HELL - Act One

Hotfoot began Hell Difficulty at clvl 37 with the following skills:

Warmth @ 10
Blaze @ 10
Hydra @ 8
Fire Mastery @ 7
Firewall @ 4
Meteor @ 1
Enchant @ 1
Fireball @ 1
Inferno @ 1
Firebolt @ 1

Note: all skills +1 thanks to Magefist.

Str 75, Dex 25, Vit 60, Nrg 110

Equipment:

Strong Field Plate of Mammoth, DR 155, +39 Life - bought from Halbu in Normal
Amber Great Helm of Tiger, 49% Lit Resist, +23 Life - bought from Hratli in Normal
Gemmed Tower Shield, one perfect Diamond socketed, resists +17-18%
Rare Light-Plated Boots, Fastest Run, +26 Cold Res, +44 Lit Res, +14 Fire Resist - gambled in Act 2 NM
Magefist - gambled in Act 2 NM
Rugged Plated Belt of Stability - +7 Stamina, Fastest Hit Recovery - gambled in Act 4 Normal
Wyrm's Bone Wand of Magus, +49 Mana, Fastest Cast - bought from Ormus in NM
Ring, +34 Life, +14% chance for magic item - found in Act 4 Normal
Rare Ring, +39 life, +28 Fire res, +22 Poison Res, +47% gold, and two other minor bonuses - Diablo Normal
Rare Amulet, +38 Life, +11 Cold Res, +2 LR, +24% chance magic item, two minor bonuses - De Seis Normal

Stashed: 2 flawless diamonds, 2 normal diamonds, 1 perfect skull (saved for emergency cash item), plenty of full rejuvs, a few alternate pieces of jewelry, and a rare plated belt with +fire resist, +life and minor bonuses.

Full-clearing the game, but only one run through each area.

Number of deaths incurred in Normal: zero. Number of deaths incurred in Nightmare: one.

Imbues used: none

...

ACT ONE

Act 1 Hell was an interesting series of contrasts for Hotfoot. The monsters, of course, had a lot of health, but at this point Hotfoot had her Fire Mastery and Hydra both up to significant levels. There was no Hydra available the first two times through Act 1, and its presence here made a huge impact. I didn't have to chase Quill Rats, and I didn't have to hit them with Meteors. Just summon some pets and watch em burn. :)

(Note: I later found out that Fire Mastery, as of 1.03, did not boost hydra damage! I had not been able to tell this from using the spell, though. It would be VERY interesting to see Hydra in action with its damage nearly doubled, as it should be with clvl 8+1 fire mastery! The skill is already an uberskill, and that's with it broken. Once fixed, it should be far more effective and may not need as much help from Blaze or other defensive skills. The Fire Mastery wasn't wasted, though. It made my Blaze and Firewalls nearly double strength).

I leveled to 38 and got my DoE skill point at about the same time, taking Fire Mastery to slvl 8+1, and adding another point to Hydra.

One thing you notice right away, is that Fallen Shamen's Fire Resistance, here in Hell, finally has some real teeth to it. Bishibosh required many many castings of firewall and Hydra to slay him. Other shamen took a while to kill, also. The result of this was an insane number of raise dead actions taking place. Some fallen ones, slain in a thick patch of Blaze I'd laid down, would die, be raised, die again almost instantly, be raised again, and on and on. No great threat there, even from bosses (Hydras can eat them with little exposure to the player) but it took a good bit more time and work.

Bosses with Fire Enchanted would of course take 4 times as long as non-FEB to kill, thanks to max fire resistance. This has always been true, but you REALLY take notice of it in Hell with those high health enemies and no Static Field in use. Magic Resistant bosses were also a PITA, to a lesser degree. Everything else willingly died without much of an argument. Since Hotfoot always had more life than mana, a hit or two was pretty much no big deal. At least that was the theory.

In the Tower Cellar, level 1, I ran into an archer boss pack right at the entrance. They weren't on top of me, but they were right there. I started casting Hydras, I got about five of them raised. I took a single hit, I was cursed. I stopped casting, drank a rejuv, and I ran to dodge the second hit. I DID dodge. That is to say, I dodged the shot that was aimed right at me. Sadly, this was a Cursed Extra Strong Multishot boss and the outside arrow clipped me and I DIED. 390 life one-shot kill while cursed. Geeze-o-man. No wonder all Hardcore players skip the tower quest. You can be dead before you know what you're even up against, with the wrong combo of bad luck: heinous boss near stairs. I only found out because I sat there, dead, while my pets pasted and killed that boss, and I got to see her properties. That was the ONE random combination of three abilities required to get a one-shot kill on me in that situation. Change any of those abilities to anything else and I would have lived. I just shook my head, thanked my lucky stars that the hydras killed that boss off, and restarted in town. There were other lively moments down in the tower, but none provided any close calls. The poor countess was killed off-screen by hydras. She never got a look at Hotfoot.

