Usain Bolter: Hell Difficulty Part Two

That almost caused disaster for Usain as he ran into this Extra Strong boss immediately upon going down the stairs to Sewers 2. With little space in which to operate, I led the boss and its minions back towards the entry stairs, then had to dash past them when they closed in. The Sand Raiders nearly stopped Usain from racing past and he took multiple hits that nearly emptied his life orb before Usain scampered past into open space. My Paladin 100% would have died here if the boss had been packing Cursed trait instead of Lightning Enhanted and I breathed a deep sigh of relief when this monster dropped shortly thereafter. The rest of the Sewers were pretty uneventful and Sewers 3 was actually the easiest floor because there were no Sand Raiders present, instead having melee spear cats who were much easier to defeat with Blessed Hammer. Radament was Multishot but Usain could cut down his undead minions faster than the greater mummy could resurrect them and Holy Bolt performed as magnificently as ever against this threat.

Just before facing Radament on Sewers 3, a gold-colored wand dropped and I realized that I had this unique item:

It was the Arm of King Leoric, the unique Tomb Wand. While obviously this wasn't useful for Usain himself, this was an absolutely incredible find for a potential future Summoning Necromancer. This thing had +2 skills to the Necro Summoning tree, then an additional +3 to Raise Skeleton, +3 to Skeleton Mastery, and +2 to Raise Skeletal Mage, along with a bonus 10% fast cast and 92 extra mana. It was an absolute dream item for a future character build and I couldn't bring myself to sell it. Just as finding those Gul runes on previous characters had set up Usain's character build, now I knew that I was going to have to base a future Necromancer around this unique item. File this under future projects for the moment, I have some ideas here that I'll come back to later.

Anyway, back to the story of Usain's own journey. The outdoor deserts of Act Two were next and I knew that these were places where Blessed Hammer would be needed once again. I definitely remember these being the areas where Usain first made use of the skill upon hitting CLVL 18 and how unwieldy I had found Blessed Hammer when it made its initial appearance. Usain had come a long way since then and he was now a hardened veteran of Blessed Hammer usage, manipulating the skill with something approaching precision against the leapers and vultures and beetles that inhabited the sandy dunes. I particularly enjoyed fighting the beetles at night when their Charged Bolts would make a flashy display as in the picture above. There was plenty of space to maneuver here in the outdoor areas and that meant a low danger level thanks to Usain's amazing movement speed. There was really no way he would ever die because he was so much faster than everything else, and I certainly appreciated having lots of room to kite monsters back into the flying hammer storm whenever bosses might appear.

The Rocky Waste holds the completely optional Stony Tomb subdungeon, which I suspect most players skip but of course Usain had to clear out. The tomb had more cramped spaces than the deserts outside but also fortunately swapped back to a mostly undead monster mix. Mummies and two types of skeletons didn't put up much resistance as Holy Bolt sliced its way through almost everything. There were some beetles here as well, nothing that Usain couldn't handle though. Creeping Feature had some traits that would have been dangerous on another opponent (Extra Strong / Cold Enchanted / Cursed / Magic Resistant) but weren't dangerous because mummies were never going to get close enough to Usain to hit him.

In terms of what actually was threatening for Usain, these spear cats in the Halls of the Dead could sometimes fit the bill. As usual, while the normal versions of the enemies could be fought at close range without much of an issue, bosses with their clumped minions had enough damage to empty Usain's health in a hurry. Rather than trying to run into melee range and throw Blessed Hammers, I found that it was better to stay at a distance and rely on Fist of the Heavens, just as Usain had done with the quill rats back in Act One. Fist of the Heavens was a slow killer due to its lower damage and casting delay before the next spell could be launched, and yet it did work in practice while having the huge advantage of being much safer. The non-magic portion of the damage was lightning in nature so it wouldn't work against anything that was Lightning Immune which fortunately wasn't an issue for these spear cats.

