[1.09b] Erayz’s Unreasonable Project [1460/2376]

Erayz

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As some of you may, or may not know, whenever I play Diablo 2, it’s always with the same goal in mind: Reaching level 99 with all classes, in every mode. This means 7x99 in LoD SC, 7x99 in LoD HC, 5x99 in Classic SC and 5x99 in Classic HC. All of this in 1.09.

Of course, I am 100% aware this project is unachievable in a lifetime, mostly due to Classic being so slow to level. But it gives me a long term goal to work towards to. I’ve been tracking this \"project\" for a long time in an excel sheet.

I made this topic to show interesting things happening as I make progress, such as, close calls and deaths in HC, reaching high levels, quest progress, notable drops, etc.

As of the creation of this topic, my current progress looks like this:



As you can see, I am terrible at giving names to my characters :lol:

I hope I won’t bore you guys with this thread haha. Sharing this online gives me motivation as it feels less lonely for me :D
 
Lately I’ve been playing Classic Softcore, namely my Amazon (Asterope), who recently reached level 86! Meaning she can now gamble +2 skills Amulets. At level 86, it also means the XP given by monster has been halved compared to level 85. From this point on, every level in Classic takes longer than 98-99 in LoD.

After testing a few leveling locations and runs (namely CS, RoF), running the Cow Level is still the fastest for her at level 86, at around 3 million XP per run on Players 8. It’s \"only\" about 35 runs, and runs are much slower than in LoD due to much weaker gear.


View attachment 1

She’s currently wearing:
Helm: Iratha
Amulet: Iratha
Gloves: Iratha
Belt: Iratha
Armor: Twitchthroe
Boots: Rare Light Plated Boots with 30 FRW, 25 Cold res, 27 LIght res
Ring1: Manald Heal
Ring2: Rare with 6% LL and 30% Fire resist
Bow: Rare Gothic Bow with 139% ED, 113 AR, 12 Max

I switch Boots for Goblin toe when facing unique monsters and Diablo.


Her build is mostly Guided Arrow for single targets, Freezing Arrow for packs, Valkyrie to attract monsters attention when I need to kite.
 
Dude this post is fkin awesome! Thanks for sharing your ’unreasonable’ project with us.

Also, I was about to say, \"nah bro, your character names are fine\", but then I saw ’Mucus’, and my stance changed :lol: :lol:

BTW, I am really liking that excel sheet with the EXOCET font (hope I got that right). Would you mind sharing that? Right now i’m heavily invested in LOD, but it’d still be fun to log my current progress on there.

Have a great night [mention]Erayz[/mention]!
 
Lol you crazy [mention]Erayz[/mention] but I love you for it. This is awesome to see and am happy to follow your progress. As expected, HC modes have the lowest percentages, death is permanent Nephalem! It’s a great experience though. Although it’s nice you have SC characters as well so when the HC one dies you can at least “heal” in SC until you are ready for the next HC attempt. This way it doesn’t feel like you are always starting from scratch again and don’t have any other characters to experience Diablo II in any other way.
 
Thanks guys! I’m happy to see you like this topic haha.

[mention]Manny[/mention] Yes, you are right, the font is Exocet, it can easily be found online.

[mention]fearedbliss[/mention], I had a painful death in Classic HC at some point with a Sorc at NM Duriel. It was painful because she was using some real good rare items my HC Classic barb had found. Such as a tri-res armor with fhr and some life, and a rare amulet with 1 sorc skill, 19 all res and 52 life. These items are now gone forever!

I barely play my HC Classic Barb nowadays too, he’s halfway to level 87, and very tanky, but Hell CS is scary sometimes with Iron Maiden. And had a real close call once against a Venom Lord with MSLE + Conviction. I’m kinda scared of playing him now lol
 
Erayz said:
Thanks guys! I’m happy to see you like this topic haha.

@Manny Yes, you are right, the font is Exocet, it can easily be found online.


Word. Thanks bro, I found it :D
 
Yup Exocet is the font haha. I still have the files from when I use to label my mods for Vanilla Frosting back in the day ;).
 
I was getting tired of killing cows with my Classic SC Amazon, so I decided to continue my Classic SC Necro. But then I noticed I had already wasted some skill points and that I had no real build planned for him, so I decided to restart a new one. But beforehand, I wanted to figure out what build could work in Classic 1.09 for a Necromancer, as they are very underpowered.

After spending some time testing with Hero Editor, I came up with something. I wanted something different than my LoD Necromancer, but there are so little viable options that I ended up with yet another Blood Golem/ Iron Maiden + Corpse Explosion. The difference here is I’ll be using Bone Spirit to get the first kill, and deal with Diablo (even if it’s going to be super slow). I’ll also use Revives to deal with casters and ranged attackers (we’ll see how that part goes).

And to help speed up the questing and early leveling, he is twinked, including a 1.05b SoJ with no level requirement, which helped immensely in Act 1 Normal. He’ll be wearing Wormskull, Gravenspine, Frostburns and a nice rare shield when he’ll have the required levels.

He is also currently using Infernal Torch, Lenymo and Pelta Lunata. And during Act 1, he found Arctic Furs, so I’d say he has pretty solid gear for his low level (14 at the moment).

Since I plan on maxing Skeleton Mastery and that I have twinked some +skills gear, the early game is easier than usual, as I can strengthen my skeletons. But still, they already die a lot and don’t deal much damage, so the best way for them to kill stuff at the moment (early Act 2) is to cast Iron Maiden on their enemies and let my skeleton deal damage by getting hit and killed :lol: . Mana is always a problem, I cannot really spam Corpse Explosion as much as I would like. I also hired a Blessed Aim mercenary from Greiz, hoping it will help skeletons hit a little more often.

