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How to reach level 99 in 400 hours (250 hours once /playerX is added)


NathanielJohn

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1 hour ago, Vextens said:

Thanks for writing this up, @NathanielJohn! You covered one of the biggest tips I had which was doing this in the Stony Field. I know there were a lot of recommendations to spawn DClone in place of Eldritch in Act 5 since he's closer to the waypoint but I figured the experience shrines in the Stony Field were absolutely a must have. I got lucky enough to roll a map that had four shrines relatively close to the waypoint as well as DClone.

 

I began farming DClone using this exact method on October 13th. I was level 91 with 1,836,590,691 exp. It took me 22,155 DClone runs to get to level 99. In the end I calculate I found an exp shrine on 53.79% of my runs. Unfortunately, I had already beaten the ancients by the time I began this farm. To anyone else who already killed the ancients don't worry too much. While it does account for 13% of the exp to get from 98 to 99 which is huge, the approximately 1k runs it saves you is still a small fraction of the 22k runs you'll have done anyway.

 

My gear for this grind was:

 

Helm - Guillaume's Face socketed with an Um rune (for crushing blow as well as extra res from Um)

Amulet - Saracen's Chance (extra stats and res)

Body Armor - Enigma Breast Plate (for teleport and 45% Faster Run/Walk)

Belt - Thundergod's Vigor (this belt was mostly used for the lightning absorb when I was farming the Ubers for my paladin torch but I never switched to something else for DClone)

Gloves - Dracul's Grasp/Magnus' Skin (I primarily used the Dracs for the Life Tap proc but near the end I switched to Magnus for the +20% IAS as it's been indicated the IAS frames are kinda busted in D2R for melee characters and I wanted to try it)

Boots - Goblin Toe (for crushing blow)

Rings - Raven Frost/Stone of Jordan (RF for the Cannot be Frozen and Stone of Jordan for the +1 to skills)

Primary Weapon/Shield - Grief Phase Blade/Exile Zakarum Shield (I chose to go with the Grief runeword over Last Wish as I found the raw damage increase helped kill off the last bit of DClone's health was more useful than the additional Crushing Blow from Last Wish, Exile was used for another source of Life Tap as well as a Defiance aura, any elite paladin shield with + to all resistances should be a good base for Exile)

Offhand Weapon/Shield - Heart of the Oak Flail/Spirit Rondache (I point at my offhand gear as this was what I used when teleporting as HOTO and Spirit allowed me to hit the 75 Faster Cast Rate breakpoint and teleport around the Stony Field faster)

 

An additional tip I'd like to give is that I had my offhand weapon/shield equipped at all times when I wasn't fighting DClone. I had the Vigor aura equipped to my offhand gear. This let me run around town faster since you can't teleport in town and let me run around faster in the Stony Field when I wasn't teleporting.

 

My stat allocation consisted of no investment to strength as the annihilus, torch, and Enigma should give you more than enough strength to equip whatever you need, enough dexterity to equip the phase blade as well as max out block chance when you have Holy Shield activated, and the rest of the points went into vitality. At level 99, my base stats are 25 strength, 102 dexterity, 448 vitality, and 15 energy.

 

As far as skills go, I invested 1 point into Vigor and Salvation and maxed out Lightning Resist from the Defensive Aura skill tree, maxed out Fanaticism from the Offensive aura skill tree which is what I used when fighting Dclone, maxed out Smite and Holy Shield and was working on maxing Zeal in the Combat Skills skill tree.

 

While moderately unimportant, my mercenary had an Infinity War Scythe for the Conviction aura, Andariel's Visage for the life steal, and Fortitude Embossed Plate for Enhanced Damage. I'm actually not sure if Conviction helps with physical damage but it seemed better than the other options I had so I used it.

 

Unfortunately, the runs times will be worse on PS4 due to longer load screens. I was lucky enough to get a PS5 at the end of October and can confirm that on PS5 each run did take approximately 55 seconds to do but on PS4 it was around 1 minute 24 seconds which is unfortunately a huge difference when we're talking about 22k runs. Without the PS5, I still would not be done with this grind.

