In March of 2010, I moved. For years I had been playing b.net hardcore ladder, both classic and xpac.
But when I moved, I had no internet for a while, so I started playing single player, hardcore of course,
for softcore has never interested me. Ever.

Thus, Cryogenic was born, along with many other HC SP toons.
But this story is about her. She began life as a FB/Orb sorc, and made it all the way to level 73 but was stuck
doing hell mephisto runs before I eventually got the internet again and stopped playing single player forever.
Until about 3 months ago.
After not even touching this game for the past few years.
I discovered PlugY after seeing several youtube streamers using it, and started getting the itch to play again.
I still had all my old hc single player toons on my 16 year old desktop, and since it is no longer compatible with the internet,
I went for it.

PlugY opened up a world of possibilities for my single player characters.
I could now finally transfer items between my characters who all had something another needed.
Fast forward 3 months, and I now have an army of high level, fully geared hardcore characters.

I now introduce Cryogenic. She was born March 21, 2010 and sat at level 73 for a solid 9 years.


And this morning at 11 A.M. she finally hit 97. All the Chaos, Nihlathak, WSK mobbing and Baal runs.





I've only ever reached 97 once before, with an enigma zealot on hardcore ladder several years ago,
so this is quite an accomplishment for me. I've lost several hc ladder 94-96 sorceresses to lag spikes in the past,
so being able to play in the lag free world of single player is really nice.

I would like to push her to 99 someday, so from here on out I will simply use this thread to share
any GG drops she gets from the upcoming endless amount of D/Nihl/Baal kills.

SWEET. First GG drop of 97, a players 1 Ber rune from a minion of Infector of Souls.




(BTW, before 97 my method was:
/players 3 clear chaos,
/players 8 diablo
/players 8 nihlathak
/players 8 WSK mobs
/players 8 clear bottom half of throne mobs
/players 1 clear throne room (annoying cold immunes)
/players 8 wave 1
/players 3 wave 2 (1 point in nova wipes the skellies)
/players 8 wave 3-5
/players 3 Baal
Rinse and repeat

(And yes I know diablo exp caps at players 7)

But now that she’s hit 97 I’ve reskilled her tree for max nova so that I can do the wave 2 skeletons on /players 8, dropping blizz down from 6700 damage to 5100 now, which is still fine.

New method:
/players 1 fast clear chaos
/players 8 diablo
/players 8 nihlathak
/players 1 only the mobs in path to throne (for drops)
/players 1 clear throne
/players 8 all waves
/players 3 Baal
Rinse and repeat

Would it be worthwhile to still kill all WSK mobs on players 8? I feel like the experience is no longer worth the risk but I could be wrong. I have zero experience with leveling from 97-99 but I do know that D, Nihl and Baal are the best 3 sources


This post was edited by GetStabby on Nov 1 2019 11:29am

I would do all Minions In wsk till 98.
After 99 only focus on nith baal and d

Gl

Interesting, are you saying skip D, Nihl, and Baal altogether and ONLY focus on /P8 mobs in WSK until 98? If that is faster and more efficient, then I’m all for it.


Edit: then again, that can’t be right. But I will simply continue to include WSK mobs in my full runs UNTIL 98.

This post was edited by GetStabby on Nov 1 2019 11:49am

Kill d and such. That's where the fast xp is.. I think he has wrong data or is explaining it wrong

So i've decided to make some changes to her build, back to the build she was using prior to her current setup.

At 96.8 i wanted to make some changes, so i swapped out her Shako and Spirit monarch for Nightwing's and Stormshield

This left her with only 28% block, 70% FCR, 60% FHR, 49% DR, only 54% MF, and no energy shield, but boosted her blizz to 6699 damage.

After some recent close calls, I've started to realize she was WAY WAY more tanky and safe with her old build, which consisted of:

50% Block, 105% FCR, 89% FHR, 24% DR, but only 4500 damage blizz.

How is that more tanky, you ask?

Well, it was an energy shield build with prayer and insight merc.

So in total she has 1111% faster mana regeneration, plus prayer merc.


I sacrifice extra cold damage for more points in telekinesis, ES, and warmth.

this is what she's looking like after just now making the change back to her old indestructible build:






And actually, before when she used this build I actually went for max block, which left her with about 1337 life and 1300 mana.
I also had more points in both warmth and telekinesis, which meant her blizz damage was only 3200.

But i'm going to try this balance out for the time being because i've been spoiled by the much higher blizz damage for the past couple days
and I just don't want to go back to 3200 blizz even if it did feel nice being completely invulnerable to almost everything.


Edit: on a side note, I did have to go back to only one point in nova for this build, so I will be stuck doing wave 2 on players 3 again, but it’s totally worth it for the long term survivability

This post was edited by GetStabby on Nov 1 2019 12:59pm

So I just made another change. I upgraded her Guardian Angel. Massive strength requirement but big boost to defense.
Stole 40 points from dex to make it happen.
Block dropped to 38% but defense rose to over 5,000.

Anyway, I think the only thing left to improve upon is to eventually find a Death's Fathom, and make some improvements to her charms.

But the gear, man. What about the GEAR?!?!

I've compiled all of her gear here for all to see. (More in next post)

Final post of her gear:

Tbh 98-99 single player fastest leveling is probably doing just nihlathek although I'm sure that would be quite boring.