Howdy folks, I´m happy to see that you miss Gabrielle!
I have been using most of my free time playing in the HC Tankazon tournament, so the writing is lagging behind. I don´t think I will write more this week either, so I´ll give you what I have so far. Sorry for the abrupt ending.
Hestian Virgin Priestess Leah (dressed in robe): "Oh, very well, I will play the part of the wetched lush, Meg, but I hardly think anyone will be fooled."
G: "Yes, they will." (Disrobes L, then adjusts her outfit)
Leah (dressed as Meg): "You really are a very nice, albeit misguided-- young person, Gabrielle. It's a great pity I didn't get 'hold of you sooner. You would've made an excellent Hestian."
G: "Thanks. I don't think so."
Leah: "Well, the chaste life's not so bad. Once you get used to it. You simply have to follow the Hestian rules. Rule 1-- know thyself. Rule 2-- whatever-- "
G (interrupting): "Believe me. If I have to go the rest of my life without companionship, knowing myself
won't be a problem.
(Warrior...Priestess...Tramp)
It was important to plan the sessions well in act 5. The ice caves are very dangerous to run through without killing anything and I would hate having to establish a foothold there more than once. I felt that I needed to have plenty of space to fight Eldritch´s pack. The Frigid Highlands waypoint is always at the very start of the area, thus it is not practical to end a session after the Highlands.
All this led to that I delayed the playing until I had a whole day for it. The plan was to play all the way to the entrance to Crystalline Passage in one session. I decided to leave the two RoF bonus areas last, as they can be played later if needed.
Bloody Foothills held Slingers and the Enslaved/Overseer combinations. I had no problems with them. Just be careful and lure back a couple of Slingers at the time. Those annoying barbarians made it so I missed out a lot of XP (they created a lot of exploding Enslaved). There is a bug with those Slingers in act 5. They often can´t hit minions and here they couldn´t hit the barbarians. Since Gabrielle advances so slowly, she only caught sight of a single barbarian during the whole area. There were plenty of signs of them though: Slingers throwing javelins in weird directions, dead barbarians and also dead monsters. I even found a typical boss drop just lying on the ground. The barbs had killed a boss Slinger by themselves!
Surprisingly, Shenk was a pushover. Eldritch´s pack was CE and they were annoying to fight. I lured Eldritch to Shenk´s platform and killed him with harpoons.
Frigid Highlands: more Slingers, imps and imp/Crush Beast combinations. Gabrielle loves imps! Very low danger level and they die quickly. It´s quite easy to separate the imps from the Beast. The beast has a much bigger “awareness†range so if I encountered a combination, I backed off so the imp jumped off and the beast came running.
An imp boss dropped a very interesting item: a
Walking Stick! I almost trembled when I identified it. Crap, the only fighter-friendly abilities were 1-91 lightning damage and 9% life steal. Still, it is a better weapon than the
Demon Spell against highly lightning resistant critters. Slightly slower, but it does much more physical damage (about the same against undead). The life steal does not help much, though. Gabrielle has to hit the enemy, like, 10 times in a row to make up for the life loss of a regular hit. She may be able to save a few healing potins but the danger level won´t go down. The staff has +1 sorcie skills and also some plusses to individual skills. Repair cost is a ridulous 62000+ (the Arcing Jo Staff has about 8000). I was actually thinking of using Larzuk´s reward on it, because if I did, I could have rerolled it with regular gems (making it magical), then with flawless ones and finally even craft it if I wanted to.
Arreat Plateau provided even more imps and also Fire Boars. Without their lashers masters. What a lucky enemy draw! The Fire Boars seemed to be even less lightning resistant than the Enslaved. I avoided meleeing Thresh Socket, for obvious reasons.
The two bonus areas also had easy enemies. Succubi, skellie mages, Balrogs and greater mummies. The layout of the areas is well suited to fight only one meleer at a time. Just take it slow and all will be alright.
Thus ended the session. I was very pleased with it. No danger at all.
Crystalline Passage next. Needless to say, I took it very slowly in the beginning. I was afraid to get caught in a boss pack fight without any safe area to run to. One small step, wait, cast Slow Missiles, another step, etc. I think I spent more than three minutes down there (and managed to secure a nice bit of ground) before seeing the first enemies: Vipers. Not that bad, actually. The
Walking Stick was pretty effective against them. There were also Death Brigadiers and cold-using Bone Mages in the Passage. Overall, another good draw. However, there was a CE Stone Skin Viper boss that was immune to physical. Combine that with good lightning resistance and you get an enemy that is very hard for Gabrielle to kill. When slowed, she couldn´t hit often enough with her Arcing staff to overcome its life regeneration. She had to resort to some Buzzing Trowing Spears she bought just for this fight. It took several repair trips and lots of running to kill the boss with those.
I avoided the Evil Urns and the Frozen River for now. I wanted to secure the important Frozen Tundra waypoint first. So it was the same cautious start on the Glacial Trail. More Vipers, more cold mages and now succubi. No real problems in that area either. There were another couple of Evil Urns to save for later. I entered the Frozen Tundra.
to be continued...
Considering her restrictions she went very far. I had wondered about her status, so I'm glad you posted the update.
