Sorry for just disappearing, but life has gotten incredibly busy (in a good way). I've recently found time to finish up my Sept, but the story will have to wait a bit. Hope you enjoy the gameplay vid of Sneezy. For those who remember the rest of the sept, you might notice something a little different
As a lot of the images are borked I figured it'd be fun to get back through the sept and repost some fun pics for each entrant. Here's War and his posse dispersing over the Barbarian mountainlands. I had trouble finding him in the crowd, and Hrothgar the Burninator is making liberal use of his volcanoes.
ps. if you're really desperate to see anything from postimg, changing the web address from "postimg.org...." to postimg.cc...." will restore the image destination. I'm trying to go through and edit the posts, but probably wont get to them all
Hey, congrats for finishing the Sept! It was entertaining to follow! What's next? Life is busy, but hey, always time for some D2 now and then
Good job with the last one, and definitely an appropriate move to take both of the weapons with the Barb himself! Looking forward to the whole story of his.
If I could work on any D2 project right now, it would be trying to Guardian my naked Barb with single pass full clear. But that requires large chunks of time. He's currently resting after taking out the Countess.
My next project is probably going to be exploring bows. I don't think it'll be quite as bow centric as this was for swords (I don't really want to play another underpowered Enchantress at the moment) but I guess it'll be at least an exploration of the A1 merc as this was for the A5 merc. I need to gather a lot more runes before I can get started. All the good runewords need at least one Jah for whatever reason. I'm also a bit hesitant to call it a Sept after how long this one took
Today's offering shows Doc bowling for a split in the Arcane Sanctuary. As per usual, Gorm is dead while the Valk tanks all the things.
* * *
Pestilence was an ideal build for the goals of this project (lots of flashing lights), and her roll in the WSK of wall to wall Flayers took things to another level. Aside from her Novas and Volcanoes, you might also notice some lightning provided by her Shadow (or maybe traps) and puffs of blue coming from Hygelac!'s Glacial spike (you can only shout Hygelc's name by the way, its the only proper way to pronounce it). I think there was so much going on that he wasn't rendered, but perhaps you can spot him?
* * *
In contrast to Pestilence, Famine never really worked out that well. Fortunately, she had Static Field, so she was able to make it past Diablo. In this shot, she's built a canal of fire connecting two small ponds of lava in the Chaos Sanctuary. And Diablo must have eaten something off leading to the ever rare green lightning attack. While Famine is engulfed by the Prime evil, you can still catch a glimpse of Torkel puffing Glacial Spikes at the beast.
* * *
Death was a lot like Pestilence. He was an expansion character, that was really good at setting off fireworks while holding down the RMB, killed everything in sight without much trouble and spontaneously died. Making his way through the Chaos Sanctuary, Death managed a succession of Molten Boulders to carpet the floor. There's also the remnants of a Nova and Volcano, and you'll notice some Armageddon crashing down (this worked really well with the theme. Delirium has also turned minions against one another, and Wulf & Bear are down in the corner taking on some finger mages. I'm still not sure how they wound up Decrepified.
Diablo: Not even Death can save you from me!
Death: um...I am Death
Diablo: Yeah, you will be once I'm finished with you
Death: No, I mean my name is Death
Diablo: That's pretty emo
Death: Look who's talking
Diablo: And what were your parents thinking?
Death: You killed them
Diablo: Aha, not even Death could save them from me!
Wulf: *groans*
Grumpy's screenshot is unique in that he's not the one providing the fireworks. I even double checked his gear doesn't have any CTC chain lightning. Here Grumpy, and Bill, are getting zapped by a Gloams from all directions. Little did they know this would just serve to charge up elecrticity between the spires of his Great Helm (all Dreams should be made in Great Helms). Bill is hiding behind a pillar, but you can still catch his Fortitude shooting out ice bolts. Faded Grumpy is mid swing using great form as he leads with the lower body. I have to say, the two handed sword animation for Pali's is wonderfully brutal. But you have to wonder how his elbows clear that helmet.
To round off the gallery we have Sneezy. He also rolled a Flayer dense map in WSK that was great for selfies. We've caught a Nova expanding out, a number of Volcanoes erupting, a LoH Holy Bolt in search of something unholy and his Fortitude is doing overtime shooting out Ice Bolts. Maybe that's why it always needed to be repaired. As usual we were in search of a Ral rune at the time. Aliza is off camera, but I think you can spot some Decrepified Flayers on the right side of the shot.
That is such a tremendous screen shot !!! It even looks as if the little Flayer ones are looking up to the fire balls from the Volcanoes. Well, it doesn't probably, but it would be so awesome if they would. 'Hey look there, fireballs in the sky! Great fireworks. And they even seem to drop down on us. Wait, what ?!'. Splash ...
Sneezy was started so long ago that his early days are an unknown to me. He sped through all three difficulties as his gear and skills never run into any issues. I know he started investing Skill points into Double Swing until it became mana free. Then moved over to BO and Frenzy as they became available and some points into Nat Res and then once Frenzy was maxed going for Double Swing and Taunt Synergy along with a bit into Find Item. His earliest gear I have a record of is dual Bloodletters with Rattlecage. Arreats Face was added and then he moved on to the Oaths. I had initially planned to make him a Frenzied Zeal barb modeled after @maareek's Huey&Dewey, but I felt I was getting enough action from just Frenzy (also then I'd have to change hotkeys every now and then, that sounds like work). So that meant he'd ultimately be dual wielding Death & Destruction. It just felt right after all.
