Single Skill Tree Tourney

Warrior of Light said:
three Golden Beard quests.


the bearded lady?
 
Warrior of Light said:
However I prefer my trusty Bartuc’s. Guess why I choose them.
I will not look at their stats (I want to be surprised the day I find them). I take your word about their superiority.

Warrior of Light said:
Do you know that shadow has a rare helm and body armor of your type? I would prefer an elite helm and armor to cast her, but haven’t luck at them. So I just used Basinet and Embossed Plate for equipping my shadow. This was the best I could find so far. IMHO the best shadow pre-buff items are Tyraels Might (no str for the best defence) and rare diadem (for imbuing shadow with nice random properties).
Good point, I forgot about that. And since you had money troubles, I guess there was no room to spend several millions to gamble a Shadow circlet.

Warrior of Light said:
I reserved 9 skill points to pump Dragon Claw after the end. See DC/Venom guide at assassin’s forum.
Interesting. Since my completed characters are always retired or dead, I didn´t think about an "afterlife"!


Warrior of Light said:
My merc died like a fly. All my reserved gold was spent on him with all >10k items, that I found. The main reasons of his deaths: Iron Maiden, Cursed Extra Strong/Might/Fanaticasm, Cold Enhansed (too slow to leach life back), Physical Immune (no leaching). I ran out of gold in Act 4 and wasn’t in the mood of gold hunting.

He´s well equipped, so I am surprised he died so much. Sounds like he could have used more help. More CoS, more Mind Blast, pull him back when he´s in trouble, give him potions more often, reposition shadow, etc.



Warrior of Light said:
Good luck in your impossible quest!
It´s far from impossible, I assure you. It´s going better than expected. Only one mildly dangerous incident in an entire Hell act. That´s a first.
But I have no good plan for the Ancients. Yet. Any ideas?
 
jiansonz said:
But I have no good plan for the Ancients. Yet. Any ideas?
As I have wrote above, when I have tried them a couple of times I thought that I could never do them.

Re-roll till you find acceptable mods (mana burn was my favorite cause I use normal attack and don’t need any mana).
Moar said:
If you have any suggestions for the Ancients, please suggest away now. They are on tomorrows schedule and I have never been so far with a HC char yet. I need all the help I can get.
corax said:
dont die. best advice ever
Moar said:
Sound advice. It was what I had figured myself and thus looked my battle plan.

Alas...

Didn't get Talic or Korlic onto anybody. They both attacked me and a combined attack of them was too much to take. Hit the rejuv key after Korlic's hit, but Talic was faster.
 
Congrats to the first Guardian of the tourney, Warrior of Light!

Yeah, lord knows I've been to stuck on the thought of just dealing with what I got, and taking on any and all monsters I get. But, that was before wisdom. Comes with age. I feel our Warrior may have it. Especially in Hardcore. As the famous words once spoken went, "he who runs away, lives to fight another day". Or, something close to that.

Whatever it takes. Having NEVER made a Guardian, all I can say is congrats again.
 
jiansonz said:
@Cormallon
Now THAT is a Big Stick o´Hurtiness! Are you or the merc using it?

My merc (holy freeze one) got it. I'm still using my 'Strength' Scepter with Zeal on it, together with a shield (PDiamonds for a total of +80 res all). I'd like to switch to 'Passion', but don't have the runes :D


Holy freeze is for safety. I probably could switch to might, but I just feel better this way. Slower enemies just can't hit me that often and I have more time to react.


I originally planned for something with high elemental damage for the merc, but it seems the game decided against that plan, giving me that mancatcher and a Hellrack (unique colossus crossbow, won't post the stats here since I know you like to be surprised when you get one ;) ).
 
