A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Progress update

Mephisto is dead, so is Diablo. Everything has been going well. Anaphylaxis and his friends are now resting in Harrogath, trying to get warm after a trip all the way up to the Arreat Plateau. A more narrative update will come when Baal is defeated.

One positive thing is that Anaphylaxis now have learned the name of his mercenary (formerly known as PRAYER DUDE): Haseen. Was about time :rolleyes:


Anaphylaxis, lvl 39 together with Epinephrine and Haseen the desert warrior

current magic find: 293%
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Good luck in the green with envy tourney iomanip. I hope you'll continue the journey once you find time though :P I WILL make a new char, that I promise...
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

... didn't say i would stop playing this one :wink3:
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

[highlight]Introducing FemurFear, the venommancer[/highlight]

Femurfear was born a freak, which is a pretty astonishing feat in a city filled with necromancers. He was not named FemurFear, of course. His birthname was Zwang-Oul, in honor of the famous necromancer who had a similar name once.
He grew up a slightly disturbed(quite normal in a city filled with necromancers), quite depressed and angsty(VERY common in a city filled with walking dead) teenager. Then, in the aftermath of a failed alchemy class where he inadvertently mixed the contents of an antidote and a rancid gas potion together, the fumes made him hallucinate. Or see the truth. Just depends on which side you are on.
Anwyays, ZwangOul finally realized that his femurs were his mortal enemies, bent on his destruction. This may seem odd to YOU, but remember, he had seen LOTS of femurs walking around, so please, some consideration before you judge!
Anyways, he took his favorite dagger, sat down, took a deep breath, and decided to cut his enemies of once and for all. He discovered lots of things at that point:
1) A leg is a very thick piece of meat, with lots of nerves and sinews inside.
2) Nerves transmit pain, especially when they are cut.
3) His paintreshold was REALLY, REALLY low.

He woke up under the not so gentle care of the local hospital, which consisted of one elderly slightly twisted nurse(the necromancer credo: 'If something is wrong, let it die and resurrect it' kind of stands in the way of thorough health care). He found out he had made a cut of perhaps three millimetres deep in his leg.
The nurse performed her duties adequately (by putting a medieval bandaid on it) and informed his parents. After a little discussion with the offspring, the parents decided that trying to cut off your own leg was too freaky, even for a city filled with necromancers.

So what to do? Banishing could only be done by the city council, and no way were they going to make their disgrace public. They briefly contemplated killing the poor lad and being done with it, but in a city filled with necromancers, death is not nearly as final a solution as it would be in other places, and they feared their son might hold a grudge for being killed, and come back a revenant.
Without any other option really, they decided to toss him in the sewer, figuring that the periodic flooding down there would wash their problem away. But it was in the sewer that Zwang-Oul met his new companions, who quickly realized they had found a like minded soul. They lovingly renamed him FemurFear, a name he has worn not so proudly ever since. The years and the ever present sewage alligators toughened him up a bit. Then he heard about the opportunity to make a name for necromancers by killing of some evil demons in faraway lands. Having managed to largely overcome the fear of his own femurs (based on sound logical principles as: What you cannot see is not a problem, and there is a lot of flesh covering my bones), he still had the heebiejeebies from any other kind of femurlike bone. But he vowed he would not let that stop him from making a name for himself, and earn the respect of his parents. (not that he has a particular fondness for them. After he has earned their respect, he fully intends to kill them, and raise them as zombies to fulfill HIS every need for a change. You gotta love the necromantic society, seriously).

FemurFear is a venommancer, much in the same way Skellophobic was. This time, he might use more of the poison nova though, allthough the intention still remains to simply use the dagger most of the time.

