I come across with that picture on d2j forum . I don't know what to say

@yphanh2002 photoshop?

I actually saw a player online once who had a level 60 character with only 6 or 7 hours played. This could be one of two things:

1) Abusing quest exp pre-1.03. I believe Zoltun Kulle used to give the same exp bonus from completing his quest (which was quite a bit before they patched it) even after the first time. So you could power level pretty quickly by just redoing the quest over and over again.

2) Botting some high exp area. I'm not sure where that would be currently, but it's probably a very small amount of exp (like Leoric's manor), but extremely dense. A bot could just run this hundreds of times with minimal time logged on the account.

@mowuffe : I don't know. That's not my picture so I have no idea. I saw them on d2j forum

Leoric's Manor is pretty good for Act 1, but not the best.
the best (imo) is Crypt of the Ancients.

Let's see how long it takes for my Barb.
I might write a guide if I manage to do it within 10h.

@venoom
How is your progress?

I have a lvl11 barb now. If I grind the crypt, is it right that I still need to continue with the full quest chain to proceed to the next Act and next difficulty level? Or is there an easy way to just skip the quest line?

here is what I did so far to get to level 20 in 2h30 and level 30 in 4h30:
- hit the AH and try to have as much DPS as possible, with +XP gear (important in the beginning)
- +25% XP gem after level 15
- Cain Set after level 23

you NEED a friend to invite you to the last quest of Act I, finish it so it's saved, then he has to invite you to the last quest of Act II, and kill Belial for you. Finish the quest too.

Up to level 15 (or maybe 18, can't remember), just hit Crypt of the Ancients.
You only have to find it once.
You kill everything, then you leave the game.
Next time, you will start directly there.
Rince, Repeat, till you see that you barely get any XP from it.
That's your cue to move on to Act 2, find Vault of the Assassins, and keep XP farming it (with +mov speed gear/skills if you can) until level 28 or so.
Act 3 also helps.
Then you need a friend to kill Diablo for you to unlock Nightmare, and asks him to do the same thing again for Act 1 and 2 (as soon as you hit level 30)

you don't need to do ANY quest to progress.
You only need to kill Diablo (through a friend inviting you to the quest) AND have the minimum required level to move to the next difficulty level.
For example, I never did Act IV for my Wizard and don't intend to play it for my Barb

doing this saves massive amount of time.
and making your friend only open the last quest and kill the boss for you will unlock everything in that Act through the waypoint, while at the same time it won't waste his time that much, it only takes few minutes.
It will not unlock the previous quests, but who cares, you only need the locations, no need to go through the lousy story.

@Venoom

Thanks very much!
I can now see how this can be done. Let me try sprinting my Barb to 60!

@Venoom

Updates on my part....hit Crypt from 12-14.
Starting 15, hit VoTA (with str gem MH, +300 LoH gem offhand).

do you find the LoH gem useful at this stage?
I personnally rarely died so far.

I only equipped red gems to get the +Dmg that is extremely powerful on the low levels.

I was thinking of using the LoH gem in my offhand to push myself as far as possible without worrying about upgrading gears. Or do you think 2 x red gems are much better?

I have the Cain's set and Born set. How long do you think they will last?

Also, I remember at low levels there are 2 legendaries which provide movement speed boost. I think a belt and a pair of 44 pants but I can't recall what they are. Maybe they are useful for power level.

@Venoom

It was hard for me to keep time since I don't have the luxury for continous play. Anyway I was grinding in VOTA, and I think I leveled from 18 fresh to 23 in about 25 minutes.

I skip loots except goblins and journals. I also equip 2 x red gems instead of 1 red 1 purple.

Here is my lovely Barbarian at level23. Anyone interested in lending her a Leoric Ring ? ;P

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Douvinsky-1811/hero/6424132

The Cain Set can last you all the way.
On my main character, with much better gear, I can play Act 1 and 2 Inferno without problems.

I skipped the Born Set, didn't find the bonus useful.

I am not happy with my recent progression: 7h30 and level 42. I was hoping it would go faster.
But now I equipped a level 60 weapon, my Barb is extremely overpowered, it should go faster.

P.S.: No need to keep time, just check your profile and it tells you how much time you spent on each character.

@Venoom

Ok, will replace Born set later while keeping the Cain.

I didn't know the trick to skip the storyline from the start and wasn't focused on power levelling. Hence the time spent in my profile includes every inefficient plays.

What I will do now is to record the time spent at level 23, and start counting from level 23.

I think eventually, you will have to do the story at some point, if you ever want to play a special quest in a certain Act (like middle of Act 2 Normal mode if you are hunting the Leoric Ring) but for power levelling, it's extremely inefficient to go through everything.

I had a friend unlock the 4 Acts for me in Nightmare yesterday, it took 10mn.

Let me know how your power levelling goes.

Act 2 is irritating, it can be tedious to find Vault of Assassins the 1st time.
Act 1 Crypt of the Ancients also annoyed me a little, sometimes I lost the checkpoint when I teleported to town to empty my inventory, or couldn't get one. Not sure how the exact mechanics of the "Checkpoint" system work.

@Venoom

Spent 2 hours to gain 8 levels to level 31. However I could have done it better. I didn't have the crater waypoints hence I was doing it quest by quest eg raise the catapults. When my friend came online he helped me open up waypoints for Nightmare Act 1 to Act III. I ended up not doing the craters at all since I am already capable of doing NM Crypt.

