The Certain Death Tournament.

Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Ouch! Unfortunate situation Hans, and may Mara rest well!

Argoel dropped down to /players 3 for Hell Act 1, and found it fairly easy going. Two FI/CI Extra Fast Rogue packs, but the merc was able to defeat them with the help of telekenesis.
Andariel and the catacombs were pretty easily as well, with Firewall dealing massive amounts of damage.

Hell Act 2 was not so gentle compared with the previous acts and difficulties.
It started well with a Radament that was not immune to anything! I was expecting a FI/CI Mummy though, but the dangers came later.

This one unique was practically invincible to Argoel and her faithful mercenary. Fire and Cold Immune, and had a powerful Cursed and Might Enchanted weapon!

A relatively quick and easy map to Fangskin and his Claw Viper Temple provided a powerful Fanatic Fangskin, but the Vipers knew little about constructing stairwells or mathematics.

After the deserts were purged of demons, Argoel went in search of a hidden gateway rumoured to be within the palace itself. The demons and undead here were not so forgiving of brief spells of carelessness. Argoel frantically attempted to teleport (3 or 4 times actually,) but for whatever reason, not one managed to trigger. I don't know if the bolts instantly killed her merc and moved on to Argoel putting her in hit recovery, or if they missed him entirely, or if the teleports failed because they were on an inaccessible panel, but the deeds have struck again. Argoel never managed to teleport to safety, and fell to the floor after the briefest moments of inattention and carelessness.

I had actually gone a different route than I normally would have, and very rarely even enter that room. Instead, Argoel teleported in to check how much area she could retreat to if needed (now who would even consider looking through the doorway!) and found a neat ring of mages waiting, seemingly expectantly.

Fun tournament, and a great challenge. You really have to be at the top of your game to proceed, and safety really is key. Big thanks to Wakiki for hosting, and to everyone for the great updates and screenshots!
Also, well done on making it so far to Tarantella's Damasque, and best of luck for the final act. I hope to be reading a Guardian Thread soon! :D

[highlight]Argoel, Sorceress, (H) Palace Cellar Level 3, Level 80 - RIP[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

@Wakiki. No RWM for me. I play completely Vanilla, always have, always will. The only exception is that I use ATMA as an extended stash, however, this is the first tournament I have ever used it for. I guess the rules were tough enough for me to add another problem with storage space.

@Jian. I don’t know to be honest. I guess it’s just been a habit of mine. I always seem to have normal attack as left click and spells on right click. The only time I can think of when this changes is when playing a Paladin. I guess it allows for more control over the situation and minimizes the chances of making a stupid error.

@Hans. ARRRGGHHH!!! What a shame! Poor Mara :(, having done so well up to that point and having done a good deed in revenging Drake, in the Arcane Sanc! Hopefully you have learn’t from your death, if anything.

Hopefully you can rejoin us? I shall make a valiant effort to revenge Mara for you with Iago. If he makes it that far.....

@Drystan. Oh crap! You as well? Damn we are falling like flies here! Tough luck with the fail teleports. May Argoel R.I.P

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iago is now a Destroyer :jig:.

The journey started off at the Bloody Foot Hills. There we were met by the usual Death Maulers and Enslaved, no problems at all thanks to Feral Rage. Gotta love life leech :thumbup:. Progress was steady but slow from the get go. My “Steel†Battle Axe, which I have worn ever since early Act 2, was begging to lag behind. I used the advantage of rapid levelling to pump up Fury, to compensate for the lack of damage. Each point boosted our damage output quite considerably and made progress tolerable on p/8.

Drops were not friendly. I found many S/U’s but none of any use at all. I was very surprised though when Iago encountered his 2nd double S/U drop from a Super Unique! This time by Thresh Socket. Unfortunately both items are useless for me :(.

Along with terrible item luck, rune luck has been hideous! Nothing higher than an Ort has dropped, which means....that Iago’s highest rune remains a Thul! Adding insult to injury, check out Baal’s drop. WTF IS THAT? Honestly, I expected much more than that on p/8 :rant:. I hope my luck changes soon!

The Cows were not taken lightly. I found out early that they can hit very hard if I wasn’t careful. From that point on I gave them the respect they deserved and progressed with caution. Like his brother Drake, Iago managed to find the Cow King’s Hide, however, he did not receive it from the King himself, rather one of his minions. It was given the same treatment as Drake’s though, with a hole punch and a PTopaz lodged in it :cool:.




