Re: Tournament: The Sword of Destiny
Spider Forest had Cloud Stalkers, Suckers and Fetish blowdarters, so it was a lot of fast action, but no enemies here had any serious amount of life or resistance to fire/physical, so it was pretty easy.
Found the Spider Cavern early. Two
tough Flame Spider boss packs to defeat. Thank goodness for those choke points you can find here and there in the cavern.
The lower part of the place had the layout where the left and the right side has no close connection. Sszark´s pack was not in the lower right corner, but the enemies there picked up Fanaticism if they were close to the left wall. I had a
bad feeling about this...
This feeling grew worse when I fought a spider that I understood was one of Sszark´s minions. Cold Enchanted, and we had to be in all-out battle mode to even defeat it without my merc dying! At one time, we were up against two of those minions at once. Completely impossible to win - I had to separate them.
The thought of fighting an even stronger spider, with Fanaticism AND Cursed on top of what the minions had was extremely unpleasant. If we got Amped, it would mean guaranteed death if we took two more hits (possibly even one, at least on a critical hit). Sszark will take full physical damage, but none of the fire damage and very little cold (plus the HF isn´t so powerful damage to begin with...)
I decided to park Sszark in a little dead end in the top-left part of the cavern for the time being. Got the Eye, no problem. On my way out, I passed by
this place, and got a flashback from SniperBlazie and her archer friend´s epic fight with Hell Sszark. OK, that´s worth a shot.
Have at you!
Uh, there is no progress to speak of. Old Buy-a-Vowel regenerates too fast. Ah, cold was probably a bad choice, because of the CE. Asheara, help!
Have at you!
Uh, there is no progress to speak of. Old Buy-a-Vowel regenerates too fast. Uh, who had the "bright" idea of going with /p3 in this place? Guess that would be me.
If only I had a muled in my rare bow with poison damage...
If only we were allowed to use one of my trademark tools: the throwing weapon of Vileness...
If only we were allowed to spam TK...
If only we were allowed to at least use some friggin' poison potions!
Oh well, let´s worry about Sszark later. Time to fill the the storage with gold!
I went back to Act II to hire a Blessed Aim merc.
All money progress I had made in this act disappeared (and then some!) against a really nasty Poison Spinner boss in the Arachnid Lair. Fire Enchanted Extra Strong Stone Skin. PI/PI (but a
little vulnerable to physical damage when Amp had triggered) and very high fire resistance. The poison immunity meant that our usual way of stopping regeneration (Marion hitting with a long-lasting poison (from a charm) over the merc´s shoulder) did not work. Merc got killed and killed and killed. We got the spider´s life halfway down a couple of times, but I had to give up because I did not want to use up all my full rejuves. I parked this boss for later.
If only I still had that HF merc...
Great Marsh had Fetish Shaman packs (with their "foot solders"), Bog Creatures and Gloams. By now, Marion´s lightning resistance was 48%, enough for me to not be too scared of the Gloams. Merc died to Gloam lightning a couple of times, and Marion had one scare with it as well, but the Marsh was quite OK as a whole. There was one head + tail of a River Stalker I could not reach here. I´ll bring another merc here later.
Flayer Jungle was a walk in the park, with vultures and more blowdarters, plus the occasional Slime Prince (love that name!). The two dungeons had some nasty bosses, as usual (Gloam, undead fetish, bats, Drowned Carcass, Dark Shape, the works) but Marion was never in any real danger. And the money storage was finally full again. With the help of Blessed Aim (and her speedy gloves) Marion was actually helping out in the fights, not just acting like she was.
With lots of rejuves in stock now, I deciced to try once more against that damn Poison Spinner boss. And this time, we won! What I think was crucial was three timely rejuves for the merc when both Amp and Open Wounds had triggered.
In comparison, Stormtree was just a big wuss (Ha!) but Lower Kurast had at least one tough Zakarumite boss. I made use of the houses to prevent them from fleeing too far.
While I was popping all the stuff here, I kept a lookout for rare bows and bows to imbue. Very few rares overall when you have so little MF, and certainly no rare bow. So I imbued one.
Charsi, this wasn´t really what I was looking for...Oh well, my new partner, Visala the Cold Rogue, showed some decent damage numbers on the merc screen (even when I didn´t count the Enchant damage) so I decided to give her a go:
Have at you!
Uh, there is no progress to speak of. Old Buy-a-Vowel regenerates too fast.
WTF?...
Hmm, maybe Marion can hit once with poison before Sszark closes in, then teleport back to this position... But when she walked closer, Sszark wised up and went around the edge on the left. Marion swung the sword over that edge, and actually did manage to inflict a poison hit. But there was no way I was going to be able to pull off that stunt the needed ~20 times in a row, and in quick succession, too. Then I found out that if Marion went to the right side of the barrier below Sszark, the spider would not understand how to get to her. It was also clear that Sszark could not hit Marion, even if she pressed herself against the wall. I tested that very thorougly (and carefully!). Then I thought: "I am SO close now, much closer than when I whack those river hydras".
"Can´t I swing at that damn beast from here?"
<shift click swordswing>
Was that a quick blink of green I saw? Yes, yes, I CAN hit from here!
(Visala made Sszark blue so often that I apparently
failed to capture the green colour on a screenie, despite three attempts). Now that I had made this discovery, it could only end
like this.
Yay!
So, despite all sorts of trials and tribulations today, Marion´s journey goes on, the Full Clear is still intact and I am back at full money, with another HF merc by my side.
And to top it off, another grail item today: Naj´s Puzzler.
[Highlight]Conqueror Marion the Enchantress and Jemali, her Holy Freeze bodyguard, level 84, Hell Kurast Bazaar next.[/Highlight]
@kavarin: excellent progress! :thumbup:
(Sidenote: I HATE that AION ad! It makes
my whole computer slow down to a crawl. Could not write this update here while I was playing poker (something which is usually not a problem). Had to move it to Word. Is there any way to tell the browser (I use IE) to temporarily ignore Flash components?)
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