- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
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Act 4 Update!
This update will be rather small, as Act 4 is short and not much of note happened (again). Things start to really pick up in Act 5 – I promise! It seems like that’s often the case as Act 5 is where area levels finally start to ramp up a little bit and more exceptional items begin appearing.
After being insulted by Mephisto’s insolence (and his useless drop), Eternity half-heartedly entered Act 4 around level 31-32. We were not looking forward to slowly whittling down Balrogs with our 5-10 damage Zephyr Composite Bow but thank goodness for Magic Arrow! Although MA made Acts 2-3 somewhat of a breeze, I think this act is where I really started to appreciate the boost it can provide to a low-level untwinked bowazon. That raw +20 damage makes a huge difference when your starting damage is so puny, and I imagine it allowed progress through this act far, far faster than otherwise would’ve been possible. Sure, there are other skills, such as Exploding Arrow, that yield higher damage, but they are generally mana-intensive and this mandates somewhat conservative usage (especially prior to Insight). Plus, fire resistance becomes more common in Act 4, whereas magic resistance tends to stay low. Lastly, we of course cannot forget the underrated feature of never needing arrows! I *really* like not having to worry about picking up arrows regularly.
So, first things first – time to find Izual! I don’t remember much about the Outer Steppes and the Plains of Despair except that the Plains had Gloams, and even now their lightning stung due to my across-the-board low resists. Hazade was easily able to tank everything we came across, including Izual himself.
Normal Izual must be one of the worst enemies to fight in terms of return on investment – he takes forever to kill and typically drops gold + garbage. As seen here.
We had one set/unique drop for the entirety of Act 4 before reaching Diablo, despite the ~150 MF we carried the entire time – Arctic Binding.
We keep finding pieces of “Amazon” sets, but always too little, too late to be of any use.
This belt would be very tempting when combined with the gloves (40% MF, 10% IAS, +50 AR, amongst other mods), but I still lack the gloves. Into the ever-growing stash it goes!
We pressed onward with steady progress, as the next screenshot I have is of the Hellforge. I guess Hephasto didn’t have any teeth this time around. I also finally got around to putting a point into Valkyrie – I wanted at least one point in Valk for the fight with Diablo. One more body for him to vaporize before targeting me, hopefully.
Hot damn, an Eld rune! One sixth of the way to a BOTD Hydra Bow
. At least the Perfect Emerald can help up a unique weapon, if I ever find one worthwhile…
The most useful drop of the Act came in the Chaos Sanctuary (I believe), and it was a very timely drop indeed.
This gave my lightning resistance a much-needed boost just in time for Diablo’s lightning hose.
Given how quickly I knew Diablo would drop the merc, valk, and decoy, this new charm was most welcome. Speaking of charms, by this point I was focusing on any charm giving +damage, mostly elemental, to help keep my kill speed tolerable. In addition to this 28% LR grand charm, I also had a 17% FR GC that I kept on because, despite being a rather crappy GC, I wanted at least *some* fire resistance and didn’t have any more pressing needs for the inventory space.
As expected, Diablo killed the rest of my team immediately, so other than dropping the occasional Valk to try and get a few uninterrupted shots off, I mostly just ran around plinking away with Magic Arrow. It’s nice how much Diablo tends to choreograph his attacks; that allows me plenty of time to stop shooting and get into evasion mode. As you would expect, the battle boiled down to shooting a few arrows and then running for my life, and then repeating that pattern a few dozen times.
Here you can see three arrows en route to Diablo’s backside. Three straight shots before having to run was probably about average.
After Mephisto’s disappointing drop, I was really hoping that my hard (well, time-consuming) work of taking down Diablo would be rewarded. The results were mixed:
Bloodthief! Not the worst drop by any means. A bow would’ve been far more useful, though.
Well, Bloodthief is nothing to write home about at first glance, but Life Leech plus Open Wounds makes this an extremely viable option for Hazade once his regen stops outpacing the damage he takes and/or some big baddies need to be bled out. This might even be a good use for that Perfect Emerald, but I held off on upping anything for the time being. I’d rather hold onto my crafting/upping supplies until a really good opportunity presents itself or a serious need becomes apparent. For now, neither of those are remotely true, so self-restraint rules the day. Hazade’s rare pike severely out-damages the non-upped Bloodthief, so it too gets stashed for now.
Eternity completed Act 4 around level 35 (? I really need to keep better track of this), with roughly 75 each in STR and VIT, and the rest in DEX. I’ll probably bump strength to 110 and vitality to 125 hard points, while putting the rest into DEX. I’ll probably try to bank 25 or so points eventually, too, in the event I come across a rare Long War Bow or Gothic Bow, or Goldstrike Arch, and want to up it to a Hydra Bow. Nothing like that would be end-game worthy, but it would certainly be viable enough to push me well into Hell. I am constantly keeping potential and worthwhile weapon upgrade options in my mind, since so far weapon drops have been non-existent and sooner or later I will need some serious firepower. For skills, after getting 1 point in Valk, my focus is to have both Critical Strike and Pierce at >50%, followed by maxing Valkyrie. She will be needed in Nightmare.
As mentioned at the top, the last two acts have been pretty mundane, but next week’s update on Act 5 features much more excitement – experience, upgrades, drops (including a legitimate game-changer) - everything you could want in an update! As always, your time spent reading these updates is much appreciated. I’ve found even more motivation to keep pushing this character along since I started this thread, and I owe much of that new motivation to the viewership, so thank you!
