 |
|
|
After that exhausting trip through the back half of Act Three, I took a break from WillPower for a few days to recharge my batteries before heading back into the fray. The interval in-between acts is a good time to do some housekeeping work on a character, like popping back to earlier difficulties to make use of saved up quest rewards, as the map otherwise doesn't change here in the offline Single Player mode. I had earlier decided that I would spend some more time shopping for Marshal's scepters with Drognan back in Act Two to see if I could turn up anything better than the one that WillPower already had with +1 to Holy Shock on it. The ideal result would be landing the Marshal's prefix along with a useful suffix along with +2 or +3 to Holy Shock. I spent about 90 minutes refreshing Drognan and looked at roughly a thousand different scepters which resulted in a mere four of them rolling the Marshal's prefix. One item had nothing else at all present, another had +2 to Sanctuary, the third had +1 to Sanctuary and Holy Bolt charges while the last one had +2 to Resist Lightning. None of these were better than what WillPower already had and this was my limit for how much I was willing to refresh town merchants. Given enough time, I definitely could have hit the Marshal's property along with +3 to Holy Shock... but how much of a difference would that have really made anyway? I'd already spent 2.5 hours in total on this venture and I wasn't going to invest 4, 8, or 15 hours of my life on this fool's errand.
Instead, I did this:
If WillPower was going to be stuck using this weapon, he might as well do what he could to increase its stats slightly. I took my Nightmare socket quest and used it to add an Io rune into the scepter for another 10 Vitality = 30 more HP. That was pretty minimal in terms of the benefits but what else could I do to improve the situation? It wasn't as if WillPower needed more resistances with him having everything aside from poison sitting at or above 70%. WillPower didn't attack, he didn't cast spells or need mana, and we all know that Defense is a nearly-useless stat in Diablo 2. Besides, if by some chance I would find a better weapon later on, I would still have the socket quest from Hell difficulty that could be used on it. That seemed less and less likely with WillPower entering Hell Act Four but you never know, sometimes the perfect item will drop out of nowhere.
I was also willing to make this move because the odds of finding upgrades to WillPower's setup were drawing close to zero. That's because his gambling days had effectively come to a close: it was taking all of the money that my Paladin was bringing in from item sales just to pay the constant bills of buying more red potions and reviving Durga when he perished. I could just barely break even on income by hauling everything useful back to town for sale, however that did mean no more gambling for this character and sadly little chance of ever finding the Marshal's prefix in the amulet or circlet slots. I was holding 2 million gold in stash just to make sure that this character didn't run out of cash and it was a constant fear of mine that the money would all drain away and leave me unable to complete the game. This is the sort of thing that your average character would never, ever have to worry about but it was a genuine concern for WillPower.
Finally it was time to get started on Act Four in the Outer Steppes. This can be a tough place to begin due to the narrowness of the entry staircase down from the Pandemonium Fortress and the fact that bosses often like to camp out right at the beginning of the area. I made sure to cut far off to the right on entry and fortunately this time there was no stairs trap to worry about. The monster draw for WillPower was a friendly one with Cliff Lurkers, Doom Casters, and Flesh Spawners and their pups, about as good as I could have asked for. The finger mages were by far the easiest opponents since they had no fire resistance at all and their mana drain was completely useless against WillPower's auras. The Cliff Lurkers were only marginally more dangerous; they were Lightning Immune as well and had 80% fire resistance but their health total was low and their skittering antics didn't help them against the auto-hit from Holy Fire. Durga's poison damage was very helpful in killing the leapers quickly.
The Flesh Spawners were the ones that took the most time to kill, as usual, though WillPower's elemental auras were an excellent tool here as well. Holy Shock was highly effective at cutting down the pups that the mothers kept breeding and this monster type had no lightning resistance at all. It was just that the Flesh Spawners had 5x the health of the Cliff Lurkers (and more than double that of the Doom Casters) so it took a little while to trim them down while Durga tanked against all the little pups. WillPower faced six bosses in total, all of them near the opening portions of the Outer Steppes, then the back half of the area had nothing but normal opponents. There were two different bosses who were Fire Immune / Lightning Immune which meant breaking out Holy Freeze for its amusing 20-42 damage aura. Better than nothing! And I should also mention that Holy Shock and Holy Fire did make sure to kill every Trapped Soul tied to a pillar, it was very important not to miss any of them, apparently.
