Does anyone have exp data from untwinked CS sorcs? I'm not a super efficient player, but I was curious how my runs and map stack up. From 95-96 I averaged 18mill per hour and so far it looks like it will be just above 9mill per hour for lvl 96. I'm guessing its not stellar though, since it equates to ~3.7mill/hour at 97, and some people average more than that at lvl 98 lol.
My spreadsheet shows Eleanor at ~4.8M/hr for 97 in the CS. Don't let those uber 98 XP guys get to you, I'm pretty sure some people in this place aren't human.
Ask and ye shall receive. I'm glad you guys asked, I've been meaning to do this for a while. Here's a small sample of what it looks like to run with Klaus (gear is at the end of the video for those interested):
@T72on1 I could always be missing something, but I have read the compendium many times and actually don't see any run data for anyone except gripphon, who I didn't aspire to compete with but the runtimes you mentioned match up pretty well with mine.
@Pb_pal 4.8M? I need to step it up then . I'm sure I'll upload a video on here for advice at some point. Nice runs with Klaus! Your persistence and not dying is inspiring.
@Luhkoh I went back through the thread to see what Sophie was getting at various levels in CS as I remember posting EXP meter a lot. I saw someone mention run times and I want to point out that a lot of times having many boss packs near the seals contributed to higher exp/hour than just outright killing seals as quickly as possible.
96: 12-13m/hour
97: 5-6m/hour
CBA going any further, ~140 pages back to find these two LOL
@Yng Thanks! And I hate to tell you this if you went back through without knowing it, but you you know you can view only your posts in this thread right? Using search, leaving it blank, putting by member yng, and checking this thread only. It's still not trivial to find the posts, but if you meant you really went back manually, it would help a lot.
But thanks for the data! Argh yeah I could save a lot of time going from 9M to 12M. Let alone on 98. I may get a "for advice" video up sooner rather than later
Make that a couple of days, I forgot how fast this character gains XP. Starting with a small recap, last we heard from Lucid was a couple of months ago after I ran CS with him for the final round if RFL. His haul from two RFL sets:
With that second set I actually had hopes he could even finally deliver my first SPF tournament win, given I had won the preceding Travincal round... but @WoRG beat me with some out of this world 1.07 luck, resulting in yet another addition to my growing list of 2nd place tournament finishes.
Shortly after RFL I went on a break from D2. RL was super busy and I was a bit tired of the game. Last weekend I went back to some running with him, and being rusty and all, things started out with an unpleasant yet classic "no I am not going to pot" moment:
Well that was silly.. Corpse recovery was swift (thanks to Enigma, Hoto, CtA et al. stashed for that purpose), but still quite unnecessary to allow a death on this character in any case. It was less than one hour of running lost though and he quickly went on to move to 97.75, so no biggie at this stage.
Most noteworthy drops since 97.5 were a Shimmering (14) GC of Sustenance (33) and a couple of HRs (Ber & Ohm). Noteworthy S&Us included numerous TC3s and a 1% off perfect eth Hone. These and other drops:
Upped the Hone because why not! Further drop list due to 10 picture limit:
It rained TC3s: Biggin's Bonnet, 2x Tankred's Boots, Gnasher, Knell Striker, Hsaru's Iron Fist
-5/+3 Lightning RBF
15 IAS, 6 min dmg jewel
5os, 250 ED Rune Master
107 AR/20 Life GC
125 AR/11 Life GC
M'avina's True Sight
Wisp Projector 19 LA/13 MF
Um
Lightning Skiller
He's now at 263 caster amulets crafted, with still no 2/10, unfortunately. Wouldn't mind a + skill ring and skiller or two either. #complaining
As for the 98-99 stage, I performed more (twinked) tests with these builds at Nihlathak, each solo and with Merc, and with various gear setups that Lucid could use or make:
Hammerdin
Smiter
Dual Dream Vengeance <-- seems slightly faster than the other builds
Dual Dream Sacrifice
Turns out the most awesome (and unique) variant is an interesting option, namely the Dream Avenger – which could include an ultimately classic eBotD BA. Somehow the build seems to have less issues with Nihl teleporting around than a Smiter. The bad news is that I also realized at ~25s per run it's likely only slightly more efficient than Diablo runs in terms of XP, and I suspect that will be true even when improving running technique as I go. I'll start by comparing Lucid's 98-99 CS numbers to my twinked tests at Nihl once he hits 98, but looks like I might stay in CS after all.