Here are Iago’s stats entering NM with no changes.

Yuck! would you look at those resists and that damage! They are not going to cut it! A fashion change is in order I think! So with that I made 2 changes, I switched out an MF ring in favour of a resist/LL one (see below) and swapped my 3soc Flawed Topaz Ring Mail for the Cow King’s Hide. That fixed the resistance issue, but didn’t help damage at all.

I decided to try my luck gambling a new weapon. I spent a few thousand gold on Axes and Polearms. I knew it wasn’t going to be hard to score something better than the “Steel†Battle Axe. I was right. Nice! That’s not bad at all! Despite it being slower and without OW, it hits a lot harder, an extra.... 140 average damage per hit, harder, to be precise! Not to mention it also has Ctc Amp damage and 6% life leech, which boosts my overall LL to 26% with a fully charged Feral Rage :cool:.

Here are Iago’s stats after the makeover. Ahhhhh.....much better!

As for Iago’s skills and gear:

Elemental Skills
None
Shape Shifting Skills
4 (5) Werewolf
9 (10) Lycan
1 (2) Feral Rage
7 (8) Rabies
19 (20) Fury
Summoning
5 (6) Ravens
4 (5) Carrion Vine
1 (2) Oaks Sage (end game goal around 8-10)
1 (2) Carrion Vine

Gear:
Helm: Tarn Helm (34% MF)
Armor: Cow King Hide’ (Socketed with PTopaz)
Amulet: Amulet of Fortune (22%)
Weapon: Rare Halberd
Gloves: Rare Heavy gloves (Ctc lvl 3 Frost Nova, 30 %Ed, +1 Strength, +8% Cold resist, +20 Lighting resist, 24% MF)
Ring 1: Nagel Ring (23%)
Ring 2: Rare ring (+86 to AR, 4% LL, +11% Fire Resist, +27% Poison Resist)
Belt: Sigon’s Wrap
Boots: Jade Heavy Boots of Luck (+21% Poison Resist, 31% MF)

Weapon Switch: “Steel†Battle Axe (For the OW, if needed) .

Chalan's Gear:
Brutal Partizan of Gore (41% Ed, +8 to Max damage). Socketed with an Ort rune, 1 remaining socket. **didn’t manage to get a single -% requirement jewel, so Chalan had to wait until he had enough strength to equip it**
Static Circlet of the Leech (1-96 Lighting Damage, 4% LL)
Sparkling Mail

[highlight] Destroyer Iago the Fury/Rabies Druid, Level 48.7, NM Rogue Camp, Life = 238 (536 with Oaks + Wolf Form) aided by Chalan the Prayer Merc[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Well last update I think we had finished Act 1 (norm).

I've been messing around with Act 2 a bit so far this week (when I haven't been at work... Argh! TOO much work). So far I've done full clears of everything except the Palace. Not really any interesting itamz yet (few more Els and Elds). It Was nice to see the cube (as always) so I could start cubing up gems and Full Rejuvs.

We just defeated the Summoner, had to clear all 4 sides before I found him (which is fine, because I gained a level in the process). It was a pretty typical fight with the Summoner. I had to charge right up into his face in order to tug my merc into noticing the monsters and moving to tank. In the process I took a couple of his cold attacks to the face (among other attacks), I would consider this to be her first NDE of the tournament.

Also I'm beginning to remember how much I hate relying on Mercenaries when I don't have teleport to 'place' them.

[highlight]AlreadyDead, Trapper, Canyon of the Magi, Level 25[/highlight]

-hps

P.s. If you haven't noticed, I'm having troubles deciding whether I should write these from an 'I', 'she/her' or 'we' perspective...

Edit: Also, RIP to those who have died recently.
 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Oh no, another two successful chars down! :dizzy:

Congrats on how far you two did make it, and good luck with your fishyzon Alfonso.

CB
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Wow! Lot's of bad news over the last few hours. However, the long march continues and GeneralJoe now sits in Harrogath, preparing for an assault up the mountain.

The River of Flame was pretty straightforward and cleared easily. The Hellforge dropped me an Eth, a PTopaz and some sapphires. I now have 2 PTopazes and should look to find an appropriate helm with which to use them. Current MF is 257% but I can definitely do more.

