

After Blizzard nerfed the Azmodan run, we started looking around for different ways to continue power leveling.

Our new favorite is Zoltun Kulle, along with a technique that’s been floating around in the internet to get multiple quest turn-ins from 1 kill. With the new technique and 3 people, we took a new Hero to level 60 in roughly 5 hours.

TL;DR

Kill Zoltun Kulle

Act 2 Quest 8 – The Black Soulstone – Soulstone Chamber

Number Summary



Original Using advanced technique Normal 45s run per 10.1k EXP =

13.1k EXP per minute 3 turn-ins x 13.1 = 39.3k EXP per minute Nightmare 55s run per 36.4k EXP=

39.7k EXP per minute 3 turn-ins x 39.7 = 119.1k EXP per minute Hell 55s run per 94.5k EXP=

87.2k EXP per minute 3 turn-ins x 103k = 309k EXP per minute

How To Do the ‘Resume Game’ Advanced Technique

By taking advantage of how ‘Resume Game’ and quest turn-ins work, you can complete the difficult part of a quest and reap the rewards many times over. In most cases, the hard part (killing the boss at the end of a dungeon) is on a separate trigger from collecting the reward (takling to the npc, clicking the dongle, etc). Because of this you can kill a boss and make many copies of the resulting game state where the reward is just waiting to be claimed.

Resume Game Strategy

Depending on how quickly your high level character can kill Zoltun and the number of people in your team, your optimal group size and cycle format will vary. The biggest decision is whether its better to have the high level character create a resume game session for another exp turn in, or pre-emptively start the next session. The sign of a perfect cycle is when the low level character is scrambling to join/leave games as fast as he can with no waiting.



Let’s break up the team’s roles:

Highbie – person killing Zoltun

Lowbie – person getting rushed

Helper – person who keeps the original game alive and provides an additional resume game

With 2 people in the party, the lowbie can get at most 3x the EXP per cycle

with 4 people in the party, the lowbie can get at most 5x the EXP per cycle EDIT: this is wrong, you can get more, but Kulle is so quick it doesn’t help

If your highbie takes a few seconds to kill Zoltun, Three people is the most you need. Your lowbie will be the ‘slow link’ in the chain, joining and leaving games as fast as he can. In this setup the highbie doesn’t clone a game, he instead pre-emptively starts the next ‘cycle’.

If your highbie is a little slower at killing Zoltun, a fourth person will help by filling the time with another resume game. Highbie still doesn’t clone a game, and instead pre-emptively start the next ‘cycle’ to kill Zoltun



If your highbie is really slow at killing Zoltun, you will want to have him create a ‘resume game copy’ as well and consume his first, before he goes off to pre-emptively battle Zoltun again. A fourth person will be helpful to fill the time.



Cycle for a 3-person rush

Highbie creates game 1 at ‘Soulstone Chamber’ Highbie kills Zoltun, Lowbie and helper join game 1 Highbie clicks Black Soulstone, and leaves game Highbie creates game 4 (pre-emptively starting steps 1 and 2 in the next cycle) Lowbie leaves game, and hits ‘Resume Game’ to create game 2 Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Lowbie leaves game 2 and joins game 1 Helper leaves game 1 ASAP Helper creates game 3 via ‘Resume Game’ Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Lowbie leaves game 1 and joins game 3 Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Lowbie and helper leave game 3, and join game 4 (joining the second cycle)



Cycle for a 2-person rush

NOTE: Step 2 where lowbie does nothing. The 3-person method allows staggering the start and ends of each cycle, drastically improving efficiency.

1) Highbie creates game 1 at ‘Soulstone Chamber’ Lowbie joins game 1 Lowbie hangs out in town waiting for about 30 seconds Highbie kills Zoltun and clicks Black Soulstone Lowbie leaves game, and hits ‘Resume Game’ to create game 2 Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Lowbie leaves game 2 and joins game 1 Highbie leaves game 1, and hits ‘Resume Game’ to create game 3 Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Lowbie leaves game 1 and joins game 3 Lowbie talks to Adria, and gets EXP Highbie and lowbie leave game

Separate Scripts

If you’re anything like us, you may have trouble executing this dance in real time, as it moves rather quickly (or after doing it an hour straight and Diablo psychosis starts to set in). Here are instructions for the three different parts.



Highbie



Kill Zoltun Wait until everyone is in the game and then click the Soul Crystal Leave game, and Create a new game

Lowbie

Once Soul Crystal is clicked, leave game Create game via ‘Resume Game’, get EXP and leave game Join the helpers game, get EXP, and leave game Join the helpers game, get EXP, and leave game Join the helper/highbie game and wait

Helper

Once Soul Crystal is clicked, just wait When lowbie returns, leave game ASAP Create game via ‘Resume Game’ and wait for lowbie When lowbie returns, complete quest and leave game Join highbies game and wait

Helper #2 (if your highbie is slow at killing Zoltun)

Once Soul Crystal is clicked, leave game Create game via ‘Resume Game’ and wait for lowbie When lowbie returns, complete quest and leave game Join highbies game and wait

Two Rules of Multiplayer Games

After some testing, we figured out some principles of how Resume Game and Multiplayer interact, explaining why this was working and what its limits are.

1) When playing in Multiplayer, your single player ‘Resume Flag’ will be updated when something happens on the quest log –

Example: Joining a game where Zoltun had just been killed does nothing to your resume point.

Example: Joining a game, and then having Zoltun killed right after will update your resume point.



2) A game session has to have at least one ‘owner’ at all times, or it will end spontaneously – By default, the game creator is an owner. Anyone who is in the game when a quest is completed is promoted to owner as well.

Example: 3 players join a game and the creator leaves the game immediately – all players are booted from game.

Example: Player A joins a game created by Player B. Azmodan is killed and Player B (the game creator) leaves. Game is still open because Player A was promoted to owner when Azmodan was killed.

Raw Numbers and methodology for our tests

Level 51 Witch Doctor

Level 1 Demon Hunter

Level 55 Barbarian

At the 30-minute mark – Level 20

At the 60-minute mark – Level 30

At the 1 hour 45 minute-mark – Level 40

Runs took 45 seconds in Normal and 55 seconds in Nightmare. (This includes logging on/off)

In Nightmare, we used voice chat to coordinate everyone joining right after Zoltun died, to avoid fighting him at 3x health

Time between Black Soulstone triggers in normal/nightmare = about 3 cycles of resuming game

our highbie did NOT clone the quest, it was better to have him prep the next cycle while the rest of us consumed EXP as quickly as we could.

Our highbie wasn’t leet enough to continue killing kulle in a few seconds in hell, so we had him clone quests as well to do 4x turn ins