Hey guys! I know I have been away for awhile but just had a lot of stuff come up and haven't had time to continue my 99er. I wanted to move myself to the resting heroes section as I fully intend to finish this awesome journey. I haven't fallen yet! Hope you didn't think that was the reason I vanished haha. I did make it another 10% or so over the summer but don't have a lot of time for the coming months.
I also just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed this community for the short time I was active and can't wait to return to you all when I have some more free time. Until then, happy leveling!
I too would like to assure my brothers that I am indeed alive and well, and am preparing to continue my journey forward to attain a level 90 character for the first time since I laid eyes on this glorious game. While level 99 is the ultimate goal, 90 is a milestone for yours truly, and I'm a little less than halfway into 89 until I reach such a point.
@buckcrazy Nice. I was thinking about your entry in this challenge the other day. Good to hear that she is still alive, and has actually progressed since last time. You'll get there eventually, I hope.
@ffs A true Hammerdin never leaves CS . Having said that, I'm surprised that Nihl wouldn't be a lot faster than CS at 25s runs. Iirc my Nihl runs were at 30s on average, resulting in some 2.7M xp/hour. I thought that CS was behind that.
Whatever the outcome is, I admire how you keep on testing various setups, often out-of-the-box ones.
Admittedly I only roughly ran the numbers. But generally 98-99 takes ~5.5k runs in CS or ~13k at Nihl.
P8/P7 runs in CS are 80-90s currently. If Nihl runs take 25s, then CS runs at P1/P7 would break even at ~60s, not factoring in XP shrines. Not sure if I can get P1/P7 CS runs to 60s – but given Lucid's map has 6 shrines, I’m fairly confident Diablo runs will get at least very close to Nihl efficiency after XP shrines.
That being said, how awesome would it be to hit 99 with an untwinked, eBotD wielding Dream Avenger? (The only thing Lucid is currently missing for that is a decent Dream shield base.) The massive style points factor is appealing for sure.
@buckcrazy Come back when things clear up! Glad to hear Zic is still alive and kicking, and we'll look forward to having you back in month or in a year or whatever!
@ffs awesome idea with the avenger. Would be cool to put that zod to use for sure. Hope to see it! Also your progress is always inspiring.
Ok I did make a little "for advice" video of my blizz sorc running CS. The runs have gotten very smooth in general, and needing to use 2 rejuvs on the first run must just have been camera-nerves I think this is a pretty average set of runs otherwise and indeed the exp/hr over the course of the video was just under 10M, so it wasn't anything out of the norm. But any advice is appreciated, I would love to get my exp/hr up to 12M or so. Also I will certainly try anything if it is strongly suggested, but I had tried out ice blast only, and using static more on infectors pack, but didn't notice any time difference to just spamming glacial spike, while the latter helps me a ton with safety.
Also my body recovery kit is finally complete and is super nice but I have a question. Hopefully I won't need the answer, but if you run up and click your single body (ie haven't died twice), you can then s/e without fear of losing gear even though you didn't pick up all the equipment from your corpse correct? It will just appear on the corpse in town, the same as if you have s/e right after death?
@Luhkoh Looks good to me, only thing I noticed is you could use SF at Infector. Other than that, just streamlining by running more I guess!
For those interested, I recorded a few test runs (twinked char) with Vengeance Dreamer at Nihl:
Gear is shown in the end. Since my only BotD (as of now) is in a GPA, I tried to kind of simulate Lucid's possible setup by using Oath BA with an extra IAS item. Ironically this results in lower damage than what Lucid would end up with, despite this being a twinked Pally. The huge attribute boost and ML from BotD would allow further optimization as well (more options for gloves, 2nd ring, amulet slots for example...).
I think Faith Merc is way to go, makes juggling IAS and FCR breakpoints much easier, while Reaper or Insight Merc would mostly be for QoL reasons, albeit considerable ones... But Faith Merc allows easy 8 FPA + 75 FCR. Without it I'd have to choose between either 10 FPA + 75 FCR or 9 FPA and <75 FCR – not super happy with those choices.
As you can see he's not too bad overall, with fast runs around 20s, but quite some variance. I guess he performs slightly better than Smiter due to the better range when using a BA. However, Merc died in one run and when Nihl rolled HF that also slowed me down. So yeah, not sure if this is better than CS running. Also if going for Nihl, Smiter with Exile or Last Wish is near immortal so that's another thing to consider. Tough choice for 98-99 that's for sure!
