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Vessel of Hatred

The Committed Tournament

Whitefang continued to Harrogath (I think) at level 66 or 67, I can't recall. The Bloody Foothills included quill rats and demon imps, so there wasn't much in the way of experience to be had there. The Frigid Highlands was easy. Whitefang was not able to find Sharon's body in the Crystalline Passageway, but he was able to find three boss packs of Blood Lords like this guy...
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...and this guy. They were not stacked at the entrance, they were closer to the exit so I had some maneuver room to work with, which I needed. They hit hard!
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The level also had claw vipers, and one of the viper packs was also extra fast so it was a good thing that I own the battlefield when running. Probably a frenzied up Blood Lord would be able to catch me but I'm faster than Ajheed and that's all that matters!

The Frozen River was crazy! It had burning souls, hell witches and vipers. There was always something really painful coming at me so it was a whack whack with Feral Rage, run away and hope one or two followed me. Sometimes the Rage ball would time out and I'd have to go back to 40% FRW which seems awfully slow now, at least in the thick of battle. I got to Anya and was happy about the 10% resists. That maxed out fire and lightning.
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What AR problem did I have before? I forget.
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The Frozen Tundra was pretty tough! This was the area I alluded to in my last update. Skeleton Archers > Feral Rage. Gaggles of Skeleton Archers were very tough nuts to crack. I got my ball going so I was running fast (leech was pointless with these guys) and ran in a circle around them until I found a straggler and stopped for a quick swipe with Feral Rage. Then it was off to the races again. They killed Ajheed once, normally just firing in random directions as I ran by. It involved quite a few red potions, as my angle of attack did not always coincide with them firing in the wrong direction, but eventually I got them. There were four sets like this. Fortunately, none were boss packs so there were no mana burn or extra strong/cursed mods on any of these arrows. My cold resists were not good so they just hurt a little bit.
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Flayers and zealots by the thousands on my way to Nihlathak! It was crazy to see so many blow darts hitting Whitefang. It was a constant growl out of him, but he prevailed, easily I might add.
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The Halls of Vaught was tough too, with poison vipers and amp witches. I thought the poison clouds would be instant death but I only ran into them a couple of times and not for that long. Lost a couple hundred HP each time, easily leeched back when I made it to the vipers, who went down lickety split.

Nihlathak was pretty easy. He blew up about 4-5 corpses but they didn't hurt.
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Drops this session. I found a nice ethereal Martel de Fer with 3os so I made my Black out of it. It will be my switch weapon against bosses/ancients in hell. I am at 400 strength so it's gonna whomp. I haven't found an Io this entire game, but I am up to 8 Hel runes, so I sacrificed three of them to mint this puppy. It is two frames slower than my current axe, but I think if I swing the axe until Amp triggers, then Fury with this thing, it should hit periodically and really hurt. Hopefully the AR doesn't suffer too much. If it does, I'll switch back.
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Another update follows (I'd do them all at once but I am sure it would crash out on me).
 
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Nice work! I'm excited to read your next update! That shot of your AR is just nuts, and I'm a little confused about it. The shrine should add 200% to AR, so it seems bugged.

Like the black martel also, great damage.
 
Whew, last one for today.

After killing Nihlathak, Whitefang continued along in the Ancient's Way. He met up with some Frenzytaur buddies while there but they weren't talkative. I think Ajheed interrupted their Parcheesi tournament. I can't take these guys more than two at a time, so hopefully in hell we can figure out a way to tone them down a bit.
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The Icy Cellar was nearby the Arreat Summit and had this at the ready. Nice! It helped defeating Korlic.
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My stats before joining the fight with the old men. I dropped some juvies on the ground for just-in-case and then activated the alter, ran to the bottom and after taking two swipes at one of them to start running faster, ran to the top. Korlic chased and made me put my Spirit Shroud back on, which I didn't take off (although my life bulb looks like I might have put the life armor back on for Talic, I can't remember. It was last night you know!).
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Fight with Korlic did not last long.
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I took Talic second. Easy mods.
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Madawc was third. No problem at all. I didn't have my Cleglaw's gloves for this, I just plain forgot them.
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WSK was uneventful, but the Throne of Destruction was crazy, and it was here that I realized that after getting the WP in WSK 2 that I forgot to S&E to get those gloves. Oh well, I decided to press on without them. The ToD had unfreezable frenzytaurs, witches and gloams. Nasty set but no boss Frenzytaurs (only witches) so I got through it. The waves were still all freezable (Colenzo and Achmel's minions) so they went down without much problem. I can stand in the hydras blasts and not feel it when there is a target to be had. Pretty cool.
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I had to string out Lister and his buddies but even Lister with these dangerous mods, as soon as he backed me up against a wall, went down without much problem. I took them two at a time except for him, as Ajheed could freeze one in place and I could wail away at the other with Feral Rage and then fury fury fury. Fury usually puts a monster in hit recovery. It always does when they are amped (except act bosses).
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Good positioning and the Spirit Shroud ensured that the hoarfrost attack from Baal would not be a problem. The column, pedestal or railing stopped the knockback, and the armor kept the chills at bay, so Whitefang just pummeled Baal. He cloned himself three or four times, and a couple of times his clone would be out of position to hurt me or Ajheed so I just stayed and whittled his life (I have 7% CB on the gloves too but this was also at /P7) until it was gone. Check out my hit points for Lister and Baal. It was a pure coincidence but I think it's pretty funny.
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His drop.
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The cow king and his ilk were handled at /P1 because this guy is not a cow runner. We did get a single Amn rune for the hour we spent clearing it. Meh.

