GAAAAH! Cannot Complete Quest!

[WarBlade]

*Counts to ten again*
*Takes deep breaths*
*Tries to think of things other than Blizzard employees, bathtubs and toasters*
*Counts to ten again*

Right!
Now where was I? Ah yes. "Cannot Complete ____ing Quest". Now how is it that a character can somehow fail to complete the "Kill Baal" part of the last quest in Nightmare when said character made the game, got through the game alone, and proceeded to completely annihilate the tendral tossing freak without any external player interferance whatsoever?

Well there are four choices.
1.) Have not snagged Halls of Pain WP
2.) Have not rescued any Barbarians from the highlands
3.) Have not killed Nihlathak.
4.) Waiting for good itamz before asking Larzuk to drill the holes that he promised.

I never do those first three! :( The Halls WP is out of the way and shuts the red portal, besides being on the way to Nihlathak who is just too annying to bother with historically. Sockets can wait until the items are worthy and as for those Barbarians, not rescuing those hairy damsels in distresses saves me the bother of lugging around the extra trio of runes which take up more space that I'm not supposed to have (according to the new disappearing item bylaws of Harrogath).

I understand (and support) the move to stick the thumbscrew on rushing, but it's not like I got portal'd anywhere by anybody. I actually played through and avoided a couple of side areas that bug the hell out of me. :(

So the question to Lurkers is quite simply, "In your experience, does anyone have a good idea of which of these four is the offending oversight on Blizzard's part?" I'm going have to go back and finish some crummy quest and defeat Baal again because of this thing. <_<

[Tiffany_Scott]

Scott, Tiffy's hubby, here. Just in case I'm obviously, painfully off the mark in what I'm about to say, I don't want Tiffy to get blamed for it. She tends to think things out pretty well before posting.

Me, I'm more impulsive. :D

I say you MUST kill Nihlathak, bro. That's what's holding you back. I'm familiar enough with the fictional D2 storyline to feel quite confident in venturing this guess.

It ain't da barbs--dey don't need to be rescued in order for Sanctuary to be saved. <_<

Kill Mr. Corpse Explosion, and then see what happens. I'm betting you can Baal yer brains out afterwards... :lol:

[TaiDaishar]

you MUST kill Nihlathak

Well if this thing is true 99.99999% of all HC player will never finish hell even if they're level 99 and 50-66% will never finish nightmare.

Unless nihlathak got the nerf stick but probably he didn't after all, he's not nearly as powerful as bremm sparkfist or the armorer in act 4 were... he's way more powerful.

[Rataxes]

I don't find Nihlathak that hard or dangerous. On NM he dealt about 300 damage per CE to my merc in a Players 5 game, nothing a simple Super Healing Potion couldn't remedy. The range of his CE on NM also isn't that great, I stood almost next to a monster when my merc killed it, and I had only run about five yards at most when it exploded, I didn't take any damage.

[Tiffany_Scott]

Well if this thing is true 99.99999% of all HC player will never finish hell even if they're level 99 and 50-66% will never finish nightmare.

Unless nihlathak got the nerf stick but probably he didn't after all, he's not nearly as powerful as bremm sparkfist or the armorer in act 4 were... he's way more powerful.

Scott again. I've already read from several different posters (over at diabloii.net I think) that Nihlathak has indeed been weakened considerably. Ditto for Undead Stygian Dolls (cumulative aaaaaaaah, please) and MSLE's.

Not sure how I feel about this yet. It seems odd they've ramped up the difficulty level of almost all the monsters, while simultaneously weakening those few truly strong monsters from 1.09 which gave all of us HC players fits.

*shrugs*

[Mavfin]

Well, aren't those three of the most dangerous one-hit kill monsters out there? Ones that, no matter how careful you were, you could die instantly? At least with most of the others, you at least have an inkling what you're dealing with, but, some of those 3 you might be dead before you knew they existed...

[Bolty]

Nihlathak's Corpse Explosion has been nerfed. It's not nearly so deadly now, doing a percentage-less damage which scales according to difficulty (if I recall, Hell difficulty has him doing only 33% of a CE's normal damage). I may be off on the figure, but his nerf is a definite.

-Bolty

[kandrathe]

Well there are four choices.
1.) Have not snagged Halls of Pain WP
2.) Have not rescued any Barbarians from the highlands
3.) Have not killed Nihlathak.
4.) Waiting for good itamz before asking Larzuk to drill the holes that he promised.

My 2 pfennig. I would put my money on #2, then slightly behind that #3, and finally #1 and #4 hardly likely.

Then again, it could be a bug, or a fluke. It may be much to ask for, but have you tried it again.

[kandrathe]

Now what about Stygian Dolls? They might make me a HC player yet.

[WarBlade]

Then again, it could be a bug, or a fluke.&nbsp; It may be much to ask for, but have you tried it again.

No, I finished. Got annoyed and came here for some late night forum posting before going to bed.

