Quest: Cube Grail, v1

[Swamigoon]

Litas worked a few more cowherd work shifts, and found an Ohm rune! The other Ohm, the Lo, and the Sur in the stash let me check off one more upgrade.

Spoiler: ber

Jumby is level 81, and has arrived at the Canyon of the Magi in act 2. He has been spending some time in act 1's pit to get a little more experience, and hopefully he'll confont Duriel soon. The ethereal Demon's Arch unique balrog spear has turned out to be a fantastic weapon for the mercenary. That particular javelin stack not only has 11% life steal, but they also give him some fire and lightning damage against those PI monsters that a druid hunter's pets can't hurt.

I also went ahead and created a new barbarian. I hope to level him far enough to try out that Wolfhowl unique fury visor I found last year.

Spoiler: Introducing Ixtle the barbarian

Ixtle is strong textile fiber from yucca and agave plants. It's used for things like scrubbing brushes, paintbrushes, and ropes.

Progress: 114 recipes. These three remain:

upgrade: add socket to rare (rare + SoJ + 3 x perfect skull)
rune: Cham (2 x Jah + flawless ruby)
rune: Zod (2 x Cham + flawless emerald)

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: Patriarch

I took screencaps of each forge reward this time:


And one other interesting find:


Very early, I retrieved a lot of strength charms from the GoMule stash, as well as Hsaru's shield and boots. They were just barely enough to let Jumby equip the entire Death's set at level six, and so I took a screenshot of that minor accomplishment as well.

Jumby spent all of his points in the summoning skills tree. In addition to maxing the grizzly and dire wolves, he also maxed Spirit of Barbs and Solar Creeper, so that his summoned companions were the sturdiest they could possibly be. Leftover skill points went to Heart of Wolverine, and during late game questing I switched between the angry red and prickly white phantoms depending on the situation. Barbie (yes, I gave the spirit of barbs a proper name) was most effective in battles with blunderbores (and maulers/urdars), minotaurs (death lords, etc.), Duriel, or Lister and his minions. Those monsters were all quite talented with stun attacks, keeping my dire wolves or grizzly dazed and unable to fight back. With Barbie's aura, those monsters were still hurting themselves with each hit, even against a stunned pet, so I just kept resummoning more furry friends for them to whack until they took enough returned damage to kill themselves. I hastened the process a little bit by firing a bunch of Witchwild String magic arrows between resummons. On the other hand, Barbie's aura has no effect whatsoever in battles against ranged or elemental-damage attackers, so for those fights I usually summoned Candy (sorry, the name I selected for the wolverines' hearts is pretty lame). Her aura improved damage and attack rating. Even though Candy was more fragile than Barbie, she was still a big help - when Barbie was around, Jumby's attack rating only gave him about 50% chance to hit most monsters with his magic arrows, but Candy usually brought that chance to hit up to 70% or more, and added noticeable damage to the team's attacks as well.

For most of the journey, Kasim the might-aura mercenary wore a Rockstopper unique sallet and a Black Hades unique chaos armor (socketed with three perfect topazes). However, for the final battle against Baal, I put a Guillaume's Face winged helm on him instead for crushing blows, and I'm glad I did - that final battle would have taken a lot longer without it. Baal has way too many weapons in his arsenal that thwart just about anything a druid pure summoner can bring against him, so bringing a way to deliver crushing blows to Baal is about the only way to make that encounter bearable.

I was pleased that Jumby could have the honor of cubing the Ber rune recipe. I'll keep doing more rune runs with the area running ladies (Xylia the blizzard sorcress, Litas the lightning amazon, and Mafic the fire trapper), hoping for more high runes. Now that I have a complete Trang-Oul set, maybe I can twink those items over to Noxio, and see whether he can find any high runes too. In some near-future post, I also hope to share how Ixtle the barbarian comes along.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: Patriarch

Baal dropped a grailer for me! It's a unique exceptional russet armor:


On the way, Ixtle had some very nice forge results:


A few other nice finds included a couple of TC3s (Death's Hand and Infernal Cranium) in normal difficulty, and he also found an extra Bonehew while he was swinging one in hell difficulty:

