"Don Bruder" <dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:bMednegABfjFopXVnZ2dnUVZ_o3inZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Let's start it out in true gaming style:
>
> "No **** - There I was..."
>
> Spent the better part of an hour with my level 68 fireball/frozen orb
> sorc, doing my usual "scorched earth, no stone unturned, no chest
> unkicked" routine in Hell act 1. It paid off in a handful of low runes,
> 3-4 pgems (after cubing up lesser stuff) and a pair of Lum runes - one
> under a rock, the other in a chest. Hit Tristram, free Caine, then back
> to the Dark Woods for mop-up, and on to the marsh, looking for the
> waypoint. Now, this little girl is some serious trouble for anything not
> fire immune - Between her Lore, a Salamander staff, a spiffy amulet with
> +2 fire skills, and her base skill points, plus her synergies, her
> fireball hits for 2243-2597 at a whack. Her orb is still comparatively
> wimpy, only dealing about 270 points, but... <shrug> She gets by. Add
> her Thorns merc toting an Insight, and I don't even bother carrying blue
> potions anymore.
>
> So, we're tooling around in the Marsh, looking for the waypoint, and
> eventually the countess. Clear the Marsh, but I must have blinked as the
> waypoint went by, 'cause I still don't have it. OK, Mugsy - let's take
> another turn around the park... Aha.. There it is - Surrounded by not
> one, but TWO boss-packs of sasquatches - Fortunately both had LI bosses,
> so, fireball wiped 'em out PDQ.
>
> OK, got the waypoint - now to go play with the countess. Head downstairs
> to level 1, and proceed to clear it - Still "scorched earth" and hitting
> every item that might yield something worth picking up. Level cleared,
> head for the stairs. Down we go. Uh-oh... classic stair-trap - Pop in
> smack in the middle of what I'm soon to find out is a boss-pack of
> Devilkins, which are FI, as all of the fallen/carver/devilkin types have
> been since I came into Hell level. OK, switch to orb and get one off -
> just before getting tagged for a handful of points worth of damage - but
> now my mana ball is empty. Aw, crap... Boss has mana burn... This is
> gonna be ugly... Punch the f-key for tele****t, and hover a finger over
> my stack of fat purples to feed either me or my merc as needed while
> trying to tele out of the crowd. No luck - Whack! hit-locked and
> mana-drained. Chug a fat purple, and feed one to the merc. He makes a
> valiant effort, but he's apparently targeting the boss, and there's
> charged bolts going off like crazy. Oh great... Mana burn *AND*
> lightning enchanted? Yeah, this is gonna be SUPER fun... NOT! Merc is
> taking a severe beating - As fast as I pump fat purples into him, he's
> back to under a quarter of his life-bar. Five potions later, he goes
> down as I'm stabbing at the key to feed him the last one of the stack of
> fat purples while TRYING to tele****t to "anywhere but here!!!" in
> between snarfing down fat purples. (and almost instantly getting hit and
> re-drained) Oh boy... we're in SERIOUS trouble now, Kemosabe! I'm trying
> like crazy to either get back up the stairs, or tele away, but I'm
> surrounded and getting beat on like a pinata at a cinco de mayo party.
> Whack, hit-locked and mana ball empty again. Whack. Hit-locked again.
> Life ball below half. Punch to chug a fat purple and try to tele. Whack!
> Whack! Whack! Mana ball empty, life ball below half, hit-locked, and
> punching for another fat purple while trying to tele and/or move to hit
> the stairs. No joy... Whack. Hit-locked and trying to punch for yet
> another fat purple, still trying to tele. Rapid-fire
> WhackWhackWhackWhack! You have died...
>
> Well, wanting to know what I was going to be in for when I tried for a
> corpse retrieval, I sat there moving the cursor around trying to spot
> the boss. Finally got him - YIKES! No wonder the merc went tango-uniform
> so fast: I'm looking at "Devil ****fter the Mad", and he's showing
> lightning enchanted, cold enchanted, extra fast, extra strong, and mana
> burn. As if that weren't enough, he's FI/CI/PI, and I've got
> next-to-nothing in the lightning branch of the skill tree - I think I've
> got a whole 5 points total into the lightning branch of the skill tree,
> Pfft... Nothing worth bothering to talk about. This is a Fireball/Orb
> sorc, after all...
>
> Thankfully, I'd just leveled up on the first level of the tower, so I
> didn't lose much of anything in the way of experience. That being the
> case, I decided that I could "suicide through" the boss-pack waiting at
> the bottom of the stairs. Tried it - three times. Finally gave up after
> getting creamed within two seconds of arriving on all three attempts,
> and as far as I could tell, didn't accomplish much more than scratching
> one of the pack, and chipping a nail on a second one.
>
> Just goes to show that a decent night can turn into a near-total wash...
> All it takes is one LE/EF/MB, FI/CI/PI boss-pack at the bottom of the
> stairs to do it...
>
> Back to the drawing board - Tomorrow!
Consider yourself lucky that you werent playing in hardcore ;)
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