Eternity - Untwinked Bowazon Walkthrough
- Thread starter jonny5
- Start date
Zyr
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- Jan 31, 2018
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- Jun 11, 2018
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@Kartongen Yeah, and to get it from normal Baal of all places was a pretty nice gift heading into NM, that's for sure. Much better than a Zephyr bow!
@Zyr I certainly remember that thread you linked! If I were playing hardcore there's a pretty high chance I would consider less-than-maxed strafe. I'll definitely revisit the entire build layout when I get near end-game, but I found strafe to be a pretty nice questing skill, especially when you have lots of effects to apply to enemies, so I figured I would just max the damage potential and go with it from there.
@T72on1 Thank you sir!
@Zyr I certainly remember that thread you linked! If I were playing hardcore there's a pretty high chance I would consider less-than-maxed strafe. I'll definitely revisit the entire build layout when I get near end-game, but I found strafe to be a pretty nice questing skill, especially when you have lots of effects to apply to enemies, so I figured I would just max the damage potential and go with it from there.
@T72on1 Thank you sir!
Last edited:
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
The beginning of a Nightmare…
To begin Nightmare, I made some gear changes as per Baal’s drop and after seeing my newly lowered resistances (I was hoping to stay above zero), out went my 3 flawed topaz armor and on went Iceblink. I also wanted to try freezing my opponents, in addition to the slow afforded by Riphook. So my gear at this point was as follows:
2x Flawed Topaz Full Helm (26% MF)
Rare Amulet (22% MF, 6% res@, 10% lightning res, +11 life)
Riphook (219% ED, 10% life leech)
Iceblink
Bloodfist
Nagelring (27% MF)
Manald Heal (6% mana leech)
Up’d Goldwrap (30% MF)
Rare boots (~10% MF, some lightning res, 30% FRW)
Altogether this setup gave me roughly 115% MF, a decent amount but something I had plans to improve on soon. My merc was still using Wormskull (life leech), a rare pike, and Hawkmail (for the CBF). An upgrade to Insight was definitely on the to-do list, so I kept a lookout for any half-decent base moving forward. Some type of mana replenishment is pretty crucial to keep on strafing, and being able to drop the Manald Heal sooner than later would be most welcome.
As for stats and skills, my re-allocated stats looked something like this:
STR – 100
DEX – 125
VIT – 75
ENE - base
I focused on pushing DEX pretty hard after this, along with a handful of points in VIT and STR every so often as well.
The new skill placement was pretty straight-forward, too:
Strafe – 20
Critical Strike – 8 (51%)
Pierce – 5 (55%)
Valkyrie – 6
Pre-requisites - 11
Subsequent points went toward maxing Valkyrie. After that, pending some serious charm/AR upgrades, points would likely go to Penetrate.
As is typical for most decently-geared characters, the early stages of NM (even at /p8) were a breeze. The Valkyrie was a nearly-impenetrable tank (and only getting stronger), and both the Valk and the mercenary still provided steady damage. Riphook was the real star of the show, though. It’s so satisfying to watch as a menacing pack of Brutes comes lumbering toward you, then you strafe, and everything slows down noticeably. Since I can still hit max strafe with only 37% IAS, if Cleglaw’s Pincers show up I plan to equip them for the “lol factor” that comes from 55% slow + knockback. Not necessary, but it would be fun. If you haven’t read Nightfish's thread on Guardian Viridia, who worse Cleg’s plus Blackhorn’s Face (knockback + 45% slow) and only used 54 (non-pre-req) skill points, with 33 left unspent at the end. As a strafezon, the ability to slow your enemies can make a huge difference to safety.
The first challenging opponent, err, speedbump, we came across was Blood Raven. Lots of hitpoints and very difficult to hit from afar with her constant running.
I like this action shot a lot. Looks like Blood Raven is just barely saving her ass from 3 separate attacks simultaneously.
After finishing off Blood Raven and the surrounding dungeons, we headed off to the Stony Field and the Underground Passage, where I found a more ornate “Fallen Camp” setup than I typically see.
This is kind of spooky compared to most layouts. It looks like they had some sort of ritual while killing the rogue.
In the Dark Wood, the most interesting thing was not Treehead Woodfist but rather this rare armor. Yes, a non-set/unique/runeword armor actually caught my attention.
24% FHR plus two sockets is pretty interesting at this stage of an untwinked journey. Could come in handy for either me or the merc in the future.
“Extra fast” seemed like an oxymoron when applied to Mr Glacial himself, Griswold. Unfortunately, his high HP pool slowed down my steamrolling of Act 1 as much as Blood Raven.
Not a hint of damage to anyone in the party. This setup is a bit overpowered – no, that’s the wrong word – it’s a bit oversafe, I would say, at the moment.
I’m typically pretty accustomed to the clean-killing techniques of a Blizzard sorc, but it looks like I’ll have to get used to a bit more blood with Riphook.
Riphook is a very fitting name. Lots of bloody trails as injured fallen run away.
As mentioned in the last update, my original plan was to stop and farm the Countess for runes to cube a Ko. I decided to run her maybe ~5 times, just for fun, but otherwise pressed on.
This is the best drop of the few Countess runs. Pretty decent for NM!
On the rare occasion that a nasty pack of mods spawned on the right (wrong?) mob, Hazade dropped pretty quickly, but the Valkyrie continued to prove her worth, tanking anything the game could throw at us.
Poor Hazade never had a chance.
Although Multishot is almost certainly better for overall DPS, Strafe is still fantastic, especially for an untwinked character. The ability to apply mods (or try to) with every arrow is great. It’s also still plenty sufficient for chilling and poisoning large packs to begin softening them up from afar.
So much green! Even in the face of huge numbers of opponents, this was battle was completely safe thanks to strafe + pierce.
While going through screenshots and writing this update, I felt legitimately mad at this next screenshot. You see, the entire county we live in is currently under siege from a particularly nasty viral diarrhea – and the younger the person, the worse it is. See my rant at the bar for the gruesome details.
No thank you sir, I have had plenty of puke lately.
We had one last slightly more dangerous speed bump to take care of before facing Andariel – Pitspawn Fouldog. His pack, as many unsuspecting noobs have learned, is surprisingly dangerous in every difficulty. I mean, just look at this next screenshot – my Valkyrie actually took damage.
Nice to be able to cast the valk inside the prison cell to tank Pitspawn without him getting out, while the merc covered my flank. I’m seeing more and more benefits of having a castable tank to go with my merc.
I was also pleasantly surprised at the following drop.
Good thing I didn’t spend time running the Countess and cubing runes!
At least now I know that there’s the option to make Harmony whenever once I find an acceptable base. Until the Riphook loses its effectiveness, though, that rune will sit patiently in the stash. I’d really like to make Harmony in a fast, elite bow ASAP, so I will at least bank this one Ko until another drops.
Before fighting Andariel, I took a detour back to Normal Larzuk and bought the first Artisan’s Great Helm with a suffix I could find:
Nice upgrade over my current hat, and just in time to fight Andy.
I also found a 4os Hunter’s Bow, seemingly Diablo’s effort to tempt me into making a near-worthless Harmony. The fight with Andy was unremarkable; her poison quickly killed off the merc and the valk so I just kept running and shooting. The 30% slow from Riphook makes strafing her much safer because she can’t approach while I’m strafe-locked nearly as quickly. This feature will probably come in handy again against Duriel. Andy’s drop was nothing exciting.
A couple of uniques and some rares, but no upgrades for me. And she dropped a lot of gems.
So, that’s Act 1 of Nightmare in the books. It was fast and safe with no deaths or NDEs. I picked up several sets/uniques along the way (nothing exciting though), including Angelic Halo, Venom Ward, Spectral Shard, The General’s Tan Do Li Ga, Civerb’s Icon, Skewer of Krintiz, Sigon’s Gage, Isenhart’s Parry (see Countess drop above), Berserker’s Hatchet, Civerb’s Cudgel (twice), Tancred’s Weird, Isenhart’s Case, and Maelstrom and Blackbog’s Sharp from Andy. Basically, I found a lot of shiny garbage, but I kept it all for the sake of untwinked grailing.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully the next act will present some kind of challenge to our intrepid team.
To begin Nightmare, I made some gear changes as per Baal’s drop and after seeing my newly lowered resistances (I was hoping to stay above zero), out went my 3 flawed topaz armor and on went Iceblink. I also wanted to try freezing my opponents, in addition to the slow afforded by Riphook. So my gear at this point was as follows:
2x Flawed Topaz Full Helm (26% MF)
Rare Amulet (22% MF, 6% res@, 10% lightning res, +11 life)
Riphook (219% ED, 10% life leech)
Iceblink
Bloodfist
Nagelring (27% MF)
Manald Heal (6% mana leech)
Up’d Goldwrap (30% MF)
Rare boots (~10% MF, some lightning res, 30% FRW)
Altogether this setup gave me roughly 115% MF, a decent amount but something I had plans to improve on soon. My merc was still using Wormskull (life leech), a rare pike, and Hawkmail (for the CBF). An upgrade to Insight was definitely on the to-do list, so I kept a lookout for any half-decent base moving forward. Some type of mana replenishment is pretty crucial to keep on strafing, and being able to drop the Manald Heal sooner than later would be most welcome.
As for stats and skills, my re-allocated stats looked something like this:
STR – 100
DEX – 125
VIT – 75
ENE - base
I focused on pushing DEX pretty hard after this, along with a handful of points in VIT and STR every so often as well.
The new skill placement was pretty straight-forward, too:
Strafe – 20
Critical Strike – 8 (51%)
Pierce – 5 (55%)
Valkyrie – 6
Pre-requisites - 11
Subsequent points went toward maxing Valkyrie. After that, pending some serious charm/AR upgrades, points would likely go to Penetrate.
As is typical for most decently-geared characters, the early stages of NM (even at /p8) were a breeze. The Valkyrie was a nearly-impenetrable tank (and only getting stronger), and both the Valk and the mercenary still provided steady damage. Riphook was the real star of the show, though. It’s so satisfying to watch as a menacing pack of Brutes comes lumbering toward you, then you strafe, and everything slows down noticeably. Since I can still hit max strafe with only 37% IAS, if Cleglaw’s Pincers show up I plan to equip them for the “lol factor” that comes from 55% slow + knockback. Not necessary, but it would be fun. If you haven’t read Nightfish's thread on Guardian Viridia, who worse Cleg’s plus Blackhorn’s Face (knockback + 45% slow) and only used 54 (non-pre-req) skill points, with 33 left unspent at the end. As a strafezon, the ability to slow your enemies can make a huge difference to safety.
