Corvus: Nightmare Difficulty Part Two

The two underground caves in the Spider Forest were both packed full of spiders as usual. The Poison Spinners in the Spider Cavern had some kind of insane poison damage that kept Corvus green for ages on end; I looked it up at the Amazon Basin and apparently they deal 2673 poison damage over some ungodly long span of time, sheesh! I followed my usual pattern of clearing out the place in counterclockwise fashion to leave Sszark and his crew until the very end. Well this time Sszark spawned with a green color which was almost identical to the shading of the normal Poison Spinners and I thought the boss was a normal monster until the last second! Fortunately his extra ability was the not-dangerous Magic Resistant and I managed to walk away without getting Cursed, whew. The Arachnid Lair held more spiders along with bats which were easy prey for the ravens. They loved to go after the bats clinging to the ceiling and knock them out one at a time before the things could ever activate.

The Great Marsh was full of zombies and gloams, and this was unusual because I had yet to draw any of the fetishes or flayers up to this point in the jungles. They will still show up outside their little villages but otherwise I was getting a draw of entirely non-fetish opponents. Naturally enough, this was offset by the Flayer Jungle being nothing but the little ankle-biters, endless flayers and soul killers together with their shamans. I definitely preferred the earlier sections of the jungles as the ravens struggled against the swarms of fast-moving little buggers. Corvus took a lot of hits in these areas and I was forced to keep drinking red potions (which fortunately dropped at a health rate). Again, nothing truly dangerous popped up in the open outdoor areas but it took a long time to slog through them.

Much more scary were the underground portions of the Flayer Jungle where the undead doll version of the fetishes began to appear. Their death explosions were reigned in by the fact that this was an offline game in Players 1 mode, no extra HP scaling causing their death animations to go up to some insane value. Even so, taking 100 damage or more from each fallen opponent added up fast and when undead doll bosses appeared I had to take extreme care. Remember, Corvus had no minions or mercenary to tank blows for him and couldn't attack in any way, he had only my own footwork to keep him safe as the ravens did their thing in the background. I took things very slowly and carefully on the floors where the undead dolls appeared and only sped up when I could confirm that they weren't present.

The only noteworthy item that Corvus turned up in these areas was Pierre Tombale Couant, the unique partizan spear which had some impressive numbers on it. That would have been a mighty weapon for a Barbarian of some kind but of course it was useless for Corvus and had to be sold. The Gidbinn reward ring from Ormus was insultingly bad and Corvus pitched it over the edge of the docks into the waters below.

Once the jungles were out of the way, things picked up noticeably in terms of making progress. Lower Kurast had lots of weak enemies in the form of vultures and leapers and whatnot, nothing which was going to pose a threat at this point. I breezed right through there and the Kurast Bazaar without even breaking a sweat. Unfortunately that brought me to the first of the Kurast temples, some of the most dangerous areas in the entire game due to their tight spaces and frequent boss encounters. I started out with the dreaded Ruined Temple and didn't draw either of the common "T" formations, instead getting a more unfamiliar dungeon layout which had two different entrances heading off towards the right along with a somewhat larger space on the left side where there was an altar on the floor. I edged my way towards one of those two entrances only to have Sarina and her whole crew come racing out at breakneck speed:

They were all waving their weapons and screaming bloody murder, nipping away at Corvus' heels as they crowded atop one another. I did my best not to panic, immediately drinking a red potion and beginning to walk in circles around that little altar. Round and round we went, with Corvus taking hits constantly while staying just barely ahead of the rampaging mob. I was glad that I had recast the Raven skill five times before entering because there was no time to stop and refresh the spell, any cessation of movement would have resulted in Corvus getting surrounded and killed. Keep walking... keep walking... keep walking. The ravens chipped away at the corrupted rogues and they started falling one by one until only Sarina was left and then she collapsed as well in a spray of blood. This was about as nerve-wracking as it gets in Diablo 2; I went through several red potions that had been drunk from inventory while holding my finger above the full rejuv button the whole time. Thank goodness for the Cannot Be Frozen property on Corvus' unique armor since Sarina had drawn Cold Enchanted trait and otherwise would have been able to slow him down. I would not have been able to stay ahead of the mob at half speed and things could have gotten ugly in a real hurry.

