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

I am completely in favor of seeing Duriel taken down like a chump. Jerk had it coming.

This is a silly thing and I like it.

ahhhhh5,000screenshotsahhhohmygodwhydididothis

When we last left Songbird, she had steamrolled defeated the fallen rogue Blood Raven in combat using her deadly skills. This time, she's on a rescue mission to rescue the last of the Horadrim, Eckard's Canes. er.. Deckard Cain?

Our bold heroine sets out to rescue him, knowing full well the path will take her into the Dark Wood, and perhaps even Tristram itself.



However, being easily sidetracked, Songbird also reads a book she finds in the Stony Plains, learning about some Countess and treasure.



Rakanishu was even easier to defeat this time. Since the Cairn Stones are in between the waypoint and the Underground Pass, it was bound to happen anyways. Despite the mixed messages in the picture above, Songbird did not drink any potions during the trouncing of this Carver. After that, we head directly to the Underground Pass.



Arriving at the only way to the Dark Wood, Songbird heads inside and wastes no time in finding another Unique enemy to face.



This one was a little bit tougher, mostly because Aliza there kept firing arrows at it >_> You'll also notice in the picture that Songbird leveled up! In this level, she decided to get Cobra Strike, which will become our new main charge-up ability. Songbird was so happy about the occasion she decided to demonstrate our new ability setup!



... Okay, maybe on the next one.



In the interests of time, steps 1-3...



... and step 4. On the first charge-up, Cobra strike only absorbs 40% of the damage dealt to Life (I'm not sure if it absorbs extra or just based on the damage dealt, either way), but on the second charge-up, it absorbs 40% to both Life and Mana. The third charge-up absorbs a whopping 80% Life and Mana, making the ability very useful for replenishing Mana. At the cost of 2 Mana per strike, it's a pretty economic ability, costing the same as Songbird's Dragon Claw. Because I want to use that Mana gained for something other than more Cobra Strikes, I have set Cobra Strike and Dragon Claw both to the left attack, and switch between them as needed. This leaves the right side for the traps and such. Some of you may be missing the good old Tiger Strike, but the keen-eyed among you will notice I have set Dragon Claw to F1 and Cobra Strike to F3, so what's in between?



That's right, Tiger Strike is here to stay! To be honest, I did most of the rest of the Underground Passage on autopilot, since I was trying to get used to my new labor-intensive button configuration (accidentally drank two potions in the process, darnit), but I did sneak in some time for a few traps!



Now, I initially took this picture simply because I like seeing Carvers incinerated, but I decided it could come in handy for demonstrating traps. The two circles show a live and a destroyed trap, respectively. Both types of level 12 traps have five shots, but those five shots can make a big difference when you're in a crowded room. Songbird proceeded thus, taking out all the enemies on the first level and systematically eliminating the enemies on the second level, and I just missed the opportunity to screenshot a Unique before Aliza eliminated it.



I'd almost forgotten what this Unique even did, he was so simple to beat (it was Teleportation, if you were curious, not that he ever used it). After that, Songbird emerged in the Dark Wood and found herself in what I like to refer to as the Carver Nightmare World. It took Songbird a good ten minutes, at least, to deal with all of the carvers and shamans in Carver Nightmare World, due to a quirk the game made in putting a ruined building of Carvers and Shamans next to a camp of Carvers and Shamans next to a skeleton building of Carvers and Shamans. By some even more sadistic quirk, the Tree of Inifuss was right next to the skeleton building of Carvers and Shamans, but luckily for Songbird, Treehead Woodfist was off gallivanting somewhere else and did not join in on the Carver Nightmare World. I really ought to have gotten a picture of it, but I didn't think of it. I had considered taking a picture of the wreckage as well, but it just would have detracted from that special quality the moment had. As it is, it took Songbird another ten minutes just to pick up half the stuff they dropped, she didn't even bother with the rest. After that, Songbird decided to take down Treehead Woodfist.



After accidentally setting the Tree of Inifuss on fire (miraculously, it did not burn down), Songbird took down Treehead Woodfist with mild difficulty. She had to drink one potion to deal with him, but that was about it. After that, she found the waypoint in the Dark Wood and returned to the Rogue Encampment to have Akara decipher the Bark of Inifuss.

Songbird headed to the Cairn Stones, knowing after two confrontations that another Rakanishu fight would soon be in order.

