Skull

[Read Skull's reports for normal and nightmare difficulties.]

[Skull is honored to be included in Duchess Ember's Hall of Heroes.]

Act 1

Hell. Diablo II patch 1.08. It was, as they say, a whole new ball game.

Skull entered hell difficulty at level 39, having finished nightmare in the last few days of patch 1.06. Some of the changes in the new patch were immediately apparent. His rare rings all had new names. His Bone Prison now skill now correctly reported increased life in the higher difficulty levels, and his level 10 Bone Spirit did an extra two whole points of damage! And with the new DEX-based blocking formula, his blocking percentage had plummeted from 60% to 7%.

[It wasn't an easy decision to transfer Skull to patch 1.08 for his hell difficulty run. My initial thought was that he would stay in 1.06, for which he was, after all, designed, but I vetoed that when I realised how inconvenient it would be having to uninstall the expansion to play Skull, and then re-install whenever I wanted to get back on battle.net. The other option was waiting for 1.09, when many of the 1.08 changes would supposedly by undone, but that seemed like it was just taking the easy way out. None of the 1.08 changes crippled Skull, unlike many 1.06 builds, and if he could cope in the toughest patch made for classic Diablo II, I damn well wanted to play him in it.]

Skull sold off his now useless bone shield of deflecting. He set off into the Blood Moor using this equipment: grim wand (+2 Corpse Explosion, +3 Amplify Damage), 'Bone Mask' rare grim helm, 'Shadow Ward' rare bone shield (dropped by Duriel in nightmare), 'Death Jack' rare quilted armor, 'Bramble Fist' rare heavy gloves, 'Dire Brogues' rare boots, 'Stone Buckle' rare belt, amber amulet of the mammoth, 'Order Knot' rare ring (previously called 'Chaos Circle'), 'Bitter Master' rare ring (previously called 'Skull Spiral').

Bone Mask: poison length reduced by 75%, requirements -20%, lightning resist 34%, fire resist 12%, +14 to life.
Shadow Ward: requirements -20%, +1 to light radius, replenish life +3, cold resist 27%, lightning resist 24%.
Death Jack: +1 to light radius, damage reduced by 1, lightning resist 22%, fire resist 12%, +48 to life.
Bramble Fist: +1 to light radius, cold resist 17%, fire resist 17%, +2 to life.
Dire Brogues: 10% faster hit recovery, 20% faster run/walk, poison resist 8%, cold resist 31%, fire resist 42%, +16 to strength.
Stone Buckle: cold resist 21%, +23 to mana, +21 to life, +13 to strength.
Order Knot: +1 to light radius, magic damage reduced by 2, lightning resist 7%, +118 to attack rating, +9 to mana, +4 to strength.
Bitter Master: 6% life stolen per hit, 5% mana stolen per hit, cold resist 11%, fire resist 43%, +6 maximum stamina.

Out in the Blood Moor, another of the new changes for 1.08 came lumbering into view. Zombie. Undead and immune to cold. "Hmmm," thought Skull, "good thing I'm not a sorceress."

In the Den of Evil, gargantuan beasts were also immune to cold. Fallen were immune to fire. Skull killed them all with his Bone Spirits.

Skull soon found that his mana supply was barely adequate. He switched his amulet for a wyrm's amulet (+53 to mana), but still progress was slow, with the average dark stalker taking five shots to kill, minions would drain his mana ball, and bosses required multiple trips back to town (or use of mana and/or rejuv pots).

Bishibosh was teleporting and lightning enchanted. One small benefit of the 1.08 patch -- teleport no longer gave the monsters free healing ability. The monster AI didn't seem to have been adjusted for the new paradigm, and when low on life, a teleporting boss would blink about like a mad thing, seemingly utterly confused by its inability to heal.

Down in the cave, Skull met his first multiple shot lightning enchanted boss (MSLEB), serving as a forceful reminder that, in hardcore hell, all bosses should be approached with caution. Skull filled the passageway with his Bone Prisons, and watched as the archer boss's lightning field chewed through the bone mass with frightening speed. He had to recast more Bone Prisons several times to protect himself before the boss died.

After this encounter Skull switched back to using his amber amulet of the mammoth, putting up with reduced mana supply in exchange for greater security in case of unexpected stray lightning sparks.

