The adventures of Phawlmawth

[twentythree]

The old sage looked up from the paperwork on his desk “Ah! Phawlmawth! Come in, come in. Please have a chair”

The gaunt, meek looking youngster, sank quietly into the chair in frot of the headmasters desk. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes”, said the head of the necromancers school “I heard from Professor Theodocious that there was a disruption today in your ethics class. I wanted to hear what happened in your own words before I made a decision on the matter”

Phawlmawth felt a sinking in his stomach. He somehow suspected that the headmaster had already made up his mind as to what to do but was merely steeping through the formalities. “Professor Theodocious is a fool” he hissed under his breath.

“How so?” asked the headmaster “His views on the necessity of battling demons and the undead are highly regarded, even outside of the school. It would be wise for you to listen and learn from him”

“He is not the only voice in the matter” answered Phawlmawth “Surely you have read the later works of Maldar the Magnificent? His view is also very widely praised. How if we resort to killing indiscriminately that we become no better than the evil we fight against?”

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and folded his arms sternly across his chest “I had heard rumors that you had been reading the works of Maldar” he said. “He was one of the greatest students this school ever produced until his so called awakening. You know that his teachings are not in line with what we hope to accomplish in this school”

“I know his views are not warmly welcomed here. However, that doesn't detract from the soundness of his views”

“Phawlmawth! There is an evil upon this land. One so terrible it stands to destroy us all. How are we to defend ourself unless by destroying those beings that are to destroy us.”

“Have you not even read Maldars works yourself? He did quite well by advanced use of curses. I have been studying these skills myself extensively. It is my belief that we can turn the mind of our foes against each other and thuss spare ourselves of any guilt.”

“I had suspected you might say as much”. The headmaster leaned forward placing his hands on the desk in front of him “You leave me no choice but to have you expelled from necromancer school. You are to have your things packed and off of the school grounds by tomorrow morning. You may keep the wand the school provided for you”

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I have been playing oddball builds for as long as I have been into the game. The idea for a curse-only necromancer had been at the back of my mind for quite some time now and the new patch sparked my interest enough to get back into playing again.
But I wanted something with a bit more of a story to it than simply being a one tree character build. When I read the report MongoJerry did of Maldar, the Pacifist Hero I began to wonder if it was possible to go through the whole game without killing anything directly myself. So I thought out some ground rules for the build .....

1)Kill nothing myself. If I get as far as the ancients, Direct damage against them would be ok as I am not actually “killing” them as much as I am being tested in battle.
2)Use of mercs is ok as long as they are granted by quest reward. Hiring a merc to kill for me is am morally wrong as doing the killing myself. But if the merc just wants to “tag along” that is fine.
3)Only put points into the curse tree. Items that grant a bonus to the summoning tree is ok under the idea that the undead are just fighting among themselves. But I cant put skill points into that tree. Items that give any points to the poison and bone tree are not permitted.
4)Attempt a full clear. Rather contradictory to the spirit of the build, but it has been years since I did a full clear and I figure it might be fun.
5)Play in /players 1 and hardcore mode. Every quest and waypoint must be done in order.

I picked the name Phawlmawth as it is a phonetic spelling of “foul mouth”. Get it? Cursing is all he ever does? Nuck nuck!

I should point out that I dont ever play hardcore, so my ability to play this character through norm is highly doubtful. I just dont have the personal experience. I am also not that used to playing single player. As I go along feel free to speculate as to just how far thic character can be pushed.

[twentythree]

Phawlmawth wanders around the rogue camp unsure of himself. The location was essentially a refugee camp and he was certinaly a refugee. However, he knew he would have to earn his keep if he were to stay here. Already Gheed, the camp merchant, had traded harsh words with him.

Akara had tried to convince him to murder the creatures in a nearby cave. He had tried to explain his philosophy to the old woman, and had argued that he could not in good faith be responsible for the deaths of any other creature, but Akara had not listened. Still, there may be other ways to prove his worth to the camp besides direct bloodshed.

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The first thing I did was to map the left mouse button onto “throw” instead of on “normal attack”. This avoids any messy mistakes about moving around near monsters and antecedently clicking on them killing them. Wands, naturally, cant be thrown.

The wand I started with has +1 summon skeleton on it, and the plan for clearing the den was to get the unread that this granted to me to fight against all the other bad guys. Turning the evil creatures against one another. However, this still leaves the problem of how to kill the first monster to generate the first body.

The answer was to use Favie. http://www.itwillneverhappen.com/diablo/...hot004.jpg This screenshot shows her heartlessly butchering an iniocent quill rat while Phawlmawth looks on in disdain. After chastising Flavie for her heartlessness, he headed straight into the den.

