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Vessel of Hatred

5 Stages of Grief Tournament

Amodan_Crane started off his journey in the jungles of Kurast by doing some gambling... a lot of gambling. In NM he'd forgotten to spend his money before killing Mephisto so he ventured forward with several million in gold in the bank of ATMA. By the time act 3 Hell rolled around, he had in the neighborhood of 25 million to spend. So, after killing Duriel he equipped his Edge composite bow and visited Alkor for quite a while. He was looking for golemlord's amulets and circlets, and exceptional versions of light gloves and boots (befitting someone as weak as Amodan). He got some good items, as below. With about 7 million gold remaining he started forth on his journey into the jungles, at /P3.

A nice buff circlet for his golems. He also gambled a blue +2 all necro skills circlet, which may be a better option during combat due to its buff of P&B skills and curses.
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A sweet amulet for paladins, and with nice strength bonuses if something really nice but too heavy pops up.
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The jungles were not too difficult; as long as Amodan_Crane stayed behind the front lines of the golem and whatever he could find as Revives, the flayer blow darts were not a problem. There was one instance in the Flayer Jungle where something extra strong hit him for a couple hundred HP a pop and life went to about half, but I moved a bit and drank a red and recast bone armor and all was good. Here is Black Snarl, trying to do some damage, in vain, to Amodan.View attachment 6921

And here is his brother, Star Snarl, a few feet away. The Snarl boys turned into some good potions and gold via Ormus.
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Jungle drops were pretty decent. If I needed FCR the shield would be good. Another skiller, this time for an Amazon. Also got a nice Hellforge plate, which offers +1 skills and might be a nice item to use for summoning the IG but I don't have the strength to equip it without that nice amulet above, which means I can't use the amulet below...
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I don't recall ever finding a +2 skills amulet in a tournament before. I do have a copy of this amulet in my HC stash so I must have found one at some point but it will find use in summoning golems at the least. My other amulet, the one normally equipped, is a res all plus life plus +1 necro skills amulet so it is better all around for general use. I gambled for that one.View attachment 6924

Tree fight! It's not just for JRR Tolkien!
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We made it through the jungle in one piece, alighting at the WP in Lower Kurast having gained one level (1 stat point went to each with an extra to energy and the skill point went to Blood Golem, a useful skill due to synergizing the life of my IG).

Amodan_Crane, level 85 necromancer, Lower Kurast
 
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This thread is the delight i treat myself every morning coffee break. You guys are awesome and i really appreciated the detailed write-ups. Keep m going i really like it!

Thanks!
 
Fran and Gwinni had some pretty favourable monster draws in the jungle. No annoying crows or dangerous Gloams. Marsh had both types of frogs plus Fetish Shaman packs. Almost pathetic. Flayer Jungle did have those potentially dangerous 8-packs of melee Soul Killers, but they aren't cold immune and I was always very prepared to teleport back to calmer areas. Used the bridges a lot, and also simply teleported over the river if we were beset by a large pack.

The start of one of the spider dungeons was tricky, where I several times had to fight two better-than-regular Poison Spinners at the same time in the starting room (which thankfully was decently large). Don't remember much about Sszark, other than that it was not Extra Fast, and that I led it to and got it stuck on the exact same terrain feature as I did in Nightmare.

Both Swampy Pit and Flayer Dungeon had bone fetish in numbers, especially Swampy Pit. At least three Extra Fast bosspacks. I tried to be extremely careful with those - always separated the packs as much as I could and fought them in the calmer early areas. Managed to avoid all boss explosions but not two or three of the minions. Those hurt, but I never got much below half in the life bulb.

Got a screenie of Stormtree...

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...but taking the screenie cost me the only hits he scored. Ouch. To quote the great Sirian: 'It's hard to be both a soldier and a journalist, and one of these days I will pick the wrong time not to be a soldier.'

I didn't plan this terrain setup, it just happened... :)

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...but I took full advantage. Gwinni took them all out, because they bounced right back after fleeing every time, and (as you can see) Open Wounds was super handy here.

For both of the Bazaar temples, I entered them
- at /players 1
- with my Spirit weapon switch
- under the effect of a Resist Poison shrine

First temple entrance:

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That fourth spider moved around and poisoned Gwinni and it got a little dicey, especially since I could see a pack of rogues in the next room that apparently couldn't see us. Had to eventually get out to heal Gwinni. I wanted to avoid the rogues until we had more space, so I moved in where the spiders had come from. More spiders here to fight and a Wailing Beast pack, then some Wailing Beast Champions (two Champs, one Berserker). Could then sort out the rest without trouble, there was no actual bosspack here.