There were four bosses on level 2 of the cave. Bane Fist the Mauler (hungry dead -- fire enchanted, lighting enchanted and cursed), Flame Growler (skeleton -- spectral hit, mana burn and extra strong), Pit Spawn the Dead (dark ranger -- cursed, extra fast and stone skin), and Wrath Pus (cursed, teleportation and spectral hit). One of them dropped a wyrm's grave wand (+50 mana) which he used when he didn't need one of the spells on his other wands, easing his mana problems slightly.

Skull was noticing other features of this 1.08 patch. Aside from the greater numbers of boss groups he was encountering, there were a lot more exceptional items in drops. [Compared to Boney Jack, who was well into hell difficulty before finding a grim scythe to imbue, Skull had found several by the end of Act 1, as well as any number of gothic bows, executioner swords, et al.]

And then there were the potions. Coming in from 1.06 with his carefully hoarded stock of full rejuvs, transmuted from mana potions and gems, Skull had now given up keeping anything in his belt other than full rejuvs, and was selling all the gems he found. And at the end of each session he still had to sell off a small lake of full rejuvs that had collected in town.

Skull killed Blood Raven (who dropped a magical mage plate), cleared out the Crypt and Mausoleum, and headed on into the Stony Field. Kashya gave him Amplisa, but she didn't survive very long.

Skull still used Corpse Explosion occasionally, but it wasn't nearly as useful as it had been in nightmare. It was automatically at reduced effectiveness against anything that was immune to fire (which was common). And grouping was difficult. With no blocking or defense to speak of, Skull couldn't tank these hell difficulty monsters at all, so had to rely on catching them in explosions as they chased him. It was far more effective to drop Bone Prisons on them, and take them out one at a time with Bone Spirit.

Skull was rather pleased, actually, that his pumped level 24 and 30 skills were finally proving more useful than his one-point level 6 prerequisite

[Did the 50% global physical resist make it into hell difficulty of classic Diablo II for patch 1.08? If it did, that would be another reason why Corpse Explosion was less effective.]

Level 41 in the Stony Field. As another side-effect of the new patch, Skull was gaining approximately one level per area cleared, a rate which he hadn't approached at any point since early in normal difficulty.

The Underground Passage. Four bosses on the first level, and then down to level 2. Skull secured the first open area easily enough, with just a few carver shamans and their entourage to deal with. Then he found himself fighting a two-front war, skeleton archer champs approaching up the right-hand stairs, and an LEB boss pack to the left.

Skull's player cheered! This is what Diablo II should be like! Skull told him to get lost. This was dangerous and could get him killed.

In the Dark Wood, trapping swarms of dark hunters in his Bone Prisons, Skull developed the tactic of using the prisons as grouping devices for Corpse Explosions, with the slight drawback that the explosion would sometimes also destroy the prison, freeing any hunters it didn't kill.

Treehead Woodfist was cursed and teleporting as well as extra fast and extra strong. Skull worried that the brute would teleport on top of him and hit him before he had a chance to react.

It occured to Skull that a teleporting MSLEB would be a most dangerous opponent. Oh well. Time to cross that bridge when it landed on top of him, or something.

There was a chest in the Dark Wood containing a flawless skull, and a few yards further on a gem shrine to upgrade it, giving him his fourth perfect skull. His collection at this point also included two flawless and two normal skulls.

To Tristram, which actually seemed to have fewer bosses than normal. Griswold (stone skin and extra strong) was impotent in the face of Skull's Bone Prisons. Far more dangerous was the cold enchanted MSLEB skeleton archer Griswold was hanging out with. Skull actually got hit by some stray lightning sparks leaking out of his bone barricade, taking big chunks out of his life ball.

Skull cleared the Black Marsh, reaching level 42, and finished this session using some of his accumulated gold in a gambling session with Gheed. He got a coral amulet of the colossus (lightning resist 21%, +56 life), and tried for some gloves with decent resists, but the best Gheed could come up with was a pair of coral heavy gloves of fortune. With some equipment juggling, Skull settled for resists of 64/59/73/-42, 473 life and 390 mana. He still wanted better gloves, though.

Next session, the Hole and the Tower. Grief Blister, a mana burn brute boss (also teleport and holy fire aura) was waiting near the Hole entrance. Skull recalled hearing that mana burn added extra resistance to magic attacks (such as his Bone Spirit), and it certainly seemed that it did, judging by the even-more-pitiful-than-usual impact his Bone Spirits had on the monster's life bar.