I hope to try out that Lawbringer again and figure out why it bugged last time. I could have used it in the Drifter Cavern, which was a central entrance, and immediately CI goat men accosted us with a boss enchanted with might. I tried to run around a bit but can't do 6 on 1 with might enchanted enemies. I guess I should have stayed and tried harder but I didn't have Cleglaw's or Lawbringer to try so I bailed and all bad guys continue to live in that cavern.

Conqueror Whitefang, Titan Wolf, level 74 Hell Rogue Encampment
 
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kestegs said:
Nice work! I'm excited to read your next update! That shot of your AR is just nuts, and I'm a little confused about it. The shrine should add 200% to AR, so it seems bugged.

Like the black martel also, great damage.
Click to expand...

It added more like 10 times the normal AR for whatever reason. Check out the LCS I snapped right before going to kill the ancients, it (AR) is even higher! Who knows about this bug, it is in my favor, finally, and I'm at 95% CTH anyway so it doesn't really matter much. The biggest modifiers to me hitting with that axe at this point is the enemy blocking percentage. Baal blocked a lot.
 
Before Whitefang started the final 1/3 of the journey, I muled in all of his rings and cubed them in hopes of obtaining a Chromatic + life amulet. I did get one Chromatic amulet (+24%) and a couple of +life amulets but nothing to unseat the whale (+90 life) one I use now. I decided to do this at level 74 because 75% of that is ilvl 55, which is just sufficient to roll chromatic prefixes. No other good ones to speak of, at least at this time.

Here is his LCS prior to the journey into the blood moor. He keeps his Spirit Shroud in the game stash at all times for the CBF but uses the Smoke for normal exploring for the resists.
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Whitefang ran up against the standard quill rats and flayers in the Blood Moor. Quill rats hit way too hard in my opinion, but maybe the game wants to keep you on your toes right out of the gate. I spent several purples getting through just the blood moor with a couple rough spots on multishot quill rat bosses.

