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

Wowzers. I dunno if Muntak can go two-hander, but if he can't that might tempt him to try.

I wonder if I should take Frrrt's Strength up to 115, in the off chance some of the Druid set gear drops for me, or one of you folks. One of the pieces needs 115 Str (and it just so happens to be the one that comes with +Skills out of the box, though not all skills just Elemental and Shape Shifting). Right now Frrrt's Str sits at 100, so it's not like it'd take long to get the other 15 points if I wanted to.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I haven't seen anything resembling the Druid set yet.

When we last left Songbird, she had saved Cain from the gaping maw of certain death and brought him to the Rogue Encampment of slightly less certain death. Now, Songbird quests to retrieve the Horadric Malus for Charsi to enable her to make slightly better magical equipment for everyone! Hooray!

While Songbird was running through the Black Marsh, she spotted your quote (don't ask me how) and decided to challenge it.



The Black Marsh actually has a good number of vines and rocks that appear only in this one section of Act I, and while it's not exactly as Marshy as the jungles of Kurast, it is more Marshy than the rest of Act I, to be certain.



While she's out exploring the wild, untamed marshlands, Songbird finds another gem, causing her stash to be completely full! It's all downhill from here, folks.



Songbird finds the tower and the waypoint remarkably close together, and not wanting to waste her lovely lovely luck, decides to charge forward into the former domain of the Countess.

After all, it's not like it could be haunted, right?



...Yeah, okay, who am I kidding.



Songbird travels through the cellar, dealing with the unique enemies along the way, none of them posing too potent of a challenge.



Especially not after using traps and leaving the room.



I also get another gem, which heralds the beginning of the end. Now the only choice is to either take rejuvenations out and put them in healing potion slots, drop gems on the ground and hope they're still there when I get back, or carry them with me. I choose the first option.



The fifth level here is always laid out the same: two side alcoves that are dead ends, usually containing gold and armor stands, and two paths that lead to the Countess's chamber. I elect to grab the gold first.



I also go back to the Rogue Encampment to sell some armor and such, and find this absolute gem from Gheed. A font of genius, this one. Truly.



Feeling sadistic, the game decides to place a Unique monster right next to the Countess's chamber.



However, our Countess is in another castle, as she decided to hang out on the other side's path to her chambers. Is this new? I was under the impression she couldn't leave her super special chamber before, or never felt the inclination to.



The Countess drops a lot of stuff. Hooray! With that amusing diversion over, Songbird decides to head to..



another amusing diversion. The Hole, located inexplicably in the middle of a cliff wall I didn't get to see by the Underground Passage, proves less of a challenge than I would have liked, though Songbird appreciates the lack of challenge.





They do have some of the most unusual names I've seen yet on this playthrough, though. After eliminating the cave, Songbird heads for the Tomoe Highlands. To the Horadric Malus!

Songbird heads to the Tomoe Highlands. What's the probability she will head straight to her target, ignoring all possible distractions?



Obscenely low.





Finding... the Cave? The Pit? Something like that.... Finding that cave, she delves inside, finding some more uniquely named enemies. Songbird delves through and destroys the enemies within the cavey cave, feeling little opposition. She heads into the Monastery to kick some monster rear. (Note all four of Songbird's potion stocks are now filled with Rejuvenation potions.)



This is also the first time I realized you can have more than one charge-up strike up at once. I mean, it's probable it was there, somewhere in the back of my mind, subconsciously, but this was the first time in the playthrough I was actually aware of the fact.



The Monastery is a big increase in difficulty, though, for more reasons than just that skeletons don't let you drain Life from them.



This guy also kills me. What's worst about this death is that it wasn't because he got me suddenly, it wasn't because I lagged out, it was because I was too eager not to waste Rejuvenation potions. You'll note I'm still kicking myself for this one a week later. I nearly die again to a (not pictured) pack of Champion Blood Clan, too.



This guy was also fairly challenging, since he was so painfully vexing and mauling me. The cursed thing is actually quite clever, since it enables his little minions to do extra damage to me as well.



Despite how this picture may look, the reason I don't have a living picture of the Smith is because I was too busy with my hit and run strategy that was keeping me alive. Since the Smith hits for about 1/5 my health each time he hits me, it was really quite necessary in order to ensure my survival. Aliza certainly helped, though. You'll also notice I got a level up here. This puts me up to level 17. So close...



