Hello, Lut Gholein! Blood found the members of this community to be somewhat more charming than do River or Suwayyah, but give him time to get to know them, and he will undoubtedly become as jaded as the rest.
Blood's first magic item was a
Fire Golem small charm. I can see them as constant companions for a long, long time to come. After equipping the charm, he also donned magic rings and a magic amulet, all of which had gold find on them: 107% on the amulet, 58% and 57% on the rings.
Four levels were gained (up to 70 now, watching them very closely so I don't miss the opportunity to do the Chapter One side quest!) clearing the sewers at players 4, just to be safe. Radament went down without a hitch, though it turns out he can throw a punch as well as cast spells! Who knew? It took just a few seconds of beating on him to get him to fall over, undead.
I am undecided as to whether Blood will continue at p4 in Act II or go back and do p8-p16 runs in Act I to get those last 5 levels.
My decision was to forge ahead, so Blood set off into the desert at p8, having no troubles whatsoever. Bad decision! Level 72 with 5k life, and nothing was taking any life from him, so it was completely unexpected when a group of Bone Golems and a group of Rhino Demons surrounded him and actually killed him. I get that the Rhino Demons stun and cold-slow, but that does not explain why he died. Neither of those two packs of monsters on their own had any chance at all to kill him. Mysterious.
I knew that he would die, and I know that this will not be even close to the last death that Blood suffers, but it still sucks when it happens and lowers your score.
Boohoo, poor me! Ok, I'm over it.
Moved back to Act I and the Chapter One thread for a bit, finished that side quest, and closed the books on it. Well, my part of the books, at least.
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[EDIT]
Bloodmist did a bunch of runs in the sewers, the pit, the catacombs, all sorts of places to get a few levels. His goal was level 100 for his new helm, a Primal runeword. However, he could not wear the base item, a conqueror crown from one of at least half a dozen “any helm to primal helm” scrolls, until he had the strength for it. Pumping stats purely into strength allowed him to wear it by level 104.
The next goal was level 110 for his new weapons, a pair of Flagbearer runewords set into ethereal Divine Scepters. The base item, the War Sceptre, is not sold yet in Act II, and they cannot be gambled. He found five of them by the time he was about level 90, but the sixth did not drop until level 118! Part of the reason that he was bouncing all over the place while gaining levels was that I was desperately seeking the place he had been where they were dropping so prolifically. I thought for sure that it was the Lut Gholein Sewers, but after five runs there, not a single one had dropped, so he went looking elsewhere. Turns out they were mostly dropping out in the desert, right before his tragic death.
At that point he headed toward level 120, to finish off his skills and meet the requirements to wear a Wealthy runeword. He is still not wearing Wealthy, as his handler is still debating as to whether or not to use it at all for the side quest. I'm thinking that a six-socket high-defense armor with six topazes would be the better choice. Either way, the modified Pride armor he has is too good to replace for normal play, so he'll continue to wear that right up until he starts the quest.
After 120, he made a Brambles runeword with a 19% enhanced damage magic jewel in a pair of Vambraces that he gambled from Elzix. He has several much better damage jewels, but they are all rare, and we still have not found a good rare item that we are willing to commit to for the balance of Act II. The goal is to advance through the act, complete all the quests through the Arcane Sanctuary, clear out the True Tomb, find and open the entrance to Duriel's chamber, then do the side quest, Duriel, and move to Act III. With such a short space of time between the start of the side quest and the end of the chapter, it is at that point that he will equip his first rare, as the commitment time will be as short as possible. He has a nice 41% magic find amulet, but to use it he loses 114% extra gold, which is just not worth it until he is done farming gold. Yes, the easiest solution to equipping a rare would be a small charm, but after creating four dozen of them, not a single good one has appeared!
Next was the process of finding/upgrading his belt. He was gambling for exceptional plated belts (war belts) in order to upgrade them to a colossus girdle (which, it turns out, would have been a rules violation – see below about the boots), when he was favoured by the appearance of a war belt with 120% extra gold on it! Used a “two sockets to any item” scroll on it, slapped in a pair of perfect topazes, and that will last until at least the end of the chapter.
