The Adventures of Ruddi, the untwinked HC single-pass fury druid [by okey]

[Vildecor]

Originally posted by okey on Mar 20, 2017:

The story:

Once upon a time in god knows where Tristram, there once was a woman who would hit on men in the local pub in order to drink her ass off. One thing lead to another and she soon found herself devoured by wolves. RIP random woman. However, our story does not end there. The wolf pair which devoured the drunken little lady, soon ended up with a welcomed surprise, somehow finding themselves being a new parent of a baby ripped straight out from the womb. Many years passed and the baby who was reared by wolves mysteriously arrives in the camp in A1, and this is where our story begins.


Ruddi at the local pub, hitting on local ladies. Unfortunately for him he wasn't taught the proper way to hit on ladies.

Traveled to A2 and splattered an endangered and angry caterpillar.

Upon arriving to A3, Ruddi, having fallen unto the vices of temptations, gambled himself an ever bigger maul, a Great Maul.. which he then went to reroll until it had ED and 2 sockets and socketed a flawed skull and a 13ED jewel giving birth to the monstrosity that is this:

Notable loots so far:
- Sander's: Gloves and Boots
- Cleglaw's: Shield and Gloves
- Arctic's: Armor and Belt
- Hsaru's: Belt and Shield
- Cathan's: Ring
- Isenhart's: Sword
- Ral: 2
- The Gnasher
- Crushflange
- Gorefoot
- A handful of: El, Eld, Eth, Nef, Tir, and random assortment of gems of various grades.

Thoughts so far: Melee is a ton of clicking, and then more clicking ontop of that. I hate the little targets it's a general pain going for full area clears with all the running around and chasing I have to constantly perform. To make matters worse A3 is just a whole bunch of that factored by a power greater than 3. I wish there was a ctc level 4 corpse explosion on striking in D2, would make this whole thing go much faster.

As of this post currently at the early-mid stages of A3.

 

[Vildecor]

Cool. Good luck !!!

As for the clicking with melee ... assign your attack to RMB and use auto attack this way. Much easier.

And so our adventure continues..

Killed Mephisto, was laborious getting through A3, extremely tedious. A4 was a bit more eventful however but not as much, as I happen to get an Amn rune to drop which compensated for my Thul hf.

Funny pictures and scene depictions below.
Ruddi get's kindly invited to a gent's home, where upon they played paper rock scissors. *spoiler alert, Ruddi wins.
He who smelt it dealt it (Mephisto)
Woof! {don't pull that one on me} (Ruddi)

Ruddi gets involved in a hit and run accident scam! *spoiler alert, scammer becomes the spoiler alert.
Ooof, look at where you're going! You better give me all your pgems and hrs or I'll have you burn in hell for all of eternity! (Izual)
Woof! {F' you, I'm untwinked! I'm so poor I have to eat the corpses to make ends meet.} (Ruddi)

Ruddi attends a hammer weilding competition with the local champion.

After which he went off to a staring contest with the headhuncho of the area, a highly irradiatated porcupine.

And thus, Ruddi arrives at Harrogath.

Moments where Ruddi saw his life flashing before his eyes.
A3 shamans: I don't know what it is with them but their firebreath does extremely high amounts of damage. Being blown on for less than 2 seconds drop the life bulb to 60%.
A4 Infector pack: I figured the same thing would happen since they seem to use the same ability.. and since I am not fond of being roast wolf I did what any well minded individual would do and lure them out bit by bit. Alas I found out to no surprise that yes, even with 75 fire res, their fire breaths do a boat load of damage. Dropt my health to half more than 3 times during the span of the hit and run tactics.
A4 Diablo: There is no arguing that Lightning hose rapes. And the fact that I did not invest any points into dex didn't help matters any as well. Luckily in A2 a pair of Cleglaw gloves dropt, which helped tremendously or I think realistically I don't think I would have been able to kill Diablo as easily as I did. 70% chance to hit Diablo is not good.

Notable drops:
- Amn
- TriRes boots (15 all, surprisingly useful against Diablo)
- Helm of Duskdeep (dropt from Meph.)

Also the most notable loot from winning the staring contest:

Even more updates:

So I just took this new weapon out for a spin and this badboy is a complete devastator, though the damage is a tad less than the great maul the modifers really makes it. And then it occurred to me, I could upgrade this badboy, so I did.. but I'll let the pictures do the talking

Que in Pokemon evolution music*

Que in successful evolution music*

BUT OH NO, Ruddi doesn't meet the requirements...
HOWEVER, Larzuk owes me a socket quest and I also have a nifty rare jewel that I've been hoarding since act 2..

BAAM!!, damage increases by twofold, check out that damage!-- it went from 200-300 to 400-600! Shame I didn't get 2 sockets, otherwise I'd put an Eth to solve all my AR issues.. but beggars can't be choosers and I really did luck out on this Gale Grinder, I can foresee that it'll put anything that drop in Normal, weaponwise, to shame.

Ruddi has become a true force of nature... all that's left is to cure him of his RES and AR issues..

You can't get two sockets in a rare from Larzuk so no need to feel like you missed out.

Keep up the updates. Sound like you are enjoying it.

^ I'll try to.

Update: Finished A5 massacred the bovines and in nm A1.


Been feeling the mortality of fury druid. Missing quite a bit, and it's hard to kill the minions with the KB. Truthfully I don't know if Ruddi will make it past NM as things currently stands.

Drops from A5 and Cows:
- Death Belt (cows) only source of CBF so far. Don't know if it's worth it tbh.. hmm we'll see.
- Sigon Gloves (baal)
- Nokozu Amulet (nithalak's temple) solves most of my fire res problem.
- Sol rune (throne of destruction)

Update: Cain does not want to come out of the closet (Tristram-- ie. portal won't appear. ).

Currently at the part where I have to collect Cain. Sad as it may be, it does turns out that I do in fact need that Death belt just for the CBF alone because getting slowed and hit repeatedly makes a dead wolf pretty fast.. I also found out the importance of walking and having high defense. Things hits hard in nightmare, nearly died half a dozen times due to things hitting me in constant succession. Going to hope for a magic Cuirass so that I may craft a hit power armor. Currently Res sitting at 85/30~/50~/90.

Few unnotable uniques dropt as well as repeated Beserker set pieces.

Now the question I'm currently having now is when can I start gambling/shopping for Magic Exceptional armor? I'm currently level 49.

You can't get two sockets in a rare from Larzuk so no need to feel like you missed out.

Keep up the updates. Sound like you are enjoying it.

Oops that was meant to say "sounds like you are enjoying it."

Missing that s really changes the meaning!

^ NP.

Updates: At cleared Black Marsh, respec'd and contemplating. NM is tough.

Too many near death experiences to count. But before that I have to confess. I S&E (probably the only time I will do it too), but it was in an area which I previously cleared but bugged because Cain wouldn't come out of the closet. To make a long story, I got surrounded by the yetis and rogues by the tree had to check if scroll would drop, it didn't got surrounded, cursed and hp tanked to 90hp from full in less than 2 seconds. Yup was fun. After that I S&E then went off and cleared Tristram, progressed with they story and arrived at this point.

Respec'd base stats is 101 str and 45 dex rest in vit. I completely forgo the vine tree, imo it's totally useless, it just dies in 15 seconds of wandering off, instead I got 1 pt bear which I have to say is a real life saver, I'm surprised I didn't take it. I maxed out WW this time and left Feral Rage at 1, I miss Feral Rage 12 the life leech on it was pretty awesome. In process of maxing out Lyanropathy now. My HP is 1038 with oak not high imo. Defense could be higher.

Donning the following: noko amu, platnium ring of the sun (gives 120ar/5%ar/5light radius), random res ring, stealth gothic, duskdeep, gale grinder warclub, cleg glove, sanders boot. As it stands I am diso armor / life mods or I can certainly see my wolf dying a tragic yet comical death in the not foreseeable future.

Noteable loots:
- Shael
- Io
- extreme werewolf sadness

Updates: Arrived out outter cloister, gambled some and crafted some.

An eth General Tan Flail dropt in Pits, I'm thinking combined with that and clegs I may be able to make harder bosses more manageable assuming I can pace my weapon usage so it doesn't break. Other than that, I burned some 600k gold gambling for mesh boots, sharkskin gloves, and cuirass for rares and good base gear for crafting.. Long story short only got this outta all my trouble..

Yeah my defense isn't looking so good, I'm in dire need of some defense.

Updates: Advanced into A2 with much troubles.

Advanced through the catacombs and did the usual area clearing here and there like any good D2 sanitation worker would do and did the boogie with Addy (from hence forth I'll be calling Andarial Addy, I refuse to call her Andy, that be a male's moniker.) And with much trouble after 4 trips back to town I manage to put her down. Surprisingly the flail did not perform up to my expectations, but instead it was the cleaver use of cleg shield + gloves with the gnasher that sealed the deal. To make a long story, the reason is my AR, with cleg shield and gloves I gain a tremendous flat 500 AR which doubled my total AR, this in combination with gnasher's CB and OW really help slowly decrease her life bar. When everything was all said and done somewhere along the way I swapt back to my trusty handy dandy hammer. Sadly after giving Addy a happy ending she didn't even leave me anything notable, just a few chipped, flawed gems, and crappy rares. Regardless though, more details within pictures below.



Barged in on a gnomish study session. The instructor kindly left Ruddi a pair of Magefist, sadly Ruddi is not the brightest bulb in the shed and won't be using those.

Killed a wannabe wolf.

The Last Supper.

Snow white cuts in line into the pub, sadly the little dwarves waiting outside had to make way.

After much troubles and many trips back to Kansas, the Wicked Witch finally dies.

 

[Vildecor]

okey, GL on your journey! I ran a titan fury wolf in the Committed Tournament a couple of years back. As is your journey, it was of course untwinked. I ended up gambling a giant axe that was pretty sweet. Check it out:

The Committed Tournament

It solved some PI problems, most all stone skin monster problems and my AR problem since I had no points in dex. I'd recommend trying to find something that is fast with some ED and Fools. It really created the power of that wolf, no doubt about it. I tinkered with other weapons but nothing really ended up matching it.

^ That weapon looks juicy, it's a far cry from what I'll be expecting in the future in all honesty. I mean what're the chances of getting all those good mods in a row and on your first try no less? I could burn 3 mil and probably still wouldn't get halfway near as close as that weapon. D:

TBH I'll probably have to make Lawbringer assuming I make it that far, but I'm still hoping for a ctc amp with fools mods lol .. but as I mentioned earlier, beggars can't be choosers. hahahaha... *goes cry in a corner.

