Guardian (er, um) Conqueror Hector

**HanShotFirst** · 10-04-2012, 01:35

Who’s this Hector? . . you say . . .

Hector is the hardcore untwinked 1.13 Concentrate Barbarian that I created to participate in Kesteg’s untwinked quest for level 99 challenge/thread. (He’s a Conqueror not a Guardian because Ancients are being reserved for level 98 as I’m still pretending I’m going to get him to level 99 someday). I opted to create a hardcore character as I find leveling for the sake of leveling uninteresting unless, . . . it’s done hardcore. (Insert the usual elitist hardcore reasoning here). I opted to create a Barbarian mostly because they seemed underrepresented in the challenge and also because they seemed good for survivability (both in general and at my endgame target: Nihlathak). Concentrate was chosen for much the same reasons: survivability and usefulness vs. Nihlathak. Plus, Concentrate seemed to be something that could be effective on a budget . . .

So, how’d it work out?

Stats:

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Skills:

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Equipment:

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Mercenary:

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Gaming Experience:

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In two words: ‘Pretty nice’. Hector was my first ‘freestyle’ single player hardcore character in years and that turned out to be pretty fun. I had suspected that regular hardcore play might not be as engaging as it had been before I started playing in SPF tournaments but it’s still fun. No small part of the fun was surely that I’m a sucker for restarting and I approached Hector as though I’d decided to restart to hardcore only SP play and Hector was going to be my opening character.

To that end, getting the most MF possible (as soon as possible) was Hector’s premier priority. Early gear for Hector and the Mercenary was anything that had MF . . . but it didn’t pay off right away. Hector and his Rouge Mercenary scored a grand total of zero set/uniques in Normal Act 1. Normal Act 2 however, went much better . . . once I started running Beetleburst as he was right off the Far Oasis Waypoint. Beetleburst dropped an eth Dimoak’s Hew Bardiche which made Hector’s Desert Mercenary very effective (good thing too, because Hector sure wasn’t killing much with his Steel Broadsword).

The eth Dimoak’s Hew Bardiche / Desert Mercenary continued to do all the killing until Normal Act 5 when the Dimoak’s Hew Bardiche got upgraded to a Lochaber Axe. So then the eth Dimoak’s Hew Lochaber Axe / Desert Mercenary continued to do all the killing until NM Act 1 when a Partizan Insight was made (and yes, the mercenary continued to do all the killing). NM Andariel dropped nothing of interest on her opening drop but I decided to try her again (mostly to see how long a run would take) and she dropped this. The Shaftstop of course became my endgame armor and the Hexfire meant that Hector could do some of the killing . . . for a time. Sadly neither Hector nor his mercenary would get another weapon upgrade throughout the rest of Nightmare.

As a result, I was rather concerned about entering Hell with nothing but a Hexfire Shamshir and a Partizan Insight . . . but experience in NM was becoming scarce and so it seemed time to press on. The players setting was dropped for the first time and Hector discarded some MF gear for the safety of his Shaftstop and Gerke’s Sanctuary and ventured into Hell. At players 3, Hector with his Hexfire, was useless as a melee fighter so he became a Warcries shouting support character . . . the only problem was that he was supporting a mercenary who wasn’t much stronger . . . Still, Hector managed to creep to The Pits and locate a good map (one that had lots of chokepoints). Sporting about 300 MF (when the mercenary killed . . . and the mercenary always killed) Hector proceeded to creep through The Pits from clvl 77 to clvl 83 when suddenly a golden phase blade dropped! It turned out to be a Lightsabre, usually something that would really annoy me (as I can’t get an Azurewrath to in SP for anything), but in this case it was really exciting. The Lightsabre was a huge upgrade from the Hexfire and Hector was suddenly as or more capable than the mercenary who too got an upgrade in the form of a Thresher Insight. Suddenly The Pits became much much easier. Hector continued to run The Pits (now at players 5) to clvl 88 by which time he’d found and cubed an eth Colossus Vouge, eth Cryptic Axe, and eth Giant Thresher to four sockets greatly upgrading his mercenary’s damage (the Colussus Vouge came out to the most damage per second). Hector too got an upgrade in damage as an eth Colossus Blade dropped and cubed to four sockets enabling Hector’s creation of Oath.

