Oh Baal, I hope you didn't think these flunkies would stop me.
Nervous?
You should be!
My Trapsin has full cleared Hell Act III and IV at players 3!
Act III started off about how I expected. Everything in the Spider Forest was lightning immune. Everything
. And not just lightning immune, but annoyingly so. There were lightning immune Zealots, Fetish, and Hawks. You know what those all have in common? They all run off mid-battle. So there the merc is in a sea of monsters attempting to get me a corpse for the Death Sentries but none of the monsters will stand and fight (and therefore die). So right out of the gates there had to be a couple changes. Players 5 wasn't going to happen, and I needed to get more aggressive in steering the course of battle. Bye-bye Life Tap wand. Hello Teleport staff. And that worked. It was still a bit annoying, but with me aggressively steering, the flow of battle changed decisively in my favor.
The Great Marsh was a welcome sight:
Yeah! Something that's not lightning immune!
(Not usually something that's screenshot worthy, but after the time I had in the Spider Forest it seemed like the thing to do.)
And in fact, every area that would follow in both Act III and IV had at least one type of monster that wasn't lightning immune. Though, I think every area also had at least one type of monster that
was lightning immune ... Oh well, it's Hell. It's what I expected. With the Life Tap wand in the chest, the strategy went something like: Open with Lightning and Death Sentry, unless up against LIs, then Death Sentry and merc ... maybe with Fire Blast added for good measure. Mind Blast and Shadow Master for crowd control. Teleport staff to steer the fight. Oh, and don't pass up a good opportunity for all of the above plus using the terrain:
One of my big concerns going into Hell Act III was Dolls. Sure enough, they were in the jungle dungeons, the Sewers, and the Durance of Hate Level 1 and 2
. In Nightmare I had stopped using traps around them. This time I didn't have the patience. Fire Blast wasn't working as quickly as it once had, and so the Dolls were on screen longer, and had more chances to do crazy things mid-battle ... like run right up to me
. I decided that the best thing to do would be to only use Lightning Sentry around them. That cut them down pretty quickly and seemed much more predictable than Death Sentry invisibly triggering Corpse Explosion (and then Doll explosions) all around the screen. And it seemed to work! There were no close calls with Dolls even though there was ample opportunity:
Because, as always, the Durance of Hate Level 2 was humongous.
The scariest stuff happened in the Kurast temples. The Ruined Temple was what I consider 'the bad layout'. The one with the large chamber and two little wings right off the entrance. It was stair trapped with Wailing Beasts ... and Spiders ... and some Ghouls got in on the action soon enough ... and you know what? That temple is small enough that some Corrupted Rogues came and made an appearance too
. As you can imagine, this cluster f*** quickly filled the entirety of the entryway. With the Life Tap wand in the chest, I was using Mind Blast to buy time. Stunning some was good. Converting some helped. But there was just way too much going on in way too small of a space. Oh, and a Spider had bitten me ... big time ... so the health globe kept draining fast due to poison
. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. Let's go blind teleporting with our staff
! Because nothing says 'oh sh*t' like an Assassin blind teleporting around with a teleport staff. I went for one of the side chambers and it had more monsters!? It wasn't ideal but I wasn't going to try teleporting back through the entryway mob that was already giving chase. So time to make a stand! More Mind Blast. More Mind Blast. Shadow Master spawned in the doorway. Merc got a corpse! Deploy Death Sentries! Woohoo! Follow that train of corpses all the way back to the entrance! On the upside, the rest of the temple was a breeze, as pretty much everything had come to the entrance and gotten caught up in the chain of corpse explosion
.
The next most interesting encounter was the Ruined Fane where there were a whole bunch of LI Beetles waiting:
Including some champions. If I didn't have my teleport staff I probably could have been pinned and killed ... but alas for them, I came prepared. The combination of Teleport and Mind Blast bought me enough time here for the merc to start getting corpses for the Death Sentries. The experience was a bit alarming ... but not nearly as bad at the Ruined Temple (you can know that for sure, because here, I was confident enough to take a screenshot
).
