Corvus: Nightmare Difficulty Part One

Early Nightmare continued to play out much the same as Act Five Normal difficulty had gone, with the ravens still making short work of virtually every foe that Corvus came across. Zombies and other high health targets typically took more than one hit to defeat, however the clustered nature of the ravens meant that they were good at mobbing any opponents who didn't go down from their initial attacks. Fallens and other weak critters were still very much in one-shot territory.

I also started to see the blind effect from the Raven skill in action for the first time. That had been around back in Normal difficulty too, it was just the case that everything had been dying so quickly that the blind never kicked in. (Bosses and champs were the only thing that had enough HP to survive for long in Normal difficulty and they're all immune to blind effects in Diablo 2.) According to the Amazon Basin, the Raven skill's percent chance to blind is 40 + (5 * SLVL + CLVL - MLVL), unfortunately without specifying the exact order of operations for that arithmetic. Whether the actual formula was 40 + (5 * SLVL + (CLVL - MLVL)) or 40 + (5 * (SLVL + CLVL - MLVL)), the extremely high SLVL of 23 for the Raven skill had the formula coming out around 100% in either case. I don't think the developers ever intended anyone to invest this many points into the Raven skill and the formula was set long before Patch 2.4 of D2R increased the damage into something playable. In any case, the ravens basically blinded anything that didn't die in one hit and wasn't immune to the effects. The blindness status from the ravens was exactly the same as the Necromancer's Dim Vision curse and worked wonderfully at shutting down shaman resurrection, ranged attacks of any kind, etc. Even meele enemies would stand in place doing nothing when blinded which was a big help.

Corvus had a series of unique items drop in the Cold Plains and Burial Grounds which were unfortunately not useful to him. He found Bloodrise, the unique morning star, and then Gleamscythe, the unique falchion, neither of which had modifiers he could use. Then Blood Raven dropped an amazing circlet with +1 Druid skills and 20% faster cast that many of my other characters would have died to have - only it was still far inferior to the +3 Raven hawk helmet that Corvus was already wearing! All I could do was sell it for 30k gold, sigh.

Coldcrow was easily defeated thanks to the blinding effect from the ravens and Corvus' immunity to cold damage. She's way less scary when her arrows can't slow your character's movement thanks to Cannot Be Frozen trait. On the other hand, damage was noticeably higher from enemies here in Nightmare difficulty; getting slapped by a couple of carvers would take out 100 HP from Corvus' health orb whenever I wasn't careful. Progress was steady but I had to stay on my toes with no minions or mercenary to block for Corvus.

Corvus hit CLVL 40 while clearing his way through the endless carver camps in the Dark Wood. I had saved up about 2 million gold in stash to use on amulet gambles which Corvus burned through very quickly at 63,000 gold per attempt. The good news is that the amulet gambles would never get more expensive, unfortunately they still cost a pretty penny at the moment. I went through about 1.5 million without landing much of interest, only two items that had high fire and lightning resist respectively that might be worth hanging onto. Then I landed a bit hit: +1 Druid skills along with 10% faster cast! Too bad Corvus didn't care much about faster cast but I'd take the +1 Druid skills for the moment, that was way better than the 20% lightning resistance amulet that I'd been wearing for some time. This took Raven from SLVL 23 to SLVL 24 and that was a bigger increase than you might think; the base damage before synergies were applied went from 103-127 to 117-142, an increase of just under 15% total damage. Corvus had also found a Thul rune in the Underground Passage which meant he was only waiting on an Amn to make his Spirit runeword for another +2 skills.

Speaking of that: incredibly a skeleton archer boss in the Dark Wood dropped a Crystal Sword with exactly 4 sockets available. That was downright amazing as the odds had to be incredibly slim to find the exact item type that I needed (a Crystal Sword, no other sword type would do), plus have it roll sockets, plus hit exactly four of them with no more or less (Crystal Swords can have up to six sockets once the item level is high enough). I don't think that I've ever seen a Crystal Sword with four sockets "in the wild" before, normally they have to be created via socket quest or the socket Cube recipe. This was a great stroke of fortune for Corvus: I would no longer have to use a socket quest on the Crystal Sword sitting in stash and could instead use it to socket a rune into his hawk helm, probably a Ral for 30% more fire resistance. I guess there was one good aspect of having to wait so long to find that last Amn rune that Corvus was missing!