Oh, right, already killed him today.



After a little bit of prompting, Songbird manages to input the entire code, and through its power, she summons...



THE EYE OF SAURON WE ARE SO DEAD!!!! Actually, I didn't even intend for the screenshot to look like that, it just kind of happened. After the portal dispels the evil Sauron-y force within, Songbird enters Tristram and starts killing baddies. She starts by working around the perimeter, and finds a body.



I decide to take a page from SpoonyBardOL's book in this instance, as it had never before occurred to me that I could or should just leave the corpse there, freeing up valuable space in my stash. Songbird heads south some, and guess who she finds!



It's good old Grisworld! I'm serious, this guy has some sort of knack for.. well, I wouldn't say living, the more accurate term would be existing. However, protagonists in Diablo II have a sort of knack for killing things that have a knack for existing, as we will prove time and again in the future.



We also discover a logic bomb hiding in Tristram, just waiting to blow the minds of any who enter.



Luckily for us, for every logic bomb Diablo's RNG throws at us, they also have some names and abilities that just make sense. (It's the name this time, I'm not exactly sure what auras have to do with skeletons.) While leaving this guy to take a quick break to recover some HP Life, Songbird found out that while she thought her silent compatriot, Aliza, had killed Puke Maw, such was not the case. Dealing with two Uniques at once wasn't exactly easy until Devil Maggot the Dead walked into the house, apparently figuring it'd be easy to fire at Songbird from there. He was incorrect. After dealing with both Uniques, Songbird let Desiccate(bonus points if you know what it means), er, was that Deckard Cain, go and celebrate his near-death experience by putting him to work.



After that, Songbird mops up the remains of the demon swarm in Tristram and decides to talk to Charsi to repair her equipment.



Or.... not.

Here's where Songbird stands as of the end of The Search for Cain:



While her Dexterity and Strength may look like they're lopsided, the basic stats are actually exactly the same (trust me, I'm OCD like that.) Her basic equipment hasn't changed enough to warrant a display of that, though.

Next time with Songbird, we'll loot the Countess's evil lair and get Charsi back her Horadric Malus, because she asked so nicely.

I wouldn't mind tagging along. Got a time frame for when you'll be on (and a time zone, for that matter)?

Probably later tonight. I figure starting around 9 CDT and playing for an hour or two.

Alright, so around 7 PDT then. Yeah, I can show up for that.

Wirt's corpse drops a few dozen stacks of gold, though.

exactly why it was so hard for me to resist grabbing the leg!

I think Wirt's body respawns on a new game even if you activate it? Can't you have the best of both worlds by spawning the gold, and just not picking up the leg right now?

This is true. Wirt's corpse will always and in every game drop a leg, however many times you exit and reload. It's just not sellable.

Re: Wirt's Corpse, yeah I know you can get the gold and leave the leg, I should've been clearer on that. My point was that it doesn't make any sense to lug the leg around for the entire difficulty. I did that on my first run through the game and it was entirely pointless.

Anyway! It's time to clear out Act II! It's time for

The Adventures of FRRRT! the Windy Druid, Part the Fourth: The Act II 2! Electric Bugaloo!

Hey Spoony! You mispelled Boogaloo!

No. No I did not.


Frrrt heads into the Harem with no hesitation. Ever since he felt the cold rejection of the Dark Hunters back in Act I, what with him killing them and all, he's been wanting some female companionship. And his Rogue friend barely says three words to him, as if she were just hanging around out of a sense of duty. Poor Frrrt, so ronery...


However he runs through the entire floor of the Harem and finds not one living lady. Plenty of dead ones though. And monsters. Lots of those.

Going deeper past the Harem he enters the Palace Celler. There's got to be some wimmens down there SOMEWHERE, so Frrrt presses on, plowing through the baddies with his axe and the occasional 'gust' of wind.

Twister is still pretty useless, BTW.


This jerk gives Frrrt a run for his money. The 'Blunderbore' type enemies naturally hit hard and generally stun for a moment, and coming acrossed a 'Cursed' type is pretty dangerous for any class that needs to get up close. This dude takes about 3/4 out of Frrrt's life before he goes down.


Oh hey I know what to do here! We need to find the Orange Portal Gun.


