The AS was easy for Evangelina. Goats are FI, but not that sturdy, and thanks to the narrow walkways, the Shadow could tank all of them but the baddest bosses. The Specters competed fiercly in the 'Who Can Die The Quickest' game. :azn:
Very lively start in the Canyon with two boss packs and one Champ pack of beetles (and you know how many "minions'" those Champ packs tend to have as company...). I was busy trying to stay alive and recasting Shadows, Cloaking, etc. for a good while until I finally found a chance to release two meteors, recast the dying shadow on the same spot, and then start a
massive Death Sentry fest that must have killed 25+ beetles!
Nearly all my healing and mana potion were used up, but there were plenty lying on the ground now...
Semi-scary start in two of the tombs, but nothing too serious. I took my time to lure away Burning Dead as much as possible. When 3-4 remained in a pack me and the shadow was fighting, I would often switch to Attack to save mana. Next time I "fetched" a couple more, I tried (and often succeeded) to get the Shadow to cast Death Sentry as the new "recruits" were walking close to the corpses of the last pack. Corpse cleaning and some damage to the new ones, for free.
Before the Duriel fight, I repaired/recharged my Life Tap wand. I had kept a chippie with me for a while, just for this purpose. I did have 29 charges left; I mostly did it to free up space for a few more potions.
Then I added 6 points to STR and tried to put on Guillaume´s Face.
"I can´t use that yet"
Say WHAT?? :tongue:
Ah, there is a millisecond or so when no headgear is equipped, so the +6 STR on my current crown won´t help. I should have known this! Really. What a bummer. This means I need two MORE levels before I can use it. Hmm, I wonder if I´ll get to level 82 before Mephisto?
OK then, nothing more to do than try to kill the Lord of Pain anyway! Life Tap wand on switch ready, Thawing potion drunk (found only one in this tomb), two spare Greater Healers in inventory.
It didn´t take long before I realized this was going to be one HELL of a fight. The Shadow Warrior couldn´t survive many seconds and I was hitting far less often than I thought (and hoped) I would. The one thing the Shadow did help with was to
maybe give me a chance to attack without being more or less constantly in stun-/blocklock.
My performance was sometimes good, sometimes crappy. The Life Tap didn´t help much, since I so seldom scored hits. When Duriel was down to 1/3, I had very few potions left and things looked very bad indeed. At one time, I ran around in the chamber, Holy Frozen, Duriel hot on my heels, and the Burst of Speed had timed out. I didn´t have mana for a Shadow unless I would drink one of my last three full rejuves, and I didn´t want to do that until I was ready for a final stand. I actually managed to refresh BoS without getting hit (all my experience with Blaze running in Classic probably helped here). I skipped fiddling with Life Tap and just concentrated on trying to refresh the Shadow as soon as the casting delay had run out (BTW, how come you can spam golems, bears and valkyries but we poor assassins must wait 6 SECONDS before recasting a shadow?!?). Twice, I was out of mana about the same time as I needed healing anyway, so that was OK. Duriel is slivered now, and there
is a Meteor on its way, but here goes my final rejuve! Cast Shadow again and make one final tanking effort.
Oh yes, flames almighty, I did it!
Can you say CLOSE!?!
So, on to act 3 without any potion supply at all.
The Wanderer´s beasts dropped a small rejuve. Yay!
There were Cloud Stalkers around, so I had to be very, very careful. Cloak of Shadows nearly all the time, and I left the fighting to the Shadow. Helped her against Hulks and apes when she was in a stable tanking situation. The first boss pack were Hulks: LE something. Managed to explode and burn all the minions, but the boss survived that. Had to retreat almost to town, to regenerate mana and the Shadow´s life. The rematch was quickly won, and my number of potions quintupled. :grin:
Built up a nice supply of potions and made good progress. Arachnid Lair was plenty of work, but no trouble. It was worse in the Spider Cavern, since I ran out of mana against a couple of Sszark´s minions. (There we are again with my bothersome enemies - FI monsters with lots of life...) Played a bit in Great Marsh (it was easy here: Bog Creatures, Hulks and Fetish Shamen) to collect mana potions, then back to the Spider Cavern and cleared it out this time. Sszark was FE Extra Fast, pulverized 6 Shadows but died all the same.
The Marsh WP was in a pretty good spot. Since I found a weird little passage from the Spider Forest to the Flayer Jungle (but no 'main passage' between those areas), I know where one part of the Flayer Jungle is, and it´s not far from the Marsh WP. I will probably need to re-kill a couple of monsters, but I promise I won´t loot anything in the parts where I have been already.
[Highlight]Conqueror Evangelina the PS Assassin, level 80, Hell Flayer Jungle next[/Highlight]
(plus a tiny fraction of the Great Marsh before that)
