Act Three, Part One: The Jungle

Ember began Act Three at clvl 23 (barely) with the following skills, stats and equipment:

Firebolt @ max (+1 from staff)
Warmth @ 4

Str 10, Dex 25, Vit 75, Nrg 80

Heavy Gloves of Wolf: +19 Life - bought from Elzix
Coral Light Belt of Tiger: +29 Lightning Resist, +24 Life - bought from Elzix
Boots: Faster Run, Fastest Recovery, +14 Lit Resist, +11 Life, +7 Stamina - gambled Act 2
Staff: +1 Firebolt - Initial Gear
Cathan's Seal (ring): -2 damage, +6% Life Leech - gambled Act 2
Ring: +29 Poison Resist, -1 damage, +1 Light, Half Freeze, +2 mana, +79 AR - Duriel
Amulet: +3 Life - random drop in Rocky Waste
No helm or armor (helm forbidden, too weak for armors with 10 Str)

In stash: Lennymo, Broc, and two socketed battle staves, one with +3 Firebolt, the other +3 Blaze (items saved for possible use in Nightmare, if Ember survives Normal).

Out to the Forest, and Diablo's flesh beasts required (just barely) more than one shot apiece. I think one of them died in a single shot. Cloud Stalkers died in one hit, but Fetishes required (just barely) two. Now and then a weak one would die in one shot, but you couldn't rely on that and I came to think of Fetishes as two shot targets. Before long I found the first boss, who would end up dropping the Jade Figurine:

I had over 150k cash after that, so I decided to gamble an amulet. Anything would be better than +3 life, right? Alcor handed me one with -2 damage. Hmm, not the best, but that gave me a total of -5 damage now, between the three pieces of jewelry, and that might be rather helpful against swarms of fetishes and flayers, particularly against the blowdarters.

The first alcove in the forest turned out to be the waypoint. Ember went down into the Arachnid Lair and, strangely, encountered no bosses or champs down there. Pressed on, and killing crows and thorned hulks and a few fetishes in the forest was no problem. The Thorned Hulks required a good five to seven shots, I think, but being slow and also large targets made them easy pickins.

Found the entrance to the Marsh, which was populated with Gloams and zombies and fetishes, no frogs. I backed out of there and continued on with the Spider forest, looking for the Cavern.

When I found the cavern, I knew that it wouldn't go like the Lair had. Sszark was down there and maybe other nasties, and it was time to go hire some help. I shuddered at the memory of poor Jemali, but I hoped to find someone more like Aliza. So over to Asheara... WOW! 400 life? 150 defense? It's been so long since I actually HIRED an Act Three merc, I forgot how beefy they are. Ember forsook the cliched choice of a cold merc and opted to hire the best available Lightning mage, a stout fellow named Thadar. This choice wasn't just stubbornness or novelty, either. Remember all those fetishes taking two shots? Well a little bit of charged bolt might wound several of them at once and reduce them to one shot kills. Charged bolt would fan out a bit and hit more targets, and the Lightning mercs are the ones LEAST likely to close to melee range (fire is the most likely, with that inferno attack). Oh yeah, AND the poor maligned Lightning mages are considered useless by so many mainstream players, that proving them wrong would be a nice bonus. :)

I carefully cleaned out the north end of the cavern, as I always do. Worked my way around to the west and down around finally to the south. I expected to encounter a spider pack there, and I did, but it was NOT the one I was expecting. Poison Spinners? What's up with that?

Thadar performed admirably, bravely taking the charge of the spider horde while Ember cowered in the rear, providing the artillery necessary to get the kills. The boss was magic resistant as you see above, so he took four times the number of shots as a typical boss. Along the way he went into retreat mode (wounded) and started spewing webbing, but he ended up caught between Ember and Thadar in a curious behavior loop, just wiggling back and forth as his AI programming would tell him to run one way, then the other. This made for a massive stacking of webbing in two spots, leading to that strange screenshot above.

This left only the southeast corner of the cavern, at the bottom of the screen. Sszark had to be there.

Thadar once again braved the danger while Ember fired from relative safety. I figured Thadar for a goner at this point, especially after I heard him take a hit and the curse sound played. However, it was clear that his sacrifice was going to mean survival for Ember, who was laying into the spiders with continuous fire and had lots of retreat room. Then, surprisingly, the fight ended and Thadar was still standing, if barely.

