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

I'll probably post the first part of Act II tomorrow, though so far I've played through to the end of Act III.

Things turned around sharply for Frrrt in Act III. First off, he got Tornado which was surprisingly powerful with the synergies it had. Second he got his first unique item that was actually useful. I won't say which one it is yet, but it had a +Mana for each kill enchant on it which made all the difference in the world when a single Tornado could kill most every normal enemy in Act III (provided it hit, it's a bit hard to aim). And third he finally got a Druid helm (a rare one at that) with some useful modifiers on it.

After a tough fight against Andariel and a grueling struggle against Duriel, Mephisto went down like a chump.

Buuuuut I'm getting ahead of myself.

Also, my stash is getting too darn full, so if no one's interested in the Unique Light Crossbow, Leadcrow, or one of my two Cathan's Seals, I'll probably vendor them in a few days.

I think it probably isn't worth storing items for other TTers tbh. Unless we set up a specific request thread for items that are likely to drop and are helpful for low-mid level characters, like those Cathan's amulets (found one myself in my last session).

I've been quietly playing along and just brought down Andariel with my Barbarian. Only interesting thing that dropped was the Serpent Lord staff, if anybody wants it let me know.

And I continue to find loot that is of questionable use for a sorceress.



When I was playing with Aerdan earlier today, the Steelgoad unique voulge dropped in the arcane sanctuary, and then when we were killing Duriel, a rare sorceress orb dropped and the only skill it had on it was +1 to glacial spike.

In other news, I've hacked my way through the Act III jungles all the way to Kurast. Chain lightning definitely makes those damn pygmy bastards a lot more manageable than any other build I've ever tried.

Bungle, suggest a paladin build for two-manning it with a fishymaner, primarily based on putting down a kick-ass aura for the army. Combat ability of the paladin himself is a (distant) secondary concern.

This whole Diablo 2 mania that seems to be sweeping through the tyrant population has prompted me into giving it a try... But I'd like to know if there's some way I can possibly improve the resolution beyond the tiny 800x600 it allows me.

Edit: Actually, I've found out why that would be a bad idea. Apparently that would let me attack things that couldn't see me. ^^;;

I'll take Civerb's Cudgel, if no one else will—it's a pretty nice Paladin weapon (if a bit on the slow side for Zeal).

Trying out a Necromancer, though I have little idea for a build beyond 'swarm everything with summons' just yet. Having finished the second quest, I ventured down into the Crypt and found myself this nifty lil' replacement for my starting wand.



Certainly not bad for something that was free. Even found some nice rare boots and a sash to go with it!

Hey boys and ghouls! It's once again time for

The Adventures of FRRRT! the Windy Druid, Part the Third: Starting Act II

When we last left our intrepid Druid, who is determined to beat the odds and rise above Diablo's minions despite the notable handicapp of being a Druid, he managed to eek out a victory against the demon Andariel and make his way to the bustling desert capital of Lut Gholein.

The city of Lut Gholein is quite a bit larger than the rogue's camp, and is probably the only place in the game that feels vaguely city-like. Act III features a broken down old dock, Act IV has four NPCs tops, and while Act V is a rather impressive stronghold, it lacks the bustle that Lut Gholein has.

Not that I remembered to get any screenshots of the city anyway.

Before Frrrt charges blindly out into the desert, without any hydration and to his certain death, the old woman who runs the bar stopped him and said it sure would be great if someone could get revenge for her husband by going into the sewers and slaying the dreaded Radament.

Well, who is Frrrt not to oblige a random request for justice? Even if it means diving into one of the smelliest pits in Sanctuary.


SEWER LEVEL!

Here's the thing, I forgot to get any other screenshots of the sewers. Doh! This is largely because I actually stumbled upon Radament pretty much as soon as I walked into his floor. No joke, I went down some stairs, turned a corner, and then there he was. You get a Book of Skill for downing him, so hey: +1 free skill point!


Here in this shot you can see two of the desert's most obnoxious enemies: Cave Leapers and Buzzards. I'm sure Bungle will go over them once he arrives in Act II, but the big problem with them is that they spend periods of time un-attackable. Buzzards will randomly fly about, unable to be harmed, while Cave Leapers will leap about wildly. They're both an absolute pain for melee classes which Frrrt still is for all intents and purposes.


