NIGHTMARE

Hotfoot began Nightmare at clvl 27 with the following skills:

Warmth @ 10 Blaze @ 8 Firewall @ 4 Meteor @ 1 Enchant @ 1 Fireball @ 1 Inferno @ 1 Firebolt @ 1 ...and 3 skill points saved.

Str 75, Dex 25, Vit 45+ (don't remember exactly), Nrg 75+

Equipment:

Strong Field Plate of Mammoth, DR 155, +39 Life - bought from Halbu Amber Great Helm of Tiger, 49% Lit Resist, +23 Life - bought from Hratli Rare Tower Shield, 33 DR, +20ish Cold Resist, +10ish Fire Resist - dropped by Meph Boots, DR 2, +22 Fire Resist, Fastest Run - gambled in Act 2 Chain Gloves of Tiger, +29 Life - bought from Asheara Rugged Plated Belt of Stability - +7 Stamina, Fastest Hit Recovery - gambled in Act 4 Dragon's War Scepter of the Wolf, +33 Mana, +18 Life - bought from Ormus Ring, +34 Life, +14% chance for magic item - found in Act 4 Rare Ring, +39 life, +28 Fire resist, +22 Poison Resist, +47% gold, and two other minor bonuses - Diablo Rare Amulet, +38 Life, +11 Cold Resist, +2 LR, +24% chance for magic item, two minor bonuses - De Seis

Stashed: 1 flawless diamond, 1 normal diamond (got none from Hell Forge), 1 perfect skull (saved for emergency cash item), plenty of full rejuvs.

Full-clearing the game, but only one run through each area. Number of deaths incurred in Normal: zero

...

Hotfoot began nightmare the same way she ended Normal: on a roll. Blaze ate up Act 1, and Firewall chewed through what Blaze did not. Meteor took care of quill rats and their ilk, and frankly, I used it on a fair number of zombie types as well, because it was sometimes painfully slow waiting for them to walk into Blaze.

I'd spent my concentration gambling for Magefist. I'd gambled just a few times on boots and belt, and turned up "good enough" items there for the time being. So 90% or more of my surplus gold went to gambling for Magefist, the other 10% was frustration spending on boots and belts when too much time went by without any Light Gauntlets being offered.

Nothing gave me any troubles in Act 1 until I got to the Catacombs and faced multple boss packs of Dark Shamen and Tainted/Afflicted. I really could have used Hydra here, but... I made do on Firewall. Andariel was an anticlimax. I took more damage from the fires on the floor than I did from her, and she died quickly (for an Act boss) despite her max fire resistance.

In Act 2, I still had not reached clvl 30. I did the Sewers with Firewall and Blaze... ugh. This was some real work against the Burning Dead. Had to lure Radament's minions far far away from him to take him on. On the up side, found a gem shrine in the sewers, and traded in my rare shield for a socketed tower I had found in Act 1 and saved. With one perf gem socketed, the shield made up for the Nightmare resistance penalty, quite nearly, at least in Lightning, which is what I cared most about. Remember, I already had some resists on the shield, but... overall, this was slightly better and I was happy. I had only found two gem shrines in Normal, and it had upgraded a flawed diamond I'd made from the three chips I'd found all the way to a flawless. I'd also gotten three flaweds in acts 3 and 4 to make one normal. Now I had a normal left, and one perf diamond socketed.

Out in the desert, I finally reached clvl 30, and got both Fire Mastery and Hydra. A short time later, I finally hit on Magefist, and this virtually instantly took me from wimpy to slvl 1+1 Fire Mastery and Hydra, with MAJOR damage boosts to both my Blaze and Firewall, and even my slvl 1+1 Meteor had some teeth back now. :) But wait, it gets even better. I started gambling boots and belts again, and well before I reached clvl 31, I hit the jackpot on boots: rare light plated, fastest run, 44% Lit Resist, 26% Cold Resist, 12% Fire Resist! I also hit a rare plated belt with +17 life, 19% fire resist, and three minor bonuses. I put the belt of stability away and went with the new belt.

Level 30 was the coming of age for Hotfoot. After what I had thought was "cleaning up" in act 1, I now began to truly stomp the game in Act 2 in convincing fashion, having gotten many good things going in the span of just 1 level, from new skills to magefist to shield and boots. Even burning dead and Hell Clan were mowed down by my mighty flames! Level 2 of claw viper temple was a little bit exciting, but no close calls. Arcane and the false tombs were all uneventful, except for a teleporting Ancient Kaa... but even that was mowed down without so much as breaking half a sweat, by slvl 4+1 Hydra with 4+1 Fire Mastery. Duriel was Blaze bait, he dropped a weapon I sold, and it was on to Act 3!