There were three more brute bosses in the Hole. Naturally, two of the three also got the mana burn ability.

Then, on level 1 of the Tower Cellar, Skull had his first encounter with his nemesis. Ghosts. Ghosts could fly straight through any Bone Prisons he put down, and if he got caught in a ghost stack he would be dead in seconds.

Skull ran round and round a cleared loop of the Cellar, taking potshots with his Bone Spirits. Progress was slow, with each Bone Spirit only able to damage one of the ghosts, though with the advantage that each Bone Spirit was (almost) guaranteed to damage one of the ghosts.

As the chase continued, the ghost pack got split up. When he was able to isolate individual ghosts, Skull was able to make a stand, the impact of his Bone Spirits keeping the ghost mostly stunned, and his Bone Armor able to absorb any hits it did get in. With room in which to retreat, he was able to deal with ghosts in pairs, alternating shots between them as each one got close.

Eventually, it was just Skull and the ghostly boss.

There were blood clan champons on level 2. On level 3, another ghost pack (Mind Skin -- mana burn, teleportation and extra fast), and an extra fast blood clan boss (Black Weaver the Cold, also stone skin and spectral hit). Skull got tangled up with the blood clan while running from the ghosts, and had to make an emergency portal back to town, barely squeaking through as the clan rained down blows upon him.

Skull returned via the Black Marsh waypoint, keeping carefully out of clan territory as he dealt with the ghosts. This time, there was no loop for him to work with, but he managed in the space he had available, aided by the ghosts' tendency to get hooked up on architectural obstacles.

"Skull's first rule of ghost-hunting: a stuck ghost is a dead ghost"

On level 4, one of the minions of an archer boss dropped a white grim shield! Skull kept it as a possible imbue.

Tower Cellar level 5. Things got messy..

Skull had to spam Bone Prisons to keep from getting forced out of the level, but even so he had to retreat all the way to the door, the monsters advancing a notch each time they destroyed the innermost layer of prison.

There were two blood clan bosses and a ghost pack on this level. Fortunately the ghosts didn't wake until after Skull had cleared out the clan, or things might have got really out of control.

The Countess was lightning enchanted and extra strong. She didn't want to come out of her room, so Skull stood outside and killed her with Bone Spirits fired through the doorway.

The Tamoe Highland. Level 43. Another flawless skull. Skull cubed the three he had to get his fifth perfect.

With the black rogues in the outer cloister, Skull noticed just how fast some of these hell difficulty monsters were, having difficulty getting far enough from them to safely cast his Bone Prisons without getting himself trapped alongside the rogues.

Skull cleared out the Pit, with an easy draw on level 2. Just some dark archer champions, and a minor boss (Gloom Sludge -- multiple shots, mana burn, cursed). He finished this session with more gambling at Gheed's, spending over half a million gold on gloves, and getting absolutely nothing worth mentioning.

Next session, into the Barracks. Skull trapped lots of death clan in his Bone Prisons, and noted how quickly they were able to break free.

Skull was checking Akara's wares regularly, having noticed earlier how she always had a couple of grim wands on sale, and early in this session he struck lucky. A necromancer's grim wand of wizardry, a snip at 105K gold. It didn't have any useful skills (+1 to Bone Wall), and he had to sell off his wand of +3 Confuse to finance the purchase, but the +2 all-skill bonus was too good to pass up. With this equipped, his Bone Spirit was doing 286-296 points of damage. Whoooo!

Skull reached level 44 before fighting The Smith (extra strong, mana burn, spectral hit). He saved his level-up stat points, intending to imbue the grim shield, which would possibly require a boost to his strength.

But, when he gave the hammer and shield to Charsi, all she gave him back was junk..

Down into the Jail. Skull knew there might be wraiths here. He discovered, now that he was paying attention to such, that he could detect wraiths by standing at a door and listening for their whispering. He exploited the automatic targeting of his Bone Spirits -- if a few wraiths died to Bone Spirits fired blindly through doorways, without ever having a chance to fight back, well, that was just too bad for them

There was a wraith boss on level 1 (Sharp Wing -- mana burn, fire enchanted, extra strong), but it made a fatal mistake, sending out its minions one at a time for Skull to deal with.

No wraiths on level 2. Just some death clan champions, and Pitspawn Fouldog (cold enchanted, extra fast, extra strong). Somebody had already put Pitspawn safely behind bars, so there was no need for Skull to waste any of his own Bone Prisons.

