Act Four, Part Two: Destination Waypoint

Ember restarted Act Four at clvl 26 with the following skills, stats and equipment:

Firebolt @ max (+1 from staff)
Warmth @ 7

Str 10, Dex 25, Vit 95, 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
Ring: -2 Damage, +35 Cold Resist - flesh spawner boss, Outer Steppes
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
Amber Quilted Armor of Simplicity: +33 Lightning Resist, -40% Requirements - gambled Act 4
No helm (helm forbidden until Nightmare Difficulty)

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: ammy with -1 md, ammy with 29 Cold Res +13 Dex.

Due to the crash that terminated the previous session, Ember was starting over, and she had to face that same Spawner boss again, the one that took three tries to defeat the first time. I repeated the careful fights with the initial few monsters before peeking out far enough to wake the boss. Then I'd run Ember north, get some of the monsters lined up to occupy that shelf above the gate, and retreat to the stairs and begin the fight in earnest. The boss was cursed again, and once again Ember ended up pushed back into town by the boss, with the stairs packed. I had to restart. (Can you say deja vu?)

This time I didn't venture out. I stood my ground as the minions came on, killed one (and some pups) right there at the gate, then killed a second minion the same way, and here comes the cursed boss. I tried to make a stand but it was just too much damage once cursed. Ember had to fall back, retreating up the stairs a bit at a time. No other minions followed, so it was mano a mano, sorcie vs demon. I did all I could not to be forced out of Hell, but the boss was just too strong. The next thing you know, Ember is "in town" on the stairs, unable to fire, and the boss is staring her down, and giving birth to a pup.

I was ready to restart again, but something inside me objected to the idea. I'd reduced about a third of its life and used up some of my potions to do so. It was alone on the steps and seemed content with just one pup. When I killed the pup it spawned another, but again stopped. My vision of the stairs filled end to end with its pups did not take shape. I decided to stick it out, see what I could do. The boss eventually grew bored with me and wandered down the steps a little. I charged in, killed the pup and fired off a good four or five shots before she pushed me back into town again. Ooh, progress. I had to wait a whole minute for the boss to wander away enough to let me back in, but it happened. Repeating this patient process (and rekilling that one pup over and over) eventually wore down the boss and led me to this:

The work was far from over, but without the combo of the curse and the boss's strength, Ember was able to stand her ground against all comers, even when she got beat up a bit. No leapers in this instance, just corpulents and venom lords and plenty of spawners. The fighting littered gates of Hell with blood and entrails.

From there, with care, I was able to establish a loop zone, extend it over and past the stairway down to the Plains (which was as close as it gets, thank goodness). Once I was sure I had enough safe retreat room (never know what might chase me back to the Steppes: a boss pack, champions, too many fire resistant foes, or even Izual if I ran into him before I had a decent loop zone established in the Plains).

Enter the Plains of Despair. Ember is not even down the steps before the first spirit appears. I didn't see the glow, but I sure saw the lightning. Good thing Ember acquired that armor. With max resistance, I could stand up to more than one or two of these things without placing Ember in dire peril. I killed one, then stepped out of the gate and killed two more.

I took another step and two more arrived, with yet more glows flitting across the darkened plain. No sign of other monsters yet. The plains must be PACKED with these things. Well, no complaints here. That might be the best possible draw for Ember, because Burning Souls have no fire resistance and she could kill them in just two shots. Compare that to ten or more for a Venom Lord!

Another step, still within sight of the gate, and guess who's coming to dinner?

That's the closest I have EVER seen him stationed to the gate. Made me glad I had the foresight to clear extra room in the Steppes, because that was where we were headed.

Izual is one of those monsters that makes you scratch your head. He's not particularly dangerous, nor does he require any special tactics, for the most part. He just has a LOT of hit points. Good grief.

The Devil went down to Georgia, he was lookin for a soul to steal. He came upon a sweet young girl and offered her a tempting deal. He said, "Match that little stick of yours against this bright sword made of steel, and I'll see that you get rewarded well. No joke, this is for real."

Ember, she thought long and hard and finally she agreed. "Even the mightiest demon lord, when you shoot him, he will bleed."

Round and round, run girl run! The devil's in the house of the rising sun. Shoot those firebolts, go child go! He'll drop dead some day, don't you know. ... ... Round and round, run girl run! The devil's in the house of the rising sun. Shoot those firebolts, go child go! He'll drop dead some day, don't you know. ... ... Round and round, run girl run! The devil's in the house of the rising sun. Shoot those firebolts, go child go! He'll drop dead some day, don't you know. ... ...