The first challenging opponent, err, speedbump, we came across was Blood Raven. Lots of hitpoints and very difficult to hit from afar with her constant running.
I like this action shot a lot. Looks like Blood Raven is just barely saving her ass from 3 separate attacks simultaneously.
After finishing off Blood Raven and the surrounding dungeons, we headed off to the Stony Field and the Underground Passage, where I found a more ornate “Fallen Camp” setup than I typically see.
This is kind of spooky compared to most layouts. It looks like they had some sort of ritual while killing the rogue.
In the Dark Wood, the most interesting thing was not Treehead Woodfist but rather this rare armor. Yes, a non-set/unique/runeword armor actually caught my attention.
24% FHR plus two sockets is pretty interesting at this stage of an untwinked journey. Could come in handy for either me or the merc in the future.
“Extra fast” seemed like an oxymoron when applied to Mr Glacial himself, Griswold. Unfortunately, his high HP pool slowed down my steamrolling of Act 1 as much as Blood Raven.
Not a hint of damage to anyone in the party. This setup is a bit overpowered – no, that’s the wrong word – it’s a bit oversafe, I would say, at the moment.
I’m typically pretty accustomed to the clean-killing techniques of a Blizzard sorc, but it looks like I’ll have to get used to a bit more blood with Riphook.
Riphook is a very fitting name. Lots of bloody trails as injured fallen run away.
As mentioned in the last update, my original plan was to stop and farm the Countess for runes to cube a Ko. I decided to run her maybe ~5 times, just for fun, but otherwise pressed on.
This is the best drop of the few Countess runs. Pretty decent for NM!
On the rare occasion that a nasty pack of mods spawned on the right (wrong?) mob, Hazade dropped pretty quickly, but the Valkyrie continued to prove her worth, tanking anything the game could throw at us.
Poor Hazade never had a chance.
Although Multishot is almost certainly better for overall DPS, Strafe is still fantastic, especially for an untwinked character. The ability to apply mods (or try to) with every arrow is great. It’s also still plenty sufficient for chilling and poisoning large packs to begin softening them up from afar.
So much green! Even in the face of huge numbers of opponents, this was battle was completely safe thanks to strafe + pierce.
While going through screenshots and writing this update, I felt legitimately mad at this next screenshot. You see, the entire county we live in is currently under siege from a particularly nasty viral diarrhea – and the younger the person, the worse it is. See my rant at the bar for the gruesome details.
No thank you sir, I have had plenty of puke lately.
We had one last slightly more dangerous speed bump to take care of before facing Andariel – Pitspawn Fouldog. His pack, as many unsuspecting noobs have learned, is surprisingly dangerous in every difficulty. I mean, just look at this next screenshot – my Valkyrie actually took damage.
Nice to be able to cast the valk inside the prison cell to tank Pitspawn without him getting out, while the merc covered my flank. I’m seeing more and more benefits of having a castable tank to go with my merc.
I was also pleasantly surprised at the following drop.
Good thing I didn’t spend time running the Countess and cubing runes!
At least now I know that there’s the option to make Harmony whenever once I find an acceptable base. Until the Riphook loses its effectiveness, though, that rune will sit patiently in the stash. I’d really like to make Harmony in a fast, elite bow ASAP, so I will at least bank this one Ko until another drops.
Before fighting Andariel, I took a detour back to Normal Larzuk and bought the first Artisan’s Great Helm with a suffix I could find:
Nice upgrade over my current hat, and just in time to fight Andy.
I also found a 4os Hunter’s Bow, seemingly Diablo’s effort to tempt me into making a near-worthless Harmony. The fight with Andy was unremarkable; her poison quickly killed off the merc and the valk so I just kept running and shooting. The 30% slow from Riphook makes strafing her much safer because she can’t approach while I’m strafe-locked nearly as quickly. This feature will probably come in handy again against Duriel. Andy’s drop was nothing exciting.
A couple of uniques and some rares, but no upgrades for me. And she dropped a lot of gems.
So, that’s Act 1 of Nightmare in the books. It was fast and safe with no deaths or NDEs. I picked up several sets/uniques along the way (nothing exciting though), including Angelic Halo, Venom Ward, Spectral Shard, The General’s Tan Do Li Ga, Civerb’s Icon, Skewer of Krintiz, Sigon’s Gage, Isenhart’s Parry (see Countess drop above), Berserker’s Hatchet, Civerb’s Cudgel (twice), Tancred’s Weird, Isenhart’s Case, and Maelstrom and Blackbog’s Sharp from Andy. Basically, I found a lot of shiny garbage, but I kept it all for the sake of untwinked grailing.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully the next act will present some kind of challenge to our intrepid team.
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
Double Update!
Seeing as the last update wasn’t particularly exciting, I decided to go ahead and update two acts at once this week, skipping over some of the less eventful commentary this time.
As someone who normally prefers skill point-dependent builds like sorceresses, I’m always excited to jump right into the Sewers once I get to Act 2. Case in point, I forgot to hire a new Might mercenary for far too long after starting the act.
There were some dangerous groups down in the sewers, but careful use of choke points and tanks eliminated any real threat.
Having already been through an entire act of NM, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of 4-socket polearms. The sewers (or Stony Tomb – can’t remember) provided, however, with a very satisfactory first Insight base:
If only it were ethereal!
This led to a serious upgrade for my new Might merc, Kasim:
Between Might and Insight, the damage potential of Kasim over Hazade was immediately noticeable.
More potentially useful goodies continued to fall, with an Io, a 24% Cobalt GC, and a 4os Large Siege Bow being some of the early highlights. The Cobalt GC, in particular, took my cold resistance up to 0 even without Iceblink, and given the very marginal benefits of Iceblink, it was promptly stashed in favor of my 3 Flawed Topaz Breast Plate, for an extra 39% MF boost. I also found a 4os Razor Bow, and saved it just in case. Frankly, Razor Bows have piss poor damage and the only thing it really has going for it is its fast attack speed – good for delivering the large elemental damage on Harmony – so in a pinch, it would work. I also found some 32% MF Chance Guards in the Lost City, but I chose to keep using Bloodfist. Although I wouldn’t mind losing one frame off my normal attack because I hardly ever use it, the life, damage, and FHR on Bloodfist are still too juicy to give up for now. Given my relatively low life, FHR really comes in handy sometimes.
As usual, I made a point of always shooting from safety, even when the opponents were only moderately dangerous.
I let the Valk and Merc take the heat from this fast, aggressive group while I did my best merc impression and hid behind a wall.
Fire Eye dropped Crainte Vomir, and after that our team headed into the Arcane Sanctuary to prepare for the last leg of our Act 2 journey. As long as Ghosts weren’t around, AS was very safe thanks to my ability to hit from range.
Bloody death from afar.
Tal Rasha’s Tomb proved surprisingly fruitful, with lots of green drops. In particular, I think I’ve finally found where Sigon died, since he dropped half of his set in this tomb. I also stumbled across Infernal Torch, another Io, and Whistan’s Guard (see the first Sigon drop pic). At this stage of the game, I’m still keeping an eye out for any items that could be useful, even magic rings like this. Big AR boost and life leech? Sure, that could come in handy. Finally, we encountered the big bug himself, and the fight was a breeze because my Valkyrie could tank him at a comfortable recast rate. Remember back in Normal when Duriel actually dropped something useful? Well, shockingly, he did it again in Nightmare!
A delicious helm for me or Kasim, and yet another (duplicate) piece of Sigon’s Complete Steel!
Tal’s mask must be one of the most well-rounded helms around, with huge dual leech, res all, and hefty life and mana bonuses. The only thing that seems to hold it back from being top tier is a lack of something hard to come by on most helms, such as IAS or damage reduction. Still, for an untwinked character, this is a fantastic find and will surely find use once we ding level 66.
---
The first half of Act 3 flew by pretty quickly, as strafe is quite effective against large groups of weak enemies like Flayers. Amongst the indiscriminate slaughter, we added a handful of items to our growing collection, including Infernal Cranium, Hel, Woestave (I can’t wait to use this alongside Riphook to turn Baal into a comatose kitten), Raven Claw, and this absolute gem of a ring:
AR, mana leech, and magic find? Yes please! Even this 2% mana leech should make Insight optional once I find a higher damage bow. Good thing resistances aren’t a problem yet, though.
I also found my second Sharp Grand Charm, still with no suffix and not as good as the first:
Another nice bump to damage. Combined with Might, these things are great!
Once we arrived in Kurast, we found yet another Sigon’s Guard. I briefly considered staying and running NM LK, mostly for charms (Sharp GCs, especially) although with the hope of scoring some better runes, but in the end things were progressing so smoothly I chose to press on to bigger and (hopefully) better things. I can always go back later if I need to, although I would strongly prefer to spend time running LK in Hell, if at all. Plus, I still didn’t have a great Harmony base and I consider Harmony fairly important for LK.
The Kurast Bazaar provided a very nice utility item that will either speed up some runs or get me out of a tight spot in a pinch.
Between Spellsteel, Riphook, and Woestave, RNG is sure being generous with utility item drops!
The Act 3 Sewers are one of my least favorite places to fight due to the jumbled map layout and generally unpleasant monster spawns, but I did choose to grab some free XP and loot when the opportunity presented itself.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
It turns out that this particular skirmish was well worth my time, as one of the mobs dropped Angelic Wings, thereby opening up a “Get-out-of-AR-jail-free” card for later.
We continued to press on, finding Kinemil’s Awl in the Forgotten Temple and another Sigon’s Sabot in Travincal. The Council had Conviction, and I was immensely appreciative of having the Valkyrie around to take heat off of the merc.
Vile(hand), indeed. Cursed and Conviction, with hydras all around. This would have been a tough untwinked fight in Hell, but in NM it was still manageable with careful recasting and potion delivery.
The journey down to Mephisto was somewhat fruitful, finding two nice jewels and Trang-Oul’s Claws along the way. Bremm Sparkfist also drew a Conviction aura, which combined with Hydras and his LE bolts, made for a nasty combination.
Even my Valkyrie couldn’t stand up to this elemental onslaught for long.
The fight with Mephisto went well, as both my merc and Valkyrie managed to stay upright and allow me to blast away.