Actually, no. Welcome to The Arcane Sanctuary, one of the more visually unique places in the game. It's also the second dungeon in Act II that's a total pain to run for any class that relies on minions. The walkways are almost always narrow, and it's easy for the AI of your allies to let them get hung up on corners and stuff.


However, long-range folks have an easier time here, thanks to sitting ducks! These Clan-type monsters have no long-range attacks to speak of, and no way to reach Frrrt here. While Frrrt still has Twister, and while it is unreliable most of time, it's easy enough to fire a few off into a crowded lump of baddies like that and it will be MOSTLY effective. My Rogue pal picks off the rest.


Basically the way the Arcane Sanctuary is set up is that it brances off into four paths at the start. The boss is at the end of one of them, random each time, and you basically have to fight your way down a looping corridor to reach the end and see if you guessed right or not. When you reach the end of one of the wrong paths you hit a platform with a few monsters, some gold, and a few chests. So hey, it's not a TOTAL loss.


This one doesn't drop anything of particular import, but stuff sells for gold all the same.


Same as the above. Man, the RNG just isn't being at all generous to Frrrt in this game...


Aha, and here we have the boss, The Summoner. Much like Blood Raven it's more or less considered canon that this dude was the OTHER playable class stand-in in the first game, the Mage.

I don't have any real pent-up aggression against him like I did the Rogue, and we never really get introduced to the quest to defeat him. I think you can talk to one of the dudes in Lut Gholein before heading into the Arcane Sanctuary and they'll tell you about that asshole and that killing him is probably a good idea. But most players will just have the quest appear in their log automatically as they approach him.

If you're soloing it on an Open game with /players set to 8 then this guy can be rough. For Frrrt, though, he goes down like a wimp.


Hey is that some green text? It is!


Eh. This set item tends to come up often, it seems! Frrrt will wear it for now, but only because, as always, the RNG has given him mostly crap up to this point.

And welcome to the last leg of Act II, the Canyon of the Magi, home to not one but SEVEN Tombs of Tal Rasha.

Wow, whoever killed Tal Rasha killed the HELL out of him.

Actually there's only one true tomb, the rest are all false.


When we beat The Summoner we get to read a book which tells us which tomb is the proper one. A circle should be an easy enough symbol for even Frrrt to remember!

Hahaha. Nope. He goes straight to the wrong tombs right from the start!


Also, while he's out Tomb Raiding time and space glitches for a second and he comes across this MYSTERIOUS SORCERESS. Why, she's so mysterious I never even got a screenshot of her! She helps Frrrt clear a tomb out before time and space resets things and blips her back out of existence.


Before she goes, Frrrt takes her advice (posted on these forums which he somehow gained knowledge of) and sticks two runes in a socketed helmet to get something fairly useful! The reduction of gold from monsters isn't so bad since Frrrt gets most of his scratch from selling the Staves and Wands with bonus to abilities which sell like hotcakes. The reduction to light radius isn't really that big of a deal.


Also Frrrt finds one of these in one of the false tombs. And then later on he finds ANOTHER ONE in one of the OTHER false tombs. Cathan's set is pretty good for a Sorceress if you can find a few of the pieces to reap the set rewards, but Cathan's Seal on its own is kinda meh. Still, Frrrt equips one of them for now under the 'RNG has been teh sux' clause.


See? SEE? The RNG hates Frrrt! Another useless Druid helm.


Oh, and Frrrt comes across this guy in one of the false tombs. He's another super unique or whatever that you'll definitely find somewhere among the tombs. I'm not sure if he'll ONLY appear in false ones or not. He's an absolute jackass though, yet another effing lightning enchanted dude.


Anyway, Frrrt heads into the true Tomb. I know that symbol isn't a circle. Any time you exit the game and create a new one later, at least for online folks, the symbol resets, so now it's a.... ninja star?


GEE THANKS FOR THAT +1 TO CARRION VINE GAME, THAT'LL BE A BIG HELP


Anyway, Frrrt reaches the proper burial site of Tal Rasha, and jams the Horadric Staff into the holder thing there. There's a pretty lightshow and the staff blows a hole in the wall.

Why Frrrt needed the staff for this when some exploding potions probably would've done is anyone's guess.

Alright Diablo, I've finally caught up with you! You goin' down son!


