NIGHTMARE

Astra is my Hardcore "Hot Babe" Fire-Skills-Only sorceress. Her quest is to complete all three difficulties, and she can only do that (being Hardcore) by avoiding death the entire way.

I started Astra back in October, 2000, concurrently with Bluebonnet. Blue got more of my attention, and both pretty much went on hold at the end of the year. Ember hadn't even been conceived yet. I cleared normal on a straight run with Astra, then farmed Act Four for items and experience, slaying Diablo four or five more times, until I leveled Astra to 30.

Countess Astra began Nightmare in v1.03 at clvl 30 with the following skills and noteworthy items:

Strength 75, Dexterity 25, Vitality 45, Energy 85

Meteor @ 7
Blaze @ 10
Warmth @ 9
Hydra @ 1
Fire Mastery @ 1
Firebolt @ 1
Inferno @ 1
Fireball @ 1
Firewall @ 1
Enchant @ 1

Magefist: +1 Fire Tree Skills, +25% Mana Regen, Fastest Cast - gambled Act 3
Amber Great Helm of Stability: +48 Lightning Resistance, Fastest Recovery - bought from Hratli
Gemmed Tower Shield: two perfect Diamonds
Strong Gothic Plate of Mammoth: 182 DR and +35 Life - bought from Hratli
Ruby wand of Magus: +42 Fire Resist, Fastest Cast - bought from Jamella
Amulet: +33 Life - found Act 4 (during replays)
Ring: +41 Lightning Resist, +38 Life - found Act 4 (during replays)
Boots: Fastest Run - not found until almost clvl 30!

I honestly don't remember much about Astra's Act One. I played it months ago, did not take notes, and since then I have played almost half a dozen other sorcies, so the details got a little jumbled. I do remember two fights in particular, both underground.

The first was level two of the UGP. There was a nasty rogue boss down there who gave Astra her first real scare. Extra Strong and something else. It got to be urgent enough that there was no time to take a screeny.

Then level two of the Pit, that was also lively, made nasty by a FEB Devil Kin chasing Astra all over the level, in between other monsters. Exciting stuff.

Check out the irony on that name: Pit Thirst. Ha! In the Pit, too, and with the dreaded Fire Enchantment.

I should also mention that my Cain reward ring was awesome, the best I've gotten from Akara in Nightmare. She handed over a ring with Half Freeze, +14 Mana, +22 Life, +23 Poison Resist, +16 Cold Resist, and a tidbit of Lit Resist. Astra's jewelry luck had been SO bad in normal, but it was finally turning around. I also got my last diamond upgraded to max and completed her tower shield.

Andariel, at that time, was still bugged in her Fire vulnerability. It was v1.03 and instead of taking one and a half times normal damage, she was taking only one quarter of normal fire damage. Even so, Astra's blaze ate her up very quickly. I shudder to see a blazing Hot Babe take her on in the current version. First round knockout!

Act Two has the burning dead, and they are fully resistant in Nightmare. Astra had some work to do to clear the sewer, but it was no problem. Her next several skill points all went to Fire Mastery, except for the book from Radament, which I used to pump another level of Meteor.

I leveled Astra slowly and calmly in Act Two, playing very conservative. I recleared the desert areas a few times. This is generally uncharacteristic for me currently, but you should keep in mind that Astra was my first Hardcore character to graduate to nightmare difficulty. I had a close call with her in the Dry Hills, where an Extra Strong vulture boss almost KO'ed her. OUCH! That woke me up. In Hardcore, you can't stop paying attention to what you are doing. If you don't look at the monsters, you can get in trouble. A boss is often colored differently or otherwise stands out, but occasionally you can't tell without highlighting them.

I gambled Bladebuckle, then a truly awesome plated belt: +49 Lit Resist, +21 Fire Resist, +48 Life, +3 Life Regen, +2 Mana, and +1 Light Radius. The problem with this was, that it left Astra with too much Lit Resist, even for Hell difficulty.

