This is a bit of a repost but I didn't realise there was a personal blog area. (does it keep my blog posts permanent?)

Guys we did it. My barbarian is level 99 NA Ladder. Achieved last Friday (I took a nice break from the PC)

I figured I’d write some words expressing my thoughts on the journey; the boundaries I set, the ups and downs, as well as my thanks to my new friends and the OCE / Australian Diablo community.

The last 2+ years have been tough on the majority of people around the world and I was no exception. As someone who gets by day-to-day via setting goals and achieving them, being locked down at home can really get to you.

The announcement and release of D2R was massively uplifting for me, and something to look forward to. I love this game. It’s the greatest game ever made. My earliest experience of Diablo 2 was playing the demo on my Dad’s latest copy of PC Gamer magazine CD all those years ago. You could only play up to blood raven, and you could only play one class, the class I came to love the most: the Barbarian.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. What better way to pay homage to this game than to do what is the most daunting challenge you can do: achieve level 99. Of course, it had to be done on my favourite class as well.
There are two reasons I had not done this yet. Firstly, I live in Australia, more specifically Western Australia. The best server connection was USWest and it had nightmarish lag, DC’s and rubber banding (I always still managed to enjoy online- the game is just that good.) Secondly was the impermanence of character slots, and no Ladder history to showcase your achievement. Why not hardcore? I want to get into duelling, and Aussie internet is still pretty sketchy.

Speaking of achievement, I’ll now talk about the boundaries I set for myself.

Firstly, I have a disdain for bots and cheats. I’m not forcing my opinion on anyone here on how to play, but simply explaining my own conditions for my personal achievement to be considered legitimate. I was not to use bots or cheats of any kind on my grind. On a side note I also did not multibox to fill private lobbies, all games were publicly hosted by me.
Secondly, I was not to be a leecher! Ew. The amount of people I’ve seen getting 97-99 without actually playing the game AND claiming to have made an achievement is gross (yes feel called out noobs! mwahaha) So, how do I define leeching? A leech is somebody who relies on others to survive. I did all of my own teleporting, clearing and boss killing.

Yes, Diablo is a social game and you need full lobbies to leverage proper experience gain. So sure, I had help, that much is inevitable. That help grew as I made friends and people started to realise I was serious about this grind thanks guys. I’d estimate 90+% of my runs were done without any help as I grinded around the clock.
This leads me to my next topic, the route / strategy.

I had a day 1 team to get to hell Baal. By the end of the day most of us were top 10-20 in our respective classes. There were 6 of us in the team, unfortunately we had 2 drop out as well as our backup players. I had never met these fellas until then, but I was blessed to have met a group of chill and dedicated dudes.
Once we hit endgame, I hit the farm as hard as possible. I found my first ever Zod in chaos and finally found all runes! I found Ber at entrance to chaos and Jah on a Baal walk farm. By the end of day 3 I had enigma and we were ready to go.

I hosted Baal wave runs until 94, then started doing Nihlathak and coming back for waves. At 96 I started doing Baal taxi, clear chaos, Kill Diablo, Kill Nihlathak, return to whatever waves remained. At 97 I did the same thing but immediately leaving game after Nihlathak, teleing to Baal ng and the timing was just right for people to finish wave 5, join and immediately enter throne. I pretty much did this until 99 unless I had a Baal topper to do Top 2 Baal last hit (which was usually a zon), in which case it was a race to clear chaos, get a shrine, kill Diablo, Kill Nihlathak, Kill Baal. If finding a shrine was taking too long, I would skip Nihlathak.

I had a few people try to PK me or troll runs, I collected quite a few noob ears on the way. Nobody got mine

I must say though the hardest part of this journey was not the sheer grind (which was hard) but actually just getting people to cooperate could be exhausting.

As it currently stands nafz (me) is 5th to 99 on the Barb NA ladder. We’ll see if that changes after cheaters are cleansed from the ladder (which I assume will be done at the end? I like to think my barb brothers didn’t cheat anyway)
Given the conditions I set. I’m proud of this achievement and the pace.

I livestreamed the entire ordeal, the good days, the bad days and the triumph of finally getting 99. Twitch + Youtube has kindly restricted some of the vod exports and availability due to copyrighted music or some rubbish, but the majority of it is there.
You can check it out on this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBcZbABivx8&list=PLEabNYVQJmhjibk8diCWcpMwc7cKn4IXn
My stream: https://twitch.tv/nafz

I could go into more details about builds and stuff if you all are interested.
Weirdest Drops: 3 Gull Daggers in a single Chaos. Ohm from Diablo. 3 IK Mauls from Baal in one drop. 27 Horizons Tornados, not one Stormlash.

Finally I’d like to say thanks to these special legends:

3xempt - Barb Veteran - Pre launch planning theorycrafting + moral support.

Twinsen - Tele / Baal Last Hit / Shrine Finder
Ion / Huckleberry - Tele / Shrine Finder / Potion Master
Koiz – Shrine finder god
Lomaine - Tele, Baal Last Hit
Gaz aka THE GOAT / Chrisrock – Baal last hit / Occasional Tele
Kush - Baal Last Hit
Nando - Tele
mould - Tele / Shrine Finder / Baal Last Hit / Day 1 Team

The Launch Day Team Lads:

mould
Davey
reacher
et
miskellaneous

Special thanks to the Aussie / Oceania Community. It was a pleasure hosting Baals for the community. You were a joy to game with.

Thanks for reading.

meme related