Myrakh-2
23-08-2004, 11:16
... didn't really live very long :-)
Well, nothing ever works as planned, of course ("since when did plan A ever work?"). It took me more than two days of D2 playing to finally get on a "good" server, and stay there until the clone came up. It happened yesterday night: shortly before I decided I had to go zzzZzzzZzzz the "xxx stones of jordan were sold to merchants" started to come up in masses, as people were finally selling their dupes.
In any case... "Diablo walks the earth". I logged out the mule, since obviously I wanted a 1-player clone --- no need to make it harder than necessary. I spawned him in Stony Field with my only playchar, a Skelemancer. I had my full army with me --- 13 warriors, 13 mages; they lasted for a while, but not long enough. They did chop off a few pixels, though, so that was a good start.
I hadn't really expected it to be easy, so I went along with the original plan and went to RoF to get some Urdar. I had tried to verify the claim that they have crushing blow before, but didn't find anything; still, I wanted to try it.
That's were "Plan A" began to fail: there were no Urdar. So, I tried the beasts from Upper Kurast instead, hoping they would have crushing blow as well (if they failed I'd have tried durance-2, then frenzytaurs). Their packs weren't big enough to get 12 of them, but the 6 I got on the first round did some noticeable damage to the clone, so once my army was wpied out again, I went back into A3 to get some more revives and a few new skellies.
I had to do this two or three times; I never restored my full army because I was afraid that he might get back to full health. After a while, he was down to just a few pixels, so I figured "crushing blow" (if my Revives ever had it) would be not-very-effective now.
So, I prepared for the crushing blow :-) Back into bloodmoor, raised full skelly army again, and this time... they did it. Not a very impressive ending, I had seen this death animation too often already, no video clips, no uber-being showing up to congratulate, but he did drop a charm... no, he dropped THE charm, not the usual crap. Three skillers cramped into one sc along with other very nice mods; if that isn't THE charm I don't know what is.
My Skelemancer is level 88, with this gear:
- full Trangs (topaz/topaz/diamond)
- Arm of King Leoric (nothing yet)
- +2 Marrowwalks
- 2 magic find rings (one particulary nice... 23% mf, 95 mana. Not the highest mf, but the mana doesn't hurt... even swapped out the 25% for it)
- +3 summoning amulet
- 1 summon skiller (aiming for more...)
- Gheeds
- lots of single-resi charms and some mf and life/mana charms to bring resists to 75/75/75/75 (I know that's a lot for a Skelemancer, but not much else I can do here)
And since yesterday... an anni :-) Means I can stash away some of the resi charms. Also means I have too much str now, but who cares...
My merc needed a few pots and resurrections:
- Crown of thieves
- A rare armor with 1200+ defense (still looking for +2 Arkaine... on the old ladder I even found an ethreal one)
- +4 ariocs needle, near-perfect ed%
I did have a grim harvester (or whatever it's called) stashed for him, to PMH the clone, but I never felt the need to try that. I also had a sword with PMH on weaponswitch for myself (with another TO shield), but again... I wanted to use THAT even less: I want to stay away from the monster, not run up to the most dangerous monster in the game trying to hit him with far-too-low-AR, resists and defense...
I was pretty much surprised to see that PMH wasn't required, so I'll probably dump that gear --- either the poison from the magi or the merc worked well enough, or I was plain lucky. The PMH sword is just a placeholder until I get a Gull, anyway...
The clone hardly ever scratched me; I did get caught in his breathweapon thing a few times (or at least close enough to be damaged... seems there was a slight lag/desync here), but I was never in danger myself. I always retreated before my army was down to 0, or when the merc died. And being a "no dex, all vit" build with max resists probably helped as well...
The slow (gumby+decrep+cold magi) did work, but as you can see this didn't turn him into a tame puppy. He was still a formidable enemy. I didn't bother to spawn firewalls like I usually do vs act bosses... with 95% resist all this would just be a waste of mana, IMHO.
All in all, it was surprise that I got hm down --- my gear is pretty cheap, after all, and it's my standard play gear.
I'll be trying this again soon, as I'm making another Skelemancer with MF gear, and of course he'll "need" an anni, too :-) Even more so as he'll have severe resist problems... with just homunculus and a 20% maras, anything is welcome, even if it's only an anni :-)
Funny enough, the good old poisoned merc bug showed up a lot during the fight --- my merc would be green (didn't know DC had poison, but who cares), and Akara wouldn't heal him. In fact, I even got a green merc when I resurrected him...
In any case... Lord Diablo, I have bested you :-) Yeah :-) What a messy little demon...
