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Post by Terankar on Feb 5, 2019 15:23:29 GMT
Is this project over?
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Post by johannhowitzer on Mar 17, 2019 23:00:19 GMT
It is on the backburner for now, as I have a lot going on in my life, but I have optimizations in mind when I get around to them, and more detailed research to do. Meanwhile, I've been putting together stuff for lowbie tag tutorial videos since I said I would make those at some point. No ETA on that right now.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 20, 2020 11:07:41 GMT
Tentative news on the speedrun front - I am toying with the notion of completing the run under 40. The current win conditions of the speedrun are:
1) Become immortal. 2) Get every pre-LL tag that could not be gotten after becoming immortal.
That second rule started out as "get every pre-LL tag." However, speedruns are about entertainment, about showcasing cool techniques, and I realized late in the process that the level 40 tags were a snorefest. It's kind of cool to see a solo 40 beat the Ruined Academy Headmaster, I suppose, but the level 40 tags all take forever and aren't that interesting. Glithildhoul is the worst, being a spam of meteor-rest-meteor-rest. So that change to rule 2 eliminated all the 40s, as well as MOAD since you can shackle post-immo for her. You can't shackle below 40.
HOWEVER, if you go immortal below 40, you may be able to get some lower tags once immortal. This would push a bunch of bosses out of the run, and also some formerly required large chunks of XP! The downside is casterlevels, potentially some gear, and epic spells. The Immortal fight is already demonstrated as doable without epic wall, and loss of death of magic just means casting a bunch more missiles, but that would only take a few more minutes overall. Dropping the end of the run to, say, level 34 for the crit immunity ring, would mean skipping ALL level 35-38 tags. Those six levels also account for 219,000 less XP to earn. Reincarnation can also be moved a few levels earlier to make the quests operate more efficiently, and with dropping Zerya, I can potentially drop both her kills and say goodbye to the leveling tomes. Not planning for epic spells means my focus feats can shift around a bit - Transmutation dropped entirely, Necromancy becomes much less valuable.
Lolth is the real crux of this idea. I've been relying on Bigby Swarm for her, and losing it makes that fight incredibly dangerous. This is going to take a few hard thinks. I welcome ideas.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 20, 2020 19:22:37 GMT
Nice to see you back at it. Funky
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 20, 2020 22:38:29 GMT
Well, right now I'm just spitballing ideas. But if something like this can work, I think it will save hours.
I have a deliciously cheesy idea for Lolth, similar to what I did when trying to grab certain dangerous dragons. Alternate GV and IGMS, and make her chase me around the room. Doesn't really answer phase 3 by itself, but phase 3 spells can be handled with the good ol' GS-BBOD soak combo.
Generally speaking, the biggest reason for Theurge has been high AC. This really saved my bacon in some places, and the speedrun was able to tank Angus and the Immortal safely. But the Immortal is no longer necessary to tank, and Angus might disappear from the run. There are still some dangerous spots; I think Matrons without a rest wouldn't be possible without some epics to help, but it could be split in half and done with one rest. Lolth's room is a lot more deadly without good AC, it's just not possible to lock the whole thing down in a single Timestop. Maybe two Timestops. Icestorm damage will be significantly lower, but IGMS doesn't lose any damage at all.
Something a little surprising to me - glancing briefly over my notes, level 34 doesn't lock out a single piece of gear that I can see. In fact, a bunch of pieces require exactly 34: the crit ring, the Cleric slot axe, and the Psionic Blinders Wizard slot helm. However, some of these items would come from areas no longer visited. Gaobin's staff comes from Tulkis - though Gaobin has a bunch of quests and I might still snipe them. The staff itself isn't much stronger than the shop staff. Cleric slot axe requires going to Hel's map, but it's in the left armoire, you don't need Hel's key. Popping that with a pixie might not be possible, of course. The Wizard helm in drow is still on the path, and while it's not actually that much better than the shop helm, it takes seconds to get. Angus' helm and Axilar's cloak are far out of the way, so they would be cut.
