Tales of the Single Player

[mageofthesands]

Welcome to my Tales of the Single Player. Since coming to the forums, I came to the realization that most everything is geared towards b.net. But that is just one part of Diablo 2. The Single Player aspect is all I have, and I will write of my experiences, my growth, and my frustration, so that others may learn. Since I get bored, don’t expect to have all the Tales soon. Furthermore, I start characters while I still play others. That’s why I’ll talk about 1.0 and then 1.09d and back again. I’ll go by characters. So without farther ado, I present my Tales of the Single Player Part 1: The Necromancer. (NOTE: Any and all comments about spelling will be considered to be attacks on my honor, and I expect you to have the sword to back it up with.)

Act 1, Normal: Night of the Not-So-Living Dead.

Having read CGM and Inquest, I decided to start with the necromancer. I always enjoyed summoning creatures to do my bidding and fighting, and Mr. Pale Skin is the best I got. Besides, he had the coolest animation on the character select screen. I then entered the world of warcra…Diablo 2. Hey lookie! This Warriv guy wants to talk! Nice guy. In fact, all the people in this camp was nice. Might scare that Gheed guy sometime. I was told to go to the Den of Evil, and since I didn’t have anything better to do, I complied.
The Blood Moor. Oooooo…Scary. Anyway, I looked my first Quill Rat in the eye. {Cue Western draw music.} I whacked him with my wand. I then raised my first Skeleton. I AM A GOD!!! Mwahahaha! We then scoured the Blood Moor for more victims. By the time I went into the Den of Evil, I had a second Skeleton following me about. When I left, I had three. Once I returned to the Rogue Camp, I learned how to cast Bone Teeth. Yeah, baby. Now I was off to kill Blood Raven. Apparently she’s been raising the dead. Ain’t no one going to steal my job. When I got there, I was level 6. I had 4 level 1 Skeletons, and a Clay Golem. I couldn’t be stopped. Not by some necromancer wannabe anyways. My growing army stomped her. I added a Rogue to my army and raided the tombs. My Rogue died, and I learned the mercs suck. She was also blond. Go figure. Anyway, I went along and started my trek to Tristrum. Apparently, Cain is part of the Horadim, a bunch of ubermages that kicked the Primes Evil’s ass’ long time ago. Since this guy is the last member of the order, he must have inherited all the ass-kickyness there is. I met my first Lightning Enchanted Boss in Stonehenge. You know, I think these guys are going to be annoying. Fast forward, and I have stripped the bark from an ancient tree of power. Wish I could turn it into a club…Well, I opened the portal to Tristrum. Oooooo…SFX. Feeling confident, I took my golem and three skeletons into Happyville. I charged in, expecting my troops to take the hits and stomp some monster ass like they have before. Nope. Aura Skeleton Archers and Griswold killed me. Yippee skip. After carefully building my troops up, I began to recover my body. I succeeded in that, looted Wirt’s body, took his socketed leg, and tried to jam his skull into it. Apparently, Cain is a weak old man that only power is to identify stuff. Pretty nifty. Fastforward to Andarial’s lair. Crap. This demon bitch really hates me. That poison attack wiped me out over and over. Only by using Town Portal and running back and forth between Demon Bitch and the healer was I able to win. More sparkles, and Warriv let me use his caravan to go to Lut Gohlain. Yippee!

Wrapup from Act 1 Normal:
Poison, bad!
Mercs, dumb!
Skeletons kick ass!

Act 2, Normal: Tomb Raider, Starring Me!