Hell Act IV was much more relaxing. There were still LIs in every area but there was one big difference. Space. With lots of room to maneuver it's hard to go too wrong. And Act IV certainly has lots of wide open spaces. The most interesting thing about Hell Act IV was how many cold immunes I ran into. My Frozen Orb Sorceress had made it to the Chaos Sanctuary before encountering any CIs. Unless my memory is failing, my Trapsin found CI Flesh Spawners in the Outer Steppes, Plains of Despair, City of Damned, and River of Flame ... in other words, everywhere! This would have been insanely annoying for my Sorceress! But for my Trapsin, it meant there were lots of little seed monsters for getting corpse explosion going
. In any event, nice and steady was the name of the game. Soon enough I had reached Diablo himself. I had done everything else at players 3, so why change now? This was my first encounter with Diablo since unlocking my Shadow tree, and oh what a difference. Diablo got hit with Life Tap, the merc took one side, the Shadow Master took the other, and the Lighting Sentries went to work:
As you can see, Diablo got the Shadow Master more than a few times (she's that poofing glow under his right arm). But he only got the merc once (and honestly, that could have been prevented if I hadn't been so sparing with the fat purples).
Oh, hey. You see that puddle of blood under Diablo? Well here was the Hellforge drop:
Not an Um Rune, but just as good. Remember that Pul Rune that my Frozen Orb Sorceress found on a random Fallen Shaman back in the Cold Plains (Hell Act I)? No of course you don't. But she did, and so I can make a Duress! I found two eth elite armors back in Hell Act II ... but they rolled two and four sockets. So, the highlight of my stashed choices was a three socketed Loricated Mail with 493 defense. Or, an eth Mage Plate with a 2/3 chance to cube to three sockets and 567 defense. Well, I don't care for Loricated Mail as a base and probably would never use it on another character anyways so I went with the Mage Plate. It cubed to three sockets. Yeah! And here's the end result:
Duress
Mage Plate
'ShaelUmThul'
Defense: 1564
Durability: 31 of 31
Required Strength: 45
Required Level: 47
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x6e96a279
+176% Enhanced Defense
+12% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +15%
Lightning Resist +15%
Cold Resist +45%
Poison Resist +15%
Adds 37-133 cold damage over 2 seconds
40% Faster Hit Recovery
33% Chance of Open Wounds
15% Chance of Crushing Blow
-20% Slower Stamina Drain
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired), Socketed (3: 3 used)
Neat. Now there was nothing wrong with the Treachery armor I had been using on the mercs. But triple the defense and always having access to crushing blow and open wounds was too tempting to pass up. So how's it compare to the Treachery? To soon to tell. It seemed good while we were in the River of Flame heading into the Chaos Sanctuary ... but there wasn't much time to assess it there ... and once in the Chaos Sanctuary the Oblivion Knights meant all chances for a fair assessment were off. So, I'm looking forward to really putting it to the test where it really counts, Hell Act V!
But before I go, and by popular demand. Here's the set/uniques that resulted from a full clear of Hell Act III and IV:
With 77 mf (+23 if the merc kills).
Vidala's Fetlock, Light Plated Boots (Great Marsh)
Magefist, Light Gauntlets (Flayer Dungeon Level 3)
Razortine, Trident (Travincal)
Buriza-Do Kyanon, Ballista (Mephisto)
Ribcracker, Quarterstaff (Chaos Sanctuary)
Langer Briser, Arbalest (Diablo)
If I was in the market for some exceptional crossbows I'd be pretty excited. As is, I'm feeling glad that I wasn't hoping for anything more before heading into Act V.
Code:
SP Forum Name Characters Level Furthest WP Points
-- ----------------- ---------------- ------ ---------------------- -------
Y Hanshotfirst Sorc/Sin 86/85 (H) Harrogath 166
N Booble Sorc/Druid 54/65 (H) Rouge Encampment 124
Y skoolbus Druid/Sorc 48/49 (N) Dark Wood 60
N PhineasB Necro/Druid 43/47 (N) Rogue Encampment 60
N Crudesash68 Zon/Paladin 46/34 WSK Level 2 52
Y Gynli Zon/Necro 32/48 (N) Rogue Encampment 51
N Swamigoon Sin/Druid 34/31 Harrogath 39
Y Pb_pal Sorc/Zon 33/29 Pandemonium Fortress 39
N DariusTriplet Sorc/Zon 31/24 River of Flame 32
Y Vildecor Zon/Sorc 21/20 Lut Gholein 12
Y Maltatai Druid/Druid 21/15 Lut Gholein Sewers 9
Y b1ur Paladin/Druid 20/1 Lut Gholein 6
N CaseyJones Sorc/Druid 1/1 Rogue Encampment 0
Up next:
I’ve killed a hell of a lot of bosses to get to this point, but I have only one more.
The last one. The one I’m marching to right now. The only one left.
And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Baal.
Frozen Orb Sorceress first.
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