Diablo 2 LoD: 100% 8-player-teamrun planning thread

Edit history:

FraGFroG: 2009-11-28 04:21:08 pm

2009-11-27 09:39:36 am

Oh, that's a good idea gia! I just found this site here via google, where you can find some good sp-sorcs (including some with cheated items): http://www.myinterests.com/?page_id=15
I would recommend you get pyro-armageden... but don't look at her items as that might crash the game (as was the case with me) just blatant uber-items the game can't handle...

Beenman500

2009-11-27 10:05:08 am

Joke of all trades

when you split off and do seperate leveling in act 1, as the paladin is gonna be travining faster (due to charge) after level 12, are you just gonna send him and tha assasin of to find stuff while the sorcs get to level 18 in act 2, because at any given point one would want the fastest moving characters(for the most part sorcs) to be searching for stuff while the others level?

FraGFroG

Edit history:

FraGFroG: 2009-11-27 06:17:41 pm

2009-11-27 04:24:12 pm

Quote from zoonel:

I dont have D2 installed anymore so i cant help, but i'm wondering : the countess towers offers perhaps some good boss pack but you must find them and without teleport it sucks.

You don't have to find them. Countess norm consists of 1 main-way (to the next level) and a side-way or just some some side-rooms in almost all of the cases, so your 2-player-team can split up to find the boss on every level VERY fast. And the Levels on norm are really small (0,1-0,2 minimap-size).

Quote from zoonel:

-> check the council in travincal if you can get there at lvl 20 or so, should take less then 30 sec or so and it gives huge xp
Now there may be faster area for only 1 person or 2 person teams but if an area is good for 8 ppl it must be good for 2 if they can kill as fast. I've never see a better levelling place to reach 25 without a higher character helping.

Travincal is worth clearing from Level 22 on. But it's not the only good area around for leveling (simultaneous temple-runs come to my mind).

Quote from zoonel:

Later maybe instead of baalruns (actually it should be called minions runs) you can split your party in half and do ballrun+sanctuary runs (sanctuary runs = kill the 3 sealed boss packs). those are preferred for a reason, you dont have to walk to find bosses, you just need to get there and then kill.

Once we reached Baal, we should just all together focus on him, because CS-runs can't compete at all with the xp at a Baalrun. The difference in XP is almost 10 to 1 (I've calculated that through before we started the 2-player-run). Also Baal should be killed at any Baalrun in norm too, because he alone give you approx. 1/6th of the XP of the whole run, and he dies really fast with mass-static from 4 sorcs in normal + you get some really nice ilvl 60 drops...

Quote from Beenman500:

when you split off and do seperate leveling in act 1, as the paladin is gonna be travining faster (due to charge) after level 12, are you just gonna send him and tha assasin of to find stuff while the sorcs get to level 18 in act 2, because at any given point one would want the fastest moving characters(for the most part sorcs) to be searching for stuff while the others level?

I don't think this will be necessary (static + finisher-tactic for all 4 teams to be able to level up while running is more important) because of that Level-25-mountain, that we have to climb up anyway, sooner or later... but we'll see how fast leveling goes and can adapt then, if necessary.

Quote from bimanc:

I read the strategy, but, imho, the leveling is much faster than in a 1-2 player game, so you probably don't need to have 2-3 boss packs on every main area.
[...]
Why was my post discouraging? I said you can probably progress easier than you think. Does that make you discouraged?

Just a small addition to what we discussed earlier to clear things up. There is no such thing, as "too much bosses or xp" before the whole team haven't reached level 60 (at least not with our strategy of at least 1-2 teams always proceeding forward while the other teams simultaneously have to level up in the best avaliable areas). So that is the reason, why I said your post is discouraging for the team, because basically what it means is, that we shouldn't optimize in the early game, and the leveling teams can just somehow "chill out" there... And sorry, but for a perfectionist like me, that's just a red rag...

[quote="zoonel"]
I dont have D2 installed anymore so i cant help, but i'm wondering : the countess towers offers perhaps some good boss pack but you must find them and without teleport it sucks.[/quote]
You don't have to find them. Countess norm consists of 1 main-way (to the next level) and a side-way or just some some side-rooms in almost all of the cases, so your 2-player-team can split up to find the boss on every level VERY fast. And the Levels on norm are really small (0,1-0,2 minimap-size).

