Proceed, Heroes, Into Terror's Lair! Diablo II Freestyle Group Slamdance Thread!

I still try to get in at least a Hatred and Destruction Key attempt in every evening, but I haven't gotten either dude to drop one in ages.

At this point, instead of insisting on doing it alone (which I kind of doubt I'd have been able to, with how tough the Ubers and Panda-D supposedly are) I figure those of us who are in the range of Lv85 and up should get together, combine our Keys, and take a crack at it some evening.

I have three Terror keys, and one Hatred and Destruction Key. If we can get the other four we need between us we can give it a shot.

If we win the Hellfire Torch can go to whichever class is the lucky one the +skill mod rolled for, unless that happens to be none of us, in which case... rock paper scissors? I dunno.

It'd be a good way to cap off the LAP, I think.

Also

I'd be up for a mass gathering as one last hurrah to end the thread with.

Also, happened across a max damage Titan's Revenge, should anyone want it. Life Leech is at the low end, but still a neat weapon nonetheless.

Owfirehot was last seen killing Diablo and receiving the fantastic reward of being told to hunt down and slay the final Prime Evil, which is not very fantastic at all.



The final act begins in Harrogath, yet another town filled with people who want us to do things for them, and like every town before it, Owfirehot is content to ignore everybody and rush right into the action. The townsfolk said something about Baal and a siege on the town, but who cares? There's loot and XP out there!



It doesn't take long before we run into some new foes. Being an expansion pack, Act V has several new enemies to deal with. These Enslaved are basic melee fighters, and by themselves are entirely harmless. However, there are Overseers that appear later in the Act that will whip nearby Enslaved, causing them to transform into suicide soldiers who rush your character and explode. They can be quite dangerous in this form!

Also worth mentioning is that barbarian engaged in combat. These brave souls are AI allies, and can actually kill monsters, though they are incredibly weak and spend most of their time on the receiving end of death. They only appear in the first area of the act, and the presence of Harrogath's last remaining defenders desperately fighting back against overwhelming odds adds a great deal of atmosphere.

Also cool is the presence of Catapults constantly bombarding the stage with damaging elemental effects (sadly I have no screenshots of them). You can hunt down and destroy these siege engines, and they do have a limited range, so it isn't just an unfair situation where there's damage you can't do anything about, but it does add an interesting environmental hazard to the area.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about the overall level composition for this part of the game, because it's very good! The first several areas of Act V consist of fighting your way across these trenches, and through ruined fortifications. It's interesting because it provides barriers to work your way around without just making you run through a large, boring maze the way some of the area in other acts do. It's fast, it has forward momentum, and it isn't just a big flat corridor. It's great level design, and you can tell that when crafting this expansion Blizzard was taking notes on what worked in Diablo 2, and what didn't.



Death Maulers are ranged attackers, despite what one might think based on their appearance. They plunge their claws into the earth, where they extend and travel to your location, erupting from the ground and doing their best Prince of Persia spike trap impression. Their attacks are easier to dodge than arrows or spells, making them more of a nuisance than a threat.



IMPS! I hate these guys, and it's even worse when fighting a super unique imp. They toss fireballs at you and teleport all over the place. They're mostly harmless, but very annoying. So very, very annoying.



This would have been a picture of the super unique Overseer who guards the end of the first area (and is the target of the first quest, for that matter), but unfortunately he died so quickly I wasn't able to get a clean screenshot. So... just enjoy this screenshot of the aftermath, I guess.



There's an Overseer! See? The big blue guy trying his best to hide behind the wall! Overseers have a weak melee attack, and aren't dangerous by themselves, but as previously mentioned, they can transform nearby Enslaved into bombs with legs, so it's best to take Overseers out quickly.



Crush Beasts are big lumbering behemoths that try to attack by hitting you. Imps can teleport into those big boxes they carry on their backs, and attack you with a flamethrower at the same time that the beast tries to stomp you flat. If you kill a Crush Beast while an Imp is riding it, the Imp escapes to continue fighting. This rapidly becomes annoying when there's one or two Imps and several Crush Beasts around. I hate Imps.