From Ormus, I bought myself a Wyrm's bone wand of Magus, giving me 49 mana and Fastest Cast. This further aided my pet summonings, and the increasing Fire Mastery was steadily adding damage to my Blaze, as well, so it was keeping up with the times. Very little in Act 3 gave me any trouble. However, once again my Gidbinn ring was trash and I sold it.

The Tree Leapers were a serious problem, though. Nasssty things, those. I killed them mostly with blaze, just as I had in Normal, and just ran far, and fast, and kept doing it, using blaze and more blaze. It worked without any close calls, so I just kept doing it. Only had to face the leapers in one area, Lower Kurast.

Battlemaid Sarina and crew, I slew with a massive blaze pile and hydra pack I prepared at the entrance, and lured them to. No sweat, really. Dangerous, but deftly handled. The rest of the Kurast temples went the same way... except for two. The Disused Reliquary in Upper Kurast, had an archer boss pack near the entrance (thankfully not AT the entrance) and hits from that boss were taking about 150 damage PER. I got hit twice in a row once and could have been killed. A full rejuv fixed that, however, but it was a wake up call for sure. Slew that bunch and things went OK. Then in the Ruined Fane out on the causeway, I go down the stairs and am met immediately in the first room by a Wailing Beast boss pack, Fire Enchanted (my nemesis) and also Holy Freeze aura. I got scared and pulled out, back up the stairs. I went to town and hired a cold merc, then went back there to test my mettle. I go down in and am quickly surrounded. My merc has a couple of them frozen, but I am trapped. The boss is pounding the merc, not me, and the merc bites it. I am rapid-casting my slvl 1+1 Meteor, and I end up drinking 1 half rejuv and 5 full rejuvs, but the meteors smash most of the minions and I am free. My only option: deeper into the temple. I wake up some serpent magus, some flesh archers, I've got Holy Freeze FEB on my tale and there are vampire lords raining meteors down in my wake. I run and do my quick-double-back standard blaze tactics and chew through most of the chasers on my rear. I ended up fleeing into a room with just two vampires, and frankly, kicked their butts. The only close call was right at the stairs my second time down, getting surrounded. After that, no more close calls, no more potions used.

Having beaten this nasty of a stairs trap in Nightmare, my confidence was soaring high! High indeed. No deaths recorded yet, and really only three close calls, none of them so bad as to have worried me that I was not going to make it through.

Travincal is one of my favorite fights because it's very very fast-paced but most of the enemies are spellcasters, and you can run all over the place fighting them by the seat of your pants with only minimal threat of being swarmed under by mobs of meleers. So it went here, and I kept the Council caged in the temple while I achieved tactical victory over the area in dramatic stick-n-move fashion, blazing and calling on my pets and having a blast. :)

The council was frankly quite tough. Many times I fought them with hydra and firewall, and many times they healed themselves. Both Toorc and Ismael were LEB and Geleb was Extra Fast. Yikes. :) But I kept them caged and simply persisted until I got a lucky stretch where I managed to do enough damage to them to overwhelm their healing. Another stunning and deathless victory for Hotfoot! :)

The Durance was business as usual, and down on level 3, Bremm was Magic Resistant. I mere ran in circles, his sparks spewing like wild, until blaze and a few hydras took him out. Maffer was Cursed, in addition to his usual Extra Fast Extra Strong, and so I was in deep deep nastiness there. If he had managed to hit me, it might have been a one-shot kill. Two hits in a row meant certain death. I blazed, I ran, I ran and I blazed and I even let my blaze run out on me without refreshing it more than once, as I dared NOT stop running until he paused to heal or to raise his own hydras. THEN I would refresh. But I did it. I killed him, and he did not hit me. Wyand took longer than the other two but was frankly so much less dangerous that it was almost a relief to fight him. And Mephisto... LOL! Hotfoot's pets ate that poor son of a bitch while she filed her nails and brushed her hair and picked lint out of her belly button. :)

As you can see in the first picture, I got Meph into this corner and then without any risk to Hotfoot from there on, merely continued to cast more and more hydras through the doorway, just inside. There are many MANY more hydras than you can see in the picture, but... only a few were in my char's line of sight. That ocean of blood on the floor shows how many hits Meph had already taken. And in the picture below, you can see that he never made it out of that corner alive.