There were a few wraiths on Jail level 3, but they were just stragglers, and Skull was easily able to deal with them.

Flamespike was gone from the Inner Cloister. In his place was a random skeleton mage boss (fire enchanted, lightning enchanted, stone skin). [Crackmonkey time at Blizzard. What was the point of removing poor Flamespike if you're just going to let other bosses spawn in the exact same place?]

The Cathedral was the last place Skull could expect to meet ghost-type monsters in this act, and indeed there they were. Not a boss though, so he dealt with them easily enough.

There was a dark shaman boss just inside the Cathedral entrance. Skull fired through the doorway and saw sparks, so he knew it was lightning enchanted. Its other abilities remained a mystery, since it died without ever revealing itself.

Bone Ash was "Undead Magic Resistant Extra Strong Cold Enchanted Teleportation Mana Burn Immune to Cold." [Try saying that five times fast!]

All the bosses on level 1 of the Catacombs were packed into one tiny area. Tainted champions, a ratman boss (Rust Eater the Slayer -- mana burn, spectral hit, cold enchanted), and Bone Ripper, a dark shaman boss. Bone Ripper was teleporting and lightning enchanted, and Skull dealt with him last, having cleared the others out of the area.

On level 2 of the Catacombs, this is what happens when you mistime your Bone Prisons while trying to contain an angry spider..

Ouch! Skull made mental notes to be more careful in future.

Catacombs level 3. A total of six boss groups (and a banished champion pack) on this level, including an MSLEB afflicted (Gray Bite the Flayer), and Night Jade the Dead, an extra fast lightning enchanted banished boss who zipped around like Speedy Gonzales on steroids.

Skull was level 45 when he went down to face Andariel. He equipped a sturdy breast plate of defiance he'd found earlier, trapped her in Bone Prisons, and shot Bone Spirits up her butt.

Skull took all his gold with him to Lut Gholein, preferring to donate it to that charitable Elzix instead of wasting any more with the miserly Gheed.

Act 2

Before starting off in Lut Gholein, Skull made a quick trip back to nightmare difficulty to use his final imbue on a mage plate he'd found, hoping for something more stylish than quilted armor to wear. He particularly wanted the 'of colossus' suffix, and some resists.

Well .. it was tantalisingly close to being useful. +55 to life was excellent, if he could get his resists covered elsewhere.

Skull started in act 2 using this equipment: necromancer's grim wand of wizardry (+1 Bone Wall), 'Bone Mask' rare grim helm, 'Shadow Ward' rare bone shield, 'Death Jack' rare quilted armor, coral heavy gloves of fortune, 'Dire Brogues' rare boots, 'Stone Buckle' rare belt, coral amulet of the colossus, 'Dread Loop' rare ring (his old 'Beast Circle' ring from 1.06), and 'Bitter Master' rare ring. 482 life, 406 mana, resists at 64/59/73/-42.

In the Sewers, things went smoothly. He found a gem shrine, for his sixth perfect skull, and gained level 46.

There was an unusual shrine cluster on level 3 of the Sewers, a monster shrine and a mana regen shrine spawning at the same junction. Skull trapped a huntress in a Bone Prison, hoping to make himself a pet kitty boss, but a couple of skeletons sneaked up on him as he was triggering the shrine, and he ended up with a burning dead champion instead.

Radament was extra fast, magic resistant and cold enchanted. And soon dead. Skull added his bonus point to his Bone Prison skill, bringing it to level 20 (with his wand).

Out in the Rocky Waste, Skull discovered three different monster types against which his Bone Prisons were less than totally effective. Sand leapers could jump out, and vultures could fly out. The vultures weren't much of a problem -- they were slow, and died quickly -- but the leapers were annoying. Skull found that even if his prisons weren't reliable containment, they still served well as a distraction.

And then there were the slingers (spear-throwing cats). They got trapped in his prisons nicely enough, but they could throw their spears right through the walls. Skull studied this phenomenon. It seemed that the spears just could not hit the Bone Prison pieces -- if the cats chose to target the prison, their spears flew off in some random direction without hitting anything, but if they targeted Skull outside the prison, he got hit. Ouch.

The Stony Tomb had an extra fast beetle boss pack right at the stairs..

Actually, there were two beetle boss packs, as Skull realised when he noticed his Bone Prisons getting hit with the curse graphic, and there was no cursed attribute on this boss. The second boss was Sharp Lust, cursed, stone skin and fire enchanted.

