Nightmare - Act 1
I expect Act 1 Nightmare to be about the same difficulty as Act 4 Normal. The real troubles are likely to begin in Act 2 with enemies like Radament and Coldworm. Of course the Underground Passage and the Black Tower might be hard in Act 1 too. My last hc-character died in the Tower...
And so it begins... The Zombies take between 8 and 10 shots to die. I expect this to be many times higher in hell...
Ok, I have a several Diamonds just lying around that I just as well could make to full rejuvenation potions, so it's time to do the math. Is a rare shield with 60% blocking and good stats better than a 3D-shield?
Let's start with this: A large shield is the best shield available for me as it has 34% blocking. The next step would be a tower shield, but that would cost me 30 more strength, which could be translated into 60 life, and that's just for 10% more blocking. So I figure 60 life is worth a lot more than 10% blocking, at least to a non-fighter class that don't have thousands of life. Everything is relative.
Then it's between a shield with 50% resist to all and 34% blocking or a rare shield with 60% blocking, mdr 2, about +30 life and 30% cold resistance. At first glance I think the rare one seems better, but let's do some quick math.
Say you get hit for 100 elemental damage100 times.
With the 3D-shield you would get hit by 66 of them and take 50% less damage of the ones that hit you. This equals 66*50=3300 life.
With the rare shield you would get hit by 40 of them, taking 100% of the damage for fire and lightning and around 70% of the damage for cold. Let's say there are as much cold as fire and lightning, this translates to 13*70+27*100=3610.
Now these calculations are not really that realistic, but close enough. But it's only a 300 life difference between them, and that's with an example that benefits the 3D-shield much more than the rare shield. And on top of that, I haven't considered the life and mdr bonus on the rare one. Now most blows that hit me are physical. And with the 3D-shield a lot more physical blows would hit me.
One way to solve this would be to have a 3D-shield stashed and use it in places like CS, but I just don't have that space. And on top of that, I don't have 3 perfect diamonds. :) So my conclusion is that the rare shield is better so I'm gonna go ahead and cube all the gems.
Everything went along smoothly in the beginning. The rare ring from Akara isn't even worth mentioning. :(
Then in the Hole level 1 I once looked away from the screen for a couple of seconds. I thought I was safe since I had stood still for 10 seconds before I looked away without anything happening. Then when I look back on the screen two Brutars are attacking me! I was down to 81 life when I managed to get away. Luckily I had full life when it happened, if I hadn't I wouldn't be alive now. Same thing if I had looked back to the screen a second later. This was the worst situation so far in the game, and it was only because I didn't pay attention. Well, I hope I have learned my lesson from this... Though I fear I haven't. :)
The Black Tower wasn't any big problems. Though I met a LEB goat down in level 3, and those LEBs are not very fun fighting with only 7% lightning resist. But he was taken care of with a little running.
I'm beginning to realise how it was for Ember. The fact that they are chilled allows me to fight them without too much trouble in very small areas, you just have to keep running. Without the chilling things are completely different.
I replaced my Infernal Cranium with a skull cap with +55 life that I bought from Charsi. My lightning resistance is down to -3%... But I still figure it's worth the switch.
And I discovered that I can't drink a potion directly from the cube. I may be way off here, but couldn't you do that in 1.05? The only question is why they would change this. Or am I just crazy and you have never been able to drink a potion directly from the stash?
In the Pit I met some enemies I didn't like that much - Bone Warriors. I'm not sure how high their cold resistance, but it sure is high enough to make it harder for me.
In the beginning of the area I fought against about 10 of them. And of course I couldn't keep fighting just one of them, I had the whole bunch against me. It took me a good while fighting these off.
Later when I fought them one on one I counted the number of shots needed to 16-17.
A while after that in the same level I met an archer boss - Teleport and Cold Enchanted. I had some real trouble with her. She had a really high cold resistance, and on top of that she teleported all the time getting most of her life back again. And although I have absolutely no mana problem in general I did have it here. From full mana to 0 when shooting non-stop it takes about 1 minute. Now the only time I would stand just shooting non-stop is when I face bosses that are resistant to cold or have teleport ability or just an enormous amount of life (Izuael for instance).
