Ancient's Pledge, Ral/Ort in helm/armor and shopping gloves/belt/boots at NM Gheed should have you covered in a short time. When going into hell difficulty all characters should have max or near-max fire+lightning resistance so the Paladin can use Conviction as much as possible. The main character should leech the baal quest on nightmare from town to preserve the ancient quest for level 98 - additional leveling before entering hell may be done in the cow level. I will not go into the aspect of speedrunning through the game you can learn about this from watching the VODs of the german 8-player speedrunning team. Sorceress (Fireball) - Primary teleporter, fast throne room cleanerĪssassin (Traps) - Makes normal difficulty much faster, can be used as a filler/secondary char later on.ĭruid (Oak Sage, Shockwave) - CC and extra HP for dangerous spawns - becomes obsolete as soon as the party has gained enough levels/equipment to be comfortable without oak and should be replaced by a Sorceress.īarbarian (Battle Orders, Shout) - Cheaper and better than the Call to Arms runeword Paladin (Conviction, Salvation, Vigor) - Conviction for fast clears, Salvation for dangerous spawns. Necromancer (Corpse Explosion, Lower Resist) - Crowd control and LR+CE for fast clears. Sorceress (Blizzard) - Main character, the most suited candidate for reaching 99 quicklyĪmazon (Lightning Fury) - Clears throne and kills Baal very fast The ideal group is one of each class with an additional sorceress: The first thing to consider is the initial party composition - the balance to find here is having a group that can complete the game as fast as possible while also being capable of performing very fast Baal-runs afterwards.
So here goes my thoughts and ideas on a better approach: There was a lot of room for improvement in that attempt other than just having more players/playing more hours per day as the emphasis wasn't on setting a record. While not a record attempt I managed to hit 99 in just 29 days after ladder reset that very season under the same premise - only it was on hardcore and with much fewer players: They managed to reach level 98 in just under a week but decided to abort the attempt as they did not have enough players and the players they did had did not have enough experience in performing Baal runs - a topic that was not covered in their plan !
To complete that feat they would need a large group of experienced D2 players however - partially because of the cd-key/games per hour restriction on. In 2011 members of a German D2 community site came up with such a strategy for softcore they theorized that it would be possible to hit 99 in less than a week after a ladder reset. I will skip over a number of aspects and concepts as I don't intend to write something elaborate and complete for an old game that has already been explored. These are my notes on the strategies and ideas involved in reaching level 99 as fast as possible in a "feasible" (hardcore mode) no-trade/untwinked multiplayer setting (a ladder reset/race if you will). I write this thread to get it out of my head and make it available for others should anyone want to pursue this goal one day in our dear old game. After playing the game in so many different ways and completed so many "feats" over the years there's only a few aspects of the game that still motivates me.
In spite of not having played the game for a year and a half I still find myself thinking and theorycrafting every now and then.
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