HELL - Act Two

Act 2 started off tough, thanks to burning dead that are HIGHLY juiced up with extra life, and which have maxed fire resist in Hell. They do in NM also, but they are definitely tougher in Hell. I slew the archers with hydras cast around corners, and I slew the rest with blaze, lots and lots of blaze stacked hard and high. The mummies, cats and sand raiders, by contrast, died incredibly easy without any resistance to my spells. Rad got the Hydra Treatment and died like a good boy.

And I found diamonds! The first gave me enough to cube a perf, but I didn't want to get caught with a gem shrine and no diamond to upgrade, so I held off. Here was my thinking: I had three flawless now. With two gem shrines I'd have the other two perfs I needed. So if two gem shrines turned up, I'd have my shield filled out. But... a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? I could add nearly 20% resist to all right now if I made a perfect. I decided to hold off. If I found just one more diamond, then I would still be only two gem shrines away, and could cube the flawless into one perfect. But... if I rushed into that, I risked "wasting" a gem shrine that may turn up, and could actually end up taking LONGER to get a full shield. So I waited. Turns out it wouldn't have mattered either way, but I didn't take the chance. I soon found another diamond and went ahead and cubed the three flawless into a perfect and socketed it.

Having high level Hydra changed the way I was able to play the game in Stony Tomb, Halls of Dead, and so forth. I found a Sharkskin belt of Stability, which was basically trading the 7 extra Stamina for about 28 DR. I took that deal and sold that plated belt I'd been using since normal. I continued to gamble hard for rings, leather/quilted armors, caps/skull caps/helms, and particularly plated belts. I found Bladebuckle 6 times from gambles with Hotfoot, I gambled belts so much.

I skipped the Maggot Lair, as I often do. Rather, not skipped, but saved it for later. Why consume three slots in my inventory with that staff when space is at such a premium. I'd have had to put three full rejuvs on the ground to make room. So the maggots I didn't come back for until I was ready to take out Duriel.

The Viper Temple was not too bad. I took it VERY seriously, and perhaps that is why I had so little trouble there on level 1. Level 2, of course, is a death trap, so I hired a merc, went down there and ran in and up, then blazed and hydra'ed with small, tight maneuvers up there until I had more room. I was so successful, my merc was still alive! I just thinned them out bit by bit. There was one hairy moment where Fangskin came after me and forced me down, moving counterclockwise around the altar, having to run between about five snakes and a couple Embalmed. I took a hit, then another, drank a rejuv, then made it out the other side back by the entrance. My merc died for the cause, finally, somewhere in there. I was too busy saving my own ass to notice when. Finally, just me and Fangy left, and for once I stayed out of the center. I'd cast hydras from the other side of the room and just stay on the run, blazing if she came after me. Exciting, but safely done.

In the Palace, I humiliated Fire Eye by luring him and his pals into that tiny side room with hydras I cast through the grate there. Poor guys. It took some doing to wake them up, but once one of them came into that room, my pets were unleashed and their fury was awesome to behold. :) Fire Eye took a long time to kill, even with help with some fire wall, but so it goes with FEBs these days. I was untouchable by them from where I stood, and they seemed rather displeased with this effective strategy on my part. :)

The Arcane Sanctuary I knew would be extremely dangerous. The Hell Clan, with maxed fire resist, weren't too bad in Nightmare but I knew I was in trouble here. So I very carefully scouted each direction, looking for the quadrant with the teleporters. Found it to the East and headed that way. Goats were TOUGH, but stacking several slvl 4+1 firewalls, along with a few hydras, dispatched them safely from a distance. If I woke up goats, I simply retreated to the last teleporter and moved to the far side and did my work from there. The specters burnt up easily in my blaze, so they were minimal threat, and an amulet of negation I saved for just this purpose made the firewall attacks irrelevent.

My strategy worked perfectly. There was virtually no risk to Hotfoot as long as I made sure to retreat to safety whenever goats approached. Gradually I worked my way down one side. I reached the end and found only treasure. I cleaned that up with two trips to town, then returned to continue onward. I walked up the next teleporter and clicked on it. Why? I have no idea. Sheer stupidity? Absent-mindedness? Got distracted by a family member and lost track of what I was doing? Maybe all of those things put together, but the result was that I jumped right into a goat pack, they went chop chop, and a moment later I was staring at a red screen. This was not a tactical failure, and it certainly wasn't anything clever on their part. It was my own fault, though. Rather like dying in Diablo 1 because you accidentally teleport into an area you forgot you hadn't cleared yet... or perhaps more to the point... dying because you forgot to recast Mana Shield for your sorcerer after a visit to town. It was the dumbest thing I have done in any game in YEARS. :)

To have made short work of a large chunk of the Arcane only to die like THAT had me laughing at myself for a while. I made a mental note that, when playing Hardcore, a move like that WILL end it all, so I have to keep my mind on what I am doing, and STOP if I get distracted by something in real life.

