Kell Part Two: Nightmare Act I

Skeletal Warriors
298 life
101-104 damage

Kell's item luck had been hit or miss, as it tends to be with characters who have to turn up their own gear. The shining star in the constellation was unquestionably the unique bone wand "Ume's Lament", containing all sorts of goodies that I couldn't have expected to get until significantly later in the game. Kell would never again have to refresh the town merchants waiting for better wands to appear, thank goodness. I had also found Sander's Riprap set boots (those things seem to appear in like half of my games), which actually dropped twice, along with Manald Heal ring - which also dropped twice! - along with Twitchthroe and a number of unique swords and axes. I love Twitchthroe and used to gamble it a lot back in the days of D2 Classic, but it was not a good fit for this character and was sold. Other good finds included Kell's gloves (two pretty good resists with other minor bonuses) and his preserved head with +3 Raise Skeleton. I would upgrade to one with +1 necro skills if given the chance, but probably nothing less.

The rest of the gear was on the weak side. Kell's leather armor had appeared early in Act II, and I was actively searching for an improved replacement. I had hopes of being able to buy something better from the Act I Nightmare merchants. Kell was also gambling circlets and trying to find one with +1 necro skills or +2 necro summoning skills, both of which were now in play from Gheed. Kell's jewelry was little short of an embarassment, easily the worst part of his setup. I was saving gems to cube a Prismatic amulet, and holding out hope for a good Cain reward ring.

Before even leaving the Rogue Encampment, Kell gambled a circlet with 20% faster run and 11% resist all. I made the change to that, which allowed me to swap out Sander's Riprap for another set of boots in stash with 20% faster run and 20% fire resist. (I didn't need 60% faster run from Sander's and the new circlet!) Then I replaced Kell's fire resist ring with one that granted lightning resistance, at which time I took the screenshot that you see above. For the start of Nightmare, those were excellent resists across the board. I wasn't happy about only having 350 max life, however, and would work on improving that going forward!

The monsters out in the Blood Moor were quite easy, although the zombies took a lot of hits to kill. More than the frenzytaurs at the end of Act V Normal, so yep, we've definitely upped the difficulty here. There was one champ pack of zombies in the Moor, otherwise very quiet. Corpsefire was similarly the only boss in the Den of Evil, although he was encountered along with a double fallen shaman brood and a large pitched battle ensued. Fortunately Kell could keep raising the fallens as they died, starving the shamans of minions and eventually leaving nothing but Corpsefire behind. I put the Den skill point into Dim Vision, along with Kell's first level up, trying to add to the curse's area of effect.

The Cold Plains were full of gargantuan beasts and two types of corrupted rogues. This was the first area where Kell began facing off against large numbers of bosses: Mana Burn/LEB, Magic Resistant/Extra Strong, and the Extra Strong/Magic Resistant wench that you see above. Since all of these critters were stuck with pure melee attack, Kell could hide behind the front line of his skeletal warriors and remain in (almost) perfect safety. When the skeletons and monsters lined up like that, I could actually watch Kell's minions take out an enemy on one end of the line and then "roll up the flank" of the opposing force. Fun stuff to watch. With Decrep slowing the enemy attack and reducing their damage, the skeletal warriors held up rather strongly here.

Bishibosh and the fallen camp forced a lot of skeleton raising, but little danger.

I did the Caves next, where the monster draw was all melee again, zombies and skeletons. This was easy stuff for Kell's army, with Decrep running everywhere against all comers. Even with Extra Fast boss affix in place, a Decrepified zombie doesn't move very fast! Then Kell heard the twang of bows firing, and knew that he had come face to face with Coldcrow and her gang:

Thankfully that Conviction aura was useless, at least aside from the cold damage resulting from CEB status - this would have been a lot worse with a Might or Fanaticism aura! However, Coldcrow is still a bit of a nasty customer. It was time to break out Dim Vision, and keep the bulk of her archers Dimmed while the skeletons took the rest out one and two at a time. This is a classic picture of why even an all-melee variant like this one has great need for Dim Vision at some points! Kell kept Decrep running on Coldcrow herself and DV going on the rest of the mob. The skeletal warriors took some losses at times, but got the job done fine. Fighting in a narrow space like the corridor above probably helped.

