I am EU player who, after all achievements (both SC and HC) done, play slowly and easily on US server the rest of the season, completely solo cause all friends are in EU. So I always level alone.
When used CR Box on my first char (who accidentally had Custerians), he went from L34 to 45 at once. That’s about 5 mil gold from Box and equivalent XP from 34 to 45 (I checked XP table). All correct. He had Cain set, Leoric Crown, but that bonus XP didn’t change anything. 5 mil gold was 5 mil XP.
But yesterday I made my 2nd char (Lazy Necro for the 20 min Conquest, finding the fastest and maybe the only one capable of doing that solo, not sure). Put only the weapon with the Gem of Ease, nothing else. Not yet crafted amulet or anything, but with Custerians cubed. I opened Bounty Cache from T16, so had 1.6 mil gold. And it went at once to L50. I checked the table - that’s about 10 mil XP, or approx. 6 times more than gold amount!
So, is there interaction, however strange it would be, between Custerians and Gem of Ease? I guess it must be. I can’t see other explanation.
I know, with 2nd char we can go to 50 in half a minute, and to 70 in less than 15 min even solo. I know that. But still, this little thing confuses me:)
That is very interesting, I have not heard of this, but as a participant in the SSF league (on HC) I’m very much interested in how to level a second character fast yourself. With a Gem of Ease in weapon the first 40-50 levels are relatively quick, but then it becomes a drag.
I might test some stuff - this might give me a reason to do a couple bounties later - but would love to hear if anyone has an explanation for this.
Did the weapon that you had equipped maybe have gold find on? Plus gold find in paragon? But still, this would at most double it, not times 6…
You are right, after 50 we usually need 40 min or so, but this time I had Legacy of Dreams and ancient weapon and amulet, so put T4 (could be T6 with no fuss) and 51 to 70 went in like 12 minutes. That’s of course possible only if you use items collected or crafted by your other, full leveled character, have cubed items and so on… hardly SSF I guess:))
Weapon was Reilena with no gold. Paragon was low, about 600 (just made my first char few days ago), so gold bonus (as irrelevant and always last for me) was empty. No gold bonus except the fact it was T4. I forgot to say that Gem was L50, and looking a bit better at charts, it seem it is factor 7, not 6.
I play largely solo except bounties, and I powerlevel myself with Gem of Ease all the time.
I usually find it takes me about 15 min from 1-70, including the time to craft Cain’s + Born’s and yellows at various points. The Cube and Gem of Ease makes it pretty trivial.
The general idea:
Gem of Ease (25+, higher the better) in an ancient weapon with mainstat + vit (1000 vit helps you stay alive and run T6 the whole way). The weapon should ideally have a big skill bonus.
Hellfire amulet (has a level 1 requirement), ideally with your class second life passive on it so you have it from level 1 (good for HC, not really required for SC).
Craft low level Born’s (equip at 21) + Cain’s (equip at 23). Make sure you make the helm from Cain’s and stuff a Flawless Royal Ruby in it.
Put Leoric’s Crown in cube (for the ruby you have in your Cain’s helm). Put something in the weapon slot for another damage multiplier. Ring slot can be whatever (definitely a defensive ring for HC, e.g. Halo of Karini/Elusive Ring/Band of Might etc.).
Once you hit level 61, craft yellow items (including level 61 rings, requires a few Marquise gems) to boost you up a bit and get over the hump to 70. You can do this around level 40-50 as well if you find you need it (might be wise in HC for a little more toughness), but I usually try to push all the way to 61 before I toss on some extra yellows. On your crafted yellows try to get mainstat + vit on every piece. Crit stats are a bonus, but preference for mainstat + vit first since you’ll be pretty low on mainstat at lower levels.
If you’re really motivated, you could craft a Hellfire Ring as well. I never bother though, you don’t really need it.
I usually do Weeping Hollow until I’m level 40-50, then switch to Halls of Agony 3 until I’m 61. Then I grind big kill streaks in Fields of Misery until I’m 70. You may find you want to drop it from T6 down to T2-T4 around level 50-60, especially in HC.
If you have a Bovine Bardiche, that’s a good place to do kill streaks as well. I mostly play DH and wizard, so I rarely have one. Fields of Misery works fine too (just watch out for the spears once you hit level 50+, they start hitting pretty hard on T6).
If you’re interested, I could make a recording to show the process. I need to level a WD at some point here anyway to gamble pants.
I know you know this but for others that may not… Assuming you’re going for SLW, you don’t need to level your WD to get them. Just gamble for pants on your main and stash some level 70 yellows. Then go create a level 1 WD and upgrade rares with those saved pants and you’ll still get level 70 waders. I think you have a 1 in 6 or 7 chance to get them. Then go back to your wiz and reroll.
Thanks - yes, that’s exactly what I do as well. I also keep a look out for items that have reduced level requirements when salvaging, so over time I almost got an entire level 70 set of gear for leveling alts. And I also do use Hellfire Ring in addition to amulet (being able to use a legendary gem from level 1). Sure, it’s fast, 15 minutes isn’t the end of the world. But I’m willing to invest an hour to make those 15 minutes 5. That’s how much I hate leveling, yes
That’s why I’m interested in what OP might have discovered.
