With a bittersweet feeling, here comes the final character in my Zod sept.
Pat Baal run:
P8 Hell Baal & Lister took a while.
Final gear & build:
The idea with him was to play a Summoner who actually joins the fight and deals some damage on his own. His weapon of choice would be a heavy hitting 2-hander, and was originally planned to be Windhammer. But I realized that an eth Ribcracker was much better, and luckily before Zod'ing the Windhammer. My only eth Ribcracker had an average roll, but good enough in the end, plus I figured it's useful for other builds as well. Upped and Zod'ed:
While I've considered it several times, I never actually made Beast IG before. But in his case lvl 9 Fanaticism would mean a big improvement, so it was time to get around to it. And I'm glad I did, as it survived just fine with 20 GM hard points, and the extra damage and AR was much appreciated. It also forced me to not do stupid things.
Questing
We again went P8 from start to finish. Normal and NM were done with pretty standard and boring approach. Starting with Envy bow/helm/armor and then cutting through everything with Bone Spear, donning more and more + skill gear as he progressed. We got to lvl 76 in NM this way and gained another level in A1 Hell, respec'ed to Summoner and equipped (most of) the above gear. More information on his progress up to early Hell in this post.
There were a few S&E situations in A1 Hell and one in some A5 dungeon, all of them with some Amp/Might/Fana combo. He bailed out of those just to be safe and not lose the IG, but generally he didn't encounter major problems in the playthrough... I guess it's not surprising, with OP backup skills such as CE and AD easily dealing with almost anything the game can throw it you, if need be. That being said, I tried to limit CE use to a minimum. In A4 and A5 we resorted to it more frequently though, in order to clean up the bigger/tougher groups. Same for Enigma: I wanted teleport for positioning purposes and not skipping through half the game, but found myself using it a bit more often towards the end.
Drops
While the last couple of chars in this sept didn't find much of note, drops weren't all that bad for him. This post contains some drops from earlier questing up to A2 Hell. Drops after that continued to be useful and even included a TC87 with Earth Shifter in RoF. Also mixed in a few more action shots:
***
So this concludes my Zod sept. Almost regrettably so, as it was really fun to come up with interesting build/setup ideas to make good use of those Zods.
Been pursuing a number of D2 projects recently, so I'll relax a bit for now. Upcoming/ongoing projects include my untwinked 99er HC Barb and enjoying the current MP action around here.
Anyway, I enjoyed this sept a whole lot, thanks for reading and following along!
Pat Baal run:
P8 Hell Baal & Lister took a while.
Final gear & build:
Code:
eth Ribcracker 'Zod' (259 ED)
Kira's Guardian (IAS/AR jewel)
Mara's
Enigma
LoH
Gore Rider
Raven Froat
Rare ring dual leech/AR/res/life
War Traveler
Beast Iron Golem, made from an eth Ettin Axe
Switch: CtA + Lidless
Merc (Might): Infinity, Duriel's, Vamp Gaze
Stats for gear, rest Vita (~450)
Build: 20 GM, 20 RS, 20 SM, 13 CE, 6 AD, 1 Decrep, rest BA, BW, pre-reqsThe idea with him was to play a Summoner who actually joins the fight and deals some damage on his own. His weapon of choice would be a heavy hitting 2-hander, and was originally planned to be Windhammer. But I realized that an eth Ribcracker was much better, and luckily before Zod'ing the Windhammer.
My only eth Ribcracker had an average roll, but good enough in the end, plus I figured it's useful for other builds as well. Upped and Zod'ed:While I've considered it several times, I never actually made Beast IG before. But in his case lvl 9 Fanaticism would mean a big improvement, so it was time to get around to it. And I'm glad I did, as it survived just fine with 20 GM hard points, and the extra damage and AR was much appreciated. It also forced me to not do stupid things.
Questing
We again went P8 from start to finish. Normal and NM were done with pretty standard and boring approach. Starting with Envy bow/helm/armor and then cutting through everything with Bone Spear, donning more and more + skill gear as he progressed. We got to lvl 76 in NM this way and gained another level in A1 Hell, respec'ed to Summoner and equipped (most of) the above gear. More information on his progress up to early Hell in this post.
There were a few S&E situations in A1 Hell and one in some A5 dungeon, all of them with some Amp/Might/Fana combo. He bailed out of those just to be safe and not lose the IG, but generally he didn't encounter major problems in the playthrough... I guess it's not surprising, with OP backup skills such as CE and AD easily dealing with almost anything the game can throw it you, if need be. That being said, I tried to limit CE use to a minimum. In A4 and A5 we resorted to it more frequently though, in order to clean up the bigger/tougher groups. Same for Enigma: I wanted teleport for positioning purposes and not skipping through half the game, but found myself using it a bit more often towards the end.
Drops
While the last couple of chars in this sept didn't find much of note, drops weren't all that bad for him. This post contains some drops from earlier questing up to A2 Hell. Drops after that continued to be useful and even included a TC87 with Earth Shifter in RoF. Also mixed in a few more action shots:
***
So this concludes my Zod sept. Almost regrettably so, as it was really fun to come up with interesting build/setup ideas to make good use of those Zods.
Been pursuing a number of D2 projects recently, so I'll relax a bit for now.
Upcoming/ongoing projects include my untwinked 99er HC Barb and enjoying the current MP action around here. Anyway, I enjoyed this sept a whole lot, thanks for reading and following along!
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