Usain Bolter: Nightmare Difficulty Part Two

Here's one aspect of Blessed Hammer that I don't think I've mentioned before: the size of the opponent matters a great deal in terms of hitting or not. The hammers have a relatively small hit box and I had found over time that it was tough to get them to hit smaller enemies; crows in particular had to be in just the right spot for the hammers to nail them. By contrast, the big Bramble Hulks had a massive hit box and seemingly every hammer would smack right into them. They even made a very satisfying little "thunk" sound when colliding with one of the swirling Blessed Hammers. It was a good thing that the fetishes and flayers were demons because Usain would have had a devil of a time landing Blessed Hammer against the little buggers.

So the jungles themselves were pretty straightforward but the underground pitstops along the way were definitely tougher for Usain to navigate. The Spider Cavern and Arachnid Lair both failed to roll any maggots this time around, instead having tons of bats and (of course) spiders. The Poison Spinners were the more annoying of the two types since their bites inflicted a whopping 2600 poison damage (!) and Blessed Hammer forced Usain to stay at short range in order to land the projectiles. This is the greatest weakness of Usain's character build and if he dies it's going to be because I had to position him closer than I wanted so that those stupid hammers would actually hit. Anyway, there was no way to make use of Blessed Hammer in the cramped confines of those caves without being close to the spiders, and as a result Usain spent most of his time glowing green from poison. The Spider Cavern even had a Sszark 2.0 boss with Cursed/Extra Strong traits; old Buy-A-Vowel himself had the same pair along with Spectral Hit. I was glad to claim Khalim's latest body part and get out of these two caves.

Then the Flayer Jungle had its own two underground areas in the Flayer Dungeon and Swampy Pit. (I'm probably the only person who ever goes into the Swampy Pit as there's absolutely nothing of value in there and the monster mix is fairly dangerous.) The flayers, soul killers, ghosts, and bats in these areas were all easily handled, with nearly everything vulnerable to Holy Bolt, however there was a real threat here as the undead dolls showed up for the first time:

They were fast enough that even Usain's speed wouldn't necessarily get him to a safe distance, especially in the narrow corridors of these dungeons. Now killing the exploding dolls was easy as they would go down in one or two castings of Holy Bolt. The issue as always was their death explosions which were hitting for roughly 150 damage. That was per doll explosion, mind you, and therefore it was quite dicey when Holy Bolt started piercing through crowds and blowing up several of them at a time. I found that the best tactic was Sirian's old Tempting Fate: let them run up into melee range and then step out of the way when they pause to make their attack, then shoot at range before the animation was done playing. This didn't always work though and at times there was no way to avoid taking explosion damage. I made sure to keep drinking red potions so that Usain's health orb stayed topped off and, with this being only Nightmare difficulty, avoided any true close call situations.

Eventually Usain was through the jungles (after slaying enormous numbers of flayers and soul killers in the Flayer Jungle), passing by Stormtree and his companions at the gates of Kurast and then securing his progress at the waypoint. The outdoor portions of Kurast were another place where Blessed Hammer was the tool of choice, full of vultures and thrashers and Doom Apes which were all classified as different types of animals. The zealots and their sexton/cantor healing buddies also began to appear in the Kurast Bazaar and fortunately I found that Blessed Hammer did more than enough damage to overcome their healing. Usain could overwhelm the melee zealots with a trio of hammers or simply race up to the sextons themselves and crush them with a pair of Blessed Hammer casts. I hoped that this would remain the case in Hell difficulty; in a worst case scenario, I could fall back on leading the zealots away from their healers as WillPower had had to do. For now though, Usain's progress continued to be speedy (heh).

The Kurast Sewers were full of undead, including more undead soul killers, with Usain having to swap back over to Blessed Hammer against mosquitos and Riftwing's bat crew when they showed up. I took my time and avoided doing anything stupid like running around a corner into a mob of exploding dolls which was sufficient to get the full clear eventually. This brought Usain to the dreaded Kurast Temples where I hoped to avoid anything too terrible in terms of stairs traps. The Ruined Temple had the right-facing "T" formation this time and I made sure to clear the two side wings for safety. I almost botched this situation by having Usain accidentally race into the main room with Tome of Lam Esem - stupid Holy Bolt and movement both mapped to the left click button! - which brought out Sarina's whole coven way too fast, and only the power of Holy Bolt downing them two and three at a time prevented the situation from being a disaster. I have to do better than that on the top difficulty or it will be a Save and Exit situation for sure.

