Act 5 Nightmare: Healing the Wounds of Many
The walls of Harrogath protected me against as I came in. I could hear the lobbing of catapult fire against them. Thunderous explosions scared Pratham and I cold. We mounted the courage and left town. The ground was loitered with fallen barbarian allies. Stepping through them and aided those still alive, we made our way across the battle field. A deceased enslaved was kind enough to drop this shield for me. I put it on immediately. While I was sad to see my resists go down severely, the 50 life and faster hit recovery was more practical in this area. Pratham was still using a normal pike with 7% life leech. He managed to find himself a four socket lance though. After putting it through my socketting shop it became his new weapon.
We worked our way to Shenk and killed him with ease. The siege was broken, the townsfolk were grateful. Larzuk had a decent naga that he was selling, I bought it, used his socket quest to get two sockets in it, and shoved in a perfect skull along with a jewel of carnage. My attack speed was now considerably faster, so I took this opportunity to do several bloody runs before continuing on with the act.
Rescuing the Barbs was an easy task. I elected to not clear the optional areas this time, I pretty much ran straight to the Crystalline Passage, picking up the Arreat waypoint of course. The frozen river is were Pratham started to gain some levels on me, getting to level fifty one. Anya's reward for saving her, was crappy as usual. I didn't mind too much, it would have needed to be a great shield to top mine!
I went through the red portal and cleared every last guy in Nihlathak's Temple, the Halls of Anguish, the Halls of Pain and the Halls of Vaught. Putrid Defilers as champions is almost a contradiction in terms. While the Game Guide describes them as, "These vile, loathsome beasts strike fear even into the black souls of Baal's own troops. Not only can the Defiler viciously attack using its razor-sharp forelegs, it reproduces at will by silently hovering near an unwary demon and parasitically infecting the hell-spawn with pain worms. These pain worms immediately travel to the brain of the host monster and grow fat on the vile thoughts of the fiend. If the monster is killed while the worms are gestating, the parasite eat their way through the beast's brain and ultimately burrow out of its skull in search of a new body to inhabit" Yes, Blizzard wasted such a cool profile on a monster which walks up to you, growls, swings once, sometimes doing in excess of forty damage on hell and retreating farther than storm casters and flayers.
Nihlathak was much tougher this time, Initially there was a body too close to me, he smashed it and my life dropped low enough that I drank half of my full juvs before realizing, oh, these are full juvs they heal instantly. I wasn't expecting him to be able to do this much damage with it. However, with my bad resists and lack of DR, it became obvious as to why. I was more careful for the duration of the fight, switching to Hsaru's boots, the Ancients Pledge and salvation to max my three main resists. Nihlathak screamed like my non-existent sister after seeing something gross. He gave an ungodly amount of experience as well, getting me over halfway through level 63.
I continued onward heading to the ancients way. The frozen tundra pissed me off when all of the ranged attackers so I just skipped most of it running to the ancients way. I cleared this hole area though as well as the icy cellar (drifter cavern?) I managed to scrounge up enough guys to get me almost exactly on level 64. As I entered the Arreat Summit I found it weird, I was a higher level before doing nightmare ancients than most people are after doing hell ancients.
The ancients were really a pushover over at this point. They gave me about one and one fifth levels, bringing me to 65. I listened to their speech, which is possibly the best speech in the whole game then took a peek over the edge of the summit.
I worked my way through the twists and turns of the Worldstone Keep. On the second level, I was a bit nervous of getting hit by the exploding ice beasts, so I let Pratham take the brunt of them, since for whatever reason mercs never take damage from them. He reached level 60 when we entered the throne of destruction. We cleared everything out preparing for the worst, in fear that I may have to run the Bartuc wave away. My fears didn't come true though. We pelted through all of the waves with no problem. An oddity, seen here I'm not entirely sure what happened there, but it was most certainly not why I took the screenshot. As near as I can tell that's a minion of destruction being shattered into oblivion by Pratham.
We entered the Worldstone Chamber, I felt Baal would be a pushover and didn't both to get decent resists for the fight. I zealed away Baal's life quickly. The fight in total was under thirty seconds. Good ole Pratham didn't let me down though, he managed to find a way to die despite our overwhelming advantages. I didn't bother to revive him, he didn't deserve it. Baal dropped five magical items, not a single one of which was even exceptional, as a last act of indignity. I exited nightmare and loaded up for hell
End of Nightmare stats
Lvl - 65
Str - 137 (135)
Dex - 142 (135)
Vit - 150 (130)
Nrg - 35 (15)
Zeal damage - 162-568
Zeal Atr - 1923
Defense - 462
Block chance - 75%(with holy shield)
FR - -20
CR - 47
LR - -9
PR - -20
Skills - All skills have a base of one point, except for resist fire, cold, lightning, fist of the heavens, meditation, and conversion, which have none. I have +1 all skills, so everything I have is a minimum of level 2. Everything is listed in base points
Zeal - 5
Conviction - 5
Vengence - 5
Holy Shield - 10
Salvation - 2
Fanaticism - 20
return to the Main Page or continue to Act 1 Hell