Meph dropped me a rare ring with 40% Poison Resist, 28% Fire Resist, -1 damage, +5 Stamina, and 52% gold

So it was on to Act 4, and my true nemesis. I knew that this would be the hardest part of nightmare, and I was right. Fresh out of the gate, I am mobbed by Cliff Lurkers. There are doom knights with them, and Venom Lords. Great, just GREAT, the worst fire resistant mob combination the game can possibly throw at me! I am sprinting at full speed back and forth across the front of the Outer Steppes, now, with dozens of enemies on my heels. There are cliff lurker CHAMPIONS in the pack, and every time I take a hit from a leaper that catches up to me or a knight I run past too closely, it is a life-and-death situation. I realized that I was more vulnerable than I expected, because every time I did take a hit, I was stopped dead in my tracks, stunned HARD despite having over 360 life, and the rest of the swarm gained ground on me. I decided I should switch back to my stability belt at the next opportunity.

Well round and round I went, counterclockwise, running a blaze trail in a line along the wall near the gate, then into the left corner, down about one screen length, then in a line parallel to the first across about 2/3 of the Steppes, then up and back down, two parallel trails just outside the entrance. I stayed as close to that gate as I safely could, trying desperately not to wake up anything else but also having to stay ahead of the massive mob. If this had been a 4-player or larger game, this would have been truly a nightmare situation, never-ending life-and-death chase by a massive mob. I was able to walk enough to refresh stamina, to refresh blaze, but I only rarely had enough extra time to double back on my trail to strengthen the fires.

Things started dying eventually. A knight here or there, a venom lord or two, then more and more, until mostly what was left was leapers, those leaper champs, and a few new arrivals. A few leapers died, then a few more, and finally the mob was down to about a dozen and some change. I stayed ahead, I ran, I ran and ran, and finally there was nothing left standing except for me. My confidence, once again, was boosted, and I was riding high. Massive hairball and I'd come through it just fine, with a few close calls but I survived.

I made the egregiously overconfident decision to stick with the rare belt instead of going back to the stability belt. All that work and I'd still only cleared a small fraction of the Steppes.

Onward I went, cautiously at first, waking just a few then retreating with blaze into the cleared area and blazing until I killed them all. This was slow going, and not entirely risk free, as even just one leaper could get in a lick on me, and if more were following, stun was a problem that could get me into deeper troubles.

I had one scare where I woke up some leapers but didn't realize it, and they fell in behind me, cutting off my retreat. I was penned against the outer wall by venom lords and realized that I had to RUN past all these foes, deeper into uncharted area, and that a mob in front of me might cut me off and completely surround me. Well, that didn't happen, I managed to weave between monsters, but I did wake up more leapers, and another real hairball developed with me only narrowly avoiding a crisis. This should have been warning enough to me that my tactic here was flawed, but I still didn't heed. I'd grown overconfident in blaze, having had to complete this fight on Normal without any Hydra, and this caused me to develop an overaggressive stance that relied too much on pure running.

Even so, I was doing all right. However, it was taking too long, at least five to ten times as long per kill as any previous areas of the game. Much of that was the fire resistance, but some was the terrain along with the size, speed, and to-hit accuracy of these foes.

Having survived a second hairball, I made the decision to try and save more time by stirring up more hairballs. After all, it took nearly the same amount of time to kill twenty as it did to kill five. And as long as I stayed ahead of the pack and drew them out to open ground, I would be perfectly safe.

And it worked that way the first two times I pulled it off. My pace had quickened, and brilliant me decides that if a mob of twelve to fifteen is good, then a mob of thirty, like I had fought at the very beginning, ought to be even better. That was the theory.

The reality is that I got some lurkers behind me along the far right-side wall, and when I went to turn back inside, I was cut off by a pack of venom lords. I had to press deeper, and woke up more leapers, which were too numerous to move around. Now I am truly on the run, desperately weaving between more and more critters with more and more of them on my tail, and I end up running all the way along the entire north wall, moving clockwise, eastward, then into the corner and a complete and utter panic. I'm desperately trying to just keep running, expecting an opening to come somewhere, at some time, giving me an out to get back to open ground where I can run this mob to death.