I discovered for myself why the SPF Mat/Pat/Guardian compilation features so many wolf-barbs. Ixtle was so much fun! I planned from the beginning to use the Wolfhowl cap's 0skill Feral Rage as his end-game combat skill. I never used any re-specs, so he used normal attack only until he reached level 79, and he only spent points in the masteries and warcries skill trees. He swung a sequence of unique pole arms during his playthrough:

• a Dimoak's' Hew in early normal difficulty,
• a Meat Scraper and a Pierre Tombale Couant through most of nightmare,
• a Bonehew socketed with enhanced damage jewels through hell until after defeating the ancients, and finally
• a Tomb Reaver socketed with odd rare jewels to finish off the worldstone keep.

His weapon switch against physically immune monsters were Gimmershreds and Tiamat's Rebuke.

After maxing Pole Arm Mastery and Iron Skin, I pondered about what else to max. I remained determined to leave Battle Orders as a one-point wonder, same as the other barbarians in this project. I settled on maxed Shout, to complement Iron Skin's defense bonus, and maxed Increased Speed, so that he could be a race-walker. He wore a Steel Carapace unique shadow plate armor. Enhanced by Iron Skin and Shout, he sported a hefty palindromic defense rating of 15,551. And with maxed Increased Speed, he comfortably walked about as fast as my other characters could run; furthermore, since he didn't run, he never lost this tasty defense rating. Leftover points went into Natural Resists.

I'm going to wait until after the MFO, then I'll start another new character to include in this project. I don't yet know what I'll choose.

To collect runes for recipes, I continue to casually run LK with Vinca the sorceress, in addition to the casual rune area runs with other characters as I mentioned previously. It turns out I can't dress up Noxio in the Trang-Oul's vampire costume without a respec, and I just haven't wanted to do that just yet.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: Introducing: Hulda the sorceress

I wasn't sure what to run next. I was thinking perhaps a paladin or necromancer. But when the random 5-letter dictionary word script produced "Hulda" as one of its results, and I learned some of its meanings and associations, I changed my mind. Just to keep things simple, I'll probably build Hulda as a Lightning/Frozen Orb caster.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: Matriarch

Nothing very innovative, just a fun standard Lightning/Chain Lightning/Frozen orb caster, wearing Tal Rasha's complete set. Interesting that her NM forge run was a higher rarity than the rune from her hell forge:

Hulda did quite a few arcane sanctuary runs while leveling up, looking for runes. Not much luck there, unfortunately, so no new recipes completed. Here are some tallies I now see in the project Flavie report, after cubing up many of the runes she found:



I'm going to spend some time pondering what to build next.

 

[d2lover]

dual botd collo blade frenzytaur imo

 

[d2lover]

(Berserker axe just looks not good on char)

 

[Swamigoon]

Heh - my inner pessimist proclaims: "If I were intentionally looking for Zods, I would never have found them. But since I declared intention to cube a Zod, the game decides to tease me by dropping two of them so far."

If (my inner optimist says "when") I complete this recipe grail, I would like to make a BotD in an ethereal weapon. But I would also need a Vex. When I get one, I don't want to consume it on a runeword just yet, because I might need to cube it on the way to finishing the Cham and Zod recipes.

I have also finished nearly a thousand /p7 LK runs with my Hydra/Orb sorceress over the past couple of months, with no high rune drops for her at all. Hopefully the PRNG will relax and give me some better luck soon. And now that I have a lightning sorceress matriarch, I would also like to try running cows with her, for those times when grinding cows with the lightning fury zon gets a bit dull.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: Introducing Gusti the Paladin

My random 5-letter name generator found Gusti, and some online searches found lots of Indonesian royalty, celebrities, etc. with this name, so it seems appropriate for a "natural party leader." I don't know whether any bits of Indonesian culture provided any inspiration for the game's Kurast or Zakarum lore, but I think it's a cool enough name for a paladin, so I'll go with it anyway.

As usual, I will continue variety-grinding away with my rune runners (the lightning fury amazons, the fire trapper assassin, the zerker barbarian, and each of my three sorceresses), and keep upgrading runes (or perhaps get lucky with those rare higher rune drops) until I can complete my cube recipe grail.

I have never pat'ed a zealot before. My build plan for Gusti is to repeat what so many others before have done: max Zeal, max Sacrifice, and max a nice aura. I really like the guide that Kitteh wrote and published this year. I will probably choose the guide's #1 suggested aura, Fanaticism. Getting 3-buffs-in-one from an aura seems pretty hard to ignore; it's easy to see why Fanaticism has become a staple aura of so many other zealots. The guide also urges max block, but I confess that the two-handed weapon builds during this project have been awfully fun, and I'm very tempted to ignore the advice about getting max block. Instead, I might make Gusti swing a big two-handed weapon, wear equipment with resists/life/fast-hit-recovery mods, and then find some other creative use for skill points that otherwise would have been spent in Holy Shield.

(I briefly pondered about a Concentration zealot, because I had never seen one before. But after studying a bit, I believe Concentration aura's 1/5 chance of making an attack uninterruptible would be rather pointless, because the guide says that zeal attacks are already 100% uninterruptible; zeal never whiffs while blocking/hit recovery/knockback/etc. Concentration might benefit a mercenary, but Fanaticism would give more benefit to the hireling and to the zealot.)

Gusti has a promising start: Bishibosh already gave him one of the TC3 uniques, a Felloak!

 

[Swamigoon]

Time for another update. Gusti is coming along pretty well. He's level 82, and arrived in hell difficulty Harrogath a few days ago.

Gusti is my first ever 2-handed weapon zealot. I have had lots of fun trying out various weapons on him, including a Cloudcrack unique gothic sword (exceptional bastard sword), a Gavel of Pain (unique exceptional hammer), an Ethereal Edge unique silver-edged axe (elite broad axe), and a lovely rare balrog blade (elite giant sword) that rolled with 278% enhanced damage and 8% life stolen per hit -- that last weapon was very effective for most of Hell difficulty. But I'm pretty sure that his endgame weapon will be Naj's Puzzler set elder staff. The defensive benefits he gets from the full set (Naj's circlet and hellforge plate) more than make up for the slightly lower zeal damage (2400-2900 with maxed Zeal/Sacrifice/Fanaticism) that he's able to dish out with the staff.

I decided to hire a barbarian mercenary named Onela to accompany Gusti. The hireling is doing very well swinging the Bul-Kathos' Sacred Charge set colossus blade that I was lucky to find during the MFO a couple of months ago. While questing through nightmare and hell, I was struggling to not get too annoyed at the occasional knockback effect from Onela's Bash skill. Sometimes it was frustrating to watch Gusti start a zeal attack cycle on a monster, only to have the mercenary bash it away from him. When Onela started to use the Bul Kathos' colossus blade, which has inherent knockback as one of its item mods, I actually started to find it easier to manage his knockbacks. Why? Perhaps because it now happens with almost all of his successful strikes, so it becomes easier to expect and anticipate the battle dynamics that knockback brings.

Okay, enough of Gusti's progress: there is a reason this update couldn't wait for him to achieve patriarch. After months of dry LK runs, Vinca the sorceress was finally rewarded today with this:

Spoiler: Vinca found LK's best rune

Together with the runes that Litas, Jumby, and Noxio found and cubed four and ten months ago, Gusti got the privilege to fulfill another recipe:

Spoiler: Cham

Today is a happy day!

Progress: 115 recipes. The last two:

upgrade: add socket to rare (rare + SoJ + 3 x perfect skull)
rune: Zod (2 x Cham + flawless emerald)

 

[Babyhell]

The SoJ sacrifice was tough before D2R. Now that will be completely absurd

 

[Swamigoon]

It took longer than I expected, but I have finally patted a zealot.

Spoiler: Patriarch

He finally made it. For whatever reason, compared with other builds, I continue to find Zealots rather difficult to play. Patting the Templar (FoH) and Angel (Vengenace) paladin builds last year just seemed so much easier to me.

Screencuts of his forge rewards:


Another first-ever unique find:


I had expected to keep going with Naj's set, but when he got an Immortal King weapon in the pits, I just couldn't pass up the crushing blow.

I went "all-in" on the weapon change, by dressing him up in the gloves, belt, and boots of the same set. These items made all three of his main attack skills (Zeal, 1-point Vengenace for PIs and 20-point Conversion to manage crowds) a LOT more effective.

Next up, I'm going to try playing a mix of poison, summon, and fire skills on a Trang-Oul's full-set vampire.

Spoiler: Introducing Furud the Necromancer

Furud is the name that arabic astronomers gave to one of the stars in the constellation Canis Major ("big dog").

Right now, this is my planned build:

• maxing Poison Nova and one synergy
  • (not sure which yet, but leaning toward Poison Explosion)
• using a one-point Iron Golem with at least two synergies
  • (not sure which yet -- leaning toward Fire Golem and Golem Mastery, but Clay Golem and Summon Resist also appeal to me.)

So far this project has consumed twenty months and eighteen characters before I was able to cube up to Cham. (I'm really hoping I'm lucky enough to find or cube the other Cham a lot faster...)

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: patriarch

Forges:

His best find while questing was from Diablo:

(Ironically, the mercenary was already swinging a better Bonehew at the time.)

Furud achieved level 87 by the time he reached patriarch and finished his first sojourn through Hell's secret cow level.

Furud was an effective Pit runner in the recent "balancing the finds" MF/RF tournament. The vampire transformation from the full Trang-Oul's set gave him terrible cast rate and "poppables" pop recovery rate, but he had a very fast run/walk floating travel speed, and he made frequent good use of fireballs, firewalls, and meteors. To take full advantage of the full set's enhanced poison skill damage and lowered enemy poison resists, I changed my mind about the build, fully synergizing Poison Nova; his only maxed summon skill was Golem Mastery.

Two more characters remain to complete a third sept in this project, and I'll launch both of them now.

Spoiler: Introducing Elene the assassin

Elene appears to be an anglo-saxon spelling variant of Helen. A thousand years ago (give or take a hundred years) someone wrote an epic poem about Elene the mother of Constantine, and her quest to find the holy cross.

Plan: I think I'd like to try an "aggressin" (dragon claw/claw mastery) build.

Spoiler: Introducing Duppy the amazon

Duppy is a synonym for Jumby, which was the name of the hunter druid I patted a few months ago in this project.

Build plan: a passive-tree dagger-stabber.

 

[Swamigoon]

Elene has arrived in Hell act 5, and Duppy is pretty close to completing 15 hours in the TC3 tournament. I still want to try finding more TC3s in early normal, so I've decided to try again with a fire sorceress.

Spoiler: Introducing Chiru the sorceress

She is named after a mountain antelope species found in India, Tibet, and Bhutan, which has a soft and warm furry pelt.

 

[Swamigoon]

Still enjoying the TC3 hunting tournament, so I started yet another character, a fire paladin.

Spoiler: Introducing Bennu the paladin

The name comes from ancient Egyptian mythology. The deity Bennu was represented using a drawing that looks like a heron. I also learned that there may be some connection with the Greek mythological pantheon and the legend of the Phoenix bird.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: matriarch

Forges:


Her most interesting finds happened in Hell act 3:

This felt like the most difficult of all my characters so far. Maxed Dragon Claw and Claw Mastery were awesome skills, especially with the unique claw weapons. As she progressed, I was able to try all four of them on Elene: Bartuc's Cutthroat (greater talons) during nightmare difficulty, then Jade Talon (wrist sword) and Firelizard's Talons (feral claws) at the beginning of hell act 1, and a Shadow Killer (battle cestus) on each arm late in hell act 3. For a skill-based elemental attack against physical immunes, I elected to max Blades of Ice and its synergy, Phoenix Strike. As an experiment, all leftover points went into Weapon Block. This choice was contrary to the advice I had read in the aggressin guides here that recommend complementing Dragon Claw with "aggressive" skills such as Venom or Mind Blast. I was pleased with the experiment. Weapon Block slows the pace of battles a bit, but I wasn't overly annoyed by it. Indeed, it was rather cool to watch her block more than half of the attacks against her, not just monster attacks, but elemental spells too.

