I'm playing this game yet again

[KingOfPain]

T-hawkWell, it's seven-through (or six-through without the bonemancer), and lots of full-clearing on high player counts.  And it's selective perception on not seeing what I don't get.  There's a lot of stuff I haven't gotten, most notably Shako (Harlequin), any unique sorceress orb, any unique ring other than Nagel/Manald, Magefist/Frostburn, Bonehew or Shaftstop or Vampire Gaze for mercs, and any of Vex-Ohm-Lo which each would have been more useful to actually make something than Jah and Sur.

I am not trying to diminish the challenge of your game at all. I know rarer drops don't always work out to be the best options, especially they are mismatched. Just saying some of the drops are not so easy to find.

[T-hawk]

Right. It only feels outlying because it's selective perception, of multiple endpoints. If you look at every possible 1/100000 odds drop, I probably found close to expected value of them. We just notice the one 1/100000 that was the Jah and not every other 1/100000 item that didn't happen. Jah and Sur in the same game is certainly an outlier, but then again I didn't get Jah-Ber, Jah-Lo, Cham-Sur, or any of a hundred other pairings, in any of the five other games.

The one time I quantified my luck was the nightmare hellforge, which verifiably was an 80th percentile result, at least for rank of the runes (not trying to quantify desirability.)

And I'm not sure what to make of the hell hellforge runes so far, but that report will come soon...

[T-hawk]

Nothing to do this week but stay home and play games.  First some notes on playing, then we'll get to the Hellforge runes.

The surprise story of fighting in this act was an item I added after last act: the Widowmaker bow on the trapsin's rogue merc.  What's so special about that?  Ignore Target's Defense.  Holy crap is that amazing with the Face of Horror on her.  Previously, the Face's monster-flee would trigger every now and then, useful to soften up crowds a little.  With Widowmaker's ITD, it triggers constantly all the time, dispersing dense swarms in seconds.  I had no idea attack rating was holding that back so much.  That much monster-flee would definitely be super irritating if I was trying to farm and magic-find, but here I will take any capability that answers threats to Guardianship.  Worked awesomely particularly in the River of Flame and Chaos Sanctuary with boundaries to hold in the fleeing monsters.  I also figured out an answer to the monster-flee by way of the least-used skill in the game: Psychic Hammer!  That can stunlock a fleeing monster to get shot down by traps, but without Mind Blast's annoying conversion.

Also the Clay Golem charges on the sorceress's Stone armor performed as well as I'd hoped.  Had to recast him every now and then, and pay to recharge the armor once, but if he saved even one merc resurrection then that was worth it.  Although the clay golem's weakness seems to be poison of all things - blood maggots on the river of flame kept sucking down his health, I guess he totally relies on regeneration.  Anyway, it was against Infector's boss pack that the clay golem really turned out amazing, just enough of a speed bump that the merc wouldn't get swarmed instantly each time I teleported away, and so the sorceress handled that fight with little trouble.

Everything else proceeded as before: Cloak of Shadows charges kept the hammerdin invincible, huge life pools did the same for the barb and druid, and the javazon did her long-range thing nicely too.

So here's the wacky Hellforge results I hinted at: Mal, Mal, Mal, Um, Ko, Ko.

   

Calculating the probability same as before gives a chance of doing that well or higher of 28.7%, again somewhat lucky but within reasonable expectation.  Although it's another example where rarity doesn't mean utility, particularly given that multiples of the same thing will be progressively less useful.

The triple Mal felt highly improbable, but here's the numbers.  You have to consider the multiple endpoints, Mal isn't special, we would notice any three-way collision the same way.  The probability of any particular three all colliding is 1/121, and there are 20 different groupings of three among six items, so on average the number of triples among six hellforge runes is 20/121, again unusual but not wildly improbable.  (20/121 is the average, but slightly overstates the chance of at least one triple, because some triples are part of quads or more, or two different triples can occur in one set of six.)

I can certainly take a hint on what to do with some of it, Ko + Ko + Mal is a Sanctuary shield, more on that below.  But not sure what else.  I really don't have any target to use the Um; another merc Duress would be fine, but I don't have any 3-socket elite armor on hand, much less an ethereal-bugged one as I'd want.  The remaining Ist (from earlier) + Mal + Mal all cubed together could make a Gul, which with the Jah could make Fury, but that doesn't really seem any noticeably better than Ribcracker and also I don't have a base for it.  Or Gul could be a Principle paladin armor, but I really like the Guardian Angel on him.  Mal can make a Prudence armor, but that needs ethereality to be good enough to matter (it has self-repair) and I don't have any such base for that either.  Mal can also make a druid Rain armor, but I have a better idea than that too, more below.