With the quest for the Horadric Malus completed, all Songbird has to do to fix the problems of the rogues is kill Andariel. Well, gee, that sounds super easy.



This is not me making my life easier by activating the Jail Level 1 Waypoint before getting off <_> Now, if it was, you'd also notice that while the level bar was almost full in the picture above this, it is now empty. You know what that means! Level 18, which is great news for me, because it means I get a minion, and being a Necromancer junkie, I simply adore minions. The shadow has a lot of health (370 or something, which is about double my current health), and to top it off, she also gets access to some of my own skills to enable her to smash our enemies! That's definitely the highlight of this playthrough's new skills for me.

Here's where we stand as of the Jail waypoint level 1.



Songbird is level 18, which is surely because of her talent for using /players 8 effectively. She also got plenty of gems to drop for her!



plenty. It's almost enough to make one howl in frustration. I'm going to have to ditch these on the ground by my stash and hope for the best, unless someone else has a better idea (besides ATMA), which I'd love to hear.

The word you're looking for is tertiary.

Tertiary? Dang. I didn't know it meant that specifically, and I'm usually pretty well-informed when it comes to vocabulary >_>

Songbird? I think I love you...

SELLLLLLLLL THEEEEEEEEEEEMMMMMM

SELL THEM ALL AND NEVER LOOK BACK

I'll take a couple of each color off your hands if you haven't sold them yet.

I'm offline, so that's probably not going to work so well :P and yeah, I decided to sell the Diamonds and the Amethysts, since they were useless, and I managed to free up enough space with that to put all my gems and a few rejuvenation potions away.

well, the amethysts weren't useless, but the diamonds were, and I only had a few amethysts and something else needed to go, soooo....

Ask me how I lost 1600000 gold tonight in the Durance of Hate.

The answer?

THESE MOTHERFUCKERS.

Good lord I don't think I've despised a single enemy more than them right now. Frrrt would die moments after I hear the skittering sound they make when they approach. They could literally kill him before the server showed them as being close enough to attack me.

It made me realize that Frrrt's Defense is WAY too low to keep going. His Merc has over 900 *scoutercrush* defense, while Frrrt has a little over 300 *SPARTA*. As long as things can't hit him (and with his Merc, his Bear, and Hurricane most things rarely do) he's fine. But those Undead Flayers could reach him before either of his three lines of defense could stop them.

What's worse, Hurricane was working to his disadvantage, because they do a point blank AoE when they die, meaning they'd run up to Frrrt, and often die just as they're close enough to hit him with it thanks to Hurricane.

So after my fourth death to those assholes I stopped keeping Hurricane up all the time and proceeded VERY carefully down the Durance. It didn't help that for some reason the game spawned an absolutely enormous second level of the Durance, thus I kept being assaulted by those things every few minutes.

And then I go and kill Nightmare Mephisto in one shot without needing a single potion. Go effing figure.

And where Duriel dropped a unique stave, so did Mephisto! The Ribcracker, the one right above the Chromatic Ire.

I'm... confused. Who would equip this? I guess a Barbarian of some type might, but still, it almost looks like it was meant for the Monk class that was pushed to the next game. Oh well.

One other thing, was someone still looking for a good 2-socket Helm? I got a Coronet drop with two sockets.

You think that's nasty? You do not know nasty until you try to melee Oblivion Knights. They are the very manifestation of ragequit: they run from melee fighters, they cast curses, and if you ever so much as try to hit them with a close-range attack, they hit you with a slow-down curse that makes you move like you're frozen. Oh, and they love to spam Bone Spirit at you. Speedy heavy-hitter melee monsters are quite tolerable by comparison.

Frrrt doesn't need to melee though. But I guess every spec has their nemesis.

The undead flayers hit every weakness Frrrt has. They bypassed his two meatshields, were able to get close enough to him through Hurricane, AND their point blank AoE upon death made keeping Hurricane up unhelpful.

My next goal for Frrrt is to get him better armor, hopefully something in Act IV will oblige...

I don't really want to gamble since I went from 2500000 gold to 800000 gold, and it'll take awhile to get that built back up.

Sorry man, I didn't get home till after 7 CDT tonight. If you want to try later tonight I'm game, otherwise we can set something up for sure this weekend.

