Powerleveling / Rushing Guide

A player asked me today how to rush mules, while keeping them at Level 1. Told him to search the forums and he said there are no results, so there goes a quick, but hopefully throughout guide.

Rushing

Requirements:

A hero that is capable to complete a rush (The guy that will be doing the rushing)
Not rushed Level 20 hero
BO Barbarian is recommended, if you are playing on hardcore realm
Mules ( obviously optional )
AutoTP ( recommended )

How To

Create a new hero, purchase a low requirement bow and arrows from Charsi. Enchant him > give him a Dark Wood WP > Level up to 12 > Move to Catacombs 2 and level up to 20.
This is best done in a game with a few mules, so that you level up faster. You can pick up an EXP Shrine as well.
Your hero needs to be Lvl 20 to complete Ancients quest on normal, 40 Lvl on Nightmare and 60 Lvl on Hell.

Create a party with all of the heroes in the game. You will only be completing the quests with the hero you leveled up to 20. The rest of your mules can stay in town at each act, but they must be in the party group. So, for Act 1 you open a teleport on Catacombs 4 and only bring your 20 Lvl hero , complete the quest , and move to Act 2. The quest is gonna be completed for each one of the mules. This is repeated with all Acts, keep them in town until it is time to move to the next Act.

To which NPC's you need to talk to

I see people do this wrong all the time. The NPC's you must talk to are the following :
Act 2 - After you assemble the staff you must talk to Drognan before the person who is rushing you enters Arcane Sanctuary, otherwise Harem's entrance will be locked. You must only talk to Drognan and nobody else. Then after Summoner is killed you need to talk to Atma, so that you can enter the tp in Tal Rasha's Tomb. After Duriel is dead , talk to Jerhyn, enter Harem Lvl 1 and open up a teleport, when you enter the teleport you save yourself the time of walking through the whole act. Open up one teleport and you can use it with all of your heroes, when you are rushing 7 mules it saves a lot of hassle.
Act 3 - You need to talk to Cain after the Councils are killed so that you can enter Durance of Hate Lvl3 teleport. You need to talk to him with each of the mules.
** Act 5 - When you complete the Ancients quest , your Level 20 hero will be able to proceed to Baal corridors, your mules will be able to complete the difficulty , but since they do not have the level required to complete the Ancients Quest, you will not be able to enter Throne of Destruction teleport. After Baal is killed, when you exit the game you will get a message that you completed the difficulty. Once you have ( if you would ever need to ) the level required, you will need to re-do the Ancient quests for your mule.

Powerleveling

How to level up your Level 20 Hero to higher levels

Since you got him up to 20 Level in Act 1 , that is all that will be needed for Normal Difficulty. You will be able to complete Ancient quests, but at levels below 25 you will not receive the usual experience from Baal's monsters, that is okay. On Nightmare when you reach Chaos Sanctuary open a teleport and bring your mule with you, clearing the whole area. It takes like two minutes and your mule will be up to 40 Level. If you are only rushing this one guy, find him an EXP shrine, because the exp might not be enough to reach the level required. If you have 3 or more heroes in the game that will not be necessary. Then, repeat the same procedure on Hell Difficulty to get him up to 60. In the experiments I have done this is the fastest way, I don't do Cows and other areas than the mentioned ones. If I'm rushing one hero it takes me about 25 minutes to get him rushed through hell and up to a level viable to do Baal runs. If I'm rushing mules it is around 35 minutes. Giving teleport from Harem improves your speed.

How to level up your mules that are rushed, but are level 1

Fastest way is doing Diablo runs on hell difficulty. If you have a hero that is capable of clearing the area in 8p, bring 8 loaders in the game and do a Chaos run for your mule. If the game is full it only takes one run to get him to approximately 70 Level. If it is just you and your mule, it's gonna take ~3 runs depending on the spawns. Do not forget to do the Ancients quest again, once he is up to level 60 , so you can enter Baal tp's in public runs.

Thats it, mystery solved.

 

Thanks @klaus for explaining the details.

 

For many of those, who aim for as high lvl as possible, I would also recommend to keep nm ancient quest opened as long as possible. The exp gained from this quest can save you couple of hours of baalruns

Great guide, as always, Klaus.

 

After getting the amulet in Act II you can speak to any NPC (closest to the TP area are Atma or Meshif) and you'll be able to enter the portal to Arcane Sanctuary. No need to go all the way to Drognan. Just a note, not that it saves that much time, but still.