Some worth in considering a switch away from Theurge on reincarnation, Sabre and I talked about possibly Sorcerer for more spellslots - Sorcerer can't start the run, it's much slower with Invis delayed a level, pushing Oltum back costs a lot of time. Sorcerer also can't specialize, which means reincarnation would eliminate the iconic infinite-range Supergate that the speedrun loves. This might be okay; Gate is used in the endgame, such as for Lolth's levers and warping behind a wall on the Immortal fight, but those are just within a single map. I'd have to think if there are any Gates before the 35 tags that need to travel between maps. If there is one, it would probably be worth it just to walk in place of that one Gate, in order to afford the class switch.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 21, 2020 8:38:56 GMT
Did some more in-depth analysis and checking of notes as well as this thread, and I can now summarize what bypassing level 35 tags will cost the endgame build.
- Four feats: general @36/39, and wizard @wiz 23/26. ESF Necro was only doing two things - Death of Magic, and barring Necromancy was an easy way to allow respecialization. The specialization plan will need to be reviewed. Fourth feat is ESF Evocation, which only supported Barrage, Sunburst, and Vitriolic Sphere. Barrage is gone, the other two spells are important but the DC loss won't hurt too badly. Sunburst is used at Razhid and the Blood Moor, and Vit Sphere is used at the Moor and the Cave Trolls. Might force an extra rest in each area.
- 1 AC, from Tumble ranks. AC is otherwise untouched, which is fantastic.
- 5 SP, going from 46 down to 41. The only SR that matters at level 35 is the five Matrons and the other drow in their rooms. Regular drow 50, matrons 52, Queen Matron 54. I was using Breach, and as I was expecting to need at least one rest for the Houses, moving up to Mord isn't that bad. Still guarantees landing spells on the Matrons, only the Queen Matron now has a resist chance. I will explore countering this with Assay Resistance, which is a new spell since the speedrun was completed.
- Casterlevels for certain damage spells. IGMS remains the same, as it caps at a lower CL anyway. Icestorm is easily the other most important damage spell, and that doesn't take much of a hit. Base damage goes from 14d6 cold / 12d6 bludg down to 13d6 cold / 11d6 bludg. Yes, that's right, just a single die, from CL 38 to CL 33. Both metamagic and Lore are percentage modifiers on this base value before enemy defenses, so the pre-reduction damage goes down about seven percent. Not bad at all! Many strategies will probably work about the same.
- DOM, Barrage, Bigby Swarm, and Starfire are all gone. Starfire's not that bad, DOM and Barrage only helped make the Immortal shorter, but Bigby Swarm hurts, as mentioned earlier. The only important use of Bigby Swarm is on Lolth's second and third forms. However, I have come up with some ideas for this.
- Not forcibly lost, but I remembered I had been exploring dropping Gift of Undeath. Lithiucshas will still be killed, and the ring may still drop, and I'm going to plan on not needing it, but if it DOES drop, I have one use in mind for it, see below.
LOLTH PHASE ONE: Not really different, just a steeper grapple check on first boss form. Can't afford to be morded. If grapples fail during timestop, backup is to drain her Mord casts with blade scrolls. From there, clearing the room is about the same.
LOLTH PHASE TWO: This form is melee only. It sounds cheesy because it is, but the plan for now is to alternate IGMS and GV casts, and make her chase me slowly around the room. I can make the Discipline checks, but her AB is still catastrophically high compared to anything else in 1-40 areas, even the Immortal and Angus. Even lowering it by 14 with Bigby 5, BT, and Prayer isn't going to be enough to go toe to toe for long. This is where the crit ring can add some safety, with Epic Warding up, no crits means I can probably stand in her face for a while and be fine. If the ring didn't drop, it's cheese all the way.
LOLTH PHASE THREE: Standard candle, instead of grabbing, drain the spells first. With spells gone, form three still does a nasty wounding attack, but AB is much lower, definitely manageable. This phase will just be slower, and I need to count her spells so I know when she's dry.
So there you have it. In theory, this is absolutely possible. Slightly longer houses and Lolth fight, a few more minutes burning the Immortal into the ground, but the new route will skip killing the Pontiff, Queen Spider, Angus, Elanna, Hel, the Shrike Mother, BDK, Axilar, and visiting the Academy. Double Zerya still looks worthwhile, I think. The kill doesn't take super long, I won't need a killcount, and each book is like completing six quests. I'm mentally ballparking the time it takes to kill Zerya versus the time it takes to go fetch six things, and they seem pretty comparable. Zerya's also a pretty cool strategy.