[quote="zoonel"]
-> check the council in travincal if you can get there at lvl 20 or so, should take less then 30 sec or so and it gives huge xp
Now there may be faster area for only 1 person or 2 person teams but if an area is good for 8 ppl it must be good for 2 if they can kill as fast. I've never see a better levelling place to reach 25 without a higher character helping.[/quote]
Travincal is worth clearing from Level 22 on. But it's not the only good area around for leveling (simultaneous temple-runs come to my mind).

[quote="zoonel"]
Later maybe instead of baalruns (actually it should be called minions runs) you can split your party in half and do ballrun+sanctuary runs (sanctuary runs = kill the 3 sealed boss packs). those are preferred for a reason, you dont have to walk to find bosses, you just need to get there and then kill.[/quote]
Once we reached Baal, we should just all together focus on him, because CS-runs can't compete at all with the xp at a Baalrun. The difference in XP is almost 10 to 1 (I've calculated that through before we started the 2-player-run). Also Baal should be killed at any Baalrun in norm too, because he alone give you approx. 1/6th of the XP of the whole run, and he dies really fast with mass-static from 4 sorcs in normal + you get some really nice ilvl 60 drops...

[quote="Beenman500"]
when you split off and do seperate leveling in act 1, as the paladin is gonna be travining faster (due to charge) after level 12, are you just gonna send him and tha assasin of to find stuff while the sorcs get to level 18 in act 2, because at any given point one would want the fastest moving characters(for the most part sorcs) to be searching for stuff while the others level?
[/quote]
I don't think this will be necessary (static + finisher-tactic for all 4 teams to be able to level up while running is more important) because of that Level-25-mountain, that we have to climb up anyway, sooner or later... but we'll see how fast leveling goes and can adapt then, if necessary.

[quote="bimanc"]
I read the strategy, but, imho, the leveling is much faster than in a 1-2 player game, so you probably don't need to have 2-3 boss packs on every main area.
[...]
Why was my post discouraging? I said you can probably progress easier than you think. Does that make you discouraged? 
[/quote]
Just a small addition to what we discussed earlier to clear things up. There is no such thing, as "too much bosses or xp" before the whole team haven't reached level 60 (at least not with our strategy of at least 1-2 teams always proceeding forward while the other teams simultaneously have to level up in the best avaliable areas). So that is the reason, why I said your post is discouraging for the team, because basically what it means is, that we shouldn't optimize in the early game, and the leveling teams can just somehow "chill out" there... And sorry, but for a perfectionist like me, that's just a red rag...

mithical87

2009-11-27 08:29:03 pm

Freelance slacker

Quote from FraGFroG:

XP for one bossgroup = 1 (stands for any 100 % XP of 1 monster in a sologame) * 4,5 (8-player-bonus) * 1,35 (2-player-party-bonus) * 5 (boss/minion-xp-bonus) * 6 (avg. number of monsters per bossgroup) = 182,25 / 2 (divided by 2 because of 2 players) = 91,125! So if you kill one bossgroup, it's equivalent to having killed more than 91 monsters of that type in a sologame in just that time! If you take then a countess-run for example, where you relatively easily can get six bosses in just one run, the xp you get there is equivalent to having killed 91,125 * 6 = 546,75 monsters in just approximately 3 minutes (with static + good finisher in 8-player). That is equivalent to a rate of more than 3 monsterkills/second for 3 minutes long, which is impossible to reach with any other strategy then that, because just the time for searching 547 monster alone would probably take longer than 3 minutes (just try it out if you don't believe me, more than half a thousand monsters in 3 minutes is a gigantic mass to find, even in multiple cowlevel-runs!), let alone also the time for killing all of them while you try to find such a big mass!

While I agree that boss packs will probably be the best way to gain levels, just thought I'd point some things out.
- You'd be getting the 8-player-bonus and 2-player-party-bonus regardless of what you'd be killing, so it would be 180 monsters in 3 minutes. (Still good)
- Do minions really give as much XP as the unique monster? x5 on all of them? Is it x5? (Arreat Summit didn't have any info on this)

Also, when Bimanc said "And finally, you really need to power level that much in an 8-player run?", I think what Bimanc was getting at is if the characters will hit level 60 without taking detours for experience, it may be faster to skip them. In general, when speedrunning any game that requires you to gain experience, it is usually faster to focus on spending less time farming XP. Spending too much time on dedicated leveling is thought of as a common pitfall. It's a question of time saved by having higher levels and items vs time lost deviating from the shortest route and in most games, it is not worth it. I don't think that is the case with this run since you guys will often have only some members farming experience while others are progressing through the acts (cutting down on time lost), but all Bimanc was doing was raising the (valid) question.

