Phew, Act 5 is done. Had one NDE with Infidels being extra fast and getting me into hit recovery. Purple potion saved the day though...
The ancients weren't as dangerous as I thought, because my merc kept leeching and leeching and leeching...I rerolled the first (cursed mod) roll though (Hey! I never said I wasn't a whimp!)
I had Souls in the keep, which are - as you well know - lightning immune
Well, I'm glad my merc did enough damage to kill them, even though LF was useless...
This is the explosion of a frenzied Ice Spawn, and yeah, I had the bad luck to spawn them as major foes on level 2 and even had one boss pack of those - that means neither XP nor drops from one monster type, that's probably why I finished NM some XP short of level 75.
Double S/U drop with both items being usable! Since I already have Vidala's Snare, i could go for the wombo combo of Vidala's Barb and Snare...but since I will be using Javelin and Shield most of the time, I don't know if that is such a good idea...switching to bow for each kill and losing 25% resist all and CBF in the process looks a tad dangerous to me...
Then the mobs started coming after me...or rather my Decoy:
Bartuc after killing my merc:
Lister and his gang obliterated by LF:
and then being taken down in seconds by my merc and Valkyrie:
Baal shot first, but I shot back:
and back, and back, and back and...well, I stopped counting after my 20th trip to town to replenish my stack of javelins (size: 80). In the end though, the fight was never dangerours and I was impressed on how well the Barb merc held his ground as compared to those Desert mercs. I never ever had to use a potion on him. Then finally:
Wait, I fought Baal for 15 mins and all I got is this lousy
t-shirt drop!?! Seriously?
Used up both of my imbues for potentially better javelins, but meh, not the worst rolls, but not better than my current ones:
So, after defeating NM (and finding another 65 S/Us one the way, which isn't too impressive for 295% MF, I guess...
) I decided to swap my 3 PTopaz Breast Plate for a Smoke Demonhide Armor. I then gave up on 7%MF and 20 AR for this beauty:
Shadow Spiral
Ring
Required Level: 13
Fingerprint: 0x4f4fc9fe
Item Level: 40
Version: Expansion 1.10+
12% Chance to cast level 4 Charged Bolt when struck
+97 to Attack Rating
4% Life stolen per hit
+2 to Strength
Cold Resist +24%
10% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
And this is what my character looks like, ready for Hell (or not...we will see...):
I could probably have chosen a higher vitality score, but I wanted to be ready to equip the elite versions of my rolled weapons if they ever drop...