After a real long journey and with the brave and kind help of Ironsides(SNOB), Cyrene(AMZ) and Charisena(AMZ) my Elitist Mage Niriel`{SNOB} managed to reach the ultimate goal of each Diablo character: the elusive 50th level. To give everybody an impression how entertaining the game was a lot of screenshots (42 in total by myself and some more by the others) have been taken on the way that i'll describe a bit below.

It really seemed that Diablo has smelt what was brewing. He took control over b.net and wanted to prevent at all cost that Niriel would reach the final levelup over his ugly dead body. Failed connects for hours, tons of infamous lag hindered our advance, Niriel died an surprising stair death when entering lvl 13 (boy what a laugh we had at that moment :-), Ironsides' Stormshield was lag-duped after a server-desync-death (Shank i still got the feeling i owe you one here), monsters did appear out of nowhere and so on. But we conquered it all and worked our way down to the very bowls of hell.

I won't go into details of fighting plain monsters on our way. It's enough to say that hordes of Vortex Lords, Lava Maws, Steel Lords, Azure Drakes, Cabalists, Advocates and Blood Knights met death at the end of blades, arrows and spells from our brave party as it decended. Plus as soon as we've been aware that a boss was present on the current level we did not hesitate to charged in and seeked it out since Niriel wanted to show them the real power an Elistist can unleash! These powerful(?) minions have been slaughtered without mercy:

* Gorefeast (Vortex Lord): he didn't even knew what hit him. Here once more Niriel showed the incredible destructive power of TeleFlash(TM) in action :-)

* Steelskull the Hunter (Steel Lord): he meet a most dishonorable end. I did not gave him the honor to die by magic. Turned into a statue Niriel faced him with the legendary BloodSlayer axe until only tiny little bits remained. Not much steel left on your skull! :-p

* The Vizier (Cabalist): none of his minions were able to save him. He couldn't stand Niriel's fierce Blood Star assault even in the middle of his pack of lightning wielding sorry excuse figures of wizards. Buuuh!

* Bloodlust (Hell Spawn): that poor gal did not take it's chance to run. A cross of Guardians arranged quick around her blew her into oblivion without a chance to escape. She was really stunned! :-)

* Black Jade (Laz' Lady): chased into a corner she tried to make her last stand there. But in her final battle vs. Niriel's Inferno she pulled the short straw. Here i like to quote out friendly neighborhood-ninja Loo Wang: Burn baby burn! Flames are getting higha!

* Red Vex (Laz' Lady): guarding the entrance to Lazarus Lair she had no place to hide. Too dump to cover before an advancing field of Charged Bolts she soon hit the floor. Fizzle! Take cover once you see a thunderstorm coming!

* The Archbishop Lazarus: trapped inside his own lair there was no escape. As he tried to get out Niriel fought him back into his room with the firey breath of Inferno. Once back inside Lazarus tried to match up his Fireball with Niriel's Flamewave and a few additional Guardians. Although Laz stood quite long Niriel had the longer ... breath in the end ;-)

* Sir Gorash (Blood Knight): he never ever got the chance to swing at us. Severiouly wounded by stray fire he was killed by a stray Elemental which seemed dissatisfied by killing only a plain blood knight before him. Gorash died even that fast that i couldn't take a screenshot of it and only his droping (RoE) remained ...

Not even the sad fact that Ironsides and Cyrene felt victim to the dreaded lag-beast on lvl 15 halted our assault: Charisena and Niriel decended alone down to the deepest level. There they cleared around the 2 lever room and D's lair, then TKed the switches to open the final chamber. Then Charisena and me decided to do an angry-d-dance before the final kill: we dropped all
of Diablo's servents right before his hatred filled eyes until Niriel reached the point when the next kill would have given him the final levelup. Now Niriel began his final one-on-one assault. Old trusty Mr. Golem had his chance whacking big D while several summoned Guardians fired their hot breath at the evil one, with me porting around and throwing Holy Bolt's at the demon right
in the middle of his hideout. Not even the mystic powers of the huge stone-carved pentagram on the floor was strong enough to prevent Diablo's final defeat from this combined firepower as he went down in the end.

Niriel started his run with approx one million xp left to go and aided the party as much as he could on the way down to the Dark Lord. He even hosted the event to draw as much fire as possible away from the party. Taking only very few kills (approx 100 were left at the start) to save the leveling for Diablo most of the time Niriel produced the finest marble statues menkind has ever
seen ;-) and his brave companions littered the dungeon floor with dead corpses and thousands of small pebbles.

Back on the beach we had quite a little celebration! Niriel danced in joy with his Golem, Guardians lighted the surrounding and even a hot fireball juggle was attempted. Not to speak of the huge amount of congrats he received. Once more: THX PALS!

Well ... that's it.

"What is next for Niriel?" you may ask since he has obviously reached the end of the road. Retirement? Getting wise and rusty and dusty with age in my char backup with Arkaine`{SNOB}, Chocaciutl`{DAV}, Cohen`(BAR), Elric`[ImH], Freya`(VK), Grey`(Hybrid), Junkyard`Lizzy, Lothruin`{SNOB}, Lotus`(MAR), Mad`Man`(BNW), Morgoth`(ADV), Nut`Nude`Dude, Ragnar`[VIK], Snake`{SNOB-MM}, Srilasha`(SUM), Thora`(BAR), Turamarth`{DAP} and Wisp`(ARC)?

YOU MUST BE KIDDING! :->

Niriel will stay in active service and be ready for any challenge me and YOU want to set up! Be it support, rescue, attack or gear-gathering missions, quests to help through or whatever! He'll even bring back some old heros into action since i won't need that much char slots for mules in the future ;-)

Dr. Disaster
aka Niriel`{SNOB} level 50 Elitist Mage
TeleFlash is a Trademark of Dr. Disaster ;-)
Posted Jan. 31 1999