Update:

Forumname: Cormallon
Character Name: Conqueror Mithuad
Character class: Paladin (offensive)
Character Level: 79
Farthest Quest: Radament (Hell)
Farthest WP: Lost city
1.11b HC, no mods

Yesterday I couldn't play at all... some accident broke down all train connections between the city and my home, I arrived 2 1/2 hours late by bus :(

Nevertheless, a little progess to report. Mithuad is in the claw viper temple now, looking for the stairs. He has little problems, but there are no PIs :D I found my second thresher ... a white one. I tried the socketing recipe on it and got exactly ONE socket. Duh. Utterly useless. Two sockets could be used for Strength or such, five for Honor, four ... well need RWM for that, and three is what I want. Well, next try.
 
Character Names: Champion Isolde (& Conqueror Mark)
Character Class: Fire Rogue (assisted by curses-only necro)
Character Levels: 78
Farthest Quest: Radament´s Lair, Hell
Farthest WP: Sewers, Hell
Game Version: 'vanilla' 1.10 HC
Total MF: +213% for Isolde´s kills, +121% otherwise


Small progress, due to very little playing time. I must say I´m a little surprised it goes so well. Isolde´s bow is only half-decent and she has no Crushing Blow, Mark´s damage reduction is only 25 (out of the 70+ I am hoping for) but we still kick butt without much trouble. Radament was the worst enemy this session. He spawned Spectral Hit + Stone Skin (=> PI unless I broke it) and took a long time to kill. I lured out his buddies in small sessions and went to play other parts of the level between these sessions (so the game cleared up most (sometimes all) corpses, very convenient!).

A Resist Poison Shrine on the level was very useful, and it made me cocky enough to use Amplify Damage while tanking Radament (to speed up the killing). I used my 'Strength' Cutlass but not Goblin Toe against him (which translates to 34% CB). Mark got hit twice without shrine effect and suffered the scariest poison damage I have ever seen! All but 1 of his >800 life disappeared in less than 2 seconds!

Near the end, Mark used Amplify and played "annoying target", avoiding the Unholy Bolts so Isolde was left to do her work unharmed.

No more gambled bows because it´s so close to the next level-up.


Next session, I will take on the potentially very dangerous Stony Tomb. If I draw a beginning similar to Insane Wayne´s, we will see what material my duo is made of. What scares me the most is the risk for a nasty FE beetle pack in such a small space.
 
jiansonz said:
I lured out his buddies in small sessions and went to play other parts of the level between these sessions (so the game cleared up most (sometimes all) corpses, very convenient!).
I used a bit different tactic clearing Nihlathak corpses. When you move about 2-3 screen away of corpses, then teleport to town, the game removes some of them. Nihlathak’s CE took me about 2/3 of visible life bulb in spite of my 60+ fire and 30% physical resistance.

Do you know any other general corpse removing techniques? We all need them when facing unique resurrect monsters (no dim vision/cloak of shadows) or Nihlathak.

Also I forgot to post how hard I fought Cantor champion pack. Is there any way to counteract Zakarum Heal spell? Does PMH work (I guess no)? It is hard to fight Cantor champions or Councils when they heal all damage you can deal them.
 
Warrior of Light said:
Do you know any other general corpse removing techniques? We all need them when facing unique resurrect monsters (no dim vision/cloak of shadows) or Nihlathak.

Here are all the other corpse preventing/removal techniques I can think of:
(but many of them are out in this tournament)

* Freezing. Doesn´t work on cold immunes (damn Bone Warriors in Claw Viper Temple!) or monsters that have CBF (in Hell: all Defilers, Hell/Death Lords and ghosts).
Amazons, Sorceresses and Assassins all have skills that freeze. Some of these can be found as charges (suffixes on magical/rare/crafted items).

* Chilling (inlcuding Holy Freeze) is easy to come by. It has 33% chance to shatter a corpse, unless the monster is cold immune or has CBF.

* "Slain Monster Rests in Peace". Found only on a few rarely-found uniques. If the killing blow is made with a character/merc using such an item, it means the corpse can´t be used (or resurrected) in any way.

* Necromancers can use up corpses with Raise Skeleton, Raise Skeletal Mage, Poison Explosion, Corpse Explosion or Revive. A few of these skills can (in rare cases) be found on uniques or runewords. 'Black' has CE charges, 'Venom' has Poison Explosion charges.
Revive has limitations: no leaper, OB Knight, Defiler, boss or champion can be Revived.

