[2006] Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge [by skunkbelly]

[Grisu]

DISCLAIMER: Please do NOT post in this thread yet. We still need to migrate all posts from the old thread on diabloii.net to this thread. If you want to help, feel free to do so

This tournament has already ended. It was originally started by @skunkbelly on Sep 22, 2006. The last post was made Aug 3, 2016.
(link to original thread on diabloii.net) ​

Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge

The 99-Item Pass It On Tournament



Boris the Barbarian felt a strange sense of déjà vu, but walked into the Rogue Camp anyway. "Greetings, stranger!" cried out one man, but most remained silent, warily watching as the muscle-bound warrior took in his surroundings.

Finally, Boris addressed the Rogues. "I hear you've got some evil running around," Boris began. "I'd like to fight for you, but I don't have much equipment... just this silly little axe and shield."

An old woman stepped forward. "Well, hero... perhaps we can help!" She took a golden key from her belt, and unlocked a large wooden chest next to the campfire. "Feel free to use anything in here. I think there's about 99 pieces of equipment, give or take. We're sorry if some of it isn't much good, but we didn't know what sort of hero the gods would send us, or what sorts of skills the hero would have. I hope you'll find something useful."

Boris looked over the stash with curiosity. He didn't know what to make of the strange wands and animal pelts, but there were some powerful looking weapons and armor in the chest, too. It wasn't terrific, but it could certainly be worse...

*

Several days later, Boris returned to camp triumphant. He had defeated many monstrosities, cleared the Rogues' lands of wicked creatures, and finally - after a hard battle - destroyed the Demon Queen.

"Now that I've finished the task at hand," he proclaimed, "I think I'll head off to Lut Gholein, where I hear there is more evil to fight. I hope you don't mind if I take a couple of these items with me."

"NO!" shouted the old woman, swatting his hand like he was a child reaching for a cookie. His sword clattered to the ground. "You've had your turn. These leet itemz are for the next hero. You just get yourself to Lut Gholein. I'm sure that the people there will have some weapons for you to use to continue your quest."

***

IT'S HERE!!!

I've made warnings about this for some time, but now that the 99-Item Tournament is over, and the Pass It On tournament is down to two players locked in mortal combat, I feel the time is right.

This tournament combines two of my recent challenges into one monstrosity of a tournament: "The Pass It On Tournament" and "The 99-Item Tournament" have been combined into "The 99-Item Pass It On Tournament." There are many rule changes, and some very important stipulations, so please read VERY CAREFULLY before committing yourself to this tournament.




BASIC RULES

HC only.

Version 1.10, 1.11 and 1.11b are permitted. RWM is permitted.

Classes: you will be assigned a character class and character name at the start of the tournament. Don't worry if you don't like what you get...you won't have to play it for long!

No Multi-Player permitted. No trading permitted.

You may play on any players setting you wish, and change that setting as you see fit. Please do NOT engage in cheesy "kill monsters on players 1, open chests on players 8" tactics.

CHARACTERS

As noted above, you will be given a character class and character name to begin playing.

You will play each character you receive for ONE ACT. You must complete ALL quests in the act, and venture to the town in the next act. Finding WPs is optional. You may visit the towns in previous acts and difficulty levels for shopping/mercenary-switching purposes only, but you can only leave town in the act you are currently playing (i.e., if your character needs to play act 4, you cannot use them to go back and do Meph runs).

Upon completing an act, you will need to strip your character (don't forget their gold) and send the character file along to the next person in the table. Only the .d2s file needs to be sent... don't send map files (they're useless anyway, since you can only play in the act you are working on).

As the character you are playing gains levels, you may assign their skill and stat points as you see fit. If you don't wish to assign points, you need not do so... it's up to you. Please do NOT post in the forum anything about what skills you are using with a particular character, or even what items you are wearing. Part of the pleasure (and challenge) of the tournament is not knowing what you're going to have to deal with.