I hate those guys so much. They are some of the nastiest little bastards in the entire game, and I've lost my share of gold to them as well. Super fast, they almost always successfully hit me, and if I just try to unload fireballs at them point blank, they explode and kill me anyway!

RAGE.

I just took down Andariel, so hopefully I'll have my next update up before too long. Maybe I'll actually be able to get two updates down in a day :P

Jimcloud cannot be held responsible if update does not take place today. Offer not valid in certain dimensions. Please check with your nearest dimensional clerk to see if your dimension qualifies for Jimcloud.

No problem, I just had to deal with dinner and then WoW raid I'll be on for a bit tonight working on Countess now, but I'm happy to meet up whenev.

Druids, ironically. Well, shapeshifting druids specifically. No, really; good damage, crazy fast attack speed, huge boosts to defense & hit recovery and Crushing Blow makes it one of my favorite weapons for shapeshifters. And it does absolutely beastly damage when upgraded (~300-500).

Seriously, i love that damn thing.

Tying amulets around your arms and legs sounds silly to me. But I have wanted to equip rings on every finger ever since I played Dungeons and Dragons. I even designed a couple of solutions/workarounds for that.

I generally dislike weight-based carrying restrictions but that's mostly based on my bad experiences with NetHack. Of course, since I'm a packrat I dislike inventory restrictions in general.

God, undead flayers. Killed me so much in pervious playthroughs (and I anticipate deaths in this one as well). It's not the speed or attack damage that usually gets me, it's the AoE. I almost exclusively play melee characters, and killing several of them very quickly at point blank range is a bad idea.

All I'm sayin' is that it seems weird that you can only wear one amulet in most games. Why not, like, five? Or for that matter, why does magical gear in your inventory not grant bonuses to your character? Do magic items have to come into direct contact with your body in order to work properly? Do you even have to wear them in the right way, or could you lay a pair of gloves on top of your head and then put your helmet on over them?

Basically video game inventory systems make no sense to me. If I lived in a fantasy world I'd make a shirt out of magic gloves and then put on magic leather armor over it and magic chain mail over that. And I'd wear, like, three hats. I'd put rings on my toes! My shield would have another, slightly larger, shield bolted to it. I would tie daggers to my sword. There'd be belts on every part of my body that can be wrapped in a belt!

AND I WOULD BE INVINCIBLE

I want to be allowed to wear so much enchanted jewelry that my character starts looking like a cross between Mr. T and Flava-Flav.

Whoa, wait. That means maybe Nomura isn't a terrible character designer with the fashion sense of a lima bean... maybe he just wants to provide the most magical protection possible for his creations. It all... it all makes sense now! MY WORLDVIEW HAS BEEN CHANGED FOREVER. no it hasn't

I knuckled down and did some serious MF runs in The Pit today, and finally got the level of gear (plus a couple character levels) I need to finish the game. Finally! My mercenary is pulling his weight now, and dropping 7k meteors on my enemies never gets old.

I forgot to mention this but Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a somewhat interesting way of handling character's equipment. You had 5 equipment slots and could equip whatever you could in any slot. Including multiple "accessories" but it counted shoes and 'armlets' as items that you could still only equip one of.

Have you ever played Kingdom of Loathing? It lets you equip three different "accessories" but some specific accessories are limited to only one copy/instance.

Well, magic in games (and books and whatnot) has often handled this by saying "It just works. So stop being a little smartass about everything."

I would say inventory systems generally exist because of memory limitations and for purposes of game balance. And they don't really care if that makes sense to you or not.

Damn, bungle. You sound a lot like my friend Darren. Or this other guy (a friend of a friend) I played D&D with who was nicknamed 'Peanut'.

Also, you're such a munchkin. By the way - if you could equip all of that stuff then couldn't your enemies do the same?

...This reminds me of the FFTA2 thread over on SA, where they had a character put on as much armour and shields as possible to serve as a tank. There was even fanart of it, linked below:

http://soldoutcomic.com/Etc/Sketchdu...lessLeader.gif

Presenting the Magic User prestige class from Bride of Portable Hole:



He's wearing two pairs of magic boots.

NO!

That is against the rules! THE RULES! Enemies cannot equip magic equipment unless they are also human! The penalty is DEATH!

sure, they'd die anyways, but that's irrelevant.

Ooh Immortal King's weapon. As nice as that would be for Muntak, he can't even use it for a weapon switch - I plan to have two Echoing (+3 Warcry) weapons so he can switch and get even more beefed up, before switching back to his main weapon + shield.

