countess and forge are both horrible for runes
forge can’t drop anything higher than a gul
if you are after runes, hell cows / trav is the best bet, followed by chaos
followed by just killing a bunch of high density monsters
you can mix in countess and hope to get things like a mal or ist, but it’s not very likely
While true melee twinks are great, (my ww barb was almost as fast leveling as my fissure Druid.) All socketables and charms that make noticeable differences have level reqs. And fissure self found or with stashed gear 1-2 shots everything aside from bosses all while never having to stop moving.
my advise to you is if you cannot farm hell andy, go back to nightmare meph. farm nightmare meph till you have enough gear to do hell andy then hell meph.
u can do hell bosses if u have vipermagi, lore helm (ort sol from nightmare countess), ancient’s pledge shield for res,
chanceguard (normal boss drops this),
some rare 2 or 3 res and maybe some mf boots (u can get this from gambling).
a good fcr or res amulet+ring (or nagel ring, u can get rare amulet/ring from gambling too). and fill your inventory with res charms or mf charm.
before nightmare/hell meph dies, you swap your weapon with a mf weapon+shield (gull dagger has +100% mf, u can get this from act 1 normal. rythme shield is shael eth, u get this from nightmare countess).
u can do this without the need for a merc.
hope this helps
No they don’t. I have a twink bowazon. You put 20 poison damage jewels of envy (no lvl req) for early game. 3x in helm, 3-4x in armor, 6x in bow. Use a few +4 str/dex charms for reqs (no level req). Now you’re doing 280 poison damage on every arrow at level 1. At level 6 you add an inventory full of +6 poison damage sc and now you’re doing like 400+ poison damage on every arrow, which is a 1 shot of every monster in p8 up to the end of act 2 (then you can switch to edge and blast everything apart on p8), and you can hit everything in 2 screens with multishot. It’s way faster killing than basically anything else. Bowazons are really good for early game twink rushing due to multishot spreading low level req elemental/poison damage around. You don’t even get fissure until level 12, by then I’m doing 500 damage/arrow and hitting everything on the screen (and about 2 screens in front of me). It’s not even close.
Sorcs can still go faster overall to hell due to teleport being so good once you hit 18.
Druids aren’t anywhere close to the top of twink rushing. They’re just good solo self-found playthrough.
K……
20 characters………
yeah but it can’t drop lower than a hel, while the countess can drop as low as el
My runs include, shrek, eld, pindle, Nih, trav, meph, Arcane sanct, countess, with mixing in cows here and there. I’ve found 6 hr in AS, and 3 in cows, non anywhere else. Oh gul was from random mob when rushing someone in hell. Just seen a sur drop from Shrek. so there’s that.
or craft a Lawbringer runeword sword for him on switch.
imho the best way to get mid level runes from hel to ist is to farm the countess in hell. you need to be able to kill large numbers of weak monsters with on hit. the countess has a 95% chance of dropping 1-2 runes between el and mal(or gul, not sure they have changed this a couple times, use to be ist). and 5% chance of getting either 3 or no runes. then keep combining the runes. i have gotten 2 lems, 2 puls, a mal, 3 fals, numerous hels, ios, 3 lums doing this after about 200 runs. then i have upgraded lower runes to get the equivalent of a few more puls that i traded for needed gear. imho countess farming is a must for character development. and besides low and mid level rune words are effective early on.