The ubers (Hardcore mini-guide)

[stevethatsmyname]

The ubers (Hardcore mini-guide)

Let me start off by saying I have not fought these guys in hardcore mode.

I collected the keys with YouHaveMail's hammerdin (softcore ladder east) and defeated all 3 mini-bosses (with varying degrees of difficulty), then spawned tristram and killed all 3 bosses 2-man.

Here is a brief summary of my experience.

1) Getting keys.

Key of Terror: This is a no-brainer. Kill countess a lot, she will eventually drop keys of terror. I would expect the market for these to be pretty easy to trade for. (Since it is one of the easiest bosses to run, and she also drops decent runes). Run it with a fire sorc (with a even-leveled merc), cold sorc (with a really well-equipped merc) or litning sorc (dont even need a merc ^__^). Countess is fire/cold immune, her lackies are all cold immune, but they have fairly low HP.

Key of Hate: Summoner runs. He drops nothing else of value, so you will only be killing him for the key. Very easy run, for pretty much any type of sorceress. I did at least 100 summoner runs , and he only dropped me 1 key.

Key of Destruction: Recieved from nihlathak. Obviously, this is the most dangerous key to get.

A few things to note here:

- His corpse explosions will not kill you in 1-hit. But he can get 2 or more off in a short period of time, doing massive damage within 1-2 seconds. Thus, some sort of "slain monsters rest in peace" type thing will be needed. Nature's peace is damn near absolute must. I recommend using a merc with low-damage weapon (perhaps insight scythe or something) so he doesn't make any corpses (your nature's peace doesn't apply to him)

- Orb = teh sux. Trust me. i have a decked out orb sorc and i tried a few nihlathak runs, it was an exercise of futility. I was successful about 1/2 the time. Sure, you aren't killing any of his lackeys so he wont be exploding anything on you. but at the same time they are tanking all your little ice bolts for him, so the only way for you to do any damage whatsoever is to get perfect orbs that explode on him. Bliz might work, but i would personally prefer fireballer or Litning sorc (using nature's peace of course) to clear the whole room. The reason being, you want this thing clear FAST. if you are running around chucking orbs for 1 minute trying to get nihlathak down, guess what!! his vipers are tearing you apart!! More on the vipers next:

- The vipers!!! OOH nooh these guys are brutal. Here are a few observations on these guys . THey are regular run of the mill claw vipers, with the charge attack, but with a twist: they also throw poison type javelins. If you are 1on1 with a viper, you will find that they really don't do that much damage!! The actual javelin is blockable, and the poison damage (while respectable) isnt anything more brutal than most other monsters in hell. But.... try running through the cloud (especially with your sound turned up) and you will hear something like a machine gun. This is you getting hit by about a million javelins contained in the poison cloud. This does not happen if you are standing in place and get a jav chucked at you. It will only hit you once. I have come up with a few ways to avoid this , none of which are 100% reliable but may help a little bit:
-Don't run around........ try and keep in one spot
-KILL THE VIPERS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE
-If possible, pick a corner in nihlathak's chamber and stay there, this way you can't get charge-knockback-ed into a poison cloud.





Once you have 3 of each key, you then need to get ready to face the 3 mini-bosses.

More on this next thread.

 

[Tool_Master]

Nice little write up you got going there man.
Good job :thumbsup:

 

[stevethatsmyname]

The 3 mini bosses.

Here is the general point:

You put one of each key (terror, hate, and destruction) into your horadric cube, Travel to act 5, and transmute it. A portal will open to a special level that contains one of the 3 bosses........ The Matron's Den (Lilith), Hell's Furnace (Izual), and some desert level (lol) (Duriel)

Here is how to guarantee to get all 3 portals.......

You need 3 sets of keys, obviously, and pick a game, and get all your friends who will be helping you READY.

Open the first portal, defeat first boss.

In the same game open the second portal (1 of each key) and defeat the second boss....

then in the same game, open the third portal, and defeat the third boss.

The portals are guaranteed to be different!!

So now i will give a mini-guide to each boss.


Izual (Hell's Furance)

This is probably the easiest encounter. THe level looks like one of the side-levels in act 5. It is populated by Chaos-sanctuary like monsters..... Knight packs and balrogs. The balrogs are fairly tough to kill because they're immune to everything except physical. But the knight packs are just regular knight packs.

I would recommend a couple casters to clear the level (lightning sorc + hammerdin would work quite well) with a couple decent mercs to take care of the balrogs.

