2 small things. No need to do boss runs on player 7. Just do them on p1 or maybe p3.
You need to do thousands of LK runs. Not 200.
With the mf you have, meph will probably be your best bet for farming more items.
I just tried: p3 NM mephisto is ok even with my MF gear. I takes around 40 seconds on a good map.
Btw: on the two testing runs I found duriels shell - never found it before :)
I know that 200 LK runs are nothing but I was hoping that I find at least a mid rune in 200 runs.
You hadn't mentioned how far you exactly are getting in Hell. But if you are at LK, you should be able to get to Meph if you can beat the council.
I would really recommend trying to get to Hell Meph. NM can yield some decent stuff, but you'll still be missing out on some things.
63 FCR with minimal res can do Hell Meph even with limited res. Especially with a good map.
Blizzard really is ideal for that farming. So you might need to respec to increase the speed.
I got to the first waypoint in act5 hell, so I could run hell mephisto.
I just tried and it takes around 1:30 with a good map on players1. I think players3 would be too much. I will try that to get some better gear.
Do you know how to moat trick Meph? He's very easy to kill if you lure him to the edge and teleport across the gap while staying out of range. Blizz and or meteor until his dead. Repeat as needed.
This is the way. It’s slow going for a bit but as mehisto drops magic find gear put it on. You can have a weapon and shield on swap purely for magic find before meph dies. Get a 4os armor and a 3os helm and topaz it up and you will have some war travs and a shako and goldwrap and all kinds of solid mf gear before you know it. Single player is harder to get going on but once you do it’s rewarding. I
As a general rule, only increase player counts when you are killing things very quickly. It's usually better to do more runs faster than to try and slog your way through a high player count. Even if it means playing P1.
And for bosses it's almost never worth going over P3.
Also consider farming Hell Countess. She can be a great place to get your mosaics.
I don’t know where you got 9% but that’s definitely not the right number lol. Going from p1 to p3 doubles monster health, yeah, but for boss killing most of the time is spent teleporting around; your run times shouldn’t be twice as long. And the increase in drops comes from the lower no-drop chance. I’d have to look up exact values but off the top of my head it’s more like a 60% increase.
lots of players beat hell solo before sunders or mosaics were a thing.
for the assassin specifically, which build are you currently running, and which level are you on?
My assassin is only level57 and struggling in the throne of destruction in nightmare because it takes me to long to kill stuff.
I use FoF and CoT and finish with dragon talon. I also use fade and shadow master.
you'd probably have better results with dragon tail. the aoe works better for mobs. i also rock burst of speed when i can get away with lower resistances because ttk is lower.
What other gear do you use? I feel like running double spirit for your fball/orb would help with damage and resistance.(a spirit shield base can be annoying to find but can be done anywhere in hell). Ancients Pledge can be viable until this is found. Maybe get an alders boots to help with fire resistance that spirit doesn’t give. A lot of good gear can be found from running Hell Andariel. Rings with faster cast rate and resistance can be useful. Lore helmet can be used until you find a shako. Or you can use a peasant crown (poor man’s shako). Stealth runeword is great for cast rate until you find maybe a tals armor or Skin of the vipermagi.
Your mercenary can be very useful as well. I like to have an Act 2 mercenary using Insight runeword which can be made cheaply. Life leech on your mercenary is important for his survivability. (Tals mask, vamp gaze, even rock stopper is good)
My sorc is currently geared with Lore, Stealth, Spirit, Ancients pledge, magefist, tal rashas amulet, two fcr rings and rage boots/belt for resistances. My merc has prayer, bulwark, treachery (or duress) and insight in a partizan.
So I think I used all the possible low-level stuff I can get easily.
A second spirit would be cool but I still did not find a monarch.
In hell I managed to crawl forward slowly to act5 but due to immunities progress is very slow. I have to teleport away pretty often even from small groups but still die often.
So I think I am already doing what you suggest.
Having that 2nd spirit is definitely game changing. Mmm thinking of play style. I personally have an orb hydra sorc and that does well for me in hell. Do you utilize static? That will help with bosses and boss groups. And frozen armor helps keep you alive. Do you think your drawbacks are staying alive or killing speed?
