Hell Difficulty is where the challenge lies. That's where all the fire immunity will make things interesting. Everything up until then is pretty much just practice, tedium, or relaxation, depending on my mood at the time.

There's nothing for Hotfoot here in normal except the chance to find low grade charms, runes, the chance to find uniques perhaps, or set items, and the chance to acquire socketed items from stores until clvl 22, when those will forever vanish (unless blizzard makes a change there). I can save up cash, collect gems and jewels. Sometimes I wish there was an option to skip Normal, just start right out with clvl 27 in Nightmare (now clvl 35 in the Expansion) with a set amount of gold and some random items, and just completely SKIP the easy, mostly boring parts of the game. Blizzard does NOT do us any favors with this pathetic one-size-fits-all gameplay. "Difficulty Levels" my ass. If you could start out at LEVEL ONE in nightmare, even, now that would be something. Fight your way through a couple clvls in the Blood Moor, just to get a foothold... but no. They impose on us the tedium of having to complete normal. Sometimes I don't mind, but sometimes I do. If any game makers can capture the fun parts of Diablo without the depth of sloppiness and the arrogance inherent in the way that the PK option is imposed on us, and the spoonfed quests and gameplay elements and the complete lack of difficulty control, I'd jump to it in a heartbeat. I'm just PRAYING that somebody can come out with a better game, because while this one has a lot to recommend it, there are a lot of things that could be, should be better.

I've been through all this gameplay before. The item drops, they are changed. Some of the interface is new. Faster footwear is delayed, and there are charms now, which just about fill in the gaps left by the nerfs on item availability in Normal, so that it all plays just about the same. There's 800x600, and there are mercs. Thank goodness for the mercs, who speed along the process.

One thing has changed in terms of skill allocation: less warmth, more mastery. So Hotfoot will be saving some skill points.

I made do on firebolt, slvl 1+1, and help from the merc, until clvl 12. Then it was blaze and fireball, and an act 2 prayer merc who was easily self-sustaining, with an odd exception. Pumping blaze now, and I'll take that up to slvl 10, then halt, and maybe or maybe not ever add more to it. Firewall will go to slvl 4. I'm going to skip meteor entirely this time, so that's one point I'll save.

There are now two HORRENDOUSLY tedious parts of the game -- they can be skipped, but in terms of maximizing your opportunities, they are the best options, so for now I'm going through the motions with all my D2X chars.

Both these tediums come in act two. The first is saving up all the red and blue potions that drop in act one and early act two. Saving the blues is the most urgent part, but saving reds too isn't that much extra work. Carting them all to act two takes time, and of course, you have to go from clvl 1 to clvl 17 and the Horadric cube in one sitting, or else you have to sell or leave behind some of the potions. I do that sometimes, as real life doesn't always allow that much time in one block.

The whole purpose of this is to turn that endless supply of potions I never need into full rejuvenations in act two. Is all this effort really worth it? Probably not, and I will probably stop bothering at some point, since chances are I won't actually USE all the potions by the time I get to Hell, where they will be so abundant I'll likely sell off spares every game session, at least for ranged chars (like Hotfoot) who aren't in constant need of potion use. Oh well. I hate not having a resource when I need it, so until I estabish for sure that this is just a waste of time, I'll keep doing it: saving potions, carting them to act two, spending twenty minutes cubing them all into minor, then full rejuvs, and stocking up.

The other tedium is even more maddening. With changes to the available item affixes you can find or buy or gamble in Normal difficulty, and with the absence of a chance to gamble for sets and uniques, there is NOTHING worth gambling for at all in Normal except circlets. And I mean nothing. (Even so, I don't want to see unique gambling return, especially NOT as a total lottery, a crapshoot you can't rely on, where the odds completely suck. Either leave it as is, with no uniques, or just restore it to where it was, so that you can plan on acquiring certain uniques with enough investment. The "you must get very lucky" solution just plain sucks, OK? I hope Blizzard shows better sense than that, but I'm not hopeful, considering their insistance on doling out the runeword formulas a few at a time. (Like anybody is actually going to sit there and experiment with all those ENDLESS possibilities? I don't think so. It's pointless.)

So with circlets all that you can spend money on, and plenty MORE money available because items now sell for half their value, not one-quarter, and no money has to be spent on repairing them first, there's just piles and piles and PILES of cash. So much cash, that in single player, I hit the limit in stash, then I hit the limit I can carry, and then I'm piling up as much as 150,000 gold on the ground in town, waiting to hit clvl 21, when circlets first become available as a remote (oh how VERY remote) gambling possibility. And then what? Then I sit at Elzix for an hour, clicking Gamble as many as TWO HUNDRED TIMES IN A ROW without a circlet showing up at all, I grow beyond bored. Yet what else is there to do with the cash? Nothing. I suppose I could stop collecting cash. Just leave the crap on the ground, do less work. Maybe I should just skip through Normal entirely. Hell, I've even begun to contemplate ACTUAL cheating, just to skip some of this. I'd take the penalty, in some cases, of just showing up naked at the doorstep of act five and starting there. I haven't done that yet, and probably won't. If the game gets to be that boring, I may just quit. I know that part of the problem is that I've been stuck in normal for a month now, waiting on a patch to fix severely broken item economy, so that I won't wreck my chars by playing them too far. And that self-restriction is finally taking its toll. I'm growing bored, yes I am, but maybe, just maybe things will improve once I can get to Nightmare and beyond.

