Ancient Tunnels Farming Guide

The Ancient Tunnels are buried beneath the sands of a once glorious region known as the Lost City. The Lost City is nestled between the Far Oasis and Valley of Snakes in Act 2. This network of crisscrossing hallways and dead ends now plays host to the ancient Undead that make their home amongst the ruins and crumbled walls.

Due to the complete lack of natural Cold Immunes, this area is the unquestionable best farming spot for the Blizzard Sorceress. Many other builds can farm this area effectively to benefit from the tight map layout, and Golden Chest at the end!

Why farm the Ancient Tunnels?

The Ancient Tunnels is an Area Level (alvl) 85 zone in Diablo 2 Resurrected. Elite Packs in this area can drop every Set and Unique item in the game, making them incredibly valuable to farm. Hunting for Unique and Champion packs can net you tons of items that are Magic quality or higher. This is super relevant for Holy Grailing, collecting every item in the game!

Items

Here are some examples of what you can find in Hell. Check out our drop calculator for all possible drops.

Additionally, the normal monsters can drop amazing Bases for high-tier Runewords:

• monarch for Spirit Monarch
• Colossus Voulge / Thresher / Giant Thresher for infinity
• Superior Mage Plate for enigma

Experience

Since this Area is level 85, Elite packs are Monster Level (mlvl) 88, making them good to farm for Experience into the late 90's. For the builds that excel in this area, the minimum gear requirement to safely and efficiently farm here is very low. People will often farm here exclusively starting at Level 75 and quickly reach 85+.

Golden Chest

The Golden Chest is found to the Left of the Entrance Tile. The picture to the bottom left helps to illustrate how to head to the "Left" on an example map layout.

• This Chest can drop large amounts of Magic, Rare, Set, or Unique items. It's even possible to see a Golden Chest drop multiple Set or Unique items.
• Most of the drop patterns from this Chest are not affected by Magic Find! Even lower MF Character Builds can cash in on the drops.
• The drops are affected by Player Settings. The TL;DR for this is higher Player Count = More Drops!
• The only caveat is that this Chest cannot drop every item in the game, like the monsters in the Area can. It's a smaller reward for farming here.

How do I find the Ancient Tunnels?

The Ancient Tunnels are found from the Waypoint in the Lost City of Act 2. On Battlenet your maps are random, so learn to identify this Tile feature pictured to the right. Luckily, it always spawns in this shape, with the two Yellow Doors directly to the right of the AT entrance. While there are many ruined house structures on this map, none have this distinctive shape to them.

Tips & Tricks

Find Every Pack

Unlike other farming Areas, the Ancient Tunnels often spawns the Elite Packs in the tiniest spots. Monster packs can be squeezed into every hallway, open chamber, and catwalk. Make sure to check each section as you hunt so that you don't miss out on extra packs!

Monster Immunities

Breaking all Immunities is generally desired, but the monsters in this area are typically weak enough on Player 1 Settings that a Build's secondary damage source is strong enough to handle them. There are no naturally spawning Physical or Cold Immunes, unless the boss packs spawn with specific Elite Affixes.

• Fire, Lightning and Cold Immunes are broken by infinity's conviction Aura.
• Poison Immunes are broken by a Level 1 lowerresist.
• Physical Immunes are broken by a Level 1 amplifydamage or decrepify.

Avoiding Danger

While any monster can become dangerous with the correct set of Elite Affixes, the Horror Mage can be truly terrifying. They are evil glass cannons! Their Lightning Damage output is far greater than the other mobs, and they are the only ranged attack monsters. Make sure to prioritize Lightning Resistance (75% minimum!) on your gear.

Another great technique is to keep moving while farming here. Since they have a decent delay between attacks, you can dodge most of their damage.

Prioritize killing these mobs, while the slower monsters move to engage you and your Mercenary.

Build Recommendations

To farm the Ancient Tunnels efficiently, you need high mobility and access to multiple damage types. (Unless you deal Cold Damage)
Builds that efficiently farm this Area with their Starter/Budget variants are indicated with *.

• Amazon - Freezing Arrow
  • Cold Damage: Check! Massive AoE Crowd Control: Check! She also has access to Physical and Magic Damage for any Immunes she may encounter. She doesn't gain access to teleport easily but, she can stack high amounts of Faster Run/Walk to make up for it.
• Assassin - Lightning Sentry *
  • The Sin's high mobility with burstofspeed along with multiple high damage sources in lightningsentry + deathsentry makes her an easy choice for this spot. Once she gains access to infinity she breaks all immunities.
• Barbarian - Berserk
  • This build focuses on killing the boss of each pack, and using finditem to increase the number of drops. Use howl to clear out the trash minions, berserk also starts one-shotting at certain gear levels. This build only farms on Players 1 Setting, since you do not kill any minions.
• Druid - Fissure
  • Only 1 monster has natural Fire Resistance/Immunity in AT. With access to infinity this build easily mops the floor with every monster type, even on high Player Settings. Once you've obtained enigma this is a valuable farming area.
• Necromancer - Summoner *
  • With his army of undead, the Summoner is a very safe build to take into the AT. Access to high Physical and Fire damage also means he can pop everything on screen, regardless of immunities. You can start farming this area on the starter build, but without static maps in Single Player it is not recommended.
• Paladin - Dream Zealer
  • Ancient Tunnels is one of the few places you'd prefer having the Zealer over the Hammerdin. High mobility from charge/vigor means even without teleport you can quickly access this farming area. Then your Physical/Lightning Damage types melts all mobs, while ignoring all immunities.
• Sorceress - Blizzard *
  • This is the best build to farm Ancient Tunnels without question. MASSIVE Cold Damage from blizzard and huge CC from glacialspike makes her untouchable, even on higher Player Settings. What a surprise… the Sorceress wins again!

Summary

• The Ancient Tunnels is an Area Level 85 farming spot. This can drop every Set and Unique item in the game! If you're keeping tabs on your drops, use our Holy Grail tool!
• There are no Cold Immunes, so pick a strong build with high Cold Damage to take advantage of this. The Blizzard Sorceress is the Queen of the tunnels.
• The Golden Chest can drop great loot based on Player Settings. Keep some keys on you in case it's locked.
• The tile feature in Lost City has a very distinctive look. Try to memorize the two yellow door-shape on your map to easily identify the entrance to the AT.

Credits

Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by Raxxanterax