ACT FOUR
Skeletor begins Act Four at clvl 37, with 25 Str/Dex, 80 Vit and 140 Nrg.
Raise Skeleton @ 3 (+2 from wand)
Raise Skeletal Mage @ 5 (+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
Dim Vision @ 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
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: +49 Cold Resistance - gambled Act 3 NM
Rare Quilted Armor: Fastest Recovery, +59 Life, +21 Fire Resist, +18 Lit Resist - gambled Act 1 NM
Civerb's Icon - gambled Act 4 Normal
Rare Amulet with cold and lightning resistance - gambled Act 2 NM
Hotspur, Greyform, Nokozan Relic, Nagelring, two perfect and one flawless Diamond.
Would Skeletorr have trouble getting started on the Outer Steppes? I wondered. He drew a Doom Caster boss right out of the gate and I fed golems to that mob, relying on Iron Maiden to kill them. I had to recast golem several times, despite his new toughness, but then I had a foothold. Venom Lords, Doom Casters and Corpulents -- I've had that combination a lot lately, it seems. I used DV on some of them, but I used Iron Maiden more. I used Lower Resist if the mages were all focused on one target, and generally I kept my army restocked, though it went up and down a few times.
The Plains of Despair proved more lively. I drew knights, more balrogs, and the dreaded Flesh Spawners. Those pups provided an endless stream of bodies, but they also ate a lot of my troops, so I had to continually recast Iron Maiden on crowds because I never knew if more pups had been born, and I used a lot of mana raising a lot of replacement troops in a hurry.
There was a Pit Lord champ pack. Funny how those work. You get Venom Lords (the strongest of that racial type) in the Steppes and Plains, as well as the CS, but in the Steppes you get actual Balrog bosses and champs, while in the Plains you get Pit Lord champs. On the River you get Pit Lords, but the champs and bosses are often Venom Lords. And there are no normal Balrogs anywhere to be found. Just makes you wonder what they were smoking at Blizzard that day, when all this was decided. :) (And there are some other monster types in the game code that don't actually appear anywhere, like Cloud Stalker Nests and Tomb Vipers -- "things that make you go hmmm").
A little farther in, Skel came upon Izual amidst a big furball of a fight. The action here got really thick with Skel having to continuously cast curses, raise troops, and even drink some mana to keep going. Thank goodness the body supply was plentiful.
I don't know why, but more and more knights kept wandering up from the south, attacking my troops from behind while they held Izzy still for the mages. These knights made me cast Iron Maiden repeatedly to fend them off, temporarily overwriting the Lower Resist I wanted to keep going on Izual and slowing my mages' progress.
I devoted the two skill point into Iron Maiden, raising it from slvl 1 to 3. With skill adders, I now had slvl 5 total, for a decent duration and 300 percent damage reflection. This immediately proved useful in reducing my warrior casualties a bit, at least against these melee-oriented opponents.
When Skeletorr arrived at the City of the Damned, everything changed. I came upon a caged boss at the Fiend Exhibit and that was working out well, but then some Damned woke up and the situation turned ugly in a hurry. I tried Iron Maiden on them, thinking its new power would help out. Ha! Then some Abyss knights showed up and my force and a shaky situation went south in a hurry. The next thing I know, my troops are all dead and my golem cannot even come close to cutting the mustard against the Damned.
Those damned Damned! They pushed me all the way out of the City!
Here you see me undergoing a gruelingly slow recovery process, with endless golems and miniscule progress being made via Iron Maiden. This bordered on hopeless, because their regen was undoing the damage almost as fast as I could inflict it, but my persistence paid off with a kill, then another. I tried Terrorizing some of these dogs, but they wouldn't run for long, and some just ran into corners and immediately resumed shooting.
The real problem? They were in wounded mode and would retreat from the golem. I had to use that tight area at the gate to corner them and force the Iron Maiden onto them, pretty much the slow and tedious process I had undergone with Fouldog back in the jail. Once I had the gate secured and four bodies to work with, I chased the rest out of there with Terror, raised four mages, switched permanently to Dim Vision and exacted my revenge on the rest of that mob. Whew, what an ordeal that was. I knew that DV would work best against them but I underestimated the threat level. I thought I could handle it without constant DV against every target. I was wrong.
