Highest Lower Kurast Hell Rune Drop for Slicer

Ko Rune

I was just going through screen shots from Slicer's escapades and found this shot of a Ko rune in Lower Kurast.

I previously stated that I had a couple of Dol runes and that they were pretty much the highest rune that dropped for Slicer in Lower Kurast. It's still a fairly true statement, most of the runes were not very high level, but Ko is higher than Dol, so it takes the award for being the highest rune to drop for Slicer in Lower Kurast.

Fly like a Gull Dagger!

Gull Dagger - awesome early find

I once boasted to friends that you could find the
legendary unique Gull Dagger in the very early levels of the game. The first time I saw Gull was defeating the minor boss in the very first quest.

I'm sure my friends were thinking "yeah right." Well here's the proof - JadeKicker just found a Gull Dagger. This time the location was a bit further, in the Underground Passage following the path between the Stoney Field and the Dark Wood. The boss who dropped Gull was just some minor boss. What makes Gull such a cool dagger? It's not the 2-19 damage, but the +100% magic find!

I was thinking of suiting up with the Gull Dagger and Tarnhelm, but it's really too early to be going after magic items - though since Andarial is just a quest away, perhaps it's not.

JadeKicker kicks off a new challenge

JadeKicker, a new Assassin

Beating Baal in Hell mode with what's arguably one of the most powerful builds in Diablo (even if I didn't have Enigma, HOTO, or other fancy rune words) was a good warm up. And while I still want Slicer to have those fantastic items it feels a bit boring to keep running the same thing using many of the same strategies for a crumb or two. I'm itching for *newness*. So I started an Assassin this morning named JadeKicker. Within an hour of soloing I JadeKicker had completed all the quests up to the Outer Cloister (including the Countess who dropped a single rune word).

The plan for JadeKicker is as a martial artist. The last time I played an Assassin was shortly after the LOD Expansion pack was released. That assassin was a non-build online character who I ironically basically soloed on Battlenet. That assassin was not a build at all, but if I had to describe her I would have said she was a Trapassin who became a bit of a martial artist. It was many years ago but I remember before I stopped playing she was level 76.

The plan for JadeKicker is to take her to Nightmare and leave her there, then start another class, and keep going until I have one character of each class.

JadeKicker's stats don't look very impressive at this point, but she was able to very easily take on Blood Raven at level 4 (martial arts are awesome). I think I drank two healing potions in the fight with Blood Raven before she fell, and it probably could have just been one, but I play safe.

Runes, runes, runes

I've been cubing up runes since level 1. Now that Slicer is level 86 he actually has just over half a storage space full of runes (because they're mostly cubed up). Sadly Slicer isn't even close to a Ber rune.

I spoke about running Lower Kurast for runes in hope that a Ber might drop. A few runes dropped, the occasional Dol rune, a Hel rune, but not much better. And even after a lot of LK runs I still didn't see a lot of runes.

I decided to run Nightmare Countess with /players 8 and ran into 2 Dol runes, a couple of Sol runes, and a bunch of minor runes. Running Nightmare Countess at /players 8 isn't bad if you don't mind cubing up and doing a lot of runs.

Then I thought I'd try Hell countess at /players 8, but with a twist... I wouldn't do /players 8 until the stairway between the 4th and 5th level to prevent Slicer from being slowed down by nasty bosses along the way. When I went down to the 5th level of the tower I was almost immediately attacked by a boss (not the countess), killing the minions and the boss turned up an amazing Fal rune (level 41). It's not a really high rune, but I lost a Lum (39) the other day, so Fal is a nice replacement. I think this makes 3 Fal runes for me now.

My highest rune, a single Ohm rune is 3 runes less than Ber, which is 1 rune less than Jah, both of which are needed for Enigma. It seems I have a better chance of doing Call to Arms (I could except for the Mal rune). Lots of work to do. Thinking of running Hell Countess a few more times, but not tonight.

Victory, Patriarch Slicer

After some insane fighting Slicer jumped from going after Nilithak to defeating Baal and his minions. I still haven't checked out the Orge Maul set item Baal dropped.

Even though I was able to handily defeat Baals minions without dying, it came with a cost. Going from Nilithak to Baal's death cost me over 1 million gold (raising my hireling, repairing my armor and buying potions).