Fortunately Corvus didn't run into anything worth mentioning in the Disused Fane and was able to move onto the Kurast Sewers. This is another unpalatable portion of Act Three, dull and gloomy and stretching on and on for anyone doing the full clear of the area. I had the bad luck to draw about the worst monster mix possible as well: undead soul killers together with horror skeletons and horadrim ancients. The greater mummies could revive everything in this basement area (the third monster type rolled as mummies) while the undead dolls made turning every blind corner into a potential disaster. Corvus had to take his time and drink a lot of red potions to clear out the Sewers safely. At least Icehawk Riftwing the other bats were easy prey, taken apart by the ravens one at a time as the birds focused them down. It helped too that most of the bosses down here were encountered on the other side of river segments where they couldn't hit Corvus directly:

Corvus breezed right through Upper Kurast afterwards, another easy outdoors area which was heavy on zealots and more thorned hulks. The corrupted healers didn't cause any problems for Corvus as the ravens were able to burst down monsters before their healing could kick in and cause issues. That left the remaining four Kurast temples and the first two of them (the Forgotten Reliquary and Forgotten Temple) didn't have any monsters waiting in ambush at the stairs. Corvus was able to take his time and work through the vampires and corrupted rogues and snakes lurking inside without any real issues. By way of contrast, both of the temples on the Kurast Causeway had stairs traps waiting as soon as Corvus entered, ugh! I had to drink a full rejuv to survive one of them while managing to get by with red potions for the other one. Thank goodness there were no bosses at either entrance, only normal monsters, but getting plunged right into a dozen beetles and corrupted rogue archers was no fun at all. I do not think that Corvus would be able to survive these temples in Hell difficulty, not unless he had some kind of minion to help block for him. He was barely managing here in Nightmare and that was without drawing any bosses at the stairs.

Travincal was fun as usual, lots of casting ravens up onto the top of platforms and around corners to target vampires or hierophants. The blizzard spells of the enemy hierophants were completely toothless thanks to Corvus' anti-cold setup, unable to slow the Druid thanks to his Cannot Be Frozen property and dealing virtually no damage at all against his 90% cold resistance. I'm used to having to step carefully around those Blizzard fields and it was amusing to be able to ignore them completely. I took the time to clear out everything except the main room with the Council and then started drawing them out one at a time. Once again, the ravens performed beautifully and pecked the Council members to death in a matter of seconds. I continued to be surprised at how good they were as boss-killers, especially against monsters that stood in place without trying to dodge out of the way. The Council members kept pausing to raise their Hydra spells and that left them easy pickings. The non-bosses could even be blinded and left helpless though Geleb and Ismail and the rest didn't fare much better.

Unfortunately this was Nightmare difficulty which meant that Durance 2 was blown up to a ridiculously large size. I hate this whole concept since it does nothing to stop the people who do endless Mephisto runs (they can find the stairs down in a matter of seconds by blinking around with Teleport) while dragging things out forever for legitimate players and anyone going for full clears. There were no undead stygian dolls on Durance 1 which meant that, sure enough, I was almost guaranteed to have them pop up on Durance 2. It took me the better part of 45 minutes to clear out the full level one tedious room at a time, always needing to be careful not to wake up too many of the undead dolls at once. The mummies and maulers that made up the other two monsters were basically a joke, it was all about dodging the undead dolls and their death explosions through drinking endless red potions. Remember, expanding the size of Durance 2 doesn't increase the number of bosses or champ packs that spawn in the level. It just makes everything take forever to explore, sigh. This was not a fun area to progress through but I did get it done eventually.

Durance 3 started out with a bang as Bremm Sparkfist had a dangerous Might aura juicing up the nearby enemies with doubled physical damage. I was happy to see that there weren't any vampires clogging the entrance to the rest of the floor, only Bremm and a handful of his Council minions who I was able to draw back towards the staircase and kill in isolation. Maffer and Wyand didn't have any boss traits as dangerous as that and I eliminated them one at a time along with the vampires in the side wings.