The desert is also lousy with old crypts. Kind of. There's one out in the first desert area, another one in the Dry Hills which has a plot item, another in the vally of snakes, and then SIX SEVEN in the canyon of the magi. You'll be good and sick of crypts by the end of Act II.


Inside the crypt Frrrt hits the magical Level 12. Now he finally gets to get an attack ability that's not Arctic Blast.

And it's almost entirely useless.

Well, that's kind of a lie. Twister has its uses, but it's weak and finicky and hard to aim and disappears when it hits a wall. Tornado, which we'll get later, is also finicky and hard to aim and disappears when it hits a wall but its area of effect is larger AND it packs a MUCH bigger punch. Still, Twister is better than Arctic Blast and will serve him fairly well now and then in Act II.

Also Frrrt totally calls his Dire Wolf Ghost.

NOT PICTURED: I neglected to take screenshots of the trip through the Dry Hills and into the Halls of the Dead. So Frrrt picked up a HORADRIC CUBE offscreen. The cube has a number of functions, most immediately it can upgrade gems. Put three gems in the cube of the same type and quality and it'll spit out a single gem of the next highest quality. Three chipped rubies become a single flawed ruby, and so on. This clears out some of Frrrt's stash of the gems he's been hoarding since Act I. It also works on runes, three El runes become an Eth rune (I think) and so on.

Also


The game teases me YET AGAIN! But all is not lost in loot-ville.


That's actually a half decent jewel. And Frrrt still has the crappy breastplate that Gheed foisted off on him in Act I. If only he could find some armor with sockets....


Thank you Farah! The price is worth it since otherwise drops have been lousy for Frrrt.


I probaly could've put better stuff in there, but this breastplate will serve Frrrt well for awhile.


While out in the desert he comes upon this fairly rare shrine. Gem shrines will either spawn a random chipped gem if you click on it with no gems in your inventory (which is known as the booby prize), or it'll take one of the gems in your inventory at random and upgrade it up a notch. So as long as you're careful and don't accidentally click on a Gem Shrine with a gemless inventory (or without the gem you want) you can make good use of these as a shortcut to better gemmery on top of Horadric Cubing. Surely Frrrt will never make a mistake like clicking a Gem Shrine without having a gem ready!


MOTHERFU---

Ok remember when I ranted on about Lightning Enchanted enemies? Well Beetleburst Beetleburst Beetleburst up there isn't Lightning Enchanted, as you can see. So what's with all the static charges flying around?

It's called SCARABS ARE ASSHOLES WHO ARE ALWAYS LIGHTNING ENCHANTED.

Standard mobs, uniques, whatever. They all spit lightning out at you whenever they take a hit. And they like to come in large packs. And Frrrt just got a spell that can hit a large group at once.

Yeah, he'll need to be careful.


Oh crap! This is a bug hunt! Game over man, game over!

There are two dungeons in Act II that are the bane of any class that relies on some kind of pet or minions. One of them is the Maggot Lair.

The Maggot Lair is double plus ungood for Frrrt since it makes Twister even more useless than it already is (want to fire off mini tornadoes down here? HAHAHAHAHA! Loser!) But the narrow hallways are also hell for trying to herd around hoardes of minions, but I'm just relating my own experiences with my most recent Skellymancer.

The Maggot Lair is quite a bit easier for melee classes since it's fairly hard to get surrounded and most enemies will just line up and die at your feet.


Guarding the Horadric Staff is this monstrosity. This room is the first time Twister proves to be useful. Frrrt is able to stand at the entrance of the fairly large room, after letting his Direwolf in to play, and send Twisters in to wreck things. They move around randomly but the room is open enough and yet packed tight enough that they don't hit any walls but do hit plenty of enemies on their meandering paths. I didn't even notice when the giant maggot died.

With one piece of the Horadric Staff, Frrrt continues onward and along the way someone turns off the sun. Don't you hate it when that happens? The Tainted Sun quest is fairly simple as you complete it as a matter of course along your Horadric Staff quest. But it did give me this odd glitch:


I tabbed out and back in while the game was fullscreen, and also during the Tainted Sun's effect on the world, and this happened. It went back to normal when I tabbed out and in again. But it's certainly strange.

