In Diablo 2 Resurrected, your relationship with the game changes after a while. After enjoying the different acts, immersing yourself in the haunting cinematic experience, exploring the crypt of Act 1, the forgotten city, or this or that charming place, the player detaches himself from this picturesque approach to the game and focuses on other objectives. Mostly it’s about searching for the best Diablo 2 Resurrected items, and dealing with duels. However, regularly, the ladders are reset and the race for XP begins. On this occasion, the contenders for the first places implement a well-defined organization, a well-oiled machine, and what looked like a marathon last year, has now become a sprint of a few days.

The Cow-Level (The Farm)

If you don’t know it, this map is a secret level of act 1, to have access to it you must :

• Have already killed Baal in the desired game mode.
• Find Wirt’s leg in Tristam; then return to the rogues’ camp, merge the leg with a town portal book, a town portal will appear towards the Farm.
• Do not kill the Bull King who is walking around there (in fact this would make it impossible for you to create the tp to the Farm, you can still enter it though).

The Farm is the best place to clear to gain xp. Next to it, the Bloody Hills are simply barren and lacking in experience. It is important to know that it pays well, in Hell, from level 20, but in this circumstance it will be difficult for you to be accepted in a game, because you will clearly parasitize, whatever your character class. That said, we can assume that having killed Baal in Hell includes having generous friends…

The efficiency of the different classes

To clean it up as quickly as possible, not all classes make sense. The driving force behind the cleanup is the Amazon. She’s the one who distributes the hits, covering the longest range and widest area with her projectiles.

Two configurations of amazons are possible:

• A bowazon using critical hits and multiple shots. Ideally, she will be equipped with the bow from Mavina’s set, the Eaglehorn or the Windforce.
• A javazone using lightning in fury, equipped for example with Tal-Rasha’s mask, Belt of the Gods, Titans, Highlords Wrath, and Stormshield.

The best assistants for the Amazon are the Paladin and the Necromancer:

• The paladin will use concentration with bowazones, which gives them a wider range of movement than fanaticism, as well as better damage. With javazones he will use conviction. There is no need to equip yourself to kill, only items that reinforce abilities and reduce physical damage (Zakarum, Vampire gaze 1.08, Shaftstop, Stun, scepter + abilities and resistances, charms +1 to offensive auras).
• The necromancer will use his damage-amplification curse alongside the bowazones, or the natural resistance-lowering curse to make the javazones’ job easier.

The following classes are ineffective, but not completely impotent:

• The sorc’s firewall, timely in bloodruns, proves inadequate against the uncommon liveliness of this cow race. Ice orb is just enough to slow them down. Only static+nova can be an effective technique in terms of damage from level 32 onwards, but it is also dangerous in the face of the strength and speed of cows.
• The druid can only serve to improve the damage of bowazones with Wolverine’s Heart, but not as effectively as the paladin’s aura of concentration.
• The barbarian, if he is strongly equipped, can take advantage of the concentration aura, but he will be indisputably very slow compared to the amazons (even with the Grandfather…).

Finally, the assassin is just good at taking advantage of the experience accumulated by the group.

Early creation of the Cow-Level

The only annoying point in the Cow-Level is the time lapse between the creation of the game and the creation of the Farm. Indeed, when a team is perfectly run, as will be seen below, this time lapse can be longer than the time needed to clean up the bulk of the Cow-Level.

So, instead of wasting 2 or 3 minutes for 8 players, a ninth player can, while the others are emptying the Farm, work on creating a new Farm in the next game. His job is twofold: to go to any game in normal mode to easily pick up Wirt’s leg, and then create the next game in the cowrun series. If he has the time and motivation, he can even look for experience shrines for the players joining him. As soon as the first team members arrive in the game, he leaves and starts the same job again.

This may seem like a thankless task, but in an efficient team, the members will take turns doing it, according to a rotation system they will improvise the terms; as for its usefulness, it is undeniable, since each player sees his wasted time reduced by 88%.

Progression in the Farm

If we compare the recurring aspect of this level (though randomly generated), we see that its configuration is circular. Players are forced to progress in two groups, one clockwise and one counter-clockwise. When the two groups meet, after cleaning the cows, they move on to the next game, already created. Note that it is useless to linger on too small groups of cows, as well as bosses that are too dangerous or invulnerable to wounds or lightning, and that it is imperative to spare the Bull King (in this regard, beware of troublemakers who kill him on purpose to handicap the whole coterie).

Each of these groups will be composed ideally in two possible ways:

Either by two bowazones, a paladin (concentration), and a necromancer (damage amplification).

Or by three bowazones and a necromancer (lowering the natural resistances of the cows).

Finally, remember that damage-reducing D2R ladder items and lightning resistances will be useful, as these are the only types of damage you can receive in this place. Following this technique allowed me to get my paladin up to 1st place in the ladder, in two and a half days, and yet I didn’t play 100% of the time with my dreamteam. The rest of the time, you have to try to get closer to this type of organization. If you are alone, there is still a solution, you can find serious players by looking in the serious ladder, between level 95-98, and whisper them thanks to the battle.net command /W (without the asterisk) followed by the name of the character.