Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Billy has made it through Act 1 in a very slow and tedious manor. The only thing that saved him through the jail and catacombs was the fact that the doors are so small that you can lure boss packs to them and then stand behind the clay golem hitting them one at a time. Stat distribution started off really low to vitality but thanks to a level (i think 19) where 4 out of the 5 went to it they are now about even for distribution.

Strength 43 (+28)
Dexterity 45 (+20)
Vitality 38 (+23)
Energy 49 (+24)

As for skills they have been horrible. I have put one more point into teeth than into the entire summoning tree. My skeletons get one hit by everything and by the end of Act 1 were just used to kill corpses so they couldn't be resurrected. My clay golem is tough and survives as long as only one person is really hitting him. I have mostly been using amplify damage for curses as dim vision has such a small range with one point, and I do have a wand the corpse explosion on switch which sometimes helps clear areas.

Summoning Spells
Raise Skeleton – 2
Clay Golem – 1

Poison and Bone spells
Teeth – 4
Bone armor – 2
Poison Dagger - 2
Bone wall – 1

Curses
Amplify Damage – 2
Dim vision – 1
Weaken – 2
Iron maiden – 3

Overall I am very worried for Act 2 because it is so much more open and there are more ranged attackers. Hopefully I start to get some more useful skills and I will have to try to find a better weapon than my socketed spear.

[Highlight]Billy the Necromancer, Level 20, Lut Gholein, NM Holy Freeze Merc to come[/Highlight]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

@Bee: Oh dear, it's a long way to go till Act II NM until you get your merc...but here are some ideas meanwhile:

Once you got the cube, roll the savage polearm recipe and try to get a Scythe - that's the best polearm you can currently wield. Save other rolls (esp. Partizans!!) for later - either for you or your merc - a savage Partizan can even get you and your merc through NM.

You can even try the 3 chippies + magical weapon recipe - you can get "massive" (up to +65% damage) on the weapon and maybe a 2nd mod, as well as 1-2 sockets. You could try this on a wand, too - Static (up to 1-120 lightning damage) or Fiery (up to 25-60 fire damage) are common Affixes, and you probably get new staff mods, too.

Jiansonz also likes to imbue wands at Charsi's, IIRC: You can get some nice affixes there, too (individual resists up to +40%, elemental damage like above).

Also, use Bone Armor a lot (if you don't do it already) :)

Good luck for your journey! Hope you make it till Act II NM - with your merc, everything will get easier (him making the first killing blow, you - hopefully - having some levels in CE by then). :thumbsup:
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

@Bee: I got a Necromancer to Act V with pretty much only a Clay Golem to hide behind. Main weapon was a 'Steel' Flail - the Open Wounds did most of the damaging work through Act IV with all of its beefy mosters.

Billy is already strong and dextrous enough for a Flail, and you can buy socketed ones from Charsi. You just need Tir + El. Bone Shield of Deflecting gives you some good blocking, and can pretty easily be bought from Drognan. But then you don´t get any staffmods from the shield on that setup.

A tip for the next two acts: look for Poison Explosion staffmods on wands/heads. A couple of levels in PE lets you kill large packs with a few castings (and it only costs 8 mana per use) once you get a corpse. Very useful in the Act II doorways. Get the golem to tank in the doorway, hit with your Flail from behind the golem, and use PE when something dies. It´s a very good skill against big Flayer packs, too.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

I must confess that Clotho, the random Amazon that I started playing back in January, has succumbed to the Summoner's Glacial Spike.

I think not having a merc (I rolled a Lightning Iron Wolf merc) counted for a lot more than I realized - quite often there's an Act 2 mercenary taking that punishment from the Summoner. Clotho didn't have the Decoy skill available either.

Since I couldn't leave it at that a replacement character was rolled - a necromancer, again with the Lightning Iron Wolf mercenary. But I'm already playing a necromancer in the Revenge of the Overlooked tournament so it will probably be a while before I play this character (I fear getting confused if I simultaneously play two different characters in the same class).
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

@Grisu: Ya using the cube for a salvage polearm was the origional plan upon entering act 2, however after using a socketed brandistock for the beginning of the act I just couldn't stand the slow speed. As for bone armor I have found it amazing and am constantly making sure to have it casted.

@Jiansonz: That runeword probable saved Billy's life and kept me from going crazy playing him. Thanks for the advice.