I gathered myself back together, returned through the waypoint, had ZERO trouble killing everything on that platform with hydras and firewalls, and recovered my body without a scratch. That's how it would have gone down in the first place if I had been paying attention. Oh well. :)

The next quadrant I chose to do was the one with the spatial distortions, with the struts that lend to optical illusion: the next-most easiest to trap goats and kill them safely with spells from a distance. This one required more work, and I did have to kill a couple of aggressive goats with brutally stacked blaze on the stairs, but I did it. Treasure at the end of the line here, too.

Now I had to choose my poison. The "easy" half was over. Remaining was the straight section, which has all the lightning spires and the most monsters, or the section with mad numbers of sticky stairs. I'd have to use blaze on either, although I could probably trap SOME in the stairs-happy area while the straight area would have them all just charging me. I decided to bite the bullet and do the straight one next. My plan was to retreat down the teleport path and use the first teleporter, if necessary. Well... it was necessary. :) It was necessary about five times. After that, I had enough room that with blaze stacked 3x, 5x, 9x high, I had enough room to get the job done. It took time to pause to kill lightning towers. I'd unload a full mana ball of firewalls, then stand there recasting a new one every couple seconds until, a few minutes later, the spire would finally die. Eventually I got to the end, the Summoner was there, I introduced him to my pets and moments later he was dead.

I grabbed the Canyon waypoint, then returned to the Sanctuary to finish the full-clear. In the next-to-last area of the straight quadrant, an imbuable cuirass dropped! I took it to town, then went back to Act 1 and had Charsi imbue it. I got DR of 251, 24% fire resist, 19% lit resist, +5 life, and two minor bonuses. Not too bad, and with the really speedy and dangerous foes yet to come, I figured it was a good thing to finally move from medium to light armor. I sold the armor I'd had since normal, and then looked to reconfigure my items.

This led to me having too much lightning resistance: more than I needed, for sure. I had 37 from shield, 44 from boots, 19 from newly imbued armor, and 49 on helm. That's 149 resist, and 125 is max. I could spare 24. So I started looking for a new helm. The one in my stash with the poison reduction did not quite have the needed 25% resistance, and I didn't want to go with even a few % points below max. I found a Full Helm on sale at Fara, 37% Lit resist and +34 life. This was 11 life more than my current helm, and would keep me at max Lit Resist, so I bought it, sold the one I'd had since Act 3 Normal, and life went on.

Clearing the last area of the sanctuary involved a lot more blaze, but by now I knew the drill and my execution went without incident.

I decided next to do the Maggot Lair, get the staff, drop it in town, then proceed straight to Duriel. I did this, and in the Canyon, I made a beeline for the correct tomb. (I have memorized which is which). The correct tomb happened to be the Circle-and-Crescent, or Tomb 7 counting left to right -- on the far right.

The tomb itself provided me a fortunate draw: Apparitions and Preserved Dead: no skels. I found my way to the chamber, assembled the staff and used it. I was just shy of leveling, though, so I cleared some more of the tomb until I clvl 46, then I went in and ran Duriel around in circles until he croaked. Uberdrop was junk and I sold it. Still a LOT left to full-clear here in Act 2, though. So back I went.

Still in Tomb 7 I ran into a Magic Resistant Teleportation Unraveller boss. There were no skels, but he and his minions raised mummies and, worse, apparitions. I had to be careful, but I managed it. In Tomb 6, I found Ancient Kaa and pasted his LEBness. No multishot or teleport, so that too was an easy draw. In Tomb 5, I had a nasty fight right at the entrance and nearly bailed, but I never quite got into the red on my panic meter and by now I had a better sense of just when to really panic or not. I got the job done. Tombs 4 and 3 were cake. Tombs 2 and 1 had some nasty bosses, but Hotfoot handled them mainly with Hydras, then cleared the Canyon and got out of Dodge, over halfway to clvl 48.

- Sirian

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