Easiest way to level a Sorc?

[C-Beat]

Hi all,

Just started playing again after a long break from d2x and from what i've heard cow lvl has been serioulsy nerfed in the latest patch.

I've got some decent gear saved and a lvl 12 sorc, aiming for a meteorb. What is the easiest way to level these days? Is it just to suck it up and play it normal, nighmare and hell?

regards
C-Beat

[guface]

in your situation, there are a few ways to level up quickly.

My typical levelling:
1-14 tristram
15-23 finish act2 and do a tombrun
23-24 rush to a5 and ancients
24-25 diablorun
25+ baalrun
45ish - nightmare, rush through
45-75 - baalrun nightmare
75+ hell and baalrun

I dont like cows as
1. not too many cow games that are reliable. (ie enough people rushing etc)
2. the cows are level 28, and that means its good exp for level 23+. But after 23, you should be running diablo and baal
3. the experience is still poor compared to dia/baalruns


Of course, if you had wealth, I would definitely go for UT levelling. 1-85 in 20 mins.

[C-Beat]

Thanks for your reply!

What do you mean by UT leveling, what is that?

[Blazelight]

i guess uber tristram?

[Robobaby]

UT = Uber Tristram.

To get access to uber trist you need to find pandemonium keys. 3 of each type - terror, hate and destruction. You transmute 1 of each key in the cube in act 5 hell to open a red portal each time which leads to a very hard mini boss (dont bother doing it unless you are very high level and preferably a smiter or something similar). Each mini boss drops an organ - baal's eye, mephisto's brain and diablo's horn.

If you transmute these organs in the cube it will open a red portal to uber tristram which has stonking hard versions of diablo, baal and mephisto with mephisto being undoubtedly the hardest. UT levelling is a sort of method of controlling the game so that you can isolate mephisto and cause him to spawn billions of skeletons which a pair of high level characters (usually hammerdins) can kill for you in order to level up alot of low level characters (leechers). It is usually done as a service or as a guild/team event. All our uber games are free for guild members. Whoever supplies the organs gets the torch at the end.

We don't ever do public ubers for love nor money because it is far too easy to lose control of the game when someone you don't know joins. The most common method is for a smiter to join and kill meph and steal the torch drop. That ends the levelling game immediately.

Alternatively, a necro or pally can join and spam procs/status effects to make everyone in the game C/I (connection interrupted). It is usually followed by another person that blocks the red portal to prevent rejoiners from entering uber trist again. Game over.

If you are part of a team or guild or you can find a team or guild willing to level you (usually for a price) then to get to uber tristram as a level 1 dude you have to get a glitch rush from act 1 normal to act 5 hell so you can go into the red portal into uber trist.

Total time including rush and levelling should be around 3 hours or so if everything goes well and everyone knows what they are doing. The setup is quite complicated and you need a glitcher first of all. This is a lvl 40 character that has not killed baal yet. You can find these in game in normal baal runs and they will usually join you because they get a free nightmare/hell rush. If you are levelling a character yourself and you have one close to level 40 that has not killed baal yet then you can use this as a glitcher and also sell your services as a glitcher in game. In return you will usually get a free rush to act5 hell.

Your glitcher pairs up with your rusher which can be any high level character that can bomb it through normal, nightmare and up to act5 hell hell only doing the bare essential quests to get there. The glitcher accompanies the rusher and 'bumps' the lowbies through ancients and baal on normal and nightmare difficulty. All the lowbies stay in town and you will skip ancients on normal and nightmare difficulty (thus bypassing the level requirements). The glitcher will get you baal quest on each difficulty and for himself. Therefore, after a glitcher has been used once, he gets the quests and can no longer be used as a glitcher again.

This is roughly how you get a level 1 character in act 5 hell in the first place. Normally you need to be level 40 before you can start hell. Its easier to understand if you see it. Your best bet is to normal level up to 40ish without killing normal baal and then advertise yourself as a glitcher in search of a 'grush'. rush/leveling teams will pick you up and you will get a free ride to act 5 hell.

