Cinderella, Softcore Firebolt Sorceress (1.14 lod)

[Boro]

With the necromancer succeeding to patriarchdom, I gained a HUGE confidence boost in my abilities, and decided to do something I've been meaning to in a long time.

Background: Before I read Ember's story, I was pretty much oblivious to what dio2 was pre-1.07, namely that the 75% resistance cap applied to monsters as well, as certain tiny things like being able to buy poison gas potions, or that teleporting bosses can heal for pretty much indefinitely. I never saw this when my father played the game, because he instinctively picked the choices that just worked well (Frozen Orb, Fireball, Hydra), and he could just obliterate everything before they caused an issue. Same with 1.07 lod, he just broke immunities with cold mastery, or destroyed everything with fireball, whichever he liked more.

After the finish of the tale I was soundly convinced (also upon reading Sirian's words on the expansion, especially Wussy's epilogue, Ribinak's expansion exploits, Subpoena, the not-even-started Felgarr), that Lord of Destruction did destroy a lot of variants, and anything it left alone, well, 1.10 neutered, thanks to the increased monster hellth pools and synergies funneling character builds into an even smaller set of possibilities.

I also said to myself, around early summer, that a firebolt sorceress would never work in this patch. An hour later I had to try it out on a sorceress named Cinder. I eventually deleted that character, having forgotten to record her adventures, and having put points into stats like strength and dexterity, which are very un-ember-like. So she waited until now, and this night, Cinderella was born.

So, why try this? Well, for starters there are ways beyond fire mastery to increase Fire Bolt damage thanks to synergies. There are also more +skill items for sorceresses to increase firebolt damage, and one is the super cheap leaf runeword, which adds +3 to fire skills, and +3 to firebolt. Made with a +3firebolt gray staff it can be +9 from the weapon alone. Add +1 from a lore helm and we are looking at a level 30 Firebolt and a +4 to mastery. The runes themselves are easily acquired from countess and cubed up using chipped gems, even on non-ladder realms. What's even better, is the damage increases exponentially with skill levels above 20. Finding a +1/+2 fire amulet is very much possible during normal play, so make that 32. 

What does all this mean? Well, Slvl 20 firebolt is 45-60 fire damage without synergies, Slvl 23 is 62-80, and Slvl 29 is 134-158, Slvl 30 is 161-186, Slvl 31 is 188-214, and finaly Slvl 32 is 215-242. The last two skill levels are a 31% damage improvement, and even the Slvl 30 firebolt deals almost 4x as much damage as the slvl 20, and slightly less than 3x, than the Slvl 23 one. I won't do the exact calculations on percentage improvements, but the bottom line is, firebolt can deal a LOT of damage when boosted with a leaf staff and a few +skill items.

But even a Slvl 31 firebolt's average 200 (actually 201 but let's round it) damage pales before the thousands of hitpoints of hell monsters, especially the ten-twenty thousand frenzytaur champs and fifty thousand health point uniques. A Slvl 25 mastery only brings it to ~600 damage, slightly better but nowhere near really good levels. What helps us here are the synergies, which are added before multiplying with the mastery: 16% per point in fireball, and 16% per point in Meteor.

As usual with quadratic synergy effects, the right amount of mastery vs the right amount of synergies is often debated, but between picking 40p synergy 1p mastery and 21p synergy 20p mastery, the middle ground, 31p synergy with 10p mastery worked out for the highest firebolt damage. (calculator says 2664 average damage). Any extra +skill item beyond this adds an average +500 damage to firebolt with this distribution.

Of course, Fire immunities are a thing, so a pure Firebolt sorceress can't win alone (And I won't even consider Infinity, but that should go without saying )   . What to pick for a secondary damage spell? Nova looks like a good candidate, since it has no synergies, and even with a modest lightning mastery + some modest lightning skill items (Memory is a rather acquirable runeword for hell, and a +3 nova staff can be shopped from Drognan/Akara. unfortunately 4socket staves can't be shopped for runeword creation, but Angel's / +1-2 lightning is possible), it can deal a respectable 700-800-ish damage per casting. Even better, it benefits a lot from faster cast rate, since it has no delay, but on the other hand it is very mana intensive, which is a large drawback for a low energy sorcie like Cinderella. For comparison, burning 420 mana in 10 castings would net ~7550 damage. dealing this much with firebolt takes 7.5 mana, so I think I'll skip this one. (with maxed mastery and 10 less points in fire tree the result would be 10k damage, vs 12.5 mana and a 2000 damage slvl 31 firebolt)

On the other side, Frozen orb requires less cold mastery, but more pre-requisites, has a cast delay, and deals more damage per cast when it explodes inside the enemy. Furthermore it's impossible to drognan/akara shop for a +3 FO socketed staff, although an archangel's or +3 cold +3 FO is certainly something possible. Archangel/+3 cold staff of the magus could be an uberstaff to be shopped for, but an unlikely find

The third thing to consider, is that having a permament mercenary is possible, and even better, it can be an iron wolf, so Thadar can be both equipped with good stuff (Lore helm, stealth armor, + whatever I find) and brought back from the dead.