So the Outer Steppes went great and took about an hour to fully clear. Then WillPower crossed over into the Plains of Despair and things took a nosedive immediately:
There were Venom Lords here, ugh. The balrogs were the one monster type that I'd been hoping to dodge until they would appear as a mandatory encounter in the Chaos Sanctuary later. For unknown reasons, the stats on these things are completely out of control: Fire Immune, 75% lightning resistance, 75% poison resistance, 50% physical resistance, 50% cold resistance, plus high health and high damage output. I genuinely don't know what the developers were thinking to make this one monster type so much tougher to defeat than anything else; the Venom Lords don't even pay out more XP than their vastly easier peers! Did they just want most players to reroll these areas until they dodged the Venom Lords appearing? In any case though, WillPower was stuck with them for this incarnation of the Plains of Despair. Unfortunately the staircase to the Plains was in the worst possible location, as far away from the Pandemonium Fortress as it was possible to spawn, so I desperately wanted to get both areas cleared in the same gaming session and then lock in my progress at the City of the Damned waypoint. This meant braving the hordes of Venom Lords across the full expanse of the Plains.
It's hard for me to convery in writing how much effort it took for WillPower and Durga to slay these Venom Lords. Holy Shock's damage was cut down to 1-500 per tick against opponents with 13,000 life and hefty HP regeneration; I made the immediate decision that every single Venom Lord had to be tagged with Prevent Monster Heal to make any progress at all. Durga's poison and minimal physical damage didn't do much against these things either so killing even one of them would take close to a full minute. Of course Holy Shock has area-of-effect properties to hit multiple targets at once but that didn't really work either; Durga could BARELY tank against two Venom Lords at once, if I fed him red potions the whole time. He could not stand against three Venom Lords, not without dying, and frankly he often needed to be fed potions while tanking only a single balrog! There was one champ pack of Venom Lords which had to be split apart and fought individually, and Durga couldn't even 1 vs 1 a Venom Lord champ without needing a constant stream of potions to avoid death. You really don't want to know how many times I had to go back to town to purchase more red potions, I had to have bought hundreds upon hundreds of them across this gaming session.
Thus I crept across the Plains of Despair with WillPower, slowly drawing out the enemies in small groups for individual disposal, running the same small fights over and over and over again. Anything more than two Venom Lords popping up at once meant a full speed retreat, needing to space out the monsters with footwork to face them in thinner numbers. The other two enemy types were Doom Knights and Burning Souls (Gloams), both of which were immeasurably easier to defeat. The Doom Knights were dangerous only because they had a nasty poison on their melee attacks but died quickly due to minimal lightning resistance. The ghostly Burning Souls were even more frail and fared poorly againt Holy Fire given that it could hit them despite their being invisible. Their lightning bolts also hit hard though, especially against Durga who seemed to be able to tank incredible amounts of physical damage only to wilt in seconds against elemental threats. I noticed that pattern in Act Three as well, when he would start taking fire from a Council member's Hydras and then have his lifebar drain away in seconds. There must be some kind of programming in place that causes mercenaries to take extra damage from their abilities as Durga could take a thousands melee hits from Venom Lords only to die in five lightning strikes.
It was the Venom Lords that slowed everything down though, always the Venom Lords. I could trace the speed of WillPower's progress through the Plains of Despair by which areas had high versus low concentrations of the balrogs. I had been hoping to full clear the Plains in about an hour, only to discover right away that that wasn't happening. One hour stretched out into two hours and there were still huge chunks of the Plains yet to be cleared. I had started around 9:00 PM local time and soon midnight had come and gone with still more Venom Lords to be cleared. Maybe this might sound boring to read about but it was a huge part of the experience of playing this character. I have to live in the real world and it's not as easy to find time for Diablo 2 with a family and a small child as it was 20 years ago when I was in college. At least I did manage to find the stairs to the City of the Damned and make a run to the waypoint there, something that I've gotten pretty good at doing. WillPower had to drink two full rejuvs but he made it there and grabbed the waypoint while being chased by about 50 monsters on his heels, then darted back to town for safety. Now I only needed to finish clearing the Plains of Despair before heading off to bed.
