Should I shoot for 99?

I’ve

Fallen in love with the game and I’m lvl 94 Wind Druid on ladder, not knowing what ladder was when I first started.

The end game exp farming is horrendously monotonous. If I have to do another

Baal run again I might snap.

So is 99 worth it? I play on Xbox so I’d get an achievement, and my name on the ladder, but I’m worried I might hate the game at the end. And when the season is over, the character goes to offline and is now a relic.

What are some of your thoughts?

It depends how much of a completionist you are. For me, it isn't worth the time or energy (if I had either). My personal goal is 95 with my main character, but that's more or less because I like numbers that end in 5 or 0. Other goals include getting a fully geared character to 90 for each class. I find that to be more rewarding than spending all of my time on one character.

I would also wager that the 98 to 99 grind would turn most folks off of the game entirely.

I never did the grind to level 99 but you might not have the time anyway to finish it before ladder reset (supposition were around end of august, but with no news atm no idea if it's still credible, edit: https://mobile.twitter.com/PezRadar/sta ... 7049383936 ).

To give you an idea with a community helping him it looks like it took him at least 30h to go from 98 to 99 : https://www.youtube.com/c/MrLlamaSC/sea ... 20for%2099

More details on the grind : youtube.com/watch?v=rbxQwh6y7GU

I did about 10 hours of Chaos Sanct clears with 8 man parties so that we could have Diablo at like 1/3 health and one guy would stay in the game as everyone else teleported out to the next game. MrLlama would get the invite and come in to kill diablo in a few seconds.

There was 7-8 teams doing this when I was there at the end. Im not saying it isn't possible, but if you already did you Hell Ancients, I wouldnt even recommend it.

You'll need a team to do it in any reasonable amount of time.

Ohh nice didn't know the trick of keeping the ancient quest (not affected by xp penalty) to gain 40m XP out of the 291m grind needed for 98 to 99.

To give you some perspective at level 95 without the help of a team like MrLlamaSC and Teo had:

With a 10%

Annihilus, it's taken roughly 40

Baal runs for one bar on the meter, so it'll probably take me about 400 runs to level to 96. The experience gain efficiency at level 94 was roughly double that of 95, and I expect the efficiency at 96 to be half that of 95. I think if I looked at the experience tables, the story would be even bleaker.

Also, at 97-98 and probably even 95-96, it's a better use of your time during

Baal runs to solo farm Nihilathak and/or Diablo while the rest of the party does the throne room waves. Depending on whether

Baal is in play in those games, it would also be beneficial to be in a top 2-4 party for

Baal, but those games require more organization and pub players are understandably more reluctant to take part in those games if they're also high-level and trying to grind XP but not in the game's top 2-4.

With 1-1.5 months left until the end of ladder, you're probably not getting to 99 unless you can completely ignore the real world because what I just described is also the most efficient way to level without specially planned help.

I have one character at 95.75 and one at 95.02 right now. I can get the higher one to 97 by the end of ladder. I'm not so sure about 97 for the other, although it is possible. I also have a third character at 37 right now that I'd like to level up to use all my endgame gear by the end of ladder.

I'm not exactly working at a breakneck pace here. At this point, even if I devoted all my effort and available time to my highest-leveled character right now, I wouldn't get to 99 by the end of ladder.

For me, I don't think 99 is worth it, especially not by the end of ladder. It could also be a worse user experience trying to do all these

Baal runs on Xbox. I'm not familiar with how hard it is to make/join a series of consecutive-numbered games on there, but being able to stay with a good group when you find one is also a time saver.

At 8 players without killing

Baal.
It takes 5370

Baal Runs from Lvl 94 to 99.
Assuming 3 min/run.
5370*3/60 = 268.5 hours

So I can be done if you do baalsrun 10 hours/day at players 8 and NOT DIE

Source: https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Guide:Hi ... and_Reborn

Timshel wrote: 2 years ago

Ohh nice didn't know the trick of keeping the ancient quest (not affected by xp penalty) to gain 40m XP out of the 291m grind needed for 98 to 99.

I've done this with my two characters, but only for Nightmare. I wanted to do it for Normal as well to save another 1.4M, but I couldn't wait on my friends to get a normal character between quests 5 and 6 in Normal Act 5. I'm not likely to get to 99-20M, but if I do, I'm ready.

I didn't think Grushing was feasible in Hell. From the video of MrLlamaSC explaining the grind, it looks like all he did was fast Diablo kills and his team had a queue of games ready for him to constantly join. He really didn't need

Baal if he was killing Diablo once every 45 seconds.

I've read that there is a loophole for

Baal access, which is if you have someone in your party find and activate a portal shrine after the Ancients, then you go through to collect the WSK2 waypoint and now you've bypassed the post-Ancients party portal lockout typically released by defeating the Ancients.

I can't confirm if that portal shrine loophole actually works though. I've never done it myself and it assumes that the lockout applies to the party member's portal and not the WSK1-3, Throne, and WSC maps.

Thank you all for the insights! I may just end it at 95. I think I’m going to not do a ladder game in the future.

Maybe just regular online so I have the social aspect. Also am holding my breath for Diablo 4!

Aloo Snackbar wrote: 2 years ago

Thank you all for the insights! I may just end it at 95. I think I’m going to not do a ladder game in the future.

Maybe just regular online so I have the social aspect. Also am holding my breath for Diablo 4!

to be clear, you don't lose your ladder characters once the season ends; they can still be played online, they're just moved over to non-ladder.

i would agree that level 95 is a good enough stopping point. the highest i've ever reached was 96 back in original D2 LOD, and level progress felt absolutely glacial by that point. most characters will have all of their important skills maxed (or near enough to it) by level 90, so you're not exactly missing anything if you choose to spare yourself the mind-numbing grind required to hit 99.

Don't bother leveling to 99, it's simply not worth it and you'd only be wasting your time. I've had a couple 99 characters back in the day, but doing a ton of cow runs pre-nerf was so much fun for young me It never really felt like a grind. Nowadays, with all the exp penalties at the higher levels, it's not worth it one bit.

Yeah, even if it takes +20 years

Knowing Ladder is going to reset soon, you can continue this push into NL. But if you are someone that likes the chase/clean slate and intend to play Ladder, then I would not consider breaking your back over the next few weeks ahead of the new PTR.

I'd say it's totally worth it if you enjoy it but I wouldn't waste time pushing towards 99 for the sake of it. I'm completely sure I will never get there, I like trying new builds too much to stick to one for that long.

I've been playing since LoD 1.09 and I've never gotten up to level 99 and I never will. I have hit level 95 a few times, but I just get bored of the end game before I get any farther. For me it doesn't make sense to grind that exp, since

Baal runs are the most boring thing for me. I'd rather magic find and level up passively as I do that. but it all comes down to what you enjoy about the game. If you enjoy the grind, go for it! But ladder is almost over now, so I would personally wait for next season to try that plan out, as you will have a lot more time to get all the way to 99.

No, you should not shoot for clvl 99. It's honestly an absolute waste of time. Get to clvl 93 so you can craft the best gear, but any more than that is a novelty to grind for.