Hi, you're reading the comments of my third speedrun. Great thanks to the SDA guys, be part of the staff the present day or not, for making the recording of this run possible to me, by creating and maintaning this wonderful site. Radix, Nate, Mikwuyma, Enhasa, DJGrenola, thank you very much!

Also, i'd like to thank to the people who took part in D2 speedrunning in any form. First, thanks to David 'marshmallow' Gibbons, because he made the first D2 speedrun, and on top of that, with my favourite character, the assassin, and because he showed us that this game can be finished in less than two hours. You are awesome, man!
Thanks to Alan 'Siyko' Burnett, mostly for the 100% sorceress run, which is awesome, and i hope he'll improve his any% run with the sorc soon, and he can reach the sub-hour goal. You are hardcore, man!
Thanks to Suga, who recorded a "practice run" with a sorceress, and we still don't know why he didn't submit it. That run was a milestone in D2 running, he used new tricks, like the dedicating leveling method, which saved tens of minutes.
Thanks to everyone, who helped with the run, like discussed matters in the forum topic, Ewil, Zurecco, lag, g0lem, WoOdY49, Boochypa, 20-100, ShinerCCC, Hugo123, Ghoti, beenman500, Cmon, LeWoVoc, Fyourics, mcbroiler, FreakZilla, thanks to you guys, plus anyone, who cared about Diablo speedruns, and also thanks to Chypizo, for the "poison shrine leveling method", which i unfortunately couldn't use, but it's still an incredibly good idea.

I started this run on march 18, and finished it on june 21, while took a two-months break from late march till may. This run made me annoyed so many times, but still it was very enjoyable. I originally decided to run it, because Siyko wanted to improve his any% sorc run, and i thought it is the right time to improve the sadly outdated assassin run, too.

I hoped i would be able to get under 1:30, but it turned out to be much better. The assassin is a very powerful character, and this made this huge improvement possible. The first few segments are quite sloppy, and my original plan changed a lot during the progress, and i didn't used some tricks, which were almost impossible to implement in this run, so this character still has a good potential. I think 70 minutes would be possible, maybe, with astronomical luck, but i'm not totally sure. Naturally, i made mistakes here and there, even if this is a segmented run, some of them looks very lame, but i don't think i lost too much time on them. But, anyway, sorry for the bad gameplay, and for the small video lags/audio glitches which you will notice in a few segments. I didn't know why those were occured. After all, if i don't count the early segments, i'm quite happy with this run. It can be better, but i still beat the current time by more than 40 minutes. Oh, i have to point out that it's not because of the difference in skill, it's the more frequent segmenting, better maps, and some new tricks, which Marsh didn't use.

About the segments in detail:

Segment 1:

In this, i had to simply reach the Stony Field waypoint, and get experience meanwhile. I wanted to gain the first level in Blood Moor, because it's incredibly hard to hit enemies with the normal attack later. The map was not good for the poison shrine leveling (spawn random bosspacks near Rakanishu, pick up an xp shrine, lure the packs to a poison shrine, activate it ->+3 level), but other areas were so good, that i decided to skip that, and level up "manually". This segment could be faster, but i was afraid of Rakanishu at that time, he killed me so easily...

Segment 2:

Leveling up on Rakanishu. Simple, but it can be faster, for sure. The character is still weak.

Segment 3:

More leveling, without actually gaining a level, lol. I noticed, that the xp given from the same enemies can vary in a wide range. Sometimes Raka gave much more xp.

Segment 4:

I wanted to hit level 6, because of burst of speed, but only a few enemies needed to be killed for that. I used a skill shrine for the even faster running, and i only killed when i had to, or it didn't take too much time. Underground Passage map was quite bad, but was easy to memorize. I needed only the Black Marsh waypoint, for Countess runs.

Segment 5:

Originally, i started to run Countess, for xp and runes, but it turned out that i'm still too weak for that. So, i decided to pick up Outer Cloister wp before countess, and get a level (level 7 now), plus some better equipment.

Segment 6:

I wanted to buy a regular belt (with three potion rows) here, and i had to sell some stuff for that. Unfortunately, the belt was a superior one, and i barely had enough money for the next segment,

Segment 7:

which is the shortest segment in the run (<10 seconds), and the only goal here was to gamble a good katar. It's stats were 10 increased attack speed (ideal for a trapper, since it makes laying of the traps faster), and some nice damage (6-10, i think, and some poison damage), which was useful at Countess. I could get this katar very easy, to be honest, it was the second attempt on this segment, and i screwed up the first attempt. 8)

Segment 8:

This is the first Countess segment. I wanted to gain a good experience from the enemies in the tower, and find 4 specific runes, two in each Countess segment. In this, i found Tal+Tir, and gained the level i wanted. This was the last segment with awful playing quality!

Segment 9:

From this point, the run will be much smoother, and faster. The reason: i needed to manipulate a Ral and an Eth rune from Countess (i will use two runewords, Stealth armor (Tal+Eth), and Leaf staff (Tir+Ral)), and i had to redo the segment hundreds of times, just because the runes were missing. And i'm serious, i recorded maybe 300 succesful attempts, all with good time, no mistakes, everything was perfect, but no runes. That was incredibly tiring, it took a whole week, and i had to take a nearly two-month break after this segment. But, in return, my gaming skills leveled up, and when i looked back, i found the early segments awful compared to the ones i can make now. I was too lazy to redo the whole run, with the rune-finding, so that's why the beginning of the run is inferior. It was a good lesson, folks. Oh, and it turned out that i can gain the needed xp without the xp shrine, so i didn't need to manipulate it, which made things much easier.

