Before two years ago, there was no 100-percent solo speedrun category for Diablo 3. That's simply because achieving everything that was possible in the game–including acquiring all of its RNG-based loot–seemed like such a monumental task that nobody would be crazy enough to even try.
Enter The Travelling Inquisitor, Twitch streamer, YouTube content creator, and someone with apparently a lot of time on his hands. In search of a speedrun category that "would be a true test of endurance and sanity," The Travelling Inquisitor settled on a 100-percent speedrun of Diablo 3, defining the rules in a forum post on Speedrun.com.
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First, there's getting all the achievements possible for a solo player in all game modes for all character classes, including Adventure, campaign, and hardcore modes. Then there's crafting all possible recipes, and finally, obtaining every single possible item in the game. It's that last one that's proving to be a sticking point, as even after 2,000 hours, there are still a lot of items left for The Travelling Inquisitor to uncover.
"My first estimate of Diablo 3 was 6,000-plus hours," the streamer told Games Radar in an interview, "but now, re-evaluating and adding new parts into the run, it's more 20,000-plus hours due to grinding and extreme RNG."
Diablo 3 is all about gathering rare loot, but this means getting everything in a single run requires throwing hours and hours at a problem defined by a random number generator. One such rare item, Wirt's Original Leg, took an entire month of grinding all on its own.
The Travelling Inquisitor believes he's around "70-80 percent done," but he doesn't think he'll get to 100 percent in time for the release of the next Diablo game. "I 100% will not be finished by the time Diablo 4 comes out," he said. "I hope I have the time to play it, but Diablo 3 is a demanding beast."
You can head to the Inquisitor's Speedrun forum post or watch out his periodic updates on Reddit to read some truly absurd statistics, like how many Elites he's killed, how much Death's Breath he's acquired, or how long it took to acquire specific rare items. You can also follow his progress live on Twitch or watch videos on demand on YouTube.