You should never be playing more than one character at a time. If you haven't sent your current character onward, and you receive a new character by email, you may examine the character for your own amusement, but you may not play them until you have finished playing your current character.

If the character you are playing dies, you are out of the tournament. Please remove your name from the "living" list in the table, and add it to the "RIP" list.

The player who survives the longest will be declared the winner - no other score-keeping is required.


MERCENARIES

You may use any merc you like, and switch them as you see fit. You may visit previous towns and difficulty levels to hire appropriate mercs, if you wish. Mercenaries must also use equipment from the 99-item stash (see below).

EQUIPMENT RULES

Before the tournament begins, you will be given an ATMA stash of 99 items. **With a few notable exceptions, these 99 items will be the only items you are permitted to use in the tournament, for all characters you play.** I will create stashes that are as balanced as possible, and several of all main item types will be present. The stashes will include no crude items, but otherwise item quality will vary: everything from white items to uniques will be present, and at a variety of level requirements. You will also be able to gain a maximum of 15 additional items, depending upon how you use certain quest rewards (and of course, how long you survive!).

Quest Reward Items:

1. Malus Imbue Rewards: You may imbue ANY white item you find, whether or not it's from your 99 item stash. White items to be used for imbuing MAY NOT be put in your ATMA stash... you may only place the item in your stash after it has been imbued (effectively, this limits you to items that can be found in act 1 of each difficulty level, or items from your original 99-item stash).

2. Akara/Ormus Ring Rewards: you may use these rings.

3. Anya Rescue Reward: you may use the items Anya gives you, and you may store them in your ATMA stash.

4. Hellforge/Barb Rescue Rewards: you may keep and use ANY socket fillers you find, including these.

5. Socket Quest Reward: the item socketed must be from your 99-item stash, or an item obtained with the Malus reward, the Anya Rescue reward, or the Personalization reward (see below).

6. Personalization Reward: this quest reward is now useful! You may personalize any item once you've defeated Nihlathak - ANY item, whether it's from your ATMA stash or not. If the item is NOT from your 99-item stash, you may only equip it and store it in your ATMA stash AFTER it has been personalized (therefore, like the imbue quest, this limits you to items actually found in Act 5 of each difficulty level). However, once it has been personalized, it's yours to use for the remainder of the tournament. You MUST use this reward before leaving act 5 for a new difficulty level... no saving it for later.

7. Viper Amulet/Horadric Staff/Gidbinn/Hell Forge Hammer/ Khalim's Will - you may equip and use all of these items, if you wish, for the short time that they are available for your use.

OTHER ITEMS/GOLD: You may use any of the following items that you find: charms, socket fillers (gems, runes, jewels), keys, potions (including throwing potions), arrows and bolts, and scrolls/tomes. You may also pick up and use any quest-related items, and any gold you find. You may NOT pick up any other items, not even to sell them. If you accidentally pick up an item, you aren't disqualified - just drop it when you realize the error.

ITEMS AND SERVICES YOU MAY BUY: You may buy potions (of all sorts), scrolls, keys, arrows and bolts, and tomes. You may pay to have your equipment repaired. You may pay to have mercenaries resurrected. You may pay to hire new mercenaries. You MAY NOT gamble or purchase any other equipment.

SELLING ITEMS: You may sell items from the stash I provide for you, if you wish. You may also sell socket-fillers, charms, potions, keys, arrows and bolts, and scrolls. Finally, if you do not wish to use quest reward items (including imbued/personalized items), you may sell them.

ATMA: You may mule any permitted items back and forth from your character's ATMA stash whenever you see fit (including socket-fillers, charms, potions, scrolls, tomes, keys). If you find other treasures that you wish to keep for other characters, you may only mule them off. PLEASE, if you do find items you wish to mule off, don't accidentally put them back in your tournament item stash.