Update: Ruddi stumbled upon what seems to be a kinky bondage chamber under Lut Guhlan.

Real update: Cleared Dry Hills in its entirety and managed to do a complete overhaul of my wolf.

So I managed to hit 54 after clearing the Dry Hill area portion. After which I figured, I should resume my search for a magical cuirass so that I may cure myself of my horrendous defense ailment. Lo and behold I did just that, after which I then up'd my Duskdeep with one of my two shaels and then swapt out a few charms in with other charms as well as grabbing a cheapo light res + hp belt from Eliza since I lacked the charms to cover the light res. In short I think I'm covered as far as resistance is concerned. Anyways, more details in pictures below.

nice armor you did there sounds like a fun trip you're in ! Thanks for sharing.

^ That weapon looks juicy, it's a far cry from what I'll be expecting in the future in all honesty. I mean what're the chances of getting all those good mods in a row and on your first try no less? I could burn 3 mil and probably still wouldn't get halfway near as close as that weapon. D:

I probably misled everyone back then when I said I just tried gambling giant axes and got that one on my first ever try. I should have elaborated to say that I got that on my first try that session. I'd spent quite a lot of money trying to get good ones. I think gambling giant axes is a good place to start for a fury wolf because they have range adder of 3 (so it reaches out and hits monsters farther away) and is already relatively fast. I guess the point was that you're in an untwinked setting just like I was and that's how I was able to solve some of my AR and PI problems with this character. As always, best of luck in your journey!

^ Yeah I assumed as much, and it's getting there.. slowly very very slowly but surely.

Update: Ruddi breaks into Jerhyn's palace and coincidentally finds his hidden collection.

And that's the part I'm up to at the moment. Fought my first immune to physical in the ant tunnels, killed it after 5 minutes of holding down fury, thank god for lightning charms because amp doesn't affect it. Band montage fastforward some. And now I'm in viper temple where this beauty dropt.

ook dropt.

Now I'm happy that Riphook dropt, I'm thinking that combined with my cold charm and clegs claw I can safely tackle any of the NM bosses/annoying champion packs, the only issue is getting crushing blow because the damage on the bow is pretty low.. which I think I may be able to solve that is assuming a rattle cage and/or goblin toes drops.

Update: Arrived at the Canyon.

Ruddi's currently level 58 and swapt out his defiance merc in favor of holy freeze, notable loots that dropt: fal, shael, 3os mesh armor. Somewhere along the way I decided on making a Peace out of a mesh armor for Ruddi, the reason for this is because Ruddi is a nature lover, he's a peaceful-- alright I'll stop there. Regardless I decided on getting Peace primarily for its +2 crit mod which is equivalant to 25% deadly/critical strike, aka 1/4 of any of my hits doing 2x damage. 2x damage is nice considering that my kill rate is gradually falling. There's also the benefit of the ctc mods, missile is nice because Ruddi seems to be magnet to arrows, and being within melee and being hit repeatedly the 4% is doable, this combined with holy freeze helps with the survivability issue.. to an extent.

However, the fun part is the ctc level 15 Valkyrie that has a measly 2%. Admittingly I thought that Peace would be a waste of a mesh armor as well as a shael, but I soon found out that it wasn't the case. In fact, it's the level 15 Valkyrie that gave it its splendor. That is to say, when you know the workings of how Peace Valkyrie works the runeword actually starts to shine.

Findings regarding Peace Valkryie:

- Peace Valkyrie is a shy one, and refuses to show herself to mere mortals, he will depart to Vahlala if you go to town.
- Peace Valkyrie is a devout potion enthuasist who refuses to following people that drink potions made for mere mortals as it is beneath her,she will depart to Vahlala if you drink anything other than purple potions.
- Peace Valkyrie dislike change of states. That is to say if your orb that circles around your character (such as and not including Feral Rage) disappears she too will disappear. She will also disappear if you shapeshift in or out while she is besides you.
- Peace Valkyrie will disappear randomly when she is too far from you, like SM/SW.
- Peace Valkyrie will disappear if any of your followers dies or expires, she will not disappear if you resummon a follower.

Yup, she is one fussy follower, however this also makes her one of the most suitable for Fury druids, why you must ask? That is because:
- She has 1.5k flat hp, and this is not factoring oak sage and when she spawns, she does so with her own magic items which further augments her abilities to tank.
- Fury in conjunction with Feral Rage procs her so often it isn't funny. Which ultimately leads to an immortal moving wall which will spawn and respawn continuously so long as you are Furying. Yes, get use to hearing the deathcries of Peace Valkyrie because it'll become staple.
- Assuming you have <=2% mana leech, fury druid does not rely on potions. Just by relying on Feral Rage you shouldn't be relying on potions at all. The only time when you will require potion is if your hp drops significantly and in those cases you'll use a purple potion which coincidentally does not affect Peace Valkyrie.
- Have I mentioned that she is one hell of a tank? Because she is a much better tank than both my bear and merc, combined. By that I mean, she will constantly be your shield, she'll constantly be summoned continually right in front of you, taking a considerable burden off of you. One might say, Peace Valkyrie is a literal shield maiden.

That said I think I might stick with Peace for a considerable time, that is until I get something marginably better. And on that note, once I get a lem for treachery, I'll probably wear treachery just for fade buff then swap back to Peace.

Now then as usual, I'm still in continual search for better weapons.

yep I thought the same, treachery would be really cool since it gives you tons of resists, and leave you slots on your stuff for other stats/damages will see how your adventure turns next

Update: Ruddi finds out that the spear makes a surprisingly good shield.

True Update: Currently level 60 and managed to slip into A3. Killed Duriel with out much difficulty, swapt out my boots weapon gloves and charms so I may be able to leech mana while furying with previously mentioned Riphook. Duriel had no other recourse besides dying with openwounds and 50% slow working its magic. As far as drops is concerned, nothing good dropt sadly.

Update: Ruddi becomes a hunter.

Currently near the end of Flayer's Jungle and the journey there was pretty relaxed surprisingly. I managed to complete Hsaur's full set during my visit in Spider Cavern and as shown in above picture a druid set piece decides to grace my prescence. I knew it was Ruddi's calling with the appreance of the hunter's guise, so like any good wolfkin would do, I had Ruddi to bring the not-so-sublime headpiece (if only it was Jalala's ) to Cain to unveil. It was marvelous, well when compared to Duskdeep anyways, but yeah it was marvelous, I socketed the helm with an ort and ral to boost my elemental res up high enough so I didn't have to be burdened with carrying so many charms. And though I'll suffer a loss of a row of potion slots, I slapped on Hsaur's boots and belt which brought my AR to an astounding level, curing Ruddi of his nearsightedness.

Yeah things are going pretty well with Ruddi, however I am still hoping for a better beat stick.

Update: Ruddi will be missed.
Long story short, batteries on mouse died during battle. Champion pack came with manaburn, extrafast, and stoneskin. Suffice it to say Ruddi had to be put down. RIP Ruddi, you tried.

The takeaway from this tale: If you use a portable mouse, make sure to change it every 2 weeks or so.

Things that I could've been done differently improved upon:

AR vs Stats issues
- From playing around I found out that 1 dex is equal to 4 AR; 1 level up worth of stats for 20 AR, the trade off is so bad it's hilarious.
- By taking advantage of 3 socketed pelts and/or 4 socketed armor and placing p diamonds in them, it would alleviate AR issues, 300-700 AR issues.
- In that same venue of thought, an Eth socketed in a weapon can be the difference between needing 500 AR or not.

STR and gear requsites vs HP
- It's safe to leave STR at 125 STR to allow breathing space to wear the better axes early on. However that leaves HP severly lacking. So taking advantage of any armor with +life modifers should be considered. Belts and Armor comes frequently with such mods. However, taking Armor will sacrifice AR management mentioned previously.

Speed vs Damage vs Range
- For all intents and purposes it seems Speed is king followed by Range and then Damage.
- The mentality goes along the line of the further you hit, the less you have to chase, the faster you strike the more damage you can put in.
- This means Great Axe (-10:2, speed:range) > Giant Axe (10:3) > Mauls (10:1) > Great Maul (20:1), planning stats accordingly will save a lot hassle.

Avoid the swarm
- Your first line of defense is your geography: learn the layout of the battlefield, if you can't survey the battlefield use something summonable to scout for you. Something like a bear.

- See if there is any manaburners, if there are manaburners avoid them like the plague! Use something to distract their attention while doing hit and run tactics to whittle their numbers.

- Consider sinking points into Dire Wolves/Bear to shoulder the burden of being a punching bag.

Personal tips on crafting gear for a melee merc
- Craft a blood helm first asap, it gives merc a source of life leech as well as deadly strike.
- In that same venue, a hit power armor goes a long way for a melee merc's survivability as it's a cheap source of FHR as well as ctc frost nova if its finding itself being hit too much.
- Gamble something good with a high ED% then upgrade it through cube. (ort+amn+p.saphire)

What to say about this travel : Buy a wire mouse sad ending through, I was hoping to see you beating diablo and baal, to end it up well. Still, was pretty nice to follow this, hope you'll come back with a new story asap

^ The story is not over! It is but a prelude to the actual story, like the Hobbit if you will. Now we'll go into the next arc of the story..

Ruddi's Awakening: Rud's Deja Vu.
I think I've been here before... {Rud}

Kidding aside, I did all of A1 Normal in the past couple of hours, it was tedious, luckily we have netflix and music to address that issue.

Glad to see Ruddi back up and running.

^ Rud's up, Ruddi croaked.

Update: Currently at the Oasis, did some crafting.

So after much trouble, I relocated the gem shrines I past in the previous areas, 3 in all (2 in act 1 and 1 in sewers). As you may have or not have guessed I focused on upping a Ruby which I meticulously upped from chips. I then had Rud craft this beauty on the first hit. It can make a pretty deadly merc helm, look at those mods, save for the life leech (which doesn't matter all that much) it's a perfect roll.

Grubs on me (Duriel)

Noteable loots during this act:
Hsaur boot and Nagels (Palace Cellar)
An interesting Hammerdin rare
After arriving in A3, Rud heard rumors of Iron wolves, WOLVES MADE OF IRON, so being a skeptic that he is he decided to hire one such IRON WOLF. And that's where we're at thus far.

 

[Vildecor]

Update: See below.

And so as the appointed time slowly inches near, Rud spent his leisurely days fishing to pass the time..

And before the moment of truth he treated himself to some local cuisine, gumbo.

The moment of truth!

And so Rud prevails and after working so hard at rewriting fate, he still finds himself burning in hell.