Also, out of an urn in the Dry Hills, out popped a Treads of Cthon. Those are the "perfect" boots for a blaze user. Run all day, all night, and into the next day, and never tire out. With even minimal walking, which can almost always be done, the stamina won't ever dry up. Treads also offer +10 Life and some useless bonus to defense vs missiles. That beat Astra's plain Speed boots by about ten miles.

When Astra tried her hand at Viper Temple level two, she got hampered by a VAST field of urns on the top side, got stuck, mobbed, and I had to Save and Exit to preserve her. Blah to that, but I was not dying on account of a bunch of urns. No thanks. In playing a no-teleport sorcie, you must be ready with the town portals (I keep TP hotkeyed on my spacebar for instant "save my ass" usage). If that fails, though, the only option left is to quit before you are killed. After Hotfoot's death in NM Act 4 to the endless hordes of fully fire resistant bastards in the Outer Steppes, I recognized that sometimes the game will leave you with only two choices: get out while you still can, or die. So Astra had to Save once.

Her next attempt at the Viper Temple, there were far fewer urns and she made it to the platform, from which she rained fire on the enemy, dispatching them easily.

The palace was no problem, not even Fire Eye, but of course, in the Arcane, there are Hell Clan. Those are not to be trifled with as a Hot Babe. Astra had little trouble, but the straight quadrant did require a whole lot of blaze stacking, sprinting, and some tempting fate with the goats.

After clearing the Arcane back in November, I shelved Astra for a while, moved on to other characters. She was clvl 35. In March 2001, I finally finished the last segment of the game with Bluebonnet, and that sparked my interest in completing Astra's run as well. With the start of April 2001, I picked Astra back up.

The next task was to clear the false tombs. I made a beeline for Tomb 7 in the right corner, and the very first fight I drew was quite a battle. Was this the game welcoming me back to my Hardcore Hot Babe with a "friendly" little ambush? Looks like it.

ES FEB. Yeah, he took a while to kill. The whole time, he kept raising the same few Preserved and Burning Dead over and over and over, tripling the already heavy workload, all in the space of half a sardine can by the front entrance. Fun stuff. That large patch of fire you see on the left is the killing ground for those undead he kept reviving. The mummies would drop again immediately, so long as I kept that patch blazing, but the burning dead would walk around a bit and I had to maneuver them.

That was most of the work for that that whole tomb. The rest of it was unremarkable.

I led Astra to the next tomb in line, the Triangle. Hmm, this was a large tomb. Looks like Kaa is home.

I had a lot of rooms to clear. I mean a lot. They were jammed with Unravellers, swarmed with undead. I had to make some Stands at doors and bide my time. I used my slvl 1+1 Hydras to kill some Unravellers, beyond my range. Other times I charged into the room to meteor them. It all depended on my assessment of the threat level inside the room, and whether or not I was willing to commit.

After clearing over a dozen rooms, no sign yet of Kaa or a golden chest, doubt crept in. It dawned on me that I did not remember which tomb was the true one. Sure enough, checking the Quest log showed me a picture of a triangle. Heh. Oops. Spelunked my way into the True Tomb by mistake. Oh well.

While we are here... might as well take out Duriel. First, a quick run through the Maggot Lair (I need to get the staff).

Well, "quick run" is what I had in mind, but the bugs had other plans. (Do bugs plan? Hmm. If not, what does that say about MY planning when theirs is better? Yikes. :)

Ever try to target meteors around corners in the maggot lair? Heh.

I used some hydra, but that was slow, slow, slow against hatching eggs, so I switched to pre-emptive meteor strikes. Drop one at the corner, then walk around the corner and shoot at whatever is there. Not my idea of a good plan, but it worked better than anything else I had going.

Coldworm's brood got smashed. Burn littly buggies, burn. Ah yes. The stench of barbecued maggot. We could feed the cast of Survivor for the next three seasons with this much maggot bacon.

Now for the king bug... Burn. Burn burn burn.