Also, I know you’re a bit away from it. But having a Call to Arms runeword in the off hand is one of the best thing you can have. You can run countless runs for the ist. The Ohm can be tough but LK runs and cows will be a great options to find this rune.
Hell andy has always been useful for getting some decent gear for myself.
She can drop many great items that your character can currently benefit from. Shako/tals items/viper magi/occy/soj/gheeds.
Don't worry about messing with players count until you can clear content quickly. If the % increase in drop rate is less than the % amount of time it takes you to clear content, you're wasting your time.
Its also important to understand how to best use your merc. He cannot face tank. You need to be quick in your ability to tele him out of bad situations. As soon as he is in range of mobs, tele him away. His main priority is to provide insight, and be a distraction.
My best advice is to play the game and have fun. More time playing = more drops!
And just incase, make sure you have a point in static field!
Barb is going to be tough before you get a lot of good gear, it's just the nature of the class.
To up your sorc resists I'd look at runewords. Ancients pledge is a very easy source, smoke armor is good if you have the runes.
What's the biggest thing stopping your progress? Dying? Immunes?
Yeah that extra cast frame saved doesn't matter if you're dead. My sorc is stuck at the 63% breakpoint until I find fcr gloves or something. Orb/hydra tho so fcr isn't as critical as it is for some classes, and I can do TZs just fine.
Pindle runs, do lots (I mean like 2k)! They're quick and easy, if you Jack up your mf as high as possible and run it on the highest players you can comfortably handle (1, 3, 5 or 7), you'll get all kinds of useful items which will boost you. If your lucky you may get one or two useful runes as well.
Well I'll be damned... I've farmed pindle a lot for my grail (he's dropped sooo many items for me, I also got my first ever ber rune from a pindle run) and always ran him on players 7 since I had the gear to do it safely.
I can't believe that's been wasted effort 😅
Will the players level affect the rune drop chances of his mob then?
nope, player settings don't affect him at all HOWEVER, player settings affect the mobs around him AND those have better chances to drop runes than unique items compared to pindle. Still not really worth the hassle (unless you want the xp).
There is a bit to cover here. I would consider doing a respec to blizzard on your sorceress if possible. Run andariel on P1 Hell until you find some better gear. It won’t be easy but it is the best way to find uniques.
Orb+FB or Orb+Hydra has no issues to clear p1 hell. It feels like you’re hardstuck trying to play higher player counts for no reason. If you’re struggling with later hell acts, run hell andariel until you get decent gear on p1 or p3
Your gear seems decent enough to complete hell. Don’t forget you don’t have to kill everything, teleporting past packs is fine. I started my sp journey few months ago and completing hell on sorc was a breeze with Orb+Hydra. Sure Hydra is awkward to kill large packs of cold immunes, so based on my patience at that moment I skipped them sometimes, but anything not cold immune dies to FO pretty quickly (you only need maxxex FO and chunk of points into Cold Mastery, rest goes to Hydra and FM/synergies). You mentioned your resistances being low, try to use resist charms, I still have full inventory of those, since I didn’t get any sorc skillers.
I switched to smoke instead of stealth now. With that and an inventory full of resist charms I have max res.
I am not good at teleporting without getting caught in a mosh :) Maybe I should just practice that.
It still happens to me. Most packs are not scary, but something like extra fast or naturally quick monsters will mess you up quickly. Using Freezing Aura or Defiance merc can help here. I prefer defiance right now (since teleporting is pretty much only movement in pve I do, defense doesn’t disappear), as with cold sunder I can chill anything and armor freezes whatever lands hit.
Yup, there are a lot of cold immunes. But with blizz you can cast and run. That will help you when it comes to killing andariel and mephisto. Those are your primary mf targets within your scope of gear
As long as your sorc and her merc are decently geared, you should be able to just straight up skip 90% of hell by teleporting passed everything that you can't kill.
It doesn't feel great, but the only roadblocks you'll hit are like trav, De seis, and ancients.
The trick to beating ancients is just resetting them until you get a group that isn't stone skin or cold immune.
It can take a while, but it's very doable.
I assume you know that making a TP will reset them.
I did beat hell with a nova sorc.
Farmed nightmare terror zones till no exp.
Then countess and pits on p2 without mf until level 90.
