Annette continued along in the desert, angry at the beasts that caused her grief. She vowed to make them pay, right up to the final battle. She used her Ghoulhide gloves in all of the sewers/tombs and basically everywhere "inside" except the Maggot Lair.
She went into the Halls of the Dead and all side areas searching for any rune which might be useful to make her Harmony bow. It has been her goal to make a Harmony for this entire journey, and couple it with the merc's Edge (or a Thorns merc, who is less ideal IMO). She cubed up her non-essential runes from Shael and found that she was a single Io away from a Ko and paydirt. Thus the journey commenced...
Here is a boss pack co-located with a champ pack. The unravelers bring their own skeletons to the fight, and even though they go down quickly enough with the Ghoulhide and the rare Shadow Bow, a single decoy cannot distract that many unravelers and keep them all from resurrecting their minions, so it was tedious in areas like this.
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Other instances where our lack of massive firepower becomes obvious is in situations like this, where mummies continue to spew forth as fast as we can kill them. Here, the decoy stood in front of the door and stemmed the tide but I wasn't always able to pull that off, and sometimes unravelers made the experience more tense. Stand... Right.................. There!
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The Maggot Lair was not exactly terrible like the NM Halls of Anguish (appropriately named, yuck) but wasn't exactly speedy. The rare amp damage bow stole the show here and we actually cleared Coldworm's lair fairly quickly.
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The Ancient Tunnels were very fun but yielded no Io through Ko... The Claw Viper Temple gave us a crazy scare. We stepped through the doorway to an empty screen so I thought we'd be good, and cast a decoy about 20 feet ahead. It was set upon by Fangskin and company almost immediately so he must have been right around the corner. The Valkyrie did her tank thing well, but Fangskin and one other snake charged past it and hit Diane several times in succession. Here's where I made a mistake that almost deeded me. I did not take the Edge bow from Diane and wear it myself, and after a rejuv or two for Diane, she took one from Fangskin too hard and died, and we lost our Thorns. I'm convinced that if I'd had it on I could tank some hits from Fang and company until he went down from the Thorns, but that obviously didn't happen and I was caught, alone, in the corner. I got hit repeatedly, unable to summon a new Valk closer by (mana burn Fangskin), and wondering if that would help anyway since she was still engaged with at least three or four other snakes at the time anyway. I could only watch my life bar being consumed quickly by Fangskin and drink a purple (I had six left after feeding two to Diane) periodically while trying to click the stairs (which were very nearby since she was just standing in the corner). After ALL reds and ALL purples were consumed, Annette FINALLY made the stairs with about 200 HP remaining.
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WHEW. I was able to reconstitute my army and healing potions, swap the Edge bow onto myself rather than Diane, and make a mad dash for the corner boxes. We (Diane and I) both made it, and I made a stand there, with my back against the wall, against absolute hordes of undead. It was absolutely packed in there. The last 1.5 acts were so fun with the added kill speed that I didn't want it to end here!
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I did two of the false tombs, including Kaa's tomb. I love those Ghoulhide gloves in heavily undead areas. We usually park the decoy on top of an unraveler so it takes swipes at the decoy rather than send unholy bolts or resurrect buddies. Sometimes after only two decoys, the unravelers kill themselves without any other intervention on my part other than the occasional strafe arrow that hits it and starts the PMH. Nice!
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Here is our drop screenie in the act. I put it here because in another false tomb, I found a rune that i'd been searching for the entire time! I was playing with my boys watching (they are fascinated by D2 and when they are older I will get them hooked) when this dropped. I was super excited and you could see their eyes light up with joy at my reaction even though they had no idea what was going on. I paused the game and went to Arreat Summit to show them what I'd just found. Problem is, we had a single Amn rune (and JUST enough to make another) and NO 4 socket elite bows. We had a blade blow and 2 great bows, and a Matriarchal bow, so I was hoping a great bow would run 4 sockets and I could use my last Amn to give the matriarchal bow a try. Anyway, after we finished that false tomb I gathered the materials from the ATMA stash, socketed the great bow (4 baby on the first try!!!), tried the Matriarchal bow (3 sockets, boo), and made the weapon. I didn't take a screen shot until after I'd done part of act 3, but here it is in all its glory. You see that right, it is the worst possible roll! Countess gave me a Hel so if I somehow get another Ko I'm going to change it out. HA HA!
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Regardless of our runeword rolling challenges, the last tombs were a breeze with Annette's heavier bow damage and strategic use of revives. A single charge is about 15,000 GP so I'll be hoarding my Ort runes for sure! There were several unravelers in the last chamber before Duriel so I switched to the LoH gloves and bumped it up to /P8 to fight Duriel.
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The unravelers poofed in town while I was getting my MF gear on, after we slivered him, so I'll say they ALMOST outlasted /P8 Duriel. That's just crazy. Doesn't he do 10X damage to them too? Yowzers!
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Annette, level 81 Strafe Revivazon, Act 3H jungles
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