KoPhanTom
- KingOfPain
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KoPhanTom
- KingOfPain
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Normal and Nightmare victories, with Hell continuation Normal Difficulty Dlvl 2 - Book
- FB, Heal. 4 half blues 2 full blues. Creepy Shrine on 2. Dlvl 3 - 1 full and 2 half blues. Book - 1 Fwall, 2 Inferno. Staff of Healing 28 charges. Used 5 pots against Leo at lvl 9. First time any pots are used. Leo dropped a 12 AC kite shield :) Dlvl 4 - Hard
leather AC 12 from a barrel :) Entered dlvl 4 at clvl 10 with 5 to magic. Have problem stunning Fleshclan Archers, but that wasn't a problem since I am not getting hurt. Can almost stand there all day to block. Did I tell you Dex rules? Clvl 11 2 more to magic for heal spell and stick, 3 to str plus 2 from Creepy gave enough str to use Claymore. From then on, I plan to put all points to str to stay on top of the Stunning curve, then an occasional point to magic to keep up the heal spell. One ID used for the Deadly Claymore dropped by skel boss. This gives me bastard sword damage with only 35 str, so I can afford (cautiously) to up keep the heal spell :) Dlvl 5 - Book
of Firewall Dlvl 6 - StoneClan
Archer - Ouch! Dlvl 7 - Boo!
First room was empty except for a (after Id after the game) Snake Staff
of Res :\ Why do I only find these beauties in solo Ironman when no self-res
is allowed. Dlvl 8 - Unseen,
FireClan and their Archers relatives. Hmm Dlvl 8, no boss. Don't know
if that's good or bad, sure could use some drops for a change. And, more
freaking Familiars! End of Cats
- Clvl 17 Why ID’d so much? Well, all those except the shield came from deep Cats and I have tons of IDs. My AC is pitiful for caves so I was hoping for a little luck. I have only used 5 potions for the game so far, and all of those used against Leo. 8 casts from Heal stick was used plus some from memory and 3 Heal scrolls. Still 8 IDs left :) Just give me some Mail and I should sail through Caves :)
Dlvl 9 - Mudman,
Poison Spitter and MudRunner Dlvl 10 - Poison
Spitter - Uh ho. Plaguewrath time. All this within 3
squares from the stairs.. going to be a long lvl. Better find myself a
corral soon. One Slayer dropped a plain Scale mail 23 AC, now total of
53. Woohoo! Ya right ;p Then…You won't believe this, out popped a
plate mail from a small chest. Damn right I am going to ID this - Bless/Sorcery
90/17. 6 ID left, but I needed all the help I can get. I am not kidding
when I say one step at a time. The plate really was the turning point.
At least I am not getting hit with their claws as much. I tried not to
face more than one slayer at a time even when I see just 2, I would run
half way across the dungeon just to lose one. Heavy usage of the Heal
stick. With PW lurking around, I wasn't going to be cheap now and run
around with less than 2/3 of a full globe. I was lucky to see a boss light
over the wall, Plaguewrath dropped Crimson ring of Precision 34/19 Dlvl 11 - Hell
Stone - no problem as long as not swarmed. Fire Resist now 55-65, and
they died fast to my Vicious sword. Dlvl 12 - Frayed
one - Free exp points. From dlvl 9 - Dlvl
12
Dlvl 13 - Black
Knights - not too bad, AC is holding up Dlvl 14 - Fire
Drake and Vortex Lord Dlvl 15 - Azure
Drakes, tough but not bad even 2 at a time. Dlvl 16 - Blood
Knights and Advocates, Duh ;p I cleared around Q3 (the 2 lever room) and a little around D’s room, TK’d the 2 lever to let Diablo out. I then ran up the Town Portal at the back of Q3 and partied on. Then... At the stroke of 12...
