ACT THREE - PART TWO

Skeletor continues Act Three at clvl 35, with 25 Str/Dex, 75 Vit and 130 Nrg.

Raise Skeleton @ 3 (+2 from wand)
Raise Skeletal Mage @ 4 (+3 from wand)
Skeleton Mastery @ 20
Summon Resist @ 4
Clay Golem @ 1
Golem Mastery @ 1
Amplify @ 1
Weaken @ 1
Terror @ 1
Iron Maiden @ 1
Life Tap @ 1
Decrepify @ 1
Lower Resist @ 1

All Skills +1 from Wormskull

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
Greyform: +20 Fire/Cold Resistance, -3 MD, 5% Life Steal, +10 Dex - gambled Act 4 Normal
Civerb's Icon (amulet): +40% Mana Regen, +4 Life Regen - gambled Act 3 Normal
Bone Shield: +58 Life - found Act 4 Normal
Rare Boots: Fastest Run, +13 Fire Res, +14 Lit Res, +16 Mana, +98% Gold - gambled Act 2 NM
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: +47 Poison Resistance, +21 Life - found Act 1 NM

Rare Quilted Armor: Fastest Recovery, +59 Life, +21 Fire Resist, +18 Lit Resist - gambled Act 1 NM
Biggins Bonnet, Hotspur, Nokozan Relic, one perfect, one flawless and two normal Diamonds.

Skeletorr had cleared the jungle. To start his next session, he jumped to Lower Kurast, raised his golem, and began to assemble a new army. Leapers, jungle bunnies, Zakarumites... easy to recruit troops here. About halfway through the area, I ran across a bunny boss and had a chance to put my Lower Resist curse to work for the first time. Oh, look, what a cute name for such a cute bunny! And soon to be entirely accurate, too!

The Lower Resist helped markedly. Skel's Mages were already doing most of the killing, but this made them more effective against resistant targets. I also started using LR on the leapers because once they got stunlocked by magefire, there was no more use for Iron Maiden. I started bypassing the IM and moving right to LR, and that worked out better. I skipped one corner of town that I'd cleared on my way through last game, and avoided any contact with Stormtree's crew.

"All those who would oppose me... beware!" said Skeletorr as he entered the Bazaar.

To my delight, Iron Maiden worked well against the Sextons, just as it had in Normal. Stick a golem in their face, IM them, then let the mages clean it up if the target started teleporting. My troops took some casualties from blizzard and lightning bolt, but not as many as I expected, unless the priest was hiding on some bit of high ground or across a wide barrier. In those cases I would use Terror to push them away, minimizing the damage done to my army.

Working west along the wall divide with Lower Kurast, I found the Ruined Temple in the left corner. I had a full army, so now was as good as any other time for tackling the danger. What was my plan? Well, if I could get a foothold at all, I would be fine. I might repeat the events from Normal, choking that doorway and using IM to kill the rogues from a distance. (It didn't even occur to me that I might draw the D formation -- I just assumed I'd draw one of the two T's). Alternatively, I thought Sarina might sleep -- but recalling Ember's brief jaunt into the Ruined Temple in Nightmare, when her ONE hireling had woke Sarina, that seemed highly improbable. So the real question came do to whether I had to fight only Sarina's crew, or them PLUS some other nasties. I would have to wait and see, to react on the fly. Considering the danger factor, I decide to hire myself an extra minion. How about a nice fast cast fire sorcerer? Yeah, that's the ticket.

Down we go. There are rogues PACKING the entrance room, though not quite on top of me. I drew the left-facing T and considered that good. My luck has always been good with that one. I have not yet been killed there in single player, though I've had some brutal fights. I cast IM on the crowd and all my troops are immediately cursed. WTF! LOOK at all those rogues! Was Sarina waiting right there in the room? I have never seen that. She spotted Skeletorr and made a beeline for him. WTF! She ran right past other targets?

One second had passed.

I broke right, fled down the T, as meteors started to rain down. My troop count was dropping like the marines in "Aliens" after they shot the newborn. IE, I heard screaming, looked up and they were ALL dead, including Golly and the merc.

Two seconds had passed.