The Chaos Sanctuary was pleasant enough. I was worried that my army would fall to IM but I only lost a few soldiers and they were easily replaced by the carnage that my army was making in the first place. The only tough battle was the Infector of Souls. I finally figured out to use Terror to break up the pack and then it was easy pickin's. Diablo annihilated my army in about 1/2 second so I used the tried and true IM + CG method. I could absorb about 2 shots of the ring of fire so I made many trips back to town. I had one NDE where the bulb was quite empty (never checked how empty) and there was one time when Diablo and Joe crossed paths with Diablo taking a bone shield out of the encounter. Joe was trapped once in a bone prison but quickly used the town portal escape route and a long walk from the RoF WP to reengage.

In the end, Diablo went down with a whimper and left me an ilvl 40 Cathan's Seal. Meh for the tournament but good for the grail :)

[highlight]GeneralJoe, lvl 31, Harrogath[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

MOOsaccre, welcome to the forum sir! :D It's really gratifying for the tournament host when someone creates an account to join his/her tournament. I hope you enjoy your stay here, and I highly recommend posting an introduction thread.

* * *​

Ack! Two of our very highest characters gone! :( R.I.P. to Mara and Argoel...

Man, the doll death....how much life did you have? I have a feeling that was a critical hit. They do like 400 damage in NM right? Most characters even in this tournament could probably (barely) tank that, but a crit roll is instant (or perhaps I should say "certain") death.

Those Horror Mages (even none boss packs) already hurt alot in normal. I shudder to think of encountering them in Hell, as our health has fallen farther and farther behind...

Thanks for playing, both of you.

* * *​

Well, nice progress to everyone else. Extra congrats to Morathi for making Destroyer (well, you've done it before, but still). Good luck getting past Drake's grave. I generally find Act V's drops to be sub-par; they usually improve in Nightmare. Also, all those Baal blues have to be failed sets, right? EEk!

Hp, I often have trouble with choosing the point of view as well. ;)
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Commiserations on the new fatalities.:(

I'm thinking of starting a new character probably a summoner. As a long time bnet hardcore player I find having several characters on the go takes the sting out of losing a top character.






Wakiki - Can you confirm that the rules allow necromancers the use of skeletons and other summons such as golem or is only one type of summons allowed if a mercenary is not used?
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Alright, I'm getting in on this too. Just spent 3 hours or so Sorc-ing my way through up to the Black Marsh. Her name's Cody (stolen from Mogwai, standing for "Come on die young"), and she's going to be a Blaze/Glacial Spike hybrid. Why, you ask, would I combine those skills? Hell if I know. I love using Blaze, and I've long wanted to use Glacial Spike as a primary skill, but I never play Sorcs long enough to actually make any use of anything, really.

I'm up to level 15, if memory serves. Still have the Hole and the Tower. Early on I was annoyed at how slowly I killed anything (since most of my skills points were being saved for level 12 and beyond), and a nice little jewel dropped to help me out, leading to this little guy, which I'm probably stuck wearing until I'm comfortable Blaze-ing everything in sight. Putting that on let a Vicious Dirk of the Bear do most of my talking, and it worked out beautifully. Shortly after a NNDE against Rakinisu of all jerks, I turned the players down to 6, which seems to be working just fine. A little later on I found quite a piece of work, which probably takes care of my Armor pre-buff needs until I get offed. Right now I'm using some easily-depleted throwy-sticks to hurt things, and dealing pretty nice damage and knocking things back into my burrito stream. You'll note from that screenie I've had some nice gem luck, too. Anyway, all's well.

Cody, Level 16 Blaze/G. Spiketress, Black Marsh Norm
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

@Morathi: Wow, you certainly zipped past me in a hurry!

Iago seems to be a cool and capable character (almost makes me want to play a shapeshifter right now!), and your gear looks to be a good MF/survival combo for Nightmare. GL with that.


