Act Four, Part One: The Outer Steppes

Ember arrived in Act Four at clvl 25 with the following skills, stats and equipment:

Firebolt @ max (+1 from staff)
Warmth @ 6

Str 10, Dex 25, Vit 90, Nrg 80

Rare Heavy Gloves - +12 Fire and Lit Resist, Half Freeze, -25% Poison Dur, +1 Life - gambled Act 3
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
Ruby Amulet: +45 Fire Resist, +12 Dex - beetle boss in the Disused Fane
No helm or armor (helm forbidden, too weak for armors with 10 Str)

In stash: Greyform, Lennymo, Broc, Hotspur, Snakecord, and two socketed battle staves, one with +3 Firebolt, the other +3 Blaze (staves saved for use in Nightmare, if Ember survives Normal). Also some spare jewelry starting to accumulate: ammy with -1 md, ammy with 29 Cold Res +13 Dex.

Ember took one look out the gate of the Pandemonium Fortress and wished she had Thadar with her. In fact, she'd settle for Jemali right now! Oh well. Maybe it's for the best, with these narrow twisty stairs that had "single file" written all over them.

Ember descended the stairs and peeked out into Hell. Well, nobody home, might as well leave.

Wait, here comes someone. (Rats! Er... I mean, "oh yay").

Cliff Lurkers. Four of them. Ember shot one, then another, knocking them tumbling backward, but the other two attacked her and their blows did sting a little. Ember backed onto the stairs to fight them off and that seemed to work out OK. She steps back out onto the plains and after taking all of ONE extra step, here comes a Flesh Spawner boss, cold enchanted, up from directly below, accompanied by her minions and a corpulent or two. I didn't want to run out into the Steppes, stirring up a huge mob, so I backed up onto the steps, the boss followed, I backed up some more, she hit me HARD, plus the chill factor, and it's not long before Ember is standing "in town" on the steps, unable to fire, and there's the boss with fully 90% of her health left.

I tried to work my way back in, I really did, but by now the steps were jammed every inch with the minions and their pups. After five minutes of futility here, I surrendered, picked up my spare potions, and restarted.

That's right, restarted the game! This being single player, the map stayed the same, as did the boss locations, and even (within a certain limited framework of variability) the item drops, chest contents, and yes, the boss abilities. Well I knew there was a boss RIGHT THERE and that I couldn't actually get out onto the plains without waking it. No chance. So what to do? What to do??

One thing seemed clear. If I allowed the steps to become packed, the fight would be over. If I could get the boss onto the steps ALONE, I might be able to kill it. Even if it pushed me into town, I might be able to get it to wander away a moment and let me back out. So I had to draw away some opponents yet not let them get back at me. The answer seemed to lie with that shelf region to the north of the entrance. If I could snag a bunch of them up there, they might stay put and let me lure targets out one or a few at a time.

So that's what I did. New game, and this time no cliff lurkers. Still Flesh Spawners, but now also Venom Lords (oh my) and Corpulents (yay!) Kill a few Venom Lords at the gate (whoa, lot of shots there! Dang them and their fire resistance). Killed a corpulent. Sure enough, peek out just a little more and here comes the Spawner boss, now Cursed! Cursed is even worse than CEB! Oh well. Nothing for it now.

Ember runs north, the mob in tow. She's waking up more opponents, but thankfully only a couple of Venom Lords. I kept her out there as long as I dared, but more and more were waking up and more pups were being birthed, and the threat of getting cut off and trapped finally grew to an intolerable degree and I had to retreat to the steps. I did manage to park a whole huge mass of enemy on that shelf, but Murphy decreed that the first one to find its way to me would be... the boss!

I tried to stand there, but after she hit me and cursed me I dared not push my luck. I ended up back in town, the boss camped on the steps at the threshold it dared not cross, and I spent another ten minutes trying to get a foothold again. I must have killed its lone pup eight or ten times, but there was one minion lower on the steps, and it made a pup or two, and I just couldn't get anywhere with this. I finally gave up!

Let me tell you, at this point in time I was already seriously contemplating what hope I had of getting this done in Nightmare. I was sure I could find a way, somehow, to work it out here. But Nightmare... oh boy. Well let's forget that for now and concentrate on the problem at hand. Third time's the charm? Sure hope so.