Well, it took nearly
4 more hours to clear 3 quarters of lvl 16 afterward. BKs were never a
problem even with the Wizard Spike. What took so long was trying to separate
the lawyers so I can take them on 1-2 at a time. It was costly tho...
pots left at end of game: 5 half reds, 3 full reds, 14 half blues, 1 full
blues, 5 full yellows, 2 Heal scrolls and one Heal stick used up. All
items got ID’d for free at the end of game. Items left behind: Sticks: Golem, Fireball, Guardian and 2 Resurrection Inventory to carry
over into Nitemare game:
NiteMare Dlvl 5 - Stoneclan, Gasher, Burning dead, Hiddens, Fallen. Too easy. Dlvl 6 - Horror and stone archers, Gloom, Familiar Dlvl 7 - Mudman, Overlord and Fireclan mace. This is where I started to go with caution. Smooth sailing once a killing zone is established. Found Heal stick 24 and Religious Dlvl 8 - Horned Demons - Kept myself out of the open and stand around corners to avoid being rammed. Familiar - Pesky little things. Easy to kill yet they are the only monsters that can hurt, especially with 0 Lightning resist. Illusion Weavers - First sign of troubles ahead. Not that I was getting hurt, but missing them with most of my swings was a good warning as I approached Caves. End of Cats Clvl 27, 1 mil to 28 Tip of the Day - An excerpt from the "Batman Guide" soon to be available at stores nation wide (or find it on my site, the DSG) - All bats pause one tile away from you before they attack, Use that to your advantage, hit them when they enter the pausing square. Keep your enemies close to you, Glooms will charge (without pause) if they are 4+ squares from you. The charge itself is not an attack, but Glooms often bypass the “Pause” and do a double attack instantly. Back yourself into a corner, especially against Blinks so they can only blink to 3 possible positions. Dlvl 9 - Nightclan, Blood Claw and Poison Spitter. Tough level, but once a choke was established it went well with the help of Firewalls. Yup, I hate Nightclans especially when they do that spin around, never know what's going to happen when they do that. I was lucky to find a door before I saw any more Nightclans other than the initial 2 by stair. One unexpected tactic I used when I saw doors with dogs and Nightclans - I rushed to plug the doors instead of running and let them spill out. Thanks go to Cyrene's Cave Guide for the reminder. Dogs don’t usually spit when they are near you. The Blood Claws weren't too bad. Between using the Vampire sword to regain mana, I was using the Flaming/Accur hammer on them. Ya, Flaming is a waste and hammer not stunning but I was more concern about hitting it and blocking the hits. Dlvl 10 - Obsidian Lord, Poison Spitter... better be careful. A conflict in my mind already, should I go with full Magic resist or 0 resist for blocking incase I run into Plague Wrath's pack? The Obs Lords made the decision for me - I needed the highest AC and Dex to barely stay alive. And, I have enough room to run around by now. It ended up I never even took a single spit from PW and the gang because they didn't even see me when they all died to Firewalls. Dlvl 11 - Near
Death Experience.