YOU'RE NOT DIABLO AAAAHHHHHHH

So yeah, the Wanderer got away again, and with Baal no less! That's pretty bad. But this guy is another one of those super demon minions. The estranged half-brother of Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Puss-filled Malformed Slug-For-A-Butt. Or, Duriel.

Where Andariel hit with poison, this guy hits with ice. And also hits REALLY REALLY HARD. This was a gruelling fight. Frrrt had to flee from Andariel no less than four times, but this guy takes EIGHT trips back to town to stock up, three of them were through death. And there's no getting away from Duriel either. You could run away from Andariel and even leave the floor once you engaged her, but you're stuck in Duriel's chamber, the only thing that'll save you is a town portal. I usually had one up just in case, but he managed to take me out before I could jump in more than once.

It takes FOREVER to wear Duriel down. He pretty much kills my wolf and my oak sage right away, and even my Rogue inevitably falls in each round. Relying on a paper-weak melee weapon and the nigh-useless Twister makes this fight a slog. It almost makes me wish I named the guy FUKT. It might not be Astos-bad, but it was pretty brutal all the same.

At least Duriel retained the damage I did to him every time he knocked me down, if he fully regenerated then Frrrt really WOULD have been FUKT.


And he dies and as a final insult drops nothing of value. Even the weapons are somehow worse than the admittedly weak one Frrrt had. THANKS DURIEL.


Anyway, Frrrt talks with a glowing tentacle angel (boy does THAT sound like the title of a hentai...) and he tells him Diablo and Baal did indeed get away and headed to some place called Kurast. Well whatever it is it HAS to be better than the desert! Frrrt can't wait to visit this magical country.


After squaring away his business around town, he meets up with Meshief and together they sail away from Lut Gholein, and on to Kurast! Goodbye desert hell, surely I am going on to a better place!



D'oh!

TO BE CONTINUED

(Turns out there were no Scarabs in the screenshots in this update! so the 'Electric Bugaloo' title was totally nonsensical! Hooray!)

How appropriate.

Fun Anecdote: Wirt's Leg could spawn socketed. Rune words, however, did not work if placed in it.

Either of these may no longer be true.

Kurast.

I HATE Kurast.

See, you have Act I, which is the beginning where you mold your character, so it's expected that it would be bland-ish; Act II's desert is nice and fun, and it branches into many maps (I always liked the Arcane Sanctuary's look, too). Then you get to Act III. (the remainder is setting spoilers!)

First you have the jungle. It's big, boring and full of the bastard Fallen-types, only now they're even more irritating. Then the city, which isn't too bad when it's not throwing extremely irritating enemies at you. Finally, Mephisto's dungeon is full of annoying, and his room isn't much better. Act IV's Hell is HELL, which gives it automatic bonus points, and is supposed to be, well, hella hard; Finally in the expansion you get Harrogath for Act V, which always fit together very nicely IMO.

Yeah, right now the only thing keeping me going in Act3 is my newfound love of Charged Strike.

Incidentally another rare short spear dropped in my game Spoony, so I'm covered for a while.

Kurast is a lot more tolerable with a fire-resistant Thorns-happy Paladin, I've noticed. Sure, you still get surrounded every 30 seconds, but your attackers don't tend to live long enough to get more than one hit each on you. I'd say Salatin here has personally slain maybe a third of the enemies he's fought; most of them have killed themselves by being stupid enough to attack him.

Official belt of the Diablo II Let's All Play! Talking Time tested, Bungle approved! Get yours today!

Goreshovel (unique broad axe) and Soulflay (unique claymore) dropped for me from Meph and Izzy if any would like.

Player list is updated! Let me know if I missed anything.

I believe Krakenbrau's character is the aptly named Krakenbrau, just to let you know.

Found an Orb that would suit a Cold Sorceress quite nicely. Mods are:
+1 Teleport
+2 Frozen Orb
+9 Energy
+5 Mana

Gimme a shout if anyone wants it.

Hey I gots a question about mechanics!

When does your Magic Find come into play? When you start fighting an enemy? When the enemy dies and the loot is generated? Basically, say if you have a weapon/shield combo or something with a high Magic Find and you swap to it as you're about to kill a bunch of enemies, will it factor in?

(I may or may not have found a Gull)

EDIT: Also, Frrrt is now known as Slayer Frrrt.

