Hell Act 1
I played Hell Act 1 on players 5 difficulty, mainly looking for elite katars, armor bases (for the barbarian in particular), sword bases for the barbarian, better helmets for the barbarian and the druid, a Monarch for the sorceress, and elite polearms for the act 2 mercs. I'm relieved to report that everyone survived, ending up at level 83!
Amazon
As always, I started the act with the safest character, the Strafe amazon behind her level 20+ Valkyrie and her crowd-controlling cold rogue companion.
Prediction: If the amazon dies, it will be because I forget to cast Decoy for recon before entering a room.
We all hate stair traps, right? When you enter a temple and some mean boss pack starts attacking you even before you have a chance to see them because the loading screen's still on... deeply unfair. But what I can respect is a proper ambush! Like, when I open the gates to the monastery with the huge area behind it, and I don't see any monsters, and I enter and there's a nasty archer pack right in the corner behind the doors...
This cost me three full rejuv potions to get out of there alive. This image was taken after some monsters were dead already, and I forgot to check what affixes the boss had exactly - too hectic! - but that was quite an unpleasant encounter. That happened simply because I'm used to cast Decoy only for smaller rooms...
I experienced slight problems hitting stuff even with the socketed Eth rune in the Buriza, so I started to increase Penetrate to mitigate this. Apart from that, I had a lot of fun with my Buriza/Witchwild String setup. For larger mobs or physical resistance monsters, I'd rapidly fire WWS until Amp Damage proc'ed and then switch to Buriza to finish the monsters off. For physical immunes, I'd either break their immunity that way or used WWS's Magic Arrow, whatever felt easier and quicker in that situation. That made for quite a dynamic playstyle compared to the more simple, hold-right-button-for-Strafe mode of operations I used during Nightmare difficulty.
Druid
Prediction: If the druid dies, it will be because I won't realize my Oak Sage has died. I'm very bad at visually discerning stuff on screen; I get easily overwhelmed and have a hard time tracking all the things. The 3D engine graphics from modern games make this even worse for me, it was easier with 2D and hand-pixeled graphics back in the day. The druid with all his summons (bear, 3 wolves, oak sage, four ravens) plus his merc means I sometimes miss that the oak sage has died and my life total has plunged...
Apart from that, I'm surprised how tanky his zoo is, even at only 1 hard skill point for the bear and the wolves. And I started to really value Ravens; their blinding ability is quite helpful!
He also had a run-in with a rare boss type:
Always fun to see one of those.
I also encountered my first physical and cold immune boss. Took my merc quite a while to whittle him down with the little elemental damage he had... This one and later, similar bosses made for a good break for my cramped hand, I guess.
Besides a Ko and a a Lem rune from Andy, he also found an Ist rune! I actually misread it for an Ith on the ground and only realized what I had found when I put it into the stash.
This opens up the possibility of a
Delirium now, but I think I'll wait to see what other runes might drop for better options, like
Chains of Honor or
Call to Arms.
Barbarian
Prediction: If the barbarian dies, it will be because his leaps are so slow and by the time I land, the once-isolated monster I targeted will be in the middle of a pack that all hit me immediately. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I still wear this stupidly bad rare armor with ~400 defense; hopefully I can remedy that situation for Act 2.
I also quickly learned that Plague Bearer doesn't really cut it in Hell, so I made a thing until I can get or craft a better weapon:
Unbending Will is reliable and works nicely, and I can see myself using it for Act 2 or even Act 3 as well if needed. I like this runeword for playthroughs like this one, but still hope I'll have something better for Act 4 and later.
My mercenary started to die a lot, which puzzled me at first - I mean, as an Iron Wolf he tries to stay out of melee. But then I noticed that each time I'm airborne (and I do leap attack a lot of course), the monsters lose their focus and target him instead! This results in him not casting Fireball as often because he tries to get away from the monsters all the time, which fails more often than not and he dies. I surely haven't foreseen this particular problem when choosing the merc! Now I try to keep on the ground a bit longer for the monsters to target me when I notice the merc is in danger, but it's not easy.
Being a melee character with bad armor and a mediocre weapon, I had to leave behind and ignore some monsters. Griswold hit too hard, and the space on level 2 of the Hole was too crammed with two dangerous boss packs so I had to retreat. In other places when I encountered dangerous, non-fire-immune monsters, I pinned them to a wall in endless hit recovery animation with knockback from continous leaps and let the merc kill them with Fireball.
He also found a new headpiece for the Druid:
Sorceress
Prediction: If the sorceress dies, it will be because her Frenzy barbarian merc will unexpectedly disengage from tanking monsters while she's standing close to them to cast Frozen Orb. It's so annoying and a problem I don't have with Act 2 desert mercs; I guess it happens because the Frenzy barbs sometimes cast Taunt and then the AI needs to decide what to do next, and... goes on patrol or something? And at his frenzied speed, I need to react very quickly to teleport to safety if that happens.