Anyway, some thoughts on the actual run. It will be tricky to save as much time as possible with the hellforge quest. Whoever is in the party at the time when the soulstone is smashed gets credit for the quest, but there is only one set of gems. This means you'll have to do multiple runs, which means you'll have to have different parties heading to the forge each segment while the rest of the crew makes their way through Act 5/power levels/whatever, otherwise you'll be losing time.

It's good that you don't have to finish all the act quests before moving to the next act. This allows you to do things like have half the party go back and mop up blood raven/radament/gidbinn/lam esens/izual/forge/etc while the other half does a baal run.

Good luck on this noble endeavor!

[quote="FraGFroG"]XP for one bossgroup = 1 (stands for any 100 % XP of 1 monster in a sologame) * 4,5 (8-player-bonus) * 1,35 (2-player-party-bonus) * 5 (boss/minion-xp-bonus) * 6 (avg. number of monsters per bossgroup) = 182,25 / 2 (divided by 2 because of 2 players) = 91,125! So if you kill one bossgroup, it's equivalent to having killed more than 91 monsters of that type in a sologame in just that time! If you take then a countess-run for example, where you relatively easily can get six bosses in just one run, the xp you get there is equivalent to having killed 91,125 * 6 = 546,75 monsters in just approximately 3 minutes (with static + good finisher in 8-player). That is equivalent to a rate of more than 3 monsterkills/second for 3 minutes long, which is impossible to reach with any other strategy then that, because just the time for searching 547 monster alone would probably take longer than 3 minutes (just try it out if you don't believe me, more than half a thousand monsters in 3 minutes is a gigantic mass to find, even in multiple cowlevel-runs!), let alone also the time for killing all of them while you try to find such a big mass![/quote]

While I agree that boss packs will probably be the best way to gain levels, just thought I'd point some things out. 
- You'd be getting the 8-player-bonus and 2-player-party-bonus regardless of what you'd be killing, so it would be 180 monsters in 3 minutes. (Still good)
- Do minions really give as much XP as the unique monster? x5 on all of them? Is it x5? (Arreat Summit didn't have any info on this)

Also, when Bimanc said "And finally, you really need to power level that much in an 8-player run?", I think what Bimanc was getting at is if the characters will hit level 60 [i]without[/i] taking detours for experience, it may be faster to skip them. In general, when speedrunning any game that requires you to gain experience, it is usually faster to focus on spending less time farming XP. Spending too much time on dedicated leveling is thought of as a common pitfall. It's a question of time saved by having higher levels and items vs time lost deviating from the shortest route and in most games, it is not worth it. I don't think that is the case with this run since you guys will often have only some members farming experience while others are progressing through the acts (cutting down on time lost), but all Bimanc was doing was raising the (valid) question.

Anyway, some thoughts on the actual run. It will be tricky to save as much time as possible with the hellforge quest. Whoever is in the party at the time when the soulstone is smashed gets credit for the quest, but there is only one set of gems. This means you'll have to do multiple runs, which means you'll have to have different parties heading to the forge each segment while the rest of the crew makes their way through Act 5/power levels/whatever, otherwise you'll be losing time.

It's good that you don't have to finish all the act quests before moving to the next act. This allows you to do things like have half the party go back and mop up blood raven/radament/gidbinn/lam esens/izual/forge/etc while the other half does a baal run.

Good luck on this noble endeavor!

mfb

2009-11-28 10:20:02 am

The factor of 5 is right for bosses and its minions. Source, second table (german: Diener=Minion, spezielles Monster=special monster (boss), Erfahrungspunkte=experience points)

Gems are no problem at the hellforge, with more players completing the quest, it will drop more gems. The problem is that it drops only one rune per game, and we need to manipulate more. The player completing the quest leaves the party, so only he will get it.
We can split teleporting in act 5 in several parts, each with one hellforgequest in it (+1 quest parallel to the CS). The remaining quests are done together with baalruns.