So all things considered, Cinderella certainly has a chance against the legions of hell.

"Then why bother bringing Ember into this?" I hear you ask.

Well, because Cinderella will play by the following restrictions.

• Staff only, no shields, no sorceress orbs, no wands, nothing else BUT staves.
  
• Base strength used for normal acts I-IV. Strength adders can be used, but no equipment requiring more than 10 strength. On the first level up in act V I'll raise Cinderella's strength to 15, and that's it. Upon reaching act V Nightmare she will get free reign on using strength adding equipment to use gear otherwise unavailable for her.
  
• Rogue girl has one life only. Once she dies, the only time she can be resurrected is to unequip her gear for selling/equipping thadar. (Or before getting an act II merc, who has one life only too, but I'll probably skip on that)
  
• Arriving upon act III, She must hire an iron wolf named Thadar, who has to be a mercenary dealing a type she is unable to. Since Cinder will be firebolt/Frozen Orb, Thadar has to be a lightning merc.
  
• She has to use Firebolt for the entirety of normal difficulty. She may not raise Frozen Orb above skill level five in nightmare difficulty (But she may save up points to beef it up right at the entry into hell) and may only use it when she is facing fire immune monsters.
  
• She may not use teleport for Normal or nightmare difficulties.
  
• No other skills are to be used, especially not static. Telekinesis may get a pass on hell difficulty.
  

Oh and she is softcore, so no hall of heroes candidacy. I'll still try going deathless, but in hell difficulty, it's practically impossible not to die to even the most innocent mistakes, and I'm more interested in the hell-capability of this character than doing a legendary perfect run. I'll try getting "duchess" (deathless until act V NM), but there are no guarantees.

So, let's get started.

[Boro]

Cinderella started Act I normal with a Slvl 0+1 firebolt, a staff of +1 firebolt (equipped) and four minor health potions.

I had a fairly simple leveling plan for Cinderella. I put all my level up points into firebolt, the Den of Evil point into Warmth (which I'll leave at that, slvl 1) and the Radament point into Firebolt too. Thus, at level 20 I should have a Slvl 20 firebolt with Slvl 1 warmth, and most likely my dream +3 firebolt Leaf staff in hand to boost it into the stratosphere.

Beyond level 20 however, I planned to pump Fire Ball except for certain situations:

1: At level 30 I want to put one point into Fire Mastery (to benefit from the +3 fire skills of my staff), one into Frozen Orb, and one into Cold Mastery. I need to save the skill points at level 28 and 29.
2: Frozen Orb has five pre-requisites: Frost Nova, Blizzard, Ice Bolt, Ice Blast and Glacial Spike. They will take Levels 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 to raise.
3: Izzy gives two skill points, so I can put Level 23 and 24's points into Fire Ball for synergy bonuses.
4: I'll want to get Telekinesis and Teleport before entering hell difficulty. Not use it, but get it.
5: I'll probably want to save up a few skill points to beef up Frozen Orb upon finishing nightmare.

So at levels 31-34 I'll be pumping fire mastery, then 35-38 will go into Frozen Orb. Next is to maximize Fireball (16 levels, 39-54). Put three points into meteor's pre-requisites, (Inferno, Blaze, Fire Wall , 55-57) then save up the rest for Frozen Orb boosting in hell, and also to buy Teleport the moment Nightmare Baal dies. Nightmare DoE goes into Telekinesis, Radament and Izual points can go into meteor's pre-requisites or Fireball to speed up the process. I should have 9 points saved up by the end of act V nightmare (Assuming level 66), for a level 13 frozen orb and a level 1 teleport.

But Cindy (That's how she calls herself) needs to get there first.

She started act I like any other sorceress, taking out the Den in a short order, blowing corpsefire away without too much trouble. She continued bravely in the Cold Plains, having deemed overland areas and early side dungeons not worthy of full clearings, and soon she squared off against Blood Raven. She had a lot of potions in her inventory by then, so I was confident I had enough juice to burn the hag with.

I was right. She had enough juice. I also managed to avoid most of Raven's shots, and also to thin out the hungry dead with her to strip her caver. However the times she managed to hit me, well, it wasn't a nice sight. Two or three shots and I'm down to 1/3. Minor heals don't heal fast enough. Neither do the light ones. Not having any strength or dexterity to worry about sure makes one's life easier... or life orb heavier, whichever you prefer

Back to town. Pick up the reward merc or not? If I don't, I can get a reward merc for Gidbinn. If I do, well, I'll have to retry until I get Thadar anyways, so let's pick up the loser Kashya wants to shove on me, get rid of her and hire a real... Oh hi Aliza! Cold arrow too? Yep. Luck? Hell no. Unluck more likely, as cold mercs level slower, and quest reward mercs need so much XP that they'll never catch up to me level wise (Aliza starts at level 2, and needs to face enemies around her level to level up best as usual).

