Moving along nicely - I had a weekend without any special plans.
We came upon Riftwing's pack almost the first thing we did in the Sewers. Got some rather rare green belts from that pack:
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I am going to make room for Credendum (but it hasn't happened yet). It has 15% resist all, so I could swap out some cold/lightning resist charms for one with fire resist (to make up for it being lower than on Sigon's Wrap) and the rest for +life. Should make some gains there. Since I nearly always have my sword/shield setup when monsters die (especially bosses), the Sigon's boots MF combo would still be in effect with boots-gloves-shield.
Four of the temples were quite calm but the two on the Causeway had some excitement. Reliquary had a double whammy Stone Skin beetles duo (I've pasted in the second name from another screenie):
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Both were PI when not Decrepified, and we could only make progress against them when I had recast Valkyrie about a dozen times and got one with a long-lasting poison weapon. Still needed luck there since she whiffed a lot because of the Stone Skin, and it was also important that I got Fazel into a position where sparks didn't hit him. They each took many minutes to kill.
Fane had a stairs trap in the form of a bettle pack and a Fanaticism bat bosspack. Luckily, Fazel was standing behind the Valkyrie so he was shielded from most attacks. Viri found herself in a corner, blocked in by a beetle:
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This was scary, because those Fanatic hits hurt (beetles use Double Swing, I think). I could have left by the stairs but then I would risk an even worse position next time. And if there was a next time, we would have risked moving forward and wake up more monsters. (Some archers or snakes on top of this would have been BAD!)
So I toughed it out with potions, until Fazel had killed enough in front of him to turn his attack to the blocker bettle.
I like the name of this guy, since he
is indeed a Mauler:
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Bremm Sparkfist had Conviction, and killed the Valkyrie and Fazel twice each. My main focus was to move Viri so she was standing straight S or E from Bremm so the sparks wouldn't hit.
Mephisto was easily killed - I needed only two Valkyrie recasts. No S/U items in his drop.
Spawners in three of four possible areas in Act IV. Sometimes, Viri had to get her hands dirty if she didn't want the fights to least freakin' forever...
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Izual was killed in about 8 seconds. Yikes!
OTOH, the Heffer was very hard to hurt (PI when not Decrepified):
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HF rune was a Fal, which meant I could now cube a Lem, a rune needed for upgraing exceptional unqiue armors. Ridiculously enough, I still haven't found a Ko rune! Need that or Lum x2 for making a Twitchthroe Wire Fleece for Fazel.
Chaos Sanctuary has been the first area on Hell difficulty where even a poison immune Valkyrie can't take on enormous monster packs. Infector's pack was one example. That fight was tricky because The Infector had Teleportation. Often when he teleported, some of his minions would run after him.
With my strong minions, I decided to let them take DeSeis' pack head-on:
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It worked, but I needed at least half a dozen Valkyrie recasts.
Diablo fight was less easy than I thought it would be, because it was hard to predict his targetting. Sometimes he even swapped targets in what looked like a stable fighting situation. But we settled nicely for a time long enough for Guillaume's and my sparky pokes to do their thing:
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[Highlight]Griswold's Edge[/Highlight] (Kurast Bazaar, Thrasher boss)
[Highlight]Bloodthief[/Highlight] (Kurast Bazaar, swarm boss)
Wilhelm's Pride (Icehawk Riftwing's minion)
Credendum (Icehawk Riftwing) <- grailer!
[Highlight]Gravenspine[/Highlight] (Sewers, Undead Soul Killer boss)
Isenhart's Case #5 (Upper Kurast)
Death's Touch #3 (Upper Kurast)
Cleglaw's Pincers (Plains of Despair, DK boss) <- Viri completes her 4th set
[Highlight]The Ward[/Highlight] (Chaos Sanctuary)
[Highlight]Black Hades[/Highlight] (Diablo)
[Highlight]Viridissima the Amazon and Fazel the Holy Freeze guard, level 86, Hell Bloody Foothills next, 146 S/U items found.[/Highlight]