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.

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.

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.