There were some entertaining fights in Tristram with several different carver shaman bosses packed into the small area. Griswold was hiding in the ruins of Pepin's old house and the ravens took out 90% of his healthbar before he managed to find a way outside. Not too bad.

The next few areas were pretty routine, lots and lots of carvers across these parts of Act One. In some ways it was easier to deal with the shamans than it had been in Normal difficulty, thanks to Corvus having far more mana available so that he could spam cast additional ravens right on top of the shamans themselves. Any non-boss targeted by the ravens would also get blinded which helped to shut down their resurrecting antics. The other monster types weren't too bad for Corvus to handle either, mostly made up of goats and skeletons and corrupted rogues. Ranged opponents tended to be easier as their stationary forms made it easy for the ravens to swoop down on their heads for the kill. Melee opponents forced more mousework and dodging of incoming attacks, doable whenever there was space to manuever and harder in cramped quarters.

None of the floors heading down to the Countess served up anything truly dangerous, there were bosses in the Forgotten Tower levels but no stairs traps that could have induced panic. Corvus was able to lure away all of the minions from the Countess and fight her in isolation, with the boss dying too fast for me to get a screenshot. The rune drops were only an Ort and a Nef - I'd been hoping for better. The other infamous hairball situation in this part of Act One is the Pit Level 2 and I was concerned about getting overwhelmed by monsters down in those cramped spaces. Instead Corvus wound up with a friendly draw for the floor, with his ravens able to fly off and eliminate shamans on the lower levels to prevent them from engaging in endless resurrections. I slowly worked my way down one tier at a time to the lower portions of the room and avoided anything scary. I was relieved to have this finished since the rest of the act looked to be more straightforward.

There were a lot of skeleton archers in the Barracks and the Jail floors, and the ravens performed magnificently against them once again. The ravens were easily able to hit them through doorways and around corners while the stationary nature of the ranged monsters made them easy pickings for their attacks. The shamans were probably the enemy type that forced the most effort on my part, not so much the normal shamans but rather the bosses and champ packs that popped up along the way. The fact that they were immune to the normal blinding effect of the ravens combined with their innate higher base health meant that their resurrecting minions would keep popping back up to cause problems. Outside of a few hairball situations, Corvus continued to take minimal damage even though he had no protection against his foes.

After a lengthy run with little in the way of new items appearing, Corvus had an Io rune drop at the entrance to the Cathedral. He didn't have anything higher than a Thul rune and suddenly found this Io rune, randomness at its finest. I couldn't do anything with this rune, of course, and it went into the stash for potential use down the road. Even better was a Ruby Grand Charm that rolled with the maximum possible value of 30% fire resistance, whoa! That was as good as adding a Ral rune socketed into a piece of gear. Now I'd have to rethink what rune to socket into Corvus' hawk helm and his resistances were good enough that I could delay that decision until later.

There were more bosses than I remembered fighting on Catacombs 4, on Nightmare difficulty anyway, Corvus facing three of them before he even opened the doors into Andariel's chamber. When she came charging out after him, Corvus contented himself with walking in circles while doing his best to dodge Andy's poison shots as the ravens did their thing. It definitely took longer to chew through her healthbar this time around as compared with Normal difficulty, however fortunately this was still a pretty simple fight. I was perfectly safe drinking through a series of red potions to counter the poison until Andariel was finished. This time around I didn't have the same luck with items on Cats 4 and there was nothing of interest in Andariel's uberdrop loot.

