I completely agree.

1 thing that can be done is to have a character that put the staff in the artifact before duriel and never kill duriel

then u use that character to host the game once you are ready for act2. so you dont need to collect staff, the altar is already open

The secret of the A2 skip was discovered long ago during the LoD times by random chance and fiercely guarded by rushers across the ages. During every era there was at least one rusher that had knowledge of the skip. Just before that rusher retired, they would tell their closest confidant and fellow rusher the secret. One day a venerated rusher and close friend, assaian04, revealed to me the secret, then vanished from the scene, never to be seen again, having fulfilled the prophesy of the a2 skip.

I kept the secret for years, monopolizing the a2 skip in rushes here. But such knowledge is not fit to be contained for all eternity, and it was time to reveal the truth.

(1/x)

My friend, it is not "unstable". It is as rock solid as stone skin Lister in extra strong tz96 throne.

Yes, that basically allows to skip maggot's lair, but not the viper temple.
The char that's being rushed has to break the altar, otherwise he can't access any TP openened in arcane.
Fortunately, it's possible to build a duriel mule that has the tomb opened, but never broke the altar =]

This post was edited by xhul on Apr 8 2026 06:51pm

I made an "a2 bumper" for this but unless there's some trick I'm missing you still had to go click altar so the rushed person can take a TP into arcane sanctuary, then kill summoner so they can go into canyon.
So I imagine it would probably look something like this:

1.- Get a character up to Duriel.
2.- That character makes the A2 game.
3.- That character takes Duriel kill credit so everyone else does as well from town.
4.- Have full flail pre-collected on another character.
5.- Kill council, have anyone smash orb.

You can have 3 A3 characters parked for the flails, but if you want to fully skip A2 every time you would have to rush a new A2 NM bumper and Hell bumper up to A2 every single time you do a boost.
Then after the rush you spend 5 minutes doing normal andy and collecting normal/nightmare/hell staves for the next boosting round.

IMO it's not really worth it, the flail is because you'd spend that time teleporting anyways and you save people some time but all the extra logistics for the little time save in A2 are a bit much.

Also yeah people can "walk" into durance without having done flail but nobody wants to babysit 7 lemmings doing that massive walk.
I personally hate that they changed A3 quest sequence tbh, it was unnecessary and stupid, the game was fine for 2 decades I don't know why some opinionated devs wanted to touch it.

When i said "unstable", i meant that the person who showed me didn't have full knowledge of how the trick really works, which is why it happened to fail multiple times during testing.
But of course, if you know the full mechanic of the skipping, it can no longer be called unstable =]

This post was edited by xhul on Apr 8 2026 06:47pm

iirc the a2 skip method was on OG amazonbasin

That is not the act 2 skip, that is describing how to walk a char thru palace to talk to tyrael. The real act 2 skip features the *rusher* talking to tyrael, and the rushee getting quest in town. It requires at least 2 separate accounts to perform.

Here's how it works. This is for rushing in just one difficulty; scaling to a full rush is similar.

Method 1: burn a char
Rusher on account A, Rushy, rushes new char, A2Bump, on account B to start of act 2 normal. Account A or B makes rush game with a char with no quests done. Before rusher invites rushees over, A2Bump joins the game. Rusher rushes A2Bump through A2, with A2Bump talking to drognan after altar is popped and before anyone steps foot in palace or beyond. But no one talks to tyrael after killing duriel. Once staff is in orifice, A2Bump can be deleted or repurposed, and leaves game. Rusher kills duriel, then talks to Jehryn and Meshif in town (in that order). "But but but they aren't giving my rusher any dialogue boxes?!?!?" This is why no one found the secret. Heed my words exactly and you'll see. Once rusher talks to Jehryn and Meshif, they can leave the rush game (as long as at least one char stays in there), even exit the game and then come back to that game, doesn't matter-- the trick is set. Rushees join rush game, rusher kills Andy, then when all rushees are in a2, rusher talks to tyrael in a2. Rushees talk to Jehryn then Meshif, and move to a3.

Method 2: use a tomb opener
Rusher on account A, Rushy, rushes new char on account B, tombOpener, through act2 all the way to killing duriel, but doesn't talk to tyrael (either rushee or rusher). tombOpener is now set. Rusher makes rush game, invites rushees, kills Andy, rushees move to act 2. Rusher asks rushees to join new game made by tombOpener, and reads tomb symbol when tombOpener makes the game. tombOpener leaves game right after tomb symbol is read, to avoid completing the quest and ruining the char. In that new game, Rushy talks to Jehryn THEN Meshif, then kills Duriel, then talks to tyrael while rushees all sit in act 2. Rushees then talk to Jehryn, then Meshif, then advance to act 3.

See the vids on my profile if you want to see this trick employed.

This post was edited by celloboy126 on Apr 8 2026 07:34pm

Thanks a lot for sharing, can't wait to test that out.
It makes sense according to what the person i was talking about showed me.
The weird thing we encountered was about the location of the rushee in the lut gholein map, in the second game.
The failures we encountered occured when the rushee moved too far from the starting position, for some reason.