Allright. Time for a little storytime/flashback to my old SP grail.

I have planned my first farm in this WT to be after Baal NM, but since my plan was to farm Mephisto by then - and I'm here now, and I'm in mood for some farming, why not just do it now. Although the extra levels I would get from Act 4 and Act 5 NM probably would help quite a lot on the speed on my Mephisto runs. But screw that.
I mentioned in my #1 post that I was gonna repeat a lot of the farming that I did in my old savegame, but this farm I actually didn't do back then because I pretty much maxed my luck out while progressing through Act5 NM. Here's what happened:

As I progress through Act 5 I run pass Frigid Highland and kill Shenk as in the quest (not farming). Pretty sure my MF at this point was close to 0% and he just casually drops Titans for me:



Sorry for the authentic D2LOD quality on video. This was before I knew how to export in proper quality.

A while later in Act5 NM I had one of my first near deaths where I logged in Nithalak's temple. I was running through the Vipers poison clouds which took my hp from 100% to around 20% in less than a second.
I then reset and run to Nithalak and as soon as I see the Vipers I logged. I did this until I got a zone where the Vipers weren't spawning - but each time I reset I go and kill Eldritch and Shenk before going to Nithalak.
I only end up doing like 4-5 runs, no more than this, and then this happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDn0aeyI65g (apparently i can't post two videos in the same post)

Same here with quality. Even though I evolved and uploaded to youtube instead of Imgur it didn't improve the quality. lol.

So 5 or 6 Shenk kills in total and my char got upgraded with both Titans (1:21964) and Valkyrie Wing (1:39564) which rolled +2 Amazon skills. So yeah...
I ended up doing around 100 more runs before progressing to Hell, without getting anything. But never did any Mephisto runs (or Baal runs for that matter) back in my old savegame on NM before progressing to Hell.

And as I don't expect Shenk to hand me a set of Titans as I come by him in Act5, my goal is to get them from Mephisto, and I won't progress to Hell before I have Titans - because what Javazon doesn't have a pair Titans - aaaand let the Titans vs. Thunderstroke battle start. But yeah, enough talking.

I plan on doing a gear swap just before I kill Mephisto for these runs, which should net me around 250MF each run as minimum. This will give me 1:663 for Titans.
Worthy mentions of gear possibilities from Meph which would be huge (probably some other items that I'm forgetting):

M'avina's Tenet (1:265)
Chance Guards (1:335)
Nagelring (1:405)
Peasant Crown (1:416)
Dwarf Star (1:608)
Raven Frost (1:608)
Aldur's Advance (1:660)
Titan's Revenge (1:663)
Moser's Blessed Circle (1:671)
Razortail (1:674)
War Traveler (1:1678)
Valkyrie Wing (1:1685)
The Cat's Eye (1:2381)
Thundergod's Vigor (1:5118)
The Stone of Jordan (1:6072)

First I have to do a little bit of prep though...

This post was edited by Lesygnok on Oct 18 2021 02:34pm

So, for my Mephisto farm I'm short on three things:

3 socket Helmet
4 socket Body Armor
Enough Perfect Topaz (might just settle on Flawless Topaz)

As its possible to get 4 sockets in body armors from ilvl 55, and Durance of Hate (NM) lvl 1, 2 and 3 are all area lvl 55. I will farm here for the following base armors that can drop, and roll with cube for four sockets:

Gothic Plate (70 str)
Full Plate (80 str)
Ancient Armor (100 str)
Embossed Plate (125 str)
Chaos Armor (140 str)
Ornate Plate (170 str)

So Gothic plate being the ideal as it has the minimum STR requirement - and probably won't settle on the last three bases due to high STR requirement.
Problem is that I have 3 Perfect Topaz in total at the moment and every socket roll will cost me one. And in the ideal farming setup to get close to around 300MF I will need 7 Perfect Topaz.
If I find an armor and roll three sockets I might settle on this. But getting the 4 sockets is 50% each time. So fingers crossed.

Helms I can use the following. If I don't remember wrong ilvl for 3sockets helm is +41. It's lower than ilvl for 4 sockets body armor for sure, so will just look out for the following bases:

Mask (23 str)
Great Helm (63 str)
Crown (55 str)
Death Mask (55 str)

Could also go for Winged Helm, but since it has STR requirement of 115 I hope to get a better base. Unless I settle on armor base that require higher STR than this, but probably won't do this on either helm or armor, as it will cost me too much HP.
Chance here for three sockets is 66,6%, and I only use Perfect Sapphire here, so this shouldn't be too hard to get a helm with three socket.

This post was edited by Lesygnok on Oct 19 2021 01:12am