New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Information and updates for the Zy-El mod. If you have any questions or suggestions for the mods, please post them here. Click here to visit the official web site.

Moderators: d2vern, Kato

0
No votes
 
Total votes: 0

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:20 am

1/2 damage in Hell occurs because all of the monsters in Hell have 50% Physical resistance, so it only applies to physical damage.

I can't address the math part of your damage-to-mana theory, as I have not calculated it out for myself, but the logic of it seems sound enough... except for one little detail. The damage to mana occurs first, and then the damage-to-mana kicks in, so it would still be possible to take out her Energy Shield, provided it was done in a single hit. :D

And yes, it only applies to physical damage, though not only to melee damage - arrows, melee, spells with physical damage components, all of those should qualify.

Glad you made it to level 120 with her - that is such a massive watershed! Congratulations, and I wish you well in continuing to keep her alive. :cool:

User avatar
Al-T
Forum Legend
Power
Posts: 3704
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2005 2:19 am

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Al-T » Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:43 am

My sorceress in the Hardcore tournament playing at Players 8 in the normal mode Wayside of WoE never has to recast her Energy Shield even when being pounded on by mobs of Darth Smalls and Mini Mauls or Chimeras (including Champions and Uniques). Some facts about her that may explain why she never has to recast her ES:

Enery Shield level 176 with a 2244 second duration.
Warmth Level 177 (2142%)
Additional mana regen : 326%
Life regen : +57
Damage to mana (on PlugY stat page) : 30%
Mana : 1.1 Million
Life : 3.6 Million
Damage reduced by 139
Magic Damage reduced by 145
Fire Absorb 50%
Cold Absorb 30%
Lightning Absorb 28%
Magic Absorb 42%

Potentially a sorceress with Mana and Life close to the 8.38 Million cap for each can have an "effective life" of 16.76 Million and if the way ES and damage to Mana work is correct it can be even higher. I think I did the calculations some years ago and got a figure of about 32 Million but don't quote me on that. I guess that if you also got Absorbs high enough she could potentially become a candidate for another "Immortal" type in the Mod or a pre-4.3b "Immortal"...truly invincible in PVM (PVP if her opponent was good enough she could still be killed and even then that would probably only be if she didn't fight back :cool: ).

Hopefully this will encourage you sokol815 to continue with your plan for her.

Good luck and happy Zy-Elling :)
Al-Tisaur...Card carrying member of mentaldom since March 2007 & "Zy-Sensitive" Veteran Pension Holder!
Veteran? More like "Ancient Relic!"..been playing the mod for 12 years!
Trying to picture Al as a Power,... it's not working it must be the Tiger Stripes that get me every time - Hans
I get knocked down but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down...!
Official Zy-El Website | ZyEl Wiki | Russian Zy-El Website by mahatmaQL | Eastern Sun

sokol815
Posts: 92
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:04 am
Location: Texas
United States of America

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by sokol815 » Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:21 pm

I feel like I start off every post saying something to this effect: Thanks for the pointers! Good to know that there is a lot of support out there.

Al, I love the idea of making an immortal sorceress. I have put together my crafted shield, it has 75% fire absorb, and above 50% of lightning and cold. Physical damage is reduced by 95%. I do have one question, though: does physical damage reduced by stack on top of the 95% reduction? I thought I once heard that you can't reduce damage below 5% of original... I wish I remembered where that source was.

Anyways, I am probably going to start crafting some magic damage reduction into my shield after my next baal run. Current life and mana are at 250K/11K, thinking about making a combined mana/life jewel with fhr on it soon.

My sorceress is up to level 414 now, she has done a ridiculous number of Baal runs. Her gold find is up to 25000% (just barely crafted her 1st 14 Zy-El scroll GF jewel to go along with her 2 7 Zy-El scroll GF jewels.) One run will now give me approximately 160 million gold. Enough to make 35 scroll pieces, on average finishing 5 scrolls. I want to get her to 50000% gf, then she can start crafting like crazy to be ready for beyond normal.

Thanks guys!

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Wed May 09, 2012 1:01 am

Lust the Barbarian
After a few days vacation from Zy-El, I decided to spend a little time on this tournament again. Sadly, my efforts were lackluster at best, resulting in his untimely death just a few minutes into the Worldstone Keep while on his way down to the Throne of Destruction. :roll: I really messed up in getting him killed – he could should easily have made it all the way to 10k. I let his Battle Orders drop, and then stopped to refresh it while surrounded by a group of Platinum Drakes. Ah well. Fortunately, he left behind several hundred million gold for his successors.
Wrath the Paladin
Here we have successor #1. A strapping youth, fresh out of ministerial training, ready to call down the Wrath of God on all of his foes, both the deserving and the undeserving alike! He started out with a Rixot's Keen and a pair of Manny posters rerolled to give close to 1000 life and 750 damage each. He flew through the first 25 levels, then slowed down quite a bit, struggling through the next 35 levels until he picked up Zeal. That sped things up considerably! He left Act I at level 57 and Act II at level 90-something.

In a highly uncharacteristic move (for me), he used the gold in the stash (with Lust's help) to fashion Zy-El's Requiem, Vice, Decorum, and Stride for use at level 85. With those and Fanaticism, he was tearing things up so efficiently that he was running through Act III at p64. Freeze Target on his level-40-acquired Phoenix Long Sword locked down everything he touched, but occasionally the hard-hitters were able to take huge several-thousand-point chunks out of his life at a time. He was able to quickly leech that back, but I was aware that he was playing the long odds by engaging in such foolish activities. Sure enough, he was caught with a sound blow to the left temple by a Cyclops while blitzing through Upper Kurast... 8k+ life extinguished in less time than it took to blink. A one-hit kill to be forever remembered (by him, anyway – I barely remember it at all :twisted: ) . I should have taken the time to max out his Life BoCL belt, at the very least... another 3k life would have made all the difference in the world!
Gluttony the Sorceress
And then there was successor #2. Another fine young cannibal adventurer ready to prove herself against the world. A lot less gold from which to draw, but plenty of resources for a starting character, nonetheless. Again with a Rixot's Keen as the starting weapon, along with Simba and Sylvester posters, each with nearly 1000 life.

She quickly achieved level 20, at which point she started using a Dire Wolves small charm. The wolves kept her company until she started doing Mephisto runs at level 118. This time, I was sure to max out the Life BoCL on her belt before she started Act III! Her first few Meph runs were done at p1, switching up to p16 once he was engaged in order to maximize Zy rune drop chances. After a bit, I just left the setting at p16 all the time, though it was incredibly dangerous at times. Meph could kill her with two ice balls if she didn't get her Energy Shield back up after the first hit, but he almost never shoots them twice in a row.

Things became progressively less dangerous as she gained more levels, and by the time she was 250 or so, there was almost no chance that she could die. I was sorely tempted to use her first 40 Scrolls on a 20/20 life jewel, but... I just couldn't do it! %EG is just sooooo incredibly powerful that I had to persevere in that pursuit. Unlike with the Barbarian, who kills things like Majat packs when he happens across them, there was absolutely zero benefit to making half-jewels of %EG for her, so after approximately 1180 approximately-one-minute-twenty-second Meph runs (just over 26 hours) spread out over the course of a week (yes, I've gotten a little lazy!), she had her first full %EG jewel.

At that point she headed for Act V to do money runs in the Throne of Destruction. She did pretty well there, averaging 750M/hr. However, switching from full Scrolls using Zy runes to Scroll fragments using skulls slowed her down somewhat, as she then had lots of combination time for each Scroll. Another week later brings us to yesterday, when she made her second full %EG jewel.

I think that one more full jewel will be enough for now, and since she can start doing full Scrolls again, that jewel will be very quick to make. After it is made, she will need a 20/20 life jewel, along with 10/10 mana, 2 megaloads of Faster Hit Recovery, 1 megaload of Damage Reduction, and... I think that's it, actually. That should conclude the preliminaries, which means she can slam through Nightmare and Hell difficulties and ravage the Hell Insanities with a trusty ring of Lower Resist.

Not until she reaches 10k will I have her start collecting gold to make Scrolls for the other six. Having the ability to hold 1.6 billion gold at a time makes for much faster gold runs, believe it or not. :mrgreenlaughing:

There seem to be no signs of life on the tournament front at the moment, but if there are any of you lurking out there, good luck to each and every one in your Zy-Elling adventures! :D

Code: Select all

Name              Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Pride             Amazon             40               1
Sloth             Assassin           31               1
Avarice           Necromancer        49               1
Lust              Barbarian         375               1
Wrath             Paladin           144               1
Gluttony          Sorceress         527               0
Envy              Druid               1               0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 5   Levels: 1167   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 11664.165

Shadowbane_92
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed May 16, 2012 1:49 pm

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Shadowbane_92 » Wed May 16, 2012 2:16 pm

Is this tourney still going? Any room for a Zy-El noob? It looks like a ton of fun.

User avatar
Remac1947
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:57 pm

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Remac1947 » Thu May 17, 2012 2:09 pm

If it is still going on I would also like to join the tourney. :D . Also a major noob. Would need lots of help. Thanks.

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Fri May 18, 2012 5:22 pm

Yes, this tournament is still ongoing, and you are both more than welcome to join!

Whatever help you need, I will be more than happy to assist you if it is within my power.

Good luck to both of you. :)

User avatar
Remac1947
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:57 pm

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Remac1947 » Fri May 18, 2012 6:12 pm

Thanks for the welcome. I need a tourney to push me a little. Here is my group.

Name Class Level Deaths
---------------------------------------------------
Diana Amazon 1 0
Nikita Assassin 1 0
Diesel Necromancer 1 0
Conan Barbarian 1 0
Boone Paladin 1 0
Genie Sorceress 1 0
Merlin Druid 1 0
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 7 Multiplier: 10.000 Overall: 70

OK I just copied and pasted. Tell me if I need to do something different.
Thanks.

