Tournament: Envious of the Green and Gold

Wow, you have almost caught up with me. Nice going.

That's impressive to go with /p3 with those weapons. Is the merc still using The Vile Husk? Do you have the stats for double-upgraded version of those weapons if you get lucky and find the runes for it?

Duriel has dropped some good stuff for me over the years. I think it's mostly a case that any boss will be underwhelming (per drop) if you look at just that boss (with the possible exception of the three brothers).
 
Yeah, the merc is still using The Vile Husk, which would probably the choice to upgrade should I find a Pul.

Completely agree on your boss drop analysis. Just some general grumbling over not having meaningfully changed my gear setup since starting Hell.
 
Hoar has cleared all the way to the Travincal waypoint. Set/Unique finds of note include Goldwrap, Witchwild String, and Sander's Gloves.
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I didn't want to equip the Goldwrap straight away since I was relying on the combo of Sigon's gloves and belt; I would have lost the 30% IAS. But now that I have Sander's gloves, I have equipped them along with the upped Goldwrap.

The Witchwild String leaves me with a bit of a conundrum moving forward with respect to my Merc. Especially if I find a Pul.

I also had a Mal drop. My second so far!

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An interesting fight occurred in the Forgotten Temple which began with:
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which became:
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From there I was able to duck into the room to the southeast:
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I went through the town portal to regroup; I was down to one full rejuve at that point. After coming back in I was able to lead the bulk of the pack into the larger room to the southeast and town portal out again. I then used the Upper Kurast waypoint to reenter the temple from the entrance; much better:

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In the above picture if you look below the fire you can see the aforementioned portal. From there things went a lot more smoothly as Bors and Hoar were able to take a much more defensible position:

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On to the Council...
 
Thanks, Dezrock.

Hoar and Bors have defeated Mephisto and are now relaxing the Pandemonium Fortress. The Mephisto fight went routinely, but his drop was anything but exciting:
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However, there were some nice drops in the Durance:
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The Archon Plate would have been a fine base in a different tourney. The Pul allowed me to make this (a before and after) for Bors, but I did have to wait until after killing Mephisto since the Lum and Pemerald were in my Gomule stash:
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Extreme caution had to be taken with Bremm Sparkfist; I went and got the Wizardspike from my stash in town which helped a great deal:

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Act IV awaits...
 
Hoar and Bors have cleared (on p3) all the way to the River of Flame waypoint.

Outer Steppes: This area was a breeze, but no finds of any note either. The monster types were Cliff Lurkers, Doom Casters, and Corpulants. nothing scary.

Plains of Despair: The opposite of the Outer Steppes; as soon as I entered the area many bolts of lightning from unseen Burning Souls knock me down to quarter health. It is fortunate that Hoar has max Lightning Resistance. Regrouping, I fell back into the Steppes and collected my wits. Wits thusly collected, the area (with careful play) was not too bad even though there were some potentially nasty bosses. In particular, a conviction, extra fast Burning Soul boss with accompanying pack. But, I was able to retrieve Wizardspike and take them down.

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City of the Damned: No real problems here with Dark Familiars, Stranglers, and Abyss Knights.

River of Flame: A looong slog thanks to Grotesques and their spawn which are CI. This was the first time the trusty weapons, which have served so well up to this point, showed their age. I was forced to take on tanking duties, zeailng with the Tan Do Li Ga and providing a level 10 Fanaticism, while Bors and his (newly!) upped Vile Husk worked his way through them. Not too dangerous, but fairly slow.

Drops: In the River of Flame one of the Grotesque bosses dropped the Credendum; a nice belt to be sure, but I will keep the Goldwrap for now as I am progressing fine. Also, Hephasto dropped a Ko and the Hell forge dropped Fal. Hoar has quite some rune wealth now for single pass; too bad he can't use a lot of it!

I am excited to tackle the Chaos Sanctuary!
 
I've been reading through this tourney the last couple of days and I have to say it's been really interesting reading! I've just recently dusted off vanilla D2 and started a sorceress, but this seems really tempting to give a go. I've found my time away has allowed me to play much more methodically than in the past, so maybe I won't die so quickly in HC. Perhaps sometime next week; my play time is extremely limited typically.
 
Hoar and Bors have cleared the Chaos Sanctuary and vanquished Diablo.

For the Infector of Souls I employed the typical trick of portalling back to town and coming back up through the Sanctuary. I then was able to lure the pack out and kill them one and two at a time. The Infector himself spawned with some pretty tough mods, so my caution was definitely justified.

I handled the Lord De Seis fight in a similar manner as above. Again, the caution I employed was warranted.

Diablo himself was easy; equip Goblin Toe and Wizardspike and smite away as Bors does his thing. The drop was disappointing, since the ring was a Nagelring (my third) and was only a slight upgrade over the low one I was currently using. This drop from an ordinary Storm Caster was awesome, however, even though the roll was only okay.

Act V awaits. Can Hoar make it out alive?
 
Sput, cool that the rarely reen The Vile Husk Balrog Blade made an appearence here.

Nicely done in the Act III temples (yeah, and the rest as well but it's the temples that are potential death traps).
 
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Thanks, jiansonz. I always take a couple of moments to compose myself before heading into any of the Act III temples. As you said, any momentary lapse can result in deeds from a stair trap.
 
