Grizabella, the Realistic Fighter Mage

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE SPIDER CAVERN

Grizabella had some exciting adventures in the Act III Spider Cavern. However, before you respond to this posting or make any judgments, make sure you read the epilogue at the end.

Act III from the start was harder than Act II. A lot harder. It was so hard that I kept checking my message log to see if I had set /players 8 by mistake. I hadn't. Just making my way through the Spider forest was tough. It'd take five trips back to town to kill one boss pack of anything, and if I didn't tend to my mercenary constantly with teleports and potions, he'd die in 3 seconds. I just couldn't get it. Act II had been pretty straightforward, except for a few battles here and there. Just starting Act III was a struggle every step of the way. After about 45 minutes of pain-staking fighting, I finally made it to the first offshoot area in the Spider Forest which contained the Spider Cavern. I took a deep breath and went in.

The first group of four spiders were fire immune. "Aw, c**p," was my first reaction. It took several full rejuvs and several trips to town, but I finally managed to kill the group and establish a small beachhead by the entrance. But when I went around the corner, I found out I was going to be in big trouble.



Little lamprey bugs started flowing toward me in a seemingly neverending stream. "OK," I thought. "No problem, they're not fire immune, so I can handle them." I figured I could zeal a few of them, start up the Confuse, teleport to the mamas and cut the supply off at the source. The Confuse went off and then, bang! Amp cut in a split second later. "Uh, oh," I thought. Confuse went off again and then Amp cut in again right after. One of the Giant Lamprey mamas was a cursed boss. Anytime the Confuse went off, the mama would hit one of her babies and start Amp on everyone, canceling out the confuse. I Zealed for a bit and made a little headway through the little bugs, quaffing potions as I went, but then the spiders came in and stopped me dead in my tracks. I tried backing out and then teleporting to the mamas to try to kill them before they laid more eggs, but with me and my merc amped, we couldn't get more than three swings off before we had to get away -- without the mama bug hurt in any way. It didn't help that the merc AI attacks whatever attacked him last, so at best he'd hit the mama bug once and then get distracted and start jabbing at the babies. My merc does 3-4 times as much damage as I do, so without him providing the power, it was useless to attack the mamas directly.

So, I tried a desperate gamble. I quaffed a full rejuv potion and teleported around the cavern (teleporting away fast if I teleported into the middle of a spider pack) until I found a safe spot away from any boss monsters. I planned to then slowly and methodically take on spiders a few at a time, making my way toward the gold chest, all the while hoping I don't meet any more curse enchanted bosses. That's when I first met poison immune spiders.

Poison immune spiders? No problem, I thought. If they're not fire immune, they're toast. Hm, I don't seem to be doing any damage to them. Why aren't I doing any damage to them? What the hell? Oh.

If they're poison immune, the poison charm in my inventory won't stop their life regeneration, and the spiders were regening as fast as I was damaging them. I switched to my 'Call to Arms' blade which has "Prevent Monster Heal" on it and slowly made progress. To conserve Full Rejuv potions for battles against boss monsters, I tried to use only Super Healing Potions as much as I could while fighting normal monsters. I filled 8 potion slots with healing potions each time I went to town and on average I managed to kill one spider for every trip to town.

This adventure was starting to feel like some of the descriptions of the adventures of Sirian's Firebolt sorceress. (I know I'm dating myself a bit here. Sirian was a guy who two years ago made a pre-LOD hardcore Firebolt-only sorceress and managed to get all the way through and kill Diablo in nightmare. And this was before Firebolt became the uber skill it is today. Hm, a firebolt sorceress. I should try that).

But I managed to do it. Woohoo! It took 45 minutes of grueling work, but I did it. I made a nice path to the chest, popped the chest, and positioned myself for a screenshot next to the Eye.

Then I hit "Esc" to change the automap settings to make the scene look better and accidentally hit "Save and Exit" instead of "Options."

I just couldn't believe my eyes. I restarted the game out of some vain hope that the Eye would appear in my inventory even though I hadn't picked it up or that maybe all the monsters would still be dead. Of course, it was crazy, but when you'd just been through what I went through, denial can be a powerful force. The Eye wasn't there, and all the monsters were back. I was back at square one.

Well, not entirely. I did still have the map up to and inside the Spider Cavern. After I took a break to clear my head, I looked at the map and said, "To h*** with it" and teleported my way over to the Spider Cavern, leaving all the outside monsters for another time. I wanted to get the Eye just have something concrete for all my efforts.

I walked in and the first monster pack I came across was a Might enchanted Amp cursed spider boss pack (might've been two boss packs, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out). Here we go again. Teleport, teleport, teleport.



I ended up finding a nice little spot up in the top corner that you see in the above screenshot where there weren't any spiders in the immediate area. Unfortunately, the chest with the Eye is near the bottom corner. I did get one bit of good news while I was furiously teleporting -- I saw gloom bats, which means that there were no Giant Lamreys. I can deal with bats.

I again slowly and methodically made my way toward the chest. I had the system down, so it only took about 20 minutes to get there. I'd lure a couple of spiders at a time to my little corner and pummel them there. It was important to corner them, because 'Passion' has Hit Causes Monster to Flee on it and besides spiders like to run when they're injured anyway. I knew I success was at hand when I managed to lure away and kill two of Sszark's minions. Then, Sszark himself came out.



Immune to Fire, Immune to Physical, Magic Resistant, Stone Skin. How the hell am I supposed to do anything to this guy? Not to mention he's Extra Strong and Amp cursed. Time to quit out and reroll the monsters?

Forget it. I lured the rest of Sszark's minions away from the chest, teleported to the chest, hit it, grabbed the Eye, tp'd to town. Cya!


EPILOGUE: It turns out that the game was set on 8-player mode after all. I forgot that I had done some testing against the Ancients in nightmare difficulty and had set the game in 8-player mode. I didn't know until now that the game remembers what player setting you used even after you leave a game and create a new one. It makes sense now that I think about it, but I usually play on bnet, so I didn't know. It's nice to know that I can make some headway in an 8-player game, even if it's quite slow. Actually, as agonizing as it was, it was also the most fun I've had with Grizabella so far, because it required the most strategizing and skill of any adventure so far. Maybe when I'm done with 1-player mode, I'll try everything again in 8-player mode. It'd only take every waking moment for the next month to do it.