I'm a bit in a quandary to simply using poison explosion and using it as an important synergy to poison nova and poison dagger as well, or to max out corpse explosion for the fire/physical damage. I could do both, but I want to sink some points in clay golem and pretty much max out one of the crowd control curses (I think I will go with confusion, but not sure). So there really aren't enough points to spare, i need to make a choice. But that choice can wait for a while :P
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Code: 
Make no bones about it
Forum Name    Character Name    Level    Waypoint/Location   Best Drop            

OldSoldier      Minime            83       GUARDIAN          Skin of Vipermaji
OldSoldier      Moe               65       RIP-NM Chaos Sanc Langer Briser
Merlin          Skellophobic      52       RIP-NM Pits       Rare Amulet
Serdash         SneezyBones       44       Crystal Passage   Sander's Paragon
Iomanip         Anaphylaxis       39       Act V      
Chaogasm        Stumpy_McStump    32       Act 4             Sander's Wand
sveinbjorn      Elric             22       Far Oasis         Tal Rune
Merlin          FemurFear         17       Black Marsh       Tal Rune
Bali            DrGuillotin       16       Dark Woods        Ith Rune
DarkStarHero    Ironist           16       Inner Cloister    Rixot's Keen
TheReadMenace   Spineless_Toxin    6       Cold Plains       Chipped Sapphire

Updated the table, added myself in and updated both OldSoldier and iomanip's progress. Had some serious trouble finding some MF on gloves boots. I sold all ammies and rings with 10%faster cast rate on them, so I had a good maount of cash to spend, but my gloves have just 7%MF and my boots 20. To offset this, I found two gem shrines in my first run, first in the blood moor, the second in the stony field. Both were used to upgrade a chipped topzz to flawed, my first and my third, so my MF from the ringmail is pretty decent. The countess dropped gold and three runes on p1, a Tal, an Ith and an Eld. Not a bad set :P No cold damage charm yet, so I use a dirk with a socketed sapphire in it. With 6 points in poison dagger, it's a good utility tool.
To deal with skeletons, I use a light crossbow with 1 sapphire and 1 emmy in it. My merc also has a chipped sapphire i her bow, the toher two slots are filled with rubies. Finally, my very first preserved head was a 15% enhanced block one with +2 to corpse explosion. Not bad.

As expected, no problems so far.
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Good luck with your character Merlin. You seem to be pretty consistent now about getting into NM with your characters, and GWEII made it to hell, so it's about time to take one to the house. You don't need any tips from me, but I'll provide them if you're interested.

You'll have to max Poison Explosion for synergy purposes, or else your novas/daggers won't do good damage. I'd probably leave CE at one point and get it higher with amulet/circlet/head/wand with skills. That's several good sources of possible skill points.

For summons, you know I went IG. You can get it pretty powerful and sturdy with 1 point IG, 20 in mastery, and perhaps 3 in summon resist. That will get you some good OW and CB in special circumstances (check my fight against hell diablo, where I forgot both). However, you have to be prepared to put points in his mastery early NM or else he'll keep dying throughout the game and you'll get frustrated and lose heart. I killed several powerful bosses simply with town portals and the rusty's thorns. Clay golem costs more points but is sturdier and recastable. If you go that direction, you'll be really short of points for any curses, and you'll want some. If you can get away with it, you can save points by finding a wand/head with lower resist and decrepify. The head might be a problem but you can shop wands until you're blue in the face. I'd probably leave confuse at one point with this guy. In my experience, they clumped really well in norm/NM because the radius was small. Once I got to hell and the skill was maxed, they stayed fighting in their small groups due to the big radius. If you keep the radius down a bit, you can bring them from miles, then hit them with DV (or attract + LR, which will be faster but more dangerous) and start spamming the novas. Once the non poison immunes are down, you can start to CE the rest to kill the poison immunes. Or, simply DV them and leave.

The more I played with Minime the more unfair it seemed to me due to the ease with which I could control monster behavior.

One last thing: I'd have to say that the best drop for Minime was the Tal's amulet. While not overly useful, it was a grailer among many and will do wonders for an as-yet unbuilt HC sorc.
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

So, I'm at the inner cloister now... Things are proceeding fine so far. I just spend 160K of coins on a wand (which is, admittedl, quite a lot, but then again, it's such a NICE prebuff wand... might even be useful as an offhand weapon. (But that will wait until act II and my new moron).

