PATCH 1.09

So it finally arrived! Um... yay?

After seven weeks, the new patch is here. It's running a bit late, but no sense going on about that. A great many bugs have been fixed. The treasure classes in single player have been completed. A few runewords are available now. Mercs have been fixed. The game is playable past Normal now. I should be happy now, right?

So I get underway. First up, Hotfoot. Into Act Five now, on her way through nightmare to a date with Hell, and it's hordes of Fire Immune monsters. Sounds... interesting.

ACT FIVE - NORMAL

Hotfoot has a staff with Teleport, Telekinesis, and Static Field on it. Remember, she puts her points only into the Fire Tree, but is allowed to use any items. Hot Babe, the Next Generation.

The Foothills... what is there to say? For a fire sorcie, this is just a pinata. Beat on it a little, and out pops all kinds of candy. Doesn't take that long, and she's gained almost a whole level. Shenk dropped two rares. Hmm, these are pretty crappy. Here, have a look at one of them.

Now that's just sad. The other was no better. Here I am thinking, "Wow! Two rares!" But nope, nothing to get excited about. Both only had three affixes each, and even if added together, would not have made much of an item. Oh well, no biggie. (Right?)

Without Hydra yet, Hotfoot found herself less than ideally prepared to battle imps. Fortunately, Jabari's lightning would down them in one or two shots. His charged bolts could kill some, too, albeit a little slower. Hotfoot could use firewall, but it was occasionally futile as she'd open three or four in a row, only to have the bugger blink away each time before the casting animation was complete. Firewalling the grass, oh yes, fun stuff. Still, I didn't mind. Most of the time it worked, and I got better at not misfiring as I went along.

The Plateau was genuinely interesting, dodging suicide minions and firewalling the lashers, towers, and catapults. Lo and behold, out pops a socketed short staff with the much-desired two sockets... and both Teleport and Telekinesis on it! Wow! So I need a Ral rune now, to make the Tir-Ral runeword item, a most fattening piece of candy called the Leaf. Perfect for Ember or an inferno sorcie, but very very good for any Hot Babe or fire specialist. (Maybe too good? Well, not considering it's a staff. Can't make that item with an orb, so... yeah, pretty cool. And I will have one with Teleport!)

Hmm, more rares with three affixes? How odd. These are all pretty crappy. Well, no biggie, since there have been a few "extra" compared to usual. On into the caves, through the walking, breathing popsicles and past the big white teddy bears. Anya! Hey girl, what do I get for thawing you out?

Wow, that's awesome! The one thing I NEED on an orb is... teleport! (Now I can discard that crappy Jared's Stone with Teleport CHARGES on it, for goodness sake). Hmm... this item also has only three affixes? And this is a quest reward? Have I YET SEEN a rare with more than three mods on it??? (The teleport skill doesn't count, that's not an item affix). Hmm. Should I be happy I got an orb I can use, or upset that it's otherwise such a crappy piece of junk?

On the up side, Hotfoot looks really sleek in that screenshot. I do so like the look of splint mail on the sorceress. (Running around with a Tir-Eth. Arg, and no Eth's left to make a Tal-Eth runeword armor. But Hey! Hotfoot was played way way back before I knew any runewords yet. So it goes. I'll find another Eth, eventually. (Or make one!))

So... it's time to hunt down that traitor. Hum de dee, ho ho ho. Ah yes, found you. Die die die. (Woops, he exploded one corpse underneath me. Can't afford that in Nightmare, as that will mean instant death. *sigh* This is such a nasty fight. The deck is really badly stacked against you.)

What an item! I'm so glad this socketed staff dropped with teleport on it. Save me a mind-numbing shopping trip back to act two (where socketed items can still be bought), to refresh Drognan a thousand times, looking for a 2-socket teleport staff.

Since hitting clvl 30, I've been looking for a staff to buy. Any staff with +3 to Frozen Orb, to put on tab two, for dealing with fire immune monsters. (Right now all I have is a stack of rancid gas in my inventory, and another stack saved in stash -- must save them, since they can't be bought any more).

Well, there she blows! Too bad Hotfoot only has 630k on hand. Well now, what to do? What to do? I don't have 100k worth of stuff to sell, even if I did sell it all. And if I leave town... the merchants will reshuffle. Ah, but if I run to Act 4 via waypoint, the merchants will NOT reshuffle, at least not for four minutes. So it's worth a shot. ... Sadly, I wasn't quick enough in finding pricey tidbits, and I lost my chance to get that staff. Arg! I wasn't ever going to get another shot like that. Oh well. It would be better, anyway, to get a +3 FO with teleport. (How hard can that be? Right? ... Right?)

Found this out on the Tundra:

Sweet item, but useless to Hotfoot. It got sold.

Round and round and round we go. Where she stops, nobody knows.

Well, lookie here, it's Mr. Fire Resistant. Catch me if you can! Hahaha!

Just stay ahead of the enemy, that's all you have to do. It's not always as easy as that, but speed and mobility can often overcome strength if used wisely.

So much for Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Oh look! Two more rares! This makes... eleven I've found this game!

Eleven... all with only three affixes each. Plus a gambled circlet and my quest reward orb. THIRTEEN RARES IN A ROW, ALL WITH ONLY THREE AFFIXES EACH!

Hello, UnterRares! Rares so sad, they can make cowboys cry. Woops. Looks like somebody at Blizzard North has goofed again. (Or did they PLAN to trash the rares like this??)

