Cinderella, Softcore Firebolt Sorceress (1.14 lod)

[Boro]

   
Here it is... half a year late?

As for how it went... Act V was definitely fun, and full of candy.

for starters, a Pul rune in bloody foothills, and from fighting hell kitties and imps none the less!


then a 3 socket mage plate somewhat later, which is more than I could have ever hoped for.

In the crystalline passage Frozen River, Nokozan Relic dropped. It was bad for offense, but it could help in Hell Arcane Sanctuary.

To make the deal even sweeter, I gambled the most schizophrenic amulet ever. Great for act IV:

Of course, I used neither of these items yet. I needed no candy for nightmare, and I even had unspent skill points to spare...

The Frozen Tundra was possibly the greatest time of my life. Bone Archers as far as eye can see.

Dodging between arrows and plinking them down one by one was incredibly fun. No teleport, all footwork. It was also hard, and bosses commanded some respect... Not quite hell yet, but getting close. Needless to say: Thadar did a wonderful job soaking up the extra elemental damage and providing me cover with his body.


Closing upon Baal, (The ancients were a nonissue... No cursed, no might, no ES, No fanaticism, no holy freeze) I was having trouble getting equipment to raise my strength, so I turned to a very unorthodox solution.

Larzuk for a flawless gem?



Why not?
(as a side note, it is only now that I realize the extent of how extremely lucky I am with that circlet. Resists, Strength and +1 skill, and a free socket slot)

Going down to the throne of destruction, the draw was ghoul lords, vipers, and succubi. Don't let these images fool you, there was plenty of giving ground and dodging, but firebolts got the job done.



(If you look closely, the viper in the third picture is visible in the low left corner of the second one.)

Eventually it was down to the really nasty gang. Ventar's crew...

And the Minions of Destruction... (look at poor Thadar! The sacrifices he makes for me...)

This was where resistances became immunity-like. There was NO way to beat through these guys' regeneration, and I was forced to break out my lower resist charges.

it was not a clean solution, and it was expensive, but it got the job done.

Baal as you can expect, was fairly anticlimax: Back yourself to a wall, tape down the right mouse button, and drink potions occasionally. Oh and don't stand in range for his orange stuff I guess.



Aand that was for the end of nightmare... Does that make me conqueror? Not in game, but I know i haven't died, and it's both a wonderful, and a terrible thing. Wonderful, because finally a character who hasnt died before hell difficulty. Terrible because I'm doing my darnedest to keep her alive, going as far as not to play her at all when I'm tired.

But that is the present, and back then I was just very happy. As here ended the tale of the firebolt sorceress in nightmare. All I wanted to accomplish I did.

All that was left was to assign my skilll points: Ten into frozen orb to raise it to level 15, and the rest into firebolt synergies. I also equipped all my candy, and voila

This was Definitely hell-worthy damage!

[Boro]

And it has finally come to this.

Hell difficulty.

Cinderella started hell difficulty with:

• The rare circlet with +1 sorceress skills, +11 Strength, + 9 all resists and +29 life socketed with a flawless amethyst for +8 strength. Gamblled.
  
• Enlightenment runeword in a Mage Plate: It has +2 sorceress skills, +Warmth, +30 fire resist and other things too. Found the pul rune and the plate in Act V nightmare
  
• Magical Sharkskin Belt with gold find and some weak lightning resists.
  
• Leaf runeword staff made in a +3 firebolt +1 telekinesis short staff. (+3 fire skills, +3 firebolt, +3 warmth, and other things) Shopped in act I normal, made in act II, used for Duriel and from Act V onwards.
  
• Glacial staff (+3 cold skills), shopped in nightmare
  
• 2 fast cast / resist rings, got them in normal
  
• Burning Amulet with Poison length reduction, dropped in Act 3 normal
  
• Sander's Riprap
  

What is hell difficulty like for a firebolt sorceress with a tiny kick of frozen orb?



Not the easiest, but not nearly as bumpy as with the other characters. Before entering hell difficulty, I did change a few pieces of my equipment (Enlightenment instead of Stealth, Magefist instead of my previous gloves, and I was now using Sander's riprap), allocated my saved up skill points, and got a pretty solid damage out of that. 

The extra damage did make a difference. non-immune enemies died in 2-3 hits, and fallen in an orb or two. Teleport was also helpful, although it took me time, and a few weeks of break to get into the habit of having using it in the first place, as getting cornered when I forgot was pretty bad...