What the-- I didn't die though, why the hell am I in Hell? {Rud}

I love reading those type of threads. Which by the way reminded me of Insane Waynes crazy adventures. He took an Amazon and Druid through the game completely naked. Both are must-reads if you find untwinked single-pass HC feats interesting.

Keep it up!

Thanks for this thread, I had fun reading it.

but I guess the important question is... did you get a wired mouse this time?

^ nope, changed the batteries though.

Updates: Rud goes to A5, details below.

And so Rud finds out in order to escape from hell's torment, one must undergo the trails of ... hell yeah, hell (you didn't think of that huh?)


Woof--Ooph let's do dis (Rud)
Woof--yup, casting away boss (Devak)
Roar--screw you, why am I always the tank? (Bear)
Wissssp--cheer up fellow, atleast you can hit back, I mean look at me I'm pretty much a lamp fixture (Spirit)

And so they past the time undergoing brutal mundane Diablo trials...

Woof-- my hands are starting to cramp up.. (Rud)
Woof*--Hey guys I think this guy is giving me the eye. (Devak)
Roar-- shut up, just do you work, I am getting bruised all over here (Bear)
Wisp-- hey look at what I found (Spirit)

And then it occurred.

*Plop*
*Rocks scatters*
Woof-- guys, I'm not dead yet, help a wolf out, guys? (Devak)

woof?--guys? (devak)
inng--that's a wrap, let's get out of here (Spirit)
wooof?--uh guys? (devak)

And so the iron wolf sadly passed away during the trials of hell, however unbeknowst to him (and probably to you as well) this was all an inception, and he's been dead the entire time. Yes, Iron wolf sadly didn't have the iron stomach to eat the gumbo. If you didn't get it at this point, this is the so called Bruse Willace-esque 6th sense plot twist.

 

[Vildecor]

Update: The journey advances!

Tourism is all the rage in Harrogath, looking at the scenery around him, Rud decides to conquer the K5 Mt Arreat cliff face.

And so Rud trudges his way up but continual conflicts arose, along the way he kept being solicited to hire sherpas/guides along the path, some berated him, while others swarmed him, it was quite arduous.

HIRRREE MY MEN, YOU WONT REGRIT Et *spit {Shenk}
woof* No thanks, I'm good {Rud}

Pick me!-- Pick me, noooo PICK ME!
Me! me! MEEE!
Me mememememem!
woof* Oh ffs {Rud}

Fed up, Rud takes a female scout as a travel guide

And here we have the natives, careful, they are very aggressive and desires to take selfies of themselves with foreigners. {Oriana}
Oh hey, there's tourists, let's go take pictures {WalkerA}
Let's do the congo line~ {WalkerB}

After much treking, Rud arrives at the base camp, where he visits the local kitchen ladies(?)

woof* Hey what's cooki--?! {Rud}
Add more bile, add more spit{???}
Mmmm not enough salt{???}
Oh hey a visitor{???}
Eww gross! {Oriana}

Rud takes it up to camp's management and things get confrontational.

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE MEDDLE HERE, NOW YOU DIE! (His ingame greeting line) {Nith}
woof* Hey HEY CHILL OUT, I'm just complaining about the food! {Rud}

One thing led to another and after a hefty amount of peaceful discussion Rud arrives at the Throne of Discussion.

That Nith person referred us to go to the "Throne of Destruction", and here we are {Oriana}
awwoo* This place seems over the top {Rud}

grrawr* What would your order be sir, madam, and bear? {wait staff}
rawrrrr* We'll take the best you got. {bear}
grawra rar* One Baal coming right up, your order will be prepared in the room ahead of you. {wait staff}

woof* So it's crabpeople? {Rud}
rawr* Dibs on the claws {bear}

rawr* That hit the spot {bear}

And so Rud earns himself the title..

Normal Summary:

Rud lv 48 - 400 HP (1k after shifted+oak)
Merc: Rogue Fire (A1) -> Combat Merc (A2) -> Cold Merc (A3,4) -> Rogue Cold (A5)
Stats: Enough for base to hit requirement to wear Gothic Axe with rest spent in Vit.
Skills: 6 WW, 3 LC, 19 Fury, 11 Oak, 3 Dire Wolf, 3 Bear, 1 Carrion
Skill progression: 6 WW -> 3 LC (enough for 3min shapeshift) -> Oak (same hp buff as LC but grants overall hp buff as well as toughens up Oak to be a damage sponge) -> Dire Wolf (corpse disposal, adequate mob dps) -> 1 Carrion (when hp is large enough to give adequate health returns) -> 3 Bear (secondary focus, tank and source of stable dps for bosses) / Fury (main focus)
Notable gear: Blood helm (10% DS), Blood gloves (5% CB), Hawkmail (cbf), TirEl Ancient Axe (good dmg and scales well with Fury, 50% OW, 7FPA), Spirit boardsword
Merc: IthIthIth Short War Bow, Wormskull (5% LL, 10 poison dmg/s)


Various thoughts on skills:
pts in oak rather than LC allowed not only my party to toughen up, it also granted oak the ability to live a surprisingly long long time before having the need to resummoned.

pts in bear and dire wolf in conjunction with oak granted me the ability to sweep through areas undetered. that is to say bear could tank 2 packs of extra fast and extra strong night lord packs while amped for a good 3 minutes.

WW and LC may seem low (in fact it actually is) but with a good pelt with +LC and later with a spirit sword for switch, it allowed me to be more flexible in regards to skill placement. tbh, you really don't need to be shapeshifted for more than 2-3 minutes, specially when playing untwinked and you're revisiting the town ever minute or so to sell off loot.

Thoughts on fighting baal:
thing about fighting baal is, it's either extremely aggreviating or laxed.. I found out the correct usage of using summons to fight baal, and that is to summon your bear behind him and initiating a pincer attack, with both bear and yourself being at opposite side, this will negate much of his annoying cold wave attack. really made the fight a breeze.

Thoughts on merc:
Early on Rogues aren't so outstanding, quickly replaced with the next act as soon as it's available, same goes with the desert merc, and left poor iron wolf resting in Diablo's bedchambers.

Later on Rogue becomes quite outstanding. Ranged dps support so she isn't suicidal, and Inner sight support, which pretty much allows even the blindest nearsighted individual to see with 20/20 clarity. Really solved all my problems in terms of AR issues, both personally and for my party.

Notable crafts:

Hey there, Okey! So, I don't keep up to date with new threads lately, but now and then, I still like to grab a look at the threads, postings, and anything D2 related here.

This though...

batteries on mouse died during battle

Oh, my, god. Most unique way of deeds I've seen, coming from an HC player myself. I feel so sorry for Ruddi's death, but at the same time, that is an amusing (still horrible!) way to go. I am SOOOO glad that you kept on with Rud though. Don't feel bad - his deeds of valour will be remembered, and developed upon!
Honestly, that makes me want to read more! This horrible, inconvenient death on pure non-D2-related luck sounds painful, and to create a new Rud. Well done, and I am really glad you learnt from Ruddi, and created Rud! That is awesome. It sounds like quite an adventure so far, so definitely keep up the posts.
With each previous incarnation, you learn more and develop experience, and that makes the story more fun. Best of luck with Desroyer Rud the Wolf, and keep them coming! Well done so far.

Condolences on the loss, but good to see you came back strong !!!

Stay safe ...

^ The second trilogy is over. Ruddi the second has sadly passed away.

And with that my brief stint at D2 again comes to a brief halt. The character died, but the story will still go on~

PS: I hate fanatic manaburners.. I hate them with a burning passion.

"Rud ? Speak to me Rud ! ..."

RIP

Sorry to hear about the deeds. Take a break, create a different character, and have fun. Best of luck with whoever you create next.

Yeah that's what I am going to do it's a shame but Rud was just a dream .

Sorry to hear about the deeds. Take a break, create a different character, and have fun. Best of luck with whoever you create next.

This.

RIP. May he be reborn as any good Druid should, as a Werebear.

Preface and forenote before we start: First and foremost I know this forum doesn't condone other 3rd party mods, but I'll be truthful on this matter. Recently I found a mod online which includes runewords and simplifies the whole muling process without the need for constant alt-tabbing. Before people get up in arms about it, I want to state that I won't be trading nor planning on doing multiplayer. Save for its additional character statistic screen and dump stats click function(ie. not needing to theoritically click 200 times on vit after respec'ing), I wasn't a fan of its additional features, so I made some adjustments to the configs of the file disabling its restat/reskill features, psuedo dclone/uber. As I see it, it's not viewed in a fair light here which is why I want to state, as with anything in life, it's not that the thing but the user's intentions that makes it either good or bad. Thank you for your understanding.

Update: And so it begins.. yet again.. ~

So I remade the druid yet again, went fully in poison creeper to max out on easy AoE damage to speed along the mind numbing grinding. I call it the ghetto version of poison nova. Noteable drop so far: Gull (Tristram, by the munchkins by Wirt).

With that said let's progress on with the neverending story..

The Adventures of Ruddi: Arc 3 - Is Ruddi still dreaming?

(In first person) I do not know anything about myself save for the fact that I have these strange visions, dreams where I was one with the land and spirit. Wait... that's not right, I do know my name, or is it my name?-- what ever the case may be, I am Ruddi.

And so after a long night's trek through the wilderness, lost, abandoned and left totally naked, our protagonist Ruddi finds himself within the camp in A1.

"And so it begins.."

(1st person) While being tasked to do mundane tasks, such as fetching wood, I felt a power dwell in me.. It may be because I have an affinity with poison as I found halocinginics on my person on the day I was found, or because the connection between these visions I have been having but I am able to call forth a poisonous vine.

Hey, get back to work, we still have a quota to meet. (Wendy)
Screw work, I can kill things with my mind! (Ruddi)
Fair point. (Wendy)

Probably it was due to his past life, but Ruddi encounter something wonderful... x2 Gem Shrines in a row

And so Ruddi feeling like it was his good day said screw it with dry wood collecting, and went forth adventuring across the wilderness. Soon after came across a town which was sent up ablaze because of reasons whether it was really set aflame or was not is up to debates (those halocingenics are still in affect and is pretty strong and may all be in the mind~)

That poor kid, even a cripple wasn't spared-- (Wendy)
Oh hey look at what this boy has on him (Ruddi)

 

[Vildecor]

And so, after beating up the local basement dweller and confiscating his goods, some sort of magical Rubix cube that was supposidly passed down through the line of the family, starts to feel the effects of poverty rubbing onto him. He decides that for all intents and purposes, maybe it'll be a good idea to get a job...

