First Level 99 Ladder Season 1

Ladder

Ladder Season 1 in Diablo 2 Resurrected began on April 28, 2022. In a massive team and community effort, the first Character "Teo_Unsullied", played by Teo1904, reached Level 99 with a Lightning Fury Amazon. This feat only took 7 days and 10 hours!

A Tribute To Unsullied

Before we head into the journey to Level 99, let's go into the reason for the Character name selection. Unsullied was part of the group that reinvigorated the 8-player speedruns. He and Jymnasium picked up where the German team left off years ago. Unsullied became a huge part of the Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction community, becoming friends with BTNeandertha1, MacroBioBoi, Teo1904, and many, many more! With huge dedication, he played with all of us for years, setting ever improving records on the hell Baal team speedrun and the first Level 99 grind in Project Diablo 2's first Season. When Diablo 2 Resurrected released, we planned to push Level 99 as a team with Unsullied by our side. Then came the shock for the Diablo 2 community. On October 25th, we received a message from his brother that Unsullied passed away on October 16th, 2021. After this, we brainstormed how to honor him. Immortalizing him on Rank 1 of the first D2R Ladder was the first thing that came to mind, and here we are.

We love and miss you Unsullied!

Your Deeds of Valor will be Remembered!

Thank You

Community

The strategy of this race to Level 99 relied heavily on community support. We'd like to say thanks to every single one of you! Without all of you, this journey would have taken a lot longer than it finally did!

Special Thanks

A special thanks go out to all the core supporters of the group:

Raxxanterax: The glue of the team. He kept everyone focused and got them into the correct mind sets. This was crucial for the success of the team! He played a Tele Sorceress and slept less than Teo1904.
Rob: The main trader that helped us gain wealth quickly. He led the EU group by massacring the Chaos Sanctuary on a Hammerdin.
BTNeandertha1: Another primary Hammerdin that was always there. He co-led a group with Macro and was always flexible in his roles. He had one of the highest energy levels when we needed it most.
MacroBioBoi: He sacrificed everything for the cause, from gear to experience! He had massive uptime while balancing work in between. As a true leader he kept the team level-headed when things got out of hand.
SuddenDann: A God Barb gamer that prepped the Chaos Sanctuary for Teo1904. This was critical for getting him up to level 98 quickly!
Jeremy: A blaster that put in massive hours for the team. He was always flexible, and played menu simulator for 24 straight hours on the 99 blast. He provided much needed comedic relief for the team by arguing with Raxx about absolutely everything : ).
KiLLFaTe: A Necromancer that was there almost all the time. A Diablo II Senior Game Producer that kept us in check, and gave us a heart attack when he said someone was 50 Million experience ahead at Level 97.
KEX: Farmed Keys for Ubers and traded a bunch of items. His Infinity Lightning Sorceress crushed the Chaos Sanctuary for us.
Kano: A major theory crafter for the team. He introduced Ruined Temple runs which boosted our XP, and pointed out that P6 Diablo also worked. This helped out our strategies tremendously.
Jymnasium: Leader of the speedrun to Baal and Ubers. He created a Paladin to farm us our Hellfire Torchs. He faithfully played on Raxx's team for 2 straight days to 99 destroying De Seis.
LuckyLuciano_6: Organized two Diablo Clones walks for the annihilus charm.
Emthreex: A truly selfless player that took on any role at any time. Legend has it he is still stuck 16 runs behind Rob's Hammerdin : ).
Yarp: He was always there when he could be. He crafted some fantastic gear for the team, and was abandoned without a TP more than anyone. Never lucky!
ChitRift: A late entrant to the grind who provided massive value at the end. He somehow went from Zero to Hero in no time and blasted Chaos on his mega Blizzard Sorc.

Contributions From

GobbyD, Ryokin, Toioiz, Zerker, Snail, AHandlin, Billigt, Facefoot, HansRun, mekalb, NanoBT, Poolnoodlex, Treviousius, Vine_melon

The Level 99 Journey

Infernal Race + Ubers

The journey to Level 99 started with the Infernal Race, hosted by Blizzard, that saw teams race to be the first to kill Baal in hell difficulty. After 1 hour and 59 minutes, the team lead by Jymnasium took first place in the race. Only 1 hour and 14 minutes later the first Ubers of Ladder Season 1 had been slain as well!

Baal Runs

After the first hellfire torch, which turned to be a 13/20 Barbarian, the team started with the well-known Baal Runs, slaying the waves before Baal as quickly as possible! During that time 1 player was tasked to search for Experience Shrines, a +50% boost in experience gain. They were picked up by Teo1904 to speed up the progress. Session 1 ended at Level 93.5.

Session 2

During the 2nd session, the teams characters started to get some great gear, thanks to Rob's trading efforts and drops during the run. Some additional strategies started to be used as well:

• Teo1904 started to leave the party at waves 4 and 5 in the Throne of Destruction. This allowed him to kill them and get 100% of the experience, rather than sharing it with the team.
• SuddenDan started to prepare the full Chaos Sanctuary for the 99 Character to kill. When fully prepared, the seal bosses and additional Elite Groups were pulled to the center of the map. After the Baal Waves 4 and 5 were killed, Teo1904 and a Conviction Paladin of the team entered the Chaos Sanctuary to blow the pulls up. Of course, he left the party for this as well to gain all the experience possible.

The session ended at Level 96, only 3 Levels to go!

Session 3-5

The team started to constantly have 2 teams running parallel to each other. Teo1904 switched back and forth to grab the high experience monsters. The third session saw the addition of the Ruined Temple to min-max the downtime of Teo1904 even further. This idea was brought in by Kano.

While a Sorceress teleported to the Throne of Destruction, another one opened a town portal at the entrance to the Ruined Temple, a Level 85 area as of Patch 2.4. Killing the Elite Groups in there yielded more experience than clearing out the Throne of Destruction and the first waves. Then he joined the Throne of Destruction to pick up waves 4 and 5, before going over to the prepared Chaos Sanctuary.

Level 99 - "TEOS-Runs"

After Teo1904 reached Level 98, the team pulled together the mind-blowing idea to just chain-kill Diablo on a player 6-7. This idea was there from the start, but the amount of players required for its execution didn't seem realistic before. At this point, the ideal setup became 3 teams that constantly rushed through the Chaos Sanctuary, killing all seal bosses and spawning Diablo himself. 1 player was left behind each game to keep a town portal next to Diablo for Teo1904 to use. This is when the community of all team members became crucial to fill up all of these games constantly.
Each Diablo kill nets 54,060 Experience when spawned with 7 players (8 wouldn't increase this value) in the game. The experience needed to get from Level 98 to 99 is 291,058,498. Minus the saved 21.4 million experience from Normal and Nightmare Ancients, Diablo had to be killed 4,988 times at a minimum.
The final task was killing the Ancients in Normal and Nightmare. Teo1904 killed the Ancients on Nightmare solo and summoned the core team members for the final moment.

Final Speech

Credits

We are happy that we have reached this massive milestone while honoring our good friend Unsullied. We'll make a highlight video that will summarize the journey.

Written by Teo1904