Looking for suggestions on maintaining sanity during SP HC LK runs

Friends,

What coping methods do you guys use to break up the monotony of LK runs?

I fell back in love with Diablo 2 about a month ago. Had switched over to single player a few years ago, but this time around I delved into a hardcore journey. It's going pretty well so far, I've made Guardian with a Pally and Sorc (I'm new to HC, lemme be). I've been able to comfortably run <1 min Hell Meph on p3, which provided some fantastic gear upgrades, along with some gear for future characters, namely an Assassin and Nec (neither of which I've put much work into, yet). I've set an intermediate goal of re-specializing my Pally into an Uber Smiter, and I'm aiming to gear him as well as possible before trying, because, well, he's my first Guardian and I'd rather he continue to achieve deeds of valor.

So, I've started the LK grind. I was spoonfed an

Ohm about 45 minutes in, and found a

Vex on hour 6 or so. Sprinkle in a dozen or so Lems, a few Mals, and fistfuls of Lums and Kos which I cube up once my stockpile reaches 5. I had previously found an ethereal 27@

Sacred Targe and have the runes for Exile, and have everything for a CTA (the other

Ohm was found in

Tristram when saving Cain - at level 83 when I finally grew the stones to make the jump to Hell on my Sorc). Still need a

Lo for Grief.

I'm probably 12 or 14 solid hours of gameplay in. I can consistently make about 40 second runs including resetting the game. I have 28 open inventory spots, and pick up all jewels and charms. If rare Dudu or Baba hats drop, I'll pick those up too. Luckily, they're uncommon enough that they don't overpower my inventory Tetris. I feel good about dedicating the time to picking up charms and jewels - I've found some pretty sweet stuff. My favorites include a 15 IAS/25 Light Res jewel (which is going to look beautiful in my Uber Smiter's GFace) and a ~40 Life/~50 Mana GC which should be a mainstay on my Sorc for a good long while.

Once my inventory is full of charms and jewels, I dump everything into two shared stash tabs I keep empty specifically for this purpose. I identify everything at once when these two tabs fill up. I try to avoid setting time limits for this LK grind, but rather, I'll aim to do 2-3 mass identifications per LK session - this way, at least the frustration of the rarity of HR drops is somewhat offset by jewel and charm dopamine hits. I've been using Netflix on the second monitor as a crutch to help me maintain my sanity, as well. I've found the best bet is to find a good, long show that I'm familiar with. I've been "watching" Lost. Great show. Anyway.

Thanks for staying a while and listening. I'm headed back to the salt mines. Pray for me.

I get rid of the monotony by not running them. I find

Travincal runs more fun and far more rewarding, but that's just me.

mhlg wrote: 2 months ago

I get rid of the monotony by not running them. I find

Travincal runs more fun and far more rewarding, but that's just me.

I've looked into Trav. I have a level 74 Baba who has largely stalled out in Act 1 Hell. Currently using dual

Butcher's Pupil and desperately in need of some upgrades. I have a 5os ethereal

Colossus Sword with ~10ed which I think would make a nice Death, but I'm not quite ready to commit to it. I have a

Stormshield in the stash (these ARE hardcore characters) and I feel like Death would gimp my attack speed while eating up a

Vex. I also have 3os

Balrog Blade and

Legend Sword, which seem like decent bases for Lawbringer, but also not quite committed to running dual wield as I venture further into Hell. I'm keeping an eye out for 4os (or 0os for cube recipe) ethereal bases for Oath, but the search continues.

Any suggestions on specific breakpoints/skills/necessities to build a worthwhile Trav Barb? That's content I've never done in decades of playing D2.

Subtopic:

Is

Io rune or

Ort rune the bigger troll drop in LK runs?

Anesthesia wrote: 2 months ago

Looking for suggestions on maintaining sanity during SP HC LK runs

Alcohol and good music

(But of course not too much alcohol in HC)

Maybe I have not seen it but do you still play single player and are you offline (static maps)?

If you play online with dynamic maps I also recommend doing trav runs with your Pala. I think this is much faster and I suspect you get better drops, too. I see it the same way as mhlg.

