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Vessel of Hatred

The Normal Set Project

Mimmi has finished Act I and managed to defeat Andariel without casualties! Due of course to her mercenary now no longer being Mizan the daft town guard but instead Kundri the fiery rogue, equipped with no less than Riphook that was most fortunately found in the jails. Now with access to solid ranged support and finally a point in blade fury Mimmi can control the battle much more than before and play much safer. The lack of levels is telling and I am almost thinking of going back to raid Baal a bit. On the other hand, the countess might be better if also more dangerous. Kundri died twice to a extra strong archer pack in the close confines of the tower.

Mimmi has also found the spirit shroud which is a better merc armor than the old Rockfleece, and last also venom ward. The latter might make raiding Andariel viable but I am not optimistic.

EDIT: After two more tries I am much more optimistic. Taking the time to cclear the outer halls without exploding corpses leaves the ground as a complete mine-field for anguished maidens and Kundri keeps being excellent with the slowing bow. Now wearing a jewellers ancient armor of defiance instead, with three Sol runes. Should be a good armor for acts II and III I think with the many poisonous creatures and massed undead and flayer attacks.
 
Mimmi is moving forward through the beginning of Act II. Kundr the rogue is a huge improvement but I fear the meeting with Duriel. On the other hand, a badly equipped town guard can't tank either so there's really just a few hundred hit points lost there, and the slowing from Riphook should outweigh it. Mimmi has so far bested everything with ease except for the resistant greater mummies which take a lot of time. She is as good at dealing damage as she is bad at soaking it up. Now at level 77 and about to enter the maggot lair.
 
I played through Upper Kurast with Civerb the flaming clerical bore last night. It is a damned grind in nightmare on /players8 with not only restricted but overall worthless equipment. Ilzan stands no chance against trees or, like, anyone with his pathetic stick and Civerb can't survive close contact long enough to let Armageddon do its job. I will probably have to turn down the player settings for now until they reach less agressive neighbourhoods. He found some socketed antlers with 3 to volcano which is a potential backup attack against individual enemies so I made Lore in that but I would like to stick to a cap or circlet for the themed look. On his way to the countess I found the Nef rune I was missing and invested in a cloaking cap. Perhaps that will have to be the answer, expensive as it is.
"Trust in the lord of despicably burning people alive, for the night is dark and full of terrors"...
 
Yeah, I think I need to turn down the expectations for now. 8 player setting is slow enough even with good stuff.

While Civerb is dull bowazons with the cats grace are not! Alice sweeps through the entire Act IV, clearing the Outer Steppe son /players8 but then dropping to one player after which things began to fall apart for real...for the enemy, that is. She triggered a fire shrine next to Izual (totally useless typical bowazon irresponsible behaviour). While she didn't find the missing light gauntlets she did locate a skin of the vipermagi! Excellent magic defense for Hoku Horton, with a solid 35 resist all and 13 MDR roll. Hoku still wields a meekly great sword with Strength, poor him. Alice has a good map to nightmare Andariel who is easily felled by immolation arrows, but with the now rapidly growing valkyrie Act V might be good hunting grounds too for swords. Hoku is just a level away from being able to wield a legend sword and they are not unknown to drop in the bloody foothills in nightmare. A simple socketed legend sword can take a mercenary a long way. Alice is now at level 62.
 
Alice is now at level 65 and has found no sword or gloves of note so far but a couple of small charms. She has five small charms with cold damage which I collect for the freeze length. Act V goes fast but Hoku is in grave danger with all nasty projectiles flying around. Geraldine the valkyrie may now be summoned with a war pike without any aid of items which has freed up lots of storage space. The ancients soon await but since Alice has the spellsteel as secondary weapon they will feel their age. Generally the characters can use all items they have until hell but by then they will generally only use their set item setup, so no weapon switching to cast a curse for example.
 
