Dear diary,

I recently did a lot of terror zone runs and want to share my experience.

tldr;

Top 3 zones for xp:
#1 - 292k xp/min - Chaos Sanctuary
#2 - 285k xp/min - Baalruns with solo Throne Room between waves
#3 - 226k xp/min - Tal Rasha's Tombs/Chamber

Cows sucks:
#12 of 21 (My Personal #19 of all 35) - 113k/min - Cows

Lots of fun (up to now)

Every zone is faster than "perfect" baalruns (with cs setup and nila) on 98

tldr end;

Corner facts
- terror zones for 20 hours and 48 minutes
- exclusively on my fully geared level 98 java
- progressed from 36% of 99 to level 99
- within 5 days (6 days - did not play saturday)
- almost only did p8 runs keeping the full party together (some times games were a bit dry though: short p2 phases, sometimes p5 or p6)
- public runs only
- many different zones
- tried to be as efficient as possible per zone

I think that this is the most viable scenario. Ofcourse you have different options like:
- fast p1 runs
- being an ass in p8 runs and go solo (won't work for long anyways)
- load a lot of clients yourself and solo p8
- split farm with people that do not do terror zones and solo p8

All this is not easy to achieve!

Gathered data
- terror zone (not in the beginning)
- how many minutes
- experience in this timespan
- days from patch

Derived data
- experience per minute
- total experience in that terror zone session (maximum 60 minutes obviously)
- total % of 99 in that terror zone session
- experience per day
- zone ranking
- total minutes
- experience per minute overall
- total experience

Some words on experience per run
In my opinion experience per run is a stupid metric to measure. So often I read something like:
- "Wow, this gives 800k per run!"
- "Zone x is better than Zone y because it gives more xp per run!"
- "(In tombs, where I wanted to try solo in a p8 game and went inverted order just to test it) Do not split up. We get less xp per run!"

All that matters is experience per time. That's also why zones like The Pit, tristram, cows are pretty bad. You have to get to the zone first.

My spreadsheet



Overall Conclusions:
- 148.044 xp per minute
- 185 Million xp in 5 days
- One day I made 98 million xp
- 5,87%/17 million in 60 minutes of terror zone baalruns
- 5,63%/16,3 million in 56 minutes of terror zone CS
- Wow, Cows really sucks. Did not expect that! Found a ber in there though.
- Good Loot: Griffon, Ber, 40/15 jewel
- Baalruns were a lot of stress. I was teleporting throne because of loadtimes. Between waves I solo'd the full throne room. --> Zero pause. That were the most stressful 60 minutes of my d2 life
- In Chaos Sanctuary in the first 15 minutes Baalruns were still ahead in xp per minute because someone else teleported, but then I teleported with my good loadtimes without bo as fast as possible. Also Chaos Sanctuary has the best of everything: density, elites, 5 sec to the zone (unpacked gamefiles), boss, straight forward for party

Rankings

Ranking with duplicate zones (In Brackets were skipped zones):
#1 - 292.415 - Chaos Sanctuary
#2 - 284.972 - (Worldstone Keep)/Throne of Destruction/Worldstone Chamber
#3 - 225.983 - Tal Rasha's Tombs/Chamber
#4 - 203.722 - Tal Rasha's Tombs/Chamber
#5 - 185.112 - <Do not know> / I think it was Crystalline Passage/Frozen River
#6 - 173.805 - Crystalline Passage/Frozen River
#7 - 165.996 - Crystalline Passage/Frozen River
#8 - 160.124 - <Do not know>
#9 - 158.035 - Arcane Sanctuary
#10 - 155.767 - (Dry Hills)/Halls of the Dead
#11 - 153.232 - Glacial Trail
#12 - 150.128 - Act 2 Sewers
#13 - 143.061 - Glacial Trail
#14 - 130.047 - Glacial Trail
#15 - 126.573 - (Kurast Bazaar)/Ruined Temple/Disused Fane
#16 - 126.378 - Nilathak's Temple/Temple Halls
#17 - 122.999 - <Do not know>
#18 - 117.059 - Cold Plains/Cave
#19 - 113.397 - Cow Level
#20 - 112.040 - Forgotten Tower
#21 - 107.154 - The Pit
#22 - 107.151 - Outer Steppes/Plains of Despair
#23 - 103.233 - (Damned City)/River of Flames
#24 - 101.200 - <Do not know>
#25 - 97.627 - Frigid Highlands
#26 - 96.808 - Jail
#27 - 90.660 - Far Oasis
#28 - 88.349 - Durance of Hate p2-p8
#29 - 83.752 - Burial Grounds/Crypt/Mausoleum
#30 - 82.233 - Jail p2-p8
#31 - 79.658 - Did not seperate zones: Dark Wood + Bloody Foothills
#32 - 79.317 - Tristram
#33 - 67.832 - Glacial Trail p1
#34 - 43.215 - Act 3 Sewers p2