Billy started Act 2 slowly, using a socketed brandistock and killed only one monster at a time. His favorite part was the maggot lair as it made killing one monster at a time possible without any maneuvering. At this point I was getting very frustrated with the slow kill speed and what was becoming an impossible task. Then I decided to take a break and read the SPF, where Jiansonz provided some excellent advice. Billy got his "steel" flail and went to work killing faster then ever before and gaining confidence by the second. This confidence led him to reconsider his earlier plan to lower the player settings before going into the claw viper temple level 2. Woops. Upon entering, his useless skeletons ran to both sides and awoke many snakes pushing Billy back towards the door despite his best efforts to recast his clay golem, cast confuse, and cast bone wall to slow the snakes down. Fangskin was leading the charge and Billy was forced back to the entrance being hit from all sides and drinking full rejuve potions to avoid dying. He barely escaped though the door. He took a portal back to town to get more pots and recast his golem, knowing this could be their last fight together. Upon entering Billy spam cast confuse everywhere and it worked. Billy was able to focus on Fangskin and take him down, although he did have to leave a couple times due to the lightning enchantment taking his health down. From then on Billy had found his favorite skill. All of the archers in the palace cellar were not a problem. Confuse has more range than dim vision and lasts longer, it was a life saver. Plus the monsters end up just hurting each other making them easier to kill. In fact Billy's new doorway trick was to have the front of the pack amped and the back confused so they would just hit each other while Billy was working to get to them.

This led to an interesting discovery, it appears that if a monster is confused and then you cast Amp onto them the monster will remain under the effects of confused, that is they still attack each other for the amount of time remaining on the curse but they also appear to be amped. Of course from reading arreat summit this shouldn't happen and the curses shouldn't stack so I don't exactly know if this is a known bug, but either way it is very helpful because I haven't had to cast my Amp as carefully.

Stats have been even and are listed below:

Strength 54 (+39)
Dexterity 53 (+28)
Vitality 48 (+33)
Energy 55 (+30)

As for skills, I was hoping to have decrepify before fighting Duriel but that appears very unlikely right now so not sure what my plan is going to be. I also wouldn't mind getting some points into clay golem or golem mastery or something that helps my golem survive better as he is started to get pretty weak. Two tombs down and the match with Duriel to come soon.

Summoning Spells
Skeleton Mastery - 1
Raise Skeleton - 2
Clay Golem - 1
Raise Skeletal Mage - 1
Blood golem - 1

Poison and Bone spells
Teeth - 4
Bone armor - 3
Poison dagger - 3
Bone wall - 1

Curses
Amplify Damage - 2
Weaken - 2
Dim Vision - 1
Iron Maiden - 4
Confuse - 2

[Highlight]Billy the Necromancer, Level 27, clearing Tal Rasha Tombs, NM Holy Freeze Merc to come[/Highlight]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Bee said:
As for skills, I was hoping to have decrepify before fighting Duriel but that appears very unlikely right now so not sure what my plan is going to be. I also wouldn't mind getting some points into clay golem or golem mastery or something that helps my golem survive better as he is started to get pretty weak. Two tombs down and the match with Duriel to come soon.
Click to expand...

Golem + Iron Maiden works nicely against Duriel. Get at least one column of mana potions, so you can almost "spam" the golem (cast a new one each time it takes a hit, whether it lives or dies, so that Duriel keeps his focus on the golem).



 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Just a quick update for me. Billy finished off Duriel without too much trouble and headed into Act 3. In Act three there were a number of NDE the first main one came in the spider cavern when and extra strong cursed spider was waiting for Billy just off on the first path. Then there were a couple NDE's in the flyer jungle due to getting surrounded and a massive number of flyers being hard to handle. The next couple NDE experiences came in the first temple I entered. There wasn't anything particularly hard, just losing focus and twice almost died due to getting surrounded.

I think the slow progress can make you lose focus and then with a character that is less than optimal the loss of focus can really cause trouble. Billy was down to below 1/5th life probably 5 times in Act 3 so far, I honestly don't know how he isn't dead yet.

Right now Billy is level 31, and has finished clearing the Kurast Bazzar, the two temples in the Bazzar as well as the entire sewers.

Considering making malice in a flail as it has 100% open woods and more damage compared to steel, though not too sure about the drain life. I also found crushflange so hopefully the CB comes in handy against some Act bosses.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Ok, so I hate to do a second update in a row but Billy has been progressing on. He started to hit his stride and played the rest of Act 3 fairly well, only having trouble with Meph. Then in Act 4 Billy got some lucky monster rolls never running into anything that took too long. One problem he did face was with the oblivion knights as he can't use most of my curses on them. As well the sanctuary took forever as all of the monsters had a lot of health and I basically had to isolate each one slowly taking them down. Interesting fight with the infector of souls as I had them into smaller packs and away from the boss. With no points in summon resists my clay golem gets one hit by the Inferno fire attack they have. Using dim vision works on all of the minions but in order to separate them I was running around in circles trying to cast a bone wall between the boss and the minions then fighting them in groups of two or three.