Magic Find kicks in just as an enemy dies. So if you switch to Gull and kill an enemy you get the extra 100% mf.

Well, now that we've hit Act V, the magic drops are starting to come fast and furious.





Finally found another bit to go with those Cathan's seals everybody was finding earlier!


Hey, we've almost got a full set here!


My first Unique! Hooray!




It's really too bad that hirelings can't use crossbows.


It's too bad the Cathan's defense is so low. There's not a lot else here for a sorceress.

I've got a build question for you guys too:
I know I want to put some points into frozen orb for any lightning immunes I may run across, but I can't decide how many or how soon. I know I want to max out lightning, chain lightning and lightning mastery but the more points I put into orb, the fewer I can stick into the lightning symmetries. Any suggestions on a good balance here?

As a lightning sorc, you want to save as many points for lightning skill synergy bonuses as possible. Frozen Orb does great damage even without being maxed out provided you have good aim, so I would recommend sticking just a single point in the skill at first, then slowly add more if you feel the damage is dropping off too much.

This is correct!

Sorry for the delayed update all; I've been busy with silly RL stuff. I'll probably continue to be busy, so I might have to tone down the detail of these updates a bit.

Anyways, when last we left our hero, he'd just taken out Blood Raven. It wasn't long before he ran into...



..this guy, who was no trouble at all, in spite of Deadly Lightning.

Kraken found an old book and ran through a cave, effortlessly dispatching baddies along the way...



...including this guy (who, as others have pointed out, is fantastically named). He grabbed some fussy scroll, showed it to Akara, punched some big rocks and went through an ominous-looking portal.



Where he found this guy! Griswold was no problem for Kraken, but he has been challenging for me in earlier games. The cursedness and high health made him tricky as a new player.



Also, found this in Tristram.

Kraken made quick work of The Countess (who, for some reason, I didn't get any screenshots of), and slaughtered his way into The Barracks...



...where he met Hugo Weaving! Oh, no, that's wrong. This guy's no Agent.

The Smith was tough for me as a new player as well; he can hit hard and move quickly. Kraken had no troubles though.

Didn't take long to get from there to The Cathedral, where I finally remembered to turn players up to 8 (which is how I'll be playing the remainder of the game). Took care of the superunique Bone Ash, and descended into The Catacombs.



This guy might have been a threat, but fortunately, Krakenbrau is not a dragon.

The rest of the catacombs were pretty uneventful (except for the acquirement of a nice 3-socketed crystal sword) until we entered Andariel's lair:

Krakenbrau vs. Andariel (video)

Watch the video for details. It wasn't an especially difficult fight. Just a matter of using potions properly, and clicking lots.

Since I'm the only one playing a character using Zeal, I'll give a brief description of the skill now.

Zeal is a Paladin skill, obtainable at level 12, which costs 2 mana. When used, Zeal causes a paladin to quickly attack several times with his equipped weapon, striking as many different enemies within range as possible. At first level, Zeal grants 2 attacks and a small (10%) bonus to attack rating (aka accuracy). Every skill point thereafter, until level 5, adds an additional attack and more bonus to attack rating. At level 5 and beyond, Zeal grants 5 attacks, never more. However, at this point, additional points spent on Zeal increase the attack rating and the damage dealt. Level 20 Zeal looks like this:

Number of attacks: 5
Bonus to attack rating: 200%
Bonus to damage: 96%
Mana cost: 2

I replace my default attack with Zeal. It does cost mana, but with the mana leech and mana per kill items I expect (hope) to find, and the use of mana potions, this won't be an issue. What's more, when I don't have enough mana, attempting to use Zeal when it's equipped in the left click slot will cause me to use a normal attack.

What does this all mean? Well, basically, if there's one enemy in melee range, Krakenbrau will hit it 5 times with increased attack rating and damage, very quickly, for each left-click. If there are more than one monsters in melee range, for each left-click, Krakenbrau will strike a total of 5 times, for each strike targeting the next enemy clockwise surrounding him. For example, with two enemies surrounding him, Kraken will quickly alternate between striking each one, for a total of 5 strikes. (See the video for gameplay examples.)

This is a pretty powerful skill, and will be my main skill for the entire game. However, it does have one significant downside: Zeal attacks are uninterruptable. By that, I mean if I tell Kraken to attack something (by clicking it), and then immediately decide that he's in danger and try and move him away (by clicking the ground somewhere), he will not move until he's finished his 5 attacks. Obviously, some foresight is required to keep him alive.