Once in act 5 hell you can leech exp in uber tristram games and the setup for that is a bit more complicated. You need a smiter or a similar sort of physical damage dealer with massive attack speed, crushing blow life leech/life tap and other procs. This character will kill uber baal and uber diablo and trap uber mephisto in a burning house on the left side of the map.

All the lowbies will huddle on a rock on the right side of the map. 2 hammerdins will spin up sort of in the middle north part of the map adjacent to another burning house. Then you have a necro trigger meph's skeleton spawns by casting bonewall. Alternatively you can do it the old fashioned way with a manual trigger (any character that simply moves into aggro range of mephisto making him spawn skeletons like crazy).

There is a predictable way of figuring out where meph will spawn skellies. I don't know who figured it out but its definitely consistant. He always spawns skellies on top of the last person to join the game that parties outside uber tristram. So you need to join the game in such away that the last person to join is a hdin and that person is the last to party up with everyone else.

When the skeletons spawn on the hdins they spin up blessed hammers, one using concentration aura (for damage) and the other maintaining cleansing aura (to slow poison). Hdins kill skellies in waves of 4 to 6 (controlled by the bonewaller or manual trigger) before going to the rock with the bonewaller and waiting for the corpses to clear.

If you do not do this the game will gradually become more unstable and eventually the hdins will start to see corrupted graphics and sprites disappearing. If you continue to kill stuff and create more corpses the game will eventually crash and everyone will disconnect.

Killing skellies levels you quite fast between 1 and 24. 25 is the magic number because once you hit that you will gain a level every 2 seconds up to about 70ish. 1-75 takes about 30 minutes. 75 to 85 takes double that time. 85 to 90 takes like quadruple that time again. After lvl 90 its pretty much not worth uber levelling at all and you may as well baal run.

Once all the lowbies in the game are sufficiently levelled, the smiter can come back in and kill uber meph. In our guild games whoever supplied the organs gets the torch drop. Different guilds/teams have different rules and the smiter may ask for the torch himself (since he provides a necessary service by trapping meph).

Unfortunately, because of how unstable uber games are and how easy it is to grief them up, you will almost never see a public one. I have personally not seen one this ladder.

Whenever possible, uber levelling is absolutely the fastest way to get a level 1 character to 75 to 90. However you will pretty much never be able to do it unless you are in a big organised guild that regularly does these for members.

[guface]

yeah what robobaby said.

Although my point is that for every ladder there is someone you can pay to level you up, and they almost always do it via UT levelling as its the least time consuming.

Usually they offer it in levelling services but recently, there is a lack of UT levelling threads on forums. Maybe I'll set one up for europe at some point.

[C-Beat]

Wow, not a short answer for a short question :) Thanks for explaining it to me, i think i understand most of it.

But since i'm playin NL and not in a guild i'll probably have to level up "old style" on my own...

[sirpoopsalot]

But since i'm playin NL and not in a guild i'll probably have to level up "old style" on my own...

That holds for me as well in single player. Here's my path (assuming low-end gear), however, with the /players command in SP I don't really need to rerun anywhere. I'm not sure if that works outside of SP though (I don't think it does), and you might find it harder to get to my character levels at certain points.


Act1 Normal: Stay melee, you won't have as many frustrations with your complete lack of mana. Usually finish the act around level 16-18.

Act2 Normal: Load up on equipment that adds +mana. Perfect Sapphires in socketed armor & helm, and Tir runes in weapon & shield. Hopefully you can get some early FCR gear too (Maelstrom is a nice wand for level14 - pair it with 1xFCR ring/amulet for the 37 FCR breakpoint). Finish somewhere around level 25.

Act3 & 4 Normal: Depending on your main skill, these may be a little slow. If you chose a main skill that's relatively low-level (Fireball, Nova, Lightning) your power should hopefully be starting to pick up sufficiently. Some of the other skills (particularly Blizzard & Frozen Orb) can do quite well even when you first get them, but others require quite a while to pick up, meaning your power is a little stunted at this time. You may just have to tough it out. Finish Act4 somewhere around level 30.

