The Committed Tournament

[Turbocannon]

"So, rumors are, you have trouble staying alive out here?" Ruby cut to the chase right away, and Akara sighed.

"Aye. As if the monsters hadn't been bad enough already, they have gotten a hundred times stronger overnight. Our scout Flavie reports that monsters she had been able to kill with a single shot before now prove nearly invulnerable. We have no idea what caused this change, but once the monsters realize their advantage, we are doomed!"

"Hmm..." Ruby was about to say that they didn't seem that hard on her way in, but then decided that would sound insulting. "Is she OK then?"

"Yes, thankfully," Akara replied. "It seems she was so harmless, the monsters just consider her a part of the scenery. The zombies, at least, do not have the faculties to tell the difference..."

***

Ruby's equipment was heavily upgraded as soon as I entered the Rogue Encampment in Nightmare. After some shopping, I managed to acquire a Garnet Chain Gloves of the Ox (+8 strength, +28% FR), a Heavy Belt of the Giant (+14 strength) and a Viridian Leather Armor of the Whale (+12% PR, +100 life!). The extra strength helps a lot, since I can now stash some strength charms and also have some versatility - I can replace either the gloves or the belt and still am just fine with strength. (Right now, I need 50 strength for my magic Light Plated Boots.) I also bought a +27 @res small shield on switch.

Later, I found this new axe to replace our current weapon - it's not much better, but I was hoping the extra fire damage would help against the undead, most of whom seem to be hard to kill with just physical and poison damage. My merc and Shadow are actually a lot better against them - I was pleased to see that the Shadow has killing power too, not just staying power. (Right now, Shadow Master is at 15 - Venom is already maxed out.)

I also tried to imbue a circlet, with good results:

While the +1 skills are a miss, the FRW and the resists are great, while the AR and PDR are also somewhat useful. Blessed Aim ensures I can hit most normal monsters with 95% chance, though not act bosses and the like, and without it, my chances of hitting are significantly lower so I doubt I'll switch to Might.

Since I was having trouble dealing damage to certain monster types, I figured it's time to try and get some Blood gloves.

The result is not exactly the best, but it'll suffice - once I can equip it, that is. I'll probably try to craft a Hurlbat as soon as I can get one - which is probably Act 2, Fara. I'll save other kinds of crafting for later. I do want the "of the Giant" suffix on whatever I can get it. My calculations tell me that it might be worth crafting Blood or Safety belts from level 58 (Blood is somewhat better, but Rubies are in high demand for other items, while Emeralds are otherwise kinda useless), and further Blood gloves at 60. Blood rings should be decent at around that point too, haven't calculated it. As for the rest of my gear, I'll try to gamble some boots once I get an Edge bow, maybe some amulets once I find good boots, and possibly try for an even better circlet. My shield should be good for the rest of the game, while my armor will probably not get replaced for a while either - a super-good rare armor or Lionheart are what could potentially be better.

Overall, I'm progressing pretty well. My resists are 75/30/51/54, which is fine for now. I'm level 50, doing Act I NM on /p8, currently at the Outer Cloister waypoint.

 

[Norcim105]

Bones cleared out the sewers easily. CE was used on all of the corpses near Radament, and then Raddy got prisoned once it was just him left.
View attachment 2133

Bones went on an epic gambling spree of rings/circlets at level 80 hoping for some improvements but didn’t get anything worth mentioning.

I was a little worried about the Maggot Lair because it can be difficult to navigate around corners without getting hit right away, and the beetles can hit pretty hard. I actually found the clear to be pretty straight forward. The long narrow hallways really let Spear shine, and with the Vigor from Harmony Kyoko was able to stay with Bones without needing more than a handful of teleports. Standard strategy was to shoot spears in advance while slowly moving forward. If we saw sparks, Bones would stop moving and fire away until they stopped. If baddies came charging out at us, Bones would move to just behind Kyoko so she would take any stray sparks while also not being able to run away. The leech from the Boneflesh meant she could actually tank pretty effectively when forced to do so, even with the low resists she has. Coldworm took a little while because of Magic Resistance, and Bones had to TP to town once during this battle to stock up on some antidotes due to all the poison damage getting thrown around. Bones poison resistance is at 50, which is good enough when supplemented with the antidotes.

Ran into our first Magic Immune group with Dark Elder in the Lost City. Kyoko could take them down as long as she could focus on just one at a time. Bones just sat back and refreshed prisons. Took a while, but wasn’t dangerous.
View attachment 2134

The Claw Viper Temple was an exercise in patience with the unravelers. Fortunately we only ran into two boss unravelers; unfortunately they were both in the same room. Kyoko can take these guys down slowly, with OW probably doing most of the damage, but it takes a long time.
View attachment 2135
View attachment 2136

I hadn’t really been using the Decrepify charges on the Spellsteel yet, so Bones burned through most of them for this clear. I repaired the Spellsteel before going down to level 2 so that we would have the full complement of TP charges if needed. Bone Walls secured us a space near the stairs, and then we cleared the room out quickly and quietly. Fangskin was actually one of the very first to die down here.
View attachment 2137

Tried another imbue with a necro head I found down here, and here is the result:
View attachment 2138

It doesn’t really provide a whole lot more than Bones previous head but it is definitely more stylish and the strength could provide some more flexibility for gear moving forward. Two P. Diamonds were put in the sockets.