* Barbarians can use up corpses with Find Item, Find Potion and Grim Ward. Grim Ward can be found as charges (suffixes on magical/rare/crafted items) but unfortunately doesn´t work on skeletons and ghosts, but it DOES work on mummies, Doom/Abyss/OB Knights and undead flayers. A major drawback against Nihlathak is that you need to stand very close to the corpse to use the barb skills (except for Grim Ward, I think), and that is NOT a wise thing to do there...

* A Druid can clean corpses with Summon Dire Wolf, Carrion Vine (if he isn´t at full life) or Solar Creeper (if he isn´t at full mana). The problem with the wolves is that they will only eat corpses if they can´t see an enemy, so you often need to do some luring anyway.

* Paladins can use up corpses with Redemption. Unless you need the weapon switch for something special, my advice is to buy a scepter with + to Redemption (saves you one or more skills points) and keep it on the switch. Redemption isn´t good in the "final assault" against Nihlathak, because it can sometimes take quite a while to "redeem" a corpse.

* Assassins have Death Sentry, which is less effective at corpse cleaning than CE, because you can´t destroy the exact corpse you want to, when you want to. This trap needs to "see" an enemy in order to explode corpses. The Shadow Master/Warrior can also cast Death Sentry.


Strong cold-using sorceresses have an advantage in Hell against Nihlathak, if they get the merc killed or remove his/her weapon. The bad dude himself is only cold immune if his random abilities make him, so if they lure out most of the Ice Spawns, they can just spam their cold spells and don´t need to worry about getting corpses from the damage they deal, since the Ice Spawns are cold immune. She will still need to move away if a Spawn mutates into a bomber, though.

Bowazons with piercing Freezing Arrows would also work well, I think.

Warrior of Light said:
Also I forgot to post how hard I fought Cantor champion pack. Is there any way to counteract Zakarum Heal spell? Does PMH work (I guess no)? It is hard to fight Cantor champions or Councils when they heal all damage you can deal them.

Yes, there is a way. No, PMH does not work.
A Zakarum priest will forget to heal himself if something tanks him, so they can be beaten if you are alone with one. A champ pack is indeed a tough bunch to kill. Unless the character is very powerful, you more or less have to separate them, so they are no longer aware of each other. It can be done by:

* Knockback item (for character or merc).
* Smite or Charge
* Bash (non-barbs can use Bash charges from a weapon)
* Assassin kicks
* Summon Grizzly (it has "of the Bear"!)
* Iron Golem made from a Knockback item


(Sidenote: From 1.10, council members can no longer heal themselves, only others. Heck, they don´t even regenerate life any more!
So luring off one at a time from a pack is a good plan).
 
Finished off normal. Only really notable find was a useless dol rune. Perhaps killing baal a few more times will net me something good.

Character Name: myterra
Character Class: Shadow Assassin
Character Level: 39
Farthest Quest: Baal, Normal
Farthest WP: Rogue Encampment, NM
Game Version: 'vanilla' 1.11 HC
 
I can't really figure out if I should push forward with my amazon.. I mean the tourney is over.. Unless the remaining ppl are interested in seeing just how far we can get with our characters???

What say you?
 
skoolbus said:
Only really notable find was a useless dol rune.
If NM Hellforge gives you a Lem, or if you find two more Dol runes, will you still regard it as useless?



My success story continues. Laughable "threats" out in the desert, a little more interesting inside the tombs. Those Mummy Sarcophagi really takes some planning and skill to defeat.

Halls of the Dead level 2 started with a large room with a ton of monsters: five Hollow Ones (and of course a horde of Returned) two bat packs and two Decayed packs. No boss, so it was a veritable Dim Vision fest. I am really getting the feel for exactly how long time 11.2 seconds are.
It took Isolde over 15 minutes to clear this room...

