ACT ONE
Duchess Astra entered Hell at clvl 40. She full-cleared Normal and Nightmare. She leveled to 30 before entering Nightmare, then leveled to 35 in NM Act 2 before advancing past the Viper Temple. Now the full clears are behind her, as is any thought of additional sandbagging for more levels. The mission now is to reach Diablo. All else is secondary, and some areas and fights will be skipped. If Astra survives, she will likely finish at lower level than the full clear pace, if not by much. Her vitals:
Strength 75, Dexterity 25, Vitality 75, Energy 110
Meteor @ 14
Blaze @ 11
Warmth @ 9
Fire Mastery @ 7
Firebolt @ 1
Inferno @ 1
Fireball @ 1
Firewall @ 1
Enchant @ 1
Hydra @ 1
Skills +2 (Magefist, Rare Amulet)
Magefist: +1 Fire Tree Skills, +25% Mana Regen, Fastest Cast - gambled Act 3 Normal
Treads of Cthon: Fastest Run, Half Stamina Drain, +10 Life, +50 Missile Defense - Urn in Dry Hills, NM
Wyrm's Wand of Apprentice: +55 Mana, Fast Cast - bought from Ormus in NM
Amber Great Helm of Stability: +48 Lightning Resistance, Fastest Recovery - bought from Hratli in Normal
Gemmed Tower Shield: three perfect Diamonds - completed early in NM
Field Plate of Colossus: +6 Cold Resist, +59 Life - bought from Halbu in NM
Rare Plated Belt: +48 Life, +49 Lit Res, +21 Fire Res, +3 Life Regen, +1 Light, +2 Mana - gambled Act 2 NM
Rare Amulet: +1 Sorcie Skills, +3 Light, +29 Cold Resist, +37 Lit Res, +1 Mana - Hephasto in NM
Rare Ring: Half Freeze, +23 Poison Res, +16 Cold Res, +7 Lit Res, +14 Mana, +22 Life - Cain Reward in NM
Ring: +41 Lightning Resist, +38 Life - found Act 4 Normal
Ruby wand of Magus: +42 Fire Resist, Fastest Cast - bought from Jamella in Normal
Amulet: -3 Magic Damage, +16 Lightning Resistance - gambled Act 2 NM
Nagelring, Manald Heal, assorted jewelry for possible alternate configurations, lots of full rejuvs.
Having two unique rings roll up within five minutes was a great bit of luck. Astra's luck has come in streaks. She got Magefist incredibly early, yet did not get any chance at all at fastest run boots of any kind until clvl 29, when a pair dropped on her fourth trip through the CS in Normal. The merchants just would not sell her any, including off gambles. She had the sorriest jewelry imaginable through normal, yet got a very nice Cain ring in Act 1 NM. She got that cool helm early on, with near max Amber and Fastest Recovery, then more amber items rained from everywhere, and she could take her Lightning Resistance to over 200, no problem, but could not get fire/cold res of comfortable levels. Her Cold Res is better now, thanks to that new ammy from Hephasto, but her Fire Resistance, starting Hell, is a modest 28 percent, after the penalty. That can be taken to 70 with the Ruby wand, but that's tough on her mana. Oh well, sometimes it will have to be done anyway. And speaking of wands, she couldn't get a Magus wand with mana on it to save her life. Even when she finally did find one, it was of Apprentice. That's good enough, though, as makes no difference whether she has three points of fast cast, or four, and Magefist gives her two.
So with all this strange luck, will Astra become my first character ever to obtain the Stone of Jordan? Or will her luck turn sour and the Stone evade her grasp? I have never before had Manald Heal so early. A Stone would work wonders for this character, allowing me to put even more into Vitality. We'll see.
With Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald affixes not available on helms and armor and belts, I can only obtain a strong boost to resistances from amulet, rings, or boots. Well, I already got a cold resist boost from amulet and could ride that the rest of the way. My one ring adds to cold and poison resists, life, mana, and offers Half Freeze, which is always good. So I'm down to that other ring slot, or boots, for a big fire resist boost, or else gamble up better caps and armors, picking up fire resistance on both -- yet MOST important of all, I must keep at least one fastest recovery item on, and more would be better. So Astra is in a bit of an item crunch, trying to get very specific attributes on certain pieces of equipment to plug the holes in her current setup.