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Sun May 20, 2012 2:31 am

Type [code] just before the word "Name" at the top of your table, then type the word [/code] just after the last part of your table (in this case, the Overall score of 70). That will make your table look like the rest of them. :)

Alternately, instead of copying and pasting directly from the forum page, you can click the "quote" button at the bottom of the post containing the information you are attempting to imitate, then copy and paste from there, including the [code] and [/code] parts. But the first way is much easier now that you have already altered the table with your own team information.

Kick some booty out there!

ps - Bakula look so much younger in that wee photo you have! I just watched the episodes of "Chuck" in which he appeared, and they really went out of their way to make him look old and rundown. Regardless, it was a lot of fun seeing him in "Chuck!" From what is your photo taken? Enterprise? It looks suspiciously like a Star Trek uniform. :P

User avatar
Remac1947
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:57 pm

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Remac1947 » Mon May 21, 2012 3:27 am

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. Yea it is from my favorite Star Trek series Enterprise. Ok I will try to do an update.

Code: Select all

Name              Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Diana             Amazon             4                1
Nikita            Assassin           12               1
Diesel            Necromancer        38               0
Conan             Barbarian          1                0
Boone             Paladin            1                0
Genie             Sorceress          1                0
Merlin            Druid              1                0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 2   Levels: 58     Multiplier: 9.998   Score:579.884
Hope this is ok.

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:00 pm

Thanks to sokol's prompting, I've decided to resume playing in this tournament where I left off. I guess, technically, it's not still a tournament, but I'm going to ignore the technicalities and just carry on! I hope no one minds too much...

20180731:
Gluttony the Sorceress
She was level 527 when I loaded her up, with not much over 40k life and over 12k mana. Her mana regeneration is at 91% plus 1482% from Warmth. She has a Faster Cast Rate of 538% and a Faster Run/Walk of 241%. It appears that she has +115 skills, plus another 4 for her Lightning tree. She has put a single point into every single one of her spells, but the only spells she's invested more hard points in are Glacial Spike (one point), Warmth (six points), and the trio of Charged Bolt, Fire Wall, and Fire Mastery, all three of which are maxed.

She has a Sibyl runeword in an orb, a Stormguild (a unique shield) that she has probably been using since her inception, and a plain white leather jerkin that looks like it was picked up in Blood Moor before she was even level 5. For gloves, she is using a pair of basic magic Chain Gloves with, I'm guessing, four Mouse Tail unique jewels in them, and a whole mess of applications of “add castX to any glove” common cube scrolls (CCS). Her footwear is less easily understood. They are rare War Boots with four sockets, and it would seem that the four jewels in it are all Cat's Eye unique jewels. The puzzling part is that it has +32 all skills instead of the expected +16 given by four Cat's Eyes. I guess the boots were the recipients of some “sorX to any item” UCS. She has a Treasure Card amulet with 6.2k life and 192 resists on it, which is one of the nicer amulets I remember ever seeing. She is wearing a Kodiak unique ring for the bear that did most of the work when she was younger and a Fade Away unique ring for the 30 charges of level 20 Lower Resist on it. At level 20, the spell lowers resistances by 83%. Her belt has the life BoCL maxed on it, but no +skills yet, so I'll need to look into that. I'm guessing that the reason I refrained from putting hard points into her skills was because of how easily a Sorceress can break the damage caps on her spells. I wanted to control her spells via +skills rather than hard points – hard points are irreversible, whereas +skills can be added or subtracted at will. Last, but not least, she is wearing a Zy-El's Requiem on her head.

In her inventory she has three small charms with Faster Run/Walk and Slower Stamina Drain on them, one of which is the universal life/mana charm on which all scrolls for charms are applied. Well, not anymore, but back when she was growing up. Hers reached 5.8k life and 3.7k mana. It also has %10 max life and %6 max mana, with +5 skills and +8 Replenish Life... wait a moment! It is socketed with a jewel in it, and I'm guessing, from the stats, that she put a Rock of Ages unique jewel into it! That's pretty cool, but I don't remember that at all! It was over six years ago, though... She also has two grand charms with three sockets each, both of which seem to be dedicated to %EG. One of them is filled with three jewels (a full gold find jewel and two Shards of Avarice, from the stats on it), the other just has one of the full gold find jewels in it. Lastly, she is carrying four Master Minor ChoMs. I am tempted to make her a Master Mega to replace them, but that would be a lot of work. :mrgreen:

So I spent my play time yesterday leveling her from 527 to 600 while amassing gold. She started out with some amount less than 2 billion, and it did not take more than a few hours to fill it up to max capacity, which is just under 4.3G. When she'd hit the cap, I had her go down to Anya and gamble a handful of 100M piggy banks so that she had somewhere to stash her loot again. She had to do this several times, and when the session ended, she had 23 of the piggy banks. Well, 22 and one full ZES that she made making sure that it was 100M banks that she wanted to be buying. :P To be fair, about seven of those were bought at the end to open up some gold space for the next time I play.

I hate to admit it, but I really overdid it with the gold find jewels on Gluttony... I guess I could claim that her name and her nature dictated that she was destined to overdo it – on everything she does! Still, I could have applied a lot fewer scrolls and still been doing well with the income stream. She has two full jewels, giving her over 128,000% EG, and I'm guessing that half of that would have been fine. She has to portal to town to dump gold about every 5 to 10 minutes, and I think it is a lot closer to 5 minutes. I am honestly surprised – and a little frustrated – every time she starts complaining that she can't pick anymore gold off the ground. “So soon!? Sheesh!!!” Every time.

I started her out on the Arreat Plateau, just to get a feel for the Sorceress again. I used mainly Charged Bolt, with some Frozen Orb thrown in just because that's my favourite spell in the Sorceress arsenal. During that run, and then for hours of WSK runs – literally, hours – it never occurred to me that she had viable fire spells! It wasn't until a few Ryokin showed up on level 2 of WSK (they are fairly rare there, I've found) that I was alerted to the idea of a third element. They are highly resistant to both lightning and cold, but they melt in seconds to fire – especially when there are a handful of Hydras breathing on them. :P

She is running the Worldstone Keep (WSK), as that is where the Witches live in closely packed and confined spaces. Witches are where the money is, that's for sure! Everything else is dropping piles of 150k to 500k, while they are dropping piles of 1.5M to 2.8M or more.

I honestly didn't think that I would ever succumb to the Siren's call of using 100M piggy banks, but it is just such an easy and simple way to make Scrolls! I guess I wouldn't be doing it if she wasn't hitting town every 6 minutes with another 94M in her purse. Is this what it's like to be rich? :mrgreen:

Gluttony has over 40k life with Energy Shield acting on a mana pool of 12k, and at p16 that seems like an adequate amount – most of the time, anyway. There have been a couple of instances that have given me some cause for alarm. It's usually when a few Death Lords – those big, armored maniacs in WSK – Frenzy themselves and start to surround her. She can feel that, and how! So the prime directive on her runs is not to let those guys anywhere near her. "But what about Platinum Drakes?" you might well ask. Surprisingly impotent, actually. They do no damage to her that I've noticed, but then again, they don't tend to live very long after meeting her in the dark alleys of WSK.

It took me a long time to get where I could find anything in her stash! The organization in there is atrocious. And cramped. There is not much room for expansion for a lot of items – like charms and jewelry – whereas there exists an inexplicably large space surrounding other categories of items – like sets and uniques.

I'm picking up rares of all charm sizes, and magics of the small, large, narrow, and grand varieties. Only flawless gems (no perfects drop yet). All set items (feeding the duplicates to collectors) and unique items (same thing). There are quite a few low-level uniques that have surprisingly decent stats! The druid will have his pick of some pretty nice items. I'm not picking up any poster pieces, though I need to look at which posters the druid will have available. There may not be anything good enough left from the others having ransacked the supplies. All UCS and better scrolls, and only the CCS that could potentially be useful. I doubt that I will cube up any more CCS to UCS, though UCS to SCS is definitely on the agenda.

So what's the upshot of all of this? I feel overpowered playing Gluttony right on the heels of playing a Necromancer below level 200, that's for sure. It is disconcerting to be able to make full Zy-El Scrolls so easily, as well. Both of those reactions, however, should be short-lived. The essential thing, as far as I can tell, is that she needs to be played with caution. I can easily envision a scenario in which I lose focus for a few moments and get her killed – she is not “safe as kittens” by a long shot! She doesn't even have any Shield ChoMs, come to think of it...

Half of my time yesterday was spent filling her gold stash all the way to the brim. The other half was spent building a stockpile of piggy banks, which are just a few clicks shy of full Scrolls. It seems likely that just a few hours today should see the other 17 Scrolls amassed (a 20/20 life jewel requires 40 Scrolls, of which she already has 23, so she just needs 17 more), and another hour of fumbling around should yield her life jewel. After that, maybe a few finishing touches to FHR, damage reduction, etc, and she can easily slam through Nightmare and Hell, then level to 10k in Wayside of Woe. At least, I think that is the one that is most propitious to the arsenal of a Sorceress.

That's it for now! I would welcome the company if anyone has the inclination to play in a relaxed tournament over six years in the making. :cool:

Regardless, Happy Zy-Elling to you all!

ps - Oh yeah, the table...

Code: Select all

Name              Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Pride             Amazon             40               1
Sloth             Assassin           31               1
Avarice           Necromancer        49               1
Lust              Barbarian         375               1
Wrath             Paladin           144               1
Gluttony          Sorceress         600               0
Envy              Druid               1               0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 5   Levels: 1240   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 12393.8

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Tue Aug 07, 2018 12:14 am

Code: Select all

I'm going to join you Clersius.  I will be starting fresh so bear with me :)

Rahj

Name                Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Cersie               Amazon             1              0
                     Assassin           0              0
                     Necromancer        0              0
                     Barbarian          0              0
                     Paladin            0              0
                     Sorceress          0              0
                     Druid              0              0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 0   Levels: 1   Multiplier: 10.000   Score: 1

sokol815
Posts: 92
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:04 am
Location: Texas
United States of America

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by sokol815 » Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:52 am

Yeah, I'll join in again, too. The hard-drive containing my 4.4c files (including this tournament) died a while ago, which was a big reason I stopped playing this. I've got 4.4c installed again and will be starting fresh as well. Cheers!

