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MALDAR, THE MAGNIFICENT

Sanctuary has had many heroes, but no hero could ever match the legendary deeds of the necromancer Maldar.



Maldar traveled throughout the lands of Sanctuary and engaged in mortal battle with terrifying demons and horrifying monsters. Whenever a local population had a demon problem that they could not handle, they knew that they could send word to Maldar and he would come and clear the demon infestation for them.



As Maldar traveled further and performed ever more heroic deeds, all the people of Sanctuary began writing songs and telling stories of the adventures of Maldar. In time, the free peoples of Sanctuary began to refer to him as Maldar, the Magnificent.



But to demons, he became known simply as the "Demonslayer."

Maldar slaughtered thousands of demons and as he became more famous and as the cheering of the masses grew louder, an emptiness grew inside him. The pleasure he once felt while killing demon hordes began to fade. Doubts crept into his mind. Then, one pivotal event changed Maldar's life forever.



As he was clearing out an infestation of demons, he fired a series of bone spirits at a grotesque and killed it. But just before the grotesque died, it gave birth to a grotesque worm baby. The worm looked around, saw Maldar, and jumped into his arms. The worm thought Maldar was its mother.

That's when Maldar realized what had been troubling him. People kill demons, because they don't want to be slaughtered by them. But if people slaughter demons, he thought, then doesn't that make people just as bad as demons? Didn't his own actions make him no different than a demon?

Maldar gathered up the worm and walked out of the demon lair, leaving the remaining demons to their own devices. He traveled back to his solitary mountain home and began leading a monastic life, dedicated to the study and cultivation of life rather than the study of death. All requests for assistance were met with the same response, "Do your lands not have your own 'heroes?' I will not intentionally harm another being whether he be person or demon."

When rumors of the rise of the three Prime Evils first surfaced, Maldar dismissed them as idle fancy. As demons began proliferating in ever growing numbers, pleas for help came to Maldar from all over Sanctuary but still Maldar ignored them. Meanwhile, the heads of all of Sanctuary's guilds met in council to share all of the information they had gathered about the rise of the Three and to make plans for an appropriate response. In the end, they agreed that only one hero in all the land was capable of stopping the Three: Maldar, the Magnificent.

They traveled to Maldar's mountain retreat and presented him with the evidence they had gathered. The information was fragmentary, but there was no doubt that the Three had indeed returned. The council members told Maldar that only he in all the world had the power to stop the Three. They emphasized to him that if he stopped the Three, he would be preventing a catastrophe that would involve the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people. Maldar listened in silence and contemplated the information the council had given him for a long time. Finally, he spoke.

"Diablo and his brothers' plans will likely result in the deaths of both innocent people and innocent demons if those plans are allowed to come to fruition," he said. "I will help you, but only if you agree to do things my way. Only those demons and other assorted monsters who must be killed to stop the Three are to be killed. All others are to be left alone. They are innocent beings who have been riled up by the power and influence of the Three. Remove the Three and they will no longer threaten Sanctuary. Agreed?"

The council conferred for a long time. Many members of the council did not like the idea of leaving tens of thousands of demons alive, but in the end all agreed that without Maldar's help, all hope was lost. They finally agreed to Maldar's proposal.

So Maldar donned his armor, shield, and wand and once more traveled abroad to fight evil and save the world. Can Maldar stop the Three without any unnecessary monster deaths? Can Maldar, the Magnificent, -- Demonslayer -- become Maldar, the Pacifist Hero? Stay tuned.

MongoJerry,Sep 13 2003, 03:49 AM Wrote:He's going to abide by the following rules:

3. He must get every waypoint and quest in game order.
4. He may only kill those monsters whose deaths are necessary to fulfill the quests.
5. He may not use any cross-class skills, except that he can use a staff of Teleport in the Maggot Lair (where it would be impossible to travel otherwise without killing things).

Quote:As for the clay golem, he would be a good distraction, but isn't bone wall/prison better since they're boosted and stronger? He's still a fun one to have around though. He also appears stronger than he is since slowness can be interpreted as more life.

