5 Stages of Grief Tournament

[jiansonz]

The tough part in Hell Act II Sewers were the archer packs. Several tough bosspacks. The worst boss of them all was this one:

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I was extremely careful not to have Fran suffer any arrows from this powerhourse. Gwinni had to take them. I spent at least 5 full purples and money for two resurrections (both boss and Gwinni died in the last showdown). On the next floor, there was a triple boss pack of archers, all with Multishot. Thankfully, I had enough space to work with, and they aren't that hard to lure out a few at a time.

Radament was Extra Strong + LE. I kept teleporting Gwinni to spots just outside his Unholy Bolt range. He dropped a famous item I've only seen once or twice before - War Traveler.

Stony Tomb greeted us like this:

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I was thankful there weren't any melee monsters mixed in there as well. As it was, I was free to take breaks when needed. CE ranged attackers really slow down Gwinni's killing speed.

Halls of the Dead had some tricky situations with monsters spawning around some Mummy Sarcophagi, including some boss Hollow Ones. Teleport was invaluable here (as it so often is!) to work on the other undead and still not get so close to the Sarcophagus that it "sees" us. In both cases, I could get the boss to move away from its spot and start to chase us.


I didn't think the Maggot Lair would present any real trouble, and it didn't either. It was a marathon though, must have taken over three hours.

Recent finds:
* Crusader Bow. This can be socketed with the recipe, then rerolled once with medium gems, followed by a ton of chippie/medium/flawless-rerolling if I want to. If I decide to do this, I am of course hoping for a high-end Cruel, possibly with a nice suffix and two sockets.
* A novelty rare Maul, and I sold it. But if I did twink, I would build a 2h-Vengeance Pally around this weapon, and upgrade it along the way:
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* One reason it takes so long for me to play is the multituide of selling trips, and in this act, unless I need only the services of Drognan or Lysander, I always check out Fara's armors and belts that have the deep red colour. You never know what will turn up. This was a clear impromevent over my 4-socket Jackal Gothic Plate:
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Claw Viper Temple up next. That's sort of scary. All snakes and Bone Warriors (if I draw them) will be CI. That could mean plenty of trouble early on, and especially on the cramped level 2. Will probably turn the players setting down to 1 entering both of those places. Maybe lay down a large and super hot fire carpet near the stairs, in case I get pushed back there.


[Highlight]Conqueror Fran the Blaze/TS Sorceress and Gwinni the Fire Rogue, level 82, Hell Claw Viper Temple next[/highlight]

 

[OldSoldier1]

Argh, my reply seemed to have disappeared. I don't want to type it all again so I'll be brief.

Good job Jiansonz, archers kick my butt too.

Amodan_Crane finished act 5 NM. He got two hard points in Revive which helped stem the IG losses as I'd gone through a great many items along the way. The love can be spread further now. A favorite tactic against Blood Lords is to curse them with Amp Damage and let Wendy plink away while the enemies punish themselves on her Thorns aura. Too easy. I have to be careful not to let the 3 minute timer expire while they are all frenzied up though, as they'd make quick work of Amodan.
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Nihlathak wasn't extra fast when I hit him with a Clay Golem and some Decrepify!
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The fight against the Ancients in three pictures or less. They were not hard. I kept a damage enhancement curse going and split them up into a 3-on-1 in my favor. They always targeted the IG and killed themselves on the thorns. Amodan_Crane assisted with plenty of bone spears against Talic because it was taking a long time to bust him down.
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More Frenzytaurs in the Throne. There were also Unravelers, which hit hard and killed themselves quickly.
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The Minions of Destruction were pretty easy. I had a megademon or two and my IG and cursed them with Amp Damage and they were dead in seconds. Lister never teleported near Amodan_Crane, which would have been the only hairy situation I can think of.
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Baals drop was bad. /P8 Baal took a long time to wear out and I was hoping for something better than this but alas, not to be the case.
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Stats going into act 1 hell. I left 10 stat points from NM in reserve that I'll have to sit on until act 2. This is with a Stealth armor which I think I'll replace with a Smoke. I was hoping to get a Fal but I haven't seen one yet and I am not satisfied with 15% lightning resists in hell with only 800 hp so I'm going to change it out. I removed the Topazes from my MF helm and put an Ort and a Ral in there but I may Hel it back out again and go with an Ort and a Ruby for some more life. I still have a dedicated MF ring and the chance guards at the moment. 139% MF on all kills. I used the Larzuk reward for Wendy this time and socketed the ethereal full helm (Duskdeep upgraded to basinet) that Wendy was wearing with a Jewel of Fervor. I also installed the Crow Caw on her, as it boasts 15% IAS, 15% FHR (2 frames) and the open wounds that I kept losing when my IG died. I figured to upgrade her for the last leg of the journey.
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Some of her drops in A5NM. Note the second Grim's Burning Dead. I used it as an IG and it lasted for a while. The Coldsteel Eye blinding enemies overwrote the Amp Damage so I didn't mind when that IG died. It was not as annoying as the Voulge IG (I'd gotten the Steelgoad a while back and just decided to test it out), which sent everything running away. That one was a bad one.
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Amodan_Crane, level 75 Necormancer, Rogue's Camp

