HELL DIFFICULTY

ACT TWO

One cannot overestimate the difference in ease in the Sewers between Bluebonnet and Hotfoot. GS and some Blizz chewed through the sewers with barely a scratch, and that scratch came mainly from fire arrows that always hit if you fail to dodge. Rad's crew fell easily to GS and did not get back up. Rad enjoyed some Blizzards and I used his book to take my GS to slvl 17.

Now the outdoors and wide open spaces are where Blizzard shines best. The more room one has to maneuver around without risk of getting cornered, the better. As strong as Blizzard is (and it IS strong), it is tied to one location and requires (like Hydra) continued exposure over a length of time. This is easy to accomplish outdoors, and you can see the results of a stack of blizzards against even a large mob:

If I'd used GS here, I'd have had to run back town (No Warmth, remember), and there would be no heap of bodies. Even this corpse mass doesn't include several who still did shatter and melt away. As it stood, I accomplished that fight with about 250 mana used -- not too shabby! Only Blaze or SF+TS might have done it with less. As such, fights went like this, through the Waste and Dry Hills. I used lots of GS down in the Stony Tomb in the hallways, and more blizzard in the rooms, particularly against bosses and Creeping.

The Halls of the Dead, you might think, would be routine, but not so! Entering level one, I ran afoul of a spear cat boss pack and hordes upon hordes of Returned with their Hollow One masters. And this is just the first room, mind you. I got swarmed, got hit with spears, and was running around gulping potions like a chicken with its head cut off! Must have had at least four different close calls in this one fight, and it was so unnerving (I'd taken over a week away from this char since the previous session) that I didn't even remember to take any screen shots. Once again Bluebonnet had stared death in the face over and over only to squeak out of it somehow. What a nasty fight. My blizzards finally killed all the cats, but the skels just kept rising from the dead ad infinitum, and there was too much going on at first to allow much chance for GS. I moved when I could, got cornered at least three times, hit more than that, somehow survived.

Once I had a foothold, I was all right. The toughest part of this game is when you've been pressed too hard and you don't have any place to go except into uncharted enemy territory, waking up more dangers with every step. It can be QUITE the thrill ride -- IF you survive, that is.

And then down on level three, it happened again, only worse. A much much tighter space to work in, a much more dangerous boss:

Study that picture closely. You see the town portal? This is NOT the first encounter with this boss in this picture, this is ten minutes later and the fight finally won.

What happened was that I came downstairs and the boss and his pack are right there. Being extra fast, they swarmed me pretty quickly, running right through my stacked blizzards with no problem. GS slowed them some but that boss cursed me and I was cut off, unable to get around the pack to even try running deeper into the level. I was forced back up the stairs!

However, not ready to give up that easily, I decided to take a page from Spedara's travels and switch to Frost Nova, in combination with hiring a merc to distract. So hire I did, and back down into the mob at the stairs, cast my Frost Nova, merc engages boss and I run past the slowed minions into the level, where I cast the portal you see as an emergency exit. The merc bought me enough time that the boss did not follow, nor did most of the minions. Only two followed me and I GS'ed them. Still not enough room to fight yet, though, so I cleared around toward the room with the chest, saw the chest and backed off that, then went and cleared the room on the upper right (north), where there turned out to be a third boss. Not a tough boss, though, so after finally clearing a safe space, I went back to tackle Blood Vex and managed it safely.

Whew! What a mess that was. A little teleport would have done me nicely there, but it sure does make you think things through a bit further when you DON'T have access to such luxuries. Once that boss was done, I took on Blood Witch and her cats, then got out of the Halls for good.

And for the first time ever, at clvl 43, I had maxed a skill on one of my characters! Blizzard @ 20!

I gambled plated belts and came up with two good ones: Lizard of Colossus, +2 Mana, +55 Life, and a Hidurare with 22 Cold Res, 17 Strength (need Strength to use my boots!), +9 mana, +111 gold, +DR and Spikes. Not the best rare, but neither was the one I was currently using. In fact, this new one was better because of the Cold Resistance: still get the needed Str boost, but even out my resistances. With this Hidurare and another perf diamond, I could max my three main resists. I decided that was worth it, so I traded belts and now had resistances across the board in the 60's -- awaiting only one more diamond.

I gambled caps, boots, belts, rings... mostly rings, looking to upgrade or even, perhaps, to get a Stone before this was over. I was behind on gambles in the sense that I had spent fifteen levels in a row looking for Frosties before those finally came in. I also faithfully checked with Akara, then Drognan, looking for a wand upgrade, but no luck on that. Still using the Dragon of Magus scepter from normal. And really, that's not too bad: I could live with that the rest of the game. But it would still be nice to get another 10-20 mana base, 15-30 total (with Frostburn boost). I considered it worth trying for, and kept looking.

Oasis involved lots of GS, with those weakling insects and crows around. Some beetle bosses, not just Senore Burst, but two others also. Blizz bait. I skipped the Maggot Lair for the time being, as I am prone to do out of hatred for storing that staff any longer than required. Lost City and Ancient Tunnels went by quickly enough. And then Bluebonnet got slapped around, and hard, by the vipers. Despite Blizzard, despite liberal use of GS, they found ways to charge, sometimes charge-locking in a group. I had at least two close calls on level one. Yuck. And then...

And then on level two, with hired merc in tow, I made my usual cautionary move to the top immediately upon entry, and up there I started to do OK, clearing out several skels and vipers with GS. I thought this was going well and might be trouble-free. Boy oh boy was THAT a bad assumption or what!

The freeze sound goes off and Bluebonnet turns blue indeed!

Here comes Fangy, with Holy Freeze and (eep!) Magic Resistance!

