I think I'll eventually do some TZ andy runs, maybe I can finally pick up some of the remaining uniques I'm still looking for (shako, dweb, arach, soj, andy visage, trang belt/shield, etc.).

Found another Gheed's, which was 1% gf and 1% mf better than mine, but I still prefer the extra 2% vendor price reduction, so I left it on the ground. In hindsight, I could have stored my Gheed's in the shared stash and change them whenever I gamble, but I'm already running low on space.

Reached level 93, so I will grab a might mercenary, level him to 93 and attempt to do uber tristram. Got tons of full rejuvs and extra resist gear ready. Even if I fail to do it, I still have another organ set and improve the next attempt with the lessons learned.

Bought a new mercenary and grinded a bit more xp so he reached level 93 as well.

Tristram was a really tough experience. At first I had to create a game, where River + Durance + Palace spawned Urdars, just in case I run out of them - and that was a really great decision to make.



I raised skeletons in Act 1 so I'll still have the Pindle portal available in case of an emergency. I opened Tristram and pulled Mephisto away. I went to River and raised an Urdar army, used Demon Limb to enchant my merc and went back to Mephisto.
My mercenary's gear was Guill + Duress + Obedience and no matter what I did, he was instantly oneshot several times, there was no way to even throw potions at him in time. Without him, the Urdars weren't enough, because the open wounds from Duress was what kept Mephisto from regenerating life faster than he lost it. I also needed some actual flat damage as well, not just crushing blow. The solution was to give my Kira to mercenary for some res stack and equip his talmask myself. I was in a lot less trouble than the army, I only had to dodge/tank a few random skeleton magi.

By the time my progress was nice on Meph (~50%) the Urdars started dying, so I had to go back to River, collect more, and come back to deal with Mephisto again, with a renewed belt of fullrejuvs. I used decrepify instead of lifetap, because this way atleast I could keep passing potions between hits.



Diablo was surprisingly easy to follow up, I have no idea where Baal went, but he either didn't bother to fight for some reason or didn't cause any trouble. I still had to feed rejuvs to my mercenary but a lot less than against Meph.

With his brothers dead, it looked like Baal decided to be a lot more bothersome than before. In hindsight, I think it was my fault because I didn't lure him into the house in time and the adds kept messing with my army.
Somehow he managed to kill my mercenary and my urdars also started dying again, so I had to recollect them from Palace this time, because River was already empty.

Same routine again, raise skellies, raise urdars, have the merc turn the might aura on, enchant merc and the Urdars as well this time, restock on full rejuvs, etc. Palace barely had any more urdars left, so this would have been almost the last chance. I was also running low on full rejuvs, but I could craft more of those with gems if it came to that.

Thankfully, it did not come to that, Baal finally went down and I could loot my torch and my standard of heroes. That's one more endgame goal with a strikethrough! Only Diablo clone to go, for which I'll also have to find a soj first.

I just noticed on the screenshot that you can see the spot where I threw my TPs because I was confident it would be a kill... then my mercenary got sniped and I had to rebuild again. I remember I had to teleport back to the palace cellar wp because I didn't have tps with me.

I believe I'm either extremely lucky with the 1:7, or maybe D2R introduced something for single player where torches are guaranteed to be for your own class? In that case, 12-14 is pretty bad, but it really doesn't matter, necro stats are bad and I had plenty of resists anyway. I will restock fullrejuvs and return with the lessons I learnt, and I'll go for the second organset eventually to see if it becomes a higher stat Necro T.





And here are my upgraded stats at level 93, with a torch and CTA.



+13 skills on summoning, ~2k life ~500 mana, 75@, 75% FCR and 86% FHR breakpoints and 356% magic find.

Current midrunes: 3 Ko + 4 Fal + 4 Lem + 6 Pul + 2 Um. Current highrunes: 1 Gul + 1 Ber.

Runewords I plan to make:

• Infinity: would need another Ber and some farming to cube up a Mal + Ist. I'd also prefer to do it in an eth Thresher/GT/Mancatcher;
  
• Hoto: would need a Gul or a Vex rune;
  
• Fortitude: would need a Lo rune, or a Bramble would need Ohm+Sur runes.

I also considered making a Beast, got a 5s Millitary pick, and could scramble the Ber + Tir + Um + Mal + Lum runes together, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Especially that an Infinity will be useful if/when I respec to poison, and eventually I have to start grinding high playerlevel terror zones, where conviction would boost corpse explosion a lot.

Uniques/sets I'd like to see:

• Soj --> Annihilus + Sojs --> character
  
• Shako
  
• Andariel's visage
  
• Arach
  
• Death's web / Trang belt / Trang shield for poison respec

The grind continues, for now I think mostly with the TZ versions of Pits/Cows/Chaos/Andariel. I might do some LK runs, and I have more than 10M gold atm which I'll gamble on circlets or amulets. I'll respec if I finally make an Infinity, I want to try including skeleton magi in the build later on. I might also respec if I find death's web, but for now I enjoy the laid-back summoning gameplay.

Wow congratulations on the Necro torch!
I recommend Pindle for Death's Web

Wow i did not expect the necro torch
Mustve felt so damn good
Also decent 4bo cta, 4os 15ed mon, 5res life sc

beast is definitely worth it and will work fine without infinity. didnt scroll through the whole thread just yet but id recommend beast before enigma or infinity.

BIIIIIG update. Amazing luck on the necro torch!

Thanks! I agree the progress is going very well, identifying a necro torch felt awesome. I'll take a look at TZ Pindleskin runs too, currently doing a variety of pits/cows/chaos/pindle, mostly Pits on P7 terror zone though, it's smooth and great xp with lots of drops. Not in a hurry to find a death's web though, as I really enjoy the summoner build. I guess that's fine, because it will need some extreme luck anyway.


I still believe Beast is mostly useful for ubers/DC to speed up Urdars, other than that it's buffing the mercenary a bit, but nothing special. I noticed on P7 that my skeletons are barely doing ANYTHING other than soaking damage. I changed my Might mercenary back to Thorns, and they are finally useful again. Amplified enemies hitting thorns aura skeletons really helps speed up the corpse explosion chains. This is especially noticeable against ranger packs, as they take a lot more time and I have to manually teleport on top of each of them to focus-fire them one by one, unless there were lots of melee enemies around providing corpse explosion ammunition. I think hoto will provide more useful stats with the extra skeleton + curse radius + CE radius + 125% fcr breakpoint, not to mention the buff to resists which will allow me to transition from Kira to a Shako if I ever happen to find one.

I actually made an iron golem out of Hustle this time, because I skip Pindleskin reviving in my pit runs. I enjoy the fact that I don't have to summon a fire golem every game (and I removed its hotkey so I wouldn't accidently kill my iron golem...) and that the first few body pops are faster with a fana aura mercenary.

And quoting my last post:


I tried including skeleton magi in the mix to see if I like them. Currently I can only summon 6 of them, I figured they would be better than nothing. I was wrong, they are actually sabotaging the army, because they seem to bodyblock the rest of the skeletons. Instead of spreading out, they start casting and the rest of the skellies seem to be unable to move. I had this happen with venom lord revives in chaos sanctuary as well, that was when I stopped using revives. I think the main build will be 20 raise skeleton + 20 skeleton mastery + 20 corpse explosion + 20 golem mastery, with only 1 point on revive and the rest I might put on bone armor and its synergies. With iron golem and my growing level it would be annoying to die.

A few more screenshots incoming.

Interesting amulet, I kept it, but I still prefer my current one for now.