Crystalion,Sep 13 2003, 07:33 PM Wrote:With pumped Leap, and howl, taunt and grim ward to control and bypass crowds, I imagine a barb could live with the same restrictions (perhaps even without teleport). But the use of Bone Spirit as a ranged attack, which can be focused on a target without danger to others, is a nice touch.

Quote:A pity about rule #2, as so few waypoints and quests are actually needed in order to kill the 3 prime evils. As an example, as v1.10s stands, even solo you don't need to kill the summoner (he's a human, how could you kill him in good conscience?!) to progress (by killing duriel) as you can say "hello" to him as you touch his tome and go through his red portal to the canyon (where you can pick up the waypoint). You will not, however, be able to return from town via Town Portal to the Canyon or Tombs.

Quote:Your Clay Golem will potentially cause damage to living beings. In rare cases (weenies like maggot young perhaps) he might dishonor you by actually killing something. What you need is a Decoy.

Quote:With pumped Leap, and howl, taunt and grim ward to control and bypass crowds, I imagine a barb could live with the same restrictions (perhaps even without teleport).

Quote:Grim Ward??? That's not a very pacifist skill

Quote:Nah, 3-point Clay Golems don't do very much damage.  Even maggot young will be able to heal faster than the Golem can hurt them.  Anyway, like I said, I don't plan to use the Golem much-- just in special circumstances where bone prisons and walls aren't effective.

Quote:That is a very interesting idea.  I would never have thought about Leap.  Does maxed Leap also knockback regular boss monsters and champions?

It would be difficult to describe Dim Vision as an underutilized skill, since "Hit Blinds Target" is a mod on many popular weapons and pieces of armor. However, it is unusual to find necromancers who focus on it even though it can be an incredibly powerful spell in the hands of a player who knows how to use it. In particular, I think that maxed Dim Vision should be a part of standard meleemancer builds, whether they are poison dagger necros or not. I've seen many postings by people, still in cookie-cutter barbarian or bowazon thought mode, who think meleemancers should max amp damage. This is silly, because a meleemancer can only attack one monster at a time. It's far better to blind whole screenfulls of monsters and then cast low-level low-radius amp damage or life tap on the particular monster you want to fight. That way, you can pick off monsters one at a time.

Anyway, since "blindness" is fairly common in D2, I won't describe its effects on monsters in all the gory detail I did with Taunt in the writeups of Gunter's adventures. However, as I was leveling Maldar up, I did make a few minor discoveries and observations about Dim Vision that I'll share along the way.

One of those observations is that Carver Shamans and other monsters who raise others from the dead, like Fetish Shamans and Hollow Ones, don't raise monsters from the dead when they're blinded -- even when they're standing right on top of a corpse. Apparently the game considers raising monsters from the dead an "attack," and if a shaman can't see you, then he doesn't know to "attack" and raise his minions from the dead.

Clearing the Den of Evil was uneventful. In 1-player mode, bone spirits are more than powerful enough to kill blinded and imprisoned enemies. I'm leaving the awarded skill point unassigned for now in case I decide I need to add points to an unexpected skill later (Terror to make it last longer? Decrepify to make it last longer? Bone wall to make Bone Armor and Bone Spirits stronger?).



Getting to and killing Blood Raven was easy. It was nice to be able to trap her and hold her in place, since she's so fast and moves around so much now that it's a pain to kill her with most characters. She's not dangerous, mind you -- just a pain to kill.

I'm starting to notice Dim Vision's quartered time length in hell. At level 22, it lasts 12.5 seconds in hell which sounds like a reasonable amount of time, but when you're depending on it for survival, it sure feels short. If I get delayed somewhere (a doorway's blocked, for example), then I have to remember to cast a Dim Vision backwards or else I might get a swarm of monsters coming at me from behind.



The going was pretty steady and easy through the Stony Field, the Underground Passage, and the Dark Wood. Actually, the going was fast compared to what I'm used to. What a time saver it is to not actually have to kill monsters!

I've discovered some things about monster AI and Dim Vision. The Arreat Summit says, "Dim Vision will not prevent a monster from moving. If a Monster is blinded when moving it will continue on toward the spot where he last saw you. If you move, he won't be able to see where you went."

