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Here's an unusual tournament that I am proposing to the forum.
The Race to Kill Baal
There are many ways to make a character fast afoot. Sorcs can Teleport, Paladins can Charge and use Vigor, Barbs have Increased Speed and Frenzy, Druids have Feral Rage, Assassins have Burst of Speed. Amazons and Necros only have equipment with FRW modifiers but may have other skills (such as Dim Vision and Evade) that will help them in a foot race through Sanctuary. A Race to Kill Baal.
Basic Description
Each contestant will create a level 32 character, randomize their map, and then race through Normal Difficulty from the Rogue Encampment to Baal in 13 sections. The lowest elapsed time for getting from the Rogue Encampment to Baal will win the Race.
1) Each participant will create an untwinked soft-core character and play him/her through Normal Difficulty until the character reaches level 32. It does not matter whether your softcore character is killed once or many times while you are leveling him. While advancing your character to skill level 32 you must not defeat the Ancients. However, as a minimum, you should complete the Act 3 Quest that opens the doorway to the Durance of Hate by the time you reach clvl32.
Immediately upon reaching clvl 32 you must invest your new skill point and stop play.
2) At this point you must change your map seed so that the entire map becomes unknown to you. One correct way to do this is to create a TCP/IP multiplayer game with your lvl 32 character and then create a new Single Player game.
3) Return to the Rogue Encampment in single player mode..
4) You must now keep track of elapsed time as you race through an unknown map to kill all five Act Bosses. You will race and keep track of elapsed time like the Tour d’ France – by running different legs. Record your elapsed time as you run these 13 legs of the Race:
Act 1
1. Rogue Encampment to Outer Cloister Waypoint (WP)
2. Outer Cloister WP to Inner Cloister WP
3. Inner Cloister WP to Death of Andariel (teleport to Rogue Encampment)
Act 2
4. Lut Gholein /Canyon of Magi WP to Death of Duriel
Act 3.
5. Kurast Docks to Lower Kurast WP
6. Lower Kurast to Travincial WP
7. Travincial WP to Death of Mephisto/TP to Pandemonium Fortress
Act 4.
8. Pandemonium Fortress to River of Blood WP
9. River of Blood WP to Death of Diablo
Act 5.
10. Harrogath to Frigid Highlands WP
11. Frigid Highlands WP to Arreat Tunnels WP
12. Arreat Tunnels WP to Worldstone Chamber Level 2 WP (Kill the Ancients)
13. Worldstone Chamber Level 2 WP to Death of Baal
The contestant with the lowest overall elapsed time from the Rogue Encampment to Death of Baal wins the tournament. We will also honor the fastest of each character class (e.g., the fastest Amazon).
As you may imagine, fast run/walk speed will not be the only important attribute of a character in the race. So, carefully consider your plan for building your character – and hope you find great equipment!
Specific Rules about the Race Phase of the Tournament
1. The only monsters you are required to kill are the five Act bosses, the three Ancients and the various minions necessary to get to Diablo and Baal. You may run around or run past any other monsters you wish to.
2. You are not required to locate any waypoints other than those that begin or terminate the legs. You are not required to complete any uncompleted quests (such as rescuing Anya, rescuing the Barbarians or killing Nihlathak) that are unnecessary to the objective of Killing Baal.
3. The Race Phase is also softcore, but being killed will obviously have a built-in time penalty. If your character is killed, you may use the waypoints to teleport to the last waypoint that your character has already passed and proceed to recover your body. The clock continues to tick, however.
4. If your character is killed and you are unable to recover the body (because you keep getting re-killed), then you are disqualified.
5. You may not use teleport scrolls during a race except for returning to town after killing an Act Boss.
6. You may return to town using waypoints as often as you wish in order to repair equipment, buy potions and scrolls. The clock continues to tick while you are in town. You must always shop at whatever town is associated with the Act you are in, i.e., while racing through Act 1 you may not use waypoints to go to Harrogath to load up on better health/mana potions.
7. As you race, you will probably continue to level up past level 32. You may invest your skill and attribute points gained by leveling up –but you must do so “on the clock.”
