I once heard Sirian saying "you can beat this game on a short sword and patience". Well... I decided to see if that was true :)
So I started up Diablo 2 and pick myself a hardcore paladin. Why a paladin? Well, because I never played one LOL!! Besides, they come with a short sword by default :) and figured that this was more in line with Ember's ideals, since he also used her initial firebolt staff all the way through normal difficulty. The next problem was the name. For some strange reason I pick Stockbroker. I don't know why so don't ask :)
So, what am I going to do? I plan to full clear normal difficulty using no magical attacks. No damaging auras, no blessed hammers, etc. All the dirty work will be done with the short sword which I started with, just like Ember cleared normal with her grand staff of Firebolt. I'll allow for some mercs to cooperate of course. If I manage to beat the game on normal, I'll imbue my short sword before going on to nightmare.
Now for the character build-up... I need to pump up my damage, so I'll use might. To second might, I'll see how things go with sacrifice, zeal, vengance and maybe conversion. If I ever decide to pick conversion, it will be strictly on nightmare and only if progress becomes impossible.
I'll spend a lot of time tanking monsters, since my low damage means I'll need lots of swings to kill them. Tanking needs high blocking and tons of life. (I'll completely disregard defense - it's worthless and even more in nightmare and hell.) A tower shield is far to heavy, so that's out of the question. I'll pump strenght to 34 just to use a large shield of deflecting. With some points in holy shield I'll reach maximum block. All the rest goes straight into vitality. 34 str, no dex, no mana, all vit.
To increase my sword's base damage I'll need something that adds to the short sword's default 2-7 damage. Bloodfist gloves will raise this damage to 7-8 or so and thus fits perfectly into my plan. I'll need to gamble them as soon as possible. Greyform is also on the plans. It's a dream armour and not many realize that. It fits extremely well into Stockbroker's build-up: it negates part of the sacrifice self-damage, provides some resists, dex and magic damage reduction. It's incredible how the lowly 10 def unique quilted armour of the peasant turns out to be probably the best armour for a melee character! OK, enough advertisement for Greyform :) Let's get down to business...
ACT I
Den of Evil quest and two level ups saw Stockbroker raise might to 3 and strenght to 34. I got swarmed a few times at the Cold Plains and things got scary when an extra strong boss & company came along. But I managed. The Cave was uneventful. Areas were being cleared steadily, no major problems. Foes were falling in 1-3 hits. I was afraid of getting swarmed again at Blood Raven, but I simply charged her and she went down with little complain :) In the Mausoleum Greyform pops out of a chest!! Goddie goddie :) I head on to the Stony Field, rushed to the waypoint and finished the session. (Yeah yeah I'm slow...eheh.)
New day dawns. Cleared Stony Field. Still going steadily. The Underground Passage was softer than usual... or maybe I was just being more careful than usual LOL :) Cleared Dark Wood no problem, but in the Hole level 2 a tough boss scratched me big time. I retreated to level 1, went to town rent a decoy and charged in. The merc distracted the boss for time enough for me to kill the mob and concentrate on him later. Eventually he perished and I moved on to the Tower. No problems there, nor at the Highlands or the Pit. I got to lev 12 and dumped one pt into zeal. Probably won't drop more than that... heard some horror stories of zeal-lock :) and it doesn't even increase the damage output. Cleared out the Inner Cloister, got the waypoint and got back to town for gambling. Took on three pairs of heavy gloves but no luck :( Meanwhile I bought a 55% blocking shield, which should be good for the moment. I have close to 200 life now, so I can afford to use sacrifice on the tougher monsters...
Ok now on to the barracks. Lots of archers but no real trouble here. Just zealed my way to the Smith. With 250 life at the time he never did enough damage to force a retreat. Down to the jail. Fouldog succumbed without much groaning. Up to the inner cloister. That silly cursed razor spine once killed my sorcie in one hit!! I simply charged him three times and he was gone :) Opened the cathedral doors. Oh-oh... spectre boss pack after me (see picture 1). Impossible to split them up, so I had to take the bull by the horns. Drank a bunch of potions while tanking them. After a whiiiiiile they finally croaked. Easily the thoughest fight so far. And midly dangerous too - got to 1/2 life a few times. The low offense really was a problem here; their physical resistance negating my damage. Bone Ash died peacefully, so down to the catacombs. Some ratman bosses tried to mug me, but high life kept Stockbroker going without much trouble. Then came another tough fight. A stone skin shaman boss. I had to tank him again, while eating up fire from the minions. I eat up the whole belt and although there was really no big trouble here, the citters are becoming more and more difficult to kill. My offense goes up by 1-2 points at best per each level of might but the monsters gain a lot more hits. I really gotta get me a pair of Bloodfist... Been trying, but that old rat Gheed isn't cooperating. Anyway... the catacombs had a lot of bosses, but none really threatened Stockbroker. By this time I was using sacrifice on bosses and zeal on the rest, ocasionally drinking a mana potion. Eventually we come to Andariel. Swapped to poison gear, cleared the room and the floor, and opened the door. Some citters join the party. After some evasive manouvering I split Andariel from the minions and kill them. After that Andariel went down in 30 secs.
