Travincal Horker - Suggestions?

Ok, so I got bored of my Hammerdin this season as he is having the worst of luck. I have not been able to find anything to get him close to getting an Enigma. Finally dropped a

Lo rune in Act 5 Nightmare, so I was like sweet, I can upgrade his smiter gear from a Black to a Grief. But then I remember all these posts of Horkers getting HR's left and right on Trav runs, so I drank the cool-aid and made a Berserker Horker. Was going to make a Singer, but Zerker seemed like the ultimate MF build.

First question, how do you keep counts of your runs? Is there an app for that? I'm 3-4 days in, 3-4 hours per day, maybe about 2 minutes per run. I'm guessing I've done around 250 runs. Best rune is a

Shael, did get 2 cat's eye ammys, and a Reaper's Tool. The council doesn't seem to drop hardly any Runes, is this normal?

My drops are mostly blues, a few yellows, some White titles and maybe every 20th run a unique shows up. Maybe a rune pops every 50th run or so.

Gear: Grief, Rhyme shield, PTopaz

Shako, Wealth Armor,

Laying of Hands, 2x's Dwarf Stars, TGod's

Belt,

Infernostride

Boots, Highlord's Ammy, Barb Torch, Anni, and Gheeds. = 252% MF and 727%GF
Swap for Horking: 1 dual

Ist'd Ali Baba and 1 clean Ali Baba = 461% MF and 1112% GF

Find Item is Base 9, 17 with BO /

Find Potion is Base 7, 15 with BO for a 56% chance to

Find Item.

Not running a Merc as he dies all the time. Still waiting to get Guardians and Kira's.

I know most of you are going to say do more runs.

Is my set up ok? Do I need more or less MF for HR drops? I know the answer should be "0" MF for Runes.

Has anyone tested a "0" MF Horker vs: a 400+ MF Horker?

As for the

Gold, i've been gambling Cornets, not too much luck yet.

Oh and he's level 87, should I level him more?

Any opinions, suggestions much appreciated. My main goal is to get

Jah/

Ber for an Enigma.

Bisu wrote: 3 years ago

MF value should not impact rune drops. Seeing you are aiming for HRs, really the answer is to do more runs, as you have already heard.

The expected payoff rate is ~1900 runs per

Ber or equivalent.

Thanks Bisu, I figured that's the answer, I just want to make sure my set up is ok or if there is anything i'm doing wrong. I did get a

Hel Rune to drop in the last few minutes, getting higher on the scale

One important point is that the 'ideal' player count to do Trav is p3. Assuming you're playing online, that's not realistically achievable since Trav runs are so short. I bring this up just to say that with only 56% item find and p1, the drops are going to be much worse. Still worthwhile imo, but it won't be quite as fast as others may describe.

My suggestion would be to crank

Find Item % to 70%. Getting that 14% increase to hork chance will make a huge difference. I don't remember exactly how the mechanic works, but if I recall correctly, successful horks pull more items out of the council minions than they naturally drop at p1. If I'm remembering that wrong, the point remains that increasing hork chance does a lot of good in Trav imo. Also, Trav isn't particularly dangerous, so you can take some points out of shouts to increase

Find Item if needed. My barb is a WW and

Berserk split with 70% item find and never dies on p1. This isn't a build suggestion as much as an observation that on low difficulties Barb survivability is good enough you can split your skills points fairly thin and still be fine.

I switched to a dedicated Trav zerker once I could afford CoH + Grief +

Cham for an

Arreat's Face in season 1. My takeaway from the experience:
1. Trav zerker is among the least boring builds in the game.
2.

Gold farming is useless and annoying to manage.
3. Magic find doesn't matter in

Travincal. You'll find a unique ring/amulet/jewel roughly every 50 runs either way.
4. Overstacked resistances (including max physical) are king for consistent runs, allowing you to ignore

Conviction/Fana/Might/Amp Damage and combinations thereof entirely.
5.

Teleport is useless.

Teleport charges are straight up counter-productive because of

Hratli's awful positioning. Just

Leap. ™
6. Merc is unnecessary.

You're hunting magic jewels and charms as much as you're hunting runes in

Travincal. An occasional rare pair of

Boots or a unique, and especially

Gold piles, are detractors from your main purpose farming

Travincal: kill quick, hork quick, scan quick, repeat.

P.S. Following up what Winterkill said. You can quite realistically achieve 75%

Find Item.

Find Item does generate more items because it bypasses nodrop, so on a successful hork, the monster will drop the maximum number of items that it can drop, unlike its on-Death drops.

Thanks for the tips, I will probably reset my skills and get that 75% item find. I just had a decent run. Dropped a

Shako from the council kill and a

Cham from a trash mob hork. Will take the advice and use the

Cham in an Arreat's.

Congrats on the drops!

As for your shield, I personally recommend

Stormshield socketed with whatever (eventually, with a

Ber). Don't bother with six-

Ist and six-

Lem crystal swords/phase blades. You want to kill quickly and reliably. As I said, magic find is useless in

Travincal, and

Gold find is Sisyphean labor.

Just keep at it, zippy. My Travi Horker hast 75%

Find Item, did about 1000 Travi runs. One

Ohm, one

Vex, one

Ist is all I got. At one point the luck will change. Collect and upgrade the PG you find. 12

Perfect Amethyst you can trade for an

Ist. I got 15

Ist just from collecting the pg on my runs...