 

I know I've rambled a lot but I hope this was helpful to everyone and if anyone needs any advice or if I can clarify anything I've mentioned please let me know. Thanks!

 

Too give some people some more tips for killing Ubers with a Paladin smiter:

 

  • Amulet - Saracen's Chance (extra stats and res) [Replace with Highlord's Wrath if you have it. It has Increased Attack Speed (IAS) and Deadly strike]
  • Belt - Thundergod's Vigor (this belt was mostly used for the lightning absorb when I was farming the Ubers for my paladin torch but I never switched to something else for DClone) [Replace with Verdungo's as it gives vitality (health) and Damage Reduced]
  • Boots - Goblin Toe (for crushing blow) [Replace with Gore Riders for Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, and Chance of Open Wounds]

Nice little guide and I am still waiting to find my SoJ so I can start doing the method... Single Player has not been nice to me.

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3 minutes ago, Coexistant said:

 

Too give some people some more tips for killing Ubers with a Paladin smiter:

 

  • Amulet - Saracen's Chance (extra stats and res) [Replace with Highlord's Wrath if you have it. It has Increased Attack Speed (IAS) and Deadly strike]
  • Belt - Thundergod's Vigor (this belt was mostly used for the lightning absorb when I was farming the Ubers for my paladin torch but I never switched to something else for DClone) [Replace with Verdungo's as it gives vitality (health) and Damage Reduced]
  • Boots - Goblin Toe (for crushing blow) [Replace with Gore Riders for Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, and Chance of Open Wounds]

Nice little guide and I am still waiting to find my SoJ so I can start doing the method... Single Player has not been nice to me.

 

Good luck to you! Getting the SoJ to drop in the first place was a nightmare in and of itself. I'm sure you know but it's best to just bite the bullet and farm Andy in NM for the SoJ despite not getting any experience for it. I farmed Hell CS for a while but it never dropped. Eventually decided that it just made more sense to farm Andy. I was nervous for a while that drop chances changed for consoles but I can confirm that she does drop an SoJ in NM.

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10 minutes ago, Vextens said:

I'm sure you know but it's best to just bite the bullet and farm Andy in NM for the SoJ despite not getting any experience for it. I farmed Hell CS for a while but it never dropped. Eventually decided that it just made more sense to farm Andy. I was nervous for a while that drop chances changed for consoles but I can confirm that she does drop an SoJ in NM.

 

I did the exact same. I started by farming Hell Andy when I was still low-level enough to get XP there. Then I tried Hell CS. Then I just gave up and did Nightmare Andy. The runs against Nightmare Andy are so quick that I didn't find it *too* painful, but yeah the RNG factor makes it hurt.

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5 hours ago, Vextens said:

 

Good luck to you! Getting the SoJ to drop in the first place was a nightmare in and of itself. I'm sure you know but it's best to just bite the bullet and farm Andy in NM for the SoJ despite not getting any experience for it. I farmed Hell CS for a while but it never dropped. Eventually decided that it just made more sense to farm Andy. I was nervous for a while that drop chances changed for consoles but I can confirm that she does drop an SoJ in NM.

Did you use only Pally to farm everything,even enigma or made sorc for tele and farm with her for quicker runs? Or did you just reroll map till you got really good route to Andy?

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20 minutes ago, yoszek said:

Did you use only Pally to farm everything,even enigma or made sorc for tele and farm with her for quicker runs? Or did you just reroll map till you got really good route to Andy?

 

Yeah, my paladin did the bulk of my farming of gear. I got most of the runes on my Necromancer when I first played that character through hell. A paladin with Enigma for teleport is pretty powerful if you spec into a Blessed Hammer build. There aren't many enemies in the game with a natural immunity to magic and Blessed Hammer can get absurdly strong. I did roll maps until I got good ones for Andy. I got the SoJ when I was still on the PS4 so the load times were pretty obnoxious so if I could minimize run times by having better maps I went for it. I didn't spec into a Smiter paladin until I was ready to farm Uber Tristram for the paladin torch and then grind against DClone until I hit 99.

