Skill-less tournament (3rd edition)

@jiansonz Congrats on the OHM thats a really nice find...


Meridian and his wife/servant Meghan (my wife's name is Meghan even with the h and all) smashed and bashed their way through the underground passage, and while stumbling through the dark a kindly boss shaman dropped a unique club by the name of Felloak (which I am pretty sure I have NEVER had before) and from this point forth Meridian used it to bash the rest of his foes until which time he finds something better.

After finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and after a quick detour a bit deeper into the cave to find a shiny chest that had pretty much nothing in it. He found his way into some woods that were quite dark. In these dark woods He located a tree and a scroll. After a quick chat in town, We made our way back to the Stony Field and after running in many circles around some stone pillars trying not to kill anything that re-spawned, they entered a portal to a place that seemed very familiar.

After rescuing an old man named Cain and clearing out all the evil beings in the Once great town of Tristram, We trudged on to the next area. We avoided all foes in the Black Marsh in order to quickly find the Waypoint so we could retreat for the night and put the crying child to bed back home.

To be continued another day...

Meridian and Meghan the Wife Servant Level 15 Next up Black Marsh

Sorry for the long winded and boring telling of such menial adventures, just practicing my role playing.... it's been a while. Well nighty night fellow adventurers and good luck in your journeys.
 
@jiansonz - nice! You'll want the Delirium on your merc, with a fast weapon (like Riphook) normal enemies and minions will be constantly confused. Only drawback is that I've had a few crashes related to Confusing.

Alternatively, you can hope for a lucky Hellforge drop and the SPF's first single-pass Call To Arms.
 
@jiansonz Congrats on the OHM thats a really nice find...


Meridian and his wife/servant Meghan (my wife's name is Meghan even with the h and all) smashed and bashed their way through the underground passage, and while stumbling through the dark a kindly boss shaman dropped a unique club by the name of Felloak (which I am pretty sure I have NEVER had before) and from this point forth Meridian used it to bash the rest of his foes until which time he finds something better.

After finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and after a quick detour a bit deeper into the cave to find a shiny chest that had pretty much nothing in it. He found his way into some woods that were quite dark. In these dark woods He located a tree and a scroll. After a quick chat in town, We made our way back to the Stony Field and after running in many circles around some stone pillars trying not to kill anything that re-spawned, they entered a portal to a place that seemed very familiar.

After rescuing an old man named Cain and clearing out all the evil beings in the Once great town of Tristram, We trudged on to the next area. We avoided all foes in the Black Marsh in order to quickly find the Waypoint so we could retreat for the night and put the crying child to bed back home.

To be continued another day...

Meridian and Meghan the Wife Servant Level 15 Next up Black Marsh

Sorry for the long winded and boring telling of such menial adventures, just practicing my role playing.... it's been a while. Well nighty night fellow adventurers and good luck in your journeys.

What player settings are you on? I think you should be a higher level if you're doing full clears :D
 
Hydras doesn't do bonus damage to mercs, they are however bugged to use the pvp penalty when attacking players. Council members are supposed to be a LOT more dangerous.
 
@Dazliare: Level 15 is standard after Tristram on p8 full clears.

@felixbavaria: HF rune was a Pul. (Longer update coming up later.)

No, I won't make Delirium. Too dangerous at this stage. Confuse tends to wake up a lot more monsters, especially if activated from range as it would be in my case. Besides, my only Io is used up in Black now. (OK, I could cube another, from Hel, Dol x4 and Shael x6...)

Yeah, a single-pass CtA would be cool. Although my character would relly need a third weapon switch to make it work without a LOT of item swapping.

I made a Fortitude armor for my merc in another tourney. That's my most 'advanced' runeword. Found 2x Ohm there.
 
What player settings are you on? I think you should be a higher level if you're doing full clears :D

P8 except for the beginning of the cave before I remembered to turn it on again.

I'm not sure what it should be, I have never done single pass full clear before... But usually when i play untwinked or just solo, I am level 15 or 16 when I reach Andy....

Meridian has tromped his way through the Black Tower, and the Tome Highlands and cleared the Pit and Monistary before making a run for the Outter Cloister WP. I will make a push for Andy in the morning probably.

The ONLY rune that has been found thus far is an Eth from the countess. This seems mildly strange to me, but hopefully this will pick up. Tons of chipped gems though.

I have saved a lot of blues and sold them in order to save some gold. I have shopped some nice things from Akara, well nice for low level. I now have a wand with weaken charges, and another with dim vision charges. In addition I have a scepter with +2 Holy Fire which really helps in bashing stuff. Also picked up another scepter with Zeal and Might, so i may use this at some point.

