Roede
and Taoni Lay Claim to Ironman Triple Crown
|
|
|
|
|
|
Roede
and Taoni Lay Claim to Ironman Triple Crown
|
|
Entering the Nightmare game with 64K in hand, the vendors items leave us cold. Wirt = Plate of Ages (44k) and SBB of Heavens (49K--way too $$ to consider) Gris = Massive Maul, 2H-Sword of Bashing, Sword of Sorc +17, Sword of Blood, Sword of Slaying, and Sword of Heavens (to Taoni) and 2H-Sword of Sorc, Cobalt Mail, Glorious Leather, Tower Brilliance Shield, 2H-Sword of Precision, and Axe of Structure (to Roede). All crap! Although we debate
(again) saving the money and taking it on to our Hell game (assuming we
get there), we decide it would be going into territory that we really
don't want to at this time (and setting IM policy to boot!). So, instead,
we end up buying lots of junk gear from Gris hoping that he'll replace
it with something better. No dice. We end up with: broad sword of sorcery,
axe of structure, tower shield of brilliance, bastard of slaying, glorious/structure
crown, broad sword of blood, and repaired all melee weapons. From Pepin
we get 32 assorted potions, 2 res, 6 heal scrolls.
5th Session - Feb.
27th 03 Since the warrior had to catch up in experience, Roede soloed - and he stormed through this level. Taoni still lvl 24, Roede still lvl 22 NIGHTMARE CHURCH TWO: Devil Kin sword, Skeletons, Scavengers, Hidden. Drops: book HO, book Heal, 3 ID, 2 elix dex, elix mag, staff heal(23), staff HB, Boneripper - Constr Ring, Shadowbite - long battle bow, Butcher - field plate. Shrines: Divine. Roede still solo, still storming. He's using plain weapons, switching to "blood" or "bat" as needed Taoni still lvl 24, Roede still lvl 22 NIGHTMARE CHURCH THREE: Carver spear, Burn Dead Archers, Fiends, Scavengers, Horrors. Drops: book TP, 2 ID, Leo - battle axe. Shrines: Abandoned. Roede soloed again, but had to stop at Leo's archer guards and call for Taoni. That pack was best fought off screen. She put that staff HB to good use and then switched to Roede's meteoric bow. We cleared the rest of the lvl together. Taoni still lvl 24, Roede lup to 23. NIGHTMARE CHURCH FOUR: Corpse Capt, Burning Dead Capt, Burning Dead Archers, Blinks, Horrors, Horror Archers, Shadow Beasts. Drops: book Heal, book Inferno, book HB, 2 ID, breastplate, broadsword, Moonbender - great sword, Blackash - robe, Pulsecrawler - axe. Shrines: PS and a BF both! Uneventful teamwork. Blackash and gang were frozen by warrior, dispatched by rogue. Taoni still lvl 24, Roede lup to 23. NIGHTMARE CATACOMBS FIVE: Flesh Clan Mace, Horror Capt, Winged Demons. Drops: book HB, 2 book Fbolt, book TP, book Lightn, book Fwall, res, long war bow, gothic plate, great axe, staff heal, Shadowdrinker - staff inferno. Shrines: Goat We started in our usual teamwork. Taoni went out scouting and found a boss glow waiting behind a door. She cast a SC on that glow, opened the door - and was near-immediately attacked, stunned, and killed by Shadowdrinker. Seems the SC must have hit some other target. Roede cleared the area -- including that nasty boss-- and ressed her. After that incident, we declared it a warrior's level and Roede soloed. Although a little low on the "tohit", that lightn/blood mornstar carried him through the level with flying colors. Taoni still lvl 24, Roede still lvl 23 NIGHTMARE CATACOMBS SIX: Bone Gashers, Stone Clan Mace, Flesh Clan Mace, Stone Clan Archer. DROPS: elix str, book Heal, book Fball, 2 res, ID, plain long war bow, cap, great axe, comp bow, amulet, ring, Weapons Rack - axe, Deathshade - great helm. Shrines: none Bad desync, second scouting was a necessity. Entire rooms of opponents respawned. We saw different foes too. At some sets they kept going for Taoni, even when Roede tried to engage or followed them. This attempt to follow is somewhat tricky, it hurts to step into a rogue's line of fire But again, careful play brought us through the level without casualties. Roede started using lord's spiked club and gold claymore. Taoni still lvl 24, Roede lup to lvl 24 NIGHTMARE