The opening never came. I got completely boxed in just a few steps short of the stairs down to the Plains of Despair... and this was not the kind of despair I was trying to reach! I'm still moving, but walking now, as I hit my town portal hotkey (don't have those on other chars, but I did for this one, because using only the fire tree means I really only have four skills I actually USE, so why not key up some town portal?) but I am unable to step into the portal because critters are all around me and the game thinks I am trying to attack them. Why it would give precedence to THAT over stepping into a portal, I do not know, but it did. I am drinking potions now. I tried recasting my portal but it still will NOT let me step into it. I give up on that and try Meteor. I'm desperate now and know that this is the end, but maybe I can kill a few and get into the portal. After all, that worked when I got trapped in the maggot queen's room with Thrower: just stay calm, stay alive, kill something and try the portal again. But now I'm completely surrounded and there are venom lords breathing on me and smacking me with their swords, and there are leapers behind me. The meteors are hitting, and I am drinking more potions, but I am getting hit and hit again and again, drinking, my life orb is totally wacked out and I have NO idea how much actual life I have left (gee, thanks, BLIZZ, for THAT brilliant lag-coverup contribution to SINGLE PLAYER you blundering idiots) and still I am alive, still casting meteors, still getting hit...

...and then I died. Blood-curdling sorcie scream, red screen, "You have Died" message. The works.

It was hubris. Impatience, overconfidence, tactical booboos, and a determination to push the limits to find out exactly what they were. How much was too much? I found out. :)

Poor Hotfoot. Her first death, and it was entirely my fault.

Luckily, this being my first Hot Babe, and me learning the ins and outs of the style for the first time, as well as full-clearing the game and shying away from NO fights, she is not Hardcore. I restarted, and joy of joys, my body was hopelessly mobbed. I therefore had to full-clear the last 45% of the Outer Steppes in full naked glory, just me and my 200ish life and mana. No faster cast items, no faster walk, no +1 fire skills, no mana regen boost, and no resistances. I did put on the stability belt, though. And that and three more full rejuvs saved me from further deaths, as I DID get hit a few times. However, I had learned my lesson, and the rest of the fighting proceeded with me going into full retreat at first encounter. I fought them one at a time when I could, and three to five at a time for the most part, with no more rush to wake up more in a foolish attempt to be more time efficient. I managed to do it naked, without help from items without dying again, which taught me at least as much as the death had.

I recovered my body and on to the Plains. Burning Souls, Flesh Spawners, and Doom Knights, plus one Doom Caster boss pack. Not too bad, certainly MUCH easier to kill than leapers and nowhere near the threat level, but not exactly risk-free. I ate a lot of lightning despite how well Hydra roots out and chews up gloam types. I lvled to 36, found and slew Izzy, pumped my Blaze up to slvl 10, and... the game crashed on me.

Arrrgh. I had not only died, but now I had to go through the Steppes again. And the stairs to the plains were quite literally exactly opposite from the Pando Fortress gate, so... I had to reclear the entire Outer Steppes from scratch.

Ugh. :)

The opening was just as hairy, just as dangerous, now with Doom Knight champs, but with Doom Casters instead of Venom Lords -- some relief, but not much, as Doom Casters do have some fire resist. Oh yeah, and leapers. My pals, the Cliff Lurkers. We danced again, and a Doom Knight champ nearly killed me. But not quite. Not quite, and the marathon eventually ended with me the only thing left standing. This time I worked patiently, just one fight at a time, and had no close calls to speak of after the initial foothold was established.

Even so, this was a tactical failure. Looking back, it was a mistake to rely only on blaze to kill the leapers. I had shied away from meteor because it was now too weak (wouldn't have been if I had pumped it, but I hadn't), and I had shied away from hydra because it would push the leapers all over the damn place and keep them from following me neatly in the blaze trail. This was foolish. I'd locked myself into thinking blaze was the only defensive skill at hand, but in fact leapers automatically get knocked back ANY time they take a hit. Rapid fire hydras could have kept them off of me while I worked in a smaller space with blaze to pulverize the slow knights, and the lower-health balrog and finger mage types. Not having hydra available to me in Normal had done me a disservice. It had led me down a blind tactical alley, into thinking that blaze had worked there and would be the best choice to use here. It wasn't, and that along with some overconfidence got me killed.