ITEM MODIFICATION: you may use the Cube to modify the items in the 99-item stash in any way you see fit. This includes socketing, crafting, imbuing, re-rolling, etc. You may also make runewords in items from the 99-item stash (RWM is permitted). You may fill any socket in the items in your item stash with any socket-fillers you like.

DEATH: when/if you perish, please return your stash to Skunkbelly. Do not return items that were on your character at the time of their demise.

REMEMBER: when you are required to send a character to the next player, you will send the character completely naked, with the exception of the Horadric Cube (and at the appropriate time, Mephisto's Soulstone). Please remember to mule your gold into your stash!

TOURNAMENT ADMISSION/REGISTRATION

Registration is open now. But this one ain't free. It's a pain in the neck to build all of these stashes, especially with the item-finding involved. Therefore, in order to participate, there are a couple of hurdles...

1. If you dropped out of the original Pass It On Tournament, you are not eligible to play in this one. A couple of people actually took my item stashes, never played in the tournament, and never returned the stashes to me... not cool.

2. In order to play, you will be required to "ante up" by sending me the following *HC items* (no ethereal items, please, unless they happen to have a self-repair mod):
- 3 normal unique items
- 3 normal set items
- 4 exceptional unique items
- 4 exceptional/elite set items
- 1 elite unique item (if you do not have any you can afford to provide, then you may send a *class specific* unique item instead)
- 10 exceptional or elite items (weapons or armor) with two or more sockets
- 10 rare exceptional or elite items
- 5 pieces of rare jewelry
- 5 pieces of magical jewelry
- 5 wild card items (whatever you want).

That's a total of 50 items. I'll supply the remaining 49 items for each player. Once I've received your items, I will put them into a big pile, and divvy them out to make the character stashes (after supplementing them with items of my own). CAUTION: Resist the urge to send me your worst items... after all, you might just get them right back! If you'd like to send more than what is listed above, that's fine, of course. But the items listed above are the minimum.

IF YOU DO NOT PLAY HC: forum rules make it impossible for us to mix SC and HC items. If you don't play HC, and therefore don't have items to ante up with, you'll need to find a "tournament sponsor" -- someone "1337er" than you who will pay for your entrance. Shouldn't be too hard... people here tend to be generous, and the entrance fee is really quite cheap. If are a HC d2 diety yourself, and would like to volunteer to sponsor a player or two, please post in the thread. (I can't since, I'm spotting 49 items to all 28 players).

3. The tournament is limited to 28 players.

4. Registration is now open, and will remain open until either October 15th, or until all 28 tournament slots are filled. Nobody is officially registered until I receive their stash, but if you add your name to the table, I will hold your slot for you until October 15th. On the 15th, if I have not received your stash, you may be replaced with another player.

5. The tournament will begin on Saturday, October 28th (or slightly later, if my schedule makes it hard for me to get stashes out to everyone by that date). It will end when the last player is left standing.

REMINDERS:

All players should plan to play one, and ONLY one, act per week. This will keep things moving at a reasonable pace. Please be honest with yourself when registering for this tournament. If you cannot reasonably expect to play one act in a week, then please don't sign up... it slows things down for everyone. Players will be removed from the tournament, at the discretion of the host (me), if bottlenecks become problematic.

If you are going to be away for a week or longer (vacation, exams, etc.), and unable to play, please make sure we know by posting in the thread. That way, we won't get excited and kick you out ?

One final note: for those who MP or trade, please keep in mind that for the purposes of this tournament, you might be playing with items that were found with RWM or RRM. If that bothers you, I would advise you simply not to mule off any items you find, to avoid "tainting" your own stashes. As long as you do so, you should be able to enjoy this tournament regardless of your RWM/RRM status.

LIVING PLAYERS:
Forum Name        Starting Character/Class        Last Character Completed
Skunkbelly                 (I will fill in all characters at start time)



DEAD PLAYERS:
Forum Name        Starting Character/Class        Character Killed