Blizzard's answer to circlets seems to be that they'll make them an always-available gamble. Well, that's better than what we have now, if only by a sliver. IMO, the real answer would be to rebalance the item affixes, make the other gear come out a little better, and make circlets a little less uber without breaking them, so that players would have a reason to gamble for other items. But... that ain't gonna happen. If Blizz can't be bothered even to rebalance monster resists, they surely aren't going to do it on items. They must have some other set of priorities that come before balance. I don't believe they try to screw things up, but it's clear that there are too many game features in play for them to have the time to take care of them all.

I've wondered if I shouldn't get into mod making. The main reason I haven't signed on to mod making as of yet is the work involved for me, combined with the ideas of other mod makers. IMO, most of them go TOO FAR in changing the game. 95% of what's imbalanced in D2 is simple details. When mod makers make wholesale changes, sure they clear up some problems, but they introduce others. I don't know if I could make a good mod or not, but maybe I'll give it a shot. Maybe.

In the mean time, my girl Hotfoot. I'm hoping that she'll be fun to play. Here's a shot in a false tomb, not long after going through the Circlet Gambling tedium. With headgear now so lopsided that circlets rule all, there aren't going to be many chars I play who have use for other headgear. I'm going to miss the little-girl look of sorcies wearing those dopey leather caps that I used to gamble. Now they will look the same, all with that majestic look of the long, flowing hair. I don't mind so much for the sorceress, but it looks goofy on a combat character, like barbs and melee amazons.

I enjoyed act three with hotfoot, actually. Got my merc of choice, there, a lightning Iron Wolf. He'll probably be the main form of attack I use for fire immunes, although I don't yet know if he can really cut it for me.

I also didn't yet know about the Runeword "Leaf", which works in staves and is easy to form. It gives +3 fire skills and +3 each to warmth, firebolt and inferno. If I had known, I'd have looked harder for a socketed staff with two sockets and the teleport skill on it. Now Hotfoot has passed the level where she can buy socketed items (I really think that's a mistake, for the gameplay, taking that option off the table like that). So now it's too late. I can make a Leaf, but only with some staff that drops at random. It will be impossible to find one with two sockets and teleport, methinks.

And teleport on staff or orb is my TOP priority, gear-wise. That will be necessary to keep my merc alive, not only to save his life but also just to use him effectively as my main line of attack against fire immunes. In fact, after much refreshing of staff merchants, I finally did land a good teleport staff with two other useful skills on it.

The only foes of note were the few fire immunes. The Witchdoctor was the toughest, because his lightning resistance rendered my merc largely ineffective, his nova discouraged any melee. I ended up throwing poison potions to help the merc along to a conclusion. Then at the start of act four (I left my merc dead from the end of act three, because I didn't want to risk the Corpse Spitter Bug wiping him out permanently) I had to solo a fire immune boss.

I used the Static Field on my new teleport staff to take him down to low life, then swung at him and finished with melee. Hotfoot soloed through act four without her merc, and that was almost a refreshing change. It was easier to use blaze when everything followed me, none of the focusing on the merc. Firewall filled in the gaps.

Once I reached the CS, no more spitters, it was safe to revive Jabari, but I still held off. No need getting him wiped by oblivion knights. I took out De Seis first, THEN revived him for the Vizier. He did most of the work on the Vizier, but I did help with a couple slvl 1 Statics.

I could not do too many of those, though, as the Viz is Extra Strong and packs a wallop.

To my amazement, Jabari survived not only the Infector, but also the fight with Diablo. In fact, something must be bugged there, as he was getting pasted but TAKING NO DAMAGE AT ALL from Diablo at first. That went on a short while, then finally he started taking damage. Diablo died before he did, though.

Please note, I used my staff-based Static field ONLY against Fire Immune bosses. I did not use it on Diablo or Mephisto, nor any other target I could harm with fire. I did use the teleport ability occasionally, but not as much as I normally do for teleport-enabled sorcies. I also used the telekinesis some. Why not? That's what it's there for.

Diablo dropped an Isenhart Parry, which goes along nicely with Isenhart's Lightbrand. I'd like to collect the whole set for my merc, I think that would be so cool. We'll see if luck is kind, in time. Hotfoot is now on hold, waiting for the patch that will allow me to continue on without tainting my character with the broken item drops. I'd also like to see what nerfs and changes and such they make before I commit to final decisions on how I plan to proceed.

- Sirian

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