Skelly the Summon-Only Necromancer:
Nightmare Difficulty Part One

In terms of skill points, I dropped a few more points into Raise Skeleton Mage until I could unlock the seventh ranged caster, then went back to skilling Fire Golem once again. I wasn't concerned about Andariel but I did want to ensure that the Fire Golem would have all 20 available points before facing Duriel a second time. This only caused the Fire Golem to keep ballooning in both damage and mana cost, approaching 400 damage per hit and 150 mana per casting by the middle porton of Act One. I thought that Treehead Woodfist might kill a few of the skeletal warriors when I saw that he had rolled a Fanaticism aura in addition to his innate Extra Strong / Extra Fast combo, but nope, once again the skeletons held the line as the big furries went down to defeat. Then my search for a Sol rune finally ended as the Countess simply dropped the rune herself, allowing Skelly to make his Lore helmet and gain another +1 skill point in everything. This took Skelly to SLVL 11+6 for Raise Skeleton, leaving him one point away from the eighth skeletal warrior, so I invested that one extra point and then went back to strengthening the Fire Golem once again.

Skelly continued onwards through the second half of Act One while remaining on cruise control. Even though I was putting his skill points back into the golem again, the various skeletons kept holding their own and showed no signs of faltering against the foul creatures desecrating the monastery. For example, the Pit Level 2 was one of the easiest times that I can remember clearing that cramped environment, with Skelly tossing the golem into the face of the shamans to stop their resurrections and the skeletons body-blocking the two bosses that tried to reach Skelly himself. Individual foes like the Smith would get swarmed by the skeleton army in truly hilarious fashion, as I was able to capture in the screenshot above. All eight melee skeletons plus the golem were slashing away at the forge demon while the skeleton mages got in their licks from a distance. Have fun getting stabbed, burned, chilled, poisoned, and electrocuted simultaneously! The biggest problem for Skelly at the moment was probably the irritation of the skeletons getting caught on doorways and stuck in various rooms while passing through the Jail and the Catacombs. The skeletons will teleport to the Necromancer's position if they get too far away but they definitely spent a lot of time standing around in empty rooms due to an inability to walk through doorways.

Mostly though things were pretty chill and I found myself having a relaxing time while playing Skelly through these areas. When the skeletons were this much stronger than the enemies, there wasn't all that much that Skelly needed to do since he didn't have to recast the golem for positioning purposes or raise new skeletons to replace fallen minions. I still spent a lot of time moving Skelly around because by shuffling his position he was usually able to get more of his army into fighting position. The skeletons follow the Necromancer like lost puppy dogs and you can get them into the action by moving in and out of doors repeatedly. Overall though, there wasn't too much to report from these areas as the skeletons were handling everything with ease.

I wasn't too concerned about Andariel since the combat with her always takes place in a room with lots of potential enemy corpses that can be raised for more minions, plus she has that innate -50% fire resistance to make her extremely susceptible to the Fire Golem's damage. Her poison was deadly to the various minions though so this wasn't a total cakewalk. I wanted to clear out the side wings of her room first before waking up the boss, only to have the skeletons wander off and awake Andariel before Skelly was completely ready, which wasn't a disaster but was annoying. The fighting ended up taking place on this corner of the dungeon architecture where the skeletons pinned her against the wall while also fighting a couple of zombie champions. Andariel's poison breath killed a series of golems followed by the skeletal warriors beginning to drop, forcing Skelly to raise replacements from some of the fallens that had been defeated a minute earlier. This was a fast encounter though and it only took about a minute for the skeleton army to hack apart the demon, with most of the warriors and all of the mages still standing when Andariel fell.

I couldn't have been happier with the performance of the skeletons thus far and their ongoing strength boded well for the future given how many skill points were still available to keep beefing up their respective skills. If only I could say the same thing about Skelly's own item luck! He was STILL using non-rare magical items in all three of his jewelry slots for lack of better options and his resistances were downright sad. I was planning to Cube six perfect gems together for a Prismatic amulet for lack of better options but still lacked a Perfect Amethyst because the purple gems hadn't been dropping. At this rate, I'd have to swap over to the 3 Diamond Large Shield that I was saving in stash for emergencies. Surely he had to do better with his jewelry gambles at some point... right?

First up in Act Two was the Sewers where the Burning Dead skeletons all had heavy fire resistance. They had enough innate protection against fire to be noticeable when the Fire Golem was attacking them but died quite easily to all of the other various damage types available to Skelly's minions. Radament was distracted by casting the golem into his face, buying enough time for the skeleton brigade to tear through the enemy undead and then mob the greater mummy. I placed the extra skill point into Fire Golem which Skelly was continuing to push towards its maximum skill level. Then it was out into the wide open spaces of the deserts, one of the easiest portions of Diablo 2's gameplay. There was plenty of room here for all of the skeletons to get into the action and they had no difficulty ripping apart the beetles and spear cats and leapers encountered in the desert wastes. I was having a total blast as Skelly shepherded his minions across the landscape, still clearing these areas at a rapid pace.