Blood raven can be combined with one cowrun, the other quests can be completed earlier and help to become level 25.

We want to spend as few time as possible at pure leveling (the trist-run with ~1:10 hurts... but I think it is necessary), but we only need one or two chars to get new waypoints, so we have much time for power-leveling.

The factor of 5 is right for bosses and its minions. [url=http://d2wissen.d2chars.de/monster/110/monster-x.html]Source[/url], second table (german: Diener=Minion, spezielles Monster=special monster (boss), Erfahrungspunkte=experience points)

Gems are no problem at the hellforge, with more players completing the quest, it will drop more gems. The problem is that it drops only one rune per game, and we need to manipulate more. The player completing the quest leaves the party, so only he will get it.
We can split teleporting in act 5 in several parts, each with one hellforgequest in it (+1 quest parallel to the CS). The remaining quests are done together with baalruns.

Blood raven can be combined with one cowrun, the other quests can be completed earlier and help to become level 25.

We want to spend as few time as possible at pure leveling (the trist-run with ~1:10 hurts... but I think it is necessary), but we only need one or two chars to get new waypoints, so we have much time for power-leveling.

Zurreco

2009-11-28 10:33:05 am

Just call me the cynicism machine

Quote from mfb:

Blood raven can be combined with one cowrun, the other quests can be completed earlier and help to become level 25.

If this is being submitted to SDA, Blood Raven needs to be killed before you move to Act 2.

Beenman500

2009-11-28 11:06:41 am

Joke of all trades

Quote from Zurreco:

Quote from mfb:

Blood raven can be combined with one cowrun, the other quests can be completed earlier and help to become level 25.

If this is being submitted to SDA, Blood Raven needs to be killed before you move to Act 2.

acording to mike this isn't the case anymore, i may be wrong thougg. it was only so or sykios run as he was after a specific bounty

moooh

2009-11-28 11:53:53 am

Exoray

FraGFroG already looked it up, it was in one of his previous posts:

Quote from FraGFroG:

I asked mikwuyma about the rules and he said:
- Multiple hellforge-runs = OK
- Doing quests much later when you are already in a new act and have more dps = OK (so it is allowed to do bloodraven much later and therefore faster - don't know where you guys got your wrong informations from...)

Zurreco

2009-11-28 01:21:37 pm

Just call me the cynicism machine

Ah, well then. It seems a little silly to change that after already making it necessary for Siyko's run, but I guess it's being changed for a multiplayer run. Carry on.

Ghoti

2009-11-28 03:04:39 pm

Currently occupying the grey area.

That was only to get the bounty.

FraGFroG

Edit history:

FraGFroG: 2009-11-28 04:37:20 pm

2009-11-28 04:26:19 pm

LeWoVoc, 20-100 and ZaibirQuild I still need your free times per week to be able to plan the meetings for our testrun (before the real run starts). So please post your times in this thread or send me a pm.

LeWoVoc

2009-11-28 04:55:12 pm

As much as I would positively love to participate in the run, I don't have a consistent enough life to allow for it. I appologize for not saying so earlier, but it just hit me as I looked at my schedule for the next week or so. Good luck to everyone.

Salivator

2009-11-28 05:34:48 pm

Hello, all.

I'd like to contribute something to this run, but I'm probably not a good enough D2 player to participate directly. I can definitely help out with the scouting runs, though. I have a level 89 sorceress in single player, so I can whip through areas quite quickly. I also have a lot of free time at the moment, and am in the mood to play D2, even if it just means running through areas with a high level character.

Anyway, I think I'll tackle some of the Nightmare act 1 areas, starting with the catacombs.

Hugo123

2009-11-28 05:45:41 pm

Quote from Zurreco:

Ah, well then. It seems a little silly to change that after already making it necessary for Siyko's run, but I guess it's being changed for a multiplayer run. Carry on.

Well doesn't that make Siyko's run a bit worse? He could have saved a lot time by not doing the time consuming missions without teleportation. Sad

Beenman500

2009-11-28 05:53:10 pm

Joke of all trades

Quote from Hugo123:

Quote from Zurreco:

Ah, well then. It seems a little silly to change that after already making it necessary for Siyko's run, but I guess it's being changed for a multiplayer run. Carry on.