As for Mephisto, I deliberately decided to test out his infamous cold shot against Corvus' anti-cold setup. The big white projectile hit and did all of 10-15 damage, with 90% of the damage blocked due to all of that heavy cold resistance. This basically neutered Mephisto as an opponent since I was never going to let him get into melee range and his only other ranged ability was a series of weak Charged Bolt sparks. It did take several minutes for the ravens to chew through his 75k health but this was not a dangerous fight at all and I merely had to drink a few red potions while occasionally renewing the ravens. Mephisto dropped the unique fuscina "Kelpie Snare" which was of course not useful for Corvus and then a green-colored set amulet. There are some excellent set amulets and I was seriously bummed out to find that this was the Angelic Wings amulet: 20% damage goes to mana and +3 light radius. Seriously?! That was just an insult.

Upon starting out in Act Four, I was a bit surprised to find that Corvus had drawn a monster mix that was heavy on flesh spawners and cliff lurkers. There were none of the normal venom lords or doom knights to be found, instead Corvus was confronted with lots of fast-moving opponents which the ravens struggled against. The Outer Steppes is a big open area so this wasn't too bad overall though there was one moment where a flesh spawner boss managed to corner him with its flesh beasts and forced the drinking of a full rejuv. The third monster in this region turned out to be one of the finger mage types and that truly was an easy foe for Corvus. The finger mages pause in place to fire off their missiles which made them sitting ducks for the ravens. I was always happy to see this enemy type whenever it showed up throughout Act Four.

The Plains of Despair were dominated by gloams, or more officially Burning Souls as this particular version of the enemy was named. They flew around in near-invisible status and lit up the darkness with their lightning attacks. The ravens were pretty good at tracking them since the birds didn't care about their invisibility, with only the rapid movement of these monsters causing any issues. I was glad that Corvus had maxed lightning resistance to take some of the sting out of their bolts. The stats at the Amazon Basin note that Burning Souls have 60% physical resistance which was enough for one Stone Skin boss to roll as Physical Immune and force a rare appearance of the Spirit Wolves. As for Izual, he was much easier this time around as compared to Normal difficulty thanks to Hawkmail blocking the freeze effect from the demon's Frost Nova. We walked in a circle for a minute or two until the ravens finished clawing through Izual's huge health bar.

City of the Damned had more spawning monsters in the form of stygian hags along with the Damned that give the location its name. I didn't take many pictures of this area since it played out similarly to what I'd already experienced in the Plains of Despair. Then the River of Flame had more breeding enemies with grotesques appearing - three of the first four areas had these things, sheesh! I was doing all of these areas in a single session and Corvus was getting mighty sick of those little flesh pups, let me tell you. Most of the rest of the River of Flame was full of Abyss Knights which weren't too bad for the ravens. Like most ranged casters, they froze in place to fire off their colorful missiles and that created an opening for the ravens to swoop in and land their blinding attack. Once they were blinded and rooted in place, death immediately followed. Hephasto rolled a Conviction aura (lowers resistances) which was about middling in terms of the potential options, worse than something like Holy Fire but way better than Might or Fanaticism. I had no choice but to dodge his melee strikes via Sirian's tempting fate tactic due to the lack of minions and inevitably Hephasto landed some of his attacks. The big guy gets faster and faster as his health bar decreases which made for some fun stuff; Corvus was able to get the job done with red potions and a lot of careful mousework.

The Hellforge quest reward turned out to be... an Um rune!!!

That's the highest possible result for Nightmare difficulty - for those who don't know the exact mechanics, the Hellforge quest is a straight 1 in 11 dice roll on the rune that appears, with the Nightmare version running from Sol to Um as the potential options. Now Corvus had all the runes up to Amn, then nothing up to his single Io and Ko, then nothing up to the new Um rune. I checked to see if there was anything he could make with the Um rune and didn't find all that much, with the Duress armor as probably the best option. It wasn't ideal since Duress has a bunch of physical damage oriented modifiers but who knows, maybe a possibility down the road. What would be better would be getting a second Um rune or a Mal rune to unlock Rain, the Druid-specific armor runeword that grants +2 skills. Finding a Mal rune in pure play would be exceedingly unlikely but if Corvus could somehow make it back to the Hellforge again in Hell difficulty he'd have 2 in 11 odds to hit either a second Um or a Mal rune (with two Ums converting into a Mal via the Horadric Cube). Not great odds, certainly, but not terrible either. Could he make it through the whole game again in Hell difficulty though? I was starting to think about some tweaks to his variant ruleset that might make it possible... He still needed to complete Nightmare first though, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The Chaos Sanctuary was up next and it was a relief to be back in an area without flesh spawners everywhere. The venom lords and doom knights which had been missing for most of Act Four were easy targets for the ravens thanks to their slow movement and big hit boxes. The storm casters were even easier opponents when they locked themselves in place to attack and this proved to be a simple area for Corvus to roll through. The Vizier and De Seis both fell quickly despite the latter boss rolling with a Fanaticism aura, Corvus was able to take out the doom knights in safety from around a corner. The Infector is the most dangerous of the three seal bosses, however once against Corvus was able to draw out and kill a bunch of his minions using a little corner of the Sanctuary's architecture. For whatever reason, the monsters could not figure out how to hit Corvus around this tiny wall and the ravens were able to blind and kill one venon lord after another. Stone Skin as the extra ability on the Infector was fortunately not very dangerous.