@Lostprophet: your build is very interersting! It´s something I have been thinking about trying for some time now, albeit with some investment in Fire Wall as well, to be able to kill stationary (non-Blaze-able) monsters quicker. Since Fire Mastery is going to get a heavy investment anyway - one may as well take advantage of that. I do not dare to try the build in this tournament, though. I want to have a decent chance of having 1000+ life in the late game for this build to have a fighting chance...
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Well finally time for an update, KillAll my Sorc Enchantress got through Act I, not without some NDE, I started playing her more carefully... really those pesky shamans, had to freeze each of the minions. Had some nice finds on the way, RixotsKeen, two Gnashers and a BloodCrescent.

The fight agains Andy was on p7, but got nothing of use for her, not s single S/U... tried to melee her with the BloodCrescent but it really was too risky so I just ran while my rogue merc got the job done...

For a time I tried lowering the players settings, but it went back up, it just dind't feel right...

Finally at Act II Pratham was hired, much better then a rogue merc and Radament was dispatched without much trouble.

[highlight]KillAll, Sorceress, lvl 21, Lut Gholein[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Tarantella, yes, multiple summons are allowed.

Lostprophet, welcome to the tournament! That's an interesting build. I want to eventually try a Blaze build, probably with a cheaper cold skill (FO) and maybe a cheap lightning skill (If there is one. Preferably T-storm. As a third attack, it might not be so bad.).

And pepi, welcome back sir. :)
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

AlreadyDead & Haseen traveled to the Canyon of the Magi tonight and proceeded to throw Fire Blasts at everything that moved, as well as drinking enough Mana potions to cause serious diarrhea. The Canyon of the Magi is one of my favorite places to clear, but I must admit, I'm getting tired of throwing Fire Blasts (can't wait until LS comes up to speed).

After that we cleared the true tomb first. The idea behind this being, that when I became bored of clearing the false tombs, I wouldn't have to fight my way through boredom to clear the true tomb, I could just kill Duriel and retire for the night. We lasted for about half a false tomb before becoming bored (though I did finish that tomb).

After thrusting the staff into the orifice I had to run up and watch the light show. After the light show my intention was to return to town and enjoy an evenings worth of thawing potions with my merc in about 30 seconds. Of course, I miss clicked and found myself toe to toe with the Bug him-(her?)-self. The procedure was to drop some traps, and then hold down the Fire Blast button, stopping only to feed mr merc pots. I had to TP out twice to refill on booz...err, potions. Haseen was noticeably better at tanking the 2nd and 3rd time around, when he had some thawing potions in him.

Eventually the bug died, and dropped some crap (actually the ring was an upgrade).

By this time, the beer I had purchased on the way home from work had started to set it, so I managed to charge through another 1.5 false tombs before calling it a night.

[highlight]AlreadyDead, Trapper, Act 3 town (currently at the bar with Cain), Level 26[/highlight]

-hps
 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Alfonso the Great – Belated commiserations concerning Aragorn and glad to see that you’ve started up again I really liked reading your updates! (and hats off to you for doing such a comprehensive update after the deeds . . . personally I never have the motivation :thumbup: ).

Drystan – Aargh! Really sorry to hear that a moment of carelessness got you too.

Morathi – Yes! . . those dolls (the ones that didn’t explode) are probably dancing on poor Mara’s corpse . . . someone needs to put an end to that :nod: . . . and congrats on getting your melee character to NM! (and another Cow King’s Hide . . . amazing!)

wakiki – Mara had an embarrassingly large number of hit points (~575 after finding Haemosu’s Adamant) . . . but I was using Players 7 and three dolls rounded the corner . . . two blew up . . . anyway you calculate it . . . RIP. Speaking of RIP, if you remember next time you're updating the table you could give Helen the ol' 'RIP' tag (and in related news and because I haven't said it recently, another big thanks for all your table updating, that's some serious commitment :thumbup: :flowers: )!

Tarantella – what!? . . you’re going to leave us on the edge of our seats and create another character :crazyeyes: . Oh well, best wishes for Damasque whenever you play her!

As for me I’ve deeded four characters from four different classes in four different acts (but only two difficulties) . . . clearly there’s still some room left for more play.

Introducing Hadriela the Frozen Orb / TK / (Firewall or Enchant or Hydra or Tele . . . I haven’t decided yet) Sorceress. Why Frozen Orb? Well the Klingons say: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ (okay, so that really had nothing to do with character selection but I really wanted to work that in . . . ) Anyhow Frozen Orb it is!