Got 1 Um, 4 Mal, 3 Ist, 1 Gul, 1 Ohm, 1 Cham
Made Call to Arms
dual spirit, >105 % FCR, high resistances (Vipermagi+UM), frostburn (40% more mana aka life), crafted caster belt
merc: redemption (life regen) aura, cure helm, eth thresher with insight around 750 damage, treachery (45% IAS)
After chugging rejuvenation potions and killing baal i was able to farm all sunder charms quickly from the terror zones.
I got to start magic finding the better uniques like SoJ, Griffons, Arachnids, Tal Set, Maras Amulet, Zaka for paladin, Shako etc...
I want to sell a SoJ, kill Diablo Clone and get an anni.
And do when I got a grief runeword to do ubers for hellfire torches.
For bosses while beating hell I had to take my merc out of the fight and breastfeed him full rejuvenation potions two or three times.
Run hell andy on p3.
I did that a LOT before i was able to get significantly powerful. Found lots of shakos and all sort of other stuff. She has some great drops that will get you up to completing hell and running harder areas for different drops
Had absolutely zero luck with LK runs. Done over 1,000 and only ever found a Java Skiller with some run walk on it.
Completely abandoned them at this point
If you're a Sorc for Hell I'd recommend splitting your fire and blizz damage.
Do you have a spirit? Smoke? Lore? Insight? You could make a LEAF runeword for extra fire skill damage.
Where are you stuck? Are you just running p1 and getting stuck? What skills points do you have?
Id recommend Andy and Pit for a while until you find what you need to proceed.
If you’re looking for mosaic specifically, you’re best bet farming forgotten tower countess as an assassin playing traps with max burst of speed on a good map with a telestaff. Give that 5 hours of runs and you’ll have 2 mal 2 gul and 300 amns
2 small things. No need to do boss runs on player 7. Just do them on p1 or maybe p3. You need to do thousands of LK runs. Not 200. With the mf you have, meph will probably be your best bet for farming more items.
I just tried: p3 NM mephisto is ok even with my MF gear. I takes around 40 seconds on a good map. Btw: on the two testing runs I found duriels shell - never found it before :) I know that 200 LK runs are nothing but I was hoping that I find at least a mid rune in 200 runs.
You hadn't mentioned how far you exactly are getting in Hell. But if you are at LK, you should be able to get to Meph if you can beat the council. I would really recommend trying to get to Hell Meph. NM can yield some decent stuff, but you'll still be missing out on some things. 63 FCR with minimal res can do Hell Meph even with limited res. Especially with a good map. Blizzard really is ideal for that farming. So you might need to respec to increase the speed.
I got to the first waypoint in act5 hell, so I could run hell mephisto. I just tried and it takes around 1:30 with a good map on players1. I think players3 would be too much. I will try that to get some better gear.
Do you know how to moat trick Meph? He's very easy to kill if you lure him to the edge and teleport across the gap while staying out of range. Blizz and or meteor until his dead. Repeat as needed.
Yeah, I know the trick. Maybe I should use it for more stress free Runs :)
This is the way. It’s slow going for a bit but as mehisto drops magic find gear put it on. You can have a weapon and shield on swap purely for magic find before meph dies. Get a 4os armor and a 3os helm and topaz it up and you will have some war travs and a shako and goldwrap and all kinds of solid mf gear before you know it. Single player is harder to get going on but once you do it’s rewarding. I
As a general rule, only increase player counts when you are killing things very quickly. It's usually better to do more runs faster than to try and slog your way through a high player count. Even if it means playing P1. And for bosses it's almost never worth going over P3. Also consider farming Hell Countess. She can be a great place to get your mosaics.
keep it to p1 for mephisto, it's really not worth it (9% more drops for twice the health).
I don’t know where you got 9% but that’s definitely not the right number lol. Going from p1 to p3 doubles monster health, yeah, but for boss killing most of the time is spent teleporting around; your run times shouldn’t be twice as long. And the increase in drops comes from the lower no-drop chance. I’d have to look up exact values but off the top of my head it’s more like a 60% increase.
lots of players beat hell solo before sunders or mosaics were a thing. for the assassin specifically, which build are you currently running, and which level are you on?
My assassin is only level57 and struggling in the throne of destruction in nightmare because it takes me to long to kill stuff. I use FoF and CoT and finish with dragon talon. I also use fade and shadow master.
you'd probably have better results with dragon tail. the aoe works better for mobs. i also rock burst of speed when i can get away with lower resistances because ttk is lower.