I also didn't want to stop short of finishing this area because I hadn't even found Izual yet! WillPower made it through about 75% of the area before the fallen angel finally appeared, in the back corner of the level in one of the most inaccessible portions. Although Izual had a lot of health, he had only modest lightning resistance so he was pretty easy bait for Holy Shock. His damage output was frankly pathetic, barely higher than a standard Venom Lord, and Durga was able to tank without issue until the boss croaked. The two skill points went into Salvation for the minimal synergy bonuses. Then it was more grinding, grinding, grinding progress through the remainder of the Plains of Despair. I wasn't even getting that unlucky in terms of the monsters present in this level: only three bosses (with only the one champ pack rolling as Venom Lords) and the frail Burning Souls were clearly the most common enemy type. It just took so long to kill every Venom Lord that it felt as though they were ominpresent even though they weren't. It was times like this that I almost wish I hadn't named WillPower after our son William. Maybe then I could just claim that I had full cleared this area even if I hadn't done so - who would know? It's not like anyone is reading these reports anyway, not almost 25 years after Diablo 2 came out. But... *I* would know if I had cheated and skipped out on the full clear, sigh.
Plains of Despair fully cleared after almost four hours on the clock - time to go to bed and come back for the City another day! 
The City of the Damned was indeed next when I was able to come back at a more reasonable time of day. WillPower had to start from the waypoint with nothing else cleared ahead of time, and the danger of jumping into a situation like that was immediately apparent when a Damned boss pack showed up nearby spitting electric death everywhere. It was a Cursed boss and WillPower had nowhere safe to retreat which meant that Durga collapsed in a matter of seconds, then WillPower was left walking in circles waiting for Holy Fire to burn through these Lightning Immue foes. This wasn't as bad as it might have sounded though because the Damned had no fire resistance and died relatively fast, never putting WillPower in a truly dangerous situation. In fact, they were really only deadly for Durga and not for WillPower himself as the mercenary continued to take massively more damage from enemy spell effects than the numbers would suggest. Durga could tank their melee attacks all day only to wilt like a potted plant as soon as the lightning projectiles started appearing.
The other two monster types were Stygian Hag breeders and Corpse Spitters who had a bit of an unfortunate synergy with the endless pups providing bodies for the monster allies to eat. Holy Shock continued to work well against the Stygian Hags though it took some time to cut them down, and then the Corpse Spitters required being tagged with Prevent Monster Heal because they were Poison Immune and quite beefy with 17k health available for regen purposes. I found them mostly annoying because they would run away to eat more corpses and there were always some bodies left over from the last Hag that WillPower had downed. Progress was slow but steady and took the better part of two hours to complete this area thanks to about seven different bosses, including a Cursed / Extra Strong Corpse Eater that Durga couldn't tank against even with a constant stream of red potions. I really wish I'd rolled bats (Dark Familiars) for the City, that would have been a lot faster.
The River of Flame was up next, still one of the most visually-impressive areas ever created for a Diablo game. I was hoping for an easier monster draw and was happy to see Stranglers appear as the first opponent present. It was less great when Grotesques showed up next with their endless breeding of little worms and then worse yet when Pit Lords appeared for the final enemy. Those Pit Lords were simply clones of the Venom Lords back in the Plains of Despair with nearly identical stats, and I thought about rerolling the area for a different monster mix, only this map had an untrapped staircase at the entrance and that was worth preserving. Thus it was back to the same tactics that WillPower and Durga were used to by now: run Holy Fire to clear the weak Stranglers first in any mixed group, make sure to tag Grotesques and Pit Lords with Prevent Monster Heal to speed up the process of killing them, retreat if there were ever more than two Pit Lords present at one time. Durga could tank as many as four Grotesques and their pups at once but two Pit Lords remained his limit.