Only Sarina followed Skel into the dead end, though. I had ONE CHANCE to open a portal and get the Hell out of there or it would be Save and Exit time. Could I survive a Cursed Hit? Probably, but I didn't intend to find out. I heard her attack sound commence as I stepped through, and the sound complete in town. (Ever notice that? If a sound plays as you step through to town, you can hear the rest of it in town).

Whew.

Well that was as hairy as it's gotten for Skeletorr, bar none. Not even Duriel charging him here in NM scared me that much.

Skel's Hardcore. I could skip that temple for now, reroll the map and try my luck again later.

Or... maybe not.

"Feeling lucky today, punk?"

Yeah. I suppose I am.

Skel has no army, though. Where am I going to get more troops? Time to hire myself a cold merc, too. Hmm, only one available? Wow, that sucks. I waypoint back to Lower Kurast and run to the Bazaar. I raised mages from some insect swarm bodies (don't ask me HOW, because I have no idea) that hadn't been cleaned up yet, then worked my way into town... to the sewer entrance.

God Bless the Kurast sewer. What a lovely, lovely place that is! I am not being sarcastic, I mean it. Wide, wide, wide enclosed spaces, stretching on and on, filled with low rent tenants in large numbers, the great slum of Act Three, and a ready source of recruits for a nearly unlimited number of armies!

You bet your bottom dollar I was going to fall back to the sewer to rebuild, for the rest of this act. I would conserve every precious Preserved Dead and Undead Stygian Doll and Gloom Bat. (Sadly, the only Horrors down there came from one Horadrim Ancient Boss pack I ran into on this first recruiting drive, just around the corner from the stairs -- or maybe that was a good thing after all, because I took heavy casualties from the champs and had to clean up even more of the sewer to get a full army going -- not to mention my utterly boneheaded move of hiring the last cold merc before I raised the new army -- quite a few bodies wasted into ice, ugh. I won't make that mistake again).

Now restocked with minions, I headed back to the Ruined Temple. Sarina is AT my portal, this I know because she was swinging at me. So she will be out of the way, and the front room will contain whatever rogues who did not kill themselves taking out my first army -- sure to be plenty of those.

Down we go.

I cast Iron Maiden.

My entire army is immediately cursed.

Say WHUH...?

Oh good grief, that's a SECOND boss! No wonder the trap had been so jammed. That was two boss packs!

Meteors are falling. More screaming, both ours and theirs. One second, two, three... my troops are all DEAD.

Hmm. This seems like an opportune time to step outside for a smoke. What do you think? Yes, indeed, I need myself a pipe blow and some fresh air.

(BTW, I do NOT smoke. What a silly thing to do to one's body -- no offense intended to smokers).

Well now, that's two armies down. The entrance is still viable, though, and I've made progress with quite a few kills. I could perhaps have taken advantage of enemy casualties to raise more troops, but things happened SO fast, and my attention rested SOLELY on choosing the right moment to retreat. In fact, I still had one mage left. How he survived, when a cold merc did not, I have no idea. The slacker. :)

Back to the Sewer! Clear a little bit more, raise a new army. Back to the Temple.

This time I actually had time to Terror away that lone Dark Lord and reach for the PrintScrn key. Go figure.

There's the culprit! Sarina's partner in crime. Didn't take her long to smash three of my warriors, did it? A minion on the other side, now dead, killed the fourth warrior. My last two would bite the axe finishing the boss, but that was that. Once again I forgot all about raising new troops. I led my cursed mage brigade back outside, back to town to wipe the curse, hire a Fire merc, then back to the sewer to drum up a few more warriors.

Now it was time to clean up. With a few minions left, taking them out one at a time brought no casualties. I lured Sarina out and she was quickly dealt with. Cost me most of my infantry, but I raised a few replacements. Into the main room, two Dark Lords there and a couple more rogues, then a few wailing beasts in the back. They say the third time is the charm, right? :)

The Disused Fane was not far behind the Ruined Temple. I had found it on my trek to the Sewer and passed going both ways each time. I worked a little bit more of the Bazaar, fully stocked my warriors from the Hell Swarms I found, then ventured into the Fane.

