Gathered up in Durance of Hate Level 1.
Throughout the entire act, these mercenaries were invaluable as protection of the leechers.
The damage of these mercenaries is abysmally low however, so they are really only good for slow/freeze.
Stray monsters often ended up at the leechers, so these mercenaries prevented me from needing to S&E to save the leechers, a couple of times.




Mephisto was very tricky.
Just like with other monsters, the range at which Mephisto starts casting spells is absurd, significantly farther than in 1.14.
On top of that, the smaller resolution also does not help.
"Moating" is not really an option, since Mephisto will start casting spells at you long before you can even see him.
My first attempt at "blind moating", I took one ball to the face, and it was almost fatal. I'm not sure if this was even a critical hit.
This was from multiple screens away from Mephisto.




After a cup of tea, a heart attack and about 5 years of Hammerin', Mephisto was no more.
More drops than I expected. I suppose I still don't fully understand how boss drops work in 1.00.



This post was edited by Fruit on Jul 18 2018 11:10pm

Initially, I completely missed the Bone Helm. Now I'm glad I made sure to double-check the loot.




A regular chest besides Mephisto dropped a Ward.
It isn't quite amazing, I'd say.




The levels of all the members.
Hem is slightly ahead because (just like in 1.14) the killer gets bonus experience.



This post was edited by Fruit on Jul 18 2018 11:38pm

And Mate's stats.
Still catching up to Hem's experience.
With a level 23 Might (+260%) and a level 5 Concentration (+120%), the 44-48 Blessed Hammer damage becomes a rather big 211-230.
The damage is further increased with Amplify Damage.




The Act 3 mercenaries will thoroughly be missed as protection. They ended up significantly more helpful than I thought they would be.
The Hellforge quest will drop gems for each character, so I'll be hoping for some Diamonds to create shields with resistances.
I should also find noticeably more gold in this last Act, so hopefully I can start gambling some uniques, like Magefist and Wall of the Eyeless.

Great walk. 1.00 looks so much harder than anything else lol

If you know the tricks and the cheezy builds, it is a cakewalk but after a while will become very-very repetitive.
My personal opinion is that 1.08 in P8 is the hardest.
However this kind of walk i.e. controlling 8 players at the same time is indeed challenging. Especially because - as it was mentioned by OP - monsters' awareness radius was much bigger before LoD.

This post was edited by -joey- on Jul 19 2018 05:03am

Yeah I forgot that I did that myself lol such a pain walk to finally get 1 shot by NM ancients. I might retry it later however, kinda frustrating dying in NM
I meant this aswell, Idk how they manage to make it with switching between sessions, anyways very pleasant to read thoses shitty uniques though

This post was edited by Melatonina on Jul 19 2018 05:04am

Do you have a source for this? Cause we've been testing it recently and last hitter doesn't seem to get any extra experience. At least from Diablo.

oh, damn. i could've sworn that i recently read that in 1.14 the killer gets a bonus too, but now that i look it up, none of the sites say anything about it. looks like i was wrong. :-/



depends how you look at it. :-)
early on, before you've built up some gear and skills, 1.00 is generally tougher. monsters are very aggressive, especially casters. blizzard clearly nerfed AI later on.
many skills are garbage or otherwise mediocre, and the lack of re-specs and synergies means you generally want to save all your skill points until the good/best ones open up.
the nec and sorc are very lucky to get access to their top-tier skills at level 6, corpse explosion and static field.

but as you hit early Nightmare, and slowly build up skills and gear, i think it gradually changes into 1.00 becoming easier.
for one, there are a lot less champion- and unique packs that spawn, so it's very rare to run into 2, let alone 3 boss packs at the same time.
also, even though monster health gets a massive boost in 1.00 for each player, their damage does not increase.
and no immunities either. :-) lightning/cold/fire/poison/magic get capped to 75, while physical gets capped to 95 (99 for those Swarm/bee monsters).

but specifically for soloing Hardcore P8 Hell 1.00, there are only few builds that are really viable. most builds/skills just do such low damage that it's hard to compete with the absurd health pool of monsters.
i think you will just give yourself a headache if you aren't either a Sorc or a Nec, because only they have offensive skills of which the damage scales with players.
important to remember is that if you do not find more mana potions than you use, you have no choice but to keep going back to town to replenish your mana by healing at some NPC in town.

if i wasn't exploiting the might + concentration + amplify damage synergy, i would certainly not be doing P8 as hammerdin.
whirlwind would be tricky in chaos sanctuary because of iron maiden. you'd need to stack life leech like crazy, or use leap attack (because that skill does not return damage to the barbarian).
paladin with thorns + conversion may work. the skill has a higher chance to be successful, and the monsters stay converted for a very long time.


sorry for spammy post

This post was edited by Fruit on Jul 19 2018 09:48am

Not at all, I only very vaguely remember 1.00, makes for a good read.

On the subject of curses in CS, was Lower Resist complained about a lot too? Presumably so, as that got patched out with IM. Can't say it ever gave me much grief.

This post was edited by Mukhalif on Jul 19 2018 11:28am

great read sofar! thanks for sharing
tracked and hoping for updates