Restarted, and not a promising mix at all: leapers, balrogs, spawners and the boss is Cursed again! Arrgh.

I took Ember out once again, but this time the mob grew bigger, faster, and very quickly forced me back.

Yet fortune favors the bold, and I decided to try and make a stand anyway. Well don't ask me how, but the boss got entangled with a cliff lurker and neither one of them could advance any farther up those steps!

I backed Ember to just out of the boss's range and laid into her nonstop until she croaked. I then made the most determined defensive stance you can imagine on those stairs, letting minions, pup, leapers and whatever else pound the crap out of Ember but NOT -- I repeat NOT push her back!

After what seemed like forever, and the drinking of more potions than I cared to contemplate, Ember had a semblance of control over the gate. Still some lurkers hanging around and half a mob parked on the shelf, but I had felt the tide turn and was confident I would not be forced out of Hell a third time!

I did whole lot of blind firing out of that gate from inside, picking off advancing units before they could close to melee range. I then carefully worked around to Ember's left, to that shelf and finished off the hungry demons there. Ember was finally able to stand in Hell without its denizens giving her a Hell of a time!

Yet this was just the start of establishing a foothold. Clearly NOT the most auspicious start to Act Four, yet possibly the very worst of it was already behind me. Possibly.

After all, I now had room! Room to hit and run, room to fall back, room to FIGHT.

I headed back to town with a heavy sigh of accomplishment and identified the ring that boss had dropped. Ooh, +35 Cold Resist and -2 damage. Well that beat Cathan's Seal by a smidge (resist instead of useless life steal) so I made the switch. I then gambled up a couple belts (ooh, an Arctic Binding, made a profit on that!) and a boots, then spotted a quilted armor and figured I'd take a shot at that too.

Oh my! Maybe not the jackpot, but certainly the daily double! An armor that Ember could USE!

That's right. I never said she was forbidden to use armors, only headgear! She lacked the strength to wear armors was the problem there, and of course no quilteds on sale after Act Two. Ah but here was a legal armor, boosting her Lightning Resist to max and actually taking her be-hit chances below 95% - amazing. :)

Yes, note all the full rejuvs. I'm a total potion addict, I admit it. I hate dying! And when you need one, you probably need a bunch more and fast. Well my stash was now full of actual items: staves, uniques, and I wasn't going to waste those precious potions nor store them on the ground. No way. So...

I wasn't sure I liked the new fashion. Brass shoulder pads instead of green? Made Ember look like some beefed up muscle babe! Well, OK, maybe not, but it was still a drastic change! :)

No making fun of her armor, now! Maybe she DID need a Quilted of Simplicity, but no snickering! That is a fine armor, honestly it is. Makes her look very martial and disciplined, a bona fide killing machine.

And it was time to prove it!

I worked first to establish a loop zone. What's a loop zone? It's a track of land large enough to run in circles without getting cornered or venturing into uncharted area. And no comments about running Ember in circles, either! I don't even want to HEAR the word "dizzy" being used here. You got that? :)

Where possible, I woke up ONE foe at a time. (Yeah, and you've seen that commercial about internet sales where the guy says he's found "Laserbeamer" customers? He found only four, but that was just in the US! Well... apply that to waking them up one at a time: more myth than anything else!)

Ember could deal with mobs of two and three. (Hey, two's a MOB to Ember here in Act Four Normal. Oh DO please quit snickering, thank you very much!) When it got to be "deadly crowds" of four or more, though, then it was time for full blown hit and run, complete with unending repetitions of Tempting Fate. (Don't try this on Realms, kiddies!)

The leapers I could control, sort of. I could at least shoot them and keep them off me, push them back. The Spawners were more problematic. Four or five shots to kill a mother, two for a pup (now and then a one shot kill, but DO NOT rely on that!). Of course, add up all the shots to kill mother AND pups and you are starting to get into some Real Math there. Fortunately, the mothers are slow, and that makes them a threat only by proxy. Get just one spawner, maybe two, and it's not a problem. It's only when you have so many that they make beasties faster than you can shoot em down that it's Deep Spawner-DooDoo.