If anyone finds a nice 4 socket polearm, I could do with that for my merc. Otherwise I'm pretty set for equipment - put two Ptopaz in the IK helm, so with my rings I have over 100 mf. I should have a decent chance of pulling out good gear, but it does reduce my chances of finding a white or ethereal polearm for my merc.

Huh, what do ya know. I was always wondering what the best weapons for a shapeshifting druid would look like.

I'm sticking to Wind, but if anyone wants to roll a Were-Druid for the LAP they can have it.

When we last left Songbird, she had just delivered the Horadric Malus to Charsi, and may or may not have made a brief excursion to the Jail to get a waypoint. This time, she'll surely defeat the evil Andariel and open the way to the East!

Now, I cannot begin to say what a great help my new Shadow Warrior has been. She's very trigger-happy with traps, which contrasts well with my own conservative nature regarding the use of traps, so we come out about even in our trap use. In addition, she's also a great tank, taking damage away from the arguably more valuable main character. My potion issues are significantly more out of mind now. Now then, on to the show!



Not too far into the Jail, Songbird comes across her first Unique of the day. Get used to this, because the unique rate only gets higher from here.



This brings me to one of my favorite things about the Jail: secret rooms. Nobody's explained this yet, but take a look at the minimap area Songbird is in and you'll quickly notice there is no discernible entrance or exit to be had. You just have to click around a certain spot in the wall when you find a secret room, and the door will open, allowing entry. Some of the passages are easy to find, but others can be more difficult. Now, some of you may groan at the thought of secret rooms in the Jail that are occasionally a pain to unlock, but I delight in the thought of unlocking hidden rooms and getting their treasure, and think it's a great idea by the developers. Way to go, Blizzard!



I am not nearly so sold, however, on the idea of Tainted monsters. Luckily for us, they mostly just show up in Act I and are forever out of your hair afterwards! Not that I like the enemies they're replaced by, but even so.



This guy was one of the few terrible uniques I came across in this playthrough. One second I was minding my own business, and the next I was surrounded by Moon Clan and almost dead. Now, obviously, this picture is designed to show off the unique (I really ought to consider not photographing every unique that comes my way, but then what would I show you guys?), but after taking a look, I commandeered it for the purpose of demonstrating a trap in the process of exploding after outliving its usefulness. It's a good screenshot for not intentionally trying to get that picture.



It was around this time that I got Bungle's message and looked to see what Songbird's gems actually did. When I found out that diamonds are utterly useless for assassins, I decided to toss them out, which freed up a ton of space. I also tossed the amethysts, but mostly just because I needed a little more space and they were the gem I had the least of. (Naturally, a bazillion and a half dropped after I made this decision.)



After effortlessly charging through the Jail, Songbird ends up in the Inner Cloister. Since more than one person has already mentioned the utter and complete lack of sense going through the Jail to get to the inner part of the monastery makes, I'll skip the rant and move on to Bone Ash. He was ridiculously easy, as compared to when I went through on a cold-using Sorceress and got utterly destroyed.



Onward to the Catacombs! When we enter, Songbird miraculously receives voice acting for five seconds and belts out this lovely line:
I don't believe liking the place is the point. Now, while the Jail was a breeze, the Catacombs were even easier, since, inexplicably, the Catacombs are filled with living things susceptible to drain attacks, whereas the Jail of all places is filled with the living dead. It really should be the other way around. At any rate, Songbird tore through here effortlessly.



Rat men/Flayers/Fetishes aren't really a big deal yet, though I imagine that'll change by the time Act III rolls around.



I still don't care for Tainted, though I like them significantly better when they're after Shadow as opposed to Songbird.



While I don't have anything in particular to say about this particular Unique (I don't have much to say about any of them, as I'm sure you have noticed. Uniques are starting to be more of a commonplace occurrence and less of a deadly, dangerous encounter.), this reminds me of a Dark One Nightmare World I experienced while in the Catacombs. There were five Champion Dark One shamans, and they each had a ton of Dark Ones to their name. Since Shadow and Aliza were busy taking care of the Dark Ones, I had to go in and take care of the Champion Dark One Shamans. By myself. All of that bazillion HP they have. It took me at least ten minutes before we were through with them all.



