Naked As Sin

Dezrok

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Nov 18, 2012
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A HC untwinked Naked Assassin progress thread

It has been 14 months since my last game of Diablo.

That was a Guardian Necromancer in the Skill-less Tournament and it left me feeling like much of the challenge had gone out of the game. After all, if you can get to Guardian without skills then any other restrictions are going to seem easy by comparison. Right?

And so, I ventured far and wide, exploring other games and the world at large, stoutly ignoring that small voice in the back of my head that would whisper from time to time that D2 had two variables.

Last week I dropped into the SPF and saw the Naked Necro thread and Cyrax's post about his Naked Necro reaching Hell and was inspired to shut that voice up once and for all. I'm no Insane Wayne or Super Dave ... but I'll never know if I don't try!

Naked seems to have a few interpretations, but for this thread it will be:
No weapons
No armour
No clothing
No jewellery
No charms
Potions can be drunk but not thrown
Scrolls and tomes are fine
(It is fine to pick up items and carry them back to town to sell, just not to equip them)

Merc has no restrictions (can wear/wield gear)
ATMA as extended stash
Single-Pass
and generally will follow the standard SPF tourney rules

Next was to choose a class. Amazons and Necros seem to be the go to classes for nudity, and so I've gone with an Assassin. Looking at the skills, that pretty much means a Trapper. Most of the Maritial Arts skills need claws and for those that don't (like Phoenix Strike) I'm not sure if fists count as 'weapons' ... either way I'm pretty sure I don't want to be meleeing in Hell with no armour and base resists! Shadow skills lack offensive potential, however will provide some super important support skills.

And then there are Traps. Blade Fury is pretty useless without a weapon, the fire traps leave no option for fire immunes and so it all becomes pretty straight-forward.

Planned skills will be:
20 Fire Blast (for LIs and synergy for DS and CBS)
20 Charged Bolt Sentry (Boss killer and synergy for FB and LS)
20 Lightning Sentry (main damage source and synergy for FB, CBS and DS)
20 Death Sentry (BOOM! and synergy for FB, CDB and LS)
any other skill points will go into Fade, CoS and Mind Blast as required.

No, no Shadow Warrior/Master - The Warrior would only have traps available and would replace my stronger traps with her weaker ones. I find the Master both annoying and dangerous, plus they also replace traps. A regular merc and CoS will have to do for keeping things safe. I'm expecting Mana (or lack thereof) will be one of my major problems so will probably be looking at a Prayer merc with Insight (when it becomes available).

All pretty cookie-cutter so far!
 
And so Jacinta threw off her clothes, pumped Players 8 and ran off into the wilderness seeking fame and fortune. At first punching zombies was exhilarating, however things soon slowed down to a grind. Fire Blast was a bit of a help, but with hardly any mana and no belt they weren't really much of an option. Nothing was really dangerous though and with no need to put points in Str or Dex, everything was going into Vitalitiy, so we had plenty of life. Once we'd punched Blood Raven to death and got the services of a Cold Rogue things went pretty smoothly. Coldcrow dropped Rixot's Keen, Countess dropped a Ral, Dimoak Hew dropped in the Cathedral and p8 Andarial fell to Fire Blasts. We'd had plenty of luck with topazes and a couple of gem shrines, so the merc had flawed gems in the helm and chippies in the armour. Her 3os hunter's bow was socketed with a green, a blue and a red.

On to Act 2 at level 21. Seeing as though we had the Dimoak's Hew I decided to switch to an Act 2 Combat merc straight away. Lack of mana was frustrating as our traps became more and more effective. The 4 belt slots (red, blue and 2 purple) were saved for emergencies and generally I was drinking potions from the inventory. Not always the safest thing to do, but our life pool was big enough to take a few hits if they happened. By the time we arrived at Tal's Tombs our LS was doing some decent carnage and we could cast 3 of them before the mana ran out.

Our Merc is our only source of MF, so we should be leaving him to do all the kills .. however, I can't see drops making much difference at this stage. Razan kills what he can (which is quite a lot) but I don't hold back too much on the traps either. The mana pool and the rate at which mana pots drop seems to provide a nice balance. Razan swapped the Dimoak's for a Savage Poleaxe of Slaying after the Maggot Lair.