The underground areas were definitely trickier to navigate, at least partially due to the tighter spaces making it hard to get all of the skeletons into the action at the same time. The skeleton mages could usually find a spot to point and fire at something while the melee skeleton warriors often bunched up in the background of a doorway collecting dust. The Stony Tomb didn't have much of note on its two floors, then the Halls of the Dead introduced resurrecting Hollow Ones for the first time. I found that the greater mummies were quite fragile and could die quickly if Skelly was able to place the golem on top of them. Left alone, however, they could keep resurrecting the enemy skeletons for long minutes on end. I was able to avoid the need to resurrect every enemy undead unit for the moment, as that was an extremely mana-intensive process, though I did keep it in Skelly's back pocket as a possible later tactic. I will say that it was always satisfying when Skelly's minions overwhelmed the enemy skeletons and then flowed into the next room like a wave crashing on the shore, surging up and over the greater mummies once their defenders were gone.

The Maggot Lair was... not a lot of fun. I rarely enjoy that dungeon with any of my various character builds but the summoning Necromancer has to be a particularly unpleasant experience in those cramped tunnels. It was extremely difficult to get more than a handful of the skeletons into combat at any point in time as there simply wasn't enough room for them to move around. I had to lean heavily on the Fire Golem since it could be placed behind the monsters and open up some space; fortunately nothing in the Maggot Lair has any fire resistance (and nothing in there will be Fire Immune in Hell difficulty either). That's not to say that this was a particularly dangerous place to travel, however, since Skelly also couldn't be attacked by more than one enemy at a time. It was just tedious to fight one monster in isolation, then another monster, then another, dragging out the clearing pace needlessly. Coldworm was actually pretty easy because I could cast the Fire Golem into the middle of the room and then resurrect the vast number of maggot corpses into melee skeletons to get everyone into the fighting.

There wasn't much to note in the remaining outdoor areas as Skelly cleared the Lost City and the Ancient Tunnels. My Necromancer was still hurting so badly on resistances that I used the 6 perfect gem recipe in the Horadric Cube to roll a Prismatic amulet... which came out at 16% resist all and no second modifier. Ugh, that was literally the worst possible roll that I could have gotten. It was still better than what Skelly had though so I had him equip it. The Claw Viper Temple was heavy on snakes and mummies with none of the resurrecting Guardians present. This was an excellent draw for Skelly as his minions feasted on the lightly-defended snakes which hit hard but have little in the way of health or resistances. The skeletons were still rarely dying and were clearly too strong for the vipers to punch through on a regular basis. Claw Viper 2 was also entirely full of snakes with no undead present and the skeleton minions held the line against Fangskin. I didn't have to race for the platform or do anything special, the skeletons simply were tougher than their opponents.

The various Palace floors were a bit more dangerous for Skelly, largely because of the firing squads of hostile enemy skeletons that like to hang out down there. It could be tough to tell them apart from Skelly's own minions at times and he ate a facefull of arrows on several different occasions which forced the drinking of some red potions. I could use the golem to soak up those shots and keep the archers distracted while Skelly's own undead companions were running around doing who knows what; they really did like to race around helter-skelter and it wasn't always easy to get them focused on the key targets. Then the Arcane Sanctuary was rather annoying due to the narrow walkways which only allowed two skeletons to pass through at a time. Once again, the skeleton mages were the main damage dealers since the melee skeletons kept getting uselessly stuck in the background. I spent a lot of time recasting the Fire Golem into better positions and opening up space for the rest of the skeleton force. The golem should have been absorbing almost all of the fire damage from the vampires but still seemed to die if it came under too much focus fire from the enemies.

Skelly had two noteworthy item finds in the Arcane Sanctuary. The first was an Io rune which was the highest rune that he'd seen thus far. While I had no use for an Io rune on this character, that rune was only one tier below Lum which was a rune that I wanted desperately for a future Smoke runeword. Skelly's resistances continued to be sad and that would be the perfect runeword armor for him with its 50% resist all. Shortly thereafter, Skelly identified an amulet back in town and discovered that he had a plain Summoner's Amulet: +1 to all Necromancer skill levels. That was a stroke of luck since I hadn't been gambling amulets and Skelly had only seen +1 Assassin skill levels thus far, landing the Necromancer-specific benefit before any of the other five classes. An additional skill point in every single one of his skill was too good to pass up and I swapped over to the new amulet. Of course, this meant removing the Prismatic Amulet so now Skelly was lacking even the minimal 16% resist all that had been providing. He had something like 20% fire resist and 35% lightning resistance well into Nightmare difficulty, sheesh!

