ACT ONE - Part Two
Skeletor is playing Hell Difficulty at clvl 40, with 34 Str, 25 Dex, 86 Vit and 140 Nrg.
Raise Skeleton @ 3 (+2 from wand)
Raise Skeletal Mage @ 5 (+3 from wand)
Skeleton Mastery @ 20
Summon Resist @ 4
Iron Maiden @ 3
Dim Vision @ 4
Clay Golem @ 1
Golem Mastery @ 1
Amplify @ 1
Weaken @ 1
Terror @ 1
Life Tap @ 1
Decrepify @ 1
Lower Resist @ 1
Confuse @ 1
All Skills +2, from Wormskull and Eye of Etlich
Superior Yew Wand: +2 Raise Skel, +3 Raise Mage - bought from Drognan in Normal
Wormskull: +1 Necro Skills, +10 Mana, +25 Poison Resistance - found Canyon of Magi, NM
Bloodfist: +40 Life, Fastest Hit Recovery, +5 Minimum Damage - gambled Act 2 Normal
Rare Quilted Armor: Fastest Recovery, +59 Life, +21 Fire Resist, +18 Lit Resist - gambled Act 1 NM
Eye of Etlich: +1 Skills, +3 Light, 1-3 Cold Damage, 5% Life Leech - gambled Act 3 NM
Rare Boots: Fastest Run, +13 Fire Res, +14 Lit Res, +16 Mana, +98% Gold - gambled Act 2 NM
Gemmed Large Shield: +57 Resist All - completed in Black Marsh, Act 1 Hell
Demonhide Sash: +59 Life - found Stony Field, Act 1 NM
Rare Ring: +24 Lit Res, +40 Fire Res, -2 Magic Damage, +1 Light - Gidbinn reward in NM
Ring: +49 Cold Resistance - gambled Act 3 NM
Civerb's Icon - gambled Act 4 Normal
Bone Shield: +58 Life - found Act 4 Normal
Rare Amulet with cold and lightning resistance - gambled Act 2 NM
Hotspur, Greyform, Nokozan Relic, Nagelring.
Skeletorr's session in Act One continues. After killing my fourth Multiple Shots Cold Enchanted archer boss, in the back corner of the Marsh, I decided I did not want to try to start fresh from there. I pressed onward to the Highland, all of this in one game. Just inside the highland I met an interesting boss. The boss was not so bad, but that might aura lent extra punch to the enemy's skeletal archers, and there were so many enemy troops waking all at once, I could not raise new troops fast enough.
Even so, this was one of the easier boss fights of the day. In fact, the Highland as a whole proved easier than the Marsh or Dark Wood. I lost a lot of warriors but made steady progress. I cleared out maybe half of the Highland before reaching the Monastery Gate. Reaching the waypoint was easy, but in the wing leading to the barracks, a razor spine boss nearly wiped out my whole force. Those are effectively Multishot to begin with (four shots per volley), and you do not want to see one with the Multishot ability. Yikes.
I had to pull the same trick on this boss I used with the first one: raise golems behind it or to the side, so that the spillover shots would not destroy what was left of my force. Once this boss was dead, I went and cleared out the rest of the Cloister, restocking along the way. Iron Maiden readily took out the black rogues and yetis while Dim was required for razor spines or shamen. I used some Lower Resist, sometimes, when all my mages focused on the same target.
Now for the most dangerous part of Act One: the Pit. You might say that the Tower is worse -- sometimes it can be -- but you only get one boss at a time there. In the Pit, there are usually two bosses plus the shamen raising the devil kin hordes behind you after you kill them. Level two of the pit may not always be the most dangerous -- sometimes the Cats are worse, sometimes the tower -- but the size and shape of the area, and the potential for archers that you don't get in the Cats, gives this encounter the worst potential dangers.
Down we go, and there is a nasty archer boss in the large open entrance area.
I Dimmed her crew, then cast golem behind her, forcing her up onto the platform with me, eventually into the corner on my right. There I kept her pinned with golems and waited for my troops to finish off her dimmed minions, then finally turn their attention to the boss. Her sparks wreaked havoc.