The Fane is usually fairly calm. There are almost never any critters in the front room, but there is one formation that often puts a champ or boss pack just beyond the door on the right, and they will wake with your arrival (this can be almost as bad online as a same-room stairs trap, if you load slowly).

Flesh Hunter champs charged into the fray and my troops engaged. Then meteors started raining and some of my troops got pulverized.

By the way, did I ever mention what happened to Jelani, my lightning merc Gidbinn companion? He lived! It is true. The first merc ever to survive one of my single player quests. I had surplus gold and decided to gamble it away, but it was taking too long running from Alcor to the waypoint and back, so I hopped to Act Two for some quick runs to Elzix... and forgot that this would dismiss Jelani. Oops. So he survived, from the Gidbinn through the rest of that last session, into this one and the Bazaar. He survived the Witchdoctor and the whole Swampy Pit and half the Marsh, plus the start of this session, and I made the mistake of letting him go. So he lives.

Anyway, there were a lot of Dark Lords in the Fane and Skel lost most of his army by the time I had cleared the temple. So back I go to the sewer for more recruits. While there, I ran across Riftwing's boys, and taking them down cost half my army. I raised more, then ventured down to level two to grab Khalim's heart and clean up all that waiting treasure, while I had the chance. Only... turns out there was a nasty boss down there. (That happens sometimes).

ES LEB? Oh joy. He eradicated my troops and I finished him off with IM/Golly.

That is pretty much how the game is played for Skeletorr now: make the most of every resource, try to get the highest value out of each troop, save the ones I can, accept it when I can't save any, and continuously work back and forth between recruit areas and boss-infested zones. Not every boss smashes my whole army, but some are really tough and wipe out several armies. Some even prove dangerous to Skel himself (as Sarina definitely proved). Even so, I am making steady progress. Will the Sewer resources run out before I can complete the act? If so, I may have to restart, to get a fresh sewer so I can throw several more dozen armies at the Council and Mephisto. We'll see. I intend to full clear, which of course makes it tougher for this char, because almost all the worst bosses are tucked away in optional areas, and I go back as many times as it takes to finish them off.

Barani bought his farm in the sewer with that LEB, so I hired... Thadar! Yay! Go Thadar! My hero.

On to Upper Kurast now. I have used almost one third of the Sewer already. Yikes.

The Cantors proved more determined to smash my troops. I could down one, maybe even two, with golem and IM, but three or four at a time came up more than once and I had to Terrorize some of them. Most of my other kills came from the mages. I used a lot of Lower Resist.

I found the waypoint in the top corner, and both temples were nearby. I tacked the Reliquary first.

There was only one boss, a tough spider. Extra Strong bosses are the most vulnerable to Iron Maiden, but they decimate your warriors, and then they will stop attacking when wounded, go into retreat mode, and it took my mages some time to finish off this target, even with Thadar's fireballs.

That turned out to be the only boss/champ encounter in the Reliquary (I've seen as many as four).

On to the dreaded Forgotten Temple, home of the worst stair traps in the game. Oh sure, it can get really bad in the Reliquaries, or like this game, with a second boss in the Ruined Temple front room, but the worst of the worst lies in the Forgotten Temple. Not always. Sometimes it's even peaceful. Sometimes it's so bad you can't even move. You'd have to be a bit crazy to clear out all these areas in Hardcore, right? Right?

This wasn't the trappy formation. Nothing in the front room. I turned west, worked clockwise around the loop. (There is always a boss encounter to the east in this formation). Well, turned out there was one to the west, too. Blood Diver champs? Bats. Heh. Those are the least threatening monsters in these temples. Mostly. (Extra Fast Extra Strong Spectral Hit bats in Hell are an exception -- ask Hotfoot). So we work around to the back end, and there are a few rogue archers. Then there are a few more, then some Viper Magus packs, and before I realize it, I'm in a brutal skirmish fighting a two-front war, and Thadar has kicked the bucket. Wow, that happened rather quickly.

