ACT ONE

Skeletor began Nightmare at clvl 26, with 25 Str/Dex, 60 Vit and 100 Nrg.

Raise Skeleton @ 3 (+2 from wand)
Raise Skeletal Mage @ 4 (+3 from wand)
Skeleton Mastery @ 13
Summon Resist @ 3
Clay Golem @ 1
Golem Mastery @ 1
Amplify @ 1
Weaken @ 1
Terror @ 1
Iron Maiden @ 1

Superior Yew Wand: +2 Raise Skel, +3 Raise Mage - bought from Drognan
Bloodfist: +40 Life, Fastest Hit Recovery, +5 Minimum Damage - gambled Act 2
Greyform: +20 Fire/Cold Resistance, -3 MD, 5% Life Steal, +10 Dex - gambled Act 4
Civerb's Icon (amulet): +40% Mana Regen, +4 Life Regen - gambled Act 3
Bone Shield: +58 Life - found Act 4
Rare Boots: Faster Run, +9 Cold Res, +23 Life - gambled Act 2
Rare Cap: +24 Cold Resist, +29 Lit Resist, +11 Life - gambled Act 3
Hsaru's Iron Stay: +20 Cold Resistance, +20 Life - gambled Act 4
Ring: +24 Lightning Resistance - cubed in Act 2 (two topaz + ring).
Ring: +28 Fire Resistance - cubed in Act 3 (ruby + ring + 4 Exploding Potions).

Having full-cleared Normal, how long would Skeletorr be able to continue to slay every opponent? To clear out optional areas and explore every corner of the game? How long would I continue to try?

I'm having a great deal of fun with this character. I hear some people talk about Revive necros as boring. I would not know, as I have yet to even try out the Revive skill. For all that I have played this game, there are still some options I haven't explored at all. I can only presume that Revives are much tougher than Skeletorr's little minions, though. A Revive will have at least triple health of the original creature (more if you have some Skeleton Mastery). So a creature in Nightmare with 150 life... would come out with 450-500 life as a revive. Skeletorr's skeleton warriors, now at slvl 13 Mastery, have barely over 100 life apiece, and they will never see 200. So I must presume that Revives would be a LOT sturdier, even if they are harder to control. But wait! In Hell Difficulty, creatures can have up to 700, 800, even 900 life, giving your Revives of those critters more than 2500?? Wow. Now THAT is definitely hardier than Skeletorr's troops by several orders of magnitude.

How long can Skeletorr and his army survive? Probably longer than you may think. Just like with Ember, I have some aces in the hole for Skeletorr, and I'll play them as the game forces me to, but not before!

So we begin the journey through Nightmare, and my priority now, after one more point invested into Summon Resist, will be to max out Skeleton Mastery as soon as possible. I will then have to decide whether to invest more into army size, or curses.

Skeletorr's troops had little trouble with the Blood Moor and Den of Evil. His army grew as the corpses were plentiful. Corpsefire mowed down the warriors, but there were ready replacements. I added the Den skill point to Mastery, now at 14. The troop marched across the Cold Plain, slew Raven, then undertook the dangerous Cave. Coldcrow proved to be somewhat troublesome. Skel had to use Terror to chase away the minions, but they kept coming back for more. Terror's only real weakness as a mob control skill is that its duration does not last forever. If you get into a long battle with a tough boss, the minions you chased away will keep returning. Of course, Dim Vision and Confuse have even lower duration, so what can you do? There's no choice but to curse targets over and over, in lieu of a more permanent fix. I had to feed the rogue boss quite a few golems to keep her from shooting down all my mages (the warriors were already all dead). Fortunately, raising a new army from the ranks of the fallen in the Cave did not take long.

On to the Stony Field, where Skeletorr's army met its match! Not one, but TWO Lightning Enchanted bosses! Rakanishu, yes, but more significantly, a Rogue archer LEB too, both encountered at the same time. The carnage that ensued cannot be overstated.

That shot marks the worst of it, but blood and debris were scattered across a third of the Stony Field. Not only were the original thirteen troops slain (five warriors, seven mages, one golem), but Skeletorr raised more and more troops from the numerous minions and undead. Rakanishu has a lot of minions. Skeletorr's troops managed to kill the green one fairly quickly, but the archers were impossible to pin down for long, and they were generally unimpressed with slvl 1 Iron Maiden, so the mages had to do all the work. The problem with that is that mage life expectancy ran low with all those sparks flying. Even when some mages sat in sweet spots, between the paths of sparks, the archer boss would run hither and yon, trying to get away from the golems, and mages that were previously safe would get mowed down by some new spark trail winding across my screen. So many mages died. So many! Quite a few golems were destroyed, too. This was by far the most costly battle yet for Skeletorr. I'd rank it as a difficult win for me personally, because I had so few resources to draw on once the minions were all slain.