Code: Select all

Name            Class          Level          Deaths
-----------------------------------------------------
Calypso         Sorceress       1               0
Artemisia       Amazon          1               0
Clytemnestra    Assassin        1               0
Leonidas        Paladin         1               0
Kalchas         Druid           1               0
Xerxes          Barbarian       1               0
Rasputin        Necromancer     1               0
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 7    Multiplier: 10    Overall: 70

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:39 pm

Well I guess I've missed Zy-El. I stayed up all night last night playing and then went to work. I am tired so please excuse and spelling miscues.

Cersie is level 72 and done with Act 1. It only took me 4 or 5 hours to get through Act 1. The rest of the time was spent organizing my stash to be just right so my massive influx of items over the next few days doesnt get out of control.

Pretty standard through the first 15 levels or so. I didnt have a decent drop til going through the Den of Evil where I got a puppy drool ring and gave me a friend. No close calls until Andariel whose poison almost killed me.

I still have the Hardcore mindset; I have to realize that I can press a little harder.

(updating from work so no table)

Rahj

EDIT 1: Well Cersie died In the Travicial to a Cyclops at lvl 115. She had just started to get rolling. Her damage was enough to play on /p 8 consistently but just got lazy.

Next up is Velvet the assassin who is already level 10 and moving along nicely.

Rahj

Code: Select all

Name                Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Cersie               Amazon             115             1
                     Assassin           10             0
                     Necromancer        0              0
                     Barbarian          0              0
                     Paladin            0              0
                     Sorceress          0              0
                     Druid              0              0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 0   Levels: 125   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 1249

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:55 pm

Wow, I can't believe my eyes! Three people playing in a Zy-El tournament... simply astounding! Welcome to both of you. I feel that maybe I should start over as well, but I'm not sure I could stand to go through the pain of all those Meph runs again to establish a healthy %EG base... please forgive me for my weakness. :oops:

Rahja, that is a fantastic start! I wonder if you would be willing to take a few moments from your playing to describe how you have set up your stash? I think I must have been on some medication when I established mine, because it makes no sense, is cramped, and I still have trouble finding things that I need :!: All that stuff in there, though, would be an absolute nightmare to reposition, so I suppose I'm probably stuck with it. Future stashes may benefit from your system, though, so please do share. :)

Tell me, too, about your Amazon's damage. So early in an Amazon's career has been difficult for me in the past, so I wonder how you had her set up such that she had damage good enough to play on p8, especially in Act III? *drinks it all in avidly*

Best possible luck to you both, for sure. I'll post my update of the past eight days sometime today, I hope.

Clersius

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:11 pm

My stash theory is this: Stash is always the same no matter what. I take time out at the beginning of every stash reset to set it up. I like being able to move forward by 10's or 100's to get to what I need quickly.

1-9 is misc. stuff. A page for elixirs, demon boxes, demon keys, food items, rejuvenate potions, etc.
10-19 gems. Each gem gets a page and I upgrade them as needed.
20-29 runes. I keep the runes in order by level. Each rune gets a row of ten then extras get upgraded to the next highest one.
30-39 jewels. Magic jewels up to 37, rare on 38, and unique and crafted on 39. 39 also includeds cube scrolls to make jewels.
40-49 rings. Magic rings up to 48, rare and unique on 49.
50-59 amulets. Magic amulets up to 58, rare and unique on 59.
60-69 cube scrolls. Each page is split between scrolls to upgrade and keepers.
70-79 treasure cards. 70 for 2's; 71 for 3's, etc...
80-89 posters. I set up the posters with room to fill in the remaking pieces.
100 charms
200 set items
250 unique items
300 socketed items
400 amazon
500 assassin
600 barbarian
700 Druid
800 necromancer
900 paladin
1000 sorcerer

I try to put things where they're best used, cube scrolls to upgrade runes go on the runes page. Scrolls adding levels to paladins go on the paladin page and so on. I find that I can quickly click through and find everything I need to start a new character.

Rahj

Edit:

Things changed for my amazon when #1: I realized that charms created from cube scrolls are generally a lot better then charms you find. #2: during an inner cloister run I completed a bugs bunny poster (250-500dmg). And #3: at level 72 I was able to create and use a crafted hydra on hit ring. After these 3 things I was able to zip pretty quickly. I was doing a little over 3000 dmg and the hydras would finish up whatever didn't die.

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:32 pm

I'm a big fan of your setup, honestly... nice and orderly. I like the alphabetical ordering of your class pages. :cool: I tend to group in 10s as well, though I'm realizing that some item types need a lot more space later than they do earlier (like demon boxes), or as time goes by (like charms). I suppose, though, that my charm space problems are more due to procrastination in upgrading magics to rares. I actually have the same problem with cube scrolls, but those take a lot longer to fill 10 pages than charms do.

Like you, I split my cube scroll pages b/n keepers and losers - same with jewels. With rings/amulets/jewels, I find that I need just one or two pages for magics of those types, and most of the rest of the 10-block for rares. Then, when the characters can afford to gamble rings and amulets and buy jewels and the Hel and Ko runes to upgrade all three to rares, I rarely visit the r/a/j pages at all other than to drop off the odd unique. Because of that, I'm starting to think that r/a/j may need to go somewhere in the middle.

I'm trying to figure out what is efficient early game and what is efficient late game so that I can merge the two as well as possible. It's easy to get to the first groups of ten or hundred, and the last groups of ten or hundred (go to the end and work back), so those are the most efficient spots to visit - thus the suspicion that r/a/j may be better off in the middle.

I like your use of big blocks for bulkier and/or more prolific types - sets, uniques, class pages. If I were to put uniques (or any type) on page 250 again, between a type on page 200 and another type on page 300, I think that I would deposit the first uniques on page 299 and work my way back to 250 from there. That would save an extra few clicks getting to 250 from either 200 or 300. That is actually what is happening in this current stash. Believe it or not, my team's unique items are also on page 250, with set items following them on page 300. It is a constant chore clicking five times to get from 200 to 250, then another few times to get to the the next free spot. :x

I'm a fan of your method of placing items where they are best used. It would make searching for the "right gear" for a new character quite efficient, indeed! Do you find that the efficiency in starting a new character is worth the time you spend separating generic item types into those categories? I mean, if you come in with a load of scrolls (for instance), do you find that it's worth the time and effort of deciding where to place them, then actually placing them on 10 different pages rather than just dumping them on one page with the good ones on one side and the re-rolls on the other?

How do you handle your rare charms? I am always torn between using them to create crafted charms, which are used when Megaloading straight life and mana, and using them to upgrade Uncommon scrolls to Secret scrolls. Do you tend to upgrade your magic charms to rares, or use them to make smaller charms, hoping for good ones?

Sorry for asking so many questions - these are the types of issues that I'm always interested in regarding other players' handling of their games.

Thank you, as well, for the insight into your Amazon's damage. I appreciate you sharing it! So the upshot was that she had the damage output to handle Act III, but not the life? Are you sorry that you relaxed your HC mindset and pushed the envelope? Were you aware that a Cyclops would have no trouble grinding her into paste, or was that a surprise to you? :mrgreen:

Seriously, though, what was your plan? Do Mephisto runs and hope that nothing ever got close enough to clock her? Or did she have the life to sustain hits from everything but Cyclopi, Ogre Magi, Drakes, and Mephisto himself? What is your idea of minimum life necessary to do Meph runs with an Amazon? I think mine is probably 15k, but I might do it with 10k if I thought that I had the discipline to be really careful (which I don't). And I'd do it at p1 until just before Meph, then bump it to p16 and hold my breath. :twisted: I've never done that with an Amazon, though, so that's just a guess at what I would be comfortable doing.

I hope that your Assassin is doing great :!:

Sokol, how is your team progressing? Have you been able to start your Amazon yet? May your drops be prolific and your luck spectacular.

-------------
Gluttony the Sorceress
20180801:

As planned, she worked for a few hours on stockpiling piggy banks, attaining level 637 in the process. In the end, she created 50 full Scrolls, each one costing her approximately 120M gold. She hasn't done anything with them, yet, as her handler ran out of time to spend on Zy-El.

20180802:

I spent a good portion of the day reading through my HC Septathlon journal, trying to find out what the Sorceress – and the other characters – would need going forward. I especially wanted to know what other stats she would need to enhance with Megaloading. The answer, I believe, is FHR (1) (all of my HC characters had 1200% of this, or two applications, but I am going to try it with just 600% instead), DR (1), MR (1), MF (6) (this is so that charms are less often plain white), mana (2/2), and life (20/20). That's 53 Zy-El Scrolls needed, and she made 50 of them yesterday.

Regarding the 2/2 for mana and %max mana, I am going to take a chance on this and not make it huge, as I did with Dopey. If I need to add more, that is certainly possible. Honestly, I just need it high enough to regenerate quickly if emptied by Vorpal Bunnies or a large blow to Energy Shield, which I am strongly considering not using anymore... Does she need it with 3M life before leveling to 10k? Does she need it with 7.5M+ life in the Insanities? No idea, but if a Necromancer can tank the Insanities without Energy Shield, why shouldn't a Sorceress be able to do so?

After a few hours spent creating the crafted amulets and charms necessary to realize the jewel, she created it with little fuss and put it into one of her FRW small charms. She also fashioned a Zy-El's Decorum Artifact to replace her leather jerkin. She now has over 5M life and 98k mana. When she socketed the jewel, her mana bubble filled up in less than 2 seconds. Astounding! :)

She went ahead and maxed out both her Glacial Spike and her Frozen Orb, as those two are nearly impossible to mess up by breaking the damage caps.