 

[jiansonz]

@OldSoldier : Which one was the green amulet from Baal?

 

[OldSoldier1]

Vidala's.

 

[OldSoldier1]

Amodan_Crane ventured forth into the Blood Moor once again to deal with his never-ceasing grief. Along the way he decided that /P5 seemed about right for most areas that didn't have archers. He went to /P3 for those areas, but we get ahead of ourselves...

The fight against Blood Raven was not terribly exciting. She took a long time to bring down but stayed put in jail for most of it.
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In the Crypt and Mausoleum we cranked it up to a very high /P7 because all of the undead melee fighters. They went down quickly to Wendy (Edge) and Amodan (Amp). Unfortunately we lost our Insight IG along the way. I guess we got separated by too far and it poofed, darn it.
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As I said earlier, in the underground areas I stuck to /P3, mostly afraid of a one hit kill against Amodan. As you can see here, I switched to a fire golem because I didn't have any reagents handy and they have plenty of hit points so they fit the bill in some cases.
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Melee enemies are just plain fun with Amodan_Crane and friends. In this case I was able to bring along 4 revives. The best ones were rogues in this act. They moved fast and could get to the front lines quickly.
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Jiansonz, you were talking about how no one mentions the Pit... Amodan accepted your challenge and tackled it at /P3. There were several archer boss packs on level 1, a couple of which were multishot. I made the mistake of reviving a couple of archers myself, probably because I always wanted something up just in case, and revive AI is terrible and they constantly poof. The point is that there were a few times where arrows were flying everywhere and I couldn't tell if they were friendly or enemy arrows. It was pretty crazy but we made it out alive.
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More Pit hijinx. Level 2 was all melee and even though they drove me back to the entrance a few times, I was able to kill some carvers before the IG got too low in the red, so I resurrected them, went back to level 1 to consolidate forces and split the enemy fire concentration, and I gained the upper hand. Once a couple melee rogues went down, I blew up their corpses and the level was mine.
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The most fun combat of the entire act came in the Jail, level 3. There were two boss packs of skeleton mages (which don't hurt me too badly but do bypass the bone armor because of the nature of their attacks) and another champion pack of carver shamen in the same room. They ran me out of that room several times and the battle went back and forth until I could kill off some of the minions.
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The cathedral was fun. Here's a 5-on-1 good guys against Bone Ash.
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Vampires and Tainted bosses dotted level 3, but their attacks were not strong enough to kill the IG outright, and strategic town portals for healing helped win the day. At this point I was still at /P5 and the killing (Wendy has a Edge Blade Bow and I help her out with Amp Damage on nearly everything) decided to try Andariel at the same players setting.
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Here's the fight. As usual I switched to Decrepify against her. She really hurt herself when he hit the IG even without Amp Damage but she put him deep in the red so I usually had her Decrepified. I revived two shamen who pounded her with fireballs also, which was pretty neat. I had to make three trips to town to heal the IG and Wendy, who got poisoned twice, but Andariel died without much fanfare.
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Continued...

