Re: The Exposure Tournament
Well I've put this off for long enough I suppose...
Running_Scared continued her journey into act 2. The player setting was kept at 8 for most of the desert/sub areas, the only really hard things were Cat type monsters, which were cold immune and usually pretty fast, had a number of extra fast spawns of those, which were pretty tricky. Halls of the Dead was a tough area, with slingers right by the entrance.
This one almost got me several times, even after I had separated her. And then of course I met
her twin later in that same level. I found a Tal's belt and a Horizon's Tornado in the halls as well. Far oasis gave me a really fun
monster! I was never sure if he spawned at p3 or p8 it was right on the line, but it was very tough, I ended up having to move off screen and just let the hydras do the work, a technique that would later prove useful against sarcophagi. It took quite some time to take them all down. Maggot lair was very easy and done entirely at p8, being able to Gspike the first monster and orb the rest made it easy to be safe. and if there was a boss I would Gspike the first and then cast Hydras over the top until the boss was dead. This was all good and fun until I came to
Coldworm. I don't think I have ever seen that many maggots in my D2 career. I think the game could not physically display them all, as they just kept coming and coming. I spent a good hour on that one room alone, and about 15-20 trips back to town for 4 healers and 8 manas per trip. I think I counted around 30 pieces of treasure on the ground after they all were dead, so I know there was a ton of them. AT was done on p8 of course, but no good finds there. Viper temple was done at p1, as every stinking thing in there was cold immune. It was a pretty scary area, but not too terrible. Level 2 gave me an unbreakable
Fangskin, but fortunately he was not on the throne.
Palace wasn't too tough, urdars were the only CI i found, but at p8 they took forever too kill. Anything too tough was just moated with the terrain. Arcane was a real pain with the blood lords and ghosts, but it only had like 2 bosspacks in the whole thing, so not too tough, I killed a couple of the lightning towers, but in the end I left the rest as it look too long. A ghost was kind enough to
leave this behind, my highest rune ever! although completely useless here.
Canyon was tough with more cats, but I only complained until this
dropped from one of them. A
decent roll too.
First 3 tombs weren't too bad, I was starting them at p1 and then adjusting according to monsters. Pulled a sandstorm trek from a sparkly chest. And then I did something stupid: I had quit for the night (game still running). Came back the next morning and I was right on the edge of the next tomb entrance: Obviously I was not awake enough yet, as I thought I'll just start this one at p3, since I don't feel like typing in p1. Popped in to see a single Ghost trapped behind a pillar. That should have been a good sign to be careful. At this point I was not thinking about the fact that Ghosts have CBF, so I move over to dispose of him. Ambush! all of a sudden there is a pack of Extra Fast Ghosts heading for me! I try to evade them and kill them but they are just too fast. At this point the right thing to do would probably be to just scrap that tomb and move on. But I just wasn't making good choices at this point still. I decided to just tele down a corridor randomly and try to find a safe area to start. I went a ways, finding a few random ghosts here and there, but I couldn't shake 2 of the minion ghosts from before. I then awakened a pack of Extra Fast Urdars, this is when panic began to set in. I was burning juves just to try to keep tele'ing away from the ghosts, who would drain my full mana in 1 hit, and with about 80% chance to hit me they weren't missing much. Eventually I made a final bad choice to tele into a corner and try to make a tp. The Tp never made it up...
I took this one pretty hard, it was about 5 days ago. This is one of the more enjoyable builds I have played in a while. The Hydra's were very fun, they were doing about 500 damage per bolt. And when you have 5 on the screen at once they can do some massive damage. I had 1100 life and 75% resist all and 20 points of MDR, there wasn't much more I could have done to protect myself. But I will be back to avenge my Sorc's life... just not sure with what yet. I really thought that I could go all the way with her, but I also know that act 3 was going to be very tough, and I was planning on keeping with full clears, so that would make it extra tough.
[highlight]Running_Scared, level 84, False tomb, RIP[/highlight]
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