Well, obviously other people take a different position.
Manwë’s gonna smack you for that one…
Out of Munch’s list you can cross off Singer Barb, Chronos has one.
MDSL, if you’re thinking of a spearazon, my necro’s merc is using a +3 Arioc’s Needle at the moment and I think there is at least 1 Lycander’s Flank on somebody’s mule and various spear-type weapons that my Act 2 mercs have grown out of on my mules, so let me know about it if you make one.
The Needle might come in handy in a month or so, but I think a Razortine will work for now if anyone finds one. They are fairly common I think. A Bloodthief would bee good to when I get to 17ish.
-Mike
(This is going to be curt because I had paragraphs typed out and then accidentally closed the window)
Last I checked (1.10), it is not possible to make a runeword in wirt’s leg.
I would advise against making a spearazon unless you’re looking to make a deliberately underpowered character. Think about it like this: melee, no shield, needs to not be hit. Resists will be suxx0r if you go with fully shaeled armor, which you almost need to get hit recovery down to a decent framerate.
The potless asn is to level 69 now and doing NM Baal runs until probably 80 or 81. I am gradually doing more and more of each run (have done … 4? so far) in players 8 vs players 1, and the XP diff is remarkable. The change in difficulty is alos remarkable, however. I do not believe I will try Baal hisself in players 8 with her unless runs start to become decreasingly useful, and even then only if Lister and company become the only thing giving reasonable XP. I suspect that if I am able to go through runs at a competent pace in players 8, Act1 in Hell at least will not be overly difficult.
Neither do i, i just don’t see how you could run through the game fast enough without it to make the timing fall in your favor. I suppose the enchantress could teleport around and give you a hand with it though. Still, i’d be hesitant to teleport ANY character around in hell difficulty on HCL, just for fear of accidental loss of life and limb.
That’s very true, so in this case, we rushed 6 mules and Who’s quest character(s), who could have tagged along for the forge quest had he wanted to. In the next rush, i’ll be rushing 2 characters of mine who can do the quests, but they’ll also be considered mules since i’m getting the hellforge drops from them. The reason i didn’t count that time in the sum was that in either case it’s time that’s been spent by someone else (Who in this case) and/or time that would have gone towards playing the characters anyway. Regardless, you’re right, if it weren’t for our opportunistic ways we’d certainly have to consider the time to rush the mule to 40.
If we’re only rushing 3 mules though, it’s pointless to bother leveling any of them to 40, since you can easily get 3 mules the quest in 5 minutes in a public game. That’s how sokkerman and I used to do it before we started including more people in the rushes. I think i outlined the way to do it in an earlier post, so i won’t repeat it here.
I don’t doubt that everything dies in one hit with that level of enchantment, i was in a normal baal run series once with a sorc doing exactly that, it was a lot of fun. I guess my hesitation is that i’m not sure i believe that you can get to lvl 40 in 40 minutes. Or even an hour. Even with baal runs, it’s hard to get 1 level a minute, just due to transit times to get to the throne alone. And baal runs are by far THE most efficient way to get experience past lvl 25 in normal, all the way up to 45.
'Course, i’ve been known to be wrong fairly often. If it is possible, i’d love to try it sometime, it would certainly remove the need to wait for someone to have characters that fit the bill.
By the way, who would be up for another tonight, if i decided to do one?
If you’ve got the characters for the quests, we may as well make the most of them.
As for Bone’s method, I presume that what you do is have the new character start a few games, and switch back and forth between games while high-level characters are exploring and clearing out incidental monsters in the game the new character isn’t actively questing in at any given point.
And iampunha, I presume that your teetotaller assassin is relying primarily on Cobra Strike leeching, to replace potion-drinking? Because in Hell, you start seeing physical immune monsters which you wouldn’t be able to leech from. I suppose you could build up your charges on the unleechables and switch to something meatier for your finishing move, but that’s going to take a lot of running around, and require a decent resevoir of life, so you can survive long enough to build up.
That’s just it. I used to do it w/o rushing the mule to 40. I started having trouble finding someone in public games that needed the quest, and would party w/ me. Half the time, I’d party with them, they’d get the minion experience, and then wouldn’t kill Baal. A giant waste of time. In normal, to get a mule to act 5 ready for the baal quest, takes about 20 minutes. To do the same in NM, takes another 20 minutes. That’s 40 minutes, without the time to wait for the Baal quest counting on the random niceness of someone in a public game granting the quest. Sometimes I would look for a game to get the quest in for an hour! I figured I might as well just get it myself and save the frustration.
Chronos is correct, multiple games going on setting up things. It’s pretty quick. 20 minutes to level 20, and 40 minutes from lvl 20 to lvl 40. It’s very possible. I actually do this by myself sometimes (3 computers/CD-keys), or with a friend sometimes. Without having a char already at clvl 20/40 (or relying on a public game to grant you the quest), I think it’s the fastest way to go.
For act bosses she has to. I have a good bit of life leech (eye, cathan ring and another rare I can pull in if I need it) but also some regen. I’ve been using Blade Fury for the most part, and using CS/TS combined on Baal along with that regen. I can run almost 40 life regen if I know I won’t be able to leech with items, and that works out to about 3-5 life per second, which is useful especially if I’m poisoned. Otherwise right now I run about 33.
She’s got 769 life right now and has 75/75/45/44 resists without Fade on, which I’ll probably use in Hell since going around with -16 as a poison resist in Hell is not the way to go. Frankly I’ve been running with monsters off which I can’t leech (Cobra Strike or not), and as long as the shadow master (level 24, and she works well enough under most situations) tanks as she’s supposed to, I can generally do decently well enough. Bear in mind I say this running players 8 NM Baal runs. If the difference between Act1 NM players 1 and Act5 Norm players 8 holds to be significantly similar to the difference between Act1 Hell players 1 and Act5 NM players 8, I don’t anticipate (ha) significant difficulties.
