Hell Part II: Hellforge, Diablo, Easy half of Act V
Entering with my higher level gave me some advantage. However, my gear was still sub par. My rings were both 3% life leech with a 4% life leech amulet. I decided to go gambling. After spending about 2/3's of my fortune gambling, I came up with an 8% mana leech amulet with 11 resist all, which was badly needed. I also got a magical ring with 5% life leech and a rare one with 6% and a few other mods such as attack rating. My next problem was a weapon. One slot was a Cruel War Scepter and the other was my gemmed Naga from nightmare. After quite a while of searching the vendors the best I could come up with was a second Cruel War Scepter. I replaced my naga with it though. I got fortunate in the river of flame. Abyss knights were the only bad set of enemies, stranglers and Urdars making up the remainder of it. Since two of my resists were at least close to zero, I decided I could take this line up.
The hellforge was at the first turn from the City of the Damned. I backtracked a bit to fight Hephesto in the open. He had; Spectral Hit, Aura Enchanted (conviction of course) Extra Strong and Cold enchanted. My already poor defense was reduced to about 17, with holy shield active. Fortunately I still had max block so I wasn't too concerned with it. Things quickly changed though, his first blow that connected brought my orb to under ten percent. He turned around and one shotted poor Pratham. I went to town revived him and came back down. I took another tenth off of Hephesto before he smoked Pratham again. Figuring I needed Pratham as a decoy I was forced to revive him every time he died. After about eight trips to Tyrael I finally knocked Hephesto to the ground. I picked up the hammer and returned to the Hellforge clearing the remainder of it's occupants. I smashed Mephisto's soul stone again and received these gems
After a long voyage to chaos sanctuary the real challenge began. The clearing of the monsters itself was easier than nightmare. I changed my pattern this time and took on the Grand vizier of Chaos first. His group went down with ease, dropping a decent rare sharskin belt, which replaced my rare heavy belt for its additional potion slot. I drifted over to the Infector of Souls. Switching to my Ancients Pledge and Hsaru's boots for the added fire resist against his inferno. He was enchanted with Multiple Shots but no lightning. It took longer to do this pack as they pinned Pratham and I into a corner. Once we got the upper hand though it was a breeze. Our final path took us to Lord de Seis. This path was totally unguarded making a quick dash to the seal, freeing Seis. My good luck was ended with this pack. Several bad mods made it most difficult to get clean swings in. I was able too kill two of the Oblivion Knights when they wandered off. However, while chasing down the third I was annihilated by de Seis, who was also multiple shots shooting cold missiles. He brought my experience bar down some before Pratham and I were able to trap him between the two of us. Diablo was freed.
I ran up to him just in time to see his fire swirlys envelop me quickly. After getting my body I felt it would be a better idea to fight the remainder of the battle using salvation rather than fanaticism. Pratham did the bulk of the damage but was all but ignored by Diablo whose only concern was trying to kill me. With my good resists, thanks to salvation, I was able to shrug off his attack while vegeancing enough life to stay alive switching to the cheaper skill of zeal to get my mana back. Diablo wandered off for a bit into a corner. This was a dream location to fight him as half of his fire swirlys were now not appearing since he was too close to a wall. I was able to switch to fanaticism a bit more often now to give my merc some more damage since he suffers a severe damage penalty on hell difficulty to bosses. I also got a few convictions in to increase the effect of Vengeance. After a while Diablo finally decided to go out with a bang and drop to the ground. Low and behold He left something behind that people might in fact use. Sadly my strength was seven points too low to use it, besides, would I want to give up cannot be frozen?
Rather than clearing the Bloody foothills this time, which I had seen more than enough of leveling up, I ran through them towards Shenk. He went down with little trouble. I socketed my Peasant Crown with the intent of putting my Fal rune in it for 10 strength so I could wear the Sazabi Armor. However, with my great reading skills combined with it being quite late, I ended up putting a ral rune in it. To look on the bright side, my fire resist was now on par with my cold resist though. It helped somewhat in the Frigid Highlands while saving the barbs to be able to take a few seconds worth of inferno. I freed them all, got my ral ort tal and sold them for some money. I continued to The Frozen river where my merc finally caught me in levels, at 78. Frozenstein was easy enough and we saved Anya. My cold resist was now pushed into positive territory with her scroll of resistance. Anya gave me a Vortex shield, which at first freaked me out because it had over 2000 defense. I soon remembered though I had holy shield active so I just sold it back to Larzuk for 35,000 more gold. Instead of going to Nihlathak now, I wanted to get the rest of the waypoints, so I did. Now standing in Town I thought to myself which would I rather do first, Nihlathak or the Ancients. I elected Nihlathak would be the easier task of the two.
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