Segment 10:

In this segment, i had to get a lot of experience, because i feared that i won't hit lvl 12 till Andariel. It was hard to manipulate those bosspacks, because the rogue pack was not there in 19 times from 20, the goat boss was usually fire enchanted or cursed, and the skeleton archer loved to be cold enchanted. This spawn was too lucky to let it go waste. I picked up the Jail wp, because it was on the way, and the shrine already wore off, so it was not advantageous to continue.

Segment 11:

It would be good to get a whole level here, but the good enemy spawns were really rare. I had a goat boss one, but that record was much longer. And a speedrun is about time, isn't it? Sadly i was cursed, but i didn't lose that much xp. There were no worthy packs on the rest of the area, but now, i was way behind my plan. I had to do something.

Segment 12:

And what did i do? Changed my plan. It was possible to manipulate enough random bosspacks to reach lvl 12, but it was much more faster, if i just killed Andy without that. It was quite challenging, but not as much as for Marshmallow. I used antidote potions for the fight, and the fight was only a half minute long (with wake of fire, it would be ten seconds long).

Segment 13:

The start of this act would be better if i had that 12th level, but the enemies give more experience here, so it was not that huge problem. I could level up while ran to my destination. In this segment, i wanted to find a tp scroll, because i needed that for the next segment, but there was no scroll. :(

Segment 14:

First i ran to Far Oasis wp, and opened up a tp to the Halls of Dead (that's why i had to find a scroll on my way, it was a bit funny), then returned to town and go back via tp to get the Horadric Cube. The xp was huuuge in this segment.

Segment 15:

The Maggott Lair. This is one of the worst areas for a trapper sin. If you haven't played one, i tell you that the traps have to be layed very carefully, or they won't be able to shoot the fire waves, the walls block them completely. So i used the fire blast here, and tried to lay traps where it was possible. The places where i stopped and layed traps, but there was nothing, were usually crowded with enemies, and were quite dangerous. In this video, i was lucky with the spawns. Also, the maggots are endangered species, so i didn't kill their queen, so their community can live on.

Segment 16:

In this segment, i had to gain the majority of the experience in this act. The desert is full of bugs, and they give nice xp, while vulnerable to fire. However, i had to manipulate for scarabs, they are the best. Look, how fast the xp bar fills. The rest of the segment was uneventful, the vipers were no match for me.

Segment 17: Here's the first surprise in the run. I bought a two socket armor in the beginning of act 2, because i had a hard time finding one from enemies. I made the runeword Stealth in this segment, and you should notice that its level requirement is 17, while i was only lvl 15. So i can't equip the rw armor, but i can still assemble it on the character. And you know what? It gives the faster run bonus, which must be some glitch. It works with other runewords, too, but i only found this usable. This glitched runeword bonus has weird rules, you lose it, whenever you travel to an other act, change you equipment, or when one of your gear loses all the durability. So i had a nice running speed bonus in this segment, until i reached the portal to Arcane Sanctuary, which also removes the glitched bonus.

Segment 18:

So why i bought those thawing potions, when i had the cold resist shrine? Because that shrine was completely useless, and it turned into a good one very rarely. So i decided to manipulate either a cold resist or a skill shrine, and because of that, i needed the potions for Duriel. Level 16 was a bit low for that fight, but i managed to survive. And of course, i screwed up the end with those potions. I wanted to have to columns with the same type, to make the buying easier, but i failed horribly. And here's a little spoiler: Duri's drop was crap, and all the drops will be the same in the run. I didn't find anything good.

Segment 19:

Welcome to the Jungle! I noticed that the xp is okay without an xp shrine, so i used a skill one here, to make things faster. The map of this act was horrible, long and like a maze. The wps were placed rather good though, i could just drop a tp, and go back to town and use the tp to the cave and grab the eye of that long forgotten dead person.

Segment 20:

Still in the Jungle! I think i am the only one in this planet who likes act 3, but now, i'd like to skip this part in the game. For the next organ, i had to run through the whole Great Marsh, and almost the whole Flayer Jungle. Just look at how cruel this map is! It was a nice challenge to memorize the map layout, and perform good in this segment. I made a few wrong turns, but overall, it is okay for me. I waited a bit at the end of the segment, to see if there was a nice drop from the minions, but they were too dumb for that.

Segment 21:

The sewers is the only part i hate in act 3, maybe because i always had a very bad map for it. In this run it is a not-so bad map, but still worse than in other runs. I should kill Stormtree a bit faster, but i felt it important to be in a safe distance, and i had a hard time with those giant flies in the sewers. They suck your character's stamina dry, and they are so fast, you can't avoid them. Unfortunately, i hadn't got any stamina potions, but i still walked fast. The amulet turned out to be a rather good one, 11% to all resists, and i put it up on the silky neck of my pretty killer-girl.

