@Bee - Good luck in the CVT!
@bladejj - Normal Diablo can be a real challenge depending on where your character is in their development. Great job beating him, I look forward to hearing about it.
@thefranklin - Great progress, but don't count yourself out too early on getting through NM/Hell! A couple big finds could completely switch the dynamic for you. That bonesnap can be an enormous help with the big CB, and if you can score a good merc weapon/some decent rune luck, your merc can become quite the tank. Having the bear to take the heat off him will help as well. We believe in you (and FollowTheBear)!
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Calabi resumed her quest and finished clearing out the Crystalline Passage before heading down to try and save Anya. She drew Lancers, Snakes, and Prowling Dead in the Frozen River. The lack of Gloams made it very easy, and not at all memorable. At least Anya was pleased to be back in town. As usual, we decided to clear up to and including the Frozen Tundra before taking on Nihlathak's Temple. The Glacial Trail started off on a rockey note, when
this boss pack turned out to be very hard to seperate. As you can see they had no problem killing Kasim. In fact, they killed him about 7 times. It was a bit nerve wracking, as we hadn't explored alot yet (see minimap) and really didn't want to wake anything else up. We ended up getting pushed right back to the entrance, left Kasim dead, and had the valk take them while the decoy took some pressure off. The rest of the Glacial Trail was easy, and the Icy Cavern went pretty well, although there were a couple spots where we had to be quite careful with Ghost and Succubi boss packs. Here is a fun SS to show what we had to deal with: (did I mention I LOVE Slow MIssiles?)
The Frozen Tundra was easy, so once it and it's accompanying Hell portal (Infernal Pit?) were cleared out, we took a break to do some muling. In came the 'Nadir' helm, and the 'Black' flail, as preparation and insurance for the Halls of Vaught. So in through the portal we went. Pindle's garden was easy, we managed to get into a good spot and use the pillars and bushes to funnel the reanimators into easily manageable groups for Kasim and the valk. The whole garden was cleared from this point with no problems:
Once we were done with them, we woke old Pindle up, and
drew him out into the garden to take him where there was enough space. With Pindle dead, and his drop useless, we went down the stairs. Level 1 was cleared without trouble, we drew all easy monsters (flayers, devilkin, I can't even remember the third draw, maybe apes). In Level 2 we met up with a pack right off the bat that had the potential to be
absolutely terrifying, as we had basically nowhere to retreat to. We had to constantly spam Decoy to keep the boss and 1 or 2 minions busy, while Kasim and the valk whittled the others down. It took some time, as these guys have 66% Physical Resistance. Luckily we kept them contained, and they went down without issue, it sure was tense though! After clearing the rest of the level with no hiccups, and so it was time to go down and face Nilly.
We descended the stairs and were immediately rushed by a group of Ghosts. As we were dealing with them some Prowling dead came creeping in from off screen. Good, those are both very manageable monster types, even if they are slightly annoying. We managed to back them all into a corner and killed them with no scares, then went back to town to use Demon Limb to enchant the three of us so that the Ghosts would go more quickly. We crept down the first wing, going as slowly as possible until we found out what the third monster draw would be. We made it through the big room of the first wing and then we saw it. A little glimmer of green, it was Tomb Vipers. So we backed off and portalled back to town, with a big decision on our hands. We had come so far, it was really disappointing that we would lose the (almost entirely /p5) full clear at this point to those damned bugged vipers, but losing a character to such a ridiculous bug and not knowing if we would have been able to complete the journey would be really tough to get over. So after alot of debating, we took the WP up to the frozen tundra to continue on to the Ancient's Way and try to forget the fact that there would just have to be some monsters left to live out their days in the Halls of Vaught in peace. Sometimes you just have to make the tough decision.
Just kidding
Calabi wasn't going to let the full clear slip away now. It was either them or her. So she strapped on her 'Nadir' Helm and jumped back down the portal knowing full well in an instant it could all be over. We pasted ourselves to a wall where the vipers couldn't get us, and tried to come up with a game plan. I say "tried", because the valk instantly rounded the corner and woke them all up. CoS was cast, Slow Missiles was cast (I had no idea if it did anything to help with the bug, but I really didn't want to find out). In came the green, and then this happened:
Do you see what I see? The valk must be immune to poison, what a lucky break! Calabi stood exactly where you see her, and the snakes eventually came up to greet the valk. Kasim was vaporized, but the valk killed the vipers. Thank goodness they don't stand much of a chance against physical damage, they went down with no problem. We VERY SLOWLY cleared out the rest of the wing, and with a renewed sense of courage (mixed with extreme caution and terror) we started our second wing. There were only a few snakes in the end room, and the valk had no trouble with them as Calabi cowered around a corner, throwing decoys at them and keeping them blinded with CoS. This wing housed the dreaded Evil Urn, so we resurrected Kasim, put a decoy up where we thought (hoped) they would spawn, and hit the urn.
Vipers, great.
Calabi tore outta there like you wouldn't believe, and threw a decoy into the pack. Kasim was dead instantly, the valk took on the boss, and the decoy kept the minions busy:
These mods sent shivers down my spine. This is the only time in my D2 career that I can remember being absolutely terrified of a boss because it had Teleportation as a mod. The last thing I needed was for this snake to tele close to Calabi and hit her with the green stuff. Luckily, the boss was too busy with the valk to teleport, so the fight actually went quite well. Here is the valk's victory shot on her
pile of corpses(including Kasim's). Amazing. I couldn't believe this was happening, but I didn't want to get even remotely comfortable, as all it takes is for a couple poison spears to make it through and it's curtains. The third wing was easy, as it only had a couple snakes, and they never even let off any spears. Okay, it was time for Nihlathak's wing.
Here Calabi took a page out of Sissy's books and
made use of the 'Black' flail she had muled in. We got a lucky break and didn't have any vipers in Nilly's room, but we did have one more
curveball for us. His aura was Holy Freeze, so it was tough to track him down, and even tougher to get any decent damange in once he hit us with his frost inferno. So we crawled around the room while he teleported back and forth, raising minions and keeping Kasim and the valk distracted. We finally caught up to him, and were whittling him down when things went haywire. Kasim died (completely my fault for being negligent with the rejuvs), one of his minions went "frenzied" and exploded while Calabi was swinging her axe. Since she was super chilled, she had no time to switch weapons and CE the corpse. Nilly got to it first:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We still had the CoS helm on, so were down by almost 100 life from what we were used to, not to mention being on axe switch so our resists weren't maxed(although they are quite close on the axe switch now). We juvved (obviously), portalled to resurrect Kasim, and collected ourselves. Okay, no more funny business, and no more being stingy with the purples! We charged Nilhathak, making sure to switch weapons and stop attacking if there were any minions out at all. We tracked him down, and soon it was
all over.
That was insane. I have never been so tense while playing D2 before. I would have been incredibly upset had Nihlathak gotten us with that CE after successfully taking on the Vipers, but thankfully Calabi's obsession with boosting her life seems to have paid off big time!
Well after that we decided to reward ourselves by immortalizing our most prized possession:
Now please excuse me while I go try and find some way to lower my heart rate.
[highlight]Conqueror Calabi the Axe-wielding Amazon, with Kasim the Blessed Aim Guard - lvl 88, Hell Ancient's Way[/highlight]
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