Hadriela has completed a full clear of Act 1 at Players 7. As you would expect everything was pretty easy but there were a couple of close calls. The biggest problem causers were archers (multiple shot and extra strong being the worst). The worst near death came early in the Cave Level 1 when Hadriela came upon an obvious Fallen Encampment and charged in to get the Shaman and then discovered that this Fallen Encampment had much more than mere Fallen. The archer group led by the multiple shot unique nearly deeded Hadriela with their initial volley but some fast use of rejuvenation potions prevailed and Hadriela continued on her way.

Hadriela’s first set/unique (a Biggin’s Bonnet) came off a popable in the Dark Wood. Hadriela was tempted to use it but decided to stick with her mf helm and instead put the Biggin’s Bonnet on the merc and pretended that the plus 30% ed was doing something good :grin: . The Countess was done at Players 1 but didn’t drop much. Hadriela’s second set/unique came in the Tamoe Highland (a Felloak) . . . totally useless for this tournament considering the plus 60% lightning resistance would make it unusable until at least NM. There weren’t any other set/unique finds not even at Andariel (you’d think 70 mf and Players 7 would get you more)!

General strategy throughout was really boring (so I won’t say much) . . . mostly Hadriela would cast Frost Nova or later Glacial Spike and then pretend to melee monsters with some pathetic weapon while the merc did all the real damage :whistling: . So considering the merc is the real source of damage (maybe the brains too . . . hard to say at this point) Hadriela is really pleased to be through Act 1 and onto Act 2 and the oh so wonderful desert mercs!

Here were Hadriela's stats at the end of Act 1.

[highlight]Hadriela, Frozen Orb/TK, Lut Gholein, Level 20[/highlight]

Oh, and because it was too wonderfully ironic not to mention; when I went to create an ATMA stash for Hadriela I opened Mara (old habits you know) and noticed that first, it wasn’t Hadriela, and second there were two grand charms stored in Mara’s Cube that I hadn’t had a chance to ID. One of the charms was a useless plus life grand charm that wasn’t as good as the one that Mara was using . . . the other was an Entrapping Grand Charm :banghead: . . . that death keeps getting worse and worse . . .

But enough! No more Mara, it’s time for Hadriela! :alright:
 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

My goodness, so many heavy hitters in this tourney have had setbacks! My sympathy to you all and thanks for re-joining!

Act3 mini-update here. I'm just about to descend into the Kurast sewers, having fully-cleared up to (just before) the Travincal Causeway. Players 5 above ground, P1 below - except for the Spider Cavern, that was P5 (because I forgot!).
I saw something that utterly shocked me in the 'Cavern ... Sszark shattered my merc. I was stunned when I saw it! (Thinking back though, I've seen this before.) I portalled out and upon our return, gave the big spider the respect he deserves.

I considered leaving The Great Marsh alone as far as possible, but in the end I felt I could cope. First skiller GC here.

In the Flayer Dungeon, Ichorsting continued to prove useful, but not as useful as DV. Some foes could not be DV'd - other measures were required. Eventually, the entrance to Kurast proper beckoned, although the welcome left a lot to be desired.

This guy was nearly the death of me. He never got me down to less than half HP, but the number of bolts I had to dodge was frightening. A mis-click would have been fatal. Here you can see the OW from my crafted belt in effect. This was a cool encounter and visually entertaining, too.

Thankfully, I remembered to P1 before descending the first of the Kurast Temples - forgetting would have meant deeds for sure. The first boss pack threatened to drive me out with hardly a foot in the door, DV and frantic dodging were required. DV was difficult though, there were so many pop-ables and features that I struggled to fire a spell off! The Wailers were seen off and Witherstick was offered the question, "Do you feel lucky?". The answer was "No", as Sarina and her crew interrupted the photo shoot. They were so fast they were essentially teleporting. Somewhere in the subsequent melee, I triggered the monster shrine ... a lonely Fanatic Spider Magus was the result. Other temples had their fun with me, but they were tame compared with the Lam Esen one.

LCS readout as of now is here. This was not a mini-update, in retrospect.


Stuff
Skills
Amp, Weaken, IM, Terror, Decrep, Life Tap. Lower Res - 1 pt (3 pts)
DV - 10 (12)
BA - 1 (5)
BW - 16 (20)
PDag - 20 (24)
PExp - 10 (14)
Teeth, CE - 1 (3) (Pre-reqs only, not to be used)

BA - 300
Block - 75%
MF - 8% (who needs it?) :)
Useful charms, GC 27 Life, LC 14 Life/16 AR, SC 12 Life, plus some with +FRW, +FHR, +Cold Dam, +Lite Dam and of course, resists.