 

[OldSoldier1]

Here are a few of the more notable S/U drops along the way. As you can see, Amodan_Crane has found two Paladin skillers and Jiansonz's fire skiller. The Humongous axe is great for CB, and the ruby jewel is a perfect 40%, which is super cool. I may actually use the Tal Rasha's helm for the +60 life but it is stashed for now.
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This sword dropped on the way to a fresh area after a new game start so I can't use it in the tournament but it is a grailer so I picked it up.
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The countess' drop. I was hoping for a Lum or a Lem but was able to get an Amn, which I need anyway so I was happy.
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Nice little Riphook. I used it against Andariel for the 30% slow and OW.
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The other half of my Act Boss gear change for Wendy. The Riphook slowed her down and kept the OW (which normally comes via the Crow Caw) and the Rattlecage provides some CB. I don't think it is much needed but perhaps sped things up a bit. Against Duriel I will probably not even bother to change it out, but I know it will be handy against the other act bosses.
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Andariel replenished my Bonesnap supply. So between that and the Humongous we should be good for CB when needed.
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LCS before leaving act 1. Charsi imbued a necro head and it was nice but not nice enough.
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Amodan_Crane, level 80 necromancer, Lut Gholein

 

[Dazliare1]

It's always interesting how at home I feel with some good old D2. I've been playing a lot of other games recently (Grim Dawn, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Dungeon Siege 2, Baldur's Gate 2, etc), and have been putting off act 4. Well I finally went for it today, and I must say that depression is a good name for it. What a challenge!

Venom Lords spawned in every zone except the river of flame, which spawned Balrogs. 21 Fire Resist just isn't enough to make them feel safe! We also learned that Oblivion Knights are resistant to lightning.

By far, the hardest part of this act was when our mercenary died early on in the River of Flame. It was 100% my fault. He got surrounded, and I got greedy with my purple potions. Around the same time, Athena's javelin was almost broken. We've been keeping a Crushflange on swap for open wounds and crushing blow, so we started using that for a while. Liberal use of Valkyrie got us through some rough patches:

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We found we could position things in such a way where enemies would latch onto the valkyrie, and we could swing away, which, while tedious, worked quite well

The Hellforge gave us quite a nice reward:

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We slowly started tackling the Chaos Sanctuary. Overall, from the waypoint to Diablo took around 2 hours. This isn't the longest chaos run I've ever experienced (longest was NM CS, with Vladimir, the Skill-less barbarian), but it was mostly just tedium. Lots of splitting things up, waiting for mana, trying to take as little damage as possible. We have very low life steal, and without a mercenary, zero regeneration. No shopping for potions was just an added annoyance.

We started by going for the Grand Vizier, the easiest of the guardians. Charged Strike made quick work of him. Next up, Lord de Seis. The knights aren't resistant to lightning, so they died easily. Lord De Seis by himself in normal isn't too rough. He gave us these beautiful boots though! Perfect for the incoming fight with Big D:

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He also gave us a nice Pilum with added elemental damage. It's like the game knew we were going to struggle, and it rewarded that struggle:

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The final battle was taken at P5, because without a mercenary or life regen, I was very worried about running out of potions. I ended up with one left, so that was a good choice! His drop wasn't anything special, but finally we can say we beat depression!

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[jiansonz]

Melee enemies are just plain fun with Amodan_Crane and friends. In this case I was able to bring along 4 revives. The best ones were rogues in this act. They moved fast and could get to the front lines quickly.

Revive is a really cool skill, and it's interesting to discover which monsters do well as Revives and which ones don't. For example, adult maggots are near-useless but the little ones are good.

Jiansonz, you were talking about how no one mentions the Pit... Amodan accepted your challenge and tackled it at /P3. There were several archer boss packs on level 1, a couple of which were multishot. I made the mistake of reviving a couple of archers myself, probably because I always wanted something up just in case, and revive AI is terrible and they constantly poof. The point is that there were a few times where arrows were flying everywhere and I couldn't tell if they were friendly or enemy arrows. It was pretty crazy but we made it out alive.

Arrows flying everywhere sounds scary indeed.

More Pit hijinx. Level 2 was all melee and even though they drove me back to the entrance a few times, I was able to kill some carvers before the IG got too low in the red, so I resurrected them, went back to level 1 to consolidate forces and split the enemy fire concentration, and I gained the upper hand. Once a couple melee rogues went down, I blew up their corpses and the level was mine.