Here's a tough boss in the cave. He hit pretty hard and I couldn't leech off of him.
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He was far harder than Coldcrow. I put on the Spirit Shroud for this fight and she went down pretty easily. She wasn't extra strong or extra fast and her area was accessible from two sides so it was easy to split her from her minions a couple at a time.
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My first PI/CI in the game, this guy was a challenge. He cursed us so his attacks hit hard, and so we had limited time to attempt to get amp to trigger and break his PI. I was able to do it two or three times, which was enough to take him down, but it required most of my purples. It probably would have been easier with the Steel Tabar and not the Lawbringer on switch but I have the Steel in ATMA at the moment.
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This guy was a nightmare: unleechable multishot extra strong archer boss. I got him but it took all but two of my purples and he and his buddies killed Ajheed a couple of times. I had to run back and forth around the level to get his friends which were sniping me as I tried to kill the boss, which timed out my run speed bonus.
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Devil Ripper here was no easy task either because of the curse he put on me. His cold enchantment meant that Ajheed couldn't slow him down either, so I had to take him full force.
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This guy was my second PI/CI in the act so far. I was able to kill his minions without too much fanfare, but the mana burn meant a lot more running around than normal, because I couldn't stand toe to toe and fury away, which is my fastest amp proc method by far,, because he'd steal my mana. He died though, so too bad for him.
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My next picture is a bit out of order but shows the areas where the Lawbringer was very helpful: Griswold, when chilled and decrepified, took a swing at me that probably took longer than 3 seconds. When he started to swing at me, I was able to run away, around to his back side and continue to whack away before he finished his attack, which was now in the wrong direction. The Lawbringer also completely tamed these ghost packs on the way to the Countess. They couldn't move fast enough to counter the knockback on the aura, so Ajheed pounded them with Ice Blast and they went down. His ice blasts are pretty powerful against them and they still freeze for a good while. Lawbringer also did great in some areas where I needed the aura in the Mausoleum and Crypt. It did not seem to bug, i.e. I could switch back and forth between weapons, and although the Lawbringer didn't hit as often, the Decrepify still went off and I definitely benefited from the aura. Then when I switched back to the Ancient Axe, it amped this time. There were a couple of spots in the Pit where I definitely missed more with the axe than I thought I should (maybe a stretch where I missed about 2/3 of the time) but shortly thereafter it seemed to get better so maybe it was just a bad set of rolls for a bit. I am not sure what is going on but confidence is on the rise with it.
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The final picture is of my drops and gambles from the start of hell to the Outer Cloister. I was able to find quite a few +3 items but nothing for me until cubing a +2 shapeshifter amulet out of some gambled rings. That's an immediate upgrade over the +1 Druid skills amulet I had been using because I use it for the prebuff only and run the +90 life amulet almost exclusively at this point. The life difference is really big and too hard to ignore. I can transform into a werewolf at level 29 Lyncanthropy now, which gives me about 10 minutes between transformations. Hopefully I'll find a Monarch or other 4 socket shield and get that up another 2 levels.
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The Thunder Maul dropped in the Pit, and since it is probably the only zero dex requirement level 85 qlvl weapon I'm going to find, I cubed the heck out of it with my chips. I had enough chips for 43 tries. Tries 1 through 28 were complete crap. Not a single Evisceration (never saw one of those) or anything better than a "Brutal" for enhanced damage. 29 yielded me a Fool's weapon with two sockets but I have one of those now so I rerolled. 39th roll gave me a Lord's, but I kept going. 43rd roll gave me a 103% Ferocious but that's nowhere near Cruel + 2 sockets I needed at the least to consider using it (2 sockets to fill with Shaels or Eths if a quickness suffix didn't roll). So overall my cubing with the rings and this thunder maul did not yield suitable results.

I consider nothing that Whitefang is wearing now to be endgame worthy, but it all serves a good function and is useable as is. So I gamble all sorts of stuff! Still pretty fun to play this guy, I guess that weapon was the key.

Conqueror Whitefang, level 77 Titan Wolf, Hell Outer Cloister WP

edit: I forgot to mention that I gambled circlets so much that I've gotten 2 Naj's Circlets and not a single teleportation item, which I don't think works in wolf form anyway.
 
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Nice work, those are some tough monsters to start hell out with. Looks like you've got a pretty strong character by your lcs shot.

What /p setting are you running on?
 
Whitefang assaulted the Monastery and faced his greatest fear: skeleton archers.

This guy had the trifecta of damage enhancements against a melee character. Fanaticism, multishot, cursed. Ugh. I did some running around, and the nice thing about Lawbringer is that it makes these types of guys stumble when it knocks them back. So I was able to get in a couple hits, and once Decrepify went off, I could take a full frontal shot of all three arrows and not hurt too bad.
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I put my cleglaw's gloves on and used the Lawbringer to get some decrep going on the smith, who ended up being very tame.
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Moving into the jail I knew I would face more ghosts. None of them proved to be of any concern. Even a champion pack was pretty simply handled. Lawbringer was a good choice for situations like this one and hopefully it will assist me in act II as well. This guy's PI status had just been revoked.
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I had to go back to town to fetch my Spirit Shroud to take on Pitspawn. My resists are not great with that armor but it is better than being slowed, and the heavy life leech is great against leechables like him. This is before I was able to get it going much but he died in just a few hits.
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I used my Lawbringer on this guy too, which decrepified him. Once that happened I switched to the Amp Axe and it went off on him too and he was toast in no time. Much easier than my last couple of PI/CI monsters.
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The final level of the catacombs was pretty crazy. There was a stair trap of might enchanted boss pack of Tainted. They were hurting me pretty badly so I went back up the stairs to figure out what I wanted to do. I decided to go into the antechamber with the blood pool, but that was a huge mistake. In that small room there was 2 boss packs of zombies, a champion pack with 4 of them (1 fanatic) and the usual assortment of fallen and their shaman. I tried killing the shaman to start clearing room but there were too many zombies closing in and too many fallen taking potshots at me when I ran by to be a stable situation. Ajheed died and I had just enough time to open a portal before being surrounded. It was close! I came back in with Ajheed through the waypoint and some of the Tainted (but not the boss) had gone into the other room from the stairs, so I was able to make a foothold and clear it all out. Sorry, no screenie, but I am super glad I did not die there, I'm attached to this guy now.