It was time to do some serious inventory rearrangement. The poster he was using was not as good as it could have been, so I went browsing through his growing collection, looking for better ones. I remembered a comment from someone about Grendels possibly doing magic damage, so I focused on the posters that offer magic reduction. A Sailor Moon with over 700 life was the obvious choice there. As well, I wanted to give him more physical damage. All of his skills boost physical and life leech works off of how much physical is done. Manny was the right poster for that, again with over 700 life and over 500 damage. The 45 points of damage reduction is a nice bonus.
I kept the life stick with 500 life, but tossed out the one with three rubies and a skull – I decided that 8,000 life would be sufficient until non-charm sources were more readily available. As he gradually attained more levels, vitality, and life, I dropped a couple smaller +life charms as well, keeping the total at around 8k. The Gigantor hex charm that he was using was great, but now that he had acquired Natural Resistance and the sweet 122 resist all from his Primal helm, he could afford to sacrifice some of the resists (+48) on the Gigantor for the chance at better life gain.
Ten Gigantors later, he had upgraded from +24% increased max life to +25%! Come on!! As he failed time after time to make a better charm, he could hear Fara over there near the wall, gaily tossing her hammer and snickering at his predicament. It was all I could do to keep Blood from bashing her teeth into the back of her head with his semi-transparent Hammers of Face Smashing.
Lastly, I replaced the Healer and the Defender ChoMs with a pair of Shields for the life and the combined 50% damage reduction, replaced the Destroyer with a Slayer for better Crushing Blow and Ignore Target's Defense, and removed the Icer completely. Life drain was then 3 per second, but with 8k life (11.5k with Battle Orders) plus lots of life being leeched, that was a non-issue.
With the new weapons, a rearranged inventory, higher Mace Mastery, dexterity, and strength, Bloodmist had transformed into a pure killing machine! He was not invincible, not by any means, but he slaughtered everything he had so far encountered with grace, poise, and in a right hurry even at players 127. This is the first character I've played that handles Mithril Knights without any problems at all. Suwayyah could kill them fairly easily with enough Charged Bolt Sentries, but it took a little running around to get them in the CBS fields – if they touched her, she didn't live long. With Bloodmist, there is no worry at all. They don't fall as quickly as everything else, of course, but they are no danger, even in large packs. Frenzy is absolutely marvelous, dealing out pain in a furious hail of hammer blows too quick for the eye to follow (divine sceptres show a hammer on the toon when wielded). Whirlwind is too low yet to handle high-life monsters such as Knights, but it mows down most packs in a flash.
The only problem so far with his setup is the 25% flee on each of his weapons – that is a huge help with crowd control when fighting way out of your league, but when you are master and commander of 98% of the fights you get into, fleeing monsters are a curse-worthy annoyance after a little while. It would be sooooo easy to use a scroll to add freeze to his weapon(s) (frozen monsters don't flee!), but I want lots of corpses for Find Item during the side quests. Consequently, the Icer ChoM went back into inventory.
A better solution would be to make another pair of weapons, having one pair with freeze, and another pair without. That has the major benefit of freeing up four inventory slots. If he finds four more war sceptres (he has two now), he will probably do it.
Ok, there is another problem with his setup, I lied! Brambles casts frost nova on striking 7% of the time. This creates a lot of shattered corpses even without the Icer. For the side quest, Blood will use a pair of 4-socket heavy gauntlets with two Shaels for the IAS and two +9% MF jewels. I've found that the 40% IAS from the Brambles brings the “slow” hits (before Frenzy really kicks in) up to a respectable enough speed to actually hit the fleeing mobs once in a while, so I don't want him to lose that.
Did most of the rest of the act at players 64. When Blood got down to the umberhulks, I lowered it to p16, and for Fire Eye, dropped it down to a bargain-basement setting of 1! I sure am glad I did, because he would have killed Blood otherwise. He is one tough nugget
He has not gone into Duriel's domicile as yet, but nothing else was difficult, to the best of my recollection (which is, after all, not saying a whole lot these days).
After the Staff was assembled, Blood took one of the 1k collectors he had made and turned his Kirby poster into this:
- BloodAlbum.jpg (180.61 KiB) Viewed 5889 times
I'm not sure why I wasn't showing the stats of it in the picture...
