I uber'd! Thank you so much to everyone who helped me in this thread. This site is the best and you have all been so very helpful.
I started with 6 keysets and ended with 1 torch and 3 more organs.
Using treachery worked really well. It took a few tries to get it all worked out and I was too shy to trust fade would last long enough so I restarted it between each portal. Is fade really only necessary for Meph? I don't need to worry about it for mini-ubers? With treachery my res hits 300 now that I have the 4-pdiamond royal shield.
My first portal was to Lilith. Using zeal and fanatacism I got through the monsters without too much difficulty. My red life orb went from low to full many times, but I didn't die (there). Eventually I found Lilith, switched to smite, and took her out reasonably fast... got the horn and moved on.
Next was Izzy. I realized that you can spend a lot of time clearing the monsters on the way to Izzy and I found that you can just run past most of them. So that's what I did and stopped to clear monster blockages as I was concerned that I may run into the boss next to the big pack and get them all on me. When I found Izzy there were still about 4-5 of those little teleporting fire lobbing imps. I smited Izzy until he was almost dead. I was eager to switch to zeal upon his death to take out the imps and made a big rookie mistake: I totally underestimated how much more of a beating he needed to die and inexplicably expected him to be dead when he was down to like his last sliver. So I prematurely diverted my attention and Izzy brought me down. I went back through the portal and was able to run all the way back around monsters and Izzy to get my corpse and finished Izzy off quickly. Learning experience.
Third was of course Duriel. He was right by the portal where I smited him and killed him quickly. From this run I learned to move the portal in Harrogath. I kept the cube in my stash and just opened in right from the stash to transmute the keys. The second portal was no problem as it seemed to completely replace the first. However, on the third go I realized that the portals were overlaid, not replaced. With some careful mouse placement I was able to get to the third portal, although the one in front remained the second portal. After this, I learned to take the cube out of the stash to transmute so the portals don't stack on top of each other.
OK I gotta say this went strangely. I entered the portal to tristram and of course it looked like regular old tristram but without all the usual characters. I have read of people going to the top and then back to the bottom, so I tried that and no one came out so I didn't understand that plan at all. I went back to the bottom because that just felt right. There were some pretty tough minions, but I was able to work through most of them including skeletons and pit lords. Then Meph appeared so I switched to smite and worked on him in the midst of some remaining minions. This is where it gets weird. I killed Meph but was still surrounded by a lot of monsters when Diablo came out. I managed to work my way to Diablo and smited him till he was dead which wasn't too painful except that it was a big mad fighting frenzy. After some extended fighting, the area was finally somewhat clear. Weird part: on the ground was the charm and standard of heroes. I never saw Baal! Did he somehow join the fight and I killed him without even recognizing him? Hardly seems possible, but there you are. After grabbing the torch I decided to finish off the 3 remaining night lords and they took almost forever. After the first one went down the others scattered, so killing each one individually wasn't so bad, but as a pack those 3 were amazingly resilient.
When I worked through the second keyset, Duriel was nowhere near the portal and I had a hard job finding him. The mosquito swarms are nearly unstoppable. They were the first monsters I found in the desert and 3 swarms teemed around me. I fought with zeal successfully, but it took a surprisingly long time. After that I just ran around looking for Duriel.
I think I got IM'd doing Izzy as the map this time was full of oblivion knights and I died on one hit with the first group. Same plan as before, run past most monsters but take out the thick groups. I was able to get to Izzy without any other monsters near him and I smited him to completion.
Lilith was my third portal this time and she was literally in the last place I looked. It is amazing how fast and aggressively she attacks once you find her. I stopped there and will go to tristram with my new organs today
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So, Standard of Heroes... someone once told me that carrying it gives an experience boost, but many say that it does nothing. Do people keep them? It seems a shame to throw it away, but space is so precious.