Ah, the desert. The Mage of the Sands likes the desert. Quick, where’s my Sand Golem? I decided to explore this town. When I arrived at the palace gates, this guard ran up to me with urgent information. Boy, was he ever eager. Too eager. I was prepared to receive my first task in my quest to destroy the Dark Wanderer. What could it be? What evil shall I smite? What lonely, desperate virgin shall I rescue? I can hardly wait! “You may not past!” (dun-dun-dunnnnn!) Umm, okay. Why? The more I talked to this guy, the more I realized he should live in Cornelia. I visited the local healer/smith then decided to quench my thirst at the tavern. Ah, my first wench. My, isn’t Atma in a bind. Well, I asked for a horny woman in distressed, and I suppose I got one. At least I get to explore the sewers. I wander if I’ll find turtles in there? The answer is no. Only skeletons, more skeletons, and-skeleton-like-things-that-aren’t-really-skeletons. To make a long story short, I wiped Radiment out. Time for the reward. Atma, here I come! What?! NOTHING?! I risked my life for your petty vengeance, and all I get is 20% off my next Town Scroll? Grrrr… You’re lucky I leveled up and now have a pair of Skeleton Mages with me or I’d show you the true meaning of Corpse Explosion. Bitch. At least Andy flashed me. Anyway, where was I? Aw, yes, raiding tombs. More Skeletons. Yippee skip. I got a Horadiric Cube and learned the inventory is good. Real good. By this time, I had a butt load of chipped gems, but socketed stuff was getting harder to find. Typical. I’m going to skip to after the Tainted Sun fiasco. All you’re missing is three hours trudging through Maggot Caves. I hate that place. Hey, lookie! Mr. Personality wants to talk to me! I bet Blizzard was just saving money on the voice actor by using him for what’s coming up next. Why else would a balloon be above his head? “You may enter!” Wow. No wonder Jared had to hire mercenaries. Not that they’re much brighter. As I explored the first level, I noticed the irony of horrors in a whore house. Hehe. Blizzard most have been smoking the mako. I got some neat swag in this place though. I got a mask of horror unique, a speed shoe unique, and some other unique. Can’t remember. Probably a staff. Great stuff here. But don’t attack those big hulk guys! They hit like Tyson. The boxer, not the chicken. Remember Punch-Out!!!? Great game. Come to think about it, the big guys are more like Bald Bull. The big thing I remember in here was getting killed. Yeah, that sucked. But I had a point in Confuse. I popped into the room full of archers (and my body), confused them, and ran. I did this for an hour, and by the time I got bored, they were all dead! By the time I got to the Arcane Sanctuary, I was level 17, had a Blood Golem, and was plowing Bone Spears into everything I saw. Corpse Explosion was getting very expensive to cast. Inquest be damned! I don’t have the mana to keep casting this spell! Fastforward to the duel with Duriel. Crap. This guy is Tyson. Rule #1: Have a lot of money for revives. Rule #2: You will get you ass kicked. How did I beat him? Running from him to the healer, and poking him with my Poison Dagger. Strange, but it worked. To recap Act 2, Normal: Atma is a tease, Guard #1 is a great conversationalist once you get him drunk, don’t walk into corpse gas, and when Queen Maggot bursts; RUN!

Act 3, Normal: Or Why Blizzard Should Remove the Flayer Jungle in the Next Patch

This place sucks. Really sucks. My skeletons are getting their asses kicked, leveling is slow, damned fetishes and flayers revive their minions while taking pop shots at me with flamethrowers, all the while I’ve turned into the human pincushion. I hate this place. It’s so big. And I have to back track when I get to a dead end. And the flayers. I fear them. It’s like a bunch of psychotic children with butcher knives, blowguns and spears swarmed you like you were Mickey Mouse giving away Pure Sugar-Crack. And their mamma’s there to revive them when you whack ‘em. Try to take them out and they turn a flamethrower one you. I HATE THIS PLACE!!! God help you if you run into a Thorns-enchanted pack. I ran screaming through this place, stopping only to grab various body parts of some punk named Khalim. Things pick up when you reach to the city. Now the problem is more revivers that cast Blizzard. Yippee skip. I hate this place. Good looting though! Still, my summons are crap. Only my two Skeleton Magi can stand much abuse. Starting to think I should add more points to them. But then I couldn’t pump Bone Spear. That spell got me through this place. Pow! Pow pow! Take that! Zoom! Screeech!!! Halt. WTF? Be vewy caweful. You’we hunting Council Membews. And they are baddasses. Don’t let those three and their goons gang up on you. They’ll rip you up fast. The regenerate, throw Hydras around, cast heal spells, and each has a different annoying ability. Ugh. Well, I pump them with my bone. That did the trick. I then went all Hulk and smashed the glowing orb thing. Strange, but I was expecting the temple to self-destruct. Pity. Enter the Durance of Hate. Guess what kids? The Flayers are back, and they are kamikaze! Yay! At least this time around they don’t revive, thank God. But the place is filled with the third version of the vampire. This time they’re armed with Meteor. And Firewall. And Fireball. Good thing I have fire resist of 17%. The vamps aren’t as bad as they were in the Sanctuary, due to the fact you don’t have to stand in a firewall. Get to the bottom and you meet three more councilors. One of them is Fast. I call him Chuckles. Kill him! Kill him now! It is very hard to retrieve your corpse with him guarding it. After I cleared the area of minions, it was just me, my Iron Golem (Robocop), and Mephisto. I thought taking on one of the Prime Evils, the oldest of the Three, one of the strongest creature in Heaven and Hell would be hard. I was right. This guy is cheap. Not it the slow-chargelock of Duriel, or the super poison of Andy. Nay. Meph likes to fire freezy balls at you. Or are they lightning balls? Whatever. No tricks to this battle; just a slugfest. Have fun! Act 3, Normal in a hat: Have I mentioned how I hate this place? Loathe it. As the wise cat Garfield once said, “The person who invented Act 3 should be dragged into the street and shot.” I tip my hat to you, o sage of kittens.

