The Countess Quest

"Last Thursday, minus Jaffa who's on leave until next week and minus MoonGrabber, who was swamped with work, we tackled the middle part of Act One in Nightmare. Not too many deaths, but things escalated on the Countess quest.

Several of us paused at the stairway down to Level 5. I know there's often a stair trap down there, and my char is by far the sturdiest tank in our group at the moment. However, at least two other chars went down ahead of me, and when I arrived a few seconds later, things were already out of control. Next thing I know, three archer bosses are on the loose and rogues are dying left and right on all sides of me.

Everywhere I tried to establish a foothold, somebody would lead the mob to me and I had to flee and start over. Somewhere in there, I asked if I was the only one who wasn't down yet and the answer came back "yes". So... it's all up to me now? We're in trouble.

I managed to create a safe zone with portal in the upper right room, and just in time, as my cable connect picked that moment to wig out on me. I got disconnected twice before it settled back down, but fortunately, nobody had spoiled the safe port area and I was able to return. I ended up luring two bosses into the upper left room and teleporting into the left treasure room to clear another safe space. There were some bodies in there, too. Cy got his body back, but the situation was too fluid for me to direct him and too hectic for me to watch what he was doing. He'll have to fill in the details.

In the shot below, you see everyone in the second safe zone, in the left treasure room, and you see most of the bodies on the floor. More than one body per player now? I guess that's a new feature in the recent patch.

By this time, I had the situation enough under control to make gains, but my sisters were getting itchy and they popped out and drew more than they could handle. The next thing I know, I'm running for my life again. The treasure room safe zone has been lost. There are MORE bodies on the floor. And I'm popping from room to room on my limited mana supply, drinking a BLUE from belt for... uh... for the first time in combat with this character. So I had to resecure the left treasure room, and when I got it down to "warm" I told the team to come on down and help out with spell power. Here's a shot after we secured that room for the second time.

When someone activated a boss or two and the chaos resumed, I split off again on my own. Here I am trying to secure the right side treasure room while the naked sisters are bunched up top. I don't know if they were waiting or fighting at that point, but there was chaos on the Teamspeak server.

Finally, I picked off the minions and it was down to the three bosses now. I covered each "pile of bodies" in turn as folks got their items back, then we had one final thrill round taking down the bosses.

Poor Countess was somewhat anticlimactic, in the wake of the big battle.

This isn't even Hell, much less Friendly Fire when we can't use each other's portals and such. I foresee much adversity and hard fun ahead for our team."

- Sirian

Ah, but Sirian left out one crucial detail about this quest that made it even more memorable. Dathon elaborated in another post in the team thread:

"We all got to know the death scream of the Sorice.. er.. Rogue very well that night...

From my perspective, I was one of the last ones down the stairs, and when I hit the floor, at least two people were already dead Everybody was talking at once on the TeamSpeak server, then as I took one step forward, I saw a slew of archers and two more death messages, so I did what any brave Rogue would do... high-tailed my butt back up those stairs!! TP'd to town, asked if there was any foothold. Sirian sent a portal, as he was trying to clear one of the treasure rooms (left one, I think. This is before all of the screenshots he posted. And I understand why he doesn't have any from earlier. WAY too hot.) Then I see him blink out of the treasure room to the main room. So I figured he was going to either try and fight in the room, or maybe clear the right treasure room. What I didn't realize was that there were THREE archer bosses (I had thought a bad one, or maybe two) and that the teleport wasn't to fight, but to save his hide as the bosses had been lured to our room. I caught a glimpse of a funky colored wench, then a HAIL of arrows, then Warriv looking down at me as I picked myself off the ground

Now those familiar with team play know that all good treausre not immediately equipped gets dumped in town for the team to look at. I had a Superior Cedar bow that I was waiting for a quiet moment to socket, so I dug that out, picked up some pieces from the ground, and re-joined the fight just as Sirian had his connection drop. That's me with the bone helm on in the second shot (Tancred's Skull from in town). You can also see my body in the first pic by the TP in the left treasure room (I'm Red_RidingHood) where I was surprised by one of the wenches. In that third shot, where Sirian is off alone, we're fighting random archer minions that are wandering into the room or close enough to the door to fight, me and somebody else (don't remember) with bows, the rest with spells. Somehow, I actually managed to make it through with only the one death. Mostly because everytime I even glimpsed an archer that wasn't blue I teleported or TP'd out of there until we had the team re-assembled. Ironically, my corpse was the last one picked up, as I had to ditch the extra equipment back in town to get all of it.

But Sirian forgot to mention the best part of the whole incident. For making it through and conquering this vicious fight, the game rewarded us with..... nothing. Upon killing the Countess, the chest failed to open! Which had peals of laughter chorusing over TeamSpeak for quite some time."

dathon

As far as my own recollections, I was about the third Rogue down the stairs. The Rogues preceding me were already on the ground dying from a hail of arrows. I caught a glimpse of hordes of archers pouring down from the north part of the screen, so I blinked immediately to the south... into another boss pack of archers. Svava was literally dead within tenths of a second after coming down the stairs. One of the worst stairs traps I've ever seen. I tried to go back and retrieve my body once - um, that was a mistake. Of course, that only ensured a second corpse down there next to the first.

A shot of the minimap showing some of the carnage. There's a lot of bodies on the ground here, many of them from unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the original bodies. Personally I don't know how Sirian managed to work us through this one, but I will chalk that up to much experience at this game. This was by far the worst disaster the Rogues has suffered up to this point in their journeys.

This was the actual Countess battle, and yes, it was anti-climactic. We would re-run the Countess quest again the next session with MoonGrabber, with considerably less disastrous results (and that time the chest actually opened!), and a final time with Jaffa to catch him up on the quests. But the experience was never the same as that first time through - which was probably for the best!