Now that I had it straightened out, I DVed my way across the City. There was one problem, though. My troops were too eager. They'd engage a set of targets (and the warriors would rush into melee range, even though they could have safely stood back) and then as those were slain, someone in the army would spot new targets and rush off to engage those. Thus, like walking your dog, sometimes the dog walks you, you know? I got yanked into places we had no business venturing by overeager troops sticking my neck out for me. Look at the automap below and you'll see what I mean. I've gone far into enemy territory with uncleared land on every side of me.
I got around to where I didn't worry too much about warriors. There were no hard-rusing melee types here: Damned, Abyss knights, and Stranglers. The Stranglers could be Dimmed while attacking with their homing missiles and then they would just stand there and wait to be shot down. The casualty rate among the warriors I raised was very high, but there were few mages destroyed.
DV turned a hopeless fight into a steady, perhaps even slightly lopsided battle. Ten necromages with slvl 22 Skel Mastery -- about 25 damage per shot -- and appropriate curse help, were pretty effective.
The event depicted below made me think about the song "How Much Is That Doggy In the Window"
The funniest part is that he's not sticking his head out the window, he's sticking it right through the wall. Gah, that's a face not even a mother could love. :)
Those poor guys, getting shot down through the window by my mages. What a shame.
I had to venture into tight spaces to fight those damned champions.
Even the game calls them that!
As you can see, Skeletorr is about to level up. He did so with only a few creatures left to slay in the city. This brings me to my last chance to pick up a must-have skill before reaching the Chaos Sanctuary. I made it through Normal without this, but I know better than go without it in Nightmare. Lacking direct damage skills, lacking the sturdiness of Revives, and lacking any way to protect my troops from the ravages of Oblivion Knight magicks, I know there will come a point when my only option left will be Confuse.
With +2 skills, my newly invested Confuse skill offers about seven seconds duration. That should be plenty. Right?
Down we go to the River of Flame, where a multiple minion necro gives all new meaning to the term "Stairs Trap".
I'm lucky I drew the milder of two possible River openings. Often that segment is completely empty (as it should be -- whoever left stairs traps in the game ought to be flogged). That beastie to my left is a Venom Lord minion. There's a boss over there, too, a couple of Abyss Knights to my right, and some dead Pit Lords at the bottom of the stairs. Half my casualties were self-inclicted as I unsummoned minions on the stairs to get some dodging room to avoid incoming mageshot. My own mages bottlenecked the stairs the moment they spotted targets, and at the point in the picture, those are my last four, so I was loathe to trash them. I cast Terror at the right edge of the screen and managed to shoo away the knights, then let it play out with my decimated artillery slowing killing off the boss and minions to the left.
This was not a pleasant, nor particularly safe, experience, but Skel survived. I had a nice full army going down those stairs. You can see sloppiness in the game design there. Skeletorr finds it somewhat offensive that he and his kind were totally dissed here by the game designers.
I managed to restock my mages from the dead, but could only raise one warrior. We limped over to face the knights, who had to be Dimmed for any progress to be made possible.
Then the Grotesques arrived and started to breed, and the corpse shortage ended abruptly. I had to raise warrior after warrior after warrior, and at times, Iron Maiden was doing more damage than the mages, but then more knights would arrive and I had to go with DV no matter how hard the front line was being pounded.
A teleporting Urdar was encountered in the next segment. He wiped out the army. Actually, he wiped out about three armies right there, because I had plenty of corpses and kept raising troops. Below you see the fight interrupted by Abyss Knights, who were the real culprits, wiping out my troops when I could not afford to Dim the enemy due to trying to kill the boss.
The game gave me quite the conundrum here, as no matter which way I went with it, I got wiped out. If not for the Groteques, I would have been stymied here and may have had to quit for lack of replacement troops. I could have handled the knights or the boss separately with little trouble, but combined they proved exceedingly stubborn.
From there, I advanced to the river waypoint on a steady course. Pit Lords, Abyss Knights, Grotesques and lots of pups. IM or DV as appropriate. Then I went looking for the Hell Forge and discovered that there was a loop of river I had missed. I passed the Forge exit and unknowingly woke a few knights down there, then got sandwiched between those firing from offscreen (picking off my mages in the back ranks) and a really thick battle on the front line. My army got wiped out and I had to rebuild bit by bit, making do against high odds with few troops.
