So I just completed 3000 Travincal runs on my frenzy barb. The barb runs dual high roll Griefs and Fortitude. I do not have an Enigma. I also run only 245 GF. I do not stack GF and do not recommend it. More on why later. FI chance is 48% with 1 point in FI. This is at p=1.
I recorded all relevant loot, and other things, like run times. This took me about 3 weeks. Average time to complete the run is currently 47 seconds, based on a stopwatch of my last 20 runs. When I started, it was 59 seconds per run. The difference maker was swapping a second Grief for Lawbringer at about 2500 runs in.
But that is the actual time in run. In between is gambling, gem combining, rune combining, buying pots and scrolls, repairs, logging mules, and relogging. Bottom line is I currently run about 50 per hour, and about 40 per hour when I started. Total time for all runs was about 70 hours.
RUNES
I recorded all runes of Pul+, and most importantly, the total number of runes.
Total Pul+ runes: 4 Pul, 5 Um, 3 Mal, 2 Ist, 1 Lo.
Total runes: 962, or a little over .3 runes per run.
An observation: the second stat is far more important than the first, for statistical purposes. Because higher runes have low drop chances, 3000 runs will not accurately measure the drop chance. While it’s perfectly fine for a good estimate of total runes of all types. And your chance of high runes is directly a function of how many total runes drop in the first place.
You cannot use this notion to determine the drop chance of any particular HR, or even all say Vex+ drops, but you CAN use it to determine which farm locations are relatively better or worse than others for getting HR’s, because, as I said, on average and over time the total HR’s you get is directly related to the total runes you get per hour while doing each run. Because you can’t get an HR unless the code first roles a rune. More on this when I compare Trav to cows at the end.
PGEMS
You’re about to discover that pgems are a significant aspect of farming Trav, in terms of total contribution to wealth. Here’s why.
I did not record particular gems, just the total number.
Total gems: 6,887. Average is 2.3 gems per run. If you hadn’t noticed, that is a lot of gems.
An “average” gem is right about a normal gem, i.e. a diamond as opposed to a flawless or flawed diamond. So an average gem drop converts to a pgem at 9:1.
6,887/9=~765 pgems.
What is good about pgems? Well you can reroll GC’s for any 3, or reroll rare diadems for 6 pskulls, craft caster gear with pamethysts, or craft blood items with prubies. And several other things.
What is better than any of those things however, is selling the pgems in stacks to people who want to do those things with them. I think it’s far better economically.
Currently pskulls run 1 Ist per 40. Pamethysts are similar. Prubies 1 Mal per 40. All others sell as assorted at 1 Um per 40. These are conservative prices. This is pricing them to be certain they will sell. Many people put them up for more, like Gul or even Ist/Gul for the skulls, but in the current economy, I don’t think they’re selling at those prices. I would expect a fresh ladder economy will allow higher pricing, like it was months ago.
[Note: the above paragraph shows a too low estimate of pgem value. I’m now getting 1 Ist per 40 of any type, from a steady customer. I save the pskulls and sell them separately as I can get 1 gul per 40 of those.]
Bottom line: those 765 pgems are about 16 Mals. or 8 Ist, or 4 Gul, or 2 Vex, or 1 Ohm. Think of it this way: just add those runes to the ones that dropped.
Valuable UNIQUES:
First off, I ran with 184 MF most of the time, sometimes a little more, sometimes less.
The most significant find in this run tends to be unique ammies and rings. Indeed, I got a total of 29, 18 rings and 11 ammies. The highlights were 1 SoJ, 1 high roll Ravenfrost, 1 Mara’s +26 all res, 1 Catseye, 2 Atma’s. All others were crap, except a 29 MF Nagel which was worth keeping. I sold the SoJ for Sur+Ist.
Other uniques were not impressive. One high roll Reaper’s Toll I sold for an Um. One 4/5 fire facet. And some other uniques which are “good” but not BiS for anyone, and sell for very little. I did not record them, though a few are waiting in my stash as possible twink gear.