In the Tamoe Highland, the bone mages turned out to be a piece of work. Apparently, each one gets some resistance to the element it uses for attack, as the fire ones were TOUGH but the rest were just normal critters. I tried to keep my eyes open for an imbueable exceptional light armor (mage plate or cuirass, I wasn't particular) but so far none had dropped.

The Pit had some nasssssty bosses in there, and I'm talking level 1. It took quite a bit of artful work to get past them, but I managed it. Then I came to a fork in the tunnel and I went to the right. I'm laying down blaze and along come three corrupted rogues BEHIND me, cutting me off. The passage was way too narrow to run past them, and it wasn't all that long ago that I'd been killed for only the second time. I was forced forward, the same as I had been in NM Act 4 when I got trapped and killed. I'm running headlong now into uncharted enemy territory, I've got rogues on my tail and I'm waking up more, and more and more. Teleport would have made for an easy escape, but of course a Hot Babe doesn't have that option. I tried to maneuver, I really did, but it didn't work out. There were too many awake now, and none had died yet. No time to cast hydras, those rogues are FAST when they run. I gave up hope for that, ran into a corner and cast a Town Portal. There are two rogues on me now and six or ten more coming. I click on the portal, my sorcie says, "I can't." Meaning the game registered my click on the portal as a left-click on a monster (I had Throw -- redded out -- on LMB). Screw that I say -- not again! Esc Key, Quit and Save.

Luckily I had full-cleared the Highland and gone on to the Cloister Waypoint before going down into the Pit. I only had minimal things I had to re-kill to get back to the pit after restarting the game. I had to reface those nasty boss packs on Pit level 1, though. I did not repeat my mistake again. At each fork in the road, no matter where or what type, from here on during the game, I made SURE that nothing would get behind me from the other fork before I committed my sorcie to a direction.

Down on level 2 of the Pit, as you may know, is one of the biggest hairballs in the game in a tight space. Now and then the Tower can be worse, and certainly the Act 3 temples can be brutal, but the Pit always has three bosses and/or champ packs down there, occasionally four, and its not very big. Well... I laid down a lot of blaze, but also hydras and some firewalls, using mana potions to increase the amount I could cast immediately. A lot of things burned up in the fires, including the first boss. I managed to take out most of the shamen with firewalls, but it took time, and I had to stay on the run. That's when the Fire-Enchanted LEB rogue boss came running after me with an axe! I had to haul ass, but having done so well and already killed the bulk of the monsters, I was not going to flee. So there I am, running from a speedy boss, sparks flying EVERYWHERE nonstop, shamen raising some of the dead, monsters taking a swing at me (and sometimes hitting) as I run past them, and I'm dancin and weavin up and down stairs, between Devil Kin, blazing with each step, fires bathing the screen everywhere I'd run in the last 15 seconds or so, hydras spitting all over, my framerate at about 6-8 fps, and me loving every moment of it. :)

Where Blaze did most of my killing outdoors, things changed in the Barracks. Now it was hydras getting almost all of my kills, except for goats which would chase me hard. They too seemed tougher than I expected, despite their not having any fire resistance (yet), but so it goes. In Multiplayer, these would be a serious threat, most particularly later in Act 2. They were actually fairly tough in single player here, and they would get worse... but I'll come to that later.

The smith was no problem, but in the Jail I had more fire-using bone mages to contend with. Pitspawn Fouldog turned out to be Fire-Enchanted and Extra Strong, to go with his usual Cursed Cold Enchanted. Yummy. But I parked his crew behind a wall and cast Hydra to my heart's content and they were humilated.

In the Catacombs, I had boss packs galore, and all of them were either lightning spitters or dark shamen. The spitters had some nasty and dangerous combos but were generally not Fire Enchanted and mostly died easily. The one that was Multishot FEB, I slew from offscreen with a great many hydras. The shamen boss packs likewise took patience but I kept my exposure minimized. The worst came when I had one of those in the same room as a spitter boss, and things were a little hairy, but I managed it.

Andariel was quite simply an anticlimax. Blaze, run around in a ring, dead demon queen. No potions needed.

I kept hoping for gem shrine, or for some diamonds to drop, but I got neither in Act 1. On the up side, I leveled up five times to clvl 42, thanks to full-clears of all areas.

- Sirian

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