For being half an Act on Hell difficulty, the last two sessions have been rather uneventful. I wouldn't say boring, but almost...
Sszark is of course always a force to respect, though. This version had defensive random abilities. Once I had a stable fighting situation, Viri helped out with her spear. Note the long range:
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Got Gloams in the Marsh, so I advanced with caution. Decoys were used for scouting quite a bit, and I continued with that in Flayer Jungle because it had those 8-packs of melee Soul Killers you don't want to suprise you.
Once again, the Gidbinn bosspack took a long time to spawn, and didn't drop any Gidbinn this time either (same as in NM). EDIT: Turns out I hadn't spoken to Hratli to start the quest. But shouldn't this quest work anyway?
First floor on Swampy Pit sure woke me up. I scouted with a Decoy in a hallway, stumbled a bit with my movement and happened to get hit by 2-3 Gloam Lightnings.
Cold Lightnings, while I held my shield (=> only just above 50 lightning resist). It was a long time since I was under any sort of threat, so I probably overreacted a little with rejuves. Better that than the other way around, of course.
One minion was first to follow into the entrance room, and it dropped a Pul rune! For a large part of Viri's life, that has been at the top of her wish list, but now she doesn't need it. Fazel's weapon is already elite, and while a Lance of Yaggai Ghost Spear would have been pretty cool indeed, there's no way Viri will ever meet the very high STR/DEX demands of that weapon type.
Last room of second floor was chaotic and nasty:
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The Conviction upped the danger for Fazel a lot, both from shamans and a Gloam pack. And about 2 seconds after the screenie, Fazel died and we were Cursed.
"You must be an Amazon..."
Huh?
Oh yeah, this must be the first time in the act he's needed a resurrection!
That says something about the safety of our progress.
I thought for sure there would be at least two bosspacks in that room, but it was actually just one - Conviction Cursed something mummy boss - but the other monsters, the terrain, etc. created a perfect storm of mercenary danger.
S/U finds: boring, boring
Isenhart's Case #4 (Spider Forest)
Cathan's Visage #3 (Spider Forest)
Sander's Taboo (Arachnid Lair)
[Highlight]Viridissima the Amazon and Fazel the HF guard, level 84, Hell Kurast Bazaar next, 136 S/U items found.[/Highlight]