Pre-Season Practice Report

General Discussion
1

What is going on Diablo fans!

I am ready for a solid weekend of gaming, and I did a little preparatory practice tonight to get warmed up! I learned / confirmed some things so I’d like to pass on the strategy I am using with some tips / things I am keeping in mind as I start the season tomorrow. I hope you enjoy and find this useful.

I am going to play hardcore ssf and the strategy I will be trying is to level all the way to the end of season journey with a necro, and then to open Haedrig’s gift on a level 1 character of a new class.

I will at first be trying to imitate Rax’s necro powerlevelling strat. Check it out on youtube, he goes 1-70 (taking a few too many shortcuts though) in 17 minutes.

Here are the steps I am following after challenge rift:
-Master difficulty necro. Do not use shards yet because were playing risky for speed. Buy gloves, pants, chest, shield from vendor. Craft axe, dagger, sword, 2h sword.
-Ruins of Sesheron massacre bonus to cube. Be very careful in the elder sanctum. Perfection is hitting level 10 as you enter elder sanctum to equip new skills + passive. Finish off 19 at Firstborn or Halls of Agony on master.
-Shop a2 vendors for upgrades.
-Fight kulle at lvl 19 on master. Use corpse golem. Be careful and patient – it takes 2 cycles of corpse golem which has a long cd.
-Upgrade 2h scythes and roll for corpse explosion gloves from Kadala. Craft level 70 gear. Helm and boots first.
-Torment 6 massacre bonus until about level 60
-Turn it down as needed. Shouldn’t need lower than torment 3.
-After hitting 70, necro is basically ready for the torment 4 rift and gr20 using the following skills:
-Corpse Explosion -Bone Armor -Blood Rush -Land of the Dead

Notes about my run I just finished:
-I did a run tonight without altar to get a feel on what it would take to beat torment 4.
-I don’t want to spend a lot on the necro because it wont be my main character
-All that was required was:
-a simple legendary weapon (I got the bone spear scythe)
-lvl 70 rare items with a mix of 2, 3, and 4 affixes
-5% crit on bracers only
-0 paragon points used
-Single socket chest, and socketed ring. 0 socket pants
-crappy amulet

It was slow-ish but land of the dead lets you “punch above”. Kill trash and round stuff up, then pop land of the dead and hold down the corpse explosion button.

Should be easier tomorrow because I will have already cleared a game of torment 1 lvl 70 bounties first. You have to do the bounties at lvl 70 or you won’t get the jeweler recipes to complete “learn 5 jeweler recipes” for the SJ.

And thats about it! After that I think I’m going to roll a wiz!

I hope enjoyed. Let me know what you think. Please also add any tips of your own!

Have a great season start! Happy blasting!

-HungryJ

2

I’m going to run Filthy’s zero to Haedrigs plan which is around 2 hrs 30 min without cache.

1 Like
3

Thats a pro gamer move for sure! Definitely an option I considered too.

4

I haven’t a necro or season start party for cursed chests. Will try to get 70 w/o cache in 1h 45-2hr by combined strategy.

5

You can get the gems for Altar node 2 at level 18.

3 Likes
6

I’m gonna chill and relax and play normally with all the other plebs, should be enjoyable

3 Likes
7

Since you mentioned HC, just a heads up (because I had issues with it).

When going to Sescheron as a low level char on a higher difficulty, watch out for the unique Barbs that spawn there. They are super strong and will follow you if you try to run away.

A couple seasons ago, I was leveling a HC character and one of them appeared. I could barely damage them. I tried to get a way but they followed me until they finally killed me.

You may get lucky and not run into any of them, but since it’s fairly random like any other unique spawns, watch out.

I just did a quick run into Sescheron and bumped into “Tala”. According to Diablo Wiki:

Like other Barbarian cannibals, she has very high melee damage, huge Life pool and moves very quickly. In addition, she has Cleave and Furious Charge abilities, the latter dealing massive damage to any enemies caught in her path.

5 Likes
8

Yep, Tala specifically is the nasty one.

There’s a couple of other ones there that you might struggle to kill early on, but won’t insta-gib you and you should probably be able to escape without too much trouble.

Tala is the bad one. If you see Tala early on levelling in HC, RUN!

1 Like
9

For the cube, you’d want to race to it on Normal, and just avoid killing anything. Even the barbs are fairly easy to survive. And with practice, you can hit 18 in under 6 minutes after you have the cube.

But people really need to take practice times with a grain of salt. No one came anywhere close to the times above saving their cache.

10

Run Forest, RUN!

2 Likes
11

It sounds like OP’s plan is to run for cube while leveling, instead of separately. So they’ll be on Master while running through.

The last time I tried Rax’s guide for a HC char, I got ganked at level 7 in Sescheron by one of those unique Barbs. (Probably Tala seeing it was swift and brutal.) I’ve been getting power levels ever since. Lol.

2 Likes
12

They will certainly get ya! Corpse explosion will take care of them but you have to have corpses under them for that to work :stuck_out_tongue:

That makes sense thank you for that pro information!!!

1 Like
13

You can unlock the Anointed Seal earlier than that if you’re lucky enough to kill a Gem Hoarder Goblin. Hopefully, he’ll drop some Diamonds for you. Or, if you’re running Visions along the way and you’re lucky enough to get a Level with Goblin Packs, focus on killing Gem Hoarder and Odious Collector Goblins first. (Plans, Mats and Gems). Killing the others is “icing on the cake”.

Otherwise, at Level 18, look for the Act II Bounty to “Kill Zoltun Kulle”. He’s easy and quick to get to. When you kill him, check the Diabolic Hoard Chest at the back of the room for a handful of Gems.

4 Likes
14

Update!

I got the wizard to level 70 with tals set by 11:00 pm. Not super fast but it was a good run. I ended up with releinas shadow hook and I got the ce gloves on my very last roll off Kadala!

I made 2 mistakes I gotta remember for next time.
First of all, I didn’t get the double bounty cache node til I did like 2 full games of bounties. Damn.

Secondly, I didn’t take the “pet auto salvage” node before I got to the cr cache point. Damn again!

Gotta remember those 2 for next time.

GG

1 Like
15

I always go for this node asap

16

I’m not entirely sure of it’s usefulness.

Yes, you’ll need an RoRG at some point, and yes, you’ll need two, but those are easy enough to get. Like, immediately after the Challenge Cache is 250 Forgotten Souls, followed by an Ancient HF Amulet, and then a couple nodes later, an Ancient Puzzle Ring followed by 300 Forgotten Souls.

All of these are super tedious to acquire, and by just acquiring the RoRG normally, you can at least get some decent upgrades while you grind to get these requirements out of the way.

17

I need at least 4 RoRG’s so at moment I’ve started to seek it I must have a double caches. May be others play different it’s ok.