Still, I try my best. After finishing the Crypt and Mausoleum, I start a new session, go through Blood Moor, Cold Plains, meet Bishibosh (Who is fire immune, so I let Aliza do some crowd control while I whack him away with my trusty starter staff), skip the cave (I finished that part before facing the hag), Stony field (I make sure to be the target of Rak's attention and to shield the girl from the sparks), find the waypoint, then look into what on earth takes her so much time to level up. Well, it turns out they gain more XP for the kills they do! So, if I don't want miss Aliza to croak on me for no reason, and then fall behind in the leveling curve, I need to let her gain the credit. So I do that. I keep her safe in the UGP, bravely stand my ground and firebolt Treehead and his crew, and I let her get the kills wherever I can. In the meanwhile of course I pump Firebolt, and rather equally my Energy and my Vitality.

Find waypoint, translate scroll, go to Tristram, let Aliza get the kills. You know, it's not very much a firebolt sorcy if I'm hiding behind some fragile rogue girl, is it? Yeah, I don't like it either, and besides, it's not helping that it doesn't make THAT much of a difference: She is 2-3 levels under me, and she needs more XP per level than I do!

That does it. I'll keep her alive, but bun leveling her up. She is a good merc, but at the end a temporary companion before I get Thadar, the Ace of mercs. So after one or two more tristram runs, I head out to the black marsh, map it out, Firebolt still killing things in 1-3 hits. Mostly 2 hits for anything that isn't a carver or a blood hawk.

I was also on the lookout for 2 socket +3 firebolt nonmagical staves. First I used a +2 / 2 socket one filled with ruby chips for meleeing, but a +3 firebolt with +1 telekinesis (useless until hell, semi-useless afterwards) soon appeared for really cheap (less than 10k gold!) and I nabbed it.

The tower didn't serve up any stairs traps. There were some nasty archer bosses (One multishot fellow forced a purple use), and the countess' fire wall had me toss Aliza an emergency purple when she decided to sit in the enemy firewalls, but I got her out in time, regrouped, then took out Countess and her cohorts with better positioning.

Oh and before I forget, I DID deck out Aliza a bit. Her bow in particular was a 2 socketed short bow with a chip topaz and a chio ruby in it, her other pieces of armor were things I bought for later use (A 2 socket skull cap for lore helm purposes, and some leather armor with resists). After all, they did come with gear equipped in d2 classic, so no reason to run them to their deaths naked here either.

Since I planned to make heavy use of the Stealth and the Leaf runewords in this early game, I ran the countess a few more times. Maybe it was sandbagging, but in all honesty, Aliza could use the XP, and I was going to come back for the runes at one point or the other. She dropped plenty of tals and tirs in her first two runs, while around the fourth or fifth gave me a nice pair of Rals.

Mission completed, I set out for the Hole, because why not, it wasn't that interesting in normal anyways. Next up I hit the highlands, and followed the road to the Cloister, no problems here either, just firebolt, shield aliza, and let her score a few kills when it's convenient. I considered going for the pit, but saw no reason to. I could probably clear it out, I was ahead of the power curve by a lot and I had plenty of HP to back me up.

So I went into the Outer Cloister, romped through the barracks and burned the Smith with shapely bolts of fire, then rushed through the jail so fast I didn't even have time to tap the waypoint on level 1. Oh well, the inner cloister was a better place to continue from in my next session.

The cathedral gave me little trouble. No Dark Shamans rolled Fire Enchanted for fire immunity here, and not even their multishot presented a serious threat to me this early in normal. Bone Ash I stunlocked outside his Frost Nova range, and the first three levels of the catacombs I cleared methodically. There were bosses, they died, and Aliza lived. No close calls here.

So did we arrive on level 4. I went back to town, switched from a fast cast 10% amulet to a 8% Beryl one, gambled/bought a reduced poison duration cap, and filled up a belt row with antidotes.

The two boss packs on this level were thankfully zombies (Ghouls), who didn't last too long under concentrated barrage of Firebolt fire and enchanted arrows. Open I did the doors, then Cindy emptied her mana orb pelting all angles of the hall until nothing remained standing. There were some shamen of course to clean up, but the zombies and the afflicted and most of the dark ones perished under her initial assault.

I looked at Aliza, who was still breathing calmly and had an arrow nocked on her bow. She made it this far without any notable dangers to speak of (aside from that nasty fire wall case), but there are cases where a mercenary, no matter how much I like her and keep her safe, just dies, no questions asked. Act Bosses are such cases. With her paltry hitpoints, Aliza would die from a single hit here.