The Sewers had many more skeleton archers and skeleton mages which the ravens continued to do well against. The melee enemies down there (mostly mummies and invaders) weren't fast enough to have much luck at catching up with Corvus before they were blinded and then downed. What was most notable about the Sewers was finally collecting enough runes to put a Spirit runeword together - by doing it the hard way. Spirit's recipe is Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn and I still lacked the Amn rune needed for the last component. Instead, I had a collection of 4 Tal runes, 5 Ral runes, 2 Ort runes, and 3 Thul runes which was sufficient to make an Amn which still having all of the other requisite pieces. I cubed 3 Tals into a Ral, 6 Rals into 2 Orts, 3 Orts into a Thul, and then 3 Thuls into an Amn, leaving me with exactly one copy of all the required runes and nothing else in stash above Ith (aside from that random Io). I basically sacrificed everything that I had to make the runeword since there was nothing else compelling that I needed to do with those runes and Spirit would be a huge boost.

Spirit was a terrible addition to D2's gameplay since it provides way, way too many stats for four common runes. +2 to all skills would have been more than good enough on its own and then the runeword added 55% faster hit recovery (enough to ignore this stat on everything else for the rest of the game), plus 30% faster cast, plus 22 Vitality, plus 95 mana! Basically every caster character wants this and it crowds out all other options in the weapon slot. It was the best option for Corvus too and thus I made sure to pick it up even though I kind of hated myself for doing so. The Raven skill's base damage went from 117-142 at SLVL 24 up to 145-172 at SLVL 26, an increase of about 23% in total. When run through all of the damage multipliers from skill synergies, Raven was up to 649-770 damage per hit and per raven. That was no joke and the birds continued to carve a path of destruction through the ranks of the monsters.

With more than sufficient hit recovery coming from Spirit, I was able to shuffle some other gear around on Corvus. I dropped his old belt and gambled several hundred thousand gold until finding a magic belt (not rare) with a big boost to life and additional fire resistance. I needed more fire resistance since Corvus was losing the big 50% bonus from his old Crushflange weapon; that grand charm from earlier had been a timely find. Then I also spent a good chunk of gold to find a better set of gloves with more resistances than the last pair. The net result was gaining about 35 HP and maxing out all of Corvus' resistances except lightning, even cold resistance at the increased cap of 90%. With more killing power and solid defensive stats, he was in good shape to make his way through the rest of Act Two.

The following outdoor desert areas presented no dangers and weren't worth covering in any detail. What turned out to be dangerous was something totally unexpected: the entry room to the Stony Tomb was absolutely packed with monsters including multiple boss packs. Although it was a pretty spacious room, there was nowhere else to retreat for safety and I did my best to walk Corvus in circles staying ahead of the mob while the ravens whittled away at their opponents. Unfortunately I messed up the pathing of Corvus and he found himself completely surrounded by skeletons and beetles, no ability to move in any direction, with the critters pounding away on him. I drank one, two, three full rejuvs while recasting ravens on top of his position and pleading for the birds to break him free of this trap. The dumb things didn't understand and Corvus remained locked in place. After about 10 seconds of this, I realized that Corvus wasn't going to make it out and hit the Escape keep (appropriate in this case) to Save And Exit my way out of the situation.

This is one of the big differences between running a character in Offline mode as I was doing here and having a character on the Blizzard servers: the game pauses when hitting the Escape key and you can safely return to the main menu with Save And Exit. Most players are used to being online where the game doesn't pause and probably don't even know that this is an option. I prefer to be in offline mode though, largely to reduce server crashes and lag issues, but this is a rarely-used side benefit as well. My Hydra Sorceress Lernie wouldn't have died if she had been an offline character since I did hit Escape fast enough to save her. Anyway, Corvus returned back to Lut Gholein in this fashion and returned to the Stony Tomb where there was no such trap in the entry room the second time around. It seems that I'd just been unlucky with the first draw as the ravens cleared the rest of the dungeon (followed by the Halls of the Dead) without any issues. The need to Save And Exit out of that hairball was a blotch on Corvus' record, to be sure, while still being far better than actually dying.