Notable Drops- the game has remembered that it can drop Uniques - Snakecord Light Belt and Warlord's Trust Military Axe were the token efforts. I'm feeling the Crafting itch again. Soon, maybe.

Act Highlight - so far, the Temple with Lam Esen's tome in it - pure adrenalin rush.

[highlight]WitherStick, Poison Daggermancer, Level 61, Kurast Sewers (NM)[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Alright, I'm back in. Got to avenge all those recent deeds (and the table is long enough that no one will notice my embarrassingly large number of failures). This time I'll go for a Strafeazon with good Valk. Since I haven't played an (x)bow-zon since the days of the mighty burrito-cannon, this counts as "trying something new" for me. To show my unwavering confidence in this new project I decided to name her "SoapBubble" (i.e. couldn't think of something creative)(I considered reprising my previous attempt at glory, but somehow "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of_Worlds_II" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)(naming a character is really the most difficult part for me)(:heart:parentheses).

So of I went. For the first part of A1 I chose the /p7 (nearly) full clear route with a hunter's bow full of chippies and topazed armor and hat. This began to slow down in the cats so I simply dropped to /p3 and stopped clearing the levels. Andariel was pretty easy accordingly.
One set drop, nothing else of interest.

Next I casually started A2 on /p5 and cleared only as much as necessary to find my way (which was quite much since I constantly got lost). Drops still picked up: Gorefoots, Pelta Lunata, the unique Spiked Club, Isenharts Helm and finally these.
That means that of my 5 HC tournament chars who have cleared A2 (that excludes only the killed-off Throwbarb) 3 have found Cleglaws gloves somewhere in A2Norm + these 3 chars were the ones who can really use them. Very convenient coincidence :thumbup:
For Duriel I switched to /p1 to get it done and he retaliated with this drop (actually one green may be my best Duriel Norm drop yet).

On arrival in the Kurast Docks I shopped this pretty circlet and that is where things stand now.

[highlight]Soapbubble, lvl 25 Strafeazon, Kurast Docks[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Welcome back, scrcrw! Strafer is definitely the way to go in this tourney - they're used to having no vitality!

Good luck and gratz on the super-useful Cleglaw's - my character has one salted away, too!

ps ouch Circlet - gieb :)
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

HanShotFirst said:
Introducing Hadriela the Frozen Orb / TK / (Firewall or Enchant or Hydra or Tele . . . I haven’t decided yet) Sorceress. Why Frozen Orb? Well the Klingons say: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ (okay, so that really had nothing to do with character selection but I really wanted to work that in . . . ) Anyhow Frozen Orb it is!
Click to expand...

I like Frozen Orb, a lot. Is your plan to go with a fully-synergized, very high cold mastery FO?

I'm also curious about your plans for TK. I'm assuming that's telekinesis (as I can't remember any other skill that has T and K). Are you going to try to use it for an ES synergy but not put hard points into ES?

Good luck



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

@ the posters above me, thanks for the warm welcome :thumbup:

Well, time for my fist progress update

moossacre darted out of the rogue camp, largely ignoring all the people that wanted to talk to her (only listening to some witch telling her to go and kill stuff in a cave).
since she both likes caves AND to kill stuff, it seemed like a solid plan to her.

So off she went, hurling javelins at basicly erverything that moved, till nothing was able to move anymore.
During her killing spree in the moor and the cave she picked up some usefull stuff (some c.topazess,a charm with 10 life, a charm with +2 frostdmg, and probably most notably 3(!!) rare wands wich g(r)heed somehow found worth around 15000 gold).
With this gold she bought a decent long bow, and a socketed cap+ringmail to stuff in some shiny yellow gems, the rest was shamelessly gambled away resulting in a +5 life + f/p resist belt and a pair of gloves with 11% magic find.

Now she took some time in camp, just to let kashya tell her that she is an amazone (as if she didnt know that), and that she should go blow up some blood-raven.
Once again moossacre went out to shoot stuff up, killing blood raven and her army and clearing both crypta (during wich nothing interesting dropped).