And so poor Ruddi takes up apprenticeship with the local smithee.
I know a lot about the Ancient's ... (Fara)
Yes yes, can you show me the ways? (Ruddi)
You should let me finish my introduction at least.. sheesh, heroes these days, rarely do I get the chance to even finish one paragraph of my dialogue.. (Fara)

Much later on into the playthrough and after a dozen or so attempt at crafting, I made something quite beautiful..

As Ruddi spends his time learning the engimatic ways of manipulating the mystical Rubix cube, deriving its multiple deriviations, the time quickly passed by. Days turned to nights and nights to days, the cycle repeating itself, in time Ruddi became adapt at manipulating the cube, able to work its magic.. However one thing kept bothering him and went to the local priestess in an effort to have it resolved..

It seems to me that the best medicine would be the extract of that halocinginic vine you strangely keep on you all the time.. (Akara)
Go on.. (Ruddi)
So I took the liberties and prepared it for you so you can get yourself medicated-- (Akara)
No, not viney!-- (Ruddi)
Stop! just eat it and quickly get out. I want to head back to sleep, you know it's already closing time-- good go on, eat. (Akara)
.. fine. (Ruddi)

And so... on the night of the full moon and under the influence of some extremely potent halocingenic..

Awooo* I am Ruddi (Ruddi)
Not so loud! I'm literally a couple feet away from you you damned bafoon (Akara)

And so the legend continues~

Great Bill there.

Update: Turbocharged bear, Diablo stood no chance.

In A5 now, I will do a total tally on the difficulty summary post, but so far bad drops so far.

Never lucky but keep going haha

Update: Hopefully the last time I have to do this :/

Rngesus didn't grace Ruddi in normal.

No Amn drops, bad hf (ith), craptastic rares and uniqs save the wee early game. I did manage to get 2 cathan rings for w/e reason .. baal dropt the second.

I choose to stick with Act1 Cold merc, reasoning too many males in party, need a equal gender split-- okay not really. To be honest I like the fact that she is able to cast Inner Sight which pretty is a curse that applies ITD really helpful because I will be placing points into both Dires and Bear, naturally that mean they'll have bad eye sight. The merc also is smart enough to not charge into the fray killing herself, which is a definite plus because my other mercs all killed themselves, perhaps they have an life insurance policy they aren't telling anyone about. But I digress, you might think: "Hey okey, but A1 merc rogues got craptistic dps", well that's true to an extent.. but that's why the gods of D2 made it so we can acquire better than crap items from gambling. Make a long story short, I gambled for a Double bow took me 200k but it's well worth it, why? because it's the fastest and highest dps bow available during normal. I then took my chips to reroll it to get better modifers, but to my luck no, nothing. I am still hoping for a 2 socket ctc amp bow... fingers crossed. Regardless though, the merc does 59-172 ranged damage. It's nice.

My plan for Ruddi now is to max out Dires after Fury, yes Dires and not bear, the reason for that is to get a better spread to soak up the attention, also allows the bear to tank when he gets called out.. After which I'll sink a few points into Lyncropathy and then max out Oak. Now you may be thinking, why not do the conventional path, it's because Ruddi has an innersight casting rogue on hand.

Update: Ruddi mete with troubles.

#@$%-- (Ruddi)
PS: I get the feeling that Ruddi's been getting flipped off one too many times.

Kidding aside I've arrived at Inner Cloister. Yes, I didn't die in Barracks due to raging manaburning spearwomen this time around. Now you may be wondering, how I did it? Well I had Ruddi enforce his will on his eternally faithful and undying soldiers. Why?--because Ruddi is an Alpha Wolf.

By the way that helm was from the Imbue quest reward, coincidential rewards are nice.. it's just a shame there are 2 useless skills attached.

Now on to a different topic... and that is Ruddi's drop rate. Now whether it be runes, gems, uniques, rares, magics, has all been horrible... So badly infact that by the time Ruddi reached Inner Cloister, he decided to go on a crafting spree in an effort to alter his fate...

By luck he managed to craft a better blood glove..

He then stowed away on Warriv's wagon and headed back Normal in order to get Larzuk to socket his bill, and luck would have it the bill ended up getting 2 sockets..

Being the happy little camper I was finding out that perhaps the game hasn't forsaken Ruddi just yet, I spent a bit of time doing a bit of google-fu in effort to find out the best things to socket this poor man's ribcracker. The answer was: Ias jewel/Shael and P. Skull.

And so I did.. By socketing an ias jewel (because I have better things for shaels to be used on.. ) the fpa dropt from the initial 7 to 6. The additional Pskull frees up one of Ruddi's ring slot (Manald) to serve for better purposes (Res ring most definitely).

I can't believe it's not butter! (Ruddi)

In other news, with the newly refurbished bill on hand, Ruddi melted Andarial in less than a minute. Now Ruddi can apply I can't Believe it's not Andarial on all of his bread and breaded products.

Bonus:

Ruddi is becoming a war machine gogo Ruddi !

This is turning into quite the epic saga. "The last supper" is one of the best screenies I have seen on here!!

/g

Update: Ruddi's is about to usher in an eternal eclipse. (ie. just before Lost City).

But before I begin, I want to share with all of you something I really find facinating that occurs every god forsaken time. When I was a toddler I was introduced to Legos, to make a long story short, a dear friend of mine gifted me a bucket of random assortments of pieces.. nice right?-- Wrong, that was when I found out about the phenomenon, a phenomenon I've since dubbed as "the Lego piece" phenomenon (tlpp for short). To make a long story short, it's when you wish to find that specific piece, and it's a piece you have multiples of, that you know you have but it's mixed in there in that bucket of legos but for some unknown reason or some kind strange and twisted law of heaven which prohibits it from showing up. Yet when you no longer need it anymore because of whatever reason such as you found a replacement piece or just don't need it anymore, it ironically appears right at that moment. I've then found out that tlpp it's an universal law specifically strong and quite often found in gaming.

Now fastforward to present day, today and voila it has happened once more again.. now can you imagine mfw an amn decides to grace itself upon me, then followed by a chipped topaz (which is needed to cube up into a amn) the moment I go and break open a pottery next by the amn that was lying on the ground? It went something like this. (10seconds long youtube).

And so Ruddi becomes the Peace maker (by completing the piece he left unmade since early act 5).
by goddamn time I say

And what better way to demonstrate the abilities of a Peace than being a peaceful negotiator?

Little grubs little grubs, let me in (Ruddi)
Not on the antenneas on our chinny chin chin. (grubs)

Now the funny thing about Peace is that it has the slow missile proc, and when it procs it makes all projectiles slow to a crawl. This is a nice and useful feature because by the time the projectile does land on me I'll already leeched away hp to full in order to tank the other slowly arriving barrage of spittle heading my way.

Negotiation failed.

a minute later

Good news aside.. now comes the bad news.
In an effort to combat his ever going struggle against his resistance issue, Ruddi spent all his 1.5 mil gold on jewelry and got zip and nada for it. So had to cube a fire res ring (27 res) and power shop for magic res gear (boots, belt, helm), in the end I got max fire res, and save for poison res which is at 0, 20-30~ res on the rest. I can also swap out the boots raising light res to 60 at the expense of dropping fire res to 40. Yes, Ruddi is still struggling.

Life is ruff (Ruddi)

I am enjoying the stories! Keep up the good work.

 

[Vildecor]

Update: Dodging projectiles can't be any easier when one becomes Neo.

Encountered this dozey..

What it is is a champion/fanatic/possessed/ghost pack of ogres mixed with an enchanted stoneskin, holy freeze, cursed ice skeleton..

More of a dozey..

What we have here is the Fire Eye pack mixed in with a enchanted frog pack. Both of which had manaburn, extra fast Luckily I lured them into a entrance point and picked them off otherwise things would've ended up in a very bad state, ie deeds.

Elexa becomes the bane against undead exisitence (for now atleast).

A shame on the roll, but I'm content with just having another Amn dropping at the very least... And if I think its main purpse is to kill undead I won't get too stuck into the thought of it being a lousy roll. It's all subjective, right?

And now Ruddi is lost somewhere in a desert canyon.

Quest VII: Bartender's Plight

Due to your horrible deed of dropping the bomb (horrible news) of Baal escaping, you're tasked with bartending the whole week to quell the drinking populace's plight. Nice going there, asshole.


And so Ruddi did his job with due deligence.

bark bark* 2 orders of Atma's delight for table 1 (Dire Wolf)
woof* here you go-- *sigh when will this end? (Ruddi)
here's your orders, sirs (Elexa)

Quest Completed

Real update: Advanced to A3.

Now as far as loots is concerned A Noko amu dropt from a dead guard on a pike, solves my fire res issues. Dark Clan Crusher dropt from Tal Rasha's tomb chest, it's nice because I get to save an amn since don't need to make a Spirit now to prebuff.

And lastly, Shaels..

See shaels she shaels by the sea shore.

So here's the thing, Shaels are currently a hot commodity it seems, as I've acquired half a dozen of em so far into this run. That to me is a sign from the game telling me I should make my weapon go faster. At first I was skeptical, but then after a bit of contemplating, a hel rune dropt.. That confirmed it-- apparantly Ruddi wants to become Sonic.

Voila~

Say hello to my little friend: ShaelShael

" Hi " (??)
" Hi " (ShaelShael)

By doing that, Fury was brought form 6 fpa down to 5.

3 ...
2 ..
1 .
GO !! (Ruddi)

50 seconds later...~

Awooo.. *Craving some I can't believe it's not Andarial now (Ruddi)

Update: Overcame the roadblock.

But...

In with a new one ..

Troubling development, the Ruined Fane is just as the name implies. It's an absolute death trap. Not only does it have mobs that spawn right at the entrance, there's 3 of em! And that's not even including the fact that they are all champion packs..

I didn't get a good glance but from what I experienced, both bugs and bats are mana burners and extra fast. Snakes and bugs are extra strong. Oh yeah and bats are stone skin.. That screenshot was taken half a second after I dropt in by the way.


Oh shi-- (Ruddi)

On the plus side, I didn't die.

Time to write up a deed.. (Ruddi)

Seriously though, I stopped there.

I'm contemplating on switching merc to holy freeze but doing so would mean both myself and my minions will lack the AR to hit enemies.

What do you guys suggest?

I think you'll be safer with the holy freeze merc but it will take ages to kill monsters :/ in my opinion, not a really good way to go. But if you manage to get great AR stuff, you could switch off, holy freeze is pretty good against bosses and packs.

Be safe !

Ruddi is still aparantly dreaming. Deeds while attempting to clear the fane, the super fast manaburners are just far too tenacious and the conclusion to this particular arc was all but anticlimatic.

On to the next iteration but first I'll be taking a break..

What? Oh no .

