Sunday 6 January 2019

After a long struggle, I've finally achieved a solo GR70 with my LoN Wizard!

Just for fun, and since I play very casually, I wanted to tell you guys about my achievement!

I got a Legacy of Nightmares set when playing through the main campaign with friends a year ago and decided I'd stick with it in the post-game for my Wizard, because I liked mixing and matching legendaries, and because I'm a contrary bastard.

Lots and lots of grinding and farming, fitting every Ancient going into a build, refining it over and over, incidentally building full sets of every other Wizard set along the way, and cubing almost every item in the game in my spare time, I decided my ultimate goal was to get this guy over the line of a solo GR70 and unlock primals.

Once I heard about the upcoming buff to Legacy of Nightmares, this became far more urgent! Where's the fun in achieving it after the huge damage buff? No, I had to get this locked down now!

I got GR69 weeks ago, with 6 seconds left. I knew it was time for the final push.

Was farming today, did a bunch of rerolls. No joy getting Ancient versions of the final few bits I wanted (in a perfect world).

I walked my way up again. First a 67. Then a 68. Took a look at some advice online. Flipped back and forth between Arcane Torrent and Disintegrate - again.

Then I tried for 69 again; I'd only beaten it through sheer luck last time. I got murdered. Absolutely pasted. Died about a dozen times. Nowhere near within time. Realised I had to tighen the build up even more.

Switched my Magic Weapon rune to Deflection. Switched my Disintegrate rune to Intensify. Switched my Meteor to Star Pact: I was using Lightning Meteors because of the lack of delay, but didn't realise the delay only applied to the firstMeteor!

Then 69 again, and I beat it with over 2 minutes to spare. The boost from Intensify and the Star Pact Meteor was huge. That's when I knew I had a real shot at cracking 70.

I went for it. And ... it was one of the smoothest runs I've had at high level. Didn't even die as I ground through it (...let's not count Unstable Anomaly).

Got to the Rift Guardian with just under 2 minutes left on the clock. It was Stonesinger, so a huge massive pile of HP. I was literally watching the bar whittle down and counting the seconds. Once I had 30 seconds left I knew I'd make it.

And I got it! Squeaked over the line with 16 seconds remaining!

I took a screenshot to remember it:



So there you go! I hope you enjoy my saga; I know it's not much of an achievement for people who really play high level rift content, but it's the best I've ever done in this game and it was so much fun to do it with the self-imposed handicap / "unique playstyle" of Legacy of Nightmares.