Astra not wearing her Great Helm in that pic. She has a rare with colossus and some lesser resists. Now that I have that plated belt, I wish I could get Astra a Ruby helm of colossus. Or Sapphire. Even Emerald. Give me resists I can use. Better yet, give me a rare with fastest recover, some resists, AND colossus! Woo!

Yeah, dream on.

Anyway... I valued the +life the most, against Duriel, just in case I slipped up and he got in a hit. Well, that didn't happen, so it's all good. :)

On to Act Three? Whoa there, not yet. Astra is full-clearing Nightmare. Yep, might as well. There are a few threats around, but I can handle them. Right? Right?

So five more tombs to clear. Some burning dead, some more burning dead, some more burning dead, and some more burning dead. Some interesting bosses that would have made Ember cringe, but Astra dropped some meteors on them and they died.

Ancient Kaa extra fast? In a room with lots of mummies to revive? Yeah. However, I've been through far worse lately, so there was zero panic for me as I worked him down with meteors, using blaze only to keep the revived undead off of me.

Astra moved on to Act Three at clvl 36, nearing 37. Blaze and Meteor both at slvl 11+1, Mastery at slvl 6+1, and I intend to take it to slvl 8 with my Izual points.

Some comic relief in the Spider Forest:

A cursed extra strong crow? Was I supposed to be scared? Haha!

Death Blister indeed. That's what he died of as a big fat meteor smashed him to the ground.

When I got to the Spider Cavern, Astra paid a call on Asheara.

"I need the studiest mercenary you've got."

Asheara introduced her to a man named Thadar. Yep, that's when I knew Sszark was already dead. He just didn't know it yet!

Astra's plan? Send Thadar in to tank for her, and smash the bad old spiders with lots of meteors. Would have worked, too, if not for this unlucky draw on the random ability:

Oops.

Well, Thadar more than got the job done. Everything smashed by the meteors except for old Buy a Vowel himself, who had to be finished off with blaze. I made well sure to stay out of his reach. He did not perish until we had trekked across the entire cavern, but that was good enough. An Eye for a Thadar. Noble Thadar has never let me down!

For once, I overlooked the entrance to the Great Marsh. So it came as a mild shock when I cleared the Forest and found only an entrace to the Flayer Jungle. Just inside the Jungle, though, I found the first alcove, which led to the backdoor of the Marsh and the Marsh waypoint. Astra cleared the Marsh backward from there and found the entrance to the Spider forest way way back at the other end.

The Flayer jungle was heavily populated with vultures -- more than I have seen.

It was like that most of the time. There were swarms of melee flayers and soul killers, too, but almost as many birds.

The Swampy Pit was fairly calm. Lots of bats and other mild opponents. Level three had fetishes.

By contrast, the Flayer Dungeon was densely packed with flayer mobs, including some undead ones. My Gidbinn merc turned out to be cold-using, though, and he helped out tremendously. His glacial spikes would freeze the mobs and Astra's meteors would smash them on one hit. Glorious stuff. Perhaps even a little too easy, but I was in the mood for some higher speed killing than I have been doing lately with Ember and Skeletorr. It's a good thing those shamen types aren't fire resistant, like the ones from act one.

My Gidbinn ring had +49 Mana, two minor resists, and two useless bonuses. I kept it for now. I would use it when mana was more urgent, and use the one with the extraneous Lit Resist and +38 Life when life was more urgent.

Endugu turned out to be teleport, and that made him a problem. Meteors against teleport boss is not the best matchup.

He blinked around for a minute or two. Once he even lost me completely and I had to wander around the maze to track him down. I started using some hydra scouts to help locate him more quickly. Astra got the kill with five meteors cast with the attack button held down. Most of the time that hasn't been necessary, but it helped here.

When Astra reached Lower Kurast, there were Tree Leapers, which are heavily fire resistant, terribly elusive, and generally annoying. I raised hydras to stunlock them, then dropped meteors on them. I also found that dropping occasional meteors on my own position helped catch the stubborn ones. It seems to me that meteor's fairly large area of effect is better at dealing with these pests than I expected. I was still glad to have the hydras, though. Those are definitely the answer to leapers for the Hot Babe.