There were horrors in the Stony Tomb, which slowed Skull down considerably, with their innate 70% resistance to magic attacks. Normal horrors were bad enough, taking over half his mana ball to down each one. The mana burn horror boss on level 2 of the Tomb was just .. painful.

[That was a mana shrine off in the room to the right. It refreshed more than once while Skull was dealing with this boss.]

Here Skull is in the Dry Hills, having a quick peek over the edge of the cliff to see what he's going to have to deal with later. The cats are a boss pack also (Spine Dancer -- lightning enchanted, cursed, cold enchanted).

Skull reached level 47 while clearing the Dry Hills. Spine Dancer, when he finally caught up with her, dropped for him a unique ring! Skull figured the monster levels were high enough that it could be a Stone of Jordan, which would do great things for his mana supply, but it turned out just to be another Nagelring, exactly the same as the one he had already, with just one minor addition. A 'Required Level' of 7.

Time to pay a visit to the Halls of the Dead. There were returned in the first room.

Lots of returned.

Lots and lots of returned.

And spear cats.

Okay, so it's a boss pack of spear cats.

A cursed boss.

So now Skull was cursed, and getting hit by auto-hit throwing spears, and his Bone Prisons were crumbling, so he was getting swarmed by returned, who were getting resurrected as fast as he killed them, and ... HELP!!!

Skull tried getting round to the back of the room, but the way was blocked by mobs of returned. With nowhere else to go, he dived back out the entrance.

Wow. That was .. intense.

Skull pondered his options. He had at least managed to kill off the spear cat boss (Chaos Lust the Unholy) before the situation got totally out of control, so he wouldn't get cursed again.

Skull restarted his Bone Armor, and headed back down. He dodged through the pack of returned lurking at the stairs, into a corner, and barricaded himself in behind his Bone Prisons. He then proceeded to pick off the remaining spear cat minions, lurking in the darkness at the edge of the screen.

Without the constant barrage of throwing spears, Skull was able to concentrate on the returned, using Corpse Explosion to destroy each body as it fell. And then the hollow ones, five or six of them at the back of the room, easy prey for his Bone Spirits without their returned swarm to run interference.

After this excitement, the rest of the Halls were comparitively easy. There was another spear cat boss on level 1, and Skull made a stand at a doorway, limiting his exposure to their spears.

Into the Far Oasis. Skull went right from the entrance. There were a couple of sand maggots, a few vultures, but the Oasis seemed strangely devoid of life.

Back to the entrance, a couple of steps left, and four boss packs descended upon him at once. Stone Pus (itchies -- extra strong, extra fast, magic resistant), Warp Wolf (itchies -- spectral hit, cold enchanted, fire enchanted), Bone Fist the Witch (undead scavenger -- stone skin, cold enchanted, conviction aura), and Plague Bang (death beetle -- teleportation, mana burn, lightning enchanted). Skull fought them all in the narrow passage between the Dry Hills and the Far Oasis.

A gem shrine in the Far Oasis gave Skull his seventh perfect skull.

Skull stopped off at Elzix's for some gambling, getting some rare light gauntlets with lightning and poison resists, and a rare belt with lightning resist and +36 to life. With a prismatic amulet (20% resist all) he achieved resists of 75/58/75/-8, but was down to 444 life and 407 mana.

Skull reached level 48 fighting a tomb creeper boss (Dread Spawn -- spectral hit, cursed, teleportation) in the passage leading to the Lost City.

Dark Elder and his plague bearer minions were immune to magic. Hmmm. Skull returned to town to think.

Skull actually considered getting a piercing wand from Drognan, and meleeing the plague bearers, before it occured to them that he didn't need to hit them, when he could quite easily get them to do it themselves. He collected his Iron Maiden wand from storage, and returned to the Lost City. Bone Prison and Iron Maiden soon dispatched Dark Elder and his crew.

There were two fire towers nearby. Skull donned his special fire tower destruction gear to deal with them (basically, all the +mana items he could find, and his old fastest run boots to speed up his trips back to town).

In the Claw Viper Temple, Skull killed some snakes. One of them dropped a socketed bone helm! Such things would have been impossible in the old 1.06 Diablo II. Skull turned to his player for advice, who decided that it would be appropriate for Skull to wear a bone helm socketed with perfect skulls.