   

I also got a Lem from a random drop, so the Ist from earlier can be a Delirium.  Thing is, almost everyone is well set in the helm slot: Arreat's, Jalal's, Darksight (hammerdin isn't giving up that Cloak of Shadows), +2 sorceress circlet with strength and resists that she needs, +3 trap skills socketed with a resist rune.  The only character for whom Delirium would improve anything is the javazon, who had only a +2 skills circlet.  She doesn't have a great need for the crowd chaos stuff, but what the hell, I've never had a Delirium so let's have some fun with it, and it does have vitality and magic find above the skills.  I went to try it out back in nightmare, and it works awesomely with Lightning Fury pierce lines, the CTC Confuse can trigger over and over.

   

Back to the Sanctuary runeword: at long last, the paladin finally has a worthy endgame shield, finally upgrading from the 4-diamond that he's been using for about forty acts.  The base wasn't perfect, starting with only 24% resist all for the automod and below-average base defense, but I wasn't wasting this opportunity.  Sacred Targe is pretty scarce for a base item, showing up once per act or less, and this one dropped (a couple acts ago) with the right number of sockets and a decent automod, so who knows how long it would take to find something better, I'm taking this now with only the one act to go.  And it hit the jackpot on a perfect +70% roll for the resistances!

Also notice the +20 dexterity on it as well (comes from just the two Ko runes.)  Now the hammerdin has almost the highest blocking possible in the game: highest base item, plus 20%, plus 20% more on Guardian Angel, plus max Holy Shield.  I think the only possible ways to go higher are Whitstan's Guard and a crafted safety amulet.  I spoke against raising dexterity solely for blocking before, but this is the absolute best case for it, every point of dexterity is nearly 1% blocking.  I decided this was too much of a waste to go unused, and so finally invested some stat points in dexterity.  It took only 25 hard points and 60 from equipment/charms to get to max block.  (I put those saved points in dex at the start of the act, even though he didn't get the Sanctuary until afterwards.  Someone else got the Mal first and he already had the two Ko's, so the hammerdin knew the Sanctuary was coming and could spend the dex ahead of time.)

What I didn't expect was enough runes to make two Sanctuaries!  In an open-ended environment, I'd hold on to the second Ko-Ko-Mal set for a top-notch sacred targe base.  But here I don't care about anything beyond this last act.  The javazon could also use Sanctuary, as a very slight upgrade over Moser's shield (mostly for the 20 dex), but I'll take it.  (I still have to go back and find a base for it, either tower shield or dragon shield will do.  I'll look in Halls of Anguish/Pain/Vaught in nightmare, since nobody cleared that at all.)

Druid news: The better idea than a Rain armor is to give him the Naj's Light Plate that was left over after the sorceress got Stone.  (25 resist all, 65 life, +1 skills.)  He previously needed Lionheart's strength to support the Earthshaker hammer, but now the 20 on Jalal's covers most of that.  Lionheart is less good than it seems for the druid, because of a quasi-bug: life from +vitality on items does not get multiplied by Oak Sage.  Lionheart adds 140 life after Sage's effect, and Naj's adds 130, a very small tradeoff worth it to get the +1 skills on Naj's.  Plus it can take a resist rune with his last socket quest.

   

Also for the druid, I'm changing his merc to a barbarian for the final act.  Reason is I got a Vile Husk drop, with a spare Pul on hand to upgrade it to elite.  The druid loves CTC Amp on his merc, Tornado just melts everything once that triggers.  That merc had been using a rare lance with CTC Amp all the way through hell, but with lousy (+50%) damage, so this is a great upgrade.  This means giving up Holy Freeze, but I think I'm okay with that here.  Holy Freeze doesn't work against the greatest threat in act 5, which is the physical immune frenzytaurs.  And the one big upside of a barb merc is his fast health regeneration, which works well with the wind druid, as a percentage of Oak Sage's multiplied life, outweighing his need for life steal.

Miscellaneous items from the act: got a Shadow Killer claw; between that and Bartuc's or Fury, might have had a pretty decent claw assassin.  Also a Cliffkiller bow, would be more damage than the Widowmaker for the trapsin's rogue merc, but that ITD is just too sweet.  And a Nosferatu's Coil belt (5% life steal, hit slows target 10%) which is tempting for the barb, but I really don't want to give up the 80 life on his existing belt, a Blood craft.

