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The table may look untidy or complicated, but it is really very easy to understand.
Below is how to read it;



Char-level
The level of your character. First place to look.

Skill
Skill or difficulty. From level 1-20 only Normal skill is listed, as you're not able to join Nightmare- or Hell-games. From 20-30 it show both Normal and Nightmare, but not Hell as you still can't play it. After level 40 you won't get any exp at all in Normal games, no matter where you go - or what you kill (exept some bosses). So from 40-50 only Nightmare and Hell are listed.

Average exp per monster
OK, this is the most tricky part (but also the most informative). This is what it says, the average experience points per monster in a level. As you can see above, a character with lvl 28 gets 190 experience points in average from one monster on dungeon level 2 in Nightmare skill. What you should look for, is the highest number below the limit (which is 200*clvl. Our level 28 can therefore only get 5600 per monster). If you kill a monster that give 6000 points, you will "lose" those 400 points above the limit. When you reach level 29, you will not only get more points from that monster, but it would also be easier to kill. So, don't kill monsters that gives more exp than the limit. Better kill others, weaker monsters, and get all the points from it.
Details on the calculations is by the end of this page

Average exp per monster per hp
Same as above, except the hitpoints of the monsters are taken in account. This number shows how many points you get (in average) from each hitpoints of each monster in the level. This is often more correct to use on than just plain experience points.

Underline
Marks where you get most, and second most, experience per monster below the limit (200*clvl). If two dungeons levels gives the same, the lowest is marked.

Bold
Same as above, but marks highest exp per monster per hp

Highlight
Tells where I recommend as the best place to gain experience points. I always highlight whole "sections". That means either Church, Catacombs, Caves or Hell, and not the actual dungeon level. In the example, Nightmare Caves is the best place for a level 28 character. When I consider two places to be as good, I highlight them both.

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Acknowledgements



Details on the calculation (skip if not interested :-)

Let's look at dungeon level 15. In that level there can be 9 different monsters;
(The numbers in the brackets show how often they occur)

Balrog(17%), Azure Drake(33%), Snow Witch(33%), Hell Spawn(34%), Soul Burner(33%),
Doom Guard(17%), Steel Lord(17%), Magistrate(17%), Cabalist(17%)


In Normal skill a lvl 28 gets from the monsters;

2914(Balrog), 3411(Azure Drake), 3267(Snow Witch), 4480(Hell Spawn), 5572(Soul Burner),
2920(Doom Guard), 4252(Steel Lord), 4030(Magistrate), 5421(Cabalist)


Average hitpoints of the monsters;

190(Balrog), 180(Azure Drake), 155(Snow Witch), 175(Hell Spawn), 182.5(Soul Burner),
165(Doom Guard), 180(Steel Lord), 85(Magistrate), 120(Cabalist)


Now, let's calculate the average experience points;

(2914*17%+3411*33%+3267*33%+4480*34%+5572*33%+2920*17%+4252*17%+4030*17%+5421*17%)
/ (17%+33%+33%+34%+33%+17%+17%+17%+17%)
= 4076.6 (round up to 4077)


And average experience points per hitpoints;

((2914/190)*17%+(3411/180)*33%+(3267/155)*33%+(4480/175)*34%+(5572/182.5)*33%
+ (2920/165)*17%+(4252/180)*17%+(4030/85*17%+(5421/120)*17%)
/ (17%+33%+33%+34%+33%+17%+17%+17%+17%)
= 26.3 (round down to 26)


Hey, but the table says 27! How could that be? Well, as you can see, there's lots of works only to calculate a single dungeon level for a single character level. Imagine doing all this on all the 16 dungeon levels for all the 50 character levels... If I should do this by hand, I won't be finish until Diablo II comes out. What I did was writing a little program to calculate the data and generate a HTML-file for me. The small difference is due to roundup errors in the program. So those numbers in the table may differ with +/- 1. I'm going to fix this later(*), but in real life (as far as Diablo can be called "real life") it doesn't matter anyway.

(*) No, I won't fix it, but maybe someone else would. My works on this mini-guide has been discontinued. Sorry about that.


Acknowledgements

Great thanks goes to Pedro Faria (Jarulf) for writing, and maintaining his Guide. Most of these data are based on the info from his Guide, and his occurance data. Jarulf's Guide can be downloaded at http://pf.chemeng.lth.se/diablo/. The data on the monsters' occurance was obtained from ftp://pf.chemeng.lth.se/diablo/data/

Greetings to all in alt.games.diablo who keeps the group alive and makes it fun and friendly. May you all live long in the group and I hope those who left us will soon come back (they surely will when Diablo II comes out) :)

Thanks to Blizzard for making Diablo. I'd spent too much time playing it, but hey, it had been, and will be, fun. All the games from these folks are enjoyable, and I liked all of them

Thank YOU for reading this! I hope you can make use of my work, otherwise it would have been wasted. If you got comments, suggestions, corrections or flames please feel free to email it to me.

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Written by Soul-Toucher (st78@online.no) in VI.
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