Hmm... Might we have a worthy successor to Aliza here? I'm starting to think we might! :)

Gathered up my Khalim's eye and back to town for more gambling. Ooh, landed a Hotspur boots. That went into stash for Hidurare purposes (going to be gambling a LOT of regular boots over time, you know, since heavier ones require 18 strength or more). Also checking Ormus faithfully, looking for staves with +3 to either firebolt or blaze, with fast/fastest cast and/or some resistances. Well, found LOTS of +3 Blaze staves, but so far none with desirable extra benefits.

I worked a little more in the Spider Forest, then took a short break and left my system running. When I came back it was locked up. Crashed. Arrgh.

Had to redo part of the Spider Forest upon restart, but thankfully not too much. The inhabitants of the Marsh had changed, now, though: two different sorts of fire-spitting frogs now. Ick. Those things can be legitimately dangerous in packs, because their shots can sting if you don't have much resistance, and worse they stun you and knock you back. Get hit with several of those in succession while zombies or hulks are hacking at you and you can be dead before you know what happened.

Oh well. I'd deal with it. Here you can see a fight at the entrance to one of the marsh alcoves, this one happened to have a gold chest.

I would position Ember out front if the threat was mainly from blowdart fetishes. Her -5 damage and ability to heal with potions made sense over letting Thadar get punished. She only hid behind him when the melee fetishes came charging out, because they could actually stun her sometimes. So she took point against the ranged attackers and made him take point against swarming mobs. This tactic worked beautifully, keeping risks at an absolute minimum yet not requiring trips to town for healing at any sort of absurd rate. Progress was steady and sure, with little need for hit and run tactics, although some timely retreats did take place.

Here was one such fight, where a short retreat or two kept us out of the range of those champs.

And for the first time, I actually didn't mind that some of the frogs were bugged. It was much easier to shoot helpless frogs by the riverside than play tag-the-fire-shooter with live ones, each of us trying to shoot the other with firebolts, and them often cheating by bringing in heavy reinforcements to set up a crossfire. :)

After clearing most of the marsh, Ember and Thadar paused to marvel at the strange physics of the marsh rivers, where two of them ran right through each other.

You don't see a lot of the north branch of the vertical river there, but it extends out to form a bona fide blue plus sign on the map. Also note the square patch of river to the south and west. What's up with that, too?

We arrived at the edge of the Flayer Jungle but waited for daylight before proceeding.

Yes, I'm serious. Ember told Thadar "No way are we going in there while it's dark. We'll get ambushed. If we wait until daybreak, I can see better, target better, and avoid getting us into more than we can handle." So that's how it was done.

This tactic worked out well. There was no stumbling into the midst of flayer swarms before realizing it. No stunlock on Ember. When a mob charged, Ember ran behind her beefy warrior-mage companion, letting them knick at him with their machetes and spears, while his charged bolts danced through them point blank and Ember's firebolts mowed them down with one kill per shot. Ah, just as I had envisioned!

Then it was Ember's turn to take point against a stubborn blowdart boss and his cronies.

We found an alcove, which surely held some sort of flayer village. Maybe the waypoint? Maybe the main village? Or maybe just an outpost with nothing special. We ventured in and sure enough here they come!

Well it turned out to be the dead end with nothing special, just lots of flayers. Hmmph. By now it was getting dark and it was time to get the heck out of the Flayer Jungle. There was a bit left of the Marsh to clear so we did that during the night hours. Here's another look at the square river formation:

The Marsh was cleared out by daybreak, so it was back into the Flayer Jungle. Every few steps another swarm of flayers, and Thadar was really earning his keep. He turned what would have been lots of hard running and tempting of fate for Ember, into almost routine cleanup, with trips to town for healing now and then, but coinciding with times I'd have gone anyway to sell off armors and such, or drop extra potions in town for potential later use, or even to cube gems into rejuvs.

We found this tasty boss treat in the middle of the jungle and used caution. Namely, I killed off the minions from across the river but had to close in to keep a bead on the boss once his health got low and he started teleporting (and healing) in rapidfire rhythm.

Shortly after defeating the flayer shaman boss, we found the second alcove. Lots of flayers in that area.

