The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

27:05 with the paladin. He starts MUCH slower than the assassin, with no mastery and slower attack, I raised 10 points to dexterity to keep a decent to hit%. But as soon as I came out of the underground passage with thorns up the exp started to roll in

Vs. low level monsters with few HPs, thorns effects are pretty amazing.

I did a test with a generic character class (i.e. I used no skills; v1.10s, tcp/ip solo) and outrageous twinking and made 24:50 (sloppy, could have done better) with the power of thorns shields. Hellforge hammer and strangling gas potions were a supplement, but the shields did the heavy (xp) lifting.

Just to make it completely unfair I had, at clvl 5, plus 51 *each* to life in torso and helm (flawed rubies, 3 socket ring mail, 3 socket mask) and at clvl 3 I put on Hsarus set (removing the shield at clvl 5 in favor of the 24 thorns shield). I had so much life, I should have given the character decent heal potions (instead of the weenie ones) as I wasted a bit of time picking up potions and even going to town for them at one point.

This time ought to be improvable if you used an Assassin with BoS (even faster running than the 20% from Hsarus's boots).

In the assisted category, my theory is that a twinker Sorc (teleport, town portal, gather mobs, static) with twinkee Druid (poison creeper, clvls 1..5, strangling gas 6..8) would be the fastest run.

But all this talk of the effectiveness of thorns brings up a very interesting xp assist twink idea that is one of many I'd considered for the leveling of hirelings--a standard problem, since hireling stats are better when hired from earlier difficulties, is power leveling them if you switch to a new one--which is a Paly twinker thorns/healing-Holy Bolt build. Hirelings get more xp (3x iirc) if they make a kill than if you do.

If a player twinkee were level 25 or higher you could play this straight (partied, Paly following and supporting with aura and healing, twinkee acting as punching bag). If the twinkee were below 25 it would be very tempting to play pulse games, joining and leaving the party quickly to acquire the thorns aura. Naturally, if you're a lot below 25, then thorns shields (skulls) and healing potions obviate any need for a Paly helper. (tech note--in case it isn't obvious--at 25 the xp nerf for killing above your level is largely removed, so being twink assisted by someone who can rapidly kill mobs way above your level makes lots of sense).

One amusing thought here is in (maybe rushing a clvl 5 player to) Act 3, where you hire a (max clvl) Sorc merc, who can then be power leveled with both player and merc using 24 thorns shields (since the merc has good regen and gets more oompf out of healing potions this might even work in Hardcore--call it "drag the merc through the muck, and see how much xp we reel in").