I needed to get accustomed to the new controls, because up until now it was enough to switch weapons for Frozen orb and firebolts, but now I had teleport, and there were times when I switched weapons, only to find out I left teleport as my active skill. I needed to get into the habit of switching it back to my attacks once I was finished teleporting around. For this reason and because the danger level went up ridiculously high, the doom knight minigame was off the table. From now on it was a serious firebolt sorcie, no games.

Caves were relatively easy, not many fire immunes, so firebolt did it's wonders. The danger was high, but so was the clearing speed.

Level 2 though got me caught, and I was forced to end my attempt at the sparkly chest.


Once I did get the hang of things however, well, this happened.



Next up was getting to dark wood. Obviously, there was the underground passage in the way, and if anything could serve sneaky archer groups and nasty stairs traps in a sardine can, it was that place. Even better, my first expedition didn't find the stairs up before I had to end it, so another round was due, and oh boy was it full of struggle...

Yep, that's an archer boss buddying with his conviction-bearing friend.

Level 2 was surprisingly doable though, no stairs traps of note, no extra fast bosses, no double immune extra fast fellows, so I could grab the treasure for once! It was junk and got sold.

Entering dark wood started well, since the lineup consited mostly of carvers, their shamen, and the occasional skeleton archer or quill rat. Nothing fast, although the archers could hide behind the trees and shoot at me without warning. Still, this was preferable to vile stalkers running up to me and potentially spawning a double immune boss.


Treehead woodfist made up for all that though. Extra fast and Strong with cursed, and a fire enchanted for a nice topping? I don't know if magic resistant would have been even better for an extra fast double immune pain in the rear., but he wasn't, I thanked him for his cooperation, and set out to find myself the closest waypoint, which happened to be the black marsh one.


Speaking of the black marsh, I had no intention of fighting the countess. She was double immune, I had no static (or I forgot that I have it), and Thadar isn't exactly a oneshotting bringer of doom. (He is a really helpful guy though, I couldn't have done this without him and he even killed Bishibosh!) Not to mention the stairs traps that could end my so far deathless record, all for what is basically a gamble for runes I most likely won't use in the end.

So guess where the Waypoint was!

This game just loves me.

[Boro]

Since Treehead Woodfist was so cooperative last time, (he nearly killed me) I could go and retrieve the free ID sessions from Tristram, I mean fetch Deckard Cain from his cage. As you can see, it was a walk in the park... This was the "nice" archer boss pack. The other was a might enchanted multishot, who were picked off one by one as they rounded a fence corner.

These fellows? Run and gun. Run and gun.

The screenshots actually show my second run at this place, as the first time I was ending a session, and the next one needed some warmup before tackling the obstacles before me. Obstacle #1 is pictured below.

I deliberated on this for a long time. If I went down, and everything went according to the plan, I could hopefully get a Lum rune, and perhaps live with above-zero resists for the rest of my life. If not, well, there goes Cinderella's deathless record.

Since I could handle the archers so well, I decided to give it a shot. I was in a good mood, and ready to kick some demon hind quarters.

The first level was pretty routine, as far as hell difficulty goes. However it was not that hard to spot that the place was crawling with fire immunes, and the run quickly devolved into a tour de force in frozen orb sorcery.

The second level had some monsters camping on the stairwell, not a good sign, but no boss pack, so I could handle it.

On the third level a boss pushed me back to the stairs room, teleporting was required to establish some sort of safe grounds.

And thus I made it to the fourth level. At this point I was pretty excited. Boss packs were tough, but could be handled, scary archers could be herded around corners, thadar was still a potent meatshield... if this continued, if I could get a quick stairs down, and get through the boss packs on level 5, the countess would be a foregone conclusion.

So I went down...

Then the room immediately after the starting bend (Pentagram, three exits) had a Double immune (Fire/Cold) extra fast devilkin boss pack, who were on my tail no matter how much I teleported around. I could kill, all told, ONE minion, then I was frantically trying to avoid them, I didn't even get a shot off once they were on me. I couldn't teleport deeper into the level, since blindly teleporting into another room could lead to all sorts of trouble, and I had no loop track to fall back to. Not even enough space to toss out a town portal... 

I fumbled once, took a couple of hits, and oh my health orb dropped to a quarter! This was enough for me. I paused the game, let my racing heart calm down a bit as I stared at the screen.

...and I pulled out.


The next session saw me skipping the hole, and the pit, and going through the tamoe highlands relatively unopposed. Mages, Rogues, archers, devilkin, theye were the usual suspects, and they were gunned down as such. Sure the occasional boss pack shook up the otherwise routine fights. but this was textbook. No exra fast, no cramped corridors, the monastery gate was reached.

