06-23-2012, 05:05 AM
I wanted to post this in the screenshot thread, as it started out with some great screenshots, but it seems Bolty still hasn't implemented spoiler tags!
So big spoilers, if for some reason you haven't been to the secret level yet, well you shouldn't be reading this thread anyway.
On hitting 50 with my demon hunter taki, I hit the AH for a ~600 DPS reduced requirement crossbow to try and speed up leveling. Lightning ball was basically one-shotting hell zombies at that point, so I went to try some secret level runs. Everything two-shots me but most of it is melee so this is doable with snares, the XP and drops are also much better than Act 1.
On one of my runs, this was the first thing to greet me out of the portal:
![[Image: screenshot000xe.jpg]](http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3821/screenshot000xe.jpg)
I hadn't seen the white star-spread ranged attack on any other creature in Whimsyshire. And this one did pack a wallop. If I had anything less than completely full health, I was one-shot. Those projectiles are also much faster than my smokescreen reflexes, so I took alot of one-shots. Oh and the princess' health regenerated to full almost immediately after dying, as well as simply breaking aggro through kiting.
So as I wasn't making any headway myself, I did the responsible thing and opened my game to the unsuspecting public.
![[Image: screenshot001ck.jpg]](http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5146/screenshot001ck.jpg)
I instantly gained some lvl 50 allies who, while much more durable than I, were very unprepared for ponyland, and dying left and right. Kind of amusing in a slightly sadistic way (but rest assured, I was taking plenty of deaths myself!) It was clearly some of their hadn't been there before, commenting on how "insane" the damage was. We all know it's quite normal for act 4 hell after all!
![[Image: screenshot005yw.jpg]](http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1478/screenshot005yw.jpg)
With a bunch of us running around, we did manage to clear out enough surrounding white mobs for maneuvering space. However we could not keep stardust down. Our barbs would eventually die from the onslaught, and she kept spawning illusions that would cause us to lose the real boss when kiting, hence the boss would reset.
![[Image: screenshot015v.jpg]](http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/7105/screenshot015v.jpg)
One of my erstwhile Barbarian allies seemed to know the place pretty well and located a spot where we could "stuck" the princess and cheese our way to victory in relative safety. Unlike most other mobs there was still that ranged starburst attack to content with, but it didn't travel through trees as well as lightning ball did so there were relatively safe angles for me to attack from. The illusion spawning kept changing her position though, every now and then an illusion would come around the top side to frighten us. This is where I confirmed that yes indeed, illusions do deal damage, even if they only took 1/10th of my globe rather than all of it.
![[Image: screenshot019om.jpg]](http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/3553/screenshot019om.jpg)
Still, Stardust would not consent to defeat so easily. As her health bar trended downward, it started getting harder and harder to keep pushing it down. I normally play with health numbers off so I hadn't realized it at the time, but this is a known bug with certain Illusionist whimsyshire mobs where their health starts going up when they split. Eventually their health will reach an error point as shown and their bar won't buldge anymore. This was probably after 10+ minutes of trying to make a still health bar push down when I didn't have numbers on. (It took a long time to get her to this point so I didn't think it was that abnormal for some reason....)
Several repair bills later, stardust was parked and we cleared most of the zone, some more players entered and left till only I remained. I went back for stardust, sure enough her health had reset, fortunately to reasonable values. I was able to finish her alone after learning the Barb cheese (no SSshot to prove it unfortunately), and all she dropped was several piles of gold. Not even a white! For a while I had thought that ridiculous HP pool was intended to make her a feat of strength achievement (she well outshone Diablo's HP), but alas, she's just a relatively normal superunique that turns immortal if you don't burn her down fast.
Moral of the story: don't fight things that have denominators for health bars!
So big spoilers, if for some reason you haven't been to the secret level yet, well you shouldn't be reading this thread anyway.
On hitting 50 with my demon hunter taki, I hit the AH for a ~600 DPS reduced requirement crossbow to try and speed up leveling. Lightning ball was basically one-shotting hell zombies at that point, so I went to try some secret level runs. Everything two-shots me but most of it is melee so this is doable with snares, the XP and drops are also much better than Act 1.
On one of my runs, this was the first thing to greet me out of the portal:
I hadn't seen the white star-spread ranged attack on any other creature in Whimsyshire. And this one did pack a wallop. If I had anything less than completely full health, I was one-shot. Those projectiles are also much faster than my smokescreen reflexes, so I took alot of one-shots. Oh and the princess' health regenerated to full almost immediately after dying, as well as simply breaking aggro through kiting.
So as I wasn't making any headway myself, I did the responsible thing and opened my game to the unsuspecting public.
I instantly gained some lvl 50 allies who, while much more durable than I, were very unprepared for ponyland, and dying left and right. Kind of amusing in a slightly sadistic way (but rest assured, I was taking plenty of deaths myself!) It was clearly some of their hadn't been there before, commenting on how "insane" the damage was. We all know it's quite normal for act 4 hell after all!
With a bunch of us running around, we did manage to clear out enough surrounding white mobs for maneuvering space. However we could not keep stardust down. Our barbs would eventually die from the onslaught, and she kept spawning illusions that would cause us to lose the real boss when kiting, hence the boss would reset.
One of my erstwhile Barbarian allies seemed to know the place pretty well and located a spot where we could "stuck" the princess and cheese our way to victory in relative safety. Unlike most other mobs there was still that ranged starburst attack to content with, but it didn't travel through trees as well as lightning ball did so there were relatively safe angles for me to attack from. The illusion spawning kept changing her position though, every now and then an illusion would come around the top side to frighten us. This is where I confirmed that yes indeed, illusions do deal damage, even if they only took 1/10th of my globe rather than all of it.
Still, Stardust would not consent to defeat so easily. As her health bar trended downward, it started getting harder and harder to keep pushing it down. I normally play with health numbers off so I hadn't realized it at the time, but this is a known bug with certain Illusionist whimsyshire mobs where their health starts going up when they split. Eventually their health will reach an error point as shown and their bar won't buldge anymore. This was probably after 10+ minutes of trying to make a still health bar push down when I didn't have numbers on. (It took a long time to get her to this point so I didn't think it was that abnormal for some reason....)
Several repair bills later, stardust was parked and we cleared most of the zone, some more players entered and left till only I remained. I went back for stardust, sure enough her health had reset, fortunately to reasonable values. I was able to finish her alone after learning the Barb cheese (no SSshot to prove it unfortunately), and all she dropped was several piles of gold. Not even a white! For a while I had thought that ridiculous HP pool was intended to make her a feat of strength achievement (she well outshone Diablo's HP), but alas, she's just a relatively normal superunique that turns immortal if you don't burn her down fast.
Moral of the story: don't fight things that have denominators for health bars!