833 max dmg, 395 life, 17 replenish life, damage reduced by 68. Not worth using, but worth making for the points!
The last item before level 160 that he needed to upgrade was his Pattern runeword boots. There are some nice runewords available, like Bulldog, but nothing he
needs right now, so I decided to make a pair of Boneweave (elite chain) boots filled with extra gold and magic find. I chose the chain version because that is what he's been collecting to upgrade – light plated boots and greaves just aren't dropping yet, and my gambling has been getting out of hand.
I had everything ready to combine, stopped a moment to recount it all in my mind before transmuting, and realized that I was about to use crafted items to upgrade gear that he was going to wear! No no no! Not wanting to violate the rules, I took everything back out and just made a pair of mesh (exceptional chain) boots instead. A few magic jewels to give them 28% extra gold and 44% MF, and they were port-a-prete!
Level 160 was the final goal I wanted Blood to achieve before continuing through the side quest and into Act III. That is the required level for the “Cunning” primal helm runeword, the shining jewel of primal helms. For the base item, none of the other “any helm to primal helm” scrolls had created anything at all useful, so he threw his runic conqueror crown in the cube with an “any armor to magic armor” scroll and rerolled it. That made me a little uneasy, but there was no other option. It was a little tricky to make, what with the required Pul and Ist runes. A Ko rune downgraded to a Lum, combined with a “Lum to Um” scroll, downgraded to give the Pul. 9 Ko runes (1.2 million gold) combined to give a Lem, combined with a “Lem to Gul” scroll, downgraded to give the Ist, and voila! The best helm this side of a Requiem. Added the six “bar1 to any helm” scrolls he'd been saving for this exact piece of heavenly gear, along with 120% worth of Faster Hit Recovery scrolls – +19 barbarian skills, 2k defense, 900 life, 185 resists, 134 damage redux... I may not even use a requiem at all! Time will tell. And assuming that we ever evolve to the point of using artifacts at all.
I decided to make one last attempt at creating a good Gigantor before allowing him to get back to the killing fields... and it paid off! A very healthy "increase maximum life 47%" makes Bloodmist a happy, happy barbie
Finally he could get rid of his +500 life stick to make more room for MF charms.
Half of the True Tomb has been explored (the half with the entrance to Duriel's chambers), and he is all set for the side quest now, apart from the last bits of farming to get the remaining 20 or so perfect topazes that he needs.
Good luck to you all in your endeavors!
Code: Select all
Player PX MC Died Multi Total
==================================================================
Hellwolf_36 127 4572 0 1.0005 4574
Montex 127 4324 0 1.0005 4326
John11 127 3568 0 1.0005 3570
Al-T 127 2327 0 1.0005 2328
GoGoDanny 127 2026 0 1.0005 2027
Player Character/Class CFT B R ALB AC SQ EM TOTAL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellwolf_36 Blivarticcil/Sorc 10000 500 1500 3000 5000 4572 1.010 24818
Montex Xeon/Barb 10000 500 1500 3000 5000 4326 1.005 24448
John PewPew/Ama 10000 500 1500 3000 5000 3570 1.005 23688
Al-T Dora/Ama 10000 500 1500 3000 5000 2328 1.005 22440
gogodanny Black_Death/Assa 10000 500 1500 3000 5000 2027 1.005 22137
Clersius Bloodmist/Barb 10000 500 0 3000 0 0 1.000 13500
AngusT Aphelandra/Ama 10000 500 1500 0 0 0 1.005 12600
wolfwing wlft/druid 10000 500 1500 0 0 0 0.990 11880
czg Eve/Ama 10000 0 0 0 0 0 1.005 10050
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Metro RiseandShine 10000 0 0 0 0 0 1.005 10050 RET
ps - Come on, Thermo-pyle, are you going to let me just waltz on by you? I'm taking Morn with me and leaving you in the "capable" hands of Milos until you can pass me up again... Who knows, your son Davies may be full-grown by then!
You have more patience than me my friend....I remember once I made 5 of them and got nothing higher than 17% so I just gave up trying. Sod that for a game of soldiers 
You could have picked a Barb but you did not.