For a while I feared I would have to leave her there, but I did manage to kill her after a good time of fighting. Well, I don't know if I can call it fighting; me standing there just shooting... :)
Then down to the Pit level 2. This is one of the worst places for a hc-character IMO. The first thing that happened when I went down those stairs was a boss running against me with three of her minions. I realize that I won't have a chance just standing there against them and I have no room there to fight them in. So I decide to head deeper into the cave. I know it's risky, but that's my only alternative unless I want to retreat which I of course won't do in a situation like this unless it's really necessary since it would be near impossible getting back.
So I ran deeper, drawing attention of two other bosses. Fortunately I have enough of space to fight this big mass of enemies. Though one of the boss pack is Bone Warriors, those skeletons that are really cold resistant. This is the one I had most trouble with. Over all it was not a dangerous fight when I had gotten into it, but I think it took me like 20 minutes clearing that small area!
The Smith was surprisingly easy. His only ability was Extra Strong. Fighting him resembled fighting Izuael, but this one had much less life and no cold resistance. The whole fight was over in a matter of 2 minutes.
In the middle of the Jail I hadn't found any exceptional belt. So I decided to imbue an armor again, I was more lucky this time: +57 life, poison length reduced by 50%, 13% fire resistance and 16% cold resistance and requirements -20%. It has about the same bonuses as my other armor, but this one has 56 more life. :) I'm almost up to 500 hp.
In Jail level 2 I met the first enemy I had to leave. :( He was Cold Enchanted, Cursed and Teleport. And on top of that this kinda enemy has some natural Cold Resistance, so I'm quite sure this boss had 95% (that's the cap I believe). I fought him about 20 minutes, got him down to about 25% a couple of times, but never more than that. I gave it my best, but he just couldn't be killed without some CM. It would have been a different matter if I had taken him down do a couple of percent, then I would know it's possible to kill him if I take enough time. I however dare to say this was a fight I could not win whatever I would do.
If I continue this character through hell difficulty this will probably be the general case, leaving some of the bosses when their ability just gets to great.
Against some of the bosses that has to be killed I may buy a staff with + to some skill stronger than Icebolt to be able to kill him. I haven't decided whether I will do this yet.
I quite often gamble for cheap gloves, boots and helms. I replaced my helm with +55 life with another rare one I had gambled with +38 life, poison length reduced by 75%, 6% lightning resistance, 9% cold resistance and 11% fire resistance. It doesn't beet the other magic helm by much, but I figure it's worth the trade, especially since my lightning resistance was in the negatives... I know it's still only 6% with this helm, but hey, every little bit counts.
A short while later I gambled a belt: +3 replenish life, fast hit recovery, 38% lightning resistance, 5% poison resistance and +92% more gold. This takes my lightning to 41%, which is much appreciated. It's a good day for gambling :).
In the Catacombs level 3 I mostly fought Gholum Lords. They were quite the pain, I timed their resistance to 50%. But I'm not that far from level 30. I recently levelled up to 29, I should reach 30 at the end of the Sewers.
I've been quite unlucky with the unique enemies in this Act. I think I met around 10 enemies that were either CEBs or Magic Resistant
Andariel was easy as expected. As long as you have the space for it it's just to run and shoot, noting hard. I was level 29 when killing Andariel with the following stats and items.
45 str, 25 (+9=34) dex, 95 vit and 60 energy. Life: 469, Mana: 165.
Ice Bolt @ 20 - 22-24 damage and 32.6 chill duration and Warmth @ 13.
All resistances are around 50ish.
Lapis Yew Wand of the Magus: Fastest cast rate and 19% cold resistance.
Rare Leather Gloves: 8% poison resistance, 9% fire resistance, +9 maximum stamina, +8 life and 27% better chance of getting magic items.
Rare Serpent Skin Armor: Poison length reduced by 50%, 16% cold resistance, 13% fire resistance, +57 life and requirements -20%
Rare Belt: +3 replenish life, fast hit recovery, 38% lightning resistance, 5% poison resistance and +92% more gold.
Rare Bone Shield: 60% blocking, mdr 2, poison resistance 19%, cold resistance 26%, attacker takes damage of 1 and +27 life.