Caves 2 was significantly more difficult than the first floor! Kell had very little room to work with; he came down the stairs, and of course the skeletal warriors went racing off to fight fallens and a zombie boss (Cursed, Blessed Aim aura) off to the right. Meanwhile, an archer boss pack (FEB/LEB) came wandering in from the staircase off to the left, and that green-colored archer started firing right at Kell himself! I immediately cast Golly over there to block the stairs (you can see the crumbled mud pile indicating his previous location), and that solved the most pressing threat. Nevertheless, the zombie boss gets off his Curse on Kell and all the skeletons, and meanwhile I'm trying to run Dim Vision on the archers along with Decrep on the archer boss plus the melee opponents on the other side, plus keep reviving the fallens as they hit the ground before they can be resurrected by their accompanying shamans. Argh! This was genuinely dangerous stuff; Kell lost most of his skeleton army, pulled the zombie boss back to the stairs and slew him there, then cleared the Curse in town and returned to get the Dimmed archers. Never had to leave and assemble more recruits, but it was a close thing. Kell still hadn't killed the archer boss when he reached the bottom of the stairs:

There she is in the background, continuing to shoot away. I ran Decrep against this skeleton boss until his minions were all slain, then switched over to Amplify to cut through the physical resistance of his Stone Skin ability. I've found that that tactic works best against targets with high physical resist. Then finally the FEB/LEB archer could be surrounded, pinned against the wall, and eliminated. Hands down, this had been the most exciting (and dangerous!) battle that Kell had yet encountered.

I took some pictures of the Blood Raven fight, and yet I just don't like how any of them came out. Kell's army cut its way through the zombies she raised very quickly, with Decrep help, and then they got off a surround that resulted in her demise. Decrep appeared to slow the rate at which Blood Raven raised her minions, which may be why this fight was significantly easier than I can remember with some other characters. I'll have to remember to use Decrep here when playing other necromancers.

The Crypt and the Mausoleum weren't particularly bad, as zombies and skeletons are the only enemies that spawn down there. This was probably the most noteworthy encounter:

Fortunately skeletons and zombies are already slow opponents, and after being hit by Decrep they were really slow-moving! No matter how tough the enemies may be, they aren't much threat if they can't manage to hit you.

During my next session, Kell made his way to the Stony Field and faced off against yet more skeletons and melee rougues. Decrep continued to make short work of everything - none of this was challenging my skills as a player, and the skeletal warriors were rarely taking any casualties! Hadn't been expecting that, to be sure. The main battle came against Rakanishu:

He was hanging out with a skeleton boss, who had the misforunte to draw Spectral Hit/Mana Burn as a very weak boss combo. Decrep slowed down Rak and his goons to manageable speed, and Kell's minions cut them down without any real difficulty. For all that it generally gets overlooked in favor of Dim Vision, Iron Maiden, and Lower Resist, Decrep is extremely powerful when leveraged properly. Slowing enemies down works wonders for minion survivability.

There were lots of skeletal archers in the Underground Passage, leaving Kell wishing for necromages to return fire! Dim Vision came back into the fore to deal with these ranged threats. Above you see Kell employing standard operating procedure for ranged bosses, first casting Decrep on the whole mob and then layering Dim Vision over top of it. Because bosses and champs are immune to DV, the boss will remain Decrepped while all of the other archers are blinded. This was an application of the same dual cursing tactic that I had worked out with Skulla (except that he generally used Lower Resist instead of Decrep), and it worked really well against mixed mobs. You have to refresh the curses very frequently though, since Decrep doesn't last long here in Nightmare!