Cindy finished off one shaman, Aliza handled the other. I had my finger on the antidote potion to use the moment Aliza gets poisoned, I had Town Portal on my right click to use in a split second's notice. Cindy took one step forward, saw the demon queen, then made her stand. She was determined to shield Aliza with her body if need to be, and unleashed her torrent of firebolts...

[Sirian]

My toddler has cards with pictures of Cinderella on them! Go figure.

(2664! Probably spoil this by pointing it out, but you could use that for a credit card PIN number! )



Go Cindy, go.


- Sirian

[Boro]

(I won't disappoint you Sirian!!! /fanboy  )



In the screenshot you can see my girl wearing body armor. How is that possible at a strength of 10 without taking advantage of any strength boosting items? The answer is Ethereal armor. Amongst it's bonuses to defense, a piece being Ethereal also slashes it's requirements by ten points, putting Quilted (str12->2), Leather (str17->7) and Hard Leather(str20->10) armors into the usable category for my girl. Cindy wore an Ethereal Leather Armor (no bonuses) for most of Act 1, and wore it down to 3 points of durability, from it's starting 13. I was also looking for an ethereal two socketed leather or hard leather armor, and was slowly running out of time when it could drop.

Anyways onto the fight!

[spoiler="This is how it went down"]Andariel got in two hits, that's it. Slvl 15+3 firebolt put her down. I gulped my two reds, she died, then I immediately portaled out to avoid any invisible buggy damage from killing my poor Aliza. As a result, I had to spend four town portals to haul Andy's drops to town. It was infinitely more preferable to a dead Aliza however. (I had my mercenary killed after diablo croaked on realms, and sometimes in single player.



I equipped Aliza with the composite bow from Andy, and sold the rest.

[/spoiler]

Act Two.

Act two started at Clvl 16, a single point in warmth, and a slvl 15+3 firebolt.

Equipment of note was 
an ethereal Hard Leather armor,
10% fast cast amulet with +7 stamina 
rare Leather Gloves with minor resists
a Gemmed Short Staff "Tir" (+3 firebolt, +2 Ice Blast (Unused), +1 Telekinesis (Unused))
A shopped +16% fire resist cap from Elzix

In stash:
a Gemmed Short Staff with two ruby chips
my starter staff
a two socketed leather armor with Stealth runeword in stash, 
various runes, chipped gems, jewels, rejuv potions.

Considering starting with the Rocky Waste or going down to the Catacombs, I first went back and coerced the Countess to give me some more runes. It was one of these trips that turned up the two rals I mentioned earlier, so all in all I was lucky. I was still shopping for a better staff, perhaps with more Warmth to go with the +3 firebolt, since I had unused tirs and rals, but I didn't put much hope into it, because the difference would be negligible once I reached level 19.

So, back to the monsters I braved the Rocky Waste, and quickly found both the entrance to the Dry Hills, and there the halls of the dead. Rather than doing my usual spiel of looking for the waypoint before entering the tombs, I rushed in, figuring that for one thing it's close to the city, and for two I can grab the waypoint down on level 2 and it's almost the same, and for three I was REALLY strapped for inventory space with all the rejuvs I kept in inventory.

Down there Cindy's firebolt really tore the Hollow Ones to shreds, while Aliza kept the heat off my back. In the meantime I gambled some boots, turned up one with minor fire and lightning resists and fast (10%) run/walk. It's a magnitude weaker than Ember's, but with LoD I have to live with that, and honestly, at the rate I was tearing through the game I was not worried at all.

Bloodwitch scared me out of her room, and that was it. She could dish out the hurt, but couldn't take it.

While down there a two socketed Hard Leather Armor finally dropped, which prompted me to punch the countess's lights out yet another time for an Eth rune to drop (I also had lots of tals), so I could make my stealth armor. Thankfully, the countess was cooperating.

The Sewers came next, as Cindy very much coveted Radament's skill book. See, with Warmth, and only one bonus from Den of Evil, she had to keep Fire Bolt one level below her character level, and that was not fair at all. That big mummy had the means, and it had to be hers.

The Burning Dead were thankfully not that dangerous. Sure they took 2-3 shots, but with 10% fast cast and +3 to firebolts it was certainly doable. Burning Dead archers took a bit more footwork, but I could often hose them down by firing downrange before they saw me, or I could use the corners to deal with them in smaller packs. I hit level 18 down on level 13, putting my firebolt to Slvl 17+3 for a total of 45-60 damage.

The waypoint was hidden in a tiny nook of the 2nd level, and if I didn't zoom in to full screen from the minimap, I'd have thought there was no wp at all!

