Tried this once before, but there is a lot of logistics involved, and it got a bit demovitating. This time it worked better. Make 1 of each character. Use one of them as a "plow" to clear the road through the entire act, or up to critical points, then run through with the others to save time. No sandboxie cheats or whatever people use, do 1 at a time.

The fun thing about this is that you can use general items on all the characters, and if you find a specific item, you have a character ready to use it.

You kill every boss 7 times, which means 7 quest drops. Not been too lucky this season .. but as everyone as of now is at travincal nm, the gear pieces are mid-range; Bloodfist, smoke, ancient's pledge (lifesaver in terms of resists), king's grace, spirit, honor eth partizan for merc, hawkmail for merc... i've found about 5-6 different rare circlets, some imbued, that are surprisingly good. Some set items too, full angelic's set, the ring came late so that is just being used. Tried crafting a few rings and amulets but not lucky with those. Finally got to make harmony in cedar bow, so now running to waypoints is ridiculously fast ^^ Running gear is 20% frw circlet, 9% frw craftet amulet, stealth armor, harmony, vidala's boots and 3 x frw large charms.

You really get to challenge yourself in the way of choosing skills and making the right plays according to the gear you find. It being hardcore means you have to focus on the defensive side. Found an ethereal general's tan do li ga, which is just great to use on Duriel for melee characters, slowing him 50%. Found a bonesnap which would be great for druid and barb, but losing the shield is a big loss in resists which is not viable. So i have to make the decision to not use it.

So many things that become interesting when playing like this - i do recommend it ^^ It's like the ultimate challenge.

You gotta be proud of what you've achieved

I really like the dedication on every character. The whey you think, it is another way of playing the game. I haven’t played LoD in so many years. I go with Pd2 and resurrected, when I have time. And at the moment, I don’t have time.

But if you find something on your Amazon, but it’s for your, let’s say paladin. Then how do you mule it? - when I played back then, there wasn’t a shared stash like in resurrected

Priv game wait 5 mins LoL

Seems no need to wait that long now? Just 10 secs also work these days

Hey that's cool yeah I only play on console these days..og console...loading alone is 5 min 🤣😭🤣

I honestly did want to try ressurrected .. but my sense went against it .. regular d2 lod still "does it" for me ^^

On regular d2 lod, battle.net (i.e. playing on internet), since reset december 2018, there was a soft change (not announced), that changed the game quite a lot when it comes to muling. Whenever you make a game, it automatically perms for 5 minutes. Before that reset, you had to wait 5 minutes before it was permed. It usually stayed perm after that, as long as you revisited the game within the time limit. But i vaguely remember the games had a nasty habit of dropping some rare few times.. which made it very risky to mule important items without help.

This season, and seasons since that reset, i must have muled thousands of games, and not have one single game drop. So i have 100% confidence in the muling system as of now. Which really is a blessing.


You make a game, something easy for you to remember, say aab/aa ... drop items on ground .. switch to the other character, rejoin the game, pick up items.



Little update: Things still going incredibly well and it's a lot of fun now ^^ At the end of nightmare now, going through baal quest with all the characters. I gave up the harmony attempt on all characters .. the damage was just too low, even if it made okay progress, losing out on the potential of other optimal items is too big and too time consuming.

After doing about 20-30 eldricht-shenkruns with every character, they are now all level 53.. necro (the "plough" ^^) is now 61... i found a lot of decent items! One more lem rune, which means 2 x treachery which helps out tremendously .. Melee characters use ribcracker which is extremely powerful at this point .. baal drops within 20 seconds. Casters use spirit + rhyme. Also found skin of vipermagi not once, but twice, within 5 games ^^ Makes me believe the game's drop mechanics is rigged somehow ^^ among other items are waterwalk, jalal's mane, string of ears ...