ACT II
Equipment: -
Helm: fastest hit recovery
Armour: Greyform
Shield: small shield of deflecting
Boots: faster run, 9% lighning resist
Belt: lightning 17%, life 14
Gloves: unimpressive rare chance gloves
Amulet: damage -1
Rings: of thawing, of radiance.
Down to the sewers. Bad news... zeal doesn't cut it. Takes 3-4 hits to kill burning dead archers. Stockbroker takes hits from many arrows. He's however 300+ hits now so he can do that, but I don't like it. Halfway through level 1 I switch to sacrifice. Sacrifice works nice; it just eats potions like there's no tomorrow. And I'm wearing Greyform, which kinda cuts down the self-penalty. But no problem. I make it to level 3 no sweat. Radament's mob is going to be a pain (he himself is not that hard). I'm thinking of going back & forth town to clear some corpses when I suddently find a combat shrine. Wow, that sure helps. I clear the way to Rada, get back and click the shirne and charge him. I still have to manouver a bit to avoid getting trapped, but in the end he's down without much trouble. At this stage I'm with 150% extra damage from might & 180% from sacrifice. Damage is 9-22 or so and I begin to feel the pinch. Stuff takes a bit to kill, even with sacrifice. I really ought to get myself a Bloodfist...
Anyway... cleared the rocky waste & stony tomb without major problems. Being a bit careful because my first character ever, an axe/mace/sword barbarian (lol) was for the first time killed by some beetle boss in the rocky waste, eheh. I proceed to the Dry Hills and dive into the Halls of the Dead. That was the first experience with those annoying unravelers and, as I expected, I was forced to go straight for the throat, e.g. kill the unraveler first, no matter what. If I ever get to nightmare this will become much more difficult. Maybe even impossible. Ember at least could hit them from afar, but Stockbroker has to get personal. Hum... I try hiring mercs but they don't survive much time. Things die and I still progress easily, it's getting slower and slower.
Meanwhile I cubed a 4% mana leech ring. That might be handy when vengance arrives. I'm not too impressed with zeal, so I hope vengance will be more efficient. Up on the Dry Hills, on the way to the Far Oasis I found a +1 to max damage ring!! That brought my max damage from 22 to 27 :P It's interesting to see how those "crappy" mods actually turn out to be extremely kick ass for these underpowered setups :) But that wasn't all. On my way to the maggots I found a +3 min damage ring!! And just before going into the maggot lair I finally gambled Bloodfist!! All of a sudden the tide had changed. From 9-22 sacrifice damage I went to a whooping 46-51!! And even zeal became playable again. That was precisely the boost I needed to my morale. Stockbroker dived into the lair and, quite frankly he was OWNING. Big maggots 2 hits, the rest 1 hit. Coldworm took about 10 hits. It became so easy that I began to wonder if the whole adventure was worthy of the Hall of Heroes :) I grabbed the staff and head on to the Lost City. The City and the ancient tunnels gave no problem, except for an annoying stone skin boss which took thrice the time to kill. Found the Valley of Snakes, put on cold resist gear and dive again. No unravelers yay! For Fangskin I put on my best lightning resist gear, hired a merc and rushed to the top corner (Sirian's suggestion - eheh). Not much of a problem, despite 21 lightning resist only. Picked up and put on the Viper amulet. Palace was extremely boring, except for the first level of the harem. It had a big room PACKED with cold horror mages. I cleared it, but chilled during the whole process :)
Somewhere in the middle of all this I leveled to 18 and finally put a point on vengance (and another on blessed hammer - though I won't use it - as pre-requesite for holy shield.) Two words to describe vengance... it sucks! It's not auto-hit, the hits (if they hit at all!) are charged with 35% extra damage on only ONE element, not the three together as I thought from the description, and it drains my mana in like 3 seconds! Bah, what a waste of points. Still, it will be useful on stuff with has physical resistance, though. At this point doing damage was no problem, but actually HITTING the citters was becoming difficult. Dexterity is at base (+10 Greyform) and adding points there was out of the question. I then realized I'd have to specialize in a skill to get the AR bonus. I decided to pump up sacrifice, since it gives the most damage. It also has the priceless virtue of costing no mana. It should work fine as long as I have a potion on my belt :)