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Congratulations for doing this legit.

Also nice write-up.

Too bad that it is the PS4 stack. Well, I am in the same boat :-D. Got my PS5 later after starting the game on PS4.

Appreciate the gear discussion!

 

/edit: You can reroll offline maps on console? Is this done with difficulty switching?

 

 

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3 hours ago, Geridian said:

Congratulations for doing this legit.

Also nice write-up.

Too bad that it is the PS4 stack. Well, I am in the same boat :-D. Got my PS5 later after starting the game on PS4.

Appreciate the gear discussion!

 

/edit: You can reroll offline maps on console? Is this done with difficulty switching?

 

 

Yes.

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5 hours ago, Vextens said:

 

Yeah, my paladin did the bulk of my farming of gear. I got most of the runes on my Necromancer when I first played that character through hell. A paladin with Enigma for teleport is pretty powerful if you spec into a Blessed Hammer build. There aren't many enemies in the game with a natural immunity to magic and Blessed Hammer can get absurdly strong. I did roll maps until I got good ones for Andy. I got the SoJ when I was still on the PS4 so the load times were pretty obnoxious so if I could minimize run times by having better maps I went for it. I didn't spec into a Smiter paladin until I was ready to farm Uber Tristram for the paladin torch and then grind against DClone until I hit 99.

Did you target farm specific bosses for the other fairly important gear like boots/belt/gloves/helmet? And what was your MF like when going for the SOJ?

Also, how many times, if at all did you have to rely on your backup save due to deaths out of curiosity?

Edited by t-H-3_d-O-u-G
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33 minutes ago, t-H-3_d-O-u-G said:

Did you target farm specific bosses for the other fairly important gear like boots/belt/gloves/helmet? And what was your MF like when going for the SOJ?

Also, how many times, if at all did you have to rely on your backup save due to deaths out of curiosity?

 

I believe I got most of my gear when I was trying to farm an SoJ from the Chaos Sanctuary. The runeword bases weren't too bad to find anywhere in the game with the exception of a decent elite paladin shield. I think I only had to recover my backup maybe six or seven times. Only one was because of a death in which I'm guessing I was unlucky enough to not proc Life Tap and DClone killed me without me noticing. All the other recoveries were because I would accidentally load into normal mode instead of hell mode so I lost what I considered a near perfect stony field map and it was worth it for me to revert a few hours of progress to recover that map. 

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15 hours ago, NathanielJohn said:

Once they add /playersX to console (which has been confirmed), this time will go down even further, to about 251 hours (plus time needed for the preparation steps) instead of 380.

People, be aware that players command also adjusts the damage done by enemies and enemy pack size and such. 

 

As far as written down on the internet, /players 3 is good for starters. 

 

Also a "Call to arms" runeword weapon helps a lot.

 

On PS5 I would also disable the savegame synchronisation with the PS+ cloud because maybe it uploads a savegame where you lost your character or (in the case of Returnal, where a patch did break some savegames) uploads a not working savegame which overwrites a working one.

 

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6 hours ago, Geridian said:

As far as written down on the internet, /players 3 is good for starters. 

When doing this method with /playersX, you should only be using /players 3 or maybe even just /players 2 anyway. Higher values won't give you more XP, since there is an XP cap per enemy.

 

DClone XP on /players 1: 5539200

DClone XP on /players 2: 8308800

DClone XP on /players 3 (and higher): 8388608

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On 11/29/2021 at 7:24 PM, t-H-3_d-O-u-G said:

Did you target farm specific bosses for the other fairly important gear like boots/belt/gloves/helmet? And what was your MF like when going for the SOJ?

Also, how many times, if at all did you have to rely on your backup save due to deaths out of curiosity?