When Mephisto can’t pick a target to focus on, he can’t kill anything.
Although NM Mephisto is often a “first stop” of sorts for item farming, his quest drop was crap and we moved on from Act 3 at level 64.
Stats at the beginning of Act 4 (without Might).
Well that's all for this week. What does everyone think? More pics? Less? More discussion of tactics and less talk of shiny things? Any feedback on format and content would be great. As always, thanks for reading!
Seeing as the last update wasn’t particularly exciting, I decided to go ahead and update two acts at once this week, skipping over some of the less eventful commentary this time.
As someone who normally prefers skill point-dependent builds like sorceresses, I’m always excited to jump right into the Sewers once I get to Act 2. Case in point, I forgot to hire a new Might mercenary for far too long after starting the act.
There were some dangerous groups down in the sewers, but careful use of choke points and tanks eliminated any real threat.
Having already been through an entire act of NM, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of 4-socket polearms. The sewers (or Stony Tomb – can’t remember) provided, however, with a very satisfactory first Insight base:
If only it were ethereal!
This led to a serious upgrade for my new Might merc, Kasim:
Between Might and Insight, the damage potential of Kasim over Hazade was immediately noticeable.
More potentially useful goodies continued to fall, with an Io, a 24% Cobalt GC, and a 4os Large Siege Bow being some of the early highlights. The Cobalt GC, in particular, took my cold resistance up to 0 even without Iceblink, and given the very marginal benefits of Iceblink, it was promptly stashed in favor of my 3 Flawed Topaz Breast Plate, for an extra 39% MF boost. I also found a 4os Razor Bow, and saved it just in case. Frankly, Razor Bows have piss poor damage and the only thing it really has going for it is its fast attack speed – good for delivering the large elemental damage on Harmony – so in a pinch, it would work. I also found some 32% MF Chance Guards in the Lost City, but I chose to keep using Bloodfist. Although I wouldn’t mind losing one frame off my normal attack because I hardly ever use it, the life, damage, and FHR on Bloodfist are still too juicy to give up for now. Given my relatively low life, FHR really comes in handy sometimes.
As usual, I made a point of always shooting from safety, even when the opponents were only moderately dangerous.
I let the Valk and Merc take the heat from this fast, aggressive group while I did my best merc impression and hid behind a wall.
Fire Eye dropped Crainte Vomir, and after that our team headed into the Arcane Sanctuary to prepare for the last leg of our Act 2 journey. As long as Ghosts weren’t around, AS was very safe thanks to my ability to hit from range.
Bloody death from afar.
Tal Rasha’s Tomb proved surprisingly fruitful, with lots of green drops. In particular, I think I’ve finally found where Sigon died, since he dropped half of his set in this tomb. I also stumbled across Infernal Torch, another Io, and Whistan’s Guard (see the first Sigon drop pic). At this stage of the game, I’m still keeping an eye out for any items that could be useful, even magic rings like this. Big AR boost and life leech? Sure, that could come in handy. Finally, we encountered the big bug himself, and the fight was a breeze because my Valkyrie could tank him at a comfortable recast rate. Remember back in Normal when Duriel actually dropped something useful? Well, shockingly, he did it again in Nightmare!
A delicious helm for me or Kasim, and yet another (duplicate) piece of Sigon’s Complete Steel!
Tal’s mask must be one of the most well-rounded helms around, with huge dual leech, res all, and hefty life and mana bonuses. The only thing that seems to hold it back from being top tier is a lack of something hard to come by on most helms, such as IAS or damage reduction. Still, for an untwinked character, this is a fantastic find and will surely find use once we ding level 66.
---
The first half of Act 3 flew by pretty quickly, as strafe is quite effective against large groups of weak enemies like Flayers. Amongst the indiscriminate slaughter, we added a handful of items to our growing collection, including Infernal Cranium, Hel, Woestave (I can’t wait to use this alongside Riphook to turn Baal into a comatose kitten), Raven Claw, and this absolute gem of a ring:
AR, mana leech, and magic find? Yes please! Even this 2% mana leech should make Insight optional once I find a higher damage bow. Good thing resistances aren’t a problem yet, though.
I also found my second Sharp Grand Charm, still with no suffix and not as good as the first:
Another nice bump to damage. Combined with Might, these things are great!
Once we arrived in Kurast, we found yet another Sigon’s Guard. I briefly considered staying and running NM LK, mostly for charms (Sharp GCs, especially) although with the hope of scoring some better runes, but in the end things were progressing so smoothly I chose to press on to bigger and (hopefully) better things. I can always go back later if I need to, although I would strongly prefer to spend time running LK in Hell, if at all. Plus, I still didn’t have a great Harmony base and I consider Harmony fairly important for LK.
The Kurast Bazaar provided a very nice utility item that will either speed up some runs or get me out of a tight spot in a pinch.
Between Spellsteel, Riphook, and Woestave, RNG is sure being generous with utility item drops!
The Act 3 Sewers are one of my least favorite places to fight due to the jumbled map layout and generally unpleasant monster spawns, but I did choose to grab some free XP and loot when the opportunity presented itself.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
It turns out that this particular skirmish was well worth my time, as one of the mobs dropped Angelic Wings, thereby opening up a “Get-out-of-AR-jail-free” card for later.
We continued to press on, finding Kinemil’s Awl in the Forgotten Temple and another Sigon’s Sabot in Travincal. The Council had Conviction, and I was immensely appreciative of having the Valkyrie around to take heat off of the merc.
Vile(hand), indeed. Cursed and Conviction, with hydras all around. This would have been a tough untwinked fight in Hell, but in NM it was still manageable with careful recasting and potion delivery.
The journey down to Mephisto was somewhat fruitful, finding two nice jewels and Trang-Oul’s Claws along the way. Bremm Sparkfist also drew a Conviction aura, which combined with Hydras and his LE bolts, made for a nasty combination.
Even my Valkyrie couldn’t stand up to this elemental onslaught for long.
The fight with Mephisto went well, as both my merc and Valkyrie managed to stay upright and allow me to blast away.
When Mephisto can’t pick a target to focus on, he can’t kill anything.
Although NM Mephisto is often a “first stop” of sorts for item farming, his quest drop was crap and we moved on from Act 3 at level 64.
Stats at the beginning of Act 4 (without Might).
Well that's all for this week. What does everyone think? More pics? Less? More discussion of tactics and less talk of shiny things? Any feedback on format and content would be great. As always, thanks for reading!
- Jan 3, 2019
- 1,480
- 1,593
- 93
Perfect amount of pics, and as much discussion of both items and tactics as you want to provide
You're doing a very good job with it so far IMO. Do you upload the pics though imgur?
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
@Luhkoh Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. I use this site - found randomly on Google but it's incredibly easy to use and doesn't involve signing up for anything. Sure, it doesn't organize the links for me into an album or anything (no account to sign up for), but as long as the links and images in my posts remain stable, I don't mind the decentralized approach.
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
Update Time: NM Act 4.
This update will be relatively short; I’ve been short on play time lately and am still grinding at an early point of Hell, so I don’t want to catch up to my current progress quite yet. So, only one act today.
We left off with Eternity, Kasim, and the trusty Valkyrie about to venture into the Outer Steppes of Act 4 Nightmare.
After uneventfully working our way around the perimeter of the Steppes counter-clockwise, we finally found the Plains of Despair and were promptly greeted by some Venom Lords. Better than gloams!
We made short work of the welcoming committee.
By this point, much of my gear was starting to feel a bit stale, especially my boots with their 30% FRW, 6% lightning res, and 10% MF. Almost any exceptional set or unique footwear would provide an instant upgrade, so you can imagine my disappointment when this dropped:
While The Disciple is one of the better non-class-specific sets, the boots themselves are atrocious. 30% FRW and nothing else of any real use. Might as well keep my rares for now.
Izual must not have presented much of a challenge, as I have no screenshots or recollections of the fight. Still, +2 skills is always most welcome. As with Act 3, I managed to avoid gloams in Act 4, a fact I was rather happy about given my 25% lightning resistance. It would have been plenty manageable, especially in NM, but the less time I have to spend dancing around, the better.
The City of the Damned had plenty of Damned, living up to its namesake, but with two sturdy tanks to absorb their lightning balls, they weren’t much of a threat. In fact, I was more interested in the surprisingly evil windows that are often found in these areas.
Evil windows! I wonder whose idea it was to name them “An Evil Force”…
One of the biggest drawbacks of strafe is its insistence on firing at all targets equally. Sure, the first arrow always goes toward whatever you have name-locked, but after that it can get frustrating. The “evil forces” scattered around the open areas of Act 4 are completely harmless, yet half my strafe arrows fire toward windows as opposed to actual threats. Feels silly, but it’s usually nothing more than a minor nuisance most of the time.
In the River of Flame, I found some potentially useful gloves. Granted, they aren’t good enough to justify replacing Bloodfist, but it’s still nice to accumulate a handful of useful mods.
Mana leech, lightning resistance, and magic find – all pretty useful! Now if only these had IAS…
Once a nearby hoard of Urdars was brought down, Hephasto himself proved very tame.
Yawn. Bring on the Hellforge!
Rarely have I been so anxious about the Nightmare Hellforge, as I was this day. Many useful things could be opened up: Ko (second Harmony rune set), Fal (Lionheart), Lem (Treachery), Pul (Upped Riphook), and Um (Duress) all held great potential. I was especially hoping for a Pul to upgrade Riphook, but I would have been happy with any of those five runes. So what did the game do?
Well that’s not helpful at all.
Yep, sure enough, I got a lowly Shael. Hopefully rune luck will be made up for in the future. The Hell Hellforge will be better no matter what, at least.
As usual, the Chaos Sanctuary was packed full of enemies. The nice part about a piercing strafer, however, is that the early areas of the CS allow for excellent chokepoint herding and easy, well-controlled disposal of enemies. Again, the Valkyrie proved to be the MVP of tanking.
Without better ranged support, these guys were sitting ducks.
Whenever possible, I continued to use good strafer practices, such as quickly lining up the most efficient shooting angle when spawning the Grand Vizier.
Although I’m exposed not being behind my tanks, it’s easy to stand far enough away to where the tanks still consistently draw the aggro.
The fight with Diablo was pretty easy, despite my poor resistances. As expected, Kasim died after one look at the Lord of Terror, but the Valkyrie was a more than capable tank. And with a rare war pike, her max damage is clearly more than mine so Diablo focused exclusively on her.