The toughest opponent down in the temples wasn't Sarina's corrupted rouges, however, but rather the Wailing Beasts pictured above. These big furries had a whopping 80% magic resistance which cut the damage from Blessed Hammer down to something like 100-150 per cast, ouch. This was especially noteworthy because pretty much everything else in Act Three Nightmare had exactly 0% resistance to Blessed Hammer and allowed them to do true damage. By contrast, the Wailing Beasts needed more than a dozen hammers before they collapsed and even a handful of these uglies would drain Usain's whole mana orb. It could be worse though: these things will be completely Magic Immune in Hell difficulty and I'm not exactly sure what Usain's going to do about them. Tag them with Prevent Monster Heal and then spam Fist of the Heavens, I suppose. There's a good chance I might have to reroll some of the temples to prevent them from spawning in Hell difficulty, I'll cross that bridge when I get there though.

The other problematic enemies in the Kurast Temples were these Serpent Maguses. I already mentioned back in Act Two how it was tough to position Usain correctly for Blessed Hammer usage with the snakes charging all over the place, then these Serpent Maguses tacked on a nasty 70% magic resistance to make them much sturdier as well. Normal enemies weren't so bad but it could get messy when snake bosses appeared, or when a nearby bat boss added a Fanaticism aura. Usain was actually cornered against the wall in this room seconds after taking this picture and had to drink a full rejuv to escape, yeesh! At least these things never get the full magic immunity in Hell difficulty, retaining their 70% resistance from Nightmare. Between the Wailing Beasts and Serpent Maguses, these were not easy areas to complete at all and Usain had to step lively to stay safe. There was one bad stairs trap in the Forgotten Reliquary though fortunately the enemy mix in there had corrupted rogues, vampires, and spiders which were all relatively easy to defeat.

Once the six temples were all clear, Travincal was much simpler for Usain to pass through. His Blessed Hammer damage was still high enough to overcome Hierophant healing without much trouble and the vampires were cut to ribbons by Holy Bolt. I made sure to clear the whole area for safety before engaging the Council, though it wasn't really necessary given how Holy Bolt absolutely shredded them. They were actually taking enough damage from each casting that they were put into stunlock and a dozen such casts were enough to burn through their healthbars in mere seconds. Usain even found a Large Charm with 5% faster movement from a monster drop here, which definitely was worse than his current charms but which of course I put into his inventory anyway. He had also found a Ko rune earlier in the jungles that I stashed for safekeeping without having a clue what to do with it. Ko builds into some pretty solid runewords but nothing that Usain would want to use.

The monster mix in the Durance is entirely full of demons and undead enemies which meant that Blessed Hammer could finally take a breather for a while. I had maxed out Blessed Hammer itself at SLVL 20+5 early in Act Three and had been skilling the Vigor synergy to keep increasing the damage, with the plan to go back to skilling Holy Bolt now since it would see a lot of use in Act Four. My hope was that Usain would avoid drawing undead stygian dolls on at least one floor of the Durance, but no such luck, they were present on Durance 1 and the gigantic Durance 2. Usain wound up not seeing the Maulers on either floor as it was mummies, vampires, and exploding dolls on both of the two levels. The mummies and vampires barely even registered as a threat so all my attention remained on dodging the explosions from those dolls. This was a bit easier in the Durance because the rooms were larger here as compared to the Flayer Dungeon, with more space to sprint away and then fire Holy Bolts at a distance. Once again, I took my time with Usain and he was able to avoid anything too truly dangerous while undertaking this massive full clear.

Durance 3 was not as crowded as I had expected, with no vampires at all in the entry room and Bremm lurking with his minions near the top of the central blood pool. Thank goodness this was only Nightmare since Bremm had a Might aura which could have been really dangerous in Hell difficulty. Holy Bolt was as effective as ever in cutting right through the various Council members, first Bremm's group followed by Maffer and then Wyand. For Mephisto himself, I was able to take advantage of a convenient nearby skill shrine that pumped up Holy Bolt's damage to roughly 1200 per shot. This was enough that it only took a little more than 50 shots to deal with the big demon and with a solid amount of faster cast that didn't take long at all. In the screenshot above, the opening boss text was still display on the screen with something like 10% of Mephisto's health already gone. I was honestly a bit addicted to spamming out the Holy Bolts as fast as possible and didn't even both to dodge most of Mephisto's attacks, trying to sidestep his infamous cold shots but not caring if his Lightning or Charged Bolts hit. Mephisto's damage simply wasn't high enough to be a real threat and Usain spam-casted Holy Bolt until the demon croaked.

