Skulla Part Fourteen: A Close Shave

The next play session began at the entrance to Nihlathak's Temple. I don't much like this area, with its boring brown textures and lengthy slog, only to reach a cheese boss at the bottom who provides nothing by way of quest reward. The first thing that Skulla did upon entering the red portal was to race over to the other side of the entry room, opening another normal town portal there. That's an insurance move, providing another entrance into the temple if Skulla would be forced out of the red portal. Well it never came to that on this playthrough, but it did come close. There are a lot of prowling dead outside of the temple entrance, like a lot of them. Even with Skulla's ability to raise them as new minions and prevent their revival ability from kicking into effect, there were long moments where I wasn't entirely sure if the thin bony line would hold. The weight of numbers eventually tipped in favor of Skulla, and I was able to avoid retreating from the area. Whew. At least I had a foothold now. Pindleskin rolled Teleportation/Spectral Hit/FEB and presented no problems. On to the actual temple itself.

The Halls of Anguish turned out to be full of melee opponents: frenzytaurs, melee flayers, and temple guards. This meant a whole lot of Iron Maiden curse to reflect the damage back against all of them. As it so often happens, the opening battle at the stairs was the hardest part of the floor. There was a temple guard boss right at the staircase (CEB/Teleportation/Mana Burn) and in the process of fighting him, a flayer boss and frenzytaur boss showed up. Then as the extended contest went on, a fourth frenzytaur boss appeared as well (CEB/LEB/Magic Resistant). Fortunately Skulla was never fighting more than two of those bosses at once, but that was still quadruple of them within the first 5% of the level. It looked as though Skulla was going to be forced back up the stairs at several points in time, but the skeletal minions barely managed to hold the line. The rest of the floor was anticlimactic after that start, lots of Iron Maiden usage with the monsters forced through narrow choke points. It just took a long time to wade through such a large area. One item of note dropped here: the Face of Horror unique mask. That was something that I remembered using with Meatbag's character and having some fun with the Terror ability. Since Skulla had Terror as an innate curse, it wasn't particularly useful here.

The next floor down was the Halls of Pain, and the first thing that Skulla saw upon descending was legions of blood maggots and their young. That was not a good sign, to say the least. I had visions of wading through room after room of maggot young everywhere, something that would take hours to complete. (That might not matter if you're reading these reports after the fact, but it definitely mattered to me the player!) The other monsters turned out to be melee goats and blowdart flayers. At first I tried using Iron Maiden curse, such as against the Fanaticism goat boss pictured above. Iron Maiden did work pretty well against the maggot young, although it didn't do anything to stop the maggots from breeding. After playing around with the curses, I soon replaced Iron Maiden with Dim Vision:

That was more like it. The Halls of Pain turned out to be mostly full of blowdart flayers, and Dim Vision worked perfectly against them. Block their line of sight, prevent them from running around, prevent them from shooting back. The necromages had more fun than a barrel of monkeys killing the flayers once they'd been slapped down with Dim Vision. The curse also worked well against the maggots (which were fairly rare on this floor, thank goodness) and it stopped them from laying eggs if I could tag them in time. On the few occasions where Skulla wasn't able to reach the maggot mothers, they bred the room full of young in mere seconds. Then I would have to use Iron Maiden again to kill the teeming hordes of maggot young. Overall though, Dim Vision turned an area that would have taken ages on end to clear and turned it into something approaching routine.

There were two items of note that dropped in the Halls of Pain. One was the Dark Clan Crusher, the unique cudgel, which has +2 to druid skills and a bunch of bonus damage against "demon" type enemies. I could have used this with some of my other druid characters, although it was another whiff for Skulla. The other pickup was this grand charm with +34 to life on it. I'd been shifting around some of Skulla's charms due to the +10% resist all scroll that he had gained after completing the Anya quest. Skulla had wound up with way more lightning resist than he needed; I was able to remove a grand charm with 30% lightning resist while still sitting at the maximum of 75% resistance. I replaced it with this grand charm that had extra life on it. Why not, might as well get something from that inventory slot (I stashed the old charm in case I would need more lightning resist at some point). This is also a good picture of Skulla's inventory, where I leave just enough room to carry one item back to town. Those are slots that could be used for more charms! I was honestly looking for more useful charms at the time, I could have made due with even less inventory space. Part of the reason why Skulla has made it this far has been through maximizing his limited resources here in Single Player. When you can only use the stuff you find along the way, you can't afford to waste anything.

That left the final area of Nihlathak's Temple, the Halls of Vaught. The monster mix here had more witches, prowling dead, and arach spiders as a returning enemy. The spiders were honestly the worst of the bunch, as their poison attack was so strong that it meant instant death for any minion hit. The poor skeletal warriors were never able to fight them without suffering brutal casualties. I could watch the lifebar of the golem draining away over time as the unfortunate thing turned green. Even the fire golem's 2500 life was no match for that spider poison, it would get the golem every time if I didn't summon another one. Good thing Skulla himself never took a hit from the spiders! Ironically, the spiders themselves were immune to fire (not to poison) and poison damage from the necromages was one of the key factors in taking them down. There were some bosses down here, but nothing all that remarkable or dangerous. I found Nihlathak in the third of the four branches, pulled away as soon as the quest marker popped up, and cleared out everything else first. I wanted to deal with him as the last thing in the Halls of Vaught. Soon enough the rest of the floor was cleared, and it was time to face off against this guy. I swapped out my normal amulet with +1 necro skills for the Nozokan Relic (which allows you to go above the normal fire resist cap and hit 85% fire resist). I didn't need 11 necromages here, I needed to avoid dying to the fire damage from Corpse Explosion.