Progress was slow between the durability of the Pit Lords and the need to slay so many of the little worms every time a Grotesque appeared. The danger level for WillPower himself wasn't too bad, it simply took time to cut through these tough opponents. And to be honest, there weren't that many better options possible here on the River of Flame anyway. Maggots would have been an improvement, true, but Abyss Knights were at least as bad as the Grotesques and Urdars would have been about as difficult as the Pit Lords. Act Four just has a lot of tough enemies in general, as befitting its status as the original ending to the game. I was a bit lucky in finding that only one champ pack rolled as Pit Lords while there were four different Strangler bosses. One of them rolled a Might aura in a dead end branch of the River where it was hanging out with about 20 Grotesques - I'm not kidding on that number, it was approaching two dozen of the breeders. Digging all of them out took a good while and left little pup bodies strewn across a vast expanse of the level.
The Hellforge offramp was located extremely close to the waypoint platform and it was the last part of the River of Flame that WillPower cleared. Hephasto came racing out right away with Holy Freeze for his aura and Extra Fast trait to juice him up on speed. Hephasto has almost exactly the same HP total as Mephisto in Hell difficulty (though fortunately less lightning resistance) and hits incredibly hard with his Spectral Hit trait. I was glad to see that the boss hadn't rolled something truly deadly like a Might aura or Extra Strong or Cursed, what WillPower had drawn here was already plenty bad enough. Durga was still unable to tank the incoming hammer blows for more than a few seconds at a time, even while in perma-red potion drinking mode. I had no choice but to pop back to town constantly if I wanted to keep him alive - and I very much wanted Durga alive because I didn't want the angry forge demon coming after WillPower! I had earlier found a Portal Shrine on the River of Flame and led Hephasto over there, making it easy to hop back and forth to town without having to purchase more portal scrolls. It took about a dozen total trips (and I did manage to keep Durga alive the whole time, just barely in several cases) to work through the lifebar of Hephasto and secure the kill.
As for the quest reward:
A Gul rune, hah! 
That's the highest possible outcome from the Hellforge quest at 1 in 11 odds. There are people who create a constant stream of new characters and rush them to the Hell difficulty Hellforge quest just in the hopes of rolling a Gul rune like this. And of course the Principle runeword armor that WillPower was wearing had been courtesy of a donated Gul rune from Corvus. It felt like things had come full circle, with that Gul rune coming back to WillPower as a replacement for the donated one. He could have actually made a Principle runeword without the donation! (Yes, I realize that WillPower had been wearing this armor since Nightmare difficulty which wasn't the same thing.) The new Gul rune didn't have any use for the moment, sadly, and I put it in stash for a potential future character. I had been kind of hoping for a Lem rune to drop which would have allowed me to upgrade Durga's Shaftstop (unique mesh armor) to its elite equivalent; I suppose there was still a slim possibility of the rune dropping in Act Five.
I needed one more session now to close out things out here in Act Four. WillPower picked back up from the River of Flame waypoint and found himself facing more Pit Lords again in the River Maze along with Stranglers and Corpulents. This was a bit faster than having to deal with the Grotesques as WillPower fought his way through the two maze segments leading up to the Chaos Sanctuary. There wasn't anything too difficult that appeared along the way though it still took about half an hour to reach the gates of the evil cathedral. The Chaos Sanctuary always has the same monster mix: Venom Lords, Storm Casters, and Doom Knight / Oblivion Knight pairings. This was the first time that WillPower had seen the Oblivions in Hell difficulty and they were as annoying as ever, tossing out their curses and then retreating from combat when threatened. The Doom Knights were fairly easy to kill but actually had better luck than anything else at dropping Durga and forcing another 50,000 gold resurrection bill, thanks to their poison stopping the mercenary's regeneration. At least the Storm Casters were a total joke, collapsing right away after a quick swap to Holy Fire before WillPower went back to using Holy Shock against everything else.
There were bosses and champ packs that popped up occasionally throughout the Chaos Sanctuary, fortunately only one of which rolled as Venom Lords (a four-pack of champions near the second lava pool). The first boss was an Extra Strong Storm Caster and its attendant group of fliers, fortunately not much of a threat, then the second boss was more interesting as the pictured Multishot Oblivion Knight enemy above. This thing managed to retreat on several occasions before Durga finally cornered it against a pillar of the Sanctuary architecture. Oh, and take a close look at that screenshot: Durga somehow turned invisible! 