Thanks to some good luck and focused playing, Stony Tomb was no problem.


I found a Crude Great Bow that I imbued. Crappy result, and now I´m out of imbues.

No more Crusader Bow from gambling. Another 1.6 million gold down the drain. :rolleyes:
If I still haven´t scored one when/if the act is completed, I will buy a Ward Bow from Asheara. About 1 in 50 of her Short War Bows will be upgraded to elite.

Character Names: Champion Isolde (& Conqueror Mark)
Character Class: Fire Rogue (assisted by curses-only necro)
Character Levels: 79
Farthest Quest: Radament´s Lair, Hell
Farthest WP: Halls of the Dead lvl 2, Hell
Game Version: 'vanilla' 1.10 HC
Total MF: +213% for Isolde´s kills, +121% otherwise
 
Cormallon said:
Uh? Did I miss something? AFAIK the final rules said all Guardians will be winners and the tourney runs until some deadline has been declared and reached.

I guess I missed that.. I thought that the winner would be either the first one who completed the game or if no one completed the game then it would be the one who got furthest..

Yay.. :)
 
Update:

Forumname: Cormallon
Character Name: Conqueror Mithuad
Character class: Paladin (offensive)
Character Level: 80
Farthest Quest: Tainted Sun(Hell)
Farthest WP: Arcane Sanctuary
1.11b HC, no mods

Luck or not ... that is the question this time. No Thresher, no jewel of Freedom. No Luck. I gambled amulets and got a unique. Luck. It was a Nokozan Relic. Not what I call really lucky.

I tried the sanctuary, without a really good elemental dmg weapon. It turned out as I expected. Simple ghosts are so so ... it take some time but I can handle it. Boss packs ... one I could kill, the other right now ... it would take hours I guess, even with a (bought) arcing spear for my merc and conviction on. Now I have to make some decisions. First option: try to go through that mess and just be patient. Second option: go back and run Mausoleum more, hoping for a 3os Thresher this way or another, or some other high elemetal dmg weapon (this unique Balrog Spear I heard of...). Third option: reroll a ilvl 6 jewel I have in my stash with the few PGems I have collected, and hope for a jewel of freedom for my Hellrack before I run out of gems.

We'll see tomorrow. I'm too tired to play more HC this evening.
 
I started up on act 3 today.. Thought it would be a nightmare with the gloams in great marsh and the ton of little annoying flayers.. but it went really well.. On to lower kurast.. no problems there.. but I almost wet myself when a green hellforge plate was lying on the ground after killing a boss.. I actually didn't know that it was Naj's plate.. never had the fortune to find it before.. Lucky me.. especially when my zon only have 47% MF.. My Zon is wearing it now cause it was a huge improvement of what she was wearing..

About the psysical immunes.. My merc has no problems with them.. Not as long at he is having Toothrow on.. Dunno what excactly on that armor that makes him great against the immunes.. but without it he can't kill psysical immunes but with it he has no problems slaying them..

LiveAndLetLive is now level 79.. Her last quest is the book in the ruined temple.. She has 3 of the components for the flail.. so council is up for her next :)
 
Far Oasis was easy as expected. The first two levels of the Maggot Lair were also not a problem. This character is well adapted to that place, at least if the corridors don´t bend too much. If they did, Mark had to do a lot of "nudging" to get Isolde into the action.

Third floor soon had a 3-way junction. Which of the two paths should I take? I usually go for the "northern" paths last, since those will often lead in the general direction of the breeding room, which I want to find last (such is the mind of the full clearer. I (nearly) always want to find the path that moves the quest progress forward last. Makes for less backtracking...).

Anyway, if I had picked the other path at this stage, I sincerely doubt my team would have survived!

The "eastern" path soon led to an end room, that hosted two Rock Worm boss packs. It took almost as long as the breeding room to clear.

When I advanced in the other direction, I ran into beetle minions. In 1.10, you should never tank unknown beetle minions, they might be Fire Enchancted. After the first was killed, we could advance and see the rest of the pack, lined up in the corridor. The boss was third in the other of the remaining beetles.