NIHLATHAK

I hate everything about the Nihlathak battle. The only other boss in the game as poorly designed as this guy is Duriel, who traps your character into a tiny sardine can and then chills your movement with a Holy Freeze aura. Nihlathak is just as bad in a different way. His Corpse Explosion spell deals completely ridiculous damage and it's almost impossible to avoid. (In the initial expansion version back in 2001, the thing was a literal one hit kill: if you were hit in Hell difficulty, you were 100% dead every time. That was toned down in later patches, although it's still brutal.) For a character who can clean corpses like Skulla, the danger isn't quite as bad. If you can raise all of the monsters as soon as they hit the ground, then it's difficult - albeit NOT impossible - for Nihlathak to blow them up under your feet. He will keep summoning more enemies though, and he can summon suicide minions that detonate immediately, providing a body for him to use Corpse Explosion upon. The range on that spell is also much greater than you would think. Just because your character looks safe doesn't mean that he or she is safe, not at all. So Skulla had the means to remove those corpses by raising them as skeletons, but that did not mean that this would be a walk in the park. If I missed even one body at any point in time, that could be the end of Skulla's journey. Talk about pressure. Let's get this thing over with.

I crept my way towards Nihlathak's back corner. There were still witches and spiders and prowling dead to kill, and then Nihlathak's own ice spawn minions began showing up. He was detonating bodies with his Corpse Explosion the instant they could hit the ground, even faster than I could raise bodies in some cases. I did my best to keep Skulla as far back as possible, only staying close enough to the front lines to see what was taking place. Poison damage from the spiders forced me to retreat back to Act I for more minions at one point. Overall though, things looked pretty good. Most of the monsters were dying, and Skulla had stayed totally safe. That was about when I took the picture above, when I got my first look at Nihlathak. Extra Fast was a bit of a pain there. Nothing Skulla couldn't handle though.

I thought everything was going fine. At least, I thought so. Then suddenly I heard an explosion, and Skulla was sitting on 50 health!!! OMG WTF DRINK A REJUV POTION HOLY CRAP!!! I had no idea what had happened. I would have to go back and look at the Livestream footage to find out for certain. Here's the screencap I pulled after the fact:

Nihlathak had cast Corpse Explosion and landed it on Skulla. Nevermind that the graphic for his spell was wildly out of sync with the area of effect damage. In the picture above, Skulla wasn't even remotely close to the exploding corpse. It looks like it missed him by a country mile, but he still took the full damage from the spell. (And I thought the graphical effect for the Gragas barrel in League of Legends was misleading, heh.) Just another example of how the cheesiness of this battle stinks to high heaven, extremely misleading hit box on the Corpse Explosion spell. Anyway, I found the culprit for this random body as well. Look at the pre-Livestream picture up above. See the one spider corpse on the ground off to the left? That was the one that Nihlathak blew up. The darned thing must have run away when it got low on health, then died to necromage poison off in the corner. It was nearly invisible while playing, and I must have missed it while repeatedly sweeping the area with Raise Skeleton looking for bodies to clean up. See that's all that it takes, missing a single corpse anywhere remotely close to your character. If you miss even one, Nihlathak will blow it up and inflict crushing damage to your character. That's exactly what had happened here.

Fortunately Skulla did not die. He made it through by the slimmest of margins, surviving with 53 out of 1127 health. I was curious about this, so I worked backwards to figure out the damage from Nihlathak's Corpse Explosion. It did 1074 total damage according to simple subtraction. Corpse Explosion deals half of its damage as physical and half as fire damage. Working back from that number with the 85% fire resist Skulla had at the time, I figured out that the Corpse Explosion had done 934 physical damage (which Skulla took in full) and 934 * (0.15) = 140 fire damage. That meant that Skulla would have taken 934 * (0.25) = 233 fire damage if he hadn't been wearing the Nozokan Relic for the extra 10% fire resist, and 934 + 233 = 1167 damage, which would have been a one hit kill. The Nozokan Relic saved Skulla's life. But even with that amulet, Skulla also would have died without the random extra life he was getting from charms and the socketed perfect ruby in his circlet. I went back and counted that stuff up: Skulla was getting 222 HP from all that extra gear. And of course none of this would have mattered if Skulla hadn't been at full health when he took that Corpse Explosion, my insistence on ALWAYS being at full health at all points in time with my Hardcore characters proving to be a true lifesaver here. It just goes to show how the seemingly smallest details can make a huge difference in the end. Something as small as using your socket quests and hauling around a bunch of charms like a packrat can be the difference between life and death. It's often the smallest details that have the biggest impact.

Long story short: Nihlathak had gotten his best chance and had come up just short. He would not get another one. I kept Skulla so far away that I couldn't even see the traitor, relying on the minions to do their thing. Die, king of cheese battles. Die, hardcore character slayer. Die.

Whhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwww. Glad that's over with. What a close shave. I really hope that Skulla doesn't have another encounter quite so near to death again. The whole Nihlathak battle is pure bullshit from a design perspective, I'm still sitting here pissed at Blizzard over a decade after the fact that something like this exists in their game. Shame on them for such an unfair setup! Well, it's in the rearview mirror now. The final areas of the game await. The last climb to the top of Mount Arreat, the Ancients, and Baal. We're almost home on this one, stay tuned.