Here is the Alkaizer Run:

•An experience gem in your helm, providing you with 27%+ bonus experience.
•At least a 24% movement speed bonus.
•Then run through:
•Core of Arreat
•Tower of the damned lvl1
•Arreat Crater lvl2
•Fields of Slaughter (Bridge of Corsaic - WP)
•The keep depths lvl2 (From lvl1 WP)

Alkaizer Run

I am wondering if it would be efficient to wear the Cain's Set, have a 25% gem (so +55% Exp Bonus) and do this run in Hell Mode with 20%+ bonus speed.
it doesn't take any expensive gear to one-shot everything and it would be quite efficient and quick.
Not everyone can afford to do this in Inferno, at least not efficiently.
In Hell, you can even have high MF and farm for Legendaries/Set items and plans (if you get lucky)

What do you guys think?
I'll try to measure the XP bonus per run after doing this tonight.

otherwise, I'll go back to XP farming Act I Inferno.

With regard to Cain's set, I wonder if you could run Act 1 Inferno is the rest of your gear is good enough. It's a lot easier than Act 3 Inferno so I bet it's possible. I wonder how much less experience you get in Act 1 than Act 3, because then you're balancing the time it takes to do each run, underpowered Cain's Set +30% Exp Act 1 vs. normal gear Act 3. I have a Cain's set I use for leveling my lower-level character so I think I might make a run or two to see if I can get through a Act 1 run with it on my clvl 60 DH.

I can do Act I with my gear and Cain's Set. Check my profile, I still have it equipped. Still 50k DPS.
I one-shot most things except Elites.
the problem is that it's not very optimal with regard to monster density.
Act III seems way more packed.

Yesterday, I tried to do the run in the cave in the woods, right after the ghost, the one where you can get a checkpoint, and restart inside after you leave the game.
quest is called "broken blade"

each run nets me 300k experience in ~2mn or so. Not bad, I quickly leveled from 9 to 10, but still slow.
I stopped picking up blues (I used to pick up level61+ to salvage) and only pick rares.

With regard to Hell Act 3 vs Inferno Act 1, I think it's somewhat close. I tested the experience differential on a mob (demonic tremor) between Hell and Inferno. I am not sure if the ratio will apply for all mobs or it's consistent but here is what I got.

Tremor (Inferno): 8842 exp
Tremor (Hell): 2279 exp

So it is approximately 4 times less than what you get from Inferno. That being said, I believe Alkaizer was able to pull off 50M/hour runs with 31% gem and 30% Leoric's. The Cain's set is basically a substitute for a max exp Leoric's; so with a maximum gem, you should be able to get about 12.5M exp per hour on Hell if you can run Hell mode as fast as Alkaizer on Inferno. To give you a sense of the speed, you have to be able to clear the entire act in about 30 minutes. 12.5M/hour isn't exactly rip city, but compared to Act 1 (with its low density mob areas), it might be close. I think Act 2 beats it by a country mile, though.

really? Act II Inferno is better?
I can more or less faceroll it with my gear (including +25% gem) but probably not with the Cain's set and with very little MF.

what run gives you the most XP in Act II?

The run I used to do in Act 2 was Black Canyon Mines-Road to Alcarnus-Dahlgur Oasis-Desolate Sands-Vault of the Assassin-Zoltun Kulle. I'm not sure how to optimize it strictly for EXP, but I do know the most dense areas were Dahlgur Oasis, Desolate Sands, and Vault of the Assassin. Vault, in particular, is the one you want to always hit with 5 stacks. It is extremely dense with mobs and elites. I believe I was able to get something like, 10 elite packs and 3M exp in 10 minutes. It came out to nearly 20M/hour, which is INSANE for Act 2.

Posted by Metta at 09/19/2012 01:14 PM

The run I used to do in Act 2 was Black Canyon Mines-Road to Alcarnus-Dahlgur Oasis-Desolate Sands-Vault of the Assassin-Zoltun Kulle. I'm not sure how to optimize it strictly for EXP, but I do know the most dense areas were Dahlgur Oasis, Desolate Sands, and Vault of the Assassin. Vault, in particular, is the one you want to always hit with 5 stacks. It is extremely dense with mobs and elites. I believe I was able to get something like, 10 elite packs and 3M exp in 10 minutes. It came out to nearly 20M/hour, which is INSANE for Act 2.

I can attest to this. I decided to get Cain's set and was testing out if I could do act two and three before settling on act two. It wasn't as easy as with my normal gear, but besides a few rare packs that would one shot me I did okay. I think I got like 15 million experience in a little more than an hour or so.