The first floor of the Halls of the Dead had been packed with those spear cats along with bats and mummies. It wasn't until the second floor that greater mummies with their resurrection ability showed up for the first time, leading Usain to break out a new tool from his bag of tricks:

That was the Redemption aura, replacing Usain's normal orange circle from Vigor aura with this new red sunburst pattern. Redemption is an aura that cleans up corpses from the ground, ticking every few seconds with a chance to redeem a nearby body, and restoring health and mana to the Paladin for each corpse removed in this fashion. Thanks to his various +skills gear, a single skill point in Redemption gave Usain SLVL 1+7 into Redemption for 66% odds to redeem corpses within a 10 yard radius. These were high enough odds that the various skeleton bones left on the ground disappeared rapidly and the greater mummies were quickly starved of any fuel for their resurrection ability. Redemption was a natural skill for Usain to pick up for use against the greater mummies, located only one skill point away from Vigor which he had been using for most of his quest, and Boro anticipated that I would go here in some of his previous comments. Redemption was only intended for use against the greater mummies though, and then only because most of them are Magic Immune. The Hollow Ones here in the Halls of the Dead were not Magic Immune and Holy Bolt was killing them quickly enough that I wouldn't have needed to rely on Redemption if their peers had the same vulnerabilities. But Guardians and Unravelers would both be Magic Immune and there was no way that Usain could deal with them being immune to Holy Bolt / Blessed Hammer while also reviving their minions endlessly. Redemption would solve this one hole in Usain's character build nicely.

There was only one minor problem: Usain was so freaking sloooooooow when he was running Redemption! I hadn't even realized how addicted I had become to the movement speed of Vigor aura until I dropped it and returned to the walk/run speed of a normal character. Usain would be sticking with his normal Vigor setup everywhere that Redemption wasn't absolutely necessary to clear out undead corpses, thank you very much!

Unfortunately the next area that had to be tackled was the dreaded Maggot Lair which I knew was going to be a house of horrors for Usain. Let me highlight the problem:

As anyone who's played Diablo 2 knows (or anyone has even read these reports on my website), the Maggot Lair features ridiculously narrow tunnels only wide enough for a single character or monster to pass through at a time. This area is simply awful for larger parties with more than one player and similarly wrecks havoc on summoning builds which can't get their pets into action. For Usain, he could not use Holy Bolt in the Maggot Lair because everything present was classified as an animal, with no undead or demons to be found. The only two monster types inside were beetles and maggots, and while Usain could and did use Fist of the Heavens against some of the maggots, he couldn't use it at all against the beetles by virtue of all of them being Lightning Immune.

That meant having to rely on Blessed Hammer which was an atrociously bad skill in these cramped quarters. Blessed Hammer swirles in an outwardly-expanding circle around the Paladin's position and it dissipates if it makes contact with any surface. Down in the Maggot Lair, this meant that the hammers would fly for less than 90 degrees before clunking into the walls and immediately disappearing. The only way to hit anything with Blessed Hammer required Usain to be right up next to the target, practically giving the beetles a hug, where they could claw away at him with hit after hit. Even though only one beetle could hit him at a time, this was still exceptionally dangerous as it required Usain to stand in melee range and let the monsters beat on him while tossing out those pathetic hammers.

But wait, it was even worse than that! Blessed Hammer always flies in the same pattern, with the hammer appearing just to the left of the Paladin and then rotating above them in clockwise fashion. There is no way to get the skill to appear on the other side or rotate in the opposite pattern, it always starts on the left and goes "north" on the initial rotation. This wasn't so bad when Usain was walking through corridors that ran to the north or west, as he could get right up in the face of enemies coming down the tunnel from the other side. When the passageways ran east or especially south, however, the hammer rotation launched in the wrong direction and they simply hit nothing all before vanishing. Yes, you heard that correctly: in the picture above, Usain could throw hammers all day and they would never damage the beetle standing right in front of him, trying to tear him to bits with its pincers. Over and over again, I encountered situations where Usain couldn't even damage the monsters despite walking into melee range and I constantly had to figure out "can I hit this thing at all?" while also trying to tank a series of brutal attacks. The whole experience was nightmare fuel for a character trying to keep a clean deathless record.

