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This was it, the final portion of WillPower's journey: Hell Act Five. The last few acts had been testing my patience as a player and I knew that WillPower still had a long way to go before he could pack up his elemental auras for good. One of the foremost issues weighing on my mind going into this act was WillPower's bank account, of all things. The difficult nature of Hell Act Four had caused my Paladin to run a sizable deficit in terms of income even without doing any gambling at all, largely due to those 50,000 gold resurrection bills that WillPower had to keep paying for Durga. I was down to a little over 1.6 million gold in stash, and while that might sound like a lot, a bad strech of gameplay could result in that tally dropping perilously low. I anticipated that WillPower's mercenary would be dying a lot in some of these upcoming areas, to say the least.
But not in this first area as it turned out. The Bloody Foothills drew a monster mix of only two opponents, Carrion Bird vultures and Demon Imps, nothing but an endless sea of birds and teleporting rascals from the gates of Harrogath until hitting Shenk and his always-present minions at the end of the region. There was no other way to describe the situation: this was an absolute paradise for WillPower that turned into a cakewalk after the horrors of the previous act. The vultures had no lightning resistance at all while the imps had a minimal 25%, plus both opponents had low health totals of roughly 4000 and 3000 HP apiece. This made them absolute sitting ducks for Holy Shock's damage which was often taking out the imps in 3-4 pulses. Their blinking ability was completely useless against the Paladin elemental auras that hit everything in range. As a result, WillPower tore through the Bloody Foothills in a way that he had rarely managed to accomplish ever since reaching Hell difficulty. It took barely 30 minutes to full clear this large outdoor area, with WillPower gaining several hundred thousand more gold in the process. Durga never died or was even seriously threatened; I think the poison shots from the catapults were the biggest issue in terms of threats.
The Frigid Highlands were noticeably tougher while still being relatively straightforward. The monster draw this time featured Burning Dead archers, Demon Gremlin imps with the occasional Siege Beast in tow, and then Blunderbores for the final guest entry. The skeleton archers and the imps were both easy opponents for WillPower due to their frail nature, with the Siege Beasts and Blunderbores taking considerably more effort to defeat. Durga was generally able to tank against one or two of these beefier foes at a time, forcing me into retreat maneuvers if more than that showed up at once. Noteworthy clashes included a double archer boss pack with one of them having the Cursed trait and the other one being Extra Strong / Multishot; that was one skirmish that Durga did not survive. I continued to observe that a disproportionate number of the bosses showed up in the early stages of the area, with something like seven or eight bosses appearing in the first third of the Frigid Highlands and then nothing in the remainder aside from the always-present Eyeback. This has been happening enough times for WillPower that I suspect it's not pure randomness - yet another new bug introduced at some point in D2R? It wouldn't shock me.
This wasn't that tough of an area but it just went on and on and on because the designers made all of the outdoor portions of Act Five so unnecessarily huge. Abaddon was located at the extreme back end of the Highlands so I full cleared everything and then ventured inside the subdungeon:
The enemies inside the portal were Hell Tempress witches, Dark Ones and their shamans, and then these Horror skeleton archers for the last opponent. Nothing in there sounded particularly tough and the witches were indeed easy prey for Holy Shock's damage. Even the Dark One shamans didn't cause much of a problem, not with WillPower able to lure away the minions and slay them out of resurrection range. Instead it was the pictured Horrors that caused genuine horror for WillPower and Durga due to what had to be a buggy interaction. So the skeleton archers didn't look that bad: they were fairly frail in terms of health at a little under 5000 HP and had poison immunity along with fairly hefty fire and lightning resistances (66%). Normally Durga would cut these things down without breaking much of a sweat. However, the problem here was their poison damage. The Horrors are supposed to deal 30 poison damage on their arrows, according to the Amazon Basin, along with trace amounts of fire/lightning/cold damage.
Instead, some kind of bug was resulting in them dealing insane amounts of poison damage on their arrows. I can't really show this in static screenshots but WillPower's health orb was dropping by about 100 HP per second whenever he was poisoned. Drinking red potions was useless, that only slowed the poison drain down to something like -50 HP per second. There was no choice but to head back to town over and over again whenever WillPower or Durga was poisoned, either that or watch their respective health bars fall to 1 HP within a matter of seconds. This meant that Durga couldn't tank for more than a few seconds at a time and WillPower was in constant dire peril. Remember, EVERY single arrow fired by any Horror archer could inflict this ridiculous super poison and force WillPower to return to town for healing. Even worse, the poison was further bugged because it kept killing Durga WHILE IN TOWN!!! 