Uncertain about the assassin's route.. currently using max level shadow master which is surprisingly decent in higher levels, max level mind blast and fade.. using caster gear, i can get up to +6 to all skills, which would boost shadow master and maybe be a good asset in hell. But i think i am going to try using ribcracker for a bit and see how that works out .. and maybe focus on simply using or maxing tiger strike. Should deal some insane damage, especially when i upgrade it when all melee characters 57 .. using high level fade would be a strong defensive skill in hell mode. Traps was a big let-down, tried to get wake of inferno to a good level with synergies, but it's just way too weak. Maybe i'll try again later.. death sentry feels too much like cheating, too overpowered, same as corpse explosion.

Had to use many reset quests and buy a few tokens .. but that's all part of the fun ^^ To experiment and try new things!


Not doing quest bugged boss runs this season, it takes too much time, and i do get 7 quest boss drops as i run the characters through.. so i consider that enough. I also do exp runs in regular monster areas ...


Had 2 near death experiences .. carelessness around geleb flamefinger with the barbarian, man that was close .. went from 1400 hp to empty within about half a second, frantically pressing rejuv pots to heal running away, managed to survive ^^

Adrenaline through the roof. Second time was sorceress making a stupidly risky teleport in river of flame, i was a little bit bored and tired .. thought this once it'll be okay ^^ Was immediately fired upon by about 15 abyss knights and i know i had died if the shots had hit .. managed to hit save and exit with about 0.2 seconds to spare ^^ Very close call.


So the lesson still remains in hardcore ... take it easy and don't rush, or you will die sooner or later ^^ Not looking forward to hell mode ^^ But maybe it'll be smoother than i expect. Singling out monsters and kiting will be the going tactic to begin with.

This post was edited by Taurean on Jul 23 2022 04:41pm

I've seen this posted a couple times and I still don't understand how this works. How do the other chars level up if you're only using 1 char to clear and the other 7 to run through? Maybe I'm just to dumb to understand it.

Play to let's say lvl 10 on a sorc, then make a new char, play it to lvl 10, new char, etc.
Finish andy on each char before you go to act 2 on one of them, and so on.
If your ama finds a nice item for a barb, you mule it to the barb.

(It's not '7 other chars', but 7 chars total)

As Axel explains. You use one character as the "plough"... typically the necromancer is good at that, skeletons run around clearing monsters far away, it's easier catching stray monsters that can pose a threat to the typically lesser geared cahracters .. All acts this can be done, only act that is a bit of a hassle is act 2. You run through the entire act, killing monsters along the way. Following the left wall is a good strategy to make it easier to remember the road.

Having run through act 1, taking the necessary waypoints, typically stony field, dark wood, inner-outer cloister, and catacombs level 2 .. you can do shorter stages, but then you'd have to switch to all the 6 characters two times, which wastes time.

Typically (again), early in the ladder season, you run very slow and it takes a long time to run through. But you still save a lot of time as opposed to searching for the waypoints 6 more times. Leveling up is better done at waypoints and typical experience spots with more boss packs and champion packs. One more point to the philosophy is that, even if it is hardcore, the faster you can get the bosses killed, the logic follows that the odds are high that you will get better gear faster. So while i don't like to do it, and it may be a bit risky, cheesing the way past bosses can be okay to do in order to get the drops faster. You can always go back to level up afterwards, and that is also much more fun and easier when you get better gear. Not to mention safer since this is hardcore.

But even still, it can be a good idea to run in stages instead of the entire act if one feels like it.

So as the game progresses, keeping a mule where you stash faster run/walk items becomes an option. Now, my frw-mule has: 20% fcr circlet, 9% frw crafted amulet, stealth armor (25%), sander's boots (40%), mavina's belt (20%), some frw charms (about 30% total) and then harmony runeword. That totals about 180% frw .. and running through the acts is almost as fast as teleporting ^^ It's actually quite funny ^^ Then you have certain frw skills like burst of speed, increased speed, charge .. quite hilarious ^^

At higher difficulty, making sure there are no stray monsters becomes more important, because muling too much gear every time you swap characters just to run through becomes a hassle .. so you have less hit points and resistances .. also remembering the route is important, take the wrong corner and that could be instant ko.


Hope this made it clearer

This post was edited by Taurean on Jul 23 2022 06:50pm