The Ruined temple had a few Wailing Beasts waiting by the entrance. That wasn't much, as stairs traps go. I took a picture, but the rest of the temple was so empty, I later deemed it unworthy. Just those four wailers and Sarina's pack, which were all easily dispatched, in part thanks to the cold merc I hired.

He helped all the way through the Bazaar and Upper Kurast, and the first several temples. Then we got to the Forgotten Reliquary and there was a tough stairs trap.

The cold merc helped turn that nasty surprise into so many shattered rogue popsicles. Then we advanced to the back side of the temple, where an Extra Fast CEB Wailer boss was about to give my poor merc fits.

Astra's meteors smashed the minions, despite their high fire resistance (Wailing Beasts are one of the few fire resistant critters in Act Three -- Heirophants are another). I tried valiantly to keep my merc alive. I pulled out all the stops, from stacking blaze, to tempting the boss, to spamming meteors. He just would not leave the merc alone. Once the merc was dead, it did not take Astra long to blaze a death zone for the boss despite his speed and resistance. So it goes.

The Disused Reliquary had a terrible stair trap, maybe the second worst I have ever seen there, with two large mobs of enemies at the entrance, almost on top of us (I hired a new merc) as we entered. No boss, though, so between freeze and meteors, the threat was quickly smashed.

With the temples out of the way, there's not much threat left to Astra's run through Nightmare. Maybe Durance 3, maybe Hephasto, maybe leapers on the Steppes or a rough boss draw in the Chaos Sanctuary. Maybe. Of course, the game can always throw me a curve, like that Vulture boss in the Dry Hills. Maybe the worst part was over, but there are always chances to screw up.

The sewer held undead flayers, preserved mummies, horrors and Horadrim Ancients. I was thus very glad to have my cold merc with me. He made an otherwise nasty effort into a routine clearing. Below you see an instance of meteor flames reaching "through" a wall to nab two undead flayers on the other side. Don't ask me how Meteors can even drop from the sky while underground. The fact that the area of effect can "reach beyond" walls makes no less sense than meteors down there at all. It's there, and sometimes I use it.

I found the bat pack fairly quickly. Down to level two, clean up all the treasure, grab my Khalim's spleen, gall bladder and pancreas, then back to the effort of clearing the sewer.

Ooh, lucky break here, spotting this nasty midget from across a wide body of water. Go hydras!

You have to love hydras, they make the perfect scout.

That turned out to be the largest body of, uh... "water" in the whole sewer system. Astra drew the strangest sewer I have ever seen, with absolutely no dead space in the middle. This layout was wide open end to end, corner to corner.

My latest merc has now survived two temples and the entire sewer. No way he will survive Travincal, though. I have never had a merc survive the council with a sorcie or necro. They only survive with barbs and pals if I charge the council and put the smack down on them immediately.

Then, in a span of five minutes, Astra bought a Wyrm's of Apprentice wand, then gambled both the Nagelring and Manald Heal. Will she become my first character to turn up the Stone of Jordan? That seems likely, now, as I am gambling only rings, amulets, boots and caps, and there is a long way to go to three dots. The wand made a large impact on my mana pool, at the expense of some fire resistance. If I do get a Stone, that would be worth over 100 mana and allow me to pump more into Vitality. We'll see.

Meteors worked better than I expected in Travincal. In Normal they were still too low level to handle everything, but here they slew most things in one hit, even some Heirophants.

Ismail turned out to be Fire Enchanted. Yikes. Two of them to fight. Astra spammed the meteors, raining them down on the zoo animals inside the temple exhibit. Incredibly, one of the FEBs blew up, and everything else was dead three times over. Geleb was not impressed. He wasn't in range? Odd.

When I got him over to the killing zone, Astra repeated her hail of meteors.

That did not work!