Bones had a Lem and a Lum drop in the span of a few minutes in the Palace Level 2! Kyoko was gifted with a brand new Treachery breastplate before we went after the AS (the breastplate was picked so Bones can trigger Fade if needed before specific fights. I’m mostly thinking the Ancients, but I may get tempted to try it out before clearing the A3 temples).
View attachment 2139
View attachment 2140

I was excited for the Arcane Sanctuary because Bones had such an easy clear in NM. That was most definitely not the case this time, as we kept running into Champ and Boss packs of specters. We had our first NDE almost right away on the first wing we tried to clear when an Extra Fast pack came charging out right away. I immediately ran backwards and watched Kyoko get wiped out in about 1 second. I hit the WP and got out to regroup. What followed was a mad scramble to cast a BS or two before having to flee using the tele on the Spellsteel. Bones had his NDE when I ran too far down a wing and couldn’t get a tele off to land on the stairs leading back up to the palace. I couldn’t continue running down the wing without potentially waking up even more baddies, so Bones resorted to trying to tele past the group towards the WP. We got hit by the last specter but were able to pop some juvies and get another tele off before the rest of the pack caught up. I decided at this point to dump our saved skill points in CE so that we would be able to cause as much damage as possible as soon as we got the first specter down. I started spamming Decrep in between spears and this allowed us to get one down without taking further damage. With the first corpse, CE was able to take down another specter, then another, until all that was left was the boss. This had my adrenaline pumping, so we proceeded to clear the rest of the AS in that session. It took a long time; the fire caster guys take a little while for us to kill and they have a huge detection range so we were unable to fire at them without dodging their attacks. This was made more difficult with all of the fire walls they kept casting everywhere. Bones burned through a bunch of healing pots down here, but fortunately the AS is an area that drops tons of pots, so we didn’t have to go back to town as much to stock up.

 

[Norcim105]

Bones got Unravelers in 4 of the 7 tombs, including Duriel’s. If we could prison the skellies within CE range of them they would go down pretty quickly, but often we were unable to do this so the skellies were CE’d away from the Unravelers. This meant that Kyoko got to kill these guys all by herself, which wasn’t too bad but took a while. One of the boss unravelers regenerated really fast, but Kyoko was able to eventually bring him down with the help of ~15 decrepify charges. Without the decrepify charges I don't think Kyoko would have been able to damage this guy faster than he could regenerate. My plan was to go try to shop a weapon with PMH if weren't able to bring him down, but it wasn't needed and our full clear status is still in tact.

Bones had 2 NDEs in the tombs, both to Gorebelly boss packs. The first one Bones opened a door, didn’t see anything, so I took a step into the room and got hit immediately from the side. Bone Armor held up but Bones was put into hit recovery as the rest of the pack closed in. Bones was trapped between the pack and a corner. I burned through every full juvie I had and almost all the super healers trying to tele out, but not being able to get a tele off due to terrible FHR. I got one off just in time; another second or two and it was deeds. Here is the boss from that group:
View attachment 2141

I hadn't noticed the boss had the cursed mod until I looked at the screenie. If Bones had been hit with amp he would have been dead for sure.

The other NDE came from a Conviction LE Gorebelly boss. I thought I had him prisoned in so the bolts wouldn’t escape, but when multiple prisons are cast on the same area they don’t overlap each other, so successive prisons don’t actually prevent all of the bolts from coming out once the very first one collapses. Bones took a shot from one of the bolts which knocked our life way down. A quick juvie saved us from deeding to a second bolt, then we were able to tele away and regroup. If you'll notice in the screenie, I forgot to switch back from the Spellsteel and spent the next few minutes wondering why it was taking so long to kill this boss and clear the room with Spear... I eventually figured it out in the next room.
View attachment 2142

Bones had a unique War Spear drop in the third false tomb. I almost didn’t even pick it up because I didn’t remember what it was and a spear really doesn’t help us much, but I ID’d it out of curiosity.

The Impaler
War Spear
Two Hand Damage: 26 - 98
Durability: 17 of 30
Required Level: 31
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 25
Fingerprint: 0x753c154c
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20% Increased Attack Speed
166% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
+150 to Attack Rating
40% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
+5 to Impale (Amazon Only)
+3 to Power Strike (Amazon Only)


At first glance I was ready to drop it, but then I looked closer. ITD, OW, PMH, and decent enough range that Bones could attack over a prison/wall without putting himself in danger. Also, the stat requirements are really low. I carried this around in the cube for the rest of the tombs, and would swap it in for the Spellsteel once only Unravelers were left. Bones was able to get his hands dirty for the first time since Act 1 Normal, which felt really good! This actually dramatically sped up killing speed on Unravelers; stopping their regen really makes a big difference. This will be kept in the stash moving forward for other magic immune baddies we may encounter. It's a little hard to see but Bones is stabbing this guy!
View attachment 2143

The life leech on the blood ring is actually really nice because I can tell when I've scored a hit. The ITD is awesome for regular monsters, but Bones chance to hit bosses and champs is not so good with only 315 AR... Here are Bones stats with the Impaler going (I grabbed this screenie after killing Duriel).
View attachment 2146

Kaa was surprisingly tame; I was worried that he would take forever but Kyoko focused on two of his unraveler buddies first, so we were able to CE them after putting decrepify on Kaa.
View attachment 2144

I had muled in 2 Orts/Chipped Gems to repair the SpellSteel before starting the Canyon, and both repair sets were used before Act 2 was completed.