It took all of my skill from two decades of playing Diablo 2 to navigate Usain through this challenge. He had to lure beetle after beetle back into tactical locations where there was enough room to hit them with Blessed Hammer, either corridors that ran the correct directions or the few open spaces scattered through the Maggot Lair. There was no way to do this safely without tanking a ton of hits in the process, and I was forced to send Usain back to town several dozens of times. (This felt like playing WillPower again, argh!) Despite all of my care, he repeatedly came close to dying since I had no choice but to absorb melee blows from beetle bosses and champs with abilities like Extra Strong and Cursed (fortunately not at the same time). He ended one fight on 150 out of 1651 HP and there was another time when I saw a two-digit life total on the orb in the instant before I drank a full rejuv. I went through seven full rejuvs in total and honestly should have gulped a few more to avoid some of those close calls. I had to get this done properly, with a full clear, on the first try because I did not want to have to come back down here again!

Coldworm rolled a Might aura for one of her extra abilities (along with an irrelevant Spectral Hit for the other boss trait) which made the final room noticeably more dangerous. At least I was able to clear out the few beetles in here quickly since they chased Usain down the entry corridor, and then the maggots themselves mostly inflict poison damage which wasn't boosted by that aura. The room was so packed with bugs that it was impossible to move forward and I had Usain blast down the giant worm at a distance with Fist of the Heavens for safety. After Coldworm was dead, I eased Usain into the middle of the room while throwing Blessed Hammers as fast as possible, with bugs squishing underfoot everywhere that they touched. There were so many little maggots in this room that I started to feel a bit sick to my stomach, kind of an impressive feat that a video game could make me feel that way. Eventually everything was cleared out and Usain could claim the Staff of Kings - yes, this is a mandatory story dungeon so I couldn't have skipped here even if I hadn't been full clearing. Usain was never going back in there again, yuck!

The Lost City was more interesting than the other outdoor desert areas because the zombies inhabiting the ruins were the first monster with complete magic immunity. Holy Bolt and Blessed Hammer didn't work on them at all, forcing Usain to rely on Fist of the Heavens and its lightning component to deal damage. This was the most that I'd used Fist of the Heavens across the entirety of Usain's journey thus far and I realized that it had more properties than I'd initially thought. The main damage source from Fist of the Heavens is the initial lightning strike that comes down from the sky, however it then shoots out a series of glowing bolts that travel across the ground and seek out other enemies. I hadn't realized that this skill therefore has some minor area-of-effect properties which helped offset its heavy mana cost at 25 per casting. There was no danger here, not in an outdoor area where Usain had tons of space to move and with the other two monsters being easy-to-defeat leapers and spear cats, but it was still fun to rely on Usain's third offensive skill for a change of pace. He killed everything except the handful of Fire Towers which weren't worth slugging through their 80,000 health and 50% magic resistance.

The Ancient Tunnels were mostly pretty easy since they were full of mummies and lightning-tossing skeletal mages. The third enemy type was Invaders and they caused all of the difficulties, including one boss that came close to killing Usain and required an emergency full rejuv for safety. I wasn't able to get a screenshot of its boss traits, all I know is that it had Extra Fast based on the speed that those things were moving. The Magic Immune zombies can also appear down here and I would have greatly preferred them over the Invaders; even immunity to Holy Bolt wasn't enough to make zombies dangerous, they simply could never get close enough to the zippy Usain to touch him.