Diablo wasn’t horrible, I had hoped to try to figure out how to post screen shots but for some reason photobucket won't let me register. Anyway my original strategy was to run in with crushflang and try to avoid his attacks as the CB took his life down. This didn't work at all he just kept using his lightning hose and I was running more then anything. So I went to my stash and got my wand that has +3 to golem mastery and +2 to clay golem and used that. He went down to a lot of clay golems and Iron Maiden leaving a pile of about 40 dead clay golems.

Heading into Act 5 I know I need to play this Act on a lower player setting because my speed was starting to become too slow and keeping a crowd away for 10 seconds so you can take down one monster with decent health is not always possible. Might try to play this act on 5 players or 3 depending on how it goes.

@jiansonz: As for NM if I ever do manage to get there, I was planning on lowering the player setting to 1 running thought the entire act, killing nobody, except in the underground passage and catacombs level 4. Then when I get my merc from Act 2 come back to clear the Act except for the underground passage and catacombs level 4. I would be using the rule that if I killed a monster in an area that area would no longer be available for coming back to. I was just curious if this would be allowed under the single pass philosophy?

[Highlight]Billy the Necromancer, Level 34, Harrogath, NM Holy Freeze Merc to come[/Highlight][/QUOTE]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Bee said:
@jiansonz: As for NM if I ever do manage to get there, I was planning on lowering the player setting to 1 running thought the entire act, killing nobody, except in the underground passage and catacombs level 4. Then when I get my merc from Act 2 come back to clear the Act except for the underground passage and catacombs level 4. I would be using the rule that if I killed a monster in an area that area would no longer be available for coming back to. I was just curious if this would be allowed under the single pass philosophy?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. Sounds like a good plan.



 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Big update for Billy this time as he progressed through Act 5. He started the bloody foothills at 5 players and was pleased to be joined by some helping friends they didn't last very long thought. Then Billy progressed onto shenk. After that battle Billy realized that 5 players were to many and did the rest of the act on 3. He also realized that without summon resist he would have to kill all elemental attackers so he got an ancient pledge shield so he would have max resists. Finally Billy changes flails from a steel to malice.

After this Billy progressed until the ancients. He fought Korlic first while Madawc was playing some darts against the pillar. Then onto Madawc. Finally Talic decided that he wanted to bleed everywhere.

Slowly Billy continued until finally all of baals minions were dead including Lister. Then I began my fight against Baal.

Finally, Victory. As you can see it came at the cost of many golem sacrifices and the use of iron maiden. Honestly the most annoying part of this act was the imps because they just run around everywhere.

As for stats I have been pretty lucky and have gotten a lot in vitality. Skills, I'm still missing on in summon resist, meaning my golem dies to any elemental attack. As well, I don't have any points in decrepify or corpse explosion. This means I have to switch often to my wand with CE.

Onto NM now and hopefully I can run though Act 1 and get my merc.



[Highlight]Billy the Necromancer, Level 42, Act 1 NM, NM Holy Freeze Merc to come[/Highlight]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Nice going!

If you can leave some Act I areas untouched, you can go back with your merc and clear them later. Hopefully, you can equip him with a nice weapon.


I haven´t played my Paladin for some time now. I enjoy my Exposure tourney character too much, plus I´ve played in the SUTC tourney.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

I'm sorry to report Billy has died. It happened as I was trying to run through Act 1. I made it to the barracks easy enough but then the first room I ran into was the one with the smith. As I tried to escape I was cornered be carvers, as and the smith was able to hit over them and quickly killed me as I was drinking purples, trying to get free. It was a fun tournament and I have a new appreciation for how powerful necro curses can be. I was so close to finally getting my merc too.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

It's been a while, but I finished up a few other projects and have picked this one back up :thumbup:

Last we saw Konfus she was getting ready to take on the normal council, along with her trusty Cold Rogue.

I quickly reacquainted myself with the fact that the merc would be doing most of the killing, since I have no real damaging skills to speak of. I used mostly my blood crescent, which has nice mods, but the OW was the most helpful in killing. Static was the only spell I used though.

Nothing to troubling, Dolls in the durance 2, which I used ice blast to freeze for the merc to kill. Meph went down pretty easily, as all normal bosses should, for a sorc, nice drop for having 230 mf on the kill :rolleyes:

The beginning of act 4 continued to be pretty easy, Souls on the plains, and lots of finger mages, and spawners made things a little tough, but nothing she couldn't handle.

