At what map level should I start alchin' and goin'?

Ever since zana and carto boxes came out I feel there is no longer pressure to alc/chaos maps.

Chisel 77/78 and go for pack size on those ones as well with alts.

Most lower maps just trans aug and if it has bad mods its garbage/chisel recipe.

Doing this you can easily maintain constant 77+ (maybe momentarily drop to 76 if you are unlucky but i never had it happen) once you get the pool going.

That being said alcing maps is more fun, especially if your char is strong.

alch 77+, at the very most 76.

no point in alching anything below nowdays unless your build is pretty tanky, can do all mods easily AND you get very bad rng and are unable to sustain 75+ for some reason. if one of these isnt true, just keep alting and auging for pack size or magic. occasionally throw a regal on a well-rolled 76 like academy.

chiseling is dependent on your mode. if you play self found, then Id chisel 73 and over (yes, youve read that right). if you trade, its prolly more efficient to leave chisels for currency and start chiseling only 75+ at most.

When u play selfound u have not enough Chisels to throw them on levl 73 Maps. Hell i dont have enough to use them on my 76es. I start Alcing with lvl 75 if i can do most mods, if i cant i go for alts/regal.

"

rrtson wrote:

Never alch maps.

Alt/Aug until packsize/magic/rare

Regal it if 75+, Vaal it if 77.

No chisel for <74, 1 chisel for 75. 2 chis for 76, 4 chis for 77, sell 78's.

pretty much this.

currency and so maps you get from selling 78 maps are worth more xp than doing the map yourself as the experience difference to 77 maps is just 5%.

if vaaling a 77 fails, run it in your guild/publicly ;)

"

joscha wrote:

When u play selfound u have not enough Chisels to throw them on levl 73 Maps.

although i wouldn't recommend throwing chisels at low level maps but when starting maps you should have several stacks of them as you get plenty of cartographer boxes when doing piety or dominus runs (hell, i even get them in sarn city from time to time) and you just alterate them until you got "+ x items" which results in 6-10 level 66 maps wich you can turn into chisels with the respective "20% quality hammers/gavels"-recipe.

"

joscha wrote:

When u play selfound u have not enough Chisels to throw them on levl 73 Maps. Hell i dont have enough to use them on my 76es. I start Alcing with lvl 75 if i can do most mods, if i cant i go for alts/regal.

Ive played torment purely ssf, chiseled every map Ive ran 73+ with few exceptions and I had like 8 stacks of chisels left over after league ended

the key is to check vendor EVERY (and I mean EVERY) levelup, especially from levels 1-40), as well as have a good eye to pickup white gavels and hammers

I havent ever ran out of chisels in any league since they extended the chisel recipe.

I have a pool of about 60 alchs in standard. I alch every map I do and my pool of alchs always sustains itself(never even drops to 40). And since I never see people wanting to buy alchs anyway I figure I might as well make my maps fun, blue maps are boring.

"

geradon wrote:

although i wouldn't recommend throwing chisels at low level maps but when starting maps you should have several stacks of them as you get plenty of cartographer boxes when doing piety or dominus runs (hell, i even get them in sarn city from time to time) and you just alterate them until you got "+ x items" which results in 6-10 level 66 maps wich you can turn into chisels with the respective "20% quality hammers/gavels"-recipe.

I do like 0 piety runs and dominus usually @lvl80 or something. Still low level maps are not the problem when it comes to Gavels.

"

grepman wrote:

Ive played torment purely ssf, chiseled every map Ive ran 73+ with few exceptions and I had like 8 stacks of chisels left over after league ended

the key is to check vendor EVERY (and I mean EVERY) levelup, especially from levels 1-40), as well as have a good eye to pickup white gavels and hammers

I havent ever ran out of chisels in any league since they extended the chisel recipe.

Maybee i have to get better in spotting these Hammers. And the Vendore Checking @ low levels should really become a habbit. Thx for stressing how importent it is. Maybee ill do better with chisels next legue. I had to buy Chisels at the end on the last 4 month.

I have alchs overflowing out of one of my bank tabs and I just alch every map now.

"

Splift wrote:

Ever since zana and carto boxes came out I feel there is no longer pressure to alc/chaos maps.

Chisel 77/78 and go for pack size on those ones as well with alts.

Most lower maps just trans aug and if it has bad mods its garbage/chisel recipe.

Doing this you can easily maintain constant 77+ (maybe momentarily drop to 76 if you are unlucky but i never had it happen) once you get the pool going.

That being said alcing maps is more fun, especially if your char is strong.

This. I'm currently In 23rd place in 1MHC (18th living), so I have been mapping like crazy recently. I've ran like 250 maps since Friday, all 77+, and I never alched any of them. Here's how my system works.

First off, pack size is king, followed shortly by good magic mob rolls. Every map i run is first alted to this. Not only does it give more experience, but also way more map drops (it's like a MORE modifier for IIQ). Now that I've said that, here's a list of everything I do by map level.

Level 66-73: Just alt/aug for packsize/magic and run, easy to sustain and move up.

Level 74-75: Same as lower ones, except use 4 chisels on every map now. If I get an extremely good packsize roll (45%+) I may regal.

Level 76-78: Here's where it gets expensive. First, Chisel and alt for packsize/magic like before. Then I regal. If the regal is something I can't run like -max resists (does anyone run this in HC? Lol) then I scour and restart.

I then place it in the map device with 3 sacrifice fragments for 15% IIQ. I have constantly been buying them this league at 3:1c, and I feel 15 IIQ on a 76+ map with packsize/magic is def worth a 1c investment.

The last and final step is reserved only for 78 maps, and 77 maps that regal a second pack mod (for example alting to packsize, then regaling magic mobs). For these maps I have chosen to make the 8 chaos investment and add the "onslaught" zana mod to every single one. This gives 40% more IIQ which is huge. The final result is a 78 map with 35%+ packsize and 100%+ IIQ, which is equal to something like a 150% IIQ map without packsize. This is both amazing for experience AND map drops.

By using this system I have been able to maintain 77+ maps indefinitely. Plus, since I'm building up so many 76s (have about 70 now), If I ever run low because of a bad RNG streak I can always combine some of them for more 77s.

Now I'm sure the number 1 question will be, how the hell can you afford to add onslaught to every 78 map in a temp league? Well, in my experience, the onslaught mod helps sustain itself. It gives me tons of extra drops. This includes a large amount of level 71-75 maps, which I sell for 1-5c respectively. I also get a lot of extra currency, rare (Unid regal recipe!), and unique drops. All together this has allowed me to keep putting onslaught on maps.