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#11
Sep 11 2020 05:21pm
Sorry I've been slacking on updating this run. Unfortunately I had to reboot the run after zeal locking myself getting swarmed by beetles and cursed by a vamp pack while separated from my Merc. An unfortunate death with how well things were going. I'm going to continue this thread with the reboot as well as dump a bump of pics from the original run's A2NM.

I'll have a few refinement mentions in strategy and skills as well as what's been going on this normal run. I'm doing a 12h stream tomorrow starting with A1 NM. Hopefully I'll be all caught up by the end of it and ALIVE!

Here's the rest of A2NM and the initial attempt.

Things were going well, runes were dropping. I did my best to let the merc safely kill all the enchanted beetles I kept encountering.



Cool nest pack spawn

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More enchanted beetles, conviction aura forces me to swap to salvation here. I also upped the woestave to a bec-de-corbin.



This was my first Tal Rasha's tomb and this pack was the first thing I encountered. I really didn't have much space to work with but finally managed to find a spot to let the merc safely have at it.

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There were some difficult packs in that first tomb and ofc moments later I get caught unaware and overconfident by this room. Zeal locked and oblivious to the cursed vamp pack here. Merc was back by the door. I was swarmed by 5 beetles and nowhere near holy freeze (he got himself busy with a Vamp)



I'll have the reboot up in a couple of hours as I have about 60 pictures from normal to sift through and edit.

Thanks for reading!
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#12
Sep 11 2020 07:18pm
WeirdAl-ados is born. Firstly I'll be skipping Resist Cold, Light, Fire, and Conversion this time around. This makes A1 and A2 a fair bit harder but has a nice pay off for A3+. Secondly, I will not be socketing anything short of a partizan in normal.

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I found 3 early gem shrines in A1. I saved these until about half way through A2 so that I could cube up some rubies to at least get a perfect out of this.



I wanted to just buy an early decent weapon, which made gambling a smarter choice do to the exaggerated clvl at this stage in the game. It just so happened that my claymore pickup would be a decent early rare.

The 6% 7 life SC is probably the best charm I've ever found in A1. It's likely one of the best I've found in normal and will last me until I die this run.

Sadly, my nagel ring roll was beyond subpar (min roll). At least Andy Coughed up a diamond... yay more savage polearm rolls.

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I started with 16 savage polearm cube rolls. I ended up rolling 42 times before calling it quits. None of my rolls were nearly as good as the first 5 rolls I got last run. Ultimately I settled on this 70% halberd - I later got a higher ED +29 max dmg halberd to replace it. I saved a couple savage partizans and eventually swapped to one in early A5.



I was really excited to pick up this decent 4dex 20LRes GC.

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Hey! Another gem shrine. (I'd later misclick one in a4 for a chipped ammy :cry: )

Picture of this pelt because this would've lasted me all the way up to the tal's mask I found during the werebear run. This is a nutty single pass "Lore" base.



A4 normal coughing up an early angelic pair. Saved for later, just in case. Sadly no sigon pieces this run which hurt attack speed a fair bit.

Forge was okay, but the good rune came later :) This was my only Sol rune in normal. I found no thul or amn runes at all this run.

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Post 1/2

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#13
Sep 11 2020 07:26pm
This was a decent early pickup. The FHR was welcome along with 19 Fire resistance. I'd later drop a 30 cold 17 fire light belt with some life from my cow level - I'll probably be upping this tomorrow (means cubing some amethysts and ort runes though)

No thuls, no sols, no amns.... Shael, shael, shael..... This game truly thinks I'm still on that werebear run.

It's not a woestave but it could be a piece to the puzzle. I'm starting to give more respect to some of the CC type gear like Woestave. I'll place more value on Iceblink, Razortine and a couple others in future runs. Ofc I don't really anticipate seeing another kelpie snare for a while either (found an ethereal one from normal baal on my very first werebear attempt ~4 months ago)

They're called Pain Slippers if only because they do not have FRW... but with 40 LRes and some MF these instantly went on.



I was getting worried that no partizan would drop. I only had Ancient's way, Icy Cellar and WSK left. At this point I had seen 16 poleaxes and not a single partizan. This would be the only ilvl <40 partizan I'd see in all of normal. I got a ilvl 43 drop from baal waves later. I rolled decently although CS and AR could've been a bit better, the high ED makes up for it.

I'm pretty happy with a nokozan. (195 mf baal kill)

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Cows were easy. I forwent LL and ran 160+ MF for cows. I didn't pick up too many good things, but did add some res charms to my stash.

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Gear and Stats - I gambled the gloves and shopped the armor for the start of nightmare. It's not the best but I will be looking to improve these as I go. Just to mention it again, I have a 30 CRes 17 FRes belt awaiting a cube up.



Thanks for reading!

Post 2/2
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#14
Sep 11 2020 11:50pm
RIP #1

Good luck with the second. He will go all the way, I can sense it
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#15
Sep 12 2020 05:52am
<— DR_SEWS. Sorry bout your RIP buddy. Them beetles had you blocked in badly.. saw you chugging all the rejuvs it was hard to watch honestly.. good luck in second go - watched the latest clip this AM :evil:
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#16
Sep 13 2020 09:20am
What an adventure, yesterday was. :banana: I went a fair bit over the 12 hour stream goal. However, I managed to clear all of A1 and A2 in 13 hours even. I'd go so far as to say, A1 was scarier, at least until A2 tombs. Also this game hates Thul and Sol runes; I've only dropped 2 Sol runes, I have yet to find a single thul rune. I've had to cube multiple orts into thuls; one was used to up the belt I had from cows (30C 17F res) and the other to make a "Peace". I'm very starved with runes. Tombs helped a bit with the wraith spawns, but really I'm mostly just finding endless shaels. I'm not feeling good about the rune drops.

