Experience Sharing and You

And by "You" I mean me, my parents, and the others whom I may join on any given day.

TL;DR: I'm asking here for a check because I know some of the folks here are more knowledgeable than the average tuber: what is a good leveling strategy these days?

I've looked around and the consensus seems to be something along the following lines: whatever up to around level five,

Tristram up to around level fifteen,

Tal Rasha's Tomb up to around level twenty, Normal Ancients up to around level twenty-three, Cows up to around level twenty-six, Normal

Baal up to at least level forty for Nightmare Ancients, and then finally Hell

Baal beyond level forty.

I was leveling someone the other day in Hell, and they got good experience from Tomb runs, but they were already past the level twenty-five threshold by a bit so I understand that, but Normal

Baal up to level forty? I don't know if I buy that; it just seems like almost anything solid in NIghtmare would be faster, but I don't really know anything much about D2R yet so flying on possibly bad information as usual.

Plus, it seems to have happened; my mom and dad are enjoying the game a lot, and they want to try out some other characters now that our mains are in Hell but don't quite have the equipment to do the job--my highest resistance is in low thirties--as a break from Nightmare MF runs. I figured we could help level each other's new characters a bit so the skills can actually be played around with, and my first instinct was Cows because what oldie doesn't remember eight player Cows being the place for leveling; it went about as well as D2R players expect: no experience to speak of. I'd like to know a place or strategy that will actually work for a high-level character leveling low-level characters for us even if I never join another player.

As far as I remember (but more knowledgeable people will confirm), xp gain is optimal when the difference between character level and area level is less than 5.

You have tables to get the area levels around.

To add other options:
- when solid enough in early hell, hell countess runs are great as they provide valuable keys (for trade at first) and runes.
-

Terror zones are also an option when ever you killed

Baal in that difficulty level
- apart from that it's also a matter of taste, play where you want with a correct area level seems fair.

the reason you do

Baal runs are not for

Baal himself, but for the waves of minions. they give a ton of experience. 40-60 nightmare

Baal is good, though you can do nightmare

Baal up to 65 or so if you want some more padding going into hell. personally i find rune collecting in nightmare to be faster for progression into beating hell (rather than mfing). you can get everything you need there for some basic but necessary runewords like Spirit, Insight, etc

I agree NM exp is higher in general, but the only problem is there is not enough NM game to join with more people except

Baal runs. The following is power lvling strategy in general.

1-15

Tristram runs
15-24 Tombs runs
24 Ancients normal
25-40 Sanctuary/

Baal normal
40 Ancients nightmare
41-60 Sanctuary/

Baal nightmare
60 Ancients hell

I couldn't find the website this was taken from unfortunately, if someone knows where it went please msg me or post here. But these are the guides for power leveling. However the above post is pretty close to what I did when I used to get rushed, I used to do cows from level 20 to when the xp started drying up and then

Baal runs.

Flyhorse wrote: 2 years ago

I agree NM exp is higher in general, but the only problem is there is not enough NM game to join with more people except

Baal runs. The following is power lvling strategy in general.

1-15

Tristram runs
15-24 Tombs runs
24 Ancients normal
25-40 Sanctuary/

Baal normal
40 Ancients nightmare
41-60 Sanctuary/

Baal nightmare
60 Ancients hell

That looks about right. I remember with my spearazon, I was trying to hold on to normal Ancients as long as possible in hopes that I could get Grushed, so I ended up hanging out in Normal for a very long time and still got decent experience in

Crystalline Passage,

Glacial Trail, and

The Ancients' Way into the early-40s.

When I finally did get a Normal Grush, I got into Nightmare and hardly played that difficulty at all before going to Hell. I joined more rush games and manually Grushed myself with minimal intervention from the other random party members by unpartying myself at the Ancients, then repartying after they finished, then staying in town for the rest of the game until they beat

Baal.

I think I spent a grand total of 5-10 levels in Nightmare, because I was in Hell by the early-50s. I also managed to get accidentally Grushed in Hell, and I don't remember exactly how that happened. Since I couldn't feasibly hang on to the Hell Ancients quest indefinitely, I eventually went ahead and did it in another party when I was eligible because I wouldn't have been able to do Hell

Baal runs otherwise.

After the accidental Hell Grush, from the 50s to maybe 83-84 or so, I exclusively joined Hell Chaos runs, first as a leech just trying to keep up with the teleporters, then I started being more useful as all of my gear became unlocked between 63-69, then

Annihilus at 70, and

Hellfire Torch at 75.