Rare Cap: +38 life, poison length reduced by 75%, 6% lightning resistance, 9% cold resistance and 11% fire resistance.
Rare Heavy Boots: Fast run/walk, 13% poison resistance, 17% lightning resistance, 9% fire resistance, +22 life and +9 dex.
Rare Ring: +1 mana for each kill, 7% poison resistance, +23 mana, +6 life and +3 minimum damage.
Garnet Ring of Excellence: 29% fire resistance and +3 minimum damage.
Amulet of the Colossus: +53 life
Nightmare - Act 2
While I was in the sewers and fought zombies I discovered something. The affix "poison length reduced by x%" seems to stack. I had one item with 50% and another one with 75%. When I was poisoned it only lasted a second or so. Then I tried without those 50% and the poison length was more like two seconds. I don't know exactly how this work, but one possibility I see is that the percentage just adds up with a cap at 95% or something. I'm gonna look more into this...
Since Radament was so tough the last time I fought him in normal difficulty I decided to do good prework this time. It took me a good while, but then everything was cleared except the big man himself - Radament. He's not very dangerous to fight as Hephasto or one of those other enemies are, but he sure could take a beating. It took me about 25 minutes killing him, and IIRC he doesn't have THAT much hp. Could it be some cold resistance in there that I'm not aware of?
I've been looking for a magic wand or scepter at the vendor all the time since normal Act 2, I didn't find a good one until now. Well, it's quite good anyway, at least better than 19% cold resistance - it has +38 mana. Even though I have no mana problem normally, but against cold resistant enemies and teleporting ones I still have to drink a potion or wait a while when fighting him. I won't be looking for a better weapon now, I'm getting quite sick of looking through all those weapons all the time anyway.
While fighting in the Stony Tomb and Halls of the Dead and the like I made a habit of killing the skeletons and zombies a bit back in a "safe" area. The reason is quite obviously that those Hollow Ones would resurrect them otherwise. And due to the Hollow Ones high hp that would be trouble.
While on the subject of resurrection... those Mummy Sarcophagus. I can't kill them in a normal way. After creating a certain amount of zombies it will destroy itself, but that's the only way for me to deal with them.
Level 30 was reached a little later then expected, by the Halls of the Dead level 2. Right in time too since I met a Cold Enchanted Teleporting boss right after. It was a Hollow One that it was a hell to kill even with CM at level 1. He kept resurrecting all those skeletons and zombies I thought I had killed at a safe place. He took a while to kill...
Halls of the Dead level 3 was the worst place so far. At the place where I started I met about 30 skeletons and 3-4 Hollow ones (I'm not exaggerating)! I have dealt with this kind of situations before by running past them trying to find an area that is safe where I can fight them a few at the time. This time I had three ways to go, I tried all without finding a safe place. I only drew more attention. Finally I got swarmed and had to tp out of there.
A tp is the second way to solve these kinda problems. Lure as many enemies as you can to a place away from the stairs then tp to town and take the wp to level 2. After that if all went as it should I can return down the stairs and should only be facing the enemies that didn't follow me when I ran away the last time. With big enemy groups this may have to be repeated until the group of enemies is acceptable. And of course this is not a safe way to fight, but in some cases it's the only alternative.
Coldworm took some time getting to, there was about 10 bigger Maggots in his room. But for some reason they stopped laying eggs after a while, making it easy for me to kill them and then Coldworm.
The Claw Viper Temple level 1 took me over an hour to clear! It was full of undead that I had to lure away from the Guardians. It was really time consuming.
I expected trouble in The Claw Viper Temple level 2 considering how hard it was in normal difficulty. But it was actually easy. As soon as you're in the middle in that circle your set. And unless you have bad luck with the enemies down there you can almost always get there, even without Leap(Attack) or Teleport. So as soon as I got there it wasn't any problem at all. And with 72% lightning resist Fangskin wasn't dangerous either.
Later I was quite lucky with another gamble. I got a rare light belt with the following stats: 47% lightning resistance, 24% cold resistance, 29% fire resistance, +5 life, +16 str and attacker takes damage of 1. Now this only leaves me with 8 slots for potions, but it's without a doubt worth it. If it only had had 16 slots it would have been among the absolute best I've ever seen.