Fortunately there were plenty of corpses after the battle. Skel retooled before facing Hephasto.
Extra Strong bosses are particular bait for Iron Maiden. Hephasto is a huge obstacle for most characters, but summoning Necros have it easy -- unless Heffer gets teleport power. I remember one of the first ever Kings in Hardcore Realms, on USWest, got wiped out by a teleporting Fatso and it was big news at the time.
No teleport ability? Say goodbye to Big Ugly, because he's going down in a hurry.
And that's with just slvl 3+2 Iron Maiden and some pathetic troops. Imagine a fully stocked Revive necro with high level IM.
The forge dropped a flawless diamond among its tidbits. I already had two perfs and a flawless, though, and had sold my regular diamonds, figuring there would be no way I'd transmute a perf before I found another gem shrine. Well, that may have been a hasty decision, as I'd now be one normal diamond short of a perfect, but oh well. What's done is done, and I sold the extra diamond along with the rest. I will just have to find a gem shrine.
Now that I've cleared everything up to the last waypoint, I ought to stop. The Curse-resistant Oblivion Knights represent the worst possible threat to my army, and there is nowhere to run to in this act for more troops when I get wiped. Yes, indeed, I ought to stop now, come back another time in a fresh game, and be able to recruit new armies downriver or out on the Steppes. That's what I ought to do.
"Feelin lucky today, punk?"
Yeah. I suppose I am.
I press onward, clearing the river maze. The sanctuary gate turns out to be guarded by this fellow:
Chaos Shield! What an interesting name. Quite appropriate, as his sparks decimated my force, shielding the home of chaos against my entry. With no army left, nowhere to recruit more, I ought to take that as a sign from destiny, stop now, and try this again some other time. Right?
But no, I am too stubborn for that. I forage downriver through the rest of the maze looking for unused, unspent corpses the game hasn't cleaned up yet. I found three of them. With three mages and a golem, I return to the battle. His last two minions are slain and he is damaged a bit, but he goes teleport-happy on me and heals back up to half. My mages are wiped out, but there are two corpses. I raise them, getting one ice bolt necromage and one charged bolt shooter. The cold shooter chills him and I hit him with Lower Resist. He smacks on Golly and both mages are in sweet spots. Both survive the sparks. Old Chaos Shield is down now to one quarter health. Go boys go! Go go go!
Teleport, teleport, teleport, teleport. The charged bolt shooter dies in a train of sparks. Blah.
But wait! The boss didn't heal up in those teleports. He's still chilled. I smack him with decrep, which really slows him down. He is losing health ever so slowly, and swinging in slow motion at my golem. He is down now almost to a sliver.
Teleport, teleport. Nooooooooooooo!
I stuff golly in his face, decrep him again. My last mage shoots him twice then dies in the rain of sparks.
Oh come ON! Soooooo close!
Teleport, teleport. Oh my goodness, he still hasn't healed!
I feed him another golem, cast Iron Maiden, he takes two swings and crumples in a growling pile of smoke.
Unbelievable.
I couldn't reproduce that fight if you held a gun to my head. How I managed it, I do not know. Lots of luck combined with determination.
Into the Sanctuary we venture -- Skeletorr, Golly, and Chaos Shield reborn as a firebolt necromage.
First up, knights: a couple fighters and a mage. The fighters die by their own hand, giving me bodies to raise more mages. The Decrep Wars begin as each side Decreps the other to slow its reflexes. I keep golem interposed between the Mage and my troops.
My boys shot him down. Incredible.
One Oblivion Knight I can handle. Two is another story. Why? Because I only have one golem. I can cover one mage. I can't cover two, and those OKs can flatten my mages in one shot. Trying to take on more than one of them is a disaster waiting to happen.