Diablo himself chose to focus on his Lightning Breath of Doom for this particular fight, shooting it off over and over against against Corvus. I was happy to see him use this attack since it was pretty easy to dodge and it locked the big guy in place where the ravens could get in lots of free hits. Diablo rarely charged towards the Druid and rarely fired off his Flame Novas, it was instead one Lightning Breath of Doom after another, over and over again. This was a surprisingly easy fight once again and it only took a few minutes for the birds to chip through Diablo's 90k health to defeat the Lord of Terror. He dropped the unique siege bow Cliffkiller which would have been a fine midgame weapon for a Bowazon and downright amazing for the old Rogue Revival team. The item was about two decades too late in showing up for that though.

Act Five introduced guest monsters for the first time, a welcome addition to avoid the drudgery of these areas in Normal difficulty. The Bloody Foothills didn't have any of the normal opponents this time around and instead featured thorned hulks (moving much faster than they did back in Act Three) and Burning Dead skeleton archers. What an odd combination of enemies that normally would never appear together. In actuality though, the skeleton archers vastly outnumbered the thorned hulks and the Foothills were pretty much nothing but one archer nest after another from end to end. Now the ravens were really good at killing the Burning Dead archers since the skeletons stood in place and never moved, with the flock swooping down to smash them into bones again and again. There were simply so many skeletons that it took some time to make forward progress. I genuinely was impressed at how well the Raven skill dealt with these enemies though, this dinky little CLVL 1 skill that had never been intended for serious combat use continuing to clear a path forward with zero other skills used on Corvus' part.

The next two outdoor areas were much less interesting as they both rolled more of the default Act Five monsters. The Frigid Highlands and the Arreat Plateau both had different types of imps along with the Death Mauler enemies that send the little tendrils underground to hit your character. Having the identical enemies in both areas made for long, dull slogging through the huge open spaces of both these regions. I didn't really have a choice though since there's a massive gap between the Frigid Highlands waypoint at the very beginning of the area and the Arreat Plateau waypoint which spawned in the back corner. About the most noteworthy thing to take place in these regions was the unique yari weapon Hone Sundan showing up, and then Thresh Socket at the tail end of the Plateau dropped Bladebone the unique double axe. That was cool and all but could Corvus maybe get some uniques to show up that were not two-handed weapons of some kind? There were a bunch of unique armors and gloves and boots which would have been a big help and he kept seeing these polearms instead, argh.

More interesting were the two subdungeons that use the River of Flame tileset, Abbadon and the Pit of Acheron. Both of them were heavy on witches as enemies and I was pleased to find that the ravens handled them quite well. The blood stars that the witches fire are slow enough that they can be dodged with some success and the ravens loved to congregate over the heads of these flying monsters and then smash them into the ground. There were no minotaurs lurking behind the red portals this time around, always a bit of good news, instead there were Unravellers that appeared with no accompanying undead minions. The greater mummies were basically a joke when appearing by themselves and the ravens ate them for breakfast. These were pretty easy areas due to the heavy witch presence.