@Luhkoh It’s been a while but first thing I noticed is you’re not using Static Field at Infector pack and you’re using Glacial Spike which stops the entire pack besides the respective seal boss. You want the mobs to be moving inside of Blizzard to maximize damage. Glacial is only necessary if positioning goes bad when the seal pops but even then it’s probably just better to reposition. Also I wouldn’t bother waiting on merc to kill CI Infector and I wouldn’t stay too long to finish off a single minion etc (better to move on and hit the next seal pack).
@ffs excellent thanks! Glad there's nothing too egregious. Vengeance dreamer looks pretty dang cool, and I hope you decide to go that route for the last lvl. Dual dream and ebotd on untwinked is just amazing. Much more fun than more chaos
@Yng ok great thank you for the feedback. Spamming glacial just originally made my runs so much safer that it helped a ton. After seeing the numbers you all were getting though, I will definitely try ditching it. Maybe reroll maps and rehire a HF merc too. And of course I will try to improve the other points as well. I'll let you know if I improve a lot!
Unrelated to Orion's journey (but still technically related to this thread since all my current characters are untwinked), I have just completed Normal p8 with my Phoenix Strike Assassin, and am now up to 4 characters in total: Patriarch Orion the Fanaticism Zealot (my favourite, of course), Champion Mistrianna the Meteorber (currently a Blizzard Sorceress so she can run Hell Mephisto and LK to ship things off to future characters who may be twinked), Slayer Xul the Summoner Necromancer, and now Slayer Ariana the Phoenix Striker.
I'm about to move on to the Amazon now, but I can't decide if I want to go with bows or javelins for a main weapon, with a spear on switch, and also don't know what skills to take a look at for Normal. Thus, I look to the very fine members of the SPF, for advice.
Vengeance dreamer looks pretty dang cool, and I hope you decide to go that route for the last lvl. Dual dream and ebotd on untwinked is just amazing. Much more fun than more chaos
@Luhkoh I had HF for my CS runs but in hindsight it’s a lot better to go without it. Similar concept to not using glacial spike, it slows down the packs too much so they’re not moving around inside Blizzard radius. Again, though, you’re sacrificing safety to push efficiency.
@ffs It would still be cool in a 3os kite shield from normal But in all seriousness I'll look forward to seeing you progress regardless.
@Yng gotcha. I was thinking of HF as an in-between step as well. I'm nervous enough stopping spamming glacial with a holy freeze merc But if I get to where those feel really safe, I'll try again with prayer or defiance. Thanks!
Strength req is 118, but it's no investment when using Guillaume's (115 req +15 strength = 130 strength). Good base for the Fortitude i guess? Your thoughts? Poll is here!
Afterwards, it will be time to quest again, heading to Mephisto and beyond, for an Exile base!
For full story, see his own thread here and there edit: and there
Oh, and he finally died, snapped during LK running. Knight without his sword surrounded by a convinced and fanatic crowd...
I'm not keeping track of the number of Trav runs Stevesy does for sanity reasons, but I figure I'll update when I hit a level or enough interesting stuff has gone on. The runs are extremely safe as I've stacked so much FR that I have 85% even if Convicted. Couple that with 4k+ like and it's brain off, right-click on.
The finds haven't been overly impressive (not surprising with only 66%MF), with it mostly being an assortment of Nagelrings and Manald Heal's, but as the level went on runes started to make an appeareance.
Plugging along like normal he found a Ravenfrost, a Fine SC of Vita, and kept on going. Waiting patiently for his next good rune drop he actually got something else courtesy of that measly 66% MF I was just making fun of:
Oh. Well then. It's non-eth and a mediocre damage roll but I don't care one bit! Amazing bit of news to get this drop so early on, especially for a (considerably) slower runner like a walfbarb. Obviously this sped up the runtimes quite a bit (well, relatively speaking) so things are more fluid now.
Man, there is something special about participating in this thread, I tell ya. Stevesy now has a Grief, Highlords, and Reapers on the merc but is missing pieces like a freaking string of ears and gores. RNG is (sometimes) awesome.
Shortly after that i decided to roll a map that didn't have Toorc inside, since I'd be spending a lot of time here and it was a nuisance to always chase him down. Stevesy found some middling uniques after that such as Arioc's, Wizardspike, Demon Limb, and a Steel Shade for the Merc, but otherwise it was a leisurely cruise to level 90.