Geleb was playing coy, relying on lots of healing power. Astra returned to town, filled rows three and four on her belt with mana, stored the full rejuvs in inventory, then returned to try again.

Four different times I spammed the meteors. Geleb took a brutal pounding, his health dropping as low as ten percent before the mana ran out. Blah.

Well, I'm not going to drink rejuvs for mana to use against this heal-happy bastard. Sorry, not going to do it. I opened a portal there by the temple and began a circuit run: Spam meteors, run dry, hit the portal, run to Ormus, return to the waypoint, run back to the temple, repeat, repeat, repeat. I must have made at least a dozen such runs, if not twenty. I came close so many times, but always he healed before it was too late.

Finally I got the bright idea to hit him with some hydras. Part of the problem seemed to be that he would run away, get out of the meteor afterfires and run off to heal himself. So I spammed the meteors again, but this time when I neared the end of Astra's mana, I switched to Hydra and cast that several times. To my shock, that worked on the first try, as the hydras ate the last four percent of his life and he exploded.

The Durance was rather unremarkable, until I got to level three and found a LEB vampire guarding the main chamber.

Note, my merc is still alive. Not only the first one ever to survive the council with a sorcie, but he survived two temples, the whole sewer, all of travincal, and now down to Durance three, where he got zapped by that LEB vampire. Oh well. No merc lives forever. By the way, all those meteor targetting circles under the boss... those are NOT his meteors dropping. *Evil Grin*

The next thing out of the gate, three extra fast Council minions. Ruh Roe. Bremm must be extra fast. That is NOT what Astra needs. If it's fast, it's a threat.

Fortunately, Bremm did not come with the minions, and Astra's meteors overwhelmed their healing capacity.

I had to venture into the main room to wake Bremm. Ah yes, here he comes. Oh boy. Extra Fast means extra fast healing, along with everything else. Well, here goes.

Round and round, round and round, round and round we go. Sparks flying, barely time to refresh blaze.

The heat got to be too much for me at one point and I fled upstairs. That's when an amazing thing happened: a hydra sprang up on level two and started firing at me!

I can only figure that Bremm targetted me with a Hydra as I hit the stairs, and the game executed his command while I was on level two. Or something like that.

I put some reds on my belt (I'd had nothing but full rejuvs). Back to the dance. This time I was ready for his speed, tightened my loop a bit, and ran and ran, blazing, until he forgot to heal and dropped dead.

The blood lords in the main room got smashed with meteors. Ha! See how THEY like it! :)

Wyand died easily, then came Mephisto. (That has become my routine now, for most chars: Maffer last, if at all -- particularly in Hardcore).

Mephisto dodged a lot of meteors. He did not want to sit still. When I did hit him, though, he took good damage, from both the hit and the afterflames. Astra got hit only once by a cold shot, and it didn't sting all that much. Perhaps she blocked the physical part of the blow? Not sure.

The uberdrop was sold. I haven't gotten a great uberdrop in a while. Useful? Sometimes. Usually not.

I secured my way through the portal, then returned for Maffer. His speed and strength combination is not good if your char fights from a distance. It's worse if you have no escape skills or minions to stick in your way, and worse yet if you lack any way to slow him down. I blazed, refreshing only after he swung at Astra (he moves faster). Tempting Fate? Not by choice. Lacking fire resistance, though, he could not stand up to Astra's blaze. Once Maffer dropped, I cleaned up the last few blood lords, then on to Act Four.

No Cliff Lurkers in the Steppes. That alone meant a fairly easy ride. Venoms I could tempt with little real estate. This is a far cry from when I played Hotfoot, as I would tend to stay out of their range and sprint all over the place. Now I have refined my mousework to a polished art form, with little to no wasted energy or space, yet ironically even less risk than before. The one foe I still do not toy with is the Doom Knight. They simply hit too hard to make it worthwhile. So those are likely to be Astra's bane in Hell Act Four, if she gets there. Knights require room to work, whereas I've turned up solutions to all the other fire resistant monsters, for taking them out in less space.

