I was trying to find some speed running guides to Larzuk, but they are all centered around either single player offline using /players command, or online BNet with a friend.
I took the info that I found, and just winged-it the other day to see how long it would take…and it took more than one day to complete with a sorceress.
I was using charged bolt and lightning as my main spells. But man was it slooooow. Not to mention the thousands of mana potions that I needed. More than a day seems terrible…but, at the same time, not having someone to rush you, maybe it makes sense.
Starting off with crappy gear (well, I did have Arctic Armor and Belt) until I hit 15 to put on 2 Manald Heal rings, and an Ammy. Then, as I levelled, I put on Smoke Armor, Leaf Staff, and Magefist.
The general process was this:
Head straight to the Burial Grounds so I could hire a merc.
Clear the Den of Evil, since I’ll want that respec at Level 24.
Unlock Tristram, and then farm Tristram until about level 12/13.
Rush the rest of Act I.
Move to Act II.
Replace my merc with an Act II one.
Kill Radamant for the Book of Skill.
Rush to get all the cube items.
Rush to get to the Canyon of the Magi, and kill Duriel.
Stay in Act II and farm the Tombs until level 20/21.
Move to Act III.
Rush to get all of the items for Khalim’s Will. (In the process of this, I completed the Jade Figurine quest for the extra HP).
Completed Lam Esen’s Tome for the stat points.
Rush the rest of Act III.
Move to Act IV.
Kill Izual for the quest rewards.
Rush to Diablo.
At the end of it, I think I was level 25. Mephisto was a bit tough. I’m thinking I might need a different spell strategy, and possibly some better gear that I can equip along the way. Or maybe try a Paladin, but I’m guessing it’s going to be as slow, if not slower being melee.
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Hey, want to get a friend to run ?, otherwise get better item for each +5 level progression, and try each class
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mephisto is tough without access to spells that give area damage at standoff range. he’s actually easy to beat on nightmare and hell because you can take advantage of splash damage or the blizzard trick, but if you’re level 30 in normal you already outlevel him enough for it not to matter.
i don’t try to solo normal like that. i do tristram runs to level 18 to get teleport on my sorcs. that’s a must for speedrunning from act 2 onwards. for non-sorc characters, i keep a staff with +1 teleport in my shared inventory for a swap weapon. just check akara every time you go to the rogue camp in act 1, eventually her inventory will pop a teleport staff. if you want to stay solo, even playing online, you can still do tristram runs. there’s always a couple unique monsters with minions, and one elite pack plus griswold. it’s good experience even solo, a pretty fast run, with decent chance of upgrade loot as you run it multiple times. plus the gold laying on the ground. the experience scaling will taper off after level 15 though, and you’ll want to kill andariel and move on at that point. doing radagast runs in the sewers in act 2 is probably faster for level 15-18 if solo.
at 18, you can get teleport on a sorc or use a teleport weapon and blitz the rest of act 2 and then do tomb runs to level 24-25 before the xp tapers off. for tomb runs, just go to the canyon of the magi, teleport all the way to the left or right of the map, and clear the tombs one by one without bothering with duriel. by the time you get all of them done you should have several levels and duriel should be a breeze.
act 3 is the biggest pain in the posterior to navigate, unless you have teleport. once you get through the travincal though, you can repeat the run from the durance of hate waypoint all the way to meph. for a sorc you can get blizzard or meteor at 24 and use the room layout to kill mephisto pretty easy, or you can push to 30 and get hyrdra or frozen orb. either of those makes meph trivial to kill without getting hit.
once you get to act 5, getting to larzuk is a breeze if you have teleport. you just bzzt your way to the frigid highlands waypoint, then back track and kill shenk and you’re done.
once you get a teleport trick weapon, speedrunning gets way smoother for any class. the zones get progressively bigger for every act, so it’s a definite must-have for acts 3-5
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If you have the ingredients for the cube recipe, don’t waste your time to Larzuk.
I disagree with that. Larzuk always gives you max sockets. I’d prefer not to gamble on certain items and not get the sockets I need.
Well I suppose it depends on your situation. If I had plenty of the ingredients on hand, I would just try the cube recipe if I didn’t want to invest a day to get to Larzuk. But yes if you need the maximum socket amount then more or less it’s worth it to get to him.
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Some good info in here. I’ll weave some of this into my process and see how it changes things.
If someone w wps rushes you, you can complete normal in under an hour…
What is the point of this thread? Have someone rush you. Takes 10 minutes.
Because I play on BNet for trading purposes, but prefer to play alone.
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the cube recipe can give as few as one socket, random up to the max. larzuk always gives the max number of sockets the item can have. the cube is for adding sockets to unique or set items for that extra bonus. larzuk is for when you need to socket a base item to make a runeword, like a monarch shield or a mage plate or chaos armor
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we’re you doing this all in one game? otherwise you can rush trav wp, kill council, talk to cain, join a baal run and the entrance to durance is open.
i thought the cube recipe was to socket stuff that normally doesn’t get sockets. am i remembering wrong?
A lot of stuff here is anti-speed run. Like Den of Evil, Blood Raven, the Tome, Izual, etc. None of these are needed to get the socket quest finished quickly. They are just making you take longer.
@Eithris
Nope, you can use it to socket rares. You only get 1 socket tho.
@Bodach
I get what you are saying. But at the same time, since Im running solo, the extra stat and skill points I get from these quests are crucial, IMO. The Den of Evil is used so I can respec out of the pre-level-24 build into a post build. I may just attempt to use the post-level-24 build from the start and ignore the Den.
Running solo, having a merc seems almost required, hence Blood Raven.
I dunno, I can try to skip these and see how I fare…thanks for the suggestions.
Have fun spending a Stone of Jordan on that.
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he wants to do it solo instead of getting rushed though. doing it solo requires levelling to a degree, most importantly to get the skills to improve mobility and kill rate on packs.
you can solo a lot of the bosses at lower levels with proper planning, kiting, and careful use of portals out to refill. but doing it at too low level means it takes forever
Well, I mean to say that speed runners on twitch skip all that stuff because it’s unnecessary. That is, they speed run solo.
Would be curious for a video link.