Nice.


Cool with the revived Dark Shamans vs. Andariel. Every bit helps, right?

Nice going overall. /players 5 Hell is pretty tough.

(As for that skiller charm, I don't think Fran will ever think she can afford to pack any skillers.)



@Dazliare: nicely done getting through the last bit without a merc. Very brave to fight Diablo at /p5!
I never do that in Normal unless I have Static Field or a super powerful skill. It must have been a grueling and scary fight.

(You wrote Crushflange but the screenie with inventory shows the typical Bloodrise graphic. Bloodrise has OW while Crushflange has CB. Did you have them both or was it a names mix-up?)





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Claw Viper Temple level 2 on /players 1 it was. Calm upon entry. As soon as I could, I teleported around the right-hand (from the character's view) corner, prepared to teleport back if there were any monsters. There weren't, but I saw some snakes (not minions) on the altar platform. I was about to start letting Gwinni have a go at them when she found Bone Warriors to fire at:

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Not good, those can't be shattered on Hell difficulty. Teleport back to the corner so we could kill it there. A second skeleton appeared and it was shot down further away from us than I wanted. Gwinni has pretty impressive kill speed at /p1, I suppose. The Guardian showed itself, and Fran made sure to nail it with fast spamming:
(note my 'GTFO if needed' portal)

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After it died, Gwinni took out the two Salamanders on the platform. They moved around a bit, and I was wary that a stray arrow would wake Fangskin. Didn't happen. I slowly crept down to where the Guardian had been standing. I thought there were surely more skeletons close by. Extra Fast snakes came running! I was very prepared for that, so...

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The 3-4 skeletons were blocked from the stairs by snakes, and they walked around to get closer to us. That meant that they never found the stairs, and the place was ours.

A cavalcade of nasty bosses from the late parts of the act:

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Any Unraveler took quite some time to kill, but I lucked out in some cases. This Champ pack just stood in place and kept firing. There was a skeleton that didn't find us. As long is it is near the Champs, they don't advance. Gwinni could stand just outside Unholy Bolt range and slowly take them down (very slowly, she had to be reasonably lucky with OWs triggering, and they are much harder to hit when they are too far away for Inner Sight to take effect):

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Same story with Ancient Kaa, but here it were a few Preserved Dead that lulled around in the back part of the room and never found us until we got there.

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Always cool with this type of sparkly chest roll:

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I cranked it up to /p8 before opening these chests. One of the sparkly chests was trapped and I had to deal with two /p8 Preserved Dead. I am thankful I've decided to play on /p3...

Duriel was a piece of cake, as this build naturally stays away from a chasing monster. With potion help, cold resist was 85%. Very much a routine kill, as I once did 100 Hell Duriel runs with a Blaze Sorc (on /players 4, didn't know there was no drop difference vs. /p3).

Finds:
* 10/16 Amber Small Charm of Vita
* 2x low quality Dusk Shroud (in case I want to make a 3-socket runeword, if I normalize and recipe-socket these armors, they each have 2/3 chance to get 3 sockets)
* Magical Ward Bow (could be used for chippie-rerolling)
* Corpsemourn unique Ornate Plate. Far too heavy for either of us, but a grailer (Fran's only one this far)


[Highlight]Conqueror Fran the Blaze/TS Sorceress and Gwinni the Fire Rogue, level 84, Hell Kurast Docks[/Highlight]

 

[Dazliare1]

Whoops! I spent several hours trying to shop Larzuk for an artisan's great helm, but I'm only clvl33 hahaha. I should get a good chunk of Act V done tomorrow

 

[Dezrok]

Whoops! I spent several hours trying to shop Larzuk for an artisan's great helm, but I'm only clvl33 hahaha. I should get a good chunk of Act V done tomorrow

Best! I've done that before ... although my patience for shopping wears out well before the "several hours" mark!

 

[T72on1]

I finally got back into my character in this tournament, in between playing Grim Dawn that is.

Through_Grief has just found the amulet in the Viper Temple in NM. An eth Halberd dropped there, so I tried my luck with the cube recipe, trying to finally have an Insight on my merc. I got lucky .