Hector then had an easy time questing through Hell and found some good stuff too. A Gheed’s dropped from Big D (important because it helped me gamble more amulets more often) and an Arreat’s Face dropped in the Arreat Plateau (how cool is that). After questing up to (but of course not including) the Ancients, Hector returned to MF Mephisto. A thousand set/uniques and two character levels later, Hector had everything he wanted from Mephisto (Dracul’s Grasp was the last thing to drop). Oh, I almost forgot, a Lo Rune dropped from the special chest behind Mephisto. A Lo Rune? Yes, a Lo Rune. The only high rune that could really be a game changer for Hector . . . Amazing. Three socket quest rewards and a respec (to optimize strength and dexterity only) and Hector was ready to do or die (literally).

As you may recall, long ago before the many readouts and much rambling I stated that Hector’s prime purpose was to battle Nihlathak . . . my most feared super unique / boss. I opted to start out cautious engaging Nihlathak at players 1 . . . and to my surprise everything worked well . . . perhaps too well . . . Could it be a trap?! I did a dozen more runs at players 1 to find out . . . nothing seemed dangerous (to Hector at least, Chalan was dead, dead, dead, left dead). Okay, let’s try players 3. A dozen runs later . . . nothing seemed dangerous. Okay, let’s try players 5. A dozen runs later . . . nothing seemed too dangerous. Okay, let’s try players 7! A dozen runs later . . . nothing seemed too very dangerous. Dare I try players 8? . . I never use players 8 . . . never . . . mostly because I’m never trying to level so players 7 is plenty good . . . hmm . . . hmm . . . ‘/players 8’ . . . ‘Now for wrath! Now for ruin! And the red dawn! Death! Death! Death! . . . and guess what, it was Nihlathak’s death, not Hector’s. Hector went from clvl 90.5 to 91.5 at Nihlathak at players 8 and everything went well (he may yet die there but it seems it will take a perfect storm of monsters mods and some mistakes for it to happen). I stopped running Nihlathak when I bothered to do some math and realized that The Pit was still better for experience . . . Hector has been running The Pits without incident ever since . . .

Final Thoughts:

Spoiler

**crawlingdeadman** · 10-04-2012, 01:38

good show, sir. the thing that sucks about act 2 mercs and nith is that they'll run right through the bugged clouds of poison and die, pretty much no matter what you do. teleport is the way to keep them alive, and even that isnt a guarantee.

**pharphis** · 10-04-2012, 02:04

Could act 3 mercs be used instead, so that you still have some small additional help? Cold so that he shatters corpses, too? I'm not too sure how useful thei AI is for avoiding stuff like that, though.

Very cool, and very lucky for you to get the Lo before the other high runes you'll undoubtably find at some point with this char. I'm somewhat tempted to join this thread eventually.

**thefranklin** · 10-04-2012, 02:39

Nice character!

Quite impressive to go from 0 to 93. Now do it in hardcore.. err, naked. The character, you keep your gear on.

**CorruptedMollusk** · 10-04-2012, 03:22

Since it appears you're doing the tanking yourself, have you thought about an Act I rogue? The Inner Sight is always nice, and they tend to stay alive and their AI is a (very slight) notch above A2 mercs. Plus depending on what you find, you can make some fun bows for them. I'd get a cold one personally, and I would think you could make Harmony easily enough. Another Treachery and a hat with ll and she would be ok unless she got mobbed. I know its not perfect, but its perhaps at least some help.

CM

Edit: Also a solid bravo and well done on 1) playing a Concentrate Barb, and 2) finding all that nice gear.

**Drystan** · 10-04-2012, 03:51

Nice! Long way to 99, but big 'grats. He'd make it to Guardian if you wanted him to, so he's there.
And well done on that gear, untwinked, with a Conc barb! Wow!

**zaphodbrx** · 10-04-2012, 04:24

Untwinked Level 99 - or even level 93 HC is pretty amazing! Keep up the good work!
Gladiator's bane gives iDR for a merc, and you can socket Sol runes. That's about all I can think of.
If you use the act3 cold mercs, they cannot freeze Nihilithak's guys, they are always cold immune.

**pharphis** · 10-04-2012, 04:28

^Duh, silly me. I guess I've never fought them with anything but a lightning sorc, so I didn't think about that.
Sounds like Mr. HSF Needs himself a *Insert favourite aura* merc with the above suggestion for a set-up. I'm guessing that could make a pretty sweet difference in run speed in the long run, or just the tiny increase to survivability?

Damnit! Now I want to do this

*Gets to level 99 with his new barb named TUB*
Okay, has anyone named their barb TUB, yet?

**Arkardo** · 10-04-2012, 07:55

Holy Moly, this is nice! Your gear is awesome, especially that ammy! Keep up the good work!

**Kaerion** · 10-04-2012, 12:26

wow this is incredible. well done sir and a big congrats!

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