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....