Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011
I´ve played Binks' penultimate session - Nihlathak's Temple areas. Going with /players 3 now.
The zombie garden was quite scary. It was hard to keep the merc's life up, while at the same time trying to be left alone (with footwork and Grizzly summoning). Hurricane does nothing against the CI undead, but Tornado did a good job once I had a situation stable enough to use it.
First big level had Frenzytaurs, beetles and apes (all of them LI). An early Cursed bullhead pack made me go another way. I met one minion (with obvious mana burn ability) from another Frenzytaur pack. Managed to avoid the rest of that pack as well, for the moment. Much easier to fight them later, when you have the space to string them out.
(BTW, that Cursed bosspack was also Extra Strong (ouch!), so it was great that I managed to get out of their sight before I had any secure ground to fall back on!)
Second level had Flayer blowdarters, goats and Spawners. Spawners are CI, so lots of Tornado use against them. Easy level overall.
Third level had ghosts, Flayer Shamans and (gulp!) Tomb Vipers. I switched my fabulous 'Druid skills and Teleport ammy' for an Amulet of Life Everlasting (DR by 24). But my main way of defending against the vipers was to avoid moving along the poison trails (including about 10s after each one of them) and only rarely sideways through the trails. I also used corners and aggressive Grizzly recasts to cut down the number of poison shots they would fire. Merc died about 7 times, but Binks was never in real danger. The Evil Urn spawned Vipers :scared: - good thing I had prepared an escape TP right by the urn.
Nihlathak was FE + MR. It took me a while to find a Tornado path that would hit him (I wanted some distance because of the FE thing), but once I did he was soon toast.
During this session, I found Lem + Io runes. So now I actually have the runes for Delirium, a RW I have never made.
I really want to try it out (for the merc) so I have also muled in a 'socket helm kit', in case a suitable helm drops.
The game crashed the session before this, after I had cleared about 90% of Ancients' Way. I am not sure how much of it I want to clear out now to consider myself as having completed it, but the Icy Cellar is still left to do in any case. It may get really dicey to move around here without killing stuff, but my Teleport amulet should help a lot for the safety.
[Highlight]Binks the Wind Druid, level 86.7, Hell Ancients' Way/Icy Cellar next.[/Highlight]
) That`s going to be a major problem for your full clear style as I wouldn`t be surprised if you encounter a Cold Enchanted Ghost or something like that. 
) third power)