Given our low MF the drops were pretty good, but not a lot that is very useful (not surprising given the gear restrictions). The most interesting was a gold scimitar that dropped from a Flying Scimitar.

Duriel was taken at p8 and CBS made short work of it (him?her?it?). Drop was a big pile of yellows.

Jacinta and Razan, Lvl 28, Normal, Act 3, Kurast Docks
 
Lvl 28 already? If you keep this up you'll have passed me in no time. I wouldn't put too much hope into insight though. Still looking for that myself. Not for the mana, but just because it would increase merc damage.

Good luck and stay alive.
 
Great to see another naked project! (that felt kind of pervy to type). Getting past the punching phase is nice. I actually went back to BloodRaven after I hit level 8 and hired a merc to kill her for me.

I would recommend letting the merc get kills though, there are plenty of useful early uniques that you might miss out on.

I got my Insight in early Act V/late Act IV if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure I got lucky on my first cube roll for the 4 OS Poleaxe. I focused on cubing/shrinig up the Perfect Amethyst before Topazes so that I could get rolling faster. The Sol rune is the tricky part. I think you can start getting 4 OS rollable Poleaxes in the Durance, but I would definitely double check that info.
 
@Cyrax - I started a couple of days before posting, just wanted to make sure I didn't deed on the Blood Moor or anything stupid. Also, that seems like really bad luck to be in Hell and not have an Insight?! A 4os polearm and Sol rune shouldn't be that hard to find. I'm expecting to have them by early NM, but I'm not too hung up on it, it doesn't seem in keeping with the naked theme to get too hung up on one bit of gear.

@Brak - It's hard to control traps enough to 'let' the merc get the kills. It tends to be an all or nothing thing - I cast a few traps to speed things along or I stand around and do absolutely nothing. The merc is doing most of the killing, but a few traps now and again to help isn't a bad thing and seeing that there are only three gear spots to fill and two of them will be MF gear until Hell (probably) and the merc's weapon is unlikely to be a drop (at least in Normal), I'm not sure there are that many useful early uniques that I might miss out on.


Jacinta and Razan have defeated Mephisto and moved on to the Pandemonium Fortress.
Act 3 was pretty straight-forward. Around the Flayer Jungle we gambled a Circlet of Luck (35%) and a Savage Bill we'd cubed earlier became available when Razan reached level 31. There were a few deaths for Razan, when I let him run into big boss packs without really offering much in the way of support. It's pretty hard to use pots on him when there are so few in the belt.

Drops came in pairs. Crushflange and Isenhart's Case in the Great Swamp; Cathan's Mesh and Death's Touch in the Durance; and Duskdeep and Skewer of Krinitz from Meph.

All progress on p8 and full clears so far. Meph caused Razan three deaths and used up 4 of the 6 big purples I had on hand. Level 10 CBS did the damage in not too much time though.

So far so good, although I do miss tweaking gear. I have been taking screenshots but none of them are interesting enough to post, yet.

Jacinta and Razan, Lvl 32, Normal, Act 4, Pandemnium Fortress
 
I did find one sol and one 4 sox polearm. Unfortunately it has a str requirement that's way higher than my merc will be able to use, which i only realised after making the insight (so i used up the 1 sol i did find). Now that i saw Brak's post about the cubing i feel a bit stupid as i hadn't considered cubing for a 4 sox one. And i haven't done any kind of rerunning areas so far (like countess).
 
can you use charms?

with fade and a few dozen charms you might be able to get 75 lightresi and/or fireresi

also quite a few people use a white belt to have 4 rows of potions, do you do it that way?

as assasine, 2 white katars would be decent for weaponblock, if thats allowed ;)

edit: should have read more carefully, no charms^^
 
@Cyrax - Oops, that's slightly embarrassing to forget about cubing polearms for sockets. Still surprised that you only found one Sol, or couldn't cube up some lower runes to get a Sol. But such are the vagaries of Diablo and you are doing pretty fine so far without the Insight.

@d2fan - always good to answer your own questions. No whites either, belts or katars. Naked is Naked!


Act 4 and things started to get interesting. Big HP monsters, elemental damage, spawners, spitters and spellcasters!

