At the Ancients:



Was fairly easy:



Moving on in on Baal:

I swear, I got almost a whole level on just this wave:



Defeated Baal. Fight took me literally 7-8 minutes. 0 fear of death, just took for damn ever!



Here's a pretty nice Large Charm I've been using:

Would have been a good ES staff if I had a sorc for this walkthrough:



One of the first skiller rares I've seen:



Upgraded my MF amulet:

Found a Dol! Runes are starting to drop, which is nice:



Again, if I had a lite sorc...



Gambled this... pretty incredible ED%:

Found & sold this... lot of fire damage on this one:



Nice map!



Moving on to Andy:

Here's my stats (non-merc because he kept biting the dust and I had gambled all my gold...):



OMG! She dropped an Io... which means I can make that crushing blow runeword! I already have a base saved up!



On my first kill of her, she also dropped a Nagel Ring:

Well, shit! I guess I just assumed it would work in this base because it's a "Mace Class". Truthfully, this was a blow to my morale. I think I quit and didn't play the baba again for 2 days. Andy took forever on p8, and I'm not feeling too great about progressing at this point.



I decided, since Andy was pretty tough, to progress a bit into A2 for experience and maybe drops, and then go back and run her a little bit later:



Thankfully, I am blessed because I found another Io!

This is a pretty awesome spear:



Damn, almost!



Found this, but I'm too lazy to switch out and switch back the MF amulet so I ended up just vendoring it:

After progressing through Act 2 a bit (I still have to get the staff, then go into Palace... did sewers and viper amulet), I went back to kill Andy on varying difficulties (p3 and p5 most of the time, some on p1, p2, and p4). I found this weapon!:



It dropped as a normal base, so I cubbed it up to the exceptional base. I think that I was still reeling from the runeword screw-up, and I ended up using my socket quest to put a Shael in the sword as well as re-speccing to get points into Sword Mastery to feel better / feel results.

With the might merc, I now swing for 390-940, and I swing fairly quick. Upgraded my average hit from ~300 up to ~650, which is nice! When I run Andy on p3, I can sometimes 1-hit shamans and the bull-looking guys (forget their names).

I found these on a run:



I'm not yet ready to forsake the Sigon's 50MF Boots for them, yet, though.

I also gambled up this item!:



Really nice because my mana base was shit before this. I'd have to rock mana pots just from using concentrate, so this upgraded mana base allows me to use 3 columns of health potions rather than just 2. The MF is a downgrade (I have 4 PTopaz gems waiting in limbo in my stash for a 3-socket helmet now...). If I had the socket quest still available, I'd probably socket this helmet and drop something into it. The resists are really nice, real big help for NM! I'm up to capped Cold/Lightning resists, almost capped poison, and a shiesty 35 or something fire resist.

That's the end of the update. I'm up to level 56 now, farming Andy. My stash is getting painfully full... I have several perfect gems of most types, and I'm hoarding some runes too... 2 amn, 2 shael, 2 dol, 1 io, and some assorted other runes. I'm not really sure where to go from here... not sure if I'm ready for Duriel and his bullshit aura.

I might end up running Andy (I quest bugged her) on p3 for a bunch of runs... I've done maybe 30-40 Andy runs so far. What is the best player level to kill her on? I can usually kill her on p3 without having to back to town, though with p5 I have to go once or twice. I'm conscious about speed, but I usually end up clearing almost the whole of Cata 4 before I take her down, and that slows me. I think I have ~140ish Magic Find.

Anyone have any advice or comments?

This post was edited by Interesting on Aug 19 2017 08:50am