Things got noticeably more difficult in the RoF: Spawners, venom lords, and Mages. They were hitting a lot harder than the previous area. Halfway through the are though, my salvation came: a orb with +3 meteor and +2 Chain light. Since the merc won't tank for me, I do the meteor tanking: static, static, meteor...repeat. Works pretty well, and much things much faster! Forge was pretty good, rune-wise at least. That will likely go into a spirit sword once I get a 4os sword. Once I got to the WP I made a ancient's pledge in a large shield, as I had a couple of ORTs drop in act 4 already, that allowed me to use the orb, drop some charms, and still have max resists in fire/light. Also brought in my hotspurs that I wound a while back, just for the Diablo fight.

It wasn't too bad doing chaos, everything went down fairly safely. Using iceblast to freeze boss pack minions proved to still be a good tactic. I found this lovely half way through the CS. I wish I could wield it all the time, but then I have no meteor. So I am keeping it on switch. Diablo wasn't too bad, with 90% fire resist, his fire attacks are pretty harmless. He did catch me a few times with the pink hose, but that's what I have full juves for. I put the gull in the main slot, as the only spell I was going to use on him was static. Had about 295 MF on his kill, but he followed in his little brothers footsteps. Its no consolation that 2 of them were failed s/u :(

Looking forward to getting some more levels in act 5, and hopefully progressing down the skill trees a bit more.

stats: 4 str, 3 dex, 6 vita, 7 energy

skills: 2x Shiver armor, Tk, Light mastery, Fireball, Ice bolt.

The only two that are any good are the mastery, and fireball( which is my first point) I would really like a point in enchant, but I now have 22 skills to pick from, so things aren't looking good for getting what I want.

Still kept with /p8 full clears

[highlight]Konfus the Sorceress, level 35, Harogath, and Hannah the cold rogue[/highlight]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

More progress :)

Act 5 has been completed! I refined my strategy a bit and was able to get that gull dagger on my main switch. I keep static on the gull switch and blizzard ready on the other switch, it requires a fair amount of weapon switching, but I still use mostly static, depending on the monster types. The only real tough spots were with the Death Lords on levels 3+4 of wsk, if I got more than one of them on me it got pretty dangerous, and blizzard doesn't do enough damage, so I have to static them some. Lister was also a pain, fortunately I had gotten G spike a few levels back, so it allowed me to take on a couple at a time. But when I got to lister I couldn't kill him! I could get him down very low, but at that point static would not do enough damage to overcome his regen. Decided to shop for a poison bow for the merc, found one and it made very short work of him. Baal was also a issue. I went in there guns-a-blazin! figured I'd just tele-stomp him and static him down, what could go wrong? Well, the fact that I have 329 life could be a problem I suppose :rolleyes: He took me down to below 100 life in one shot! ouch! got out of there and took a little bit more of a strategic approach, things went a lot better after that :) Drop was dang good statistically at least, I may up the bow once I get a SOL. Everything in his drop was S/U or failed S/U (can't tell on the rare bow though) Still looking for that dang Angelic ring(s) as I have all the rest of the set. I could really use that 75 to life (among the other awesome mods)

Cows were also a bit scary until I got a good strategy going, they only had a 36% cth me, but a few unlucky rolls and it could get real ugly when you are trying to static them.

I predict NM being a lot tougher, but we will see what happens

Code: 
Name:       Konfus
Class:      Sorceress
Experience: 44190563
Level:      49

            Naked/Gear
Strength:   64/71 <----using charms for my greaves
Dexterity:  87/96
Vitality:   75/75
Energy:     99/99 <----too much!
HP:         238/332 <---this is scary! Especially the base number!
Mana:       259/301
Stamina:    187/192
Defense:    21/205
AR:         385/2580

Fire:       116/76/16 <----Pretty good resists still :)
Cold:       56/16/-44
Lightning:  120/80/20
Poison:     58/18/-42

MF:         324  <-----Yay! And I still need an armor upgrade     
Block:      26
GF:         0
FR/W:       0
FHR:        0
IAS:        0
FCR:        0

Fire Bolt: 4/4
Warmth: 5/5
Inferno: 1/1
Blaze: 1/1
Fire Ball: 2/2
Fire Wall: 0/0 <---Boo!
Enchant: 0/0 <---Boo!
Meteor: 0/0 <---Boo!
Fire Mastery: 2/2
Hydra: 0/0