The Duriel fight was anticlimactic. Bone Prison just stops him cold, and it didn’t take us long to bring him down.
View attachment 2145

Conqueror Bones, level 84 Energy P&B Necromancer, with Kyoko the Fire Rouge. Act 3 Hell.

 

[Turbocannon]

Once I found the Horadric Malus, I decided to try my luck with another circlet. Against all expectations, I actually got something that could rival my current circlet:

+skills and teleport charges, great! I was hesitant to give up on the 17 @res though, so I didn't swap it out yet.

The Countess had dropped only a disappointing Ral rune, but in the Jail, I got an Amn - which allowed me to assemble an Edge and go on a massive gambling session for some boots. And I did get some interesting things! Aside from two pretty good MF boots which I saved for other characters, I also got this:

Further yet, I actually got Sander's Riprap! With 40% FRW and +5 strength, they're pretty useful, though I won't actually use them until I need the strength and can't get it elsewhere. After all, the resists on the boots above are going to come in handy, and BoS already gives me good FRW so that's not so critical. Later on, I also found the unique Gorefoot in the Catacombs, which were pretty much useless to me.

With those boots on, I decided I can swap out the old circlet for the Doom Casque. After all, those teleport charges would be pretty good for emergency situations. These two equipment swaps lost me 30% FRW, which is actually quite noticeable, but it's alright, Ruby still runs fast enough with BoS. However, I did start to notice around the Catacombs that monsters are finally dealing non-negligible amounts of damage, so I'm trying to lose the habit of blindly rushing into rooms now... I also found the first normal monster to which I didn't have a 95% chance to hit, an Arach.

Down in level 4, the demon mistress Andariel fell without much of a fuss, although she did surprise-charge at me twice (ignoring Alhizeer stabbing at her) when my Shadow Master went down. Both times her attack was blocked, so I never found out how much damage Andariel could deal at this point.

Of Andariel's drop, guess what was the most valuable piece? Not Stormrider, which got sold as a useless find, but rather the light belt. I had been identifying rare belts for a while, and this turned out to be a real keeper:

Maximum possible strength bonus at this point, resists, and a tiny bit of life! I had no qualms spending a Ral, a Thul and a PAmethyst to upgrade it to a Sharkskin Belt, getting the fourth potion row as well.

As I had mentioned before, I've also decided to buy a Hurlbat from Fara and craft it, with the following result:

Not an awesome result, but it still is a large increase in physical damage for me, not to mention the LL and the life. My resists are currently 50/51/>75/45, so I'm doing pretty well on that front.

Level 52 now, in Lut Gholein. Probably gonna do this act on /p3 or /p5 because of all the poison-resistant undead that will constantly be resurrected, and also Duriel.

 

[jiansonz]

Mago the Summoner Necro got off to a good start in Kurast Bazaar (his golem + merc killed a couple of vultures at the LK exit in order to stay safe, but I banned myself from using their corpses): one lone Faithful and a pack of bug swarms. Easy pickings. Then I had the start of an army that would go on to defeat the whole rest of the act. Sometimes powerful, sometimes almost depleted, but never down to just golem.

In all potential stairs trap areas, I had a good army with me, often with Revives (not always possible).
Ruined Temple started like this:

As you can see, Sarina's posse has joined the fight. Luckily, that spider next to the golem clogged up the doorway. One other spider fell and was Revived as a key piece in the fighting puzzle.
"Uh, I think I'll stay back"

Brought a Thrasher into Ruined Fane. We were met by archers and snakes, who slaughtered many of my mages.
Might popped up on the enemies. Snakes with Might, that is perfect Thorns bait:

Not really an NDE, but I was taken down below half life by a sneaky bat that jumped me in a doorway.

Travincal was a long, hard grind. Several times, I had to use town portals in order to lure back zealots out of healing range. It's simply impossible for my army to kill even a single Zealot if more than Heirophant is within sight and unoccupied in melee.

It was chaotic and a real drag, but finally, we reached this trio:

Mago had a nasty NDE earlier here. On the ledge behind the temple, I got hit by more than one Blizzard (cold resist -10%, I should have boosted it with potions here, did not make that mistake again vs. Mephisto later).

Just as in Nightmare, I had little choice but to fight nearly the whole Council at the same time:

The blue guy is Geleb, he has stopped moving completely (they do that sometimes). Toorc is right behind him, and soon after the screenie, my Revived coucil member stopped casting Hydras and moved in and tanked him. Nice!

Not much of an army to take down into the Durance, and the early part greeted us with this:

I switched to Clay Golems because it's cheaper. Not the whole pack are Champs, there are three regular ones also. One was Revived, and I could get a new big army going.

WP and exit were close on level 2, so when I had a full Revive pack, I went down to level 3. The Revives (a few of them) lasted a little longer than we needed to kill two Blood Lord bosspacks in the first room. I revived three minions, and since I still had a few mages left, I took a shot at Bremm's pack. It was sort of a free shot, because I still had small parts of Durance 2 left I could have gone back to and farm more corpses. But what I had was enough. Barely:

Went back and cleared out Durance 2. Mephisto was killed mostly with Thorns + golem. That fight took less than 2 mintues.