Slowed now, I am charged, cant get away, my Shiver Armor hits back and sparks are flying. Sparks are hitting Bluebonnet. Fangy is, like, totally pissed off. Charging me again and again, knocking me around like a pinball. I try to run, finally get away around to the right and down toward the bottom. Oops, lots of things alive down there, cast some blizz and back west I go, over the top, past Fangy... no, wait. SMACK! Charged again, sparks fly, sparks hit, eep! Minions are there too, I GS them, the radius hits Fangy, sparks fly, sparks hit, EEP! Around and down I go. Try to get up on the platform but there are urns in the way and I'm charged again. Chilled the whole time, I feel like I am swimming in quicksand. Down and to the right, two Guardians down there, some skels, I end up in the very bottom corner, surrounded, I open a TP to try to get out, I am drinking potions. Sorcie Voice says, "Impossible" "I can't" "Impossible" as I try to click the portal and it's clicking on monsters. Another rejuv, and now it's down to two things: GS or Quit-n-Save. Well screw that quittin business, this is war! This is PERSONAL now! So frag it.

GS GS GS GS GS GS, Sparks Sparks Sparks Sparks, Ouch Eep Ouchie Eepie, Rejuv Rejuv Rejuv, GS GS GS

Some two Super Heals, One Minor Rejuv, One Super Mana and EIGHT Full Rejuvs later, there's just two of us left standing: me and that damned snake:

I finally got out of that corner. You can still the X of the panic TP I must have cast three times trying to get out of there, without success. But now it was my turn, and Fangy was going to pay!

I swear that's the second-worst situation I ever lived through in D2. (Spedara had one miracle escape that was even luckier, but that came ala Teleport, so we won't go there now). Twelve potions! Whew.

On the plus side, consumption of so many rejuvs opened up inventory slots, and I actually went back to carrying minor rejuvs in belt slot two.

The Palace was unremarkable, although I will say that Hotfoot had it easier there, with Hydra power. By contrast, the Arcane was a deathtrap for Hotfoot that had to be oh so carefully managed, while Bluebonnet cruised lazily through it on the back of clvl 19, then clvl 20 Glacial Spike. Quarters were just too narrow, and goats too quick/persistent, for Blizzard to do much. All I used it on was a bit on the worst mobs, the two boss packs, and believe it or not, the Lightning Spires. I had to make a LOT (and I mean Thrower-like quantity here) of trips back to town for mana recharge and item selloffs, but what the hey. That was less worrisome than the life-and-death maneuvers Hotfoot had to go through with every step forward.

No problems in the canyon. Plenty of room to rely mainly on Blizz, with a little GS on occasion. True Tomb was Number 7, far right, so I started left, and in Tomb 1:

Not a tough draw at all. Poor bastard met his match. Indoors, though, I was back to GS as main skill. For even though it required four to eight hits PER critter to get a kill, at a rather costly per use mana charge, it was safe and reliable in a way that Blizz still could not match in close quarters. Stacks of Apparitions in particular demanded GS use, as did burning dead, who would rise again from Blizzard killings. I used Blizz more often than not on the Unravelers, but not always. Not always.

Two tombs later, I had a flashback to the dangers of the Halls. Right inside the entrance, in the same open plus-shaped entryway segment, of Tomb 3, I met two bosses, one a beetle, the other apparition:

This fight was quite a mess, the equal in messiness as the fight on Halls lvl 1. That screenie is after I'd killed off almost everything and been to town and back for a mana recharge. You can see a dead beetle minion on the right and the last of the ultrafast apparitions about to get his. I used that whole second row of minor rejuvs in this fight, but of course they flow like water in Act 2 and I had plenty of replacement potions.

There were, of course, many boss packs in the Tombs. There's always one each in the chest room, but also often others. Even so, I didn't find any worthy of recording until I got to the True Tomb. In fact, this beastie was the one that prompted my LL Forum post regarding Multishot bosses:

Pretty nasty combo there: holy freeze to slow me, multishot to spread the shots out and hit my slow moving sorcie, and cold enchantment not only to add resistance, but also to offer up some 5x instant-death frost nova on target expiration (death throes). I had to stay out of range of that death nova while chilled! Needless to say this was a carefully executed fight on my part! Blizzard was weapon of choice.

I ran into the boss you see above as yet another reminder of the Halls. This one was not as dangerous, because he didn't arrive courtesy of a stairs trap, but I gave him a wide berth anyway.

At this point, I had also reached clvl 47 and put my long-planned point into Chilling Armor, to try and find some use for the skill. Try as I might, though, it just wasn't worth anything at slvl 1, IMO. I found out that I had to get hit to retaliate. Bummer. I was hoping it would fire back any time I was fired AT, but no, no it doesn't work that way. Too bad. I wasn't going to let myself get hit just so I could watch an Ice Bolt do 4 to 6 on my behalf. The monsters in Hell Act 2 were laughing so hard at that that it was embarrassing. Well, any good Ice Kitten ought to have at least one point in every skill in the tree, if only for appearance sake, to say that she is master of all cold skills. Yeah, that sounds good, right? A nice, tidy reason justifying a wasted skill point? Good. Glad we got that cleared up! :)

Oh yeah, by the way, Bluebonnet went back to the Maggot Lair, got the staff, and slew Duriel. He died in a hail of blizzards, scored no hits, forced no drinking of potions, and was completely unworthy of having his picture taken. I sent him back to Hell with a good spanking.

Not much turned up in Act 2, just those belts and lots of experience. Still no deaths. And seeing as how Hotfoot had died twice by this point (and suicided once out of sheer absentminded foolishness on my part), then died no more, well... Bluebonnet ought to have an easier time with the council, with Heph and with Act 4 in general, so... things are looking pretty good for that Queen Run, I think. Time will tell. :)

Next up, my favorite act, Act Three. Stay tuned...

- Sirian

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