I should also mention I picked up all rare rings and ammies, but did not record them. They numbered in the hundreds. They were all useless and valueless except as possible twink gear, with 1 exception. 5 min dmg, 42 AR, 6 ML, 8 LL, 15 Fire Rest. It’s quite a sweet ring that is going in on my next uber run, along with the Ravenfrost.
CHARMS
This is a big one as charms drop right and left on Trav.
Total charms: 707 sc’s, 503 lc’s, 342 gc’s.
I only re-rolled about the first 100 GC’s, before I figured out I was better off selling the pgems. So you should consider it as 442 GC’s.
I only specifically identified the best charms. The others were recorded only as charms dropped.
Overall results yielded a few good charms worth keeping, and some with trade value. Best were an SC with 7 MF, 9 light res, +1 summon druid/32 life GC, +1 cold sorc/22 life, +1 Warcries/7 FR/W. That last one is in the barb’s pack as a permanent addition. While the other is in my bliz sorc’s pack. 8 total skiller GC’s.
GAMBLING
OK so I’m going to say something controversial here. Stacking GF is inefficient compared to stacking MF and/or DPS charms.
I ran 245 GF only, and pulled about 90K gold per run. I have a -14% VP Gheeds, but to be fair, I don’t have the other item (forget its name) that has -%VP. I had to gamble about once per 8 runs. Total gold was about 28,000,000. I gambled for coronets exclusively. I didn’t get squat. Two rares maybe borderline worth something are in my stash, but in this economy, I doubt either would sell. Maybe if I got them in ladder.
But my conclusion is not really based on that. Gambling, like getting HR’s or valuable uniques, is very RNG dependent and will fluctuate. I’d probably need to gamble 10x that much to form conclusions.
Here is the real problem as I see it. When you stack GF, you are going to lose DPS and/or MF, meaning you lengthen the run time or reduce unique drops, or both. But it has another very bad effect. The guys who run GF heavy are often going over 2000 GF, meaning they are gambling at least 2 times per 3 runs.
Gambling takes time. I have to cycle through an average of 12 times to find a Coronet, and even then I may get a Circlet in that slot after gambling 1 or more times, and have to cycle again to find another Coronet. With running to the NPC, the total average time is about 1 minute.
And to make matters worse, it may be optimal to log another character to do the gambling! For a Griffon’s Eye, I think you want to be lvl 81 is it? Most FI barbs running Trav are lvl 90+. That is even more time involved.
Trav is a speed farm run. It’s major advantage is the shortness of the run and being able to repeat it over and over again, quickly. If you add 2 minutes per three runs, in my case with 3 runs taking 3:33 seconds, now it takes over 5 minutes for those 3 runs.
I’d rather have the DPS and/or MF and have shorter run times with a higher chance of uniques, particularly unique rings for the SoJ chance.
You could shorten gambling time by gambling for rings instead, where you don’t need to cycle through, but from what I’ve seen on youtube vids, that offers less return than Coronet gambling.
Bottom line: you should gamble the gold you get, of course. It hits the pack/stash limit very quickly even with 245 GF. And if you stack GF, you can eventually even get rich off it. But if you want to get rich off Trav, IMO, on average you’ll get there faster by running with more DPS and MF, and less GF.
ENIGMA v FORTITUDE
I’ve discussed this elsewhere in another thread. I don’t have Enigma. I don’t have the runes for it yet, but if I did, I’d spend them on Faith for my Zon or Infinity for my sorc first.
IMO, Trav on a barb is one of the few efficient farm runs where Enigma has only marginal value vs. the next best alternative, which is Fortitude.
Bear in mind, Trav has a fixed layout with no variation, except a little in where the Council members are when you get to the structure. And it’s a short distance from waypoint to target structure. I ran with 83 FR/W. You obviously must have the Increased Speed skill to farm this properly with Fortitude. It’s a no-brainer to put a point in it anyway, for any barb.