Ruined Temple had the left-facing-T layout, with a rogue bosspack in the entrance room. I didn't dally around, instead I teleported blindly down-right into the end room. A regular pack of rogues (usual spawn pack size of 5, I think) was here, plus at least one minion had followed us! The fight here in this tiny room was the scariest yet in the act. I started by pumping out some Statics while drinking purples, then teleported back and forth between the corners as best as I could. Took at least one town trip for potion refills, maybe two.

Here is the boss, and you can see the corpses from the hectic fight just before:

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Battlemaid Sarina had Mana Burn (minions were annoying as heck, the Mana Burn was troublesome for my teleporting actions) and Conviction, but I got to fight her alone, and never had to deal with more than two minions at a time.

The 10 random stat points I've earned have been pretty evenly distributed between STR, DEX and VIT.
I now have enough strength for a Knout. Maybe I'll make the Black runeword in one, don't actually remember if I've saved a socketed or low quality one...
Random skill point went to Fire Wall. Meh.

Finds lately:
* Ohm rune, from a regular Fetish in the Spider Forest. No idea what to use it for, other than if I do decide to chippie-reroll that Ward Bow for Gwinni and score a winner, I could put it in a socket for some extra omph.
* Scintillating (15) Ring of the Lamprey, gambled because I had to (gold was filling up, I am not muling off any gold in this act). Slightly better resists than my old rare, but now I have no life regeneration.

Will probably do some heavy gambling now. Both rings can certainly be improved, as can gloves, boots and circlet. Actually going to go for Coronets and not Circlets, because I am right at the clvl interval where it makes a difference. Coronets only require ilvl 82 to support Arch-Angel's, and I reach that with 80% of my gambles.


[Highlight]Conqueror Fran the Blaze/TS Sorceress and Gwinni the Fire Rogue, level 85, Hell Kurast Sewers next[/Highlight]
 
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Hello again SPF. It's that magical time of the year where I'm in between games and finding it difficult to pick one to dedicate to. That's of course when that small voice speaks up in the back of my head. "Well you know, you could always go play some more D2." Since I didn't have a strong counterargument (I never do) here I am again. And in the spirit of true denial as to my addictions I thought I'd hop into a fresh tournament.

The random gods decided Paladin, and so the adventures of Kaltos began. What's his build going to be? I have no idea, sounds like a problem for my end of Act 1 self, as I chose to ignore stats and skills. In the true spirit of grief I decided not to utilize any extended stash, because nothing leads to purer rage than having to fiddle with that stash size. It also wouldn't be preparing for disappointment if it wasn't a hardcore character, so let's get this started.

Like nearly everyone else, my adventure began by chopping through the Blood Moor and all its /p8 goodness. After some quick shuffling around with weapons I eventually stumbled into using a damaged scepter and some thrown javelins for Corpsefire. I had thrown a Chipped Ruby into a basic Scepter courtesy of the Den of Evil, however I hadn't even made to to Cold Crow or Blood Raven before I found myself a Superior Scepter with +3 to Holy Fire, allowing me to turn on the autopilot. While not enabling me to scorch my way through everything due to /p8 it did allow for me to start plowing through enemies with basic attacks.

From there, I had all the usual greatest hits that come with full clearing-- Cold Crow sure is annoying, Blood Raven is spooky when she curses you, and I managed to keep my Merc alive against Rakanishu at the cost of eating all the lightning myself. No particularly dangerous moments thus far, as I just finished clearing out Tristram and earned my +1 Energy Ring (thanks Akara..). I've now hit Level 15 with all my points on deck and my stash already stuffed with Rejuvs, Chipped Gems and random Jewels, because it's never too early to start hoarding.

Still not really sure what I'll be building, with no particular items pushing me in a strong direction, given how early on it is. Errant thoughts have meandered from reasonable ideas like hurling Hammers or using Vengeance all the way to the absurd and silly, so we'll see what sticks. I have a fairly respectable 20/16/20/20 resistance thanks to a plain +10 Resistance Targe that certainly had me thinking about my Imbue choices before I leave the Act.

Besides some cute resistance rares and a fun rare Hunter's Bow for my merc, I've accumulated a small collection of charms:
Grand: +8 Life
Large: +3 Strength, 6 Poison over 3.
Small: +1 Strength and Cold Resist 6, 6 Poison over 3 and 6 Stamina, 1-5 Lightning (x2)

Nothing cutting edge, but it all adds up.

Anyhow, off to see a lady about a blood bath.