It's like I'm in Moonside or something.


Hurr hurr gross names are funny herp derp.


On the way to the Valley of the Snakes to get the head of the Horadric Staff and turn the sun back on Frrrt comes upon this little mini-dungeon. This is basically another sewer area since, well, they went through all the trouble of designing art assets for the sewer dungeon at the start of Act II it would be a shame not to reuse them somewhere!

And inside these dank old halls Lady Luck finally smiles on Frrrt. He finds his very first Unique item in his quest!




And it's the Unique Light Crossbow which neither him, nor his mercenary friend, can use.



Incidentally it's still up for grabs if anyone wants it for a lowbie Amazon or whatever.


Anyway, enough messing around. Time to see some snake monsters about a the head of a staff and the sun.


HERP DERP I'LL JUST CLICK ON A GEM SHRINE HAPHAZARDLY SURE AM GLAD I TOOK MY OWN ADVICE (yeah always look before you click folks)


MOTHER FU---

Yeah this guy. DIS GUY. Anecdote time again: This asshole was another big stopping block on my very first game of Diablo II as my baby Amazon just didn't have the defenses to save herself from his attacks, his minions attacks, and his goddamn lightning enchantedness. I think she somehow killed Duriel easier than this jerkface.


But killing him awards the head of the Horadric Staff, which we put into the cube with the staff part itself (one wonders why we needed the cube to transmute it when some duct tape would work but whatever) and we get this. Not a half bad weapon if you were built around using something like this, but since we lose it at the end of Act II there's no point in getting attached.


Anyway, with the staff gathered we're sidetracked from our quest to take down Diablo by the town's leader who wants us to discreetly handle the problem of the various murders down in his Harem.

NEXT TIME: Frrrt visits a Harem, and then Time and Space breaks.

However, chipped gems are(were?) actually one of several currencies of trade, thanks to the facts that a. high-level characters have difficulty getting them OUTSIDE of gem shrines and 2. one or two Horadric Cube recipes use them.

Notably, the rejuvenation potion formula was changed in 1.10 to also require a chipped gem, rather than just being 3 health + 3 mana. The official bradygames D2 guide was useful for once!

High level characters don't have difficulty getting them, they just would not prefer farming Normal Act 1 to get lots of chipped gems, where they drop fairly commonly. Chipped gems are desired because of their requirements for upgrading runes, as well as for rerolling mods on certain items of equipment to get better ones (high level grand charms for +1 skill tree bonus, is a good example).

When we last left off, Owfirehot had just finished remorselessly igniting dozens upon dozens of demons! Not because she's terribly heroic, simply because she likes to combust things and nobody seems to complain when demons are the target. In fact, they seem to appreciate it! It's been working out way better for her than that time she tried to tried to burn down that forest. Those druids just went on and on with the lecturing, and she still doesn't know how they managed to get that hat on a bear.

But enough about that! Our last level had us pick up Ice Bolt, a spell that works just like Fire Bolt, except it chills enemies, slowing their movement and attack speed dramatically. Here's a shot of it in action:



Enjoy that screen, because I'm never using that crappy spell ever again. I got it as a solely as a prerequisite for a much better spell. Note the upper-left hand corner of the screen, listing what zone I'm in. Yes, that area is called The Cave, making Owfirehot's name look like Robert Frost in comparison.



The path to Blood Raven is littered with a new enemy type. These folks are corrupted rogues, and fire kills them as well as it kills anything else!



Blood Raven is actually really annoying to fight online as a Sorceress. She's incredibly fast and has a large walking meatshield of zombies, making it hard to hit her with bolt spells. Likewise, the omnipresent lag of D2's multiplayer makes dodging her arrows a bit iffy at times. I've been saving the poison and explosive potions that have been dropping since the start of the game, and make use of them here. They function like grenades, hitting whatever point you click after a brief delay, and sailing right over the heads of all those irritating zombies. This is the one and only time I will ever make use of those attack potions, but this one fight justifies their existence.



Killing Blood Raven gives a pretty groovy reward: a free henchman! Er, henchwoman. Annora here is an archer, will provide solid support for Owfirehot until Act 2 in Nightmare. This henchman will be of particular use in Act 1 Normal here, as I don't yet have the equipment to bolster my mana properly, and her arrows will boost my staying power out in the field by a fair amount. We also got a new quest: do a bunch of crap and find Deckard Cain.