Lister and crew... fire resistant. Moderately tough. Dead now. And Baal? Well, like so much of the rest of the Expansion Pack, Baal is either feast or famine. You either have some way to nail him from extreme range (like Hydras) or you don't. If you don't, he may shoot you with the Orange. (He may do it ten times in a row, or teleport on top of you to do it. Fun stuff). If he doesn't orange you... he's useless. I wish I could like this boss, this fight. It has some cool elements. It has even, on a few occasions, been fun to play, but mostly not. This time, Hotfoot cast hydras onto the bridge, and a rather short time later, it was already over. Sad, very sad.

So now it's on to nightmare.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

I got two very interesting letters from fans this week. One urged me not to do any more "Blizzard Bashing" in my character reports. He suggested I do that on the forums, or move it to a rants page. Well...

Upon reflection, I'm not surprised. Actually, I'm surprised this is the first time someone has mentioned this. Since the expansion beta, I've not been enjoying the game as much, on the whole. More frustration factors now than ever before -- is that the direction the game was supposed to go? How did it end up here? What... went wrong?

After playing through an entire act with the "new" rares, I was quite unhappy. I've since learned that the problem is nowhere near as bad as it looked that first night, but wow, it's still pretty bad. Jarulf says it may be as simple as a "goof" in resetting the number of mods from 4-6 to 3-6. I don't know. Maybe it's nothing to do with the "fix" to rares at all, but that was the only change mentioned in the patch text, so that's what I've been blaming. Regardless of what is wrong, something is definitely not right. Rares with three affixes? Might as well not bother. The odds of getting two good affixes on a three-affix item are much much less than on an item with four or five affixes. The odds of getting an item with four good affixes on a three-affix rare are... zero, obviously.

That's a much greater problem to a character like Hotfoot, who is playing through on one pass, with no possibility of trading. What she gets is what she gets, and every rare is a chance at something good. With only a few such chances for her whole life span, including what she can get from gambling, it's not a good thing to face lower odds of success. The balance for this sort of gameplay... well, it's wounded, at least. If not shot.

I enjoyed most of act five with Hotfoot, but by the end, as the rare problem became clear, I was growing discontented. I find Baal entirely depressing, as well. Feast or famine -- too lethal (in a dice roll sort of way) for the solo hardcore character, too pathetic in the sense that other than his too-strong orange attack, there's not much to him. You charge him and pray for mercy, and maybe you'll get lucky or maybe you won't. Otherwise, you have to take him from as much range as you can manage. After I complained about him in the beta, they made a few changes. Unfortunately, I'm left with the same unsatisfying feeling. This is not like fighting Mephisto, De Seis, Fangskin, or the Summoner. Your strategic options are pretty thin and... as I said, it comes down to feast or famine. I like act five on the whole, but Baal... blah. That's how I feel about him, sorry. Like Duriel, he's something to dread, as he's a variant-buster -- an obstacle with certain too-easy solutions, who puts a halt on certain character options, at least from a survivability standpoint.

Nihlathak is another subject. I'll come back to him later. At this point, I was blaming my discontent with Hotfoot on the new UnterRare Bug, and on the feast-famine nature of act five as a whole, the contrast of too easy vs too hard. However, I would later realize that the matter runs much deeper.

Blizzard bashing? Perhaps so. The second letter I got, after the one criticizing me for becoming more negative in my reports, was one asking me why I am still playing. It has become fairly clear, probably to all but certainly to most, that I'm not having as much fun in the expansion as I did in the original game. Can that be blamed on not having a WORKING copy of the expansion on hand? Perhaps, but only partially. I've been telling myself that if they fix this, patch that, and complete the other -- if they deliver what they have promised -- that the frustrations would lessen, and the fun would blossom. Well... the patch is here, but has the fun returned with it? That's an important question, because truly... if it isn't fun to play any more, it's time to stop.

Are we having fun yet? In large part, the answer is no.

ACT ONE - NIGHTMARE

Will it get better once there are fire immunes on hand? If I can just get Hotfoot through to Hell, that's when the fun should start for her. That's when I'll have to play thoughtfully, use some strategy. For the moment, it's mostly just a matter of plunking down a hydra, waiting for the timer to let up, casting another hydra... I run blaze most of the time and it helps a little, but there's just not much action happening.

The original Hotfoot... she was my first 3dot character. I learned more about the game per minute played with that character, than with any other. I had to use Blaze tactics, and it was a rich experience, oh so rich. Now... mostly not. The merc distracts many enemies, and the hydras shoot them down fairly quickly. The blaze... well, I find myself using only the most rudimentary blaze tactics. More just isn't needed.

Fire immune boss, time to whip out the poison potions. This was fairly interesting -- or, at least a change of pace. I couldn't use my backup attack, cold, but it didn't matter.

Hotfoot found this rare from Coldcrow, her first in the new session, and the first one for me in D2X that had more than three affixes! This would start a string of about eight in a row with more than three, mostly five or six.

For some reason, the game seems to "grow fond of" certain boss abilities. I don't know if it was always this way and I never noticed, or if it became like this at some point through a patch, but the game now seems to pick about three boss abilities per session and repeat them over and over, with only occasional departures. Well, joy of joys, this game seems to have picked Fire Enchanted as its favorite. That's mostly a nonissue, but if it pops up on a shaman, it creates an immunity.