Meridian and Wife Meghan Level 17, Outer Cloister Next
 
It will pick up. Other than from Countess, I don't think they can drop before Catacombs.
Makes sense, I cant remember since I usually blow through act 1...

Meridian and Meghan have made their way through the outer cloister, and have slain an evil armorer and retrieved a magical hammer. They have cleared out the Jail and made their way to the Inner Cloister WP.

Not sure how I am going to deal with Andarial at this point, but since I will be 5ish levels higher than normal and with around 50% block maybe it wont be as difficult as i fear. At this point I am hoping a weaken charge and her -50% fire resistance coupled my level 2 holy fire will do the job.


Edit: Took Andarial at P4. My tactics seemed to do the trick, Meghan met her end only once, when Andy hit her with the poison missile thing. Of course I forgot to bring antidote potions, or this wouldn't have been an issue. All in all I used about 8 little purple drinks to get through the fight.

Once I arived in Lut Golein I checked with Drognan, and he had some very interesting scepters, however at over 200k, we will have to wait for such things.

On a funny side note, I believe that a necromancer would be the best choice for this, as I can see from reading and my own experience that later on, the merc is going to do all the work, and all you do is sit back and curse stuff. I think a Necro would be best, because of the fact that wands and heads can have LOTS of staffmods and you could have a very nice selection of stuff on hand. Pali Shields don't seem to have ANYTHING useful on them other than resists thus far. Perhaps an Assassin would also be nice since you can dual wield claws, and she has some pretty good CC abilities.

Meridian and Meghan Level 20 Lut Golein
 
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Not only did Helena battle the forces of Hell, she had to battle two game crashes as well, which at one time led to a mad dash through the Outer Steppes.

The first crash was with a leaper after I had cleared 80% of the perimeter of Outer Steppes. Decided to map the rest of the perimeter (going from the other direction from the entrance stairs) and clear up to the stairs out. This had me playing a total about half of the perimeter twice, so I tried to leave an equal sized part of the Steppes unexplored.

Second crash was a short ways into Plains of Despair, against a spawner. I had killed two quite tough Burning Soul bosspacks that session. I left it at /p1 and sprinted through the Steppes (with a strategic CoS to lose as many pursuers as possible). Was met with this a short ways into the Plains:
HelenaH26spawnerboss_zpsa7bb14e1.jpg

And the third monster type? Yup, Souls again. Including a bosspack. Not too bad, though.

Spawners have a sinister ability. If they spit out a pup the very moment you cast CoS, the spawner won't be blinded and can continue to spit out more pups for the following 9 seconds. Highly annoying, and it's not like the little ones drop like flies from Meghan's arrows either. They require work to go down. SOP for killing spawners was a combo of CoS and tanking on the side away from Meghan, and suck up on red potions as needed:
HelenaH27spawnertactics_zps6fc5fe3f.jpg

It's messy and it's painful but it often gets the job done. Then I could sometimes reward myself by blowing up the spawner and kill all the small ones in one blast.

Everything was big and bad in the River of Flame: Pit Lords, Urdars and Maw Fiends. An exercise in patience, as these are among the sturdiest creatures in the game. Hephasto had a heavy focus on defensive abilities:
HelenaH28Hephasto_zpsebee56b9.jpg

Quite the grind to bring him down, but not dangerous once I had boosted cold resist to 85%.
It was just possible to get Megan out of the Holy Freeze range but still close enough for all her shots to hit.
Hellforge was a Pul (which means I can do another exceptional unique weapon upgrade if I find a good candidate).

I had made a 'Black' Knout for the Diablo fight. This version of Diablo preferred to attack Helena rather than Meghan, which suited me fine. Very easy fight. I think D actually gets easier to combat the higher you go through the difficulties. I fear the Normal version the most.

Recent finds (other than the Pul):
- Bonehew (Diablo)
- The Oculus (random container in Plains of Despair)


[Highlight]Conqueror Helena the Assassin and Meghan the Cold sister, level 85, Hell Harrogath[/highlight]


I will dive deep into Sacred 2 now (which I have just bought). Will probably not be back with more progress from Helena until a bit into the next year. I will get back to her eventually, she is interesting enough to complete, and I am positive that Meghan will really shine in many parts of Act V Hell. Plus I have an item upgrade planned for her if I can unlock the last Larzuk reward.
 
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Skilllass and Azrael have taken down Nihlathak and are now level 72. Not much to report about the Halls except that the Halls of Pain had Blood Maggots and Grotesques, which took a long time on p8. Otherwise, no NDEs nor any drops of note.
 
Poor Maxwell died a, thankfully quick and painless, death in act 2. Not playing the game for a few years lets you forget how deadly the scarabs lightning can be.

