Tournament: The emperor's clothes

[Merlin The Wizzard]

The emperor's clothes

We only dress in the best! No random drops will do, we want those... unique drops. The kind of equipment that the superunique monsters drop that is.

idea
I was kind of interested in the idea that Thyiad pitched a while ago. An 'easy' tourney, a tournament less experienced players (or less skilled players, take your pick) can enter and have a good chance of doing good in.

Laydown
Each act has a number of superunique monsters. The equipment dropped by these monsters may be worn and/or used. ONLY the equipment dropped by these monsters may be equipped. This includes Act Bosses.

The entire list of superunique monsters can be found here.
Note that the Cow King also counts as a superunique monster, even though it's not listed here.


Equipment = Anything that fills a weapon or armor slot.
Anything else may be picked up and used freely from every monster. This includes runes, gems, scrolls, keys, potions and anything else I missed.

placeholders
Until you find an item dropped by a superunique monster for a slot, you may use a white item. only white. Not ethereal, or socketed. The moment a superunique monster drops an item you can use for that slot, the white item must go. Note that this also covers starting equipment.

Quests
All quest rewards must be claimed in their respective difficulty(Normal, Nightmare or Hell) or be forfeited.

Several quests give item rewards. These are treated as follows:
- Rescue Cain - The ring may be used as a placeholder, if you haven't found two rings from the monsters yet.
- Horadric Malus - You may use the reward freely, BUT : You may only imbue a class specific item of your own class. This item may then be treated as a superunique drop.
- Horadric Staff and Khalim's Flail If you so desire, feel free to use these as weapons, just remember that they are gone at the end of their respective acts!
- The Gidbinn - You may use the ring as a placeholder if you haven't got two ring drops yet (unlikely!)
- Shenk the Overseer - The item socketed by Larzuk retains the status it had, BUT see below.
- Rescue Anya - The item Anya presents you with can be used freely if so desired
- Kill Nihlatak - You may personalize ANY item and then equip it freely.
Use it wisely!

Some things to point out
-Should you have trouble identifying the drop from a superunique on the ground, because several other monsters also dropped items, you cannot use these drops. Take care to kill the superunique in a place where this won't be an issue

- Socket Fillers dropped by superunique monsters are treated the same way as socket fillers dropped by normal monsters. They may be used for cube recipes, but if you insert them in an item, that item can only be equipped if it was a drop from a superunique in the first place, or you personalize it as the reward from the Nihlatak quest in Act V.
- Several superunique monsters can drop white items. Don't discard these! They may be freely used in crafting recipes, or in socketing recipes and still retain their status.
- Wirts leg may also be used as a weapon, if so desired. It certainly qualifies as a unique drop, allthough you have to be some sadistic person to use the artificial leg of a deceased crippled boy as a weapon...
- ATMA/Gomule may be used, in fact, it is highly recommended.
- RWM/RRM and versions 1.10 - 1.12a are all allowed.
- Hardcore or Firmcore only, Single pass. No chest popping at p8 cheese.
- As always, summoners are too item independant and give an unfair advantage. As such, the following skills are ruled out:
Amazon - Valkyrie. Decoy is allowed.
Assassin - Shadow Warrior, Shadow Master.
Necromancers - Summon Skeleton, Summon Skeleton Mage, Revives and Skeleton mastery. Note that the Golems may be used.
Druid - Summon Raven, Summon Spirit Wolves, Summon Dire Wolves, Summon Grizzly.
- All mercenary types are allowed. Mercenary equipment follows the same restrictions as yours.

- Necromancers wanting to use Iron Golem may use any piece of equipment dropped, not just the superunique drops.
- Equipment dropping from normal monsters may be sold freely of course, or stored for future use.

Gambling
In order to keep this open and somewhat useful, I'm willing to consider the following optional rule :

- You may use any unique/set item you gamble.

It's against the spirit of the tournament though. Another option of course is to siphon excess money off to Atma/GoMule.

Scoring
- -1 per level.
- +1 per Waypoint
- +2 per quest solved
- +5 per Act complete in Normal, +10 in Nightmare, +20 in Hell.
- +10 For completing Normal difficulty, +25 For Completing Nightmare Difficulty, +50 for guardian. Note that the moo moo farm secret level is not required for this bonus score. Also note that clearing the moomoo farm will not grant any points (but you can equip the Cow King drop)

[Mursilis]

Interesting idea.

If I understand correctly anything that the superuniques drop is usable. What happens if a super unique drops a socketed item and normal monsters drop runes. Can you use this combo to make a runeword or must the runes also drop from a superunique?

A table for sign-ups would be nice

[bladejj]

Well a runeword would be out of the question because super uniques, as well as uniques, only drop magical items. So they could have a prefix that gives the item a socket and then your question would be applicable. Can you use socketables from normal monsters?

[Merlin The Wizzard]

Forum Name      Char. Name     Lvl      Waypoint      Score      Best Find

Ok, for one, remember the personalize quest! You can use that to make any item you find eligible for use.
Second, there ARE a few superuniques who can drop white items as well (Griswold, Blood Raven, the Smith for example)

Yes, gems and runes etc. From normal monsters may be freely used.

[Hoop76]

Sounds fun. I may join if it runs for a long time.

