The Certain Death Tournament.

Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

I enter Fastpoison, a poison creeper-rabies-feral rage druid. He is using a merc at the moment, but maybe i'll switch to minions later. He cleared the Stony Field. No interesting drops so far...

[highlight]Fastpoison, Druid, Stony Filed, lvl 12[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Inevitability has denied her namesake and fights on! She is level 25 and just got into the canyon of the magi. The summoner on /p8 gave her a fright with an ice missile that took 2/3 of her life away, but she retaliated with blizzard and glacial spikes of her own. She is rocking about 110 life now, thanks to a +10 life hat and +10 or so life rare armor. has about 50% MF as well. It would be more, but I decided the life was more important on the armor. +10 life is +10% life!! Oh, she also found a large charm with +7 life and +6 mana, which was nice.

Notable finds were Cathan's armor and ring. Sadly, the set bonus for two items is +fire damage, strength, and some other nonsense that isn't life.

Inevitability, Sorceress, Canyon of the Magi, Level 25.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Update:

Lifeless the wind druid has just completed the Claw Viper Temple and stands at lvl25. No head-turning finds yet, although I am cruising with a decent amount of MF gear (I am trying to hold onto it as long as I can, even if I will eventually need to phase it out for survival gear). I am currently using an act 2 mercenary, although I would like to give act 5 mercenaries a try ultimately. It is interesting playing a build that has a powerful attack -- usually my tournament characters take forever to kill things, so this is a pleasant change of pace. (Or... it will be, until I fall victim to a one-hit death.)

[highlight]Lifeless the wind druid, level 25, Lost City WP[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Mouse got started in Act 2. Killed Radament and cleared the Halls for the much needed cube. Don't use Atma, so I was completely full with chips and small rejuvs. Got some room to work with now. Found a small charm of +7 life, +5 stamina. Bought a +2 clay golem wand to keep on switch with +1 clay head, currently level 14 clay golem. The golem has 777 life. I'm sitting somewhere around 80. 5 points in dim vision, 1 pt in CE and bone armor. I gambled some and was able to upgrade his bow, a 2-socket rare short battle bow. 63AR, 1-7 lightning, put a TAL in there for the big poison damage. He still moves slow, but that's ok, all the longer I get to play him before his certain death. :wink:

[highlight]Mouse the Golemancer, level 20, Dry Hills WP[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Surprisingly, nothing really eventful happened. Very cautious play, and even some of the hard hitters that normally do damage didn't get close enough to doing damage. Act 1 went by fairly easily, using bows with 2 chipped emeralds and 1 chipped sapphire. One bow had a Jewel of Envy in it instead of an emerald.
Andariel went down on /pl 3 to firewall, cold spells and a teleporting merc firing poison/cold arrows at her. Argoel was level 20 at the time.

Even Act 2 hasn't been nearly as difficult as I remember it being with a character full of life. I guess with that much more life, I play more on the edge. I'll kill Duriel tonight, but the basic strategy is Glacial Spike, let the merc kill them, and throw in a firewall on ranged/greater mummies. All super uniques have been killed so far.

Key items:
Arctic Furs for +10% Res All (being worn)
Cleglaws Gloves and Shield (being worn - I'd love the 3rd piece though - a great early boost.)
Isenhart's Helm and Armour
Angellic Weapon and Armour

Also, an end-game worthy ring as well:

Entropy Knot
Ring
Required Level: 9
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 21
Fingerprint: 0x937e6a42
+1 to Strength
+77 to Attack Rating
Fire Resist +18%
Cold Resist +18%
10% Faster Cast Rate

Half Freeze Duration

I'll update properly after Duriel, and then start screen shotting and adding more detail. I didn't really expect to be at Duriel with only ~98 life.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Cleared the Tombs and Duriel today. Nothing too difficult; I let Iantha take out beetles and the Ancient Kaa. Every time I did that I felt a twinge of guilt. It turned something that would have been challenging into a no brainer. Other than that, I've been having alot of fun playing this Chargadin. Generally I would Zeal away the Burning Dead, then circle around to the Unravelers until I found an angle that gave me charge room. I would charge them 3/4 times to kill them, then zip out and put on Meditation to regenerate my mana. It was pretty exciting because their dark bolts took away more than 25% of my health, so dealing with 2 or 3 could get interesting.

