Act 4 Nightmare: Hell in Nightmare or Nightmare in Hell?
Entering the Pandemonium Fortress I realized I was grossly low of a level. I exited into the Outer Steppes. Even with fanaticism on, my chance to hit was lower than 60%. This did not stop me from trying though. I worked my way from town to Izual. After clearing the burning souls around him, Pratham and I moved in for the kill. Izual, as always did very little damage to either of us, however, he was just absorbing my pathetic blows as well. After a good long while he fell to the ground giving me nearly a quarter of a level.
I continued to the City of the Damned. My good luck continued here as well, the waypoint and entrance to the River of Flame were just inside. Taking advantage of the opportunity I entered the River. It was loaded with perhaps the worst combination of guys it can get. Maggots, Abyss Knights and Urdars.
Urdars used to be the laughing stock of all enemies anywhere, closely followed by venom lords. However, Ever since Urdars got a stun attack they are quite a menace, especially to a mercenary. Poor Pratham was killed a good dozen times by an Urdar while trying to chase down a stray Blood Maggot Young. I was surprised I did as well as I was doing. I was barley losing life aside from and Urdar rush. The river of flame was larger than usual and it took me quite some time to get to the hellforge. Unlike normal difficulty, it was relatively unguarded this time.
Just to be safe though, I ran Hephesto to the River of flame waypoint for an easy exit. It would not be needed however, he went down with ease this time. I picked up his hammer and took returned to the hellforge. My prize wasn't nearly as good this time, but it was still something.
I made my way to the Chaos Sanctuary without any problem at all, even Pratham seemed more comfortable on the way up. We entered the Sanctuary and cleaned some house, granted, one to two guys at a time. I thought the Infector of Souls would be a good first boss to take on. He was faster than anything should ever be and lightning enchanted to boot. I ran him back to the entrance of the Chaos Sanctuary so I could go back for him later.
The Grand Vizier of Chaos was an easy win for me, having very easy mods on him. The battle with Lord de Seis was much easier than anticipated. I did switch back to Hsaru's boots to get a more balanced set of resists than I had with Sigons on. Upon killing him, I was again pained to see these. On a side note, I typically find boots like this online all the time, if anyone has gloves I have more than enough pairs of boots for you. Anyway, since Sanders boots had no real effective mods, I let them sit in my stash.
I mounted the courage to go get The Infector of Souls. He made short work of Pratham, surprisingly, his first death in the entire Chaos Sanctuary. While this may not sound impressive, considering it too close to two hours to clear it, I thought it was an accomplishment. Diablo finally came forth to greet us, a meeting I wish I had waited for. Diablo, on nightmare is something like level 65; I was 38 at the time. My damage was pathetic as well. After about 15 minutes of doing no damage to him, I decided it would be wise to go back to normal and level some, even though I didn't initially want too.
On normal, I did bloody runs and Baal runs until I was blue in the face, and level 47. By now I had maxed my stash and inventory with gold, which would be handy later. I came back to nightmare and did several Izual runs along with river runs, getting myself up to level 51. At this point, Pratham was still at level 46, but I decided we would likely be able to take Diablo now. My chance to hit was now in the mid 70's for the enemies we encountered, substantially better than before. However, while leveling Pratham decided to lose his brain. He got iron maidened time and time again. Of course, he died in his first two swings, long before I was able to vigor and run him out of range.
With much less trouble this time, not to mention in about eight minutes, I got to Diablo. Sadly, I still had my same crappy 13-37 damage weapon, I decided it was time to get rid of this, as I still couldn't really hurt him. I bought the first battle hammer I found, which had no mods other than 100 Poison damage. While it was slower than my previous weapon, the damage was about double, which was very handy. I revived Pratham, the first of 950,000 gold worth of resurrections and activated salvation, to give him a chance with his bad resists. We beat down Diablo with our new gear. As always seems to be the case, when I had Diablo down to a sliver of health, I could not seem to land a blow. This went on for several seconds until I finally hit him with a charge. Once again, he decided to drop me five magical items, three of which were ethereal.
end stats
Lvl - 51
Damage - 327 - 525
Atr - 1444
Str - 117 (115)
Dex - 121 (120)
Vit - 115 (95)
Nrg - 35 (15)
Life - 490
Mana - 120
FR - 18
CR - 80
LR - 29
PR - 18
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