Cows - is there any trick to speed the pattern "Stony field, Tristram, Cows"?

Yes and no.

The process is the process. Though there are some ways to speed it up at least a little bit:

- If you're planning to do multiple cow runs, grab a bunch of tomes and drop them in your stash. That's faster to reach (both, from game entry and your tp back from

Tristram) for

Tome-recovery than heading down to

Akara every game for one

Tome at a time.

- Remember that the stones (and by extension the portal to

Tristram) are generally always close to the road so once you WP in, cut across until you hit the road and then just follow that until you hit the stones/portal. Still gives you a 50/50 shot of picking the wrong direction on the road initially, depending on how far away from a wall you find it but that's still better than blindly scanning the entire zone every time.

- ... that ... might already be it? ^^

This is 100% pure anecdotal evidence, but for me it seems like the

Tristram portal is always "above" the stoney field way point. If you were to draw a horizontal line starting at the stoney field way point, and extend it left and right, the

Tristram portal would be above that line. There is only one time that I can remember where it was "below" the way point. Again, could pure coincidence, but that's what I've noticed. Does seem to cut the time to find

Tristram, by a lot, if I start by searching "upwards".
Good Luck!