Asteria suffered a major slowdown in the Dry Hills/Far Oasis, which was overrun with LI vultures and beetles. After a dozen recasts, I scored a strong valk and she did a good job knocking them out, although it still took a while. Potion slingers were a nuisance, but at least I could take them out quick. Slow Missiles against them is funny; they toss potions straight up, sky high, and they descend like a meteor and
hit you anyway. One of the beetles dropped a Lem, the 2nd Asteria found from a normal monster, and just as useless.
Into the Maggot Lair! More beetles! Asteria crossed her arms, frowned, and tapped her foot impatiently, as the valk defeated long lines of scarabs. Level 2 had lots of locusts, which boosted my scroll supply a little. Also on level 2, I found a Spectral CE PILI beetle boss. We couldn't harm it. I've been working on a 3-socket kris, adding Ith and El. Either I would find an Eth this session and complete "Malice", or this beetle would be my first parked monster in over two years. For now, I was able to work around it and get to level 3, which was free of beetles. Easy clear to the staff room. Lacking the massive group power of Lightning Fury, I did the next best thing: stormed in without hesitation (before major spawning could start), took out a few guard maggots, and blasted Coldworm
directly. It was a little dangerous, and required a few potions, but large maggots absorb all the CS bolts and thus fell quickly.
I went to p3 for the Ancient Tunnels. It was packed with an exciting assortment of mummy, zombie, and invader boss packs, many with brutal mods. The valk was poison immune, but still lost health steadily, and every mobbing was a race for me to save her life by killing them before they killed her. With my paltry 57% MF, I didn't expect to find much, but some monster from a double boss pack dropped an
EU armor. Too bad I can't meet the STR (or level) requirements for a long time. Cool find, but no help to Asteria.
Back to p1 for the Viper Temple. I was hoping to get lucky and avoid skellies, but no such luck. However, because nothing was LI, I was able to rush the unravelers and take them down. It was much less difficult than Halls of the Dead. The snakes were dangerous. It's scary to get blasted backwards out of nowhere. But they're delicate. I took them out one-on-one as they advanced, or I let them surround the valk and picked them off. Good news: I found my Eth rune and completed the Malice kris. Not the best option for Malice, but I was desperate to have it available and the kris was the first 3-socket compact weapon I found.
Now for the dreaded level 2. I equipped my Circlet of Teleportation. Skeletons marched into the doorway corridor, and a I spotted an unraveler with more skellies inside the altar. As the valk re-killed the resurrecting skellies, I tried to sniper the unraveler with Frozen Arrow, but it was shielded by its skellies. I tried to get a new angle, a little closer, and the snakes came from both sides. Screw this! I teleported inside the altar, on top of the unraveler pack. It cost me a few potions, but I wiped them out. Bad news: another unraveler, way back in the shadows, was re-raising the altar skeletons. Snakes completely surrounded the altar. I ran onto the altar stairs, while the valk protected my back, and I took out about 10 snakes in single file. These snakes charged hard, and I drank many potions. Fangskin cursed me and nearly killed me, so I
switched places with the valk. I was down to 2 rejuvs and one antidote (I always store a couple in a rejuv column). When Fangskin died I teleported out, killed the unraveler, and mopped up the remaining snakes. Another grand adventure with Fangskin!
One last task remained, a showdown with that tough beetle boss in the Maggot Lair. Time for a little
stabby action. Open Wounds worked its magic, and he dropped a magical troll belt.
[highlight]Conqueror Asteria, 1.11 CS Amazon, level 79, Act 2 Hell, Jerhyn's Palace[/highlight]
) has made it to the Inner Cloister and reached Lvl 18. This is good because I have made it to Charged Strike, but I REALLY can't wait to get to first Decoy, then of couse, Valk.
. 