[Highlight]Conqueror Mago the Golemancing Lord of Mages and Ajheed the Fire Mage, level 83, Hell Pandemonium Fortress[/Highlight]

 

[OldSoldier1]

Short update today for Whitefang. He didn't do quite the adventuring that some of the others in this tournament have documented in the last couple of days, but he did go forth into the Kurast jungles (at /P7) to seek his fortune and hopefully get to the halfway point in winning his love's hand in marriage.

His first boss pack predictably dropped this strange jade figurine, which after talking to the townsfolk and Meshif yielded another 57 life while in wolf form, more than a 5% bump.

Shortly after beginning his journey, he scored this rune. Most of us might be imagining the Treachery possibilities with something like this dropping, but for Whitefang it completes the runes needed for Passion and also forms the partial basis for another way to deal with physical immunes, a Lawbringer. He's still on the lookout for a Ko, though, before that can become a reality.
View attachment 2152

Not long after that, he got a set of Cleglaw's Pincers. Since IAS outside of the weapon is useless for the weapons I've decided to focus on, that might be handy in tough areas where monsters cannot be frozen by Ajheed.

This guy showed up in the great marsh area along with his minions and a couple of regular packs of gloams. Their lightning hurt pretty bad even though that is the only elemental resistance that Whitefang has at 75% at this point. There were quite a few lightning bolts flying around so Whitefang beat a hasty withdrawal in order to regroup. Here and there a couple of gloams would follow and be easily frozen and dispatched. I finally got the boss at the third advance.
View attachment 2153

This screenshot shows how Black Hack's cousin just got word that we'd been beating up on him and decided to come join the evil cause. Apparently the mail is slow in Sanctuary.
View attachment 2154

As everyone that's been following along knows, I've been lamenting Whitefang's luck in finding suitable weapons for use against the forces of evil. He's struggled with attack rating worst of all and carries a nearly worthless ring except for its AR bonus, and carries a rather poor +76 AR grand charm in his backpack to desperately try to keep his CTH above 80%. He's spent skill points in werewolf much earlier than normal because of its 15%/level AR bonus, but the base AR without any dexterity is just not very good. I've been gambling Giant Axes in the hope that some day one of them would drop with some decent stats and a socket or IAS so I wouldn't lose a break point in my attack and could get some on-weapon AR.

So I gambled this one on my first try.
View attachment 2155

It has Merciless, Quickness, Amp Damage, Consecrated, Fools and Locust on it. What a great weapon! It will be difficult to peel this out of my hands for a while. I upgraded it instantly and sold my rare War Club I'd been using. The "Consecrated" part of this rare means that the war club isn't even better than this against undead. I improve one frame attack both on Feral Rage (to 8 fpa) and on Fury (to 6 fpa), and if I hole it and put a Shael in there I'll improve one more on each as well.

Here is the old beat stick.
View attachment 2156

My AR instantly tripled and I am now 95% CTH. I was able to get rid of my platinum ring of the sun and that 76 AR charm and replaced the ring with a fire resist ring with +9 strength, so fire resist is now over 50%. I wouldn't quite call the weapon a game changer like a Ravenfrost or a Jalals Mane would be but it will make my life very much easier for some time, hopefully.
View attachment 2157

After such luck with my axe gamble, and the Lem and Cleglaw's gloves, I decided to blow about 1.5M in gold on circlets and jewelry (mostly rings). I did get this, which is close but not quite what I'm after.
View attachment 2158

I haven't tested out Shadow Rend but I will tonight. Here's to actually hitting what I'm aiming at!

Destroyer Whitefang, level 60 Titan Wolf, NM Great Marsh

 

[Kestegs]

Wow, it'd been way longer than I thought since I posted a table! Sorry for being slow, I tried to get it all, but may have missed some so let me know.

Great progress everyone, we've got a lot of strong characters pushing through here!

And sorry for the deeds, some tough losses lately.

Table of Heroes:
Forum Name        Class                   Char Name  LVL  ACT  Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kestegs           Elemental Druid         Rhett      86   A5(H)  Guardian
Jiansonz          Summon Necromancer      Mago       83   A4(H)  Pandemonium
Norcim105         P&B Necromancer         Bones      84   A3(H)  Kurast Docks
OldSoldier        P&B Necromancer         Splat      60   A3(NM) Kurast Docks
OldSoldier        Shift Druid             Whitefang  60   A3(NM) Great Marsh
Turbocannon       Shadow Assassin         Ruby       52   A2(NM) Lut Gholein
felixbavaria      Shadow Assassin         Cisa       48   A1(NM) Rogue Encampment
Adam Vrana        Shadow Assassin         YAJIRUSHI  28   A3     Kurast Docks
Jiansonz          Curse Necromancer       Geezer     20   A2     Lut Gholein
Toa3t             Bow Amazon              Marnie     14   A1     Blood moor
logoutzero        Warcry Barbarian        Tremolo    11   A1     Stony field
jamesixgun        Bow Amazon              Fatema     11   A1     Cold plains