My fight with Andariel. She hit really hard, harder than I expected. I was able to get Feral Rage going (I wanted to use that sweet Black Martel) and probably wouldn't have had much problem if I had just stuck to my normal axe weapon. But I switched and swung slower. Andariel moved 25% slower herself, BTW. I was normally watching my life bar, because it moved up and down pretty fast, so I don't know exactly how it happened but I'd say I hit her with a fury cycle and maybe two or three Feral Rage hits with that Black after I'd gotten the amp going with the axe, and she died FAST. I needed her to, because she caused me to use all of my rejuvenation potions that I had in the game. Red potions do not heal very fast for my character it seems. But we prevailed!
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Lovely drop (not).
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Apparently that Twisted Essence is not compatible with ATMA. It crashed on me and I thought, oh great now what, but I dropped it on the ground and I'm back in business.

Conqueror Whitefang, level 77 Titan Wolf
 
"AAARGH!" Ruby screamed as she was showered with a torrent of sharp bone fragments. Alhizeer quickly hurried to her side, helping hold Ruby's shaking hands still as she quickly drank a Rejuvenation Potion.

Half a minute later, Ruby was still breathing rapidly. "Shit... I thought I was going to die there, for sure. Ingenious. It's like one of the fire grenades our order uses, delivered through this undead creature."

"You know, boss, things like this wouldn't happen if you covered up more of your body. Armor is no use if it doesn't protect half of your skin."

"You'd be surprised. Besides, I've told you already - the magic infused with the armor helps me more than the armor itself. I can't wear full-body heavy armor, I need it for the mobility."

"Hey, I've watched you try on light plate mail before, I..."

Ruby shot him a reproachful look. "You did?"

"Er... crap, I probably shouldn't have said that," Alhizeer grinned sheepishly, then winced as Ruby sent a light mind blast his way. "Anyway, you said you can wear that, didn't you? Besides, this armor covers your torso, but these tykes we're fighting here can't even reach up that high. Whatever you're trying to do here, Ruby, you could probably do it better."

"Uh huh."

Alhizeer sighed. "You know, sometimes you act as though someone was watching you throughout your adventures... someone you were trying to impress. With your looks, that is."

"Nonsense," Ruby retorted sharply. And with that, the discussion was over.

***

I've completed Nightmare up to Act 3's end. Act 3 was done on /p8. Since tough times are coming, I'll probably not do any more acts on /p8 henceforth. Act 4 will be done on... probably /p3, since I can't use CoS on the upper levels because of the high risk of crashing. Act 5 will likewise be done on a relatively low difficulty because I'm afraid of the Ancients. And no way am I doing Hell with anything higher than /p3 even during Act 1.

Had one NDE in the Swampy Pit. Due to poor maneuvering, an Undead Stygian Doll ended up right next to me as it died, and it took me down from mostly full to 33 HP. That was scary. Otherwise, this was an easy act - aside from the obnoxious "nearly immune to poison" undead in Mephisto's fortress, everything went down quite reasonably. I was much more careful with the dolls by that point.

Not much in the way of equipment upgrades. Two attempts with blood gloves didn't give me anything magnificent, the better one was this:

ZtXmWRX.jpg


Still not a big deal - resists are even poorer than the current gloves, and +10 strength would be nicer if the other stats were better.

Mephisto's drop was this:

Zad8S2o.jpg


Most notable drop is the short spear:

3XgK1X9.jpg


A weapon like this, upped once, would be great if the stack size was bigger, if I hadn't already leveled Burst of Speed up to 16 (which lets me reach the maximum speed breakpoint with my Hurlbat, making it impressively fast), and if it had some more damage and/or better auxiliary mods instead of +AR and +fire. As it stands, none of these conditions apply.

Another interesting find was the Woestave halberd, which could potentially be a nice weapon if upped. I'm still considering whether that's a good idea, as I had actually found a 2os Partizan among some Flayers, which I socketed to form a Strength runeword, a strict upgrade from the Savage Bill of the Leech the mercenary had been using so far (aside from a slight attack speed drop which shouldn't be that bad on the merc). Woestave also doesn't leech, so I'd have to find another way to get leech on the mercenary if I decide to use it. If I had an excess PRuby, I'd probably craft Blood armor, but since all of my crafting needs are competing for rubies, I can't justify the expense.
 