Well doesn't that make Siyko's run a bit worse? He could have saved a lot time by not doing the time consuming missions without teleportation. Sad

but IIRC hes was accepted anyway, and he made a sweet $150 so , um, shut up. or complain till your blue in the mouth and maybe his run will get taken down and you'll anger EVERYONE in the universe, that run with its current audio commentary is a godsend to many

back on topic, i can help out, but my timmings will be atrocious, i don't have acces to d2 for 3 weeks atm, and i have a bunch of schoolwork , im GMT(0) [england baby], so if you ever need just one more player and im online give me a shout.

Hugo123

2009-11-28 05:54:50 pm

Quote from Beenman500:

Quote from Hugo123:

Quote from Zurreco:

Ah, well then. It seems a little silly to change that after already making it necessary for Siyko's run, but I guess it's being changed for a multiplayer run. Carry on.

Well doesn't that make Siyko's run a bit worse? He could have saved a lot time by not doing the time consuming missions without teleportation. Sad

but IIRC hes was accepted anyway, and he made a sweet $150 so , um, shut up. or complain till your blue in the mouth and maybe his run will get taken down and you'll anger EVERYONE in the universe, that run with its current audio commentary is a godsend to many

back on topic, i can help out, but my timmings will be atrocious, i don't have acces to d2 for 3 weeks atm, and i have a bunch of schoolwork , im GMT(0) [england baby], so if you ever need just one more player and im online give me a shout.

Yeah what a complain from my side.... Get someone else to flame, thx.

Salivator

2009-11-28 07:19:11 pm

Might as well add Nightmare inner cloister and cathedral to the list of areas I'm scouting, since I'll be right there, anyway. Hopefully I'll have the data ready sometime tomorrow evening.

FraGFroG

2009-11-29 12:12:17 pm

Quote from Salivator:

Might as well add Nightmare inner cloister and cathedral to the list of areas I'm scouting, since I'll be right there, anyway. Hopefully I'll have the data ready sometime tomorrow evening.

Thanks for your help, this data will be interesting to compare with our existing data for normal...

MrEnzyme

2009-11-29 12:13:34 pm

I would like to help with this speedrun, if possible. I know you have 8 players already, but as you said, not everyone will always be available. I have plenty of experience with D2, and have kept up with the past speedruns on the forum and SDA. I would be willing to play whatever character/role needed, and am able to record.

Edit: my timezone is GMT - 5.

Beenman500

2009-11-29 01:40:14 pm

Joke of all trades

just a thought, can you play a bit of one cha by himself, for say cubing items, and then have that as a seperate segment rather than having all people have to join that one game just to get a chance at cubinh, obviously you may have the advantage of two people being able to cube at once, but i think the odds are already heavily stacked against you. Finnaly, might it be atall effective to get some awesome crafts going, i never got into them on b.net but they do become worth a fortune so worth a thought maybe?

FraGFroG

2009-11-29 04:40:06 pm

@MrEnzyme: OK, I added you to the list on the first page.

@Beenman500: Playing non-8-player is not allowed i think, so that is not an option. Concerning craft-stuff: We had a 10 fc-belt on our list in the 2-player-run, but I don't think it's worth getting in an 8-player anymore.

Salivator

2009-11-29 07:35:09 pm

Scouting is taking a bit longer than I expected. I completed 7 runs and will finish the rest up tomorrow.

Zurreco

2009-11-29 08:07:37 pm

Just call me the cynicism machine

How are you going to scout a multiplayer map?

LeWoVoc

2009-11-29 08:14:27 pm

He's scouting several areas to check the average number of bosspacks compared to the average map size.

Zealie

2009-11-30 03:33:57 am

about playable times... I usually am always available every evening on Monday through Wednesday(so from about 18:00 till 0:00 or so GMT +1)
Of course there are some exceptions some times that I can't tell in advance. There are also times I can play Thursdays evening, but that's too random to really say anything about it. (same goes for friday and sunday allthough the chance I can play on those days are lower).

Could maybe also play sunday from about 11:00 till 17:00 and then maybe also in the evening, but that really depends on how much I drunk the day before Wink

P.S. As it stands now (will probably change in a week or 4) I am also available during the whole monday (from the morning till the evening)