That's correct, but what if Jehryn is bugged which happens most of the time. In that case you'll need to open up a portal with your rusher in Harem 1 and all your low levels will have to speak with an NPC before they run for that portal, otherwise they won't be able to enter. I usually speak to Warriv, because my lvl1s are still at the spawn point in Act2 and he is on the way. In both cases a Harem 1 TP is a must.

Great guide.

 

After you assemble the staff you must talk to Drognan before the person who is rushing you enters Arcane Sanctuary, otherwise Harem's entrance will be locked. You must only talk to Drognan and nobody else.

When you talk to Drognan, after you assemble the staff and before the person that is rushing you enters Arcane Sanctuary , Harem's entrance will never be blocked. Jerhyn is getting bugged because players do not understand this particular part. When you talk to Drognan he tells you to go and look for Arcane Sanctuary in Harem and he opens up the gates. If the person that is rushing you enters Arcane Sanctuary through the waypoint , before you have assembled the staff and talked to Drognan, Jerhyn is going to be bugged 100% of the time. But if you do as I said you will never have to give tp to Harem 1 as you are describing.
Please, read carefully before giving feedback.

 

Thanks for explaining it in detail. Now I understand. Accept my apologies and disregard my previous reply.

Cheers.

 

I'm pretty sure that you don't have to move your mules into the next act, as long as they are ingame the exp gained is increased or am I wrong?
I usually entered a game with 1rusher 1 or more characters being rushed and rest mules. Then rush to act 5.
After that your rushed char is only lvl 2 so I do 1 trist and I'm not sure like 1-3 Tombs for lvl ~22 and then 1 cow run to get to lvl 32+.
Then just ancient quest and baal this will give another 8-10 level if I remember correctly.
For nm the same, just get ur rushed char out in cs for like 10+ extra level.
^same in hell.

 

The mules don't have to be in the same act , the same area or in party in order to get increased exp, they just have to be in the game.
Usually when I give advices to people, at least most of the time, I speak about things I have tested and they worked. I have described what was to be the fastest way to level a hero that I have figured out and I have pointed exactly how it works and what you have to do and what you don't have to do. If you feel like getting legs, doing cow runs and some tombs - go for it. That I consider to be a waste of time and if I'm writing a guide it will not be a good information to give to other people seeking advice. There are so many ways that you can get your hero to higher levels, you can choose whatever you feel like. I always say that you should do whatever feels fun for you, because fun is what are games are about, if you don't have fun you might as well not play : )
However, I am not aiming to provide fun information in guides, because that players can figure out on their own. I'm providing ideas about methods that are superior than others. It is, again, completely up to the player to figure out which way he goes.

 

Alright if you say that way is the fastest I will try it next time but I'm confused as to why it would be faster to level in darkwood and catacombs because I think (not sure) other areas that I mentioned give more exp.
I'm also not sure why you rush your mules to higher acts

 

If you are unsure - ask, but don't do it mockingly like this. If I prepare my game in advance I can hit 20 in less than 10 minutes ( I haven't noticed that timing at all, but it happens fast in a full game with exp shrine ). You start from Dark Wood because at 1st level you will not be hitting monsters in Cat2 at all and there is a high chance you might die, which is a concern if you are playing hardcore. Even on softcore I consider that to be a good starting route and it is one I have used over and over again to good success. I don't claim this to be the fastest way, but it is the fastest way I have discovered , if you know a faster route you can share it and I will be sure to edit my post. Also, you doing runs over and over again + cow runs, I just don't see how you can do it faster. Normal Baal runs do not yield that much experience, so getting exp from there is irrelevant to me, unless you are playing in a 8p game. The procedure is not exactly the same for each difficulty, as when you hit 40 in nightmare and do Baal on NM , you will need significantly less exp when you reach Chaos Sanctuary on Hell. You will only need to do a 1/3rd of the run to get to Level 60.
Another thing you probably did not understand out of the guide , is that you do not need to bring your mules during boss fights ( If the mule is in party and stays in town, he gets all quests completed. So in the end you must only talk to the required npc's to move to the next act. You do not need to be present in Chaos Sanctuary when Diablo dies, for example, to be able to proceed to Act 5. And same goes for Ancients and Baal ).
In this server mules are primarily rushed for Larzuk's socket quest, in other servers for Forging quest.
Also, the "mules" can very well be heroes you are planing to develop in the future, so you do not have to rush them one by one as the normal scenario goes, also getting an already rushed mule from 1 to 70 is a lot faster than getting a non-rushed mule from 1 to 70. As the guide says, a single Chaos Sanctuary run in a full game will provide the level required for baal runs and that run takes 10 minutes in the worst case scenario.

 

Alright thanks for explaining, totally forgot the socket quest and sorry if it seemed to be mocking that definitely wasn't my intention!