Ancients were insanely hard... I died 2 times trying to kill the Ancients. It really took luck and running, a lot of running, to be able to sort of isolate one or two ancients. Their near impossible to isolate at this skill level and are pretty effective together.

I'm also kicking myself because after I died the first time I restored an old version of Slicer I had backed up, losing in the process a Lem rune and a unique helmet I've never seen before. Was defeating Nilithak, Ancients, and Baal and his minions worth it... you betcha!

Trang-Oul's Chaos Armor

There just isn't a whole lot of excitement to tell. I've been running around Lower Kurast accumulating flawless gems, cubing them up and using 3 pgems to transmute charms, mostly into less useful charms. I found this Trang-Oul's Chaos Armor after about 50 runs.

I also found that some seeds have more than 1 camp-fire. Previously I'd been attaching myself to running 1 camp-fire area, until I found out there was more than 1 in some seeds, which would explain the lousy drop rate I mentioned in a previous post.

I accumulated statistics for 48 runs. In those 48 runs nothing really remarkable appeared (other than this set item). Oh, I suppose the Laying of Hands (Disciple set) Bramble Mitts also could be considered remarkable. I think it's actually the second piece I've found in that higher level set.

A lot of charms dropped, and almost all of them useless. I muled a bunch away for really weak characters I'll play in the future (any advantage is an advantage). I also muled away a bunch of jewels. At some point I'll probably start crafting caster items with these things. Maybe I'll run the countess a bunch of times and see if I can get the right runes to drop... but not now.

Speaking of runes, here's the rune count from the 48 runs: 2 x Ort, Thul, Tal, Tir, Io, Ral, and Sol. Not a lot of runes, but the Io is a pretty high rune. Running countess at /players 8 is likely to result in multiple deaths (and loss of experience) and maybe I could cube up to something a lot better, then again I have heard of Ber runes dropping in Lower Kurast... just not for me, not yet.

The spreadsheet I created in LibreOffice has cells for 56 runs (2 pages), front/back if you have a printer that can print on 2 sides.

My goal running LK has really been about getting runes to drop so I can cube up. I'm thinking I've been wasting a lot of time and it's time to move on.

Slicer is level 86 now. All the synergies for Blessed Hammer are maxed out. There's little room to squeeze more out of Slicer except with exceptional equipment. Without Enigma and HOTO Slicer does just shy of 5k damage.

Slicer was getting his butt kicked trying to get into Nilithak's lair. Turns out the raised skeletons are darn strong. It might be high time I look at beefing up Slicer's hireling.

Unremarkable runs with some minor Magic Find charms

Lately it seems like I find nothing of interest in Lower Kurast, even at /players 8. Run after run I was barely finding anything in the "special chests." I tried popping them without attacking anything around, popping them after attacking everything around and nothing remarkable seemed to come out of the chests or from the monsters. The only runes that dropped with very low El and ELD runes, there were only 5 or 6 flawless gems (in more than 40 runs), and really almost nothing else of interest.

The only slightly interesting items were a few charms that dropped with Magic Find ability. One was a large charm with 4% MF which I don't think I'll use at this point because it's more of a waste of space for 4%.

I think what's happened is I must have a map that doesn't have a lot of good drops on it. Between the map and the seed (it should be all seed) it just doesn't seem like a profitable map, so the next job is to switch maps.

Over the next couple of days I won't get to play Diablo II. There are just too many events going on to allow me to relax with a good game of D2. So until late Saturday or so....

Gheed's Fortune Grand Charm

With it getting harder and harder to gain experience (check out the experience bar - almost there for another level) I needed to find motivation to continue. Usually I see the same stuff dropping over and over again Thul runes, Amn runes, Ort and Tal runes, and then something totally shocking drops like the Gheed's Fortune Grand Charm that dropped for me in Lower Kurast. I love it! 34% extra magic, 151% extra gold and a 12% reduction in vendor prices (not that I've bought anything except potions). I wonder if this means it will be slightly cheaper to resurrect my NPC?

It's a nice find for a Lower Kurast run. I was simply trying to level, but when this charm popped out I freaked. I've had a few 75+ level characters and this is the first time I've had a unique charm drop. I wasn't even sure if they would drop in solo mode because I'd never seen one before in solo. Definitely cool!