This guy was stubborn. He took almost a whole stack of potions to kill. Hmm. That could get to be rough in Hell, trying to rely on poison potions. It will get me through for now, though. (I was still under the delusion that I might find an orb suitable for Hotfoot -- and use a shield with it. I would eventually surrender that delusion, but for the moment, I was carrying around a 3socket kite shield, gemmed with nothing as yet, and left my frozen orb staff in my stash.)

There's not much to say about the rest of this act. Feast or famine. I found myself reminded of something DaShiv said way way back on his second sorcie run through Hell (with a lightning-only SF/TS sorceress). He said that there were categories of monsters: LEBs and non-LEBs. The difference being, the LEBs took a little longer to kill. On the whole, he found that character and that quest unsatisfying. This time around, I'm feeling the same way about my poor girl, Hotfoot. Static Field is what did him in. For Hotfoot... it's a combination of factors.

The fire immunes, they were interesting. This one took some work to kill, and I had fun dealing with him. There were some others like him, too. This session was highly fond of Fire Enchanted.

Sadly, the rest was not worth talking about. Cast a hydra, run around waiting for the timer, cast another. Yawn.

Gosh, I hate to say it, but I'm bored. Why? WHY??? Why is this soooo damn boring? I don't get it. The occasional fire immunity ought to make it more fun, right? Well, it IS, but the rest of it... is just not.

Andariel was quickly put out of her misery. Hotfoot is now clvl 38, heading on to act two.

THE DOWNFALL OF THE SORCERESS

The spell timers have ruined my girl.

That's my final verdict. The spell timers are bad bad bad bad bad. They are evil. They have stolen my joy.

Despite all of Blizzard's best efforts to rebalance the sorcie to make the timers work out, despite all of their best intentions, the work they put in... she doesn't live up to what she used to be. She might be graphically more palatable on the Realms, but she's nowhere near as much FUN to play.

Why not? What's wrong with the timers? They have dumbed her down. They've neutered her, labotomized her. They've brainwashed her and reprogrammed her. The strategy is dumbed down, the tactics reduced quite nearly to mindless point-and-click. She's... boring.

Why didn't I see this in the beta? First, not enough time. I wasn't PLAYING her, I was testing her. I was looking at how EFFECTIVE the skills were to use, not how much fun they were. My test character was tri-elemental, and there was the discovery factor in play. I just didn't have enough time to see the truth.

When Ariel announced a few weeks ago that he was quitting, selling his CDs and moving on, I felt sad. I didn't want to see him go, as he was one of the most lively sorceress fans at the Lounge. And why was he leaving? Bored to tears. Sorcie no more fun to play. I didn't understand, since I had had fun with Sor-Cee in the beta. But I had had fun TESTING, and the test choices I made didn't highlight what has gone wrong with this class.

Now I've figured it out.

You see, with the first Hotfoot, the entire game was a continual process of tactical execution. Every step mattered. I had to engage my brain to kill with Blaze, and Hydra was too weak to overwhelm the enemy outright. Even emptying my mana ball on hydras could not dish out as much damage as ONE hydra can now. That's just the start of the problem.

The spell durations all got whacked. Everything is short now, for "graphical reasons". Used to be that hydras lasted and lasted. It MATTERED where you put them, and managing them was a continual exercise in situational awareness and planning. Now... it's plunk one down anywhere, and try not to doze off as you wait wait wait on the spell timer, to cast another. There is no strategy. Oh sure, there's the obvious shoot-around-the-corner move, but that's not hydra strategy, folks. That's basic common sense. There's no more question of stacking vs spreading, of crossfire vs concentrated fire. Now that magic stuns, once your hydras stun a monster, it's toast. There's no scramble to stay ahead of the targets yet still keep them in range of your long-lasting hydras. There's no substance to this skill at all any more. It's been dumbed down in the worst way, and it's just not fun to play.

The sorceress on the whole is like this now. Oh there may be some exceptions, but her glory days are over. She's been sold out. People's worst fears have come to pass: the timers have RUINED this class. Not only is she not fun to play any more, but she's the hated uberchar now, too. No respect left for her. Most people despise her on sight. It is... most sad.

ACT TWO

Is there any redemption for Hotfoot in the sewers? Against the Fire Immune mages on level three?

Not really. Frozen Orb is also on a spell timer, now. It's shorter, thus not too godawful bad, but with each passing hour, I am less and less entertained by the "tactics" of waiting for permission to cast another spell. It was genuinely more fun to play when the spells were weaker, but the action was continual. Now it's stop-and-go, and about as unsatisying as a timer would be if imposed on food, sex, movie-watching and other recreation.

WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS ANYWAY? They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Well, the "good intentions" of the spell timer system have led me to sorceress hell. Arrgh.

Of course, I didn't realize this fully yet. I didn't understand it yet. All I knew at this point is... hey, this ain't as much fun as I expected! Arrgh.

Act Five is part of the problem. It sounds really good, adding another act to the game, but it is SO FULL of endless candy... it completely warps the game. You gain NINE LEVELS there in normal difficulty, on a full clear. My goodness, you don't even gain that many in act two! All this experience "candy" leaves your character much higher upon reaching Nightmare. For weapon users, perhaps it doesn't matter (or it may, I don't know yet). For a sorcie, skill points are everything. Not only do I have more and more on hand, but I also have more +skill gear (+3 to fire, from my staff, along with +3 extra to Warmth, which I still had at slvl 1). Act Five just has too much reward to it, relative to the other acts. They threw in too much candy. They threw in so much, it made my character ill. Yet she doesn't have the option of skipping act five.