After she fell, I raised most of an army from her minions' corpses and pressed on. Bone warriors soon provided fresh bodies to recruit, but I had to Dim everything to keep the rogue archers quiet.
I return to town frequently with Skeletorr. There are several reasons for this. One is that the healer will heal my troops, extending their value. Another is for selling junk, gathering as much gold as possible for gambling mainly, or checking the merchants for certain pieces of gear. Merchants don't help much after Normal difficulty has been passed, but sometimes they may have something I want. Like this:
Woohoo! I give up one point in Skeletal mages, break even in Raise Skeleton, and gain two points in all my other skills (plus the extra in Golem Mastery). This will work miracles for Skeletorr. His curses increase across the board. Instead of level 3+2 Iron Maiden, it's now 3+4. That's an extra five seconds duration and an increase from 300% damage returned to 350%. Two more levels of Skeleton Mastery means 14 more hit points per warrior, a bit more damage from each warrior hit, each mage shot. Golem's life increased from 230 to 360! Wow, 360. That sure beats the 120 I had when I faced Duriel in NM. In a sense, this almost makes the golem tougher than I wanted. He's back to being twice as tough as one of my warriors. But I'm not going to avoid +skill items. They are just too important to Skeletorr's potential. I get another second on DV, going from 4.2 to 5.2! I also get more effectiveness from Confuse (that one's going to need to be pumped before I reach the end of the game), more effectiveness from Lower Resist, Terror, Decrepify, Summon Resist, and more. I'll gladly give up that +1 Golem Mastery, if I can. That would reduce Golly to 340, and I might be able to boost something like Mana, casting speed, or other skills. I'd love to get a +2 skill wand with +bonus to Raise Mage or Summon Resist or Iron Maiden.
There's another urgent reason I visit town often, though. That's due to the Iron Maiden bug that creates unkillable minions. As you use Iron Maiden, if any of your minions are reduced to exactly zero health (at least that's how I think it works) then they become invincible, unkillible by the enemy. You might think this is a cool bug, but I don't. An invincible minion is an annoyance. Iron Maiden stops working with them. This is not how the game is meant to be played. You can exploit this bug to a variety of ends, but then you end up playing a different sort of game, and I more enjoy the way the skills are supposed to work.
When the golem goes invincible, you can fix it by recasting him. You get a life bar, so if his health is zero, I just recast him automatically. With warriors and mages, it's harder to detect. There is no health bar. So you have to pay attention. Any skeleton warrior who lives too long is surely invincible. They cannot take that much punishment. Same for mages under direct attack, although they are hardest of all to detect, because they generally stay out of fights if possible. If I spot an invincible skeleton, I will unsummon him. However, it's not always that easy. Sometimes you can tell you have one (or more) but can't figure out which ones are bugged. You can't just resummon them ALL in most cases, because there aren't enough corpses. If I can tell who is bugged, I will scrap him. He's supposed to be dead anyway. However, there is another way to fix this bug: if you heal in town, all your minions are healed, life is restored to the bugged ones, and they are returned to normal condition. This is still a bug, as you get a "free" minion, who should already be dead, but the only way around that is for Blizzard to fix this problem at its root. They have already tried once, and not yet nailed it down, although its not as bad now as it used to be.
As a general policy, I visit town with Skeletorr often. That way I don't have to get distracted by this bug. I know a town visit fixes any broken minions, at least until the next time the bug strikes. It hits fairly often when you are using lots of Iron Maiden. Invincible Revives will expire with time anyway, so they are only a temporary problem, while invincible skeletons can go on and on and on, and mess up your rhythm. The only way to maximize my enjoyment of the skeleton necro is to get to play him as he should be: with minions that die when they run out of health. I take pains to ensure, as much as possible, that this is the case.
So back to the pit, and I now have only nine mages, but they are stronger, and golem is much stronger. I kill some more bone warriors, more rogue archers... winding now toward the stairs down to level two. I recognize a stairs segment. Oops, it seems to be guarded by another LEB archer. Hmm.