The only enemies I feared were the thorn beasts, but they didn't show up, so I didn't bother hunting for the extra fast blue one.

The fellows guarding the other gate though. Spitters, Archers, Mages... one bright company for the nighttime.

The outer cloister was secured, the flanks... let's not talk about them. One black rogue ate Thadar, firebolts ate that speedy bastard, three champion devilkin shamen, plus a few normal ones, forced me to loop after loop after... and so on and so forth, around them until their minions either shattered, or the big ones dropped.

With that mess over, i was hoping for a bit easier time in the Barracks. However, the welcoming committee was ready for me

Archers. Just what I wanted! not

But this wasn't all. I was about to meet the objectively worst AND the best thing in Lord of Destruction: The death clan goats. These guys have NO immunities in hell, but they do have 75% fire resistances. It's as if the developers forgot to change their max fire resistance (from old diablo 2) to 100%, like they did for everything else in LoD.

However, these guys also come in packs, and in this case, the first was an extra fast mana burn boss pack.

Tempt, shoot, run round and round, turn back, take a shot, don't look at enemy health bar OR mods, and keep going... I ran, I shot.. and this guy still didn't die. Then eventually..

This was a massive relief, after what seemed an eternity of tempting and running.

Deeper in there wasn't much better, but FEBs allowed me to break out the frozen orbs.

More goats, more running...

And what does fate give? Something that's worse than my circlet.

Deeper in, I get to abuse corners even more. And if it sounds easy, it isn't... Every time the arrows hit me, every time they come flying around, it's surprisingly tense.

And we end up at the Smith himself.

He is NOT extra fast, as you can see, yet he was still way too speedy for my tastes. Room after room did he chase me, and it took an age to whittle his health down.

Closing the session was a nice trip down to the jail waypoint, so I wouldn't have to go through the barracks again.

[Boro]

There wasn't much to say about the jail. Cinderella enjoyed the shooting gallery provided by the barred areas, and that most enemies were either slow, chillable, or both. Pitspawn was also closed in one such gallery, easy to kill



There were some nasty bosses on level 3 I couldn't screenshot, but I recall a lot of running back through previously cleared rooms to stay ahead of them. Best of all, was how at the end it turns out, I didn't even need to fight them!



Then what gives? The inner cloister's past end had this nice fellow, thank goodness for his weak pathing algorithm, else it would have been a hairy fight. As it was, I just needed to wait.



Finally the cathedral, while containing numerous bosses and the return of Shamen, was doable with the rather large loop track and lack of extra fast threats. Once bone ash & co were dispatched, Cinderella took a photo at the altar.



And that was just enough for the short session I could take. And the way it turned out, my next one became a short livestream.

But for those who'd rather see it in my words:

Cathedral - usual suspects, some bosses had to be drawn out, no big deal. Some dark ones in inner cloister had to be cleaned out, to avoid them biting me in the back, but nothing else notable.

Catacombs level 1: Fallen, and Rat men spitters, and lots of shaman bosses. Rat men were the biggest problem, with their speed. Every corner I feared running into extra fast packs and being dead before I could blink, but luckily, no such a thing happened. I could also skip the last quarter of a level using this magnificent tactic: If there was a boss in a room i didn't want to visit, I left him alone.

But catacombs level 2? Boss pack in the entrance room, this time, dark ones with their shamen! Best of all, I had to prematurely end the session, thanks to real life events, so I didn't find the next waypoint.




---

And here we are now.

As it stands, I have to go through a quarter or so of the first level, and the stairs trap on the second, or risk rerolling the place, with even more chance of running into rat men through another unexplored Catacombs level 1.

[Boro]

So, what happens next? Well, clear the inner cloister, through the right wall of the cathedral, down to the first level.

A loop track was established, the shaman and the afllicted objecting to it were quickly firebolted-orbed down to oblivion, and I thanked my luck for not sending anything extra fast or double immune at me.

My luck continued, as the second level had no bosses around the stairs, enough space for me to maneuver in, and even a short loop track! But then, I saw a double immune Shaman, and oh boy, when I brought up the lower resist wand to let my Thadar handle him, a bunch of extra fast lightning enchanted afflicted come at me, welp, abandon that "arm" of the level, try to look for the WP elsewhere, but... no such luck.

Once the rest of the level was cleared, I went back. The extra fast fellows could be strung out, and since they were weak to firebolt (0% resistance), I stopped them at the corners and doors as I retreated, taking out a chunk or two of the boss's health, and retreating back. I didn't want to be eaten by a stray boss now that I'm so close to Andariel now!

Then the double immune shaman. After I lured away his minions from resurrection range, and had the game erase a few of their corpses, he was really a cakewalk, as long as I kept him lower-resisted and thadar fed with potions.

Once the dreadful duo was defeated, I could finally claim the Waypoint. No more worry about fetishes until act III and act V.

One thing left for this act: To kill andariel.

The waypoint was suitably far from the stairs down to level 3, (about as far as walking there from the Inner Cloister waypoint), so I decided to continue.

(cats) Level 3 had the nice spawn of more Afflicted(LI), Ghouls(FI), Dark ones and their Shamen(FI), and finally Vampires(CI). the vampires had the worst bunch, double immune with lifesteal, who I had to portal park, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The stairs up to level 2 were in roughly two thirds to the east of the map, with a large portion of the map to the northwest, and southwest, which I explored first. Not finding the stairs to level 4 there, I then proceeded to the south, making sure I clear out the dead ends so I can further use them to portal park nasty encounters.

...to my demise.

The last dead end before the stairs contained a boss group of afflicted.

I ran away from them, but since they are not Fire Immune, and I'm trying to be a firebolt sorceress, I swapped back to my fire staff from my cold one...

but had teleport left on my RMB.

In the time it would have taken to kill one minion with firebolts, I was in the middle of the pack, with a sliver of health left. I tried teleporting out, I tried drinking...

(the image url even ends with Vex)

And so ends the deathless run. Of all the things to die from, an otherwise harmless boss pack without any resistances or immunities, auras, or extra speed, but even more importantly, my own mistake for having left teleport on my fire staff...

After half a year, of waiting for the right moments when I wouldn't fall asleep during play, even sleeping before the session, this was a miserable defeat with noone to blame but myself.


For corpse recovery, frozen orb was the only option. Firebolt had 450-500 damage, useless at this level.

Yet while I recovered Cinderella's body without any real complications, a part of her soul remained there.

To add insult to injury, all I had to do to avoid all of the above was to keep going straight!

The demon queen's lair didn't have anything particularly dangerous. ghoul bosses, some shamen, and of course Andariel, who was weak to fire.



And what does weak to fire mean?

She even dropped a twisted essence of suffering! I threw that into the trashbin, no need, I haven't even touched Akara's respecs!

Cinderella headed out to act II

---

The recording of the run is available here:

[Boro]

Onwards to act II!

It's funny: It's the first time I reached act II on my own, as a sorceress, in hell difficulty, and with a variant, no less! Anyways, I was in Lut Gholein, with having bugged Andariel (Not that it matters, I'm never seeing her again.), and I've decided to be a bit more cautious. Since Radament's skill book seems well within my reach, I've pushed my lower resist wand (No shields) to my switch slot, only to be used in cases of emergency, and picked my Glacial Staff as my main weapon. This did away with the switching and leaving teleport on right click problems, but left me with a weaker (700-1000-ish) firebolt.

So down to the sewers I went. First I tried the docks entrance. If the stairs were nearby, I could potentially skip the whole first level of burning dead archers, and have an easier start with level 2.

OK, so about this place: Burning dead have fire immunity, so far everyone follows. Then the Sand Raiders also have fire immunity, while the regular mummies are poison immune. This meant a lot of frozen orbing, with a bit of firebolting here and there to conserve mana.

The entrance was a T-intersection with a way northeast and a way southeast. I tried south, poked a few packs down, but my maneuvering has woken up a couple of extra fast might enchanted sand raider MINIONS, and I bugged the hell out of there.

So far no dice on entrance #1, but #2 could be a better start, as it has the whole standard "sewers-like" entrance, with two loop tracks and lots of cover to break up archer packs, great for a teleport-happy sorceress like me. Best of all, it was always free of monsters, so I didn't have to worry about stairs traps.

The draw wasn't friendlier here, and I had to execute no less than two bosses in this starting loop. One of them being a teleporting Burning Dead Archer, who had the bright idea to teleport right next to me while I was running half circles around him, the telekilling bastard.

Still, for the most part, the level sort-of eased up, and the boss packs weren't too bad, but the regular archer groups, they were a hassle enough, as any arrow could stun me.





Slowly but surely, I made my way back to the old entrance, and found the worst news of the run: The stairs weren't to the south, but to the north, where at least two boss packs roamed happily!



But first things first, separate the extra fast raiders from the archers and the might boss.




Then, the bone archers: They were a hell to dodge, but after Lots and Lots of frozen orbs off-screen, the barrage of arrows slowed down. Then when I tried to advance, Conviction pops up and thadar gets killed.

Wonderful. There is a third boss!

Let's see if I can take them out.

Okay, one more archer, one more sand raider minion that wandered off, and woo here we go! Conviction on me, might on the minion, and


By the time I got Thadar out of there he was cursed too! Oh boy, this was getting better!!!

Down to sewers, peek-a-boo! Kill-a-minion, boss's light radius shows up, pop back to town, pop down again, pop out of cover, shoot, hide, shoot, hide, dodge arrow, step! Then, success! Conviction boss dead, I didn't see his abilities. Does it make it extra dead? I'm going to settle for Extra Scary. Conviction EScB for short.


This left - check this out - only the might boss and it's minions left to fight. Well, if it isn't ANOTHER extra fast sand raider! Of course I had to fumble with the hotkeys again, so here's a pic of cinderella bravely teleporting into Extra Fast Might boss's face!


Needless to say, much hitting of buttons ensued, I'm pretty sure I used at least one more full rejuv than I had to, and hitting the esc key too, but at least I teleported out intact, and caught the boss' stats.

Magic Resistant... neat. After him there were only a token few minions and regular enemies to clean up. No might or conviction to multiply their power, I could finally reach the stairs! (In a way I lucked out, the stairs were right next to the entrance, except I lost my foothold and had to clear the entire level from the other entrance to regain it )


Onwards to level 2:

Entrance is hook-shaped, bad for maneuvering.

And just beyond the second corner, a very interesting enemy found me - an archer who wasn't fire immune! Time to fetch the fire staff!


It's cohorts were taken out with frozen orb, then, making sure there was a corner or Thadar between me and the boss, it was finally taken out of submission.



More dry corpses and burning dead archers followed, as Cindy took the path to the left, with a particularly nasty one guarding the path to the waypoint, but the heavy use of a fire resist shrine, thadar, and of course happy feet tactics combined with teleporting behind cover to break their suppressive volleys of fire saw Cinderella through.

In other words, it was a sweaty slog

Once the waypoint was secured, the rest of the level was a cinch. One extra fast corpse later, the way to level 3 was clear.

And level 3...

Cold immune huntresses, fire immune burning dead mages, some poison immune corpses.

This time the majority of enemies wasn't FI, so I swapped my staff to the fire one, but kept the cold amulet (Freezing of Thawing) on, and thus managed a somewhat balanced output of both elements, eliminating the need to swap weapons when an immunity presented itself.

Of the enemies of note there was an Extra fast kitten, who I couldn't photo (again), a multishot / holy shock mage I almost died photo-ing, and a fire enchanted dry corpse.



The notable loot was a white coronet, and an amulet I was praying to be +3

It was, except only for paladin defensive auras

The white coronet turned into a pretty nice imbue though, so I stashed it for the time I'd need to go all out with cold damage



And of course, the host of today's fun was none other than the big bad Extra Fast Mana Burn Magic Resistant Radament!


His group was a tough one: Extra fast melee burning dead, all sorts of mages (Thankfully, the non-fire casters died in one hit) and a bunch of cats! Ugh, I had to take the time to sort them out, pick up the loot, clear out the other parts of this level, just so that the game would clear up some corpses.

Of course, once the cohorts were out of the picture, the big one fell in an anticlimax game of tank and spank.



Skill point spent on Meteor for synergy.

Cinderella will see you out in the desert.

[Boro]

Cinderella headed out for the desert.

There were no leapers

The chorus sang.

Hell froze over

...and diablo was feeling cold because his spikes would pierce any coats he would buy.

The end.

...

Okay, not so far yet, but the lack of those annoyances really made things a breeze. Beetles were slow, cats were cold immune, it was a firebolt sorceress' field day! Things went so well in this session I really intended for nothing more than a shopping spree at Drognan in hopes of finding a good staff, that I just HAD to continue.

Down to the Stony tomb I went.



Somewhat populated large-room entrance with lightning bolt throwing burning dead mages, but they for some reason are only immune to the element they throw, unlike the ones in Nightmare who had multiple resistances, and could actually withstand damage. Here they are just weak to fire, immune to lightning, a good showcase of Blizzard hacking up their old system after including immunities and ditching the "max resist" thing on monsters with LoD.

Other than that, the rest of the level was a mop up. Scarabs, mummies (Decayed), no big problem, and the level was four rooms including the entrance.



Level 2 presented more pressing challenges, as I was forced back to the tiny entrance by a boss. However, once I got my foothold, the other three rooms were easily mopped up. Creeping Feature was weak to firebolts. ONWARDS TO THE DRY HILLS!



Welp, so much for an easy walk, the cats in the hills are Fire Immune for a change. This fellow was also cold enchanted, which meant I had to go back to the waste to have enough space for him! Fanaticism meant I had to take care, but all in all, he wasn't too much of a proble...



Did health just go from near-full to zero?!

I really didn't expect this to happen. Near the edge, almost full health, I should have been able to avoid this, but I didn't. The game legitimately killed me.

Oh well, this is softcore, we wake up in town, face down, and keep going. I must say I had no qualms about using the terrain features against the next boss



But other than these, the dry hills went down without a hitch. The halls were found, and for some reason the Oasis entrance was right at the halls one, so I took a quick peek.



Lightning immune vultures, black blood hawks, and beetles? No problemse here! I found the teleport on the other half of the oasis map, but since I was getting tired, I decided to end the session by returning to the hills and grabbing that waypoint.



For our next session, we go down to see what perpetually resurrected hordes of undead look like.

[Boro]

And it came to the halls of the dead, where I realized that this sorceress had no reason to go down to, except to prepare for the inevitable Tombs and their resurrecting hordes of burning dead.

Of course, first I had to get there. 3 boss packs near the waypoint, one on the way there, one of them was cold enchanted, and I stayed far away from her when she died, but with perseverance, and lots of trips back to town to sell the loot, I made it, and this foray could begin in it's earnest.



The entry was... rough. I entered, the returned start pouring in, and the greater mummy is reviving them just as I feared. What's better, it's a spiral entryway. Luckily, I down them faster than they are revived, and eventually I get a few shots at the greater mummy.



There were two more of them to go, but with the few resurrected returned turned to my brave Thadar, Cindy's firebolts put an end to the tide of bones!



Phew, One tiny corner secured. Next up were fire immune shock bats, with 10frame attacks, best avoided at all costs, although I had good fast hit recovery. There were some more skeletons and another greater mummy from a hallway, but step by step I gained an actual foothold down there!

The fighting always went like this: Cinderella tried to wear down the undead horde, and when an opening presented itself, went for the greater mummies. If the numbers were too much, then a retreat to split up the undead hordes was necessary, but aside from that, the bats were the only problem.

My first foray was to the northwest, where only one boss barred my way, and after one large room, the corridor ended in the stairs down.



Rather than going down, I figured I'd see what else the level holds, and went Northeast next. If you guessed Bats, Returned and Hollow ones (gr. mummy), congratulations! But not just that, there were boss packs and a turn to southwest as well. First boss was this bat on crack. Please don't ask me how I wore it down, I don't want to remember.




Then I teleported into the next room, and welp, another boss pack, time to beat a hasty retreat!



On the way back I find out to my horror that this fellow got lucky on the lottery, and won the "Fire/Cold sorcs hate you" prize, because Magic resist + Cold Enchanted meant an easy cold immunity to go with the fire one. I tried lower-resist teleporting loops on the way back, but there was no downing this fellow right yet. He was left teleport-parked next to the stairs up.



Returning to the room I found him in, I saw a bunch of his minions, Two Greater Mummy bosses(CE, MS Cursed and Extra Strong, MS Cursed), and another mass of greater mummies with yet more returned.



Here you can see what happens when I am cursed and take a hit. Yep, almost lost my teeth there, although hit the escape to catch my breath, as it was too close for comfort. I also missed the rejuv potion key again.

Once I recomposed myself, visited town and let the game clear some of the corpses, the two bosses were pretty doable, as long as I stayed away, lured away, or killed any minions that could potentially score a hit on me.
http://i.imgur.com/iFO1azV.jpg

Back in town, I saw my spoils were enough for another gambling spree, AND to have leftovers for any +3 frozen orb Glacial staff that would inevitably crop up at drognan once I didn't have enough to buy it

Still, here it was: The blazing amulet.



Yep, my Burning amulet of Remedy I had since act III normal has finally been retired!

Still, with that big room and no way to use it... I had to try getting that double immune boss down. I lured him back, set up a portal,



...and we danced the night away.



Once he was low on health (It took long to wear him down, and plenty of Lower Resist charges ), he went to the north corner trying to hide.