Thadar died over to my left. The rogues were just too hard to control and they shot down too many of my mages. This was the last straw for me. I limped out of there (through a portal) to recruit a new army via the Bazaar waypoint, and vowed with my next level up (coming very soon now) to stop postponing and invest in the Uberskill I'd been avoiding all this time. It looked like I would need it to get through Travincal, if these few archers and vipers could wipe me out -- not even a boss, just normal enemies. Weaken got me through the Jungle, and I'd met my goal of investing in Lower Resist *before* I would get Dim Vision. So it was time.

I cleared the rest of Upper Kurast and leveled up to clvl 36. I placed a point into Dim Vision, which at slvl 1+1 and reduced duration of 50% for Nightmare, left me 4.4 seconds. That may not seem like much -- it isn't much, actually -- but I have grown used to Decrepify's even shorter duration and still find it invaluable.

4.4 seconds... yeah. That would be plenty.

I got a chance to test it out on the Causeway, where a Heirophant boss and crew stood guard, blocking my way into Travincal. I tried DV on them, but this left my mages firing at different targets, so I Terrorized them, scattered the minions, LR'ed the boss, then DV'ed the scattered minions to keep them from healing anything.

Looks like I got my DV just in time. I could have made do with Terror, maybe. Maybe. Unlike the larger areas, though, there wasn't enough room on the Causeway to chase off the minions with Terror. The ones that ran into Travincal were one thing. The ones who ran into the sidebars with the two temples were another, and I could not get rid of those. Maybe I could have done it, but with Dim Vision, I handled it without any great pain. In fact, I was able to fully restock my army without running back to the Sewer.

I saved the Ruined Fane for last -- it is almost always the smallest and easiest temple. I tackled the Disused Reliquary. Down we go, and my troops are instantly chilled with Unholy Freeze. Um... yay?

Rather than wait for an onrush, I charged left, leading my force out of the entry room. No boss here, so he must be in the other direction. I stopped, waited. Nothing came after us, so I presumed we hadn't wakened anyone. I worked counterclockwise around the ring and came upon a beetle boss on the back side.

I put beetles in the category of vultures, vipers and spiders: hard hitters with low health. Iron Maiden bait, in other words. The beetles have some Lightning Enchanted properties, which vary between boss/champ and the minion/normal varieties. Some will spark with every magic hit, others spark with every physical, all spark when they die, and then of course the bosses can come in LEB variety, and those spark all the time and have lightning resistance.

This fight was brutal. I raised new warriors from beetle corpses, DVed some rogue archers and let my mages clean up the rest of the room. Around to the right, we found the Unholy Freeze boss.

Ugh, Teleportation Aura Enchanted. Glad I saved him for last. I used Terror and DV to chase away archers and minions, then it took about four minutes of continued exposure to my mages, chasing the darn bat hither and yon as it blinked here there and everywhere -- finally I wised up, switched from LR to Decrep, and it died mid-animation, trying once again to teleport and heal up. Have I mentioned how useful Decrep can be in some situations? If it's slow, it's going to die.

Enter the Ruined Fane. Yep I drew the main formation, the tiny little temple with no stair trap and two small back rooms. Piece of cake. No monsters to fight in the hall, either. Oops, been flashed with Conviction. Well it's not as if I didn't know there would be one boss in here. There always is. I'll wrap this up quickly and then it's Travincal time.

Multishot Archer? Hmm. Well, uh... get her, boys! Calcium supplements to the skel who takes her down!

I DVed the minions but that didn't help. I LRed the whole crew, but that was worse. My troops are dropping left and right, now. I Terrored the minions into the corners and DVed them. My mages step into the room and are mowed down two and three at a time. Hmm, three of her five minions are now dead, but so is my army.

Fricken archer bosses. At least she wasn't LEB, too. That would have been a real nightmare.

I did not give up. I tried persistently, for several minutes, to whittle her down with IM and golems. Oh so many golems, the poor guys. We ended up out in the hall, and she would shoot golly, hit him with one arrow but the others would continue on and Skel got hit over and over. When his reds ran dry and he'd made virtually no progress, it was time to bow out of there for now.

Well, for the first time in a while, my whole army was wiped out. It was time to head back to town, sell off my biggest pile yet (remember, I was not visiting anyone in town except Ormus, thanks to getting jammed up on those narrow plankways by my own minions).