That was my original plan. But man oh man… it’s tough to find bounty groups in HC. Last time I mained HC was like season 6, but the playerbase was a fair bity bigger then I guess. And the number of torments was smaller. It’s really tough now to find pub bounty games in HC.
Bounty mats are going to be pretty precious, so I was thinking it might be better to just gamble for them.
As I mentioned, don’t forget medium-to-high leveled LOD gem, which makes leveling easy on T6 all the way even on HC. Just a bit of luck and you can have ancient weapon, amu and ring. And even not ancient, simple legendaries will do. Pair it with Molten Gem and you’re totally safe. And as a 3rd some pure dmg Gem, like Pain or Myrinae. L25 enough.
However, I hope someone will know the answer. Maybe to test it with lower or higher Gem of Ease, if number change from 11 milion XP, we’ll know for sure.
T4, as I mentioned in my 2nd post, which I forgot in first (with many other things:))
Update:
Just did the same with new HC char, but this time was T6 and opened CR Box and one T16 Horadric Cache together. Went from L1 to L54 at once.
It is about 6.6 mil gold and 27 mil XP points. That’s about factor 4 now, hm. Really confusing. But anyway nice to get to 54 in 1 second instead of usual 5-8 min, ha!
And most important, decided to take a risk and did not equip any weapon or gem - nothing. So this happens regardless of Gem of Ease, Custerians somehow multiply gold to xp. Is it always or only below L70, who knows…
But this is a nice fact. Though, we still don’t know if there was a weapon with Gem, would it be even more xp. Damn experiments:D
Update2:
This LoD gem really makes such a huge difference for self-leveling second and other characters. Finally can play T6 from the beginning to the end, 54 to 64 was like 2 min, then several minutes in town choosing more gear, and again 64 to 70 in 4-5 min. Incredible. First time ever I leveled myself completely on T6 and so fast.
Due to LoD toughness is over 15 millions, it is so secure and trivial.
Other 2 gems are Pain and Toxic, very low level, it seems can be L1 as well.
LoD was only L30 this time.
Maps were crowdy and nice Fields and Woods in Act 1.
I’d still like to solve this “Custerian Mystery,” but with LoD gem, it is completely unimportant except for the first seasonal character.
T3 has a +550% meaning a 6.5x factor thus 1.64 mill becomes 10.66 mill - similar to what you see.
T5 has a +1150% meaning a 12.5x factor thus 1.64 mill becomes 20.5 mill pretty similar to what you report. Seems like something allows the difficulty bonus to be applied at a lower difficulty level.
I can see the mechanism, yes. KiWeN’s Law:
THE DIFFICULTY BONUS IS SOMEHOW APPLIED AND MULTIPLIES THE AMOUNT OF FOUND GOLD WHILE CONVERTING IT TO XP.
But numbers don’t fit so well.
As stated, it was T4 in first case, so factor is about 8 or 9.
And especially 2nd case, with 6.6 mil gold on T6, not T5.
I forgot what is the factor of T6, but if you say for T5 is 12.5 then is certainly not less than 15. It would be at least 100 mil xp then, but it is only 27 mil.
T6 is a factor of 19, so that’s going to be too high. The whole issue is to clarify how it finds the value it adds and thus how it is applied. Once I get some time I will try and debunk it, currently working on a spreadsheet that calculates the exp value added.
Still need to find the bracers and level a Gem of Ease.
Ok, I did several tests, farmed a bunch of T16 caches and then tried the following things, all on a level 1 character with Custerian Wristguards:
“Normal” difficulty, no weapon
T6, no weapon
Normal, rank 25 Gem of Ease (+1750 XP)
Normal, rank 60 Gem of Ease (+3500 XP)
T6, rank 60 Gem of Ease
The result was always exactly the same: I got to level 50 (2,037,920 XP to level 51). Absolutely no variation.
So if anyone can think of any other variables be my guest, but it’s neither game difficulty nor Gem of Ease level. Has to be something else.
What’s interesting is that OP used a CR cache instead of a T16 cache in the first case, yielding less XP, even though it should yield more (5.1m gold from CR cache vs. 1.64m gold from a T16 cache). It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, and I already spent my CR cache this week so can’t test it, but there has to be something fishy going on with that - because the XP gain from the gold from a T16 cache seems to be exactly the same, all the time, see my tests.
The XP from 1 T16 cache in my tests is equivalent to 14,774,000. Multiply that times ten, like in your case, should put you at level 61 and a bit. So why only 5154??? I don’t get it!
Thanks, fixed. I still don’t get it. You should’ve received so much more XP than that. You don’t happen to check what you got from a single cache? I wonder if there’s some diminishing return or so going on for the wristguards. Even though it doesn’t make sense. I see no math that leads up to the results we’re seeing here.
only give xp when you kill a monster, -as the text says, it has no effect on gold pickup bonus. 