You'll need to build a War tank next time, this way they'll not even damage you. RIP and hope to see some new adventures asap

So the thing is Holy Freeze merc works up to an extent sadly however the targets will still be moving. TBH I'm starting to think A3 cold mercs are the way to go given their frequent casting of glacial blasts which freezes enemies.

Go go, Ruddi! Love the thread

EDIT: Oh..he died..man that sucks..hope you find the motivation to continue and finish this cool project..*looks for thumbs-up button*...

oh I will, it's just need to get a break otherwise the game would become stale for me. the title is called adventures of ruddi, the arcs themselves may finish, but the story itself will go on.

Ruddi Scrolls V: Blood Moor

Update: Ruddi escaped from Skyrim.

F' that place. (Ruddi)

Real update: At outer cloisters as of this posting.

Update: Midway into A2.

As per usual Andy didn't drop much of anything,

but strangly did give me a Storm Touch ring.. Is Ruddi perhaps a Stormcloak? :I

After acquiring the cube I wasted all my accumulatedd diamonds and burned a good 30 or so chips and got this..

It's not as good as the previous bill I suppose, but it works great for the merc ..still hoping for the bill though.

 

[Vildecor]

Update: ; Currently in A4.

Yay! Check out those mods! (Ruddi)
...
Hey, wait a minute... (Ruddi)

... (Me)

On the flip side (haha get it?) I did happen to craft this.

Update: Trudging along into A5.

So I decided to craft myself a pair of demon horns because dog ears isn't enough for me. Surprisingly made a keeper, suffice it to say I'm satisfied with the results.

Then with an almighty high mf% of 9 MF, or probably because Ruddi's and Diablo's demon horns resonated with eachother this dog bone decided to drop.

Sadly its roll was subpar, but beggars can't be choosers and it's better than no bonesnap at all. So in spite of things I'll run with it til something better comes along and to be honest 49% CB is pretty nice.

The reason u died is the same why I'll never play HC: too many bugs in the game. Mana burn is bugged and steals 25k plus Mana. Blizzard was told about this 13 years ago and still won't fix it. Let's not forget the other long list of known bugs. Temple vipers anyone? I've thought about doing HC in 1.09 when the game was much easier, then moving the toon forward.

okey, GL on your journey! I ran a titan fury wolf in the Committed Tournament a couple of years back. As is your journey, it was of course untwinked. I ended up gambling a giant axe that was pretty sweet. Check it out:

The Committed Tournament

It solved some PI problems, most all stone skin monster problems and my AR problem since I had no points in dex. I'd recommend trying to find something that is fast with some ED and Fools. It really created the power of that wolf, no doubt about it. I tinkered with other weapons but nothing really ended up matching it.

That big axe was definitely a sweet gamble for you! Everything you could ask for but some fire or lightning damage to boot.

Update: Trudging along into A5.

So I decided to craft myself a pair of demon horns because dog ears isn't enough for me. Surprisingly made a keeper, suffice it to say I'm satisfied with the results.

Then with an almighty high mf% of 9 MF, or probably because Ruddi's and Diablo's demon horns resonated with eachother this dog bone decided to drop.

Sadly its roll was subpar, but beggars can't be choosers and it's better than no bonesnap at all. So in spite of things I'll run with it til something better comes along and to be honest 49% CB is pretty nice.

Very nice drop for you! Upgrade that thing and you'll be pounding stuff hard, at least until you hit all the Stone Skin, PI monsters later in you journey.

Ruddi-Doo where are you?

Real update: Up to Outer Cloister

And so Ruddi passed many trials and advanced up to NM outer cloister. Noteable drops up to this point: x2 Shael, x1 Amn, x1 Sol, eth 4os partizan. Turned Bonesnap into a real Bonesnap, now Ruddi can do 7fpa furies. Sadly Sol dropt too late otherwise I would've used the sol for an insight instead since Merc's damage is horrid atm. Oh right also made a Spirit sword for prebuffing purposes.

Update: Killed a hydralisk.

Some real updates, somewhere along the way Sol decided to drop. So I went ahead and made an insight.. it's alright.

The +6 crit ensures that merc does x2 dmg 1/2 the time which I think makes up for the rather subpar ED and horrid medatation roll. Aside from that I also went and made a Peace armor as I need a source of crit% and I find the other procs pretty useful. Besides that I also maxed out my res value by means of: 1. Gambling 200k gold gambling on Circlets, ended up with a +23 res/Dim vision circlet, 2. Mass cubing up ring/amulet, ended up with a +14 res/12 pdr amulet, 3. magic light belt with 90hp/30 fire res, 4. magic boots with 30 light res.

As far as skill development is concerned Ruddi has two paths to choose from: 1. he can either be a loner and max out Fury (currently 4) 2. or be a team player and max out Grizzly (currently 1).

looks more like a roach than a hydralisk tbh

Update: Introducing the Bear

Come to me child.. (Bear)
Die you-- (Mephisto)

FOR I WILL BEAR ALL YOUR SINS. (Bear)
Fuuuu-- (Mephisto)

Kidding aside, Ruddi has surmounted his previous setback and has successfully advanced into NM A4. Things that occurred, as far as loots is concerned: Tals masked dropt from a booby-trapped stash-rock-chest, and this delightful scythe as well..

I mean sure its ED isn't good-good, but its mods makes it a keeper what with it being set into a Scythe-Polearm class. TBH it having the ctc AMP, 30IAS, as well as being in a Scythe made it a keeper. Now if only it were Ethereal, and had Fools and Jeweler's mod..

FOR I WILL BEAR ALL YOUR SINS. (Bear)
Fuuuu-- (Mephisto)

HAHAHAHA! This was wonderful!

Recent Hi-jinks: Sol stealing.

This will be a fairly large update dump so here goes..

Recently after the previous escapedee Ruddi not knowing better goes on liberating poor Sols from the denizens of Hell. Sometime into the act Ruddi even consumed the so(u)ls of his spirit summons envigorating him. :O

Yup, went from Summoner-Hybrid and went Cookie-cutter only rather than dumping pts into Dires pts went straight into Werewolf(14) after which will then be placed into Lycanpathy(5). (since Feral Rage and Fury were both maxed).

The lack of a strong wall (Dire wolves) meant I had to hide behind mercenary while hitting the enemy from the side/behind with occassional bear lures to keep the heat off mercenary so that he won't become overwhelmed. Hell forge dropt a shael and one of the mobs that spawned near Hephy dropt a cracked embossed plate, which I found pretty neat (aka too good to pass by).

Which brings an interesting point, I found a surprisingly neat trick when dealing with infestor, well it's dependant on the map layout though. Assuming you don't know what it is or how to do it.. To do it assuming you have a J hook map where the end of the J is where the seal to spawn Infestor is at, you have to open a teleport ontop of the seal, pop the seal, then lure Infestor pack into the J hook while you yourself port back into town. After which you trek all the way back. This way you can shave off the pack without getting gang banged into oblivion and back. And that is what I did when dealing with Infestor pack... which spawned with, I s**t you not, Manaburn, Extra Strong, Extra Fast. Yeah things would've gone south really really badly for Ruddi had I not found out about this trick hehe

After dealing with much of that madness it went on to dealing with Diablo..

Which died pretty fast all things considering. I gave Ruddi's armor (Peace) to Ashab and his weapon back to Insight. I then wore his Stealth in order to wear his ctc amp scythe (because I was an idiot and forgot to stat points into dex). Regardless, it went pretty smoothly all because of the combination of Slow Missile which proced off somewhere into the fight and HF aura which literally allowed Ruddi the ability to tank headfirst into Diablo's lightning hose. It was perhaps the most relaxing boss fight of this entire run TBH-- I could literally check my emails and do my bills while occassionally see Diablo spew lightning hose in frustration, all to see it be healed back up in moments-- which I did, lol

Sadly, Diablo didn't find it all too funny because he dropt jack-n-squat.

And with that Ruddi heads off into Act5 NM

 

[Vildecor]

Update: Ruddi takes up the role of the Nef and Lum.

*Sometime after socketing runes in place... *

"We are the spirits of the Nef and Lum, the Smokey Ones." (???)
"??? -- Where is this noise coming from." (Ruddi)
"You are worthy hero! ... If you are weak, the world as you know it will be lost forever. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES." (???)
"@$%@-- Bear is that you?" Ruddi

And so Ruddi unwittingly becomes part of the Smokey ones. Kidding aside, snatched a Io rune from Shenk and with that I ended up getting 3 Ios.. now the thing about Io runes is, there is literally no useful rune words / effects that can possibily perform better with what Ruddi has on hand. That being said, the next best thing to do is to cube the Io up into a more useful rune, like say an Lum, which I did. I then repaired the Embossed Plate and decided on socketing it with the cube recipe because I wanted to save the socket quest as well as there being a higher chance of it being a 2 socket (3/4) rather than a 1 socket (1/4) since it is a ilvl 1 armor, this is based on my shoddy knowledge on socketing. That said, luckily it ended up being a 2 socket. And I ended up with a very very nice piece of armor-- the def rating easily outclasses anything that's on hand in the current difficulty; all the mods are useful (well save for the light radius nonsense). The defense vs missile can be useful when paired up with slow missile making Ruddi even harder be hit, 10 energy allows Ruddi to lay more frequent bear traps, last but not all the 50 all res bonus which we all simply can't get enough of but equally more important, the easy access to a level 6 Weaken charge which by itself is cheap to recharge.

Why did I mention Weaken? Well it's because it's an overlooked modifer that I initially didn't take too much attention of and underestimated. This is mainly due because of how shapeshifter builds function, them not being able to cast while shapeshift; however, it still does not discredit the usefulness of the spell itself, which I have to say is immensely useful now that I have experience with its use. That being, Weaken as its name implies weakens a target so that they deal 1/3 less damage, which is awesome when you think about how utterly @#$%ed up Fury druids have it. They litterally have to shove their face into hordes of these baddies, all itching to skin and roast them alive, each with some wonderfully twisted variety of ways at their disposal that will allow them do just that.. We got: manaburners/drainers which literally sucks all of your mana and to kill 'em you gotta have a face off-- check, extra-hard(aka stoneskin), extra-better(aka fanatic aura), extra-fast, extra-strong variations (which are all self explanatory) --check, and last but not least LE/FE enchanted, amplifers which we all love and can't ever forget --check, check, and check.

And to kill them we simply have to face off... against them, hordes of em, yup.. nothing to it; Ruddi's got it.

But yeah, I digressed, Weaken helps level out the very unbalanced playing field, because let's face it Fury druid aren't able to do anything besides tank and spank; and becomes progressively harder to do just that when its only you on the recieving end. And there you have it.