Kaltos the Indecisive Paladin, Level 15, Normal Black Marsh
 
And down she goes:

Had a rather interesting run up to this point, full clearing on /p8 and then finishing off Andy herself at /p3 to save myself some trouble. I've been drumming up my anger by being constantly irritated that my stash is full of random chipped gems, so I feel certainly prepared for the upcoming Act. As for Act 1 itself, it was pretty fun. The Paladin has a good attribute spread so I never felt too pressed for equipment or specific stats, still using that same Scepter I got from the Den of Evil. While fighting Bone Ash I managed to find both Blood Crescent and a rare Targe, the former my first real competition in the weapon slot, but I felt like the +3 Holy Fire was just too valuable on an unskilled character. Beyond that I found a Deathspade in the Catacombs that I lacked the Strength to use even if I wanted to, and a Cracked Rondache, which was shaping up to be my Imbue before I fled the Act. I had two Jewels of Envy that I considered throwing in a bow, but my Rogue was doing just fine without it. Ended up looking like this before the end of the Act.

While I found the two uniques (Blood Crescent and Deathspade) the most interesting looking items were probably my shields, just because Paladin Shields look so impressive with their text-tsunami, even if they're not. The Rondache is a result of using up my Imbue. I have been trying to juggle around just a simple two-socket Targe in case I need it, but I have a feeling it'll be discarded before long.


Still not entirely sure what I want to do for my build, as I strategically wait to talk to Warriv before the rage of brash decisions overcomes me.

Kaltos the Still Indecisive Paladin, Level 20, Normal Lut Gholein (Once I stop stalling)
 
Amodan_Crane continued forth in the Kurast suburbs, venturing in all of the temples and sewers in search of his ultimate tormentors, seeking bargaining power as a means to put an end to his suffering. He continued on with the rest of the act at /P3 as he'd done the entire act so far. Upon entering the different temples he always made sure to have at least 2 revives along in order to more even the numbers upon entering. Two of the temples had enemies at the front door but neither of those were located at the stairs themselves, and so our friendly forces had time to venture forth and engage, leaving Amodan to fire his bone spears in relative safety.
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Battlemaid Sarina was bottlenecked at a doorway and unable to make headway in her quest at stopping us.
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Sometimes we came upon monsters that were unable to damage us at all. Silly Stygian Watcher, our Iron Golem is immune to your primary attack!
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This screenshot shows one of the temples where we had to fight on our beachhead.
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I didn't get any screenshots of the fight in Travincal because there were probably 20 or more Heirophants, including two boss packs and a champ pack, and the blizzards were aplenty. A few times I had to beat a strategic retreat to the docks for healing, and I could not beat the champ pack until after the council was dead (they were too close together and the council's hydras were picking us apart while trying to focus on the Heirophants). Needless to say, we marched onward. The Durance was filled with melee enemies and /P3 was probably too easy. Level 3 was our most fun, with blood lords in droves and more council members keeping the fireworks coming. I enjoyed shooting Devil Bender in the back.
View attachment 7007

I did not switch to Decrepify for Mephisto, leaving it on Amp Damage. His poison cloud attack was wasted on the Iron Golem and every time he tried to strike the golem, his own life went down by a lot. He was dead in under a minute.
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Drops were good. I gambled the necro circlet, which became primary gear for act 4. The Hone Sundan became our IG in act 4 as well.
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Act 4 was of course short and fairly sweet, although there was a wrinkle at the end in the Chaos Sanctuary. We plugged along, dropping the players setting to /P1 and doffing almost all of our MF gear in favor of survivability and life and skills gear, since our end game gear is perfectly acceptable now. I kept the 35% MF circlet and 35% MF amulet in the stash for the Diablo and Baals kills.

There were no difficult situations in the first three areas. Doom knights and regurgitators and leapers in the first area were all easy pickings. The +2 necro circlet provided me with as many as 5 revives if the situation needed it (2 hard points, plus 3 points via gear) but I don't think I ever ran with more than 3 or 4. The stygian hag pups were decent revives. The doom knights were good too. The venom lords were my favorite though, at least in these early areas. Urdars were in the river of flame and those guys are great revives. See how we beat the first few and got some going in the area.
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Hephasto was silly with a level 11 IG (300% damage returned and over 6500 life) with level 15 Thorns (810% damage returned) and amplified via Amp Damage. The Hellforge drop was very useful which is shown below.
View attachment 7012

I decided to spend my Lum and Pul and upgrade the Riphook for the fight against Diablo. I kept that and the Rattlecage (which I also upgraded) for the last fight in the act.
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Check out the carnage here! I love it.
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During the opening of the Grand Vizier seal, they popped on screen DIRECTLY on top of us. They didn't get through Amodan's Bone Armor (about 500 hp) but they were able to kill Wendy, which left my thorns damage badly degraded for the other two seals and Diablo. During the fight with Lord De Seis, they also dispatched my Hone Sundan IG, so I didn't get the benefit of that CB and great Lighting and Fire resist either. But the revives came into their own and the bone spears took Diablo down.
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Drops for the act.
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I used this weapon as my IG heading into act 5. Hopefully he makes it for a while, because its a good one. Probably my best one left.
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Amodan_Crane, level 86 necromancer, Harrogath
 
