Grizabella, the Realistic Fighter Mage

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT III

With the game now correctly set to /players 1 mode, the monsters got eight times easier to kill and the game got 64 times easier to play. It was still a slow grind and I still had to break up large packs of monsters at times by luring members a few at a time back to a safe location to pummel them, but the going was much easier.

Of the jungle areas, the Great Marsh probably took the longest. The Zombies there are fire immune and have a lot of hit points and the Gloams are always a pain. Still there weren't any times in the Spider Forest or the Great Marsh where Grizabella was ever in any real danger.

I expected the Flayer Jungle to be much harder than it was, but there for the first time, I saw the power of Zeal. Up until now, I've been wondering if 'Passion' was worth bothering with and I still think that one could get by with using a 'Call to Arms' Phase Blade alone. (If I had more +skills items, I would probably like 'Passion' more). But with the little flayers swarming me and my merc, the Zeal on 'Passion' let me for once kill at about the same speed as my mercenary. None of the little flayers are fire immune, so they tended to die quickly -- somewhere in about 2-3 Zeals. Then, I and my merc would then teleport to the shamans, who are fire immune, and take them out without much difficulty before they raised too many of the little flayers. And if any of the little flayers did swarm us while we were attacking a shaman, Zeal would quickly dispatch them. It was a grueling long journey through the Kurast jungle areas, but after a couple hours of adventuring, Grizabella had her feet firmly placed on the Lower Kurast waypoint -- Eye and Brain in her stash and the Gidbinn protecting the Kurast Docks from harm.

Gidbinn Screenshot

Lower Kurast Screenshot

The next big challenge was the Ruined Temple or as I like to call it, "The Death Trap." But I'm no novice hardcore player. I specialize in taking out the Ruined Temple in hardcore hell. The Ruined Temple comes in two possible maps. About three-quarters of the time, it'll show up with one large main chamber right in front of the entrance stairs with two small chambers to either side. This is the "Death Map," because it allows for maximum swarming from all sides. But there is a second map that appears about one-quarter of the time that starts off with a long hallway and then has two medium-sized chambers off the hallway. This is the "Safe Map" in that it's much easier to take on monsters one group at a time. My plan was to keep rerolling the map until I got the "Safe Map."

The first time I went into the Ruined Temple, I got the "Death Map," but nothing swarmed me immediately. Hm. "Well, I'll take a look around, but at the first sign of an extra fast might enchanted boss, I'm out of here," I mused. I checked the side rooms, and they had no monsters. Strange. Finally, a Flesh Hunter and a couple of Gargantuans came out of the main chamber to greet me and the fight was on. But it wasn't too terrible. Sure, I used tactics to help me like fighting in doorways to keep from getting swarmed, and I'm sure the Confuse from the 'Delirium' runeword helped a lot. But it was weird. There didn't seem to be nearly as many monsters as I remember from 1.09 and earlier versions of D2. There were a few Gargantuans, a few spiders, a few vampires, and the usual Flesh Hunters. But I think the only boss pack was the Flesh Hunter boss pack. Nothing was fire immune, so everything died efficiently. Either I got really lucky with my monster rolls, or Blizzard majorly nerfed the Ruined Temple. I hope it's not the latter one, because I always liked the challenge of taking on the Ruined Temple.

Lam Esen's Tome Screenshot

I popped into the sewers and got lucky in that the entrance to the second level of the sewers was near the entrance I used. I got the heart and then it was off to Tranvincal.

I'm glad they're making people do Tranvical now. Of course, I wish they made people get the Eye, Brain, and Heart, too, but Tranvincal has always been one of my favorite areas. It's a nicely well-built challenge. Sure, if you have an uber-l33t character, you can probably march up to the full council and take them all on without a thought. But if you like to play more challenging builds as I do Tranvincal takes a lot more thought.

The first thing you have to do with Travincal if you're playing an underpowered character is do a full clear of the entire map away from the temple area. In particular, you want to hunt down and destroy any Heirophants, because the last thing you want is to spend five minutes wailing on a council member boss only to have him healed by a Heirophant. Getting rid of all vampire-like monsters is also a big plus, because you don't want meteors raining down on you while you're fighting a council member. I usually go around the outside perimeter of Travincal first, then spiral in and hit the outer buildings and end by attacking anything left in the middle and in front of the temple area. Then, it's time to lure council members out one at a time to some safe location well away from the temple area. As long as you're attacking them one at a time, the council members are not bad at all. However, I had an amazingly difficult time with Ismail Vilehand.



I don't get why he was so tough. He was Immune to Fire, but he wasn't Immune to Physical. Nonetheless, it took literally 25 minutes to kill him (I watched the clock). I don't know how to read the MPQ's, but I would guess from this experience that he has a natural 95% resistance to physical attacks or something like it. He wasn't regening, because he's not immune to poison (and anyway I hit him with my 'Call to Arms' blade just in case). He also never cast a healing spell on himself. Indeed, his health never went up at any time. It just took 25 minutes to finally whittle him down. I backed him into the corner that you see in the picture and wailed on him there. After a bit, he seemed to give up. He stopped attacking and shut down. Either his AI doesn't know how to handle being cornered or the AI says, "If a guy's been pounding on you for 10 minutes, just give up." After he didn't do anything for 5 minutes, I rested a book on my mouse button and went and made a sandwich. The other council members died efficiently, though. (ed note: It's two days later, and I realize now I should've tried Berserk).

I found a Doombringer off a Heirophant in the middle Travincal. If I find one in a hardcore ladder game a week into the ladder season, I wonder how much I'd get for it on Ebay. :-)

I smashed the compelling orb. I still can't believe that Blizzard hasn't done anything to make this quest more rewarding. You should get a hellforge level rune out of it at least. Oh, well. I went down into the Durance of Hate and finally got the screenshots I've been dying to get.



Undead Stygian Doll on Undead Stygian Doll!



Take that!



And that!

Besides laughing hysterically at the doll on doll action, I did notice something significant. Both in doll form and in sorceress form, I wasn't taking any damage, or at least any significant damage, from the exploding dolls. I even killed a boss exploding doll and was hardly damaged at all. Either the explosions can be resisted or blocked, or Blizzard nerfed the exploding dolls considerably. Hmmm... no msle's, the Ruined Temple's been nerfed, and now the exploding dolls don't do much damage. Blizzard may have made your average joe monster harder, but it seems like they're nerfing everything that used to be a challenge in the old game.

Into the Durance of Hate Level 3 I went. The council members and vampire guys fell efficiently. Sure, I had to run and teleport around a bit and go back to town twice, but the fight wasn't too bad. The Confuse kept most everyone occupied long enough for me to pick them off one by one. Then, it was time to take on Mephisto.

I had found a Ravenfrost in nightmare, so I put it on to protect me against Mephisto's Blue Ball of Death. I also bought an antidote potion to give me a temporary boost to my poison resistance. This all turned out to be overkill.



I and my mercenary teleported next to Mephisto and started wailing on him. And wailing on him. And wailing on him. Somebody said in another thread that melee characters are at a big disadvantage to missle fire fighters and spellcasters against Mephisto, because you can't leech against Mephisto anymore. That person is an idiot. The only scary attacks Mephisto uses are his blue ball and charged bolt, but he doesn't use them against melee attackers. Instead, he uses his pathetic melee and poison attack which hardly do any damage at all. I used 5-6 super healing potions to keep up my and my mercenary's health against the poison, but otherwise, Mephisto went down with hardly a fight.

So, Grizabella is now safe and sound in the Pandemonium Fortress. On to Act IV! Here are the usual end-of-act screenshots.

The Quest Screen

The Waypoint Screen