A hardcore journey [win SC NL prizes] [***DONE***]

I thought you said Hell was going to be slow going?! You're crushing Hell faster than Normal and NM! Good work!

"If you die on this quest, I will commemorate your

Sacrifice in an epic poem. You will not need a potion to achieve immortality.

Ormus' words will do that."

-

Ormus and I, ready at any time to make a poem if you don't finish this.

Don't die tho, I'm betting on u
Good luck on your Act 3 journey!

Derenzo wrote: 3 weeks ago

"If you die on this quest, I will commemorate your

Sacrifice in an epic poem. You will not need a potion to achieve immortality.

Ormus' words will do that."

-

Ormus and I, ready at any time to make a poem if you don't finish this.

Don't die tho, I'm betting on u
Good luck on your Act 3 journey!

That's a great quote by

Ormus haha He says some memorable things in this game if you listen to him

Knappogue wrote: 3 weeks ago

I thought you said Hell was going to be slow going?! You're crushing Hell faster than Normal and NM! Good work!

Well, I'm not really rushing, I swear! I'm not clearing maps and I'm progressing whenever I find the exit to the next place, but I am methodically killing all monsters I encounter (unless they're of the very dangerous kind, then I might

Teleport around them rather than risk it, which hasn't happened a lot yet), often disengaging and backing off to take on fewer enemies at a time, etc. Just trying to be careful. No sense in teleporting past weak mobs only to have them gang up from all sides (and that's when you encounter something actually dangerous... )

Killed him with SF (to half) and

Charged Bolt, or...? How long did it take? He dropped 3 milion town portals or 69.000 potions?

No,

Static Field +

Frozen Orb actually FO is a good boss killer. He didn't drop any scrolls this time (but I've seen him drop only scrolls more than once lol).

Orb on

Duriel?? How's that possible without Sunder? I never even tried to use any cold skill on him, though. When started this game one of first lectures from googling were "

Andariel immune to poison,

Duriel to cold." I guess it's not true then.

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

Orb on

Duriel?? How's that possible without Sunder? I never even tried to use any cold skill on him, though. When started this game one of first lectures from googling were "

Andariel immune to poison,

Duriel to cold." I guess it's not true then.

You're probably thinking of the Uber variants. Uber

Andariel (

Lilith, rather) and

Uber Duriel are immune to poison and cold, respectively. But not the normal non-Uber act boss variants. Hell

Andariel has "only" 66% poison resistance, and while Hell

Duriel does have a whopping 95% cold resistance, he is not immune and thus

Cold Mastery works normally on him.

EDIT: Pro tip, the boss names above are clickable, if you click on their names you'll get to the database page for those bosses and you can see their stats including resistances. Curiously,

Uber Duriel page says he has 75% Cold Resistance, but he has a hidden Cold Enchanted mod which gives him an extra 75%, making it 150%. If I understand correctly .

You rock, Shadow.

TY SO MUCH FOR EXPLANATION, SHADOW. 95% is huge, but I totally forgot

Cold Mastery. When you don't actively play a certain char, you simply forget the basics.
Anyway, advice on Google was quite OK even for standard bosses, don't use poison on

Andariel or cold on

Duriel, unless you are Sorc with CM

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

TY SO MUCH FOR EXPLANATION, SHADOW. 95% is huge, but I totally forgot

Cold Mastery. When you don't actively play a certain char, you simply forget the basics.

No problem, happy to help

Side note - Act 3 is when it really starts getting interesting, with the first (possible) appearances of both

Willowisp and

Bone Fetish. No souls in

Great Marsh this time, thankfully. Currently in

Kurast Sewers Level 1, and there's dolls here of course. I don't think I've ever explored it quite as slowly and carefully as this time around. One mistake could mean instant Death lol.

The council is down, the

Flail has been forged, the orb has been smashed.

Mephisto is next. But first, one of the scariest areas of the game (on hardcore at least).