For those who haven't played this game, the town areas are supposed to be completely safe from danger. The player can't die there, or even take any damage, and the same thing is supposed to apply to the mercenaries as well. But nope, over and over again, WillPower would escape back to down just in the nick of time only to have Durga's red health bar suddenly disappear and the mercenary perish on the pavement tiles of Harrogath. I had to race over to Malah as fast as I could because the town was not safe against this bugged interaction!
Even with this ridiculousess, the first half of Abadon wasn't too bad to complete. I was able to use hit-and-run tactics along with constant returns to town to clear out the first dozen or two archers. Then I reached the middle portion of the level and encountered one of the worst tactical situations I've ever faced in Diablo 2:
This is a picture that I took later after clearing the area with the minimap turned on. The entrance to Abbadon is over on the left, with the pathway looping around to this massive square in the middle of the level. There were two of those overturned wagons blocking off the path to the north and south, forcing WillPower to move through the central region. In order to reach that spot, he had to clear out the first Horror archer boss who had the Cold Enchanted trait so that its arrows all slowed in addition to inflicting poison, lots of fun. Then the only way forward was through the middle of that square, with THREE separate archer bosses lurking on the other side and firing away from their protected spots into the completely exposed central square. It was like a shooting gallery with arrows flying absolutely everywhere and getting hit with even a single arrow could send WillPower scurrying back to town for healing. Archer boss #2 was Multishot / Cold Enchanted / Lightning Enchanted and camped out guarding the bridge along with its minions, making it seemingly impossible to proceed. I literally had no idea how to advance here and the whole dungeon felt completely impossible.
The first order of business was leaving Durga dead for the moment; I was out some 300k gold from trying to revive him and it just wasn't worthwhile. He died so incredibly fast to the poison and there was no way to keep him alive, not with him dying in town even when I pulled him out safely. With just WillPower under my control for the moment, I snuck around to the left side of the lower wagon barrier where I was able to isolate some of the skeleton archers and barely, just barely, hit them with Prevent Monster Heal javelins and Holy Shock to land a few kills. This cleared out enough space to pull Archer Boss #2 down to the bottom corner on the right side of that same wagon barrier:
This picture was taken after killing two or three skeleton archer minions; I had to use Holy Fire due to the increased lightning resistance from having Lightning Enchanted trait. And yes, WillPower has just been poisoned again for the umpteenth thousand time and had to return to town to cleanse the green stuff, sigh. Eventually I managed to slay this boss and start slowly moving northeast, pulling out more skeleton archers in ones and twos for disposal. Every single one had to be hit with Prevent Monster Heal to shut down their HP regeneration and the status often had to be reapplied after WillPower returned to town for healing. The PMH status should have remained but of course it often didn't due to the extreme bugginess of this area. One skeleton archer at a time, WillPower fought his way northeast where he found Archer Boss #3, with Extra Fast and Extra Strong traits, who was pulled back to the same corner for elimination. I thought that that would be it only to keep seeing more and more Horror archer minions. I swear that the number of them packed around this one square had to be close to two dozen in total. Sure enough, there was Archer Boss #4 with Multishot / Extra Strong traits along with Lightning Enchanted to create an outright lightning element immunity. Do you think that was enough Horror archer bosses crammed into one little area? Like, three wasn't sufficient, we had to have a fourth one as well?! Sometimes you can only shake your head in disgust. 
Killing these skeleton archers with the super poison shots was extremely dangerous and took ages upon ages to complete. I'm trying my best to convey how lengthy and difficult all of this was, with the need to wait for minutes on end to kill every single skeleton while dodging endless arrows the whole time. Even one hit and it was back to town again, often needing to pause and then reapplying Prevent Monster Heal upon returning. Once WillPower made it past the central square, the archer spam finally died down and he was able to cut through some easier witches and dark ones (both of whom barely seemed to exist in this subdungeon). Finally he made it clear to the gold chest at the end of the level, after taking a full TWO HOURS to clear Abaddon! Good grief! It was now 11:30 PM on the local clock and I still needed to find the next waypoint in the Arreat Plateau to avoid having to restart from the beginning of the Frigid Highlands. Abaddon had just been an utter nightmare.