Oh my. My oh my oh my. Now that is a rough combination. I can handle two of those three abilities, but all three together? This is going to be brutal. The sparks will decimate my troops, the teleportation will heal the boss, and the extra fast ability will ensure endless rapid teleporting. Can I possibly decrepify her enough to hold her still? Not on the first try. That's one army down.
There is still half the Highland uncleared, though, so I set out to recruit a new army. I clear about one third of the remainder, round up new troops, then march them down into the pit for the next go-round.
They got slaughtered.
Oh, sure, I got the boss down to one quarter of her health. I decreped her so many times, those wrinkles on her face turned permanent and she got REALLY pissed. She developed arthritis in half her joints from all the Decrepifying. And still she wiped out my second army.
Back to town I go, and Akara offers me another green wand:
Yeah, baby, yeah. That's the ticket. I gave her back the other one. This one pumped my DV up to 4+7! Slvl 11 DV now with a wide coverage and 6.7 second duration. That's all I will need, and it means I can stop pumping DV and start increasing Iron Maiden and Skeletal Mages. The +9 mana on this new wand didn't hurt either -- better than the +min damage on the last one.
I commit my third army against the speedy archer boss. This result went very poorly, as she blinked into the midst of my mages for no apparent reason, still almost at full health, and wiped out all but one of them with a single volley of sparks. Then she blinked away, giggling like a succubus. That witch!
Enough of that. I decide it's time to park her for a while and explore level two while I can. I round up a new army from the rest of the Highland and march them down through the pit to level two. My now mighty Dim Vision can sweep the whole room with two castings, and the longer duration means fewer sleepers waking before I am ready. The result? This time through pit level two was much ado about a petting zoo. My new, tough 340 life golem kept the boss's attention, and the rest were Dimmed. Easy pickings -- far easier than my fight here in Nightmare.
One other thing of note: my warriors are getting some licks in. They do whiff more than they hit, but it can be interesting when all seven of them are on one target and I hear thwack-thwack-thwack as several of them hit all at once. With their damage now up at 49-50 per hit, they aren't just blocking dummies like Golly. Golly is feeble (remember the boss on level one of the tower? That took forever). Golly is sturdy and readily replaceable though, so he is ultimately more important, but those skeleton warriors are contributing some damage to the total -- maybe as much as five percent.
With the lower pit now cleaned out, it's time to teach that Blade Kill wench a lesson with my fourth army.
Yeah boys! We've got her on the run now! Golly, you corner her! Warriors... um... die like good soldiers. Mages, target her. GET HER!
Teleport-teleport-teleport-teleport. Uh... where did she go?
Hmm, she seems to have healed up. Well, get her again!
Teleport-teleport-teleport-teleport. Uh... where did she go?
Sparks fly from the middle of my mages. Artillery count plummets from 8 to 1. *sigh*
I limp out of there with my one mage. There is some area here on level one that remains to be cleared. At the devil kin camp in the far corner, I recruit one last army to throw at the boss. If the third time is the charm... the fifth can do no harm.
Five armies she has wiped out. Counting all the golems, she has slain over 100 of my troops. Enough is enough. I parked her, left her standing there. It's going to be a long, lonely life for that wench. See ya!
Back to the far corner, the devil kin camp, where there are just enough critters left to recruit one more army, short of a few warriors. The game is now fully clear all the way up through the Outer Cloister.
On to the Barracks. I open the doors, my warriors swarm the devil kin there. I raise more warriors. I have a full army now. Oh, hmm. Not for long, apparently. Here comes a LEB rogue. Ouch, a nasty one, too. I had better be careful here.
Yikes! She wiped out my warriors and golem, then somehow targetted ME and charged me like a bullet. I ran behind my mages and she made short work of them. Oh good grief, this is not going well at all. I ended up fleeing in near terror before her wrath, looping the cloister wing and trying to distract her with golems. When I finally did get her focused on the golems, she dished some nasty damage back to herself, but it took a new golem for each blow. This was about as lively I cared for it to get, but I finally downed her. Sorry, no more pix of her. She was quite worthy, but I was too busy not dying.