Out of the ashes of grim victory shall arise a new army. In the last corner of the Stony Field, the game granted a miracle unto Skeletorr. A teleporting Moon Clan goat boss that wiped out almost all of Skel's army finally died to magefire, and he dropped a demonhide sash. I gave that a quick identify, and it comes up red! Not only "Of Colossus" but a perfect one! +59 Life! And just like that, Skeletorr has himself an awesome four-row belt! I had planned to use my imbues on belts (and probably still will, hoping to get colossus PLUS other goodies) but now, for sure, Skel has a good belt he can live with indefinitely, without complaint.

Skeletorr marched into the Underground Passage at low strength, but soon found new recruits. Bosses down there inflicted heavy casualties, but the corpse supply replenished the ranks. Slowly, ever so slowly, the balance of power for Skeletorr is shifting more and more to his mages. Now that we are in Nightmare and bosses all have two abilities, the number of dangerous bosses is on the rise and the warriors are getting mowed down. Golem's life expectancy is increasingly short. His 120 life is not much, at this point, and the only way that could ever be improved is with +skill items. If Skeletorr lasts long enough, I will eagerly switch him over to a +2 skill wand, but that likely would not happen until Hell Difficulty. I am keeping an eye out for a good +1 wand, though. If I could get a +1 wand with some in Raise Mage, I would snap that up in an instant. Golem's life would increase by 55 to 175 total, with +1 to skills (+20 from Golem Mastery and +35 from Clay Golem -- too bad that those bonuses are additive, not cumulative). Then factor in Iron Maiden still only at slvl 1. True, the damage is scaling up as monster power increases, and the sturdiness of my warriors is still slowly on the rise. They are now each tougher than my golem! Even so, my mages' shot power is also rising with Mastery and I am witnessing, ever so gradually, a shift over to reliance on mages. Those LEBs in particular highlight this phenomenon, as all the warriors get fried quickly, while some mages inevitably find sweet spots and are able to continue firing, to apply steady damage, so long as I can hold the target still with golems.

Archers in Tristram inflicted heavy casualties. If not for aggressive golem decoying, Skeletorr's army would have been wiped out several times over. Treefist, by contrast, had died quickly (by his own hand). For all the mages do, there is still an important role for the warriors and Iron Maiden, against the strong, quick and aggressive melee types.

Akara's ring turned out to be useless and I sold it. However, I did find a an Emerald Ring of Tiger, +47% Poison Resistance and +21 Life. I switched to that from the Garnet Ring.

On to the Marsh. Down in the Hole we find another LEB.

As you can see, this one decimated the warriors -- that always happens with LEBs -- but I was able to distract him with golems and my mages did him in before too long. Only two of seven died by sparks. With five survivors, recruitement went quickly.

The Countess quest involved some tough bosses, but Skeletorr pushed through. At times he had less than full strength, but a goat boss (non-LEB) supplied replacement corpses.

On to the Highland, where another LEB laid waste to Skel's army.

Lightning Enchanteds were far from the only threat, but they sure were the most devastating, wiping out all the warriors and sometimes the entire force. Keeping my mages alive became the important job for me as a player. Without their ranged power, I'd have been up the creek several times.

My LEB woes continued in the pit with a particularly nasty boss. Being Stone Skin, my Iron Maiden did almost nothing to him.

I was learning as I went, though, and this time I did not keep raising troops from the dead minions. I saved the corpses and raised only one or two mages at a time. This tactic helped me to defeat this boss, if slowly and sometimes painfully. I even had enough corpses left at the end to raise most of a new army -- and this too got adopted into my tactics. Sometimes the best thing to do with those corpses is to let them lie until you really need them. If golly and Iron Maiden can do the job readily, saving the corpses for after the boss is dead seems best. If not, well, you have to manage each situation differently. Sometimes raising all the available mages is the right thing to do, sometimes raising one or two at a time is better, and sometimes you are even better off to raise warriors instead. That has to be the funnest aspect of this character: the situations for him are rather varied in terms of what the most effective response will be to a given threat.

Pit Level Two provided a unique circumstance. A might-enchanted multishot archer boss ran right up to us on the top platform and I had a devil kin of a time keeping her attention occupied while I tried to coax my mages to stop twiddling their thumbs at the stairs and start shooting her.

