially when cursed. Ist #1 fell shortly after, and then a really long dry stretch, at least 20M, until the next drop meriting a screenshot, a low roll 3os Tomb Reaver.
At the 98.4 mark, we had one NDE (S&E with only a couple hundred hit points), and a stretch of multiple cursed rolls that made things tough and included a couple aborted runs to prevent an NDE. We had gone back to Dwarf star, and I decided to test out another approach to amp’ed CE management: considering maxed fire resist, I though the 15% fire absorb might be less beneficial than extra damage reduction (only at 10% with Shako), so tested out Verdungo’s, with dual FCR rings and 2/10 amulet making up what was needed to stay at 125 FCR.
It was actually pretty solid, with life still >3100 after dropping another skiller in favor of vita SCs. The other benefit was the second FCR ring has 11@ and extra poison resist, which made hits by spiders a little less annoying. I eventually tried out 2/20 amulet and Dwarf, with 11@ FCR ring, pulling in a couple ruby SCs to keep fire resist maxed.
I eventually went back to Mara’s/Dwarf/Arach at 98.45, keeping the extra SCs (only 3 skillers and Gheed’s), and his life is almost 3400. I think the setups are pretty comparable, but I prefer the higher resists with Mara's and higher life given how often he's getting hit. Even with the better map, it's still messy every third run on average. In retrospect, the one thing I didn’t test with Verdungo’s setup was dropping 4 vita SCs in favor of 4 FHR SCs, for 86 FHR breakpoint. That might be worth it due to frequency he is hit (way more than Mercy and Hiatus), and I think he’d still have life >3000.
Anyhow, drops meriting screenshots over the last ~20M were Ohm #3, Ghost Flame, and Gul #2. Other notable drops from this stretch were 2os Giant Skull x2 and 2os HHG, with 18 unique rings and 8 unique amulets, plus 6 facets.
In terms of charms, he found another Fungal Skiller, this one with gold find, and now has 8 total He also picked up a couple high resist GCs and SCs with secondary mods, and an Acrobatic skiller of Vita (41). So the two “of Vita” 41+ skillers I’ve managed are for a suboptimal skill tree
But he’s fast compared to prior two with the S&E improvement, as he’s been average ~3M/hr when focused, and not much lower than 2.8M/hr when running more leisurely. So at this pace, he has about 35 hours + Ancients to 99.
This week i'm going to play my runners again, there will be an update for BabyNinetyNiner for sure, and will make some progress with IpBanPrevales, even if 95 won't be reached, i'll target a 3/4th of the level done (currently plain 94).
@PhineasB - Awesome progress, nice to see he's a bit more stable now, and still very fast! Sometimes it's those little re-gears that seem to make the most difference, even if they look very similar on paper. Gogogogo!
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Stevesy the frustrated Frenzier is back at it, as I got some unexpected uninterrupted D2 time over the last week or so.
As alluded to before, Stevesy decided to try his hand at the Pits to gain some levels and gear so he could take on the Trav and make the next step to some good RWs. Well at first it was really frustrating as his merc would just die constantly, but we quickly happened across this Fal, prompting Stevesy to roll all the polearms he had. On the final one, he rolled 5 sockets on a CA and promptly made this:
That's better! The merc actually (mostly) stays alive now, so that's great. While he was at it Stevesy also made dual Spirits for his BO switch. If you thought that would be enough to keep him comfortably safe (I did), you'd be wrong. A pile of NDEs followed, and the merc just couldn't cut it with the tougher bosses, so Stevesy decided to move on from the Pits and try to find a target that had a more favourable clvl/mlvl difference, as that is paramount for safety in melee HC.
He quickly polished off the rest of Act 3, and moved through the underworld taking out Izual, then Hephasto (grabbing an Um from the Forge on the way). A slow crawl through the CS (even at /p1) ensued, but eventually Stevesy reigned victorious over Diablo and pushed on to his barbarian homelands.
My first thought was to push all the way through to Pindle and hopefully run him for some XP. Well, that didn't work. He's way too hard-hitting to run safely. Luckily, before we left him he decided to reward Stevesy for his (minimal) efforts:
Code:
Highlord's Wrath
Amulet
Required Level: 65
Fingerprint: 0xf615fe48
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+20% Increased Attack Speed
Adds 1 - 30 Lightning Damage
3% Deadly Strike (Based on Character Level)
Lightning Resist +35%
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 15
Huh. The IAS actually doesn't matter for Frenzy, but the rest sure is nice!