[yugular]

Sounds like a tournament to try out as a first tournament&HC game.

I will sign-up when I can create HC character. I have just re-installed the game and my only char is in A2 normal, if I remember correctly I have to beat the normal level before creating HC is possible? I think it will take me a week or so to complete normal difficulty as I don't have much spare time.

So if I understand the challenge correctly it is not wise to clear maps from monsters? As each level you get lowers your score.

There are 13 superuniques in ACT1 so to get decent equipment for me and my merc isn't gonna be too easy? I mean only 13 drops that are allowed to wear. I wonder if I can even make it through A1.

Hints&Tips are welcome. I would also like to know if anyone has suggestions about capable character builds. I was thinking about barb/pal to begin. Hopefully someone else will also try this out.

edit: I am thinking not to use gambling at all! Like Merlin said. It doesn't fit in the idea.

Thanks for Merlin!
yugular

[Fast Eddie]

Forum Name      Char. Name     Lvl      Waypoint      Score      Best Find
Fast Eddie	oneeightseven   1	Rogue Enc.	0	    N/A

I will sign up for this, my first tournament. I will be 1.12 RWM/RRM SC only because I still have very few items, and would hate to lose some of them at this stage. But this tournament should give me a break from levelling these inane sorceresses, and it looks very fun!

[grumpyskeeper]

Sounds a very interesting tourny. I need more time to read and understand everything but surely will join. Not right now though. I'll just finish up some stuffs for press release and August issue write ups then I'll sign up.

[Merlin The Wizzard]

@yugular - Welcome! You beat me to my invitation at least. Let's see if I can address your questions and remarks.

First off, you may also start a SC character and use him/her. This is called FirmCore and is mentioned under the rules. It means: Once you die, you must stop the tournament.
However, you can of course still use the character, since a death in softcore has no immediate repercussions (apart from money/xp loss). Of course, you may also try this hardcore.

So if I understand the challenge correctly it is not wise to clear maps from monsters? As each level you get lowers your score.

The -1 point per level means that the person who can finish the game at the lowest lvl wins. Of course, the lower your level, the more difficult it is to do so. In general, it's best to do some solid levelling with your character, especially if you are not all that used to the game yet.
In order to facilitate this, feel free to use the /playersX command, where X stands for a number between 1 and 8. Do so by entering the command in a messagebox.
At players8, the monsters are tougher, but they also drop more items, give you more experience and chests drop a whole lot more as well.

There are 13 superuniques in ACT1 so to get decent equipment for me and my merc isn't gonna be too easy? I mean only 13 drops that are allowed to wear. I wonder if I can even make it through A1.

Remember that you may also use any white item you find. Also remember that superunique monsters always have 2 item drops, a lot of which are rare as well.
Further more, if you take a bit of care, Act 1 is quite doable, even with only white items.
Remember that a mercenary is allowed and you may also give her a plain white bow (or a bow dropped by a superunique monster) this will also be a significant source of damage (often enough to clean out the entire act, apart from Andariel).

Hints&Tips are welcome. I would also like to know if anyone has suggestions about capable character builds. I was thinking about barb/pal to begin. Hopefully someone else will also try this out.

Well, I find that difficult to answer. A lot depends on your playstyle I'd say. By your suggestions, I take it you like bashing monsters over the head with melee weapons. Immensely satisfying, but certainly not the easiest path to take.
A character that always does well, provided you can get her past the first few acts, is the sorceress, either a meteorber, a pure blizzard one, or a blizzballer (There are character guides in the stickies which explain all these builds, you can also go to the sorceress forum for more information). A character that will do well from the getgo is the fishyzon (this is a hybrid between a bowazon and a javazon, where your main attack is going to be Lightning Fury with the javelins, and the bow will shoot freeze arrows). You can also fully concentrate on the Javelin and spear class, and opt to put points in charged strike and equip a spear class weapon as your alternate weapon.
The beauty of the lightning fury is that it matters little what type of javelin you use, most of the damage comes from the skill.

For a meleebuild, you can also try the assassin. Her martial arts skills are quite powerful, and quite entertaining as well. Also, phoenix strike and Tiger Strike are not bound to assassin weapons as well, so you'll be pretty much item independend as far as the weapons go.
The barbarian has a few options as well. The most common ones are a berzerker and a Frenzier. There are guides for those builds in the stickies. whirlwind may look nice, but requires good gear to truly shine, and that might be problematic in this tournament. Of course, Warcries are a tournament character's best friend (Battle orders is absolutely awesome!)

The paladin is probably your safest choice for a melee build though.

For all of them... Try to read up on some builds. Look at the suggestins for the skills and weapons to use, and some of the better tactics.

You can still gamble. Especially if you want some good items for twinking purposes, this tournament might help. Gamble and store decent items in ATMA of GoMule. You may of course store the money in ATMA if you so desire...

[Merlin The Wizzard]

@Fast Eddie - what kind of character do you use? I see I missed an important column :P

Forum Name  Char. Name    Char. type   Lvl      Waypoint      Score      Best Find
Fast Eddie  oneeightseven              1	Rogue Enc.	0	    N/A

SC is fine, see my previous post. However, once you die, you are out of the tourney. Allthough you may of course start a new character if you want to :smile:

@grumpyskeeper - Hope to see you soo then!