You see what I mean about new enemies appearing constantly in this act? As a full expansion pack, Lord of Destruction really knocked the ball out of the park. While enemies still fall into the same basic categories, there are a lot of cool new tricks that make the expansion really stand out when compared to basic Diablo 2.

If I sit here and explain every new monster in detail, and keep gushing about the expansion pack, this LP will never end, so let's move right along with the abridged version:



Owfirehot saves some barbarian dudes.



Then she saves some lady trapped in ice!



Then she kills the guy who trapped the lady in the ice!



Then she beats up a bunch of ancient spirits on top of a mountai- wait a second. They just let Baal, one of the Prime Evils, walk right in, but I have to take some stupid test to earn access? The ancient spirits are jackasses.

Bah, whatever. Moving on!



Owfirehot enters the Worldstone Keep, fights to the bottom floor, and meets Baal, who summons more things for her to kill. Then she chases him into the worldstone chamber!



Okay, I guess I better give a proper mention to the last boss. Baal isn't too difficult, but the encounter is cleverly designed regardless! Aside from his powerful melee strike, his main attack is a giant flamethrower blast, which isn't all that damaging if you have proper resists. For Owfirehot it's even less relevant, because she can stand juuuuust out of range and hit Baal in the face with Meteors and Fire Balls. Far more dangerous is his ice wave, which launches a V-shaped wave of ice across the ground, causing damage, applying a chill effect, and most importantly, it knocks you back! Getting hit by the ice wave means getting hit several times and pushed all the way into the wall.

Even worse, Baal constantly spawns tentacles throughout the room, and they have a very powerful melee attack. Getting hit by an ice blast can result in being pushed into a cluster of tentacles if you aren't careful. Finally, Baal can spawn a clone of himself, and it has the same abilities he does! He can also teleport, but it doesn't make much of a difference in how the fight plays out.

The general strategy for the fight when playing as a sorceress is to try to keep your back against a wall to prevent getting pushed around by ice waves, while keeping one hand on the teleport button just in case a tentacle pack is spawned too close. Ice waves can also be avoided by teleporting, but I find that to be a waste of mana, as proper positioning can prevent nearly all of the damage and knockback the ice waves cause. Baal will never voluntarily engage in melee combat, so as long as you can avoid tentacle spawns and manage the ice waves, you can remain safely at range and slowly wear him out.



Then Baal dies! And all the Prime Evils are gone and Tyreal shows up and tells Owfirehot she is super awesome and he destroys the corrupted worldstone and so obviously the world is fixed and everything will be better forever and there will definitely not be any more demon invasions ever again.



SON OF A BITCH.

That's silly! Why would they have a new game called Diablo when we obviously destroyed the actual Diablo in this one?



...oh.

I cannot wait to hear what the explanation for Diablo's return is. It probably involves someone or something becoming corrupted by evil, since that seems to be Blizzard's favorite plot device.

There's probably a million contrived story angles they can use to bring Diablo back to life again and none of them matter because DROPPED LOOTS

*whoosha-whoosh-tingle*
*clang-bonk*
*clunk*
*squish*

*scrape?*

*BOING*

*clink*

A pity Mephisto's Soulstone was not equippable to headslot. That would've been hilarious continuity.

Except not. It is Diablo's Soulstone that gets shoved into people's heads. Baal's was impaled in Tal Rasha's chest. Makes you wonder where Mephy's stone would be inserted.... actually, let's not contemplate that.

In the back like a knife.

In the next game Mephisto will be a big shaved bear that hates people.

a few options?

I tried doing some Nihlathak runs, since Muntak is so durable and can survive a couple of Corpse Explosions, should I accidentally get into range of one. Found a Jah rune after a few attempts, which I can trade on the realms for a Ber, so that covers me as for finding the runes for CoH. Only problem is my armour is currently Duriel's Shell, which grants among other things Immune to Frozen mod, so I'll need to get hold of a Ravenfrost or something, so I can replace it and not get ruined by cold monsters. I think I've got a couple of runes I can trade for that too. I'm slowly getting there as far as equipment goes.