Segment 22:

In this segment, i had a lot of things to do, and this was not easy. First i had to buy a two-socket staff, for the Leaf runeword, then sell and equip stuff, buy potions, and i also tried to put the organs in the cube while running. Once more, i failed. In Travincal, i finally abandoned my precius katar, which served me well, but after this, it was not useful for me. Bye-bye, Eagle Sratch! After the council members, i still had to gain a bit of xp, in order to be able to use the Leaf staff, which gives +3 levels to fire skills, and you know, the fire traps are fire skills. It was a nice damage boost, plus it gives some cold resist, too. It made Meph much faster. I made a "tactical retreat" during the fight, which was not that necessary, plus i danced around so vigorously, and didn't realized that i had 60% cold resist and 75% lightning resist (the shrine), so that was pointless. But screw that, the assassin moves so sexy, and she has nice, sporty legs, so i don't care.

Segment 23:

This segment was simple, but still made me troubles. First i sold Mephi's craps, then i ran to Izual, and lured/killed him, then picked up the wp. It took too much time, so later i killed him first (i only lured him to that shrine to see if it was a fire one), then ran to the wp. I hope the extra damage from the skill synergies was worth the time.

Segment 24:

I dedicated a segment for River of Flame, mostly because i wanted to save after Izual, and before Diablo, so i didn't have too many choice. Nothing else to say here, i think. Next please.

Segment 25:

This one was a real joke for me. I laughed hard at this point. I was lvl 19, and i only had to gain one more level till the ancients. But, after some tries, it was clear for me, that there's no way i can get that last level in act 4 and 5, during the normal, running segments. So finally, i had to make a short leveling segment, just like Marshmallow did in his run! I feel like and idiot for this, after that hard planning and things, and i could still just repeat what Marsh did. That good was his run, you know.

Segment 26:

Diablo time! In this point in the run, i had very little money, which was a serious problem (i could have sold my boots for a good 5.5 k gold, which only had 10% faster hit recovery), that's why i picked up that armor in the previous segment, but i hoped Dio will save me with some nice drops. Surprisingly, Lord de Seis had this fine circlet for amazons, which sold for maximum gold. That solved my problems with money. Anyway, i was lucky with the enemy spawns in the Sanctuary, but somehow, the shrine which i wanted to use as a secret weapon (as a fire shrine) turned out to be a mana pool. I'm still confused about it. You can say that i did a big mistake with that running around looking for potions, instead of visiting the town, but i didn't lose much time on it. And just imagine, what if i came back from the town, and i found myself in a bone prison, unable to avoid Dia's attacks. Plus, the ultimate reason: the assassin runs so sexy, as you should know.

Segment 27:

I bought potions in a4, because they sell them cheaper than those barbarians in a5. I couldn't master the gate-opening sequence, i was amazed that everyone opens that Gate of Harrogath so perfectly, i mean other runners don't stop at the gate, but i can't do that. Please, someone teach me how to do that (i think i could perform it once, accidentally, so there is hope). The enemy spawns were okay in this segment, but i maybe should choose a better route on Bloody Foothills. Originally, i wanted to save on Frozen Tundra, but after i finally memorized the map layouts, the enemies started to block me at every corner, and i saw they laughed on me, when they succeeded. So i split the first half of a5 in two segments.

Segment 28:

We are almost there, guys. This segment is the same as the previous, just had to run through some narrow caves, and stuff. I got lost a little on the Tundra, because it's all white, and i didn't even see the minimap. I dropped a few traps, because i still needed a tiny xp for the 20th level, which i absolutely needed for the ancients quest.

Segment 29:

And here's the last segment of this run, which is far the longest one (11 minutes, and the second is Diablo with 7.5 mins). However, it wasn't that hard to record. The Ancients Way and Worldstone wps were out of the way, so i decided to just skip them, and kill the remaining enemies in one sit. It was a huge success, maybe because of that wine i drank before the recording. Surprisingly, i could pull off everything quite smoothly in this segment, and it didn't feel so long for me. The ancients were easy, they didn't hit that hard (my character was very healthy, she had more than 300 hit points), and i managed to keep them in one group, so the traps hit all three of them at the same time. The minions of Baal were also easy, the first one was lucky, Colenzo didn't even tried to revive his minions, the second wave fell so fast, they couldn't poison my merc (he died almost instantly in the third wave, though ;_;), Bartuc was acceptable, and then i started to park the last two packs. I ran out of the throne room, to check for wandering monsters, but surprisingly, they were gone, so i lost a little time on that. The parking went well, i think, and i had great luck at the end of it. I was sure they will follow me inside the room, but no, they were kind. Or just not interested in an assassin. I also had good luck with Baal, even though he constantly summoned his clone. I somehow managed to always pick up the fight with the true Baal, and the clone did a very lousy job doing damage to me. He even hid behind a pillar, lol. Baal also stayed still for a moment, fortunately, which meant a great constant damage to him. I had to visit the town once, but the fight still was very fast, i believe. Sadly, the recording stopped, when i exited, probably because of the change in the resolution, so there's no final cutscene. The run just ends here.

How could this run be faster:

I still believe my original plan was superior, so leveling up to 12 in act 1 means a faster Andy fight, and faster progress in act 2. Leveling up to 19 in act 2 would make a much faster Duri fight, plus there's no need to kill for xp in act 3. The maps could be a bit shorter, and the enemy spawns could be better (more xp, less kill, shorter segments). Also fire shrines in boss places would be nice, especially for Meph and Dia. Maybe i should have manipulated ias gloves, and frw boots, plus some nice headgear, and maybe a skiller amulet. These tweaks could shave off 5 minutes of this run, i think. Good luck for the one who tries it.

