Hey Sput, thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten about that recipe. I didn't need it thankfully as I played a bit more defensively and enough purples dropped to keep me happy. I find gems of pretty premium value in these tourneys so wouldn't like to be using them to make full rejuvs unless really desperate.
Meanwhile...
Chansi has cleared NM Act 2 and defeated Duriel. All pretty easy with some good gear upgrades along the way.
Started out with a Might merc. The extra damage was great, however, Fazel did have a liking of dying. So, after clearing the Far Oasis I swapped him in for Haseen the Holy Freeze merc. Haseen died a few times but a lot less than Fazel and having everything slowed down and corpses shattering was just grand.
We also started out with a new, improved Zephyr Cedar Bow. This was a noticeable improvement over the old Composite Bow version.
At the end of the Far Oasis, when we traded in Fazel for Haseen, we also did a bit of crafting. First up was a Hitpower Amulet with 30% fire res, a huge improvement over our +11 mana blue ctc amulet. Then I thought I'd try my luck making a Safety Spear for the merc as I had a few Perfect Emeralds lying about and not much to do with them right away. Took me a long time to shop a blue Yari but once crafted the roll was great, with ctc Amp Damage on the first try! The other stats weren't so great (27%ED, 1-77 lig dam) but they weren't bad either and a huge improvement over the previous rare War Spear. Just having Amp Damage is great and not worth using up more gems to improve upon at this stage.
A Ko rune dropped in the Ancient Tunnels, so now Chansi is just a Fal and a 5os polearm away from making Obedience! That will be very nice.
After clearing out the Palace Cellars Chansi upped her rare Composite Bow with ctc Amp Damage (switch weapon) to a Double Bow. The extra damage put it on par with the Zephyr Cedar Bow and the chance for Amp meant that by the end of the Act this was Chansi's weapon of choice. Strafe and Amp is working a treat and even with Magic Arrow it is not too bad. We also crafted a Blood Belt at this point and got ctc Charged Bolt, +15 AR, +4 str, +14 lig res and +1 light - along with 2% ll, 8% OW and +17 life. Super improvement over the old blue belt and both the ll and OW have been mighty handy. This also meant I could change my amulet for a gambled ctc Rare with 12% res all, 9% cold res, 1-6 cold dam, +3 max dam - a good boost for the resists.
All of those changes allowed me to drop out some of my crappier resist charms and get some extra mana and AR, both of which were becoming much needed. The extra mana allowed me to start using Strafe a lot more, enough to be killing things with it, although still very dependent upon blue pots as we have no mana leech.
Topazes were also more frequent this Act and Chansi now has her full 7 PTopazes while Haseen has but 1 and is looking forward to getting an armour upgrade as soon as the next one appears. His flawed topaz Breast Plate is looking mighty dented after 6 Acts of use. MF is at 203% for Chansi with an extra 66% for merc kills.
Skill points have been going equally into Decoy and Penetrate (levels 16 and 15 at the moment). The really robust Decoy allows me to set up nice stable battlefields, keep the pressure of Haseen and be confident that I'm not going to get mobbed whilst using Strafe. With 0 FHR getting hit is not at all fun.
Code:
Name Character Class HC? Diff. Area Level M/R/S/U/C/RW
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Dezrok Chansi Amazon HC NM Kurast Docks 60 0/6/0/0/2/1
grk Shaetemmu Necromancer SC NM Jail level 1 51 5/2/0/0/0/0
dhaos TheAnimal Druid HC NM Rogue camp 47 5/3/0/0/0/0
jdkerr Acephal Amazon HC NM Rogue Camp 46 2/4/0/0/1/2
HC Gunther Zounds Paladin SC Normal Lut Gholein 21 5/0/0/0/0/0
Kitteh Olypuirs Assassin HC Normal Dark Wood 15 6/1/0/0/0/0
Dazliare Athena Amazon HC Normal Cold Plains 6 0/0/0/0/0/0
Grisu Flashy Barbarian HC Normal Rogue Camp 1 0/0/0/0/0/0
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RIP:
dfp Chantix Sorceress HC Normal Rogue Camp 19 2/3/0/0/0/0