Act Four was the home turf for various demons of all sorts and Usain was more than happy to meet them with Holy Bolt locked and loaded. The Outer Steppes turned out to be a preview of the Chaos Sanctuary, with the identical monster mix aside from lacking Oblivion Knights. All of the bosses were once again clustered around the entry staircase and Usain had several minutes of intense fighting before they could all be cleared out. He actually managed to empty his mana orb while repeatedly casting Holy Bolt (with some help from the finger mages and their mana drain), something that was almost impossible to do given the cheap mana cost of the skill. Then the rest of the area was uneventful since all of the bosses had already been slain. The Plains of Despair had almost the exact same group of monsters, only swapping out the Doom Knights for Corpulents, once again remaining an all-demon group. These areas were incredibly fast to clear with everything dropping to Holy Bolt and Usain was tearing through them in a little over 10 minutes apiece.

The one minor roadblock was Izual who for some reason is not a demon as I mentioned back in Normal difficulty. Usain positioned himself directly below the twisted creature and emptied out three consecutive mana orbs casting Blessed Hammer until Izual was defeated. At least the big thing does very low damage and Usain only needed to drink a couple of red potions while tanking its attacks. Then it was on to the City of the Damned where everything still remained a demon of some kind. This place was notable for the first appearance of Stygian Hags which Usain had avoided completely back on the initial difficulty. I was pleased to find that Holy Bolt handled them just as smoothly as everything else, cutting through the pups to down the breeders in mere seconds before the spawning could get out of hand. That was great news since Usain would surely see them again as guest monsters somewhere along the road ahead.

Usain was clearing so quickly that I thought I'd at least check the River of Flame to see if it had another friendly monster draw. To my delight the River rolled again as an entirely Holy Boltable floor, with Pit Lords and Urdars and Strangler finger mages. This was massively preferable to getting a River full of maggots and it meant that Usain had drawn an entire Act Four of enemies weak against Holy Bolt. The Hellforge turned out to be right next to the starting staircase, as close as I've ever seen it spawn, and thus it only took a minute or two before Usain was facing Hephasto. The evil forgemaster rolled with Lightning Enchanted trait but lacked the speed to keep up with Usain, as I used hit-and-run tactics to stay out of its melee range while firing away with Holy Bolt. Soon enough the boss was gone and the Hellforge quest rolled... another Ko rune, heh. Now Usain had most of the pieces for a Sanctuary shield (Ko-Ko-Mal), which is quite a nice item although not something that this character would ever want over Spirit. To be honest there really wasn't much that Usain wanted in terms of runes, not with him already having a Principle armor and about to have double Spirits in his two hand slots. The helmet slot was the only one left and there isn't much there better than the Lore runeword he was already using.

The Chaos Sanctuary was a lot of fun, with Usain engaging in firefights between his Holy Bolts and the various elemental projectiles of the Oblivion Knights. The place was packed with monsters as always and the fighting was particularly intense around the bottom of the first blood pool where there were two bosses and a champ pack grouped together. Usain fought his way across the dark cathedral with nothing but Holy Bolt and a silly amount of movement speed, killing and killing until the whole place was cleared. I did not have to retreat from the Infector's huge mob as surprisingly Holy Bolt was able to pierce through everything and shoot the Venom Lords down before Usain could be swarmed. De Seis was a problem only because his minions all spawned ON TOP of Usain (whoopsie on my part there) and forced the drinking of a full rejuv for safety. The Vizier was an absolute joke and died in something like six casts lasting mere seconds, sheesh.

I started out the Diablo fight by hitting some sniper shots at long range from the south side of the pentagram. He came charging out after a little bit as he always does and then the duel was on in earnest. Usain had maxed fire and lightning resistance so there wasn't much danger from Diablo's Flame Nova and Fire Wave attacks; the only thing that I had to make sure to avoid was the Lightning Breath of Doom since that hits so hard if your character eats the whole thing. Mostly I kept Usain at medium range and kept firing away with Holy Bolt, stepping out of the way when Diablo charged or shot his red lightning across the cathedral. In a surprisingly short amount of time, the holy blasts did their job and the world was missing one Godzilla knockoff monster.