So I was sitting in the Rogue Encampment, trying to decide what to do with my Paladin. Knowing that the next step is Anger, I tried to think about what things made me upset in Diablo 2-- almost immediately, I had flashbacks of using Zeal only to look like some blindfolded child swinging at a pinata-- "Oh, what is my chance to hit, my totally honest character sheet-- 95% you say? Then why can't I hit a single damn thing!?" And so as I fumed and bitterly mumbled to myself I found myself repeatedly putting points into Smite without further consideration. "Attack Rating you say? Lying Character Sheets huh? Let's see you try and dodge your way out of Smite, game!" From there, I thought about other frustrating things, and since I was on a Hardcore character, what sadder fate is there than dying? And so I looked at Holy Shield and Defiance and thought to myself "If I never get hit, surely I'll never die!" And making sure to keep my eye on Salvation, because who really has the time to balance out all their resistances to a nice and cute 75%.

"But what about Offensive Auras? How do you plan to kill anything?" I hear a voice cry out. Needing to rely on fancy auras to kill things sounds like someone who lacks the bitter dedication of pinning someone in a corner and pummeling them to death with a big hunk of metal. And with that, I knew I was ready, and told Warriv to get this started.

I decided to throw one point into Defiance to make a statement before dumping the remainder of my points in Smite. As for my attributes, I raised my Dexterity up to 60, before putting the remainder into Vitality, knowing that this trip through the desert will see me putting points into Strength. Yet inconceivably, I found that I lacked the Strength to buy much of use at the stores just a moment later, who would have thought? After arguing with my Rogue about how she doesn't help me stay alive, I booted her out of my party before snagging a Prayer Merc because dying is for chumps.

There was no time to go mucking about in a Sewer-- my stash is full and I want my Cube right this instant, so I rushed out into the desert. After blundering and plundering the wrong tomb I eventually had the Cube in my grasp and freed up some much needed stash space, as I was previously juggling items in my inventory, much to my frustration. I also found Cleglaw's Shield-- which in Magical Christmas Land may turn into a source of Crushing Blow if I somehow collect them all and if I'm ever that desperate.

After many trips back to the blacksmith to fix my sword after one too many thrashings (I guess you could say I have a temper problem..?) I went to clear out the Sewers due to the incessant badgering of the townsfolk. It was there I perfected my stunning stratagem of repeatedly bashing any uniques into the back of my mercenary until he deigned to hit them. Before long I had my negotiations with Radament which quickly broke down until I had to beat him to (un)death with his own mummified shoes.

I'm now all set to begin dumping points into Holy Shield come next level, and have been steadily working to raise my Strength. I also just now remembered I should be pitching my Elemental Damage charms if I'm using Smite.. woops. As far as weapons go, I can actually make two Steels, but I feel like at present Blood Crescent is a fairly functional foundation of Attack Speed and Open Wounds, plus the Resists and Life isn't so bad either.

Kaltos the To-Hit Calc Trumping Paladin, Level 23, Normal Dry Hills
 
It didn't take too long before I decided to emulate the tryhards by finding a nice 3os chest piece and fill it with Topazes. I would have done the same with my helm but I was out of the yellow gems and so had to settle for rubies instead, and made up for it by shopping around until I found some MF gloves and boots. This tanked my resistances (what I had previously been stacking on these slots) but I assured myself that it'd pay off soon or later-- or you know, maybe I'd just die.

The trip through the desert was mostly uneventful, save for a lot of complaining about sand in my boots. I had taken to walking into a room and letting my mercenary do the grunt work while I worked on my writeup supervised his form. Armed with lifesteal, frost nova on being struck and a chance to cast amplify damage he was able to whittle his way through foes to save me from having to ping pong enemies all over the map to kill them.

This lasted until the Arcane Sanctuary where eventually impatience started to flare up and irritation swiftly following in its place. Despite finding the Summoner on the first try, I wasn't that amped to go and full clear this place with a half-cooperating mercenary, so I decided to lower myself down to /p1 and enjoy two shotting things for the first time in a while. I started to clear out most of the tombs until I was precariously getting close to Level 27, before deploying my Tactical Level Up (patent pending) and fought /p3 Duriel. Believe it or not the only thing I had to drink was mana potions, because it takes a lot of pummeling to kill giant slugs.

There were some interesting goodies this Act. I'm holding far too many mediocre charms because I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to inventory space. Going along with the Infernal Sign I also have Hsarus' Iron Heel and a smattering of random runes. Still using Blood Crescent despite knowing a Steel would probably be better, but I like the defensive bonuses, and I'm happy that I found two rare rings to go along with my MF amulet. I'm using a Shimmering Heraldic Shield just for more Smite damage over my Rondache, although whether that's actually that important is debatable.