The noble Valkyrie staring down Diablo’s lightning hose. Notice Diablo stepping on poor Kasim's corpse.
With the exception of Diablo’s fire nova attack, all I had to do was stand anywhere other than directly behind the Valkyrie and fire away. A very safe fight.
As if to mock my Hellforge luck, Diablo dropped me a lowly Nef.
Unfortunately, the drop was again disappointing. For the act as a whole, I didn’t find much: The aforementioned Rite of Passage, Frostburn (Gogo 5% enhanced damage!), Milabrega’s Orb, Arctic Binding, and the Shadowfang dropped by Diablo.
I leveled twice during Act 4, with my updated stats and P&M skills (plus a hard beeline to strafe with 20 points in the skill itself) looking like this heading into Act 5:
I’m always impressed at how useful the Amazon’s P&M tree is.
I don't think the effect of Might is shown in that screenshot.
Next week we’ll wrap up Nightmare with a trip through Act 5. Act 5 NM, to me, is when things finally start to get a little more intense. Hell will be a whole different game, though - especially with my resistances being so atrocious. Some gear changes will likely be in order.
Thanks for reading!
This update will be relatively short; I’ve been short on play time lately and am still grinding at an early point of Hell, so I don’t want to catch up to my current progress quite yet. So, only one act today.
We left off with Eternity, Kasim, and the trusty Valkyrie about to venture into the Outer Steppes of Act 4 Nightmare.
After uneventfully working our way around the perimeter of the Steppes counter-clockwise, we finally found the Plains of Despair and were promptly greeted by some Venom Lords. Better than gloams!
We made short work of the welcoming committee.
By this point, much of my gear was starting to feel a bit stale, especially my boots with their 30% FRW, 6% lightning res, and 10% MF. Almost any exceptional set or unique footwear would provide an instant upgrade, so you can imagine my disappointment when this dropped:
While The Disciple is one of the better non-class-specific sets, the boots themselves are atrocious. 30% FRW and nothing else of any real use. Might as well keep my rares for now.
Izual must not have presented much of a challenge, as I have no screenshots or recollections of the fight. Still, +2 skills is always most welcome. As with Act 3, I managed to avoid gloams in Act 4, a fact I was rather happy about given my 25% lightning resistance. It would have been plenty manageable, especially in NM, but the less time I have to spend dancing around, the better.
The City of the Damned had plenty of Damned, living up to its namesake, but with two sturdy tanks to absorb their lightning balls, they weren’t much of a threat. In fact, I was more interested in the surprisingly evil windows that are often found in these areas.
Evil windows! I wonder whose idea it was to name them “An Evil Force”…
One of the biggest drawbacks of strafe is its insistence on firing at all targets equally. Sure, the first arrow always goes toward whatever you have name-locked, but after that it can get frustrating. The “evil forces” scattered around the open areas of Act 4 are completely harmless, yet half my strafe arrows fire toward windows as opposed to actual threats. Feels silly, but it’s usually nothing more than a minor nuisance most of the time.
In the River of Flame, I found some potentially useful gloves. Granted, they aren’t good enough to justify replacing Bloodfist, but it’s still nice to accumulate a handful of useful mods.
Mana leech, lightning resistance, and magic find – all pretty useful! Now if only these had IAS…
Once a nearby hoard of Urdars was brought down, Hephasto himself proved very tame.
Yawn. Bring on the Hellforge!
Rarely have I been so anxious about the Nightmare Hellforge, as I was this day. Many useful things could be opened up: Ko (second Harmony rune set), Fal (Lionheart), Lem (Treachery), Pul (Upped Riphook), and Um (Duress) all held great potential. I was especially hoping for a Pul to upgrade Riphook, but I would have been happy with any of those five runes. So what did the game do?
Well that’s not helpful at all.
Yep, sure enough, I got a lowly Shael. Hopefully rune luck will be made up for in the future. The Hell Hellforge will be better no matter what, at least.
As usual, the Chaos Sanctuary was packed full of enemies. The nice part about a piercing strafer, however, is that the early areas of the CS allow for excellent chokepoint herding and easy, well-controlled disposal of enemies. Again, the Valkyrie proved to be the MVP of tanking.
Without better ranged support, these guys were sitting ducks.
Whenever possible, I continued to use good strafer practices, such as quickly lining up the most efficient shooting angle when spawning the Grand Vizier.
Although I’m exposed not being behind my tanks, it’s easy to stand far enough away to where the tanks still consistently draw the aggro.
The fight with Diablo was pretty easy, despite my poor resistances. As expected, Kasim died after one look at the Lord of Terror, but the Valkyrie was a more than capable tank. And with a rare war pike, her max damage is clearly more than mine so Diablo focused exclusively on her.
The noble Valkyrie staring down Diablo’s lightning hose. Notice Diablo stepping on poor Kasim's corpse.
With the exception of Diablo’s fire nova attack, all I had to do was stand anywhere other than directly behind the Valkyrie and fire away. A very safe fight.
As if to mock my Hellforge luck, Diablo dropped me a lowly Nef.
Unfortunately, the drop was again disappointing. For the act as a whole, I didn’t find much: The aforementioned Rite of Passage, Frostburn (Gogo 5% enhanced damage!), Milabrega’s Orb, Arctic Binding, and the Shadowfang dropped by Diablo.
I leveled twice during Act 4, with my updated stats and P&M skills (plus a hard beeline to strafe with 20 points in the skill itself) looking like this heading into Act 5:
I’m always impressed at how useful the Amazon’s P&M tree is.
I don't think the effect of Might is shown in that screenshot.
Next week we’ll wrap up Nightmare with a trip through Act 5. Act 5 NM, to me, is when things finally start to get a little more intense. Hell will be a whole different game, though - especially with my resistances being so atrocious. Some gear changes will likely be in order.
Thanks for reading!
Nice progression, it s really interesting to read, with many screenshots ! I wish I could take battle screen like you can
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
@Chaostar Thanks; glad you like it! For the screenshots, I tend to take a lot, and often several in quick succession during interesting (but safe enough) battles, and then pick the best ones later. Lots of bloat to sort through that way but I usually get decent pics of the battles I'm trying to capture that way.
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
Nightmare Act 5
I always enjoy Act 5 (NM and Hell) from a playthrough standpoint – you really never know how hard an area will be until you see what spawns. And this time around, Act 5 greeted me with a rather difficult spawn in the Bloody Foothills, especially for this gal. There were a few blood hawks around, and LOTS of burning dead archers. If the game randomly draws 3 enemy types for these A5 areas, is it possible to draw one type twice? Because there were only two types of enemy here, and there were a ton of those damn archers. Anyway, with my bad poison resistance (-24), mediocre fire resistance (25), and lowish life (592), this area was a major slog. The foothills were indeed bloody, with many merc resurrections, Valkyrie recastings, and even retrieving my own body once (overly-aggressive advancing combined with strafe lock and poorly positioned tanks = lots of flaming arrows = instant death).
Kasim and the Valk were not always in the best position to take the heat…
As usual, the Valkyrie proved to be a far more durable pincushion than Kasim.
Look at those piles of bones – it’s almost like the archers were lined up in a semi-logical way to all get a clean shot at me! Looks like Kasim took the brunt of that first volley.
After the grueling slog that was the Bloody Foothills, I had hoped to find some relief in the Frigid Highlands, but it was not meant to be. Both rogue archers and burning dead archers had a good time flinging arrows at our little troop, but fortunately Eternity managed to stay upright the entire time. We also happened on another major upgrade for Kasim:
It’s not elite, but it’s still a fantastic find at this stage of the game.
The ethereal Bec-de-Corbin only averaged 3 less damage per hit than a non-ethereal Thresher (IIRC), making this a very powerful weapon at this stage of the game. Finding it both eth and with 4os was a nice morale boost after a few acts of very little in terms of gear upgrades.
After an uneventful trip through Abaddon, I had a brief moment of hope after finding a superior, socketed Blade Bow – my first elite bow drop! A -10WSM Harmony Bow is currently high on my priority list, so I had high hopes. Did it have the 4os I’ve been craving?
So close, yet so far.
Well, at least the Riphook was still pulling its weight. Monsters were definitely tougher to bring down, but all those debilitating mods (especially 30% slow) still allowed for generally safe and steady progress. Immediately afterward, a second Tal’s mask dropped. With my twinked stashes already overflowing with these, I normally only look to see if I can land one or two with perfect defense, but here a second one of these highly useful helms was most welcome. Once things start to get too tough in Hell, barring a great find (Vampire Gaze, godly rare circlet, Giant Skull, etc), this will likely be my end-game (questing) headgear. Although the helm is fairly common, finding such a useful item twice in one playthrough was a very nice gift from the RNG gods.
The Pit of Acheron is where things started to get tough. Well, could have gotten tough if not for a sturdy tank and lots of natural chokepoints. As long as you don’t have succubi flinging death balls at you, these areas can be pretty tame while yielding decent XP and drops, so I usually enjoy them.
Despite the Valkyrie’s ability to comfortably hold the bridge, I was in no mood to move another step and risk seeing how well she held up against the whole pack. This setup was ideal.
Another boss back of death lords. This time, though, I was safely separated from them and decided to see just how strong the valk was. She survived without needing to be recast. A level 20 valk is just too sturdy for most of what Nightmare can throw at her.
After forgetting once or twice, between sessions I finally remembered to mule back on the runes for Insight so I could create my merc’s new hurty stick:
400+ max damage on an untwinked merc weapon in Nightmare? Sounds good to me!
After that, Kasim was really dishing out notable damage. By this point I had grown to view the Valkyrie as our tank, with Kasim and I both as the damage dealers in need of protection. Partway through Act 5, Kasim’s stats looked pretty impressive.
Kasim, with 10% life leech, huge damage, two auras, CBF, and maxed resists. Merc gear is falling into place fantastically.
I have no screenshots from the frozen river, meaning it was boring (= no gloams). Anya’s gift was crap for this stage of the game, but would have been very handy at its required clvl. By now, I had finally accumulated 5 perfect topaz, and it was time to start cube socketing some gothic plates. On my first try, I scored 4 sockets, and bumped my magic find up to a respectable 267% (I believe) for the remainder of the difficulty. I also found a white Matriarchal Bow, which again got me excited. I came up short yet again, though, drawing 3 sockets with the cube. If only there were some better 3-rune bow runewords. I also found a very nice Leaf base on my way to Nihlathak and stashed it for possible future twinking use. Despite only being NM, Eternity does not have very high life, so to be prudent I went ahead and pulled Nihlathak’s minions away before taking him on. Once you get rid of his bomb-in-waiting cronies, he’s always disappointingly tame.