By contrast, the Venom Lords are fast, they have max fire resistance even here in Normal, and it took Ember over ten shots per to wipe them out. There just isn't room enough in Hell to run from them without Tempting Fate. Luckily, they are one of the easiest foes to Tempt, because their swing is sooooooo slow. And if it's slow, it's not much threat. So as speedy as they are, their slow melee attack really takes the teeth out of them in small numbers (contrast with the Smith or the heffer, who have a quick swing! Ouchie).

So the routine for these balrogs was: shoot shoot shoot, one has closed in, it swings, Ember runs before the swing can hit her, she runs until the nearest one is falling behind near edge of screen, stop, shoot shoot shoot, repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat.

Now I cleared out that loop track first, then cleared a little more, all the way to the northwest corner, then did an about face and came back to work on the south, heading east. Fights took a lot of time. Any given fight might last minutes or even less, but collectively it was slow going. And if I got careless or just had bad luck and woke up more than three of anything, the fight would get really long, taking even longer exponentially for each added foe. It went something like this:

Wake up a mob of five Venom Lords? Ouchie! Not good, not good at all.

Pushed back the WHOLE way across the Steppes, Tempting Fate the entire time (and taking a hit now and then, hey it's hard to execute repetitive moves without a few goofs here and there), find myself in the southwest corner and none of those five are dead yet!

Turn around and back the way we came, Tempting Fate the entire time. Last one about to die as we arrive back where we started. Yes, that's back and forth across the entire southern expanse of the Steppes to kill FIVE Venom Lords, and doing it the risky "quick" way to boot, letting them take repeated swings at me. As I said before, "Professional at work! Don't try this at home. kids! Er... I mean, Don't try this on Realms!" :)

If Ember lives to Nightmare Act Four, it's going to take quite simply a Herculean effort to get through to Diablo without any deaths. I don't know if I can do it, but I have some ideas. In fact, I have a complete strategic plan, but at the moment it's not worth the imagination it's printed on! Back to the current situation:

By this point, I've cleared two thirds of the Steppes, leveled up, added five more to Vitality and another point in Warmth. Got plenty of room and only the worst possible mistake could force me to restart now, much less actually kill me. Well, I tried anyway!

Not only was I careless enough to wake up so many opponents at one time, I was even stupider by stopping to gawk like a tourist and take this picture. Remember I said that someday I'd get myself killed taking a screenshot? Well that's not going to be today, but I came awfully close!

That mob was wakened along the eastern side, and I retreated back to the south, then southwest, falling back into clear territory. Only, well, I got cut off, leapers running and leaping past me. Not good. Next thing I know, I'm out on a ledge in the middle of Upshitz Creek. I had all of ONE chance to open a TP and bail before I'd have been swarmed and forced to Quit n Save. I pulled it out, don't ask me how.

The blue X marks my current position, and the yellow X marks the location where I lapsed into stupidity. This was not quite up to the Hotfoot-in-the-Arcane level of complete absentmindedness, but this was as close as it comes in Hardcore without being fatal. Below you can see those hungry bastards swarming around the portal, wondering where in Hell (literally!) their meal escaped to.

I cleaned them up without much problem, and in no particular hurry. When only the ones out on that ledge were left, I penned them in there and butchered them where they stood. Bloody f-ing bastages. TIME TO DIE!

And then, brilliant me, I tried it all over again!

This time I made SURE not to get cornered, badgered, herded, pushed, nor to walk out onto any Dead Ends. (A whole new meaning to dead end, I tell ya!) They pushed me all the way back to the gate itself, but I killed em all and made sure not to screw it up.

Finally, after who knows how long (probably not as long as it felt), I killed the last of the inhabitants of the Outer Steppes. The entrance to the Plains was near the Fortress gate. I stepped down there to see what I would face, and was met with more Venom Lords. Heh.

Back to town, and time to take a much-needed short break away from the computer. Get something to drink, walk around, stretch, etc etc. I had cleared the Steppes! The Plains should be easier, with no leapers!

I come back to find my system has locked up. Crashed! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

!@#$%#@ Blizzard you piece of !@#$%# 2143@$%! If I ever get my hands on !@#$# #$#@@#! ##$%#!

Lost all my spare potions on ground in town. Lost all my progress, other than that armor and no more need to full-clear the Steppes. THAT they can't take away!

Ember will see you next time, right back where she started, to fight that wretched Spawner boss and gain a foothold, all over again from the beginning! Gah.

- Sirian

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