The Arcane Sanctuary wasn't as hard as I feared it might be. The only tough enemy were those cold resistant Ghoul Lords, but with 42% CM it wasn't extremely hard. And I had enough mdr to nullify the firewalls, not even the Summoners firewall did much damage. As a distance fighter the teleport quadrant is without a doubt the easiest and funniest one as long as you're careful with those teleports. ;) As a melee fighter I tend to prefer the one with straight lines. The other two are just annoying no matter what character you play, maybe with the exception of a teleporting sorceress.
After clearing Canyon of Magi and half of one of the tombs I hear thunder outside. Due to this I have to turn of my computer. :( At least I won't have to clear Canyon of Magi again.
Then when I started the character up again the day after I realized something. The last couple of games I made a habit of dropping the Horadric Staff (not only the Staff, I had already transmuted it with the Amulet) in town for the extra space. Well yesterday I was in a hurry shutting down the computer and forgot all about the Staff. So today - no Staff... :( I even thought about using a trainer to get it back, but then I thought: No, I've come here legit, I don't wanna ruin it just for a thing like this. Even though no one would now, it's enough I would.
So I have to do it all again. I don't expect it to take so long since I know where all the exits are everywhere as the maps stay the same. But the Claw Viper Temple level 2 might be hard this time, we'll see what happens...
I went for the Amulet first, took me about 30 minutes getting it. I didn't bother killing the enemies down there, I just ran by for the Amulet and tp:ed out. I have cleared it once already and I could have done it this time too, but I saw no real reason to. Time for the staff instead...
The Staff was a little easier getting. Took me maybe 20 minutes. The same thing as before happened. All those bigger Maggots lays one eggs each or so and that's it. So after killing 50 or so smaller Maggots it's just those bigger ones left and they don't lays any eggs anymore. I wonder if this is something that was fixed in 1.06 or so to make this place less painful for some characters.
I often meet several of those Sarcophagus in each Tomb. They can often take up to 5 minutes each to kill since I have to wait it out. And the most annoying part of it is that I don't get any experience from all those Zombies I kill during the waiting. Personally I think this is unbalanced. In previous versions you would get full experience from maggots and zombies like these, now you get zero. Somewhere between should be just fine IMO.
In one of the Tombs I met a boss Apparition (one of those ghost types). It was Extra Fast and Aura enchanted. Both he and his attacks were so incredibly fast that I realized it must be fanaticism he has. I can't remember ever seeing an enemy move and fight that fast. Luckily his attacks are weak; otherwise he would have been really dangerous. As it is I could probably take like 10 hits from him before having to drink a potion.
My gambling is quite good. Once I gambled for Chance Guards, the next items I gambled for was Magefist :). I switched my quite bad rare gloves for Magefist, a trade I didn't regret. The extra casting speed is VERY useful.
Duriel wasn't very hard. Sure it took me a while (around 20 minutes), but I was never in any danger. I just kept running and shooting. Even though people say Duriel won't charge you when he's chilled I'm pretty sure he did it to me. Not as often as usual, but I still think he did charge me. The uberdrop was a rare Grim Helm. I thought that I wasn't strong enough to carry it even if it was good. Well it turned out it wasn't good, but also that it only required 35 str! I had no idea a Grim Helm required so little.
One thing I realized was that I really needed fastest run/walk; I only have fast run/walk on a couple of rare boots with some other quite nice mods. I wouldn't switch them for boots with only fastest run/walk, but with some other thing on them too I would.
Act 2 nightmare was finished at level 33 with the following stats and items:
45 (+16=61) str, 25 (+9=34) dex, 115 vit and 60 energy. Life: 510, Mana: 210.
Ice Bolt @ 20 - 22-24 damage and 32.6 chill duration, Warmth @ 14 and CM @ 4 - 49%.
Lightning resist maxed, fire and cold around 50 and poison around 20.
Dragon's Yew Wand of the Magus: Fastest cast rate and +38 mana.
Magefist.
Rare Serpent Skin Armor: Poison length reduced by 50%, 16% cold resistance, 13% fire resistance, +57 life and requirements -20%
Rare Light Belt: 47% lightning resistance, 24% cold resistance, 29% fire resistance, +5 life, +16 str and attacker takes damage of 1.