Oh sure, I could skip the optional areas throughout the game, rush through faster. Or I could invoke Players X (at least now I can) and increase enemy hit points... but the experience is increased too, so she'd just be gaining that many more levels. And there's the problem of the Fire Immunes, of making them too strong for her deliberately weak alternative attack forms. That would only make those parts of the game more tedious.

Poor Hotfoot. It seems that Hot Babe "fire-tree-only" sorceresses really ARE dead after all. Not because they are too weak -- far from that. No, it's because they are too strong, too vanilla, and too overall boring. My design here is flawed. Dropping everything into the fire tree just makes everything NOT immune to fire too easy to kill. I'm thus guilty in my character plan of the same thing that has gone wrong with D2X in general: too much Gap. Too easy on one end, too hard or tedious on the other. It's impossible to balance these extremes, because they are too far apart. Everything's too easy for my hydras, but if I increase the "game size" to make them take slightly longer to kill, my design isn't prepared to tackle the boosted fire immunes, and that part will take too long or require parking.

Not even 95% resistant bosses are interesting. In fact, they're boring as Hell, as I cast ONE hydra, then wait wait wait wait, then cast ONE hydra, then wait and wait.

The flow of the game is gone, at least for the sorcie timer skills. :(

It was also a mistake to rely on a merc to supply an alternate elemental attack. I'll take fire and use him for lightning? He was too effective in normal, and now already on the too-weak side in nightmare, and getting worse. He sucks at killing anything with any lightning resistance. Yeah, he was mowing down imps in act five, but he's slow as can be fighting a Magic Resistant fire immune boss here in the desert, even counting that Magic Resistant was lowered to 40% from 75%.

Yes, sad but true, the poison potions were much more effective than the merc.

EVEN AMONG MERCS, the Gap strikes. Act five mercs are so tough, so strong, given good equipment. There's no way to boost the offensive output of act three mercs with equipment, thus... they are now, and by far, the weakest in the game. Even the freeze mercs are a poor option. The speed-up-after-unfreezing bug is still in the game, as far as I know. You're better off (if you want chilling help) to get a rogue merc and give her some cold damage. Give her a bow with lots of sapphires in it, if you want really long chill. The act three mercs... are a weak option, to be sure. Late in the game, they could almost be said to be variant material. Almost.

And thus, by way of item luck, my act three merc came to the end of his road.

It may be a mistake, but I decided that I had to make use of this item. I would go back and get an act five merc, and switch from lightning as backup attack, to physical and poison. This goes against my original plan, but if you can't make use of the items that drop for you, what good are they? Sometimes plans are meant to be changed. I just hope I don't regret this. This is quite a large piece of candy, and... I worry that it will spoil Hotfoot's dinner. We're going to find out.

My game continues its infatuation with Fire Enchanted bosses. Second boss in act two with Magic Resistant Fire Immune. Fun stuff.

The new merc is gettin his bootay kicked. Starting at clvl 29, with Hotfoot at 40, I did not backtrack to level him. For the moment at least, he is getting roughed up. I presume as he gets a few more levels under his belt, that will change, but it's almost annoying to have him get smacked around so much, after having a low-maintenance partner for so long.

What happens when you combine a Might Enchanted Extra Strong boss with a tiny head and big muscular arms and a FAT club with a young barbarian mercenary? You get a resurrection bill from Greiz, that's what.

Duriel ate him up, too. Then blaze ate Duriel. That's one monster I didn't mind having too much power on hand for. And still immune to cold? Somebody at Blizzard... ah, never mind. Use your imagination, there, as I was about to bash pretty hard.

ACT THREE

Well it didn't take long. My merc ate this boss in 2.2 swings.

I was lucky to get a picture at all. And that's with a temporary sword. He's not even using that artifact yet.

Hey, check this out. One positive thing in the expansion is more gems. I can actually, for the first time, use this cube formula:

Sadly, I got a minimum result. I will have to try it again, once I gather the gems.

Oh joy, the UnterRares keep rolling in. (Insert Blizzard Bashing comments here: _______ )

The witchdoctor... that kooky midget. Take this, you crazy flayer.

Well now, the game is just INTENT on giving me the one combination of abilities that can create Fire Immune bosses out of thin air. This is the fourth one in act three, not even counting the Witchdoctor.

Throwing weapons look like a bright spot. I'm glad they increased stack size on throwing axes and knives, and improved the two throwing-only affixes. Why no increase to javelin class stack size, though? Was that an oversight? Or did they want the benefit to go only to throwing barbs, and screw the javazons? Oh well. At least now there are repairable throwing weapons like this nice stack:

The non-immunes were mostly climbing into the boring range by now. All those skill points saved up were nearly used now, maxing both hydra and mastery at the fastest rate.

