The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

Now that I'm 20 I'm taking a break, but I will time taking the character to 25 sans location rush. Then I will location rush to nm Hellforge, timing that. Then I will time, solo once again, leveling to 40. Then I will time the location rush to hell Hellforge.

Took me nearly 2 hours to make clvl 24. I started at clvl 20 and waypointed into the Great Marsh (act 3). By time I made 24, I was close to Shenk so I finished him and took the waypoint before exiting to do this write-up.

So, not counting the twink xfer time and game start time, I have ~5 hours to make level 24. The only location rush I did was after I killed the Council, I quickly made a game to be given the Durance 2 waypoint (and then returned to SP Players 1).

I stopped at 24 both because it is a significant skill point (good time to save, in SP, when testing) and because I realized that if I'm going to location rush at 25 I might as well location rush at 24 instead and have the Ancients part of that make me 25, eh?

I didn't bother to do the Tome of Lam Esen or normal Hellforge (nor have I gone back and done Radament).

I've not tried anything but Players 1 for this test... in doing parts of Act 4 I think I would have bogged down at Players 8 as I ran into many things with decent fire resist (afaik). However, other than that, I'd have been leveling much faster, as it is clear I'm overkilling most of the time (and most battles/screens only take a few seconds). It is perhaps the case that playing Players 8 you'd want those points I saved into the FB synergy to WoF.

Soon I will run into an amusing problem: I've been playing so many characters in beta that my highest (clvl 72 Assassin) has not made it to the hell Hellforge. This makes timing a "rush" to hell Hellforge somewhat difficult. :blink:

At least I can complete the clvl 25 rush, nm Hellforge, and location rush a bit more to nm act 5 (where I can test the theory about party leeching xp from my HolyFist Paly in the Zombie Garden).

BTW, I still have not used Cloak of Shadows. IIRC I have 6 unspent skill points and 35 unspent stat points (not counting the unclaimed Radament and Lam Esen). I'm debating whether to blow 3 points to get Dragon Flight, for some movement utility and as an alternate for mana leeching (on Serpent Lord switch).

From 20 to 24 my good drop was: Sigon's shield. So I threw away my twink one and am using the one I found--which has one more point of AC even! :D

p.s. I am, of course, out-leveling my hirelings. So when I was in act 3 and level 21 and my act 2 merc was 13 I decided to hire an act 3 cold merc. I had to reload as no cold mercs were offered at all, but on the restart I became the proud owner of a level 19 Jarulf cold merc. I'm sorry to say he has died quite a few times, but I'm very fond of him. It is particularly nice that I can weapon switch and walk up to a frozen popsicle for mana leeching when I want to. He still hasn't made level 20.