Rare Bone Shield: 60% blocking, mdr 2, poison resistance 19%, cold resistance 26%, attacker takes damage of 1 and +27 life.
Rare Cap: +38 life, poison length reduced by 75%, 6% lightning resistance, 9% cold resistance and 11% fire resistance.
Rare Heavy Boots: Fast run/walk, 13% poison resistance, 17% lightning resistance, 9% fire resistance, +22 life and +9 dex.
Rare Ring: +1 mana for each kill, 7% poison resistance, +23 mana, +6 life and +3 minimum damage.
Amber Ring of Light: 31% lightning resistance and +1 light radius.
Nightmare - Act 3
It's very strange; in normal I didn't find any golden chests in Great Marsh. In Nightmare I found just 1. What's up with this?
The Flayer Jungle is by far the worst one of the three. Groups of 10-15 Flayers are more a rule than an exception. Fortunately constant use of Tempting Fate makes it easier than it sounds. They have a quite slow attack animation when my Icebolt chills them.
The ring from Ormus was actually good for once. 47% lightning resistance, +37 life and 2-1 (!) damage. I'm near 600 life with this! :) And it even gives me an excess of about 20% lightning resist.
Battlemaid Sarina sure is a tough boss. Extra Fast and Fanaticism enchanted... You can completely forget about tempting fate, even when she's chilled. But her hp is quite low so she's not that hard, though you take a lot of hits from her.
Level 36 was reached in Sewers level 1, and thereby I passed the 600-line. :) Much of it is from items though. I think I get around 150 hp from items and the rest from my vitality. I would be very surprised if I passed 700 life unless I continue on Hell-difficulty.
All those Reliques and temples sure are hard. Some of them I had to tp out off like ten times. In one of them I was swarmed and after casting some tp:s that I couldn't reach I was suddenly out of them... But then I started shooting and after I killed one of the enemy I was able to reach the tp. I'm very glad I have all those full rejuvenation potions, without them I wouldn't stand a chance in these situations when I get swarmed. And you can hardly avoid being swarmed in some places...
After clearing everything in Travincal except the Council I was in the situation I feared since the beginning. In normal it was hard, but doable without a doubt. But what about nightmare? My offensive power is ridiculous against the Councils healing ability. I NEED to get the fourth piece of the body parts to get further than this, but can I kill the one who has it? And who is it who has it? I'm not sure, but I think it's always the same, only thing is that I have never bothered to remember exactly who of them it was. So what am I supposed to do? I don't know exactly, so let's start fighting instead.
The minions I was able to deal with quite easily. Then I started fighting Icetooth (I think that's his name). Even though he's a CEB, my CM cuts right though it, making it quite irrelevant. The trick is to keep moving and shooting all the time. If he stoops moving you can bet he's gonna heal himself. So Icetooth was killed in a matter of minutes, he didn't heal once. And what does he drop? Well, it's the fourth piece. :) This leads me to believe it's random which of them drops the body part since I'm quite sure Flamefinger has dropped it before. Even though I have killed them all well over a hundred times this is something I don't take notice of. This also means I can continue to Mephisto even if I am unable to kill the rest of the Council. The fifth quest won't be done, but what else can I do?
It turns out I was worried for nothing. Flamefinger went the same was Icetooth did, the same tactic. Ismail Vilehand is another matter though. His Extra Fast ability makes him real tough. And Tempting Fate is out of the question since that means he will stop, meaning chance of healing... :( And I only have fast run/walk which makes it so much harder :( So killing him took a LONG time. And on top of that my previous statement turned out to be incorrect. He healed twice while chasing me, meaning moving all the time. So I would like to extend that statement to say that they very rarely heal while they are moving. And on second thought it might also have something to do with the chilling... But anyway, the Council is killed and I'm getting ready for Mephisto.
While in town I gambled for a ring and came up with a quite nice one. The important mod was fast cast rate, it took me down to 8 FPC. I noticed the difference right away. The ring also had some resistance to poison and cold.
Though I do have 20 less mana and faster cast rate from this, so yet again I have some very minor mana problems against bosses. But this isn't really any problem. I also will have two additional points to Warmth soon from the Izuael quest.