I hadn't put points into Strength prior to this Act so I don't feel too bad about the investment there, and as for Skills I've been intentionally keeping them close to the chest so that a stray level won't be the worst thing in the world, although I plan to finish the Act in /p1 (and likely the rest of this playthrough) just because I don't think the XP will make a gigantic difference from what I've been reading, and I don't know if I have the patience to wait it out for potential item drops on a character like this.

Full speed ahead, I can trade the sand in my shoes for mud and water instead, woohoo.

Kaltos the Angry That My Shield Keeps Turning Off Paladin, Level 27, Kurast Docks
 
It was time to run along as fast as my 0 FRW feet could take me, as I quickly ran through all of Act 3 with the grace of a falcon, in and out like a demon's whisper. I had fairly good luck in actually traversing the Act, finding most things at a fairly decent pace and never running into too many dangerous encounters, save for a pack of Blood Lords that did a choreographed meteor shower the likes of which I've rarely seen. As far as gear was concerned, all I found was a Cathan's ring, taunting me with its Life Leech, and a lot of Circlets that wanted to give me Attack Rating from gambling. Mephisto himself gave me a rare pair of gloves with random mods and about the same MF as my blues, so they were swapped out, and a decent dual resist crown which I stashed. I avoided leveling throughout the Act (ended up at about 4/5th of a level, thanks to my empty XP bar heading into the Act), and my only stat distribution from the Tome all randomly went into Vitality, so at least I had that going for me.

It was then I realized that Act 4 was coming up, and I was woefully underprepared. I haven't had to use 'too' many potions, mostly just scavenging mana potions off the ground, but I've been fairly light on storage space due to not having an extended stash, so filling up on items wasn't entirely feasible. What's worse, I realized I wouldn't be able to repair, and I've been relying on one weapon with particularly low durability.. so I grabbed a random Kris off the floor of the Durance before filling up on some consumables and heading into Act Four, with the intention of saving my Blood Crescent for Diablo himself.

I have some resist gear saved up to swap out for my MF gear, but I'm still not feeling that confident about the Diablo fight, especially with limited resources and likely no Merc to rely on due to a lack of revives. To me it seemed clear that if I were to duke it out with Diablo I'll need to hit Level 30 to cap my resists using Salvation, and maybe some other tricks. Since I'm only Level 27 at present I've been toggling /p8 here and there, although I certainly don't like fighting Venom Lords and their ilk when they're that tanky, as can be seen by my special tactics..

Eventually I found my way to Izual before breaking my weapon on him, and then at some points resorting to punching him to death when my mana hit 0. It was then that the RNGods looked down upon their weaponless servant, and deigned to grant him an instrument of destruction, as a unique flail dropped. Excellent! Another weapon, a very fast one at that, and with Slows Target to boot.. why things are certainly looking up for good ol' Kaltos the Smiter today and..
Kaltos The Unarmed Paladin, Level 28, Cursing the Gods in the Plains of Despair
 
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A much larger update this time, to counterbalance my multi-posting.

I was still left without a weapon after killing Izual, eventually just burning the Flail out of durability since I didn't have the space to hold on to it, and I was already saving my Blood Crescent in my other swap. So this began a process of picking up and utilizing any weapon on the floor I could nab that might improve my attack speed, as I cleared out the remainder of the Plains of Despair and City of the Damned. Outside of the odd pack of flamethrowers I didn't feel too threatened, but my process of bobbing up and down on /p1 and /p8 as I tried to gauge my level progression did slow me down some.

I made Hephasto do the Hit Recovery dance in the corner and eventually claimed my prize-- an El Rune, hurray, and started to make my way to the Chaos Sanctuary, at this point 29 and on my way to the important Level Up. It couldn't have been much closer, as I ended up dinging at the final seal pack before the big bad himself, and retreated back to town to see what resources I had available. Seeing my items strewn across the floor certainly gave me Diablo 1 flashbacks.

When it came time to fight Diablo himself, I switched to my not-so-secret weapon-- my old Blood Crescent, and moved to flank him, since I only have one shot with my Merc, I thought it best to try and keep him safe. In a shocking news update, it turns out having capped resists and 75% block is actually pretty good against the red devil, and before long he was dying in a rather sizable puddle of his own blood. Open wounds definitely helped here, but if I was feeling particularly bold I think I could have finished the fight without using any Health potions, but I wasn't that eager to test that theory and played it safe.

We finally reached freedom, although I was quick to kill Shenk before restocking on anything besides repairs. I was certainly enjoying Salvation, but there were plenty of times where resists weren't that important, so I was considering a few options. Eventually I decided to start working my way to Redemption, because mana consumption has really been an ongoing problem. In the Frigid Highlands I found my first +Skills Amulet (and +50 Mana) but it was unfortunately for a Sorc. In return however I managed to squirrel away a 2os flail earlier and when I stumbled on to a Chipped Topaz in Abaddon of all places, I managed to finally cube up some Runes to make Strength-- Crushing Blow here we come.