Thankfully WillPower caught a massive break in the next outdoor area. The monster draw this time was Fire Boars, Death Slashers (the underground tentacle enemies), and fire skeleton mages as a guest monster. All of these opponents had no attacks worth worrying about and weren't particularly tanky either; the Death Slashers were the only semi-beefy foes with 7000 HP and 50% lightning resistance. The Fire Boars had little protection against Holy Shock and the fire mages were a complete joke with 3800 HP and no lightning protection. Even their bosses and champions were dropping in half a dozen pulses of Holy Shock. I realized right away that WillPower had the monster mix of his dreams and resolved to full clear the whole Plateau despite the late hour. I would have needed to do this anyway as the waypoint didn't appear until the place was about 80% complete, with the entrance to the Pit of Acheron also in the back corner near the Crystalline Passage opening. WillPower and Durga absolutely flew through this area thanks to its complete lack of danger, with only the occasional Evil Demon Hut slowing them down. It took a little less than an hour to get the full clear despite the massive size of the Plateau - I guess it was some good luck to balance out the horrific luck in Abbadon? WillPower could have been fighting through carvers and their shamans the whole time, shudder.
I picked up next time from the Arreat Plateau waypoint and headed straight into the Pit of Acheron subdungeon. As expected, the Plateau was noticeably tougher in the brief portion that WillPower had to pass through, this time with Lightning Immune skeleton mages and Blood Bringer siege beasts which would have required much more work to defeat. Within Acheron itself, WillPower found himself facing Hell Clan goats, Demon Imps, and Balrogs. The only one of these three opponents to cause trouble were the Balrogs, no surprise there, who did so much damage that Durga couldn't even tank a pair of them at once. He would slowly lose health even with a red potion running while posting up against two of the big demons. By contrast, he could fight as many as half a dozen goats without much issue and the imps remained little more than a joke. The map layout for the Pit of Acheron turned out to be completely identical to what I had seen a few days earlier in Abbadon so I knew exactly where WillPower needed to go, with this small area taking about an hour to full clear.
WillPower continued into the Crystalline Passage where he found a heavily ice-based group of opponents. The caves were packed with Snow Drifter Yetis, Frozen Creepers, and then Claw Vipers tossing out their Bone Spears. The only thing that I cared about was continuing to dodge the minotaurs which fortunately hadn't appeared as yet. None of these monsters were particularly dangerous and in fact they dealt low enough damage that Durga was able to tank large numbers of them at once without dying. He was routinely hanging in there against 6-8 of the Frozen Creepers at a time, what a contrast from the Venom Lords and Balrogs! In terms of offense, Holy Shock and Holy Fire were about equally as effective against the yetis and ice monsters, but then I spotted that the Claw Vipers had 90% lightning resistance and therefore ended up running Holy Fire against everything. There were seven or eight bosses in this area with the most noteworthy one being an Extra Fast / Cursed snake boss that popped out of an evil urn and flattened Durga instantly. Those things were flying around like crazy and WillPower had to drink a full rejuv for safety. It took a few minutes to get that situation under control with some expedient retreats to break apart the boss pack into smaller numbers for disposal.
I also had an interesting find in terms of loot in this area: the unique mighty scepter Heaven's Light appeared from one of the bosses! With +3 to Paladin skills this was almost something that WillPower could use himself, however he didn't have enough Strength or Dexterity and he had used up all his stat respecs earlier. It wasn't the right weapon for this character anyway since all of the physical damage modifiers would have been wasted. It did make me think about designing a melee Paladin to use this weapon down the road someday; between this weapon and the Gul rune from the Hellforge for another Principle armor, I had the makings of an outstanding character build. Maybe something to consider for the future...