We encountered our first (out of many) cold and fire immune boss right out of the gates in the Blood Moor. Took some patience until the barb had killed it; again, something that is less painful with an A2 merc wielding an overpowered
Insight weapon, but it's manageable (if the barb has a source of poison damage, otherwise they often regenrate faster than he can damage them).
After some cubing with bases, I managed to produce a 3os sharktooth armor and exchanged the
Stealth armor for a
Lionheart. I also cubed her an
Ancient's Pledge until I find a monarch for
Spirit and gave her a magic Jared's Stone I found with +2 to sorceress skills and +20 to life. That still has room for improvement, but works for now (thanks KoP for reminding me about ditching the
Leaf, I had forgotten about that).
Her best drop happened in the Catacombs level 2:
A Mal rune! That opens up some options, in particular an
Oath for the barbarian. A
Sanctuary would also be possible and nice, but I think he will need a better weapon more urgently.
Paladin
Prediction: If the paladin dies, it will be because I only very rarely have to engage in melee and don't have a feel for how much damage he can withstand. It turns out I can kill most monsters with Fist of the Heavens; even against animals, the killing speed is good enough with Conviction, and I can cast it constantly now. Even for some lightning immune animals like leapers, Conviction breaks their immunity enough to kill them with FotH, albeit slower. Only for a few LI animals the damage becomes too low and I have to enter melee with Vengeance.
He replaced his
Stealth with a
Smoke wyrmhide once he found a 2os base, and overall, he had it the easiest in this act. Clearing out fallen camps with FotH is pure joy. :D Only a cursed Arach boss I had to engage in melee reminded me not to get too overconfident.
Assassin
Prediction: If the assassin dies, it will be because I remain too long in a pack of monsters before teleporting out, thinking I only need one more discharge of Claws of Thunder to kill the pack!, overestimating her ability to tank. (Or that I am forced to tank because of tight spaces.)
The assassin is also the class I'm least certain about how she will perform and how good or bad her current setup will work in future acts. All other classes I feel have already all they need to potentially reach Baal, or in case of the barbarian, at least I have some form of plan for how to empower him. For the assassin, I have no idea how suitable my current damage reduction setup will be in the long run, and while her exceptional claws surprisingly still work well enough in Hell Act 1, I know they won't carry me forward much longer. Their saving grace I guess is that they have large bonuses against undead and demons.
It's always the same with the assassin: I start playing an act, encounter my first boss or large mob, my merc dies a couple of times and I have to quaff way too many potions, thinking in panic, "Oh no! This won't work at all!", until I rediscover the groove of teleporting to solitary fleeing monsters, killing them, then releasing my charges at the edge of mobs, rinse repeat. And then I'm confident again that she's not a failure after all.
What helped was that I found a 5os thresher relatively early and made her merc an
Obedience.
Yes, that ties perfectly into the discussion that in the end, any class can beat the game if they let the merc do all the work. But the assassin really needs some help while at the same time still manages to pull her own weight - she could do it on her own if necessary, but too slowly and tedious for my taste. (Of all my three classes who employ a desert merc, she's also the only one not dependent on an
Insight for mana regeneration.)
One related problem is that the assassin is the only character in the team with almost no magic find. She simply needs all slots for resistances, damage reduction etc. and has no room anywhere for mf. The merc has more mf than the assassin herself.
One more argument for him using
Obedience, I guess.
I also deviated from by initial build plan and invested a point into Venom. That extra poison damage diversifies her damage types and helps a bit against regeneration.
My merc's Rattlecage (still love that monster flee chance!) gut upgraded to an embossed plate. I didn't really thought that through though, as most of its defense comes from a flat +200 defense and so the upgrade only marginally improved it (+ approx. 200 defense, I think). But then I had the runes to spare and every bit helps, so...
On level 5 of the tower, I encountered a cursed fanatic archer boss accompanied by champion archers. Even at player 1 difficulty (set before entering the level for the countess' rune drops), they killed my merc several times and slowly pushed me back to the entrance. Before they managed to completely lock me out of the level, I decided to leave them be and used Dragon Flight to teleport through them and then run away. Rsiky, but thankfully it worked, and she ended up being the only character to get something remotely good from the countess: A Io rune.
What I also noticed with her is how annoying spiderwebs can be. All other classes ignore webs; they are either out of range or leaping, so I don't even notice them usually. The assassin is the only one having to move sometimes when being close to spiders, and the slowdown hurts.