@Venoom

I just hit level42 @ 7 hours 26 minutes.This is about the same timing as you. I think it is impossible to achieve 10 hour mark by playing solo unless there is a bug. It should be faster if we have a high level friend to help out. I know my 60 DH can finish the whole Normal VOTA in just about 2-3 minutes with all the multishot and vault and +24 movement speed and the right other skills.

However, as I mentioned I wasn't focused on powerleveling in the beginning (& also made a lot of mistakes in getting waypoints), hence I should be able to shrink this time better next time. We could certainly put our heads together to perfect it.

Regarding Act 1 Crypt of the Ancients, for the waypoint to work you have to select the proper quest (I am off the game now, but it is the quest that you talk to the guy at Drown Temple. I used to farm the Warrior's Rest using this. You then only need to search for the Crypt once). However, I didn't do this for powerleveling.

This is what I did for level 31 to level 41 (2 hours):

- NM Act 1, Festering Woods (2 caves and clear around) + Leoric Manor. I was planning to just farm the Crypt but I discover that I don't have the proper quest (The Broken Blade I think) completed as I explained in the earlier paragraph.

Level 41 to level 42 (30 minutes)

- I found that I couldn't get good XP from Act 1. And I was not ready for VOTA. Hence I just go NM Act II and did the quests from the beginning. Still quite effective with +movement speed from the boots, I believe.

Level 42 ++ (TBA)

- I bought a reduced level18 (3 millions ouch) with more than 100 vitality, and I am going to use +300 LoH gem on my offhand to hit VOTA. I believe this should provide me with the edge on both DPS and Vitality, and good regeneration via LoH (I also have LS on offhand haha).

Additional inputs from me:

If you can secure the ODYN SON (with socket) at low level20ish, I believe it could speed up your killing. The +40% lightning proc helps a lot. It saves me quite a few swings. I was attacking the skele in NM VOTA and I was surprised that the long leg creature at the back got zapped and killed in one shot from just the proc.

I also believe LEAP should be helpful if I am moving around as I did. However I didn't use it since I have defaulted mine to what they said is the WW barb build...

Any updates/ tips at your side please let me know. Thanks.

@douvinsky
you're wrong about CoA :)
I also thought it wasn't possible in the beginning, but it is.
you only need the last quest unlocked, and then you should get a Checkpoint in CoA if you find it.
I admit that I sometimes lost the checkpoint when I TPed back to town, but I managed to get it back by resetting the quest.
Not sure of the exact steps to solve this, all I can tell you is that I managed to get a checkpoint there without unlocking the Drown Temple quest, only the last one (after killing the butcher)

I managed to reach level 50 in 9h. Not super thrilled about the time but I am beating my previous time with the Wizard.
I did Areat Crater, Keepdepths and Bridge of Korsick repeatedly.
lots of mobs there.

your weapon is really expensive!
check out mine on my profile, only 300k gold. (the level 42 one, 600DPS, dagger, 1.50 Attack Speed)
but I bought it during the week, not during the week-end.
I noticed that a similar weapon would have been above 1Mio (if not more) on friday/saturday.
Keep this in mind: best to buy gear outside of the week-end period.

This weapon was enough so far in Nightmare mode, I rarely die.
I will hit Hell mode and see how well I fare there.
I didn't pay much attention to the build, if you have any hints, it would be welcome.

good luck :)

P.S.: I just replaced my weapon with a level 50 600DPS dagger, with 600LoH, 100 Str/Vit.
It helps a lot, and it was cheap (275k gold)

@venoom

I couldn't find a cheap weapon. Cheapest was around 500k but with only 300ish DPS. Ended up buying the 3 million one. It has 94% crit so I was thinking I could keep it till level 60 as an offhand. Plus, I just sold a rare dagger for 28 millions so I suddenly felt rich and couldn't resist to press the buyout button. I probably sold the dagger a bit cheap. It has all the stats that a monk want:

Dex
Vital
600 LoH
3% LS
70 crit damage
Open socket

It actually improves my monk's DPS by about 1k, but I prefer to keep the Won Khim Lau for the extra damage not shown on the paper doll. I was originally selling it at 100m but I know there are cheaper legendaries and I am worried about the impact of 1.05.

Omg just sold my used Odyn Son for 2 millions lol. Still a good price to players who have spare change!

and I sold my dagger 1'250k :)
really happy with that (bought it 300k)

I am waiting for friends to unlock Hell Mode for me, so not much progress on my side.

Grats! Add me? 1811.

I added you.
This community is nice :)
I got a private message from a member who offered his service for unlocking waypoints.
thanks a lot :)

Nice! Btw I switched to Leap. I got myself thrilled when I leaped on the huge party of monsters in vota and it was an instant kill of 20+ when she landed in the middle.

I saw a YouTube on power levelling using the Skycrown battlement quest. Just 20 seconds each run where the meteor help kills the monsters. I think this has been nerfed? Otherwise it is possible for solo power level.

I have heard of that technique, but I didn't test it, I assumed it was nerfed.

I am struggling with the last few levels.
Act 1 Hell doesn't give enough XP but Act 3 is too difficult.