Act5+: Pump as much into your main skill as you can (with at least 1 point in your mastery). If you still have mana problems, consider putting points into some synergies/masteries instead of the main skill, since this can help keep mana costs down.

You can do Baal runs in Normal until level50 with relative ease. It's possible to go higher level by running him, but starts to slow down a little after that point.


Act2-3 Nightmare: You can start to teleport a little more. Before this the mana cost was probably too high to use it more than very sporadically. Heck, it's still quite costly, but should at least be usable in short bursts.

Act3-5 Nightmare: If you're going with a dual-element attack you'll want to build up your second element during these levels - before you get to Hell.

You can do Baal runs in Nightmare until level77 with relative ease. It's possible to go higher level by running him, but starts to slow down a little after that point.


Generally: potions are your friends. drink them.

Overall: sorcs are still one of the most tedious classes to levelup, especially if you don't have good equipment.

[C-Beat]

Thanks for your post Sirpoopsalot! It will help me alot :)

[DECOYBOY]

for normal, having a friend with an enchantress or a second account with an enchantress speeds things up, and it gives you something to do cuz you can actually kill things while questing, rather than just sit, wait for tp, leech etc.

[MalVeauX]

Hi all,

Just started playing again after a long break from d2x and from what i've heard cow lvl has been serioulsy nerfed in the latest patch.

I've got some decent gear saved and a lvl 12 sorc, aiming for a meteorb. What is the easiest way to level these days? Is it just to suck it up and play it normal, nighmare and hell?

regards
C-Beat

Heya,

Ubering is certainly a fast way to level. But it costs you big time. Or it at least requires you have some very active and good friends who will let you tag along.

However, there is an easy way to ride the b.net wave:

Lots of people do `trist' runs to level 12~15 or so, then run off to do `tomb' runs until level 20. Then they do `cows' until 24. Then ancients. Then at 25, they baal to 40. Then at 40, they advertise or join games like `baalq 4rush' where someone with a high level hammerdin (for example) who has several level 1's or low level friends who all want a grush. You give your quests (the ability to do ancients/baal in NM essentially) in order to get yourself to at least Act4 Hell. At this point, you can join a channel like "clan chx" and start hell chaos runs until level 64. At this point, you can do the ancients (join a game, make a game, pay someone to do it for pgems, etc). Then at 65, you're ready to baal run to whatever level you please. There are many non-stop baal run channels. But even easier, there's always baal run games going--run by bots generally. They're fast and go on and on and on. In a single day, doing this, you can easily hit level 70~80 no problem.

The way I do things, I have two copies of the game (ie, two sets of keys). I have a laptop & a normal computer, and I run a copy on each one. On one account, I have a high level Sorc for rushing. I also have an enchnatress (a sorc with nothing but fully synergized enchant). I start a new character and do a normal rush with my sorc just to get to act5 real quick. Next, I join full a game (or near full game). I join with my enchantress. I chant my low level. My low level then does 1k fire damage and proceeds to kill everything from blood more to the black marsh. I'm level 12 by then at least. Then I switch to act2, and go run through the sewers. I'm level 15 by the end usually. Then I go to the tombs and by the 2nd tomb, I'm usually level 20. At this point, I go to act3. I go to the kurast bizzare. I re-enchant (it lasts like 10 minutes or more). I then clear out a lot of the bizzare and go backwards to the lower bizzare and then into the flayer jungle. I hit 24 by then. Now I bring back my sorc and I do ancients for my character to hit 25. Now I just casually join baal runs until level 40, or I just make baal runs myself with my sorc and join with my new character and leach. At level 40, I get the baal quest. Then I do a self rush through nightmare. I do ancients. I do Baal Q. I then self rush Hell and go to Act4. At this point, I join "clan chx" and do chaos runs to level 64. At this level, I make a game and do ancients with my sorc again. I then join public baal runs or I join a channel like ANT, Coldone, or just follow a bot that is doing well in public games (they tend to spam their channels). I get to level 80 in an after noon rather quickly. Mean while, I also get all three of my own forges.

Anyhow, something to think about.

Cheers, :)