Finally, i want to thank You, because You read this endless column of nonsense called author's comments, and hopefully because You watched my run. I hope You enjoyed them. Cheers!

First off, I highly recommend listening to the audio commentary. It has a lot of information these comments might miss.

Big thanks to everyone at SDA who supported this run - especially Requiem and Pweisger for putting up the bounty that gave me the kick to make this run happen. Zurreco and Lag.com for their knowledge and experience and helpful advice, and g0lem for his insanely thorough knowledge of the game, who corrected me on quite a few points. Adzicents, mr kidd, ShinerCCC, xud9dab2, bimanc, and all the rest on SDA forums and Youtube for their advice and support, and Suga for showing me how a sorc is SUPPOSED to level ;)

Diablo 2: LOD is a good game. The difficulties are rather unique, in that you are expected to go through all 3 difficulties sequentially. Normal is for levels 1-35, Nightmare for 35-65, and the final enemies are in their 80s. There is a hard enforcer to make sure you abide close to this though - the second to last quest in each difficulty has a minimum level needed to complete it - 20 in normal, 40 in nightmare, and 60 in Hell. This makes leveling a large part of the game, even though I go for the minimum level, I still need to spend a decent chunk of time killing bosspacks and champ packs (the most efficient EXP) to level. The game allows for a 2.5-minute or so powerup "Exp Shrine" that doubles all the exp you get during that duration, which is extremely valuable. I spend a lot of effort to make sure I have this on whenever I am leveling.

I will write comments here for each segment, but I recommend you watch with audio commentary - it is probably more enjoyable (I have not recorded it as of writing these comments). There are 150 segments.

1- I apologize for the audio issue in here, as some of the louder sounds are messed up. It only exists in this segment though. This segment requires a lot of luck - getting the exp shrine, getting a decent armor, getting an early stamina potion, and having a light monster spawn in the den. Also it's nice to get some valuable items as gold is an important early resource. I got lucky on almost all fronts, although there were enough enemies so that my exp shrine wore off near the end. Unfortunate, but there was a lot of good luck on this segment.

2- The javelins and throwing knives are very handy here. There's still a lot of running in these segments, so I don't worry about getting the exp shrine early. I was rather lucky to get the CB orb, and charged bolt cleans up pretty well. The enemy spawns are rather unpredictable, so when I go up to visit the handful of goat people, I was expecting a much bigger spawn, but there's no way to know until I get there.

3- The run to dark wood. I hit level 6 here and get Frost Nova, which is one of the few spells that just hits EVERYONE in a certain radius. It's not very high damage yet, but it will be.

4- This is all about gold and a +2 frost nova staff. I perform this segment a bit sloppy, but it took many many many tries to get that staff to show up, so I kinda balked when it finally did.

5- Tristram. Everything is just annihilated by my new frost nova, which makes my exp gain ridiculous. The assortment of enemies in trist are nearly perfect. Rather good segment, except near the end where there didn't happen to be a bosspack. Was still the right chance to take though. I lose time on collecting items, but gold is still extremely important for a while.

6- All about the quest reward. Akara has about a 9% chance to give me a 10% faster cast ring, and here it is. Fast cast is extremely important to the sorc - especially with repeat teleporting.

7- Countess - you can see frost nova is pretty valuable here. Unfortunately I don't get a good rune, but since I got two experience shrines, I consider it an even deal. Not too much to say here.

8- Pretty quick run to outer cloister. I don't get TOO much exp, but it's pretty good.

9- I use a TP drop here - at a certain intersection, I have to visit both sides. So I drop a town portal at the fork, work my way to the waypoint, then in town, take the TP back to the intersection and go towards the blacksmith. It saves a good amount of time that I don't have to backtrack at all. Everything goes pretty smoothly here - I spend a lot of time without my EXP shrine up though, but that's just a product of the large amount of running I have to do.

10- I work my way all the way down the catacombs here to Andariel, who is not too hard since I got enough EXP for Fireball in the previous segments. Afterwards I go do Blood Raven. I skipped her earlier because she has such a ridiculous amount of HP, and even with fireball she still takes an annoyingly long time. She is hard to static since my static range is so low, and she's constantly moving around.

11- I have to do a lot of leveling in Act 2 at the far oasis, so I don't bother getting an exp shrine or killing much since the Oasis is much more efficient. There's a shortcut to get to the A2 waypoint that I don't do here, because I need to hit Lyslander for potions.

12- Town segment to prepare for the leveling. I get my merc and okay weapon, and grab everything I need. Nothing special here.

13-21- Leveling to 18. Really nothing too fun here, it's rather repetitive. but necessary. Notice I keep a lot of skill points unspent, I need to save them for some of the prereqs to make sure I get everything I need once I have level 30 (which includes basically the whole cold tree).

22- Countess run - I get Tir+Ral+Tal here. Tir+Ral is for Leaf runeword, which gives me +6 fireball. Tal+Eth is for Stealth, which gives me faster run/walk, and also 25% faster cast rate. Extremely valuable, both of them.

23- Picking up two socket items - shield + chest. Shield is for Ancients Pledge, which comes later - breastplate is for Stealth.

24- Eth rune mentioned above.

25- Getting a 2 socket staff. If I found one that gave +fireball I could have ended up with a +7 fireball staff, but it's not too necessary, and it costs a ton of gold - more than I'm willing to spare here.

26- Sewers - I can't use the Leaf just yet, so the killing speed is not remarkable. Now that I have teleport, it's pretty quick.