Yet all that did was to remove my fear of being killed by it's death explosion. (It's drops were crap)



To top everything off, while clearing the rest of the level, (more multishot greater mummies) I hit level 75, added a point to mastery, and my firebolt's minimum damage reached 4000 with the blazing amulet on!

Level 2 however...

The greater mummy at the entrance wasn't too bad. But the north had an ominous green glow, and the south had an extra fast spear throwing cat boss pack swarm me, force me back to the stairs, and out of the level.



That was it for the halls of the dead. Since I have nothing to earn down there, I am not inclined to try again. Cinderella will insead head onwards to the Claw Viper Temple, for a cool date with Fangskin.

[Boro]

I couldn't stop myself though, I had to try my hand at the Claw Viper Temple. Unshatterable cold immune Bone Warriors and resurrecting guardians, plus really high-health regular mummies(dried corpse) not to mention cold immune claw vipers and salamanders!

First I had to go through the lost city, but the welcoming committee didn't share my sentiments.



Thankfully, Frozen Orb shuts these lurker-leaper things down HARD. Shuts them down as in stunlocks them to any terrain fixture that can stop their movement. The rest of the monster draw (Magic Immune Zombies, Lightning immune Night Cats) were more than susceptible to my 4034-4430 fire damage.

And down there? No guardians, No undead, just snakes, snakes, and more snakes. So I went, room by room, opening doors with telekinesis, sweeping the arcs with firebolts, sometimes cooking entire groups off screen, but more often I was stunning and killing them as they tried to file through the doorway. The worst enemy was a Magic Resistant + Spectral Hit + Extra Strong salamander, but I had enough space to wear him down, even without touching my Lower Resist wand.



Same draw on level 2, same tactics as before: Hose down everything with firebolts, and to illustrate the power of this tactic, ONE enemy made it to my screen. ONE. I was just sweeping left and right, saw sparks fly, saw my kill indicator (tir rune in my staff) flash up, then it flashed no more. Fangskin, and his posse, were scythed down by my fire.




Next up: The harem!

[Boro]

The Palace itself was fairly routine: With the many many fire immunes down there, plus archers, I just went, grabbed the waypoint, and skipped the rest. On level 3, I had suicide teleport #2 happen, this time into a group of archers I couldn't attack from a good angle. I tried positioning myself so that Thadar would tank the arrows for me so I could firebolt the whole bunch down, except I must have fumbled my spell switching, because next thing I know I'm in the middle of the archer pack and there is a death screen. Oh well, time to recover, I walk back, somehow take care of the stragglers (It was a hair raising exercise because archers HURT), and ... I waited for the boss to walk off my corpse, I couldn't do much else, besides running around avoiding his arrows.

Once I got my equipment back however, he was Toast.

In the arcane sanctuary, I headed top-left first, and I decided to switch up my amulet for the Nokozan Relic and it's fire resistances. That got me to a positive, and I felt it as the fire walls weren't hitting me nearly as much as I thought they would. The summoner was at the end of the quadrant, and I happily pranced off to the Canyon of the Magi... to be forced to give up the land as a boss pack pretty much ambushed me after I walked off the waypoint. Oh well, there is always next time, I thought.

For that next time, I decided I'd get the Staff from the Maggot's Lair first, and it went about as well as one would expect the maggot lair to go. Hair raising, bugged, buggy firebolt shooting on narrow corridor at bugs. When I say buggy I don't just mean the occupants, but that half the time I didn't see my firebolts fly, as the corner fights, collisions, and Line of Sight are just busted in that particular area of the game.

There was one particular fight, when I had to fight a two-front war at a corner, where the corner room had a boss pack, while the continuation had a champion and a boss pack all woken up, all sending their young at me.

Another particular bug was how sometimes the eggs couldn't be hit by my firebolts. I tired firewall for kicks too, once everything was dead, but no, not even direct firewalls under the rock worm egg could hit it. Meteor worked fine though.

Other than these particular instances, I enjoyed Thadar's ability to tank, and used a lightning resist 40% rare ammy for the more scarab infested parts. Coldworm itself was fairly easy to dispatch at the end, she didn't breed everything wall-to-wall.

Staff in hand, I went out to the Canyon of the Magi again, to be forced another reroll (not a hard, map reroll, just a soft one, just the monsters) because Thadar was hopelessly mobbed again. This second time, while the draw was still fairly unfriendly (CI melee Cats, FI javelin cats, CI crushers), but there wasn't any hopeless fight around the portal, and I could establish some foothold at last, and from then, I managed to squeeze through. Given the tough draw, I decided to head to the true tomb right away, which was the crescent moon.