When Ariel had retired, citing boredom, I had asked him why couldn't he just switch to variants? Impose a little extra difficulty on there himself, and use restraint in regard to the item candy. He said that just wasn't going to work. I'm coming to realize why these things cannot rescue the sorcie from the pit into which they've dumped her. To make a "variant" work, you need the rules in place before you start. Once you are into it, it's too late to change, and you may not realize that a bit of candy is too sweet until you've got in your mouth, and then it's too late. Besides, variants are supposed to add fun to and extend the life of an already fun game. If you have to create variants just to have any fun at all... that's a problem. It only gets worse when there are genuinely difficult or dangerous opponents sprinkled in every so often amidst the hordes of walking Pez Dispensers. Finding out mid-game that your variant rules are flawed, and it's just not as much fun as you expected, that's a problem.

The Council was a case in point. First of all, Cybit got it dead wrong in reporting that they've fixed the Council. These guys can still heal just as much, just as many times as they like. Nothing has changed with them, thus... you must overwhelm them, the same as always. And with uberhydra on hand, and strong strong firewalls, Hotfoot still could not take down 75% fire resistant Geleb Flamefinger by herself, at least not within ten minutes. When I had enough of that, I got him down below half and teleported onto him, using Telekinesis to stun him while my merc beat him to death.

Yeah, that worked. It worked very well (almost too well). Yet it's just another example of the Gap. We've got a couple of quests that are... extremely tough to complete without dying. Then there's the rest of it, which for the sorcie is now too easy, too vanilla, too... mindless, for my taste. Here comes a "difficult" fight, which took many minutes and some thought to overcome, and still I was bored by it. What could they do here to make it better? At this point, I don't even know. I don't particularly care to speculate, either. If I can get Hotfoot to Hell... maybe there it will be more fun.

Geleb's gift to me? A useless UnterRare.

Down we go into the Durance. Bremm's conviction is going to whack Hotfoot's resists all to Hell, but of course the Lying Character Screen won't show me how much. All I know is, each hydra shot appeared to be doing about 100 to 120 damage, when she was flashed with conviction. I had two nasty close calls, but managed to drink each time. The slightest hesitation, or punching the wrong potion button, would have spelled death. So... now that it's "hard", are we having fun yet? Nope. Still not. Feast or famine. This is almost one-shot-kill territory. Is that the ONLY trick in the bag, for Blizzard North? Whatever happened to AI behavior changes, such as those in Diablo One on bosses like Plaguewrath, Steelmace, Blightfire, Baron Sludge, and Black Skull? No? All we can do is insert a few one-shot kills amongst the monsters, and call it interesting? Arrgh.

So Hotfoot lived through Bremm. The merc did not, but so it goes. I left him dead for the moment. The rest of the level died fairly easily to hydras. Not much tactics required, just wait wait wait for the spell timer, plunk down another hydra, and stay ahead of the enemy.

ACT FOUR

Right out of the gate, Doom Knights, immune to fire. Yay! It's got to get more fun now. Or... at least it will play differently.

What the...? My merc just bashed a knight to death in ONE HIT? Oh what a difference a dozen clvls makes. I remember when this sad fellow could not handle skeletons in act two. Now he's ripping these knights a new one in one or two hits, each. Hotfoot has to do... pretty much nothing. Walk around, wait wait wait on the spell timer, raise one hydra, wait and wait some more. Oh sure, I can swap weapons, cast frozen orbs. I did that, too. Why not? But mostly all that did was chill the targets so the merc could smash them a little more safely.

I suppose it was a mistake, after all, to use that ridiculous sword. Just... dammit. Just too much candy in this game now. The Gap on items is worse than ever. There are no "good" items available. There's the slim chance (or a lot of shopping trips) to find awesome gear amongst the crap of the shops. Not many runewords active. (I find myself looking back to the old method of gambling for uniques and sets. Even if there were more runeword choices, there aren't any runeword gloves, belts, boots, or jewelry. Thus all of those slots are relegated to rares or random luck now. Can't manage the gear any other way, not while playing single player). There's gambling, but oh wait, nope, no gambling. (Probably just land another UnterRare, so why go through all the work of hauling crap back to town to raise the money?) Can't gamble for anything but normal items anyway. Oh sure, you eventually get a pittance of a chance to gamble exceptionals, and you can play the lotto trying to get an elite, but... apparently, somebody at Blizzard needs a serious refresher course on probability, or... they have stopped caring about balancing pure play -- and single player -- at all. Certainly all these piles of candy were intended to titilate most of the Realm crowd. Too bad they broke the game in the process. Yes, the WHOLE game is broken now, in my view. What am I going to do with a weapon character? Struggle through on what I can scrounge, until one of these bits of candy happens to drop? That's it, game over, I've "won" already? I can then stop fighting monsters, and switch into lawnmower treasure-hunter mode? Uh... no thanks. Not much point going through the motions once a piece or two of candy has tripled my effectiveness. Or... who knows. Maybe I'm wrong. I will give it a chance, with Felgar, before I declare the whole game dead. But this is looking pretty bleak to me, folks. Not sure how much longer I'll be messing with this game.

A tough-looking boss guarding the city gate. Tough looking. Hydras ate him for a snack and complained they were still hungry.

Gathered enough new gems at the Hell Forge to give the prismatic cube formula another shot. Whoa! Much better result. I switched from the +32MF amulet Hotfoot had been wearing for eons, to this bit of goodness.

Now that's what candy ought to be like: tasty, but not too large of a serving, not tooo godawful sweet (not so sweet it gives you a tummy ache), but sweet enough to taste better than your regular dinner. Some parts of the D2X design plan have been brilliant. What went wrong? This expansion pack had so much potential?