She spent the next large chunk of her time applying +skills to her belt 32 times to give it +128, then took off the 128th to leave it at a safe 127.

She spent a few minutes in WSK, just to test everything out, and it is splendiferous! Amazing, really. Safe as kittens and killing things even faster than before. :) Played long enough to get her four levels, up to 641 now.

During her flurry of crafting, she spent the stash gold down to just over 2G, so she is going to fill that back up, maybe create a hundred or so scrolls (“just in case!”), and purchase or loot an entire stash page full of Zy runes. Maybe two pages full. She'll then create all of the belts for her kin, with full life BoCL and +127 skills. Then we'll see where we stand! She might even create the “bare minimum” jewels just like hers, with 53 Scrolls worth of enhancements. She might leave off the 6 for MF, but that is debatable. Again, we'll see how much stamina I have for all of that.

The 32 Cube Locks were the worst part of the whole process... well, besides the crafted charms. Those are always a chore and a half! :roll:

Farming the resources for 23 crafted charms per player (20 for the life, 2 for the mana, and 1 for the Magic Resistance) takes quite a lot of time, and might be better done as she traverses through Nightmare and Hell difficulties. That alone requires 69 rare charms or, worst case scenario, 414 magic charms. Per player. And shopping for them is even worse, so they really need to be farmed. She needs to do most of the above list before she starts in on the dangerous activities – leveling to 10k in the Insanities, for instance. I don't think I'd be able to bear outfitting another gold farmer – I'd have to kill everyone off in quick succession to get back to Gluttony! :rotf:

I might actually have her pile up the resources except for the crafted charms, and let the other characters do those themselves. That way it would occur more naturally, and blend in with the normal efforts of raising a character. That has appeal, but so does twinking. :P

20180803:

Didn't actually get to play a whole lot today, sadly. I did get her another 48 levels – up to 689 now. She had been playing on p16, but that was so easy with her increased skill levels that she bumped it up to p32. After a few minutes, it was still too easy, so she made a final bump up to p64. At that setting, she has to work a little bit to slay her foes, which is nice because it keeps things interesting.

She filled up the stash gold again, then made 20 more Scrolls with part of it.

20180804:

She is going to make an effort to adjust her various skill levels and thereby set them in stone. She obviously wants to do as much damage as possible with each of her spells, which is a tricky juggling act for a Sorceress.

First off, she made herself a Zy-El's Idea ring, replacing her Kodiak ring. This gave her +15 skills and bumped the total +Sorceress Skills up to 249, with another +3 to Lightning Skills from the base Orb of her Sibyl runeword.

The skills she uses anymore are the following: Charged Bolt (CB), Hydra, Glacial Spike (GS), Frozen Orb (FO), and Thunderstorm (TS). TS is still useful, though it becomes less and less so, eventually degrading into uselessness in Hell difficulty. Not because its damage is worthless, but because it doesn't discriminate – it randomly chooses any monster in range to attack, and if a third of the ones in range are LI (lightning immune), then it's not doing anything for her. Still, I may tweak TS so that she can keep using it for a while. I also think that Nova could be useful, though I seem to remember that it had no effect in Wayside of Woe. I wonder if that is a valid memory, or if I am misremembering...

Of those, CB, Hydra, TS, and Nova are the only ones that will need to be massaged into delivering their maximum damage. Let me address them individually, then.

Her Hydra needs only 37 levels to reach it's next maximum damage output if increased on its own, or 22 levels to reach max if increased at the same rate as Fire Mastery (FM). In other words, +37 to Hydra or +22 to Hydra and +22 to FM. This equates to skill levels of 287/349 (Hydra/FM) or 272/371. To jump to the next max, it needs 114 in both, which is 364/463.

CB needs 180 levels to reach max (532/253), or 70 levels if increased with Lightning Mastery (LM) (422/323). CB only adds about 400 per level at those skill levels, so getting to the next cap is prohibitive – over 340 additional skill levels in each! So really, CB is the keystone of this process.

TS needs +8 to both TS and LM to reach its next max (261/261), +56 to both to reach the max after that (309/309), and +98 to both to reach the max after that (351/351).

Nova needs +53 to both Nova and LM to reach its next max (306/306), then +110 to each (363/363).

The easiest change to make is to add skills to +All or +Sorceress, obviously. Looking at the overall picture shows that +53 is the commonality that brings them all closest to their ideals without breaking one or more. If Gluttony adds 53 Sorceress skills to her items, then what does she need to do from there?

Hydra will be at 303/402, doing 303,084 max damage. Raising it to the next cap while keeping the FM level the same requires an additional 113 Hydra skill levels. She has room to add 99 skill points to Hydra, and she can get another 10 using a Skill Adder recipe on a crafted charm. That wound bring her to 412/402, yielding 414,787 damage, or 79,243 effective damage. Quite respectable. Better yet, she can add 93 skill points and then use the Skill Adder recipe to create a +20 charm, bringing her to 416/402, putting her right under the cap (which is 83,886) with 83,343 effective damage. That sounds even more respectable. :)

CB will be at 405/306, doing 76,032 max damage. Maxing it out requires another 40 skill levels to CB itself, which can be achieved via two +20 Skill Adder recipes on crafted charms. That would put her CB/LM at 445/306, doing 83,712 damage.

TS will be at 306/306, doing 572,640 max damage, or 69,324 effective damage. To bring it to max requires an additional 7 skill levels, which she can add with hard points straight into the skill.

Nova, of course, will be at max damage, for whatever that's worth. I seriously have to wonder if I am ever going to actually use Nova. However, whether I do or not makes little difference to the plan. If I were to concentrate solely on Hydra and CB, I would end up following almost the same +skills path.

The team has +15 Sorceress Skills CCS (common scrolls), plus another +43 total All Skills UCS (uncommon) and +24 total All Skills SCS (secret). Taking all 15 CCS and 38 of the UCS will leave 5 UCS and 24 SCS for the rest of the team, but there's no reason to believe that some of those won't be regained as she progresses.

All of these numbers, and all of this planning, only take into account monsters with no resistances at all. Positive, normal resistances are straightforward enough – she does less damage in those cases. It's the negative resistance effects, such as lowering the resistance of a baddie, that throws the whole system into complete and utter chaos! I guess my philosophy will have to be that if lowering the resistance of monsters makes them harder to kill (due to the monster taking more damage from her spells and thus breaking the damage cap), then don't do it... Otherwise, full speed ahead!

Off I went to see what progress I could make in this regard, but as always I became sidetracked. I needed Cube Adders to make the +skills charms, and those require Zy-El Scroll Fragments (ZESFs), so I decided to explore the idea of farming ZESFs in the Secret Cow Level, just to see what the drop rate might be. Gluttony will need 36 of them to make three +20 skill charms. The first clearing yielded 4 fragments, and she left four Immortals behind, not wanting to waste time waiting to kill them. The best chances to get the fragments are from Voorlons anyway, and she killed all of those in the area.

She cleared out the Secret Cow Level three times, then each of SS, WoW, and OtO. At the end of that spree, she had made it to level 971 and accumulated 13 ZESFs. Better than a third of how many she needs. That's quite encouraging! Another few clearings of the Cows yielded nothing more on the fragment front, but it did net her another few levels – Gluttony is level 1002 now.

Next time, I may continue looking for fragments, or I may just make them via redeeming Collectors.

20180805:

Wow... I was reading some more in my HC Septathlon journal, looking for tips on the finer points of character preparation, when I saw this comment: “The gold supply for the team is dwindling and the crafted charm supply has been entirely used up (thanks a lot, Gumpy_III!). That means about 300-400 million gold just for the charms...” which struck me as interesting. What was I doing, buying charms a couple at a time from vendors, then upgrading them? That would not add up to 300M gold, surely... So what was I doing? Then it dawned on me that perhaps I had been buying them with collector points! I scurried over to the wikia to see if that was at all efficacious. Sure enough! Crafted tall charms can be purchased for a mere 6k collector points. That's two empty collectors, a perfect skull, and three Zy runes. 23 of them would cost 290M gold. And save ages and ages of farming for magic and rare charms. I'll say it again... Wow. I can't believe how many of the finer points of this delicious mod I've forgotten. :cry: And who knows what I didn't include in my journals because it seemed so quotidian, so run-of-the-mill, so unnecessary to mention.

Did just one or two clears of the Secret Cow Level, but still no more Fragments, but Gluttony is level 1009 now. I then managed to distract myself with outlining a plan by which I could get all 6 of the other characters up to par with Gluttony, and thus able to finish all three difficulties and level to 10k. That took the rest of my playing time, but I think it was well worth the time spent. I'll spare you the several pages worth of ruminating on these ideas... The upshot is that she will need to make at least 370 Zy-El Scrolls (~44.5G) and at least 240 Cube Locks (1.6G). If the Barbarian and the Druid both need elemental damage jewels, that is another 200 to 400 Scrolls (24 to 48G). That's a lot of billions...

20180806:

As I was about to finally get around to setting Gluttony's skills in stone, it occurred to me that I would be better off increasing Fire Mastery by the +20 Skill Adder in order to get Hydra closer to its max, because that would increase Fire Wall as well. No other fire skills are relevant, so nothing would accidentally be broken by doing this.

A quick recalculation is in order: After the +53 skills, Hydra/FM will be at 303/402. Adding 20 to FM will bring it to 303/422. Adding 95 skill points to Hydra will bring it to 398/422, which is 419,196 damage, or 83,652 effective damage. The plan regarding CB from previous calculations remains the same.

I finally put the plan into action, and Gluttony's skills are now set for the rest of her career. She tested the new skill levels, first in WSK at p16, then in the Secret Cow Level at p64. Both went perfectly – her spell damage is wonderful! I even had her start using Nova, and it is quite nice. CB sometimes depends on the angle of attack, and can be frustrating when trying to wipe out small-profile targets. With Nova, neither of those issues exist, which makes it a nice alternative. For large-profile targets, CB can strike the same target with multiple bolts, so it's more useful there – if the angle of attack is correct. Anyway, the point is that the skills upgrade is done and that I am very, very happy with the results.