I hope that wasn't too confusing; I tried my best to explain it well.

Also, I've decided to continue playing faux-hardcore; avoiding death at all costs. So far, so good.

Death tally: 0.

Next time: A whirlwind tour of Act II!

HEY KIDS! It's that time again!

The Adventures of FRRRT! the Windy Druid, Part the Fifth: The Jungle that Never Ends

Incidentally, how do ya'll find my updates? Am I too fast with them? Should I slow down a bit? Just right? My plan is to try and keep a M-W-F schedule, and even then my actual gameplay will be far, FAR ahead of the updates. But, this my first real LP contribution, I'm ambitious!

Anyway.


Not three steps outside of Kurast, I come upon the Wanderer! Wow, that was fast! Maybe Act III won't be so bad after all! Frrrt runs up to introduce himself via blowing ineffective twisters in his face, when...


The Wanderer disappears leaving a bunch of rather out-of-place monsters behind. I didn't get a good screencap of that because my system lagged just as the monsters were appearing, and when it caught up they were already dead, picked off by my Rogue. Welp, Frrrt's back to square one, and he doesn't even have any quests for Act III yet! Time to go jungle exploring.


He encounters a group of obnoxious little rat men and one of them drops an item with some enticing gold text. It's not a unique or anything, though, it's a quest item!

This thing kicks off a rather frivilous fetch quest where you bring the statue to Cain, then to Meshif, Meshif gives you a golden bird, you talk to Cain again, and then go to Alkor (the Alchemist), who tells you to piss off for a minute, and then you talk to him again and get


Well... I'll take it.

Cain then stops you as you're leaving town and FINALLY decides to fill you in on what you'll be doing for most of Act III: Another Horadric Cube fetch-a-thon! Yes, instead of finding two parts of a staff to Transmute together, you have to find FOUR parts to put together a Flail! And three of those four parts are the likely rotting remains of some dude called Khalim. Y-yay....


Heading back out into the Jungle, Frrrt comes across the spider cave, part one of the Khalim Khuest.


THIS IS A BUG HUNT! GAME OVER MAN GA--- oh wait, I did that one already.

Yes, once again we're stuck clearing out insect-infested caverns. At least the spider caves in Act III are nowhere near as frustrating as the Maggot Lair in Act II. They're shorter, they're not built from narrow halls, and nowhere near as maze-like.


And here's another one of those 'always there' uniques, Sszark will be found guarding the first piece of Khalim. I've already expressed my dislike of Extra Strong Cursed monsters, at least he's not goddamn Lightning Enchanted too.


And here we go, the first piece of the Khalim Khollectathon, Khalim's..... ewwwwwwww.


Well, disgusting quest item or no, some good came out of the spider cave. Frrrt hit Lv24! And you know what THAT means! A new tier of skills!

And boy howdy what an upgrade! Tornado finally becomes available, letting me dump Twister off my bar forever and replace it with something that does ACTUAL DAMAGE! No joke, thanks to the points I stuck in Cyclone Armor and Twister, the first point I put into Tornado gives me a spell with crazy high damage thanks to Synergies (as far as Frrrt has been dealing so far anyway!) And now he starts killing things left and right!

You rock, Synergy!


Yes. I know.


This is Tornado in action. It moves in a similar path as Twister (in other words, kind of unpredictable with a nasty habit of swerving around the monster I'm firing it at) but its area of effect is much larger, it travels a little farther, and it packs a hell of a punch. Even better, a single Tornado can hit a foe more than once! The large the foe, the larger the hitbox and the more damage it can do. Typically smaller enemies with small hitboxes only get hit once, but they tend to have lower HP as well. Basically, Tornado is much better than it seems.

Still, it costs 10 mana a pop, and Frrrt's mana supply is still fairly low with no real regeneration yet. Fortunately the foes of Act III tend to swarm around you, so it's not at all uncommon for Frrrt to fire off one Tornado into a pack and have it kill many of them in one shot. Flayers die to it instantly, and it weakens most of the other foes down to the point where my Rogue and my own melee attacks finish them off. Providing Tornado hits.