Here it is.
Crimson Wand of Energy.
Fire Resist +8%
+7 energy
+3 Clay Golem
+2 Golem Mastery
+2 Terror

The last one is not all that useful, but those top two are. Especially if I use them in addition to a skill shrine, I might score me a rather decent Golem...
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Thanks for the advice OS! And how are you liking the married life? Still congratulations of course!

My plans? Well, for now I pretty much want to see what kind of gear I can land in normal and part way through nightmare while pumping my poison damage... Depending on what I can lay my hands on, I'll pick a merc. In all likelyhood, I'll find nothing, and I'll wind up with a trusty act 2 moron. Or the A3 Cold one. His damage is minimal, but the slow/freeze undeniable, and it's a source of elemental damage I won't have access to myself...
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Thanks for the congrats, Merlin. Married life is bliss so far. I think the key is to find a girl that is low maintenance. Mine is great that way. Unfortunately I don't see her playing Diablo in the future, sadness. I got about 30 minutes of time in last night, as a warm up. It was my first gaming in about 3 weeks. Still moving stuff around, you see... it should slow down in about a week (hockey playoffs are coming to an end too).

My kill speed sped up dramatically with Minime compared to Moe because I went with an act II merc as soon as possible. I used the staff/diamond/belt/kris recipe and got lucky with a savage poleaxe of frost, but you can do the same with the chip recipe if you can make a good base item. Fill with one sapphire and you're good to go. It easily doubled his early-game questing speed. Throw in a bunch of confused enemies and they come running to get slaughtered, even at /P8. Beware though, normal act V at /P8 was terribly slow. You might be better off because your "disposal" spell is also a synergy, while extra points in CE weren't doing any good at /P8.

By the time you get to act III, hopefully you'll have gotten a cold charm yourself and can help out with any weapon you want, except on the skeletons. Heebie jeebies indeed!
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Oh, interesting things happened already.
In the catacombs level three, my first set item dropped... the boots I have fainly gambled and hoped for my entire Green with Envy II career ... Hsaru's booties. Nice Fire resist, but for now, the 20%MF of my boots takes precedence.
Had some troubles on andy's lvl, since I had to fight a fanatic enchanted ghoul bosspack there, and all the annoying dark ones got fanaticism as well of course. Quite an ugly battle for normal. But my uber golem (Well I cast him at +5 and +2 to golem mastery as well) could pretty much tank the entire group with little problem, leaving me and the merc free to kill the shamans and the dark one stragglers.
Andy focused on the golem, which actually lasted for a bit before dying... long enough for me to get about 4 or 5 PD hacks ni there. Of course, my resummoned golem did not have the same boost, so it was nothing more then a one blow diversion for andy. But thanks to it, and me hacking in her and feeding health potions to the moron, she survived the fight and I think made the killing shot (allthough Andy could have died from the poison of my dagger). Anyways, she dropped a DeathSpade. Nice, but not very useful for a daggermancer. Her rare zombiehead was better, since it too was a +2 to Clay Golem head! :grin: It also had low fire, poison and cold resist, attacker takes damage of 1, half freeze duration and +15 FBR and +10 Increased Block... I gladly traded in my other zombie head for it.

As soon as I hit Luth Gholein, I hired Azrael, a defensive merc, went one time out of the city and back to find a 3os spetum. Bought that, put the chipped sapphire in there I had kept for that purpose, and went into the sewers.
Radament could make no dent in the golem, and he dropped a green light plated boots. Nice! Better yet, some random mob dropped me a 1-2 cold damage small charm. So I now use my random kris. I can also loose the gemmed light crossbow, and equip my offhand weapon for prebuff with that shopped wand. It means I will have to find some other shield to use... But Drognan should be able to give me a nice spiked shield with +30%FBR and +20increased block...

I intend to gamble for pikes and polearms when they come up... with a bit of luck, I can score one with +cold damage. Or perhaps I can find a nice jewel with some +cold damage on it and shove it into either helm or body armor...

I'll also go and shop for a 2 os superior kris and make a steel runeword in it if I get the chance.
 
Re:

glad to see you're back.