She's up to level 1046 after the tests. Now I think that I will take her through Nightmare difficulty, which she is starting with 2.91G gold and 44 S/B (Scrolls/piggy banks). She'll start out at p16 and adjust from there based on how things go.

Didn't get terribly far, and there was nothing notable about any of it. She picked up the Jail waypoint at level 1048 before wrapping it up. Very low xp for her in Act I, as over-leveled as she is. Pretty good income, though – looks like almost 1.8G so far.

20180807:

Moved from Act I into Act II at level 1047.

One of the more notable occurrences had nothing to do with the Act at all. Gluttony attained, on behalf of the lower-leveled members of her team, the top third of the Abu poster via re-rolling. That poster is not easy to complete, in my experience, and it is one of the best of the Minors.

The True Tomb of Tal Rasha only took about 15 minutes, and that's without teleporting around – she was actually clearing rooms, at least partially. Clearing a path and picking stuff up off the ground. Pure luck.

Moved from Act II to Act III at level 1054.

Sometimes while she is teleporting up and down the banks of the streams, looking for the next ingress to follow in quest of Waypoints or dungeon entrances, Gluttony is overwhelmed by the desire to stop in the middle of an especially humongous, roiling mass of dolls or Treants and just wail away at them with Nova, watching them fall before her rings of destruction as wheat before the scythe. This then slows her down considerably, because the desire to sift through the remaining detritus and pick some of that garbage up is just as strong for her handler as was her desire to kill in the first place. :roll:

Ended the session at level 1063. Almost max gold and 74 S/B. Lower Kurast Waypoint acquired, and she is ready to assault the middle part of the Act.

20180808:

As I always forget it, I'm just jotting this down for my own future information: the correct name for Battlemaid Serina's abode is “The Ruined Temple.”

Jem Hadar in Durance 3 are dropping 12k gold... is it possible that Gluttony's “Extra Gold from Monsters” has shoved them up over the max gold drop number, whatever that might be? I had her take one of the jewels out of her inventory and kill a few more of them, but that lowered the output even further. I'm almost thinking that the multiplier for Nightmare difficulty itself is what has caused the cap to be exceeded. Very interesting information.

Started Act IV at level 1070 with 2.55G gold and 95 S/B.

When she got to the River of Flame, she noticed that there were Venom Drakes and Komodos as far as the eye could see. They were “continuous as stars that shine and glitter on the Milky Way,” as Wordsworth wrote, so she slowed down and killed at least 95% of them. So much fun. :)

About 25% of the way into Diablo's lair, the game crashed. I had a mess of Hydras out and had just sent a Glacial Spike over to freeze a Slimeball when it happened. There was more going on, so I don't know that that particular event is what triggered the crash.

Didn't happen again. There were Slimeballs, and I used Glacial Spike, but there were no Hydras. That's a far cry from causation, but it is a fact.

Started Act V at around level 1115.

As the life of Gluttony's foes becomes higher and their individual resistances continue to diverge, she finds that Nova is becoming less and less useful, though including it in her skill maximization calculations has been a huge boon heretofore – she doesn't regret that in the least. Glacial Spike and Fire Wall are her standard fare, even with the slowness caused by the cast delay of Fire Wall. GS to immobilize them, then FW to roast them where they stand. If they cannot be frozen, she either dots the vicinity with Hydras, carpets the floors with Charged Bolts, or keeps casting FW to burn them for a few milliseconds at a time.

Gluttony finished Nightmare difficulty with 1132 levels, 3G gold, and 111 Scrolls/banks. That comes out to 86 levels gained running through NM, with an earnings total of 6.8G gold. Not terrible for skipping so much of the action! She did do all the quests and pick up all of the Waypoints. Well, all of the quests apart from killing the High Council. She killed them four times before acknowledging that the game was not going to allow the quest to be completed.

20180809:

Den of Evil done, now for a blitz to rescue Cain. Gluttony hates identifying her own stuff...

Act I finished at level 1137, with 3.9G and 112 S/B.

In Act II, she killed a few dozen packs of monsters here and there (apart from Radament's chamber, the Temple of the Viper, the Summoner's Lair, and Duriel's chamber), I guess, but mostly it was Teleport mania. In NM, the True Tomb of Tal Rasha took 10 to 15 minutes while slaying. In Hell difficulty, it took over 15 minutes while liberally using Teleport! The only monsters she killed were the ones guarding the room wherein she needed to activate the staff. :roll:

Even so, the baddies in this Act had some hefty experience to them... she gained 14 levels during her adventures. At least four of those were in Duriel's abode, where the Mithril Knights were thick and swirly.

As I looked to see what level she was at the end of the Act, I noticed for the first time that her resistances are not maxed in Hell difficulty... she has 72 cold and 67 lightning. I guess that is something to address. Maybe Elements, or Cabbage, or even a simple Coffee Bean. The last of those would just barely max her out at 77 for all four, but a Conviction aura would plunge her resistances into the Abyss again. Two or three Shards of Hamster would be nice, but the team doesn't have any more than that. I think a Shard of Elements would be best for her.

Act II finished at level 1151, with 3.3G and 124 S/B.

Act III finished at level 1160, and I did not look at her net worth.

In Act IV, Gluttony Teleported as fast as she could to the River of Flame – in fact, she forgot to stop and see Izual! When she arrived at RoF, though, rather than whisk through it straight to the Waypoint and/or Hellforge, she noticed that there were even more Venom Drakes and Komodos than there had been in Nightmare difficulty. She started killing them (which really is quite mesmerizing... freeze, Fire Wall, freeze, FW, the next few come in, freeze them as well, FW, re-freeze to keep them from running away, etc), and before she could become bored with that and get on with finding Diablo, she chanced upon an Experience Shrine. Uh-oh. Catnip in flag form!

For the next, I don't know, hour or so, she just slaughtered those red and blue, twitchy, squawking experience reservoirs. The levels were just pouring in. She went to town as little as possible, and then only to dump her gold so that she could carry more.

After that first hour-ish time period, she finally filled up her stash and had to stop and gamble piggy banks to make more room. I got into that mode where I click Gheed, click gamble, then hit the escape key as soon as I see that there is no red piggy bank on a stark white background, which seems like maybe three tenths of a second. By the time the screen clears, the mouse is already moving down cto lick Gheed again, and so it cycles.

The problem is that sometimes I mess that cycle up and click “cancel” instead of “gamble.” Always, I hit escape anyway, as that is my trained response to not seeing the red on white, so it's already in the process of happening. Because there is no gamble screen to escape out of, the escape causes the menu screen to come up, which places “save and exit game” directly over the spot where Gheed is standing. Usually, I can stop myself from clicking “save and exit game,” but not always. This time was one of those rare times when I failed to stop myself, and so I lost all progress into RoF as well as the perfectly-placed Experience Shrine.

I know, right? What a tale of woe! Poor me! :cry: :roll:

She made it to level 1266, and 106 levels is a ton to gain in a single area outside of WSK or the Insanities (in my opinion), but she still needs to get from City of the Damned to Diablo (the Hellforge is done) and finish the Act – if she can avoid the Siren's call of those Drakes!

Code: Select all

Name              Class             Level          Deaths
--------------------------------------------------------------
Pride             Amazon             40               1
Sloth             Assassin           31               1
Avarice           Necromancer        49               1
Lust              Barbarian         375               1
Wrath             Paladin           144               1
Gluttony          Sorceress        1266               0
Envy              Druid               1               0
--------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 5   Levels: 1906   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 19050.47
That's it for now. Happy Zy-Elling to you all!

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:02 pm

Clersius wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:32 pm
do you find that it's worth the time and effort of deciding where to place them, then actually placing them on 10 different pages rather than just dumping them on one page with the good ones on one side and the re-rolls on the other?
I find that I'm a hoarder at heart and will take the extra time to sort correctly to reap benefits later.
Clersius wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:32 pm
Do you tend to upgrade your magic charms to rares, or use them to make smaller charms, hoping for good ones?
I upgrade as a need presents itself. I use magic ones to upgrade scrolls so I tend to leave em as I find em.
Clersius wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:32 pm
Were you aware that a Cyclops would have no trouble grinding her into paste, or was that a surprise to you?
I was very much aware that el Cyclopsino would pummel me if given the chance. I just didn't believe it would get that chance. I've upgraded the crap out of my bow with scrolls and I freeze almost everything immediately after hitting it. I felt I was pretty safe against everything. I had gone through the Durance 3 times already at p16 with no problems whatsoever.
Clersius wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:32 pm
Seriously, though, what was your plan?
My plan was to level up in Travical till about 150. I felt better fighting there because it is open and I'm able to retreat if needed. At that point after getting my life to 10k I would do Mephisto runs for my Requiem. I hadn't planned much after that. Couple shield charms maybe and the starting of a EG% jewel.

sokol815
Posts: 92
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:04 am
Location: Texas
United States of America

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by sokol815 » Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:02 am

Wow, you guys have gotten far. I haven't been able to spend much time playing lately. (until this morning) Now I've got my Amazon up to level 5 after one of the first chests she opened dropped a 20 poison over 2 seconds jewel with no level requirement... that was a god-send event.

Still running around trying to get her through the really squishy phases.... It's a lot more work than I remembered. :o

I find that my stash sorting is pretty similar to what you guys have detailed.