Next up Stevesy tried some Eldritch runs. Long story short it's way too slow on anything other than /p1, and on /p1 the XP is reallly slow. Stevesy tried some Meph runs to see if he could get some gear upgrades, but the merc can't handle it at all. He THEN tried re-gearing with Infernostrides and some jewelry swapping to get proper resists and gave the Council another crack, to no avail. A few more NDEs and he decided to abandon that plan before it was too late. Back to Eldritch for a slow saunter to 85.
I'm a little bit frustrated with the situation, to be honest. I guess I was maybe expecting too much from a melee character who didn't gear up at LK first, but it's a little disheartening to only be able to run Eldritch or the Countess without the immediate threat of dying (I'm actually considering going back to the Countess, btw). I think maybe I'll give Stevesy a bit of a break for a bit so that the shine doesn't wear off too much, and see from there.
@Pb_pal Nice update, but sorry to hear it's getting frustrating. What weapons are you using? Lawbringer helps so much, but I didn't know if that already in-hand. And i wouldn't think p1 council would be too bad with it, but I am also not a HC player at all
Played IpBanPrevales for about two hours, doing Baal runs at start then forgetting about Baal and only doing waves at /p7 - as this was really more efficient xpwise.
No real drop given by those waves, nice progress on flawlesses - slightly less than a pgem per run, but Baal start dropped a nice circlet - lots of lacking mods for it to be huge, but the strength bonus is really nice tho...
At current rate, lvl 95 is doable in about 10/11 hours (8/9 hours left), i'll keep with it for now then i'll see
@Pb_pal Nice update, but sorry to hear it's getting frustrating. What weapons are you using? Lawbringer helps so much, but I didn't know if that already in-hand. And i wouldn't think p1 council would be too bad with it, but I am also not a HC player at all
Dual oaths right now (in poor bases, mind you.). The worst part is not necessarily the killing speed, I can deal with that. He's extremely squishy, which is bad for HC obviously. Combine the squishyness with the lack of killing power and it's a bit of a tough road.
It's all part of the fun though, and I'm sure brighter days are ahead. I'll get him through, I'm just not entirely sure how yet.
@Pb_pal I would think lawbringer + oath would greatly improve safety without decreasing killing speed much, if at all. But tell me if I'm wrong, I know you have a lot more d2 experience than me in general. I would also want to try 6 or so points in howl for a decent radius and make liberal use of battle cry, but those are just some ideas! Not sure if you'd already messed with most of that stuff. Keep up the good work . Oh and a point in leap for any situation it would just be best to leap in place for knockback and let merc work on a dangerous enemy is also nice.
This. I guess there wasn't a merc, but still that's ambitious @Bewitch Sorry to see the death, but glad to hear you got the corpse to minimize XP loss.
@PhineasB I’m not ashamed to admit that I like seeing deaths at Nihlathak. It makes me feel ok about getting killed in under a second there and what not lmao. Great progress from everyone though!
[updated 2019/06/28]
On acts 3 and 4, most of BabyNinetyNiner's progress has been based upon boss running - Mephisto opened it due to a very good map, then Diablo and CS gave good stuff.
The flayer dungeon dropped this MF circlet:
Then these MF boots on the road to Travincal:
Council gave a nice present:
And RNG gave this fcking map! Hope to get something similar in Hell!
Mephisto's first death gave the Milabrega's crown...will be used by merc until Howltusk came to drop
Forge: Ral + PSapphire
First Diablo kill upgraded merc armor:
Then when running CS/Diablo, the first Amn drop, opening the Strength RW possibility:
This eth Tannr Gorerod provided a huge merc damage boost!
Gambling time: was trying to upgrade the belt, and at some point i saw a circlet, and boom!
Diablo kept delivering - now will have to find PDiamonds:
On the very next run, the somehow perfect base for the Strength RW at current level:
With this and the ethereal Tannr Gorerod, Diablo is now dying so fast!
Magefist and druid circlet:
But with some life leech and other useful stats: merc upgrade!
Arrived at lvl 35, decided to go to Harrogath. Stopped at lvl 37, just found entry to Crystalline passage, and on the way found this GC, that will replace a low AR/gold find one:
See you on next update!
[update 2019/06/28]
Short session done at /p7: Anya rescued and Cristalline passage waypoint hit, no noticeable drop, lvl 39.
As far as the Durance 2 map is concerned: I get such maps pretty often in Normal, where Durance maps are much smaller. In NM and especially Hell it only happens very rarely while questing. Keeping my fingers crossed you'll get lucky though .