Skull juggled with his equipment to replace the resists lost from his helm, ending up with resists of 71/61/69/-28, 436 life and 409 mana. He had an alternative ring he could wear to max out his lightning resist, for the loss of a little fire and a lot of cold resist.

Back to the Temple. The impact of his new helm was noticeable in the decreased time taken to regenerate enough mana for a Bone Spirit cast when his mana ball was emptied. Also noticeable was the loss of 75% poison length reduction from his helm, when he was poisoned by some embalmed.

On level 2 of the Temple, Fangskin was joined by a claw viper boss (Blight Widow the Hunter -- cursed, fire enchanted, holy freeze aura). Fangskin had an aura too, but Skull didn't take the time to notice what it was.

Skull reached level 49 in the Harem, maxing out his Bone Spirit skill (376-386 damage at level 22).

In the Palace Cellar, Skull's enemies tried a new tactic to dissuade him from his full-clear goal. Mind-numbing tedium, courtesy of the masses of horror archers and their 75% resistance to magical attack. Killing them wasn't particularly dangerous, or challenging in any fun way. Just agonisingly slow.

And then there was this..

Skull experimented with more Iron Maiden, but it seemed entirely ineffective. So he camped in front of the grating for a while, casting endless Bone Spirits and burning through most of his full rejuv supply. [Estimate based on potion consumption -- around 600 Bone Spirits to kill this one boss. All because of that mana burn tag. Sheeesh.]

Here the last horror archer in the Cellar is about to die. Yay!!

Down into the Arcane Sanctuary. Specter territory.

Skull located the teleport quandrant and went that way first. The teleports wouldn't help much with the specters, but at least he could avoid taking on specters and hell clan and ghoul lords simultaneously.

Skull's strategy was simple. Individual specters he killed. Specters in pairs he could deal with, but any larger pack required much running around until the pack broke up into ones and twos. And then he killed them.

There was another specter boss (Gray Burn -- magic resistant, mana burn, cursed) and a ghoul lord boss (Devil Dancer -- spectral hit, magic resistant, extra strong) in this first quadrant. Skull had just reached level 50 by the time he was finished.

Second quadrant. Skull made two unfortunate discoveries. Bone Prison always puts down a whole prison's worth of segments, so if you cast it on a narrow walkway it extends back further than you might expect.

And specters always turn up at the most inopportune moments.

Yet again the specters forced Skull ignominiously out of the Arcane Sanctuary. Bah. At least this time he didn't lose his Amulet of the Viper, but he did lose his Hotspur unique boots, and most of his decent spare jewelry.

[Note: I never use escape just to pause the action. When I hit the escape key outside of town, it's either accidental, or I've already committed to save-and-exit.]

When Skull restarted, the game punished him for his escape by putting two specter bosses (one lightning enchanted), and an extra fast ghoul lord boss, in that same stretch of walkway.

Skull killed The Summoner as he had in nightmare, firing Bone Spirits in the direction of his platform while it was still off-screen.

Skull found a rare amulet in one of the chests. It would have been awesome, if he'd been a paladin. By now Skull had found, cubed or gambled many +skill amulets for every class, except not a single one for the necromancer.

A pack of specters dropped a flawless skull, which he cubed to make his eighth perfect skull.

Skull cleared the Arcane Sanctuary. He went to Greiz and hired a stout fellow by the name of Chalan, leading him around the empty Sanctuary to dispose of lightning spires, since his Bone Spirits had very little impact on them. A golem helped, too, not so much with damage, but if the spires were shooting at the golem, they weren't shooting at Skull or Chalan.

Lightning spires give quite good experience. Clearing them all from the Sanctuary gained Skull about 1/8 of a level, just enough for level 51.

In the Canyon of the Magi, there were devourers and crushers and hell slingers. Chalan didn't survive very long. Skull woke up a larger horde of monsters than he had intended, and, forced back by the spears of the slingers, he almost lost control of the waypoint.

Tomb time. Skull discovered that unravelers are immune to magic, but responded quite nicely to Iron Maiden on a Bone Prison. "Hah!" thought Skull, "nothing is immune to the necromancer!"

Skull also discovered that casting Bone Prison on a mummy sarcophagus stops it from releasing any mummies. He wished that he'd known about this when he was going through nightmare difficulty.

Ancient Kaa was inhabiting the third tomb.

