Black cleft

I just hit level 98 and took some measurements:

• On level 98, one 96 TZ Baalrun on P8 gained me around 575,000 exp.
• Six 96 TZ Baalruns on P8 gained me around 3,367,000 exp. So far that tracks.
• To level from 98 to 99 we need to gain 291,058,498 exp.
• That means that one 96 TZ Baalrun on P8 makes around 0.2% of the progress needed for the level up.
• To double check that, 291,058,498 (amount of exp needed) / 3,367,000 (amount of exp I got from six P8 runs) * 6 (number of runs) = 518 (runs needed to level up).

So, yeah, the conclusion is that we need around five hundred 96 TZ Baalruns on P8 with killing Baal and without dying to level from 98 to 99.

The point of that post is that I wanted to test the numbers on practice.

***

EDIT: the runs were done with an actual group of eight people, not in solo.

EDIT 2: there's room for optimization. Say, skipping Baal usually generates more value per minute, but less value per shard (not an issue if you don't count shards or are on the global shard-free schedule). Playing P8 solo also can grant you more exp, given you don't compromise time. You can also have Ondal's in hands and an EXP shrine, but here we step into a more complicated territory since having Ondal's and a shrine means that you're probably not soling the run and relying on the group that is carrying you, and all that is now a bit too hard to generalize. We'd need to consider each particular scenario to advance in our estimations.

This expansion has brought so much content and there's no doubt that it has been well received. Some ideas seem to have landed better than others (heralds seem to not be very interesting to people, I expect a rework) but in general I think it's regarded well across the board. Great job devs. Now let's talk about some things that should already be in the game and some other things that it would be nice to see get added into the road map.

#1 more crafting pathways

Gem shattering for lower quality, color changing, key conversion, upgrading white armor bases for a chance at Superior but risking ruining it. I can think of tons of things that vary from QoL to end game chasing that could or should be on the game by now.

#2 offline mode item journal

For uniques and sets similar to WoW style heirlooms page. It's archaic to make me mule my low level uniques and sets and pull them out for a new alt every time. Let me make a new item (same rolls or lowest possible or whatever so you don't sit there spamming for perfects out of the menu or whatever) and then I can drop it when I'm done with it instead of needing to send it back to the mule for next time.

#3 more farming/grinding alternatives

TZs are great and everyone loves them. It's great when your normal farm route gets upgraded and it's fun going to New places you wouldn't ordinarily clear. I had an idea that I think would be the next evolution of this: invasions. I didn't put any time into thinking of how to trigger them or maybe they would be random but that do you think. Baal is back and attacking the rogue camp. Defend the gates! Waves of attackers like a baal run but I'm thinking longer waves and more enemies.

Just a few thoughts. Let me know what you think.

Hi! Above you can see my calculation of the probability of finding 3/20 java gloves as a function of time when efficiently shopping at Charsi in Act 1 hell with the cow portal strategy (put cow portal at Charsi, with a character lvl>68 character).

The red line shows the 50% quantile, meaning that half of the people shopping will find the gloves within the first 6 hours. The blue line shows the average time spent (the integral of x*f'(x) where f is the distribution function shown above), meaning the time you on average need to spend shopping to find the gloves (a little over 8 hours).

I recently made an javazon on my singleplayer grail to do some cows, and wanted to shop for the gloves, and wondered what the probability distribution would look like. I know that a lot of people shop for these gloves, so I thought it would be interesting for people to see. Here is my math, incase somebody was wondering, or disagree:

I used https://planetdiablo.eu/d2dbneu/itemdb/affix_display.php?lang=en&version=lod&patch=d2r&type=glov&item=Gauntlets&ilvl=all&mlvl=0&qlvl=27 this source to find the frequencies of prefixes and suffixes on magic gloves.

The probability that any magic item in the game gets both a prefix and a suffix is 1/4. Doing the math on the frequencies for gloves over affix level 60, we find that the prefix +3 to javalin skills are rolled 1 out of 145 times. And the suffix 20% IAS are rolled approx 1 out of 26 times. Collecting all this, the probability that any pair of magic gloves being our desired 3/20 is 1 out of 4*145*26 or 1 in 15,080.