27- Getting the cube here. The only problem with my teleport is the mana cost is prohibitive - with these dinky potions, I can't regen mana faster than my rapid-fire teleport spends it. I need to teleport, walk, teleport, walk, which is a bit annoying, but that is for this act only. Next act I get better mana potions.

28- Maggot lair. Killing here is annoying since they're all clumped, but there's not too much danger here, so I can live in those big mobs of enemies.

29- Getting the amulet, last piece I need for Act 2.

30- After a couple chores in town, I get to go down to the Arcane Sanctuary, where leveling is pretty strong. I finally am able to equip Leaf here, which lets me REALLY mow down these guys.

31- Duriel, who's not too rough. Notice I go into the palace, take a TP to town and walk to Meshif, which is a lot faster than walking all the way to Meshif.

32-Housekeeping and grabbing the spider eye. I manage to make almost perfect use of my EXP shrine here, which is nice. Unfortunately, the Act 3 map is set up such that there's no waypoint near me, which means I have to walk out the front door again. Fortunately it's ripe for leveling.

33- I grab the Gidbinn here, as well as the Flayer WP. Nothing too special.

34- For the Gidbinn quest reward, I manip a good ring here that also has 10% Fast Cast rate. I am up to 45 now (25 chest, 10 ring, 10 ring), which is still 20 away from my goal.

35- Leveling in the jungle (love watching all these flayers evaporate), and grabbing the heart. The boss here is immune to fire, but he's good enough EXP that he's still worth killing.

36- After ID'ing the surprisingly good amulet, I go get the Las Esem Tomb, as well as the brain from the sewers.

37- High council. A point of interest is the boots - they seriously help me, and it's pure luck that I got them, and then pretty lucky that I didn't die after finding them (which would have forced me to redo the segment and lose the boots).

38- I have to break the orb that I didn't do last segment, and kill Mephisto. No notable drops, just a lot of stuff to sell.

39- Leveling. I want 25 before I start act 4 due to the way the experience is calculated. If I was 24 when I did act 4, I'd get almost zero exp. The formula to calculate experience changes at level 25.

40- The orb I find here is good as a switch, since it gives me good resists and Leaf is good for nothing but fireball killing. I plan on using it during teleport segments (and once I get my ancients pledge shield, it makes a good mainhand).

41-42- Leveling. I change where I level based on where my exp is the most valuable - but these levels are always notoriously slow.

43- Leveling + Izual. Again, as I rise in levels, I get more exp from higher level mobs, so the act 4 monsters become nice and profitable.

44- Hellforge + Waypoint. Also more leveling.

45- Even more leveling in Act 4. I finally hit level 25.

46- Town segment to prepare for the Chaos Sanctuary, which is pretty hard.

47- Chaos Sanctuary. I get VERY light spawns all over this map, which is nice, and a pretty standard Diablo fight. He decides to melee me for quite a while, which is very convenient, since it does crap damage compared to his spells.

48- Shank and the bloody WP. I don't need to make much effort to level, since I'm high enough for ancients, and everything gets better once I hit Baal. The orb I got last segment is better than my resist switch because it gives a LOT of mana, which is GREAT for teleporting. I put it on my switch.

49- That stupid act 5 rescue quest, and the waypoint. Now that I have greater mana potions. I can blaze through with teleports.

50- Rescuing Anya. She's kinda out of the way, which is inconvenient, but who can argue with the reward of a permanent +10 all resists? I also socket my tarnhelm to put the amethyst in, put the amethyst in for the strength, grab the strength large charm, and I can finally equip my shield. A point of interest is that I use my Leaf staff when teleporting instead of the mana one I got explicitly for teleporting. This was very intentional. The curse the birds cast on me has a meaningless effect if I have more life than mana, but if I have more mana than life, then I take damage every time I cast a spell. This would annihilate me while teleporting, and the orb gives me enough mana to push my mana over my life. Leaf staff it is.

51- Ancients. A pretty difficult fight, but in Normal it's not bad at all, since there's no immunities and I can static the crap out of them. I also get the Worldstone Keep 2 waypoint.

52- I give myself just enough strength to use those boots I got back at HC. The rest is just a town segment in preparation for Baal.

53-56- I do some Baal runs for the exp. The only point of interest is that I get an EXP shrine between the third and fourth packs. These packs gives a lot more exp, and it's hard to keep the shrine the whole fight. If I get too close to Baal (on the same screen as him), I get hit with Decrepify curse, which knocks off my shrine. I also get Frozen Orb here, which helps out a lot. The skill points I saved let me pump up Orb + Cold Mastery at the same time, giving me a very powerful orb very quickly.

57- I manip the quest reward from Anya here - 20% faster cast rate, and +1 sorc skills, as well as healthy energy+life. The fast cast puts me up to 75% (which is no better than 65%), but it means I can replace one of my rings or amulet without any harm to my casting speed. It wasn't intentional, but it's a nice little perk.

58- Nihlathak and Baal.

59- Cows seals up Normal difficulty. Nothing interesting here.

60- I start nightmare here. Nightmare for a frozen orb sorc is extremely easy - almost everything falls apart to one or more orbs. Act 1 is where it's the most obvious - I may as well be fighting Normal mobs here. I clear out the den pretty easily, and we're on. Also the exp here is awesome.