I'm hopping back in to continue the fight. Here's my current status:

Code: Select all

Name            Class          Level          Deaths
-----------------------------------------------------
Artemisia       Amazon          5               0
Clytemnestra    Assassin        1               0
Rasputin        Necromancer     1               0
Xerxes          Barbarian       1               0
Leonidas        Paladin         1               0
Calypso         Sorceress       1               0
Kalchas         Druid           1               0
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 12    Multiplier: 10    Overall: 120

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Sat Aug 11, 2018 2:51 am

Rahhja wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:02 pm
I was very much aware that el Cyclopsino would pummel me if given the chance. I just didn't believe it would get that chance. I've upgraded the crap out of my bow with scrolls and I freeze almost everything immediately after hitting it. I felt I was pretty safe against everything. I had gone through the Durance 3 times already at p16 with no problems whatsoever.
:rotf: I love it! I'm just sorry that el Cyclopsino wasn't more sympathetic to your beliefs. :(
Rahhja wrote:
Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:02 pm
My plan was to level up in Travical till about 150. I felt better fighting there because it is open and I'm able to retreat if needed. At that point after getting my life to 10k I would do Mephisto runs for my Requiem. I hadn't planned much after that. Couple shield charms maybe and the starting of a EG% jewel.
I've never used Travincal as a leveling spot, but it sounds like it should have been a reasonable plan... maybe for the Assassin you could rearrange the parts of the plan a bit and give her the Shield ChoMs before leaving Act I. They truly are invaluable, and not terribly difficult to get that early. I hope she is faring well, and that she was able to have at least a bit of a kickstart from the hoarded valuables left in Cersie's wake.
sokol815 wrote:
Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:02 am
Now I've got my Amazon up to level 5 after one of the first chests she opened dropped a 20 poison over 2 seconds jewel with no level requirement... that was a god-send event.
Aren't those jewels amazing :?: It's unreal how effective they are in boosting the power of a low-level character. Congrats on that incredible find! :) I hope you get more time to enjoy your journey. I like your offensive lineup's naming scheme, but I hope that Clytemnestra doesn't meet with the same fate as her namesake! I guess that I should wish the same for Leonidas, as well... Rasputin should be seriously hard to kill. :twisted:

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:39 am

I think that the loot is better then the xp in the Travincal; the mob density is amazing.

Velvet is going strong is is about to go after the Countess. While using scrolls to make charms she came across a charm with blood golem charges on it. That has helped make the early game leveling process easier. I should be able to put some more time into her today and make an amulet and maybe those shield choms :)

Edit: Just wiped out the Countess with no problem though I am starting to run into bone golems which are always tough hombres. I made 3 amulets from treasure cards; stars, swords, and talons. All 3 are very nice but the lowest one is level 53 so I have some time to wait.

Code: Select all

Name                Class             Level          Deaths
-------------------------------------------------------------
Cersie               Amazon             115            1
Velvet               Assassin           43             0
                     Necromancer        0              0
                     Barbarian          0              0
                     Paladin            0              0
                     Sorceress          0              0
                     Druid              0              0
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 1   Levels: 158   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 1579

sokol815
Posts: 92
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:04 am
Location: Texas
United States of America

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by sokol815 » Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:23 pm

So, I had a bit of time over this weekend and played my amazon, Artemisia. A lot of my time was taken up with the on-going DCSS tournament. She built up quite a stash of gold, runes, jewels and gems. She died at level 18 when I got careless tip-toeing into the Cold Plains. She has a couple of charms that added an additional 10 - 100 total damage, which helped her a lot.

Next is Clytemnestra, my Assassain. Hopefully she does well!

Code: Select all

Name            Class          Level          Deaths
-----------------------------------------------------
Artemisia       Amazon          18              1
Clytemnestra    Assassin        1               0
Rasputin        Necromancer     1               0
Xerxes          Barbarian       1               0
Leonidas        Paladin         1               0
Calypso         Sorceress       1               0
Kalchas         Druid           1               0
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 24    Multiplier: 9.995    Overall: 239.88

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:21 am

Sorry for the slowness of my update - I always seem to be wanting to play instead of compose when I have Zy-El time. :D
Rahhja wrote:
Mon Aug 13, 2018 11:39 am
I made 3 amulets from treasure cards; stars, swords, and talons.
Ahhh that's the stuff, there. Those things are sooo helpful! Congrats on getting three of them already. I hope she continues to fare well.
sokol815 wrote:
Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:23 pm
A lot of my time was taken up with the on-going DCSS tournament.
I looked that up, as I had not heard about it. I bet that would be quite addicting! I appreciate how they are trying to take the drudgery out of the Rogue-style genre, sort of streamline it so that you can spend more time playing. Speed-playing, even. Do you do well in the tournaments? It looks like you need to be able to speed-play and get pretty lucky at the same time make a decent showing.

Good luck with Clytemnestra.

-------------------
Gluttony the Sorceress
20180809:

This time through Act IV, it The Lost City that had the masses of Wyverns, Drakes, and Komodos, along with a well-placed Experience Shrine. There were a few in the River of Flame as well, but not enough to warrant killing many of them.

Gluttony finished Act IV at level 1341.

She cleared all of the last level of the Wordstone Keep, then finished off Baal. Those Witches, Hell Lords, and the little Druid things (Death Brigadiers?) that sink the vines into the ground to come up under Gluttony's feet – all of them were worth quite a bit of experience.

She finished off Hell difficulty at level 1451, which means she gained 319 levels spread over the five Acts. I had set p16 at the start of Nightmare, and kept that setting throughout all of both NM and Hell difficulties. She had no problem killing things at any time, though some monsters took longer to die than others. She ended up with 3.7G gold and 147 S/B. Apparently, she only earned 4.3G during while traversing Hell difficulty. That tells me that the monsters she stopped to kill – Venom Drakes and their kin – are not the ones with the gold.

20180811:

Gluttony did another run of WSK to see what that was like for levels and loot at p16: 89 levels and 800M gold. She then did a run of the Secret Cow Level at p16, bringing her to 1621 and netting 1.66G gold. Doing this in Hell is taking a lot longer than it did in Normal (surprise!), and I'm not convinced that it yields better money than it does in Normal.

Next she tried Suicide Sanctum at p16, netting 215 levels and 1G gold. That took a long time. I finally started parking the Darth Smalls and Mini Mauls, after clearing 85% of the area. I parked at least 25 of them. No Immortals or Voorlons.

After that, Wayside of Woe was up at p16. That netted her well over 500 levels, thanks to the glut of Chimeras, bringing her up to level 2353 and earning only 720M gold. My problem in SS was that I forgot to use the Lower Resistance ring! I had her use it in Wayside of Woe and it worked very well. Except on Ryokin (which she doesn't have any reason to kill anyway). When Ryokin are affected by Lower Resist, they become slightly susceptible to Frozen Orb (which I noticed while trying to kill the Voorlons), but they gain immunity to lightning damage! Very interesting, as normally the best way to kill them is using Charged Bolt.

A p16 run of Orifice to Oblivion raked in another 196 levels and a surprising 2.3G gold. She tried WoW again, which gave her another 380 levels and 840M gold. To wrap it up, she did another half clear of OtO, then spent a few minutes in WSK, at the end of which she was level 3093.

20180813:

I ruminated over yesterday's experiences with Gluttony, and realized that I needed to choose either leveling or farming. Focus on one or the other, but not both. In order to get her more levels, I needed to adopt the play style that I had used with the Hardcore Sorceress, or something similar, which was to just focus on WoW, and in there, just take out the Chimeras and some Tims if and when convenient. After I establish a rhythm in that process, perhaps up the setting to p32 or p64 to speed it up a tad. I don't think I'm a good enough player with a Sorceress to ensure that I could keep her alive at p127, honestly. If I was going to clear out the level, sure, I could do that. But leveling is more of a speed event, and I'm not so good at combining speed and safety with her. Or I don't perceive that I am, which is all that really matters.

First, though, she has 219 Scrolls/piggy banks, most of which are banks, and I am thinking that I need to make more of them into Scrolls. I also need to make a bunch of crafted jewels so that I have something onto which to craft the Scrolls with Megaloading. That is at least something productive I can accomplish.

Even before that, though, I needed to address her life. She was up to just over 8.3M, which is way too close to the cap for comfort. I took off the 1649 “normal” life on her belt (mostly resulting from “hp to belt” scrolls), then reduced her belt's life BoCL by 20 1/8th points, or 2.5 life/level. This brought her down to a hair under 8M life.

As for the crafted jewels, I only had to make 20 crafted jewels to find cleanable candidates for all six characters. The two lowest are 33 and 34. I could make more and hope to come up with jewels having level 30, 31, or 32, but I think I'm happy enough with 33 and 34. The Druid will receive the level 33 jewel, and the Assassin (currently at level 33) will receive the level 34 jewel.

I spent much of the day upgrading scores and scores of piggy banks into full Zy-El Scrolls. I actually ran out of gold and had to do a few more partial runs of WSK in order to finish that project. I guess I had not taken into account that it costs just a hair under 2G gold to convert 100 banks into Scrolls.

Gluttony is level 3189 now, with a mere 700M gold remaining. She still needs to make at least 150 more Scrolls to add to the 238 that she currently has, and that's not counting any elemental damage jewels that might need to be made - which, honestly, must be taken into account before she passes the reigns to the Druid.


20180814:

From this point in the grand scheme, I figured I could go one of two ways, or create an amalgamation of the two. On the one hand, I could re-learn how to level a Sorceress, as I mentioned yesterday. Up the setting and teleport to Chimeras, then either lead them somewhere or kill them where they stand.

On the other hand, I could revert to either Nightmare or Normal and do WSK runs at p16. I think that it takes too long in Hell at p16, and the drops are not prolific enough at p8. I could, though, do a few statistical runs and gather data.

Either way, I seriously need to be done with collecting items. No more farming apart from gold and rare charms! And Demon Boxes! And Collectors, Cube Locks, and other items that drop infrequently.

My first test was WSK at p16 in Hell. Granted, I did not do my utmost to hurry or to minimize the useless actions in my routine, but it was still only 800M in 100 minutes – 8M/min. That seems incredibly low. Seriously, terribly, horribly atrocious. And low. So, so low. Everything takes ages for her to kill.

So I quit doing it, and completely switched gears, instead concentrating on leveling her to 10k. Off she went to WoW so that I could learn how to do it again.