This was one of those occasions where the Claw Viper Temple was fairly light on snakes, instead having lots of mummies and skeleton/greater mummy pairs such that the whole place felt more like the Halls of the Dead or the Tombs of Tal Rasha. This meant that Redemption aura was back again to force the undead to stay dead once they hit the ground, their souls sucked out by the angry red glow around Usain's feet. The screenshot above was from the biggest fight that Usain encountered on the first floor, a huge room to the east of the entryway that contained a mummy boss, a Guardian champion pack, and a mummy maker which was spitting out more of the undead walkers throughout the rest of the combat. All of the Guardians were Magic Immune and thus required Fist of the Heavens to kill them... except that I started noticing as the dungeon went on that the greater mummies were taking damage from Holy Bolt. Huh? Experimentation proved this to be correct: they were indeed taking damage from Holy Bolt even though it deals magic damage and they were supposedly Magic Immune. Did the fact that they were classified as undead override that magic immunity? This didn't make any sense to me but I went ahead and took advantage of it. Usain continued to wield Holy Bolt to blast apart all of the undead, then Redemption to quiet their bodies, while Blessed Hammer sufficed for the Claw Vipers. This place wasn't exactly easy but Usain handled the whole thing in routine fashion without any true danger.

Claw Viper 2 is always a scary challenge though, as there just isn't much room for your character to move and it's easy to get swarmed by Fangskin's mob. Upon entering the bottom basement floor, I tiptoed Usain to the left and woke up a few snakes for disposal with Blessed Hammer. Some melee skeletons were the next to appear and Usain killed them several times while waiting on Redemption to clean them up, not wanting to advance any further until they were safely out of the way. He then shot down the Guardian that had been reviving the skeletons with Holy Bolt and picked off a few more snakes along the northern side of the chamber, right up until I saw Fangskin waking up at the base of the central altar. As soon as the serpent boss starting moving towards Usain, I turned and charged in the opposite direction, to the right of the altar and down to the bottom of the little room. There were a lot more skeletons and snakes down there than I had been expecting, and they almost managed to close off the path forward, but Usain's mighty speed saved him again as he zoomed up onto the central platform before the enemies could close in:

And once he was up there, the fight was over as Fangskin won't chase up onto the altar itself. I took my time shooting down the various undead with Holy Bolt's excellent range and letting Redemption clean them up, the swapped over to Blessed Hammer which was perfectly suited for hitting Fangy from this position. I love how this screenshot caught the one snake at the top of the screen yelling out in pain after being decked by a hammer, heh. The snakes all dropped to the hammers and Usain was finished with another one of the most dangerous tasks in Act Two.

The Harem and the three Palace floors all played pretty similarly for Usain. These four areas all have the same five monster types (Invaders, Dune Beasts, Horror Archers, Blunderbores, and Horror Mages); each floor will randomly pick three of the five enemies for the player to face. Most characters tend to worry about the ranged threats the most, with the skeleton archers in particular causing all kinds of problems for various melee builds (since they like to cluster in big sniper nests and lifesteal doesn't work against them). Both types of skeletons and the Blunderbores were no problem for Usain, however, as Holy Bolt worked beautifully as usual at shooting them down from afar. The Blunderbores have a lot of health and a lot of resistances but magic resistance wasn't one of them. I barely saw the Dune Beasts on this trip, with them only appearing on one floor, but unfortunately the Invaders were present in three of the four areas and they were definitely the toughest foes. I've written before about how their unusual movement pattern made it unreliable to hit them with Blessed Hammer, and when they rolled with dangerous boss traits like Cursed or Extra Strong, Usain had to make a real effort to stay out of their reach. Fire Eye on the bottom floor was annoying if not dangerous:

For whatever reason, Fire Eye and his whole boss pack refused to leave the central room where the portal to the Arcane Sancutary was located. This would have been a total joke if they could be hit with Holy Bolt, as Usain would have shot them all down at range, but that wasn't an option and the southeast-facing doorway meant that Blessed Hammer didn't work against the Invaders. The hammers would simply swirl around and crash into the wall next to them without ever hitting them. Thus Usain had no choice but to eliminate them with Fist of the Heavens which took some time because Invaders have 50% lightning resistance. I actually broke out the rarely-used Prevent Monster Heal javelins on Usain's alternate weapon tab to stop their HP regeneration before whittling them down with Fist of the Heavens. This process took a minute or two but it did work out OK, successfully clearing the path forward into the Arcane Sanctuary.