Some good finds, too. First of all, I gambled this Circlet:

Stone Horn
Circlet
Defense: 22
Durability: 34 of 35
Required Level: 18
Fingerprint: 0xabbcbb66
Item Level: 27
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Cold Resist +33%
+1 - 116 Lightning Damage
22% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
10% Chance to cast level 3 Nova when struck


Incredible! This went on right away. It put my cold resist over 50%, so I shopped a pair of plain Fortune gloves (22%) from Elzix.

I had a chest drop All set items. Hooray...one of these days that will net something cool for me, I hope. :P I also had to deal with a rather smart boss. Alot smarter than the Might aura skeleton mages I met earlier in the act. :) I found the third best item I can at this point in the game (#1 is Gull and 2 is Chancies. Can you figure it out without looking?) I also found a Sigon's Shield right before Duriel which was really awesome. I put that on right away, and now my block is maxed even without Holy Shield up. Duriel also gave me a cool drop, which is rare for sure. Not a good drop, mind you, but I did manage to complete the hilariously bad Berserker set. :)
______________________

Glad to see everyone progressing consistently, even during the week.

Tarantella, just to let you know all crafts are fine. I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked at your belt and saw that you didn't throw away something too godly. It was a good belt though and I am sorry.

P.S. Welcome to the tournament, Shaandore.

[highlight]BathtubPancake, Holy Freeze Chargadin, Kurast Docks, level 28[/highlight]

(Time to go update the table)
 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Teff is chugging along on players 8 as always, and has reached the Canyon of the magi.

Maggot lair wasn't difficult, with easy merc repositioning with Teleport, and Blizzard doing amazing things on the crowds in the rooms.

Claw vipers weren't difficult as well, especially when all nicely frozen by Glacial Spike. However, Fangskin was scary. The second I went down the staircase, he was at the entrance to greet me. Energy Shield began flickering like mad from all the bolts. I ended up casting Blizzard, going up the stairs, going down, casting, going up, etc. At the end, the merc came out in a good position (in front of me, instead of behind like usual /swt) so I stayed down and finished him off.

No real problems until the Arcane Sanctuary and those lightning towers. They made me wince at the hits, even with 50% light resist and 30% ES. Blizzard also had difficulty with the monster packs there, even when they were all neatly arranged on the platforms (or maybe it was because of that, I don't know).

Gear fun:

Found a +3 static orb, so I can safely static while hiding behind the merc.
A Stormguild, stashed for later...Nightmare perhaps if I make it there.
2s bone shield of deflecting shopped, and socketed with 2 Elds for 74% blocking.

When I got the cube, I immediately began cubing up my gems. At the same time though, I needed to make a nice stick for my merc. I had a large amount of chipped diamonds but I started cubing and left only 4 to use for the polearm recipe because I was sure one of the savage polearms would be good enough. Oops.
All 4 results could not be equipped until lvl 36+. I didn't want to use flawed and normal diamonds, so I continued hunting. At the end of clearing Arcane Sanctuary, I had 3 chipped diamonds.

Ok, time to try again. I didn't want to enter the tombs without upgrading his weapon even a little. (Using poleaxe of blight)
First diamond: Savage Battle Scythe again.
2nd diamond: Savage voulge... =(
Last diamond: Savage halberd of blight... Yay, my merc can wear it! =)

A valuable lesson learned from this experience. Cube the polearms first, and I need to learn how to use Blizzard.

[highlight]Teff, ES Sorceress, Canyon of the Magi, level 26[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

I did a full clear of all the fake tombs, as well as the real one, but found an easy map for a teleporter.