Once I get an Oblivion isolated, thought, he's doomed. Doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
There were two times in the long hall leading up to the pentagram when my force was wiped out and there were no bodies left to work with. Both times I had to run around casting Confuse on the enemy, hoping the Venoms and Dooms would attack the Oblivions. That happened the first time, but they also attacked one another sometimes, too. I managed to get them to kill off two Oblivions, though, then lured some of the melee types downriver toward the front of the sanctuary where I slew them with IM and raised myself a new platoon of mages. The second time I got wiped out, there was nothing left but two Oblivions in the long hall, so I had to venture past them, across the pentagram, to locate more melee opponents. I lured them back, Confused them, got them to kill one of the mages, then IMed them and raised my own mages to wipe out that last Oblivion. Whew, this is getting into some serious tactics now, trying to invent victories out of thin air.
I made damn sure not to go anywhere near the two side wings. Those were my last possible reserves for new recruits, and I knew I could not beat De Seis without those reserves. So I advance straight into the north wing, where I encountered a very thick mob.
Look at the Doom Knights piling up. Wow. Plenty of bodies there, but... of course I am going to need them all and will run short anyway. You can see my anti-Oblivion curse at work: Lower Resist.
With all those resources on hand, and wide open space in which to work, I defeated three enemy mages in one battle without losing my whole army. A few Storm Casters provided additional entertainment, mugging my mages while Golly was committed to preventing my troops from meeting with Oblivion.
Finally we have made it to the Seal and I have over half an army left: fully stocked with necromages, and even a pair of warriors. Can I defeat an Oblivion boss with half an army? Bwahahaha. Yeah. Right.
Here's a look at my sad resists, my stats and such.
Babysitting my troops through the river maze was a pain in the rear end. I had to take extreme care because each troop mattered. Well, at least I hoped they would matter. In Normal I had been able to kill all but one of his minions before my force was wiped out, and that had been enough to push through from there with melee and then a single mage. I knew better than to expect this sort of result on this attempt. I hoped, at best, to cull a minion or two before the harder work began.
Magic Resistant? Well that hardly matters much. His base resists are all 60% anyway.
I tried to keep them distracted with golems, but that just didn't last long enough. Two minions eventually flanked my golem blockade and started wiping out my mages. I blocked them off with the golem, but that freed De Seis. I fled and three of my mages made it out of there with me. No enemies slain. Not good.
The next several minutes entailed a lot of cat and mouse, sticking golems out at the edge of my range to lure the Oblivions while struggling valliantly to keep my mages from engaging. I needed to isolate a minion if at all possible. I decided to key up Attack instead of Throw on my left mouse, as I would tank for my mages in the right situation if it might mean getting a kill. I wasn't going to do that unless I isolated a target.
Then, somehow, it happened. One of the Oblivions broke off from the pack and I got him alone, below the pentagram. I had two mages left. This minion was very low on health. He had taken the brunt of my earlier assault. He was a poison shooter and he hit both of my mages while he ran from my golem. Blah. I had seconds to get the kill. First one, then the other of my troops fell, but the minion had half a sliver left. I charged him, desperate to secure this kill before it was too late.
Swing, swing, swing, swing, with my sorry little wand and probably a To Hit rate under 40%.
I got a hit! The minion collapsed into steam! YAY!!!
Then reality set in. I had spent my whole army and a good bit of sweat to kill all of one minion. With only the side wings left unexplored in Act Four, I would not have enough to defeat them with my troops.
The time had to rely on Confuse. I could only hope there were enough troops around to get the job done.
I ventured into the Infector's wing and, in a daring move, lured out the entire enemy force. I swept every nook, corner and niche and woke the entire mob. Foolhardy you say? Perhaps.
I led the mob back to the pentagram where a brutal four on one fight ensued.
Yes, indeed, four on one: Lord De Seis and three of his minions against my entire army of one Storm Caster.
To make matters worse, my Confuse only lasted a short time, the Storm Caster would retreat when his health dropped below half, and De Seis could countercurse my troop, overwriting my curse. Also, don't forget that Confuse only acts to have the cursed enemies attack the nearest nonconfused target. Sometimes that was me. So I either had to do a lot of happy feet maneuvering, or sometimes even Terrorize the Storm Caster and then Confuse it. Damage done to my troop regenerated, but so did damage done to the minions. Damage done to De Seis did not heal, so I made some progress, but eventually I tired of how little progress was being made, IMed the Storm Caster, slew him, then headed for the Vizier's Wing. There had better be more than ONE enemy over there, or Skel was done for the night.