Just look at all the junk I've collected for sale!

That was 190k worth of crap. I had 200k in stash and some gold to start, so I now had over 450k total and carrying more than half of it. That gold was burning a hole in my pocket. I was compelled to give much of it to Alcor. First thing, though, I needed a Cold ring. I'm heading into Travincal now and I don't want to stick with zero cold resist and low lightning resist any more. Also, that archer boss's shots stung and I could use that extra 59 Life on my rare armor I've been saving. Giving up Greyform meant losing my only source of cold resist, though, so I HAD to have some cold res from a ring. I just had to. Well, I knew it might come to this, so I had saved a sapphire when it dropped. I took the gem, a crap ring, bought four thawing potions from Ormus and cubed myself a Cobolt ring. And what luck! Max value, +29 Cold Resist. Excellent.

Now I'm ready to gamble. Let's see, here. Oh look, an amulet. I'll take that. Probably junk, but I just keep trying, gotta hit something good eventually (something better than Civerb's Icon).

Hmm. What's this piece of crap? Eye of Etlich? Blah. Sell it.

WAIT!

That's not another crap ammy. That's what I've been looking for! Woohoo! Another +skill item!

Just like that, I gain another warrior, another mage, another level of hit points, another level of mageshot damage. Another golem level, another golem mastery level, 3% more summon resist, and another tier of all my curses. Iron Maiden now at 3. Decrep, Lower Resist, Terror... and Dim Vision dur now 5.4 secs!

Oh yeah, and +3 to Light Radius. (The rest of the ammy is useless to Skeletorr. Cold damage? Leech? Blah. Like I would sully my hands with melee!)

Still got lots of cash, so let's keep going. Run to the waypoint, run to Alcor, run to the waypoint, run to Alcor, gamble up some crap boots, sell em, run to the waypoint, run to Alcor.

Oh look. A ring for gamble. I'll take it. Doh! Yeah sure, NOW you give me a sapphire ring with 49 cold resist! Wait until after I waste a gem, that's very kind of you.

But wait, we're not yet done with the irony! Alcor also hands me a plain Summoner's ammy! Gah. He was in a nasty mood today.

I shut up, though. Beggars can't be choosers. At least now I had workable resists in the 25-40 range for cold and lightning. I gambled away the rest of the surplus, removed Greyform for the last time, donned my rare quilted, my new ring and amulet, and vowed immediately to invest more into Energy (I knew I would feel the pinch right away, giving up my 40% mana regen from ammy to a +skill that would only raise the cost of summoning my army, especially the golem).

I hired another fire merc and headed for the Sewer via the Bazaar waypoint. By the time I rounded up a new army, I noticed that I had now cleared over half the sewer. Will Skel run out of troops before he can finish? I could always try to recruit a few in the Spider Forest if I had to. DV would shut up the blowdarts quite nicely, and I could try the Arachnid Lair or Swampy Pit if I wanted, or the Marsh. So I didn't worry about that.

Now for that Multishot wench. I returned to the Fane, DVed her last two minions in the hallway, let my mages have some target practice, then cornered that saucy babe in her chamber and gave her the business.

Decrep? You bet! Slow her down, pull her teeth, keep my tanks alive, and let the mages work her over.

Take that! Ha.

So much for the toughest boss in Act Three. Say hello to the new and improved Skeletorr, complete with more life, more curse power, more and stronger troops (especially Golly! He can actually take a hit now), more hit recovery, more resists, and the almighty Dim Vision.

Into Travincal we go, where even when they smash my army, Dim Vision can shut them up, turning them into mindless targets that will stand there and die without protest, even if I have only a few mages left.

Dim Vision is not quite a cure-all. Heirophant magic is strong, and Night Lord meteors are brutal. Trying to juggle large mobs of Zealots backed by priests and vampires is still a task not to be taken lightly. I thrilled at the intense run-n-gun action, nonstop cursing, making do with a "three troops at a time" sort of fighting, pulling moves to divide and conquer, sometimes with curses, sometimes footwork, sometimes decoys. Great stuff. I loved every moment. Five heirophants in one location actually wiped me out but I rebuilt from right there under their blinded noses with golem and a couple of zealots. Racing now up and down the aisles of Travincal, trying to shut up all the mage types before they could blow my troops to Hell.