I didn't fall asleep until about 5 AM. <_<

[Brista]

MS multiplying the Charged bolts from LE bosses has always been a bit silly. I think this is simply a bug fix. Multishot (on a character) simply allows multiple missiles on your main ranged attack

Conviction LE is still out there - another notorious hardcore killer

And I would still treat Dolls and Nilathak with caution

Dolls scale up according to if they're bosses or champs - I've seen a tank Barb get toasted in 1.10 already after taking negligible damage from regular dolls. They may scale up based on player count. And various mods - notably Amp Damage - boost their damage too

Nilathak's CE was rather odd before and the fact that it goes down in Hell suggests to me that it's now based on the life of hell monsters which has doubled. (Some effects were based on the life of Normal monsters in 1.09)

It also may scale up based on Player count

His mods may effect it - Amp and Conviction spring to mind

That room has dangers besides the one hit kill. It is very full and possible to get swarmed, there are bombers as well as CEs and getting hit by both simultaneously is certainly possible and getting stuck on terrain or running out of potions or any of a number of fairly routine hazards can be lethal if you are on the receiving end of chain corpse explosions

Remember with all these things monsters have 5% chance of a critical hit. Even if you find you can generally laugh at these effects, it only takes one critical, players 8, amp-boosted, high roll CE to put you back on the Blood Moor in Hsaru's

Having said that I've always rather enjoyed negotiating these hazards and am a little sorry if they are truly nerfed. Doing them is certainly part of the game - avoiding them to keep the portal open or whatever is a tad cheesy. (not that I don't do such things but I'll cheerfully give them up).

Still, on the bright side, there seem plenty of new hazards to keep things fun :lol:

[Dagni]

I don't think that this has anything to do with what wpts you've got or what quests you've done. If it were anything like that, I would imagine other people would've already posted about the same problem.

How close to Baal were you when he died?
The only thing I can think of that might cause this sort of problem is if you were too far away to get exp/quest rewards when a "party member" killed Baal - even though you WERE the party member in this case (or your merc?).

- Dagni

[WarBlade]

Point Blank. Melee range.
I had Hurricane running and was pasting the evil with Tornado, kill-o-matic, banned in fifty countries, uber fart generator. The only thing I'm not used to seeing was Baal shattered like little popsicle under sledgehammer persuasion.

I'm sure it has to be quest related. <_< My first guess is Barbarian rescue, but there are still too many options left unchecked to say for sure.

[Dagni]

Well, in Normal I sure didn't have to do the quests or get the wpts. I killed Baal without any quests except Ancients and Shenk, and only a couple of wpts or so, and had no problem.

What about character level? Seems unlikely, but perhaps they added a clvl requirement, ala the Ancients?

- Dagni

[Guest]

I am pretty sure it's not Nihlathak. It's either character lvl , or Barbarians in the Highlands. I didn't bother with Nihlathak in normal of course. It's not like i must have a personalized item in single player, duh. What a shame they didn't change the reward for this quest.

But my sorc was lvl 60+ when NM Baal got cooked, so i could say it's the problem in your case, though you didn't specify your clvl.

The patch has a lot of rushing restrictions for sure.
:P

[WarBlade]

76 in Nightmare (yes I know, completely unprecedented, but this guy was stuck at the Ancients in 1.09 and occasionally got woken up for a midnight jog around Nihlathak's halls).

If there was a level problem it would mean a maximum cap which makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever, unless such a thing were to be a bug. No, I sincerely doubt overleveled characters would be blocked (intentionally).

[Dagni]

Hehe, but what a hilarious bug it'd be! :lol: ...Unless your character was the one bearing the brunt of the joke, of course.

Whatever it really is, sounds like a wierd bug to me.

- Dagni

[Tiffany_Scott]

Scott again. :/

Why do you guys think the Rescue Da Barbs quest matters, and NOT Nihlathak? I'm stunned. How familiar are you peeps with the fictional storyline anyway? :huh:

Killing Nihlathak (everyone's favorite undead dude) is vitally important in terms of plotline. His death provides important information leading to the inherent weaknesses and whereabouts of Baal. Wheras rescuing da barbs is actually just a minor little Boy Scout errand designed chiefly to win you the gratitude of the rescued soldiers' wives (and 3 low-level runes!), as well as enable you to hire Barb mercs from their relieved commander.


*shrugs*

Go ahead. Fart around rescuing da barbs, then. Then try killing Baal again. And watch Nihlathak--still alive and kicking!!!--laugh his undead ass off at you... :P


EDIT: Ok i just noted the previous post wherein someone claimed they killed Baal in normal without having done ANY Act 5 quests. :/


I'm at a total loss, then. No idea. Grab a can of Raid and spray some around your comp, I hear it's great for killing bugs...

[kandrathe]

Yes, I think I'm too attached to the time and effort I invest in my characters. Most weeks I only get to play 6-12 hours. So it is not the cummulative play hours I would miss, but the non-playing days in between. It appears to me though that v1.10 characters level up quicker, so with an investment of 12 hours, one could probably attain lvl 35-40. I guess I just think that the faster you can kill something (player or monster), the more strategy and tactics you remove from the game. And, its just cheap. :)

[edv]

1.) Have not snagged Halls of Pain WP
2.) Have not rescued any Barbarians from the highlands
3.) Have not killed Nihlathak.
4.) Waiting for good itamz before asking Larzuk to drill the holes that he promised.

5.) Its a bug and this is a beta. :unsure: