Boco: True Blizzard fanboys often willfully deny the existence of Hellfire ... it wasn't even made by Blizzard!
Booda: I think people would find it fun to watch because no one knows the best strategies, they are very dissimilar to your standard "playing Diablo" experience, and certainly some of them could be classified as ridiculous.
In response to your notes:
- Not always.
- Not necessarily, depending.
- Target character will always be too slow.
- For the purposes of leveling, as far as I know, optimal equipment requiring higher levels in the assisting character is better than a slower, lower level assisting character.
When is experience not multiplied by the number of players and when do you gain experience even when not around the monsters being killed? The only instance I can think of for the latter is the ancients, but by that time it doesn't matter.
The target character will probably be slower at killing monsters, but if he's getting 100% of the experience, it may require him to kill fewer of them. Depending on certain extremities, it could save time.
In 1.09, it took somewhere between 10-20 minutes to go through all the act bosses with a good rusher. There's a few more requirments in 1.10, but the real barrier here is the ancients. You can't complete the quest unless you're level 20, and you can't enter the Worldstone Keep without completing the quest. So I think getting the character up to level 20 in the shortest amount of time is the main goal.
Booda:
Incorrect, the Ancients experience is indeed multiplied by players in the game, however, it's still 0. The experience rewarded is not for killing the monsters but for completing a quest. My "not always" was referring to your claim that 8 people should be present in every game where something is killed.
I repeat, the target player is always slower, in all cases. There are no "extremities" [sic]. 0.1% of good experience is better than 100% of garbage.
10-20 minutes is way off, see a previous post.
Only because I changed the wording of the requirements, one set of Ancients is a barrier. (Before, none of the Ancients needed to be completed, hence I stipulated the character had to pass through DESTRUCTION'S END in Hell.) The "main goal" in this case is then figuring out the fastest way to get from 1 to 60 once you are in Hell.
Booda, a note concerning your edit. That is not why a level 24 character gets little experience from a Baal run, while a level 25 character gets tons. It's because the experience formula actually changes at level 25.
Prior to level 25, for monsters 10 levels or more higher than you (which is everything in a Baal run), you receive only 5% of the experience that has already been split proportionally among your group members according to level. That is, you will receive:
L = Your level
S = Sum of levels of group members present
1.35 is a party multiplier
Base EXP depends on the monster and number of players in the game
Actual EXP = 1.35 * L/S * 0.05 * Base EXP
After level 25, for any monster above your own level, the penalizing multiplier changes from 5% to your fraction of the monster's level. That is, you will receive:
L = Your level
S = Sum of levels of group members present
M = Monster's level
1.35 is a party multiplier
Base EXP depends on the monster and number of players in the game
Actual EXP = 1.35 * L/S * L/M * Base EXP
Even for Hell Baal (level 99) at level 25, L/M > 0.25 > 0.05. For most other monsters, L/M is even larger. Additionally, since L/S and L/M are constantly getting larger as you level, you experience very little of the diminishing returns intended by Blizzard until the mosters you are being leveled on become a lower level than you, or you hit 70, where the formula changes again.
Whatever. My point being to maximize the amount of experience gained in a minimal amount of time. I know characters in game, level and number of characters actually at the scene of the kill, and level of the monsters all apply to how much experience is gained. I'm also trying to come up with strategies so that the movie wouldn't just be a low level character standing around while a sorc casts Frozen Orb on everything.
No one has mentioned that you can use the command /players 8.... although I dont recall if that works on Bnet. I know it works in single player on Lan games, so that you can simulate 8 players with out needing 8 players in the game. While the monsters will take a little longer to kill with /players 8 on, you get a heck of a lot more xp. But then again, I dont know if this is the best stratagy....
Even if we were talking about a situation where /players n can be used, which we are not, it is rarely profitable to use it. It is only more efficient to increase the simulated number of players in a game if you are killing almost everything in 1 hit. This is because monster life scales by a factor of n while experience received scales by a factor of (n+1)/2.
Probably shouldn't clutter that bodycount thread with it.
I'd think that a run from very beginning to very end of Hell difficulty would be more interesting than otherwise, mainly because of ust how bad the cards get stacked then.
Also, with randomly generated (!) maps, you could make it so your path was a lot shorter than normal.
Sorceress's value would be in Static Field (because a third, or a quarter, or whatever it is this patch) of boss HP is a LOT more than any other damage, almost always.
Paladin can be fast with Charge and the Vigor aura.
If you used an older version, Amazon would be great with pierce/guided shot (N hits per fire, only have to manipulate pierce chance- doesn't check AC)
Again if you used an older patch, you could get rares with top-tier enchants.
Druids get crazy runspeed by something in the lycanthropy chain, I forget what.
Quests- Act I: none required except bosskill. Cain would be useful in IDing if you didn't have to backtrack to get to Tristram, and if ID scrolls weren't relatively common drops, so it looks like he'll stay in his gibbet. (And he'll be there in later chapters, he just charges a fee if you don't do quest)
Act II: have to get the cube to build the staff to get to boss. No way around.
Act III: Have to build the flail to smash the orb to get to boss, I think- though glitching down those stairs might be possible without, which would save several dungeon sidetrips.
Act IV: bosskill
Act V: just have to kill the Ancients to get into the end dungeon. Requires level 20/40/60 in each difficulty, iirc. Again, a nonrecent version would be handy due to gaining many levels on doing this- it's been capped much lower than normal exp gain.
edit: For planning and because the discussion had started anyway. I don't know if dosbox etc. work on it.
I don't think DOSBox will ever emulate a Windows game which uses DirectDraw to display the image. There's no way to emulate it so far, not even close to it.
And if anything, there are half a dozen uniques and a few runes that can be manipulated from almost every enemy, so you can do everything like 2x-3x faster from the get-go.
Sorceress and Assassin will be the fastest overall, as usual; the latter will actually be more interesting to watch overall.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Correct. Overall she requires a far more humble skill/item setup than barbarian, and is overall stronger on the offensive side (since defense is barely relevant in a TAS). Sorceress will likely always be faster, though, thanks to a combination of ranged attacks and Teleport.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
for a full run including hell, the sorceress will always win. nothing beats teleport. The assassin just gets Burst of Speed much quicker, making her a good choice for a run through normal mode.
When tool-assisted, the sorc can easily avoid almost any damage - just check where you're teleporting. Enough fast-cast and mana-gear can be manipulated to drop or be gambled.
Early patches included their own RNG, newer patches just use the operating systems RNG - so feel free to hack into that. Can even be used to make enemies miss all their physical attacks, and the sorc dealing maximum damage (lightning skills, anyone?)
There's still the problem of some required immune enemies on hell: council members, the three seal guardians inside the CS, the ancients and the waves before baal. Skilling TWO elements with lvl 40 will be difficult. Or getting enough potions/equip to make your merc kill the immunes.
Teleport's very mana-intensive unless you dump a lot of points into it, is the main drawback. (Same can be said of general sorceress action, even with a lot of Warmth- you'd have to practically drown in mana potions)
Burst of Speed can get you moving faster, and has combat benefits as well...and you can easily replenish health/mana with two charges of the Cobra Strike. *remembers fondly the days when the strikes were all on the same timer, so you could leisurely build up to eighteen charges for a crazy explosion strike*
Uniques wouldn't help much in the early stages, I think,simply because most of them weren't that good (exceptions: tarnhelm, chance guards, nagelring, goldwrap, or Lenymo's sash for sorc). Maybe an early set...some rune words also aren't shabby, though most require at least one mid-range rune.
Cows might be useful after each difficulty to gain items, with the side benefit of being exp-heavy.
you don't get the concept of "luck manipulation" yet, do you? ;) mana potions can drop whenever you need them, they can also be shopped. All the formulas are known and posted somewhere, it's just a matter of providing the correct "random" numbers.
oh, and there's an unassisted run, proving that teleporting is quite possible: http://speeddemosarchive.com/Diablo2LoD.html
>> exceptions: tarnhelm, chance guards, nagelring, goldwrap, or Lenymo's sash for sorc).