Well, nothing ever works as planned, of course ("since when did plan A ever work?"). It took me more than two days of D2 playing to finally get on a "good" server, and stay there until the clone came up. It happened yesterday night: shortly before I decided I had to go zzzZzzzZzzz the "xxx stones of jordan were sold to merchants" started to come up in masses, as people were finally selling their dupes.
In any case... "Diablo walks the earth". I logged out the mule, since obviously I wanted a 1-player clone --- no need to make it harder than necessary. I spawned him in Stony Field with my only playchar, a Skelemancer. I had my full army with me --- 13 warriors, 13 mages; they lasted for a while, but not long enough. They did chop off a few pixels, though, so that was a good start.
I hadn't really expected it to be easy, so I went along with the original plan and went to RoF to get some Urdar. I had tried to verify the claim that they have crushing blow before, but didn't find anything; still, I wanted to try it.
That's were "Plan A" began to fail: there were no Urdar. So, I tried the beasts from Upper Kurast instead, hoping they would have crushing blow as well (if they failed I'd have tried durance-2, then frenzytaurs). Their packs weren't big enough to get 12 of them, but the 6 I got on the first round did some noticeable damage to the clone, so once my army was wpied out again, I went back into A3 to get some more revives and a few new skellies.
I had to do this two or three times; I never restored my full army because I was afraid that he might get back to full health. After a while, he was down to just a few pixels, so I figured "crushing blow" (if my Revives ever had it) would be not-very-effective now.
So, I prepared for the crushing blow :-) Back into bloodmoor, raised full skelly army again, and this time... they did it. Not a very impressive ending, I had seen this death animation too often already, no video clips, no uber-being showing up to congratulate, but he did drop a charm... no, he dropped THE charm, not the usual crap. Three skillers cramped into one sc along with other very nice mods; if that isn't THE charm I don't know what is.
My Skelemancer is level 88, with this gear:
- full Trangs (topaz/topaz/diamond)
- Arm of King Leoric (nothing yet)
- +2 Marrowwalks
- 2 magic find rings (one particulary nice... 23% mf, 95 mana. Not the highest mf, but the mana doesn't hurt... even swapped out the 25% for it)
- +3 summoning amulet
- 1 summon skiller (aiming for more...)
- Gheeds
- lots of single-resi charms and some mf and life/mana charms to bring resists to 75/75/75/75 (I know that's a lot for a Skelemancer, but not much else I can do here)
And since yesterday... an anni :-) Means I can stash away some of the resi charms. Also means I have too much str now, but who cares...
My merc needed a few pots and resurrections:
- Crown of thieves
- A rare armor with 1200+ defense (still looking for +2 Arkaine... on the old ladder I even found an ethreal one)
- +4 ariocs needle, near-perfect ed%
I did have a grim harvester (or whatever it's called) stashed for him, to PMH the clone, but I never felt the need to try that. I also had a sword with PMH on weaponswitch for myself (with another TO shield), but again... I wanted to use THAT even less: I want to stay away from the monster, not run up to the most dangerous monster in the game trying to hit him with far-too-low-AR, resists and defense...
I was pretty much surprised to see that PMH wasn't required, so I'll probably dump that gear --- either the poison from the magi or the merc worked well enough, or I was plain lucky. The PMH sword is just a placeholder until I get a Gull, anyway...
The clone hardly ever scratched me; I did get caught in his breathweapon thing a few times (or at least close enough to be damaged... seems there was a slight lag/desync here), but I was never in danger myself. I always retreated before my army was down to 0, or when the merc died. And being a "no dex, all vit" build with max resists probably helped as well...
The slow (gumby+decrep+cold magi) did work, but as you can see this didn't turn him into a tame puppy. He was still a formidable enemy. I didn't bother to spawn firewalls like I usually do vs act bosses... with 95% resist all this would just be a waste of mana, IMHO.
All in all, it was surprise that I got hm down --- my gear is pretty cheap, after all, and it's my standard play gear.
I'll be trying this again soon, as I'm making another Skelemancer with MF gear, and of course he'll "need" an anni, too :-) Even more so as he'll have severe resist problems... with just homunculus and a 20% maras, anything is welcome, even if it's only an anni :-)
Funny enough, the good old poisoned merc bug showed up a lot during the fight --- my merc would be green (didn't know DC had poison, but who cares), and Akara wouldn't heal him. In fact, I even got a green merc when I resurrected him...
In any case... Lord Diablo, I have bested you :-) Yeah :-) What a messy little demon...