After that entertainment ended, it was back to business. Ember still needed a loop track in the Plains. I moved her west and encountered more Burning Souls, along with a Doom Caster. Hmm. Fire Resistant foe, but fortunately not as tough as Venom Lords.

A trio of lightning shots came from the far west and Ember retreated. When the spirits did not follow, she fired blindly, covering every available angle. When I finally ventured over there for another look, this is what I found:

Yep. Killed all three from off screen. Remember I said that firebolt has long range? Well it does, but it often won't register on monsters that aren't yet awake. On the other hand, if it HAS been kicked into AI mode instead of dormant, you CAN hit it from quite a distance. My results on this are inconsistent, so I can't say what the true range is, but it definitely extends off the screen by at least another whole screen in at least some circumstances. I think the farthest I've killed anything with firebolt is across the entire distance of the main chamber of the Outer Cloister. I'd bet the range is identical to that of normal arrows shot from a bow.

After securing the way to the corner in that direction, I turned back and ventured east. What's this:

Yes, I do believe those are not Burning Souls. Amazing. :)

Now that I had retreat room, everything went according to plan. This is what it looked like:

That pic with all the convergent lightning, you can see how much of Ember's 300+ life they ate. Looks like over one third of it. With no resistance, that would have slain Ember for sure, full to dead just like that. I was not being reckless here, either. Sometimes you just wake up more than a few. Unlike D1, this game is so much harder to control that way. No more of that "if you can't see them, they can't see you" stuff.

All in all, though, the Plains were cleared without any crisis moments, and without nearly the risks nor workload required to clear the Steppes. Below you can see Ember about to silence the last surviving inhabitant of the Plains of Despair.

For the City, I prayed for Dark Familiars, Corpse Spitters and Damned. Let's not have any hordes of fire resistant bastards, shall we?

OK, here we go. Ah, here come the inhabitants now. Hmm...

:( Those aren't Dark Familiars. :(

Well, nothing for it. Ember will have to cope.

I managed to kill several of them at the base of the stairs, by just barely peeking out to a spot I could shoot from without giving them a direct line to me. A few were smarter than that and found their way up the stairs, but just the fact that some did NOT made things a little easier.

I dreaded what I'd find for the third racial group. Please let it not be Abyss Knights!

Ah good. Hmm, which one should I kill next? Let's flip a coin. Hell, let's flip twenty coins! :)

Those wretched spitters are the bane of any Lightning sorcie, but Ember was glad to see them. They want to call themselves "damned", well damn them! To Hell with them! Damn them to Hell! Er... OK, enough bad puns. On with the slaughter.

I cleared a little this way, a little that way, a little the other way. The damned were the most numerous, but it took as much work to kill one Pit Lord as four Damned. Over in the northwest corner, I ran into trouble:

That's a Mana Burn boss. He chased me all the way back to the Plains, where we did the loop thing (round and round, run girl run!) until he eventually keeled over. High Fire Resistance on a boss in Act Four is "Not Good" (R). If I had come through the waypoint and found that boss without plenty of clear looping room, it would have been a Quit n Save situation.

After that fight, things settled into a decent routine and I had enough room to work in that Ember was not pushed out of the city any more. About halfway through, I found the waypoint, and Ember was assured of NOT having to redo any more fights in the Steppes, thank goodness!

Here's a look at one of the livelier fights, to the south, on the far side of the city away from the entrance gate. This fight is notable in that it involved a rounded mix of foes, which Ember discovered to her dismay actually made each individual type harder to defeat.

The very last fight in the city was the maw fiend cage. Then Ember had to run all around, cleaning up stragglers, aka Stranglers. Here you see the very last two.

"Aw, please, guys! I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Please talk to me!" :)

I must have stood there for over a minute, savoring the moment, watching these wretched demons cower in the corners like this. Then I shot them.

Even though the Plains had been a fairly easy draw, the City was not and I'd also had to fight some brutal battles in the Steppes. It had been a long session and I was ready to quit. Yet I also was on a roll, and I did have the time to do the River run, so I thought I'd give that a try.

Down the stairs... Ember is IMMEDIATELY being shot at by at least three, maybe four Abyss Knights from just off the screen to the right, and there are Stranglers closing in on her from three sides before she can so much as descend halfway down that short flight of stairs. So what did I do? I turned around, walked back up those stairs and got Ember the Hell out of there.

Wow, worst River stairs trap I have EVER seen (and I've seen some bad ones).

I took that as a sign that this session should end here.

Ember will see you for the conclusion (one way or another) of Act Four.

- Sirian

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