Used 6 pots and 7
recreated BF trips for the level. Items are showing wear and tear. Tip of the Day - Don't be afraid to run back up the stairs as soon as you see/hear monsters on entrance (or even a door opening as in cats). This will give you time to come up with a best possible tactic and time to change gear if available. Always enter the next level with full health. Dlvl 12 - Pit beast, Cave Viper and FireDrake. I may make it sound too easy to gross over the details, but we know from dlvl 10-11 they won’t be a big problem once a choke/door is available. A warrior with his own Firewall spell rocks :) At a glance, the items look nice. Hmmm...too bad the prefixes and suffixes are scattered over so many items. I think Luck was on Tom's side - The situation was hopeless when he was on lvl 10 (Plague Wrath and Slayers) in normal diff, then out popped the Blessed/Sor field plate from a chest. Guess what popped out of a chest on lvl 12 this time? A Jade/Abs field plate! What's with that!? It does sound nice, but it might as well be a T-shirt. OTOH, it does last a little longer than rags and I wouldn't have ID'd it if it wasn't a plate. Even my Blessed/Sorcery is not giving me enough protection against melee, it's only 90 AC (not much better than a high grade plain full plate. I am just glad I didn't ditch the Flaming/Accur hammer, I need all the dex I can get with such low AC. The shields started to wear down ever since Tom entered Caves. I was worry about the sorry state of my equipment. 1 sword and 2 shields had gone red and the plate yellow. I repaired one of the shields and noticed it only lost 1 dur. Being lazy to write footnotes, I repaired all items myself instead of calling on the Hidden and Religious shrines found earlier. 3 dur lost on the plate. Dlvl 13 - Snow witches, Cave Viper and Lava Maw. Cave Vipers are not a problem by themselves. Witches can be hunted down 1-2 at a time, and, I was gaining enough mana to heal with the Vampire. I was tempted and wore the Jade/Abs plate together with the Cry/Star helm for more Magic resist. Bad mistake! 2 dogs hidden by the corner got me while chasing down a witch, it took 6 reds to walk out of the stun. Still, taking on 2 dogs at once is really pushing it even with my full AC setup. Luckily, dogs are easier to lose when there's enough room to run. Now, here's another difference between carry-in-inventory or recreated-in-town Blood Fountain - I was relying on the Vampire sword rather than using better weapon because I wasn't going to make a town trip after every single witch kill. And, if I get hurt faster than I can regain my mana, I just drank my own pots. Well, lvl 13 took 5 hours! I need a break and to rethink my tactics too. By the way how Diablo seems to have a theme when seeding monsters, it looks like there are going to be more witches, dogs and snakes on 14. What to ID? 2-3 jewel,
1 SWBow and 4 low AC field plates. Not too optimistic about the plates
since they will have to be better than Blessed to offer protection against
melee and I can already max resists (in odd ways). I am not even sure
resist is a good thing. I did experiment on a couple of lone witches with
0 resist and I do have enough Dex (especially with hammer) to block almost
all BStars from 1-2 witches but not enough Dex to dodge them. Tip of the Day: Don't forget Hell stairs are good places to hide too. The game treats the stairs as a full wall and better. Better because you can see the other side and there are more holes in the wall. Dlvl 14 - Hellspawn,
Lava Maw and Snow witch. So, it’s pretty well the same monster mix as 13 but Hellspawns instead of Vipers. I have decided to go with No-Ac setup after the first (large) room plus a small closet was cleared. My AC was 89 with the Jade/Abs plate but now close to max Magic resist. It was too much of a pain to try to stop and block BStars and spits when the whole level is full of them. Now that I have room to run, I just have to be more careful and avoid facing more than one dog at a time. This is of course easier said than done. I tried to avoid hugging the inside corner whenever I approached a new room to eliminate surprises by dogs. There were still times I had to face 2 and twice 3 dogs at a once, but I was ready. I would run back to hide behind corners and changed gear on the move. I would switch in the Saber of Speed for just 2 dogs, and also the Blessed/Sor plate if 3 dogs. Otherwise, the enter level was slaughtered with my trusty Vampire sword. This time I was able to stay down in the dungeon with no use of Blood Pool, but a few red pots. Dlvl 15 - Hellspawn
and Magistrates
Almost all witches, Black Jade and Red Rex included, were lured to this execution room. Notice that I can hit the witches with my arrows but their BStars fizzles out by the column? Magistrates were easier this time around, I had almost full Lightning resist with the Obs/Perf bow and enough damage plus Tohit. Laz and company was done in the traditional (for me anyway) way. 4 rows of Firewalls took care of the 4 doormen. Btw, there are always 4 doormen in Laz’s chamber and the first one on the right is on the first row immediately inside the chamber, second one on the right is on the third row. The first one on the left is on the second row, and the second one on the left is on the fourth row if they are undisturbed. You can approach the chamber opening from as far South as the layout would let you, then stop at 4 tiles away without activating anyone. Both unique witches were lured out one at a time to the killing field. Made a mad dash into Laz’s room to invite the two remaining witches to the killing room. Walked into Laz’s chamber diagonally to the right to force him to go left. This walking pattern avoided all the initial barrage of Laz’s Fireballs. He was cornered easily and killed without much lost of HP, but, he sure gave me a taste of what’s ahead on 16. Laz dropped Hard Leather Armor, Black Jade Hunters Bow, Red Rex a Great helm of Precision 11/17 and a blade from the beautiful Bloodlust Tip of the Day: learn to recognize virtual walls where your projectiles can go through the holes in the wall, but missiles from monsters are blocked. Some holes in the wall are more obvious than others. A lot of these holes can be found in the Caves levels where outcroppings round off to the ground and don’t take up a whole game tile. For more details, take a look at Cyrene’s Caves Guide and the D Filez in the DSG Tips section. Bonus tip: Don’t forget the Knight’s move blind-spots (where player or monsters would not be hit by CBs) when shooting Magistrates. If it’s not feasible to stand that close to a Magistrate because you may activate/face too many, try to stand 5-6 steps in a straight line (45 degree angles) from them. At that point, the main bolt would usually seperate and miss you. Keep your cool and take a quick look for more spots the CB misses. Dlvl 16 - Blood
Knights and Advocates again, don’t they ever give up? Advocates, on the other hand, was a totally different story. They have to be lured away from their pack one by one. The damage a single Advoc can inflict was alarming even with near max fire resist. Nearly 2 hours after, the parameter of Q3 was cleared at the cost of one full belt of half reds plus a few Heal with the stick. Dying is simply not an option this deep into the dungeon. No resources were spared - Heal and potions are used way before the danger point. The only way I would die now is if I ran out of potions. It would take another 6+ hours before I can clear the dungeon at the rate it’s going. Time to switch hats for 7 more Dex - A helm of Precision instead of the Diamond/Star I have been using. I TK’d the 2 levers and let D out so I can put him out of his misery. Firewalls 4 deep (one mana globe) was laid in front where I chose to make the kill.
Did anyone notice I had only 21 HP left when Diablo died in normal diff? That’s not going to happen again. In the end, the Firewalls were not needed, Diablo can barely scratch me. I drank 2 potions for safety’s sake just in case he flukes a double attack. ...to boldly go where no man has gone before… onto Hell Diff.
Tom was still a little shy from Clvl30, but half a level of caves 9 saw to it he can enter hell diff - with the same equipment since his a teenager. Hell Church
in general was a slice. It was populated mostly with low level critters.
Tom took on the Butcher toe to toe (well, for a split second, long enough
to have a reality check), right away the Butcher took half Tom's hp. Which
is, thankfully, a much needed reminder how fast his hp will deplete when
hit by even the lowly monsters. *Don't get cocky* From experience, Tom knew he didn't have the needed AC and then Dex to block Leo. Lvl8 Holy bolt would not hurt Leo either with his low magic ToHit. So, Leo was avoided until a large room was cleared and Tom showed Leo his trusty Obs/Perf SWBow. The trick was to get Leo to hug the walls and/or go thru corridors so the arrows would be line up for his approach. Eventually, 2 pots and many many minutes after, Leo cooperated and died. An Aquinara's Hatchet was the reward that never saw any action. Lvl 5 saw Stalkers,
Hiddens, Shadow Beast, Stone Clan and their archers friends. So this is
where my ac does not count anymore…important to get that first swing
in, otherwise be blocklocked for a long time to come. Lvl 6 - Rats,
Unseen, Familiar, Stone Clan, Acid Beast and their boss. Lvl 7 - Night
and Fire Clan, Overlord and Familiar. The going was tough, but the tough got going. ¾ of the level cleared with minimal resources, Tom had nearly 20 potion of each red and blue. Although he never expected to see hell caves in the beginning, it certainly look hopeful now - with a new found Blood Fountain :) Oh, what about the
Night Clan boss Blighthorn Steelmace? Piece of cake if… Too late! Tom was
dead in a split second. R.I.P. KoP
Hell Difficulty Posted
June 25, 2000.
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