There were more bosses on Underground Passage 1, although not enough to post their pictures. Underground 2 always has the same layout, with an open room at the foot of the stairs with fallen shamans and their minions ready to engage. For my necro characters, that means blanketing the room with Dim Vision as soon as they come down the stairs, then raising the fallen as they are killed to deprive the shamans of bodies. This worked out perfectly with Kell, but of course I knew what I needed to be doing. Had I been ignorant of the map setup, I might have still been facing the fallen when this boss showed up later in the level:

Her Fanaticism aura's fiery red glow made a nice contrast to the blue chill of Kell's Decrep curse. Those two seemed to cancel each other out, more or less, which was fine with me. Fanaticism and Might are usually the most dangerous boss auras, with only Holy Freeze coming close in some situations. Anyway, you can see that there were also lightning spitters down here, including an Extra Fast/LEB spitter boss, but Underground Passage 2 is relatively safe after clearing the stairs, and Kell finished clearing things up without issue.

The Dark Wood actually did not have carvers present as one of the default enemies! Instead, there were two types of corrupted rogues and razor spines on hand to cause mischief. Of course, there are huge sections of this area where carvers are always placed regardless of the monster mix, including the giant carver camp and the stables/corral section. The overall effect was that the Dark Wood had something like 50% carvers on this trip through, as opposed to the normal 80% carvers. Better, but still not one of my favorite locations. Treehead and his crew were Extra Strong/Extra Fast/Spectral Hit, which was a safe roll on the third affix. As long as he doesn't roll Cursed or Might aura or something like that, Treehead isn't too bad.

Tristram, on the other hand, was packed with foes. Kell had to face down two skeleton archer bosses before he even reached the north corner of the town, and the western edge was further crowded:

Griswold popped up with Cold Enchanted as his extra ability, and meanwhile there was another carver shaman boss just off to the screen to the south, plus carver shaman champs spilling over with their little buddies from the center of the town square. I had to keep track of raising bodies to prevent shaman resurrection while drinking more mana potions and dodging shaman fireballs - a lot going on all at once! Despite my best efforts, one of the carvers slipped in and smacked Kell while he was Cursed, taking a huge chunk out of his life orb. I mention this because I had the exact same thing happen to Skulla on his playthrough of Tristram, and promised that I wouldn't let it happen again. Well, lesson not learned, apparently!

In the end, Kell wasn't in any serious danger and completed the quest to rescue Cain. The reward ring had me wondering why I even bothered though:

The Black Marsh was full of more carvers and their shamans. I barely took any pictures at all from this area, just not a whole lot going on. We've all seen carvers before, thanks. The Hole featured rogue archers, lightning spitters, and.... more carvers!

There's actually a carver boss in there, with the red-colored skin, but it's kind of hard to see. Kell didn't notice anything different while his skeletons cut them down. I used a lot of DV down in this underground area, with two of the three opponents having ranged attacks. The second floor of the Hole is the easiest of the "Terrible Twos" (Caves 2, UP 2, Hole 2, Pit 2) and Kell waltzed through it with no problems. There was only a single devilkin boss, and he wasn't worthy of having his picture taken.

Next up was the dreaded Forgotten Tower quest, home to so many failed Hardcore quests. And yet, Kell had hit his stride, and I wasn't feeling intimidated by the threats that he had seen thus far. Perhaps the melee skeletons will start to struggle as they get further along into Nightmare difficulty, yet for the moment they were holding their own with ease. I was confident that I could do this area so long as Kell took his time and avoided getting swarmed by monsters on all sides. The biggest threat down there are the ghosts, and they wouldn't have Physical Immunity here on Nightmare. Time to see how this would go.

The ghosts indeed proved to be the biggest threat, certainly more so than the goats and devilkin! This FEB/Cursed customer on Tower 1 managed to down several of the skeletal warriors before he was through. This was a particuarly bad position, because the whole time there were rogue archers firing through the twin doorways on either side to the north and south. If things had gotten worse, I would have retreated back down the corridor to pull away the skeletons and establish a single front, but things weren't quite bad enough to necessitate that. It was a little hairy for a few minutes though.

