06-01-2004, 11:43 PM
Quote:I laughed above when I said the Voidwalker is "accessible" because the quest to obtain the Voidwalker, received at level 10, is totally impossible to do solo at level 10 and still very, very difficult in a group. I believe this was not intended, but we'll see in later pushes if it's tweaked. Any Warlock player will be able to tell you of their pains trying to get that Voidy at level 10, requiring you to make a foray into a cave filled with enemy Warlocks packed so tight you can't breathe...
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I soloed that quest. I just thought that it was somewhat tedious since every encounter was a pair (warlock+imp or warlock+voidwalker). Just needed to pay attention to which one of each pair that was attacked first with which skills and which of the two to take out first (not always the first attacked). There were a lot of pairs in there, but I found them to be well enough spaced out that there were only a couple of spots where I would have had to deal with taking on more than one pair at a time, if I had gone those routes. I did have to stop and wait for the mana/hp recover to work in many spots (mine and the imps) since many of the fight drained us down to the limit many times. As it was the imp had to be 'sacrifcied' about 6 times to make it through some of the fights.
In general the imps were the best to take out first and fast in those pairs. The warlocks would sometimes then lock themselves into trying to resummon it and be an easy kill then. If not then there was still less to worry about with out those dangerous fireballs being directed at you.
For the voidwalker pairs it was usually more critical to arrange for my imp to get its attention just before I nuked the warlock with a Shadow Bolt to focus his attention on me. The warlock would then at times start dividing his attention between myself and the imp who was putting a pounding on his tank that usually was dishing out too little damage compared to the what the imp could take. The enemy warlock was then only dangerous if he kept his attention on me and was using too many Shadow Bolts compared to DoTs or curses (I could stand several of those compared to the SBs). Then it was just a matter of deciding which of the two was more important to take out first. If I needed to finish the warlock first, it usually cost me the imp to the voidwalker but I could then finish the voidwalker due to it greatly reduced life and no backup.
I actually had more trouble in that cave later with a group when doing one of the other quests that takes you in there. Too many other palyers will end up not wanting to take the time to recover enough in between fights and start wandering an waking up pairs in multiple directions.
As for the soul Shards stacking, I would tend to agree with lemekin in the stacks should be up to 5. These can actually be very powerful items if you could stockpile too many easily. But at 1 per slot, it makes it a royal pain to be able to accumulate any items as a large portion of the inventory would start being taken up in just maintaing a reasonable reserve of them. You did not mention that the Soulstones, Healthstones and such can be traded to the other players (and many want them when they know what they do) and that they go "poof" when you logoff. This can mean needing to replace these item everytime that you log back on. This also makes this an unappealing class for those players that cannot affort to invest a more than short play sessions since they will likely be chronically short on enough shards to keep up the other items/minions.