At level 68, Alice has defeated nightmare Baal but gained no item of note from him. Hoku has received a moderate upgrade in the form of a strengthy zweihander but the biggest success lie in the crafting of another useful blood ring with quite good fire resistance. Alices rings add both resistance and some damage and dexterity which is just what she needs since her weapon is inherently weak and she has focused her stat points on vitality. I am currently hesitating about whether I shoul increase her strength somewhat to enable her to wear a gothic plate to speed up the magic finding later. It would also enable wearing greaves and some exceptional kinds of shoes which is welcome. Currently she is hunting Eldricht and Shenk hoping to run into swords and Andariel hoping to run into whatever useful merc things there may be and her own missing gloves of course.
 
Restles has rescued nightmare Anya and advanced to the Glacial Trail and level 62, going steadily forward. No set pieces found but two nice small charms.
 
Restles conquesr himself a conqueror title at level 68 and Alice has reached 69. No personal set items found but a couple of nice charms. Now a grinding raiding against Baal for experience awaits and then against normal Mephisto or something to search for the missing pieces, or possibly against nightmare Andariel which both have good maps to.
Restles wipes the floor with Lister and Baal thanks to an unravellers head with +3 to decrepify. His other such head adds a point in attract, so I aim to find an extra sword so he can switch if necessary.
 
So typical of Diablo II: Sander the necromancer found Alices arctic mitts...
Apart from that, the foolish necromancer stumbled through hell and is now in the barbaric northlands with a savage partizan iron golem. The golems predecessor required most of the stored diamonds before a good base appeared but then he got lost when Sander ran ahead. Damn! I thought golems would teleport. Now another thing to worry about. Diablo dropped the good ironstone war ahmmer and the coolest item in the game - Woestave! I will upgrade it and use when the time is right, perhaps in nightmare act 2 to melt the undead so they cant rise. So sad that Sander can't use the halberd himself.

I got careless against Bremm Sparkfist and lost my mercenary. I've seriously had it with that Lilithscrewing delay in that Lilithscrewing life bar. How hard can it be to program a real time graphic change like in the characters life bulb? Barani ("bara ni" means "only you" in Swedish by the way) the cold mage did actually manage to survive both Mephisto and Diablo later, so it really bothers me that he died. Although he probably will and would have fallen many times later in the game anyway, Sander doesn't have very much to protect him with.
 
Sander has advanced to level 40 and is making fast progress. It made a big difference when I actually started using the stash of diamonds to create savage partizans to use and the now maxed out golem mastery means the iron man is sitting on a solid 1,5k hit points. I decided to go for blocking and put points in dexterity, which has the added benefit of enabling Sander to wield the Woestave that Diablo dropped until he finds his set pieces. With that and the cold mage, Baal and his minions are easily dealt with. Confuse and corpse explosions takes care of Achmels band.

The iron golem is having effect mostly by attacking but the yetis and minions of destruction that stun enemies have underlined the importance of the thorns damage too. I had started to consider maxing out fire golem instead of iron golem, for the bonus to damage, but am now convinced that iron golem is the right choice to improve the...iron golem. On the last raid against Baal, Sander also located his fast and useful boots!
 
I have raised Nokoz from a lazy n00b to an early success. First, or last but first and foremost in importance he has found his first set item - the cap none the elss which is the hardest to find! Added to that he has advanced to level 25 and got an iron golem built of a savage partizan. Nokoz and Fazel the mercenary have gotten themselves stealthy armor and Fazel a savage lochaber axe which outclassed his former poleaxe. Nokoz used some spare Ral runes form the tower to add ranged damage with a hunters bow but the accuracy was bad so I eventually ditched the bow and made a malicious two handed sword. Now he supports with open wounds which is close to how he will act when finding his set. I hope to be able to get the swordback hold spiked shield with 50 % more open wounds (a total of 70 %).

My girlfriend will be so mad at this stroke of luck (since she despises the fire golem skill) :D.
 
Thanks to the above mentioned power of the iron golem and Fazels jabbing Nokoz has reached level 31 and now commands his signature fire golem! Level 30 achieved with my girlfriend watching as well.