Anesthesia wrote: 2 months ago

I've looked into Trav...I have a 5os ethereal

Colossus Sword with ~10ed which I think would make a nice Death, but I'm not quite ready to commit to it. I have a

Stormshield in the stash (these ARE hardcore characters) and I feel like Death would gimp my attack speed while eating up a

Vex...Any suggestions on specific breakpoints/skills/necessities to build a worthwhile Trav Barb? That's content I've never done in decades of playing D2.

Trav is a huge upgrade over LK. LK is good if you have nothing. Trav requires a little more investment, but you get a lot of useful uniques/sets on top of charms/jewelry/runes/gems that you drop in both areas. The

Key is just a good weapon, which at a minimum should be Oath in an

Eth base. Especially with a decent roll, Oath and common melee support gear is really all you need

The best weapon is Grief of course, and Death is arguably second best but harder to build around. You need 90 total ias with a

Colossus Sword, so usually it's better to run a (ultra rare) zerker

Axe base. You have at least

Ohm

Vex, so if you can cube up and make Grief, now would be the time. (btw I could not un-recommend Exile enough at this stage of the game, especially in a 27 all res base)

The other thing to choose is

Whirlwind vs.

Berserk.

Berserk kills faster, but

Whirlwind is much safer because it leeches life. In hardcore, I would think that you would always choose

Whirlwind. The other important part of the build is getting

Find Item to 75%. I don't consider this negotiable, because

Find Item is THE reason that trav barbs are top tier rune finders. But I don't play hardcore, so someone may recommend a different skill allocation, like maxing BO first

Appreciate the responses. Settling into the groove of late-game farming, and grateful for the opinions on next steps!

oOKIWIOo wrote: 2 months ago

Maybe I have not seen it but do you still play single player and are you offline (static maps)?

Yep, single player. I have a wonderful static LK map on my sorc, where the waypoint and target tiles form a perfect right triangle, with the waypoint opposite to the hypotenuse. Each target tile is adjacent to the waypoint tile.

3 teles from the WP up to the first target tile, 5-6 teles from the first target tile to the second target tile, then another 3 teles back to the WP, allowing me to start each run in the

Pandemonium Fortress rather than

Kurast Docks. Seems like it shaves off a few seconds - even if it doesn’t, each run feels like it starts off with a bang (rather than running from

Meshif to the A3 WP).

marl71 wrote: 2 months ago

The

Key is just a good weapon, which at a minimum should be Oath in an

Eth base. Especially with a decent roll, Oath and common melee support gear is really all you need

You need 90 total ias with a

Colossus Sword, so usually it's better to run a (ultra rare) zerker

Axe base. You have at least

Ohm

Vex, so if you can cube up and make Grief, now would be the time.

(btw I could not un-recommend Exile enough at this stage of the game, especially in a 27 all res base)

Found my Oath base (4os ethereal

Balrog Blade) this evening!

Grief feels like it’s getting closer and closer. I found a

Gul and two Ists tonight, which gives me some flexibility in cubing upward.

Finally, I’ve been hesitant about rolling the Exile, especially with the low resistance roll, so your point is very well received.

Change of pace is the best way, farm other areas.
Me personally I swap between characters, level up new ones, rush other people through the game
Why torture yourself, it's supposed to be fun.

BonyM wrote: 2 months ago

Change of pace is the best way, farm other areas.
Me personally I swap between characters, level up new ones, rush other people through the game
Why torture yourself, it's supposed to be fun.

Outstanding advice. Taking cues from other people in the thread, I reworked my Baba to push through the roadblock he was experiencing to progress through Hell. I had been using dual Butcher’s Pupil axes, but found a 4os ethereal

Balrog Blade and a bunch of mid-runes in LK to roll an Oath (got a fantastic roll of ~330 out of 340) and paired it with a

Stormshield.

Further progress is being achieved presently.

I'm going to agree with the above. Lk runs are a no go for me.

-pit
-countess
-Andy
-

Lost City
-tunnel
-

Arcane Sanctuary
-canyon of magi
-

Flayer Jungle
-lk
-Trav
-

River of Flame
-

Chaos Sanctuary
-

Crystalline Passage
-throne

Reboot.

That's my usual Pattern. Though i switch
it up depending on

Terror zones.