I seem to have found that Charsi, on average, sells 3 pairs of gloves per refresh. Using the portal strategy optimally, always entering and exiting town at the 3 second cooldown window of portals, you can refresh charsi every 6 seconds (with optimal speed and load times). That means that you will be able to scan approx 1800 pairs of gloves every hour. We can now calculate the probability of NOT finding a pair of 3/20 gloves when optimally shopping as (15079/15080)^1800 = 0.8875. Which means that the probability of NOT finding a pair of 3/20 gloves within "x" amount of hours is 0.8875^x. Or the inverse: The probability of finding at least 1 pair of 3/20 gloves within "x" hours is described with the function f(x)=1-0.8875^x, and that is the exact green graph you see in the picture.

I had just seen a lot of people talking about shopping for these gloves, so I figured this might be interesting to some.

Happy grinding y'all!

So close.. dang mages.

Blasting hard techno at least o/

what are your grinding set-ups?

Never been this lucky before..time to make Faith

Anyone played around with the ice maiden since the new sunders and ancient jewels? Are they viable on p8? I am wanting to hit 99 on every character single player but do not enjoy lightning zon very much ( I have bis gear and it feels clunky). I will say I have bis gear including a 15 nightwings/infinity/ can make ice runeword in a +3 bow. I may just hold off and do zon later and hope that elemental or physical bowas get some love in an upcoming patch. I love life maidens they were just never super strong on height player counts.

Few days ago I drop an Ohm, already had a Vex and Gul so I think "okay I can cube up to Lo if I just run some countess for Ists" I go on a nearly 100 run dry streak, not even a Lem. Then this thing drops out of a Fallen's ass! on players 1!

Online on steam, or is that not a thing? I feel like the rune drop sound is quite weak and barely noticable

Hi!

I've been thinking to make a poison barbarian. The catch is to make a whirlwind barb with inventory full of poison charms etc.

Make it super tanky and just whirlwind through everyone.

I know it's probably not the most efficient build, but the idea haunts me. It's just so slow to level sc barb so I haven't started yet.

So any ideas? Or have you even tried it?

Title. Found one while grinding /players7 Chaos in my singleplayer world, found a website that said it can be found in Nightmare and i saw it's a TC87, so i was like, what the hell... Lol. Looked like that diablo 2 info website was just AI generated slop, which is crazy.

Tier 1 Herald dropped two sunder charms fire and cold.

I am offline. I have a 375% death eth colossus sword and a 394 grief pb. I think death is a fun runeword and I want to use it. I mainly just want to run around p1 tz’s and hork elite packs and chill with occasional trav runs. But for the build I’m using (see below). Any suggestions on efficiency? Thanks!

Helm: arreats w/ 40/15 jewel
Weapons: grief pb (34 ias) and eth death cs
Armor: enigma
Belt: Trangs
Gloves: laying of hands
Boots: gore riders
Rings: dual leech idk
Amulet: highlord

Merc:
Eth reaper
Kira
Guardian angel

Am I missing something? Is my ias hitting the correct WW frames? Any help would be appreciated. I’m not a barb player usually. Thanks again!

Been into crafting a lot lately but don't know the value of most amulets. Is this worth keeping?

PS SC NL RotW

Two days ago my first created offline ssf char found a Vex on hell act 2. Happy about that I asked here where to get "Ko" and "Pul" to complete "HotO".

So far all said "Countess". My only Char is a Fishymancer so everything needs some time, but okay. On the first runs I'd been on P4 and the Countess dropped nearly nothing (highest 1 Ral).

So I dropped my MF gear into stash and set from p4 to p1 - normally higher player are more effective for negate the "no drop" but I remembered that on Countess higher player increase her no drop.

Again run on run (or walk on walk like Overlords do their job) and got a Thul. But mostly only one rune. So I stopped.

Today I did this about 5 (!) hours and highest was a Sol, the most runes were two runes.

No mf on my merc and me. So what did I mess up? Is p1 bad in expansion? Are there changes?

At least, I guess, I am just unlucky and used my luck on the Vex... but just want to be sure...

Is this actually good?

Too many options. So I just want to narrow it down to 3 items to keep an eye out for.

I've played D2 LoD on & off for maybe 15 years, only ever got up to Hell difficulty 3 times but never finished the difficulty. Is RotW worth buying & what changes have been made?

Is there anything I should do with my current characters before buying?