There are a couple optional dungeons you can access in Blood Raven's graveyard. This is one of them! Normally I would skip these areas, but for the sake of thoroughness, let's go desecrate some tombs!



Go away Haze Burn the Axe. Nobody likes you, and your name sucks.



Hey, the detour paid off! Anyone who's spent enough time with D2 knows exactly what this is!



The Arctic Furs aren't super impressive, but +10 Resist All and a whopping 48 defense will easily take us through Act 1, so it's a pretty good find.



We also find this Eagle Orb with a decent set of skills attached. Orbs are much better weapon for the Sorceress than staves, as they allow the use of a shield, which is a pretty big deal, especially in higher difficulties. It's worth switching over as soon as the opportunity presents itself.



You might have noticed in previous screens that I had a skill point available. I totally spaced out using it for a while, but when I noticed it, here's what I put it in! This skill is called Inferno, and it works like a flamethrower. It sucks and it isn't worth investing more than one point as a prerequisite unless you're playing a build that needs the synergy bonus. And yes, I am playing a build that needs the synergy bonus. That won't be necessary for quite some time, however.



Hey, nice! This is a damn good bow for this stage of the game, and it turns Annora into a killing machine. She does more damage than I do now! What a jerk!




This game has a lot of palette swaps. I guess I can forgive Blizzard since Diablo 2 is awesome, but geez.



Level up! Owfirehot pumps some more iron to increase her strength, and we invest our skill point in Frost Nova. This is a pretty handy skill.



And here's why! Frost Nova hits a large radius around the Sorceress. The damage range is pretty puny, but then again, the enemies at this stage of the game are pretty puny too. However, it hits a lot of targets, and it also applies a chill effect for a whopping 8 seconds, making it a very handy skill for all of Act 1 normal, and worth keeping hotkeyed as an emergency escape until you can get your hands on Teleport.

We gain another level! The point goes into Frozen Armor, an excellent defensive buff. the second point you see there is being granted by Owfirehot's weapon. Rest assured that only one point has been invested in the skill.



Hi Rakanishu!



Bye Rakanishu! Annora killed him in about two hits, while Owfirehot's Frost Nova took out his buddies.



I finally locate the cave leading to our current quest target. Took long enough!



Frost Nova really is a great investment for any low-level Sorc that plans on investing in Frost skills.



Another level! YOu'll note that I've begun investing in Vitality. Vitality is the most important stat in Diablo 2. No maatter what class and build you use, you will need a lot of Vitality if you plan on challenging Hell mode.



Here's that skill we just picked up in action. Ice Blast is an amped up version of Ice Bolt. It does more damage, aand instead of chilling the target, it actually freezes them in place. Much better than Ice Bolt, but only situationally useful. It costs a lot of mana and only hits a single target.



Almost there! Just a bit further now...



Another level gained searching for the Tree of Whatever It's Called. I get even more Vitality and put a point in Static Field. Static Field is a great skill! It simply cuts the current health of anyone close enough by a certain percentage (25% at skill level 1). Essentially, it works just like the Gravity line of spells in Final Fantasy. Static Field even works on bosses, which makes it a grea opener against some of the game's tougher opponents.



Best. Name. Ever.



Long story short: we killed Treehead, got a scroll from the tree he guards, had Akara decipher it, and now we're about to begin a simple magical ritual to open a portal to Tristram in search of Deckard Cain.



That doesn't look ominous at all! I'll bet Tristram is filled with puppies!

No puppies so far...



Hey, there aren't any puppies here at all!



Aww, I feel pretty bad for Griswold, what with his corpse being used as a horrible shambling abomination and all.



I put Griswold to rest. He helped me out in the first Diablo, so I can at least do that for him. Mostly this involves keeping him chilled while Annor fills him with arrows.



I don't feel bad for Wirt, though! Looting Wirt's body and seeing all that gold pop out is one of Diablo 2's greatest joys.



Owfirehot cleans up the remaining demons and finally rescues Cain. After she rescues that gold on the ground, of course. Gotta keep your priorities straight.



Ah geez, not more word... wait. Free identification? I don't need to lug around a Tome of Identify any more? You know what, I'll make an exception to my No Words rule for you.