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fallen (RIP):
Forum Name        Class                   Char Name  LVL  ACT  Area
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Azimuthus         Trap Assassin           Fury       80   A5(H)  Ancients
felixbavaria      Bow Amazon              Paige      78   A2(H)  CVT L1
Bladejj           Lightning Sorceress     Element    78   A1(H)  The Hole L1
OldSoldier        P&B Necromancer         Splat      77   A1(H)  The Hole L1
japanzaman        Martial Assassin        Highheels  70   A1[H]  Underground Passage
OldSoldier        Bow Amazon              Sharon     69   A5(H)  Crystaline Passage
Dazliare          Fire Sorc               Quelana    61   A3(NM) Flayer Jungle
Pb_pal            Shift Druid             Yau        60   A3[NM] Spider Forest
Southpaw8668      Javalein Amazon         Ema        55   A2[NM] Duriel
logoutzero        Warcry Barbarian        Barry      51   A1(NM) Jail
Dezrok            Martial Assassin        Marita     50   A1(NM) The Cave L2
ranagrande        Summon Druid            Orbin      34   A4     Diablo
Southpaw8668      Summon Necromancer      Krelos     30   A3     UK temples
Dazliare          Fire Sorc               Atronach   19   A1     Catacombs
Collateral.Damage Combat Paladin          Parker     15   A1     Stony field
GooberGrape       Shift Druid             Vilkas     14   A1     Black Marsh
Dazliare          Fire Sorc               ???        12   A1     Stony field
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[jiansonz]

Spawners are normally my least favourite enemies in Act IV, but for this character, they are a blessing. They made it very easy to get an army going.

Plains had Burning Souls, so I had to watch out. Especially here:

This pack fried Ajheed twice. At the time of the sceenie, I was glad that the firing direction from the boss was this favourable (and I was outside Conviction range!), so I thought it was best to fight it out instead of going for another Ajheed resurrection. The fire golem actually dealt notable damage to this boss. Far from the useless piece of &%¤# the Necro forum's golem FAQ says it is!

Some big fights:

In this one, it was obviously important to protect the lightning/cold mages in the center. How else are we going to defeat that boss?

This was an even bigger brawl. Insane!

Urdars are obviously great Revives (stunning and Crushing Blow ftw) but if the passsage is narrow, it's often better to have a couple of smaller ones also, like the Grotesque Wyrms that were around in large numbers.

Hellforge gave me Um, and all four gems were sapphires. That was a first.

All 'megademons' in this act took a long time to kill. Poison mages were very important against them, and Thorns was a big help. I had many Revives up by the time I got to the Infector's seal, which was great:

Managed to get two of De Seis' minion Revives to the Diablo fight:

They were amazing. Diablo couldn't kill them! They are of course FI, and the lightning hose started too far away from Diablo to hit them. Plus their HP was high enough to withstand his blows. They actually timed out (Diablo takes longer to kill than the other act bosses because he hits himself (Thorns) less often). After they timed out, I switched to Fire Golems because he would not target Clay Golems when he could see other targets (I think we went for highest displayed damage).

Some cleanup was required after the fight:

One more act to go. I'm still waiting for a shrunken head with more than +1 skills, or a magical/rare Succubus/Bloodlord Skull to reroll. Plus I still haven't seen that coveted Golemlord's Amulet even though I gamble like crazy.


[Highlight]Conqueror Mago the Golemancing Lord of Mages and Ajheed the Fire Mage, level 83, Hell Harrogath[/Highlight]

 

[OldSoldier1]

That Urdar fight shot is great!

 

[Kestegs]

Those are some crazy shots, and some tough monsters! Glad to see you got through it all, and good luck in the final act!

 

[Turbocannon]

Jerhyn gave Ruby the once-over as he spotted the woman returning via town portal, covered from head to toe in muck. "You look like you've had a tough battle, adventurer! Tell me, did you manage to stop Diablo?"

"No," Ruby shook her head. "They laid a trap for me. Duriel, the Lord of Pain, tried to ambush me as soon as I entered Tal Rasha's chamber. Just as I had foreseen... Without the element of surprise, though, he was unable to do us much harm."

"Yeah, tell that to me," Alhizeer muttered inaudibly behind her. Little did he know that Ruby heard him through her Shadow - though she ignored the remark with just a smirk.

"Pray tell me - where do you get these 'visions' anyway?" Deckard Cain interjected.

"Secret of the trade, old man," came the enigmatic reply.

"We thank you for your immense assistance nevertheless," the young Sultan inclined his head. "I will have Meshif outfit a boat for you as soon as possible to assist you in your journey east."

"Great! In the meanwhile, I'll just loot the other six tombs. They're simply loaded! Come on Al, let's go - I'll be able to pay you all the better, you know," she called out to her reluctant mercenary.

***

I did a marathon clear of Act 2 yesterday on /p5. It wasn't really bad, although I did manage to find myself in a tight spot one or two times, but using the teleport charges of my circlet allowed me to safely survive these situations. Sometimes, between games, it seems that my teleport hotkey is removed, even though I don't remove the circlet - need to watch out for that!

For the most part, this act brought us better amulets. I found this at some point:

Awesome, isn't it? The thing is, my resistances to lightning and poison were already maxed out, and my fire and cold resists are also pretty good. (Equipping my CB gloves reduced my FR a little bit but increased my PR.) While I'll probably use this in Hell if I don't find anything better, or whenever I need the extra strength, for now I've found something a little better:

Just great! It's the equivalent of 25-50% DR against most monsters right now, if not more. It makes going through NM a lot safer, mind you! In Hell, monsters will probably start dealing more physical damage (thus this will help relatively less), and I'll need the resists more, which is why I'll probably switch to the rare amulet then, but for now, the only thing that I think could be better than this amulet is a Life Everlasting amulet with a good prefix.