I also started to cast Shadow Warrior for recon more often. Until now, I hesitated to recast her so she won't lose her learned skills. Now in Hell, she's not of much use beyond being a simple meat shield, so I could recast her more freely as an advance scout now.
Necromancer
Prediction: If the necromancer dies, it will be because I won't notice that his Bone Armor has been used up and now ranged hits directly go to his life pool. For most characters, I only notice they get hit by ranged attacks because their red globe loses color - again, I'm bad a discerning visuals and often don't notice projectiles flying. But when I keep standing in the same spot and don't see any changes in my life total, I tend to look less often to the globe. (I also notice I've been hit when the character makes the appropriate sound; I don't remember if the necro does it when his Bone Armor gets hit?)
There's not much to tell about the Necro's journey throught Act 1. He found himself an Ume's Lament which went to his weapon switch for marginally better Clay Golems, and that's it. No interesting events, no items for him or other characters, no problems with immunities, only slowly prodding along. At the end of the act, I got fed up with his Frenzy barb and replaced him with a Bash barb for the next act. In contrast to the sorceress, the necro has no real way to save him when he speed-runs half-dead to dangerous monsters except maybe casting Bone Wall, which is often inconvenient (or I'm simply not quick enought because he's so damn fast!). I don't have a good weapon for him yet, but maybe he also causes less problems with overwriting my amp damage like the Frenzy barb does with his Taunt (I have to read up on/test how Stun and War Cry interact with curses).
Items
The countess was a disappointment, dropping 1 El, 4 Tir, 1 Tal, 1 Ort, 1 Sol and 1 Io rune. Other semi-interesting items that dropped:
- Spirit Shroud, Peasant Crown: Went to the barbarian's Iron Wolf for more +skills.
- Fleshrender, Guardian Naga: Accidently sold both; should have compared them to the Paladin's Aldur's Rhythm for the few times I have to use Vengeance instead, although I suspect Aldur's with its sockets would have come out on top anyway.
- Nord's Tenderizer: Now that would have beaten Aldur's for Vengeance, but at the time I still had forgotten about the fact that FotH wouldn't always work. Once I remembered, I had already sold it. Damn.
- Frostburn: Kept it as an option for the Necromancer for the 40% more mana for more castings and less potion quaffing; he's wearing Chance Guards at the moment.
- Lava Gout: 20% IAS, +fire damage, +fire resist, chance to cast Enchant... looks nice, but couldn't really find someone to actually wear it. The assassin wears Ghoulhide for the damage boost against Undead and the mana leech, and the barb's Chance Guards are worse for combat, but he also doesn't need the Enchnant (his Iron Wolf can do it better) or the IAS. The paladin isn't in melee combat enough, so... sold.
As I said in the section about the assassin, most of my characters feel ready for Baal. Of course they would like to have better equipment, but if I wont't find it, I'd make do with what I have and probably will be fine (outside of making mistakes on my part, of course). The two exceptions are, unsurprisingly, my two melee chars: the barbarian and the assassin. Here are their problems, ordered by severity:
- The barbarian's armor. He's still using a ridiculously bad rare mesh armor.
- The assassin's claws. Thanks to the AR boost and changed charge-release mechanics of patch 2.4, and to her wearing Ghouldhide among other things, it's still enough to pass T-hawk's three-second melee test (which I agree is a good rule of thumb). But it won't carry her forward for much longer.
- The barbarian's weapon. Unbending Will will fail to pass the three-second melee test sooner or later as well, although it's not as bad for the barbarian as for the assassin, as he is airborne all the time and thus safer.
- The assassin's armor. I love Rockfleece and how it fits into my damage reduction setup, but there will soon be a point where higher defense will be better than the 10% damage reduction. To be honest, that point is probably already here, but overall it still works - but not much longer.
The hardest problem to solve will be the Assassin's claws. There are no affordable runewords to help out here, and I haven't found any unique or good enough rare elite claws yet. So all my characters gifted their Hell imbues to the Assassin, and after this didn't help, also the rest of their imbues (around 8 more) for using with any halfway decent white elite claws I found. Fifteen imbues, and no claws better than the exceptional I already wear. :wallbash: So I can only hope for better luck with drops, which doesn't feel good.
For the barbarian, I face an interesting conundrum. I have the runes for either an
Oath weapon or a
Stone armor, but not for both. In the end, the armor is more important going forward, but I will play the barbarian last in Act 2 to see what runes or bases drop before making that decision.
As for the assassin's armor, I can only hope more mid-level runes drop while her Rockfleece still works to craft her a better armor. But at least I have several options here and don't feel as dependent on luck as with her weapons.
)
But now that I think about it, I need to remember not to socket Aldur's with anything lightning...