And so the traitor finds himself alone and cornered.
Before heading off to challenge the ancients, I took a moment to upgrade Woestave in preparation for the Baal fight (and possibly the ancients, if needed). Sure, Woestave has a very small %ED bonus, but extra damage is extra damage, and the cost to upgrade uniques from normal to exceptional is small. I took my usual detour down into the Icy Cellar and disposed of Snipsnap Chitter, and despite a decent mix of mods, he again could not break my Valkyrie.
All hail the Valkyrie. Note Kasim bravely guarding my empty flank.
Finally we arrived at the Arreat Summit, and without much of a second thought we touched the altar. It took some time to wear down the /p8 ancients, but they inevitably fell. It certainly didn’t hurt that two of them spawned Magic Resistant.
This setup was unorthodox, and had my tanks taking hits from all 3 ancients at once (including Talic’s whirls), but without a nasty mod combo they just aren’t very potent in Nightmare.
The WSK varied greatly in difficulty by level, with WSK 2 being the most memorable. Primarily because of this lovely…thing?
A PI, CE gloam boss, with other gloams around. Great. Lots of (slow, frosty) dancing, but eventually we won out.
Baal’s minions were all tame, with Lister spawning with a very tame set of mods.
Lister will not be tormenting anyone today. Basically a big ugly puppy.
I gave Kasim his Woestave, jumped into the Worldstone Chamber, and teleported across the void, placing Kasim right next to Baal. Between Woestave and Riphook, Baal mostly just sat around telling us about his lobotomy, before finally he fell.
Now that’s a more typical Baal quest drop. No awesomely convenient items this time around, sadly.
I ended Act 5 with stats and skills very similar to those at the end of Act 4, just with a few more points in Dexterity and Penetrate. After I max penetrate, the plan is to give some more attention to Pierce (target level 9 for 100% Pierce with Razortail and no +skills) and Critical Strike (target level 20?).
As before, Strafe is at level 20 and no other points (besides pre-reqs) have been assigned outside the P&M tree.
Overall, finds were not in short supply, but they were generally short in quality. Besides the aforementioned Tal’s Mask, finds for the act included Hsarus’ Iron Heel, Cathan’s Visage, Tancred’s Crowbill and Deathspade, Hsarus’ Iron Stay, Stormstrike, Berserker’s Hauberk, Isenhart’s Case, Wall of the Eyeless, Bane Ash, Bverrit Keep, Sigon’s Gage, Venom Ward, Skull Splitter, Hel, Wizendraw (-24% ECR), Iceblink and Isenhart’s Horns (thanks, Baal).
As always, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in Hell!
I always enjoy Act 5 (NM and Hell) from a playthrough standpoint – you really never know how hard an area will be until you see what spawns. And this time around, Act 5 greeted me with a rather difficult spawn in the Bloody Foothills, especially for this gal. There were a few blood hawks around, and LOTS of burning dead archers. If the game randomly draws 3 enemy types for these A5 areas, is it possible to draw one type twice? Because there were only two types of enemy here, and there were a ton of those damn archers. Anyway, with my bad poison resistance (-24), mediocre fire resistance (25), and lowish life (592), this area was a major slog. The foothills were indeed bloody, with many merc resurrections, Valkyrie recastings, and even retrieving my own body once (overly-aggressive advancing combined with strafe lock and poorly positioned tanks = lots of flaming arrows = instant death).
Kasim and the Valk were not always in the best position to take the heat…
As usual, the Valkyrie proved to be a far more durable pincushion than Kasim.
Look at those piles of bones – it’s almost like the archers were lined up in a semi-logical way to all get a clean shot at me! Looks like Kasim took the brunt of that first volley.
After the grueling slog that was the Bloody Foothills, I had hoped to find some relief in the Frigid Highlands, but it was not meant to be. Both rogue archers and burning dead archers had a good time flinging arrows at our little troop, but fortunately Eternity managed to stay upright the entire time. We also happened on another major upgrade for Kasim:
It’s not elite, but it’s still a fantastic find at this stage of the game.
The ethereal Bec-de-Corbin only averaged 3 less damage per hit than a non-ethereal Thresher (IIRC), making this a very powerful weapon at this stage of the game. Finding it both eth and with 4os was a nice morale boost after a few acts of very little in terms of gear upgrades.
After an uneventful trip through Abaddon, I had a brief moment of hope after finding a superior, socketed Blade Bow – my first elite bow drop! A -10WSM Harmony Bow is currently high on my priority list, so I had high hopes. Did it have the 4os I’ve been craving?
So close, yet so far.
Well, at least the Riphook was still pulling its weight. Monsters were definitely tougher to bring down, but all those debilitating mods (especially 30% slow) still allowed for generally safe and steady progress. Immediately afterward, a second Tal’s mask dropped. With my twinked stashes already overflowing with these, I normally only look to see if I can land one or two with perfect defense, but here a second one of these highly useful helms was most welcome. Once things start to get too tough in Hell, barring a great find (Vampire Gaze, godly rare circlet, Giant Skull, etc), this will likely be my end-game (questing) headgear. Although the helm is fairly common, finding such a useful item twice in one playthrough was a very nice gift from the RNG gods.
The Pit of Acheron is where things started to get tough. Well, could have gotten tough if not for a sturdy tank and lots of natural chokepoints. As long as you don’t have succubi flinging death balls at you, these areas can be pretty tame while yielding decent XP and drops, so I usually enjoy them.
Despite the Valkyrie’s ability to comfortably hold the bridge, I was in no mood to move another step and risk seeing how well she held up against the whole pack. This setup was ideal.
Another boss back of death lords. This time, though, I was safely separated from them and decided to see just how strong the valk was. She survived without needing to be recast. A level 20 valk is just too sturdy for most of what Nightmare can throw at her.
After forgetting once or twice, between sessions I finally remembered to mule back on the runes for Insight so I could create my merc’s new hurty stick:
400+ max damage on an untwinked merc weapon in Nightmare? Sounds good to me!
After that, Kasim was really dishing out notable damage. By this point I had grown to view the Valkyrie as our tank, with Kasim and I both as the damage dealers in need of protection. Partway through Act 5, Kasim’s stats looked pretty impressive.
Kasim, with 10% life leech, huge damage, two auras, CBF, and maxed resists. Merc gear is falling into place fantastically.
I have no screenshots from the frozen river, meaning it was boring (= no gloams). Anya’s gift was crap for this stage of the game, but would have been very handy at its required clvl. By now, I had finally accumulated 5 perfect topaz, and it was time to start cube socketing some gothic plates. On my first try, I scored 4 sockets, and bumped my magic find up to a respectable 267% (I believe) for the remainder of the difficulty. I also found a white Matriarchal Bow, which again got me excited. I came up short yet again, though, drawing 3 sockets with the cube. If only there were some better 3-rune bow runewords. I also found a very nice Leaf base on my way to Nihlathak and stashed it for possible future twinking use. Despite only being NM, Eternity does not have very high life, so to be prudent I went ahead and pulled Nihlathak’s minions away before taking him on. Once you get rid of his bomb-in-waiting cronies, he’s always disappointingly tame.
And so the traitor finds himself alone and cornered.
Before heading off to challenge the ancients, I took a moment to upgrade Woestave in preparation for the Baal fight (and possibly the ancients, if needed). Sure, Woestave has a very small %ED bonus, but extra damage is extra damage, and the cost to upgrade uniques from normal to exceptional is small. I took my usual detour down into the Icy Cellar and disposed of Snipsnap Chitter, and despite a decent mix of mods, he again could not break my Valkyrie.
All hail the Valkyrie. Note Kasim bravely guarding my empty flank.
Finally we arrived at the Arreat Summit, and without much of a second thought we touched the altar. It took some time to wear down the /p8 ancients, but they inevitably fell. It certainly didn’t hurt that two of them spawned Magic Resistant.
This setup was unorthodox, and had my tanks taking hits from all 3 ancients at once (including Talic’s whirls), but without a nasty mod combo they just aren’t very potent in Nightmare.
The WSK varied greatly in difficulty by level, with WSK 2 being the most memorable. Primarily because of this lovely…thing?
A PI, CE gloam boss, with other gloams around. Great. Lots of (slow, frosty) dancing, but eventually we won out.
Baal’s minions were all tame, with Lister spawning with a very tame set of mods.
Lister will not be tormenting anyone today. Basically a big ugly puppy.
I gave Kasim his Woestave, jumped into the Worldstone Chamber, and teleported across the void, placing Kasim right next to Baal. Between Woestave and Riphook, Baal mostly just sat around telling us about his lobotomy, before finally he fell.
Now that’s a more typical Baal quest drop. No awesomely convenient items this time around, sadly.
I ended Act 5 with stats and skills very similar to those at the end of Act 4, just with a few more points in Dexterity and Penetrate. After I max penetrate, the plan is to give some more attention to Pierce (target level 9 for 100% Pierce with Razortail and no +skills) and Critical Strike (target level 20?).
As before, Strafe is at level 20 and no other points (besides pre-reqs) have been assigned outside the P&M tree.
Overall, finds were not in short supply, but they were generally short in quality. Besides the aforementioned Tal’s Mask, finds for the act included Hsarus’ Iron Heel, Cathan’s Visage, Tancred’s Crowbill and Deathspade, Hsarus’ Iron Stay, Stormstrike, Berserker’s Hauberk, Isenhart’s Case, Wall of the Eyeless, Bane Ash, Bverrit Keep, Sigon’s Gage, Venom Ward, Skull Splitter, Hel, Wizendraw (-24% ECR), Iceblink and Isenhart’s Horns (thanks, Baal).
As always, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in Hell!
- Jun 11, 2018
- 654
- 9
- 3
Hell Act 1, and Way Too Much Time with The Countess
After cruising through Nightmare, I felt fairly confident that I could handle the early stages of Hell without any gear changes, and played at /p3 (except when Countess running). This meant that Eternity was going to be a glass cannon for the time being. Well, more like a glass cork gun, but glass nonetheless:
Eternity’s (abysmal) stats entering the Moor for the final time.