Vengance was useful in the Arcane sancturary. It dispatched the spectres faster than sacrifice. The sanctuary and the Summoner were another uneventful push-over. The canyon was also a push. The false tombs had some unravelers. Those are annoying, since the risk of getting swarmed is considerable. Actually I was close to being forced to save & exit when on one of them I got stuck in a room with lots of obstacles and an unraveler boss pack!! Fortunately I killed the boss quick enough to make a getaway though the hordes of burning skeletons. Phew! In another tomb I found the Face of Horror unique mask. That was cool, I could use that howling ability. The disadvantage is that it made Stockbroker look silly. DOOOH! I used it throughout the rest of the tombs. It was actually quite nice to spread out unravelers/apparitions and take them one by one :)
Finally I reached Duriel's lair. Easily the deadliest boss of the lot. The whole setup is designed to screw you up... no room for manouvers, annoying unholy freeze aura and high damage charge attack. I normally die to him with my softcore characters. I think the only one that didn't die to him was precisely my axe/mace/sword barb! Needless to say I was pretty scared. Bought all the +life gear I could at the merchants, gambled all I had in hopes of some decent +life item (no luck), refreshed the mercs a couple of times to get a large shield of deflecting (no luck again - I'd have to do with 55% small shield block), hired a merc and there I go. I was lev 22, with 498 life and inventory full of rejuvs. Lets see what happens... He comes straight for me. OOPS... he hits me, I hit him. He freezes me. ARGH I hate that. I swing at him like a dizzy broom. He hits me again, I drink a rejuv. Hum... he's not doing much damage. Great, but I'm not taking any chances - I chug out all the rejuvs I had. After a while he finally concedes. Hurrah! This is has got to be one of the thoughest challenges of a melee character (the other is Hephasto) and Stockbroker passed with distinction. By the way, the merc survived! Duriel never swung at him :) (See picture 2)The so-called uberdrop was a crappy rare bastard sword. Packed up and moved to act III. I was so happy that I began to write up this episode immediately :) I start writing and after 10 secs Word crashes... I'll spare you the details. Reboot and check quest status... AAARGH! The game hadn't been saved. What's up with that Blizz!!!??? No save after THE most important quest!? Grrrrrr! Oh well... On the way back to the friggin tomb I gamble a nice +31 life rare skull cap. Hum.. maybe that crash wasn't too bad after all. Clear tomb, hire merc and here we go... AGAIN! Dudu charges the merc and RIP. I repeat potion-chugging procedures and after some stressing moments he croakes for good, and drops a ring. It is a winner! +3 min dam, dam reduced by 2, +mana/life/AR!! I am now lev 22 with sacrifice lev 5, dam 51-56 @ 67% to hit. Swapping the silver ring I was wearing would give 66-71 damage, but I'd drop to 57% to hit. Heck, lets keep the other +3 min dam ring for bosses. OK time to move on to act III AND SAVE THE BLOODY GAME :)
ACT III
Equipment: -
Helm: rare skull cap fast recov, 31 life, thorns 5
Armour: Greyform
Shield: small shield of deflecting
Boots: heavy boots fast recov, lightning 32%, dex 9, chance 32%
Belt: lightning 17%, life 14
Gloves: Bloodfist
Amulet: damage -1
Ring 1: silver ring 41% AR
Ring 2: 19 AR, 24 mana, 37 life, +3 min dam, dam -2 (courtesy of Duriel)
Face of Horror on stash for the Kurast temples :)
I start out and check the merchants for large shields. Aeshara has a devious of deflecting! *Smacks Aeshara* :) Spider forest was quite uneventful. One hit for small citters, two big ones. I find the Arachnid lair and go carefully. Well, before I know it I get swarmed. AGH. The boss is around and I have to drink quite a lot of potions. Eventually things settle down. This is by far my character with the most life on normal difficulty and I don't regret a single bit of it :) Later I find the spider cavern, containing Sszraak the burning. I have a lot of respect for this boss. Going down slowly, step by step to avoid getting swarmed... AGAIN. One step took me too far and I awoke the whole Sszraak mob at the same time!! AGH! Here they come at full speed. I hit one, hit two, get swarmed... retreat... *chop*, *aaah!*, *chop*. I'm forced all the way back to the entrance. I manouver back and forth a lot and manage to kill 1, 2 minions. More manouvering and all the minions fall. Afterwards Sszraak goes down as well. Ufff. I'm pulling off a lot of stunts here, with all this tanking. I won't be able to do the same in nightmare, so I better start getting clever! Back to town I gamble Nightsmoke. That's a neat belt. The 50% dam to mana will be helpful to refil the orb for holy shield. It has also 3 rows and reduces damage by 2. Damage is cut by 5 at the moment (belt, ring, ammy). The +mana and resists are just a bonus right now.