Out to the Blood Moor, and Zombies did not die in one hit. Hmm. That has to be fixed. I decided right there that I would dedicate skill points to maxing meteor as soon as possible. Hotfoot had kept a balance between Hydra and Blaze, with a tertiary in Firewall to handle those occasional situations that neither Hydra nor Blaze is good at addressing. With Meteor, it covers all situations, so it demands to be pumped up. The only reason I don't have it at slvl 17 (the most I could have in it at clvl 40) is that I had not saved up many points, instead pumping Warmth early on, and then I invested some points into Fire Mastery. Now it was time to drive Meteors to their fullest potential and see what that skill is capable of doing in Hell.
So I put my Den point, and my clvl 41 point, into Meteor, taking it to slvl 16+2. The extra damage was clearly noticeable, even as little as it was, because it crossed some invisible line that allowed me to kill zombies in one hit now, at least most of the time.
Blood Raven offered no resistance. She was easily smashed, and I do mean smashed, the rocks raining down on her head. I had skipped the Cave -- not full clearing any more with Astra, and the odds of a nasty multishot archer in the cave are more than considerable. The two crypts in the buriel grounds have no archers, though, and I cleaned them out. Below is a shot from the mausoleum treasure chamber. On the floor you see the items dropped by the Hungry Dead boss. Why is this noteworthy?
I dropped meteors inside the room, casting through the doorway. That boss hit the ground before I had any chance to see its abilities. There is a special nickname given to such bosses, coined during the original run of the Elemental Strike Team: "ED". That boss was named ED.
ED? Yes, ED. That's short for Extra Dead enchanted. A boss so powerfully dead, you are amazed by his ability. Any boss that hits the floor before you even get a look at him, that's ED. ED lives on, rises from the dead, possesses many a poor soul, driving them to disaster. Some EDs are worthy, others are merely dead.
Say Hi to ED. :)
Astra marched on to the Stony Field, where she cleared the place out before locating Rak and the stones. Rak was Teleporting and Magic Resistant, but Rak is still only Rak, and Astra racked him up. After the fight, there were some goodies on the ground: a ghost armor, a scepter, and a stack of superior hurlbats.
I SWEAR those were hurlbats. I had even picked them up, then decided to put them back down as the scepter would be worth more. I could get the hurlbats on the next trip. I thought. Oops.
The Mystery of the Disappearing Hurlbats.
There is only one other time, ever, that I have seen this bug. It happened to me way WAY back in July 00, with my first 1dot character, Urrgo_Longreach, a polearm barb. This was my first char to reach nightmare difficulty, and the very first time a Ghost Armor dropped, I picked it up, looked at it, put back down and it INSTANTLY turned into a Quilted Armor.
Huh? Say wha? Yep.
To this day, I cannot find a Ghost Armor without getting paranoid. DON'T PUT IT DOWN! IT MIGHT VANISH LIKE A GHOST! I even thought, at first, that all ghost armors would revert to normal quilted eventually, but apparently not. Only that one time have I seen it. I thought it was a bug they fixed, or just some really odd occurance, or a server pack lost or something.
But no, Astra is single player, and she has now seen it happen with a different item type. So there IS a bug in there somewhere that causes exceptional items to revert to normal ones. Dunno where, how, or why, nor do I have any inkling how to reproduce this bug, but there you have it.
So on to the UGP.
"Under the Hills and to the Woods, to Inifus Tree we go."
Uh... there's a Might Enchanted boss down here. Hmm. Well, just be careful.
Uh... that's a Multishot skeleton archer boss.
Uh... that's a CURSED Multiple Shots Might Enchanted archer boss, and he is SHOOTING AT ME!
RUN!!!
RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!
OH MY GOD THAT'S A CRAP LOAD OF ARROWS!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
GET OUT OF THERE!!!
I can't BELIEVE this is happening to me! It's Hotfoot All Over Again!