I knew that as long as I could keep my tanks upright and stay behind them, things would be manageable thanks to the 30% slow on Riphook. Physical immunes were much more common than in Nightmare, and I relied on Open Wounds and whatever meager elemental damage my team had, to whittle them down – I tried to avoid running from enemies except where it was obvious that the whole team would get killed. I’m really starting to get impatient waiting for a 4os -10 or 0 WSM elite bow to make Harmony in, though – that elemental damage should really help with PIs.
The fight with Blood Raven was long due to her insistence on running all over the place and her tendency to resurrect the undead, but ultimately she fell.
Open wounds plus all that running around leaves the ground crimson.
We ran into a lot of elementally-enchanted enemies, and I had to stay way, way back. Especially if conviction was around:
That cold nova would be absolutely lethal.
We continued plugging away, with Eternity staying safely behind Kasim and the Valkyrie. Things were fairly safe due to the easy monster types that spawn early in the game, and before long we had arrived at the Black Marsh waypoint. My plan at this point was to run the Countess to get a few runes for gear upgrades: namely, a Pul to upgrade Riphook, Lem to make my merc a Treachery, and Fal to make myself a Lionheart. A second Lem to keep another Treachery available would be nice, too. My last stop before Countess running was the Hole, and I got an unexpected yet always nice rune drop.
Nothing to use this on for now, but still a nice find!
My first time heading down the Forgotten Tower, I came across a gray Matriarchal Bow. 4os would cause me to think twice about insisting on getting a Pul from Countess running, but yet again I was disappointed, as it had only 3 sockets. Tough luck with elite bows so far!
The only real change I made to my gear prior to starting these runs was to equip Trang-Oul’s Scales for its 40% FRW. My Black Marsh / Forgotten Tower map was not great. I had two shrines on the way to the tower, netting me 25+ free pgem upgrades, and although levels 1 and 2 were long and frequently featured doorways blocked by packs of Fallen, I opportunistically killed various champ/boss packs along the way for XP and drops. I kept Spellsteel on switch and routinely used one charge per run, and levels 3-4 were extremely short, so things evened out in the end. In all, I went from level 78 to level 83 doing /p1 Countess runs. Yes, it was a lot of runs and it did get old after a while. The reason for so many runs was simple: she absolutely refused to drop a Pul for the longest time, and Pul was the most important rune for me to get from these runs. Seems about right.
I tracked all runes Hel+; here is the breakdown along with pics of anything Fal+:
Hel: 12
Io: 7
Lum: 6
Ko: 2
Fal: #1, #2, #3
Lem: #1, #2, #3, #4
Pul: #1
Um: #1, #2
Mal #1, #2, #3
I found it pretty interesting that there was a huge drop-off in rune abundance after Lum, and you can imagine my frustration after finding 2 Ko, 3 Fal, 4 Lem, 2 Um, and 3 Mal runes all before that Pul finally dropped.
Although the runes were the focus, I did net a few surprisingly nice sets/uniques during these runs:
Maybe a better PI solution until I make a good Harmony?
This should be a huge help with boss runs in the future. Nice to check this one off the list.
Not particularly useful but still nice to see elite uniques! The Blade Bow was 2os.
Any 1.09 Paladins out there looking for a weapon?
I managed to collect some useful bases during these runs as well, including a 3os Mage Plate and a 3os Great Hauberk. A 15%ED +2 AR Superior Thresher was a bit of a tease.
Once I found the Pul, I shifted focus toward re-gearing, giving up 168% MF (topazed helm + armor) in favor of better survivability and killing power. Here are my stats and skills (strafe not shown as usual) prior to re-gearing:
Room for improvement.
First, I equipped Tal’s helm for the life, dual leech, and resistances, and then I made Lionheart in the Mage Plate I found doing Countess runs. Between the huge across-the-board stat and resistance boosts, and my lack of needing further IAS, this was a no-brainer.
Such a nice armor for the price.
I then upgraded the Riphook for a badly-needed damage boost:
That damage looks much, much better.
After the gear changes and weapon upgrade, Eternity looked a lot less glassy:
That looks better.
As a bonus, I managed to maintain ~100% MF with the new gear setup. After leaving the confines of the Forgotten Tower, the new and improved Eternity went to clear the Pit, just to see how the current setup fared. It was a little rough, needing 3 full purples and one resurrection for Kasim during the run, so she is clearly not yet ready for full-time Pit-running duty. Despite only clearing the Pit once, it yielded a surprisingly nice drop:
+4 skills, 222% ED.
Arioc’s Needle was a nice upgrade for Kasim, and it coincided very well with me receiving a huge mana leech boost from Tal’s mask and the higher damage on my bow, which had made Insight’s Meditation aura redundant. The +4 skills boosted Might nicely and made a significant difference to my damage, increasing my average damage per shot by ~30-50 (IIRC). I also made Kasim Treachery in the Great Hauberk I found previously, giving him 75% IAS total and greatly increasing his survivability.
The new and improved Kasim. Looking pretty good for untwinked.
The rest of Act 1 was straight-forward, and the fight with Andarial was fairly predictable – her melee attacks obliterated Kasim, and her poison damage completely neutered the Valkyrie’s regen and therefore her ability to tank, so I spent a good deal of time getting chased around. Fortunately, 30% FRW + 30% slow made it very easy to run across the room, strafe 2-3 times, and then run again. I went back to town a few times to shake off some poison, but other than that she didn’t land a single hit.
I switched into my MF gear for the kill and still got a crappy quest drop; lucky for me she’ll always quest drop moving forward!
The other finds for this act included Sigon’s Gage x3, Trang-Oul’s Scales x3, Cathan’s Visage, Cathan’s Mesh x3, Sigon’s Sabot x2, The General’s Tan Do Li Ga, Cathan’s Rule, The Jade Tan Do, Skewer of Krintiz, a Chilling GC, Sigon’s Guard, Arcanna’s Flesh x3, Arctic Binding, Silkweave, The Patriarch, Crow Caw, Arctic Horn, Angelic Mantle, Isenhart’s Parry x2, Sigon’s Wrap, Biggin’s Bonnet, M’avina’s Icy Clutch, Spellsteel, Cleglaw’s Tooth, a perfect roll Steel GC (too bad no suffix), Civerb’s Ward, Tancred’s Weird, Berserker’s Hatchet, Sander’s Superstition, Que-Hegan’s Wisdom, Humongous, Gorefoot, Demon Machine, The Butcher’s Pupil, Bladebone, Gleamsythe, Wall of the Eyeless, Isenhart’s Lightbrand, Griswold’s Edge, Vidala’s Fetlock, Civerb’s Icon, The Mahim-Oak Curio, and Cleglaw’s Tooth. Quite a lot of junk and repeats, so I didn’t bother to show all the screenshots this time. I think I’ve completed most of the normal sets 2-3 times over already. For the sake of record-keeping, I keep collecting duplicates, but it would sure be nice to start getting some more useful drops instead.
Well that about does it for Act 1 Hell. This was one of my favorite updates to write since I had some good drops to share, and for the first time since the end of normal, some really notable gear upgrades. Countess running may not be the most efficient way to collect runes long-term, but with the many useful runewords made from mid-tier runes, it was a really valuable exercise in this untwinked setting. I also feel much less rune-poor moving forward - 3x Lem, 2x Um, Ist, and 3x Mal represent a nice start toward building real rune wealth.
These updates are now caught up to my current progress, so future updates will be less predictable and more dependent on how much play time I have. Still, I hope to finish up Act 2 by the end of next week so the wait for the next update shouldn’t be too long. Thanks for reading!
After cruising through Nightmare, I felt fairly confident that I could handle the early stages of Hell without any gear changes, and played at /p3 (except when Countess running). This meant that Eternity was going to be a glass cannon for the time being. Well, more like a glass cork gun, but glass nonetheless:
Eternity’s (abysmal) stats entering the Moor for the final time.
I knew that as long as I could keep my tanks upright and stay behind them, things would be manageable thanks to the 30% slow on Riphook. Physical immunes were much more common than in Nightmare, and I relied on Open Wounds and whatever meager elemental damage my team had, to whittle them down – I tried to avoid running from enemies except where it was obvious that the whole team would get killed. I’m really starting to get impatient waiting for a 4os -10 or 0 WSM elite bow to make Harmony in, though – that elemental damage should really help with PIs.
The fight with Blood Raven was long due to her insistence on running all over the place and her tendency to resurrect the undead, but ultimately she fell.
Open wounds plus all that running around leaves the ground crimson.
We ran into a lot of elementally-enchanted enemies, and I had to stay way, way back. Especially if conviction was around:
That cold nova would be absolutely lethal.
We continued plugging away, with Eternity staying safely behind Kasim and the Valkyrie. Things were fairly safe due to the easy monster types that spawn early in the game, and before long we had arrived at the Black Marsh waypoint. My plan at this point was to run the Countess to get a few runes for gear upgrades: namely, a Pul to upgrade Riphook, Lem to make my merc a Treachery, and Fal to make myself a Lionheart. A second Lem to keep another Treachery available would be nice, too. My last stop before Countess running was the Hole, and I got an unexpected yet always nice rune drop.
Nothing to use this on for now, but still a nice find!
My first time heading down the Forgotten Tower, I came across a gray Matriarchal Bow. 4os would cause me to think twice about insisting on getting a Pul from Countess running, but yet again I was disappointed, as it had only 3 sockets. Tough luck with elite bows so far!
The only real change I made to my gear prior to starting these runs was to equip Trang-Oul’s Scales for its 40% FRW. My Black Marsh / Forgotten Tower map was not great. I had two shrines on the way to the tower, netting me 25+ free pgem upgrades, and although levels 1 and 2 were long and frequently featured doorways blocked by packs of Fallen, I opportunistically killed various champ/boss packs along the way for XP and drops. I kept Spellsteel on switch and routinely used one charge per run, and levels 3-4 were extremely short, so things evened out in the end. In all, I went from level 78 to level 83 doing /p1 Countess runs. Yes, it was a lot of runs and it did get old after a while. The reason for so many runs was simple: she absolutely refused to drop a Pul for the longest time, and Pul was the most important rune for me to get from these runs. Seems about right.
I tracked all runes Hel+; here is the breakdown along with pics of anything Fal+:
Hel: 12
Io: 7
Lum: 6
Ko: 2
Fal: #1, #2, #3
Lem: #1, #2, #3, #4
Pul: #1
Um: #1, #2
Mal #1, #2, #3
I found it pretty interesting that there was a huge drop-off in rune abundance after Lum, and you can imagine my frustration after finding 2 Ko, 3 Fal, 4 Lem, 2 Um, and 3 Mal runes all before that Pul finally dropped.