I then had to pick up the pieces, relying totally on DV to rebuild one mage at a time from scratch. Once the shamen were dead in the first room, I could have gone IM/Golly, but I didn't. Seemed faster/better/safer to stick with DV, at least until I had my nine mages back.
From there, things improved. I kept the bone archers Dimmed, but there weren't many of those. Mostly Skel encountered goats and women, which happily and readily wiped themselves out, leaving plenty of corpses. With this mostly melee mix, the fighting went smoothy for my army. Until the next boss, that is.
Decimation. Nuff said.
Beyond him lay the Smith. What's this? Hell Difficulty and the Smith with no extra abilities? That's rare.
Of course, that kind of Smith is easy to kill. I had a sharkskin belt waiting in town to be imbued. I could gamble for everything I might want except those four-row belts, so I spent all three of Skel's imbues trying to top that perfect Colossus belt a goat boss dropped me in NM Stony Field. Charsi failed me again. Been eons since I got an imbue worth keeping and using -- at least one better than stuff I already have on the char. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and this didn't cost me anything. In fact, I sold the junk belt for 25k and went gambling. :)
In the last room of the Barracks, there were four archer champs. I distracted them with golems and use Lower Resist to speed the mage kills. Iron Maiden is next to useless against archers.
The Jail proved even more friendly than the barracks. Lower Resist thrashed the wraiths, who only seem sturdy to melee chars thanks to their physical resistance. Iron Maiden made short work of the goat hoards, and there were no archers on levels one or two except this boss:
I dimmed his minions, decoyed him with golems, wrote off my own warriors, who ran up to the dimmed troops to be shot down, and kept my mages alive and safe. That remains my primary strategical urgency: whatever it takes to preserve the mages. Everything else (other than Skel's own safety) takes a backseat.
I used the same strategy on Fouldog and had an easier time with him here in Hell than either Nightmare or even Normal. He definitely seemed unhappy with his Dimmed troops. :)
There were some archers on level three. As such, my warriors took more casualties. I Dimmed everything, marched steadily through the level, cleared it all, then headed for the Inner Cloister.
Guess what my strategy there will be.
Yep. :)
Ah, but then it gets interesting.
Fortunately, these critters are low health, so my mages ate up his minions before he got to spit many sparks, and my Lower Resist curse cut past his defense. He died quickly, taking several of my troops with him. I was not able to replace all my losses.
Well, Skeletorr has come this close, right? If I stop now, I will have a nasty fight on my hands returning to this waypoint. Might as well finish all of Act One, right? I've not done that often, clearing Act One end to end all in one day. Act Four I do it often, because that one is fairly short. I have done it several times with Act Three. Never in Act Two, which is by far the largest if you clear everything. You can do it if you skip the Halls, the false tombs, the palace, the extra parts of the Arcane, and the two optional dungeons, but then you've skipped half the act. Heh. Anyway, I decide to go the rest of the way, or die trying.
I hear the sound of spitter growls through the doors. Likely a boss pack in there. I open the doors, stick a golem in there and back off a bit. Yep, I see minions, enchanted with Might Aura. That's a boss.
WOW! He ate Golly in ONE BITE!
This ain't your sad little 120 Golly, either, this is Beefy Golly, with 340 life. One-shot-killed.
I also heard sparks fly, so it's LEB, too. Probably Extra Strong Might Enchanted LEB. I had better be careful.
I feed him another golem from maximum range. ONE BITE, DEAD GOLEM. Yikes.
I feed him another, then another. Both of them dead in one shot. Yet the boss isn't dead yet? Huh? If he's dishing that much damage, he ought to have killed himself already. Those spitters aren't that tough.
While he's busy eating golems, two of his minions wander out in search of Skeletorr Snacks. I had to tell them "No thanks" to their dinner invite -- I didn't like the menu. I cast DV on the minions and let my mages shoot them down. Well, actually, shoot one of them down. That's when the boss came out, and I learned the hard way that he wasn't downing my golems with Extra Strong, he was downing them with Multiple Shots.