And a miscellaneous note: I've been surprised at everyone's use of the glove slot, almost all just for utility.  Only the barb has anything special there, Laying of Hands.  I never got any Magefist or Frostburn for the spellcasters.  So everyone has gone shopping at Anya for gloves quite a few times throughout the acts, many multiple times as their needs changed.  I shopped so many combinations of gloves with a resist prefix and a suffix of strength or dex or IAS, and then ended up trading it out for another when they got strength from somewhere else or needed a different resistance.  The hammerdin in particular just shopped gloves of 20 lit res and 20 dex - seems mundane but it really is the best use of the slot for what he needs.

So just one more act to go to crown six Guardians, next up will be the thrilling conclusion.

[superdeath]

Cant wait!

[T-hawk]

Mini-update: I got a tower shield for the javazon's Sanctuary.  Unfortunately this one got a low resistances roll, only 53% (out of 50 to 70.)  10% resists below Moser's, but she was oversubscribed on fire anyway (Aldur's boots), and I can arrange enough charms to make up the lit and cold.  So the extra blocking is worth it, went from 38% up to 50% with the better shield and the extra 20 dex.

One other point: With the druid swapping away from Lionheart, I thought about it and was surprised to realize how Lionheart isn't all that good in this environment.  It's great for solo with stats/resists/life just bigger than anything else one character is likely self-find, and it's great in a full-twink environment where a character already knows their endgame equipment so can precisely make use of the str/dex to target their requirements.  But this environment was an odd not-so-effective middle ground for it.  Lionheart users kept finding more equipment with str/dex stats (gloves, circlets/Jalal's, amulets, rings, the sorceress's Stone), rendering Lionheart itself overkill.  The only character here who kept Lionheart to endgame was the javazon, because extra dexterity at least continues to be useful for blocking, and the strength does support Aldur's boots, but that's just because she never found an amazon circlet/amulet with strength.  It's still my favorite runeword for hardcore, but I did underestimate how much it gets superseded by other things with big defense or some combination of skills and other goodies (Vipermagi, Guardian Angel, Treachery, Naj's.)

I didn't start act 5 yet, but made one last pass among all the characters to gamble away all their gold and arrange charms and resistances, and should have time this weekend to play.

[T-hawk]

   

[superdeath]

I... really want you to use a hero editor and give that necro a proper Guardianship.

[KingOfPain]

appropriately named

[T-hawk]

Yeah, this was the first time you saw the names.  I intentionally didn't use them in the writing, to focus on the mechanics rather than the aesthetics, and also a couple aren't quite intuitive (Spark could be the javazon, Storm sounds like the wind druid.)  And to break them out for that final reveal there.

Oh, believe me, I was tempted to revive the bonemancer, to see what might have been from his hellforge rune and give him his shot against the Ancients and Lister and Baal.  But no, he didn't earn it.  Hardcore death has to mean death.  Yes, that one instant of lapse in attention and judgment spoiled the team and cost me the investment of building and running him... but it has to be that way.  If you circumvent that at all, it's not hardcore any more, you rationalize your way out of it having any meaning at all.

And Starbone is the worst name there, I could have been more creative with that, actually that's part of why I didn't really mind losing him.  (Naming characters is pretty significant for me.  In earlier plays of D2 and some other games, I would often have a character build in mind but be lukewarm about getting started on playing it...  until I thought of a good name and then got super excited and couldn't wait.)

Anyway, that was the teaser, here's the full report from the last act.  It actually felt like the last sector of playing FTL.  Just get to the flagship and beat it, nothing else matters.  I staunchly never went above players-1 and through as little fighting as possible.  No barbarian rescuing quest, god hell no Nihlathak, and actually not even the Anya quest, which takes quite a while to get through and can be risky against gloams and witches.  Just straight to the Ancients then Baal with everyone.

Although Diablo is unlike FTL, in that it's hard to convey the feel of a game in text.  FTL works that way, being about the play-by-play flow and ebb of attrition and resource management, while Diablo never is, threats come and go in instants.

   

Like this, I took a screenshot of the one time I had to save & exit, when I teleported near that Might-enchanted archer pack with the sorceress.  (I never teleport blind or aggressively in hardcore; I thought I was passing back through clear territory, but had missed that very tightly bunched pack.)  I burned through a column of rejuves in about 0.8 seconds and then smacked Escape barely in time.  (I've always considered save & exit to be valid tactically and not cheap; you have to react fast enough to do it, and it does have a real tradeoff, whatever's left in town is lost (for me, always a pile of gems and runes) and you have to make your way back from the last waypoint.)