We started using Fade in this Act, 19% resists is better than 0% when there are plenty of elemental damagers around. An Ort dropped in the Plains of Despair and then a few seconds later this was very unexpected! On the RoF we saw our first cracked Partizan ... now we just need to get Razan enough strength to be able to use them. Hellforge dropped a Thul, and then a Naglering (29%) dropped a bit later. The Chaos Sanctuary went okay, although I wimped out on the Infector of Souls and his buddies and ducked through a tp after tapping the seal. Razan was keen to go toe-to-toe but Jacinta had other ideas and we ran back the long way to drag them out a few at a time. Seeing as though Razan still managed a couple of deaths this was probably the right thing to do.

Then it was time for Diablo, discretion being the winner, we dropped to p5. Razan died, then died again, then one more time. Jacinta decided she would deal with Diablo on her own ... CBS doesn't work so well when there is no tank and Diablo keeps running around, so we switched to LS. Cast LS, retreat (runaway), drink a blue from the inventory, return, cast LS, repeat. Every now and then we had to take a red just to keep the red bulb full. Although with over 600 life we weren't in any real danger. Took a bit of time and an awful lot of blues before Diablo was no more. The drop was nothing amazing, except that the pike looked like this:


Dire Bar
Pike
Two Hand Damage: 27 - 127
Durability: 13 of 13
Required Level: 15
Required Strength: 50
Required Dexterity: 35
Fingerprint: 0x18191909
Item Level: 40
Version: Expansion 1.10+
32% Enhanced Damage
+3 to Maximum Damage
+51 to Attack Rating
Adds 1 - 6 Lightning Damage
Adds 12 Poison Damage Over 3 Secs (75 Frames)
7% Life stolen per hit
Ethereal


Better than a Savage Bill, the leech is super and it should keep us happy until Razan can start using a Partizan.
Jacinta was level 35 on killing Diablo.

Pushing on into Act 5 and the Bloody Foothills coughed up Hwanin's Belt. The Frigid Highlands had lots of pesky Imps so we made good use of CoS for the first time. On through the Arreat Plateau and Cleglaw's Tooth was the only bit of colour of note. We reached a massive 80 mana at some stage here and now can cast 4 traps at a time if we start with full mana! It has been pretty tempting to put a few points into Energy at times but I think I'm going to be glad I didn't, 80 is already starting to feel manageable.

So far I have found 2 cracked Partizans to go with the RalTirTalSol. If a regular Partizan doesn't turn up by the time Razan has enough Str to wield them I'm pretty tempted to get Larzuk to give one 4 sockets and make the Insight. A naked character with a cracked weapon wielding merc is kinda appealing.

Jacinta and Razan, Lvl 40, Normal, Act 5, Arreat Plateau
 
Actually i haven't checked if i can cube up to sol. Since i don't have anything to put it in, there has been no need for that so far. ;)
 
Jacinta jumped into the Frozen River to rescue Anya. Mission accomplished it was time to get Larzuk to socket that cracked Partizan. Other than Durability, which doesn't matter for a merc weapon, there are only two points min damage difference between a low quality and normal partizan and the kill speed difference between the pike and the Insight is huge. Despite the very average to bad rolls, Razan 1-2 hit kills almost everything now. The boost to mana regeneration is also much appreciated! Now that Razan is killing things faster than the traps, Jacinta is relegated to pretty much only casting CoS. Maybe the odd trap for particularly difficult boss packs.

Around the Halls of Pain we reached our max gold limit and with nothing really to gamble at this stage we have stopped picking things up to sell. One million gold was transfered off in ATMA, but there is only so much gold we can use I think.

Nihilithak was no problem with Death Sentry to blow up his corpses. The Ancients were taken at p8. I forgot about the CoS/Ancients bug and so had a game freeze first try, so had to re-start and come back again. Second try was no problems. WSK 1 had Vile Witches, Putrid Defilers and Defiled Warriors - CoS kept the witches quiet and the only thing that slowed us down was waiting around for the warriors to reanimate. WSK 2 only had Greater Hell Spawn and Frenzied Ice Spawn - a very dull area. WSK 3 had Demon Sprites, Rancid Defilers and Death Lords - none of which were a problem for Razan. The Throne had Stygian Fury and more Death Lords - no problems there or with Baal's Minions. Lister was probably the most trouble needing a bit of care and some use of MB to stop Razan getting a pounding.