NEXT TIME: After an ice-oriented update, fire makes its triumphant return! Also there's some stuff that happens. But who cares about that?

I did a double take for a second there because I thought when you said Anara you referred to your adventuring companion, as opposed to... Akara. Well, it's an easy mistake to make!

Whoops! Yeah, apparently somehow their names got mixed up and merged into one. It's been fixed.

When we last joined Songbird, she had fearlessly charged into the enemy lines, decimating their Den of Evil. Today, she'll be defeating the fallen hero Blood Raven, looting the Mausoleum, Crypt, and Cave; and definitely not entering the Stony Fields at all. No sir. Not here.

In any case, here's an interesting fact about Assassins: They often end up with a crazily high surplus of gold to spend. Claw-class weapons are the cheapest type of weapon in the entire game, probably because not many people use them, so a good deal of her money will go towards beating the RNG in gambling.



It just takes a little bit of prodding first. She spends her moderate amount of cash and finds herself in possession of a couple of items that are better than what she had, so she puts them on. We have...



This one...



This one...



And last but not least, this one. This will help her be not totally inept in the areas to come. I also decided to start taking some cues from what I've seen in the LP and doing a couple of things differently. My first one was adjusting my ability point allocation, as I used to put a lot of points into energy ._. That I've been doing since the start of this LP, though. This particular LP, we're starting with some new ones, such as...



/players 8. The first thing Songbird does is test out her weapons in this new, enhanced difficulty, and I find the difficulty to be suitably challenging, but not too hard.



She then decides to take a warm-up in The Cave. and by The Cave, I don't mean The Cave, as in the one in the Cold Plains (if that makes any sense), I mean the Den of Evil. Turns out it gets renamed to The Cave after you come back to it after quitting the game once to reset the monsters. Songbird takes out her opponents without being too threatened, and along the way, she finds..



... an official waste of my earlier gold spent on leather armor gambling! Oh well, these things happen. Songbird then makes an excursion into the Cold Plains...



... has a run-in with a group of Fallen Rogues who apparently thought surrounding her was the answer...



... and finally arrives at that other The Cave!

I believe that my experience in this The Cave can only be summarized briefly and effectively through the power of song. That's right, boys and girls, it's SONG TIME!

♫On the fourth day of Diablo LP my RNG gave to me~♫
Four unique monsters~♫(one, not pictured, was Fire Enchanted)
Three near death situations~♫


Two cold enchanted archers~♫

And a Lightning Enchanted, cuz it hates meee~♫

It actually isn't quite as bad as I made it out to be. As you can see, Coldcrow is not in the first picture, that's one of her minions. That's because Songbird took her out first, after some circling around their group dodging arrow storms. After that, though, was when it really got rough, because all of her minions have cold enchanted attacks too, and then she was taking down her enemies with Snail Power! Bane Crow was, for some reason, not quite as tough, despite apparently being the cousin of Coldcrow, if names are to be believed. Songbird just hung out with them and quaffed potions like that time at Summer Solstice Campout. Despite Ooze Froth the Mauler being...

... he didn't pose much of a threat to my assassin, due to her good old four-step plan to deal with them, which limits contact to the Lightning Enchanted foe, preventing injury. This makes her eternal nemesis the Cold Enchanted foes, though fast Lightning Enchanted enemies can still be a pain, as Songbird used Ooze Froth's laughably slow speed against him. After that, she did... what did she do.... no, it was definitely not going into the Stony Fields early to get the waypoint... definitely not...



.... that's definitely not a picture of Songbird and the corpse of Rakanishu..... Okay, yeah, that's exactly what it is. Here's how it goes. I didn't have a lot of time left, and I knew it wasn't enough to kill Blood Raven and storm both of the optional dungeons, and I also didn't want to bother killing her a second time later. So, I decided to take Songbird to the Stony Plains for the short time I had before I had to go. Now, then, Rakanishu wasn't incredibly hard, as I employed the strategy depicted above; however, I did spend at least two big potions on this, mostly because I ran into a group of Champion Hungry Dead (one of them is behind Songbird in the picture) looking for enemies to charge up on to hit Rakanishu, and man, those guys hit hard. I spent one of the potions on the Champion Hungry Dead alone, to give you an idea. From there, I found the waypoint, and ran around a little killing things. I was actually lucky enough to hit level 12 right before it was time for me to go, and you all know what that means!