At level 28, with a level ~11 firewall, Duriel was a breeze. He did drop Cleglaw's Sword, completing that set, but unfortunately, I realised that Isenhart's and Cleglaw's are not worth holding on to for a sorceress.

[highlight]Argoel, Sorceress, Kurast Docks, level 28[/highlight]

Edit - I don't even know her name! Argoel, meaning "omen" apparently, not Argeon.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

well, Sway continues on. not finding much, even with around 130% MF. 2 angelic sabres, an artic cord, gorefoots, and thats it. cant really decide whether to throw or stab, now that decoy is permanently on right click. never liked throwing with left click, but i do such poor damage its not really worth heading into melee

strength in a dagger may work later, but for now i cant see the point stabbing things as the best daggers i can get hold of are rares

certainly not planning to give up my shield though

so for now i cast decoy and stab things 5 times to take off a third of the life, and then my merc runs up and crushes it in one hit

good times

made it to the canyon of the magi, which is nice. evade really helps my survival i think, archers in the harem always catch me when im moving cos they are hard to spot

SwayBabySway, PassiveZon, level 25, Canyon of the Magi
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Nice progress, soulmanz. :thumbsup:


cant really decide whether to throw or stab, now that decoy is permanently on right click.

What about Slow Missiles?


never liked throwing with left click

Why not? Is it because you risk moving in that direction if you happen to click next to the monster when you aren´t holding down Shift?



evade really helps my survival i think, archers in the harem always catch me when im moving cos they are hard to spot

I recommend you use Slow Missiles more in areas with ranged attackers. Not only will it make those enemies much easier to spot (even from the other side of a wall!) but will also make it much easier to avoid their shots.



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

GlassJaw has finally made it to Act 2. For once the Cathedral was almost empty...looks like monster church attendance is way down. BTW can anyone explain to me why there's a 3-level jail in a monastery? GJ had a few fairly close calls in the catacombs, but no real NDE's. Even Blaise had to be resurrected only once, thanx to Andariel, but the demon queen gave GJ no trouble at all. She dropped a lot of rubies and some very nice ring mail which made our hero finally give up his Arctic Furs. He's going to take Act 2 in the proper order, but he's really looking forward to slaughtering the beetles that killed his sister. Here's hoping he lives long enough to get his revenge!

[highlight]JayeM, GlassJaw, Barbarian, Lut Gholein, 19[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

First entry is a trap assassin. Picking my way through act 1 now and the damage is already starting to get a little scary. Level 15 and just gambled some mf boots (16% cold res, 20 mf) and some mf gloves (1 max stamina, 20 mf). Pretty good rolls on the fortunes.

[highlight]HolieCows, HolieTraps, Assassin, Darkwood, 15[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

BTW can anyone explain to me why there's a 3-level jail in a monastery?

The Inquisition comes to mind . . .

And in unrelated news, Ulquiorra-san did full clears of NM Act 1 at Players 7 and really didn’t have any problems. Before heading out of the Rogue Encampment his equipment was reorganized so that resistances were brought up to above negative levels (the biggest change was swapping out the three chipped diamond shield for a two perfect diamond shield . . . I didn’t have three perfect diamonds at the time). The two perfect diamond shield brought resistances up to around 30 and after finding a gem shrine in the Underground Passage resistances were up to around 50 :alright: .

The monsters were all really easy to defeat. The general battle plan was to drop dim vision and spam bone spear. Bone prison was used to stop extra fast uniques and lightning bolts from LE uniques. Considering Ulquiorra’s limited life the biggest concern was getting blown to bits by an FE, CE, and or LE unique’s death blast so those uniques were treated as though they had the plague and preferably killed off screen. (Not very interesting but as I said things were pretty easy).

Drops were pretty good (there were a ton of set/uniques . . . mostly useless but at least there was some potential). The best finds were runes (I found three more Amns! . . in the Cold Plains, at the Countess, and in the Tamoe Highland) and an Io Rune dropped in the Mausoleum (Ulquiorra’s highest to date). The best find that wasn’t a rune was the Spectral Shard that would have been really useful except RWM is allowed . . . so why wouldn’t I use Spirit? . . beats me. Speaking of Spirit, Ulquiorra found a four socketed long sword seconds after finding the Spectral Shard . . . but decided to hold out for a four socketed broad sword which was found in the Jail Level 3 . . . Spirit was made (a pretty good roll too).

Let’s see what else . . . ah, Andariel was really easy to defeat . . . she had a unique nearby that was might enchanted so she was drawn out of her throne room and trapped in many layers of bone prison, bone speared, RIP. Andariel dropped a set ring that got Ulquiorra really excited but instead of it being his first Angelic Ring it turned out to be his fourth Cathan’s Ring :unimpressed: .

Here were Ulquiorra-san’s stats at the end of NM Act 1.

[highlight]Ulquiorra-san, Bone Necro, NM Lut Gholein, Level 52[/highlight]


 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

GlassJaw has finally made it to Act 2. For once the Cathedral was almost empty...looks like monster church attendance is way down.

Same thing happened to me. Was really odd. I think the only one in there for me was Bone Ash, the skeleton mage boss. I can't remember that happening before. Something with base vitality??? :)


 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

jiansonz, honestly i hate slow missiles!

i have been a zon avoider for years (well, since release really) and am much more used to necros/assassins. the fire and forget nature of both CoS and DV in hobbling ranged attackers is sorely missed

slow missles seems to me to not help much at all. with more than 8 ranged guys around, you still dont really get time to chuck off a few low damage javs anyway, and you just have to play the dodge the slow arrow game. not much different to running around in circles not getting hit

since my merc is my major damage output right now, i take the heat off with a decoy right by the archers, and then follow the merc and stab from behind him. safe for me and merc usually

preference i guess. cant say i love zons even with swaybaby. maybe if she could use swords without gimping her blocking, i could see it. but as it stands, bah humbug.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

About two levels ago, I gambled this:

Circlet of Luck
Defense: 26
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 19
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 27
Fingerprint: 0x138b2d7d
31% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

That brings my stats to:

Increased Magic Find: 162%
Increased Gold Find: 128% (all from charms)

Now, I just gambled this:

Rainbow Circlet of the Magus
Defense: 22
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 21
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 31
Fingerprint: 0xa12425d3
All Resistances +11
20% Faster Cast Rate

I am pretty happy with that! It remains to be seen whether I need the FCR or not, but if I do, that is handy (and I can socket it if I so desire).

It has gone in my stash, though -- magic find is priority at the moment.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Tane has defeated Duriel with extreme difficulty I may add. This is where he very nearly met his demise with numerous NDE's. He was kept extremely busy by Duriel who was wiping out his summons faster than he could cast and re-cast. His strategy was to throw up a portal as soon as he entered the chamber each time so as to be able to escape in the nick of time (10 or more times), cast fissure, re-summon, run like crap through the portal, gather himself and re-enter the chamber again and again.
Tane has teken the ship to Kurast Docks and now rests at the local tavern trying to forget his almost fatal battle with Duriel.

A thought came to me after turning off my PC - "you idiot, you did the whole thing on Players 8", damn:doh:

Tane, Fire/Summoner Druid, Kurast Docks, Lvl 24
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

slow missles seems to me to not help much at all.

Depends a lot of the type of missiles.

I agree with you against most archers (but I still stress the scouting usefulness of it, especially and dark areas or in areas with many small rooms) but it is in these situations SM really shines:

* Inferno attacks (Flayer Shamen, Venom Lords). Fire stream gets reduced to a silly little "cloud" in front of their mouth. You can easily stand there with a range 3 weapon and the fire won´t touch you.
I think it works the same against Arctic Blast, but I can´t confirm it.

* Spitters (lightning dogs, whatever you want to call them). Their effective spitting range is about halved. It may look like they hit at their normal range, but their globs will only do damage at short range.

* LE bosses and bettles. You know that if you are going to melee one of these chaps, you try to look for a spot where all the Charged Bolts will miss you. Sometimes there is no such clear spot. Slow Missiles may (or may not) produce a "sweet spot" where none was before.