Before tackling Baal I personalised the Insight and then onwards. Baal at p8 gave Razan a couple of deaths but between the Insight and plenty of Lightning Sentries we ground Baal down in not too much time. The drop was good, although useless. Unfortunately the Worldstone portal opened off the side of the platform and was unreachable! A bit of a panic thinking I'd have to re-run Baal again, but some quick work on Google showed that as long as you kill Baal you don't need to go through the portal. The Worldstone cinematic will run when you next S+E. Phew!

Cows continued the carnage. The portal opened right next to the Cow King's fort, which could have been horrible but ended up okay. Razan 1-2 hit killed cows, so unless there was a very, very large pack Jacinta just left him to get on with it.

Drops were alright considering Jacinta has no MF. Runes were particularly good with a Dol dropping in Cows to go with the 2 Shaels, 3 Sols and everything else lower. S/U's - Bloodfist and Ripsaw from the Arreat Way; Baal gave Cathan Mesh, Cathan Seal, Venom Grip and Rusthandle; Cows = Rixot's Keen, Sigon's Visor and The Diggler. Of course, none of it is useful. At the end of Cows we were able to cube our 3rd PTopaz so Razan now carries 134% MF going into NM.

Skills are 7pts FB, 12pts CBS, 7pts LS and 14pts DS. With 5pts in Fade and 1pt MB and CoS.
All stat points have gone into Vitality. Life is 884 (this is a very, very safe level for Normal) and Mana is 95; Defense is 5, Resists with Fade will be 22% in NM.
Surprisingly (to me) Block is 1%

All up a pretty enjoyable return to Diablo. A surprisingly simple run through Normal without gear. p8 all the way escept for Diablo himself who was p5. Full clear so far.

My expectation is that NM will also be pretty straight-forward but things will get a lot more difficult in Hell. I also have this vague idea to do a Naked Sept, but I'm getting ahead of myself and need to Guardian this first one before thinking more about that.

Jacinta and Razan, Level 48, NM, Act 1 Rogue Camp
 
What I remember most from your last post, is that it's 100% certain you will do a Naked Sept. Cool !!!:cool:
 
Nightmare Act 1
Not realizing there was actually an update, I thought I'd see if there were any updates for D2 and found myself upgraded to patch
1.14, except the auto update didn't work and I now got error messages when I tried to play D2. So I manually updated and now it
works ... except it is so friggin dark I can't see anymore and I can't adjust the gamma or contrast. It will be a race to see
whether the monsters get me or my eyes break first! Especially unpleasant outdoors at night trying to make sure I don't miss any
chests or loose stones anywhere. The Catacombs weren't much fun either with all those dark corners to hide chests in. Things took a
lot longer than I thought they should!

Lots of Merc deaths probably sums up Act 1. Razan really doesn't like bosses much and I was playing pretty sloppy, letting him get
mobbed and not giving him much help with traps. I need to get better at using Mind Blast to stun if I'm going to keep letting him
get most of the kills. No NDEs but Jacinta did get chased all the way across the Dark Wood by Treehead and his buddies after Razan
had another untimely death. The Carvers must of wondered what was going on when a naked woman suddenly came screaming through their
midst closely pursued by a couple of large bear-like Brutes!

A few times when things got really busy on the screen and there were some resurrecting monsters about I let Jacinta drop a pile of
Death Sentries and watched the screen clear oh-so-fast! Griswold copped the DS treatment, all 5 one on top of the other gives a
nice steady stream of lightning.

With our very low MF any gold is exciting, so seeing two on the same screen was extra special.
S/Us - Spire Lazarus, Deathspade x2, Twitchthroe, Sigons Guard, Tearhaunch, Isenhart Horns, Nagelring (18% - Jacinta's 2nd), Vidala
Barb, Hellplague, Bloodthief, Goreshovel, Warlord's Trust.
Best rune - Hel, Countess dropped Eth and there were lots and lots of Orts.

The whole Act was done on p8, including Andy. She was a right pain, killing Razan with no trouble at all. He racked up 9 deaths and
used up all my purples (about 16 big ones) and Andy still had more than half her life. Jacinta decided it was time to solo it and
did lots of straight lines up and back across the lava pool room keeping Andy in the DS lightning bolts. Only a couple more trips
to town for more potions and victory was ours! I meant to get Razan back so he could make the final kill, but my timing was out and
suddenly Andy was dead. 0% MF still got us one unique, and it could even prove to be useful! Killing Andy also tipped us over to
level 53.

