[2007] SUTC4: The "Pick Your Poison, and Pass It On!" Tournament [by skunkbelly]

[Grisu]

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This tournament has already ended. It was originally started by @skunkbelly on Dec 17, 2007. The last post was made Dec 27, 2010.
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SUTC4: The "Pick Your Poison, and Pass It On!" Tournament

Skunkbelly’s Ultimate Tournament Challenge 4

The “Pick Your Poison, and Pass It On” Tournament

*

For Boris the Barbarian, it was déjà vu all over again. How many times had he had this odd feeling? He could almost tell you what would happen next: a bunch of silly bow-wielding women in the Rogue’s Camp would whine about someone taking over their monastery, blah blah blah, and a few weeks and a couple of Prime Evils later he’d be killing oddly aggressive cows carrying battle axes. Then it would all begin again, more challenging each time, until after a third go-round, he could finally get some rest.

So when Charsi started giving him the doe-eyes again, Boris was wary. And when the creepy old Akara started telling him about some Den full of wickedness or naughtiness or evil or something, he started to gather his equipment. At least he’d get to start hitting something soon…

“WAIT” shouted Akara.

Boris waited. If he knew anything, he knew there’d be a catch… there always was.

Akara looked over his gear. “Have you not read The Book of Skunk, and the wisdom contained therein?”

Boris was growing irritated. Of course he hadn’t read The Book of Skunk, or any of the old freak’s other moldy tomes. He was, after all, a flippin’ BARBARIAN.

Akara sighed. “In ‘The Book of Skunk’, it is written that the warrior who can defeat the prime evils must bear only one type of armament. But you have all sorts of stuff here… a rare belt, a magic sword, and if I may say so, a rather low-quality loin cloth that clashes horribly with your unique fez. This won’t do, if you hope to prevail against Andariel. Another thing, hero… while you’re under the Skunk’s guidance, you’d do well to focus your training in Vitality. Skunk values not your endurance, nor your intellect, nor your prowess on the balance beam… but he can lift a zillion pounds with a single claw.”

*

Eventually, Boris decided to keep his wonderful rare items… they were quite powerful. He rescued Cain, defeated Andariel, then hopped a camel train to Lut Gholein. But upon entering the town, he was immediately stopped by that place’s guards.

“What’s wrong?” asked Boris, as they looked over his equipment with shocked murmurs.

“These clothes—they are an affront to Wolron!” they shouted.

“And who’s Wolron?” Boris asked, as politely as he could after four days on the back of a camel.

“Why, he is the Most Highest Godliest Diety of our fair city, you infidel! And if you wish to enter into our lands, you must wear only his holy color—green. Luckily, even for an uncouth wanderer such as you, we have some things you can use in your quest. So drop all that unholy garbage, and gird yourself with these things. And one more thing, infidel… all those muscles aren’t going to fit in around here. If I were you—Wolron forbid—I’d start working on my flexibility.”

Boris looked at the mismatched collection of gear. He’d do his best.

***

In this tournament, the fourth installment of the SUTC series, you will need to choose your own fate early, in two different ways (stats and gear), and then stick to those choices for the entire game. However, that won’t be quite as simple as it sounds, because like all SUTC tournaments, the character you play will change with each act.

BASIC RULES

-- HC only.

-- Version 1.10, 1.11 and 1.11b are permitted. RWM/RRM are permitted.

-- 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, and no trading either.

-- You may play on any players setting you wish. No cheesy setting switches, please.

-- No re-running areas.

-- You will need to keep an ATMA stash for your character, and you may use it freely. But you cannot mule items onto your character unless they were found in the game.

-- Since there are several other tournaments in progress, the time constraints on this tournament will be rather loose compared to previous SUTC tournaments. You will have two weeks to complete each act. If you cannot complete one act of the game in two weeks, please do not sign up.

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 finish by entering the town of 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 your merc’s gear!) 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). Please make sure that your character keeps his/her Horadric Cube and any quest items when you pass them on to the next player.

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. In the event of a tie, the co-winners can accept their shared victory gracefully, or bicker about who is “teh 1337” and who is “teh n00b.”

STAT POINTS & SKILL POINTS
As the character you are playing gains levels, you may assign their skill points as you see fit. But stat points are another matter. You must select a stat at the beginning of the tournament. For every level you gain, you must put four of your five stat points into this stat.

EXCEPTION: Stat points from the Book quest reward may be spent in any way you see fit.

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. Mercs may wear any equipment you like, and are not bound by the equipment rules.

EQUIPMENT RULES

At the beginning of the tournament, you must make a second big choice. Your character will be able to wear one item quality, and one quality only, with one exception per quality level as noted. Item qualities are defined as follows:

MAGIC – Blue magic items only... but ANY weapon may be used at any time.

RARE – Rare items only. Blue magic jewelry may be worn until (and only until) a rare jewelry item is found to fill the slot.

S/U/C – Set, Unique and Crafted items only. Your two quest reward rings from Normal Difficulty may be worn until (and only until) a replacement is found or crafted.

WHITE – white, socketed, low-quality or non-magical "gray" ethereal items only. Sockets may be filled with anything, including runewords. You may wear any jewelry you want at any time, with the exception of Set or Unique jewelry (crafted jewelry is legal, though).

The following additional exceptions apply to this selection:

1. Quest Items. Any character may equip a quest item (malus, horadric staff, viper amulet, gidbinn, hellforge hammer, Khalim’s flail).

2. Anya Rescue class-specific items may be saved in your stash, and may used by any character that is capable of equipping them.

3. Personalization Reward: this quest reward is very useful. Any item that you personalize may be worn at any time, regardless of the item quality. So if you are playing “MAGIC ONLY,” you could personalize a Shaftstop armor and then use it. Jewelry may not be personalized, so such items are not eligible for this reward.

4. Starter gear. Feel free to use it as long as you want!

5. Wirt’s Leg. Feel free to use it, if you like. But you cannot re-run Tristram to find an ideal socketed leg… you can only go once, so you get what you get. You may return to Tristram for a new leg only after defeating Baal (so you can kill Cows).

6. All players may use any charms they like. Socket fillers and consumable items (pots, keys, arrows, etc.) are also completely unrestricted.

TOURNAMENT ADMISSION/REGISTRATION

Registration is open now. The tournament will begin on Christmas Day. Switch Days will be every two weeks from Christmas Day on.


REMINDERS:

All players should plan to play one act every two weeks. This will keep things moving at a reasonable pace, given the number of other tournaments going. Please be honest with yourself when registering for this tournament. If you cannot reasonably expect to play one act in two weeks, 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.

To register, add your forum name, email address, stat selection, and equipment quality selection to the table.

Forum Name             E-mail Address            Stat             Equipment
Skunkbelly             memmers4ATpeoplepcDOTcom  Strength         White