Act 4, Normal: Fire = Bad!

Welcome to Hell. Actually, compared to Kurast, I like this place. Oh, it’s much harder. But nowhere near as annoying. Sure, the native have less personality than Binky, Jared’s guard (!) but they have their uses. And the critters in this place eat each other and then spit at you (eww…), and big bad demons will use flamethrowers at you, and some Super Skeletons will target you for war crimes, but still, no flayers. Yippee! I so wish I could summon an Oblivion Knight. Or upgrade some of this crap equipment. You see, kiddos, I don’t have the luxary of trading for good stuff on Bnet. Stone of Jordon, currency of D2? Hell, I haven’t even seen a Stone of Jordon, much less refer to it as mere currency. I would polish it and call it my precioussssss. Stupid bnet people, with their high fluetin’ ways…grrrrr…There are five, yes five unique bosses besides Diablo himself. They can all kill you. Izzy likes to use Frost Nova and then smack you with Azurewrath. Smithy simply tramples you. And if you make it to the inner sanctum of Big D, you find three more bad guys. By this time, I was on 1.04, so Desais didn’t steal from me. Infact, I have yet to encounter someone that has the steal trait. Smash them and prepare to meet the biggest badass this side of a very big ass gone bad. And die. And die again. Again. AGAIN! After awhile, I learned to place the town portal away from Big D. Haha! Pump him full of Bone Spears/Spirits. Yay! Who’s a demon killer? Wrap up: Stay away from Diablo’s Lightning Breath of Doom.

Secret Cow Level, Normal: MOO!

Moo. Moo? Moo moo moo moo. Moo. I can still hear the Hell Bovines. Their bloodcurdling war cries still haunt my dreams. MOO! So many. So strong. Break out the Revives. This is the only time in the game where I liked Revives. Since Hell Bovine’s AI is kill target, Bovine Zombies don’t wander off to play in the flowers like Balors. Moo.

Act 5, Normal: All hail Poison Nova!

I waited a few months before playing Act 5. Had to buy the expansion, you know. I had a hit list going. Two Prime Evils dead, two Lesser Evils slaughtered. One more Prime Evil to go. I learned that many of my skills suck. I didn’t invest into Curses at all. My summons were bad. I banked most of my points into Bone Spear/Spirit. I decided to add the next to Poison Nova. And the Heaven opened and Tyreal did speak: “An acidic rain shall devour your foes.” Use Poison Nova. I can’t tell enough how cool this spell is. It kills all but the undead like they were fallen. It’s just not right the abuse you can use inflict with this spell. The minotaurs died like flies. Those guys the shove their hands into the ground? Dead. Shrek? Dead. Frozenstien (shame on the person that named this creature) dies with his buddies. Seen it in 1.10? Over 3000 poison damage minimum. Oh, yes, all hail to the king, baby! That’s how this act went. Punks run into my four mages, and my barb merc (give the man that created the new mercs a raise.), and I would cast two or four Novas, and move on. Simple, really. Except for that time I thought I saw a cow. That scared me. I looked at his name and it said Lister. How hard could someone named after mouthwash be? Two reloads later, and it was down to me, Harold, my Fire Golem Nathen, and Bhall. (cue Western draw music.) What a battle. That snow plow of his made me quiver. My Nova didn’t do a thing to him. His Clone trick engaged my minons. By Bone Spear barely fazed him. His Chaos Bolts fried me. My Bone Spirit nailed him. That’s what I did. Popped in, pumped a mana orb’s worth of Spirits into him, and TP’d out of there. Cheesy, but effective.

More later...