Korialstraz's Guide to fast and efficient rushing

Korialstraz's guide to fast and efficient rushing.

This guide was written to address some questions regarding rushing and to give a few tips on how to speed up rushing.

Standard rush.

Act 1, The

Rogue Encampment: This is where it all begins, the game, the story and the rushing. In this act there is only 1 thing we want to do, and that is killing

Andariel. She is located in The

Catacombs Level 4, and your character must be present when she is taken down. Once dead you can go back to town and tag along

Warriv’s caravan to the east, to Lut Gholain.

Act 2, Lut Gholain: This act is in my opinion the most boring and annoying act in the entire game. Not only when playing it through quest for quest, but also when rushing. You can’t just go to

Duriel and slap him around then move on, first you’ll need to gather some items, which you will come to hate when trying to do fast rushes. But I’ll explain what needs to be done so those new to rushing know what to do and how to do it. First you must get the

Horadric Cube located in Halls of the Dead, which is used to cube the Shaft and Head piece of

The Horadric Staff. Then you must find the Horadric Shaft, which is located under the

Far Oasis in the Magot Lair. The last piece needed is the head piece which you will find in the

Claw Viper Temple below the

Valley of Snakes. After this you must place the 2 pieces in the Cube and transmute them into a

Horadric Staff. At this point it’s very important that you talk to

Drognan after transmuting the staff so that you can talk to

Jerhyn later on. You also want to speak with Cain so that you can enter

The Arcane Sanctuary. Now find

The Summoner and kill him while the character being rushed is present. Only thing remaining now is to find the right tomb, open and enter the room where

Duriel is located and kill him. Again the character must be present when he is killed. After this you talk to Tyreal, go back to the city, talk to

Jerhyn and then

Meshif who will take you to the docks in the jungle landscape known as Kurast.

Act 3, Kurast: Finally done with act 2, and ready to do act 3. After patch 2.4 your character now have to smash the Compelling Orb to enter the Durance of Hate, instead of just killing the Council. This means the

Khalim's Will: Quest needs to be completed to use the

Durance of Hate Level 2 waypoint. For this quest you’ll need to gather some items. The first item,

Khalim's Eye, is hidden in a golden chest in the

Spider Cavern in

Spider Forest. The next item

Khalim's Brain is hidden in a golden chest in

Flayer Dungeon Level 3 in the

Flayer Jungle. The next

Khalim's Heart is hidden in

Kurast Sewers Level 2. and last

Khalim's Flail is dropped by the last superunique

Council Member in

Travincal. After this you must place the items in the

Horadric Cube and transmute them into

Khalim's Will. Then destroy the Compelling Orb.

Mephisto is the boss of Act 3 and is found in

Durance of Hate Level 3. Have your character stay nearby while killing

Mephisto and then take the portal into act 4.

Act 4: This is all about beating Diablo, but before you can do that you must activate the Seals in the

Chaos Sanctuary. Luckily that is where Diablo is as well. So activate the seals to spawn Diablo, and then kill him. Characters must be in the Sanctuary and not too far away to get the quest. After he is dead you talk to Tyreal who again will open a portal for you. This time it leads to act 5.

Act 5: For a standard rush this is where the rushing ends and leveling begins. To move on without glitching

Baal you must have a level 20 character so you can do the Ancients and thus get to

Baal, however for easier rushing in Nightmare and beyond I’d level the character to at least mid 30s, which is easy anyway considering the nice experience you get from baalruns. Also if you decide to level in baalruns I would wait with doing Ancients until 24, so when they are done your character is 25 which is when you will get massive amounts of exp. Anything before that will be too little to be worth it. Below I’ve explained the most common, and as far as I know fastest way of leveling to 24.

Levels:
1-x:

Den of Evil. Start out with doing

The Den of Evil quest.
x-15:

Tristram. Run

Tristram over and over until you reach level 15.
15-20*: Tomb runs. The tombs are located in act 2. Level until you reach 20.
20-24**: Cow runs. Run the

Secret Cow Level until you reach 24.
24-25: The ancients. Kill the ancients. It will give you a level.
25-xx: Baalruns. Do baalruns until you reach the desired level.

* Only stop doing tomb runs if you can find good cow games. If you can’t then doing tombs is generally faster.
** If you can find good cow games then this is by far the fastest way of reaching 20-24.

Recap:
1. Rush the character to act 5.
2. Level the character to 24.
3. Do ancients quest.
4. Level to mid 30s or desired level is reached.
5. Finish

Baal quest.
6. Do ancients in nightmare (character must be level 40).
7. Level some more before hell or start rushing in hell.
8. *Do ancients in hell (character must be level 60).

*If you are in hell act 5 but your character is not 60 yet, Chaos runs in hell is a very viable way of leveling, even past level 60.

Glitch rush (Grush): The only difference between this and a normal rush is that you glitch the

Baal quest in normal and nightmare. Grushing a character basically means you can get a character to hell act 5 at level 1. How is this possible you say? Well this is where the glitch part comes in. If you are in a party with someone completing the

Baal quest, you will get it as well. In other words you have completed the act without meeting the requirements for doing so, thus glitching the quest. For example you are standing in act 5 needing

Baal quest on a level 4 character. In your party is a level 31 guy who also needs the quest, as well as a high level character to beat

Baal. When

Baal is killed the quest completion will trigger for the level 31 guy, and since you are in his party it will trigger for you as well.