Did I really suggest I might try a Naked Sept?? Madness
 
Jacinta and Razan pushed on into Act 2. After playing around with the gamma setting on my video card I can now see again and play without breaking my eyes (of course anything else I try to do on that computer looks terrible now, but I guess D2 comes first). Anyway, all was going pretty well until a crash 3/4 of the way through the 2nd level of Halls of the Dead. The crash was in the middle of an epic battle in a large room packed full of monsters, including at least 2 bosses. I'm really loving this patch 1.14! So, in the interest of keeping to both single pass and full clears I dropped the players setting down to 1, ran from the waypoint through most of the level (without killing or being killed), got back to the epic room, cleared it at p1 then went back to p8.

Back in town after finishing the 3rd level of Halls it crashed again. A couple of items went missing from our inventory (some gems and a white Battle Scythe I was thinking of socketing for a new Insight), but not much to do about it, so we just pushed on to the Far Oasis and got on with killing stuff. Jacinta reached level 55 and racked up 1000 life, to go with her now 100 and a bit mana. At the moment that much life gives us a good margin of safety and allows for some pretty sloppy play at times.

Up until the Palace Razan had been doing really well at staying alive. Jacinta was making great use of MB to keep the heat off him and everything was good with the world. Then the Palace hit and Razan died and died and died some more, over and over and over again. In retrospect I was pretty impatient during this session and let Razan rush into far too many rooms full of bosses, hopefully we can go back to safe play for the Arcane Sanctuary, which is where Jacinta is hanging out for now.
 
About the darkness ... I had that issue to after the last upgrade. Sven's glide wrapper fixed it for me. You might want to try that.

Congrats on the progerss so far :). O yes, and very cool that you keep sticking to that crazy Naked Sept idea ... it will be great ...
 
Jacinta and Razan pushed on into Act 2 clearing the Arcane Sanctuary without too much trouble. Narrow pathways make everything nice
and controllable. Canyon if the Magi also not too much trouble and then into the Tombs. Lacking patience I got into the habit of
using plenty of Death Sentry to blow up corpses so they couldn't be raised, especially if there were any boses or champions around.

Razan is still wearing a breastplate with flawed topazes, so is a little bit fragile.

Tomb 2 and we had another crash. Thankfully it wasn't in too bad a spot, but still frustrating.
After Tomb 3 we had our 5th PTopaz, so took a break and muled in some runes, gems and bases. First I upped the Woestave, then tried
socketing some Partizans. The first got 3 sockets but the next was a lucky 4 and so I made a new Insight. Better rolls across the
board. Then I socketed a gothic plate and got 4 sockets to put the PTopazes in. Razan now runs with 191% MF. Lastly, I upped the
Twitchthroe.

Back to the Tombs and the rest went alright. Razan still dies more than I'd like but Jacinta is never in danger and despite hardly
selling any items we aren't spend more gold than we are making.

Then it was time for Duriel, p8. I gave Razan the upped Twitchthroe, a Strength Partizan and a 4% ll circlet to start with. Razan
died lots, I fed him purples, but he drank all 16 that I had with me and still died. Duriel still had a ton of life. Razan died
some more as I fed him reds as fast as I could, which wasn't that fast cause I can only hold 4 in the belt. Fighting Duriel with
the Inventory window open, feeding him reds and trying to suck down the odd blue from Inventory as well is kinda awkward. Once we
got Duriel down to about half life I switched out the Strength and gave Razan back his Insight. Now I didn't need to worry about
blues for Jacinta and could just focus on reds for Razan. Razan died some more and one close encounter where Razan died while I was
trying to feed him a pot. Suddenly I was running across the screen away from the portal and towards Duriel. Duriel got a hit in and
the slow motion chase was on. Jacinta was down to half life. I wouldn't normally consider 580 life a NDE but this was feeling very,
very bad. Just as Duriel was lining up for the killing blow we completed our lap of the cave and dived back through the portal. We
wont make that mistake again. No more feeding pots to the merc portrait! Lots more pots, more deaths for Razan, lots of tps and
then finally Duriel was down to the final sliver and then ... dead. As the ground shook and the rocks fell I realised I'd forgotten
to switch back in the MF gear. Bugger!