Oh, and I just checked timestamps on the full speedrun video. I start 35 tags at the seven hour mark, and get epic spells at the nine hour mark. Accounting for slower drow/boss stuff and less XP needed, we are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 minutes to two hours saved!!
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Post by chainlink on Jul 21, 2020 11:48:29 GMT
It may be worth having a chat with Teleben as he managed to get some stupidly low level -HC- characters (below level 30) through the accomplishments and to immortality.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 21, 2020 13:51:47 GMT
Yeah, I'll pick his brain, though I can already think of a few advantages he probably had - multiboxing, for one. Maybe also BUR subrace and pre-existing gear and gold - though the XP bonus will actually make Air Genasi faster.
However, you sent my brain crunching numbers, and I bumped into a forgotten hard limit. In my head I was going: okay 21 pure wizard to supergate from House M to rest, max GSP feat means 10% to hit Queen Matron... 23 gets ESP and bumps to 30%... oh wait drow books SLAM brick wall. A DC 80 trap brick wall, that doesn't vanish when sprung. I'd bet money Tele at least brought a high-level picker along. Without pixie, a viable solo immo-killer cannot get that book. Theurge with 26 pixie can reach 84 with buffs and take 20, could drop Wizard to 25, maybe 24, and still do it. Pure mage 25 pixie with empowered Fox for +12 INT (37.5% chance) can do it too.
Theurge can go as low as 25/9/1 perhaps, losing Harm and AOV and barely making quasi. Switch to Sorcerer would force reinc, as would 25 pure endgame with oltum starter. But while that's the lowest level, I'm not convinced it would be the fastest. If going with straight mage over low-Cleric Theurge, a couple levels can mean a big power bump, and Uro and Kard are pretty quick. Sorcerer sounds cool, but lacks specialization and is forced to get to the Crown Sanctum on a single rest, since the ring isn't usable until then.
My instincts want to say the most promising option among these is 29/1 Wizard/Ranger, forgoing reincarnation and skipping everything after the 25 dragons. A really efficient huge chunk of XP would be to daisy chain the six Shadow Elves/moor quests into the two Pontiff quests, and snipe a no-tag Pontiff kill for the neutral level book, that loop is almost four levels of XP all by itself. Zerya takes much longer to kill, even counting Ruination's room, and has no quests en route. For the highest SR check, the Queen Matron is 44 after Mord, SP would be 35 max and that's a 60% chance to land spells on her, 70% if Assay Resistance stacks with Mord.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 21, 2020 14:19:59 GMT
Here is the full list of hard requirements for a 29/1 build to complete the speedrun. I never did remove it, but Lev Ring can go thanks to being attainable after immortality via the town militia, if that's still a thing. Firewalk and Passwall are so close to required bosses that who cares. Water Ring is required for Spawn of Uro.
- BDD - Half-Orc - Kuo - Water Ring - Hive Mother - Hero Stone - Reanimator - Crypt Thing - Goblin - Kennel - Mino - Ogre - Staff - Ice Kob - Rat - Corpse Lord - ER Chief - Cess - Formians - Passwall - Lava - Firewalk - Dracolich - Renders - Hendron - Elder Orb - Kard - Uro - Deep One - Ancient Tome
- Xulrae KC - Xulrae - Sithyrrs - Four Books - Queen Matron - Sixth Book - Lolth KC - Lolth - Immo KC - Immortal
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Post by chainlink on Jul 21, 2020 14:42:03 GMT
Yeah, I'll pick his brain, though I can already think of a few advantages he probably had - multiboxing, for one. Maybe also BUR subrace and pre-existing gear and gold - though the XP bonus will actually make Air Genasi faster. However, you sent my brain crunching numbers, and I bumped into a forgotten hard limit. In my head I was going: okay 21 pure wizard to supergate from House M to rest, max GSP feat means 10% to hit Queen Matron... 