Re: The Exposure Tournament
OK, I apologise for shooting off ahead, but weekends are my only time to play, so I figured I'd start early, and then get overtaken during the week
Nevermore storms onward!
With Ravens circling, Nev raced out into the desert and found the cube (and Dry Hills wp - this is the part of single pass that sometimes bothers me - i would have preferred to just run through on p1 and get the cube, but if I did that my ravens woulda slaughtered a lot in the first desert area on the way through). A cool thing to note was that Nev could comfortably stand in a pack of beetles without dangerous life yoyo-ing, albeit a half-blind pack of beetles. But that is always nice for a melee class this early, and fills me with some confidence about his survival later into NM.
After cubing up all my chipped gems (stash and inventory full!) I decided it was time to take down Radament. I always find this tough with most meleers in normal, because of the unleachable skele archers that pack a hell of a wallop. Wasn't so bad for Nev though - just run in circles until they are almost all blind, and whomp em down. He actually started developing a new tactic here - if you are running fast and activate the archers all at once, they fire roughly in sync, so a fast wolf can dodge, run in and lay the smack down, and dodge out again safely. That is especially great because it gives Nev something to do while the Ravens are pecking out the skeletons ....uh ... eye sockets?
Anyway, all went swimmingly, and a number of lightning resist shrines on level 3 helped with the mages/horrors.
I should probably say by this point that not having a merc to resurrect is awesome! All Nev's money went straight into gambling mauls, which finally netted a 10%IAS, 50ish% dam, 4%ll (i wanted ML, but cant complain too much!) rare. Also a slower rare with 130% dam to undead really helped in the sewers.
On the way through the maggot lair (which was really not problem at all) Ceglaws pincers dropped, which i stashed to help slow down the big slug at the end of the act.
The rest of the act was uneventful really. Kill speed was decent at p8. Skills went a few into lycanthropy (now on 4), a few into feral (now 3) and then into armageddon pre-reqs. Ravens still 15 or 16.
No NDEs in arcane, or the tomb. Nev was pretty sick of skeles so didnt feel like tomb diving, and just did the real one.
Duriel coulda been challenging, but ceglaws gloves, plus an arctic belt and LL around 20% meant there were no real problems, although unshifting halfway through because I didn't reset the wolf timer was a little hairy.
So Nevermore travelled to Kurast, level 25.
I wasn't gonna update the table, but just so an up to date one is here
Code:
Forum Name Character Class Location Level Points
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SoulmanZ Nevermore Raven Drood Kurast Docks 25 ?
ChrisTheMean TheLoner Paladin Black Marsh 15 26
Dark Matter Arthur Barbarian Dark Wood 13 21
Jason Maher Fanven Paladin Stony Field 12 19
daed Strafy Amazon Stony Field 12 19
wielanja Beowulf Barbarian Stony Field 12 19
Morathi Dorian Paladin Rogue Camp 1 2
ILikeRocks Gragamel Paladin Rogue Camp 1 2
mattinm Kamikaze Necromancer Rogue Camp 1 2
scrcrw Nagisa Barbarian Rogue Camp 1 2
kestegs Running_Scared Sorceress Rogue Camp 1 2
Gcanada MsGarrison Assassin Rogue Camp 1 2
Vang Leeloo Amazon Rogue Camp 1 2
DaveW Blades Assassin Outer Cloister 14 28
CM Lisbeth Assassin Rogue Camp 1 1
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Dark Matter BoneyM Necromancer Stony Field 12 20 (RIP)
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!
I have all Christmas break coming, though it's going to be punctuated with other games since I'll have just bought a new computer as well. 