Ranking without duplicate (taking highest), without low players, without <Do not know>, and other bad data:
#1 - 292.415 - Chaos Sanctuary
#2 - 284.972 - (Worldstone Keep)/Throne of Destruction/Worldstone Chamber
#3 - 225.983 - Tal Rasha's Tombs/Chamber
#4 - 173.805 - Crystalline Passage/Frozen River
#5 - 158.035 - Arcane Sanctuary
#6 - 155.767 - (Dry Hills)/Halls of the Dead
#7 - 153.232 - Glacial Trail
#8 - 150.128 - Act 2 Sewers
#9 - 126.573 - (Kurast Bazaar)/Ruined Temple/Disused Fane
#10 - 126.378 - Nilathak's Temple/Temple Halls
#11 - 117.059 - Cold Plains/Cave
#12 - 113.397 - Cow Level
#13 - 112.040 - Forgotten Tower
#14 - 107.154 - The Pit
#15 - 107.151 - Outer Steppes/Plains of Despair
#16 - 103.233 - (Damned City)/River of Flames
#17 - 97.627 - Frigid Highlands
#18 - 96.808 - Jail
#19 - 90.660 - Far Oasis
#20 - 83.752 - Burial Grounds/Crypt/Mausoleum
#21 - 79.317 - Tristram

Ranking with all zones by my estimation:
#1 - 292.415 - Chaos Sanctuary
#2 - 284.972 - (Worldstone Keep)/Throne of Destruction/Worldstone Chamber
#3 - 225.983 - Tal Rasha's Tombs/Chamber
#4 - 173.805 - Crystalline Passage/Frozen River
#5 - 170k-ish - Flayer Jungle/Flayer Dungeon
#6 - 165k-ish - Ancients Way/Icy Cellar
#7 - 160k-ish - (Lost City)/(Valley of Snakes)/Viper Temple
#8 - 158.035 - Arcane Sanctuary
#9 - 155.767 - (Dry Hills)/Halls of the Dead
#10 - 153.232 - Glacial Trail
#11 - 150.128 - Act 2 Sewers
#12 - 130k-ish - Rocky Waste/Stony Tomb
#13 - 126.573 - (Kurast Bazaar)/Ruined Temple/Disused Fane
#14 - 126.378 - Nilathak's Temple/Temple Halls
#15 - 125k-ish - Travincal
#16 - 120k-ish - Spider Forest/Spider Cavern
#17 - 120k-ish - Cathedral/Catacombs
#18 - 117.059 - Cold Plains/Cave
#19 - 113.397 - Cow Level
#20 - 112.040 - Forgotten Tower
#21 - 107.154 - The Pit
#22 - 107.151 - Outer Steppes/Plains of Despair
#23 - 103.233 - (Damned City)/River of Flames
#24 - 100k-ish - Durance of Hate
#25 - 97.627 - Frigid Highlands
#26 - 96.808 - Jail
#27 - 95k-ish - Bloody Foothills
#28 - 95k-ish - Arreat Plateau
#29 - 90.660 - Far Oasis
#30 - 90k-ish - Dark Wood
#31 - 90k-ish - Stony Field
#32 - 83.752 - Burial Grounds/Crypt/Mausoleum
#33 - 80k-ish - Kurast Sewers
#34 - 79.317 - Tristram
#35 - 70k-ish - (Blood Moor)/Den of Evil

What defines a good zone?
It is always a combination of the following determining if a zone is good or not:
- density
- champs, uniques, super uniques, boss
- accessibility of area (WP vs. leg vs. find area)
- run length (loadtimes)
- coordination of party (straight forward vs. open area)

I hope that helps someone

This post was edited by Druidika on Sep 29 2022 03:22am

Interesting to see cows so far down, but this seems highly char-dependent. My fishymancer is noticably faster in cows than in chaos. FoHdin on the other hand (to nobody's surprise) absolutely wrecks Chaos and levels ridiculously quickly there.

It is data based on p8. Unless you have a shit party it should be equally fast since the party is a big ball of death

not char-dependent, cows just suck


thanks for all the hard work

the only variable that wouldn't be obvious is what amount of base experience you get from trash mobs / uniques at level 85/88 vs 99
for example a level 85 trav council gives 353385 base xp normally, but I calculated about ~562466 in a level 94 terror zone by reversing the xp penalties.

if monsters in chaos or baal are giving ~1.5-2x the base experience, as well as not having the xp penalty, then the amount of experience you're getting from terror zones relative to normal monsters is easy to calculate, since its 13/256 vs 256/256 xp penalty. So perhaps 30-40x the experience at level 98
That's still close to a week's worth of a full time job in grinding just to get from level 98 to 99, which is absolutely prohibitive for the vast majority of players

This post was edited by Goomshill on Sep 29 2022 03:35am

thank you

So how many days from lvl1 to lvl99

Great work - thanks.

Nice data!



The cool thing about this analysis is that it looks at xp/min over several runs. I'm sure cows is good xp once you're there, but the time spent fetching the leg and making the portal really drags those numbers down.

This is some excellent data! Thanks for your hard work!