I am considering getting a pair of Dracul’s from Jamella (the hero editor, not the A4 NPC), and those would be used pretty well solely for act bosses.
Puhna, I came to the same conclusion. I was thinking back to the last time I had a spear-a-zon and it was before they fixed the speed issue with jab. Before they fixed it it had a constantly high speed reguardless of the weapon. Thus, really fast hitting with a pike.
Oh well. :wally
I think I have both a Razortine and a Bloodthief. My usual play accts are *ponophobic and *tluv, so give me a holla and I’ll fix you up.
Just yesterday, I picked up that Ali Baba, and put in my two Ists. Today, I was eager to try it out… And I accidentally sold it to Akara! Worse, she didn’t hold on to it, even though she had room, so I lost it completely! I realize that they had to do this with Stones of Jordan (for purposes of clone summoning), but did they have to do it for all unique items? Aaarrrggghhh!!!
Chronos - Ouch! That had to hurt. I think the disappearing-uniques-when-you-sell-them thing has always been the case. I seem to remember it from 1.09, anyway.
Here’s my bonehead moves of the week:
1 - Okay, not really bonehead, cuz it’s B-Net’s fault. I dropped a pair of Magefists on the ground in town, because I didn’t have room in my stash. A few minutes later I found myself unable to click on anything. Okay, no problem, happens all the time. I’ll just exit and re-enter the game and that will fix the problem. But wait, no, B-Net tells me “Failed to join game” :eek: What the hell? It was just as if I’d been temp-banned for entering and exiting games too many times too quickly. Except this was the first game I’d made in a couple hours. Magefists go poof. Gone. Bye-bye. :mad:
2 - So once again I drop stuff on the ground - this time all my gold so that I don’t lose it when I die. And once again, I find myself unable to click on anything, and unable to re-enter the game after exiting. Panic! about 1,500,000 GP on the ground, gone! But just for the hell of it I tried to enter the game with another character on another acct That character can join the game. Because I had emptied the gold from this character to give to another, I was able to rescue all that gold for the character that dropped it. Whew.
3 - I took my Wind Druid into The Pit on Hell difficulty, because I’ve heard that Wind Druids are well-suited to making Pit runs. He promptly dies in Pit Level 2. I decided to retrieve the body after donning a spare set of body armor. I headed back to the Pit, where he promptly died again. I didn’t want him to die again, so like a complete idiot I exited the game a rejoined and retrieved the body in town. Minus the Skin of the Vipermagi he’d been wearing when he died the first time. :wally = me.
On the plus side, I used the Ist I got from the Hellforge rush the other day to make a Delirium helm. It’s pretty cool, but I discovered it’s a lot more useful on my merc than on my Wind Druid. Definitely a melee helm. My Druid also found a Dark Clan Crusher unique cudgel, with +2 Druid skills on it.
OK, now I’m really puzzled (and annoyed). I just got a worthless unique from a Baal run (a Bladebuckle, not that it matters), and tested the sell-to-NPC thing… And Malah kept it available for resale! Do they only steal worthwhile items, or something? What’s going on here?
And Phase42, never, ever re-equip anything before trying to retrieve your body. If you think you can do it naked, fine. But re-equipping is just asking for trouble.
Of course, I suppose you’re quite aware of this now…
Strange. Perhaps there are different factors involved. I know for a fact that I have sold uniques and watched them disappear. For example, uniques might always go to the “Misc” page when you sell them, regardless of item type, and what matters is how much room is available on that page when you sell, not the Armor or Weapons page. So if the Misc. page is full, it’s gone. Just a WAG. I could be something else. Like the difference between the item level and your character level. Who knows 
If the item screen is full, you’ve lost it forever. If not, you can still re-buy stuff.
I use that feature more to see how much buying stuff back would cost. I don’t like the whole $35K max thing, so I like knowing what the actual value is.
None of that explains Chronos’ experience. Eonwe and I were both in the game where he lost the baba. Akara’s weapon screen was not full and neither was her misc. screen, there was plenty of room in either for the baba, but it wasn’t there.
Now another thought. Back in dear old 1.09, one of the ways to supposedly “permanent” a dupe was to sell the dupe to a NPC and buy it back. This supposedly gave the item a unique item identifier. You may notice a few “supposedlys” in there. They’re in there because I don’t know anything about duping and have just heard rumors. If that tactic is an actual one, it would be another reason that some items cannot be bought back from NPC’s.
I’m currently seeing two possible explanations. One, possibly because of the duping issues Who_me? mentions, Blizzard decided that “good” items could not be bought back. “Good” might be a hand-made list, or it might be based on monetary value, item level, or the like. Either way, Stone of Jordan and Blade of Ali Baba seem to qualify as “good”. Two, the problem may have been the sockets, somehow. I’m not sure how this would have worked, but it seems conceivable that since “Clean Blade of Ali Baba” is a different item than “Blade of Ali Baba socketed with two Ists”, that that might somehow throw in a monkey wrench (similar, I suppose, to how items are repaired when you sell them). In this case, of course, Stones of Jordan would be a special case, since they’re not socketed, but can’t (I assume) be re-bought. I’ll have to do some experimenting in single-player to figure this out.
I think I can save you the time. I’m pretty sure that items with filled sockets always disappear, regardless of type.
D’OH! Sockets - that’s it. I knew that.
Speaking of sockets, does anyone have a spare 3-socket phase blade lying around? I’ve got the runes to make Crescent Moon…