That's not exactly true. What really happens is that the monster continues to see you until he has to make a new "decision." Monsters who make decisions often shut down immediately. Monsters who make decisions less often will continue to do what they were doing until they are forced to make a decision. For example, gargantuans who are closing in to attack you and then get blinded will continue to come toward you and will follow you all over the map. In order to get them to stop, you have to force them to make a new decision. For example, you can bone prison them, make them run into other monsters, or make them run into walls, chests, and other barriers. Blinded carvers will also follow you around if they were closing in on you before they were blinded, and lancers will keep right on charging you after they're blinded.

How do you stop them? Make sure to blind them before they can see you. Maxed Dim Vision covers almost the whole screen and it centers on whatever spot you clicked on. That means that you can blind monsters a half a screen away off screen. If they're blinded before they see you, they'll just shuffle around randomly. If you want to fight them, you can then pick them off. If you're Maldar, you can quickly and safely run past them.



I had a comically difficult time opening the portal to Tristram. I first drew Rakanishu's pack down below the stones, Dim Visioned them, and to make sure they stayed put, bone prisoned them. Then, as I started touching the stones, a couple of monster packs (on whom Dim Vision had probably expired) came from off screen, so I had to stop, bring them down with Rakanishu's pack, Dim Vision them, imprison them, and go back to the stones. I ended up having to do this four times before I was finally allowed to hit all the stones and start up the portal.

It's difficult to describe the intensity of playing a character like this. Blind and imprison the monsters and run past them. It sounds easy. But in narrow enclosed spaces, you can't zone out for even a moment. You have to be constantly aware of what's around you. You have to be thinking about what could lie ahead -- perhaps a boss or champion pack or a swarm of monsters in a small room --, what you left behind that could wake up from Dim Vision and come after you, and where you'd escape to if you need room to maneuver or park monsters.

Before I created Maldar, I made a test character using Nobbie's 99th level characters. I wanted to experiment a little to try to figure out what curses and skills I'd need and how many points should be placed into various skills to be useful in hell. I tried out the Countess's Tower, the Arcane Sanctuary, and the Crystaline Passage in order to see what playing in narrow corridors would be like. Besides finding out that this character build would be both really really hard and really really fun, I found out an interesting tactical point: in indoor areas, it's best to keep the bone prisons to a minimum.

When I started playing my test character, my strategy in the Countess's tower was to Dim Vision monsters, cast several bone prisons around them, sneak by the monsters, and then cast bone prisons behind me to make sure I wouldn't be followed. That worked well up until I ran into champion packs in narrow spaces or worse in dead ends and I found myself trapped with no place to go. My test character died three times in the tower because of this, and I started wondering if this character build was workable.

Then I tried to using bone prisons sparingly and then suddenly things became a lot easier. Doing so meant that I had to remember to cast Dim Vision behind me if I got delayed somewhere, but because I stopped using bone prison so much, I had a lot more room to maneuver.

The other reason why the Countess's Tower was so tough for my test character was that fact that it has lots of ghosts in it. Why is that important? It's important because ghosts fly right through bone prisons and walls without hindrance. So if you run into a champion ghost pack or the worst, an extra fast ghost boss pack, you're pretty much hosed because you can't Dim Vision them and you can't imprison them.

Well, not quite. True, you can decrepify them and try to out run them, but that's tough. However, there's one more cute trick that I found by accident. If you cast several bone prisons in a room with the ghosts and then tp to town, the ghosts will switch to attacking the bone prison. When you come back through the townportal, they'll keep attacking the prison and you can then book it out of there. It's best to do this in a place where you know it would be safe to park the ghosts and where you know you can run a decent distance without being slowed down by other monsters.



After dodging many monsters and parking several ghost packs, I managed to get to the countess's chamber, spam the place with bone prisons, and kill the countess. I got a Tal and Tir. Oh, well. If I was going to get low level runes, at least I got a Tir, so I can try crafting another wand the next time I get a chance to break out a perfect amethyst from my mule.

Just to add insult to injury, I kept all of the Countess's minions Dim Visioned, let the bone prisons expire, and then picked up all of the gold from the chest and from the two side chambers in the 5th level of the tower. There was a boss pack of ghosts down there, so it was especially gratifying to snatch all the treasure under the monsters' noses (or what's left of their noses).



