+1 to all skills is a HUGE deal for a Summoner, because Summon Mastery is a synergy that doesn't only work with actual skill points. This item improved my damage by 10-20%.

Just a pity that it's not +2...



Act 2 went quite quick as usual. Duriel took a while, but was easy. Also as usual!



You learn something new every day! Apparently Nightmare bosses drop essences in PD2.

Low runes drop super often, which means I can shell out an Insight the first chance I get! The damage is low, but I'll just replace it later.



Another lame set item... I think I'll stop posting these now.



My highest rune so far!

More and more interesting drops start happening. This String of Ears is perhaps not useful for a summoner, but my merc will love it.

Yes, mercs can use belts in PD2.



Another big damage upgrade for my merc.



And a big defense upgrade for myself! What a fantastic item to get this early on.

My Mephisto fight was very interesting. It took long because there were 3 trash groups with bosses that all got pulled in. I had to focus on them one by one, because my skeletons are terrible when they're all spread out.



But then this happened... Dropped from one of those trash bosses.



Interestingly, Mephisto himself didn't drop a single item apart from his soulstone. I don't think I've ever seen that happening before.

Hellforge was disappointing... Just another Ko rune.



Diablo took long, as expected, but the drop was well worth it!!!



THE GAVEL OF PAIN!!! This allowed me to switch to a Barbarian merc, and his job will be to put level 15 Amplify Damage all over the place. I won't have to put any skill points in it anymore myself, which is fantastic.

Easily the best drop I got so far. This is 100% an end-game item.

Finally a 2 OS helm. Lore means another +1 to all skills!



Aaaaaaaand another one! I'm waiting for a +3 skeleton head to drop so that I can make a Splendor runeword, but this will do in the meantime.



After doing Anya, I'm at 75% for all resistances. Not bad.

I thought this was a nice drop...



... but then 1 minute later THIS dropped. I have no idea what I did to deserve this, but I am having amazing luck today.



On the way to Nilathak, I got a new highest rune. Lem rune is important because I'm going for Treachery runeword.

This may not be a remarkable drop, but I'm posting it because I kept it. +20 attack speed is great for my merc.



Another keeper... just slightly better than the one I had.



Worldstone Keep Level 2 is great for reruns!

... And level 3 is too! Remember that I can teleport, so running to Baal will go super fast on these maps.



Screw you, souls...



Those minions are taking long, but it's not too bad! I once gave up on a playthrough on vanilla D2 because I couldn't get past these in Nightmare, but my summoner seems to deal with them just fine.

Baal took aaaaages. But just like his minions, he was barely able to kill even one of my skeletons.



Bam!





Time to start doing reruns now. I think I'll do at least 10-20 baal runs (mostly for the levels) before going to Hell.

This post was edited by Leevee on Feb 27 2021 04:00am