The Canyon of the Magi didn't have the Crusher brutes present which made it a very easy outdoor area to complete. Then it was into the seven Tombs of Tal Rasha as I continue to be one of the only people who full clears all of the False Tombs. I actually forgot to click on the Summoner's tome back in the Arcane Sanctuary and therefore didn't have the location of the True Tomb revealed in the quest log, only to have it revealed anyway once I finished clearing the first False Tomb. When did the developers add that to the game? It makes the actual Summoner quest completely pointless, heh. Anyway, the Tombs of Tal Rasha were characterized by the Unraveler / Burning Dead combo as usual. These things were EVERYWHERE, present in all six of the False Tombs before finally disappearing from the monster mix of the True Tomb itself. They were by far the most difficult of the various enemy types that can appear in the tombs thanks to the Unravelers constantly bringing their minions back to life. Once again, I employed the Fire Golem like an assassin by casting it directly onto the greater mummies and letting it eliminate them. There were just so many of the Unravelers though, often four or five of them in a single room, and it was beyond tedious facing them in tomb after tomb after tomb. They also have an extremely strong poison breath that does about 1200 damage over some ridiculously long span and that killed more golems than I could count. Skelly was still making solid progress but this was the closest to a slog that I had yet experienced with the character.

Skelly leveled about halfway through the False Tombs and placed his final skill point into Fire Golem which was currently maxed out at SLVL 20+4. With all of these skill points invested, the damage on the golem's attacks was absolutely insane for Nightmare difficulty at almost 750 damage per hit! By way of comparison, the Apparition ghosts have 750 HP and the Steel Scarab beetles have 870 HP here in Nightmare, meaning that the golem was nearly one-shotting them. I've never had a golem at anything even remotely close to this skill level before and the fiery summon was a true wrecking ball when it could isolate an individual target. Note that all these skill points had barely moved its health total though, which required more points in Golem Mastery that I wasn't planning on spending any time soon or possible ever. And then there was the mana cost: the SLVL 24 Fire Golem required a staggering 234 mana per casting. Skelly only had a little over 300 mana total in his blue orb! This situation was never going to get better either because I had to keep dumping Skelly's stat points into Vitality for safety - maybe an eventual Spirit shield will help here. For the time being, I was simply going to have to get used to the Fire Golem requiring a blue mana potion for every casting.

There were a lot of tough fights in the various Tombs but this one stood out from the rest:

This battle took place in one of the small False Tombs by the gold treasure chest. It took several minutes for Skelly and his minions to force their way into the room, with Skelly having to raise some of the Burning Dead bodies as his own skeletons to make progress because the Unravelers inside were resurrecting them at such a furious pace. Once Skelly was able to get inside the chamber, I discovered the problem: four Unraveler bosses. You might think those were Unraveler champs because of their various funky colors, but that was not the case, those were four separate bosses that all spawned inside the same room - yeesh! This kind of thing happens frequently in Hell difficulty but four bosses in the same room is exceedingly rare for Nightmare. Skelly went through five or six mana potions resummoning the golem until he could use it to slay two of the bosses, then the odds swung in his favor and the rest of the skeleton army was finally able to crash over the Burning Dead. This fight was made more difficult by not having any cold skeleton mages at the time which meant no shattering of enemy bodies. I kept getting large numbers of fire and posion mages in the Tombs which weren't too useful against the fire and poison resistant Burning Dead.

By way of comparison, Kaa was a lot easier despite his Mana Burn / Extra Strong / Lightning Enchanted / Extra Fast traits. His room only had two other non-boss Unravelers present and it was also much more open which allowed Skelly to target down the other greater mummies relatively quickly. Once Kaa was left alone, he fell quickly to the slashing blades of the skeletal warriors. Clearing all of the False Tombs proved to be worthwhile when the fourth one dropped a Grand Charm with 29% lightning resistance present, thank goodness! This allowed me to shift Skelly over to a magical (blue) set of boots with 20% faster run and 28% fire resistance, bringing both fire and lightning resistance up to the 40% range. I was *STILL* using non-rare items in the boots, rings, and amulet slots despite spending vast amounts of gold on gambles looking for upgrades.

On that note, much as I dislike the Duriel boss encounter, this is one of the few places in the game where resistances are completely meaningless since Duriel does entirely physical damage outside of his Unholy Freeze aura. Skelly made sure to bring a full skeleton army into the tiny boss room along with an inventory full of blue potions for the inevitable recastings of the golem. Most of the skeleton mages ran into good firing positions while the melee skeletons and the golem raced over to confront the big demon. Duriel chomped through the Fire Golem first, then turned to attack the skeletal warriors even as I immediately recast the golem. He ate five melee fighters in total before turning back to the golem, after which I was able to keep him occupied with a series of golems for the rest of the fight. Skelly drank close to a dozen mana potions, needing a new one for each new golem casting, while the skeleton mages did most of the hard work. The golem and the melee skeletons were almost useless against this boss due to that freezing aura slowing their attack speed to a crawl. Good thing most of the skeleton mages stayed back out of the chilling aura and remained there until the fight was over. Three of the skeletal warriors and all of the mages were still alive when Duriel bit the dust.

Duriel dropped the unique Gnarled Staff, the Spire of Lazarus, which would be a really cool item for a Sorceress if the Spirit runeword didn't outclass it every way possible. As I've written so many times, Spirit is way too good and crowds out innumerable other item options for casting characters. Anyway, Skelly managed to complete Act Two without any truly dangerous situations popping up and I did successfully max out the Fire Golem before having to face Duriel. Skelly would now be free to go back to adding more skill points to the skeletons which should be a lot of fun. How large could he get the skeleton army before reaching the end of Nightmare difficulty?