9.77% of voters on diabloii.net said that Maldar would die in the Secret Cow Level. While I wasn't as cocky entering the cow level with Maldar as I was with Gunter, I felt much more confident than those voters clearly were. I figured that the most difficult problem would be finding the Cow King's corral. My plan was to lead cows packs to some general area -- a corner, for example -- to thin out the herd, so to speak, and give me breathing room to work with when I did find the Cow King's corral.



I entered the red portal and did a double take when I saw what was on my screen. The King's corral was right in front of me! Wow. I wasn't going to look this gift horse, er... cow, in the mouth.



I thought if I could blind all the King's minions before they saw me and lead the King away from them to the red portal, this fight might be over in two minutes.



I entered the corral, spamming Dim Vision all the time. I didn't find the King, but I found two other boss cows. Argh! Where the heck was the King?



I parked the two bosses in the corner above the corral and went back to find the King.

In the process, I ended up waking several packs of cows. Darn it! I'd lost the initiative.

One annoying thing about cows is that they seem to have a similar AI to gargantuans. Once they see you, they'll keep coming after you relentlessly even after you blind them, so the only way to stop them once they see you is to cast bone prison on them.

I found a "minion" cow, but where was the King?



Ah, there he was! He finally separated himself from the pack.



I bone prisoned the King and did my best to keep Dim Vision on the normal cows. A third boss was in the area (Blood Fist the Impaler, Extra Strong, Stone Skin, Magic Resistant, Immune to Physical), so I bone prisoned him in with the King (see the screenshot above).

I took the opportunity to take some shots at the King. By the time I'd taken off about a quarter of his life, though, I started getting really nervous. The King and Blood Fist were slowly chopping their way through the bone prisons toward me and despite all my attempts to keep the normal cows back, they were creeping up on me from both directions. Like I said above, if Dim Vision ran out on a cow and the cow saw me, the only way to stop it was to cast bone prisons on it. My potential escape routes were clogging up, cows were slowly advancing on me, and I wasn't sure that I could kill the King in one trip even if I got a chance to try. If I got pushed back to the red portal, I'd have to escape through it and restart the game.



So before my escape route on the left side closed, I threw up some extra bone prisons around the King and booked it up the left side. I then drew a large pack of cows to the corner where I had parked the first two cow bosses. Again, I wasn't trying to clear out every cow. I just wanted to "thin the herd" around the King's corral.

I came back down into the corral and found the King with a few of his buddies. I bone prisoned them, started firing at the King, and thought to myself, "This is fine. I can do this two or three times and whittle the King down with hit-and-run tactics." Then, a realization dawned on me. The King was healing! I had thought he was like an End-of-Act boss, so I didn't think he healed. My other 1.10 characters had poison charms or mercenaries who dealt poison damage, so I had never seen the Cow King heal before (and before Maldar, I'd always killed the King's minions first before taking on the King, so the fights were usually too quick to notice the healing).

Oh, man. This also meant that I should try to kill the King in one trip and not go back to town to refresh potions in the middle of the battle -- or at least if I did go back to town, I should make the trip very quickly. As a last resort, I could switch to using the Pus Spitter I've had on weapon switch this whole time but had never used.



Time to stop fooling around. I led all the cows near the King's corral up to the corner that was a little further away from the corral than the corner where I had parked those first two cow bosses. I Dim Visioned the normal cows there, cast a few bone prisons around them to get them to stop chasing me, and did what I could to attract the attention of the Cow King. There were two other cow bosses in the area who started chasing me but careful casts of decrepify and bone prison separated them from the Cow King.



With all of the other cows blinded or imprisoned, it was easy to lead the Cow King away from the rest of the pack back to the red portal. The area around the corral had now been completely cleared of any other cows.



I then bone prisoned the Cow King and started firing.

The Cow King slowly made progress through the bone prisons toward me, and as I backed up, I started getting nervous. I had never traveled very far in the right-hand direction, so I didn't know how far I could go without waking up new packs of cows.



So I circled around through the corral to position myself to shoot at the Cow King from the other direction.



As I quaffed my last mana potion, I saw that the King's life bar was really low. Which would last longer: My mana ball or the Cow King's life?



My mana ball ran out first, but I decided I'd rather use my full rejuv's than risk having the King heal while I was in town buying potions. I quaffed a rejuv potion, and the King fell soon after. Sadly, all the items turned out to be junky.

Quote:Now I have to think of yet an other special, but still somewhat usefull character build.

Quote:Experience. I have had little(VERY LITTLE) experience, my highest character, Anuvii, level 7 Rouge.