Spectral Hit Fire Enchanted Extra Fast!!

I Decrepified the boss and Dimmed the minions. As soon as the boss was "free" to advance, I knew that the slightest mistake could be fatal. The extra speed of this boss made it much worse than it would have been otherwise. I though of my Knockback kit, but didn´t trust Mark´s throwing skills enough. Besides, I had my salvation, the end room. One minion followed. Isolde did a good job tanking the boss the second it took for Mark to bring up a TP.

Now it looked like this. The boss pack had spawned near the edge of the "large" room I was about to explore. I Dimmed and Isolde killed the remaining minions. We cleared out the rest of the place completely, hoping for some better fighting space. Found both a loop track and a very long and straight corridor. The speed of the boss (it was still fast even when it was Decrepified, especially during "rushes") forced Isolde to tank it between shots and retreats. She wasn´t happy, but she understood the seriousness of the matter, and took the damage like a warrior. Well done!

Character Names: Champion Isolde (& Conqueror Mark)
Character Class: Fire Rogue (assisted by curses-only necro)
Character Levels: 79
Farthest Quest: Radament´s Lair, Hell
Farthest WP: Far Oasis, Hell
Game Version: 'vanilla' 1.10 HC
Total MF: +213% for Isolde´s kills, +121% otherwise
 
Warrior of Light said:
IFAIK Open Wounds ignores physical resistance and even physical immunity. At character level 79 it deals 218 damage per second.

Ah.. I suspected that might had been the issue.. thanks for the info.. I play the game but I don't know much about a lot of things still.. heh..

Well.. I am trying to reach Mephisto.. The way to him is easy enough until I hit the last level.. Both times I have been down there there has been a mix of lower resist aura, extra fast, lightning enchant.. that combined with a lot of blood lords just sucks :( So I have been spending SO much gold on my merc and both times I just gave up.. I hope next time the lower resist will be out of the equation.. then I might push trough..*Crosses fingers*

Oh.. and I found thunder stroke javelins.. but can't use them because of the +3 lightning thingie.. sucks
 
Update:

Forumname: Cormallon
Character Name: Conqueror Mithuad
Character class: Paladin (offensive)
Character Level: 80
Farthest Quest: The Seven Tombs (Hell)
Farthest WP: Kurast Docks
1.11b HC, no mods

Well... Duriel is no more. I decided to try the Sanctuary without waiting for more elemental dmg, and were very lucky: the Summoner resided in the first branch I tried. After that, I went immediately to the valley of Magi. The valley itself was easy. Then a false tomb: Apparitions. Lots of them. Tomb aborted. I tried the correct one... Again unmanageable PIs. Then I went for a mausoleum visit, to no avail. Rerolling the jewel I had was next. The third try resulted in a jewel of freedom, OK. Put it in the Hellrack ... I should have calculated the result more accurately before... I had two strength points less than required. Curses. Next try: Den of Evil again, looking either for a +str charm or that darn Thresher. Jackpot !

Crescent Moon
Thresher
'ShaelUmTir'
Two-Hand Damage: 35 to 415
Durability: 43 of 65
Required Dexterity: 118
Required Strength: 152
Required Level: 53
Polearm Class - Very Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10 Expansion
Item Level: 79
Fingerprint: 0xf1fb247d
+195% Enhanced Damage
20% Increased Attack Speed
Ignore Target Defense
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+2 to Mana After Each Kill
+10 Magic Absorb
10% Chance to cast Level 17 Chain Lightning on striking
7% Chance to cast Level 13 Static Field on striking
Level 18 Summon Spirit Wolf (30/30 Charges)
-35% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
Socketed (3: 3 used)


With that, the tombs were easy, as well as Duriel. No apparitions this turn :rolleyes: Next target: Mephisto. Unfortunately, A3 has a lot of LIs, the static field and chain lightning won't do much here. But the raw physical damage, with fanat aura, will do.
 
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