The third tomb was also home to an abundance of apparitions. Skull did a lot of running around, splitting up apparition packs. Sometimes they cooperated, and got themselves stuck in doorways.

Skull reached level 52. With Bone Spirit and Bone Prison already maxed, he put his first skill point since normal into Bone Armor (now level 17).

The true tomb was wall-to-wall unravelers. Skull got mightily sick of opening the door to some tiny closet of a room, and having a small army of twenty or more burning dead come swarming out, all needing to be led away and disposed of before he could even start on the unravelers.

After he found the orifice chamber, guarded by yet another lightning enchanted apparition boss, Skull took a break from tomb-clearing to go and explode some maggots. Coldworm was extra fast. Skull wondered if this affected the rate at which she produced new maggot mothers.

Then it was back to the unravelers.

[This was, indeed, really really slow going for Skull. It was a 10-hour playing session from Canyon of Magi waypoint, clearing all the tombs, quick side-trip to Maggot Lair, and finally defeating Duriel.]

Skull reached level 53 before he finished clearing the tomb. He found a gem shrine, for his ninth perfect skull.

Before visiting Duriel, Skull went to talk to Greiz. Chalan had apparently been resurrected and re-employed, so Skull hired him again. He equipped his best life-boosting equipment (finally a chance to wear his shiny new mage plate!), raised himself a golem, selected Bone Wall for his right button skill, and went in to see the demon maggot. [Bone Wall has one advantage over Bone Prison here. It stops a Duriel charge just as effectively, even at level one, but it can be cast without needing a target.]

Duriel wasted his one chance, taking out Skull's golem with his first insta-charge. Then, Skull had a couple of Bone Walls between himself and the demon, and switched to Bone Prisons, Iron Maiden, and Bone Spirits.

Duriel dropped a magic claymore, superior balanced knife, some potions, and a flawed ruby. Bah. This new 1.08 not-an-uberdrop system sucks.

Act 3

Skull started off in act 3 using this equipment: superior grim wand (+1 Clay Golem, +1 Iron Maiden), gemmed bone helm (two perfect skulls), 'Shadow Ward' rare bone shield, 'Death Jack' rare quilted armor, 'Carrion Hand' rare light gauntlets (gambled in act 2), 'Dire Brogues' rare boots, 'Bramble Lock' rare belt, amber amulet of the mammoth, 'Dread Loop' rare ring, 'Bitter Master' rare ring.

Skull decided he needed to curb his rampant leveling. He was already guaranteed enough skill points to max out all the skills he intended to put any points in, and he was in danger of breaching the level 60 limit for Hall of Heroes characters before completing hell difficulty. He resolved to make more use of Iron Maiden, since even in the new patch he still wasn't getting experience for monsters that killed themselves on his Bone Prisons.

This worked fine for thorned hulks, and melee fetishes. It wasn't so effective on the annoying blowpipe fetishes (though his Bone Prisons did at least protect him from their darts, unlike with the spear cats in act 2). And jungle hunters were so feeble, they didn't do enough damage to overcome their own regeneration.

Unlike in nightmare, Skull got his jade figurine from the first boss he encountered (blowpipe fetish boss Haze Thorn -- extra strong, mana burn, teleportation).

Skull had dealt with three more bosses (two jungle hunters, one cloud stalker) by the time he reached the first forest alcove, which turned out to contain the Spider Cavern.

Iron Maiden worked well against spiders, and swarms of giant lamprey young. The giant lamprey boss and its minions took a little longer to die.

Skull cleared the whole of the Spider Cavern, except for Sszark's corner.

Skull advanced into the spider's lair. Sszark and its minions came rushing out. Skull laid down his Bone Prisons, and got the spiders trapped.

Not quite.

Sszark was extra fast. Extra fast spiders are, well, bloody fast. One of the minions caught up to Skull before he had his Bone Prisons down. For the second time in hell Skull found himself trapped with an angry spider. Only this time it was a far more dangerous spider.

Skull got hit. He drank a rejuv potion.

Sszark attacked the Bone Prison. Curse graphics popped up everywhere.

Skull tried to target the spider beside him with his Bone Spirits, but in all the confusion he was not entirely sure he was aiming at the right one. He got hit again, which almost killed him.

Skull drank more rejuvs, tried to recast his Bone Armor. He was interrupted by the blocking animation. [5% blocking and it chooses now to go off? Sheesh.]

And then, it was over.

Skull's adventures end here. RIP.

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