There was a Fire/Lightning enchanted Doom Caster boss in the Steppes, but as these things go, he wasn't that much of a hassle. Venom Lords, Knights, and Doom Casters made for a heavily fire resistant draw, but Astra's powers and my tactics were more than a match for them.

The plains held Burning Souls by the buckeful, also Vile mothers and Corpulents. No fire resistance there at all, yet this crew gave me more trouble. Go figure. The Corpulents are harder to predict. The spawners send pups from offscreen (thank goodness for blaze, or that would be problematic), and the gloams spray lightning all over the place. The good news against them is that dropping a few meteors around the screen tends to catch most of them with little effort spent.

When Izzy came out to dance, I locked him up in a very short loop and did him in more quickly than I had with Hotfoot. Interesting how my tactic there changed with time.

That's actually a bonus for Astra, who has the hit power with meteor not to have to run so much. At least... not yet she doesn't. Perhaps I will stop pumping the blaze and max meteor ASAP, to hold on to that smash power as best I can. There is something to be said for not needing much blaze if meteor will do most of the work. We'll see.

If Astra reaches Queen, I will update my Fire Skills guide with new insights.

Now that there was a real chance of getting a Stone, I did not want to pump Fire Mastery to no useful end. I want to stop at slvl 9 total, so that could be 7+2 instead of 8+1. So I only put one of my Izzy points there, taking Mastery to 7, and put the other into Meteor.

There were Stygian Hags, Stranglers, and Dark Familiars in the City. Guess which gave Astra the most trouble. That's right, the Dark Familiars. Those crazy bats! Blah. The spawners and casters behave consistently. Prediction is the key to meteor use. Here in single player, with no lag and no monster desynch, prediction is fairly steady against most opponents. Those bats don't behave aggressively, though. And when they do get in mind to take a bite out of you, they MOVE. Wow do they move. Not that they are all that speedy, but they sure aren't slow, and they change their minds suddenly, with no warning. Astra got bit numerous times. Go figure. Meteor smashed the "tough" foes but had some trouble with... bats!

The river had mages, and down there they prove dangerous. Their range has mine beat. Of course, I also have hydras, and I used them sometimes. Ha! Take that.

Also down there, Maw Fiends and Blood Maggots. Ooh, maggots! Been a while since I drew those on the river. Perfect timing, too. Blaze is an impenetrable shield wall of flame that maggot young cannot penetrate, and meteor quite nicely squishes bugs of all kinds. The squishies went squish-squish. Look at the bodies piling up. Skeletorr would have wet himself to have hordes of these at his disposal, but he never got them.

Um... What is happening here? I stepped away from the stairs... and arrived at the waypoint? Huh?

Astra backtracked down the Creek of Flame, trying to figure out why it was so short. Hmm, apparently that offramp to the Hell Forge is more than it first appeared to be. Check it out! The entrance stairs and waypoint visible on the same map screen! Never seen that before. I even cut away most of the screen shot and they are still in the same picture!

Following that offramp, Astra went a short distance to a T intersection. I presumed the Forge to be to the bottom of the screen. I have never seen a forge entrance to left or right. I always seem to enter from top or bottom. So I went to the right, a short distance to THE largest maggot breeding ground I have ever seen. Must have been twenty of them there: not as thick as Coldworm's room when she's had time to breed her antennae off, but this was the next best thing. Sadly for them, meteors wipe out whole armies in one shot. After having the game do that to Skeletorr some 9000 times, it felt good to get some revenge.

"Die, Maggot!"

This also left me with a tough situation: nowhere good to fight Hephasto. This river layout sucked.

What to do? Hmm. Well I could try to Blaze him. Uh... yeah. Remember how many close calls Hotfoot had when she blazed the fat one in Nightmare? Blah to that. I'm not planning to get Astra killed here. And the big ugly only gets faster and faster and meaner and more angry as he gets hurt. Is that some kind of Frenzy action at work, or what? No, what I need is a place to park this SOB. I could try the River maze. I've never actually done that before, but it could work. Or... hmm. What about that cul de sac right next to the stairs?