After dealing with the countess, it was time to set off for the monastery. Everything worked pretty straightforwardly. One kind of cool thing about Dim Vision is that it works through walls and doors -- kind of like an amazon's Slow Missiles. Before opening a door, you can cast Dim Vision in front of it and the effect will spread out into the next room. That way, all the monsters will already be blinded and you can run past them. If you don't do that, then the monsters will see you and start rushing you. If you then blind them, many of them will keep rushing you until they're forced to make their next "decision" by running into something, for example. It's much better to blind monsters before opening doors.



I made my way down to Andariel's lair. It turned out to be one of the easier fights I've had with Andariel, since her poison attacks were completely blocked by the spammed bone prisons. I did have one little scare when I accidentally bone prisoned myself next to a boss zombie and I couldn't get out. I had to sit there and wait 24 seconds for the bone prison to expire -- refreshing my bone armor and quaffing red potions the whole time. You can't unsummon bone prisons or walls, unfortunately. Once the prison finally collapsed, I rushed out of there, cast new bone prisons on the zombie and everything else and finished off Andariel.

No, I didn't get any good items from Andariel or in the entire Act. It's tough to find good items when all you can do is open chests and kill quest bosses.

Act 1 Quest Screen

Act 1 Waypoint Screen

Quote:tactical point: in indoor areas, it's best to keep the bone prisons to a minimum.

...in narrow spaces or worse in dead ends and I found myself trapped with no place to go

Quote:ghosts fly right through bone prisons and walls without hindrance.  So if you run into a champion ghost pack or the worst, an extra fast ghost boss pack, you're pretty much hosed because you can't Dim Vision them and you can't imprison them.

Well, not quite.  True, you can decrepify them and try to out run them, but that's tough.

Quote:However, there's one more cute trick that I found by accident.  If you cast several bone prisons in a room with the ghosts and then tp to town, the ghosts will switch to attacking the bone prison.  When you come back through the townportal, they'll keep attacking the prison and you can then book it out of there.

Quote:Dim Vision is that it works through walls and doors -- kind of like an amazon's Slow Missiles.  Before opening a door, you can cast Dim Vision in front of it and the effect will spread out into the next room.  That way, all the monsters will already be blinded and you can run past them.  If you don't do that, then the monsters will see you and start rushing you.

I typically enter the Lut Gholein sewers from the trap door next to Greiz, but just as I was about to do that, I felt a gnawing in the back of my mind. There's that other entrance to the sewers by the dockside and I've always wondered why it was there. What's more, it always seemed like I had to pass by it on my way to the stairs to level 2. I thought that maybe Blizzard included that "secret" entrance as a sneaky way for knowledgeable players to get to the second level of the sewers quickly.

So on a lark, I entered the sewers using the entrance by the docks, made a quick right, and found the stairs to level 2 almost immediately. It's funny how one can learn new things about a game even after playing it intensively for 20 months (not counting an 18 month hiatus).



Getting past the skeletal archers and mages was pretty easy with Dim Vision and Bone Prison/Wall. Once I got to Radament's area, I drew off most of his skeleton minions and Dim Visioned and Bone Prisoned them. Then, I ran in and spammed bone prison all around the room to hold down Radament and keep the remaining minions at bay. After that, I took down Radament with Bone Spirits, waited for the Bone Prisons to expire, picked up the book and tp'd out of there.

The Halls of the Dead (Maldar has to get every waypoint) were surprisingly dangerous. It had a lot of narrow corridors filled to the brim with skeletons, bats, and mummies. One room had a mummy boss who was Conviction aura enchanted and a boss bat who was fire and cold enchanted. That was scary as hell. But I got to the Halls waypoint all the same. *whew*

Then it was time to be off to the Maggot Lair. As I said in my opening message, the Maggot Lair is the only place where I'm allowing Maldar to use Teleport (using a staff of Teleport on weapon switch). Still, when I first entered the Lair, I tried very hard to keep to the no-teleport rule. I lead a group of scarabs and itchies back to the entrance room and Dim Visioned and Bone Prisoned them there, but then I ran into a boss maggot parked right in the middle of the corridor and there was nothing I could do but teleport past him and the monsters beyond him.