Why not clear the blood more first? I knew I would have to be raising several skeletons over time. And if I was unable to generate new bodies faster than I used them up raising skeletons, I would have to go back to Flavie and have her make more bodies for me. I therefore kept an ample stock of killable monsters on queue in the blood more.

Just inside the entrance I ran into a pair of gargantuan beasts who pounded hard on my lone little skelly. I had to tank to keep my minion from being crushed totally and I used up all four of my starting red pots to do so. I wasen't off to a very good start. The skeleton was able to finally take down one fo the gargantuan beasts before being crushed itself. I made the first in what would be many return trips to Flavie. With a fresh new skeleton beside me, I reentered the den and watched from the sidelines as the skeleton put down the second gargantuan beast.

The first encounter with a fallen pack was even worse. There was no way for me to direct the skeleton against the shaman first. And even me tanking next to the shaman trying to keep him distracted didn't stop him from raising the fallen as soon as the skeleton dispatched them. I was left with no other option than to use the freshly fallen bodies to summon new skeletons even before I needed a new skeleton. Using this strategy let me chew through the pack easily enough, but I hoped I wouldn't find later that I had “wasted” those bodies.

Things seeded up considerable once I was able to place my first point into amp damage. It now took only one skeleton to bring down a gargantuan beast. The rest of the den went rather well until I got to the zombie pack areound corpsfire at the end. Wow wee do those guys pack a wallop! It took two skeletons on average to bring one of those suckers down. I had to backtrack to flaviefor fresh bodies twice. The real bottleneck came when one zombie wandered over to the left between two fallen shaman. Between the two of them spitting fireballs, and the hard punch of the zombie from the boss pack, my skeleton was loosing life fast. After 4 more trips to Flavi, I had managed to dispatch both shaman and tanked the zombie as my skeleton did its dirty work.

Corpsfire himself was anticlimax. It was a simple matter of tanking him while chugging reds as the skeleton whacked at him from the side. http://www.itwillneverhappen.com/diablo/...hot011.jpg

Back at camp, I got the skillpoint and just sat on it. I wanted to keep amp damage at just one point so that later I could target it on one specific monster with a small radius on amp damage rather than overriding more important curses with a large radius amp damage.

Out into the cold plains I began a slow methodical clockwise sweep. When I came to the cave I did a quick look inside and was greeted at the door with a cold enhanced archer pack who offed my skeleton quick and nearly got me killed also. Shesh, I knew I was inexperienced at playing hardcore but to nearly get wiped out before I even start the second quest was a bit of a jolt. I would have to learn to be more careful.

Thankfully when I went back above ground there was plenty of bodies laying around and I raised up a new skelly. The cave would have to wait. I kept on with the clear of the cold plains. The caver camp caused me less grief than what I expected. It was a simple matter of making sure I raised a new skeleton with every body that hit the ground. I was glad to be able to buy all the blue pots I needed to keep up with the rate I was ripping through mana. No way I could have been able to go against the caver pack in some of the older versions of the game where the only way to get blue pots was for them to drop.

With the camp clear, Bishiop himself was a pushover. http://www.itwillneverhappen.com/diablo/...hot016.jpg

Den and cold plains were now clear. My next goal was to go against bloodraven. Like fallen packs, I coulden't direct the skeleton against the target I really needed to aim for. And bloodraven was able to raise new zombies faster than my one skeleton was able to dispatch of them. I would have to come up with some new form of strategy if I was going to be able to defeat her.

[twentythree]

I now faced a rather impossible task. How to do bloodraven?

There is no way for me to target a skeleton so it will go after a specific monster I want it to. I would need to clear out all the zombies from the graveyard first so I can concentrate just on bloodraven alone. Even then I would need several skeletons in a row to do battle as bloodraven knocked them down one after another.

The first plan of attack was to round up all of the extra skeletons and zombies in the graveyard into a central spot near the entrance. With all the bodies in one place, I could easily run back and make a quick new skeleton for myself whenever the one I currently had would fall. Two problems happened with this idea. First, the bodies I had collected near the entrance would evaporate after a few minutes leaving me with no way of generating new skeleton for myself without another return trip to Favie. Second, bloodraven was able to make new zombies at a faster pace than I was able to dispatch them and I quickly got swarmed again.

Well, some of you reading now might have already guessed my trick. http://www.itwillneverhappen.com/diablo/...hot019.jpg

The restrictions I placed on myself only said I would never put points into the summoning tree. Everything else is fair game I figure. The skill shrine effectively tripled my killing rate and thus was able to keep up (just barely) with the flow that bloodraven was throwing at me.

