Re: The Certain Death Tournament.
Super-long TheAragorn update ahead. For those of you who wish to skip reading the thesis: TheAragorn has completed a good many deeds of valor. Those deeds include killing Mephisto and Diablo. So he's currently chilling in Harragoth.
So on with the meaty part. TheAragorn tore out of Kurast like a Dark Familiar out of the City of the Damned. Holy Shock had finally reached the point where it was hitting for more damage over time than Holy Freeze, so he swapped to that except against certain particularly nasty opponents, and he was once again two- or three-shotting most mobs on /p8. The Spider Forest had that incredibly annoying and stupid layout in which the Great Marsh is WAAAAAAY on the other end from the entrance to the Flayer Jungle, with the waypoint smack in the middle and closer to Kurast than either exit. Nevertheless, he cleared the Great Marsh and, sure as shooting, Gloams sprang forth in all their infernal glory. Even with only 24% lightning resist, though, they were surprisingly tame...but this is only Normal. Hazade killed most everything melee while TheAragorn namelocked on blowdart-spitters or Flayer Shaman, wading through the hordes indiscriminately until he could take down the target.
A couple of uniques were spat up in the Marsh but aside from that nothing--and I do mean NOTHING--of any real interest dropped for the remainder of Act 3. TheAragorn burned through at least half a million gold before finally getting his hands on a Static Circlet of Luck, which, coupled with Holy Shock, pumped his damage to even more obscene heights.
There were a couple of stairtraps in the abandoned temples but, well, they were devastated so fast they weren't worth a screenshot. Spiders, Flesh Hunters, Blood Divers, Dark Lords...didn't matter. Namelock and kill while the merc tanks. Same with the Council, with a tiny bit of dancing involved for the hydras.
Holy Shock did pose problems for me, though. Come the Flayer Dungeon/Swampy Put/Durance, the last thing I wanted was to get exploded on by those <expletive deleted> dolls, and Holy Shock, while it couldn't one-shot-pop them,
could knock off a good half their life, while the merc would merrily skewer the last bit away. It was almost deeds a few times when I crept around a corner only to have three or four of them waiting for me. After the second time, I switched to Holy Freeze while exploring those places and swapped to Shock for Preserved Dead, Maulers, etc.
Remember how Duriel gave up the Angelic Sickle, which is not of much use to a Ranger like TheAragorn?
Yep. The RNG must be taking advice from ZAngband.
And here's Mephisto. TheAragorn switched back to Holy Freeze to help the merc survive. Had a NDE when Meph released his Charged Bolt spam and a goodly number of them wiggled around the merc, knocking off 2/3 of TheAragorn's life. Eep.
Nevertheless, things ended the way I foresaw. The pike on the ground was a real doozy of a find...enhanced damage, added cold damage and 5% chance to cast Amplify Damage. I traded the old 4% leech brandistock for it in a heartbeat. The rest was crap, including the circlet.
I love Act 4 in Normal. The XP shoots through the roof, the monsters are not difficult
at all, the drops noticeably improve, the Hellforge teases with its offering of runes, and the place is so very nostalgic. So TheAragorn killed and killed and killed. Namelock the Flesh Beasts, thereby killing a good half of the babies. Namelock the Abyss Knights, thereby pelting Maw Fiends or Doom Knights or Pit Fiends and eventually hammering a path through to victory.
Namelock this guy and chortle as Amplify Damage goes off again and again and again and Prayer keeps everyone unscathed.
The River of Flame was easy beyond words. Pit Fiends, Maw Fiends, Abyss Knights. No Urdars, no Grotesques, the merc took the damage and TheAragorn did the killing.
A slightly interesting find dropped near the Hellforge, and
Hephasto had a fun little aura. Too bad his nearby Abyss Knight friends were annihilated, else they maybe could've put a dent into the merc's health bar. The
forge drops were a mite disappointing, though I'll take any non-Eld rune I can scrape up. I hate Elds.
On into the Sanctum! During the stretch of the River after the waypoint, I collected every. single. healing potion. that dropped because I knew I would have to keep a steady stream flowing into the merc for the Big D. The stash was filled to overflowing and the inventory was clogged and I cleared and I killed. Hazade dropped a couple of times to a surprise IM (amp'd Doom Knights and all) but mostly the clearing went smoothly. Namelock the OKs and kill. That went even for de Seis, who wandered into view to cast Weaken, of all things, TheAragorn. Which, of course, opened him up for a namelocking and hot electric death.
Then the Infector of Souls came along.
That's TheAragorn running from them after he and his buddies curbstomped Hazade. The Infector's the scary chilled one. What's going to happen here? Well, I switched to Holy Freeze to buy a few extra seconds, opened a TP in the second "clearing" of the Sanctuary, ran around the second "lava pit" with the mob tailing me all the way, popped to town, and then took the long route back via waypoint. The Infector is much less frightening when his mob is strung out over half the Sanctuary. Thanks, Holy Freeze! :thumbup:
Then the moment of truth and potion preparation dawned. The first major bump in the road: what does Diablo do to archers who namelock him? He puts bone prisons 'round their skin and looses
the lightning hose again. But the lightning hose wasn't the scariest part. No, Diablo's fire ring easily took the cake. It shaved off about 1/3 of TheAragorn's life with each volley, and he couldn't just take cover behind a wall and let the merc do his work, because he needed to keep
D's attention on himself as much as possible, lest he spend all his money on merc resurrections and die an ignoble death from lack of help. The Amplify Damage also helped things along. Why, oh why, did I spawn him at /p8?
Anyhow, the battle of attrition
wore on. Would Diablo's massive life bar or TheAragorn's chimpmunk-like hoarding of potions give out first? Granted, he could buy more reds, but it was the purples with which he was most concerned, and as of that screenshot there were only two left. They're what kept the merc hale and hearty; the reds were mostly for TheAragorn's own use against the dread fire ring.
Shatter. It's so nifty when that happens to the biggest of bads. The drops are about what I should have expected from the hateful RNG.
This about sums it up.
[highlight]TheAragorn, Ranger Paladin, Level 35, Harrogath[/highlight]
And now for a quick question: I know there's the +HP limit on items, but I didn't see one for +VIT (or, by extension, +all stats). Are we allowed to equip things with bonuses to Vitality/all stats; if so, is there a cap similar to that for +HP items? I'd like to know so I know what to look for when I begin assembling gear for NM/Hell in earnest.
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