Trap time! I like traps because they are a quick and easy way for Songbird to clear out a room without actually being in the room, since while her Life isn't bad, it's not exactly Paladin levels here. You stick one in a doorway, and they'll totally decimate for the five charges they have. The one downside is that their Mana costs are pretty big for a melee-based character, so you want to use them judiciously. I logged off after this, and I took on Blood Raven the day after, which is to say, today.

This is Blood Raven. A bit hard to see, I know.



This is Blood Raven five seconds later. I'm not even kidding, there was a period of five to ten seconds in between the first picture and this one. It was just ridiculous. After that, I decided to do a little bit of exploring on these optional dungeons and also found them ridiculously easy. My trap took care of a unique monster before I could even register its existence. Thus no picture. Eventually I went back and got a quest to rescue some Hordic person or summat:



... Could have been Horadric. From there, I proceeded to take out the rest of the optional dungeons, plugging on, until I killed another unique monster with no hassle whatsoever.



As my gauntlet-based avatar has realized, I forgot to set everything to /players 8 after I logged back in! heh. Even after righting everything, though, Bloodbones or whatever the guaranteed unique is went down so easily I did not feel obligated to dignify his existence with a screenshot. Here's where we stand as of the end of the Blood Raven quest, as far as stats:



as well as equipment:



I realize you can't see what the magic effects are, exactly, so I have used state-of-the-art technology to show you at least what level of magic ability is on them. Also, at least 1/3 of this setup was obtained via gambling, guess which ones!

Next time, Songbird will be trekking through the stony fields to the dark wood and even into Tristram itself to rescue Deck-a-Cane... or was that Deckard Cain... all that and more next time!

That's... that's not exactly a girl's belly.

Shhhh, Songbird doesn't have an extensive knowledge of anatomy, and besides, what's a disembodied hand going to do to her anyways?

don't answer that.

But no, really, I had nothing but innocent intentions when I made that picture ._. besides, I'm a girl, and I'm not into girls, so there's no reason to put any focus on a slight misplacement of the cursor, right?

don't answer that either.

Really enjoying getting back in touch w/ this game; having a bit of a Blizzard binge between it, War3, and my usual WoW schedule The TalkingTime/Tyrant lobby works nicely. Playing Khaeryn on USEast, aiming for Fishyzon ultimately, though I'll likely detour to Strafe for a bit then respec.

I really like the Fishyzon, by the way. I hadn't tested it when I recommended it, but I've played it a bunch since then and it's a great deal of fun. Yeah, there's a bit of damage loss compared to a full-on Lightning Amazon, but having two types of elemental attacks more than makes up for that. Besides, Lightning Fury is stupid powerful even without maxed out synergies.

The best thing you can do for a Fishymancer is provide an aura that increases the damage of their minions. They can get Might from their mercenary (an Offensive merc from Act II on Nightmare difficulty), so you should focus on one of the other two damage boosting auras.

With that in mind, you have two options:

Concentration: Provides a major damage boost to the party and makes their attacks harder to interrupt.

Fanaticism: Provides a smaller damage boost than Concentration, but gives additional boosts to attack speed and attack rating.

While Concentration does offer the bigger damage increase to the Necro's minions, I think your best bet is to focus on Fanaticism instead, along with some other skills that will turn you into a furious killmachine. That way you get to both power up the Necro's minions and do lots of damage yourself.

To that end, I recommend making a Zealot, which is a Paladin that uses the Zeal skill.

Here's the plan:

Offensive Auras

1 Might
1 Blessed Aim
1 Concentration
20 Fanaticism

This tree is simple. Fanaticism is your main aura and you'll use it basically all the time.

Combat Skills

20 Sacrifice
1 Smite
1 Holy Bolt
20 Zeal
1 Charge
0-1 Vengeance
1 Blessed Hammer
20 Holy Shield

Zeal is your main attack and Holy Shield is a buff you should have on as much as possible. It gives you an enormous boost to defense and block chance. Sacrifice provides a synergy bonus to Zeal. You can also use it as your special attack early on before you pick Zeal up.