I tried to keep all of her resistances maxed throughout hell, but when she got to the Arreat Summit, she hit a serious roadblock. She had to consume many healing and mana potions while fighting her way through act 5, and I knew I would need to stock up more potions for her before she faced the ancients. For her first attempt, with an inventory full of potions, she managed to defeat Korlic and Madawc, but ran out of drinks soon after engaging Talic, so I aborted that attempt with a town portal. For her second attempt, I again filled her inventory with potions, filled the cube full of potions too, dropped them all at each corner of the summit, then went back to town and filled her inventory and cube again with potions. Again, she defeated Korlic and Madawc, but Madawc was fire enchanted and she died instantly at his death explosion. For the third attempt, she went back and ran through the Pit, Ancient Tunnels, and River of Flame a couple of times to collect and cube a stash full of purple potions. I also decided to change two pieces of gear - I swapped her resistance armor and boots for a Gore Rider and a Treachery runeword. I had been avoiding most runewords throughout this project, preferring to save them for cubing recipes. Regardless, I decided I could spare a Lem to help Elene get into and through the Worldstone Keep.

Just one matriarch remains, and then I will have completed another sept! After starting off Duppy the daggerzon in the TC3-hunting tournament, she has quickly advanced through most of nightmare difficulty. I am also looking forward to rerunning old friends such as Litas, Xylia, Furud, and Qursh in the RFL which starts later this month. I will be very pleased if the upcoming RFL helps me find the necessary high runes to let me finish the last recipes and complete this cube grail quest.

 

[Swamigoon]

Spoiler: matriarch

Duppy is a single-tree (passive and magic) daggerzon, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing her. Compared to two recent melee toons, Elene the aggressin and Gusti the zealot, Duppy definitely had fewer frustrating gameplay moments.

Her forges:

I'm not very good about switching from running to walking when I need to maneuver during a melee battle. Therefore, my characters often get stabbed in the back while running away because their defense was dropped. I decided to max Duppy's Evade skill, and I definitely noticed the difference it made. She would run around a monster to keep from getting surrounded, and very often, instead of getting injured, I would see her stutter-step and hear her sweet "whoa!" noise, letting me know she evaded the attack. Her other maxed skills were Critical Strike, Decoy, and Valkyrie. The Valk also gets the Evade ability as a synergy enhancement, but that bonus was harder to detect. I only once clearly noticed the walking valk evade an archer's arrow.

Rather than spend any point in Penetrate to boost attack rating, I decided instead to hire Zanarhi, a mercenary that spun a Blessed Aim aura onto Duppy. I had read guides and articles warning me that Penetrate's bonus is ignored completely when a Blessed Aim aura is active. Depending on the monster, Duppy's LCS usually showed that Zanarhi's aura boosted her chances to hit by 20%. I spent leftover skill points on Inner Sight, which helped her dagger attacks strike even more often. This was my first time juggling and using all four of the amazon spells (Inner Sight, Slow Missiles, Decoy, and Valkyrie) using hot-keys. It was definitely worth the time and effort to practice casting all four during battles.

Other nifty item drops:

Spoiler: interesting items found

Thanks, Duriel! (... grumble ... as if hell Andariel hadn't already provided way too many of these ... )

And more importantly, on the way to rescue Anya:

Spoiler: important find: Ber rune

A couple of weeks ago, during round one of the RFL, Litas took a Jah rune from a cow. After the RFL round, I did a few casual Baal runs with Hulda, and she found another Ber:

Spoiler: throne of destruction rune

Together with the Cham cubed by Gusti, Duppy was able to complete the last rune recipe!

Spoiler: zod

Not only that, but I was so thrilled with a circlet that Baal dropped during one of Hulda's runs, that I decided to use the last SoJ recipe to get it nice and ready for an upcoming dentist/bone-spear necromancer:

Spoiler: add socket to rare

So, upon completing my third sept, I have finally successfully used and captured screenclips of every 1.14b Horadric Cube recipe.

Completed: 117 recipes.

Spoiler: all done!

Let's all celebrate and have a good time.

 

[Vildecor]

Congrats on finishing this epic undertaking! (Bonus points for finishing it with a daggerzon)

 

[Nona]

Really an incredible achievement! Way to go!

 

[Zyr]

Wow!

Unbranded conveys her warmest congratulations and deepest admiration to Duppy.