Next up was the expansion content of Act Five where Usain was greeted with the annoying monster combination of spear cats and quill rats in the Bloody Foothills. Even though this was only Nightmare difficulty, they sent out a storm of projectiles which proved to be impossible to dodge and had my Paladin drinking a lot of red potions. The quill rats were also tough to hit with Blessed Hammer since they had such tiny hit boxes, noticeably more difficult landing the projectile against them as compared to something like Siege Beasts. Dac Farren's imps at the midway point and Shenk at the back end of the Foothills were the only targets that Holy Bolt worked against in this whole area. Clearing everything out unlocked the socket quest reward and now Usain could finally make his second Spirit runeword in his stashed Heraldric Shield:

Look at the insane stats on this thing which required a mere 40 Strength to equip. Usain picked up another +2 to all skills, another 27% faster cast rate, another 55% faster hit recovery (an important stat that even one Spirit means you can ignore for the rest of the game), another 22 Vitality which meant 66 health for Usain, another 105 mana, and then 64% resistance to everything other than fire which had to be content with the mere 29% base amount from the shield itself. The 100 additional mana was particularly great to have since Blessed Hammer and especially Fist of the Heavens were mana-intensive spells and of course Usain was coasting through the game with zero stat points placed into Energy. This was a stupefyingly powerful item and there was no way Usain could ever find anything that would outperform this runeword. I keep talking about how casting characters really have no choice other than to use Spirit (unless they're deliberately restricting themselves) because it outperforms everything else to such a crazy extent. This is textbook poor game design in action: one option crowds out everything else and makes huge portions of character-building irrelevant.

The other component of itemization that I want to mention was Usain's amulet slot where he contined to search for an item with +1 to Paladin skills, or better yet, +2 or +3 to the Paladin's Combat skill tree. They were both in play by this point and I would spend all of the gold from the entire act searching for any of these modifiers on amulet gambles. Usain's luck was dismal in terms of finding what he wanted, however, as he had managed to find +1 skills to all six of the other Diablo 2 classes by the end of this act but without getting the Paladin. He also managed to get several different +2 and +3 skills to various different class trees that didn't match his Combat tree. He even found +3 Paladin Offensive Auras which was the very item that WillPower had spent the whole game searching for and not finding - where was that for my last character?! I also tried to craft a couple of Blood amulets, which have guaranteed faster run speed as a modifier, without turning up anything useful. Those crafts were limited by the supply of Amn runes which I didn't have more than a handful of thus far. Sooner or later Usain had to hit a measly +1 Paladin skill levels amulet, right?

As far as the actual combat went, Act Five was as dreary as ever and only spiced up occasionally by the presence of the guest monsters. Imps continued to be an utter joke that died in a single shot of Holy Bolt which meant that Usain spent most of his time fighting the various opponents who lacked the demon tag and had to be handled with Blessed Hammer. Siege beasts were probably the most irritating of this group due to their high health totals; they actually have about seven times the health of the imps and were of course immune to Holy Bolt. Baal's Enslaved minions were also common across these areas along with the Death Maulers that send their tentacles underground. Oddly enough, there was one Enslaved type of monster called a Hell Spawn which was tagged as a demon and could be Bolted, who Usain fought in the Arreat Plateau next to Fire Boars which were another type of Enslaved and which could *NOT* be hit by Holy Bolt. Basically, these monsters looked identical but the blue ones could be hit by Holy Bolt while the red ones were immune. Was that an unintentional coding error from two decades ago that was never fixed?

The River of Flame subdungeons were a bit trickier solely because they were the only areas where the dreaded minotaurs popped up. I previously wrote back in Normal difficulty about the problematic nature of fighting those things, between their high damage and speediness and extended range once they started using their Frenzy ability. Usain fared a lot better here in Nightmare largely because I was so much more familiar with using Blessed Hammer by now, alternating between staying at a distance and casting a swarm of hammers when there were a bunch of minotaurs on screen versus getting right up in their faces to ensure the hammers hit when it was only one or two of the bull-heads present. The other monsters in these subdungeons were a mixture of witches and balrogs and one wacky Fallens + Shamans pairing back from Act One which were all handled easily with Holy Bolt.