CATACOMBS SEVEN: Overlords, Stalkers, Mud Men. Drops: elix vit, book CB, book MS (we had a VERY happy rogue here), bastard sword. Shrines: Glimmering!!! We had some close calls at the start, when more than 2 biggies showed. Roede then needed Taoni's SC or an organized retreat. After a while, we had managed to clear some running space and a door and declared it a warrior's level. Taoni went for some ale at Ogden's; she didn't like the Hiddens anyway. Roede had the block and punching power to hold a door and worked the rest of the level alone. Things got tight again when Roede had to face a massive pack of mud men that were waiting in a small room and were thus activated altogether. Several of them had that bad habit of not stopping and fighting in the door, but to slipping past to flank. It took a retreating battle through six doors to clean up that pack. Taoni lup to lvl 25, Roede still lvl 24 NIGHTMARE CATACOMBS EIGHT: Poison Spitter, Blood Stones, Night clan mace. Drops: book Lightn, book Fwall, book TP, book Fbolt, 2 res, ring mail, kite shield, long war bow, staff heal, ring, Chaoshowler - scale mail. Shrines: BF, goat, Mysterious Another desynced level. As if that foe combo wasn't rough enough, we had the entire range of desync problems: ghost foes only visible/fightable by one of us, respawns, foes beaming in out of thin air to cut off the retreat of the scout. We made it without casualties though. Thanks to Roede's "blood" weapons and to the early found PS and BF, we came out of this church/cats session with a nice net gain of potions. Taoni still lvl 25, Roede lup to lvl 25; end of 5th session
6th Session - March
4th 2003 Stairs were in the open, in the middle of the map. Roede had started the level with his master's sabre ready, but with these foes, he could afford to switch back to the gold claymore. With these "mostly ranged" attackers, the rogue collected kills somewhat faster again though we tried to lure the archers into Roede's swing. Taoni still lvl 25, Roede still lvl 25
Stairs were in the NW corner of the map, in a confined corner. Luckily our starting place had a fence, so the first wave of weavers could be bowed. Monster mix looked a bit like "more of the same", lava dudes and dogs, only the archers were replaced by the weavers. Result was the same: our rogue was shooting like mad. For Roede the gold claymore was still doing the job. The dog boss pack was waiting very early, but located behind a lava river. Thus it could be bowed down off screen (after we had traded the perfection amulet to the rogue). We VERY carefully worked our way from gate to gate and corner to corner. Taoni luped to lvl 26, Roede still lvl 25
Same map as lvl 10, "almost same" foes too. Game seemed to have a theme, we faced lava dudes, dogs and something else in addition. And again we had a rogue firing furiously. Roede used his master's sabre now versus the Flayed Ones ( the only foes he got to fight). Compared to this, the previous levels seemed to have gone "fast". This one was really tedious, due to dozens of dogs and stones across lava that required alot of dancing/dodging from the rogue and some visits to the PS (she was using MS now). Taoni still lvl 26, Roede still lvl 25
drops: book MS, battle axe, plain long war bow, chainmail, axe, ring, amulet Again stairs were in the NW corner, slightly different layout though. Roede needed the masters sabre again, not for hitting, but for stunning. Those fast attackers gnawed on the shield, and two of them was bad news: red gulping time and hoping Taoni would bow them down before the belt was empty. But we made it through without casulties. Taoni still lvl 26, Roede lup to lvl 26 NIGHTMARE HELL THIRTEEN: Lava Maws, Snow Witches, Storm Lords. Drops: book SC, ID, sabre, short sword, flail, large shield(indestruct), ring, Witchmoon - breastplate. Shrines: 2 cauldrons. The stairs were in
a big room near the SE corner of the map. We cleared some around and then
went up to check the town entry. It was close to the NE, almost next room.