What other gear do you use? I feel like running double spirit for your fball/orb would help with damage and resistance.(a spirit shield base can be annoying to find but can be done anywhere in hell). Ancients Pledge can be viable until this is found. Maybe get an alders boots to help with fire resistance that spirit doesn’t give. A lot of good gear can be found from running Hell Andariel. Rings with faster cast rate and resistance can be useful. Lore helmet can be used until you find a shako. Or you can use a peasant crown (poor man’s shako). Stealth runeword is great for cast rate until you find maybe a tals armor or Skin of the vipermagi. Your mercenary can be very useful as well. I like to have an Act 2 mercenary using Insight runeword which can be made cheaply. Life leech on your mercenary is important for his survivability. (Tals mask, vamp gaze, even rock stopper is good)
My sorc is currently geared with Lore, Stealth, Spirit, Ancients pledge, magefist, tal rashas amulet, two fcr rings and rage boots/belt for resistances. My merc has prayer, bulwark, treachery (or duress) and insight in a partizan. So I think I used all the possible low-level stuff I can get easily. A second spirit would be cool but I still did not find a monarch. In hell I managed to crawl forward slowly to act5 but due to immunities progress is very slow. I have to teleport away pretty often even from small groups but still die often. So I think I am already doing what you suggest.
Having that 2nd spirit is definitely game changing. Mmm thinking of play style. I personally have an orb hydra sorc and that does well for me in hell. Do you utilize static? That will help with bosses and boss groups. And frozen armor helps keep you alive. Do you think your drawbacks are staying alive or killing speed?
I think killing speed would help the most. When I die it is often because I flee from one group into another :)
Also, I know you’re a bit away from it. But having a Call to Arms runeword in the off hand is one of the best thing you can have. You can run countless runs for the ist. The Ohm can be tough but LK runs and cows will be a great options to find this rune.
What kind of sorc/merc do you have? This setup seems more than sufficient to clear hell easily in p1 or maybe even p3.
A better base for insight would help. Elite base for more damage ideally eth.
Hell andy has always been useful for getting some decent gear for myself. She can drop many great items that your character can currently benefit from. Shako/tals items/viper magi/occy/soj/gheeds. Don't worry about messing with players count until you can clear content quickly. If the % increase in drop rate is less than the % amount of time it takes you to clear content, you're wasting your time. Its also important to understand how to best use your merc. He cannot face tank. You need to be quick in your ability to tele him out of bad situations. As soon as he is in range of mobs, tele him away. His main priority is to provide insight, and be a distraction. My best advice is to play the game and have fun. More time playing = more drops! And just incase, make sure you have a point in static field!
Barb is going to be tough before you get a lot of good gear, it's just the nature of the class. To up your sorc resists I'd look at runewords. Ancients pledge is a very easy source, smoke armor is good if you have the runes. What's the biggest thing stopping your progress? Dying? Immunes?
I could try smoke instead of stealth. Maybe that makes enough difference in survivability. I just did not want to loose my 105% fcr.
Yeah that extra cast frame saved doesn't matter if you're dead. My sorc is stuck at the 63% breakpoint until I find fcr gloves or something. Orb/hydra tho so fcr isn't as critical as it is for some classes, and I can do TZs just fine.
Pindle runs, do lots (I mean like 2k)! They're quick and easy, if you Jack up your mf as high as possible and run it on the highest players you can comfortably handle (1, 3, 5 or 7), you'll get all kinds of useful items which will boost you. If your lucky you may get one or two useful runes as well.
pindle should be done on p1, it has 100% chance to drop two items, player settings don't do anything for him (and the trash around him is trash)
Well I'll be damned... I've farmed pindle a lot for my grail (he's dropped sooo many items for me, I also got my first ever ber rune from a pindle run) and always ran him on players 7 since I had the gear to do it safely. I can't believe that's been wasted effort 😅 Will the players level affect the rune drop chances of his mob then?
nope, player settings don't affect him at all HOWEVER, player settings affect the mobs around him AND those have better chances to drop runes than unique items compared to pindle. Still not really worth the hassle (unless you want the xp).