Corvus ran into lots of beetles in the Far Oasis, including three bosses fought in succession in one small corner of the map. Naturally this meant that the rest of the outdoor area was lacking in bosses or champ packs which left it nice and easy to complete. The Maggot Lair was basically the same as it had been in Normal difficulty, irritating to pass through while not raising any deadly threats due to the narrow corridors. I tried my best to get the ravens to hit the beetles and maggots around the tunnels of the narrow corridors; the blind effect was helpful here in getting the monsters stuck in place to create traffic jams. At the end of the dungeon, the ravens all focused Coldworm immediately and downed her in mere seconds before she could breed much of anything. Oh, well, that certainly worked.

The Lost City had slow-moving melee opponents, lots of zombies and invaders that the ravens had little trouble swarming and killing. Things were easy enough that I flipped the camera to the zoomed-in perspective at several points and tried to get some pretty screenshots. It was hilarious watching Dark Elder shamble after Corvus at his glacial speed as five ravens pecked him from behind. The main foe in this region turned out to be the immovable Fire Towers which were absurdly tanky due to their 90 percent physical resistance. Everything else died in seconds while it took about a full minute of all five birds attacking relentlessly to smash the towers into dust. This was particularly annoying because there was one moment where the ravens all focused a Fire Tower as a zombie was chasing Corvus, and no matter how many times I re-cast the Raven skill the summons would keep flying back over to the darned tower! I had to wait until they slooooowly killed the thing while avoiding the zombie before they finally turned and downed Corvus' lethargic pursuer. More funny stuff and I did take the time to grind down all of the Fire Towers - the birds wouldn't leave them alone!

The Claw Viper Temple was entirely full of snakes and this was another monster type that the ravens handled beautifully. Target, attack, blind, finish: rinse and repeat. The Vipers and Salamanders rarely made it close enough to Corvus to get in any hits with their charging attacks. For the tiny bottom floor, I tried to inch my way forward as slowly as possible to avoid waking up the monsters. The ravens started killing enemies out in the darkness that I couldn't even see which was fine with me. This time Fangskin didn't spawn on the altar platform; rather, he was BEHIND the altar and the birds were able to fly over the terrain obstacle and squish him with Corvus in complete safety. One more potential hairball avoided.

Oh, and the deserts of Act Two rolled one of the weirder geographic formations I can recall. They wrapped around in clockwise fashion in such a way that the Lost City was directly east of Lut Gholein, literally due east on the minimap. This meant that the ocean docks with Meshif's ship ran directly into the desert sands immediately outside the town which made no sense at all from a perspective standpoint. Random map generation at its finest!

The lower floors of the Palace were another area where Raven excelled as a skill, much as I had mentioned back in Normal difficulty. The birds are really good at hitting targets through doorways or around corners since they don't require line-of-sight from the Druid himself to launch their attacks. There were a bunch of different times where Corvus opened a door and backed away, unable to see anything while I listened to the sound effects that play when monsters die - the sound of skeletons crumbling or blunderbores screaming, that sort of thing. Unfortunately this didn't make for good screenshots since I couldn't see anything, you'll have to take my word for what was happening. Many classes have a lot of trouble with the Horror archers on these floors but not Corvus.

The Arcane Sanctuary was smooth going as well, none of the three monster types causing any real issues for Corvus. The goats, spectres, and vampires were all slow-moving enough that the ravens had no trouble targeting them and the damage from the Raven skill was still very much up to the task of downing enemies quickly. I even hit a skill shrine at one point which bumped Raven's damage up to 878-1026 which was plenty high enough for Nightmare. Defensively, I made sure to avoid Corvus getting swarmed by doing a lot of retreating backwards for individual fights, especially in the two quadrants of the Sanctuary that have mostly linear paths. The goats were prime targets for Sirian's old "tempting fate" tactic: wait until they start their swing animation and then walk (not run) to the side to dodge. Although Corvus took plenty of hits along the way together with chip damage from the vampire fire spells, he was never in any real danger and rarely fell below 80% on the health globe. I guessed incorrectly every time and didn't find the Summoner until the final quadrant but of course I would have needed to full clear everything anyway.

