The Certain Death Tournament.

Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

bah, duriel. I hadn't considered that. Well, necros who pick a clay golem will be in good shape if they get decrepify before the big Dur. Otherwise... good luck? No idea what I'll use to take him down.

Oh, my 56 life sorc, inevitability, level 13, has just made it to the dark wood. I'm still not sure what i'll be using to kill things, but i think it's some combo of static field and blizzard, if i get that far, with some energy shield mixed in. I'm putting points into energy! muhahahaa
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Bluechip said:
bah, duriel. I hadn't considered that. Well, necros who pick a clay golem will be in good shape if they get decrepify before the big Dur. Otherwise... good luck?
Click to expand...

If you have a golem, why bother with Decrepify when you can use Iron Maiden?



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Amarantine made a fast passage through the Arcane Sanctuary at p4, cleared the canyon and half the tombs(very slowly) at p8 the rest and the real tomb at p1. Picked up a Dimoak in the canyon and small charm with 7 life, a replacement grand charm with 13 life and 17pr and a useful 12fhr grand charm on the way. No luck on the maiden javelin but one of the purchased short spears had some cold damage on it.

Still functioning on 1 point in plague javelin all the way I stopped fretting about imminent death and switched to 1 point lightning bolt and entered the chamber with myself and merc both at level 26 and once there was a reasonable gap between the melee and myself and Haseen held his own for a short while it was quickly over.


http://lh5.ggpht.com/_-iGMJiP4apQ/Suslk-COSeI/AAAAAAAAAFE/dBTjOTdEpOY/s640/Screenshot005.jpg


So now its

Tarantella Amarantine Skirmisher Kurast Docks level 26
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Welcome, Thomh!

jiansonz said:
I don´t like the name of this tournament ('Low-lifes' would have been better, IMO) but I like the rules. Seems like many other do as well.

One interesting thing is that, because the characters have so little life in the early part of the game (and for a long time, too) there may be some parts of the game that will act like "hurdles" and actually be harder than the late game (where you have scraped together some great gear).
Click to expand...

Heh, I also considered naming it "The Impossible Tournament." Interesting thoughts about the hurdles. I have a gut feeling most of these will be in Nightmare, since most of normal can be completed with a shopped Ned/Emerald bow if you are patient. Act bosses will be tough in normal though. Can Life Tap wands be shopped before Duriel? Diablo will be totally insane, perhaps unbeatable for many characters.

@Morathi: Ack, R.I.P. Oliver. Ghosts are so brutal since they stack together. extra strong is the worst to have in normal, followed by extra fast then cold enchanted I suppose. Can we add Oliver to the table? I like to keep track of every character that's played in it, like it's a ladder. I hate to see your effort erased as if it never happened!

P.S. If you want to have multiple 'P.S.'s, you need to say P.P.S. P.S.S. would mean "after the script script" which doesn't make sense, but P.P.S means "after the post script." ;)



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Wow, I had no idea how strong a bladefury'sin is. Breezing through the monsters like nothing. Duriel was a bit scary, but manageable (even though I fought him empty handed for a while after putting the staff in). Duriel on /p1, all else on /p8.
Just reached Lower Kurast and made lvl 29. All quests before are done. The 20hp drink got my total up to an imposing 170hp :thumbup:
Other stats are 102str / 86dex (enough for max block with bone shield of deflecting) / 20 vita / 25 ene. Fire and Light res are at 46 with fade lvl 2.
Too tired now for a more detailed writeup...

[HIGHLIGHT] scrcrw, Kaiko, Bfury Assassin, Lower Kurast, 29 [/HIGHLIGHT]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Nice progress guys. Can't wait to see what people do over the weekend.

BathtubPancake has had an easy time so far. No NDEs, not even Pitspawn.

I've also had great Topaz luck, filling all 10 of the slots for my Paladin and Iantha, while having two left over. I've also gambled an excellent rare pair of 25% MF gloves and 24% mf boots. I have exactly 100 MF (6 from a ring) on my character and 145 on my merc, who kills everything. Next tournament that I make, I'm going to disallow MF on mercs. It's strategically smart to let Iantha kill everything, but it hardly feels like I'm playing.

Screenshots:

[highlight]BathtubPancake, Holy Freeze Chargadin, level 19, Innter Cloister[/highlight]

(Updated the table in the first post. I'm going to move it to the top and see how it looks.)
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Ulquiorra continued to do full clears at Players 7 throughout Act 2. Things started out easy with Leharas (combat merc) doing most of the slaying (Ulquiorra was plenty capable of doing slaying by himself but preferred to cast dim vision instead of bone spear . . . . it kept the mana potion consumption reasonable). Leharas pretty much got all the kills up until the Maggot Lair where Leharas’ poor path finding caused Ulquiorra to take charge. At this point I was pleased to discover that Ulquiorra’s bone spear could still kill everything in around three hits (even though players 7 was in use) . . . so from this point on most of the killing was done by Ulquiorra (which kept things moving quickly but necessitated a lot of mana potion drinking). In general Ulquiorra spamming bone spear from behind Leharas was really effective and safe . . . but there were a couple near deaths. The first occurred in the Claw Viper Temple Level 2 when Ulquiorra went one way (towards Frankenskin) . . . and Leharas went the other way . . . the end result was that Ulquiorra got swarmed and ended up pinned in a corner . . . if he didn’t have rejuvenation potions that probably would have been deeds. The next near deaths occurred in the False Tombs that contained Unravelers (pretty much everyone of them). Unravelers were trouble because their “spider missiles†really packed a punch at Players 7 (Ulquiorra only has 114 life). Combine the spider missiles with being able to raise the dead (mostly behind Ulquiorra . . . did their AI suddenly get better!?) and you’ve got a near death lurking behind every door. In contrast, Duriel was really simple. Leharas absorbed the demons damage, and Ulquiorra spammed bone spear from behind . . . the ‘battle’ was over in a minute.

Duriel dropped one of three set items found in Act 2 (the ring turned out to be a Cathans) . . . which was really too bad considering that the Angelic Armor had dropped in the Ancient Tunnels. The other set item was a hardly worth mentioning Berserker’s Axe. There were no unique items :cry: .

Here were Ulquiorra-san’s stats at the end of Act 2.

[highlight]Ulquiorra-san, Bone Necro, Kurast Docks, Level 28[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Well its been a long time since I entered a SPF tourney, but here goes!

I am playing a javason named CandleintheWind. Candle has reached Stony Field. I am playing ultracautiously buthere are two observations I have:

- rings and ammys at the beginning of the game are nearly worthless. 5% Cold resist? "+10 to Attack Rating and +1 to Light Radius"? Yikes. They wouldn't protect a character from a strong fart.
- It is funny that the 2nd area in the game -the Cold Plains -takes the longest to play. It has five areas off of it: Graveyard, Crypt, Mausoleum, and Hole Levels 1 and 2. It has four super-uniques and three sparkly chests. Go figure

Plague Javelin and 1 point in Jab are getting Candle through so far. I don't want to become too dependent on Plague Javelin - poison is not the attack of choise to face Andariel with, lol.

CandleintheWind, Javazon, level 12, Stony Field
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Quickdeath said:
- rings and ammys at the beginning of the game are nearly worthless. 5% Cold resist? "+10 to Attack Rating and +1 to Light Radius"? Yikes. They wouldn't protect a character from a strong fart.
- It is funny that the 2nd area in the game -the Cold Plains -takes the longest to play. It has five areas off of it: Graveyard, Crypt, Mausoleum, and Hole Levels 1 and 2. It has four super-uniques and three sparkly chests. Go figure
Click to expand...

Welcome to the fray Quickdeath (a very fitting name i must say!).

Actually the early rings and ammy's arn't as useless as they appear. If you save all of them up at clvl24 you can cube them to have some very nice mods. Thats what i am doing with Sibella (yes that means i am actually using an extended stash!!!!!), hoping to strike some amulets/rings of luck or near perfect Coral/Cobalt/Garnet mods.

I love the Cold Plains, especially when you first start a character. You level up pretty quickly (especially in the Crypt/Mausoleum) and can find some cool items in there as well.



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Taking time to shop in act 3 and sort out gear and plan ahead I remembered that the 1.11 runewords are single player too.

Could we have a ruling on the possible use of treachery(with ctc fade) and peace (with its ctc to cast summons)? They are quite possible options in a single pass game and potentially useful to any build on merc or player. If I reach level 30 today I'll hold for the ruling as Im not 100% clear whether I'll go merc or valk yet.
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

The GlassCannon is now parked in the Inner Cloister. She has a full set of + life charms: S +7, L +6, and XL +8. Add to that a +7/life jewel in her ring mail (also a 10% dmg goes to mana), bringing her life total to 110. She sparks a lot, due to a total of 30% chance of charged bolt on gloves/belt/boots...glass should be sparkly, right? Next level (which isn't far away) she loses Paige and gains a shadow.

[highlight]JayeM, GlassCannon, Assassin, Inner Cloister, 17[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Horrendous drops so far, no S/U, no topazes, only 1 charm.
Still, dumping all points into dex means I never miss anything, ever.

Looking forward to completing normal by Sunday evening. All good at the moment, a bit scared of facing the Big D, but onwards we go!


[highlight]EmperorMoo, Finefingers, Glass cannon stafazon, Inner Cloister, 17[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

EmperorMoo said:
Looking forward to completing normal by Sunday evening. All good at the moment, a bit scared of facing the Big D, but onwards we go!
Click to expand...

WOAH WOAH..........someone is confident :badteeth:.

I am also looking forward to defeating Hell Baal tomorrow........:smug:.

Hopefully your luck changes!



 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Uzumati started of as a pink and fragile human being with a hand axe, buckler and not much else. He immediately started whacking fallens at players8 in the blood moor and poured his first three skill points into Werewolf and Lycanthropy. Since Werewolves are less cool than being human, Uzumati decided to wait until he could take his true form a couple of levels later before shapeshifting.

The blood moor and Den of Evil was cleared fast and soon enough Uzumati had the power to transform into a ferocious bear. He became especially ferocious after strength was pumped to 35 and he shopped himself a large axe with 3 holes, which were immediately filled with small rubies.

Some yellow gems found on the ground were put into a powerful 3os Ring Mail shopped from Charsi and as Uzumati hit lvl12 early in The Cave, it was time for a little gambling session before the showdown with ColdCrow and gloves and boots of the "chance" variety was equiped. It sure paid off. Not terribly useful for this tournament, but it`s actually a grailer for me:)

Since bears have massive life pools early in the game, even with no points spent into vitality, the journey through Stony Field and Dark Woods was really easy. I expect bigger troubles later on, and I mean big, big problems. Uzumati managed to find another sweet item in the Underground Passage, which will be very useful if he somehow manage to find the corresponding belt:) The odds of that are pretty low, but it would be a nice end-game combo as it would free up the obligatory Rhyme slot and enable Uzumati to equip a big, bad two-hander.

Uzimati is now resting in the Dark Woods (just like any other bear) after rescuing Cain, and he currently has 83% MF with 27% more when the merc makes the kill (which is every single time). I am really looking forward to lvl 17 to gamble a Maul and better gloves and boots, and hopefully find two more chipped Topaz to fill up the mercs hat. This has been a great start with 7 chipped topaz and one flawed from a shrine, things are looking good.

I think I have to abandon the plan of going with an act1 merc as AR is going to be impossible to get. Gameplay later on would probably just be me spamming shockwave while waiting for the merc to kill stuff, and that seems pretty boring to me. I`ll switch to an act2 offensive merc for the blessed aim aura and just forego the style points if I get that far:(

[highlight]Thomh, Uzumati, Mauler, Dark Woods, lvl 15 [/highlight]

Edit: Thanks to Wakiki for hosting this awesome tournament. Great fun:)
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

jiansonz said:
Heh, I often pick Act 1 mercs to be able to hit monsters better...
Click to expand...

:) I like it when the LCS is telling me my AR:whistling: Does she cast Inner Sight often enough to be reliable? I`m pretty sure having a loss of my AR mid-combat in later acts and difficulties will be fatal.

HoW might be able to fix some of my problems, but probably not enough. Why does Maul have so awful AR bonus, it`s pathetic:alright:


 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

Welcome, Quickdeath!

Tarantella said:
Could we have a ruling on the possible use of treachery(with ctc fade) and peace (with its ctc to cast summons)? They are quite possible options in a single pass game and potentially useful to any build on merc or player. If I reach level 30 today I'll hold for the ruling as Im not 100% clear whether I'll go merc or valk yet.
Click to expand...

Tough one. I'm thinking that I will allow Peace with merc users since it's so bugged anyway. Treachery is a more difficult choice. I don't like the idea of letting people max their resists with Treachery 'cause then alot of people would use it, so I'll just say that the Fade is to be treat like if you were an Assassin -- you have to count that as your base resists, and they can't go over 50 while in Fade.

@JayeM: hah, I hate that mod. I have a 20% chance as well, which is rare for me since I avoid it. They are on my 6% MF ring and my 24% MF boots though, so there's no help for it.

@Thomh: no problem, thanks for joining. <3

Thomh said:
:whistling: Does she cast Inner Sight often enough to be reliable?
Click to expand...

She's cast it three times at one monster, shoot an arrow, cast it again, etc.! :P

EDIT: After playing my Pally some more....

[highlight]Rule Change Alert[/highlight]
Mercenaries may not wear Magic Find in Normal. They may wear up to 35% in Nightmare, and 50% in Hell. This applies to all NEW characters; characters that have already been started can continue as they are playing (no MF restrictions) until they die. I decided on this because I'm treating a merc like a summon, but Shadow Masters, Valyries, etc don't have magic find, so it seems unfair.



 
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Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

GlassCannon made 18th level shortly after my last post, but Paige took forever to die...annoying since I couldn't have my shadow till I ditched her. Andariel finally finished her off. Now that GC's made it to Lut Gholein, she's going to drop down to /p1 and just concentrate on trying to stay alive. Most of my HC tourney characters bite the dust in Act 2 norm. One timely find: Death's Hand gloves just in time for the battle with Andariel. :)

[highlight]JayeM, GlassCannon, Assassin, Lut Gholein, 18[/highlight]
 
Re: The Certain Death Tournament.

JayeM, keep in mind, if you were planning putting one point into your Warrior and maxing your Master, you could wait until then to kill your merc.
 
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