61- My method of leveling is pretty solid throughout nightmare - I basically frozen orb every boss pack a couple times, then keep teleporting to my destination. Every time I get to a boss pack, I stop briefly to kill them all, then resume. Leveling is extremely efficient here. It's about 2 minutes per level INCLUDING doing quests, which is MUCH better than what I did in normal dedicated leveling segments. It's just a byproduct of being in Nightmare as well as Frozen Orb.

62- I tag both the Stony and Dark Wood waypoints here. Another level.

63- I get the scroll and hit up Tristram. I make sure to remember to get Wirt's Leg here, so I don't have to run back to Tristram when I have to do cows.

64- Quick run to Countess. Nothing special here.

65- The ancient armor I grabbed last round is not special, but I hang onto it in case I get lucky with runes and can make a nice runeword for my merc. Otherwise, I know it will sell for a lot. Into the stash it goes. I don't care about whats-her-face's quest reward of the ring, because both of my rings are very good, and she can't offer much better. I grab the OC waypoint and get the hammer. I don't HAVE to kill the blacksmith here, but I do for the exp. I am almost dead though, so I end the segment before I have a chance to look at his drops. Shame, but it was probably nothing good.

66- I grab the inner cloister waypoint, and kill the enemies in the cathedral for the EXP. I don't move forward into the catacombs yet.

67- I need to burn my imbue, and I don't have any white items handy (only non-magical items can be imbued), so I go ahead and imbue the Wirt's Leg. It's kinda funny that it lets you do that, but it doesn't really make a difference, I can still use it for the cow portal. Andariel dies - you'll notice I don't static her - I'm still extremely low level for this area - look how much damage the fallen do to me. I kill her conventionally and move on to the next act.

68- Here is the type of merc that will stay with me forever. I choose the one that gives frozen aura - it's very handy when folks are trying to kill me and I can't get frozen orb off, and it also freezes mobs who normally cannot be frozen - including cold immune. It was a tough decision between this merc and the one that gives Might aura, but I think it was the right decision. I also grab a lower resist wand - which lets me cast the necromancer curse Lower Resist, which reduces the enemies resistance to elemental attacks. This gives me significantly more damage, but has limited charges. I use it pretty often though, anytime something takes a while to kill, it's nice to have the extra oomph.

69- I go through sewers here. Nothing special, although you can see the difference between A1 and A2 mobs - my frozen orb is not the kill-all it was last act.

70- Just getting the waypoint. I miss it a few times with telekinesis because I'm retarded.

71- Maggot lair. Orb is a real pain to use in these corridors, especially since they all take multiple hits, and the beetles would destroy me if I ate enough of their lightning, so I don't kill anything. It's a rare moment of the sorc's humanity showing, but it is short lived.

72- And the amulet. I should note that normal is the only difficulty I have to get the cube - I keep the cube from last difficulty and only need the staff + amulet to make the horadric staff.

73- Palace and arcane. Seriously, all these segments look the same (not that they didn't take many tries).

74- Duriel goes down pretty peacefully. Nice of him. Onto act 3.

75- Act 3 starts out uneventful. I get the eye, as well as the jade figurine.

76- I trade in the figure for the potion, and do some more town chores. Segments like this are frustrating because if I had gone to the stony and there was no EXP shrine, I would have had to start over and do that whole town nonsense again. I kill all the flayers for quite good exp, make my way through the dungeon, and get the brain.

77- Manipulate a decent ring out of Ormus, and other town foolishness.

78- Tome and heart. I get an ethereal Iceblink here, which is not too great, but it's decent on the merc.

79- I keep the Darkglow because of its resists, but it's not too big of a deal. I move on to kill HC - it was heartbreaking passing those two bosspacks without an exp shrine, but it's pointless to shrine for this segment, since it's impossible to avoid getting cursed by the HC. I make the effort to get the Durance2 WP before ending the segment this time.

80- This is a short segment preparing for Mephisto. I fully intended to do HUNDREDS of attempts at the next segment to get a good drop, and doing it in another segment means I don't have to do that town nonsense along with every single one of my meph attempts. Saves my sanity.

81- Meph for the drop. I get a Kelpie snare here for my merc. I was hoping for an Occulus, but this is equally valuable. It has "slows target by 75%", which makes bosses much much easier. I got it specifically for the hell ancients (even though it ended up not really helping there). If I had to do this run again, I'd probably hold out for an Occulus here, but the kelpie did help at several spots.

82- Gambling for a good amulet. This one gives me +1 sorc skills and good resists, so I'm happy. It does not have 10% FCR, which means I'm back down to 65, which doesn't affect my cast speed, but means I can't lose any more.

83- Equipping the amulet and a couple town things. Nothing major here.

84- I get a ludicrous amount of exp this segment. Act 4 mobs give a lot of exp, and I run into a ton of them.

85- Fast hellforge segment. I had to do this many times to get the um rune and get a good time. Very clean here, although no shrine and I don't get the followup waypoint. That's okay, since I need to get exp anyways, I don't mind travelling the river again.

86- The ol' chaos sanctuary. I looked at my Normal CS run when I did this one, and I lost a lot of time due to standing around putting potions in my belt and stuff. I told myself I wouldn't stop to breathe during this run, and I think I did well.

87- Gambling for a good circlet. This one ends up with +1 sorc skills, faster runwalk, and not much else. That's fine with me.

88- Did you know Shenk was named after Phil Shenk, the Lead Artist on Diablo II? Apparently he is a pretty nice guy and does not whip his employees into a blind rage like this Shenk does. This one dies though.