MF equip wouldn't even be needed. But who said uniques? rare and magic items with lots of mana and/or fc is what's needed. If you want skills, tarnhelm and ettlich are the way to go, along with a nice orb or 2h-staff.
>> Cows might be useful after each difficulty to gain items
lemma of luck manipulation: any enemy that CAN drop a useful item WILL drop a useful item. Go wherever your EXP is best. Then again, reaching 40 is all you'll need, so I doubt you'll do much exp-runs after level 20 - you'll reach lvl 25 as you go, from there to 40 is a matter of minutes.
technically, it's already feasible: pick wine (because it's source code is available), hook whatever calls you need (RNG, timing functions, glFinish() or similar) and you're set. The most difficult thing would be to implement a save-state function. Luckily, sound and video are used output-only, the only files that are written are character saves and meaningless logfiles, and there are no network connections. D2 itself is single-threaded, which is a big plus - no idea if wine uses threads internally, wineserver might be painful.
meh, I wish I had time...
While playing through Hell would probably be more interesting for people who have played the game before, I suspect it'd be less interesting for those who haven't (or haven't played past Normal, and I know plenty of people who've played D2 didn't bother with the harder difficulties). The big problem is that the game, when TASed, becomes a matter of luck manipulation and assassinations - you manipulate the map to be short and the monsters to drop what you need, and then you move at maximum speed to the monsters, kill them, grab the MacGuffin of the day, and move on. There's enough variety in surroundings that I think this would work OK for one difficulty, but I question it for three.
And yeah, that is rather annoying just because the Sorceress doesn't really have any trouble until Hell.
Why do you need level 20/40/60 for the Ancients? Do they refuse to talk to you if you're too short?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
You can visit them, you can talk to them, you can kill them. But even if you do, the quest won't be marked as done, and the door to WSK won't open. You also cannot take town portals into WSK until you passed the quest.
Long story short, you cannot bypass that restriction in single player. (unfortunately it's quite easy in the multiplayer modes).
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
The way, way more important reason assassin is useful for speed is that her traps can be dropped in a room, and she can continue without need stop for more then the fraction of a second it takes to cast the traps. This way she gets rooms full of experience, and hardly even needs to slow down to do it.
Also, cast speed does nothing for assassin (for traps at least) so the key for her will be getting high IAS weapons, as this affects the rate you drop traps. The unique flail comes to mind as a good choice because its 20% ias on an already vfast weapon (a total of -30 attack speed). Even better would be a katar of speed at low level, and then a blade talon with 30%-40% once higher level is reached (this would be -60 attack rate, should be the most possible). if perfect item manipulation can be achieved, one with +3 to traps and 40% ias on the base -20 weapon (blade talon or exceptional versions) is the ultimate weapon for a speed run.
Beyond this, all that would be needed to be manipulated to dop is run speed boots (fetlock, the set light plate boots is a good example) and +skills with low level requirements.
The biggest thing that would affect char choice that I really dont know for sure is if a staff/wand can be dropped the has charges of static field on it. If it can be, then finding one of these would take away the main reason to play sorc (staticing bosses down to 5% in a few casts, in normal difficulty). The other reason sorc is good is because of teleport, but enigma armor might be able to solve that problem, because it provides teleport to any class.
In a Tas setting, I would bet that assassin is the right call.
Funny that this comes up now, I was alt tabbed from playing diablo 2 when I read this, I was thinking about having a go at the SDA record for this game. The existing run is sloppy as hell, the maker of the run manages potions very badly.
I doubt Enigma would be feasible until near the end of the Hell run, whereas a Sorc gets Teleport partway through Normal.
Keep in mind that the Sorc has spells that deal damage over time (whatever the spell is that causes fire to spring up in her footsteps, for example). Not nearly as easy to use as traps, of course.