I continued to full clear all the zones (on /p1 however) and I certainly started to enjoy having Vigor on a toggle, which then prompted me to switch out my 20MF boots for Hsarus for even more running speed simply out of convenience. It was around the time I was fighting Pindle that I leveled into Redemption-- and what a game changer it feels like. Every time I start using Redemption I question why I'm not always investing the points into it, as it pretty much meant I didn't use potions for the remainder of the Act, toggling between it and Vigor as I cleared out the areas.

Crushing Blow made quick work of the Ancients, and before long I was at Baal's Throne Room, which outside of some inconvenience with Decrepify and Chilling, I didn't run into any problems, and it was certainly amusing to see all of the Minions of Destruction stunned at the same time in a twist of fate. In a rather relaxed fight Baal went down without much issue, save for some mana potions due to the drain from his attacks. With only an Arctic Binding as a reward from him I went back to town to make some finishing touches.

I had found a 3os Heraldic Shield that soon housed an Ancient's Pledge, although it is currently on my swap. Finding no bases I really wanted Socketed or items I thought would last me the length of the playthrough, I decided to take the symbolic route and dump it all into my Shield, which now looks like so:

Onwards into Nightmare, and saving away some points that will likely be going into Holy Shield, or maybe I'll finally move towards Fanaticism, who knows. Will definitely need to start crafting/finding/runewording some items come Nightmare since I've been lagging behind to some degree.

Helm: 2os Helm (+41 Life)
Amulet: 16MF (or +1 Defensive Skills)
Weapon: Strength Rune Word (Base: Flail)
Chest: Rare 2os Splint Mail (+40 MF) other affixes rather unimpressive.
Shield: As seen above.
Gloves: Rares, 20MF, Half Freeze, +7 Lightning Res
Ring: Rare, +10 Life, +10 Cold Res (+others)
Ring: Rare, +23 Fire Res, +23 Lightning Res (+others)
Ring Banana Phone
Belt: Sigon's Wrap
Boots: Hsarus' Iron Heel
Swap: Blood Crescent and Ancient's Pledge (Heraldic Shield)

Charms: 24 Slots
Strength: 7
Dexterity: 9
Life: 28
Resists: 17/30/7/15 (F/C/L/P)

Other Uniques/Set Items Found:
Iratha's Coil
Sigon's Shelter
Infernal Sign
Cleglaw's Claw
Cathan's Seal
Steelclash

Destroyer Kaltos the Paladin, Level 37, Nightmare Rogue Encampment
 
Something seems wrong with a lot of pictures on the previous page :(.

Anyway, progress ... and preventing @Xios from being banned because of spamming this thread with posts ;).

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That's right. Through_Grief is finally ready to take on Hell.

But first things first. Starting out in Act 3 I gambled some boots and gloves. No luck though. As for playing through, I decided to do the same as in Normal: just play through on /p1, killing as little as possible, to reduce the number of level ups and thus random skill and attribute points. Again, this worked very well. Also, in some parts later in the game I had the impression that xp moved very slowly in certain areas, probably because of too much of a level gap between me and the monsters. So in the end I don't think that I've lost a lot by using this tactic.

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Mephisto didn't pose too much of a problem. He dropped nothing of interest.

Act 4, back on /p8, went smooth, although a little slow, as is often the case in this Act. I mainly used FO and Glacial Spike as skills in this act, as the fire skills seemed to kill much slower.

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Izual, right at the entrance of the area.

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Nice drop for my eth grail collection ... if I ever decide to do such a thing in HC that is ...

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The fight was fun, the forge drop ... Sol, so quite disappointing. The Chaos Sanctuary made up for that a bit with a Ko dropped from Lord De Seis.

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Diablo was taken on from a very safe distance, except for the initial batch of static. Merc lived through about 3/4 of the fight. Again, drops were crappy. At that point I was level 66 and very much looking forward to Act 5, as Act 4 isn't my favourite act at all. Well, it depends on the character, but it wasn't with this one.

First part of Act 5 went smooth, although at times I had to make use of ...

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Gotta love Hydra for the ability to take out enemies from behind a corner or across a river :cool:.

Somewhere in the Act I found this nice little twinking item:

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Hmm, maximum amount of images reached, time to split up into a second post. We are back after the commercial break :).
 
Ok, welcome back everyone :).

Somewhere in one of the sublevels of the open areas, I find a strange group of exiles:

View attachment 7067

At the later stages of Act 5 I sometimes had a bit of a harder time, mainly due to enemies like archers. Even then it was mostly a matter of feeding potions to my merc and getting him in safety with teleport though. Hydra took care of the rest !!