After clearing GT, I thought of methods to make Furying more sustainable, easier to acheive. I found that its not DEFENSE that melee'ers need it's PDR. One would think it's the other way around, with items giving evasion-like properties and armors giving dmg mitigating properties. But again, I digressed, regardless what I'm trying to get at is: regardless of how much butter one has, a hot knife will still melt through that butter, but will a hot knife be able to melt through a rock? No, that would be silly. And that's the analogy I'm trying to make, that even if you have 3k hp, if the rate at which you lose it is unsustainable or become dangerously close to it, the purpose of all that becomes pointless, it's much better to drop your health by a bit in order to incur less rate of loss. Which makes things like Weaken and PDR so much more valuable.

And so I had Ruddi rearrange his gear to spot as high as possible of a PDR which is 36 PDR. In the end, it paid off, because...

Yup you guessed it, those be some very very nasty Tomb Vipers.

Unfortunately, merc isn't capable of doning such luxuries and promptly died thereafter within the invisible cloud of death, also notice my health dropt?

This entire place was a deathtrap, mind you, Tombvipers weren't the only thing Ruddi had to watch out for. There was also ghosts and flayer midgets to watchout for. There were more than two ocassions where Ruddi was swamped with zealot like ghosts as well as flayer midgets with manaburn properties.

Very notable mention goes to this:

This place just gets better and better! (Ruddi)
Smokey angry (Bear)

Yup that's right, somebody started a forestfire, champions spawned from urn and they were blessed with: extra fast, extra strong, fire aura. And the perfect way to address this situation, yes, you guessed it calling forth the power of Smokey Bear. Ie. I lured them into a corner and casting Weaken doing so dropt their invisible poison cloud dmg by 1/3 as well which essentially made me invulnerable to their ploys and trickeries.

Bear smash (Bear)

And what better way to conclude this post than with a fairy tale story.

There once was a story called: "Little Red Riding Hood", this is a similiar story..

FIN

Not really, because Ruddi makes his approach up to the summit of Mt Arreat.

Update: Ruddi immortalizes his position as a Nef and Lum

Is this how you're suppose to do the golden statue pose? (Ruddi)
Yeah, a little bit more to your left and you're good. (Korlic)
Okay, now you just got to remember our collective phrases, and to let you know, it's so we can all speak and sound in sync. (Madawc)
Ehh?-- that sounds stupid though. (Ruddi)
It's for style!-- look you don't know how dull it gets here surrounded by two men only to occassionally see a hapless passerby!(Madawc)
He's got a point you know..-- you know what they say, first impressions and all (Talic)
Mhmm (Korlic)
Arrrgh! Screw this, I'm out *unmorphs outta the statue pose* (Ruddi)
(Ancients Trio)

One thing leads to another and so Ruddi ventures once more to Baal's bedchamber..

Slaying her once more, though the process was a tad bit tedious at times (what with the low hit%)..

After leading a successful night's raid, Ruddi finally acquires his very own Conquerer's boy scouts merit badge.

Congratulations hero! Here's your badge. (Cain)

Well a little bit before that though, I had Ruddi do cows.. Cows was downright time consuming, I had to do 3 seperate sigments each 20-30 minutes a piece what with cows being extremely clumped together. Now that may be good for characters with strong AoEs, but sadly it's very difficult for melees. In order for Ruddi to cope with such an ardueous task, I had to swap around his and his merc's gear; armor exchanged, and merc's weapon swapt out to the ctc scythe.

Brown chicken brown cow~

No but seriously, Peace armor and the ctc scythe is what made doing cows humanly possible. Peace provided Ruddi with an additional tank to soak up the aggro helping split and stave off the atrociously compacted cow groups. Ctc scythe helped speed up the process of killing off the cows without having me to mutilate my fingers and possibly damaging my mouse due to the constant clicking I had to keep doing... Now without the ctc scythe I'd say I would probably have to spend 2-3x as long.. that's 2-3 hours of cow wrangling.. haha... yeah no.

Keep this going i really like it!

 

[Vildecor]

Update: Ruddi is really digging the bullsh**t that is Hell difficulty ..

Initially when progressing through A1 Ruddi had to deal with many many.... many bullsh**t encounters, but hey that's Hell Difficulty for you right? Here are a few of those..

Right into the cave, guess what?-- Cold and lightning enchanted archers that are extra fast, now what you don't see is a shaman pack a little beyond the screen with mana burn, extra fast, and extra strong. It's like the game wants Ruddi 6ft under already.

Then while ruscuing Cain, there's this asshole..

Yup this f'ing guy, but before we get started on iterating why he's an asshole some backdrop. Initially, the previous goat encounters which by themselves were note worthy too (what with them being able to manaburn, hit extra hard, and run faster than Usain Bolt), but I digress, so here Ruddi was minding his buisness trying to play it safe when this f'ing guy literally blink strikes me when I went out of shapeshift. Tanked below 50% there. Luckily, Ruddi's got Smoke to ward off most of the pain, that and Full Juvies.

Then we got this piece of van Gogh right here, I call it the Ghoats...

What we have 2 unique packs camping right out of the stairwell.. Ghosts were cold enchanted extra strong variety which Ruddi luckily killed with cooperation from Merc. Ruddi had to spend a few charges of weaken in order to paint this masterpiece..

Now speaking of ghosts... can't forget this encounter lol... No, Ruddi won't forget it even if he wants to.

... sometime after ...

Little did Ruddi know what waited for him down stairs..

Hey guy's I was late for the party, what's up? (Goat)
@#$@ (Ruddi)

But the bullsh**t goes both ways ..

So the thing here is Ruddi after spending all that time cow wrangling only to get a Fal for his troubles, Ruddi would later find himself a prestine white thresher.. coincidence? Eh, the perfect Obedience base-- Is this Ruddi's time to shine ? But the thing is the map was still uncompleted so unfortunately I had to keep at it til I reached the Cloisters. During the trek to the Cloisters I myself was struggling with the decision of whether on having Ruddi bide his time in order to make a Lawbringer.. because I only have 1 Ko on hand. I really did weigh the benefits between both RW.. In the end I succumbed to the choice of obedience.

And so after trekking all the way to Inner Cloisters I had Ruddi drop back to Lazurk, NM. I am truely glad I kept the socket quest when making the Smoke armor because now knowing Ruddi had a thresher drop, it is all worth it.

Check out the stats on the Obedience!-- It's a perfect 30 to all res!

With Obedience in hand and a couple gear rearrangement here and there (ie. pdr circlet --> blood helm) Ruddi was able to be a true force of nature as he was literally mowing down everything in sight.

This literally happened in real time.

Die mag-- (Andarial)
Rawwerraggh *death cries* (Andarial)
Crappy loot.. (Ruddi)

Things really shaping up now

And with that Ruddi heads on into Hell A2

Cool weapon. Isn't it slow though, as shapeshifters almost completely rely on weapon speed and Obedience has none?

Anyway, congrats on the progress.

Slow is subjective in the grand scheme of things. What's slower, hitting ghosts that refuses to die because you lack the nessecary damage before amp wears out forcing you to run circles around the map in order to split them up and take them out individually, or get a weapon that will quadruple your damage allowing you to kill off all the ghosts before their amp statuses wears out?

I understand the point of how the attack speed is dependant on the weapon and that's why Thresher was literally a beacon of light, like a starry lighthouse whose light pierces through even the dark stormy seas. That is to say, Thresher is the fastest elite base weapon for the polearm class with it being [-10]. That being the case, even without no additional mods to IAS, it's still capable of doing 7fpa.

There's also comes the point of, this being an untwinked run, beggars can't be choosers. The mere fact that the Obedience components decided to grace my presence in no short order says something to me. And that being the case, sure I can bide my time and hope for better things to drop; however, that something may not even drop and I'll only be forced to take the bitter pill and forced to struggle against tougher and tougher enemies, which may possibly even force me to another death. And what do I have left?-- Sadness and regrets because I was stupid enough to pass on what was offerred.

Thanks for the congratulations.

Update: Ruddi awakens the spirit of Harmony.

Psst.. psst over here! (Ko rune)
Ohh nice a Ko, now what to put this into.. (Ruddi)

Would you look at that. (Ruddi)

And so Ruddi goes on to awakening a Harmony Great Bow[-10]. It was a low roll; fortunately however, I don't need Harmony for its physical ED but rather its elemental dmg properties. I tried many ways in rearranaging my gear as around as well as gambling for rings with high DEX in order to equip it unfortunately I wasn't successful..

I did manage to roll this pretty sweet looking ring.

Now as far as notable encounters is concerned, there was a snake pack with extra fast, mana burn, and cold enchant exactly in front of the stairs of level 2 snake temple. I found out both Ruddi and myself have something very in common, we both hate snakes.

After thwarting the vile plot of the snakes (which I don't quite understand) Ruddi went back to A1 normal to respec.. Here are his specs thus far, these are without secondary buffs applied (auras and what not):

Main weapon , info pg 1, info pg 2
Secondary weapon

Note that elemental damage and AR portrayal isn't quite accurate because the screen is missing Obedience's Enchant which would add an additional 80-100~ fire damage and increase AR by 200%. That means the AR would really be in the 6k range.

Now you may be asking, why Harmony, why not make a Lawbringer? Well the thing is Ruddi isn't lucky in that regards towards making that.. Lem hasn't dropt nor had any suitable war/divine/caddy scepter bases. That being said, Ruddi is reaching the point where he will constantly be encountering enemies with physical immunity and the lack of a better method of addressing this problem would ultimately become a detriment to his (and my own) wellbeing (sanity, time, etc.)

As far as elemental damage is concerned, Harmony in combination with the Obedience Enchant as well as few charms in inventory easily allows Ruddi to dish out 600~ dmg per swipe, and with that being the case Ruddi shouldn't have much difficulty when dealing with those pesky double physical immune ghosts or insect clouds..

Update: Ruddi & Co. plays Monopoly

Try to use your imagination because I'm too lazy to photoshop.

Real update: Finished a very long and drawn out game of tag in Arcane Sanctum. I hate ghosts, it's not that they are physical immune, nor is it that they are manaburners, but the fact that they are a combination of the two. In order to split them up I had to have Ruddi run laps around the map.. Each of the directions took 30 minutes each.. I'm really hurting for a Lawbringer and bring some much needed justice into this picture soon or god save my/Ruddi's soul.