Did I ever tell you how much Whitefang loves Combat Shrines? I try my best to abuse them as much as possible by touching them a few times as appropriate.
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Blade Bite bit it.
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We had seen two white ogre mauls dropped and after killing Radament I decided to attempt my Normal and Nightmare imbues on them. This is the better one, if only because of the name on it. While it has better damage than my gambled axe Shadow Rend, it is slower, less AR and no amp proc. Pass. I've realized by now how special that weapon really is, even if base damage isn't great. It handles most situations very well.
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Here is my chance to hit with the rare axe I use.
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Here is my chance to hit with the Lawbringer, which I use in many undead areas to keep the unravelers off of me. I have no idea if the -50% target defense shows up on the LCS but 62% seems about right. I definitely hit less than with the axe, but often enough to get Decrepify going often, which is a major plus to that weapon.
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Here are some of the PIs handled almost exclusively by Ajheed in the Maggot Lair. The Maggot Lair was very fun for Whitefang, even though he didn't have a piercing missile attack like Splat or Sharon. Enemies came at him one at a time and the PI Itchies were dispatched rather easily by Ajheed's Ice Blasts, which hit very hard and still freeze for quite a long time even in hell. Ajheed would freeze nearly everything (only Coldworm was CI) and Whitefang would either stand back and enjoy the ice show or whack away, depending on type of enemy. It was a great 1-2 punch.
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Lawbringer > Dark Elder. No contest.
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In the Claw Viper temple I ran the Spirit Shroud (mostly) and Cleglaw's Pincers (always). Everything was cold immune so Ajheed was mostly a spectator, but I was able to use him for some hit absorption in a few cases (sorry buddy!). Don't worry, I bought him some great mead at Atma's place afterward. This guy I just had to go toe-to-toe without decrepify or amp damage. My knockback was funny as it gave them room to charge me back, and we ended up basically dancing back and forth in the room. But I prevailed.
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This is the first time I remember using the crates in the corner. These silly boxes allowed me to handle the champ pack one at a time. Fangskin was at the lower right so I ran onto the altar, got the amulet and fought him and his pack back down the stairs, also one at a time. This was one of the more frightful places I had been fearing, but we made it out alive.
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Our drops this update. I decided to burn a couple of my P Rubies on shopped-from-Fara Decapitator blood axes. This is the better one. Pretty nice and good damage but not enough to unseat the Shadow Rend (Also, this is my first Io rune, about 11.5 acts into the game!). The ring got equipped full time. It was gambled.
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I like decaptitators because they have low dex requirement. If I do find an Um rune (already have the Fal) and upgrade the Shadow Rend to get more base damage I'd have to find a way to get to 55 dex, which is the Glorious Axe requirement. I can put a Hel rune in the axe to bring that down to 44, but right now I only have 35. I can put an Emerald in my coronet to get to 45, but I'd like to put a ruby in there because at level 29 lycanthropy, a perfect ruby gives me 108 life. I also have a res all ring with +10 dex which is pretty nice but my second ring now has +36 life and 30% cold resist so I have some decisions to make eventually. But the axe still works fine now, and I suspect it will for the time being (maybe by act IV it will slow down).

One more update today.
 
After clearing the desert areas, Whitefang wasted no time (OK I took a few days off personally) in assaulting the harem and palace cellars. It is probably a good thing the harem had all been killed: Whitefang's breath is terrible by now. He'd scare them off with his fur coat too, as he hasn't had time for a proper bath to keep it nice and shiny.

