A few days ago, I posted about using the dancing souls Easter egg in conjunction with full game TZ clears. I wanted to determine what the combination of these two things would look like in light of the changes to the game in ROTW. This is the result of that experiment.

Some basic things:

• This was done on single-player on a hardcore javazon with very good gear (griffs, coh, titan's, ss etc.). For the most part, I played on /p3, but not always - I will explain below.
• I let the souls go through their whole dance twice, which should mean I was running about 8400% MF (give or take 100% for my actual gear). Because this took me about a day and a half in real time - I have a job - I repeated the ritual once because I don't know if the duration counts down while the game is paused. If it doesn't, then I was actually running around 16800% MF for acts IV and V. For what it's worth, I did not notice a difference between 8.4 and 16.8.
• It took about eight hours of actual gameplay. My character doesn't have infinity or enigma - this is a highly unoptimized time. You could definitely go faster e.g. by not playing on hardcore.

What did I get?

• Uniques: 54 total - 17 exceptional, 15 elite, good for about 12% progress on the unique grailer
• 37 set items, good for about 25% progress on the set grailer
• Highest rune: Pul
• 13 heralds
• 10 shards
• 0 statues
• 0 sunder charms (lol)
• ~15% experience towards level 97 and then about 2% towards 98 (I dinged in Act V)

Was it worth it?

Maybe. There's no straightforward answer to this question.

My hypothesis going into this is that running insane amounts of mf%, combined with the ability to turn everything into a TZ, would significantly reduce the time investment needed to complete a grailer. This, combined with the heralds system, would make this method of farming obviously optimal. Having done this now I can definitively say that that's not true. But I want to look at it in a little bit more depth.

This is a good method for working on a grail but it is probably not optimal. I went from 4%/0% (unique/set) to 16%/25% from just a single pass. That's significant progress for eight hours, but it's also deceptive. For one thing, almost everything I looted was junk. The main thing that makes grailers take long is the base odds of dropping the rarer bases. Running an insane amount of mf means you need to make less of the bases drop on average, and terrorizing the whole game means you are getting lots more opportunities at good bases, but it's still incredibly rare to see them drop. I received very few useful items from doing this, with the standout probably being a mid-roll raven frost, which is hardly rare.

I suspect that targeted methods of mf are still better for softcore grailers, even offline. This is because you will almost certainly be running enough mf% to not actually benefit too much from having 4200%+ more mf. For hardcore players it's more complicated because this gives you the option to run no mf at all, which opens up your gear choices a fair bit. I think hardcore players should seriously consider this method of farming because it is a relatively safe way to run a lot of mf (although with one significant caveat re: heralds).

It's also good experience. For very high level characters I don't think TZs can be beat by any other method unless you are very fast at baal. Again, it's almost certainly not the most efficient method of gaining experience, but it is a pretty good method.

I will say that unless you have very good gear already this probably isn't for you. My zon has basically optimal gear minus infinity (which, admittedly, would make a very large difference).

What about Heralds?

In my opinion the herald system is broken and needs fixing. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, heralds are not a good reason to significantly modify your approach to farming. Thirteen heralds across eight hours of gameplay is not good. I had cleared an entire act (II) before I started getting T4 heralds, which means I'd played for about a couple of hours before I even got to the point of having realistic odds at a sunder drop. The way I understand the math, you would have to do several full game TZ clears to get reasonable odds at a sunder. That sucks.

At the beginning of this I had come up with a plan to try to spawn heralds in /p1 Act I to minimize the danger of them. I'd like to report that this completely didn't work and anyone thinking that they can do this should think again. I ended up playing a lot of the game on /p1 waiting for heralds to respawn after drawing their ire. Even then, I quickly ran out of real estate in Act I to spawn them in, which lead to the near-disaster below.

Another broken aspect of the herald system that is a big deal to hardcore players is that they are likely to spawn on an area transition. This is very, very bad game design, especially because D2R has load times again. For example, despite my best efforts I was forced to spawn a T5 herald in the throne of destruction. This spawn triggered as I was coming up the stairs, putting a T5 burning souls boss pack literally right on top of the stairway. My character is basically invincible, but this would have killed just about anyone else.

Look, I'm glad the devs are trying stuff. But I think this system needs a significant rework, and doing a full game TZ clear on the most favorable conditions imaginable only reinforced my belief.

Loose Ends

You will almost definitely get more shards than you use by terrorizing the whole game. Having said that, because shards are distributed unevenly - this is probably unintended behavior and may be patched, by the way - I think it's very possible to terrorize the whole game, clear it, and not be able to terrorize the next one. I got lucky, but of my ten shards only one of them was for Act IV.

Once you get some practice setting up the souls it doesn't take long at all to get the buff. Honestly, I think it's probably worth taking the time to get the buff, even for single act clears, especially on hardcore. The most common mistake I've encountered setting up the buff is that there is actually a fifth soul nearby, causing them to do the pentagram (with one soul missing) instead. You can tell you've gotten this instead of the dance when they go back to attacking you after one "letter".

One downside of the buff, though, is that you will invariably miss out on terrorizing most of plains of despair and city of the damned. YMMV in terms of how much you care about this.

Actually playing the game remains a shit source of runes. The lone pul was really the only notable rune drop.

In case anyone is curious, here is the complete list of drops:

UNIQUES
- Deathspade
- Griswold's Edge
- Wolfhowl (e)
- Azurewrath (e)
- Ironstone
- Razortine
- Bladebuckle
- Venom Grip (x)
- Widowmaker (e)
- Baranar's Star (e)
- Kelpie Snare (x)
- Hellcast
- The Impaler (x)
- The Meat Scraper (x)
- Ripsaw
- Twitchthroe
- Dark Clan Crusher (x)
- Raven Claw
- Manald Heal
- Fleshrender (x)
- Athena's Wrath (x)
- The Centurion
- Steel Shade (e)
- The Reaper's Toll (e) 
- Fleshripper (e)
- Shadow killer (e)
- Treads of Cthon
- Bloodletter (x)
- Eschuta's Temper (e) the worst roll you've ever seen
- Blacktongue
- Raven Frost
- Blastbark
- War Traveler (x)
- Radament's Sphere (x)
- Valkyrie Wing (x)
- Skull Collector (x)
- Marrowwalk (e)
- Blackoak Shield (e)
- Gerke's Sanctuary (x)
- Demon's Arch (e)
- Husuoldal Evo (x)
- Giant Skull (e)
- Rakescar
- Lidless Wall (x)
- The Chieftain
- Plague Bearer (x)
- Bloodthief
- Shadowfang
- Hone Sundan (x)
- Nagelring
- Lightsabre (e)
- Bloodrise
- Gheed's Fortune
- Rune Master (e)

SETS
- Cathan's Seal x2
- Cathan's Mesh x2
- Cathan's Rule
- Tancerd's Skull
- Horazon's Dominion
- Horazon's Legacy
- Sigon's Sabot x2
- Sigon's Visor
- Sigon's Guard
- Iratha's Cord
- Bul-Katho's Tribal Guardian
- Griswold's Heart
- Vidala's Fletlock x2
- Isenhart's Parry
- Isenhart's Horns x2
- Isenhart's Case
- Isenhart's Lightbrand
- Bane's Oathmaker
- Angelic Halo
- Rite of Passage x2
- Berserker's Hatchet
- Berserker's Hauberk
- Civerb's Icon
- Griswold's Heart
- Laying of Hands
- Dangoon's Teaching
- Trang-Oul's Girth
- Tancerd's Crowbill
- Hwanin's Splendor
- Sazabi's Ghost Liberator