Rad himself was handled with the textbook method of luring his minions out, then firebolting his daylights out. The only difference here was I made sure to stay between him and Aliza. Wouldn't want our lovely to die from a stray unholy bolt after all the trouble I went to get her through. His Skill Book finally allowed me to have a native firebolt skill level equal to my character level. (+3 from staff   )  Firebolt Damage: 49-65

Next up I mapped out the Rocky Waste and the Stony Tomb, then finished off Creeping Feature by stunlocking him out of range. Neither Extra Strong or Cold Enchanted can do much without the means to deliver that punch. Even though Cindy was weaker equipment-wise than Ember, stunlock was more powerful than anything in the legendary sorceress's arsenal.

Far Oasis saw me level to 19, turning my firebolt to Level 19(+3) for a total damage of 53-70. Back to town, add a rune to my staff, then voila...

107-130? I retract everything I said about equipment. Cindy is MUCH better equipped than Ember could ever hope to be.

With this greatly boosted power, almost everything died in a single shot. Lost City had some plague bearer minions who died in two, but that was the exception rather than the norm. Both the WP and the snake valley entrance were in the top half, so I rushed to the Temple.

Everything died in one hit, Fangy died offscreen from a hail of firebolts aimed at the bottom corner of level 2. Aliza is still alive and kicking, and a +8 lit/+5 fire resist / 25% poison duration reduced rare cap was scored from Elzix. It was also time to call it a night.



Next day I wandered out to the lost city having realized that I haven't been there in daylight for the past fifteen years or more. It's just not the same though. I was even... missing the darkness. It really built up the tension, as I had to react fast if I didn't want my armor to lose durability. I was still wearing the non-runeword armor, because that stealth has to last until Diablo croaks, but it was a good idea to get into the habit for the next two acts. After then, I'll be using the normal non-ethereal piece anyways.

The ancient tunnels were a footnote at this point. One shot, one kill, WAY too much mana to spare, 3 mana gained per kill, and a slvl 1+6 warmth, the firebolt sorcie is peaking. I hit level 20, Final Damage at slvl 29 is 134-158.



Similar feelings in the Harem/Palace cellars, although Horror Archers caused me to jump, and I even forced a few potions down Aliza's throat to get her out of a messy room. Fire Eye scored a hit, or two. I don't know, but he dind't last long.

Having looked up Duriel (Who deals ~20 damage in physical, and 30-35 in cold), I started gambling/shopping for cold resist gear. My Leaf staff gave me +33%, and I had some from spare charms and my gloves, but I needed more. It didn't take long to find a good cap with 11 cold 9 lightning plus some other useful mods, or to gamble a Coral sash of Might (22% lightning resist). I also gambled a Jade Light Belt of the Wolf (20 life, 30% poison resist). Now over half of my stash was spare gear either for sentimental reasons (the staff I started with, actually kept for an imbue), or for situational use (resist belts, alt rings and ammies, and so forth)

Arriving at the Sanctuary I equipped the Ethereal Stealth armor, and put the non-eth one on Aliza (after all, she was past level 17, and a bit of extra walk/run speed could get her out of trouble faster). I was confident I could keep it from losing too much durability, as I lost only three points in the regular one during this act. As a side note, Stealth's 25% run/walk speed is almost like having fastest run.

Arcane: Goats die in one shot. Spectres die in one shot. Ghouls die in one shot. Summoner dies in one shot. Summoner hid in the last quadrant I visited (The straight one), but that only prolonged the inevitable. He didn't even score a hit on Aliza or Cindy. Canyon WP grabbed, the true tomb is marked with a Circle. (And I looked up, and surely, Ember had the circle as her true tomb... Is this what people call fate?) The first treasure platform held some sorceress items, including a rare sparkling ball with +1 to Firebolt and +1 to Blaze, 16% cold and 20% fire resists, and tons of mana. Of course this isn't a wand sorcy, so it got sold to Charsi.

It was time to hit the the Maggot Lair, so I traded some life for lightning resistances, and firebolted everything down there. I put some antidotes instead of mana potions on belt for Coldworm, and gulped one when a stray invisible poison hit me still outside in the main hallway. Thankfully coldworm can't breed regular maggots now, so aside from the poison there was no danger here, plus, Aliza was nice enough to stay behind and let me do the heavy lifting



So into the false tombs I went. In the canyon Cindy took a hit, stealth armor down to 14 durability from 15. Oh well, switching back to the non-stealth one. The burning dead died in one hit, Unravellers too, only the ghoul lords took two to kill. From the sparkly chest I get a Gold ring (+87 AR) with Charged Bolt charges. Not bad, but not for Cindy.

The next two tombs were easy. Some unravellers, some apparitions, gorebellies, and ghoul lords. Mostly dead in a single shot. I gambled some circlets to get away from the peasant hood look, and settled for a +6% all resist one.