Around level 3700, I finally felt comfortable enough with her that I could raise the setting to p85. So comfortable, in fact, that I think I could have gone all the way to p127, but I was not completely sure of myself, so I compromised. She always went and searched out an Experience Flag as well.

At that point, my approach was still to try to maneuver a pack of Chimeras to a relatively unpopulated space, because most of the other monsters were small enough (in relation to Chimeras) to wedge themselves in between Gluttony and the Chimera she was targeting. The problem with that is that she was using Charged Bolt to take down the Chimera, and anything between her and the Chimera prevents her from hitting the Chimera... To compound the problem, once Lower Resist is used, every monster other than Chimeras becomes immune to Charged Bolt. :roll:

It didn't take me too long to figure out that this was an uphill battle that I had no interest in prolonging, and it was shortly after that realization that the Big Realization hit me – Nova was about to become Gluttony's best friend again! That's right, Nova. Using it, she could teleport into the middle of wherever the most Chimeras were and not worry that 80% of the population density consisted of “trash monsters,” aka monsters other than Chimeras. She would wait a second to let the Chimeras pack themselves in as close as they could get, desperately trying to reach that tasty Sorceress flesh, then use Lower Resist and start wailing away with those beautifully concentric Ripples of Nova Death. I just had to hold it down about 5 or 10 seconds until all of the Chimeras in Nova's radius were down, then move to the next place where they were hanging out and repeat the process.

It took another 10 to 12 runs over the course of a couple of hours, and she was done! Level 10,000. Done with leveling, anyway... that was the easy part. :P

She still has a long road ahead of her in fabricating the necessary Scrolls for the team's well-being. I think she'll go back to Normal to continue that task, though. As I mention, killing the denizens of Hell takes too long for them to be efficiently gold farmed.

So I did that for a while, and it was more pleasant – or at least less odious – a task than I had at first anticipated.

At the end of my playing session, I took some time to think about what I still needed to do and how to approach it more efficiently. I'm not going to be able to get away from creating an elemental damage jewel for at least the Druid (unless a miracle occurs and I figure out how people play those detestable characters as actual Summoners) and the Barbarian. I may or may not be able to get away with doing half-jewels (25 applications of fire/cold/lightning/magic instead of 50), but if so, that is still 200 Scrolls (instead of 400). That means at least 570 total Scrolls beyond what Gluttony has consumed, and possibly 770. I've made 267 of those.

That's daunting, to say the least! So how do I speed that up? The obvious answer seems to be, “add more %EG!” A little bit of math (now that I have a better idea of what Gluttony's gold intake per hour is) shows me that doubling her current %EG – perhaps even upping it to 2.5 times what it currently is – would decrease the amount of time spent farming by a large handful of hours. More than that I did not investigate, as she only has enough Scrolls to boost it by 2.5 times, aka +150%, aka three additional %EG jewels, aka 210 Scrolls.

The problem about which I worry is whether or not she'll hit some sort of cap, past which the monsters will start dropping gold piles in the hundreds or thousands rather than in the millions. I have a few HC characters who would be ideal for testing to see whether that issue would, in fact, be at all relevant!

Sleepy, the HC Amazon, is sooooo fast at clearing out... well, any area! The outcome of the test was that, while there may or may not be an upper limit to worry about, it certainly isn't at or below 311,000 %EG, aka 5 full %EG jewels.

There will, of course, be a time hit as relates to the creation of the jewels themselves (making the crafted rings is the time-consuming part, but at least the recipe doesn't require crafted charms!!!), but factoring that in still results in a significant savings of time to gather the gold and create 520 to 720 more Scrolls.

Another interesting thing that I noticed is that my HC Amazon also has an elemental jewel......... that's bad news. Really bad news. I had been hopeful that I could rely on the Amazon's skills (Cold Arrow, Immolation Arrow, Lightning Fury, Plague Javelin) to do non-physical damage. Apparently my HC self didn't believe that would be sufficient. Either that, or he tried it and found that it wasn't sufficient in fact, not just in belief. Or he just made the jewel for her without bothering to test to see if she really, REALLY needed it... I guess that's possible.

20180815:

Spent the first portion of the day updating, editing, and formatting the Minor Posters page so that I could make myself a list of which posters I care about without having to constantly look them up. Every time I return to the stash, I'm having to look up whether or not I want to keep that particular fragment or re-roll it. Now I have a list, so I can look at that instead. There are 30 posters (ignoring all of them with poison damage) that have either 1000 damage and 1000 life or 1000/750 or 750/1000 or 750/750. That's a good-sized pool of posters on which to concentrate.

Spent an hour and a half at the end of the day putting together the first of the new %EG jewels (63,900%), and nearly half of the second one (30,600%). Making the crafted rings was not as time-consuming as I remembered it to be, thankfully. Expending resources like this without seeing a life jewel or new equipment materialize before my eyes is disconcerting... This better be worth it!! It must be – the math isn't wrong. :P

20180816:

Finished up the jewels in a little more than an hour, then socketed them in three of Gluttony's small charms – a magic charm with FRW on it and her two crafted +20 CB charms – all three of which were cleaned as much as possible before socketing the jewels. Her %EG is now up to 325,022%.

Now comes the part which I can avoid no longer – days and days of gold runs. :P I'm eager to play the other characters, but it's too soon. More work needs to be done before the relative joy of leveling the other six to 10k begins.

By the way, I am assuming that the rules would state (if timmermac were around to create new rules for this situation) that once I moved away from playing the Sorceress, I would not be allowed to come back to her out of turn in order for her to gather more resources. I might believe that I could come back to her to buy gems and runes in Act V, should the need arise, but surely the rules would not allow her to leave town and kill anything until it was her “turn” again.

Did a few runs after the jewels were completed, and the increase in gold farming is phenomenal! One interesting thing did happen... One of the Nykrons that Gluttony killed dropped an item called “0 gold”. Neat, huh? Never seen that happen before!

The runs are taking about 27 to 28 minutes when she doesn't spend too much time killing in WSK levels 2 and 3. When she does find a glut of Witches without any accompanying Platinum Drakes (which have caused her to crash once, so she doesn't mess around with killing things when they are present), she takes another 10 minutes to gather up the gold in those levels. The 28-minute runs generally work out to between 3.8G and 4.1G per hour. The 38-minute runs are higher – up around 4.6G.

She is back up to 200 S/B, which seems remarkable to me. She has 2G in the bank, and she can't have more than that when she starts a gold run or she'll have to stop in the middle of the run to gamble, which basically ends the run. I think that I would be quite happy with 150 piggy banks a day, and it appears that it will be a lazy day which sees that few new banks acquired. That's how many it was today because I spent several hours on stash maintenance, updating a few Secret Cube Scroll entries on the wikia, and the hour+ spent building the remainder of the %EG jewels.

Just for the sake of statistics, it takes me 6 to 7 minutes to gamble 15 piggy banks, and that is consistent for the 5 instances during which I've timed it.

After spending an hour or two tomorrow doing gold runs, I think that I might hop over to my HC characters and do some testing with the Druid. I want to see how well – if at all – he fares using Fury. Barring Fury, I want to see if it is viable to use WW or WB form at high level. I also want to test out how well he uses a Thresher (Elite Scythe), which is his fastest weapon. One of the tests will be to see how fast he swings with IAS on the weapon as opposed to IAS on non-weapon items. Finally, I want to see how he fares using a bow and/or a xbow, both in normal and WW/WB forms. I'm not sure I can handle taking him to level 10k in the same excruciatingly slow manner in which the HC Druid got there, hence all the necessary testing!

20180817:

Only farmed enough to gather another 100 piggy banks today, bringing her up to 300 total. “Wasted” more time on stash maintenance as well. One of the few things that Gluttony still picks up are small, large, and narrow magic charms (besides rare charms of all sizes). Those tend to pile up after a dozen runs and they require maintenance in the form of a whittling down process to turn them into rare charms. Otherwise they overflow the allotted space in the stash, and that's not acceptable!

The other things she still picks up are Demon Boxes, Treasure Cards of 3 or higher (though this is a bad habit that I need to drop – there is no way that the time given to upgrading and re-rolling those cards is going to provide amulets that are that much better than the ones the team already possesses, especially since the +life on them is moot – it's only the resists and the replenish life that are useful on them, given the 20/20 life jewel that the character will start using in the 30s or early 40s), all poster fragments (which are re-rolled in order to find pieces on the list of high profile posters that I have), and a handful of scrolls that are still potentially interesting for the younger members of the team. FCR (castX), FRW (moveX), mana manipulation of all types (+mana to amulet, helm, and charm, mana leech, mana regen, mana per kill), damage3 to both melee and missile weapons, and dex and str scrolls (to use a wider variety of unique items from the stash during the character's early levels). I think that's about it for scrolls. She still picks up unique items of all types in order to provide an assortment of options to the other characters. She usually fills up her inventory, but at most there is only a little bit of overrun into her cube, so post-run maintenance is not too terribly horrible.

20180818:

I put in quite a few hours today. Gluttony now has 525 Scrolls/Banks. 225 in one day took a long time, but some days are more conducive to excess than others. The next two days, for instance, will most likely be light, as I have other obligations to which to attend.

Full disclosure: all but 44 of the 525 are piggy banks, which means that they will require an additional 20M each to convert, as well as the time to click them into full Scrolls. The time is not much for a handful of scrolls – maybe 30 seconds each? – but that adds up to hours over hundreds and hundreds of banks!

Most likely, I will convert the banks to Scrolls next, then do some of that testing I mentioned before so that I have a realistic idea of how many Scrolls the team will really need. That would be extremely useful information right about now. I'd hate to spend time gathering resources that will never be needed!!

Best of luck to sokol and Rahhja, and Happy Zy-Elling to everyone out there!