Ater talking to kashya, one of the rogues seemed to take a liking in moossacre and started to follow her wherever she went. And so after listening to akara telling moossacre to tear the bark off a tree to help some old geezer (where does she get these ideas from?), she went out again to do just that.
A lot of dead demons later she released the old man, and took her time to speak to the volk in the camp and curse akara for somehow thinking bowazones need a +10% faster cast rate ring. (no interesting finds save a truckload of chipped gems and rejuv potions, i already had to mule 2 stashes full of those into atma, also the countess somehow did not drop a rune leaving me with 0 runes)

Charsi sweet-talked moossacre intro bringing her the horadric malus (bring me the hammer and ill make you something awesome!!) well.. lets just say that that not even my merc could have used the crap mods on the imbued bow i got from her, but i did gamble a helm with some poison resist + 2 sockets and two greens dropped (artic belt, and the poison reduce shield)

The jail and catacombs were cleared slow but steady (not having my main attack yet, shooting stuff with a ~20 dmg bow on /players 8 takes a while). The only thing on the way to andariel that was close to dieing once, was my merc (running head on into a fanaticsm aura demon pack)
The maiden of anguish herself got peppered with arrows, but killed my merc in the process (damn you 8 space belt!.. needs more antidote), anyway one lesser evil less to worry about and a lot of useless loot more to worry about.

Conclusion : a slow, decent start with a lot of gems and rejuvs but not one rune (i will have a lot of cubing to do soon)

stats after act1 normal on /players 8:
--------------------------------------
char: moossacre
class: amazone
level: 20
Planned skillset: strafe,valk,guided arrow + passive

talents:
bow/crossbow skills: magic arrow,multishot,cold arrow, guided arrow: each 1
passive/magic skills: inner sight,slow missiles,dodge,avoid: each 1 .. critical strike: 8 penetrate:2
leftover skill points : 2

stats:


str: 48
dex: 92
vit: 20(base)
ene: 15(base)

to be continued.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

@Wakiki: I considered Orb, but I want to avoid feeling like this is a FO Sorc with Blaze thrown in for good measure. Of course, right now in Act 2 with the merc killing just about everything I feel kind of like an Cold Wolf myself, but them's the breaks (and it won't be true against Duriel or in the Throne Room, if/when I get that far).

@jiansonz: I threw a point into Fire Wall under consideration and may put more in there as I pump Fire Mastery.

Anyway, the end of Act 1 was basically a breeze. I'd had had Alt pressed down you'd see that I can't use my first unique (until Nightmare), because it's Felloak Club which adds a whopping 60 to LR. The game next taunted me for not being a Necromancer, and then dropped me these to make up for it. Andy's drop looks pretty decent, anyway, but the only thing that might have been interesting was the belt and I was wearing a better one already (though, if I'd been a Druid, I would have run around for a minute or two clubbing things with what turned out to be a this dual-leecher).

And so Act 2 began in earnest. I've been pelting things with a rare Balanced Knife I gambled toward the end of Act 1, with some life leech and an Increased Stack size. Blaze is up to level 11 and does over 100 damage a second (and lasts for about 15), and Glacial Spike is sitting on level 5 (I'm 22). I just picked up the cube, and as I mentioned previously my merc basically does all the killing - I stand back and Glacial Spike/huck knives as needed. It's funny the things this tournament makes you appreciate: a little extra Stamina on a charm, for instance. Or a +7 life GC. I'm up to 96 life (and around 120 mana) at the moment - thanks in large part to this recently gambled beauty - and nothing scary has really happened yet in Act 2. With my Tangerine Bone Shield of Deflecting I have 75% block, and between the Hsaru's boots and that belt I have 50 FR exactly, though I worry about finding a good non-boots non-belt item that I have to shelve so as not to tip 50.

On to the Far Oasis.

[highlight]Cody, Level 22 Blaze/G. Spike Sorceress, Dry Hills (Norm)[/highlight].
 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

A belated welcome to MOOsaccre and Lostprophet. I have to comment on LP's Zidane avatar - that GIF on Youtube nearly killed me, I laughed so hard.

Good luck, you two. To get the gold writing, just add [highlight][/ highlight] around the text you want [highlight]highlighted[/highlight] (remove the space I left between the / and the h)
 
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