"Potential" -- that's a fancy French word for "Screwing Something Up". I should know, as that word applies to me, personally. I'm still trying to live up to my potential. "Potential" means "hasn't succeeded yet". That's not entirely bad, but it's not all that good either. That about sums up my feelings. I've been going on and on about this in this page of the report, I realize, but my reports have never been anything more than a window into my own gaming experience, and I can only show you what I'm seeing, experiencing, relate what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. I'm sorry this isn't positive. I wish it were! Whether you care to blame me, or the game, or whatever... at this point, I don't think it matters. I don't think the fun is ever coming back to the sorceress class, at least. As for the rest of the game... that remains to be seen, but I'm not particularly hopeful.

So what happens when the Vizier (who is automatically immune to fire) also turns up Cold Enchanted?

Nothing special. Just took four times as long, running around the pentagram with him chasing, to kill him. Even at that, it wasn't too terribly long, but it certainly wasn't exciting. Run, wait wait on the timer (at least it's shorter for orb), cast an orb, run wait run wait, cast, run wait wait, cast. Drink a mana potion now or then. Oh yeah, did I mention that another piece of candy popped out? Of a storm caster champion in the front hall? Yep, it's true. Volcanic coronet, +3 Fire Skills. Hotfoot now has slvl 20+6 Hydras. They do... a lot of damage. A whole lot. Not to the Vizier, of course, but everything else is dying fairly quickly.

Thanks to fire immunity, the Infector was the same story. Circle the pentagram, orb wait run orb wait run wait orb wait wait wait. Yawn.

Diablo went down about as quickly as you would expect.

ACT FIVE - NIGHTMARE (oh, what a nightmare!)

Why am I still playing? That's a good question. I wish I had an answer. (Oh yeah, something to do with "maybe it will start to get fun when I get to Hell." After all, Nightmare was pretty much a cakewalk for the original Hotfoot, too. Until... act four. With one or two exceptions.)

So what has act five REALLY managed to accomplish? It's managed to make Normal and Nightmare even longer. It's managed to introduce a long, hard famine, with too much feasting at the last three quests. But I've come to realize it's NOT so much act five at fault, though parts of it ARE too easy. It's the sorcie herself, it's the timers. I mean it when I say they have ruined her.

Shenk's UnterRare. Oh joy.

Imps... in Hell, they will be fire immune. For now, they are hydra bait. Cast a hydra, wait wait on the timer, cast another. That sums up my trip through the Buddy Foothills and Rigid Highland. The suicide minions are another critter that will become fire immune in Hell, but for now they burn quickly in Blaze, or die to a single hydra shot. They are mildly interesting, as they do force at least a little tactics onto me. Then the caves, and back to hydra wait wait hydra wait wait wait.

Now that's a NICE orb, best I have personally acquired. It's big candy, compared to the Dragon of Magus wands my sorcies used to get. +2 Fire? A good resist? Strong MDR? (Oh wait, they slew MDR, so that's now useless). And +1 Blizzard! This would be worthwhile for Hotfoot in particular! Get that 3D shield into play, or an Ancients Pledge at least. Right? Bzzt, wrong. Hotfoot would rather have Teleport, and I've made it her rule, no points into the other trees. So it's teleport on an item, or bust. Well... maybe I should have given up the teleport... but no, wait, see I can't really afford to do that. Teleport is needed to manage the merc more effectively, and he's a large part of my anti-immune strategy (told you that was a mistake). Also, I want teleport on hand for Nihlathak and Baal, as mobility is the best weapon against their various forms of cheese. Oh well. I sold this orb. Useless piece of crap for poor Hotfoot, with her chosen limitations. (Not that she NEEDS the extra points in her fire tree anyway. At this point, more +skills candy will just make her sick. I'm already regretting finding that coronet).

THE HARD PART

So it came time to play the hard part. Nihlathak, the Ancients, and Baal.

I found Nihlathak in the upper right. My merc proved to be a detriment. What I should have done is lure out as much as I could all the way back to the stairs, and leave NO enemy corpses anywhere within ten miles of that bastard. At least until I got him down to only the freshly summoned ones (you can't ever completely isolate him from potential corpse material, sadly). The danger factor is off the charts. Not even Baal's orange, not even the telekill move, is as dangerous as this cheese factory. That's fun, from a softcore point of view. Take the high risks, see if you can manage it, pull it out. The hardcore player... is either damn good or a monumental fool... or both, to try this in Nightmare or Hell.

So instead of luring the enemy to the stairs, and completely starving Nihlathak of explosion fuel, I only lured them out to the front area of his quadrant, and though I tried to contain the corpses to one pile, they spread out more and more. I went to town a couple times to let the game's cleanup routine thin the corpse piles, but not thinned enough. I also moved in too soon to attack. There were still many live enemies around when I opened up hydras on that gray bastid. Wounding him that early proved to be a fatal mistake. As along I come, rounding a corner to find him OUT IN THE AISLE already. He had teleported to get away from the hydras. Uh... I'm standing on a pile of corpses. Perhaps, if I hadn't been caught completely flat-footed, I could have teleported away. I was... STUNNED that he came out after me. That had never happened to me before (but then, I'd never sniped at him with hydras before, while still fighting his goons, either). I may have had time to live, if I had reacted instantly. He teleported AGAIN, out into the middle area, then he instantly blew up a corpse under me and Hotfoot died instantly.