These stairs were better, very close to the wall, giving us a 1-tile corridor
to fight from. We had three casulties on this lvl: #1&2 - Taoni had
some witches sitting duck and Roede tried to move himself into a good
bow position, when suddenly there was a storm too, resulting in the instant
death of the rogue. Roede got his running shoes, switched gear while running,
and managed to single them out and fight them down one by one. Well, almost
all - one witch refused to follow for some reasons, she just sat at the
corner and guarded Taoni's corpse. Chasing her into the unknown was no
option. So Roede went for a town res. He cast a TP on the corpse and a
res right after. BUT, due to desync the TP wasn't on her body on Taoni's
screen, she still had to walk some tiles. With that witch still arround,
we had another instant dead rogue. It took some more tedious running and
even some steps into the unknown till Roede had cleared the area and the
second res attempt was successful. #3 - When Taoni brought 4 Storms to
our set, we had a dead warrior. Even a SC didn't help, they were done
with our warrior in split seconds. It took some running and shooting till
Taoni had cleared that mess. We felt that Roede needs an edge. We opted
for the ring drop from that level (potential to Taoni lup to lvl 27, Roede still lvl 26; end of Sixth session
7th Session, March
6th 03 We were still working from our first set, behind the stairs, when bad luck brought 4 hell spawns to our set. We had no running space yet and thus bailed out upstairs. There we confered and Taoni told Roede about the layout already known to her. His map still showed the stairs only. Then Roede went down, in order to pull them away from the stairs. In his first attempt to the SW he ran into even more foes, witches and snakes, and had to bail out via TP earlier then he'd hoped for. The second attempt to the NW was successful, he made it all the way to the dungeon corner and pulled several foes. Upon the third reentry, he could clear the stairs guarded by one snake and one witch which were still there and we could start to work the level again. After that first rumble right at the beginning, the clearing went smoothly. Taoni tried to bring succubis into a sitting duck position for Roede to tag some too. Hell spawns were entirely Taoni's business, unless we had a set were they ran into his swing. But the usual desync made that almost impossible. We spotted both bosses across walls and used an infra to investigate. We decided to go for Stareye first, she had some snakes as company. We killed the snakes together, but when Stareye was activated, Roede left the scene, to give Taoni the needed running space and to reduce desync. Same rule applied when she had bigger packs on her heels. Roede would bail out then, to allow her to spread them a little more. For the snake pack, Roede tried to tag/activate some offscreen with his bow, then ran for it and let Taoni take over. She strung them out and brought singles and pairs to our set. Still at one point, Roede misjudged the situation and did not run when 5 were approaching. Dead warrior was the result, and Taoni had to bow the rest alone on a retreating battle. Taoni still lvl 27, Roede still lvl 26 NIGHTMARE HELL FIFTEEN: Azure Drakes, Hellspawns, Soulburners. Drops: book TP, book Blood Star, long battle bow, claymore, 2-hander, maul, long sword, warstaff, splint mail, short sword, amulet, ring, Bloodlust - short war bow, Black Jade - staff Fball, Red Vex - short war bow, Laz - book Elemental. Shrines: 2 caulrons, BF Another snake/witch level. The stairs were in the SW quadrant, and we set right at the stairs. We worked quite a while from there, even Bloodlust was fought in the stair room. It was almost a rogue only level, though Taoni brought every snake she found to the set. It turned out to be enough drakes to lup the warrior. After the level was done, we collected our goodies and some from our mules and used the Glimmering (from lvl 7). We had: splint mail of wolf, plate mail of vigor, kite shield of tiger, full helm of giants, great helm of eagle, crown of tiger, claymore of blood, lord's short sword, mithril/blood long sword(!!!), short war bow of stars, ruby short war bow, amulet of tiger, garnet amulet, amulet of skill, ring of stars, ring of stars, ring of dragon, ring of gold/radiance, ring of light, topaz ring. Taoni lup to lvl 28, Roede lup to lvl 27; end of 7th Session
8th Session, March
13th 2003 Taoni soloed the outside areas of the lvl, while Roede stayed at the pentagram and repaired bows as needed. The warrior joined to clear the rooms. We still had some ID scrolls and felt a little stat boost would be handy, so we ided the ring drop - serpent/vigor. Once the cross room(third room) was cleared, we set one TP there and another at the first room. Plan was to park Diablo in the cross and work the guards from the dividing arc. Roede set in the cross, Taoni sent a lightn along the center line and bailed out. Diablo knew his part, followed the warrior and was left alone at the TP. We muled our town store out, Roede returned, used Taoni's TP, launched a new TP and called Taoni. Taoni rentered. Together with her, Diablo reappeared out of thin air at the spot where she had seen him last, which was pretty much in front of our noses. Bailout procedure again: Taoni took the nearest TP, Roede zigzagged arround and led him to his TP in the NE corner behind the maze. This time all stayed quiet when we returned and we could work the guards. When only Diablo was left, we juggled our gear to achieve the best setup for our intended shield/executioner team, with the warrior as shield. We set at the dividing arc and Taoni went ahead and send him a lightn message down the corridor. Coming back, she even had the time to raise a golem. That three man team punched the Big Red Guy down. He was stunned most of the time, the occasional apocs were blocked. Once the final battle was engaged, the issue was never in doubt. Roede's stats fighting Diablo: clvl 27 AC 83 his gear: Taoni_the_Fell, Level 28 IronRogue Str 45(73) Ac 57, to hit 153%, Damage 32-39(tripled due to Civerb's Cudgel), Helm of Giants+18, CC, Armor of Sorcery +16, Lg. Shield (indestructible), Drakes+43 Amulet of Wizardry+21, Ring of Stars +10, Gold Ring of Radiance, Resistances all zero. After that we rejoined
in a new game, ided the stuff on mules(free town id) and set ourselves
up for the training sessions.
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