89- Stupid town stuff and giving my circlet an Um rune.

90- Just getting the waypoint here, and the rescue quest. Also, some monsters die.

91- Did you know you don't need to kill Frozenstien to do the quest? And you can talk to Anya using Telekinesis. Handy.

92- I load up a couple potions here because I put several hundred attempts into the next segment, and I have to reorganize my inventory for it. This just saves me the hassle of also arranging my inventory several hundred times with each segment. Sanity saver.

93- Manipulating a good orb here. 20% fast cast rate is mandatory to keep 65% FCR, and this also has 14 life, +30 fire resist, and a delicious +2 sorc skills. It is possible to get better, but the odds become astronomical as I build odds for getting the 'perfect' orb.

94- Ancients and the worldstone keep waypoint. Not much to say here.

There's a story behind these next few segments, so let me tell it here.

I did segment 95 and 96, and posted them to the internet. I decided they weren't good enough, and went back to redo them. I got much better segments, with nice drops, so I replaced the old segments. HOWEVER, I made a GIANT boner and didn't correctly replace the save files. My segments afterwards used the save files of the videos I deleted (the 'not good enough' run), which means there was a striking inconsistency between segments 96 and 97 (inventory was totally different, among other things).

Nobody (including me) noticed this, which means I went through and finished the run with this gap between 96-97. Only when I was timing the run did I notice the problem.

The only way I could fix this was to redo these segments, and end up EXACTLY where I was. I recorded four segments (now 95-98) that bring me to the EXACT state of my old run. The difference is exp - I have a bit amount more exp at the end of 98 than I do at the beginning of 99. Other than that, everything is identical. This is the best I can do to repair the problem.

95- Baal. Die, man.

96- Nihlathak. Die, dude.

97- Cows. Die, folks.

98- Inventory repair. I get a lot of gold here, and then drop enough so I end with the correct amount. I arrange my inventory to how it has to be for the next segment, so if you're not reading these comments (but you are!), it looks like I'm wasting a lot of time this segment. However, I have to bring my character to the same state that it was when the next segment starts, so here I go.

99- I start Hell here. The mobs die pretty easily, but everyone is immune to something. The cold immunes are the biggest problem, since my fire is still pretty weak. Because of this, I delay the den (the only place I HAVE to kill all the mobs), because it has a lot of cold immune zombies and those big ape-monkey-things. I save that for the end of Act 1, so I can have some more points in fire.

100- Trudging my way through Act 1. Each of these hell segments that look the same took a LOT of manipulation - I have to get an EXP shrine, get a lot of bosspacks that AREN'T immune to cold, NOT get cursed (very easy to do in Hell), and not die. Very hard, but not too much thinking involved. I'm pretty sure most of these segments were done with reruns of Seinfeld running in the background.

101- Clearing the way to Dark Wood, and getting that scroll.

102- Tristram.

103- Annoying town segment - hell really eats up a lot of potions, so I have to take more town segments than I'd like.

104- Notice when I get the stony EXP shrine, I make sure there's bosspacks there and I kill them. It's nearly free EXP, since I'm going to be stopping there anyways. I try to do this every single hell segment. I grab the marsh WP and end it.

105- Countess. She's both cold and fire immune, so it's on my merc to kill her. I grab a String of Ears here, which has 13% Physical Damage Reduction. This doesn't help me too much, but I put it in the stash in case I ever need it.

106- Town.

107- Outer cloister waypoint grab. Nothing special...

108- I'm almost 60, so I don't have to level everywhere. Since the Jail run has a lot of cold immune mobs, I decide it's not worth it to try to level on this run, so I just make a dash for the Malus and waypoint.

109- Andariel.

110- Quick town segment where nothing happens.

111- Finally I do the den. You can see why I waited to increase my fireball skill, and I even go as far to get a +2 skill armor shrine here. The last mob grabs a Sharktooth Armor, which I wisely grab before ending the segment.

112- I imbue the armor for something my merc likes. Lightning+fire resistance, and +life. I take the stupid wagon to act 2 and end it.

113- I like the fact that it's faster to take the wagon across the desert, then take this teleporting... whatever... back to act 2 than it is to just walk from one side of town to the other. Then I kill radament.

114- Maggot lair, and again, I kill nobody. What can I say, this lady likes maggots.

115- CV temple. I think this is one of my favorite segments - everything just happens so fast.

116- Arcane and getting the waypoint for Canyon.

117- Duriel's time to die. Note the teleport I do out of his chamber - because you're not supposed to advance through the crumbling wall until he's dead, this room restricts your ability to teleport. The teleport I do out of this room is VERY difficult - most places in this room, teleport just simply does not work. Anyway, it saves me a few tenths of a second, and I move on to act 3.

118- Waypoint and eye.

119- Town segment is nothing special. I go back to act 1 because running through town at the beginning of segments where I start in act 3 takes a lot of time.

120- I do the ol' flayer dungeon.

121- Ormus has nothing to offer me with his rings - my rings are fine. I grab the ol' tome.

122- I grab the Trav WP, and hit up the ol' sewers. I'll stop that now.

123- Oh boy, this is annoying. Toorc is immune to fire and cold, which means I need to let my merc hit him. There's a couple spells I have that do lightning damage, but mostly I use telekinesis to keep him stunned and to stop him from killing my merc. This... is a pretty boring segment.