You could also put one point into Vengeance, which is a skill that adds a ton of elemental damage to your attack. You can use this instead of Zeal when you fight monsters that are immune to physical damage. You don't have to worry about this if you're always going to be playing with the Necro (because immunities mean nothing to a Necro), but if you ever plan on playing alone it's worth spending a point on.

Defensive Auras

0-1 Prayer
1+ Defiance (Dump extra points here when everything else is done, as it passively increases the defense bonus from Holy Shield.)
0-1 Cleansing
0-1 Vigor
0-1 Redemption
0-1 Salvation

Pretty much everything in the Defensive tree is optional, but Vigor (increased run speed) and Salvation (massive boost to resistances) make nice backup auras. Putting all of your remaining points into Defiance is highly recommended, as it makes Holy Shield more powerful (yay synergies!).

Another skill from this tree to think about is Redemption, which consumes nearby corpses to restore the life and mana of your party members. Unfortunately, that's actually a terrible thing for a Necromancer, who needs those bodies to make minions or giant deathsplosions. Still, like Vengeance, it can be useful if you play solo sometimes, and it works just fine with one point in it.

Build Order

Basically, max out Fanaticism, then Zeal, then Sacrifice, then Holy Shield, and grab the skills in the Defensive tree as they become available. While you're working your way up to level 30 and Fanaticism, you can spend extra points in Zeal, Holy Shield and Sacrifice to get them beefed up a bit. Once you hit 30, pump Fanaticism until it's done, then move on to the others.

Gear

You want to be looking for items with Increased Attack Speed, Crushing Blow, life and mana steal, and attack rating, in that order of priority. A Zealot with lots of attack speed and lots of Crushing Blow can tear through anything in the game like paper. Get as much of both as you can.

YES

THIS IS THE MOST CORRECT THING

I just slew Diablo before work (jerkass didn't drop any uniques) and I got a rare Short Spear with a +1 to Amazon skill levels. Required Dex 40, Required Str 40, required Lv 22.

Any spear-wielding Amazons on US-East Ladder that are interested?

I'm certainly interested, but as I'm still 4 levels shy I'll happily defer to anyone who can use it now. I really won't be able to use it properly til level 30 anyway.

I picked up both Civerb's Ward and Angelic Sickle; the latter is up for trade. The former will be if I don't receive Civerb's Cudgel.

EDIT: And Vidala's Fetlock, whee.

So it turns out my old Diablo II disc is missing; If I can't find one cheap in the mall (and I've seen some in the past) I'll copy the files from my upstairs computer to this newer one. I still have the expansion disc, though.

Funny how, for all the time I spent on this game, I never got very far. I only had two characters get to Nightmare, and they both never got past act II there because I got bored - a Barbarian with the leap attack and Whirlwind and an Assasin who I don't even remember.

The assasin is my favorite class, really. You can go so many ways - you have Traps, combos/ finishing moves... It's fascinating, really, while also being special enough to set it apart from others (claws, lockpicking etc.).

While I would like to reiterate that I am in no way participating in this LP, I did just beat Duriel on my latest play-through in progress in a rather... unique way. It involved about 50 light healing potions, 8 scrolls of town portal, and a level 12 Thorns skill. He literally killed himself while my Paladin ran in circles and occasionally popped a potion or hopped back into town to restock.

I think you're the only Amazon in the group, so either it goes to you or it gets vendored. Unless someone else starts a spear-wielding Amazon RIGHT NOW and powerlevels it to 22.

Though Big D didn't drop any uniques, or even any sets, or even a flawless or perfect gem, there was a useful drop in his stuff. So it wasn't a total loss.

Man, LP is at the Harem, my actual progress is entering Act V. I'm starting to see how Bungle must feel sitting on a pile of screenshots and wanting to write about them, except it's probably 100 times worse for him.

Also one last call for the Leadcrow, Clegaw's Shield, Hsaru's Belt, and the Cathan rings. There is literally no more space in my bank, and I can't really create a mule without playing it for a few hours so it won't get baleeted.

I'll take the sickle in exchange for the cudgel if you don't mind. I'll ping you in IRC. I found yet another Hsarus' belt too if anyone wants it.

I'm going to be making a run at Mephisto tonight if anybody that far along wants to join me.