Cows are underwhelming for leveling, have been for a long time since whichever LoD patch nerfed their XP gain, and are still bad in Terror Zones. There are a lot of people who still haven't caught on to that though.

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

when solid enough in early hell, hell countess runs are great as they provide valuable keys (for trade at first) and runes.

I hadn't thought of farming keys and runes from Countess while leveling.

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

Terror zones are also an option when ever you killed

Baal in that difficulty level

I don't know if that would work well as the level would jump to forty-five or whatever related to the level of the highest killer I think.

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

apart from that it's also a matter of taste, play where you want with a correct area level seems fair.

True, and I used to love farming Cows. I just didn't want to pull the colossal waste of time Cows turned out to be again.

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

the reason you do

Baal runs are not for

Baal himself, but for the waves of minions. they give a ton of experience.

>_<

What do you know? You are the worst d2 player ever!

Seriously though, we tried that as well, but as Necrarch says the enemy level was probably just too different. We'll try

Baal--and friends--at a later level.

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

40-60 nightmare

Baal is good, though you can do nightmare

Baal up to 65 or so if you want some more padding going into hell.

I would have thought the payout was just too poor to get to that level from Nightmare

Baal runs, but we tried Hell at level fifty-something, and we just couldn't stay alive so we'll try that next.

Flyhorse wrote: 2 years ago

I agree NM exp is higher in general, but the only problem is there is not enough NM game to join with more people except

Baal runs. The following is power lvling strategy in general.

That's pretty similar to what I had found, but the addition of some steps makes more sense to me and doesn't require glitched runs.

davme_mcreg wrote: 2 years ago

But these are the guides for power leveling. However the above post is pretty close to what I did when I used to get rushed, I used to do cows from level 20 to when the xp started drying up and then

Baal runs.

I have no idea what those charts say. I get that blue is the sweet spot, but I have no idea what "No1," "No2," and so on are for this chart. I see they are leveling spots in the various difficulties, but I don't know which ones from what was posted.

[Edit]

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

Cows are underwhelming for leveling, have been for a long time since whichever LoD patch nerfed their XP gain, and are still bad in

Terror Zones.

I think it was 1.10 because that's about when I quit playing.

Also, even "underwhelming" is an understatement. I did three runs and went to help them spend skill points and the experience bar had basically not moved.
[/Edit]

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

I have no idea what those charts say. I get that blue is the sweet spot, but I have no idea what "No1," "No2," and so on are for this chart. I see they are leveling spots in the various difficulties, but I don't know which ones from what was posted.

Normal Acts 1-5
Nightmare Acts 1-5
Hell Acts 1-5

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

I have no idea what those charts say. I get that blue is the sweet spot, but I have no idea what "No1," "No2," and so on are for this chart. I see they are leveling spots in the various difficulties, but I don't know which ones from what was posted.

Normal Acts 1-5
Nightmare Acts 1-5
Hell Acts 1-5

>_<

Oh. I was overthinking things a bit.

For hell survivabilty, you have level and you have gear.

Level at 50-ish seems decent for hell, but especially if you power levelled have you geared enough ? Especially resist charms help a lot by then, as the -100 hurts in early hell.

Btw, have you made all normal and nightmare quests ?

Anya rescue especially. Time to do them if not ready, extra stat points, skill points, life... always serve.

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

[Edit]

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

Cows are underwhelming for leveling, have been for a long time since whichever LoD patch nerfed their XP gain, and are still bad in

Terror Zones.

I think it was 1.10 because that's about when I quit playing.

Also, even "underwhelming" is an understatement. I did three runs and went to help them spend skill points and the experience bar had basically not moved.
[/Edit]

Strangely, I've seen people get defensive about XP from cows so I understated how bad that level really is compared to its reputation. Here's what I can say about TZs at level 96:

TZ Chaos or

Baal: Approximately 1 bar per hour

TZ cows: I think I played for 3-4 hours during the all-day cow TZ earlier this week to get the remaining 1.75 bars I needed to hit 97 on my bowa. The last series of runs I joined was with a group that had done 180 of them and they reported only picking up around 3 bars at level 98. At around 3 minutes per game, they would have gotten 20 games in per hour, so they must have been at it for 9 hours at that point.

I'm pretty sure that my march from 98-99 last season didn't take 30 hours like it would have taken these guys if all they had to run were TZ cows. It was more like 20 because there were a number of better TZs mixed in, and I cashed out the 20M XP from Nightmare Ancients to finish the job.