This update will be rather small, as Act 4 is short and not much of note happened (again). Things start to really pick up in Act 5 – I promise! It seems like that’s often the case as Act 5 is where area levels finally start to ramp up a little bit and more exceptional items begin appearing.
After being insulted by Mephisto’s insolence (and his useless drop), Eternity half-heartedly entered Act 4 around level 31-32. We were not looking forward to slowly whittling down Balrogs with our 5-10 damage Zephyr Composite Bow but thank goodness for Magic Arrow! Although MA made Acts 2-3 somewhat of a breeze, I think this act is where I really started to appreciate the boost it can provide to a low-level untwinked bowazon. That raw +20 damage makes a huge difference when your starting damage is so puny, and I imagine it allowed progress through this act far, far faster than otherwise would’ve been possible. Sure, there are other skills, such as Exploding Arrow, that yield higher damage, but they are generally mana-intensive and this mandates somewhat conservative usage (especially prior to Insight). Plus, fire resistance becomes more common in Act 4, whereas magic resistance tends to stay low. Lastly, we of course cannot forget the underrated feature of never needing arrows! I *really* like not having to worry about picking up arrows regularly.
So, first things first – time to find Izual! I don’t remember much about the Outer Steppes and the Plains of Despair except that the Plains had Gloams, and even now their lightning stung due to my across-the-board low resists. Hazade was easily able to tank everything we came across, including Izual himself.
Normal Izual must be one of the worst enemies to fight in terms of return on investment – he takes forever to kill and typically drops gold + garbage. As seen here.
We had one set/unique drop for the entirety of Act 4 before reaching Diablo, despite the ~150 MF we carried the entire time – Arctic Binding.
We keep finding pieces of “Amazon” sets, but always too little, too late to be of any use.
This belt would be very tempting when combined with the gloves (40% MF, 10% IAS, +50 AR, amongst other mods), but I still lack the gloves. Into the ever-growing stash it goes!
We pressed onward with steady progress, as the next screenshot I have is of the Hellforge. I guess Hephasto didn’t have any teeth this time around. I also finally got around to putting a point into Valkyrie – I wanted at least one point in Valk for the fight with Diablo. One more body for him to vaporize before targeting me, hopefully.
Hot damn, an Eld rune! One sixth of the way to a BOTD Hydra Bow
. At least the Perfect Emerald can help up a unique weapon, if I ever find one worthwhile…The most useful drop of the Act came in the Chaos Sanctuary (I believe), and it was a very timely drop indeed.
This gave my lightning resistance a much-needed boost just in time for Diablo’s lightning hose.
Given how quickly I knew Diablo would drop the merc, valk, and decoy, this new charm was most welcome. Speaking of charms, by this point I was focusing on any charm giving +damage, mostly elemental, to help keep my kill speed tolerable. In addition to this 28% LR grand charm, I also had a 17% FR GC that I kept on because, despite being a rather crappy GC, I wanted at least *some* fire resistance and didn’t have any more pressing needs for the inventory space.
As expected, Diablo killed the rest of my team immediately, so other than dropping the occasional Valk to try and get a few uninterrupted shots off, I mostly just ran around plinking away with Magic Arrow. It’s nice how much Diablo tends to choreograph his attacks; that allows me plenty of time to stop shooting and get into evasion mode. As you would expect, the battle boiled down to shooting a few arrows and then running for my life, and then repeating that pattern a few dozen times.
Here you can see three arrows en route to Diablo’s backside. Three straight shots before having to run was probably about average.
After Mephisto’s disappointing drop, I was really hoping that my hard (well, time-consuming) work of taking down Diablo would be rewarded. The results were mixed:
Bloodthief! Not the worst drop by any means. A bow would’ve been far more useful, though.
Well, Bloodthief is nothing to write home about at first glance, but Life Leech plus Open Wounds makes this an extremely viable option for Hazade once his regen stops outpacing the damage he takes and/or some big baddies need to be bled out. This might even be a good use for that Perfect Emerald, but I held off on upping anything for the time being. I’d rather hold onto my crafting/upping supplies until a really good opportunity presents itself or a serious need becomes apparent. For now, neither of those are remotely true, so self-restraint rules the day. Hazade’s rare pike severely out-damages the non-upped Bloodthief, so it too gets stashed for now.
Eternity completed Act 4 around level 35 (? I really need to keep better track of this), with roughly 75 each in STR and VIT, and the rest in DEX. I’ll probably bump strength to 110 and vitality to 125 hard points, while putting the rest into DEX. I’ll probably try to bank 25 or so points eventually, too, in the event I come across a rare Long War Bow or Gothic Bow, or Goldstrike Arch, and want to up it to a Hydra Bow. Nothing like that would be end-game worthy, but it would certainly be viable enough to push me well into Hell. I am constantly keeping potential and worthwhile weapon upgrade options in my mind, since so far weapon drops have been non-existent and sooner or later I will need some serious firepower. For skills, after getting 1 point in Valk, my focus is to have both Critical Strike and Pierce at >50%, followed by maxing Valkyrie. She will be needed in Nightmare.
As mentioned at the top, the last two acts have been pretty mundane, but next week’s update on Act 5 features much more excitement – experience, upgrades, drops (including a legitimate game-changer) - everything you could want in an update! As always, your time spent reading these updates is much appreciated. I’ve found even more motivation to keep pushing this character along since I started this thread, and I owe much of that new motivation to the viewership, so thank you!
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