8. Once you start a leg of the race, you should make every attempt to complete the leg before shutting the game down. If you have a computer failure, just do the best you can by restarting your leg at the last waypoint you had passed and continue to accumulate a total elapsed time for the leg. Obviously, its okay to pause the game and stop the clock, in order to answer the phone or do other real-life things, and then later restart both the game and the clock.
General Rules about the Tournament and Building your Character
§1. Characters are softcore. Version 1.10/1.11. RWM/RRM may be used, but only Runewords that are able to be created unpatched can be used.
§2. You must play untwinked while building your character and while racing. You may use ATMA as an extended stash, but may only provide to your character those items that have been obtained by your character during the game. Once your character begins the Race Phase, you may not twink on any items from ATMA.
§3. You may not use Save & Exit to escape death.
§4. You may play on any /players setting and change it at any time you wish. It is expected that most participants will elect to race in Players 1 mode.
§5. There are no restrictions on skills, attributes, or weapons usage.
§6. You may rerun areas if you wish during the character building phase (but NOT during the Race Phase.)
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That's it. Please provide your comments and/or indicate your interest in this unusual tournament idea.
Sounds interesting, I'm willing to give it a try (with an Assassin as usual). I don't know if it's just because I enjoy playing assassins, but it seems that they are versatile enough to do well in most of the tournaments.
When do we start? Will there be an ending date?
I'm ready to run.
Hells yeah. Sounds cool. So can we start leveling now, or should we wait?
...I know I won't get the fastest time overall, but I'd like to take a Barb. Sorcs will most likely own this tourney, but I'm comfortable knowing I'm inferior. :grin:
edit: I suppose I could use a bit of clarification on how to run the timer. In the case of the Tour de France, the timer begins at the start of a leg and ends at the termination of a leg. SO, for instance, at the end of an act's leg like after killing Andy, do we stop the timer as soon as we reach the Rogue Camp? Or does the timer keep going, forcing us to keep rolling through A2? In another case, one of A3's legs terminates at the Travincial WP. Can we, for instance, WP back to town, halt the timer to prep while there, and only when we're WPing back to Travincial do we begin the timer again?
I understand that anytime you need to hit Esc to pause the game, the timer can stop. But are we supposed to run all 13 legs at once in a marathon of sorts? I'd just like to understand before I either add too much time or take too much off. ...hope I'm being clear... :undecided:
I'm pretty sure barbs will do better. Sorcs will have a high-mana cost teleport with no-to-little faster cast, I think slvl 9 frenzy+slvl 15 increased speed will make it faster.Originally Posted by ElmoCorruptsChildren
Well heck, that sounds like a challenge. I'm in with a sorc, assuming that the timing of the tourney works out for me. :smiley:Originally Posted by Corrupted
Sounds like a fun and short tourney. I'm in, probably a sorc, but I'll have to think about it for a bit.
edit: bah, just remembered I'm going out of town for the next few weeks and won't have access to D2. I'm out. :[
Who says it's possible to be competeing in too many tournaments?
I'm in like flynn. Playing druid.
Great to here there is some interest!
1. You may start leveling as soon as you wish.
2. The Race to Baal tournament will continue until there is no more interest - so being out of town for two weeks does not need to rule out your participation.
3. The question about where each leg ends is why I bothered to define each leg - i.e., the termination and beginning of a leg are just as they have been defined. The first leg ends when you reach the Outer Cloister WP; its not necessary to go back to town. The next leg begins at the Outer Cloister WP, not in town. When you kill Andariel, your 3rd leg is over and the clock stops - unless you want to pick up loot (which is always on the clock.) The fourth leg begins in Lut Gholein as you use the WP to teleport to Canyon of the Magi;, its not necessary to include th travel with Warriv across the sea.
4. I forgot to mention Mercs. Basically there are no restrictions about Mercs - do whatever you want.
just a silly observation / question ...
Finding Duriel will be 'interesting'. As the quest will already have been completed, lucky people will find the correct tomb straight away, unlucky ones will find it on the 7th try. The time difference could make the single difference between winning and losing. Or is there a (legit) way to tell which is the right tomb ?
DelBoy
ps - another thought - why not just make a char with the -act5 switch ? He'll have no gear, so maybe that's why not, but you would have a lvl 33 char with a clear map
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