Do you see that wispy harpy corpse to the left? Arg, it's tough even to see where the corpses are, with these graphics. That floor hides them, and hides them well.

Wake in town face down, got telekilled, a big frown. I still have to go back to face that clown!

Not many corpses, that's good, very good. That son of a barbarian whore is blowing up corpse after corpse after corpse after corpse, all well out of range. Then he blows up one I didn't see, a little too close for comfort. My hydras are pelting him now. Uh... is that a harpy corpse I see on the floor near me? (Picture Wile E. Coyote, who has just run off the edge of a cliff, he stares into the camera, realizes he is already dead, gravity has been toying with him but now it pulls him down down down down... THUD!" Road Runner grins. "Meep-meep!" Lots of sticking out of birdy tongue. Poor Wile E). Yep, that's how Hotfoot felt. I saw that corpse too late, and I knew... I KNEW I was dead. Half a moment later, it detonated.

My pets nailed him from the grave. You can see his own Oops Moment taking place in the top right of the picture.

Ironically, while I found this depressing from a hardcore standpoint (won't be rolling these dice trying to get a full clear, sorry. Not even I am that stubborn), it IS an interesting challenge if played in a context where death does not spell final defeat. (You can play to see if you can survive, and barring that, like the old "Name That Tune" game show, how many deaths can you name this monster in? That could be fun, yes it could -- in Softcore.) You've got to prevent EVER exposing yourself to standing on a corpse. You thus need a corpse disposal skill, or a whole lot of discipline and determination. In one sense, I thus despise this fight, while in another I actually appreciate it. It's the best part of act five, to put it bluntly. Baal is feast or famine, and the Ancients... I like the Ancients, but they don't DO anything besides mindlessly chase you. They are... another form of Duriel puzzle. There are two blunt and simple tactics for the ancients: stay ahead of them, or tank them. I know that sums up the entire game, as well, but... they are just so mindlessly single-minded, and so easily defeated simply by running around and around and around while some type of ranged damage skill whittles them down... and once again, it's a matter of one-shot kills. They are... disappointing to me, at least from a sorceress perspective.

Nihlathak is a bit too cheesy, especially with a telekill ability. You can't EVER expose yourself to corpses when within ten miles of him, as you never know when he's going to get blink-happy and teleport all over the damned place, catch you flat-footed and BLAM, it's over instantly. However... at least this is a threat you CAN manage, even if it's monumentally hard to do so. See... this is where I wish I had a wand of Raise Skeleton. All these *** **** ****** ******* charged items, ALL useless except for tele-something and a curse or three, and there's no Raise Skeleton on hand anywhere, with which I could dispose of these corpses for a character like Hotfoot, who otherwise has no means of doing it. (Insert scornful Blizz-Bashing paragraphs here: _______ )

Well, two deaths. It could have been worse. At least it was a thoughtful fight.

My Nihlathak advice? (Other than to skip him in Hardcore?) Well... for starters, kill your merc, if you have one. Slay him. Lead him (or her) to some nasty spot and feed him to the enemy. Travincal is a good possibility for this, if your merc is too strong. Or... take off their equipment. (Of course, then where do you store it? You can't put it back on them while they are dead). Unless you are a necro with direct corpse removal, or a paladin with high Redemption (ha! Has anybody ever tried that?) or an assassin with Death Sentry, it's just not worth it. Barbs can clean corpses, but they have to get close to them to do it, and that's a major problem. ANY exposure may turn lethal. Druid vines can clean corpses, too, but you have to make absolutely certain you get them ALL. If you can do that, you may be able to keep your merc with you. If you can't reliably clean all the corpses from safe range, you're stuck in the slow lanes, saddled with the burden of managing where and when you kill his lackeys, and you can't pull that off with a loose cannon (aka hireling) running around.

After that, you need to thin out the enemy ranks. Lead them far far away and dispose of them. Sadly, he will continue to make more, so you can't clean them all. At some point, you have to ignore the remainder and go straight for Gray Boy himself. Your top priority then is to prevent killing any of the remaining monsters by any method whatsoever, until you've taken down the traitor. He's slippery, with teleport, but you may be able to stunlock him or overwhelm him with a decisive offensive action. At this point, you have to take your chances. Much like with Baal, where you charge and pray for mercy from the orange, here you charge and pray for a swift kill. And the one thing you cannot allow is a suicide minion. If one of those forms, you must break off and run, because those DO leave a corpse behind, and he'll blow it up instantly and kill you if the minion detonates. That's quite a task, but it's doable for some builds. Mega risky, too.

Ember hopefuls... seriously now. Skip him. Don't chance it in NM and Hell (Normal is doable) unless you've SUCCESSFULLY pulled it off in softcore over and over. This is one case where discretion is the better part of valor. You can always go back, after 3dotting, to grab full clear credit after the fact. (Oh yeah, and not so many variants, huh? Let's see some people make it through the whole game here. With ANY build. OK?)

Now that Hotfoot has nixed that nasty old cur, it's time to enjoy the quest reward.