Tidal waves of white death washed over my hapless mages, obliterating them.
"Aha," says Skeletorr. "Good thing I wasn't standing THERE."
So now it's Skeletorr vs the MS LEB spitter, with no troops and nowhere to go to recruit troops. Yeah, that sounds like a fun party. Can I be invited? I'll bring the popcorn, you bring the soft drinks.
I lured the boss up to the area with the stairs to the Jail, offered him a golem snack and RAN.
I cornered two of his minions at the other end of the cloister and painstakingly slew one with Iron Maiden, the same as I had to do in NM City, before I switched to All-DV-All-the-Time.
Once the first one fell, I dimmed the second one, raised a mage (oh dear, a poison shooter?) and soon had the second one slain. I then raised... another poison shooter. Um... yay?
Now with two poison shooters, I tackled the boss. His Might aura means he hits harder. That's a GOOD thing, my friend, because Skeletorr wants him to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible -- to himself. The rat bastid. Believe it or not, one of my two mages actually lived through half this fight. I kid you not. Don't laugh at my one-skeleton army. Poison-Mage the Multishot Lightning killer. Well, that, and Golly the Punishment Sponge.
The boss was generally uncooperative. My first priority was to stay out of the path of the spew. My second priority was to keep the boss cornered in an actual corner. I tried the right corner first, but he squeezed out of there, so I had to herd him all the way across the cloister to the bottom corner. He eventually slithered out of there, so back we go to the right corner. Slowly, ever so slowly, his health IS dropping.
Ouch. Poor Golly.
Have I ever mentioned how tough life is for golems? If they ever go on strike, Necros are in dire trouble.
Poor Golly. What a shocking display of mindless obedience.
Stone Growler managed to slither out of there again and sent me running before his walls of white joyjuice. Once I regained control of him, I herded him back to the bottom corner, where he was finally dispatched.
Into the Cathedral now, Golly and one mage (born of the slain boss). I had to DV everything, but I managed to gather up four more mages before Bone Ash emerged. He wiped out all but one of my mages before I got him herded into a corner, and I had to work dilligently to keep him there -- and I had to stand still, so my last surviving mage would not move from that sweet spot between spark paths -- and patiently wait for that mage (at about 14 damage per shot, after resistance and Lower Resist were factored) to shoot down the boss all by himself.
DV and two mages got me several more mages before the Cathedral was emptied.
Down we go into the Catacombs. Level one always starts with the same segment: the stairs island amidst a spiderweb of paths, with eight ways to choose. Some turn out to be dead ends, others will have doors. If I am playing an underpowered character or in Hell Difficulty -- and certainly when doing both, as now -- I will skirt this whole area before I open any doors, to get as much foothold as I can before it hits the fan. This time, for the first time I can remember, this led me to the stairs, on the back side, without a single fight.
So much for level one! Ha. But I'll be back, once Andariel is dead.
Level two offered me several boss fights. Only one proved tough.
Shaman bosses are so much easier to deal with when you can eradicate the minions with ice or by way of using the corpses. Even so, teleporting shamen are a tough breed. Their melee attack is strong, and they can blink amongst the vulnerable mages, slay some with a few swipes, then teleport again and heal the damage done -- assuming Iron Maiden was active, which it wasn't, in this case. Lower Resist all the way for me. You can see one purple bubble behind that small cloud of poison.
You can also see a ten count on the mages in that shot. Skel had leveled up, adding five more to Vitality and another point to Raise Mage. It felt good to be back up to ten.
Skeletorr ended up clearing most of level two before finding the waypoint, then the stairs. On to level three, where a spitter boss waited. I downed him, several ghouls, juiced up my troop count, and found the way down to level four after exploring less than a quarter of level three. Fine with me.
Level Four offered plenty of Dark One bodies. I dimmed the whole front room and let my mages shoot them down. With a full army and some spare corpses lying around, it was time to take on Andariel.