Ah, here we go. I've found some recruits to help me out with the DeSeis-ive battle.
My battle plan? Simple. Walk (or run) past De Seis, have the Doom Knights follow, then turn and Confuse them when they were near or (better yet) surrounding the target.
YEAH! Get him, boys! Go go go!
This tactic worked to kill a minion. Then one of the fighters was slain by De Seis. Eventually they mugged him, though. That's a good thing, as this was the only monster pack left in the Sanctuary, and I had to use them to mop up the last three minions as well as the two Oblivions I lured them away from. There were only three Doom Knights left, all wounded, when the Oblivion slaying was finally completed.
I raised mages from the corpses. Ugh, mostly poison throwers. Oh well. Have to live with it.
LEB? Oh yeah, that's fun.
At least the bastard is Extra Strong. After his sparks wiped out my mages, he had little trouble beating himself to death on Golly's thorns. Same with most of his minions.
I don't remember the Infector's random ability. Must not have impressed me, as I didn't take his picture either. I came out of that fight with four necromages for use against Diablo.
Now I had earlier found a Ruby grim wand. Seeing as I did not need my wand for Diablo (not enough corpses to make troops, and even if there were, it wouldn't matter). So I put my good wand in my stash and carried the Ruby. Might as well max fire resistance, right? I switched around other items as well, ending up with -20 Cold Res, but max Fire and 62 Lightning, with -2 MD. Yeah, that should be plenty.
Down we go, open the last Seal, out comes Big Gold (in Nightmare he ain't red, you know) and my main ambition, other than winning, is to find a way for my mages to contribute to the fight. Last time I got here, in Normal, Diablo wiped out my entire force with one fire nova before my troops so much as fired a single shot. This time they would get revenge. I made sure of that.
Ha! Look at that! Chilled! That was because I had two cold mages behind him shooting him up the tail pipe!
Yes, it's true, my necromages contributed a vital 0.1% of the damage done to Diablo. Let him tremble in fear.
Or... maybe not. Check it out, how he lays down the smackage on poor Golly. Wow.
I'm just glad that wasn't me! Skel with his -20 Cold Resist. Ouch.
So we settle into a routine. I raise golems, he destroys them. Sometimes he destroys them with fire, sometimes with lightning, sometimes with a big fat bitchslap. I liked it when he did the bitchslap, as it is not only cool to watch him smash golems by the dozen, it also furthers my end of doing damage to him -- or rather, him doing damage to himself.
Ever wondered what it looks like when something is about to die yet doesn't have a clue? Poor Golly.
Have you seen those women who turn away from people, hold up their hand to keep them at arm's length, and say, "Talk to the hand, talk to the hand." I've seen people like that on trashy talk shows -- not that I watch many of those, but I have on occasion. "Talk to the hand." Poor Golly.
Somewhere in there, I was using too much mana and switched out from Etlich to Civerb's Icon. That helped a good bit, as I was able to finish Diablo without dipping into my rejuv supply just for mana.
Say hello to Duke Skeletorr.
Nightmare difficulty cleared end to end, no critters parked, no Save and Exit. The game got pretty tough at times, but I could have made it easier for myself by getting DV sooner. That's how I wanted it, though. Now that I have made it to Hell difficulty, I fully intend to take Skel to King. I didn't think he'd be viable this far, but those necromages are half decent in large numbers, and I'm having a lot of fun with this char, as each fight presents a new challenge.
Here's Skeletorr's curse tree:
You can see that I still have Civerb's Icon in use. Just add one more to everything to get the picture of my current skills.
The same applies to this picture. Remember that I used a ruby wand only temporarily. The wand in my stash has +2 Skeleton and +3 Mage. I will surely be replacing it with the first +2 to all wand I am offered by Akara in Hell. With luck, I may even get such a wand with bonus abilities or a good suffix. We'll see.
Nothing from the bone tree. Skeletorr does ALL his damage through his minions. That can be tough sometimes. Not so tough as to be undoable, though. :)
Duke Skeletorr will see you in Hell.
- Sirian
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