Dark One Shaman uniques, however, are not quite shaping up to the same level as their Champion counterparts, though I'm sure they'd be mildly more fearsome if they at least got effective abilities.



All is not monotone, however, as Songbird's first useful unique item finally drops! The Nagelring, however, is definitely not the most powerful unique item I've seen. If it wasn't for that +27% to finding magic items there, I definitely would have had Songbird sell it. Keen observers will also notice I found 3 rings and an amulet along with Nagelring there. In different fights, mind you, Songbird did not encounter an enemy that happened to have a freakishly large number of ringed fingers.



....I think I've said about all I can say on Tainted. They shoot lightning, they hit people, I don't appreciate being hit or shot at with lightning, so we fight? That about covers it.



Now this is a fight that I remember. As it turns out, despite Vampires being among the undead, I can still drain Life and Mana from them just fine. (Wraiths, too, unless I'm mistaken.) This comes in handy, since I believe that Viper Shield the Tainted 2.0 has the most health of any baddie I've fought so far, including Andariel. That or the curse causes my attack to be reduced to two, one of the two things. In any case, though I was effectively invincible for the entirety of this fight, thanks to my draining, that sure didn't stop Viper Shield 2.0 and his buddies from trying to beat me. For the whoooooole time we fought. Man, that was a long fight.



Are you sick of standard zombies? I'm sick of standard zombies! Not to say that I'm glad to see their replacement coming up, but at least it'll be a little change, you know? I can only make so many zombie jokes before I collapse into a broken mess of LPer, and nobody wants to clean that up.

Now, that's all the Uniques we have for floor three of the Catacombs. Anyone who's played Diablo 2 knows what that means!

it means Andariel time.

Oh, how lovely. Another zombie speedbump. How did you know just what I wanted, game? I feel so loved.

Now, here's the plan. Songbird will let the Shadow take Andariel's attention, and because she's a sap, she'll attack it instead of the fleeing Songbird. Songbird runs behind Andariel, charges up three Cobra Strikes, and recovers her full MP just in time for Shadow to perish again. Rinse, lather, repeat.



It's going well, right? Well, except no, because me, being an idiot, pressed escape to pause right after taking this screenshot, and I accidentally clicked on "Save and Exit Game". Right before beating her. Imagine my anger. No, really, just imagine it.



Proof the game knows what I don't want: hurling another zombie unique at me on floor four of the Catacombs.



Okay, are we ready this time? Anyone forget anything? No? Good, because this time we kill the spider scorpion demon hybrid once and for all.



This time goes significantly better. Songbird doesn't even use a potion this time.



HA! Andariel, of course, drops nothing of value. (My RNG is completely broken anyways, so it's not like I expected anything. All of my items except my rings and amulet are from gambling. Seriously, every last one.) However, Songbird, evidently channeling the coolness of other Assassins, brings us this quote:
or something to that effect, but I'm pretty sure that's what she said.



One tearful farewell to the Rogue Encampment later and Songbird is on her way to the golden city of Lut Gholein!



...Well, it's definitely a yellowish color not too dissimilar to gold.

Here's where we stand as of the end of Act I.



The keen-eyed amongst you will notice that my Strength and Dexterity have both gone down since I last updated, but that was just me disposing of a few charms and items that were clogging up space, and cycling out some old armor pieces in favor of new ones. These things happen.

Next time, Songbird will delve into the sewers and kill some undead! Well, re-kill some undead!

Note: Some of you may notice that Shadow speaks differently in the two second version Andariel pictures than she does everywhere else. This is because I made those pictures before I'd developed Shadow's "personality" fully, and I'd actually went back and added little Shadow tidbits to the pictures before that, which is why they match up and those two do not.

I totally forgot to mention the hidden rooms, though I came across a few myself.

It's such a shame they totally ignored them for the rest of the game. Some could have easily been put into the Tombs in Act II, or the Temples in Act III.

Anyway, despite being totally embarrassed by the Undead Flayers, so far Frrrt has been tearing up Act IV Nightmare. He even downed Izual in less than 10 seconds, that's how potent Tornado and Hurricane are right now.

And I think I need to make a second bank at this rate. My first one is already totally full, and she hasn't even been played enough to remove the expiry notice yet.

I'm such a pack-rat though, I can't help it!

I've considered actually playing my bank character to the point where she can equip a few of the items she's holding, just to free up a bit more space.