hey! This has been discussed before and I did some offline testing in a previous thread years ago, but nothing really came of it. If anything, it became somewhat of a joke to suggest runners use it to cheat a run despite how obvious that would be, haha. However, there has been some interest in it lately that made me pick it up and stream it, and got some pretty good feedback about it in my stream, as well as Indrek picking it up and playing against my time. Does 2 people actively running it make it worth being a category? maybe not, but I thought I'd post my VOD here nonetheless to see if more runners are interested in picking it up, and maybe trying out a more down-to-the-millisecond speedrun of Diablo 2. It can be a really good filler for long hardcore streams that "ended early" or it can turn into serious grind-time too. Fun for all I'm sure :3

Here is my vod for -act5 Sorceress, with a time of 6:40.38. I highly suggest including milliseconds in the timing of these runs as it eventually really will come down to it. I can see runs easily approaching 6 minutes with luck and minimal mistakes

To do this run, all you need to do is put -act5 in the parameters of the executable or shortcut, the same spot you would put -sndbkg and -w. I highly recommend making a new shortcut (called diablo 2 -act5) so that you dont have to edit it every time you want to switch categories :P Whenever you make a new character with this parameter active, they will be level 33 and start in act 5. -act2, 3, and 4 work too, with different starting levels (Individual-level style speedruns could easily be done for all act bosses, but for now I'm most interested in act 5)

Strat-wise, I've tried quite a few different things, including fireball and nova for some reason, but clearly Cold is the way to go. I went with Orb but you could go blizzard if you wanted, but Orb is much easier to control on the go and you dont have to watch for monsters to run into it, as well as covering more area. I specced 5 in Energy shield so that I take less damage and have more "health", and 8 in Static Field so that I can hit all ancients with 2-3 statics before circling Madawc and casting Orb, as well as hit Baal from a safer distance. I spec 15-20 points in Vitality since you will still take regular damage, and the rest in Energy. With this much mana, you can easily teleport all the way to Doc Farren with no mana potions and have leftover to cast a few Orbs to kill him, and hopefully get at least 2 mana potions and some gold / usable loot. Continue teleporting to Shenk and Eldritch for more chances at loot before going to town (unless Farren got you 25k and a magus wand, then you could skip these two groups and get your potions now). Going to town only once in the run is optimal, just to buy enough potions. Maybe shop for a magus wand.

If you dont go full energy / energy shield, you wont have enough mana for the initial teleporting. You also use less mana potions in general, and take less damage overall, so I recommend this build. Energy shieldless build You have to run to doc farren, which is easy time loss, or you have to pop a clickable and get a mana potion or 25k item, which will become very grindy. But I'm sure it could work, too.

Good luck to anyone trying out this run!

Side-note, I have also tried other classes, but they arent nearly as exciting as the sorc. Sin and Pally both with a time of 14:38 and Barb with a time of 28:51, but I only did a few runs with these classes and like a hundred runs with Sorc. If asked I can post the vods for these too, but they can definitely be way better times and strats more polished. The hardest part is figuring out what the best way to start is, and what you need to go for in terms of drops (you need to be able to kill mobs too so this affects your strategies, unless you're going for pop-chests-only....)

Some other notes on these runs:

Waypoints are broken, you cannot use them. The game still treats it as though you havent completed acts 1-4, and the only actual waypoint you can go back to, until you complete the other acts, is Act 1 Rogue Encampment

Blood mana is cast by Harpies in the ice caverns whenever you life total is lower than your mana total, which is the case with the energy shield strat, and it makes you use life instead of mana for casting spells, meaning your life depletes while you're teleporting. However, it automatically dispells when you're below a certain amount of life % and it shouldn't kill you. You can keep teleporting. It might just be easier for you to get tagged by something while teleporting and die if you don't have health potions

On my 1st attempt i took the wp at frigid, clicked on the top of the list (thinking it would be Harrogath) haha. then on 2nd attempt didnt buy more tps after my 1st shop... on my 3rd i finally finished at 17 mins i just ran normal sorc speedman spec with nova/static.

This IS fun, good way to break up a grind or do something different. Id run it if it was a category. Short and sweet.

This is very interesting and I'm excited to see you diving headfirst into it. I think that you should continue to grind better times and encourage others to participate. I don't think that whether or not it gets accepted as a category on this website should matter. Go fast!!!!

Always thought this was an excellent idea @BLaZeR-flamewing Speedrun.com always had the perfect spot for it under individual level categories.

I spent the time to build it. I setup categories for -act1, -act2, -act3, -act4 and -act5. Each act is also split into 7 different classes. For individual categories speedrun.com doesn't support more sub-categories, but I think acts and classes are enough anyway.

Here's the leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/d2lod/levels