The Arcane Sancutary was the opposite of a nightmare for Usain, more like a pleasant dream that he didn't want to end. I mentioned back in Normal and Nightmare difficulties that everything in the Sancutary is an undead or a demon, and the narrow pathways are perfect for shooting off Holy Bolts. If anyone was wondering whether the situation would change here in Hell difficulty, the answer was no, it did not. Holy Bolt once again annihilated everything inside the distorted reality, making the whole place feel something like an isometric shooting gallery. The Hell Clan goats and Apparitions never managed to get close to Usain while the Ghoul Lord vampires didn't do enough damage with their Fire Walls to cut through Usain's fire resistance. The only opponents that Usain couldn't kill were the Lightning Spires (since they were Lightning Immune and Holy Bolt didn't work on them) which had to be skipped. I found the Summoner at the end of the first quadrant, secured the waypoint, and then cleared out the whole rest of the place in about half an hour of real world time. I've had lots of other characters that struggled mightily in the Arcane Sancutary and took hours to full clear the place so this was a real blast for me.

The Canyon of the Magi avoided rolling any beetles or maggots for Usain, instead having Crusher beasts and two types of spear cats. This was an easy draw in terms of the two spear cats (those things never seem to cause problems for any of my variant characters) but the Crushers were another story. The big furries are fast, they get faster after they take some damage, and they hit quite hard at a little over 100 damage per strike. The Crushers became much scarier on this specific playthrough because Diablo 2 decided to spawn virtually every single boss as a Crusher; I think Usain saw a single spear cat boss and something like seven or eight Crushers. In particular, the game went absolutely nuts rolling Crushers with the Cursed trait as I snapped pictures of four different such bosses and I think there was another one where I missed the screenshot. The second boss above was exceptionally dangerous with the Extra Fast / Extra Strong / Cursed combo as it was moving at double speed and dealing 4x normal damage. The saving grace here was the geography of the Canyon itself, a wide open space where Usain could kite these monsters backwards and avoid taking hits. Once again the extra movement speed from Vigor aura was legitimately useful in staying ahead of these things. This was one of the tougher Canyon of the Magi clears that I can recall doing; a character with a weaker variant build than Usain might not have been able to manage it.

Then it was time for the longest part of Act Two, the six False Tombs followed by the True Tomb. (Again, I don't think the developers really intended players to clear the False Tombs but they do exist in the game and a full clear means a full clear.) There are six monster types that can appear in these areas and each tomb will randomly pick three of the six: Apparitions, Steel Scarabs, Preserved Dead mummies, Unraveler / Burning Dead combos, Ghoul Lord vampires, and Gorebellies. Every single one of those opponents had the demon or undead tags with the exception of the beetles and Usain found himself hoping for anything but the sparking bugs to appear in each tomb.

Most of these monsters were pretty easy for Usain to destroy thanks to the power of Holy Bolt. The Apparitions and mummies and vampires were all little more than a joke because they all wilted so quickly when hit with Holy Bolt. The Apparitions even had 50% magic resistance and it didn't matter one iota because they still died in a handful of bolts. The Unravelers and their Burning Dead minions tend to cause the most headaches in these tombs since they can keep reviving the skeletons endlessly. That wasn't a problem for Usain though since Holy Bolt could easily get the initial kills followed by Redemption cleaning up the bodies. That's a screenshot of the aura in action above, with the very evil-looking red skull graphics indicating when a corpse on the ground had been removed via Redemption. Sometimes Usain would have to stand in a doorway for a full minute shooting down seemingly endless waves of Burning Dead, but eventually they would all die and then be removed by Redemption, after which Usain could calmly eliminate the Unravelers themselves. Once again, the greater mummies were listed as being Magic Immune but still took damage from Holy Bolt anyway. This made it trivial to destroy them as Usain didn't even need to break out Fist of the Heavens; Ancient Kaa the Souless was in Tomb #5 and he fared no better than his lesser brethren, dying without putting up much of a fight.