Also, don't forget about charms. You can get lots of faster run/walk out of charms. If a run were to be done through Hell difficulty, by the end you should be getting the kinds of speed that are normally only possible in modded games...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Funny that this comes up now, I was alt tabbed from playing diablo 2 when I read this, I was thinking about having a go at the SDA record for this game. The existing run is sloppy as hell, the maker of the run manages potions very badly.
Keep in mind that the current unofficial record is something around 1:20, and it wasn't submitted because its creator, suga, insisted it was further improvable (and was a test run in the first place, or something along those lines). I'd say you'd have to go under 1:15 to make an acceptable run at this point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Thanks for the heads up, this actually doesn't surprise me at all.
The only reason I was interested to try in the first place was that the published run looked like it could be improved by a wide margin. I guess this proves me right, but it makes the idea of improving 1:20 seem like a tall order. That time seems closer to what a record for this game should be.
Also, cast speed does nothing for assassin (for traps at least) so the key for her will be getting high IAS weapons, as this affects the rate you drop traps. The unique flail comes to mind as a good choice because its 20% ias on an already vfast weapon (a total of -30 attack speed).
that way of calculating attack speeds was outdated before assassins even existed. IAS calculation is a bit more complex. And anyway, damage > plant speed, so you'll want claws with skills. Two of them. Blade talons aren't slow anyway.
Then again, a sorc does have her share of fire&forget-spells: firewall, blizzard, both of them anything but weak. Also, the sorc can afford staying a while to kill enemies, she makes up for it when teleporting to the next group.
The earliest run-boots are Hsarus, level 3, 20%. Vidala's Fetlock is lvl 14, but would be an upgrade to 30%. Cow Kings Boots are 30% at level 13, but you won't have them by then. ;)
Static charges have never been possible. There are "cast static on strike" or "..on hit", which you could manipulate to fire off each time, the first one available is Hwanin's Refuge, level 30. (Actually, the whole cow king set, level 25, but you need to go out of your way to get it and it covers three slots with otherwise crappy items). Anyway, you won't get static until it's capped at 25%, and against bosses in singleplayer, crushing blow is equally effective - put Strength on your merc (lvl 25), manipulate to trigger 100% and down goes the boss. (actually, CB is halved against bosses, but your a2-mercs fast attack speeds make up for it).
Static is an advantage for sorcs on norm games and against multiple enemies (to weaken them before hitting), nothing more, nothing less.
Enigma is level 65, you should have killed Baal hell by then. There are teleport charges, but they're way too expensive to use. Also, the assassin's cast speed is quite slow, teleporting doesn't offer her much speed increase. (it's good to go through walls, but on a straight line, it's barely faster than running).
I love assassins, but in a full game TAS setting, they just don't win.
Edit: teleport-charges are possible on two-hand-staves, level 24. Up to 30 charges. You'd need to make a new staff drop each time they run out (and pick it up), +skill won't help you lower the mana costs, and the issue about slow casting speeds remains. I still doubt it.
oh, suga's test run is here: http://hosted.filefront.com/sugagaga/2258269 - watch it before defending the assassin ;)
Mana potions would be easy to get, maybe, but you still need to pick them up.
Tub wrote:
>> Cows might be useful after each difficulty to gain items
lemma of luck manipulation: any enemy that CAN drop a useful item WILL drop a useful item.
Cows have relatively good loottables. Not everything can drop everything.
Tub wrote:
Go wherever your EXP is best. Then again, reaching 40 is all you'll need, so I doubt you'll do much exp-runs after level 20 - you'll reach lvl 25 as you go, from there to 40 is a matter of minutes.
Why only forty? Hell Ancients (to get into the Worldstone Keep) required 60, I thought.[/quote]
As for the MF issue, it makes manipulating it easier. Not that that matters if you do the wine and hold the RNG in your iron-fisted coding, true...but static field/crushing blow/critical/deadly strike would be all desirable procs, should you be an assassin. (Probably right about the teleport though)
editx2: edit: looks like he made a large mistake- using low-resolution. You can see and therefore teleport a whole 25% farther = 25% faster motion. But we're not to where he uses Teleport yet. Nevermind, he was using high-res.
