1.10 Ridulous

[Ferengi]

Was that from the Shamen inferno, the lil guys butcher knives

but were just proceeding cautiously?

I personally think the Hardcore concept is inherently flawed

It's an interesting question whether "normal" builds should have been play tested for unfair death in "storyline" quests.

There are no Shamen in the Dungeon except for the last boss. The ONLY elemental attack is poison until the bottom. The infernos from slow moving monsters are simple to deal with. Shamen also come with light radius BTW. I see that the other details were placed in a different thread, I thought that I had repeated them here. The pack on the bottom level fell over dead, I was getting nailed on levels 1 and 2.

It was simply fast, large, high damage packs coming out of the dark. Flayers have always been fast and the Dungeon has always been dark, but they have ridulous damage and speed in order to hand me 600 in a couple of seconds. It's a good thing that potion drinking doesn't require faster hit recovery. It's also good that gold drops are increased to help pay for your merc (again). Since I see Shamen reviving over a greater distance now, I assume that monster "radius of awareness" has been boosted, which is why entering a large dark room can result in sudden rushes from distant side corridors as you come abrest of them. When that pack delivers so much damage that it becomes a 1-hit kill on a character carrying an effective 600 HP in normal act3, when previously a sorc with about 80 HP could stroll through the same area, surprise will be the least of the generated emotions.

Proceeding cautiously? Well death does temper one's enthusiasm after a few times. It was the dread of facing 3 more levels (while on level 2) that caused me to bring in the necro. By the time I brought in the necro, I expected to encounter that level of damage, it is ridulous that it occurred.

As for the rest of Act III, (i.e. what most replied about), it was simple, Chain Lightning nailed flayer packs, since they could be seen (or were otherwise predictable) easily and it auto-targets (even offscreen). The Council handed me some 39 Chancies for instance. Even the sewers didn't have these killer mobs, they just had a nasty HS pack on level 2 that I played ring around the pool with quite a bit (good thing that is a fixed level design that I played enough in eariler days). My Confuse necro can deal with known (or knowable) packs pretty easy, in Normal monsters cannot kill each other, but they do not swarm attack me. In NM, monsters will kill each other, if they live long enough.

As for the necro, Fire Golum is very active and precasting is difficult when you are essentially blind. I had tried that with the ChainLightning, but after 5 deaths it was clear that didn't work. Holy Freeze is useless against these packs, you die in less than 3 seconds afterall and auras do not go around corners. A Hydra sorc would have had advance warning, which is enough. Chain would have nailed them IF I had known they were there (Chain sets off hit recovery and the cast rate ensures that they never leave it). Chain disables 5 members of the pack, which reduces the size enough to have an opportunity to teleport away.

It's interesting to see that most players are getting into the Durance without completing the fail, so much for the anti-rush techniques. There is a similar backdoor in Act2 for players without the Snake quest. The playtesters might have been lucky or not paying much attention, the in game chatter in NM shows many players dying in ways that surprise them.

Oh, I never had much respect for Hardcore, since I rarely died and rarely pumped vit. Making it a ghost would be fine, I find most Hardcore players carried a chip on their shoulder and would be glad to get rid of that (since the game was easy). The new lag from the server counter World Event will doom many players now, so that should sweep away everything but clvl 50 in act1 normal hardcore.

It will be interesting to see what is posted by the next weekend....