After a few CoS crashes in the tombs (they seem to happen when CoS affects a mummy sarcophagus or other immobile item when it's off-screen, and then I move closer to the sarcophagus - I've been able to cast CoS no problem while the sarcophagus was there) and quite a lot of pain trying to deal with Unravelers and such, I managed to complete the act. Let me tell you, the new Hurlbat and its greatly increased physical damage are a massive help against the undead!

Other notable finds were a Lum in the Arcane Sanctuary and an Io in one of the tombs of Tal Rasha. The latter is not that useful for us right now, but the Lum puts us one step closer to acquiring a Lionheart.

Duriel was not too hard, as the Shadow Master was much better at tanking it this time than in Normal (think it was the Warrior at that point, too? Not sure). The mercenary died once or twice, but the third(?) time it got stuck on the Shadow Master, who in turn couldn't be knocked back by Duriel's slam attacks because of the mercenary behind him. This was ideal; the mercenary's damage output was lost, but he didn't die, while the Shadow Master lasted for a very long time, allowing me to fill Duriel with thrown projectiles. This was the drop:

None of the armor proved to be an upgrade for the merc, who's still using an armor with decent LR and 3 PDR, but not much else.

Now, my ring situation is actually quite atrocious. I was using +str rings for most of the game, but now I no longer need those small strength bonuses (for the time being), and I don't have good rings to replace them. I found some rings giving me small amounts of FR and such, but the Manald Heal is still the better of my two rings, and it's not even that great. So I tried to craft a Blood Ring once I got into Act 3.

It's OK, but not that impressive, really. It would still be an upgrade if I could wear it now, but I'm 8 levels away. I'll probably find several PRubies by that point which could be used to make more. Though once I reach level 60, I'll probably try to craft better Blood gloves - ones with a better LL and CB roll, hopefully, and also better resists. And maybe some strength. And hopefully IAS, too - despite my BoS there are still breakpoints to be reached, though I'm too lazy to calculate where exactly they are. Either way, Venom and Shadow Master are now maxed, and I'm going to pump BoS for a while (for some FRW and hopefully an IAS breakpoint too) and then Mind Blast (which is actually kinda useful at times - it's just annoying when my Shadow Master converts the Unraveler that I should be killing, but if it did the opposite and converted the meatshields instead, it would come in handy actually).

 

[OldSoldier1]

Whitefang tested out his new weapon these last couple of days and maybe it is more of a game changer for him than I thought. Before, I'd find myself running from more than two bad guys that did much damage because my life bulb just wouldn't raise fast enough when hitting to make up for the damage dealt to him, and the hit chance was not good enough to be consistently leeching. Well those problems are a thing of the past, and Whitefang hits almost every time. Before the Fool's weapon, he struggled to maintain 80% CTH but now everything is pretty much 95%. Basically the misses went from 1 in 5 to 1 in 20. A Fury cycle hits 5 times most of the time and casts amp damage quite a bit. And when that happens, stuff just melts. I killed a Mauler in three fury hits, or 18 frames. It was incredible and it felt like that act II screenshot where he was completely surrounded and survived, all over again. Let me run you through with some screenshots to make the point.

Safety is still first, this is HC after all! I think situations like these where there are 10 enemies that can "fit" around my character are probably the biggest threat right now, so I took them on a couple at a time. The nice thing about the ancient axe I am using is that it has a range adder of 3, which means it reaches out and touches pretty far. It can get a flayer and the flayer (or two) behind it on a single Fury cycle.
View attachment 2176

I was not able to take more than two of Stormtree and buddies at once when they were frenzied up, but Ajheed was great about freezing some of them in place while others followed me deeper into the jungle, so I could spread them out and dispatch them easily. You can see that Stormtree was Stone Skin. The amp nearly always went off on these guys because they took a lot of hits to bring down, but once it did, no problem.
View attachment 2177

Both of the temples in the Kurast Bazaar were stair traps. This one had a boss pack of Blood Lords blocking one exit from the room, and the other exit had about a dozen serpent magi and wailing beasts coming through as they could fit one at a time. I hadn't had a lot of experience with the survivability granted by this new weapon and 80%+ life leech so when they kept pouring through, I decided to leave since there was no way to get my back against a wall and I didn't know what else would come through the magi-beast doorway. I decided to come back later after clearing the rest of Kurast and the sewers. The spiders and beasts were just normal monsters, not bosses, so they were basically mobile purple potions and it was not much trouble.
View attachment 2178

The other temple had Sarina in a different configuration temple than I normally see her in, and she was extra fast and extra strong (of course) and her pack did quite a number on me. I didn't dare try Fury because I was getting mobbed and it just wastes a ton of time when you are mobbed because it misses, so I focused on Sarina herself with Feral Rage while Ajheed tried to freeze her minions. I had to run up the stairs once. I went back down and finally caught a break when I amped Sarina and Ajheed threw out a glacial spike, which gave me some time to deal with her one on one. I did use six purples and three reds dealing with her though.

I couldn't get the loot! I'm sure that necro head is worth 30K!
View attachment 2179

I started to get more confidence when facing this guy and his minions. He had a conviction aura, which scared me at first, but once I finally waded in, and started wailing away, even standing in a couple meteor patches with conviction, I wasn't even feeling it. Feral Rage > Conviction Meteors!
View attachment 2180

The council was no problem whatsoever, even with 55% fire resist. My life moved from full one or two times, by maybe 200 HP max. It really was too easy.
View attachment 2181

Durance level 1 had three boss packs of undead dolls which I was concerned would kill me when they died, but the biggest hurty explosion was about 400 HP, and they are leechable, which surprised me, so the very next one filled Whitefang to the top before it popped. The first boss I hit with the Steel tabar (I upgraded from the giant axe in this act) and allowed Ajheed to shoot at him while he chased me around and eventually bled out, popping by himself. That is a tactic I will probably use again in later difficulties/areas. The other two I tanked and they were no real problem. I just made sure to use Feral Rage and not Fury so I could control when they died.

Durance level 2 was easier, with zombies and maulers and blood lords, all leechable monsters. I was able to tank all four champion maulers (two were dead before I took the screenie). I am not sure I'll try that again but it was nice to see it in mid-NM anyway. No potions required. I don't think I used a potion after the Sarina fight until getting to Mephisto.
View attachment 2182

I killed the council members in level 3 in seconds. It was ridiculously fast. I just about ignored the blood lords' damage. They took a fair number of whacks but that means that amp went off on about half of them, and then their health shot to zero in a few seconds or less.
View attachment 2183

I was feeling pretty bold about my character's power at this point and once I killed the last council member, I decided to charge straight to Mephisto because I had my Feral Rage ball maxed out. Life leech with a maxed out Feral Rage (which for me was level 19 at this point) and the weapon I carry was I think 91%. I also have 40% FRW boots, which combined with Feral Rage, give me 93% FRW. At this point, I am faster than everything and if it is leechable, I am almost untouchable.

Take a look at the Mephisto fight. No way would I try this with most characters! I'd spend copious time drawing the blood lords away from Meph so I could take him one on one. Well with Whitefang, I saw them as purples! Meph isn't leechable, so when I focused on him, I would take noticeable damage from standing in firewalls and such, so I would switch targets and kill a blood lord to get back up to 100%. When I could get amp to go off on Mephisto, I would fury away at him until I needed to get more life, and go back and kill another blood lord. Their fire did hurt when I wasn't leeching so I decided to kill 3 or 4 in a row once to get some control of the situation, but it was never in doubt. I did use all my small purples and a couple of full purples because when Amp went off on Mephisto, I didn't want to waste it. Once all the blood lords were dead, I did go back to town to restock potions one time, but I just kept my eye on the life bulb (which was mostly green) and Feral Rage, Feral Rage, Fury, Fury, repeat, and he went down in a heap. I checked the LCS at the Pandemonium Fortress and my CTH on Mephisto was 89% with Feral Rage and 88% with Fury.
View attachment 2184

My drops this act were pretty funny. Remember the +3 elemental skills circlet from my last update? I think the game is trying to tell me something about my build preference! I have hardly gotten any other +skill tab equipment, for any class, let alone druid. The amulet was an Iratha's, not an Angelics, grrrr.
View attachment 2185

Destroyer Whitefang, level 64 Titan Wolf, NM Pandemonium Fortress

edit: I am trying to plan ahead for Diablo - I have Cleglaw's gloves which provide 25% slow but I have been unable to find any additional slow. I have found 5 Hel runes and that Lem but nothing else so I can't make Lawbringer unless I get a Ko at the forge. So basically I'll be fighting a full power Diablo unless I can get a good drop beforehand. I can make a Black RW to help with some CB against Diablo but am not sure the weapon range I need to be using in order to stand inside his lightning hose reliably like the Doom Knights did for Jiansonz. If I make Black in a flail (range adder 2) will I be hit by the hose? Morning Star (range adder 1)? War Hammer (range adder 0) will certainly get it done but it is super slow with a werewolf.

 

[Kestegs]

Wow, great to see the new weapon making such a huge difference! Also some great elemental druid stuff... Of course.

You can always manually put yourself into close melee with Diablo if you want. I wouldn't expect he'll move around too much if you stay close. I think with all your leech you probably don't have too much to worry about.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@OldSoldier - Awesome job! The game has a funny way of showing you what could have been, doesn't it? Glad to see the new axe is working out well!

 

[bladejj]

Awesome progress OldSoldier! The screenshots and corresponding dialogue make it feel as if we're actually there. Good luck against diablo.

Quick update on Levi, the warcry only, mixed stat distribution barbarian. He is currently in Act 2 normal and just acquired the cube. Progress is slow as summer and and quarter 2 close at work are in full swing. Hopefully as the fall comes closer I'll get some more time to make some decent headway. Good luck to the other participants as well.

 

[OldSoldier1]

You can always manually put yourself into close melee with Diablo if you want. I wouldn't expect he'll move around too much if you stay close. I think with all your leech you probably don't have too much to worry about.

The problem with getting closer manually is that the 93% FRW actually works against me there. Whitefang really hauls the mail around the battlefield, and I don't trust myself to switch from walk to run to manage speed during the fight. I think I'll ditch my Steel tabar for that fight and shop a wand of Life Tap. I can have LT on right mouse button and attack on left mouse button, which will close to zero range when I try to swing at him with the wand. The other weapon can either be a Black flail (I need to get some good dexterity to wield it, as dex is not my strong suit) or the axe I'm using during exploration and general melee. And since Mephisto wasn't leechable, I don't know if Diablo is or not, so just in case he isn't, the Life Tap will also be handy. Maybe if I get to 140%+ life leech, the lightning hose won't matter!

 

[jiansonz]

@OldSoldier: nice progress and write-up.

Sarina is always Extra Fast Spectral Hit, so you rolled Extra Strong as random extra. Tough roll.

Mago would have looted that necro head on the sewers island. He has a teleporting circlet in his stash.

Even if you walk fast and have a long range weapon against Diablo, I don't think it will be hard to click just past him (try to walk through him) to get really close before you attack. In NM, you must be maximally close to avoid the hose (of course, this means that you're a sitting duck for a ton of Firestorm segments, be prepared with purples...).

 

[OldSoldier1]

I got to the RoF waypoint last night. Oddly enough, I was able to find all three of the runes for Lawbringer in a single standalone session. Maybe an Omen? I bought a wand of life tap and with the Gerke's Sanctuary that Mephisto dropped I'll be sporting either 20 or 28 MDR for the fight with Diablo, depending on if I decide to wear the Spirit Shroud or my life armor, which maxes out my fire resist and gives me a few hundred more life. Decisions decisions! Diablo tonight! I have four weapons to choose from and two armors. I think (hope) any combination would work. But we'll see!

 

[OldSoldier1]

Update with pictures in the next few days, but Jiansonz was right (again). I just clicked a bit past Diablo and whilst walking I clicked directly on him and stood inside his hose easily. Even the firestorm didn't hurt too bad. And as a general gameplay note, you cannot cast Life Tap as a wolf. Doh! That plan got scrapped for now. Maybe I'll bring it back out down the road for another try. A final note: I did make a Lawbringer in a war scepter, but it didn't perform all that well, and when I went to switch back to my Axe of Giddiness, I clearly lost the benefit of the Fools mod, and it was MINUTES without amp damage. I finally got it to work again somehow, even though unequipping the axe didn't work the first time (I could tell based on the fact that it was almost all whiffs for several screens in a row, and I had to resort to scaredy-wolf tactics all over again), even though the LCS sported a sultry 95% CTH. I think going back to town and unshifting, unequipping the axe, and removing the Lawbringer from my character finally did it. Not going to use that thing again, at least until I find a more calm area like the Den of Evil or something easy where I can test it out again. It certainly didn't perform like I was hoping (i.e. get a form of crowd control against cold immunes and physical immunes in hell).

 

[OldSoldier1]

I can't let this tournament languish on page two for long, so here's a couple of updates back-to-back.

Act IV began with Whitefang getting greeted at the door. Not a very nice welcome wagon.
View attachment 2199

Those guys weren't hard though, and they provided great leech potential at /P7. Whitefang rages at 102% life leech and 7% mana leech. Needless to say the bulbs stayed topped off even while poisoned, except in some circumstances which I will discuss in my next update.

In the next area, Whitefang ran into this guy...
View attachment 2200

...and this guy...
View attachment 2208

...and this guy all together.
View attachment 2201

I was fighting a bunch of lightning bolts and invisible enemies when I heard the words "Save yourself!" at the same time, so I ran back up the stairs (was amped by the second Burning Soul boss anyway) and Izual followed me up the stairs. Feral Rage > NM Izual and those two points maxed out my Feral Rage and Werewolf, only leaving Fury to go higher.

The rest of the outer hell areas were uneventful and rather easy. I did have a scary moment in a situation similar to this one; Whitefang moved forward to engage the maggot young (Fury is great against these guys) and at least two or three eggs popped at once, leaving me unable to escape along the nearby bridge. Two regular maulers were clubbing me silly, and Fury wasn't quite fast enough to kill the maggots before they swarmed. Took a couple purples but once I finally got the small bugger blocking the path to the bridge, it was back to normal.
View attachment 2202

Feral Rage > NM Hephasto.
View attachment 2203

The Chaos Sanctuary had some fun fights. Even Decrepified, he runs pretty fast at 95% FRW and still attacks fast enough for me to stay fully healed. Honestly it was still an OK challenge without IM, but I am a bit sad that that part of the game has changed, even though this character probably would kill himself on IM. I still ported out before getting swamped by Infector's gang of thugs, ran back from the WP, and got them 2-3 at a time. Same with De Seis.
View attachment 2204

The Diablo fight was easier than I thought it would be. I first tried the life armor I purchased and made (+112 life, 30% FR, which gives mucho life when transformed) but Diablo chilled me and put the damper on my fun, so I went back to the Spirit Shroud. I clicked past him like we discussed earlier, and stood inside his fire hose. The +11 MDR I have on at all times helped with the firestorm, but really the Feral Rage won the day. He only lightning hosed and firestormed about 3x each. I attribute some of the tameness to the Cleglaw's gloves.
View attachment 2205

My drops this act. I've been seeing a lot of +3 skills circlets and amulets, but nothing for a shapeshifter like myself (I don't really care too much about a circlet anyway, unless one comes with life and resist all). The +4 Lycanthropy buff helm I use is pretty sweet.
View attachment 2206

Here's the weapon I made from the runes this act. It looks great on paper but I haven't gotten the hang of it yet. So I put it away for now.
View attachment 2207

Another update inbound.