Then it was on to the Crystalline Passage and the Frozen River, all of this taking place in a single session when I'd had an evening to myself after we were able to get our baby son to sleep at an early hour. There were lots more witches to be found in these areas and the ravens continued to handle them beautifully, as easy of a time as I can recall when using any other skill on different character builds. Other monsters included the frozen horrors and the walking dead skeletons, both of which were so slow that Corvus almost never took any damage from either. The frozen horrors in particular were helpless against Corvus with his 90% resistance to cold damage and Cannot Be Frozen armor protection. The most annoying enemies on the Frozen River turned out to be Ghosts which showed up as a guest monster, as they were fast enough to get up in Corvus' face and a bit more difficult for the ravens to target due to their innate physical resistance. Frozenstein's yeti monsters only showed up at the very end of the Frozen River where the ravens downed them in safety across an ice barrier.

I detoured over to Nihlathak's Temple next and tried to rush down Pindleskin before the rest of the shambling dead could wake up. This proved to be a mistake as Corvus was swarmed by monsters at the narrow entrance to the temple and he was nearly killed before I could retreat backwards to safety. I think I'll try starting from one of the corners if there's a next time going through here.

Inside the Halls of Anguish I drew an odd enemy mix with leapers, Temple Guard jungle bunnies, and then masses of devilkin with their shamans. The hordes of the devilkin proved to be a genuine threat to Corvus in a way that I hadn't been expecting and I had to work my butt off just to clear out enough room to get started on the floor. The devilkin themselves were legitimately nasty critters, hitting reasonably hard and moving much faster than they had back in Act One. They were not at all easy for the ravens to kill between their fast movement speed and surprising toughness; the Amazon Basin later revealed that the devilkin had a whopping 66% physical resistance, sheesh! The shamans were actually easier to kill since they lacked any physical resistance. Unfortunately the shamans had a juiced up resurrection animation that had them raising the devilkin at warp speed and they seemed to be able to raise enemies two or three screens away from their position. The only way to make progress was to rush the shamans whenever they appeared and the whole thing was long, tedious, dangerous work. I couldn't wait for this floor to be over and done with.

The Halls of Pain had to be better right? It turned out that they were equally as bad with Corvus drawing a monster mix of quill rats, hierophants/zealots, and maggots. The breeding worms were the problem again as they quickly laid eggs everywhere and filled up the hallways with their disgusting little offspring. Corvus kept running into zealots who would race out and try to cut him down with their melee swings, inevitably forcing a retreat backwards for more space, and therefore allowing time for the maggots to hatch their eggs. I could not rush down the maggots in safety anytime that there were zealots present - and that was nearly all of the time. Thus the whole floor became another lengthy ordeal as Corvus was forced to kill endless numbers of the maggots to make any progress in exactly the same fashion as I had faced resurrecting devilkin on the previous floor. I don't know if this was worse but it certainly was no better. Much as I've been praising the ravens for how well they were handling Nightmare difficulty, this was one situation where they struggled mightily: no area of effect damage. The ravens could only hit one target at a time and floors like this really highlighted their limitations. According to the in-game clock on my screenshots, it took well over an hour to full clear these two floors, argh!

I was glad to be playing this character on Diablo 2 Resurrected as the Halls of Vaught contained vipers with their poison bone spear attacks, an ability which was bugged for almost a decade and used to deal thousands of points of damage. Here in D2R that's been fixed and the snakes were pretty easy to clean up along with their fellow enemies (witches and skeleton archers). Nihlathak was down the first quadrant that Corvus explored and did his best to detonate corpses willy-nilly as my character approached. I stayed at max range and cast the Raven skill on top of his head to send the birds off in his direction, only to be rewarded a few seconds later when they landed the kill without much trouble. Corvus was even able to make use of a skill shrine that had shown up on the same floor which bumped up the Raven skill to SLVL 28 at 1190-1389 damage per attack! This whole floor was honestly an afterthought following all the trouble of getting through those devilkin and maggots on the first two floors.

The next couple areas were immensely easier than the long haul through Nihlathak's Temple. There were no monsters that stood out as having difficult properties in the Glacial Trail, more yetis and frozen horrors and snakes which were easy prey for the ravens by now. One of the Pit Viper snakes rolled Stone Skin as a boss trait and apparently that was enough to make the thing Physical Immune; I hadn't even known that these enemies had any physical resistance. The Spirit Wolves popped out and made short work of the fellow before being unsummoned again. This area links to the Drifter Cavern which is one of the smallest subdungeons in the game and can sometimes act as a real deathtrap. That was not the case on this trip though, as there were few bosses inside and none of them crowding the entry stairs. I didn't even bother to note the monster mix aside from remembering that there were more witches inside yet again.