Although the runes were the focus, I did net a few surprisingly nice sets/uniques during these runs:
Maybe a better PI solution until I make a good Harmony?
This should be a huge help with boss runs in the future. Nice to check this one off the list.
Not particularly useful but still nice to see elite uniques! The Blade Bow was 2os.
Any 1.09 Paladins out there looking for a weapon?
I managed to collect some useful bases during these runs as well, including a 3os Mage Plate and a 3os Great Hauberk. A 15%ED +2 AR Superior Thresher was a bit of a tease.
Once I found the Pul, I shifted focus toward re-gearing, giving up 168% MF (topazed helm + armor) in favor of better survivability and killing power. Here are my stats and skills (strafe not shown as usual) prior to re-gearing:
Room for improvement.
First, I equipped Tal’s helm for the life, dual leech, and resistances, and then I made Lionheart in the Mage Plate I found doing Countess runs. Between the huge across-the-board stat and resistance boosts, and my lack of needing further IAS, this was a no-brainer.
Such a nice armor for the price.
I then upgraded the Riphook for a badly-needed damage boost:
That damage looks much, much better.
After the gear changes and weapon upgrade, Eternity looked a lot less glassy:
That looks better.
As a bonus, I managed to maintain ~100% MF with the new gear setup. After leaving the confines of the Forgotten Tower, the new and improved Eternity went to clear the Pit, just to see how the current setup fared. It was a little rough, needing 3 full purples and one resurrection for Kasim during the run, so she is clearly not yet ready for full-time Pit-running duty. Despite only clearing the Pit once, it yielded a surprisingly nice drop:
+4 skills, 222% ED.
Arioc’s Needle was a nice upgrade for Kasim, and it coincided very well with me receiving a huge mana leech boost from Tal’s mask and the higher damage on my bow, which had made Insight’s Meditation aura redundant. The +4 skills boosted Might nicely and made a significant difference to my damage, increasing my average damage per shot by ~30-50 (IIRC). I also made Kasim Treachery in the Great Hauberk I found previously, giving him 75% IAS total and greatly increasing his survivability.
The new and improved Kasim. Looking pretty good for untwinked.
The rest of Act 1 was straight-forward, and the fight with Andarial was fairly predictable – her melee attacks obliterated Kasim, and her poison damage completely neutered the Valkyrie’s regen and therefore her ability to tank, so I spent a good deal of time getting chased around. Fortunately, 30% FRW + 30% slow made it very easy to run across the room, strafe 2-3 times, and then run again. I went back to town a few times to shake off some poison, but other than that she didn’t land a single hit.
I switched into my MF gear for the kill and still got a crappy quest drop; lucky for me she’ll always quest drop moving forward!
The other finds for this act included Sigon’s Gage x3, Trang-Oul’s Scales x3, Cathan’s Visage, Cathan’s Mesh x3, Sigon’s Sabot x2, The General’s Tan Do Li Ga, Cathan’s Rule, The Jade Tan Do, Skewer of Krintiz, a Chilling GC, Sigon’s Guard, Arcanna’s Flesh x3, Arctic Binding, Silkweave, The Patriarch, Crow Caw, Arctic Horn, Angelic Mantle, Isenhart’s Parry x2, Sigon’s Wrap, Biggin’s Bonnet, M’avina’s Icy Clutch, Spellsteel, Cleglaw’s Tooth, a perfect roll Steel GC (too bad no suffix
), Civerb’s Ward, Tancred’s Weird, Berserker’s Hatchet, Sander’s Superstition, Que-Hegan’s Wisdom, Humongous, Gorefoot, Demon Machine, The Butcher’s Pupil, Bladebone, Gleamsythe, Wall of the Eyeless, Isenhart’s Lightbrand, Griswold’s Edge, Vidala’s Fetlock, Civerb’s Icon, The Mahim-Oak Curio, and Cleglaw’s Tooth. Quite a lot of junk and repeats, so I didn’t bother to show all the screenshots this time. I think I’ve completed most of the normal sets 2-3 times over already. For the sake of record-keeping, I keep collecting duplicates, but it would sure be nice to start getting some more useful drops instead.Well that about does it for Act 1 Hell. This was one of my favorite updates to write since I had some good drops to share, and for the first time since the end of normal, some really notable gear upgrades. Countess running may not be the most efficient way to collect runes long-term, but with the many useful runewords made from mid-tier runes, it was a really valuable exercise in this untwinked setting. I also feel much less rune-poor moving forward - 3x Lem, 2x Um, Ist, and 3x Mal represent a nice start toward building real rune wealth.
These updates are now caught up to my current progress, so future updates will be less predictable and more dependent on how much play time I have. Still, I hope to finish up Act 2 by the end of next week so the wait for the next update shouldn’t be too long. Thanks for reading!
Very nice progress! She's starting to have a solid setup already as well. Riphook is such a handy little weapon. I've used it couple of times on a twinked Strafer during NM, and always wondered how well it could fare in Hell
- Jun 11, 2018
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@Grape Thank you sir - I certainly can't complain about the drops overall; her gear is more than adequate for getting through Hell already. Regarding the Riphook, well, the non-upped version was painful at /p3, but progress since the upgrade has been pretty tolerable. The 30% slow is a really underrated feature as it definitely makes things much safer. I'm still looking forward to getting that first "end game" item drop, though! My bet is on Laying of Hands or Razortail.
- Jun 11, 2018
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Acts 2-3 Hell – Smooth Sailing
I’ll be updating Acts 2-3 Hell together today as they were fairly straightforward and I’m almost done with questing, so I can pull the schedule up a little bit. The goal is to finish questing within the next few days and post the final update/conclusion to this thread by the end of next week.
First, some random musings that would be more appropriate in the UT99er thread: fresh off the fight with Andariel, it became clear that running her with a bowazon would be no easy task. Although leechable, the potency of her poison is a major problem for a character that needs a sturdy tank to hold a target steady for successful strafe volleys. Either that or waste a lot of time running back and forth. I tried a couple of runs in which I gave the merc Guillaume’s Face and kept him alive just long enough to score a few hits and apply some CB; this definitely helped speed things up but it’s impractical due to using lots of big purples and needing a resurrection every run. That’s a bit of a shame because she has very good odds to drop several pieces of equipment I would very much like to get my hands on sooner than later. I was hoping she would be an easier target. Oh well. Maybe Mephisto will turn out to be easier either due to his less frequent use of (a less potent) poison, or perhaps moat-tricking him with strafe. The one item he drops that Andy doesn’t, and that I really need, is Reaper’s, so he will probably get run at some point either way. It’s just that Andy drops almost all the other A1-A3 Act boss drop items I want at better odds when quest bugged (jewelry especially – looking at you Highlord’s and Ravenfrost). Many more tests will be needed, but first we have to get all this questing out of the way!
---------
Act 2
I was hesitant at first about Act 2 due to all the unleechable undead, but on my way to Radamant I learned that as long as just one or two leechable targets are around, 20% LL and 12% ML allowed me to top off my bulbs easily. Other than that, I rarely took many hits and even without leechable targets my mana pool was big enough that I could easily end 99% of battles before running out of mana, thanks to the relatively low cost of strafe.
The trip to Radamant was painless, and a conveniently-placed Combat Shrine helped make fighting the big mummy trivial.
The drop highlight of Eternity’s progression so far (perhaps except for that juicy normal Baal drop that propelled me through Nightmare) came early into my foray into the Rocky Waste. As I spoilered in the IFT last week, some random leaper (I think) dropped this nice shiny rock:
¼ of a Jah down. Now just an Ohm and 3 more Surs… oh, and a good base… until Faith.
Being a bowazon with those inherently low resistances, I’ve learned to pay much more attention to elementally-enchanted bosses. Consequently, I can’t help but think that I’m bumping into an awful lot of those nasty LECE mobs, such as Creeping Feature.
As hinted at in the title of this post, things were pretty straight-forward for most of the act; the only thing that really slowed me down were champion packs of Unravelers; even then it was usually just a speed bump that simply required me to get into proper position to deliver most of my arrows to the unravelers as opposed to the skeletons. Their poison was also a bit of a hassle for the Valk, as expected.
As an aside, I remembered to grab a couple of screenshots of my damage without and with my merc using Arioc’s Needle; those +4 skills really are nice in lieu of Reaper’s.
One of Coldworm’s crew dropped me a socketed shadow bow. Would I finally have my Harmony base?
Nope! I’m starting to suspect that I will finish this walkthrough before finding a 4os elite bow.
In the Lost City, we finally started getting slowed down and pushed around a little bit by Plague Bearers, with Dark Elder having an irritating set of mods:
PI and Extra Strong with poisonous attacks. Took some potions and persistence to eventually take him down.
We went down into the Ancient Tunnels and found it generally a bit safer than the Pits, so that may be a viable target for our team once we start A85 runs. As usual, the Palace Cellar was irritating with all the unleechable ranged enemies, but the Arcane Sanctuary was a mixed bag. On the one hand, lots of PI ghosts made things a bit of a slog, but on the other hand, strafe + narrow corridors made for fun times.
It’s nice to keep dealing damage to enemies in the back even when you’re stuck dealing with a pile of ghosts up front.
The Summoner dropped me Bonesnap. Surprisingly, despite this fantastic roll, it is only the second best in my collection (I believe I scored a perfect one some time ago with another character). After leaving the AS, getting to Duriel was easy as his tomb did not contain ghosts. The Valkyrie was able to hold her own fairly well against the big bug, and for the third straight difficulty he gave up a potentially useful drop.
It’s not as good as Tal’s mask, but Dwarf Star is still nice to have available! The set ring was Angelic, so the better of the two possibilities at least.
---------
Act 3
In the jungles of Act 3, things got surprisingly tougher, with Thorned Hulks pushing us back on a few occasions. Admittedly, I am excited to finish questing and move onto both other projects and the grind for this gal, so I dropped the players setting down to 1 for the remainder of the game. Things got noticeably faster, although I had to accept that drops would go down as well. This was entirely okay, as Eternity is already sufficiently geared to finish questing with her current gear. Targeted runs will be more effective in the long run, anyway.