Starhammer: He bulldozed the Ancients in seconds, before I even saw most of the boss modifiers.  I was worried about him handling the second Baal minion wave, the magic-immune greater mummies.  But they were hardly any threat to kill me, so it just took about ten minutes.  First I had to cast hammers while running Redemption aura constantly, to get rid of the minion skeleton corpses.  After that, I switched to Smite, although actually the mercenary did most of the damage.  Lister's pack after that was actually easier, took about 15 fairly quick hammer hits each.

Starshade, the trapsin: She had a lot more trouble with the Ancients.  I had to portal out and reroll them several times until getting a workable combination of boss modifiers (mostly no Cursed or Fanaticism, Conviction, Might.)  And had to isolate them one at a time and recast the shadow constantly, but got it done eventually.  Lister's pack wasn't too hard and dropped fast once Death Sentry got going; even though Lister himself was both fire and lightning immune, he was easy to kill by the rogue merc while pinned down with Mind Blast (does inflict knockback/hit recovery on him, unlike on the Ancients.)

Starspark, the lightning sorceress: Handled the Ancients carefully but fine, again isolating them one by one.  Even though the third one turned out to be immune to both lightning and cold, but the merc was able to kill him all on his own, thanks to the clay golem tanking and slowing.  Actually my worry was if the 16 Clay Golem charges would hold out but they did.  All the Baal minion waves were easy (no lightning immunes) and so was Baal as always.

Starstorm, the javazon: Damn, Delirium is awesome on this character.  I had been saying she didn't greatly need the crowd control stuff, but wow does it rip apart any potential threats.  I totally didn't anticipate how the CTC Confuse would trigger constantly with Lightning Fury pierce lines through dense packs.  The Delirium morph did happen a few times (I'm not sure I'd want this on a melee character), but it's easy to reset by just waypointing to another act and back.

Anyway, she beat the Ancients easily in one try, and killed the first one fast enough to not have to isolate them.  Madawc was lightning immune, but Plague Jav and Jab and the merc killed him reliably enough.  The big difficulty for the javazon happened in the Throne of Destruction, and it wasn't the minion waves which went down easily, but this:

   

Lightning and poison immune gloams, also 90% physical resistant.  Ouch.  I probably should have rerolled a new game, but doggedly pushed through it anyway; with max lightning resistance and frequent trips to town they weren't really a threat, just took quite a while for the merc and me to jab down.  My reward for pushing through that was a pretty good drop payoff!

   

I actually put that on for Baal, when the Delirium wackiness wouldn't matter but Cannot Be Frozen would.

Starwind, the druid: His story was mostly the barbarian mercenary.  He never died once the entire act, that health regeneration is the real deal, even held up against Bartuc's pack's hydras and Lister's pack.  His only weakness just like the clay golem was poison, his health only ever dropped in one area full of poison skeleton mages.  His CTC Amplify sword was cool but not critical against the physical-immune frenzytaurs and witches, since Hurricane was able to kill them well enough.  But that CTC Amp was critical on the Ancients when two of them spawned Stone Skin!  They were little threat, but tornadoes couldn't dent them much... until the Amplify triggered and then each went down in seconds.  Lister was also stone skin but also went down under Amp.  After all that, then the druid actually had the most trouble out of everyone with Baal himself, mostly because Oak Sage couldn't stay alive.  And I ran out of rejuves, so had to be very careful about portaling back to town every time anything's health dropped, but we got it done.

Starbrute, the barbarian: I played him last, as the most robust and reliable character to serve as a victory lap, and also so I wouldn't bother taking the time to hork everything after everyone else had already finished.  Although there was one thing he didn't do optimally: socket his Arreat's Face.  I decided to just put something in it for life since he didn't need anything else, and the biggest option actually would have been the Jah rune (+5% max life), but I couldn't bring myself to do that and just went with a ruby instead.  Anyway, he clobbered through the Ancients in seconds also, helped by a combat shrine that I remembered was near a waypoint and went back to grab; I killed two Ancients by whirlwinding with that before ever seeing their modifiers, then looked at the last one and saw stone skin so switched to Berserk.  Baal's minion packs and Baal himself also went down easy to complete my roster of six Guardians.

Item finds, not that it matters: that Kira's Guardian, Warshrike throwing knife, a second Whitstan's Guard, Spire of Lazarus staff (actually a cool package of lightning skills, fittingly dropped for the sorceress from Baal), Sazabi's set armor, a third Haemosu's set armor.  No rune above Hel and no skill charms, but doesn't matter now that we're done.

I'm resisting the urge to go take a victory lap in the cow level.  There's nothing to gain, and only heartbreak if someone were to die there.  Both my first-ever guardian and my previous bonemancer went on to die in the cow level, so let's leave that alone and call this the conclusion here.

[superdeath]

Die to the cow king there. Its only fitting.