Look at the numbers. Over 20 runs, I recorded an average 11 second time to run from the waypoint to the target location. Pro-tip: when you run in with Fort, you can usually whack a mob on the way and get a big FR/W bonus from frenzy, speeding you up considerably for the remaining distance.
Based on trying the run on my sorc, I would estimate it takes 2 seconds with TP. So that’s a 9 second shortening of the time. But Fortitude’s 300% global ED is a lot more damage than Enigma’s 80ish Str bonus. I have two Griefs, one with +389 dmg and the other with +393. Do I want to add more base damage from Strength, or do I want the 300% multiplier instead? It isn’t even close.
Assuming the kill time is only 5 seconds shorter with Fortitude, then Enigma has a 4 second clear time advantage. But it also has 50 MF, increasing your chances for valuable uniques like SoJ. So Enigma is BiS here, but only just. Is it worth the value difference between jah/ber and lo? In my opinion no, as it will take beaucoup runs, 10’s of thousands, to make up that difference from the slightly higher efficiency of Enigma. Basically I would run Fortitude unless I already made an Enigma for other farm locations or another character, in which case I would run Enigma.
TRAV v. COWS
When comparing farm locations, you don’t usually want to compare them when running the same character on each. Running cows on a frenzy barb is basically a waste of time. It’s a horrible build for that zone. Took me almost 20 minutes to run it when I tried it once.
You ideally want to compare what is meta in one with what is meta in the other. Fortunately, I have a bliz sorc with end game gear, which, along with Infinity light sorcs, javazons and hammerdins is pretty much meta for cows.
And before I did the trav runs on the barb, I did 500 cows runs on the bliz sorc, all at p=1. I did not record uniques or charms. I did record HR’s, total runes, total gems, and average run time. These were the results:
Average run time of my last 20 runs, where my gear was best, was 6:50 seconds, including time to acquire the leg. Bear in mind that the sorc now has sufficient gear to one shot all normal cows. There is a big difference between one and two shotting cows, because with Blizzard you have to wait for it to hit. Two shotting increases the run time quite a bit vs. one shotting. So I’m hyper-efficient here.
With in between run activities, I can run cows about 7 times per hour on this character.
Total gul+: 2 sur, 2 cham, 1 ohm, 2 gul.
Total runes of all types: 1712 for 500 runs=3.4 runes per run x 7 runs per hour=23.9 runes per hour. Compare that with the Trav runs, 962 runes/70 hours = 13.5 runes per hour.
The HR’s I got are totally irrelevant for statistical purposes here. You can’t measure HR chances over 500 cows runs. Fact is, I just got lucky getting the 2 surs and 2 chams.
But the second stat matters a lot. I get runes about almost2x as fast running cows on the Bliz sorc as I do running Trav on the barb, meaning in the long run I should get HR’s 2x as fast there.
[Edit: fixed a small error where I showed 200 more runes dropping on cows over the 500 runs]
Gems are a different story.
2875 gems in 500 cows runs = 5.75 “normal” gems per run. Based on 7 runs per hour, I get about 38 normal gems per hour, or 4.2 pgems per hour. Versus about 10.6 pgems per hour in Trav. A more than 2:1 difference in favor of Trav.
Charms I didn’t record on cows, but eyeballing it, it’s like 2-3 charms per 7 minute run. I get them on Trav at least 2x as fast as that.
Uniques I also didn’t record for cows, but it isn’t even close. In Trav you kill 3 bosses and 7 minions in under a minute, then FI them all. Uniques is at least 2:1 in favor of Trav.
Then there’s gold for gambling. Obviously there is no comparison there. Trav wins.
So which is more efficient in total? Hard to say. Trav wins on 4 of 5 categories, everything except runes, but loses 2:1 on runes to cows, and runes are the single biggest source of wealth on both runs. But maybe not more important than all the others combined? You decide.
Alright, long post. Thanks for reading, if you happened to get this far.