The Maggot Lair was tight and it was rough when I'd teleport right in the middle of a pack of monsters.



But that didn't stop me from doing a little item finding by opening a few chests and kicking open a few jugs. What's kind of cool about casting Dim Vision on maggots is that they seem to consider the act of laying eggs as an "attack." So, if you blind them so that they can't see you, they don't lay eggs and you don't have to deal with hordes of little baby maggots. (There are baby maggots in the above screenshot because of the boss maggot who can't be blinded).

When I found the main chamber, I Dim Visioned everything as quickly as I could to try to limit the number of baby maggots that would be created. Then, I teleported right to the chest, thinking that I could hit the chest and exit before the bugs knew what was happening and that if there were bugs there, I could cast Terror on them to make some space and then hit the chest.

Unfortunately, it didn't work. There were too many itchies and other monsters there and I couldn't hit the chest. Plus, they were packed in so tightly that when I cast Terror on them, they had nowhere to run. I took a lot of hits and after quaffing my third full rejuv, I Dim Visioned everything, teleported across the room to a temporarily clear spot and tp'd to town to refresh my potions.



When I returned, I adjusted my strategy. I Dim Visioned everything again but this time I cast a bunch of bone prisons on the nearest half of the room. The idea was first to protect me from randomly wandering monsters and second to attract the more distant monsters near the chest toward my side of the room. I let the Dim Vision expire for a few seconds and cast a few more bone prisons on my side of the room. Then, I recast Dim Vision and teleported over to the chest.



The strategy worked. Most of the bugs had moved away from the chest. Two itchies remained in the area, however, preventing me from clicking on the chest. I cast Terror on them to move them out of the way, then Dim Vision and then some local bone prisons to hold the bugs back. Then, I hit the chest, grabbed the staff, and tp'd to town.

The Viper Temple was quite fun. It has a lot of monsters in it, but its rooms are also quite large, making it easy to run past most monsters. It was funny to run around opening chests and breaking jugs while a dozen snakes randomly slithered around me.



However, I had one very frightening moment in a hallway. I ran into a champion pack of vipers and when I instinctively cast Bone Prison on them, I accidentally trapped myself while I was in range of their attacks. After making some futile attempts to get out, I cast a tp, but it appeared too far away and I couldn't get to it. So, I cast decrepify on the vipers and refreshed Bone Armor and quaffed potions, hoping I could survive and get out once the Bone Prison expired. The Bone Prison finally expired and with the vipers decrepified, I was able to slip between them to the town portal and refresh my potions. *whew*



I took the stairs down to the second level of the Claw Viper Temple and immediately spammed Dim Vision everywhere. As I slowly made my way around the alter, Fangskin, the only monster who hadn't been blinded, came charging out. I led him back to the entranceway stairs and Bone Prisoned him there. Then, after Dim Vision expired, I led his minions away from the alter and Dim Visioned and imprisoned them. After that, it was a simple matter to run around the mummies, open all the chests, kick open the jugs, hit the alter, grab the amulet, and tp to town.

I ran quickly through the palace levels (which was easy, because it always has the same layout) and entered the dimensional portal to the Arcane Sanctuary. I touched the waypoint and then I had a decision to make. Which direction was I going to try first? I decided to try the northeast direction (upper-right).



The pathways in the arcane sanctuary are too narrow to allow someone to slip past monsters and anyway, ghosts can come upon you from all directions and block your path, so the way to deal with the Arcane Sanctuary if you're not allowed to use Teleport is to draw monsters from the direction you want to go and park them in the three directions you don't want to go.



Parking normal ghosts is pretty easy, actually, since it's easy to lead them to where you want them to go and then send them off to the nether reaches of the sanctuary. You lead them as far as you feel you can safely go in the direction you want to park them, Dim Vision them, move around behind them, cast Terror on them repeatedly until they fly off the screen and then cast Dim Vision at the edge of the screen. The last thing the ghosts remember is that they were flying away from you, so they keep on going for a decent distance and if everything works out well, you won't see them again.