I can't say that much changed when Usain reached the ice caverns about halfway through Act Five. These areas also all looked the same, just various shades of white instead of shades of brown, and they tended to pack a bunch of the same repeat monsters as well. Usain fought more witches and skeleton mages along with a decent number of Claw Vipers who liked to shoot their Bone Spears at him. The snakes were the toughest enemy here once again due to their charging attacks, at least up until minotaurs rolled in the Glacial Trail and forced me to step cautiously. (Another fun fact: unlike virtually every monster in Nightmare which tended to have zero magic resistance, the minotaurs had a universal 25% resistance to Usain's abilities - because of course they did, why wouldn't they?!) There were a decent number of bosses along the way but without anything rising to the level of a real danger. Everything vulnerable to Holy Bolt died quickly and all the non-minotaur targets didn't put up much resistance to Blessed Hammer. Yetis and the ice monsters had nice fat character models to make them prime hammer bait.

Nihlathak's Temple was definitely harder due to its more threatening opponents. After cutting through Pindleskin and his skeleton pals in the courtyard with a whole lot of Holy Bolts, Usain found himself facing huge numbers of Death Brigadiers and Temple Guards in the Halls of Anguish. While these weren't scary monsters on an individual basis, there were enough of them that it took a while to clear out the whole expanse of this large floor. The third enemy type was Devilkin with their shamans, though they were actually easier to fight since they were demons and Holy Bolt could cut right through them. The following Halls of Pain were tougher yet with more Temple Guards along with blowdart Flayers and Zealot/Hierophant pairs. There was nothing to be done here except wade into combat with Blessed Hammers flying to smash through the zealots before their corrupted priest companions could heal them. Usain had to swap back and forth constantly between Holy Bolt (for the flayers) and Blessed Hammer (for everything else) which started to get tiresome. I wouldn't mind if these levels weren't so big, I suppose the designers didn't intend players to full clear them. There are only three layouts for these floors and Usain rolled the same floorplan twice in a row to add to the tedium - lots of fun here.

The bottom floor in the Halls of Vaught turned out to be a poison-fest, between Arach spiders and posion-spitting Tomb Vipers. The poison on the snakes was bugged for more than a decade before being fixed in Diablo 2 Resurrected; it used to deal hundreds of damage per second and I'm really glad that they patched out that error. Things were still plenty annoying enough with the spiders hitting for 10,315 poison damage on their bites. No, that's not a misprint, they really do inflict 10,000 poison damage although it's spread out over some ungodly long period of time. I had no choice but to port back to town over and over again to clear their poison despite the fact that Usain had 80% poison resistance to block much of the effect.

Nihlathak was hiding in the final quadrant and I didn't find him until the entire rest of the Halls of Vaught were clear. I hadn't been happy with my performance against him in Normal difficulty and had a new plan to rely on Fist of the Heavens hitting at long range, rather than trying to run into close combat and make use of Blessed Hammer. I did my best to lure out as many of the monsters crammed into Nihlathak's room as possible, trying to dispose of them out of his Corpse Explosion range. I was mostly successful with this but couldn't stop him from detonating some of them and nailing Usain. Making matters worse, Nihthalak had the Cursed trait which I can't recall ever seeing on him previously. This caused the physical portion of the Corpse Explosion to deal double damage which was hitting Usain for several hundred damage at a time. I stayed calm and kept drinking potions, keeping as far away from Nihlathak as possible without scrolling him off the screen, with Usain ignoring the enemy minion hitting him (to avoid creating a fresh corpse) and spam casting Fist of the Heavens at the traitor. This worked reasonably well although I think I could still improve on the performance for Hell difficulty. Hopefully Nihlathak will have a less dangerous trait next time and there won't be poison-inflicting guest monsters in the mix.

The Frozen Tundra was routine and repeated the same opponents that Usain had already fought: imps, Siege Beasts, Death Maulers, etc. Been there, done that. There were more minotaurs in the Infernal Pit along with fire-tossing Salamanders which always looks so ridiculous when they spit out their flaming Bone Spears. One of the minotaurs also spawned out in the River of Flame which was funny enough that I saved the screenshot. Going for a toasty swim there, buddy? There were more snakes in the Ancients' Way and the Icy Cellar, although this time of the normal Bone Spear variety. I would have been more concerned about the tight spaces of the Icy Cellar if the other two enemies, witches and gloams, hadn't collapsed instantly when touched by Holy Bolt. Usain's namesake spell had topped 1500 damage per casting thanks to the extra stat points from the second Spirit shield and it was getting close to the 2000 damage mark which I hoped to achieve by the conclusion of the act.