I was fortunate in the map layout for the Crystalline Passage which had the waypoint located close to both the Frozen River and Glacial Trail entrances, making it convenient to pick up from here on a fresh gaming session. The Frozen River wound up drawing another friendly monster mix which was heavy on Rot Walker shambling undead as pictured above, plus a repeat of Claw Vipers and Snow Drifter yetis from the last area. It was the walking undead that predominated though and they were simply not a threat; their slow movement allowed WillPower to kite them endlessly if needed and they barely even attacked aside from launching the occasional charge attack. Durga could stand in a big mob of them without any worries and he actually managed to survive even the nasty Extra Strong / Cursed boss seen above. It also helped that they had zero fire resistance which made this another area where Holy Fire was the star of the show. The Anya quest reward scroll finally maxed out WillPower's non-poison resistances at 85% fire / 85% lightning / 75% cold. Not bad!
It was convenient enough to begin from the Crystalline Passage waypoint that I did the Frozen River in one session and then a separate one dedicated to the Glacial Trail and Drifter Cavern. WillPower entered the Glacial Trail and cleared out some space to maneuver next to the stairs, fighting even more yetis and cold-tossing skeleton mages. They were both readily beaten, especially the skeleton mages who had no lightning resistance and only about 4000 health. Now I just needed to figure out the third monster in this area...
Minotaurs, not good at all! 
These are by far the most dangerous of the enemy types added in Act Five, with high health, strong resistances, and a truly punishing melee attack once they wind up their Frenzy skill. Readers may notice that Durga was missing from the picture above - not by my choice, believe me! He didn't stand much of a chance against minotaur bosses when they appeared and this pair of foes wrecked him pretty good. WillPower used that time to tag both of them with Prevent Monster Heal and then slowly whittled them down with Holy Shock despite Spectral Hit giving the boss something like 75% lightning resistance. They were actually faster than WillPower when they had Frenzy activated and I had to run (not walk) to stay ahead of them which was really rare. Non-boss minotaurs were more doable for Durga although the danger level remained extremely high. He could not 1 vs 1 even a normal minotaur and he slowly lost a 1 vs 2 situation even with red potions running - sheesh! It was kind of insane how the yetis and skeleton mages could pose no danger whatsoever and then the presence of even two minotaurs at once would send WillPower fleeing for the hills.
It could have been worse though: at least these were Moon Lord minotaurs who are Fire Immune instead of the more common Lightning Immune types dotting Act Five. I'd been lucky to dodge them up to this point and they had to show up eventually (I wasn't going to reroll areas to avoid them completely). And as bad as they were, WillPower had lots of practice fighting these types of opponents by now. If the minotaurs were as bad as the Venom Lords and Balrogs, at least they weren't any worse than those monster types. There were eight or nine bosses total in the Glacial Trail with three of them (two full bosses and a champion pack) rolling as minotaurs. The skeleton mage bosses died in mere seconds while every one of the minotaur bosses was a grueling struggle where Durga died and it took long minutes to slay the bull-headed creatures. Bonesaw Breaker and his crew were easy pickings afterwards despite rolling the Cursed trait.
The Drifter Cavern is a tiny dead-end subdungeon attached to the Glacial Trail. There's absolutely no reason ever to go down there since it's such a deathtrap (there can be as many as eight bosses inside on Hell difficulty!) but of course WillPower needed that full game clear. I inched him forward on entry into the cavern, fortunately not having to deal with a stairs trap this time around, and spotted that the first enemy type was Night Clan goats, excellent. They were pretty tame as far as melee opponents went. Next up were Ghosts - even easier for an elemental Paladin - and finally Succubuses with their blood star projectiles. This was a great draw that could have been so much worse (minotaurs can spawn down here too), with only the witches causing some issues when they bunched up together in big packs. I had WillPower hug the north edge of the cave where the enemy density was lower and cleared all the way to the gold chest, then returned for the south side of the place where three bosses were grouped. The pictured Succubus was the hardest opponent to defeat since she was both Fire and Lightning Immune; Durga had to do pretty much all the work and that was a slow process. All in all though, the Drifter Cavern was quite easy and WillPower could check off another one of the most dangerous threats presented by Act Five.