That's a hot item. :) Sadly, it is only reducing my fun even more. Yet... if an item drops, and you don't make use of it... then what? Shouldn't this variant design be enough self-imposed restrictions? Apparently not. I should perhaps have even skipped the Leaf runeword, too. But no, then fights like Nihlathak would only be that much more grueling, and the Ancients would be that much more boring. Arrgh. Caught up in the NEED to be strong to take down these couple of dangerous foes, and then too strong for the rest of the enemy. It's quite a pickle, and much of the reason why I view the entire expansion as broken. I also completely understand Ariel's point of view, finally. I could not throw away this piece of candy, even though it only hastened the end for this character. (Yes, the end is almost here).

Hello UnterRare #8765. Sometimes the frustration piles high enough, all you can do is laugh at the absurdity.

With a skill shrine in play, LOOK at the ridiculous damage! ("Mommy, my tummy hurts!" "I'm sorry, dear. But you shouldn't have eaten so much candy." "Can you make it stop hurting, Mommy?" "Here, now. Do you want a hug? Does that help?" "Ow ow ow." "Poor dear.")

Round and round, round and round, round and round... wow, this is even more boring than Izual! Round and round and round and round! Stay... ahead... stay... alive... Hydra run run run hydra run blaze run hydra run run yawn zzzzzzzzzz...

Whoa, gained three and a half levels from the quest reward. Mastery is now maxed, hydras are topped out (unless more +skill candy bursts from the pinata). OK, so we get to the Throne of Destruction.

Now see, the Minions of Destruction are 95% fire resistant. Why the Spectral Hit isn't causing Lister to show up as fire immune, I have no idea. Hardly matters. Fire isn't doing anything significant to him. In fact, the frozen orbs aren't either, but they are better than the fire. The same is also true of the minions.

So what we have here... is effectively a pack of hefty fire immunes. At least it's playing out that way, as I use nothing but orb on them. They chill, they slow, they growl and howl and scowl, then throw in the towel. Many minutes pass, and many blue potions consumed. A trip to town, once. The goons finally expire, and it's just the boss left now. Lister. And how does it play out? Orb wait wait, orb wait wait, orb wait orb wait orb wait orb wait. Hmm. Quite easy to stay ahead. This isn't hard, it's just eating up my time... and because of the spell timers, the action is lightweight, stop-and-go... BORING.

Well, this is my answer. I don't need to move on to Hell to see fire immunes in action. They're all going to go like this, or the merc will whack on them a bit. There might be challenging moments, some occasional need for strategy, but those hydras are going to eat non-immunes for a snack. And it won't require a lick of strategy, just cast a hydra, then wait wait wait wait wait on the spell timer to cast another.

Hmm. Well, you know what? No thank thee. This isn't Hotfoot. This isn't even remotely like old times. I'm not enjoying it, I have no doubt I can pull it off, I have almost no doubt that I'll survive everything, except possibly a sardine can stairs trap, some Conviction boss who catches me flat-footed, and Nihlathak. If it was fun to use hydras, then maybe. It's not. This is NOTHING compared to Hotfoot's original quest. I could ditch the merc to get into fun blaze action, but Blaze itself is stronger now, and it won't touch the immunes, and without the merc... I'm not built to take on the immunes. (Well, maybe I could, even just with the +3 FO staff, but that too... is boring to use, with this timer.)

Whoever's idea it was to go with these spell timers... I tried. I honestly did. It's just not fun to play. A pox on you. May your feet itch at night. May your potted plants wilt. May your spouse or significant other put your sexual activity on a timer and see how YOU like it. I'm done. No more sorcies with ruined timer skills. I'll be skipping the fire druids, too. Might try a wind druid, if I keep playing this game. Or... I might not.

And Baal? Baal the big orange, the Florida poster boy? Tagging him from off screen with hydras, it's not quite a gimme, but he's so dangerous at close range (well, ONE of his attack forms is dangerous) that it's feast or famine, and either way, it's not particularly satisfying. Hotfoot (with teleport help) had minimal trouble downing him.

Hotfoot's final stats:

Hydra @ 20 (+6)
Mastery @ 20 (+6)
Blaze @ 10 (+6)
Firewall @ 4 (+6)
Warmth @ 5 (+9)
Fire Tree Prereqs @ 1 (+6, +9)

Primary Staff: +2 Teleport, +2 Telekinesis, Leaf runeword
Alternate Staff #1: +3 Frozen Orb, +35 Cold Resist
Alternate Staff #2: +3 Blizzard, +3 Teleport, +2 Glacial Spike
Alternate Staff #3: +3 Thunderstorm, +2 Lightning Mastery

Deaths: two. Both to Nihlathak in Nightmare.

My advice regarding the sorceress: build her tri-elemental and go for modest power. Avoid the timer skills where possible, because they are a snore-fest to play, and the longer the timer, the worse it gets boring. Do everything you can to avoid creating a Gap for yourself, where most monsters are too easy but some are too hard. That only sounds interesting on paper. Round her out so that she's effective against everything, overwhelming against nothing, and doesn't get stuck on the ridiculous cheese bosses. Avoid the act five mercs at all costs. Don't overpower your mercs, if you use them at all. Round out your skills wisely, and try not to let the candy spoil your character -- if you can help it.

"Here lies Hotfoot the Second. Her spirit wilted under the shackles of the spell timer, and she died of complications from indigestion. Rest in Peace."

On now to the other classes, where I hope to find a little more fun in this game, from Subpoena, from Felgar, from my Sassies perhaps... before I ride on into the sunset. Oh yeah... and I need to finish Wussie's tale, to reflect back with a new appreciation on the final days of the fun-to-play sorceress.

- Sirian

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