The Ancients had been pretty easy in Normal difficulty and things played out much the same way here in Nightmare. I didn't bother stacking as many red and blue potions on the ground based on my previous experience, just half a dozen of each for refilling the inventory throughout the battle. The Ancients are pretty mindless and will chase after your character endlessly, which in the case of Usain meant throwing out a bunch of Blessed Hammers and then running away while the three barbarians ran into the swirling cloud of metal. Hit and run, hit and run; Usain had to make sure that he was never caught standing in place when Talic spun onto him. The Ancients can take a long time to defeat because they have heavy resistances for Nightmare difficulty: 70% physical and fire resistance on Korlic and Talic along with 70% lightning and cold resistance on Madawc. However, they all had exactly zero percent magic resistance and that meant Blessed Hammer was dealing its "true" damage (to use the League of Legends term) of about 1000 per hammer hit. They died faster than I had expected, only about half a dozen circles around the central statues before their lifebars ran out.

The Worldstone Keep has a wide variety of potential enemies once the guest monsters start showing up in Nightmare difficulty; this can make these three levels much easier or harder depending on what appears. The first two floors were pretty uneventful with melee fetishes and zealot/hierophants and Black Souls (Gloams) that fired brilliant streaks of lightning at Usain. He had seen various versions of all these enemy types before and these areas passed by quickly. Worldstone 3 was a bit more interesting as there were Doom Knights / Oblivion Knights together with Death Lord minotaurs for a series of dangerous opponents. The Oblivions liked to dial up the threat level by casting their Amplify Damage curse on Usain which doubled the damage taken from the minotaurs, not exactly what I wanted. At least there was a well on this floor for convenient removal of Cursed status.

The Throne of Destruction stairs were not trapped for once and Usain fought his way through more witches, snakes, and an appearance of undead exploding dolls. Holy Bolt worked against everything other than the Serpent Mages, then it continued to be the weapon of choice against all five of the bosses in the concluding boss rush. Let me be clear: Holy Bolt absolutely destroyed these bosses one after another, owning them harder than I can ever recall beating them with another solo character. Colenzo and Achmel had no chance to revive their minions with the bolts piercing through the crowd to drop them instantly, then I barely even had to retreat to annihilate the remaining three opponents. Bartuc and the other Council members, Ventar and his Venom Lords, even Lister and his unique minions: they all fell in mere seconds to the power of Holy Bolt. For a skill which has been a complete afterthought for the majority of Diablo 2's history, this was an impressive display of demon-slaying prowess.

Baal isn't much of a final boss and he didn't put up more than a token fight this time around either. My plan was to stay at max range and shoot down Baal at a distance as Usain had done back in Normal difficulty. This plan was ruined by the appearance of the clone, who camped out at the foot of the central bridge while Baal stayed at the back near the Worldstone and refused to come out. Usain ended up having to tank spells from both of them in order to hit the real Baal, not ideal but survivable so long as I kept drinking red potions. I actually didn't know that the infamous orange blast also acts as a mana burn attack (was that always the case?) which is about the only way that Usain was going to find himself running out of mana given the low cost of Holy Bolt. Baal has about 117k health in Nightmare but he's another foe with no magic resistance at all, and with Holy Bolt dealing nearly 2000 damage per shot, that lifebar kept dropping in a hurry. Soon enough it was all over:

Usain even leveled to CLVL 68 on the Baal kill itself, very nice. The unique Trellised Armor was the Iron Pelt which had some nice damage reduction modifiers on it but would never come remotely close to equaling Usain's Principle runeword armor. There was one oddity about defeating Baal this close to the Worldstone: Tyrael spawned on top of the big red rock and he failed to open the glowing "Destruction's End" portal after completing the final quest. I guess that it's coded to appear to the right of Tyrael and there was no room for the thing to appear. This also meant that Usain failed to get the ending cinematic of the Worldstone being destroyed, nor did he get the screen with Cain announcing his new title, Champion in this case. It's another small example of how this game can still surprise me after all these years.

Another difficulty passed by Usain Bolter with flying colors. Everything was full-cleared once again with no deaths on Usain's part. This character build continued to be stronger than I had expected, particularly with Holy Bolt continuing to eviscerate everything that it worked against. It was always Blessed Hammer that led to the most difficult fights for Usain, never the other way around, even though Blessed Hammer is the much more famous Paladin skill. He'd have to see how Holy Bolt fared against the toughest tests in the top difficulty with Hell next on the agenda. Plus, how high could I stack Usain's movement speed before the gameplay came to a close? His journey will continue, next time on the final difficulty.