This also meant that after going through the normal merc progression and dispatching Baal, we should probably change things up a bit. And so Aliza, the cold Rogue was hired. Sneezy was much happier with Aliza anyway because Lanth was always trying to Shout and give him Orders, but that is clearly Sneezy's job. Also, there were only so many good swords to go around. In the end, Aliza would need a fitting weapon, so we considered all of the great runewords. Faith might be an obvious choice, but "Death, Destruction and Faith" just sounded like a bad Christian metal band. Ice is really sexy, but "Death, Destruction and Ice" that's just a Powerball lineup for American Gladiators. No, there was only one bow that would do for Aliza...Wrath. Yes we would finish this thing with "Death, Destruction...and Wrath!"
Sneezy was swinging fast enough that he didn't both with any IAS armor and just kept on Rattling until Fortitude became available. After traversing the deserts and jungles where they saw some interesting monsters, they descended to Mephisto's lair and he would be the first Prime Evil to face the pair's Fortitude. (Note at this time Aliza was using Harmony, a Frenzy barb with Vigor is just crazy, I honestly don't know how @Grape navigated his super fast Barb Citius). This was also about the time where Sneezy met his biggest weakness, gold. Note to self, never put Fortitude in a Superior Base. If you do, always keep Ral runes in your stash. Destruction was equipped in Act IV NM as usual. Diablo and Baal ate some Volcanoes and it was onward to Hell.
* * *
Operation Death and Destruction, Entry 100: I wasn't expecting that
Sneezy was easily the most enjoyable character to play of the sept. He had the fast attack of Pestilence and Death, but was far more sturdy. Partly due to his large life pool, but also because of his great crowd control. Death was getting swung fast, which meant a lot of Glacial Spikes all over the place keeping monsters either frozen or crawling. And Aliza's Wrath was wonderful, I didn't really rely on it to break PI's but it was very convenient for slowing things down and making non-PI monsters die fast. The occasional overriding of Decripify for Life Tap really didn't bother. I mean who doesn't like Life Tap?
The other thing I decided was to not use the Switch for prebuffing, but instead as a sort of PI solution. Since a good chunk of standard PI monsters are undead, I went with Lawbringer for the Sanctuary aura and paired that with Crescent Moon for CTC static field. This was great as whenever I rolled ghosts I could just flip the switch and they turned to dust.
The game went by really fast. Andariel was consumed by a pillar of flame (and some volcanoes), Act II was a breeze and Duriel fell without much troubles. For Act III, I even rolled one of those awesome maps where I got to skip the Great Marsh all together. Not that I minded, I was having a lot of fun bowling for Flayers in the jungles. Bremm ended up being the hardest fight of this entire run through. He rolled both Magic Resistant and Stone Skin. The Stone Skin made him PI without Aliza's help and the Magic Resistant made Berzerk and not very effective damage dealer, which is not a good thing when I then can't leech back life while he's spitting out bolts and I'm convicted. The biggest issue was that he would absolutely tear through Aliza. She died in seconds on three straight tries. I attempted to Zerk him alone, but this was going nowhere, he could steal life faster than I could take it. So eventually I got to him without losing Aliza and she didn't do the pee-pee dance into one of his CB streams, and he finally died. Compared to Bremm, Mephisto was a cakewalk and we were on to Act IV.
Act IV is my favorite. It's a nice mix of space and monster density and allow for some nice shots. I don't remember fighting Hephasto, but I'm guessing it was easy. Hellforge was a Pul. We had very little resistance in the Chaos Sanctuary and Diablo wisely decided to ignore Aliza so I could smack him in the face repeatedly while he was cursed and standing on an active volcano.
Act V was one of those sprints where I could never find the Waypoints so I just kept pushing forward. My choice of a Wrath bow, despite its low damage output, was constantly reaffirmed as opponents were often under some helpful curse. I finally grabbed a waypoint at Ancient's way (I think) and decided to take a break. Unfortunately between sessions I muled off my Ral runes thinking I needed Orts. Orts had previously been my go to repair rune because Destruction is also pricey, but at least I can hold the cash in an inventory. Pretty early into this play session I noticed my armor was low. If I couldn't get a Ral soon, I'd have to restart. My next flash of Orange got me super excited, then sad cause it wasn't a Ral, then super excited again.
really if someone told me I'd be getting a Zod rune, maybe I wouldn't have taken 8 years to finish this project
Also note that this dropped from my weapon switch, I think the Diablo Gods were rewarding my style points here
I pushed on to the Ancient's after gathering my nerves and they were dispatched in a blaze of glory. I know it's sexist, but I'm quite happy that all the enemies seem set on ignoring women in this run through. Aliza literally just sat there shooting arrows in to the backs of their heads, and they didn't seem to mind one way or another. So the Ancient's were dealt with, but this didn't solve my armor problem. I pushed on through the WSK, fingers crossed I'd get a Ral. But it was not to be. My Forti was down to 2 durability. But wait, maybe that Qual Kehk fellow could loan me a rune. I literally left the WSK to rescue the illiterate Barbarians that cannot read TP scrolls by themselves, just so I could repair my armor. And I'm sure you guys all know what happened on the VERY NEXT monster pack after going back to the WSK. A very exciting rune drop that's what! After getting our outfit sorted, we met those very nice Flayers again on our way down and threw a disco party. We made it through the minions with no problems and Baal was exploded like everyone else before him. The sept was finished.
I have to say, this was the perfect character to wrap up this project with. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of playing him. And to bring it all full circle, my very first character was a Frenzy Barb. Way back when Frenzy didn't even give you a damage bonus, it just made you run around like a madman, and I LOVED IT (although killing things would have been nice).
Google