On to Act 3.

Jacinta and Razan, Lvl 59, NM, Act 3, Kurast Docks


Pics:

How not to play HC

Boss 1

Boss 2

Ancient Kaa

Duriel
 
Loving the screen shots! I remember AnnaGoAnna and SuperDave's journey with her! I am really looking forward to the rest of the story! Good luck sir!
 
Act 3 started out well enough with Jacinta and Razan cruising through the jungles around Kurast. The dreaded Gloams made an appearance in the Great Marsh, but they were no match for Jacinta's modesty as she quickly covered herself in a Cloak of Shadows, while Razan punished them for their cheeky peeking. No-one really gave us too much trouble although Razan had a few deaths here and there. Some of the poisonous spiders seemed to especially cause him grief.

A lovely Rockfleece dropped in LK and we upped it at the beginning of the next session. Razan sticks with his 4 socket Ptopaz armour for now, but nice to know there is some PDR armour in the stash. The Forgotten Temple was the only temple with a sort of Stair Trap. The Flesh Archers were all right at the doorway when we entered, but then ran away to give themselves room to use their bows and happily for Jacinta give her room to be safe

The merc bug kicked in during Trav and that was a little bit excting for Jacinta to have all these men and monsters running at her. Normally, despite her nakedness, they didn't pay her much attention. Much prefering to throw themselves at Razan. It was a novel experience that left her feeling very exposed. Although it probably worked in her favour in Trav as the Council's hydra totally ignored Razan and only spat fire at her. Despite her low resists, she was much better at dealing with them than Razan would have been. By carefully srawing out the Council members one at a time we were able to keep them pretty permanently stunned with Mind Block, so Jacinta was able to keep her distance and Razan could get on with killing without interuptions. However, I wasn't going to try dealing with the dolls in the Durance, so after crushing the Compelling Orb we took a S+E to reset the bug. Luckily no-one was blocking the door to the black temple when we restarted, so we were able to rush straight through and down into the Durance.

Second level of the Durance we got Rockstopper and Bonesnap. Always happy to see these two items, even if Bonesnap is completely useless for Jacinta. Rockstopper on the other hand gives me a good merc helm, the most difficult item to get of the three we can use I think.

Down to level 3 and a couple of bosses greeted us in the entry. We dealt with them and the Council, even a LI/Might Aura Bremfist wasn't much trouble, and then it was time for Meph ... on p8. Razan put on the upped Rockfleece and the Rockstopper and was ready to rock and roll. He also put the Insight away and grabbed the upped Woestave. Razan had a quick early death but then we got into this position and it seemed nice and stable until we ran out of red and blue pots and had to return to town for more stock. By that stage Meph was down well below half life. Overall, Razan's max resists, 20% PDR, OW and Slow from Woetave seemed to do the trick and with Jacinta keeping level 12 CBS on and lobbing a stream of lvl 18 Fire Blasts, it wasn't long before Meph met his end. That Circlet was pretty nice and could easily be Razan's only source of leech once we get rid of the MF gear. Razan ended up with only 3 deaths taking down Meph and chugged his way through about 10 bug purples (and many, many reds). I switched in the Insight towards the end, but once again mistimed things and didn't quite get the MF armour and helm switched in time.

Jacinta's traps are pretty handy now, with 20 pts in DS and 18 in Fire Blast. Despite our low mana pool we can pretty much lob Fire Blasts endlessly without draining the bulb (as long as Razan has the Insight), so Jacinta can make herself useful (and keep herself warm) knocking some of the life off the larger monsters that we are now coming across. Makes a very noticeable difference to kill speed. 12 pts CBS and 8 pts LS round out the traps. A bit undecided which one to max first - LS is a great synergy for everything else and will quickly become our main damage trap to get that first kill, on the other hand CBS works best on Bosses, which is where we have the most trouble ...

Thanks @ILikeRocks , glad you're enjoying it. I definitely should have spent more time on a name though ... Buff-E would have been good or maybe Lady Godiva? Ah well, next time.

Jacinta and Razan, Lvl 64, NM, Act 4, Pandemonium Fortress
 
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