ACT FOUR

Act Four, and you know the plan. Work through to the waypoint, then repeat repeat repeat until clvl 30, where Revive and Fire Golem will pump up the volume and allow for taking on Oblivion Knights, who are not impressed with necromages and are immune to Golly's thorns. So... let's get it on.

Skeleton Mastery @ 7+1
Raise Skeleton @ 1+1
Clay Golem @ 1+2
Golem Mastery @ 10+1
Raise Skeletal Mage @ 2+3
Blood Golem @ 1+1
Summon Resist @ 1+1
Iron Golem @ 3+1

Wand, +1 Summoning Tree
Totem, +2 Skeletal Mage, +1 Clay Golem

This is still v1.08, so the first thing to do, drop a stack of throwing axes on the ground and summon the first Iron Golem. Then down the winding steps to the Steppes, stepping over demon footsteps, ready to step up and get spanked like a redheaded step child. (What steps will I have to take to survive this mess?) And here they come! Venoms, Doom Casters, Doom Knights. Nothing fearsome there. P could still get into trouble if he woke too many, though. Here you can see that he's gotten himself trapped inside the enemy mob.

Big oops. Must not do that. No way out. Drink a red and wait for the minions to rescue him. Ah, yes, there we go. Note to self: don't get killed. Must pay attention at all times, cannot afford overexposure or too much aggression in terms of trying to manipulate the battle via character placement. P has to remember to watch out for the enemy first, and worry about his troops' performance second.

That was the only exciting moment of the Steppes. Oh there was work to be done, sometimes barely keeping up with recruiting. Several skels would get smashed at once, with no corpses on hand to summon more, and he'd have to weather the storm. Of course, short of dying, the worst case is to lose all my troops, including golem, and lose control of the area. That doesn't happen often, but you have to know what to do when it does. It helps if you have plenty of clear terrirtory behind you into which to fall back, if you must. None of that was necessary in the Steppes, but... it might become so in the City or River, and would be unavoidable in the CS.

On to the Plains now, and here comes the spawner boss pack. The Corpulents made this more difficult, surprisingly so. With Skeletorr, I always had curses to help cope with them. Here, there was no way to tie them up or send them scurrying, so it was, at times, a fight for the corpses, and P lost several such skirmishes, running low on troops at times. The flesh pups helped counteract that effect, supplying extra corpses. P made it through without any great hardship, but it was notably more work than the Steppes had been.

The City offered another spawner boss, this one whelping nasty green lil buggers.

The rest was fairly calm, all melee types: Familiars, Pit Lords, Stranglers. P had to work his way through it, but it was standard fare, your typical army rations. (No candy bars, no packs of gum, no toy surprises. Just... minimal nutrition).

The River of Flame was quite the mess. Maggots, Grotesques, Stranglers, with hosts and hosts of young. Here I want to talk tactics a minute. Without curses on hand, no direct means of attack, no Revives yet, P's got one strong piece (iron golem), several weak artillery units (magi), and a few pawns (skeletons). With effective deployment and control of this ragtag army being the only means to victory, the concept of "frontage" is all that lies between success and defeat. As any competent general knows, you built a front that is capable of fending off the enemy attacks. As long as you keep the enemy in front of you, you can maintain your formation. The formation is necessary for the unit to fight as a group. Your strength arises from the synergy of your units working together, not from the strength of the individuals within. You present a front, you hold the line, you maintain formation, and you use this combined strength to overcome the enemy.

However, if the enemy flanks you, moving around your front, or drives a wedge through your lines, you have a serious problem. Your formation may be weakened, or even collapse. Your units may not be able to work together any more, and thus the enemy finds a way to divide your force, then conquer it.

When you are pitting superior tactics against mindless brute force, you can accomplish almost anything. Diablo has a ton of weak units to throw at you, to wear you down by attrition. However, the Necromancer's own forces are very weak. The golem may be strong, and capable of holding a front, but he is ineffective against many ranged targets, and can't take unlimited heat without melting. He is best supported by the artillery. In some cases, he NEEDS their firepower to get the kills. Most of the time, the enemy's numbers remain fairly small, and no matter what happens, it's fairly easy to hold the front. However, with so many young out there on the River, P was facing some dire situations here. A horde of little buggers and beasties can chew up P's whole force in seconds, except for the golem. However, there is only one golem, and P doesn't have the means to recast him over and over -- an item has to be placed on the ground, and the golem raised from it. Thus, unlike the other golem types, the iron requires either preparation (items preplaced on the ground), luck (eligible items drop in combat), or you're left with lack of mobility (dropping an item and raising the golem at your feet). It's very easy for the golem to outrun your position. If he charges too far ahead, or moves off to the side in an open area, he may expose the guts of your army to enemy attack, and if you are already pushing the limits of what you can hanlde WITH a formation, just imagine when the formation collapses.

This is a nightmare scenerio unfolding. This is P's first battle on the river, and already it's looking very grim. Golly and one mage ran off toward the top of the screen, oblivious of the charging horde of lil buggers coming from the right. Those maggot young zoomed right in on top of skeletons, and you can see the result. The formation has completely collapsed, and this ENTIRE army is doomed. Doomed. Once the skeletons are all dead, the golem will be cut off and surrounded. Not even his strength and reflective damage can hold out for long against those odds. He can anchor the front against almost anything, but he cannot stand if his support is cut out from under him.