To match its colour Nokoz will wield the swordback hold spiked shield which is reddish if I recall correctly and use an orange plate armor, perhaps goldskin if I can find it. Gold is always nice to have.

Why iron golem is a prerequisite for fire golem:
1 Fire Golemancy.JPEG
 
Tancred walks the earth. Hopefully he will become mor epowerful than Isenhart who has hit a wall, despite having had the luck of finding his set pieces and a Lem rune. Tancred will focus on zeal early on and go out aggresively with pole arms and the prerequisite holy freeze I think.

Nokoz advances further and has reached level 35. He bought a wand with decrepify points which shut down Mephisto. He has also found a wand with confuse points and a head with amplify damage so he can be quite supportive. In Act IV Nokoz found three or four nice small charms too.
 
Nokoz couldn't handle normal Diablo - he didn' die but he lost Fazel and his golem died all the time. A weakness I underestimated was the fact that his mana is just enough to recast the golem but not to decrepify an enemy after that, so he would need a mana potion just to be able to curse rapidly. After Fazel died Nokoz flogged Diablo apart with his malicious flail. In any case, after clearing the Bloody Foothills he is at level 36 and I am (again) sick of the extra damage to hirelings done by act bosses. IF they are supposed to do such imbalanced damage, the player should be able to leave the hireling in town or temporarily "unhire" him or her or something. Even Neverwinter Nights, which had the worst party system imaginable compared to the predecessors that it blatantly failed to live up to, had the option to tell allies to wait at a spot.

After the disappointment I switched to the barbarians for a while. Sigon has grinded himself to level 43 and is doing rather well now in stark contrast to his earlier troubles. War cry is the most decisive factor there. He found an etheral halberd with two sockets and made a strengthy halberd for his town guard Neeraj, which proved uch better than the earlier rare pike. Eventually Sigon will probably use a fellow barbarian but I have yet to find a good sword for that. After one more Baal run he should be ready to enter nightmare.

Clueles has advanced much slower, due to no faster running, to level 20 and after reaching the desert hired the defiant Zanarhi. They have a couple of poleaxes that he managed to gamble, one rare with a couple of sockets though the clueless berserker lacks any skulls to put into it.
 
I accidentally updated to patch 1.14 when me and my girlfriend were going to multiplay for the first time in a very long time. I misclicked on open battlenet... So the normal set project will now be in patch 1.14 but I don't think there should be very much changes.

Sigons Complete Steel Ownage
When I looked up Isenharts situation lately it became apparent that I had underestimated the need for good non-set equipment and since Sigon lacked the two pieces that are hardest to get from normal Mephisto I decided to proceed into nightmare with him. I tried out running normal Baal at 8 players and to my surprise it worked very fine. The I replaced the savage giant axe of the bat with a cubed savage partizan and put on a minor mana stealing ring, just 2%. While little, it proved to be enough to maintain concentrate attacks and slowly regain mana still.

I had the bloodrise morning star stored and planned to upgrade it with a sol rune. Sigon stumbled on a socketed cleaver and made it to steel and also a shael rune which he put in a rhyming bone shield, replacing milabregas inferior kite. The blocking was underdeveloped but after some points in dexterity and a random monster dropping no less that twitchthroe, it was suddenly maxed. Twitchthroe made a lot of things much easier, it is such a great armor for those who can gain resistances from other sources. Act I in nightmare flew by quickly, on 1 player setting. In my opinion barbarians progress is determined by weapons found rather than levels gained. Sigons partizan was enough to massacre everything in act I and would probably be good enough in act II but I decided to try to get something better still. The first attempt was a white partizan which I made into socketed, but it turned into a worthless four sockets. However, I later found a sol rune from the countess which went into Sigons great helm which Larzuk had pounded a hole in, and after a couple of more runs and rerolling the bad countess map to a also bad version Sigon found another sol rune, with which he upgraded the chieftain, the unique battle axe that he had found in the catacombs.