Charged Bolt: 4/4
Static Field: 3/3
Telekinesis: 4/4
Nova: 0/0
Lightning: 1/1
Chain Lightning: 0/0
Teleport: 3/3
Thunder Storm: 0/0
Energy Shield: 0/0
Lightning Mastery: 3/3

Ice Bolt: 4/4
Frozen Armor: 4/4
Frost Nova: 2/2
Ice Blast: 2/2
Shiver Armor: 3/3
Glacial Spike: 1/1
Blizzard: 0/0       <---Boo!
Chilling Armor: 1/1
Frozen Orb: 0/0   <---Boo!
Cold Mastery: 2/2

All a5 was done on p8 (-ancients) and I will keep with it as long as I feel safe in NM.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Act 1 NM proved to be far more challenging than Act 5! I quickly decided that my 329 life was not going to cut it! So I did a massive shopping session at charsi.

I shopped these things:

Code: 
Grinding Hunter's Bow of Butchery 
Hunter's Bow 
Two Hand Damage: 2 - 85 
Durability: 22 of 32 
Required Level: 37 
Required Dexterity: 28 
Fingerprint: 0x3dc403dc 
Item Level: 54 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
+40 to Maximum Damage 
+39 to Maximum Damage (Based on Character Level) 

Mechanic's Ring Mail of the Squid 
Ring Mail 
Defense: 45 
Durability: 25 of 26 
Required Level: 30 
Required Strength: 36 
Fingerprint: 0x55bcd906 
Item Level: 54 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
+73 to Life 
48% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items 2 Sockets (2 used) 
Socketed: Perfect Topaz 
Socketed: Perfect Topaz

Russet Belt of the Squid 
Belt 
Defense: 5 
Durability: 16 of 16 
Required Level: 30 
Required Strength: 25 
Fingerprint: 0x80b393fe 
Item Level: 54 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
+78 to Life 
Fire Resist +15%

That gave me a red bulb of around 460, which felt much safer. The bow gives the rogue about 50-250 damage, which coupled with static and Gspike works pretty well. The most dangerous part of the act was the Countess' tower, as I expected. I got 3 levels with moderate stair traps, the worst being level 5, which started with a goat pack in the first area. On all 3 of those levels I had to make blind teleports to find a safe spot, but I got lucky and they worked out. Everything was done on p8, except for Cata 4, which was done on p3. Andy wasn't too bad, I static'ed her while the merc was still alive. I got most of the rest of her life with orb ( I found a +1 FO orb back in cata 2) then I finished her off with my super powerful level level 3 fireball, so that I could have my MF switch active. Nothing useful dropped, along with the rest of the act.

No useful new skill points were rolled, and only 3/20 points went to vita :(

[highlight]Konfus & Hannah the cold rogue, level 53, act 2 NM [/highlight]

I encountered a weird bug at a gem shrine. I had gone back to town and picked up a flawless topaz to up. I came back, hit the shrine, the P topaz fell, I quickly clicked to pick it up, but missclicked at the shrine again. When I did that, a Flawless sapphire popped out! Very strange!
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

kestegs said:
I encountered a weird bug at a gem shrine. I had gone back to town and picked up a flawless topaz to up. I came back, hit the shrine, the P topaz fell, I quickly clicked to pick it up, but missclicked at the shrine again. When I did that, a Flawless sapphire popped out! Very strange!
Click to expand...

What a cool bug! And very strange. Did you carry a mid-sized sapphire, or was a flawless just produced out of thin air?



 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Just out of thin air, I am always sure to double check that I don't have anything else on me. I have gotten 3 gem shrines (wow!) with this character since then, but have been unable to reproduce that result.
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

I am progressing, slowly but steadily. What´s killing the monsters is Ithera´s bow, a +162% Large Siege Bow with Anthrax damage and a little Monster Flee. Brian lends her level 12 Might, and tank/Smite support.

The fleeing was quite annoying in the AS, leading to several Specters getting killed out in space, leaving no drops there. Two of them that did get killed above ground dropped flawless topazes though, so now Ithera has a 3x PTopaz helmet just like Brian. A 4s Gothic Plate is now in my stash - one there are two PTopazes there, it will become Ithera´s new armor. Brian is going to continue with the full Angelic Raiment a while longer.

One of the random skill points went to Smite, adding 0.2 seconds stun. Since I use it ALL the time, every bit of extra stun helps whenever I need to tank more than one monster.


[Highlight]Brian the Might-Smite Paladin and Ithera the Cold Rogue, level 59, NM five last Tal's Tombs next.[/Highlight]
 
Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II

Hey im going to kind of join this tourny


i will play it but will not do single pass and therefore cannot acatuly take part, but will have fun in the process :)
 
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