Just did the following run in A1:

1) The Watchtower
2) Festering Woods
3) Leoric's Manor straight to Butcher

Exp +Gear used

1)Radiant Star Ruby in Helm: +31% EXP
2) Leoric's Signet: +21% EXP
3) Cain's set (gloves/boots/helm): +30% EXP

Movement speed: 23% due to Tyrael's Might and Cains Sandals
Total run 30 mins
Exp Earned: 6,440,997

I could have gone faster if I didn't pick up any rares or jewels or tomes.

Edit: My movement speed was actually 11% during the first 10 minutes or so of this. Then I remembered I had a Tyrael's Might and put it on for the rest of the run.

Using cain's set is good or bad totally depends on your gear. If somehow youcan maintain 50k+ dps ( except DH with SS) with cain set, I believe you can run act 3 inferno efficiency . Personally I feel that really tired if I focus to run too fast ( around 9-10m with Alkaizer run) . I normally use Alkaizer run but I pick up all 63 rares with 34% ms ( 24% form items and 10% form passive) . I get around 10-12m per run for 15 - 20 minutes and I feel that's pretty good and acceptable.

I can't get past 25% movement speed with my DH, I find that unfair.
the passive that gives an additional 15% movement speed when your hatred is full does not go over the 25% cap, I tried :(

@Venoom At least you get a passive for it. Wiz has to buy at least two pieces of gear for it.

I've done Alkaizer's run doing with Cain's set before. What you do is get your 5 stacks, then swap into the Cain's set and skip all remaining elites as you kill the trash only. If you don't worry about fighting elites it's a lot easier to survive.

However, the +XP bonus is not really that amazing anyways (about 15% more xp gain after NV and ruby), so most of the time I just run through in normal gear. If you're very intent on levelling and you can't afford Alkaizer level gear, skip the elites. The majority of the XP comes from trash mobs, so focusing on that will yield the most XP. However, if you find yourself dealing plenty of damage to certain elites just running by, then you might as well kill the easy ones. Finally, if you're well geared and can kill any elite in a few seconds, might as well just kill them all.

@zylog I don't understand why you say "only +15%".
The set bonus is +30%.

is it because with the set, your runs are slower?

good idea on skipping the Elites, but one will need movement speed and kiting skills.

The exp set bonus from Cain's, Leoric's, NV, and Ruby are all additive, not multiplicative. Anything that is additive will have a diminishing percentage increases as the initial value increases.

Let's say you get 20M exp at 106% bonus (from 5 NV stack and 31% Ruby). That means your base exp is about 9.7M exp (with no NV or ruby). If you put the Cain's set on, you would have 136% bonus. With 136% bonus, your overall exp is 22.9M exp.

22.9M vs 20M exp is about 15% more.

I wonder if it is still the most efficient run in 1.05, after choosing the right MP levels.

Rerun and reset all XP gains from 5 NVs?

Anyone still doing this (+ maybe key run)

I'm doing Alkaizer runs on my wizard running Archon. Works wonders for leveling. Hardly any downtime between areas and I love Keep depths level 2 now. I get around 11-12 million experience in a 15 minute run.

Posted by NightCrawler9 at 11/07/2012 06:44 PM

I'm doing Alkaizer runs on my wizard running Archon. Works wonders for leveling. Hardly any downtime between areas and I love Keep depths level 2 now. I get around 11-12 million experience in a 15 minute run.

Thanks. I might try this tonight. Time to use an XP gem >-<.
At the field, do you go into the cave?
Which MP are you running?

If I feel like it I'll go into the cave. It's usually not the best for archon wizards because the mob density isn't too great so archon will run out multiple times. If I feel like it it's usually have found a legendary on the run I was currently on or am close to leveling haha.

I usually run on MP1.

I tried.

It is about 10m XP and 130k gold per <15 minutes for me.

Here's an interesting XP/second study for Archons.

Good find @Khan! Interesting read!

don't want to thread jack, but I recently tried archon build and its quite fun to see things melt in your face, however how do you deal with reflect damage? before with ww/cm wiz it was no sweat, but with archon it poses a real threat... do you have to pick off one at a time?

@euggie I use a lifesteal weapon, life on hit pieces (Blackthorne Pants/Amulet), and enough VIT to get you through.

@khan fml i was afraid of that

Yeah, life steal and picking off the mob members one by one is pretty much the best way to go about it. Life on hit doesn't really do much other then when you're left click attacking.

And yeah, good find Khan. Been looking for something like that.