PixlBit

Got the achievement for getting to level 30 on Hardcore. I stayed in the game a little longer so Mark could get the same achievement. Now there's just one left and that's getting 5 million in gold. Trick is, this is 5 million that you pick up from the world and not gold you get from selling items. I forgot to look at what I have so far but Mark has a little over 3 million, which means I'm probably at 2 million. That's a lot of moola to go find and pick up. I have a few ideas though.

First thing I did today was almost destroy my 360 by opening a semi-frozen bottle of seltzer water which sprayed seltzer all over the place. Luckily none got in the air vents, otherwise I'd have a shorted out system.

                               

                                                        I call him Krushensky.

Next thing I did was create a new character, a Monk, and named him after Jean Claude Van Damme's character, Ivan Krushensky from the 1986 martial arts movie, No Retreat, No Surrender. I set the difficulty to Master I and equiped any piece of equipment I found that had a boost to gold drops. The game was pretty tough for a starting character at that difficulty, but it was manageable until I got to the first major boss, The Skeleton King. Then I realized, by the incredibly slow rate at which I was damaging him, that it would be nearly impossible to beat him. I was at level 11 at the time. So I moved the difficulty to Hard, beat him and moved on. Hard was still challenging, but no where near as brutal as Master I. I was kind of disappointed because I liked the struggle with nearly every group of monsters on Master I. I had to really pay attention and use all my skills to the max. On Hard, you have to be careful too, but mostly you can roll over the regular monsters and only have to concentrate on the bosses and random super badies.

I ended the night at level 13. I think I'll take the Monk all the way to level 60 and try and boost my percentage chance of loot finding with appropriate equipment. I did think of another option, which was to take my level 60 Wizard and replay Act III, on Hell Mode, with the difficulty cranked to Master V, and see what fountains of gold spring from chests and monster's bodies (the higher the difficulty, the more loot and experience you get). I think I may try that once just to see how much I get from a single playthrough. I'm also excited to see how hard Master V is, and what crazy amounts of monsters I can get on screen at once. That should be fun!

Good algorithms pixlbits!