But things don't always work out well. At some point while I was parking some monsters in the southwest, I woke up a ghost boss pack and he seemed to have picked up some of the ghosts I thought I had ditched. Unfortunately, casting Dim Vision on the minions wouldn't do any good, because now that they were already locked onto me, they would keep coming at me even after they get blinded (until their next "decision"). Plus, that wouldn't stop the boss in any case.



In a panic, I used the bone prison-tp trick by spreading a few bone prisons, going to town, and coming back. As expected, the ghosts switched to attacking the bone prison. I booked it up the northeast direction, figuring that the waypoint area was now offlimits. I had already made some progress in parking some of the monsters from the northeast direction, though, so I thought that maybe I could park the remainder of the monsters in some of the side paths up there.

Unfortunately, the ghosts must've broken through the bone prison quickly, because it wasn't long before I saw a mass of ghosts closing in on me from behind. I tp'd to town.

Now I had another decision to make. I had effectively managed to park the whole ghost pack up in the northeast, but I had already pulled out about a third of the monsters from that direction -- and parked them in the other three directions! Should I leave the ghosts and switch directions or figure out another way to deal with the ghosts?

I decided to deal with the ghosts. So I returned to the sanctuary via the waypoint, ran up the northeast path and got the whole ghost pack to chase me.



Then I led them to the southwest direction -- all while casting Dim Vision in front of me to blind the monsters I'd already parked. I ran as deeply in the southwest direction as I could and started a tp. The moment the first ghosts got to me, I entered the portal and went to town.

I came back to the sanctuary via the waypoint and worried about whether I had parked the pack deeply enough. Actually, a few ghost stragglers hadn't been parked deeply enough, but because they were normal ghosts, I was able to lead them up the northwest direction and ditch them there. It looked like the boss and most of the pack, though, were staying safely parked in the southwest. I made sure to try to stay as far away from that direction as possible just in case.



After that, all that was left to do was to draw all of the monsters from the northeast direction and lead them and corral them to the northwest direction. I also had to pray that there were no boss or champion ghost packs sitting up in the northeast direction.



Luckily, there weren't any more ghost boss or champion packs to deal with. I managed to move all of the remaining hell clans and ghoul lords from the northeast direction to the northwest direction, and I managed to send all of the ghosts off into deep space. After an hour's hard work, I found the Summoner's platform.

Did I say an hour? I should've said that it took an hour in each direction, because you see, everything I said above was the story of clearing out the northeast direction. When I first entered the Arcane Sanctuary, I actually tried the northwest direction first. After an hour of carefully moving and parking monsters, I found it was one of the false directions. Luckily, I found the Summoner in the second direction I tried and luckily he wasn't in the teleport portal direction. If he had turned out to be in the teleport portal direction, I would've had to have rerolled the map and started from scratch.

So, how did Maldar do against the Summoner? Stay tuned.

The hardest part about the summoner was getting to him. Once Maldar found him, it was a simple matter to bone prison him and cast bone spirits at him. The bone prison stopped a couple of the Summoner's glacial spikes and the bone spirits killed him in 5-6 shots. Like I said in Gunter's writeup, the Summoner can dish it out, but he can't take it.



Tal Rasha's Tomb had Ghoul Lords, Gorebellies, and Scarabs. This was a really easy draw, because it was easy to run past everything. There weren't any ghost boss packs to deal with and no Hollow One/skeleton packs clogging up hallways. I found the staff chamber fairly quickly and stuck the staff in it. I was scared. How would Maldar do solo against the infamous hell Duriel?



OK, I lied. I wasn't scared at all, because I'd already done this in nightmare difficulty. I immediately spammed Bone Prison on Duriel to stop him dead in his tracks and then cast a barrage of bone spirits at him. There was nothing Duriel could do and after quaffing 5-6 blue potions, Maldar killed Duriel without any trouble.

Act 2 Quest Screen

Act 2 Waypoint Screen

MongoJerry,Sep 13 2003, 06:16 PM Wrote:That is a very interesting idea.  I would never have thought about Leap.  Does maxed Leap also knockback regular boss monsters and champions?