The only decent thing I ever found from council was an occasional SoJ, despite horking it with my 2nd barb already... This game perfectly knows I'm tryin to farm it, and does it's everything to prevent me from finding nice crap - thus forcing my trading efforts instead
Besides, I just got no patience for thousands of runs - after 2-3 dosens I'm bored af.

Buut... when I visit some random tz, I can occasionally hork something I never expected. 2 last examples were Mang Song from some unique cadaver, and

Cham from regular ghost in tower. So basically, game says: "just play me, don't farm me - and you'll have something"

As for

Find Item - yes, It's awesome at online solo bc when % rolls, no-drop is ignored. That's why council is horka's no.1 choice
That means - just max your WW, mastery, BO and

Find Potion, puttin the rest to

Find Item. (1pt of zerk is also a must for any barb)
Also - even if you avoid usin Ravenfrost, Chammin your arreat/

Shako/ss (or just use trang

Belt), there are still chillin armors at both fortitudes - your and merc's. Annoys as well, in fact (thinking to try CoH's for the cause instead)

Faster Run Walk, as much as you can get, running through town each run adds a lot of time. As said before aim for 70% Item Find. Also don't overlook faster cast rate. I ended up using 1 Ali Baba and 1 Spirit sword on switch for my trav barb. Having item find cast faster really helped speed up the horking. Fortitude also gives faster cast rate and of course the 300% ED. Last season I only found 3 high runes in trav before I got bored of the location. I found a similar amount of value in uniques thanks to finding things like maras and 5/5 facets. Some MF % is good, but you don't need a ton. I think I had around 200% MF on switch with ali baba.

Just curious, it's been a few days since I brought up this topic. You say to

Cham the Arreat's, why not

Cham the

Stormshield and Ptopaz the Arreat's? I was debating

Shako+Rhyme vs Arreats+

Stormshield.

Shako Rhyme gives you more MF+GF whereas Arreats++

Stormshield gives you more kill/survivability. Or I could do

Shako plus

Cham'd

Stormshield... hmmm

I second what Asha said about maxing WW. Zerker with shield is good, but WW with dual weapons is much better overall IMO. And

Cham +

Shako is best for

Helm if you like the extra MF, otherwise Arreats +

Cham is a powerful choice if you dont care much for MF and just want fastest rune drops. Or even a perfect +3 rolled

Demonhorn's Edge if you can find one (might help hit an IAS breakpoint). I managed to buy one for

Ohm+

Vex a few months ago.

As another option, have you tried your hammerdin at trav? The difference is he can’t hork, but he should be able to handle much higher player levels at speed. My dedicated horker is level 92 and can do players 5, but he doesn’t compare to how fast my hammerdin steam-rolls players 7. The higher players level sees much more runes.

I do use Enigma, but you wouldn’t have to use it if you have the

Charge skill and your hammers do decent damage (I think over 10k is sufficient)

Nate wrote: 3 years ago

As another option, have you tried your hammerdin at trav? The difference is he can’t hork, but he should be able to handle much higher player levels at speed. My dedicated horker is level 92 and can do players 5, but he doesn’t compare to how fast my hammerdin steam-rolls players 7. The higher players level sees much more runes.

I do use Enigma, but you wouldn’t have to use it if you have the

Charge skill and your hammers do decent damage (I think over 10k is sufficient)

The whole advantage of horking in trav is you get the same results from horking on P1 vs P8. With a barb I'm even doubtful it's worth going to P5 since the kill speed is slower and you wouldn't be increasing the loot that much. I advocate for P1 horking in trav, P3 if it isn't slowing you down and you have some great gear. Any other class can probably find better areas to run/needs a high player count combined with GG gear to get similar results to a hork barb on P1.

Thinking about best gear for the cause... My barb uses SS, so I'm not considering dual, or 2h- setups. Any Grief roll - pb easily hits 4fpa WW, other weapons demand a bit extra IAS, but no problems with that either (I use CB atm).
Chest is COH - it's bonuses outweight that 300%ed forti has - and no chill procs. We're here for 100% bodies
Best glove is LoH - 20 ias and 350%dmg demons is unbeatable here.

Belt - why not trang? This way we don't need chamming our gear, and some hard life/mana is there

Gore Rider

Boots for some crush - or travs if a bit more mf is desired. I chose gores.
Highlord - if more ias is needed (CS Grief, for example), otherwise any 2barb/mara/3wc amu is just fine.
2x bk rings, or bk + carrion (my choice - always loved carrion at my non-casters, never regretted it).
Head: instead of default arreat, decent halaberd could be used as well. Shacko for green condom adepts, or some 3wc+mods barb

Helm, whatever.
What else... swap, ofc. 3 options there:
1) 2x heart carvers. +8 find, but slow hork, and nothing else.
2) 2x hoto's - fast hork, +6all. This is exactly where to put your hoto's 30-31 roll xD
3) cta 3-3-x + hoto - +7/(+8 with command) all, thicker azz - my personal choice.

And merc - he just needs to survive in any armor, other than forti (no chillin!) Treachery, whatever. Arm him with decent insite, and

Ral'd andy / thief

Crown.

See if you can up your current

Find Item skill with extra warcry GC('s).

Gheed isn't needed, imo.

iamergo wrote: 3 years ago

Find Item does generate more items because it bypasses nodrop, so on a successful hork, the monster will drop the maximum number of items that it can drop, unlike its on-Death drops.

Huh?
Isn’t that the same as Death drop? Where is that info from?