This turned out to be the spot with the Swampy Pit and the waypoint. In town I gambled for another amulet and got one with -1 magic damage. Oh why couldn't it have been -2 or more? Why? Oh well, it was still better than what I had. I really badly needed any reduction in magic damage I could find! I had also turned up an ammy with +29 Cold Resistance and +13 Dex. I kept that for situational use and definitely planned to be wearing it against Mephisto unless an even stronger one turned up. I'd wear the -1 md through Travincal and the Durance, though, right up until the end.

Down into the Swampy Pit and there were undead flayers. Not a gross threat, not with as much life as Ember has, but still, anything that swarms and is particularly speedy can make you nervous. Have to exercise care. Once again, Thadar proved a valuable companion, by now actually outperforming even what Aliza had done for me. Here he is buying time for me to switch amulet to cold resist and pick off some of these minions:

I love that screenie! Caught a minion in its death throes. :) You can see the firebolt glow where Ember got the hit. And there's good old Thadar, occupying the boss's attention. He took some serious damage here but I wouldn't call it a close call.

We cleaned up the swampy pit and while in town, Ember gambled the Snakecord light belt, another item on the Hidurare collection list. She also hit on an Arctic Binding, which then sold for 15k?? Good grief. One could almost gamble for profit with sashes and light belts. Sashes can turn up the pricey Death's Guard and this Arctic Binding is worth a ton, too. Too bad that 2-row belts in themselves are virtually useless to your average character. Ironic that you can make money on them sometimes, and on caps or leather armors, but never will off costlier items. Heh.

Before long we found the final alcove.

As you might expect, the main fetish village was pretty heavily defended. Swarm after swarm, and we aren't even in the front door yet. Look, here comes another mob! Even Thadar is running! :)

Ah yes, the Gidbinn! Hmm, what's this, a lone RAT MAN champ as guardian? Heh. Can't get any less of a fight for the Gidbinn than that. Well, I returned to town, excited about my chances for a ring. Blah. Ormus you loser, what's this piece of crap? My goodness, all the bonuses on that thing combined didn't add up to the value of -2 damage from Cathan's seal. Oh well. I sold the wretched thing. (Been selling a lot of Ormus rings lately. Just don't seem to make em like they used to!).

Down into the Flayer Dungeon, and surprise surprise, there are lots of flayers there! :)

With Thadar to tank for me, the dungeon was not so bad. I can tell you right now, I'm really going to miss Thadar in Act 4. I just know that it's going to be a lot more work to get things done without his help!

Down we went, through the flayers, the undead flayers, the water hydras and their spit, more flayers.

As you can see, Thadar cooperated with my Endugu strategy: he stayed out of the way. Good man! Best merc I ever had, and that's the truth! And, well, Endugu is no Bishibosh. As long as you don't let him get close to you, he's a peice of cake. Somewhat much more of a serious threat to melee-only chars and variants though. But... that's not Ember! Not even close. :)

Back to the Flayer Jungle. Not far to go now. I can almost taste the end of this long run. Got careless with a flayer swarm, though, and quite nearly got Thadar killed!

Barely got him out of that pickle! Yikes. But he lived. He's a tough customer, let me tell you. If only Act 2 mercs were one tenth as hardy, I'd hire them more often.

Finally we come to the last battle in the Jungle, with the mighty Stormtree. Thadar's plan was to rush in and attack him head on!

I had to order him back to town for a serious talk, as I knew that tactic would be the death of him. In fact, I had to ORDER him to stay out of this fight (Stormtree resists his lightning attacks, and was the first LEB we had encountered together. I was firm: Thadar would STAY OUT of this fight!)

Let me tell you, he whined like a lost puppy dog. But he obeyed. He stayed on the far side of the river, although he followed along the shore and almost seemed ready to swim across to try and help out.

However, Ember knew what she was doing: she was killing Stormtree AND saving Thadar's life:

And so it was they left the jungle. Ember had full-cleared everything, and Thadar had survived the whole way to Kurast! Ember knew she had one free Merc hire coming from the Gidbinn quest but avoided that, and hoped that perhaps she'd never need it, that Thadar might live forever! (Hey, one can dream, right?)

One final task for the current session, and that was find the Kurast waypoint. Still some fighting left to do, though, and some work for Thadar, distracting hungry foes while Ember rained fire on them:

Cleared fully a third of Lower Kurast but finally found the waypoint.

The Jungle behind her now. Next up: the children of Zakarum. Ember will see you for the conclusion of Act Three.

- Sirian

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