I cleared it solo w/ hammerdin (he had badass merc though)

Izual himself doesn't have anything tricky up his sleeve, doesnt do too much damage. I would say that the 2-3 casters that clear the level should also be able to finish him off. If not, clear the whole area around him (ESPECIALLY KNIGHT PACKS!!!) and bring in a smiter to finish the job.


Lilith (The matron's den)

This level is HARD!!! It is packed with succubi packs, and there are just TONS of succubi. It also has some of those corrupt rogues (spear chicks) from act1. These dont seem so deadly to me as the succubi packs, but if they spawned a fanat/cursed pack i can see them destroying any character in seconds. At the moment, the exact immunities of the monsters here escapes me. But i think there were some poison imunes, cold immunes, and maybe fire immunes.

I recommend going in with a party of 2-3 and just clear the whole level. Make sure to get a BO barb to prebuff, and maybe even to stick around to tank stuff.

Lilith herself is DEADLY, especially if there is a nasty pack spawned near her. I also found her tough to find.

I think the most important thing here is to *not hurry* Dont go in and teleport around searching for her, if you teleport on top of her if you are amped for example, you could quite easily be 1-hitted.

Clear slowwwwly. Be sure to take out every last monster in your path until you eventually find her.

She hits hard.

She hits verrrrry hard.

I recommend a bare minimum of 85% poison resist (achievable with antidote potions fairly easily) and a full belt of rejuvs (even WITH life tap).

I took her down with frenzy barb + hammerdin + hammerdin's merc, with some difficulty. The frenzy barb solo just couldn't keep up with her damage (WITH life tap) even with really decent gear (beast zerker, ethereal DEATH ettin axe, fortitude armor)

Recommended party for lilith herself is smiter + sorc, BOTH SHOULD HAVE BATTLE ORDERS ON!!!!!!!!! Seriously lilith hits HARD!!!

Duriel (Forgotten sands?)

This is the encounter that i know the smallest amount about. I made the portal, me and my smiter friend went down, and duriel was right there. We attacked him, and my smiter friend made quick work of him. I didn't see him go below 2/3 health (he had about 3.5 hp with BO though ^____^)


Once you kill all 3, you will have all 3 body parts..... i forget which part comes from which boss, but the end result is, diablo's horn, mephisto's brain, and baal's eye.


Put all 3 into the horadric cube (act 5) and hit transmute to make the tristram portal. Dont evne think about doing this until you are completely ready to pwn these guys (THe realm crahsed on me 20 minutes after i created my second tristram portal, so i lost out on all my hard work. This was after i had gotten my first charm though)

More on tristram next post.

 

[stevethatsmyname]

Tristram!!!!!

OK so you have all body parts, and you think you're ready to play with the big boys!!

Here's what you'll need to secure beforehand:


Battle orders: This makes the encounter a lot easier, and of course gives you that snuggle room so you aren't always fighting for survival.

crushing blow. Lots of it. Get at least 1 smiter (frenzy barb will work even) with 70+ crushing blow and dracul's grasp.

Stacked resist.... I recommend all characters in this fight get enough stacked resist to reach max AFTER conviction. This will mean lots of MFing for gear and damage sacrafice, but it's well worth it. If you get mephisto stacked on diablo, and get hit by one of his attacks + diablo hellfire or ligthing hose, you are TOAST.

Here is a decent caster setup to stack enough resistance......

I will need a bit of help here. I am not exactly sure how much resist his conviction reduces by. But it is at least 100, so i will assume 150 for now.

You start with base -100, so -150 conviction gives you -250 to start with, and you are trying to reach 75 all, so we need 325 to all resistances.

Wizardspike is up to 90 with jewel but we will assume 85 , kira's guardian is up to 70, 85 with um rune, we will assume 80. Depending on what type of caster you are, your shield choice may vary. But I recommend using mosers at the very least, which lends 63. You get 30 to all from anya quest.

So using wizardspike, kiras, and moser's, you get 258 at least. So you just need 67 more from the rest of your items (50 from upped ummed vipermagi lets you almost reach your goal)

Yeah i realize these are fairly high end items and will not be readily availabe for another month or so. So if you really want to kill these guys with ghetto gears, you will need to bring in a salvation pally.

 

[stevethatsmyname]

The Encounter

I really can't say much about this encounter since it was mostly my friend (the smiter) that did most of the killing here.

But here are a few pointers:


-Dont ever fight more than one in the same place....... if you ever are fighting one and see the attacks from one of the others...... RUN AWAY!! and hopefully only one follows.


-Mephisto is a prime candidate to die first. Once he is killed, you can take off all your stacked resist gears and put back on your damage gears!!

-Here is how each boss works..... each of them spawns additional monsters at a fairly constant rate, these are fairly weak and have low hit points, but there will be lots of them. They will never stop spawning. They don't drop anything either, if i remember correctly.