The palace wasn't too difficult to beat. Many of the skeletons were of the poison mage variety, which are my faves. I love fighting through doorways with Whitefang. Ajheed freezes the minions, blocking the doorway, and are killed many times before the boss gets into the fight.
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Arcane sanctuary was pretty slow, but methodical. It took two days and a few hours of time to clean them all out. The apparitions demanded respect, but Lawbringer tamed them all.
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Here was a tough fight, not due to danger of death but because of how slow the lawbringer kills stuff. It knocks things all over the place and Ajheed's missile miss a lot when stuff gets spread out. Sometimes I retreat so they can reconsolidate and we can both bring our "talents" to bear. Once the apparitions were gone, I switched back to my axe and nuked the blood lords with no problem. It is silly how easily those guys die.
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Here was a scary sight. I waited until Ajheed threw a glacial spike, which freezes several of them (but not for long). I dove in and furied away while Ajheed's armor froze a couple more, and the blockage of my pathway was cleared. Once that amp goes off, things stay in hit recovery (or frozen) and die in few swings.
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The Canyon was all cold immune except for a few maggots, so Whitefang got to do more heavy lifting.
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I decided to do the true tomb first, and here is my pre-Duriel LCS. I used Cleglaw's and Lawbringer a lot to get decrepify going, and when it went off, I switched to the axe and probably did 3 Fury to 1 Feral Rage to keep the ball going but do max damage. I did not bring the black martel for him. I needed speed and the ability to take his away.
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Kaa's tomb turned out to be next. It was packed with unravelers. In one room there were 6 or 8 champions, their assorted skeletons, and a mummy sarcophagus. The unravelers are cold immune and their unholy bolts hit Ajheed with extreme prejudice, killing him several times. We got them all though, switching between weapons here and there to split them up. Funny how I can dictate the shape of the battlefield and split the mummies up using a paladin aura as a wolf druid.
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This guy was a hard nut to crack. He was extra fast, and cold immune. I split them up and basically did my best to hide behind Ajheed and run in circles so that he would swing at Ajheed and not me, giving me enough time to get a fury cycle going. Once amp went off, his PI was broken and I could whittle away at him. He died in two amp-ings.
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Here are my drops for this update. The skiller was cubed, the Ogre Maul was dropped in a false tomb and the ammy was gambled. Nice for a melee enchantress wielding Kingslayer I think (I've done that, it was fun).
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I look forward to finding the jade figurine and getting another 57 life tacked onto my tally for future exploration.

Conqueror Whitefang, level 81 Titan Wolf, Kurast Docks
 
Great work Whitefang, holding your thumbs (claws) :)

Yajirushi has slept for a while so she could gain enough strenght to make it through the jungle. But after kicking Mephisto´s demonish ass she was unable to stop her killing spree - she pierced Diablo´s and even Baal´s throat with her poisoned arrows. Diablo´s fiery circles seemed like an issue as only three of them could burn Yajirushi down. Vikhyat made a tremendous job with his pike though and even Shadow_Yaj (Yajirushi´s Shadow Master) proved to be useful in this fight. After wiping out all those daemons, The Three was told by Tyrael, that managing all of this means nothing as all of this was just a dream. We have to fight through the daemon hordes again and face even stronger creatures. The Nightmare is about to begin...

Destroyer YAJIRUSHI - Pure Dexterity Bow Assasin - Level 48, Rogue Encampment
 
I waited several days between updates last time, so let there be rejoicing this time, as there is less of a delay.

Whitefang took to the jungles of Kurast like it was his native habitat. I was excited for him to get the potion from Alkor, as his life goes up by 20 in human form but then is multiplied by 2.85 via level 29 Lycanthropy. Along the journey last night I was also able to find some better life charms than I had before, so life went up nicely. I think my net was +10 life in charms, which yields 28 life in wolf form.

The Spider Cavern was an easy place because all the enemies were frozen while Whitefang attacked, except of course the bosses and champions. The spiders are basically big purple potions when frozen or slowed by Ajheed. This guy fell last.
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The great marsh had pretty easy monsters in it: zombies and trees and frogs. None of the trees were bosses so that was nice; once they get frenzied up they can really put a hurt on me.
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The swampy pit was pretty hard. The place was 100% undead except for the tentacle snakes. The gloams were not hard, like this guy...
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...but the undead flayers were a big pain in the rump. They are always really fast and threatened to end Whitefang's journey. In fact, without the Lawbringer, which for the most part kept them off of me (especially when decrepified) and enabled Whitefang to dispatch them one at a time in order to not kill two in a row and suffer their explosions, it would surely have been deeds. That weapon is such a great help in undead areas. I ran it nearly the entire dungeon. It helps that the shield on that switch is Gerke's Sanctuary, which provides 75% resists and PDR and MDR. I'd say the worst pop was about 800 HP, maybe less. The worst one was a minion for some reason, and not the boss.
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Almost got surrounded here.
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Another boss falls to the Lawbringer. He was pretty difficult as he hit hard due to the curse, and his charged bolts were nasty. I used a couple of purples on him alone. The Lawbringer sent him and his minions all over the place and kept them away from Whitefang so he could focus on one or two at a time.
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This guy caused me some trouble. You can see he is extra fast and might enchanted. His group accosted me in the first chamber off the stairs and I had to retreat back up the stairs to the flayer jungle a couple of times. I had to do a blind run to escape them because I couldn't get a foothold and every time I went back to town to heal my rage bulb would time out. Since they were "living" flayers the lawbringer did not knock them back. Eventually I found a sanctuary in another room, cleared out several boss packs of undead flayers, cleared the rest of the level and came back to the stairs to finish these guys off a couple at a time with plenty of maneuver room.View attachment 2342