23 gets ESP and bumps to 30%... oh wait drow books SLAM brick wall. A DC 80 trap brick wall, that doesn't vanish when sprung. I'd bet money Tele at least brought a high-level picker along. Without pixie, a viable solo immo-killer cannot get that book. Theurge with 26 pixie can reach 84 with buffs and take 20, could drop Wizard to 25, maybe 24, and still do it. Pure mage 25 pixie with empowered Fox for +12 INT (37.5% chance) can do it too. Theurge can go as low as 25/9/1 perhaps, losing Harm and AOV and barely making quasi. Switch to Sorcerer would force reinc, as would 25 pure endgame with oltum starter. But while that's the lowest level, I'm not convinced it would be the fastest. If going with straight mage over low-Cleric Theurge, a couple levels can mean a big power bump, and Uro and Kard are pretty quick. Sorcerer sounds cool, but lacks specialization and is forced to get to the Crown Sanctum on a single rest, since the ring isn't usable until then. My instincts want to say the most promising option among these is 29/1 Wizard/Ranger, forgoing reincarnation and skipping everything after the 25 dragons. A really efficient huge chunk of XP would be to daisy chain the six Shadow Elves/moor quests into the two Pontiff quests, and snipe a no-tag Pontiff kill for the neutral level book, that loop is almost four levels of XP all by itself. Zerya takes much longer to kill, even counting Ruination's room, and has no quests en route. For the highest SR check, the Queen Matron is 44 after Mord, SP would be 35 max and that's a 60% chance to land spells on her, 70% if Assay Resistance stacks with Mord. He had no high level characters with him that I know of and you are correct he had more than one character but he may still be able to donate some useful information to your quest.
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Post by teleben on Jul 22, 2020 4:01:58 GMT
My methods were mostly incompatible with Johann's speed run rules. I was trying to push the immo run as low as I could, not as fast as I could. Yes, I multiboxed. Three level 30s and a level 24. All BUR subs and geared to the hilt with items not available to this solo speed run. Eg. Pyramid rings usable at 22 with no tag requirement for 75% fire/acid imm and +6 stat boosts and Uro boots for +14 dodge AC usable at 28. That tag is possible with level 30 mortals.
However, there are still a few things that might be helpful. Have you tried IGMS scrolls on the immo? I found them useful even on the level 24. Maybe they could give you some flexibility on your rest requirements. Also a slinger was a huge help for many tags. Bigby and silence bullets, then indefinite divine damage. You'd need 30 levels for the bigby/divine bullets. The way you want to solo it, you could splash a level of rogue as well for the picker requirements and perhaps Monk for the AC taking it to level 32. But that would mean doing the level 30 tags before the immo cycle.
My builds were optimized for level 30 with no intention of going further. I guess you will also rejig yours a bit to optimize them for whatever level you do it at.
I haven't checked your full gear list, but Targak's cloak from outside deepbats is a set item giving 10 def AC and 25% Acid imm, +2 saves and True Seeing. Usable at 26. It was another useful item all the 30s had. A little bit out of your way if you're stopping at 30/32.
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Post by teleben on Jul 22, 2020 4:04:55 GMT
Actually the Monk level on that Slinger idea probably wouldn't be useful at 30/32 as you'd have to give up heavy armour and shield to get the Wis AC.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 22, 2020 9:02:47 GMT
Thanks for the input, Tele, I had guessed at a lot of what you said, but I'll weigh in on the major points.
- IGMS scrolls: maybe worthwhile on a multibox, but scrolls suffer from 1) much lower damage than full-CL IGMS, 2) are cast half as quickly, and 3) can't be maxed or empowered. I don't think rests will be a concern for this, even with the last few bosses taking longer; if I run into troubles, I'll keep this idea in my back pocket.
- Slinger's an interesting idea; that quasi was on my initial list of candidates back when this project started. However, Slinger's advantage is sustainability, not speed, IGMS and Icestorm are really going to outstrip even divine bullets, not to mention bullets have no aoe. If I reincarnated for Slinger, I think it would have to be after Lolth, just to make the Immortal fight safer. Another back pocket idea.
- Yup, Targak is a cloak I've used before for Deadpool. Speedrun has been using Cloak of the Fold, though - usable at 25, 10 AC plus Wizard slots, but drops off Axilar. I could go down there and skip the killcount and just knock him over for the cloak, the shrikes are good XP and there's a few quests. Not much else to equip in that slot, so that's a definite possibility.
