After seeing the video of the guy destroying the whole undead spawn in 12 minutes, because he was clearing whole rooms on nearly every swing, I decided I had to take a close look into this hit area thing.
To make it, I used copper hammer, vicsious of slaghter title (3 charges), and it took me ~40 tries to get a 70% (fire) hit area weapon. Given that Hit Phys is mostly pointless, I'd say count on 3 or 4 hammers per useful 70% hit area reforge.
The damage done by the hit area is equal to 50% of the damage done by the hit that triggers it, and then that value is affected by the resist of the creatures in the area, and may scale slightly lower the further away from the center.
For testing I used the Baracoon spawn as my control group, because I've been consistently doing that in 34 or 35 minutes, and that time is from the time I hit the sacred journey into the dungeon, clear the spawn, kill 'coon, pick up all the gold piles, and loot 100% of his corpse, then get back to town. Note: all testing done wearing a Vermin Slayer talisman.
I used to clear the first 3 levels with a radiant scim with 45% (don't have raptor teeth) hit area. Then, as proof of concept, I moved up to a longsword with 45% and my times dropped consistently down into the 31-32 range.
Just made a 70% hit area longsword, which means that I clear the area on level 1 every time it goes off, and can kill a ratman/dire wolf every 2x the area hits in level 2. From there I move to a repond slayer radiant scim with only 45% hit area for the 2nd part of level 2 and all of level 3, then swap into a reptile slayer with 45% hit area for level 4.
In attempt 1 like this I was down to only 28 minutes. I figure that if I made a 70% hit area repond slayer double axe I could clear levels 2 and 3 even faster than I currently am with my radiant scimitar.
To make it, I used copper hammer, vicsious of slaghter title (3 charges), and it took me ~40 tries to get a 70% (fire) hit area weapon. Given that Hit Phys is mostly pointless, I'd say count on 3 or 4 hammers per useful 70% hit area reforge.
The damage done by the hit area is equal to 50% of the damage done by the hit that triggers it, and then that value is affected by the resist of the creatures in the area, and may scale slightly lower the further away from the center.
For testing I used the Baracoon spawn as my control group, because I've been consistently doing that in 34 or 35 minutes, and that time is from the time I hit the sacred journey into the dungeon, clear the spawn, kill 'coon, pick up all the gold piles, and loot 100% of his corpse, then get back to town. Note: all testing done wearing a Vermin Slayer talisman.
I used to clear the first 3 levels with a radiant scim with 45% (don't have raptor teeth) hit area. Then, as proof of concept, I moved up to a longsword with 45% and my times dropped consistently down into the 31-32 range.
Just made a 70% hit area longsword, which means that I clear the area on level 1 every time it goes off, and can kill a ratman/dire wolf every 2x the area hits in level 2. From there I move to a repond slayer radiant scim with only 45% hit area for the 2nd part of level 2 and all of level 3, then swap into a reptile slayer with 45% hit area for level 4.
In attempt 1 like this I was down to only 28 minutes. I figure that if I made a 70% hit area repond slayer double axe I could clear levels 2 and 3 even faster than I currently am with my radiant scimitar.