I killed cold immune Stormtree and his minions by taking them one or two at a time and basically withdrawing behind Ajheed so that the tree would start his frenzy on him and not Whitefang, but close enough that the fury swipe would hit the tree. If the tree swung at Whitefang, it would hit faster than me and get inside my feral rage timing ability and knock me around. If the tree swung at Ajheed, the fury or rage attack would hit 80% of the time and normally put them in hit recovery, which yields success for us.
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I got this as a drop in the journey. I am thinking about plugging it into the axe. It would give another 15 to 30 damage to the weapon's stats, which would bring it from 81 to 201 (currently at level 82) to 96 to 231. My damage would go up about 16%, which I think is comparable to putting a shael or fervor jewel and going to the next break point for fury and feral rage. What would you do? I have 4 Hel runes so I can switch out later if I find an Um and upgrade the weapon and decide I need a Hel for it instead (due to the dexterity requirement of a glorious axe).
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Conqueror Whitefang, level 82 Titan Wolf, Lower Kurast
 
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Congrats on the nice progress everyone!

Some of those monsters in act 2 are really tough, good work getting through it. How do you feel about the knockback from the lawbringer aura? Would you rather it be smaller, or do you like the high level? I'm trying to figure out how many points to put in it for my paladin in the other tournament.
 
My lawbringer rolled with level 18, and as far as I'm concerned, the bigger the better. It is plenty large enough probably at just a couple points for most circumstances but in some instances it was able to keep extra fast monsters off of me as well. I am not sure that would happen with a small radius. I don't know how the damage bonus works with my no ED% bonus lawbringer, but I would imagine putting a few points in it with your charger would really make it pretty powerful against the undead. This weapon has allowed me to deal with about 80% of the PIs in the game so far. Ajheed got about 10% and the amp axe got the other 10%.
 
So the game rewarded my dismissal of the monsters in the jungle by giving me several tree bosses in Lower Kurast and the Bazaar. Bile Wing the Quick and his ilk were easily the most difficult. He was extra strong and stone skin so he took a lot of hits to bring down, and Ajheed paid the price, dying at least 5 times. He drove me back into Lower Kurast in search of space to maneuver. I wondered if I was going to have to park him but I was able to get him down eventually.
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The sewers were not hard, and we were able to dispatch Icehawk without any trouble. Level 2 had a boss pack of undead flayers but nothing else.

Snot Blister (nice name for a girl boss, she must have been pretty ugly) was pretty hard. She came to play before I was able to clear out the area of the vampires and their (lame) stair trap. Those guys just can't seem to do much damage to ole Whitefang, happy to say. The rogues here and the trees in the bazaar were far more difficult.
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Here are some pretty dumb monsters. I think in open spaces that this boss would have been pretty challenging but they are too dumb to fly over the ledge, so I'll take it.
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Here is the entrance to the temple with Lam Esen's tome in it. I was able to get these guys out of the way before I faced Sarina.
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Sarina was harder in nightmare than hell.
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I must say there is now another area that monsters live to see another day: one of the temples in the causeway started with a stair trap of snakes (CI of course) and so when I went to get some space, I stirred up some archer rogues and wendingos. I tried to get my back to the wall but Ajheed wasn't going to be much help, and I don't think arrows plus charging snakes in confined spaces was what I would like to spend my afternoon doing (especially in a non-critical area) so those guys also survive.

I raced from the Causeway through Travincal without killing anything to get the WP and to a good stopping point with a set map. I went back to normal and NM and used my socket rewards on the axe (put in a fervor jewel with 20% poison resist, best I have) and my coronet (installed a ruby). I figured that this stuff has gotten me this far, why not let it take me a bit farther. The jewel gave me a break point with both FR and Fury (which is now 5 frames!) and man that weapon swings fast!

Travincal was pretty fun but also fairly mundane, especially for what I expected. Blood lords just don't pose a big threat, and the zealots were fire and lightning immune, so they were frozen in place and dropped like a sack of potatoes easily. The council posed no threat. Toorc was the first to die, followed by Geleb, and finally Ismail. I just charged the gates of their little sitting area to get Ismail and didn't really feel much pain anyway. Probably trying to take them all on at once would have been a mistake but one or two at a time was unfair, really.
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Undead flayers again! The standard in areas where they pop up is to explore with the Lawbringer active. The footsteps and the little crunch you hear when they get knocked back lets you know there is about to be some fun. Plus the 75% increased gold is noticeable when popping chests. I got hit by quite a few death explosions but my life is good enough to absorb at least one, and likely even two before being much trouble. I kept to Feral Rage for the one target attack for the most part when some were getting low on health. The other bosses were zombies and urdars, which were all freezeable and easily manageable. At some point on Durance level 2, the merc bug hit and everything ignored him which was fine by me. He even survived the Meph fight.
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First Bremm, then Wyand, and finally Maffer. Not one problem, any of them. Maybe I could keep this guy as my council runner after the tournament? Why do people do that anyway? Runes?
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My fight with Mephisto. I brought the Cleglaw's gloves but not the black. Meph hit pretty hard and caused me to use 5 rejuv potions, and I tried to get him decrepified to take away 75% of his speed, but I just couldn't get it going. Once I switched back to the axe, he amped a few fury cycles later and melted pretty fast once that happened.
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My drops this half of the act.
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The charm dropped, as did the Sander's Boots (another 10 dex and some AR if I find that Um and need the dex!) and the Bartucs (which is ethereal) and Culwen's Point. I spent one of my precious rubies to try for four sockets on the Aegis, but I got only three. Bummer, that'd be worth about 50 life if I can get a 4 socket shield. The Pain Flange is a low quality Ogre Maul that dropped this act and I took to Charsi for my final imbue. It has potential. Perhaps I can use this instead of the axe since it can get pretty fast and hits harder than the axe does (minus the amp). I do lose about 20% CTH with it so we'll see.

Conqueror Whitefang, level 82 Titan Wolf, Pandemonium Fortress
 
Mago the Golemancing Lord of Mages (with even stats distribution) has started his journey in the final act. It's been a long slog, with seriously annoying monster immunities and -behaviour. Thorns does nothing to ranged attackers, which means my (often meager) troops need to do all the damage.

It's often dangerous, too. Mostly for Mago's army but a few times for himself. He has less than 900 life, bad cold resist and only 37 fire resist.

Burning Dead Archers and Quill Rats (FI, sigh!) on the Foothills. Shots coming from many directions. Really tough to keep a big army going. Revive was crucial to open up extra fronts. Meaning, get a near-unkillable critter up to absorb most shots so I can recast the golem somewhere else (where my mages were usually dying in droves...).

This guy was a real piece of work:
MagoH35%20Warp%20Lust_zps6h9h2175.jpg


As you can see, I have no melee skeletons here. On my wand/head setup, I can otherwise summon five of those but with no extra points in RS, they are pretty wimpy. Damage they do is about 90 (not too bad all things considered) but in this area they just died so they were quite useless.

Next up, cold-boosted Slingers. They can't hit my troops (due to a bug. I can't believe they still haven't fixed this, over so many patches. Geez...) but the spears pass right through them. A less limited Necro can toss DV or Attract in these situations, but no such luxuries for Mago. I quickly found out that even if the spears are flying in thick swarms, if I don't get hit, then just STAND STILL:

MagoH37%20stand_zpsmzvlf8vz.jpg


Had two nasty NDEs against Slinger spears in this area. My initial extra supply of full purples went from 6 to 1 over the course of the Highlands.

The Plateau brought more Slingers (sigh!) but these were slightly less dangerous since they were fire boosted instead of cold (=> less damage, no chilling).

The two RoF-like bonus areas were fun breaks. Here's a screenie from one of many big fights:

MagoH36%20big%20fight_zpspkj8yeei.jpg


Too many poison mages here (I usually go with 2, sometimes 3 if the poison is important) but that was fixed with the corpses from those Temptresses.

I will leave the computer on for this last act, and do everything in Act V within the same game.
I have no Revives going into the ice caves but otherwise a full army, which is comforting.


[Highlight]Conqueror Mago the Golemancing Lord of Mages and Ajheed the Fire Mage, level 83, Hell Crystalline Passage next[/Highlight]
 
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@jiansonz - Wow those open areas sure look tough and those spear cats and skeleton archers are super annoying in that area with all that piercing going on. Way to prove it can be done with a LoM. Two thumbs up!
 
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