Act 4: Causing My Own Terror in Hell
Standing just beyond the gates of hell, Hazade and I left their fortress and proceeded into the Outer steppes. Taking advantage of a very easy line up I cleared everything there leveling once in the process. I stepped no more than three paces in the Plaines of Despair and encountered Izual. While he posed no real threat to me, he did pose quite a threat to Halbu's Blacksmithing ability. After making two trips to town to repair my flail I talked to Tyrael and collected my reward of two skill points, both of which I saved. I found the city of the damned with little problem, I somewhat wish I hadn't as it had a lineup of enemies I wasn't too fond of fighting.
The waypoint and the entrance to the river of flame revealed themselves about half way through, anxious to leave the bad set of monsters I took it down. What a mistake this was. Going from Abyss Knights, Stygian Hags, and Damneds; I rushed myself into the river of flame enemies, Abyss Knights, Blood Maggots, and Grotesques. I had some very close calls here with my rather poor resists. I made the mistake of challenging Hephesto the Armorer before clearing the way around him. My already low resists in addition to his conviction aura resulted in many potions I would have rather saved for another time. After a lot of pounding, a dead mercenary and another trip to Halbu, Hephesto fell to the ground leaving me the hellforge hammer. I promptly destroyed Mephisto's soul stone leaving these. I backtracked my way to the only fork in the path, flipped a hidden stash and found a pair of Treads of Cthon. Sadly I substituted a decent resist on my Hsaru's boots for these, I wanted to run faster with a bit more life and defense. I had no problems on the upper half of the river of flame and before long my revived mercenary and I were in the Chaos sanctuary.
It gets really ugly here. Someone needs to inform mercenaries that swinging when under the influence of Iron Maiden is not a good idea. He died at least four times because of that and another couple for his wandering off. In fact, I'm so sure mercenaries are just programmed to attack with Iron Maiden upon them, I'm willing to bet an act3 Merc would swing his sword as well. I elected to go after the Infector of Souls first. He fell easily and left a goodie for me. As I approached the Grand Vizier of Chaos, another treat was dropped for me here, nicely replacing my half freeze duration light gauntlets. Again, he proved to be no trouble at all and I approached Lord de Seis. I'm proud to say he was unable to kill my merc. I made short work of Seis and awaited the beast of the hour, Diablo himself.
I put my cursor over him once and ran to the nearest corner to analyze the situation. MY chance to hit him was higher than I was expecting it to be, almost 65%. however, with his grossly high block it would be closer to 30%. In exchange he had a 94% chance to hit me, however, with my 75% chance to block it would keep the hit to hit exchange fairly even. I was forced to switch to a shield with 2 normal topaz's in it to help negate his lightning attack. The constant getting frozen coerced me into filling my belt with thawing potions. Hazade was a great in the fight, but don't let this fool you, he would manage to die moments before Diablo did. Doing so, kept him from seeing the GODLY drop here. I switched back to my normal gear, revived Hazade and made haste to harrogath.
end stats
Level 26
str 66 (65)
dex 71 (70)
vit 65
nrg 15
Life 272
Mana 52
FR 0
CR 20
LR 11
PR 0
DMG 11-84
AR 1,296
return to the Main Page or continue to Act 5