Anaphylaxis have made progress and is currently in Act III NM (lower kurast i think, haven't had any time for D2 lately). Current equipment are:

MF helm (72%)
MF armor (96%)
MF ammy (29%)
Rare gloves, 25% mf
nagel 19
mf ring 16
boots 32 mf
crafted caster belt.
Rhyme in a necro head w/ +3 dim vision +1 amp dmg
Spirit broad sword (i know what some people will think about this..)

For prebuffing my clay golem, i use the Spirit sword and a zombie head w/ +1 clay golem +2 GM. I also managed to gamble a nice necro circlet (+1 necro skills, some resist all) and an amulet with +2 summon skills and resist all, which is used in town for prebuff. The two latter items are probably end-game worthy. What i really need is a better armor for myself (and for the merc). Skin of the Vipermagi, anyone? Im hoping Mephisto will be nice to me this time...:whistling:

The most interesting finds have been:

-Kuko shakako (pits lvl 2 nm)
-Nightsmoke (will probably up this for hell for the +15 res all)
-eth battlebranch (used by merc atm)
-gambled circlet of everlasting (dmg red 23) (maybe ill try my luck to socket this for the merc if nothiing better turns up before Hell)
-probably something else as well, can't remeber from the top of my head.

What i really need is a source of CB for the merc for boss battles. Strength seems allright i guess, but i have only found one amn, and it went to the spirit to solve my mana issues. Hmm.. maybe i'll cube it if i have enough thuls... but then again, no really good weapon for it either. Im already worrying about NM ancients.

On the rune front, the gods seem to favour me. I have found three shaels and a LEM (:jig:) in the arcane santuary NM. I have already used a shael for rhyme, but it feels good that i can make another one should a better candidate head drop. Also, upping the nightsmoke will cost one. Should i be really lucky (although i won't) and NM hellforge drops an Um, then the merc will get duress ofc.

Progress in NM have been slow, and i still let the merc do all my kills. I figure it's better to go slow in NM and gather some nice items than to die in early Hell..

peace/iomanip

(probably will have more time to play in two weeks. hopefully merlin haven't ended the game by then...)
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

:grin:

... The most interesting finds have been:
...
- probably something else as well, can't remeber from the top of my head.

That's an awesome invention! A wildcard best find! and one of my best finds was something I don't quite remember... :grin:

Anyhoo, after a bit or runeword checking I foun that my 'Steel' in a kris is nonsense.. the runeword doesn't work in daggers... But I could make a Strength in it the moment I land an Amn! And I will! For now, I intend to cube up two normal emeralds and toss them in the 2 sockets...

I shopped a 21% MF heavy boots and 24%MF Heavy gloves, an amulet dropped with 11% MF(also with +8 to energy, which I can really use!) and 1 ring with 7% MF. I still wear the ring mail with 35%MF and the helmet with 18% MF, and the merc also wears the standard 5 chipped topazzes for a total of 45%. He pretty much makes all the kills, and pretty fast too, with the help of my poison explosion :P
So I found Hsaru's Belt as well, so now I have two parts of the set. Coupled with a defiance merc, I am tempted to use them and greatly increase the defense on the field (hefty +defense bonuses for two of the set items) But I'd really hate to lose any source of MF at this moment.
Another sweet drop were Ceglaw's Pincers, which could be end gear for this particular build, the knockback and slow target are great mods for a daggermancer IMHO. Finally, I also found a Dimoaks Hew, but that one is quite useless without any other form of cold damage on the moron... And even if I HAD another form of cold damage, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use that hew :P
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

nice!
actually never considered the mods on 'da cleglaws p00nzerz' to be useful for anything else but a zon..

peace
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Advice is needed... but lets start with a little update.