The first time, I had a golem, two mages, and slvl 1 Iron Maiden. I went through a lot of mages, a lot of golems, but not so many that I used up all the corpses. I didn't. The mages were alive when Andi died, too. The second time, golem was no stronger, IM was no stronger, all still level one. She ate my mages, the corpses ran out, and I finished her with many golem snacks. The problem there was curse length, more than anything. The IM just ran out too quickly.
Things are going to be different this time. Iron Maiden now at slvl 7 (total), golem much tougher and backed by slvl 8 Summon Resist (total). Seven skel warriors, ten mages, all maxed on strength.
I opened the doors, my warriors charged in to meet the ghouls and Dark Ones. Andi roared out, sprayed her poison. I didn't wait, I recast golem immediately, and my surviving warrior wandered in there to fight. She could not down my golem in one hit, so there was time to recast him. I pointed right at her and cast him "on" her so that he would appear next to her. Four of my mages survived the first volleys of poison that sprayed through the door. They kept firing. She was smacking Golly over and over, doing most of the damage to herself. Another poison spray killed two more mages. I kept golems on her, though. She never made it through the doors.
One of my mages survived. He was hit by her last poison spray, though, and dropped dead a few seconds after she gave up the ghost. What a victory! Amazing what you can do with a tougher golem. I can only imagine the punishment high level golems bumped up to 5x health or more in seven or eight player games can endure: thousands of life points! Gollies that live forever. Heh.
Anyway, there was still some work left to do. Skeletorr recruited new troops from the rest of level four, enough to field a full army. There was work left to do clearing level three, which included some champs and another boss. The slow ghouls were often best hit with Lower Resist: shoot em down before they can engage at all. Other times I used IM and let them smash themselves. Silly zombies. The Banished were another story: Dim bait. That pulled their teeth. They can't bite you very hard without teeth.
Once level three was cleaned out, I went back up to level two. Only one minor branch remained to be cleared there, but it held a nassssssssty boss.
With nowhere left in Act One to turn up new troops, I had no choice but to port to town after every third flash of Holy Shock. I HAD to preserve my mages. I must have gone through two thirds of a Portal Tome before the boss was finally slain.
I get up to level one and there's a fetish boss in the large corner room. What is this, a Holy Shock convention? Enough of that crap, already! Good grief.
As you can see from the large orange writing, I had to return to town after every third flash to heal my mages. If they dropped en masse, I might not have the juice left to finish in this game, and dammit, I do NOT want to have to come back here again for my full clear.
Once you get the boss isolated, you're in good shape. The problem with these aura bosses is that you don't encounter them in a vacuum. You have all the minions to deal with, and possibly other enemies, some ranged. Once you get torn between ranged and melee, you are in trouble. No matter what you do, your force is going to take it hard. This little rat bastid was even tougher than the multishot Shock spitter on level two, mainly because of the terrain and what else was in the mix. I didn't take the screen shot until I had the situation fairly well in hand.
Skeletorr is heading now down the last uncleared hallway of the last level in Act One. Almost home free, but as they say, almost only counts with hand grenedes.
Teleport boss? Great. At least he wasn't Extra Fast, but once again the terrain interfered. He blinked around several times, and I only managed to kill him when five successive blinks failed to heal him.
One room left to go. We're done here, right? Right?
Oh good grief. Shaman champs in the last room in the act? Yeah. Sometimes the universe displays its own sense of humor. At least the horde of Dark One warriors could be Dimmed. I fed golems to the shamen champs to hold their attention. With four of them in there, though, one golem wasn't quite enough. I had to raise the enemy warriors the moment they hit the floor or they would be resurrected. As I do not have a resurrect option for my troops, this presented a small problem. I limped out of there with half an army left, but it was good enough.
Duke Skeletorr has now full-cleared nine acts. Lots of nassssty bosses in Act One. Lots in Act Three, too, but next up is Act Two. What lies in store for Skeletorr there? Stay tuned.
- Sirian
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