As far as the other two monster types were concerned, Gorebellies were essentially a bigger and stronger version of the mummies, hitting hard if they could ever reach Usain but almost never getting close enough to do so. I was really glad that they have the demon tag so that Usain didn't have to get close enough for Blessed Hammer. There was only one Gorebelly boss worth mentioning: an enemy who rolled the terrifying Extra Fast / Extra Strong / Might aura combination who Usain found in the very first of the False Tombs. That guy was behind the very first doorway that Usain opened and he had to sprint backwards firing Holy Bolts over his shoulder with barely enough damage to drop the boss before getting cornered back at the entry staircase. Whew, that was scary! When the Gorebellies didn't roll that kind of insane boss setup, they didn't warrant much concern for Usain.

So that left the Steel Scarab beetles who consistently dealt the most damage to Usain, both with their sparks and their melee attacks. As the only monsters who couldn't be touched by Holy Bolt, and who were also Lightning Immune to rule out the use of Fist of the Heavens, the beetles forced Usain to move into close range where he could smack them with Blessed Hammer. This meant much more danger and much more damage taken on Usain's part. There were beetles in three of the seven tombs, with them present in Kaa's Tomb but fortunately not the True Tomb. The worst situation took place in the final False Tomb that Usain visited, where he drew the open entry formation with corridors leading off to the northeast, southeast, and southwest. I've always hated that Tomb formation because it's so exposed and monsters pore in from three sides, and sure enough beetles immediately began swarming from all three directions at once. I had to run deeper into the level and bail out through an emergency town portal, then return to the entrance from the waypoint to get a foothold in the tomb. Then a little bit later on, Usain encountered a beetle boss with the Extra Strong / Cursed combo who was hitting at quadruple damage for nearly 500 damage per swing, ouch! The danger level in that situation was off the charts, I had no choice but to drink repeated full rejuvs any time Usain's health fell much below 1000 HP or else he could find himself dead in a hurry. Usain did manage to survive (though I saw his health orb reading 300-something HP for a split second at one point before I chugged another full rejuv); I was not able to take any screenshots of the situation though as Usain was too busy not dying!

And then Duriel himself was a complete anticlimax when compared to some of those bosses in the Tombs. Usain's standard gear setup gave him about 105% faster movement speed and I was delighted to find that once again he was simply too fast for the big demon to hit him. Even with Duriel's Holy Freeze aura running, Usain's insane sprinting ability kept him out of reach and allowed him to kite the Lesser Evil endlessly. Usain certainly wasn't going to run out of stamina as SLVL 28 Vigor and 400+ Vitality gave him something like 3000 of the stat - I think that he could have run continuously for close to an hour. Run to the other side of the little boss chamber and fire a few Holy Bolts, run to the other side and do it again, rise and repeat. Duriel landed a couple of charges at various points in time and Usain drank a single red potion but that was it. This was one of the easiest Duriel fights I've ever done and probably easier here in Hell difficulty than it had been back in Normal.

Act Two therefore came to a close still with no deaths incurred for Usain. He had a number of close calls and I continued to worry that the need to engage enemies at close range with Blessed Hammer was going to be his undoing at some point. The upcoming Act Three contained what would likely be the single hardest portion of the game for Usain, the six Kurast Temples with their tight spaces and Magic Immune Wailing Beasts. I still wasn't exactly sure how he was going to navigate them, I guess I'd find out soon enough. Stay tuned.