The great marsh was a push, as was the flayer jungle. In the middle of the jungle I level to 24. Put a point into holy shield and start using it. Damn... it wears out in no time and I can't recast that often, even with Nightsmoke. But I'll dump a few extra points here, so that won't be much of a problem later. I'm aiming at reaching the 75% block cap with it. The Gidbin pack went down in 2-3 hits. I check the ring and... Ormus you da man! A 105% AR ring with other goodies! Just what I needed :) Now I hit 74% of the time. I get the quest merc, Telash (cold mage) and go down to the flayer dungeon. This is another scary area. My tweaker sorcie died here a bunch of times on hell :( Taking no risk, I put on a spare pair of ruby boots to max out fire resist. All goes well. Telash's freeze comes in VERY handy. In no time Endugu is slain. Telash finds a nice spot vs. Stormtree and survives the fight! However, his triumph was short-lived. When entering lower Kurast we wake up a boss pack of zakarumites and again get swarmed. I survive after some potion drinking, but poor Telash can't do the same (damn it Blizz, that sucks!!) and goes down. Embittered by the fall of my comrade I get the waypoint and end the session :(
The sun rises again. I clear lower Kurast with little trouble, as well as the Bazaar (used vengance on hell swarms). I'm still away from a level up so I might as well try the ruined temple now. The quest points will come handy for the other temples. I hire Jelani (cold) and down we go. A complete mess at the entrance: wailing beasts and a boss spider pack. We get swarmed and bail out just in time to save his butt. I then notice I had completely forgotten to put on Face of Horror, so I do that. It sure helped. We kill the arrival commitee and proceed to Sarina. No biggie here. I tank for Jelani while he freezes the girls. I get the book and on to the next temple. Another trap and this time Jelani has no chance. The mask scares away some minions but it wasn't enough. In any case I'm able to finish the job without much trouble. That mask is quite a nice item I tell you. Down the sewers. Nothing problematic (read: no mummies). The undead fetish were troublesome but never really threatened Stockbroker. Icewing cooperates by dropping a +3 min dam ammy. Cool :) Upper Kurast was a routine clearance as were the temples there and in the causeway.
Stockbroker enters the Travincal is immediately greeted by a mixed pack of hierophants, zealots and ghouls. Run around, swing here, swing there and a few minutes later all are dead. I clear out the area before tackling the council. I managed to take them out one by one and finished them in realtive quietness. Smash the orb and down to the durance. Steady progress, citters taking 1-2, sometimes 3 hits to die. Picked up lightning resist gear, trop up Face of Horror and tackle Bremm Sparkfist. Some ghouls come also. I let them get behind me and a corner. Then I hit them, they flee to the corner and get stuck :) Nice way to trap the blood lords - courtesy once again of the mask. (See picture 3 for an example of this.) Bremm took 10 hits to kill. I drank two reds only. Maffer Dragonhand was taunted to the entrance hall, lured into a corner, trapped and slain there. Wyand Voidbringer was slain in his own room without even getting a swing at me. Swap to cold resist gear and take on Mephisto. Lured him into Maffer's room when I began to hit him. He has some sort of melee attack which forced me to drink an occasional rejuv, but other than that he posed no threat. The uberdrop was so unimpressive I completely forgot what it was. Ah, yes. It was some lame rare gothic shield.
ACT IV
Equipment: -
Helm: rare skull cap fast recov, 31 life, thorns 5
Armour: Greyform
Shield: small shield of deflecting
Boots: heavy boots fast recov, lightning 32%, dex 9, chance 32%
Belt: Nightsmoke
Gloves: Bloodfist
Amulet: of excellence, min dam +3
Ring 1: 105 AR, lightning 11% and some other lesser mods
Ring 2: 19 AR, 24 mana, 37 life, +3 min dam, dam -2
Face of Horror and specific resist gear on stash.
Sacrifice @ 6
Zeal & vengance @ 1
Holy shield @ 2
Might @ 12
1 pre-requesites
STR @ 34, rest to vitality.
