i can’t get a rune higher than fal to drop, and i’ve only seen one of those. average is amn or shael.
at this rate, it seems i can get characters to act 4 of hell mode faster than i can farm middle tier runes.
what’s the best class for repeated hell rushes solo?
Hammerdin is easy to item and just runs thru the game
are you farming trav + cows…? please don’t say you’re farming countess for hrs -.-
playing for hell hellforge is not efficient. and boy you’re going to get mad when it just gives you a hel rune (that’s what i got on my most recent character i rushed to hell). trav + cows is most efficient. if you want a free Lem rune add me Guitars#1883, it’ll help with your sanity and now you can say highest rune you got is a Lem
my standard farming run is to clear the crypt/mausoleum next to blood raven, then countess(walking through the tower clearing the packs,i get more runes there than from the countess), then andariel, then the ancient tunnels, then travincal and mephisto.
that’s my standard farming run
i’d do chaos sanctuary as well, but the packs of mixed immunes make it really slow, so i start over after dropping meph
it is an ok run but i would skip countess, waste of time unless you desperately need mid/low runes and add cows. look at drop calcs, you’ll see trav + cows are the best.
my evidence may be anecdotal, but i’ll never believe that trav is good for anything. i have never seen a single rune drop clearing travincal, and i kill the trash as well as the council becuase they die fast. that’s not “i see low runes drop” there, it’s “i literally have not found a single rune or anything but yellows and blues” in that place. after hundreds of runs. 30+ runs a day for the past couple weeks
cows i generally do every couple of runs
sadly rng. trav has been the best place for me. got a gul, um & ist the last 2 weeks from trav.
30 runs per day for a couple weeks is a decent number of runs but also sadly pretty small 
mix it up, change up your runs. because trust me running for hell hellforge is a piss poor way to get HRs. back in classic d2 i used to rush people all the time for their forge. rarely gave me anything above mal…usually was hel/ko/io/fal/lem…and it ain’t like you’re getting the chance to find shako, coa, arachs, etc which is a possibility if you continue regular mf runs…just keep grinding away
another way to mix it up is join some public games with a lot of players and kill trav then.
With a barb using hork (find item) it is about 400 runs per high runes in travincal, which is good. I have been tracking my travincal runs, I am 150 in and have a Gul, mal, and pul so far on my barb. But I can clear it and hork the bodies before the game timer is fully reset as well.
On my blizz sorc I run chaos sanctuary for runes, there is a good concentration of ghosts and it is pretty fast to clear with a blizz sorc.
Plus tc87s are good as well.
Got my first ever SoJ from trav and I’ve been playing since diablo 1.
Shhh! Be careful Stanner might hear you! He is lurking…
Best char for running Hellforge over and over is whoever you are good with. For me that would be Trapper. Fire trapper till about lvl 45-50 then go lit trapper, the only place that slows me down is Act 3 Hell with all those stupid Lit immune Flayers, but on-line you can usually find a rush for that area. I also have all the hand me down gear for when I need to re-make her.
Honestly you are better just farming with your existing chars as everyone else has noted.
Sorc for sure. You have teleport.
Sorc on classic 100%
rush classic mules through until hellforge on hell
do not do the hellforge quest. Convert mules into expansion, do hellforge profit.
that way they can be lvl 1 and you skip the entirety of a5
-edit-
a1: tp cata4 make tp get mule in kill andy
a2 create the game on a char which did open duriels chamber but never killed him take note of the grave symbol in quests - leave the game with that char, join that game with sorc+mules.
a3: tele behind council house tp mule in kill council talk to cain, make meph tp kill meph.
a4: tele cs open seals tp mule kill D
my fastest rush prolly was a1n->a4h in like 35-40minutes
thats ~1.7gul or so per 7mules (counting lem-gul), could say 1-2 vex per hour
i really need a friend that plays lol
i would be so down to tag team a hellforge rune rush like this
i never played classic though. isn’t it limited by a lot less uniques/sets and stuff? i’d need to make a classic sorc for rushing them through
classic shaves years off of the run, especially as you do not need a bumper/lvl 40 chars to get past ancients nightmare.
Classic isn’t that bad, no runes, smaller stash. Hell only hitting -50res
OH AND STATIC FIELD CAN TAKE A MOB DOWN TO 1 HP
mercs are garbo tho
how do you run that m any mules in your own game? do you get seven friends to log on?
trapsin is the fastest leveling character hands down but hy would you even want to rush hellforge? TO get a Um rune? That’s a lot of work for low return imho.
hell forge can pop all the way up to a gul
to get ~ 7x hel-gul in 40minutes back on d2 as you could easily multi, now its only feasible if you can run 8 instances of the game somehow, so it got a lot worse
-edit-
I will NOT count playing with 7 friends as the time invested is 8x 40minutes per run then.
Definitely not worth a gul
If you’re lucky yes. Countess drops up to Ist and its available all the time, no need to rush trhrough 2 difficulties first.
I still think that’s a lot of time investment for low return, especially solo like OP suggests.