Tower 2 was pretty quiet. Tower 3 had a minor stairs trap, fortunately with a devilkin boss (Extra Strong/CEB) instead of anything genuinely tough. Kell was lucky that he didn't draw something ridiculous, like double or triple archer boss pack at the staircase. (I've had it happen to me before, and yes that's unfair beyond belief on the game's part!) I noted with interest that a Stone Skin ghost boss still didn't have enough physical resistance to become immune, although it did have enough that Amp worked a lot better than Decrep in getting the kill. I was also somewhat worried by an Extra Fast/Teleporting goat boss; if he blinked next to Kell, I could have been in a sticky situation. Decrep worked quite well at chilling him out, and it kept his teleporting to a minimum.

The most worthy fight came on the bottom floor, right outside the Countess' room:

Fanaticism aura on an archer boss! Could have been a lot worse than Teleportation for the other affix. DV and Decrep worked well again here, although of course she blinked around a little bit before the skeletons could close in and secure the kill. Kell was mostly glad that he didn't have to take on this rogue boss at the same time as the melee girls that the Countess employs. That might have at least forced some work on my part. Instead, I placed Golly inside the central chamber, cast Iron Maiden on the enemies inside, and then raised bodies as they hit the floor as new skeletons. This was necessary to get all of the skeletons inside, because two of them had gotten stuck in the doorway, fighting there while the others milled around in the back pointlessly. By the time that Kell transferred all of his minions inside the room, this battle was over:

Kell picked up the useless gold and headed back to town. I understand that this is a good boss to fight for rune drops, and yet all Kell found was a Tal and an El rune. What a ripoff...

I made it up to the Jail Level One waypoint before stopping. Picking back up on the next level, skeletal warriors tore through wraiths and undead archers without any issues. Kell took much more damage from barrels than from the forces of Andariel. Pitspawn Fouldog was a lot more difficult, as his Cursed attacks dealt massive damage and slowed my stalwart minions. The key to this fight was conducting most of it from behind the safety of a doorway, and having bodies on hand to resurrect more skeletons from a previous fight in the other room. I ran Decrepify here, as the enemies had all closed to melee range and Dim Vision wouldn't have achieved much of anything. Never any serious danger, but still far more lively than the rest of the floor had been.

On the next floor, an Extra Strong/Teleportation lightning skeletal mage proved to be an interesting fight with his attending crew, as they were all packed inside a jail cell along with a bunch of goats and dark ones. I had to keep most of the mages tied up with DV while using Decrep on the melee foes to speed along the fight. Routine stuff, although I was out of D2 practice after months of playing other games. This was a good test to get back in the swing of using the hotkeys again at the right times. Kell had another fight a bit later with goat champs inside a cage smack in the middle of a room, and I had trouble getting enough skeletons inside to do enough damage to down them. I ended up using Golly to kill some dark ones, then reviving them inside the cage as warriors, which provided enough damage to overcome the regeneration of the champs. That sort of thing tells me right there that Hell difficulty would be extremely problematic, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it...

Inner Cloister had a teleporting skeletal mage boss, who died without even once damaging Kell. The Cathedral introduced dark one shamans, and Kell had to resort at times to cleaning up some bodies to avoid their resurrection. I could use DV to stop that with normal shamans, but the bosses of course were immune to that little trick. Bone Ash did nothing despite his many, many boss modifiers (Magic Resistant/Extra Strong/CEB/LEB). Catacombs One had few fights of consequence, the only ones that sprung to mind were two different encounters with dark one shaman champs, and those only because Kell had to drink mana potions as he kept resurrecting all of their minions. Kell himself remained untouched.