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The last Sol rune I'd see for all of A1 and A2 - At least I got my "Lore" early.



Griswold drops elites apparently... :blink: too bad it wasn't a 3os - I'd gladly save one of these for a "crescent moon"

NM Countess rune drop is even worse than my normal countess :cry:

I made a "strength" for the merc in a 2os Partizan base shortly before the A1 boss fight. Andy forced one rejuv out of me. Otherwise she had a hard time competing with cleansing+medi (double prayer).

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Apparently this game has a hard on for giving me ethereal merc weapons. I can add this to the list of eth merc weapons I've seen over various runs (kelpie snare, woestave, eth partizan in normal, etc)

Of course it's too much to hope for an EZ ravenfrost drop.. why would you want ravenfrost when you can low roll another nagel ring.. 15% and 18%.. at least when the Werebear found 3 nagel rings they were 26%, 28% and 29% :rofl: oh and a dwarf star... fml

The first beetle I encountered just so happened to be FELE... this felt like a bad omen given that I saw my first FELE beetle a few mins before I died on Weird Al #1. I'd go on to see many FE beetles, including Beetleburst - more on this later.



Can you understand why I hate unravelers on melee? At least we have sanctuary aura right? I actually was having a hard time with -25 psn here so I had to go back and swap my shitty 30% hard leather for stealth + antidotes. It took a little bit of effort but this room went down.. It was, however, the first of 4 champion unraveler packs I'd see between HoD, Claw Viper, and Tombs. Champion unravelers are often worse than unique unravelers. In generally having more than 4 unravelers in a room causes problems, if only due to skele density. The weapon swap to stealth did trigger an interesting chat suggestion from Slayer_Peach though. "why not make 'Peace'" - well duh, that was a great suggestion! Why not.. it covers the 30CRes, brings my CS from lv3 to 5 (32-42% deadly strike), honestly the best part is the valkyrie though. She relieves so much monster pressure from me it's kind of nutty when she spawns.

I had found a tele staff somewhere in normal (I'm often to lazy to shop charges). I decided to take the EZ Fangskin gib. "I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND"

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13life 4FRes: It could've done with a little bit more resistance, but this probably won't leave my inventory.

So many dual enchants today. I'm pretty sure this was my second tomb which had wraiths and beetles and was also Ancient Kaa's tomb. I love getting wraiths and beetles in larger tombs, they help speed up clear time and are often more rewarding for exp and drops. However, I really didn't get any small tombs today. They were all on the medium-large side. I still managed to get through them quickly but some proved more challenging than others.

Amn, Dol, Hel were drops only seconds apart and moments after complaining about rune starvation (still... we're so fucking starved this run).



Tomb #4 was the scariest. Upon arrival I saw 1) Wraiths, (2) minion beetles. I ran back out the door to think and reset. I didn't have a lot of room to move around and I was worried it could be an FE beetle. Sure enough, it was. Little did I know that if I had pushed in further I'd have pulled 5... yes 5 unique packs on top of me. Immediately to the right hallway was Extra Strong CE maulers. GIVE ME A BREAK GAME! I ended up having Mind Maw and Stone Thirst on top of me and pinned at the door. Valk and Merc came through for me though. Attract swap didn't really do much here. I think I'd prefer terror charges to isolate pack leaders.

Immediately after Stone Thirst and Mind Maw (we proceeded slowly) was a LE conviction beetle with an additional beetle pack (I forget the affixes). At the end of that (top) hallway was a Wraith pack too! (cursed iirc). So let's recap. Door is the bottom of the square with 3 hallways, left, top, right. in the square room I had wraiths with a FE beetle pack. To the right I had CE+strong maulers that were on the near side of the hallway (they pulled immediately). In the top hallway we have, near side conviction beetle, mid another beetle pack, far side wraith pack. That's 1 wraith, 1 mauler, and 3 beetle packs with almost nowhere to walk. I'm not sure I've ever had this difficult or congested of a tomb. This was also my smallest tomb.. go figure.

I'll probably need the AR at some point. 3str is worth ~9life.

Duriel, like his drops, was a joke. Valk didn't stick around long here. No rejuvs needed, just the occasional going back to town to rebuy healing pots. Cleansing aura helped a bit better with sustain than the other auras (like fanata).

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Gear and stats in next post 1/2

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#17
Sep 13 2020 09:22am
Gear and Stats:



I'm very likely done pushing vitality for the rest of Nightmare as I need to start increasing Dex and Str for elite weapon reqs - unless I want to settle on an elder staff.. that might be a better idea.

Post 2/2

Thanks for Reading!

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#18
Sep 13 2020 09:28am
Quote (M0r0n @ Sep 11 2020 10:50pm)
RIP #1

Good luck with the second. He will go all the way, I can sense it


I'm glad you're so optimistic! I don't think this build can go all the way for a couple of reasons - but mainly the low health will sink it as its a very aggressive playstyle. I'll be stoked to make it to hell, and proud if I can clear a1h.
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#19
Sep 13 2020 11:51pm
Man im sorry about the 1st run man... the beatles are awful in nightmare and hell... hope the 2nd run goes awesome! Enjoying how you post the updates!
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#20
Sep 14 2020 07:31am
Very nice WT as always, I'm happy i can see it on live! B)
Good Luck!
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