Fourth tomb had gorebellies, preserved dead and ghoul lords. The boss here was a Conviction preserved dead, who dropped three greater healing potions for me.

Fifth tomb had a very crowded treasury, but Cindy got it done for the paltry cost of two health potions. As a reward, I gained a level here, Clvl 23, about a half ahead of Sirian's usual clear pace. Point went into Fire Ball, the Fire Bolt damage is now 199-234. Nasty.

This left the sixth tomb to be Kaa's, and thankfully the draw was Gorebellies, Preserved Dead and Ghoul Lords, so the threat level was again very low. Kaa himself took five shots, a testament of the new and improved firebolt's power!

Onwards to the True tomb, it's YET again Ghoul Lords, Preserved Dead and Apparitions. No unravelers aside from two boss packs, and even those died rather quickly.

For Duriel Cindy swapped her gear around to get 286 life and 73% cold resists. This was nice, it should neutralize most of Duriel's nastiness and allow me to tank for Aliza. Yep, she made it all the way here, even leveled up to level 22 in this tomb while I was level 23! I never had her this close to my level. If she makes it through... No. I will pull her through. I will charge Duriel, Whack him with my staff, (I have some minor chill duration from charms you know!) then stand there, drinking Greater Healing Potions and Rejuvs until the bug croaks!

I need to get 20 shots in, as my hits deal 160-185 damage after calculating the resists, and Duriel has 3000 ish life. I'm un-stunnable most of the time, since he deals an avg 20 damage with 4-5 cold damage from his holy freeze aura.

Let's do this!



First off, we charge, he misses (YES!), I lay into him with firebolts, good, uh oh, that's a stun. Crap! he pushed me back towards Aliza but he is MELTING under my firebolts, and he is chilled thanks to the rogue girl's cold arrows! Another whack, I'm next to my girl now, but he has a tiny sliver and NO! DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HER YOU ... umm



Okay. That works out for me. Just in time too, as even that single hit took almost a half of the poor girl!

Duriel dropped a Serpent Lord and a large charm of 1-7 lightning damage, and Fara was happy to relieve me of those burdens.

Cindy will see you in act III.

[Boro]

Act III, In which.. oops, was I getting ahead of myself?

Cindy started Act 2 one half level ahead of what I expected, yet this didn't make much difference. First of all, Aliza had served her time. She was cool, she fought well, she helped with Duriel, but from here on I'd never need her cold or physical damage. A Lightning Iron wolf on the other hand was clearly the choice companion for a firebolt sorcie who would dip into frozen orb for a quick fix against immunes.

Problem was, Thadar was not available when I arrived.

Oh, I mean, he was there, his element was even lightning, but he was level 18, and I had none of the patience to do the Aliza training tedium again. Off to reroll him!

First he was weak, then he was a level 22 cold mage. Some times he didn't show up, and he even came up as a fire mage! How embarrassing it must be, trying to hose down enemies with inferno in the company of a firebolt sorceress! If not for the immunities, I'd try that for sure, but it's D2X, and we need all elements we can get.

Then after the sixth-eight try or so, the stars finally aligned. Thadar, Level 22, Lightning. So I said goodbye to Aliza, sold her bow, equipped Thadar with a stealth armor, a two-socket skull cap (Retained for Ort-Sol runeword), a gambled 4% life steal 10% fire resist sword, and a 3socketed large shield, and owned the spider forest. Nope, that's no joke. Slvl 20+9 firebolt with 48% total damage bonus from Fire Ball took everything out in a single hit. The Spider Cavern was no problem, Sszark only had a sliver of his bar left by the time it crawled onscreen, I almost one-hitted his minions... Things were easy. Something even dropped me a burning amulet!

Too easy even.

Having just then read hot foot (version 2)'s story, I was quite aware of the" too much candy" effect, so I switched back to my starter staff, and the challenge levels returned to interesting once again. The Arachnid Lair still mostly died to a few hits per monster, but I had to make more effort to avoid getting mobbed or cornered. At the same time, I was trying to avoid physical hits wherever possible, as to minimize the damage my armor took.

On to the Marsh and the Jungle, and slowly, ever so slowly my inbuilt reflexes of Shoot First, stunlock then kill gave way to the Tempt first then only shoot when it's safe order.

Neither the Swampy Pit nor the Flayer Dungeon provided anything interesting. (Witch Doctor was fire immune, so Cindy let Thadar do it, there is no way she's wading into that inferno happy bastard's face for elbow grease) However, the Gidbinn ring turned out to be a 10% fastcast with some resists, and I got another 10% fastcast from a drop. I also found a better Burning Amulet and ditched the old one: Firebolt at Slvl 22, with 20% fast cast was good enough. One gamble turned up an Amber Circlet, which replaced Thadar's 2socket skull cap for the meanwhile, and it was onwards to the Lower kurast, Bazaar and upper Kurast areas.