If I am to succeed with a Hardcore Hot Babe, as I intend to do, I will have to do several things:

* I will have to forego full-clears. * I will have to use more than Blaze on leapers. * I will have to be willing to save and exit. Without teleport, there are bad situations that cannot be saved. In particular, any time something gets behind me and forces me into running headlong into uncharted enemy-occupied territory (Act 3 NM and later, for sure, maybe earlier too depending on how bad bad gets) it's panic time and time to get out BEFORE it's too late.

So I had one death, and also was forced by the game crash to redo an entire area and about 1/3 of another.

City of the Damned was a cakewalk by comparison, despite Abyss Knights. Hydras mean low-risk or even risk-free killing of slow enemies. Hell's mages are always a serious threat, but... I'll take them any day of the week instead of leapers!

The river was just as easy. Urdars, despite resistance, die quickly to blaze. So do Grotesques and their kiddies, who have no resistance. I had a pit lord boss pack, and that was some work, but overall not too bad. I found Hell Forge very early on in the River and Heph was a Teleporter. I decided to try my luck anyway. If anyone can beat a teleporting boss solo, it's a Hydra queen.

Twenty-five minutes later, I gave up. Just not enough damage quickly enough to take him down before that cheesy endless-healing effect would restore him. And one time he teleported right on top of me and I barely lived. I threw in the towel, restarted the game, and came back for him. So what is he now? The next-worst thing besides Teleporting: Extra Fast. Yummy yummy.

I wasn't in the mood to shy from the fight, though. NOW is the time to test the limits, before I get to Hardcore. Well... test them I did, and the answer I came up with is that I will quit-n-save if I run into a Heph like this in Hardcore. Despite having a NICE terrain lava patch to work around, Heph would roam all over the place and wander out of hydra range, and I'd have to go get him again. I tried not to. Tried waiting, tried running, tried other things, but he wouldn't come back unless he SAW me, and then it would be another life-and-death sprint trying to get him off my ass before my stamina ran out or I made a mistake. He got licks in on me at least five times, and though none were fatal, bad luck or a second hit would have killed me. Also, this fight WOULD have killed me online. Only a complete lack of any and all lag made a victory here possible.

Lessons learned in Normal were not forgotten. I took a town portal out of the CS when I opened the seals, and came back down via the waypoint. This kept me alive. And Diablo was frankly too easy. My pets humiliated him quite nearly as badly as they had Mephisto.

Hotfoot's nightmare run saw one death, which could have been avoided, and numerous close calls, almost all of them against Cliff Lurkers and Hephasto. I already mentioned all the significant gear upgrades I got: shield with one diamond, ring from Meph, and two good gambles: magefist and rare boots. Well, there was one other good gamble: a skull cap with 21 life, 27 lit resist, and -75% poison length. It was basically a weaker version of my main helm, but with poison reduction. I used it when facing abyss knights and oblivion knights, and planned to use it again in Hell mode, for the Lost City and Maggot Lair.

I tried many many times to upgrade my armor. I gambled for rare leathers, and looked at the merchants for any armors of colossus with resistance or other useful benefit. None turned up. So I kept that plate I bought from Halbu all the way through nightmare, and I also stashed that rare belt and was back to using the one with stability. Oh, there was one other development. The first ring I gambled, at clvl 31, was a Nagelring. So I stashed it and decided I'd try for a Stone. I spent at least a million on rings in the rest of Nightmare and got nothing for it. Nothing. Nothing good on belts or armor either. Some good helms popped up, but none good enough to keep. I got all my gambling luck in one short run in Act 2. So it goes.

I did also find one more diamond, and I got lucky with Hell Forge, getting two flawless diamonds. This left me with two flawless diamonds, two normal diamonds, and one perf socketed into my shield.

I pumped my Vit and Energy. Kept Vit at or above half of my Energy level, with life between 350 and 400 depending on gear, and mana above 300. Doesn't sound like much, I am sure, to those of you used to having a Stone or two, maybe a Frostburn, and pumping mana like wild to support Frozen Orb, but honestly it was plenty for this character. Blaze is the most mana-efficient killer there is, even beating out SF in single player for general fighting, and I could cast about 7 or 8 hydras then concentrate on blaze tactics while mana recharged. If I really needed more than 8 hydras, it was against a boss I couldn't kill with blaze, and that meant it wasn't aggressive enough to prevent me from safely standing back and adding another hydra to the fight every 4 seconds or so, with natural mana regen. Hephasto was the only exception here, and only because he wouldn't sit still like a good boy and let my pets hammer him. :)

Next up, Hell Difficulty...

- Sirian

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