Despite dropping to /players1, I wanted to keep challenging Eternity in some small ways, so I took her into the Great Marsh despite getting a ‘skip’ map and was promptly met by gloams - not exactly a strafer's best draw. One of the best finds of the Act did occur in the Marsh, however, so at least we managed to score some fun (albeit useless) loot:
Although there weren’t too many challenges, I knew when to run. When a horde of Might-enhanced knife-wielding Flayers came charging toward us, I left my Valkyrie to hold the line long enough for me to get out of the way.
The Valkyrie’s noble sacrifice. At least she’s recastable!
We learned that Witch Doctor Endugu wears scarabshell boots; too bad the role was only mediocre. The rest of the journey to Travincal was easy, and the Council itself was surprisingly tame. Having the Valkyrie fighting alongside the merc greatly improved his survivability, as she could eat hydra bolts much more readily than him, and Kasim actually survived the fight. The council in Durance 3 was actually harder, due to the vampires hanging around adding to the chaos.
There was a lot of fire being thrown around, but ultimately 20% life leech and all-leechable enemies made Eternity virtually unkillable in this situation.
After that, the fight with Mephisto was almost a formality; both the merc and valk fared much better than they had against Andariel; the valk in particular was strong enough to be worth recasting throughout the duration of the fight.
Periodic recastings were needed, but she lived long enough to keep Mephisto occupied consistently throughout the fight. Too bad his drop was crap. It's funny to consider that Duriel dropped better than Meph on all three difficulties. That can't happen very often.
Other drops for the two acts included The Skewer of Krintiz, Steelgoad, Culwen's Point, M'avina's Icy Clutch, Kinemil's Awl, Arctic Horn, Iratha's Coil, Spellsteel, Death's Touch, a 32% Ruby Jewel, and Milabrega's Orb. So, as predicted, the big drop in MF resulted in a big reduction in drops compared to previous acts. That's just fine though; survivability is most important at this stage! I can upload images later if requested; just before adding this section to the post my image hosting service crapped out when trying to upload. At least those already uploaded are linking fine.
And with that, two more acts are in the books. Outside of a handful of sloppy/impatient Countess runs that resulted in death, Eternity hasn’t had so much as a NDE in Hell. Those gear upgrades really worked out well, and she’s still carrying ~122% MF. Hopefully we get some more nice drops the rest of the way!
Thanks to all reading, and with some luck we’ll wrap up this walkthrough next week, holding Nihlathak’s head in our hands while picnicking on the Arreat Summit.
I’ll be updating Acts 2-3 Hell together today as they were fairly straightforward and I’m almost done with questing, so I can pull the schedule up a little bit. The goal is to finish questing within the next few days and post the final update/conclusion to this thread by the end of next week.
First, some random musings that would be more appropriate in the UT99er thread: fresh off the fight with Andariel, it became clear that running her with a bowazon would be no easy task. Although leechable, the potency of her poison is a major problem for a character that needs a sturdy tank to hold a target steady for successful strafe volleys. Either that or waste a lot of time running back and forth. I tried a couple of runs in which I gave the merc Guillaume’s Face and kept him alive just long enough to score a few hits and apply some CB; this definitely helped speed things up but it’s impractical due to using lots of big purples and needing a resurrection every run. That’s a bit of a shame because she has very good odds to drop several pieces of equipment I would very much like to get my hands on sooner than later. I was hoping she would be an easier target. Oh well. Maybe Mephisto will turn out to be easier either due to his less frequent use of (a less potent) poison, or perhaps moat-tricking him with strafe. The one item he drops that Andy doesn’t, and that I really need, is Reaper’s, so he will probably get run at some point either way. It’s just that Andy drops almost all the other A1-A3 Act boss drop items I want at better odds when quest bugged (jewelry especially – looking at you Highlord’s and Ravenfrost). Many more tests will be needed, but first we have to get all this questing out of the way!
---------
Act 2
I was hesitant at first about Act 2 due to all the unleechable undead, but on my way to Radamant I learned that as long as just one or two leechable targets are around, 20% LL and 12% ML allowed me to top off my bulbs easily. Other than that, I rarely took many hits and even without leechable targets my mana pool was big enough that I could easily end 99% of battles before running out of mana, thanks to the relatively low cost of strafe.
The trip to Radamant was painless, and a conveniently-placed Combat Shrine helped make fighting the big mummy trivial.
The drop highlight of Eternity’s progression so far (perhaps except for that juicy normal Baal drop that propelled me through Nightmare) came early into my foray into the Rocky Waste. As I spoilered in the IFT last week, some random leaper (I think) dropped this nice shiny rock:
¼ of a Jah down. Now just an Ohm and 3 more Surs… oh, and a good base… until Faith.
Being a bowazon with those inherently low resistances, I’ve learned to pay much more attention to elementally-enchanted bosses. Consequently, I can’t help but think that I’m bumping into an awful lot of those nasty LECE mobs, such as Creeping Feature.
As hinted at in the title of this post, things were pretty straight-forward for most of the act; the only thing that really slowed me down were champion packs of Unravelers; even then it was usually just a speed bump that simply required me to get into proper position to deliver most of my arrows to the unravelers as opposed to the skeletons. Their poison was also a bit of a hassle for the Valk, as expected.
As an aside, I remembered to grab a couple of screenshots of my damage without and with my merc using Arioc’s Needle; those +4 skills really are nice in lieu of Reaper’s.
One of Coldworm’s crew dropped me a socketed shadow bow. Would I finally have my Harmony base?
Nope! I’m starting to suspect that I will finish this walkthrough before finding a 4os elite bow.
In the Lost City, we finally started getting slowed down and pushed around a little bit by Plague Bearers, with Dark Elder having an irritating set of mods:
PI and Extra Strong with poisonous attacks. Took some potions and persistence to eventually take him down.
We went down into the Ancient Tunnels and found it generally a bit safer than the Pits, so that may be a viable target for our team once we start A85 runs. As usual, the Palace Cellar was irritating with all the unleechable ranged enemies, but the Arcane Sanctuary was a mixed bag. On the one hand, lots of PI ghosts made things a bit of a slog, but on the other hand, strafe + narrow corridors made for fun times.
It’s nice to keep dealing damage to enemies in the back even when you’re stuck dealing with a pile of ghosts up front.
The Summoner dropped me Bonesnap. Surprisingly, despite this fantastic roll, it is only the second best in my collection (I believe I scored a perfect one some time ago with another character). After leaving the AS, getting to Duriel was easy as his tomb did not contain ghosts. The Valkyrie was able to hold her own fairly well against the big bug, and for the third straight difficulty he gave up a potentially useful drop.
It’s not as good as Tal’s mask, but Dwarf Star is still nice to have available! The set ring was Angelic, so the better of the two possibilities at least.
---------
Act 3
In the jungles of Act 3, things got surprisingly tougher, with Thorned Hulks pushing us back on a few occasions. Admittedly, I am excited to finish questing and move onto both other projects and the grind for this gal, so I dropped the players setting down to 1 for the remainder of the game. Things got noticeably faster, although I had to accept that drops would go down as well. This was entirely okay, as Eternity is already sufficiently geared to finish questing with her current gear. Targeted runs will be more effective in the long run, anyway.
Despite dropping to /players1, I wanted to keep challenging Eternity in some small ways, so I took her into the Great Marsh despite getting a ‘skip’ map and was promptly met by gloams - not exactly a strafer's best draw. One of the best finds of the Act did occur in the Marsh, however, so at least we managed to score some fun (albeit useless) loot:
Although there weren’t too many challenges, I knew when to run. When a horde of Might-enhanced knife-wielding Flayers came charging toward us, I left my Valkyrie to hold the line long enough for me to get out of the way.
The Valkyrie’s noble sacrifice. At least she’s recastable!
We learned that Witch Doctor Endugu wears scarabshell boots; too bad the role was only mediocre. The rest of the journey to Travincal was easy, and the Council itself was surprisingly tame. Having the Valkyrie fighting alongside the merc greatly improved his survivability, as she could eat hydra bolts much more readily than him, and Kasim actually survived the fight. The council in Durance 3 was actually harder, due to the vampires hanging around adding to the chaos.
There was a lot of fire being thrown around, but ultimately 20% life leech and all-leechable enemies made Eternity virtually unkillable in this situation.
After that, the fight with Mephisto was almost a formality; both the merc and valk fared much better than they had against Andariel; the valk in particular was strong enough to be worth recasting throughout the duration of the fight.
Periodic recastings were needed, but she lived long enough to keep Mephisto occupied consistently throughout the fight. Too bad his drop was crap. It's funny to consider that Duriel dropped better than Meph on all three difficulties. That can't happen very often.
Other drops for the two acts included The Skewer of Krintiz, Steelgoad, Culwen's Point, M'avina's Icy Clutch, Kinemil's Awl, Arctic Horn, Iratha's Coil, Spellsteel, Death's Touch, a 32% Ruby Jewel, and Milabrega's Orb. So, as predicted, the big drop in MF resulted in a big reduction in drops compared to previous acts. That's just fine though; survivability is most important at this stage! I can upload images later if requested; just before adding this section to the post my image hosting service crapped out when trying to upload. At least those already uploaded are linking fine.
And with that, two more acts are in the books. Outside of a handful of sloppy/impatient Countess runs that resulted in death, Eternity hasn’t had so much as a NDE in Hell. Those gear upgrades really worked out well, and she’s still carrying ~122% MF. Hopefully we get some more nice drops the rest of the way!
Thanks to all reading, and with some luck we’ll wrap up this walkthrough next week, holding Nihlathak’s head in our hands while picnicking on the Arreat Summit.
- Aug 5, 2005
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First time I have dropped into this thread, great write up. Did you consider Claglaw's Pooncers for the gloves? I would have thought with the KB and the added slow they would make it very safe. No that I am a Bowazon expert though.
- Jun 11, 2018
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Thanks for stopping in, @maxicek. Oh yes, Cleg's have been my target pre-LoH gloves from the word "go" but surprisingly they have yet to drop! That's one of the very few classic set items I don't yet have with this girl. Bloodfist have been a nice alternative, but Clegs (especially combined with Riphook) would have basically neutered the entire game. It would have made for an (even) easier questing experience, but with how straight-forward this has already been, I can't necessarily say that that would have been a good thing - especially for a walkthrough: "Stepped forward. Shot things. They stopped moving. Then they died. Repeat" for the whole game would get boring pretty quickly. It hasn't been a whole lot more exciting as is, for better or worse!
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