 

I just realized I never answered you about my mf when farming the SoJ. I want to say I had it around 700. I had a three socketed helm with 3x Ists (75%), the Enigma breast plate which gives mf based on character level (~91%), six socketed crystal sword with all Ists (180%), a four socketed paladin shield with all Ists (100%), Chance Guard gloves (~35%), Goldwrap belt (30%), two perfect mf Nagelrings (60%), some rare mf boots (~25%), and a Gheed's Fortune (~30%). This comes out to 626% so I might be off on some of the items with variable mf and I also had an assortment of mf charms in my inventory. In my offhand I had the HOTO + Spirit to hit the 75 FCR breakpoint and teleport faster to andy. 

 

I only used this gear when I was farming nm andy as it was exceedingly unlikely that she could kill me. I would not recommend this setup to farm anything in hell as it does nothing for your resistances and offers poor survivability. 

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Also, keep in mind that there are *massive* diminishing returns with MF when it comes to unique items like SoJ. Your first 150 points double your chances of getting an SoJ, and your next 550 points (if you go up to 700 MF like Vextens) don't even double it again.

 

Each unique ring that NM Andy drops has a 1/31 chance of being an SoJ. Period. MF has no effect on that, and there's nothing you can do to alter it.

 

With 0 MF, Andy has a 1/123 chance of dropping a unique ring, so NM Andy has a 1/3813 chance of dropping an SoJ.

With 150 MF, that increases to a 1/64 chance of dropping a unique ring, or a 1/1979 chance of dropping an SoJ.

With 300 MF, it increases to a 1/52 chance of dropping a unique ring, or a 1/1617 chance of dropping an SoJ.

With 700 MF, it increases to a 1/43 chance of dropping a unique ring, or a 1/1345 chance of dropping an SoJ.

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38 minutes ago, Geridian said:

@VextensHi, mind sharing your platinum and level 99 screenshots here? Would be awesome to have some evidence that you got the trophies 100% legit :)

 

I can do that. Do you know how I can share photos on this website? And is it also possible to share gameplay footage that I took? I have a clip of a DClone run that I took that would probably be worth posting just so folks can see what it looks like. 

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@VextensThank you very much for sharing the videos. Seeing Diablo having no chances against getting slammed by your Paladin and your merc killing trash mobs for your level 99 trophies was funny to look at ?. Diablo was not even dead and ping: Level 99 ?. Enigma teleport really was a key component for getting one run done fast.

 

Also thank you very much for understanding the reason why I was asking for screenshots.

Now I also feel a bit sorry. But the stupid save editor opens the way to far too many possibilities.

Clever people can manipulate savegames in a way nobody can detect, in all games they like.

==> So glad that this is not a thing on PS5 savegames, until the console is hacked.

 

You earned the first place! :platinum:

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7 hours ago, Rando-Calrisian- said:

@NathanielJohn and @Vextens how long did it take for SoJ to drop?

 

 

 

 

 

I had a bit of worse luck. I think it took maybe three solid days of farming NM Andy with 700 MF for my SoJ to drop and it was in the 30s or 40s for the amount of unique rings I got from her before it was an SoJ. RNG, am I right?

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14 hours ago, Geridian said:

@VextensThank you very much for sharing the videos. Seeing Diablo having no chances against getting slammed by your Paladin and your merc killing trash mobs for your level 99 trophies was funny to look at 1f602.png. Diablo was not even dead and ping: Level 99 1f600.png. Enigma teleport really was a key component for getting one run done fast.

 

Also thank you very much for understanding the reason why I was asking for screenshots.

Now I also feel a bit sorry. But the stupid save editor opens the way to far too many possibilities.

Clever people can manipulate savegames in a way nobody can detect, in all games they like.

==> So glad that this is not a thing on PS5 savegames, until the console is hacked.

 

You earned the first place! :platinum:

 

No worries. I totally understand. I would like to know what derbaeer's strategy was, though. With a Stone of Jordan trophy popped after getting the level 99 trophies, they clearly didn't farm DClone to get to level 99. May have farmed Ubers or just done Diablo, Nihlathak, or Baal runs but those just aren't as time efficient as DClone.

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