My gambling and shopping tactics have made this a smooth ride so far, and I have just cleaned out lower kurast.
1) I sold every amulet/ring that went for more then 5k of gold. This was also done with the lvl 24 convertion spree. I decided to do this because I needed the gold to gamble some decent weapon for my merc and a nice kris/circlet for myself.
2) My gambling efforts focused on a) boots with high MF and some good resists/FRW. Faster hit recovery would be a bonus. b) Gloves with IAS/MF/Good resists. c) a good rare poleaxe with at least 50% enhanced damage, preferably some IAS and, as per tourney rules, some cold damage, Life steal a huge bonus. d) Kris with preferably : Hit makes monster flee/IAS/Some elemental damages (non poison)/Good enhanced damage and some life steal. e) Circlets.
3) I shopped for a) 3os breastplates(superior preferably) , b) 2os superior kris with +dam, c) Staff/Sceptre with Telekinesis charges.

I found a good staff with TK (and no other mods), I only gambled one circlet with MF on it(only 8%), but my second gambled Circlet turned out to have +1 to poison and bone +38% LR. It's in my stash, i still use the chipped topaz helm from A1. I gambled boots with 14% MF, 20%FRW, 36% LR, 28% PR. The gloves I wear have 24% MF, 20% LR, 10% CR and 5% bonus to AR. I gambled 1 kris with 5% Life Steal, 2os, 43% enh. dam, 1-8 Fire dam, 1-14 Lightning dam and some +AR (still waiting for ome good gems/jewels to toss in it(suggestions?)) I gambled a rare poleaxe with 32% enh dam, +4 max dam, some lightning damage and some cold damage and 9% Lightning Resist.

No problems in all of Act 2, and ym duriel fight was so easy! I found ANOTHER zombie head, this one with +3 to clay golem. Since I had 1 point in CG, 1 in Golem mastery and 1 in summon resist, and I had cast my golem with a skill shrine on, I had in effect a lvl 9 CG with 5 Golem mastery and 3 Summon Resist. It lasted me up until Kaa. I recast with a new skill shrine I found next session, and it lasted until duriel. The maggot was NO problem on p8, my merc and golem did a good job tanking. He dropped a cathan's seal.

In the flayer jungle Sigons shield dropped. I am currently debating if I want to use it. +1 skills is mighty enticing, but my rare buckler provides me with my only source of Fire Resist at the moment...

And now for my question. In lower kurast, a green long sword dropped, which gives me the complete cleglaw's set. Should I use it, with a kris and poison dagger in my alternate weapon slot? The set has some very attractive mods I must say, with 50% Deadly Strike, 35% Crushing Blow, Hit slows target, Knockback (great for the dagger those two), good damage range on the long sword, a bit of resists added and 20% IAS.

Any suggestions?
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

GreenisMean was born, he is meant to be a PoisonNecro, max poison skills and lower resist, always wanted to try one so this is the opportunity. Will update after playing a bit.
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

FemurFear is a bit dead. Well, a lot dead, actually. And it was the big ugly red beast in Act IV who did him under too.... That oughta teach me to go up against the big D with about 30 FR and 40 LR on /p 8 :P

I'd like to say that I had been lucky with my drops so far, but truth to tell, I found them lacking a bit. Apart from the +3 to Golem head, I found little of use. And up until the last gamble round, I never landed a circlet with enough MF.

So I figure a bit more luck with items might go me a long way...
Contemplating my next build, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a meleemancer this time around. No poison skills, just 20 in corpse explosion, a beefed up iron golem and some good curses (I'm thinking decrepify and confuse here).
 
Update!

Allright, finally had some time to play D2 again! Time for an update.

First of all: Anaphylaxis is still alive! And that's not all, he is easy to play and remarkably safe as well.

I struggled through the (boring) jungle, no drops, no exp (?), no nothing... At least i found a partizan for insight, which is good i guess. Problem was, my merc could no longer wear his mf helm (72%; due to the lack of cold dmg). I figured the dmg upgrade was worth it, and he's now wearing a circlet w/ some cold dmg + worthless mods (gambled in act 2 normal, the only reason to why i didn't sell it was that it was worth more than 10k and was therefore ATMA'd to be sold in act 3/4, something i forgot to do... luckily :scratchchin:). On the plus side: 1) both Anaphylaxis and Haseen are wearing 96% mf gothic plates (for a total of 440 for Haseens kills, which is all of them). 2) Haseens killing speed increased somewhat. 3) The lvl 14 meditation aura that insight provides synergizes very well with his prayer aura = nice healing capabilities.