By the time I arrived, my 11 durability from the regular Hard Leather Armor went down to a measly 3! Knife and Blowdart Flayers hit a lot, even if the damage was minimal most of the time. It was a good idea to keep my stealth armor stashed.

For the ruined temple I equipped my stealth armor (14/15 durability), somehow survived the stairs trap (It was two groups, but the entry room was large enough for looping and stringing them out), and traded 1 durability point to 1 Lam Esen Tome.

The rest of the temples were routine, Sewers went without a hitch, I gained practice in tempting and handling exploding undead dolls.

Thadar bit it for the first time when fighting the Council (Travincal was easy, even with just firebolt), then again when fighting Bremm (Ouchie, I had to loop him in the entry hall, the other two were easy), then he started surviving Mephisto's lightning without problems (Amber Circlet FTW), but one charge was all the big bone needed to turn my stalwart companion into a puddle of water.

From then on it was just the two of us. Sometimes Meph would charge and I had to run (not walk) to keep my distance and avoid getting cornered (cough), other times he'd give me the cold dodgeball treatment, but as soon as I started to treat every casting of him to be a cold shot (as Ember did in NM act III), he became relatively simple, and was brought down with minimal potion usage. He dropped an unique morningstar, which was useless and sold, alongside the rest of his rares.




Enter act IV at level 26, where fire resistance made the game a lot more fun.

Firebolt was Slvl 20+1(staff)+1(ammy), Fire Ball was Slvl 4, confering 64% damage boost to Firebolt.
Various pre-requisites were in the cold tree (Ice Bolt and Frost Nova)
Armor was an ethereal stealth hard leather armor, at 13/15 durability (1 lost in canyon, 1 to sarina's crew)
Amulet was Burning Amulet with some mod (I think it was poison reduction)
Rings were Ring of the Apprentice and a Gidbinn Rare (10% fast cast + some resist)
Boots were some rare regular boots of slightly faster movement speed (10%) + some resist
Helmet was a gambled circlet with 4 mana per kill and some decent cold resist.

Steppes was Spitters, casters and doom knights galore, so establishing a foothold was easy. No leapers at all! Not surprisingly, Thadar was the main damage dealer here, capable of beating doom knights in three well-aimed lightnings or a few charged bolts in point blank range. He was also quite a tempting fate artist himself. When aided by my own movements, he could be a hell of a decoy for me. Of course, Cindy spewed firebolts from every orifice, so our output was well balanced. (45% fast cast cuts 3 frames from the 13 frame casting sequence)

Wait there were leapers. A single fanaticism enchanted boss and minions without the minion tag. They weren't much of a problem.

Plains had Doom Casters, Corpse Spitters and stygian hags. The plains also had Izzy, but even Thadar could tempt him 75% of the time, so you can imagine how much of a threat he was. His skill points went into Glacial Spike and Blizzard, finishing the pre-requisites needed for Frozen Orb.



After about a half of the plains, I headed for the city (both to wrap up my session, which was, while not a full session starting in act 3, was still an area and a half cleared in act IV.) and found Damned (a LOT of them, major luck here), a Damned boss (Lightning Enchanted, sorry Thadar) then some Pit Lords and Abyss Knights. Another two-thirdsful of area later, the waypoint was found, and my progress secured.

In the meantime I found a ral and an ort rune, and with the stashed Tal I still had, made Thadar a RalOrtTal shield. His resists were maxed out now, turning him into my dedicated Anti-Abyss-Knight tank.

The next session saw the clearing of the rest of the City, (The boss was an AK this time, fun) and the River of Flame waypoint, complete with the hard hitting heffer led to a shooting gallery, escaped via portal, then I returned to haunt him from across the lava. An extra fast strangler boss made things interesting for a while, but he and his cronies eventually yielded to firebolts. I peeked into the chaos sanctuary, but left that for a time when I was more rested. Stealth armor at 10/15 durability, looking good so far.

I'll be honest here (Not that I wasn't, but this is an extra bit thrown in for emphasis), it was insanely tempting to switch back to my leaf staff. The chaos sanctuary was FULL of fire resistant critters. Venom Lords, Doom Knights, even Oblivions take three to four shots. Thankfully, stunlock is my friend, but LOTS of happy feet were required to keep the numbers manageable.

The architecture helped too, the small walkways on the sides of the lava pools serving as natural chokepoints (Enemies had to walk around the stunlocked critter in a single file) and also lining enemies up for Thadar's piercing lightning.

De Seis was the first to fall, he and his cronies were separated, and he himself fell while I was retreating towards my escape portal on top of the seal. Score one and score level 28.