Interestingly, the first crusher boss oh this run dropped the Skin of the vipermagi! While it wasn't better than my Enlightenment armor, it had better resists, and 30% faster cast rate, so it could be useful in the upcoming fight against Duriel.

Down in the tombs, the entrance is the right-facing thin crossroads, and the first enemies I meet are preserved dead (PI), while trying the north path. Next up, gorebellies (CI) who could eat a whole half dozen of 4k damage firebolts, and finally to round out the gang some scarabs (LI). The approach I made turned out to be the correct one, as the north path turned east, then southwards to loop into the western path, and that became a boon once I woke up the extra fast MR gorebelly boss to the south. Still, No unravellers, no burning dead, this was a cakewalk! I was unsatisfied though, first the Viper Temple then this robs me of my chance to prove myself? I guess I shouldn't  complain, at least I wasn't driven out of there, and I could use my firebolt to kill things, but the lack of LR was keeping things a bit more lively than I liked.

About halfway through the dungeon I got Howltusk as a drop, as well as a Fal rune. Nothing new I could make with them, so the helm got sold, while the rune stashed, but that gave me an idea to switch things around... 40% lightning resist from the rare amulet, 22% from my 3row belt, and finally 28% from vipermagi, those were enough to max it out for this trip, at the paltry cost of 1400 firebolt damage (avg went down from 4200 to 2800, but the cast rate went up). Now I didn't lose half my health bar every fight with the scarabs, but I needed a lot more firebolts to score kills. Oh well, so it goes.

Eventually, the Orifice room was found and guarded by a champion gorebelly pack, but so it happened that I had enough firebolts for the task.

Anyways, it was time for the biggest of D2's bugs. Juiced up with speed and strength in hell difficulty, the king of the sardine can, lord of pain and killer of variants barred Cinderella's path.

Not wanting to go in there without a plan, I went back to town, drunk 15 minutes worth of thawing potions, gave 6 minutes to Thadar, loaded up on rejuvs, and it was time to go.

Round 1: Fight!

Welp, Thadar goes down to half health from a single attack?, half of the time my teleports just fizzle out, not good, Thadar is down, Duriel's on me, and I'm slowed, I and while I can outrun him, every time I cast he gets to swing at me with a speed that just can't be tempted. I try to make a stand, but even with resists, the damage is just too much. I run, I squeeze off a portal, drink a rejuv, another loop, and back to town.

Duriel - Cinderella
1 - 0

Get back to town, get thadar, try again...

Okay, Outrunning failed, Stand failed, I'm out of tricks. He isn't fire immune, so I won't be using frozen orb, as per variant restrictions.

What else could I do? I broke out my blaze staff.

Yep. It all happened back in Normal, Drognan had a 2socket staff with +3 to blaze, and I had the runes. It was an impulse buy, made and left in stash for nightmare, where I didn't need it.

And now it would serve me once, and only once.

Enlightenment plate on, fire amulet up, blaze staff in hand, Cinderella refused to back down.

Round 2: Fight!

Firebolts flew while thadar lived, and I opened the portal in advance this time, and soon, sooner than I'd have liked, the looping began. How's that song? The one that starts with "Round and round..." and is traditionally sung when fighting Izual. That's how I felt.

So round and round we went. Sometimes he got in hits, and I drank. Then I was out of reds, and the rejuvs too were going down... Nope, this won't do, so I called for a time out.

Duriel - Cinderella
2 - 0

Fill up with reds, get Thadar, go down... Portal up, firebolts in, and round we go again!

Round 3: Fight!

Then I ran out of stamina. Given how I had 345 Vitality, that was a LOT of running involved (Walking was a death sentence with his attack speed and holy freeze, even with 40% FRW). I ducked into the portal at the last pixel of running, and it was back to Lyssander for potions.

Duriel - Cinderella
3 - 0

But duriel was down to his last quarter health! Stamina potions in hand, Thadar back up again, I went down. 

Final round: Fight!
Round and round we went, (Thadar died as usual), and after another arduous loop sequence, the big bug gave up the ghost.

Cinderella won with a KO!




Uberdrop was Angelic Wings amulet and Griswold's Edge.

With that behind, I had no more use for my Blaze staff, so I gave it to Charsi for safekeeping, and stood up from the computer, as the whole ordeal took enough time for the thawing potions to run out

Cindy will see you in act III Hell.