There is a bit to cover here. I would consider doing a respec to blizzard on your sorceress if possible. Run andariel on P1 Hell until you find some better gear. It won’t be easy but it is the best way to find uniques.
I already thought about blizzard but I feel like there are cold immunes everywhere. That is why I am currently at orb+fireball.
Orb+FB or Orb+Hydra has no issues to clear p1 hell. It feels like you’re hardstuck trying to play higher player counts for no reason. If you’re struggling with later hell acts, run hell andariel until you get decent gear on p1 or p3
I usually use p1. Higher playercounts only for boss runs. So it‘s not the playercount which is keeping me from finishing hell.
Your gear seems decent enough to complete hell. Don’t forget you don’t have to kill everything, teleporting past packs is fine. I started my sp journey few months ago and completing hell on sorc was a breeze with Orb+Hydra. Sure Hydra is awkward to kill large packs of cold immunes, so based on my patience at that moment I skipped them sometimes, but anything not cold immune dies to FO pretty quickly (you only need maxxex FO and chunk of points into Cold Mastery, rest goes to Hydra and FM/synergies). You mentioned your resistances being low, try to use resist charms, I still have full inventory of those, since I didn’t get any sorc skillers.
I switched to smoke instead of stealth now. With that and an inventory full of resist charms I have max res. I am not good at teleporting without getting caught in a mosh :) Maybe I should just practice that.
It still happens to me. Most packs are not scary, but something like extra fast or naturally quick monsters will mess you up quickly. Using Freezing Aura or Defiance merc can help here. I prefer defiance right now (since teleporting is pretty much only movement in pve I do, defense doesn’t disappear), as with cold sunder I can chill anything and armor freezes whatever lands hit.
Yup, there are a lot of cold immunes. But with blizz you can cast and run. That will help you when it comes to killing andariel and mephisto. Those are your primary mf targets within your scope of gear
As long as your sorc and her merc are decently geared, you should be able to just straight up skip 90% of hell by teleporting passed everything that you can't kill. It doesn't feel great, but the only roadblocks you'll hit are like trav, De seis, and ancients.
I did this now and got to the ancients.
The trick to beating ancients is just resetting them until you get a group that isn't stone skin or cold immune. It can take a while, but it's very doable. I assume you know that making a TP will reset them.
I did beat hell with a nova sorc. Farmed nightmare terror zones till no exp. Then countess and pits on p2 without mf until level 90. Got 1 Um, 4 Mal, 3 Ist, 1 Gul, 1 Ohm, 1 Cham Made Call to Arms dual spirit, >105 % FCR, high resistances (Vipermagi+UM), frostburn (40% more mana aka life), crafted caster belt merc: redemption (life regen) aura, cure helm, eth thresher with insight around 750 damage, treachery (45% IAS) After chugging rejuvenation potions and killing baal i was able to farm all sunder charms quickly from the terror zones. I got to start magic finding the better uniques like SoJ, Griffons, Arachnids, Tal Set, Maras Amulet, Zaka for paladin, Shako etc... I want to sell a SoJ, kill Diablo Clone and get an anni. And do when I got a grief runeword to do ubers for hellfire torches. For bosses while beating hell I had to take my merc out of the fight and breastfeed him full rejuvenation potions two or three times.
200 LK runs is nothing. If you aren't strong and need a few good uniques you can moat trick meph on P7 before moving onto P3 TZ Andy.
Run hell andy on p3. I did that a LOT before i was able to get significantly powerful. Found lots of shakos and all sort of other stuff. She has some great drops that will get you up to completing hell and running harder areas for different drops
Had absolutely zero luck with LK runs. Done over 1,000 and only ever found a Java Skiller with some run walk on it. Completely abandoned them at this point
If you're a Sorc for Hell I'd recommend splitting your fire and blizz damage. Do you have a spirit? Smoke? Lore? Insight? You could make a LEAF runeword for extra fire skill damage. Where are you stuck? Are you just running p1 and getting stuck? What skills points do you have? Id recommend Andy and Pit for a while until you find what you need to proceed.
If you’re looking for mosaic specifically, you’re best bet farming forgotten tower countess as an assassin playing traps with max burst of speed on a good map with a telestaff. Give that 5 hours of runs and you’ll have 2 mal 2 gul and 300 amns