-Your smiter will be primary damage dealer and tank. I recommend he be the best equipped. max resist after conviction vs meph, preferably with some +max resist and some absorb. Lightning and cold are top absorb that you want.

-everyone else just supports the smiter. Keep the summoned monsters dead.

-Once the boss gets down to a sliver the smiter's damage will be pretty low, so now everyone get on him and he will die.

this should work for all the bosses.


Each boss has essentially the same attacks as they normally have (yes uber baal spawns a clone, no his clone does not replentish HP)


THE REWARD

When the last uber boss dies, he drops a unique large charm. (Hellfire Torch) The stats on the charm are, +10-20 to all attributes, +10-20 to all resists, +3 to a random class' skills, and some % to cast something or other. One of these is diablo's fire storm type ability, which makes it obvious when a melee class has one of these!!

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

 

[Raith]

very well written. hellfire torch charm, only one person gets it?

 

[stevethatsmyname]

yeah, only 1 person gets...

similar to annihilus in that you can only carry 1 at a time.

 

[YouHaveMail]

I'd like to say I supplied the Hammerdin, Frenzier, and all the gear.
Dracul's on a frenzier works well, it did work well against Lillith, I don't know what he's talking about. 8)

 

[Nilaripper]

Izual (Hell's Furance)
This is probably the easiest encounter.
.

I dont get it why all players say that izzy is easiest. I lost a godly Zeallot
in my first encounter because i didnt watch out for IRON MAIDEN.
The monsters who guard him are immune to all ele attacks, which is terrible for
any sorc. I guess all who killed him fast used a hammerdin which i didnt have
in HC Ladder 2.

All other Ubers went down pretty fast, my smiter (lifetap wand on switch)
shred them into pieces. :clap:

 

[Ankeli]

for what ive noticed Izual is highly resistant to magic damage.

Anyway, good guide :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

[stevethatsmyname]

I dont get it why all players say that izzy is easiest. I lost a godly Zeallot
in my first encounter because i didnt watch out for IRON MAIDEN.
The monsters who guard him are immune to all ele attacks, which is terrible for
any sorc. I guess all who killed him fast used a hammerdin which i didnt have
in HC Ladder 2.

All other Ubers went down pretty fast, my smiter (lifetap wand on switch)
shred them into pieces. :clap:

well yeah.... its easy if you clear out all the knight packs THEN work on izual.

YouHaveMail's frenzy barb was able to solo him (with ease)

trying lilith solo was just impossible with the frenzy barb, i would need a stack of juvs to do it.

 

[NEURO_CKY]

good guide steve!!

sounds like it will be awhile before i can take these guys out this season....


CampKillYourself

 

[stevethatsmyname]

any more feedback....?

oh yah neuro did you still have that griffons eye when the ladder rolled over? THat would be pretty cool if ya did =P

 

[NEURO_CKY]

any more feedback....?

oh yah neuro did you still have that griffons eye when the ladder rolled over? THat would be pretty cool if ya did =P

Im pretty sure i do. all the stuff on my sorc and necro are still there. to be honest i just started playing again. i quit when guild wars came out but this new ladder has sucked me back in temporarily....heh! :thumbsup:


CampKillYourself

 

[stevethatsmyname]

yea i was playing WoW but the new ladder brought me back, playing HC east.

 

[killerxbabe]

Bumpity bump bump. Sticky please. :clap:

 

[killerxbabe]

Once more with the bumpity.

 

[stevethatsmyname]

it's not ready for sticky yet, i would have to do some formatting+add some more missing information, for it to be sticky-worthy.

You could do the next best thing and post a linky to it in one of the existing stickies so you always know where to find it!

 

[Bootbird]

Lilith

I took a stab at these guys with my light sorc and a friend on his ama. We got izzy first and he died easy. Next was lilith, the curious thing was that the ama could tank her quite easily, but for some reason we couldnt keep up with her life regen. So essentially we could fight her all day but not kill her. We tried using a prevent monster heal mask on the ama, but still no luck.

Ideas, input, anything would be usefull. I do realise this is not the perfect class setup for fighting these guys, but we thought it would be fun to try.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Nilaripper]

Ideas, input, anything would be usefull. I do realise this is not the perfect class setup for fighting these guys, but we thought it would be fun to try.
Thanks in advance.

You should try to use at least one strong melee char to kill lilith. This could be a strong zeallot or smiter or a good conc/barb, but a char strong enough to tank her. To prevent the life loss ( lilith hits hard) use a life tap wand ( can be shopped in all acts in hell) and rip her to pieces.