Bremm Sparkfist had some pretty nasty abilities. He was a MSLEB!!! Probably the most dangerous mods he could get. One of his bolts took about 40% of my life. If I were to get caught or screw up in some other way I would be dead in less than a second. He was also Aura Enchanted, but I'm not sure which aura it was, either way I didn't notice any affect from it.
The point is, I was not willing to fight this fearsome creature. Like I said, a couple of fast hits and I would without a doubt be dead from his lightning, and that is with maxed lightning resistance and some mdr! I did try to fight him for a short while, but it was just too dangerous. So I decided to park him. It's not an easy decision to do, but I feel it is the only reasonable solution. Sure it is possible I could have taken him, but I figure it's less than 50% chance I would survive the fight. I am NOT willing to fight him at those odds.
The other council-members isn't really worth mentioning after talking about an MSLEB. :) They took some time, but they weren't especially dangerous if you took it easy.
So I went for Mephisto. I parked him on the other side of the river and took him from the other side as usual. The uberdrop was Doomslinger, a quite nice bow for a low-level amazons. It can also be used with skills like GS to pierce though enemies. I could actually have used it to pierce enemies with Ice Bolt, but it wouldn't have been worth it. I don't have the dex for it either way.
Act 3 was finished at level 36 with the following stats and items:
45 (+16=61) str, 25 (+9=34) dex, 135 vit and 60 energy. Life: 604, Mana: 194.
Ice Bolt @ 20 - 22-24 damage and 32.6 chill duration, Warmth @ 14 and CM @ 7 - 63%.
Lightning and cold resistance maxed, fire and poison around 40.
Dragon's Yew Wand of the Magus: Fastest cast rate and +38 mana.
Magefist.
Rare Serpent Skin Armor: Poison length reduced by 50%, 16% cold resistance, 13% fire resistance, +57 life and requirements -20%
Rare Light Belt: 47% lightning resistance, 24% cold resistance, 29% fire resistance, +5 life, +16 str and attacker takes damage of 1.
Rare Bone Shield: 60% blocking, mdr 2, poison resistance 19%, cold resistance 26%, attacker takes damage of 1 and +27 life.
Rare Cap: +38 life, poison length reduced by 75%, 6% lightning resistance, 9% cold resistance and 11% fire resistance.
Rare Heavy Boots: Fast run/walk, 13% poison resistance, 17% lightning resistance, 9% fire resistance, +22 life and +9 dex.
Rare Ring: +1 mana, fast cast rate, 19% cold resistance, 19% poison resistance and +1 light radius.
Rare Ring: 46% lightning resistance, +37 life and 2-1 damage.
Nightmare - Act 4
Just to give you a figure of how tough the enemies are I counted the shots it took to kill them:
Corpulents: 25
Doom Caster: 15
Doom Knight: 20
Flesh Spawner 25
Flesh Beast: 5
Of course it's not exactly those figures, sometimes it's a little more, sometimes a little less.
Izuael took me 20 minutes in normal difficulty. I took time this time too, it only took me half of that - 10 minutes. This may seem very strange at first, but when you think about it two things come to mind. First I have CM which is an unbelievable help. Second, I have much more mana this time, so in general I don't have to worry about my mana even against Izuael. Though without the CM it may well have taken me like 30-40 minutes... The two points went into Warmth. Not cause I need it, but because that's the only thing I can put them into since Ice Bolt is maxed and CM can't be higher than what it is considering my clvl.
Those Stygian Hags sure are sent from Hell. They seem particular keen on giving birth to their minor versions then the other versions of them (Grotesques and all those). On average they give birth to maybe 6-7 minor versions before I am able to take them. Sometimes up to 15!!! It could take me up to two-three minutes killing one of them if I was unlucky. And don't even speak about when they come in groups of two or more (not that that happens often since I've made it a habit of moving sloooooowly since a long time back). The time grows exponentially for a character with as weak offensive power as mine with the number of Stygian Hags I face.
And their quite high hp and cold resistance doesn't exactly make things better.
