Here’s the other end of the spectrum.
Let’s just say it wasnt for the no level requirement altar node almost everyone would open the challenge rift cache. Hopefully we all get lucky with gold or bloodshard goblins.
I already ruined my luck this season, the first rift i did on the PTR was the cow gauntlet wich gives tons of gold and xp. Theres no way i’m gonna be as lucky on live. That’s basically GG right there , it alone gives enough Gold for the blacksmith.
Also if you get the Whimsydale therem rift, theres a high chance of getting high level gems, those sell for a lot of gold.
Yeah luck factor is not included, since it’s inconsistent.
When I do levelling practice I generally assume poor luck. I assume I strike out on my upgrade, and I generally skip all the legendaries that drop and ignore any goblins I see. That kind of simulates a worst case scenario, so I know a rough bound on how long it will take to level. If I get lucky on the actual season start, great! I levelled faster than expected.
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Also skipping rubies. They can remove decent chunks of leveling time.
Outside of that, I do prefer fixed level weapons, rather than rolling the weapon during the run. You just need some control. A run where you get a 42 weapon with one class, and another run with a different class getting a 51 weapon can give a false impression of which class levels faster.
And I know it’s the best expected, but with a Level 40 weapon for each class, I have that control. And its easier to figure out what I need to dump my difficulty down to, rather than what I can upgrade it too. So, just for personal use, I have two runs, one with a 40 weapon, and one with no Level Reduce. That way I have a chart of the appropriate difficulty to switch over to when I do get my Level Reduction weapon.
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I don’t think so. The difference between leveling cache vs no cache is pretty similar in each environment.
With the way the altar price structure works, not having the cache post 70 is a pretty big deal.
Not having that cache is going to hurt, but sometime you gotta risk it for the biscuit.
This really comes down to what you’re after. There’s still the Ramaladni’s Gift and Petrified Scream that you need to sacrifice. You’ll see people who will say they have them on opening weekend, but you also see people who post if these things exist, when they’ve reached 800+ paragon without seeing them once.
Now, if you’re playing for 20+ hours, it becomes less of a question. But that’s still 6+ hours each day of the weekend. People have family, jobs, etc. that 20 hours over the opening weekend isn’t realistic for them.
And the Challenge Cache not only helps for leveling, it helps for post 70 as well.
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I’ll open mine and enjoy the season start (uber leveling), then if I get to power 15 before next CR reset so be it, I can spend that time farming the stuff needed for the rest… Staff of Herding as an example 
Love that there is a choice to be made… people also forget you get almost all the good stuff even if you use cache.
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If you save the cache, you’re betting that:
-you’ll get to node 15 (and maybe past it)
-having gotten all the drops needed previously
-in time to not only unlock but also meaningfully use those Altar powers, before the next CR is available
-despite leveling more slowly and gearing up more slowly at 70 without the boost the cache gives you
Even for people who have no other weekend plans + Monday off, getting in enough play-time after unlocking node 15 but before the challenge rift resets to make up for the slower start is going to be challenging.
I have plans and will have to work Monday (too bad they didn’t plan ahead to start the 17th for Family Day weekend) so it will likely take me a few additional days to be ready to unlock that node. But I’ll definitely save the second cache for it.
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This is a great thread. I’m still reading through (at post 51). I will say this. @BehindTimes is a beast. I thought I had good ideas on solo leveling and then I encounter that guy. Side Note: This game has NO balance. NoNe! The Necro class is broken or should I say Necro is a tool for jail breaking. It is like a skeleton key. /meme_face
This…
Crafted Yellows + Blues are tradable on the PC (not the console version though).
… sucks. I don’t play console but even I was like damn that is a cat turd for sure.
The ideas in this thread can be tested right now. You all have access to all 3 realms.
I’m most likely going to hold my Friday CR until I get my Monday CR. I don’t trust blizz or RnGesus. I could see them throwing a real stinker CR at us on Monday and those who burned the Friday CR are stuck waiting an entire week to finish unlocking the tree.
Multi-class/char seems to be the way to go.
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That’s not true, unless blizz changed it. I did all 4 chapters in SC and had the ‘mail icon’ sitting there on my UI. When I got my Barb to 70 in HC, I clicked on it and got all 6 pieces.
Is it cheesey? Yea, but there were conquests on both sides to get to the end of the journey for the stash tab and either wings or pet.