Knowing this, knowing from the moment I saw the golem run too far ahead to attack, and the young scurrying in from the right, that this battle was already lost. I could raise more troops from the bodies of dying bugs, but I could not reform the front, could not restore integrity to the formation. I did what I could, then fell back an entire screen length, abandoning the golem to his fate, letting him buy me another second or two. I had to hurry, to drop a new item on the ground and summon a new golem before the enemy force arrived. I needed to establish a new front, one that would not be flanked. Then I could raise more mages and renew my steady march upriver. This worked, albeit with brutal casualties among the skeleton warriors, a few mages lost, and a third golem needed once this one weakened too far. I didn't want to run back to town with a large and dangerous enemy force on the loose. That might cost me some of this hard-won ground, or worse.

Below you can see that the battle here has finally been won. The force to the top has been destroyed. The front facing to the right has been secured.

There's so much carnage in that one area, it even looks like a heaping pile.

This is a microcosm of P's existance. No threat can be taken for granted, because any blunder can either get P trapped, or bust the formation and shred the stability of his force. A few enemies can bust through even a tight formation by overwhelming the point, the golem, but any enemy can flank the line if the general issues faulty orders. In this sense, the summon-only necromancer has a difficult time not only in terms of time spent (he kills rather slowly) but also in work expended. There's more to it than following your army around and replacing damaged or broken parts.

Revive will change that, but only to a degree. Revived monsters have a time limit to their existance (skeletons and magi do not), and they are slower, a little dumber at times, and for whatever reason, they do not enjoy the new benefit of being teleported nearby if they fall behind. They had to provide that for the new mercs, as it was nasty early on in the beta when your merc could be erased because he/she got stuck somewhere. Skeletons, Valkyries, Wolves and Bears, Ravens, Shadows, Golems... all of these minions are reliably teleported to you if you get too far away from them (rare exception, if they are engaged in combat, the game may eat them). Revives do not. You have to walk them along, and people say it's PAINFULLY slow. I still haven't used the skill, so... I'll wait and see. But either way, that timer keeps ticking on your Revives, so it's impossible to cultivate a polished army of them. You pick up some, use them while you can, and then they are gone. This will mostly mean fighting monsters with the same type of Revived monster. How that's going to pan out with Physical Immunes, I don't know. But that's why I plan to get Fire Golem, and also to stock and nurture along a number of Skeleton Magi. Those, at least, I can keep with me if I take a break, visit town for an extended period to shop, gamble, deal with gems, etc. I expect Revive to pose an interesting ebb and flow for P, a rise and fall of fortune made more pressing because of the lack of "starter" skills like Bone Spirit, and no help from curses.

I showed you an example of a flanking in progress. Now have a look at an effective front. I chose a bottleneck point and made an extended stand. A lot of carnage was generated, and more than one golem was needed here, but the line held, and my frontage was very effectively controlled.

The artillery remained safe behind the infantry, to the frustration of the enemy.

Now let me show you a troubled scene. The terrain was more open, yet Golly was already committed. The hatching of eggs forced the opening of a second front.

You can see Golly on the lower side. He was fully engaged. A new threat appeared on the upper side, but it was limited to weakish maggot young. Thus I was able to hold my position by redeploying my skeleton warriors. They had been supporting the golem, but he could hold his position on his own. There were two corpses between the vulnerable necromages and the new threat. I summoned those as warriors ("wasting" the existing ones) and opened a second front. The lines held, although one mage who got too close to the action got nailed. Still, P held his ground, whereas if the front had collapsed, he would have had to fall back.

LEBs are a major threat to minions, who aren't smart enough to protect themselves. All I could do is occupy his attention with golems, and draw on the large supply of maggot young bodies strewn all over the place to summon more and more artillery to help support. As you can see, it worked. Eventually.

Hephasto isn't that big of a deal to a necromancer employing reflective damage. In such cases, the harder they hit, the bigger the fall.

So we come to the waypoint, to the end of the action for now. It will likely be necessary to repeat all of act four (up to this point) as many as six or eight times, to level up to clvl 30. P has been through some of that already, though -- repeating parts of act two to gain access to iron golem to fight off Duriel. So it won't be a big deal. Invest the time, and it will pass.

Um... P? What are you doing?

"I'm heading up the river."

That's, er... That's not in the plan, you know.

"I know."

What? You're going to grab a little more experience here before we head out?

"Yeah. Something like that."

OK.

Right off the bat, P finds himself in a sticky situation. He's fighting a two-front war, and it's getting hairy in a hurry.

Golly's all alone, and you can see him taking a licking. His health is dropping a bit quick for my taste. On the other side, we have only two warriors between us and total collapse of this position. The bugs are killing those guys as fast as I can raise more. If not for the concentrated fire of all the mages in support, this line could not have held.

Slowly, at times almost painfully, P pushes his way up the river. Finally, he's got it cleared. Time to pack it in.

Um... P? Hello? That's the Chaos Sanctuary you're entering. Remember our plans?

"I remember."

Let's call it a day. We've had a good session.

"You go on. I'll catch up."

You've got to be kidding me now. What? You're itchin to wander in there, get your wand handed to you on a plate? Serve up a piece of humble pie? Those Oblivion Knights are going to mow you down, and it isn't going to take them long at all!

"Yeah. Maybe."

This is foolish. You don't have anything that can stand up to these guys!

"Now see here. I went through that deal once already. Practice, train, prepare. Smart, safe... boring. Enough of that. I'm going in here. I'm not doing it to test the waters. I'm not doing it to grab a little more experience. I'm not doing it to pussyfoot around. I'm going in there and mop the floors with these sad sacks of manure. They're going down. They're ALL going down. Right here. Right now. Understand me?"

*sigh*

Sometimes when I get into this mood, it bugs even me. :)

Aw, what the Hell. Let's Do This.