Twice I had to venture back to the sewer for replacements, despite all my newfound power, but here I was, a sad little skelly summoner kicking bootay in Nightmare Travical. Well, sort of. They were dying and I wasn't. That's an asskick victory for Skeletorr, especially when they can't even force him to run much any more.

So we come to the temple, and Skel has a fresh army. The council raise a few hydras, and Skel has no army.

Oops. What happened there? Hmm.

Well, that's HOPELESS. Time to let Maiden and Golly sort it out.

Yep, that worked remarkably well. Golem now slvl 1+2, mastery at slvl 1+2, golem life at a hefty 230, Iron Maiden now 1+2 for a decent duration and 250% damage reflected. Council will heal and heal and heal themselves at range, but if you melee them, they turn aggressive, trying to get a kill, and forget to heal. Oops for them. Thus, it didn't take long to wipe them all out. I had to venture in there for Toorc, whose Stone Skin helped him survive after all the others had suicided, but I cornered him with golems and he soon followed the others into the grave. I raised mages from the corpses, got six total. Cubed the Will, smashed the Orb, and down we go into the Durance of Hate.

DV, DV, oh I how love thee.

Undead flayers? Not a problem. Tempt them, DV them as they pause, mages make short work from a distance, nobody gets hurt. I know how much of a problem these are in multiplayer because their death explosions scale up with more players. The EST took several deaths that way, more so in NM than Hell, ironically. Here in Single Player, they are still no joke, but they don't rise to the level of instant death unless you tackle Extra Strong Cursed bosses and suchlike.

Night Lords? Not a problem. Shut them up, shoot them down. Or... swarm them with warriors, IM them to speed the cause, and shoot them down. Without DV, these would be fearsome foes and would require much travelling to go on recruit runs.

Bosses? LR or Decrep and shoot them down.

I know I've said this before, but I really enjoy Skeletorr because he's so far from your usual summoner, who relies on the brute strength of Revives and generally doesn't need much besides Iron Maiden. Skel has had to use all his curses, and with the way I've developed him, the mages are his bread and butter and that makes for endlessly interesting battles, each one different from the last. You gotta love that!

The moment I found the stairs (which came fairly soon) I descended. Why? Because I could use levels one and two of the Durance to restock troops. I knew I would be running through a lot of armies.

On level two, I did search for the waypoint, to make sure I had that just in case of the remote possibility of quitting out of a dire situation.

Down we go, into Mephisto's den. I DVed a few Blood Lords and my troops shot them down. Then out comes Sparkfist and the game is afoot. My troops went for a frontal assault, and to my amazement, Golly's new toughness and Lower Resist curse made a remarkable difference.

Can you believe that? All the LEBs that decimated my army, yet we thoroughly pummeled the great Sparkfist on the first try. Go figure.

I raised replacement mages and a couple warriors from the corpses. Out now to the main room, DV some more Blood Lords, take them out. Raise warriors. Should I take on Maffer next? Or Wyand? I decided to go for Maffer. Oops, wait. Whoa! A LOT of firewalls raised against my troops over near his chamber. I pulled back. Too many Blood Lords there, maybe even a boss pack? Back to town to heal my troops, drop junk on the pile, and now to tackle the Voidbringer.

There were some Blood Lords with him. He turned out to be Extra Fast, and I found that with my attention divided between the Blood Lords and the boss, I did not have enough attention to go around. Wyand ate my army while I tried to distract the Blood Lords, and Iron Maiden is pretty much useless by itself against vampires. The brunt of their melee attack comes from cold damage, which is not reflected. Teleportation is another problem. Without any mages, I found myself suddenly impotent. (Not a new experience, either).

Extra Fast really makes things worse. Teleportation plus Extra Fast can be worse even than LEB Teleport. They just teleport SO MUCH, and so quickly. Not even Decrep can always handle it.