View attachment 6868

+6 CS and lvl 16 Meditation, yes baby !!!

This should enable me to pick up speed now. Note to self: don't get overconfident ...

 

[T72on1]

Through_Grief has reached Act 3 NM.

The rest of the Act provided a few good items actually:

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Not useful for my character, but still very nice.

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In the end I kept my Rhyme Shield, because this is HC after all, but still a very nice find in an untwinked tournament.

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By far my best find the last few weeks, especially considering this is a single-pass, untwinked tournament we are talking about .

Other than that the journey was quite uneventful. The Insight helped me a lot though, as expected. I really love the build so far. I'm using Hydra, Fire Ball and Orb about equal amounts of time, so definitely a balanced build.

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Always nice to meet this old friend.

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Surprisingly no scroll of tp, but the green breast plate makes up for that ...

 

[Insane Wayne]

Great to see this tournament doing so well, it took me a while to read through all the updates. Condolences to the fallen and congrats to the guardians!
Last I updated, I was somewhere in early Act 1. Yikes, that was 6 weeks ago and I can't trust my memory, luckily I have screenshots to rely on!

Act 1 NM was not particularly interesting, no NDEs or special tactics needed. Standard Blizz smackdown. I used Charsi's imbue on an orb with a pretty good result:

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No boost for my cold skills (not that any was needed at this point), but I'm a big fan of the FCR and +mana. FCR is a great defensive attribute to "snap-freeze" erratic enemies who attempt to sneak in and disrupt Saffron's mojo. Being quick on the draw is a big plus.

Early Act 2 drops included Hwanin's Bill and Kelpie Snare. Kelpie is the more Hell-worthy weapon, not to mention upgradeable, but for now the Bill wins out thanks to its speed. Saffron collected 2 Skystrikes which rolled good ED%, that brought back fond memories of my Money-hating Barbarian and his rogue merc, but were of no use for Saffron nor Durga (new Holy Freeze hireling). Easy jump into the altar to avoid Fangskin. His (or her) angry hissing was music to my ears!

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A random monster in the Canyon dropped Goldwrap, further boosting my MF.

As with Normal, I switched to p7 for Act 3NM. Three notable finds: +47 resist-all Ward, 26% Nagelring (by far my best MF jewelry at that point), and a near-perfect pair of Amber Boots of Luck. The random stat/skill placement was atrocious, the only halfway decent skill landed in Frozen Armor. All the rest were so bad, not only were the skills themselves useless but they opened up additional undesirable skills. Stat points were skewed toward Dex, the least helpful. Most of the temples contained stair traps, luckily normal monsters with more bark than bite.

Considering Saffron's relatively easy journey compared to some of the builds I've been reading about, I decided to attempt Act 4NM with no stockpile of potions or scrolls. This turned out to pose no issue whatsoever, there were ghosts/stranglers/souls aplenty coughing up all I needed. I did have to raid the corpse piles for potions several times, but it wasn't any more laborious than town trips. Just like Fran, Saffron also discovered a big hammer in the City of the Damned.

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It rolled +249%ED (1% from perfect), and is rather easy to equip with -50% req. Unfortunately there were no Evil Force windows for Saffron to vandalize. Rune drops included Lum and Fal from Hellforge:

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I managed to keep Durga alive throughout. This was no easy task against Diablo, but with a little patience and a lot of purples, Durga scored the kill:

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The lack of town repairs was another non-issue for Saffron. Indeed, of all her gear, throughout Act 4, only the boots lost any durability, and that was one point!

The first order of business in Act 5NM was to shop for 4-socket armor, of which I had discovered none thus far. Larzuk provided a Jeweler's Gothic Plate of Absorption, which received 4 PTopaz for Durga. I never got an exact count, but MF was at my typical late-NM levels of +several hundred% with pretty much every piece of non-weapon equipment dedicated to MF. Lots of S/U drops. War Travelers was a cool find but not a good fit for Saffron. At this point, I started to get a taste of life against cold immunes. Amping sirens were quite aggravating on the Frozen River but Saffron managed to exterminate every last one. Durga's damage plus weak Hydra was enough to take care of business. Pindle's garden yielded Tal's Death Mask, a somewhat boring tournament find but tried and true nonetheless. Saffron discovered another Fal rune in the Halls, and a unique amulet, the Mahim-Oak Curio, quite a well-balanced amulet and Hell-worthy considering Saffron's lack of decent jewelry! I suffered my first NDE on the Tundra, and it was extreme. There were skeletal cold archers surrounding us, and the bright arrows were hard to see against the bright snowy background. I'm not sure what happened, but my D2 spider sense was tingling and I glanced over to see a suddenly empty life bulb! I slammed a couple rejuvs. I definitely was not prepared for that!