The shield I mentioned:
View attachment 2


Since SoJs are easy to come by in 1.05b, I have many spares, so I can afford to add sockets to rare items in Classic. So this shield will eventually have a Perfect Diamond. I initially wanted to use a 3x PDiamond Tower Shield for more resists, but they require 75 str, and have less block chance than this shield, plus a rare Grim Shield has more style points haha

 
I made some progress last weekend with my new Necromancer, Horologium. Finished Normal at level 22, I had to kill Diablo with just level 5 Bone Spear, as my summons could not resist a single attack from Diablo.

Then I started NM, and by the second half of Act 1, Horologium was level 24, and experience started to slow down a lot. Probably because of the level difference between him and the monsters. So I decided to do a few Normal Cow runs on P8. I only needed two runs to reach level 29, which allowed me to wear Frostburns, a +1 Nec Amulet, and my second SoJ.

He reached level 30 shortly after killing Radament, and now he can use Revives and Bone Spirit. With my + skills gear, both spells are already level 7. I never used Revives before, they’re quite strong, depending on the type of monster but they’re terrible at following you around sot they tend to disappear, and they cost a lot of mana.

Surprisingly, I still use my skeletons and mages, along with my Blood Golem and the Revives, which makes for quite a big army, and monsters almost never attack me directly, so the build is really safe so far. The skeletons are very frail and mostly die in 1-2 hits now, and only deal damage via Iron Maiden. I also hired a Holy Freeze Merc, even though he can’t switch acts, nor wear any equipment, but it’s really helpful to slow everything.

I’m still not sure when I’ll stop using my skeletons and rely mostly on Blood Golem and my Revives, even if they are mostly useless lol

 
I’ve been pretty busy lately, and didn’t have much time to play, but I still made decent progress with Horologium, my Classic SC Necromancer. Just finished Nightmare and surprisingly still going strong. Even the fight against Diablo was easy. But leveling is really slow for some reason, I killed Diablo at only level 37. I’m using a combination of Blood Golem, Iron Maiden, Amplify, Revives and Corpse Explosion. Skeletons are 100% useless at this point.

I had my first death in NM Harem level 2, against a boss skeleton archer with CE and LE, which killed all my minions, and obviously myself. Other than that, Act 2 went really smoothly, thanks to Holy freeze from the merc, slowing everything down :D

For now I started running NM cows, I might do that until level 50 or so, depending how I feel. Just one run on P8 got me from 37 to 41. Bringing my total level to 1349

 
Nice. The characters are looking good. There is something nice about just seeing the unique color names and the white text without the vivid green from the expansion label. Although the expansion label also looks good.
 
Still don’t have much time to play lately, but I’ve been able to squeeze a few NM cow runs here and there. Horologium is now level 55, bringing my total to 1363 / 2376.

Only one semi-interesting drop, but still not quite good enough to replace my current amulet:
 
Nice, it’s good to have that than not having it. It’s like my 100 to life and 20 to res but in classic instead, so it’s more valuable than the LoD version IMO.
 
It’s been a while since the last update, because I’ve been busy with other things and I am currently playing different games, but I finished the game with my Horologium the Necromancer. I gotta say that Necromancers are much stronger in Classic than in LoD, at least in path 1.09. CE + Amp one-shotted most monsters for the whole game, and revives are actually really good tanks, making the build really safe. Thanks to that, I completed the game with only a single avoidable death. Blood Golem + Iron Maiden means my health is topped most of the time, too. This makes me confident I’ll be able to complete a HC Classic Necromancer in the future. Even act bosses were easy, most of them killed themselves by hitting my golem. As for Diablo, I just needed to re-summon my Blood Golem after every Firestorm to avoid Diablo coming after me, and spam Bone Spirit.

Finished the game at level 61, and stopped there for the moment. Realistically, he’ll eventually reach level 88 through cow runs, but after that I’m not sure how I will level him.

Now all my Classic SC characters are Barons/Baronesses
 
Happy New Year, [mention]Erayz[/mention]!

It was nice reading this update from you. Your Classic Necro sounds like a lot of fun!

May 2024 bring you all the success you aspire for, both in real life, and in Sanctuary :mrgreen: ;)
 
Congrats [mention]Erayz[/mention]. And happy new year and best wishes to everyone!
 
Made some progress recently:

Classic SC Necro went from 61 to 69
Classic SC Barbarian went from 85 to 86
Classic SC Amazon went from 86 to 87

Table looks like this at the moment: 1379 levels total


If anyone is interested, I could make a leveling guide for 1.09 (for both LoD and Classic). The guide would include class specific advice, coming from my personal experience with leveling.

Though it would be a little inaccurate for the late levels in Classic because I’ve never reached 90+ there, the general idea for those levels in classic is pretty simple: kill champions/uniques only, pop seals and kill Diablo. Once you’re high level enough so the champions and uniques don’t give enough XP to be worth killing, run CS on Players 1, open the seals, spawn Diablo on Players 8, bring him to a sliver of health, find an XP shrine then finish Diablo.
 
Some progress made recently:

Softcore Classic Barbarian: 88 -> 89
Softcore Classic Necromancer: 69 -> 74

Now I have to try finding a map for my Classic Barb where a unique Urdar spawns near a waypoint consistently. This should be the optimal way to level until 93 or 94 depending on how consistent is the spawn and if there is an experience shrine that spawns close too.
 
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