Classic rush (Crush): Classic rush is when you make the character you want rushed in non-expansion. (Cant be Druid or Assassin) and rush him to act 4 hell, then convert to expansion and you will be in act 5 hell in expansion.

Recap:
1. Rush character to act 5.
2. Bug/glitch

Baal.
3. Rinse and repeat for nightmare and hell.


Speed rushing tips:

When speed rushing you usually have several characters in the game, and some may even use fast user switching to control up to 4 characters at the same time. It takes time to switch from 1 character to another using this method, so we want to minimize the amount of time we need to switch characters to reduce amount of time needed to complete 1 rush. This is especially important of the rushes done is as a service to others, since in this case time is money. Also there are some tricks to make things easier and thus faster. I will break this section into acts, and then talk about the different tricks used in each area.

Before starting a rush involving more than 3 people it is important to assign everyone a role. We have the rusher, quester and leechers. The rushers obviously do the rush and killing, the quester will follow the rusher and be present for the quests that can be glitched, leechers just follow the rusher and quester through the acts and join the quests which can’t be bugged.

Act 1: In act 1 you only need to kill

Andariel before moving on to act 2, however as I said earlier time is money, and every second saved helps. The trick here is to only bring the quester down to the 4th level of the Catacombs and the rusher kills

Andariel. The leechers patiently wait in town. Not only does it reduce amount of times needed to change characters, but also reduces the chance of someone screwing up by getting killed by a monster. In other words you only need the character doing the killing and 1 guy needing the quest for everyone to get it. Once done you all move the characters to act 2.

Act 2: This is the annoying part again, and I’ve found that the more people involved, the worse it gets… that was until I found out about some tricks used throughout the act. First of you want to place all leechers outside

Jerhyn’s palace since they won’t be doing anything at all in this act. Placing them at the palace will reduce time spent on moving characters to act 3 later on. For now we will focus on getting the staff. This is done exactly the same way as when doing a standard rush. However when the 2 parts are found it’s very important that the rusher do not enter

Arcane Sanctuary until the quester have transmuted the shaft and headpiece to make a

Horadric Staff, and then talked with

Drognan. This will prevent

Jerhyn from staying in his palace and blocking you off from it, which results in an added step before being able to complete act 2. In other words the rusher must take the waypoint (wp) in

Palace Cellar Level 1,

Teleport up to

Harem Level 1, and then open a town portal (tp) for the leechers and quester so they are able to talk with

Jerhyn. Anyway once the quester has made the staff and talked to

Drognan the rusher can begin his search for

The Summoner. A nice trick here is for the rusher to open a tp to

The Arcane Sanctuary wp, then the quester opens a tp there as well. Should the rusher

Teleport down the wrong path he/she can simply open a tp, then go through the questers tp, saving some more seconds. Once

The Summoner is found the rusher opens a tp, and waits for the quester to come through before killing

The Summoner. A good rusher won’t have to wait for the quester to tell him the sign, but find the missing one in the Sanctuary. Once

Duriel is dead the quester must talk to Tyreal so all the other leechers get the quest as well. Once done they can all talk to

Jerhyn and follow

Meshif to act 3. I usually don’t run from

Jerhyn to

Meshif, but rather walk into the Harem and open a tp, that way I won’t have to walk from one end of the town to the other, and when using faster user switching it’ll save you a bit of time as well.

Act 3: The quester and all leechers no longer need to be present while killing the

Council Member's. This makes rushing much safer. Now the rusher can just opening a tp after killing the council and have all of them walk through to smash the Compelling Orb. Once that is taken care of we can take down

Mephisto. This time we only need the quester and all leechers will stay in town. Once

Mephisto is dead the others can follow through the tp and take the portal to act 4.

Act 4: This one is fairly straight forward again. Only the quester is needed, so the leechers will have to patiently wait in town again. The rusher will clear

Chaos Sanctuary and spawn Diablo while the quester will be waiting in one of the secure areas inside Chaos. Once Diablo is dead you can talk to Tyreal and he will open a portal, this one taking you to act 5.

Act 5: There really aren’t any tips I can give here, since the rush is actually complete at this stage, and since glitching

Baal is explained above there is not much I can add to speed things up for act 5. I may update the guide at some point to include specific quest not related to rushing but which benefits your character (skill/stat/res quests).

Rushing D2R is like waiting for 20+ years to eat at a restaurant. Then, when you finally get there, the doors open, and you sit down, but instead of savoring the reward of your long wait, you instead lift the plate up and start forcing the food down your throat with your bare hands, like some Neanderthal; you don't even slightly taste it.

Take your time. The game isn't going anywhere. You earned this, and you should savor every second of it.

your thinking about this all wrong. just use rush for the extra sockets quests and hellforge runes. you can always just play through normally as you level up after, or when your not rushing.
people also use rushing to make looter character for hardcore hell duels, or on low level pvp characters to get more stats and skills.

And you rush others (not your business) in exchange for their hellforge quest or a pre-defined reward, e.g. an Mid-Rune...

So: Good Job on the Guide.

I heard somewhere (i'll try to grab a link) that the killing Cow King will no longer affect your ability to spawn the Cow Level.. in D2R.

somthinwicked wrote: 3 years ago

I heard somewhere (i'll try to grab a link) that the killing Cow King will no longer affect your ability to spawn the Cow Level.. in D2R.

yes. that's correct. Killing The Cow King will not Prevent new Portals