HC Druid Summoner

[pakman]

Just to let you know, Diablo isn't much easier in Nightmare, though he probably would be much more manageable with more +skills on my summons and fewer equipment restrictions on Francis letting him spend less time doing the "avoid the LBoD dance." I tried him twice last night, after getting a sol on my nightmare hellforge (which actually didn't annoy me as much as it otherwise might, since I needed a sol for my cleric paladin for an Insight stick for his merc).

The first time, I cleared the CS and started fighting him, and partway through the battle, the game lagged out abruptly. I saved and exited as soon as I realized I was lagged, and was very happy not to arrive in channel invisible or in robes. The game was gone, so I had to start again.:angry::rolleyes:

The second time I got as far as the chaos sanctuary before I realized I was too tired to continue, so I stopped for the night.

I hope for better luck in the future. The best of luck to you as well.

Heather

Well, last night I took on the Chaos Sanctuary. My oh my was that a fight to stay alive. Well, not so much for me as for my minions. I forgot how rough Oblivion Knights really are, too. Emilio and the Grizzly got swamped a few times with the OKs throwing BSpirits and that elemental missile they throw while the Venom Lords, Doom Knights and Doom Casters enclosed the vine, bear and merc. I had to make several tactical retreats to regroup. However, my merc didn't die in those situations as I had equipped him with a life steal stick that did decent damage. The OKs didn't even bother casting IM, instead they like to use Decrepify, which was really annoying more than dangerous. One thing I did notice, though, was that if I recast my bear he still had decrepify on him. Either that or the OKs cast it on him as soon as I summoned it again. After about an hour of clearing the CS, except for two rogue Doom Casters that flew out over the lava and couldn't be reached, it was time to hit the seals.

As always, if I die to anyone in the CS, it was going to be De Seis, so I popped him first. He kept casting Decrepify slowing everyone down, and I kept casting grizzly to speed everything back up. Emilio took out the Doom Knights while the bear kept De Seis occupied. He was taken out "easily" after his minions were dispatched. The second seal I popped was a dud because I couldn't remember which one spawned the venom lord pack, but he was next on my hit list. That pack didn't prove cahllenging at all, and was quickly put down like a rabid raccoon. Lastly was the Doom Caster pack that I pretty much just looked at funny and it decided to lay down on its own.

Well, now it was time to pop the last seal and let the Dog out. As a little joke to myself, I, for some unknown reason, decided to play "Who Let the Dogs Out?" in iTunes as I popped the last one. *rumble* *rumble* *rumble* *shake* *shake* *shake* Who let the Dog out? Me and I forgot the leash. I knew this was going to be a hard fight right from the start, it always is. As a reminder I have been full clearing everything on /players8 and Act bosses were no different (meaning no cheating the game back down to /players1). I _slowly_ crept towards the center of the CS casting the vine forward and seeing where it died. Once I got it to Diablo, I cast the bear up there and he was promptly frozen. BigD let out a fire ring and knocked out half the life of the Oak Sage without me knowing it. The Demon was happily LBOD'ing the bear and I was "happily" trying to maneuver Emilio to go start poking at him. The first time Emilio touched him, he took an LBOD to the face and was down for the count. I also noticed that my life was getting large chunks taken out of it as well. Then I noticed that the OS was gone, I had become so used to it just being there and me having 600+ hp and my merc having upwards of 1000. Well pretty much everything died in round 1 except for me and my ravens. I had set up a TP beforehand so I went and visited Tyrael, the local merc necromancer and paid 9158 gold for his revival. I also stocked up on healing potions and mana potions seeing as I was out of full rejuvs. Then next 20 minutes went something like this: go back, cast TP, find D, cast bear in front of him to distract while merc poked at him and I fed the merc healing potions. Each time Diablo would do that fire ring thing, my OS would lose half it's life, so I would recast it just to make sure. The PC kept the Dog green. I had to resurrect Emilio about 10 times during the course of this fight. Diablo kept the grizzly frozen and kept attacking it with the firestorm, LBOD, etc. If the Grizzly's life got into the yellow, I'd just recast it. Finally, Diablo was killed.

Diablo really didn't drop anything of note. I got a pair of Sigon's boots and the Skull Splitter unique pickaxe. I equipped that mainly for the 20% mana regen. He also dropped a couple uninteresting rares.

On to A5. Well the Bloody Foothills are as XP rich as ever, I visibly saw my XP bar jumping with the monsters my minions killed, which I haven't seen since A1 in the Blood Moor when I was whacking things with a club. Shenk was no problem, and I freed the barbies. That's about as far as I got.

I have one question, though. I have the runes for a Spirit RW sword. I am currently in the market for a 4 socket broadsword or longsword seeing as the first 4 socket shield available is a monarch with a STR req of 156 (I only have 80 and the only way it's going to get higher is from items). What are the chances of me going back to A2 or A3, buying a normal broadsword, bringing it to Larzuk, and getting the full four sockets in it? Does the number of sockets received depend on clvl?