The Frozen Tundra is the last big outdoors region in Act Five and this time it was sporting Death Berserkers (the underground tentacle monsters), melee spear cats from Act Two, and even more witches for a ranged opponent. These were not dangerous foes for Corvus and he had already fought off their like on many previous occasions. Most of the bosses were also clustered in the first 20% of the Tundra, with Corvus fighting four different bosses before he managed to reach the first line of fortifications, and that left the rest of the area sporting nothing but basic enemies. The Infernal Pit subdungeon was entertaining for having Salamanders that spit their fire element Bone Spears (always hilarious to see in action) along with lots and lots of doom knights. With plenty of space to maneuver, I wasn't concerned by any of these opponents and hadn't been seriously challenged since Nihthalak's floors.

But then I reached the Ancient's Way and suddenly the danger factor ratched up by a factor of a hundred. Corvus entered the underground caves and turned the literal first corner only to be confronted by a boss pack of minotaurs moving around at warp speed. That meant Extra Fast trait and the first hit taken caused the Amplify Damage curse to appear above Corvus' head - uh oh, Cursed trait to boot! I knew instantly that I couldn't fight this opponent and opened a town portal to escape, drinking a full rejuv in the miliseconds that the portal took to open before stepping through. I saw a "200" number on the HP globe for a split second before the full rejuv went off, yikes. This is one of those places where years and years of practice at Diablo trains you to react instantly without having to spare time for thought: drink the full rejuv and get out of there immediately.

Now I had this exceedingly nasty minotaur boss pack to deal with and all of 1% of the Ancient's Way explored thus far. Returning to the floor by portal would be suicidal and therefore I walked back to the entrance from the Frozen Tundra waypoint. I needed some space to operate and thus decided to race forward from the Ancient's Way entrance deeper into the level, an exceedingly dangerous option but one which hopefully would clear space at the entrance. Corvus headed down the stairs and the minotaurs immediately began chasing him, I ran around another corner... and into ANOTHER boss pack of minotaurs, oh come on! I managed to get slightly deeper into the level and hop out through another town portal just before getting cut to ribbons. It was looking more and more likely that I'd have to roll a new map but I stubbornly returned back to the Ancient's Way entrance to see if I'd managed to separate any of the monsters. There was one minion at the entrance which the ravens were able to blind and kill - one down. I edged carefully around the corner and the original boss was right there, fortunately now in isolation as I led him back to the entryway:

There he was, the Extra Fast / Cursed customer along with the one minion I'd been able to kill lying over by the stairs at the left of the screenshot. I absolutely had to kill this boss here before waking up any of the other minotaurs to get that Cursed ability out of the mix. Unfortunately this minotaur was immune to the blinding effect of the ravens by virtue of being a boss and he was insanely fast once his Frenzy attacks were up and running together with the Extra Fast trait. I could only attempt to dodge his swings as best I could while drinking full rejuvs off belt - no time for red potions to operate here. Using Corvus himself as bait, the ravens did manage to kill this boss at the cost of four full rejuvs and more stress than I'd like to recount.

This allowed Corvus to creep forward and start pulling out the remaining minotaur minions in ones and twos. They could be blinded by the ravens and this quickly became standard operating procedure: run away until the birds landed one hit for the blind effect and then all of the other ravens could pile on and execute the unlucky opponent together. This was the first time that I'd seen minotaurs as an enemy throughout all of Act Five and yeeeesh, they are so much more dangerous than any other enemy type that it's just ridiculous. The minotaurs are the tankiest monsters, deal the most damage of any monster, and also have faster movement speed than almost anything else. I don't know what the developers were thinking here because the gameplay is not balanced in the least. Anyway, eventually I was able to track down the second minotaur boss and kill it in isolation as well:

With this guy thankfully having much less dangerous boss traits. That's a Holy Fire aura, not a Might aura, thank goodness. If this boss had rolled a Might aura to combine with the Cursed/Extra Fast on the previous boss, you could have stuck a fork in Corvus because he'd have been done. Thus at immense effort I now had all of 5% of the Ancient's Way cleared out and enough space to retreat for future fights. It turned out that there were no more minotaur bosses on this floor, however there was a minotaur champ pack where I had to do more separating with footwork and still nearly had to drink full rejuvs to stay alive. A single minotaur champ was still harder than almost anything else I'd seen in the game thus far. There were carvers and their shamans elsewhere on the level but Corvus could handle them even if the resurrecting was tedious at times. The minotaurs were just pure horror and I was really pushed to my limits as a player to make it through the opening of this area with nothing but ravens to work with.