It didn't help that Azrael was being an az and attacking everything he could as quickly as he could (I know I shouldn't blame him, he was just so eager to please).

Anyway Maxwell are now part of the rocky waste, may her level 22 corpse be used as nourishment for plants, or... which brings us to the next news:

Going to start a new character now, but this time I am not going to let lady luck pick my character, not that there is anything wrong with assassins, but I want to try a necromancer now :)

So every time I am summoning a clay golem in the future, it will most probably have parts of Maxwell in it.


@jiansonz - Just make sure Helena doesn't get hubris and I am sure that she will go all the way.
 
@illya_ : A 'sacrifice' character is to be expected when the game is still a bit unfamiliar. The necro would reach much further, I'm sure :)

Here's another table post, before the page ends.

Code:
Alive characters:
Forum Name      Class       Char Name    LVL   ACT     WP             Version
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jiansonz         Assassin   Helena        85   A5(H)   Harrogath         1.13
Sput             Sorc       Skilllass     72   A5(N)   Halls of Pain
Dazliare        *Barb       Vladimir      65   A4(N)   Pandemonium Frt
japanzaman       Barb       Babs          57?  A3(N)   Travincal         1.13
Dezrok           Necro      Unlikely      62   A3(N)   Kurast Bazaar     1.13d
michajo2k       *Paladin    Meridian      20   A2      Lut Gholein        
imakeigloospat   Druid      Glenn          1   A1      Rogue Enc         1.13d
xXxGrimmxXx      Amazon     WaffleStrike   1   A1      Rogue Enc         1.13d
Atroz           *Assassin   ?              1   A1      Rogue Enc
illya_           Necro      ?              1   A1      Rogue Enc         1.13c
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dead ones:
Forum Name      Class       Char Name    LVL   ACT     Place of Deeds  Version
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SunsetVista      Necro      Yredelemnul   81   A3(H)   Travincal        1.13
HanShotFirst  ***Sorc       Two           86   A3(H)   Flayer Jungle        
felixbavaria    *Paladin    Incompetentus 72   A5(N)   WSK 1            1.13d
epaminondas     *Assassin   Adriana       56   A2(N)   Palace Lvl 2     1.11
illya_          *Assassin   Maxwell       22   A2      Rocky Waste      1.13c
Southpaw8668    *Paladin    Lucious      >19   A2      Duriel           1.13
xXxGrimmxXx    **Druid      Roland      >=17   A1      Monastery        1.13d
Southpaw8668     Necro      Goulash       14   A1      retired          1.13
xXxGrimmxXx    **Assassin   Noctyria       9   A1      Cave Lvl 1       1.13d
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:
*  = this class has been randomly chosen
** = this class has been somewhat randomly chosen
*** = this character needed a random decision that it would not be random :)
 
@illya_: Sorry about the deeds and good luck with your next try. From my experience, beetles are among the few monsters that can actually kill you in Normal. In Hardcore, unless I have significant lightning resistance, I try to stay away from them and let the merc handle them - they have good resistances from the start.

On a related note, I could not resist this madness and I have started a skill-less Amazon, currently in Act IV. Will write an update when (if) she kills Baal.
 
On a related note, I could not resist this madness and I have started a skill-less Amazon, currently in Act IV. Will write an update when (if) she kills Baal.

Nice! We needed an amazon. They are truly more skill-less than other classes because they don't have any any items with staffmods.
 
I guess I'll give this a try. I don't think I've even gotten past normal baal on hardcore before though.

Spineless, the 1.13d necromancer enters the fray! Strategy: stack slows and decrepify. Chance of success: pretty much zero.
 
@Sput - nice job on Nihlathak! Almost to hell....

@illya_ - sorry about deeds. Neat little writeup though. I like that Maxwell will continue to kill demons as part of a clay golem. Good luck with your necro!

@felixbavaria - wow, impressive to give it another try, especially with Amazon! Good luck!

@Naturallog - welcome to the tourney and good luck! Necromancer is a good choice for this one since he has a whole skill tree of one point wonders that can appear as staffmods.
 
Spineless easily swept the Blood Moor of enemies, then pushed recklessly to the Burial Ground. He was met by the dreaded Blood Raven, who proceeded to summon corpses and shoot fiery arrows at him. Spineless had almost given up hope of victory when he finally abandoned his cowardly ways and bravely beat Blood Raven to death with a scepter.

Spineless remains alive after clearing the Stony Field and performing a daring rescue mission to save Cain from the clutches of Griswold's corpse. He's now level 15 and preparing to scour the Black Marsh in search of a fabled treasure. Or maybe just a rune or two. Either way, his journey will continue tomorrow.
 
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