The Ancients were easily separated by Teleport and handled swiftly.
Saffron encountered a rare creature in the Worldstone Keep, a boss suicide bomber:

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Some other random monster dropped another Fal rune (Saffron's third, rune luck continues to be excellent).
Baal was easily tamed by cold damage, Kelpie slowing, and Holy Freeze. He dropped multiple Light Plates:

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After a routine clear of the cows, it was time to assemble my Hell gear. For the merc, it was easy: Kelpie Snare, Duskdeep socketed with Sol for a total of 14 DR (helm had been socketed by Larzuk in Normal and later upgraded), and another shopped body armor, Jeweler's Full Plate Mail of Absorption socketed with 4 Sols (DR 31). Saffron's gear was more carefully considered, the biggest decision was opting for Lionheart instead of Smoke. Full breakdown below:

Saffron, level 75, Blizz/Hydra Sorc, Act 1 Hell. Resists 90/75/75/4. Life 1,001. Mana 629.
rare Swirling Crystal (Anya) with +1 skills, 20%FCR, +26 life, +6 Energy, and 2 sockets with Cold Resistance jewels
Rhyme Bone Shield
Tal's Death Mask socketed by NM Larzuk (Thul).
Lionheart Breast Plate
Russet (18) Belt of the Whale (97)
Coral (28) Chain Gloves of Fortune (22)
Hotspur Boots
rare ring with Fire Resist 24%, +15 Life, +54 Mana
rare ring with Fire Resist 5% Lightning Resist 24%, +8 Energy, +39 Mana
Mahim Oak Curio (+10 to everything)
Weapon Switch: Life Tap Wand
Shield Switch: Rhyme Small Shield

Durga, Holy Freeze Merc
Kelpie Snare
Jeweler's Full Plate Mail of Absorption socketed with 4 Sols for total of 31 DR
Duskdeep Basinet socketed with Sol for a total of 14 DR

Special Tool Kit
Malice Kris
Black Morning Star
upped near-perfect Steeldriver. Saffron can hit much harder than Durga . I don't plan to use this but you never know when Saffron might be in the mood to bash a few skulls, after all, she is psychologically imbalanced to put it mildly...
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Fun build but not much excitement yet, I'm sure that will change in Hell!

 

[jiansonz]

Saffron encountered a rare creature in the Worldstone Keep, a boss suicide bomber:

Did you managed to kill it before it killed itself? If yes, did it drop anything?


Yeah, very nice luck with the Fal runes. I am halfway through Hell, and I've yet to see anything above Ko with one clear exception: an Ohm rune from a regular Fetish in the jungle! You can't make any cool runeword with an Ohm and nothing else above Ko, can you?


GL on Hell difficulty!

 

[Insane Wayne]

Did you managed to kill it before it killed itself? If yes, did it drop anything?

I saw 2 such bosses and managed to kill them both before they reached Saffron and the merc. Neither dropped anything, but it was satisfying. I'm not sure but I think you get XP if you can stop them before they detonate.

Wow, Ohm is an incredible find, congrats, better than any rune I've found since 1.10 (naked Druid found a Vex). I'm not aware of any attainable runewords unless you score other very rare runes. That has always bothered me, there should be more runewords that only have 1 high rune, so single pass players can benefit.

 

[OldSoldier1]

Nice update, IW! I like your stacking of PDR on the merc. I had a twinked character I played with lots of PDR and he was the best tank type character I ever played.

 

[Insane Wayne]

I spent all my gold gambling (unsuccessfully) for a Circlet of Life Everlasting. I was hoping to score one and have Larzuk socket it. Duskdeep was the backup plan, hopefully will be sufficient.