Anyway, cows aside, my takeaway is that staying in Act 5 of the previous difficulty isn't a bad thing considering the leveling in the next difficulty's Act 1 often feels much slower because you may not be geared for it and Act 1 in general is less dense than Act 5.

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

For hell survivabilty, you have level and you have gear.

Level at 50-ish seems decent for hell, but especially if you power levelled have you geared enough ? Especially resist charms help a lot by then, as the -100 hurts in early hell.

Btw, have you made all normal and nightmare quests ?

Anya rescue especially. Time to do them if not ready, extra stat points, skill points, life... always serve.

Oh, we played normally on our mains so have done all the quests up to Act 1 Hell. However, we have not geared enough. I, for example, found a couple of really nice pieces in early Nightmare which carried me through the rest of it, but at the same time, I haven't changed a single piece of equipment in four acts. I'm the best equipped of the three of us. As you say, we are in serious need of some decent resist charms plus a few more pieces of equipable gear for each of us.

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

phantomotap wrote: 2 years ago

[Edit]

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

Cows are underwhelming for leveling, have been for a long time since whichever LoD patch nerfed their XP gain, and are still bad in

Terror Zones.

I think it was 1.10 because that's about when I quit playing.

Also, even "underwhelming" is an understatement. I did three runs and went to help them spend skill points and the experience bar had basically not moved.
[/Edit]

Strangely, I've seen people get defensive about XP from cows so I understated how bad that level really is compared to its reputation. Here's what I can say about TZs at level 96:

TZ Chaos or

Baal: Approximately 1 bar per hour

TZ cows: I think I played for 3-4 hours during the all-day cow TZ earlier this week to get the remaining 1.75 bars I needed to hit 97 on my bowa. The last series of runs I joined was with a group that had done 180 of them and they reported only picking up around 3 bars at level 98. At around 3 minutes per game, they would have gotten 20 games in per hour, so they must have been at it for 9 hours at that point.

I'm pretty sure that my march from 98-99 last season didn't take 30 hours like it would have taken these guys if all they had to run were TZ cows. It was more like 20 because there were a number of better TZs mixed in, and I cashed out the 20M XP from Nightmare Ancients to finish the job.

Anyway, cows aside, my takeaway is that staying in Act 5 of the previous difficulty isn't a bad thing considering the leveling in the next difficulty's Act 1 often feels much slower because you may not be geared for it and Act 1 in general is less dense than Act 5.

As for people getting defensive over Cow experience, I believe it. Some people really like to hold on to what they "know" is right. I'm guilty of it myself with some linux commands, C++ programming, and some similar stuff.

As for leveling past ninety-five, I'll probably get there on at least one character as I enjoy the new Terrorized Zone mechanic a lot, I haven't played in a long time, and I have some good people to play with. That said, I do miss the speed of old Cows.

Wait, when did cows get nerfed? I admit it has been quite some time since I did the rush and then grind xp game, maybe 2008?

Nowadays I just follow that chart and make my way through the game that way. And if you play single player, put it to P8 and do it that way, oh man, you level fast.

One day I was in an 8-player TZ 96 Chaos run, and someone joined with their 10+ level toon. I cannot tell you how many deaths he suffered, but at the end of that one hour run, he reached level 80.

It was still slow-ish before he reached level 25. But after that, it was like a rocket ride.

Yeah, that's because the XP gain is massively penalized at level <25 when facing enemies that are 10 levels higher than yourself.

If you look at that chart and find the line for levels 24 and 25, you can see that the XP gain is only 5% at level 24 in Nightmare and Hell, but a lot more at 25.

The reason is that at level <25, if the monsters are 5 levels higher than you or more you get an XP penalty based on the level difference and that penalty caps at a 10 level difference (at which point you only get 5% XP). When you are level 25 or higher, the XP penalty calculation changes substantially - instead of being a fixed penalty depending on the difference in number of levels between you and the monster, the calculation is simply your level divided by the monster's level (as long as you are lower level than the monster). So a level 24 killing a level 35 monster only gets 5% XP, but a level 25 killing a level 35 monster gets ~71% XP.

https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/ind ... cter_level

That's why you typically do areas with levels close to your own until 25.

I suppose

Baal runs are popular because they are easy (usually) and give you a lot of concentrated XP in a short amount of time, and the XP penalty isn't so severe as long as you are 25+.