View attachment 7068

That is the kind of boots you want to find in an untwinked environment !!! I kept my mf boots for NM, because my resists were maxed anyway, but these will most likely be my endgame boots. Not too shabby for boots with a level req of 18.

Ancients weren't really hard, again due to Hydra's fire and forget nature, but I didn't get any picture, because they spawned both Cursed and with Conviction, so I had to keep on teleporting.

WSK was somewhat slow, but steady. Obviously, on a single-pass tournament, you get this map layout in WSK2:

View attachment 7069

Waves were a bit hard, but again not too much so.

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At Baal my merc died 2 times, but other than that he was a walk in the park. His drop was quite good actually, albeit in terms of low level items:

View attachment 7071

I was happy to find the Goldwrap, although with my current gear my resists won't be high enough to be able to wear them in Hell.

My Sorc dinged level 75 upon killing Baal, so when it comes to clvl, Through_Grief is definitely ready for Hell.

Starting out in Hell, she will have 29/25/66/34 resists. Not really good, but for this type of build it should do. My merc will be using his Insight Partizan he has been using for quite a while now. Hopefully I'll find an elite base soon. Rest of his gear is Iron Pelt socketed with Sol and rare Circlet with max dam, AR, all res, cold res, life leech and some damage reduction.

Not sure what I should do for Hell. What player setting did you guys play on? I seem to recall that a lot of you did so on /p1, but I'm inclined to think that I should be able to do /p3 or so.
 
@T72on1, one of my favorite tournament characters was a hydra sorc. I liked how I could stand across the river or other obstacle and get some easy kills, especially of harder monsters like frenzytaurs.

I really liked your screenshot of the fight with Diablo. You got the picture just as your hydra fireball hit Diablo below the belt!
 
Lol, thanks. I didn't even notice that. But yeah, that shot is spot on !!!
 
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I was too surprised so hit escape too fast, but ...

View attachment 7089

... Through_Grief's journey ended in early act 2, due to that evil Radament :(.

The sad thing is, this happened on my second attempt at him. The first time, he was down to less than 1/4 health, when I was out of pots for my merc, so I wanted to get back to town, and as I tried to enter the tp, the game crashed. Without this crash, it wouldn't have happened, as he didn't have any dangerous mods, and I was fighting him from a distance anyway. But because of the crash I had to make another game. I teleported through the 3 levels up to Radament, killed a few of his minions, when they were all near me and Radament was all alone at the opposite side, I teleported to him to apply static, but I teleported too close, got amped (yes this time he did have some nastier mods), managed to swallow on full purple when my life went down fast, but didn't manage to teleport out and got killed before I could pot again :(.

Before that, Act 1 had been going really well, albeit somewhat slow, at /p3. A few screens about the journey through act 1:

View attachment 7090

I don't think I have fought Blood Raven so far outside the cemetary often. I wonder if I could have chased her all the way to the Rogue Camp, she would have turned into the Diablo Clone ... :rolleyes:.

View attachment 7091

Best drop of the Act. Other noteworthy drops were a 39% CB IK Maul and a 5os Giant Tresher. I didn't mule off the Ist, so I'm afraid it's gone ...

Countess got me an Ort :(. I imbued a Coronet, but that didn't give me anything good.

View attachment 7092

Some 90% mf on my character, not enough, not enough ...

View attachment 7093

Andy kill. Teleport in, Static down, then retreat to the other room, cast Hydras in the doorway, let her pass through, teleport to the other side of the wall, rinse and repeat. Worked like a charm :).

So unfortunately my participation in this tournament ends here, as I plan to divide my time between my 99er Sorc and Grim Dawn for now. Thanks a lot for hosting @Pb_pal !!! It was a very fun experience, and very nice concept. Good luck to all participants !!!
 
Congrats to OldSoldier for reaching the final act. Looks like you really know what you're doing. The merc loss in late Act IV did complicate things - but only a little.

@T72on1: Argh, too bad!
Those guys hit hard. That's why I usually don't teleport to Static them - if you happen to 'tag' them so the name bar is shown, you'll teleport right next to them. Much better to pick a spot to run to that doesn't risk getting you that close.

---------------------------------------------------


I forgot to tell you last time, so I do so now instead. The Gidbinn shrine spawned a measly Champion Rat Man. It made a regular Champion drop, but didn't drop any Gidbinn. :(
It it was a tourney where that drop had a decent chance of actually meaning something, I'd go there in a new game, on /p1, and pick up nothing else, but now I won't bother. I have enough money to gamble dozens of rare rings (with higher ilvls) if I want to.

Sewers was an all-undead affair. Fightning bone fetish here was much easier than in Swampy Pit, since I could always arrange a situation to fight them across a platform gap.