I hope when you say "slow play" isn't applied on other aspects of your life. Because if this is slow, can't imagine what is fast.
So you didn't have dolls in Flayer Dungeon? Marsh is nice and extremely easy for farming if no souls.
Now you can see why I adore Java in HC: Valkyre and

Decoy

Attract dolls and you simple kill them from afar. And you only have Merc, so stay turbocautious. And of course, Durance is the most nervous part, it is so tense in HC you can feel it. Welcome to the fun side, to paraphrase Xanhast.

Good luck!!! I really hope that my prediction was wrong.

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

I hope when you say "slow play" isn't applied on other aspects of your life. Because if this is slow, can't imagine what is fast.

Haha, well it feels slow. Careful might be a better word. I'm taking my time to kill monsters that are in my way, retreating when it's overwhelming (like if merc is in danger), re-engaging, retreating, re-engaging, etc. Just not clearing maps

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

So you didn't have dolls in Flayer Dungeon?

Nope, no dolls there First encounter was in Sewers.

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

Now you can see why I adore Java in HC: Valkyre and

Decoy

Attract dolls and you simple kill them from afar. And you only have Merc, so stay turbocautious.

Hehe, yeah, I'm employing a tactic where I

Teleport forward a bit, then immediately take a few steps back, cast a FO to "scout" (I play with minimum brightness so it's very hard to spot enemies from a distance). I'm extra careful about

Teleport destination when there's walls and doors, try not to

Teleport into the unknown.

Curumo69 wrote: 3 weeks ago

And of course, Durance is the most nervous part, it is so tense in HC you can feel it. Welcome to the fun side, to paraphrase Xanhast.

Thanks

is fo + cl better than fo +

Hydra?
my sad sorc is running the latter and im not impressed........

krathkor wrote: 3 weeks ago

is fo + cl better than fo +

Hydra?
my sad sorc is running the latter and im not impressed........

Don't get me wrong, I like FO+

Hydra, and

Chain Lightning needs a bigger skill investment to really shine compared to

Hydra (if you want to main it and farm efficiently), but in this case I like

Chain Lightning for it's auto-aiming and AoE, each cast arcs through monsters automatically, each arc can be quite long, if there's fewer monsters than max hits then it will just arc back and forth between the available targets (NHD, next hit delay, plays a role here though).

In this case I also started with

Charged Bolt and just decided to stick with the lightning tree (+ FO) to avoid spending a respec until I actually needed one. I haven't felt like I needed a respec yet. Sure, my CL is a bit weak due to lack of +skills but it's serving me well enough and I like to avoid respecing until I absolutely need to.

The advantage of

Hydra is that you can set-and-forget and kite or cast other things while they do their thing, even placing them through doorways to hit things you haven't aggroed yet. CL is a bit slow to cast and locks you in cast animation so it can be dangerous if cast in short range. It takes some getting used to.

Mephisto shall no longer darken our souls with hatred.

Durance of Hate Level 2 was scary with all the dolls running around, felt like it took forever lol.

GZ, "slow" man!
What dangerous areas remain?
-

Plains of Despair if filled with "Caspers"
- De Seis if he's Limmune (dunno is that his inherent immunity or it is only sometimes as aditional)
-

Frozen River - possible "Caspers"
-

Nihlathak - well, always a potential danger
- Worldstone L2 - again if there are "Caspers"
- Throne - if there are dolls, and be carefull, 2nd

Baal's champion can resurrect them
So, practically, if u're lucky, won't see any "Caspers" and dolls and you're done.

Except for, well, you know - the toughest part... Ancients.
Luckily, you can try them zillions of times and escape easily if needed.
One of them is Limmune, dunno which one, but the swirling dude is the most dangerous. If he hits you, you're one-shot dead.
You can have huge shield and life, but on Hell he can one-shot you.

Yeah, there's plenty of dangerous things ahead, for sure.

Also, the "caspers" enemy type you're talking about are called

Willowisp, but most people called them "souls" (there is one variant called "Burning Soul" and one called "Black Soul").

Will be scary going forward

Casper is much better name