The whole lower part of River of Flame took me about two hours to clear! And almost only because of the damn Grotesques. They aren't as bad as Stygian Hags, but there are much more in RoF. Hephasto was a piece of cake. He was Cursed, Extra Strong, Magic Resistant and Cold Enchanted. Sure, it may sound tough, but what good is the cursing if he can't hit me? :) And when he's chilled his attack animation is quite slow, so tempting fate on him is easy. Of course if he had been Extra Fast I would have been in some trouble. Not to mention Teleport, if he had had that, I would without a doubt have to reroll the map, hoping for better abilities (well, better for me, worse for him :)). I didn't bother making full rejuvenation potions from the gems, I have enough as it is. And after some VERY long thinking I've decided not to enter Hell difficulty, but more on that later.
The rest of the Act was actually not that hard considering it IS the "finale" for this character. The thing that's often most dangerous about upper RoF and CS is all the elemental attacks. However with my good resistances and 600+ life the elemental attacks are the least of my troubles. Upper RoF took maybe 30 minutes clearing.
Just like in Normal I cleared the whole CS before opening any seals. I started with the left seals, those ghost-like creatures. Basic fighting here: shoot, run, shoot, run and so on.
Lord de Seis was the second seal I went for. He was a little worse then the last seal, but still no real threat. As I mentioned elemental attacks aren't dangerous to me with my resistances and high life. I should also mention that I used full rejuvenation potions quite frequently here, because I needed them? No. But because I had like 70 of them at this time and since I had already decided not to go to Hell-difficulty I could waste them without thinking. I used them in every situation where I needed mana or life. Because of this I may just imagine CS was easy...
Anyway... The Infector was actually the hardest of them. His speed makes him hard to me, although his weak offensive power still makes him a minor threat. I solved it this way:
You may see that he does have Teleportation, but strangely enough he didn't teleport anything that I can remember. The way I got them there was the old tp-trick. I laid a tp there and then fooled the enemies after me to the tp where I went thought it to town. From there I took the wp and went back to CS on foot. After that it was just to stand there and shoot them without any danger.
So what about Diablo? Not much to say here. Diablo is a very easy boss to distance-fighters in general considering that he is the final boss of the game. None of his attacks were dangerous to me. So I just ran around him, shooting when I had the possibility. The whole fight took maybe 10 minutes.
All in all the final part of the game (for this character) was somewhat of an anticlimax. The earlier part of Act 4 was a lot harder in certain situations.
Diablo was killed at level 38 with the following stats and items:
45 (+16=61) str, 25 (+9=34) dex, 145 vit and 60 energy. Life: 626, Mana: 198.
Ice Bolt @ 20 - 22-24 damage and 32.6 chill duration, Warmth @ 17 and CM @ 9 - 69%.
Lightning and cold resistance maxed, fire and poison around 40.
Dragon's Yew Wand of the Magus: Fastest cast rate and +38 mana.
Magefist.
Rare Serpent Skin Armor: Poison length reduced by 50%, 16% cold resistance, 13% fire resistance, +57 life and requirements -20%
Rare Light Belt: 47% lightning resistance, 24% cold resistance, 29% fire resistance, +5 life, +16 str and attacker takes damage of 1.
Rare Bone Shield: 60% blocking, mdr 2, poison resistance 19%, cold resistance 26%, attacker takes damage of 1 and +27 life.
Rare Cap: +38 life, poison length reduced by 75%, 6% lightning resistance, 9% cold resistance and 11% fire resistance.
Rare Heavy Boots: Fast run/walk, 13% poison resistance, 17% lightning resistance, 9% fire resistance, +22 life and +9 dex.
Rare Ring: +1 mana, fast cast rate, 19% cold resistance, 19% poison resistance and +1 light radius.
Rare Ring: 46% lightning resistance, +37 life and 2-1 damage.
So what about Hell-difficulty? Well after playing certain areas, for instance lower RoF I have come to the conclusion that this character CAN NOT do Hell-difficulty simply because her attack-power are to weak. My opinion of this matter have changed all through the game, going from doing Hell to not doing Hell several times. But after playing Act 4 NM I realise I wouldn't stand a chance, and on top of that it would be boring as hell... These latest Acts has been on the limit to boring considering the ridiculous difference in their life and my attack-power.
So... this is all from me now.
- BelTorok
| BelTorok's first Hero, the late Count Yrok |
| The Hall of Heroes | Sirian's Diablo II Page |