124- Town nonsense.

125- Mephisto, with no real drops. Really just cranking it through to the end here.

126- Another town segment.

127-131- Leveling to 60. I'll admit I got about a half level too much here. I could have saved a minute or so with better planning - I didn't expect to get as much exp from chaos sanctuary as I did.

132- Town segment to prepare for act 4.

133- Izual.

134- Hellforge. I get a pul rune, which is kinda exciting, but really does me no good for this run. It could be used to upgrade the Kelpie snare, but then my merc wouldn't be able to use it.

135- Town segment, selling those gems from the hellforge. Goodbye Pul.

136- This is an important segment - I grab a chipped gem. Chip gem + ort rune + something with charges = refills all of the charges. I was almost out of Lower Resists, so this fills me back up. It also means I don't have to worry about conserving my LR's anymore.

137- Last minute preparation for Chaos Sanctuary. I could have done this at the beginning of the next segment, but I was preparing for another few hundred attempts here.

138- Probably the second hardest segment in the game, maybe third (hell ancients is hardest, hell Baal 2nd or 3rd). I get a VERY light spawn of mobs here, which is convenient. Diablo goes down with not too much of a fight, although I do get stuck on a corner and eat half of a lightning firehose, but I get to eat a juvi right after.

139- Quick town segment to prepare for Shenk. Shenk is extremely hard, as you'll soon see.

140- Shenk AND his mobs are all cold immune. This makes it a HUGE pain to do any damage to him, and killing him takes a lot of work. I have to kite his mobs around a good amount before I can do lethal damage to him.

141- Waypoint run.

142- Socketing my merc's Kelpie snare with a Tal rune. This gives it poison damage, which prevents monster heal. This was mainly for ancients, although again, it didn't really help. There's nothing else I want to socket though, so I have no regrets.

143- Anya. Frozenstien is super pissed, but fortunately I don't have to kill him, and I can just sneak Anya out of there (actually I unfreeze her and then bail, leaving her to fend for herself, but she makes it back to town).

144- Ancients way WP run.

145- Town segment preparing for the ancients.

146- HARDEST segment in the game. The town portal scrolls are to reroll the ancients. They can come up with some really annoying mods. Any 'bad' mod and I'll simply have to reroll the ancients. If it takes too many rerolls, I just have to restart the segment. This one probably took the most tries out of the whole run - it was EXTREMELY difficult.

Madawac- ALWAYS immune to lightning. I would reroll if he was cold immune, because then I'd have to fireball him down from 100% to 0%, which is retarded.

Talic- ALWAYS fire immune (which I don't care about). I would reroll if he was lightning immune OR cold immune, since I both static and frorb him to death.

Korlic- ALWAYS cold immune. This one is the real bastard. If he is either fire immune or lightning immune, I reroll. I need to static him down to 50%, and then fireball him down to 0, which takes a while because FB is nowhere near the power of my orb.

It all goes pretty smoothly. I didn't teleport to the worldstone keep waypoint because I didn't want to die after successfully killing the ancients, and I have about a 50% chance of dying while teleporting through the worldstone keep.

147- Nihlathak. His friends are all cold immune, so I have to do this annoying dance. Not too difficult. I have to be wary of corpse explosion here on the serpents - CE of the suicide bombers won't kill me though (it's based off the hp of the corpse, and the suicide bombers don't have much).

148- Personalizing my stupid boots just to burn out the quest.

149- Town segment to prepare for Baal.

150- Baal. This went REALLY smoothly, despite the ugly parking of the 5th pack. Not only were the random mobs outside the room the vipers (EXTREMELY easy to kill compared to everything else), but the throne room has literally NO enemies - this is very rare and very convenient. After some difficulty, I park those jerkwads, and kill Baal, who is rather easy after all of this. This is the longest segment in the run.

151- The ol' cows. You can tell cow king is dead because he drops like 8 stamina potions.

152- Sucks to end on this segment, but because of the issues above (the segment replacement), I never ended up personalizing my item in nightmare. I do it here to wrap up the final quest in my ledger, and we're done!

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Improvements:

• I think I could have done without the second point in charged bolt.

• I could have handled the fire skills better. I leveled up fireball when it actually increases the damage more to level Fire Bolt. This also avoids increasing the mana cost, so it is a no brainer.

• I should have gotten telekinesis as soon as I hit level 6, and used it more often. I didn't start using it on waypoints and shrines until a bit later than I should have. Oops.

• I think I shouldn't have repeated normal Baal - leveling in act 1 nightmare may have been more profitable.

• A better manipulated map would let me level better to 18 in act 2, and give me a great act 3 area for leveling to 20.

• I shouldn't have leveled to 25 before chaos sanctuary. I should have done ancients slightly before hitting level 24, which means I hit level 25 JUST as I start Baal, and can get the improved exp formula for him and his mobs.

• I shouldn't have hit level 60 DURING the hell leveling segments, I should have hit 59.3 or so.

• I shouldn't have messed up those stupid nightmare Baal save files. That was just dumb.

• I could have gotten a better weapon from Nightmare meph. Occulus, specifically.

• I think I would have been better off with the act 2 Might merc for the extra damage. Hell countess + Hell Toorc both required merc beatdowns. Then I could have also given him a healthy lifeleech weapon, and maybe he would have survived hell ancients (and actually done something useful!)

Can't think of any more.

Thanks for watching!