I must have fed her dozens of golems, all of which died way too quickly. Her arrows STUNG and they rarely missed, although Skel did block a few. There were at least two times when this situation looked so bad, I considered retreating permanently up the stairs. Minions and devil kin warriors kept harassing my troops, making things worse. Terror did not keep them at bay for long because they could not run far, then would return the instant the effect wore off. I finally managed to lure the rest of my mages into the fight by increasing Skel's exposure (advancing farther into the chamber) but this was by far the hairiest fight yet, beating even all those LEB fights for danger and difficulty factors. You do NOT want to be locked into a sardine can with a Might-Enchanted Multishot Archer boss when your army is fragile. Trust me on that.

Defeating that saucy wench only offered a partial victory. The other half of the fight remained to be won, with devin kin shamen and another rogue boss still to go.

This was such a brutal contest, I can hardly imagine pulling this off in Hell Difficulty, with tougher monsters, bosses with three abilities (Imagine that Multishot Might archer with Lightning added! NO WAY would Skel have had a prayer against her!) and so on. If Skel makes it all the way to Hell, I may have to give up on the full clears and just try to squeak through any way I can. In the mean time, Nightmare is plenty hard enough for Skeletorr, thank you. Now that the Pit has been cleared, it's on to the Barracks.

Here you can see the Terror Tactic in full force. No sense wasting resources on minions that will get resurrected. Chase them off with Terror and concentrate everything on the boss. That was the key to victory against this shaman boss.

The Smith quickly killed himself against my wall of warriors. Skeletorr had Charsi imbue a sharkskin belt but she struck out, so he sold it to her.

Down in the jail, old Pitspawn Fouldog gave Skeletorr his longest fight yet. The big nasty was locked in a cell, so the threat level did not come anywhere near what Skel had run up against in the Pit, but the work here to get the job done took even longer and even more golems than slaying Diablo!

Once my troops got wiped out, and there were no bodies left to work with, Skeletorr got reduced to the slow drudgery of raising golems inside the cage for them to feed on. Problem with that is, spitters run when wounded, and Skel's golem is slow, weak, and stupid, so I literally had to corner one in the near corner of the cell and cast golems behind it, to force a kill. Getting cursed over and over did not help golem in his effort. There were not only spitters inside the cell, but also a few bone mages, fire shooters, and Skel had nowhere left to go to rebuild his troops (other than to press on to level 3, and return later, but I decided not to go that route, since I was still making some headway here, albeit at a snail's pace).

Then the most annoying thing happened. A lone skeleton archer showed up outside the cage. He must have been hiding in some corner, or around behind a wall. I had to retreat out of Fouldog's range and feed numerous golems to the skeleton archer, letting Iron Maiden whittle away at it. Good grief, how SLOW that was! I made some strategic decisions for future skill allocations as a result of this fight, but I'll tell you more about that later.

On the other hand, I now had one corpse available, and I made the most of it. I positioned Skeletorr to block shots, started spamming golems not to corner the targets nor to chase them off, but merely to decoy their attention, then I raised myself ONE mage from that dead archer.

That lone mage slew everything in the cage. It took a while, especially considering that spitters are lightning resistant and this was a lightning shooter, but incredibly enough, the damage rate was three times quicker than Iron Maiden. If this doesn't prove that Skel's mages were doing most of his work, I don't know what could! When I started this character, I expected the skeletal mages to provide useful fire support, but I never imagined they would become the focus of the character.

Flamespike turned out to be LEB, too. LEBs LEBs and more LEBS. I think the game had it in for my warriors.

I continued to gamble. I tried mainly for amulets, some rings, boots, caps, and particularly quilted armors. Well, I hit the jackpot with quilted armor! I landed one with Fastest Recovery, +59 life, and +20ish Fire and Lightning resistance. I did not immediately switch away from Greyform for lack of alternative cold resistance (I was not going to leave Cold Resistance on empty) and I also wanted to keep some magic damage reduction. So I saved my awesome rare for later and stuck with Greyform for the time being.

Down in the Catacombs, the ineptitude of slvl 1 Iron Maiden and the rise of Skel's mage troop hit a new high:

Teleport/Stone Skin -- that's the combo that proved too much for Thrower on his trip through Nightmare catacombs. Skel's mages had other plans for this nasty, though. I wished that I had some Lower Resist curse to help out, or some Decrepify to slow its reflexes (and its teleporting frequency) but the mages got it done anyway.

Other bosses posed some challenge, and the Banished Ones on level three gave me a little trouble.

Finally we come to Andariel. This time she wiped out Skel's entire force and chewed right through the mages, so I had to fight her with nothing but golems and Iron Maiden. That took a while but eventually worked out. Act one was successfully full-cleared, although at times it was a close call and pushed my limits. At clvl 29, Skeletorr is moving on to Act Two.

- Sirian

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