Half way into the first direction, I found out much to my dismay that my merc was biting the bullet a bit too much for my liking.. so I went and rummage around my stash to find the highest eth armor I had on hand. That armor being an eth balrog skin. I then went and eth bug it (topaz+tal+thul) which boosted its overrall defense to the 1k margin. I then socketted runes for Fort minus the Dol and Lo which I don't have. This in affect boosted my merc's defense by twice its initial value in affect allowing him the ability to dodge enough hits without croaking too quickly.

PS: I'm digging the Harmony, love the vigor aura and ability to actually kill physical immunes, only bad thing is the elemental dmg isn't as good as I hoped for, if the minimum damage was higher or overall range of the dmg was boosted some I would like it.. but as for now I'm just having Ruddi wack physical immunes w/ Harmony until Ashab procs his amplify then switch back to Obedience.

Good job finishing the heavy PI areas of Act II.

Let's hope Tal Rasha's Tomb don't have too many ghosts!

 

[Vildecor]

^ I love all the jinx I keep recieving. Would you believe it if I told you that not only did I get ghosts, I got many PI enchanted unique packs?

Update: Ruddi wishes to be Me-Ship'd (really his name is that if you replace the "F") Off to Act 3.

I'll skip to the point and just jump into the nitty gritty because much of what I'll be complaining about is pretty much the same thing I've been complaining about for a while now and that is: Ghosts.. those damn SOBs

They are @#$%ing everywhere.

No joke, in more than half the tomb, there is 4 or more packs of ghosts, all of which (being ghosts) being assholes (because that's what ghosts do... being assholes-- going boo in your face, and f'ing up your home and all).. Now if ghosts weren't bad enough, there were more than enough times where there would be bugs spawning with physical immune/mana burn or extrafast/strong as well..

A perfect example and highlight goes to this...

Yup all happened in the same tomb all in extremely close proximity of each other. It is a miracle how I/Ruddi was able to pull this off lol.

Another contender for second place goes to this where the ghost was super, unnaturally fast (like they had 100 frw with vigor added on top) the ghost was faster than me.. lol.

Regardless of having to dealing with the over abundance of physical immune baddies, Ruddi had to grit and bare with it. And so Ruddi (and myself) didi..

Initially I had the merc the ctc amp scythe but it got too bothersome having to continually chug down potions when dealing with ghosts.. so I had to rely on the partizan unfortunately the dmg on that partizan was for lack of better words lacking. Luckily however an eth 4 os thresher dropt which I readily made another insight out of. Overall, it turned out a little above average. Compare: New , Old Insight

Later on along the way we met up with Ancient Kaa which luckily was preoccupied with the bear to be bothered to use his over powered specs on Ruddi and the merc.

Had merc switch back to the ctc amp scythe when dealing with Duriel. And just like Andarial Duriel went down just as fast (well not quite because Ruddi missed quite a few swings).

Yup I suffered alright, and just to get those poor drops no less. Got to love the game this game is playing on me.. sometimes I wonder if there's some higher order being f'ing with game just because he/she/it has nothing better to do lol.

But regardless Ruddi made pass this hurdle... now off into exploding doll wonderland.. quite possible the hardest act in this play through..

Update: Flayers really wants to give Ruddi the bone.

But wait there's more!

So in this episode, Ruddi returns back to nature in A3 .. but as always, nature is playing hard to get. Luckily for Ruddi, the map that rolled was a linear path with no branching, so that's a plus.

Wonderful encounters in the order they occured: 1 - Itty bitty spider that hates the water spout-- not only was he manaburning away he hits hard and leave an annoying killer posion dmg /s. 2 - Casper the lonely ghost-- this is immune to amp and hits slows Ruddi down not to mention that the spectral hit made him hit pretty hard as well.. 3 - Casper the stalking ghost-- his back but this time he is FE/LE/Fanataism enchanted, Ruddi had to face tank not only his attacks which dealt 150-200dmg per hit, but his retalitory charged bolts which did just as much, sometimes even more. PS: I had to split him away from the mobs otherwise it would be much too painful to kill him. 4 - Casper the really annoying stalking ghost -- his back, this time LE/Might/Stoneskin enchanted, meaning amp won't work on him, luckily for Ruddi he proc'd his CS 4 times in a row without out having being hit allowing him to kill him in no short amount of time. 5 - Stormtree -- his mods always makes him fun to deal with, more so when he gotten weaken otherwise I think the merc wouldn't have survived. 6 - and lastly, Sabrina the drop out witch -- I had Ruddi approach her group from a chokepoint at the bottom then casted Weaken on the group letting Ruddi and co have easy pickings.

Now as far as drops is concerned: Only thing noteable that dropt was a Dol rune and some interesting Javazon Rares. I socketted the Dol into the mercs armor, with luck I might be able to get a Lo?-- I may be pushing it on that one but here's to hoping.

Latest thoughts: As far as progression and difficulty is concerned Act 3 was contrary to what I anticipated. Initially I was thinking it would be as hard, if not harder than Act 2. But then again Act 2 had an unnaturally large amounts of Physical Immunes to deal with that not only were painful to deal because they manaburned as well, but due to they the way they stacked upon each other making them act like a miniboss of sort (in fact each ghost group was dozens times more harder to deal with than dealing with the boss).

I am hoping to acquire a Lawbringer, once I get that I think the build is done in regards with items.. Perhaps maybe get another eth armor to ebug and socket junk jewels into them?

Anyways with that Ruddi is about to enter the sewers from Kurast Bazaar.

Update: Ruddy gets dog crap drops (nothing new here) from Mephy.

Details up to this point: Stoneskin and manaburn seemed to be the latest trend for most of the later parts of Act 3.. See: [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] , [10] , and many more which I didn't bother taking screen shot of
When tackling the six temples I took Murphy's Law into consideration.. my standard procedure before heading under was to heal up, summon everything, then have Weaken toggled which I had Ruddi then spammed regardless of whose around. It paid off in the end because two of the six temples were literal death traps; Forgotten Reliquary - magical inclined but since the skeles were in close proximity to Ruddi they did melee as well. Forgotten Temple - See those snakes?-- they are fast manaburners with stoneskins.. and being snakes they love to continually use charge which deals a lot of damage. Regardless of it sounding like a good time, this could've easily been case of deeds had Ruddi not relied on Weaken.

Taking on the council was much easier in comparison. I had Ruddi make use of Bear summons and Vigor aura to fish out and killing 1-2 council members at a time. Luckily for me/Ruddi there were no physical immunes. See: [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]

Underestimated the power of ogres and was forced under 40% more than x4-5 during the encounter. Dealing with one isn't bad, but being surrounded by 2 or more would probably lead to easy deeds (as seen with this encounter.. them being a champion packs didn't help any )

Loots that dropt during this segment: IK Maul (socketed a Shael in it, waiting for a Hel to drop requirements in it) , 3os Wyrmhide , Amn rune , Shael rune , Dol rune , Eth Champion Axe.

And with that Ruddi lv 82 Conqueror goes on to enjoy some freshly roasted marshmellows in Act 4..

Update: Ruddi RPs with a Megademon.

The trek through Hell was managable by taking the monsters two or three at a time. That is to say, the Megademons when they land hits hit pretty hard, Burning souls, or mainly the unique packs of Burning souls, hits extremely hard and their application of chill is applied on their lightning, and unique Damned (those demons that spit lightning balls) hit hard (on that note, Ruddi was fortunately enough to come across a conviction pack, getting hit by lightning took 3-400 hp easily).

Noteable encounters: As mentioned in the intro, a unique Megademon fancied himself as balrog..--spoiler alert he dies . Encounter this work of art, its spawn which it spawned a good half a dozen had its property, this is everything Ruddi hates in an unique.

Izual fell fast once he was primered with a layer of amplify. Aside from coincidentally leveling up to 83 after clearing the City of Damn, nothing worth mentioning happened.

Now as far as drops is concerned: Rusthandle Grand Scepter , Shael , Amn , Lum dropt , 3os 400def Duskshroud , 450 plain Duskshroud .

Once Ruddi arrived and acquired River WP, I had Ruddi reset the map (A1's wp was situated near Akara) so that I may power shop a Jeweler's Armor of Amacae. After spending a good 20 minutes I ended up getting Ruddi a Jeweler's Full Plate of Amacae (14 PDR) which I then had Ruddi socket 4 more Sols into. I then transferred the armor onto the merc in order to alleviate some of his burden as a punching bag, which unfortunately is getting harder on him.

With that Ruddi is now at the entrance to River of Fire.

What an excellent thread, I hope Ruddi makes it to Baal!

Congratulations on that armor! Damage reduction is sweet.

^ yup pdr sure is sweet. I'm quite satisfied now that merc isn't built like straw.

Update: Ruddi comes to a startling conclusion as to why the forces of light are so useless aka won't fight against Hell.

Uh so why won't you guys fight? (Ruddi)
Look at me, do you see my gear, or rather what is missing? (Hadriel)
Yes..-- (Ruddi)
Exactly,. see the thing is we being holy angels, being good and all weren't authorized and commissioned swords. We are only made to DEFEND, now get moving citizen, you got work to do, and I got traffic to direct.
Huh? there's no one here-- (Ruddi)
Oh right, you can't see things from a multiversal spectrum, since you're a mortal, *grumble*damn mortals *grumble*.. well see this past few minutes a Necro, two Barbs, and an amazon with no gear just past by *facepalms.. (Hadriel)
Woof?-- (Ruddi)
You don't know what I've seen in these past 17 years-- along you go. (Hadriel)

And so... Ruddi went, cue in music

[1] -> [2] -> [3] -> [4] -> [5] -> [6] -> [7] -> [8] -> [9] -> [10] -> [11] -> need more music? -> [12] -> [13] -> [14] -> [15] -> [16] -> [17] -> [18] -> [19]

HEY YOU FORGOT ABOUT TO MENTION YOUR VISIT THROUGH THE RIVER(Hephy)
shut up, no one likes you (Ruddi)
(Hephy)
maybe if you gave me something better than a Lum.. but yeah no. (Ruddi)

And so Ruddi makes his way into A5.

Update: Let The Bodies Hit the Floor.. (Ruddi)
Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.. (Abominable 1)
Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.. (Abominable 2)
Let the Bodies .. (Abominable 3)
..Hit the .. (Abominable 4)
Floooooooooooooooorrrrr... (Barbarian)

Made Shenk pray to his new lord and saviour, Ruddi. Afterwhich, crusaded along the long trodden path all til the base of Mt Arreat (aka Frozen Tundra WP). Killed a bunch of uniques along the way which you may view from this album since linking all the multitude of picture will be time consuming.. See album here(album arranged from latest latest to earliest). Coincidentally leveled to 84 after clearing and reaching Frozen Tundra WP.