Code: Select all

Name            Class             Level          Deaths
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pride           Amazon               40             1
Sloth           Assassin             31             1
Avarice         Necromancer          49             1
Lust            Barbarian           375             1
Wrath           Paladin             144             1
Gluttony        Sorceress        10,000             0
Envy            Druid                 1             0
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Deaths: 5   Levels: 10,640   Multiplier: 9.995   Score: 106,346.8

User avatar
Rahhja
Junior Member
Paladin
Posts: 165
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:07 pm
Location: Boston

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Rahhja » Mon Aug 20, 2018 4:50 pm

Wow! Great job Clersius! Can't believe you got to 10k already. Must have put in some serious hours (days)! Good luck on the rest of your crew.

My assassin died in the Inner Cloister at level 44 to a super charged Black Rogue. My Necro is now 37 and is approaching the Monastery. He has 18 skellies and a clay golem from a necklace. I've used all of my + necro levels cube scrolls on him to boost his skelly mastery up to 35 which has made a big difference in his staying power.

Will update my scores the next time.

Rahj

Clersius
Junior Member
Champion of the Light
Posts: 405
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2011 8:34 pm
Location: North Carolina

Re: New tourney: The softcore rotation tournament

Post by Clersius » Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:14 pm

[Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:11 am]

That Skeleton Mastery is seriously helpful. Having it that high is a nice boost, especially at lower levels.

What players setting were you using with your Assassin when she got stomped?

Be wary of the lure of playing the Necromancer at a high players setting! The skeletons can handle it right up to p127, and the constant level "dings" are euphoric, to say the least. The skellies will protect their Master most of the time, but it only takes a single instance when you are standing in the wrong place at just the wrong time...

Honestly, it didn't take very long to raise the Sorceress to 10k once I found my proper rhythm for playing her in "leveling mode." It may seem like I'm exaggerating, but attaining 10k is the easy part. Farming the resources to give the rest of the team their best shot is what takes hours and hours and hours. I'm glad that most tournaments don't necessarily "require" that level of farming. I love farming, mind you - like you, I'm a farmer at heart - but doing it for all of the needs of all seven characters all at once diminishes that love noticeably. :twisted:

I hope your Necromancer goes all the way to 10k! :mrgreen:

------------------------------------
Gluttony the Sorceress
20180819 & 20180820:
Fairly light playing days. I spent most of my time testing various aspects of the HC Barbarian's physical damage and his damage jewel. I wanted to be sure that I was not about to create several damage jewels unnecessarily. I can say, unequivocally, that the 50/50/50/50 jewel on the Barbarian will in no way be a waste. In Hell difficulty, at high players settings, it is absolutely vital! 200 Scrolls may be a pain in the arrears to part with, but they are worth every single click it takes to make them, no question about it. Again, I make that claim for the Barbarian, not necessarily for the other characters. I suspect, though - and will act on this suspicion as if it were fact - that the same is true of the Amazon and the Druid, assuming that I am going to run my Druid to 10k via melee.

20180821:
Went back to converting banks to Scrolls. Finished the remainder of the 525 and added 48 more, converting as they were acquired.

20180822:
I did some timing on acquisition and various aspects of the conversion process. It takes a bit less than 8 minutes to gamble a set of 15 piggy banks. It takes almost 10 minutes to convert them into Scrolls. My test today indicated that it took me 6 hours and 30 minutes to gather the gold for, gamble the banks for, and then convert those into 102 Scrolls. That is a lot longer than my previous calculations had indicated. I seem to be losing my vim and vigor for the task at hand!

All total, at the end of the day there were 750 complete Scrolls in the Stash, and I plan on making an even 1000.

20180823:
More gathering and converting activities. Total of 885 Scrolls now available.

20180824:
I upped the total I wanted to acquire to 1025 from 1000. At the end of the day, 1025 were ready for use when I need them!

20180825:
I did some testing of the HC Druid and the HC Paladin early on the 25th in preparation for making their equipment and jewels. I noticed something that made me turn a sickly shade of green... the Paladin has a damage jewel! That is terrible, terrible news! I wanted to believe that I had made it for him through lack of proper testing, but it turns out that it is quite helpful to him. Yes, without the damage jewel he can kill almost anything (including Chimeras) with a combination of Vengeance and Conviction, but he has to swing his weapon at normal, non-Zeal speeds to do so... that may be fine some of the time, but being able to use Zeal most of the time is a basic requirement in my book. Therefore, Wrath will have a damage jewel as well.

I want to write a few words about my testing on my HC Druid. Perhaps this is part of the knowledge that I lost over the many years since I've played vanilla D2, but Increased Attack Speed on the weapon itself is actually vital in some cases! A Druid wielding a polearm - the weapon type for which he has the most affinity - is one of those cases. Even with nearly 1000% IAS off-weapon, the difference between 0% and 150% IAS on the weapon is astounding. Jaw-droppingly amazing. Using Fury, it is at least as fast as Zeal, if not faster, and that's using a polearm!! And here's the kicker: the only ways to get IAS on a weapon that doesn't already have it (besides Shael runes socketed directly into the weapon at level 50) is with Secret Cube Scrolls that have "swingX to any weapon" or Arcane Cube Scrolls that add "MegaX to any weapon." The rest of the "swingX" scrolls add it to armor, gloves, or other items that are not weapons. It cannot even be added to a crafted weapon through crafting, or through Elixir recipes. I wonder if Kato did that on purpose?

One other thing of note: the damage for a Thresher (Elite version of the Scythe) depends on 100% of Strength and 75% of Dexterity, as do the Phase Blade and the Divine Sceptre (and numerous other weapons, but these are two that were important enough to me for me to actually test them).

20180826:
Spent hours and hours collecting gold and buying the 200 piggy banks for the Paladin's damage jewel. Almost 10 hours of work. Next comes the process of converting them - for me, it is faster to convert them in bulk than to do so as I buy them.

20180827:
It took just a little less than 10 minutes per set of 16 to do the conversion of 200 banks to Scrolls. After that, with 1225 Scrolls available, I started gambling for the base items for all of the Artifacts Gluttony needed to make for the rest of the team. All five of them (the Paladin already had a set, oddly enough) needed a Requiem, Decorum, Vice and Stride. All six of them needed a Marker (small charm Artifact). Also made a Suffrage and Vengeance for the Paladin, as well as a Ransom, Deceit, and two Idea rings for the Necromancer.

Once those were created, I made the Necromancer's basic jewel, adding a dose of Faster Block Rate to it. He is the only character who will be using a shield (for the +skills). He is the only one who would be able to get away with using a Shield, as he has his army of Mages to protect him from getting block-locked.

Sometime in the past, I mentioned that I was going to try to get away with giving each character just 2 Megaloads of mana and 2 of %max mana. As regards the Necromancer, I tested that theory out with my HC Necro, and that is far, far too little mana if he plans on using Poison Nova or Bone Spirit. Those two skills at level 450, or 400, or even 350, suck down mana like it was Gatorade. I ended up giving the Necro 5/5 for mana instead of the planned 2/2.

Another change from the plan of each basic jewel having 20/20 life, 2/2 mana, 1 FHR, 1 DR, 1 MR, and 6 MF was to drop from 6 to 4 for MF. I think that will be sufficient. I'm not entirely sure why I am giving any of the other characters a better chance to find magic items in the first place, but... I am!

20180828:
Finished the basic jewels for both the Druid and the Assassin. This marked the first time that I needed to create crafted charms using Collector points. If you can get the exit from the city of Lut Gholein to exist right beside Drognan, this process is almost trivially easy. Buy from him a tall charm, run out of the gates and back in, buy from him another tall charm. Repeat this until you have all the tall charms you want. Then go to Harrogath to construct the 6k in Collector points from two empty collectors, a perfect skull, and three Zy runes.

I only had to make 52 of those to complete, also, the basic jewels for the Amazon, Barbarian, and Paladin.

It took just a few minutes to do, but I also created the jewels for all 6 characters containing a single Megaload each of Critical Strike, Crushing Blow, and Open Wounds, as well as enough crafted rings with Static Field on them for each of the Paladin, Druid, Barbarian, Amazon, and Assassin to have a pair of them. I made sure that each character received one ring as early as possible (dependent on the levels of the rings I made), then another later in their careers - again, as the levels of the rings I crafted dictated.

After that, I spent a little time choosing and cleaning the crafted jewels to use for the four damage jewels. Each of the four was the result of a Demon Box, and each had at least 400 damage to one damage type already on them. The largest was a jewel that was in the stash from years ago when I first started playing in this tournament. It had 2000 magic damage on it. There was also one with 600 fire damage, one with 500 cold damage, and the last had 400 cold damage on it.

For the remainder of my playing time, I actually finished the damage jewels for both the Amazon and the Barbarian. Quite the slog! Two more of them and I'm done with every major task I set out to accomplish. Whew!

20180829:
Finished the other two damage jewels after working on them for a little over three hours.

I made 150 Cube Locks to add to the 11 I already had in the Stash, then used some of them to put +127 skills on the belts of the Necromancer and the Druid. The Assassin's will be next, then Life BoCL for all but the Barbarian and the Sorceress.

So I guess I was a little off in stating that the damage jewels marked the last of the major tasks I had planned... close, though!

20180830:
Finished all of the belts, both +skills and Life BoCL. 28 Cube Locks remain in the stash, and those will be stored against the possibility of there arising a need for them in the future.

20180831:
Messed about with Demon Boxes, Major posters, and updating various information on the wikia pertaining thereto. Those Major posters can have massive amounts of damage on them!! They are rather insane, honestly. That won't stop me from using the best of them on the level 1 Druid when the time comes, however. :twisted:

Did very little in the game, actually - real life monopolized. I needed a bit of break anyway, I think. Very soon will be the push to 10k for all six of the other members of the team...

None of the team's levels have changed, so there is no need for an updated table.

I hope that sokol and Rahhja have not abandoned the good fight, and good luck to their endeavors if they are still playing every now and again.

Happy Zy-Elling to one and all!!

Post Reply

Return to “Zy-El: Trial by Fire”