Frrrt comes across a mysterious locked chest at a far end of the Great Marsh, second jungle zone, which didn't contain much of anything. Odd thing was, he had explored the entire Great Marsh and found no exit to the third zone at all.

This is one of Act III's more unique, and frustrating elements. The Great Marsh is, potentially, ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. It's possible the game will spawn the path to the third jungle area from an exit in the first instead of the second, which is what happened here. Imagine if you could reach the Stony Field in Act I from the Blood Moor about 30% of the time. But hey, at least the Cold Plains has an exit to the Blood Raven quest. The Great Marsh has no quest relevance whatsoever!

So if you enter the Great Marsh without fully exploring the first part of the jungle, you're not necessarily moving forward. It doesn't bother me too much, Frrrt kills it all for the EXPs anyway. But if you're trying to blitz Act III quickly then this can become a pain, since there's no way to know if the Great Marsh you're heading into is a dead end or not without fully exploring the previous area.

Oh hey, when Frrrt circled back to the first area he came across a second spider cave. Like I mentioned in an earlier update, Blizzard wanted to reuse most assets as much as possible.


And inside he finds nothing of value! Are you all surprised?


Finally, Frrrt finds his way to the third jungle area of the jungle, the Flayer Jungle. Jungle jungle.

Flayers can very quickly become dangers if a large group surrounds you, but Frrrt's new Tornado spell makes quick work of any that dare enter its path of destruction.

But shortly into the Flayer Jungle something... unexpected happens. Something that really hasn't happened for the entire LP so far. Something... magical.


Frrrt gets a unique item that is very, VERY useful to him.

I didn't appreciate how useful this weapon would be at first. It doesn't appear especially useful, at least at a glance. But there's one modifier on this that makes all the difference in the world:

+6 Mana after each Kill

"So?", you might ask. Well, as I mentioned earlier, Frrrt has poor mana recovery and low mana overall. But this? This changes the game. Since enemies don't need to be killed by the axe to generate the mana, they just need to be killed by Frrrt.

Tornado costs 10 mana to cast, which still gives me a mana loss if it only kills one foe (and a bigger loss if it misses entirely), but the enemies in Act III tend to swarm and cluster up. More often than not a single Tornado kills more than one foe, recovering more mana than I spent to cast it.

The bottom line is, Frrrt is now free to fling Tornados far more recklessly than he could before, and not have to worry about mana as much. More often than not he recovers more than he spends, or at least comes close.

This is the turning point in Frrrt's quest. Getting Tornado was a great boon, but being able to cast it more frequently changes the game. This one item suddenly made Frrrt very, very powerful. The struggles of Act I and II are over.

Frrrt and his mighty wind are now a force to be feared.


Anyway. Frrrt eventually stumbles upon this whatever it is and brings it back to town.


Ormus rewards Frrrt with this rare ring that's not half bad, and I'll reward the rest of you by not making a Xenosaga reference.


Time for the next piece of Khalim.


Which is guarded by this guy, but honestly nothing in the Flayer dungeon posed a threat to Frrrt. It was tricky with how tight all the corriders were, which is trouble considering Tornado fizzles if it touches a wall, but things stacked up so much that even cutting down on Tornado's distance didn't really hurt my killing power.


And I get these along with the next part of Khalim. Not bad!


The Flayer Dungeon is kind of nuts, though. The first two floors are short, but the third will almost always force you to navigate an annoying maze where the treasure is as far from the stairs as possible. It's hard to see, but Frrrt has no direct path to the treasure from the stairs here, he has to circle the length of most of the maze to reach it.


The Flayer Dungeon was so much fun let's do it again!


More mazes and monsters. Funtimes!


Aha, we've finally reached the end of jungle hell. You'll always find ol' Stormtree guarding the entrance to Lower Kurast. He's lightning enchanted, but Frrrt can now reliably take him out from a distance, and barely even takes any damage from his static discharges.


And this is where we end for now. The jungle behind us, Frrrt must now search out the final part of Khalim somewhere in the city, fight the zealots which have taken it over, and open the way forth to take out one of the 3 Prime Evils himself.

TO BE CONTINUED

Hey Krakenbrau, you still got that Infernal Cap? Because the wand portion of that set just dropped for me.

Is anyone doing a necromancer on US-Ladder East? Because that'd be a nice kick start to a character. If not, hell, I'm tempted to start a second character myself.