Things had to get better from there and fortunately they did for Corvus. The Icy Cellar is the other tiny subdungeon in Act Five and it was teeming with bosses... but all of them had non-dangerous abilities that couldn't pose a real threat to Corvus. There were several witch bosses that the ravens had a field day against (one of them Magic Resistant / Teleportation in about as weak a combo as possible) and then a frozen terror boss and champ pack which were never going to be fast enough to get close to my Druid. I wasn't able to get a screenshot of Snapchip Shatter's abilities, we might as well call him Extra Dead Enchanted considering how poorly he fared against the avian threat. I needed a break and this area delivered.

The Ancients were up next and I'd been serious concerned about how Corvus would fare against them. I loaded up one side of the arena with red potions in case I needed a refill and cautiously activated the statues. Madawc spawned initially with Cursed trait and I immediately reset the fight by leaving via town portal and coming back. One lesson I learned from poor Skulla's demise is not to mess around with the Ancients, get out of there and re-roll their boss abilities if something nasty appears. The second time around was much friendlier in terms of boss affixes and I settled down for a lenghy fight. I knew that Madawc would be the first enemy to fall since he lacks any physical resistance and locks himself in place to toss his axes. The ravens focused him immediately and he died in less than a minute. Then things got... kind of weird. Korlic (Teleportation) and Talic (Mana Burn) both have 70% physical resistance in Nightmare difficulty and the ravens had difficulty hitting them since they kept moving around constantly. However, by carefully walking Corvus around in circles, they were also unable to hit my Druid with their Leap Attack and Whirlwind abilities. Corvus wasn't attacking them outside of the ravens and they couldn't lay a finger on him.

We were therefore stuck in a long, slow stalemate that streched for minutes and minutes on end. I was watching their health bars and both of the Ancients were indeed dropping over time, the ravens dealing more damage than their health regen could match. It was too bad that I couldn't tell the birds to focus on one target at the time as they split their damage almost exactly evenly between the two. Anyway, Corvus walked and walked and walked, occasionally having to drink a red potion as he was grazed by one of the Ancients and recasting the ravens about every minute to make sure that their "hits" didn't run out. The whole thing was downright farcical to watch, an absurd parody of the epic duel supposed to be taking place. According to the clock, it took about eight minutes of this before Talic dropped followed by Korlic about 30 seconds later. What a legendary tale, I'm sure the bards will sing of this fight for ages yet to come. And with that challenge out of the way, Corvus was finally able to enter the Worldstone Keep:

The three Worldstone floors are another place where the player can get a vast range of different monster draws which can increase or decrease the challenge level accordingly. The first floor was heavy on zealot/hierophant combos together with more witches and Fetid Defilers. I've never understood that enemy type and they've always seemed pathetically weak; the ravens certainly tore right through them whenever they showed up. Worldstone 2 was even easier as it had more snakes, mummies, and bats that clung to the ceiling. The ravens were exceedingly good at killing all of these targets, especially the bats which the birds could eliminate before they even activated. This tends to be the easiest of the three Worldstone floors and even so it was an unusually calm group of opponents for Corvus. Worldstone 3 had swarms of blowdart fetishes, doom knights with their oblivion casters, and then minotaurs back once again to torment me. I approached this floor much more cautiously and managed to avoid drawing out any large groups of minotaurs, preferring to blind them singly or in pairs to minimize risk. Corvus was also a bit lucky in avoiding minotaur bosses as the oblivion knights and fetishes were much easier foes when they rolled additional boss traits.