Sometime along the way I swapt my headgear (10DS Bloodhelm) in favor for my 24 pdr circlet, reason being I wasn't taking hits as well as I'd hope. In short I bumped my PDR up to 60 at the expense of 10% double dmg. I think it's worth it, better than dying, and I can laugh at ranged damage (so long as I'm not under amp or monsters aren't fana/might'd)

Now as far as notable mishaps/difficulties is concerned: Ruddi encountered a newly found monstrousity that is Blood Lords. These fellas are equally as bad as ghosts, why?-- because they are physical immune with Frenzy, in short they pack a wallop even when taking them on individually. Now make these uniques and its fun all around, and to make it even better, they seem to proliferate in cold icy tunnels. A notable example goes to..

.. figure A, meet ****, look at his mods, he pretty much came straight out of a slasher film. One moment he's across the room staring at you, and the next moment when you're on the phone he comes and straight up ports behind your back, manaburning you and defiling you. This guy literally chased me from one end of the map to the other (he dropt a Crown of Theives for what its worth)
But if you think that wasn't enough, here's figure B, meet Tom, yes he's ****'s cousin, and don't let his lack of physical immune fool you because the moment I dropt down under, Tom and Co. (some 9 or so) flooded Ruddi. Ruddi to run laps in an enclosed space while abusing line of sight and town porting in order to kill all of them... but there's more..
Because there's figure C, meet Harry, Tom's friend, this asshole is FE/LE enchanted and stoneskin to boot, fun all around.

Aside from that, Casper and the gang decided to play tag and hide-n-go-seek with Ruddi, it was a long and drawn out experience.

And with that Ruddi, lvl 84 is about to invade Nilathak's home.

Update: Ruddi witnesses the first Archon user.

So quick update, as you may have guessed, yes I killed Nihlathak. But first I must confess, right after I went down to the first level of the temple, I encountered a photogenic unique monster. My printscreen button bugged out while trying to SS the beauty (not a drop dead beauty ofcourse because Ruddi could've easily killed him/her/it) forced Ruddi to S&E because the bug was Cursed/Extra Strong/Conviction and ended up getting surrounded trying to get a screenshot of its profile. Afterwards I remapped printscreen to middle mouse button (didn't know you could remap printscreen to a different key, should've done that at the the start of this journal, would've saved a lot of unnessecary NDE.) Long story short, I nearly pulled a Steve Irwin (bless his soul). For more natural nihlthak's temple wild life encounters see album here.

Now for some real updates, I spent 9/10 of my savings trying to gamble a jeweler's circlet of ever lasting life, but alas I have no luck. For what its worth I happen to get a +3 trap sin circlet. I then spent all of my perfect emeralds trying to craft a worth while safety ring and settled with this. It's not good but, definitely not bad. Because I didn't get the Jeweler's Circlet of Ever Lasting Life, I succombed and socketed my 24 PDR circlet and ended up with 2 sockets, which I then socketed my last remaining Sol and a Pruby. Used my final respec (Hell Akara) and further fine tuned my stats to raise my maximium HP while placing points into Oak Sage rather than HoW this time around.

The end final stats goes as follow: char pg1 / pg2 / pg3
Note, this was all done before going down to kill Nihlathak.

Now the beauty of having this set up is, using Frenzy Taurs as standard (since those fellas pack the highest average wallop), I can tank 100~ hits while morphed and 50~ hits while unmorphed. Why do I mentioned morphed and unmorphed?-- because on the ofchance I have to cast weaken I'll have to unmorph, and in that case I'll be more vulnerable; however, now with added PDR and more focus on health department, I/Ruddi shouldn't have to worry about dying in 2-3 hits unmorphed (rather I/Ruddi will die in 4-6 hits! ). Things you can do with high PDR: shower and bath in tomb viper's poison spears, hell scubus star attack, flayers darts, hedgehogs quills, in short laugh straight in death's face. Kidding aside, I am hoping that with this set up I shouldn't have much problem when tackling Hell Ancients.

Rather now the issue comes to how I'm going to keep my merc alive, I can foresee a high chance of it dying. Should that be the case I'm thinking of hiring a Rogue Merc, outfitting it her out with PDR gear and Harmony/ctc amp bow. Even then I'm still dreading the fact that it still isn't enough..

And with that Ruddi is at Frozen Tundra WP.

Update: Ruddi becomes the Highlander.

Waltz through entirety of Arreat and first half of WS without much difficulty. Luck would have it that I caught the Ancients Trio with their pants down as their mods were quite hospitable to say the least. That or Ruddi/I have far too much PDR to spare since Ancient's bearly dealt any damage to Ruddi. My overlying strategy revolved around lowering the Ancient's damage as much as possible followed by taking out the ancients in the order of percieved threat. That is to say, I positioned myself near Korlic (because I figure his Leap Attack, should it critical strikes, would do the highest damage) so that he wouldn't Leap Attack Ruddi. After intiating the fight, I had Ruddi immediately cast Weaken over the Trio, this would effectively making him neigh impervious to damage (each of their hits did dmg in the single digit to low 20s range) for a good 25 seconds. And while periodically resummoning Oak Sage and Bear over Madawc to mitigate further damage (since Talic is harder to pin down due to his whirlwinding tendency), I had Ruddi take out the Ancients, with leaper first, whirlwinder second, and thrower last, this was based off of percieved theoritical threat (ie. Korlic's Leap Attack+Critical Strike vs Madawc's Double Throw+Critical Strike). I only had to use one HP potion during the fight, and that was because I was paranoid that Ruddi's merc would croak (42 PDR+Weaken says otherwise). In short, though I am not complaining, the Ancient's fight was quite laughable.

Afterwards Ruddi steamrolled through the first half of World Stone. Surpisingly the hardest encounter of this segment would not go to the Ancients, but this atrocity. in all honesty, I think this guy stole the Ancient's divinity, why?-- Because this guy was neigh invincible, what with being blessed with obscene health regeneration, physical immunity, and having an atrociously high magic resistance (which isn't listed), and not even including the fact that each of his hits (which he dishes out far too quickly) dealt damage in the hundreds, also manaburns! But with much preservarance, and a good dozen mana potion support from Anya(notice the belt-- yeah, had to port back to town 3 times to refil on manapotions), Ruddi was able to surmount this obstacle.

And with that Ruddi, nearly 85, is currently at WS2 WP

 

[Vildecor]

Update: After multiple incarnation, Ruddi lv85 becomes a Guardian

The trek to the throne wasn't too difficult as none of the monsters spawned physical immunes, well besides this asshole. On arrival to the throne, had to deal with stygian dolls, which to be honest wasn't all that bad as I let my merc deal with it while I wack them on the side here and there.

Look at me, I'm an Act 2 Bone Merc (Fester)
Don't be taking my job now (Ahsab)

Aside from that, had to deal with a few legions worth of oblivion knights, which did the most damage to the group, had to split their attention with bear/spirit otherwise Ruddi and Ashab's life would tank far too quickly. Their bonespirits/spells does quite a bit of damage.

Since the map was littered with stygian dolls, I had Ruddi lure them to the outside of throne room because 1. I find fighting in throne room annoying, what with having to contend with Baal's decripfy, and 2. I don't want 2nd wave of undead to ressurect exploders on Ruddi while fighting them.

Similarly so, save for the first 2 waves, I had Ruddi lure Baal's minion outside the throne room and took them out 1-2 minion at a time.

The fight with Baal wasn't all too aggreviating, scratch that, it was. Baal kept porting awhile and spawning his tentacles, to make matters worse, he didn't drop anything of worth..

the plottwist: Ruddi was but a figment of Charsi's imagination.

Sigh.. what will Ruddi do next? (Charsi)
What I'm just an imaginary friend now D:? (Ruddi)
There there, it could be worse (Ahsab)

Lessons learned through this playthrough:

Unless you want to pull a Steve Irwin (bless his soul). Remap your Printscreen button to something that doesn't conflict with your potion hotkey hand...: In my case, I remapped it to middle mouse button.

PDR is important (and sadly sorely underestimated): That is to say, enemies in n/nm/hell do on average 25/45/65~ physical dmg, having a higher flat PDR can be in most cases be more effective than an increased health pool. In short, similarly to RES ie Elemental resistance, PDR should be viewed as Physical Resistance. Having a high RES is mandatory, no good can spell from having a low RES unless you wish to see yourself fried, similarly so is high PDR mandatory, unless you wish to see your hero become mashed potatoes.

Stack up the PDR if you plan on living through Nilhathak's Temple: That is to say, gamble/look for circlets with 20-25 PDR. Cube/gamble/look for amulets with 20-25 PDR. You need a good 40/60~ PDR to live through the Tombviper's Poison Tail Spear.

Invest time to buy a Jeweler's Armor of Amicae: The flat PDR will serve your merc far better than anything else, yes I dare say even Treachery.

Stock up on Sol runes: You'll probably going to need a good 8 or so for merc's PDR armor, your own PDR circlet, and your NM and Hell Insights.

A2+Insight is a godsend for Melee: That is to say, during the later parts of NM and entirety of Hell because of manaburners abound, unless you wish to stick to normal attacks/ chugging 30k+ worth of manapotions every 5 minutes, having a source of Meditation aura will become a true boon to your/your hero's sanity.

Gambling is bad mmk?: Don't do it, unless you really really have to.. because it's a double edged sword. Remember, the general saying in gambling "the house always wins."

Movement speed is wonderful: For melee, nothing is better than getting swarmed because you lack the movement speed to outrun certain encounters, ie. encountering holy freeze, extra fast, fanatic aura unique monsters/frenzy taurs. Harmony works wonders in this department.

Weaken is your friend: Heading down into a deathtrap?-- don't forget to use Weaken. About to do Ancients?-- don't forget to use Weaken. Weaken can be seen as an PDR version of Salvation aura, ie. it will strengthen your Physical Resistance, see PDR is important for more.

Craft recipe is awesome: Depending on your needs-- Need physical resistance? Go with safety: Safety glove, belt, boot, rings. Need more damage?-- Go with blood: Blood helm(deadly strike), gloves(crushing blow), belt(open wounds). Early on, blood items would serve you more, whereas later on safety items will prove better.

Huuuge congratulations!

This is quite the dedication, thanks for sharing the story of Ruddi.

I agree about all your conclusions except perhaps prioritizing safety gear over blood gear late in the game. While I adore PDR the presence of the open wounds and crushing blow from blood belt and gloves can mean all the difference in the world in some cases. But it does of course depend on the character. It's a real shame that safety helms, armor and amulets are so overshadowed by magical PDR gear.

Gratz with the guardian! Very fun read It's always fun to play untwinked, trying to make use of those low end rune words, and crafting helms and gloves.