I drew up the build I think might be used for a level 30 run, take a look.
Human, PT - Air Genasi, Lawful Good STR 12 DEX 8 (10) CON 16 INT 18 (20) WIS 8 (6) CHA 8 (6) All increases INT
Wizard 1-3, Ranger 4, Wizard 5-30 Skills standard, Concentration plus some AE and crossclass Tumble, not much has any effect.
Feats, order not yet determined: - ESP to max hit chance on matrons - ESF Conj for specialized Supergate warping - ESF Illusion for 4-round extended GV and good Weird at Zhents - ESF Evocation, not as important without Razhid, Moor, and Cave Trolls, so we'll see if this gets dropped - ESF Divination, for +5 Assay, Queen Matron now 85% hitrate, other Matrons 95%! This is glorious - Extend, Empower, Maximize, for lots of guaranteed strats and plenty of IGMS/Icestorm power - ESF Lore for added damage - Great Intelligence I, since the build sits on an odd number at 30 and not much else is worth taking
The 1-30 section of the speedrun used ESF Necromancy, both to help with a few things like Zerya's killcount, and to provide a reliable pivot spellschool to respecialize with. Dropping this, Divination looks like the most likely candidate to stand in as the new pivot. Also, Epic Warding requires 34 Spellcraft, meaning minimum level 31, so away it goes.
(I goofed saying lev ring is getting dropped. Air Genasi. AIR. It levitates, lev ring was never a part of the speedrun!)
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Post by johannhowitzer on Jul 31, 2020 23:58:38 GMT
I've been looking at spell selection, because I was a little concerned about being able to squeeze every spell the run requires into 29 Wizard levels, but I found rather quickly that there's nothing to be worried about. My current notes for the 40 route involve about 60 spells at level 2-9, which is barely above the 54 available to me at level 30, but there's a bunch of stuff that gets obsoleted, particularly most of the Arcane Academy door spells.
Checking this stuff also drew my attention to a potential strategy! Energy Drain was used for Grehnaxas to help the grapple chance, and that's it, and with Grehnaxas gone from the run, I was about to toss Energy Drain out the window, but then I realized that it can help my chances to hit the Queen Matron! In fact, it brings the chance to exactly 100% and no more, for a full minute. Just have to rest in town and leech some temp levels off some poor east road bandits. This is amazing news, because it means the Queen Matron kill strategy will go from potentially getting luck screwed sometimes, to never having any chance of that. The difference between almost guaranteed and completely guaranteed cannot be overstated.
So there you have it. Against a 54 SR target, a level 29 caster can achieve 100% hit chance, with ESP, Mord, Assay, and 3x Energy Drain.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 2, 2020 12:20:29 GMT
Alright, time to make a choice!
I've reincarnated a 30 I had lying around into this build, now that I have the spell selection trimmed enough. In looking at the next step after reinc, namely gearing up this test character, I looked into my notes and was reminded that my Theurge speedrun route used the First Defense shield from Imports for the second half, to cover immunities.
It has 0% spell failure, so the only downside of using it is losing Premonition buff. There are no viable offhands other than the epic flag and Gaobin's holy symbol, and both are bad to useless for me at 30. Displacement covers conceal better than EV, so EV doesn't matter. Premo is 30/+8 at CL29, whereas Stoneskin is 10/+8... however, I have a strong suspicion that +8 is no good against Drow anyway.
I'm not going to be relying on tanking stuff, all the strats for Drow areas are going to be built around keeping the enemies off me, with grabs, timestop, timestop grabs, walls, blades, maybe some other stuff. So I don't think the soak will be anything more than a nice safety if it even works. Then again, the shield's immunities are probably irrelevant, too, if I'm not letting enemies do anything to me. But I would like to head down there and test taking hits for a bit against a single Stormtrooper or something, getting some logs and comparing averages to see if Premo does make a difference. If it doesn't, the choice is easy.
Not running the test tonight, just making a record of my thought process here. In case people don't know, I moved to Japan earlier this year, and while I love it here and want to stay forever, one downside is the internet. It's normally just fine, fast, mostly consistent, but every single night around 8-9pm, it plummets to 1-5mbps download and stutters so badly that even basic webpage loads are frustrating. At least it keeps me on a decent sleep routine!
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