It was still a bit tricky. Round up some bodies by the entrance. Go grab the skill shrine and chug a stamina pot as I ran like mad toward the graveyard. On my way in, quickly revive two more bodies. Get in a few hits on bloodraven before the skill shrine ran out. A fast trip to town to restock on red pots. Round up another group of bodies at the entrance and start all over again. Thankfully the skill shrine took about the same length of time to regenerate as I was spending in the graveyard.

On the fourth trip in I wasn't able to get back out again with my skeleton intact. So I had to make yet another trip back to Favie. By this time I had lured at least 1/3 of the stuff in the blood more over to her. If I ran out of stuff to lure before I was able to get a merc I wasn't sure how I would be able to continue.

Progress was slow, but bloodraven wasn't regenerating. Slowly, bit by bit, I was whittling her down. After the 11th trip to the graveyard I was in town restocking my health potions when Akara sold me exactly what I needed. A +1 raise skeleton / +1 skeletal mastery wand. It left me with less than 1,000 gold remaining to buy more health potions with, but I got the wand anyway.

The next trip into the graveyard I rushed in like gangbusters. Three skeletons that were each individually charged up with 3 points in skeletal mastery made quick work of bloodraven. I accomplished more on that one trip than all of my other trips put together.

However, the skill shrine ran out before I finished the job. So I had to do one more circuit through before I was done. http://www.itwillneverhappen.com/diablo/...hot026.jpg
Kyoko joined up with me. Phawlmawth gave her a stern lecture about peace and harmony and never harming another living thing. But Kyoko didn't listen. Oh well, as long as he wasn't killing anything himself, his conscious was clear and he could sleep at night.

With some more firepower backing me up I could finaly take on that pesky cold archer pack at the entrance to the cave. I drop down inside and my merc instantly gets slaughtered.

What in the world? Son of a ..... but I had no time. The archers were now blasting away at me and my life ball was dropping fast. I punched franticly at the keyboard drinking as many red posts as I could as I made a desperate run for the entrance. Well, actually it was more a slow mosey more than I run. Why had I not bothered to stock my belt with thawing pots? Shesh, I just don't have any experience with playing hardcore.

I did manage to make it back to the cave entrance. But with just the barest sliver of life left. That was a close one! I wonder if Im even going to make it to the end of act 1 if Im messing up like this.

I was now faced with an ethical dilemma. Revive Kyoko or not? As peace loving as Phawlmawth is, Im sure he would not willingly want to be hanging aroudn with someone who didn't agree with his strict moral code. However, to return someoen to the land of the living once more, especially since Phawlmawth was partially responsible for getting her killed anyway, is very much in alignment with Phawlmawth's ideology. In the end I decided to bring back Kyoko. Not for ethics, but simply because I knew I wasn't skillful enough at playing hardcore to ever get far without her.

Back into the cave again, this time with some thawing pots, and I made one more go at the archer pack. Thankfully my last trip in, only a few of them had followed me as I ran for the entrance. This had split up the pack slightly and I was just barely able to hang on to victory!

The rest of the cave was boring after that. About halfway through clearing the place, I got to level 6 and put a point into dim vision. Oh yummy. Things were going so much faster now. No more having to tank fallen shaman. No more strategic reserves of bodies to pull skeletons out of. Just run right in and splatter the walls with everything that comes near me. Wheee!

With the cave cleared, and a merc by my side able to generate fresh bodies for me, I no longer needed help from Favie. Back to the blood more I tidied up the area completing a full clear to to this point. Time for a rest now I think.

[Sheep]

Using Favie for your first body and the skill shrine for Bloodraven is pure genius. I never would have thought that you could play a character like this from the get-go.

Keep the updates coming!


Peace

[Chaostheory]

It seems that it is possible to get real far, by just letting the merc that u get in act 1 kill everything in your way. I am currently in act3 and level 21, my merc is 20. The only thing, i have made differently in the game (i mean the rules 1-5) than twentythree, is that i use bone armor. Other spells, that i use, are only curses.

I must admit that i have died once (gulp :( ).
It was in act one in underground passage. My merc killed most of the enemies and i thought that the merc would keep me safe, so i left the game open and went to eat...
When i came back... :blink:
Somehow there was 4 champion afflicted (or whatever they are called in underground passage) standing on my corpse :angry: . grr... . After that i resurrected my merc and ran all the way from stony field wp to retrieve my corpse and to kill those champion monsters....

My merc nor i haven't died since that, exept my merc died once by the hand of andariel and 5 times by duriel :blush: ...

The weapon, that my merc has now, has been gambled. Gambling is a great way to get good bows...
I would have whole lot of discoveries and things i found out while playing ALMOST curse only necro (reminding again that i use bone armor(only lvl.4 by now :P ) )... But i think it might be much more fun to find them out by yourselves...
...and...
this is not my story. :P

Keep on writing twentythree!!! :lol: