I got into the base AE game a couple of months ago and recently did this challenge Solo Self Found in 17h35m (this included a bunch of xp farming I need to do that I wouldn't need to with Act 5 due to their quest xp amounts). Note that this is before I decided to buy the expansions, so I only had to go through Acts 1-4 but it also means I don't have access to any of the strong items (or 40 Mastery) the expansions provided. For those interested in attempting SSF, I can offer the following tips to supplement the excellent ones in this video: 1) Going SSF means the single most important thing you value is a main skill whose damage is as independent of your gear as humanly possible. This is because if you are doing it correctly, you will be SEVERELY underleveled. To give you an idea, I completed Normal at L26, Epic at L38, and Legendary at L51 (this is high, I was aiming for 47). Therefore, if you are depending on outgearing your enemies, that will fail. 2) For me, it was important to pick a build that had as fast a start as possible (high dps w/o the need for gear) as well as one that gets movespeed in a Mastery (because you will have atrocious movespeed on gear alone when SSF). 3) You want a build where it is extremely easy to shop for good gear. 4) You want a build that peaks WAY before Level 60 (because you won't get there). Ideally, you want one that peaks in the upper 40s. For those reasons, I played a Brigand Trapper. That's because traps are high dps, large AoE in attacking, and (most importantly) don't require you to stand still and take hits to do damage (this is super important because it's incredibly difficult to be tanky while you are like upwards of 15-20 levels under and with trash gear). Traps use pet gear, which is probably THE most consistent in vendor farming. Finally, because traps do NOT scale damage off your stats, you are free to allocate as you see fit (hold points until at least middle of epic except to wear good gear you find to see what kind of drops RNG blesses you with before allocating.) For defenses, don't worry too much about res in Normal and Epic. You will die here or there but it's not a big deal (I had close to 20 deaths in total for the run) as you won't lose much time. But in Legendary, do everything you can w/o gimping your damage to get at least 800 DA (1,000 is better) and as much life as possible. You will also want to prioritize capping Stun, Slow, and Pierce res here. This is because in Legendary, if you don't have these defenses, you won't just die once or twice--you will get stunlocked and killed repeatedly with no way to move forward. If you find the right items, get Fire res as much as you can next. The remaining resistances aren't worth bothering with (carry some swap gear with Vitality and Cold res for Charon). In Act 1 Normal, the best starting weapon for a Rogue is the crappy knife you start with. This is because it is Very Fast speed and your Envenom weapon will one-shot anything no matter the weapon. Envenom till 8 points (Level 4, right when you fight Nessus with a crappy starting bow), then climb the bar and push straight for Lay Trap. You should hit Arachne at L7 with Lay Trap, which makes her a much easier fight. Once you reach Delphi, respec out of Envenom and focus on maxing Lay Trap plus its passives. After that, the next goal is to beeline for max Trail Blazing in Hunting. Scrolls are your friend in this kind of run. In early Normal , Scroll of Unbroken Wheel is super strong (don't bother with the other starting scrolls). Next is Scroll of the Cyclops when you are high enough level to use it (L24). Cyclops is actually good all the way into Legendary. Frenzy Scroll is great for running past tricky areas until your move speed is close to cap. In Legendary, Scroll of the Mad God (for bosses susceptible to Vitality Damage) and Scroll of the Behemoth (for those who aren't) are huge. For Cerberus as a trapper, you can cheese him--open the gate, creep near it, then throw 3 traps as far as you can into the room. Make sure the third trap is the one that aggro's him. Once he's aggro'ed, he will run forward and the gate will close. If you are on the other side of the gate, your traps will fight him while you are outside of the room completely safe. You will need to do 2-3 iterations of this per fight but he will go down easy. I started Legendary at ~10.5 hrs. Because I had a lot of time, I spent 2.5 hours farming Gorgons because the usable gear I dropped thus far was dex based and Gorgon head/chest/arm pieces are the best guaranteed drop pieces you can get in the game. I also spent an additional hour checking shops for better Ritualist rings but ended up with nothing there. If your character is strength-based, I would instead farm early Act 3 (the quest Ichtians). Dex-based is best if you can swing it because you get DA, whereas Str and Int give you nothing. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Let me know if you have questions.
I've done it recently, took me around 13-14h in total with the Runesmith. Here are some tips from my experience and i've found on forums: - Colossus form can be abuse by exiting to menu and re-entering the game when you reach a fountain, cuz you'll spawn without cooldowns. - You can disable Ragnarok DLC after you finish normal with an Accomplished Hero with the condition to avoid Rune mastery, thus making the later difficulties end after Hades. Didn't test it myself for obvious reasons. - REFLECT GEAR, this single mechanic is just retarded, easy to equip and farm and thanks to the game not resetting bosses HP (exception being those who have any form of regen) after dying you can deep dive until the boss is dead. I didn't even cared about my DPS, just that i have enough defense to no get 1-hit. - Learn the map layouts, it will save a lot of times and abuse charge to close distance fast. Especially on Act 2 and 3. - Make and Legendary Hero if you can (Eternal Embers DLC) and buy titanic potions in the hundreds. - The fire chick from Act V you need to kill in order to acquire the item to open the temple can take up to 30 min. One way around which i didn't test is to farm the quest item with another character and stash the item. - The most obvious way to get this one faster is to host the game for other people to taxi you around the continents and kill things, make sure you're the host. If some of these aren't relevant or proven wrong i might edit the comment at a later date.