I’m with you. Assuming I decide to play s28 (still waiting on those darn updated patch notes) I will be using the cache immediately. The quality of life is just too high. Also, I know that I personally will have maybe 8 hours of play on Friday and another 5 or 6 on Saturday. And then the next time I get on, the next challenge rift will be available. There’s almost no chance I’ll need the one for the altar before then. Even if miraculously I could use one, 14 nodes worth of the tree is already going to be a strong power boost.
Somewhere in S-24 or S-25 there was a Wizard CR that used Tal Rasha and Storm Armor, but had no Karini so your CR wizard basically had no defense. The rift was full of Act 4 mobs. There were certain junction points where it was just a killing zone for the mobs. There were other points where teleporting would land you into an ambush. I didn’t finish the CR because the pubs kept leaving. Someone in in-game chat mentioned 1 player had to draw fire and take the death which allowed others to TP pass the cluster to reach a pylon and clear a path. It was a hot mess and several hours of failure due to pubs quitting was real annoying.
Back on topic:
For those holding the CR cache it might make more sense to go A > B instead of A > C. A > B is for PC kill streak strats.
Do not speak to the enchantress until you are level 11. Sounds like a red pill strategy. You have no value until you build yourself up. After you build yourself up then you are high value and get big staff.
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It’s never been that way before.
So, since I hadn’t tested this out within the past couple seasons, I got a friend to help test. And apparently nothing has changed on that end.
He logged back in SC, and the gift was still waiting in his mailbox. Are you sure you didn’t leave something untouched in Chapters 1/2?
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B is almost never the way to go unless you’re a Necro. Necros can get to level 40 in roughly 15 minutes (even without the season theme and double massacres), at which point, if you happen to be lucky with rolling a level reduce naturally, that’s going to be faster. But I still wouldn’t advise it, even in that situation, as you lose +25% Movement Speed. Extra movement speed will make up for the lost time in that scenario, and is just too good to pass up.
Anyway, as far as the No Challenge Rift approach, there are a few changes, if you want to be efficient. You still level up to 18 as a Necromancer. But you don’t do the bounty then. Just speed to 18.
You do the bounty on your real character, and you want to focus on Act 4, because bosses take time, and aren’t worth the reward. With Act 4, you can spawn without a boss bounty. (And it’s just overall a faster act.) On HC, you can do this on T1/T2. On SC, you can even push to T3.
Anyway, the next step is to snapshot 3 zones.
Equip the gear your Necromancer had, and you should be practically invincible at Level 1.
Now, teleport to the bounty acts and just run around, attacking nothing. Just make sure you find elites and the target boss. The zones really don’t matter, provided they’re single zones. (In other words, you don’t need to enter another zone where fighting is unavoidable.) Just do this with 3 acts (takes roughly 5-10 minutes). The monsters will now be stuck at Level 1.
Now, start doing the bounties that you didn’t snapshot. This will boost your levels up. Complete the 3 zones that you snapshotted, and since they’re stuck at Level 1, they’ll die near instantly. Collect your Cache and now you have the gold and Death Breath. This will be a little bit faster than his approach. I ran through a few times on the PTR, and it was roughly 60-70 minutes to level any class but the Demon Hunter. (Guessing 2.5-3 hours live). The problem with the Demon Hunter was that they use bows, so the weapons don’t really transfer over as well.
@
I see.
FYI, A4 Cursed Shrines bounty. You have to find the red portal to enter. Once inside the place is called “The Archives”. This bounty spawns near unlimited spiders I believe. They continuously spawn so this might be kill streak heaven. This may not be unlimited spiders as they eventually do stop spawning. When the timer runs out it might kill the spider spawns and then you are left with the shrines that spawn mobs and elites to deal with. You will lose the double chest by not beating the timer but the kill streak though.
Side Note: I hate the A4 mobs they are so annoying. Stuns, knockbacks, and charge.
It’s not about the extra chest nor the extra monsters. It’s all about the time. Because once you can create a Level 70 weapon, it’s going to take mere minutes to hit Level 40, even from Level 1. It’s not worth spending 15 minutes to go from Level 10-15, when you could spend 5 minutes to go 10-11, and 5 minutes to go 11-40.
How much does it cost to fully upgrade Mystic and Jeweler?
311k for the Blacksmith
416k for the Jeweler
226k for the Mystic
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