In the durance, a long hoped for Amn (the first went to spirit) dropped from one of those clidren dolls. Amn + Tir went into a plain, 2-socketed Bill, and Strength saw the light of day. Mephisto and the council dropped crap, very dissapointed, especially in meph... maybe i'll do a re-run of meph twice more, hmm...

In act 4, this is where it gets cool, has always been my favourite act. Izual went down quickly due to the might of crushing blow (i keep Strength in the inventory) and the path to the river of flame was easy. I was already getting jumpy from the anticipation of the hellforge drop. What could it be? Lum for Smoke? Um for Duress? Pul for the **** of it? The smith was killed, the hammer pciked up, the soulstone placed in it's socket, and the stroke fell. Flawless sapphire, Perfect ruby, Flawless Sapphire, c'mon c'mon... UM!!!. Wohaa!!! very useful.. Duress, here I come. (This will also let me to put on his mf helm (since duress has cold dmg), thereby preventing total loss of mf from the armor).

Let's not stop there, a little while later, a LUM dropped from a random minion, netting me this:

Code: 
Smoke
Ghost Armor
'NefLum'
Defense: 196
Durability: 18 of 20
Required Strength: 38
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 45
Fingerprint: 0x26ef311e
+10 to Energy
+75% Enhanced Defense
+280 Defense vs. Missile
All Resistances +50
-1 to Light Radius
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Level 6 Weaken (18/18 Charges)
Socketed (2: 2 used)

Will probably be my armor for hell.

Diablo fell with a bang, dropping... Isenhearts breast plate, the rest was worthless yellow/blue items.

[highlight]
Anaphylaxis, lvl 66 necromancer, Epinephrine, the sturdy clay golem and Haseen, soon to wear Duress prayer merc.

Currently residing in Harrogath, chatting to Nihlatak
[/highlight]

also, a question to the SPF fanatics. Duress seems to be a given choice, but in what? I think my best armor is a superior (13%ed) 3 socketed light plate (122 def). Is this good enough (probably isn't)? And if not, what should i look for?

peace!
 
mini mini update

Hey guys!

Look what i just found in the frigid higlands:

Code: 
Bramble Trample
Heavy Boots
Defense: 6
Durability: 10 of 14
Required Strength: 18
Required Level: 29
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 59
Fingerprint: 0xcd5660c
Fire Resist +32%
Lightning Resist +9%
Poison Resist +12%
30% Faster Run/Walk

so so i can hear you say, BUT, look at them!! boots

"i love the look of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the texture...."
RED BOOTS FTW!! haha

peace!
/iomanip
 
Re: A new tournament: "Make no bones about it"

Hey folks! Iomanip made a bootsy call! :grin:

MY own necro, Pasmani, has made some steady progress. Currently, he is camped out at the canyon of the magi.
My best find so far? Well, definetely the maelstrom unique yew wand. Too bad it only had +1 to amp damage, but +3 to CE and +3 to terror are nice... I use it to provide some amping and coprse explosion help for the merc. He wields a pike with 1-2 cold damage as its only mod. I gambled a rare pike with 61%enh. dam and 6% LS. I'll atma it for now, if I find nothing better I will poke a hole in it with LArzuk and put some cold damage in it.

Stats : 70 Str, 55 dex, 55 vit and 25 energy (lvl 27)
Skills : All curses xcept for Lower resist 1 (the maelstrom adds +3 terror, +3 iron maiden and +1 amp dam, and the preserved head +2 dim vision). Poison and Bone : 1 teeth, 5 in CE (8 with the maelstrom) Summoning : 1 CG, 1 BG, 3 in Iron Golem, 5 in Golem MAstery and 2 in Summon Resist.

My best find is obviously the Maelstrom, but other notables include the Coif of Glory, the Pelta Lunata and a decent slew of greens, including Civerbs Cudgel.
 
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