Preference plays a big part, of course. Slow Missiles is one of my favourite skills in the whole game. :scratchchin:



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

After the slight difficulties I had against mass skeletons in the viper temple, I switched to /p8 again for the next section. However in the palace cellars and the arcane sanctuary I found my way pretty quick (first arm I tried in the arcane sanctuary). Summoner was an easy sniper kill. In the canyon I headed right for the true tomb and switched back to /p1 (really dont like those mummies + skeletons). As a result Duriel was soon found and killed without difficulties. Drop was horrible.

Act III was more of the same. Monsters are hard hitting and not that easy to kill (/p8), but thanks to Knockback and (maybe) some routine on my part Kaiko won through. (Near) Nde's were plenty though, it's rather amazing I'm still going.
Some flayers tried to lift my spirits and dropped first an Ali Babas and then a Lidless Wall. Both of limited use though, since I'm usually to busy for much weapon switching.
Sarina was quite scary in the limited space, but I outsmarted her with same quick escape by tp and return by wp.
For the High Council I again chickened out and switched to /p1 (yes, I know there are numbers in between 1 and 8 ;) ). No problems accordingly. In the durance the sm proved a huge help, since I could easily reposition her between me and exploding puppets.
Mephisto was of course tackled at /p8. Some moat may have played a decisive role in the rather long fight :whistling: (gotta get me some cb...). For the cheap trick I was punished by a dismal drop.
To summarize my playing style:

Fair play? Never heard of it.

Act IV (and its vendors) welcomed me with this baby which I stumbled upon by accident wanting to recheck a claw I had just sold:

Nothing exciting happened afterwards. Thanks to a nice monster roll (no gloams, no mages) nde's weren't quite so frequent. The river of flame wp was reached without trouble (/p8 all the way).
In between I played some "find the exit":

and fell in love at second sight:

100% +ar for 6 minutes? I approve :thumbup:
The CS proved to be no more difficult than anything before. The sigils were opened and their guardians disposed of routinely. For Diablo I dropped again to /p1 (too chicken for old chicken-legs :scratchchin:). This made for an easy fight (recastable minion was a big help as usual).
Drop was actually not too bad, including tankred's armor and these designer boots:

This again prompted a major reshuffling of Kaiko's equipment. Did I mention that I hate the res restriction?
I came out with a loss of 25 light res (21 now) and of all my fhr. On the plus side I gained a huge 120 hp which puts the total at ~420 :thumbup:
Fire res is at 47 with fade (without everything falls to pieces) which means that I will have to put the res scroll from malah in the stash till hell (should I ever reach it) :scratchhead:.

[HIGHLIGHT] scrcrw, Kaiko, BF Assassin, Harrogath NM, level 65 [/HIGHLIGHT]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

@Wakiki. Holy crap! That is a nice Circlet you have there!, possibly end game worthy actually!

@Everyone. Well done guys! i am suprised at some of your progress :thumbup:. I think i should take some pointers out of it and take extra care and slow it down a little!

Well after recovering from Sibella's careless demise i have re-grouped and will re-enter for a third time (3rd times a charm right?..............RIGHT!?). I have decided, given the lack of barbs (and for good reason), that i will enter with one named Bahram (Persian word meaning "smiter of resistance" or "victorious." Lets hope he can live up to his name!). Nothing sounds more awesome than a melee character with no vit and limited resistance! YAY!

Not sure how he will turn out, maybe a Conc/Berserk/War Cry type variant......we shall see.

For table purposes:
[highlight] Bahram the Barb (undecided barb), level 1, Normal Rogue Camp [/highlight]


PS. I will inform you all that i will be leaving overseas tomorrow for 1 month (back on the 6/7th of December). I will be taking my laptop with me, so Bahram will get attention, however i am not sure about internet access. So if you dont see or hear from me, means there is no interent, but if you do i will hopefully bring good news about Bahram :nod:.
 
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