 

[OldSoldier1]

Amodan_Crane entered the sewers of Lut Gholein very angry, seeking to quickly avenge Atma's deceased loved ones. He was on a mission, heading to Radament but only after routing out every vestige of evil within the entire area. /P3 in case archers showed their ugly faces. Notice how Amodan refused to allow Radament to use his undead allies' bodies.
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After dispatching Radament, Amodan_Crane fell upon a double boss pack nearly immediately upon entering the rocky waste. It seems to be the case almost always that the strongest enemies befall Amodan right away upon seeing new territory. Here, Black Widow stood no chance with easy-to-defeat abilities.
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Her cousin Black Touch was even easier. They only challenged our team slightly because they were stacked together and attacked simultaneously.
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All of the enemies in the Stony Tomb were melee and so Amodan_Crane ratcheted up the difficulty setting to /P5. Creeping Feature was no match for our Thorns.
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Beetleburst was far less problematic than the hawk nest nearby, which didn't cause too much physical pain but rather took about 100 spears to bring down.
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Amodan_Crane went to /P5 in the Maggot Lair, knowing that all enemies were melee. He loved the long hallways, which forced many enemies to line up and take their bone spear medicine.
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Amodan_Crane was very bold in the Ancient Tunnels, moving to /P8 for it. No good items dropped but the pace was not slow even at that high setting. We lost an IG or two in cases like this. There was enough equipment laying around that it was never a problem to make a new golem, albeit without the benefit of the buff equipment (at this point a mere +1 summoning circlet).
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This double pack was not even really that much trouble, unless you count losing a golem as a problem. Once a couple zombies went down, the chain reactions began and that accelerated the slaughter.
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I kept the Claw Viper Temple at /P5 because of the nature of our enemies. They were all melee and with Amp + Thorns they did not stand a chance. I was able to resurrect two greater mummies and they assisted with Fangskin, who was no problem.
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Continued...

 

[OldSoldier1]

The cellars were a great place to have some good old fashioned back and forth combat. Several times, stacked boss packs drove us back and forth from rooms, archer packs fired arrows through various openings in walls and doors, and generally made gameplay its most exciting yet. Here we see the front end of a double boss pack.
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Here is the back end of the same pack. There were plenty of arrows going around and Amodan_Crane sometimes had to charge into a room to get the Revives to follow and engage. Once they did, it was generally simple to stay out of harm's way and fire away with spears. Once an enemy went down, reviving it was a good way to stem the tide of further arrows flying about. I think there was a champion pack along with this double boss pack but I don't have a screenshot to prove it. We did lose a golem or two in these areas. The cellars were all taken at /P3.
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Before taking the Arcane Sanctuary, we upgraded the Iron Golem, making him out of the Bverrit Keep we'd found earlier. The fire resist inherent in the shield made him immune to fire and very handy in the entire level. Mission accomplished there. We did the sanctuary at /P5 and didn't find much to speak of until the fourth quadrant, and you can see the two drops a bit later in the post. The spider bow was an upgrade on the Blade Bow for everything but demons in terms of damage (lower ED roll and one more frame per attack but higher base damage).

Here is a good shot of the way we were able to deal with masses of enemies. We kept them at the door, amped the group a few times to get most of them and blew them up until all the bodies were gone so they couldn't be resurrected. Then the greater mummies were a simple matter.
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We took the Canyon and all tombs and Duriel at /P5. I would go /P8 against Duriel if I had to do it again. There were several greater mummies in the last room and so I brought them with me and Duriel killed himself on the Thorns. It was pretty fast actually, even at /P5. No mummies went down and it was so fast I forgot to put on my MF gear. So I was rewarded with my third unique cudgel. Ugh.
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Some of our other drops along the way. The Crusader Bow is dang interesting but I think I'll leave it in the stash for now. The Edge is a major part of my build at this point. I will use the Ogre Maul for some CB in the last three acts.
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Amodan_Crane, level 84 necormancer, Kurast Docks

 

[OldSoldier1]

I'm having trouble posting so my apologies for the triple post. On some of them not all my attachments are showing up either. I did not want to have to repost the entire thing and I got impatient. Dang squid.