Now for one of my least favorite parts of Diablo 2's gameplay: Nihlathak's Temple. WillPower crossed through the red portal and immediately cut over to the eastern side of the small entrance area. It's a bad idea to stand right by the entry portal because if you get overwhelmed and have to flee back through it, there's no safe way to return. The Prowling Dead started waking up en masse and Durga was off doing his own thing instead of staying close to WillPower to protect him. The shambling undead landed one charge attack, then two, then a third in rapid succession; those charges generally aren't dangerous except when there are so many of the walking skeletons on screen at once that some of them are bound to connect. I saw WillPower's health orb flash "600" something and instantly drank a full rejuv, racing back over towards the red portal again to keep my Paladin from getting swarmed. Durga finally started doing his job tanking and the situation came back under control again, with the Prowling Dead beginning to fall from the effects of Holy Shock. That was way too close of a call though, sheesh! I really wish that there was more room to operate here. I saved waking up Pindleskin until the whole outer area was under control; he was Lightning Enchanted to create an immunity to Holy Shock but Holy Fire worked well enough once his minions were gone.
I hate going through the floors of Nihlathak's Temple because they're so large in size and dull in visual appearace, a lengthy series of uninteresting brown tunnels that resemble Durance 2 way too much. There are also some nasty guest monsters that can appear inside on Nightmare and Hell difficulties which add to the trouble of passing through the place. The Halls of Anguish were a happy exception to that trend though as WillPower rolled about the best possible set of opponents. He avoided the minotaurs that could have popped up and instead fought poison-tossing Horror Mages, Temple Guard jungle bunnies, and Death Brigadiers who had the underground tentacle attack. Nothing here presented any serious danger and everything was easy to kill due to low health or a lack of appropriate elemental resistances. The Temple Guards had no fire resistance while the skeleton mages had no fire or lightning resistances at all, with only the not-scary Death Brigadiers having some elemental protection. WillPower feasted on this floor and happily cleared everything out, even gaining several hundred thousand gold in the process to help his sagging funds in stash.
What would WillPower draw on the Halls of Pain floor? He came down the stairs and I couldn't help but let out a big sigh:
There were Grotesques here and that was bad news indeed. These things had been tough enough to kill back in Act Four before they were juiced up with even more stats as guest monsters. In particular, these things and their pups could newly inflict poison damage on their melee attacks which was really bad for Durga as it shut down his mercenary health regeneration. Instead of Durga standing around and tanking everything without breaking a sweat, now I had to feed him red potions constantly while the Grotesques kept spawning their endless young. I saw this Grotesque boss behind a wall to the west of the entrance and tried to go to the east first instead... only to find that there was a minotaur boss over there, argh! The second monster type was Night Lords who were Lightning Immune which forced WillPower to fall back on the less effective Holy Fire. It took long enough to kill the minotaurs with their 16,000 HP and this made them worse than their Moon Lord cousins that I had seen back in the ice caves. The final monster type ended up being Razor Spine quill rats, which weren't a great opponent either because they liked to sit back and launch their poison-inflicting projectiles from a distance while the Grotesques and minotaurs ran up into melee range. This was a nasty, nasty situation and I could tell within seconds of entering the Halls of Pain that it was going to take hours to clear out this floor.
Before anything else, I needed to clear out enough room for WillPower to operate. The minotaurs were the most dangerous foe which meant WillPower couldn't move to the east, nor could he go to the north where I spotted a second minotaur boss pack behind another wall. West was the only viable direction and that forced me to deal with the Grotesque boss before anything else, luring out its minions one and two at a time to fight them by the stairs. The screenshot above should illustrate just how much effort that took in terms of pups spawned as every Grotesque had to be tagged with Prevent Monster Heal so that Holy Shock would slowly cut through its lifebar, all while feeding Durga potions and returning to town frequently to heal. The stupid little spawns loved to block any attempt to apply PHM status and it frequently reset when WillPower had to return to town even though that's not supposed to happen. I laboriously downed all the minions and then this Lightning Enchanted boss, then had to deal with a second Grotesque boss with the Cursed trait, plus its minions, which was lurking nearby. It took something like a half hour to pull this off and slowly fight my way to the western edge of the map where there was finally enough retreat room to feel safe.
From there, I had WillPower methodically work his way in a counterclockwise sweep of the area as he attempted to find the waypoint and the stairs down to the Halls of Vaught. There are only three map patterns that can appear on each floor of Nihlathak's Temple and WillPower had the best odds to find the waypoint and stairs down by proceeding in this direction. As a full hour passed, and then a second hour, it became clear that the Grotesques were the biggest problem on this floor. Dangerous as the minotaurs might be, they could be split into smaller groups with footwork and then they WOULD die after Durga could get his poison applied to help out Holy Fire. The Razor Spines also weren't too bad once they were encountered on their own, as they were glass cannons that could be bum-rushed down by racing up into their faces and then escaping back to town for a quick heal when their poison stacked up too strongly. But the Grotesques, ugh, there was simply no way to defeat them quickly as every single fight with those stupid things would take long minutes on end. These things are really bad for low-offense variants even though they were never going to outright kill WillPower. I kept wanting to see more of the minotaurs and quill rats even though they were the more dangerous encounters because they would actually die in something less than a geological era!
Eventually WillPower found the stairs to the southwest which meant (after a quick Google search) that the waypoint had to be over on the east side of the floor. I continued making that counterclockwise sweep through the floor, fighting and defeating one group of monsters after another. Close to 90 minutes after starting the Halls of Pain, this brought WillPower back to that original minotaur boss that he had spotted and avoided facing before. This guy was Lightning Enchanted / Fire Enchanted / Magic Resistant which made him completely invulnerable to anything WillPower could do while still having enough offense that he could kill Durga in a matter of seconds. Normally I would let Durga die in these situations and then slowly burn down the boss with elemental auras, but no, Durga *HAD* to be the one to defeat the boss with these traits blocking all elemental damage. Thus I had to pop back to town something like 25-30 times (not an exaggeration) to keep healing Durga while the mercenary ever so slowly cut down the boss with his pitiful physical damage. DR2 keeps a clock on the side of the screen so I know that it took about nine full minutes in total but this boss did indeed die.
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?! 
Finally, after two and a half hours just spent on the Halls of Pain, WillPower was able to reach the waypoint and lock in his progress. He still hadn't finished full clearing this floor, with something like 30% still remaining to be done, but I could come back here in another session to get the remainder when there would hopefully be a less obnoxious enemy draw. It was more important now to press on down the stairs and complete the Halls of Vaught while WillPower still had a clear path down there. By the way, check out where these bosses had been placed relative to the stairs leading up to the Halls of Anguish. The entry area had been completely ringed with bosses and no safe room to go in any direction, yeesh! This was Diablo 2 at its absolute hardest and most frustrating self.
Thankfully things were much better on the Halls of Vaught. The monsters on this much smaller floor were Flayers and their shamans, cold arrow-shooting skeleton archers, and Tomb Vipers throwing the bizarre poison Bone Spears only found here. Although the poison from the snakes was annoying, none of these enemies had much in the way of health or resistances and they all died in a tiny fraction of the time that had been needed for minotaurs and Grotesques. To provide an indication of how much faster this floor was, I guessed wrongly every time on where Nihlathak was located and still cleared out the other three quadrants of the Halls of Vaught in less than 30 minutes of real-world time. That was a real blessing as I was approaching five continuous hours on this session and desperate to be done for the night.
Nihlathak's quadrant was eerily deserted as there were no enemies to be found anywhere until approaching the back room where he was hiding out. That room was packed with monsters, of course, and I made sure to start luring them out where they could be killed outside of his Corpse Explosion range. WillPower had 85% fire resistance and 1750 HP which was about as prepared as I could be for this threat without having some kind of gear with physical resistance on it. Once the back room was largely cleared out and Nihlathak had only his Slayer minions remaining, WillPower and Durga moved in to engage with the traitor. You can never get rid of all the minions because he'll keep summoning more, although it was funny when there were a few points in time with nothing else present besides Nihlathak and my two characters. One of the huge problems with this battle is that the graphics on screen don't match what gets hit by Corpse Explosion; despite all my care, WillPower was hit several times by Nihlathak's detonations, even when I swear he wasn't standing next to any of the bodies on the ground. Those hits dealt about 600 damage apiece to WillPower and when two of them landed in quick succession I had to drink a full rejuv for safety. That was as close as he got to beating WillPower though and it only took about a minute of stabbing from Durga and electroshock treatment from Holy Shock to finish up with this threat. Goodbye and good ridddance!
I was originally going to put all of Act Five onto one page but this report ended up being long enough to warrant splitting into two parts. Continue on to the next page for the conclusion of WillPower's journey.