I ported out of there, sold the pile, gambled, got nothing for it. Back down to the waypoint, finished clearing level two, then up for part of level one. Now with a new army, I returned to level three to tackle Wyand. My plan? Terrorize the vampires to scatter them, then lure Wyand out to the main room and fight him there solo with my whole army. That should work, right?

Phase one completed, Blood Lords scattered. Phase two working out OK, Voidbringer now out in the main room. My warriors are dropping as he smashes them. Uh oh, hydras now. Gah, there goes a mage, now another. Firewalls? Wyand can't cast firewalls? What are those Blood Lords doing out in the main chamber? How did they find us out here? Blah and blah. Scratch another army. No progress made!

I ported out again, back inside Wyand's chamber with the Blood Lords there. He was still out in the main room, where I had abandoned my last two mages to hold his attention a bit longer.

Up to Durance 1 again, and time now to finish clearing that level. Oh look, undead flayer champs. Yum.

Now the top two levels have been cleared end to end (and plenty of junk added to my new pile in town). I walked all the way back to the waypoint. Why? So I could port my latest army onto those Blood Lords, DV them and take them out of the equation. So that's what I did. Lost some troops, raised two new mages, then ran out to tackle Wyand. Progress looked good, but then he teleported away. I gave chase, now around the bottom part of the main room. He kept teleporting, moving always toward Maffer's chamber. When we got to the bottom corner on that side, that's as far as I would go. I pulled my troops back. Wyand came back for us. I Decreped him without end but he still managed to teleport away, and slowly he wore down my troops. He'd port next to a mage and smash its bones, or he would raise a hydra, and two or three of my troops would refuse to run away. Before long, I found myself down to just golem, and I fought on. Iron Maiden, yes, but not just that. I changed from Throw to Attack on left mouse and waded in with my wand. I couldn't hit for anything, but I wanted him to hit me. He did. Ouch, my mana got voided. Heh. I drank red, minor purple... keep hitting me you bastard, you are almost dead.

Teleport-teleport-teleport-teleport. Four quick flashes in a row, and he's got 90% life. Well blah to that.

I walked over to his chamber, opened a portal there, then walked him out, down, and back around to the stairs, where I left him parked.

I restocked in town, switch amulets from Etlich to a rare with +20ish cold and lit resists, and went down the portal to take out Mephisto. With IM and Golem at slvl 2 (Remember, not wearing the eye) this fight took a little while, but I avoided troubles and the big wispy one expired eventually.

I grabbed the drop and took the portal out of there, to Act Four. Interesting drop. I had already found Stormeye with this char, now it was the Bong's turn. A first on both of those for me. Plus Wormskull. Some rare finds here (rare for single player at least).

Now Skeletorr being hardcore, I should skip that last remaining tidbit of act three, shouldn't I? After all, I had skipped whole levels of the Palace and all but the most mandatory portion of the Arcane. Unless I went back for those, it wouldn't be a full clear anyway.

Yeah.

OK, so you know I have to go back there. I am not leaving that teleport-happy bastard alone. Sorry.

Down into the Sewer, which is really starting to run thin now. By the time I round up another army, I have cleared over three quarters of Sewer level one, all on recruitment drives.

I left Wyand parked at the stairs for a reason. Yes, that was the easiest way to ditch him, but more so, when I came back... I knew that THIS would happen:

YES! STAIR TRAP FOR THE GAME! BWAHAHAHA!

Skel's massive army had the bastard surrounded the moment I arrived on the level. Too bad for him.

You can see in the screenshot that he's about to teleport for the first time. He managed to teleport half a dozen times, but I had a full compliment of mages (some cold mages this time, take that you slap happy devil's whore) and I Decrepified him until the sun set on his parade.

Now for the last one. He could run, but he could not hide.

Ooh, Multishot. Glad I didn't draw that on Bremm. I might still be fighting him. :) Or... dead. Hmm. Let's not ponder that too closely.

Cleaned up the Blood Lords (DV DV) and then back to finish the sewer. Ah yes, Act Three cleared end to end. Ah the sweet taste of victory.

And now, before we go, there is Some Unfinished Business to Wrap Up.