I have no idea how this happened or what kind of bug this was, his character model completely vanished and stayed that way for about half an hour before he suddenly returned again. I could see Durga's big polearm (which was flying around as if wielded by a ghost) but not the mercenary himself, which made it tough to know if he'd been poisoned by Doom Knights since there was no visual indicator like the normal green color change. Anyway, this little oddity helped liven up an otherwise slow and methodical full clear of the Chaos Sanctuary that took the better part of two hours. Eventually everything was dead and WillPower could begin opening the seals:
I started with the Infector of Souls as the most dangerous of the three, and arguably a tougher obstacle for WillPower to overcome than Diablo himself. I had the standard town portal ready to go upon opening the seal which absolutely proved necessary to bail out of when the Infector spawned in between WillPower and the rest of the Sanctuary, not before Durga was swarmed under and killed though, argh! I returned from the River of Flame waypoint and walked back to the central pentagram, then began the slow process of pulling out the Infector's minions one at a time for elimination. The Infector appears with a double sized minion pack for about a dozen total Venom Lords in the group, and WillPower had to keep luring them out one at a time and then slowly killing them with Holy Shock and Durga's poison. The poor mercenary couldn't even tank a single minion 1 vs 1 and would need to be fed about four red potions to get the isolated kill, then do the same thing again, and again, and again. I definitely did not want to pull more than one Venom Lord at a time as even two of them made things much harder. The Infector eventually came out with one minion in tow, which was enough to drop Durga followed by WillPower walking in circles for five minutes to slowly kill the boss before reviving Durga to take the above screenshot at 99% damage dealt. Then there were still four more minions to deal with afterwards, and three of them came out as a group which resulted in Durga dying yet again before Prevent Monster Heal could take them down. All told, it took a good 20 minutes just for this one seal boss.
The other two seal bosses weren't as bad. De Seis was Extra Strong / Cursed / Might aura (!) which meant that Durga had absolutely no chance against the Doom Knight minions. I accepted that he was a goner and left the mercenary dead for the moment, relying solely on Holy Shock and Prevent Monster Heal to land these kills. The Grand Vizier was easier yet despite having four boss abilities, with WillPower able to walk straight between the Storm Caster minions while barely being touched by their mana drain. Holy Fire burned right through them until only the boss was left, with the Vizier taking a bit longer since it always has Fire Enchanted as a trait. That left the final boss of Act Four:
Diablo trapped WillPower in a Bone Prison immediately, and I mean within one second of him spawning on the pentagram. Fortunately I had thought about this before starting the battle and had a plan ready to go: I swapped from "Throw" over to "Attack" on the left mouse button and immediately began bashing through the skeletal barrier. The Paladin elemental auras also have on-hit damage that WillPower hadn't been using throughout his quest, and in fact the on-hit damage is significantly higher than the passive aura damage. That damage came in handy now as it helped WillPower break free after a few seconds of swinging away. After that, it was a long and rather uneventful boss battle with WillPower slowly walking around and dodging Diablo's flashy abilities while Holy Shock ticked away in the background. It was pretty easy to avoid Diablo's Flame Nova, Flame Wave, and Lightning Breath of Doom attacks, plus WillPower had 85% fire resistance and 80% lightning resistance if he would get hit. The only scary aspect of the confrontation was Diablo's Bone Prison as he caught WillPower FOUR more times over the next ten minutes, what the heck?! I was keeping in constant motion and Diablo almost never lands his Bone Prison so I have no idea what was going on there. I had to drink two full rejuvs when Diablo landed the Bone Prison and charged right on top of WillPower which made for some tense moments. Otherwise, this was nice and routine and a good bit faster than dealing with Mephisto (thanks to Diablo only having 50% lightning resistance). Game, set, and match:
I was quite glad to be finished with Act Four as this had been more of a joyless slog than a fun scamper. It was taking ages to complete every area due to the weakness of WillPower's elemental auras now that he was approaching the final portions of the gameplay. Nevertheless, if I had taken him this far, I was confident that I could take him the rest of the way and wrap things up with a complete game clear. Only Act Five remained to be finished - time to finish the journey.