The chieftain is a great weapon in early nightmare when upgraded. I had expected only a slight improvement but with the speed it quite outshone the savage partizan. And the 6 mana per kill is superb because it allows you to fight skeletons comfortably since they die in a few hits but you can't leech mana from them. Along with Neerajs prayer Sigon was not bothered by the undead in early act II and war cry and battle cry together with almost maximised battle orders and the sets scaling attack rating makes him quite unstoppable for the moment. He also has 20% life stealing... 10 from the set, 3 from a rare ring and 7 from the eye of etlich amulet (great little thing early on). To round it up, he also found the ribcracker quarterstaff! That will shut up bosses in no time but I actually kept the chieftain for now for the mana and the looks. Sigons only enemy is himself, me, that is, since I tend to be reckless when characters progress too fast. The last hardcore character I lost was a barbarian that was flying through nightmare with a rare sword and the generals flail and ran to fast into lord de seis pack.

Sigon is after this at level 51 and at a high point in his career.
 
@Zyr
Congratulations on the progress and the drops. :)


Maltatai said:


The first attempt was a white partizan which I made into socketed, but it turned into a worthless four sockets.
Click to expand...
Are you playing this project without RWM? If so, it's not clear to me from the first post. I'm the kind of player who treasures even a low-roll "Insight" Partizan.
Click to expand...
 
Hm, I thought the intro would be clear. Doesn't the rune word mod count as a (forum approved) mod?
From the first section of the opening post:
All self-found of course, and in patch 1.13 1.14 with no mods.
Click to expand...
So, no rune word mod here. Otherwise, I absolutely agree that the Insight rune word would have solved the problem throughout the rest of nightmare.

I might add that I am deliberately highlighting the progress by the end of normal and the beginning of nightmare since I have found most build guides and guardian threads to be less focused on that part of the game while I have myself often found melee characters with inadequate equipment at that time.


QUESTION: Caps, because I am very much concerned. Have rune drop rates/rune availability been altered by the 1.14 patch(es)?
 
Hehe, no problem.

Now, the reason I am asking about the rune drop probability - I haven't found any notes about increases in 1.14 either but it's nice to have someone elses input regardless - is that just after I accidentally installed the patch Sigon had the most outrageous luck with runes in nightmare:
First, he had just the common kind of outrageous luck and found the Stormrider in Jerhyns cellars! Despite lacking the speed and mana of the chieftain it proved to be nearly as efficient since fewer hits were needed and mana consumption kept down. Also, thanks to concentrate being uninterruptable, it was a much more powerful weapon and the lightning effects were notable versus crowds and physically resistant ghosts. Further ahead in the Arcane Sanctuary Izzor stumbled on a masterly made sword which was impressive if a bit boring.

2.JPEG

That sword would later be replaced by a socketed knout with the Black runeword in it, extremely fast and crushing every act boss to nothing. But Sigon used the sword a bit against Duriel, and Duriels quest drop is what really made me wonder about the rune drops. He, the lord of town portal scrolls, dropped a LEM RUNE in nightmare. One of the most useful things imagineable at that point in the game. Threachery there was for Neeraj who still clung to his etheral halberd. But ahead in the Great Marsh Sigon stumbled on ANOTHER LEM RUNE from a random drowned carcass or something. If I had been wondering before I was now getting serious doubts, to the point where I actually dreaded finding more excellent runes since doing so would increase my suspicion that Blizzard had either made some unwanted change to make the game ridiculously easy or that something was messed up with my patching, which I had by all means tried to cancel but clicked a second too slowly at.

And just to add to it, that Durance map...

3.JPEG

Since the rest of Avt III went more conventionally I decided to conclude that Sigon had simply been insanely (for one of my characters) lucky and would no longer need to consider four sockets in a weapon a bad outcome. Just as in normal, the lord of set items had found a new best friend who would come to visit many times, but the hell forge is calling too. What if it would match Duriel and drop a Pul or Um rune?

4.JPEG

Sigon is now at level 60 and barely needs to drink potions as he spreads tabar terror among the poor demons.
 
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