I found the unique Light Plate (Heavenly Garb) in the Arcane Sanctuary which unfortunately wasn't a good fit for Corvus. I liked the blue color that it gave his armor when he wore it but the thing ultimately had to be sold. For other items, I had sunk about a million gold into gambling for a boots upgrade and largely struck out, only managing to trade poison resistance for a more useful cold resistance option. I was looking for faster run plus multiple resistances and hadn't managed to roll a good rare combo thus far. There was still plenty of time: I didn't plan to go back to gambling amulets until Covrus hit CLVL 60 and unlocked +3 Druid summoning as a rollable option.

Canyon of the Magi plunged Corvus into trouble when he immediately ran into a double boss pack right next to the waypoint. One of the bosses was Extra Strong / Cursed and I was praying that I could avoid taking a hit to prevent the Amplify Damage curse from going off. Corvus kept walking in a series of tight circles until the melee spear cats and brutes were all defeated, the curse fortunately not triggering until they were almost all dead. The rest of the Canyon was relatively simple once Corvus had enough room to get himself established.

As for the Tombs, I started out with a friendly draw by avoiding Unravelers and their Burning Dead minions in the first two False Tombs. This couldn't last though and I drew the resurrecting skeletons with the greater mummies in the next four Tombs in a row, including Kaa's much larger dungeon. The Unravelers were significantly more difficult opponents than any of the other monster types, much worse than the beetles and vampires and mummies and whatnot that populated the other tombs. Even though Corvus could cast the Raven skill directly on top of the greater mummies to focus them, there were simply so many Burning Dead skeletons walking around that Corvus would invariably have to retreat back into prior rooms to string out the monsters before going back for the greater mummies. I've done that many times before with other characters and I knew how to pull it off here with Corvus, however it did mean significantly more time investment and a higher danger level as well. At some point Corvus still had to run into the room with the greater mummies and summon ravens on top of them to get the kill which inevitably meant accepting a higher degree of risk. There were no close calls at any point in time but it did take me the better part of two hours to clear out all seven of the tombs.

There were three more tidbits from the various False Tombs. One of them contained only the second Physical Immune boss that Corvus had encountered thus far, a Stone Skin apparition which created an immunity to the ravens. Corvus used his birds to slay the entire rest of the mob and then brought out the Spirit Wolves with their cold damage to defeat the boss itself. Corvus also found a sweet Grand Charm with 28 life and 24% fire resistance which was a keeper item if I've ever seen one. The last and most surprising result was a Ko rune dropping out of nowhere, nice! I checked and couldn't find anything useful to do with it for the moment; too bad that it wasn't one slot lower for a Lum (Smoke) or one slot higher for a Fal (Lionheart). Corvus had Io and Ko runes with nothing else higher than Amn - more RNG fun.

The True Tomb did not have Burning Dead/Unravelers, thankfully, which greatly shortened the amount of time needed to complete it. The Orifice chamber was actually right next to the entrance and Corvus found it within 15 seconds before having to grind his way through the rest of the place for the full clear. This was the one battle where he was allowed to break out his Spirit Wolf companions (since Duriel is such a cheap boss fight) and at SLVL 26 they had 877 HP apiece for all five of the wolves. That sounded like more than enough to tank Duriel's damage and indeed it proved to be so: the big bug occasionally downed one of them but it was trivial to resummon more wolves back again. The ravens did their thing while the wolves tanked and Corvus was never touched. Imagine how much easier this would be for a non-variant summoning Druid: they would have the ravens plus the Spirit Wolves and Dire Wolves AND the Grizzly Bear plus a mercenary and likely Oak Sage to give everyone 100% extra HP. Corvus had nothing but his ravens and they still seemed to be doing just fine.

Two acts down in Nightmare at this point, I'll put a break in the report here and we'll continue with Act Three Nightmare on the next page.