Temples were bound to be exciting. This time I didn't have any convenient Resist Poison shrine for the last spider temple (the one in Upper Kurast), which made fighting the bosspack by the stairs a bit dicey. Only three minions in the pack, which was somewhat of a blessing. More than once, I took cover behind GS-frozen minions to protect us from the boss:

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When only one minion remained, this was no longer possible. The rest of the fight was quite frustrating (I had to move around a lot, and that made Gwinni keep alternating her fire at the two different targets, killing none within reasonable time) and, a few times, dangerous. Boss was highly resilient/immune to our main damage types:

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I had started the session with 8 extra full purples in stash, was up to 11 before taking on the temples. Down to six after this fight. There was only one more bosspack in the temple (Extra Fast rogues) but it had a lot of monsters in total. There were about 5 regular spider packs, 5 regular rogue packs and two Night Lords.

The next temple (Forgotten in UK) had an empty first room.

Ruined Fane on the Causeway had half a dozen regular snakes in the entrance room. I need lots of teleporting space to fight them safely, so I did a blind teleport down to an empty pretty large room (lucky!).

The final temple (Causeway Reliquary) is the one that has cause me the most trouble over the years. This was the welcoming crew:

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No boss, so it was manageable. Got to secure some good amount of space before running into the first boss:

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Pretty obvious why I want some space, huh? Both to fight guys like this and to separate them from their minions.

It's always a milestone for a character to survive the temples. Now I am excited about the rest of game. Still haven't done much gambling but will do so now.

Recent finds: only one of note - Stormshield unique Monarch (grailer, my 2nd for this character).
Stats are nice but no way I can ever meet that STR requirement.
(I like the Diablo 1 homage here. Stormshield was always a favourite find there, at least the Tower Shield version with its more forgiving STR requirement.)


[Highlight]Conqueror Fran the Blaze/TS Sorceress and Gwinni the Fire Rogue, level 85, Hell Travincal next[/Highlight]
 
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Sad news on the death. As for myself, just a small update.

I made sure to go back and kill all of my Cows, although I didn't find anything too useful in the way of drops, even with the death of the King. Once in Nightmare proper, I fiddled back and forth with player settings for Blood Moor, a process that happened throughout the Act, although the majority was handled at /p1.

I've noticed a shift in my approach to champion and unique packs, where now I'm often playing bodyguard for my Merc by seizing the initiative to either stun the pack or in the case of Cursed or other nasty boss modifiers, thwacking the boss into isolation and a stunlock to kill them preemptively. While it's working quite well so far, it seems a risky proposition to do later on, particularly if I get to Hell.

Didn't have any real moments of danger until I made my way down into the Cellar, where I had this wonderful welcoming committee that immediately blasted my poor Merc to pieces.

The key for me here was to not panic, and namely not to run. Even with my points held hostage I'm still at a 75% chance to block, so I was able to navigate my way through the pack and eventually kill off stragglers one by one until it was no longer an issue. The Countess if I recall correctly dropped a Dol.

Moving on, I continued to full clear all the zones on /p1, and started to notice that since Smite is not increasing in costs yet my mana is slowly increasing, Redemption isn't as important to constantly have on. Additionally, there are times where the movement of Vigor or the resistance of Salvation feels unnecessary, so I am thinking it's time to pick up Fanaticism for when the real scrapping starts.

Eventually I tracked down Andy herself and took her out without much issue (thanks Crushing Blow) although I probably should have killed her at a higher player setting, since all I received was an Isenhart's Case for my troubles. I burned Charsi's imbue on a Circlet that was +1 Lightning Skills, so unfortunately that's a wash.

A well timed level up gives me plenty of options moving forward. I think I'll be finishing off Holy Shield and then moving into Fanaticism, or some combination thereof. As for stats, most likely I'll top off my Dexterity a bit, before putting the rest in Vitality and assuming my angry waltz through Act 2 will sustain my Strength gain. I believe it may be time to say farewell to my Prayer Merc and pick up a Might one in the meantime, although I did consider Holy Freeze as well.

As for items, not too much to report. I managed to find Sander's Taboo for gloves which was appreciated, and a 4os Polearm if I ever find a Sol for my Merc, but beyond that I've been using what I had before. I am however considering upgrading my Shield to its Exceptional version to help with Smite damage.

Lastly, I was considering making some Blood Gloves and Belt for more Crushing Blow and Open Wounds respectively, although the finding of Sander's gloves made me hesitate, and my Merc is currently using Malice (100% OW) so it has been put on hold for the time being.

That's all for now, I have a feeling with Might, Fanaticism and an upgraded Shield, I'll certainly be able to crank up the aggression come Act 2, let's hope it doesn't get me killed.

Kaltos the Paladin, Level 45, Arming Up in Nightmare Lut Gholein
 
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