I start the steppes and notice I'm taking more damage than usual. Since the citters have more hits and take 2-3 swings to die, this might be due to sacrifice. I decide to try out a 5% life leech amulet that I had cubed. Results were encouraging and I proceed to use it. Clear the steppes without problems, although I drew spawners, yuck! Zeal helps clearing the pups, though. I found a combat shrine on the steppes. Izual will be lured there for fast dispatchment :) The plains also go steadily. Found Izual and carried out my plan. I saved the two points for later, should I decide to go with conversion on nightmare. The city also posed no problem. Now to the river. I get the most annoying of draws: maggots (I hate them) and grotesques (agh!). While trying to speed up things I got a bit reckless and got swarmed a couple of times, but 550+ life is hard to take down, especially with a belt full of rejuvs :) I was planning to reach 26 before I went down to Hephasto, but while clearing the passage to the hellforge he makes a sudden appearance! I manage to evade him and pause to think. Now or later? Fate seems to be asking for me to meet my destiny now, so I say "what the heck, lets do it!" With all the +life gear I had I came to 648 life. Will that be enough? We'll see.
I face him and draw first blood. Take some chunks of him before he manages to pass my holy shield and curse me. He only takes 60-100 life when cursed, but I'm taking no chances. Back to town to clear the curse. Rinse and repeat. Two minutes later he's dead. Not much of a threat after all. I smash the soulstone and get one ruby and two semi-diamonds. I might use those to cook up a +AR/life helm so I keep them. I've been gambling for short swords meanwhile - in case Charsi blows my imbue for nightmare :)
I continue to clear the river. The spawners are very annoying, but fortunately not dangerous at all. I zealed most of the pups while sacrificing the biggies. One monster drops a +1 paladin amulet and I swap to that - need it to bufferize holy shield, which still drops too often. The entrance to the chaos sanctuary is guarded by a fire enchanted venom lord boss. I tank him and his minions without major problems - Greyform rox!After 10 minutes I'm at the pentagram. At the right wing there's another combat shrine! Diablo will eat some of that. I take the opportunity to clear the right wing. While no oblivion curse overrides the shrine effect, it's all one-hit kills (damage 150-170, eheh). Next I clear the top wing and the left wing. I open the vizier seal and dispatch them with no problems. The vizier drops a kick ass rare flail. I take a shot at it and send it to Charsi with a note: "This is how I want my imbue to look like!":) Then comes De Seis. I'm a bit overconfident so I charge the mob arrogantly. I come down to 1/3rd health in 5 secs. OUCH!! (No screenie, sorry! Too busy to save my butt.) I flee to town decrepified under a shower of missiles and spirits. Phew! Serves me right for underestimating him. Stock up potions and here we go again. After some spirit dodging and tactical manouvers I split the pack, chase down the minions one by one and take De Seis last. Separate they are no problem, but taking them all at once is a death wish. By this time the combat shrine had regenerated and Infector took some of it.
OK, so back to town. I fly back to Lut Gholein to get me a coral helm. After some minutes I finally get one. I'm taking on the Lord of Terror with 598 life, 30 fire resist & 69 lightning resist. Magic damage -4 and damage reduced by 4. The combat shrine had regenerated again and I was ready to take Diablo. Biggest problem will be, as always, his lightning breath. Down we go...
I click on the shrine and tank him. To my amazement, his lightning breath was COMPLETELY nullified by the damage reduction gear. I would take at most 20-30 damage from a full breath. Incredible. (Picture 4 shows the most damage his breath could do.) The whole affair was a quick and enjoyable ownage :) The uberdrop was some lame rare greaves and great helm. I could never use those, but they sucked anyway.
After receiving the props from Tyrael I started new game and went back to Charsi to have my short sword imbued...
Dam 5-13
+1 baba skills. LOLOLOL!
-36 monster defense per hit
No monster heal
2-7 fire damage
+90 AR
SWEET! Just about as good as I could realistically hope for. Sacrifice damage went from 51-56 to 70-80. This was about the same percentage increase Ember had when she got fire mastery. I'll still be looking for a better sword, but I could do with this one for a long time.
Final notes: the ride through normal was slow but easy. All I needed was in fact some patience. Risked a bit - could have done things more carefully - but having 500 life lets you take some chances. In fact, all you need to beat normal is 500 life. It doesn't really matter what weapon or magic skill you use. 500 life enables you to keep control of all situations, and that's what I found to be the most important thing in hardcore - to keep control. My greatest worry for nightmare is that monsters will hit a lot harder. I've pulled a lot of tanking and that will probably be unfeasible in nightmare. The worst fight will be vs. Duriel, if I ever get there. For that one I have to get clever...
Count Stockbroker and his short sword will see you on nightmare.
- Whereagles
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