The bottom floor of the Worldstone Keep was itself a real pain to clear out, with minotaurs back for the second time in a row along with some of these nasty Burning Souls:

It was a good thing that Corvus still had maxed lightning resistance. Despite the small size of this floor, it took some time to clear out both of the side wings due to the density of monster opposition and the need to eliminate several more minotaur bosses. Nothing was quite as bad as the minotaur bosses in the Ancient's Way but they weren't exactly easy opponents either. Anyway, I definitely needed the floor to be clear of enemies before engaging with the Throne of Destruction boss rush. Raven as a skill couldn't exactly nuke down the incoming bosses with area of effect damage and that meant needing to use strategic retreats to thin out the ranks of the enemies. Colenzo was first and nearly saw Corvus die because I was pushing forward so aggressively to take down the resurrecting shamans. His health fell all the way down to 300 HP and I didn't even use a full rejuv because I kept thinking red potions could handle it. Well they did keep him alive but it was beyond foolish to take such a risk. My targeting of the ravens was better with Achmel and I managed to eliminate the greater mummies in safer fashion before they could pull off their own resurrecting shenanigans.

The remaining three bosses all needed retreating manevers back into the entry maze for safety. I was able to pick off Bartuc with the ravens almost immediately and then lure out his Council minions in small groups for disposal, the whole thing going about as perfectly as possible. Ventar's venom lords behaved similarly to the Infector's brood back in the Chaos Sanctuary and Corvus was able to kill three of them before the whole mob came charging out at him. I had to defeat Ventar back in the tunnels and then come back to clean up the rest of his minions. And of course that was always going to be the case with Lister who had a Blessed Aim aura this time around for his minions to share. The Lister minions actually died surprisingly fast when the ravens were able to gang up on them together. The biggest issue there was the fact that Lister and his minions were all immune to blind status and therefore kept moving around rather than remaining locked in place. Corvus was able to split them up with footwork and defeat them all in small groups where there was minimal risk.

I was not particularly concerned about Baal and the final battle was more of a culminating triumph for Corvus than a deadly task. I pretty much kept Baal off at the edge of the screen and let the ravens do their thing in peace, avoiding the Festering Appendages that Baal kept summoning as best I could. They were the main source of damage hitting Corvus since it was unpredictable where they would appear. Baal's cold wave was ineffective against Corvus' 90% cold resistance and immunity to being frozen while I stayed far enough back that his infamous orange shot couldn't reach its target. I knew that the ravens would spend a lot of time hitting the Baal clone, and since there was nothing that I could do about this, I didn't worry too much about it. The clone died at one point and was brought back again by Baal while Corvus made one trip back to town for additional red potions. The ravens were hitting the clone again and about to kill it for the second time when the quest completion notification popped up on the screen:

Whoops, I guess that was the actual Baal they defeated and not the clone, I guess I should have been paying more attention to the text on the healthbar. That mindset should tell you how worried I was about Corvus kicking the bucket in this battle. Baal failed to drop any unique or set items and the rare items that appeared were utter garbage in terms of their modifiers, what a disappointing haul in total. Then I went and gambled close to a million gold on amulets, landing a bunch of different +skills modifiers but none of them for Druid summoning. Corvus actually found two different amulets with NECROMANCER summoning, including one with 40% cold resistance to boot, while lacking the needed Druid category. Hopefully he'll be able to hit there if I keep spending more gold on amulet gambles.

Defeating Nightmare difficulty completed all of the initial goals that I set out for Corvus. He full cleared every region in the game on a single pass through Normal and Nightmare difficulties, using only the items that he found along the way. I was once again able to avoid any deaths and had only the single Save And Exit back in the Stony Tomb entrance of all places. The variant that I used was a serious challenge, with Corvus unable ever to attack and relying solely on the Raven skill for all damage without any minions or mercenaries to help tank for him. I had to use Corvus' own positioning to help the ravens get kills in innumerable situations and the severe lack of available options really pushed me as a player. It turns out that you can do the entire game up through Nightmare with literally nothing but the Raven skill and its synergies. I may well be the first person ever to pull this off given how Raven was useless ubervariant material prior to the 2.4 patch of D2R and that's a pretty cool thought.

Corvus isn't done yet though! I think it's possible for him to complete Hell difficulty as well with one small tweak to his variant ruleset. We'll get into that on the next page as the journey continues into the depths of the final difficulty.