11 minutes of normal Mephisto runs

Got 11 minutes to spare? In 10 minutes and 50 seconds Slicer ran normal Mephisto (without teleport) 10 times at /players 8. The key is not to attack everything in sight and go straight to Mephisto. You'll also want to find a good map. What's a good map? A good map is a map where the way point is extremely close to the level 3 (Mephisto's lair) stairs.

Here's what Mephisto dropped on each run:

Run #1: (Unique) Bloodrise Morning Star, (Unique) Gleam Scythe Falcion

Run #2: nothing of interest

Run #3: nothing of interest

Run #4: Tir Rune

Run #5: nothing of interest

Run #6: nothing of interest

Run #7: nothing of interest

Run #8: normal magical jewel (useful for crafting and that's about it)

Run #9: nothing of interest

Run #10: (set item) Arcana's Death Wand

Running Mephisto in normal mode, even at the /players 8 setting, really doesn't turn up a lot of rewards. But it's an easy and fast way to get low level uniques and set items.

Cool set item- Dark Adherent Dusk Shroud

We all know normal Dusk Shroud's are cool. Quite early on in my Hell travels I found this awesome Dusk Shroud, the Dark Adherent, part of The Disciple higher level set.

It's been a couple of weeks since I first found the shroud and since then I haven't found any other part of the set.

I have been lucky enough to find a few other cool higher level set items but they seem so rare. Lower level set items seem to drop more often even in Hell.

One of the obstacles I find doing different runs is that I seem to fill up my stash fast. I'm thinking I might just concentrate on finding set and unique items again. I might create a new mule just to unload everything in both my stash and all my charms. Then I'll load up on MF equipment and see what drops.

Lower Kurast Combat technique

Some bosses are fast, have lightning and tend to come with an army of minions. For bosses like this I find it helps to trap them just beyond their reach.

The screenshot shows a good example of trapping a boss. Black Maul is on the raised up way point. If I get close enough to the edge Maul can claw me, so I stand just clear and send hammers flying.

Sometimes the bosses are fast and I end up on the way point with them trapped below the way point. Either method works pretty good as long as you don't get swarmed.

For swarms I use the stop, hammer and run method to take out a few minions. When it's just me and the boss, or me and a couple of minions I try to trap them.

There are still a few minions that are pretty strong, but I find that some of the minions in lower acts are actually more difficult than Lower Kurast.

Moser's Blessed Circle Round Shield

I didn't mention before because I think somewhere between all the LK runs I ran Diablo in nightmare mode with /players 8 and he dropped this nice shield. Not only is it unique, but it came pre-socketed with 2 sockets.

It's certainly not the best shield out there, it's got +25 to all resistances and 67% blocking, but not much else going for it. 173 Defense really isn't much when you're fighting monsters in Hell mode.

Still... it's cool to find a unique socketed shield like Moser's Blessed Circle.

Popping chests, just puffery?

Maybe it's a bad map or a bunch of bad seeds, or maybe I just got lucky before (yesterday), but this morning it seemed the best I could do running special chests in Lower Kurast was jewels and flawless gems.

Last night a run lead to this awesome +1 Grand Masteries Barbarian charm. I already have a +1 charm for Assassin.

I decided to stop popping chests after about the 10th run when one of the minor monsters dropped a Hel rune.

Previously I mentioned finding a Dol rune in my LK special chest runs. The problem I've found running the entirety of Lower Kurast is that it takes a long time. There's enough bad boss monsters at /players 8 to slow the game down significant enough (and this is with 75% resists to everything except poison in Hell). Experience is not bad, but it takes about 10 of these runs to level at level 84.

Spending a couple of hours leveling isn't a bad way to go, but it feels slow, there's not a lot of excitement and once you pop the special chests it seems nothing special drops after. I did find the Hel rune, but something like a Hel rune dropping from a minor monster is pure luck, and the odds of it happening again are pretty slim, at least at my current power level.

Rune hunting

There are all kinds of rune hunting guides out there. If you're level 92 with a teleporting character these guides are great. For lower level characters or even high level solo characters these rune guides don't seem very applicable. It's hard to get good equipment. Sometimes you get lucky and get a couple of items, but getting good equipment to match a build is extremely difficult unless you dupe (and that's not an option for many of us).

