Hi. Sorry if this has been discussed before. I find no straightforward info searching around, what with the old stuff regarding classic and the myriad walkthroughs and so.
I reached cow level in Normal, first time since I started playing D2R. My Paladin is lvl 47.
And it seems about as useful as running any other Act 1 zones in Normal, at my current lvl.
That is, the drops are worthless and the XP gain is tiny.
Sure, the sheer number of cows and the level itself assure me an interesting amount of magicals, runes and charms. But they’re all weak drops nonetheless.
The cow level should obviously be AT LEAST as useful as the Worldstone Keep, for drops and xp. Otherwise, it’s beyond pointless. Googling around, I saw the cow level described as lvl 28, while the Worldstone Keep is mentioned as 42. What gives? It’s obvious that after finishing the normal difficulty, you’d be so much higher than 28 that it’d be useless to go there.
And the funniest thing is, the cows themselves ARE as tough as Worldstone Keep monsters. Plenty of hit points, and they may deal dangerous amounts of damage if I let 15+ of them surround me.
Bear in mind, I’m playing using the /players8 option. And I manage just fine. Never died yet, and I faced the hardest bosses without needing to portal away or even getting my hit points worryingly low.
the secret cow level is based on act 4 being the ending point as it was pre expansion content, this makes the lvl 28 zone the same as the lvl 28 chaos sanctuary you needed to finish to open the portal to it pre expansion.
in the expansion they kept the flag the same which is finishing a difficulty but that also changed the flag because the difficulty finishes after act 5 which is higher level than act 4, needless to say it is a weird quirk of how they did the flag tying it to finishing normal/nm/hell instead of tying it to killing a specific boss such as Diablo.
having said all that they didn’t “ruin” cow level in d2r if anything actually “ruined” it, it was the lod expansion launch in 2001.
it becomes useful in hell at least because the mob density and drop rates of cows for runes make it great for farming them.
I think there is some missing stuff in your comment.
There was a significant amount of time after LOD where cows were the best farming spot for exp. SO much so ppl would rush to Hell a1 only
If I recalll the last big update which added synergies made Baal exp better than cows for LOD. Perhaps that is what the OP is complaining about.
I would have felt the same way had I not played prior to D2R
At one point the Cow lvl was straight up busted. They nerfed it a long time ago, not just the drops but the exp as well. It used to be farmed like a Baal run and ppl were hitting Lvl 99 in less than a month.
this is not pertinent to single player offline and he specifically was talking about normal cows not hell cows.
not really busted it was just how hell mobs worked back then and cows were high density they did nerf this but it doesn’t affect offline single player as you can’t even make it to hell at lvl 47.
At the time period I’m referring to all cows gave a lot more exp. It was not just cows in hell. My comment is speaking to “all” cow farming for exp
I don’t mind that it’s not “super farm-able” anymore. It just bothers me that it’s the total opposite now. Not worth touching, at least in Normal. But somehow the cows themselves remain significantly stronger than most of the monsters. So, all drawbacks and no benefits.
Or am I doing something wrong here? I just believe the game shouldn’t have utterly worthless levels shrugs
i am not positive on the exact xp for normal cows because they were utterly useless prior to 1.10 for multiplayer so i didn’t play them much but it wasn’t a significant drop in xp unlike the nerf in hell combined with the buff to act v mob xp.
also you literally said
which is also why i assumed you were talking about hell cows because nm and normal cows were basically pointless in 1.09 and since they hadn’t done the massive nerfs to xp based on level difference.
I haven’t played in over that long, and I know the origins. I just remembered it was supposed to be worth your time. Yes, clearly my info is very outdated heh.
So you’re using it’ll be useful, in nm? I dunno what level I’ll be by nm’s end.
your second option would be to start your characters in non expansion and once you are done with normal cows convert them to expansion since nm and hell cows are within a few levels of throne in those.
28| 64| 81 vs 43 |66 |85
they are only 2 levels lower than the end of a5 in nm so if you want to farm them the density makes them not a bad alternative.
the place they really shine is hell though because while blizzard nerfed the magic drops, runes drops are still higher in cows than from normal mobs (other than ghosts) and it is one of the most densely packed areas.
though admittedly on single player you are better off farming lower kurast chests for runes.
It’s actually still a very popular farming location for runes and rune bases. In the early game it’s also used for leveling from 20-25 easily in 8 player games with a friend hosting portals who has already completed normal. At that point you can start running ancient way or worldstone because exp sucks in that area until 25+.
Aside from god-like rare roll items and some t87 uniques, high runes are basically the most valuable thing in the game and cows have a nice density and solid drop rate as well as a side bonus of potential god-like base items.
Gather round, children! I’m going to tell you what the cow level was like before d2r.
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Exactly the same, except we had to run away from the cow king because killing him would prevent us from opening the portal forever. The second you saw charged bolts, you ran. And you couldn’t do public cow games because you’d get trolls that would kill the cow king just to screw someone else over. And you’d also get newbs that didn’t know better.
You are VERY overleveled for normal. Even in Act 5, you’re likely getting only around 40% of the xp for even the highest level enemies you’re fighting. You have to move on to Nightmare or your leveling will grind to a halt.
in 1.09 the cow level was the most farmed area of the game. some people sort of did chaos sanctuary and some brave adventurers went through bloody footlands. that was in 2003.
You are VERY overleveled for normal. Even in Act 5, you’re likely getting only around 40% of the xp for even the highest level enemies you’re fighting.
Really? Since I changed difficulty up to “/players8,” everything got nicer. More enemies and tougher, sure. But I found out I could handle them even when they crowded me, and even The Ancients and Baal weren’t that tough. And the loot and xp improved substantially.
With that difficulty, I can farm Pindleskin and increase a whole character level in 5 runs. Which sounds pretty decent to me.
That’s how I got to be overleveled, I suppose. In my attempts to improve my gear.
And it definitely paid off. I got much better attack speed and life and mana leech through new equipment, so I only ever need to use potions if I’m hit by the toughest attacks from Baal (and most often, not even that makes a sizeable dent). I can even afford to throw several FoH around on a small mana pool, since I can build it back up in a snap by leeching.
And yeah, I’ll go to Nightmare as soon as I clear Baal again (had to exit the game after that pointless cow level run, so everyone re-spawned). I know the real fun starts there.