Catacombs 2 started out with a running battle against some arachs, and then dark ones and a pair of their shamans wandered into the fight, and then a group of dark one shaman champs, until Kell had a major engagement on his hand. While I wouldn't quite say it was dangerous, it did get rather interesting for a minute, and more lively than the fight had any real business being. On the northeast side of the floor, Kell ran into a huge nest of dark ones, a full champ pack along with a boss as well. I had no choice but to revive everything as soon as it hit the ground, burning through two mana potions in the process. This seemed to be the level for dark one shamans, as I fought yet another such boss towards the end, at the same time as a tainted boss flanked the skeletal army from the other side. I had Kell beat a strategic retreat back to a cleared portion of the level, then fought the two of them at the same time on one front (they were both Cold Enchanted, I didn't write down the other affixes). Used both Decrep and Dim Vision here as needed, and the tactical retreat turned what could have been a dangerous situation into something approaching routine.

Catacombs 3 was vampires, vampires, and more vampires. There were other enemies present but all of the bosses seemed to roll as vampires. With their innate life leech and high physical resistance, Kell's minions found these opponents to be tough going at times. I found myself using Amplify Damage instead of Decrep on the vampires, as their melee attacks didn't need to be slowed and the increased damage from cutting through physical resist was noticeable. One of the vampire bosses rolled Holy Freeze/Cold Enchanted, a real cool customer who took a while for the skeletons to kill. They tend to fare poorly against enemies who can chill them, since again all of their damage is melee. There was another big mess in the middle of the level where Kell ran into three boss packs together, two vampires and a zombie boss group; I didn't write down their abilities, just kept reviving more skeletons as they died and cursing the whole mass of opponents with DV, Decrep, and some targeted Amp. Had to drink several mana potions.

My goal on Catacombs 4 was to stay on the floor without returning to town if at all possible, so that the game would avoid cleaning up the corpses and leave me with resurrection material. In the outer room, Kell locked up the dark one shamans with Dim Vision, to prevent resurrection of their minions and not have to scour all the bodies. This worked out well, and I was able to save a full room of bodies for retreat use as needed. Into through the gates to Andariel's lair, and Kell found himself deluded with more dark ones from both wings of the chamber. I pulled the same trick here, and once again managed to avoid having to clean the bodies of all those little milling dark one shrimps. At the tail end of this fight, Andariel entered the picture:

Kell's minions cornered her against the left pillar, a short distance into the room. I thought that they would wilt instantly under Andariel's poison, but the skeletons proved to be more durable than that. Although warriors dropped at a steady rate, Kell had enough time and sufficient bodies to keep replacing them over and over. Now I tapped into the accumulated store of bodies that Kell had been saving up, turning those fallen dark ones into a steady stream of skeletal minions. This was not made easier by the dark one shamans, several of whom wandered into the fight from the north and began using the bodies for their own purposes! Kell took some hits inevitably, but the skeletons kept Andariel locked against that pillar, and her health was dropping at a steady rate. I kept expecting to have to retreat back into the first chamber, and use the remaining store of bodies. It was never needed though - Kell's minions were up to the task.

Behold the power of Decrepify and a whole bunch of skill points in skeletal warriors!

I was genuinely surprised at how strong the warriors proved to be, both in this battle and throughout Act I. I knew at some point, the skeletons would fall too far behind the power curve, and they would no longer be viable for clearing a path through the game. Clearly Kell had not reached that point as yet, however. This was not a fight that I could repeat in future acts, as it was only made possible by the ample supply of fallen corpses present for resurrection duty, and the other end bosses don't offer up that luxury. Golly + Iron Maiden it would have to be for those battles. For the moment though, Kell was still alive and doing quite well against the minions of chaos. On to Act II, and a grudge match between Kell's skeletons and the waves of Burning Dead!

* * * * *

Or not so much, as it would turn out. Kell is an unfinished character of mine, left by the wayside many years ago. I'm opting to publish what I have written rather than let this story disappear forever. I hope you enjoyed this brief tale!