Yeah, I like that plan better.

So I set up a portal there, then ventured down to the Forge. There were knights and bugs, bugs and knights, but no sign of Hephasto. I didn't find him until I was almost on top of the forge itself. Finally he comes out. Spectal Hit? Excellent. That's irrelevant so long as I stay out of his reach.

We blaze across the river, mostly walking at first. I was quite disappointed with how little damage he was taking. This made me glad I didn't try to blaze him. We marched all the way to my portal, by which time he had taken perhap fifteen percent damage. I ducked up the portal, back to the City waypoint and down the stairs. Ah, perfect. Just where I wanted him. I raised a bunch of my weak hydras, dropped some meteors on his head, threw some rancid gas over there (the poison clouds caught him on some occasions). I spammed meteors on his head when he was on the edge of the screen, spammed hydras when he was in restless mode. That space over there left him nowhere to run, though, so this plan was working marvelously!

Meteors did most of the damage. Finally he dropped. You might almost describe this victory as a Piece of Cake. :)

Whoa! What's this I find on the creature's neck? I wonder who he took this from.

+1 to mana? That's a joke, right? Heh. Oh well, still a worthy item. Too bad Astra can't wear it until next level! Silly +Cold Damage affix. Blah to that, I say. :)

Back to town, and Jamella is holding a closeout sale on Tancred's Hobnails. I have no idea why, but Astra decided to buy the whole supply.

What is it with women and shoes? Heh. Anyway...

Knights on the river maze are always a lively engagement. You do not want to fight that battle in lag. I've heard of many players who simply quit and seek a new game, in multiplayer, if there are Abyss Knights on the river. This isn't Lag Land, though, and I have little respect and even less fear for these foes. Drop some meteors on their heads, that will teach em.

Into the Chaos Sanctuary, and Oblivion Knight champions are another story. THOSE I respect.

No, that's not Blaze Art I am drawing on the floor. That's Astra running from bone spirits while trying to buy enough time to cast a meteor or two.

The CS was as routine as it gets for me, after that. Yeah, everything in there is fire resistant, but after taking 25 shots per kill with Ember, and having to herd and maneuver and manage and cajole my way to fighting one or two at a time all the way through, the ability to drop a couple meteors and wipe out whole crowds had me giddy with the speed of it all.

Lord De Seis turned out to have "Extra Dead" enchantment. ED, for short. Yes, that's what the Elemental Strike Team crew and I call bosses who hit the floor before you can get a look at their powers. ED.

"Oh look, it's ED again." "Yeah, poor ED." "Damn, we ED-ducated him, didn't we?" And so on.

Then Astra drew the stuff of Ember's WORST NIGHTMARES:

Astra will have to send Ember a wax-sealed letter telling of this defeat of the sped up Vizier. Ember will be delighted to hear that one of her Fire Tree sisters gave old Viz a hot time.

Oh yeah, then there was Diablo. I switched to the Nagelring from the +mana rare. Why? Because that was my only -2 MD ring, that's why, and Astra was hurtin for magic damage reduction. I also switched out her life ammy for a -3 MD I've been saving. That gave me -5 MD, with 58 fire resist. Yeah, that should do.

Diablo proved more elusive than he had in Normal, running all over the place this time. A lot of Astra's meteors missed at first. Eventually he settled down and she finished him off. Nothing special.

Astra full-cleared both Normal and Nightmare. One Save and Exit, in the viper temple. Some sandbagging to level up at the end of normal and a tidbit in act two NM. Now begins the Hell run, as I try to make it to Queen with my Fire-Only sorcie. I know this is well within my means, but I will still have to execute, and bad luck could wipe me out. Fire Resistant bosses will be more plentiful, but I have no more plans to full clear. From here on, I'll skip what I don't care to risk, the same way I did with Ember in Nightmare.

In other words, the easy part is over. Now the real game begins for this character.

Duchess Astra will see you in Hell.

- Sirian

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