The Infector was a tougher deal, but Cindy's footwork strung them out, and by the time we reached the gate there were only two minions and the infector himself left. I tried Ember's leashing trick, but it didn't work for me either. The boss died at the gate, his friends got mopped up in ones or twos, and all that was left was the Grand Vizier of Chaos.



The Vizier was Fire Immune.

Yeah, how is a firebolt sorcie supposed to take these down? Elbow grease? psh! Short staff and my fifteen points of strength (ten base, +5 from equipment) says no! Frozen Orb? No chance I'll level to 30 here.

Enter Thadar. His lightnings are pretty damaging, and even his charged bolts can knock a bit off the guy. However he's going to be taken apart by the minions... Hmm, however the minions are only resistant to fire, not immune.

And round and round we went, around the pentagram. Sometimes casters would flee, and come in the most inopportune moment, but there was enough space for me to keep ahead of them. I targeted the minions, sometimes the Vizier blocked my shots, and the game went on... and on, and on, but luckily my damage was greater than their regen, and I eventually got them whittled down.



Once it was only the Vizier and us, I looped around him to keep him in missile lock while Thadar pounded him unmolested. It took long because he used a lot of weak charged bolts, but we got it done.

All that was left is one seal to go, and one Diablo to kill, but... I don't need to go into detail of how Diablo is killed by a firebolt sorceress, do I? (Hint, it involved a lot of shooting, a bit of drinking, and lot of footwork.) He was charge happy, but at this difficulty with Cindy's vitality he was not an instant-killer threat.





So Diablo dead, it was time to finally put my saved up stat points into Strength, and ditch the ethereal armor I wore. It had 10 durability remaining, so I didn't lose a single point in the sanctuary! Next up Charsi imbued my starter staff, and my my she made a wonderfull staff with magus suffix and +2 Glacial Spike, +1 Blizzard, +3 Chilling armor! It also had 28 mana, bonus AR/Damage vs undead (Totalling 226% damage and 183 attack rating), and 22-45 fire damage. It was so wonderful I had Charsi keep it!

I equipped my leaf staff, my non-ethereal stealth leather armor, and stepped through the portal to act V.

[KingOfPain]

Just skimmed through the after action report, will have to reread this when I have more time later. Nice reporting. I like that you are the calculating type, but not too much to make my head hurt

What is the plan with mercs after NM?

Good Journeys!

[KingOfPain]

Oh right, there is a 4 socket war staff with 2 bliz and 3 nova, req clvl24 o
PonyExpress2 - SockWeapon
Or a bunch of unique staffs elsewhere
Grab it if you want.

[Boro]

Thadar, Kop. Lightning Iron Wolf THADAR! No substitutes. :D

(This girl is singleplayer, not some kind of tweaker sorc on realms, but thanks)

The character plan, now that I look at it, mirrors a meteorber in a lot of ways I feel.

I'm starting to think that maybe Firebolt is a potentially more powerful asset to a meteorber's arsenal than fireball, but I have to see NM and hell to really get the feel of it. For normal she sure beats traditional meteorb progression and fun factor, not to mention the ease of equipping.

[KingOfPain]

Cool with lightning Thadar to complete the tri elements. I also have theme team toons such as my FireEngineRed, all passive naked Zon, with Kyoko rogue merc, decoy and valk

(This girl is singleplayer, not some kind of tweaker sorc on realms, but thanks)

In the Realms Beyond, "tweaking" allows us to build weaker toons ;p

[Boro]

Cool with lightning Thadar to complete the tri elements. I also have theme team toons such as my FireEngineRed, all passive naked Zon, with Kyoko rogue merc, decoy and valk

(This girl is singleplayer, not some kind of tweaker sorc on realms, but thanks)

In the Realms Beyond, "tweaking" allows us to build weaker toons ;p

Ah so true! I forgot about Beyond Naked Mages donating spare cursed gear to those who lost their garments!!! (I played a BNM once, down to dlvl 14, it was such a liberating experience, not being afraid of death.)

But now I'm thinking, "building weaker toons" could mean building one of those wacky builds nobody would in their right mind would do that MIGHT work with really obscure non-optimized pieces of gear... Stuff that people gloss over never thinking that someone might use them :D

I... can't really comprehend what being a passive naked zon might be like. Throwing knives? I gotta read that story I mean, I could work rather well with a crazy setup of mostly magics and meh-rares with my necromancer, so with a good Valk I see how it'd work (plus, I read AnnaGoAnna's story, hence why my necro wore a personalized cracked sash, but that still didn't really give me the insight to the experience.)

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BTW I killed baal, and Nightmare feels just like Normal did when I started, except with more bosses, less health on bosses and champs and minions, and no mana problems. Taking down Bishibosh with two semi-sweetspot frozen orbs was a HUGE catharsis. :D Resists are down to quarter-tier however, so this is definitely a more dangerous game.