I realize it takes many hours, evidenced by some players thousands of LK runs. Recently I had a few thoughts about running lower kurast and rune finding in general. Like many I'd heard of the "special" chests. Generally they're neat a fire put. It happened on one of my hell Lower Kurast runs that the way point appeared very close to the special chest(s). So I thought "why not just run these two chests" over and over for 1/2 hour. In that 1/2 hour I picked up the following items of interest: jewel, Tal rune, flawless skull, flawless ruby (2), Dol rune, flawless amethyst (2), and a flawless sapphire.

Next I ran Diablo in normal mode with /players 8 to see if he'd drop any runes. This took quite a bit of time (I don't have a teleporting character) even though I rushed and didn't kill anything (at least compared to running the Hell LK chest at /players 8) unnecessary. The reward, a single Ort rune.

Then I ran normal countess at /players 8. I ran her 3 times and got 2 x Tal runes and a Nef rune. The single Ort was a better reward.

The best of all three of these was doing the Hell Lower Kurast runs at /players 8. Dol is significantly higher than Ort and I also found a Tal.

Funny enough one of the runs I need to make is one that finds chipped sapphires. I have a lot of Sol runes (15) that need to be cubed up.

Frozenstein dead, Anya rescued

After quite a bit of caution and killing almost everything in the way I managed to kill Frozen stein (who wasn't electrified this time) and rescue Anya.

For the moment I've decided to empty most of my stash and do lower kurast hell mode runs in a really useless attempt to cube up to something decent. Likely I won't get many runes, but we'll see what pops out of the sparkly chests. It's good experience at the very least.

I'd run a particular area, but the very best chance I could get is already gone (Andarial Quest in Hell) and that's a 1 in 80,000 chance of a drop. It's better than playing the local lottery, but 80k... Cubing up is painful.

In the "Wow, that was unexpected category..."

In the "Wow, that was unexpected category" I found Bartuc's Cut-Throat Greater Talons in a Lower Kurast run yesterday. The claws are only level 42, but they're a pretty rare find. It makes me want to play an Assassin again, but I'm also itching to play a Druid. At this point I'm pretty happy with Slicer, my Hammerdin Paladin. He's not the strongest figure, but he's getting there.

It's going to take some more work to bypass Frozenstein, but I think if I'm careful and maybe with a little luck I should be able to eliminate all along the way. So close before...

Transform a good charm into a lousy one

There are lots of sites talking about how you can cube up 3 perfect gems and a high level charm (in this case the charm started out at level 69) into a "skills" charm. After 24 perfect gems this is the result... nothing good.

At one point there was a +Lightning Resist. I suppose I could have kept it, but with +75% Lightning Resist in hell already not sure it would have done a whole lot of good.

The charm is from LK hell runs at the highest setting. I'll probably cube it up a few more times to get a better result.

Lower Kurast is getting kind of boring again. I might press on with Frozenstein. As for this charm, I don't think it's going to get much better than a high skills charm.

Level 84 solo

Slicer made it to level 84. Interestingly much of the experience was gained on 1 run of Lower Kurast. I'm not sure what happened but it seemed like I must have hit the magical seed that makes almost every monster a boss. In one run of Lower Kurast I think I must have killed about 12 boss monsters in addition to all their minions (and almost dying several times). Even being careful it was hard not to get swarmed... the seed was unbelievable. So were the drops, nothing for unique or set items, but charms out the wazoo! Most of the charms were high level, one level 69, another around 65, but only one was useful (a Fire resist + faster heal). A second became useful after I cubed up some perfect gems and a less useful charm for a large magic find charm. This makes the second magic find charm (the other an even better small MF charm) in my stash, putting my MF up around 80%.

Eighty percent isn't much for magic find, but I also don't have Enigma, Hoto, or any of the high level rune items yet. I've been playing without hacks (only muling off items) trying to see if it's indeed possible to find the equipment recommended for a Hammerdin in single player mode. Hammerdins are suppose to be one of the strongest characters in the game, it didn't feel like it last LK run, though I know running friends through Normal and Nightmare will be a laugh. At level 84 I've maxed Blessed Hammer and ALL synergies. I thought I had +5 to all skills via various items, but it appears it's only +4 since Blessed Hammer is only 24.

At this point I'm not quite ready to give Frozenstein/Anya another crack. I think I'll try to get a bit more experience before tackling this quest again.