Hoar and Bors have cleared through the Arreat Plateau (still on p3) and dispatched Thresh Socket.

Bloody Foothills: This area was not bad as it was populated with just Slingers and Enslaved. This is especially true with a horde of fanatic barbarians on my side. Shenk and Doc went down relatively easy with no drops of note.

Frigid Highlands: This area was considerably tougher thanks to enemies like this, this , and this. In Abaddon the red balls of death were avoided well enough to take down her. After which, she dropped this sweet charm.

Arreat Plateau: The plateau itself must have been uneventful as I took no screenshots except for a random one in the Pit of Acheron and one of Thresh Socket himself. He took a while, but there was no danger as smite stun locked him and the Vile Husk eventually took him out.
 
Hoar and Bors have cleared through the Frozen Tundra, rescuing Anya on the way. Not too much trouble on the journey all told. I lured Frozenstein out with only a couple of his minions. Some archers in the Drifter Cavern had to be dealt with carefully. But really little else of note. I did like this screenshot from the Infernal Pit: "You cannot pass!"

I am slightly nervous about heading down into the Halls after Nihlathak. Lots of ways to get killed.
 
Hoar and Bors have emerged victoriously from the Halls!

In all honesty one of the hardest parts was the very beginning in the courtyard of Nihlathak's temple. The prowling dead there are numerous, pack a heavy punch when they charge, and are CI. As you can see here, things got a little hairy. Unfortunately, Pindle's drop held no goodies.

The first two levels held no real excitement and the second level was especially ponderous thanks to large packs of blood maggots which took forever to kill.

For Nihlathak's level I switched out The General's Tan Do Li Ga with Wizardspike which gave me F: 75, C:95, L:76, P:75 resists. Fortunately there were no Tomb Vipers to be found, just Slayers, Returned Archers, and Hell Temptresses. I was able to lure the majority of Nihlathak's retinue to a safe distance before talking on the corpse exploding master himself. The drop was nothing special; the jewel was not green nor gold.

On to the Ancients' Way...
 
Nice going everyone! And congrats on the Amazon Guardian, jiansonz!

I've recently installed D2 again, after I found out how to run it in fullscreen mode on Windows 8.1 with a NVIDIA card. (I hate window mode, it's totally non-immersive for me and I quickly get bored).

Bruno is still alive and currently in A2 NM. I can't remember how A1 went (was before my hiatus) but A2 was easy going, with the exception of the Stony Tomb, where he got hit hard by some spectral hit lightning mages in the first room, which were backed up by beetles and poison mages (only 15 lightning resist and negative poison resist). Barely escaped with 1 hp left. He is nearly invincible in melee but I fear that with his current resists his journey will end somewhere in Act IV, when elemental damage becomes a huge problem.

[highlight]Bruno the Fireclaws Werebear and Haphet the Cold Mage, level 54, Far Oasis[/highlight]
 
I haven't had much time recently to touch my phoenix striker unfortunately :( She's still somewhere in mid act 5, nightmare. Will update again when I pick her back up
 
Found some time tonight, and good things! A pretty awesome upgrade over my current Ironstone war hammer :)

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Also found this gorgeous charm!

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Pretty cool concept. I'm sorry I've missed this for so long, but I am interested in giving it a shot now. I do have one question though. Single pass suggests that this should be done on the highest player setting possible, but this also means that area clears could be quite time consuming. I have a family (toddler no less) and my gaming sessions tend to get interrupted from time to time. I can really see a situation arising where i clear half of an area and have to leave the game. When i resume the game later i may have to kill some of those same monsters again which violates the rules. How should this be handled?
 
edistotiger said:
Pretty cool concept. I'm sorry I've missed this for so long, but I am interested in giving it a shot now. I do have one question though. Single pass suggests that this should be done on the highest player setting possible, but this also means that area clears could be quite time consuming. I have a family (toddler no less) and my gaming sessions tend to get interrupted from time to time. I can really see a situation arising where i clear half of an area and have to leave the game. When i resume the game later i may have to kill some of those same monsters again which violates the rules. How should this be handled?
Click to expand...

Single pass doesn't mean you have to play on the highest psetting possible; it just means you can't revisit areas.

As for having to resume the game, one possibility is to play in windowed mode, and just leave it tabbed out. Not the best solution, but it could work in a pinch. Other than that, just understand that these things happen. My assassin has had her game crash a couple times. I just do my best to skip over enemies I've already fought (using CoS so they don't follow me too far), and don't worry too much about it.
 
@felixbavaria: Welcome back and good luck on your quest with Bruno. BTW I couldn't agree more about windowed versus fullscreen mode.

@Dazliare: Two very nice finds there. I expect Baezil's Vortex will be used for quite a while.

On another note, Hoar and Bors have defeated Baal! I did from where I left off last time to the end all in one go, so expect a (somewhat lengthy) post sometime soon detailing the journey.
 
Dazliare said:
As for having to resume the game, one possibility is to play in windowed mode, and just leave it tabbed out.
Click to expand...

I use Esc to pause, then alt+tab to get out and then I just leave the computer on for as long as I need to. I don't play in windowed mode, and I don't see how that has anything to do with the ability to tab out and get back later.
 
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